Rocky's arrival at my house almost coincides with the point in time that my blog lapse began. Rocky was born Sept. 2 at Veritas Aussies in Wimberley, Texas. Rocky is a blue merle, and I think he looks like my favorite cheese, Roquefort, which when combined with my affinity for the Beatles, resulted in his official registered title of Veritas Tail of Roque Raccoon. Here's Rocky giving the "eye" to one of his cousins.
And before one of you good Austinites shouts at me for this, yes my other two animals are rescues, and I believe that both rescues and purebreds have a right to life. Fair enough? OK, not for some of you, but at least I drive a 40 MPG car and ate a vegetarian soup for lunch (but am not a vegetarian, to be clear). Back to the point... Thanks largely to my maternal grandparents Morris and Ilene Bowen, my family has a history with Australian Shepherds and Cocker Spaniels. My earliest dog memories stem from Daisy, pictured here in her work environment.
And though I've been planning the back-from-the-puppy-induced-lapse post for a while, I have the Hillary Clinton campaign to thank for making this post far more topical (Thanks, Hillary!). Now why would I say this? Because, obviously, I am "pimping out" my dog to you. My dog has nothing to do with the quality of photography you will receive from me, but the emotional appeal of seeing my dog is supposed to influence you. Let's pause for just a sec while I pimp out Rocky and my first cousin.
Many photographers do this with their husbands, wives, and children, and I get a bit sick of seeing it, so I have to make a bit of fun at the practice. Let's pimp out another chunk of my family here!
Back to the Hillary campaign (and the Obama campaign's official concurrence in the matter),I have always been amused when Political Correctness run amok forces our leaders to feign outrage at words that may sound slightly offensive but really aren't at all. Those who feign outrage do so based on the idea that Hillary thinks someone is actually calling Chelsea a prostitute, which is not the case at all. To pimp out someone or something describes a situation in which a controlling party, for the purpose of its own self gain, influences or forces an irrelevant but more appealing third party to promote the services or agenda of the controlling party. An important concept of "pimping out" is that the appeal of the pimped party be totally irrelevant to the service being offered. For example, the amazing cuteness of my dog will not make your wedding dress look any better. Just as the appeal of Chelsea Clinton has absolutely nothing to do with the services which her entirely independent mother have to offer as a politician. Yet Hillary is still willing to peddle her daughter's irrelevant appeal for her own personal gain, and then act oh so offended when a pundit describes the phenomenon. Did I mention that Rocky has really cute Cocker Spaniel cousins?
On a slightly more serious note, the one time I think all this pimping gets out of control is when the pimped out party is a minor child. I have seen wedding photographers literally hand out photos of their own pre-K children as promotional material, not to mention the more common postings on commercial websites. I guess a fertile photographer is a better photographer. Hmmm.... Photographers, you know who you are. Someday your children will go to the sixth grade, and the eighth graders will have a google photo archive of all the funny outfits that you posed your child in for financial gain. And they will repost those photos on PhotoBucket and sites that don't exist yet. Let's just hope you put those gains in a college fund :-)
And I'll end this tirade back on Rocky, of course!
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