It all began when I came down with Puppy Fever last spring.  I love our dog Charlie, but for some reason I got it into my head that I wanted to go through the experience of adopting a new pet.  Apparently I wanted to hear the pitter-patter of a new animal pooping on the carpet.  And I thought Charlie seemed lonely.  He wanted a friend!

So I started looking around on the website of the Wake County SPCA, and it was there that I saw ‘Pajamas’, a forlorn, Dalmatian-looking white dog with grey spots. The description read something like this:

HI!  MY NAME IS PAJAMAS!  I’M A THREE YEAR OLD DALMATIAN/AMERICAN BULLDOG MIX.  I’VE HAD A PRETTY HARD LIFE, AND I’M LOOKING FOR A FAMILY THAT CAN GIVE ME LOTS OF TENDER LOVING CARE.  I THINK A HOUSEHOLD THAT ALREADY HAS A DOG WILL BE A GOOD MATCH FOR ME AND REALLY HELP ME COME OUT OF MY SHELL.

That’s too bad, I thought.  Pajamas looks cute, but we’re looking for a younger, smaller dog.  Still, when we dropped by the SPCA one Saturday a week or so later, “just to look”, (which I’m pretty sure is how most people end up adopting new pets) I saw Pajamas in one of the holding pens, sleeping curled up tightly around another dog.  The sight warmed my heart.

“Want to look at Pajamas?”  I said to Brian.  “I saw her on the website.”

When a shy, sad Pajamas was brought into the room to meet us, though, I was unimpressed.  She was not a puppy.  She was not a smaller dog, either, like I wanted.

Instead she was bony, and she had recently had puppies, so she had those big knobbly dog nipples drooping off her ribcage.   (Apparently the Wake County SPCA went down and rescued her from a SC shelter after pictures of her looking extremely emaciated were spotted online, for which we are eternally grateful.  Her story up to that point remains a mystery.)

Sad to say, my initial response upon meeting Pajamas was, “Hmm, I’m not sure about this…”

And then I looked over at Brian.  He had an enormous, beatific smile on his face and had opened his arms wide to enfold Pajamas.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said tenderly.

“Oh, man,” I realized.  “We’re going home with Pajamas.”

Charlie Was Confused

We named her Sophie.

Other nicknames we have since invented for her include Loaf, The Monster, and White Devil.

Here are things that Sophie likes:  jumping up on the bed and drooping her jowls over my face first thing in the morning, snorting and huffing around and making hilarious noises, standing utterly still and fixing me with a thousand-yard stare when I’m trying to call her, and being flatulent when we have company.

She has a goofy sense of humor and is a big clown, leaping around with abandon and throwing herself into hilarious antics whenever possible.  She’s the perfect compliment to Charlie’s slightly quieter, more subtle nature, and she follows him everywhere like a delighted little sister, which is pretty much what she is.

She’s also incredibly soft, like a teddy bear, and beautiful, with big brown eyes and a graceful gait.  She has perfect white toenails and little pink footpads and little white eyelashes and a droopy mouth like a sad melting shovel.  Passers-by stare and smile at her; little children say, “Look at the dalmatian!”  She is also impressively flexible and can curl up into a tiny, spotted ball.

Sophie Makes Herself at Home.

Sometimes she’ll lie on the floor with her enormous, curtain-like jowls drooped over her front paws, like a muffin top.  Then I say, “Whatcha doing, Sophie?  Are you making muffins?”

Once Charlie realized she was here to stay, he began warming up to her.  Now they frolic and play together, and sometimes he licks her face when he thinks no one is looking.

They're Like Bookends!

Anyway, those are the dogs.  Having 2 dogs is definitely twice as much work as having just one.  But I’m so glad we found Sophie.  She feels like part of the family.

I went through my wardrobe with brutal honesty and precision, and ended up getting rid of about 1/3 of my clothes.

I don’t miss them!  Because the clothes I got rid of– I hadn’t worn many of them for six months to a year.  They were the clothes I pawed past each time I opened my dresser drawer looking for an outfit.  The shirts that looked nice but that I needed to wear a particularly uncomfortable bra with.  The skirts I never wore, but that someday I would be in the mood for.  The jeans I didn’t really like anymore, but that I might like someday.  Basically, they were the clothes I didn’t think I should get rid of, because they were in great shape– because I never wore them.

Now they’re gone!  When I open my drawers (which also open much easier now that they are not stuffed to the brim), I like 99% of the clothes I find in them.  It’s a great feeling.  I have fewer clothes than ever before– but I feel as though I have more clothes than ever before:  because I like all of the clothes I have.  I think actually appreciate each item of clothing more now, because it’s part of a smaller, sparer collection.

The last item of clothing I bought was in late July.  Although I tend to buy clothes in a thrift shop rather than retail, I still figure I’ll give myself 6 months of buying no new clothing of any kind, and see how if feels.  After all, I don’t NEED any more clothes.  I have plenty of clothes right now; enough to last me through at least six months; possible an entire year.  If I can make it that long more’s the better.

So far, getting rid of 1/3 of my clothes is one of the most practical, satisfying things I’ve done in a long time.

Plus, I’ve always been jealous of those people who say things like, ‘Oh, at home?  I never go on the computer at home.  I’m on the computer all day at work; why do that at home too?’  I too am on the computer all day at work.  I needed to take a page from the books of those people.

So I quit cold turkey, because I knew that would be the only way to do it.  Now the only leisure site I’m letting myself hang around on when I’m at home (i.e. aside from email, or the site where I check my bank balance or book airline tickets and whatnot) is the New York Times.  I can easily waste some time there, but a girl’s got to have a vice or two, right?

Right now a debate rages as to whether Google grossly overstepped its bounds by collecting and saving the data of users on wireless unencrypted networks for around 3 years. Frankly, I don’t see how there is any way that Google’s actions are defensible. Even if, as the company’s management claims, higher-ups were actually unaware that this data was being gathered, then the issue is still concerning, because it means that Google has some huge issues as far as supervising its employees or even being aware of what they are doing.

And ultimately, I find their sing-song “we didn’t know it was going on,” defense to be pretty unbelievable. Really, Google? For 3 years, mountains of private citizens’ data was being recorded and stored by your company, and none of the employees who were recording it ever said, ‘Hey, is this thing on? ’ In 3 years? Nobody ever came across the saved files and said, ‘Huh, what is this information and why are we collecting and storing it?’ I suppose this is why Google’s company motto isn’t “Don’t Be Willfully Ignorant”. If the company’s claims are true, and they really had no idea that this data collection was happening, then at the very least it would mean that Google operates pretty much like any other bumbling, corporate bureaucracy. It’s kind of like finding out that there’s no Santa, or that his elves, with or without his knowledge, save and store the records of which children have been naughty or nice for some unknown purpose.

In fact, Google’s famous ‘Don’t Be Evil’ company motto is receiving further scrutiny these days. Upon first blush it seems very hip and fun, the way Google itself seems, with its primary-colored logo and its funny name. ‘We’re like you, except in a billion dollar company!’ it seems to say. ‘Who likes evil? Not us!’ Still, when you think about it, evil is not always easy to define. There are a lot of grey areas, and what’s evil to me might be considered normal and necessary to, perhaps, a huge oil company or, say, a West Virginia coal mine.

It is also unclear at whom the phrase is actually being directed. Now that I think about it, the motto very well could be Google’s way of telling consumers not to be evil, and by ‘evil’ they mean, ‘concerned with their own privacy’ or maybe ‘questioning of Google’s motives’. Man. We should probably stop being so evil.
I am disturbed by the arguments of those who defend Google’s actions by stating that people who use unencrypted wireless networks are essentially asking for their data and information to be recorded by others. Perhaps their surfing habits are not password protected, but does this make them public knowledge? The last time I checked, the data of the kind Google was accused of collecting is not exactly left lying around on a park bench somewhere. Picking it up is not as easy as picking up someone’s dropped shopping list or reading their open diary. And even if it were, would that make it right? Just because my data is not locked up, does that mean it is no longer mine? Is it up for grabs? Is it morally right for someone else to snatch it up without my permission or knowledge? If I leave my diary out, and you read it, sure it’s partly my fault. But it’s your fault too!

The Supreme Court’s recent momentous (or monstrous, depending on your definition of ‘evil’) verdict declaring that corporations have the same rights as people as far as making donations to political candidates has raised an interesting issue as far as Google’s current quandary is concerned. If a corporation is to be treated like a person, then shouldn’t it be held to the same moral standards as a person? Especially when it’s a corporate person who preaches to us about evilness.

For the last few years, Google has built up a reputation as the Fun internet company. It’s young, it’s hip; everyone wants to be seen hanging out with it. But just because we’ve all been out with having a few beers and a few laughs with Google doesn’t mean we shouldn’t say anything when it rifles through our belongings while we’re in the can. You might be our friend, Google, but if you cross the line, we’ll still call you out on it and cut you down to size. We have to make sure you know what our boundaries are and that they need to be respected—otherwise, you might grow bolder, and who knows what you might do next.

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: Lately it seems as though a lot of women I love and respect have been prefacing statements with, “I’m not a feminist, but—“. This tends to make me mad, because the statements they’ve prefacing are usually about how women deserve to be treated equally, which, to me, is what feminism is essentially about. And yet they don’t want to be labeled as feminists, which I guess I understand, except I don’t. I am unequivocally a feminist, and I see nothing wrong with telling anyone who asks as much, because I don’t think there is any reason to not want to be seen as a feminist.

But I digress. There are still certain scenarios when my entire feminist perspective gets thrown out the window, where it is charged more at the dry cleaners and forced to do equal work for less pay. One example of such a scenario is when a friend of mine asks for advice after a first date. Generally, she’ll say something like, “We had a great time! He hasn’t called yet though. Should I call him?” To my astonishment and shame, I always find myself saying, “Hmm… better not.”

Why is this? At this point men and women take turns staying home with the kids, we achieve the same levels of education, we are both allowed to be doctors and nurses and flight attendants. Equality between the sexes is not there yet, but things are moving closer. And yet, when it comes to courtship, to a certain extent we may as well be back in the turn of the century, when a woman who wanted to snare a man had best not let him know of her interest until he couldn’t stand her avoiding him anymore and proposed marriage.

Much of it is the chase; I know it is. We still think that men want to chase us, and I guess a lot of them do, or think they do. But the problem is that technology has rendered the chase mostly obsolete. At this point it often consists of pressing the ‘Send’ button on a cell phone, or typing out a text message, or an email, or submitting an online friend request …basically, it’s almost harder NOT to be constantly in touch with other people. The chase is pretty sad these days. So if the chase has been lost, why are the other old customs still in place, like the one that says A Women Can Never Call a Man After a First Date, He Must Call Her (And if He Doesn’t, Oh Well, She’s Clearly Better Off)?

I think that part of this is due to tradition that is difficult to move past, and a lot of it is fear. A first date is such a tricky situation to begin with; you both bumble around, sweating, trying to be suave and to impress each other. At the end of the night, you are each pretty sure that the other had a good time, but at the same time you wouldn’t be surprised if they hate your guts. So it’s easiest for both parties to simply fall into the roles that are expected of them. It means neither has to rock the boat, which, if the date was a good one and each party is hoping for a second date, is comforting and provides some structure. Why not follow the rules, if that’s usually the way these things work? After all, if you don’t this time, what if you screw everything up? For a less stellar date, there might be more room for experimentation—a woman might feel more comfortable just picking up the phone to say hey if the date was just so-so—but in that case, why would she even bother?

The problem with tradition is, as 99.99% of us can attest from personal experience, waiting around for someone to call puts you in a foul mood. It is in fact Hell. So why does this have to be the woman’s job? Why does the man get the power to decide whether a second date is in the cards or not?

I don’t have an answer to this. And, as I’ve stated before, although I consider myself to be a feminist, when I first met my fiancé, I NEVER EVER called him. Even months after we’d been dating fairly seriously, I always waited for him to call me. So don’t look to me for answers, because I’m clearly screwed up. Still, let’s at least start to think about these gender roles and expectations, because if we don’t, centuries from now our great-great-great granddaughters will be sitting there after a good first date, waiting impatiently by the hologram machine. Let’s help them avoid that, shall we?

It’s something we have in common! No wonder I love dogs.

Dogs are the best.

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I want to cast astrology aside scornfully, but it seems like every time the subject comes up, someone else I love and respect confesses that they are interested in it, and I feel a renewed justification in being curious.

It’s not that I spend that much time thinking about astrology; I don’t even know off the top of my head what the dates are for every sign.  (In fact I am always simultaneously impressed and alarmed at those people who CAN say things like, “Your birthday is August 27th?  So you’re a Virgo then, hmm…”)  Nor do I really pay attention to people’s birthdays being on the cusp or whether their moons are in the house of something or other.

Really, the only time I pay much attention to astrology is to match up my sign with the sign of the boy I’m interested in and/or dating.  Now that I have settled down and become engaged to a Scorpio I don’t do much astrologizing, having spent a slow afternoon at work a few years ago reading every account I could find about what Scorpios are like and whether they are a good match with a Taurus.  Most sources claim that they are, because they’re kind of opposites but both really intense or something like that.  As About.com states, “Scorpio has intuitive powers and Taurus is master of the 3-D physical world — as a team they can experiment in bringing visions into form.”  Exactly!  That pretty much describes an average Sunday morning in our house.

There are those who claim that the problem with astrology is that you can read any horoscope, whether or not it’s your own, and find ways to relate to it, and pick things out of it that you think can be applied to your own life.  This is probably true for me.  I can relate to the 10pm weatherman;  I can find something that applies to my own life in an online recipe for chutney.  I guess you could say I have boundary issues.  So in that way I am a perfect candidate to find astrology both extremely compelling and extremely full of lies.

Still, I love people who are openly excited about astrology and enjoy discussing it, even if they do so with a dose of deprecation.  Talking to someone like that about astrology is like finding a kindred spirit who isn’t afraid to get raunchy while telling you why she broke up with her ex.  It lets you settle into a certain comfort zone and it increases your expectations for the depth of the conversation.  You know you are in for a good time when you find someone who you love and respect but who is also not afraid to look you in the eye and say something like “The way you just stirred your coffee is SO like a Taurus!  Your moon must be in the house of Saturn this week.”

One of my best friends will confess an intense interest in astrology when pressed, but she knows how admitting that sounds to some, and she’s not afraid to use that fact to her advantage.  One night she got out of a bad date early by discussing her love of astrology.  “I’m a Pisces,” she told the guy.  “We tend to be needy and emotional—and we’re also very demanding.”  Needless to say, she never heard from him again.  Their love must not have been in the stars!  Score one for astrology.

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I know it’s just the polite, making-conversation thing that people say to you when they learn that you got engaged, but I’m a little tired of having people ask if I’ve set a date for my wedding or not.
Have I set a date? No. Am I excited to lawfully wed my sweetie so that he can be on my insurance plan and we can visit each other in the hospital and get tax breaks and we will both have cool wedding bands and can continue to plan our lives together?

Hell yes. Am I excited about my wedding? Hell no.

I’m just not a ‘wedding’ kind of girl. I don’t watch any of the eight thousand television shows about weddings and bridezillas. I don’t read bridal magazines. I have never imagined what my perfect wedding day might be like. I just really don’t give a flying boutonniere.

I like going to other people’s weddings because I like parties and open bars and cake and dressing up, and it’s nice to see my friends pledge their eternal love to each other and then to drink a lot and do the Macarena. But I also tend to find weddings boring and formulaic and overblown and I hate wearing pantyhose and making idle chitchat with people I barely know.
But now I have reached the point in my life where I am ready to get married and move on to the next stage of life as a married person, which is great! The only thing stopping me is the damn wedding. It’s like marriage is on the other side of an iron gate covered in taffeta and frills and icing and guarded by a photographer and a caterer and an overpriced dress and flanked by 300 of my closest friends and loved ones, and it costs ten grand to pass through.

Nooooooooooooooo!

A few weeks into our engagement I got the brilliant idea that if I dropped enough hints, maybe my closest friends would band together and throw me a Surprise Wedding. How great would that be? One day I’d come home and – Surprise! There’s Brian, in a tux! And all our family & friends! And a minister! And flowers, and snacks, and booze, and music, and everyone looks nice. Surprise! It’s your wedding! And you didn’t have to plan anything! My friends, who are wonderful at planning surprise parties, are somehow not enthused at this idea. I’m pretty sure that I’ve dropped the heaviest hints possible, (“Man, I hate the idea of wedding planning. I wish SOMEONE would just throw me a surprise wedding. Oh well.”) but to no avail.

So I could go the Vegas Route. I could go the City Hall Route. I could go the Backyard Barbecue Route. None of those routes really appeal to me either though. It’s a special occasion and a special day, and I’d like it to be special. Just not “hundreds of dollars on table place settings that will be thrown away at the end of the night” special. Not “you can’t invite Great-Uncle Phil or Great-Aunt Agatha will disown our side of the family and by the way did you invite the guy at Dunkin-Donuts who always gets your coffee right?” special.

There has to be a middle ground. Something that’s not chintzy OR over elaborate. Something that’s a nod to tradition and yet still feels representative of our relationship.

Or I guess we could always have a Zombie-Themed Wedding like Brian wants, and call it a day.

Empire of Illusion, by Chris Hedges

It was great.  It gave me a lot to think about; addressed some thoughts and concerns I had already been ruminating on in a much more articulate and explicit way.

So once I finished, I went through the notes and bibliography in the back of the book and bought every book that I had recalled the author referencing in an interesting way; about 7 more books.
I read them in pretty random order, starting with this one:

The Image, by Daniel Boorstin

It’s hard to describe this book, but I can’t recommend it high enough even though reading it was an almost excoriating experience.  It was the kind of book that while reading it every once in awhile I had to put it down and sit there staring into space while I shied away from and eventually absorbed what I had just read.  I’ve never read a book like that before.  It has fundamentally changed the way I see the world.

So for my next book I went a little lighter, or so I thought.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman

This book was also really good, although since it was written in the 80s and dealt mainly with television and its effect on American culture, it was a little frustrating, because I wanted the author to apply that information to the internet.  Boorstin’s book was written in the 60s, but somehow it reached ahead of itself and still felt fairly current, or at least still very relevant.  Still, Postman made a lot of good points and it was good to ground myself in the theories that came about with the advent and rising popularity of television.  Postman founded a graduate program at NYU in Media, Culture and Communications which I would go to if I had all the money.

Next I went back to serious with:

Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone, by Frank Furedi

This book was extremely dense and required more concentration than any books I have read recently (aside from, perhaps, The Image).  It reminded me of being back in college again.  It really got going after the first few chapters and introduced a lot of really fascinating ideas about the modern American and European culture ‘of inclusion’ and the fact that nobody walks around saying “I’m an intellectual” anymore because they’d be ashamed to do that in the current anti-elite culture.  A little off-topic with regard to everything else I had been reading that was more about media theory and criticism, but a great read nonetheless.

I thought I would treat myself with a slightly less dense book after that, so I’ve just started:

Life:  The Movie:  How Entertainment Conquered Reality, by Neal Gabler

I’m only a few pages in and I’m already amazed at how often he has referenced Boorstin’s The Image, so I’m really glad I read that one early on.  I’m also realizing that I need to read some Marshall McLuhan.  Like, but how.  But I’ve still got another 4 books to go through before that, and I’ve also found a lot of really great-sounding books from this recent New York Times article. I mean, Jaron Lanier’s ‘You Are Not a Gadget’?  How awesome does that look?

Lots to read!  Lots to read!