Thank you, Salon, for publishing this letter. At first, my visceral reaction was one of disgust. I thought, “Why the hell would Salon publish this crap? Bin Laden is offensive and evil, and it pains me to know he is still breathing. Why would Salon lend credence to his remarks by publishing them?”

And then I had my epiphany, as many others have had before me. Frankly, I’m embarrassed that it took this long. The Bush administration has no interest in capturing or killing Bin Laden. He’s the perfect pitchman for the RNC strategy, and his message nicely dovetails into Karl Rove’s past and present election year strategies.

The RNC and the Bush administration keeps playing this game, which can be distilled in one obvious, often-repeated declaration, spoken in many different ways, but which has always been the same message: “Look at the Liberals, Democrats, and anybody else who questions our presence in Iraq and our strategy on the War on Terror! They all want the same thing as Bin Laden! We can’t withdrawal from Iraq! If we did, the terrorists will win! Are you with us, or are you going to side with the terrorists?”

Of course, this argument would be moot if Bin Laden and his cronies were captured or killed, for then more and more people would look deeper into the Iraq situation, and if you know anything about the Bush administration, you know just how much they enjoy scrutiny. Reading Bin Laden’s message only makes me angrier at so much that has been wasted: money, time, and, most importantly, lives, all going in the wrong direction, for the wrong “cause”. Imagine how quickly we could have captured or killed Bin Laden if we had devoted a quarter of what we have spent in Iraq to the effort.

For justice, for the families of the victims of 9/11, to truly defend freedom, we should have this bastard “dead or alive”. However, the Bush administration needs its straw man, to distract us all, both Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, from it failures and its sins.

Well, hip or not, reading the article brought me back to my early teenage years, sitting in the living room, listening to "Escape" on my parent's turntable, and sporting those HUGE white headphones. I recall that this album and Foreigner's "4" were what I listened to at the time.

Of course, my taste in music changed and grew over the years. And yes, even at that young age, I could smell the cheese in Journey's lyrics and music. However, their music was built well, and it still catches me on the hook (or hooks).

So don't hate, people. Accept the fact that you liked this music once (or forever), and it still brings you back to a moment in your life. That is what good songs always do.

I have to say, while the "Mission to Mars" ending "explained" everything (but didn't explain why Sam's hair was the almost the same, but not why Imperioli and Keitel's hair was "shortened" by giving them dinky ponytails), I felt that if the show ended with the scene of Sam reading to Annie, it would have been much more powerful.

After Sam got up to leave, I remembered the expression on "Older Annie's" face. She seemed lost, as if suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's disease. To me, at that moment, it seemed as if Sam's "trip" was something in HER head, an embellishment of how she may have met the love of her life, who although is the same (or around the) same age as her, was then a handsome younger man, and whose youthful image she carried forward to her worsening perception of present-day reality. (Or would that have been too much of a shout-out to "St. Elsewhere?")

(And did anybody catch the spelling of "Hyde" after all the talk about "dark sides" and "demons"? At first, I thought the writers were going to spring a RLS-type ending with multiple Sam personalities fighting for control... thank goodness they didn't end the show THAT way).

I watched this match on live television, and what struck me most was how much Serena reminded me of a petulant child. Immediately during and after the incident, the phrase "oh grow up!" kept playing in my head.

I can recall when I was kid, the many times either I, or a sibling, or a friend would up-end a Monopoly board or "take their ball and go home" because the game wasn't going their way.

I thought Serena knew she was losing, knew that she already had a strike against her (the racquet-breaking after the first set), and knew what the next strike would be. How could she not? She knows the rules. I think that her frustration level was so high because she simply didn't want to face the fact that she was losing (regardless of the violent threats)and took this route instead (the tennis equivalent of biting an ear). And what does this say about her? She's a narcissist who needs to take responsibility and keep playing the game out. Lose with grace, lose with dignity, and grow up, dammit.