Duuuuude! You forgot to mention my Birkenstocks...

Were it not for that sealed hood, the "Woman's Volvo" sounds like a great car. A low-maintenance, ultra reliable hybrid with extra safety features? I think of that wrap-around bumper less as accommodating female drivers than as insurance against the nitwits who always seem to bash my car in supermarket parking lots while I'm inside buying groceries.

I just wish I could afford one.

I paid less than $20 for it at Mallwart (it's one of those pre-paid cheapies). I use it as a phone about once a month, but I use the flashlight, the count-down timer, the alarm clock and the "reminder" feature at least once daily.

India is simply following the trend of packing more and more features into our electronic marvels; I ditched my TV when I discovered I could watch movie DVD's on my computer.

If India ever builds a microwave that can function as a sewing machine as well, I'll be first in line to buy it.

People who normally wouldn't be caught dead watching "American Idol" are tuning in just to see what all the flap is about. Even Keith Olbermann and Salon (whom I normally respect) are getting into the act.

Give it a rest, folks. Twenty years from now this young man will be as deservedly forgotten as Mitch Miller and Tiny Tim. Nothing I've read or heard so far convinces me to turn my TV back on.

Oh sh....

Those were the first words out of my mouth when I read this article. Oddly enough, I'd been thinking of Vonnegut lately. I even visited his web site two nights ago, wondering if he had anything to say about the latest Dark Fantasies emerging from Washington.

I remember how reading *Cat's Cradle* changed my life, back in college. I gave my son a copy when he went off saying, "If you remember nothing else about these years, remember this book". He posted it as his favorite on My Space (I must have done at least one thing right as a mother).

I've reached an age when I read the obituaries, dreading to see the names of friends. But when your heroes die, it really hits you in the gut.

So long, Vonnegut and Ivins. The world is a poorer place.

The books are small, they don't need batteries, they don't annoy my fellow passengers with beeping noises, and they keep me from clawing the arm rests. I'm a nervous flier. Intellectually, I know flying is safer than driving, but some corner of my brain is worried that someone will revoke Bernoulli's Law half-way off the tarmac.

Best of all, you can throw those Sudoku books in the trash when you reach your destination without offending the author.

And I don't expect everyone to share my preferences.

What amazing courage it took to bring these images to us.

I expected a lot of what I saw - shuttered homes, depopulated streets, burnt-out cars - but what surprised me was the piles of garbage. When I thought about it, I realized "Of course there's going to be garbage!" How do you expect garbage collectors to work in a city wrenched by civil war?

Keep the series coming. I'm far more mesmerized by watching what happens to these young people than by the antics of the fools on American Idol.

That knowing smirk on his face as he blamed the firings on McNulty reminded me of a boy ripping the wings off of butterflies. Does really expect us to believe he could remember nothing last week, and now suddenly recalls it was all McNulty's fault?

What an odious little toad. Were I a DOJ employee, I'd resign ASAP, and spill my guts before I myself was rushed to the ER with multiple stiletto wounds. This is starting to look like some blood-drenched Jacobean drama.

If not, that would be my first suggestion. Intact male animals tend to be aggressive: it improves their ability to survive and pass on their genes in the wild, but makes it hard on any humans that try to share their own space with them.

If the cat was neutered - and still acts like this - then by all means the next step should be an animal behaviorist.

Video dog falls

Flat on its buttocks again

Haiku not funny.

At the pharmacy, and had no one to watch my kid, who was then about 8 years old. He spotted a display of condoms near the register and asked me what they were. I explained that couples used them during sex to prevent pregnancy and avoid spreading certain diseases.

Of course, when I got to the front of the line, my son pointed at the display, and loudly told the clerk "Don't sell my mom any of those! I want a brother".

Maybe she's an alcoholic. Maybe she's not. But her story is so similar to mine and others that I've heard in the rooms that I suspect she is. Certainly nothing in her life will improve if she continues to drink and then act in ways that shock her once she's sobered up.

She doesn't have to sign on for the program or confess to alcoholism, just admit that she wants to stop drinking. AA can help her with that. And if she needs more help than that, the members know well what's available in the community.

The stock market is melting down, despite the idiotic optimism of the present administration the war in Iraq drags on, my cat needs surgery, my car is going to cost me half as much as it's worth to get running again, and two troglodytes without a workable idea between them and a chronic allergy to the truth are running neck and neck with the only decent Presidential candidate left.

But all is not grim. Anne Lamott is back.

Thanks, Salon, for lifting my spirits.