Introduction
My name's Rocky and my master, Shaun, has written several books about me and my adventures. Now he's got a website he's let me keep a diary and post my thoughts on the website. I've called it Rocky's Barks and Howls - howls for the damage that man's greed has done to the environment and barks for when I get really angry with someone or something (some of my barks are reserved for Shaun) and for Snowy, the other dog who invades my kingdom. I've had an exciting life and Shaun's books are based on some of my adventures and he's added some new twists. But sometimes I just like to lie in the sun, so don't expect a diary entry every day!
Rocky's Barks & Howls - January to December 2010
31 December 2010He’s actually done it, but now it needs a once over? I Question his sanity!
8 December 2010
Says now he’ll be finished on the 31st. Some would believe that, I on the other hand don’t!
30 November 2010
Thinks he’s got it right! Sure, sure, sure. . . I need to go to the bathroom, quick!
10 November 2010
Reworking theorem he is. . .
15 October 2010
Much, much more editing!! And much , much more sleeping!!!!!!! This is really getting boring, but as they say in the movies, ‘The show must go on, and on, and on, baada boom, baada bang!!!’
10 October 2010
Shaun assures me he is nearly finished editing. . . Yeah, right, like I believe him!
30 September 2010
Just when I thought the book was finished Shaun realized he had to do another edit! And yet more irritating behavior upon my part. . .
30 September 2010
Even more editing!! And even more sleeping!!!!!
20 September 2010
More editing! More sleeping on my part!
15 September 2010
I’m laying down and Shaun is still editing – I get tired just watching him!!!
5 September 2010
Done some talks and TV appearances, but most importantly, the 4th book is pulling together, and, day by day, being edited. I tend to lie down while Shaun works. But when he starts editing I do my best to irritate him by wanting to go out and not doing what I said I needed to do, ie, take a dooki. For some reason known only to him it makes him cross, but it is one way to get him away from the computer.
10 August 2010
We all live in a land of impermanence, we inhabit a fraction of time that will disappear into the past as time marches inexorably on. The land we live on, the Earth we settle on can fragment and shift and break apart. The roads, cities and dwellings that are built (and the cheesecake that is baked – couldn’t resist, sorry). They are all impermanent structures that will corrode and breakdown, through age or the natural processes that shape our environment. A landslide, a tidal wave, a tsunami, an earthquake, an eruption, a hurricane, tectonic plate movement, an outpouring of lava or ash, a solar flare, a collision with an asteroid, or, even, the slow wear and tear, one grain of sand at a time. . . In one swift throw of a dice civilization comes to an end! And, the material things man has created will all evaporate, with only radio waves he has sent fourth into the universe to act as a reminder of his existence. . . Everything breaks down in the oceans that surround us, bones, metal – It all disintegrates. Maybe the odd footprint made in the sand will be preserved in sedimentary layers on a beach somewhere, or, a muddy lake or river or stream bed, that’s all. . . Man has such great visions of himself, but, in the end, he is nothing. . .
20 July 2010
Shaun is busy working on his ‘Alternating Crustal Displacement and the Torque Wrench Effect’ theory. It all has to do with the way we are melting the polar icecaps and redistributing the surface mass of the Earth. All, I might add, in a very short space of time. This creates turning moments, or torsion upon the Earth’s crust because of these unequal amounts of mass being subjected to centrifugal force generated by the motion of the planet. This is why we have earthquakes, and, is the reason the rift valley is getting wider and incidentally why the transverse faults towards the poles are lengthening. This happens at the end of an ice age and at the end of an interglacial period. The bad news, is, that it causes the crust or lithosphere, to break free of the underlying mantle or magma. There is then a massive gyration of the crust, or dance, as I refer to it, before the crust finds a point of equilibrium and gains stability yet again, and everything goes back to normal. At least that’s the theory. And, not so normal as it was before. . . Just like Snowy! Wuff!
10 July 2010
Shaun is busy working on book four, ‘Rocky and the Origins of Man.’ All he does is write notes, do research, write notes, do research. Shucks, it never stops. I thought we were finished with the third and we could take a break, but no, he wants to kick out number four. All I can say is it is getting rather tedious. But I guess we all have to do our part, don’t we?
5 June 2010
If man wants disaster, disease, starvation and hunger (or even kebabs for that matter), God and Mother Nature will deliver – You reap what you sow. ‘Sow discord and you will receive discord!’ Humankind is just beginning to receive recompense for his actions – it is only the beginning of sorrows – For his want, his lust, his overpopulation. The only trouble is, we, as animals, get shafted by the gods and man. . .
11 May 2010
Well, the third book is out and it is really be-awesome, better than awesome. There is a character in it that I love, Natalie, Shaun has a thing for her to, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. There are other characters in it that are decidedly not lovable, like van Toeball, Dumi and Mugambi, to name but a few. I don’t even think their mothers are too fond of them either. Unfortunately there are no funny incidents with kebabs. . . just one scorpion. . .
20 April 2010
The human adults of today and especially the politicians and greed filled corporate (Oh heck, I guess they’re all greedy) are destroying the future of the kids of today and their kids, kids – but do they give a damn, no! They just want more of the same. I say Ferraris all round and gold plated Learjet’s and I’ll have a couple of Rolls Royce’s in platinum and gold too. . . What the heck if I kill off a few endangered species or destroy an ecosystem, what do I care? Let me slaughter a few thousand rhino while I’m at it, What, there are only a few hundred left, quick, here’s a gun, kill them quickly before someone else does. . . There is something definitely wrong with the human reasoning process. . .
15 April 2010
The choices humankind make now will affect the future of all life on Earth – Like the U.S. v’s China in the climate change talks – the only constructive thing they created was more hot air and carbon emissions to change the climate even more!
4 April 2010
I was talking, or rather yapping, to another conservationist yesterday, he was telling Shaun and me about some rivers in the Bengula region, and how taxi drivers, hundreds of them, dump used motor oil in them. . . They don’t care, motor oil manufacturers don’t care either, and this is just a small fragment of degradation to nature. An Atlanta based corporation is turning rivers in Papua and Borneo into black sludge because of their surface coal mining. There are so many people in the world with doctorates and degrees et al, just to tell us, ‘Hey man, I can stick a stick in this black river and it stays upright. I think we need to do some tests on the water. It could be polluted!’ “Polukas!” is all I have to say. . .
17 March 2010
They talk of the D-alele gene as the common sense gene, if that is so, there can’t be more than a handful of humans on Earth that posses it. . . Wuff!
16 March 2010
I make no bones about the philosophical content of these entries, we can’t always run around in circles like Snowy and digging holes everywhere. . . Question: Is it true that the odd cataclysmic event happens that causes mass extinctions, but, the quaternary extinctions are caused by humans. Answer: Yes, and they are unparalleled and unprecedented in nature so far, even the cretaceous period extinctions took place over more than one million years. Gee, so the human contribution is the extinction of all life o7n planet Earth. . . Comforting isn’t it!
15 March 2010
Life on Earth was created in a niche in time that is momentary at best, at worse, fractionally so, a blip on the scale of time in our universe, to be forgotten in an instant. And yet, humans think of themselves as the supreme beings of the universe. Especially since nature provided the right conditions for man to propagate. But what does man do, he wastes it, abuses it. . . Isn’t there anything else he can think of beside’s himself. . .
1 March 2010
Man has become a viral-like organism destroying its host as it replicates, and unless he or she gets their collective butts together, their host, Mother Earth, may just decide to shrug them off like irritating parasites, to the detriment of all other species as well. . .
28 February 2010
Planet Earth is the most precious thing we as its children have, but why do we continue to destroy it, why are we so intent on dismantling all of it, when we are all part of a symbiotic system. . . I guess it’s because nobody cares, everybody is just so intent on chasing their own tails, spinning around and around in circles like Rumplestiltskin and Snowy. . .
15 February 2010
Shucks! What a month, all we do is work and work and work, on my third book. Every day you think it’s finished then we find more mistakes. I’m really getting tired of it, so is Shaun. Even my walks have gone down the drain. We keep on correcting mistakes and new ones keep popping up. . .
23 January 2010
Shaun talked to Roland Reid from Landrover today about sponsorship for the TV series – Wow! Was the guy rude and abrupt – After Shaun’s pitch, he said, ‘That’s all very well for social responsibility, but we’re not interested in that, what will it do for us, we just want to sell Landrovers, we’re not interested in the environment or nature, we couldn’t care less. So don’t bother us!’ What a load of scumbags!! Gee, I was listening in on the speaker phone and I was disgusted – Just goes to show what big corporations are like, doesn’t it?
FullHouse