Still learning to master my dog

Some people ramble on for years about the novel they intend to publish, as soon as they find a publisher. I behave in the same way as far as mastering my dog is concerned. I talk about it constantly, and believe that my leap into mastery is just around the corner. But a bright observer (such as my son François) surely realizes that I’m unlikely to ever gain my diploma in dog mastery. It’s simply not in my genes.

For the last week or so, I had finally decided that the cold season is fast approaching us, and that it was time for me to accept the presence of Fitzroy inside the house. There’s no intrinsic dog-mastery problem in such a down-to-earth decision. All I have to do is to tie up Fitzroy outside, during the day, for at least an hour or so, to give him an opportunity of doing his business and having a pee. I repeat: no problem. If the worst came to the worst, and my dog decided to pee somewhere inside the house, in the middle of the night, it still wouldn’t be catastrophic. Besides, that situation would only arise if I went out of my way to give Fitzroy, late in the evening, a big bowl of milk… which would be a silly act for me.

Yesterday evening, Fitzroy was edging around the kitchen door as if he wanted to move out into the balmy night air. I must be careful about opening the door at such times, because my Gamone property is still a victim of disgusting Pyrale moths which dart towards any light that appears in the darkness. Be that as it may, last night, in the darkness, I did in fact make a single foolish mistake. I failed to attach my dog to a lead before letting him race out into the night air. Consequently, in the darkness, I failed to see where he had disappeared… but I soon learned (after a bit of silly shouting) that the Master’s animal was seated snugly in his kennel. (In daring to use the term “Master”, I was trying to crack a joke.) So, I dashed towards him and attached his collar to the chain alongside the kennel. Then I went back quickly inside the house, hoping that I wasn’t being pursued by too many moths. Once inside the lonely house, I watched some fine television, while listening periodically to check that my dog wasn’t barking.

This morning, at 8 o’clock, I was awoken by my clockwork brain. I saw from a window that Fitzroy, during the early hours of the morning, had performed an impressive wood-moving operation, over a distance of some ten metres. I grabbed my Nikon and took this photo of the result:

I have decided for the Nth time that, this evening, I will surely become, at last, an experienced dog-master. We'll see...

Peace at last for a man of peace

Shimon Peres [1923-2016]

 

French Moslems

Let us take a glance at the results of a recent IFOP poll of 1,029 individuals in France who consider themselves as Moslems. They can be broken into three categories:

 • 46 % are totally secular, or undergoing integration into the system of values of modern France.

• 25 % have a strong religious identity, but accept the existence in France of secularism.

• 28 % are Moslems who've adopted a system of values that are clearly opposed to those of the French Republic.

French specialists should examine the poll, to see if it was indeed conducted correctly. If so, then I'm troubled by the surprisingly large size of that third category.

Clearly I'm an ecumenical tweeter

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I wonder what the letters FDN mean,
after the name of a Melbourne priest.

Is it possible that Father James Grant
belongs to the French Data Network ?

Smelly

An old publicity slogan remains well-known in France: « Il se passe toujours quelque chose aux Galeries Lafayette. » There's always something happening at the Galeries Lafayette department store.

For a long time, I've imagined naively that a few modern men's deodorants would keep me as fragrant as white lilies up until the cows come home. I've always liked a joke that doesn't seem to appeal to young generations: "I'm not basically a dirty or smelly person, so I don't need to wash myself regularly." Here's the sort of shit I smear upon my body to keep it fragrant:

Well, I've just come upon a disturbing news article about a typical happening at the Galeries Lafayette. It brings up the question of aluminium salts in deodorants. Apparently they're everywhere... like air pollution. It's almost impossible to understand a label that might warn you of dangers. And the basic danger in question is some kind of cancer, particularly for women.

Ghoulish Catholics

I've never understood why Catholics are so obsessed by blood and guts, as if the Creator had been particularly concerned by human anatomy. Well, yes, I do understand. We humans are obviously interested in such matters, because we often have to spend time getting bodily repairs carried out. So it's normal that we imagine the Creator being interested in the same messy meat as us. And other believers in magic can be more obsessed still.

Saint Padre Pio was a Capuchin friar (an offshoot of the Franciscans) who suffered constantly from an exotic bodily affliction that believers call stigmata. His hands displayed spontaneous flesh eruptions that reminded observers of the wounds inflicted upon their alleged hero of ancient times known as Jesus, about whom modern historians know next to nothing.

Well, preserved parts of the dead monk's internal organs have been placed in a plastic box, and they're currently being transported to places in America. Ghoulish pilgrims are coming out in droves. It's not often that they're offered a fleeting view (?) of a few pieces of relatively well-conserved meat.

I was better off sleeping

I don't suspect that many people in France stayed up late into the night to watch this debate. We've got far more interesting local stuff to see on TV, in prime hours. The New Yorker suggested recently that Hillary Clinton might have been seriously studying self-control.

In the case of such debates, there has to be a winner, otherwise it's not good entertainment. It appears that Hillary won by a big margin.

Click here to view a short talk between a French-speaking journalist and Oliver Stone, who sees the Clinton/Trump affair as a choice between the plague and cholera, between a warmonger and a madman.

Behavioral differences between members of the same family

In my post yesterday entitled Mongrel genes, I spoke of a curious change of behavior between a recent Skyvington father and his son. Well, no matter how hard I try to follow up this question on the web, I simply cannot understand how enormous behavioral differences might affect members of a single family. Explanations evoke inevitably the question of nature versus nurture. But I still fail to grasp the reasons why members of my own family group appear to be so different.

I grew up essentially in the same environment—indeed, in the same houses—as my brother and sisters, in simple rural settings, in similar educational contexts and social circles. But I have the impression that I evolved in totally different directions to my siblings. I often feel that I was "hit by a dose of mongrel genes", which have made me a very different individual to my siblings. For the moment, I simply fail to understand how these differences could have come about. I continue to believe, rightly or wrongly, that they were differences of nature rather than of nurture. But this opinion could well be erroneous.

In any case, I have no recollections of ever getting involved in "philosophical" discussions with specific adults, be they teachers or religious folk. The only individual whose remarks often sent shivers up my spine was my maternal grandmother, whom we called Grandma. She often analyzed critically the personality of my father, suggesting that he was what we might call "bipolar", constantly alternating between one kind of behavior and its opposite. Grandma used a mixed-up metaphor, saying that "the worm would turn". I think he meant that Dad was capable of abruptly reversing his personality. It's a metaphor that even Shakespeare used, but nobody knows its exact origins. Somebody suggests that the worm was a dragon, and that his "turning" simply meant that the beast was no longer about to attack us.

Grandma had lost her beloved husband Charles Walker [1882-1937] when he was still a relatively young man.

I often felt that this premature departure of her husband had destabilized the poor lady, and caused her to adopt a constantly harsh outlook on human existence. Grandma would go out of her way to make me realize that my own dear mother Kath could rapidly find herself placed "in the clay up on the hill at South Grafton" (that is, the local cemetery).

In another situation, Grandma plunged me into a state of despair when I saw her reacting most negatively to the fact that Bill, Kath and our family had failed to make a point of communicating with her when we traveled on vacation up around the Northern Tablelands. Because of our failure to communicate, Grandma said that she no longer wished to hear any words about our supposedly happy holiday. This austere character existed also in her elder sister Henrietta. Besides, let us not forget that these ladies were essentially descendants of Irish Protestants.

Is it imaginable that Grandma was transforming me when I was still a child, as it were, into the objective thinker that I would soon become ? It's certainly a highly recognizable case of nurture that cannot be denied.

Air-borne witch

These photos come from the 43rd annual Icarus Cup event near Grenoble. Here we see a witch running down the slopes:

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And here she's floating through the air, with a skeleton hitching a ride behind her:

Australia’s preferable mate: USA or China?

The French newspaper Le Monde informs us that this crucial question has arisen Down Under. May the better mate win.