You Are Wrong If You Are Thinking What I Think You Are Thinking

If you are wondering how I know what you are thinking, don’t spend too much time wondering. I don’t know how I know either. It is a gift.

There are times, however, when I think it is a curse because I tune in to some of you only to find it very unsettling when I see what you are thinking.

Let’s get back to the Subject of this Foolishness. I saw that you are thinking that I am so gifted at recognizing and recording Foolishness I must be the only one recognizing and recording Foolishness. You are wrong in that thinking because you forgot about the herculean efforts of the Journal of Animal Ethics. These guys are Experts in the Creation, Promulgating and Invention of Silliness!

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Do you own a pet? Would you call yourself a pet owner? The Journal of Animal Ethics would disagree with you if you did. Its editors have decided that the word “pets” is insulting to animals. They have been trying to replace the entire spectrum of words related to owning a cat or dog. The result was a diktat to call pets “Animal Companions” and owners be called “Human Carers”.

Amusingly, they also tried to squash out animal-based idioms from the English Language...

• “Eat Like A Pig”… They determined that, just because pigs eat like pigs it was insulting to say they pigs eat like pigs. I’m sure, if I had looked hard enough, I would have found that they had taken a similar position with regard to Eating Like A Horse.
• “Sly as a Fox”… Is being Sly bad? I bet this disappointed a lot of Fox because they thought being Sly was kinda Cool.
• “Drunk as a Skunk”… They say Skunks aren’t alcoholics and to imply that they were alcoholics would be derogatory.
  
  
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Their Change for The Sake of Change Idea is even extended to Wild Animals. The Journal insisted they have to be referred to as “Free Living” to avoid offense. (I can’t help but wonder how the “free-living” animals managed to tell them they were offended.)

Other bad words…

• Beasts… Something tells me that this objection only applies to Animal Beasts. Really rotten Human Beasts can still be Beasts.
• Vermin… We have to stick up for the Rats out there.
• Pets… This is the word that started all of this confusion. This is diminutive and has a negative connotation, as if the animal is beneath the status of the human...Which it is.
• Pets (more)… A really smart Bilingual Licensed Clinical Social Worker smarter than I am smart says this... I use the word "pet" in a colloquial fashion but when writing scientific papers I am always careful to say "companion animal," which provides more respect to our animal partners.
• Animals… This is the second word that started all of this confusion.
• Master… How dare you think you are superior to an animal just because you are capable of Rational Thinking and the animal you are Thinking about is not capable of Thinking.
• Wildlife… Might as well throw out anything “wild”. Can Wild Cherry, Wild Fire, Wild Flowers, Wild Hairs or Wild Ideas be far behind? I guess this is why we no longer see commercials for Wildroot Cream Oil on TV.

Other words/phrases we should use…

• Companion Animals (I thought we were not to use “animals”.)
• Free-Living Animals (I thought we were not to use “animals”.)
• Animal Guardian (Instead of Animal Owner.)
• Pet Parent (Instead of Pet Owner.) (I thought we were not to use “pet”.)
• Differentiated Entities (This could very well be my favorite, if I knew what it meant.)

The hope of the Journal of Animal Ethics is that avoiding language with negative baggage will help nudge our culture away from views of animals as mere property, resources or threats…Or will it? We would probably be too confused to feel the Cultural Nudge.

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More Confusion…

• How Well Do You Speak Your Dog’s Language?
• Is the Word "Pet" Harmful and Demeaning to Animals?
• We Should Watch Our Words When Speaking About Animals
• Are Emotional Support Dogs Always a Cure-All?

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe:

Wildroot Cream-Oil is a men's hair-tonic sold in the United States from the 1940s to the 1960s by the Wildroot Hair Tonic Company, based in Buffalo, New York.

The company first started selling Wildroot Hair Tonic in 1911. In the 1920s, the tonic was primarily marketed to women, with advertisements warning that bobbed hair and tight hats would cause baldness, unless they used the Wildroot product. Wildroot started marketing the product to men in the 1930s. In 1937, the company was scolded by the Federal Trade Commission for claiming that Wildroot Hair Tonic keeps the scalp "healthy", "penetrates" the sebaceous glands, cleans up dandruff "completely", and that the results were "guaranteed".

The company's original tonic was alcohol-based, which became more scarce during World War II. In the early 40s, chemist Emanuel Gundlach invented a new alcohol-free formula. At first, Gundlach presented the Wildroot executives with a cream that came in a tube, but they rejected that formulation. Adding more water to the mix, the company bottled the product, and the new Wildroot Cream-Oil was a success. The product's main ingredient was lanolin, also known as wool grease, which is a wax secreted by the sebaceous glands of domestic sheep.

Wildroot Cream-Oil was first sold in 1943. In the 1950s, the product was associated with the greaser subculture, teenage boys who slicked their hair down into a ducktail style.

The Wildroot Company was sold to Colgate-Palmolive in 1959 for $10.5 million dollars. A "Wildroot Hair Groom" is still being marketed today by the Oakhurst Company.