. . . and occasionally he rhymes.

Cocktails with Bean

My dog, Bean, continues to grow more civilized as time passes. So it is with me too, I suppose. We both look to cultural conventions to help knock off our rough edges. Bean's latest nod to sophistication is the preprandial cocktail.

 My usual dinner-time routine is to feed Bean, start dinner for us humans, and after I've got things simmering, to build myself a martini. Regular readers will know that I prefer mine shaken vigorously with ice until my hand hurts from the cold. When I'm finished with the shaking and the martini is poured into a chilled glass, the cocktail shaker is full of melty ice cubes infused with a bit of gin and vermouth. Several weeks ago I started giving a few of these to Bean to enjoy while I'm sipping my drink. He loves ice cubes - always has - but this ritual sharing of well-chilled martini juice has apparently elevated his enjoyment to a whole new level.

My long passed cat, Russeau, who lived to be twenty, used to lick the olives in the bottom of my empty martini glass. I thought this curious when he first did it, but over time it became a bonding thing between us. I love olives myself, but I was willing to forego the pleasure of eating them in order to provide Russeau his own modest enjoyment. It's sad that Russeau and Bean never met. I think they would have enjoyed one another's company.

Anyway, the thing about Bean and the ice in the cocktail shaker is that now he is refusing to eat his dinner until he's had his cube-tini. He'll nibble around a bit, biding his time and checking on my progress, but he won't commit to the food in his bowl until I give him his ice. If he gets tired of waiting, he will go have a lie down until he hears the cocktail shaker rattling the call to mess. Then he gallops into the kitchen for his wee taste. Who'da thunk this possible? I don't know, but I gotta tell ya, it's just one more reason to love my dog.

THE UNEXAMINED LIFE

Temptation to resist...or a little gift from a benevolent God?

The unexamined life may not be worth living, as Socrates suggested, but it sure is easier than second guessing your every motivation. Maybe it's not exactly what Socrates had in mind, but for the dutiful Catholic a regular examination of conscience is part of the defining regimen. It's something we do before we go to confession. This means a thorough scrutiny of the things we have done that we shouldn't have and the things we didn't do that we should have, as well as the reasons we did or didn't do them. As you can imagine there is enormous potential for inner conflict in this process.

The first problem is deciding what's right and what's wrong. We don't actually get to decide this, of course, although many of us are hard pressed to refrain. We may start by going through the 10 commandments, which seem pretty straightforward, but we soon realize that there are degrees of everything and the more we think about it the harder it is to lay down a distinct line between what we need to confess and what's not so bad after all. To make matters more difficult we have to go confess the bad stuff to a priest, often a priest who knows our mother.

This is a hard place to be. This is the garden where the Serpent resides and tries to persuade us that we are the best judges of our own behavior. He goads us to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He seduces us with the notion that we are as good as God when it comes to deciding what's sinful and what's not. It's an easy job for the Serpent, not least because it's sometimes hard to decipher exactly what God means.

What exactly is coveting for example? Say you admire your neighbor's wife because she looks like Kate Beckinsale and cooks like Paula Dean. One, who could resist such a creature, and two, when does that stop being mere admiration and start being sinful? To complicate matters, suppose your neighbor is a derivatives trader for Goldman Sachs, an insufferable blowhard, and a philandering dog? When does thinking his Aston Martin ought to be in your driveway instead of a 9 year old PT Cruiser cross the border from longing for social justice into rank covetousness?

And how about the eighth commandment? 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.' We are told this means you're not allowed to tell lies. What does bearing false witness have to do with the untruths we tell to grease the skids of social discourse? If your husband wants to know if his snoring is an irritant, how charitable is it to say the truth that if it were any worse you would murder him in his sleep? When your six-year-old wants to know why Santa brought him underpants instead of the Freddie Kruger action figure he asked for, do you lie and tell him he should have been a better kid or tell him the truth that Santa doesn't really exist and the crappy gifts are actually from his mother?

I think you get the idea. A good examination of conscience is a tricky endeavor, fraught with moral peril. You have to know what God thinks, even though a lot of what He's said sounds like a 17^th century English poet who's been drinking wine all day. Plus, if the nuns and your catechism are to be believed, He actually left a lot of stuff out of the commandments. So for instance, where it says 'Though shalt not kill,' it seems pretty direct and easy to understand, but we are taught that this also means you can't punch your brother for sticking his tongue out at you in the backseat of your dad's car, or you can't slap your kid for punching his brother, or you can't get angry with your wife for maxing out the Mastercard on the wedding reception for your daughter, who is marrying a vampire wannabee.

We all understand 'Thou shalt not commit adultery', but there are hundreds of ways to be unfaithful to your spouse and the institution of marriage without actually knocking boots in secret trysts. So how do you decide when taking your car to a sorority bikini car wash is less about keeping you car clean and more about chatting up some coeds to see if you've still got some mojo left? Where exactly does wishful thinking become an affront to your vows?

Once you've got a good grasp on your sins, you have to then cultivate a 'firm purpose of amendment'. This means sincere determination not to commit the same sins again. This too is much easier said than done, especially when you consider that most of your so-called sins happened by accident. You resolve to do better. You go to great lengths to avoid situations where you are likely to be tempted. You pray for strength. Then one day you are at the farmers' market looking at the honey crisp apples when a gust of wind lifts the silk skirt of the woman standing next to you to reveal lacy yellow boy-short panties and legs that extend beyond your wildest imaginings. It's difficult at this point to know whether to complain to God that He has led you into temptation in spite of your prayers to the contrary, or to thank Him for the fortuitous view of some of the pinnacles of His creation.

Bean, the contemplative

My dog, Bean, conducts regular self-examinations as well, even though, technically, he is not a Catholic. Admittedly, his focus seems to be more proctological than spiritual, and he does not seem to differentiate much between enthusiastic self-examination and probing the southern-most regions of any other dog that comes within range. Bean has not eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Neither did any of his ancestors. He remains blissful in his ignorance of any arbitrary borders between the proper and the proscribed.

For all his wonderful qualities, Bean is incapable of looking gleefully forward to an opportunity to do something that he knows he shouldn't while praying at the same time, and fervently, for the strength to resist the temptation. We humans can, and, because we can, we do. It's this kind of conflictedness that makes the smelter in which our humanity is fired, repeatedly, until we are sufficiently purified to stand before our Creator and admit to being worse creatures than our dogs.

More Conversations with Bean: Dogging Healthcare

We've had our greyhound, Bean, for a year now. Every day he grows in wisdom and grace. He is a good dog, eager to please and eager to learn. We have begun to engage one another in conversation with some frequency. He seems to enjoy our little talks, and I find, as his powers of observation grow, so do I. Here is another recent exchange.

BEAN: You remember when you took me to the Vet last week?

ME: Yes. Sorry. It was time for your annual shots.

BEAN: Oh, I don't mind going to the Vet. I mean once they took my nuts, I figured it couldn't get any worse.

ME: Not my fault, Buddy. They did that before I got you.

BEAN: Yeah, I know. Still it seems like a cruel fate. You don't have any idea what's about to happen. They give you a lovely nap, and when you wake up you're carrying an empty sack around. It's embarrassing. I'm mostly over it now, but every once in a while, when I think about it, it gets my back up. You might want to reconsider sleeping in the nude...you know, for your own safety. I'm just sayin'.

ME: Yeah. Okay. Thanks for the warning. We were talking about the Vet.

BEAN: Yeah. What I was wondering is, how come it's so much cheaper for me to go to the Vet than it is for you to go to the Doctor?

ME: I don't know, Bean. I haven't thought about it much.

BEAN: It's not like the Doctor is smarter than the Vet. In fact it's probably the opposite. The Doctor only needs to know how to fix people. The Vet has to know how to fix dogs, cats, hamsters, boa constrictors, guinea hens, cows, horses, giraffes, and hippopotami—just to name a few.

ME: You make a good point.

BEAN: So what's the difference then? Are people more valuable than dogs?

ME: I don't think anyone I know would make an argument like that.

BEAN: Me either. Clearly that would be ludicrous. So what is the difference then?

ME: Well I think it might be the insurance companies. Insurance companies are in charge of most of the healthcare system for people. They decide who gets covered and how much it costs to get covered on the one side, then, on the other side, they determine who gets paid, what services get paid for, and, to a large extent, how much gets paid. They have a significant say in every aspect of the money flow for healthcare in humans, but very little say about healthcare for animals.

BEAN: So you think insurance companies have bid up the cost of healthcare for humans?

ME: I don't know. It's very complicated. If you think about it though, the insurance companies are handling all the money and taking a piece of the action on everything, so the more healthcare costs, they more money they will make. They really don't have a vested interest in keeping medical costs down - only their own costs. They keep their own costs down by limiting coverage to people who are not likely to get sick and then denying the claims of the people they do cover.

BEAN: Sounds to me like you guys need to get the insurance companies out of healthcare.

ME: Maybe so, but that's way easier said than done.

BEAN: Why's that?

ME: Well for one thing, the insurance companies have a lot of money left over from collecting big premiums, limiting coverage, and denying claims. They use that money to make campaign contributions and to pay lobbyists in Washington to make sure that no one in Congress messes with the system. They pay good money, in other words, to keep things as they are.

BEAN: And people put up with this nonsense?

ME: So it would seem.

BEAN: I think someone needs to take this system out on the back porch and chew it up like a rawhide bone.

ME: As usual, you make a lot of sense, my friend.

BEAN: Yeah, and meanwhile you ought to consider just getting your work done at the Vet.

MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH BEAN: Inbreeding the Banks

We've had our greyhound, Bean, for a year now. He's adapting well to life off the track, and he seems happy to have traded his racing days for a life of reflection. Every day he grows in wisdom and grace. He is a good dog, eager to please and quick to learn. We have begun to engage one another in conversation with some frequency. Here is one such exchange.

BEAN: Did you see that thing that's going around the Internet about all the bank mergers?

ME: Yes I did, Bean. Very interesting, don't you think?

BEAN: Interesting?! Frightening is what it is.

ME: How so?

BEAN: I've been watching this for a long time, ever since the news started talking about banks being too big to fail.

ME: And?

BEAN: Seems like merging is the wrong way to go about fixing the problem.

ME: You make a good point. If they're already too big, mergers just make them bigger.

BEAN: Yeah, but that's not the half of it. Think what's involved in the merger. You got a bad bank, full up with toxic assets, about to go under, and you merge it with another bank where all the same problems haven't come to light yet. You haven't solved anything. I mean, you palm Merril and Countrywide off on Bank of America, Wachovia off on Wells Fargo, Bear Sterns and Washington Mutual off on JP Morgan, you just made yourself a ticking time bomb. There are only four commercial banks left at the top. You're running out of places to bury the crap, if you know what I mean.

ME: You seem to have a pretty good handle on this for a dog.

BEAN: Well it's not exactly rocket science.

ME: A lot of people find this all very complicated.

BEAN: That's because they don't know how to think like dogs. Look at it like this. Suppose you had a really bad pit bull. He's aggressive, unmanageable, and anti-social. He's already done serious injury to a lot of innocent bystanders. What do you do with a dog like that? Do you neuter him? Rehabilitate him? Put him down? ...Or do you breed him to a bigger, stronger dog?  

Conversations with Bean: Sorting the Bitches

We've had our greyhound, Bean, for a year now. Every day he grows in wisdom and grace. He is a good dog, eager to please and eager to learn. We have begun to engage one another in conversation with some frequency. He seems to enjoy our little talks, and I find, as his powers of observation grow, so do I. Here is one such exchange.

BEAN: Have you ever tried to sort out the neighbor's bitches?

ME: We call them women.

BEAN: I know you do, usually, but I think your neighbor's women are probably bitches.

ME: What makes you say that?

BEAN: Well, for one thing, he calls them bitches when he is talking to the friends that he calls dogs. You know the ones I mean. They drive cars with big shiny rims that I like to pee on when no one is looking. None of these dog friends ever talk about women...only bitches. They stand around smoking the cigarettes, looking at their cars, and talking about bitches. Then they throw their cigarettes on the ground, and drive away in a pack. I like these guys. I think they all would like to be dogs. I think that shows good taste even though they all have to use their forepaws to hold up their pants.

ME: You may have a point.

BEAN: Anyway, have you been able to sort them out, the bitches I mean. Because I don't understand them. They confuse me.

ME: Well women can be like th­at sometimes. Aren't you glad you live over here where it's easier to figure out.

BEAN: I do like it over here. Everybody over here knows their place. It's me, then you, then Sandy, then Mommy. Mommy's not so good when you're not here. Sometimes she forgets her place, but since you're here almost all the time, it hasn't been much of a problem.

ME: One of the benefits of me not having a job I suppose.

BEAN: What is job?

ME: A job is where you go someplace else and do stuff that somebody else tells you to do.

BEAN: Why would you do that?

ME: Well every couple of weeks they give you treats for doing it.

BEAN: Is it the good treats? The chewy ones that taste like the stuff the cats leave in the sand box?

ME: No, not really. I guess you would say that the job treats are not that good.

BEAN: I don't think I would like this job then. We should talk more about this later. Right now I want to finish sorting out the bitches.

ME: Okay. Tell me what it is that confuses you, and I will try to help you sort it out.

BEAN: Well the neighbor has the two bitches, just like you, only they both walk around on their hind legs like Mommy instead of on all four legs like Sandy, so it's harder to figure out who is alpha. It would be good to see them together. If I could see how they interact when they are together, I would know how they rank in the pack. They are never together though. Sometimes the skinny one with the face like a doberman with worms is there, and sometimes the bouncy one with the pictures on her legs is there, but they are never there at the same time. I can't figure out how they arrange to never be there at the same time. It is a mystery.

ME: Well, Bean, I have to say that I have noticed the same thing.

BEAN: It is almost like magic. The skinny one will be there for three or four weeks, and then one day she will get in the round car and drive away, and then five minutes later the bouncy bitch will come up the driveway in her square car and she will stay for a week. Then, as soon as the bouncy one leaves the other bitch comes back. They don't miss each other by much, but they always miss. I think that maybe these bitches cannot get along with each other like Mommy and Sandy, so the neighbor has to keep them apart. I don't know how he does it though.

ME: I'm not sure how he does it either, my friend, but I think maybe it has something to do with his cell phone.

BEAN: What is cell phone?

ME: A cell phone is that little box that he holds up to his ear when he is standing in his driveway and it seems as though he is talking to himself. He is actually talking into the cell phone, and someone someplace else can hear what he is saying and can talk back to him.

BEAN: I have seen him do that often. It is a relief to know that he is not talking to himself. I was beginning to worry about him. I thought that maybe not knowing when his bitches were coming and going was making him a little mad.

ME: I can see where you might think that.

BEAN: That still doesn't sort out his bitches though. Why do you think they behave in this strange manner?

ME: Well here is what I think, but I am only guessing. I would ask him, but in addition to the cell phone and the car with the big rims he also has some guns, so I don't want to sniff around in his business until he lets me know that it is okay, if you know what I mean. I think the bitch that looks like a doberman with worms is the wife bitch, and the one that bounces is the girlfriend bitch, and that the neighbor uses his cell phone to manage his bitch's comings and goings because if they are in the same place together they will tear each other to bits.

BEAN: Why doesn't he just tell them to behave?

ME: Well the thing about wives and girlfriends is that they do not really behave like proper bitches, at least not when they are aware of one another. Wife and girlfriend bitches are more like cats. They are very difficult to manage.

BEAN: If not impossible. Thank you. That really clears things up.

ME: You are welcome.

BEAN: Do you think that I could have one of these cell phones? I would like to be able to manage Mommy better when you are gone. It seems like a cell phone could be very useful in this regard since the neighbor is able to use his to make what seems like magic.

ME: Well first I think you need to understand that having a cell phone is a lot like chasing your tail. It seems like a good idea until you catch it. When you have a cell phone you can tell people what to do, sure, but you also have to listen to them when they talk to you.

BEAN: Do you mean that Mommy would be talking into the cell phone from someplace else, and I would have to listen to her?

ME: Exactly.

BEAN: Well...never mind then.

Privacy Issues

First, let me apologize for the low light level of this video. If we'd had any idea we were going to get something worth sharing out of this little venture, we would have left the lights on. We set up the laptop with a webcam to record what our hounds were doing while we were out. We did this because we worry about the new hound, Bean, getting into some mischief now that we are letting him roam free instead of putting him in his crate. When we got home we discovered that the video had stopped. We had to watch to the end to see what happened.

Turn your sound up so you can hear the snuffling and the key clicks. I love this dog.

Somehow Bean discovered the key to toggle the record function off. Hell, I don't even know where that is. I use the mouse. Now I have to believe that the dog is a technical genius - at least by canine standards. Guess we'll have to put the keyboard up higher next time, out of his reach...or not.

Maybe I should just respect his privacy issues.

Naming the New Dog Blues

der Beanerschnitzel

The Bloggess has a very funny post up about a new kitten they just got named Bob Barker...or Anderson Cooper...or Pterodactyl. I'm not quite sure which at this point because the cat's name seems to be in a state of flux, and understandably so, as they are letting the cat have some say in the matter.

I totally understand how this works as we also had some difficulty coming up with an appropriate name for our new dog, Bean, although after two months time Bean's name is mostly stabilized. Bean is a 5-year-old greyhound that just came off the track. When we got him his name was Blue, and therein lies the story.

Blue was supposed to be a blue fawn in color. He's registered that way. I've always wanted a blue fawn hound. Blue fawn is an unusual and striking color. In my mind anyone who has ever seen a blue fawn hound forever after covets a blue fawn hound. Blue fawn is a designer color—opulent, velveteen, subtle. It is comprised of fawn hair shafts tipped with gray. Gray greyhounds are called blue. Blue greyhounds are rare. Blue fawn greyhounds are rarer still. On balance the color of blue fawn is taupe, but there is an almost iridescent quality to it. It changes with the background and the lighting. It is silvery or bronze according to the necessity of its surroundings. It is what it needs to be. It is magical. It goes with everything.

Going with everything is a useful quality in a greyhound's coat. An adopted greyhound it is going to spend a great deal of the rest of its life curled up on your furniture in iconic repose. Once you realize that the hound has become part of your décor, you are going to have to work it into your color scheme. There are only two possible ways to do this: change the color of your dog or change the color of your rooms.

Notwithstanding the existence of neon hued poodles, you cannot change the color of a greyhound. Greyhounds are too naturally regal to tolerate this kind of foolishness. That means you are going to have to paint your walls, replace your carpeting, and buy new furniture. That means, once you have a hound, you are limited to a design palette that matches your dog. What a happy circumstance then to be blessed with a dog that goes with everything. It is for this reason that whenever a blue fawn hound comes available for adoption, it is snapped up within minutes by people in the know. This is what was supposed to happen to us.

We were in the know. We were first to find out that a blue fawn hound was coming off the track. We weren't in a very good position to take on another dog. We already had a sweet little brindle girl in our tiny house, and I was still unemployed. On the other hand we might never get another chance at a blue fawn. Most people have never even seen a blue fawn hound. We were getting first crack at taking one home. We decided to go have a look.

We took the brindle to meet the blue. She would have the final vote. If she didn't like him, he'd just have to go elsewhere. If she did, well that would just ice the cake. I already knew how it was going to go for me. I'm a sucker for greyhounds. Besides the brindle we've had for 8 years now, we've tried to foster two other greyhounds. Fostering is taking care of them in your home while the agency tries to place them in a permanent home.

I say we tried to foster because I didn't get either dog all the way home before I decided we were going to adopt them ourselves. They were just that charming. So fostering didn't work out so well for me. I needed a deeper commitment, so I made one. I figured the same thing was going to happen with Blue. Once I saw him, I was going to want to keep him. But I was really only going to look because he was a blue fawn. I may be a sucker for greyhounds, but I am a slave to fashion.

When we got to the kennel, the director came running out to meet us as we were getting out of the car.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “You're going to hate me.”

I didn't really think so at that point, but I've learned over the years never to underestimate people's capacity to piss me off.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“He's not a blue fawn.”

“What is he then?”

“Fawn. Plain old fawn.”

“How did that happen?”

“I don't know. All his paperwork, all the way back to his initial registration, says he's a blue fawn. He's not though. There's not a blue hair on him.”

“It must be the wrong dog then,” I ventured.

“No. I checked his tattoos. He's Blue, but he's not blue.”

I was thinking just then that I might be a little blue. I'd just driven two hours on the promise that I could have a blue fawn dog. I couldn't. However it came about, the promise was a sham—a trap to suck me in and dash my hopes. This was all beginning to sound familiar. It was beginning to sound just like the rest of my life. Expect one thing...get less. I knew the drill. I was going to have to figure out how to settle for what I actually had coming to me. I know how to do this. It's one of the things that makes me too wonderful to deserve the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.'

They had some other dogs we could look at. I tried several. There was a big black and white spotted boy that looked like a holstein. He was missing half his tail, and he pulled on his leash like an ox. I didn't need that. We had a labrador/chow mix once that pulled on his leash. He pulled my wife's shoulder out of joint. I had to twist her arm back into its socket. I learned two things doing that. One, I can do a lot of disagreeable stuff if I really have to, and two, orthopedics can be really disagreeable.

There was another fawn boy, besides Blue, and a dark brindle girl. I considered the girl for a while. She was a pretty little thing, but she also was a little churlish to my taste. I'm the designated churl in our family. I don't need any help, and I don't need any competition. The fawn boy, the one who was neither blue nor Blue, was skittish and slovenly. I knew he would clean up, but I really didn't want a timid, fearful dog. You just never know what to expect from them, and I don't have the patience or the expertise to rehabilitate one.

the very cool scar with stitch tracks!

The best of the lot then turned out to be Blue...even though he wasn't blue. He was a little ratty looking too, and he was sporting a fresh 6 inch scar on his left flank. The stitch marks were still raw and pink. I was concerned that he might have been in a fight, but it turned out that he had torn his side on a fence at the track compound.

Greyhounds are notoriously thin-skinned. It is unusual to get one off the track that doesn't have scars or other signs of a strenuous and hazardous existence. Blue's scar was an impressive one in scale and shape. It gave him an air of danger and mystery, when in fact it was born of sheer clumsiness. It was kind of like the eye patch on that guy in the old Hathaway shirt commercials. Blue might have been a pirate in a former existence. His disposition was friendly and genteel, but the scar made him look a little dangerous. I liked him. Our brindle seemed to like him too, and that clinched the deal for me. We took Blue home.

We started thinking of new names for Blue on the way home. He'd been called Blue for five years, but near as I could tell he had never actually been blue except on paper. The obvious misnomer did not sit well with me. There was no way I was going to call a golden dog blue. The very notion offended me.

We came up with a few notable names including Old Yeller and Scarface, but neither of those was very satisfying. Old Yeller ended up sadly, and Scarface was just wrong on several levels. I thought of Schweppes, and kind of liked it, before I realized that the Schweppes tonic guy was not the guy with the eye patch. He may have had a pirate kind of look and feel, but schweppervescence is not the equal of an eye patch when it comes to commanding admiration.

Hathaway would have made a classy name, but it may have been too classy. You can't shorten Hathaway up very well, and you certainly can't call a dog by a three syllable name when you are trying to get him to stop eating your shoes or the TV remote. That's when you need a short, distinctive name that gets his attention without making him feel like he is more distinguished and better looking than you are—no matter how much he may in fact be. No, Hathaway wouldn't do either. (Besides I didn't remember that the eye patch guy was from Hathaway until I just Googled it 10 minutes ago.)

Nothing else really tripped my trigger. I was going over stuff to say about the dog in my mind, hoping that something about him would suggest a name. That's when I was suddenly overwhelmed with a foul odor from the back of the car. A green cloud of noxious gas settled over my ruminations. I knew it couldn't be our brindle because I had never fed her road kill or swamp sludge. That's when it came to me.

“How about Beano?” I asked my wife.

“Beano? What's that got to do with anything?”

“Well, we drove down there to see a blue dog. When we saw him, we looked all over his hide and hair very carefully, and saw that there be no blue.”

“That's it,” she said. “You're going to make his name a bad pun with bad grammar?”

“You have a problem with that?”

“I have a problem with Beano. It sounds like that gas pill.”

“I know. Isn't that great?”

We started out calling him Beno, and spelling it B-E instead of B-E-A, but we were always thinking of B-E-A, so we changed the spelling to what everyone was thinking anyway, and then we shortened it to just Bean because there's so much more that you can do with Bean in terms of derivative endearments, and so far that's stuck on him pretty well. He seems to like it, and so does everyone else. Bean is a good name for a dog. It's one you don't hear very often—ever in my case—but it seems to roll off the tongue and convey a sense of casual conviviality that matches up well with our non-blue dog.

Now that we are settled on Bean for a name, we have started to expand on the theme of it. We call him Bean and Beano mostly, but also Beanie, Beanie Baby, Beanie Weenie, Mr. Bean, Beaner, and my personal favorite, der Beanerschnitzel, all interchangeably and as circumstances warrant. He answers to them all because, well, he's not blue. He's just bubbling over with schweppervescence.