Don't talk to me right now.

Seriously, don't even talk to me.

augh at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

September

Jim The Small Child Nephew began preschool this week, and because he is my godchild, he did not want to go.

"I'll stay in the car," he said when his mother drove him to the parking lot to acquaint him with the notion.

"No preschool bag," he announced when they entered the schoolbag aisle at the store.

Oh, and because he is brilliant, he finally attempted to ship off his little brother in his place.

"Baby Will go. I'll stay here," he suggested.

I always knew I wanted a younger sibling.

preferring paying bills to the first day of school at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Just Another Housewife

I'll be writing about the new season of Desperate Housewives for MSNBC.com through sweeps, so if you The Readers want to be fully on board with Monday-morning vents, you know where you need to be on Sunday night-- inviting the parent company of Walt Disney World into your home for sixty weekly minutes of statutory rape, imprisonment, and illegitimate children.

This has meant a great deal of brushing up on back stories, and I'm really starting to wonder why anybody lives in Fairview. By my count, there have been two arsons, eight murders, two and a half suicides, a home imprisonment, three falls from great heights, one car bombing, eleven forced entires, one hostage crisis, multiple incidences of domestic violence, a pedophilia outbreak, one count of human trafficking, and two hit and runs. The per-capita violent crime rate has to be in the thousands. You would think Dateline would have shown up by now.

Oh, and there's been two comas, two heart attacks within one sweeps period, and one semi-case of amnesia, all in about seventy episodes. The producers are now officially one evil identical twin and an organ fanfare away from the Procter & Gamble Hall of Fame.

Also for some reason the wardrobes on the teenagers have failed to exit 1987. I saw aqua stripes on Danielle VandeKamp in Season 2. Aqua. Stripes, and plastic earrings.

Further Fairview concerns:

-Are the cops sick of interviewing Susan Mayer yet? She called them like four times in Season 1 alone. I am thinking that Susan has 911 on speed dial.

-So does herpes just not exist on Wisteria Lane? How many men has Edie Britt been with? How many, how many? And Susan will just go ahead and sleep with her ex-husband and her current one after they've slept with Edie? Does she not know where Edie's been? I doubt Edie knows where Edie's been. Susan seriously needs to have a sit-down with Ms. Huismann, who taught me freshman health and once made a very sobering, forty-five minute point involving stick figures and a tree chart about how sleeping with one person is like sleeping with every other person that person has ever slept with. Ms. Huismann would see to it that Susan would not so much as inhale sharply around Edie Britt.

(Speaking of Susan--whom I, you know, hate-- we learned in Season 3 that she was valedictorian. Of what class? One located in a single-room schoolhouse consisting of grades K through sixteen?)

-If I behaved like Lynette's children behave, I would be dead about eight hundred times over by my mother's own hand. People seeking an effective method of birth control should watch any five seconds of a Scavo family-centered episode.

-Dear Hollywood: Please stop watching one and a half Bing Crosby movies and begin thinking that you now have a firm grasp of the finer points of Catholicism. I have very little knowledge on how to be, for instance, a Christian Scientist, so if I ever found myself writing for a Christian Scientist character, I'd like to think I'd put a bit more effort into it rather than stringing together dialogue along the lines of "Well! I'm certainly not taking any Sudafed today!"

I have yet to meet a nun who goes about recommending annulments; and was never really sat down and informed that the Pope wants me to breastfeed, as someone seems to have done with Carlos; and I would love to know this church Edie Britt attends where Confession is apparently administered with zero penance, and also where she shakes the hand of the priest outside the confessional, then enters the confessional and raises the little screen. It's rare to even find a church these days with proper confessionals--most now resemble the Cosby's living room, complete with comfy chairs and potted ferns, and the last time my confession was heard, it was in a cinderblock alcove that also clearly served as a concession stand. When you do enter an actual old-skool confessional, you don't amicably greet the priest outside and then raise the little screen. The vast majority of people enter confessionals for an anonymous confession. That's the point of the little screen.

-Where are these people that there's only one florist shop, and yet Gabrielle has full access to couture clothiers? She's forever heading to the mall, and if I know my former models, a former model wouldn't be caught bony-handed within four hundred miles of an Old Navy.

yeeeeeees at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

The Power of Blonde

The only thing I had to do with Mormons up until this point was to walk past a television set as the MoTab was broadcasting a Christmas concert and reflect, "Well, those are really some very nice robes." This complemented a rigorous inter-religious education, the center of which consisted of overhearing at Notre Dame theology professor refer to The Book Of Mormon as "Jesus: The Western."

Last week, however, I expressed certain English major concerns about the style name of a prom dress on a Mormon modesty dress site. That post was in turn picked up by exmormon.org, which further spiked traffic to the original link. Apparently someone checked the Google analytics and did a bit of hasty literary research.

And now? Lolita, she is "Alana." I'm thinking one of the elders had a little sitdown with Lolita and her can of Natty Lite.

This is what every writer dreams of: The power to rename demurely draped chiffon. This is way, way better than a Pulitzer.

bwahahahahaha at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Summer of '77

One dead Elvis, one dead Kenobi, one white jumpsuit that made everybody else want to join them. I don't remember it, but it was my first one, and I'm assuming I found it enjoyable. Between the formula spew, and all.

actually didn't understand why someone would bother putting together a slide show until I remembered how old I am at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com