Dogs and a mini-rant

This guy was over at the Ledges yesterday. I forgot to include him in the pictures.

I was looking up at the sky today and got three pictures of the clouds. Now it is raining and it is chilly and I'm sort of bored. But the sky was beautiful.

I got to thinking about Beauty Pageants today. The flap over Miss California and her remarks got me to wondering about why we have this type of contest anyway. I mean really! I have seen pictures of girls as young as 6 years old dressed up and made up for junior beauty contests. I think our values are all screwed up that we put this much emphasis on physical beauty. It seems to me to be out of control and why all the bother about this young woman's comments. Who is she anyway and why does her opinion matter to anyone? What are her credentials to make what she has to say important. As John Stewart says "Who Cares?"
Anyway here is what the Wikipedia has to say about the history of beauty contests.

History of beauty contests

Choosing symbolic kings and queens for May Day and other festivities is an ancient custom in Europe in which beautiful young women symbolize their nation's virtues and other abstract ideas. The first modern American pageant was staged by P. T. Barnum in 1854, but his beauty contest was closed down by public protest—he previously held dog, baby, and bird beauty contests. He substituted daguerreotypes for judging, a practice quickly adopted by newspapers. Newspapers held photo beauty contests for many decades: In 1880, the first “Bathing Beauty Pageant" took place as part of a summer festival to promote business in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Contests became a regular part of summer beach life, with the most elaborate contest taking place in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the “Fall Frolic” attracted women from many cities and towns.

The modern beauty pageant's origin is traceable to the Miss America Pageant, which was first held in Atlantic City in 1921, under the title "Inter-City Beauty Contest." The Miss America Pageant eventually included preliminary eliminations, an evening gown competition, musical variety shows, and judging by panel. Still, the contest was at first shunned by middle-class society. Pageants did not become respectable until World War II, when "beauty queens" were recruited to sell bonds and to entertain troops. Scholarships and talent competitions evoked even closer scrutiny of contestants’ morals and backgrounds.

I used to watch these shows all the time. But somewhere along the line they became just one commercial after another and often they would repeat the same commercial three or four times and it got boring and old. And the answers to the questions made me think that there was very little in their heads anyway. Their comments do not show up among the most quotable. Sometimes the word to describe what they are saying is vapid. So it matters very little to me if Miss California doesn't like gay marriage or not. I don't really care if she posed partially nude or not and if she didn't like her boobs it is fine with me if she had them "fixed" - It just doesn't matter.

That's my rant on the matter and you know what? It doesn't really matter what I had to say either. I hope you liked the pictures and thanks for stopping by.

Now I want to leave you with another dog. This one is fantastic. Enjoy The Amazing Skidboot