Hot in Here

Our classroom is currently at least 85 degrees. It makes life more than miserable.

Love connection

This weekend, J1, S1, and I all had a slumber party at K1's place. We were watching movies until late Saturday night and so we all just ended up staying over. Sunday morning, we got up and I made chocolate-chip pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast before we headed out for an afternoon of shopping.

We were riding the train down to 34th Street so we could hit H&M, Zara, American Eagle, etc. K1 and I were standing in front of a row of seats, chatting away in some sort of brilliant and fascinating conversation.

We got to 42nd Street, and the guy sitting below us was kind of looking toward the door. K1 asked, "Do you need to get out here?"

"It's my stop, but I don't think I can make it to the door," he replied.

K1 stepped aside and said, "Go ahead -- I think you've got time."

He stood up and moved past us toward the door. As he was passing K1, he said, "Thanks. [2 beat pause] By they way, you're so beautiful."

I was cracking up. It was so funny, partly because it was the typical lame subway pickup line. Do guys really expect a woman to say, "Oh, it's so sweet of you to tell me that. Want to get a drink?"

But it was even funnier because of the way it was phrased. I don't think guys can ever drop lame compliments like that without the "by the way" tag. "By the way, you're so sexy." "By the way, I find you so attractive." "By the way, you have amazing eyes." Well, ok. I suppose they are sometimes prefaced with "Has anyone told you..." "Has anyone told you that your ass is amazing?" "Has anyone told you how gorgeous you are?" Somehow, guys think that the introductory phrase will somehow make the compliment less awkward.

This interaction could only have been made funnier if K1 had channeled Han Solo (when Princess Leia told him that she loved him) and stared back at Mr. Subway with a perfectly straight face, deadpanning, "I know."

But of course, the story doesn't end there. An hour later, we were on the second floor of the H&M at 34th and Sixth when we ran into the same guy. And could he just pretend to be looking at clothes and avoid the awkward interaction? Of course not.

As K1 and I were looking at shirts for her brother, the came over and said "Hey, I was talking to you on the train."

K1 barely looked up. "Oh, yeah. Hey."

So, the love connection didn't quite happen in midtown yesterday. But it certainly wasn't for lack of effort on the part of Mr. Subway.

The art of retouching

Interesting link I found this afternoon, showing the degree to which photos can be retouched and improved.

Basically, this guy is showing off his portfolio of work, in hopes that others will hire him. Click on the thumbnail, then mouse-over to see the "before" picture.

Of course, many of the changes are subtle. But added together, his correction of skin tone, butt lifts, breast enhancement, and tummy tucks transforms the women from above-average bodies to rather attractive. But I think the most startling change is in the faces, where he transforms many of the faces by smoothing lines and erasing blemishes to create the illusion of a perfect face.

I think it's just good to keep in mind because it's so easy to see pictures of models in magazines and think, "Oh, she's so beautiful." Maybe she is, but you can bet you're not seeing what she really looks like, but an idealized version of it.

Worst guilt trip from an email forward

Someone emailed me the most guilt-tripping email forward ever today. I'm still laughing, it was so funny.

It was some sort of religious poem. I would give more details but I didn't actually read it. I merely noticed this gem:

Do You Love Jesus? This is a simple test:
IF YOU LOVE JESUS, SEND THIS TO AT LEAST 10 PEOPLE, INCLUDING THE PERSON WHO SENT IT TO YOU!

I'm sorry. I didn't realize that sending spam to people (including the person who just sent the crap to me) would prove my love for or devotion to a certain deity.

The shouting in all caps is a nice touch too, I think.

Worst sports day in a long time

Saturday was one of the worst sports days that I have experienced in a long time.

Warning: if you don't understand why my emotional happiness is strongly influenced by the performance of my teams, then just skip this post. You won't understand it.

Anyway, it started out ok, as Michigan lost to Ohio State. I does my heart good whenever Michigan loses, so at least things were ok. In addition, the loss finished Michigan's chances for a Big 10 title, which meant that even if Michigan State beat Penn State, Michigan would not have a sniff of a BCS bowl.

Everything went steadily downhill from there. Michigan State - Penn State was a disaster in every sense of the word. It wasn't just that they lost. In many ways, I expected that. They've been in a death spiral for the last two months, and Penn St. is one of the nation's top teams. No, it was the gut-wrenching kind of loss, where every time you have hope that your team is about to come back, they throw away their chance, leaving you in pain.

This game had it all: muffed punts, back-breaking interceptions, missed field goals, bobbled field-goal snaps, and stupid penalties. It was just sickening to see the season end with yet another stupid loss. This could have been so much better, but mistakes at key times have killed us all year.

So I was not feeling good about that. Meanwhile, in Hawaii, the MSU men's basketball team was kicking off their season against Hawaii. It should have been an easy tune-up for the fourth-ranked Spartans as they prepare for the LOADED Maui Invitational field. Instead, four of the starting five players suffered from severe cramps (one was carried off on a stretcher and another missed the last 13 minutes of the second half), and State was blown out by 20-odd points.

At this point, I figured that the only way the day could get worse would be if the previously-unbeaten Pistons lost in Dallas to the Mavs. Uh, yeah. Check.

They lost by 40.

I'm telling you, it just wasn't a good day.

I could use some good sports news, starting about.....NOW!

Shout-out to S2

Just wanted to say congrats to S2 for finishing the Philadelphia Marathon in fine style today.

Unlike me, when S2 runs a marathon, he actually prepares for it properly, not in some half-ass crazy way.

It paid off for him, as he ran a PR 3:21:33. A damn impressive time, I must say. And, it puts him within sniffing distance of qualifying for Boston (3:10:59).

Congrats, S2. You kick ass!

The To-Do List

I have about a million things to do right now, which is why it makes perfect sense that I'm posting on my blog.

J1 and I leave for California tomorrow night for a week of Thanksgiving revelry. And by revelry, I mean sitting around with her family, chilling and eating food. Wild and crazy, I'm telling you.

Anyway, before we go, I have a number of things to do. I see KS tomorrow at 8:30. I have to figure out my schedule for next semester. I have to turn in a revised proposal for a seminar paper. Fn1. I have to turn in an outline of my key points for a mock negotiation which will happen the Monday after Thanksgiving. I have a homework assignment for my seminar that I'm missing Wednesday. I have to pack. Oh, and I have to sleep.

Hopefully, I can get a couple things done tonight, and then do the rest during the day tomorrow. That's the good thing about an early appointment -- it forces me to start the day at a reasonable hour rather than sleeping till noon.

Speaking of packing, I hate packing. I can never think what to bring, and I'm always afraid I'm forgetting something. So just now, I thought that it would be a good idea to make a list of what I need so I won't forget anything. Here's what I have so far: iPod, iPod charger, camera, camera charger, cell phone charger, and glasses. Somehow, I don't think this is all I need, but at least it will satisfy my technology needs.

This leads me to another point: charge cords really need to be standardized. The more mobile technology I acquire, the more charge cords I'm carrying with me. It's pretty crazy -- the bottom of my suitcase looks like an electrical convention just let out, and all the cords are sprawled out, heading for home. Why can't there just be one standard plug?

Ok, enough rambling for this post.

1. My first proposal was rejected because it had too little to do with law. Go figure. What is this -- law school or something?

Blogger screwup

So last week, I was trying to figure out how to delete a comment that I had made in response to a reader's comment, (fn1) and I ended up turning on the "Moderate Comments" function in the Blogger software. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that what this does is force me to approve all comments before they can be published. Oops.

So I fixed that and now comments should be back to normal. So comment away, unless you're a spammer. In that case, may you die a slow, painful death.

1. Why did I want to delete a comment, you ask? Well, J1 was logged into my computer to post on her blog, and I didn't realize it until after I posted the comment under her name. Wait. You said you didn't ask? You don't care why I wanted to delete a comment. Well, fine. Be that way.

Insomnia

It's 4:38 a.m., and I cannot sleep. I don't know what my problem is, other than that I have been sleeping in all week. I just feel absolutely not sleepy.

I went to bed around 1:30, but I couldn't fall asleep for an hour. I got up and was reading Page 2 on ESPN.com. Usually, I can tell when I'm ready to sleep because I can't focus on what I'm reading any more. But tonight, I just kept reading. Eventually, I got bored, but not tired.

So I guess it's time to post on my blog, which I've neglected for a few days.

Obtuse Fortune of the Day

J1, K1, and I grabbed dinner at Lily's tonight because we were starving after they finished choir practice. Lily's is always a source of QUICK, reasonably good, cheap Chinese food. Maybe it was just because I was famished tonight, but the food tasted so good!

Anyway, we got the check and of course it was accompanied by fortune cookies. Only these fortune cookies come from the weird-ass fortune cookie factory. All of us got pretty weird fortunes -- they're not really even fortunes, but more observations on life -- but mine was particularly weird.

"As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more."

First of all, like I said above, that's not a FORTUNE. It's someone trying to be profound. But it's the typical attempt a profundity that tries way too hard to be smart, leaving something that is basically meaningless.

School is hanging us out, as usual

I really do not understand why the law school can't plan anything more than two days ahead of time. Particularly with the issue of scheduling, we are always finding everything out at the last minute.

For example, we got an email tonight informing us that pre-registration (basically lottery entry) for spring classes begins tomorrow. Why, I must ask, was this information not passed on to us sooner? It's not like they just set this date yesterday. And to make matters worse, the announcement didn't even include a schedule of the classes being offered next semester -- that is being issued tomorrow.

Now to put this into perspective, registration runs for ten days, and there's no preference for entering early. Since I'm a procrastinator, I'm naturally going to wait till one of the last days and then start working frantically to figure everything out.

However, I guess this is just symbolic of how indifferent the school seems in regard to the students. It's like we're always on a "need to know" basis, and the school decides that there is very little we need to know. The environment is one in which you feel like you have to fend for yourself. For the amount of tuition we pay, you'd think they could at least treat us like we matter.

On a more positive note, the Pistons took out the Suns tonight. Great game -- both teams played well. But at the end, Detroit just put on the clamps and won the game, finishing on a 17-4 run. It was a dominant performance, and gives them their best start since 1988 at 5-0. So I'm so happy about that, I can't get too worked up over how poorly the school treats us.

The Long Tail

I read an absolutely brilliant article on Wired.com today called "The Long Tail." fn1. In it, Wired's Editor in Chief Chris Anderson discusses demand for content (books, music, and movies) and how the internet is revolutionizing the way in which consumers find and purchase content, making niche content more profitable.

This is very important stuff, in my opinion, because it's a perspective that is largely ignored.

Anderson looks at the demand curve for entertainment content. The demand is similar to a negative exponential function (I think fn1). There are a very few items that have extremely high demand. There are more items that have smaller, but still substantial, demand. Finally, there are vast quantities of items that have ever-smaller demand. But the key is that the curve never crosses the x-axis. In other words, if I cut a CD tomorrow, there would be some (albeit tiny) market for it.

However, it is typically unprofitable to sell items for which there is such a small market, particularly in traditional retail venues. Consequently, most stores stop selling items at some point on the curve. For example, Wal-Mart will only sell albums which they believe will sell at least 100,000 units (a small minority of releases). Fn2. Blockbuster mostly stocks new releases and a few older movies. Barnes and Noble carries about 130,000 titles.

Basically, for any retail business, there is a calculation regarding how many units of an item must be sold to make stocking that item worthwhile. For example, a record store needs to sell at least two copies of a CD to pay the "rent" for the half-inch of shelf space occupied by that CD. If an item can't sustain a profitable volume, it won't be stocked.

The problem is that any brick and mortar store only draws from a limited geographic market. If you're a record store in the woods of Alabama, you may only have a couple customers who like Ambient Dub, so you'll carry few of these CDs. In fact, in any one record store's geographic market area, there may be so few Ambient Dub fans that carrying this sub-genre is not economical. BUT, if you aggregate all the Ambient Dub fans in the U.S., there are plenty to support the genre.

This is where the long tail comes in. With any entertainment item, there IS demand for the item. It may be small, but it's there. However, the demand may be spread thin. The dis-aggregation of of the market population for niche entertainment is a major factor which causes mass-production of culture and limited choice.

However, if the geographical dis-aggregation can be overcome by a medium which make geographic boundaries much less relevant, niche markets can be served profitably. The result can be seen in the sales result of a retailer like Amazon.com. Remember the 130,000 "popular" titles stocked by Barnes and Noble? Amazon makes more sales outside their top-ranked 130,000 titles than inside. In other words, the "long tail" market is actually larger than the market for popular material.

What's the upshot of all this? The internet is going to allow people to more effectively match their tastes with their entertainment choices, rather than being confined by the mass-market preferences that govern geographic retailing. And this almost certainly means a richer, deeper, and more diverse culture. It also means that alternative voices will have a greater chance of being heard. And both of these, I think, are happy conclusions for anyone who cares about the health of American society.

1. My math skills are embarrassingly rusty, and I can't remember the precise type of function which produces a graph which is asymtotic to both the positive x and positive y axis. Here, the x-axis represents the quantity of demand, and the y-axis represents the number of items with that demand.

2. I stumbled across it by accident, as I was searching in class to find what percentage of CDs are sold by Wal-Mart. (The answer, by the way, is about 20%. Between them, Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy control about half the total CD market.)

Chuck D agrees with BRY: Snitch!

A few months ago, I wrote about how much I dislike the whole "stop snitching" campaign which is becoming increasingly prominent. The idea is that witnesses and victims of crimes should not cooperate with police, because apparently, felons should have the right to commit their crimes without interference from police or affected members of the community.

An article on the Reuters wire discusses how this attitude (and the deadly retributions that it encourages against "snitches") is hindering the prosecution of violent crime.

They talked to Chuck D, of Public Enemy, one of the more socially conscious musicians of any genre. He said, "I support snitches. If a person is cancerous to society, then a snitch is sometimes the best solution, with an army behind him."

Way to call it, Chuck D. People who are perpetrating violent crime are a cancer to society, and should be dealt with. Hopefully, more people will start to see it this way.

Getting back to good

Well, a stressful two or three week period is finally coming to a close, and I can return to my comfortable slacker existence. Last week, I had two midterm exams. This week, I had to help deliver a two hour presentation and turn in the rough draft of a group paper in another class.

All in all, it went ok. The midterms weren’t as miserable as I thought they might be, and the paper and presentation came together pretty well. In fact, it ended up being highly entertaining during the first half, when we performed a skit recreating the events surrounding the deal we were analyzing. Everything would have been perfect were it not for the absolutely asinine questions with which we were interrupted every couple minutes. There were two girls who were particularly irritating, with constant questions about the internal motivations of the parties. These are things we don’t know, and we made this pretty clear. But that was too much for them to comprehend, as they gave us bitchy looks for failing to answer their questions to our satisfaction.

Despite the relatively positive conclusion to our work together, our group of eight people has been the real pain in my life. Of course, with any group of this size, there will be good members and bad members. We ended up, I think, with a pretty standard bell-curve distribution of quality.

I have to admit that I felt guilty because I didn’t feel like I was pulling my share of the weight in the project, especially early on. I was distracted by my midterms, and sick – not to mention unmotivated. So I was generally dodging work and not being nearly as reliable as I would like to be. It’s not that I want to be the group superstar, it’s just that I’ve been in enough groups with people who are flakes, and it’s no fun. Fortunately, at the end, I was able to make some major contributions, so I felt better.

The real problem was this dude named Jesus. Now I know it may be inappropriate, but I love people named Jesus. It’s just so great – it’s like you’re named after god. In fact, you kind of are. Besides, it gives rise to lots of good jokes. fn1. Anyway, the guy is a total flake. He never gave us any of the work he was supposed to do.

He also never showed up at group meetings. This past weekend (when we were doing the bulk of the work of assembling the paper and writing the presentation), he supposedly had a family situation to take care of. Now I understand that things come up, but when you’ve consistently been unreliable, it’s hard to cut any slack.

So what I really wanted to do was write a post called either “Waiting for Jesus” or “Is Jesus going to come?” It just seemed to perfectly encapsulate what was going on, with a nice degree of humor too. But I didn’t write the posts, fearing that it would be slightly sacrilegious.

Oh, one final note about Jesus. He signs all his emails “Jesus!”, as if the exclamation point makes the fact that he’s going to miss yet another meeting not quite so bad.

1. I realize that Jesus is a name primarily used in Spanish-speaking cultures. However, I can’t really see it as racially insensitive to get a kick out of it. After all, Jesus means the same thing in Spanish as it does in English. Just because it’s more common for Spanish-speakers to name their kids after the Son of God doesn’t mean that I can’t find it humorous. Now, on the other hand, if I were taking a foreign name that happens to sound like an English word with a different meaning, then that would be insensitive.

Inane Comment of the Day

“It really stinks to stay home with your kids, especially when you are highly educated and think you should be out using your talents.”  This, according to some guy in my class.

While I’m sure many stay-at-home moms feel that way, I’m not really sure a blanket statement like that is wise, especially coming from some dude.

MIA Exam

My late seminar got off to a great start when, just before class started, the professor said (while standing in front of the whole class), “N, did you turn in an exam [midterm] last week?”  

I said I had, but was immediately somewhat worried – who wouldn’t be?  The prof is like, “Oh, don’t  worry.”  

I cracked back, “I already am!”  Seriously.  How does the freaking professor lose my exam when it was in the stack with all the other exams?  And why shouldn’t I be worried – about her competence, if nothing else?

The class got even better when she informed us that we have to stay an extra 15 minutes to make up time we missed a couple weeks ago.  Yippee.  I already enjoy this class so much, and I’m thrilled I get to spend extra time here.

Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head

I was running late as I left my apartment my seminar this afternoon, and forgot my umbrella.  I knew rain was in the forecast, but of course, it wasn’t raining at that time – well, it was only drizzling – so I didn’t want to take the time to go back upstairs and get my rain gear.  

Now, going from my first seminar to the second, the rain is pouring down.  And it’s not just hard rain – it’s the huge, cold drops pelting down on my bare head.  I feel rather foolish, and I am going to get rather wet after class tonight.  

A Perfect Storm

Well, apparently a couple cheerleaders for the Carolina Panthers got busted for fighting with nightclub patrons in Tampa. Why? It seems the ladies were in a bathroom stall, uh..."getting to know each other." People waiting in line for the bathroom objected to the fact that they were hogging the stall.

More information here.

Clearly, this is basically the confluence of many male fantasies, including cheerleaders, lipstick lesbians, etc.

So where did they go wrong? If they had just conducted their extra-curricular activities in the men's bathroom, I don't think ANYONE would have objected to how long they were spending in there.

Silly cheerleaders.

Mr. Saturday Night Special

Don't worry folks, this post isn't about a cheap gun. It's just talking about Saturday night activities and staying with the Lynyrd Skynyrd theme from the Sweet Home Kentucky post.

Today was a glorious day, I must say. After church, we skipped out on what promised to be a pretty horrible afternoon of meetings and got us some tasty half-priced Indian food from Baluchi's. I actually got an entree which I had never ordered before -- the Matar Mushroom. It was so good, with nicely spiced sauce.

We wanted to meet J2E in the park for some Wiffle ball action, but by the time we ate, got dessert, got back to the west side, changed, and got back to the park, the wiffle ball game was almost over. I must say I hate this early darkness thing.

From the park, we wandered to over to K1's place, stopping at Hollywood Video to rent the always-classic Dodgeball.

At K1's place, everyone ate popcorn. But wait a second guys! Aren't you supposed to eat the popcorn during the movie??


And what about me? I'm slaving away in the kitchen, making brownies!


At least my baby will come give me some love.

p.s. - I never got any popcorn. *sob!*

After eating pizza and the aforementioned brownies, E, J2, and S1 prepare to watch the movie.


J1, meanwhile, was having problems with her ears clogging up (she's sick), so she tried to clear them by putting a cup with hot water up to her ear. It was E's magic remedy. Not sure if it really worked.


After Dodgeball was done and everyone else had left, K1 and I crashed on the couch to watch some Invader Zim.


It was a fun night. But I shouldn't have eaten brownies. I'm feeling sick again. This crazy cold absolutely refuses to leave my body. I think it's time for an exorcism.

Friends don't let friends...

This girl just got on the train sporting BAD camel toe. And, she was with friends (girls). Friends don't let friends go out with camel toe!

Sweet Home Kentucky?

So I saw new ads for KFC (aka Chicken Capital USA) tonight. The backing track is Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama."

Now, I realize KFC officially changed its name from Kentucky Fried Chicken (abbreviated KFC) to just "KFC." fn1 Regardless, "Sweet Home Alabama" just doesn't seem like the right song for a restaurant named after Kentucky.

1. Contrary to a popular internet hoax, this was not because they use genetically-modified chicken and therefore are not allowed to use the word "chicken" in their name.

El Duderino

There's this great scene in The Big Lebowski where The Dude meets The Big Lebowski. The Dude explains, "I am not 'Mr. Lebowski'. You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing."

Well, if I were in The Big Lebowski, I would be saying "El Duderino" all the time, because I'm certainly not into the whole brevity thing. This point, of course, is obvious to regular readers of this blog.

This is currently posing a problem for me on my take-home exam. It's two questions.... and limited to 1,400 words. Now when I burp, I record it using 100 words. So this whole word limit is creating a problem.

On the one hand, it's a positive, because it means I don't have to do as much work. The negative, however, is that I feel like I'm doing incredibly crappy analysis, because the prof wants us to address dozens of issues in very limited space. You can't cover anything in depth -- I feel like I mention things and then have to move on immediately.

My problem at this instant is that I can't write anything. I have two hours twenty-five minutes to write 700 words. Wouldn't be a problem, if I knew what to write....

The worst kind of test

I just got done with my Financial Accounting midterm. What an absolutely miserable experience, and how foolish I am for ever signing up in the first place.

First of all, it was a Scantron, multiple-choice test. How retarded is that? I haven't taken a multiple choice test since probably my sophomore year of college. Second, it was closed book. Call us law students spoiled, but we don't do closed book tests (this is, in fact, my first closed book test in all of law school).

The reason is simple. The point of law school is not to become an expert on some topic so that you can mindless spit up the knowledge you memorized on a test. It's impossible to become an expert on any area of law in one semester, and even if you did, the law is constantly changing. Instead, the classes are supposed to provide you with a background of the key concepts of the area of law, along with ways of thinking about problems in that field. fn1.

Consequently, there is no point in having a closed-book test where the goal is to memorize everything. If you need to refresh your memory on some specific point, it's similar to what you'll do throughout your legal career: Look it up. Besides, the theory is that law school exams are so demanding that you better have a pretty good grasp on all the material going in, because you'll never have time to look it up during the exam. fn2.

For a class in financial accounting, there is even less reason to have the exam be closed-book. The goal of the class is not to make us accountants. No one expects that we could audit a company at the end of the semester. We're learning about how accounting works so we can more effectively analyze deals we encounter. This means that we need to understand big-picture points, not minutiae.

Of course, the most minute details were what the professor decided to test. It wasn't just that we needed to have learned the basic overview information. He was asking about tiny details that were throw-away points barely mentioned in class or in the materials. One question referred specifically to a one-page reading assignment in the coursepack.

So it was the worst kind of test. No sense of scale or focus on the most important points. Oh, and did I mention that it was multiple choice?

fn1 - Whether law school actually does this effectively is another question.

fn2 - I haven't necessarily found this to be true, but whatever.

Pr0n alert!

Apparently, I need to be careful blog-surfing during class.

Bored, with a headache, and tired of studying for my midterm (which comes up in less than two hours), I decided to go blog surfing. I clicked the "next blog" button.

The first site that was displayed featured, at the top of the page, a shot of a woman from behind, bent over, with her thong around her thighs, giving the viewer an unimpeded shot of....well....do I really have to spell it out for you? Worse yet, this site somehow had gotten rid of the Blogger bar, which meant that I couldn't just click "next blog" to get away from it. So a quick Alt+F4 solved that problem.

I should have known better, but I decided to try again. A few blogs in, I got a picture of a nude guy, from behind, twisted slightly to the side to accentuate the bum. This time, there was the bold headline "His ass is SO tight!"

At least, blog pr0n seems to be gender balanced.

Sights of the Day

On the way to class, a girl was leaning over, puking vigorously into the gutter. I'm not quite sure what was going on there. I mean, I hope she was ok -- it's 4 pm. It's not quite time to be drunk yet.

Meanwhile, we are watching what is possibly one of the worst power-point presentations I've ever seen when we are in class. It seriously looks like a web page designed by a middle-aged crazy lady who really likes cute clip-art. Or, alternatively, like the header of this site here. Anyway, back to this power-point. The general philosophy in making it seemed to be "If you can find room for one more irrelevant graphic, put it in!"

"Pro-lesbian advocacy group"

I am sick and tired of ranting, right-wing extremists. They seem to be able to find something to criticize in everyone who doesn't conform to every point of their orthodoxy.

Believe it or not, this is not a rant about the Harriet Miers withdrawal, and the ensuing nomination of a right-wing, activist judge in her place. It's all about a fashion show.

A Catholic school was planning to do a fashion show/fundraiser, featuring American Girl apparel and dolls. fn1.

However, they've now cancelled it, in response to pressure from two far-right advocacy groups (the American Family Association, which sees the "gay agenda" in everything in America, and the Pro-Life Action League).

This is so stupid. Their whole problem is that American Girl supports Girls Inc., formerly known as Girls Clubs of America. This organization has been around for more than 140 years (but should not be confused with the Boys and Girls Club of America). So what's wrong with Girls Inc.? Well, apparently, they don't condemn girls who happen to be struggling with their sexuality. And they provide a full-featured sex ed, rather than some close-minded, celibacy only joke.

This, apparently, makes Girls Inc. "a pro-abortion, pro-lesbian advocacy group," according to the AFA.

The moral of the story: if you don't brow-beat everyone with the political viewpoints that the AFA believes you should hold, you are a pro-abortion, pro-lesbian advocacy group.

I just wish these far-right freaks would quit worrying about what everyone else is saying or doing and focus on their own lives, and they intolerance they are spreading.

1. I have never understood why people are so into the whole "American Girl" thing, which I find purely obnoxious. But I am neither a woman nor a child, putting me squarely outside the target market for this product, so don't take my word for it.