The Rage Diaries

"Honestly, the class feeling you run into these days!"

I am part of that small subset of Vogue readers who tends to pick up an issue depending on who's in it, not who's on it. Among the must-reads for me: Julia Reed. I like her style, which pulls the reader along on a warm current of words, then steers them directly toward a trenchant observation or two.

So I picked up The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story in part because I had been surprised and pleased by Vogue printing Reed's articles about life in post-Katrina New Orleans. I mean, this is a magazine that treats a $1.6 million brownstone as a charming starter home; to have a writer openly assail the social complacency that begat the terrible class divides and subsequent tragedy in New Orleans is positively sansculottian.

Pick-a-fight Friday ... Mix-in-a-jar. Yes or no?

In this month's Fiscal Fitness theme post, Kip wrote something that had me nodding along vigorously in assent:

If you are just batching up something for the sake of giving out a "homemade" gift, please don't bother. I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but I really hate those dang "gifts in a jar" where hotcocoa mix, milk powder and marshmallows, or Jiffy cornbread mix, or whatever is layered into a mason jar. That doesn't say "Christmasariffic! How innovative and delightful!" to me; that says "Someone needed to check the box on thirty acquaintances so she went to Costco and bought ten pounds of Swiss Miss."

Have any of you ever read Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, wherein she expounds on "toecovers," or those gifty items that seem to exist for no other reason than to be inflicted upon someone else in a spirit of generosity (or obligation)?

My definition of toecover includes the mix-in-a-jar gift. (One year, I got seven-bean soup. Anyone who knows me is snickering, but I assure you, I was gracious.) Or those bottles of mystery oil in which some radioactive red peppers are suspended -- those are toecovers.

Or bath salts. As a militant non-bath person (oh, God, the idea of poaching myself in my own scum ... shudder), I include schmancy bath salts or those weird jelly-textured marbles of bath oil as toecovers.

But I get that for some people, receiving some beans in a jar channels the very spirit of Christmas. Or for some people, lovingly ladling pancake mix into jars, then hot-gluing ribbons to the lid reminds them of what really matters for the holidays.

So I'm throwing it open to you, the people. What are your toecovers? And what seemingly toecover-like gifts do you secretly love to receive?

How do you implement affirmative action in the DCUniverse?

WARNING: This post is all comics babble. If you are not a comics reader, you might want to just skip it.

One of the funniest and truest lines ever uttered on the Simpsons belongs to Edna Krabappel. When she ditched Comic Book Guy at the altar, she explained their incompatibility with, "It's like I'm DC Comics, and you're Marvel." I don't have any elaborate theories as to which gender tends to lean toward DC and which one toward Marvel.

Fiscal fitness -- November's theme ... and a pick-a-fight Wednesday

... is linked to this WSJ story, "Glum Tidings: Santa Gets Sacked as Cities, Companies Look to Save" (Nov 10, 08) and this Business Week Story, "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Recession" (Nov 6, 08).

Yup -- we're talking holidays. The questions for the month:

Are there any external factors affecting your holiday spending?

My answers and more after the jump.

Veterans' Day

Other people said it better ...

Are you a Californian? Are you dismayed at how the Prop 8 vote went down?

Go sign Equality California's marriage equality petition.

By collecting 1 million signatures, Equality California can put another measure on the ballot. This is but part of a multipronged strategy to determine whether the question of gay marriage should be decided by majority rule, or settled by the courts.