The Provident Cat is now on the scene.

Oh! Oh! Look at me! I'm dismissing Maureen Dowd

Contrary to this piece's subtitle, actually, I *can* dismiss Maureen Dowd--precisely because she is inflammatory and she is generally satisfied with being exclusively that. Traister says, "Dowd has clearly touched a nerve. And you only touch a nerve by telling a truth."

Well, pardon me, but what kind of bullshit is that? Sometimes you touch a nerve because the flesh has been scraped off by having the same old, rusty untruth scraped over it again and again. For instance, "Sex and the City" sociology jangles my nerves not because it's true, but because I'm so appalled at the notion of having complicated lives reduced to anything so facile that even Sarah Jessica Parker can narrate it.

When Salon runs "the trouble with feminism" (or "the trouble with men", or "the trouble with guys who don't wanna date me") pieces like this, I have to remind myself that this is the same magazine where Joan Walsh printed her "Actually, I do want to run the world, and what of it?" column in the wake of the NYT Magazine's piece on women opting out of careers. This magazine is capable of seeing through trend pieces and the memoirs of a narrow stratum of women. So how'd this pointless assemblage of quotations and would-be ahas get through again?

Oh, Tino, I will miss you. You, your fine play (particularly in actually troubling to field at first base), and your hotness (particularly your jawline and forearms).

Yankees Decline Option on Tino Martinez

The math of budgets and batting statistics means nothing to me, nothing compared to my love for Tino. I will not be reasoned out of it.

P.S. Please nobody write me stories about Tino Martinez snorting coke off a hooker's thigh at a Denny's in Kansas City. I don't wanna know. One of the perks about choosing non-pinups for meaningless crushes is that their venality is kept from public view. Let me enjoy that perk.

Target.

My email rant to them:

I have written before, once via the Planned Parenthood website and once in response to the defensive auto-reply I received in return. I'm writing now through your site, in my own words, in an attempt to communicate the seriousness of my sentiments.

I have been a loyal Target customer and had hoped to be one for a good while longer; your Flatbush Ave/Atlantic Terminal store is blocks from my home and I enjoy your selection. But until Target reverses its stance regarding dispensation of emergeny contraception, your company will not get a cent from me.

To be clear: I do not in any way regard as valid your contention that employees' civil rights are at stake. Would a muslim cashier at a Target with groceries be allowed not to scan bacon? That, after all, conflicts with Islam. But I seriously doubt you would send away a customer, or refer him or her to another store or butcher, in the event your employee's sincerely held religious beliefs were at risk. Or what if an employee's religious beliefs encourage homophobia? Would you allow gay customers to be turned away? And, would you allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for Viagra, or to sell condoms, to unwed men on the grounds that sex outside of marriage violates their beliefs?

Of course not. Because for one thing, you're a business and that counters profits. And for another thing, you're probably not interested in being sued.

Well, guess what? Singling out contraception as the one area where you will allow employees to impose themselves on customers shreds your wafer-thin civil rights argument. Whether the remaining reason is sexism on your part or mere cowardice, it ain't pretty. And I will not spend my money in a store that does not respect women's rights to have prescriptions filled immediately, without comment, intercession, deferral, relocation, or any other importunance. Pharmacists fill prescriptions. That is their function. Unless my prescriptions have contraindications, I expect the pharmacist to fill the prescription without any comment except a "Thank you and have a nice day" as I leave. Period.

Whatever the sex of the pharmacists involved, the only customers being punished for having the gall to fill a prescription are sexually active or raped women. That makes your policy, in operation, transparently sexist. All the hip multiculti ads in the world won't make up for that, and I'm sure you'll find that feeling is shared by a very large, very unhappy chunk of your customer base.

I have a jelly cabinet, bookshelves, some dvds, kitchen wares, a few birthday presents, and many Christmas gifts to buy. And I won't be buying any of them at Target until you reverse this ridiculous and unjust policy. To be clear: I haven't shopped at Best Buy in three years, and that was just because a single shipping clerk was rude. Your actual company is being absurd. That buys you decades of avoidance and bad word of mouth unless you set things right.

I hope you come to your senses and fix this.

Tonight, my roommates and I made bananas flambees, and they RULED. I don't know if we did everything exactly right, but we got the main points and the result was delicious Plus, I got to use my kitchen torch! We turned off the lights to watch the blue flames circling the dish--it was dessert AND entertainment. If you don't have a kitchen torch, I can't encourage you strongly enough to get one immediately.

Henceforth, any dessert that doesn't end with me dousing everything in cognac and firing up my torch is going to seem like a disappointment.