Normally I enjoy Salon's lighter, gossip-oriented articles. But this one left me scratching my head. Exactly how is Perez Hilton significant? He sounds like yet another attention-craving bottom feeder. And the best way to deal with this species is to starve it of what it most desires.

Unfortunately, this kind of crime is all too common. And pointing out the parallels in these cases is hardly frivolous; they are tragic in their similarities and the lack of traction in their investigations.

Publicizing crimes against women is fine. I'm all for shining a light in dark places. But dwelling lovingly on their sensationalistic aspects is another story. Look at the coverage of Laci Peterson's, Nicole Brown Simpson's and Jon Benet Ramsay's murders and Natalee Holloway's disappearance. Did it shed more light on these tragedies, or bathe the nation in bathos and sleaze to juice the ratings?

The crimes seem very similar. Both involve multiple female victims. Victims in both cases were prostitutes. Some of the women in both cases were strangled. Ongoing investigations are having a hard time narrowing the search for the killer. Identical comparisons are made between the murderer and Jack the Ripper.

About the only difference is that there have been some attempts to humanize the victims of the Atlatic City murders. (I can't recall any of them being referred to by their hair color, for instance.) Other than that, both are examples of how crimes against women are sensationalized by the news media.

... from the danger of tofu!

Yes, new moms can be inane, a constant stream of infant talk is boring, kids poop, doting parents spoil their offspring, and showing off your frozen breast milk can really kill a conversation. On all these things, this mom agrees with Elisa Gonzales Clark. Even parents can only put up with so much of this before desperately changing the subject.

However, where we part company is on Clark's view of friendship, which seems kind of selfish. She doesn't want to meet her friends halfway, despite the enormous changes in their lives. She resents her friends' responsibilities towards their families and wishes they were all childless and free again so they could escape to Hawaii and flirt with a transvestite Johnny Depp in a mosh pit or something. Her friendships seem to be all about her needs and her pleasure, not about her bonds with others.

To endure, a friendship requires empathy, supportiveness, and the realization that its very nature may change over time. Friendships end, too. Sometimes children kill a friendship, and sometimes it's marriage, or moving, or illness, or a million other things. And sometimes friendships ebb and flow with time. It's best to let them run their course without resentment. Who knows when an old friend might breeze back into your life? (It happened to me yesterday!)

Anyhow, if Clark really wanted to retain her new-mom friends, she wouldn't have dissed them so publicly in the San Francisco Chronicle. That in itself speaks volumes about her strange concept of friendship.

When your biological clock strikes midnight, you may not have time to wait for Prince Charming to ride in on a white horse and whisk you away. You have to make up the ending yourself -- good, bad or somewhere in the middle.

When my husband and I got engaged, we needed transportation a lot more than a diamond. So we used the money that would have been spent on an engagement ring to buy a car. Not very romantic, perhaps, but it's the kind of pragmatic thinking that I love in my husband.

We also had a small, intimate family wedding. (Our biggest extravagance was a chocolate chip cheesecake wedding cake.) Now, when I hear everyone's tales of Bridezilla, Momzilla, and other assorted wedding woes, I just smile.

Guess we'll have to tie him down, peel his eyelids open, and force him to watch Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Lily Tomlin, Katherine Hepburn, Janeane Garofalo, Whoopi Goldberg, Ellen DeGeneres, Tina Fey, and Margaret Cho do their stuff.

Do not move with your mom into a duplex. It sounds like she needs a higher level of care than you can provide without quitting your job. You will end up resenting both her and the other members of your family. Trust me, I've seen it happen.

Instead, look into assisted living facilities near either you or your sister. Your mom will have independence and an appropriate level of care, plus companionship and stimulation from the other residents and programs at the facility. And you and your sister can spend as much time with her as you want.