The In Crowd

Ordinarily I make my plans according to what I assume to be the opposite of whatever one million moms have scheduled for their days.

Change some diapers? Nooooope. Mold and shape young lives? Uh-uh. Kiss boo-boos and put myself last? Ha! Not likely, folks. Spend embarrassing amounts of money on things I might throw out next week and then take a mid-afternoon cocktail nap after Googling “can a person be too well-rested” and “how do I know my cat loves me for me”? Ah yes, pencil me in for that — and I do mean use a pencil. You never know when an emergency meeting with my couch, some chick-lit and a giant iced coffee might come up.

Bosses! Am I right?

I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for a little girl talk.

Hmm. What. Shall. We. Discuss? Let me see, little girl talk ... little girl talk ...

Oh, I’ll just get right to it because who has the time these days. What the heck is up with Gov. Nikki Haley?

About 10 years ago, I spent the day with the owner of a traveling sideshow for a story I was writing on the county fair.

He and I sat in his trailer — which smelled of well-loved dog and old bowls of generic Spaghetti-Os — and we talked for a long time about human oddities and the dying freak-show industry.

The best thing about dying a young icon is that you'll always be remembered as such. Unless, of course, you were friends with Daily Beast and Newsweek publisher Tina Brown ... then you'll be remembered as the creepy zombie wearing a fascinator and purposely ignoring your daughter-in-law's perfect brown hair and impossibly toned arms.

Nobody really knows what Tina Brown was thinking when she decided to drag 36-year-old Princess Diana from the comforts of her grave and make her 50 (actually, I do ... she wanted attention for her dying magazine. Yeah, I said it).

I often wonder how much farther humans can go in our evolutionary journey.

I mean, this can’t be it for us, right? Surely we have more fur to shed and brain cells to activate, no? More diseases to eradicate ... more wrinkles to make vestigial?

The assumptive part of me has always thought the plan was this: We’ll continue to breed our way to perfection, leaving behind the weak and the stupid, and thereby mutate into a precision species that everyone hates because we win all the gold medals in the intergalactic Olympics every four revolutions of the black hole (or whatever).

I was Facebook chatting with some friends the other day about part two of the "Real Housewives of Orange County" reunion show when a really ugly side of me started to come out — a side in which my desire to make people laugh directly competed with my fear of being reincarnated as Paris Hilton's best friend or one of bin Laden's compound mistresses (tomato, tomahto ... I honestly can't decide which would be worse. Massaging bin Laden's crusty sandal toe and wondering what that crashed helicopter is doing in our yard or listening to Paris tell me why she's sooooo pretty?).

Male politicians will be male politicans, right?

Lord. I don’t know about you guys, but I think I might just be bored by this whole Rep. Anthony Weiner scandal. I think I might have actually reached my limit on tolerance and the ability to be shocked.

In a new study of married couples, researchers have found that women experience lower stress levels when their husbands are helping them with household chores.

Similarly, the researchers found that stress levels in husbands are drastically reduced when the men watch “Real Housewives of New Jersey” with their wives and don’t complain a single time. Not. A. Single. Time.

Who couldn’t use a little Botox on the forehead, some localized waxing and a nice, padded push-up bikini top to wrap it all up in?

Eight year olds, that’s who.

And yet ... oh, and yet.

In what has become a fully expected fashion stunt, Abercrombie & Fitch recently came out with its latest controversial and tiresomely inappropriate item of clothing: a padded, striped push-up bikini top for girls, ages 8 to 14. You know, to help catch the eye of that boy on the beach who might think your 8 year old is yucky or has cooties — or, God forbid, that she’s too immature-looking for his nose-picking, dinosaur-playing, truck-destroying, sand-throwing self.

Sometimes I wish there were a United Nations regulatory committee devoted to the dispensing of celebrity news.

Think about it. In the face of international tragedy — such as when a large earthquake and tsunami are followed by widespread panic over nuclear disaster — the committee could gather hastily at their underground bunker and take a gavel vote: “All those in favor of Charlie Sheen poetry tweets and Selena Gomez-Justin Bieber dating rumors flying at half-mast until the iodine pills have been distributed, say ‘aye.’ Ambassasdor Agyekum, please alert Ryan Seacrest and Bonnie Fuller on our decision.”