Reader Roundup

Restoration Hardware:

You are filthy rich and outfit your many homes in impossibly gigantic and heavy dining tables and flowing, airy window treatments. You do not have children as evidenced by your penchant for decorative 4ft columns that weigh nine thousand pounds and artfully scattering enormous wooden spheres in the corners of your living rooms. You do not own pets because you have silk and wool hand-knotted rugs everywhere. You do not enjoy colors. You do not allow dust motes, dead skin cells, or stray pubic hairs in your homes. You do not use regular toothpaste which is why your bathroom countertops and double sinks do not sport minty white splotches. Each of your homes employs a scurrying, silent maid whose sole responsibility is to keep perfectly fluffy and spanking-new oversized plush towels in your bathrooms. (Obviously-crusty, damp, bleach-spotted towels are not allowed within forty feet of your gated entryway.) You have a vast wine collection, and none of the bottles are dusty or lacking special fabric cork-cover thingies. You feel that no living room is complete without a huge reproduction clock or an oversized reprint of a Columbus-era map of the world. Or both. Your purpose in life is to make poors like me look at my own squalid, hideous shack of a house and cry and cry and torture myself with images of pristine, dog-hair-less couches and glass tiled bathrooms with steam showers.

And:

Wireless Catalog:
Your husband, a comparative literature professor, is a home-brew hobbyist, and makes quinoa beer in your basement. Your grandkids hand-make all the bottle labels with archival-quality supplies from your daughter’s successful crafting store, Cat Scrap Fever. You are a free-lance travel writer whose article “Ten Best Taco Stands in Sonoma County” was recently picked up Sunset Magazine. Around the house you usually sport Japanese gardening pants and a t-shirt that boasts of surviving menopause, although you are also frequently guilty of having a Chico’s kind of day. You only wear amethysts. You’ve stopped dying and straightening your hair. You recently admitted to your therapist, Gail, that you cannot bear the thought of Garrison Keillor retiring.

And:

Lilian Vernon: You are an older lady obsessed with whether your daughter-in-law is doing a good job raising those grandchildren she finally gave you. As you select gender-role-colored his and hers chore charts for the little ones to inject into your weekly dose of meddling, you wonder vaguely if you should replace the prayer stone in the back garden. You’re in luck—they’re always in stock.

• Best Comment Of The Day, in response to Police Report “Burka Rage” As French Burka Ban Is Proposed:

While I support the clause which would punish men for *forcing* women to cover their hair/face, I absolutely CANNOT get behind legislation that *forces* women to reveal their hair/faces/bodies if THEY don’t CHOOSE to.

I find this legislation ridiculous because in order to ALLOW women to be ‘free’ from alleged subjugation, the government will now be subjugating them, instead.

Your husband shouldn’t *force* you to cover your hair/face, so we will *force* you to reveal it, instead.
Such hypocrisy.

Reminder: If you see a great, funny, insightful, eloquent (or awful) comment, nominate it! Email the comment and the timestamp link to the left of the comment to Hortense at [email protected].

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