city doggie-village doggie

my brother and his fiance adopted her from an animal protection association in Bucharest called ROBI and ever since, all they talk about is Adela. Such organizations estimate about 30.000 stray dogs in Bucharest, with a birthrate of 100 puppies per day. Authorities don't want to make the numbers public, but at least there's an Administration for the Surveillance (?) of Dogs Without Owners which also makes adoptions possible despite the obvious failure to manage the situation. in this video she's puzzled by the chicken's idea of humping that water bottle.




this is Leutzu, my dad's countryside dog that he picked up from the street. no intermediaries in this case, it was love at first sight.he really needed a new buddy around the house. our old dog there (RIP) was over 20 when he passed on last year.
the young one's name is the diminutive of his predecessor, Leu.
i don't see many stray doggies in the countryside, maybe because they are more valued there or things there just fit in easier.


these two dogs will probably never meet, but it was a pleasure for me to spend a few moments with each of them.

grizzly man

the world's cold shoulder leads some to embrace wilderness as a obsessive ideal in need of protection. without using a religious or metaphysical justification for protecting elements of nature, men and women struggle to immerse themselves in the habitat in which ultimately they would feel protected. what is the mindset of such a person?
watching werner herzog's docu-drama about the grizzly man Timothy Treadwell, the most vibrant feature piercing through the images recorded in his solo expeditions is his displacement. having spent 13 summers in the Alaskan grizzly habitat, he documents his encounters and relationships with the bears and foxes, through which you could sense the regret of not being able to perfectly fit in.
at times dead serious about his conservationist work and its necessity, most of the times playing like a kid left home alone, making up friends and voices, the man remains a mystery even in his disappearance. the director advices that the documented end of Timothy be destroyed, after hearing the tape with the screams of him and girlfriend being torn apart by one angry grizzly.
absurdly enough, this bear was killed afterwards and thus the effort of the grizzly man's expeditions do not appear so valiant and useful in the end.
he did tamper with nature, but was aware of the constant threat, and could not give up what had been offering him a true meaning. the need to feel needed ...or selflessness? i can't really judge, and perhaps one should not.

TT one hand holding the camera and recording himself: "and that's the story here...for me, Timothy Treadwell, the kind warrior. can i take it? i'm trying...ok, yeah, i can do it, why not? i've crossed the halfway point...i've had danger in the bone...i've almost died, i've almost fallen off a cliff. the danger factor is about to amp up in the maze [grizzly maze], the maze is always the most dangerous...lord, i do not want to be killed by a bear...i do not! i always cannot understand why girls don't want to be with me for a long time...because i have really a nice personality...i'm fun...i'm very very good in the...well... you're not supposed to say that when you're a guy...but i know that i am, they know i am...aaaaaaaand i don't fight with them...i'm so passive...bit of a patsy...which is that of a turnoff to girls to be a patsy?"

john muir, steve irwin, timothy treadwell, jane goodall and many others have lived in the light of man being on a par with wildlife, and undoubtedly this needs to be the truly ethical approach to modernity.

NO zoo

again, i ask myself, why should there be a zoo in the first place? as long as we have scientists travelling half the world to bring us images of the animals in their original habitat, and efforts to protect the extinct...has anyone made a study to how many visitors are there a day? is the zoo such a profitable business, despite being morally bankrupt?

i am sick and depressed, but it's beside the point...

yes, of course I cringe at the thought of bombings, murders, deaths by any means, and I can hardly say that famous stalin joke "a single death is a tragedy, death of a million is statistics" is hilarious.
BUT there are certain pieces of information which blatantly point out the IRRATIONAL CRUELTY of people and they just sadden me to the bone. there u have it: a rare siberian tiger in a zoo in central china was beheaded and skinned in order to make some money on the black market.
she was anesthetized by her killers who otherwise could not have performed this, and she was one of the 530 of its kind in the wild.

even if not butchered by criminals, animals in bucharest zoo are killed by the personnel.
to me the whole idea of zoo is obsolete and cruel. even if located in china, bucharest, berlin, they are all sad places that bruise the imagination. i do want to see a kangaroo, i love them, but i don't want it to be restricted to a place which undoubtedly stinks and cannot replace its natural habitat.

since i don't stray from films analogies too much, one that touches on the obscurity of the zoo and its relation to human decay is "A Zed and Two Noughts" by the old man Peter Greenaway, a fountain of criticism which i admire.