The Raneys and Pets

This blog is dedicated to my black labrador, BJ's best friend, Tanzi, a rhodesian ridgeback owned by my friend and colleague Charles Monteiro.

I received the heartbreaking news the other day that Tanzi contracted lymphoma. There was never a sweeter, gentler dog and I and my dog both love him (which is rare for him given he is pretty particular).

Everyone wish Tanzi well on his 26 week therapy to lick this. You can visit Charles' medical log about it and see some other great pics of the handsome fella. If any of you might have any knowledge or info to share on Tanzi's condition please visit the page and send an email to the link provided.

---

The Raneys have always adored animals. When Dad was a boy he had a dog named Snuffy Smith. He also had a rabbit and several other animals according to my grandmother. Later on he took a shine to cats, having seven of them near the end of his life. He would let them run around in the back yard. He kept his garden uncut (He often commented that he wanted his backyard to look like Monet's garden, much to the chagrin of his neighbors who would murmur about his unkempt habits). As creative as he was as an artist, he was not so much so with his pet names. They were quite perfunctory: Blacky, Yellow Kitty, Felix etc…

Felix was his favorite. He had a daily "making-bread-on-belly" ritual with Dad as the master would recline on the couch. The activity would end with a couple of head brushes against my father's nose. The other two cats had funny schticks as well. For example Yellow Kitty would completely circumnavigate the livingroom across all possible above-ground perches without touching the floor (jump the table, cross to the couch, up to the top of book cabinet, the entertaiment center, the window sill...you get the picture).

Whenever any one of them passed on, it would send Dad into the worst tailspin psychologically. Unfortunately they outlived him and our friend guitarist Mel Deal and his wife Becky were nice enough to adopt them and bring them to their big house in Nashville for their remaining years.

Doug and I were always cat people, too. Doug brought home a cat from the schoolyard in the sixties with his first "can we keep'm??" plea bargain. He was either named after comic/actor Orson Bean (whom Dad knew from his Blue Angel days) or Orson Welles, not sure. I liked to call him "Orson Being because he had human like habits; he was the only cat I have ever seen that sat up on his haunches like an old lady in her easy chair. Orson's other endearing habits were slipping his head between my pen and my homework assignment. He used to allow me to wear him like a yoke across my neck, gripping his two pairs of paws. The other hilarious thing was the "crazy kat boomerang routine" where all the sudden he would get bats in his belfry and tear ass across the wood floors. But since it was a small apt with twists and turns, Orson had a rebound wall that would make the 90 degree turn into the living room a breeze. It also made for ever higher and higher paw prints on the wall.

My second cat Kodak was very similar in behavior and temperament to Orson. Almost dog like in his friendliness. He loved to sit in the center of the table to be where the conversation energy was happening. Licking my bicep until it was raw was another of his favorite pastimes. The night I had to put him down was awful for me. I just got home from a gig. I cried for days after.

Given the somewhat canine behavior of my previous cats, I was somewhat prepped for dog ownership. Although I wasn't prepared for my Dog BJ to be so interwoven in our lives and daily routine as he is now. Will devote a bit more space to him on a future blog.

Cheers

Jon

The first or the second biggest a-hole in America?

Most frustrated got nothing better to do than criticize wanker of a human being

It's a toss-up. Rush and he should have a sudden death tournament. You can take that literally if you like or not..

Derail-mongers I would call them.

The National Youth Leadership Forum marketing scam

Has your college bound child recently been the recipient of a glowing congratulatory letter for academic achievements and invited to attend a conference or seminar sponsored by The National Youth Leadership Forum (NYLF)? At first, a gush of pride comes as you think, "Wow my child aroused the notice of this big organization!" and some representative Dr. Doshi, MD – seemingly - wrote it. We are all looking to get support for our college bound child's best efforts and are prone to want to believe these things, and they are aware of the timing of this as a strong marketing method.

Sadly this is just another modern day scheme by an opportunist company seeking to make bucks off of you at a time when you need to spend your money wisely. This is a new age of spam where your child can now be marketed to as well. Once your child checks off certain boxes on an SAT form that's how you start getting these things. I am also suspicious of mailing lists that get generated from flyers and literature from colleges. My daughter gets more mail now than any of us, especially now that credit is dried up and all those low interest credit card offers no longer fill our mailbox. Poetry organizations are another one that I'm suspicious of. The tell tale sign is hidden costs at the end of the process.

Are the NYFL offers a type of "Nigerian scam"? No. They actually run these seminars. Will your child get something out of it? Doubtful. You're not doing anything that will improve their college resume I can tell you. What colleges are looking for are important extracurricular activities such as research, mentorship programs or even worthwhile jobs to show them that the student has something else on the ball besides good grades and SAT scores. These things won't cost you anything and in some cases, the students can actually earn some spending money for themselves. In the words of one recent college advisor, "We are looking for someone who has something different going on, someone whom WE want to have here as part of our school." If you have $2000-$3000 to blow on some seminar, be my guest. But I would challenge anyone to provide proof that attending such events has any benefit towards the college selection process or a student's academic goals.

The best explanation of the scheme is featured on Jim Skamarakas' blog (ironic name in this case…) located here: http://skamarakas.com/jim/2008/03/04/nylf-working-to-steal-parents-money-again-in-2008. Here is an excerpt of a blogger response to it:

js13 said,

I noticed your site a while back but hesitated to reply. Let me just state for the record the I worked for Envision EMI and their ubsidiaries NYLF, CYLC, etc. And, I must say, everything you have been saying……..is true. They're whores for money and are run at the top by 2 people with no business acumen. They employ over 200 full-time staff to extract every available cent out of any parent who has high aspirations for their son or daughter. Its quite slick marketing and looks very impre ssive, I know. But frankly, most of what they say are lies or half-truths.

Undoubtedly, this blog will attract trolls who claim, "they went to the seminar and it was great!" the "NYLF is legitimate" etc,.They did the same on Jim's blog. All I can say is bring it on! You will ultimately spur me to gather signatures and allies (for example other parents who fell for these offers) to make schools review their partnerships and the organizations they allow themselves to be associated with. Personally, I would like to see a public official take up this fight to control the actions of NYLF because clearly they are misrepresenting how they obtain your child's information and sending a blanket form letter - with a clear intent to make parents and children believe that a teacher or high grades made them part of a special "nominated" group. This is merely a demographic marketing selection to sell a product: a costly seminar. Schools have some culpability in this as well, frankly.

My thanks to Jim for telling it like it is and taking a stand on it. If you are still debating this question ask yourself, why would such an organization, supposedly send you this invitation (several times - be prepared for it)indicating your child was nominated when in fact your child was just signed into a mailing list by checking an SAT box? They will claim that teachers can nominate and provide an online form for them to do so as proof. This is merely the smoke screen to cover themselves. But do you really think a teacher would be so foolish to sign a child up without the child's or your consent--breaking the most basic rules of email opt-in procedures and courtesy? And on top of that, referring them to some organization whose sole function is to sell costly seminars for $2500 or more and burdening parents with such a decision? C'mon get real.

Man vs. Machine

Do you have a love hate relationship with computers and technical gadgets? I know I do. At times it seems like the gadgets have their own spirit and intentions and in some cases (as in below story) openly defiant. And forget about the manuals. I want to constantly shoot the authors of them. And gadgets always screw up at the same time don't they? Which is contributing to my personal persecution theories...

Case in point. I bought a Motorola 2.4 ghz cordless phone w/ answering machine. I was happy with the purchase and got it for a good price. But for some reason it would not correctly update the day and time stamp for incoming messages: it was always one day behind the current one. What started out as a simple quest to reset and fix became an unwinnable war between man and machine.

To start off, we manually reset the date on the unit to Saturday 10am. We hear it. We're not hallucinating. The answering machine said "Sa-tur-day 10 ay-EM!" We call the phone and leave a test message : "Hello this is a test of the answering machine". We listen back to the message and the answering machine defiantly reports "New message sent Fri-day 10 ay-EM". We try it several times with the same result. Even setting it to Thursday. The machine, like a defiant child responds, "Wednesday, 10 ay-EM(?)" almost with an upturn in the voice to pose and interrogative as if to say, "Had enough, human?"We decide to trick the machine by setting it one day ahead since it insists on putting it one day behind. Makes sense right? Wrong. You know what the box said? You guessed it. "Fri-day, 10 ay-EM! Now I'm completely confused. Is time not relative for these little machines? If I tell it that it's Sunday, shouldn't the little demon accept my appraisal? Does it know I'm lying? Who's in charge here??

Anyway it became my theory that there was a bug in the machine and somehow had an internal calendar set for 2005 rather than 2006. I looked at my old calendar and confirmed in fact that January was one day behind in terms of numerical day of the month and its day of the week. Eureka! I thought. So I slog through the manual for some time (Again no love lost there to Mr. Manual writer) to find a way to reset the complete date including year for the phone. After achieving this I'm certain I've licked the problem. I reset the machine, the phone and leave a message. "New message....sent.......FRI-DAY, 10AY-EM! At this point it's about time I take the answering machine to the back alley and rough it up a bit. But like death and taxes I'd resigned myself to Mr. Motorola's wishes to remain in yesterdayville and focus on other things with the unit.

Well at least I can change that awful blaring default ring tone to another one more pleasing. After scrolling through the classics and testing them out, Mozart, Handel and others we decide on Lizst. Catchy and soothing. But when we call the phone we are somehow treated to the Motorola's perverse form of musical counterpoint: the base ringing the default tone and the handset ringing Lizst! And on top of that there is no way to control the volume level of the ring for the base. Once again I consult Mr. Manual and of course there is everything but practical function explanations on there. Troubleshooting? Well I'm sure you've seen the explanations. "Make sure the unit is plugged in.." and the like.

What I had first viewed as an attractive, stylish machine with it's silver lines and umber/orange LCD, now struck me as a kind silver metal armadillo in sunglasses that wanted to do its own thing. "Screw you, anthro". Needless to say I boxed the little dickens in a generic container with lots of bubble rap and now it's on its way back to the merchant and eventually to its next unsuspecting owner looking for a good deal on a refurb. Perhaps it will encounter talking Chucky somewhere in the gadget warehouse in need of an answering machine , who won't be quite as civil or forgiving as I.

(This story was first published in 2006 on the somewhat useless portal & blogspace, Yahoo 360)