Slow pan over woman in porn-clothes in a corvette. Slowly it becomes apparent that 1) her throat has been slashed and 2) she is meant to be trans-gendered. Rad! A twofer!

Then, the lead investigator dude shakes his head at the mess and slowly says “Women in convertibles are just low-hanging fruit.”

No, really. No. Really.

Frogs, as you have undoubtedly heard, are one of those bellwether animals whose rapid disappearance (they’re suddenly down 75% in some areas) and last-ditch survival tactics foretell of the coming climatic cataclysm and of the crappy effects pollution et al are having on the ecosystem.

Indeed, fully ten years ago I had an internship with an environmentalist organization whose sole purpose was to count the local frogs every year, encourage others to do so, and do something scientific with the numbers. In addition to coffee-fetching and general paper-shuffling, one of my tasks was to sit next to a local stream, one evening a week, and listen to frogs, tallying how many I heard of which kind. For this reason I still have, somewhere in my apartment, a cassette tape of the calls of all the different frogs that live in Michigan. Perhaps you could see if you can’t find some recorded frog calls on the intertubes, and then venture forth at dusk and listen to see what-all you’ve got.

I don’t mind telling you, one noise I had always thought was some kind of insect turned out to be spring peepers.

I’m so anxious for spring. We get tiny frogs who sing on warm evenings (spring peepers, natch). My ears are itching to hear their song.

Re: Fluoride – look up Dartmouth Professor Emeritus, Dr. Roger Master’s work on this and other toxics here:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~rmasters/tbcba.htm

http://www.fluoridealert.org/sf-masters.htm

The fluoride used today not the same type studied back in the fifties. It is a waste product of the aluminum industry and not the purer stuff. Master’s is a good egg and recognizes that women and children are disproportionally damaged by these chemicals which are supposed to be so good for us. Someone has to buy all that waste. Recycling, you know. We make good receptacles for trash.

Furthermore, fluoride is a hefty ingredient in many of the psychoactive pharmaceuticals which endangers those taking it for depression etc. Which are also ineffective in half the population due to genetic diversity. But no one will test you for compatibility before altering your brain chemistry – just try it and see if you like it.

As for Bones? Note that they have to make her attitude towards men a function of social dysfunction/incompetence. It can’t be admirable but is tolerated and offset by intelligence and excellent looks. Not that I begrudge anyone enjoyment of TV – just that we see it for what it is. This is no compliment to a female’s independence from men. Just an exceptional case.

One of the things I love best about it is how one of the major tensions in Booth and Bones’ relationship is that Booth is very invested in being Sir Booth the Mighty, Defender of the Maiden Fair and Bones is really not having with it. That, and their relationship is like my platonic ideal of intimacy; whether or not they end up romantic partners, however many time they piss each other off they’re always going to be a presence in each other’s lives because each of them brings something to the relationship. They are stronger as a team than they could ever be as individuals. I get warm fuzzies.

I’ll, uh, I’ll stop gushing now.

All you youngsters who grew up with fluoride – just remember they didn’t have fluoride when I was a wee girl

Not only that, there was major wingnut opposition to putting fluoride in the water on the grounds (the unhinged General Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove” voices this opinion) that it was a Communist plot to weaken the US so the Reds could take over. And they fluoridated the water anyway, and lo! it came to pass that the USSR won the Cold War.