HOW DO YOU RATE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-19-24)

     There are only a few more days until Christmas, and I'm still behind in my shopping. I started it five months ago, but I've been paralyzed by R.O.D., or "ratings obfuscation debilitation." That is a well-known condition which I just made up that causes your brain to shut down after reading between 1200 and 32,000 ratings for a given product on Amazon that you might buy as a gift.

     I easily find what I want, and wrestle the item into the shopping cart. But it's still there, because I can't decide on a shipping option. Do I want FREE two-day delivery, or do I want one of the other options which is even MORE free? Or do I want to have it sent on Amazon Day, which is a different Amazon Day from the one where everything is 25% off, but I will get a little credit, something I usually don't get in real life. OR, do I want it delivered on a day that has a lower carbon footprint than my usual size 11 carbon footprint? I  check the box that says "Just Send Me the Damn Thing," and go to the "Extended Warranty" section.

     Do I want to protect my purchase? If my purchase is say, a knife, it should be able to protect ITSELF. So I check the box that says, "No Thanks, I'll Irresponsibly Take The Chance That This Thing Will Survive The Least Expensive Shipping Option." Right before I press the "Complete my Purchase" button, I see a tab that says, "Other Things People Have Bought That Were Better Than The Thing You're Going To Buy." So I check them out before I check out.

     And there they've compiled a list of items tailored specifically for me based on my behavior, which is often not exemplary, I will admit. It seems like Amazon is somehow watching everything I do. It sees me when I'm sleeping, it knows when I'm awake. It knows if I’ve been bad or good, just give me a fricking break.

     So I look at the items, and I must say, they would complete me. But are they everything they're cracked up to be? I'd better check the ratings, that's where people do their best cracking up. Let's see, here is a frying pan with 12,000 ratings. They've listed them based on their relevance, according to what I've found relevant in the past and my likelihood to like them in the future. I sort them by how many things the rater has rated that other people have found useful. Then I discard any reviews less than two year old, so I can see if this baby's gonna last. I then weed out all the ratings that are more than 700 words, and those less than three. I only choose the raters that have a good rating. I'm down to 4,000 ratings, so I take the ones that are not in English, and translate them to a different language that I don't know. Now I'm ready to make an informed purchase.

     Do I want to sign up for rewards? YES! I expect to get a reward for turning you in to the authorities, depending on what you've done, or for finding your cat, depending on what he's done.  However, I'll need to fill out a 6-page application form for a credit card that I will only use this once.

     Okay, I think I'm ready to click "Order" now. But wait, is that a video at the bottom? I'd better check it first. After the opening credits roll (I've always wanted to be the "best boy" on a production crew, but there was a better boy than me), I'm asked to like the film if I don't specifically dislike it. But it turns out that the movie is only about unboxing the item. It does have a plot twist at the end, so I won't give it away, but I guess I was expecting a little more thinking outside the box. I should have known, because the video was only rated "somewhat helpful."

     Maybe I should just get something on Facebook Marketplace Instead. Surely I can trust you, my lifelong friend? But even though we're already friends you keep friending me, and I keep accepting you, and then you keep posting to say that it's not really YOU sending these friend requests, but someone POSING as you. But is it YOU posting that warning, or is it the posting imposter? The good news is that I've seen you posing for a million photos on Facebook, so I should be able to tell if it's really you posing as you.

     I type into the Marketplace search box that I want to find a Milwaukee Sawzall for my wife, no farther than 10 miles away from me. Why do I think my wife would like a Milwaukee Sawzall? Why don't you let me worry about that. And presto, through the magic of modern technology, I'm bombarded with pages and pages of items that my wife would enjoy even less than a Sawzall, available only in Milwaukee. 

    Well I must say, ordering online has been a time saver! If you found this article helpful, please hit the "like" button below. But I assure you, I'm much more likeable in person. Have a great holiday, and many happy returns!

SWEPT UP IN THE YULETIDE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-12-24)

     Somewhere during the months before Halloween, when all the creatures were still stirring, even the mice, it was WAY too soon to start thinking about Christmas. This was the prevailing thinking right up until the day after Thanksgiving. And look at us now: in COMPLETE PANIC, because Christmas is RIGHT around the corner! I've gone so far as to put in a call to a contractor and architect, to see if we can't lengthen the corner. 

     I wouldn't mind if the holiday season felt more like it used to: fun and gay. Now, if something seems fun and gay, I have to check to see if I'm keeping any secrets from myself. The question is, has Christmas lost its mojo? We used to have a real Christmas tree, back when it was still fashionable to have fir. Now we have a cat. We discovered that you can't have both. I know what you're going to say: you can't decorate a cat. But on the other hand, if a Christmas tree crawls onto your lap you're going to get pine needles down your pants.

     I'm weary of the crass commercialism, companies trying to sell me things, and I wonder if we shouldn't be concentrating on the true meaning of the holiday. Do you remember "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on TV?. Snoopy decorates his doghouse with neon lights (which I thought looked kind of cool), and Charlie Brown is charged with getting a Christmas tree, and he comes up with this threadbare, scruffy sapling, but then, once everyone finds the deeper spirit of Christmas, it transforms into this bushy, dazzling super-shrub. By the way this joyful classic is available to every kid who wants to see a wonderful story, and happens to subscribe to Apple+ streaming service.

     I don't think I should be made to feel guilty just because I didn't give you as good a gift as you gave me. And consequently, you shouldn't feel bad if you got me frankincense when someone else got me actual GOLD. Some would even say that it's tacky to give money instead of a gift, although I've never heard that said about GOLD. If you got me myrrh, well that's going to be a separate conversation.

     At our house we still put gifts in our stockings. Which were basically socks- it's not like you'd go around stuffing toys into women's lingerie. Go get your own column if you want to do that. And send me a copy. I have a huge stocking (because it's my birthday) that was knitted by my Mother's cousin or something, and it has pictures of ornaments and sequins and such, and my name  knitted right into it. All six of us kids had our own. Can you imagine anyone doing that today? The tradition itself is a little strange, because what ever became of the other stocking? There are two feet on most people; it's not easy to miscount, although the lone sock syndrome is a real thing.

     Wouldn't it be fun to read Moore's classic poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known as “'Twas The Night Before Christmas” to your kids? You're going to have to stop here and there to explain things. "Sugar plums, Dad? What are those?" "Well, Son, they were like Twinkies back then." "Twinkies, Dad? What are those?" "Don't worry about it, just keep listening, it gets better. Anyway, 'I tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.'" "Ew, Dad, gross." "All right, all right. 'As I was turning around, down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.'" "Gee, Dad, Santa's going to have a lot of laughs coming in through that energy efficient heat pump we installed last year."

     Speaking of Santa, I read that the North Pole has shifted 30 feet toward Russia in the past few decades, so if you asked for a new wardrobe for Christmas, you may find yourself with Russian dressing. It's all good, because the elves are now working hybrid, in a four-day week. We don't call them elves anymore anyway, they're referred to now as "low altitude-dwelling independent contractors," and they know how to code.

     There are so many things about the Christmas I knew growing up that simply aren't around anymore. Maybe that's disappointing, but maybe it's just a chance for us to think up some new traditions, and maybe they'll keep Christmas relevant. 

     I'm going to throw some ideas out there and see how they fly. What about, instead of stockings, which hold only a few small gifts, we try a larger form of apparel, like a pair of pants would be perfect to hold a new pair of skis for someone, say, whose birthday is on Christmas, in case I didn't mention that. Also, candy canes are not a treat worthy of a major holiday. Let's find something that doesn't taste so much like toothpaste. Let's invest in new technologies, not necessarily to save the world, but simply to discover a string of Christmas lights that doesn't fail when one bulb burns out.

     Well, Christmas, I guess I've had a little fun with you after all. I suppose it's not what you do on Christmas, but whom you do it with. So find yourself someone you love and read something, listen to something, watch something, but do it together. And if you roast chestnuts on an open fire, please do so in a well-ventilated room with a fire extinguisher close at hand, and void where prohibited.

     Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah and a healthy new year!

CATATONIC

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-21-24)

     This column is about The Joys of Cat Ownership, and every word in that phrase is laced with irony, with the possible exception of "of." I sometimes see photos of people with their cat on social media, and they're both having a great time, but I suspect the cat has been Photoshopped in. I don't know where we got the idea that a cat would make a good pet. Historically, it's been theorized that Pharaohs kept cats for protection, against people who kept coming over to borrow things. I read that the first known instance of a cat being domesticated was, well, never. 

     A cat is basically an elitist snob that wears fur year-round and poses as a pet owned by you, when in reality, it legally more resembles a future litigant who, by virtue of the fact that it lives in the same house you do, has squatter's rights, and merely tolerates you even though it has very different plans for the property. A cat is always looking down on you. Literally, because it jumped up to the top of a tree, which you climbed in order to rescue it, whereupon it easily rappelled down your back, jumped to the ground and licked itself while making no effort to rescue YOU.

     When will I ever learn that the cat has a different definition of "fun" whenever we play together? "I'm going to tickle you on your belly! Yes I am! Tickle, tickle, tickle! Ha, ha! Got you! You like that, don't you! Tickle, tickle, tick- JESUS! Your cat just tried to remove my nose." I finally figured out where the phrase "tickled to death" came from.

     My wife announced one day that the cat had killed a mouse. "THAT cat?" I asked. It's unlikely the cat would have done anything useful on purpose. "No way," I said. "The mouse probably died in a car accident." "That's impossible- there was no vehicle at the scene." "Well, the cat probably poisoned it with antifreeze over a long period of time. I saw it on 'Forensic Files.'" But what would be the motive? Also, the cat has never engaged in anything remotely resembling athletic activity, other than spontaneously exploding into a triple Axel and then suddenly tearing down the hall for good reasons of its own.

     My wife took the cat to the cat doctor for an annual checkup. After giving the animal a clean bill of health they presented me with an unhealthy bill of my own. What could the doctor's advice have been for the cat? "Just keep doing what you're doing: You should be getting a MINIMUM of five seconds of exercise each day. You should be eating a horrible diet, and vomiting as much as you can."

     If I added up the cost of all the cat scratching devices that have been bought over the years but never used, it would add up to approximately $43,000 dollars, or eight times the cost of the furniture it was supposed to prevent the cat from destroying. Which it did not.

     I bet you're going to say, "A cat is so clean! It goes right in the litter box! Then it covers it up!" Somehow, even though my sense of smell is not as refined as that of a cat, I was able to locate it almost immediately, then had to UN-bury it and figure out what to do with it.

     I've never had a cat that wasn't a little off in the cranial department. We once had a bob-tailed cat named Pookie, who loved my wife but was always secretly plotting against me. It must have read somewhere that a cat used its tail for balance, and she would walk out onto the 8th floor terrace and sun herself on the three inches of concrete just outside the railing. This proved how physically balanced she was, and how mentally unbalanced. I was charged with retrieving it from danger by chasing it around this precarious edge. She knew the trouble I would be in if the she fell off the balcony, so she feigned near-misses all the time. 

     "This pillow on the couch is WET," I complained. "Oh? Hmm. She's marking her territory." My wife is much more tolerant of cat transgressions than I am. "This couch is NOT part of the cat's territory. This is MY territory. It was bought as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Am I going to have to go around this house and re-mark the territory?" "No, please don't do that." I did it later and so far it has worked.

     Next time, why don't I convince my wife that there are so many other animals that would make a more suitable pet. A piranha, for instance, never throws up in the laundry basket. It's just as friendly, and eats less. An ant farm is educational, and teaches kids the value of working together toward a common goal, which is trying to get out of the damn thing. I know we don't have kids, but one could visit. Besides, maybe the ants will grow something on the farm, who knows. A bear is big, I understand that, but it lives in the den, which we don't use a lot, and sleeps most of the year. I saw a commercial that implied that it seems to know quite a bit about toilet paper. I'm just saying that there are other options.

     Yet, we've always had a cat. The darn thing purrs, sometimes even at me. It just jumped on my lap. Okay, now it's licking me, which I guess is kind of cute, so I don't even notice that it's systematically removing the skin from the back of my hand.

LET'S AGREE TO AGREE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-14-24)

     By the time this column reaches your mailbox, we'll have a different president. You may be pleased with the result of the election, you may be horrified by it, but one thing's for certain: Our political system is not very good at pleasing anybody. The Founding Fathers made a lot of mistakes when they sat down and figured out who should do what, and a lot more bad decisions were made along that got us where we are  today, which is, when all is said and done, a place where a lot of dumb things are said and nothing much is done.

     I know exactly what needs to be changed, and I could go on and on about that, but instead, I'll just say that Americans are fundamentally lousy at arguing. Our debates usually start at the polar ends of the spectrum, instead of finding a point at which we both agree, and making small steps where they diverge. It's like zipping up a zipper after you just ate an entire pizza. It seems impossible to get both sides together, but you keep working at it, and you get it zipped up, and it hurts for a while, but eventually you order another pizza.

     Let's start at the beginning: I think we can all agree that the Earth is round. Oh. We can't agree on that? Well, then let's at least say that it's not trapezoidal. I conducted my own experiment, set out by car in one direction and ended up exactly where I started. By doing so I proved that, a.) the earth is round, and b.) I'm not exactly clear on how to use my GPS. Let's just agree that the Earth is flat in Iowa, and go from there. 

     Can we agree on immigration? Maybe you are in favor of a more equitable system for the introduction of people from other countries. While immigrants of recent years often arrive seeking a better life by escaping economic collapse, or religious or political persecution, the original immigrants to this country thought they were in a place seven thousand miles away from here, looking for spices because the food was THAT BAD where they were. Perhaps we can at least come together on the fact that if we all went back where we came from, no one would have been born. 

     Climate change. Now there's something we can all come to a meeting of the minds on. Global warming is happening whether or not you believe the weather. You may think it's a conspiracy theory, a bunch of scientists getting together (well, pretty much all of them) and staring at computer models, something I also do in my spare time. Let's just agree on one thing: Due to climate change, Elizabeth Hurley is becoming inexplicably hotter.

     The economy is inflating, no one could argue with that. Or is it? Maybe everything else is just getting smaller. Food is more expensive, yet my waist keeps getting bigger, resulting in a rare double-belt-tightening. Should America espouse a "trickle-down" theory of economics, where we decrease taxes on corporations and politely ask that they spend the extra money on hiring more workers and not on robotics and artificial intelligence? Or should we rely on a "demand-side" model, where, through individual tax cuts and government spending, we rely on consumers to drive the economy by buying a lot of crap they don't need, like 800 pairs of shoes, size 7 1/2, that take up most of the damn closet? (This is purely a hypothetical example.) I did much better in home economics than economics, so let's get together on the importance of accepting cookies.

     Life is no bed of roses, and that's why health care is such a thorny issue. So you need a health care plan. My plan so far has been to do something stupid on the tennis court about once every three months that requires surgery, thereby financing another one of my orthopedist's children's education. I don't know whether you think that government intervention in the health care system is a form of socialism, and that that is a dirty word. But what I do know is that when something happens to YOU, and you find out that it's not covered, you will let loose a torrent of words that are MUCH dirtier. let's just concur on the fact that those never-ending commercials for health care plans are the very things making us SICK AND TIRED.

     Foreign policy is foreign to me- I don't know who we should pick as our friends and who are our real enemies any more than I did in high school. Let's just agree that it's fun to travel to other countries and visit our foreign policy once in a while, to see how it's doing.

     Are we so embedded in our own beliefs that we can't come together on simple programs that benefit us all? Maybe, but we could focus on baby steps. You have to learn to crawl before you can run for office. For now, just leave it to me: Can we agree that a pizza is flat? And can we also agree that it's round? There- I fixed us.

COVERING ALL THE BASES

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-31-24)

     It's October already, and America's summer pastime has blossomed into the Fall Classic. I love baseball, and this is the time I love it the best. The other major sports are fine, football for example. Football is fun because they play in the rain or snow, and when the football gets loose everyone chases it around like a greased pig. And I like the name of some of the penalties, "unnecessary roughness," for example. If you grab a running back and throw him upside down on his head, it could be considered a necessary amount of roughness, depending on how much people dislike him. But you can't use your own head to hit another player, even though it's just as likely to hurt you as him. It's like the word "criminal mischief," where you allow that a certain amount of high jinks is all well and good, but if you add too much tomfoolery and throw in an overabundance of monkey business or shenanigans, you could have a misdemeanor on your hands.

     There's nothing wrong with basketball as a sport, but it seems like a lot of trouble to go through to put things into a basket one at a time, with someone trying to prevent you from doing it. I've encountered the same thing when I attempt to sort the laundry in the same room as my cat.

     Hockey is kind of exciting, and just saying the word "puck" unexpectedly in mixed company is an end in itself. But it goes so fast on television, people chasing an object no bigger than a cake of soap. It's hard to follow, and one of these days they'll blow the whistle when they realize they've been batting around someone's cell phone the whole time.  

     Soccer? I know the rest of the world loves soccer, but those are parts of the world where watching paint dry is also popular. My brother says, "You just don't understand the game," which isn't any more true than "I don't understand people WATCHING the game." I could fix the sport in two seconds by widening the goal two feet, decreasing the field by 20 percent, and adding a poodle to each team.

     But baseball is unique in so many ways. The innings of a game unfold like the drama of a play with nine acts. Then there is a play within a play- the action of the scoring and defense within the inning. Drilled further down is the confrontation of each at-bat, the ebb and flow that can quickly change the tide of the outcome. And every singular play is, well... a play. It's an individual challenge within a team war. And, unlike a Broadway production, no one feels the urge to break into a song.

     There is no clock to determine if you have time to catch up. Take all the time you need. We can bake some cookies while we're waiting, or do our taxes. No one will say, "Hey, can you score any faster, please?" Like they might in real life. During the 7th inning, we'll stretch, and sing a song together. During the 8th inning, a nice nap. By the 10th inning, maybe the cookies will be ready.  Also, there are no designated dimensions of a baseball park; each one is different. And, it's the only sport I know of that will admit that balls might be foul.

     Baseball also has the most entertaining fights in all of sports. I'll describe one to you: The pitcher grows tired of the same guy repeatedly hitting home runs in the game, so to get even he throws a ball at a completely different guy, who is much smaller. He aims for a spot near his head, but misses and hits him in the back. The guy who was hit makes a threatening gesture toward the mound, the same one your Mom made if you caught a garter snake and it got loose in the den. The pitcher then performs a pantomime symbolizing the entire "You talkin' to me?" scene in "Taxi Driver." Which is the international symbol for everyone who is employed by either team to run onto the field, in search of someone to hold them back. By this time players are streaming out of both bullpens, but instead of fighting each other along the way, they slow-jog all the way to the pitcher's mound to give the fight more time to be over. 

     Players are pointing at one another and yelling, and here for the first time, is what they said: "This happened last week and both benches emptied." "Oh, that wasn't a fight, someone tried to microwave some Chinese food that was three weeks  old." "Well, I'm going to have to punch you anyway in case you were thinking of doing the same thing." "Sir, I am on your team." "Really? I don't believe I've ever seen you before." "I'm a pinch runner, just called up today." "Well, I saw you pinch my sunflower seeds before, and then you ran. I'm going to have to ask you to step outside." "We are outside, but we can step inside. I only took the sunflower seeds to put in the birdfeeder. The Orioles, Cardinals and Blue Jays are in town next week." The fight escalates from there, and ends up with dinner reservations.

     This should be enough to convince you to watch the World Series with me, and enjoy one of the few sports where the "World" is defined as two countries on the same continent.

THE FALL GUY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-24-24)

     Every fall when I walk outside the house I smell that smell in the air, and I panic for a fleeting moment. It's the smell of overdue homework, of menacing teachers, of disappointed parents. Even after all these years I still feel a twinge of guilt for having made teachers work so hard for such meager results. 

     To my Dad, good grades meant a smooth four years of college, which meant an on-time graduation, resulting in potentially one less kid cluttering up the house. When you have six children, churning out college graduates is like an assembly line, and I was threatening to hold up the works like Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory.

     Teachers told my parents that I wasn't applying myself. But certainly neither of us would have benefitted by a more liberal application of me. They told me I was a smart-ass, correctly identifying the most intelligent part of myself. They would call my parents in for a conference, and I can only imagine how it went: "Your son is not taking his work seriously," the teacher would say. "Yes, we notice the same thing at home- he does his chores un-seriously." "He's becoming a disruption in class." "There too? He's a disruption around the house also." "At school, he complains about his homework." "Oh really? At home, he complains about his schoolwork." "Well, I'm glad we had this chat, it seems like we're in total agreement."

     My parents, teachers, guidance counselors, all said the same thing in different ways: I was a slacker not living up to my potential. I told them that they couldn't be more wrong, because they had vastly overestimated my potential. So they sent me off to a BOCES vocational testing facility, where I undertook a barrage of tests meant to derive suggestions as to what career path I might undertake, based on my intelligence and interests. I was expecting the results to show that I was best suited to become whatever the opposite of rocket scientist is. I definitely was not expecting the outcome I got, a recommendation of "flower arranger" (I'm not kidding about this). To this day, whenever I see an arrangement of flowers, I think, "Those were probably arranged by someone who did not apply themself in math class."

     I'm not sure where it started to go wrong, since I began as a gifted student. Excelling in blocks, coloring and the alphabet, my academic career was off to a rousing start. In middle school I was a promising pupil, but by high school nobody believed my promises anymore.

     It's too late now, but if I had studied harder in science and mathematics, perhaps I could have become part of the team that developed artificial intelligence. I would have had the most to gain from any intelligence that didn't have to come from me. But I am conceptually retarded in math. I couldn't put two and two together, and what if they don't even want to be together? People assume that traffic and weather want to be together, and both of them keep getting worse, so look how that turned out.

     Finally, just when it seemed like my academic career would come to a grinding halt in the 12th grade, I figured out the key to writing a credible term paper. All this time I had focused on finding a clear-sighted, intelligent thesis and supporting it with dumb analysis. After my moment of awakening, I realized that a ridiculous, far-fetched premise would be much easier to prop up with my fatuous arguments, and I blossomed as an scholar, getting accepted to one of the premier communications schools in the country.

     In college as a serious student, I prepared myself for the first job in my 44-year career at the most famous of the broadcast networks in the world: watching television for eight hours a day. There was never a job more suited to my talents and training. I understood that eventually I would marry an intelligent wife and let her do the thinking.

     And that has worked out spectacularly. My wife is well-read, quick-witted and wise. She provides me with half of an insightful conversation in many subjects. I'm supposed to supply the other half. For my part I like to think of myself as the "yang" to her "yin," a perfect counterpart who provides what she might be lacking at the time: a steady barrage of one-liners during sensitive parts of a movie (which in my defense are the boring parts). 

     And yet, that smell of fall still has the same effect now as it did then, and with a fresh jolt of anxiety I realize why it's so strong: I never handed in my final high school term paper. If my teacher gets a hold of me now, he's going to throttle me within an inch of his life, because he must be really old by now. I bolt back inside the house where the only smell in the air is the cat box, and dealing with that is long overdue also.

A FITTING TRIBUTE

 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-10-24)

     This is how I shop for clothes: I bought six pairs of Lee jeans from Amazon, 34 waist, 34 length. Can you believe that after all these years I'm still a 34-inch waist? Okay, 35. 36, but that's my final offer. How do I keep my slim waistline? By tightening my belt with a chain wrench before zipping up my pants. The waist is a terrible thing to mind.  

     The truth is that I don't know much about how to shop for clothing. Manufacturers should realize that most guys don't put a lot of thought into it. They should just decide what we want, produce it, send it to us based on the sizes we tell them (such as, "oh, pretty normal-size I guess," or "just round it off to the nearest whole number"), ship it to us, debit our bank accounts and leave us completely out of the process.

     And do it periodically, because guys never throw out clothing. I have a pair of jeans that has a rip above the knee that's eventually going to go all the way around, and then I'll have to decide if there's such a thing as half a pair of shorts. 

     I ignore terms like "the rise" when shopping for pants, because it sounds like something that's none of my business. "Inseam" I guess is pretty self-explanatory, but I'd like to be able to measure my pants without turning them inside-out. I wear my jeans pretty long, in case I have cowboy boots on, but when I wear sneakers the cuffs scrape along the ground, picking up all kinds of things that may later be introduced as evidence.

     I haven't bought any shirts for a long time, because shirts are hard. Xtra-Large usually means tall and portly, whereas I am not extra-tall but I am extra-whimsical, and that's a very hard size to fit. Tee shirts aren't much easier. If I buy a Large it's sometimes too small. If I buy an Xtra-Large it's usually too large. If I buy a Medium, sometimes it's TOO medium.

     It's even worse for women, where the sizing isn't based on empirical measures, such as inches, but on an inscrutable foundation of magical premises, the most important of which being that no woman is satisfied with her actual size. EVER. So clothes-makers jump through hoops trying to find phrasing that dances around the reality of the facts. When clothing designers coined the term "plus size," they were trying to be sensitive to the idea that it's sometimes hard to lose weight. "Plus size" sounds like an asset: there's just more to love. "Multiplication size," even if often more accurate, would not service this purpose. "Petite" is an honorific that makes an appealing term for women who can't reach any of the kitchen cabinets. Some "petites" are so petite that they end up in the "juniors" department, wearing styles that their Moms wouldn't let them out of the house wearing, except that THEY'RE the Moms now. Shopping in the "Misses" Department at your age tells you up front that you're way off the mark. 

     Confounding it all are the sizes themselves. The numbers are often inconsistent between manufacturers, not to mention internationally. You can still try to force reason upon the issue. To accurately determine your waist, wrap the tape measure around the narrowest part of your torso, just above your belly button. The tape should be snug but not tight. Okay, ease up a bit, you're turning blue. You seem to have keeled over. Let's move on. Numerical sizing for women is supposed to take into account her proportions, and provide a tailored fit, taking into account her various feminine attributes. If, as she ages, there is an  inverse proportion, complicated math may be involved. "Can you believe that after all these years I STILL wear a size zero?!" "Wow, that's  the same size as before you were born!" 

    Some sizes run small. Well, if they were actual inches they'd have no choice but to run in place right where they were. Maybe you want something with a "fuller cut?" Don't overfill it or you might spill something. Maybe you'd like something "curvy" and "off-shoulder?" If so, the road I live on might be perfect for you.

     I've gone shopping with my wife, and it's a very frustrating experience. She wanders from one rack to the next, and picks up each sleeve and rubs it and goes "Hmmm." Women have a special way of divining whether a garment fits/ is the right price/ looks good on her just by touching it once, whereas it might take her several years to figure out that her boyfriend doesn't fit at all.

     I just thought of THE PERFECT THING for you! It's asymmetrical, bat-wing, boat-neck, box-pleated, patch-pocket, notch-collar, puff-sleeved, adjustable-suspension, automatic-transaxle and self-leveling, and you can drive it off the lot today with only 20 percent down! The bottom line, which should fall somewhere near your bottom, is this: If you dress well, and everything fits, you may finally be taken seriously at work. And as a humor writer, that's the last thing I need.