Give me a break! Break up a marriage because you feel that your artistic soul isn't being satisified and you're heart isn't in your marriage anymore. I've heard plenty of foolish, self-centered reasons for considering divorce but this is one of the better ones.

Legally, you don't need a good or compelling reason to end a marriage and if it were just you and your depressed spouse, I'd say go for it. You have as much right to be stupid as any celeberty that gets hitched in Vegas to someone they met last week, then two months down the road has buyers remorse. No rules that say that you have to work through the rough parts of a marriage if your "heart isn't in it".

But it's not just the two of you. There are children involved and no matter how amicable a divorce is, it's always difficult for children to watch their parents split up. When kids are involved, your first priority cannot be for your own happiness and fullfillment. You have to consider their needs firsts.

In cases like this, you have an obligation to try to work through the difficult points in your marriage. Really open up communication with your spouse and see what accommodations can be made so you have a chance to satisify your artisitic needs. Get into counciling if necessary. Do what you can to see if the marriage can be saved.

If it can't, and you made a genuine effort to work through your issues, divorce should be considered, but remember that as a parent, your wishes come a distant second after your children. They get first dips on your time and their needs come long before you get to give in to your artistic urges. Having children means that you don't get the run away and live like an extra from RENT, not unless you want to be known far and wide as the most self-centered asshole in the universe.

Time to grow up. You are a married person and a parent. You really don't want to stay married, that's your choice, but you do not get to discount your children's needs in this. Artistic heart or not, they come first.

That Gonzales is either unquestionably the most politically corrupt Attorney General in the history of his position, or the most incompetent. It is hard to understand how he, at every level, seems to fail to grasp any understanding of how the Justice Department operations and the people who serve beneath him.

Instead of running the Justice Department to serve the needs of the American people, Gonzales apparently believes that it is his job to further the power of the GOP, whether by firing attornies investigating corruption or by groundless accusations of voter fraud in swing districts. By continuously blaming the actions of his aides while at the same time pleading ignorance of their decitions, he has proven beyond any doubt that he no longer can serve with the confidence of the public.

One thing is clear, though. He is not the people's attorney. He is continuing on serving the interests of George Bush and his administration, regardless of the harm that he has inflicted to the rest of the nation. It will be many years to repair the harm that he has done to our courts and justice system.

At it's base, Coldstone is still pretty lousy ice cream. Too sweet and it leaves a weird texture on the tongue. I went to a Coldstone once (again, after hearing a friend praising it over and over again) and got plain vanilla with some chocolate chunks mixed it. I wanted to be able to taste the ice cream itself, and was unpleasently surprised to find that there was very little vanilla flavor to be found. The primary flavors I got was sugar and a heavy fat flavor with vanilla coming a very distant third. It didn't help that the chocolate chunks that were mixed in were of pretty low quality chocolate. For what they were charging for a "Like It" serving, it was very disapointing.

Now, if you like Coldstone, that's fine with me. But for me, a real treat is for me to head to Eddie's Sweet Shop near Forest Park in Queens, NY. This is an old fashioned ice cream palor that has been around since the early 1900s and still serves homemade ice cream with real homemade whipped cream. You can got an old fashioned sundae (or ice cream soda or whatever) where the ice cream is more than a vehicle for the toppings.