My Dog Killed a Snake

Well, the big news today is that Anne Rice has cancelled her membership in the Christian Church. Many people find this to be something of a surprise since she apparently has had a reputation for often being a sanctimonious bitch, but she did say that she “remain[s] committed to Christ as always.” Anne Rice, in case you don’t recall, is the rather well known and financially successful author of “Interview with the Vampire” and other Gothic bloodsucker novels. I have nothing against Gothic bloodsuckers, or even French Third Empire bloodsuckers; I am just amused that it is necessary for someone who writes books about vampires to publically disassociate themselves from the Christian Church. I’m pretty sure that Dracula wasn’t a regular church-goer, although he did sometimes dig up old friends at the church-yard. Anyway, I don’t begrudge anyone their religion, or renouncement thereof, and Ms. Rice did say she had had it with the Church because of its tired, old promotion of 16th century values, but I imagine the Christian religion is considerably more complex than just that, and only crazy women in Texas throw the babies into the bathwater.

Speaking of Dracula, I’m still behind the curve on all this sexy teenage vampire stuff going around. I know there is a very popular show on HBO called True Blood which is sort of the vampire version of Gossip Girl, but I’m too old to stay up that late. Those Twilight Saga movies also seem to be pretty popular, but I haven’t seen them either. I thought Thirty Days of Night was a pretty good vampire movie, and Daybreakers was entertaining, and even Jennifer’s Body had a few interesting scenes, but those movies didn’t have morally conflicted, teenage pretty-boy vampire anti-heroes at the heart(!) of the stories. This is all probably Hollywood’s attempt to find an appropriate metaphor for how the teenage female mind reconciles the conflict between the confusing mix of sniveling cowardice and irrational aggression which comprises the teenage male psyche; or perhaps it is just another financial exploitation of barely legal T&A and high school beefcake. I really prefer stuff like The Lost Boys, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn and Blade, because we know that anybody who has to drink blood to survive is not going to be really nice deep down. Just ask any local cow.

No politics today, unless religion is politics, which many believe, but there is just no topic concerning the governance of this nation, or its interaction with other nations, that won’t piss me off, so I am going to avoid it. My dog did kill a snake the other day. She is a West Highlands Terrier and she weighs all of 17 pounds, and has consistently proven her cowardice in the face of armadillos, but she shows considerably less caution with small lizards. She was a puppy-mill puppy, and I believe that her never having known her father or having had a positive male influence in her developmental weeks has left her emotionally unbalanced. When the black, four-foot long serpent slithered into the yard she observed it cautiously for a few moments and then began stepping on its tail. Rather than attempting any sort of threat display, the snake simply accelerated its progress. My dog apparently took this as a sign of inhospitable haste and grabbed the snake behind the head and shook it repeatedly. This dog could make martinis for James Bond. We thought to attempt to liberate the snake, but we were both happy for the dog and uncertain as to the toxicity of the snake involved, so in the end, we let nature take its course. Apparently there weren’t terriers in the Garden of Eden.