I expect much more from, well, just about any national publication. Complaining that you have trouble packing school lunches? Get a fucking grip. This article is not hip or edgy; it’s the sort of thing normal people keep inside their heads. Scratch that: Normal people don’t think things like this at all.

Blech. I might vomit. Not from a peanut allergy; I’m only allergic to people who put their own kids’ food preferences ahead of other kids’ lives.

Nobody is “cowering in fear of the lowly peanut”. People are taking reasonable precautions in response to life-threatening allergies. In schools, especially some elementary schools, that means banning peanuts entirely.

Ms. Pearson claims she “dove into the science” before she wrote this article. That may be true, but when you dive into the shallow end of the pool, you hit your head on the bottom. I’m not sure how self-centred a person has to be to risk a child’s health over a peanut-butter sandwich, but at least now we know this about her and can keep our distance.

I really wish I was a snotty Toronto mommee whose greatest concern about food was that my child would only eat macaroni and cheese under certain circumstances. That must be really awesome for Ms. Pearson. It would be great if I didn’t have to spend my time reading labels to make sure my child doesn’t die from his peanut allergy. I’d love it if he could eat anything at a restaurant.

Now that I think about it, Ms. Pearson is right. After all, he probably won’t die, and it is a real inconvenience for other moms to have to pack jam sandwiches instead of peanut-butter sandwiches. Those talks I have with his teachers each year about how to use the EpiPen? SO HYSTERICAL OF ME. Thanks, Ms. Pearson. It really is great to have you around to put everything in perspective.

I especially appreciate Ms. Pearson’s concern for my budget. Yes, EpiPens are expensive. They sure are. I own several, and I have to replace them when they expire. If I didn’t have them, I could afford to buy other things. This is true. Also, I have no confidence that people know how to use them. Unless…uh…I show people how to use them. But that would be too tiring, I suppose. Thank goodness Ms. Pearson is around to point out things I never understood before! I should just explain to my son that they’re too expensive to replace when they expire.

And one person outgrew his peanut allergy! Case closed! Schools and parents are overreacting. That MUST be the way it is. It’s a whole new world over on this side!

Thanks for showing me the error of my ways, Ms. Pearson.

Ms. Sanati, please ignore everything I said earlier. It was just hysterical talk from an overprotective parent.

My dad has written many songs over the years, but this is the one I remember best. This video is probably from 1986 or so. I had an audio tape of this performance, and I listened to it many times, but I’d never seen the video until a few days ago when I found it on my godfather’s Facebook profile.

My dad has played stringed instruments since before I was born, and this is how I remember him from the time we lived in Maine. I would stay up late, waiting for him to come home from gigs. I loved to go to his band practices, which were in Jim-Bob’s Flooring in Dexter, a few miles from our house. (Jim’s the drummer; you can’t see him from this angle, but I think he still owns the flooring business.) I even recorded my own version of this song when I was nine or so. I wish I could remember more about how that happened. I am pretty sure the song is about John the Baptist; you can learn more about him by reading the gospels.

That’s my godfather in the middle of the screen on the guitar and harmonica. I’ve been watching these videos for days. In some of them, the band members are all wearing matching vests and the singers (”Bubba” and Bob) have matching moustaches and a coordinated dance routine. My dad is wearing a PUFFY SHIRT in the clips from Bangor Cable. I dare you to tell me that’s not awesome.

Michael’s reaction: “That’s Grampy! Whaddaya mean, that guy’s name is Bubba? What the heck is a godfather? STEVE WHO?”

I guess you can’t really share your memories.

Wow. I never thought about it that way before. Obviously, you must be correct.

• Do you read newspapers? If so, do you read them online or in hard copy?
• Would you pay for online content? If you would, how much would you be willing to pay? If not, where would you find news if news organizations put up pay walls?

I know my readers are not exactly a cross-section of the public, but I’m curious.

Here’s the post from the LA Times that made me wonder about this.

We didn’t have a TV when I was a kid, but I remember watching Sesame Street at my grandmother’s house.

This is just what it’s like to do “streeters”. They suck. Seriously. If a reporter asks you to help out with a streeter, be a nice chap and answer his stupid questions. He knows they’re stupid. Just do him a favour and help him to finish the worst part of his day.

“You swear on a Bible? That’s just silly. You should just promise to tell the truth.”

“I’m not TRYING to get buff. I already am buff.”

“I want Barack Obama and Stephen Harper to subscribe to my blog.”

“MOM. DON’T STAY UP JUST FOR A TV SHOW. IT’S LIKE YOUR WHOLE LIFE ON ONE SIDE, AND A TV SHOW ON THE OTHER. PLUS, YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO SNUGGLE ME.”

“What the heck? You don’t have to be married to have kids? Does Daniel know about this?”

“If you make fun of Barack Obama, you can get arrested. What? You can’t?”

“SWEEEEET CAROLINE! BUM BUM BAAAAAAHHH!”

Reader-submitted link: A Hoff Mess Up North.

LEAVE DAVID ALONE. You are lucky he even performs for you BASTARDS. He got divorced, his wife turned out to be a user, and he went through a custody battle. All you people care about is MAKING FUN OF HIM WHEN HE GETS DRUNK.

He hasn’t performed on stage in years. I mean REALLY performed, not just lip-synching on America’s Got Talent. His song is called Looking For Freedom because he wants to be FREE FROM YOU PEOPLE.

Anyone that has a problem with him, you deal with ME.

LEAVE HIM ALONE RIGHT NOW I MEAN IT.

I went to see This is It, the Michael Jackson movie, last night. I’d promised to take Michael (of In The Net) and Daniel (made famous by Dispatches From The Failed Mommies Club) to see it, and I am a woman of my word.

It was a stark reminder that Michael Jackson was the kind of tragic character people used to write plays about. He was phenomenally talented, larger than life, disfigured by his own hubris.

We didn’t have a TV when I was growing up, but my brother the Capitalist and I were still big Michael Jackson fans. When we were about the same age my son is now, Michael Jackson was at the top of his game. I remember watching the video at the top of this post at my uncle Butch’s house; he also showed me Thriller after expressing some concerns that my parents might not want me to watch it.

Now that I think about it, I may never have told them this. Sorry, Mom and Dad.

It was the mid-1980s, and Michael Jackson was the biggest star in the world. The Capitalist and I had some of his songs on tape, and we had very few songs on tape. He danced like no one we’d ever seen. He wrote the coolest songs we’d ever heard.

That would have been an excellent time for him to have stopped having plastic surgery.

I haven’t thought much about Michael Jackson since about 1991 or so, when Black Or White came out. My uncle Butch was disgusted. He’d seen the long version of the video; the one that was yanked off MTV after a day or two. This, of course, was back when MTV actually played videos. He described it to me:

“There’s no music at the end. He just walks out and start smashing car windshields. There’s no reason. The video’s better without it. Oh, and he also grabs his crotch about fourteen times.”

Daniel and Michael are now huge Michael Jackson fans, and they practise the moonwalk every day. It’s pretty cute.

They don’t know all of the details of his life, of course. They know that he looked the way he did because he had too much plastic surgery, and that he died of a drug overdose. They don’t know about the allegations, which I won’t describe because I don’t need that sort of Google traffic.

They didn’t see the things I saw in the movie. They didn’t see that he was hiding his face behind sunglasses, hats and walls of hair. They didn’t notice that he appeared to be struggling to recall his own lyrics at times, or that he was obviously lip-synching at other times. They don’t remember him as a handsome young man at the top of his game; they see only a man who was clearly talented, and don’t know how far he’d fallen.