The other day I made homemade chicken soup, for the first time ever. Tallied up the cost of ingredients - $7.75, and the number of big bowls of soup resulting - 6 - and figured that I could have bought Campbell's soup cheaper. If you add in my time, which is usually valued at 50 dollars an hour, you end up with 34 dollar bowls of soup.

Although my soup tastes better and has less sodium, which was the plan all along, it ain't worth 34 dollars a bowl. Next time, I'm buying ready-made stock.

How much does dental floss cost? I know it's possible to buy dental floss at the dollar store. How much does it cost to run the stove to boil it?

I guarantee the cost of a hospital stay on a respirator plus physical therapy is more than you can save by buying dented cans. I've had botulism and I'd like to kick the ass of Mildred in Minneapolis and her potentially lethal advice about "homeopathic cures." Has she come up with some homeopathic way to breathe with a paralyzed diaphragm?

These aren't SMART people calling in with tips. Smart people know that buying $100 of brand new fabric, $15 worth of thread, then spending 120 hours handsewing a quilt which you can buy at Target for 20 bucks is not a savings. And since it's not really a savings, you don't get to claim it as a virtue.

Now that I've got that out of my system, I'm very glad to see this article, because Salon has been one of the worst offenders on the "The recession makes me happy!" front. If you never cooked for your family before and now you do, it's because you were a twat before, not because of the recession. There are people who never could afford to eat out, and now they can't afford to eat in, and your little Marie Antoinette pretending-to-be-a-shepherdess on the grounds of Versailles schtick makes me want to kill you with a sharp stick.

It's simply a lie that people are donating to food banks more. Our food banks have put out a call because they have empty shelves, and there are more people using them than ever before. People who have nothing give nothing.

Or you could start with spermicidally lubricated condoms. Not as safe as spermicide separately, but I bet it would kill stuff better than tabasco!

Video doesn't run.

So does this mean...

...that I should be offended when a woman carries pepper spray or mace in her purse when we are on a date? Where's the trust, ladies?

Yes, if your steady girlfriend carries mace in her purse because she thinks she might need to use it on you, you have my permission to be offended.

Oh come now. Surely you see there's a difference between protecting yourself from assault by strangers and protecting oneself from your ongoing sexual partner. It wasn't just the first time they had sex that he did this, but many times during the early part of their relationship. He was doing this after he knew her. He never stopped doing it; they simply stopped using condoms, so it ceased to be an issue.

I live in Tennessee, and this hasn't been mentioned in our local paper or on our local news.

Okay... some of you folks are concerned that if a women WERE to use the sperm from a used condom to get pregnant, the hot sauce might HURT HER?

Huh?

On the off chance that a woman doing such a thing were even a plausible happening, her getting mild vaginal irritation as she tries to screw over her sexual partner behind his back isn't something that deeply concerns me. It's like putting a mousetrap in your safe and being terribly worried that some poor widdle safe cracker might get a broken finger.

My objection, and I assume the LW's objection, is to the assumption that she (or any other sexual partner) is likely to do such a thing, not that she was planning to and worried about getting hurt!

Guys, don't be quite so paranoid. In this day and age most men aren't going to marry a woman just because she gets pregnant and most women know that. Getting child support out of an unwilling father is like pulling teeth and most women know that too. Yeah, there are some kooky bottom-feeders who might do such a thing, but you're not likely to meet one, and if you do she will have "I'm crazy, run like hell" written over her in so many ways it won't be a surprise. Most women aren't racing their engines with eagerness to provide an unwilling absent father for their children.

Cary is assuming, in his response, that the fiance is both young and uneducated. But the LW is writing to Salon, which says to me that her fiance is probably the sort of person who is Salon's target audience - mature, with a college degree and at least some graduate school.

The way this came up, in a conversation about his brother, says to me that this is not an OCD issue, or at least not a contamination-related OCD issue. It seems to me more of a "My brother and I regard women as scary dangerous bitches and it's us against them" issue. That he was listening to this Leykis guy in the first place is problematic. You want a piece of that? I sure wouldn't, if I were you.

Quick poll of the (four) male friends I've seen today would indicate that they all shake their heads with a wall-eyed look, laugh, and say your boyfriend is crazy.