Goodbye Harry Flashman

Home Life, Pets

img284 My wife Jess with her boy, Harry Flashman

Harry Flashman passed away peacefully today at the Greensfork Animal Hospital after a brief illness. Harry was, like his namesake, bad-natured, argumentative, and a bully. Unlike his namesake, he was also loyal, courageous, playful, and fiercely protective. He would not hesitate to take on a dog 3 times his size if he thought it was too close to, or getting too much attention from his mommy, my wife Jess. He loved her as much as she loved him. He would follow her anywhere, and put up with things from her that would cause him to rip anyone else’s throat out. His trust in her was ironclad. He would eat anything she gave him, from dog treats to lettuce. Actually he would eat anything she dropped. We had to learn early on not to drop pills or jalapenos. He was an inveterate counter-surfer. Nothing close to the edge was safe. I’ll never forget the time he came trotting out of the kitchen with a slice of my pizza in his mouth. He’d snagged it, and managed to jam the entire slice down his throat. The only thing visible was a big pizza crust smile.

A few more memories of Harry:

Him running from window to window crying and looking for his mommy every time she’d leave the house. His frantic barking and efforts to escape his ex-pen at dog shows as a puppy any time Jess wasn’t right next to him. The way he loved to snuggle on the couch with Jess, and God help any other dog that got too close (except, of course, his half-sister Elsie). His compulsive swimming in our pool back in Vegas. He’d get in there and just swim, until he was almost too tired to get out. How much he loved running in agility competitions with Jess. No one else could get him to do anything, but he’d do anything she asked him to. If anyone else tried to run him, he’d just run out of the ring to be with Jess. He was her boy, and only hers, and there has never been another dog that was loved as deeply or as well as Jess loved him. When he got sick, it broke her heart, but at the end, she loved him too much to prolong his suffering, despite her own suffering at his loss.

If dogs can go to heaven, and I can’t imagine that they can’t, he’ll be the first in line to welcome Jess when she gets there, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

So goodbye Harry, you were a good boy.

Wuthering Heights – Literary classic or instrument of academic torture?

Arts, Books and Literature

I’m reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, possibly the most horrible book ever written. There have certainly been worse books written, but for sheer oppressive horribleness, Wuthering Heights takes the prize, for me anyway. In the entire book, there is really only one even remotely decent, or even intelligent character, the maid Nelly Dean. The rest are so vile and nasty, or pathetic and easily manipulated that I can’t help hoping for an earthquake to swallow up all of Yorkshire, just to make sure that none of their genetic material can be perpetuated. These characters would be right at home on the Jerry Springer show.

So why do schools insist on inflicting this book on students? The writing is, to be honest, excellent. She does a great job of setting the gothic atmosphere. I do, however, wish that Emily Bronte had had a sense of humor. It would have made an amazingly funny comedy. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book that would benefit more from the Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein treatment.

With so many literary classics available (anything by Dickens, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Dumas, to name a few), I believe that schools continue to inflict it on students because it was inflicted on them, sort of an academic hazing. I say it’s time to stop the cycle of abuse.