Adverb verb pronoun preposition noun conjunction verb article noun noun. (Article adjective noun verb pronoun. Interjection!) Conjunction noun verb article noun pronoun verb preposition pronoun noun preposition proper noun. Adjective noun verb adjective noun? Noun verb adverb adjective, adjective, conjunction adjective, conjunction adjective verb noun—preposition article adjective noun—adjective. Noun verb noun adjective verb adjective conjunction adverb adjective. Verb preposition proper noun, article noun verb adjective noun conjunction...interjection...adjective, adjective noun. Article noun adjective verb proper noun, preposition article noun preposition noun (adjective, adjective article adjective noun). Pronoun verb adverb adjective, adjective verb preposition article adjective noun. Article adjective noun verb adjective pronoun verb!

(You know what I'd like to see? A compendium of literary works broken down into parts of speech. Reducing Hemingway to its linguistic components would be a joke, but can you imagine what it would take to translate something like Ulysses? It would take an army of Noam Chomsky clones who did nothing but analyze language night and day, night and day. Freaky freaky freaky.)

Out of the night, when the full moon is bright
Comes a horseman known as Zorro.
This bold renegade carves a "Z" with his blade:
A "Z" that stands for Zorro.
Zorro...the fox so cunning and free
Zorro...who makes the sign of the "Z."

In her newest book, Isabel Allende has reimagined one of my favorite action heroes as a multicultural character (the son of a Spanish aristocrat and a female Shoshone warrior) who is inspired to greatness by strong women. This is exciting to me, because I've loved the character of Zorro since I was a little girl. I watched the TV series on the Disney channel, and the sight of Guy Williams bringing justice to 19th century California inspired me to scratch the mark of Zorro onto every surface around me. I wanted to sew a dramatic "Z" onto all of my clothing (like the trademark "L" for Laverne), but this fell through because of my lagging attention span and lack of sewing ability.

Guy Williams was great on this show, although I didn't so much understand the presence of Annette Funicello and her incongruous guitar solos. She'd come on, and I'd instantly tune out, because then it was as if my favorite action show had morphed into Laurence Welk, bubbles and all. "This is boring!" I'd shout impatiently. "When's Zorro going to fight the evil, bearded, avaricious landlord who wants to evict his poor tenants? When's he going to play another hilarious prank on Sergeant Garcia?" To which my parents would respond, "Shut up and drink your gin!" Okay, not really. If such a thing had ever occurred, I would have instantly known that my parents had been replaced by giant sea pods, and that my best bet was to scramble out the window and climb into my spaceship for a quick getaway.

I have not cared for any of the recent renditions of Zorro (except for that George Hamilton vehicle, which was hilarious). The 1998 movie was passable, not great. This was not the fault of the cast. Anthony Hopkins was good, but I couldn't help wishing he'd come out in a mask of his own—the kind that he paired so nicely with a straitjacket in an earlier film. Catherine ZJ was competent and engaging, but she was still relegated to the role of the innocent, bosomy daughter, who has beem lied to by her father and must ultimately be saved. (sigh.) Okay, you gave her the ability to swordfight. How feminist of you. And then there was Antonio Banderas, who was by turns passionate and weepy, qualities that the TV Zorro never had and that I didn't appreciate here. This depth and emotionality may enrich our experience of newbie action heroes like Goofus Maximus in Gladiator (or whatever his name was), but duct-taping pathos onto a tradition as engrained in the culture as that of Zorro is like showing Indiana Jones weeping into his whiskey because somebody stepped on his fedora. The Zorro as portrayed on TV was the equivalent of Ricky Nelson: plastic and unflappable, but artful in his own way. And, of course, there was the comfort of predictability—you knew he'd defeat the baddies by the next commercial break, and you knew the choreography would be flawless. The TV producers on this show understood that it wasn't so imperative to reveal the human quality in Zorro, to portray the masked bandit as a sort of brooding Hamlet. And I think this is really the crux of the problem with the most recent Zorro movie. The director tried to turn an action hero into a revenge hero. Revenge heroes are part of a totally different genre (Braveheart, etc), in which depth of character is crucial for ensuring a satisfying catharsis. But with action heroes, what we really want is light-hearted, moderately violent, campy fun. I don't want my action heroes to dabble in issues of ontology unless it's in the most comical, Owen-Wilson sort of way. Just think about it. Do we really need to know about John McClane's troubled childhood? Of course not. We just want to see him kick the crap out of the terrorists in Nakatomi Plaza.

This problematic legacy will be an issue any time the Zorro story is reimagined using any visual medium. But with a book?—yes, I think you could accomplish it, much like Gregory Maguire has been successful reinventing modern mythology and classic fairy tales.

Why, Isabel, why? As if you didn't have enough to boast about, what with Eva Luna, The House of the Spirits, and Portrait in Sepia, now you have to go and do something else brilliant? I'll no doubt read your newest book and love it. And the Z-shaped marks will start appearing around my house again.

I just finished a novel called The Center of Everything (written by Laura Moriarty), about Evelyn, a little girl growing up in central Kansas in the 80s. The book is uncanny, both in its encapuslation of the era—the friendship pins on the shoes, the prevalence of OP sweatshirts, the ubiquity of the "Just Say No" campaign—and its depiction of the experience of childhood. This is a beautiful, authentic story (but not in that weepy, Oprah's book club kind of way). As the narrator says when reflecting on Anne Frank's diary, if it were a story someone made up, then it could have a happy ending. But because it's real life, anything can happen. Even the very worst thing possible.

As a child, I had a few things in common with the narrator, not least of which was my fascination with Ronald Reagan. Evelyn's mother hates Reagan, but Evelyn thinks Reagan seems like a nice man and she wants to meet him. I, too, thought Reagan was great. He had a kind of avuncular quality to him that made you think he would hand you a bowl of peppermints if you ever came to see him. When I was eight years old, I wrote him a letter, telling him all about myself and my new puppy and how I hoped he would be re-elected (Reagan, not the puppy). I am not particularly proud of this, but it does illustrate how malleable children are, how their value judgments are much simpler and based on different criteria. As children, we always endeavor to define ourselves in terms of our parents, whether wishing to draw similarities or distinctions. We either embrace what our parents believe wholesale, or we embrace a diametrically opposed view because we want to show we are smarter than they are. When we get older, of course, we realize that this is a false dilemma falacy. Why choose a black and white view of the world when there are a million gradations of color?

One other odd synchronicity I'd like to point out in this book is the brief mention of the Challenger disaster. Evelyn mentions that one of her teachers was a finalist for the 'teacher in space' program. This is interesting because my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Connors, was actually one of the finalists. This makes me wonder if maybe Laura and I went to the same school and I just don't remember (although I'm sure I would have because she's very, very smart).

The author also spends some time with the tricky social infrastructure of middle school/high school. Evelyn comes from a poor family and is the subject of disdain from the popular group. She is not pretty like the other girls, and her only friends are fellow misfits: a pathological liar and a budding thief. Nevertheless, she wants badly to be popular herself, and hounds her mother for an OP sweatshirt (which her mother claims stands for "over-priced"). I remember this phenomenon, how you did your best to amass the trappings of popularity because you were sure that this would mean the difference between inclusion and exclusion. It's almost as if the fashionable clothes and accessories were magical artifacts. You truly believed that wearing the expensive brand of jeans with the triangular logo would change things for you. Overnight, the popular kids (whom you simultaneously hated and admired) would adore you. They'd carry you over their heads like a hero. You'd sit at the middle of the lunch table in the middle of the cafeteria, and all the popular boys (or girls) would laugh when you told jokes and did hilarious impressions of the gym teacher. But, of course, popularity is too elusive for that. The social patterns and hierarchies in childhood and adolescence are far more entrenched than in the outside world. Grown-up geeks get famous every day (think Trey Parker and Matt Stone), but in school, there is no such thing as social mobility. Who you are on the first day is who you will always be. It's a pretty icky way to live.

Childhood is reputed to be a time of innocence and joy and discovery. Really, it's an ordeal we can't even put words to because we haven't read that Arthur Miller play yet (I'll give you a hint; it's the one about witches). It's a miracle any of us make it out alive. But as the book demonstrates, if we're tenacious and lucky, we'll come out of it all with a little bit of grace. Read The Center of Everything. You'll see yourself in it, even if you never wrote a letter to Ronald Reagan.

There's no question in my mind. Goodnight Moon, the children's book by Margaret Wise Brown (pictures by Clement Hurd) is a socialist manifesto.

You remember this book right? It's the classic children's book, first published in 1947, in which the narrator describes all of the things in the "great green room" and then says goodnight to each of them. There's a little bunny in blue-striped pajamas being tucked into bed. It's adorable, and it is beloved by millions of children throughout the world. It was one of my favorites for many years. Yet, no one has had the vision to perceive its secret agenda until now.

First of all, let's look at the things in the room. You have a red balloon. Doesn't take much imagination to figure what that's all about. From the flag of the USSR to the little red books published by Mao Tse Tung's government, red has been a color directly associated with socialism. Then there's an animal skin rug, and a framed picture of the three bears sitting on chairs. The animal skin is obviously a sign that the effete fat cats of capitalism have been skinned and made inconsequential. As for the three bears, the bear always was a symbol of Russia, am I right? And three bears instead of one? Well, that clearly represents the Russians extending their influence to encompass China and the United States. How do I know it is the United States and not Europe, you ask? If you look closely, one of the bears has its paws crossed in a fashion that can only be described as blatant mimicry of the posture of Harry Truman. Everyone would have recognized this then. It's like if one of the bears had been drawn with one paw inside his jacket.

Then there's the cow jumping over the moon. The farm symbolism and the pile of hay evident in the bottom left corner indicate that the pictured area is an agrarian commune. The moon is turned upward like a sickle. Then there are two little kitten and a pair of mittens. Note that although there are two kittens, they are sharing the mittens. Neither kitten feels it is entitled to sole possession of the pair. There is also a little toy house and a young mouse. The benign coexistence of the kittens and the mouse is intended to demonstrate that all animosities toward other nations and types of people are learned behaviors, not natural ones. In a pure socialist state, the author is trying to tell us, the lion could indeed lay down with the lamb. No person or mouse must be sacrificed for the good of a few wealthy people or mice.

There's also a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush. These things indicate that although resources will be redistributed, people will still be able to eat. And not only that, but they will still be able to enjoy the niceties of life, such as basic hygiene. Finally, in the great green room, there is a quiet old lady who is whispering "hush." The author clearly believes the best way to achieve this new socialist utopia is to let the revolution occur quietly, with as little noise or bloodshed as possible.

At this point, the author says goodnight to all of these things. "Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon. . . . Goodnight stars. Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere." You cannot help but feel that, by saying goodnight, the author is really saying goodbye to the capitalist world she has known. In this goodbye, there is an implied 'hello' to a new age in which socialist ideals rule. What I want to know is: why has no one ever noticed that buried within this sweetly sentimental children's story is a very serious political agenda?

The part of this last section that always struck a chord with me as a child was the "Goodnight nobody, goodnight mush" part. I mean, the bunny just said goodnight to someone who wasn't there. Is this evidence that the athor is leading children into the dark world of nihilism? Of course not, silly. You're reading too much into it.

So check it out. Kinky Friedman is running for governor of Texas.

His campaign motto is "why the hell not?" For those who aren't familiar with him, Kinky Friedman is one of the greatest personalities of our time. Rarely seen without a smirk, a fat cigar, and full-on cowboy garb, Kinky is a somewhat paradoxical character. He writes hilarious mystery novels (with titles like Greenwich Killing Time and Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned) and is the frontman for a country group called "The Texas Jewboys." His platform is the "anti-wussification" of Texas (Kinky is of the opinion that the current governor, Rick Perry, is a prime example of how his home state has become wussified). Kinky has spent time in the Peace Corps. He's best friends with Willie Nelson, and likes to hang out with Presidents Bush and Clinton. He's against political correctness. He's the founder and organizer of Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, a haven for mistreated cats, dogs, and, yes, chickens. He has his own brand of salsa, as well as some serious concerns about the death penalty.

If he were to win, he'd be the first Independent governor of Texas since Sam Houston.

Realistically, his chances may not be great, but he refers to his gubernatorial bid as more of a spiritual run than anything. What he is serious about is pointing out how disappointing the political climate has been year after year, in Texas and elsewhere. He's also annoyed about a political process that alienates voters. If the Kinkster had his way, ordinary people would be running things. He's kind of a populist in that way.

I never thought I'd say this, but I wish I lived in Texas right now so I could vote for him. It's about time someone brought back the stogie. Kinky for Governor!

For those of you who religiously monitor my reading list, you'll note that I've just finished a book called The Stones of Summer, by Dow Mossman. It was published in 1972 to rave reviews, before quickly going out of print. Recently, it was rescued from obscurity by a filmmaker named Mark Moskowitz, whose documentary, Stone Reader, chronicled his quest to find Dow Mossman. Dow seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth, you see, and Stones was his only book. So Mark crosses the country several times over, looking for clues and tracking down Dow's old professors at the Iowa Writers Workshop, all so he can sit down and talk to the author about his book. Although Mark's quest may seem a little bit like stalking—more than a little, at times—I'll tell you now that my own fascination with the book probably rivals his. (Unfortunately, now that Mark's already done it, I can't just go and make a documentary as an excuse to talk to Dow. But whatever.) I loved this book. I savored it from page one all the way to page 581. Yes, it's a long one, but well worth your time.

The book is divided into sections, and it follows Dawes Williams through three periods of his life. The first section shows Dawes as a boy growing up in Iowa. He's extremely bright, and already he's got some strange attitudes about the world. He speaks in analytical, poetic gusts that completely confound everyone but his best friend, with whom he gets in trouble repeatedly. In the second section, he's 18 years old and doing a lot of drinking and driving (it's rural Iowa, and there's not much else to do apparently). At this point, we see Dawes diverging from reality more and more, drifting into crazy and eloquent monologues prompted by nothing more than the innocent comments of friends. The third section finds Dawes in his mid-20s. He's pretty much off the deep end by now, spending his time carousing and getting in fights in Mexico. His best friend writes him letters from Vietnam, the only place where the madness and chaos equal what's occurring in Dawes' brain. In fact, his personal insanity seems to be not so much a pre-existing condition as the result of being infected by the insanity of the world.

In case the madness thing tipped you off. . . yes, there's quite a Hamlet thing going on. In fact, the whole book is one big "To be or not to be" soliloquy. Why are we here? What is the purpose of everything? And Dawes' secondary personality (which takes over in the final section) is named Seriphus Handsaw Dawes Williams, with "handsaw" as a reference to that line from the play, "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw." Shakespeare was also pretty big on death, and this book contains the third best description of dying I've ever read, just after One Hundred Years of Solitude (by Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and Black Water (by Joyce Carol Oates). None of us has a clue whether it's accurate, of course, but watching the mind of Dawes Williams gradually wind down to its inevitable end, you just get a feeling that it's right, that it's got to be exactly like that. (Sorry about the spoiler, but it's not much of a secret once you start reading.)

Now's the part where I tell you that, of everyone I know who has read it, I am the only one who enjoyed this book at all. Most of them didn't make it through the first hundred pages. I was bewitched from the first, and I'm guessing that if it's not like that for you—if you don't love it right away—then you probably won't want to waste your time. The reason I fell into this book's gravitational pull was the author's seemingly endless capacity for imagery. You will never read such evocative language, so deft and slippery that, admittedly, you may have to focus all your energy to know what's going on. It's kind of like Faulkner in that way, except with better punctuation. This is what bogs people down I'd guess. You can't just tear through Stones as if it were any other book. There are no straightforward Hemingway phrases; there are only long-winded disquisitions on existence. So it does require a modicum of patience, but my God is it worth it in the end. Recently, I told a friend that this is one of those books I would want with me if I were stranded on a desert island. You could spend a thousand years meditating on it, just letting yourself get carried away by each image and metaphor, and still have more to think about by the end. These are not the kind of metaphors that you relate to; they're the kind you inhabit and get lost in. And they're not even strictly logical. Like everything else in the book, they're tinged with madness. Here's the first sentence of the book:

"When August came, thick as a dream of falling timbers, Dawes Williams and his mother would pick Simpson up at his office, and then they would all drive west, all evening, the sun before them dying like the insides of a stone melon, split and water, halving with blood."

Dream is right. This is the kind of dream you don't want to wake up from. Highly recommended.

By the way, if anyone else out there has read Stones, let me know. Even if I can't stalk Dow Mossman myself, I'd settle for talking to someone else who's read (and liked!) his book. :)

Whether lazing about beside a glistening lagoon full of mermaids, or just working the burger joint as always, you'll need reading materials to keep the summer ennui from lulling you into a coma. Fight back with these picks from the bottom of my heart and the middle portion of my backpack. (A caveat to those who read while tanning: The suggested readings are so engrossing, you may lose all sense of time. Just remember that when you hear your internal organs begin to sizzle, you should probably turn over.)

What I'm reading this summer:

1. The wall of graffiti in the coffee shop bathroom
2. The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (a quick read, with lots of high glamor and drama)
3. The back of the new Modest Mouse CD
4. Manuscript on furunculosis
5. Instructions for assembling IKEA-brand luxury house
6. Stupid trivia about film techniques and which stupid actor comes from which stupid country that will play on the theater screen before Spider-Man II starts
7. "Keep off the grass" signs, giggling about possible double entendres
8. Acknowledgments of Prozac Nation, by Elizabeth Wurtzel
9. Charles Manson's letters to John Paul Sartre
10. Pages 567-1,028 of the tax code, especially portions about off-shore accounts and whether I'm going to get screwed on that Cayman Islands deal Bill told me about

Enjoy!

—Four sticks of doom

"Youth is wasted on the young" is one of those tedious bromides with which we're all familiar. But in Andrew Sean Greer's brilliant book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, the truth of this phrase is put on trial. A self-described monster, Max is a creature born into the world wrong. At his birth, he is as shriveled and wrinkled as an old man, and as his mind grows older, his body inexplicably grows younger. At 35, his looks and his mind finally converge, and Max gets to stop pretending to be something other than what he is. But then his body keeps going, and he can't stop its progress any more than the rest of us can halt the onset of wrinkles and sags. He dies his hair gray and walks with a cane, hoping his wife will not notice his body growing younger and firmer, knowing that when she does, the dream that is his happiness will dissolve into whispers. Time is an enemy to Max, too.

Contrary to what you might expect, this unique situation is not a boon to Max. He doesn't learn anything about life until his mind is quite old, just like the rest of us. He fears the same things we fear—loneliness and old age, which for him means the baby years in which sense and consciousness melt away.

This book is all melancholy. Greer depicts life as a sad dance in which we love others who can never love us back. It's a bit like those old Archie cartoons, in which Veronica chased after Archie, who pined for Betty, who was in love with Reggie, who was mad for Veronica. The characters are tragically mismatched, wretched in their impossible loves—always hoping, and yet hopeless. Add to that the strange relationships that ensue as father becomes proxy brother, husband becomes son, finally culminating in a world-weary Max, who appears to be eleven, befriending his own son of the same age. It's all very convoluted and complex, but every bit of these skewed affinities rings true.

The writing is lyrical and gorgeous. Greer has a way of putting words to things I would have thought were indescribable. You know that feeling you get when you read something that is entirely new and yet familiar: "yes, that's exactly it," you say to yourself. I guarantee this will happen to you several times while you read the book. Greer is what the psychics call an "old soul," and at only 33, he seems much, much wiser than his age. Hmm . . . kinda makes you wonder . . . .

½—one and a half sticks of doom

If you love circuitous stories that do not really begin or end, if you love narcissism and solipsism and sexism—you'll love Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife, a novel by Mick Farren. Jim Morrison kicks it with Doc Holliday, Jesus hangs out inside a tumor in Godzilla's brain, and people randomly turn into cartoons. It all sounds so promising, doesn't it? Ordinarily, I'm a huge fan of this sort of absurdity. I'm always the one who goes straight for the cult section in our local video store. But, there has to be something to grab onto in the story—whether it be a particular theme or just a vividly portrayed character—something that justifies the time you spent reading or watching it. I was ticked off while reading JMA, and even more ticked off when I had finished it.

Now for a too-generous comparison: This book reminded me of Philip Jose Farmer's "Riverworld" series, in which the entirety of humankind is resurrected along the banks of a giant river and is forced to create new civilizations from scratch. The first two books were fascinating and brilliant (To Your Scattered Bodies Go even won the Hugo Award), but before long it became clear that the premise had exhausted itself. I mean, where do you go beyond the afterlife? When these characters were killed, they were merely resurrected on some other portion of the river. There was no longer anything at stake. The once-riveting story, therefore, sputtered along through a few more books before ending with the lamest, most anticlimactic denouement since Geraldo Rivera covered the opening of Al Capone's vault. JMA suffers from the same logistical limitation, except that the author doesn't seem to give a crap (and if he doesn't give a crap, why should we?). He also isn't much interested in things like internal consistency, sympathetic and/or believable characterization, or plot. It's just a bunch of far-fetched fantasies crudely stitched together to make a not very entertaining whole.

I'll concede that there are good things about Farren's overall design for the afterlife. For starters, there is a Great Double Helix where the newly dead hang out until their consciousness ripens and moves on. Once they leave the Helix, they get to choose their own type of existence. There's no celestial supervisor (although there are some gods), and the point is well made that in such a self-determining world, we wouldn't be likely to see much wisdom or growth, just more stupid-human tricks. Christians are disappointed by this turn of events, but Hindus are not, because it turns out that just down the road from the Double Helix is the Canal of Reincarnation, where the dead who wish to be funneled back to earth have only to let themselves drift into its gravity. Kind of cool, huh?

Beyond matters of design, though, I was wholly unimpressed. But if there's one thing this author knows how to do, it's how to denigrate women. We're given a "strong" female lead who is little more than an S & M pin-up, and then we are forced to watch her suffer all sorts of indignities at the hands of the multiple patriarchs (including a Charlton Heston-like Moses) cluttering up the afterlife like so much yard art. She is embroiled in catfights, naked slave auctions, and sex-for-survival scenarios. Sounds like the fantasy section of Hustler, right? And the best part is that there is no point to any of it! This is no Moll Flanders, where the seedy environment is a necessary instrument for highlighting the character's personal struggle. It's not even a fun and playful romp that pokes fun at sexual conventions (see Robert Anton Wilson's Masks of the Illuminati). The only explanation for any of the nastiness in JMA is the demands of the author's insatiable libido. Don't get me wrong—there's nothing wrong with a book about sex. I'm all for it. What is bad is unleashing a gender-typing festival of puerile depravity and abuse. I feel sorry for this man's blow-up doll.

You know what else bugs me about this book? How bout I tell you? This guy doesn't seem to have any idea what Jim Morrison was all about. The Jim Morrison in the book looks like he should, but he doesn't have the slightest interest in music or poetry or anything even remotely artistic. The author seems to recognize this discrepancy, and tries to buy us off with a cheap comment about how maybe art isn't necessary once you're dead (an interesting notion, but poorly handled here). Here, Morrison is like the cardboard cutout that fans pose next to. Believe it or not, the Lizard King was just as interested in spiritualism as boozing it up, and it's ridiculous to think he wouldn't have a thing or two to say about the disappointing chaos of this afterlife.

Here's something else I noticed, and when the realization occurred to me, I could imagine the author chortling with pride at his own wittiness. The name "the Doors" was taken from an Aldous Huxley book called The Doors of Perception, a narrative of Huxley's first encounter with mescaline. That title was in turn borrowed from the writings of William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." But back to the mescaline for a moment. JMA is totally and unabashedly a drug novel. It's almost as if—dare I say it?—the author was attempting to carve out a Hunter S. Thompson-esque niche for himself by writing a book entirely under the influence. Portions of the text do support such a reading, especially one scene where some guys in an opium den do an obvious riff on "Kubla Khan," Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic example of writing while stoned.

Yes Mick, I get it. You're quite clever to draw such a comparison. But just because you write a book while bombed out of your mind doesn't mean you're on par with the literary talents of Coleridge.

Just stick with writing letters to Penthouse. At least you and your readers will be on the same page.

Physicians are always trying to be a cut above the rest. But according to a new book by Kenneth Iserson, physicians are interested in other kinds of cutting as well. The book, entitled Demon Doctors: Physicians as Serial Killers, provides a background for this growing trend, as well as a discussion of a new degree, offered for the first time at medical schools across the nation, which combines a focus in medicine with that of serial killing. In the text, Iserson cites a surprising statistic. Of the students graduating from U.S. medical schools last year, 30% went into family practice, 60% chose traditional specialities, and 10% elected to pursue the new hybrid degree as a demon doctor/family physician (abbreviated MDD).

According to Iserson, this field is only going to expand. "Medical students are more demanding these days," he says. "They want a specialty that reflects their varied interests. I think this is the wave of the future." However, many physicians disagree. "Like all popular fads in medicine," says Mark McCahill, MD, "the enthusiasm for serial killing will wear off soon enough, and then those with this ridiculous degree won't be able to find a job to save their lives."