Saturday under the Big Top.

Because I have so many things to do today, and because one of the items on my list is the grading 25 personal response essays, I decided that I first needed to upload three new pod casts.

Procrastination. How you gonna perfect it if you never practice?

It's another birthday post!

But it's a really important one.

I had all sorts of pictures to thrill him with, but I couldn't figure out a way to do that and not bore the hair off people who don't really know either one of us. If I'm going to be running off readers, I want it to be because I said something shocking.

So. Happy Birthday to my baby brother, the guy who pummelled me every day until I moved away from home. I bet you still fight like a girl.

I wish I could see you and torment you every day. Have a birthday corn dog on me.

Photos, clockwise from top: Butch at four, with his mother, Helen Gurley Brown; At three, already trying to start something--you can plainly see that his butt cheek is on my side; Easy Rider Butch; Miami Vice Butch; Butch with his trusty chihuahua caddy (and very possibly the reason for his golf score).

Faster than a speeding ovum.

People who know me (even a little bit), know that I have a tendency to say even those things that would be better left unsaid. But in my own defense, you should know that I almost never let things fall out that are patently unkind.

Lately, though, I've noticed a decrease in my already weakened censoring abilities. I have on occasion been actually thinking the words, "Don't say it," even as the offending tidbit was rolling off my tongue. It doesn't help that most of my unfiltered comments are directed at people who have no first-hand experience with the menopausal phenomenon. The victims of my faux pas are so obviously taken aback that they may as well just say the words, "crazy old lady," and be done with it.

My friend Tawana is having a difficult time of it as well, but she seems to believe that the breakdown of her heretofore fully-functioning filtering device has endowed her with special menopausal powers.

Apparently, she's become indestructible.

This month alone she has *(1) blatantly defied an airline attendant's direct order, (2) behaved obstinately in response to a traffic cop's instructions, (3) ridiculed a stranger (to his face) about the condition of his unmatched socks, and (4) berated the checkout clerk at the grocery store for never-ever saying "thank you" at the conclusion of their transactions. I'll give you a moment to ponder the irony of this last example.

If I had tried any of the above, I would be escorted off the plane, carried away to jail, cursed, and asked to leave without my Diet Cokes.

Because you just can't pull that crap down here--special powers or no. If a flight attendant instructs you to close up your cell phone, you might buy some time with, "No thank you, I don't believe I care to," but you will do it, and be damn glad for the opportunity. Don't let the corn-pone accent fool you--folks around here just don't truck with any of that Northern sassiness.

Tawana's a transplant, so she knows this stuff. But she's allowed herself to forget, and has lost sight of the fact that you have to use the power of the dying ovum for good--never evil. Consequently, every time she comes home, I stay worried to death for her. I just don't think it's truly dawned on her that her special powers won't work here on her home planet of Kryptonite. One of these trips back, her old dried-up-Miss-Haversham eggs are going to get her into real trouble.

It's just a matter of time before someone wraps her up in her own cape and Billy Joe McAllisters her right off the I-40 Bridge. And I'm going to be powerless to do a thing about it.

photo, Laura Kennedy

*I will not be describing the conversation that took place on Wednesday between Tawana and a coworker when the latter made the unfortunate decision to park in Tawana's parking space because I love Tawana and don't want you to think she's an ass.

When knowing too many lesbians is a liability.

During conversation the other day, I made a comment about someone being "a sister."

Among my lesbian friends, "family," means that you belong to the family of gay culture. Thus, a sister is code for lesbian. Why I felt it relevant to point this out in conversation is lost to history, but I believe making the distinction must have been pertinent to the conversation, since I am not in the habit of outing my friends and acquaintances.

However, the aforementioned comment about my friend, the sister, was met with a cold stare from my conversational partner.

"I'm sorry," she said. "But what does your friend being African American have to do with anything?"

Sometimes, I wish the stuff I made up was this good.

photo, Neke Moor

Why practice doesn't necessarily always make perfect.

I recently discovered New York Public Radio's Radio Lab. Last week, while trying to catch up on all the episodes I'd missed, I heard (what was to me) an absolutely amazing fact.

But first (and the reason you need to know this will become apparent), I want to tell you that I earned a solid A in both Biology and Bio Lab. I was able to do so by virtue of the world's most primo set of flash cards--a full 8 1/2 inch stack of the most comprehensive cards ever compiled for Kirkpatrick's Biology course. I spent at least as much time during the semester creating these cards as I did studying them. This stack of cards was so perfect, in fact, that I was able to dine out on the price they fetched for the entirety of the following semester. For all I know, they are still in circulation. As I said, they were guaranteed grade-A flash cards.

The problem with flash cards, though, is that the information comes in, takes a look around, sees that there's nobody else there worth being seen with, and then vamooses. No sign that it's ever even been there--no forgotten pair of sunglasses, no wet ring on the coffee table, no lipstick-stained cigarette butt in the ashtray. Pooft. So, virtually every bit of information I memorized for that class is long gone. You'd never even know I had taken a biology course, much less aced it. Which explains how I was able to be amazed by a fact I had apparently already learned.

Did you know that every man passes on to his male child an exact copy of his Y chromosome? That child then passes on the exact copy to his male child, and so on. So that, over the course of a thousand years, that same Y chromosome gets passed down through the generations, and unless a mutation occurs, all the male descendants possess an exact copy of Big Daddy's original Y chromosome?

This totally and completely blows my mind. I can't even get my hair to do the same thing two days in a row. And as for my progeny--most of the time she's trying to figure out which shopping mall I stole her from.

So way to go, men. Way to pass down your essence through the centuries. Now if I could just have a program please, so I can tell which of you are part of the same bloodline.

I think I may have finally figured out why I keep marrying the same men, over and over again.

photo, Jean Scheijen.

Excuse me. Are you going to keep that?

I'm not really into things. You might not know that to look at me or my home, since I have so many of them, but I'm not attached to them in any real, sentimental way. I'm just incredibly apathetic and don't want to deal with getting rid of them.

The one positive step I've taken in the past 6 months toward freeing myself from the shackles of over-ownership has been to issue a self-imposed moratorium on the purchasing of new stuff--notwithstanding the bloodthirsty feather pillows I purchased last month and their down-alternative replacements I bought on Saturday. And the new car I bought two weeks ago. And the--well, crap. Never mind.

But mostly, I've just been bringing stuff home that has a limited half-life. Paper towels. Hair creme. Diet Cokes. I don't need to haul anything else into the house that will ultimately represent another decision I have to make. When I'm sick of it, or when it doesn't work like it should, or when it's used up, I don't want to have to look at it and wonder, "What do I do with this now?" I know how to deal with an empty dental-floss container. I don't know what to do with the five throw-pillows that no longer go with my swanky decor, the George Foreman grill I never use, 300+ audio cassettes from the eighties, and every bank statement I've ever received.

If I can't pick it up and deal with it while on autopilot, I just truck it out to the garage. This solution works fine for me as long as I don't have to put my car away. If I ever have to hide my ride from an ex-husband or the repo man, I'm going to be out of luck.

So I've decided that what I really need to do is "work a trade."

When I was a child, the men in my family would loll about on the porch while the women prepared the big holiday or Sunday meal. Once or twice a year, the opportunity presented itself for one or more of them to work just such a trade. By the time the food was on the table, my mother might discover that my father had traded her favorite end-table for a coon dog, or that she was now the lucky owner of a new (to her) horse-head-sized, acorn-shaped ashtray in exchange for the ladder she thought important to the repainting of the house but to which my father objected just on general principle. (I was never clear if it was the ladder or the painting assignment to which he objected.)

The result of all this trading was that none of us was ever sure just what we owned outright. My brother and I took to parking our bikes at the neighbor's house, just in case my dad decided they were worth more in trade than in keeping us out of his hair. You may not be in a position to remember this, but a kid in the seventies without a bike had absolutely no street cred whatsoever.

Anyway, I happen to know Tawana owns a painting that Carol absolutely abhors and an almost-empty garage. So I'm getting Carol on the phone right this second, and by the time Tawana reads this post, it will be too late. I'll have a mediocre painting I can hide behind a door, and Tawana can figure out what to do with twenty-seven years of bank statements.

And therein lies the beauty of "working a trade."

photo, Andrew Beierle

Please don't tie up the phone. I'm expecting a call from AARP asking me to function as their spokesperson any moment now.

Well, here's something brand new to worry about.

Did you know you can do something in your sleep and wake up the next morning looking like one of the zombies from Night of the Living Dead?

It's true.

This morning, my right eye is bright red and filled with blood--and yet, I've suffered no trauma. As far as I can tell, I haven't yet had the stroke I keep threatening my writers with. And that aneurysm I've been expecting--the sudden pain in my frontal lobe that causes me to grab at my noggin and fall motionless to the floor--well, so far, that's just a dazzling, future opportunity.

According to the interwebs (my first source of information when yet another something new and frightening has just happened to my body), you can blow the blood vessels in your eye with a minor cough or sneeze. Just like that.

Now I don't just have to concern myself with the possibility of strangling on my own spit as I sleep and peeing the bed, I can stay awake nights wondering if a little bit of cat dander (or one of those marauding, killer, pillow feathers) is going to trigger a sneeze and blow my peepers right out of my head.

It just keeps getting better and better.

Nowhere is safe.

A friend's daughter--a perfectly lovely and attractive person by anyone's measure--was standing in front of one of the campus buildings last weekend, waiting for her professor. This seems to me to be quite an honorable thing for a young person to be doing on a Sunday afternoon, and one would think, karmacally safe.

Suddenly, a car rounds the corner, driving much too fast. As it passes, an unknown female voice shouts, "You fat, stupid cow!" and the car speeds away.

My friend's daughter looks around, completely stunned, and I assume, praying that at least one other person is standing nearby so she can reassure herself that the insult was intended for someone else. It's already splashed up all over her; the most she can hope for at this point is a possible alternative target for the malicious stranger.

Unfortunately, the only other person in sight is a young man, leaning against the building and smoking a cigarette. She looks at him and he looks at her--for what feels like a very long time.

"Man, that's harsh," he finally says.

Another attempt to get by with something less than original content.

Because I've been suffering from the world's worst case of poor time management, and what I most wanted in the whole world last night was to lay down in my bed at a time that would help ensure that the first words out of my mouth this morning weren't "Good Lord, is that the time?"

And what do you care where it came from, as long as it's funny?

Originally published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

STORIES THAT WOULD HAVE TURNED OUT DIFFERENTLY IF THE PROTAGONISTS HAD HAD CELL PHONES BY PETER NORVIG

Hi, it's Patsy.
I went out walkin'
After midnight
Out in the moonlight
Just like we used to do.
I'm always walkin'
After midnight
Searchin' for you.
Yeah ... Uh-huh...
OK, I'll meet you there.
Bye.

- - - -

ESTRAGON: You're sure it was this evening?
VLADIMIR: What?
ESTRAGON: That we were to wait.
VLADIMIR: He said Saturday. (Pause.) I think.
ESTRAGON: You think.
VLADIMIR: I must have made a note of it. (He fumbles in his pockets, which are bursting with miscellaneous rubbish.) What'll we do?
(Beeping sound as ESTRAGON dials number.)
VOICE OF RECORDING ON PHONE: You've reached the number for Mr. Godot. Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won't come this evening but surely will tomorrow.
ESTRAGON: Well, shall we go?
VLADIMIR: Yes, let's go.

- - - -

ROMEO:
News from Verona!
How now, Balthasar?
Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar?
How doth my lady?
Is my father well?
How fares my Juliet?
That I ask again,
For nothing can be ill if she be well.

BALTHASAR:
Then she is well, and nothing can be ill.
Her body sleeps in Capel's monument,
And her immortal part with angels lives.
I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault
And presently took post to tell it you.
O, pardon me for bringing these ill news,
Since you did leave it for my office, sir.

ROMEO:
Is it e'en so?
Then I defy you, stars!
But soft! What SMS through yonder RAZR breaks?

SMS ON ROMEO'S PHONE:
i'm ok --
poison fake
rofl
cul8r
:-*

Fightin' words.

In my minimal study of sociology in college, I learned that naming is power, and that one definitely wants to be them what is doing the naming, as opposed to them what's being named.

And, if I may mix my behavioral sciences a bit, that's pretty much the psychology behind the talky-types like me who just can't leave the subject of menopause alone.

I may not be able to control it, but I can sure as hell call it out into the street for a rumble.

photo, Deon Staffelbach

Testing, one, two, three.

No doubt you are all expecting new content, as well you should. It's Monday morning, after all.

And while I do have new and exciting posts in the works, I'm afraid that I spent the bulk of my time this weekend recording and mixing the new podcasts. So much time, in fact, that my home office looks like something Phil Spector just stepped out of on his way to pick up more vodka.

It's littered with empty booze bottles, half-smoked reefers and the crushed butts of unfiltered cigarettes. I just sent a half-dressed groupie out for coffee, and as soon as she returns, I'm going to start another mix. This is the most fun I've had in months.

I've recorded podcasts for selected posts from the archives, and you can find them with their associated posts and below. Eventually, you'll also be able to download them from itunes, but first they have to go through their review process. I'll let you let you know when that's a go.

So for now, this is all you get. If you've got comments, let me have 'em. Obviously, I'm fearless.

photo, David Lok

The extremely righteous music on these podcasts is a remix of Feel My Pain Miss Jane--words, music, production, and performance by David Henderson.

Hear a podcast of # 98, Just wrong. In so many ways (from 9/12/07):

Powered by Podbean.com
Hear a podcast of #88, Poke a stick in that puppy and give it to me to go (from 8/ 30/07):

Powered by Podbean.com

Hear a podcast of # 5, Six Little Words (from 5/27/07):

Powered by Podbean.com

Oh, the technology.

Beginning Monday, September 17, you can download audio podcasts of your favorite posts. Download when you visit mundanejane, or subscribe via itunes. Now you can hear the voice behind the blog.

Don't even pretend you aren't curious.









Photo by Georgios Wollbrecht

100 posts in. It's too late to back out now.

"You know, you really should have a blog."

A lot of people are kicking themselves about now.

If any of them had known, not a one would have been so encouraging. And yet, each and every one of them insisted, at least before the fact, that I really should have a blog.

You just can't please some people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been insufferable--taking notes during everyday conversation ("Hold on a sec. Can you spell that?"), or calling Tawana or Muffin Uptown to ask again what was that that extremely funny thing they said yesterday. An awful lot of the conversations I'm having lately seem to begin with the words, "Listen, you can't blog this..." And my poor mother--I would feel bad for her if she didn't represent some of my best material.

Then there's the lying and the stealing. Wait, I think I meant to call that the creative license necessary to make for a better story and the cultivation of ideas from my blogging friends. Yeah, that sounds better.

The other busy and important publishing professionals stay quite simply scared to death. They never know what I'm subject to say when we're sharing a conference table and am sitting close enough for any one of them to reach over and thump me in my head for my trouble. All the many things I might type into my computer at night to splash all over them out on the world wide webs keeps most of them afraid to boot up their computers in the morning.

All of you, just relax. You just have to assume that if I haven't ruined your reputation, embarrassed you into hiding, or published your bank account or social security numbers over the course of 100 posts, you're probably safe.

Unless you think your social security number might get a laugh? Wait a minute, I may know how to write that...

Photo by www.anna-OM-line.com

I think I'm ready to be taken back to my room now.

I bet you were worried I'd fallen victim to another nefarious wiener on a stick. I thought I had already posted for the day, but as it turns out, I hadn't even written the thing.

You'd think that, having bought a singularly orange car, I could easily pick said car from among the hundreds of other cars spread all around the Target parking lot. Probably so, were I not looking up and down the rows for the gold car I used to drive.

I won't be sharing with you how long I searched before I remembered.

photo, Emma Baxter

Just wrong. In so many ways.

Okay, I wasn't going to, because it just seemed too easy. But the more I thought about it, the less able I was to walk away. So if you have a problem with a cheap shot every now and then, take it up with the management.

I know you heard about this. A 53-year-old Colorado man has come down with a rare form of lung disease that his doctors think was caused by eating butter-flavored microwave popcorn every day for over a decade. As a matter of fact, this man so loved his popcorn that he sometimes prepared and ate it twice a day. Apparently, he contracted the disease because it was his habit to open the bag and deeply inhale the faux buttery smell wafting out the top (which just so happened to also contain some sort of particulate matter that, as it turns out, really should not be inhaled).

Yeah, yeah, yeah--you already know that I don't need yet another thing that's going to give me cancer just because it tastes great and I don't know nothing about no self control. But you can get that story anywhere. You didn't come here for that.

Here's the thing I can't stop thinking about. Every single day for 10 years this guy's wife is watching him get up from the couch and meander his way into the kitchen to pop up some corn. He probably even says something exactly like that on his way there. "Well. I think I'll just pop me some corn." Although he may say it like it just then occurred to him, he says it exactly the same way, every single day. Because when you're living with someone, eventually you notice that they have a tendency to do the same things, over and over again.

She watches as he takes the package out of the wrapper, punches open the microwave, squints at the bag for a really long time to be sure that he's reading the This Side Up properly, sets it into the oven, and then jabs COOK-3-0-0-START. He's doing it and she's watching him do it at least once, sometimes twice, every single live-long day.

When the popping stops, he opens the bag and puts his nose down into all that third-degree-quality, pseudo-butter-smelling steam that's pouring up out the top. Each. And. Every. Time. And maybe he's scalded the brains right out of his frontal lobe a couple of times, but by the time he's popping again, he's forgotten, and so he just keeps right on poking his naked nose right down into that bag. His wife may have even said on occasion, "You know, that can't be good for you."

What she's not saying, but is almost certainly thinking by about the twenty-second thousandth time she's seen him do this, is that she's going to either by-God kill him dead or die herself if she has to watch this whole process go down even one more time.

Because that's just how it is when you're living with someone.

photo, Leonardo Morales

Hear a podcast of this post:



Powered by Podbean.com

The extremely righteous music on this podcast is a remix of Feel My Pain Miss Jane, words, music, production, and performance by David Henderson.

CityWendy, where you been all my life?

I read an awful lot of blogs. I read craft blogs to see what's cool and who's found an easier way to do it (and to see if I can talk them into letting me publish their book); I read design blogs just because they make me happy; I read the shopping blogs because there's just too much stuff to find it all myself, and I read the cleverly-written blogs because they are so cleverly-written.

I keep track of the blogs I'm following with as much dedication as I do most things. Which is to say, if I sleep on the wrong side of my face, I may wake up the next day having forgotten that I had ever seen a particular blog in the first place. And then it's gone forever.

Most of the other busy and important publishing professionals I know also look at a lot of blogs. And everybody wants to be the one who finds the next big thing. I'm no exception. I'm all about hogging a little glory, no matter how petty and insignificant.

But my friend Mary has a sixth sense about these things. As soon as I lose track of a blog, that blogger will do something so incredible that it results in the interweb version of "Stop the presses!" And that's when Mary will send me a link with "Have you seen this?" in the subject line.

When she does this, I just want to wrestle her to the ground and say, "I. found. it. first."

But I don't. They frown on that kind of thing where I work (and Mary would get really bent out of shape).

So. That's my big buildup to encourage you to read ohmythatsawesome if you haven't already. The girls who write it are clever all the time, and fall-in-the-floor-and-flop funny sometimes. And so far, I've been able to remember that they have one of my favorite blogs.

And Mary, I found 'em first.

Oh yes, I see what you mean. I suppose I could have just had the air conditioning fixed.

I was going to elaborate on my new car buying experience, back before I was sidetracked by an unanticipated trip to hell and back.

I have a friend who buys a new car every couple of years; she starts researching in the Spring, and then, right before the new models come out in the Fall, she has her car detailed and heads over to the dealership to negotiate a really smart trade.

I, on the other hand, simply wait until somebody points out that my tires are going bald. Someone will have to call this to my attention though, because unless something is demanding to be fed, petted, or paid, I can't be bothered. And anybody knows that it's way more fun to buy a new car than a new set of tires. Or to have the air conditioning serviced.

So once I've decided to buy a new car, I usually just pull into the first lot I pass on my way home from work. I will stop to grab the maps, emergency tampons, and CDs from the glovebox, but other than that, they take possession of the car in its functioning condition. In other words, I let them deal with the empty Diet Coke bottles and Hostess Cupcake packages rolling around in the back. And on the passenger side floorboard. And in the trunk.

As someone who loves being the center of attention, I know that nothing gets folks' attention like a business transaction in the thousands of dollars. There's no competing with that easy, back-and-forth banter that happens when one person knows the other is about to make them a lot of money. I knew I could pretty much count on getting to a quick first-name basis with a perfectly dressed, perfect stranger, provided I was willing to give him a copy of my driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance. Which, it so happens, I most certainly was.

But oh, but what an unfulfilling major-purchase experience I had. Perhaps my salesperson should give up his career in the car business and go back to college. True, he did make the sale, but you should know that I was pretty much prepared to make a deal with a monkey, provided he had the keys and was authorized to give the go for a test drive. But this guy? He totally ruined the very best part of the whole process.

He Ma'amed all the flirt right out of me.

A trio of birthday haiku for The Boy. Because when is one haiku ever sufficient?

A birthday haiku
will have to do until the
mailman brings your gift.

21 years' old
what an excellent reason
to walk to the bar.

Pure grain alcohol
and a birthday pinata
aren't a good combo.

photo, C. Glass

Sometimes, all you have to do is ask.

You might remember this whiny post from July, in which I bemoaned the fact that I just couldn't seem find the things I thought I really needed, even though I had the money to buy them and the fortitude to search high and low for them all over the interweb. (And thanks, by the way, to those of you who wanted me to hush badly enough to send me your suggestions.)

And then I found this comment from BJ Leiderman on the dirtyfrenchnovel blog (relax; it isn't):

Hi All,

BJ Leiderman, public radio theme composer here. Interesting you mention ringtones, because I have been planning on releasing my first ringtone package for a while now.

If you are interested in new, original ringtones for Marketplace, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!, and you think others will also be interested too, would you please email me through my website: http://www.bjleiderman.com/

Many thanks for listening,

BJ

Coincidence? I don't think so.

photo, Vjeran Lisjak

Oh, the irony.

Oh yes, there's irony, but there's heartbreak, also. Witness:

On Monday, I bought a new car.

On Monday night, I ate something evil.

On Tuesday, I threw up in my new car.

On Wednesday, I prayed for death.

The culprit? A corn dog.

Thanks for waiting.

I'll try to be back tomorrow.








photo, Nick Cowie

How to get asked to leave the National Organization of Women.

There's really only one time when I actually miss having a man in the house. Well, actually there are two, but I'm not doing that here.

I've been needing a new car, but the unexpected death of my air conditioning forced my hand. I had hoped to wait until I'd had a little time to research my choices, but on the way home from work on Thursday, my head burst into flames. I'm not sure anyone will notice my new look, except that without the eyebrows, it's more difficult to communicate just how confused I am about whatever the hell it is they are talking about. And in business, you know, it really is all about communication.

If there had been a man who was convenient to call, I would have phoned one up this weekend to accompany me to the car lot. I fully expect the NOW people to demand their membership card back since I've said that out loud, but it does seem to me that after all these years of giving them my money, they could have at least sponsored some sort of legislation that would enable me to walk into a car dealearship without automatically loosing 15 IQ points.

A girl with burnt hair, no eyebrows, and no ride doesn't really have the 15 points to spare.

photo, Constantin Jurcut

Wanna see your name in print?

The Design Department at Leisure Arts is kicking off a new Christmas book series, and nothing and no one is safe until they settle on a plan of attack. I know I don't come off as a woman who is easily intimidated, but truly, these people scare me to death.

I went to fetch a Diet Coke from the machine on Friday afternoon and by the time I had returned, one of the designers had fashioned a Christmas card holder from my new Coach handbag. It's very cleverly done, and I'm sure will come in quite handy when all those season's greetings come pouring in, but now I don't have anywhere to carry my keys.

Fortunately, they've asked for my help finding people with Christmas ideas. This would be a good time to come to my rescue while also getting your name and idea published. There's no compensation if your idea is chosen, but you will get published credit, and then you'll be famous. Sort of.

Take a minute to consider the questions below and email your responses to one or more of them to me at mundanejane@gmail.com.

1. What are some of your family’s most memorable holiday traditions or activities?

2. What tips do you have to share about preparing for the Christmas holidays that help make them less stressful?

3. What is your favorite “must-have” holiday recipe that you prepare for your family or that you make for neighbors and friends as a gift?

4. What are some quick changes you make inside your home that help create a holiday feel?

5. What unique decorations do you enjoy displaying or making during Christmas?

6. What was the most memorable holiday party or gathering you ever attended?

7. Do you have any organizational tips for putting your Christmas items away?

Be sure and include your full name and the city and state in which you live in your email--just in case your contribution is chosen. Once you hit the send button, you're giving us permission to publish your idea if we like it, so be careful. You know what they say about fame.