Observations and Comments 

By Eldon Spady

A recent headline said, “How Is Jay Leno Handling His Retirement.” Okay, nothing wrong with that as I’m sure there are some people who would like to know. They have answers that Leno gave to their questions about his retirement. The thing that got me was the picture they put with this headline. The look on Leno’s face shouts, “Why would you think that dead rat is mine?”

     Now this is just conjecture, but I bet it’s correct. This picture of Leno had no relationship to the interview about his retirement. (Which, by the way, is going fine and he seems to be enjoying himself.)

     Now if this were an isolated case I’d not be spouting off about it. But I see this all the time. It works like this--there is something an editor feels is newsworthy concerning an individual and he tasks a flunky to go into the files and pick out a picture to go with the article. The disturbing thing (to me at least) is that most of the time the picture tends to make a very unflattering association between the person and the subject of the article. Example:  The headline may say, “Clinton In Trouble Again”, and the picture shows him with a sly grin on his face like he couldn’t care less about another indiscretion. Or a headline may say, “Bush Answers Questions About New Grandson.” And in the accompanying picture he has an expression like he just bit into a sour pickle that passed its sell-by date some time ago. Now people who just read headlines and look at pictures (and I’m guessing there are more than any of us would like to admit), will come away with a totally wrong impression of how either Clinton or Bush is reacting to the aforementioned subject.

     But who said that the News was anything other than entertainment?

Wine IS Good For What?

Some wives are just natural caregivers. Take this wife in Houston, Texas. Her husband had a throat ailment of some kind, which kept him from drinking his wine. So Tammy gave him a wine enema. That’s right. She shot two large bottles of sherry right up his bum. Not little airline bottles, but 1.5 liter bottles. This action cured his desire for any more alcohol, it also cured his throat ailment, and it also killed him. It seems the body can die of alcohol poisoning regardless of which end the fluid uses as an entrance point. I wonder what's the best year for an enema wine?

But Did They Ask The Foxes

A new era has dawned in England. The powers that be have passed a law making it illegal for people to hunt animals using dogs to do the pursuing. Now the foxhunt has been a cultural standby of the upper classes for the past three hundred years. You know, fox hunting, riding-to-hounds, pink jackets, funny little hats and all that. Now they can’t do that any more, at least when using dogs. Whether that’s all good or bad, is up to the English.

My main concern is, did anybody ask the foxes how they felt about this? For two thousand generations foxes have lived with the foxhunt as a way of life and entertainment. In the whole history of the foxhunt I’ve never heard of one fox ever being caught or molested more than just a good workout. Of course I might not be the last word on the history of fox hunting.

Foxes thought it great sport to lead a pack of hounds across the countryside at break neck speeds, slipping under low rail fences, and then watching the first dozen hounds scramble their brains by smacking into that same bottom rail. (Foxes used to sell tickets to the local fox community just to watch this happen.) There was a whole segment of the fox educational system based on the foxhunt: ‘Getting them on the scent’, ‘Keeping them on the scent’, ‘How to use natural terrain for your amusement: briar patches, fences, ditches, trees, rocks, and our special friend, the split rail fence’, and ‘How to use human made obstacles to our advantage: Highways, freeways, trains, bridges, and canals. Like I said, no one ever thinks of the foxes.

Science Strikes Again

From a report coming out of the UK, it seems that one quarter of Britain’s dogs are stressed out. How do they know this? It seems they took a survey of 1,100 dog owners and one-quarter of these owners believe their furry friends are suffering from stress. Fifty-three percent of those surveyed thought themselves to be stressed out also. This highly scientific study reminds me of a comment by Mark Twain, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

Last and Least

One late evening when on our way home in Lexington, Lorraine noticed that a family was going into local Tex-Mex fast food place, which shall remain nameless. I guessed that maybe they were looking for their cat.