My ex-gf couldn't make it through the first 150 pages of the first Twilight book in 2008.

My current gf thinks Buffy is awesome but can't stand Twilight. Just a few hours ago she was watching this wildly popular "Buffy vs. Twilight" mash-up on YouTube (apologies if it's been linked here before):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM

Both of these women are in their mid-late 20s, self-identify as feminists and have read every single Harry Potter book from cover to cover.

I don't see any need for antipathy toward the horde of teenage Twilight fangirls on the convention circuit, though. I bet a healthy percentage, at least 10%, can be "turned" onto edgier stuff once they start browsing the booths.

Liberal sources report that 2 + 2 is 4. Conservative sources dispute this assertion; they say that 2 + 2 is 10. We don't really know where the truth lies, but we can assure our readers that we will continue to report on this dispute and keep readers up to date on developments.

2 + 2 IS 10... in base 4.

Is that part of the joke? Where's my prize?

RBL and chickie both hint at, in their letters, what I think is one of the major subtexts not really addressed in the CNN article - the MONEY.

My divorced father tried getting back into the dating scene a few years ago. (No, he didn't use the Internet.) He met a very sweet widowed woman who owned a fair amount of local real estate, including the building right across the street from my father's small business. The relationship eventually fizzled, and a major contributing factor was the widow's adult children who were aghast at Mom potentially diluting their future inheritances by remarrying outside her social class.

As in many other areas of life, the Internet is just taking these age-old societal conflicts and speeding them up a bit, to where some people don't quite know how to react. "Merry Xmas kids... check your stockings for a special surprise... restraining orders" :)

... the key to high school popularity is giving away free mind-altering substances.

100% TRUE life story to relate about this - in high school, I played football but was only of middling popularity - I was an overweight offensive lineman who didn't know how to talk to girls. And oh yeah, I got straight A's and hung out in the computer room every day before practice.

However - by virtue of my overwhelming fatness I was voted as a reserve on the league football all-star team, to play an benefit game against a rival league. And better yet, the game was to be held while all the rest of my family was away on vacation.

Naturally, the first thing that sprung to mind for me was... "Now I have an entirely new peer group of temporary friends for three weeks who don't know anything about me other than that I am a reasonably competent football player... and I have the entire house to myself. Now is my chance... to be popular!" So what did I do?

KEG PARTY. Of course!

And it worked. There were cute girls. Nobody got arrested. A couple people passed out on the floor but responded well to black coffee a few hours later. Someone spilled beer on the rugs so I steam cleaned the carpets before my family got back from vacation. Everyone had a rockin good time and wished me well in college and promised to drop me a line again one of these days, and then I never heard a word from any of them again.

MORAL: I finally knew what it felt like to be popular, and was then able to peacefully return to my life of nerdy obscurity. Now I am living happily ever after.

The end.

Why are you even talking about this now? Didn't you discuss this BEFORE you got married? Or did you, and perhaps one (or both) of you has changed his/her mind?

I ask this question as a direct reflection of my own life, being a guy who is interested in becoming a parent some day. The "kids" issue is pretty basic for me and has already put the brakes on a couple promising relationships for me in the past, so now I'm asking as early as the third or fourth date, in my own subtle way:

Me (pointing at screaming kid a couple tables/checkout lanes away): "Cripes, I can't stand these parents who take their screaming fucking banshee hellspawn out in public like that."

My date: "Aww, you shouldn't talk like that. Kids are cute."

CHA-CHING! That's what I want to hear. Sold.

Now how hard was that?