An ordure of magnitude: the trashing of California…

Every now and then, while observing life (or what passes for it these uncertain days) around me in the Late Great State of Californica (sic), I feel my gorge rise as a swell of intense distaste wafts over me like a fetid cloud of bovine flatulence.

Dealing with the common (vapid) mentality that surrounds us, in this context, often has all the attractive aesthetic qualities of owning a downwind house directly adjacent to a stockyard. One of these moments occurred just yesterday.

There I was, enjoying an Andre Rieu musical performance at home on the local PBS station. The wonderful, light-hearted ebullience of Rieu’s orchestra had smoothly transported me from the half-baked, sun-boiled cowtown that is Suckatomato (capitol of Californica) to the streets of Maastricht (Nederlands) as the lovely Austrian waltz classics kept sweeping over me, like waves of light fog at a seashore. In truth, it’s the closest to a semi-ecstatic state that I’ve been in since we took a Danube classical music cruise last year.

Rieu, as some of you older members of the audience well know, has a unique way of transcribing the Strauss classics that is seldom attained by other contemporaneous orchestral artists. On the ‘chube’s Great Eye, the hundreds upon hundreds of listeners at his concert were being visibly caught up in the near-rapturous melodies of his artistry like flotsam tossed about in a tsunami. As the video cameras swept over the swelling audiences, everyone present was visually and even viscerally immersed in the music, not unlike someone would be who is sensually immersed in a hot, scented mineral bath. Smiles were universally evident and many attendees had tears in their eyes, so great was the wave of nostalgia that Rieu effortlessly stimulates in his appreciative audiences.

In the concert’s crowds, most of whom were seated at tables amply supplied with flagons of wine and beer, this uniquely animated spirit of appreciation all shared was contagious as couples sprang to their feet and danced to the familiar strains of Rieu’s luxuriant and melodic music. The lilting joyousness of the music clearly filled the entire venue, permeating all who listened raptly as Rieu’s orchestra played on into the gathering dusk.

All this made me reflect upon how wonderful such collective pleasures could be and…not least of all…how much I missed the luxuriously civilized European culture that I spring from. By comparison, what passes for our own brand of American culture, our home-brewed, made-in-the-USA-by-pop-culture-crap, has all the attractive qualities of the bad part of a big, ugly, smelly city crotch being scratched on a hot, sweaty summer night (social media smegma?).

This, in turn, prompted further reflection by me on why, exactly, ordinary life in so many urbanized parts of these United States has sunk to such a cesspool quality level…but that was where my brief pause to ponder ended prematurely, due to the difficulty I was having thinking negatively in the face of such marvelous musical enjoyment as Rieu provoked.

Somewhat later, once the concert had ended, I fitted our pup’s lead to her collar and took her out for her evening walk (a necessity here in the summer heat) after the temp had cooled off a bit. Since we live adjacent to one of the city’s more heavily-traveled east/west asphalt arteries, walking up the five blocks or so on its sidewalk (a distance required to get to a local park) is a required prerequisite for getting away from the annoying and highly irritating cacophony of passing traffic on that thoroughfare.

Many years ago (when I was still young and in search of gonadal excitement) I was involved in sportscar racing at several California racetracks as part of the medical emergency turn crew, which involved standing along the edges of the Monte Carlo style course, often only few feet away from cars traveling in excess of a hundred miles an hour, waiting for the inevitable crashes. The noise and racket were horrific then…even ear-defenders were only partly effective in blocking out the harmful decibels at such moments.

Walking down this stretch of the city streets today, I am sad to say, greatly resembles being at that race-track, with cars routinely exceeding the posted 35 mph speed limit by substantial margins as they race to beat the stoplight. Then there are the large and offensively loud semi-truck/trailer units coming off the near-by interstate, scores of obviously illegally modified automobiles (how do they get away with this, in tightly regulated California, with all our anal-retentive smog and emissions controls, one has to wonder?), high-performance ‘sportsbike’ motorcycles (being driven like they are entrants in the Isle of Man TT) and just plain offensively loud ‘Hardly-Goodsons’.

Had it not been for my past race experiences, walking along this stretch of the street with my pup would be anxiety producing, to say the least, and that’s not even considering what her (our pup’s) hypersensitive ears register as we walk there.

Finally, though, after transiting the five blocks, we at last reached the park and I could already feel myself un-tensioning, relaxing my situational vigilance a bit and responding to the soothing peacefulness of the leafy bowers there that fill the park. My girl began to sniff out the scent of other passing dogs and started ritually covering that scent with her own squirts of marking urine. The relaxing, healing come-down from all the highly irritating street noise continued for a few minutes more as I started looking around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the squirrels, birds and other naturally delightful inhabitants of this park.

It’s usually at that point on these walks that I begin to notice all the traces of unconcerned human presence there…scattered bits of human waste, cast-off debris, food wrappers, empty vodka bottles (‘Alcoholic beverages strictly forbidden’) and the general effluvia left by visitors to this park during the day, and it immediately starts to erode whatever feelings of natural release being in this park evokes, like raw sulfuric acid.

Since we live near two schools, one a primary and the other a high school, it’s obvious that a lot of this cast-off crap is the product of students who use the park as a post-school-day hangout for a while before returning home. It’s also clear that they regard tossing their detritus on the ground as an age-entitled expression of youthful rebelliousness, since the nearby trash containers all stand pretty much empty and unused. ["Let's make a mess for others to deal with!" "Dude! Cool!"]

Then too, we have the several picnic table kiosks, with their provision for larger parties to share BBQ or whatever. These areas are always particularly strewn with waste and throw-aways, again despite the presence of plenty of adjacent waste barrels. Many rejected food items lie haphazardly flung about, such as pieces of fried chicken that have been partly gnawed, then flung away into the grass. Every now and then, one also comes across tossed-away used plastic syringes. Yesterday there was a used condom on the ground…One can only cringe, wondering where they tossed the dirty, used needles.

It makes walking a dog not unlike walking through a minefield filled with non-explosive hazards, since dogs will usually quickly sniff out and start to consume anything even vaguely resembling human food. Our girl, being a husky, is particularly adept at quickly wolfing down rancid food items (including yucky unidentifiable stuff) before we even know what she’s up to. And every time she does, it provokes a silent string of curses from me at the careless and thoughtless dipshits who are responsible for this, since veterinary expenses are no longer a cheap or inexpensive fact of life for pet owners.

Moving further along, we usually start to encounter another recurrent frustration of city park use: loose dogs roaming around in a park that mandates all dogs be on a leash at all times. It seems that, despite the presence of a designated, enclosed dog park just a hundred yards away, many dog owners seem to feel that they can come to this park, take their dogs’ leads off and let them run around unfettered with complete abandon.

Their motivations are guessable. They probably feel that letting the dogs run around loose provides some brief happiness for their pups, gives them exercise and subconsciously reckon that  this makes up for all the walks that their doggies (likely) never get, otherwise. But what they don’t seem to either understand or care about is the fact that ‘responsible’ dog owners (such as myself), who follow the rules (posted) and keep their pets on proper leads, are at risk when their loose dogs come careening over to spontaneously ‘greet’ ours.

Our girl, as a typical husky, reacts differently to the intrusion of other dogs when she’s on a lead than she would if she were unconstrained (i.e. off lead) in a dog park. Her consequent reactiveness, exaggerated by her inability to properly ‘meet’ the intruders on their terms, mixed in with a natural husky assertiveness, creates an antagonist state of affairs that can quickly turn into a dog fight.

Ask any dog expert and he/she will affirm that dogs react in a completely different social manner when leashed, as opposed to being unleashed. Further, attempting to restrain your own dog when the other dogs are coming at her with the complete freedom denied her, puts you (the owner) at risk as well, since any sudden lunge can offset your balance and pull you over unexpectedly.

Our girl weighs only 65 pounds, which is nominally considered a ‘medium’ size, but it’s 65 pounds of solid husky muscle, capable of pulling heavily loaded sleds through unbelievably difficult terrain. If she’s suitably of a will to do so, she can pull (and has pulled) my 98-pound wife off balance. Even I, weighing in at 160 pounds, can be caught off balance if the lunge is not anticipated and checked appropriately.

Of course, the average dipshit whose dogs have been allowed to run loose is totally unaware of all this, nor, I would venture, does he in the slightest care. All he is blissfully (ignorantly) aware of is his inclination to let his dogs have the run of the park.

In the past, my dogs (we recently had two rescued huskies but one sadly passed on), have been set upon in this manner…once by not just one, but two Pit Bull type dogs at once. They dashed out to attack, silent and grimly determined, and before I knew what was happening, my girl was on her back and would certainly have had her throat ripped out had it not been for a very study, metal studded color she always wears that prevented the larger of the attacking Pitties from sinking his jaws into her neck.

Other encounters of this type (our girl restrained and the others unrestrained) have not been quite so potentially disastrous, but the point is clear enough and the liability is always patent. Allowing dogs to frolic in a public park (a park that is clearly posted, requiring all dogs to be on leads) is not just illegal and irresponsible, but clearly a potential threat to others who use it responsibly. In fact, my wife recently fell and broke her nose (requiring a hospital ER visit) owing to an incident of this sort in this same park, last week.

All that unhappily stated, as our walk continued on this lovely late-summer evening, we came upon evidence of our local city's homeless problem. In one corner of the park were piles of the same sort of variegated trash that most of us now recognise as being the personal possessions of some homeless person. In this instance, it was not just the usual collection of seemingly cast-off shit but an actual individual's encampment. A tent had been set up against a far fence, cleverly hidden from police observation somewhat by its green coloration; the ‘trash’ sat in disordered piles nearby. As we passed by, a woman walked out of the trees towards the tent. She had the appearance of having just taken care of whatever toilet ablutions she felt it necessary to perform and was apparently returning to turn in.

Steering my curious girl away from this unpleasant scene, we continued our erstwhile ‘walk-in-the-park’ before shortly coming across a large pile of human excrement, flecked with discarded (and well-used) shards of TP. Naturally, something gross like this is a source of great interest to any dog, given that shit yields up so much information to the doggie nose…much to our human disgust. So, yanking her away from the disgusting site, we continued our walk…only to encounter further evidence of the homeless using the park as a sort of natural outhouse for their convenience...before finally getting out of the park and onto an adjacent street for the return walk back home.

Once on that street, things were a bit less stressful, since at least we weren’t treated to all the previously mentioned disgraceful evidence of what I like to call socially uncondonable ‘dipshittery’. The passing cars were infrequent, so this part of the walk was at least less disconcerting than the first half (including the park segment); but by then my previous mood of peaceful harmony was now almost completely gone.

When we were almost back home again, I had considerable pause to reflect on all this unhappy evidence of the increasing deterioration of the quality of urban life we are all experiencing, as Californica continues to be exploited to death by its uncaring, irresponsible and socially retarded inmates, urged on as it were by all the misguided, goody-good liberal shit-for-brains progressives.

From the near ecstasy of an Andre Rieu concert to the gut-wrenching disgust of trying to navigate a public park, avoiding trash, refuse, irresponsible users and the depredations of the increasing numbers of the homeless, life in our once beautiful and harmonious state has progressively (there’s that hateful ‘P-word’ again) gone downhill with the rapidity of a space capsule on atmospheric re-entry.

Aside from the irritation of having to closely (and harmoniously) coexist with others who have the collective mental awareness and consideration of a retarded sea slug, the ultra-left progressive mentality that has subsequently resulted (for example) in certain cities (like San Francistern, the city I was brought up in) co-dependently protecting the mentally deranged (or substance addled) homeless and even encouraging them to thrive, has now created a cultural environment that encourages complete and socially chaotic irresponsibility.

In addition to constituting an unforgivable visceral insult to all of us whose taxes continue to financially be used by our legislature to promote these mistaken and catastrophic public policies, we (the responsible citizens) are now being shamed in our feeble protests that this is a pure perversion of enlightened public policies. The fact that we should provide the greatest good for the greatest number of responsible people (and not encourage all the social parasites) appears to be lost somewhere in the muddled, half-baked rhetoric of the New Left.

Robert Dasmann’s excellent book ‘The Destruction of California’ (published originally in 1965) presaged this ongoing process of deterioration that California is present continuing to suffer from. That was back in the days when we didn’t have all the complicating qualifications of the present diversity quandary, nor all the added problems caused by a PC policy of allowing (nay, encouraging) undocumented immigrants to flood into the state unchecked, and back when the environmental preservation movement was largely and almost solely a ‘white’ cause, founded and supported almost exclusively by white environmental leftist activists. My, my, how things have changed!

Adding to that original challenge, we now have people from a broad range of other cultures, races and religions whose dismissive attitudes towards being communally responsible vary from fuzzy at best to totally absent at worst (I'm being uncharacteristically 'diplomatic' in phrasing things this mildly, naturally). We see this on a larger scale throughout the entire state, just as we see smaller and more personal (but no less important) evidences of it is places like the public parks that my bitch and I visit each day. Any effort to clear the anger and annoyances out of our heads that are caused by our uncaring, frenetic and misdirected pop-cultural elements are routinely frustrated.

To say this is all greatly upsetting is the understatement of the decade. To say it is unforgivable and outrageous perversion of enlightened, reflective. democratic (as in 'democracy', not the party) logic is a further gross understatement.

In 1999 the University of California published a photographic essay on Californica’s sad, graveyard spiral titled ‘Farewell, Promised Land’. Authored by Robert Dawson and Gray Brechin, it examines what Dasmann originally investigated back in 1965 and it is extremely disheartening to say the least.

This once lovely, friendly, harmonious and productive state appears to have become totally past redemption in the 34 years since ‘The Destruction of California’ first came out in print. While we may gain some small grain of hope from the fact that certain astutely aware people still care enough about our greater, social collective welfare to try to partly offset the social abnegations of the mass herds of idiots, dipshits and materially obsessed exploiters we live among, the overall prospects for redemption are, I am afraid, sadly almost non-existent.

Instead of dealing directly firmly with the homelessness problem, for instance, all we get are scattered goody-good church programs to feed, shelter and cloth these social parasites (or such incredibly stupid ideas as building 'small houses' or communal mini-habitats for them in hopes they'll actually inhabit them and stay put...they won't).

I recommend both of the above books to any mature adult (as well as the thousands of immature ones who are a large co-dependent part of the stated problem) who lives in this state and who still laments and mourns the passing of its formerly positive potentials, as our greater society continues to shit collectively (figuratively speaking) in our own human kennels.

As my husky girl and I daily pass through the shambles of that beautiful park, trying to avoid all the crap, waste, garbage and socially irresponsible acts of our ‘fellow’ human beings, I find myself constantly being reminded that not even a dog shits in its own kennel…

Unlike about 90% of the people using that park (and all the others like it, across our state).

But hey, what can we after all REALLY expect from people who spend half their adult lives with their heads firmly deposited up their distal colonic regions?