Would you prefer I visit the planet Arrakis? It’s another desert planet. Yes, I open books and have people read them to me. Sure, I’d like to visit the Gold Coast sometime, too. I’ll call it West Egg while I’m there. IS that better?

And Re: Claudia - Yes, there is a rule somewhere that alien women must be portrayed as busty and underfed and always wear a skin tight body suit. I’d didn’t make the rule up, but I certainly don’t object.

But, I prefer redheads. NATURAL redheads. There’s a difference.

You may be curious why I know all these names. Quite simply, I think of them as guys who could take second place.

During my son’s extraction(C-Section) the nice little doctor lady said exactly what I was thinking. “Uh-oh” which she then followed with the proper response to saying uh-oh in surgery. She turned to me and said “Oh, I didn’t mean uh-oh so much as, huh, would you look at that, his head is larger than I thought and that incision is going to be tight.” Then she jumped on my wife’s rib cage to try and stretch the incision. Brilliant recovery. I think they teach that in the third year.

My wife is a redhead, but boys look funny like that, so I made him a blonde, like me.

And yes, you two are odd with these literary fantasies. Now, please excuse me while I plan my trip to Tunisia to visit my homeworld of Tatooine.

in response to your inquiry re literary fantasies–i must admit to not exactly a fantasy, it was far too real for far too long to be a “fantasy” and i quess it depends on your definition of “literary” (nose in air) but if that includes the most full-on kick-a__ little red head on the planet than here it goes.

i think most of you, particularly those who follow norse myths and heroes (ummm, heroines) will know i’m talking about pipi, that’s right, of the the longstockings. i was so pipi obsessed that i became pipi– requesting, no, demanding, that my family honor my decision to change my name, and refusing to answer to anything except pipi for an obnoxiously long time. (many is the night i layed awake rueing my parent’s utter lack of ceativity; for god’s sake if they couldn’t have named me pipi at birth, why not at least anika??) long after i thought i had left the pipi within behind the siren song of that darling girl called again. i was giving birth to my third child, a girl child. as her head appeared the nurse exclaimed, “she’s a blonde”–i literally screamed, “what are talking about, she’s supposed to be a redhead, are you sure she’s not a redhead!? the nurse replied, “i’m positive, she’s a blonde–why is there red hair in your family?” “no”, i replied. she turned to my husband, “so there’s red hair in your family? “no”, said my husband. “then i don’t understand,” said the nurse, “why would you think you’d have a redheaded baby.” to which my husband replied, “because she wants one, goddamnit.”