If you are my friend (and clearly you are, or you wouldn't be reading this) please, please, please don't ever "shoot" me an e-mail. And if I ever "shoot" you and e-mail, feel free to just shoot me.

The love-obsessed astronaut mom charged with attempted kidnapping and murder earlier this week should probably send some flowers to Anna Nicole's funeral. I've never seen a story disappear so quickly and completely.

This is a rhetorical question, but what the hell happened to the news in this country? I took a much greater interest in each of these stories than I should have, so I know I'm part of the problem, but damn. Our news coverage is completely out of control.

Mia had a hard time getting to sleep last night. She had had a bad dream the night before and she was afraid that it was going to come back if she went to sleep. As Mia tells it, "There was this evil puffball. His name was Fluffy. And he kept tricking me into his evil traps." What the hell? What kind of nightmare is that? You know, she used to be terrified of a singing puppet from Teletubbies. She saw it once and had nightmares about it for years. It was this bizarre little puppet guy with a bun on his head that went from window to window in a computer animated pink house singing a horrible little song. She saw the guy once for maybe 10 seconds and the image haunted her for, literally, three years. She even knew his name (although I'm certain he was nameless on Teletubbies). She called him Ihavin. I have a kid who is terrified of puffballs and singing puppets. What's up with that?

In other kid news, we ended up talking about Latin American while we were sitting around the dinner table last night. As you may or may not know, we have an exchange student from Germany living with us right now. Jenny (that's her) is taking, among other things, Latin American Studies at Austin High, which led to the following conversation. . .
Zoe: What's Latin American Studies?
Jenny: Well, do you know what Latin American is?
Zoe: Nope.
Me: Latin America is a bunch of countries to the south of the United States where the people mostly speak Spanish.
Zoe: Oh, like Mexico?
Me: That's right. And Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, etc.
Mia: Oh yeah. And India.
Zoe: No, silly. They don't speak Spanish in India. They speak Curry.

Oh my. So much for multiculturally-sensitive parenting. . .

I subscribed to Prevention magazine recently. I needed to subscribe to *something* as a friend's kid was fundraising for preschool playground equipment or an orchestra trip, or whatever. In any case, I already receive all two magazines I'm interested in reading (The Week and less consistently, Texas Monthly) as well as a couple I don't read.

I chose Prevention because a couple of my friends get it. And these happen to be my most health conscious, fit friends. And they're smart, too. Really, really smart. So, rather than ASKING what they thought of the magazine, I figured they must like it. And wanting to be health conscious, fit, and smart, I subscribed.

But guess what!?! It SUCKS! It's like a health and nutrition tabloid. Seriously. I'd say it's about 50% pharmaceutical advertising, 15% other advertising, and maybe 15% useful information. The remaining 20% consists of bogus and/or hyped up health claims, such as how to Lower Your Blood Pressure with Celery! or how to Choose Fat-Blocker Foods!! Or my all-time favorite, "Doctors' Top Ten Secrets for Preventing Heart Disease! What?!? Doctors keep the good stuff secret and then publish it in Prevention magazine? Yeah, I didn't buy it either.

So, if you love Prevention and I've hurt your feelings, I apologize. Especially if you're the friend whom I love and respect who unwittingly tricked me into buying the damn thing. But I really had to get that off my chest.

Now I'm going to go find out how to Ward Off Cancer with Cherries!

I'm going to lay my political biases right out on the table (as if I haven't already). What I'm about to say is pathetic, but it's honest.

If we had discussed the issue a week ago, before any of this happened, and assuming the vaccine has been well-tested and is safe and effective, I'd very likely have thought that adding this to the list of mandatory vaccines would be a good idea. BUT as soon as I heard Perry had issued an executive order making the vaccine mandatory, I was suspicious. We are on completely opposite sides of the spectrum on most every issue of substance, and that makes me wonder what his motives are. Plus, the idea that he completely avoided any kind of debate about the issue by issuing the executive order really rankles me. Any time any political figure does something like that, I think it should raise flags.

All that being said, I think it is ridiculous to argue that giving a young girl a vaccine to protect her against a potentially life-threatening disease STD is somehow promoting promiscuity. If we were to apply the same argument, we shouldn't vaccinate children against hepatitis because it could promote promiscuity, intravenous drug use, and blood transfusions. The argument just doesn't make sense!

It absolutely sucks that we live in a time where everything out of the ordinary can be interpreted as potential terrorism. A bunch of birds die near the capitol in Austin, and we assume someone has released something dangerous into the air. An irreverent tv show initiates a stealth marketing campaign, and some passerby panics and calls the police, who shut down parts of a major US city.

What the hell?

I've been thinking about all the hubbub caused by the "terrorist scare" in Boston. (You can read up on it here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16921137/ if you're not up to speed.) Is it possible that the government really intends to hold the marketing people responsible for the goverment's own overreaction?

Maybe I'm missing a key piece of the puzzle, but it seems to me that intent has to play a role. From what I've read, what I know about the show the devices were marketing, and the images I've seen, it's hard for me to imagine that the people who placed the devices intended for them to be interpreted as dangerous. It may have been misadvised (although, really, I'm not even sure about that), but I don't think there was an intention to do harm. Yes, someone panicked and set the department of homeland security in motion. But whose fault is it really?

Which brings me to the lame and incomplete hypothetical scenario I've been considering. Let's say I take my minivan full of kids to the mall. As they're climbing out, someone unknowingly knocks the remote control to my on-board DVD player out of the van and we head into the mall. When we return, the parking lot has been overtaken by police and homeland security, and MOPAC has been shut down because somebody walking by saw a strange electronic device in a place it shouldn't have been.

Would this all be my fault? Could I actually be held financially and even *criminally* responsible for someone else's misperception of the situation? 'Cause that's what it sounds like is happening in Boston.

And that's just NUTS!