I’m taking a break from the election (Please!  Please!  When will it be over?) to announce that my poem immortalizing my beloved pooch, Molly, has just been published in June Cotner’s DOG BLESSINGS. See the poem below, and here’s the link to June’s website where you can buy the book and read bios of all the contributors. (You can also get the book in the usual other places.) This little book is a sweet compilation of “Poem’s, Prose, and Prayers Celebrating Our Relationship with Dogs.” Divided into sections including “A Dog’s World,” “Puppies,” “Our Bond,” “Devotion,” “Aging Gracefully,” “Partings,” “Reflections,” and “Prayer’s, Blessings, and Inspiration,” the book includes work by wonderful dog loving poets from all over the country. A great gift for a dog lover…. Really!  

Below left: This serious (although very cute) dog posing with the book is June’s.  

Below right:  Whereas that extraordinary dog below is Molly and her friend Huddie. (Molly’s the chocolate)

WHAT? YOUR DOG DOESN’T TALK?

Mine does. Mine talks a blue streak.

Has a full English vocabulary, colloquial and formal,

uses simple and complex sentences,

and muscular prose,

accompanied by a full range of gestures, tricks and expressions.

Grammatically iffy sometimes, but always deeply felt.

A fine sprinkling of Italian and Yiddish, too.

Here is a sampling:

·      Welcome to our house. I’m Miss Molly. See. It says so on my chair.

·      Mom, can you believe it? This guy won’t get out of the car. He thinks I look fierce. Ha. Ha. Ha.

·      I prefer THIS chaise lounge (chair, rug, hole) right now, and if I turn around three times first, it’ll be even more perfect. Ain’t life grand?

·      I’m really, REALLY sorry, Mom. I didn’t feel well.

·      Move over, would you? And by the way, I was here first.

·      I’ll come when you show me the goods.

·      Okay then, if I lie down and put my face on the floor between my paws, will you PLEASE give me some?

·      Are you upset, Mom? Here. Let me love you . . . put my head on your thigh . . . lick your face . . . rub your nose . . . put my paws around your neck . . . make you laugh with a brilliant antic. Or we can just sit here, if you want.

·      Are you talking AGAIN about what a great dog I am? Talk on, and I’ll listen and thump.

·      Ummmm. Get a load of these lilacs . . . carrion . . . goose (horse, dog, rabbit) poop . . . new mown grass . . . fish . . . birds . . . air . . . the weird smell in the hallway. Life is delicious, and smells SOOOOOO great.

·      Okay. If I can’t come, I’ll just wait here until you get home.

·      Oooooh! I just LOVE it when you brush me . . . tickle my ears . . . rub my belly . . . my hind quarters . . . that place on my back . . . no, not there! THERE!

·      Ahhhhhhh! This is the life.

Readers, I’m quite a busy girl these days, so I haven’t had as much time to offer my Bruised Muse musings as regularly as I had been doing.  Today I’m going to cheat a little, and offer a reader’s comment in this space, with only the following as a brief introduction.  People everywhere keep trying to come up with analogies from books and film and television to describe McCain/Palin world. 

I personally feel either I’ve entered “1984,” complete with double think and double speak, or perhaps as if I’m stuck in the room with crazy General Jack Ripper from “Dr. Strangelove” perseverating on those crazy Rooskies and our precious bodily fluids.   Matt Damon feels as if Sarah Palin potentially being President is like a bad Disney movie. On the Huffington Post, Jake Tapper of ABC News compared the whole McCain/Palin campaign to a Saturday Night Live routine.  Gail Collins wonders who the candidate of the week is, and compares whoever he is to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.  Bruised Muse Reader Michael wrote this:

Watching and listening to McCain/Palin reminds me of an old storyline I read as a kid in the Superman comics, of all things. Every once in a while, Superman would go to a planet called Htrae (earth backwards)where all actions and words were opposite of those on earth. Their version of Superman looked more like Frankenstein. What we considered good, they considered bad, and so forth. This planet was called, appropriately, Bizzaro World.

In order to keep a steady, sanity check in the midst of the constant stream of McCain/Palin lies and obvious disingenuousness, combined with the fact that certain people are actually swallowing this garbage, I can only chalk this up to the fact that Bizzaro World exists on our planet and in our country.

Dr. Strangelove.  1984.  Bad Disney Movie. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Saturday Night Live Skit. Superman Comics Bizzaro World.  Readers, let’s come up with some more bizzaro world analogies.  It won’t change anything, but it’ll make us feel better.

Yesterday on NPR, in an interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, Tom Friedman, Pulitzer Prize winning NYTimes columnist, told it like it is on the absolute necessity to go green. Although I definitely disagreed with him on the lead up to the Iraq war (which I always thought not only incredibly stupid but a strategic and moral catastrophe, and he originally supported), Friedman remains among the most brilliant commentators we have in this country. Friedman ought to be required reading (or listening) for every American. Here are a few memorable (approximated) quotes from that interview that drill down (you should pardon the pun) the problem with electing John McCain:

When I heard Rudi Guiliani lead that crowd (at the Repub convention) in chanting “Drill Baby Drill,” I thought, what planet are these people inhabiting? It’s as if on the eve of the advent of computer technology, the Republicans were out there saying “Let’s stick with the IBM Selectric Typewriter.” Type baby type. Type. Type. Type.

If the Petro-dictators–the leaders of the world’s most repressive, anti-modern, anti-woman regimes like Saudi Arabia, which we’re supporting by our addiction to oil, either foreign OR domestic–were up in the bleachers at that convention, they would have been giving each other high fives! They WANT us to remain focused on fossil fuels.

We ought to be promoting fuels from Heaven (wind, solar, etc) rather than fuels from hell (fossil based)

John McCain, whom I used to respect, has been ‘bloody dishonest.’ He’s making people stupid, and it’s frankly disgusting.

John McCain’s support for lifting the federal gas tax for a summer giveaway was absurd and misleading.

We ought to have 100000 innovators working in 100000 garages.

The current tax and production credits for wind and solar energy expire on December 31. A bill to extend them has been brought up in Congress eight times and John McCain didn’t show up to vote eight times. Obama showed up three times and voted to extend. So now, at this crucial time, the solar and wind innovators in this country are at a dead stop, frozen. Nobody is starting new projects. This makes no sense at all.

President Bush claimed we have an addiction to oil, but do you think he invited all these senators, Republican’s and Democrats, to Camp David and said, “Let’s work it out.” Do you think he lifted one little finger, one pinky to help?

Remember when Ronald Reagan pulled Jimmy Carter’s solar panels off the White House?

When Reagan canceled Carter’s tax credits for wind, Denmark bought the top American wind company and now has the largest wind company in the world.

Now WHICH party and WHICH Candidate are green? George Bush (and John McCain, his twin) don’t want to work it out because the Republican party (of which John McCain is a bonafide member, matter how much they try to distract you with their lipsticked Pitbull and claims of being energy savvy mavericks and change agents), is completely in the pocket of the big oil companies. Make no mistake. The only change they’re going to give you is to move even farther to the right than even George Bush. It’s amazing: Here we have a candidate John McCain who’s made a completely irresponsible pick for Vice President, and in addition has picked just possibly the most anti-green person he could have found. Apparently, in addition to her extremist views on religion, book banning, teaching creationism in school as science, her belief that you can turn gay people straight, and so much else, Sarah Palin also apparently believes global warming isn’t man made. Great. While the rest of the world is moving forward in science and technology and medicine, we’ll be increasing our deficits as Republicans always do; restricting the most promising line of medical research, stem cells; continuing to consume oil at a planet-killing rate; teaching Adam and Eve as science to our young people; arguing over gays; adding to the world’s overpopulation in a resource limited world by pushing abstinence only and restricting access to sex education, birth control and abortion. Now that would be a catastrophe. And the Republicans continue to live in a fantasy world and insist that America is still and always will be the world’s “leader,” and call anyone who would dare speak truth unpatriotic.

To hear the whole Fresh Air interview here’s the link on NPR

Be afraid, people. Be very afraid. Bush calls us the angry left? But I’m not angry, I’m mostly just sad. I grieve for the demise of this country and this planet. But instead of fighting as we go down, some of us will be chanting “Drill Baby Drill.”

On this glorious Sunday afternoon, the Bruised Muse would like to follow up on my last post, in which I gave the “Bubblehead of the Year” Award to Cindy McCain for saying that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gives Sarah Palin foreign policy bonafides, and, while I’m at it, respond to Bruised Muse reader Preston, who said, “Completely agree, that was a stupid comment! Have not heard it repeated, so they must’ve told her “don’t go there!”.

Far from telling beautiful Cindy not to go there, the Republicans have made this an ACTUAL TALKING POINT, and we have John McCain himself actually repeating it, as in this interview with Charlie Gibson:

GIBSON: Can you honestly say you feel confident having someone who hasn’t traveled outside the United States until last year, dealing with an insurgent Russia, with an Iran with nuclear ambitions, with an unstable Pakistan, not to mention the war on terror?

MCCAIN: Sure. And one of the key elements of America’s national security requirements are energy. She understands the energy issues better than anybody I know in Washington, D.C., and she understands. Alaska is right next to Russia. She understands that.

If Sarah Palin understands that, why doesn’t she sling up that baby and her gun and march back up to Alaska to negotiate with and slay those pesky Rooskies and the moose they’re riding in on, presumably from Cape Dezhnev through the Bering Strait? (And then she can gut and skin and eat the moose too.) Do moose swim? Or is it mooses?

But seriously, Bruised Musers, according to the Introductory Textbook of Psychiatry by Andreason and Black, psychotic disorders are characterized by (among other things) disorganized, derailed speech in which, “The patient tends to skip from topic to topic without warning, to be distracted by events in the environment, to join words together because they are semantically or phonologically alike, even though they make no sense, or to ignore the question asked and answer another.”

Between the disorganized, tangential, illogical speech demonstrated in the Gibson/McCain exchange above; McCain’s constant repetition of irrelevancies and false slogans such as Drill Here and Drill Now (perseveration?); his bizarre switched on/switched off smile (inappropriate affect?); his apparent belief that we’re going to buy him as the “change” agent the country needs (delusion?); his offering of such peculiar comments as “Sarah is my soulmate,” and “She’s best Vice Presidential candidate in history,” (grandiosity?); his bellicose “We are All Georgians” rhetoric (paranoia?); and his obviously impulsive, last minute pick of an extremist, unvetted, unqualified VP, the Bruised Muse is really starting to worry about his sanity.

Senator Barack Obama actually DOES have the right temperament for the Presidency. A more impulsive, bellicose, and erratic man (say Senator John McCain) would surely have lost his temper in the face of the stream of stupidity, bald faced lies, and simplistic nonsense emerging from John McCain and the Republicans.  But Senator Obama laughs amiably and says, with admirably restrained sarcasm, “They must think you’re stupid.”

Delusional is more like it. Good for you, Senator Obama. If I were on the stump right now, my head would be exploding.

I’d like to suggest other psychological types contact me so we can start a group called “Psychologists for Truth.” Now I know Americans don’t like to hear the Truth, and prefer a prettied-up, romanticized version of life, but seriously folks: What are the long term personality consequences of a person enduring torture for five years? As Republican Thad Cochran of Mississippi said, “The thought of McCain being President sends a cold child up my spine.” Me too, Thad. And it’s getting colder by the moment.

Be afraid, reader. Be very afraid. This guy is going to get us into another war.

If the Bruised Muse hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed it. Consider for a moment Cindy McCain’s amazing comment about the foreign policy credentials of would-be-VP-in-waiting, Sarah Palin. On Sunday, on ABC’s This Week, beautiful Cindy said:

“You know, the experience that she comes from is, what she has done in government — and remember that Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia.”

The Bruised Muse is absolutely certain that this comment couldn’t be an official Repub talking point, but rather is an example of Cindy McCain striking out boldly on her own, having watched Fox News, where commentator Steve Doocy testified to Sarah Palin’s national security experience on Friday by saying that her state, Alaska, was so close to Russia.

The Bruised Muse, for once, is speechless!

Following up on my previous post on the cynical choice of Sarah Palin as VP, the Bruised Muse would like to invite Karl Rove to a word eating party. On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” a few weeks ago Rove said that Obama was “going to make a ‘political’ choice rather than a ‘governing’ choice, and offered Tim Kaine as an example of such an intensely political and bad choice, one that would help Obama win but not govern. Karl Rove should know about these things because he presided over an Administration in which the entire workings of government took a back seat to politics in every single area. But he was wrong about Senator Obama, who made a very wise, non-political choice in Joe Biden, and showed great “judgment.”

Well. It turns out that it’s actually John McCain who’s made a “political” choice rather than a “governing” choice. Isn’t the VP supposed to 1) help the President govern, and 2) be the person best qualified to take over. Surely McCain doesn’t think this former mayor of a town of 6700 with less than two years of experience as Governor of Alaska is the best qualified person to take over, should he not be able to serve? What are we to make of his judgment when he picks someone with no foreign policy experience after he’s spent the last few months trying to sell us on the idea that Senator Obama is unqualified because he has no foreign policy experience? At least Senator Obama is self-reflective enough to recognize a potential gap in experience and chose a foreign policy expert like Joe Biden, who might actually help him govern, and who WOULD be qualified to take over. Perhaps the old warrior McCain feels he’s invincible. Doesn’t he realize that he’s 72 years old? We’ve had enough of a President with no capacity for realistic self-reflection.

You have to wonder if they even vetted this woman. Wow. For a real scare (or laugh, depending on your mood), watch Sarah Palin on youtube, asking the key question of our age:

What exactly does the Vice President do on a daily basis?”

Lady, with all due respect, let’s hope you never get to find out. John McCain puts America First? I don’t think so.

At the risk of seeming to pander to my friends who say they can’t take the whole “grief thing” of my blog (which by the way is only 34.682 % grief), I’d like to pay tribute this Monday morning to legendary record producer Jerry Wexler. This is NOT a grief post, even though death is involved, since Wexler died on Friday at the age on 91 in Florida. The thing is, I keep hearing his music being played in tribute on the radio, and let’s face it, the man essentially INVENTED “rhythm and blues” as well as “blue-eyed soul” and produced some of the greatest music EVER, including: The Drifters, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Wilson Picket, Sonny and Cher, Dusty Springfield, Led Zepplin, Dr. John, Willie Nelson, Dire Straits, Bob Dylan , Carlos Santana, and Etta James.

Oh, how we grooved back in high school to the rhythm and blues, songs the likes of which have never been heard again, such incredible songs as “Respect”, “In the Midnight Hour”, “Mustang Sally”, “Chain of Fools”, “Dock of the Bay”, and so many more? It makes me swoon with memory just thinking about it. How do you ever forget stacking the records on the turntable, blasting the music and dancing until you danced yourself into exhaustion? How do you ever forget the soulful, imagination-stirring magic of “When a Man Loves A Woman?” How do you forget hanging out in cars with the radio turned up, listening to “I Say a Little Prayer” or “Respect?” Or going down the shore to Atlantic City long before gambling came in, when the landscape was graced by wicker pushcarts on the Boardwalk, and great hotels like the Ambassador and the Ritz rose behind you as you watched the sun rise and listened on the radio to none other than the Drifters singing, “Under the Boardwalk, we’ll be falling in love”?  And fell in love. Ooooohhhh. So great.

Thank you Jerry Wexler. I’m glad your Mama couldn’t corral her wayward son.