Most communities require backyard pools to be fenced in -- they're considered to be attractive nuisances that can present a danger to children. If your pool doesn't have a fence, I'd get one. First and foremost, it's for safety reasons (you don't want one of the neighborhood kids accidentally drowning in your pool) but it also has the happy side benefit of allowing you to control when your husband's cousin can use the pool.

Once your pool has a fence, lock the outside gate. Then, inform your husband's cousin that you need to keep the pool locked when it's not in use due to local safety laws. Also tell her that she now needs to call before coming over so that one of you can let her in. This should keep her from dropping in when you don't want her around. And never give her a key to the gate; tell her that the law requires only the homeowner to have it.

However, before you do any of this, make sure your husband is on board with the program. He needs to back you up with this plan. If his uncle and aunt make a scene, he can always blame your local government's silly laws. After all, his cousin is still going to be allowed to use the pool, it's just that she no longer can just drop in any time she pleases but must clear it with one of you first.

The cold draft of a recession also brings a blizzard of pink slips. It's hard to justify buying a new car, widescreen TV, or other big-ticket items (or even many small-ticket items) when you're anxious about being unemployed in the near future.

It's the sound of your job flying off to India, China, or some other Third World sweatshop. And yeah, that's all women's fault. It's those eeeeevil working women who made your job miserable, not global competition, the elevation of short-term profits over long term planning and good management, outsourcing, soaring health care costs, and everything else that's whittled away the number of your coworkers but not the work that needs to be done.

Nope, it's all the fault of those nasty, villainous, wicked feminists for *gasp* wanting ridiculous things like careers and financial independence and stuff. Those harridans have completely ruined it for everyone.

Pay no attention to the CEO behind the curtain who's laughing as he sails off with his golden parachute while you put in yet another overtime night to prop up his stock options and get pinkslipped for your pains. If you're unhappy, it must be the fault of some woman, somewhere. That's right: your job sucks because of those uppity chicks.

Now, get back to work.

Maybe he's figured out that he'll have a shot at winning the election if he repudiates Bush.

That wouldn't necessarily be bad news for Democrats, since he didn't do much for Gore's campaign.

But it's not. Last time I checked, it seemed to be split fairly evenly. Of course, certain categories of fiction are dominated by one gender or the other. But other categories that were once primarily the domain of one gender now feature writers of both genders (e.g., science fiction). Besides, you can't always go by the name on the book cover -- ever hear of the nom de plume?

Speaking of the nom de plume, if fiction was historically a female-centric endeavor, why did so many female novelists once feel compelled to publish anonymously or adopt male pen names? (For instance, Mary Ann Evans published her work as George Eliot and the Bronte sisters published under the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.) There must have been some sense that writing fiction was an inappropriate pastime for women, or at least women of certain social classes.

Forcing women to bear unwanted children is a form of slavery. Basically, it reduces women to walking, talking wombs whose contents are controlled by the state.

Next up: Iraq has achieved 110% of its tractor output quota under the 5-year plan.

The complete absence of books and other reading material.

I have very diverse tastes in literature and going out with someone who likes different types of books than I do doesn't faze me. But I won't go out with anyone who doesn't enjoy reading. No matter how lowbrow his taste may be, he has to like SOMETHING involving the written word. I've dated guys who were into comic books/graphic novels, military SF, vampire novels, heroic fantasy, various areas of nonfiction, and even 19th century British literature. All of them had plenty of interesting things to say about the books they loved. (Although in retrospect I should have passed on that guy in college who was into Ayn Rand -- good in bed, tiresome out of it.)

My husband reads mostly nonfiction (right now he's into sailing and naval history) and is a Tolkien fan. We have plenty of literary things to talk about.

My Ayn Rand-reading ex-college boyfriend was tiresome because he lectured me about it and didn't want to hear any criticism of Rand's thinking. This kind of rigidity was largely absent from guys with other literary tastes. We had two-way conversations -- not lectures -- where we shared what we enjoyed reading. Plus, they were open to discussing the bad points as well as the good points of their favorite writers.

I now really like graphic novels thanks to Mr. Comic Book, for instance, although I never got into vampires despite the best efforts of Mr. Vampire Novel. My admittedly nonscientific sampling of male Rand fans at parties and the like showed that Mr. Ayn Rand's behavior was not an outlier, so I generally avoided dating his fellow travelers.