Obligatory Entomological Pedanticism(tm) here: “Lady beetle” is often used synonymously with “ladybird beetle” or “ladybug”. Burying beetles, like those above, are in a different taxonomic family. This is analogous to the difference between cats and dogs.

It has plenty to do with rape culture — the two crimes share a root. Someone — either a jealous ex or an obsessed fan — felt that he owned a woman’s body and life, and wasn’t going to let her take it away from him.

Now I’ve got a terrible earworm of “Yellow bird, high up in banana tree ....”

When I first read that quote, all I could think was, “Holy Zarquon, this woman is really about eleven years old.”

Beat me to it. Damn!

Agreed. I’ve never had it, but two friends of mine had nasty encounters with that condition.

It’s reputed to increase the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome after infection, but that’s still pretty rare. Supposedly, many people who contract Zika have few or no symptoms at all.

They did, although “sweet and savory” was a better way to descibe them. They made celery, tomato, and mixed-vegetable Jell-O briefly in the 1960s.

I’m pulling for Al Franken, who would dismantle Trump with relish and maybe a little mustard. Plus, he’s from a state that has a Democratic governor; if Minnesota is a state where the governor appoints a senator’s replacement, that would be another advantage.

Tents, sleeping bags, and alcohol left behind? Their parents must be rich as hell.

Is there anything in this report that’s even remotely new?

I think she was around 12 in the book. Her mother delivered her straight to Woltz’s casting couch. Also, earlier in the story, Woltz was also described as being attracted to “very young” girls. Hagen (I think it was him in the book) sees the mother and daughter leaving the house afterwards, with the daughter stunned…

One bottle of Clinique foundation. One bottle of slightly darker L’Oreal foundation for those tan days. An old tube of bronzer that I should throw out. A couple of powder blushes. One or two lipsticks, and a few dark powder eyeshadow colors because I look better with smudged powder for eyeliner than I do with either…

I think the airlines should require each tarantula to purchase a ticket before flying!

Nope, you’re not! I’m a biologist and I love arthropods. (Well, most arthropods.) Tarantulas are not especially dangerous to humans. Not that I’d want one running up my leg on an aircraft, but I’d much rather have a tarantula in my lap than a house fly in my soup.

I’m long past their demographic, but when Forever 21 started advertising their imminent presence in malls some years back, I immediately presumed from their name that they were purveyors of sturdy doubleknits, in dozens of coordinated ice-cream colors, to the octogenarian set. (Anyone who has ever encountered a…

This. I really lose it when people think it’s great to remove wild animals from their habitats and attempt to keep them as pets. A few years back, some idiot who thought it was a great idea to keep a lion in rural Michigan got a big surprise when it killed his neighbor. And then there was that disturbed guy in Ohio…

I think that the resemblance between chimps and us makes too many people forget that chimps are wild animals. Also, treating a great ape like a pet is a bad, bad thing. Not only was Sandra Herold keeping Travis in a completely inappropriate habitat, but she was allowing him to drink alcohol, take Xanax (!), and eat…

I’m grateful that I never had to go through this — but two people in different branches of my extended family did experience it, and had to cut off whatever minimal relationships they had with their disturbed mothers at heartbreakingly early ages. Fortunately, both had other family members who were loving and…

Lots of deodorants also contain talc. I used to swipe my legpits with deodorant for years. Sprouted a (fortunately benign) ovarian tumor that had to be surgically removed when I was 40. Can’t prove, of course, that the deodorant caused it. But I’d be careful with the stuff anyway.