Wow, this guy would be perfect for me! I have recently developed sleep apnea and now need to wear a breathing mask at night--most unsexy. I can't even imagine being able to tell a guy this, let alone try to sleep with him there, much as I'd like to. I'd love to find someone who prefers to sleep alone NOT because of genuine intimacy issues.

The video is broken.

Let's hear it for Midwestern plain speaking!

I copied this article into an email (with full attribution, of course) and forwarded it to friends with the subject line "Pass on to your friends--and your Senator."

It would be interesting to see how many email copies of GK's article it takes to get each of our senators moving. Please participate! All 100 Senators need to see this, multiple times. Send to yours and post to let us know you did. I'll keep count.

Sign these kids, quick!

I don't CARE if it sells cars. I think it may make at least a few people buckle up more often.

Kudos to Volkwagen, and when they're done running the series, the NTSB should fund running them again every few years.

Forgive my temerity, O Learned One, but isn't it Mary Shelley's MOTHER, Mary Wollstonecroft, who is "regarded as a feminist icon": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecroft?

I love your articles generally, but I couldn't plow through this one. I couldn't get past the stunning juxtaposition of these two sentences at the beginning of the second paragraph:

"I vote for the last option, maturation -- so hang tough, Reverend Al. And Right On to that meaty middle finger you've offered in response to black power's attempt to silence any who step out of line."

Maturation--via the middle finger? Get me rewrite, please!

LW, I could so imagine myself in your shoes, and wish I had been able to wear them at your age. I was with two very attractive men in my youth--not George Clooney, quite, but demonstrably attractive to many women. And yet, the relationships died (okay, crashed into brick walls and died at the scene). As I grew older, I found my tastes gradually changed on their own to align with my own stated non-lookist philosophy, such that I have fallen for several wonderful people whose looks make my friends' left eyes squinch up and their brows furrow for months on end.

I have to admit that this one true thing about myself makes me secretly very proud. I wish I had been born this way, but it came only with age & experience. I find myself now, at 50, deeply in love with a short, balding, large-headed, long-waisted, short-legged man with imperfect teeth and a respectable waistline--and an abundance of integrity, generosity, consideration, humor and the ability to actually pay attention when women talk (a rarer thing than you might imagine). He's unavailable (married, and I would never cross that line), but I thoroughly enjoy warming myself in his orbit.

It is also true that, were he somehow suddenly available to me, I would gently guide him into a new pair of glasses NOT manufactured in the 80's, and back him firmly away from the comb-over cliff he's blindly approaching. In other words, I think there's nothing wrong with doing a little loving tweaking, especially when the changes can make a positive difference for the beloved in his/her interactions with others.

Hang on, Princess, do whatever talking to yourself you need to do to keep correcting your path. The rewards come both in having a wonderful partner and (eventually) in the pride you can take in how you feel about yourself.

LeftWingPharisee, apparently you've never checked out Deuteronomy 19, verse 21: "Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

You might have pointed out, Joan, that while Cho did rail about "rich kids" [making him a liberal], he also railed against "debauchery"--that would make him a conservative. It all adds up to--schizophrenia.

Does anyone know the status of the voter-fraud indictments brought against ACORN? It might be instructive to see whether they have held up.

Not that there's anything wrooooong with that!

Really, we need to stop playing into the right-wing's hands with their hypersexualizing of politics. Look at right wing men: cigar-chomping, womanizing, hypermasculine men's men (Rush Limbaugh, Tom Delay, Bill O'Reilly, Fred Thomson). Look at right-wing women: skinny, skirt-wearing, make-up wearing, long-haired hyperfeminine girls (shorter list, but includes Ann Coulter, Liz Dole, Laura Ingraham).

And what is the most common ad hominem attack on Democrats heard from the right? "Hillary's a lesbian; John Edwards is a girly-man!" Rush Limbaugh goes on about "hairy armpit feminazis" and Tucker Carlson recently called Obama "kind of wimpy" and "a wuss."

We need to confront this tactic head-on and insist that politicians, journalists, "journalists" (talk-radio hosts) and cable-tv "news" show hosts talk about issues. Call 'em on their shit.

I don't understand this clean thing, coming from men. The last two men I dated both wanted me to go without bathing for days on end (apparently, this was something that Napolean famously requested of Josephine). I complied but it felt gross. Now men want clean? What's the world coming to? Soon they'll be exchanging recipes...

I'm stickin' with the "brass ovaries" I've had all my life.

What if zygotes get the right to bear arms? Owie...!

I've seen it pointed out on the web that the video looked very much like the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars. Indeed, it does. But don't I remember some commentary somewhere that the Death Star scene was bogus because nothing can actually burn in space without oxygen, so the fireball wouldn't happen? Any ACTUAL rocket scientists out there know the answer?

I have to think Palin's "last mission" was a stumble over the "send me on one more mission" that McCain has been spouting the past few days.

Perhaps our girl is trying to imitate the President's infacility with language.