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I read my wife's e-mail. It's not that my social life is that pathetic; it's just that in the beginning, we set up a joint e-mail account that over time has become hers, but still contains my first initial in the address. In my book, that gives me the right to pry.

So begins my blog entry titled "Breaking the Chain" about how I refuse to forward those annoying chain e-mails well-intended folks send around that I refer to as "karma bombs." After all, it's not my e-mail. The passage is part of my weekly blog titled The Suburban Field Guide (suburbanfieldguide.blogspot.com) that has nothing to do with direct marketing and everything to do with the inevitable domestication that occurs as a result of marriage and parenthood. Such contributions are intended to force me to lay out the skeleton of a book where, with able assistance from an audience, all the bones will be funny ones.

Blogger is a free service from Google that allows anyone to publish a blog--that synthesis of the words "web" and "log"--about anything they darn well please. At the bottom of postings, bloggers can enter keywords so that random folks might chance upon their rant about, say, the dangers of dating a woman who keeps rabbits locked inside her apartment, or how their wife's "book club" is really fronting a wine-of-the-month club. In addition to Blogger, Google owns something called AdSense, which allows people to turn their blogs into generators of dollars--or, in my case, cents--by posting related advertising based upon the blog's content and such keywords. While it's comforting to know that someone else enjoys a good double entendre, this is where the trouble begins.

The phrase "sneaky husbands" in a posting has triggered an advertisement featuring an offer sure to make anyone who has ever donned a jockstrap tremble: "search the world's largest database of cheaters." Another treatise on female personal ads that veto the folically challenged, titled "No Baldies," brings a torrent of ads for hair restoration products. Lastly, an essay dubbed "Sit & Spin" that examines why the up-and-down saddle movement in spinning classes might not be as fun for men as it is for women inspires the query, "Want to Get Spanked?" This gets me wondering: has Google developed some kind of fingerprint recognition software that enables them to reach through the Internet and read minds? My God, what will people--more pointedly, my pastor--think?

Concern about what the public might think is transitory, however, when I remind myself that the blog includes my five-year-old Charlotte's recent observation that began, "You know..." then, after pausing to find the right words, continued "...you're kind of furry." Or perhaps worse, I recall that, after watching me do drag comedy emblazoned with the organization's initials in the form of a lower-back tattoo, ERA's president and CEO Barbara Tulipane commented. "You have no ego." Consider it a testament to my commitment as an ad man when I say: "I'd disagree."

Rick Petry is the immediate past chairman of ERA and a freelance writer. In addition to The Suburban Field Guide, he writes advertising copy peppered with urgency when he's not penning articles laden with angst. He can be reached via e-mail at rickpetry@gmail.com or at (503) 740-9065.