Really?

At first I thought he meant, his part of the conversation in italics, and then the answer back in plain text; and then I thought his italics would illustrate that the fence was being leaned upon….and then I thought he meant italics for what he’s thinking, and plain text for what he’s saying….and then I gave up - but I didn’t think of your pickets! Very imaginative

Only when he walks backwards. Otherwise, it’s eight inches ahead of the rest of him.

(If you notice the post above yours, there’s a line that goes “made my piece with that”. The biggest problem with politicians is that they’re illiterate, so they think their constitutents want them to make piece instead of making peace.)

You know why men give a cute name to their dick?

I thought it was always girlfriends that did the naming. If guys did the naming, it’d end up being named something like “Mr Tasty” every time.

You know why men give a cute name to their dick? You wouldn’t want a stranger making all your decisions for you.

and then, my nn.c training kicked in, and I immediately saw his misuse of the word ‘piece’….but I did like his take on Spitzer (yet another Dickensian name, as it turns out)

I didn’t get the ’slanty’ business, though

To be specific: my newspaper column returns. In the paper. Also on Sunday. In the Metro section. Bonus points: it’s under my name. For my entire tenure at the Strib the column has been named something else, lest people recoil in horror at the ambivalent penultimate vowel – short e, long e, who knows? (Long.) There’s no formula, no name like “the Quirk” (I made my piece with that, but there were days it made me want to open my belly with a corkscrew) or “the Backfence (the thing over which I leaned, neighborly, to engage neighbors in genial patter – that was the idea, anyway; the format meant there were long blocks of italic type that gave readers a handy visual clue. Skip the slanty part!) Now it’s a column with my name.

He also makes a passing comment, as a number have in the last <24 hrs. about legalization. I’m torn on this one, having spent time in prisons talking to women who were generally in for other things (assault, murder) but whose primary job description before their last arrest was “lot lizard” or “lady o’ the night (or hour).”

My negative reaction is mainly to assertions that it’s a victimless crime, which is hooey, but that the victim is most emphatically the woman. There have been plenty of stories of women who would say for a camera or reporter that they “chose” their work, their vocation as a “sex worker,” and most of them, if they lived that long, got out later and then had a story of beatings, psychological manipulation, economic desperation, and drugs that were why and how they stayed in the life.

So going legalization feels like it won’t help that end of the problem, which was the same question i had for Ed and David after their star turn on “Talk of the Nation” yesterday (check NPR archives for mp3). I think they’re onto the right track, and i’m pretty much with their “jury nullification within limits” proposal, but won’t legalization just affirm a different level of victimization?

Although i think their response would be (David, if you’re still reading, feel free to straighten me out) that it’s better not to have Da Government victimizing people, and stopping the dealer/profiteer/thug victimizers is Step B, not to be confused with Step A, end the drug war/war on the underclass.

The prostitution example slows me up from signing onto any wholesale legalization plan to cure social ills by making them mainstream, but de-criminalizing major aspects of both drug use and money-for-sex to protect the most helpless makes tons of sense. Paying for it, illegal, taking the money, not so much; distributing drugs, illegal, selling it on the corner, littering & loitering charges only.

At $4300 for a VERY short work day, I’m inclined to think that prostitution victimizes women. Where does a guy sign up to be victimized?

David Paterson is legally blind and widely liked. Congressman Peter King (R-Long Island) calls Paterson a “thoroughly decent guy”.

Born in 1954, 1977 gets history degree from Columbia, 1982 gets JD degree from Hofstra, 1985 starts representing Harlem in NY State Senate, 2002 minority leader, 2006 wins post as Lt. Governor.

I imagine there have been jokes about “minority leader” and about people pulling the wool over his eyes, but I have too much class to make one of them.