Ah, the first week of the new year. The holiday greetings and gay happy meetings have come to a close, and you're left with a full voicemail box, an overflowing inbox and the sense that the entire world is tilting left, which may indicate that you're still slightly hungover from New Year's Eve or that you have the beginnings of an inner ear infection. The only thing keeping you afloat as you trudge through the longest day of the work year is this: You know she loves you. And tonight, at 8 ET on the CW, Gossip Girl returns.

Because I love you too (though obviously not as much as Gossip Girl does), I've compiled all of the spoilers and speculation about the second half of Season 2 into one post. There are actual, legitimate, confirmed spoilers below. Read at your own risk!

About a month ago, two books were published with the same theme: getting girls to like you. The first, How to Talk to Girls was written by an 8-year-old boy. The second, Hooking Up with Tila Tequila: A Guide to Love, Fame, Happiness, Success, and Being the Life of the Party, was written by — well, you don't need me to tell you; it's right there in the title.

Because I care about getting girls to like me, I read both books to see which one had better advice. Let's tackle Tila Tequila first.

The first thing Tila Tequila wants to you know when you open up her book to the beginning chapter — titled "Sluts" — is that you can "f--k off." No kidding, that's how she starts the book. The next chapter is called "Haters" and in it Tila Tequila is shocked and outraged that she hasn't been more accepted by the lesbian and bisexual community; or accepted by women in general.

Does this plot sound familiar to you: Four women love and live and drink and laugh and share their lives together in New York City? It sounded familiar to the network executives at Fox, too. Familiar and profitable. So they gave the go-ahead for a new show about four women who love and live and drink and laugh and share their lives together in New York City — as werewolves.

Here's how I imagine the conversation went:

TPTB: That Sex and the City movie made a bazillion dollars this year, which just goes to show you that women like to be entertained too. Weird. You know what else was a big hit? That Twilight thing. I'm thinking a show about four women. I'm thinking a show about mythical creatures. I'm thinking sex. I'm thinking beasts. I'm thinking ... bam! Female werewolves. We'll call it Bitches.

And so they did, and here's the math.

A week ago, when the Atlanta Dream announced that they had acquired the rights to Chamique Holdsclaw from the L.A. Sparks, season tickets for the worst team in the league started flying out of the box office.

Chamique Holdsclaw's relationship with the WNBA has been tempestuous. After winning three national championships at Tennessee and being named a Kodak All-American four times, she went to the Washington Mystics as the first pick in the 1999 WNBA draft. She won Rookie of the Year, started in the all-star game and helped lead the U.S. women's basketball team to a gold medal in the 2000 Olympics.

Then her grandmother died.

Because we will stop at nothing in our quest to prepare you for the final season of The L Word, here are episodes four through eight of Season Five, condensed to Facebook, just like real life.

5.5 "Looking at You, Kid"

Christmas day is just around the corner, and you know what that means: ribbons, tags, packages, boxes, bags — and the release of half a dozen much-hyped, mega-budget films. Among them is the movie adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit. It doesn't have any Nazis, puppies or backward-aging babies, but it promises killer performances from a bevy of women who want nothing more than seduction and destruction.

Scarlett Johansson plays Silken Floss, a frigid vixen; Eva Mendes plays Sand Saref, a conniving jewel thief; and Jaime King plays Lorelei, a phantom siren.

Of course, no superhero's tale would be complete without the quick-witted girl next door. To balance out Spirit's femme fatales is the police commissioner's daughter, Ellen Dolan, played by out actress Sarah Paulson.

When I heard that Cosmopolitan was featuring a real-live lesbian love story in January's issue, I resolved to lay aside my differences with the magazine (Photoshopped covers that destroy a normal woman's body image, volumes of tips on keeping a man satisfied, and over-perfumed pages), and pick up a copy.

It didn't go smoothly.

I passed by the magazine rack half a dozen times, glancing at the cover, trying to stealthily decipher whether or not there was actual lesbian content inside. A person could lose all queer street cred if she got caught red-handed with a magazine promising advice on "guy-pleasuring touches" and "how to deal when your man gets moody."

Then, on my seventh pass by the magazine stand, I saw it: "Angelina Did It. So Did Lindsay. What It's Like To Love A Girl."

The article is a Q&A with Jennifer Duncan and Stacey Book, two women who met in Central America while working on CBS's Amazing Race.

Hoping to piggyback off the cataclysmic success of Disney's High School Musical movies, Fox has ordered 13 episodes of a musical comedy series called Glee. The one-hour show will follow an idealistic chorus teacher as he tries to inspire a group of ragamuffin students — plus a Zac Efron-esque star quarterback — to musical stardom.

You're probably thinking that High School Musical has already told this story three times, and wondering if there any possible way to make the show fresh and engaging.

Yes, yes there is: Glee will star Jane Lynch — as a cheerleading coach.

Just let that ruminate. This morning you woke up thinking something was missing from your life, but you just couldn't put your finger on it. Now, I am telling you that Fox has created a show where Bring it On meets Sister Act, and Jane Lynch is going to get to say something like, "This is not a democracy; it's a cheerocracy. I'm sorry, but I'm overruling you."

When Annika Sorenstam was on the junior golf tour, she would deliberately three-putt the 18th to avoid having to give a victory speech. On Sunday in Dubai, she birdied the last hole of her professional golf career, and was applauded off the green by every player at the tournament.

"It means a lot," she told reporters. "When you get that kind of respect from players it breaks your heart."

Between the young girl who was terrified of public speaking and the 38-year-old woman who ended her career with a standing ovation lie 90 international tournament wins, 78 LPGA victories, 10 majors titles, eight player-of-the-year awards, six Vare trophies and more than $20 million in winnings.

Equally impressive was her 2003 participation in the Bank of America Colonial Tournament — a PGA event. Sorenstam became the first woman to play in a men's tournament since 1945, when Babe Didrikson Zaharias entered three PGA tournaments.

As Sarah pointed out last week, the more press Jennifer Aniston does for Marley & Me, the less she can keep her pants on.

I loved Jennifer Aniston on Friends more than I can express; not a Thanksgiving goes by when I don't bring a dessert to my grandma's and say, "First there’s a layer of ladyfingers, then a layer of jam, then custard — which I made from scratch — then raspberries, more ladyfingers, then beef sauteed with peas and onions, then a little more custard, and then bananas, and then I just put some whipped cream on top!"

There's something about Aniston's movies, though, that just don't resonate with me — and no amount of half-naked magazine photos is going to change that.

But you know what might change it? Magazine photo shoots with puppies.

The sixth season of The L Word is almost upon us. Over the next few weeks, we're going to help prepare you for the mayhem and destruction of the final season, mostly by taking a look back at Season Five to make sure you haven't forgotten anything.

Luckily, we were able to grab these screenshots from our favorite ladies' Facebook pages last season. It should provide a perfect refresher course for you.

Episode 5.1 "LGB Tease"

This week, the BBC treated us to a history lesson about sexual revolution — in the form of animation. Every generation, the BBC says, has its own subversive female cartoon character who sashays or skydives or golden lassos her way into our lives, and challenges society's views about femininity. Here are a couple of their best picks:

Betty Boop, 1930

When Betty Boop appeared on the big screen in 1932, she had something no other female cartoon character had ever exhibited: cleavage. She wore high heels and a garter belt, and embodied the carefree persona of a '20s flapper. Before Betty Boop, female cartoon characters were either anthropomorphic, or caricatures of actual women who were often reduced to physical comedy like falling over and showing their bloomers. We never see Betty Boop's underoos. We don't even know if Betty Boop wore underoos. But she was the first cartoon character ever to make anyone wonder.

Pretend for a second that you're a member of an iconic lesbian duo that's been around for, oh, 20 years or so; or that you're one of the two lesbian members of a woman-loving band whose popularity exploded this year; or, even easier, pretend that you actually kiss girls, and actually like it. While you're imagining that you're one of those people, pretend that the singer who gets top billing at the most dyke-tastic weekend of the year is Katy Perry.

Now you know what the Indigo Girls and Uh Huh Her feel like.

"NEWS FLASH! KATY PERRY (I kissed a girl) HEADLINES THE CLUB SKIRTS DINAH SHORE WEEKEND!" shouts Dinah's website.

(Oh, and P.S., some actual lesbian bands will be there too. Or whatever.)

Hi, my name is StuntDouble and I'm a DVR-aholic. It started out so innocently: The DirectTV guy installed my DVR and told me to use it wisely. At first, I was just recording one or two shows a week, the ones I really liked. Then it was a couple of shows a day. Pretty soon I was choosing "Record Series" instead of "Record Once." And one time, by complete magic accident, I found out I could record three shows at the exact same time.

It went from bad to worse when I got wrapped up with this dodgy cat named The Linster. She gave me a sample, told me the first one was free. It was called Chuck, and inside was something named Agent Sarah Walker.

Pretty soon I was ignoring every show in my DVR, and watching a full season of Chuck on DVD. After that, I caught up on NBC.com, and moved the show to Priority One in my DVR. Everyone began to suffer:

Blair Waldorf and Serena Van der Woodsen

When Lauren London guest-starred as cheerleader Christina Worthy on 90210 this season, she gave a drive-by shout out to her bisexuality. Today, it was reported that London will be back when the season returns — and this time she's got a girlfriend.

The skeptical part of you is probably yawning and saying, "Oh, wow, and just in time for sweeps, too." Or maybe, "Still being billed as a guest-star, I see. I guess that's so she can disappear into thin air when the Very Special Episodes are over." Or even more likely, "Wow, has this show not been canceled yet?"

I understand the reluctance to jump up and down, especially after the lesbian community has been burned so badly by network TV this year, but a teenage bisexual woman of color isn't exactly something you see every day on television, so I say it's probably a good thing.