It's almost not-morning now, so I figure everyone's stomachs are settled enough to read about our fancy new Death Star imperialist palace embassy in Iraq, which opens today. It cost $700 million, which the AP writer manages to minimize by calling it merely the "largest embassy ever", which is similar in scope and accuracy to calling the blue whale the largest fish ever. For this blogger at least remembers the plans for the "embassy", which seems less like an embassy and more like a fortress palace.

Construction of the U.S. embassy in Iraq, set to open in September, is projected to cost $592 million, with a staff of 1,000 people and operating costs totaling $1.2 billion a year. It will be a 104-acre complex, which is the size of approximately 80 football fields.

And that was a year ago. You can only imagine how big it is now. Here's another picture from the plans, before they were yanked offline because of "security", which means that the Death Star was an official embarrassment to the Bush administration.

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I get a lot of e-mail from PR firms wanting me to blog about their products at Mombian.com (which, if you don't know and it isn't obvious, is a site for lesbian moms, after which this column is named). I usually give them a glance, having once myself managed public relations for a dotcom. I figure it's good karma. Still, some of them are so clearly off target it makes me laugh. Here are a few gems I've received over the past year. Names removed or changed to protect the guilty.

According to UrbanDictionary.com--manscaping is "male grooming below the belt." But now, a NY-based CEO has taken that term to a whole new level. Meet Jane Doe, CEO/Founder of [Company]-- a product that claims to 'color the hair down there.' According to Jane, sales to the male demographic are up 15% this year--a projected 4% increase in just one year. So does this prove that manscaping is on the rise??

I'd love to link you up with Jane to discuss this 'manscaping' trend and the various options that are out there for men to take care of their 'hair down there.'

Hmm. Think I'll forward that one to Neal.

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My heart goes out today to actors John Travolta and Kelly Preston, whose 16-year-old son Jett died yesterday while the family was vacationing in the Bahamas. The teenager apparently had a seizure while in the shower or bath at their hotel and hit his head. "At this point, we know that John and Kelly Travolta's only son, Jett Travolta, had a seizure. All attempts were made to revive him, but were unsuccessful and he died," said the family attorney, Michael Ossi. The Travoltas have another child, daughter Ella, who is eight.

While Jett himself was mostly out of the public eye, he was the subject of many health-related questions. Many believed that Jett was autistic, something that his parents denied. Both Travolta and Preston are well-known members of the Church of Scientology, which does not acknowledge autism's existence. Instead, Preston went on The Montel Williams Show and explained that her son suffered from the rare Kawasaki Disease, which primarily affects young children. Kawasaki is an inflammatory disease that affects - and can weaken - the heart and the muscles around it. Preston went on to explain that Jett became ill because of chemicals and other contaminants that were used in carpet cleaner at their home.

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So I'm wondering: Is hockey the sport that never sleeps?

The Montclair Blues (mite division), the middling-to-above-average team for which The Heir enthusiastically serves as World's Skinniest Goalie, suspended most of its activity for the school holiday break (which I also took off from work). This unexpected but most welcome development freed up, oh, approximately 60 hours from Christmas Eve until this coming Saturday. [Just think, if Hockey Mom were a paid position, of all the overtime I'd rack up in any normal week; but then again, in this economy, it is far more likely that not only would overtime be slashed, but a goodly percentage of us would be downsized, and the Montclair Blues (mite division) would be left with one overworked Uber Hockey Mom who, considering the current ideological bent of our federal courts, would have no legal redress for being forced to do the work of 15 women. Uber Hockey Mom would be solely responsible for applying roughly 75 pads to various limbs on the bodies of the 15 Blues mites; for double-knotting their 30 skates; for ordering their team jackets in 15 different sizes ranging from "World's Skinniest" to "Are You Sure You Aren't 35 Years Old?"; for distributing their 15 bottles of Poland Springs every practice and for exhaustive de- and re-padding when at least three of them subsequently had to pee before practice ended; for scheduling their off-league games and for delivering all 15 of them to their league games, which are generally held as far away as one can get from Montclair while still technically remaining in Jersey, and at times that just barely qualify as "not the middle of the night." I can only picture Angelina Jolie in the job. Well, maybe Shirley Partridge, because she already has a bus. But I digress.]

Anyway, this surprise windfall of freedom led me to foolishly plan all sorts of fun stuff to fill the time -- putting together the new toys Santa and my mother, Mr. Monopoly, had gifted to The Heir and The Spare; finding homes on shelves for said new toys; packing up old and formerly beloved toys to make room on said shelves for said new toys; delivering old and formerly beloved toys to organizations that will match them with new children to belove them; and maybe taking a bubble bath. But then Little Max's mother called.

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I know it's cliche for a liberal, lesbian mom who's about to become a dad to mistrust doctors, but I can't help myself.  I just don't like them most of the time.  But get this:  

Yesterday we went to Victoria’s 37 weeks and 5 days doctor visit.  We saw the same doctor, Dr. Guinot, that we saw last week–there are six doctors in the practice.  Last week, I asked him if I could check Victoria’s dilation at home.  

He said I shouldn’t.  He said it was difficult to calculate.  He said I could break her water with my nails if I wasn’t careful.  

I said I was going to try anyway and he smiled. 

He said, “Then take some gloves.  

 I said I already had taken gloves. 

Yesterday, while Victoria was peeing in a cup, Dr. Guinot passed me in the hall and smiled.  He said, “Is she dilated?” 

I said I couldn’t tell.  I said I needed a lesson. 

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Yep, it's the last Meconium post of 2008 - I'm getting psyched up to do some real actual reviews in '09, with items like the Kindle on deck. Plus there's that ever-approaching book thing.

For now, a far nicer cardboard box than the one I've been living under lately. This Little Piggy's House is made from recycled cardboard, harvested from the tony recycling bins of the SF Bay Area. Oh wait, I read that wrong. It's made from "recyclable materials." So you can recycle it later.

For $40, you get a house (22"x24"x28") in brown or white, complete with mailbox and chimney, and 5% of their profits go es to charities dedicated to feeding hungry children. And if you act now you'll get a set of the Dalai Lama's used sweatbands (limited-time only).

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18-year-old Bristol Palin, daughter of also-ran Vice Presidential candidate and current Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, gave birth to a son on Saturday. She and fiance Levi Johnston named the new addition Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston. Depending who you ask, this is either Bristol's first child or her second.

Bristol did not finish high school (neither did her brother Track, who is in the army, which brings Sarah Palin's total of high school graduate offspring to 0/5), but will earn her GED via correspondence courses. Levi, who is also a high school dropout, is training to work as an electrician. Lest we worry that the young couple won't be able to support themselves financially, People magazine has reportedly ponied up $300,000 for the first photographs of little Tripp. Perhaps I should have seen that coming - after all, People got to break the news of the baby's birth, and the magazine has earned a reputation for paying outrageous sums of money for celebrity baby photos (past 'gets' included the Brangelina twins, Knox and Vivienne, J.Lo's twins, Max and Emme, and Nicole Richie's daughter Harlow).

If People is willing to drop a lot of coin for pictures of your infant, I guess that makes you by their logic a celebrity. What does this mean? It means that, for now, we're stuck with Bristol, Levi, Tripp, and the rest of the gang. That doesn't just include Sarah Palin, it includes Tripp's other grandma, Sherry Johnston, who got busted last week for selling OxyContin to an undercover police informant. Apparently Johnston's arrest and the subsequent media attention helped drive up the price of the baby pictures.

To quote an old Irish poem about a mother talking to her baby: "I hurl you into the world and pray."

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In other breaking news, the Pope has admitted to being a Catholic.

Honestly. If we didn't spend so much time and money investigating things most of us know are no-brainers, we'd have colonized another planet by now.

It's weird how quickly people forget what it's like to be a teenager. Doing the Eddie Haskell is almost second nature to them. Let me show adults what they want to see, and while they're writing blog posts about the importance of virginity and courtship, that will give me time to climb out my bedroom window and smoke a joint with some of the kids from Sunday School.

 "Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

What drives me crazy, though, is the knowledge that the people who are pushing abstinence-only programs are going to ignore this research completely, including the part about kids exposed only to abstinence education being more likely to forego birth control later on, are just going to ignore it. Because Jesus has a latex allergy, I guess.

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There's never been a better time to introduce a luxury wagon. Kid's wagon that is. The Cloud 9 is a concept for now, and since it's suggested price will be over a grand, or worth more than your 401k, I'm sure it'll supplant the Wii in next year's holiday crush. The full feature list includes "digital controls, speakers and a dock for an MP3 player. The luxury toy wagon is outfitted with 5-point safety harnesses, padded seats, cup holders, foot brakes and fold-out storage containers. Cup Holders!

The “Radio Flyer survived the Great Depression, and this year has been a difficult year for a lot of companies,” says Tom Schlegel, vice president of product development.

Of course, the classic little red wagon probably survived the Depression because it was useful for hauling junk and much, much cheaper than a car. I like the idea of the 5-point harness, though, in case any kid ever dared to take their wagon outside the home.

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Campbell Soup is the latest company to realize the value of marketing to the $650 billion LGBT market—and specifically, to lesbian moms. They have run a two-page spread for Swanson's broth in LGBT news magazine the Advocate, featuring two lesbian moms and their young son. The women, Lea Forant and Carolyn Montgomory, are owners of Café Forant in Manhattan, and apparently use Campbell's Swanson chicken broth in preparing many of their Christmas Eve dishes.

The conservative American Family Association has already sent an e-mail to its members declaring "Campbell Soup Company embraces homosexual agenda." The Advocate itself then covered the controversy, as did advertising trade journal AdAge (where you can see a large version of the ad).

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"I have discovered the SECRET of LIFE!"

This ought to be good, thought Harriet from her hiding place in the dumbwaiter.

"You just TAKE to your BED. You don't leave it for ANYTHING or ANYBODY."

That's it? thought Harriet. That's the stupidest thing I ever heard of.

Harriet the Spy was one of my all time favorite childhood books. I must have read it dozens of times. I kept a notebook like Harriet, I made a spy kit like Harriet, I played Town like Harriet did, and I begged my mother for a nanny like Harriet had, which I did not get.

So of course, when the movie came out, I was fully prepared to be mortally offended by every casting choice. Rosie O'Donnell as Harriet's crisp nanny Ole Golly? Dammit! A cute, long-haired perky little moppet playing Harriet instead of the short haired, sturdy androgyn on the book's cover? Dammit! Eartha Kitt as Mrs. Plummer, the super-wealthy, shallow society queen that Harriet spied on? The one who laid in bed all day eating bon-bons and talking on the phone while Harriet peeped at her through a crack in the dumbwaiter door? Perfect beyond measure.

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I had never been particularly afraid of aging, or at least this is what I’ve told myself. I’ve told myself this even as my hair stylist combed a lovely shade of chocolate into my hair, or even when I stopped getting carded a year ago. Or when I started knitting scarves and sweaters and doing yoga. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I thought the specter of Middle Age (dum-duh-dum-dum!) was on the horizon, not staring me down in my front yard. So when Saturday came, and Giselle woke up next to me, kissed my head and said, “Happy Birthday!” I did a double take.

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To all my wonderful, virtual friends whose real names I do not know but whose blog comments I enjoy immensely and whose readership I appreciate tremendously: May your holiday season and all of 2009 be better than sex with George Clooney. Below please find the 2008 Pandolfo Roy annual holiday letter and photo, mailed to those friends that one or more Pandolfo Roys have actually met at least once. Not, of course, that I like them any better than I like you... Anyway, this is our letter, with a name or two changed to protect the guilty. Blessings.

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Watching this interview with Rick Warren, I have to admit that I'm surprised that he is as popular as he is, because he's pretty incoherent, even by low wingnut standards. His argument against gay marriage---against gay people, really---starts off with an obvious and odious lie. Warren would have you believe that he regularly has dinner engagements with a multitude of gay people who love him despite the fact that he hates them and happily wishes to send them to hell, and that during these dinners, they have a cheerful, free exchange of ideas where said gay people say, "Rick, I want to get married so I can fuck a city block." And how unfair is that? After all, Rick wants to have sex with every beautiful woman he sees, but he can't, because god says no. Also, so do the beautiful women, with the law backing up their right to do so, but it's a lot more pleasant to imagine it's merely a matter of willpower.

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Here's what I have to say (on Slate.com) about recent criticisms of the Newbery Medal, the prestigious children's books award. 

Just to be clear, I *heart* Dav Pilkey.

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I'm not a big fan of wrapping presents. Or gift-giving in general, but what I usually do when I have to disguise a gift I put it in the gift bag I received from the Open Source Conference. This year, though, I'm not sure I want to part with the "I Heart Ubuntu" bag I've been saving, but there's another way to get your gear wrapped by a true unprofessional.

Firebox.com has launched CrapWrap, a professional service that allows you to outsource low quality present-wrapping. Just purchase any super geeky item from Firebox, and you have the option to get it "crapwrapped." This involves torn tape, ripped paper, and uneven folding, all of which is checked and rechecked by the quality assurance officer, a " tipsy bloke wearing boxing gloves and a sack on his head." Firebox uses off-duty forklift operators who are given no instruction to make a hash of it. And somehow I'm sure they'd do a better job than I.

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On how Nate Silver uses statistics to prove Harry Reid has allowed Republicans to walk all over him. You know, I'm far from convinced that the auto bailout has to happen, but I am sure that the threat of the filibuster from Republicans is an abuse of that power, and it's about time that the Democrats started forcing Republicans to actually filibuster instead of just threaten it. I haven't forgotten how the Democrats had to fight to keep the filibuster alive at all a few years ago. How very nice of them to do that so that the Republicans can use the threat of the filibuster to shut down anything the Democratic majority wants to do. Wouldn't it have been rich if short-sighted Republicans had killed the filibuster only to lose control of the Senate? John McCain presented the Gang of 14 situation as evidence of what a friendly, bipartisan guy he is, but the reality is that he's just slightly less stupid and short-sighted than his fellow Republicans. And that's saying a lot when you consider that this is the man who picked Sarah Palin as a running mate.

Anyway, screw the commentary. Let's get to the charts! Nate Silver demonstrates how the Republicans are shameless bastards when it comes to using the threat of the filibuster.

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Question: Will I get the job I want? Is it going to be a hard row to hoe?*

Answer: Good news: You have the natural ability to translate vision into practical results. Bad news: You’re starting to feel more and more blocked, frustrated or thwarted in getting those results.

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Two weeks ago, I posted about the pair of male penguins in China who were trying to steal other penguins' eggs in an attempt to become parents. Now, at the urging of zoo visitors, zookeepers have given them a hand: "We decided to give them two eggs from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor and they've turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo,' said one of the keepers. (Thanks, Good As You.)

Nice to see them following in Silo and Roy's waddling footsteps. Their offspring will have to get together with Tango and form HOLAGE: Hatchlings of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere. (Apologies to COLAGE.) I'm also thinking that Join the Impact's next action should be to organize a way for people to send stuffed toy penguins to various groups on the right.

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From Ezra, a story both inspiring and troubling story highlighting how important energy conservation will be to greening America.

Refrigerators consume a lot of energy; all alone, they account for almost fifteen per cent of the average home’s electricity use. In the mid nineteen-seventies, California—the state Chu now lives in—set about establishing the country’s first refrigerator-efficiency standards. Refrigerator manufacturers, of course, fought them. The standards couldn’t be met, they said, at anything like a price consumers could afford. California imposed the standards anyway, and then what happened, as Chu observed, is that “the manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.” The following decade, standards were imposed for refrigerators nationwide. Since then, the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than ten per cent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds.

The transition to more efficient fridges, Chu pointed out, has saved the equivalent of all the energy generated in the United States by wind turbines and solar cells. “I cannot impress upon you how important energy efficiency is,” he said.

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We've been searching around the old intertubes, looking for gifts for the family with some charitable angle. For the budding cryptozoologist* in your family: San Francisco Zoo has a Zoo Parent program, where you can sign up your little ones to adopt their own zoo animals.

• A Basic Animal Adoption Package is only $50 and includes:
• Personalized certificate of adoption and gold star seal
• Framed, color photo of the animal species you select
• "Nature Notes," an educational fact sheet about the animal species you select
• Complimentary issue of Zoo Views, our quarterly Members’ magazine AND
• Invitation for two to ZooParent Day

There are dozens of animals to choose from, and what kid wouldn't be happy to get an autographed photo of the Scimitar-Horned Oryx? Hopefully part of the adoption fee will go to improving the SF Zoo's bandwidth - you might have more luck flying there in person on the back of a condor to make your purchase.

*there are currently no cryptids available for adoption, though the bearded dragon might be weird enough for consideration.

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