As if the Bush administration didn't give me enough to worry about, Regina Lynn's article on Wired News, has me wringing my hands about the administration's covert war on sex. According to the article, the government has stepped up its attack against pornography and, at the same time, keeps its obscenity guidelines secret. Were you a producer of explicit or even soft-core material, you'd pretty much have to guess if your content met the guidelines.

But pornography aside,with Bush more than doubling the abstinence education budget, who is going to teach our kids about birth control and AIDS prevention? My boys certainly don't want to discuss sex with me---where will they learn to be safe if informational websites and classroom teaching are abolished? My favorite quote in the Lynn article is this one from Jeffrey Douglas, chairman of the Free Speech Coalition.

"You just know high-ranking members of the Bush administration stay awake at night thinking that somewhere out there people are masturbating, and they have to do something to stop it," he says.

They'll find you in the press, they'll find you on the internet, now apparently they'll find you in your bedroom

OK-- this article by Ben Stein--yes that Ben Stein--scared the hell out of me. If his calculations of what we Baby Boomers will need to retire are accurate, I'll be the bag lady sitting on the curb with a sign reading "Will work for high-speed access."

I cannot be a grandparent--I don't know how to make a strudel, I don't own a hair net, and my stocking are never rolled down to my knees. I can't crochet, play mah-jong, or speak Yiddish. How could people as young and hip as we Boomers turn into grandparents?

Well, we are. An article in the Palm Beach Post discusses what this means to a culture obsessed with youth and with still being cool.

The article also mentions "A Boomer's Guide to Grandparenting," by Kathryn and Allan Zullo, who became grandparents in their 40's. Yikes! In my forties, I was still attending parent-teacher conferences at the middle school.

Anyway, Mr. Zullo had been kind enough to come right here to the Aging Hipsters when he was researching the book, so we thought we'd give it nice plug. In preparation for the next role in your life, why not start learning how to be the best, if not the hippest grandparents ever. Buy the book at Amazon.

Thank you Maureen Dowd for articulating so well what I've only been able to babble about since Election Day. In her NY Times Op-Ed piece she validates what I thought were paranoid fears that, as far as W is concerned, there's only one way to unify the country; by agreeing with him. Unity, my ass---what's next for those of us who disagree? Resistance groups hiding in what will be left of the forests?

For those who cannot access the Dowd piece, it follows on a separate page.

If you're one of those Boomers who's worried about how to beat taxes on your millions, there's a new retirement plan in effect for the self-employed. The Solo-DB plan allows you to contribute hefty amounts each year, in excess of $160,000. After you've finished reading about it, feel free to further improve your tax situation by making a charitable gift to us aging hipsters.