rants and observations

I’ve been listening to music all my life, probably from moments after my birth and will probably be listening to music moments before my death. Music has been with me for all the great events in my life and has helped me through some of the worst. It attaches itself to your memories and can drag you back to a sunny day with friends at the beach in 1978 or waking in the snow along Victoria’s Fort Street in the early evening of 1985. All of the images, smells and sounds become clear with the help of music.

Everyone has a favourite song, something they probably connect with a specific moment or event in their lives. Music is the soundtrack of our existence (oooh, heavy!) and we edit our score on a daily basis, adding new pieces to new events for future memory recollections.

Here’s a few that do it for me:

Claude Debussy’s Clair De Lune – This one reminds me of living in Shearwater, Nova Scotia as a small child and walking to school. Don’t ask me why…it just does.

Irish Boy (From the movie Kal) by Mark Knopfler – This brings me back to winter in Victoria in the mid-eighties. I listened to this album relentlessly along with Knopfler’s soundtrack for the movie Local Hero while walking the streets and listening to my walkman.

Hungry Eyes by Sad Cafe – I hung out at Beaver Lake in Victoria with my girlfriend for an entire summer in the late 70’s. We used to listen to this song on my crappy car cassette player while heading to the lake in the late morning to secure a good spot for our blanket and cooler.

Feel free to add a few of your own music memories by clicking the Comments link below, adding the name of the song and the memories it conjures.

After the recent attack on Benjamin by a neighbour’s unleashed dog and their refusal to pay the resulting vet bill, we’ve officially initiated Operation A-Hole:

• Step One – Submitted a statement to the city outlining the event in detail and supplying a photo of poor Benjamin’s injuries. The city can deem their dog ‘aggressive’ which would increase their annual license fee.
• Step Two – Sent the vet bill via registered mail to the A-holes with a cover letter stating that we would wait 7 days for payment after which we would initiate a claim in court.

We intend to ramp it up and drag them into court if they don’t respond to our registered letter and pay the vet bill. But will they leash their dog in the future? Who knows but we plan on making it quite uncomfortable for them until they start behaving like responsible dog owners. Stay tuned.

It’s well known that some dogs just don’t like other dogs. Our dog Benjamin and a neighbour’s dog just a block away don’t like each other for some unknown reason and waste no time barking and posturing whenever they meet. They’ve had 3 run-ins over the years and we keep Benjamin on a leash at all times on his walks primarily because of this dog, however our neighbours are not nearly as responsible.

My wife was out with Benjamin shortly after Canada’s gold medal hockey win (Go Canada!) when they came across his arch enemy out for a walk with his owners on the trail behind our home. They didn’t have their dog leashed and, ignoring their useless and feeble “Stop” and “Sit” commands, he charged our dog and latched on to his head. With Benjamin screaming in pain my wife attempted to disengage the attacker without being bitten herself but it was intent on inflicting as much damage to Benjamin as possible. Even the owners couldn’t control him and it took some time before they could finally drag their dog away leaving Benjamin with a large gash on his head.

My wife was some distance from our home with poor Benjamin bleeding profusely from the wounds on his head. So do you think these people offered assistance (there were two of them) or some help back with our wounded dog? Nope. They unapologeticly resumed their walk and my wife did her best to get Benjamin back to our home, in the car and off to the emergency veterinarian. I visited the couple shortly after my wife’s frantic phone call and advised that I would be presenting them with the vet bill and expected them to pay. Nope. They advised me that they were not responsible for the attack and wounds caused by their unleashed dog or the $252.00 bill for veterinarian care. I returned to their well lit and obviously inhabited home a bit later to give them a copy of the vet bill and, once again, ask them to do the right thing. And like the irresponsible twats they appear to be, they refused to answer the door. If you ignore the problem it will go away, right? Where do shitty neighbours like these come from and why in hell do they live in my neighbourhood?

So what do we do. Well, to start, we called the city but they can do little other than increase their dog license fee (assuming their dog is licensed) by designating it as an aggressive animal but we will submit a complaint and go as far with it as we can. Fair enough but that may not force them to be responsible or pay the vet bill. So we have little choice but to pursue the issue through the courts and we’re quite confident we’ll win but why does it have to come to this? Why can’t people just step up and be responsible rather than being, in my neighbourhood anyway, atypical assholes? I can’t answer that but they WILL end up paying Benjamin’s vet bill and probably a bit more. And I can also award these people the April Road Asshole of the Week Award. Congratulations you assholes and see you in court.

Keep a 12,000 pound killer whale in isolation for an extended period of time and it’s no surprise when it drags a trainer into the water to ‘play’. Tilikum the killer whale, a past resident of Victoria’s now defunct Sealand of the Pacific tourist trap and now residing at Seaworld Orlando, is responsible for the death of Dawn Brancheau, who had to be manually extricated from the jaws of the mammal by Seaworld staff. Tilikum reportedly grabbed Ms. Brancheau by the ponytail and dragged her into the pool, repeatedly pulling her underwater until she drowned. The killer whale would not release her so staff coaxed the animal into a holding tank which was drained of water and she was removed from it’s mouth by prying its jaws apart.

This isn’t the first human tragedy connected with Tilikum. He was responsible for the death of a trainer at Sealand of the Pacific in February 1991 when he dragged her into the water and played with her until she drowned. It took Sealand staff over two hours to retrieve her body from the pool.

Tilikum was also responsible for the death of a man in July 1999 at Seaworld when his naked body was found draped across it’s back when staff began their early morning shift. He had apparently spent the night in Seaworld and entered the pool to play with the killer whale. In retrospect, not a terribly smart move on his part. Tilikum drowned him and tossed his body around the pool until it was retrieved by staff.

Which leads to the obvious question…why keep whales in captivity at all? Why put an intelligent, majestic animal like a killer whale in a small pool and force it to entertain tourists by doing unnatural flips and acrobatic tricks for fish treats? Because it makes money. Period.

Tilikum had been kept in solitary isolation and used only for breeding purposes due to his violent past. Is it any wonder he wanted to play? Whales don’t understand that humans can’t breath underwater and could easily bite a human in half but Tilikum was bored and frustrated with spending it’s days in a small tank with little or no interaction with its own species or human beings. Anyone would go mad under those circumstances.

It’s time to shut down these freak shows and let the present inhabitants live out their lives with dignity and in peace. Seaworld Orlando will close the doors for a few days but will reopen and continue displaying these poor creatures until the next death. And on it will go until we finally wise-up and force them to close forever. And how can we possibly force them to close? It’s easy. We just don’t go anymore.