Here are the latest concepts I don't buy into. Let's go ahead and call them stupid.

1. Ketchup bottles with different drawing tips in the cap. Ketchup is not cake frosting, nor is it an art medium. It is a condiment. While we are at it, children old enough to walk about are also old enough to learn to sit down and eat at a table.

2. Trail mix with lentils. At least two brands of trail mix have lentils listed in the ingredient panel, but neither have generic M&Ms listed in the ingredient panel. Yet they both contain candy coated chocolate disks. Breaking news: M&Ms are not dried beans, or legumes, or whatever the hell lentils are.

3. "Donut Friday" 

Frozen cinnamon waffles and grated cheddar do not necessarily make a good combo.

Hurricane Rita is supposed to have some sort of direct effect on us. As in, some sort of weather will happen, and we will have to do something different.

Far north Texas has been preparing for Rita.

First of all, Sam's Club and all the grocery stores were completely out of run-of-the-mill bottled water. Since all those bottled water shoppers surely can't be wrong, we snatched up a case of sparkling San Pelligrino as well as as some Kroger store brand bottled sparkling water. I'm no snob, I will brush my teeth with any sparkling water. Take what you can get.

We also got some Monster energy soda since if you are going to be cooped up in either a small room of your home or even the wreckage of your home, at least you ought to be shaking your leg non-stop. Plus we got some Fruit 2O flavored water, because it was there.

We got some canned chicken breast and triscuits, peanut butter, tuna, tortilla chips, trail mix and the like. I made some Kraft Dinner, and in one package I added sliced hot dogs for David.

Gas was, and still may be, in short supply. I went fuel-hunting at 5:30 this morning for the MDX, and found premium at $2.83. If you buy gas, reset all the computers, and then immediately coast down a substantial hill, you can get 76 miles per gallon. Who needs a hybrid?

The funniest thing about this storm is that I feel the need to clean my house. Dammit, if the windows are going to break out, at least my counters will be clean. And by the time it actually hits, my laundry will be done too. Stupid, but true.

When David and I were first married, we were in a lot better shape. We worked out a lot more, and ate a lot better. Then, as the realization set in that we were actually adults, we started to buy, and actually take, vitamins and supplements.

Being easily swayed by health articles for a period of time, coupled with being cheap, led us to purchase large quantities of vitamins and supplements from Sam's Club: Vitamin E capsules, Feverfew root, Lysine for cold sores. Jumbo vitamin C tabs. St. John's Wort for depression. Fish oil. Flaxseed oil. Evening Primrose oil. Vitamin B to the x power.

It is a great commitment to shove so many pills down one's throat on a daily basis, so it was no surprise that all these jumbo bottles of pills ended up in a Rubbermade bin under the bed. Long expired.

Sundown, Inc. manufactures supplements with a nifty Twist 'N Learn Label. But, nowhere on that Twist 'N Learn Label does it tell you how to dislodge several pounds of expired vitamins and supplements from your toilet trap.

Just so you know, the answer is boiling water and a plunger.

I wish I had a picture.

I spotted this decal on the door of our local Target last night.

What constitutes a "service animal"?

I think I'm going to take my guinea pig up to Target. If they say anything, I'm going to point out that while a guide dog may be of service to one person, guinea pigs have been helping all of mankind for ages. You can't get much more service-oriented than a guinea pig.

Plus, William needs to try on his Halloween costume before we buy it since we don't know his size. I'm assuming a dog's size small is the best we are going to do.

Guinea pigs: the underappreciated service animals.

I found Maisy a week or two ago - Noggin changed their morning preschool lineup, replacing Max & Ruby with Maisy at the 5:30 a.m. time slot.

At first, I didn't like Maisy, but being too lazy to change the channel, I started watching, or at least, listening.

Maisy is a large baby mouse. She seems to be the equivalent of a two year old human. She makes noises that sound like human speech, but she isn't actually speaking English. Maisy lives alone in a two-storey house.

There is a narrator who talks to Maisy and her friends throughout the show, but doesn't otherwise interact with the characters. He asks dumb questions and Maisy and her friends reply, but the narrator isn't an authority figure or anything logical.

Maisy has a several friends, a rather close-knit gang. There is Tallulah the chick, and Cyril the squirrel. Tallulah and Cyril seem pretty intelligent and are intellectually, verbally and physically about on par with Maisy. They don't make the same noises as Maisy, but the babble is similar

Then, there is Charley. Charley is a crocodile. There is no nice way to say this but Charley is a complete idiot and we watch the show to make fun of him. In fact, I just listen to the show to listen to Charley make stupid noises. He may be retarded, but of course in baby cartoons we wouldn't have that so Charley is fair game.

Add to the stupid noises the fact that Charley is the only carnivore of the group, and he is huge compared to everyone else. On some days, he has to duck to get through a standard doorway. His teeth are often outlined in red, so he is likely eating some sort of meat, so given his little reptilian pea brain, he will surely eat one of the gang soon.

David does a hell of a Charley impersonation. We were in Target yesterday, and he let loose an AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY so loud that we both hid. I swear, the neighbors can hear either David doing his Charley impressions or at a minimum, me crying tears of laughter in the morning.

I cannot explain Maisy and Charley remotely as well as Mimi does.

During Katrina's wrath, I was stunned by how far removed I felt from the destruction and devastation taking place a mere 545.5 miles away. And, I suspected MSNBC of, as usual, blowing the whole thing out of proportion in their usual attempt to get my adrenaline pumping at record pace. It was just a weird feeling - things seemed so normal here.

Last week, I learned that an abandoned Walmart a few miles from us became a shelter for people who lost everything they owned to Hurricane Katrina. These people have been on my mind a lot since then. In fact, I've been thinking of them constantly.

What kind of despair must one feel when in a mere week everything you own is lost and you find yourself living in a building abandoned by a discount retailer?

I was worried - the old Walmart was slated for demolition next month - was there still air conditioning? How were people bathing? Was it smelly in there? Were people out in the open in a sea of cots just wasting away in their grief? Were they allowed to come and go at will?

I had assembled a box of clothes, and especially childrens shoes. LD has stuff that doesn't fit anymore that has - seriously - been worn perhaps twice. We drove down to the Walmart shelter, but there was a sign posted, "No Donations". Why not, we wondered? How mean. But when we took the box to the Goodwill donation center across the street from the old Walmart, the attendant told us that the Walmart shelter was overloaded.

They had too much stuff.

So did the Goodwill center. They were piled high with more clothes donations than they could even process. I saw this large pile with my own eyes through the glass doors.

Come to find out, living in an old Walmart isn't as bad as I thought it would be. In record time, hundreds of volunteers had showers installed, day care and a teen lounge in place, laundry facilities created, an internet access center was created, murals painted, etc. Partitions were set up to give families privacy. Children have been enrolled in local schools. Meals are provided. Adults are working locally.

I did a little research on the McKinney Walmart shelter, and if you are interested, here is an article from the McKinney Courier-Gazette.

Here is more information on the McKinney Walmart shelter from the Dallas Morning News.

Am I saying that living in an old Walmart is a good thing, or that losing everything you own to a hurricane is not a big deal? Oh hell no!

It is just nice to know that when crap like this happens, there are a lot of people out there who will help out the best they know how, and try to make it a little brighter than it has to be. I hope to find some way to help out next week.

I only hope that as time goes on, people manage to get back on their feet quickly and that we don't end up hearing about nastiness when, as they say on MTV's The Real World, people stop being polite.

We have a couple of pet guinea pigs. William and Dixie are super pets, with very distinct personalities. While they are large rodents, they are pretty intelligent and are highly trainable.

It is pretty funny, in fact, how fast they will learn something, even if we didn't mean to teach them anything. For example, I put some cut up fruit on top of a pile of rocks in their enclosure. I did that perhaps twice before they caught on. Now, whenever I go in there, before I even get there, two guinea pigs are standing up waiting for a fruit delivery on top of the pile of rocks. And they know the sound of my footsteps versus David's. After all, I am the fruit delivery system. Also, if they are out of water or food, or if any other condition is unacceptable, Dixie will whistle until "the help" has rectified the situation. No kidding.

So anyway, I think about how boring their lives must be. They spend a lot of time watching for predators that never come. They sleep a lot. They stand around waiting for fruit deliveries. They poop. William makes advances to Dixie, who seems to cuss at him, just like a lot of human couples.

What kind of fun stuff can a guinea pig do? I put a cardboard toilet paper tube in there. Maybe they could roll it around. William ate it. I've put boxes in there, William eats them. We have stuffed hay in a bag, they seem interested, they both eat the hay, William eats the bag.

When you think about it, in the world we have two main groups:  The Eaters and The Eaten. The Eaters eat meat and enjoy games and play. The Eaten just enjoy not being eaten. Any day when an Eaten doesn't get eaten, well, that is a very good day.

When we play games, even Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit, aren't we just fulfilling some ancient need to win the game of life or death? When there is no challenge in the daily mechanics of life, we enjoy other challenges. And not just humans. The house cat, for example, with no need to hunt for food, will kill for sport, be it a bird, a paper sack, or a string.

So I think I will go ahead and treat my little herbivore animals as what they are, and let them just sit around and enjoy all their very good days of not being eaten.

Daily, I am bombarded with stupid concepts, be it on the television or internet, or even in real life. I think this is going to be a new series. Anyway, without further adieu, here are some concepts I just don't buy into:

1. I don't deserve a new floor no matter what Home Depot would like me to think

2. "Fall Shoe Mania"

3. I am not fat because I cannot take stimulant-based diet pills. I can take (and enjoy the heck out of) stimulant-based diet pills, and I still eat too much, therefore I am fat.

A really good name to keep on the tip of your tongue is Joey Buttafuoco.

Trust me - the name comes up several times.

And don't forget Amy Fisher, "disturbed teenager". I wonder, if like in today's elementary schools, she would be refered to as a "precious sweet girl".