Allow me to celebrate the fact that in this time of great unease, conflict and tension, a fragile peace has been forged between two of the greatest forces in all of North Carolina: Your friends at Krispy Kreme and your enemies at Cheerwine.

With July looming before me, I walked past the flag display at the store a half dozen times before I caved. Look, Mommy, it’s a flag! my little guy said over and over. I looked at his eager face and thought of the parade we would attend for Independence Day.

Turns out that if you furnish a scorching last-minute winning goal and add the subtle, unrelenting pressure of most of my friends and all of Twitter, I turn into a dynamic, perspiring World Cup fan! At least for the next few days, or weeks, or years, or however long this thing goes on. I haven't the foggiest idea.

We work so hard to keep our children safe that it becomes unfathomable to consider torturing them. The numbers tell us otherwise: Child abuse happens, and it happens with disgusting frequency.

BP CEO Tony Hayward didn't want to be a total jerk, so he went to A YACHT RACE, because it was the wanker-est thing he could think of that didn't involve tucking his polo into his khaki shorts, which I cannot imagine also didn't happen.

Not long ago, I realized that if you want to raise a child who stops to smell the roses, you have to actually let him stop and smell the roses.

The competition is pretty ferocious, but the most uniquely ridiculous of the forehead-smackingly silly fads to sweep in and out of my junior and high schools were these rubber watches that came as part of a Burger King value meal, something with a hork of meat and a fry pail for $4.99 or whatever.

Marva Collins knows a thing or two about success. She grew up as a young black girl in Alabama, at a time when black people were not allowed to use the library. She didn’t have an education laid out before her — she had to work for it.
So she did.

As a rule, I try to avoid revisiting topics, unless of course the topic is me, but we return this week to South Carolina, where, against the well-chiseled laws of human decency and basically physics at this point, politics IS EVEN MORE AWESOME THAN BEFORE, and by "awesome" I mean "there's more fat sweaty racists than there used to be."

Sometimes, amid all the cap-throwing and the cash gifts, we gloss over the idea that learning hasn’t ended. It is, in fact, just beginning.

I’m sure you’ve met her. She’s the mom with kids signed up for three sports. Well before kindergarten kicks off, junior already has music lessons, art class and soccer games – and that’s just on Tuesdays.

The best line I've heard about the horrific oil leak that may or may not be closed, and may or not be still leaking away and may or may not have something to do with the full moon and may or may not be 11 million gallons or 50 million or eleventybillion gallons depending on which wafer-thin BP-issued Lie Producing Machine was activated this week, comes from Jimmy Fallon, who said, "BP wants Twitter to shut down a fake BP account that is mocking the oil company. In response, Twitter wants BP to shut down the oil leak that’s ruining the ocean."

Right, like this wasn't going to be a column about "Lost." Because I thought, hey, you know what would be a good way to get read on the Internet today is to write about something other than "Lost." So I'm sorry, Lengthy And Reasoned Think Piece on Elena Kagan, you'll just have to wait until next week, if we even still have a "Supreme Court" by then. (Rand Paul was just Step One.)

It’s time for a confession: I’ve been having an affair with Jack. And Sawyer. And Ben. And Sayid. And Jin. And Desmond. And Jacob.

White Castle earlier this month announced the launch of its very own scented candles, an absolutely legitimate product that has the goal of spreading White Castle love while making your house smell pretty much like a delightful combination of abandoned onions and my grandparents' kitchen.