For the past three weeks something has been bugging me. Every day it bothers me more and more, and I'm now to a point where I have to avert my eyes every time I get in my car. It's that damn screen where the navigation/radio/everything appears when I turn on the car. At first it was amusing, but now I need an answer.

Here's what comes up every time I turn on the engine:
CAUTION: Using COMAND may not divert your attention away from road and traffic.

Huh? As if using only one 'm' in Comand isn't bad enough... At first I thought it must say, MAY divert your attention, which would make sense. Warn drivers that staring at some video screen in the center of the dashboard may have an impact on whether or they inadvertantly plow into an on-coming car.

But that's not what it says. It says it MAY NOT divert attention, and, I'm sorry, that doesn't exactly deserve a warning. The car also MAY NOT have a hidden treasure in the glove box, it MAY NOT pop spontaneous wheelies on the highway, and it MAY NOT have a portable keg in the trunk in anticipation of impromptu tailgating parties. But they didn't need to warn me about that.

I've been trying to figure it out. Is it a typo? Did they really mean to warn me that my eyes should be on the road, not the video screen? Am I totally missing something in my interpretation? I can't decide whether I'm the idiot, or the people who typed that cautionary phrase into the computer.

At some point I'm just going to have to give up trying to understand and go directly to my car dealer for an answer. What gets me is, am I the only person who's noticed this?

Karin Gillespie, the mastermind behind the Girls' Cyber Circuit, has a new book out. A DOLLAR SHORT is a hilarious saga of loss, sisterhood, and the will to survive in small town Cayboo Creek, South Carolina.

I asked Karin two probing questions, hoping we could get inside the psyche of a woman who named her two main characters Chenille and Chiffon. Here are her answers:

Q: What song would you love to find out was written about you?
A: "Black Magic Woman." I like the idea of being a little mysterious and having the wiles of a witch.

Q: If you were going to be the inspiration for a song, what would its title be?
A: "That Girl Never Gives Up" When I decide I want something I will move heaven and earth to get it, no matter how frustrating that might be!

I've included a little description of A DOLLAR SHORT, but for more info, go to: www.karingillespie.com.

It isn’t every day a movie star steals your husband. Former beauty queen Chiffon Butrell faces that dilemma when her husband Lonnie wins a trip to Hollywood. Lonnie meets mega movie star, Janie Lynn Lauren—known as Jay-Li to her elite circle- and leaves Chiffon behind in Cayboo Creek, S.C., with three kids and no money.

Her good friends, the Bottom Dollar Girls, try their best to pitch in. But there are too few hands to lend, what with Elizabeth and her husband Timothy expecting their first baby any day, and the rest of the Bottom Dollar Girls knee-deep in their secret—and possibly scandalous--plan to raise money for the Cayboo Creek Senior Center.

When a slick of Wesson Oil at the Winn Dixie gets the better of Chiffon’s ankle, there’s just one thing to be done—call on estranged older sister Chenille, who hails from Bible Grove, S.C. A prissy, fussy spinster prone to dressing her dog Walter in matching plaid “mother-son” outfits, Chenille is everything Chiffon detests.

Chiffon's little house is soon overrun with buzzing paparazzi, and the tabloids are having a field day with the starlet's affair with a down-home country boy. Jay-Li declares war when she appears on national television to assassinate Chiffon’s character and to declare her intentions for Lonnie by wearing a t-shirt that says, “Chiffon, Be Gone!” Things get ugly in a hurry in the battle of wills between the mother of three and the world’s greatest movie star.

It's late Sunday night and I'm trolling the Internet because I'm something of an on-line addict, and I just saw a review of OFF THE RECORD on the B&N site. It was actually a very looooong Kirkus Reviews review, and, of course, I read it with one eye closed as I prepared to cringe. It was actually a good review, which was nice to read. But there was also something that troubled me. A word, actually. I read the word over and over and couldn't help wondering... is it sad that the author doesn't know the meaning of a word in her own review?

The reviewer wrote: "It's decadent fun to see Teddy's oleaginous agent create a media circus as Teddy and Jane rekindle their childhood relationship in full view of the paparazzi."

Oleaginous? Even my laptop couldn't find a synonym for "oleaginous" in its vast thesaurus. So I resorted to looking it up on dictionary.com. Here's what I found:
1. Of or relating to oil
Um, don't think so. Unless it's oily as in slimey. Not the slippery slimey, but the underhanded slimey.
2. Falsely or smugly earnest; unctuous
Unctous? Another word to look up? Turns our unctous has to do with all the oily stuff again, so I decided to go with the falsely or smugly earnest definition. Or not? I'm not any less confused.

Still, I was quite flattered that the reviewer pulled out such a fancy word. Even if I would have called the agent a shit head and called it a day.