I'm A Political Visionary

Someday, if the world cooperates with My Vision, republicans will be kept in zoos and the Rest Of Us will be able to just observe them and remark upon their odd and strange ways.

Perhaps that statement is too...visionary. (Did you think I was going to say "harsh" or "strong" or even "partisan?" You must be a New Reader! Welcome to the Dept.!) Those of you who know me know that I was being rather tame and subdued, especially when it comes to the adjectives "odd" and "strange." I'll leave it to you to play Mental Thesaurus and fill in those spots with what I really want to say. But I digress.

I've been collecting little informatoids about republicans for you, and I'm ready to set them free in order to bolster my Visionary Plan. Let me know if you are on board.

I. The Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home: A Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of republicans in the wild found that 53% believe that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama, with 14% who believe Obama is more qualified and 33% who said they were not sure. Holy crap. Let's remember that the former Governor of Alaska, who quit for still-inexplicable reasons and who touted her international experience as being able to see Russia from her house, has no idea how South and North Korea came into existence. She couldn't name a single newspaper that she read, yet she claimed to read "all of 'em." Perhaps those republicans just admire her business savvy; after all, she is keeping her book on the bestseller list by using her PAC to buy up more than $63,000.00 worth of them as gifts to donors. This is more than she's been donating to other political candidates in her party. That's some hardcore maverickin'. But presidential brainpower? Duh.

II. A Woman's Place: Why any woman or gay individual or person of color would ever, ever identify himself or herself as republican is beyond me. This party is so provincial and Old Boys Club. But don't take my word for it. Oh no. Give a listen to Jan Larimer, Republican National Committee co-chair, on the republican party's strategy to recruit more women candidates: "Women sometimes need a little more handholding, or they need their friends to help them make a decision. And by our going in and talking to them and recruiting and educating and training them to either get involved in a campaign or become a candidate, we're giving them the tools so that they can do that on their own."

The fact that Jan is a woman makes me want to cry. Or scream. Or hurt someone. So much is so wrong so completely with this statement that a stuffed moosehead could enumerate the points. To a doorknob. With crystalline clarity and brisk alacrity. Allow me, if you will, dearest Readers, to address Jan Larimer for a moment.
Jan--republicans sometimes need a little more faceslapping, or they need Democrats to help them make a decision. And by our going in and civilizing them and giving them a dose of reality and educating them and taking them out of their nineteenth-century wayback machines, we're giving them the tools they need so that they can someday join the twenty-first century where women have brains, control over their lives and destinies, and are, in short, not Stepford Wives or mistresses of republican senators looking for a little action.

III. Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Remember: See my above first sentence for II. In 2006, Senator John McCain was asked about the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding gay people serving in the US military. Now, we all remember the senator's glowing, stellar military service record. He made damn sure of that during the presidential election. Damn sure. And I, along with everyone else, thank him for that service. His opinion on military matters should be given consideration, given this experience. Here's what he said regarding the DADT policy: "The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to." Okay, Senator. But...now, with President (Democrat) Obama in office and DADT about to be repealed, is (Up For Re-Election) Senator McCain ready to trust the leadership of the military? Let's listen in: "At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy." Hmmmm....! Let's take a count, shall we? Defense Secretary Gates? Repeal. Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen? Repeal. Former Secretary of State and Former Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired general of the Persian Gulf War Colin Powell? Repeal. Is this enough "Military Leadership" for you, John McCain? Guess not. Not when your seat is in play and you haven't had any other job for about eleventy thousand years. Life is tough.

But, don't despair, John McCain, Jan Larimer, and clueless republicans. If my vision is realized, you'll be well taken care of. I'm sure we can find a nice spot for all of you. Safe, homogenized, and very Beaver Cleaver. You can wave at us as we wander by and marvel. Just like Sarah to the Russians.

Saturday: Thinking About Trucks, Television, And All The News That's Fit To Fabricate

So I'm watching Judge Judy, one of my guilty pleasures. (Don't start with me. I already know I watch entirely too much television as it is, and I cannot be tasked with watching only quality programming all the time. I've already cut out most Food Network shows, having broken up with almost everyone over there. But that's another post entirely.)

Anyway. Over the course of several months of watching Judge Judy, I've noticed something curious. There seems to be a growing trend of young single women who drive trucks. Not semis or eighteen-wheelers, like for their jobs; I'm talking personal vehicles. Like a pickup truck. I cannot begin to tell you how many times a young woman will begin her testimony--as a defendant or a plaintiff--by mentioning her truck. Either it was damaged or someone owes her money for one or it was supposed to be a gift or whatever. And let me tell you--this truck ownership crosses racial and socioeconomic lines as well. These young women are black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and mixed races. They are seemingly well-to-do as well as appearing down on their luck. The Judge Judy show is filmed in New York, but her cases are from all over the country.

I am honestly befuddled by this apparent movement of Young Woman Truck Ownership. Why is this occurring? Why is the pickup truck so attractive to these young ladies? Do they have things they need to haul? Do they have a lot of friends who move? Do they not want a back seat, thereby eliminating the need to provide rides for lots of people at once? Are they sending a certain message, and if so, what is it? Do young men find women who drive trucks "hot?"

I find it all very intriguing. Perhaps the common denominator is that young women who drive trucks are either very litigious or very unlucky; failing that, they are hooked up with people who go to court an awful lot.

On a related note--marginally, at best--there is a television commercial that I find highly irritating lately. It is for a new laundry product by Purex called the 3-in-1 laundry sheet. In the ad, a woman with terrible-looking red hair says that this product "makes her life ONE THOUSAND TIMES BETTER."

Holy crap. Seriously? How miserable is this chick's life? And how much of it revolves around laundry? You know what? When Jared told me about using Control + F, it made my life easier, but mainly when I'm trying to search through hundreds of entries in my resident archives of the Brian Williams Tie Report , and not 1000 times. And again, only when I'm writing silly little blurbs...about ties. Someone needs to get some perspective, Redhaired Laundry Slave, and it isn't me.

Finally, there's this, just for...well, just for. (Mainly, so you all feel good about your families being ONE THOUSAND TIMES more normal than mine.)

Scene opens with Nance in bathroom drying her hair. Jared enters casually.

Jared: Hey. This just in. Dad says he doesn't like you.

Nance: Yeah? So what?

Jared: Mom. Hey. I don't make the news. I just report it.

Jared saunters out. Nance continues drying hair. Rick is in living room feeding logs into fireplace, innocent to all which has taken place.

Finis.

Variation On The Thumper Rule: If You Can't Think Of Anything Smart To Say, Then Shut The Hell Up--The Political Version

Mark Twain once said, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." So many people in politics would do well to have that quote tattooed upon their forearms or, at the very least, with them, visibly, at all times. Here are a few examples that I've been collecting lately for your consideration. Hey, everyone needs a hobby.

Case 1. Ideally, we want our leaders to be brilliant. We want them to be smarter than we are and not the kind of ...entrepreneur that puts himself through law school by posing naked for a hotsy-totsy publication. Or the kind that uses his historic (the first time a republican has garnered a Massachusetts Senate seat in over 30 years) acceptance speech to pimp out his daughter. Senator-elect Brown is not your typical republican in many respects--he is pro-choice, he supports his state's subsidized health care system--but he needs to smarten up. Here is a delightful quote that says it all for me: "I'm a history buff. I love the Museum of Natural History." Oh, boy. Come on, Scott. Do you even know what is in a museum of natural history? Heavy sigh.

Case 2. I liked Elizabeth Edwards and stuck up for her when people--male people in particular--said unkind and disparaging things about her. (Same thing about Barbara Bush, by the way, who I always liked until she opened her snobby elitist and out-of-touch yap about the Katrina victims.) You know, the snotty remarks about how she (and Bar) looked old enough to be her husband's mother, how Elizabeth was matronly, overweight, and all that crap. Then, as the media circus was finally settling down and she and her kids could just live their lives and she could focus on managing her terminal illness, Elizabeth wrote her bestseller and dredged it all up again. Okay, whatever. I say, "Stick it to the cheating bastard and make him squirm." But just as John "The Haircut" Edwards is finally facing the music, what is Elizabeth doing? Well, among other things like running a furniture store, she's giving an interview to POLITICO, in which she seems to make excuses for him. Oh, Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth. Here's what she told them about Babydaddy John-boy: "The things he wanted to do weren't going to be natural for continued public life anyway. He honestly cares about poverty." Hm. Well, it's nice that he cares about...something.

Case 3. Speaking of John Edwards. (In the interest of full disclosure, I used to like him. As a matter of fact, he was My Guy way back when. I saw him, as I may have said in a much-earlier election blogpost, as a sort of Kennedy/Clinton clone. Obviously, I STAND CORRECTED. The guy is a slimeball.) Anyway, does this guy strike you as a modern-day Reverend Dimmesdale from Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, or what? Remember him, the minister who got the Puritan woman pregnant, let her take the fall for him, stayed silent for eight years while she raised her daughter alone and was vilified by the community, and then, as he was dying, gave a pseudo-confession with his last breath, and was still seen as a Christian martyr by many in the community? One of Dimmesdale's midnight promises to his daughter Pearl is that he will one day legitimize her by standing with her and her mother. When Pearl asks if it will be the next day at noon, Reverend Dimmesdale says no, it will be another day: Judgement Day. In an eerily similar vein, here's a little quote from John "Call Me Rev." Edwards: “I have been able to spend time with her during the past year and trust that future efforts to show her the love and affection she deserves can be done privately and in peace. It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me.” Oh, PS. Little Frances Quinn Edwards-Hunter is TWO. At least she only had to wait ONE year for her father's acknowledgment.

So, yeah, I get it; I get that being under constant public/media scrutiny is tough. You can't filter your mouth nearly enough. But these? These are...just terrible. These people chose a public life. Now they need to choose their words, too, and carefully. Or just shut up.

The First Step Is Admitting That You Have A Problem: But That's A Helluva Big Step, You Know?

How sad. I am completely bereft these days of anything valuable to say on any topic of Real Significance. This fact became all the more apparent after I had one martini on an empty stomach on Friday, grabbed Rick's PDA during dinner out, and jotted down what I thought would prove to be incredibly brilliant notes for a blogpost.

I'm still using them here. I'll leave it to all of you to decide if there should be a new organization called WADB: Writers Against Drunk Blogging.

*)(* People everywhere need to stop ordering and drinking White Zinfandel!! (Ed. Note: This was written after I noticed the waiter bringing a gargantuan bottle of White Zinfandel to the table next to us. They eschewed the waiter's suggestion of La Crema pinot noir or another lovely Chardonnay and instead got this two-liter of WZ.)
Rick: It's not even "white," it's a BLUSH.
Nance: Yes! True. And here's a shocking truth. I'm just putting it out there. I'M A SNOB.
(Ed. Note: I'm pretty sure I sat back with a sort of "so there, act surprised, but there it is!" expression on my face. I probably am a little bit snobby about a lot of things, but in all fairness, I don't think I'm really a snob. Completely. )
Rick: (laughs)
Nance: And I just want to take that huge bottle of white zinfandel and smash it on the ground. And then I want to take this purple crayon and write on this paper tablecloth: STOP DRINKING WHITE ZINFANDEL. FOREVER!! (Ed. Note: We were at a Macaroni Grill, hence the crayon and the paper overlay on the tablecloth. That chain still likes the cutesy idea of the waiter writing his name on the table. I don't get it, personally, but okay. By the way, their new appetizer--which I wish had arrived much earlier so I wasn't already half in the bag--of marinated olives and parmesan bread, is very nice.)

*)(* A Singing Waiter! What a lovely voice, but he only sang one time and then we never heard him again. Probably one reason why was because EVERYONE ELSE SIMPLY IGNORED HIM AND KEPT SHOVELLING FOOD INTO THEIR YAWS. HARDLY ANYONE EVEN LOOKED TOWARD HIM! Typical Ohio mentality: feed your yap and not your soul. (Ed. Note: He was not our waiter. He waited on the table behind us and a few tables over. At one point during his song ("If I Loved You"), one of the diners at the table harmonized with him, which was surprising and pleasant. Both Rick and I turned toward him; our waiter, who had arrived to take our orders, stopped and listened with us. We inquired politely about the young man, who we discovered is trained in opera. All in all, it was an unexpected pleasure which was largely unremarkable to most of the other patrons, it seemed.)

*)(* My Perfect Blackberry! It would be red or pink and less square and I'd call it a raspberry. NO KEYBOARD. I would speak clearly into it, and then I'd say "stop." I would be able to edit the message before sending it by SPEAKING THE CORRECTIONS into it. Then say, "Send to Rick" or "Send to whomever". Again, the most important thing is NO KEYBOARD. (Ed. Note: I am flexible on the Raspberry name. And the "roundish" aspect. But the idea of typing on a "phone" device is completely abhorrent to me. I detest the phone, and the idea of sending messages on the fly is appealing, but teensy-tiny typing is NOT.)

I know it seems horrifyingly impolite that I was taking all these notes during a nice dinner out with my husband. Let me assure you that it took only moments to record them because, as you can see, they are fluffy little bits of nothingness. And I was everso discreet. At least I think I was. After all, I was deep into a gorgeous vodka martini, up, slightly dirty. Isn't it just tragic how little it takes to get me...thinking? And about such deep, deep things, too! Sigh. Ah, well. Let someone else win Nobels.

It's Not Just A Job, It's An Adventure: Snow, Easels, Etch-A-Sketch, And Some Etiquette

Well, I'm back at The Rock after a bit of a Break, and trust me, it was a Monumental Struggle Of Epic Proportion for everyone concerned. Thank goodness that The Longest Week Ever In The History Of Education was cut short by a Snow Day on Friday. (Best Christmas present of all!)

Here for you are 3 vignettes from Room 245, where the students are sometimes very human, and all of us learn more than just English and American Lit.

I. D's & Sympathy

Scene opens on active classroom. Students are paired off discussing the life and works of Emily Dickinson in preparation for presentations. Teacher circulates while keeping despairing eye on windows which give a wide view of ever-increasing snow outside.

Dylan: (calls teacher over for assistance) Mrs. D., can you help us a minute?
Mrs. D.: Of course. (walks over, sits down next to student)
Dylan: Are you alright? You look...I don't know. Not real good. (quickly) No offense.
Mrs. D. : That's okay. No, I'm fine. I just detest this weather. It won't stop snowing, it's freezing, the sun hasn't been out for a hundred years, and I just hate it. It's absolutely miserable and horrid. I just hate it here.
Dylan: Yeah. I know. (pats her hand sympathetically) How long ago did you move here?
Mrs. D.: What?
Dylan: How long ago did you move here? Where did you live before?
Mrs. D.: Right here! I've always lived right here. And I've always hated it. Now (brightly)...what was your question, sweetheart? About Miss Emily, I mean.
End scene.

II. Easel Does It

Scene opens on empty classroom during class change. As students begin to filter in, teacher is at the front of the room adjusting the easel to be used for visual displays during Emily Dickinson presentations. Students Brandon and Elijah come up to seats near teacher desk.

Brandon: Wow! An easel! Just like elementary school. I remember how my teacher used to use the easel for this big writing paper, and she used to show huge letters on these big charts.
Mrs. D.: Those were the days, huh, B?
Brandon: Heck yeah!
Mrs. D.: You know what I used to love in elementary school? FELT BOARDS! You probably have no idea what that even is. I used to absolutely love when my teacher would put the felt board on the easel, take out the big box of felt shapes, and use them to tell a story...or do math, even. You probably had a SMART board or something like that when you were in elementary school. How terrible. How sad. Technology is ruining childhood.
Elijah: Man, I always loved me some Etch-A-Sketch.
Mrs. D.: Oh, yeah? Me, too! What a great toy!
Elijah: (gazes off, face softening, eyes dreamy; he is completely lost in a reverie and smiling) I could take a Etch-A-Sketch and a cup of applesauce all day!
End scene

III. Just When You Think You're Talking To A Brick Wall...

Scene opens in a quiet classroom as students begin to drift in for 7th period junior "regular" English. As usual, only a few girls arrive promptly. They quickly clique up and begin to gossip as the teacher sets up the overhead projector and transparencies for the day's notes on Adjective Subordinate Clauses.

Angela: ...I know! And she has a face like a bird's.
Faith: That's because she has a nose like a chicken.
Kourtney: Well, I--
Mrs. D.: (interrupting because she can definitely hear all this and has to say something) Ladies! What a terrible thing to say! None of that is very nice at all. I certainly hope that you're not talking about anyone in our class. Remember, we all have to get along, and--
Kourtney: (interrupting with a matter-of-fact tone and expression) We're talking about The New Girl.
Faith: None of us like her.
Angela: She's a troublemaker, Mrs. D. You don't know her.
Mrs. D.: Good heavens! She just got here. And I expect the three of you--and the entire class--to treat her with respect.
Faith: She was in this school before.
Mrs. D.: I don't care. Good heavens. I had no idea the three of you felt this way!
Kourtney: ( head cocked and slyly smiling) That's because we all have to get along and treat each other with respect. Right?
End scene

Reflections: Or, A Holiday Postmortem Complete With Underwear, Dendrology, And My Brief (Retail) Sex Change

Later this afternoon I'm going to bribe Rick into taking down the tree and completely deChristmasing the house. I'm tired of all the opulence and luxe and extra stuff. Mostly, I'm tired of the Extra. Extra sweets, extra lights, extra decor, and extra extraneousness.

(Bah Humbug. I know, right? Sigh.)

But before all of that--and playing endless games of newly rediscovered Snood (how terribly sad)--I wanted to inflict upon you share a few reflections with you regarding my Holiday Adventures.

:-) On one of our Marathon Shopping Outings, Rick and I searched for the desired underwear for Sam and Jared. JC Penney seemed hell-bent on not only honing our math skills, but on presenting as many confusing options as possible: boxers, boxer briefs, briefs, bikini briefs, buy one get one half off, buy one get one free, all depending upon the dizzying array of brands available, all of which were placed in varying areas not entirely lined up with their corresponding signage. I was stroking out, but Rick persevered, and undoubtedly using the Pythagorean Theorem, chose this particular brand and took two packages to the cashier immediately before I needed EMTs:

whereupon they rang up incorrectly. Of. Course. Rick politely pointed this out, and the twentysomething woman called her manager over and said--and I quote, "Hey, Eric. These Boulevards aren't ringing up correctly." No. I am not making this up. Can you only imagine what I began to go through, as a real person with education and human sensitivity? Neither Rick nor I dared look at one another. And yes, the manager asked her to repeat herself AND SHE DID. Even as I type this, I want to throw something. (And, just to satisfy anyone's curiosity, here is the origin of the name BVD.) Still not over it.


:-) I am still trying to figure out why we have such a bigass Christmas tree. I distinctly remember saying, when we went out for our tree, "Let's not get such a bigass tree this year. It's time to start downsizing." Yet, we have an absolutely enormous tree. Everyone who walks into the house says, "Wow! That is one huge tree. That's probably the biggest tree you've ever had." What the hell happened? My sister Patti has had a fake tree for years and years and has never looked back. My brother Bob, a major real tree holdout, informed me at the family gift exchange that his tree this year fit on top of a tv snack tray. Then he said, and I quote, "Look at Nance's face." Because I sat there, horrified and mouth agape, realizing that I was the only sucker left in the family (besides my younger sister Susan, who still has two younger kids) who goes all out and gets a bigass real tree. Bob then went on, "Yeah, it's a little fake tree and all the ornaments fit in a shoebox. The lights are already on it." I turned to Rick immediately, and he said, "Nance, you're the one who picked the tree out." Which is ridiculous, of course; reread the top of this section! Next year, for sure: DOWNSIZE IS THE KEY WORD. If only people would listen to me!


:-) This is the first year that I, for various reasons, was a Last-Minute Shopper for Christmas. (I felt downright Manly. Hee hee.) Two words: NEVER. AGAIN. I cannot tell you how many times I physically stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the mall and told myself, "Nance. You are a Grownup. You can do this. It's Just Shopping." In my defense, I must tell you that I was shopping for The Most Uninspiring Recipient Ever. Who Shall Remain Nameless. And for whom every year, I get to shop for "gifts" like socks, underwear, white teeshirts (V-neck), tennis shoes, and crapola like that. Or a Power Tool for which there are no distinct parameters, for example "a drill," but nothing about voltage or power or if it is to be "3/8 or anything like that. Do not suggest that I take anyone with me, either. Trust me, no one can handle shopping with me. That is how deep my pathology is at this point. No one deserves that. But, I did get it all done and it was fine. Just Fine. But that Last-Minute Shopping Thing will never happen again.


Oh, hey. Happy New Year. This was not The Year I Had Hoped It Would Be, to be sure. Let's keep our fingers crossed for 2010. (Which I refuse to pronounce "twenty-ten." Sounds just terrible.)

Merry Wishes From The Dept. of Nance

There's certainly plenty of both in the Dept. Cellar, thanks to our Friends In Canada, so I'm sure to be well fortified for the Holidays.

It is with deep gratitude to my Dear Readers that I greet you this Christmas. Thank you for your faithful and kind attention. To my Faithful Commenters, you hold an ever-glowing warm place in my heart. You are the ones who let me know that I am not simply strutting and fretting full of sound and fury but signifying nothing (to loosely paraphrase W Shakespeare). You're like a Secret Society with elbow-jabbing in-jokes, knowing nods, and sighing commiserations. I always write for me first, but I always think of you.

May this holiday--Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, or anything you celebrate--find you all with something that makes you happy. Even for a moment.

And above all, may you find Hope.

Or, may Hope find you.

Saturday Morning With Sam, His Blackberry, A Cow, And A Wolf: A Play In Two Scenes

Saturday morning at the Dept. Sam makes a rare appearance, mainly to troubleshoot his Blackberry using Rick's laptop. Rick and I are watching the Cleveland NBC affiliate morning news show.

SCENE 1.

Nance: (watching a report about a therapy dog) Hey! That's what I'll do. When I retire, I'll use my minicow as a therapy animal! How wonderful would that be? Just imagine: I could take it to nursing homes to visit the elderly, to hospitals to visit sick children...it would be great!

Rick: I'm with you one hundred percent.

Nance: Sam! Wouldn't you love it if you were a sick child in the hospital, stuck there in bed, sad and afraid, watching The Price Is Right reruns all day, and suddenly a gorgeous and cuddly minicow came to see you?

Sam: (not even looking up from his Blackberry) No. Cows don't do it for me, Mom.

Nance: That's not true! You would love it! You would be happy and excited. You know you would. Everyone loves cows. Rick.

Rick: I'd love it.

Nance: Look there. (points to shot of smiling elderly woman on television) That woman would be thrilled to see a happy, well-cared-for cow visit her. For holiday time, I could even put, say--

Rick: (interrupting) --a hat or--

Nance: (interrupting with a disdainful look that lasers his head off and leaves a burning, charred stump at the top of his neck) Rick! No animal likes to be dressed up. It's undignified. As I was going to say, I could put a small bow on it, like a red or pink bow for Valentine's Day, for example. Tell me that a sick kid or a lonely old person wouldn't love to have a beautiful, cuddly cow come visit him on a holiday. Tell me. You can't. It's as simple as that. Sam!

Sam: Whatever. Cows stink. They smell bad.

Nance: Sam! That's just not true. The animal itself has no unpleasant odor. It doesn't. Sure, its manure smells bad, but the cow itself doesn't. I would shampoo it before I took it anyplace.

Sam: (looks meaningfully at Rick) Yeah, right.

Nance: What? What is that look?

Sam: You mean Dad would be out there washing the cow. No way you're out there washing a cow. Especially in cold weather, outside.

Nance: AHA! But we're moving to a much warmer climate when I retire! SO THERE!

Sam: (shakes head doubtfully)

SCENE 2.

(Segment changes on show. Moves to live weather report from Virginia affiliate. Reporter named "Wolf" stands outside in snow.)

Nance: Sam. Aren't you glad Mommy didn't name you something horrid like "Wolf?"

Sam: Not really. That's kind of cool.

Nance: No, it isn't. It's terrible. Children in elementary school would tease you and howl at you all during recess.

Sam: Then I would bite them.

FINIS.

Grinching And Bitching At The Dept., So If You're The Least Bit Merry, You Might Want To Skip This Post Until You've Had Way More Eggnog

Oh, Heavy Sigh. Today I am valiantly trying to have Christmas Spirit, and no one is helping me. Honestly, what the hell is my problem, anyway? Christmas is not like Easter, a holiday which randomly occurs by some incomprehensible formula devised by ecclesiastical calculations based upon...exactly what, I'm not sure (and please do not feel compelled to enlighten me in Comments). Christmas is the same day every single year. Yet, for many years now, I have been left unready and unmotivated, as if it sneaked up on me like a lurker from the shadows.

It is a strange paradox: I feel stalked and victimized by Christmas.

It's unnecessary for me to rant on about how retailers have begun to allow Christmas to insidiously seep into stores as early as October now, elbowing out Halloween items for shelf space. (When I was little, I used to know that Christmas season had officially begun as soon as I saw the commercial on television where Santa rides the Norelco electric shaver. ) This Holiday Push is nothing new anymore.

What I have begun to feel, I think, is a sort of Christmas Maturation Burn-Out: it's just not fun any longer. It's all a Lot Of Extra Work. Back when Sam and Jared were little, I could wander into Toys-R-Us and zoom down the Fisher Price aisle or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle area and have fun! Or buy zippy crafty stuff like Play*Doh and boxes of Crayola crayons and a Lite Brite, or games and silly bath foam and Spirograph sets. Those littler boys did not have jobs and girlfriends and other commitments that make trying to schedule putting up the tree an occasion for a family meeting.

And buying presents now is...worky. It's all sizes and store preferences and guessing and "I don't know, Mom, I'll email you a list from work if I get time." And don't say, "Give them money or a gift card" because moms can't do that and you know it.

So I soldier on, the Bringer Of All Holidays. I do it anyway. It's My Job. I start up the 30-day Friendship Fruit for the 25th year so I can bake a cake. I throw together a couple of batches of cookie dough. I nag my sister for some ideas for her kids' gifts. I elaborately decorate the fireplace mantel and set out the snowman collection. I buy each of my four long-suffering and indispensable teacher aides a nice gift and make a mental note to get them wrapped and to school before Christmas break. I desperately try to remember how big of a ham I bought last year for the family Christmas Eve open house (held every year at my house) so that I don't have too much left over.

And there's still almost all of the shopping to do. Who are these people who get theirs done so very excruciatingly early? How on earth do they do it? Do they hold the potential recipients at gunpoint and get their lists like, in August? Or do they blithely just get each person whatever the hell they feel like buying for them? If that is the case, then I need to revamp my Entire Gift-Giving Attitude And Approach and get with that program.

TWELVE MORE SHOPPING DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS! some overly perky blond newscaster trumpeted at me this morning as I was trying to have my coffee and read my Plain Dealer at 8 AM. I wanted to hurl my candy cane mug at her pancakey face and shellacked page-boy, but I couldn't because I was immobilized by panic and shock. I have to work until the 23rd! How will I ever get everything done? "Christmas is for children" says a line in one carol. Boy, they're not kidding. Those were the days: all we had to do as kids was write a letter to Santa, show up, and open presents. Even the "being good" part was pretty much optional. I loved Christmas. Now I feel beaten up by it.

Has anyone else lost their Christmas Spirit? Or is it just me? Maybe it's the culmination of a downright crappy year. I'm hoping that, if I keep on keeping up appearances, it will just come back on its own. Wish me luck.

(Oh, and just so you know that I once had a bit more of a sense of humour about This Holiday, here are some of my favorite Christmas Posts Of Long Ago, since my LinkWithin seems to be ignoring them: This about themed trees ; this one about a non-traditional Crocs-wearing Santa ; this one about our family's sacred Christmas rules ; and finally, this one about our rather oddly-shaped Christmas tree a few years ago. I hope you enjoy them as a little Christmas present that I didn't have to shop for!)

I Am Not An Animal! (And Judging By Their Press, I Am Damn Glad!)

From time to time, as many Alert Dept. Readers know, I like to keep you all abreast of Important Doings in the Animal World. (I also like to give my Shift Key a workout and employ Pretentious Eccentric Capitalization, but I digress.) Well, that time has come again, and with vigor. Two of my favourite animals are in the news, and circumstances being what they are--dire--I must bring these bulletins to you.
ITEM--In a shameless display of bullying, China, who holds almost 800 billion dollars of the United States' debt, has decided to flex a little of its leverage muscle and ask for its pandas back. Especially upsetting to patriotic panda lovers is the imminent return of Tai Shan, the cub resident at D.C.'s National Zoo in our nation's capital. Tai Shan, who was born at the zoo in 2005, will be shipped to China early next year, despite the fact that he is American born--a naturalized citizen of these United States! Plus, let's keep in mind that we're giving the Chinese not the old, hand-me-down pandas that they originally gave us! No. They are getting a brand, spanking new panda. How is this fair? I am also assuming that Tai Shan does not speak Chinese. He has been around American keepers his whole life, and I am also assuming that his parents, who have been in this country now for nine years, have entirely assimilated and are pretty much Americans, too. He is ill-equipped, at the tender age of four, to go off to what will be a foreign country and live among strangers. I am worried about his wellbeing and his happiness. You should be, too, if you are serious about pandas.
ITEM--More bad press about cows, and this time, it is all conjecture and forensic revisionist literary history bullshit. Thank goodness again for my Google News Alert feature, or I would never have been aware of this travesty. This inflammatory headline, of course, drew my ire right away, and I knew right then that I had to take the bull by the horns: WAS JANE AUSTEN KILLED BY COWS? "Of course not!" I shouted at my computer screen. Jane Austen is one of the most beloved of all Victorian novelists, and certainly in the sacred pantheon of woman writers. The last thing cows need is her death on their heads. They've already been saddled with global warming, and now this? The headline leads the casual news skimmer to assume that she was perhaps trampled or gored by rampaging bovines. One has to get past an entire lead paragraph and well into the second to finally read the far more tame and tepid crux of the theory: "Austen may have succumbed to tuberculosis contracted from cows." Oh, is that all? A glass of milk? Yawn. Listen, people, in this day and age we can die from eating spinach. Or drinking water. Lay off the cows, already. But, really, they still have it better than the camels. Read on.
ITEM--Listen, I am not a big fan of camels. I rode one once, and it was okay, but by and large, they don't do a thing for me. Still, no animal deserves this. Okay, maybe snakes. Or the dogs in my neighborhood who never shut the hell up. Or maybe certain republican radio show hosts. But not these poor camels. True, no one wants to be invaded by 6000 rampaging anything looking for a drink--that's for sure--but to round them up by helicopter and then pick them off and allow them to rot (read: die in agony if not killed, only wounded) sounds just terrible. First of all, these camels didn't ask to come to Australia; they were brought to the continent. Is it their fault that the experiment didn't go as planned? Why didn't the conservationists and wildlife experts there control the population before the feral herd topped a million? Why hasn't Camel Control been a priority? Besides, look at the photo of that camel opening a door by using the knob! That camel did that without being trained! Don't tell me that some of those camels don't have a future in the Entertainment Business! Why can't Australians look into Camel Exporting? I feel like there are any number of solutions that just haven't been explored here, the least of which might be: Camel: The Other White Meat.

I think you're all up to speed now with our friends in the Animal Kingdom. Remember, they share our planet. When it's all over, who do you think will come back first? Better be nice!

Reports Of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, But We Can Still Talk About It. (Death, That Is.)

Call it a sign of Getting Older. Maybe I'm even getting a little Morbid, I don't know. But for the past several months, I've been fascinated with the obituaries in my beloved Cleveland Plain Dealer. I'm never looking for anyone in particular--that's not it. I'm intrigued by these little tiny paragraphs that encapsulate a person's life, moreso by what they don't say than by what they do, and always by how they say it.

Not so long ago, obituaries used to mention the Cause Of Death: there would be phrases such as after a brief illness, or died suddenly, or even in some more graphic cases lost his battle with lung cancer, or something like that. Now I read less and less of that. Obituaries--or "Final Notices," as they are sometimes euphemistically referred to in some publications--have become far more tasteful and subtle in that regard. They don't even say that the person has died. I'm all for that. I mean, after all, it's an obituary. Why do you think he or she is written up in here? It simply proceeds with alacrity and lists the relations and, if the departed's relatives ponied up for a big spot in the Obits, some other interesting facts are included such as hobbies and military service and the rest. I'm particularly fond of the ones that are obviously written by family and not merely by funeral home or newspaper staff. The family ones are much more personal and touching and they have more adjectives. They tell of a woman who had a "quick wit and warmth even under the direst of circumstances." They list "special friends" and even a "longtime companion and loyal guardian," all of whom were obviously pets, judging by their names. These deceased men and women didn't leave behind just husbands and wives, they left behind beloved husbands and dear wives. And their obituaries list all of the grandchildren or nieces and nephews by name.

My newest favorite thing, though, is this trend--around Northeastern Ohio, anyway--of putting in somewhat non-traditional pictures for the obituary. I love to see the old, old pictures of a 1940s beauty next to an obituary for a woman who died at age 89. Or a vintage, youthful Marine in the handpainted portrait style for a man who died at age 72. The other day, I noticed a lovely picture of a woman holding what looked to be her favorite cat and, noses touching, I'd swear they both were smiling. What a wonderful last picture for everyone to remember her by! (Personally, I've never been a fan of any formal, posed picture except for wedding portraits. When I go back and look at my boys' school pictures, I love to see the imperfections: the cowlick, the gap in the front teeth, the simple, everyday teeshirts. It's who they were at the time! My kids never got dressed up except...wow. Maybe for...a wedding!)

Today, however, I saw the Obituary Picture to beat all Obituary Pictures once and for all. When I saw it, I was immediately sad for two reasons: one, that this woman was dead; and two, that I had never known her. As I read her obituary very carefully, I felt like I could surmise quite a bit about her. I saved it so that I could scan and post it here for you. I'm including the date of the newspaper so that you know I'm not making it up. Out of respect for her and her family, I'm blackening the names. I think you'll agree that this is, by far, the most incredible Obituary Picture you've ever seen.

I showed it to Rick, and I said, "I'll be dead, of course, when you decide whether or not to put a picture in the paper for my obituary. I'd prefer you don't put one like this in of me because that's just not my style, but I want you to put in whatever kind of picture--at whatever stage of my life--that you think is the way I should be remembered."

I'm unconvinced as to the idea of an afterlife; I try not to dwell too much on questions so deep and impenetrable. But, if there is one, I hope I have an opportunity to look her up.

If This Is The Penultimate Post At The Dept., I Can Udderly Live With That

It's time for a new post, and I'm not too sure what I feel like writing about. Or if I even feel like writing. There's sort of a pervasive cloud hanging over a lot of the Minor Blogworld lately, I think. Oh, some people got all jazzed up after attending a conference; some people are making their blogs their business; some people are are participating in NaBloMyHeadOff, and that leaches readers/comments away; some people have hooked up with a comment promotion blog whose members zip around and comment only on the sites of whomever leaves the top comment on the list (or something) and then post a badge on their blog. Sigh. It's all very worky. And calisthenic. But it's all making me, for the first time ever, start to question whether or not the Dept. of Nance has run its natural course. I don't know. I'm not alone in this quandary, I do know that. No one wants to play to an empty theater; I guess it's the age-old conundrum of the tree falling in the uninhabited forest.

For now, I will continue to reflect upon the Original Mission of the Dept., and whether or not this enterprise is still satisfying to me. Maybe I'm just suffering from An Eeyore Episode, and a lengthy one at that. But maybe it's just time to gracefully fade away. I'm not sure yet. I'll decide in time. For now, let's move on.

Thanks to Google News, this arresting headline was brought to my attention, and I think it must be brought to yours. I'm not sure I even want you to know anything else. Period. Here is that headline, in all its wonderful imperative glory: VET SCHOOL 2.0: STICK YOUR HAND UP A VIRTUAL COW BUTT. Well? What did I tell you? Is that arresting and wonderful, or what? If you insist on knowing more, here is the link to the article. But you know me: I will be more than happy--overjoyed, even--to give you the most germane bits right here. Because, as I have said time and time again, when there is a good animal story to impart, I am all over it; that is my vow to you.

But I digress.

The lead of the article states, and I quote: "There’s nothing tidy about sticking your arm deep into a cow’s backside, getting up to your elbows in warm and gooey bovine innards. But for new vet students, there’s no avoiding the procedure: To diagnose pregnancy or check for infection, you’ve got to reach into a cow’s rectum and feel for the uterus, ovaries and stomach. Unfortunately, proper palpation is a tough skill to teach, because once your arm is buried inside a cow butt, no one can see what you’re doing." End quote.

Would anyone care for a hamburger?

Oh, I hear you. "Nance," you ask earnestly. "Is it in any way possible for this machine to get another headline almost as wonderful?"

Dearest, dearest ones. It is my extreme and uddermost pleasure to share. Please, please finish drinking any and all beverages as to avoid any spray onto keyboards and monitors. (If it is not too late.) If you are reading this in The Workplace, try to be Discreet. Are you ready? Here, then, it is: ROBOT COW RECTUM: FOR EDUCATIONAL, NOT RECREATIONAL, PURPOSES. (I especially adore the comma usage, don't you?) The writer of this post chose to take a distinctly more titillating tack and observed of its inventor, "with robotic organs and a monitor, she can teach students exactly what they should (and definitely should not) be grabbing." O-kay...! Someone is a little too preoccupied with teats and rump roasts.

This Informative Post would not be complete without a picture of said device. Especially entertaining is the Actual Cow in the photo. And the incredible posture of the Woman Whose Arm Is Elbow-Deep Into The Virtual Cow Butt. And...oh, hell. Just look for yourself.

Now, seriously...aren't you glad you stopped by?

Seeing Double--This Is What You've Driven Me To: The Blogpost Equivalent Of The Gameshow Channel. I Hope You're Happy.

Been a while since I did one of these silly little posts. Seems like it's been tough throughout the blogosphere to generate any interest in anything lately, so I'm going to take it easy and toss off a little cyberfluff.

If you watch Project Runway, you probably sighed a little this week when they let designer hottie Logan go. It was time--he was starting to get all "I think I'm rocker edgy, but really, all I can do is black and sleeveless, and I know I need to mix it up...somehow"--so he made a Judy Jetson waitress outfit. (last outfit shown) That Fashion Don't got him Auf'd. But do not despair! If you need a Quickie Logan Fix, just tune in to House. His twin, Jesse Spencer, works there playing Dr. Robert Chase. Don't believe me? Take a look:


Okay, as if I haven't already put my Sad, Pathetic Television Addiction out there, here's another one. Have you been watching Top Chef Las Vegas? I'm putting my money on chef Kevin Gillespie, who is a very nice guy who can cook, unlike the cutthroat and cyberbot-esque Voltaggio brothers. (Those guys give Sibling Rivalry a whole new meaning.) Anyway, see what you think about this:


There's just NO WAY the guy cannot be merry! His lookalikes star in TWO Christmas specials!

Next, all four of you Dept. readers know of my Breakup with David Gregory. But that has nothing to do with this. I used to laud DG for his bold cravatical choices in the past, especially his unabashed Wearing Of Pink. Lately, however, David has Fallen From Fashion Grace with a bigass thud. I have no idea what has happened. Anyone who still soldiers on and endures Meet the Press knows this is true, and when David appears on The NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, I am forced to reckon with Mr. Gregory's newfound sartorial predilections, which seem to be akin to none other than Bill the Butcher:


Those of you who have been watching with any regularity at all know this to be absolutely true. His propensity for mixing patterns has become a disease. Ugh.

Finally, some of you may be aware of my vast and somewhat uncharacteristic/surprising store of sports knowledge/interest. (Could I use some more backslashes? I'll see.) It's a source of amazement to my students, especially the boys, who see me as a high-heel-wearing chick who wouldn't know the difference between a free throw and a punt. Even I am sometimes a bit regretfully flabbergasted at how many professional athletes I know by sight and how much I know about various aspects of basketball, football, baseball, and their related topics. (Most of it picked up in self-defense, living as I do with three men.) All of which is to say that this last pair doesn't even require you to know Toronto Raptor power forward (that's basketball, by the way) Chris Bosh. Just know that he is who I thought of immediately when my student Jessica B. brought me this souvenir from her band trip in Florida:

Do not tell me you don't see this! Imagine them both pink....Ha!

That's it. I can't do it anymore. I need a drink. Go twit or spacebook or something. Sigh. Not that I am bitter.

Just Because We Can, Doesn't Mean We Should, Unless You're Talking About Cleaning Out My Basement

Very sorry for the monstrous gap between posts. Went on a jaunt, then came home and promptly fell ill. Still not feeling up to par, but oh well. We do what we must.

Onward.
This little newsish item caught my eye for some odd reason. A clump of Elvis Hair, vintage 1958, went up for auction and actually sold for $15,000! But allow me to clarify: this is hair believed to be Elvis's. Heaven only knows what, if its provenance was more reliable, it would have sold for. Perhaps eleventy billion. Especially since an Elvis Shirt went for 52K. Just a shirt--not something that actually may hold the DNA of The Pelvis himself. (Who may or may not still be alive, by the way.)

Personally, I have never understood the Mystique Of Elvis. I never liked his music, not any of it. I don't get the pilgrimages to Graceland or the people who buy the Velvet Elvises (Elvi?) or the collectible plates or any of that stuff. But the hair thing really creeps me out. What will the buyer do with it? Ever since reading and seeing Jurassic Park, the story in which scientists successfully extract dinosaur DNA from prehistoric bugs preserved in amber (the dino blood was still in the insects' system after they bit them) and then recreate the long-dead species, I can't help but think about the motives of some people. Oh sure, for some fans, it's merely a desire to hold on to something that belonged to someone they admired. Or to own a piece of someone famous. For others, celebrity memorabilia is an investment like stocks or gold.

But in this age of highly advanced science and technology, it sure would give me pause if my dad or daughter or husband were a bigdeal celebrity. The weirdo stalkers are bad enough. Can you imagine if some superfan with big bucks decides that he wants his own Beyonce 2.0?

Hey, did I just write a Script Treatment for a movie?

Anyway.

On a related note: The seller of the Elvis Clump, a Mr. Pepper, was apparently a friend of Elvis's and a president of one of his many fan clubs. Actually, the seller had to have been the friend's estate, because Mr. Pepper died in 1980. So, it seems that perhaps Mr. Pepper's family may have been de-cluttering things a bit and found that the Clump and assorted shirts and Pez dispensers really weren't doing much more than taking up space. I can relate. I bet you can, too.

How do you know what to save anymore, and for how long? It's just terrible. My kids are 24 and 21. Confession: I did not save all their baby clothes. Am I a terrible person? I also did not save every single card they gave me, nor did I save every single one of their elementary school papers or projects. Did I just lose my Mommy Card? I can't stand saving a lot of stuff. I don't want to end up on that tv show "Hoarders."
Right after the tragedy of September 11, I was talking to my friend Ann, and she said, "One of the things that struck me when I saw those towers come down was all that paper. Everywhere, there was paper. Right then and there, I decided that it was time to get rid of all the junk in my house. Because when I die, I don't want to burden my family with having to go through all the papers and all the crap in my house." She was so right.

That, however, was eight years ago, and although I made a similar pledge right along with her, I have a bunch of crap in my house that would not bring anywhere near fifteen thousand bucks, total. (Although I do have a clump of Rick's hair from when he had to get his long, long, LONG hair cut in order to get a "real" job many years ago. Anyone interested?) Rick even has his first five-speed bike that he bought with his very own money back in, like, 1875 or something. Why he has it, I'm sure I have no idea. It's lying in the basement, dusty and forgotten, but he needs it. It is a valuable relic of his Past.

And me? I am, at present, trying valiantly to think of a valuable relic of my Past that I am stubbornly holding onto. Aside from the abstract and intangible, I honestly cannot think of any. As I have often wondered before, I fear I have become Sentimentally Autistic; in my desire to always move forward, I willingly leave things behind, knowing that the truly important things travel always within me.

Put On Your Flak Jackets And Take Cover! My Head Is Exploding, And Nutella, Cows, And Student Errors Are Everywhere!

Can you possibly handle a Barrage of Hodgepodge? A Pelting of Pastiche? Because my brain is firing random shots of mental rubbish right now, and it looks like you're the hapless target. Gotta get rid of this stuff somehow...

Item. This from a student essay about the character of John Proctor from the play The Crucible: He has changed jurassically from the beginning of Act II until the end. What am I to make of this metamorphosis by a simple Puritan farmer? Does this mean he has become, oh, I don't know...a stegosaurus? Perhaps the student means JP has undergone an era's worth of change? Rather, this kid has phonetically--in his mind--written "drastically." Sigh. And yes, this was in HONORS.

Item. Here's a thing. Now, longtime Dept. readers know of my unabashed love affair with Nutella. It is no secret. But even I never tried to pass the stuff off as a Health Food to try and ameliorate my addiction occasional snacking. What Mom/adult in her right mind would actually believe that a chocolate spread is part of a healthy breakfast? Oh sure it is, if the rest of said breakfast includes eleventy pieces of fruit, half a loaf of tofu bread, and oh, I don't know, maybe a chicken. Come on, Nutella People! Let's take a Reality Pill and Get On A Program.

Item. My Google News Reader has an alert for stories about cows, (Of course. Doesn't yours?) and I keep getting terribly disturbing ones about cow suicides. And no, I am not kidding. My first thought is, naturally, how horrifying. Those poor cows! My second thought is, What the hell is so damned depressing in the life of a cow that it would cause it to kill itself? Seriously. Can you just imagine the thought process of that poor thing? Or, what if it decides to confide in its cowfriend?

Penny: (thoughtfully munching on cud) I don't know, Hortense. I'm just so...down lately.
Hortense: (ruminates, then surreptitiously farts) Let's walk over by that edge there. Then you can tell me.
Penny: I mean, every day it's the same thing. It's okay and all, but I just feel so...so penned in all the time. Don't you ever just want to do something else?
Hortense: Sure. Sometimes, I don't go right up there to the barn. I sorta just wander first. And sometimes, I pee right on his hand when he straps me up.
Penny: (peers down the edge of the cliff) Look down there. I'm just gonna go. You with me?
Hortense: (brings up her cud, then glances over the edge of the cliff) Yeah, okay. Let's make a little noise first. (stretches neck, moos, farts)
Penny: (does same, jumps)
Hortense: (jumps)
(Other cows follow blindly in a stampede of bovine destruction. End)

Google News has about two weeks to get its manure together on the whole Cow Info Situation before I delete that section. At least today I learned that California has outlawed Cow Tail Docking. (What a relief! For the cows, too.)

Item. Oh, this stuff is killing me in student work, too. How hard is it to spell "beginning?" You cannot believe the variations I get. The most common are: beggining, begging (hey, Genius! already A WORD!), beggeng. WHAT? And, has the word "woman" completely disappeared from the English language? Has it? Because my students do not know that it exists. They just use the word "women" for the singular. Or worse, the term "female." Erg. Moreover, they pronounce the word "women" identical to the word "woman." WHAT IS GOING ON? Again, let us remember that this is from my "honors" classes. Heavy sigh.

Item. It is becoming increasingly difficult to do creative image searches on Google. I pride myself on having interesting graphics to go with my posts, and heretofore (*love that word!*) I have been able to plug interesting phrases into the query box and come up with wonderful pictures. Now, for some reason, Google merely isolates any word it feels like and generates completely boring and unrelated things. For example, I wanted to find some sort of interesting art for this post that showed perhaps a head with random imagery swirling out of it or around it. I plugged in "head open", "stuff coming out of my head", "exploding head", "spilling my head"...oh, any number of things like that. Idiotic Literal Google generated things that merely had the words "head", "open", "spill", or anything like that. Ergo, I had pictures of a glass of spilt milk, a hummingbird, a candle, a gay couple kissing, etc. Even the word "my" was in bold, indicating that Dorky Old Google had oh-so-helpfully searched all the pictures that included that word in their captions. Note to Google: You're effing up my Project.

All righty then. As usual, I feel better now that we've had a little chat-up. Thank goodness I have all of You. If it weren't for the Brilliant Readers/Commenters here at the Dept., I'd probably follow Penny and Hortense right off The Deep End.

If Television Is Going To Be My Life, Then I'm Going To Get A Hell Of A Lot More Out Of It: The Birth Of DoNTV

So much about my television viewing habits has begun to concern me. No, really, it has. Isn't it bad enough that I make a point to separate the TV Section from the rest of the Sunday paper and keep it on the coffee table so that I can refer to it daily? That I shriek like a martinet if anyone even looks like he is going to set a Pepsi can or beer or wineglass upon it, thus rendering it unreadable?

No. It is not. For it gets even Worse.

Friday night is "Hulu Night." Rick hooks up a cable from his laptop to the television and, after our lovely dinner, we spend the evening watching the shows we missed because (A)we were busy, (B) we were rendered comatose by our pathetic lives, or (C)they were on at the same time as another show we also like to watch.

I know. Just shoot me now. I am only fifty. I should still be out doing exciting things like...oh, not knowing the names of all of the contestants left on Top Chef and Project Runway. It's clear that I have a Problem.

Sometimes, just for fun, I like to read from the TV section the little plot blurbs about the shows aloud to Jared. I love those little summaries. I often wonder who writes them and how I would go about getting that gig. Some of them are unintentionally hilarious, especially if I don't watch the show. This one, for a new show called the forgotten, (lower case is apparently required), cracks me up: "A dead John Doe left beaten on the street leads the team into the world of professional football." OKAY! Also merry is this one for Dirty Jobs, especially if you read it with a real happy voice: "Mike travels to Miami to recover and crush abandoned boats and then heads to San Francisco to recover old mattresses!" HOORAY!

Today, I was reading a few out loud for giggles when I came upon the blurb for the now-tragic show Jon & Kate Plus 8. I'm sure we all know the sad soap opera behind that reality show, but that's not what I want to chat about. What I want to chat about is how this is a show: "An expert helps guide the family in an attempt to organize their basement." Okay, huh? Seriously? I mean, I get how herding a bunch of similar-looking kids as they toss toys at each other and an anal-retentive mom attempts to make sense of it all while reining in her OCD might be sort of fascinating--for about ten minutes--but really? A WHOLE SHOW?

The more I thought about it, the more irked I got because I knew damned well that the show paid for this Basement Organization By A Trained Professional. How fair is this?

So, here's the deal, America (or at least the minute percentage of America which reads the Dept.). I would like to, in one fell swoop, take care of my Television Problem and several of my...Other Problems by having My Own Show. I'll call it DonTV. I will ink a deal similar to the Jon & Kate deal as far as budget. Here are some of my blurbs:

*An expert guides the Dept. in an attempt to organize their basement.

*Nance decides to hire an expert to help guide her in selecting a new wardrobe, complete with shoes.

*Frustrated by her sons' inability to fledge from the nest, Nance hires an expert to help guide her and Rick in an attempt to get them to move out into an apartment and live on their own.

*Rick and Nance hire an expert to help guide them in the redecoration of their home.

And finally, the season cliffhanger will be

*Upon retirement from teaching, Nance hires an expert to guide her in the search for her new residence in a warmer and more Democratic-leaning part of the country.

Oh, I like it. All I need is the right network. What do you think?

In Which I Take On Restaurants, Bad Footwear, Hyper-Casualism, And, Just On Principle, republicans. Because I Must.

Certainly our current Administration in Washington D.C. has plenty to do, what with The Economy, Health Care, Iran playing Hide-n-Seek with nukes, and the republicans trying to...well, Do Whatever Nasty Thing They Can Find To Do. But this is no time to forget the fine cement of Nicety that should hold our country together. Once again, I volunteer to step in, make the Dept. of Nance a bona fide department, and do what I can to whittle away at the insidious incivilities that threaten to weaken what is left of Our Gracious Society.

Our topic today, dear readers: Restaurants. (Let me immediately say that I have a personal stake in this subject and that it was inspired by a recent dining experience at a franchise restaurant which shall remain nameless. Rick, not feeling particularly sociable on Friday, called the restaurant (one of the few to still take reservations for a party less than eleventy thousand) to make reservations for the two of us on Saturday. We decided to dine early, at six. This is plenty of background. I press on.) Restaurants have become a Behemoth Of Bad Behaviour in our Society as of late. Not owning or operating one myself, perhaps I am simply naive or ignorant, and a restaurateur can set me straight. Otherwise, I will remain convinced that the following points need to be remedied immediately. It simply cannot be that hard.

1. Reservations: Firstly, take them. Regardless of party size. Second, honor them. I do not want to arrive on time and have to wait twenty minutes (as was the case Saturday). Listen, I made a plan to dine at your establishment. I can understand there being some unexpectedness involved. But twenty minutes? Ridiculous. I'd like to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld when I say, "Anyone can take a reservation. It's holding the reservation; that's the most important part."

2. Seating: Do not insult me and take me, a person who made a plan to dine at your establishment over 24 hours ago, to the lousiest table in your restaurant. Those horrific cafeteria-like two-tops along a banquette. I do not wish to share my dinner and my dinner conversation with strangers. As a matter of fact, restaurateurs everywhere, STOP PUTTING THOSE GODAWFUL SEATS IN YOUR RESTAURANTS, PERIOD. THEY ARE TERRIBLE. If you must have them, save them for the walk-ins who decided at the last minute to patronize your establishment. When I am escorted to one by a clueless hostess, I politely insist that I be moved. Questions follow, managers inevitably insinuate themselves, and the dinner check ends up being comped. I don't try to get a free meal. I just want a nice dinner. I'm happy to pay for it, really.

3. Acoustics: Why do you have "ambient music?" Most restaurants are too damned loud anyway. The music/Muzak does not help. Especially annoying is "theme" music, i.e. Italian music at Italian restaurants. If I had a restaurant, I'd plaster that place with acoustical tiles so that it sucked in every single noise. You wouldn't hear an ice cube clink. In other words, you'd be able to hear the person across the table from you talk. Without shouting.

4. Appropriate Dress: Flip-flops. I see really no difference between these and being barefoot. Really. Can you imagine all the crud being flipped and flopped into the dining atmosphere from these people's feet? Ugh. And, is there really a difference between an Abercrombie & Fitch hooded sweatshirt and a plain old hooded sweatshirt? I want there to be some restaurants where I can go and not see a baseball hat. Where there won't be a woman in tennis shoes and sweatpants. But I don't have to pay fifty bucks for my pasta. You know?

The Dept. of Nance stands ready to restore Gentility to Dining Out. Short of opening its own restaurant, it will do its utmost to assist diners everywhere in their Quest For A Sophisticated And Civil Dining Experience. But first, both parties must accept their share of the blame.

Restaurateurs, anxious to make a go of their ventures, are increasingly lax regarding their standard of clientele. They're just happy to get bodies in the door. If they are running a casual, family restaurant, that's fine. But do draw the line someplace. Is it beach shoes? Is it bikini tops? Is it children running amok and disturbing other diners? Train your staff, and make sure they are capable. Tossing a few free meals here and there will eventually add up, and pretty soon, you'll be shuttering your business.

American Public, have some class. You are out to dinner. Not standing in front of your Frigidaire after having closed up your garage sale. Other people are around. True, you do not know them, but have some Personal Dignity. Are your children disturbing others? Apply a standard other than "Are they killing someone/each other/me?" for their Public Behavior. Finally, wear Real Shoes. It will be Okay. It's only an hour or two and then you can go home and take them off.