Gay news of tomorrow. (notes from a blond).

That barking sound you hear is the chorus of new TV shows the networks are unleashing almost nightly. You now have the option of watching forensic detectives slash and grope their way through corpses in Las Vegas and Miami. And you can watch the criminal justice system at work and play every night of your life, not even counting the news broadcasts. Dysfunctional family comedies are on the rise, which means that sooner or later somebody is going to wind up gay, because where there is dysfunction there is homosexuality, or so it says in the manual of TV writing. The Sopranos will naturally remain unaffected by this bylaw. (The late, great Big Pussy never got it on, or off, with Paulie Walnuts. Some situations are too violent even for the mob.) So you pretty much know how the fall is shaping up already in TV land. But it's time for a fall preview of something, so here are a few predictions of what we might expect to see on our own gay planet this season:

* You'll open your Sunday Style section of The New York Times and there, smack in the middle of the blushing brides, is the announcement of the civil union of Harvey and Start. No second-guessing, the way we always do when the spouse is named Chris or Pat. Maybe even a picture. This I gotta see. The Times, having sat down with GLAAD's Joan Garry and no doubt every other gay relative in the place, has finally decided to honor gay commitments with the same sort of hysterical froufrou it hitherto bestowed only on straight marriages and engagements. So we splash into the mainstream, and it's a good thing too. Remember, there is no equality without visibility.

* The government of arch homophobe Robert Mugabe will fall in Zimbabwe. He is in the process of forcing white farmers off their land, thus disrupting the growing season and killing off the local food supply in a country where 6 million people will die of starvation by the end of the year. He might read one or two of the excellent new biographies of Marie Antoinette, who lost her head when her husband couldn't figure out how to feed his people. After Mugabe's gone, Zimbabweans will be infmitely better off--and the rest of us will be spared his tiresome, evil, gay-bashing rants. ("If dogs and pigs don't do it, why must human beings?")

* Those shock jocks in New York who talked a couple into having sex at St. Patrick's Cathedral will sue to get rehired after it is revealed that thousands of gay men have been having sex at St. Pat's with various members of the staff virtually since the cornerstone was laid.

* Somebody from American Idol will declare his homosexuality in a tearful TV moment, either on that show or in an interview with Caroline Rhea on her new talk show. Unlike people on Survivor, people on American Idol are evidently not allowed to be gay because they are not just ruthless cutthroat games players, they are entertainers, although you can be forgiven for confusing the two.

* In Sing Sing, Martha Stewart will fall under the protection of a tough dyke named Carla, who will force her to make a Christmas tree out of old shoelaces and dental floss that will be the talk of the entire cell block.

* Guest-star spots on Will & Grace will become so coveted that Jerry Falwell will hire the William Morris office to massage him into an episode, but he will never make it past the makeup and hair trailer, thanks to a sharp-eyed hairdresser with good aim and a teasing comb.

* Vin Diesel gay rumors will continue merely because the character he played in XXX is never ever without all his leather and tats and that suede-and-lamb's-wool coat. The skanky Russian girl is clearly a red herring. I mean, he's in Prague, surrounded by Bel Ami boys, and that woman with the Uma Thurman Pulp Fiction makeup gets his attention? Snort.

* After four years on Hollywood Squares, I've gone. The center square is occupied by a lesbian. Somewhere, Paul Lynde is chortling.