The latest selection in the Danielle Book Club (i.e. books Danielle reads on the elliptical machine so as to not think about how much she wants to be doing anything else) was Kirsten Bakis' "Lives of the Monster Dogs."  

I didn't quite realize how profound this book was until the end.  It is, essentially, a book about what existence means in the grand scheme of things. 

The basic premise of the book is that a group of scientists, led by a charismatic madman, created a race of "monster dogs" who were larger than normal, able to speak through the use of a mechanical voicebox, walked on two feet, and had prosthetic hands.  The original intent in creating this race of dogs was the creation of supersoldiers for the Prussian Monarchy.  Alas, as time passed, the madman lost the support of the Prince and he and his followers moved to Canada where they started their own colony, funded by money they embezzled from the monarchy.  The madman died and his followers vowed to continue his work in anticipation that he would return and lead them back to their rightful place German Empire.  The scientists eventually succeeded in creating the monster dogs, and while they waited for his return, the monster dogs were relegated to positions as servants and slaves in their master's households. 

Eventually, there is an uprising and the dogs kill all of the humans in the colony and burn the buildings to the ground.  They then run away with all of the money and valueables.  They arrive in New York City, where their wealth and novelty makes many of them instant Hollywood stars and society elite. 

The monster dog species comes down with an illness - a regression of sorts which makes them behave like regular dogs.  Ludwig, the historian dog who lives in seclusion from the other dogs, is the first dog afflicted.  He has spells where he cannot remember anything but awakens days later to find evidence of accidents throughout the house.  At this point, he believes it to be absolutely critical to know more about where the dogs came from if there is any hope of charting a course for the future.

As the council of dogs meets, it becomes clear that more dogs are also afficted.  However, the dogs do not want the humans to know of their illness or vulnerability because they do not want their history as a race of slaves to humans to repeat itself.

At this point, the dogs continue to search for a cure to this illness on their own.  There is an element of hopelessness in that, even if they were to find a cure, the dogs would not live forever, and the only people who knew how they were created were killed in the uprising.  In response to this, the dogs decide to build a gigantic castle which takes up a full city block in NYC.  The first floor would be a museum about the life of the dogs and and upper floors would have dining halls and sleeping quarters for any dogs who chose to live there and select human guests. 

At the opening of the castle, chaos ensues because of the mobs of people clamoring to get in.  The dogs put the castle on lockdown, with some humans inside (who may leave voluntarily but cannot reenter), and for the safety of their guests they decide it would be best to establish death panels of sorts who will kill the dogs when they are overtaken by the illness.

By the end of the story, only one dog is definitely alive – Lydia, a Siberian husky who jumps out of the window when the castle catches on fire.  It is also rumored that other dogs fled the castle at this time.  Ludwig disappears and we are left to believe he may also still be alive.  

When I finished reading this book, I felt bombarded with questions.  What does it mean to exist?  Is existence merely staying alive, or does it entail something more?  Most of us take comfort in the idea that even when we cease to exist, future generations will continue on.  Even if I never have children, my friends and family members will.  For the monster dogs, they were given the unfair choice of their own freedom from slavery or the continuance of their species.  At the time, they didn’t see it as a choice at all.  They wanted freedom and failed to realize the long term consequences of their actions. ....

One particularly powerful passage is in a letter from Ludwig to his human confidant Cleo:

For we always know we are going to die; it is only a question of time, and however long it will take, it is always a certainty, as certain as if we have already received the fatal wound. 

So we burn, Cleo, but we must burn joyfully, and give off light.  Our little glowing hearts grow smaller every minute, and with them, the length of time that we have left upon this earth, and yet we must go on, for there is nothing else to do. 

At the end of their lives, the dogs were filled with resignation that their species would be extinct soon.  But, at the moment when they were threatened by the castle fire, they felt the urge to fight for their lives.  “And yet we must go on, for there is nothing else to do.” 

As for Cleo, the young writer who befriended the monster dogs, she once said that she felt as if she would die in a world without the dogs.  In the epilogue, she married a cellist who she met in the dogs' castle and had a daughter.  "And yet we must go on, for there is nothing else to do."

After reading this book, I’ve come to realize that existence is the sum total of the past, the present and the future.  Without the past, we have no understanding of how we came to be at the point where we are today.  Without the present, we have no way to connect to other individuals in the here and now.  Without the future, we have nothing to look forward to and build towards when we are young and nothing to comfort us as we face the end of our lives. 

Bill Maher, host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," said the following on his show this week.  It makes me really sad that we live in a country where intelligence is so reviled.  As such, I figured that this merits a repost on my world-famous blog. 

New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A few weeks ago I was asked by Wolf Blitzer if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. It was amazing - in the minute or so between my calling America stupid and the end of the Cialis commercial, CNN was flooded with furious emails and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! It's how they get the blood circulating when the Cialis wears off. Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which A) proves my point, and B) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.

Now, the hate mail all seemed to have a running theme: that I may live in a stupid country, but they lived in the greatest country on earth, and that perhaps I should move to another country, like Somalia. Well, the joke's on them because I happen to have a summer home in Somalia... and no I can't show you an original copy of my birth certificate because Woody Harrelson spilled bong water on it.

And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.  Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."

People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"

And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.

And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin.

Which is the way our founding fathers wanted it. James Madison wrote that "pure democracy" doesn't work because "there is nothing to check... an obnoxious individual." Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.

Until we admit there are things we don't know, we can't even start asking the questions to find out. Until we admit that America can make a mistake, we can't stop the next one. A smart guy named Chesterton once said: "My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying... It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'" To which most Americans would respond: "Are you calling my mother a drunk?"

Bill Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," and will be joined on the show tonight by Arianna Huffington. "Real Time" airs fridays on HBO at 10:00PM Eastern Time.

Where do I even start?  How about why I'm spending my valuable time reading a book from the youth fiction section of my local library - Twilight.  It all started when I watched the Twilight movie.  It was so unbelievably bad that I could not understand what people liked about it.  I have friends (you know who you are :P) who swear this is one of the best movies ever made, and I was told more than once when I questioned why it was good, "Well, you haven't read the book." 

So, I read the book (all 500 pages and the New Moon preview at the end).  Besides, it's not like I had a whole world of possibilities open to me while on the elliptical machine at the gym - you're pretty much stuck there and anything you can do to lessen the suffering is a good thing.  I do feel like I am at least better versed in the underlying stories of the book and more capable of picking on the movies as a result.

First off, I'll say it (even though I might lose friends) - I hate Bella Swan, and to a lesser extent Edward.  I think the whole book would have been better if they weren't in it.  Shocking, isn't it?  She comes off as this robust and independent "every girl" type character - smart, clumsy, and generally feeling like an outcast (I challenge anyone here not to feel like they match this description).  So, overall, she's very relateable - except, wait - she smells tastier than any person on the planet and has a cast iron skull which is impenetrable to Hottie McVampire's psychic abilities.  There, now she's very special and we should all aspire to be like her someday. 

Throughout the book, she's really a tragic character, always whining.  She is whining about how much her life sucks in Forks, whining about how hard it is to be smarter than everyone around her, whining because her boyfriend is a vampire and might eat her but he's way too hot to fathom life without, whining because she chose to hang out with vampires and one decided that he wanted to eat her, and then whining because her boyfriend refuses to turn her into a vampire (which I personally think is a good thing because a 6-month relationship based on the fact that he's really hot and she smells tasty is not one where anyone should be thinking about eternal commitment). 

So, she and Edward spend the whole book being pissed off at each other over one stupid thing or another.  They're like one of those annoying couples that has to have a fight when they're out with friends or hanging out at the dog park, just to make the people around them feel awkward.  And somehow, like those clinically insane couples, they seamlessly transition from being angry at each other to "I love you more than life itself, and I wouldn't want to live if you died."

If we were to imagine a Twilight without Bella and Edward - a tale of a vampire family living in modern society, where they have to face the challenges of daylight, interactions with humans, the hunger for human blood and their struggle not to attack - a tale of multiple vampire clans, family trees, and vampire-lycan interactions, I would imagine this to be a good book.  Basically, Twilight without the schmoop and dysfunction. 

Maybe it's because I'm from New Orleans, and if I wanted to date a vampire, it would be an achievable goal.  Maybe that's why I'm not sold on the whole dysfunctional vampire love thing.  Also, because I live in Tallahassee, I totally understand the currency that is "[Insert flaw here] but he's so hot," but you don't fall into eternal love with Mr. "[Insert flaw here] but he's so hot" - you play with him until he ceases to be fun and then cast him out into the world and wait for someone you actually find attractive AND have things in common with to come along.     

Now, the dilemma... Should I continue feed this fire by reading New Moon?  I remember when I was in high school, we had a salad bar in our cafeteria and one of the items available was pasta salad.  To our high school palates, this was a weird offering.  One day my friend Brandon and I dared each other to try it (we were always the adventurous types :) ).  Brandon's quote, which I will never forget, was "It's making me nauseous but leaving me wanting more."  In a way, this is how I feel about Twilight - it makes me nauseous but leaves me wanting more. 

The next book in the gym queue is "The Secret Lives of the Monster Dogs" by Kristen Bakis.  (Thanks, Keith!)   A book review will follow.

 

WARNING:  This blog contains the rantings of a mad woman and should in no way be taken seriously or as anything more than a way to kill time on a Tuesday night.

Often when Clinton and I go on our walks, I'm left to my own devices to entertain myself whilst my dog finds the perfect collection of spots to pee/poop.  I fill these gaps in my life by doing my favorite thing - thinking about me.  The triggering event for this particular line of reasoning started this morning at 8am when I went to pick up Clinton's surprise poop from last night, and there was this woman sitting on her front porch near the spot, smoking a cigarette and she had her pomeranian with aggression issues beside her.  As we drew near, the dog started going nuts, so I walked away and almost instantly thought "Well, I guess it's just not meant to be." 

I do that a lot (not with dog poop, but in general).  Whether it's a boy who won't make the first move or a job interview where I'm told that I'm too qualified and they'll keep my application on file in case a better job opens up (as best I can tell, this is a lie potential employers tell you so that they feel better about rejecting you for someone less qualified due to some nepotistic arrangement), I just think "It's just not meant to be." 

I do this with little things too, like if I'm thinking that I should stop at Walgreens on the way home and someone is being a cf and blocking the entry to the shopping center - "It's just not meant to be." 

I find all this apathy to be somewhat comforting and somewhat worrisome.  I know that I've been very fortunate to this point in my life.  I have a great family and wonderful friends, which makes everything easier.  I'm also told that I am "smarter than the average bear."  I wholeheartedly believe that everything that I have and everything I am is fully attributable to those two things.  So, I've been content to ride the roller coaster to see where it brings me.  I try to be open to opportunities and changes, but I'll only do so much before my "It's just not meant to be" instinct kicks in.  

At this point, I'm not sure if I should be fighting for the things I want or waiting for good things to come (as they have always come in the past).  Usually when I fight, I end up losing, but it seems like the whole world is losing these days, so at least I'm not alone. 

Oh, well.

When will I finally learn to say "No Clinton, we're not going walk on the nature trails today.  Here's why: 1.) You just had a bath yesterday and a flea control meds application today, and you will likely end up immersing yourself in a random pool of water that we happen upon thus reversing all the hard work that I've put into dog maintenance this weekend, 2.) Being cursed, the nature trail that we are on will magically disappear when we are coming back from a long walk and are minutes away from the car, at which point we will end up traversing the woods only to end up at a fence that will force us to walk through more nature to get around and I'll be covered in spiderwebs, 3.) It's 90 degrees out there, and 4.) I hate nature." ???

If it were up to me, I would have happily spent the whole day indoors, but I feel so guilty that Clinton spends every day indoors and he loves getting out the house and walking the nature trails so much.  Plus, it's a good way for me to force a workout upon myself.  I just wish I didn't consistently pick the wrong trails and end up either lost or covered in nature. 

At this point, we've moved on to the "Are Men Necessary?"  part of "Are Men Necessary?"  Maureen is citing all these studies of female dominated species throughout the planet and how happy and harmonious their existence is - including the bonobo chimpanzees.  She's gone a step further to discuss the insect species where the females kill the males during mating (and the males gladly sacrifice themselves so that their genes can carry on).  All of this is building up to the fact that more aggressive Y gene found in human males will be extinct in the next 10 million years.  Apparently, biology favors the female's XX genetic structure and males have done a pretty good job of selecting themselves out of existence through violence and wars. 

http://www.seattlepi.com/health/133356_male04.html

From an evolutionary perspective, only a handful of males are needed to continue the species with a planet full of females.  In addition, scientists believe that it is possible to make an embryo from the unfertilized eggs of two donors, and that the child produced would be female. 

Am I happy about this?  Heck no.  In a world without men, my pool of friends would be reduced by about 85%.  Although there are a lot of things that I don't like about mankind in general, there are even more things that I dislike about womankind in general.  Obviously, culture is responsible in large part for our gender roles, but so help me - a world where everyone wants to talk about my feelings and ask me if I'm pregnant is a world in which I'm going to be a homocidal maniac.  On the bright side, no one can pester you about the lack of a man in your life if there are no men on the planet.  Fortunately we'll have 10 million years to get this all sorted out. 

Ok, I'm about halfway through disc 2 right now.  Maureen (we're on a first name basis now) is really depressing me with her talk about the backslide of feminism and the increased importance that women are placing on cute dresses with matching shoes and bags, and catering to the whims of some man (any man will do really) all so that they can sport the social moniker "Mrs."  Discussions abound about women who only took menial office jobs so that they could marry some guy in a gray suit and then quit their jobs and spend their afternoons with the kids or at Starbucks.  Oh, and unlike the women of the 1950s, these women have advanced degrees. 

One really interesting comment to come from the book so far is (and I realize this is an overgeneralization) that successful men want a subordinate and successful women want an equal.  Basically, she shows many examples of men who just want someone to cook dinner and pick up the dry cleaning (basically a glorified personal assistant), because they find it to be a chore to actually have to be "on" and expected to have intelligent conversations with an intelligent spouse after a long day at the office.  At the same time, she shows examples of women who refuse to date someone who is not as smart or funny as they are, because they expect to have stimulating conversations at the dinner table.  The moral of the story is that smart women die alone.

All of this goes a long way towards explaining why I've almost completely withdrawn from humanity.  A humanity filled with Stepford wives and men who would prefer to date the nanny or the maid than the CEO is not a humanity I want any part of. 

On a related note, something funny happened yesterday.  Even though I don't date, I've always fancied myself to be a bit of a cougar (why I'm a cougar is a story/psychoanalysis that I will save for another blog, but it's basically that I'm a control freak).   My friend Tony had even given me the nickname "Cougar" after our last outing together because of my "kidding on the square" about the general lack of single, straight men in the mid 20s - early 30s age range in Tallahassee who are not desperate to get married and have babies and my resulting desire to date younger, not older.   Well, we were out again last night with a group of friends and he called me "Cougar" to which one of the girls replied "You're not old enough to be a cougar, you're a bobcat."  So, now I'm "Bobcat."  It's the most awesome nickname ever. 

Today I was bored at work, so I decided to drive down to the public library and get a book on CD.  As a PhD student, I often feel an overwhelming sense of guilt whenever I pick up a non-dissertation related book - as if reading it would be tantamount to cheating on my dissertation.  Books on CD, however, are fair game because I listen to them in my car, where it would be nearly impossible to read, write and crunch numbers. 

So, today's book is Maureen Dowd's 2005 book "Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide" and so far I'm feeling a bit disappointed.  Granted, I'm only about halfway through the first CD.  If the disappointment continues, this could become the blog equivalent of a mini-series. 

Although my experiences of her have been largely limited to her guest panelist segments on Real Time with Bill Maher, I've always really liked Maureen Dowd.  In some ways, the book began with great promise when I found out that she grew up in a Catholic family with a police officer as a father - two things I didn't know we had in common.  We also both have mothers who are huge fans of men, especially for heavy lifting, and somehow both turned out incredibly liberal and independent. 

The book begins by talking about sexual politics and changes in our culture over the years.  From the flapper girls of the 1920s who were smoking, drinking and dressing like men, to the domesticity of the 1950s when women resumed their rightful place in the kitchen, to the hippie chics of the 1970s who were smoking, drinking and wearing unisex jeans, to the domesticity of the 1980s when women once again stopped caring about being equal to men, to the 2000s when they started wearing miniskirts on television while advocating for the systematic removal of women's rights (I believe she was looking at a picture of Ann Coulter when she wrote this, but it could have been Sarah Palin).  It is interesting how cyclical things are. 

What really bugs me right now is her section on popular generational books like "The Rules" and "How to catch a husband."  It's not Maureen Dowd that I have a problem with, but the ideas that she is reading off from these books.  I'm sure she's building up to something, but likely won't find out for several days.  These books basically tell you that the only way that you will ever be loved by a man is to be quiet, ladylike, mysterious, and willing to place his interests above yours - basically, Stepford.  With advice like that, is there any wonder why half of all marriages end in divorce?  

To be clear - yes, I am a feminist.  I'm not a Carrie Bradshaw "Sleep with enough men and you'll eventually find one who respects you, or at least one who will refinish your floors, one who will buy your old apartment for you and one who will buy you an apartment on Fifth Avenue" type of feminist.  While I do own my fair share of faux-flannel, I also don't see myself as a "No make-up wearing, man-hating feminist."  I'm sort of in-between.  I like men a lot.  I generally have more male friends than female ones, albeit mostly gay, married or otherwise undesirable.  Although I haven't personally been on a date in the past five years that I've been trapped in the no-mans-land that is Tallahassee (my latest dating tagline is "I like men, just not most of them"), I still have an appreciation for men who open car doors and pay for dinner.  I'm also not averse to occasionally picking up the check.  I find notions of "women and children first" to be antiquated and anti-feminist.  What makes the life of a man less valuable than that of a woman?

However, at the end of the day, I'm always going to be me.  I'm not going to laugh at things that aren't funny or spend time with someone out of some banal need to procreate that I don't find interesting or who has no shot at understanding who I am or what I want in life.  I'm also not going to temper my personality or fain interest in things that don't really interest me so that others will like me, male or female.  That is the curse of being me, and I'm sure that as a result, I will lead a very lonely life and I'm ok with that.  

A home cooked meal, a bottle of wine, and a Woody Allen movie about the complexities of love = not a bad showing for a solo Valentine's day. 

Bonus:  Didn't even leave the house today, minimizing the risk of encountering v-day a-holes.