So because the multifunctional breast is used for nourishment as well as sex, it should be OK expose it in public.

Great. Because by that logic, the multifunctional vagina is used to give birth to a baby as well as for sex. So it should be OK to expose it in public as well. And all the perverts who can't separate its two functions will just have to get over themselves and look away.

While we're at it, let's recognize the gloriously multifunctional penis. Its life-giving sperm is the companion to the multifunctional baby-bearing vagina as well as being used for pleasurable sexual activity, so I propose also putting the penis on the I'll-whip-it-out-if-I-please public viewing menu.

Moving on to the anus...

How ridiculous. Just because a body part serves another purpose besides sex doesn't mean it's appropriate to expose it in public. That's such a lame argument.

And add me to the list of people who have been horrified to see a woman plop down a baby on an empty chair in a restaurant and proceed to change its diaper. Followed of course by the defiant "I gave birth. Whatever I choose to do, wherever I choose to do it, YOU had better learn to deal with it... the rules no longer apply to me" glare. "I'm a mommy, so you'll have my baby's crap and piss with your dinner and like it, you baby-hating monster."

No, I don't hate babies at all. I love them. They're beautiful, innocent little things. It's their attention-craving, superiority-complexed "total strangers should have to subjugate themselves to my life choices, and I am exempt from the rules of manners, decency, politeness and consideration because I had a baby" mommies I have a problem with.

What Ric said.

"My questions to him will be: 'What do we need to do to succeed? What is your strategy in dealing with the sectarian violence?'" It felt like a burglar asking how you're going to replace the goods he just stole, or an arsonist asking how you'll rebuild the house he just burned to the ground.

THANK YOU. This is the part they never seem to get. All this time they've been insisting that eventually the Iraqis are going to have to stand on their own feet and run their own freakin' country. And everyone, on both sides of the political spectrum, has been nodding their heads in agreement. We've driven that country into the ground, now we're standing there saying "well, we can't do EVERYTHING for you... this is your responsibility to fix it." We destroyed it, yet we're expecting them to clean it up even though we've screwed up their entire infrastructure and pretty much erased and/or plundered all their resources. We made the mess, but it's up to them to clean it up. Nice.

Reminds me of that age-old domestic violence scene, where the abusive husband throws all the plates from the dinner table into the wall, and the room is covered in food and broken crockery. Then he grabs his wife by the neck, pushes her face into it and screams "LOOK AT THIS PLACE!! NOW CLEAN UP THIS MESS!!"

...and really MUST choose. They're all single and she's free to see both of them and enjoy both of them, because she has been honest and open with both of them. The only caveat to this is that she can't play the betrayed victim when one (or both) of these men decides he also wants to see someone else. Which is probably already happening (have they removed their online dating profiles?), but they haven't told her because they don't want to tip the scales in the other guy's favor.

Robert and Joe represent what you see as the perfect man... only they're each only half of that whole man. And as someone else pointed out, you're having all of your needs met at the moment... well, except one. Contentment.

The one thing that is crystal clear is that neither of these men is meeting all or even most of your needs relationship-wise. Each meets half your needs. And it wouldn't be fair to anyone--yourself included--if you married either of them.

I personally don't feel there's any shame in a single woman dating two single men. However, marrying one of them while pining for the other would be wrong. At the first sign of trouble (the same trouble you already know exists), you'd go running back to the other.

The true answer--the only smart, fair thing to do--would be to walk away from both of them. But you already knew that.

We did NOT choose him over Gore. Al Gore won the popular vote. That is an incontestable fact. George Bush was NOT the choice of the American people when he was up against Al Gore.

Unfortunately, that didn't matter in the end. But I still felt obliged to point it out, that when given the choice between Bush and Gore, we DID INDEED choose Gore. Bush won on a combination of an ancient, irrelevant technicality and a whole lot of cheating in Florida. But none of that changes the fact that most Americans DID vote for Al Gore.

2004, I can't even begin to explain to you. You don't have the time and I don't have the stomach.