iStock

I AM NOT a violent person. I have never struck anyone, or hurt anyone physically in any way. I can’t even kill bugs, except when I am so compelled in order to save my own life —like when a bee is harassing me and I’m allergic to bees so I find a telephone book and smash it down on top of the pathetic creature. Then I cry and feel shitty about it for like half an hour. So I was shocked to read in the Wall Street Journal that by letting my adorable cat go outdoors I am actually complicit in the murder of birds and mice and possibly little froggies, and am actually messing with the tapestry of life. Apparently, “life on Earth is a complex tapestry in which each species represents a single thread. Outdoor cats threaten that tapestry.” Who knew?

IT’S THAT time again. I already have several pumpkins and yesterday I saw a huge display of Halloween candy and costumes in the supermarket. That got me thinking about ghosts.

My maternal grandfather was the coolest person I ever met. He was the oldest of 13 children. They all survived the Hitler years and came safely to this country from Poland. Some of them may have died before I was old enough to know them, or maybe they lived far away, but the others were always around, showing up for all the Jewish holidays, wedding and funerals. Occasionally I am reminded of them, and although they loomed large during my childhood, they left very little imprint. Here’s what I recall:

Aunt Harriet was a loon. She never married, living alone somewhere in Brooklyn and commuting by subway to her job as office manager for an accounting firm in lower Manhattan. She collected (stole) rubber bands and red and blue colored pencils from her office, which she then distributed as gifts to all of the cousins at Hanukah. She did this every year, as if we needed more by then. The pencils were held together with the rubber bands. She often wore a hat with a giant rhinestone flower on it and a veil that came halfway down her face, keeping it on even indoors like some sort of fading movie star.

Uncle Ruby was the coolest of all the uncles. He was very short, had a gold tooth in front and was a snappy dresser. Many of his suits were striped. He always seemed ready to break into a soft-shoe dance routine like the actor James Cagney or maybe Mickey Rooney. His wife, Aunt Rose, was stone-faced, half a foot taller and a total bitch. Nobody liked her, including Uncle Ruby. He was very affectionate and always had funny stories to tell, whereas Rose was most comfortable scolding someone or discussing the latest cancer victim; there was always at least one in the family.

Aunt Sylvia was “the baby,” although she never looked like anything but an old lady to me. She was sweet and sort of dumb. Her husband was Uncle Lefty, and although he had a different real name, that’s what everyone called him. He may have been smart but I always thought he was a simpleton, possibly because he allowed people to call him “Lefty.” Aunt Sylvia smiled a lot and did little more to distinguish herself. In conversation, my mother always called her “a saint.”

Uncle Benny was a fast-talker and most likely a gambler. He definitely did something illegal and was always very well-dressed. His wife was very hip, very good-looking and all the cousins loved her. A true favorite at holiday gatherings, Ethel wore her bleached blonde hair in some sort of upswept style with a colorful scarf worked into it. She was slightly foreign, like from another country, maybe Mongolia or someplace with gypsies, but I never knew where. I adored her and thus was always a gypsy at Halloween, inspired by Aunt Ethel.

Uncle Morris and the twins, Aunt Beverly and the other one, possibly Lucille — I never remembered her name but I think she was one of the cancer victims — weren’t around much. I’m thinking they lived in California. Of course they’re all dead now, as are my parents. I wish ghosts were real; I’d love to hang out with them.

— Andrea Rouda

Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

Is it Hillary? Or isn’t it? / Photo by Andy Katz, iStock

I LIVE IN MAINE. Naturally my life is pretty dull. I have few friends here, my husband travels for his job frequently and as a freelance writer and artist I don’t work outside the home. My grown son is gone and since having hip surgery six weeks ago I no longer go to my gym or swimming at the Y for the time being, so I interact with few people every day, if any — don’t even think about neighbors. (See first sentence.) Still, even with all this time alone, and including the occasional glass of wine or puff of pot, I have never once thought that Hillary Clinton has a body double.

Apparently there are people out there who do. I heard one lady on a talk radio show insisting that the Hillary who exited her daughter’s apartment building the day she collapsed and was rushed there was NOT REALLY HILLARY! Apparently some other woman who looks like her went to Chelsea’s apartment and changed into her clothes and exited looking and feeling great! Googling this preposterousness, I found that many people out there agree.

Admit it: we all need to focus a lot less on this silliness regarding politics and get our own lives. Do you have one?

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

Susan Sarandon / iStock

I’LL BE HONEST: 70 is not my perfect age. In fact, it is nobody’s perfect age except for actress Susan Sarandon, who is also 70 and is currently starring in a TV commercial for an anti-aging face cream in which she coos, “I’m at my perfect age,” peeking through flowing diaphanous fabric like that damn scarf that killed Isadora Duncan and gazing flirtatiously up into the camera — up is always the best angle for old people — behind God knows how many forgiving camera filters.

Susan is certainly no stranger to plastic surgery, having gone under the knife many times. As an unabashed fan, she has had obvious breast enhancement, liposuction under the eyes and chin, and proclaims she still has “much more surgery planned” to maintain and enhance her beauty. This is perfection? I would like to go on record saying that the need for surgery, elective or otherwise, is no hallmark of perfection. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The perfect age is when you bound out of bed limber as a ballerina instead of like the Tin Man in need of a lube job, when you don’t need one pill to get your insides working smoothly and then another one to make them stop working too smoothly, and you don’t know the names of any surgeons at all except the ones on Grey’s Anatomy. The perfect age is when you can forget your body entirely and just enjoy the day, flitting around weightlessly like a hummingbird. And, honestly, that does not happen at 70, despite how rich you are.

Make no mistake, at 70 you can still be happy, you can still look good, and you can still enjoy life. But it is not by any stretch of any imagination the perfect age except for maybe Susan Sarandon, especially on those days when she cashes those big fat checks from L’Oréal.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

WHEN I LEARNED several months ago that I needed surgery and would be spending at least three weeks at home recuperating, I had big plans. I would read all those books I had never been able to read before, like Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse.” Described by a leading literary critic as “one of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time,” and a favorite of my dear friend Greg Jarold, I was determined to conquer it although I had tried and failed before, many times in fact. I would meditate for half an hour each morning, paint a great masterpiece and possibly learn a new language.

Now halfway into Week 4, I have not gotten past the second sentence in “To the Lighthouse,” a sentence so inscrutable as to make my reading the entire novel out of the question. Meditation has eluded me as I keep getting distracted by images of the artificial hip installed inside me. As for painting, I am unable to sit for more than 15 minutes at a time without turning to stone, so that has also not happened. Instead I have spent the last three weeks, roughly between 2 and 5 in the afternoon, lying on a couch with an ice pack on my hip watching “Grey’s Anatomy” on Lifetime TV, with time off for short walks, appropriate nourishment and bathroom breaks.

I had never seen the show in its heyday, beginning in March of 2005, mostly because a), I don’t watch weekly TV dramas and b), I hate blood and gore. So it was surprising that I chose to go this route, but now that I have I’m an expert on the subject and can tell you exactly what happens in each and every episode, since each and every episode is exactly the same:

Someone young and vibrant who comes in with a minor complaint is diagnosed with a terminal disease. An old person dies. A lunatic threatens the entire hospital.

An ambulance arrives with an accident victim impaled by a sharp object sticking out of his/her head/heart/stomach. 

At least two hot interns have sex with at least three equally hot residents, all in the hospital during work hours and often in supply closets or empty patient rooms. 

An amazing amount of ooey-gooey, squishy body parts have incredible close-ups: Hearts, lungs, brains and intestines spurt blood everywhere. 

There’s a crisis during each operation where machines start beeping and the patient almost dies, but after the application of pressure to the chest cavity, they survive. High-speed drills and scalpels are used with abandon by the sexy doctors hidden behind blue face masks, all while they exchange casual banter and jokes. 

Every so often the Seattle Bomb Squad  is summoned.

The hospital’s chief yells at everyone at least once, telling them to shape up. 

Dr. Meredith Grey, of the show’s title, figures prominently in all story lines. She usually has at least one dream sequence.

Because the show is set in Seattle where it rains a lot, many scenes occur with one or more of the leading characters standing outside, dejected and dripping wet. 

Accompanying all surgeries and sexual encounters is a musical score comprised of the edgiest tunes of the day, chosen to underscore and pinpoint the intended feelings of the script just in case you didn’t get it or couldn’t follow Dr. Grey’s final voice-over narration pulling all the loose ends together.

It’s lucky I never saw one episode of this show before my surgery or I never would have set foot in a hospital.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

iStock

THESE DAYS YOU hardly ever hear the truth about anything. This explains why nobody cares that Hillary Clinton tells lies and Donald Trump tells even bigger ones. After all, who doesn’t? For example, right here and now I will not write what it’s really like to recover from hip replacement surgery because it’s depressing, a downer, and nobody wants to hear it, least of all those aging baby boomers who are all clamoring for new body parts to stave off the inevitable. The bravest among them, or the ones with the best health insurance, will keep lining up for the popular procedure that’s fast becoming an everyday Olympic sport. To do so they will focus on the cheery, chirpy reports out there that the whole thing is “so damn easy, you’ll be back on the slopes (or the links or out jogging or biking, etc.) in no time!”

Fine, go for it! You should live and be well as my grandmother always said, but bear in mind that having your thigh sliced open followed by having the top of your hip sawed off is no walk in the park. And FYI, you won’t be having any walks in the park for some time, trust me. We can thank the overwhelming reach of social media for painting a prettier picture than truly exists, since we are all supposed to be feeling great and “smiley-facey” despite the grim facts suggesting otherwise, such as the number of suicides and people on antidepressants, the growing rates of mental illness and drug addiction and an alarming rise in violent crime.

Still, be my guest. And if you live in Maine, or even if you don’t, you’ll want the job done by Dr. George Babikian of Maine Medical Partners, truly a superstar of the hip world and a pretty hip guy in his own right. His staff is superb as well, and if you’re going to suffer through something as gruesome as this surely is, you might as well go for the Gold.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

Andrea chooses to meditate in a regular chair . . . / iStock photo.

MY HUSBAND IS always asking me what’s on my bucket list. He does this because I am getting older by the minute (as we all are but for some reason it is only noticed after a certain age) and he’s worried I might kick the proverbial bucket before I have gotten to see whatever it is he imagines I’ve always wanted to see. To assuage him I try to dream stuff up, but really my list has nothing to do with travel to foreign lands or treks to famous places. Instead, it has everything to do with achieving peace of mind—and an

. . . rather than this: from Bean Products (beanproducts.com), buckwheat-and-cotton zafu meditation cushions that cost $42.95 and, at least in Andrea’s world, appear mostly in purple. / Photo from Bean Products.

airport security line is the last place I expect that will happen.

Not long ago I attended a two-day weekend retreat led by a Buddhist teacher. He told us many stories of his quest for enlightenment and had us meditating en masse, which was all very nice but served only to disturb my peace of mind rather than enhance it. There were just too many people sitting cross-legged on their designer meditation cushions for my taste. (Available in many colors, for some reason most people had gone with the purple.) Seems to me a plain old chair works as well, is much more comfortable and is readily available no matter where you are.

So once again, today, right here in my house in Maine, in a plain old chair in the corner of my bedroom, I will seek to check off the only thing on my list. Wish me luck!

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

iStock

WHY IS IT THAT people are ready to hop on every passing bandwagon like it’s exactly the thing they have been waiting for all their lives? The latest one is a child’s video game, yet adults everywhere are losing sleep over Pokémon Go, something they play on their cell phones instead of doing other things like working or, as I mentioned, sleeping.

I have been reading about the fad for the last few days and I still can’t understand what would make normal adults become involved in such nonsense, many of them running around outside late at night in their pajamas, other than what I think of as the “lemming response.” A lemming is defined in the Urban Dictionary as, “A member of a crowd with no originality or voice of his own. One who speaks or repeats only what he has been told. A tool. A cretin.”

Another example of the lemming mentality is a new app called Prisma that takes normal photographs and alters them to look like paintings. This is the latest tool, the results of which will be showing up in the Facebook profile pictures of all your friends very soon, trust me. (I almost did it but stopped myself in the nick.)

Fads have been around since the beginning of time, like for example fire, surely the granddaddy of all fads. After the first caveman came up with it you can bet all the rest of them wanted some. Then along came the wheel, which was certainly an overnight success; I’m only guessing since I was not around for its inception. But I was for the Hula Hoop, which I thought was stupid even then and I was only like 10 years old when the craze swept the country in the late 1950s. At the height of it, more than 50,000 hoops per day were manufactured by the Wham-o toy company in California. The hoops traveled the globe, eventually dying out in the 1980s, but not before everyone and their Aunt Tillie (see photo) had given one a whirl.

And for what? Oh yeah, fun. Most passing fads are just plain dumb and net nothing useful for anyone except the manufacturer, who becomes an overnight billionaire. I just wish I could think up one.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

iStock

Photo by Andrea Rouda.

FINALLY, A DIET THAT WORKS. It’s easy, with no weighing, measuring or special eating plans, no need to keep food diaries or attend weekly meetings. No diet pills or drinks, no stomach stapling or surgery. The Foolproof World News Diet (FWND) works like magic! Simply prepare your meals as usual, then sit down at the table with today’s paper open to the news section and begin eating. Sure, you’ll take a few bites at the start, but the cumulative effect of worldwide carnage and destruction is guaranteed to kill your appetite, saving you thousands of calories each week when done properly at every meal.

My perusal of theJuly 5th Wall Street Journal caused half my breakfast to remain uneaten. Starting with two strawberries, two dried prunes and an English muffin with almond butter (385 calories), I became nauseated by the time I reached the photo at the bottom of the page showing the gleeful murderers cradling their rifles and sporting their tablecloth hats, thus leaving approximately 175 calories on the table

Completely free (except for the cost of the newspapers), the revolutionary FWND works with any major metropolitan daily and all types of foods! In fact, if it doesn’t help you drop 10 pounds in a month then my name isn’t Marie Osmond.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

iStock

I KNOW YOU’VE heard this before, that thing about how “there are two kinds of people in the world, the kind that does this and the kind that does that,” and it’s always different stuff, and usually it doesn’t really hold water, at least not for everyone. But I’m pretty sure this one does: There are two kinds of people in the world, those who have grandchildren (TWHG) and talk about them incessantly and think people are interested and those without any grandchildren (TWAG) and who are not the least bit interested in yours.

Forgive me, but TWAG are getting really sick and tired of hearing from TWHG about how cute the little ones are and about the adorable noises and funny faces they make and what they did at their first birthday party and what their teachers say about them and how they are starring in their school plays and how you bake cookies together and how they are such talented artists and all the rest. The truth is that the whole entire time you are going on and on about the precious carriers of your DNA, whoever is facing you, pretending to listen and smiling with a glazed expression, is actually plotting their getaway. Just so you know.

Really, it’s nutty and sometimes downright rude. A new baby is one thing when it’s your very own and we’re good friends, but a grandchild is a different animal altogether, especially when I’ve never even met the kid’s parents and hardly know you. Besides, even though I am among TWAG, I still matter! Ask me a question about my life, why doncha? So stop with the stories and enough with the pictures and let’s focus on more important matters, like the fact that both of the people running for president are currently being investigated for wrongdoings and may be facing legal tribunals before either of them gets elected. Now there’s a topic worth jawing about.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

Editor’s note:  Slightly guilty of  granny ranting. But I’m learning to keep my mouth shut about how cute the little ones are, knowing how utterly boring it can be to people who don’t have grandchildren. On the other hand, maybe those  people could consider that I don’t have much interest in their pets! 

iStock

[This weekend] the great Muhammed Ali died at the age of 74. He was one of my heroes, inspiring the following essay years ago. I offer it again here for the stray reader who hasn’t read it. 

IT WAS A BLISTERING July, and I was not happy to be spending any part of it wandering the streets of Miami Beach. Still sad over my grandfather’s death only two weeks before, I had been tagged to accompany my mother and grandmother on a quest for suitable lodgings for the new widow. While it seemed too soon for her to make such a move, just hours after her husband’s funeral Grandma had begun lobbying for her plight, lamenting, “He should rest in peace, he’s dead already, but what about me, I’m all alone now!”

Clamoring to get out of that “hell-hole” formerly known as her home for the past 30 years, Grandma ached to spend what time she had left playing canasta on the beach with her friends who had already moved there. Making matters worse, we had to take the train from New York to Miami because Grandma wouldn’t fly. Twenty-four hours of her complaining about the broken air-conditioning and the bad food and how she couldn’t sleep a wink on the Amtrak Special, with my mother huddled in a corner quietly sobbing into a wad of tissues, primed me for what was coming.

Once there, I was put in charge of it all. With me at the wheel and my mother riding shotgun, Grandma chased her dream in a rented Buick. At first, going through the classifieds, each apartment  sounded perfect. But then we’d get there and Grandma would claim it was too close to the beach, or too far from the beach, or too hot, or too small or too noisy or too quiet. By late afternoon we’d return to the hotel, have an early dinner, and then go to a movie or watch TV. At night, kept awake by my mother’s sobbing, I’d carefully plot my grandmother’s untimely demise. The next morning, after perusing the classifieds at breakfast, off we’d go to view that day’s probable rejects, a dogeared city map serving as our only guide.

Finally, after a week of searching — glory, hallelujah — we found it! A one-bedroom unit with a dining alcove, not too expensive, it was close to her friends, on a low floor, with a nice breeze and an ocean view. Grandma took one look and said, “What’s not to love?” We signed the lease and planned a celebratory farewell dinner that night at Wolfies’—after all, who wouldn’t celebrate such a thing with corned beef on rye and a lovely stroll down Collins Avenue? My mother was finally happy, mentally counting the moments until she could literally kiss off her mother for good.

Arriving back at our hotel, the venerable Fontainebleau, we were just crossing the lobby when Grandma stopped walking and said, “What do I know from Florida? It’s so hot here. And the beach — feh! What, I’m going surfing all of a sudden? I’m a New Yorker. Maybe I’ll go back home with you.”

Right there, my mother lost it. It was not surprising — she and her father had been very close, and there had been little time to register his death before embarking on this trip. Her emotions exploded out of her, and she screamed, “I hate you, I’ve always hated you! You should have died instead!” My grandmother, kicking it up a notch, clutched her bosom as if she were having a heart attack, wailing, “Oy vey, I should only drop dead this minute, how a daughter can say such things to a mother!” Everyone within earshot stood stock still. Being only 22, I had no idea what to do. I prayed for salvation.

Suddenly a handsome young black man in a blazing white suit approached us. He was smiling and saying, “Ladies, ladies, calm down. What’s the problem?” As he got nearer, we recognized him as Cassius Clay — even though by then he had changed his name to Muhammad Ali — still in his prime. Reaching us, he put his arm around my grandmother and said, “Now, what’s all the fuss about?” Grandma, a world-class bigot — to her, if you weren’t Jewish, or at least white, you were nothing — looked up at him, stroked his cheek, and said, “Oy, you’re such a doll! You know, I hate all schvartzes, but you I love.” He seemed to find this comment acceptable, and the two trotted off together in the direction of the lobby bar.

The hotel physician gave my mother a strong sedative; she slept until the next afternoon. The next morning, I drove Grandma — still in fine spirits from her “date” with Ali the night before — to the airport for her flight to Baltimore, where my uncle would be waiting. (I figured, it’s his mother, let him worry about her.) Ever since, I’ve considered Ali to be The Greatest.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

iStock

I WISH ALL THOSE nerdy scientists would stop trying to cure diseases. After all, there are so many, why bother, because if you don’t get one you’ll likely get another. Instead they should knuckle down and concentrate on making our lives easier, which is especially important if we get one of those uncured diseases, by the way. Fortunately for us, some of them are trying.

An article in last week’s Wall Street Journal details how much effort is being put into solving one of life’s peskiest problems: folding laundry. Thank goodness the great minds over at General Electric and Samsung have their priorities straight, because studies have shown that folding laundry is on everyone’s hate list. In fact, many people, fed up with the Sisyphean task, have simply stopped doing it altogether, opting to dump out their freshly laundered clothes in big piles and live the wrinkled life.

In the very same paper there is breaking news about a new product from Google that will do just about everything else for you, saving you countless hours to sprawl in front of the TV or do whatever. The virtual assistant is voice-activated, so you can just yell over to it to make a dinner reservation while you do more important things, like take a bubble bath or nap.

I am pretty excited about all these advances and look forward to a day in the not-too-distant future when I can get some app to write this blog. Then I can sleep in, and when I do finally get out of bed I can focus on eating snacks, which seem to get better every day. I am particularly interested in those new Cheetos I saw advertised that now come in different shapes! Apparently they are also extra-cheesy!

iStock

A  WOMAN AGED 72 had a baby last month in India. She and her husband (himself 75 or 79, depending on the news source) had tried for all their 46 years of marriage, with no luck. Finally, through the miracle of modern science, it happened: In vitro fertilization paid off!

Here’s what I have to say about that: Nothing. My opinion on the subject matters not one bit, and in fact I don’t even have one. You can look at it this way, and then again you can see it that way. Yet people everywhere — mostly on the Internet where, aside from at Donald Trump rallies, our most inane rabble-rousing occurs — feel it is their civic duty to weigh in on every last thing that happens to people they don’t know, will never meet, and could care less what they think. They post comments like: “It’s terrible, a shame, disgusting! It’s a miracle, God provides! They will both be dead soon and the baby will be an orphan! Science should be solving problems like the lack of water in India, not making babies! Science is incredible! Love never dies! What will be will be!” 

I say blah, blah, blah and yada, yada, yada. Spare me, and all the rest of us, your opinion (defined as “a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge”), most especially on matters that have nothing to do with you. And that goes for just about everything.

(Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking: This is all just my opinion. Well guess what? This is my blog.)

— Andrea Rouda
Frequent contributor Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

AS I DO EVERY now and then, I checked the Internet to see if Jackson Browne, my favorite performer of all time (except for all the dead ones), would be heading my way anytime soon and struck gold. Yes, in fact, he is giving a concert right here in Portland this June! Visa card in hand, I was eager to buy tickets while I still could, but then I stopped and considered the venue: The Maine State Pier? What’s that?

Turns out to be an actual pier, “a municipal-owned deep-water marine facility and music venue” right on the water in downtown Portland, where they put out bridge chairs and erect a stage and jam it full of people, many of whom pay to be in what is called the “General Admission Standing Area.” Thinking that could be iffy — a sudden rainstorm, annoying seagulls overhead, drunken throngs lined up at the porta-potties, passing trucks belching pollutants all but obliterating the quiet troubadour’s angelic voice and soft guitar — I needed more information before I plunked down hundreds of dollars for a potentially disastrous experience.

That’s where Yelp comes in, the tell-it-like-it-really-is website with reviews written by real people with no agenda. And what I learned was that, according to numerous reports (certainly enough to convince me), attending a concert at the Maine State Pier is fraught with problems, including all of my imagined worries and then some.

Unlike so many of our politicians, Yelp delivers.

— Andrea Rouda
Frequent contributor Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

• YSIGNS ABOUND of Man’s ever-increasing slide back to the primordial ooze. First off, there’s the current fiasco we call electing a president. Add in the hot debate over which public bathrooms people with what genitals should use, whether or not GMOs are bad for you, and the fact that the average American woman today weighs the same as the average man did in the 1960s, and you can surely spot a downward trend intellectually.

Not convinced? Well then, consider a printed correction in today’s Wall Street Journal, that long-esteemed, business-focused, English-language international daily newspaper published six days a week by Dow Jones since its inception on July 8, 1889. Having the largest circulation of any paper in the United States, the Journal has won 39 Pulitzer prizes through the end of 2015, with more to come no doubt. Anyway, they got the following fact wrong and apologized for it:

“An article about Burberry’s new fragrance, Mr. Burberry, in April’s WSJ. Magazine incorrectly said the bows on the fragrance’s bottles are satin; they are gabardine. A correction published Monday incorrectly said the article had reported that the bows are silk.”

So we learn, to our collective horror, that their first correction of this very important fact we all need to know contained a wholly different error. I for one, as a paying subscriber, certainly hope heads rolled.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.