Official Bodily Function Euphamisms

Everyone knows what you mean when you go into a bathroom and declare that you are "going #1" or "going #2". I kind of like it; it's not terribly crass and it comes in handy when you only have one small bathroom and you have to decide who gets to go first after a long car ride (#1 obviously). But I always thought that it was an overly cute way of referring to urine and feces.

Until my building installed new two-way handles on it's toilets because we are in a drought and have to conserve water. The sign gives careful instructions that you should pull the handle "Up for #1" and "Down for #2", "depending on your needs." That's right; I shit you not. The official instructions for peeing and popping are "#1" and "#2".

Happy Third of the Month!

Today is the first Third of the Month in 2008. This provides us with an excellent chance to start the year off right. New state, new job, new puppy (forgive me, oh Peaches!), new opportunities to appreciate one's own existence.

So stock up on moist towelettes, put on some plaid (if you even own any plaid anymore, this being 2008 and all...), and marvel at how absolutely perfect you are. The Colbert Report is back and after today we hopefully won't have to hear about Iowa for another 4 years. What could be better?

Cats and Dogs Living Together...

Mass hysteria!

The Peaches is about to get a new big sister. That's right. Somehow the boy convinced me to adopt a dog. Up until last weekend, when the Peach was terrorized* by his sister's dachshunds, it's possible she had never seen another animal up close before. She did not handle it well. She made sounds I didn't think were possible to be made by a house cat, even such an exotic beauty like my Peaches.

So, in the span of two years I have gone from a completely pet-free** existence to running a zoo. And he made me buy him a book on raising chickens for Christmas. Chickens! Scratch that zoo thing; we're going to have a whole frickin' farm. A farm! And no Chinese delivery! And last night I ate dinner at a chain restaurant. A chain restaurant! I swear, this town is killing me.

But my cat is certainly going to kill me in my sleep if I let this dog take over. She's been known to hold a grudge. And urinate in my laundry.


*Now I have been told that "terrorize" is too strong a word but what else do you call it when the little vermin ate all her food while my precious baby cowered in fear underneath the bed?

** I do not consider my fish to be pets; they are decor.

Defende Nos in Proelio...

Growing up in the northeast you couldn't swing a dead cat around by a rosary without hitting a Catholic church. Here in North Cacalacky we are not so blessed. It as thus made me appreciate more the majesty and thoughtfulness of my parish in New York, or at the very least its professional choir. But having enjoyed a lovely evening of singing carols at Love Feast last month, I am saddened to announce that one tiny little Methodist church has more singers who can carry a tune than the entire Catholic population of Durham.

And it's certainly not for lack of trying. Oh, do they try. Encouraging as it is to see an enthusiastic congregation at each Catholic church in the city, genuineness of faith is no excuse for laziness. Making mass a pleasant experience requires more than just showing up and at the very least requires the cantor to get her vowels right, particularly if she isn't bothering to pay attention to the key. Why, oh why, must we sing Gaelic folk songs and Caribbean allelujahs when there is nary an Irishman or a Jamaican in the place? And surely someone close to the "choral director" is aware of a mass setting that was not written by Marty Haugen.

But the hand-holding. Oh the hand-holding! As if I didn't have enough crosses to bear down here, I have to suffer through the whole congregation grabbing each others' hands, sometimes across the aisle, during the Our Father, as if that's the best time to invoke traditional camp-fire activity. And color me a literalist, but I don't think you can call it the Agnus Dei (tr. "Lamb of God") if you don't say, um, "Lamb of God." Look, if I wanted to kum-ba-ya like in a hippy-dippy liturgical clusterf*ck, I'd be Protestant.

So, anyway, this was the (extremely uncharitable) mindset I was in when visiting the future in-laws in an even more southern state (Georgia) for Christmas. We came dangerously close to going to an Episcopal church for midnight mass until God stepped in and totally got us lost and made us run out of gas. Providence is either truly mysterious or simply a synonym for absent-minded. Needless to say we went to the little local church the next morning and prayed for the best...

... Boy, you sure do find those RadTrads in the strangest places. Now I admit I used to troll the Catholic blogs back in the day (still do sometimes) so I knew they existed but I'd never seen any up close. And these guys were good! It was very subtle; you had to know what to look for. Everything was just a little bit off, like those bells I haven't heard since I was a kid or when the little altar boy stuck a plate under my hand just in case I spilled a few crumbs of the Eucharist. Little stuff that made you go hmmmm.

Again, everything was just a little off, that is until the end of the mass, when the entire congregation prayed, in full Stepford unison, for St. Michael the Archangel to protect them from the demons and evil spirits that prowl the world in order to prey on good souls. Oh yes, they said "prowl".

It was that moment when we knew we had to flee lest we be discovered, moderate cradle Catholics in the bowels of the RadTrad beast!

But the kicker (and this is where I really believe that the good Lord is testing me by fire) is that in the midst of a clearly conservative, traditional congregation complete with totally suppressed prayers to heavenly warriors, I still had to hold hands during the Our Father! Will the indignities never end!

No Soup For You!

There are three things in life that are certain: death, taxes, and the Wall Street Journal's hatred of China. China, on the other hand, hates me. Or at least the Chinese do. Or at least the Chinese and/or non-Chinese who own Chinese restaurants in Durham.

Alone for dinner last night, without the car, I did some laundry and settled in to order some food. Having planned on ordering Chinese all day I as really jonesin' for some hot and sour soup. So I kicked off my shoes and called the closest restaurant and asked if they delivered. The woman replied by asking me my address. I told her where I lived (which is no more than 0.5 miles away).

She replied "Is that an apartment or a home." I answered that it was a home.

Then she says, "Oh, we never delivered there before."

"No, this is my first time calling."

"Oh, then I don't think we deliver. Sorry." And then she hung up!

So I called her back. I politely told her I thought we got cut off. But no, she assured me that she hung up on me because she won't deliver to a home. Only to an apartment. (This was of course beginning to feel like this time that a store in Prague wouldn't take my credit card because it wasn't Thursday.) But then she clarified. They only deliver to Duke Apartments. In case you are wondering, those apartments are a) sketchy and b) about three times farther away than my house. So, yeah still crazy but in a different way.

It turns out, however, that it wasn't only this crazy lady who wouldn't deliver to me. Not one single Chinese restaurant in a 5 mile radius (and there are more than you might expect) would deliver. Period. What do sick people do in this town? Meals on Wheels? Clearly there is room for a new product here without even having to come up with an original idea.

Now, had I known this illogical non-delivery policy that has plagued my city, I would have just walked the half mile to the China Inn and been done with it. Except it was raining. Oh, and Durham has no sidewalks! That's right. There are no sidewalks. I'm like not even exaggerating. If you were to take the ratio of sidewalks to streets it would be like 1:45623579.

Sometimes this town confuses me.

Happy Third of the Month!

Well, I believe it has been over a year since you last received a greeting on this day. This is not to say that I haven't been voraciously extolling my own virtues in the meanwhile. Far from it. I have been, idiomatically at least, loving myself up one side and down the other for the better part of this year.

In the intervening months I have defended my thesis, published a portion of said thesis in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, moved to Roosevelt Island, and lined up a post-doc at a prestigious university with an infamous lacrosse team. That university is not, unfortunately, in New York City. Which means this September we will be moving our humble little family (me, boy and cat) to the South. I will therefore have to not only learn what it's like to own a car and drive everywhere I want to go, but to like grits and Duke basketball. I think I'm up for the challenge (the grits at least).

So, since this is a day of happiness and joy, I will not dwell on how I will miss the vim and vigor of the Greatest City on Earth, but rather focus on how the streets of North Carolina will presumably not smell like the men's room at Penn Station every time the temperature gets above 73 degrees. I will also focus on how I will have a yard and porch and a grill and not pay 65% of my salary towards rent! Maybe I can afford some new plaid underwear...

Love yourselves. You deserve it.

The Many Indignities of New York City

I have discovered that as the days draw nearer to our departure from New York, the less I am able to tolerate the thousands of indignities that New Yorkers are constantly subjected to. For eight years, which happens to be all of my post-college adult life, I have sung the praises of New York; it truly has become my home and I am, of course, scared and reluctant to leave. It is at times both horrific and majestic, filled with mystery and misery. To be concise, I am a city-boy at heart, even though I hail from the suburbs and in general loathe other people.

But that does not mean that I do not have the right to be treated with respect. And who is capable of hurling insult after injury upon New Yorkers better than the MTA?

This weekend, as many other weekends in the past, the F train was running on the V in the Queens-bound direction. When that happens, a straphanger can do one of two things to get to Roosevelt Island: either take the F all the way into Jackson Heights and transfer to a Manhattan-bound train, or get off at 53rd and Lexington and walk to the Tram. For able-bodied persons, the latter is the better option.

Unless you listen to the announcements. At every stop starting at 14th St. the conductor informed us that, to get to Roosevelt Island, one should get off at Queens Plaza and take the shuttle bus the MTA has graciously provided for affected passengers. Oh glory days! A shuttle bus! That wasn't sarcasm; to me, above ground is always preferable to below. So we stayed on the train.

And the shuttle bus would have been a great option. If there had been a shuttle bus. See, when we got off the train and asked the attendant to give us a shuttle bus ticket, he informed us that there wasn't one and he had no idea why we thought there would be one and that we would have to get back onto the train, which had now departed, and take it to Jackson Heights and switch trains.

I understand service interruption; it is a necessary evil when it comes to public transportation. I begrudgingly accept poorly worded signs alerting me of such changes. What I do not accept is being lied to. And the worst part is, no one cares. The conductors don't care; the attendants don't care; the MTA certainly doesn't care. And you can't complain to anyone. Well, I mean you can certainly complain to people (I suggest your co-workers and/or loved-ones) but you aren't going to get any retribution.

That's why you should focus your energy on complaining about things that can have satisfactory outcomes. Like when a taxi waits until the last minute, after the lanes have split, to get into the exit lane on the BQE, rather than wait in the long line of cars like a respectable human beings do, and you have a cell phone and his easy-to-remember 4 digit license plate, you can file a reckless driving claim on his ass with the TLC. That, my friends, is satisfying.

I am, of course, terrified that my general rage at people who do things that piss me off is going to be turned into road-rage that will get me injured. But I am counting on the general passivity and cordiality of Southerners to keep me sane in the Carolinas; but a more likely scenario is that their general lackadaisical congeniality will, um, piss me off.

Sad Tableau

This morning I was riding the 6 train and as I descended into the subway, I saw something that truly saddened me. An old man, probably in his sixties but with a hunched over stance and white hair and moustache that made him look much older, was scrubbing graffiti off the wall. Of course, the first thing that popped into my head was that episode of South Park where someone drops a deuce in the urinal and it leads to Kyle being blamed for September 11th.

Although graffiti can be considered a valid art form, this was just straight up vandalism. And this poor man, who has probably labored a great deal in his life, was forced to clean up after some horrible thug who has no respect for his neighbors. Heartbreaking. It's as bad as taking someone's newspaper in his own home. And that's seriously bad. It's almost enough to make my middle-class white guilt overcome by liberally-educated homosexual sense of entitlement.

Gingivectomy

That's what the dentist did to me today.

Sure, I went in for a routine cleaning and sure, I haven't been flossing as much as I should and my gums are a little swollen. And I do know that, left untreated, gingivitis can kill you. Or at least I've always been suspicious of it.

But I thought that all the dentist would do was scrape some plaque off my teeth and give me a good tongue lashing for not flossing. But noooooo. She wanted to perform a gingivectomy to rid me of loose gums that apparently were creating deep pockets around my teeth for plaque to reside. She referred to it as "recontouring my gum line," which sounded a little too Park Avenue for my taste (forgetting for a second that my dentist was located on Park Avenue) but which I accepted because that's what you do when you are lying back in a chair with a bright light shining in your eyes and a masked woman poking your gums with a metal prod.

She attempted to ease my mind, though, by assuring me that she wouldn't use the "blade" but rather "just the sharp tool". I will not bore you with the subsequent gory details of my dental procedure, except to make note that it involved lots of blood. And when I rinsed and spat, I am positive I saw parts of my gum wash down the tiny little sink.

The upshot, of course, is that I have a killer new smile. Or at least I will when the new gaping holes in my gums heal over.

Illiterate Ph.D.s

Yesterday, somebody in my building took my copy of the Wall Street Journal. I know someone took it because it was in the hallway waiting for me when I left for the gym, but when I returned it was no longer there. So I used my tightly honed powers of deductive reasoning to conclude that someone took it.

Now, it's possible they were confused. Apparently the guy who delivers the paper to us can't walk thirty feet down the hallway, perhaps because of some affliction to his lower appendages (although were that the case he perhaps would have chosen a less mobile profession), and instead merely tosses the paper out of the elevator and doesn't care where it lands. Sometimes it lands in front of someone else's door. Sometimes it barely makes it out of the elevator. It has never made it in front of my door. So maybe that's why someone took it.

Maybe someone saw the paper on the floor and said to themselves, "Hmmm, isn't it nice of the building to leave this copy of the Wall Street Journal just lying here for anyone to take. Hey, I like to read! Maybe I'll read this paper!" Or maybe they said to themselves, "Hey, perhaps in a drunken stupor I accidentally ordered the Wall Street Journal to be delivered to my hallway, and even though I can't remember doing it, I'm going to pick it up and read it anyway!"

Except the problem with my little hypotheticals, which might seem reasonable to the casual observer, is that they neglect a very salient fact: the person who picked up my paper mistakenly cannot possibly know how to read. How do I know this very important and what might be considered highly improbable piece of information?

I know this because if they could read, they would have seen the big fat address label that does not have their name on it.

The kicker, of course, is that every single apartment on my floor has at least one Ph.D. living in it. It baffles the mind that, in an entire floor of Ph.D.'s, there lives someone who is not capable of reading an address label.

Either that, or one of my neighbors is a gigantic douche.

15 Seconds of Fame

As some of you may know, Emerson and I, along with my friend Jennifer, tried out for the second season of VH1's The World Series of Pop Culture, hosted by none other than our local news idol, Pat Kiernan of NY1. Needless to say, we did not succeed. Even though we studied for months. We didn't even pass the test. Although we are forbidden under the fullest penalty of the law to say what went on in that room, I will say that it required more knowledge of the WB than even I was capable of cramming into my brain. It's a shame. Stupid Gilmore Girls!

We had chosen what, in our opinion, was the kick-ass-est team name ever: "There Is No Dana". We even showed up to the auditions dressed as nerdy paranormal investigators. And I thought for sure that no one would get to see us. But I was wrong. In the intro to the first episode, where they showcase scenes from the written test, there we are in all our test-taking glory! Emerson even got a close-up!

Of course, I am still bitter about not getting on but I am tickled pink that last year's winners, El Chupacabra, got knocked out in the first round. I always thought those hacks got lucky!

Fun Summer

The boy and I had a very pleasant Sunday in the sun a few days ago. We began by getting up at the ass-crack of dawn and schlepping down the street to our newly acquired car that has its own newly aquired parking space at the Motorgate Parking Garage above the Gristede's on Roosevelt Island (which is where we live, of course). Then we drove to Target because we realized in our hasty planning that in order to properly enjoy the beach to which we were headed we were going to need to purchase beach chairs. This, a day after we made a special trip out to Target for other necessary sundries.

And of course, because we can't do anything ordinary, we didn't go to a popular, common beach like Jones Beach or Coney Island. No, we had to find the quiettest beach in the five burroughs; a beach that no one in their right mind would want to go to because it is impossible to reach by public transportation and nearly as impossible to reach by car and doubly impossible to park once you get there because you need a fishing license to do so. Oh, and it also had to be the former home of supersonic air defens missiles. I give you: Fort Tilden. Let me just say that New York Magazine didn't mention the $50 fee for a parking permit!

Regardless, we found a beautiful spot on the beach which wasn't nearly as vacant as I was led to believe but was still far quieter than any other beach in the metropolitan area. It was also probably windier. The wind, in fact, prohibited me from properly applying my spray-on sunscreen. To wit, I have horrible streaky bright red sunburns all over my legs, in very uncomfortable locations.

That didn't deter us, however, from having a pleasant work out at the gym and then having dinner in Long Island City at a delicious Thai place, Tuk Tuk. I had the pinapple coconut duck curry. It was exquisite. Then we had a scotch at our new favorite outside bar, LIC, on Vernon Blvd., where we were serenaded by a local band that specialized in surf music. I kid you not.

As it was, I enjoyed my weekend immensely. It fit well into our theme for the summer which is: "Fun Summer". Not original, I know, but then again it wasn't me who came up with it. Next Fun Summer weekend? Blueberry picking and Harry Potter reading....

Triumphant Return!

After about a year, I have decided to return to blogging. I'm not entirely sure what prompted it but I'm certain that it has something to do with ego and self-esteem issues. And maybe akrasia.

So I hope to keep this up. You can expect me to blog about the usual stuff. Pop culture. My goings-on about New York. Probably a little intelligent design creationism thrown in amongst some other sciency stuff. Gay marriage. Maybe my gay marriage, if we ever get around to setting a date. I might even talk about some politics, like how the vice president's quasi-QM metaphysical musings about his state of existence rival the existential poetry of the former Secretary of Defense. Or how much, no matter how hard I honestly try, I still can't like Hillary Clinton. And if I'm really lucky, I'll get to turn this into a Mike for Prez blog.

But more likely than not I'll just complain about things that piss me off. Like the smug sense of entitlement every person in this city seems to have. Or how people never exit at the back of the bus. Or how livery cabs merge in front of you on the BQE at the very last second even though they, of all people, should certain know better.

Oh, and I'll probably extol the virtues of plaid on a regular basis.

Stem Cell Lies

Michael Fumento, the National Review's go-to guy for science stuff, has a particularly nauseating essay in this week's issue dealing with embryonic stem cell (ESC) research in the wake of the President's veto. It deals with a letter written to Science by three prominent ESC researchers taking to task a list that's been floating around claiming that adult stem cells (ASC) can treat upwards of 70 some-odd diseases, whereas ESCs haven't cured anything. Science has a nice article this week on the reality of some of those "cures", most of which are in foreign countries with undocumented, anecdotal results. These scientists are correct to take issue with Congress touting out "patient testimony" as evidence of ASCs curative powers.

Fumento gets riled up, however, by the supposed dishonesty of these scientists by downplaying the curative potential of ASCs, claiming that they are apparently "at odds" with the whole medical community. Why? Because they claim “adult stem cell transplants from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood can provide some benefit to sickle cell patients” and “hold the potential to treat sickle cell anemia” [emphasis Fumento's]. He claims that, no, ASCs have full curative power:

An article from the May 2006 issue of Current Opinion in Hematology notes that “there is presently no curative therapy” for sickle-cell anemia other than allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. “Hematopoietic” means from marrow or blood; “allogeneic” means the cells are from another person. Seminars in Hematology (2004) states, “. . . curative allogeneic stem cell transplantation therapy” has “been developed for sickle cell anemia.” Meanwhile, “. . . curative allogeneic stem cell transplantation therapy [has] been developed for” sickle-cell anemia according to Current Opinions in Molecular Therapy (2003), while “hematopoietic stem cells for allogeneic transplantation” are “currently the only curative approach for sickle cell anemia” observes the journal Blood (2002).

What does everybody seem to know that the Science writers and editors don’t?

Hmmm. I'll tell you Mr. Fumento. They know you need to read more than one sentence into an abstract. Take the Curr Opin Hematol article. Fumento needed to only read the next sentence: "This therapeutic option, however, is not available to most patients due to the lack of an HLA-matched bone marrow donor." Wow. One curative therapy exists and it remains unavailable to most patients. I'd say that, on the whole, allogenic stem cell transplantation therapy holds potential and provides some benefit to patients as a group, which is how we generally think of the benefits of a therapy. And since immunocompatibility is a major problem for organ donations (which stem cell transplantation essentially is), that's why the all the papers he cited go on to talk about gene therapy to overcome that problem. I'd hardly say the powers of ASCs were falsely underplayed:

Sometimes it prints easily falsifiable studies, such as this, attacking the usefulness of ASCs.

Yes, it is easily falsifiable, as in, one can attempt to falsify it by

reading the literature. However, as is obvious from reading, oh say,
the entire article, one realizes that ASCs aren't nearly as useful as
you'd like to believe.

Will ESCs help us in our pursuit of the holy histocompatibility grail? Maybe, maybe not. Point is, ASCs probably won't because they are a lot harder to manipulate. Studying ESCs is basic science research and may provide some clues towards this manipulation by helping us understand early differentiation, for example. And that research needs to be funded by the federal government.

Fumento ends, of course, by implying that the recent South Korean stem cell debacle shows that Science is a "propaganda sheet:"

Other times it falsely promotes ESCs. That culminated in January when the journal was forced to retract two groundbreaking ESC studies that proved frauds.

Yes, but it didn't falsely promote ESCs. The journal itself was defrauded by the authors. And it immediately retracted them. It was not intentional and not only was the journal defrauded but the peer-reviewers and several co-authors as well. Not everyone involved with the publication of data is expected to independently verify every detail of the work submitted.

Whatever one's opinion on ESC research is, I simply abhor when irresponsible "journalists" misrepresent science. Abhor. Like I abhor Richard Gere. Oh yes, that much.

Alternate Side Parking Rules

New Yorkers have this funny little ritual that they go through several times a week if they own cars and it goes by Alternate Side Parking Rules, whereby for about an hour and a half two or three times a week, one of the sides of the street gets cleaned and must be cleared of traffic. Which means if, oh say, you've borrowed your sisters car for the week while she's studying in Italy so you can go to Costco and run other errands and drive out of the city on the weekend and generally just get a respite from public transportation, you can't just leave it on the street until you need it. No, you have to move it between the hours of 9:00 and 10:30 so that the Department of Sanitation can clean the street, which in my seven years in this city I may have seen happen once.

Anyway, I used to think this little annoyance was amusing and I got a cynical bout of schadenfreude every time I saw people double parked across the street waiting for the magical time when they can move their cars to the other side and leave them there for upwards of three whole days!

That is, I was amused until it happened to me. When I arrived on Sunday night I was determined to park on a side of the stree where I didn't have to move the car until at least Tuesday. This meant either parking on the other side of 96th St. (the horrors!) or trying to fit my sister's little Elantra in a small space between an Infiniti and a Pathfinder. SUVs are, of course, the bain of my existence but this one took the cake. I asked the boy to get out and see if I could fit. He said yes, which would have been the correct answer if the Pathfinder didn't have a spare tire the size of Minnesota sticking out the back. Bumper to bumper I was fine. But bumper to tire? Nope. The Elantra's hood was just two inches too high for that. I managed to wedge myself in, but by the time I realized I couldn't get the car closer than a foot and half to the curb, there was no going back.

I did manage to find a space this morning, however, after only 45 minutes. By the end of the week I'll be a pro. Just in time to return the car to Connecticut and go another seven years without ever having to pray for inclimate weather so I can hear those blessed words on the morning news: "Alternate side parking has been suspended city wide...."

The Light at the End of the Tunnel...

... is October, baby! A little later than I wanted it to be but whatever. My committee meeting went swimmingly. And in just four short months I am going to insist that you all start referring to me as "Dr."! Apparently my work on the modification of bilayer mechanical properities by poly-unsaturated fatty acids, specifically the interplay between changes in elasticity and curvature, was a hit with the biochemists!

I'm on tonight and my hips don't lie....

Happy Anniversary!

To marriage equality!

The DaVinci Code

I am torn by the fact that Ron Howard is not putting a disclaimer up about Opus Dei when the film gets released this month. I am torn because I detest Opus Dei and would like people to have a disfavorable opinion of them, but I do think that they warrent a fair treatment. Granted, the story is fiction, and piss-poor fiction at that (give me Umberto Eco anyday). But of all the crap that Brown made up, Opus Dei is the only organization a) introduced to the general population by this drivel and b) still around. I think the Vatican is fair game in the same way that "the government" is appropriate as the Big Bad in a conspiracy story.

That said, however, I do get a tinge of delight at the twisted portrayal of Opus Dei. All fundamentalism should be stamped out.

Happy Third of the Month!

Ah, spring has sprung. It's wet and breezy with wild temperature fluctuations and inconceivably high levels of airborne allergens. Not to mention the fact that the vaguely acidic smell that has been permeating my department's restrooms comes not from infrequently emptied trash bins but from the toxic vapors emanating from the broken wasteline from the gross anatomy lab above us. If I wasn't in the daily habit of inhaling enough methanol to blind an elephant, I might be worried.

But not today.

Because today is about happy thoughts. Happy thoughts like how ludicrously awesome Prison Break is. Will Sarah Wayne Callies actually break the law and help Wentworth "I'm Secretly Black" Miller escape? Who is this "Company", an international conglomerate of corporations that control all world politics (aka the Elders of Zion) and why are the messing with Patricia Wettig? And don't you think Patricia Wettig's name seems to be missing a consonant?

All these questions, however, can gleefully distract us from our true mission today: to spread love and joy and self-appreciation everywhere! Some may say that my infatuation with self-satisfaction is merely a casualty of the self-esteem movement of my childhood, a "this is your brain on drugs" childhood, which admittedly made heroin look tasty rather than horrifying (had I known the dangers of "bad" cholesterol (which is of course an idiotic oversimplification of an essential and vital mammalian sterolic compound that we really shouldn't be attempting to moralize by placing value judgments on it)) I'd've probably been terrified. If I had been a product of the "drugs will make you stick your entire hand in your mouth" childhood, I might have stayed of the crank... the self-love crank that this!

So if you're having difficulty finding your inner high today and you can't get a hold of some methanol, might I proffer a suggestion: take a dozen moist towelettes and remove them from their deliciously square foil wrappers. Layer them on top of each other and place them firmly over your nose and mouth. Secure them by tying a bandanna (preferably plaid) around your head and breath normally. Ignore the burning sensation in the middle of your cerebellum. As your eyes begin to well up with tears of joy and wonderment, think upon the meaning of the Third of the Month and try to stay awake until the euphoria hits you....

Mmm Tastes Like Chicken

This weekend the boy and I went to the Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. I highly recommend it, and not just because they take a nicely produced swing at Intelligent Design Creationism. In a serious of video discussions Ken Miller, Eugenie Scott and Francis Collins, among others, neatly lay out the definition of a theory and discuss why ID isn't one.

But that is not the focus of the exhibit; the focus is Darwin's journey from simple observations to his detailed, revolutionary idea. The whole exhibit has a very Victorian feel and you get a true sense of how pathologically curious the man was, as evidenced by the fact that he ate every species he came across to see what it tasted like. Seriously. Apparently those endangered Galapagos iguanas taste like chicken.

And while the IMAX movie of the Galapagos islands enhanced the experience, it really isn't all that necessary; it's too short to actually give you any scientific detail, although widescreen IMAX movies of nature are always pretty cool.

Not Ludicrous Enough

Last night was the best night of my life. Well, recently at least. Why? Because Ludicrous Prison Break is back on the air! It was fantastic! There are all these really tense moments. Is he gonna get the chair? Is he not gonna get the chair? Is Sarah Wayne Callies '99 gonna come through and talk to her daddy? Was Wentworth Miller going to be able to stop staring off into middle distance long enough to plead with her eyes? When are they finally going to get to make out? Are they going to have a torrid off-screen romance? Is Abruzzi coming back from his stint with VW? Are Michael and Sucre ever going to make out? Are they going to kill off Veronica so I don't have to suffer through any more of Robin Tunney's horribly affected phrasing? And doesn't Patricia Wettig rock?

Big Boys Don't Get Do-Overs

As you probably know, I am not a big fan of unions. Especially greedy ones. The TWU is no exception. Perhaps you all remember that strike back around Christmas? That illegal strike? Remember it was about how the MTA wasn't given the workers what they wanted? Remember how, when they didn't reach an agreement, the MTA wanted to go to binding arbitration? Kind of like how every other union/management dispute is settled. Because arbitration and mediation is how adults who cannot come to an agreement settle their differences.

Remember how the TWU didn't want to go to binding arbitration because they didn't want to lose a say in their contract? And remember how the MTA backed down to virtually all the union's demands and how the union president, Roger Toussaint, agreed it was a fair contract? And remember how the union got to take a vote on it and get their say? And remember how they rejected it and how the MTA said, "fine, we'll go to binding arbitration, like adults."

Well, now the union wants another chance to vote. See, they didn't understand what they were voting on. It's not like they had weeks to read the contract. It's not like every news program and newspaper in the city reported what was in the deal ad nauseum. No, they weren't properly informed. They want to try again.

I'm sorry. Adults don't get do-overs. You had your choice. You struck for three days, illegally, when you didn't get your way. Then you were handed a nice, sweet deal, when the MTA had every legal and rational reason to push for binding arbitration. And you said no. And now, when it looks like you're going to be forced into binding arbitration against what you originally wanted, you want another vote?

"We believe that the MTA should be held to the terms that they agreed to in December, and that the MTA should not get into the business of dictating to the union when and how we ratify a contract," says Mr. Toussaint. Oh really? Dictating? Kind of like how you dictated the MTA when and how you were going to go to work? Are you so egotistical as to think that the workers are the only entity that matters? Earth to Roger: socialism lost. You have management to deal with, the ones who have to sign off on your contract. And don't forget about those pesky little subway and bus riders. We're just a bunch of irritating gnats.

You had your chance to sign the MTA's contract offer and you blew it. Adults go to a mediator. Children pitch a fit when they don't get their way and then demand everyone let them try again. And when you act like children, you deserve to be treated by children.

Not My Fault...

I intend to return to blogging as soon as my schedule calms down a bit.

I have resurfaced, however briefly, to inform everyone that I am in no way involved in this. A worm that attacks everyone on the third of the month is, in fact, blasphemous! That is not in the spirit of the Third of the Month! It is not about wanton destruction or vandalism! It is about loving yourself and cherishing yourself and protecting yourself from sadness and malaise. And plaid. Never forget that ultimately this day is about plaid....

So, grab a stack of moist towellettes, don your favorite pair of plaid boxers (or if you have any shirts left over from the mid 90s) and start updating those virus definitions! And stop downloading porn from random spam! (And no, the irony of this worm's method of attack is not lost on me...)

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a dinner party in my honor thrown by what I would like to call my rich Jewess benefactor, the lovely woman who endowed the fellowship that makes my PUFA research possible. Now, I've know some wealthy people; I have been to parties of wealthy people; I have some wealthy people in my family; heck, my cousin went to one of those pre-schools that cost more than Dartmouth did.

But I have never been to a home where you could stand at the toilet in the guest bathroom and relieve yourself while staring at a Picasso. An actual Picasso. In the guest bathroom.

And the clincher is that this apartment, in all its glory (and it was fantastic), was on the not-so-impressive middle floor of a not-so-impressive building on Park Ave. And still the only place they could find for the Picasso was the guest bathroom.

I need to invent something. Pronto.

Unmitigated Gall

I am having a bad morning, and it's not because I only had toast and jam for breakfast. No, I am having a bad morning because I am wet. I am primarily wet because of the rain; I realize, so is pretty much everyone in New York today. However, I could be less wet because I do own an umbrella; an umbrella that I'm very careful to keep with me at all times because you never know when the sky is going to open up and pour down on you and make you wet. And God knows there's little I hate more than being wet all day. Which is why I carry an umbrella with me at all times.

So why am I wet today? Because some asshole (and I only use that word because it's the nicest thing I can think of) stole my umbrella from the hallway outside my door where it had been drying overnight. Oh, that's right. Some un-neighborly fuck-twat took my umbrella from me on a soggy, rainy, cold morning two days before Thanksgiving! This godless asswipe of a thief took my ratty, ugly pop-up umbrella on a day when the owner (me) probably (definitely) really needed it. I would have bought another one but I didn't have enough cash on me to buy an umbrella because, oh gee, because I hadn't planned on needing to buy an umbrella this morning. Because I own one.

But I'm really angry at myself. I'm angry because I never leave my umbrella outside of my apartment. I never leave my umbrella outside of my apartment because I am a paranoid person who thinks very little of other people and I always had this irrational thought that if I left a cheap umbrella outside my door someone would probably steal it. And I always knew, deep down, that it was an irrational thought. Who would steal an umbrella? People cannot really be that thoughtless and cruel to their neighbors. That's what I thought to myself last night as I returned to my apartment with a soaking umbrella and left it outside to dry.

Well apparently my irrational fears were perfectly rational. The world is apparently filled with heinous, uncaring, unloving, selfish fuckholes. There are only seven other apartments in my building. And I swear to God I will find the fucker who stole my umbrella and I will not hesitate to rip his thieving arm from his socket and beat him to death with the bloody stump.

Calgon! Get Me Up Outta Here and Take Me Somewhere!

The boy and I have taken to watching music videos in the morning, in order to stay apace of what the kiddies are listening to these days (or at least what's on MTV). It has been thoroughly enlightening, since I don't listen to the radio. It has made me come to appreciate the wonderfulness that is Kanye West's "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" and "Gold Digger".

But our story doesn't start with MTV or Kanye or bling related hip-hop. No, our story today begins with late night channel surfing a few months ago. The boy was asleep, but I was a bit wired so I started flipping through channels until I came across the local PBS station from New Jersey, you know the one that plays that scenic tour of Italy twelve times a day? Well, at 3:30 am I was taken aback to learn that, instead of some dreary travelogue, PBS was showing some "hipster" youth jumping up and down on top of his piano, acting like an asshole. I mean, come on. An edgy jazz pianist? Sneakers and shaggy hair alone will not make you cool. Especially when you're banging away on your piano keys like a teenaged boy popping his cherry (lots of show to camouflage a lack of talent) while singing a sophomoric version of "I Could Have Danced All Night". Needless to say, I wasn't in a particularly sharp state of mind at the time and didn't know quite what to make of this spectacle.

So I put it out of my mind.

Until last week when this tool showed up on MTV. Apparently he's famous. Apparently people really like him. And apparently they have all had lobotomies. His name is Jamie Cullum and let me give you a taste of his youthful wisdom:

So what game shall we play today?
How about the one where you don't get your way?
But even if you do,
That's okay.

Trust me, it isn't any more interesting with music. Anywho, let's break it down, shall we? The only defining characteristic of this "game" is that the chick he's after doesn't get her way. But, he says, even if she does get her way, he's totally fine with that. But since that was the only defining characteristic of the game he was suggesting, he's really saying that he doesn't care what game they play. Which might be mistaken for deep, if the song manages to not put you to sleep by the time you hit the chorus.

He's a got a few more gems in there, too. Like:

I opened the door and you walked in,
(Sniff) The scent of wild jasmine.

Honestly. Do women smell like anything other than jasmine or vanilla? I don't even think I know what jasmine smells like. But what I do know is that rhyming it with "walked in" is about as lame as rhyming
"get your way" with "okay"...

Or how about this one:

And who'd have thought that entertainment,
Lies in the winter of your discontent.

Oooh, Jamie Cullum read a book! Lesson 1: when you want to look smart (but aren't) quote Shakespeare.

Alright, I got one more:

Now, sit at the table, face to face,
Queen takes pawn, check or checkmate!

Check or checkmate. Got that? Lesson #2: when you want to look smart (but aren't) make references to intellectual games. Like chess. Or backgammon. Or the one where you don't get your way.

Now, for a final observation... Compare what you read above with the following:

Now I aint sayin she a gold digger (When I'm Need)
But she aint messin wit no broke niggaz

I think the answer is obvious...

Maggie Gallagher Is A Whiny Bitch

After a week of guest-blogging on The Volokh Conspiracy, that's about the most charitable thing I can say about her. Over the past few years I've read much of what she has written and I always thought it boiled down to "sex makes babies so we shouldn't allow gay marriage" which of course makes that kind of sense that doesn't. So I was generally interested in seeing what she was going to say in a series of posts geared toward lawyers. Five days and approximately 20,000 words later I've discovered she basically thinks that "sex makes babies so we shouldn't allow gay marriage".

I feel justified in making the judgment that I do (ie, Maggie Gallagher is a whiny bitch) because that's about the level of sophistication her arguments took ("like the first ingredient is a husband and a wife, duh").

I also feel justified in critiquing what she has to say because we are equally qualified to comment on marriage and social policy. We both have undergraduate degrees from ivy league schools (Dartmouth '99; Yale '82) in fields unrelated to social policy (Chemistry; probably English and since none of her biographies seem to indicate what it was, I'm guessing it has nothing to do with government or sociology). We both have published an equal number of peer-reviewed articles on marriage (zero; zero). We both worship the whore of Babylon (Catholics, you know). We both have a checkered past with payments for expertise (she was payed by the Administration to espouse their policies in print; I was payed by a university to "volunteer" my time a local high schools). She's married and I'm not, but I'm gay and she's not so as far as "gay marriage" is concerned I think we can call it a wash. The only thing she's really got on me is that she's "thought about marriage" an awful lot; me probably not nearly as much. But if thinking a lot about something can be considered a qualification, I think Oslo's a bit behind on giving me my Nobel.

With that out of the way, I was going to go over her arguments post by post, but I've decided that they aren't worth taking a look at in that much detail because she tends to repeat herself a lot. Instead I'll look mostly at her last entry. According to "bad time management" we do not get treated to the

theories of the cognitive nature of social institutions, the relevance of the New Institutionalist Economics’ understanding of isomorphic institutional change, the developing legal pressures in Canada to repress opposition to its new normative understanding of marriage, or even why I think the most likely outcome of same-sex marriage is not polygamy but to the end of marriage as a legal status.

which is a shame because something substantial like that is what I was interested in hearing. Instead we get treated to five days of "sex makes babies, duh" rhetoric. My guess is time management has nothing to do with it; my true belief is that the woman has absolutely no qualifications whatsoever, let alone knows the definition of "isomorphic". Ok, that was a bit harsh, but for all her grandstanding and considering the venue I would expect something a little less sophomoric. She spent a great deal of time making a case for the importance of procreation to marriage, which is becoming more and more like a strawman argument. Not many same-sex marriage advocates argue against the importance of marriage and child rearing; what I've been searching for these past few years is a reasonable argument to connect "sex makes babies" with "gay marriage will end marriage as a legal status".

Maggie seems to be making three general arguments against same-sex marriage. 1) Analogies to no-fault divorce; 2) Connections to generativity; and 3) "Gender matters".

On the first point, I believe she is misguided. She brings up the history of no-fault divorce and the mantra about someone else's divorce not affecting your marriage. The disconnect here is that, in the case of no-fault divorce, it is easy to see how a climate of divorce might effect, not necessarily current marriages, but the decisions of the next generation to get married. If the next generation grows up in a world where individual marriages are statistically less permanent, two people entering into one might also treat it as less permanent. After all, monogamy is hard. But what exactly does the marriage of the gays down the street do to heterosexual marriage? It's not exactly as if same-sex marriage would realistically make a straight person think that he could just as easily marry someone of the same sex. So what does it do?

Dissociates marriage from generativity, obviously. If the gays down the street can get married without having children, what does that say about my marriage? Well, according to Maggie, "marriage as a public act is clearly no longer related at all to generativity, and the government declares as well it has no further interest in whether children are connected to their own mom and dad." Really, Maggie? But people are still having babies. Husbands will continue to be responsible for the children of their wives, presumably their children. And what about that so-called "sterility strawman"? Her answer, I must cite in full:

A subtler argument sometimes made is this: well, we have some non-procreating couples in the mix. Why would adding SS couples change anything? Two points: SS couples are being added to the mix precisely in order to assure that society views them as “no different” than other couples. This intrinsically means (if the effort is successful) downgrading if not eliminating the social significance of generativity (procreation and family structure). The second truth is that both older couples and childless couples are part of the natural life-cycle of marriage. Their presence in the mix doesn’t signal anything in particular at all.

Really, Maggie? Older couples and childless couples are part of the natural life-cycle of marriage? How? How exactly, if they aren't generating any children, can they be part of the natural life-cycle of marriage? Because they are a man and woman? That's borderline tautological. She's trying to defend the definition of marriage as between only a man and a woman based on procreation (not child-rearing, by the way) and generativity, but a male-female couple who cannot participate in either procreation or generativity are still part of the natural life-cycle of marriage precisely because they are a man and a woman and not two men.

See, according to Maggie, gay marriage is filled with gender contradictions:

Gender doesn’t matter, except when orientation is involved, in which case gendered sexual desire matters so much we are morally obligated to restructure our most basic social institution for protecting children, so that all adults get their needs for intimacy and social affirmation met equally. Orientation, as a classification, assumes gender is a real and significant category of human existence; but apparently only for gays, and not for children.

But gender does matter, obviously. It matters equally for heterosexuals as it does for homosexuals; it just doesn't matter so much for the institution. Maggie would like to believe that marriage has nothing to do with adult intimacy, and while maybe the government doesn't care if you love your spouse, perhaps Maggie forgot why she got married. Children are the ultimate expression of love, but I'm guessing it is not exactly for the sheer love of children and the future of the human race that Maggie chose her particular husband. But what I don't understand is the above statement in light of Maggie's (reluctant) support for single and gay adoption. Her constant bleating of "mothers and fathers matter" can obviously be halted if a child can be saved. What her real beef seems to be with is artificial reproductive technology (ART) and alternative family structures, but that's a whole other can of worms I'd rather not get into.

It is important to make the distinction, though, because the burning question which she is unable or refuses to answer is why, given the current state of ART and of adoption laws, how the very important role that marriage plays in connecting children to their fathers will diminish any faster with a small number of gay marriages. And her focus on sex is also very confusing and contradictory; her position seems to be that all procreative sex should occur only within marriage and if you can only have non-procreative sex you cannot get married. Well, exactly what kind of message does that send exactly? That sex outside of marriage is fine as long as it doesn't result in any babies?

I do think there is an elephant in the room (like there always is): Maggie finds gayness icky.

I really do think, btw, that this is what bothers most ordinary people: an instinct that their government, against their will, is telling them (and will re-educate their children) that everything they know about marriage (like the first ingredient is a husband and a wife, duh) is wrong and must now change. Upon penalty of being officially labeled bigots by their government. And everyone knows its open season on bigots in our society.

Well cry me a river, Maggie Gallagher! You might be labeled as a bigot if you oppose same-sex marriage! I oppose affirmative action and hate crimes. Many consider that bigoted. But I've got some convincing (I think) arguments that say affirmative action harms minorities and society as a whole, and we would all be better off without it. Can Maggie offer any convincing reason why gay marriage is harmful to gays? Why yes, she can! Societies can't survive without marriage and since gay marriage will obviously cause the downfall of marriage in Western society, western civilization will crumble and be replaced by something else that isn't so gay-friendly. See, this society is the best we're going to get, so we should just be grateful we aren't hanged to death for our perversions. Yes, that's really her argument as to why gay marriage isn't in the interest of gays.

Color me unimpressed.

Happy Third of the Month!

Ah, it's that time again. The fall weather is nipping at our door. Well, not today; it's like 80 degrees. But soon it will be.

Last month we took a Third of the Month hiatus because we were basking in the rays on Fire Island, not thinking about the horrible tragedy that was assaulting our nation. Normally, we would have celebrated in our usual cynical form but this one, at the time at least, seemed too soon and too crass, even for me. Although some of you may remember my September 11th limerick (email me for details), you should keep in mind that I was shell-shocked and not thinking straight.

Anyway, enough of this depressing crap. Let's remember what this day is really about! It's about loving yourself and loving yourself often. The world is looking up. I was in Connecticut for a wedding on Saturday which happened to be the day that civil unions went into effect. I got to hold a baby and it shit on me. The president has, I believe, completely isolated his base this new Supreme thingy. And the plaintiffs are kicking butt in Dover. Who could ask for anything more! (Toyota!)

So, wear plaid. Always carry a moist towelette. And watch Sarah Wayne Callies '99 on Prison Break tonight. She's trapped in the hospital wing of the prison during a riot, but she's still managing to out act everyone in a three mile radius; and it's only a matter of time before she can out stare Wentworth Miller into middle distance.

The Paraphrasation of Mimi

The boy is obsessed (obsessed!) with Mariah Carey. He tries to defend it using literary theory or post-modernism or deconstructionism or some crap like that. Point is, every morning we have to scour the music video channels to see if we can find a Mariah Carey video. And it usually takes us about 30 seconds.

The big one these days is "Shake It Off" where Mariah, soaking in a tub full of rose petals, manages to paraphrase one of the simplest commercial phrases of all time, namely "Calgon, take me away!" In Mariah's brilliant rendition: "Like a Calgon commercial I / really gotta get / up outta here / and go somewhere"... Just in case you thought "take me away" wasn't clear enough, Mariah breaks it down, she "deconstucts" it, so to speak, so that we, the audience, really understand not only the essence of the original pop culture reference but exactly how Mariah is feeling, at that moment, in the tub.

As a side note, a verse was cut (for time) which went like this: "Like a Wendy's commerical I / really gotta find / out where the beef / went up and got to"...

When Politicians Promote Peace, Everybody Loses

Last week, as many of you know, the UN was celebrating its 60th anniversary. At the same time, the fashion world was celebrating Fashion Week for like the 16th time this calendar year. With all the self-congratulatory mental masturbation going on you'd think it was the Third of the Month. But no. See, the Third of the Month, while all about loving yourself, doesn't involve pissing me off.

So, I needed to walk to the subway last week to get a new Metrocard, so I decided to take the 6 down to Hunter College. Being the lazy git that I am, I decided that, rather than walk the 4 blocks in the muggy heat, I'd take the M66. After all, I could see the bus down the street, between Park and Lex. So I waited. And waited. And waited. I got through Donna Summer's "I Got Your Love" and Madonna's "Holiday" before the bus managed to cross Lexington. And why? Because apparently all of Midtown was rerouted to the Upper East Side because a few diplomats need to be able to not be assassinated.

But that's not it. I had to watch three very able-bodied young women walk all the way from the back of the bus to get out the front, instead of the back, prohibiting the woman in the walker from exiting in a timely fashion and further delaying our embarkment just long enough for another train to arrive and forty more people try to pile on to go the four blocks that I was too lazy to walk. Fortunately I had Maroon 5 and Electric Six to keep me company (God bless my iPod).

It would have been ok, except that when the bus finally got to 1st Ave, this other woman (herinto refered to as "the ho") suddenly realized, after about four thousand people exitted, that she wanted to get off. This ho managed to yell "back door!" without dropping either her cell phone (presumably it was her conversation that had kept her too distracted to see the entire bus had vacated) or her nail polish, quite a feat. A feat that managed to allow just enough cars in front of the bus that it got held up through THREE LIGHTS before it got to York and was able to let the rest of the people off.

It took me twenty minutes, TWENTY MINTUES, to travel four blocks. And I was neither given a free ticket to Fashion Week nor compensated for putting up with the traffic, save for the pleasure of getting to hear a diplomat's punk-ass kid double park his SUV outside of my apartment, crappy-ass ghetto music loud enough to shake my couch, so he could get a kebap. Well, I can forgive him that because we got some damn good kebaps in our building....

Together At Last...

I have only two google alerts set up to notify me weekly on the two topics I find near and dear to my heart; intelligent design and gay marriage. I was shocked this week to see one story appear in both alerts! I mean, it is from Renew America, but still, it heartened me to realize that someone else shares the same interests that I do...

WARNING: People with any knowledge, however scant, of either science or philosophy should refrain from reading the above cited article, as it may cause nausea, upset stomach, insomnia, itching, burning, redness, dry eye, mental retardation, epilepsy, consumption and, in rare cases, death.

Absence of Proof...

I'm almost finished with Ken Miller's fantastic book, Finding Darwin's God (which I'll probably comment on at some point), and what with the president's recent statements about intelligent design, a thought popped into my head that I thought I'd get down.

Recently, Rick Santorum has been flip-flopping about teaching ID in schools but he recently said

We should lay out areas in which the evidence supports evolution and areas in the evidence that does not. And as far as intelligent design is concerned, I really don't believe it's risen to the level of a scientific theory at this point that we would want to teach it alongside of evolution.

I'm happy about the second sentence but the first sentence illustrates perfectly the problem with this entire brouhaha. There is much evidence that supports evolution; only the crazy young earthers deny that. But there is no evidence, and I mean actual evidence, that does not support evolution. I'm not talking "gaps" in the fossil record, kiddos, I'm talking actual evidence that does not support evolution. I'm not even asking for a direct contradiction, just some actual piece of biological evidence (whatever that word means!) that doesn't help evolution one iota.

But see, there isn't any. The closest you can come is claiming that there is no direct line of evidence to support the transition of one species into another. All we have to do, though, is keep digging and we're sure to find it. Because lack of evidence for evolution is not evidence against.

Happy Third of the Month!

It's August. It's hot as balls. I have a wicked scary talk to give in a week. And the president just said that he thinks we should teach "Intelligent Design" in public schools. But I'm not going to let that get me down. I'm going to get out there, like I do every month, and spread the good news! Today is a day that we should think of nothing but ourselves, nothing but the beauty that God bestowed upon us, the beauty that allows us to walk proud and tall (unless we are short) and say "I am what I am!"

But, not all self-love is selfish. We can love ourselves by helping others. And by helping others we get a glimpse of what it is like to be in someone else's place, or even a place in our own past; a place that was dark and foreboding and sad and ugly before we got Queer-Eyed. For example, I believe that every time we teach a child the joys of molecular cloning and immunoblotting (like I got to do today) we celebrate ourselves. Sure, we may be sacrificing precious time in the laboratory but we are at the same time educating the youth of America in a monetarily well-compensated way. I do this not only for myself but because I learn from the children as well. See, I believe the children are our future. We have to teach them well and then let them lead the way. In the spirit of the Third of the Month we must show them all the beauty they possess inside and give them a sense of pride, to make everything easier. And then, when we have opened ourselves up, we can let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be.

Yet remember, the Third of the Month is ultimately about appreciating yourself and all the unique qualities you have to give to the world. You are special just as I am special. I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow. I figured, if I fail or if I succeed, at least I'll live as I believe. No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity! Or my moist towelettes! Because today, the Third of Month is happening to me, as it should be happening to you. I found it right inside of me. It's really easy to achieve because learning to love yourself is what the Third of the Month is all about.

So if, by chance, that special place you've been dreaming of leads you to a lonely place, find your strength in plaid....