If (only) looks could kill

All the while deftly avoiding the term "tramp stamp," The Wall Street Journal reports: "There has been an explosion in recent years in women's lower-back tattoos -- often ornate designs that take up a lot of surface area near the vertebrae where epidural needles are typically inserted."

This apparently has some pregnant women with ink in the "mid-lumbar area" (sheer poetry) worried that problems could gestate if the needle pushes a microscopic bit of pigment "into the nerve-rich region outside the spinal column."

Though there's not much if any science to back it up, it's an intriguing notion.

Combine it with all the stories about kids' Crocs getting caught in escalators, and you've got natural selection for the modern, aesthetically enlightened world. Wouldn't that be nice.

By the way, here's a heads up on adapting for fall: Sweater dresses make you instantly gain ten pounds; wearing tights as pants causes debilitating nausea, possibly even cancer; and wearing sandals with socks is code for "raging case of gonorrhea."

Call it survival of the fitted.