I crack myself up, even when I'm asleep.

Last night, I dreamt I was driving down the main street of the old down town of my home town. My husband was driving our car, and he pulled over at a cafe/cd store (which isn't there in real life, except for the cafe). He said, "Get what you need, and I'll drive around the block."

So I went in, to this old shop with wooden floors, and worked my way through the cafe to the Virgin Megastore-type cd store in the back. This was a 5 & 10 in my childhood, and there were still elements of that in my dream: high dark ceilings, wooden display tables. I saw a table that held stationery, with a sign that said 30% off, so I looked to see if they had any Shag art. As I was leaning over, a clerk came up behind me and said something unintelligible about a nice bag. Nice bag? Huh? What am I carrying? I reached around behind myself to feel for my purse and realized that I'm only wearing a sweater and an olive green Coach hobo bag. My ass is hanging out.

"Damn! Naked AGAIN??!!" I yelped. I must be dreaming. I grab the clerk, to see if I can feel him, which I can. Never mind. I know I must be dreaming, and so I force myself to look around the store and confirm that I am, in fact, asleep. I then clap the clerk on the shoulder and say "Thanks, dude. I needed to wake up."

I leave the store, and wait on the corner for my husband to come back with the car. He does, but not before I've yelled at a couple of bad drivers for taking the corner too close. I get in the car, close the door, and wake up.

And yes, it was time for me to get up. As I said, I can crack myself up awake or asleep.

I don't know why I'm having such a hard time writing. Yes, I'm still annoyed by damn near everything. Yes, I am still surrounded by stupidity, incompetence and swine-like behavior. So why can't I rant? Have I lost the will to rant?

What a thought. Who would I be, if everything slid off me like water off a duck...

I entered a blog writing contest, the BlogMadness thingy, and, as my entry, submitted, not a rant, but my piece about death and the loss of friends.

And even as I did, the word came around about another college friend who has shuffled off this mortal coil. Bill Kelley, one of the biggest film junkies ever, and in a sorrowful coincidence, the best friend of the late and always lamented Leapin' Larry.

Which reminds me of a joke card about the good die young, and yet you, weenie boy, are still with us, celebrating another birthday. It was too cruel to send, and there was no way I could send it anonymously to the ex-husband, the Anti-Christ.

My good husband, the Renowned Local Artist, entered his first street show in years, and has decided to price to sell. If you are in Miami on February 21 and 22, stop by his booth at the South Miami Arts & Crafts Festival to pick up your own original work of art.

Finally, in this wandering entry, I leave you with a link to the Bush in 30 Seconds web site where you'll see some good ads. Too bad they'll never see the light of media play.

My parents drank. After work, before dinner, my parents would have a cocktail. When we dined out, they would have a cocktail. Maybe two, if things were really swinging.

I drink. After work, I have a glass of wine or two. I may have a martini or two instead. When I dine out, I'll have a cocktail, or two.

Growing up in the late 50s through the 60s, drinking was a sign of adulthood. A sophisticated adulthood. The Rat Pack, James Bond, Holly Golightly: they all drank.

I went away to college and learned how to hold my liquor. Much to my relief, I discovered that I am a jolly drunk. I do not get loud. I do not get sloppy. I do not cry, or fight, or pass out. I tell stories and jokes, and can keep them straight. I may have to speak more slowly than is usual for me, but I do not go out and get knee-crawling, commode-hugging, sloppy, shit-faced drunk. I am a respectable drinker, and I stop long before I have too much.

Drinking is now a sin, like smoking. But that's another topic for another day. It's drink I wish to address. I love alcohol. I love the taste of a single malt scotch. I enjoy the rituals of drink mixing. I love the olive at the bottom of the glass, after it has absorbed as much vodka as it can.

But I am slowly being forced to see that I am an exception among my friends, in that I can say no. I can choose not to drink, or not to drink another. I am dragging my mental heels, but I have to admit that a number of my friends are alcoholics. They drink because they must, not because they can.

I no longer want to be their enabler. I don't enjoy their company when they drink. I don't want to watch my one neighbor become disgustingly drunk after a single martini: channeling the snake gods and terrifying my other guests. I don't want to lie and tell her that I forgive her drunken, savage calls to me when she's had too many. I don't want to have those conversations with her husband, where he denies his own alcoholism. I don't want to hear about still a third neighbor, who is dying of cirrhosis of the liver, and had to be Baker acted just to dry him out enough to be put in a nursing home to die.

I don't want to go out with my friend and watch him pass out in his food, and beg to be let go to wait for the rest of us in the car. I don't want to be part of it when he embarrasses his wife or abuses the waitstaff.

I don't want to carry my other friend into my house to pour black coffee down his throat and wait for him to sober up enough to drive the two miles to his home.

What is wrong with us as a nation, that we cannot do anything without doing it to excess?

We eat to obesity, we drink to unconsciousness, we smoke to death, we drive too fast, we spend too much money and save too little. On the other side of that same coin, we refuse to allow others to make their own choices regarding birth control, or marriage partners. We terrorize people who smoke, wear fur, or eat meat. We insult, abuse, and attempt to discredit people whose political views are different from ours.

We are become a nation of intolerant extremists, and that terrifies me. Enough that I think I need to go home and have a drink.

I wrote this entry once today, just at the time that Blogger went down. It was, as so many of my posts are, well written, and heart-tugging. It moved effortlessly from pathos to wit and back to scathing sarcasm.

Too bad it went the way of the dodo, into pixel oblivion. Or o-BLIV-ion, as Riff-Raff would say.

So here's the thing. Tonight I will be in a safe place, far away from any windows when the midnight shooting-guns-into-the-air festivities begin in Miami. We seem to have the third world aloha* down. I will be indoors, my pets will be indoors, and the windows will be covered. The laws of physics still apply, friends, even if you are drunk. Goes up: comes down.

The only resolution I will make this year is to help regime change begin at home, in America, where I hope and pray with my whole Yellow-Dog Democrat soul that anyone other than Bush gets elected this fall. Really elected, as opposed to selected, if you know what I mean. And if you don't, then you deserve what you got.

I will drink myself silly tonight and toast friends missing, absent or dead. I will revel in maudlin emotions. I will not let anyone other than my husband see or experience that, however. And I'm not going to detail it here, tomorrow.

I'll end this by paraphrasing another pop-culture hero of mine, Ford Fairlane (aka Andrew Dice Clay) and say: 2003? I fucked it.

* the third world aloha: shooting guns into the air as an expression of a) satisfaction b) dissatisfaction c) violent disagreement d) violent agreement or e) any and/or all of the above.

I went to Disney World. Yes. I did. And I loved it. I love the sight of hundreds and hundreds of people in Santa Hats with Mickey Ears. I love the sight of many of those same hundreds in bright red sweat suits. In public.

On the other hand, I did not see a single instance of public personal grooming.

On still another hand, the husband and I got to engage in one of our favorite pastimes: being in other peoples photo shoots. On purpose. We wait until someone is about to snap a shot, and as we walk through the frame we turn and smile, or wave. We've been doing this for years, it started on our honeymoon, when we saw the same Japanese tourists day after day, with their video cams. We just started waving, and saying "Still married! Still honeymooning!"

This time we even got to toast the people at the table in front of us, as the waiter took the shot of the table from one end, thereby including us at the other end. What fun!

But seriously, I do love Disney. My girlfriend tells me that there is a special spot in hell for us stockholders, where we will be forced to wear the Mickey/Santa hats all year long... while we ride for all eternity through "It's a Small World." I say, as long as it keeps my portfolio from being in the red, I don't care what Michael Eisner does.

In fact, I have a couple of suggestions on how to increase the bottom line, if Mr. Eisner would like them, he can just drop me a line here at Girlyshoes.

The food at the park hotels is phenomenal, and when I get the chance, I will tell you about the 12 grain vegetarian dish I had at Jiko, in the Animal Kingdom Lodge. But tell me this: when was the last time you had a meal so good that you wrote a little love poem to it on the Styrofoam box in which you took the leftovers home? Yeah. Didn't think so. But this dish was so damn good, I did. And the two people I let see the leftovers ended up sticking forks in it and moaning in ecstasy as they ate.

I took lots of photos, which I may or may not post. I shopped at both the high and low end outlet malls. We indulged our audio/visual habit with trips to some obscure CD stores, and bought a box set of Rough Guide to Indian Music, a box set of Kurasawa's Samurai films, another box set of garage/psychedelic bands from England (Rubble) and the soundtrack to Our Man Flint and In Like Flint.

We bought books, and Legos and fabric for my quilting habit. We ate like starving stoats and all in all had a marvelous time, thank you for asking.

And you? Did you all have nice holidays? Or did they send you back to therapy for another ten years? Oh, well.

I guess that there are things more horrifying than watching a woman pluck her eyebrows down to fine lines during a morning public transit ride. Special thanks to the skank sitting next to me, who was using those tweezers that have handles like scissors, and who was quite ferocious in their application.

1. Pajamas as day wear

2. Milk containers as urinals (thanks to LaDiDa for the heads up on this one)

3. Tongue splitting as a fashion statement (Note: a google search for tongue "slitting" finds you all kinds of information on medieval torture. Tongue "splitting" which, as far as I can tell, is the exact same thing, takes you to news and body modification sites.... semantics)

4. Cosmetic foot surgery

On that last topic, I really must say something. My great-uncle was a cobbler: a man who made shoes. For three generations, my family made and/or sold clothing. Here's the sum of that collective clothing knowledge (ahem, clears throat for this pronouncement)

MAKE THE SHOE FIT THE FOOT, NOT THE FOOT FIT THE SHOE.

This is really a no-brainer, folks. If you have a big ole fat foot, buy big ole wide shoes. You don't need surgery to fit your size 9s into a size 7, just buy bigger fucking shoes. Shoe size is not a big deal. In fact, unless you are swapping them with your friends, nobody needs to know what size you wear. What is the big freaking deal?

Hey! I wear a size 9 shoe. Or an 8 1/2. Depends on the manufacturer and the cut. But you know what? Wearing a size 9 doesn't stop me from buying really pointy-toed shoes. So what if they look like something from the Florentine Renaissance? They are pointy shoes, you don't really think I'm cramming my toes all the way to the ends in them do you? No. My feet end somewhere around two inches in back of the point.

Here's a tip from someone who knows how to fit shoes. Put the shoe on. Stand up in it and put your weight on that foot. Then take your thumb and put it on the widest part of the front of the shoe. Press against your foot through the shoe. The widest part of your foot, the ball below the big toe, should be aligned with your thumb and the wide part of the shoe. If it isn't, then the shoe doesn't fit. If the wide part of your foot is forward of the wide part of the shoe, get a bigger size. It's that simple.

If you can't put your thumb between the end of your toe, and the end of the shoe (from the outside, of course, by pressing down gently on the toe of the shoe), then you need a larger size. Again, it is just that simple.

But carving off toes, in order to get a better fit? I'm sorry, but that is just fucking insane, and any doctor who would perform that surgery is immoral.

Back in the dawn of time, when I was a little curmudgeon, one of my aunties used to bring me a present from Germany, whenever she went to visit. It was the coolest thing, and I loved it to death. What was this marvel?

Soap. (Insert your own lame jokes here about growing up in a small southern town, laugh at will and get back to the point.) But not just any old soap. It was soap in the shape of a teddy bear. Once it was out of its wrapper, it grew fuzz. (On purpose. Jeez, guys, get over it already.) It became a fuzzy bear. Once you used it , the fuzz didn't grow back. Something else cool happened. When you used the bar up, there was a tiny Cracker Jack-type toy inside the soap. Usually, as I recall, another tiny little plastic bear.

Well, Aunt Helga long ago passed into family legend, and I have never seen that soap ever again.

But I want to. I believe in the power of the Internet. I believe that if I put this request out there, someone will remember the soap. Someone will know what it was called (other than soap, duh.) Someone will be able to tell me if it is still produced, where and how to get it.

I believe.

P.S. I found it myself. Fuzzy Wuzzy Soap is the name, and some guy has a single, mint-in-box bar for a mere $125. See?

"The United States Coast Guard has a rule of thumb its members call the "rule of gross tonnage." It basically states that the bigger boat gets the right-of-way."

Yep. The bigger the boat, the more right of way. Maybe that's why people in SUVs drive like they own the road. Maybe they all drive citing the Rule of Gross Tonnage. It's my theory, anyway.

Today, I was forced to drive to work, something that I just dread. But it was a magnificent morning, the air was cool, traffic wasn't too obnoxious, and the sun was shining in spangles through the trees, as I took the back roads to the hospital.

I was cut off in the middle of a traffic circle by some a-hole in a Lincoln Navigator, who felt that he could merge into my lane despite the fact that I, in my little VW, already occupied that space.

Maybe he couldn't see me way down there, so close to the ground, or maybe he was driving according to the Rule of Gross Tonnage. But the fact that he was in a Lincoln SUV gave rise to this new take on the old gross tonnage law: in an auto, gross tonnage refers to the amount of money you spent on the thing you are driving. The more you spent, the more right of way you have. That would explain a lot about the kind of cars that cut me off in traffic, merge into my lane even when there is no room to do so, why someone will think it's ok to whip in to a parking space I'm clearly waiting for (complete with indicator light blinking) and like that. I drive a cheap car, there for I have less right of way.

And let me rant a little about the fact that Lincoln makes an SUV. (Aside: doesn't everyone?) What ever happened to playing to your strengths? Lincolns have been the gold standard for American luxury autos since they were being built on carriage frames. So why, why, why, would you try to make that leap to station wagon on steroids? Why not just continue with what made you famous? And another thing: why would anyone on this planet need an SUV with a turbo engine, manufactured by Porsche? If you wanted a Porsche, why would you want anything other than its flagship car, the 911? And why does Porsche manufacture any of its vehicles with an automatic transmission? If you are driving what I consider to be one of the finest sports cars in the world, why would you have an automatic? Must I remind you that the stick is to driving what bareback is to horses? Ultimate oneness with the beast.

Well, anyway... The Rule of Gross Tonnage. The more gross tonnage, the more right of way, or the modern version, the more you gross, the more right of way you have.

There was a little accident on the train today. Someone in a wheelchair fell on the tracks, thereby bringing mass transit to a mass stand still. Before you ask, no report yet on the guy who fell.

I was on the first train behind the accident, and so had first crack at the bus brought in to take us commuters on north. I got in the line, and watched in amazement as people streamed in from both sides, so that the woman in the purple leather jacket who started out directly in front of me, drifted further and further away, even though neither of us moved. While we had been in proximity, she commented to me about the man who pushed in front of her. The guy who pushed between us as she spoke was in a striped shirt and a beard. I last saw him getting on the bus.

By the time I managed to get to the bus doors, the driver shut them on me, saying this bus is full. The woman in the purple jacket was on board and seated. I backed out of the door well, and as I did, another five people pressed past me and on board.

That's when I lost it and said to the bus driver "If the bus was full, where did those five people fit?" Well, he asked, where are you going? To the hospital, I replied. OK, he said, where do you think you can ride?

As we have this conversation, another two people push past and cram their fat asses into the door well. The driver closed the doors and the bus left.

Now, I ask you, how did I end up missing the bus, when I was at the front of the line for so long? Because I refused to push, shove, cut, or otherwise exhibit rude behavior to my fellow humans during an inconvenience such as a transit failure.

I crossed the highway and flagged a cab. I also shared the cab with two other employees. We had a nice ride, thanks.

*read an earlier rant about the nano-second people.

It was time for my driver's license to be renewed, so I did it the modern way: on the internet. Or at least, I tried to. Instead I received a letter from the State of Florida, very politely apologizing for having misplaced my photo, and asking me to "expeditiously" beat a path to the nearest Licensing Bureau and get a new one.

This concerned me, because, through some fluke of the universe, I have, or had, the world's best driver's license photo. It looked like me. It was, at the same time, a flattering picture of me. I have on make up. I have on a smile. I do not look like I just wandered in from some half-way house for the criminally insane.

Nevertheless, when the State asks one to make one's way in an "expeditious" manner to the license bureau on pain of losing your license if you don't, you go.

I made an appointment, thereby saving myself the agony of a three-hour wait. I took care with my makeup this morning, and dressed in a solid color with a simple neckline. I drove to the licensing office, and found the only open spot in the lot. There was still time on the meter. Things were going quite well, I thought. Then I got into the office. On my way in, I had to pass the line that, at 9 A.M. was already out the door, and past someone in the line who reeked of piss and beer.

There was only one person in the line for appointments. When she finished, I presented my letter from the State to the woman at the counter, and she looked at me and said: "I'm on break now. The man will take care of you." So I turned to the gentleman she indicated, and started again. "I have an appointment. I have a letter. I have my old license." "Right. Confirmed. Go stand in that line." So I did.

And stood, and waited, and stood, and waited. And finally got to talk to the next clerk. She couldn't get it. I have a license that needs to be renewed, but the computer is telling her that it's a duplicate. At no cost to me. Fine. Take the freaking photo and let's go. After much deliberation, and with two other people getting to put in their opinions, I was finally sent to the end of the room, to the photo guy.

First photo: He tells me to take off my glasses, without noticing that my license says I actually need to have them on to drive. I take them off. He shoots. I look scary, and he says: your hair is sticking up. I say: it always sticks up. It's curly. Let's take another one.

Second photo: I start to position myself to minimize my flaws maximize my better features, and as I do, the two women standing in the next line over start to shriek like magpies and point at me and carry on about how I'm "posing" for the photo. The guy snaps the shutter as I turn and stare daggers at the women. He refuses to let me see it and tells me we're going for three.

Third photo: I look at the camera, I think about attempting to smile and he says, there. This one is better. I look, and there on the computer screen is the vilest photo of me since my employee badge photo. It is in extreme close-up. I see the San Andreas Fault where I normally see crows feet. Although my forehead is powdered, it looks like a giant shining beacon of grease. I have jowls like Deputy Dawg, a feature not found on my face in real life. In fact, my new driver's license photo looks a lot like Michael Jackson's mug shot.

I don't know whether to cry or call a plastic surgeon.

There's a story in the paper this morning about the various groups that are planning to sue the Miami police over civil rights violations during the FTAA.

I'd like to refresh everyone's memories, if I might, about what a true violation of civil rights by military or civilian forces looks like.



or maybe



That, my friends, is silencing dissent.

When you take to the streets to protest, you must understand the covenant that you are undertaking. Yes, it is your right to go in the streets, but it is the right of the government to keep you from rioting. In Kent State, the National Guard fired live rounds. In Miami, there was bruising from rubber bullets.

According to the protesters themselves, they were wearing black masks. You cannot wear a mask in a mob protest rally and expect there to be no repercussions. Think for a minute, son. If the police were in riot gear (which they were), masked and anonymous (which they were) would you feel safe, or like this was a confrontation doomed to end badly? Well, those guys behind the shields felt exactly the same about you. Masked, anonymous, and clearly up to mischief.

While I'm on the subject of rights, I'd like to revisit the Constitution of the United States. I've been reading it, and reading it, and I have yet to find the right to not be offended. In fact, as best as I can tell, that whole first amendment thing is pretty much the right TO BE offended. As in, I don't like what you say, I don't like what you stand for, but under the laws of this country, you can say and think pretty damn near anything you want, and it is everyone else's obligation to ignore you or agree as they see fit.

This is how that works, for those of you new to the whole concept: I say, for example that I think George W. Bush has the intellect of a shoe. You are free to agree, or to disagree. If you agree, you keep reading my blog. If you disagree, you send me e-mail calling me names. Or if you are the FBI, you open my dissident folder and start keeping track of all the times I say Dubya is a self-serving moron. Either way, though, I have the right to my opinion.

You do not have the right to silence my opinion because it offends you. I'm offended by plenty of stuff, as readers of my blog are well aware. Occasionally, I let the offender know that I am offended. But usually, I just bitch about it here, to my own amusement, and presumably, yours.

That's the bottom line of the first amendment, you see: Everyone has the right to their opinion, and the right to express that opinion. Nobody has the right to prevent you from expressing your opinion.

In theory, at any rate. I can ban your comments, because this is my private, personal press, and I don't have to let you blither if I don't want to. The Miami Herald can choose not to print some lunatic's single-brain-celled screed about making English the exclusive and mandatory language for all visitors to this community. Not because they wish to silence a dissenting opinion (that multi culturalism is bad), but because such letters are usually written in crayon and with no sense of grammar or literary elan. You can find me such a bleeding heart liberal pinko retard that you develop a tic every time you read me, and so choose not to read this blog, or even block it from your personal computer.

The one thing an individual in this republic cannot do, is prevent another individual's voice from being heard. Otherwise, believe me, I would prevent Rush Limbaugh from ever being heard on the radio again. It is not my job, nor my right, to silence him.

The only way offensive viewpoints can be made to disappear is to not listen to them. If everyone would quit buying Madonna's albums, eventually she would have to stop making them. Look at how well that worked in the case of her remake of "Swept Away." It stunk. Nobody went to the movies to see it. It never even made it to video. Now she's having a hard time getting roles.

Censorship doesn't work. Ignoring what offends you works better.

OK, obsessive compulsive behavior alert. I woke up this morning to the sound of birds. Various songs and calls. It was beautiful. I could identify the cardinals and the orioles, but someone was making a racket I couldn't recognize.

I went outside to feed the koi, and there, in the avocado tree, was a flock of ... something. They were jay-sized. They were black, with a white eye line. They had long-ish, sharp beaks (like a blue jay). The beaks were bright orange. They had white wing patches.

They are not in my Audubon Field Guide to the Birds of North America. They are not starlings, or red-winged black birds. They are not anything I can tell.

Nor, after an hour of internet research, and let me tell you, I can write a search query better than most folks, are they on the internet. I can't even find an on-line field guide.

Of course, I didn't get a photo, either. Any birders out there with any sort of clue? Remember, it's winter and I live on the end of Florida, so there are migratory birds passing through.

We're in week two of the boss is out of the country. This leaves me with plenty of time on my hands at work. So, in the name of research, I am teaching myself how to skin this blog, by teaching myself Cascading Style Sheets. I used style sheets all the time in PageMaker and Quark, so I figured it wouldn't be too hard.

I was, typically, wrong.

Thanksgiving was uh, well, I gave thanks. I gave thanks that my father is still with us, despite his illness. Crabby and fussy and, in his own words, "sharp as a rat's turd and twice as nasty." I gave thanks that my nephew has the sense and sensibility to come to town and visit his grandparents. I gave thanks that my brother wasn't at the actual dinner which allowed me to scarf down all the fried turkey skin by myself, since the rest of the family has fat and cholesterol issues which make poultry skin repellent.

But mostly, I was thankful that my mother got released from the nursing home/rehab back to her own home. She recognized it as her home. She knew me, and she knew my nephew. On Sunday, she looked at me and asked when I was going back to my home.

For maybe ten minutes, I had my mother in the room. After that, she went back to babbling non-stop about things that no one in this world can comprehend. But. For ten minutes, my mother was there with me.

Alzheimer's has got to be the most cruel disease inflicted on man. Jackie, at the needlework store where my mother used to buy her supplies said to me: "Her light shone very brightly, for a very long time." Jackie, I know you'll never read this, but thank you. It did. She did.

Maybe because of that sentiment, and my own recognition of how her light has failed, I'm taking up knitting again. For years, my mother made me a sweater for each birthday. I haven't gotten a new sweater in maybe eight years. I bought yarn from Jackie, and a pattern, and this morning I cast on 70 stitches and began a turtleneck.

Also this morning I read the obituary of a senior girl from a local high school. She was on the crew team. She was a friend of my surrogate daughters. They are destroyed. This is the first death that they've experienced of a peer, and not an elderly relative. They are gobsmacked by the suddenness of death, its random nature. How could it happen? Why? There is so much she will never know...

For all the joys they list in their blogs, I think of the other things this unknown girl will never know. She will never have her heart broken in first love. She will never discover that the person she trusted has stabbed her in the back over something as insignificant as a job promotion. She will never worry that the world is no place into which to bring a child. She will never look in a mirror and wonder what happened to her youth, her innocence, her love of life. She will not live to see her parents die.

And it's World AIDS Day, the day that I think of my friends who are gone. My peers who will never bring children to the world, never find love or happiness, or sorrow or fame. My peers who died senselessly and randomly.

I wrote to my daughter-by-choice and I told her, from the vantage point of age and repeated loss, what I know of sorrow and death. I said: Say their name aloud. Remember them. Don't ever let a moment pass where you know they would have found joy or amazement or sorrow and not say their name. Wait for them in your dreams. Eventually they will come to say goodbye.

So in memory of the men I loved, who died because they loved other men, I say their names: John Borella, whose sisters disowned him, and who died in the arms of kind strangers. Nick Cannon, who was so bright, and so funny, and who was my college friend, and who never told me he was sick. Shel Lurie, who was an artist of amazing talent, and a man of such brittle and bitter humor. He stood by me and wrote my letter of recommendation to graduate school. His pride was such that he never let me visit him in the hospital to say goodbye. Scotty Neail, who was the first boy I ever had a crush on, who took me sailing on the St. Lucie River, who was the first to die. Scotty's little brother Richard, who was my friend, too, despite being so much younger. And Rick, and Mark, and Ken, and Adam, and Robert, and all the others. So many. Too many.

I have a word of advice to all those baby docs I see around campus. I know that you are still in your training years, just out of your undergraduate salad days, and have yet to absorb the teachings of medical school that will allow you to stroll through this world with the utmost assuredness of your own genius and infallibility, but. But you cannot start to inculcate that belief in others until you stop dressing like you are going to med school in your pajamas.

Today on the train was a young man of above average good looks. He was studying a medical text. He had on scrubs, at least the bottoms. He was wearing a SpongeBob SquarePants t-shirt. When he stood up, his scrubs were sitting low on his hips, showing a good three inches of boxer shorts.

Eww. And Eww. The thug look is overdone to begin with, but trying it with a pair of scrubs? Just icky. And the combination of scrubs and SpongeBob? Not a good image maker there, pal. Shouldn't a doctor, even a baby med stud, be beyond Saturday morning cartoon wear?

The female med studs are even worse, affecting as they do, at least on this campus, the just-prior-to-breakdown hair style of Anne Heche. Spikey, blonde with dark roots, and in desperate need of a shampoo. They are also fond of the belly-exposing scrubs. They are, to a man (oops, but if you could see them, you'd understand my confusion), fond of the black bra under pale tank top look favored by the lower-class stoop sitters of popular 50s fiction.

Eww. And Eww. For the last time, girls: Black bra under light colored clothing is bad. I don't care if Carrie wears it on Sex In The City. She is fictional. She lives in a fictional New York. She wears things on the streets of that fictional city that would get a real person in real New York arrested for real crimes against fashionable humanity. Do not emulate her.

And that dirty hair and dark roots thing? Why should I listen to you about my health when you so clearly can't shower on a regular basis, something that is generally known to promote good health? I don't want to see your belly, either. I want you to pretend to be a grown up, and I want you dress in a way that gives me a little bit of confidence in your ability to make decisions.

Doogie Howser wore a tie, not a Scoobie Doo t-shirt for a reason. I suggest you do the same.