Doggone Sumbitches
A recent traveler in Vietnam had this to say: ‘I’d love to eat dog, if for no other reason than to annoy all those dog lovers for whom the welfare of their pooch is more important than the welfare of their fellow man.’
I have heard the same criticism leveled at ‘tree-lovers’ – i.e. they esteem the welfare of trees (of all things) above the welfare of the poor sufferers in the world.
The tree family has produced the rubber tree and from this tree is fashioned the simple condom. If humans are poor and cannot offer their offspring the benefits of a beneficial life then being more intellectually developed than dogs they should slip on a rubber and do the world a favour.
Another ‘useless tree’, the coconut tree produces a wine which when drunk along with a haunch of roast black Labrador is said to give a lazy third-world lay-about ‘the horn.’
After some ribbing from his ‘barkada”, ‘peuan-peuan’, ‘bpoo-uk maak’, or ‘baan’ he will politely excuse himself from the card-game and hurry home to his nipa-thatch abode and, like Rover, take over and give ‘er indoors a bone of his own while she is bent over stirring the rice pot.
Then, a couple of years later some duff-head white backpacker doing the obligatory post-graduate tour of Indo-China will spy the fruit of ‘Bong-bong’s’ loins standing on the side of a dusty road complete with runny hooter, bare feet and torn blouse and feel justified in chowing down on a chow chow to spite the pooch-lovers back in Blighty or wherever.
Is Lassie really now (like Heroin) so passe?
Whatever happened to the warm sentimental glow people used to get seeing the faithful family pet risk life and paw to drag a little toddler out of a blazing house-fire by the scruff of his nightshirt?
In 1902, University of Colorado geology professor Ernest C. Lindemann”s prize Saint Bernard, Prince Leo, became a Boulder celebrity. The 200-pound animal had picked up an unconscious man and carried him for 14 hours down a mountainside near Breckenridge. The dog was said to have saved the man”s life as well as the lives of three other men.
Prince Leo was rewarded with a medal and named the ‘strongest and soundest St. Bernard’ in a Denver dog show. Both his owner and the man he carried said they would not sell him for his weight in gold.
Three years later, the legendary Prince Leo nearly died when someone injected strychnine into a leg of lamb and threw it into Lindemann”s yard. After the dog’s stomach was pumped, he was nursed back to health, but not long after the incident, while still in his owner’s yard, Prince Leo was shot and killed.
Just the other day a self-confessed German cannibal was jailed for life after a court found him guilty of murder for killing and partly eating a victim he had met on the Internet.
At a retrial, the court in Frankfurt found that Armin Meiwes, known as the ‘Cannibal of Rotenburg’, slaughtered a man to satisfy his dark sexual urges.
The motive for dog eating seems to have some parallels to the motives expressed by the Kraut Kannibal. In South Korea, for instance, it is common to eat dogs. This is not done in a humane manner, but by torturing them to death by hanging, strangulation, and beatings with such objects as bricks, large rocks, heavy rod-like objects and electrocution. They do this for long periods of time in order to terrorize and cause great suffering to the animal. They die a very slow and painful death. This brutal execution is done to dogs, because many South Koreans believe the flesh from a dog who is tortured to death has aphrodisiac qualities and tastes better. In Korean folklore, it is believed that the presence of adrenaline in dog meat is a sexual aphrodisiac.
Hmmm! Is it really such a fine line between love and tortuous S&M?
The judge rejected the prosecution”s demand that the Kannibal Kraut be disqualified from release after serving a minimum 15 years, meaning he may not spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Meiwes, 44, immediately indicated that he would appeal, signaling another round in a long legal process that has laid bare a hitherto secret underworld of cannibalism in Germany.
Investigators found that he had been in touch with more than 200 people who shared his fantasies, while Meiwes himself said there were about 800 cannibals in Germany who hoped to fulfil their urges.
As I began to explore the modern hip trend of dog-hatred I discovered that currently the most popular web-site dedicated to this religious fervour, i.e. http://www.dogs.hatepage.com/?d=b&i=15&m=b hails from?.. surprise surprise Germany!
Germany being the home of such renowned philosophers as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers and Immanuel Kunt, I half expected to find some dynamic dialectics in defence of the discerning dude who dines out on dogs. Not a bit of it!
The most intelligent re-occuring phrase seemed to be ‘unconditional love’???
‘Come and visit my cool doghate site,’ says one contributor, another offers a very basic un-imaginative recipe for boiled dogmeat. Somewhere else someone whines on in a group discussion about how unfair a legal case was in the U.S. where a male driver overcome by road rage reached into the window of a lady’s car which had dented his fender, grabbed her yapping poodle and threw it into the adjacent busy three lane superhighway where it was pounded into dog-mince.
”Hell! He got three years in the Pen where he’ll likely be sodomised for one lousy mutt! They shoulda jus’ made him buy her another – it?s like only a dog!” Whine, whine.
I asked myself why there seemed to be such a voracious display of retarded childish anti-sentiment towards the canine fraternity on this particular website.
Perhaps there was another clue concealed by the Kannibal Kraut.
He admitted he eventually ate some 20 kilogrammes (44 pounds) of human flesh, accompanied by potatoes and a pepper or wine sauce, served on “good crockery.”
Meiwes further testified that his fantasies about eating flesh dated back 30 years. He said that after his father abandoned his family, he realised that he wanted to eat a school friend as a way of keeping somebody with him forever.
Hmmm? Do dog-haters perhaps carry an early childhhod trauma of losing a dearly beloved pet and like the Kannibal Kraut fantasize about eating one in order to keep lassie permanently ‘at home’ in the kennel?
It seems there are not any competent modern German philosophers swayed either way by doggie dialectics but it wasn?t always so.
Take the case of the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes. One day he was running towards the river with a begging bowl, just as Buddha had a begging bowl. He was thirsty, but just as he was reaching to the water, a dog came running, overtook him and started drinking the water.
He said: “My God! Why am I carrying this bowl? The dog is in a better position!” He threw the begging bowl in the river and learned the way of drinking water like the dog.
The dog certainly became very friendly to the man, so he invited the dog to share with him whatever he got for food.
Diogenes was known as ‘THE DOG’ throughout Athens and at one particular feast certain people kept throwing all the bones to him as they would to a dog. He, understanding that dogs in their simple humility are the pinnacle of evolution as we in our complex arrogance are not, played a dog’s trick and urinated on them.
Another time, the great conqueror Alexander the Great came to pay Diogenes a visit while he was having his morning bath outdoors in a barrel. Alexander was enamoured with the intellect, grace and charisma of this Diogenes and asked him to allow him to offer him a gift or favour that would make his life more pleasurable. Diogenes replied, (as Alexander was blocking the sun’s rays)
‘I want only one thing Alexander. You stand in front of me, and you”re hiding the sun, so, don’t take from me, the thing that you cannot give me!’
Alexander is reported later to have said, “Had I not been Alexander, I should have liked to be Diogenes.” As it turned out, both Diogenes ‘the dog lover’ and Alexander ‘the conqueror of worlds’ died on the same day in 323 B.C. Alexander was 33 and Diogenes was 90.
In the Bhagavad-gita (5.1 Krishna explains that spiritual perfection begins when one can see the equality of all living beings, “The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana (a priest), a cow, an elephant, a dog, and a dog-eater (outcast).”
Another ancient Indian text states: ‘The Unapproachable are those who cause pollution if they come within a certain distance.’ It is said of the Nayadis people, who fall into the category of the Unapproachable, ‘that they are the lowest caste among the Hindus’ – the dog-eaters.
Disregarding these Ancient would-be wisdoms who can we turn to to make the right decision when faced with a sign on roadside advertising: ?Satay Dog with Stir-fried magic mushrooms lunch-time special????
Well, there’s always the astute Asian adventure adepts from the popular TV hit series ‘Pilot Guides.’ One presenter, Megan McCormick is seen pondering a lump of dog-meat pinned between her chopsticks in Vietnam and staring cheekily at the camera as if inciting the armchair traveler to dare her to pop in into her north and south. She does of course and hams it up finally admitting, yes, it tastes like (yawn) chicken.
Justine Shapiro who usually presents episodes of Pilot Guides in S-E Asia was not chosen for this cuisine tasting segment as dog and cat are strictly forbidden by the Jewish religious dietary (kosher) laws. And it wouldn’t be the key presenter Ian Wright who fakes the scenes where he is seen eating bat’s blood etc. As Ian says in the ‘Pilots Guides meets Ian Wright’ interview: ”I am vegetarian, although not for the show.”
When Megan is not traversing the backbacker track she contributes to a website called: ‘Deep End Dining.’ (”We are diners dedicated to seeking and devouring the food uncommon, the cuisine exotic and the entrees less ordered. Have an open appetite and get ready to take the plunge into the Deep End”.)
If you really want to take a true plunge into the ?deep end? in S-E Asia, put your conservatism on the line and take a step in the direction of the enlightened ones. Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Boddhidharma, Chuang Tzu are all still waiting to challenge you. Let the sleeping dogs lie. Ahimsa.
Peace out,
Heinrich manoeuvre, K440.
