Brats in foodland

OK, people, Lesson No. 1 one in child rearing: When you reproduce, you are no longer allowed the luxury of toting your progeny along with about six or 10 of your friends' progeny to white-tablecloth restaurants. Do you know how many little tatterdemalions that makes? It's a lot, depending on how many times you and your friends have popped one out.

I love kids and kids love me. I have proof. But there are only four appropriate eating places for that many snot-nosed pups -- McDonald's, Chuck E. Cheese, Pizza Hut and possibly American Girl Place in Chicago. This rule is for the good of everyone involved. It's why Chuck E. Cheese was invented.

If you don't follow this rule, something bad might happen. For example, the other people in the restaurant might keep glaring at you, the pastel-colored and matching moms, while you obliviously eat your Cobb salad and your kids dump spaghetti on the floor. And who knows? One day someone might just freak out, snatch one of the miniature darlings and mop the spaghetti off the floor with him.

I'm just saying. Something bad might happen. It's an outrage.

It's a sign

I'm not certain that I want to go to law school, and the Law School Admission Council isn't making it easier for me to decide. Is it a sign? I dated someone who said he didn't believe in signs. I should have known that was a sign he was going to stomp all over my pretty heart.

First, I tried to sign up for the Law School Admission Test two months before it will be given in September and one month before the sign-up deadline. No available seats within 100 miles of the District of effing Columbia. This is me giving the finger to all those excessively early overachievers. Jesus effing Christ. Hrmpphhh. Arghhhhh. God dammit all to hell.

Fine, fine, fine. Whatever.

I decided to suck it up and sign up for the December test. But you can't just fill out a form and click the button that says "Yes, I will gladly pay you $118 to play your stupid logic games." That would be very un-law schoollike. First, you have to download a program. It is called "Citrix ICA Client." I don't know what the crap it does or why it's so important, but I downloaded it, and I filled out all the forms. I told them to send me information about people who would like to loan me about $150,000, I told them I was born in Joliet, Ill. where there was once a very large jail, I told them I majored in journalism even though that might have made Citrix laugh. I got to the part where they asked for my credit card number so they could gladly charge me $118 to play their stupid logic games.

Then I went to the bathroom. When I came back, Citrix was gone. Citrix has never returned. I went back into Citrix to try to find the application again. I went back to the Web site to try to find it in there. I tried to download Citrix again. And again. And again on a different computer. There is something wrong with the Stuffit Expander. And by the way, which is it? Does it stuff or expand? Stuffit Expander told me to download a new version of Stuffit Expander. What? Is it serious? Now it's just mocking me.

It's a sign. And it's an outrage.

'Eyebrows on exactly the same level'

The venerable New York Times wedding pages have been the subject of many a rant and rave, particularly since the advent of the Internet. And the paper's online editors recently upped the ante. Now, readers who can't wait for Sunday's printed orgy of the wealthy, well-connected and uber-educated can watch these people profess their love on film at the paper's Web site.

My favorite, so far, is a little show I like to call The Catatonic Couple. I can't say that I've ever seen two people captured on film seem less excited to be marrying one another. Apart from the banjo, these people don't even seem to like each other.

The wedding announcements, and the mysterious-yet-not-so-mysterious manner in which they are selected, are proof that merely becoming wedded to the supposed love of your life isn't enough for some people. For those people, here's hoping your father is a CEO, and if not, you or your beloved at least graduated from Harvard Law. Most importantly, it is critical to line up your eyebrows with those of your intended. I couldn't make that up if I tried.

It's bad enough that the Times' society editors still deem themselves the arbiters of who is worthy enough to proclaim their love on their pages. Now they've decided everyone wants to know the mind-numbing details of how these mostly Ivy League-educated ladder-climbers found each other. And the sad truth is that people do. Unlike the Times' famous columnist Thomas Friedman, whose words have cost cash online for almost a year, anyone can get wedding announcements going back all the way to 1981 for free. The Times is obviously making bank off the clicks on these things.

I don't think I can say it any better than fellow-appallee, Slate writer Troy Patterson: "Who are these people? Why are they so pleased with themselves? Why can't I stop watching?" It's an outrage.

Itsanoutrage.blogspot.com is an outrage

I haven't yet filed this as an official protest, but I just don't understand why there isn't an expiration date on some Blogger URLs. As you can see, some apparently inebriated ragamuffins created www.itsanoutrage.blogspot.com in 2004, posted some nonsense that can barely pass for English, much less outrage, and promptly abandoned it after two days.

I write superbly in English, I have legitimate outrage, and yet I'm forced to utilize the second-class system of dashes in order to pass my outrage on to the greater Internet world. In the meantime, itsanoutrage.com is for sale. At least they are using it to make money. Otherwise, it's an outrage.

Take your music and turn it off

To: MySpace Music-as-a-Weapon Wielders
From: A silence-loving member of your world
I'm in favor of everyone's right to their own music. After all, I like some pretty shameful stuff. We don't really need to get into specifics, but think line dancing. That doesn't mean I have to tell the 100 million people who might happen across my MySpace page that I once knew all the words to Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart." But it turns out that most people don't feel the way I do, and on the few occasions I'm actually surfing MySpace, I am constantly and suddenly assaulted by music at a time and place not of my own choosing. It's an outrage.

It's an outrage, but not an exclamation

Exclamation points are used far too frequently, even in the context of an outrage.