Duchess of Cornwall: Now Uterus-Free

How odd that, on the same day I finish reading Sue Townsend's passably funny new novel "Queen Camilla", her real-life counterpart should be in the shop for a tune-up.

Such is life. And her, just back from United Arab Emirates, kicking up a fuss over a few li'l rubies just days ago.

We here at the Pop Culture Institute wish Her Royal Highness every haste in her recovery, and breathe an extra sigh of relief that yet another barrier to reproduction has been afforded the honeymoon couple.

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An Entire Country Says 'Duh!'

Christian Chavez, a popular Mexican pop star, has come out.



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George Michael To Re-Open Wembley

Say what you will about his horndog tendencies and/or pharmacological mishegas, on stage is where George Michael really delivers. It's rare that I see a live performance of someone's that's better than the studio version, but George Michael is it all the way.

So it's a tremendous (though, in my opinion, fitting) honour that he gets to help christen the new 90,000 seat venue on June 9th by playing the first concert there, though it may take him a couple of weeks to get around to servicing all the men's washrooms.


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The War on Macro-Terrorism

Well, it's high time somebody did something about this. It's too bad it's my old nemesis Gareth Kirkby who is, but he's at least somewhat better than no one.

When I lived in Ottawa (I believe it was the late Cretaceous period) I wrote a couple of times for the gay paper there, which at that time was called GO Info. It was sponsored by what was then just plain Gays of Ottawa. In fact, GO INfo was the first paper to publish me, and I still have nightmares about my editor there, one Gabriella Goliger.

We had an awful time in those days (1989ish) getting retailers to carry the paper; it would seem, then, that nothing has changed in my nation's capital. GO INfo was superseded by Capital Xtra and they're still having the same problem.

Of course, even here in super-tolerant Vancouver, Xtra West paper boxes are the most damaged of all. I frequently find them propped open so that the papers inside will be destroyed by rain. Despite my prickly relationship with Xtra West I always repair their boxes when I find them like this.

One of the things I'm going to do once I'm getting paid to produce this site is to stake out the ones most frequently targeted and catch some motherfucker in the act and have him arrested, take his picture getting arrested, and schmear his face and name all over the Internet as a warning. Unless it's some homeless guy.

You know, it's all very easy to see terrorism as a big event - a car bomb, say - and feel there's nothing we can do about it. But terrorism is also a hundred little things, such as this. Preventing people from finding community and accessing information that is pertinent to them (but otherwise unavailable) is what I like to call macro-terrorism, and it needs to stop too. Fortunately, individuals can stop macro-terrorism, so let's, shall we?

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Esther Goes For The Whole Megillah

This is either a) a tired old married couple trying to put some zing back into things with a little role-playing, b) just a normal day around Madonna's house, c) Purim at the Kabbalah Center in LA, or d) a little bit of each.

Yes, here's Madonna in a costume she pilfered from the set of "Bloodhounds of Broadway" and Guy Ritchie, wearing something one of his wife's best gays must have left behind.

Finally, Some Good News

How does one select "a jury of his peers" for an actual Peer, anyway?

Well, we're about to find out. Jury selection began today in the trial of Conrad Black, who for years used his company Hollinger Inc. (and its shareholders' money) as his personal ATM, mainly because his sense of entitlement is so vast it has its own postal code. This loathsome tyrant spent a few years coercing the Canadian media into making him our own Murdoch, until he decided he'd rather be Lord Black of Crossharbour instead, and off he went to hump the scotch-soaked wool sacks at Westminster.

In his defense, his biography of FDR is phenomenal. It's so compassionate I've often wondered who really wrote it.

Al-Qaeda's War Against Civilisation Continues

There have been so many bombings and so much destruction in Iraq I find it hard to make it through the day if I have to think about it, so I end up shutting most of it out. I realise it's selfish, but I've grown accustomed to paying the rent, and sitting on the sofa weeping over hundreds of dead people I would have never met anyway kind of interferes with that.

The war has so far been a blur of stock footage and the vaguely recalled soundbites of a thousand recorded arguments, and I would reduce it even further than that if I could. But this is too much to ignore.

This was not a random thing, but a pointed act. As powerful a thing as the printed word is, our ability to read it is even more so. These animals are attacking that very thing, striking at the very soul of every human being.

I wonder if there were any copies of the Koran in this book market. Surely blowing up the words of the Prophet ought to disqualify them from receiving their 72 virgins or figs or whatever it is they get.

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Beaver Fever Sweeps The Bronx

These jokes are too easy, even for me.

Seriously, though, if I may be permitted to wag my finger...

In a lot of ways we as a species seem determined to wipe the Earth clean of everything but bugs and rocks; in the meantime, some of the changes we've already made seem to be making it possible for other animals to return after long absences.

Now, if only there was a way we could do whatever we've been doing, just a lot more...

[The New York Times]

The man we have to thank for this is Representative Jose Serrano, of New York's 16th District.