I'm not the biggest marriage advocate, but the original essay annoyed me a lot, too. Her points are kind of boring, and, yes, condescending. "I don't need a piece of paper from the state to tell me that my love is more enduring and lasting than all other people's love" was pretty much the tone that came through to me. Well whoop-de-doo for you, lady.

Besides which, her disagreement with marriage seems to have more to do with word choice. paraphrasing, again. "Marriage is for retro-morons. My partner and I, being more evolved and modern, are going to have a 'commitment ceremony' that is much better than your marriage ceremony." Wheeeee! How great for you. But it sounds EXACTLY like a couple of the marriage ceremonies I went to last year. Only the wording has changed, but somehow yours is better. What??? Oh, that's right. Theirs involved a "piece of paper" from the state.

Third, disliking the trappings of the modern marriage ceremonies is hardly the same as arguing against the institution itself. Whether partners are "married" or merely "committed" there are legal aspects (that piece of paper) that might eventually have to be addressed down the road. Community property, what to do with kids, etc. Many of these are already addressed by the piece of paper. Oh, but I forgot: only married people ever see their relationships fall apart. People like the essay writer and her partner are way too superior to the rest of us to ever have their relationship dissolve; their love is forever, because they opted out of a marriage ceremony in favor of a "commitment" ceremony. How wise of them. How so much better.

In short, the essay wasn't so much an indictment of marriage as it was a sanctimonious bit of self-promotion. It makes no real argument against marriage, yet mocks those who might still find value in marriage, especially as to how it can bind larger families into relationships, too, as being old-fashioned dinosaurs. Grrrrr, I say. Grrrrr. Grrrrrrr.

From the fertile imagination of Keith Knight comes another comic gem.

The professor was a profoundly wise man.

We haven't invaded Iran yet. I'm gonna change that.

Some people think a president should be subject to the laws of the land. I'm going to change that, too.

Some people have this... misguided idea that America is a democracy. I'm working on that one. too.

I'm a change president. Change is what I do. I'm a change-inator.

If there is any justice in the world, a year from now the only meaning the word "change" will have for George Bush is that it is the word written on the styrofoam cup he is holding out on street corners.

At the bottom of the Flanagan's column, it says she is working on a book about the emotional lives of pubescent girls. I think that explains this column perfectly. Expect more of the same flimsily constructed arguments which will reveal more about HER emotional reaction to the emotional lives of pubescent girls. And as to the central question of her essay?

...Now we have to ask ourselves this question: Does the full enfranchisement of girls depend on their being sexually liberated? And if it does, can we somehow change or diminish among the very young the trauma of pregnancy, the occasional result of even safe sex?

I have no idea what WE are supposed to do with any of this -- Ummm, no, you're right; they should be fully enfranchised and sexually repressed if they want to be, is that what you're saying? Anyway, I'm not sure what you're suggesting, but we need to get on it; someone form a committee. A committee to study a way to... what is it again that we are trying to accomplish? Protect women, as the Victorians did (when scandal and trauma were unknown) so that they can be fully enfranchised for the first time in history with boys, or at the very least diminish the trauma of unwanted pregnancy by, I guess her logic is, making boys share more of the stigma? But what's the point of that since, "the brutally unfair outcome that adolescent sexuality can produce will never change."

It's all very confused and poorly written. If it was brought to me by a student, I'd view it as first-draft material. It's certainly not NYT worthy. And her final anecdote about the word "Please" etched into the metal sanitary napkin box? Gag! Gahhh! Writing doesn't get more wretched than that. "Please" Etched letter by painful letter on hall pass breaks! ("If I can only finish the first 'E' I might get through the day without going insane," Sally thought as she raised her hand to get Mrs. Flanagan's attention.)

Oh my God! That paragraph is just the worst of the worst. That wild extrapolation, built from nothing, is Flanagan's final indictment of the horrors of being young and female? Please! The girl probably was trying to write "Please tell the school office if you take the last napkin."

I think Danvers is the name of a dog. A big, enormous, shaggy dog.

This is terrible news. My kids were this close to growing up as moral decent upright citizens, and now this - atrocity - of a decision. My kids will never be the same. There's just no going back from the kind of damage Keaton inflicted on them.

As you noted, these movies are always advanced, story-wise, by the same stupid device: having the dormouse character played by an actress who we know, in real life, would have men panting after her like crazy. In the world of the movie, though, the men are all too dull to see the obvious attractions of Katherine Heigl.

Excuse me, what? What crazy Bizzarro world are these men living in? "She am physically perfect. Me not attracted to her at all."

Delicious pun in the title of the strip.

As to her dilemma, she should try to forgive herself. As Dean Martin once sang: "Everybody loves a zombie, sometime..."