The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

I dusted off this book, which has been on my shelves now for a decade. I knew it was an acclaimed book because I had purchased a hardback copy and I hadn’t given it to the book sales at the library in one of my periodic cleanouts. On the other hand, I couldn’t remember the story and the flyleaf was folded about 100 pages into the book, a sure sign that I had given up on it, but I couldn’t remember why.
It was being recommended by someone in our book reader’s group as their favorite of all time. Surely it was worth a second go. And there’s a hint at the reason I tried it in the first place. Having lived, married, and raised a family in England for a decade, I was now, upon return to the USA, a sucker for any literature by a British author. This includes Canadians. The expression, “a second go” is an English one; and having just read the book, these sorts of expressions creep back into my language use.
So, why did I give up on the book on the first go-around? Simply put, it appeared to be a “bodice-ripper,” aka Chick-Lit. This was a fun-filled fantasy for the author, and of interest to other women through the elaborately detailed descriptions of playfully romantic scenes with generic stylized men. 99% of all character development was of the women; leaving a paltry 1% to the men. The women think, plan, scheme, and emote; the men just act, and react.
Vive la différence! I don’t expect women to like sports or war stories. I enjoyed Laura Hillenbrand’s recent, “Unbroken,” which was strictly a male adventure; no love story, just family and camaraderie. From a craftsmanship point of view, Atwood gets full credits for plot-weaving and creativity. She is an excellent writer. She has done a good job of disguising the political nature of her writings; thus this book does not come off as a women’s lib treatise. The recommendation to take a look was accompanied by a disavowal of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Along with my “bodice-ripper” categorization for “Assassin,” goes a suggestion of a rerun of “The Story of O” wherein “The Handmaid;” is driven away at the end by strange men in a limo for purposes of (?). Personally I prefer Anne Rice for this sort of erotica; probably because she gives equal time to male fantasies.

Of Love and Evil by Anne Rice

A new look (for me) at Anne Rice. I became a devotee of Anne Rice back in the eighties?, ninties? When she was the queen of porn. There has never such good writing since the “Story of O” in the sixties. I gave up on her when she switched to evil. Vampires aren’t my thig – I tried a few of her Lestat vampire novels, but no, not my thing.
I heard that she had “found God,” and was writing about angels. That was at least a decade ago. I tried one of her “new” works but found them struggling for clarity, in her own mind and her writing. It’s only recently that I picked up a piece of her current writing. It’s not easy to write about spirituality. Or better said, it’s very easy to write about spirituality, but very difficult to be understood.
She has achieved the clarity of a piano tuner’s fork; better yet, the clarity of a paino tuner’s ear, when it comes to capturing spiritual feelings. I picked up Rice’s book along with a Forsyth action thriller entitled, “The Cobra”. Forsyth’s “stuff” is created to keep you on the edge of your seat, and, as expected, before I put it down, I was three chapters into it. Rice’s book I read slowly, a chapter at a time. In was intriguing, and by the end of a three day weekend, I was six chapters into “Love & Evil”; and hadn’t returned to Forsyth. Anne Rice was presenting a compelling story with clarity and conviction.

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Was this a classical 20th century American immigrant tale ?.? It was a multi-generational German memoir spanning father and son during the half-century in the middle of the 20th; 1925-1975.
When we enter the twenty-second century, will there be stories about American immigrant Mexicans, Croats, Viet-Nam-ese, Turks, Afghans, Iraqis, Tunisians, Koreans, and Serbs?.? I think not. The assimilation era has been replaced by multi-culturalism. If told, their stories will be in their native tongue. Britain and France have fought a losing battle on this issue for decades. This means no more dumb Pollack jokes (including Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns). Also there will be no more gangster Italians, penny-pinching Jews, lascivious Frenchmen, drunken Irishmen, and bland, sexless Englishmen. Comedy, and English Lit will never be the same.
The book is well written, the character development is outstanding; motivation, superb. The book provides an interesting and rare point of view on American 20th century history. It was especially poignant to me because I minored in German language in college, spent two years in Heidelberg, all expenses paid by Uncle Sam, and married, almost fifty years ago, a Schwartzwalder woman who is still one of my best friends.

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

The latest fad amongst writers seems to be experimenting with point(s) of view. For a pulp fiction reader like myself, this tosses a monkey wrench into what should be a calming evening with a whodoneit book. I just finished a Sue Grafton detective mystery {Z {finally}} where she used at least three and maybe four characters as the focus(es) of her first person writing. It used to be that the device was simply alternating chapters, but that was too easy, readers could skip every other chapter and finish the book in half the time. I just finished a good book, “A Call From Jersey,” by P.F. Kluge, where he switched points of view, mid-paragraph, between father and son.
My point is that things have gotten out of hand with POV and we’re entering the twilight zone of artsy Swedish films that pride themselves on keeping their viewers mystified as to what is really happening and why.
We had a Brown Bag book five or six years ago, Hadden’s “a curious incident … ..” (see reverse) that used an autistic’s (Christopher’s) POV. Good book – well done. If this month’s book was about autism, it was a poor reworking of well-trod ground. But that’s an “If.” Maybe it’s just about a “normal” guy that goes bezerk finding his wife with another man. But I don’t buy it. I’m a normal guy and I’ve even been cuckholded by a wife and neighbor; but I didn’t spend four years in a loony bin. It appears that he was a cool guy before the incident, so it’s hard to believe this was a latent (and severe) anger management problem. Depression can be serious, but these days they give you some pills and you’re sort of normal. This guy’s been seriously wacked out for four years; and just saying the guy was screwy doesn’t make it an interesting story.
So there is where I gave up – it’s not an interesting story. I don’t really understand why this guy is so wacky, and thus I have no sympathy for him or his new neighbor girlfriend who appears to have similar, but also undefined, problems. Maybe if the author had cut out, say, three of the football games, and used the space to develop the character before the incident, the reader might be able to root for him.
No sympathy for the protagonist was developed. I didn’t learn anything (that is sometimes a mitigating factor.) To cap it off, it wasn’t well written: simplistic and jumpy, bad transitions; not even any steamy sex with the babe next door.
BORING. !.!

Give Me Your Heart by Joyce Carol Oates

She’s done it again. She’s written ten short, stories. They are new and dark, black actually, all about young women, mother-daughter relationships, and sex.
My favorite was “Strip Poker,” a cautionary tale for young men reminiscent of Glen Close’s “Fatal Attraction.” Oates masterfully paints a picture of a 15 year old girl, fighting with her mother, and getting way in over her head with three 22-year old guys. They teach her the rules of poker and when she loses all her money, they take her bathing suit top. Then comes the reversal after she sulks in the bathroom for an hour. She wants to change the game to Truth or Dare, and she wants to start off by telling the guys a true story. Her father just got out of State prison (4 years for manslaughter;) cause, when she was 11, some pervert was attacking her in a women’s bathroom and Daddy came to save her and beat the man to death with his bare fists.
Two other stories, “Nowhere” and “”Bleeed” are variations on the above theme. It’s fascinating (and almost like a master class in writing) to read and comparare these three stories. The essences are the same. You can almost watch her mind working with these basic ingredients, creating different stories.
“Split Brain” is another of these writing exercises. The protagonist is the active, racing mind of a woman who has decided to return home, mid-day; and mentally develops different detailed scenarios as to how things will go.
Of course there are men in many of these stories: loutish men, dumb men, men in prison for sinful crimes: greed, lust, coveting, and other acts of stupidity. Oates is not too sympathetic with men.
Oates is a prolific, master craftsperson at writing. Her characterizations are superb, especially their states of mind.

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On another note
Writing a biography for a horse was more of a fictional, suspenseful story-telling, like a novel. Seabiscuit was a huge success. How could she top this? Well, she chose not to compete with her own success and didn’t cover a horse or any other animal. Instead, she wrote a lengthy biography, fully supported by the family, of Louis Zamperini.
Should this name have been famous? -- well-known for his potential in the 1936 Olympics? -- or as a survivor of Japanese Death camps in WW-II.?.? Hillenbrand creates another spell-binding tale with Zamperini’s life. She’s a good writer. Maybe she spun a bit of golden thread from straw, but it’s worth giving the book a look.
Why is it that WW-II continues to intrigue us so; parts of it were 75 years ago?.? This is akin to me, having grown up to stories of the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71). And why is it that so little is known about track and field (the Olympics) prior to Roger Bannister cracking the 4-minute mile?.? Did we just have to wait for all these old guys to die off?.?

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Haddon

For me, Christopher’s way of thinking is natural, obvious, and the only logical way to view the world.
I took a scientific and mathematical training path all through school and in my career work. I look at the physical aspects of the world through the lens of the laws of science, and I see the art and beauty of the world through mathematics.
I could easily and comfortably be just like him, except his behavior patterns have been “socialized” out of me from birth. His is the natural way to look at life.
Books like this give one pause to stop and wonder about life. Maybe that “retard” you’re either feeling sorry for or trying to trip is the next Stephen Hawking, world’s greatest genius in Cosmology. Christopher and Hawking have different problems at the base of their “uniqueness” from other people. What they do have in common, though, is focus. It does seem that people who are lacking in some areas tend to focus their unused energy in other areas. For Hawking and Christopher, the areas are mathematics and science.
I don’t want to tread into the more religious aspects of life & death, but one lesson to be appreciated from this cute short story is that all life is precious. No life is beyond exclusion from respect and consideration and everyone needs to be given as many chances as possible to succeed in their chosen areas. How do we know who will be the next Stephen Hawking?
The other lesson is that there is always hope for salvation from one’s demons, but it may take a lifetime, as it will for the father who has murdered an innocent dog and lied about a child’s mother, all caused by uncontrolled anger and jealous passion
I am also reminded of the movie, “Liar, Liar,” Jim Carrey, 1997, where Fletcher Reede must speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It results in uncomfortable situations like in our book, when the police sergeant wants Christopher to say that he didn’t mean to hit the policeman, but he can’t say that because he did intend to hit him and he can’t lie.
Part of the transition from childhood to adulthood is the graying of the spaces between truths and lies. It seems that full adulthood represents the ability to never quite tell the truth. The more respected and powerful the position: politician, media person, corporate president, even President Of The United States; the higher they go, the more these people have been seduced by the dark side of the force. It is a sad commentary that concomitant with the lengthening noses of those on top, is the population’s willingness to accept the lies.
The truth is often a bitter pill to swallow, but we’re better off to take it when the doctor orders.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

By sheer coincidence, I read two 400-page books this past month; both written by and about young women; and both focussed around antiquarian book shops. The owners of the book shops were older men – one the young woman’s father; the other, eventually, a lover. This is where all similarities ended; other than this; both book jackets claimed these novels compared with Jane Eyre {they didn’t}.
The Thirteenth Tale is written by Diane Setterfield, an English “ex-academic”, whose novel maintains focus throughout on a single well-woven plotline; and while not great writing, it is a worthwhile, entertaining read. The other book is The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman. She is writing for awards and movie rights. A dozen thin, hackneyed plot lines, trying to utilize every touch-stone from a decade ago, climaxing with 9/11, and followed by a cleanup so that all who remain, live happily ever after.
Cookbook’s best sub-plot is the cookbook research. Other subplots are Berkeley tree-huggers; pre-2000 computer startups, Silicon Chardonnay vs. Boston Burgundy; 18th century philosophy {Hume and Hegel}; Jewish mysticism and the Holocaust; 9/11; and family genealogy. It was paella, a smorgasbord of something for everyone. These eight sub-plots and half a dozen families, sort of like Dickens, are all integrated by the end of the book.
Tale is a more classical approach to plot development, a series of stories, unraveling chronologically, keeping clear of sub-plot or character development that is off the main thread. It is thus that the characterizations are deeper; causing the reader to think and become involved, even invested, with the story. We Americans root for English Margaret, while chastising Vegan Jess for being flippant. Cookbook is more like reading a magazine article – read about a character or situation – that’s nice – then on to the next page and an unrelated story; it’s like Chinese food, you’re hungry an hour later.
Cookbook is definitely American; not just the author’s nationality, but her focus on reality show hedonism: food, wine, women, & song – reminds me of Millionaire Matchmaker. No futzing around with book club notes for Allegra; she is going for the glitzy Hollywood, jet-set production with no moral values – maybe just “money can buy happiness.” Tale dwells on the how and why of people, from various walks of life. There is history and continuity as only an English author can provide. The reader is sufficiently informed, as the story develops, to make judgments about the people’s lives. There is value to people and their lives.
Both books investigate old family threads, lost and/or forgotten. How did the progenitors of their motley crew get together all those years ago? Why did they hook up? What secrets did they hide from their families, at least until the authors came along? Suspension of disbelief is everything in a fictional novel. Tale has created such a convincing web of cross-linked stories that I kept wanting to check out the novel’s veracity on the internet, Googling Angelfield. The lines of Setterfield’s web are sheer, but strong, just like a spider’s. Cookbook, however, was obviously overly contrived from the beginning; their connections made with wet paper maché. The protagonist in each novel is their author’s respective research detective; Tale’s Margaret much better at it than last month’s Aimée; Cookbook’s Jess was just your average American, Valley girl airhead.

Murder in the Rue de Paradis by Cara Black

Last book club selection of 2010 or worst of 2010.? It’s a hard decision and I think, to play it safe, I’d award this book both prizes, last and worst.
I do grant that she’s a pretty young girl, or do I mean a pretty, young girl.? Her book cover picture seems a bit out of date for a woman in her fifties. Meow, Peter. Anyway, we should support our local Bay Area talent. So, on the good side, I liked the concept of a series set in Paris. A female detective is wandering a bit from the genre expectations, but other writers have plowed this ground before.
Now maybe she tried writing travel guides to Paris, or maybe she just liked to research her travels to France thoroughly, and maybe she was looking for a way to cover the expenses by writing a book. She’s made it. They sell. She’s assured a lifetime income stream from this venture and brought the money back to the Bay Area. More power to her.
However, I feel that her writing style is unreadable. One of her traits is to constantly add extraneous descriptive information, digressing from the plot advancement. We don’t need to know that her flat’s landing is black and white tile, nor that her bedroom has parquet flooring. Sometimes this sort of information is interesting in coloring a scene, putting the reader there. However mysteries tend to drop these sorts of hints in building a plot.
Another major flaw is Aimée herself.! American or French.? Can you imagine Sam Spade running around San Francisco; thinking historical, tour guide thoughts at every passing building, street, and store.? Of course not, R.Q. People who live in a city, don’t think about it the way Cara portrays Aimée. At best it is misplaced tour book verbiage; at worst it is blatant word count fluffing.
While we’re on Aimée, I never developed any feeling for her. This was a woman who had a quickie one-night stand with an inappropriate ex-lover, agreed to marry him ???; and was so moved by ?something?, that she spent the rest of the book chasing his killer. On the good side, she got beat up a lot – hard-boiled detectives always get beat up. But she was mousy in her interactions with the good guys and the bad guys – we expect hard, sassy retorts from our detectives, just asking for another slug.
The story was vapid as far as being a mystery novel. Actually the complications might have been handled well by someone like John LeCarré, but it was far beyond Cara Black’s capabilities. The side characters, even Yves, were only superficially developed – interrelationships not there at all. As I have implied already, I agree with Rouffillac, she should have stayed home, out of trouble. Stay at home and see a shrink – back off of the casual sex – quit playing Mata Hari -- and go back to San Francisco.

spook country by William Gibson

I recently read Gibson’s 2010 Zero History and was surprised at the similarity between jacket covers across a three year patch - down economy? -- saving a few bucks? Someone got $50,000 for the artwork change, but not $500,000.
Now, the things that Gibson is famous for, is apprising us, the reader, about the trendiest cultural, marketing, and technological paths that technophiles like me are investigating.
Locative art is one of his ideas which, so far, haven’t materialized; most of his ideas have. Picture yourself walking down a Safeway aisle, Blue-Ray earpiece positioned, but idle; then “Hey there Jim, I see you’ve slowed down passing the Pet food. We’ve got a special on Kitty Litter which might be perfect for your new six-week old kitten.” Why not use your receiver, if no call is coming in, to let you know, for your convenience of course, about our local store savings available. We heard of the 6-week cat from: the SPCA, local vet, your purchasing habits at: PetCo and Safeway. That’s locative marketing. Picture you again, this time with a “heads-up” screen. You’re riding shotgun in the family car, looking for an afternoon’s entertainment. Entering San Jose, California, you watch fascinating images of Egyptian artifacts and mummies at the Rosicrucian Museum; then highlights of the Sharks ice hockey team. But it’s Water World that drags the kids into cheers of, “Yes, yes, that’s where we want to go.” As we pass the town’s center, there are virtual marble monuments to the Silicon Valley greats, Jobs, Packard, etc. with laudatory explanations of their contributions.
Listening technology – the hottest topic of the Bush (2) Administration. I am constantly, to no avail, referencing back to the movie, “Enemy of the State,”.1998 with Will Smith and Gene Hackman. It’s getting on to be fifteen years old now and yet all the techno-devices they talked about, and showed, in this movie, were what we supposedly feared were being enabled by the Patriot Act in the Bush era, 5-10 years after the movie: all calls being listened to; satellite pictures of everyone doing anything; and the Brits, they have the ubiquitous CCTV cameras, a million of them all over England, matching faces to computer profiles on every citizen.
I wrote a short story in the early 2000’s projecting what President Bush was doing at the time with “border guards.” The Patriot Act took half a dozen small quasi-police type units: immigration, border patrol, DEA, etc and amalgamated them into a single large unit under Homeland Security, nicknamed “ICE” Immigration & Customs Enforcement. The new ICE unit was unified with a: single physical uniform; enforcement teeth – armed & with powers of arrest and/or detention; loyalty to the executive branch (Seig Heil); and a common mission – homeland security. During the Bush administration, there was a scary edge to this group, which was growing year by year – estimated at 300-400,000 when I was following them in 2005/6/7. The numbers owned up to recently have been dramatically reduced – their web site says 20,000, but that doesn’t marry up with a recent 10,000 on the Mexican Border alone. These are storm troopers – a federal police force, which is unconstitutional – we’ve got State’s rights and the National Guard. When Bush’s megalomania was at its peak, he was trying to start up the Space Cadet Force, which would rule outer space (since forgotten{I hope}).
“Enemy of the State” doesn’t draw conclusions, which is why it gets an OK to go. No harm done – we’ve dumbed down the populace enough that no one draws conclusions. If only 1/10 of one percent of computer users encrypt their messages, what percentage of cell phone users encrypt their calls? Try a countable number, maybe less than ten thousand!!! Most criminal users toss them away – one time users. What does this mean !! ?? WiFi(cell) users don’t have to worry about telephone taps anymore. The furor over wire-tapping in the mid 2000s was over a dead technology. A $50 black 64-bit encryption box plugged into a $50 throw-away cell phone provides the security of WWII’s enigma machine.
WHY ?? Security Services, worldwide, have bought in to, nay, encouraged and supported 3G and 4G networks, which are convenient and ubiquitous for normal users, and completely open to computer analysis by:
--- Security people
--- Marketing people, who fun security people
--- Political people, who are funded by marketing people

Dalveston by Nic Pizzolatto

Reader Beware.!! This book is not for those with feint a weak stomach or heart. The jacket uses the words “hard edge.” That doesn’t begin to cover it. This is grizzly and the “good guys” don’t live happily ever after. It reminded me of the Mel Gibson movie, “Payback”, where Porter is a petty thief who comes back after a double-cross and blows away everyone up the chain in the local mob to get the money due him, enduring some grimacing torture along the way.
The story is fast-paced and held my interest, cover to cover in two days. There are no good guys: the female lead is an abused, runaway hooker; our protagonist is a petty, murdering thug. Everyone else up the line is even worse, but somehow, maybe it’s because there’s no one else to grab a hold of, the reader begins to root for these misfits. Crime doesn’t pay, even for this Bonny and Clyde pair of wannabe thieves. They only want $75,000 but they try and take it from a New Orleans mob boss.
This is a great, fast read, 250 pages – simple plot line, for someone who likes violent crime stories. There are no mysteries here, other than how it will turn out in the next scene. The Gulf coast scenery is well-painted, albeit at its dismal worst perspective. The characterizations are vividly done. The author does a good job with the minor bit players in this story, not just the protagonists.
I recommend it. It’s a new book, 2010 publication date, available at the Guerneville Regional Library.

Zero History by William Gibson

This is the latest in a long series of novels that blend together the leading edge of societal trends, technology, and a good mystery plotline. I have been enjoying Gibson’s books for many years, like: Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Idoru, and Pattern Recognition. Of late, he has been focused on marketing trends; in Zero History, it’s the clothing industry. He looks at high fashion: what makes it hot? He explores reverse marketing; keeping things quiet. Once a couture dress is shown, it’s copied within 24 hours and mass produced in China within 72. On the other side of the market, there are 100 million men and women under arms in the world, mostly in similar uniforms -- this is an inflation-proof market where prices are famous for the $400 hammer.
Interesting and sometimes insightful observations, but it’s more than good ideas that draw me to Gibson’s writing. Idoru really hooked me fifteen years ago, because all the action took place in San Francisco, Japan, or New York – very cosmopolitan and right up my alley as a technophile. We all know how suspect photographs are, with the advent of Photoshop. People living right now, tend to self-protectively be in denial about this kind of stuff because no one wants to be in a world where you can’t depend on your senses. He flipped the picture thing into a voice/audio thing, virtual bands. All senses are suspect if any one of them can be doctored/tailored by computer reconfiguration – it’s a scary world – close to insanity. Gibson also introduced the real/virtual mosh for his world, ten years before its existence.
Gibson spends his research time thinking, maybe one step ahead of what computer designers will be secretly doing next. Pattern Recognition continued (2005) with the cosmopolitan flavour that is attractive to me because most of my life has been spent in large cities in foreign climes: London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Jerusalem, and Tokyo. He also doesn’t waste time explaining his rapid-fire, obscure references, at least not right away – he lets them dangle until you’ve had time to Google the phrase and figure out what he meant and how it related. In a uTube-recorded interview available on Amazon, he explains that this is a new facet of writing – faster-paced, abbreviated – let the reader do the research. An example interesting to me was a throw-away line about an IDF-bra. For me, having spent a year in Jerusalem, working for the Israeli Air Force, Ministry of Defense (MOD): Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), I knew exactly what he was talking about. I also looked up dozens of other references and probably missed many others. I like the challenge.
I have a new, only once read, copy of the hard-back for anyone daring enough to try it. I’ll bring it next month, November 2010.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

by Garth (Fido) Stein -- October 2010

“Reverend Cleo, my leader,” “I am on my knees before you!”
“Please rise, Chessie, oh sagacious one.” “You are near the end of your fifth felid ascension, and a counselor whose advice I value.”
“Thank you reverend Cleo.” “You are still new to your ninth ascension, but in your maturity, you shall be the wisest felid in the land.” “What knowledge might I be able to impart to you today?”
“Well, it’s that stupid canid living in the field next to us.” “He’s a part of that nutty cult that has an upside-down, sort of helio-centric, view of the world.” “Those canids went off the evolutionary path thousands upon thousands of lives ago.” “Their souls have atrophied; and rather than developing naturally into revered, higher quality beings like we have, they have regressed into unclean, guilt-ridden canids with no control over their passions.” “They’re really disgusting.” Cleo was becoming excited with this oration.
“Please, my reverend Cleo the ninth,” Chessie again bowed low, “We really can’t do much about those creatures.” “All would agree that the canids have dropped several tiers on the evolutionary tableaux.” “But we have spent scores of thousands of lives evolving the primates into perfect servers.” “Unfortunately, during this same period, the canids have developed a horrid, symbiotic relationship with the primates, and we’re now stuck with the both of them, like fleas.”
The Reverend Cleo smiled and calmed down. “Yes, Chessie, each allows the other to expiate their guilt.” “What a strange thing that guilt is … .. I’m glad we’ve never developed any.” “No, the thing that was bothering me was this rare sense that sometimes seems to develop between the lower species.” “Every now and then, out of the billions, upon billions of pairings, somehow ideas get transferred from one to another, a canid to a primate in this case, and the primates spread the story with their primitive communication tools.” “Maybe one or the other of them, or both, has a flashback to a previous descension; a sort of genomic memory. The primate Jung had a vision of this.” “Or maybe it’s just an errant gene. I’ve heard that every now and then, there’s a positive mutation, and a canid ascends to a felid (!) at only the first level of course.” “The comedy in all this is that this particular canid seems to understand the concept of ascension, but wants to descend backwards to a primate level; and of course, primates don’t believe in progressive lives.”
“OK, mother Cleo,” “I understand your concern now.” “Yes, this does come up every half-life or so.” “We’ve been able to successfully contain any true belief in these stories by making sure the primates laugh at them as children’s stories.” “It actually helps to have the canid espousing some form of primate worship.” “This works like a charm – every time. The primates think these stories are cute.” “No primate has any idea of the true nature of things.” “They’re so self-centered, that they still believe their world, their Gods, their whole universe is centered around them.” “They don’t want to believe anything else.” “Even if there were hints, like Jung fantasized about, they don’t believe in past life memories.” “They cut themselves off from the real world long ago.” “They are very happy, though, with their guilty canids.” “And we love them, just as they are – happy servers.”