From the video description by pianist Paul Barton:
Mongkol is a 61-year-old former logging elephant. His captive-held life was spent hauling trees in the Thai forest. His body shape is deformed through hard labor, he lost his right eye and tusk in this brutal logging practice. Mongkol was rescued and brought to Elephants World to spend the rest of his days relaxing peacefully in freedom by the River Kwai. I discovered Mongkol is an extremely gentle, sensitive elephant who enjoys music, especially this slow movement by Beethoven which I play to him occasionally in the day and night.
Answer: NO. Only human beings have rights. Human beings are the only creatures capable of conceiving rights or exercising them. Animals have no conception of rights, or the obligations that go with them.
They also have no concept of right or wrong - that is to say, morality - or of law; some may have a kind of limited intelligence, and can be taught to obey human commands and do wonderful tricks, but they lack reason and abstract thought, along with other strictly human qualities. The higher animals can in fact be loyal, useful companions to human beings, which is a lovely thing as far as it goes - but they can never be human beings.
That being said, in your Head Trucker's estimation, human beings have a moral duty to treat animals humanely, not abusing or mistreating them; the higher the animal, the greater the duty. This duty can and should be enforced by law.
Consider the elephant in this video: would you want him for a roommate? What do you think he smells like? Is he really a person, just like you?
Optional homework assignment: Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and for each occurrence of the word "everyone," mentally substitute the word "elephant," and see where that gets you.
Your Head Trucker has answers to a lot of other questions now bedeviling the public mind, like What is a woman? and Is Donald Trump a pathological liar? but it's probably best that I stop right here.
Ever feel like the world is ganging up on you and biting your butt big time? Well then, maybe you will take heart from this video filmed by visitors to a game preserve in Zambia last week:
The astonished watchers promptly dubbed the little guy Hercules in admiration for his victory. Yes, he got away safely, with a great story to tell the folks back home.
Moral: Don't fuck with the elephant, fellas. He will kick your ass good.
Jenny and Shirley at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee
I hate to bring up the subject of Christmas, because I despise thinking about it this early in the year. Unfortunately, there are too many silly or greedy people in our society who have turned the whole concept into a circus of display and consumerism. For myself, I make it a firm rule never to put up any Christmas decorations before the 15th of December, and what few I do put up are very modest. But the stores are already filling up with Christmas dreck, and every one of you reading this is already making certain plans for the season, I know you are. So I'm going to put a bug in your ear about all that, as we say down South.
Your Head Trucker would like to send this little suggestion out to the world, for what it's worth: this Christmas, instead of spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on decorations and parties and expensive crap to give to your friends and relations, who already have too much crap of every kind and color to deal with - why not have a smaller, more modest holiday, and instead get your loved ones to join with you in adopting an elephant? Elephants are smart, gentle, emotional creatures who are too often vulnerable to cruelty and abuse. Check out these videos, and see what I mean.
"Spaceless in Seattle" is a short film about the elephants at the Woodland Park Zoo in that city:
And here's the Performing Animal Welfare Society in Galt, California - which also makes a home for lions and tigers and bears, I kid you not. And some primates, too.
Now please listen to ol' Russ before you click away. Whether you are a believer or a non-believer, your Head Trucker asks you to just stop everything for one five minutes, and consider why you go through all your holiday routines in the month of December, by whatever name you call them. Is it all really to celebrate the warm relationships you have with others in your life? Or is it possible that you do all that to celebrate - yourself. Your taste, your wealth, your fabulousness, your one little precious snowflake of a life?
If your religion, or your lack of religion, does not make you a bigger, better, more thoughtful, more compassionate person - then what exactly is the point of all you believe, or disbelieve?
Come to think of it, what is the point of human life, anyway?
What is the point of your life?
Or is there one?
You don't have to tell me, fellas. But do think it over. It will do you a world of good.
* * *
Of course, there are many other worthy causes in need of your help, and I'll be blogging about some of those in the weeks to come.
But do be aware that you can check the performance of legitimate charities, including the ones above, at such excellent sites as Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau.
They're on the rise, and damned if I can understand why. Jonathan Capehart in the Washington Post's PostPartisan blog:
Gay men, lesbians and bisexuals who self-identified to exit pollsters made up 3 percent of those casting ballots in House races on Tuesday, and 31 percent of them voted Republican. By itself, that number is amazing, especially when you consider that way too many people think being gay and voting Democratic are one in the same. But that percentage is ominous news for a White House viewed with suspicion by many gay men and lesbians, because that's four percentage points higher than the change election of 2008.
Self-identified gays have been slowly sidling up to the GOP for a while now. In the 2008 presidential race, they made up four percent of the vote and gave 27 percent of their votes to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) against then-Sen. Barack Obama. In the 2006 midterm elections, when the House and Senate flipped to Democratic control, gays made up three percent of the electorate with the Republicans snagging 24 percent of their ballots. And in the 2004 presidential elections, President George W. Bush got 23 percent of the gay vote. They comprised four percent of those polled.
Why do gays vote for the Republican Party? Come to think of it, why do poor people, unemployed people, old people, single parents, minimum-wage workers, and anybody else who's not a fucking millionaire, vote for the GOP? The party of Sally Kern, Sarah Palin, and John "Filibuster" McCain, to name but a few.
The Texas GOP, like that of many other states, actually wants to recriminalize sodomy, among other choice proposals.
Did any Jews vote for Hitler? Did any blacks vote for George Wallace? Given that the river of human stupidity is an ever-flowing stream, I sure wonder.
Sigh. Kinda makes you feel like just giving up on the human race sometimes, ya know what I mean?
Your Head Trucker now believes it will be twenty years before we see equality all across the nation: DADT repealed, and DOMA. ENDA enacted, and UAFA, and marriage equality in every state.
Twenty years: remember you heard it from Russ right here. Mark your calendars, and drop me a postcard when 2030 rolls around. If the gay Republican kapos will let you have a postage stamp.
Tell me I'm wrong. Please.
But first ask your friends who they voted for . . . and see if they hesitate to answer.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
