I’m trying to prepare myself for the imminent loss of fresh Daily Show and Colbert Report material as a result of the looming writers’ strike. Other sources of satire will have to do; maybe it’s time to become a regular reader of The Onion again. And perhaps the loss of scripted television might compel me to get through my geometrically expanding reading pile. As a fellow union worker, my sympathies are with the writers. If I must go without new eps of The Office in order to ensure that my working brothers and sisters get what’s owed them, then that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Okay, so you want to write a post-apocalyptic story but you want to make sure that it doesn’t end up on the SF/Fantasy shelves between to the novelization of the Transformers movie and the latest doorstop in that tiresome epic fantasy series that the author should have put out of its misery back in Volume Six. If you incorporate the following creative suggestions, you’ll earn yourself a one-way ticket to literary cred and a choice back-cover quote from Michael Chabon:

• Identify your characters in only the most generic terms possible (e.g. “man” and “boy”). This will keep the reader’s mind focused on the universality of human suffering. And critics just eat that shit up.
• Be purposefully vague about the exact nature of your fictional apocalypse. Remember, you’re trying to say something profound about the human condition and plot details just get in the way.
• Limit yourself to one stock female character. After all, the end of the world is no place for girls. And have her say something like, “Because I am done with my whorish heart and have been for a long time.” Everyone knows that all the great writers are self-important misogynists.
• Throw in a scene where a newborn infant is roasted on a spit. Because there’s no rule against dotting the road to profundity with a couple gross-outs.
• End your book with a cryptic paragraph about trout. Yes, trout.

If you follow the five easy steps I’ve outlined above, your dreary and tepid post-apocalyptic fable will be the toast of the literati. You might even get on Oprah.

When Barack Obama first announced his candidacy, my initial reaction was enthusiastic. I believed that he could be an invigorating shot in the arm for the Democratic party. While I never really expected him to pose a serious challenge to Hillary, his passion and eloquence could have stood in stark contrast to Clinton’s sometimes overly-scripted persona. But Obama has demonstrated a troubling tendency to try to be all things to all things to all people. Witness the controversy surrounding the gospel event his campaign sponsored yesterday, featuring a gospel singer who is well-known for his assertions that gays can be “cured”.

I have no doubt that Obama fully supports gay rights, but his willingness to allow a homophobe to stump for him is the hamfisted move of an amateur. The Democratic Party is a big tent and I don’t expect everyone to be of one voice on any issue, but it isn’t acceptable to appease one constituency by metaphorically kicking sand in the eyes of another. I’m a Democrat because I believe in some core principles, including the vision of an equitable society that doesn’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Obama should be leading his followers towards that vision, not tacitly reinforcing old prejudices.

In conjunction with the release of his book Conscience of a Liberal, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is now keeping a blog with the same title. The book is on my to-read list, but the blog has plenty of interesting morsels for the progressive mind. Recommended.

I thought I should post something before I feel too crappy to be even mildly amusing. I woke up this morning with a sore throat and things haven’t gotten better over the course of the day. Maybe I should consider moving to a warm, dry climate. But I think sunshine every day would seriously depress me. There’s something about the occasional streak of gloomy days that is familiar and comforting, like a well-worn blanket.

Send lapdancers and echinacea.