Sean mentions here that Sara Lee owns Playtex. While it is just a wee bit dastardly to promote a pencil-thin body image for women in your bra advertisements and then turn around and offer them a big ol’ cheesecake to eat, I don’t see a conflict of interests there. On the other hand, if Sara Lee starts selling diet pills under another name, let me know so I can have a fit about it.

It’s not Playtex I have a problem with, it’s bras in general.

I haven’t burned all of mine in protest, but I am mean to them and call them names sometimes. I’m skeptical about these “cup and a half”-sized bras being any more comfortable than any other bra I’ve worn, and I’ll tell you why.

A bra hinders the natural movement of a woman’s breasts. If a woman has large breasts, a bra puts a strain on her back*, because her weight is not distributed properly. Then, to add to the fun, some bras contain under-wires to poke her in front and clasps to poke her in the back.

Under-wires. How better to explain under-wires than to simply say that bra manufacturers are misogynists?

Under-wires are metal wires they sew into certain bras for the purpose of support. If you exchange the word “support” in my last sentence for the words “stabbing you in the chest,” the sentence becomes more accurate.

When a bra with an under-wire is washed, the stitching that holds the wire in it’s place becomes looser and looser. Then, when the woman who owns said torture device puts it on, the wire will remain properly in place only long enough for her to get somewhere very public and then poke her repeatedly and urgently until she can find a private place to remove the bra and/or rip the wire out of it.

The wire in the photo above worked its way out in exactly this fashion, but I pulled it out further to make it more visible in the picture. Seeing is believing.

So, is the difference in cup size going to change the bra as we know it? No. My guess is that bras will always will poke and pinch women just like the lecherous old man who grabs your ass as you walk by his table at McDonald’s.

The more I write, the more I see that a burning is the only answer here. The old man? Leave him out. Too much gristle. Just the bras. We have to show those bra companies that we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it. Who’s with me?

Who am I kidding? No one wants her boobs hanging around her ankles. Bras are a necessary evil - like Michael Bolton. You see, if we didn’t have Michael Bolton to compare it to, we’d never know what good music sounded like. Ok, that’s silly. Disregard that.

Anyway, I realize now that I should have used the word “boobies” more in this post. Sorry, guys.

Boobies. Boobies. Boobies.

There.

*From my experience, exercise bras are a different matter altogether and are much more friendly in this area. They aren’t as flattering in that they press you in instead of pushing your ladies up and at attention, but they tend to be easy on the back.

Reading Jules post this morning reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend soon after John Denver’s death in 1997.

I said to Billy, “Did you know John Denver died?” He said something like, “Oh that’s awful.”

After a few minutes of my rambling on about how much it sucked that the world lost a great musician, he said, “Didn’t you say Bob Denver died?” When I affirmed that it was John Denver of folk music and not Bob Denver of Gilligan’s Island who had passed away, he seemed nothing but relieved.

At first I thought he had to be kidding, but it soon became clear he was not. Of course, we debated for a while over who made the larger contribution to society. But, apparently, Bob Denver fans are a steadfast lot. He could not be swayed.

I was never much into Gilligan myself, and I don’t remember Bob doing much after that series ended.

Although I don’t wish Bob dead, I think John’s death should have rated more from my friend than a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Bob who had died.

So, any thoughts on this, folks? I know this is an earth shatteringly important topic, so you may need to mull it over a bit. I’m nothing if not edgy. But, as you know, you have to be ballsy enough to deal with topics that are less than seven years old if you want to be on the cutting edge. So, here it is.

It’s rainy here today, and I still have electricity in my house. I feel there must be some mistake. I should call the bastards at LG&E to express my confusion at this new phenomenon, but I think I’ll just revel instead.

This guy could convey my amazement at having power better than I can. He can even do the “Gee Wally, that’s swell!” smile. That’s real talent if you ask me.

Douglas Adams died in 2001, and I’m still aggravated about it. Couldn’t he have waited to die until it was more convenient for his readers? In fact, while reading the introduction to The Salmon of Doubt, the untimeliness of his death rudely slapped me with a wet towel and made me cry.

The Salmon of Doubt is a collection of Adams’ work that was published posthumously. His publisher Christopher Cerf and his wife Jane Belson pieced it together from his many computers.

The resulting compilation is a must read for fans. On the other hand, any person who is unfamiliar with Adams’ previous work should not approach this book. It does not convey the man’s true genius even half as well as any one of his other novels. You would do Adams a disservice by judging him on the basis of this book alone.

I did have some reservations going into the book, which is lucky because it can be difficult to get into a classy book like this without making reservations.

Seriously though, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read a book that the author never meant for me to see. You’d never guess it, but even I don’t let anyone see my stuff before I revise it a few times. But, then again, once I’m dead I hope I’m too busy decomposing to worry about someone reading my unfinished drivel.

I’m not calling The Salmon of Doubt drivel. Not at all. In fact, a good portion of the book isn’t even unfinished. Part of it is made up of letters and essays that were published in magazines while the author was still with us.

Some of the essays relate to Adams’ devout atheism, others are about his love-hate relationship with computers, yet another is about his friendship with some neighbors’ dogs who “ignored” him when he took them for walks. All of these pieces are complete and stand well on their own.

Then you get to the title work. Adams’ had hinted that he intended to piece it into the next Hitchhiker book. He never got it to that stage in its development. It’s still a Dirk Gently novel, and it’s obviously not finished. It doesn’t even have an ending except that the words stop. Of course, that’s preferable to someone else putting forth a hack ending for Adams’ book, but it’s still disconcerting that there’s no conclusion.

Even so, this is well worth a read if you are a Douglas Adams fan. If you are not a fan already, start by reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and read The Salmon of Doubt only after you’ve become a fan.

It’s easy enough to fall in love with Adams’ books, so becoming a fan is as easy as grabbing your towel and stowing away on a Vogon ship.

You’ll soon discover that there is nothing not to like about Douglas Adams - unless you count the fact that he left us too soon.

I used to love to sit in my tree-house and read as a child. Actually it wasn’t so much a tree-house as a board laid across some branches, but hey it worked for me.

Maybe that early communion with nature is the reason I get so pissed off that Bush is getting ready to sell out our national forests to corporate interests. His spin on it is that logging will stop forest fires from spreading. While it’s true that strategic and limited logging would help stop the spread of forest fires, he can’t just give away our national forests to timber companies. Why? Because they belong to all of us.

Please use this link and then click on take action. It’s a no brainer. If you don’t want stumps where our forests once grew, you are opposed to Bush’s plan.

Best dream ever. I was Spider Man. I wasn’t saving anyone or fighting a bad guy. I was just having a blast swinging from roof to roof with only the occasional fear of splatting into a wall. I’m not coordinated at all in real life, but I fared well in my dream in that I was always able to find something suitable to attach a web to.

Just wanted to share with everyone the best dream I have ever had or will ever have again. I can’t imagine anything being more fun for me than web slinging through a city at night.