Jenny, who is a dog, watches entirely more TV than I do these days. She can’t read, yet, but she has fig­ured out which but­tons on the remote con­trol do what, and she’s learned to iden­tify the voices and the theme music of the pro­grams she likes best.

When I say she watches TV, what I mean, of course, is that she turns the TV on and lis­tens to the pro­grams. I asked her one time what she saw, when she stares at the screen, and she said, “Ghosts.” She’s a lit­tle spooked by it, I think, and so she mainly lis­tens. She likes the edu­ca­tional chan­nels best, it seems.

I came home today to the strains of Daily Planet’s end-credit theme music, blar­ing. She’d turned the vol­ume up as high as it’d go, then wan­dered to the kitchen to lis­ten to the ghosts speak.

“Learn­ing lots?” I said.

“Bul­let train,” she said. “Inter-nash-null space sta­tion. GMO grain.”

“Good,” I said, crack­ing a beer. Long day.

“Can I have GMO grain? Supper?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

“And liver. Liver good.”