Well, whaddya know...

So it turns out that "ridiculosity" is a REAL word. Who knew?? Here I thought I was just making up a really stupid-sounding variation on a real word, a la "comfortability"... but I actually "made up" a word that does, in fact, exist. Even why I TRY to be linguistically challenged, I end up speaking correctly. Sigh... I guess we can't ALL be fake-word experts... :)

This is why all my scarves are purple...

So yesterday, as I was casually scanning the news headlines on the internet, I came across the story about the Rachel Ray Dunkin’ Donuts ad. Did everyone see that? Dunkin’ Donuts decided to pull one of their ads because they’d received complaints about it. Apparently some people have WAY too much time on their hands, and they managed to find non-existent terrorist symbolism lurking within the sunny frames of Rachel Ray’s caffeine-fueled coffee pitch. Here is the shocking, utterly offensive image:

OH MY GOSH!! Do you see it?? Do you see it???? Uh yeah, I couldn’t figure it out, either. As I scanned the article further, I read that the reason people had been complaining about the ad was because Rachel Ray’s scarf resembled a keffiyeh – a traditional Arab headdress. Some examples:

Here’s a random old guy wearing a keffiyeh:

(Hey, wait a minute – that sort of resembles those red and white checked tablecloths they use at Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut supports terrorism!!)

And here’s a random young guy wearing a keffiyeh:

(Hey – that guy looks like a model! The modeling industry supports terrorism!! AND anorexia!!!)

And here’s a scene from Lawrence of Arabia, where everyone is wearing a keffiyeh:

(Heeeeeey… do you mean to tell me that Hollywood supports terrorism, too??? The conspiracy just keeps growing...)

Look, I’m not a big fan of Rachel Ray (you can read about that here), so it doesn’t bother me if someone wants to pull one of her ads off the air. But you have to pull them off the air because she’s ANNOYING, not because of some made-up “symbolism” within the ad. Give me a break. In the first place, the keffiyeh is obviously not some kind of exclusively-terrorist object. It’s not like Rachel Ray appeared in that commercial with a cup of iced coffee in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. Now an ad like THAT would’ve made me go, “hey, wait a minute… does that iced coffee come in different flavors??” And second, Rachel Ray’s scarf isn’t even the SAME as a keffiyeh – so it happens to be black and white. So what??? The design is clearly paisley – there must be a million randomly-patterned black and white scarves out there, adorning the necks and heads of people from all over the world. Big deal.

As much as Rachel Ray annoys me, I really wish Dunkin’ Donuts hadn’t caved on this issue. It reminds me of something I read not too long ago about the memorial being constructed in Pennsylvania for the victims of flight 93. Apparently, the original design was scrapped because it was beginning to look “too much” like a crescent moon and star – again, something which is NOT some sort of copyrighted terrorist symbol. It may be ASSOCIATED with Islam, and the flags of Turkey and Pakistan and Tunisia and probably some other countries incorporate them. But once again I have to ask – so what??? Nobody OWNS the moon and stars… if a crescent moon and star is a symbol of terrorism, then we’d all better stop eating Lucky Charms. Those cereal boxes are FULL of crescent moons and stars… And for goodness’ sake – don’t anybody look at the sky unless the moon is full!! Stop pandering to the terrorists!!

Is this how things are going to be from now on? Are we going to see “terrorist” everywhere we look, even in the most innocent of circumstances?? This, I have decided, is pure ridiculosity. Yes, it’s so ridiculously ridiculous that I had to make up an entirely new word to encompass the vast ridiculosity of the situation. (I’ll have to have Faisal, my Made-Up Word Fact Checker, inform me of his comfortability with ridiculosity…)

I think I’ll go buy a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee to show my support for Rachel Ray’s completely innocuous paisley scarf…

Flea circus, anyone?

So did everyone have a nice Memorial Day weekend? Mom and dad went up to Buffalo to help grandma and grandpa celebrate their anniversary. (How many years now? 67? Yeah, I think it was their 67th…) So while they were gone, I was watching all the cats – Kiko, Ozzie, Tiger, Koala and Dusty. (Every time I try to remember their names in rapid succession, I seem to forget one of them… :)) Unfortunately, the cats have developed a bit of a flea problem for some unknown reason. (Seriously – none of them are outdoor cats, so how did they pick up the fleas??? Do fleas often sneak under doors into houses, with no prior knowledge of the potential food sources inside? It was my understanding that fleas remained outdoors until the cats came to THEM, and only THEN would they hop on board the feline express and take a ride to the magical world of humans. Obviously fleas have begun sending out adventurous little flea search parties, who fling tiny backpacks over their shoulders – uh… do fleas have shoulders?? – and comb their flea kingdoms for food prospects.)

Anyway, I have an extremely annoying, mysterious flea-attraction quality – I seem to have some unknown characteristic that fleas love. You’d think I was covered in strawberry jam or something. If there are fleas within my vicinity, they WILL find me. I’m also quite sensitive to flea bites – while some people can be bitten a million times and never know it, I end up covered in miserable, itchy welts. So , needless to say, it was quite the interesting weekend. The fleas seemed to be particularly bad in the bedroom, where Dusty is sequestered to prevent fights with Kiko the Provoker. So every time I was in the bedroom, I found myself flinging fleas off my legs. Even so, I wound up with a couple dozen bites (plus a paranoia that I’ve brought fleas into my OWN house…).

Back when I was a teenager, and we had a couple dogs and a couple cats, I would get flea bites all the time. They would die down in the winter time, but summer was often quite distressing. Not only did I have to sleep in the only bedroom with no air conditioning (obviously more proof that mom and dad loved Eric best… haha! Just kidding! :) Everyone knows I’m the favorite… I’m sure they gave me the room with no air conditioning because they knew Eric was too much of a weakling to handle the heat… yeah, I’m sure that must’ve been it…), but I also had to contend with the itchy flea bites. At the time, I thought it was rather bizarre that I seemed to be the only person in the house getting bit. And I often seemed to get bit in the middle of the night… So, in an effort to even the bite ratio, I would occasionally switch bedrooms with Eric, or sleep on the trundle bed in his room – I THOUGHT that his room must’ve been flea-free, since he never got any bites. But even there, in the cool, air-conditioned comfort of the second-favorite child’s bedroom, I ended up with more bites. So unfair…

Eventually, I discovered through much research that if fleas are present in a house, EVERYONE gets bit – but NOT everyone has a reaction to the bites. And since I’ve always been so ridiculously allergic to mosquitoes, it came as no surprise to me at all that I should be one of the unfortunate people to wind up with welts and itching from flea bites. Oh well…

All this talk of fleas is making my skin crawl… at least I’m HOPING it’s the talk, and not actual FLEAS… (can humans use Frontline???)

Happy Birthday, Eric!!!

Thiiiiiiis iiiiiiiiis my birthday song, it isn't very long...

Happy birthday, Eric! I know we don't really know how old you are, because the gypsies who left you on our doorstep never told us when you were born, but I think I can make a safe guess -- so... happy 42nd birthday!! :)

Me and Eric back when we were cute...

My how times have changed... (just kidding, Eric! Love you lots!!) :)

At least I got a free toothbrush...

So Monday morning I went to the Mysterious Dentist’s Appointment I Never Made, where the Marquis de Sade of dental hygienists cleaned my teeth with disturbing enthusiasm. At least I THINK she was cleaning them… but perhaps she was attempting to pry them out of my head. All I know is that once I got home, my entire mouth hurt for several hours, to the point that I finally took some Tylenol to calm my aching nerves. I’ve always wondered how dental hygienists perfect that “sawing the gums” technique they use when flossing teeth – do they have to practice that on dummy teeth before graduating to real people? Is there a class entitled “Lumberjack Flossing 101”? Are they not considered “real” hygienists until they’ve made someone’s gums bleed? Honestly, I’d be much more happy if they just gave ME the stupid floss and let me handle it myself… really, I wouldn’t mind at all…

Anyway, this particular hygienist also decided to scare me into obsessive tooth-anxiety by pointing out the fact that I grind my teeth at night, which, in turn, is causing small fractures to form in my bottom molars. With the fancy new cameras they have in the dentist’s office, she was able to blow up a picture of my tooth until it was the size of my head, so I could see in great detail what she was talking about. She then proceeded to tell me that my teeth could be perfectly fine for another fifteen years, or they could all basically break apart and fall out of my mouth within the next year or so. And to REALLY hammer home the message, she showed me pictures of other people’s teeth (again, blown up to the size of my head) that had already broken apart and (literally, in one case) fallen out of their mouths. I can never… eat… anything… again…

Seriously, I’ve always had a strange obsession with my teeth. The ONLY recurring dream I ever have is about my teeth falling out. It’s not the exact same dream every time, but about once a month I’ll have a dream where my teeth start falling out. Usually it starts with me realizing that one or more of my teeth are loose, and the more I TRY not to bite down on them, the more I DO bite down on them, until the loose tooth (or teeth) falls out. I then wake up and take a quick tooth inventory, to make sure it really WAS just a dream and all of my teeth are safe and sound. So really – showing me pictures of my horrible tooth nightmare come to life is NOT going to be good for my psyche. In fact, it’s kinda stressing me out… and I think when I get stressed out, I grind my teeth even more… but if I grind my teeth more, they’re going to break apart… and the thought of my teeth breaking apart stresses me out… which makes me grind my teeth more… ARGH!!

So why all this tooth paranoia? I don’t even know the answer to that question. I do know that all of my teeth were early bloomers – I even had all my wisdom teeth by the time I was sixteen. And then one day, I noticed a NEW tooth attempting to break its way through my gums behind my upper right wisdom tooth. Huh??? I thought wisdom teeth were it – wisdom teeth are the be all and end all of teeth. Once you’ve got them, you’re done. There ARE no more. There aren’t REGULAR wisdom teeth, followed by extra-enlightened-King-Solomon wisdom teeth. So, thinking I had some sort of mutant teeth that would eventually push my wisdom teeth aside, I went to the dentist and had some x-rays taken. It turned out that I DID have mutant teeth… two of them, to be specific. One on the right, and one on the left. The dentist removed the one that was pushing through my gums, and then handed it to me in one of those little plastic treasure chests they give to kids for the tooth fairy. The extra tooth wasn’t the size of a wisdom tooth – it was more like an incisor… a stray incisor that somehow migrated to the back of my mouth. Fifteen or sixteen years later, when I finally had my wisdom teeth removed, the oral surgeon remarked on the funny little tooth behind my upper left wisdom tooth. He took it out along with my wisdom teeth (but never gave me the little plastic treasure chest… in fact, I didn’t get ANY of my wisdom teeth. Maybe I WANTED those things. They WERE mine, after all... and c’mon – how much do you think wisdom teeth would fetch on the tooth fairy black market??).

Anyway, I’m getting an overwhelming urge to brush and floss, so I’d better go do that… before my teeth fall out…

I don't have time for this...

The other day when I was working out, I watched “Meet the Robinsons” on HBO. It’s a pretty cute little movie – one of those digital Disney animation things. The story is about a boy named Lewis who is raised in an orphanage and loves creating silly inventions, most of which don’t work the way he hoped they would. On the day of his school’s science fair, after yet another invention goes awry, a boy from the future arrives in a time machine and tries to convince Lewis to fix the invention. He takes him to the future to prove that he IS, in fact, FROM the future, and then explains that the invention from the science fair must be fixed in order for the future to unfold correctly. If he DOESN’T fix the invention, the boy from the future will no longer even exist. Eventually, we discover that the boy from the future is Lewis’s eventual son, and the science fair invention was a catalyst that resulted in Lewis being adopted, meeting the girl who would one day be his wife, and the means to provide him with everything he needed to continue inventing things. (Including time machines, which his future son uses to go back in time to make sure the time machines will be invented… or, er, something like that…)

Time travel has been a big theme this season on Lost, too. I watched several episodes yesterday (I had four unwatched episodes on Tivo, and Tivo only saves five episodes before it starts deleting…), and all of the time paradoxes are starting to get confusing. (Which is weird, because usually Lost makes so much sense. :)) Desmond can jump back and forth through time but has no control over it… Ben shows up in Tunisia and asks for reassurance that the year is 2005 (presumably because he has mastered the art of time travel, unlike Desmond?)… a morse code message is sent from the island to the freighter out on the ocean, when the ship’s dead doctor washes ashore – except the doctor is still alive on the freighter (so is the ship in the past? Or is the island in the future?).

A few years ago, I read an interview with the writers or producers or directors of Lost, where they were asked about the mysterious goings-on at the Lost island. They assured the fans that the inhabitants of the island were NOT dead and they were NOT in purgatory… moreover, they said that when the entire story finally unfolded, we would see that everything that has happened on the island was possible or at least plausible. So, I assumed there would be nothing TOO far-fetched happening on the show. And then all the time travel stories began…

Although to be fair, there ARE scientists who believe that time travel COULD be possible. They theorize that time is not a rigid straight line (as is often illustrated by “timelines”), but rather something more pliable – like a piece of yarn. If you can attach one end of the yarn (let’s say the “past”) and the other end of the yarn (the “future”) together, then perhaps it would possible to quickly jump from one side to the other, thereby visiting past and future, future and past. Of course, it all depends on breaking the speed of light… because apparently time is different when you’re going really, really fast…

But my puny little mind has a hard time accepting time travel as a “plausible” thing. In order for it to be possible, it seems like “time” would need to be a more concrete entity – isn’t time really just a “concept”? Isn’t it just a way that we humans define our existence? How can you jump back and forth between a concept? Once a moment happens, how can it ever be lived again? It hasn’t been “recorded” anywhere – it’s just something that happens and never occurs again. And if we COULD travel to a different time, wouldn’t we still be in our OWN present? I mean, no matter where you are or what time it is, your experience will always BE your present. So if you were able to travel into the past or future, yet still be in the present, wouldn’t that mean that ALL time is occurring simultaneously?? And if that’s the case, then shouldn’t we already HAVE time travelers from the future who are popping up into our present? It gives new meaning to that song from Rent – “there is no future, there is no past… there’s only now, there’s only this…”

I think I need to go watch something that doesn’t make me think… :)

I can't remember...

I read this article today about a woman with an extraordinary memory – but not a memory for useful things like names or numbers or chemical formulas or grocery lists… but she COULD remember what she was doing on any given day of her life. She actually wrote a memoir, which I can only assume is tediously boring – because aren’t MOST of the days in MOST of our lives pretty mundane? Every now and then something interesting or unusual will happen, but for the most part, the days of a person’s life consist of things like going to work, buying groceries, watching TV, putting gas in the car, reading books, cleaning the bathroom, going out to dinner, etc… in other words, not the stuff good memoirs are made of.

I’ve always felt that my OWN memory was a bit too good. I may not be able to recall what I was doing every single day of my life (although I’m sure most of my days have been pretty boring, anyway), but I CAN seem to recall just about every bad/sad/embarrassing/painful/heartbreaking event in my past. I think I read once (if my great memory is correct) that our ability to recall bad memories more easily than good ones is the brain’s way of preventing those bad things from happening again. It might be nice to remember every detail of a great vacation or a happy get-together, but it’s not really beneficial in any way (except for conjuring up wistful longings for more vacations, hopefully securing the likelihood of a future journey). But if we can vividly recall all the stupid things we’ve done, or the things that have caused us much misery, we’re less likely to do those same things again. (Like the time I accidentally spilled a jar of honey all over my bare feet right before I stepped into a fire ant hill… won’t be doing THAT again… I’ll keep MY jars of honey in the house where they belong, thank you very much…) Okay, maybe that didn’t really happen… but you get the point…

Fortunately, I have a pretty good memory for the GOOD things in my life, too. When I was kid, I loved to read books and then give a chapter-by-chapter recap to whoever would listen. I’m thinking that MAY have been a bit annoying. So nowadays, when someone asks, “what was that book about?” I try to condense my response into a more reasonable length. But the memory is still there. If I wrote my OWN tediously boring memoirs, I would have plenty of material… random memories from my life pop up at random times – like flash cards, or a shuffled set of photos. At the most bizarre moments and for no reason whatsoever, I’ll suddenly remember things… like the time I got my ears pierced when I was seven years old, and made a point to wear my hair up the next day when I went to school – I then deliberately visited the desk of my friend Eve several times until she noticed. Or the time we went to the Toronto Zoo and Eric and I befriended a funny seal who liked to mimic our movements (and who, for some reason, we decided to name Andy). Or that time I was sitting at my desk at work and one of my co-workers exclaimed, “I thought you were about eighteen!” when he discovered I was well into my twenties. Or the day we brought Echo home from the breeder’s house, and she spent the whole car ride trying to climb up onto my shoulders (when she was a puppy, that was totally ADORABLE).

It’s all just a mishmash of arbitrary stuff, but somehow I manage to retain it all. So you can imagine my confusion when my dentist’s office called me last week, to “confirm my appointment” for next Monday. I am fairly certain – no, I’m pretty darn positive – that I never MADE an appointment for next Monday. In the realm of “things that stick in my memory,” dentist/doctor appointments maintain an edge over other recollections, just because I hate them so much (please see the paragraph about easily remembering bad stuff…). I just don’t forget things like that, because I tend to obsess over things I worry about. So if I’d made a dentist’s appointment, it would’ve popped into my mind at various random times up until the point I had to jump into the car and drive to the office. So where did the mysterious dentist’s appointment come from??

I don’t know, but this is SO going in my memoirs…

A few random pictures...

I haven't done a random picture post in a while -- and I just found some pictures from Kauai that I never downloaded to my computer, so I thought I'd post a couple (along with a few I'm pretty sure I've already posted, but maybe not...). And I threw in a few more random shots, just for the fun of it...

I'm pretty sure I HAVE posted this picture of one of the birds at our hotel in Kauai, but I really like it so I thought I'd post it again. :)

A great shot of a wave breaking near shore...

We saw this sign describing "Red-footed Boobies" one day, and all the guys were so excited, because it meant they could talk about "boobies" for the rest of the trip and pretend it wasn't because they were immature...

A lighthouse on the north shore of Kauai... that's me in the pink and Debbie in the red...

I took this shot of the lighthouse with the sun behind it, and suddenly everyone ELSE started taking the same picture because they thought it looked cool. I am SUCH a trendsetter...

Me at Waimea Canyon with the cheap purple sunglasses I bought after one of the lenses popped out of my "expensive" pair. And I actually ended up liking the cheap purple ones... (except for the fact that they pinch my head if I wear them too long...)

A picture of dad taking a picture of the canyon...

Obviously not Hawaii... but a great shot of the Chicago skyline from Lincoln Park...

Have I mentioned that Piva loves to burrow? She's like part groundhog or something... this is what she does when anything is piled on the bed -- blankets, clothes, towels... she'll find a way to burrow into the middle of them...

And THIS is what happens when we've been on a vacation for a while -- the cats have to sleep NEAR me (see Piva's little head behind mine?)...

Or ON me... (can't believe I slept through cats crawling all over me and Rick taking pictures of the whole thing...) :)

Happy Mom's Day!!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! :) I hope the weather in your respective places of residence is as nice as the weather here today – sunny, cloudless, 77 degrees. Very springy…

So speaking of kids (in a roundabout way, since I was talking about moms)… last night we were settling back into our house after a grocery shopping trip – I was stocking the fridge and the pantry with gold, silver and precious jewels (I mean, that’s what I’m ASSUMING we bought, considering the final monetary total – food prices really HAVE gone up…) and Rick was sitting on the couch, playing with his new toy (an iPod Touch – like an iPhone without the phone…). And just as I was trying to decide what I should make for dinner, the doorbell rang. So Rick answered it – it was a couple kids from the neighborhood, who were having a scavenger hunt. They needed a band aid. And hey, we HAD a band aid – so sure, why not help out the cute adorable children and their fun little game? Rick got the band aid, gave it to the kids, and that was that.

But of course that COULDN’T be the end of it. Not two minutes later, the doorbell rang again, and two more kids stood on our porch. This pair was looking for an old birthday card. Um, nope, we didn’t have one of those. So we sent them on their way…

And then the doorbell rang AGAIN. Did we have any old ticket stubs?

And AGAIN. A package of ketchup from a fast food restaurant?

And AGAAAAAAAIN – and it was at this point that we’d decided we would no longer answer the stupid door every time the bell rang. Except those crafty, nosy little children decided to stand on our porch with their faces pressed up against the glass window, searching the house for human occupants. And Rick made the mistake of moving an arm or a leg, at which point the kids abandoned the doorbell altogether and simply pounded their fists on the door. (Seriously? Is the completion of a scavenger hunt really THAT urgent?)

I finally realized that our garage door had been open, which is really like a big sign that says “someone is home.” So I closed the garage door, Rick moved away from the line of sight from the front door, and we managed to successfully ignore the next doorbell or two. I can understand kids wanting to have some fun, and a scavenger hunt is probably an entertaining way to pass some time… but c’mon – where are the adults to supervise the execution of the game? You can’t have fifteen different kids going to the same house over and over again – how about dividing up the “search area” between different groups of kids? Or did these kids just take it upon THEMSELVES to organize a scavenger hunt?

I suppose I shouldn’t complain TOO much. At least they were running around outside and not parked in front of the TV or computer… :)

Friday random thoughts...

I was so excited last night to see that the Discovery channel has filmed a couple more episodes of one of my favorite shows, Discovery Atlas. That was the show I fell in love with way back in 2006, when each episode focused on one country, and various inhabitants of that country. It was SUCH an interesting show, with really beautiful, rich, colorful cinematography. And there are at least two episodes showing right now – France, and Japan. I watched the episode about France last night, and as the camera swooped in on the proud, gleaming Eiffel Tower, I suddenly realized there was a difference between the way the show looked last night, and the way it looked a couple years ago when I was watching it in my old house – I now have high definition TV! That Eiffel Tower looked like it was IN my living room! I could practically smell the lavender in the fields of Provence! Soooooooo cool. (And once again – yes, Faisal, you’re right. I DO like my electronic doohickeys, okay? Almost as much as I love my lip gloss… sometimes, even MORE than I love my lip gloss… :))

I have decided that Piva is quite the strange little cat. Not only does she enjoy climbing into the fireplace and chasing the little mouse pointer arrow on computer screens, but apparently she’s decided she can ONLY drink water from a running faucet in the bathroom. I’m not sure she EVER drinks from the bowl of water next to her food bowl that I diligently refill with fresh water every morning. I guess water in a bowl just isn’t fresh ENOUGH – it has to be straight from the tap. So when Piva wants water, she’ll follow me into the bathroom, jump up on the sink, and give me a few cute little meows until I turn the water on for her. She then parks herself in the sink, with her head under the running water so she can lap at the faucet. When she’s done, she shakes off her paws (which always get wet) and her head (which sometimes gets wet because I like to dribble water on her head… she’s always so focused on drinking that she doesn’t even notice the water on her head until she’s finished… I suppose that’s mean… but it IS rather funny. :)).

I bruise WAY too easily… I knocked my arm against a doorknob last week, and ended up with this really ugly bruise that FINALLY seems to be fading. And then this morning, I ran into the stupid doorknob AGAIN (are my motor skills somewhat challenged or something?? You’d think I could manage to avoid running into doorknobs…). Same arm, same place – so now I’m HOPING I didn’t hit it hard enough to bruise again. Because I’ll be really annoyed if I finally managed to get rid of the first bruise, only for it to be replaced with a second, equally-ugly bruise…

I must take this opportunity to offer congratulations to Dave and his soon-to-be wife Nancy, who are getting married tomorrow at that ranch in Crawford… oh, no, wait, that’s Jenna Bush. Well, Dave and Nancy will be sharing an anniversary with the president’s daughter. In case anyone has forgotten, THIS is Dave -- the fire worshiper on the right:

And again, THIS guy is getting married. Really. THIS guy:

I expect my parents to return with many wedding pictures that show Dave all dressed up with food in his teeth. Because I'm just not sure we've ever been anywhere with Dave and NOT come back with a picture of him with food in his teeth...

Okay, seriously – congratulations, Dave!! I'm sure your wedding will be beautiful (and spinach-free), and I wish you and Nancy all the best. :)

I wear my lip gloss when I'm watching my TV...

A few years ago, my friend Faisal and I had an interesting conversation about electronic doohickeys. At the time, I meant to write down my thoughts on said conversation (minus any mention of the nonexistent word “comfortability,” which I’m sure popped up at some point or another) and publish them to my blog. But, like so many conversations with so many people at so many points in time, the content of the discussion was eventually forgotten and the blog post fell by the wayside. And then this morning, as I was wandering aimlessly through my many saved Word documents, I found a rough draft of the little essay I was working on.

Apparently, I had mentioned electronic doohickeys in one of my posts (and after extensive research, I have decided it must be this one). The post itself is mostly about how I accidentally locked my cat in a cabinet – but in the second paragraph I said something about how “electronic doohickeys are absolutely necessary for the well-being of men everywhere.” Which is true, right? :) But Faisal thought I may have been a bit unfair to the men in my blog-reading audience – because perhaps the quest for electronic doohickeys is programmed into the Y chromosome, and men are irresistibly compelled to go forth and hunt down anything with a power cord. So for me to imply that electronic doohickeys are completely unnecessary was simply a mistake of my female misunderstanding.

Faisal pointed out that electronic doohickeys – while occasionally running the risk of leading to credit card debt – can be enjoyed by EVERYONE. Male AND female. If a man runs out and buys a giant television set, chances are his wife or girlfriend or sister or mother or aunt or whoever can enjoy it as well. And I DO have to admit that I’ve become quite fond of our new HD television set that we have hanging over the fireplace. Our home theater set-up is pretty darn nifty, too, and there’s no way I would’ve given that HALF as much thought as Rick did. So Faisal has a point – while men may be inexplicably drawn to the whining hum of an electronic-packed Best Buy, women can eventually benefit from this bizarre obsession in the grand scheme of things.

Women, meanwhile, are just as apt to buy unnecessary objects, but they tend to be less “unisex” than electronic doohickeys. We’re drawn to things like shoes or clothes or make-up or all those great-smelling bath products they sell at Victoria’s Secret. I’m totally guilty of this. I must have about two dozen different bottles of various perfumes and lotions, and I rotate their usage depending on my mood. Some girls have a “signature scent” they wear day in and day out – I’ve known women who wear the exact same perfume every single day, every single year. But I go more for the “what do I feel like TODAY” system. And what I feel always seems to be different, so of course I need two dozen different scents. Right? Right. :) I will also freely admit that I have a pretty serious lip gloss/lip balm addiction. I’m not exactly sure how many different shades of pink can be captured in various brands of lip gloss, but I’m definitely trying to find out…

And men (MOST men, anyway…) have no use for such girlish frivolity. Of course, you’d have to buy an awful lot of lip gloss and perfume to match the monetary worth of a big-screen TV. And I’ve never understood the women who will actually go out and drop an entire paycheck on a pair of Manolo Blahniks or some kind of ridiculously expensive bag (because they’re trying to keep up with the unrealistic lifestyles of the Sex and the City girls perhaps??). Maybe they need to get clued in to a little place called the outlet mall. Great place, that outlet mall. Just because a girl likes bags or jewelry doesn’t mean they have to cost much. In fact, the most I’ve ever spent on a bag was $40 – that was for a bag I bought at Fossil (at the outlet mall) about two years ago, and I’m still toting it around today. Personally, I can’t justify paying too much for something I’m going to be tossing into the back seat of my car over and over or throwing on the floor of a restaurant now and then (but no matter how cheap it is, I will not – NOT – put a bag on the floor of a movie theater… ick…). Hmmm… I’ve had that bag for two years… it might be time for a new one…

So yeah, Faisal definitely had a point about how electronic doohickeys can be enjoyed by all. Although really, all that girly stuff WE buy isn’t solely for US, either. I mean, think about it – if there were no men in the world, do you think we’d be teetering around in expensive heels and going out in frilly, uncomfortable dresses and covering our faces with make-up?? Of course we wouldn’t. We’d all be walking around in sweatpants and sneakers, with clean faces and bad hair. We’d go out and have a plastic grocery bag with our car keys and sunglasses in one hand, and a tub of ice cream in the other. And we’d probably all weigh about 300 pounds. So really, it’s all about balance – guys buy the expensive doohickeys and we women end up appreciating our HD TVs, and girls attempt to smell nice and not eat tubs of ice cream so guys will appreciate that we DON’T weigh 300 pounds. Yeah, it’s all about balance…

And by the way, Faisal – you may be right about electronic doohickeys, but you're still wrong about comfortability. Not a word. Nope. :)

Don't forget...

So Amazon.com has recently begun selling something called the Kindle. It’s a paperless, wireless, handheld reading device. You can download entire books to your Kindle in seconds, and read them any time, any place.

And I have such mixed feelings about where the “future” of book reading seems to be headed. One part of me thinks that the Kindle really DOES seem like a good idea. You can buy books in minutes without even making a run to the Barnes and Noble, tote them all around with you in a nifty gadget that happens to be smaller than most INDIVIDUAL books, and never worry about dog-eared pages or dropping that copy of “War and Peace” on your foot. It would be great for travel – a dozen different titles would fit quite neatly into the pocket of a single carry-on bag. And of course, the more books downloaded to Kindle, the fewer paper pages would need to be printed, and the fewer trees we would need to chop down.

But another part of me – the “writer” part of me, mainly – is already mourning the loss of the printed page. Is this the way the books of the future will be disseminated? Will that neighborhood Barnes and Noble eventually be a used book repository, where rare printed copies of Harry Potter novels will collect dust on the shelves? Will curling up with a good novel on a cold, rainy day consist of a cup of hot tea in one hand, and a hard piece of digitized plastic in the other?

It’s not that I don’t LIKE the idea of the Kindle. I can definitely see a use for such a device. I could see myself tossing one into a bag before a cross-country plane trip… or using it to download a novel I just can’t wait another minute to start reading – of course, if I was enjoying it, I would probably want to go out and buy the actual BOOK. To me, there’s a difference between holding a cold, impersonal computer screen and holding a collection of malleable pages. It’s almost as if books contain a LIFE of their own… something living and breathing and organic… and if you consider all those sacrificed trees, they really ARE organic. To HOLD a book, and to lose yourself within its story, and to eagerly turn each crinkly, fragile page, is to become a PART of that living, breathing, organic book…

I fell in love with one of my favorite books, "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, after only a few pages. It was the author’s description of a vast book collection, in a place called “the Cemetery of Forgotten Books,” that sucked me right into the story. As the protagonist, Daniel, says:

“We followed our host through a palatial corridor and arrived at a sprawling round hall, a virtual basilica of shadows spiraling up under a high glass dome, its dimness pierced by shafts of light that stabbed from above. A labyrinth of passageways and crammed bookshelves rose from base to pinnacle like a beehive woven with tunnels, steps, platforms, and bridges that presaged an immense library of seemingly impossible geometry.”

And later, Daniel’s father explains:

“Every book… has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens… When a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.”

What could you say about a vast collection of books on a Kindle? There would be no twisting, turning paths of shelves, no musty scent of old paper and dust, no piles of titles to peruse underneath wandering fingertips. To curl up in a comfortable, overstuffed chair with a mug of hot chocolate and a literal, printed, possibly dog-eared BOOK is one of life’s simple joys. Hopefully one that will never be “forgotten”…

Get up off the couch already...

So speaking of body weight (as I was in my last post) – I just read an interesting article about how much money could be saved if people in America would lose some weight. I was especially interested to read about how much money airlines would save on jet fuel – if none of the passengers on flights were overweight, airlines would save 3.8 billion dollars year. Wow – 3.8 BILLION?? All of those extra pounds may not seem like much on the ground, but apparently once they’re crammed into already-too-small-for-thin-people seats and effortlessly lifted into the air, it becomes apparent that the feat is not so effortless after all. No, in fact, it takes 3.8 billion dollars worth of EXTRA fuel to get all those fleshy behinds and their suitcases full of extra large stretchy pants into the air.

And that’s sort of disturbing, isn’t it? How much more weight can our airplanes handle? I always think it’s funny when I have an extra-heavy suitcase and I place it on that scale at the airline ticket counter and the weight is juuuuust a bit over the “free” limit… and, invariably, the person behind the counter suggests I simply “redistribute” my belongings between the heavy suitcase and a smaller piece of luggage, thereby avoiding a charge for a heavier bag. But this, of course, doesn’t change the overall weight – if I move five pounds of clothing from my fifty-five pound bag into my twenty pound bag, I end up with a fifty pound bag and a twenty-five pound bag. It’s STILL seventy-five pounds total, no matter HOW it’s broken up. I could haul out seventy-five plastic baggies and pack a pound of luggage into each one… it doesn’t matter – it’s still the SAME weight. So what’s the point of charging extra for heavier bags if, in reality, they really don’t CARE about the overall weight of the luggage on an airplane?

I mean, there MUST be a point where the combined weight of passengers and luggage would be TOO much… right? So if PEOPLE keep getting fatter and fatter, I can only see a few solutions to the problem of overloaded airplanes. One would be for the airlines to place larger seats in their planes, resulting in fewer passengers (and a roomier, more comfortable journey for those of us with a healthy BMI)… but honestly – airlines concerned about the comfort of passengers?? Ha! If they’re not packing us in like sardines, it’s just not a profitable flight. Another solution would be for ALL the airlines to adopt the policy that a few airlines have already implemented – passengers who are significantly overweight would be required to buy tickets for TWO seats. Of course, then you get people complaining about “discrimination” and unfair treatment, etc. So I can only assume that the final solution to the overloaded plane problem will eventually be baggage weight restrictions – except they’ll have to be much more strictly enforced than a simple “redistribution” policy. If the weight restriction is fifty pounds, it will have to be FIFTY pounds. Otherwise, we’re right back at square one – where the overall weight of baggage doesn’t really matter, it’s just a way for airlines to make more money.

As un-PC as it might be for me to say it, I actually LIKE the idea of overweight plane passengers buying tickets for two seats. Until airlines start creating larger seats, it’s just a CONSIDERATE thing to do. Spend ONE long flight sitting next to a large person, and you’ll understand this sentiment. And I have to admit, over the last few years I’ve gotten a lot less sympathetic towards people who “just can’t lose weight.” Because unless you happen to be one of the VERY few people who has an actual medical reason for extra pounds, the fact of the matter is you CAN lose weight. It really IS simply a matter of burning more calories than you take in. There’s no secret formula or magic pill or strict “regime” to follow… it’s mathematical simplicity – calories consumed minus calories burned. That’s it. And no, it’s not the easiest thing in the world – I’ve worked pretty hard over the last few years to change my eating habits and increase my activity and to pay attention to how I’m living. But it’s certainly not the HARDEST thing in the world, either. So it rather annoys me to hear people who are significantly overweight resigning themselves to fatness for the rest of their lives. It is NOT an inevitability, and it CAN be changed.

And that's really the BEST solution to the overloaded plane problem. If more Americans would start eating less and moving more, we wouldn’t have to worry about all those extra large suitcases weighing down the cargo hold of our airplanes. (Although we MIGHT still have to redistribute all our luggage into little plastic baggies...)