I was at an event last month with a large group of professionals who had flown into town to lobby their Congressional representatives. I was listening in to a nearby conversation regarding Bernard Madoff, arguably the most hated man in America, when one person brought up the possibility of execution. Nobody flinched.

As you know, Madoff was convicted in a 50 Billion dollar financial scheme, leaving thousands of investors with an empty portfolio. One Connecticut town alone lost $42 million in pension money, and famed holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Weisel’s “lost everything.” Wiesel, when interviewed, said that Madoff should be “in a solitary cell with a screen, and on that screen…every day and every night there should be pictures of his victims, one after the other after the other, always saying ‘look what you have done’…he should not be able to avoid those faces for years to come.” I think I can do Eli one better.

TNG contributor Craig Gidney has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, the most prominent prize in LGBT books. His book, Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories, is nominated in the LGBT Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror category. TNG celebrates Craig’s accomplishment and will be rooting for him when the awards are presented on May 28th.

Lately i’ve attended a number of social engagements that resemble live theatre. I’m amazed by how easy it is to vanish in them—even in small group settings—without the cast of actors noticing. They perform with little need of reaction from me, the audience. Monologues replace interaction and listening becomes less an art than something endured. Usually that endurance is limited,their voices leaping over each other in a chorus of competing self-importance. I can sit in the darkness of the audience and watch for hours. From the cheap seats these social invitations are revealed as bribes of food and/or wine paid in exchange for sitting through a performance.

The lights of the theatre may not be dimmed, but the conversations are. I recently gathered around a table and sat with five people for a nearly four hour experience involving dinner and drinks. Only three direct questions were asked of me all night. I usually prefer to investigate others, so it suits me when people fail to show an interest in what I do or think. However, on this night the chorus was so intense that even my questions were lost to the crowd as so much ambient noise. A couple of times I tried to cast a line of interrogative discourse through the declarative fog, but both attempts were blocked by a competing actor’s need for center stage.

Rush Limbaugh is in the news again. Apparently, the Democrats are doing a good job of helping him promote his voice as the focal point of the Republican party. I’m supportive of anything that helps the GOP implode, but I feel drunk when confronted with the reality that Rush is still taken seriously by the people we rely on for information and analysis.

Rush Limbaugh is a drug addict.