On the good, the bad, and the Friday Random Ten

Okay, so honestly, one of the best things about this week was actually having time to find things that are good and bad. Non-work related things, I mean. I probably could have come up with enough to fill up a list, but unless "those little magnets that look like thumb tacks" and "imposition proofs that leave deep paper cuts" move you deeply, you're probably not going to identify.

I have had time, though, and it's been a pretty good week for news, so this is what I've got for you:

What's good (for the week ending 8/31/07):

- payday
- Vespers
- baby hedgehogs
- another one biting the dust
- the return of college football

What's not good:

- trolling for sex in airport bathrooms
- douchenozzles

The Ten:

1. Vertical Horizon, "Everything You Want"
2. Passengers, "Miss Sarajevo"
3. Christina Aguilera, "What a Girl Wants"
4. Johnny Cash, "I Still Miss Someone"
5. Gioacchino Rossini, "Gloria in excelsis Deo," from Petite messe solennelle
6. Maroon 5, "Secret"
7. Remy Zero, "Belong"
8. Diane Schuur, "Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me"
9. The Smiths, "Shoplifters of the World Unite"
10. Lisa Loeb, "We Could Still Belong Together"

And what about you? What's good for you this week?

On a pathological case of wishful thinking

Ooh, baby, calculate a way for me to please you.

Okay, so courtesy of Doug comes this link to a guide for women looking to be the "perfect football date." A guide written by a Georgia Tech guy. On being the perfect football date. Anyway, Doug was curious to see my reaction as both a ball-busting feminist and a similarly passionate Georgia fan. I have to say, though, that my feminist card may be in danger, because "And why exactly am I expected to suit my football fandom to your standards?" was only my second thought.

The first one was, of course, "Georgia Tech guy? Date? That's a category error, right?"

I guess I just don't know, though. I mean, some of those guys are going to end up making some money, so it's not unlikely that some girls will find that attractive and will have the foresight to hook up early. For those girls, here's the advice provided by the Ramblin Racket:

First and foremost, to be the perfect date, you have to be a delicious piece of arm candy. Sun dress, high heels, and a pearl necklace are pretty much givens in this instance, and for lots of girls out there, this is how you roll anyway, so far so good.

What not to wear is a lot more broad. Pretty much crummy clothes in general. A t-shirt is poor form, a jersey in most cases is sorta lame, and worst of all are those god awful 'non-functional belts'.

Soooo Kentucky Derby-wear (minus, I'm sure, the distracting hat) is in, and anything comfortable and/or displaying team spirit is right out. Got it. I'm sure those heels'll make it a lot easier to sprint to the keg as we try to

Monitor your date's beverage needs. If he's gettin' low, and you show up with a fresh cold one for him, you will be IN. Also, showing up with a tasty food item will also score huge points with our friends, which is a really good way to get a guy to like you. If his friends like you, you're in good shape.

Fetching drinks. Awesome. I can do that. Anything else?

Study up. That's right, study up, and know who the key players are for your date's team, if not some of the big guns on the other team. Not knowing the rules isn't cute. We don't want to have to explain them to you, and fortunately, a lot of ladies already know what's going on in the game of football, so this shouldn't be much of an issue. You get MAJOR bonus points if you know what penalty was called before it's announced, and a hearty "that's bullshit" objection, while not especially lady-like, will be appreciated in rare instances, if only because guys think its cute when pretty girls get all worked up and let a curse slip out once in a while.

Oh, to think I'm just one naughty word away from being cute! Such a relief. Now, that extensive studying, does that give me the right to school you openly in front of your friends and still be "cute," or would that make your willie shrivel up like a cashew and rocket me into the "uncute" category? 'Cause God knows I want to get this right.

Other game related notes are that you are going to be called upon to smuggle whiskey into the stadium for us. Your objections to any such requests will result in loss of cool points, teasing, and may cause us to offer drinks to hotter girls we might bump into while in the stadium because clearly "you don't get it." Just do yourself a favor and come prepared to smuggle in a flask or two, or don't bother coming at all.

Human Camelbak. Check.

Half time is pretty much our chance to walk around and say 'hey' to people we might not normally see, better looking girls than you included. Don't be offended at our outright flirtations because if we had a chance, we would be at the game with them in the first place. This is when you need to be in full arm candy mode, by the way. I've wanted see your tits pop in that dress all day baby, and half-time is that time. This is important for making dudes jealous, and making those girls we just flirted with second guess themselves (we hope). Remember, as humans we are always trying to trade up to something better, so try to make us look good if you can, thanks.

Let me just recap, 'cause you know I want to get this right: Sundress, heels, pearls, no t-shirts or jerseys, fetch food and drink, know just enough about football to be "cute," hang on his arm to make all the guys jealous and the girls covetous, and never drop the merest hint that you were late to the tailgate because your date was deeply embroiled in a game of Puzzle Pirates with an electrical engineering student two floors down.

In other words, this is hot:


This is not hot:


Spanish fly:


Saltpeter:


Any questions?


And for God's sake, don't mention this.

On Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig

Okay, so I seriously couldn't care less if Larry Craig is gay or not.

Well, okay, I do care, but not because anything is wrong with being gay. I wanted to get that out of the way first, because folks (conservative folks, Freeperish folks, of course, and others) like to talk about how hypocritical Democrats are that we support equal rights for gays and then are all, "Oooh, he's gaaaay," but the gay isn't the problem.

The hypocrisy is the problem, really. His hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy of the rest of the Bible-beating family-values conservatives who like to step out on their wives with a man, or a hooker, or an undercover cop, or a meth dealer who's a man (Ted Haggard, Doug, you missed one).

In all of those cases, and in Larry Craig's, it's not the gay sex that's the problem. The problem is the fact that these men have made their careers holding their Bibles high above their heads, parading their perfect nuclear families around in dirndls and knee-pants, cursing teh gheys straight to hell, pushing legislation to punish gay couples and gay families and unmarried people who have sex and women who get pregnant and low-income families and single parents and everyone else who doesn't conform to this unrealistic, idealized image that they swear is the life they live. They set themselves up - themselves, this isn't something that's been thrust upon them - as unblemished paragons of virtue, as standards up to which the rest of must live or else, while living the very lives that they seek to punish.

Larry Craig is the worst kind of hypocrite, because he's so ashamed of his homosexuality. He finds it shameful and evil and filthy and wrong, and everyone around him, everyone in his party and every religious leader who bends his ear, tells him that every day. He's so desperate to hide his shame that he's willing to force every comfortably out gay person back into the closet, to punish them for who and what they are, to make them feel the shame that he feels every day. And hide it all under the blanket of "family values." He's like the grumpy guy at the party; seeing all of these happy people only makes him grumpier, and the only way to soothe his grump is to make everyone else just as pissed-off as he is.

As far as outing and closeting are concerned, I'm not going to tell another person what to do with his or her life. Pam at Pandagon has written extensively on the politics of the closet and the damage it does to the gay rights movement, and as a straight woman, I won't question her on that. But I also won't tell anyone else what to do with their lives. I can't imagine the pressure involved in coming out, and if you don't feel comfortable doing that, it's no one's place to force you to do it, even if doing so would benefit the movement as a whole. All we can do is try to create a world where gay people do feel comfortable expressing that part of themselves without the discrimination and antipathy that Larry Craig promotes.

So go ahead, Lar, you're totally straight. It's rather common, actually, for straight people to plead guilty to soliciting gay sex in a public restroom just to keep the media quiet. It's completely common for a straight man to have a long history of soliticing gay sex in public restrooms. You just shut that closet door tight and pretend that you're not one of the people you've so hatefully railed against your entire career. Because God forbid you should have to actually step out of that closet and live in the world you've created.

On another job opening in the Bush administration

Okay, so Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says he's resigning.

But can we believe him?

On the kind of sick relationship from which our children must be preserved

Okay, so we all know that children are the future. And we know how important it is that children be raised in a stable household with a mother and father, or a mother and an absent father, or a father and no mother, or an abusive pair of parents, or an alcoholic mother and a codependant father, or vice vera, or vice any of them versa, as long as kids aren't being raised by two stable, responsible women (or men) who love them very much (clutch pearls!).

I don't even know what to make of this:

Four tiny orpahned hedgehogs are snuggling up to the bristles of a cleaning brush - because they think it's their mother.

The four inch long creatures are being hand-reared by staff at the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park in Ashurst, Hants.

Workers say Mary, Mungo, Midge and Slappy get comfort from playing with the centre's cleaning brush and enjoy rubbing against it.

The smells on the brush, which is used to sweep a yard, remind the hedgehogs of their natural habitat while the texture reminds them of their mother.

On the one hand, this unnatural relationship that these hedgehog bébés have with that cleaning brush is just twisted. They're doomed to growup without appreciation for the traditional gender roles of girl hedgehogs and boy hedgehogs; why, they're likely to think that the job of a hedgehog mom is to just lie there, unmoving, all day long, while the kids crawl all over her and the father works long hours to keep the whole family in grubs.

On the other hand, they could be raised by two female hedgehogs, and God knows what that would do to them.

(Hat tip Cute Overload)

On the good, the bad, and the Friday Random Ten

Two people who need spankings for very, very different reasons.

Okay, so when the endorphins start wearing off and a kind of torpid euphoria sets in, you remember that the past week was crazy like Rose McGowan's love life (and wardrobe), but you don't remember precisely why. And that, in and of itself, is a good thing. Here are a few more.

What's good (for the week ending 8/24/07):

- a boss who says, "You worked really late last Thursday. Why don't you bust out of here a little early today?"
- the Classy/Trashy Party to benefit Magic Moments (photos to follow)
- kicking your shoes off at the end of a long day
- Neutrogena Oil-Free Eye Makeup Remover
- Inside Man on DVD

What's not good:

- disproportionate sentences for drug-related crimes
- tight deadlines

The Ten:

1. Joss Stone, "Super Duper Love (Are You Diggin' On Me?) Part 1"
2. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, "I've Got Something in My Front Pocket for You" from "South Park"
3. Dinah Washington, "No More"
4. Morrissey, "Glamorous Glue"
5. 311, "Leaving Babylon"
6. Kay Starr, "My Kinda Love"
7. The Smiths, "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore"
8. Sarah Brightman, "Deliver Me"
9. Nine Days, "Bob Dylan"
10. Luigi Boccherini, "Allegro" (from Concerto in G Major)

And what about you? What's good for you this week?

On crime and punishment

Okay, so yeah, I have been that busy.

It's exhausting.

I've literally had no time to surf the Internet for fun, which means no blogs, which means no links, which means no blogging from me, and after a week-long absence, what pisses me off more than anything? Lindsay Lohan.

Yeah, I know there has to be something more important going on out there. The stock market is yoyo-ing, wingers are plotting to overthrow the Iraqi government, the media have given up on fact checking, apparently Leona Helmsley died, and I'm all, "Hey, a Hollywood celebrity got an unreasonably light sentence for her dangerous crimes! I clutch my pearls in shock!"

But here's what got to me:

But there's more to the story: In deciding whether to file felony cocaine charges, the D.A. always looks at the person and the circumstances. In Lohan's case, the fact that she was busted twice in a short period of time actually helped her. It shows someone is struggling with an addiction problem. The fact that each time she was busted, she immediately checked into a rehab facility also helped her case. Also, her age -- 21 -- and the fact that her upbringing was extremely unstable -- also worked in her favor.

One law enforcement source put it this way: "Prosecutors in this county see a lot of kids in crisis. There are lots of kids struggling with addiction. The first sign of trouble usually involves a car. We're not going to throw every one of them in prison. It doesn't make sense."

Well, no, not every one of them. That would be silly. Just the blacks and the Hispanics. After imprisoning them at disproportionate rates, we can just take care of that whole "overcrowding" thing by letting the pretty white girls walk. She's a kid in crisis!

And I also find it fairly cool that being a repeat offender now gets you leniency. That's going to make huge waves in the legal communiy as they shift their traditional punitive course to, "Three strikes and you're out... on probation, you silly little slugger! Don't go doing those nasty drugs again, now!" Bouncing in and out of rehab like it's an inflatable castle at a company picnic is absolutely a sign that she's committed to recovery. And let's also not forget that this millionaire movie and recording star had an unstable upbringing, as opposed to the thousands of uber-tan youths currently imprisoned on drug charges who've only had to deal with, like, single parents and housing projects and gang violence and concerns about money and food and stuff.

Ugh, I'm tired, and the sarcasm is starting to run out. I just think it sucks, is all. Am I the only person who thinks that maybe "has everything going for her and has chosen to piss it all away because she's spoiled and unsupervised" isn't really valid as a mitigating circumstance when the charges involve driving with a BAC more than twice the legal limit and chasing someone around in an SUV?

I'm not the stealing type, but I'm sorely tempted to try and knock over a convenience store now. And when the cops catch me with my pockets full of crumpled bills from the register and my purse full of purloined snack cakes and maybe a bottle of fuel injector cleaner, I'm going to say, "Hey, listen, you don't know what it's like to grow up comfortable and loved by your parents. When my friends complained about their parents, I was completely unable to commiserate! I had to compete fairly with my peers for class rankings and scholarships! And don't even get me started on the white guilt!" And the cops will be all, "Wow, you're right. That's a tough break. It's a lot to deal with. We're going to let you off with a warning this time, but next time, you need to ask before you leap across the counter and empty the till. And it's okay, you can keep the pastries. Crazy lil' nipper."

On the good, the bad, and the Friday Random Ten

Another winner, another loser.

Okay, so what's good and bad this week?

Good gravy, can't y'all tell I'm busy?

What's good (for the week ending 8/17/07):

- iced coffee
- Ben & Jerry's Black and Tan ice cream
- rain (offer not applicable in Texas or Hawaii)
- spinach and feta pizza
- Michael Bublé at the Fox Theatre (or so I'm told)

What's not good:

- thirteen-hour workdays with no lunch
- creepy mandatory national ID cards

The Ten:

1. Michelle Branch, "You Set Me Free"
2. DJ Sammy, "Heaven"
3. Pet Shop Boys, "I Made My Excuses & Left"
4. Joss Stone, "Chokin' Kind"
5. Josie and the Pussycats, "Real Wild Child"
6. Billie Holiday, "Stormy Weather"
7. Johnny Cash, "I Walk the Line"
8. Lauryn Hill, "Lost Ones"
9. Cake, "Race Car Ya-Yas"
10. Massive Attack, "Teardrop"

What's good for you this week?

On the Department of Why Isn't Everyone More Pissed Off About This?: Mark of the Beast edition

Okay, so I hate hearing about this stuff after the legislation is long passed and I don't get to bend my chosen legislator's ear about it:

Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver’s licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver’s licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

The [newly mandated federal ID] would be mandatory for all “federal purposes,” which include boarding an airplane or walking into a federal building, nuclear facility or national park, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the National Conference of State Legislatures last week. Citizens in states that don’t comply with the new rules will have to use passports for federal purposes.

Quoi? Beg pardon? "Real ID Act"? When did this happen? Did Richard Shelby call me and ask me if I wanted all of my personal information stored on some conveniently stealable wallet card? How is it that people are up in arms and state legislatures are passing symbolic bills denouncing it and I haven't heard a damn thing in the maintstream media?

Apparently, applicants for the Real ID (which we're all supposed to have by 2013) have to show up with a photo ID, birth certificate, proof of Social Security number, and proof of residence, all of which the states will maintain in their totally secure, thoroughly impenetrable databases. States may end up charging in the neighborhood of $100 (which, of course, we all have) per Real ID, and in the absence of said Real ID, a passport (which, of course, we also all have) will be required to board a plane or enter public national parkland.

In short: The government wants to store all of the personal information essential to our identities on one, small, easy-to-steal wallet card, so that the guy checking my age at the liquor store has access to my Social Security number, and so that I can be prevented from entering the public national parkland that my tax dollars maintain, and so that I can be prevented from boarding a plane to travel within the United States even if I can show the same state ID card I've had my entire life that's been perfectly satisfactory for that purpose in the past, and so that I can obediently show Papiere any time a government agent demands them of me.

Why isn't everyone more pissed off about this?

On stuff we already knew

Okay, so now it's time to play a little game we like to call "Who Said It?"

Here's the quote:

Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

And now you get to figure out who said it! (See how that works with the name of the game? Kind of intuitive.)

Did you guess "ACG at Practically Harmless"? If so, you're... well, kind of right, maybe, because I'm sure that I've said that once or a dozen times. But no, that particular quote came from none other than Dick Cheney himself. 'Cept he said it back in 1994, back when logic still halfway applied, before invading Iraq became a good thing via the magical power of Karl Rove.

While we're playing the game, who said this?

“He will move back up in the polls,” says [our mystery speaker], who interrupts my reference to Mr. Bush’s 30% approval rating by saying it’s heading close to “40%,” and “higher than Congress.”

Looking ahead, he adds, “Iraq will be in a better place” as the surge continues. Come the autumn, too, “we’ll see in the battle over FISA” — the wiretapping of foreign terrorists — “a fissure in the Democratic Party.” Also in the fall, “the budget fight will have been fought to our advantage,” helping the GOP restore, through a series of presidential vetoes, its brand name on spending restraint and taxes.

As for the Democrats, “They are likely to nominate a tough, tenacious, fatally flawed candidate” by the name of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Holding the White House for a third term is always difficult given the pent-up desire for change, he says, but “I think we’ve got a very good chance to do so.”

That would be "political genius" and "brilliant mind" Karl Rove, who is packing up his shrunken baby heads and cat-o'-nine-tails for his departure from the White House at the end of the month. He says it's "to spend more time with his family," and although convential wisdom generally translates that to "I just got fired, either for my own stupidity or poltiical reasons," I think in this case it just means "the military developed a nice satellite remote that lets me control the president from the comfort of my living room."

On making new friends (although "keeping the old" sometimes goes out the window when you have to flush the blogroll)

Okay, so everybody welcome to the blogroll Kathy of Birmingham Blues. She's linked us a couple of times, she gives good post, and I even got to meet her at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner a few months ago and found that she was nice (but in a good way). The only reason she hasn't been linked before now? Because I suckity-suck-suck. And now I'm taking care of stuff.

On the good, the bad, and the Friday Random Ten

No comparison.

Okay, so I can't tell you how many times some random person has said to me, "ACG, you seem to have it together. You seem to know what's up. You're the sole arbiter of what's good and what isn't. Impart your wisdom upon the populace." And of course, I'm happy to do so, unless that person approached me while I had a book open and obviously was trying to read and had my earbuds in as a clear sign that I wasn't interacting with the outside world and when a person is keeping to herself like that and happy to be doing so, why would you go up and disturb her just to find out what's good and what isn't?

I make such information available now in the hopes that people'll leave me the crap alone on the airport shuttle.

What's good (for the week ending 8/9/07):

- The service at the Hilton St. Louis Downtown
- Jergens Natural Glow Firming Daily Moisturizer
- a grilled cheese sandwich made with equal parts comté and gouda
- a ceiling fan on a hot night
- The Bourne Ultimatum

What's not good:

- crying babies behind you on an airplane
- Alberto Gonzales

The Ten:

1. The Beastie Boys, "Shadrach"
2. Luigi Boccherini, "Rondo" (from Concerto in D Major)
3. Barenaked Ladies, "Light Up My Room"
4. Cameo, "Word Up!"
5. Sixpence None the Richer, "Breathe"
6. Gorillaz, "Rock the House"
7. Pet Shop Boys, "Heart"
8. Michael Bublé, "The More I See You"
9. Howie Day, "Sorry So Sorry"
10. Billy Stewart, "Summertime"

What's good for you this week?

On happy returns

This is why I'm hot.

Okay, so I'm back, and regular blogging can now resume (more or less as soon as I've cleared this pile of work-related crap off of my desk). The trip was largely uneventful, save for the opportunity to get voluntarily bumped in exchange for a voucher (sweet! Skokie, Illinois, here I come) and one evening at dinner where we... Well, we'll just say we didn't expect the joke to go as far as it did, and he was totally a sport. Anyway, my coworker and I did all of the fun touristy stuff, going to the top of the Arch and whatnot, and we conferenced, and we got home safely (and, in my case, about seven pounds heavier than when I left - hello to the gourmet hotel food), and that makes it a good trip, in my eyes.

I don't know if conferences were supposed to be as fun as ours was - the conference director did mention that ours was the first group to start a drinking game during a session ("Robust!" "Hey!") - but I'm fairly sure that a good time was had by all but that one prat from Kennesaw State who couldn't stop talking about how much he hated marketing people. I mean, as many conferences as I tagged along to with my dad, not once did any presenter ever pull out this video:



Good times.

The funny thing is that, the whole time we were in St. Louis, temperatures were in the mid-90s and people kept jokingly accusing us of bringing the hot, muggy Birmingham weather up with us on purpose. Then Wednesday, our plane lands in Birmingham and the captain informs us that the temperature here is 101. So I guess the joke is on... well, us, still. It's shoe-meltingly hot, and as miserable as I am, that's still with the benefit of central air conditioning.

And I guess my question would have to be, What the hell are you people doing when I'm not here? I turn my back for a second and a half, and suddenly temperatures are in the triple digits, the Dems caved and President Bush is listening in on people's phone calls, respectable Republicans are trying to go down on cops in public bathrooms, and K-Fed is filing for custody.

This is why we can't have nice things.

On further paucity of blogging

Okay, so blogging will be light this week, as I'm at (I just remembered, waking up in a hotel room and not my own room) a conference for work and will be lacking dicking-around-the-Internet time such as I often find at work. Which is to say, ahem, I never dick around the Internet at work, because I'm such a responsible state employee, and I actually deserve a raise for the amount of time I devote to my job, time that could be spent dicking around the Internet.

Anyway, see you on Thursday. Until I get back, here's a Westie in a baby swing:

On Rep. John Adams: This Is Your Soundtrack

Conan the Ovarian

Okay, so the Ohio state legislature is set to debate whether or not a woman has to be pregnant if the man who poked her requires it. Because the fetus is his property, and he has every right to store it in her uterus if he wants to.

Rose F. Kennedy, she of the Washington, D.C. Kennedys, once said that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. I say we test that theory.

Here's my proposal for the next fundie-backed health initiative, since women's health obviously isn't a priority: Male pregnancy. No, seriously. Carrying a baby for nine months is so very easy that a woman should be forced to do it against her will? Have at. If your goal really is a welcoming uterus for every embryo, and not just punishment for evil, slutty women, put your money where your mouth is and start looking for a way to put that welcoming uterus in a welcoming body. And any man would be happy to be pregnant, right?

Until then, you might want to start making birth control, including - nay, especially - emergency contraception, more widely available and affordable; make sex education comprehensive and universally required; establish programs to help and protect young, single mothers who've been abandoned and/or abused by their families; make quality, affordable health care for mother and fetus available not only pre- but also post-natally; provide incentives for businesses to offer child care, compassionate leave, and family leave; and close the gender wage gap.

And until then, Ohio Representative John Adams, this Friday Not-Even-Ten is dedicated to you for your ceaseless devotion to forced pregnancy for slutty women. Should I find myself unwed and pregnant in Ohio, count on me to name you as father. Anyone else?

The Ten:

1. Cat Stevens, "There Goes My Baby"
2. Was (Not Was), "Baby I Need Your Loving"
3. Rodelheim Hartreim Project, "Papa"
4. Athenaeum, "If Baby's Gone"
5. Everclear, "Father of Mine"
6. Madison Avenue, "Don't Cal Me Baby"
7. Annie Sellick, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" (NB: But My Uterus Belongs to the Ohio State Legislature)
8. Johnny Cash, "Daddy Sang Bass"
9. Fountains of Wayne, "... Baby One More Time"
10. Smash Mouth, "Can't Get Enough of You Baby"

Your Ten goes in comments. And guys, just out of curiosity here: If medical science could make such a thing possible, would you voluntarily get pregnant? If your girlfriend/wife couldn't/didn't want to be pregnant, would you do it for her?

On poking and owning

Okay, so the Ohio state legislature is working on a bill that would put any source of fresh sperm in charge of any uterus said sperm encountered. Under House Bill 287, any woman seeking an abortion would have to produce a signed note from the sperm donor saying that it's okay to terminate the pregnancy.

In other words, if a woman doesn't want to be pregnant, but her abusive husband/date rapist/stepfather/creepy pastor/one-night stand/vindictive ex won't sign the paper, that uterus is going to be "no vacancy" for the next nine months, and there's not a damn thing she can do about it. Why? Because he planted his man flag in her uterus, dammit, he planted his seed, and whether or not he even wants the kid, he has every right to make her endure the risks and hardships of carrying it against her will.

Luckily, there's a very simple solution to this problem. If a man and a woman shared, say, a special edition box set of Seinfeld DVDs, and she decided she didn't want it anymore, she wouldn't throw it away - she'd give it to the man. And he'd by no means force her to hold on to them, just because he wanted to keep them - he'd take them off her hands.

So if a woman is pregnant with a man's fetus, and she no longer wants to be, the reasonable thing to do would be to give the fetus to the man, let him finish gestating it in his uterus, and everyone’s happy.

At that point, of course, it's the man's responsibility to provide adequate facilities to raise a fetus to adulthood, but that shouldn't be too much trouble, right? It's no more than he was expecting of the woman who had custody of the fetus in the first place. The Ohio state legislature is right in saying that a man deserves a say in the disposition of any fetus that's half-his. It just doesn't make sense that he'd have any right to store it in another person's uterus without her permission.