One reason I love my husband: The way we read the paper together. Long silences, and then, “Jesus Christ! ‘A Child Called “It”‘ has been on the paperback bestseller list for 313 weeks!” Gotta love a guy who thinks that’s a sign of the apocalypse.

When I served on the Allen County Reads committee, one of those everybody-reads-the-same-book community eat-your-peas efforts, we got lots of nominations for “A Child Called ‘It'” One day, feeling punchy, we started pitching a sequel.

“Another Child Called ‘It'”
“Revenge of a Child Called ‘It’: It’s Mommy’s Turn to Cry”
“A Grandchild Called ‘It'”

The real sequel, of course, is “A Man Called Dave.” The Allen County Reads book was “Fahrenheit 451.” That is all.

The other day, while discussing the Schiavo case, my sister asked, “What can normal people do to get the country back from these idiots?” I thought she might be a teensy bit overdramatic — forgive her, she lives in Ohio — and then I saw this WashPost story, about the growing “pharmacists’ rights” movement. What pharmacists’ rights, you ask? Why, the right not to fill your prescription. And why would they do that, you wonder? Why, because they perhaps have a moral objection to the medicine you plan to take — why, it could be a birth-control pill! Or a morning-after pill, which could kill a helpless little zygote by depriving it of a home!

I consider myself an opinionated but essentially tolerant person. If you want to assert these rights as a pharmacist, I figure, I reserve the right to complain loudly to your boss and take my business elsewhere. But no! Ahem: Pharmacists are regulated by state laws and can face disciplinary action from licensing boards. But the only case that has gotten that far involves Neil T. Noesen, who in 2002 refused to fill a University of Wisconsin student’s birth control pill prescription at a Kmart in Menomonie, Wis., or transfer the prescription elsewhere. (emphasis mine) An administrative judge last month recommended Noesen be required to take ethics classes, alert future employers to his beliefs and pay what could be as much as $20,000 to cover the costs of the legal proceedings. The state pharmacy board will decide whether to impose that penalty next month. “He’s a devout Roman Catholic and believes participating in any action that inhibits or prohibits human life is a sin,” said Aden of the Christian Legal Society. “The rights of pharmacists like him should be respected.”

Hello? No they shouldn’t. If Neil T. Noesen wants to live his faith through pharmacy, then he should take his devout Catholic ass down to a devout Catholic hospital and work in the pharmacy there, not in a corner CVS, where a university student should expect to have her Ortho-Evra script filled without a lecture. Or even a scowl. What a jerk.

Andy Maskin’s living will. I think it’ll be mine, too. I like that part about the Bush twins.

You know Pat O’Brien is in rehab, of course. You know why, perhaps. What you may not know about is the presence of I’m Stuck in Rehab With Pat O’Brien, which basically tells the same joke over and over but I’m still laughing:

After dinner we hung around the common room and sang songs. Pat O’Brien had his mandolin. He actually wasn’t that bad. He sang “Eve of Destruction” and “To Sir, With Love.” I just wish he hadn’t taken his shirt off. Nobody wanted to see that.

“Hey, babies: Whitney’s in da house!” she proclaimed.

Note the Flickr Zeitgeist thingie over on the left rail. Join Flickr, make me a contact, and your pictures can cycle through it randomly, too. At the moment it’s just me, J.C. and Zach, so the pond is pretty wide open for now.

And I’m shutting down. Tomorrow, then?