I was a casualty in the War on Christmas.

'Twas last night at the checkout counter at Whole Foods. As is our wont — or Meade's wont, anyway — we'd brought back Whole Foods shopping bags for refilling. One of the bags — probably reused 3 or 4 times — a handle had torn lose.

I said, "Foiled in our effort at recycling." Then — because I'm always looking for the positive side of things and noticing the red-and-green image of a string of Christmas lights on the new bag — "At least the new one is a Christmas bag."

The cashier said: "Holiday bag."

The neverending cruise, promoted as the "world's first floating city."

It's the Freedom Ship, a name that does not work on me. It telegraphs imprisonment.

And I love that it uses the roof for an airport and landing strip on the top level, so the 50,000 residents — instead of having a place to experience sunlight and sky — can feel and hear jets landing and taking off.

The benefits of ocean occupation would involve brand new schools, hospitals, businesses, parks, promenades, landscaping, public art and saltwater aquariums.

What's the law enforcement? Will that be experimental too?

"This will be a very heavily capitalised project and the global economy in the last few years hasn't been too inviting for unproven progressive projects like ours. Happily, though it has experienced a hiatus, the Freedom Ship now looks as if it is a live project again. In the last six months we're getting more interest in the project and we are hopeful we will raise the $1 billion to begin construction."

Looks as if... as if...

It looks as if this is a project for bilking billionaires getting articles written about nonsensical boyish fantasies.

I know. I shouldn't give these clowns attention. But I just hate cruises.

"One of the first questions they ask you [at the Ayn-Rand-fan dating website] is about your appearance."

"I'm not sure what the difference is between 'cuddly' and 'very cuddly.' Seems like some kind of code word for fat. I picked 'very cuddly,' as I figured Objectivists are looking for a man who likes to cuddle after they get home from a long day managing a train factory or whatever."

After an interminable, seemingly random series of invasive questions about my personal proclivities, I finished my profile. I almost quit when it asked me if I was interested in the "cashflow game," which I thought was some kind of hip-hop reference, but I persevered like John Galt would have.

"How I’ve wished, over the years, I’d never told anyone about that poke in the butt."

A sentence in "The Girl," the authorship of which is credited to Samantha Geimer, whom Roman Polanski raped in 1977, and Lawrence Silver, who is Geimer's lawyer, and someone named Judith Newman, to whom the NYT book reviewer Lisa Schwarzbaum attributes the book's "lively, pugnacious narrative voice."

Schwarzbaum says the book is "a feisty, almost jaunty you’re-not-the-boss-of-me account" and "autobiography as a feminist tactic for Geimer to own her sexuality," because — I guess — that's what the lawyer and the pugnacious-narrative-voice provider figured would be the best approach to selling a graphic tale of the poke in the butt anal rape of a child.

Unfathomably, Schwarzbaum goes for a comic tone: "And wasn’t that what second-wave feminists fought for: our butts, ourselves?"

"You are my wife!" exclaims Nicki Minaj in praise of a 19-year-old singer.

On "American Idol" last night. Nicki Minaj is a female. Whether we're talking same-sex marriage or not, however, proclaiming one of the contestants to be your partner in marriage is edgy for that family show.

Minaj is always coming up with new ways to say "I love you." (For example, last night, she also said "You are a little marshmallow that I want to eat.")

I appreciate the effort not to be boring, and it must be a great effort, when you listening to hundreds of song performances and then must say something. Imagine trying to think up something new to say that advances your image as a sexy, edgy pop star but isn't too dirty for a prime-time network show aimed at kids and the parents who watch TV with their kids. You can't say that you want to have sex with the contestant. You have to take it down a step.

ADDED: I just remembered that Minaj also said to one young female singer: "I love your boobs." To be fair, the singer was wearing a dress with a tight bodice that had high-contrast triangles marking the nipple location.

A euphemism for "aging": "evolving."

Example:

One of my wise [yoga] teachers told us that after 50, she began to cross off the list poses that she no longer felt made sense for her evolving body.

Cue the episode of "Outer Limits" where David McCallum enters the evolution machine:



Tip for "wise" teachers: You're not evolving. And why you find the notion of evolving more comforting than aging is a mystery you might want to ponder.

"Your ignorance makes me ill and angry."

Also... here's the trailer for "Altered States":