This particular Saturday in Cambridge, the UK2011 June 04

Thinking of you.  It's been too long since I've dropped you a line. 

Here are just a few snippets of my Saturday:

     At the wine merchant: Professor Fauxpaye, have you had trouble with this card before?  The Professor, in a Spanish accent, No, I never have had before.

     Odd a Spaniard with a French name meaning "false payment" having trouble buying wine.  The merchant, generously, did not make note of it.

     At a traffic light on the way to the wine merchant's shop, a Dolly Paton look-alike jumps out of a cab, runs over to me on my bike and gives me a big hug, then runs back to the waiting cab.

     A John Cleese look-alike thinks that she has abandoned the cab.  A small scuffle ensues.  Certainly, we are all on film, now being processed for TV.

I should note that I have seen this motion-picture before.  My last cab ride from Atlanta's airport toward Emory University.

The cabbie turns to me in the back seat, pointing out the window to our right.  That's Ted Turner's building, he says proudly.  There's a commotion outside.  There's Ted Turner, himself.  He has Dolly Parton in a bear hug.  Strange. I think, What mama-bear wears a sequin dress?

Then, I have a flashback to a Christmas party at my step-parents house.  One of the guests, the then food editor at USA Today, a woman who looks as though she's truly enjoyed all of the food she's written about, has elected to wear a red sequin dress.  It fits like a latex glove.  In it, as she waits beneath the mistletoe, she's more Betty Boop than Dolly Parton.  All evening she's popping out of the dress; or, rather, the sequins are flying from it with an explosive force comparable to the seeds from an impatiens' pods.  Over the course of the next month, I count as many sequins as she must have had on the dress.  I don't recall having seen her leave.  And, I'm wondering now:  IF, . . . If I had sown them back together, might she have reappeared?

     From my home-office window, I can see my neighbour returning home.  She leaves the cab wearing a Dolly Parton outfit.

     The Strawberry Festival — more strawberry fields than strawberry fruit — is on.  Cambridge is exploding with character(s).

If this were a postcard, the tag line would read, Wish you were here!

Hope your weekend is as odd as mine . . .

And, just when Pantomime season should have been over!

 

Pocket Changes: the UK’s 2012 Olympics 50p Athletics& 2000 50p Libraries Coins

In the United Kingdom, the 2 pound and 50 pence coins — perhaps because of their size — are used as bill-boards for commemoration.  Today, I point to two coins.

     

A COIN FOR THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES

   
I am amused by the UK’s 50 pence coin commemorating Athletics, one in a series of 2012 Olympics coins.  Olympic coins have started to show up in my change.

This coin, mind you, comes from a country that amuses itself with the irony of hosting the games despite its poor chances of medal winning, or, at least its poor showing in recent past games.

I presume that the depicted athlete is to be seen in motion, rather than simply upside down.  The still depiction, however, … the open mouth, the wide eyes make it seem that this athlete is in trouble.

It should be noted that this design was selected from among designs submitted children.  Other 50p Olympic coins have more realistic, more heroic designs.

More to my amusement is the symbol of London 2012 resting over the wobbly kneed athlete.    Some Iranians have suggested that the symbol spells out the word "Z I O N" and that London 2012 is the Zionist Games.  Art, particularly abstraction, is in the eye of the beholder, I say.  In abstraction, it reminds me of the Chinese (both simplified and traditional) character for the English word “Mix” ( 混 ) as in the Chinese word 混乱 meaning “Chaos” or literally “a random mix”.

I hope neither the image nor the symbol foretell the UK’s medal winning chances in 2012.

This coin is part of a series of London 2012 coins available from the UK’s Royal Mint.  Please buy the coins.  The Games are costing the UK a mint in a time of austerity.

     

THE PUBLIC'S LIBRARIES

   

Also appearing in my change is the 2000 50 pence coin celebrating 150 years of British Libraries.  I am less amused.

Who could have imaged that 11 years later, in the face of deep deficit reduction measures, the UK’s Public Libraries would be facing MASSIVE, nation-wide closures.

More than 80% of the UK’s Public Library circulation is to children learning to read with the aid of literature for children.  Closures will leave the children of the poor without assistance.  It is the children of the poor who most need Public Libraries to become literate, to reinforce reading, study and research skills, to subsequently sustain if not grow the British economy.  Without access to literature, It will be more difficult for British children in future, to secure a good education and a job that keeps them and Britain off the dole.

I know that everyone must be austere in a time of austerity, but this is false economy.  It pains me that no austerity has been spared forward thinking here.

This is going to come back to bite British society in the ass . . . as surely as change in my pocket when I sit down.

Now Back to our Regularly Scheduled ProgrammeLIFE IN CAMBRIDGE

An odd collection of September days.  Awaiting fall like a leaf on a planetree.

On this 29th day of September 2011
(Cambridge, the United Kingdom)

   

Another freakishly hot day here in the UK; and, with the autumnal sun low to the horizon, it feels as though a miracle’s about to happen …     this can’t be good.

    

People are already leaving their clothes behind.  Granted, they’re sunning themselves on Parker’s Piece, where it’s like Miami Beach in the Winter  —  the Dutch descended, as a nation, upon the sands.   And, some folks are already rising toward heaven.  Yes.  Of course, they're only playing football (uh, soccer), doing headers, whilst others are straining to catch Frisbees.  As signs go, I take what I am given.

      

I haven’t seen any wolves lay down with lambs.  But, my dog pulled me into the shade of a plane-tree on the banks of the River Cam.  There he laid himself down, panting, beside the bulls that normally feed on the fen grasses.  No, and nor have I seen four horsemen.  But, the schools have just ended the day’s sessions; and, their munchkins are travelling in packs on bicycles in the spirit of emissaries of Mongolian Khans.   — No one is safe!

   

And, this being the United Kingdom, I can attest: everyone is speaking in tongues, the tongues both of these isles and those of their commonwealth together with those of the continent over which many Britons despair.

   

No, this cannot be good.

   

There is not a cloud in the sky.  And, come nightfall, Jupiter will again herald the hour when the NBC and CBS World News programs are broadcast.  They'll be carried live, like water from a well.  ... Broadcast well beyond bed-time, suggesting that the working day is done.

     

I bet that tomorrow will be hotter, still.  Hotter than bright.  Hotter than hell!

   

      

On this 28th day of September 2011
(Cambridge, the United Kingdom)

   
[while out walking the dogs, Max and Maya]

   

It’s a scream bloody murder night in my neighbourhood.

HELP ME! can be heard as I round the corner from City Road, which is less urban than the name might suggest, onto Fitzroy, a shopping street.  The call is loud.  It is persistent.  Oddly, it is male.

Fitzroy, by the way, is archaic English meaning son of a king; its translation, this evening, is somewhat closer to son of a queen.  Neither is exactly what I’m hearing as I approach the young man.  He’s speaking a bit of English mixed with Russian.  He is accompanied by three friends: one male, one female, and the other is a bottle of vodka.  In Russian, he’s asserting that his male companion, who has him in a headlock, is a Nazi.

We travel in proximity until we reach New Square, where Max has a rendezvous with the lawn.  The Russians continue on, loudly.  One of the young men will punch the lights out of a road sign, literally.  It is an internally lit road sign.  Regardless, the sign takes it well and fights back like a Weeble.

(I think Weebles, here in the United Kingdom, are known as “roly-poly men”, or, since the days of Noddy on kiddie TV, “wobblymen”.  But, that’s beside the point.  In Russian, they’re known as “tilting dolls” or “candidates not-named-Putin" in a Russian presidential contest.)

A bit later.  From the direction of the city centre.  Screams of RAPE! from a young woman and HELP ME! from a young man can be heard coming upon us as we head home.  I remind myself that Yob (that’s Boy spelled backward, an English invention, meaning poor wayward lad) … that Yob only sounds like a Russian word.  These are American voices.  They’re probably travelling with a silent friend, Jack Daniels; but, I can’t see them yet.  They’ll overtake us soon enough; Maya is taking forever to find just the right tree to fertilize.  It’s amazing how loud people, regardless their nationality, can be here after dark.  Anyway, the speed with which they are approaching suggests that the only rape presently occurring is that of a peaceful night.

The voices, Russian and American, are odd book-ends for what is heard on the return approach to Fitzroy.  English accents, this time.  No, you sodding arsehole! a male voice screams.  The English have a lovely way of intoning the word No, of elongating it to demonstrate insistence, as if in this case “sodding” didn’t lend enough support to the word "arsehold".  It’s followed by Get your own tree.  The sound of it is, well, incongruous without recalling childish conundra (erm [um], conundrums) such as Does a tree fall in the forest, if … and Does the Pope shit in the woods, if …  As I round the corner onto Fitzroy, I spy them. 

Three young Englishmen, plus one, the sodding one.  Each of them, lined up like Elgin Marbles.  Each of them, minus the sodding one, standing stolidly beside one of the line of trees fronting the Waitrose grocery store.  The sodding one seems aimless, like a just-fired pinball, banging about.

Inside the store, a sixth friend is buying a fifth friend for the evening; it looks like Lamb’s Navy Rum — amongst rums, a rather rough tasting liquor but very English.  It’s a pity that the sixth friend emerges from the store with a puzzled look on his face.  He doesn’t get the classical reference.   Athena Parthenos! shouts one of the tree men.  We are about to play a game of “See no evil.  Hear no evil.  Speak no evil.” with these cheeky monkeys.  Athena was the goddess of the forest! shouts another.  It's obvious; they've escaped from a classics degree for the evening.  And, the final of the three tree men, staring into the eyes of the emerging friend with his fifth of Lamb’s, screams Parthenos! … She was the VIRGIN, to which the fourth man — pin-ball man, the sodding one — adds sheepishly Parthenos.  That’s Greek.

Ah, college men.  I wonder if they know the old British naval saying.  Would it be too crass to remark upon it here?  I’m oddly tempted to scream it out, You need a cork at night to get any sleep!  Disappointingly however, I believe that the trees are London Planetrees.  Americans call them Sycamores.  No cork there.  And, none for The Night of Loud Voices either.

 

On this 25th day of September 2011
(Cambridge, the United Kingdom)

   
Max is developing a new habit.  On walks he pulls toward the Veterinary Surgery (that's "the vet’s office" in American English).  Max seems to have developed a fondness for the vet since his last check-up when sweet nothings were whispered, in German, into his ears.

It’s a curious development, as Maya has been known to run home from the vet’s office.  (It’s only three blocks away; and, she hates needles.)

Walks in the direction of the office are becoming painful.  Both Max and Maya are amazingly strong.  I often have one dog pulling me toward the vet, the other pulling me away.

[Meanwhile]

I’m trying to suppress cravings for German and Polish pastry, dairy-rich morsels that threaten early death by coronary.  (The English have never, apparently, mastered the dark arts of death by deserts.  English pudding, for example, is just under-baked cake.)

I’m wondering how a pastry run to Munich or Warsaw will look on my application for permanent residency in the United Kingdom.  The application requires one to state where one has travelled outside the UK, for how long and to what end.

    

On this 3rd day of September 2011
(Cambridge, the United Kingdom)

A well dressed, immaculately groomed older woman called to me from the coffee shop across from the Indian ladies news outlet this morning.  It took me a while, speaking with her, to realize that she was speaking well formed gibberish.

The coffee shop owner told me that she used to drop in irregularly.  She’s now become a regular.  Forced retirement pushed her over the edge.  He said that he doesn’t mind.  She drinks the coffee and draws in customers.

The shop is something of a mixed bag.  In the morning, it’s a French pastry and coffee shop.  It makes its own croissants and pastries each morning.  The shop normally draws a crowd of older men in casual-ware with nothing better to do.  They drive up in their expensive sports cars and park them on the pedestrian mall.  Come evening, it’s a traditional family style Chinese restaurant, drawing the mainly Chinese students of the English language school next to the Indian ladies news outlet.  Mid-day, it is a little French-colonial era Hanoi.

       

On this 1st day of September 2011
(Cambridge, the United Kingdom)

   
The Indian ladies at the news store have decided that I should learn Gujarati.  That’s one of the squiggle languages.  Fortunately, they’re not making me write.  Speaking it is quite enough.

I’ve had to take a rather bizarre approach just to wrap my head around it.  Just so: I made the Urdu-speaking Pakistani delivery men laugh — nervously, but laugh — when I gave the Indian women a very polite greeting, Jeshi Chreshna — literally, May God be with you.  I felt rather like a trained monkey, what with the bounding voice with which I spoke the words.  Their laughter actually followed my response to their question, How you know that?      Jesus Christ, I said courtly, It kinda sounds like 'Jesus Christ'.  I've a motion-picture in my head, playing a video of the Hare Krishna devotees back in Gainesville, Florida.  Everyone is happy, swaying to the beat of cymbals and drums.

Knowing that they were Urdu speakers, and likely Muslim, I then greeted them with Allah Ismarladik (which to me, in my quirky world of language-learning sounds like "Is-Marla-a-Duck?") — that’s Turkish actually, for God be with you usually meaning "Goodbye" rather than "Hello" — what can you do in a pinch?!, … anyway, since Turkish is close (geographically if not linguistically) to Arabic, I figured that Urdu would be close as well.  It was.   Or, at least the delivery men pretended that it was.

Fortunately — perhaps wisely — they didn’t ask, How you know that?  I might have told them something my mother loved saying, Lord (Allah) … Lord, love a duck!  That probably would have been a big no-no.  But, I’m learning.

Anyway, may God be with you too!

A Dog's Day, Too!

This morning finds my dog Max in the dog-house.  Too bad, his dog-house is his home rather than some shabby warren out at the far end of the garden.  That is where he belongs this morning.  Banished.

Max is lovable indoors but a kind of beast outside.  There, his inner dog is released.  He is become a take-charge personality.  So strong can be his intent that no ordinary lead suits him; so strong, that he’d sooner choke himself than be denied his will.  We’ve tried other leads, those that attach themselves to a “take charge” head harnesses for example; but, Max is the master of escape.  He wears a padded harness, designed for dogs riding in cars; it’s the closest thing that the dog world has to a straight jacket.

A standard poodle lives in the neighbourhood.  Standing a head taller than Max, whatever the dog’s breed or disposition, is an open invitation to play.  A standard poodle is one such dog.  Trouble is, Max is a ‘coon-hound; and, his way of issuing that invitation wells up from his chest, in a resounding, deep hunting-dog’s croon.  It is a language that neither standard poodle nor its master — a plain-Jane office worker type — understand.  Imagine that you are completing your rounds in the supermarket, when someone you don’t really know shouts out, Hey! You. Yeah, you! Get yourself over here, and, let me give you a cuddle. NOW!   Indeed, it is a language that the other dog and master appear to fear.  Unfortunately, in the dog world, nothing telegraphs with greater resonance than the sign-language of fear.  That hurried backing away indicates that they’ve translated Max’s invitation to play as I want to eat you all up.

It is then that the real trouble begins.  Max knows no rejection and will never know rejection even when it bites him on the arse.  What follows the hurried backing away is a renewed coon-hound’s croon to which is added the sign-language of Wait! No, wait. We really have to play.  Trouble is, with a dog bred to leap into trees after prey, Max appears to be lunging madly.  In the slow motion of events unfolding before eyes that would rather they be blanketed, it is then that Max goes “House of Flying Daggers”.  Max is flying at the end of his lead. He is flying., I hear myself relaying events to myself in a reporter’s dispassionate calm if only to mask my horror.

With Maya, my other dog, pulling at my other arm, encouraging Escape!, it is all I can do to hold my flying dog between his Heaven and my Hell.  I lean back against his forward thrusts.  I wind the lead around my hand until the colour of the hand goes the red of a child holding his breath, until the lead is short enough to breach the space between my hand and the nape of his neck.  As I latch onto his neck — the baby-fat that a mother dog would have used to carry her pup — Max’s croon is broken like a teen-age boy’s voice, broken with surprise.

My arm is a crane.  It brings him back to earth, corps à corps.  The standard poodle’s master uses the moment of distraction to make a break, to run for it, to get away.  From the corner of my eye, it appears that she, bundled in her beige winter’s coat, its hood up, brimming with fur lining,  . . .  it appears she has become a squirrel, scrambling away with what speed her legs can muster.  It’s only more sign language in dog world.  Game on, thinks Max. I’ll catch you, if I can.  My voice commands him, Sit! Stay!, as though someone more commanding has stepped into my body.  My voice has dropped octaves.  Leave it!, I insist as though standard poodle were one of Maya’s toys.  As I struggle to command his sight, Max struggles to break free.

Amidst main street’s morning bustle, I seem to be having an out-of-body experience.  I hover above the scene, not like a halo on a saint but as a demon on my shoulder.  I notice that passersby eye me with a mixture of horror . . . fear . . . disdain.  What I am feeling is the shame of a parent, caught-out, having to discipline a naughty child in public.  The feeling is heavy; and, I seem to sink back into myself.  Be good boy, I say.  Wait ’til I get you home.  Who am I kidding?  "Home" registers as a command Max is willing to recognize.  He’s off, tail wagging, toward home.

Here, he is decided, to take his punishment laying down.  He runs off to the guest room, and, throws himself down upon the center of the body of the bed.  Corps à corps, indeed.  Here, sleep has over taken him.  He runs through wild fields — in his dreams, as indicated by the movements of legs — no doubt, joined by the standard poodle.  Here, he will sleep until the sun through the room’s sky-facing windows no longer warms him.  And, then he will be of a mind to hound me: Take me outside again!

A Dog's Day

Good idea.  Sunday.  — Let’s take the dogs to their old park! David said. — A good 30 minutes from our old house.  A good 45 from the new.

David, never one for a direct route, took a northerly path to go south.      — Now a good 60 minute walk.  The northerly path took us through one of Cambridge’s big parks.  Max got excited – as he always does in the presence of his flying squirrel toy — the second his leading front paw hit the lawn.  Demanded his toy.  Too many people to also let him off his lead.  So as he tossed and swung squirrel — threw himself into the motions — from one end of the park to the other, I was the rag doll that he was pulling behind.

Crossed the path of another strong-willed dog on the way, just outside the great wall of Fenners’ Cricket Grounds.  The two of them were all Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon.  I was a member of supporting cast – hidden by the blue screen – clipped from the final cut.  The fellow at the other end of the lift strings.  The dogs looked as though they were flying in slow motion. Here, as seen by the man having the out-of-body experience, they’re all teeth.  Fur is just a color.

Now, back in old territory, suddenly new with Spring flowers, Max was a yacht, catching every cresting wave of other dogs’ scents. I was the dingy, the life-boat behind. Like a man slowly quartered, I had a mind for direction. Max peed so much, marking this new land, that he would strain to drain himself on the alternate path home.  By now, the muscles in my upper right arm and side ache as though they’ve been elasticized, pulled and sprung.  I have been his sling-shot.  He is my stone.

In the old park finally.  Three football fields in length, and each of them occupied with a game.  Polish speakers versus the Gujarati.  Urdu speakers versus the Turkish.  The Scots versus the English.  Near the tennis courts, a father and son are taking football lessons.  The kid’s especially good with his head.  But, Max loves balls; controlling him becomes a measure of using my body as his counter-weight.  My left knee joint pops.  This is my trick leg.  I should take it to birthday parties and bar mitzvahs.  It could make us money.  For the moment, however,  I’m baying like a wild dog in the light of moon.  It’s a choke collar, I don’t need.  Then, Squirrel saves me: a moment of distraction.

The path home carries us over the railroad tracks in a tube of translucent glass; its red and blue accents, gone neon in the light.  We are the metal balls of this pinball machine.  I pray that Max will not be sprung at the sight of an approaching dog.  A long arching ramp forms the glide path, but there’s also an escape fashioned of steps leading down to the street on the other side.  David makes a sensible decision.  It’s the steps; most dog owners will be on the path.  My knee feels like the boulder learning to round itself as it descends a mountain in free fall.  The pain is a passion that will not go unrequited.  Each step is a stolen kiss.

The alternate path home is eventually flat.  Urban, but uneventful.  Home-bound dogs here come to their windows to watch us pass.  We are guilty as sin – Max especially – in our desire for water.  But, no dogs bark, just as no paths are marked.  This is an unwritten law of the dog world: thou shalt not challenge those who pass without claiming your own.

The good minutes home stretch out.  Dead to the anticipation of a destination.  The alternate path brings us to the rear gates of the cemetery.  The repose of those who’ve come before us is a short-cut not unlike hypothesized worm-holes through space-time.  It lays parallel to but distant from the walled cricket field we passed earlier.  There goes foresight: wary, the dogs who come here to play simply because it is gated and walled, . . . and, because there are several great places to hide, from which to tear out barking, Surprise!  So, we take instead the route that bubbles around the homes and streets backing onto the cemetery walls.

House is a destination.  Home is a state of mind.  The dogs, freed of their leads, lay prone on the dining room floor.  Max, a priest, taking orders.  Finally, I climb the steps toward my desktop computer.  It too is a destination that goes before the remains of the day.  Were it a tree-top nest, I would be its wounded bird.

   

Burnt to Hell and Back

This past year, I've found myself alone for all but one of the major holidays.  David was travelling to meet research and other academic obligations.  Being alone hadn't so bad.  It freed me from obligation.  I did not have to rise to or suffer those social conventions that I find forced, insincere, or intolerable.  If I wished, I could observe without interacting.  I could justify my being as ethnography, even if that was just an excuse.  Truth is, I'd have made a fine monk.   Best of all, I  ate what I wanted to, without regard for tradition.  I exiled myself from a nation of reheated store-bought hot cross buns.

David's travels gave me the freedom to allow the forbidden foods to be carried over our threshold. Amongst them: lamb, goat cheese, eggplant and zucchinni — the latter, locally going by their French names, aubergine and courgette.  These were the cardinals and bishops of an outlawed church.  Eating them, a heresy.  Worse still, as I would come to learn, baking them in the same oven that cooked our family food was a sin against David's law of kosher cooking.  The forbidden foods had defiled the oven, the food that came afterward into the oven, and those who ate these foods thereafter.


The oven demanded ritual cleaning.  I could tell because, though David never cooks, oven cleaning products began accumulating on the kitchen counter.  These weren't just any oven cleaning products, they were American oven cleaning products.  Where he got them, I don't know.  European environmental law requires that products normally found in the United Kingdom will not be detrimental to the environment.  That's not to say that American products do damage the environment.  But, it would be fair to say that American products kick ass, while European products are more Everyman than superhero.  In a world of oven cleaners, America has Captain America, while the Captain of team England can be sent off with a red card.


Let the cleaning woman do it, he suggested.  Now, David's idea of a clean oven is of an oven returned to an as-new state.  It would take hours, not counting the wait-time between the application of an oven cleaning product and the actual cleaning.  His faith in chemicals is unshakable; but, as a geo-chemist, that is as it must be.  Still, even the chemicals in the average American over-the-counter oven cleaner would only deal with soft stuff.   In any case, the cleaning woman didn't have additional hours to give to oven cleaning.  Besides, if we wanted to retain her services, we would never require her to clean the oven.  With that explanation, I hung my head low.  I did the crime, I said, I'll do the time.
     

Let's be honest here.  How often does anyone clean their oven?  Not often, offered the cleaning woman.  I clean mine, she continued, only when what I've cooked starts to taste like something else.  That, in my experience could be quite a while.  The average person would be more likely to move house and have to clean the oven for that purpose long before a "dirty" oven would confound the tastes coming out of it.  Let me put this another way, anything in a dirty oven that could kill you has already been burnt to hell.  That's what makes cleaning an oven such a chore.  What's there is baked on.  We're talking the geology of carbon rather than the biology of carbon-based life, ... diamonds not the creature from the Black Lagoon.


Frankly, I'm more fearful that not only will chemical cleaning of the oven eat my lungs — yes, in a well ventilated room ... thank God, the kitchen has windows, but that the chemical residue left in the oven after cleaning may be carcinogenic.  Sure, I know that these are well tested products, that there are as many folks dying from cleaning their ovens as there are folks cleaning their ovens, but I still worry.  For that reason, I avoid using the American oven cleaning products that David has collected.  Instead, I resort to methods that my cleaning woman says her mother uses.  They're the same methods my depression-era, war-baby mother used.  Thick rubber gloves.  Piping hot salted water and vinegar.  And, a soft scrub pad, backed up by metal wool.  The latter is probably like cotton candy — what the British call candy floss — amidst carbon-based lifeforms.  The scent of vinegar draws my mind to fish-and-chips.  Of course, this method means that cleaning the oven stretches from hours to days.  Well, it certainly feels like days.


The amazing thing is not that I've cleaned the oven, not that I've rejected the chemical world, but David's reaction when he arrives home from a day at the lab.  He's checked the rubbish bin.  He's found the cans of American oven cleaner that I've simply thrown away.  And, he's decreed Good job!  I feel like the fearless Lion standing beside the Tin Man before the Wizard of Oz.  I've been ordained knight of the kitchen counter.  I'm sure that he's thinking that I'm thinking Hey, I might just do this again sometime.  Being lauded feels so, ... so wonderful!  I'm actually thinking, Arise, Sir Oven Cleaner! and taking stock of the knives.  He hasn't bothered to open the oven door.


I can tell what the dog is thinking.  There will be no roast tonight!