Oh. And Joan Crawford Was Right.

This Blog rarely takes on anything controversial unless it has a solution.  The Proximania(tm) post, with its trademarked solution to the Israel-Palestinian problem, is a recent example.

So, abortion.

This admittedly old topic breached its meddling head during the healthcare debate.  Pro-abortion types wanted abortion funding included in the law, while the anti-abortion types didn't' want abortion defined as healthcare at all.  The bill past after some last minute abortion deal was made a couple Democrats happy enough to put the bill over the top.

But you know, the healthcare-abortion thing is not over.

First of all, take a breath.  (You'll need it.  This is a longish, if essential, post.)

The healthcare bill was really an insurance bill.  We are still stuck with health care firmly in the trustworthy and efficient hands of big financial services companies who dabble in health insurance, mega-profit making non-profits with licensed blue crucifixes on their chests and the governments mascaraing as insurance companies.  The term reform has never been put to such effective comic use.

Assuming that health care in the country is all about insurance, why do we mention abortion at all?  Just because we can?  Probably.

My health insurance, when I had some, did not cover any number of procedures, like curing crows' feet with botox or zapping cancer using nano-sized black holes.  We were approaching the time when obstetrics itself will no longer be covered, because lawyers made it too expensive to underwrite for any sane insurance company, let alone the ones we have in this country. 

So, how doe we solve this problem?

When the Constitution and its johnny-come-lately Bill of Rights were ratified, fetuses had few, if any, rights.  They could not vote in elections; own property on their own, including people; serve in the armed forces (Don't Ask Don't Tell being totally unnecessary in such cases); drive cars, which we didn't have anyway; take jobs away from illegal aliens; or much of anything.  Women didn't really have any more rights than that, except that they counted five fifths when it came to counting for gerrymandering purposes.  And men were the ones who said how many rights women and fetuses had, or, let's face it, didn't have.

Not much guidance there, as Scaley and his Goths would tell you.

If women had been child-bearing men, instead of just women, this would be easy.  No man would allow any government anywhere near his Privates, or at least wouldn't tell.  And no real man would vote to allow governmental interference in something that important.  But women, like it or not NOW, are not men.  And men have said that child-bearing is so important to running a country and raising a decent army that society's men should decide how to run child-bearing, since they have done so well at country-running.  (Child-rearing is being handled adequately these days if you don't cotton to evolution.)

After the Civil War (or The Glorious if Aborted War of Liberation, depending on where you are from), men passed a Constitutional amendment giving equal protection of the laws to...  "Any Person".  So who's a person?  Slaves, for sure, not that it mattered for decades; women, mostly, not that it mattered for decades; cows, dogs, cats, horses, fish, no; really smart dolphins, maybe.  Really rich Corporations, yes, and it matters.  Fetuses?  Hmm.  It doesn't say.

The Supreme Court, when it used to actually think about such things, pulled a Solomon and figuratively split the fetus into three parts.  One part had more rights than a woman, one had fewer and the final part had about the same as a woman, meaning men could dictate the handling of the bodies of both. 

Pretty fair, you'd say, but why do female-sexed fetuses get to have more rights than female-sexed human beings?  Don't get all up in a logical tizzy.  All will be settled in the end.

So, there were still those, then and now, who were horrified at this fetus tri-sectioning.  We are morally offended when a dog or cat is sectioned and served in a Chinese restaurant.  These folks seemed to think that the fetus from the instant God, personally, spliced a couple cells together, had way more rights than the woman around it.  Section the women, instead! they cried.  Cooler heads prevailed and women largely got to remain in one piece, except for the uterus, which men can reach for society's purposes.

What a mess.  Especially if you are a woman, fetus or a mass of pre-existing conditions in need of health insurance coverage this week.

The solution is to follow Scaley to his logical conclusion.  For the all-male Founders, women and fetuses really had no rights to begin with and neither should be considered as real a "person" as a corporation, say, except for counting heads, in whomever located, for the census.  So, the government gets the women.

Well, that's just not a good idea.  That's like herding cats across the Yellow River.  The government doesn't really need all of the women.  No, I don't mean 35% of them, from puberty to 40 and especially Megan Fox.  Just section out the uterus and ship it to a big government complex, like Fort Knox or the CDC, since it so vital.  Do the sectioning of the women a day or two after birth when you have control of the whole body.  Surely, men are smart enough now to figure out how to use the damned things, if they have a few million decent sized beakers in which to hold them.

But maybe not.  If the beakers don't work, just take the whole body, declare it a Uterine Holding Device, UPS it to Fort Knox, or, better yet, Blue Cross or United or Aetna since they can run things twice as well as any government.  That's good:  We get to privatize the whole operation.  Once, the Uterine Holding Devices (UHD's) arrive at the Insurance Company Uterus Storage and Utilization Faculty, they can be stored there until they are needed by the government for fetus fabrication. 

Mind you, the UHD's will be fed really well--corn meal would be an excellent choice except it goes into gasahol, so soybean is next best--and clothed in plaid skirts and white blouses from re-tasked Victoria Secret.  (Presumably, silk negligees, rope and accessories will carry seriously diminished profit margins.)  The UHD's will be supplied with mental soothing via Lifetime and "Twilight" movies.  Luckily, they need never worry about the fate of printed books or evolution.

What if the governmental conception leads to a life-threatening pregnancy?  Oh, hell, there are plenty more UHD's where that one came from. We're not China, after all.

No system is perfect and some of these UHD may escape.  To be safe ban those metal hangers, as Joan Crawford so presciently demanded years before she even ran Pepsi.  We are banning the more harmful incandescent light bulbs, so hangers should be no big deal.

(And, guys, pray every night that UHD's don't start thinking and voting for themselves.)

Blog Commenting and Criticism: A Guide

It is easy to criticize a blog.  It is best to do so inside your own damned head.

Comment all you want, assuming you can figure out how to do it without selling your virtual soul to Google (I haven't, figured it out, that is).  Praise is always good and questions show you are thinking about the substance, if any, of a particular post.  Many blogs ask questions, some over and over, and you should feel free to answer.  Unless the question is something like "Huh?"

Don't bring up extraneous issues, like facts or pronouncements of FOX News.  Such items will confuse the blogger and make the next post seem completely opaque or like one from last month.

Many readers criticize a blogger because they envy the blogger's writing skill and, rarely, philosophical agility.  But mostly, they are really jealous of the blogger's courage to express the shallowest and meanest of thoughts for dozens to read.  Such critics are probably only able to occasionally express their own rude snappishness at the living room LCD when Serena makes yet another bad boyfriend choice on "Gossip Girl" (she drives me... viewers nuts with that stuff).

At heart, Bloggers don't like criticism all that much and know where you live and what car you keep in your parking space or garage, especially if it is always there, like a Toyota, maybe.  On the other hand, most bloggers no long have recognizable physical forms and only exist in that layer of the Cloud known as the Blogosphere.  Or an unnamed Caribbean Island.  So maybe, you are pretty safe after all.

Still, do not openly criticize bloggers in comments unless your corporate-free-speaking employer orders you to.  Criticism might have a chilling effect on the diversity of opinions that is (or are, in England) the key element of the Blogosphere.   No two bloggers have the same opinions or read the same British tabloid.  Moreover, each blogger has his, her or its own stylistic choices, focusing, naturally, on commas and parenthetical asides. 

And, if you try it for a couple weeks, you 'll find blogging is not as easy or rewarding as it looked.  After slaving for an hour on your occasionally daily post, you'd expect to get the best table at the nearby Red Lobster, but there really isn't one.  That pile of nano-dollars you earn when your sisters click on Google Adsense ads, in which they have no earthly interest, won't quite buy you a bread stick at Olive Garden.  Celebrities you selflessly promote remain aloof.  Does Oprah so much as call?  Do you get even a brief text "hi' from any tub-hawking. bare-kneed starlet you might have mentioned a couple times?

So, comment, sure.  Even be anonymous, if you want.  Go right ahead.  But, whatever you do, don't expect a civil answer.

Super Bowl Ads: Shallower is Better

The best of the 2010 Super Bowl ads?

Cell phone, Megan Fox, really small tub.

Second?  Dave, Oprah, Leno, awkwardly small couch.

I have endeavored since I started this blog to hide my fixation on Megan Fox.  You may note that my profile lists me as male.  End of secret.  Neither am I usually obsessive about freckles (that Anna Freil thing notwithstanding).

More to the point, Megan has battled gamely space-worm-sized robot cars and toasters and has gotten quite dirty in the process; hence, the tub.  I have no doubt that "Transformers 3: The Droids Devour Olive Garden" will center around Megan, and that lame guy she's usually with, taking on a line of transforming cell phones with cameras.  Everything about the ad almost fits.

Taken all together, then, the Megan Fox ad was the best one. Because it worked.  It is still working, trust me.

I'm headed out to Home Depot right now to get that nifty European-style tub she was pitching.  And fifteen gallons of ice water.