Who wants a present?

It's time for me to renew my Entertainment Weekly subscription, and though I'm not so pleased with their recent "redesign" (fewer book reviews! and shorter reviews! less to read!), I'll subscribe again.

There's an extra incentive this time: I get a free gift subscription to give away.

You want it? Explain why, in haiku form. Funniest entry wins the gift subscription. (You'll need to be willing to tell me your address if you're the winner, obviously.)

Deadline: September 1.

I hate that smoker

This summer, a couple moved into a condo in the building next to mine. She's a smoker. She doesn't want to stink up her home, so she goes out in the front yard or on the back porch to smoke. The breeze wafts that damned stink right into my house, and by the time it wafts to where one of us is sitting, it's too late to shut the window.

Cigarettes in general are stinky, but there are some brands (no idea which ones) that are less assertively rank. Alas, the neighbor prefers one of the nastier-smelling brands.

It's been a glorious summer, one in which we've not had to use the air conditioner much so the windows are open. But this smoker has me hankering for the return of cold weather, so I can seal the windows against her smoke.

This year, the state's indoor smoking ban took effect and bars and restaurants are blissfully smoke-free—but now I need to leave home and go to a bar if I want to avoid smoke!

Maybe I'll leave a Chantix brochure and a pack of Nicorette on her back porch.

Thank you for letting me rant.

How I blog the DNC

I greatly admire Ted Kennedy and all he has done in the Senate, and was delighted so see him speaking with righteous liberal passion at the Democratic National Convention. He looks surprisingly robust.

Ben's watching with me. He had one question:

"Does he have a neck?"

I cackled.

Kennedy's relative necklessness and expertly wrangled hair (obscuring pretty well his surgical site) all looked fine. But oh, man, it looks like Jimmy Carter blew a blood vessel in his eye. Gruesome! I had that myself earlier this year, only to a lesser degree.

Second breakfast rocks

My favorite meal is not one I have every day, because if I had second breakfast every single day, I would have to buy an ever-larger wardrobe.

I typically start my day with a bowl of cold cereal and a hit of cold, bubbly caffeine. It doesn't always tide me over until lunchtime, but pouring cereal out of a box is about all I've got the wherewithal to do first thing in the morning.

I love nothing better than making plans to go out to eat between 10:30 and noon. It's a bit early for lunch, but perfect for second breakfast. Mind you, having plans to go out to breakfast at 10:30 doesn't mean I skip that bowl of cereal—I'd get hangry without first breakfast.

The very best second breakfast is the blackberry bliss cakes at a Chicago place called m. henry: Two fat pancakes. The bottom one soaking in a pool of warm blackberries and their juice. The top one adorned with a sweet and crunchy mix of oats and brown sugar. Sandwiched in the middle, a slab of vanilla mascarpone cream that melts while you're eating the bliss cakes. One forkful containing fluffy pancake, crunchy oats, sweet and tangy berries, and sweet rich cream? Holy crap. It's all I can do to sit upright...but if I let myself slide onto the floor in a state of rapture, I wouldn't be able to reach my plate.

Second breakfast can also take place at IHOP, with an order of corn cakes (Butter? Check. Hot syrup? Check.) and a side of scrambled eggs. But you really can't beat those bliss cakes.

The new sidebar poll asks what your favorite meal is. If you love a mealtime that's not simply breakfast, lunch, or dinner, tell us about it.

(Post inspired by Mona's breakfast musings.)

Damned with faint praise

Yes, I'm going to give myself props for belated cleverness on a very, very small scale.

As you may recall, I've had a collection of orphaned socks for many moons.

Yesterday, I noticed that Mr. Tangerine's sock drawer was uncommonly empty, waiting for clean socks to refill it. I was struck by an epiphany: I should take all the remaining socks out and see if there are any orphans that match up with those in the Basket of Lovelorn Socks.

I think I added one or two socks to the Basket, but I was able to reunite seven Basket inhabitants with their partners.

The black ones make sense—Mr. Tangerine probably wore two unmatched ones, and those two socks have lived in the Basket of Lovelorn Socks ever since. I don't know how one purple-and-green running sock found its way back into the drawer alone, though.

Isn't it sad that this is what passes for accomplishment in my life these days? This and changing the damn sheets.

I did it!

Yet another "praising myself for an insignificant 'accomplishment'" post—the bedsheets are in the laundry. (Recently, DoctorMama misunderstood my "I finished another book" brag as being about writing a book rather than reading one like the rest of you do all the time.) Why, it's been scarcely a month since they went on the bed! Ben did relocate himself to his parents' room and drool on the bed the other day, which contributes to my motivation to change the sheets....as do the Fiery Eyeballs of Judgment I was feeling from those of you who cannot abide leaving the same sheets on for more than two weeks.

Speaking of Ben: Wow, 8-year-old kids are so awesome! He's cracking me up every day with the things that issue from his rambunctious mind. This afternoon, he asked me what month comes after this one. September, I confirmed. "What's the date?" It's August 19. "Man! It's almost school!" he exclaimed with an acute sense of outrage. Yeah, it's that time of year.

You ever sit there mocking something because it's for old people and then discover that you are the target audience? I made fun of the merchandise in the FootSmart catalog right up until the moment I noticed that I could use those socks...and those shoes look comfy...and maybe they've got the right arch supports for me. Am I old, or am I a young and vibrant woman cursed with crotchety feet? I just ordered a night splint for plantar fasciitis because the daytime stretching doesn't do enough. My orthopedist said the night splint didn't do anything for him, but I figured it was worth a shot. Because I am old.

I had a birthday last week. Mr. Tangerine ponied up a box of assorted Godiva chocolates and a box of Godiva "biscuits." That's some good shit.

I've had a low-grade headache for a week and a half. I just diagnosed it this morning as a result of Olympics-related sleep deprivation. I've been up 'til 12:30 or later all but one of the nights since the Summer Games began, but I'm not sleeping late in the mornings. It's either that or a brain tumor, and I choose to believe I will be cured within 48 hours of the closing ceremonies.

By the way, if you were hooked on Scrabulous at Facebook and you've been in mourning ever since it got the boot, I bring good tidings: Scrabulous.com. I've been playing via the e-mail option—you play Scrabulous the same way as before, but you get an e-mail notifying you when it's your turn. Which means you don't have to go to your Facebook page and click on the Scrabulous link to find out if it's your turn—it's e-mail! So easy! And you can play with your non-Facebook friends. Or your non-Facebook self. Tertia, Julie, PK, and Krupskaya are among my Facebook friends, but I'm sure a lot of you are all, like, "Eww, Facebook, that's for kids." You probably think texting is for teens too, don't you?

Linens and things

Today, Ben was outlining the things kids need to do before they leave for school in the morning. (Chicago kids don't go back 'til after Labor Day, so that's a few weeks off for him.) Eat breakfast, get dressed, brush your teeth...and make the bed.

"Make the bed!" I exclaimed. "You never make your bad." Neither do I. It's not the way I was raised. Mr. Tangerine's mom expected him to make his bed daily, but he's adapted just fine to the "twice a year, when we're feeling fancy" mode I tend to follow.

I read somewhere in blogland that Oprah changes her sheets every day or two. Or, more likely, her hired help changes the linens for her, and launders the vast volume of fine cotton, and pays the utility bills for the washer and dryer's overuse.

Me, I change the sheets roughly quarterly. There. I said it. Confession time. The pillow cases go through the wash more often, because (a) that's where our faces land and (b) they're so easy to add into a laundry load of towels.

Where do you fall on the make the bed/change the sheets continuum?

The next big thing

So many people have iPods and other portable music players these days. Sure, they're pretty much hands-free, but not everyone cares for earbuds.

I saw a man downtown the other night, walking down Michigan Avenue. On his shoulder he bore a music-playing device the dimensions of which approximated 12" x 8" x 3". It was a wireless marvel! No cumbersome wires to tangle, nothing wedged hotly and waxily into his ear canals, and no over-loud sound waves aimed directly at his eardrums, posing a risk of hearing damage. Furthermore, this player allowed him to continually improve the endurance of his shoulder and arm muscles.

Keep your eyes out for this exciting new trend in portable music!

The tongue of artistic concentration.

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Kapow! My head just exploded.

Mr. Tangerine was surfing the TV listings. The ABC Family channel is following Pat Robertson's 700 Club with syndicated reruns of That '70s Show. Yes, that's right: A Christian talk show (which I had no idea was still on the air) is in the same programming block as a sitcom featuring a lot of weed and beer, teenage sex talk, and neighbors' nudist parties.

How to tell someone they sound racist

Hip-hop video blogger Jay Smooth has the goods on how to call someone out for saying something racist. Key point: Focus on what the person did or said, not on what they are. I.e., saying "You're a racist" is a dead-end argument.

I hadn't heard of Jay Smooth until a friend-inside-the-internet sent me a YouTube link to the above-linked video. I clicked through to Ill Doctrine and scrolled down to his theory about "Wall-E"...aaand then subscribed to his RSS feed. I need another blog to follow like a need a hole in the head, but then, one can always use an extra hole in the head for ventilation purposes, right?

Plus, it's a video blog, and the guy is kinda cute.

More orange product reviews

I was at 7-Eleven yesterday and saw not one, but two new fruit-flavored chewing gums in orange-hued packaging. Orbit White in Fruit Sorbet? Non-whitening Orbit in Fabulous Fruitini? Both crappy. I tried them both, spit them both out, and had to chew a third kind of gum to get the horrible flavors off my tastebuds. I had been afraid my purchase of Fresh Fruit flavored Spry gum was overly extravagant, what with playing for shipping. But no. It's the only gum that slakes my Trident Discontinued Fruit jones.

Today, I was looking for New Glarus's Spotted Cow cream ale, which Mr. Tangerine and I had in Wisconsin on Sunday. I wouldn't have thought something called "cream ale" would be up my alley, but it was light, crisp, refreshing, and low on the bitterness scale. The grocery store didn't have that, but they did have Buffalo Bill's Brewery's Orange Blossom Cream Ale, so I picked up a six-pack. Yum! Orangey, refreshing, kinda sweet, eminently drinkable. These beer snobs don't like it, and say things like "sour macro-lager-esque cheap grain/adjunct flavor," but hey, I like the flavor of oranges and I have a sweet tooth, so this is a good summer brew for me.

It is too late to vote

...but Ben wanted me to register his vote for winter as his favorite season. You can, he points out, have snowball fights during the winter, and who doesn't love pelting and being pelted with snowballs?

I was surprised that the 100% statistically valid poll results indicated that fall is a landslide winner (57%) in the race for favorite season. Who are you people who like fall the best? When all the green signs of natural life turn crunchy brown and disintegrate? When the days grow shorter and darker? When kids have homework again? Granted, it is delightful to get past hot, muggy summer doldrums, and Polartec fleece and cashmere have their appeal.

Thirty-five percent of you (...or of the teeny number who clicked on the poll) voted for summer. That's fine. Summer break, the beach, banishment of seasonal affective disorder, sandals—summer has its advantages.

But spring! Spring is lovely! Warmth, sun, and life return. Trees leaf out and the grass comes back to life after winter's brown dormancy. Crabapple trees (every time, I type that as "crapapple" on the first attempt) and lilac bushes blossom. (Apple blossoms are my #1 favorite scent.) Tulips, daffodils, violets, and crocuses all bloom. Who are all you haters who didn't choose spring as your favorite season? What have you got to say for yourselves, hmm?

P.S. I finished another book last month

It's true! I have read two whole books this summer! I have gone beyond my usual rations of blogs and magazines and newspapers and read actual books. Besides Fun Home, I read The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts.

If you were a fan of Chris Farley or have an interest in addiction, check it out. The book takes the form of an oral history, weaving together stories recounted by people who were close to Chris Farley. Childhood friends, his brothers, fellow improv comedians, girlfriends, priests—they're all in there. It's the tale of a sweet man who did low-profile volunteer work because it was the right thing to do, who continually battled the demons of his addictions. Family pathology, damaged self-esteem, it's all in there. The book's a loving but tough portrait of the artist as a young man.

Bad blogger procrastinates, feels low-grade remorse

Yes, it's been weeks since I posted here. Don't think I don't feel bad about it. It's all part of my Grand Procrastination Package, the deluxe model. Procrastination was, in fact, the topic of the day at therapy on Tuesday. The piddly things I put off—clerical crap, household stuff—there's no real payoff in tending to those things. What's the fun in calling the plumber? There isn't any. This doesn't really explain why I've been letting this blog lie fallow of late. I do like writing, I am self-absorbed, and I do enjoy conversing with you, my lovely readers. So blogging should be a thing I do instead of all those items on the to-do list, rather than being treated like one more item on the ceaseless list.

Anyway. What's been going on in the last several weeks? Well, this morning I had a touch of food poisoning, I think. I seem to have recovered quickly, though I'm still headachy.

A few weeks ago, I got some sort of good news from the kidney doc. He remains perplexed that my condition not only improved so markedly from the Bad Pregnancy Days, but has remained so stable in the intervening eight years. Maybe—just maybe—the kidneys will continue on this path for the foreseeable future, rather than being assured of tanking at some point. Until last month, I'd been working under the assumption that the tanking was inevitable. And now? Maybe it isn't. This is a hopeful thing, and it's dislodging the eventual-doom thinking, the assumption that I would absolutely need a transplant someday. Mind you, this new news doesn't change my day-to-day life at all—the same medication regimen and the same dietary restrictions/paranoia still hold. Yeah, I'm not getting to eat chocolate, nuts, dairy, fruits, vegetables, and legumes without having to budget for them any time soon. It's a big hassle, but certainly not life-threatening (but I reserve the right to whine).


Ben and I went to my 20th college reunion in June, and we both had a blast. We spent two days in Minneapolis with our friend Kristin, and three days on campus. As will happen on a college campus, Ben hooked up with a girl on his first night and they were practically inseparable. Both being 8 years old, the "hooking up" entailed running around outside, talking about favorite TV shows, attending a day camp program, and being field trip partners on the school bus. It was a weekend match made in heaven—Leah's an only child who doesn't mind playing with boys, and Ben's an only child who doesn't mind playing with girls. (And no, he hasn't written to her since then—but he does recount things he did with "my friend Leah." So sweet!)

I had feared that reunion weekend would entail Ben going to bed at 9 p.m. and me being trapped in our room while my classmates mingled late into the night. As it turned out, Ben did OK staying up until 11 p.m. (and kept busy with minimal supervision! such a treat), and I was tired enough to want to sleep then too. The summer solstice + Minnesota = blindingly bright sun penetrating the curtains around 5 a.m. And student housing = uncomfortable twin beds, so sleeping late wouldn't have come easy anyway.

Ben was busy in the camp program until 8 p.m. for two days of reunion, so there was plenty of grown-up time for me. Yay! It was great to just hang out and chat with people I'd mostly not seen for two decades. And there were congenial conversations with people I hadn't known during my college years, all of us being grown-up enough now to chat rather than hang back and wait for our own posses to appear. Sara, who reads this blog, was my roommate and co-DJ for part of sophomore year. (Hi, Sara!) She gave me crap about that last blog post, in which all I did was tout chewing gum. (Which I am chewing right now, I'll have you know.) Yeah, yeah. See what happens? You apply the pressure and then I procrastinate even more. That'll learn ya! If you're someone other than Sara and you went to college with me, I have no idea you're reading this—leave a comment to say hi, wouldja?

Every couple days, there's some little thing that makes me think, "I should blog this." But since I had procrastinated on The Big Post, I couldn't very well just write a short one, could I? Yes, I could. But it's that sort of all-or-nothing thinking that permeates a lot of my procrastination. Is there a pill for that? No? Damn.

I wonder what all those little bloggable items were. Let's see... I finally finished reading another book. I'd started Alison Bechdel's Fun Home last year, as bedtime reading, and maybe a new Games magazine drew my focus elsewhere for a while...and then the book ended up buried in a stack and forgotten. Somewhere recently I came across a link to Bechdel's blog and this post, and then I felt terrible that I had allowed myself to put down a book by an artist who had also played the Authors card game as a kid. (Anyone else remember the Authors deck, illustrated with portraits of various writers who'd written at least four noteworthy titles? Loved it!) So I picked up the book, reread the first half, and finally read the second half. Great memoir! And well-illustrated, given that it's a graphic memoir (graphic as in "graphic novel," with minor bits of graphic like "graphic nudity"). Let me know if you want to borrow the book.

Hmm, it's 80° inside now. Maybe I'll turn the air conditioner on.

The new Batman movie, Dark Knight, opens next week. Given that the movie was filmed in Chicago, with some parts shot just a block away from where we live and other parts making use of classic Chicago scenery like lower Wacker Drive, I'd like to take Ben to see it. The advance word is that the movie's great, but will the violence level exceed what I'm comfortable with my kid seeing? I guess we could always cover his eyes, as we did during the brief torture scenes in Iron Man. Ben tends to like scary stuff, so we'll see.

Before the school year ended, the second-graders got a visit from a third-grade teacher giving them a heads-up about the coming year. More homework! Every day! Even on weekends and holidays! Oy. This sucks. Third grade is the year that the standardized testing kicks in, so there will be a ton of "teaching to the test" up until testing week. Ick. Just seven more weeks of no homework before the school year starts and my afternoons become stressful. I just ordered a CD video game called Math Blaster, which a friend credits for her son's straight A's in math last year. Ben mostly gets B's and C's in math, so I figure it's worth a shot and maybe it'll help smooth over third-grade homework woes.

Speaking of school, what are the odds that the next president will roll back No Child Left Behind and all its teaching-to-the-test crap?

Time for lunch. Thanks for tolerating three weeks of blogging smushed into a single post, dear hearts!

An orange product recommendation

Did I ever tell y'all about my fondness for Trident fruit-flavored gum? It came in an orange package, and the gum was light orange in hue. The flavor was mellower than Juicyfruit, but because it's Trident, it was sugar-free. It was my favorite gum, but it was discontinued by 1997 or so. Don't give me that "Tropical" or "Strawberry Breeze" or "Citrusmint" malarkey—none of those gums have anything like Trident's old fruit flavor.

When I visited Prague in 1997, I was delighted to find Orbit sugarless gum with a strikingly similar taste. I brought a few packs back home with me...but soon enough I was out of fruit gum again. My dear friend Robin was living in Europe and tried—lord knows, she tried!—to get more of this gum for me. Alas, Orbit quit selling that fruit-flavored gum. There were other gums that claimed to be fruity or that had orange packaging, but they weren't the same.

After more than a decade of waiting, at last I have found a reasonable facsimile: Spry Fresh Fruit gum sweetened with xylitol. Xylitol is good for the teeth! (Really: There's a wealth of scientific data supporting xylitol's efficacy in fighting cavities.)

Sure, you need two pellets to have a decent-sized wad of gum, and the flavor doesn't last too long. But it transports me back to the halcion days of the '80s and '90s, when Trident fruit-flavored chewing gum was available at every 7-Eleven and gas station across the land.

Diversity in fabrics and people

You know what's a fun way to buy a new purse, handbag, clutch, messenger bag, or diaper bag?

(1) Go to an 1154 Lill Studio store (in Chicago's Lincoln Park, Boston, Philadelphia, or Kansas City) or their website/

(2) Choose a style.

(3) Mix and match with about 150 different fabrics to design your very own super-cute bag.

Today, I ordered the Sophie bag with pink and green fabrics (key lime twill, bubble gum linen, morning glory). You can play around on the website, trying a zillion different combos.

The prices may seem a little high for a fabric bag, but they're sewn in Chicago, not China, and provided you don't choose a horrendous combination of fabrics, you're going to get plenty of compliments on your probably-unique bag.

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So, the Chicago 1154 Lill store is on Armitage, in the heart of a Lincoln Park boutique shopping district. Nearby was a salon that appears to be dedicated to facial bronzing. I don't know what that means. You go in and someone else applies self-tanner to your face so you don't "tan" your palms? I don't know. It did strike me as quite possibly the whitest business concept that there has ever been.

There's a lot of money in that neighborhood, and a lot of white people. Driving home from Armitage to our more diverse neighborhood, we made a game of labeling the pedestrians and cyclists we passed. Like this: "White, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, brown, white, white, white, white, white, tan, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, black, black, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white." Down in Lincoln Park, I think there were at least 30 white folks for every person of color.

It struck me as a good method for sizing up just how diverse or not diverse a particular area is. I think it's easy for the typical white person to fail to notice those first 30 white people and just notice the occasional variation: "Oh, yeah, this neighborhood's really diverse. You always see people of a variety of ethnic backgrounds." But if you are a person of color, perhaps you notice those 30 white people in a row: "It's an almost all-white area."

Try it out yourself, the white/tan/brown/black game. (Tan is Ben's designation for most Asian and Latin American skin tones.) Maybe you'll find it as illuminating as I did.

Slow down for the crosswalk

The Chicago Tribune reports that the Chicago police will start publicizing the crosswalk laws this week. It's about time! There are so many crosswalks at small intersections or in the middle of a long block—without stop signs or traffic signals. Most drivers seem to assume that these crosswalks don't give pedestrians the same right of way that they're granted at corners with stop signs or red lights. But it's not so. If a pedestrian has entered one of those renegade crosswalks, he or she does have the right of way, and the driver is required by law to cede the right of way and wait for the pedestrian to pass safely.

The cops will be crossing the street in some of those crosswalks and issuing warning tickets to people who don't yield to them.

Now, those of you in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and California may find it odd that drivers wouldn't naturally slow down to let people cross the street. But Chicago drivers tend to keep plowing through, even though slowing for a pedestrian is a minor inconvenience.

So if you're driving in Chicago's neighborhoods, pay attention. If a pedestrian's in the street, don't play chicken with them. Slow down, let 'em cross. Even if you could zip past before the walker reaches your lane, slow down and wave them across. Some pedestrians will insist that you go, and others will be pleased as punch that a Chicago driver's actually being nice.

Jaywalking is technically illegal, but I suspect the law requires drivers to ease off the gas pedal and not try to run over jaywalkers.

Imagine the karma points that you'll rack up, letting people cross the street in front of you. Extra bonus points in crappy weather or hot, muggy weather, when the pedestrian just wants to get where she's going and you're comfortably ensconced in your climate-controlled vehicle.

This is my first attempt at posting straight from my phone. I fear you will need to tilt your head to see the Police concert photo.

Hitching a ride

Why bother writing my own post about going to the Police concert on Mother's Day weekend with Flea when I can just link to her write-up? My own version wouldn't make fun of me like Flea's does, but I am willing to accept a little public abasement if it means getting out of doing some work.

Speaking of getting other people to do my work for me, does anyone know if there's a way to send a photo from a Verizon phone to Blogger?

Why some mothers don't breastfeed

Breastfeeding is a brilliant invention of evolution, isn't? Mammalian mothers can magically nourish their offspring with food produced by their own bodies, and that food turns out to offer optimal nutrition.

But sometimes it doesn't work. If you have ever had a scornful thought when you saw a woman feeding her baby with a bottle, please read Julie's post, "The breast-laid plan," and the comments thread. When nursing works out, I hear it's a lovely thing. But for the unlucky women for whom it simply doesn't work—for a slew of reasons, including low milk supply, pain, poor suck, medical complications, and prematurity—the societal pressure to breastfeed can exert a huge psychic cost.

If you have never known the tyranny of the breast pump (and not the pumping-at-work set-up—I'm talking about round-the-clock pumping), you are lucky. If your body actually produced enough milk to meet a baby's nutritional demands, you are lucky. If breastfeeding was natural and beautiful, you are lucky.

I was not lucky. I had problems that were addressed by four separate chapters of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, and one or two more problems that the book didn't cover. There was no chapter entitled "What To Do When There's a Perfect Storm of Problems and It's Simply Not Working Out"—the message was that quitting is not to be contemplated, even when it's ruining a woman's quality of life.

The pumping/lactation phase of my life lasted only about two or two and a half months eight years ago, but it remains the most traumatic period of my life. I think Ben's early months would have been much less stressful if my doctor had said, "Listen, your body is in no shape to make this work." But that didn't happen, and I put so much pressure on myself. On the bright side, Ben thrived despite our rough start, and he thrived when he got formula instead of milk.

So if you see a woman in public mixing up a bottle of formula for her baby, don't assume that she's selfish or shallow or unaware of breast milk's advantages, or that she takes a cavalier view toward caring for her child. She might've adopted that baby. She may be taking vital medication that's not safe for the baby. She may have tried like hell to breastfeed and failed Dairy Cow 101 anyway. She might've had breast surgery that precludes nursing. Informing her that "breast is best" or that she's robbing her child of 6 IQ points and improved immunity? That's deeply hurtful and certainly poor manners.

If you know a pregnant woman, sure, go ahead and make the case for breastfeeding's advantages. But don't suggest that she'll be failing her child if it doesn't work out. And once the decision has been made—for whatever reason—don't presume to second-guess it. Respect the woman's ability to make the best choice for her and her child.

ZOMG! Hostess dropped the beef fat!

I've been shunning Hostess Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs and their other crappy snack cakes for years because the ingredient list couldn't commit to vegetarianism. The "May contain one or more of the following" list of oils always included beef fat. The message I got from that was "We're gonna buy whatever we can get by the tankload for the cheapest. Maybe it's hydrogenated vegetable oil, maybe it's beef fat, maybe it's some other plant-based oil. We don't feel like picking just one and sticking with it."

But today, I picked up a Ho-Ho package in the store and lo and behold, no beef fat! I bought a box of 10 immediately. Then I ate one for dessert after my salad lunch. It seemed smaller than I remembered, and drier and less tasty. And I recognize that the nutritional value comes in on the negative side. But I had to say "thank you" to International Foods for finally leaving cows out of their snack cakes, didn't I. Moo!

What about boys?

The New York Times reports on "purity balls" today—those father/daughter dances in which dads promise to protect their daughters' "virtue" and the teen girls “promise to God and myself and my family that I will stay pure in my thoughts and actions until I marry.”

It's such a crock. Where are the mother/son purity balls? Oh, right. Boys will be boys, but girls need to be kept on a tight leash lest they become damaged goods, sullied flesh that isn't suitable property to be handed over from father to husband. Really, could this entire concept be any creepier than it is? Look at the psychosocial ramifications: Girls are promising to let their dads keep their virginity in a lockbox so Dad can "give" a tight piece of ass to another man. It's just gross.

If the patriarchal nutjobs who endorse purity balls at least expected the same from girls and boys alike, I might buy their cover story, that it's about saving yourselves for a beautiful marriage blessed by the lord, yadda yadda. But when the movement is centered so strongly among girls and their fathers, the fact that it's about controlling female sexuality is laid bare. There's absolutely nothing wrong with celibate teenagers, but the fetishization of female virginity just gets re-e-eally creepy when Daddy gets involved.

What do you think?

I am the undisputed heavyweight champion of the procrastination world

My blogging to-do list:

• Flea and I went to the Police concert last weekend; reflections, ruminations, and a pictorial comparison of the mini-flower pots her son and my son gave us for Mother's Day. The contents of the pots are, quite frankly, the best part.
  
• Pictures from spring break and whatnot. I pull out my phone and take pictures of things that amuse me, but then the pictures seldom make it to the blog I intended them for.
• My fear and loathing of the busyness of this time of year. Weddings, graduations, birthdays, family gatherings, and all the truly wonderful crap that fills our calendars and deprives us of our lazy time. I love weekends with no plans. I stay in my pajamas all day. I go to bed in the same pajamas I've had on all day. Eventually, I motivate myself to shower and maybe put on some real pants...but don't go anywhere. It's not that I'm a total homebody—honest, I'm not—but I love a good lazy weekend. 
• Therapy. Did I tell you I started seeing a therapist in March? Wow, is it indulgent! I go and talk about whatever, and she listens attentively. And I'm not supposed to say, "Enough about me. How have things been going for you?" Therapy rocks. Plus she dispenses the occasional helpful suggestion that smooths out some rough spots at home. For instance: Ben + homework = trauma and frustration all around much of the time. Now we're on a new plan of "finish your homework by 4:30 and you get to play video games from 4:30 to 5." This is working like gangbusters. Ben's usually done with his work on time, and he's not lollygagging his way through it or fighting about it. He gets down to business because there's a reward. Say what you will about incentives and children's behavior—it works, and it's far more enjoyable than the daily knock-down, drag-out disputes Ben and I had been having...for a year and a half.
  

While I continue my busy, busy schedule of procrastinating, tell me: What have you been meaning to do, but you just haven't found the time?

Unprecedented development!

I got a Mother's Day card from my mother-in-law yesterday, one of the rare "to my daughter-in-law" cards. This spurred Mr. Tangerine to exclaim that he needed to send his mom a card.

I think that for nearly all of the past 17 years, I have been buying and mailing the Mother's Day cards we have sent to his mother (and mine). Today, he called me from work to ask for his folks' new mailing address because he wanted to get that card out in today's mail.

Omigod! Is it the apocalypse? I think it's the apocalypse. The swine have taken wing, and the devil is refereeing snowball fights.

Socks update: I sorted out an embarrassingly outsized heap of clothing in my bedroom. I just knew that many of the missing socks were lurking within the pile, and it would feel so good to be able to mate (heh) some socks and throw away the remaining confirmed-bachelor socks. Wouldn't you know it? I found four socks in the pile. All white, and not one a match for the lonely socks. So now I have more desolate socks than ever before.

My most important poll ever!

I need to know, dammit. I need your advice. I don't know what to do. I'm lost.

I have a laundry basket that never gets emptied out, even though the contents are always clean. There are some socks going stag in the basket. A lot of socks. Approximately seven black socks, six tan socks, seven white socks, and a couple miscellaneous stragglers of other hues. Some are mine, some are Mr. Tangerine's, and some belong to Ben.

None of these socks have mates! But surely, I tell myself, they'll surface some day. They must be in the house somewhere. Probably just got nudged under a stack somewhere.

If I throw these ones away, you just know their mates will return to them, full of apologies for being gone so long, eager to make amends, desiring nothing more than riding into the sunset together whilst embracing my family's feet.

What to do?

Your drag self

Hey, did your parent(s) ever tell you what you'd have been named if you'd been born with a different chromosomal package? I would have been named Anthony, which makes little sense. It's not a family name. Perhaps my mother had a thing for Anthony Hopkins or Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates!) in the '60s?

Ben might've been a Julia Rose. We had plenty of girl names we liked, but hadn't settled on a boy name before he was born. In fact, for his first three days of life, we called him something else—the name that became his middle name. (The bonus of having a baby in the NICU is that you can shoo away the birth-certificate-filler-outer person for days on end, and need not worry that you'll leave the hospital before naming the kid.)

A lot of parents do settle on both boy and girl names for a baby, particularly if they don't know the baby's sex in advance. What might you have been named if you'd been born with a different set of gonads?

Guess whose crossword was accepted by the NYT?

I just got the good news that Will Shortz has accepted a Sunday crossword co-constructed by my friend Tony and me. It will likely be many months before the New York Times Magazine runs this crossword, but: Wahoo!

It's that time of year: Heartfelt donation request time

But first, it's information time. Information about ovarian cancer. The wife of an acquaintance of mine, a woman I met briefly last year, died of ovarian cancer a week ago. Her name was Michele.

The disease was fairly advanced by the time it was diagnosed. For a year before diagnosis, her doctors said it was just irritable bowel syndrome, that's all—and they didn't recognize her vague symptoms as the warning signs of ovarian cancer.

Almost a year ago, my aunt died after a three-year struggle with ovarian cancer. She, too, had experienced vague symptoms and consulted multiple doctors for months before her cancer was finally discovered.

One of the biggest reasons that ovarian cancer is so deadly is that the symptoms are so nonspecific. From that Mayo Clinic link comes this information:

Recent studies have shown that women with ovarian cancer are more likely than are other women to consistently experience the following symptoms:

• Abdominal pressure, fullness, swelling or bloating
  
• Urinary urgency
  
• Pelvic discomfort or pain
  

Additional signs and symptoms that women with ovarian cancer may experience include:

• Persistent indigestion, gas or nausea
  
• Unexplained changes in bowel habits, including diarrhea or constipation
  
• Changes in bladder habits, including a frequent need to urinate
  
• Loss of appetite
  
• Unexplained weight loss or gain
  
• Increased abdominal girth or clothes fitting tighter around your waist
  
• Pain during intercourse (dyspareunia)
  
• A persistent lack of energy
  
• Low back pain
  

Now, how many of those problems have you experienced off and on? A lot, right? Gas, bloating, indigestion, constipation or diarrhea. Apparently what marks these as suggestive of ovarian cancer is persistence and worsening—rather than coming and going or acting up depending on what you've eaten, if those vague abdominal symptoms just don't go away, it's not a bad idea to ask your physician to give you a workup to rule out ovarian cancer. This might include a transvaginal ultrasound (using what I like to call the "cooter wand"), a rectovaginal exam (like a pelvic exam, only with two entry points), and/or a blood test to check your CA-125 level. (Note: CA-125 tests can be false-positive and freak you out, or miss many early-stage ovarian cancer cases, so it's not the be-all and end-all of ovarian cancer detection.)

On Saturday, May 3, I'll be taking part in the 11th Annual Break the Silence: Walk for Ovarian Cancer, held by the Illinois chapter of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition. The NOCC is the nation's leading ovarian cancer public information and education organization; the group promotes research, raises awareness about ovarian cancer, and provides support for women and families dealing with the disease. If you'd like to sponsor me, please visit my donation page. There's no minimum donation, and every little bit helps. I'm hoping to raise $500 overall.

Thanks for your consideration, and please spread the word about ovarian cancer's nonspecific and deceptive symptoms. Many women and many physicians don't think to suspect ovarian cancer, so it's incumbent on all of us to be familiar with the symptoms and be able to advocate for ourselves and the women we care for.

I will spare you a photo

Really, it's that I'm too lazy to take a picture and post it. If I'm going to do that, then I'll get mired in the process of sorting through those other photos I wanted to post, and nothing will ever get done.

And I also don't want to horrify and repel you, or show you The Scarlet Pimple.

Words must suffice. On my neck, above the larynx/Adam's apple zone, just left of center, I have a giant...thing. I believe it to be an ordinary pimple, but it's completely ignoring the tea tree oil assaults I have administered, and it won't shrink or appear vulnerable to a good, firm squeeze. It is not anchored to anything firm.

In short, this thing is freaking me out, not to mention those who behold it.

It needs a name. And there will be a poll in the sidebar for one week. Won't you please help name this evil baby?

Feminist LOLcats!

Check 'em out. If you like LOLcats, you like feminism, or you like giggling, you need to see these annotated cat pictures.

My favorites are the "I'z not racizt, I has black cat frend!" and "I dansed, but revolushun no come."

Mr. Tangerine's special brand of genius

This morning, Ben had what we term "a messy poop." He wiped. He wiped again. He wiped some more. And so on, and so on. He may have sat down to a bowl with some TP already in it, but the approximately 29 wipings that followed? Overloaded the toilet's capacity to flush it all away. Ben flushed, the water level rose, and I lifted the tank lid and jiggled the whatsit to stop the influx of water.

"Honey! We have a situation here!"

Take a moment to ponder how you would remedy the situation.

The approach that Mr. Tangerine came up with was new to me. He stretched out a wire clothes hanger and used it to tug two thirds of the TP globs away from the escape hatch, and flushed. One third, down the hatch. Then he unleashed half of what remained, and flushed again. After that he neatly disposed of the hanger, and the toilet was cleared via a third flush.

Staged flushing! I never would've thought of that.

Note: This method is unlikely to work for a giant turd like the one in David Sedaris's "Big Boy.

What's the deal with femininity?

Twisty, who has resumed regular blogging of late, puts a new (to my brain) spin on the matter of femininity. Key excerpts:

The greater the sex-based dimorphism in commercial products, the easier it is to rationalize sex-based social discrimination. For it is upon the supposed enormous differences between men and women that our culture bases its wide approval of the concept that women’s essence justifies our ghettoization in the sex caste.

Picture disposable razors, molded from manly black or blue plastic or from feminine pink and lavender plastic. Clothes, wristwatches, rubber flipflops, deodorant, greeting cards—and now, Twisty reports, there's even a Russian vodka with an hourglass figure to its lavender bottle, wearing a Marilyn Monroe skirt. Can pastel girly beer be far behind?

Behold the neat trick. First, you make women act like simpletons, broodmares, janitors, mannequins, and sex slaves before you grant them social approval. You call this behavior “femininity” and explain that it is their essential nature, and that any deviation from the program will be punished. Then you infantilize and ridicule the ones who get it right, and vilify and abuse the ones who get it wrong (you can also vilify and abuse the ones who get it right, because, let’s be honest; the world is your oyster).

With so much riding on it, whether femininity is performed right or wrong is an issue of enormous concern to women. That’s where the Empowerful Pink Marketing Juggernaut comes it. They package femininity, changing it a bit every so often so that the old version eventually becomes obsolete, and sell it to women as insurance against getting it wrong. This pink capitalist enterprise has the dual effect of diverting women’s income back to the male-dominated megatheocorporatocracy, while simultaneously reinforcing women’s investment in the bogus feminine identity and marking (with pink, the color of female infancy) the objects tainted with girl-cooties. The woman festooned with pink accessories, therefore, may be easily identified from a distance as a friend to Dude Nation.

And the reverse is true—the woman who doesn't go in for traditionally feminine clothes, who doesn't have a high-maintenance hairstyle, who doesn't spend time and money on cosmetics, and who eschews high-heeled shoes is marked as a threat and often deemed to be in need of fixing. "With a perm, you could be really cute." "A little eyeliner would really bring your eyes out." "She needs to wax those caterpillars sprouting over her eyes." "She could stand to lose 10 pounds." "Wearing heels would visually lengthen your legs." "Man, she's ugly." "What a dog." You've probably said something like this at least once, and quite possibly been on the receiving end of this sort of judgment or "helpful" suggestion, aimed at wedging each of us into the femininity mold rather than helping us achieve our potential as humans.

Femininity, in fact, can’t even be practiced without stuff (which is one way of debunking the argument that it is an inherited sex trait). It is simply not possible for a woman without makeup and deodorant and lingerie and kitten heels and diet pills and clothes without pockets and anti-wrinkle cream that promises “glowing skin” and self-help books explaining the best ways to suck up to men and jewelry and razors and tweezers and lemon-scented cleaning products and boxes of Lean Cuisine in the freezer — all stuff that must be bought — to be fully feminine.

This is not to say that I will stop shaving my legs or getting highlights, or that I will reject any compliments about a new haircut or cute outfit. But I won't kid myself that I'm furthering the cause of feminism by playing along with femininity and reaping the benefits.

Dispatches from the schoolyard

I just reserved a date for Ben's birthday party at that garish Charles E. Rodent arcade place. It'll be a joint party with one of his friends who also has an April birthday. Yes, the site is loud and horrible to behold with one's eyes, but it entails so little effort on the part of the parent, my dominant lazy gene appreciates the Rat.

The other kid's mom was telling me today about a party her kid was invited to a couple years ago. The venue was Chicago's Navy Pier, and they were going to see Spider-Man 3 and eat at McDonald's and whatnot. And...the hostess informed the invited guests that she'd be needing $55 in advance from each kid ($75 per adult if they wished to accompany their kid). Can you imagine? Planning an expensive party and billing the guests up front? I'm not sure if anyone actually went to the unfortunate boy's birthday party.

This week's school newsletter mentions a child named Treasurer. Is that not the most awesome name ever for a kindergartner? I hope Treasurer doesn't turn out to be a sloppy money manager or an embezzler. (I also hope it wasn't a typo for Treasure, because that's not nearly as funny as a six-year-old Treasurer.)

One of Ben's classmates is named Windy. His parents came to Chicago from the other side of the world and named their son after the Windy City. True story.

That Cooter Festival

I got back yesterday from eight days in Florida. Ah, spring break! Ah, greenery! Ah, warmth! Ben played in the pool every day, and he even figured out how to swim. Yeah. Laps. The technique isn't textbook, but he gets across the pool, mostly with his face in the water, with confidence. The last time he was in a pool, over Labor Day weekend, he couldn't do this.

I thought about going to Inverness to find a "Save a fish, eat a cooter" t-shirt, because Mona had wanted one a couple years ago. But then I Googled that phrase, and found this blog post by a local bemoaning the hick reputation that the lame Cooter Festival was giving the county. (And that county needs all the help it can get—between the Badcock furniture store, Mama's Kuntry Kafe, and the U-Kill-Em self-serve pest control store, it doesn't need any more blows to its elusive sophistication.)

The week in Florida was the most relaxing vacation possible without spa treatments. My mother-in-law cooked a lot, the air and the pool had both just warmed up in time for our trip, we had wireless internet access, we slept late every day, we did laundry a couple times (that counts as relaxing because not having any clean clothes left is stressful), and Ben went in the pool twice a day. Good times. And now, it's an Easter Sunday full of laundry and getting ready for a busy week. And—sigh—there's about 5" of fresh snow on the ground from Friday's storm, only the evergreens are green, and the cold, dry air is working hard to chap my hands, smooth from a week in warmth.

This city ain't country

Chicago may be smack-dab in the middle of the Midwest, but that general heartland fondness for country music passed us right by. There are a few country music stations on the radio dial, but none of them are based in Chicago or even Cook County.

I saw a cowboy hat on the dashboard of a parked pickup truck this morning. You know what demographics sport cowboy hats in my neck of the woods? Mexicans and gay cowboys, possibly also gay Mexican cowboys. But not many of Nashville's key demographic.

This suits me just fine, as a man in a cowboy hat is not a particularly compelling image for me.

So how about you—do you live in country-music country or a country-free zone?

If a writer asked my advice on pronouns, here's what I'd tell them

Peter Seibel says everything that needs to be said about they used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun in lieu of he, she, or he/she. Shorter Seibel: It was used long before the no-singular-they rule was invented, it works well, and it's not going away.

Read it, love it, refer stick-in-the-mud he proponents to it.

The 2008 San Patricio Limerick Festival!

JP, who is now teaching Spanish in China, likes to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with an annual Limerick Festival. I need to get my creative hat on before I head over there. Haiku and senryu are so much easier to write than limericks with their set meter and rhyme scheme. Hmm. Must think hard.

So write some limericks and post them at JP's Fluency blog!

Apt vocabulary pupil

(This is one of those lazy, linky posts without original content. But if it's new to you...)

Nancy Friedman (who has a cool blog about words and product/company names) writes about John McGrath's interview of Ammon Shea, whose upcoming book is about reading the entire damned Oxford English Dictionary, all 21,000 or so pages.

Shea enjoyed discovering unfamiliar words that are just so perfect, that so aptly describe a concept in a single word. My favorites of Nancy's favorites of Shea's favorites:

apricity: the warmth of the sun in winter (mmm, yes, I love that sensation)

onomatomania: vexation with being unable to find the right word (grr, that's so frustrating!)

peracme: the point at which one’s prime has passed (heh—I want to find an opportunity to hurl this word at someone who's leapfrogging their peracme)

psithurism: The sound of leaves moved by the wind (see also susurration)

sialoquent: someone who spits when they speak is this (sounds like a compliment along the lines of "eloquent," only "ptui!")

velleity: a mere wish or desire for something, unaccompanied by any action of effort ("Man, I wish I had some chocolate right now." "Somebody should do something about that.")

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

The crossword tournament was a blast. Several people asked me to sign copies of my book, which of course I loved. One person recognized me without my name tag because she'd seen me on Merv Griffin's Crosswords. And a bunch of people said they appreciated my crossword blog. The attention? I eat that up. Big time. I'm a Leo, after all.

I made my goal for the tournament (with no room to spare in the rankings). I am still sleep-deprived because I haven't been catching up on my sleep, and I only slept from 3 to 7 a.m. Friday and Saturday nights. Not that there was insomnia—it was intentional. (Why go to bed early and find yourself unable to sleep from antsy nerves when you can be socializing during those hours instead?) But lousy timing—I have an eight-hour sleep debt to make up, and we're about to lose an hour with daylight saving time kicking in this weekend.

If you want a peek at the tournament, check out the article and video at ESPN Magazine. Yes, I said ESPN. As in sports. They had a reporter and cameraman working the tournament. In the video, you'll see four-peat champion Tyler Hinman, the 23-year-old guy I go to pub quiz with on Tuesdays. And Will Shortz, and assorted other people I know. ESPN, baby! The crossword nerds have long awaited attention from ESPN—when will the tournament finals be televised? Maybe that day is coming.

Edited to add this: If you want to try your hand at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament crosswords and send them in for scoring (to find out how you would have placed at the tournament), you can order the puzzles here.

Brooklyn, here I come!

Twelve hours from now (weather and O'Hare air traffic control permitting), I will be half way to New York for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament! Here's how the tournament works: Six crosswords on Saturday, preliminary standings posted around 8 a.m. Sunday, one more crossword Sunday morning, then the finals (which I do not expect to be in, but I won't turn down an invitation). Friday and Saturday night will be devoted to schmoozing at the hotel bar. Daytime breaks are likely to take me to Jacques Torres's chocolate shop and other short Brooklyn excursions.

And late at night, when the bar closes? Time for bed. In my hotel room that I will have all to myself. I don't mind sharing a bed with my husband—in fact, I much prefer it—but the kid, ai-ai-ai. Most nights, he wanders down the hall before sunrise and climbs into bed with Mom and Dad. And sometimes he snores. Or tosses and turns. Or grinds his teeth so loud. So two nights to myself. Yay!

The insanity of clothing sizes

Explain this to me.

I bought some women's t-shirts from the Gap about 15 years ago, size medium. They've been downgraded to pajama drawer status, but they're loose and comfy, and the cotton's nice and soft.

In the interim, breast augmentation surgery has made a few million American women's boobs bigger, and WonderBras and their rivals added padding to women who have eschewed implants. And the population has also grown increasingly obese over the years.

So how come now, an American Apparel women's tee in size extra-large barely stretches over my torso? I have a "normal" body mass index, so it's not as if I'm freakishly outsized. I know the snug fit has become more popular in the last five or ten years, but really: an XL is too small for me? WTF? I don't get what's happening here.

Randy Pausch's "last lecture"

Apparently there's this concept in academia of the "last lecture"—if you could only lecture once more before you died, what would you say?

Oprah's favorite doctor, Mehmet Oz, heard about an engineer type named Randy Pausch who's dying of pancreatic cancer, and Oprah had Pausch on her show to reprise his "last lecture." The video is here, and it's well worth the 11 minutes it takes to watch if you aren't one of the millions who've already seen it.

It's inspiring (and funny, and touching, and straightforward without being trite), and it reminds us all to keep our focus on what's important. My cynicism put itself on hold for those 11 minutes.

The name's Tempic. Peter Tempic.

Benjamin recently suggested that I should get one of those Peter Tempic mattresses. That was a couple weeks ago, and it still cracks me up.

That boy rocks, it must be said. He's funny (intentionally—not just with malapropisms), he's sweet, he always praises my (all too rare) cooking. And he's a pretty damned good eater for a 7-year-old. We went out for dinner tonight, to an Indian restaurant. (Free street parking right in front! What are the odds, right?) He loved dipping his paneer pakora (batter-fried cheese) in both the tomatoey sauce from my alu matar (potatoes and peas in a tomato-onion sauce) and some mango chutney. He had some chicken pakora too, which looked to have tandoori seasoning inside the batter coating. Maybe it was too ordinary for him—he didn't eat that much of it. And for dessert, we all shared gulab jamun, those doughnutty balls in a sweet syrup. Neither Ben nor I liked the dessert, but hey, we both tried it.

I was too afraid to try Indian food until I was nearly 30. The kid, he is a good eater, adventurous and open to trying new things. Mr. Tangerine waited out Ben's infancy with great trepidation, wondering if my picky-eater genes would win out. Nope, it appears not. Ben seems to have inherited his dad's fondness for flavor, variety, and food explorations.

Creepy phone call

By the way, at my other blog, I wrote up the game show experience. The guy who (undeservedly) won took umbrage at how I portrayed him in my blog last week. And he tracked down my phone number. And he called me. At my house. At 10 p.m.

That's fucking creepy, right? I mean, how much of a sense of entitlement do you have to have to call a near stranger after 9 p.m., first off? Isn't that the general rule of thumb, that you don't call someone after 9 unless you know them well enough to know it's OK? And to phone a blogger? WTF? Wouldn't the first line of action be a blog comment or e-mail?

I asked why he cared what anyone else says about him—why can't he be just content with the seven grand? And do you know what he said? That the money is nothing to him—he can make that in a day. Obnoxious, right?

What a twit.

Cognitive dissonance

The days grow longer now that we're just over a month away from the vernal equinox. Spring is coming! The sun's not setting until about 5:30 now, so there's an extra hour of daylight in the afternoon.

However: It's 13°F. And that's a good 15° warmer than yesterday.

So which is it? In this awkward in-between stage, do we focus on the lengthening days and strengthening sunshine, or do we wallow (indoors, of course, with fleece and flannel) in the arctic chill, watching the snow fall and wondering if our corner of the planet will ever thaw?

Watch me!

A lovely friend who shall remain nameless owing to copyright issues has put my Merv Griffin's Crosswords episode on YouTube (sans the first round, which I wasn't in): Part 1 and Part 2.

What struck me at the beginning of the first round was this: "Hey, Ilene and Jeff were way thinner than that!" Somehow, all the contestants (self included) look heavier than in real life, whereas Ty Treadway looks the same on TV as in person. How can that be? I swear he didn't look anorexic in person. (Just foxy.)

One fine day

Sometimes at bedtime, I like to ask Ben what his favorite part of the day was. Today, he listed four things:

• Crosswords—seeing me on TV.


• Grammy—my mom came up to the city to watch the game show with us.


• The assembly—he found out that we're invited to the school's awards assembly on Friday. (I think he's getting perfect attendance, and that his two January tardies didn't count against that. He was on the honor roll in the first quarter, but not for the second quarter that just ended.)


• The ISAT—Ben's class is beginning to practice for the ISAT standardized tests. (Thanks, No Child Left Behind, for making teachers teach to the test!) Bless this child, he truly enjoyed the test! He finished too quickly, apparently, and had to read his chapter book while waiting for his classmates to catch up.
  

☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠

Yesterday, Peapod delivered my grocery order. While putting the food away, I encountered a rogue container of cottage cheese. I seldom buy cottage cheese and when I do, the 24-ounce tub is far too big.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

When life gives you a bucket of cottage cheese, make sweet cheese pie.

It tastes sort of like cheesecake, sort of like flan. And everyone in the house thinks it's yummy. Why, you might even acquire cottage cheese on purpose to make this.

In my head, I was making this for my dinner last night. Yes, the recipe says it serves 6 to 8 for dessert. Yes, the words sweet and pie are in the very name. But it has cheese! And eggs! And milk! That's good for me, right? Calcium, protein, vitamin D? Yep. Good for me.

☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠☃☠

The other day, Ben was drinking milk and burping. Apropos of nothing save his own burps, he announced: "When Dad burps, it smells like beer. When you burp, it smells like Coke. They both smell horrible." Gawd, I love that kid! He now says he's the Crackmaster 3000 because he's always cracking people up.

An olio

(Olio is crosswordese for miscellany.)

• That new "low-calorie hydrator" from Gatorade called G2—you want a low-calorie means of rehydrating yourself? It's called W-A-T-E-R. "But Orange, I need those electrolytes, don't I?" Eight ounces of regular Gatorade gives you 37 mg of potassium and 90 mg of sodium. You should consume about 3,500 mg a day of potassium, so a big bottle of Gatorade will provide about 3% of your daily allotment. Orange juice gives you three times as much potassium as Gatorade, ounce for ounce. And skim milk? Eight ounces gives you 407 mg of potassium and 127 mg of sodium. So drink a few ounces of milk and a bunch of water and voila, rehydration with electrolytes! Screw Gatorade and their low-calorie hooha.
  
• I wouldn't have been rooting against the New England Patriots if all those Bostonians hadn't been so obnoxious about both the Pats and the Red Sox. They became more arrogant and loud than Yankees fans, and that really took some doing. Undefeated throughout the season and playoffs? Yeah, fine. Blah, blah, blah. You lost the Super Bowl. Now will you people hush next year? Modesty will make your team much more popular.
  
• Oh! If your local TV station airs Merv Griffin's Crosswords, my appearance is supposed to air on Wednesday, February 6 (the first episode if your station airs two episodes a day). You can find channels and airtimes here. (Some of the info may be out of date.) Look for a turquoise V-neck sweater and a scintillating intellect.
  

Six useless facts about me

My old college friend Mo tagged me with a meme.

The rules:

1) Link to the person that tagged you.
2) Post the rules on your blog.
3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people at the end of your post and link to their blogs.
5) Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6) Let the fun begin!

#1 I'm a two-footed driver. I know you're supposed to use your right foot for both braking and accelerating, but I use my left foot for braking. (You know what's tricky? Using your left foot for both pedals. I had to do that when my right foot hurt, and it was incredibly non-ergonomic.)

#2 One of my worst procrastinations is putting off making those practical phone calls that need to be made—like scheduling appointments. Once I'm actually on the phone, it's totally fine and not at all stressful, so why do I put it off?

#3 I grew up in a suburb that was about 20% black, a teeny amount Asian and Latino, and mostly white; with busing, the schools were mostly white, about a third black, and a smidgen other. Growing up somewhere really homogeneous seems foreign and exotic and a little scary to me.

#4 I prefer natural fibers like cotton and cashmere (though I loathe itchy wool) and cannot abide and crappy acrylic. I make a huge exception to the preference for natural fibers when it comes to fleece. Polartec, microfleece, and all the finer grades of polyester fleece are wondrous and comfy (if a bit staticky on withdrawal from the dryer)—but shouldn't I feel just a smidgen guilty that they're made from petroleum? And microfiber undies—smooth and comfy, and I love 'em, but I think they're derived from oil too.

#5 I'm a hot-blooded mama. I hate to feel hot and I hate to sweat. If I had to choose between 0° and 100°, I'll bundle up and take the 0°. Coats that are extra-warm—made from alpaca, say—are of no interest to me.

#6 I still chew my nails (and so does my son—his own nails, that is). I'm still waiting for the cure. Do you have a cure?

I thought about not tagging anyone, but let's see if we can't pry into the secrets of Jay, Narya, and Psycho Kitty.

Political pout

In years past, Illinois's primary took place in March, by which point the presumptive nominee had usually sealed the deal, so the presidential candidates largely ignored the state and there was no compelling reason to vote for any of them.

This year, Illinois is part of the new Super Tuesday on February 5, so I figured that we'd finally become a campaign hotspot. And? No. No, not this year, either.

The mailbox is filled with glossy self-mailers touting assorted candidates for the judiciary, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (sewers!), and state and county offices. During the local news, each commercial break bombards us with political ads. A few phone calls have come in for judges.

But the presidential candidates have been largely absent. Not a one of them is wooing me. Darn it, I wanted to be wooed! I wanted my turn in the Iowa sun! Alas, it was not to be. Clinton and the others (now down to Mike Gravel) may be ceding the state to Obama, but I don't think McCain, Romney, Huckabee, et al., have bothered with Illinois, either. Pooh.

Ben describes Gene Simmons

I was leafing through the latest Entertainment Weekly while Ben was doing his homework. There was a photo of Lennox Lewis, Gene Simmons, and Stephen Baldwin from Celebrity Apprentice, and I thought Simmons looked odd. So I asked Ben to tell me about the person in the middle of the picture.

"The face of Barack Obama, and the hair of Miss Landis" (a kindergarten teacher of his acquaintance, who sports a black bob).

I think the grody Simmons would not care for that distillation of his visage, but I gotta tell you, it cracked me up.

Does this make me gay?

This morning, I awoke from a dream in which I was sharing a house with a friend, hung out and necked a little with Mick Jagger in the living room, went upstairs to pee and clogged the toilet by dropping my sweater in it while flushing, and went back downstairs to discover that Mick was now in garish mannequin drag with cherry-red glossy lipstick and that Ringo Starr and George Harrison (I know) were now in the living room, too. When it was time for everyone to leave, I said wait! Let me get my camera. And the musicians thought I was a big dork for wanting to have my picture taken with them.

So I made out with someone who became flagrantly womanly. Does this make me gay?

Terrific Parenting, Volume 1: Update!

I took Ben to acting class this morning, and this week, the enlightened dad's wife was there.

I told her how cute her little boy had been playing dress-up with the yellow braids and whatnot. She said, "Yes, I heard about that."

Then I said how great it was that her husband hadn't quashed the boy's fun with oppressive gender norms. (Okay, I'm paraphrasing.)

She said, "He wasn't always like that!" Apparently she's put in years of effort, training him not to tell his sweet little boys to man up. Hah!

The heartbreak of a lost hairdresser

Two years ago, I quit going to the hair salon around the corner, where I'd been going for a decade, and switched to a spendier salon where a couple friends had gotten terrific haircuts and color. I've been procrastinating on calling for an appointment for a solid month now (why? why do I do that?), but referred a friend there. She went yesterday (and looks fabulous)—but relayed the news that I'd better get in there quickly because Stephane is moving to Fort Lauderdale in February! Oh noes! So I called right away. I will have one last Stephane cut next week, and then I don't know what I'll do. You know how you often find a few stray hairs of uneven length that you need to snip the day after your haircut? I never had that with Stephane. Perfectly even ends every time. (Sigh.)

At least Frank, my colorist, isn't leaving.

But who will cut my hair? I can't go back to the old shop. I have higher standards now, and I want the perfectly even ends that Stephane's kooky technique (I have to stand up twice during his hair-cutting process) ensures.

(Could I sound any more spoiled?)

My culture

My kid's school is having a weekend multicultural fair for the community in a few months. Makes sense, as the students at this school come from families representing about 100 different countries.

The flier inquires, "Got talent? Want to share your culture?"

I'm thinking I'll do some white-person blogging, or maybe a demonstration of my crossword-solving prowess. Do you think my talents will make the cut for the show? These things are not specifically cultural, it is true, but I am so far removed from the cultures of my various ancestries. My last immigrant ancestor came over from Poland about 102 years ago, and there are kids or parents at the school who came from Poland far more recently than that. I tell you, this white/American privilege thing is a hassle.

Speaking of crosswords, the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament runs February 29 to March 2. Be there and be square! You can register here. (Dr. Igloo, I'm lookin' at you.) It's in Brooklyn, which should be fun (more fun than Stamford, Connecticut, anyway!). It's a little pricier than past years, but hey, you can spend your upcoming economic-stimulus tax rebate.

Terrific Parenting, Volume 1

Benjamin's got two Park District classes now—one exercise and one acting. The acting class is on Saturday mornings (but at a respectable time, or there's no way in hell I would have signed up for it—and by the way, the "terrific parenting" in the post title is not mine), and the first two weeks have focused on improv.

The kids chose costumes from a heap of choices (literally a heap, spread out on the floor), decided what their character was, and came up with some action and lines. Of course, the plot is utterly nonsensical. There are princesses, some Cinderella-style sweeping, a cop with a creepy rubber face, and a military policeman (Ben) with a dagger. The teacher is terrific with the kids—she treats them with far more respect than 7- and 8-year-old kids generally get, remains unflappable in the face of theatrical chaos, and manages to teach the kids about theater. I should tell her how impressed I am—she probably doesn't hear it nearly enough. Ten points to the drama coach for coolness.

One girl, a brunette with a short bob, opted to be the director in week one. She tends to wear camouflage pants or t-shirts, and last week she got a mite peckish and grabbed her baggie of Goldfish crackers from the table near me. "Camouflage Ziploc bags? Cool!" I exclaimed. "I got those for Christmas," she explained nonchalantly, as if camouflage-print sandwich bags are an utterly ordinary thing for a kid to get for a gift. Ten points to her parents for not quashing her camouflage habit. How many parents would refuse to buy camouflage t-shirts for their daughter, or would only get her the girly pink version?

The second week, it was extremely cold out, and between the mutual assured procrastination and the need to bundle up with extra layers, Ben and I were 10 minutes late to acting class. You can imagine my relief when a dad showed up a few minutes after me (and then another dad soon after) with two boys. His older son found a costume in the aforementioned heap and joined the group, but the younger boy, about 4 years old, was too young for the class. The adorable preschooler amused himself by trying on various costumes, and he kept going back to the blonde yarn braided pigtails. African-American boy, blonde pigtails? Sure, why not? He tried on some other "girly" stuff, along with a superhero muscle suit and some plastic armor. And his dad? Reacted no differently to the pigtails than to the muscle suit. He helped his son get decked out when asked, and let the kid do his own thing when he wasn't asking for dad's assistance. Ten points to this dad for letting his son play dress-up with girly things and never once saying, "That's for girls. Why don't you try that costume instead?"

It makes me sad any time I hear an adult (or another kid, for that matter) telling a child to hew to gender norms, and these kids seem to have lucked out with parents who encourage them to be fully themselves.

Moving right along—In the category of "Regular Parenting, Observational Division," I can report what happened when Ben walked into class that first week. He saw his classmate, Linh, and exclaimed, "Oh, god! Linh! What is she doing here?!?" Linh replied, "Benjamin! What are you doing here?" (This is, of course, the universal exchange carried on between two kids who run into one another somewhere unexpected, not their usual meeting place.) They proclaimed their mutual antipathy and proceeded to chase one another around the room and administer pokes and shoves. Ben is incensed by any suggestion that there may be some second-grade crush action here. In fact, when he told me the other day which three girls he hated, they were exclusively girls who'd been talked about in the "I hear they like each other" context. (Starts early, doesn't it?) By all appearances, Linh has two dads. That is neither her nor there, but at some point if it becomes clear to Ben that his classmate has two dads, i'm glad he'll have had the exposure to that normality.

Blog for Choice Day

It's important to vote pro-choice and, if you can afford it, support organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL by donating or volunteering.

As Bitch Ph.D. put it a few years ago, being pro-choice is about trusting women to make the decisions that are right for them:

When pro-choice feminists like Wolf, or liberal men, or a lot of women, even, say things like, "I'm pro-choice, but I am uncomfortable with... [third-trimester abortion / sex-selection / women who have multiple abortions / women who have abortions for "convenience" / etc.]" then what you are saying is that your discomfort matters more than an individual woman's ability to assess her own circumstances. That you don't think that women who have abortions think through the very questions that you, sitting there in your easy chair, can come up with. That a woman who is contemplating an invasive, expensive, and uncomfortable medical procedure doesn't think it through first. In short, that your judgment is better than hers.

Think about the hubris of that. Your judgment of some hypothetical scenario is more reliable than some woman's judgment about her own, very real, life situation?

And you think that's not sexist? That that doesn't demonstrate, at bottom, a distrust of women? A blindness to their equality? A reluctance to give up control over someone else's decision?

I don't hear other people expressing this concept much, but it resonates with me. Trust women. Trust women. It's that simple.

Another aspect of the abortion issue is deeply personal: A law like the one the South Dakota legislators enacted (that the citizens of South Dakota wisely overturned) says that my life is crap. If I were to have a contraceptive failure and wind up pregnant, I would absolutely get an abortion because of the serious risk to my health that a pregnancy would entail. It wouldn't necessarily be life-threatening, but it would damage an organ to the point that I'd need a transplant. And it wouldn't be a healthy pregnancy—it would drastically interfere with my ability to parent my child, and if I made it to a live birth, it'd be a sickly preemie. The South Dakota legislature had zero regard for my well-being, so you know what? I need not accord their opinions (or those of other anti-choice activists) the slightest bit of respect. Those who would hasten my demise can go to hell.

I always vote for candidates with strong pro-choice beliefs and a solid record of supporting women's reproductive freedom. If you're not sure you'll do the same, please read my friend Jay's enumeration of reasons to vote pro-choice. She says it better than I can.

Edited to add: Ding covers the financial impact of restrictive abortion laws on women, particularly poor women, and reminds us that the next president will likely be appointing two or three Supreme Court justices. Just one more judge hand-picked by a Republican, and Roe v. Wade is likely to go down the tubes. With a Democratic president, Roe v. Wade's constitutionality is likely to be upheld.

Strictly practical

Yesterday, Ben the Grape lost his fourth baby tooth, another lower incisor. All four of those teeth didn't make their exits until the permanent teeth had already sprouted behind them, shark-style. (The teeth move forward to fill the space after the baby tooth departs.) He tied some dental floss to the bathroom doorknob, hooked the floss around his so-loose-I-can't-believe-it-didn't-fall-out-a-solid-week-earlier tooth, and nudged the door gently 'til there was a snap. I missed the whole thing—I was in the kitchen, utterly unaware at the agency and autonomy my kid was demonstrating.

He placed the tooth in a Dixie cup full of water to rinse off any blood, and undertook to post a "do not drink" sign on the cup. Of course, the handiest paper in the room was toilet paper, and he chose a green Sharpie permanent marker to pen his note. Yep, that marker bled right through to the white vanity counter, all right.

Would you believe I got the Sharpie ink completely off? First I tried Scrub-Free Mildew Remover, a bleach cleaning product. That got off a little. Then I used the internet, which told me Amodex ink stain remover is what I needed, but I sure haven't got any of that around the house. The internet also suggested rubbing alcohol, so I swabbed the stain a couple times with rubbing alcohol. It lightened up a little further. Then there were two more rounds of spraying the Scrub-Free on and letting it sit for 15 minutes, and voilà! The Sharpie stain is gone.

So Google searchers with countertop Sharpie stains, try this approach if you haven't got any Amodex.

You know what else is a practical solution? If your towels come out of the laundry smelling a little musty or faintly mildewy, try using borax (20 Mule Team is the main brand in the U.S.) in each washer load of towels. The box tells you how much to use, and damn, it actually works. I've been using borax for a month or two, and I finally returned a big fluffy bath sheet to innocuous freshness. The box of borax also touts its usefulness for general cleaning and freshening chores, but I haven't ventured down that path yet. You can find handy-dandy borax in the laundry aisle at your grocery store.

The last Orange's Handy Tip is the Desert Essence Blemish Touch Stick, a mini roll-on with tea tree oil and other essential oils. I've found it at stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, and it's also available online. This stuff has been killing my zits for a year or two, and I love it! It works its tea tree magic on inflammation and tames the angry pimple. It's also said to be good for bug bites and skin irritations—it does work nicely on those miscellaneous red bumps my kid sometimes gets. It smells herbal and it stings a little on more irritated skin, but it's so worth it.

Fruit salad

Ben knows that I'm Orange on the computer.

He asked, "Can I be Grape? I wanna be Grape."

Orange, Mr. Tangerine, and their mutant fruit hybrid, the Grape. I just don't think it's biologically possible for two citrus fruits to form a non-citrus hybrid. This, actually, was a topic of debate last week at pub trivia. The question was, "The ugli is a hybrid of the orange, tangerine, and what other fruit?" One of my teammates thought it had to be the pineapple. WTF? How would you cross a pineapple tree with a citrus tree? Someone else on the team suggested another non-citrus fruit. I, as the point person for all things citrus, knew it was the grapefruit. The tangelo is a tangerine/grapefruit cross. There may be a few other citrus hybrids. But pineapple? No. That'd be like mating a horse and a monkey.

So, maybe Ben can be Grape as short for Grapefruit, our bastard citrus offspring. At least inside my scientifically anal head, if nowhere else.

By the way, if you read this post's headline and started hearing the Wiggles, please smack yourself.

Watch 60 Minutes tonight

Tonight on 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper will be reporting on the systematic rape and violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. If you haven't heard about this, I can tell you that the brutality is beyond your imagining. I read about it here last fall.

If you haven't heard much about these atrocities against women, perhaps it's because it's so sickening, people would rather not think about it. Or because it's happening so far away from America, or because people don't like to feel helpless.

But there is a way to help: You can donate to Women for Women International. As the website says, "Women for Women International supports women in war-torn regions with financial and emotional aid, job-skills training, rights education and small business assistance so they can rebuild their lives." You can earmark your donation (of any size) for the women of D.R. Congo, or those in a number of other war-torn areas. Iraq or Afghanistan, Bosnia or Kosovo, the Sudan (where Darfur is) or Rwanda, Nigeria or Colombia. The violence directed at women is perhaps worst in D.R. Congo, but survivors of war face plenty of other challenges for supporting themselves, raising families, and staying safe.

You can also sponsor an individual woman for as little as $27 a month.

I hope you'll make a donation—every little bit helps. Thank you.

I think it's time to have "the talk" with my son

No, not about the birds and the bees and the reproductive organs. The other talk.

Ben is in second grade, and he has heard people say "the N-word" but didn't know the full expansion of the term. I told him I didn't want to plant that word in his head because it's so vile, but wouldn't you know it? He asked a classmate, and that kid knew what the word was. (Because the latest Rush Hour sequel had included someone saying something like "the N-word, the M-word, and the F-word," and the kid's mom answered him when he asked what that meant.)

So now Ben knows the word, but in order to really grasp that it's not just a word you wield when the expanded F-word doesn't feel strong enough, he probably needs to learn about the hateful history of the word and about the heritage of racism in this society.

I don't know where to begin and what to say, though. Advice, anyone? Key points to touch on? Useful analogies or facts?

The Manolo has taken note!

The Manolo, the world's leading shoe blogger, linked to my last post. I swooned briefly. I am not a shoe maven (unless you're talking about super-comfy shoes like Merrells and Naots), but the Manolo is super-fantastic.

Speaking of Merrell, they've discontinued the Primo Chill slide! What will keep my feet warm next winter? Sigh. Clearly, I should have bought more than two pairs last winter when I had the chance. I thought two was enough, but sadly, no.

Anyway, welcome, Manoloistas!

New Year's Day fashion roundup

Last night, 7-year-old Ben managed to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year. I wasn't sure he could do it, but I should've known a kid that stubborn would manage it. (Hey, look‚ a could, should, and would in one sentence!)

With a coupla glasses of prosecco (for me, not the kid), the hours flew by. Helpful hint: If cheap sparkling wine explodes a headache into your cranium in short order, try better champagne. If that still hurts your head, try the lovely Italian sparking wine, prosecco. Sure, it's supposed to be for summertime sipping and not New Year's Eve toasting, but I've had it the last two New Years and it is tipsy-making without being headache-ogenic.

The title of this post promised you fashion, and fashion you shall have. Alas, I have no photographs, because (a) it would have been rude to take pictures of strangers with my cell phone, and (b) I was far too busy gaping to be taking pictures.

I had a late breakfast at IHOP with my friend Kristin this morning. En route to and from IHOP as well as inside the restaurant, we saw many 20-somethings out and about. Usually a crowded IHOP means a little of everyone—some young adults, some families, some old folks, some medium-aged adults. Today, it meant a crapload of 20-somethings out after a festive New Year's Eve. The taxonomy of the young women can be broken down thus:

• Womanus normalus: Clad in weather-appropriate attire, able to navigate a four-inch snowfall and a wind chill factor in the teens.
  

• Chica festiva: Sporting a short skirt or dress, small jacket, optional pantyhose, and high-heeled shoes. Biologists suspect that Chica festiva has a predilection for nesting in unfamiliar locations after extended exposure to intoxicating libations.
  

• Pajama domestica: Wears cutesy-print flannel pajamas and slippers...to walk a couple blocks to Starbucks. The slippers expose Pajama domestica's heels to the wintry air. This species must conserve energy for higher metabolic needs and therefore cannot put on sweats or other pants, much less a pair of shoes, when leaving the apartment.
  

• Pajama domestica festiva: This is a hybrid, a cross between the latter two species. This exquisite creature camouflages its brilliant footwear with drab, baggy pajama pants in order to not draw attention from its natural predators. Several plumages are seen in nature: Area scientists have observed the baggy men's pajama shorts/black stilettos combo as well as the more striking long black pajama pants with silver spike-heeled pumps. Pajama domestica festiva is a social animal and travels in small groups of its kind.
  

(I couldn't make this up if I tried. I'm simply not that inventive.)

Up, up, and away!

Crikey! Who wants to close out the year on a serious note? This little cartoon crafted by Mr. Tangerine is suitably whimsical for a festive New Year's Eve.

Happy New Year, everyone!

The thing about megachurches

I just finished reading Frances FitzGerald's New Yorker piece about megachurches, "Come One, Come All " (abstract here; 12/3/07 article no longer online for free).

FitzGerald profiled Frank Santora, a young pastor at a smallish megachurch in Connecticut, and addressed the overall topic of the megachurch movement, which tend to be oriented more towards the needs of the congregation (a café! family finance classes! rock music in the service!) than toward a strict focus on scripture. Examples include Saddleback, the Southern California behemoth led by Rick Warren (The Purpose-Driven Life guy), and WIllow Creek, a suburban Chicago megachurch.

FitzGerald writes:

Some evangelical pastors—typically from fundamentalist or Calvinist denominations—have attacked Saddleback and Willow Creek as market-driven churches that cater to the society's insatiable demand for entertainment. They have also charged Warren and Hybels [the Willow Creek guy] with preaching a Christianity lite, in which theology is marginal and the Gospel is mixed up with pop psychology. Their teaching, these critics say, is "me-centered," rather than God-centered, and it proposes that people are basically good, rather than essentially sinful and in need of salvation. Seeker-church pastors, they say, argue that the Scriptures help to heal pain and bring self-fulfillment, but in doing so they are suggesting that the Bible is true just because it works. Furthermore, their God seems to be a domesticated, useful deity—a God without wrath who demands no sacrifices from his children.

Wait, wait, wait. This is a bad thing? Huh. No wonder the megachurches are thriving. They don't use religion to browbeat people and try to scare them into submission? My, doesn't that seem sensible. I rather doubt I will ever be inclined to join any organized religious body, but if I did, the type that accentuates the positive rather than the "Crime and Punishment" approach makes a ton more sense. My essential world view is that people can be ethically good because it's the right thing to do, not because they know they're in for an eternal whupping if they don't. And the bad eggs, they're not going to have their "sins" excused because they go to confession, and they're not going to be punished by hellfire—this is where the criminal justice system comes in.

Honestly, I don't know how people buy into the whole "God's punishment" and "eternal reward" conceits.