Today is the day to fight gangsters

Have I told you to buy Chicago Noir yet? Do it!

Hey Chicagoans. Want to see a free show at Second City this weekend? Of course you do. Come to Schadenfreude's Aspen Comedy Fest tryout and cheer them on with the heartiest of laffs.

Despite my daily uniform of zoobahs and tee-shirts featuring my favorite "Family Circle" cartoons, I do enjoy following the fashion. For instance, this year I am excited about some of the styles that we're told are going to be in, like military-type cuts and flat boots.

Some, per usual, is stupid. Big belts are in, did you know that? And you don't wear your belt to hold up your pants. You get a nice three-inch-wide belt, put on a sweater, and then sling that belt over your sweater, around your hips. This reminds me of the last time I did this, when I was in eighth grade and topped a neon long-sleeved baggy t-shirt with an Esprit black belt, over black stirrup pants and black patent leather shoes. Now they're reselling it to us and I won't have it.

But women still will buy the look, even if it's silly or something blatantly recycled from fifteen years ago. The other day I saw a girl sporting said belt over a dress. Hmm, it's 90 degrees outside. What does this sundress need? I know, a huge belt.

I read an article in the New Yorker about a practice dictionaries and encyclopedias have, where they place one fake entry in each edition as a copyright. They'll make up a word or person and then they'll know if they've been ripped off if another publication uses it.

Today is the last day of Fashion Week in New York. (With online writing, I don't need to bother with smooth transitions.) If I were a designer, I would totally place a fake entry into each line, to see if I was being ripped off. For instance, along with all my new styles, just to copyright everything, I might send a model down the runway with a cat on her head:

Plus, with something so specific, if you saw someone walking down the street with a cat on their head, you'd be able to spot that they were just blindly following style dictations for the season, as opposed to adopting styles to make them their own, which is certainly way more gauche than wearing a cat on your head.