Elise Sereni Patkotak

Please oh please Hillary. Do the honorable thing and drop out and heal the party. Leave me respecting you at least a little. And a little respect is all I have left at this point for both you and Bill.

Almost all science fiction about visitors from outer space is predicated on those visitors being advanced civilizations with earth being a backward little backwater.  But what if we find life on other planets and it turns out WE are the intelligent life form and they are the primitives? How depressing would that be?

I’d feel a lot sorrier for George Bush about all his former staff who are coming out with books telling the truth about the lies and deceptions his administration is built on were it not for the fact that if you are an administration of lies and deceits, then these are the type of people you attract. Live with it. The American people have had to for eight years.

I saw a kid on a skateboard talking on a cell phone today. Thus endeth the last hope for civilization to have a bright future.

So now airlines are going to charge for every piece of checked luggage in an attempt to make up revenue. Here’s a better idea. Charge for every piece of carry on luggage instead. It would cut down dramatically on the amount of stuff people try to shove into overhead bins and under their feet, cut boarding prep time in half since you’d just go find your seat and sit down, and create a much better feeling about you among passengers who didn’t try to shove their baby grand piano into a bag and then insist it could fit in the

OK, now I’m really depressed. Not only did I pay over $300 to get my plumbing fixed, resulting in my toilet seat now being cold instead of warm, but a friend from college just e-mailed me to tell me she had a face lift, lost 30 lbs. and has an insatiable Italian boyfriend.  I think I’ll go to bed and stay under the covers until Labor Day.

If you read my column in the Anchorage Daily News, you should know that the paper had a difference of opinion with me over what constituted material that can run in a family paper. So I apologize for the edited version of the column that appears in the paper today and urge you to check back here tomorrow when the full, unedited, unexpurgated version will appear on this website. Prepare to cover your children’s eyes.

So my toilet breaks and I have to call the plumber because the water won’t stop running. While he’s here fixing the myriad things that turn out to be wrong with it, I ask him why the seat always seems warm, like hot water is flowing in. He said that something that separates the hot and cold water flowing into my pipes was probably breaking. He fixed it. So now, when I get up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, instead of a nice warm, inviting seat, I get a cold ring of plastic.  And I