The charges don't make sense. Either nothing happened, or something happened between four people.

I agree with Sandra that when a woman accuses someone of rape, she should be pressured to see it through. I'll go one step further and say that it drives me berserk when women are raped and don't press charges - a friend of mine was very violently raped, and she just let it go, because she was afraid of being dragged through the mud by the prosecution. Meanwhile the guy was raping other women. Yeah, I know, it sucks to have an obligation because of something someone else did to you, but nevertheless... you don't always pick what happens to you, and you don't always pick your obligations.

After the soul-numbing waste of time that was Mirrormask, I'm afraid to try any movie that has Gaiman's name on it. I can't find a Salon review of Mirrormask; did they love it too?

Warning: incoming rant.

What the hell is wrong with people anyway? I hate plastic bags. They spill stuff all over my car. The sacker puts two items in each bag and groceries that used to fill two bags now fill twenty. "Oh, I can carry so many of them!" gushes my friend. Well, dummy, you better be able to, since each bag holds so much less.

The last time I bought groceries I noticed that the little rotating sack-dispenser had a sticker on it: "EIGHT IS GREAT!" it proclaimed, with a little picture demonstrating that the lazy-ass checker should try to place more than one item in each bag. Even funnier, slightly over this sticker was a new sticker: "STRIVE FOR FIVE!" I guess they gave up trying for eight and decided just five was at least better than what was happening naturally. Next week I expect the new sticker will say, "TWO WILL DO!"

I always demand paper bags, and I sack for myself instead of letting the store sacker place three items in each sack. (I know, I should buy reusable totes. But in Memphis, I think that would make the security guard follow me around wondering if I needed to be wrestled to the ground and hauled off in a straitjacket.) An entire shopping cart of stuff will fit in four paper bags, or two hundred and seventeen plastic bags. Yet for some reason the stores insist plastic saves them money, and shoppers have bought into the idea that plastic is more convenient.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Between my last letter and this letter, I have been to the grocery. My grocery has a brand-spanking new display selling reusable bags for ninety-nine cents and insulated ones for four dollars or something. The coincidence boggles my mind.

I didn't buy any of their bags; they aren't well-designed. They have tiny little handles and they are less than half the size of an ordinary paper grocery sack.

However, reading this article has inspired me; I shall go on a crusade in search of some decent bags. The mesh fold-up ones which another writer got overseas sound lovely; anyone have a source for those within the states?

... I know plenty of guys who have commented after first dates that they knew when the chick ordered, "Just the salad, please, no cheese and dressing on the side," that they didn't want anything more to do with her.

I'm not kidding; I have lots of guy friends and I have heard exactly this complaint once, and related ones more than once. In this particular instance it was followed by a diatribe about "narrow-assed little twig women," and how he wanted a woman with some meat on her bones.

I also know a guy who dumped a girl for lecturing him when he ordered veal.

On the other side, I have a girlfriend who dumped a guy after he sent his hamburger back because it had pickles on it. Why not just remove them? He hated the smell of pickles, and eating anything a pickle had even touched was something he wouldn't do. Thus the sandwich was tossed and recooked.

Moral is: perhaps a first date is not the time to trot out your hangups, pickinesses, and peculiarities, whatever they are.

There are literally hundreds of Michael Hunts in America. I'm sure some of them are called Mike.

(Say it out loud.)

My husband, in his college days, worked for one of those places that personalize stuff by painting names on it. He saw some doozies. (Yes, most of them were African American, but in Memphis we also have a Fuzzy Mayo and a woman named Tugar because her baby sister mispronounced 'sugar' who are white.) Perhaps my favorite story is of a woman who complained that he had misspelled her name. Well... he had worked there for a while by that time, and always made sure to have the person fill out the work order for him, so that there could be no chance of his misunderstanding a name. Sure enough, she had forgotten how to spell her own name.

"Ransom" is based on the idea that Christ was the ransom for the whole world. It's a little odd, granted, but it's basically a religious name.

I've always wondered: why is it that Hispanics are often named Jesus, but the name is tabooed among Anglos?

Our tree surgeon is named Terran Arborwood. That really is his birth name; his dad was a tree surgeon before him.