(no subject)
Jul. 28th, 2008 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickTook Callie out for a brisk walk today, four miles (down to the bridge, up the other side to the stop sign, and back home again) which went well. She walked briskly and didn't seem to do any more damage to her heels than she'd already done. Tomorrow is another walking day. Feel the excitement...
Cass had Casper (her pony) tacked up in a new bit that looked just like this. This is a combination gag snaffle / elevator / hackamore. In terms of its severity as a bit, if a full cheek snaffle is rather like a green bell pepper, the gag/elevator/hackamore dealio is a thai bird's eye chili. (50,000 to 100,000 Scoville units. For comparison, a standard jalapeno is between 2,500 and 10,000 on the Scoville scale.)
It's a hell of a lot of bit, more than is needed and more than is suitable in the hands of a twelve year old child. I told her to take it off and put her pony's usual bridle on instead. She was NOT amused.
Also, some words of wisdom for District Attorney types, whom I would not have thought would be people in need of my wisdom. After all, they make lots of money (ours takes home around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year) and they Fight Crime and Stand For Justice and stuff. Recent events, however, have convinced me that at least one District Attorney needs my help in the wisdom department.
Here are the things that at least one District Attorney needs to know:
1. District Attorney, in Pennsylvania, is an elected office. This means that District Attorney types serve at the whims of The People. They can be unelected.
2. People who are elected officials are held to a higher standard than normal people. This does not mean that every elected official has to behave like a saint (I'm trying to live in the reality-based community these days) but it does mean that the elected officials should NOT GET CAUGHT BEING FUCKING STUPID.
3. If you happen to be a District Attorney in a rural county, you're the equivalent of moderately famous just for being District Attorney. (I blame shitty cable service.) Even better, if you've just wrapped up a Really Big Murder Trial with the conviction of the Criminal Suspect that countywide opinion suggests was The One What Done It, people might even know your name. They'll also know other trivia about you. If, for example, you happen to have a lovely wife and two small children, the constituency will know that.
4. If you happen to serve a rural county that has recently constructed, at considerable taxpayer expense, a Brand New Shiny Courthouse, the Brand New Shiny Courthouse will undoubtedly have a Brand New Shiny Terrorism-Fighting Surveillance System. The Brand New Shiny Terrorism-Fighting Surveillance System has cameras in all sorts of places, all over the Brand New Shiny Courthouse, anywhere that terrorism might happen.
5. Surveillance System cameras, even fancy Terrorism-Fighting Surveillance System Cameras, are peculiarly blind, like Justice herself. The result of their peculiar blindness is that they film everything that happens in front of them, from evil brown men plotting TERRORISM to crime suspects picking their noses to District Attorney types behaving inappropriately with their smoking hot secretaries.
6. All District Attorney types who have been caught behaving inappropriately with their secretaries on a Brand New Shiny Courthouse's Brand New Shiny Terrorism-Fighting Surveillance System videotape have proved themselves too damn stupid to be District Attorney types.
7. This is an election year. Of all the years in which one might prove oneself too stupid to serve as a DA, this would be the sort of year most conducive to not-getting-reelected.
Cass had Casper (her pony) tacked up in a new bit that looked just like this. This is a combination gag snaffle / elevator / hackamore. In terms of its severity as a bit, if a full cheek snaffle is rather like a green bell pepper, the gag/elevator/hackamore dealio is a thai bird's eye chili. (50,000 to 100,000 Scoville units. For comparison, a standard jalapeno is between 2,500 and 10,000 on the Scoville scale.)
It's a hell of a lot of bit, more than is needed and more than is suitable in the hands of a twelve year old child. I told her to take it off and put her pony's usual bridle on instead. She was NOT amused.
Also, some words of wisdom for District Attorney types, whom I would not have thought would be people in need of my wisdom. After all, they make lots of money (ours takes home around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year) and they Fight Crime and Stand For Justice and stuff. Recent events, however, have convinced me that at least one District Attorney needs my help in the wisdom department.
Here are the things that at least one District Attorney needs to know:
1. District Attorney, in Pennsylvania, is an elected office. This means that District Attorney types serve at the whims of The People. They can be unelected.
2. People who are elected officials are held to a higher standard than normal people. This does not mean that every elected official has to behave like a saint (I'm trying to live in the reality-based community these days) but it does mean that the elected officials should NOT GET CAUGHT BEING FUCKING STUPID.
3. If you happen to be a District Attorney in a rural county, you're the equivalent of moderately famous just for being District Attorney. (I blame shitty cable service.) Even better, if you've just wrapped up a Really Big Murder Trial with the conviction of the Criminal Suspect that countywide opinion suggests was The One What Done It, people might even know your name. They'll also know other trivia about you. If, for example, you happen to have a lovely wife and two small children, the constituency will know that.
4. If you happen to serve a rural county that has recently constructed, at considerable taxpayer expense, a Brand New Shiny Courthouse, the Brand New Shiny Courthouse will undoubtedly have a Brand New Shiny Terrorism-Fighting Surveillance System. The Brand New Shiny Terrorism-Fighting Surveillance System has cameras in all sorts of places, all over the Brand New Shiny Courthouse, anywhere that terrorism might happen.
5. Surveillance System cameras, even fancy Terrorism-Fighting Surveillance System Cameras, are peculiarly blind, like Justice herself. The result of their peculiar blindness is that they film everything that happens in front of them, from evil brown men plotting TERRORISM to crime suspects picking their noses to District Attorney types behaving inappropriately with their smoking hot secretaries.
6. All District Attorney types who have been caught behaving inappropriately with their secretaries on a Brand New Shiny Courthouse's Brand New Shiny Terrorism-Fighting Surveillance System videotape have proved themselves too damn stupid to be District Attorney types.
7. This is an election year. Of all the years in which one might prove oneself too stupid to serve as a DA, this would be the sort of year most conducive to not-getting-reelected.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-31 11:19 am (UTC)That on an animal unaccustomed to it, and in a kid's hands is an accident waiting to happen if you ask me. How on earth did she get hold of it and wtf did she think she was playing at putting something like that on anyway?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 11:36 pm (UTC)I rather expect that what she was hoping to accomplish with it was "look really cool" like the fifteen and sixteen year old girls who ride timed event horses in the self-same bridle, one of them the daughter of the tack store lady. The ponies of the girls who ride with this rig as headgear behave no better than you would expect them to behave.
The pony that the kid in question rides is alarmingly smart and will not uncomplainingly put up with undue abuse. That kid and that bit and that pony would have ended with a hurt kid. The kid does not believe this.
Now, to be fair, the pony as she is occasionally pitches a small buck. These bucks do not represent an honest effort to unseat the kid -- however they have convinced the kid that she can sit bucks *quite well*. (But they're crappy little half-ass bucks.) The kid pays no attention to boring old adults who try to explain the difference between the bucks that happen when Casper is checking to see if the rider is paying attention and the bucks that happen when Casper is actually trying to put someone off. With that crap hung in her mouth, Casper probably wouldn't do anything until the third or fourth time the reins got yanked... but then she would have had *enough* and the kid would hit the dirt forthwith.