KEPT WOMEN

Good morning, and welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we congratulate the lively young minds at Princeton University on their successful Frist Filibuster! It's a bittersweet victory, however. As a godless, kitten-killing, homo-loving, tax-and-spend liberal, I really was hoping for an end to the filibuster so that when the liberals seize power they could put Susan Sarandon and Lou Reed on the Supreme Court.

Actually, there's going to be a very important Supreme Court decision this year that's gonna drive those Far Right Chippies (Christian/hippies) out of their ever-lovin' gourds. And that is the "must be faced" decision on whether or not individual states can enact medical marijuana laws. A classic case of states' rights (conservative) versus a strong federal government (liberal). But oops! It's GANJ. The DEVIL WEED. The tool of Satan vs. the Conservative interpretation of the Constitution! Stay tuned.

The bored gods say, "He who fights use of medical marijuana may need it some day."

Translation: Ganj is good medicine for a lot of things. I don't use it, it's against the law (as is doctor-shopping for Vicodin). But I've had a few run-ins with Jack Daniels in my time, and "anecdotal evidence" tells me that being stoned is not as bad as that.

Today's topic: Kept Women

You Princeton guys are slobbering, thinking I'm going to tell you all about sexy mistresses who sit around luxury apartments in lingerie, waiting for their rich, fat-cat corporate greed-monger married boyfriends to arrive with the diamond bracelets that stimulate the economy.

Sorry. That kind of kept woman now has a new name. She's a trophy wife.

There's another kind of kept woman out there, and I'm surrounded by them. These are highly intelligent, college-educated, upper middle class women who don't have to work because they married well. Husband is breadwinner. He's in pharmaceuticals. He practices corporate law. He's a plastic surgeon. He's a developer. (We have LOTS of developers where I live. The master plan is to cover the entire state in asphalt.)

These wives are kept women. They have nice houses, budgets for pedicures and shopping, time to join book groups and to do charity work. But most of all they are absolutely, positively, relentlessly, avidly, and obsessively devoted to their children. They run the PTA as if it's the FBI. They're constantly after the school board - and the teachers - to make the curriculum more difficult, so their daughters can grow up to be kept women too. They organize talent shows after school, they run girl scout groups, they agonize over their kids' unpopularity, and then when the kid actually gets some friends, they agonize over whether or not they're the right friends.

Welcome to the world Dr. Laura has made. Thanks, Doc.

If you detect a touch of bitterness in my tone, you're right. Because I have to work. Not that my husband's a slacker. Far from it. We live here in Stepford, and our house is almost as nice as all the others. We even have an updated kitchen and one and a half baths, both with low-flow toilets. So it's not like the old man isn't pulling his weight. But when we moved here we were both working, our salaries were deemed barely adequate to meet the mortgage and expenses, and it's been that way ever since. Harder now than ever, in fact. Thanks, Dubya.

Worse, I often have to work on weekends. It's that way when you're a goat judge. So my kids, The Heir and The Spare, are given a tad more latitude than most of the carefully cossetted tweens and teens around here.

This degree of freedom for the old tots has led to no end of snide remarks from the kept women, who feel my children are headed straight to Cannabisville by way of the Abortion Clinic. But because these kept women have college educations, they couch their critiques either in "I really care about your out-of-control child" solicitude, or in subtly wicked comments like, "No one knows Main Street better than The Spare. She's down there all the time."

Yeah, Kept Woman. My Spare is a favorite of all the merchants on Main Street, because she's buying stuff while you're carting your brat to gymnastics in the Ford Expedition. And it hasn't escaped my notice (or yours) that my kid is gorgeous, witty, and dramatic, while your little precious pet is plain, shy, and moody.

The Spare was accused of using physical force against the posh offspring of a kept woman. It might have happened. I wasn't there, I was half mile away, with cell phone highly charged, looking at goats. But guess what? Since being earnestly entreated by said highly educated kept woman to get help for The Spare, I have decided that what The Spare really needs is to be kept away from kept women. Poor Spare. Now she'll be dragged to the goats.

A quick aside: Kept Woman's child showed no blunt trauma force, no missing teeth, no contusions or post traumatic stress disorder. In fact, she's still pals with The Spare, if only in the confines of school.

And poor kept woman's offspring, who didn't have a pal to her name before The Spare came along. Oh well, there's always soccer, and ballet, and piano lessons, and gymnastics, and girl scouts, and church choir, and astronaut club, and chess club, and swim team, and shopping.

My biggest pet peeve about kept women? Why did they need a college education? They don't use it, except maybe some of the vocabulary. What a waste of money.

I say, bring back finishing schools and everything they implied. If you want to be a kept woman, you go to one of those, save your tuition money for a better down payment on a bigger house.

You Princeton girls don't run a high risk of becoming kept women. You didn't get into Princeton because you want to be a good judge of wallpaper and a savvy flea market shopper. But watch out, Princeton gals. Wherever you move, Buffy the Peace Slayer is going to be micro-managing your kids without your help, and she won't be a damn bit grateful when your influenza vaccine saves her precious tots from bird flu.
ANNE CONDONES GRATUITOUS VIOLENCE IN HER CHILDREN, YEA, EVEN ENCOURAGES IT