A look at the world from a sometimes sarcastic, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, decidedly American male perspective. Lately, this blog has been mostly about gender issues, dating, marriage, divorce, sex, and parenting via analyzing talk radio, advice columns, news stories, religion, and pop culture in general. We believe that the Bible is right, life begins at conception, and government should be limited instead of being our parent. Don't take us too seriously and read at your own risk.
Dr. Laura linked to this article, "5 Reasons to Make Some Noise in the Bedroom", in her daily list of recommended articles. I wonder if she noticed or cared that the author is an "open marriage" advocate, or if she figures "all truth is God’s truth" and questionable sources can still provide worthwhile reading? The author says what I've referred to as "aural sex" can be a matter of health.
Breathing deeply can increase pleasure. It can also keep the fun from ending too soon. Use your breath to regulate the speed of what’s going on. Speed it up to help get you in the mood, and slow it down to prolong the activities.
It's good to use everything we can, right?
It means your partner knows that you are enjoying it.
YES! That’s very important for me to know, anyway.
It keeps you in the moment. If you spend all of your time in bed thinking about keeping quiet so you don't sound "weird,” you’ll miss all of the fun. But, if instead of worrying about how noisy you are, you simply let the sounds fall where, when, and how they may, you can stay present and enjoy all of the presents your partner is gifting you.
We know from other areas of life that thinking about breathing and being deliberate about breathing can impact our physical and mental state.
It shows intimacy. If you can tell your partner what you want in bed, it means you feel close enough to him or her to be comfortable doing that.
I need to work on that. See below.
It means you’re comfortable with your sexuality. Letting it all out is only possible when you feel good about yourself and what you're doing, which is how everyone should feel when it comes to sex.
This was obviously written by Dr. Laura herself because I find it VERY hard to believe that anyone could be as c--t-like as her...specially when I read the parts defending her talking trash about fat people and single mothers who decide to take responsibility by raising their children, instead of pushing them off on people who could potentially molest, beat them or end up being a drug addict in which case the child/ren would be much worse off than being with some dreadful...single mom (gasp)!
And...
And by the way, Dr. Laura, I know this won't end up on this blog but I just wanted you to read what a piece of trash I and many think you are.
I am clearly not Dr. Laura. I do not have a Doctorate. I've never identified as Jewish. I'm a follower of Christ. I have a penis and testicles (I 'm not absolutely certain, but it is reasonable to presume Dr. Laura doesn't), I do not have a radio show, and I have more than one child. I have also disagreed with Dr. Laura about some things (mostly minor things and her bias against technology). So clearly, I'm not her. She has her own blog and fancy website and would have no reason to write this blog.
Trisha... bitter, fat, foulmouthed, paranoid, and condemning children to fatherless lives is no way to go through life, and it must suck for the child(ren) to have only one parent, and one who is in such a state.
Having been fat myself, Dr. Laura is right. Fat people, in general, are fat because they eat too much and move too little. There's nothing wrong with that she says about that.
As far as adoption... there are adoptive parents who are good parents. Women can avoid being single mothers by using the many forms of contraception available, or even better, saving sex (or at least intercourse) for a good, compatible man who is willing and able to be a husband and father (choose wisely). Marrying such a man and treating him well (treat kindly) may still result in a woman being a widowed mother. However, Dr. Laura makes a distinction between "widowed, divorced, never married". In the event a woman finds herself without a good husband and pregnant, then yes, there's adoption.
Lashing out at Dr. Laura doesn't change the fact that people have made some poor choices in their lives, and if other people learn not to make those same poor choices, we'll all be better off.
This is another entry in which I discuss marital lovemaking. If you don't want to read about this subject, or read about it as it pertains to my marriage, consider yourself warned.
About six months ago, my doctor told me my cholesterol was way too high and offered me the choice of medication or trying to lower it through other means.
I told him I'd hold off on the medication.
I did some basic research on what I should and should not be eating if I wanted to lower my cholesterol level.
My wife does most of the grocery shopping in our family, so I gave her a list of things to buy that would help - I only included in the list things I would actually eat. I was honest with myself.
Well, it worked.
I recently went back to my doctor and the latest lab report shows I lowered my level by 50 points. I also dropped a few pounds without getting any more exercise. Actually, I probably got less.
The one thing I really miss is cheese. I love just about any kind of cheese... sharp cheddar, soft cheeses, goat cheese, spicy cheese... argh.... Oh well. I still have a little cheese here and there, but it isn't a regular part of my diet anymore.
It probably helped that we haven't been to my wife's parents' place in two months, not only because of the tasty dinners my MIL prepares, but the appetizer snacks my FIL always puts out while dinner is being made.
Why haven't we seen them in two months, despite living about 15 minutes away from them? That'll have to wait for another update.
How are you??? Any current health/fitness success stories to share?
I have this friend I'll call Charlie who has been a friend since something like the second grade. Actually, it wasn't until sixth grade that we got to be good friends, and after we were graduated from high school we've stayed in contact more through e-mail and social networking than anything else, but every few years we've had dinner or whatever.
Recently, he sent me a message that made me think of this:
My wife had a very good idea the last time we saw Charlie in person. She wanted to set him up with a friend of hers. Charlie and this friend have compatible careers and faith. My wife's friend is attractive and has never been married. (My wife can't figure out why, I point out that my wife has never dated her friend.)
Charlie, however, isn't open to dating. He told me he really thinks he's supposed to be with a certain woman I'll call Chrissy. Many years back, Charlie, who thinks of himself as a good Christian man, "married" Chrissy and moved her and her kids into his place. I wrote "married" because Chrissy was still legally married to the father of her children, supposedly just for benefit purposes.
Wouldn't you know it? After a few years, Chrissy ended up taking her kids and reuniting with their father, who was still her legal husband. Charlie refused to move on. Mind you, Charlie had been legally married before in a marriage that didn't last long because his wife, who was about ten years older than we are, was a control freak who couldn't handle the fact that Charlie threw her a surprise birthday party. That ended that marriage.
But back to the situation with Chrissy
So Chrissy and the kids left because Charlie was tired of divided loyalties, and Chrissy later moved out on her husband again without coming back to Charlie, but that hasn't stopped Charlie from referring to her kids, who have a father, as his kids, travelling to see them, having them come for visits, etc... and for keeping his heart fixated on Chrissy (who is NOT some beautiful prize, mind you).
But wait... it gets better.
One of Chrissy's daughter had a friend I'll call Allison who a bad home life, so Chrissy took her in. When Charlie was returning one of Chrissy's kids to her, he met Allison. Since he treated Chrissy's kids like his own, he agreed to treat Allison like one of his own (he has no biological or adopted kids of his own). Allison has referred to him as dad ever since.
Allison went back to her parents, and Charlie and Allison kept in contact. Charlie went to visit and Allison and her parents. They later sent Allison to visit Charlie. Allison didn't want to go back home, but she did after she and Charlie talked about the possibilities, and Charlie sent a letter to her parents asking if he could take care of Charlie. Her parents sent her back to Charlie.
Charlie wrote to me and told me that he has "assumed custody" of Allison.
I wrote back a blunt reponse, part of which is below:
What do you think the average (not YOU, the average) social worker, police officer, prosecutor, judge, jury member, or TV news viewer would think if they heard that a single heterosexual man... “assumed custody” of an unrelated, troubled 16-year-old girl whose family lives halfway across the country?
And...
What does “assumed custody” mean? Is there a legal contract? Official sanction from state/local governments? Approval from a licensed social worker?
There's a reason people legally marry and build a nest before raising children or foster parenting. As you noted, it is hard being a single parent. (It is hard enough being a married parent.) You can’t provide Allison with enough supervision, especially given her background, and she’s at high risk to end up pregnant within the next couple of years.
Charlie has not responded, and it has been a while. The age of consent in our state is 18, by the way. I'm pretty sure Charlie was a virgin until well after high school, and he may just not have a grasp on the reality of the situation.
I do not believe his intentions are for ill, but as the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I would not be the least surprised if Allison has or develops a crush on Charlie, or if her parents were to screw him over. Charlie wants to stay connected to Chrissy and play the hero, and that is what he's doing here. For whatever reason, he doesn't want healthy, available women. He wants projects. The problem is, this a very risky situation and I can't think of any professional advice-giver saying this is a good idea. Dr. Laura would name which chapters in her book Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives Charlie is doing. He has given no idication that his parents or sister, or anyone else, has told him this is a bad idea.
Fortunately for me, my wife likes to celebrate a different day, as one of our anniversaries falls close to February 14.
It's my year to plan, but my wife made plans already for the both of us that preclude us from doing anything too big. Looks like it's going to be restricted to a nice dinner out without the kids.
What are you doing or what did you do, if anything?
A man who discovered that the daughter he raised was not really his can sue the biological father for $190,000 -the estimated cost of raising her for 15 years - the Connecticut State Supreme Court has ruled.
Good for the court!
Eric Fischer saw the red flags. When his youngest daughter was born, his wife Pamela Tournier's close friend and business partner Richard Zollino rode home in the limo with the new parents. For the next 15 years, Zollino was omnipresent at the girl's musical recitals as well as her eighth grade graduation. And his youngest daughter did not look like his other two daughters, including one from a previous marriage.
Fischer decided to confirm what he already suspected. He "surreptitiously obtained" a hair sample from his daughter and sent it to lab with his own DNA sample and in October 2006, he received the results that "excluded the possibility that he was the younger daughter's father," according to a court document.
Fischer confronted his wife and they divorced in 2007.
The couple's separation agreement only listed the couple's elder daughter as issue of the marriage and Tournier testified that she believed the agreement was fair and that "she believed [Zollino] was the younger daughter's father and that he had provided the younger daughter with support since and would continue to do so," according to the court document.
I have to wonder how the marriage was otherwise?
Zollino submitted a DNA sample and it was confirmed that he was the girl's father.
He was the sperm donor. Her father is the man who raised her.
In 2008, Fischer filed a lawsuit against [Zollino] seeking damages on claims of nondisclosure, misrepresentation and unjust enrichment.
A lower court ruled against Fischer, saying that he "had held himself out to be the younger daughter's father, that he had caused her to rely on him to meet her financial and emotional needs, and that revealing her true parentage after she had been led to believe for her whole life that [Fisher] was her father, would be detrimental to her emotional well-being."
Well hey, that happened anyway, didn’t it? Why can’t the courts quietly and secretly award damages along with an order that the truth not be told to the child under penalty of violating the court order? He held himself out to be the girl's father because he was defrauded. A fraud victim does not lose his or her right to seek recourse just because they were duped. They have to be duped in the first place for the fraud to take place.
Once upon a time in a land far, far away... OK, well, actually several years ago in the OC, there was an 18-year-old who at least dabbled in cocaine and she got in a fight with at least one of her parents, took their expensive sports car for a late-night high-speed drive, and got herself mangled and killed in the process. Thankfully, she did not kill anyone else.
The responding law enforcement agency documented the accident scene, including taking pictures.
Some unprofessional members of that agency leaked the pictures.
Those pictures have found no small audience online. That;s bad enough.
Unfortunately, some people took to cyberbullying by sending and delivering the photos to the deceased's family.
The family has just now reached a settlement. It is too bad that taxpayers, or an insurance company hired by taxpayers, are paying for this settlement.
I've deliberately been vague about this. You really don't need to search for the pictures.
Some people who have shacked up for years and have kids plan these elaborate weddings, complete with a white dress. And have you seen any of those elaborate flash-mob-dancing wedding proposals?
Yeah, well, it is getting worse.
Teresa Watanabe reports at LATimes.com about a high school senior named Alex Hom asking a freshman by the name of Brooke Drury to the winter formal dance. This is at South Pasadena High School in California. That city is often referred to as Mayberry, yet is home to a lot of Hollywood people (some famous actors have attended that public high school, including at least one Oscar winner I can think of.) So if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere, as evidenced by the rest of the article.
So he rounded up more than 20 friends, supplied them with red roses, choreographed a dance routine and wrote out his plea on signs. Then he had a friend bring Brooke, blindfolded, to a spot on campus for the big production.
"I thought, this is my senior year and I gotta go out with a bang," Alex said.
He's not the only student elevating the art of the school dance invitation.
Students are folding the question into homemade fortune cookies, tucking it into pinatas, knitting it into scarves, spelling it out with pepperoni on pizza and orange chicken on fried rice.
There are animal-themed invitations, using live puppies and turtles as messengers.
Ugh.
Camille Santos, Van Nuys High's student body vice president, recalled one student who dressed up as a knight and got a friend to dress up as a dragon to "attack" his prospective date. Then he rode onto the scene on the back of another friend dressed as a steed, "slayed" the dragon and popped the question.
"We live in a generation where flashy is good, bigger is better," said Camille, whose boyfriend placed his invitation to prom two years ago inside a rhinestone-studded fortune cookie box after dinner at a Chinese restaurant.
"We want to be seen. We want the world to know how romantic we are."
TMW. Too much work. Especially for a high school dance. This is stuff you do for a wife. If a guy does this kind of thing and she doesn't react well, he could easily be accused of being a stalker or a sexual harasser.
I won't even get into the potential problem of a 12th grader (who can often be 18 years old) taking a 9th grader (who can often be 13 years old) on a date. That's nothing new. Way back in the Dark Ages when I was in high school there were those girls who went to all of the formal dances starting in their freshman year, asked by seniors. But a senior asking them used to be impressive enough.
There's a line between being endearing and romantic and being narcissistic or beta.
Yeah, the kids in the article had some cute ideas.
But the larger issue I see with this trend towards more showy and elaborate schemes for not just marriage proposals but now high school dates is that it is a reaction to the flip side, which is the prevalence of casual and promiscuous sex. Today, guys can get sex from many girls for little or no effort and no strings attached. So the more hoops guys are made to jump through to go the traditional route, the more guys will go the other way instead. Aside from getting to see lots of hits for their online video, how many of these guys have more fun on the evening in question than the guy who just shows up at an after party, not having spent any time or money on the event at all?
Yes, men tend to value things for which we work, but if we perceive the escalating requirements are frivolous or simply about feeding egos, we may bow out. We'll work by saving up money, dating a woman to get to know her, and buying an expensive ring, but if we have to hire some Broadway director and choreographer to ask a question, something is very, very wrong.
I've probably heard all of the arguments against the death penalty. I understand some people have good reasons for opposing the death penalty in California.
However, I am so convinced that Manling Tsang Williams deserves to be executed that I would not hesitate to strap her down and push the buttons myself. Lethal injection is too good for her.
She has shamed the Tsang family and doesn't deserve the Williams name.
Haven't heard of her? No Lifetime Original Movie will be made about her.
From the Whittier Daily Newscomes this report from Brian Day. Whittier and Rowland Heights are communities east of Los Angeles, in eastern Los Angeles County.
A judge sentenced Manling Tsang Williams to death Thursday for smothering her two young children with a pillow and slashing her husband to death with a sword in the family's Rowland Heights home in 2007.
2007. She should be dead already. Neal Williams, the man to whom she had made vows, was 27. Their sons were 7 and 3.
A jury convicted Manling Williams of three counts of first-degree murder in 2010, along with the special allegations of using weapons and lying in wait. After one jury was unable to agree on whether to sentence her to death or life imprisonment, a second penalty phase jury recommended last year that she be put to death.
Please tell me that the people who were siding with the life sentence were hoping it would make it easier for another prisoner to beat her to death.
"The evidence is compelling that the defendant, for selfish reasons, murdered her own two children," [Judge] Martinez said.
Her motivation, Martinez said, was a "narcissistic, selfish and adolescent" desire to start a new life with another man, free from the hindrances of family life.
In the months before the murders, Manling Williams had reconnected through the Internet with an old friend and began a relationship with him.
The judge pointed out that Manling Williams had numerous family members who would have taken in the children, should she have decided to abandon them.
She could have left them with Neal, who worked at Disneyland, by the way. He helped bring happiness to strangers.
After smothering Devon and Ian in their bunk bed, "The defendant savagely, brutally and viciously attacked her husband with a katana sword," Martinez said.
Neal Williams was stabbed and slashed more than 97 times in the attack, investigators said.
"In the final moments of life, Neal begged the defendant for help," the judge said.
Don't try to tell me lethal injection is "cruel and unusual" punishment. It is too good for her.
Defense attorneys Tom Althaus and Haydeh Takasugi argued for their client's life to be spared.
Althaus told the court that the killings were not calculated executions, but a "sudden mistake."
This is exactly why I couldn't be a defense attorney.
"There's no basis for the prosecution's contention that these murders were planned," Althaus said, adding that Manling Williams was in a state of "extreme mental and emotional disturbance" when she killed her husband and sons.
Neal was no doubt in a state of extreme mental and emotional disturbance and physical disturbance but he didn't murder anyone. And yes, there is a basis for the contention that these murders were planned - at least the second and third ones. Unless she's a giant octupus and killed everyone simultaneously.
Mitigating factors also included a difficult upbringing and no previous history of violence, he said.
Who didn't have a difficult upbringing? So she assassinated the character of her family. Great. Let's say it is all true. She should have THANKED Neal every day for being her parenther in a BETTER life. No previous history of violence... that's a good one. How many husbands and kids did she have before?
Althaus acknowledged that his client had had an extra-marital affair, but disputed the prosecution's assertion that the affair formed a motive for the crime.
A tramp as well as a murderer.
Out of more than 700 California death row inmates, fewer than two dozen of them are women, and none has been among the 13 prisoners executed since the death penalty was restored in 1976.
This is an outrage. Those vicious murderers are sitting there with shelter, health care, meals, running water, security protection, recreation, communication with others, and so many other things. We should execute at least one a week until Death Row is vacant.
Martinez said that the evidence showed that Manling Williams had planned the killings two months in advance, and immediately began trying to conceal her guilt afterward.
She wore latex gloves as she attacked her husband, he said.
Testimony indicated it takes five to 10 minutes for a person to die by suffocation, meaning that Manling Williams had at least five minutes to contemplate her actions while killing one of her children before killing her other son in the same manner, Martinez said.
"She clearly had time to reflect on what she was doing," he said.
Following the killings, the judge said, Manling Williams typed up a note indicating that Neal Williams had killed the children and himself, she disposed of bloody clothing and returned home before screaming to neighbors that someone had killed her family.
While being interviewed by detectives after the discovery of the bodies, "For hours, she feigned grief, sadness and bewilderment," Martinez said.
It was only after being confronted by investigators with a bloody cigarette box that was found in her car that Manling Williams broke down and admitted the murders, Martinez said.
Neal married the wrong woman. That was his biggest mistake.
I say a good homemaker is priceless, especially if they make the home pleasant for the income earner and provide ever-present love and guidance to the next generation of citizens. But lets look at what is being said this time around.
We examined some of the tasks that a homemaker might do to find out how much his or her services would net as individual professional careers. We only take into consideration tasks which have monetary values and use the lowest value for each calculation.
Private Chef
Meal preparation is one of the major tasks of most homemakers. From breakfast to dinner, there is plenty of meal planning and cooking to be done. The American Personal Chef Association reports that its personal chefs make $200 to $500 a day. Grocery shopping is another chore that needs to be factored in. A homemaker must drive to the supermarket, purchase the food and deliver it to the home. Grocery delivery services charge a delivery fee of $5 to $10.
Total cost for services: $1,005 per five day work week x 52 weeks = $52,260 per year.
The article does similar calculations for:
House Cleaner
Child Care
Driver
Laundry Service
Lawn Maintenance
I'm surprised they left out prostitution, but maybe they take the approach that women actually like lovemaking, too. Then then the conclusion is:
Total for a year of all services is: $52,260 + $6,137 + $31,200 + $4,168 + $936 + $1,560 = $96,261 per year.
Uh huh.
The daily work of a homemaker can sometimes be taken for granted by his or her family members.
Unfortunately, that's true, and it is also true that some feminists denigrate women for being homemakers, as do political types who want more income to tax, employers who want more labor supply to lower labor costs, and businesses who want people to have more "disposable" income to spend on crap they don't really need.
I do want to know that in general, if you don't like your chef, cleaner, daycare provider, driver, laundry service, or gardner you can fire them either immediately or with very short notice, and paying your latest bill will settle the matter. You generally do not sign lifetime contracts with them. However, if you marry someone who promises to be a homemaker and it turns out that person does next to nothing or does a horrible job, in states like the one I live in the default, standard contract is that "firing" them means giving them half of everything you earned while they were in the contract with you, and continuing to pay them one day for every two days you had the contract, or for life if they were under contract with you for ten years. There is NO penalty for failing to perform any of the tasks adequately.
Actually, it is difficult for me to use the toilet in a public or unfamiliar restroom, and even harder for me to use a urinal. I think is part of larger OCD problems on my part. Even without OCD, I'm very much a creature of habit in many areas of my life.
After the wake-up urination session, I can often hold it the for the rest of the day, and typically do hold it for at least 14 hours.
But there are rare times when I just have to use a restroom when & where I'd rather not. That happened recently, and it occurred me that for me, a "successful" (least stressful) trip to the a restroom for me goes like this:
Nobody sees me go in.
Nobody else is in there when I am.
There no sign anyone else has been there recently except for the janitor.
Nobody comes in during my time there.
Nobody sees me leave.
The worst thing is when I'm standing at the urinal trying to start taking a leak when someone walks into the restroom. Sometimes I zip up, flush, and wash my hands as if I actually used the urinal, even though I didn't.
This doesn't stop me from living life, mind you. I've never hestitated to travel or visit anywhere because of this. I always wondered how I was going to handle potty training the kids, but it worked out, somehow.
It's titled "Jumping Back In" but is there still water in the pool? "Bella" wrote in to Dear Margo:
After a marriage of 20-some years, I am about to dive into the middle-aged dating pool.
Oh boy, is she in for some fun.
I suspect it will be very different the second time around, but part of me thinks it may be just like picking up where I left off.
The first one is right for two reasons: 1) the rules have changed, and 2) you've spent up one of a woman's most valuable dating assets - your youth.
Friends tell me, however, that it’s a whole new ballgame and difficult.
Yup!
Dear Mago metions baggage, then ends with:
But … chins up. The men you will be seeing are just as nervous as you are, and I’m here to tell you that you will get the hang of it.
Dear Margo is either oblivious, delusional, or didn't have the heart to tell this woman the truth. Some of the people commenting did, though.
There are two big questions that the letter writer should have answered by including the information:
1) What are you looking for in general? Free dinners and entertainment? Another marriage? Steady companionship? Sex? If she's getting alimony, she may not want to get remarried if she values the steady money over marriage.
2) Are you willing to try men significantly younger or older than you?
Almost all of the successful, desirable, dating heterosexual men around near her age are divorced or on a marriage strike and dating younger women. If she wants to marry or even date a man near her age, she's probably going to have to be open to dating men who can't afford to pay for her to have nice dinners and entertainment, never mind financially support her if they marry. If she wants those things, she will almost certainly have to go with a significantly older man. If she just wants companionship and doesn't care if the guy is "of modest means", then it isn't so much of a problem.
She'll also find it isn't a problem to get sex if that is all she wants, but it will be easiest to to be on the "A" list with guys who are younger (since women their age are dating older men) or significantly older. Guys around her age will probably have her on the "B" list.
Speaking of sex... there's no short supply of younger, hotter women than her willing to have casual sex with the men she'll want to date. Most men these days expect it by the third date, if not before, and a lot of women consider themselves rejected if he doesn't try for it by then (if those women aren't taking the initiative themselves).
Those are the brutal, harsh realities.
If she wants to marry a successful man near her age who would make a good husband, her best hope is going to be to find a divorced man whose wife threw away a perfectly good husband, yet he hasn't been turned off to marriage. If he has no minor children, that will be the best scenario. He'll likely be paying alimony to his ex-wife, though. (If he was widowed, she won't have an ex to deal with it all.) To snag such a man, she's going to have to compete against those younger women I wrote about above. The does not mean she has to jump into bed with him – if he thinks sex is for marriage or only for steady, exclusive relationships, he'll appreciate it if she keeps that boundary in place. She should play up her advantages over those younger women (if she has them) – a better understanding of how to keep a man happy (did she learn from her ended marriage?), better earning ability, more experience in social graces, etc.
Enjoy!
Sheesh... after I wrote all of this I remembered having written something like this before. Previously:
I have been dating "Kyle" for more than six months, but I have loved him for more than two years.
Well, we already know she's a teen, so I'm taking the idea that she's "loved him" for 18 months longer than she's been "dating" him with a grain of salt.
I always thought we had a wonderful relationship and that Kyle was a sweet, innocent guy.
Sounds great! Everything's going great then, right?
Well, he just confided to me that he has an Internet porn addiction!
There are some problems here. The first one is that he said something to you. The second is that he either 1) believes that there is such thing as an addiction to porn or 2) thinks you believe there is such a thing or he wants you to believe there is such a thing.
Anything pleasurable or exciting can become "addictive". But I'll only believe porn addiction is real in cases where someone goes through withdrawal symptoms akin to those suffered by nicotine or heroin addicts (provided he is still allowed sexual release).
He has a habit. It's probably just a phase and he'll grow out of it...
A teen in the Sacramento suburb of Natomas sustained life-threatening injuries after being run over by a car while lying in the street, authorities said.
Did he trip? Had he been assaulted and left in the street?
The 16-year-old was in the middle of the road wearing headphones about 7 p.m. Tuesday when the Chevy ran him over on Regginald Way and Taylor Street, Fox40 News in Sacramento reported.
The driver, apparently not an illegal alien with no license and no insurance, actually stopped and called the police! Yay! No charges have been filed against the driver, who is probably traumatized.
The teen was being treated at a hospital for critical injuries considered life-threatening.
As far as I can tell, there are three possibilities here:
1. The teen is a potential Darwin Award candidate who was simply being stupid.
2. The teen was intentionally trying to commit suicide.
3. The teen was assaulted and left in the street, or suffered some sort of medical issue such as seizure, and fell down in the street (though the text of the article probably would have mentioned something about that).
It's a terrible situation no matter what, but I somehow feel numbers 1 and 2 are worse, and at first glance, I was sure it was #1.
If it was 1 or 2, then you know what we need? A National Office of Not Being Human Roadkill, perhaps with a Czar or Secretary cabinet position. We can tax gasoline even more to pay for it, and then when those revenues take a dip, we can raise incomes taxes to keep such a necessary office and the people who've been retired from it for 40 years fully funded. We'll have public service announcements, printed warnings, education programs, and we'll have to teach in our schools about prominent people in history who have been hit by cars. Or maybe not.
We went through eight years of fertility treatments before having our twins.
Hmmm.
When they were a year old, we discovered I was pregnant with our third child.
Surprise!
We have two embryos left and need to decide what to do. We either use them or destroy them.
Those embryos are human beings. Think about it this way: "We have two toddlers left. Do we raise them, or do we destroy them?" Fortunately, adoption is a more realistic option when it comes to children who are still embryos.
I think we need to give the embryos the chance they were meant to have. However, my husband is concerned only with the financial side of it as we have been living on one salary and things are tight.
Gee, better hope you don't get sick, if your husband puts money ahead of human life.
My heart aches over this.
If only there was some way people having trouble conceiving becoming parents that didn't involve creating more embryos than they were both willing to give a reasonable chance at living.
Do I do what I believe is right and stand by my religious and moral beliefs, and take the chance my husband will resent me for the rest of our marriage?
Guys, think about this. She can go ahead and have those children implanted whether he likes it (or knows about it) or not, and he can be held financially responsible for them. She can adopt them out, and he can still end up financially responsible for them. I say men should not donate sperm and should be very cautious about banking it for themselves, and that applies here as well. He needed to give his sperm (unless they used donor sperm) for this to happen. Which also brings up the point that even if they did use donated sperm (or some creep at the lab decided to secretly use his own sperm) and her husband doesn't want more children, he can still be held financially accountable by a court. All it takes is one judge.
But I digressed. What she is apparently talking about is going ahead and having them implanted over his objections. She should not do that. What she should do is donate them. I was happy to see Dear Abby give information about doing just that:
Your embryos could be donated for embryo adoption by a couple who have been unable to conceive, and who would love to raise them. For more information, you should contact an attorney who specializes in family formation, or contact the Snowflakes Frozen Embryo Adoption and Donation Program. Its phone number is 714-693-5437 and its website is www.nightlight.org.
Thank you, Dear Abby!
Unfortunately, it seems that some people in the fertility/reproductive assistance business want to increase their "success" rates, and so they will create more children than will be given a reasonable chance at life, pick the most promising embryos (discarding or experimenting on the others - killing them either way), implant multiple embryos, and selectively kill any that make it to the fetal stage that might have a medical problem or are the weakest if "too many" of them have made it to that stage. Too many parents don't need much arm twisting to go along with any of that. The result? Innocent human beings are being killed by other human beings, and even those who aren't killed are being treated like commodities.
Ladies, if you spend your twenties and early thirties partying and having sex with bad boys you wouldn't want to be the (financial) father of your children, or you spend that time getting graduate degrees and climbing the corporate ladder... rather than learning what kind of man would make a good husband and dating and then marrying such a man... so that you find yourself marrying in your mid or late thirties, expect that your're going to have trouble conceiving.
I realize it is emotionally easy for me to discourage or be cautious about fertility treatments, IVF, third-party reproduction, etc., since my wife and I conceived the children we wanted to have, without aid, in two months and in three months, and those children have survived. But that it is easy for me to write does not make what I write false or wrong. I value human life. I also appreciate that I was conceived in a loving act of passion rather than in lab equipment and stuck in a freezer. Even if a child was conceived in rape, it is better for an adoptive set of parents to give someone else's biological offspring a good life rather than killing their own biological children in an attempt to have a biological connection to the children they end up raising.
