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Items to fit into your overhead compartment |
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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| This story from USA Today (actually from April, not today) is something I've been complaining about for a while, but people seem to think that complaining about it makes me a bad person. Service dogs can be four-legged lifesavers, alerting to dangerous allergens, assisting with travel and making people with a wide range of disabilities safer. Cats could do all that too, but they're too intelligent to want to. But fake service dogs, advocates say, are taking a bite out of real service dogs’ credibility, exacerbating the challenges that people with disabilities who rely on service animals already face. Fake service dogs are poorly trained or untrained animals falsely passed off by individuals trying to access restricted places or benefits. And that is what I've complained about, only to be told that I'm a terrible person for even suggesting it. Thousands of grocers and shop owners now prohibit any animals, including legitimate service dogs, from entering their stores. Huh. I didn't even know that was legal in the US. I thought ADA required service animal accommodation. Legitimate service animal accommodation, that is. Businesses are required to allow service animals onto their premises under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but it's not always obvious whether a service dog is legitimate. See? I was right. "There are individuals and organizations that sell service animal certification or registration documents online," federal officials warn. "These documents do not convey any rights under the (Americans with Disabilities Act) and the Department of Justice does not recognize them as proof that the dog is a service animal." This is the problem. Entitled people who want to bring their stupid dog everyfuckingwhere are the problem, and so are the people who enable it. If I were dictator, I'd ship every last one of them to a gulag. Without their dogs. Mollica advises individuals with service dogs who encounter skeptical business owners to take "a nonaggressive, non-defensive stance" and let them know the animal is legitimately needed. Nonagressive AND nondefensive. Um... okay. Yes, people with a legitimate need for service animals should be accommodated. I'm not arguing that. But it's not the business owners who are to blame, here; it's the fake-service-animal people. It's kind of like the shops that only allow in one teen at a time: it's not because every teen is a problem, but because enough are that the business feels the need to have some control over potential situations. According to Canine Companions, loopholes in the ADA have enabled scammers to exploit the system. In 2024, the group said it hopes to persuade lawmakers to add definitive language to the act that addresses service dog representation, making it "crystal-clear that misrepresentation of a disability for personal gain – including the use of a service dog – is against the law." We might have more pressing legislative matters to deal with, but that seems like a step in the right direction. It's not always about personal gain, though; often, it's about Main Character Syndrome. A false sense of entitlement. Maybe even a dose of denial: "Oh, Froofloo won't hurt anyone." *Froofloo bites some kid* "That kid must have deserved it!" Now, I'm aware that things aren't always so clear-cut. Like, maybe you've grown attached to a dog but the only place you can find to live doesn't allow dogs, so you fib a little to say it's a service animal. I'd still send you to the gulag, but at least I can sympathize with that situation. But for the most part, anyone who fakes having a service animal is part of the problem and should be mocked, shunned and avoided. |
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So, I think I think therefore I delude myself in thinking I exist? Too much work for too little reward. 
Perhaps one day.