. . . 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.

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.