OMG feel my muscle. Is this fifth grade? Haha.

LW-- I am gonna take you seriously because I know people like you. Take a toastmasters class. You just need to learn how to perform a little bit.

Is there a happy medium between drop trou hot and completely unattractive? Like some nice guy of average looks but one really cute feature, like great eyes or a friendly smile?

How do you cope with people you HAVE to talk with in the course of daily life? Do you become a babbling idiot with your attractive but married & completely unavailable co-workers or clients or the guy who sells you a lottery ticket?I

There are a lot of strategies to deal with this aside from Cary's hilarious suggestions. You can play mental games to knock these Adonises down a few pegs in your mind, like imagining them naked. Or imagine that their good looks are totally the result of extensive plastic surgeries and try to imagine the features of that insecure unattractive pre-op person. Imagine that if they were actors and played the role of a unattractive or overweight person, what they might look like with that prosthetic nose or fat suit.

Imagine what they might look like at the age of 85. Or chronically ill.

These strategies might permit you to have a substantive conversation with the attractive men you happen to meet. Instead of babbling, you can listen to what they have to say and see what kinds of things they are interested in learning about you.

You can finally get to the business of judging that person beyond their looks for who they really are. And see if the substance of that person is worth your time and affection.

It is a good skill to have, to be able to look beyond superficial appearances. Attractive people don't appreciate being prejudged any more than ugly people do.

The boys would have been 12 and 15 when you started this seperate house arrangement. Did they stay with their mom those nights you had custody of their Dad? Four blocks isn't exactly close enough to deal with an emergency if one arises. Were they just left to their own devices? Completely unsupervised like in some depressing S.E. Hinton novel?

Cary's letter is wonderful and compassionate to the boys. They are powerless in this arrangement and have every reason to resent you and your selfish nonsense. You are a very selfish person concerned only with your own needs and you are completely unwilling to make sacrifices. They speak in terms of lost inheritance because maybe they are losing out financially in this dual house arrangement-- oh make that triple house if their mom is living alone too. Maybe they have friends whose parents are going to send them to college, and maybe they are feeling the burn of knowing their Dad won't be able to provide them with a college education because his modest income is going disproportionately to his new wife.

I hope you take Cary's advice but I doubt you are capable of it.

You are probably one of those kinds of step parents that make me pray that my marriage will be sucessful and that I will have good health so that my own children will never, ever, have to endure a step parent like you.

Disconnected or dead lines are not quite as screechy as faxes are.

Don't even accidentally have kids with your spouse.

Just go.

This is just a battle. It's not over yet.

Just keep on fighting the good fight to change hearts and minds.

I felt for Jesse Jackson watching the tears stream down at the announcement of Obama's win. I can't help but remember his run for president in the 1980s when I was young.

But for many of us who voted for Barack Obama 20 years after our parents did not vote for Jesse Jackson-- I think that the influence of The Cosby Show must certainly get a nod.

Who isn't reminded of Felicia Rashad's beautiful confident lawyer-mother-wife Claire when looking at Michelle Obama?

Yes, I know Cliff Huxtable was an OB/GYN not a politician. But he was a warm, intelligent, loving and humorous father figure type and we loved him and never even thought to fear him. Yes, I know Bill Cosby has been turning into a grumpy old man in his later years but he's been through a lot, too.

But going back to our childhood influences== I think that Cliff and Clair Huxtable certainly left an imprint in my young mind-- maybe others-- that would resonate later when the Obamas came to the forefront of this election.

I was ready to hate this article after reading the headline and subtitle.

But Ms. Havrilesky nailed it. Although, I might be a little older than her, because in my experience, we did have the brief hopeful interlude of the Clinton years, pre-Impeachment. I felt unabashedly hopeful campaigning for Bill Clinton as a college student in 1992. But eventually, that hope was snatched away, too, with quaint overwrought sexual scandal setting the stage for the Bush/Gore debacle of 2000.

BWAAAHAHHAAAHAAA.

No seriously, good for the goose and gander. I demand that the FCC fine this hypocrite and his show and his station.

If there is one thing I am trying to teach my kids, its that rule of law matters and no one is above the rules.

The GOP didn't refrain from impeaching Clinton. Let the Congress now impeach and indict Bush-- let an investigation air out the crimes, let Bush pick his whipping boy to leave dangling in the wind (maybe Cheney?) and let Obama swipe down and pardon to save the bipartisan day.

I think it is time to rescind tax exempt status for churches that engage in this sort of transparent politicking, whether it is abortion or gay marriage or stem cell research or whatever.

The loss of the tax exemption should be immediate.