Limited Inc, with our unholy talent for screwing up -- there must be an equation for this showing that Limited Inc's single life of screwing up is equal, in number of screwups, to the total of at least three other people put together (one named Larry, one named Mo, and one named Curly) -- made a mess of our income, survival chances for winter, and mental health yesterday. We've been writing on money laundering, we've been on the phone to fabulous Paris and London -- and by the way, the British phone service has gone the way of so many things in Post-Thatcher England, from convenience to nuisance -- we've talked to investigators and libertarian freaks and friends of the Somali peoples and what happens, what happens with this overload of carats? We come in with a piece that is too long and too late. We don't know yet if the newspaper that commissioned it on spec is going to throw it back at us, but we are afraid, very afraid. And the worst part is that we very much wanted to bootstrap from this article to another article about Mexico's dirty war, the secrets about which are now starting to spill.

Limited Inc's excuse for this state of affairs is so piss poor it doesn't deserve to survive in prose. But we will no doubt return to our private Tora Bora, our cave of misfortune and chaos, at another time.

In the meantime, the News! Yes, we are aware that crazy Sharon is staging a firesale of Israel statehood (everything must go!); we are aware that bin Laden might be captured any minute now; we are aware that the first collateral damage from Enron's collapse is hitting; but none of these things move us, no, enchant us like Robert Gottlieb's review, in the NY Obs, of Uplift: The Bra in America


Is this the way to begin a review or what?

"You may have worn a brassiere, you may have helped a friend or two take off a brassiere, but have you ever really thought about the brassiere? It�s not too late. �Brassieres must do more than fit a multitude of bodies �. They must accommodate the same body as it changes through the monthly cycle and through the life cycle. They must provide for movement of the torso and arms in many directions without chafing or binding and without slipping out of position. As if that were not enough, brassieres must also retain their own structure through multiple wearings and launderings; must not abrade in contact with clothing; must remain, as a rule, inconspicuous beneath the outer clothing while harmonizing with the desired silhouette; and must be priced to sell to many customers. No wonder hundreds of attempts have been made to design the ideal breast supporter over the past 140 years.�