Just a round up post, ma'am

Why yes, I have been busy. Thank you for asking!

First, for something completely different: I wrote about fishies for the first time since I moved away from my koi pond! In the Pet Connection nationally syndicated feature this week, which appears in around a hundred newspapers:

Take one fish in a plastic bag, one fishbowl and one child, and what do you have? Chances are you'll soon have a dead fish and a very unhappy child.

But it doesn't have to be that way. The secret of making your child's first fish tank a success is choosing the right equipment and the right fish, along with equal parts planning and patience.

Beginners need to start with the basics, and when it comes to fish, nothing is more basic than water. Without plenty of filtered, aerated water kept at the right temperature, your child's fish will become stressed, ill or may die. That's why equipment, rather than fish, is the most important part of setting up your child's first aquarium.

By the way, that equipment does not include a fishbowl, kthnx.

My editor went out of town, so I snuck some more politics into my blogging at AfterElton.com, in "The Republicans hate us, but will that be enough this time?":

I got into a bloody battle the other day with some idiot on a blog who was pissing and moaning about the California Supreme Court's ruling that prohibiting lesbians and gay men from marrying was a violation of the state's constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law.

It's coming at a bad time, he said. He was afraid that having that issue in the news, and a constitutional amendment designed to strip that right away on the ballot, would drive right wingers to the polls and cost us the White House in November.

Of course, he's not insane; that Rovian strategy did in fact work quite well for the Republicans four years ago, and four years before that. And yes, it might work again, although I'm thinking, at least in California, it won't.

But whether I'm right or wrong about that, one thing I do know: anyone queer with a television or Internet access is going to have a few rough months, at least as far as political ads and punditry go. It's gays, guns, and God, and there are people who sincerely believe the last on that list wants them use the second on the first. And this hostility towards us and our civil rights is going to continue to feed the gaping maw of the sensationalism-hungry cable news monster.

Now on to the fluff. Also on AfterElton.com, my interview with the two gay team members on HGTV's new season of Design Star:

It's true that the third season of HGTV's Design Star doesn't have seven out gay male contestants like last season's Project Runway did. But the always-queer-friendly network that gave us David Bromstad is continuing its tradition of gay contestants and fielding a "Team Gay" of two: Michael Stribling, 23, and Matt Locke, 38.

[....]

It's not unusual that two out gay contestants made the cut, and not just because interior design is a pretty gay-male-friendly field. Since its first season, when David Bromstad (Color Splash) became America's first design star, the series has had out gay contestants in every round.

Last season featured Josh Johnson and Scott Corridan, although both were eliminated fairly early in the competition. I asked Matt and Michael how the producers approach the issue of the sexual orientation of the contestants.

(I also recapped the first challenge, again, on AfterElton.com.)

And bringing it all back to pets again, I updated and revised my "Ten Things I WILL Tell You" post into my column on SFGate.com:

For more than 22 years, I've been raising and caring for my pets using alternative and complementary methods. In that time, I've seen dozens of supplements, herbs and nutritional theories hailed as the one true way to pet health, and then fall by the wayside.

After interviewing dozens of holistic vets, following a lot of tips that sounded promising and undergoing a great deal of trial and error with my own animals in the past two decades, I've come up with a list of 10 tried-and-true holistic tips that have worked for my pets as well as many others.

One caution, and it's a big one: Talk to your veterinarian before trying to treat your pet at home. It's one thing to give a gingersnap to see if it helps a healthy puppy's mild carsickness; it's another to think you can treat a pet's violent or chronic diarrhea at home. There is nothing "holistic" about treating conditions without a diagnosis.

I was supposed to be at an event in the East Bay today, but the predicted 107 degree temperatures and my mom's health ruled it out... even in San Francisco, it's in the 90s, and the dogs are huddling at the little air conditioner like they did the last time it was hot. Poor puppers, and poor dogs and people all over this City that's normally "air-conditioned by Mother Nature"; we're just not prepared for this kind of weather.