Saturday

Not a lot on the docket today.  August?  Ya' gotta be kiddin' me!!

4 wondered if I had any thoughts on the new Lion King saga going on with recently deceased Cecil.  The story was actually in at least two places in the Wednesday Minneapolis paper that I read when we were there for the Shania concert...before it exploded into an international call to justice. 

I've never been much of a hunter.  I tried a little as a teenager with some squirrel efforts on the farm, and a couple of pheasant excursions to western Iowa.  But it never caught on, and I've spent most of my adult life being afraid of guns.  I'm not anti-gun, but I just don't like 'em.  And for as long as I can remember, I have found incongruous the concept of hunting for an elk in the Rockies or a Grizzly in the woods for "the sport" of it.  Sitting in a hunter's hidden perch to down an unsuspecting animal with a high-powered rifle doesn't resonate as much of a "sport" to me.

But I digress.  It sounds like our friendly dentist associated himself with some boys of questionable character who promised him a shot at a big cat.  And the dentist had to know he was with guides who walked a thin line between being lawful and poaching.  He paid lots of money to get to that spot.  And though I haven't had the interest to research his past, I've seen references to some prior legal issues with his hunting experiences.  The guy is not an innocent.

The real message in all of this is the passion of the social media mob, the willingness of do-gooders of every ilk to cast stones, and the risks for Everyman when he/she knowingly or unknowingly crosses a line in the new (and evolving) Code of Acceptable Conduct/Beliefs.  Little did the dentist know that when he released that arrow toward Cecil, his life would never be the same.  Regardless of the legal aspects of the act, he's done as a dentist (at least under his current name and any where near his current location), and will have to go through the equivalent of a witness protection program to re-establish some semblance of normal life.  Welcome to the Age of the Internet.

Activism has become one of the most socially-acceptable efforts in our modern culture.  From Occupy Wall Street, to Same sex Marriage, to Black Lives Matter, to Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, support for minority causes is the new prerequisite for measuring the bona fides of anyone who happens to find themselves in the crosshairs of the judges.  What was once a fairly simple two-question standard..1) pro-life or pro-choice, and 2) pro-military or anti-war...has expanded to the point where you need a scorecard.

Moving on...

In other news, the Illinois-side paper here moved its price from fifty-cents to a dollar today.  Bummer.  And it doesn't even have a decent crossword!.  I've been buying it daily for the last several years, in no small part due to the price relative to all of the other papers on the stand.  Newspapers are dying.  Not news, I know.  Hate to pay $1 for something that yields only a few minutes diversion.  The NYT is $2.50 daily...and I only buy that when I'm on the road.  What's a guy to do?

I'm not saying that the Buick has a big blind spot in the rear left corner, but there's a problem.  I hit a light pole in the parking lot at the coffee shop last week, and I still can't figure it out.  And it has a back-up camera to boot.  I've told 2 that I need her to give me more guidance  I've been seriously considering taking the advice of my pal Doc Doug's neighbor who says to make three right turns rather than a left turn for safety's sake.

OK.  Make it a Good Saturday in your neighborhood!

BCOT