See below for explanation.

All over America, and in parts of Canada and Israel, everyone has been asking: Why have I been so quiet lately? (That’s I as in me, the person writing this, and not I as in them, the people asking it. If they had been quiet lately, they’d probably know why. Normally that clarification would introduce a rambling, incoherent parenthetical aside, but I’m pressed for time and will have to settle for this.)

After all, I’m over my illness and haven’t been incarcerated recently, despite a run-in with my parole officer last week. (Here’s a rambling, incoherent parenthetical aside I do have time for — who knew that running guns to Cuba was a parole violation? Shouldn’t they be happy when rehabilitated criminals show a little entrepreneurial spirit? They’re so big on “get a job, get a job, it’s a condition that you have a job,” but then you get a job and all they do is complain.) The answer is… well, I don’t know.

What has there been to talk about? We all know that Sally Kern is a bigot and Eliot Spitzer likes paying for it. Some stories are so widely commented on that mentioning them seems a complete waste of time. And this blog has never been something I intended to use for much in the way of deeply personal writing, so there will be no rambling late-night posts about exes or life-changing events. Nor do I believe that anyone is interested in reading a catalog of the minutiae of my day-to-day life. (When it comes down to it, even I hardly care about what I had for lunch yesterday or the last CD I bought.)

This thing, this so-called blog, is only meant to be an outlet for the occasional outburst or silly observation, something that lets me write when I want to write and maybe reach a few people who are exhaustively searching the Internet for naked pictures of Ken Berry. (If you think I only wrote that sentence so I can monitor how many people actually search the Internet for naked pictures of Ken Berry, you are absolutely correct.) The simple truth is, I’ve been outburst and observation-free for much of March, though I’ve kept an eye on several news sites hoping to find something inspiring. The results, some of which I’ll share with you now, have been largely disappointing:

Jodie Foster is still in the closet, hiding behind that dress you bought for your cousin’s wedding several years ago and haven’t worn since.

Mandy Moore, who is a much better comic actress than most people give her credit for, may or may not have multiple mommies. The National Enquirer, that bastion of journalistic integrity, is reporting that her mother has taken up with a female tennis player. Since it’s not Gabriela Sabatini, I doubt most of you are interested.

Meredith Vieira, ever the kidder, told attendees of a recent National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association benefit that while she’s not gay herself, she “did spend nine years with the lesbians of The View.” Oh, the hilarity! But wait, Barbara Walters did beard for Roy Cohn. Cue the suspenseful music.

Taylor Dayne, who is promoting a new album (does that mean the crowds at every Pride festival on the face of the earth will hear something besides “Tell It to My Heart” come June?), can’t spell. Or count. And that’s O.K., because she can still sing and tease her hair like nobody’s business.

Openly gay theater critic Nicholas de Jongh has written a play, Plague Over England, about actor John Gielgud’s famous 1953 arrest for some Larry Craig-like behavior. It’s getting good reviews and de Jongh spoke about it, and his own personal life, to The Observer last month.

Photo explanation: It was surprisingly difficult to find a gay-oriented, state of the union-ish photo to accompany this post. It was either use a picture of Katharine Hepburn in State of the Union or Photoshop my face onto George Bush’s body, and the latter option made me feel dirty.