Tightly Wound

The dreaded moment of realization: that "Parents" or "Parenting" is really Martha Stewart for Moms; that our life is over once we aren't glowing, pregnant, and exercising our nether regions preparing for our perfect, drug-free birth; that if we didn't create a multi-layered roundhouse birthday cake for our little boy's birthday there's always next year.

I still get this magazine (one of them, can't recall which) but I'm not sure why. Reading it is just a particular kind of self-mutilation I feel compelled to perform.

What the heck is a splice? Never mind, just leave me in blissful ignorance, scattering commas around willy-nilly wherever they look right to me.

If I had your hublet in front of me I might slap him. No, I'd probably just talk to him emphatically. Hopefully he will be kinder to his students than my daughter's teachers have been. They set up quizzes to weed out the kids who'd relied on Cliff's notes or whatever; the problem was that those study guides covered all the important, interesting things in the dadgum books. So the quizzes contained questions like "What did Pip's parents die of?" for Great Expectations; which nobody cares a rat's tail about because it doesn't matter. And my kid, who would die before she touched the Cliff's notes, but who reads for the story and not all the stupid irrelevant details, ends up with poor grades. Tell him not to do that.

Laura -

Don't panic. Film versions of books are often wildly divergent from the books themselves, and lend themselves easily to the "you should have read at least something resembling the assignment" quiz format. Quizzing around Cliff's Notes is a different thing altogether.

And read Eats, Shoots and Leaves for a nice definition of the splice. The semicolon is my friend.

There's a colon joke in there somewhere, but I think I'll pass ... er ... skip it.

I've TIVO'd the first episode of 4400 but haven't watched it yet. We're filling our Buffy/Angel void around here by watching Monk (which I highly recommend) and Deadwood (which you can play a fun game with your spouse while watching by counting the number of times the word c*cksucker is used by one of the characters). Not quite pure geekdom, I'm exploring Stargate SG-1 (which I've never watched before even though it's been on for something like 7 years) and the new Stargate Atlantis. I've only watched 2 episodes so far so I'm still trying to figure out all the backstory.