Occupation of Independence

Many times I have praised the habit of catching things out of the corner of your eye. It happened again today. I was driving to town on an errand. Fifty yards off the road was one of the rental outhouses at this recreation area. There was a large chocolate labrador retriever (lab) close to its door.  Clearly, his human partner was inside the outhouse, doing his business. The dog's head and body language were so curious, expressing the great importance and significance of the dog's supervising or guarding. The dog was unnaturally stationary for quite a long time. What an expression of loyalty it was! The best I could do was take a smartphone photo from the van. It was disappointing. The photo doesn't seem to express the endearing behavior of the dog that I thought I "saw". But this isn't the first time I saw something out of the corner of the eye, fluttered my eyelashes over it, and then later, wondered if it was actually real. This suggests that the

It is a healthy sign of our culture that YouTubers are starting to make fun of #vanLife videos produced by illiterate charlatans who look good in a bikini. But why didn't old-fashioned blogs -- you know, the kind you have to read -- go through the same phase of healthy self-criticism? Consider their presentation of the American Southwest. The bloggers are here for a couple months, when it is sheer frozen hell in the rest of North America. So they have an 'easy audience.' Typically they are sitting out in a folding chair, in front of their rig, while reading a book. They are wearing shorts and a straw hat, perhaps. The readership sees this and thinks, "And it's January. Paradise." In case the suckers haven't been sold yet, the blogger then shows 30 postcards of saguaros at sunset or red cliffs and arches. That really gets the armchair travelers to flutter their eyelashes.  The sort of half-truths you can tell with a digital camera and a free blogsi

She was a funny-looking little dog: a red heeler, more or less. But she was too stubby and a little porky. Her name was Willie, short for Willow. But she had talent. I watched her human partner throwing a small diameter frisbee to her. She was better at retrieving than he was at throwing. Twice she ripped the frisbee out of the sky. The second time was spectacular! If only I had my camera along, with it set on multiple exposures. From express.co.uk .  I especially like the photo on the right. My own dog has no airborne tendencies at all. She won't even chase a tennis ball on the ground. Her only real talent is turning on the charm to newcomers and immediately conquering them. Actually I prefer her personality to these super athletes of the air -- they are usually obsessive. They can get tiresome quickly. Still, it is fun to watch them in "small doses."

I am beginning to think that I can no longer communicate with my fellow American. Sure, you expect this kind of thing when calling 'customer service' or some kind of 'call center'. But that is because you are calling India. Lately I have been drowning while playing email ping-pong with car salesmen. Yes...the great day of replacing my 1995 Ford Econoline van, with 292,000 miles on it, is approaching. But the ping-pong is driving me crazy. It is understandable that we could all stand some improvement in our email style -- after all, none of us was taught in grade school how to write useful email. But car salesmen are professionals, so they should be good at writing emails. Now, I needn't reiterate my rant against pronouns, acronyms, and abbreviations. What these guys need to learn how to do is write a self-contained message, because only then is it actionable. For instance, they start off saying, "But that car is not..."  Which car is "that&