Pow Pow! POW!

As I write this, Paul and his friend Brian are sitting on the couch playing games on the XBox 360.

Yes, they are both in their 30s ...

POW POW! Pow. POW!

As background music, the game features some sort of pseudo/electronic hip-hop music (think: what's in Sonic the Hedgehog's iPod...).

It's kind of quaint to watch two ultra-liberal Manhattanites (did I mention "in their 30s?") spend an evening shooting underpriviledged black and Latino kids. Ahem, "gangstas."

"But ... but... my character is black, so it's okay!!! Right? "

(A look of angst as Paul weighs Social Concience against Entertainment Value of game... )

"Oh, for god's sake, I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU!!!"

POW POW! Pow. POW!

Alas, "Entertainment Value," like the Devil, is the victor every time.

On the upside, Paul has promised not to make fun of me for purchasing ridiculously overpriced cosmetics and/or underwear and/or self-help books ... So I guess it's a reasonable trade.

Bonjour, y'all!

I'm not sure if anybody's even still reading this (but I guess you are, if you're reading this ...kind of like the virtual tree falling in the SimsCity forest ...). Sorry I've been AWOL for a while - I've been insanely busy at work for reasons that are FAR to dull to go into.

That said, I'll go right into it. Part of the busy season included going to Atlanta to talk about fundraising (which is what I do at Institution Which Shall Remain Anonymous) at a meeting of French school heads (technically, they also had bodies). It was kind of weird to go to my "homeland" to go to a conference in French. Although I'm not from Atlanta per se, it is at the crossroads of where all the various branches of my family are and have been from for as long as anyone can remember: South Carolina (on Mom's side), Alabama (Dad's) and Jacksonville, where I grew up (for the most part).

Sadly, I did not get any grits, collard greens, BBQ or fried okra, which was my secret motive for agreeing to go to Atlanta. At first, I was hesitant about attending the conference, because it required me to face my greatest fear: snakes on a plane. Well, that and public speaking. I HATE public speaking. Being in public is hard enough. As is speaking. But both of them together? Horrifying. Strangely, it's easier to speak to a large group in French, I guess because it's not my first language --which, ironically enough, is Southern. And which I revert to as soon as I am physically even a foot below the Mason-Dixon line. This also happens after 1 a.m. or after two drinks, whichever comes first.

"Bonjour, y'all!" I wanted to say, to make it more democratic; so that nobody - French, Southern or otherwise - would have the foggiest ah-deea what I's tawkin' bout.

I did get bizarre job offers from other French schools. At least, I think they were job offers. Somehow, everything seems a bit seedier coming from a middle-aged French dude. Je vous propose 20 % plus de ce que vous touchez acutellement ...

In French, even a boring job offer sounds a bit like they're proposing something that might be illegal in Georgia.

BUT, on the upside, I have the week off this week! It's Spring Break #1 at the school where I work. Since it's a French school, they have two spring breaks (kind of like how the Hobbits have first breakfast and second breakfast ....). We also have a fall break, and a winter break, not to mention most of the Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Zoroastrian high holidays... The French really do know how to live. Go on vacation and eat some meat fried in butter and duck fat with a big slice of cheese and wash it down with red wine and espresso and a Gitanes - all while having sex. It's enough to let you overlook the whole Jerry Lewis thing. And all those films with "bourgeois" in the title, where everyone sits around and smokes and cries and takes off their shirts/pants for no apparent reason, and then it's over before you can even figure out what kind of existential tightrope they were tenuously balanced over.

There is nothing quite as nice, or as decadent, as the "at-home vacation." I think Travel and Leisure should do a segment on it - "Great Undiscovered Corners of Your Living Room," or "Bargain Adventures in the Backyard."

Today, I've done nothing. Well, next to nothing. I put a bunch of books on Amazon and Half.com. I woke up and realized that all of our bookshelves are overflowing, and part of it is my unfortunate addiction to books with some combination of "Light," "Quantum" and/or "Healing" in the title. I've decided to go on a Self-Help fast. If anyone's been helped after all these years, it's Random House. Following various mental health lapses, I've probably been single-handedly responsible for the quarterly surge in sales in the Personal Development division.

I was having quite a bit of angst lately, because I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. And then I realized - oh, fcuk, I AM grown up!!! Too late to be a wunderkind, except possibly at the 2039 Senior Olympics. This used to inspire me to head straight for the Self-Help aisle, but no more. I've finally just achieved a level of Zen through transcendental meditation (i.e., lowered my expectations).

There was a time when I would sit around and worry about my lack of "achievements" or "professional accomplishments" or "personal hygiene." But more recently it's occured to me that the many people I know who are hugely successful aren't that much happier than I am. In fact, most of them are downright miserable.

But they do have much better footwear, which is why I still envy them.

Penguin indecency, and other subjects of great national importance

It's far too cold here in NYC.

Far. Too. Cold.

Right now, it's 19 degrees, but "feels like" 7. I love the "feels like" part of the weather. I'm not exactly sure how this is formulated, but I think it involves dividing the wind chill factor by the circumference of meteorologist's ass, multiplied by the square root of the combined digits in the birthday of his/her celebrity crush.

How cold is it? Yesterday, the gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo had to stop threatening the marriages of straight people in Washington State.

Speaking of celebrity crushes, I've let the back issues of InStyle pile up for so long that I didn't even realize that one of New York's top 7 celebrity gay penguin couples, Roy and Silo (above), have broken up. The news is pretty heartbreaking; I really wished those crazy kids the best. You might say they were the Jennifer Anniston/ Brad Pitt of the gay penguin community.

The breakup came after six years together, during which time they incubated a fertilized egg and raised a healthy chick known as Tango. Their story was even told in a children's picture book, And Tango Makes Three, which set off controversy in Indiana among parents who don't want their children to grow up to become penguins.

Roy and Silo demonstrated all of the characteristics of the straight mating pairs of their species - they built a nest (very well-decorated, no doubt), shamelessly nuzzled necks (in front of children!!!), and exhibited something called "ecstatic behavior" (crystal meth is huge in penguin gay bars).

But into this happy domestic tableau, enter Scrappy: a female temptress from Sea World San Diego. You know how those Southern California floozies are.... she probably has fake blubber. Anwyay, you might say Scrappy is the Angelina Jolie of the penguin world. And not just because she, too, was once married Billy Bob Thornton.

This is all very bad news for poor, jilted Roy (who, according to US Weekly, is "just good friends" with Keanu Reeves). However, this team-switching penguin does give some hope for the Rev. Ted Haggard, who, like Silo, has gone back to being "certifiably" straight.

In Haggard's case, it was all just an administrative oversight. You see, he was so busy preaching about the liberal agenda of gay penguins that he simply forgot to go down to the Department of Heterosexual-ness (DOH) to get his license renewed.

This unfortunate clerical error inadvertently resulted in Haggard doing fat lines of crystal meth off the chisled asscheeks of a male prostitute. Repeatedly, over a period of three years.

But, come on - cut the guy some slack. We've all let the tags on our car get out of date. It's practically the same thing.

Besides, who can blame the good Reverend? The DOH always takes forever, and they make you take that stupid "straight test" (written and road). This involves making men listen to the soundtrack to "Funny Girl," and if they actually know any of the words, they have to re-read the handbook and take the test over again. And if a guy notices a woman's shoes and/or personality before looking at her boobs, or if he can tell the diffrence between "Eggshell" and "Ecru" on the Sherwin Williams color chart ... well, he flat out fails.

The sad thing about Roy and Silo breaking up, and about Merle Haggard existing, is that it leads some people to say that being gay is a "deviant" choice, rather than something that is innate (although there are still four same-sex mating pairs among the 68 penguins at the zoo , which means just over 10% of them are "gay") .

But just because something is mutable doesn't make it unnatural. And besides, what if it were a choice? If it involves two consenting humans over the age of 18 (or two sexually mature pengiuns) what the flip difference does it make? I wonder if anyone in the history of EVER has cited "the well-manicured lawn of Steve and Phil down the street" as their reason for filing for divorce?

Most importantly, I wish people would stop looking to flightless arctic waterfoul as a reference for human familial or ethical behavior. On one side of the spectrum, the religious right co-opted the "family values" embodied by those smug Emperor Penguins in the documentary film, The March of the Penguins. At the same time, their cousins in captivity became the unwitting mascot of PFLAG members everywhere.

The poor penguins don't even know they're in the middle of a cultural turf war. Gay or straight, they're neither good nor evil, in the way that a cheetah who eats an antelope is neither good nor evil. He's just being a cheetah.

Adorable as they are, penguins aren't supposed to be our role models. Granted, they're more ethically mature than any of the White House Cabinet members. But still. A penguin's brain is the size of a cashew nut. They're not sitting around their nest discussing the geopolitical ramificaitons of the Guyanese border disputes. They're not even discussing the latest episode of "Top Design." But I'm sure that if they could, they would be.

Especially poor Roy. He really needs something to look forward to now that Cher cancelled her next world tour.