Anyone without kids could tell you that. :)

Seriously, though, it's understandable. It probably has less to do with the children themselves and more to do with whether you actually enjoy raising kids. Kids can be cute and cuddly... but if you're someone who's made miserable by the thoughts of diapers, tantrums, and rebellion, you might find that the experience of raising those kids doesn't make you happy at all.

But you can't ride it in the rain (or leave it outside, for that matter)! I don't think I'd buy one.

And what if your computer is part of your job? Do they reimburse you for lost earnings if you can't work for two weeks?

I wonder if you can see an electrfied fence and attack dogs from space...

A Tampax dam? Is that supposed to be some sort of unholy metaphor?

I don't say "aBOAT", either. My accent is probably closer to "abauoot", if you want to get really technical. I've never had any Americans get after me about it, though. They were too busy laughing at how I said "orange" ("OHrange" as opposed to their "AHrange").

I think the West Coast accent is pretty homogeneous. Not much of a difference between California and British Columbia... at least not as far as I can tell. As you start to go east, however, I think you get more differences.

Love the cartoon, though. And did you know there are now FIVE severed feet for the mystery?

@ Jeannette:

"And to use the excuse that women in arranged marriages are unloved and abused, I say that there are probably JUST AS MANY women in non-arranged marriages that are unloved and abused. The abuse comment is a weak one that discriminates culturally. Just because the marriage is arranged, does not mean the culture condones such actions."

I never said that women in non-arranged marriages aren't abused. And I don't think the abuse comment is a weak one. In our community, there is a large East Indian population. In the last few years alone, there have been a number of young women killed by their husbands. Many (if not all) of these were probably arranged marriages. The warning signs were there, but the women couldn't leave. Heck, the most recent story in the news right now is about a husband who was convicted of stabbing his wife 39 times because he claimed she threatened to leave him. And what's even sadder is that her father, while pleased at the outcome of the trial, seemed surprised at the conviction, as though such a thing would never happen back in India. It's always the woman's fault, you know, because she's... well, not a man.

As for marriage not just being about love and attraction... well, times change. Our parents' parents may have stayed together for 50+ years, but they didn't really have a choice. And if marriage is only about the other things you mentioned (partnership, co-operation, hard work, sense of duty, and obligation), then it's not something I want to be a part of. What's the good of all that if you hate your spouse? You have to be loyal to them even if they're an ass? And as for kids: you don't raise children for 50-70 years. If there's no love holding two people together, why should they be miserable trying to hold a broken marriage together once the children are raised and gone?

Oh, I remember. It's because God said so... right?

I've had a fan running all night in an enclosed space. I wonder why I'm not dead... Maybe it only kills Koreans.

Wouldn't the concentrations of carbon dioxide and oxygen be the same in a closed room whether you had a fan on or not?

The article makes some good points. But they'd probably be lost on most Virginians, by the sound of it.

Even if you can interpret the text that way (which seems a bit of a stretch to me), the people who wrote it didn't have today's guns to worry about. It's a lot easier to "shoot first, think later" with today's guns than with those they would have had when the Second Amendment was written.

And if the Founding Fathers had wanted everyone to carry guns around, why did they include the bit about the militia at all? Surely it would have been easier to say "Guns for all!" and be done with it.

LOL!

Doesn't this make her a prostitute?

I would never want to marry someone my parents picked out. I would never want to marry someone I'd barely met. And what makes me sad is that, even if these women are unhappy, there's little they can do about it. They're culturally bound to stay with a person whom they may not love, who may not love them, and who may actually abuse them. If marriage is simply about property and children, then this is fine. But it should be about more than that. There is such a thing as love and attraction; I don't understand why some cultures try to suppress or ignore those things.

"Shortly after the discovery of radium in 1898 ... everyone wanted to put it in their products."

Kind of like soy. :P

Well, if all five events have happened, what's the big deal? There's nothing they can do about it now.