DAMES: When I was a kid, even party girls were pretty classy, or at least attractively dressed, well groomed, and polite. Now pudgy broads in wrinkled smocks huddle together at clubs, talk smack, line dance with each other, and carry on like some of the more flamboyant gay men. No wonder guys are turning queer.

CANDY BARS: Trapped in an endless cycle of same price-but-smaller, then same size-but-more expensive, then.... Kee-rist, it's enough to make you start smoking.

TV COMMERICALS: I never thought I'd wax nostalgic for Alka-Seltzer's "speecy-spicy meatball" guy. Now it's po-faced androgynes wandering the landscape in search of the latest patent medicine. WTF DOES that stuff do besides give you gas, liver damage, diarrhea, and sexual disfunction?

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Back in the 20th century, real scientists wrote articles for this mag, and one book review could run 5 or 6 pages. There were science projects and math puzzles that would reduce Ph.D.'s to tears. Now the damn thing looks like GQ and the writing would embarass an eighth-grader.

"And, the final insult, the Pompedieu Center -- looked cheap and broken the day it opened and time has not been kind."

I am still laughing.

Actually, you're close about the hair being cut with a machete. They actually use a razor.

So sue me for being contemporary.

Calling a business: If you don't get the receptionist who picks up the phone and promptly says: "Can you hold, please?!" to which you have no choice but to utter a grunt, you get a litany of instructions for which number to push for your particular need. By the time you listen to all the options and realize none of them fit your need, you get that feeling of wanting to crawl through the phone line in search of a neck.

The Mint Oreo is the greatest reinvention of an old product of the 21st century. The Uh-Oh Oreo's (chocolate creme inside vanilla cookies) is pretty damn good, too. Not a big fan of the regular or double stuffed.