The Dog Doesn’t Die

Radical Prunings: A Novel of Officious Advice from the Contessa of Compost is told in the form of a hilarious gardening advice column written by the main character, Mertensia Corydalis. Mertensia is opinionated and in possession of a very dry wit. She also has a much softer heart than one might think, but Abbott takes her time in revealing that side of her narrator, as she also takes her time in spooling out a clear plot line. This extremely funny book, one of my favorites, is MOSTLY SAFE for animal lovers and would be entirely safe but for the preventable demise of a few fish.

Mertensia is wise enough to understand the need to train her dogs, Jasper and Jennelle, while at the same time not expecting them to think like people. When Jennelle does something that is destructive from a human point of view, Mertensia allows that Jennelle, being a dog, was thinking like a dog and was therefore blameless. Mertensia also advocates on behalf of birds, mice, bugs, and butterflies. And it was a rare page where I didn’t laugh out loud. I heartily recommend this book.

Let me start by saying that I love, love, love Christopher Moore. Some of my friends find his writing a bit over the top, but I think he’s great! So needless to say, I enjoyed A Dirty Job immensely. And it is Mostly Safe for animal lovers. Moore’s absurdist style makes it hard to take the occasional cartoonish violence very seriously, though some of his books have a message. Fluke, for example, is about the need to protect marine life, and in Coyote Blue, Moore advocates for Indigenous Peoples’ rights more effectively than any article or white paper I’ve ever encountered. (And given the nature of my job, I encounter a lot of that stuff!)

A Dirty Job is about death and our inability to deal with it. Making that funny is quite a trick. The book starts off with a human death, and it’s rather sad, actually. Most of the remaining casualties are pretty comic, but not that first one. Anyway, in terms of animals, Bummer and Lazarus are dogs loyal to The Emperor of San Francisco (just trust me on this), and one of them is rewarded for intrepidity towards the end of the book. However, another character has trouble keeping pets alive for a while, given certain powers that take a while to sort out. Those pets aren’t really given much discussion, and they are briefly mourned. Then the hellhounds show up. The hellhounds are indestructable and the epitome of canine loyalty. They’ll eat anything. As one character says “Okay, you’re hellish beasts from another dimension, and you like toast.” A named pet dies in the middle of the book, but we don’t learn much about him and, in typical Moore fashion, he is briefly mourned. Past that, I can’t say too much, except that the dogs are prominent among the good guys.

I highly recommend this book.

Last week, I came across three things I wanted to post on this blog. And now I find that two of them are sweeping across the Internet. So there’s no point in waiting, I guess. I also have a brief message of encouragement for those of you who land on this site looking for info about diabetic pets, but that’s at the end.

Have you seen the extremely popular YouTube video, “An Engineer’s Guide to Cats” yet? If you haven’t, you eventually will because it is all over the place. You can watch it now by clicking on this link. You’ll be glad you did, because it’s quite funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHXBL6bzAR4

Have you seen the creepy video of the guy stuck in the elevator for 41 hours? No, the video is not 41 hours long, it’s about 2 minutes. It’s worth watching. Here it is: http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/2008/04/21/080421_elevators/?yrail

Accompanying the video was a well-written article, which is not being passed around the Internet quite so much. I read the article in a hard copy of The New Yorker, a magazine I dearly love. It explains all about poor, trapped Nicholas, as well as discussing elevators in detail. They’re safe, they’re more complicated than you might imagine, and they generate much of their own power, kind of like a hybrid. Here’s the link: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten?/yrail

And now we’re all caught up. I had planned on putting up a book review tomorrow and some diabetic cat success stories later on in the week, but I’ll have to revisit that schedule now. In the mean time, if you’re one of the people drifting in to check out my periodic references to diabetic pets, here’s the bumper sticker version: Yes, it can be treated, and no, it’s not hard. You can do this and you’ll be glad you did. Giving 2 shots a day to my diabetic cat, Eddie, takes about 5 minutes total, and for my trouble I have kept him alive and in very good health since Sept. 2004. More on this at the end of the week or beginning of next week.

My community, a close-in and rather urban suburb of a major city, has the usual combination of pros and cons, but one of the best things we do is what I call “Weird Garbage Day.” I think it should be a national holiday celebrated in every community, but it would have to occur in phases. Maybe “Weird Garbage Month”? Anyway, this is the Saturday on which we put out our large, odd-shaped, heavy, and miscellaneous cast-offs that the regular garbagemen can’t and won’t take. The powers that be in my city have divided us into four quadrants, and each quadrant has a designated Saturday in April on which weird garbage will be collected. Hazardous waste and large or complicated electronics aren’t allowed — they must be taken to a central location — but just about everything else is. I love Weird Garbage Day, and so do my neighbors.

In previous years, I’ve unloaded an old lawnmower, a broken vacuum cleaner, and the remnants of an ancient chair. This year, I had a huge amount of stuff: a bicycle I rode religiously for 3 years but not for the last 10, an old bed frame, a mirror that was too heavy to hang, a briefcase that had seen better days, a nonfunctioning phone, and a portable cassette player (remember those?). The great thing is that everything I listed in the previous sentence was gone before the garbagemen arrived. “The scavengers,” as we refer to them on my block, drive around in big trucks the day before and collect anything they think they can refurbish and sell or use. The scavengers include antique-dealers, second-hand store owners, and the very thrifty. It’s a great way of recycling, in other words. All we have to do is get the stuff to the curb, and if anyone with more imagination, time, and skill sees something they can use, they take it. Everyone wins. I love it!

At the same time, I have launched the war of the groundcovers in my front yard. Your living room is probably bigger than my front yard. You may even have a closet that’s bigger. Yet the diminutive size does not solve the problem of ugly grass and weeds that must be mowed, even though they don’t have the decency to cover the entire yard. Yes, I have bare patches. It looks like 20 teenagers spent the weekend playing touch football on it. Which would be difficult, given its size, and anyway, I can assure you this didn’t happen. So why not plant a bunch of groundcovers and see if they do better? Right now I have woolly thyme, something called Majus, variegated vinca, golden clover, and Scottish moss. I bought more plants today, including another short thyme, but they will mostly go in the back yard, which is bigger and not as problematic. Anyway, I am hoping these new groundcovers will take over the yard eventually, although it will take a while. My highest hopes are for the woolly thyme and variegated vinca. I am least optimistic about the Scottish moss and golden clover, but they could surprise me. And the majus is a complete unknown. As long as they eventually fill in the bare spots, I’ll be happy. Wiping out the grass would be a wonderful bonus.

I try not to review books from memory, but I will make the occasional exception.

I like Bruce Wagner as an author, but some of his books are NOT SAFE for animal lovers. Specifically, he does have a character kill a hapless, harmless pug in Still Holding. And one of the Amazon reviews for Memorial, another Wagner book (and the “half” because I didn’t read it myself), indicates that a pet dies. I don’t recall a problem with Chrysanthemum, which was my favorite of the Wagner books I’ve read thus far, but again, I’m doing this from memory. If an animal death really disturbs you, be wary of Wagner. Otherwise, you might like him. Check some of the more in-depth reviews online.

On the other hand e, by Matt Beaumont, is pretty funny and I don’t recall any animals in it. So I will deem it SAFE for animal lovers. The book is told through a series of e-mails, which I thought would be off-putting but actually worked extremely well. I highly recommend it.

If I ever establish an Honor Roll of authors who write books that animal lovers will appreciate, Julia Glass will be the first name on the list. Her second book, The Whole World Over, is not only SAFE for animal lovers, it is recommended. Glass can barely bring herself to imperil an animal, let alone hurt one. Among the many animals mentioned, a  horse sustains a bruise, a placid bulldog gets shuffled around a bit, and a character worries about who will take over feeding some feral cats, but that’s it. There is also one human death that’s reported but not shown.

Glass also proves the point that you don’t need real villains if you can get “good” characters in conflict with each other. This is a long, gentle book told from several perspectives. Is there a plot? Sort of, but it’s mostly a matter of how these good characters work out their differences. Anyway, I loved reading this book, and I recommend it. For anyone who also read Glass’s first book, Three Junes, there are a few recycled characters, including Fenno the Scottish bookstore owner and his bird, Felicity.

This won’t happen very often, but I’m going to tell you about a couple of websites where you can spend money.

When Dave and I were in New Mexico last October, I found this great hand lotion — Cedar and Sage, by Southwestern Soapworks, at www.southwesternsoapworks.com .  Now, I go through more hand lotion than anyone I know, to the point where my friends tease me about it. So this was a significant discovery. When I ran out, I checked the website and found that the online prices are quite low. I also like the story of how one night, the founder had a dream to make soap. And that’s how she and her husband ended up starting their company. I ended up talking over the phone to both of them, and they’re lovely people. So that’s my first cheap thrill.

For the next cheap thrill, check the first comment.

It’s gloomy out, I’ve had better days, most of my friends have had better days, maybe we’ve all had better days. So it’s time for some silly stuff!

This short video shows why we love Stanford University for its many contributions to technology, society … and cat toys!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNUHeMM_GpQ

My 87-year-old father has this Disney-esque view of the animal kingdom, where all wild animals want is to be our friends. What can I say? He’s 87. It’s a little late in the game to change his mind, and at this point, why try after failing for decades? Anyway, this Weezer video was produced by Spike Jonze, but it could have been written by Dad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hyoszso38E

Finally, my friend Marsha had a disagreement with her otherwise delightful husband, Elliott, who accused her of making up her memory of The Banana Man. Trust me, no one could think they remembered something this absurd without having seen it. Thanks, Marsha, for digging this up and passing it along. Captain Kangaroo presents The Banana Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et6Jt2YX44o

Orhan Pamuk is the Turkish writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature around the same time that the Turks were prosecuting him for mentioning the slaughter of Kurds and Armenians in Anatolia. You can read all about him on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan_Pamuk

The White Castle is a short book, unlike some of Pamuk’s later work. And it really reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges, which is neither a positive nor a negative. You either want to read Borges or you don’t. I have mixed feelings about him, and I had mixed feelings about The White Castle, even though I’d previously read Pamuk’s My Name Is Red and thought it to be beyond brilliant.

Anyway, The White Castle is MOSTLY SAFE for animal lovers. Pamuk hints at 4 unpleasant images that I counted, but ultimately he pulls his punches and doesn’t describe them, he just lets you know that these things happened, and they’re in passing. There are no animal characters as such, so there are no opportunities to get attached to them.