It won't be long now

before there are more yoga teachers than students. And, contrary to the cliche, just because you can do doesn't mean you can teach.

Give me some skin.

I think I'll make a deal with my son, just to get him to drop the whole tattoo argument. He's not 18 yet, so we still have 15 months before he goes all human canvas on us.

Here's the deal: you can get a tattoo now if your parents get to pick the design.

Dave and Stephanie and Regina and HR

I don't judge anybody by their sex lives. As far as I'm concerned, consenting adults can consent to whatever they want. Just please don't tell me about it. Still, I'm glad I'm not married to David Letterman, whom I never met despite having once shared a corporate suite and bleachers with him at the Indy 500 – entirely another story. Anyway, I suspect poor Regina Lasko, who waited the guy out for twenty years, has long made her peace with his philandering. It seems he likes funny, smart, nerdy girls who wouldn't be out of his league in the real world. The crew and production team must be crawling with them. So what's Regina to do if the Late Show women are there for the picking, like craft service M&Ms? As the old Irish proverb says, "What cannot be cured must be endured."

But that's all between Dave, Regina, Stephanie, the tabloids and only Dave knows who else. It's the work thing that bothers me. Some office romances are kinda kosher. Like Sam in Accounting and Jan in Human Resources. But the head honcho mousing around with assorted female staff members is completely uncool. Dave's ladies, however innocent or sincere, will have a red I-had-sex-with-David-Letterman-to-get-ahead on their foreheads for the rest of their careers. Women who won't play with Dave, or are too old, or otherwise not Dave's type will be bitterly resentful and despise Letterman - not really an emotion one wants to elicit in one's employees. Men will state ruefully that they can't get ahead at The Late Show because they don't have tits.

I don't know that any of the above is happening at The Late Show but on the work front I've seen it all. There's never any hiding these relationships. The couple smolder at each other, close a lot of doors, have too many private jokes. People notice, people talk. Incessantly. "What a lousy decision. Wonder if it was HER idea." "Did you hear Martha got promoted? Wonder if SHE slept with him too." "No, I'm not going to the conference. The boss is bringing her boy toy."

When employees conclude that the playing field is not level, they lose faith in the company leadership. The boss has proven him/her self all too human, and people start to question management's decisions. If the economy is good, intelligent employees may feel they have to leave to get ahead. Meanwhile, the slackers find it easier to stay under the radar or rationalize their lack of advancement. Bad for morale, bad for productivity, bad for quality control. There is simply no upside for an organization when the person at the top is fooling around with the staff. Unethical. Disruptive. Tacky. Really stupid human trick, Dave. By the way, did you notice that honey in the editing suite? A little broad in the beam, but I hear she went to Columbia.

Yes, I know, Regina. He makes you laugh.

Boom!

I just don't get this youtube video all my friends are posting. It's set to Dueling Banjos and stars a Caucasian rube (I'm a Caucasian - I can say that) who is about to demonstrate the efficacy of some home made fireworks in what appears to be his dining room. Instead of the discrete shower of sparks he promises, the guy makes a huge boom and startles himself silly. Except that when the boom cloud clears, he appears to be wearing a different shirt which I don't think we're meant to catch. This is not a genuine wack job, it's a dweeb with a twisted sense of humor. He looks like David Letterman's slightly unhinged younger brother who lives in their mom's basement. The twisted sib makes fireworks and wishes he had Dave's sex life – or wishes he could have sex for once in his life. (Don't start a rumor - I made up the thing about DL.)

Anyway, real or fake, I see nothing funny in watching someone risk burning down his house, possibly singe his face (or duck on cue?) and make a complete ass of himself. If this is real, it's tragic. If it's not, it's just dumb. Now let us put aside the idiotic specifics of setting off fireworks in your home and simply look at the fact that this person comes off like a complete fool. Why is that funny? Some people are accident prone or clumsy. Yours truly, for example. I have inadvertently embarrassed myself on more than one occasion.

Once, I was participating in an ad agency creative exercise. We were divided into teams and each one had to put on a group presentation before the agency and a panel of judges from upper management. We were pretending to sell some kind of software - the details elude me - and we had determined that the overarching benefit, the one that could serve as an umbrella for all the others, was adaptability. So I decided to dimensionalize adaptability and add drama to my part of the presentation. As I was making the case for staying agile in a changing marketplace, I pulled a ball from my pocket with the intention of throwing it at my creative director friend in the judge's panel. "And you have to (BALL TOSS) think fast...". Only my aim has always sucked, and instead of lobbing the ball at my friend, I spiked it into the lap of our frail and delicate head of account services who almost fainted from the shock.

Oh, I hear you laughing. Go ahead. Chortle away. I will maintain my solidarity for that terminally immature fellow and his home made explosives. Not funny. And even less amusing if they're shooting the video at his mom's house.

Got it.

All of a sudden, everybody gets it. You tell your kid to cut you a little slack because your other kid is having a crisis and you're told "I get it. You don't care about my problems." You start to make a case that you deserve a raise, or a break, or a job, and the person you are beseeching replies. "I get it. I just can't do anything for you right now." You want to call someone to task for their behavior and you get back "I get it. I was a jerk. " And then they change the subject, short-circuiting any constructive discussion to make sure said behavior doesn't happen again.

I get it is the new conversational reset button. People can use it to dismiss, reassure or mollify you, but it's always a way of taking control of the discussion. Sometimes, this is done because the person who gets it has no interest in further exploring " it" - the defensive I get it. Sometimes, it's to cut off whatever long and involved statement you were about to make - the preemptive I get it. Seems like everybody's so busy getting it, you just can't get through.

False prophets and false analogies

This inane controversy over the President's speech to school children was petty and paranoid and, yes, I must alliterate, pathetic. And yet it made me think. We on the left spent 8 years thinking of Bush as the Idiot-in-Chief, and now the far right sees Obama as the AntiChrist. Was this demonization and reverse-demonization?

I thought I might be on to something and perhaps we could all meet in the middle. This frivolous notion lasted all of 10 seconds. The truth is, one can build a lengthy and convincing case demonstrating that Dubya deserved to be dubbed the Idiot in Chief, but no logical case can be made that Obama is the AntiChrist– even if you buy into that superstitious concept.

Today, I was listening to a discussion about the war in Afghanistan on NPR. One expert was lauding the Afghans for their turnout in dangerous situations and the thorough distribution of ballot boxes in remote and difficult terrain. Another pundit tempered the expert's enthusiasm by pointing out that Afghanistan was a tribal society and people were voting along those lines. Nobody mentioned the low female turnout, with many women afraid to work the polls and other women kept at home for fear they might encounter a male pole worker. The one comment that struck me was by a professor, born in Afghanistan and raised here. How can we take this election seriously, he asked, when 90% of the electorate is illiterate? They are voting along ethnic lines, in response to bribes or threats or just because they like the look of the guy (no need for unisex wording here).

My sick mind immediately returned to the conspiracy theorists getting their panties all in a wad over death panels, Kenyan birth certificates and a traditional inspirational speech to school children. Yeah, they are literate, and they vote. But they aren't very smart. Stupid people vote, and it's right and fair that they should. Sometimes, they elect stupid people. That's democracy's Achilles heel, and it certainly accounts for the high number of bozos in the House and in the Senate. So yeah, compared to the poor, undereducated people in Afghanistan, our electorate is pretty sophisticated. They can read, but apparently, they don't.

That Vision Thing

As far as I'm concerned, the nature/nurture debate is over. All you have to do is reproduce and try your best to raise your kids. Just as you come to the realization that your children have inherited all your worst traits, you're hit with another epiphany: you're turning into your parents.

My father is quite nearsighted and has always worn glasses. Without them, he has that telltale soft, myopic gaze and is, if not helpless, definitely challenged. He is a physician and health-conscious, with just a touch of hypochondria, so he wears sunglasses – over his glasses. But because he fears that's still not protection enough against those pesky, cataract-inducing UV rays, he adds on little clip-on shades. Every day is a gray day in the land of Dr. Dad.

Then, there's my grandmother. As a girl, I found her spectacles truly annoying. No, not the frames themselves - the daily drama of finding the right specs when she needed them. She would start by asking my grandfather in their native French if he had seen her "glasses to see far" or her "glasses to see close" , depending on which pair had gone missing. Pretty soon, the entire family would be searching the house, the car, the beach or the restaurant for my grandmother's glasses, which somehow always turned out to be in the first place she'd looked, her purse. My mother does not yet need distance glasses (wish I'd gotten that gene). She only wears readers, but she makes up for it by losing them twice as often as her mother did.

Growing up, I found my father's redundant eye wear and my grandmother's daily vision quest incredibly embarrassing. Surely everyone was staring at my eccentric family, thinking "That poor girl. She's related to these people." Of course, I had 20/20 vision, and I wasn't about to hide my best feature behind a pair of shades. Five presidents and a digital revolution away from middle aged lucidity, I didn't know that with maturity comes a blissful lack of concern about looking goofy.

Fast-forward a few decades.

Don't know if it's from staring at a computer screen for a living, but my eyes went south surprisingly fast. Right around my fortieth birthday, the type on paperbacks began to blur. Menus in dimly lit restaurants became illegible unless I squinted like Renee Zellweger and dislocated my arm. I got a pair of cute little red 1.0 reading glasses which quickly became inadequate. Soon, I needed glasses to look at the thermostat, the dosage on the cold medicine, the needle I couldn't thread. Too vain to go full-grandma and get an eyeglass chain, I started wearing my readers like a utilitarian headband.

I had graduated to 2.0 lenses when I noticed an annoying development at the movies: The projectionists were all too lazy to properly focus the image. Tired of reading fuzzy credits, I'd duck out of the theater and bitch to the nearest theater employee. Eventually, I realized it wasn't the projectionist who had the focusing problem. I got my eyes tested and officially graduated to bifocals, which I have never gotten used to. When came time to change the prescription, I had the optometrist give me regular distance lenses. Now, I switch back and forth, just like grandma did. Sometimes, I too can't find my glasses, which usually turn out to be on my head.

It's when I go on my nature walks that things get really complicated. I need reading glasses for the trail map, sunglasses to protect my peepers and distance glasses to make sure whatever is causing that rustling in the brush isn't a mountain lion. The distance glasses give my vision a tantalizing clarity. I can see every leaf dancing in the breeze. But the glare can be intense, so I've resorted to wearing sunglasses over my distance glasses.

Just like my Poppa does.

On Hiatus.

I have temporarily lost my mind due to a difficult move. We had to move out on the 21st but couldn't get into the new place before the first. I had to schlep my non-laptop computer around and set it up in hotels so I could work. Now, I am in a new place, surrounded by boxes. My husband is grouchy because his internet's not working. My kid is nasty because he didn't want to move and is choking on his own testosterone. My daughter is having her 25 year life crisis a couple of years early and has decamped for the East coast. My supply of St. John's Wort has run out. The only sane person around here right now is the dog. Consequently, please bear with me while I unpack, clean cabinets, write hospital brochures and howl at the moon.

Taking the glove off.

Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson.

"I can't believe this," grumbles my husband, the boomer curmudgeon. "It's not like he was John Lennon."

Well no, but MJ did have the best-selling album of all time. He danced with astounding elasticity and grace. He invented the expensive music video. His music is an instant flashback to the lost youth of GenXers everywhere. He broke the color barrier.

"What are these people talking about?" The curmudgeon growls." What about Motown? What about Marvin Gaye, or Stevie Wonder?"

But they weren't played on the same stations, I explain. Michael crossed over. Although I have to admit, the frenzy is starting to get on my nerves - especially when I get to yoga class and find out we are dedicating the entire class to the memory of "the King of Pop". The yoga teacher recalls how, in her early twenties, she traveled to North Africa alone. Not a good idea for a young female, even now. Hailing a cab at the Tunis airport, she asked to be taken to Carthage. As the car headed into the desert, paranoia set in. Where were they really going? Was she about to be traded for a pair of camels? Would she ever see her mother again? Peering from his rear-view mirror, the cabbie bared his tobacco-stained teeth. "So," he began,"Tell me about this Billie Jean. Is she really his lover?"

It's a great story. Michael Jackson's music creating a connection between a middle aged Tunisian cabbie and a scared little hippy chick. But the curmudgeon isn't having any of it. Instead, he presents me with a recap of Michael's greatest tabloid hits.

Jackson squandered his incredible talent. He grossly mismanaged his money. He wallowed in crass, over-the-top materialism. He was a black man so self-hating, he whittled his nose down to Phantom of the Opera proportions and somehow managed to have white babies, probably with the aid of a turkey baster and a wad of caucasian sperm. He was a publicity hound who married Elvis' daughter, hung with Liz and Liza and paid Marlon Brando a million bucks to come to a party. MJ spent his adulthood trying to make up for the childhood he never had, building his own amusement park and private zoo, traveling with a chimp, playing video games and of course, playing with children. He was a probable child molester so tone-deaf, he gave an interview in which he described sharing his bed with a thirteen year old boy as perfectly natural. Now, we are learning about anorexia, drug addiction and a live-in Dr. Feel-Good who literally anesthetized Michael on a nightly basis.

Let's face it, people. The curmudgeon is correct. The gloved one was not an innocent, or a sprite, or a manchild, whatever that is. You could say Michael was victimized by an abusive father, by fame, by blackmailers, drug dealers, sycophants, hangers-on, and so-called plastic surgeons. But ultimately, we are talking about a talented, deeply flawed middle-aged man with some serious character issues.The grooves were infectious, and the showmanship, beyond compare. But the songs sound dated and strangely sexless. When Michael Jackson grabs his crotch, it's just choreography, and it's about as hot as watching a four year old who really, really has to pee. Just try and imagine the guy crooning "Baaaaby, I'm hot just like an oven, I need your lovin'" and you'll see what I mean. Give me Marvin and some of that old-time testosterone.

Now, Los Angeles is preparing for a funeral the likes of which we haven't seen since Lady Di was put to rest. As the curmudgeon grimly points out, it's going to cost a fortune for the city to take on all that traffic and crowd control, and LA, like the rest of California, is tapped out. But it's all a welcome distraction from the ruined economy and the fans need to mourn. As for Michael, he's finally getting what he wanted for so long. Unconditional love and a nice, long sleep.

If my son were stuck in a one-horse town...

...he'd get the horse to buy him some beer.

Wright Wingnut

So "them Jews" are barring Reverend Wright from talking to Obama. Thank you, asshole, for giving Rush Limbaugh ammunition for his outrageous attempt to turn far-right white supremacist Holocaust Museum killer James Von Brunn into an antisemitic leftist wack job. Hmmmm, there are so few of that type, and most of them are from Europe. Limbaugh would have been hard-pressed to find a poster-child for leftist anti-semitism in America, had Wright not presented himself like a suckling pig on a silver platter, with an apple in his mouth. Thank you, you unholy fool.

Republican DisSonyance

Huckabee called her Maria! Limbaugh thinks she's stupid! Gingrich says she's a racist! She's Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's first supreme court nominee, and she's warming the hearts of Hispanics and Democrats everywhere. Hispanics because they are justifiably proud of a girl from the projects who made good, and Democrats, because they think all that right wing bluster will alienate Hispanics from the Republican party.

So what does it all mean? Well, Ms. Sotomayor birth certificate says Sonya, not Maria, so Huckabee can stop worrying that his cleaning lady's about to quit. And while Rush Limbaugh calling anybody stupid is the ultimate example of the pot calling the kettle black, one does have to set the record straight. The lady was high school valedictorian, graduated magna cum laude and phi beta kappa from Princeton, winning their top academic prize, and went on to Yale law school, where she was editor of the law review. If that's stupid, then Rush Limbaugh must be a brainless invertebrate (no, wait, bad analogy... he IS a brainless invertebrate).

Still, it's fair to take a closer look at the quote, taken out of context from a 2001 Speech at (CONSERVATIVE RED FLAG!)...UC Berkeley. " I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Here's where the right wingers have a point. For a person whose job it is to weigh and measure and parse words, the quote is unfortunate. It lacks eloquence and clarity, and is too open to interpretation. Sotomayor does appear to claim that a Latina can make a better judgement than a white male, which is uncomfortably close to the notion that a white male can do a better job than a black one, or a Christian can be more effective than a Muslim, and yes, that is the kind of thinking affirmative action was established to debunk.

Now here's where Newt and friends are, depending on your tolerance for their world view, either misguided or full of shit. When Sotomayor talks about having "lived that life", she's not talking about race (and you can invoke la raza all you want, Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race). She's referring to that great American taboo, class. We don't talk about class in America. It interferes with our mythology about upward mobility and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.

A judge who was a fourth generation legacy at Yale can't know what it's like living pay check to pay check, or getting evicted, or having a sick child and no health insurance. A judge from an underprivileged white or black background would share Sotomayor's perspective on how the law affects the working poor and the opportunities available to them. This is what Obama calls empathy.

Wolf-Boy

I hear the gray wolf has been reintroduced to the wilds of Wyoming. This could work out well for us, because my son is maybe one D and a misdemeanor short of a wilderness program and I'm thinking the wolves would make more effective parents than we seem to be. The kid should adapt well: he already acts like he was raised by wolves. He can't be domesticated.The heavy metal music he listens to consists of mostly howls. He's largely nocturnal, preferring to hide out in his den during the day. He travels in a pack and wolfs down his food. Perhaps, after his stint with the wolves, he might come back more respectful: Wikipedia says the cubs are very deferential to their parents. If his surrogate wolf-mom starts to give him constructive criticism and he accuses her of biting his head off, she might get mad and actually do it - unlike his real mom who mostly bites her own tongue. And just think how well vulpine parenting worked out for Romulus and Remus: They grew up to found Rome. Which beats the hell out of working at the Burger King.

A dish best served cold.

We ladies may live longer, but men age better. We get saggy, they get craggy. As usual, our culture sends out mixed messages. While Oprah and More Magazine celebrate femmes who are "forty and fantastic" or "fifty and fabulous," Hollywood continues to team up George Clooney, Harrison Ford and Jim Carrey with costars young enough to be their daughters.

One of the reasons Paul Newman was so beloved, besides his charitable endeavors, acting skills and legendary blue eyes, is the fact that he remained happily married to Joanne Woodward. Women of a certain age take comfort in his famous quote "Why should I go out for hamburger when I have steak at home?" The Paul Newman phenomenon had a lot to do with why so many women liked Elizabeth Edwards. The dumpy, frumpy cancer victim married to the perfectly coiffed, eternally cute man. The tragedies they endured together! The family values! The love!

Of course, all that went out the window when the world found out dear John had an affair, and probably a love-child, with Rielle Hunter, a skanky Lucinda Williams lookalike with overly processed hair. Even worse, the dalliance occurred while his wife was recovering from cancer and during what might have been a viable presidential bid. Had Edwards' candidacy taken off, the scandal could have cost him, and the Democratic party, the election, thrusting us into an alternate reality too horrible to contemplate.

Time passes. Tabloids move on. Cancer metastasizes. Poor Mrs. Edwards is terminally ill. She has three children and a husband she claims she's still - oh please! - "in love with". Her days with her beloved family are cruelly limited by her disease. And instead of making the most of the rest of her life, she's away on a book tour for her tell-all tome, narcissistically titled "Resilience". It's like Stephen Hawking calling his memoirs "Genius" or Giselle naming hers "Perfection".

How can Mrs. Edwards put her children, now all old enough to understand and be humiliated by their father's infidelities, through another media assault? Why would she leave behind a book that casts their only remaining parent in a negative light? In three consecutive interviews, Elizabeth informed us that "All she ever asked from John was that he be faithful." Repeatedly pointing out that she's an army brat, she describes her humble origins. They "never had a lot, but they had enough". Consequently, she "doesn't care about diamonds"- she just wanted her man to be true. Well, diamonds may not do it for her, but square footage is the girl's best friend. Elizabeth, the twins and John, self-styled champion of the underclass, live lavishly in a 28,200 square foot home, which includes a high school sized gymnasium where John can play basketball if Obama ever visits (highly doubtful).

So it's not like they need the money. The book puts John and his bad behavior right back in the spotlight, and Elizabeth's impending death will be the coup de grace to his career in public life. Apparently, revenge is sweeter than the eight year old twins. And John isn't the only partner in the Edwards marriage with character flaws.





Personally, I always thought John Edwards looked like a slimmed-down Bob's Big Boy. And unlike Paul Newman, he DID go out for hamburger...

Out of service

Today was a vibrant Northern California Spring day. The sky was an eponymous blue and the oversized vegetation preened in the sun. I was taking a brisk walk in the hills, the frisky wind refreshing my skin and my outlook. Suddenly, from a house a half block behind me, I heard an ear-splitting scream. "NOOOOOOO. NO NAP. NOT NAP TIME. NO NAP. NOT NAP. EEEEEEEEEEK! NO NAAAAP!" I sped up, trying to get away from the sound of some unseen, willful, angry little person with a set of pipes made for heavy metal. Alas, the road curved, and the wind was blowing in my direction. The raging child's voice followed me for an astounding three blocks. "NO. NOT NAP. NOOOOOOOO". I wondered if mom's ears were bleeding yet.

Nap time. Finally a reason to be glad I'm not thirty anymore.

Shameless Self-Promotion

On the off-chance that anybody reading this doesn't know me personally, I thought I'd let you know I have another blog.
It's more thoughtful, less snotty and has generally longer entries, on topics ranging from family issues, to politics, to life in Berkeley, California. If you'd like to check it out, simply go to http://eucalyptusway.blogspot.com/

lip-sinking to new depths

The above online campaign been stalking me for weeks. Somehow, I doubt the advertisers got Angelina's buy-in, and I really hope she sues.

Angelina Jolie has lovely lips, of course. They are large. They also have a distinct contour, a line that you can draw, because she comes by them honestly. Artifically plumped lips lose that shape and can look a lot like earthworms mating.



But this is the part that gets me. "Thin lips are ugly on anyone." Talk about tapping into young women's physical insecurities. Ugly like who? Kate Hepburn? Vivienne Leigh? Courtney Cox? Erin Burnett? All beautiful, all thin-lipped, all unimaginable with an outsized tumescent mouth.

When I was a girl, society gave Black women the message that their full lips were unattractive - which is racist and sick. I guess we have evolved a tad, since this ad isn't racist. Just sick. There are many ways to be beautiful. Black women generally have big lips, like the ravishing Beyonce, but that doesn't make sloe-eyed, slim-smiled Thandie Newton a dog. Angelina and Scarlett are pretty and pouty, but Gwyneth shouldn't have to wear a bag over her head.

This revolting ad is just another manifestation of our bigger is better culture - a culture that appears to be in its death throes as the economy snaps to like a pulled-taut rubber band. McMansions. SUVs. Bagels and muffins bigger than your head. Huge cocks and gigantic boobs and lips big enough to keep your nose warm.

The entertainment, advertising and fashion industries keep telling young women "You can't be thin enough". Unless, of course, the thinnest part of you happens to be your lips.

On G.E. stock breaking the $10 mark

Insight from my hubby, the stock trader.
"If you had asked people six months ago which was most likely to occur first, General Electric dipping below $10 a share or the rapture, most would have guessed the rapture."

At least we have more time to repent.

Puff Piece

The Michael-Phelps-caught-smoking-pot-story is a tempest in a bong. By now, most Americans understand that pot isn't any worse for you than booze. Personally, I'd rather have a stoned driver coming towards me at 40 miles an hour than a drunk one going twice as fast, hurtling across the median line. So what are we to make of this good old boy sheriff down in South Carolina, who had his men burst into a frat house, guns drawn, in search of an incriminating bong that might have Michael Phelps' DNA on it? It's a frat house, for heaven's sake. The surprising thing is that they DIDN'T find a bong. Michael Phelps had the discipline, character and athleticism to win 14 gold medals. I'd say he's earned the right to unwind and smoke a little dope.

It's time this country got over its hypocrisy and legalized pot. After all, it's a lot less dangerous than the grotesque binge drinking that kills a dozen or so college students each year. Most intriguingly, legalization could be a huge boost to our flailing economy by creating thousands of employment opportunities, including:

• Agricultural jobs for farmers and farm workers

• Retail jobs for dispensaries and eventually cannabis cafes, the smoker's equivalent of a bar

• Trucking and distribution jobs

• Opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to sell pre-rolled or packaged pot, or pre-fab brownies and other treats

• Refining, processing and packaging jobs for factory workers

• Research positions for scientists who would finally be allowed to investigate THC's pharmaceutical properties

• Marketing, advertising and design jobs to market the pot to adults, just as hard liquor is marketed today

Then, there are the fringe benefits:

• More time for the cops to go after bad guys

• More room in the jails for actual hardened criminals, who we could put away for a longer time

• Fewer lives ruined by incarceration for a victimless "crime"

• Less congestion in the courts from trials for pot-related offenses

• Less business for murderous Mexican drug cartels

• Less hypocrisy in society in general

• Less fodder for sleeze ball "journalists" who spend their times trying to embarrass people like Michael Phelps

Live long enough and you'll prosper. Maybe. If we ever get out of this hole.

Those long, elfin ears! Those diagonal brows! There is no doubt in my mind: Timothy Geithner is a Vulcan.

Eight Is Too Many.

"...I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgement, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous..." Excerpt from the Hippocratic Oath

Stand back. I'm gonna spew. I'm gonna be venomous and judgemental and not nice. Because Nadya Suleyman, the psycho woman who just had the octuplets, makes me sick.

For starters, there's the pathological Angelina Jolie fixation. Mom's had a nose job, cheek implants and lip plumping to make her look like the fourth runner-up in an Angie look-alike contest. She's trying so hard, I wouldn't be surprised if she had a crossed-out Billy Bob tatoo on her ass. And despite the lack of a Brad clone to mate with, Nadya's apparently determined to out-baby Brangelina. Except rather than pick a poor nation to adopt from, she's just given birth to her own third world country.

No one can accuse the Jolie-Pitts of not having the resources to raise their children. This bimbo, on the other hand, is divorced, with no apparent source of income and 6 other kids at home. Suleyman claims she'll be able to support everyody after she finishes "her classes". Until then, she'll be giving them "love". Which better be caloric, 'cause she sure ain't breast-feeding eight kids. And what classes, pray tell? Because flower-arranging isn't gonna keep 8 babies in huggies and onesies. As for love, does this cow have any idea what an ordeal the NICU is for a preemie? The needles, the blindfolds, the lack of physical contact and nurturing? The estimated tab of $400,000 per child by the time they're discharged? Does she realize premature babies are likely to have digestive issues that could require surgery? Or severe vision problems? Or under-developed lungs susceptible to respiratory distress, asthma and life-threatening infections? She's looking at six or eight thousand dollars per kid just for RSV shots, which preemies need to get through the cold and flu season - not to mention the cost of treating the inevitable developmental delays and possibly life-long learning disabilities. But who cares when "all you ever wanted to be was a mom"? You just have to share that love because it's all about you. If it wasn't about you, you wouldn't be getting interviewed on TV: you'd be in the NICU with your babies.

Nadya Suleyman intentionally conceived eight children with ongoing medical problems that will cause them pain and suffering and cost society millions. She has demonstrated that she is unintelligent, irresponsible and selfish - all terrific reasons to replicate one's DNA. Just what our overpopulated world needs - more stupid, self absorbed people, consuming and polluting. Most disturbing of all, this case almost has me agreeing with the pope. In vitro, in this instance, really IS unethical. The so-called doctor who agreed to implant the embryos could have refused on the grounds that it was medically dangerous. Instead, he took the money and created eight children with compromised futures to accommodate a crazy woman's identity issues. The doctor should lose his license. As for Pseudo-Angie, I hope her uterus falls out.

The Impersonal Trainer

"I am searching for on-line personal training clients."
My company, NAME WITHHELD, offers a very personalized on-line personal training service. ...

Believe it. This was posted on one of my linked in groups. The ultimate can't-be-done online business is now being conducted, on line. The trainer can't see your bad form, or take note of your problem areas. You can't be shamed, goaded or inspired into just five more reps. It defies the whole raison d'etre for personal training! What's next? www.facelift.com?

Bite me, Sweetness.

My women's networking group has a massive off-topic email list which we use to post requests for referrals for everything from advertising writers (like me) to housepainters. So this member sends an email asking the group if they have tried to find work through online bidding sites. This process was described by many respondents as a "race to the bottom." Whoever sells herself the cheapest, wins, so to speak. I wrote back of my experience with a paying site where I have gotten exactly zero responses, and recommend against it. And then I impulsively typed the following: OBAMA BETTER HURRY UP AND GET TO WORK! THIS ECONOMY SUCKS! :-(

OK, I admit it. All caps, tacky, wrong forum, I got carried away. So this woman writes in to ream me, in a kind, nurturing and ickily self-righteous way, in front of some 300 women, reminding me that more millionaires were made during the depression than any other time. (No idea if it's true, but my husband suggested that might have helped make up for all the millionaires who jumped to their deaths). The lady gently chides me for sending out my bad thoughts about the economy to all the women in the group. It's this negativity that's causing all our problems, and making the bad economy a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sorry, Precious. I don't agree. Between real estate tanking, and credit hard to come by, and layoffs all over the place, and people's savings or retirements evaporating, anyone with half a brain would hold a sober view of this time in our nation's economic history. None of this is caused by a sudden consumer reticence to hit the mall. This is no time to up your discretionary spending, and folks are wisely keeping their wallets in their pants or purses.

The stories keep getting closer to home. The foreclosures, layoffs, part-timing for partial wages, the insurance crises, heck, I'm just two degrees of separation from an 83 year old Bernie Madoff victim. This stuff is happening to people I know, and people my friends know. I'm not sure where the optimistic lady lives: a high end neighborhood, or her own personal bubble?

People who call a spade a spade are not pessimistic, or negative, or witless participants in a mass hysterical denial of how great the economy really is. They are realists. And if there's one thing a realist can't stand in a crisis, it's some damn Pollyanna telling you to get happy. You need to be grounded in reality, and you need to be able to indulge in occasional dark humor to let off steam.