It is sad that All My Children went to all the trouble of ginning up fans and foes of gay marriage with the Bianca & Reese storyline. Many of the right things were said, some truly, deeply wrong things were shouted, but the worst, the very worst thing about this storyline was that it traded in prejudice without acknowledging it. It’s classic soap opera to have an engaged person fool around the night before the wedding. Let’s get that out of the way. It’s really low to assert, however, that lesbians are confused, promiscuous, lack self-awareness and shouldn’t get married, which is the take-away lesson of the whole episode.

So AMC staged this wedding and immediately pulled the plug on the marriage, as if to say, “Don’t be mad at us, God Botherers! Do you see a couple of lesbians making out on the couch? You must have imagined it.” I just don’t have the patience for that kind of immaturity and cowardice.

Maybe I need a break from my soap. I certainly need a break from any argument that lesbians are mythical creatures on the prowl for a hot man.

This is a picture of my mother, sort of. Of course, it’s a photo of Elizabeth Taylor, whom my mother always resembled to a wacky degree except that Mom was a natural blond with lighter blue eyes. Picture that. Picture your mother being the blond version of Elizabeth Taylor, and picture men following your cart through the produce aisle. Picture what happens when the car breaks down and the tow truck arrives. Picture Mom not noticing because that’s just how people act. Picture your Mom, young when you’re born, bowling in black stirrup pants, mowing the lawn in a bikini, creating a stir at the PTA meeting with her mere presence. Your job: try not to develop a complex.

Friday afternoon, I was on a mission in the grocery store: to plan five or six menu items for a surprise party Saturday night. I walked slowly, recalculating each idea as I found or couldn’t find ingredients. Three-quarters of the way through the aisles I was exhausted by the effort. I walked in circles until I found a hand of ginger I knew must be near shallots. At the register, I stood blankly while the cashier struggled with a large order complicated by food stamp regulations. The customer seemed used to matching items to the papers but I felt her watching me for signs of impatience or scorn so I studied the soap opera magazines with what shred of attention I still possessed. Finally, I was helping the very young boy packing my groceries into my canvas bags when I looked up and saw a tiny figure behind me in a black peacoat, a Greek fisherman’s hat and black jeans.

“Hey,” I said. “You’re my mother.” The cashier stops what she’s doing and the boy struggles to bag 18 eggs. Mom says, “Why, yes I am,” and goes on to explain her appearance which, if I’m honest, looks a little unusual. She says she’s had migraine all day. That’s news and I had two simultaneous reactions.

1. Shit, Mom had a migraine. I bet she feels bad; and:
2. Shit, Mom had a migraine, which means migraines are almost certainly in my future. Shit!

“You look like Comrade Gidget controls the means of production,” I say.
“Why don’t you stay to help your Mom?” the boy asks.
“Mom, do you need help?”
“No, I’m looking forward to getting a little exercise with the bags,” she says brightly.
“Then I’m off like a prom dress,” I say, and I am.

OH. MY. GOD. Is Zach Braff writing commercials?

When the chopper hits the sink I spit whatever I’m drinking. I giggle when he says, “Martini bikini.” When he asks us to check out his anatomy, I laugh like an eighth grader. But when he promises to make America skinny with a nut chopper, I laugh and applaud. That, my friends, is comic gold.

This is interesting. Meet Carl Malamud, whom BoingBoing calls a “rogue archivist.” Carl is the only person I’ve ever known with his own zip code – but enough about me, what’s Carl on about?

This is a bit unconventional, but I have launched a front-port campaign to be nominated Public Printer of the United States. I’m inspired by Gus Geigengack, a working printer who convinced FDR to name him to the post.

I am thrilled to have such a distinguished committee backing my efforts, including the Honorable Cory Doctorow and the Honorable Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing.

To endorse my nomination, simply comment on any blog post (like this one!), tweet me, or send me email. The endorsements will be harvested, set into a book, and released as a free PDF file with paper copies dispatched to the White House Office of Personnel.

Thank you for your support.

The occasion of my acquaintance with Carl was that I was business manager of a radio comedy show and Carl was creating internet radio. Yeah, that guy. We were the first comedy show on internet radio and Carl was a stickler for deadlines. Ever manage a comedy troupe? Herding cats would be easier, so Carl’s attention was kind of a double-edged sword for us. In particular, Mr. Wintle, who found this story, and I tore out our hair getting DAT to the post office. Thus, I was really interested to see at Yes We Scan where Carl was turning his pointy pointy attentions now.

Please allow me to highlight a few of the items that I think we all need to pay attention to, and I invite you to contact me so we can continue to talk about these issues.

I’m skeert! And I’m fresh out of hot pink wigs!

1. America’s Operating System. The Government Printing Office serves all 3 branches of government and prints the Official Journals of Government. GPO should lead the effort to make all primary legal materials produced by the U.S. readily available. [more]

2. Librarians. Librarians are the bedrock of the public domain and the defenders of our fundamental right to access knowledge. GPO should work even more closely with our libraries and reform the Federal Depository Library Program to support them better. [more]

3. Jobs. As commodity printing goes the way of the PDF file and the copy machine, GPO must retrain and refocus its workforce, working with the unions and the employees so we may face the challenges of the future. If nominated and confirmed, I would work to establish a United States Publishing Academy, reviving the grand tradition of GPO being in the lead for workforce development, vocational training for students, and educating the rest of the U.S. government on how to print and publish effectively. [more]

4. Security. GPO produces passports and other secure documents. The current design for passports uses an RFID chip, which means that an American can be picked out of a crowd merely by having a passport in their pocket. If nominated and confirmed, I would ask security expert Bruce Schneier to form a Blue-Ribbon Commission to reexamine the design of passports and other secure documents so we can better protect the privacy and security of all Americans.

The seals of approval are a nice touch. Seems Carl’s on the side of the angels after all. The RFID chips should have been a giant red DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! flag but instead – what? Sensible people who should’ve known better got passports and RFID-chipped in the name of freaking safety.

Carl’s manifesto is indeed interesting. I’m willing to put aside my feelings about that year he made life a glamorous living hell because I’ve watched what the GPO has been doing for the last eight years and know it must change. You have no such impediment, but you’re probably looking forward to improved government transparency. Will you endorse Carl?

Just so know: when Cinema Paradiso is on really late on a school night and you really want to watch it and you know you’re up too late but – but – but – Cinema Paradiso! and you watch most of it in your living room and creep upstairs to lie in bed, pausing only to brush your teeth in a negligent whirlwind manner you will surely regret, and when you lie in bed with one eye open because surely that is close to sleep and that scene you can’t bear to live without seeing is on soon soon soon and you promise yourself you’ll close the other eye in a minute but you don’t a few times, well, you are not actually sleeping, and you will regret that, probably.

I swear I’ve been to parties that look like this Korean ice cream commercial.

I am ambivalent about reunions of any kind. For instance, I’d rather chew off my foot than attend my high school reunion, though I imagine the startled looks when people my age are old and I am still getting better looking, which is like a curse, only …not. This morning, WRXP’s Matt Pinfield was talking on the radio about tomorrow’s Melody Bar reunion. It’s all over Facebook and friends can’t stop blabbing about it. I was there. It was cool and I was there. But how uncool is it to drag the black leather out of the back of your closet a decade or two after you left the scene and tell your former friends in mid-life crises your Mowhawk was just a phase?

What if you just want to dance?

Get a load of this horseshit.

ND measure says fertilized egg has human rights

Aha. Lunch is in an hour, but I can start throwing up now.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A measure approved by the North Dakota House gives a fertilized human egg the legal rights of a human being, a step that would essentially ban abortion in the state.

The bill is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that extended abortion rights nationwide, supporters of the legislation said.

Representatives voted 51-41 to approve the measure Tuesday. It now moves to the North Dakota Senate for its review.

The bill declares that “any organism with the genome of homo sapiens” is a person protected by rights granted by the North Dakota Constitution and state laws.

The measure’s sponsor, Rep. Dan Ruby, R-Minot, said the legislation did not automatically ban abortion. Ruby has introduced bills in previous sessions of the Legislature to prohibit abortion in North Dakota.

“This language is not as aggressive as the direct ban legislation that I’ve proposed in the past,” Ruby said during House floor debate on Tuesday. “This is very simply defining when life begins, and giving that life some protections under our Constitution — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Until they’re born, then they have the right to starve, shiver and go suck an egg.

Critics of the measure say it will cost millions of dollars to defend. Ruby said the state has been willing to go to bat for other principles that were less important.

In Oklahoma, meanwhile, a state House committee Tuesday approved legislation that would prohibit physicians from performing abortions solely on account of the gender of a woman’s fetus, even though the measure’s author said there is no evidence the practice has ever occurred in the state.

The legislation passed 20-2 by the House Public Health Committee. The bill now goes to the full House for consideration.

The author of the bill, Rep. Dan Sullivan, R-Tulsa, said it is designed to stop couples from using the gender of a fetus as a reason to get an abortion. Sullivan said a doctor would be prohibited from performing an abortion if the mother specifically said the fetus’ sex was the reason.

However, he said there is no evidence the practice has occurred in Oklahoma. “I haven’t received any definite information that proves it,” Sullivan said.

I can’t find mention of this on CNN, which is certainly curious.

One of my sisters rejects the idea that Roe v. Wade will ever be overturned. Won’t hear a word of it. Won’t listen to discussion of current events and votes Republican. This attitude is not uncommon, actually.

How you like those Republicans now?

Pffft!

I’m bummed because All My Children just offed Greenlee in a dumb, squirrelly fashion. Get a load of this: Miss Thing is persuaded to call off the wedding and pretend to have food poisoning but never takes off the frilly human sacrifice suit. Then, when she can’t get her best friend’s husband on the phone, she jumps on her motorcycle, still in the designer parachute but adding a black leather jacket, and speeds off toward the place where she called out sick to avoid. Meanwhile, the cranky best friend speeds off in a car back to the hotel or something. They’d collide if Miss Greenlee didn’t sail over an embankment to her supertragic girlie death in her wedding dress, veil and riding gear that somehow reeks of stale Meatloaf songs. I mean, really. The one and only character on daytime TV that could tear off Bunny Bixler jokes deserved better.

As I said, I’m bummed, but I’m content to console myself with Michael Easton, star of another soap. Not only is he yummy, he and I share a birthday, which was yesterday. Michael Easton’s character on his soap set up a joke about guns and Italian pastries weeks in advance of the actual delivery. I was impressed when the actor didn’t wink at us on camera, because in his place, I might’ve succumbed to the urge. And speaking of urges, I’m kind of fighting the urge to quit blogging or turn pro or take up philately on a temporary basis, which everyone considers now and then. Yesterday, I remembered holding handstands in a split position, looking at my fingertips and placing my foot down behind me, between my hands, which I last did about 23 years ago. This evening, my yoga teacher called and classes start soon. I look forward to being the right kind of upside down.

Supposedly in America we don’t talk about class. Seems to me we never stop.

Wish I could attribute this clever image to a wry commenter. If you know who made this, please zap me an email.

I’m no credentialed brainiac but I can’t help noticing the budget-busting gagfest Confessions of a Shopaholic opened the same week Congress votes on a bill to save us from economic disaster. Creamy Jesus on a crouton, who thought now was the golden moment for a lighthearted romp about the rewards of living beyond one’s means? What the fuck is this?

I probably wouldn’t be spitting bullets about a chick flick if last night on The Daily Show Jon Stewart hadn’t let John Sununu get away with twice saying the bullshit euphemism entitlement reform. I don’t even go to the movies anymore because if I spend $10 on a bottle of wine and drink the whole thing I feel less stupid than I do leaving yet another mind-bogglingly bad movie. But it’s just too much to have even a moment’s patience with this tissue-thin premise when Republicans are campaigning to cut Social Security and Medicare and conservative Democrats might give ’em a hand.

President Obama intends to appoint a task force the week after next which will be charged with “reforming” Social Security. According to inside gossip, the task force will be led entirely by economists who were not able to see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which is giving the country its sharpest downturn since the Great Depression.

This effort is bizarre for several reasons. First, the economy is sinking rapidly. While President Obama’s stimulus package is a good first step towards counteracting the decline, there is probably not a single economists in the country who believes that is adequate to the task. President Obama would be advised to focus his attention on getting the economy back in order instead of attacking the country’s most important social program.

The second reason why this task force is strange is that Social Security doesn’t need reforming. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it can pay all scheduled benefits for the next 40 years with no changes whatsoever.

The third reason that this effort is pernicious is that this talk of reform is occurring with the baby boomers just as the cusp of retirement. Due to the reckless policies of the Rubin-Greenspan-Bush clique, this cohort has just seen their housing equity wiped out with the collapse of the housing bubble. Tens of millions of baby boomers who might have felt reasonably secure three years ago are now approaching retirement with little or no equity in their homes.

Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements in the pejorative sense this word has been used politically for the past couple of decades. They’re investments. Our whole working lives we pay into the funds and when we retire, we are paid our due. Period. There’s no reason to even talk about it except to say, “Isn’t it lovely that we’re so civilized? Yes, yes, it is” and SHUT IT – unless you disagree and show no class whatsoever.