...setting up the "Obama defense" like that. You must have something really big & risky planned, to be laying the groundwork of your excuse already. Please make it something that has a high probablity of doing you great bodily harm. Live on the edge, man.

Add me to the list of common-sense, "get the kids the hell out of the house, NOW" posters. As someone with a bi-polar relative who killed himself not even a month ago, I can tell you that our extended family all lived in constant fear that he would hurt his own daughter, yet his wife would not take her and leave. It felt like waiting for a bomb to go off. And it did, but thankfully he only took himself out. It could have been so much worse, all because his wife had her priorities in the wrong order. The children must come first - they cannot protect themselves.

catslave wrote: "I told him that I'd never divorce him, he'd have to do something so vile and heinous I'd just go ahead and kill him and no jury would ever convict me because he'd so deserve it. Here in the south, we say "he needed killin'." He finds this oddly comforting."

I told my hubby this same thing years ago, almost verbatim! Mine has no worries, either, because we both know he'd never do anything that terrible. As rough as I've been on him at times in our 13 years together, he would have done it by now. How much do I love this man who says our marriage gets *easier* by the year? More than words can say.

As we approach 40 together, I cannot imagine myself with anyone else and am happy to see Aaron Traister's positive thoughts on marriage given a prominent spot in Salon.

To me this is much more serious an issue than the Harlequin books. Google combos of "Twilight" "Harry Potter" "Nc17" and "fan fiction" and you will be agog at the stuff that is posted - and very easily accessible to any teenager willing to lie on the age verification page. Every kink you can imagine, and some that probably never occured to you, is explored with these teenaged characters. Parents should be so lucky if all their kids are reading are the Harlequins.

...no Crocs for my family or Uggs either for that matter. Some of us still recognize ugly when we see it.

"women can do anything they like and unless they weigh 400 lbs and have two heads lots of men will be willing to take a chance on them and see how it goes." Sounds like your issue should be with your brethren, then, for having low standards.

As to women watching horror movies, I've never gotten the appeal. My friends and I didn't like them as teens in the 80s and I can't even recall the last one I have seen as an adult. For ever strong woman that kicks butt there are many more that die because they are portrayed as sluts that have to go, or helpless idiots who are just too stupid to live. I'll pass, thanks. Give me Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. Not high quality cinema, to be sure, but much more inspiring.

And you said why perfectly, utdajx. I had a Wattsesque wall protecting my emotions as a teen, too, so she was really the only heroine I could relate to. And I adore the earring scene, because I wanted them for her just as badly as she did. Not because they were expensive - I think they could have been little silver hoops and she still would have wanted Keith to give them to her because of what they meant to *him*. I would never watch that movie with my friends because I didn't want them to see me cry at the end, but I wore out my own VHS copy at home, alone, bawling like a baby while cheering out loud.

I will continue to support the DNC, because as imperfect as Obama is on LGBT issues, President Huckabee will be much, much worse.