Where did that $100 of birthday money go?

1. Pin -- $17 (now that I'm 40, I can't leave the house without a pin on my cloak, a silk scarf over my bouffant, and making sure I radiate Chanel No. 5 for at least fifteen feet in all directions).
2. Two essential Bill Murray movies (Kingpin and Groundhog Day) -- $30.
3. Muted safety orange down vest, stone cropped low-riders, and electric cranberry velour pants from the Gap sale rack -- $45.
4. Finally getting my vibrating pink gel dildo repaired -- priceless.

I was vaguely concerned about joining the pink velour pants brigade, which seems mainly to be comprised of UCSB girls on their way to or from Starbucks. I guess if I start wearing them with flip-flops you can take me out with a pellet gun.

My other weak, half-hearted concern is for Ben Affleck, who is all up in arms about this new player deal for the Yankees (Jack came up with a good headline this morning: "Affleck Apopleptic"), but I'm reserving my special edge-of-panic concern for HELLO!? Mad Cow Disease! The New York Times keeps publishing these windy, midsize, no-one-wants-to-be-the-first-one-to-admit-that-they-think-there's-an-enormous-problem articles on page 17 about how the USDA tests only about 40,000 cows out of bajillions each year, and how witnesses report sick cows stumbling up the ramp to be slaughtered, and how brain and spinal tissue sticks to the machinery and potentially gets mixed into food product meat, and how even if the machinery is clean the carcass parts with infected prions get rendered down into stuff like gelatin, which is made into those gelatin capsules, implying that even if you're a vegetarian and you take supplements or medication contained in gelatin capsules, you can still contract your distinctly human but still crippling version of Mad Cow Disease. And if cows have been Cannibal Cows with twisted prions starting ten, twenty, thirty years ago? Then we all have it. Is what I'm thinking. Is anyone else half-panicked about this, or is it just me? Because I forgot my own phone number the other day.