Ms. Traister wrote well, but didn't convince me. I wonder if Ms. Traister's unease is Ms. Rowling doing the equivalent of painting beyond the frame, which doesn't blur the line between make-believe and reality, as an artist might intend, but rather reminds us that what's in the frame is make-believe. For example, if one were to paint a woman in a field that was contained in a frame, those borders facilitate our projecting into the frame, but if an artist were to paint a woman in a field stepping out into our world, by way of the frame, we would only see the gimmick.

Likewise with Ms. Rowling pulls back the curtain with her terrier teeth and shows us that her Wizard is powered by a woman on a stage wondering aloud, it is harder to pretend that Harry and company are real.

Very, very.

And Mr. Kamiya is his cognitive cousin.

Hubcap halo!

Mission accomplished.

Next year, they'll be bronzing brides, so that they'll be pretty forever and ever. Me first!

A couple is joined by God, thus a couple can't be split by a person or persons.

One's first spouse is one's only spouse.

Thus, Ronnie Reagan was never truly married to Nancy Reagan. They weren't spouses. They were merely proligate, public adulterers. And so it also goes with the millions of allegedly divorced folks, who especially cluster in the homo-hating red states.

Or so should say the fundies if they were theologically consistent.

...less expensive, fuel-efficient options to the Prius. The Prius is pricey for me. If it isn't for you, well, you're swell, I guess, but don't plink Ms. Clarren for being glad that there are green cars for folks without stacks of greenbacks.

"Is there a growing Victorianism lurking in our verbal closet?"

Yep. Times ten. We're all strung too tight. Sex is used to sell us EVERYTHING. At the same time, I can't recall having a single lover who could actually chat about sex...not in the purient, leering, pornified way, but freely and funly. So, sex in media ratchets us tighter and tighter and we have no mature release, thus we squirm for words.

We're pathetic, but hey, hey, hey, those jeans and energy drinks and everything else sure are selling.

I suspect it's due to the reality that 99.99999% of us, regardless of whether you drive a Prius or a Metro or a scooter or even walk, are consuming the Earth and hurrying along the coming Great Dying. Nearly all of us share the blame for the coming famines, droughts, the ends of various islands and coastlines, etc.

As a writer, I interview various corporate bigshots and if the interview goes well and we go off the record and they get to tell me the truth. The truth is that we're running out of everything: money, metals, energy, hope, and time. Some of us will survive, but we're too fatty a species, in all ways, and Mother Nature is a butcher, who, like Jack Sprat, likes no fat.

...smart.

...my torn shirts and "ahem" hems. And sometimes I'm paid, as I was today, to yap at folks in fancy clothes...gawd, I pity those fancy folks, I truly do. When people assess me, it's based utterly upon what I can do rather than what I wear. What's better than that; to be judged on your ability to do whatever you do rather than your ability to shop for shoes or synchronize your shirt.

as it rhymes with angina.

Now don't you have someone somewhere to torture? This is the playroom.

I felt like I waited for a morsel. Talk faster, Ms. Clark-Flory. Get to the point and make sure you have a point before standing before the camera.

...and "The Daring Book for Girls" and dare to tango with danger. The girls I knew growing up lived such lives. We rapelled off cliffs and into pits, forayed into wilderness, and worked in ghettoes.

But that was a different time.

Children were more plentiful and especially in my family and so if I wanted to sleep in the snow, my parents said, "Go. Don't die."

My sense is that the book tightly observes gender boundaries. Boys risk danger, but girls dare...barely.

Hell, even Barbie dares...to ski...in pink!

I'm going to write a book entitled, "How Oprah ruined everything."

It will be a book about gardening, but people will buy it, eh?

Since I've written for major feminist mags, I've interviewed major feminists and I've found them to be serious, wise, and cogent. Some feminist bloggers strike me as...young. And a little silly. And seriously self-absorbed behind the curtain of "I deeply, deeply care about all women."

I'm just ranging.

If you always agree with a particular person, you and that person are chained to the same dog(ma)house.

In a world where folks think, we would find ourselves disagreeing and agreeing with the same folks on a regular basis. Rush's dittoheads are the utter antithesis of such folks. I like the wit of the Broadsheet writers, but I think, in the pursuit of copy, that they sometimes strain to be edgy. I think that they sometimes try to grind an edge onto cotton candy.

Or here's another Casablanket metaphor: Some of them thar hills of fulla beans, if you know what I mean, and don't amount to much in this truly dangerous world.