Pedalling Uphill

What a wonderful movie this is!  The stage settings, the costumes, the actors and most of all some blessedly intelligent dialogue.  What a difference between now and then.  Before this generation, words had a weightyness to them.  They meant something.  People thought…they weren’t afraid of silence.  Compare that with today’s mindless blatherings 24 hours a day.  Constantly moving screens and cameras - juvenile plots and gratuitous violence.  No wonder this movie wasn’t a box office smash.  It’s just too smart.  Or maybe I’m just getting old.

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A hollywood version of reality (based on a true story).  I don’t ususally like movies with any known ‘movie stars’ in them because I can never  get beyond that it’s Julia Roberts being paid to do her Julia Roberts smile -  same for Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson et al.  However, this was a good movie.  For one thing, it didn’t have JUMPY CAMERA shots and it was laid out nice and clean - good acting, interesting sets and an uplifting story.

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What can I say that hasn’t already been said about this movie.  The acting all around was excellent - even that prima dona Mariah Carey proved herself in this movie.  Worth the money - good to see a movie of substance and one that makes you think.

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I was dragged to this movie because more than anything I hate Romantic Comedies  - mindless vehicles for over paid movie stars.  However, this one was a surprise in a very good way.  I couldn’t mouth the dialogue before it was spoken and the plot had some interesting twists and turn and there were some good laughs too.   A very pleasant surprise and good for our friends who went with us because they didn’t have to listen to me grumble about wasting my money ad naseaum.Â

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Beautiful, poignant, sensitive, thought provoking,  horrific, sickening, tragic and stunning.

See it and wonder at the people of this world.

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My mother is 87 and has a steel trap mind.  She’s 100% all there in mind….body, not so good and that’s important to know because of what I’m going to tell you.  She has macular degeneration and only has about 10% of vision left in one eye.  Several months ago she mentioned that she was seeing piles of sticks and strange faces with big red lips (you know, the kind we used to get made out of wax) and she had even seen a ’short movie clip’ of a 1940’s car driving through the snow at night, with snow falling and heading towards a small town.  She said it was a beautiful scene. 

The first thing I thought was that somebody in their communal kitchen was spiking the food with an illicit drug giving her hallucinations.  But before I made any accusations, I made an appointment for her with the eye doctor and told her to tell him about these visions.

Here’s the amazing part!  The doctor told her that some few people who have macular do see these visions and that it would not be wise to discuss it with people that didn’t know her well as they might tend to think she was slipping a little off her rocker.   Since that time, she has seen many other realistic ‘visions’ - sometimes a lifesize woman dressed in clothing from the 1800’s holding the hand of a small boy is standing next to her bed when she wakes up.  Sometimes two young boys also garbed from the 1800’s are there.   And others that I won’t go into here - not one of them is anyone she knows or has ever known.  But it can make you wonder if these visions, seen by credible people throughout the centuries,  before macular was ever known about, were not the origins of ghosts.  From everything she describes to me they certainly fit the description.

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We had a very bad experience with CIA (CYBERSURF or 3WEB) which led ultimately to a court case that we won.  Unbeknownst to us,  during this time they sold to a company called DISTRIBUTEL.  Even though we won the case,  it turns out that Quebec law in small claims court has no teeth so with our judgement in hand, they told us ‘now go fish’.  We knew DISTRIBUTEL had a contingency fund set aside for cases such as ours, but since they know the law is useless in this case, they refused to pay.  So now we have to spend our money to get a lawyer to fight our case with the end result that it will cost us more than we won and to add insult to injury, DISTRIBUTEL is soliciting us for our business.  So once again, lawyers win, judges get paid, CYBERSURF gets off the hook and who is left holding the bag?  The little guy.  Â

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He said something pretty profound last week on some talk show….they were talking about rape, which because it’s mentioned so often these days, has seemed to lose it’s terribleness - but he really put it in perspective for me.  He said “When we catch Osama Bin Laden, we’re going to kill him, not rape him”.  Think about it. Â

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Bonnie - My problem rescue dog and our happy ending: Hyper active, pacing, jumping all over us, pooping and peeing inside (even when she knows she will be punished and after having been taken for a walk) – just all around an exhausting, demanding dog (even though she’s only 10 pounds).  When we would walk Bonnie (on one of those retractable leashes which might be good for some dogs, but not ones behaving as this one was), she would run ahead weaving back and forth across the street in a dizzying pattern, constantly pulling. The good side: She’s very affectionate, cute as all get out, excellent with young children, very smart and totally non aggressive. The solution: Just by luck I stayed up late to watch a British program about unmanageable dogs who were at the end of their line.  One, a bearded collie fit the exact profile of Bonnie – sweet natured, smart, healthy but hyper active -  the only problem was that when he was herding sheep (his job), he would get the uncontrollable urge to kill one at the same time.  This cuts into sheep owner’s profits L and needless to say was frowned upon.   So this very nice British lady undertook the retraining to save his life.  The first thing she did was make him walk BEHIND her.  You hold a stick, like a walking stick in one hand and a short leash in the other.  Placing the leash hand behind your back, you tell the dog ‘behind me’ and use the stick to block their way if they try to get in front.  The next morning, I tried this on my hyper active dog and it was like a complete transformation!  She fell into line behind me and calmly walked meekly along.  Today it’s 7 days since I started doing this and she is a changed dog.  No peeing or pooping in the house, the pacing has stopped and she is a much more relaxed dog.  She still has a lot of energy, but it’s not the frenetic kind she exhibited before – it’s a playful type. I’m really hoping this little piece of knowledge can help other desperate folks that are having trouble with wonderful but uncontrollable dogs.  Try it!  It costs nothing – and the effects can be seen almost immediately.  The dog psychology behind it seems to be that the dog has to see you as the Alpha (lead dog of the pack). They become very stressed – hence the pacing and irrational running around on the leash – when they have to assume that role by being out in front of you on the leash, or by sitting higher than you (on the back of the sofa for instance) or even by running out the door ahead of you.  These are actions that should be attributed to the Alpha human, not the dog.   Further investigating these theories led me to a very informative website called www.dogbreedinfo.com  - look over at the categories on the right side of the opening page. 

I just hope this little piece of information can be as helpful to some other troubled dog owners as it was to me.  If you think it can, please pass it on. 

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Last week, Abe and Tazzie got up early and Chester and I slept in.� When we finally got ourselves together, I saw Ches start down the stairs with his usual boink a boink to each step and then�we both�heard Abe in the kitchen�chastizing Taz� “Bad dog Taz, bad dog!”� Without missing a beat he made a U turn and boink a boinked back up the stairs and stood at the top with his head through the railing listening for more details.�

He really cracked me up…that’s his job - to make me laugh and look at him with intense�love in my heart and know that he’s the cutest dog in the world.� But judging from some dog magazines, maybe I’m not expecting enough from my dogs.

Recently I picked up copies of the two most popular dog magazines and as I read through them, it started to dawn on me that as with everything in our society today, a good thing taken to extreme can be pretty ugly.� Dogs are riding the crest of popularity, but that means there are plenty of people ready to exploit them to make big $$$.�

I feel sick looking at the Pitbull ads so obviously created to appeal to the ‘macho’ among us.� “Monster dogs with large heads (tiny cropped ears making it look even more fierce), wide chests, thick bone structure.� Extremely athletic for the ultimate in working ability” they read.� The ads and the dogs both look like something out of a nightmare!� What type of work are they doing?� Herding sheep?� Leading�the blind?� Surely not working with the police…even they would be afraid of them!� So what else can there be?� I’m sure you can guess.

And then there are these trials to evaluate terrier and bull type dogs - something new to me.� From what I understand, it says�they fling rats�into a large pond and let the dogs swim out to hunt them.� In other trials, rabbits are released and as soon as�the animal�has found cover�the dog is released to hunt it down. “The actual catching and killing of the rabbit�is immaterial, as any untrained dog will often do that” they say.� Yes, dogs will do things like that, but do normal people�usually encourage that type of behaviour?� As usual, it’s really not about the dogs, it’s about the egos of�pathetic little�human beings and dogs end up paying the price.

And I guess I’m left scratching my head wondering if these things being published in a mainstream magazine makes them seem ‘legit’ to the readers.� Not to me.

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