Today I struck a blow for civility and I'm proud of the results. As usual, I was on the train. As usual a woman sat down across from me and began the ritual of making up a face. She took out her eyelash crimper and started on her left eye. I took out my trusty digital Nikon and pointed it at her. She looked up and glared daggers at me. I blandly continued to zoom in on her at eye level. She flung herself sideways in her seat and huddled down, now working on her right eye in a cramped little ball with her back to me.

At the next stop, she got up, flung another dirty look at me and flounced off to another seat, far away from me and facing in the opposite direction.

Despite the fact that my battery was low and I was unable to get the shot to add to my hall of shame I was pleased with the results of my attempted photograph.

My only regret is that despite the hateful looks, the woman didn't say anything to me about my trying to get a photo. I practiced my most polite and proper response, and never got the chance to use it. So here is what I WOULD have said:

'Madam, that which you are attempting to do in public, you should be doing in private. If you do not wish to be observed or your acts to be documented, I suggest you carry out your morning ablutions in the privacy of your own home, and not on public transit."

Boo-yah!

I really, truly do. I hate what they have done to my profession. I hate what they have done to human discourse. Most of all, I hate that they have become so insidiously necessary to all aspects of human endevour, and when they fail, they take with it all ability to function. Case(s) in point: last night I attempted to order groceries on line. It took two and a half hours to do something that, had I gotten out of my bathrobe and into the car, I could have accomplished in 45 minutes with much less aggrevation. But it was 9 at night, I'd worked a full day and then endured a homeowner's association meeting that would have driven a sober man to drink, much less a lush like me, and there was no way I was going to drive to the nearest Publix and roll a wobbly-wheeled cart through the Muzak-filled aisles as I searched for a decent head of lettuce.

Instead, I spent two frustrating hours having my laptop time out and refuse to accept input, only to discover as I attempted to check out that I had 5 heads of lettuce and other mistaken multiples. Which I then could not edit out of my basket. It took so long to navigate through this morass that I lost my original delivery time. And ground about a quarter of an inch of enamel off my back molars.

Today, my e-mail has disappeared from register.com. But so has Register.com, it would seem. No matter what you type in, no matter what you click you get the same frustrating screen of this domain has just been registered, and information will be coming soon. As fucking if. I have tried to link to their help page, their manage my account page, their search for a domain name page, and two separate e-mail accounts. All I get is this lame "soon come" crap.

I don't have much more enamel on those back teeth. Can something get fixed? Anything?

I'll make an exception. Here is yesterday's release from WhiteHouse.org (not to be confused with the official government site)

FORMAL STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT RESPONDING TO RECENT CONDEMNATION OF CLUSTER BOMBS BY SIR PAUL "FRUITY-FOGEY WASHED-UP LIMEY VEGAN ZOMBIE" McCARTNEY
Statement by the President

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today, virtually anyone and everyone who ever dared question the heft of my hairy war balls is standing in humiliated shock and humble awe now that I've effortlessly run roughshod over the ridiculous concept of Arab sovereignty. And while Shiite -

(Laughter.)

Hey, man, I'm just pronouncing it the way it looks. As I was saying, while Shiite Muslims make their loony pilgrimage to Karbala this week to ritualistically beat their chests bloody like a pack of orangutans that escaped from a CIA experiment to see what happens when you substitute methamphetamine for water over a two year period, our administration is engaging in our own mirror-like ritual of frantically running around in public patting ourselves on the back. Yes, it is an amazing feat to actually win a war when you only spend thirty billion dollars to defeat a country whose army has less fire-power than Jennifer Lopez's personal security detail.

But as I basked in the glow of press adulation this morning, I was slightly annoyed to find that I still have an adversary or two. Indeed, while I thought I had successfully squashed every last dissenting anti-death cockroach there was, it seems I missed a Beatle in the process - namely, Paul "the cute one" McCartney.

Yes, earlier today ? "Sir Paul," as those wig-wearing limeys still like to call their men who've been "honored" by being told to get down on their knees like a velvet-mouthed New Haven streetwalker while my totally relevant cousin Lizard the Queeny-Pops pretends to hack off their arms in slow motion with a jewel-encrusted girl-sword ? voiced his worthless opposition to the continued military use of cluster bombs. That's right, it seems Mr. McCartney, who became a minor cultural figure in the free-love, disease-swapping 60's by strumming backup guitar on a few forgettable elevator songs written by his long-haired commie partner who knocked up that screeching chinkazoid art freak Yuku-Duo, is all worried that a few thousand Arabiac children will benefit from free cosmetic amputations provided by one of the most benevolent implements of liberation in America's arsenal of mass freedom: the cluster bomb.

Now, don't get me wrong ? I haven't forgotten about the Walrus' patronizingly tedious, yet lyrically BRILLIANT post-Sept. 11 grandpa rock ballad "Freedom." No one appreciates opportunistic tragedy profiteering ? be it political or be it little bags with dollar signs on them ? more than yours truly. Mr. Eleanor Rigby did a smashing good job of milking America's bed-wetting terror and hard-wired affection for cheap, emotional crack rock from billionaire jingle writers from Liverpool. But then he had to go and get all high on his kidney pie farts ? he forgot that it's all about the money? well, it's all about the kids. Then the money. Talking trash about harmless mommy bombs that bloom mid-air and release their pink bonnet of little baby bombs that go POW and hurt the bad men is not in his financial interest. If Paul was smart, he'd write a song called "Happiness Is A Freedom-Protecting Cluster Bomb."

But no, clearly Mr. McCartney knows about as much about dispensing blissful freedom as my spirited twin daughters know about making a convincing fake I.D. card. And if he values the 1% of whatever's left of his career in the United States, he'd do well to just shut up. If he's still pissed off about his music catalog being stolen by someone transgender, just wait until he has to deal with having his balls lopped off by someone transatlantic.

You know, you'd think that by now, British pseudo-royalty would know better than to start flapping their snaggle-toothed mouths about small munitions that make their pansy-talking asses queasy just because they're still blowing the limbs off little sand negro babies decades after we drop them. I mean, first it was old ex-Princess Die, who the CIA was going to have live up to her name after she started moaning about land mines, but was spared the trouble when some zillionaire greaseball French Arabiac terrorist named "Mohammed" killed her for smearing those taut, pink Christian ta-ta's of hers all the scruffy face of his sexaholic, Viagra-mainlining Muslamian son "Doo-Doo." And now we have Sir Paul bellyaching about a few tens of thousands of unexploded cluster bombs around Iraqi and Afghani-Rican kindergartens! I mean, HELLO PAUL! Fate doesn't like to be tempted - especially by some Jurassic-era Rockasaurus whose accent makes him sound like Ronald Reagan mumbling about which unicorn he's gonna ride to the Depends? wholesaler today.

I'm not going to pretend to give a shit about Paul McCartney's notoriety just because a bunch of fat, still-idealistic baby boomers think that noise of his is music. Now sure, back when I was at Yale, there were tons of kids who were playing their Dung Beatles LP's in the dorms morning, noon, and night. And yeah, I heard it all: the "Magical Mushroom Trip Tour" and the "Sergeant Crouton's Lusty Tax Man's Polka." The Yalies said it was "groovy," "hip," and even "with it." Well, speaking as a life-long Lawrence Welk man myself, all I can say is that I rightly opted for buying the kind of records that weren't bound to leave me shampooing my crotch afro with pesticidal Breck.

In the end though, even though Mr. McCartney is proving himself to be nothing more than just another in a long string of detestably populist, pseudo-intellectual celebrities who are determined to chip away at my political armor, I will not begrudge him his foreigner false right to be utterly wrong about everything. Nor will I will surrender to the temptation to pray to Jesus that someone had had the sense to buy Mark David Chapman a trans-Atlantic plane ticket so he could have finished the job of permanently retiring the Fag Four back in the early 80's. No, I will not do any of these things, because I know that Sir Paul has been rendered effectively retarded by the same vegetarianoid diet that gave his tambourine-playing ex-wife cancer and killed her.

And on that note, I bid Sir Paul's pathetic self, and the rest of the world, a very magnanimous good day.

Thank you, and God Bless America.

The other day I was sitting in the train across the aisle from a couple of young female students. They were talking about high school life and the attendant traumas. The gossip. The backstabbing. The malice. And I tried to hide my smiles, but they saw me and said "Oh, we were just talking about school." I said "Yeah. How sad that you could just as easily have been talking about where I work. It never changes." That got them a little saddened, I think. Contemplating that pettiness continuing until retirement or death. It certainly saddens me.

One of them was telling the other how she hated her nickname: Crazy Natalie. I gave them my card with this website address on it. I don't know if they've ever come to read the blog, but this is for Natalie.

That's always been my nickname too. Not Natalie, just crazy. People are afraid of things and people who are different, and they will always label you in an effort to make themselves feel better. You told me you are a design student. Well, then, embrace the label of crazy, because no true change, no true art has ever been created by people who are safe and think the same as the rest of the sheep.

It doesn't make it easier to hear. It doesn't make you feel better, either. But just know, that crazy isn't bad, necessarily. It is just different. I sit on a board of directors where I am valued for my ability to see outside the box. In fact, they tease me that I don't even see the box. What box. That's a kind way of calling me crazy. But a valued crazy.

Don't give up the crazy to be the same. It will only hurt you worse, in the long run, than the names people call you.

Crazy? But that's how it goes.

OK. This entry was not going to be about hell, really, but then I read Mimi Smartypants and her new vision of existentialist hell. Laughed out loud, right here in the office. Just too damn funny. And that reminded me of the scene on the Sopranos when Christopher was shot and had a near death vision of hell, which he described as : An Irish bar where every day is St. Patrick's day. And that one always struck me as being close to true. But Mimi Smartypants has it all over Christopher.

What's your idea of a personal hell? I think mine would contain elements of a Paul McCartney concert where he and Linda were doing a duet of "Silly Love Songs" while my ex-husband kept kicking me in the ankle telling me to enjoy myself. My ex-assistant, the heinous Chihuahua, would have to be somewhere nearby, too.

I'll write what I meant to write later.

Alright ladies, gentlemen, drag queens and transgendered persons it's that time of the year again. Just a friendly reminder!!

Please raise your big toes and repeat after me:

MY SISTERS, BROTHERS, DRAG QUEENS & TRANSGENDERED PERSONS: (The Open Toed Shoe Pledge) As a member of the Cute Girl Sisterhood, I pledge to follow the Rules when I wear sandals and other open-toe shoes:

1. I promise to always wear sandals that fit. My toes will not hang over and touch the ground, nor will my heels spill over the backs. And the sides and tops of my feet will not pudge out between the straps.

2. I will go polish-free or vow to keep the polish fresh, intact and chip-free.

3 I will not cheat and just touch up my big toe. I will sand down any mounds of skin before they turn hard and yellow.

4. I will shave the hairs off my big toe.

5. I won't wear pantyhose even if my misinformed girlfriend, coworker, mother, sister tells me the toe seam really will stay under my toes if I tuck it there.

6. If a strap breaks, I won't duct-tape, pin, glue or tuck it back into place hoping it will stay put. I will get my shoe fixed or toss it.

7. I will not live in corn denial; rather I will lean on my good friend Dr. Scholl's if my feet need him.

8. I will resist the urge to buy jelly shoes at Payless for the low, low price of $4.99 even if my feet are small enough to fit into the kids' sizes. They're tacky.

9. I will take my toe ring off toward the end of the day if my toes swell and begin to look like Vienna sausages.

10. If I have been privy to the magic that is Foot Soap, I will share that knowledge and experience with the non-initiated.

11. I will be brutally honest with my girlfriend/sister/coworker when she asks me if her feet are too ugly to wear sandals. Someone has to tell her that her toes are as long as my fingers and no sandal makes creepy feet look good.

12. I will promise if I wear flip flops that I will ensure that they actually flip and flop, making the correct noise while walking and I will swear NOT to slide or drag my feet while wearing them.

13. I will promise to throw away any white/off-white sandals that show signs of wear...nothing is tackier than dirty white sandals...