PMS makes me internationally renowned

Some of you may recall my story on PMS this past week. Go to http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060726/LIFE07/60726002/1088 if you missed it. It's quite the treatise. And this ain't just me talking.

I got a phone call from a French Canadian psychotherapist who happened to read it and called it the only piece on the subject written by a man with science and insight in it.

OK, maybe those Canadians don't get out much, but I can't wait to tell my wife Sue this news because, frankly, I don't thing she was too happy with the work, especially since our sons agreed that I had certainly hit the nail on the head in describing what they'd seen of PMS growing up in the Riley house.

The heat makes reluctant saints of us all

I was driving home from work one recent afternoon. It was one of those hot days we've had lately - Serengeti-hot, a hot that hurts your eyes just to be out in it. Nothing I wanted more than to get to my air-conditioned home.

My car hasn't had a working air conditioner for a couple of summers now and the only illusory cool comes from breaking the speed limit to get some hot outside air blowing on you.

I passed a young woman walking along what could have been bubbling blacktop, the La Brea Tar Pits of Jersey, for all I knew. She had thin-soled shoes on her feet and a shopping bag in her hand.

I pass by people like that all the time, never giving them a second thought - unless they are carrying a gasoline can, because I've been there. The awful heat made her visible, shimmering like some mirage.

She accepted my offer of a ride and we drove about two miles to her destination.
People say that oppressive heat makes us cranky, but sometimes, I think, God works to make it otherwise.

Taking your balls and going home

President Bush exercised his very first veto this week.
The bill that he vetoed would have allowed the federal government to fund stem-cell research on frozen embryos that would otherwise be destroyed.
"That would be immoral,'' says the president.
I just don't get that. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that frozen embryos are full-fledged human beings just shy of being able to vote, drink and fight in a desert a world away.
They are going down one way or another. The fertility treatments worked. These embryos are not going to be used and are scheduled for demolition, whatever that means in terms of a test tube.
The president seems to be saying that if the fertility clinic patients don't want the extras, then ain't nobody gonna use them.
That's fine and dandy for folks who are quick to point out that embryonic stem cell research hasn't led anywhere or gotten anybody up and walking.
That greenish bread mold was around a long time, too, before somebody figured out that penicillin was a pretty good thing to have around.
Nobody wants embryonic spare parts factories, for God's sake. But embryonic stem cell research deserves more of a chance than these forsaken frozen petrie dish dwellers.

Knock that (expletive deleted) off!

If you don't like President Bush, there are a host of reasons on the left and the right to support your opinion. But his recent open-mike gaffe, wherein he explained to Tony Blair his view of the best way to stem the current violence in the Middle East this way: "What they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this [expletive]" is not one of those reasons.
Most of us figure this is the way to solve the world's problems.
I call it "The Three Stooges'' Paradigm.
The United States, being Moe, gets the warring parties to declare a cease-fire by banging their heads together and saying, "Cut it out, you knuckleheads!" Any further aggression is met with a sharp poke in the eye.
The fact that Shep never entered the diplomatic corps (although easily upset John Bolton seems Shep-like) is proof, of course, that world diplomacy is never that simple.
Nyuck! Nyuck! Nyuck!

I need your help

Indeed I do. I've been asked to write an article for the Asbury Park Press entitled "A Guy's Guide to PMS.'' Of course, I'll be talking to medical experts and drawing upon my own vast expeirence in the field, but I'd also like to hear from you with your stories of PMS troubles and also any suggestions (besides "Set up a tent and go live in the backyard for the duration'') on how us guys can help the women in our lives through the rough patches.
You can feel free to post anonymously, of course, but the only way I'll be able to use your wise words is if you let me know who you are and how to get in touch with you.
Thanks

Who's Your Mack (MC Squared) Daddy?

The recent release of a massive trove of Einstein letters has been a revelation.
Albert Einstein apparently believed that marital vows were as relative as the time-space continuum.
The guy was a hound, and had quite a few opportunities to experience the old "fusion and fission rhumba'' outside the bounds of matrimony, if you catch my drift.
I imagine it must have been difficult for him to resist temptation. The letters reveal that the guy had more groupies than Gene Simmons in whiteface.
Those math groupies must be wild. A few drinks and it's "Oh show me your integers, and your differential equations. Oh, baby!!''
One of his letters actually reveals how tired he was of the groupies.
In 1931, he wrote, "Out of all the dames, I am in fact attached only to Mrs. L. ....."
How great is it that Einstein went around using words like "dame?"
Like he's something out of a Raymond Chandler novel or a Bogart flick.
I can picture Einstein sitting at at bar, three days of stubble on his chin and an ugly bruise on his noggin.
"Dames," he thought to himself, nursing his drink and his regret. "Just like critical mass. Can't live with 'em, can't blow up the world without 'em.''

Dirty capitalism

So, yesterday I'm booming down Route 130 in Burlington County on my way to pick up my wife, who was visiting her mother at the lovely Baptist Home of South Jersey. I pass one of those bunker-like concrete block buildings that usually house either a sad, nasty bar or, in this case, an adult video store.

A banner across the front wall read: "Under New Management.'' And so I thought to myself, "What possible difference would that make?''

Up, up and away!

The strangest things will turn right-wing radio listeners absolutely livid. Like the new movie "Superman Returns,'' which does not mention that Superman stands for "the American Way.''
"How dare the movie makers take that away from the Man of Steel?'' these hosts and callers fume. "Just one more example of spineless liberal muddle.''

A couple of points. In the first place, Superman isn't real. Conservatives seem to have some trouble separating fact from fiction. Remember when Dan Quayle gave "Murphy Brown'' a dressing down for having a child of wedlock? In the second place, while Superman did kick Nazi butt during WWII, it's not a new idea that he sees himself as a citizen of the planet and protector of same.

Speaking of planets, Superman ain't from around here. These same folks bemoaning the lack of a cliche in a movie would be the first people to send the Kryptonian packing. The guy's an illegal alien, for Pete's sake! They'd have the Immigration folks his case faster than a speeding bullet.