I will never know what it's like to be a bat, to fly and roost upside down and use echo-location, but I do know one thing: if I see a bat with a broken wing, I know that the bat is in pain and would benefit from my help.

There is way too much liberal guilt being spilled in these letter pages. So what if we are not a desperately poor resident of a Third World nation plagued by landmines? Can't we still, as fellow sentient beings, recognize the pain and suffering victims of landmines experience? Enough already with the navel gazing.

You know what? Even if an "activist" somehow turns concern for landmine victims into a self-analysis and cathartic experience, who cares? If that activist is raising money for landmine victims or otherwise helping to end this scourge, then he or she is doing a GOOD thing, regardless of what the hypercritical peanut gallery might mutter to themselves.

Really folks, please get over it. Few enough people get involved in problems outside of their own lives to begin with. Let's not over-anylyze to the point of death those people who, for whatever deep-seated reason, choose to help others. Instead, let's applaud them.

If two consenting adults choose to swap sex for material goods, whose business it it anyway? I spent a summer documenting filthy rich Republican shits, and time and time again I watched fat old slobs saunter into swank parties with pretty young things hanging off of their flabby arms. He got sex, she got material goods and invites into the world of wealth. Perfectly legal. However, if some lower class slob should dare to give $50 to a woman for a blowjob, it's a crime. The hell with that.

Personally, I wouldn't indulge in such a crass transaction, but that's me. If rich white broads want to fuck hot black studs, and the price is money, not love, who cares? It's not anyone else's business. Imaginary God knows that there's enough hypocrisy involving sex to begin with, so why worry over it or worse, criminalize it?

Child or forced prostitution? Execute the fuckers in charge. Consensual sex between adults based upon an exchange or money or material goods? No one's business but theirs.

Ideally, sex is between intimate partners based upon mutual attraction, but lots of folks aren't so luck as to find that ideal.

LW, your situation is difficult, but not unsolvable. Give this dog a chance. This dog is also stressed out and unhappy at what is happening to your grandmother. Be compassionate. Messes can be cleaned. There are over the counter and prescription drugs which can help this dog's anxiety.

My parents went through a similiar situation with their small dog. She became incontinent and a little loopy. They dealt with it by putting wee wee pads in the places she usually peed, and with patience. Eventually she died and they mourned her loss, but they did what they could to make her comfortable until they end.

This dog gave, and gives, love to your grandmother. Be a champ and return the favor.

"What's better than good sex?"

My pasta with pesto sauce.

What's better than that?

Combining sex and the pesto sauce.

Interesting thread going on here ("Spread Magazine" featuring "Yoga for Strippers." Who knew?!).

Though I think prostitution should be decriminalized, it's not a career I would recommend for people, but that's just me. I too have read accounts of sex workers who are happy in their jobs. Obviously many are not, and far too many are forced into such work one way or the other.

Still, consider the people who take jobs cleaning public toilets or picking crops in the hot sun or any other menial, gross job you can think of. Who takes such awful jobs except for people who are poor and desperate? If you are outraged at prostitution, should you not be outraged at other jobs which are physically (and perhaps even spiritually) degrading? What about the office cube worker who must perform mind-numbing tasks every day under the glare of flourescent bulbs in windowless rooms? The sky's the limit when it comes to awful jobs filled by desperate people.

Why is sex work different? Is the problem that I and some other guys here are seeing this from the male perspective, and that from the woman's point of view, having numerous penises stuck inside her body, or guys cumming on her skin, crosses the line into degradation? What about the dominatrixes who piss/shit on their clients, or whip them, etc.? I'd say that's degrading to both sides, but moreso to the man.

Perhaps you anti-decriminalization folks are right, but I still think that making it a crime is not the right remedy. It seems to me that the problem here is sex.

Question: is boxing or other violent entertainment a form of unacceptable degradation? How many poor men submit to having their bodies pummeled because that's the only way they can make a living? On the other hand, some guys love their careers as fighters, even if most may not.

If sex is a bright line not to cross, what about violence?

I think you're right. In heterosexual seductions men display their wealth and women display their cleavage, not unlike other animals which display their respective breeding assets. I wonder if in human societies this will change if and when women achieve full equality or even surpass men economically. In that future, will women display their wealth and men show off their surgically-enhanced dicks?

But then, we have the Kenya example to illustrate for us, don't we? The women display the wealth, but since sex and not procreation is the goal, the men presumably show off their hot bods. Looks like humans can rise above their instinctual displays after all.

Anyway, there's sex, and there's relationships, and as you pointed out, the lack of good conversation can end a sexual relationship. Just ask Jerry Seinfeld's brain, which easily checkmated his genitals in that classic episode.