Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

Want a twist on the my-crazy-parent-alcoholic memoir? What about having some colonialists for parents? No, not African missionaries. Colonialists. Rhodesian colonialists that would cheer when a land mine went off because it was either an African rebel or a baboon. What?

I had been meaning to read Alexandra Fuller's memoir for years, and yes, the writing is excellent. 2003 was the tail end of the weird memoir era. You didn't know there was a weird memoir era? Running with Scissors, Liars Club and then A Million Little Pieces kind of ruined things as people were just making stuff up. Hey, every family is crazy enough that you don't need to make stuff up. You just need a good memory and the wherewithal to realize that not all families, say... go through a period where when any member of the family farts, you all have to knock on wood for some reason. The last person to knock was the so-called "loser." (Who started this, I'm not sure.) This game was so popular in my family that for an nine month period all of the artwork on the walls was crooked. (We discovered that the picture frames were often the closest source of wood within reach). I still have no idea why we did this as we all suffered the consequences. 

Fuller does mention farts in this memoir, albeit briefly.  This book wasn't as good as I had hoped, it's a little sad and it covers death, disease and war-like unrest.  Vastly different than my family.  The most traumatic thing that happened in my family is when our beloved parakeet drowned in the upstairs toilet. I'm sure he wanted to take a bath, poor guy.

Even though the title of this book is from a quote...there are a ton of dogs in this book, When the dogs got worms and scraped their butts across the floor they called it "sailing." Drink with a variation of the "dog drinks": Greyhound: 1&1/2 oz. vodka, 3 ounces grapefruit juice, serve over ice, garnish with lime. Salty Dog: Same as above but replace the vodka with gin and put a salt rim on your glass.  Salty Chihuahua: same as the Salty Dog but replace the gin and use tequila.