For the gazillionth time - 9/11 and Iraq ARE NOT CONNECTED. Now the official investigative panel has said it too:

"The panel said it found 'no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.'

Once they open the store, go visit designsonthewhitehouse.com and buy this shirt.

In other news, Mattel is introducing a line of clothes, so grown women can dress up like barbie. Yep, that seems like a swell idea.

In happier news, there's this reminder that we can all be better people. A woman in California is paying for inner-city school kids in Oakland to go to college. She isn't particularly wealthy, and she hasn't opened some random scholarship. She walks into third grade classes and tells kids they can do better, and if they do, she'll make sure they can go to college. Then she sticks with them, meets with them, encourages them, for the next ten years.

And just for fun, sometimes the right wine is beer. The guy featured in this article has been learning about beer for the past 20 years and he's now as much of a connoisseur of matching beer with meals as wine. Next time I see Carrie I'm totally asking her to make an apple and goat cheese omelet and we're starting brunch with wheat beer.

Telling it like it is

There was a big flap over one line that was critical of the Reagan administration in some lame tv-mini-series about the Reagans this past year. And the Band Played On includes this line, "...if all the angels came dancing down to earth like the rockettes even they couldn't get a dime out of this administration for anything with the name gay on it." Funny how we manage to take two steps forward and two steps back. Though, in truth, Angels in America was just as damning of the Reagan administration's handling of the AIDS crisis. Perhaps it's only HBO that can manage painful truths.

DONE!

One bubble bath and the better part of a bottle of merlot later and I feel Great! Of course, I finally get a night off, and what do I choose to rent from Blockbuster? And the Band Played On. Yeah Matthew Modine playing a hunky doctor working for the CDC battling the AIDS crisis. Could I be a bigger public health dork? I actually remember watching this on HBO when I was younger and I think it's the reason I have the hots for Modine. Anyway...the friends continue the awesomeness, with matt driving me to happy hour tomorrow so I can get blitzed and April and Scott making dinner for me on Tuesday and then Cara joining us for trivia at Thinking Man Tavern. Stay tuned for an upcoming post about The Handmaid's Tale and how creepy and prescient it is and how everyone should go read it RIGHT NOW! And now...time for some Matthew Modine yumminess...