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the latest waddle:

good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03

elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01

building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19

ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09

my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04


2006-10-15 ... 8:43 a.m.

TWO THINGS I HAVE RUN ACROSS IN MY WORK LIFE

1. A footnote to a graph that said, "The reference group was white Americans." They forgot to add a comma and the words "surprise, surprise."

2. An irritating cost-effectiveness study on a pediatric infectious-disease vaccine, where the researchers figured in parental lost work time due to childhood illness. Which is as it should be. However, while they counted eight hours (more or less a whole day) of lost work time for a child's being hospitalized, they only counted THREE hours of lost work time for a child's emergency-room visit. AS IF. Your kid is sick enough for the emergency room, but as soon as you get done in there, you'll drop him off at daycare and scoot on down to the office? Not to mention the fact that no childcare center or school would be open-arms-welcoming when you mentioned that little tidbit on your way out the door. Can you even be seen in an emergency room in less than three hours, unless you come in with your leg cut off? (Note: the vaccine in question was not for amputation prevention.)

SPEAKING OF AMPUTATIONS

As you may know, I long to find a human head, and I also love forensic shows where invariably some hiker makes "a grisly discovery." I never go hiking, but as we drive past the forest preserve on the way home from my parents' place I always keep a sharp eye out for body parts, despite LT's bubble-bursting statements about how serial killers are hardly going to leave their victim-bits so close to the road. Which led to a discussion of organizing hikes specifically to look for decomposing body parts, not in a specific-individual search-party sense (as when someone goes missing), but more of a geocaching "let's see what's out there!" I am not sure if this would ever really catch on as a hobby, but maybe we could put up a few fake webpages and fool some lazy style reporter into doing a story.

NOT A SHILL

I keep getting email solicitations for different marketing companies, asking me to mention certain other websites on my "blog." These are not even pleas for me to have some clickable ads, or to review some books or products, they just to want me to link and write about some dumb celebrity's fake "personal journal," or to exhort my readers to try a certain online shopping place. Of course, I cannot mention which things I am being asked to mention, because that would be mentioning them, which I adamantly refuse to do. However, trust me: these things are lame.

At the risk of being mocked for putting on my virtual Black Flag pins and tattered black overcoat covered with anti-capitalist-anarcho-grrrl-power buttons, I hereby proclaim to you that I will never do such a thing. I am indifferent about ads on personal websites---I don't want any myself, but ads do not turn me off entirely as long as they are nicely placed and not blinking all over the page. But this stupid viral marketing campaign, as if I am some sort of tastemaking buzz-producing person who need merely suggest a link and the clickers will set to clicking, makes me want to spit. Preferably on the shoes of the marketing directors who drafted these emails. Ptooey! Punk's not dead! (Said the thirtysomething yoga-pantsed mom typing away in her comfortable urban condominium! Oi! Refuse! Resist! Make plans to get to Trader Joe's before the kid's naptime!)

One of the gag-worthy marketing emails also had as its recipients several other fairly "popular" writers of internet diaries that I read, so I am putting those women on notice: if I catch you gushing (for free!) about the lame things that I was asked to gush about, I will know that you are a soulless dork or possibly a robot. And I will mock you.

Ooooh, I'm so tough.

FLORIDA? AGAIN?

Did I not just vacation there last year? Accompanied by much pseudo-angst about how I Am Not The Kind Of Person Who Vacations In Florida? And yet we leave next week. My parents were going, and asked us to tag along, and I could not resist the idea of a two-bedroom beachfront condo with my parents, who will happily hang with Nora at night while LT and I go out to consume violently colored cocktails at establishments whose names contain an eponym, a seafood, and a word for a shabby domicile (Carl's Clam Hut? Nathan's Anemone Shack? Santiago's Oyster Lean-to?) So I am packing my swimsuit and my sunscreen and making plans to visit the Intimate Waxer in the next few days. Yippie.

Hmmm. I had more, but I have left Nora in front of Wallace and Gromit for too long now. I will just post these freaky freaky freaky baby-comforting stuffed hands instead.

---mimi smartypants should be poured into a lightly greased loaf pan.

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