Me, I walk along and feel quietly defensive, a recluse in the Land of We. That's quite the loaded word, 'we.'

Before you get a dog, you can't quite imagine what living with one might be like; afterward, you can't imagine living any other way.

Surely, it's one of terrorism's intended effects, to literally stun our morale, to blow up strength and will along with buildings, and the reaction is hard to counter.

I'd rather you walk with the bases loaded.

The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the pet at whim. There is a lack of self-consciousness and a fluidity to it that is absent from most human relationships. If someone acted that way to you, you'd feel claustrophobic pretty quickly. It's a boundary violation.

'Realistic' is a loaded word for me. Anyone who uses the word 'realistic' is all bad.