So I was wadding up newspaper to pack dishes.

The last time we moved, half our stuff was packed with racing forms, due to a neighbor’s habit of playin’ the horsies, losing, and leaving large stacks of forms in the recycling bin. And that was fine by me.

This time I just picked up a random stack of free publications at the supermarket, which means that the dishes are packed in restaraunt reviews and personal ads advertising all manner of disturbing acronyms, and a few old copies of “Wired.”

And then there were these things.

Dish in box. Eyes on dish. Hand over newspapers. Grope for newspaper. Glance over at newspaper–hey, are those boobs?

Certain things captivate the human eye, and the human breast is one of ’em, even if you’re female and there are little white squares over the nipples. Dishes forgotten, I picked up the newspaper, and read, jaw hanging open, “Take charge of your life with breast augmentation! This woman speaks her mind! She takes second fiddle to no one! That’s why she chose breast surgery!” A smiling doctor wearing a brightly colored fez, advertising himself as “an artist in the truest sense of the word,” offered to turn any breast into one of an array of before-and-after shots.

James wandered in, possibly attracted by my “Gnrrrghff!” noises, looked over my shoulder, said “Oh, yeah, I know, those jackals preying on those poor women,” and wandered out again while I was still making incoherent noises about the after shots. I realize that gravity is slowly taking its toll on my squishier anatomy, but square boobs with long vertical red scars do not strike me as improvement.

Still, it pads a dish nicely. Perhaps I should simply resign myself that my dishes will always be packed in an expression of human vice.