"I thought that would be good. Very nutritious."

Said Tom Cruise, about his baby's placenta. (Is the placenta the baby's or the mother's? And which way troubles you more?) It seems now that he was just joking, though some folks really do believe in eating the placenta.

I want to say that I wish the new baby well. It's a little girl, named Suri. Let's be nice!

But first, I want to say that in the interim before the only-joking word came out, Christopher Althouse Cohen emailed:

My question is: if you're going to eat the placenta after childbirth, why not eat the foreskin after circumcision?

There's more to that email, but out of respect for little Suri, I won't reprint it (though it was quite hilarious).

My response:

Why isn't placenta-eating cannibalism? The way biting your cuticles is cannibalism... Or should I say, biting someone else's cuticles?