I've actually not been solving my usual number of straight-up crossword puzzles lately -- I've been distracted by flats and Sudoku and just generally doing other stuff. Tonight I made a point of doing some solving just to keep in practice. I need to keep my game up to have a hope of challenging rpipuzzleguy next year, after all.

So, of course when I solve I get theme inspiration. I've been in theme doldrums for weeks, but I solved 10 puzzles tonight and one of the theme answers in one of them made me think of a different, though related, theme. I cranked out a set of theme entries in about 10 minutes. This is why I must solve all the damn time -- idea generation!

Watched Bride and Prejudice tonight, and also finished Goodnight Nobody. Both were a bit of a disappointment, if for different reasons. B&P just seemed like one of those movies where I didn't have to pay attention for most of the movie to know what was going on (in fact, I did a sudoku while I was watching it), and Goodnight Nobody had a really disappointing ending. I hate loose ends in fiction (with the exception of Gone With the Wind, which is so masterfully done that ending the novel before we find out whether Scarlett gets Rhett back is a pleasure), and there were more than a few at the end of Goodnight Nobody. Still, I think it's better than Weiner's last novel, and maybe on par with In Her Shoes. Good in Bed is still my favorite, though!

Maybe I should go on Depo. Enough said.

I am going to go ahead and rant about birth control as an example of why the government shouldn't be in the business of healthcare regulation, though. See, the researchers who invented the Pill realized that women didn't NEED to have a monthly period. They simply designed the Pill that way because they figured women would feel more "normal" on this new medicine if they still had a period every month as usual.

Birth control pills have been around for, what, thirty years now? More? Which makes it totally infuriating that it was only LAST year that a pill designed for a woman to have periods every three months, instead of every month, came onto the market. Actually, such a pill was ALWAYS available -- it's just a matter of skipping the placebos in a normal pack of pills, and going straight to the next pack, taking placebos only one week out of every 13. (It's even possible to skip your period altogether by getting rid of the placebos; Wyeth is currently working on getting approval for theirs.) But the FDA wouldn't approve that use of the pill without additional clinical studies of thousands of women. Imagine the better uses the money used to fund those studies could have gone to! Maybe it could have developed a diabetes drug, or gone toward cancer research, or any number of other healthcare problems that HAVEN'T been solved as elegantly (or as redundantly; besides the Pill, women can use the patch, the Depo shot, Norplant, or quite a few other methods) as the problem of unwanted pregnancy has.

Not to mention, the supposedly "new" pill, the once-every-three-months pill, is being marketed as though it has no competitors. Because, as far as the FDA -- and thus, many third-party insurance payers -- are concerned, it doesn't. Never mind that a pack of Seasonale is no different from four packs of a generic brand of everyday Pills with the exception of its containing fewer placebos. When I go to the pharmacy and ask for the generic pills more often than once every 28 days, I get a hard time from the clerk and my insurance makes me pay full price for the "extra" pack of pills in that three-month period that I am "not supposed to be taking" according to the FDA. This means that it is actually less expensive for me to buy Seasonale (which has a co-pay of $60 per three-month pack -- $20 for each month of a formulary non-generic drug) than it is to buy a generic brand ($10 copay for each of three packs, plus about $35 for the "extra" pack), even though Seasonale is undoubtedly costing my insurer more money. And all because of silly FDA approvals.

Ah, yes, and let's talk about the prescription drug system. I think that should be abolished too. What business does the government have regulating what people put into their OWN bodies? Obviously robberies or other crimes performed in order to get a supply of drugs must be punished as the crimes they are, but as long as a person's drug use harms nobody but himself, the government has absolutely no place in forbidding it -- and even if it does harm others, the criminal acts are what should be punished, not the underlying drug use. If I want to go to the store and buy a chemotherapy drug (and can find someone willing to sell it to me) and swallow it, it's MY funeral. It's not the government's job to protect me from my own stupidity, or anyone else from theirs. If we didn't have a prescription requirement for any drug, I bet I could walk into the store and just buy a BOTTLE of birth control pills, not the carefully bubbled little packs with their printed schedules, and just take one every day in the hope of never menstruating again until such time as I am ready to have children. (I can hear the archconservatives screaming.) Damn, that would be nice.

Totally unrelated note: in typical Stella style, I am planning ahead. Next week is Objectivist karaoke night, so I've been going to the karaoke bar's web site to decide what I'm going to sing. (I'm annoyed that they don't have Chicago's "Will You Still Love Me For the Rest of My Life?" so I guess I'll have to settle for "Saturday in the Park.") They do, however, have Toto's "Hold the Line." Excellent!

I am also planning WAY ahead -- an Objectivist Christmas party. (Really, there's no Christ in THAT "Christmas" celebration.) I thought it'd be fun to throw a holiday party with a bunch of fellow atheists around this year. Would you believe I've already got two full menus (one utterly diet-unfriendly, the other a bit lighter) in mind? Well, yes, of course you would.