Bridge Day at Greg Donoho's

My Horoscope du Jour says:

VIERGE: votre horoscope du 22/12/200

On pourrait avoir des réactions violentes à votre égard.  Vous feriez bien de faire attention à tout ce que vous allez pouvoir dire.  Préparez-vous à faire preuve de compréhension.  Sachez modérer vos affirmations.  La situation va évoluer très lentement vers un heureux dénouement.

These, of course, are good rules for life; but they're peculiarly apposite as rules for sensible bidding at bridge, particularly if we're going to be changing partners for each new rubber.

Today will be the fourth time (in two months) that the Relicts (myself, Mildred, Helen, and Greg) from Central Union Church will have met for a private bridge party; the second time we'll have met at Greg's.  What great fun it is.  Reminding one that, for as long as there has been bridge, it has been played in Honolulu....

The Joy of Gestational Surrogacy

Ricky Martin isn't someone I spend a whole lot of time thinking about, as a usual thing.  My Infallible Gaydar has always signaled "Red Alert" at his most carefully posed still photographs, even back in the days when he was a shrimp of a 'Menudo' star--and it has always rather tickled me that his many loyal fans find his gayness a matter of dispute ("Forgive them, Lord, for they are mostly females and have not Gaydar")--but, apart from a certain incredulous bemusement, and wondering to myself, "how far can he take this?" I have paid very little attention to Ricky's progress in the world of Pop Star Celebrity. He is, of course, what the Many Headed call a "singer"; in fact, an immensely popular and successful one, who works hard and intelligently at his craft, and has achieved an impressive international reputation for the excellence of his "albums" and "songs" in both English and Spanish. This I know, for I have (just now) read it in Wikipedia.  I have not, of course, heard any of his "songs," much less the Compact Disks or "albums"in which they are to be found [On the off-chance that I might be missing something, when I've finished this blog entry, I'll see if I can't find one or two of Martin's more acclaimed "songs" on YouTube, and actually try to listen to them]; so I must concede the possibility that they, and not his personal charm and beauty alone, are at least partially the cause of his great popularity--with all allowance for the fact that the personality, and the person, of the "singer" is never separable from the charm of his "song" in modern popular "music."

At any rate, I was not so surprised as many of ricky Martin's loyal female fans evidently have been, when I belatedly learned (apparently the event, and the news of it transpired on the 20th of August) that, in the manner of other, openly gay, popular "singers,"(namely, Michael Jackson and Clay Aikens) our Ricky has adopted twin baby boys, via "Gestational Surrogacy."  Delicious phrase.  It means that the sperm (delivered by the scientific equivalent of a turkey baster, from the male "donor" [possibly Ricky Martin himself] who, masturbating over a copy of 'Inches'  in an adjoining room,  has just ejaculated it into a test tube floating in a beaker of warm water) is united in vitro with the ovum (obtained, through a tiny surgical incision from a suitable, anonymous "donatrix"), and the resulting blastula (or, as in this case, twin blastulae) is then implanted (by what means I know not, and wish not to know) in the womb of the Surrogate, where it Gestates.  In the fullness of time the baby thus gestated is delivered (I should think by Caesarian Section--the whole point of surrogacy being vaginal avoidance), and, after being kept for some days or weeks (perhaps for primal breast-feeding) by the surrogate mother, is handed over to the adoptive parent. Interestingly, Martin has put his "musical" career and and work on hold for the next several months and taken on himself the whole of the care of his twin baby boys: feeding, changing, strolling, rocking, "singing"-to--tout.  For the necessary (God knows!) spot of relief, he has retained a young male factotum to take care of him.

It reminds me that, when a boy, I often and often dreamed of an all-male, homosexual society.  My vision was of an island divided by a Himalayan-like mountain range, with females on one side, and males on the other, connected by a secret tunnel with a revolving convent delivery gate in the middle, through which male infants were passed by conspiring priestesses to their male priestly counterparts, who brought the "children of the mountain" forth with homosexual Nativity Ceremonies, and raised them pretty much like Ricky Martin's boys.  Of course, in my childish imagining, there was not a little ritual male homosexual pedophilia, and of course that would not be the case with the "mountain children" of Michael Jackson, Clay Aiken, and Ricky Martin.  What a corrupt child I was for thinking of such things!