So the kid is really into fairies, and I am largely at fault. Every night I tell her a bedtime story that involves owls and fairies flying around her room and sometimes I get all Pink Floyd with a laser pointer and a blue LED flashlight, and I'd best stop writing about this before I reveal something about "the land of fairy dreams" that could earn me an unfortunate nickname. Let's just say she's really into fairies and leave it at that. I was at the store the other day and I thought I'd pick her up a Christmas present that involved some sort of plastic, figurative fairy, and walking up and down the toy aisles the closest thing I could find is all this "fairy princess" crap. Now I've pretty much had her sequestered away from the whole Princess Industrial Complex. As far as she's concerned, "princess" is just what the creepy old ladies who get in her face at the grocery store call her. I just don't understand why the only fairies they sell also have to be princesses. Is not enough just to be a fucking fairy? You've already got effervescent butterfly wings and a magic wand and pointy shoes and a toadstool couch and two little tiny ponies to pull you around the forest in a wee cart. On top of all that, you need to be a member of some faerie aristocracy? With a fairy castle with little pixie maidservants and a whole fiefdom of lesser fairies to tax in order to sustain your royal extravagances? Why is it perfectly acceptable to celebrate this lifestyle of excess permitted only to those lucky enough to be yanked out of most royal of fairy vaginas? I want the kid to understand that just because someone's parents are wealthy, that doesn't make them smarter, nicer, prettier, more interesting, or in any way better than anyone else. If I teach her that now, she won't have to waste four years at Yale to learn the same thing. Think of the tuition we'll save in 2023!

Well, I suppose I'll have to go looking in one of those hippie toy catalogs that sell faceless dolls made out of organic wheatberry chaff. I'm sure they sell fairy toys that won't offend my Jacobin sensibilities, you know: hardworking proletarian fairy serfs who harvest thistledown and collect dew drops for the royal baths. I wonder if they'll be able to ship in time for the holiday. As my wife always says, you can't rush a hippie.