The Weather Channel has emerged as the Other Woman in our house: in terms of my husband’s attention, it is my fiercest competition.

Although I can accept the fact that I am not permitted to interrupt important weather-event forecasts, I put my foot down at “Storm Stories.” I will not watch old weather; the weather of the past does not carry the weight of the ages with it.

If it did, it would be on the History Channel.

Perhaps I should consider myself lucky. Facing the reality of an actual 19-year-old named Bambi would be worse than facing a virtual Heather Tesch, weekday morning Weather Channel anchor. After all, Heather is personable and bright, not to mention holding the American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval. She is also based in Atlanta which, conveniently, is far enough away for her to remain virtual.

It isn’t Heather in particular who attracts Michael, anyway....

Foam for brains? (Image at realbeer.com)

My student Samantha Buzzelli and I made a deal: “Here are the questions for my Women in Violence course. Our group project’s focus is on how advertisements use sex to sell their products as part of gender-specific marketing strategies. I understand that you’ll use our questions and your answers for the Brainstorm blog. OK, here goes!”

Here goes, indeed — Sam’s questions and my honest, if not always politically correct, answers:

1. Does the media encourage sexist opinions toward women? And if so, is it an individual or social problem?

— Our culture encourages us to stereotype everyone.

We put people into categories: not only do we stereotype women and men, but we stereotype short women and tall men, fat women and skinny men, women who dye their hair, men who are basically bald but who have one lock of long stringy hair which they...

( I came across the diary of 19th-century feminist artist and writer Marie Bashkirtseff when I was living in England in 1978; her life terrified and enthralled me in equal measures. I wrote this in my notebook 30 years ago today.)

The canvas, big as a door, absorbs the Paris morning light. Pencil sketches made in the rain lie overturned. White paints rub into your hair, red oils stain your fingers; you move in sudden gestures and broad strokes, murmuring to yourself: “Paint more quickly.”

As a child writing in the night you recorded premonitions: three candles lit in a room, a sparrow caught in the greenhouse, flying against the glass. You feared your death as shopkeepers fear thieves.

Yet darker words written by an older hand say that magic and signs have little power.

Tragedies do not happen, Marie, because mirrors break; mirrors break because tragedies will happen....

I am not a pretty girl at an Internet cafe eager to chat to you.

Sorry about that.

But I do want to know how you’re spending the evening.

I am fascinated by how people intend to deal with election night.

I have friends who have been working on campaigns (yes, a variety of them) and a youngest kid who has been working on the Obama campaign in Florida for the past month; I have students who have spent more time working towards today than towards their own LSATS (amazing, right?)

They have wine in the fridge — or a chilling six-pack (named Joe?).

We’ll be getting pizza, salad, and I’ll be getting into my pajamas by 8 p.m.; this in itself is an act of bravery, since I am fearful by nature and fight the urge, every election, to sit out the frenzy in my basement with a paperbag over my head.

What will you be wearing? Who will you be with? What will you be eating and drinking? ...

There was a fascinating and unprecedented continuum of women represented by major players during this last tour around the political theme park. We were presented with the Uber-feminine, as embodied by Sarah Palin, who was of course in direct opposition to Hillary Clinton, a woman who wore her Bluestocking colors proudly even after she was defeated by Barack Obama in the primaries.

The major players lined up as follows: Sarah Palin, Cindy McCain, Michelle Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton. They moved our eyes from red heels to comfortable wedges, from skanky-tight skirts to pantsuits, from beehive hairdos to blunt-cut pageboys.

I thought it might be intriguing to prepare a quiz, and to see where the Babes of Politics might fall in terms of their entirely theoretical and wholly invented responses to these multiple choice questions, questions which nevertheless...

Twenty Truths That You Might Not Want To Know But You Should Hear Anyway:

1. Some of us did not stop breaking out when we got through adolescence. Some of us did not stop breaking out when we got through menopause.

2. When you say “My coworkers are just like family,” you do not necessarily have to mean it in a nice way.

3. Forget grapes and nectar: Baked macaroni and cheese is the food of the gods.

4. “Missy” is not a flattering name for a section of retail clothing space designed to attract the adult female.

5. Very few couples can stay friends after a break-up if there is not a secret desire on the part of one of them to become lovers again.

6. Great satisfaction can be obtained by reading a paperback or magazine while taking a bubble bath on a cold afternoon.

7. Women are not taking over the workplace, despite mutterings of disgruntled troglodytes; we still make, on...

When other special dates on the calendar have greater historical, cultural, social, and national resonance, why does Halloween remain the occasion upon which we Americans actually have most fun as a group?

It’s not like Halloween has inspired great art. Most of your other major holidays, for example, can claim Handel, or Mozart, or Cole Porter as their balladeers. But there’s no magnificent piece of canonical music that can be seen as the theme song for Halloween, not unless you consider “Monster Mash” a magnificent piece of canonical music.

Okay, here’s why Halloween is the best holiday: We don’t worry about it. Nobody frets about being lonely, abandoned, heartbroken, alienated, or bereft on Halloween. There is about one-one-hundreth as much emotional tension surrounding Halloween as surrounds Valentine’s Day, for example, or New Year’s Eve. Few wring their hands, wondering...

Go ahead, download it. What’ve you got to lose?

I can think of some wonderful things about the Internet. Brainstorm, for example. A few other things are pretty good, too.

Because of the Internet old friends have been able to look you up via your Web site, you’ve located precious books you otherwise never would have been able to find, and you’ve found decent hotel rooms in NYC, where a weekend rate adds up to only half of what you’d spend on a small foreign car. Terrific.

Then a colleague tells you, in passing, that she has found unfortunate yet unequivocal proof that some students are buying papers off the Internet. She mentions some sites to look up if you want to see what’s going on.

Late one night you decide to check out the stolen-paper material your colleague has mentioned. You’re amused by the very idea of doing something illicit — this should be really funny. Probably...

A devoted and fabulous friend in New York who loves Barbra Streisand, Paul Stuart suits, Vogue, All About Eve, Paris during fashion week, fine literature, brilliant humor, and just happens to be a gay man, yesterday sent a news item which has entirely captured my imagination: “A gay dating Web site has submitted the results of an interesting poll. Over a third of gay men have expressed romantic interest in Prince Harry, only 23 percent prefer William, and a good third of the polled population would steer clear of either.”

The snippet (I refer the bit from the paper, not my friend, although “The Snippet” would be a great nickname for somebody who routinely fed one excellent small pieces of delicious gossip), anyway, the news item went on to explain that “the poll expressed hope that people like Harry and William, constrained by their exclusive monarchy, would be pleased to learn that...