10 reasons why everyone should have a dog

1 You never have to suffer the embarassment of knowing that, yes, you really will eat that bit of cookie/pancake/macaroni-and-cheese that fell on the floor because before you can so much as bend over for it, it's been snarfed. He's happy, you don't have to feel like it went to waste, and you didn't even have to clean it up.
2 Once he's housetrained, you almost never have to mop the floors. As explained in 1, foodstuff magically gets cleaned up, and what else do you spill on the floor?
3 You always know when you have visitors. Even if your doorbell is broken. Even if you don't have a doorbell. A dog will always let you know when you have visitors.
4 A dog helps you appreciate your food so much more. No matter what you're eating, his high opinion of it makes it taste better.
5 A dog helps your social life. You're out taking him for a walk, and you start making friends with everyone else on the block who has a dog. Now, just imagine if everyone had a dog, you'd get to know everyone on your block! Wouldn't that be cool? Better yet, you'd get to know all their dogs!
6 Say it's a Saturday, and you're antsy, but you don't want to do something useful, and you're not the sporty go-play-basketball type. What do you do? Well, if you have a dog, you go outside and play fetch. You burn energy, your dog has fun, and everybody's happy.
7 Say you're sick, or maybe just tired, and you want to curl up in bed and read a book, or flop on the couch with a movie. Is there anything better than cuddling up with a dog on such an occasion? Okay, maybe an attractive member of the gender of your choice. But short of that, is there anything better than a dog?
8 Dogs build critical thinking and memory skills. Basic things like remember to feed him, and remember to take him out. But also, remember not to leave food at the edge of the table where he can get it, and judging just how close to the edge of the table is safe. Or, is this Christmas present probably something safe to put under the tree, or could it be chocolate, and I'll find its wrappings shredded all over the floor? See, critical thinking skills!
9 You always have someone to talk to. Okay, so maybe he can't actually converse back with you about politics or books or your miserable lack of a love life or whatever it is you'd be talking to yourself about, but he'll listen. Intently, if you scratch behind his ears.
10 A dog automatically forms a pack, with you at its head. You get to be the alpha. All you have to do is take care of your pack and be a good leader, and you get a pack member who's loyal and good and funny and always likes you. You get the pleasure of knowing there's somebody who prefers your company to anyone else's. You get to have a pack. And, really, what's better than that?

a review: alabama, books, skin

I thought in an effort to find a reason to post more often, I would review movies, books and music as I encounter them. Don't expect anything in-depth; I'm just going to say whether I liked it and not much more.

Sweet Home Alabama is fun movie. I confess I haven't seen a great many honest-to-goodness chick flicks, but I've only liked about half of the ones I've seen. This is a member of that happy club. It made me forget that I generally don't hit it off with rednecks. So, good show.

I'm in a Contemporary American Fiction class right now, so I'm reading a bunch of books I might not otherwise have read (I shop mostly in the SF/Fantasy section). The next several books are among them. I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier never actually made me really care. I'm not sure why, but I didn't. The last couple pages were an absolute mystery to me. In class, Prof. Card acknowledged that there might be people who got to the end of this book and had no idea what had just happened. He assured us (without asking for a show of hands, bless his soul) that we were not idiots. Yet the fact remains that I needed to be told what had happened to know.

David Lubar's Hidden Talents was way fun. Likeable characters (I almost typed lickable - Freudian slip?), a cool premise, and a happy ending. In addition to the copy I have, I bought a copy at Wal-Mart for my brother and another for the next kid that I decide should have one.

Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak is one of the best, most personal books I have read. High school was a rough time for me, and the books that helped me then are some of the most personally meaningful books for me. This book is meaningful enough to join them. Painful, but beautiful, and very good.

Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson was not for class, but Speak made me think of it. I had somehow got through childhood without reading it, and read it recently. It's beautiful and sad and wonderful and true. I rarely cry for books, but I cried when I read this.

John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany was not a book I disliked. But then, neither did I like it. It was slow as anything. I'd feel like I'd been reading forever and find myself thirty pages in. Somebody else in class said that she'd start reading this and suddenly realize, "Oh, y'know, I should go do dishes..." That seemed to be my class' concensus -- that it wasn't painful to read, just... not particularly gripping, and slow as molasses.

Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool was similar in that not much happened, and it wasn't terribly gripping, but I liked it far better. Reading it was like being with a friend. Not gripping -- when you say goodbye to a friend, you don't sit around biting your nails, counting the minutes 'til you can find out what's going to happen next! No, you're happy to see your friend, and you enjoy your time together, but then when one of you has to leave, that's okay too. That's this book -- friendly and comfortable and pretty darn likeable at an easygoing pace.

I feel silly reviewing an individual song, but I like it. I ran into Natalie Merchant's My Skin in a music video featuring Firefly/Serenity's River Tam on YouTube.com.

in response to the bar theory

So, the bar theory basically says that no guy, when he encounters a number of females he doesn't know, looks for one with a great personality. He goes for the pretty ones, hoping to find one with a good personality before he gets too far down the line. Whether or not we believe that guys do this, we all agree that guys shouldn't do this, right? It's the old saying, "don't judge a book by its cover."

Let's go with this analogy for a minute, shall we? You're in a bookstore, and by some terrible bad luck, they don't stock any of your favorite authors. In fact, they don't even stock any authors you've even heard of. So you go and pick up this sort of ugly-looking mass market paperback, right? What's that, you say? No, you'd go and check out the hardcover with a beautiful, appealing cover? Well, of course you would! You can't read the back cover and first few pages of every book in the bookstore. So you pick up the ones that look appealing, and see if the story seems interesting and the writing good. It's what you do. If you know you like the author, or if the book has been recommended to you, you'll pick up an ugly book, but all other things being equal, why would you?

So back to the point. What honestly is a guy supposed to do besides judge by looks, at least initially? I feel like a traitor for writing this. I'm a girl who's not blonde, fashionable, cool, athletic, or a size 2. I don't want this to be true. I don't want this to be the only reasonable course of action open to a guy. But how is it not? It's not as though likeability and attractiveness are mutually exclusive or even inversely related. A guy is just as likely to meet an attractive girl with a great personality as an unattractive girl with a great personality. So, assuming he can woo either, why shouldn't he go for the cute size 2 blonde? If I'm wrong, please tell me. Or better yet, convince every guy you know of the fact. I promise you, I do want to be wrong, for if I am right, the world has suddenly become a far more depressing place for me and mine.

a college student's unrealistic fantasies concerning what life will be like when she has a source of income

I have long used the term 'made it' to refer to that happy time of life when your wishes come true. As in, "y'know how I'll know when I've made it?" followed by a favorite fantasy. I suppose this is really just a thinly disguised way of saying, "y'know what I wish?" but ah well. Indulge me. This is, after all, my blog. Get your own if you want to have realistic fantasies. (But then, who wants to have realistic fantasies? They're no fun.)

I will know I have made it when I have:
1 solid wood doors
2 wood floors in every room, except possibly the bathroom and kitchen
3 windows with wooden frames
4 a house to have all these characteristics
5 a horse
6 and a buggy
7 a bookstore
8 and a personal library the size of a small bookstore (or a large bookstore, as long as we’re wishing…)
9 a cat
10 and a dog
11 enough money to drink milk at every meal
12 and enough money to eat real mac-and-cheese, not the kind in a box with cheese powder, but with milk and real cheddar cheese melted in a pan - lots of cheese, more cheese than anyone should eat in one sitting, enough to be coming off the macaroni in a long string extending from your bowl to your mouth every time you get a spoonful - real mac-and-cheese!
13 to feel awkward and guilty for not knowing what to get family and friends for Christmas, instead of feeling awkward and guilty because I have no money to buy them Christmas presents
14 a dwelling-place where I can sing in the shower and not fear that I’ll wake anyone up