Um, not true. I had an existing queen mattress that fits just fine with the "slats" in place, which is a good idea if you weigh more than a hummingbird.

The trick with any furniture shopping is to not buy particleboard. It's a little extra work to look at the small print building materials list provided with every piece, but you'll be thankful you did.

When my wife and I bought our first house, we went to a "real" furniture store for our bedroom set. Median-priced (Wickes, I believe) but reasonable. What we didn't check were the building mats. Turned out that the side slats were p-board. Which was fine until a particularly humid May that started loosening the glue. Now a piece of furniture that could easily support 500 lbs. snapped in two with barely any pressure.

We went to IKEA for a replacement frame. We've been going there for years: originally in the late 90s when they were the only place I could find adequate storage for my huge CD collection that didn't cost $1,000+. We've returned many times, mostly for storage items but sometimes for more. Most of our pre-schooler's room is IKEA (those step-up storage bin things for kids can take a beating) and we've had no problems. Our dining room table is also IKEA, made of solid wood (4 legs and a top) and is the most stable table I've ever seen outside of industrial workbenches - I stand on it to change the lightbulbs and its never so much as wobbled; just try that with your parents' dining room furniture!

Anyway, we got a solid wood bed frame for less than $300 and its fine. Just as stable as the $1000 one it replaced and we'll never have to worry about humidity turning it into junk.

...a mischievous badger!

George Bush and Dick Cheney is the reason the Republican Party is where it is today.

Barely. After your flowery, no substance convention. Everybody gets a bounce – doesn't mean a thing.

Basically, he's admitting they had a chance until 2 weeks later when:

1. A major financial crisis forced everyone to get a little more serious about the election's outcome

2. Palin started doing national interviews, leaving no doubt about the quality of McCain's VP selection and, by proximity, his leadership abilities

If (1) didn't happen (the meltdown could have come earlier or after the election) maybe they would have stayed up for a few weeks until (2) happened. At that point, McCain/Palin was dead in the water.

McCain's Sunday interview does reveal some of the class that got him the nomination. Other GoOPers could take a cue from him. But if he's not willing to cop to how truly horrible his VP choice was, can we really trust his judgment in anything else?

The latest Z craze started with the "Dawn of the Dead" remake which, probably not so coincidentally, came out in the fall of 2004. Gee, what else happened during that time period? Oh, yes, another horde of zombies went to the polls and "re-elected" George Bush.

I remember at the time I joked to my friends that if Bush did get re-elected, at least it wasn't as bad as a zombie apocalypse! Soft bigotry of low expectations, I guess.

Max Brooks' "World War Z" (an incredible companion piece to his "Zombie Survival Guide") was published in 2006, so it doesn't qualify. "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" only sort of qualifies because the follow-up "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" has no zombies what-so-ever. Even "Zombieland" was pre-produced (written and cast) in early 2008 and was probably not influenced too much by the meltdown. 2008 also produced George Romero's overlooked comeback in "Diary of the Dead".

Zombie-love, or at least this latest incarnation of it, was conceived in George Bush's America, David, and for good reason.

You should stick to the monsters you know: vampires.

I hope someone on some news station somehwere establishes a connection between the Chicago "no" vote and a family's recent tragedy in losing their son to violence in the city.

Rio, who was just chosen, has a higher rate of murder than all the finalists and often calls in the military to handle "security".

But every other poor person in Rio doesn't own a cell phone with video capabilities, so no one knows that 11-year-old's armed with machine guns often patrol the city for their drug cartel bosses. Or that their athletes and their families are often kidnapped for ransom.

Anyway, congrats Brazil!

She looks like a doe-eyed, heart-shaped face, 20-something. Which are exactly who Hollywood casts to play "teenagers" in shows like "Gossip Girl" and "Veronica Mars", and now, "Caprica".

Broadsheet has been really burning the midnight oil lately as the possibly kiddie porn alert system, and there's no doubt in a few cases they've had a point. But posts like this are a cry wolf situation that does nothing but further Broadsheet's burgeoning reputation as a borderline tabloid-blog. Think Perez Hilton without the nip slips.

It also smells a bit like filler: an easy 300-word post.

I found the article rather light-hearted, especially when you consider some of the atheist literature I've read lately. Dawkins and Hitchens come to mind. Please don't read those. Your head will explode.

"Just because evolution applies to everything around us doesn't mean it applies to humans."

And how would THAT work exactly? If it doesn't apply to all then it doesn't apply. That's how science works.

Or are you proposing that all other species came into existence through evolution and god picked the current (last 6000 years?) time to plop mankind into the middle of it?

Step 1: Be George W. Bush

"Cat"? He referenced Obama using outdated slang from 70s black exploitation movies. Does he also say "Give me some skin"?

Speaks volumes about race relations under the Bush administration.

Lastly, with a mother like Bar Bush, you'd think he'd be a bit more sensitive about fat-ass comments?

Isn't that a bit like covering massages?