I know love, Sir, and you are no love

This is Satchmo...


As you can imagine, he’s got a very hard life. His day usually consists of napping on the couch, barking at birds, chasing lizards out of the back yard, playing with his dad, and begging for cookies, which he gets. In the evening, we’ll drive out to one of the fields around our house that has not yet turned from cotton field to suburb development, and watch him run off the leash chasing birds, digging in holes for furry creatures, and finding any muddy patch possible to get dirty in. When we get back to the house he gets a Frosty Paws ice cream while we have dinner. A night, he sleeps in our bed, under the covers if it’s cold.

Yep, it’s a hard-knock life. Bob Geldhof should get together with some of his friends and write a song.

My point is this dog is LOVED. I’ve always been an animal lover, but loving this dog seems to have increased my love for all other animals as well, especially dogs. Watching animal rescue shows on Animal Planet breaks my heart. I dream that if I ever won the lottery, I’d make a doggy refuge for every unloved uncared for dog I had the power to rescue. If I were the goddess of dogs, Snausages would rain from the sky.

And if I had any kind of supernatural powers, people like Michael Vic would experience daily suffering. I’ve been to the medieval torture museums; I have ideas.

Maybe I am the goddess of dogs, just as I am. Doesn’t do a whole lot of good for all the dogs that aren’t Satchmo. Buster sitting in the pound, Fido digging in the trash can for food, or Poochie laying at the side of the road after getting hit by a car; none of them are going to be too impressed with me if I can’t do something to help them. I’m not waiting for them to ask me for help nor for them to do the right trick. What kind of sick fuck would do that? And it’s not that they’ve been bad or peed in the wrong spot or even bitten someone. It wouldn’t matter. I’d save them all if I could. But without action, without ability, my love doesn’t matter either.

Believers will often quip, “God is Love.” It sounds good. It’s very Hallmark. But even if it were true, it’s pretty meaningless. If there is an entity out there that loves me, LOVES ME, it’s not going to care whether or not I love it back. Looking at the world around me, if there’s an entity out there that loves us it’s obviously not very powerful and I’m not impressed.