$950 For a Puppy?!?

I was watching CBS Morning Show today, when they ran an article about Designing a Cutter Dog. The gist behind the story is the new trend in mixing breeds to come up with the perfect dog. Puggles, a mix of pugs and beagles, were focused on, but they discussed other new breeds as well, including minature St Bernards, Lhasa-poos, and Shitzus mixed breeds. (Think of what the resulting name would be for those dogs!)

The breeder in the article said his puggles sell for $950. However, the article also said that these engineered breeds could go for thousands.

Don't get me wrong. I love puppies, (and kittens, and just about any other animal -- well, at least mammal -- out there.) But when does someone go too far to find a pet? When does the pet stop being a pet, and become a social statement?

The article ends with a quote from the breeder, "They gotta be cute or people don't want 'em." So, what happens to the resulting puppies that aren't cute?

My advice? Go to the pound or a rescue organization. You can find just as loveable puppies there, for much cheaper. Just ask my dog, a fellow rescued greyhound.

The Logistician

Logisticians are a sad and embittered race of men who are very much in demand in war, and who sink resentfully into obscurity in peace. They deal only in facts, but must work for men who merchant in theories. They emerge during war because war is very much a fact. They disappear in peace because peace is mostly theory. The people who merchant in theories, and who employ logisticians in war and ignore them in peace, are generals.

Generals are a happily blessed race who radiate confidence and power. They feed only on ambrosia and drink only nectar. In peace, they stride confidently and can invade a world simply by sweeping their hands grandly over a map, pointing their fingers decisively up terrain corridors, and blocking defiles and obstacles with the sides of their hands. In war, they must stride more slowly because each general has a logistician riding on his back and he knows that, at any moment, the logistician may lean forward and whisper: "No, you can't do that." Generals fear logisticians in war and in peace, generals try to forget logisticians.

Romping along beside generals are strategists and tacticians. Logisticians despise strategists and tacticians. Strategists and tacticians do not know about logisticians until they grow to become generals--which they usually do.

Sometimes a logistician becomes a general. If he does, he must associate with generals whom he hates; he has a retinue of strategists and tacticians whom he despises; and, on his back, is a logistician whom he fears. This is why logisticians who become generals always have ulcers and cannot eat their ambrosia.

Author Unknown

Quoted in 2005 at both The Professor's Lecture Notes and Iraq Now . I ran across the quote when blog surfing. It's an old quote but still applicable today.

"Your Such a Strange Garanimal"

Many years ago when I attended college, one of my roomates always use to call people garanimals. At the time, I didn't think too much of it, but as they years progressed, I noticed that everyone is a garanimal in their own right. Being a garanimal is neither good nor bad -- although I would admit that some garanimals are good, while others are not. Instead, it is what you make of it. Live your eccentricities.... Revel in your differences.

In the end, all that we can do is live our own lives. And perhaps, we can hope to find the garanimal who completes us.