Cute but also good

Life can be unfair. Starting today, La Perla is having a 75 percent clearance sale on *all* the lingerie in its NYC stores. Since that's the only time L'Ailee can hope to afford any, she's taking advantage. However, it's Hell Week, so I won't get to enjoy it for a while, damn it. I don't get any La Perla, either, because they don't do plus-size. I have to stick with Avenue, or do like Gretchen Wilson and claim that I'm just as sexy in stuff from Walmart.

It can be lots worse. Last weekend, riptides off the beaches of NYC and Lawngiland--sorry, Long Island--claimed at least four lives this weekend. They're still searching for 10-year-old Akira Johnson off of Coney Island. I guess people up here just don't know what a riptide looks like or what it does. I like hurricane surfing, at least up to Category 2, and I stay the hell away from riptides. The police didn't want my help finding Akira--I can't dive deep enough and don't have enough training, though BossLady would have let me go for a day to do that. I don't know. She troubles me the most. Children do that. I want to go hug my mother for all the times she put up with my whining when I was growing up near Daytona Beach and she wouldn't let me go into the water for some "stupid" reason or other.

So, no beach. Just as well that I went to the farmers' market and watched NASCAR instead. That was really a horrible race, though. Competition cautions for tires every 12 laps!!!!!! Yeah, *that's* what people paid good money to go see at Indy, in this economy. One poor woman, who was shown on Speed in the pre-race show, held up this sign: "I drove 535 miles to watch SMOKE drive 400 miles." The NASCAR execs finally apologized for its suckiness today. They simply didn't think. It didn't occur to them that with a whole new car, they'd have to test tires again. Maybe Mauricia Green's obnoxious New York lawyer is right, and they are just a bunch of nudniks who got lucky. At least Tony Stewart gets to feel vindicated about his well-known feelings against Goodyear Tires, though not much else. It seemed to put a sour cherry on top of Smoke's sucky year to see him come in 23rd at his beloved Brickyard.

The highlight, then, was having L'Ailee's best friend's 7-year-old daughter with us. He is divorced, and he's now in a relationship with L'Ailee's other best friend, who is also male. He doesn't get his daughter nearly as often as he should, but I won't go into details--that's for his blog, if he wants one, not mine. Despite this, he got the little girl into NASCAR, too. (NASCAR may have a few things going for it, if a bisexual Nuyorussian cabbie can get into it and get his daughter excited about it, too.) Of course, we all had to behave around her. My usual guests tend to drink more during cautions and red flag delays, and the 7-year-old's prescence kept that in check, too. L'Ailee and I were most grateful for that.

She cuddled up next to her father a lot. It was so sweet. He warned her that the wasabi peanuts were really hot when she reached for some. "I *know* wasabi, Da," she replied with little-girl superiority, but she still seemed grateful for the orange soda I gave her after she tried a couple of my peanuts! (Usually dairy cancels out spiciness, but I find that sugar helps with wasabi.)

Another guest asked her who her favorite driver was. This launched a sequence that showed us that, perhaps, bisexual parenting can be a little different. L'Ailee's friend is an ardent Junior Nationalist--he was upset when he was told he couldn't have Dale Jr. stuff in his cab. The girl replied, "Junior!" Then she looked up at her father. "He's the best, right, Da?"

He caught the hesitation in her voice. "I think so, but you can like any driver you want."
"Okay. I like Kasey Kahne, too," she admitted. "And Joey Logano."
"Why Kasey Kahne?" another guest asked.
"Kasey is really cute, except he's short." Her father is 6'6", and she seems to be inheriting his height.
"Most NASCAR drivers are short, dear," I told her. "It makes it easier to fit in their cars."
"Yeah, but some of them aren't so short. I like Kasey, though. I like it when he dances in the commercial. He won the All Star race, so that means he's really good, because they only let the best drivers race in that. So he's not just cute, he's also good." She gave her father a meaningful look, and so did several of us.
He blushed red, as he should have. He frequently tells us that he doesn't just like Junior because he's cute; he likes him because he's good, too. "I tell her she can't only like a driver because he's cute," he admitted.
"But it helps!" his partner teasingly added, and we all laughed.

"I really like Joey Logano," the 7-year-old declared after the adult foolishness passed.
"He's not in the Sprint Cup yet," L'Ailee pointed out.
"He will be," the girl declared confidently. We were all pretty impressed, actually, at how attentive she'd obviously been. "Joey's cute, but he's not just cute, he's really, really good! He won only his third race [in the Nationwide--second tier--series], and that's a short time to race before you win. Everyone said so. And he's Italian. [Her mother is, too.] And he's [counted on fingers] only 11 years older than me, so when I'm old enough to marry him, he won't be an old man!" Now everyone really laughed.
Her father hugged her. He pointed to me. "She would have married Tony Stewart if [L'Ailee] didn't ask her first."
"But he's not just cute, he's also really good, even if he is having a sucky season," I had to respond. I believe I will be giving her my #20 earrings in November, when the season's over and Tony Stewart's out of that ride in body as well as in mind. It looks like her future husband may have that number, after all.

Links, links:

This delightful photo set at Flickr demonstrates why the world needs more panda cubs. They're not just cute, they're also funny! Zhen Zhen ("Precious"), the San Diego Zoo's 11-month-old girl, can be a bit of a brat, and she also *loves* her keepers' shoes. In this series, she strives with all her might--all 50 pounds of her--to get them. Whatever they do, they can't let her see any DVDs of Kung Fu Panda or Sex in the City!

It's easy to believe that the world also needs more cute kittens, but, well, it doesn't need as many as it's getting. Global warming is really increasing the population of ferals, for a number of reasons.

There is an *awesome* article in Scientific American about bisexuality in animals!!!!!

Those of us who took sociology classes were probably all taught that Herbert Spencer was the founder of "Social Darwinism", an unrepentant racist, and one of the bad guys in academic history. This ain't necessarily so. It could be, in fact, that the real racists were his liberal detractors!

Finally, you absolutely must see Despair.com's new Government and Tradition Demotivators!