TALES OF A MIDDLING PUBLIC HOSPITAL: I am still stuck between two full time positions, and getting in trouble when one--the one I quit two months ago--isn't getting done. The gravitational pull between the two jobs may tear me part before all is said and done. Well, probably not. But I wonder if I will ever be allowed to take on my new position at this point, and enter the promised land of hassle-free flex time.

An addendum to my women's summer fashion post: those pleated skirts some girls are wearing now--it's not quite a miniskirt, but it is a fashion risk. Plus they look somewhat ridiculous; in a few years time we'll all be wondering why a long, flowing look combined with showing a lot of leg was particularly attractive. Better go with the look at my butt/you can't see my butt dichotomy, ladies. Or just the short shorts if you really need to show some leg.

This Dick Riordan story gets funnier and funnier. Riordan first makes the bizarre statement to a little girl that her name--Isis--means "stupid, dirty girl," something completely incomprehensible when you read it and I can't think of a context where saying that to a 6-year-old at a library is anything but weird. THEN the NAACP jumps in and we hit you-can't-make-this-stuff-up-folks levels of humor:

"It is abusive to use such language toward a child, regardless the gender, race, socioeconomic background or national heritage," Alice A. Huffman, president of the California State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement.

"To say that he was only kidding or joking suggests that Mr. Riordan, who is in charge of developing education policy for our children, knows nothing about children and has even less respect for them."

The NAACP and other civil rights groups had planned to attend a Capitol news conference Thursday called by Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton, who was demanding that Riordan step down. Dymally's office abruptly canceled the event, however, after learning that the girl is white.

Because if your name is Isis, you have to be black. Except you're not and you (a different you now) don't even bother to find out before piling on? Isis' mom, by the way, is named Trinity, suggesting that people were naming their kids Trinity before the Matrix came out. I did not know that. But...yeah. When Trinity's little Isis met Dick, hilarity ensued. And Mervyn made a fool of himself.

Now Tim of the Hurting wants us all to dig up our old copies of freakin' Quasar? I hope I still have mine--I don't remember it being much of anything at the time. I will say, though (and I know the Earth X love is kind of my hobbyhorse) that I think Jim Krueger was the last person who cared about the Marvel Universe--at least he bothered to write a respectful farewell to all the old continuity. The Earth X saga is to the Marvel Universe of the 60s through the mid-90s what Alan Moore's Last Superman Story is to the old Superman mythos.

I'm going to the attic to find some comics. Eh? Physics? Yeah, the physics of me flopping down on the couch with a pile of Mark Gruenwald comics, buddy boy.