Stephen King wrote it...

Now reading another novel--Doctor Sleep--by Stephen King.

Hard to make sense of it over the first 108 pages (as far as I've gotten), but I can tell you the story harkens back to King's earlier masterpiece--The Shining (about an old haunted hotel, the Overlook, in Colorado).

Never knew until I read the preface that FEAR is an acronym for: Fuck Everything And Run

Oh well.

Other memorable lines:

1. "All we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." (Quoted by King from the writings, I believe, of William James)

2. "You better stay somewhere soon, or you won't be able to stay anywhere."

3. "Take me to the movies... Pay my way and buy me popcorn. The dark makes me amorous."

4. "You don't want to date, do you?" (Great pickup line!)

And my favorite:

5. "You take yourself with you wherever you go."

Translation (my opinion): It really doesn't matter where you run off to. Or who you might escape with. You can't get away from yourself.

Dogs--God's chosen animals

Can't resist commenting on two stories I recently read about dogs.

(Found them both on CNN.COM)

One was about cancer-sniffing canines. That's right. Scientists are finding that dogs can detect cancer better than some kinds of high-tech machines.

More research, as they always say, needs to be done. But the day may come when dogs will be used to smell you for cancerous tumors or moles.

Makes sense to me. After all, dogs have a sense of smell hundreds (thousands?) of times more keen than ours.

Second piece I noticed about dogs was from Istanbul, Turkey. Hundreds of dogs (many of them golden retrievers) are roaming the streets there. Once they were puppies and had good homes. But now, bigger and not as cute, their owners have left them to fend for themselves in Istanbul.

They don't have a chance making it on their own because they're so used to being taken care of. As one of the women in the story noted, "All a Golden wants is food, love and affection."

Many of the dogs, thankfully, are being adopted by an agency in Atlanta, Ga., which is helping them find good homes.

Excellent program!

I love dogs. Some dogs are better than some humans. Hate that so many of our four-legged friends are being abandoned in Turkey.

Shame on their Istanbul owners!