3 Ring Binder

Before bestowing the bounty of toys on Christmas Eve, that's Santa's litmus test. Have you been naughty or nice? He really doesn't give a shit if you have deep, passionate feelings about certain things, attachments that you're willing to fight for, or an outrageously tight and innate sense of justice. He just wants to know if you've been naughty or nice. When you think about it, it makes sense. He doesn't have time to check on all the little nuances that make each child a worthy and wonderful little person. But Santa is for suckers. There's no way that one old, fat dude can get all that crap to all those kids. I'm just sayin'. We, however, are not suckers. We are individuals who must deal with each other as other individuals. Naughty or nice. Or in the parlance of today's political realm, nasty or nice. A friend recently wrote on her Facebook wall that someone accused her of being not nice. Later, she said the other person thought she was...

Last night I went with a friend to see the National Theatre's movie presentation of Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the tortured Dane. I was so proud of myself for agreeing to go out on a weeknight and see a movie of a Shakespearean play that I didn't think my night could get any better. It did.  There was a bar at the theatre!  It's not that I would in any way need a bar to sit through four hours of Shakespeare. No! It's just that it was such an unexpected delight. It's almost like I hadn't been to the movies since they invented the reclining seats. But, I digress.  Not only did the theatre have a bar, but there was "real" food.  (By "real" food in this context I mean anything not made by Mars, Incorporated or deep fried.)  As it was the Ides (of November, so not really), I ordered the Caesar chicken salad wrap. After many, many minutes and missing the beginning of the Cumberbatch mini-interview, I got my food an...