I didn't have time to post this yesterday, so here's a belated news flash: The Prayer Warrior has made his first comments on Ted Haggard. (The short version: Disgraced pastor = GOTV!)

November 6, 2006

Prayer Warriors,

Pray for me as I am serving on jury duty today and tomorrow.

Pray for Ted Haggard, his family and church as evidence has proven that there has been sexual immorality.

Despite the news, all Christians need to cast their value vote tomorrow.

Thank you,
Pastor Hutch

A friend found a camera in a taxi cab and has posted the pictures on Flickr. She'd like to find the camera's owner and give it back to them. Isn't that nice of her?

Are you one of these people? Do you know whose camera this is?

All the pictures can be seen here.

This morning the radio was on and they were reporing on Ted Haggard and I was listening intently—until my son asked, "Daddy, what's a 'male prostitute'?"

It took me back to the dark days of the Bill & Monica scandal, the Starr Report, the impeachment, and all the talking heads on TV pursing their lips at the thought of—horrors!—a powerful man getting a blowjob from someone that wasn't his lawful wife.

Lots of the average folks arguing for impeachment—not the pols, many of whom had been on the receiving end of extra-marital blowjobs themselves, or the TV talking heads, ditto, but the average conservative voter—were saying things like, "My children are listening to this on the TV!" They objected to being forced to discuss things with their children that 1. their children weren't ready to discuss, or 2. that these parents didn't want to discuss yet or ever.

I've had that same feeling twice in a month. First with Foley ("Daddy, what's a 'congressional page'?") and now with Haggard ("Daddy, what's a 'male prostitute'?"). Back in '98 I was one of those people who dismissed the grumblings of freaked-out parents during the Bill & Monica scandal. I think I owe them an apology—I don't think Bill should have been impeached, and if you're going to mad at anyone, be mad at the Republicans that dragged his private life into the public square.

But, yeah, it's a bummer having to explain to an eight year old eating a piece of toast exactly what a male prostitute is.

Letters to God end up in ocean, unread.

This note from the Prayer Warrior came yesterday, and it didn't really rise to the level of Slog-worthy Prayer Warrior missives. But then came the news that one of the country's leading evangelical figures has stepped down amid accusations of sex with a gay prostitute. Given all that's going on, I thought Slog readers might find a word from their local Prayer Warrior comforting.

November 2, 2006

Dear Prayer Warrior,

I am flying out to Bend Oregon to speak to pastors at a lunch for Restore America. Tonight I will be speaking at a mens group, and flying home tomorrow morning. Please pray for these speaking opportunities.

Also, please pray for tomorrow night Gideons Posse!!

Your Pastor,
Hutch

Yes, again.

In other McRib-related news, McDonald's launches its own petition drive to "save the McRib." (Also check out this parody web site, sponsored by the "Boneless Pig Farmers of America".)

In other McDonald's news, I was in Prague recently and I marvelled at the incredible variability of the chain's international offerings. "McToast,"anyone? Hungry Planet, a fantastic (and gorgeous) book about what the world eats talks a little about McDonald's international variants, as does a recent New Yorker article about water scarcity in India, where McDonald's (which serves chicken-only "Maharaja Macs" and vegetarian "McAloo Tikkis") is becoming increasingly ubiquitous.

And in other junk food news, I saw a commercial last night for Jack In The Box's new "sirloin ciabatta," which looks for all the world like a worm sandwich. I wasn't able to find a picture to post here, but in the process of looking I got sucked into Jack In the Box's web site, where you can "build a meal" of Jack In the Box items on a virtual "tray." I built what I considered a relatively modest meal: Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger, medium curly fries, small Pumpkin Pie Shake. The result: A gut-busting 2,350 calories, about 350 more than an average woman is supposed to have in a day. Oh, and 145 grams of fat, 3,228 milligrams of sodium, 279 milligrams of cholesterol, and 97 (!) grams of sugar. Bon appetit!

I've spent a little time killing animals and writing about killing animals. I wrung the head off a pigeon. I shot a rabbit and a squirrel. I sautéed slugs. But even I was a little shocked to read this in today's lead story in the New York Times:

"My pig?" he said. "They shot him twice in the face with a 9-millimeter pistol, and then six times with an AK-47 and then twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. And then he was set on fire."

"I kept him alive for 15 hours," he said. "That was my pig."

The human "he" in this story is Petty Officer Third Class Dustin E. Kirby, a marine medic in Iraq describing part of his training. Each corpsman gets an anesthetized pig to work with—learning about live tissue and major trauma just isn't the same from a textbook. Or even an emergency room. Wartime medicine is a thing apart (here's a photo of Petty Officer Kirby, holding a bullet that wound up in the head of one of his platoon members):

He put the bullet in his breast pocket, to give to an intelligence team later. Sweat kept rolling off his face, mixed with tears. His voice was almost cracking, but he managed to control it and keep it deep. "When I got there, there wasn't much I could do," he said. Then he nodded. He seemed to be talking to himself. "I kept him breathing," he said.

The pig exercise is torture—keeping an animal alive for hours and hours in serious pain for edification or pleasure. It's repulsive, but it (ostensibly) saves lives. Unlike veal. Or foie gras. So it's hard for me to get worked up about these pigs if only because, compared to other animals we use and abuse, they have it pretty easy.

They might even have it easier than Petty Officer Kirby. I just stumbled across this passage by Nietzsche (sorry Mudede—and everyone else), lifted and pared down from the opening to The Use and Abuse of History:

Observe the herd which is grazing beside you. It does not know what yesterday or today is. To witness this is hard for man, because he boasts to himself that his human race is better than the beast and yet looks with jealousy at its happiness. One day the man demands of the beast: "Why do you not talk to me about your happiness and only gaze at me?" The beast wants to answer, too, and say: "That comes about because I always immediately forget what I wanted to say." But by then the beast has already forgotten this reply and remains silent, so that the man wonders on once more.

But he also wonders about himself, that he is not able to learn to forget and that he always hangs onto past things. No matter how far or how fast he runs, this chain runs with him. For the man says, "I remember," and envies the beast, which immediately forgets and sees each moment really perish, sink back in cloud and night, and vanish forever.

In her honor, party tonight at the Hideout, after ArtWalk (stop at Punch and the Lee Center for sure).

For those of you who don't read the print version of our paper:

Years ago I worked at the Egyptian theater, mainly during the busy Seattle International Film Festival—just one of many popcorn jockeys earning minimum wage picking up trash and tearing tickets. One of the few perks of the Festival, at least back then, was the amount of downtime we behind the concession stand would have for chess playing, book reading, and, on many an occasion, booze drinking.

One year, SIFF held a special retrospective of French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier. During the screening of his (then) latest film—I believe it was Capitaine Conan—Tavernier, himself no slouch with the bottle, came out to the concession stand in search of a drink. One was poured for him, then another, then another. Finally, as his film was nearing its end and Tavernier would soon be asked to take the stage for questions from the audience, one last drink was offered to him. His response: "My God! You drink more than the Finns!â€�

At the time, Tavernier's quip seemed a little strange. Why the Finns? Were the Finns, and not the Irish, the traditional "lushes� of Europe? Was drinking so out of control in Finland that a common joke was that one "drank more than the Finns�?

The answer, if this BBC report is any indication, appears to be oui:

Alcohol has become the leading cause of death in Finland for men, and is a close second for women, a study says.

Figures for 2005 released by the state statistics agency showed alcohol killed more people aged 15 to 64 than cardiovascular disease or cancer.

Almost as many women died of alcohol-related causes as breast cancer last year.

Charles Mudede will outlive us all.

Researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute of Aging report that a natural substance found in red wine, known as resveratrol, offsets the bad effects of a high-calorie diet in mice and significantly extends their lifespan.

Last night, over drinks, in a bar, The Rosebud, whose atmosphere was warmed by pre-bebop piano jazz, a poet, Shannon Borg, informed me of a strange experiment that proved something that's so incredible it changed my whole understanding of the largest land mammal. Scientists painted a white mark on an elephant's shoulder (or thereabouts) and placed the big beast in front of a big mirror. What happened? The elephant stared at itself for a moment and then with its trunk tried to wipe off or figure out what the mark was doing on its shoulder. Meaning, instead of reaching for the mark in its reflection (what a dumb animal would do), it reached for the mark on its actual self. Meaning, the elephant knew that it was looking at an image of itself. Meaning, the elephant was aware of itself. The conclusion:

Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, joining humans... as animals that possess...self-awareness

This has tremendous implications for human society because, by definition, what separates us from almost all other animals is nothing else but self-consciousness, self-awareness, awareness of our individuality. If elephants have this same power of self-recognition then killing one is the same as killing a human being. And it doesn't stop there: If an elephant kills a human being, stomps him/her to dust and death, then it should be charged with murder and face the judgment of our law system. We must now make room on death row for such elephants (as well as apes and dolphins, as they also possess self-awareness).

The minute you know who you are is the minute you know what you are doing. Elephants, welcome to humanity.

Who needs ghouls and horror and sexy, sexy [insert plural noun here] when you've got the motherfucking bone crusher?

From the International Herald Tribune

Europe's immense bearded vulture, sometimes called the [motherfucking] "bone crusher," boasts a wingspan of nearly 10 feet, plucks meals from avalanche debris, and breeds its chicks in the subzero temperatures of the wintertime Alps. Its gastric juices register a "1" on the pH scale, nearly pure acid. Seething belly bile is a necessity for a creature that subsists mainly on weather-bleached bones.

They were close to extinct, they're coming back, and they're badder than you.

From the wikipedia article on the motherfucking bone crusher (aka the "Lammergeier," or "lamb-vulture"):

Like other vultures it is a scavenger, feeding mostly from carcasses of dead animals. It usually disdains the rotting meat however and lives on a diet that is 90% bone. It will drop large bones from a height to crack them to get smaller pieces. Its old name of Ossifrage (or [the motherfucking] Bone Crusher) relates to this habit. Live tortoises are also dropped in similar fashion to crack them open... According to legend, the Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed when a tortoise was dropped on his bald head by a Lammergeier which mistook it for a stone.

They've got acid for body fluids, they eat pure bone, and they kill playwrights for sport.

Theater is doomed.

All hail the motherfucking bone crusher!

Starting tomorrow, November 1, the DVD-checkout period is being extended to two weeks. Good news for those of us without cable who get an entire season of a television show at once. Ever tried to watch a whole season of The Sopranos in a week? It isn't healthy for the psyche.

Ok, I admit, this is not your typical note from the Prayer Warrior. Those usually come via email, and this one comes via ABC News. Still, how can today's quote from Ken Hutcherson pass without notice?

"When it comes to adoption, America needs an enema and I'm hoping God made me the chocolate laxative," Hutcherson said.

This disorder, (and here) in which sleepers aggressively try to initiate sex, is more common than once thought. Can Peter Sarsgaard please get the bug and come crash at my house?

From yesterday's NYTimes comes an article on how fat people may be ruining the world (global warming, health care costs, simple aesthetics, etc.) but probably aren't to blame for it ("Genes play a significant role�). The Obese are labeled as gas hogs and scapegoats (mostly the latter), but the article shies away from drawing any conclusion other than being obese is worse than being armless and fat people eat more when they're unhappy. They what will help these folks get healthy? Regulations like militant fat taxes? Help like healthier KFC? Soda bans? Derision?

Fat people are more reviled than ever, researchers find, even as more people become fat. When smokers and heavy drinkers turned pariah, rates of smoking and drinking went down. Won't fat people, in time, follow suit?

Research suggests that the stigma of being fat leads to more eating, not less. And if reducing the stigma suggests a solution, that's not working either.

"One hypothesis about getting rid of stigma is having more contact with the stigmatized group,� Dr. Brownell says. But with obesity, the stigma seems to be growing along with the national girth.

He cites a famous study in the 1960's in which children were shown drawings of children with and without disabilities, as well as a drawing of a fat child. Who, they were asked, would you want for your friend? The fat child was picked last.

Now, three researchers have repeated the study, this time with college students. Once again, almost no one, not even fat people, liked the fat person. "Obesity was highly stigmatized,� wrote the researchers, Janet D. Latner of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Albert J. Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania and C. Terence Wilson of Rutgers University, in the July 2005 issue of Obesity Research.

One problem with blaming people for being fat, obesity researchers say, is that getting thin is not like quitting smoking. People struggle to stop smoking, but many, in the end, succeed. Obesity is different. It's not that the obese don't care. Instead, as science has shown over and over, they have limited personal control over their weight. Genes play a significant role, the science says.

After about five Halloweens spent in our patented costumes of "Stoners on the Couch," this year my fella Jake and I decided to get dressed up and hit the town.

After a small amount of discussion, we decided to go as Nancy and Sluggo, the stars of the Depression-era-and-beyond comic strip Nancy, whose commemorative stamp is pictured above. We both grew up reading Nancy, and found both the girl and her strip completely baffling yet somehow entrancing. As comic genius Lynda Barry puts it, "Nancy was my most favorite comic strip when I was growing up because it was so beautiful and strange and boring and homely and mysterious and normal. I could never not read it." (Also, since childhood, I've been attracted to guys who look vaguely like Sluggo, so the opportunity to see my already vaguely-Sluggoesque boyfriend don full Sluggo regalia was a dream come true.)

Dressing like Sluggo means putting on a T-shirt and a hat. Dressing like Nancy means replicating the look of the weirdest-looking little girl in comic-strip history. Jake said he'd make the costume (he makes things for a living) and I said I'd wear it.

Once I'm ready to become the type of person who puts photos of himself dressed as Nancy on the internet, I will.

Until then, please enjoy this photo of the Nancy wig.

(All praise to Jake.)

I, for one, was disappointed by the lack of interesting costumes wandering around Seattle this weekend. I think what most Halloween-goers are lacking is ingenuity -- you get one night a year to dress up guilt-free as anything you want in the world, why stick to the limited creativity of heavily-focus-grouped and suitable-for-mainstream-marketing store-bought costumes? Even people who make their own outfits usually fall into several safe and identifiable categories (though definite props to the Sexy Bee I spotted mingling with the Sexy Pirates, Cowgirls, etc., in Pioneer Square last night; anyone proudly dressing to attract insect fetishists has spunk in my book), dressing as characters or icons thought up by someone else. I know, I'm a snob when it comes to Halloween (same goes for pies and parmesan cheese) but the only originally-generated costume I saw all weekend was the girl dressed as Homeschool Mom with a frumpy lace-lined flowered dress, cat earrings and a crucifix necklace.

A spot of light in the bleak landscape of Halloween creativity: erotic pumpkin carving contest at Babeland.

I love the Cumkin. You can submit, too, until Tuesday.

UPDATE: For the official record, Dave Schmader knows what's up.

Apparently we are supposed to know every gay man in town:

hi. my name is Tania and I`am from Chile.
well, long time i go i know one gay, his name is Matt S, i was check the internet for loking for him... meibe you can help me.. his living now in seatlle and like 8 year a go, he was living in chile... if you know to him, can take me a contact whit him plase?

thanks.
tania

Matt S., write to editor@thestranger.com and I'll connect you.

Everybody else: Did you remember to set your clocks back an hour this morning?

At this very moment I am attending a party in this
sexed-up Raggedy Ann costume. Tomorrow I'll tell you whether it got me laid.

UPDATE (Oct 29, 3:30 pm)
Yes, ladies and gentleman, I'm pleased to report that this getup got me play last night. (I have to admit that I knew it was fail-proof: I put it on the day it arrived in the mail weeks ago and got laid immediately.) Last night the action went both ways: My husband in his sailor uniform was hotter than my sexy Raggedy Ann. I love Halloween.

This man made a great impression on my youth.

Because there was no regulation on the amount of public television I could watch (commercial TV was practically banned from our house), the drama series I grew up with and learned to love was the Paper Chase, which ran on PBS and starred John Houseman as a merciless law professor. How I loved his stiffness, his meanness, the way he terrified students, and could them tremble with just his words and eyes. John Houseman was all I wanted to become.

Slapping is in. Slapping is current. Slapping is what the kids are doing. Can anyone explain it, this new, weird trend? I got slapped so many times last night that my hearing is off today, like I'm underground, or underwater, or walking around with paper towel rolls on each ear. And since no one actually slapped me on the ears, I can only attribute this to my brain getting a bit bashed around inside my skull. I have a touch of coup contrecoup.

Last night's slapping occurred at Havana, at a costume/dance party to raise money for Washington Ensemble Theatre, where, in the "slapdance," I was paired with Marya Sea Kaminski. We began by placing a hand on the other's cheek. Gradually we worked up to harder hitting. Once I hit her too hard so she got to hit me hard back. Then Brendan Kiley walloped me. This was all while dancing.

A couple days before, a house party I went to—a party also involving Brendan Kiley—also devolved into a slapping war.

Erik, an acquaintance I always run into at the Hideout, was slapping people a couple months ago, random people, at the Hideout and other places. As he explains, the natural inclination of humans is to not want to be hit, but "in reality when you slap someone, usually they like it." This is, of course, not always the case. Erik (who is straight) was so slap-happy that when he traveled to Austin a few months ago and met a cowboy in a bar, he slapped him. How did the cowboy respond? "He and his friends took me outside and beat me up."

But here in Seattle, slapping is met with a this-is-fun, live-to-the-fullest, we're-all-gonna-die-at-some-point, it-doesn't-hurt-that-bad what-the-hell-ness. It's odd. It's wonderful. It's hard to explain.

My husband and no doubt countless of you are still in need of a great Halloween costume. I'll trade you four of my easiest ideas for one of yours...

Bird Nut: Take an old jacket or sweatshirt and spill white and gray paint down the shoulders and arms to resemble bird crap. Get various fake birds from the craft store and staple them to the shoulders of the jacket. Save one to wire to a headband or hat. Wear mismatched layers and put binoculars around your neck. Fill your pockets with birdseed and sprinkle some in your hair. Talk to your birds and to yourself.

Man/Woman in the Wind: Wear a tie and attach wire to the back so you can bend it over your shoulder. Staple leaves and scraps of paper to one side of your body and gel your hair to the other side. Carry an umbrella turned inside out and walk with effort as if you're in a windstorm.

A Sailor: Get a jaunty white cap and dress whites, or a striped pullover and blue pants, at an army/navy surplus store. Wear black boots and a smile.

Dan Savage: Print a mask and add well-worn light-blue jeans with holey knees, a solid black T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Carry a bike helmet and a Stranger.

18 months ago, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, lost the ability to speak due to Spasmodic Dysphonia, which he describes as:

Essentially a part of the brain that controls speech just shuts down in some people, usually after you strain your voice during a bout with allergies (in my case) or some other sort of normal laryngitis.

He was told by his doctor that nobody had recovered from the condition. There's no cure, and the only real treatment is Botox injections into the throat, which only stops throat spasms from occurring.

The weird thing about Spasmodic Dysphonia, as Adams describes it, is...

... that speech is processed in different parts of the brain depending on the context. So people with this problem can often sing but they can't talk. In my case I could do my normal professional speaking to large crowds but I could barely whisper and grunt off stage. And most people with this condition report they have the most trouble talking on the telephone or when there is background noise. I can speak normally alone, but not around others. That makes it sound like a social anxiety problem, but it's really just a different context, because I could easily sing to those same people.

Now, however, despite the fact that there's previously been no cure, Adams is able to speak again. How did he do it? The full story is a great read and can be found here.

I've stayed away from Charles's post on "pregnant sex" (shorter version: sex with a pregnant woman is dishonest because the woman's body has changed; thus sex with a pregnant woman is close to pity). Fortunately, one of my favorite bloggers, Amanda at Pandagon, has taken up the gauntlet:

From his Derbyshire-like insinuation that his unpopularity somehow bolsters his case that he's right to suggesting that someone getting a Viagra-assisted hard-on and getting off and possibly taking a snooze is a bad ending, this paragraph is a work of genius. Yes, genius at horseshit, but genius is genius.

Well done, Mudede. I know this particular rabbit hole he's plunging down all too well. Or versions of it—I've seen some bitter arguments over whether someone is still punk or a sell-out, and then there's the perennial "lefter-than-thouâ€� and "can feminists wear lipstickâ€� insanities. But Mudede really does beat all in the authenticity obsession—affection, pregnancy, Viagra and who knows what else are all deeply dishonest threats to this Platonic ideal of authentic, unencumbered lust.

The more I turn Mudede's points over and over in my head, the more I must reach the conclusion that by his very own cynical standards, there is no such thing as sexual desire. After excluding emotional reasons for lust (clearly, "honest� lust is all about your looks) and excluding anyone who claims they can feel physical desire for someone who doesn't have "objective� good looks as defined by our entertainment industry and then excluding anyone who does have pure physical desire for standardly attractive bodies because we know their desire isn't "honest� but a product of their environment, we are left to conclude there is no such thing as authentic sex.

Read the whole thing here.

From the Guardian:

Men who drank between one and a half and three units of alcohol a day on average had nearly a third of the risk of suffering heart attacks faced by healthy men who stayed off the booze. One unit is a glass of wine or a half-pint of beer.

Smoking pot prevents Alzheimer's (and as we learn in this week's "Savage Love," helps some women achieive orgasm) and booze prevents heart attacks. Now if researches could only discover that chocolate cake with white frosting reduces your chances of contracting HIV—fingers crossed—then all my vices will officially become part of my health regimen.

Mmm... cake...

For those who think the sexualization of Halloween* is just for grownups:

What will your daughter be for Halloween?

How about a sexy go-go girl?

Or a sexy prison bondage girl? (Actual title: "Miss Behaved.")

Or a sexy army girl? (Actual title: "Major Flirt.")

Or wicked, wicked Dorothy?

Or hell, why not just doll her up like Britney Spears?

I'm no prude. I like sexy clothes, in context. (Said context preferably not being the one day a year I'm given "permission" to "go bad"—because as everyone knows, overt female sexuality is always "bad".) However, correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that eight-year-olds are not supposed to be "sexy." Even if you think Halloween is "empowering" (because it gives "good girls" an excuse to let out their "inner sluts"—by playing out male fantasies of subservience, conveniently), can anyone deny that tarting up preteens (another costume shows a six- or seven-year-old wearing a corset) in this fashion takes the whole "reclaiming sexist stereotypes" thing way too far?

*Other enticing choices for the preteen set (images too small to post, but you can find them here) include "Boy Toy," "Harem Girl," "Indian Babe," "French Maid," "Bunny Hunny," "Cop Lady" (complete with tiny kid-sized hot pants), "Red Hot Teen" (a slutty devil), "Supergirl Sexy," "Naughty Officer," a "Bad Girl" jail getup, "Super Fire Fox"... etc. Sigh.)

I'm a vegetarian, but the words "PETA protest" make me cringe. Usually they are obnoxious and rather unproductive, doing more to perpetuate the "animal lovers = radical fringe" image than really convincing people Quarter Pounders are a problem.

Evidence A:

But the PETA protesters who've been hanging around outside the Capitol Hill KFC (10th and Pine, $3.99 Famous Bowls) every Tuesday are downright adorable. Politely passing out pamphlets are two delightful old ladies who bring along their beloved Japanese Spaniel and say "thank you" to every person who passes.

They also have endearing thick French accents. "We've been members for twenty years," one woman told me, "We know ze people want to eat ze chicken, we just want zem to do it somewhere else."

I'm not sure if they're going to show up today, what with the crummy weather, but try to stop by some week and give them a hug.

Thank goodness I moved to Seattle in time for the comeback of grunge. Urban Outfitters is onto it. Hot Topic, not so much.

You know what film editor Annie Wagner and I could use in the near future? A fresh intern. Noah, our current intern, is a great guy, but he's starting to lose consciousness.

Must be: meticulous to the maxo supreme, available on Tuesday afternoons, and willing to withstand Ms. Wagner's ferocious halitosis.

Apply to: brendan@thestranger.com and/or annie@thestranger.com

In the comments to my wildly unpopular post on pregnancy and sex, Diana asks, in response to my claim that making love with a pregnant woman is in essence dishonest, if making love to a man who uses viagra is in essence dishonest. My answer stands on harder ground than before: such a person is dishonest to the bone. They have reached the very peak of pity. They are not even making love with the man but with the medicine. Where is there any honesty in that? How can the man feel proud? How can his partner not feel that the definition of what they are doing is charity? How can this not end badly?

My point is not whether this or that kind of sex is right (all sex done within the circle of legal consent is right); what I want to know and expose is the motive for the sex. Why is he or she really doing it. Is it for money? is it for favors? is it, worst of all, for pity.

Let's say you're too nerdy to even play fantasy football. How will you possibly find a competitive way to waste time on the internets?

Welcome to Fantasy Congress.

As the NYT reports, today is the first day for the Fantasy Congress session. Draft a team of legislators and muscle your way to the top of the virtual Hill. Or buy a pun-laden shirt. Or just laugh at people who do either.

You know it's hard out here for a Mudede.

"I'm starting to think I'm mentally ill, and I just wanted to check with you guys." —Anonymous, speaking on the phone with a source

One of the big holes in the culture of this society is on the matter of sex and pregnancy. Meaning, we have answers for things like drinking and driving (the answer is no), for public sneezing (cover your mouth), clearing a clogged nose (must be done with a disposable tissue--the other day in Chinatown I saw an old Chinese man shut one his nostrils with a finger and blow the mucus in the open nostril out onto the street, in middle of the afternoon, in public, and he did it as if this was an OK thing to do in American society, which, of course, is not the case).

But when it comes down to the question of sex with a fully pregnant woman, there is silence. What should a couple do in this situation? Is it right? Is it wrong? And if a woman's pregnancy is far along the way, having sex with her must mean having sex with the baby. Is this acceptable? Here is my personal answer: Sex with a pregnant women is not right or wrong but dishonest. It's an act that is close to pity. One does it because one is trying to be nice, and not being honest about how much their partner's body has changed.

The body that had the sex that resulted in the pregnancy is not the same as the body that is in the process of producing a whole new life. The first body was attractive (like a flower is attractive); the pregnant body, on the other hand, is used up by the function of the pregnancy. What a woman loses in the long process of a pregnancy is precisely what made the pregnancy possible, the flower of her body.

Class Traitor: Okay, so I occasionally fly first class. I don't pay for first class—does anyone?—but use the mountains of frequent flyer miles I've "earned,â€� and earned the hard way (i.e. by flying coach). I hate flying, and didn't use to join frequent flyer programs. Frequent-flyer come-ons sounded about as appealing as, "Buy ten root canals and get your eleventh free!â€� I don't like root canals—why would I want to "earnâ€� a free one?

So there I was in first class this morning, on the first leg of my trip today, when I suddenly realized that my cell phone, which had been on my lap, is missing. The flight attendant notices me looking around, and asks me if I needed help. We looked, couldn't find it. I mentioned that I had been to the bathroom and another flight attendant tore the fucking can apart. She reached into the trash—half-way up her forearm—and rooted around in the Kleenex and god-alone-knows-what. The first gets on her hands and knees and crawls up the first class cabin, checking under every seat. When we land, I hang out—and two flight attendants rip my row apart. And they find the phone, wedged into this weird crevice that only flight attendants know about.

I felt like an asshole, of course, and I can't help but wonder if they would have torn the plane apart for me if I had been in coach. Kinda, sorta doubt it.

Arm's Length: The future of Brad Steinbacher's forearms is sitting next to me. Brad has hairy forearms, as his friends can attest, but the man next to me has forearms so hairy that Brad could hide in their dense foliage.

Pity Party: Andrew Sullivan writes of straight men ...

Every now and again, the plight of the heterosexual male deserves some sympathy. Wired for sex, yet programmed for marriage, and forced to deal with an opposite sex they can neither fully understand nor easily resist, straight men do not have an easy time of it.

When I speak at colleges—I was at Kent State to give a talk yesterday—I'm often asked if I've learned anything that surprised me doing my goofy job. (Savage Love = my goofy job; editing The Stranger = my real job.) I always respond that I'm surprised by how sorry I've come to feel for straight men. I ache for them, the poor darlings. They are, as Andrew writes, "wired for sex,â€� and yet they are told, over and over again, by church, mainstream media, and their partners, that being in love doesn't just mean sleeping only sleeping with just one woman, but only wanting to sleep with just one woman. Despite the fact that straight men are in charge, we've built a sex-and-love culture that is hostile to male sexuality. Openly disrespectful, even—I mean, watch Dr. Phil lay into some poor asshole that cheated on his wife sometime. You would think he was cross-examining Joseph. Mengele. Straight men, like Andrew says, don't have an easy time of it.

Gay men, on the other hand, have too easy a time of it—that's our biggest perk and biggest problem. We're wired for sex, and gay male sex culture—by dint of its maleness, not its gayness—is wired for sex. A straight man can spin out of control sexually, but he has to work at it. Gay men can spin out of control all too easily, and we have to work at preventing ourselves from doing just that.

Wiping Up Santorum: Rightwingnutjob Maggie Gallagher doesn't like me.

The undying hatred of people with Dan Savage's views is a badge of honor for Santorum personally, whatever happens in this election, but it is also the real reason for the millions of dollars flowing into Bob Casey's campaign war chest: If Rick Santorum loses, nobody in Washington will ever want to lead on the gay marriage issue again.

God, let's hope. And I have a badge here for you too, Maggie.

Best New Bar: A bar named "Retox� will soon be opening in New York City, according to the New York Magazine I bought on my short layover in Minneapolis this morning. It's a name so good, so clever, and yet so seemingly obvious that you wanna smack yourself for not thinking of it first. It's right up there with The Onion reporting that Francis Bean Cobain had entered "pre-hab.�

Charles Mudede: "You're not interested in my theories of sandwich-making."
Jen Graves: "I was interested for five minutes."
Mudede: "But I had ten minutes of material."
Graves: "Yes you did."

1. Last night, I saw mockumentary, the dance/video/music spectacular by locust at On the Boards. Because I have friends in the show, I'll leave the opining to others. But I will say this: It is loud. It is energetic. And it settles the long-standing debate about whether zombies are capable of love. (They are.)

2. During intermission, someone pointed out that my profile of Genius Award-winner Jennifer Zeyl contains an embarrassing factual error: "WET mounted the first full version of [Crave], Sarah Kane's experimental play, which had been directed all over the world as a chamber piece to be read, not acted." That someone was Sean Ryan, who directed a 2002 production of Crave, which I actually saw. Twice! He didn't ask, but seemed to want to ask: How could you have forgotten? Here is an explanation (not an excuse): Sometimes, for me, writing a story is like walking into a new house. And I get so lost in exploring that house, I forget things, important things, about the outside world. It shouldn't have happened. I feel stupid. I'm sorry.

3. On my way home from the theater, one of two middle-aged men in matching blue jeans and bright t-shirts with stacks of CDs stopped me on the sidewalk, said a loud hello, and held out a CD for me to take. I reached out, he pulled it back: "I will sell it to you." I said I didn't have any money on me. He then made three assertions, two true, one not true: "You do have money for this CD [not true]. You just like to get things for free [true], white man [also true]."

I'm at Kent State... and you're not...