Wine-boxing.

You know as well as I do that eventually, you’re going to start buying your wine by the box. Don’t pretend you haven’t occasionally slowed down as you passed the boxes just adjacent to those giant bottles of wine in the back of liquor section of the grocery store. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed the absurdly low cost. Don’t try to deny that you haven’t noticed those articles that show up in respectable publications or heard Alpana Singh suggest that more and more often, they’re putting decent wine in boxes. And don’t go feigning surprise at the implication that you’ve been considering buying some of the stuff just as soon as you can figure out how to do it without sacrificing your self-respect. Fortunately for you, I am here to soften the blow, my self-respect having slipped into the shadows of retreat somewhere around the same time as the last significant film role for Theresa Russell. So I am here to help you through this inevitable transition. No one did that for me. But I’m doing it for you. That’s how I am. I am generous. I am thoughtful. I am sensitive to your needs.

What I am not exactly, is sober. I have not been altogether sober in probably two weeks. This is what happens when you buy your wine in a box. No one tells you that. But I will.

Here’s what happened: About two weeks ago I went to Target to purchase power tools and alcohol. After comparison shopping for drills and sanders, I headed over to the coffee and alcohol section. (Because at Target, they apparently organize the foodstuffs in aisles according groupings appropriate for categories on The One-Hundred-Thousand-Dollar Pyramid. This being the aisle identifiable as Foodstuffs That Directly Interfere with Normal Brain Functioning.) I have to admit, the wine selection is not at all bad for a discount store. They have most of your favorite really cheap wines from the grocery store. Plus they have there own line of box wines. The insidious part is that the wine boxes are available in smaller sizes than one might see in the grocery store liquor sections. That’s how they seduce you. With introductory sizes at a deeply discounted price. It’s not the big twelve dollar commitment it might be at the supermarket. It’s just a few bucks. Clearly, the people running the wine business for Target are the same ones who sold weed outside my junior high school.

So I hardly had to think about it. I bought myself a box—nay, a mere cube—at a cost equivalent to seventy-eight cents a bottle. Or something like that. As I said, I’m not entirely sober. I shouldn’t be relied upon for calculations.

I feared my neighbors would see me bringing it in, but I think I managed to scurry up to my apartment unnoticed, securing, perhaps, another week of avoiding their pitying sidelong glances. Yay.

It didn’t take long to figure out how to place and operate the spigot. You’ll figure that out fine by yourself What you may not realize—and it’s really important that you realize this—is that you will have no way of tracking how much wine you have consumed. I mean, unless you count the glasses—and who does that?—you will be unable to estimate the volume by which your wine box is diminished. This is more than an invitation to overimbibe. This is practically a demand. The box, you see, unlike the traditional bottle, is opaque. So there is no wine-line to tell you you’ve sucked up half a bottle before dinner’s even ready. It carries the illusion of an endless supply of (surprisingly tasty) wine. The box, is, in fact, merely the housing for a bag. And that bag is remarkably similar in texture and appearance to a mylar balloon. And as you know, the mylar balloon is practically a universal symbol of deceit. It is the customary means of seeming to have contributed something important while expending minimal effort and cash. (E.g., “Hey, it’s your birthday! Look what I got you! A balloon! Not just a balloon though—a mylar balloon! Did I go the extra mile, or what?!”

Don’t be entranced by the mylar illusion of the wine bag in the box, I implore you. It’s too late for me, but you can still save yourself.

Me? I was entranced. The box o’ wine had me mesmerized. As a consequence, I have made some significant errors in the past two weeks. These errors may have included but are not limited to:

Going to an organic food store and spending approximately seventy-two dollars on six dollars worth of vegetables from a be-mohawked young lady for whom, from what I can tell, organic foods have done nothing helpful.

Watching Tyra.

Pulling out the guitar that’s been in the closet for at least six years and calling up an ex-girlfriend to play the song written especially for her, not giving a second thought to the guitar being way out of tune, and not really knowing how to play a guitar.

Losing a large bottle of laundry detergent and at least two loads of laundry.

Watching Barack Obama’s press conference, noticing the lame, softball questions put to him by the press, and thinking at one point, “Ooooh, that young blond Republican girl on The View is certainly going to have something to say about that!”

You can avoid these errors. Circumvent the excessive boxed wine consumption problem by pouring yourself one big tumbler of wine and then cutting yourself off right there. If you’re like me, this will probably mean hiding the wine box somewhere that’s hard to reach when your equilibrium is compromised. Because after one big tumbler, you’re likely to change your mind and decide you want more. I suggest you put it up high. On the top shelf of a closet perhaps. That way, when you get out the ladder to try to get it, tipsy as you are, you’ll more than likely fall of the ladder and knock yourself unconscious, thereby cutting yourself off for the evening. When you wake up in a heap just inside your coat closet the next mid-morning, you’ll congratulate yourself for your temperance. Go, you!

Robots. Autism. And so it begins.

Can Robots Help Treat Autism?

This was a story on the Today Show this morning. Basically, the idea is that kids with autism, having been functionally compared to robots inasmuch as they tend to lack a socially appropriate range of affect, might learn to assemble the elements of constructive social transactions by interacting with humanoid robots. Humanoid robots. That’s what they said in the story. Humanoid robots are apparently less threatening than actual humanoids if you’re autistic. Hence, the robots would not provoke anxiety and would be more relatable for the kids. This actually makes some sense when you consider how the plan seeks to avoid the overstimulation that often sabotages learning for people with autism. The robots could help autistic kids deconstruct the components of social behavior without all that loosey-goosey human affect that so often rattles 'em and sends them packing into social withdrawal. The robots would be presumably be programmed in such a way as to model and encourage more adaptive behavior.

A fine plan. Right up until those robots secure a bond with the kids and beguile them with their cool, brushed metal lack of emotional range into doing their evil bidding.

Robot planetary conquest: Phase one.

And I’ll tell you what else: When the robots and autistic kids have fully joined forces, the first thing they’re going to do is avenge this poor kid.

And by the by: Over a lifetime of hearing kid-left-on-school-bus-by-incredibly-stupid/high/stupid-bus-driver news stories, I have yet to have anyone sufficiently explain to me how a bus driver, even a stupid or high or really stupid bus driver, gets off a bus without noticing a person sitting there. Even little persons can be seen fairly easily when they’re sitting on a school bus. It’s not like these things are big old rolling auditoriums with distant, darkened recesses and all manner of colonnade obfuscations.

Oh sure, a kid could slump down behind the seat and not be immediately noticeable at a glance. But you’d think that any school bus driver, recalling the innumerable stories about kids left on school buses and the very bad social ramifications for the bus drivers who leave them, would perhaps look around a little bit for some sleepy hanger-on before closing up shop for the day. A minor investment, I should think, in contrast to the possible consequences for losing a freaking kid.

And besides, think back to your school bus rides. Was it remotely plausible that your school bus ride was so serene, so smooth, so deliciously soothing—that you actually fell into the kind of ossified slumber from which the heaving brakes of a bus couldn’t rouse you?

Now granted, the autistic kid who got recently left behind while his bus driver went shopping, was perhaps not as likely as the average student to say, Hey! Where the hell are you going? as the driver bound from her sacred charge to a party supply store. (I thought at first it was a craft store. Same difference. You just know that a school bus driver that eager to get to the party supply store is likely to be one of those people who regularly uses “scrapbook” as a verb.)

It’s possible that an autistic kid might not summon the social initiative to bring his presence to his stupid bus driver’s attention. Or maybe—just maybe—like the robots with whom he will eventually unite to take over the world, he was lying in wait. Biding his time. Knowing that a species that leaves kids on buses and maybe spends their spare time scrapbooking, is a vulnerable species indeed. Ripe for submission to our eventual robot overlords.

Florida is weirder than I remembered.

I am back from Florida, and I feel I have been divinely appointed to come back to you with this message: Florida makes you strange. Of course, you all knew this. But as with so many things, I never really thought about it until it directly affected me. And by then it was too late.

The photo is of the book that my father was reading when I arrived. 23 Minutes in Hell. It came highly recommended by a guy with a wholly insufficient Jesus-hat. I skimmed the book long enough to know that the title might well be referring to the experience of reading it. The author has not very good sentence-putting-together-ness. Which means he apparently made a lot of money with very little skill. Which makes me jealous and actually more offended than I am when I consider his absence of even a blush of theological integrity.

To his credit, and to my relief, my father thought it was probably unlikely to be a true, visit to Hell’s actual postal code, as claimed by the author. Still. Just knowing that my father felt this book might be worth reading caused me to lose a little bit of sleep.

Throughout my visit, I steered assiduously clear of conversations that might lead one to speculate on the identity of the Anti-Christ. Fearing that Barack Obama might be a candidate. Or Michael Phelps. Or Tom Bergeron. Or me with this mannish haircut of mine.

One never wants to believe that their parents have gone all apocalyptic. But I suppose when you’re in your eighties, a big hootenanny End of the World is probably not as threatening an idea as it once was.

Oh. Then there’s the marshmallow fluff. Also pictured. It disappeared shortly after my arrival. My parents, over the course of two weeks never mentioned it. I never mentioned it. It made no detectable appearances in the food. The marshmallow fluff situation may be another sign of the apocalypse. But just as with wondering what it must be really like to spend a half hour or so in Hell, some questions are better left unexplored.

On Vacation with the Florida Amish

I'm on vacation.

Every time I go to Florida to visit the parents, I'm surprised by how fully I had forgotten what inspired me to move far, far away in the first place. It's sort of like what I've heard about childbirth: Your sense memory dictates that you block out the memory of the horror of it all, lest you would never be willing to repeat it, and the species would, at least, fall into disrepair.

On my arrival, we went straight from the airport to their weekly bowling... thing. Picking me up at the airport had caused them to be too late to bowl with their church group, and this meant I already had to come back from a fairly serious social deficit.

But we arrived on time to join the group in heading out for dinner. (4pm. Yes. 4pm.) The group decided on an Amish buffet. Even though I cautioned them that any Amish in Sarasota had surely been run off their Amish communities probably for not cooking as well as they're supposed to.

Fortunately I was wrong. Which is proabably why none of them laughed or even seemed to consider the possibility I was joking. Instead, I'm pretty sure that these Amish people were sent away for doing fabulous things with a relatively liberal food like poached salmon. I have never had such incredible salmon before.

They also make their own ice cream. Kahlua Krunch among them. What the Amish are doing with Kahlua, I cannot imagine. I'm also fairly sure it's not very Amish to spell Krunch with a "K". But these are Sarasota Amish, after all. The radical anarchists of the Amish. These Amish have their own website. Apparently this is okay, but driving cars is still totally a sin. (Which may mean, since I also have no car, plus I have a much crappier web presence, I'm technically a better Amish gal than this group.) I noticed one woman even had her hemline two to three inches above her ankle. So there ya go. Hell in a handbasket. (A handmade Pennsylvania Dutch handbasket, but to hell with it, none the less.)

I also tried to point this out to the church group guy sitting across from me who looked at me as though I were speaking Swedish. Or some other devil-loving language. He was wearing a baseball cap that said "FBI". And in small print beneath it, it read "Fully Baptized In Jesus". Now I'm not one to quibble, but shouldn't it be "FBJ" then? Or "FBIJ" at the very least? Isn't there something keenly wrong about leaving Jesus entirely out of your clever, Jesus-themed hat abbreviation? I mean, it's a hat for Jesus, isn't it? Let's give Jesus his due then. I don't think it makes Jesus very happy if the best amusing Jesus-themed hat abbreviation you can come up with is FBI, and Jesus doesn't even get the same billing as a preposition. In fact, I'll met that makes Jessus pretty mad.

That said, I'm totally going to get myself a had that says "NCIS". (Neat Christians in Sarasota!)