I'm a liberal who listens to 'liberal' talk radio, read 'liberal' Web sites and publications and know many 'liberals.' No where do I see any call among all of us to end Christmas or make anyone stop saying 'Merry Christmas.'The only place I see the 'war on Christmas' being flogged is on Fox.

What a coincidence that Fox has so much to say on the so-called liberal war on Christmas just as one of its anchors, John Gibson, is selling his new book, 'The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.' Mere coincidence? I think not.

I wonder how long it would take someone to reduce O'Reilly to shouting "Shut up." From what I've seen, this is how he 'debates' anyone who doesn't agree with him.

Read this excellent commentary by Keith Olbermann.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060912/cm_thenation/15120539

Lord, I hope this is all tongue-in-cheek. Get yourself some new friends. Yeah, you might have the postpartum experience from hell, or you might have the greatest experience of your life. Your call.

Forgive me if this point was brought up before but I have not read every single post on this story.

>>So, too, was my decision to get a Ph.D. in literature as a step toward the nice cushy professorship that would allow me to lay back and watch myself write novel after novel, with perhaps a collection of stories here and there.<<

That should be 'lie back.' As my mother always used to say, "To lay is to put. You don't 'put' down in bed."

Tossing a student out is not going to solve anything. Sooner or later, someone will sue because being ejected from the school was the final straw that drives some student over the edge to kill themselves.

But on the other hand, after some due diligence, it's not the college's responsibility to play nanny to a young adult.

It's called 'marketing.' Old products are re-marketed as a new product, thus reviving interest and sales. My favorite marketing ploy is the genius who came up with the idea of putting a diamond wedding ring on the other hand and calling it the righthand ring.

The nipple tint/lipstic thing reminds me of a joke my dad, a research chemist who worked with cosmetics, told about lipstick. What is the difference between lipstick and a suppository? The color.

>>I joked that they should call these gatherings schtupperware parties.<<

A friend of mine held parties to sell sex toys, lingerie and etc. She called the stuff 'fuckerware.'

I admit too that there is a light bulb battle in our house. My husband wants them because of the economical reasons but I don't like them. They don't work right in the lamps with dimmer switches, flickering and occasionally completely going off, and in other fixtures they don't fit uunderneath the shades. And in our local newspaper, there was a recent article that said these bulbs contain mercury and must be disposed of through the city haz mat recycling, not just tossed in the trash.

>>Just as there is outrage over this issue and FGM, there should be the same outcry over the practice of mutilation via circumcision of baby boys in the West. Is is not the same issue of conforming to a cultural norm?<<

Seems to me the equivalent for men would be reconstructing the foreskin after circumcision. But does any culture value bringing an intact foreskin to a marriage?

The thing I hate second most about Coldstone Creamery is standing in the long line waiting for someone ahead of me to get all that crap mixed into their ice cream.

The thing I hate most about Coldstone Creamery is being the person getting the crap mixed into my ice cream while everyone else in line behind me waits.

What? 31 flavors weren't enough?

I won't go there anymore. Since I'm not in their target demographic, I guess they won't miss me.

When I was 13, I had had it with 5 years of viola lessons. I wanted rock 'n' roll and a viola most definitely wasn't rock 'n' roll. Years later, listening to Sgt. Pepper it occurred to me that maybe it was more rock 'n' roll than I thought and regretted that I didn't stick with it in hopes that I could some day play behind someone as big as the Beatles.

So maybe your daughter wants to move into rock, blues, country or jazz, or another genre of music but she's stuck with a teacher who has her playing Moonlight Sonata and Fur Elise. Or maybe she'd like to drop piano but pick up guitar, percussion, pedal steel, harp, bagpipes or some other instrument.

What performer does she like? Examine that performer in a CD, DVD or live in concert and see if your daughter wants to move into that genre or take up another instrument played in the performance. After all these years of piano lessons, she's got the musical skills to move on to something different and excel.

Or maybe she seriously does want to drop the piano. If the music isn't pleasurable and she doesn't have a passion for it, she's probably not going to get much more out of it no matter how hard you push.