Cat People Vs. Dog People Who Hate Cats

I'm definitely a cat person living in a dog world.

Yeah, I've had dogs. I don't dislike dogs, and the only reason why I don't presently have a dog is because I don't have the time, my apartment is too small, and they are just way too much work.

A cat is easier to take care of. Their pretty much self-maintaining. Give them food and water and a clean liter box and their good to go.

I say that I'm a cat person living in a dog world, because, presently, I feel like I'm surrounded by people who hate cats, both where I live and where I work.

My job is getting kind of annoying, but I'll save the details for a later post, the monthly meetings are back, which I despise with a passion, and the first new meeting of the year started with an ice breaker,  where you have to give two facts about yourself.

I knew I was in trouble when the first fact given was "I hate cats!", and the second and third and fourth person quickly followed suit.

I won't go into further details of what ensued in this annoying meeting, but just will say that I would like to comment on what I see as being the fundamental difference between "cat people" and "dog people who hate cats".

He said: "They don't do anything! I hate them!"

This is very revealing and really is at the heart of the matter of just what the difference is between cats and dogs and the people who prefer one over the other.

The difference between cats and dogs is simple.

Cats have primarily aesthetic value, whereas dogs are more utilitarian. Cats are valued mostly for their beauty, they don't have to do anything, simply being is enough. Dogs on the other hand are workers. They do stuff for you. Whether it's to pull a sled, shepherd the sheep, search and rescue, guard the house, offer personal protection while traveling, or to simply fetch stuff for you.

Both cats and dogs provide companionship, show affection, and play. But yes, it's true, cats don't really "do anything" in the way that dogs do, which is not to say that they don't do anything at all, it's just that they do something because they want to do it not because you want them to. Cats are independent to the core, are more difficult to train, and are less obedient.

Dogs aim to please, whereas cats aim to be pleased.

So really I see people who love cats are more likely to have an appreciation for the fine arts. And people who hate cats but love dogs, are generally going to be more utilitarian people, people who see no value in a beautiful animal that doesn't serve some practical function for themselves.

A well trained dog is like a perfect slave, like an obedient child that worships you, whose sole aim of existence is to please. Some people need that. It kind of boosts their ego. You'll never get that from a cat. Cats are independent to the core, they don't worship you, if anything their the ones being worshiped. You don't have a cat to do stuff for you, you have a cat simply because their beautiful animals, and you appreciate that. That's really what the difference comes down to those who have an appreciation for beauty and those who don't.

Don't get me wrong, keeping a dog because they serve a utilitarian purpose is a perfectly good reason to have a dog, and is probably the main reason why I will likely have a dog again in the future, but the important insight I got from this is simply that the conflict between cat people and dog people who hate cats is defined by an essential difference in their characters.

Cats equal beauty and independence. Dogs equal utility and obedience. Those who hate cats value conformity and control over beauty and independence.

I guess that's why I am a cat person, because I despise conformity, am independent to the core, and appreciate beautiful things that don't necessarily have a price.

So there you have it my theory concerning the essential differences between cat people versus dog people who hate cats.

Will the Annoyances and Grievances Ever End?

I try to live lightly, gently, not causing any problems to anyone. I'm conscientious of others, keep my space clean, don't leave a mess, don't make noise, don't disrespect other people's property or space. I just go about my life, trying to live harmoniously with the natural flow of nature, striving to do the least amount of harm as possible, wherever I go, whatever I do.

And this is the reason why I don't talk to many people, other than when I have to superficially for work, or shopping, that sort of thing, because so many people are living in the exact opposite way, with an abundance of stupidity and ignorance, people acting disrespectful and unconscientious.

The landscapers here where I live are a lost cause. They are idiots. They are incapable of learning from their mistakes. They are incapable of modifying their behavior.  Instead of learning from experience, and getting better over time, they've only gotten worse. I feel that they must be completely brain damaged and are incapable of thinking. That is the only explanation. They do more harm than good, and don't know it. Try to tell them, it won't do no good. No matter how many times I complain, nothing will ever change here. It just gets worse. I thought about posting videos, consulting professionals on the matter, getting their input, seeing if I can discover and expose any violations the company may be guilty of, but I don't feel I have the energy. If I were to succeed what good would it really do, they will probably hire another company just as bad to replace them. So, like I said it's a lost cause. The only solution is to leave, just ignore the problems while I do my time and run out my lease, and get the hell out.

I have two neighbors I suspect are drug dealers. One of them I suspect has a lab in his apartment. I ignore it for fear that my life may be in danger if I report it. He also throws his cigarette butts all over the place. The entrance of his front door is littered with cigarette butts, who lives that way? I used to smoke, and I used an ashtray. How hard is that? I cannot comprehend the mentality of that, of people throwing their butts on the ground, throwing their garbage on the ground. It is entirely alien to my way of thinking, that of treading lightly on the earth, being respectful and conscientious. I have other neighbors that are also very loud. Think they own the place, having loud parties, using crude language, smoking joints outside there apartment, right out in the parking lot and driving buzzed. Makes me sick. I couldn't care less if people want to use recreational drugs in the privacy of their own home, but I object to public usage and people getting high and then driving under the influence.

But what I am going to do, call the cops on everybody? I can't do it. I'd be calling every day, and eventually the cops would stop responding, wouldn't be available in a real emergency, and all my neighbors would hate me, and probably try to hurt me. So I do nothing but feel pissed off sometimes about where I'm living.

You know I didn't think this apartment complex was that bad, for the price range I would venture it is one of the better ones, simply because it has the most trees, it is the most park like apartment complex for the money, and that's why I chose it. It's small but efficient, and they've always been prompt with the maintenance requests, fixed or replaced everything that was broken in a timely manner.

I was looking for a place that was affordable, that I could pay the rent working part-time, and still be able to save. But that's just it, no matter where you live, at a certain price range of rent, which differs from city to city, state to state, basically any place with rents affordable to a person making minimum wage, you're going to have a criminal element. It's inevitable. And where you have a criminal element, you're also going to have more people who are generally disrespectful and unconscientious of others, and more noise, more garbage, more illegal activity, more disagreements and fights, and more disharmony and discord.

That is the way of the ghetto. But are the people bad because their poor, or poor because their bad? Probably a combination of both. Some people though are rotten to the core, and will always be poor. And if you gave them a lot money, they'd still be rotten to the core, and spiritually poor. I firmly believe this to be true.

I never realized before today just how despicable and vile a person could be. I mean, yeah, I knew evil people existed, I just never met one in person before. You know, you're nice, and their not nice to you. You say: "Please don't do this." They say: "Fuck you!" There completely in the wrong, and their turning the tables on you, saying no you're in the wrong. Impossible to reason with.

I just made enemies with a mentally unstable psychopath. For real. I have two outdoor cats I'm feeding. There not my cats, but I'm helping to take care of them, giving them food and water and so they feel safe hanging around outside my apartment. This psycho bitch has two little dogs that whenever she passes by she sicks her dogs on the cats and chases them into the parking lot where the cats usually find shelter under a car. This woman does it every time. I confronted her once before, asked her why she was doing that, and if she would please stop. She told me to fuck off, said I was crazy.

I confronted her again today. She appeared very mentally unstable, either mental illness, or a drug addict, maybe both, but I swear she almost hit me. She came up on me like on the Jerry Springer Show ready to attack. I just asked her to stop harassing the cats. And she came up in my face, looking all deranged, she almost looked like she was going to hit me. And acted like I was the crazy one. She was like if you don't want anyone to mess with your cats, don't let them outside.

I know now I made this worse. I should have just ignored it. Now I'm worried she may cause a problem in the future, either hurt me, my property, or maybe even hurt the cats.

Will the annoyances and grievances ever end? Apparently not. There's always something. Will there always be difficult people, toxic people, violent criminals, drug addicts, and crazies? Will there always be evil people?I guess speculating on the matter is fruitless, the true problem occurs when you are confronted with one face to face. It's like all of the sudden, for that brief moment in time, you are transported to another world, where law and order does not exist, where there is no sense of goodness or ethical standards of justice, a land where evil prevails and brute force is king.

It's a land where evil is predator and good is prey. That's what happens when you come face to face with an evil person who hates you, there is no logical argument or ethical justification to change their mind about you. They are going to do whatever they wish do, think whatever they wish to think, there is nothing you can say to stop them. If you fight, it's fight to the death. If they survive they will come after you. But if you kill them, you become them. So you lose either way.

That's how it is in the ghetto, the human jungle, a place where might is right, and where human animals live completely without reason and morality. It's not a fun place to live, it's an ugly place to live, but it's reality. I'm just saving my money, biding my time, and yes this too will pass.

Annoyances and Grievances Redux

I've been really annoyed with people lately, annoyed by their idiocy and their ignorance, that it has got me retreating as far away as possible. I've got problems with the landscapers at my apartment complex, problems with the pest control people, problems with the mail carrier, and problems with some of my neighbors.

The landscapers use the leaf blowers inappropriately, stirring up a lot of unnecessary dust, and contributing to a significant portion of air pollution from their gasoline powered exhaust. They overblow and overtrim, actually make a mess that wasn't there before, and don't appear to be very knowledgeable about the plants they are supposed to be taking care of. I've complained to the apartment manager but nothing has changed. I've confronted the landscapers directly, but they speak broken English and are completely unreceptive and incompetent, and there's like zero chance for intelligent communication. So it's pretty much a lost cause, but it never ceases to stop pissing me off.

Pest Control. My apartment is clean, don't have a problem with pests, don't have a problem seeing the occasional cockroach or ant, and would never use toxic pesticides to eliminate them. If I find any I catch them and put them outside. It's not a problem. Well some of the people I live around are slobs, they don't clean up after themselves, and then they wonder why they have an infestation of bugs. Because of them they've had to fumigate the building, they sprayed in between the walls, and now I'm getting poisoned, because it's only a matter of time before the insecticide gets into my apartment too, and being a renter there is absolutely nothing I can do about it to stop it.

Mail Carriers. I've lived in this city for almost twenty years now, and have been living in my current apartment for just a little over a year now, and have had more problems here with the mail these past three months than in all the twenty years I've been in this city. Problems with mail not being delivered properly, getting my neighbors' mail, my neighbors getting my mail, packages being delivered to the wrong address, not getting slips telling me I have a package ready for pick up, have had two slips and only one package, packages without slips, and slips without packages. And there is also the issue of the mail coming super late, and thus having to wait an extra day to pick up packages left at my apartment complex office because the mail came too late for me to get before the office closes, etc. It's gotten so bad that I've enrolled in paperless billing for all my bills simply because I don't trust important mail coming to me, because I'm concerned I'm not going to get it.

And then there's the neighbors. Most of my neighbors living around me smoke, and their always sitting outside smoking, and I can't even sit outside without breathing in their smoke, or have a window open without their stinky cigarette smoke coming in my apartment. And then there is the issue of people letting their dogs run loose, running wild, despite the fact that there is a leash law in effect. And these dogs are pooping up a storm and the people aren't picking it up. Then there is the issue of recycling, I myself recycle, but most of my neighbors don't. Minor grievance compared to the smoking and dog poop, but it is a grievance nonetheless. What is wrong with you people! Recycling makes good sense! You don't have to be a radical environmentalist liberal to see the merits of recycling. Recycling is the most conservative, logical, level headed, and common sense sign of intelligent life. It's smart to recycle, okay? I question the intelligence of any person who continues to throw their glass bottles and aluminum cans in the trash, when there is a recycling bin just a few feet away!

I'm happy to have gotten this off my chest. I feel somewhat better now. I forgot how good blogs are for this purpose, that of venting and complaining about whatever is pissing you off.

Does reading this add value to your life? Maybe not, but what it does show I feel is that writing a blog post about your annoyances and grievances can have potential therapeutic value at least for the person writing the post. Putting the problem into words on the screen helps to broaden your perspective of the problem, to see whether there is a clear solution, and if not, and you must live with the problem with no viable solution, perhaps you'll see that getting upset serves no constructive value to yourself.

Anger is a catalyst, it gets you moving to take action, but if there is no action that you can take that will actually solve the problem, getting angry isn't going to help anything. In this case, the anger turns inward and will just end up making you sick. Writing about your problem, particularly those in which there is no clear solution, helps to dissipate the anger so that it's no longer causing you harm. If it still bothers you in the future continue to write about it, and explore all possibilities for a solution to the problem. You either fight or flee. Unless you've got an army on your side, or the blessing of the criminal justice system, starting fights and calling people names rarely works, but usually makes the problem worse. So unless you've got the law enforcing the solution of your problems, sometimes you just got to give up, and get the hell out of dodge. If you have problems with your neighbors, you either put up with it, or you move somewhere else.

For instance, if you can't stop the smokers, then perhaps you just need to find a community that doesn't allow smoking, or move into a house with enough land around it not to be bothered by your neighbors. It appears that some places are hopeless, full of hopeless people, who are never going to change, and instead of trying to change them, it's better just to leave.

My Experience of the Kindle E-book Reader

So, I finally got a Kindle. I got the Paperwhite on sale $30 bucks cheaper a few weeks ago. I had such high hopes for it, especially eager to utilize its built in dictionary, note taking highlighter, and vocabulary builder flashcards, features that are still kind of cool, but would be better if the word definitions had audio playback, to help with pronunciation and retention.

I figured I haven't been reading much lately this past year, I thought that maybe having a Kindle would help me read more, by making books more accessible and more portable and perhaps easier to read.

But after extensive time trying it out, I found that despite what I've read to the contrary, if you plan to read more than an hour on it at a time, at least in my case, it causes more eyestrain than a traditional paper book.

You see I'm the kind of person that when I get into a book I like I will read it for several hours at a time. There have been days when I've had the free time and wasn't working that I would spend twelve hours a day reading. I wouldn't recommend doing that with a Kindle.

Overall I'm finding that I prefer traditional paper books to e-readers. There will be an upcoming post delving deeper into the particulars but for now I will will keep it simple.

Regular books are easier on the eyes, but not always easier on the budget. This is where the e-book excels. After the initial investment of the e-book reader, you'll find that e-books are generally cheaper. I'm on an extremely frugal budget and only like to buy books that I intend to keep in my permanent collection, or intend to read more than once, anything else I check out from the library and read for free.

Well, sometimes I want to read a book that isn't available at the library, and don't want to wait around months for an interlibrary loan to come through, but in the meantime can find an e-book version online either for free or priced significantly cheaper than the equivalent paper version, that's where the Kindle comes in. In this regard it's already paid for itself.

I was able to download three technical textbooks for free which would have cost me no less than 30 bucks a piece used. So in this regard I considered the $90 spent on the Kindle to be money well spent. But as far as using it to read fiction, particularly taking advantage of the extensive collection of thousands of public domain classics available for download, such as Moby Dick by Herman Melville or War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, for that I think I will be sticking to the traditional paper version, something that pretty much any decent public library has.

So to recap, the Kindle is great for reading books that aren't available at the library, but are available for download online, either for free or at a cheaper price than the equivalent traditional paper version. It's also a great way to preview a book before you buy it or before you check it out from the library. Being lighter and more portable than most books, it's great for reading bulky textbooks, technical or reference material, and also makes a good travel companion, where you can easily read a thousand page book on the go without being bogged down by a heavy bag.

But in every other circumstance, traditional paper books are clearly the winner, for the simple reason that they cause less eyestrain. Despite all the improvements having been made in this regard, paper is still easier on the eyes than digital screens, especially if you plan to read for hours at a time like I do. So I see the Kindle more as a supplemental tool of my reading repertoire, and not as a replacement for the traditional book.

An Oldie but a Goldie

From September 16, 2013:

"No matter what I do, wherever I find myself in my life, as far as where I'm living, where I'm working, and how things are going, whether things are good or bad, that no matter what, I will never let myself go. That I will never allow myself to get fat and flabby and out of shape and old before my time. That I will never allow myself to consistently engage in unhealthy eating habits. There may be occasional moments of weakness, of engaging in bad habits, junk food, fast food, getting drunk, smoking (not that I do, but just saying for the sake of example), that if I mess up and make poor choices, if I do something I ordinarily swear against, knowing it to be wrong, unhealthy, unwise, that I will correct myself as soon as possible."

Yes, four years later, it is still relevant.

Although, I am a bit troubled by the implications of not letting go, as stated in the introductory statement. There is a certain vanity and egotism in being attached to the pursuit of perfection, which I find unsavory. That's not really what I meant, though it could be a Freudian slip, I only meant that I am devoted to a path of clean healthy living, and not letting myself depart from the path of clean healthy living, which also means ethical living, and admitting that sometimes I falter, but when I do I am usually quick to adjust myself back to where I wish to be.

In other words, I recognize when I've done wrong, and I'm quick to recover. Despite the occasional vice of having french fries and twinkies, believe me it rarely happens, but it has happened on occasion, among other things that are contrary to what I believe in, I'm doing pretty good in the health and personal fitness department, but in the ethics department, I would say my biggest character fault is of being overly judgemental of others. Being angry and bitter and looking down on others that don't share the same ideal of clean healthy ethical living.

That is a major pitfall for those on the path of personal excellence, is how do you manage not get a big head, not to become overly prideful, self-important, not to look down with hatred or disgust on those who have succumbed to all the vices you yourself have overcome or are seeking to overcome? Hate the sin not the sinner? I have trouble with that. Nothing like living in the ghetto to find compassion and a feeling of goodwill for ALL of humanity than by living among the lowest of the low. Though that's probably the hardest thing in the world. It's easy to love people when you're living around like minded good people, but totally different story when you're living next door to violent criminals, rapists, pedophiles, gang bangers and drug addicts. I guess worse of all would be being in prison.

Being a good person surrounded by bad people would I suppose be a lot like being an angel in hell. How would one cope? I don't know. I guess, no matter what, you stick to your moral compass, the ideals you've committed yourself to, to the best of your ability, and that is what I'm trying to do.