UNCIVIL UNIONS

Gigantic in the news is the proliferation of separate sleeping quarters for married couples and civil unions. Legally joined people are opting for separate beds, separate bedrooms, and in the most extreme cases, separate wings of the house.

None of this should surprise anyone. Why the hell would men and women--to cite just one form of marriage-- expect to dwell in the same bed, when they originated on Mars and Venus, respectively. Alien status would suggest different beds, if not different planets, or so one would think. Besides, studies have shown that married folk enjoy more intimacy in their separate sleeping quarters.

As just one example, Duracell's stock price is up over 40% since the separate bedroom phenomenon surfaced. Those energized bunnies keep going long after they're separated from their lovers. Pleasuring and Solitaire seem to be The New Doubles.

For some time now, contractors have built McMansions with two master bedrooms--often in different zip codes. It's enough to give you restless leg syndrome. Now, when young children have to throw up in the middle of the night, they are torn over which parent's bed they should do it in. Pity the poor parent who misses out on this bonding experience.

Of course, the reason given for the new bedroom exodus is excessive snoring, thrashing, and flossing. After ten years of interrupted sleep, elbowed backs, and meaty string, couples have reinterpreted their vows, parted the covers, and headed for the promised land.

Who ever said love was easy? And since when is a good night's sleep a reason to banish your life partner? Most continue with conjugal visits, but for many, intimate contact is limited to text messages. Could the offending spouse change? It's like the old joke: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? One--but the bulb has to really want to change.

Though my snoring has been compared to a chainsaw on Quaaludes, my wife and I are able to co-habitate on the same Posturepedic. This is largely because of the two dogs and two parrots that separate me from my wife's retribution. Sleeping with one's pets can remind couples of why they got married in the first place: to save themselves from the chuckle monkey histrionics of pre-marital love.

It's true, the dogs growl when they're disturbed, and the parrots are grumpy in the morning, but over the last 6 years, I can count the number of times they've bitten me on my left hand. Well, actually, I just count the scars. Sure I wish the parrots were house-trained, but I can say from experience, there is no better bed buffer than two grouchy wolves and their bitchy avian sisters.

In short, there is no reason why sleep depravation should ever lead to sleep separation. Separation is known to lead to divorce, and it's not necessary. Far less Draconian measures could be employed. Consider the following interim measures before moving down the hall:

1. Crazy Glue a sock to your lover's tonsils.
2. Ask your sleepless lover to wear elbow pads.
3. Snap the meat from the floss before drying it on the bedpost.
4. Sleep during the day.
5. Up your lover's life insurance to $4 million.

And as always, remember the kids. You are modeling the behavior you expect to see in them. Second thought, buy your lover a separate house. Seriously though, why feed your teenagers' suspicions by sleeping apart from your spouse? Despite what they think, it is possible to be middle-aged and intimate. Or, at the very least, civil.

MANIFEST DESTINY

To anyone who knows this joint, Chappaqua is dripping with US presidents. It seems that everywhere you look, you see another national leader. I predict presidential libraries will soon outnumber restaurants in this small, cozy hamlet on the banks of the Saw Mill River. History has played strange tricks on this town, and there seems to be no end in sight.

Our favorite son, Liberal Republican Horace Greeley, the famed editor of the New York Tribune (who urged people to follow their manifest destiny and head west–beyond Ossining), ran for the presidency of the United States against the Radical Republican incumbent, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln's victorious general-turned-president.

Despite the Democrats throwing their support for him, Horace Greeley lost the presidency in a landslide in 1872, but lost by only slightly more popular votes than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lost by in 2000.

Greeley had married--get this--Mary Cheney, who then became Mary Cheney Greeley. Mary Cheney Greeley had medical problems and died before her husband’s electoral votes could even be counted. Therefore, we old-timers in Chappaqua still consider Greeley the honorary winner against the hard-drinking and ill-mannered ex-Civil War general.

Soon thereafter, Greeley was defrauded of his investments and lost control of his beloved New York Tribune to Whitelaw Reed, the owner of the New York Herald. Greeley died in Pleasantville saying, "You son of a bitch, you stole my newspaper."

William Jefferson Clinton landed on the shores of the Saw Mill soon after serving 8 years as our 42nd president. Like Horace Greeley, Bill Clinton had supported liberal policies towards the settlers who, by 1992, were reasonably well-settled.

While he was president, Bill called for an end to racial discrimination, reformed welfare, prosecuted a successful war, and in turn, was prosecuted over his veracity in non-job related indiscretions. Ultimately, he was found not-guilty by the Senate. Bill left a sizable budget surplus to the man who lost the popular vote to his vice president, "Get out of Mary Cheney's father's house" Al Gore -- but who won anyway. I hope I'm not confusing you.

Anyway, Bill Clinton, of course, had been married to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who quickly became the first Arkansas woman to win statewide office in New York, by winning her Senate seat. In fact, she was the first woman from New York to win statewide as well. During her first term, Hillary started a dialogue between liberal-leaning downstaters, and the more conservative upstaters, finding the common ground that paved the way for her landslide reelection victory in 2006.

Now, Hillary has declared she's in the presidential race to win. With more working candidates than working voting machines, Hillary will have a tough fight ahead, but many in Greeley's home town think her success, providence. For some time now, our impressive parades have attracted not only stray dogs, but the national media as well.

Winding down King Street, past the Greeley homestead and onto Greeley Avenue, one gets a sense of history in the making. There, ahead of the Cub Scouts and Brownies -- the tubas and the fire trucks -- the veterans and the ambulance corps -- quite possibly marches the first woman president of the United States!

Horace Greeley would have been pleased to know that the souls he sent west not only survived life on the frontier, but prospered. It is fitting that, 128 years later, two of presidential caliber would return from the territories to carry on his presidential dreams. It was manifest in our destiny.

RIND STONE COWBOYS

Wow, was it dark when my alarm went off. We've got to stop fiddling around with this Daylight Savings thing. Even the sun was caught off guard this morning. Another breakfast by flashlight.

Back when my daughter was table height, she refused to eat the crusts of her bread. This was particularly disturbing when it came to my celebrated French toast. What became known as freedom toast, I'd cut into ninths, two cuts vertically and two cuts horizontally, which stacked two high produced eighteen pieces. Since my daughter wouldn't touch the pieces attached to the crusts, only the centermost two pieces were palatable to her.

So, for years I've eaten the outermost sixteen pieces -- which explains why Al Gore and I share the same tux size. Now, however, my daughter is going on fifteen, and still she has not made peace with her bread crusts. Even though I completely de-crust the French toast before cutting it into ninths, she still refuses to eat the perimeter pieces. According to her, the outermost pieces, though crust-free, were once married to the crusts, and are therefore tainted and unfit for consumption.

Where does this aversion to food extremities come from? I've always eaten the whole package, leaving no prisoners. Whether apples, pears, potatoes, or bananas, I eat the whole thing. Waste not, want not, I believe. I will admit, pineapples are tough on the stomach--if not the throat--and Gouda is better without the red waxy part, but it's never killed me. Besides, it adds bulk and leaves me satiated.

I had a roommate once named Chuck who thought that bologna rinds were natural casings-- that is until they showed up as a plastic ball on his stomach X-ray. The X-ray tech thought it was stones. His gastroenterologist thought it was a rubber band ball he had swallowed. The doctor wasn't all that relieved when he learned the truth. Chuck became known around school as the Rind Stone Cowboy.

My daughter, however, would peel her grapes -- if she ate grapes. She doesn't like any fruit, presumably because of its contact with the outside world--the peel. To me, the outsides are the best part. No, with the exception of oranges and coconuts, I don't waste a thing. I was taught not to waste food.

For example, after I finish de-boning a cooked chicken, forensic scientists would have a hard time finding trace DNA on the carcass. Dinosaur fossils have more organic material than my chicken bones. I even drill out the wishbone with my Black and Decker, for its marrow. My wife, a soup maker, has complained about this for over 20 years. The sorry soup bones she gets from me result in broths clearer than water.

I've learned never to say: Honey, isn't this soup a bit thin? And I have a "stock" question for dinner guests: "What flavor would you imagine this soup to be?" It does save on dishes however. We can just dip our tea bags directly in our soup bowls.

I grew up in a family where meals started not with grace, but with a reminder of the starving kids in Tanganyika. In my family, nothing went to waste. I was a human dishwasher, leaving the plates shiny before they even left the table. I did it for the kids in Tanganyika. It was my job to beef up the kids in Tanganyika.

Kids today are different. My daughter has no feeling for the world's hungry, like me. In fact, she told her Global teacher that I'm the reason for the worldwide food shortage.

A LITTLE JAKARTA STREET KID

When you're running for president of the United States as a Muslim-sensitive African-American whose first name rhymes with Iraq, middle name rhymes with its monstrous dictator, and last name rhymes with the world's most wanted terrorist, the best defense has to an offence. The first thing you need to do is get a good PR agency and start working on the negatives.

For instance, how is this Black Muslim Terrorist Dictator thing going to play in the South. Secondly, how are you going to convince people that everything you ever learned about internationalism, you learned before the age of 10. Nothing is impossible to package and in this case, starting with less than nothing is a good start. You need to build a story.

Born in Hawaii and abandoned by his Harvard-educated Kenyan father at the age of 2, Obama moved with his Kansan mother at age 5 to Jakarta, where he briefly attended Muslim schools. By the age of 10, he was back in Hawaii living with his maternal grandparents.

Between the ages of 6 and 10, I was living in Great Neck, Long Island, and when I wasn't peeling the asbestos off the pipes in the basement, I was over at my friend, Jimmy's house patiently building IED's out of millions of emptied cap gun caps.

I certainly never thought about my indigenous culture and the intricacies of worship in the impoverished landscape of a gentile living among the Orthodoxy of Great Neck, Long Island. I was too busy wrapping sewage pipes in dirty magazines. I'm sure they're still there.

Somehow, between kindergarten and the 4th grade, Obama became a statesman. It's a compelling story, especially for those of us who were plinking cars with pea shooters while guiding our bikes through burning leaves.

I do remember one seminal moment when Jimmy told me how babies were made, and I still can't believe it. I dismissed the preposterous notion, assuring Jimmy that God would never do it that way. But I sensed it was just weird enough to be true. God, for sure, does have peculiar ways and babies are bizarre.

However, there was no way God was going to talk my Mom and Dad into anything as nasty as what I was hearing. Anyway, He was too busy consoling them at the time: my younger brother was a baby when he died, and though I thought he looked weird--what with the big head and the little feet--my parents and older sister were clearly upset.

They dropped my sister and me off at our grandparents and to this day I remember pondering the strange way in which God forces us to make babies-- then takes them away: "What the hell was He thinking?"

Obama witnessed the Muslim call to prayer and described it as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset." Abandoning my Christian upbringing, my appreciation for religion trended more towards the smoked whitefish and lox served at Danny Lebberfeld's house every Saturday morning.

Smoked Whitefish on an onion bagel is one of the prettiest smells on Earth at sunrise. But I never learned a thing about getting along with other cultures. Even Danny beat me up regularly--and we both shared a Judeo-Christian Great Neck background!

I was certainly not ready to run the world before the age of 10. Indeed, my 5th grade teacher wasn't sure I was ready for her area of expertise. Angry at being locked in the cloakroom over some small indiscretion, I stapled all my classmates' garments to the wall (a feat I repeated in college). Ms. McDade was not pleased, and told my father so. This was no way for a Principal's son to behave.

But according to Obama, "My experience growing up in Indonesia or having family in small villages in Africa--I think it makes me much more mindful of the importance of issues like personal security or freedom from corruption." Tell me about it. Danny's mother bribed me not to tell mother of my beatings -- with smoked fishes, capers and onions. For that brief moment my teeth broke through the fresh bagel and into the smokey flesh, Danny's throttlings were a distant memory.

This is why Obama will make a great president, and I will make a great voter. He is the sum total of all his experiences, and those experiences were rich -- not in the cream cheese sense--but in the worldly sense. Whether living in the USA, or abroad, Obama saw the world as an outsider and could appreciate its potential. I saw the world as an insider, thinking everything outside Great Neck was Port Washington.

WHAT'S WITH OUR KIDS?

What's with our kids today? Their ghetto talk. Their adult aversion. Their materialism. It's like we're raising little aliens.

Call me old fashioned, but I'm not used to picking up the phone and hearing, "Sup ho."

Even if I was a "ho" (whore) and overlooked the rhetorical question, sup ("what's up?"), I wouldn't want to be greeted by my daughter's boy friends in that way.

I remember one day last summer it was hotter than hell, so I awoke my 14-year old daughter (at 12 noon) and asked her if she wanted to go kayaking. We would paddle up an estuary to where it met a set of rapids split in two by an island. On the Island, we would have a picnic lunch and later swim in the pool formed by the rapids. Nice offer, I thought.

She wouldn't go. I knew she wouldn't walk within 50 feet of me in town, but in the wilderness? No, she refused to go.

Using all my alliterative language skills, I painted a wonderful picture of the destination, even embellishing it with two non-existent waterfalls cascading into whooshing, whirring whirlpools.

It didn't work. I asked her what it would take to get her to go. "Money," she snapped. "How much?" I asked, thinking a five spot would do it. "Thirty," she said.

"Thirty dollars?" I coughed. I had to shine all my father's shoes for 35 cents. Alright, inflation. "Ten bucks," I said.

She came back with 25. I countered with 15. 24 she said, incrementally. I sensed I was fighting for every dollar now. $20 I said. She repeated 24. Damn. Are we all through at 24?

$22, I threw out, desperately.

Alright, $23 she replied, reluctantly. Momentarily, I felt a surge of adrenaline, like I had just won the Triple at Yonkers Raceway. Then it occurred to me that I had just been extorted $23 for the privilege of taking her kayaking.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. Last year my daughter wanted a Gatorade, and my wife refused to give her the sugary drink. Next thing my wife knew, our then 13-year old daughter had called 911. The kid had called 911 for chrissake!

From the upstairs phone my wife overheard, "Like I said, officer, my Mom won't give me any Gatorade. Would you talk to her?"

Ballistic, my wife screamed up the stairs she would not talk with the police and to "hang up the phone immediately, young lady, or you will be grounded for the rest of your natural life."

The police called back to ask my wife if everything was okay. "For now," she told them. "Call back in an hour, though."

Anyway, we did go kayaking, (I had to go to the bank to get my daughter her ill-begotten $23), and afterwards, she wanted to go for ice cream. Thinking this a prime opportunity to teach a lesson, I ordered two triple-scoop ice cream banana barges and suggested she pay for them out of her "earnings."

"Nice try Dad," she replied. "That money, which I hid at home, is going directly into my candy fund."

"$11.43 please!" demanded the adolescent ice cream clerk.

BOOKING ASTRONAUTS

No sooner had I started watching the Ali G interview with Buzz Aldrin (who was first to land on the Moon with Neil Armstrong), than I got a call from Captain Alan Bean, the 4th person to walk on the Moon. Alan wanted to talk, but I didn't want to miss the Ali G. interview, so I lied and told him I was on the toilet and would call him back. More about astronaut Bean later.

In the interview (in which the astronaut is unaware his interviewer is a fake), Ali G calls Buzz Aldrin "Buzz Lightyear," and asks him if he was bothered by the fact that Louis Armstrong stepped onto the moon before him.

After being corrected, Ali G then asks the pioneering moonwalker if he saw any people on the Moon, and while Buzz is trying to explain how there is no life of any kind there, let alone people, Ali G is firing off his next question: "You think people will ever land on the Sun?"

Again, while Buzz is explaining that the Sun is too hot to ever land on, Ali G inquires, "What if they land in winter?" Buzz assured him the Sun was hot in winter too. Apparently even the Sun is experiencing global warming.

Anyway, I had booked astronaut Alan Bean to speak at one of my client's dinners and he had called me back with the background info I'd need to introduce him in Washington DC. Somewhere between his first Piper Cub solo and joining NASA , I couldn't resist asking Moonwalker Bean what it was like strolling on another orb.

"You bounce," he said. Hmm, you bounce, I thought. Okay then. There you have it. Glad I asked!

"You bounced!" I repeated. "Anything special about it?," I asked, with special emphasis on "special."

"It was fun bouncing around," he clarified. Now I'm thinking this is going to be the shortest 40-minute speech in history. I pressed on:

"Yes, but there you are, Captain Bean," I said, "on another world, looking back at all of human history, and for all intents and purposes, you are all alone, except for two others in a similar predicament to your own --and one of those is up in a little tin can orbiting above you; all three of you frail, lonely visitors, whose whole experience is back on that distant blue marble floating off in a vacuum of eternal darkness." I gulped for air, and pleaded, " What--must--have--that--been--like?"

There was a significant pause, and Astronaut Bean said, "It was like bouncing."

I wish there was more to say, but that was it. I guess that's why NASA sent him and not me. I would have peed in my spacesuit. So imagine my surprise when I read the Associated Press February 6 headline:

ASTRONAUT CHARGED WITH KIDNAP AND ATTEMPTED MURDER
Nowak raced from Houston to Orlando wearing diapers in the car so she wouldn't have to stop to go to the bathroom, authorities said. Astronauts wear diapers during launch and re-entry.

Holy smokes, that sounds like something I would do. You mean, I could do NASA?

Turns out the 43-year old robotics specialist, Lisa Marie Nowak, who flew on the July space shuttle Discovery mission, was charged with attempting to kidnap a romantic rival, one Ms. Shipman, in a love triangle with another astronaut. Nowak, a married mother of three, stood in a jail uniform, wearing a tracking device, as her charges were read: attempted kidnapping, attempted vehicle burglary with battery, destruction of evidence and battery. The attempted murder charge was added later as more evidence came to light.

According to police, Nowak had driven 900 miles in diapers in order to meet her love rival's plane without having to stop to pee. Disguised in a blonde wig and trench coat, Nowak met Ms. Shipman's plane, then boarded the same airport shuttle bus Ms. Shipman took and followed her to her car.

Ms. Shipman had stolen the affections of Navy Cmdr. William Oefelein, the pilot of the space shuttle Discovery last December. Though Ms. Nowak and Mr. Oefelien had shared earthly pleasures, the relationship had never gotten off the ground.

Now, armed with a BB gun and pepper spray, Ms. Nowak rapped on the car window, but Ms. Shipman refused to roll it down more than a few inches. Nowak then peppered Shipman through the opening.

The responding officer found a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, rubber tubing, $600 and garbage bags inside Ms. Nowak's bag. NASA said that Nowak's status with the astronaut corps remained unchanged.

"It is unlikely Ms. Shipman will ever be in space to distract astronaut Nowak," a NASA spokesperson later confirmed.

THE END OF TIME

Just in case you're a little too happy, Dr. Martin Rees has just posted his doomsday prediction on Long Bet, the web-based, "arena for competitive, accountable predictions," funded by Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos. The Cambridge cosmologist announced that humankind has a 50/50 chance of being extinct by 2100, (that's 2100 minus 7, borrow from the one, let's see, ten minus 7 -- that's in 93 years!). There are two questions I'd like answered.

First is, why do professional athletes not wear watches when performing their trade? With the exception of scuba divers, whose last breath depends on it, you never see sports figures wearing watches on the field. Off the field, they flash their Rolexes and Piagets for fat endorsements, but not while they're playing.

You won't see football players wearing watches. I remember Joe Namath wore a Timex after the game, but not during. You watch this Sunday--those big fat men will not know what time it is.

Bend It Like Beckham doesn't wear one, unless he's shooting an ad. A-Rod doesn't wear a watch. If I made $10,000 a minute, I'd wear a watch just to see how rich I was getting. The Shaq? No. Maria Sharapova looks great in a watch, but while on Center Court, her wrist sports only a sweat band. Maybe there's a watch under the sweat band.

You say, Rick, golfers wear watches. Golfers are not athletes. To be an athlete, you must be engaged in a sport. Golf is a game, like Trivial Pursuit. Pushing a quail egg around a lawn doth not an athlete make. Just because it utilizes 479 billion metric tons of insecticide and half the world's water supply, that doesn't make it a sport.

So, where was I? Oh, right. You say that marathoners wear watches. Yes they do. Thank you. May I remind you this is my story?

Anyway, the second question I'd like to have answered before humanity goes quietly into the night is: Are there any jobs left that don't require a computer? If you consider the modern cash register to be a computer, you'd be hard pressed to come up with any job that requires no computer. There are just two jobs that require no modern computers. Air traffic controller and president of the United States.

Air traffic controllers use computers recycled from old barroom Pong Games. The little white blips serve ATC personnel just fine. They're on the ground!

Presidents don't use computers either. Their speeches are written for them. Their intelligence is done by others. They live in a cocoon of misinformation provided by others. It is better they don't have Google. Take George Bush Senior, for example. Remember when he visited a supermarket and was astonished that groceries could be scanned? Those new fangled bar codes, which had been around for twenty years, had not penetrated the bubble of the Bush dynasty. Servants did their shopping.

But, back to the beginning, which is really the end. We need to take our computers and watches and look at the time we have remaining. Whether Bezos like Jeff, or bozos like George, we have no time to spare if we are to survive ourselves. 50/50 is good odds if you're flipping over who gets the cheesecake. Lousy if you're talking about survival of your species. I see from my watch, my time is up.

ENABLING THE DISABLED/ THE REBUTTAL

I've always complained about the surplus of disability spaces in parking lots. All the prime (and empty) parking spots are designated "disability." There they sit, unoccupied, as I drive off into the hinterlands in search of a oil-stained patch on which to store my car. Hiking back, I curse the stenciled blue wheelchairs that spoil the otherwise perfectly good parking spots.

Some lots have as many spaces for the wheel people as for bipeds. Except for the time I broke my foot and personally ticketed each illegally-parked car myself (after smacking their doors with my crutches), I have no patience being displaced by disabled no-shows. Even with the war in Iraq, there are not enough disabled people to fill all the empty disabled spaces that litter our parking lots.

And not to digress, but how 'bout those nice, wide, disability stalls where you could spread out your breakfast and read the paper while doing your business. How often have you sat on a wet, cramped seat, precariously balancing your coffee on the paper dispenser, knowing the spacious throne to your left lay vacant? Am I wrong?

And where are those stalls when you need them? Again, when I would hobble into the restroom on my crutches, the disabled stall would always be occupied. Peering under the stall door, holding your pee-pee for dear life, you'd see no crutches. The occupant, also peering under the stall door, could see your crutches and would be too embarrassed to to admit he'd selfishly usurped your stall. I once out-waited the jerk for a half-hour, just so I could plant my crutch in his crotch. But that was then.

Now, in another disability disgrace, a blind woman in Albany NY has raised the bar. She navigates around town using a seeing-eye horse. Great. Just one more inconvenience for me.

Not a full-size horse, mind you, but a miniature horse just 29 inches at the withers-- tipping the scales at just over 120 lbs. The horse replaced the blind lady's seeing-eye Labrador, after the dog was run over by the bus discharging him.

The seeing-eye horse snuggles, fetches, and leaves 6-pound dumps on public transportation, shag carpets, and the freshly-mopped classroom floors where the pony's blind master teaches special education.

While the blind woman misses her dog, her horse's abilities as a herd animal, help in predicting how an object is moving in relation to herself. Being a seeing-eye animal, the horse is forced to forego blinders, which in turn forces her to process too much information for a pasturized grazing animal. This can lead to skittishness, and sadly, stampedes.

And unfortunately, as a prey animal, the horse will take off at the slightest provocation, like dogs, cats, and daffodils --dragging the poor woman behind her. Once, she was dragged clear home to Schenectady. Thank God she couldn't see how close she came to the cars on the New York State Thruway.

But all this is a small price to pay for the love and companionship of the little pony, or so we are told.

To accommodate the horse, the city's fleet of 150 buses has been ordered to retrofit to larger, horse enabled disability ramps, and to start carrying bales of hay.

The bus company has until Jan. '08 to install salt licks. Public transportation riders are advised to wear hip boots.

SCOOPER POOPERS

It is getting truly embarrassing how often PNL, with its limited full-time staff (one --not counting its brain-dead Science Scribe) and it's limited resources (zero), out-scoops the New York Times, with its vast resources. In today's OP-ED section, they run a story about the silly new Lexus that parks itself--a story that PNL did last year (Park Me Elmo/ Dec. 1, 2006). I am sick and tired of reading my stories months later in the Times.

You might say, "Rick, in all fairness, more than one publication can do a story about self-parking cars." To that I respond, "Oh, shut up!"

PNL, as you know, is more reasonably priced than the Times, and home delivery is included. You won't find your PNLs all soggy at the bottom of your driveway! Delivered fresh almost daily, PNL gives you all the news that's fit to -- whatever -- without all that "reality" spin. But I digress. What was I talking about?

Oh yes. In the self-parking car article, the plagiarizer (whom I shall not name out of sheer magnanimity) says he employs the "bread-and-matzoh" method of parallel parking. If you can slide a bread slice between the bumpers of the fore and aft cars, that's one thing, he claims. But if you "break" the matzoh, you're good!

Gee, that's so funny I forgot to laugh. PNN had a much higher standard. In PNN parking, waxed dental floss is the true litmus test of determining whether you've squeezed into the smallest space possible. Last time I checked, dental floss is considerably thinner than even the thinnest matzoh. Moreover, that the floss needs to be waxed, tells you that the car- spacing was less than the diameter of the dental floss.

When waxed dental floss gets stuck between bumpers, only then can you call yourself a true parallel parker. I submit to you that the "dental standard" is the benchmark for a quality park job; not matzoh.

In pandering to the Jews of New York, I'm sure the matzo-metric was calculated to grab eyeballs and divert attention away from the fact that the story had already been covered by PNL. And though the "crunch" of the crumbling matzoh was, I'm sure, designed to add an aspect of auditory appeal, with no-one to hold the matzoh in place, it becomes a hypothetical mind game. The concept requires too many additional players and is, therefore, not "clean." The dental floss method requires only the driver.

Had the self-parking car been a Mazda and not a Lexus, the matzoh measure would have been more appropriate, if not more funny.

Enough. I have consulted my legal dept, and I assured me that the PNN piece pre-dates today's Times article by over 55 days. And where's the public outcry? While we haven't the resources to take on an organization as bloated as the Times, we are issuing the following warning:

"Stay off PNL's stories, or risk Rick canceling his home delivery."

VERY MOVING VIOLATIONS

AOL ran a stupid article on how to beat traffic tickets. There was all the usual stuff, like obsequiousness, groveling, and pleading ignorance. Every cop is aware of these ploys and will have you spread-eagled and batoned before you can say the word "Vaseline."

I thought I'd make my own lists of "do's" and "don'ts" of what to do when stopped for traffic violations.

DO's to say as you roll down your window.

1. Good morning/afternoon/evening officer. Have you lost weight recently?
2. Hey, nice haircut. Who do you use?
3. Would you like to see my breasts? (best if you're female).
4. I think I just dropped a hundred dollar bill. Could you help me find it?
5. My wife saw you last night at the Laptop Lounge. Want your tip money back?
6. What a shiny gun. Mind if I remove my teeth and gum the barrel? (male cops only)
7. $200 Dunkin Gift Card interest you?
8. May I say you're the best looking arresting officer I've had the honor to meet.
9. My son fighting in Falluja looked just like you-- until we got the "knock at the door."
10. Yes officer. I am fast. Want your gun back?

DON'TS to say as you roll down your window

1. Care for a toke?
2. I was blinded by your flashing lights.
3. Go easy on the donuts, badge-boy.
4. I like your car. It reminds me of a toy I had as a kid.
5. Yes officer. My radar detector ID'd you as a wimp.
6. $20 Dunkin Gift Card interest you?
7. Is your mind made up, or can we work on it?
8. Speed is relative, Officer Einstein.
9. I'd offer you a drink, but I'm down to my last three fingers.
10. My car won't go 100. It wouldn't even pass inspection.

Personally, I've had an abysmal record trying to beat tickets. I once got a ticket on the Southern State for going 551/2 mph in a 55. I approached the officer's "pace" car (which was going exactly 55 with a string of cars trailing behind him) going 1/2 mph faster than he was. Silly me thought it impossible to get ticketed for breaking the speed limit by a half mile an hour. It had taken me 20-minutes to patiently inch past the patrolman. Next thing I knew, I was pulled over and handed a $90 ticket. I said, "You're giving me a ticket for 1/2 mph?" He said no. He was giving me a ticket for being a smart ass. I thanked him for removing my handcuffs, and assured him he'd never see me in his county again.

Another time, while driving through South Carolina, a fat Redneck officer stopped me for driving 31 in a 25. After pleading ignorance to any posted speed, the cop pointed to a rusted, bullet-ridden sign 50 yards off the side of the road covered in Spanish moss. I informed him that the good Yankee cops up North would never ticket for so small a trifle, hoping he would remember who won the war. Officer Beauford then upped the ticket to 40 in a 25 and splayed me over the back of my rental car. Northerners should never phrase their arguments in Civil War terms while whistling through Dixie.

The bottom line is, treat Smokies like their human. Bribe unto them, as you would like to be bribed yourself.

IS YOUR DOG GAY?

The stupid radio station my daughter listens to ran a contest called "How to tell your dog is gay."

Some of the phoned-in entries were:

1. If his wardrobe includes pastel kerchiefs.
2. If, instead of barking, he bitches at the mailman.
3. If he thinks "Milk-Bone" is a command.
4. If he sits for a liver snap, but lies down for a Cosmo.
5. If he licks his olives while sniffing his martini glass.

Not terribly funny, but there they are. As a rule, I don't do gay jokes -- not because they stereotype individuals -- but because there are apparently no straight men left. To listen to women, all men are gay. I read today that 51% of women live without a spouse, so I guess this assessment shouldn't be surprising. But what about the other 49%?

Women have told me that all those men you see on TV: football players, World Federation wrestlers, clergymen, construction guys, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Delay, David Letterman, Anderson Cooper, and of course, George Bush, are all gay. Actors are all gay. Businessmen are all gay. Lawyers and doctors? Gay. Crime investigators. Gay. Farmers? Just ask the sheep.

In fact, when pressed, women say virtually all males in the animal kingdom are gay.

How could I have missed this? I never even knew my roommate in college was gay. So I took a crash course in Gay Spotting offered by the Junior League, and I think I'm getting the knack of it now. They suggested I start small, so I started with my pets.

For instance, I have a parrot who not only perches, he gums perches. I don't know if he's gay, but his lime-green plumage, his long black nails, and his Freudian red beak would look smart leading any Gay Pride Parade.

My daughter had a goldfish named Bulgie. For years I thought the bulges were his eyes. How could I have known he swam upside down? A watched fish never fornicates, so it's hard to know for sure. I tried to investigate this, but grew bored after several months. I did notice Bulgy getting frisky with the macho deep sea diver who would rise to the top of the tank, pass wind, and return to his pink gravel yard.

In retrospect, I'm thinking Bulgie wore tight jeans in another life.

My daughter rents a horse named Blondie. Foolish me thought he was named after the dessert. His manhood could be mistaken for a fifth leg. The muscular stallion looks great in stirrups and wears more leather than a saddle. Upon reflection, if he's not gay, he ought to be.

Both my poodles, Sammy and Petey, hump in public, though I tell my wife that this means nothing. Just because they hump each other doesn't make them lovers. They hug trees too, and that doesn't make them environmentalists.

On Halloween, Sammy will tolerate his diamonique tiara longer than Petey, but any notion that bejeweled dogs in crowns are gay is, of course, homophobic. But maybe I have to rethink this.

Finally, there was our rabbit, Melville. He was named Melville because of his novel Moby Dick. As a bunny, Melville would be expected to have an elevated libido, however his promiscuousness was out of the box. Looking back, the creative things he did to his chicken wire still make me blush years after we cut him loose and sold him back to the pet store.

If I am the only straight male out there, so be it. Stereotypical of the straight males of yore, I'm just waiting for the next shoe to drop.

NAMING NAMES

I have a car named "Landy," a car named "Bluey," and a car named "Sporty." The Land Rover, the Hyundai, and the Miata, respectively, were named instantly, as were my dogs, Sammy and Petey, my daughter, Sara, and my wife, Hon. There was no hysteria over choosing special, fancy names: no pretentious, precious solipsisms, no books of a million names to anoint your child. Indeed, deeds and misdeeds are all I believe distinguishes oneself -- not labels.

People give their kids all kinds of ridiculous names now. Children come with names like "Appomattox" or "Chutney." One pre-school class in town had the following first names: Cierra, Makynzi, Quinlynn, Creighton, Ruger, Flower, Dacoda, Irelynd, Oleo, Brooklynn, Blaze, Kryslyn, Laken, Cinsere, Solace, Destiny, McKaty, Quillon, Griffen, Bane, Tiara Rose, and Dusk (he has a sister named Dawn).

Rounding out the class, there are the Breeze twins. The two little breezes are known collectively and individually as "Breeze." Don't you want to just smack that parent?

Imagine the teacher who has to remember these ridiculous names, let alone spell them? And the little brats get indignant when you mispronounce their names. I'm sorry but any parent who names his kid "Oleo" needs to go to jail.

I have a terrible problem with forgetting names. If your name is Bob, I have at least a fighting change of remembering your moniker. "Bob" I can remember forwards and backwards. But call yourself Lattifa, and I'll be calling you "Hey You," for the rest of your life. I have a friend named Bud, which is a little esoteric, but I can remember it because he is my buddy. His wife, Pat, I can remember because I always -- bad example.

When my kid was born, the doctor said, "It's a Girl!" and I thought that a fine name. But Hon felt otherwise. She wanted her to be a Rachel, or a Rebecca -- but I was sure that was too many different letters, so we settled on Sara. Sara is easy to remember, and when I call for her in the school nurse's office, eight girls raise their hands to go home. Any girl whose name I can't remember I call Sara, knowing I have a 1-in-4 chance of being right. No, I believe names should be simple, common and if at all possible, descriptive.

Having said this, I do believe in naming everything. While some would have you believe only animals need naming, at my house the trees, the bushes -- even the driveway has a name (Blacky). Indoors, my toaster (Toasty), my spatula (Spatch) and my TV (Aaron) all respond to their names (or the remote) and help to give my house (Boxy) a homey feeling. I can sit writing a letter by the fireplace (Loggy), go out the front door (Dorey) and drop it in the mailbox (Letterman).

I have a special hammer named Wrenchie, so-named because I wrenched my back once using it. It gets confusing sometimes when asking for it, but Wrenchie has bent over many a nail, and when it isn't hanging from my special tool belt (Tooley Galooley), it is nicely stored in the basement (Count Basey).

Hon is even worse than I am, having named each of her ten figures. I would never do anything as compulsive as that. I'm quite content group-naming my digits Lefty and Righty, and letting them fight it out as to whose turn it is for a given task.

Names are a source of great concern these days, with people getting hung up over who called whom Macaca, or Moktada. Hakuna Matata, meaning "no worries for the rest of your lives," is definitely NOT their "problem-free philosophy." Whether you're Senator Allen or a Shia Henchman, you must be careful what you call people simply named Mark Stark or Saddam Hussein. Mark Stark rhymes. Yell "Hussein" in Iraq, and half the crowd will answer, "Yes?" I like that simplicity.

Had Joseph and Mary known what people would scream every time they hit their Lefty with a Wrenchie, they'd have never named their son Jesus H. Christ! For me, names worth remembering are names that are memorable. That's why I'm voting for the Democrat, Iraq Hussein Osama, in '08.

CRITICALLY UPLIFTING

Why am I harangued so? Women readers keep asking me to comment on the new stick-on bras that are the rage today. Well, if you hadn't noticed, PNL is striving to be a classy, lifestyle column and not just another titillating tabloid. Besides, I am trying to be a cynical critic, and silly sophomoric subjects will erode my negative credibility.

Having said this, I don't see what all the furor is all about. "Chicken cutlets," as the new strapless gel bras are referred to on the street, are used to make perpendicular what would ordinarily point to your shoes. New fashions require support systems that work "behind the scenes," if you will.

This is nothing new. Architects have striven to hide all evidence of load-bearing supports for centuries. Whether buildings, bridges, or bras, the prizes have always gone to those who can seemingly defy gravity with grace. Conversely, structural failure has been on people's minds every since Osama bin Laden watched Janet Jackson on Superbowl XXXVIII and emailed the clip to George Bush.

Women assume men want floaters. I don't know why. I've never liked being pointed to -- whether by my teachers in school -- or by colleagues in the work force. Breasts outnumber men two to one, and there are as many mammaries out there as there are men and women combined. I am not overly tall. At five foot eleven, the last thing I want is to have them all pointing at my nose.

I grew up on John Gunther travel documentaries and remember as a child being quite turned on by the pancakes dancing around the fire. I developed a taste for tribal aesthetics before I could even read. Early on I learned that that which does not point to the center of the Earth, is probably not real. This sensitivity not only helped me through anthropology, but physics and middle age as well.

The history of the bra is a history of pain, starting with whalebone corsets that stiffened the entire female form, right through to underwire bras that mimicked the medieval flying buttresses of Notre Dame. Though less comfortable than cheese cutters, these push up devices strove to make mountains out of molehills. In every case, Mother Nature, herself a bra-burner, punished those who would mock the Earth's gentle but inexorable tug.

To listen to the advertising, the size-enhancing, self-adhesive, backless, strapless, gel bras with cleavage-control are just the thing for slipping bust lines. The stick-on silicone supporters are supposedly perfect for the office, the prom, or the second wedding -- and are especially effective for quick fixes -- like broken straps or leaky sinks.

Female readers tell me that cutlets are not for the "full-figured" woman, however, and as such, there should be warning labels: "Do not attempt to use these devices if you are equal to or greater than a 44-D."

Common sense would dictate that the Brooklyn Bridge could not go "strapless" for long. However, women are not always the best judge of their own size, and wishful thinking causes many potential "cutlet" customers to chicken out.

Cutlets are also not for those with nipple rings -- for reasons that should be obvious. As a rule of thumb, maintaining the suction is critical to maintaining the deception: break the seal, and it's a whole new deal.

Removing the devices has been problematic in some instances, and there is one documented case of a Best Supporting Actress who lost a nipple to her gel bra. Anyone who tells you to "pull it off swiftly like a bandaid," should be ignored.

FREQUENT FLYER FLATULENCE

I wasn't going to cover the story about the flatulent woman who lit matches on an American Airlines flight to cover her foul smells (forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing), but readers have been insisting I do. It seemed too sophomoric for PNL however, there are constitutional issues at play here, so I am making a one-time exception.

That an in-flight passenger would be deplaned prematurely for attempting to remedy an ill wind, most would agree, infringes on self-incrimination protections. After all, one cannot pop a mint after one's nether region betrays one. It does no good to close the barn doors after ole Nelly is on the loose. And mint suppositories have not, to my knowledge, been invented.

There are cover-up sprays, but airlines have banned aerosols. The only proven way to eliminate cheek gas is to incinerate it. We can't put the genie back in the bottle, but we can scald the rude intruder. For those wanting to land with the plane, there are other methods.

A frequent-flyer friend of mine tells me he unscrews and aims the overhead fan nozzle when he needs to dissipate his trouser burps. While the odor is not vented outside the plane, it does get pushed across the aisle, where he can then look in dismay at its new owner.

A couple of words of caution, however. This method of vectoring fouled air works only if you're in an aisle seat. And on long, cross-country flights, the "Vector-and-Dismay" method gets old. At this point, either a seat reassignment, or an antacid is recommended.

Once, while experiencing turbulence on flight to San Diego, I unknowingly passed such offensive gas, all 319 oxygen masks but mine dropped down. "Hey, where's my mask?" I called out, playing the call button like clarinet.

Foolish me thought it was an emergency depressurization event! Your own never smell so bad. Besides, who knew they could selectively drop the breathing apparatus? Did the pilots program each of the 319 face masks to drop individually -- or simply deactivate mine, I wondered. They obviously have too much time on their hands.

Anyway, after permanently disabling my call button, my stewardess assured me my oxygen mask would have deployed properly -- had it been authorized. It took the flight attendants from Dallas to Bakersfield to stuff all 319 face masks back into their 319 little overhead cubbies.

Aside from being rammed a few times by the food cart, I think I was forgiven. But this got me to thinking, why not use the oxygen masks routinely to counter smelly accidents and food? Airlines could even charge a few bucks for them, as they do for head sets.

I have an aging dog who, on long car trips, fills the cabin with bad air. Even in winter, my family is forced to ride with the windows half-open. In stop and go traffic, we take turns doing Chinese fire drills in order to breathe.

Fouling the air is embarrassing, even for a dog. After passing wind, our old pooch will attempt to hide, which in a car (or an elevator) is hard to do. He tries to dig a hole in the fine Corinthian leather that was my back seat, presumably to den. Our other dog, though a butt sniffer, is intolerant of butt air, so he rides in the trunk. On planes, both go third class: cargo.

Richard Reid, the would-be Shoe-Bomber, ruined it for all in-flight, flatulent match-strikers. Airline passengers associate the smell of burnt matches with real bombs and will panic at the sight of a matchbook. Long gone are the good old days, when fliers could just light up and blow smoke rings out both ends.

Someday plane seats will be designed with negative pressure pores that suck away that embarrassing fruit of the looms. Until that time, flatulent flyers could simply be Glad-bagged. While there are government rules against photographing deplaned body bags, there are no restrictions on ones containing live bodies. Best of all, the large 750-liter bags come in twist-tie or zip-lock versions.

Bagging offensive air passengers would not only give them a dose of their own medicine, it would eliminate the need for unscheduled stops.

MAKING THE GRADE

It all started with a note from our daughter's high school guidance counselor. "Your daughter received a C-minus on an English Lit paper," she wrote, "and we need to see you at your earliest convenience."

You need to see us over a C-minus? What the hell is so ominous about that? I'll admit, it's not the greatest grade in the world, but a school conference?...at your earliest convenience? It's not like she pilfered the vice-principal's petty cash drawer during detention, as I was once accused.

So anyway, with great anticipation my wife and I go meet with the guidance counselor. When she entered the room, her stricken look indicated she had grim news.

"I'm sorry we have to meet under such sorry circumstances," Dr. Schlanger said solemnly. Your daughter's English Lit teacher wrote me a shocking note and I felt the need to communicate it to you as quickly as possible."

"Of course, of course," we said in unison. "What? What?"

"Your daughter didn't write this paper, did she?" the counselor said, shoving the assignment towards me.

After a quick glance, shameful shame came over me. Years of guilt welled forth and, coupled with my fear of authority, it all became more than I could bear. Falling on my sword, I spilled:

"Oh, Dr. Schlanger," I said, trying not to smirk while enunciating her evocative name, "I am soooooo sorry. Look at me. Look how sorry I look." I curled my lips for emphasis, and in my best English, continued:

"It was a dark and stormy night, and my daughter couldn't seem to complete her assignment. I begged her to focus on the task at hand, but alas, she fiddled with her lip gloss and rearranged the items on her desk a dozen times -- anything but buckling down and doing her best work."

At this point I looked up to make sure Dr. Schlanger was sufficiently empathetic. Satisfied, I continued:

"Anyway, I was sooo tired, and I knew I couldn't stay awake much longer, so I sat down at my daughter's computer and tried to coax the words from her lips. But still she fiddled -- this time with her iPod accessories -- and then she changed the subject altogether -- to her ridiculously long Christmas list."

Again, I locked onto Dr. Schlanger's eyes to see if I was having any impact. Seemingly on a roll, I ramped up my confession.

"Soon, I found my fingers typing words I was hearing, but -- I'm sooo sorry -- this has never happened before-- the words I was hearing, quite possibly, may not have been hers. I fear I may have written that paper -- with the best of intentions, of course -- only to restore peace, and to ensure that my ever-so-tired child receive enough sleep to achieve a better tomorrow."

When I came out of my trancelike speech, both Ms. Schlanger and my wife were slack-jawed. Silence filled the room. Was it that bad? Could I go to jail for this? Had I overdone it a bit? Or, perhaps, not gone far enough? Must I start to cry?

I began to begin again, when Ms. Schlanger cut me off. "Thank you, Mr. Reynolds, for your honesty. But I haven't called you here today to talk about your daughter."

Well thank God for that, I thought, giving my wife the thumbs up sign under the table.

"Your daughter's doing great," Dr. Schlanger said. "In fact, she got an A-plus on the last paper she wrote in class."

"Now we're talking," I said. I winked at my wife.

"What I'm concerned about," Dr. Schlanger continued, "is that a large, 50-something man would get a C-minus on a freshman-level English Lit paper."

X-MAS: NAUGHTY OR NICE?

Every year as a child -- precisely twelve days before Christmas -- I'd start thinking seriously about getting nice. My Christmas list was so long, and my sister so well-behaved, that competing with her in the "niceness" department for Santa's limited Christmas funds was no small task.

Two weeks of goodness would have been too long for me, and one week seemed opportunistic. Twelve days, as in "The Twelve Days of Christmas," felt right.

There were friends of mine who didn't care about being nice. Danny would go around the neighborhood lifting the front ends of plastic reindeer over the rear ends of their herd mates, leaving yard displays looking like porn palaces.

Jimmy would go house-to-house unscrewing one light bulb from homes outlined with lights, leaving the sorry owner to figure out which malfunctioning bulb --out of millions -- made his house go dark.

Aside from putting a few lawn sheep up in trees, I never went to the naughty side at Christmas time. Twelve days of goodness was not too much to bear for toys needed to get me through the next twelve months.

So I was surprised to hear that "Pornaments" are such a hot-selling item this holiday season. Don't these people know they're being watched?

Pornaments, for you prudes out there, are just that. There's "Mr. North Pole," pointing north, just as you would expect. There's "Tormented Teddy," terribly tied in X-mas lights. There's "Horny the Snowman" with a nasty-looking carrot. And poor Santa, strapped spread-eagle to a Christmas wreath. Not nice stuff.

Anyway, "Pornaments" is the fastest growing X-mas category after Victoria's Secret. No longer nativity scenes and candy canes, the high holy holidays are taking on a freaky frolicking friskiness not seen in Christmases past. God knows I'm a non-Believer, but these people need to get to church.

Even as a practical matter, it seemed foolish to me to blow it all in the 12-day X-Mas countdown. All those Brussels spouts you swallowed whole, all those dirty magazines you didn't steal, all those "please and thank you's," would all be for naught. How hard is it not to be naughty for twelve lousy days?

Jesus, what is with these people?

Naughtiness is definitely a part of all morality plays, and the Christmas story is no exception. Niceness owes itself to its unselfish counterpart, naughtiness. Were it not for naughty children sacrificing their presents, there'd be no presents for the nice children. So badness has it points.

I don't know if it was Abu Ghraib that changed things, but I am drawn to the Santa Torture Wheel. There's something about seeing Santa in his skivvies putting the "X" back in X-mas that cracks me up. It's the one thing Donald Rumsfeld and I have in common. Does this make me a bad person? I don't want to do anything that would jeopardize my wish list.

PNL PRESENTS...

It is better to give than to receive -- that is, if you're one of the good people. I don't like either much but I'll admit, we don't always have an easy time showing our love to those dearest to our hearts.

The flip side of the commercialism taking over the holidays, is that we can express our appreciation for those special people in our lives through our gift giving. Our children, our parents, our friends, and our mail carriers are all vital to our happiness and should be remembered at this time of year.

But what do we get them? It's always such a hassle. There are only so may fruitcakes, slippers, tea strainers, and cappuccino makers a person can take. Garages are already spilling over with last year's presents. And making presents for those on our present list is way too time-consuming. Just because we love them, doesn't mean they're worth our time.

My wife is very close with our dear neighbor, a nurse named Jeanie. She had already gotten her a yoga CD for Christmas, but wanted to give her something really special. She told me she was thinking of getting Jeanie a hot water bottle as well.

A hot water bottle? Christ, is that the sexiest present you could think of, honey? I asked.

"Well, I don't ordinarily buy neighbors sexy presents," she explained. Besides, she said, Jeanie had always liked our daughter's hot water bottle, so she thought she'd get her one too.

Sweat Pea, I said. Think about it. You're going to give our dear neighbor, Jeanie, a hot water bottle for Christmas? Why don't you just give her a rectal thermometer with a nice red bow and be done with it?

I know it's the thought that counts, Snookums, but what the hell are you thinking? I said in my nicest, most soothing voice.

Look, some things just don't make good Christmas presents, I calmly told my wife. Sure we all need toilet paper, I reasoned, but you would never give it as a present, would you? While she was pondering this, I, myself, starting thinking it not such a bad an idea -- after all, they do come individually gift-wrapped.

When I snapped to, I suggested that things reminding one of doody, warts, phlegm -- or in this case, nausea -- rarely make good presents. For example, Kleenex? Terrible present. Preparation H? Denture adhesive? Crescent-shaped bedpans? All terrible presents.

Other presents never to give include: Syringes. Enemas. Urine collection bottles. And Diamonique rings from Home Shopping Network. Give these things, and next year's present list will shrink to zero.

Not buying my argument, my wife said hot water bottles were not just for upset stomachs. Neighbor Jeanie could warm her feet against it on a cold winter's night, and besides, hot water bottles are nice to sleep with after a night of yoga exercises.

God knows I like something warm in my bed, but not something that smells like warm rubber. There are people who sleep with plastic, life-sized blow-up dolls but like yoga, I think that's a stretch. I can only speak for myself, but I'm pretty sure these people like to buy their own.

Once, as a boy, a warm pleasurable feeling came over me in my sleep. I dreamt I was scoring with Eva Gabor. When I awoke, not only was I without Eva Gabor, it turned out my hot water bottle had opened in my sleep and I had third-degree burns on my green acher.

To this day, hot water bottles, ginger ale and "dry" toast remind me of the stomach flu. I begged my wife to reconsider her present choice.

The mail and newspaper delivery people are always kind enough to leave me a Christmas card with a postage-paid, self-addressed envelope. In past years I have mailed them back with a cookie enclosed -- requiring $0.65 postage due. This way I'd get the pleasure of giving, plus I'd get the cookie back.

This year, I'm thinking of giving my daughter's hot water bottle to the mailman. Not knowing it's ours, my wife will be thrilled getting the bottle without having to pay the postage due. Most importantly, my good neighbor will have warm feet, and I will, once again, feel the pleasure of knowing that "the gift is in the giving."

A SKEPTIC'S CHRISTMAS

This is that warm, fuzzy time of year that I get all choked up and sentimental, even reverent. I know many of you think I am a raging atheist but, believe it or not, I actually enjoy the spiritual aspects of Christmas. There have even been rare but confirmed sightings of me in church around the holidays. The choral music, the cookies, the lights, the cookies, the smell of pine... mixed with cookies -- it's a wonderful time.

I don't know if you know this but once, after too much eggnog, Jesus appeared before me on Christmas eve and questioned my lack of Belief. "Here I sit before you," the Lord said, "talking with you, joking with you -- and still you doubt the existence of the Holy Spirit. What is it with you skeptics?"

After cautioning him to go easy on the eggnog, I told Jesus his points were only valid if I actually existed. If he could prove I existed, that would be sufficient. He looked at me, shook his head, and got up to leave. I said, look, I'll settle for any sign: how about a jar of herring and cream sauce under the tree? That way, at least, I'd get a jar of herring with the nice crunchy onions out of the deal.

Christmas morning came and there was no jar of herring under the tree. There was one in my stocking -- but technically, that shouldn't count. Skeptics need to get things precise.

That being said, at times, we must all suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy the fruits of irony. This is the time of year I let go and let Jesus have his day. After all, it is his Birthday. Jesus and I joke about each other's resurrection --I tell him he has resurrectile dysfunction -- and he tells me I'll rot in Hell -- you know, playful guy stuff. Sometimes our feelings get hurt, but hey, it's all in good fun.

Anyway, this is the time of year I take the family out Christmas tree shopping. I always manage to get a tree that is seven feet taller than our ceilings, forcing me to discard the top half. Buying a proper-sized tree would cut its price in half, but by cutting the tree in half, I don't have to admit to low ceilings. Missing its taper, the tree ends up looking like a spiral staircase.

My wife likes the free-range, natural trees with no branches, and my daughter likes the farmed bushy ones that grew up on Miracle Grow. Every year we fight over which kind of tree to get and, being the peacemaker in the family, I remind my daughter that Christmas is not about the children.

According to my wife, the emaciated trees that grow naturally under the forest canopy are perfect for hanging Christmas balls. They are reminiscent of the old-fashioned, 19th-century feather trees that were made from bird feathers and dyed green. If you don't mind Christmas trees made from died animal parts, feather trees festooned with Christmas balls are lovely as well.

Buddy Hackett once told Al Franken a related story that I'll never forget. It seems a man went to his doctor worried about a green spot that had suddenly appeared on his forehead. After close inspection the concerned doctor told his patient he was so sorry, but in 14 days a penis would grow out from where the spot had been. The man freaked. How would he cope Christmas morning seeing a penis on his forehead while shaving? It won't be so bad, the doctor assured him. The balls will hang down and cover your eyes.

I just love Christmas stories! Anyway, the balls hang down from our sorry Christmas boughs, and not only do the trees come alive -- but Jesus, and Buddha, and Buddy, and Al-Franken all come alive as well. Life is funny, and isn't that the greatest gift of all?

GETTING FLEECED

Everywhere you go today, people are knitting. Not since voodoo and tattoos have the needle arts been so mainstream. No longer the realm of grannies, men, women, children -- even domesticated chimpanzees have taken up knitting in this most unlikely of fads.

I think it's just great. Is it me, or does knitting seem a tad repetitive? On more than one occasion, I've watched my wife grow disenchanted with a knit she's spent a hundred hours on, only to pull out all the stitches and start again.

It drives me crazy. I won't even make another omelette if it falls on the floor. I'm down there on all-fours, fighting off the dogs for the ham chunks.

Who the hell cares if there's one botched stitch 14,000 stitches ago? My wife cares. She'll unravel an eight-foot long scarf if she notices a "dropped stitch" made back when the scarf was the size of a pot holder. It drives me nuts.

She tells me her knitting is like writing -- well maybe not like my writing, but others' writing. Knitting is a craft and, as such, she will do a piece over-and-over until she gets it right.

For Christ's sake, knitting is not like writing. But if you want to force the analogy, it would be like me writing, i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i for ten hours, then am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am for another ten, then getting fancy -- I'm getting happy fingers now --bored-bored, bored, bored-bored, bored, bored-bored, bored, and so on, only to find out two days later that I don't want it in the "first person," and having to start all over again.

There are two knitting clubs in town: The Knitwits and The Hookers. The Hookers are technically crocheters and are frowned upon by The Knitwits. I don't know what their turf battle is all about, but I'm wary of any ideologues who carry pointed weapons in flowered bags. They seem to hover around yarn stores like moths to a 40-watt bulb.

Not long ago, I went to buy my wife one last small birthday present at the local yarn shop. The Yarn People were there knitting away. Pretending to know what I was doing, I was fingering through the merchandise and squeezing the yarn balls like I was buying avocados. Finally a suspicious clerk came over and asked if I needed some help.

I was shown some pattern books. Pointing to a nice-looking turtleneck sweater, I asked where I might find that yarn. Thirty minutes later, when the clerk finished telling me everything I ever wanted to know about sheep hair, I was told she didn't have that yarn.

I picked out another simple-looking garment, an ankle-length sweater-coat with ruffled collar, I believe it was. It was cool. Even the buttons were knit. This time she had the yarn -- but not enough of it. After several such dead ends, I was ready to velcro the wool clerk to the pattern hanging on the wall.

It was at this point the clerk started questioning my wife's knitting ability. Hey, no one questions my wife's knitting ability. Not even me. "Oh, she's the Westchester champion at purl-casting," I said, "dropping" two of the three terms I knew. I prayed the clerk wouldn't ask me to elaborate. Then she looked up my wife's record in her computer.

"You know, she's only made scarves and hats before," the clerk said. I assured her my wife was well beyond that now, and pointed again at the sweater pattern.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I finally found a box full of "skeins" that had been died in the wool in the same batch (important, I learned) and proceeded to checkout. The clerk told me I was a very nice man for buying my wife this present. I didn't know how nice I was until the register tape was pressed into my hand.

"$276.34 please." When the clerk revived me, she told me she had made a mistake in ringing it up. No shit Sherlock, I said. She had forgotten to add in the tax.

I pleaded with the clerk, "Do you know you can buy an already-made sweater at Kohls for a tenth that price?" She patted me on the shoulder and helped me sign the sales slip. I reminded her we were talking sheep fur, not Parisian silk.

On the way to the door, I spied the circle of in-store knitters -- The Hookers by the looks of them -- busy knitting away, pretending not to notice my elevated stress levels. I reminded everyone within earshot that my wife would be supplying the labor -- I was only looking to buy the yarn. Next thing I knew, I was on the outside looking in.

The clerk later told my wife (when she was in exchanging my gift) that the knitting class could hear me muttering all the way to the car, "I was only looking to buy some yarn, I was only looking to buy some yarn...."

PARK-ME-ELMO

Just as I was getting comfortable having autos tell drivers where to turn, now one of those new-fangled cars, a Lexus I believe, does the one thing my mother, my sister, my wife and my daughter have never done successfully. Parallel park.

With the exception of my 14-year old daughter, whose unblemished parking record owes itself to her non-driving status, all the others have peeled back the sides of their cars and returned home with no explanation for why their vehicles shed their passenger sides. Maybe it's just my family.

Anyway, as an excellent parallel parker, I'm skeptical of machines entrusted to perform such complex tasks as parallel parking. A one-time resident of New York City, I learned to routinely shoehorn cars into spaces smaller than they were.

With a combination of advanced physics and wanton nudging, I was able to fit 10-foot cars into 6-foot spaces. After airbags were introduced, this was no longer possible. Even wearing a football helmet, the bags took their toll.

But even now when I parallel park, you can barely slip waxed dental floss between my car's bumper and those who would sandwich me in. And I've never picked up as much as a scratch.

Please understand me. Men are not better drivers than women. But historically, men have had to do the heavy parking. Backing chariots into parking spaces could not have been easy for gladiators in ancient Rome. And I don't expect women to see parked cars as the personal threats I do. Call it a blind spot, but I won't ask strangers for directions, and they won't learn how to parallel park. Or back up for that matter.

Why do certain people look out the front window when they are backing up? They'd prefer to see the world moving away from them, than the 90-year old man with osteoporosis flailing beneath their rear tires. My wife once dragged a Walmart shopping cart that had become wedged under her car, all the way home: a trip of 25 miles. Thank God the woman pushing the cart had let go.

My mother once tried to back out of parking space facing the front of a laundromat. She thought she had the car in "Reverse," so naturally she was looking out the front windshield at the laundromat. As it turned out, the car was in "Drive" and straining against the cement restrainer designed to keep her car from entering the laundromat.

Thinking it a problem of throttle, Mom goosed the gas. When the four-barrel kicked in, she hopped over the restrainer, and rocketed through the window of the laundromat. The sympathetic cop trying to calm her, explained she must not have seen the window getting closer given she was looking behind her. No, she corrected him. She saw the whole thing.

I could go on. I remember my sister, after getting a fill-up, backing away from the gas pump and into a telephone pole. The telephone man working at the top of the pole was catapulted to a different area code.

And my wife actually backed over a deer. Can you imagine the look on that deer's face? It was the first deer in history to be killed while frozen in the tail-lights.

Look -- who's counting? We've all had our mishaps. I don't want to get ahead of myself, so I think I'll backup for a moment.

Where was I? Oh, right. A self-parking car. Who would trust a car to parallel park itself? I mean, there are going to be times when you'll be parking between a Porsche and a Jaguar. Serious cars. What -- is Toyota going to send those nice rich people cashier's checks when some little diode goes blink in my Lexus -- and I leave $200,000 worth of cars looking like Sunni limos at a Shia wedding?

At least with Voice Navigation, the worst that can happen is you fall in love with the robo-woman giving you directions. Just don't ask her for directions on how to parallel park.

So, unless you're not a man, pass on the "Park-Me-Elmo" feature. You could well find yourself explaining to the very officer who just bent you over the back of your Lexus, how you destroyed three cars with one ill-conceived push of a button.

PNL's DIVINE DUMPS

I was switching radio stations in the car recently when I caught the front end of a story on the plunging house prices. Some guy who had been trying unsuccessfully to sell his house had been given a small plastic St. Joseph statue for good luck. The man was instructed to bury St. Joe head-down in his front yard, feet pointing to heaven -- at exactly 15 inches depth -- to expedite the sale of his home.

Thinking this silly, the frustrated house seller threw the statue in the garbage.

A few days later, the man was sitting on his front porch reading the local newspaper when he spotted an article in the real estate section that the town dump had suddenly been sold. The land the dump sat on had been on the market since 1873.

Frantically, the man headed for the dump, only to find "Sold" and "No-Trespassing" signs where "For Sale" signs had stood for over a century. Undeterred, he drove to the nearest Bible supply store and purchased another St. Joseph statue -- and a shovel. Thinking it odd the Bible supplies store sold shovels, he inquired about it to the bald, heavy-set shop owner and was sorry he had.

Anyway, at this point I lost reception on the car's radio, and can only speculate on how the story ended. But before I do, first a little background history.

St. Joseph, for all you Bible geeks, was the son of Jacob. He was born in Bethlehem, but soon moved to Nazareth where real estate was cheaper. Why Joseph forsook his home town for the land of Galilee is not known as of this writing, but suffice it to say his moderate circumstances, combined with the necessity to earn a living, may have preordained the move.

Joseph, you may recall, was a mechanic by profession, but with cars not yet invented, Mr. Good-Wrench took up carpentry. At the age of 40, Joseph married a woman called Melcha (for her unpleasant odor), and they lived forty-nine years together having six children -- the last of whom killed Joseph's wife in childbirth.

The local priests then sweet-talked the widower, now pushing ninety years old, into marrying Mary, then twelve years of age, explaining that God had chosen Joseph, and "to fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost;" their words, not mine.

Joseph, now suffering from emaculate degeneration, asked if he could at least engage in a little "slap-and-tickle" with his young wife, and was told that foreplay would not be necessary. When Jesus was born, nine months later, Joseph stared into the lights and insisted, "I did not have sex with that woman." The rest, as they say, is history.

Jesus's foster-father died before the beginning of the Savior's public service, at the ripe old age of a hundred and fourteen. As for the Savior, he's due any time now, and with Bush still in office, "now" wouldn't be too soon.

Okay. Where were we? Real Estate. By the way, there are hundreds of real estate web sites selling St. Joe statues, complete with instructions for burial. For as little as $2.95 -- plus $49.95 for Next Day Air, anyone can expedite the sale of his/her home. Indeed, one site even bragged that one of its customers buried her St. Joe statue in a neighbor's yard whom she hated, and the bank ended up repossessing his house. But back to the story.

As it turned out, I believe our frustrated home seller buried his St. Joseph figure and before the week was out, he had an offer. The offer was well below asking (50% below) but the money would at least pay-off the mortgage. So the desperate seller, looking to slough off debt and thinking it divine intervention, accepted the deal.

At the closing something was bothering the seller, and he couldn't quite put his finger on it. With the ink still wet on his signature, he noticed the buyer, though wearing a rug, looked strangely familiar. When it came to him, it was already too late.

Now homeless and penniless and wearing the smile of resignation, our sorry seller asked the new owner if he would kindly accept the slightly-used shovel back for a store credit.

REQUIEM FOR A PINK FLAMINGO

Union Products of Leominster Mass has shut down its last remaining production line and just like that, the neon-pink, plastic lawn flamingo has gone the way of the ivory-billed woodpecker. That icon of the American landscape is now deader than a dodo.

Isn't that just the last straw? Well, screw you world!

I've always loved plastic pink flamingos, even before they became koolkitsch -- and well before Jenny Price's moving requiem for the plastic birds in her Op Ed piece in the Times (Friday, Nov. 17) -- the inspiration behind this PNL.

Even when the lawn ornament was co-opted by the Gay Games as a mascot for the "Pink Flamingo Relay," I felt secure enough in my masculinity to proudly display my neon lawn birds. Back when marriage was still between a man and a woman, pink flamingos adorned the tops of wedding cakes. Only weirdos put little plastic brides and grooms on top of their pastry. How tacky! Both my wedding cakes had pink flamingos. It seems to bring good luck.

As the premiere lawn decoration of the 1950's, the pink flamingo distinguished the ticky- tacky little boxes of Levittown, Long Island, where every other house stood out. There, swaying in the breeze, the resin birds gave scale to their claustrophobic settings.

Lost between those notable, flamingo-festooned, postage-stamp sized yards were the yards with the tacky green and blue "Christmas Ball" pedestals that told everyone you had coodies. One could always tell the elitists and the racists by their black-jockey-hitching-post lawn ornaments. Cast iron stableboys with big red lips and bulging white eyes stood at the ready for their horseless masters.

Of course, the pink flamingo soon became a national phenomenon. Migrating south to Miami and west to San Diego, "Flamingo Gringos," as the yard artists were known, left no yard behind. Soon the gentle pink flamingo replaced the bellicose bald eagle as the national bird.

The original pink flamingo was designed, appropriately, by Don Featherstone, a man of dubious taste whose signature was cast right into the mold. They originally sold for $2.76 a pair plus tax and now, when you can find them, they command more money than your car.

I have friends with vintage pink flamingos (and the last car port in Chappaqua) and every several years I slip into their driveway under cover of darkness and steal them. As close as we are, they threaten legal action until I return them (or facsimiles of them).

Simply put, tasteful lawn ornaments (like the pink flamingo) make everything better. Somehow disease, starvation, loneliness and war all seem better when you have the correct lawn ornament.

For instance, were you to walk through the woods, you'd see an ugly tangle of trees and underbrush held together by poison ivy. Boring. Throw in a pink flamingo, and the space wrapping around it suddenly gets defined. It gets scale. You start to see the forest for the trees. The world was an ugly place prior to the plastic pink flamingo.

As a symbol of bad taste, the pink flamingo has always defined my aesthetic sensibilities. Instead of gathering yardbirds, today we have gathering threats. Now that the gentle plastic flamingo is extinct, I hope we can still find our way through the dark landscape left behind when the Republican machine finally ground to a halt.

YOUR ANTI-AGING CARD

It's bad enough AARP sends you a card before you even turn 50. Never mind your sophomoric tastes. Never mind that 50 is the new 40. Never mind that you're doing yoga and eating bran. Never mind you won't be able to retire until you're 90. Fasten your seatbelt, 'cause you're heading for the Pearly Gates and for a fee, AARP will ease the way.

They might as well have called it HARP. The Grim Reaper shows up in your mailbox looking like just another official document; like a social security card, or tax audit. Death and taxes. It's a foregone conclusion you will send them twelve bucks, if you believe their official-looking literature. But you are being robbed, you idiot.

AARP is just another thieving company reaching into your pocket. And once you sign on, you will be robbed every year 'til death do you part. Worse still, you won't even use your group discounts because you will never admit you are AARP material.

And what are the discounts to? "Oh look hon, there's a 10% discount on Bingo tonight," or, "Quick, get in the car, the last Howard Johnsons in Massachusetts is having an AARP special on the turkey with stuffing Saturday nite."

The only people proudly flashing their AARP cards are those who can't remember turning 50. Hello? I take my Gingko just so I can remember turning 50.

As if it wasn't bad enough that my "going problem" is a "growing problem," my TV tells me I must toss AVADARTs at my bladder 'til I walk around like a human sprinkler. Who the hell thought up that name? But not to worry, DEPENZ will allow me to dash to the pharmacy to buy METAMUCIL so I can move my bowels, before wetting my whistle.

As if it wasn't bad enough I must inject snake venum to BOTOXify the nerves wrinkling my forehead, I must now wear a lampshade to cover up my 12-hour erections.

Face lifts, breast lifts, and dick lifts have lifted us to the point where, if we weren't "GELLIN," our toes would barely touch the ground. With everything heading north, it's not hard to see why our bank accounts are going south. Imagine explaining to your daughter, "I''m sorry honey, but you'll be stiffed out of your inheritance because daddy overdosed on VIAGRA."

Thank heaven they've given us more sleep medicines because old farts (formerly Baby Boomers) can't fall asleep. The names alone will put you to sleep: LUNESTA, AMBIEN, SOMINEX. The only side effects are "drowsiness while operating heavy equipment," and with the new time-release version, "death." Thank God I don't operate heavy equipment!

"Death" isn't so bad: It's what they call your last payment at AARP.

That's it. I'm starting a new company. CARP. On their 30th birthday, I'll send every citizen and illegal alien a little CARP membership card and charge them only six bucks -- a savings of 50%. They'll be no unnecessary discounts (indeed, no discounts at all) and best of all, the brochure won't have Paul Newman's face on the cover.

In fact, CARP literature will contain no rhetoric at all about being as young as you feel, which only made you feel older. Until your ALIEVE kicked in.

Hell, why don't we just get started? Mail $6, (no pennies or pesos please) to PO Box 17793240871902447, Laguna Beach CA, and you'll receive your very own anti-AARP CARP card.

One free lifetime membership will go to the winning entry in the "What Does CARP Stand For?" contest.

DEER DIARY

Deer are not scary. Grizzlies are scary. Sharks are scary. Even stingrays can be scary. But Bambi never felt particularly threatening to me. In fact, one could make the case that deer are timid. They would always scatter when I charged them. Especially does. So, what went wrong this morning?

I was out admiring my paint job on the house, when I spotted a doe munching on the last pedals in my wife's sorry flower garden. Ever since spring, when her prized lilies first appeared, I've been chasing the deer all over the neighborhood in a futile effort to keep them off the expensive herbiage.

I've begged my wife to "plant" long-lasting, artificial flowers -- to no avail, and now I've become a Pinkerton on the garden beat.

It's never done much good. The deer always get the flowers anyway. But I get a little power rush thinking my heft and histrionics would feel threatening to a large, four-legged herbivore (my wife is a small, two-legged herbivore). I never chase carnivores, no matter how small.

I'm like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, scaring large beasts with large teeth back into the jungle. I go "whoost" and growl and the deers dart off into the surrounding woods like they've seen Hannibal Lector. I like that feeling.

Now I'm behind locked doors, all agitated and my hands are shaking. What part of my routine did that animal not understand?

So anyway, I'm out in the yard and I see this doe, a deer, a female deer, noshing on my wife's mind-bogglingly expensive hybrid lilies, and I feel my muscles tighten. Temples pulsing, I clenched my teeth, leaned forward, and charged the plant-purloining perpetrator.

Accelerating, I began thinking of the energy my considerable mass would unleash at the moment I impacted such a large, albeit docile creature as a deer. Actually, I was hoping it wouldn't come to this.

So why am I now dripping with sweat and humiliated beyond tears? I'm getting to that. Are we with me?

Anyway, back outside, I squinted and stared directly into the doey eyes of my quarry. "Make my day," I thought as the animal loomed larger.

So I'm charging and somewhere along the way I'm noticing that the animal isn't taking flight. The damn deer appears to be holding her ground. Oh boy, what do I do now? I sense my momentum is not going to be braked any time soon. Thank God she doesn't have a rack, I remember thinking.

Now everything is a blurred, slow-motion, stop-framed event. I see the doe lower her head. She's looking straight at me now. Like the bulls of Madrid, she is flaring her nostrils and the steam jetting from her snout indicates to me she is pissed over my intrusion. Now she starts scuffing her hoof along the ground.

I know this scuffing hoof thing means she's angry. Why do I know this? I think to myself.

I used to watch TV westerns with my sister, when the horses, getting angry about "injuns" in their midst, starting scuffing their left hooves against the ground. For some reason, it was always the left hoof. Do horses know their left hoof from their right? Who knows! Anyway, when I snapped to, it occurred to me that the deer was not only looming larger because of my approach, but because she had the temerity to charge me -- a human for chrissake!

What the hell is this? A deer charging me? Have deer finally turned on the human race? Was this the deer version of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds? Why should I have to teach this deer how to be a deer? I'm not really prepared to collide with a two-hundred pound wild animal, I'm thinking. I haven't even had my coffee.

Two-hundred pounds hitting two-hundred pounds. This can't be good. I quickly calculated the force of impact. Two times two, let's see, carry the zeros...this was not going to end well.

Sensing serious rib cage damage, I veered off at the last second, tripping over the damn cement lid covering the septic tank that the assholes never replaced right when they last pumped the tank. Now, I'm squirming on the ground in considerable pain.

The deer turned to see my predicament and, shaking her head, polished off the last flower and sauntered off.

My wife's birthday is this Wednesday. This is the big one. She's turning 30. As soon as my ankle feels better, I'm going into town and getting her some artificial flowers.

RAISING THE QUEEN

I don't have a son. It didn't matter to me the gender of my child. There were no royal male succession issues in my largely matriarchal family and when the roll of the dice came, it was a young queen.

She bounced past "princess" to queen almost from birth. Even before she was fully articulated, her translation of "happy birthday to..." was "aba du," and when I'd say happy birthday to her, she'd say "aba du you too, da-da."

Intuitively understanding the royal "we," she felt that if it was her birthday, it was everyone's birthday: a state holiday. And she'd let them eat cake.

When taking home movies, I'd ask my daughter to give me a kiss and she'd wobble up and slobber-smooch the lens. Consequently, like Jacques Cousteau, she always appeared in-vitro. Lens wipes outnumbered baby wipes in our household.

As the court photographer, I took so many home movies, she thought her dad lived somewhere inside the camera. Even if the camera was sitting by itself on the counter, she'd walk up to it, peer inside the lens, and ask for me. A little tiny father sat in a tiny little chair just the other side of the lens.

Being "boo-boo" challenged, my daughter was obsessed with potential injury zones. Vulnerable spots she'd preemptively cover with Band-Aids. Like a chain chewer of gum, my young daughter became a chain user of Band-Aids. We'd go through several boxes a day.

I could always find my toddler by following the trail of Band-Aid wrappers. When I finally caught up to her, she'd be wallpapered in Band-Aids, looking like Nephritis' mummy.

Potty training was a breeze. My girl had a little plastic toilet that traveled, and I can still see her sitting on her throne waving to the passersby from the shoulder of the New York State Thruway.

The girl was definitely of regal blood. Early on she loved having servants and would feign fainting when their obsequiousness wasn't up to snuff. She demanded obedience -- always. Thinking she was possibly spoiled, I took her to a baby therapist.

After the $400 session, the shaken therapist informed me that my daughter really was a queen in a past life, and that I had better befriend her now before her palace guards had "issues" with me. To drive home "issues" point, the therapist had signed the euphemism with air quotes.

The girl always loved animals, and our home soon became a menagerie, with goldfish -- then tropical fish, and dogs -- then more dogs, and parakeets -- then cockatiels and parrots -- not to mention the rescued wild animals that had zigzagged in front of us just before "Daddy ran them over with the car."

We had pony parties for her where it always rained, and the pony tender would leave early before the eager guests arrived, and we were left with 20 whining brats and nothing but imprinted horse napkins.

Soon, my young queen started riding horses in earnest-- as royalty often does -- and she is quite the equestrian today. I don't like animals that weigh over a thousand pounds; especially those with brains smaller than a Chihuahua's, but she connects with them. I don't like Chihuahuas much either, to be honest, though they don't need to be trailered -- but enough about me.

By middle school, my daughter was found to be fast as a quarter horse. She joined the track team and was soon beating not only the princesses, but the princes as well. Not content to have anyone else in the number one spot, she would swiftly put those in front behind.

Now in high school, the attitude thing has fully kicked in, and I have become a wallet-in-waiting. Irrelevant at best, and an embarrassment the rest of the time, I drive her around in a chauffeur's outfit (she insists I wear a uniform so as not to be mistaken for her father). This is not unusual in our rich town where many kids are picked up from school by licensed taxi cabs. I think it would be cheaper to FedEx them home, but who am I?

These days my influence is no longer influential. Mostly, I try to protect my queen from injury. The Band-Aids are gone now, and the hurts have become real. Thankfully, the memories still hold court.

ORANGE WATER

Every morning, as I have for years and years, I hobble down the stairs, pour a quarter-glass of orange juice, and top it off with water. I've had trouble drinking straight water ever since my old Bon Appetit magazine client informed me that fish fornicate in it.

Bon Appetit's ex-editor-in-chief was a portly man: more gourmand than gourmet. He enjoyed the finest foods and drink and was a living billboard for his advertisers' products. Water was way too much a commodity for his epicurean tastes, and he was no stranger to the bottle, always taking his drinks "neat."

He died of a heart attack in his late 40's, but I digress. I've had trouble trying to visualize what a fish-eye view of fornication would even look like, but water has never seemed quite as appetizing ever since. Somehow, the acidity of the orange helps the water go down, and it helps me forget about the frisky fish.

This morning, though, I clumped down the stairs, poured the quarter-glass of OJ, and filled the rest with... milk? Wow, that was interesting, I thought to myself. You poured in milk. Where did that come from? We a little distracted, are we? I asked myself. The Twilight Zone jingle ran through my head.

As I was thinking about this, I noticed I had just put my metal coffee mug in the microwave and it was arching.

Yikes, I never do that. Just when I said, okay, we're focusing now and this nonsense is over, I realized that, in the midst of my declaration, I had fed the dogs Honey Nut Cheerios. They were delighted, but I had intended to give them the Science Diet kibble in the large 30 lb. silver bag.

Starting to think this was never going to end, I looked down and noticed my cereal bowl filled to the gunwales with hard brown chunks. An honest mistake I thought, but how unappetizing they looked floating in all that milk.

Wow, I thought. Was this the big A? Was the old head processor losing a few chips? Or was the stress of living through two Bush presidencies starting to get to me? Just as I was heading for the gingko, my mind wandered off into the nature of distraction.

Like, for instance, how does one dis-distract oneself when one has to distract oneself to focus on not being distracted? As I questioned this, I noticed that something was very wrong with my tee-shirt.

I could see from my reflection in the microwave (where I was trying to focus my eyes on the replaced microwavable coffee cup turning in circles), that my tee-shirt was clearly inside-out. I knew it was inside-out because the type on the front of the shirt was right-reading. My scientific mind knew this couldn't be so.

Pondering the fun of being able to read right-reading type in a reflection, I discovered my shoes didn't match. That's bad -- much worse than mismatched socks, which I'm often told I have -- though I only buy one brand of black socks so I don't know how that could be --but I digress.

Just when I was thinking I would have preferred seeing two different kinds of loafers on my feet -- rather than a loafer and a sneaker -- I felt the strongest need to head for the computer.

Of course, I hadn't actually been distracted at all. Everything was fine. All systems were "go." No need for an ambulance. I had simply been writing in my head the Pinecliff Network Life column for today. The moment I sat down at the keyboard, the story just spilled out like orange milk from a tilted glass.

CRUSHED BY THE POST OFFICE

I went to mail a small package of fragile goods at the local Post Office and was reminded of why our government is so dysfunctional. I don't like going to post offices nowadays because they feature large portraits of President Bush and try to sell you flag stamps. When you ask for the fruit stamps, they roll their eyes at you like you're unpatriotic or something, but I digress.

The package contained fragile antique toys I was sending to an auction house, so I bundled them up like babies in winter, boxed them in Styrofoam peanuts, sealed the box with an entire roll of shipping tape, and handed it to the clerk.

The clerk asked me if the package contained anthrax, napalm, or uranium. While I was thinking it over, she switched the subject to how I wanted it sent. I said I didn't care, as long as the box wasn't crushed. This raised her suspicions.

After scanning down a long list of services, the clerk looked up at me and said, "We don't offer that service."

I said look, just stamp it, "Do Not Crush." They had no "Do Not Crush" stamps.

Why not? You have a "Do Not Bend" stamp, I said. The clerk looked confused.

Look, this is a "Do Not Bend" order in every dimension, I clarified. I explained that I often get packages from the Post Office that are crushed: not merely bent, but crushed flat as a pancake. This was not a VCR or some piece of electronic junk that could be replaced.

The clerk said, "Look, we do not "Do Not Crush." What we do do is offer insurance. I said great, I have to pay you not to crush my box.

Well, actually, no. I couldn't pay them NOT to drop-kick my box into the truck -- and NOT to put a refrigerator on top of it, because that brand of tough love was a given. But I could buy insurance that would reimburse me for the damage, after the fact.

I said look, this is not just about the money. These are rare antiques. They cannot be replaced. When they're gone, they're gone. And wouldn't that be a shame? The clerk nodded and asked me if I wanted a book of flag stamps.

I said, look, I'm willing to pay a premium for you not to crush my box. The clerk said, don't worry -- you'll pay a premium alright, and charged me $26.35 for the insurance. I said that was an outrage. She said hey, they're your antiques.

Just when I started seeing red, I noticed a sea of yellow "Support Our Troops" ribbons behind the clerk on either side of the smiling Bush portrait. I don't mindlessly support our troops. For six years our volunteer troops have become a de facto wing of the Republican party, I thought to myself, and I don't support what they're doing in Iraq. Sixty percent of Americans think our troops are fighting the wrong war and I want them either home safe, or redeployed elsewhere where they can make us safer. Then, I'll support them.

Besides, government employees on official business are supposed to be neutral when it comes to partisan issues, aren't they? Support the Troops has blurred into Support the War.

"Flag stamps?" the clerk asked as I snapped to. No, I want the frickin' fruit, I reminded her. I was starting to wish I had listed "anthrax-dusted uranium" in the contents. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have crushed that.