"Authorities said a security guard last year saw Merino engaging in sexual activity with the body in the Holy Name Hospital morgue."

Also, in my opinion, the very, very best story of the year: Dead woman's money spent. This story hits just about all the major tabloid plot points:

• Decomposing corpses
• Toilets
• Cults
• Cashing in the social security checks of the dead
• People threatening their children with public school

I loved this story so much, I started chatting about it with Bob, who I assumed had heard about it already. But he hadn't and got confused at first, thinking I was conflating two other stories: Woman sits on boyfriend's toilet for 2 years and Corpse Wheeled to Check-Cashing Store Leads to 2 Arrests. I had actually heard of the latter, but not the former. Wow. So many dead people, SS check cashing, and toilet stories out there. Incredible! I see the makings of a new rock opera.

Also: Jenny's back! What I relief. I was getting terribly bored.

Subject: Ira glass, this american life

Looks like you!!

Several days later, Brian received a voicemail from his aunt, who had independently come to the same conclusion.

The comparisons to Ira Glass have been growing, and while Brian doesn't agree, he has noted that there are many worse people to be accused of looking like.

He was discussing this with coworkers on their way back from lunch when they passed one of these ubiquitous posters. The coworkers suggested Brian stand beside the poster. As he did, a cab driver, who was stopped at a nearby light, leaned out of his window. He pointed and yelled excitedly, "IT'S HIM!"

Since then, Brian has been trying to avoid standing too close to any "This American Life" ads.

But when a female has a baby when she is young and not financially/emotionally stable, we think she is trashy and careless. When she gets pregnant and wants an abortion, we tell her she's a murderer. And when she waits until she's good and ready, we tell her she's selfish.

My general feeling is that women can't win. I think this is partly due to the fact that many of women's harshest critics are other women.

I was home sick the other day, and I slept for probably almost 20 hours (non-continuous). During that time, I experienced hundreds of dreams. I remembered only brief snippets of some of them, but for some, and I could recall whole plot lines. They seemed to be interconnected and very vivid.

During one dream, Brian and I were cleaning up the items on our messy bedroom floor when he dug out a pair of gaudily shiny tuxedo dress shoes. I was surprised that he would own such a thing, and when I said as much, he told me, "Don't you remember: I wore them to our wedding."

In another, I was sorting through papers on our bed when I noticed what looked like a take-home test. It was dated two weeks earlier. I realized at that moment that I had forgotten all about the test, which was our final, and now probably failed the class.

I think in most if not all of the dreams I remembered, I was straightening up our otherwise messy apartment and discovered items I had forgotten about — for better or for worse. It's kind of dumb, I guess. But I would wake up from one dream, sweaty-headed and dazed, having just experienced finding, among the bills on the kitchen table, a rent check that Brian had forgotten to send out. Then I would plunge back into sleep, only to have the scenario reshuffled. Now I was doing the dishes. I felt something strange at the bottom of the sink. Out of the soapy water I pulled a large amber old-lady ring.

At least none of the dreams had my teeth falling out.

Fertility seems to peak at about age 22, says Marcel Cedars, director of reproductive endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. After that, it gradually declines, and past the age of 35, pregnancy is much harder to achieve.

"Each egg is more likely to be genetically abnormal," Cedars says. "And a genetically abnormal egg is less likely to fertilize, is less likely to develop. It is less likely to implant. If it implants, it is more likely to miscarry."

. . . . .

"Women are no longer marrying the boy they met in high school," Fisher says. "They're concerned with getting a career before they marry. This takes time."

But this is time on the biological clock that cannot be recaptured.

Grrr. When I read things like this, I want to submit my own articles: "MEN'S EMOTIONAL INFLEXIBITY AND PROPENSITY TO LIVE IN SQUALOR CONTRIBUTE TO EARLY DEATH RATES"; "PHARMACUTICAL COMPANIES SAY IMPOTANCE SEXIER THAN BIRTH CONTROL."

Whatev.

Bob sent me an article too: 15 Fish Hooks Surround Dog's Neck: Border Collie Underwent Surgery To Remove Hook. This was preferable to the link to the Norwegian metal band slideshow he sent me last week.

I said I hadn't noticed any problems. Then I put in the disk and the DVD made terrible noises, but wouldn't load. I said, "Brian, it heard you!"

This was truly my first thought—that the DVD player had heard Brian insulting it and decided to take revenge.

I walked up to the player, knelt down, turned the machine off. And when I turned it back on, I said loudly (so it could hear) that it had always been a very hard-working and reliable DVD player and I had no intention of replacing it.

But the damage was done.

We moved to the desktop computer to watch the show. I scooted up my TV table to get a better look. And we began watching. The first 20 minutes or so were personally uneventful.

But then, like all things of its kind, it happened in slow motion. A wooden dowel holding up the legs of the TV table inexplicably came loose. As it fell to the floor, it scratched my right thigh. I looked down from the monitor to see what was happening, and I saw the top of the TV table tilting forward. I reached out to grab my plate full of food, my glass of water, my glass of wine, as they slid forward and down. I lurched forward and was thrown back by the breath of the table top. One after the other the dinner accouchements crashed to the floor, the wine glass bouncing and tossing its contents against the wall.

Maybe this lasted a half of a second, but it was plenty of time to have a full understanding of what was happening. And plenty of time to feel dumb about not being able to prevent it.

How many of these longest moments have we had? In the car as we are about to crash? The misstep leading up to the seeming forever fall? In the morning, I look down at my coffee cup, and when I look up again, ten minutes have gone by. But the seconds spent between the moment I slip and the moment I hit the group are an eternity.

The half-second when my food was falling from the TV table seemed like ten minute. But the ten minutes we spent cleaning up the mess ... well, that also seemed like ten minutes. I wish we could use our time sense more wisely.

Still. I went to the locker room to change last night, and before heading upstairs to the elliptical machine, I took a look at myself in the mirror. Something was wrong. I looked more absurdly schleppy than usual.

And that's when I realized that instead of packing my gym shorts I had packed an old pair of swimming trunks.

While I'm sure that no one else could tell the difference between my normal bag-lady-chic and this new low: exercising in an old pair of ill-fitting swimming trunks, I still felt ridiculous. For 45 minutes I experienced sharp pangs of embarrassment.

I'll traipse around the city in a mismatched polyester pantsuit, but old swimming trunks at the gym is crossing the line. It's funny what causes us shame and what passes for personal style.

Speaking of personal style and the wearing of tight fitting athletic gear, Bob wrote:

i sent comments to the nytimes earlier query, 'who's your favorite action hero.' it had not been posted last i checked, and now they appear to have taken it down for some reason. so here it is for you, dear: i just commented on that nytimes board asking 'who's your favorite superhero'... I gotta pipe up on this one for Batman as well, but for slightly different reasons--I love a complete sociopath with unlimited resources.

On the super girls side of things, I love me some Buffy the Vampire Slayer (now back in comics!). She kicks a** like Superman and has a more eclectic wardrobe. Vampires and demons are such hateful creatures. We're lucky to have the slayers.

On a sidenote, complete dorks everywhere wept bitter tears when the news broke that Buffy's creator, Joss Whedon, had been removed from the helm of a potential Wonder Woman movie due to script disagreements with the studio. It was a difficult time for the nerd community. There was a silver lining, though, for people who own stock in Doritos, Mountain Dew and internet porno--you've got to do something to take the pain away.