MSN Dating offers this helpful article: 9 romantic gestures that’ll knock her socks off.

Note to the relationship expert who titled this piece: Men are not trying to get women’s socks off.

Let us men know when you get to more relevant garments.

Thank you, that is all.

Remember all those times you couldn’t think of what to get those special someones on your gift-giving list? You thought they had everything?

You were wrong. Odds are, that special person doesn’t have one of these Subversive Cross-Stitch creations.

Until this Christmas, right?

Harvey at Bad Money speaks word punctuation to power:

The purpose of punctuation is to reproduce the pauses and vocal inflections of the spoken word, thus allowing the writer’s intended meaning to be made as clearly as possible.

It is a servant, not a master, so use it any way you wish, as long as it helps you get your point across.

Now, let him try to convince my mother-in-law, the former English teacher. Good luck, Harv. I’ll be behind you with a dust pan, ready to collect your pieces.

Over at Those Shirts.com, they’re sporting an advertisement whose filename is hlnshirt.jpg.

Don’t be fooled.

There is only one real hln, the PerfectWife:

Sure, some other InstaWife solutions sound easier (just add water), or more convenient, but there is no comparison.

Lileks today:

Big tot day, Mondays. No school, no Nana, just us – and since I decree that the TV shall be silenced after two morning programs, that means puzzles and books and coloring and painting and so on. Usually I have the radio or the news on while we play, but like I said last week, I hit a point where I can’t take it right now. I just can’t take another “we’re there for the oil” call. I can’t take another 37 minute discussion about whether the PDB said OBL wanted USA DOA PDQ. I browse the news sites and the blogs, then go play with my daughter for the rest of the morning. I think April will be my month off from marinating in the news 24-7, if only to get my blood-pressure down from hummingbird levels.

I am with him on this. I told Heather just this morning, before reading Lileks, that I don’t like listening to the radio for news or watching television. I don’t like the practiced sneers in the tones or the unsubtle narrative framework offered for the events. So I’ve stuck with the online news sources.

However, when I’m lost in the day to day hysteria of the 24 hour news cycle, I turn to an unlikely source for perspective. Back when I was an eBay dealer, I purchased a collection of Newsweek magazines, a single year from 1966-1967. I paid $2 for it, okay, and I made the $2 back in selling select issues. But that’s not the perspective: no, although Viet Nam was ramping up at the time, each week it was gloom and doom or hope. Granted, Viet Nam didn’t turn out that well, but the simple snapshot from the beginning of the conflict showed how poorly the media could predict the course in the early time period.

Contemporary media provide the same bark-level view of the forest. Still, I don’t enjoy the spoken news.

Although to be honest I can listen to the students on WSIE because they don’t have the fully practiced nuance of newscasters. Heck, in many cases, they lack inflection or even proper pronunciation. So I can take their version of radio news, which is just as well; I’d hate to have to change from Ross Gentile’s Standards in Jazz on the drive home from work.i

Dear women readers:

MSN Dating and Personals offers 7 sure signs he’s a mama’s boy. They are, to sum up:

1. If you’re talking to him on the phone, if his mother interrupts through call waiting as you tell him you’re not wearing underwear, he’ll talk to her instead.
2. He talks to her a lot on the phone.
3. He cancels a date in which you will not be wearing underwear to help her move furniture.
4. He quotes his mother a lot.
5. He compares you to his mother a lot.
6. His mother decorated his house.
7. His mother visits his home frequently.

Ladies, that’s a lot to remember. You want to know how to tell a mama’s boy, as depicted above, in one step? 1. Real men are beating him up right now. That’s a lot easier, isn’t it?

Besides, the minute you have announced to a real man that you have no underwear on, we’re on our way to meet you. We’re not going to talk to our mothers. We’re probably not even going to follow any conversation really well. If you say you’re feeling a draft and a man acknowledges call waiting at all, he’s not a mama’s boy, he’s trying to pass to spare her the pain of coming out.

At Encarta, Martha Brockenbrough takes pop/rock lyricists to task for their crimes against the language.

Unfortunately, although she has a point, grammarians tend to go a little easier on historical lyricists who butchered the language to make a rhyme or to get off on the right foot. There’s no word on whether old poets necessarily knew the rules they were breaking, either.

What was my point? Oh, cool grammar post. Go read it, Mz. Igert.

Sign on the studio door at the gym:

GX classes will be cancelled on Easter Sunday.

Why not go ahead and cancel them now? Why wait until Easter Sunday?

Sorry, that’s humor only a Grammar God would appreciate. If you’re a Grammar Master or lesser, e-mail me and I will explain it to you.

Pardon me while I cash in on the outrage, but:

Available in t-shirts or bumper stickers at Cafe Press.

My most beautiful wife and the light of my eyes and el fuego de mi corazón, I want to take a moment to explain this little scrip of paper before you find it on a dresser somewhere. It says, in my handwriting:

Melanie Thomas
(314) xxx-xxxx
meet Thurs. night

That’s Melanie at Thomas Construction regarding the work we’re about to have done. We should call her back to give her some additional information or to schedule an evening meeting.

(Am I the only spouse out there who preemptively explains his phone message shorthand when it involves a woman?)

Fark links to a story in the Fond du Lac Reporter about a woman whose water was cut off because a faulty meter underreported water usage for her late mother. It’s a pretty sad story, but what’s even sadder is the way the story sort of changes themes in the middle:

t was no April Fool?s joke when the tap went dry Thursday for a Fond du Lac woman who was left to pay a $1,200 water bill for her deceased mother.

Sonja A. Terry, said neither she nor her late mother, Maria Wittig, had an idea the utility bills were drastically less than they should have been. The problem with an outside meter was discovered only after Terry’s mother died in June 2003 and water utility officials cross-checked what they call the “actual” meter in the basement at 120 E. Second St.

Wittig had requested and purchased the outdoor meter so the reading could be taken outside her home. The outdoor meter had slowed drastically and may not have been working at all.

Terry agreed in December to pay $50 a month toward the $1,200 bill. When she failed to make the two initial payments, her water was shut off.

“I turned the faucet on and nothing came out,” Terry recalled.

Early last week, she was given another shut-off notice due to two more consecutive months of non-payment. The water was shut off Thursday. She agreed to pay $100 and the water was turned on a short time later.

“I can’t make those (extra payments),” Terry said. “They’re putting it on my regular (utility) bill.”

Terry said her most recent regular utility bill was $242. Another $150 was added to the bill ($50 repayment schedule for each of three months), bringing the total to nearly $400 for the quarter.

Before the error at the meter was discovered, Terry said her mother’s bill was $53. The amount is the monthly charge for vacant residences, according to water utility staff. The amount suggests that the outdoor meter wasn’t functioning at all.

“I hate doing this,” Fond du Lac Water Superintendent Dale Paczkowski said. “I don?t like it. (And) it?s time consuming for us to be putting (shut-off) notices on the door and sending letters.”

Paczkowski said the water was used — it ran through the actual meter.

“I agreed (in December) to $50, which I cannot do,” Terry said. “I thought I could (pay $50 per month toward the debt), and I had my back surgery, and I lieves headache and eases insomnia. It can be applied full strength to burns, rashes or psoriasis.

Lavender is a “must-have” in the home, Vores said.

* Lemon increases optimism and sense of humor, helps calm fear and increase memory, according to Vores? list of essential oil uses. In very dilute solution (1 or 2 percent) it is good for acne, he said.

* Peppermint is a mental stimulant, relieves headache and anxiety. It is good for congested sinuses and digestion as well as emotions.

* Tea tree oil builds strength before surgery, says a list of oils Vores has compiled. It?s a strong antiseptic that stimulates immunity.

Vores describes essential oils as the “lifeblood” of a plant, the part that is fragrant. “Pure” oil comes from a single source.

It’s some sort of content error, but it’s always interesting to note how far you go before you realize you’ve missed something.

Sometimes, when I am reading a particularly hard to follow text, I have been known to skip pages when the last words of one page and the first words of the page two pages ahead mesh in a manner no more confusing than the rest of the work. When reading, I admit I don’t slow down and understand each sentence or paragraph before moving on; I tend to gather the grasp of the whole, which is why I keep reading stuff I don’t understand as I am reading it. I expect to pick it up from context. As I have a philosophy degree, rest assured I have run into the situation where I accidentally skip a page and don’t immediately know it many times while contending with works of on the order of Heidegger, Sartre, Dostoyevsky, and others.

P.S. I didn’t get to the whole next paragraph in the above piece, unlike some works.

Which of the fourth-class junk mail envelopes that arrived for me today should I open first?

• Urgent Update – Stop Hillary Now: Help NRA-PVF DEFEAT the “Clinton Candidates” of 2004

  or

• How you can help our new Democratic nominee, return address of James Carville, Democratic National Committee

Perhaps I should do a reality-television like poll about it, but there’s always the chance you whacky, Kerry-loving “friends” would make me open the DNC one at all.

So I point my beautiful wife to this Fark photoshop contest because it’s about a cat and she likes cats. “That one with Natalie Portman isn’t bad,” she says.

My friends, do you see the unjust double standard at work here?

Picture of cat scratching scantily-clad Natalie Portman = not bad.
Picture of Brian scratching scantily-clad Natalie Portman = exhibit in State of Missouri vs. Heather Noggle capital murder trial.

I ask you, is that fair?

So I used to go to Realtor.com to look for the million-dollar homes for sale in the St. Louis and Milwaukee areas, preferably with some land to go with them. However, Ravenwood has shown me I am a piker, for I had not until now thought about buying my own island.

If only I were an entrepreneur, founding my own company that would lead me to wealth through hard work and a bit of self-made luck.

Here’s a new bit on Snopes:

Claim:   Fecal matter sprayed by flushing toilets can collect on toothbrushes.

Geez, Mikkelson, thanks for the graphic details and the extreme tips, such as:

People tend to leave frequently-used articles where they are normally put to use, which means most of us unthinkingly deposit our toothbrushes on the sink or counter in the bathroom. A better strategy would be to place them in the medicine cabinet between brushings. It pays to keep in mind that while you may remember to close the lid before flushing, not everyone else in the household will always be as diligent.

Actually, there are numerous other tips, but I’m not going to implement them. I spend so much time being a paranoid neurotic that I don’t have any time to add another set of obsessive-compulsive tasks. Sorry.