Alright, in general, I’m in agreement with the breast is best movement. However this is ridiculous.

I’m lovin’ this site. Politicfact.com has been taking claims made in both speeches and explaining just how true the statements are.

Here’s a few examples:

From Obama’s Speech:

1. Obama says: McCain “said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars.”

Truth-O-Meter (TOM) says: Barely true. “McCain has a mixed record on fuel economy standards.”

2. Obama says: “Today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day Senator McCain took office.”

TOM says: True.

From Biden’s Speech

1. Biden says: “McCain voted 19 times against a minimum-wage increase.”

TOM says: “The Democrats counted correctly.”

2. Biden says: ” Three years ago, John McCain said, “Afghanistan — we don’t read about it anymore in papers because it succeeded.”

TOM says: True, but Biden chose his words very carefully to make this statement true. (And this is why I love the site. Yes, the statement in itself might be true, but look at the context and then decide if it’s true or if it’s just a correct choice of words.)

Giuliani’s speech:

1. Giuliani says: “For four days in Denver, the Democrats were afraid to use the words ‘Islamic terrorism.’”

TOM says: Barely True. “Dems discussed terrorism aplenty” (but they refrained from using the word Islamic because Muslim-American groups have pleaded with policymakers not to use the term “Islamic” in describing al-Qaida terrorists for fear that it will contribute to discrimination against Muslims in the United States, and because they believe al-Qaida’s brand of Islam is a bastardization of their faith.)

Palin’s Speech:

1. Palin says: Barack Obama supports plans to raise “income taxes … payroll taxes.”

TOM says: Half True “Obama’s taxes hit only higher incomes”

2. Palin says: “I told the Congress ‘thanks, but no thanks,’ on that Bridge to Nowhere.

TOM says: Half True. She killed it but it was mostly dead.

And my personal favorite:

Planned Parenthood says: McCain “said he was ’stumped’ when asked whether contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV.”

TOM says: True. The interview is here and I find it amusing that he was stumped by the question of whether or not contraceptive help stop the spread of HIV.

Anyway, there are about 16 pages of “attacks” and statements made by various candidates and speakers. It helps put a lot of the quotes back into context to get a better idea of the claims people are making. (And for added fun there is also a “flip-o-meter” on the site.)

Okay all my artsy/crafty friends (yeah, I’m looking at you Limor, Steph, Jaime), I need help with the baby’s room. I’ve got an underwater theme going in there with bedding, pictures and stuffed animals but I’m not excited about just painting the walls “water blue.” I want to think of a more creative way to paint but I’m not wanting to do a mural in there. I like the idea of a mural but a) I’m not that talented and b) if I’m going to do that, I’ll do it when my baby can have some input so I don’t have to paint over it in 5 years. I’m having a complete mental block on this. And I think the size of the room is throwing me off as well. I don’t want anything too overwhelming because the room is long and narrow, so it feels a lot smaller than it is.

Any ideas?

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Seriously, do people really fall for this stuff? Aside from the poor grammar and all the typos, I don’t know where I am going, when I am leaving or even which credit card I charged my “flight ticket” on.

So, all the complaining people do about the budget and the deficit and the spending and the taxes in our country and they always have a solution to the problem.

Well, here’s your chance. Play Budget Hero (brought to you by your friends at Market Place Money) and see if you can balance the nation’s budget. I wasn’t so great at the actual balancing part (I basically took away a ton of $$ from the military and gave it to the schools) but the game itself is pretty educational and does a decent job explaining what cutting or adding money in different areas could mean for the short and long term effects on jobs, people, economy, etc.

I spotted an ad on facebook or something for 80’s t-shirts. They were advertising them as retro t-shirts. This one caught my eye because I remember saving my hard-earned babysitting money for at least a month, begging my mom to drive me and a friend to the mall, carefully looking over the choices at Sam Goody and finally paying $17.99 for this shirt (and now that I think about it, that was over 15 years ago, that shirt was a complete rip-off),

So I’m trying to figure out if it makes me cool that I had this shirt before it was considered retro…I’m gonna go with yes because I looked so cool when I wore this with my pink stir-up pants, scrunchy socks and denim jacket.

I copied this from Limor who copied it from someone else. I’m trying to paint the guest room and needed a break (plus it was a good excuse to stop and watch some of the Olympics as well..) so here’s what I did on my break.

The following are quotes from 15 of my favorite movies. Can you name them? Take a guess in the comments. Here’s the “official” rules:

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.
5. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly and put who guessed it and the movie.

1. “I know how difficult it must be for you to overcome all those years of upper middle-class suburban oppression. Must be tough. But the next time you storm the PTA crusading for better… lunch meat, or whatever it is you white girls complain about, ask them WHY they can’t buy a book written by a black man!” Tim (10 Things I Hate About You)

2. “Have I stepped over some line in the sands of coolness with you? Because excuse me if somebody doesn’t know the secret handshake with you.”
“There’s no secret handshake. There’s an IQ prerequisite, but there’s no secret handshake.” Dave (Reality Bites)

3. “You know how Sister Bertha always makes me kiss the floor after we’ve had a disagreement? Well, lately I’ve taken to kissing the floor whenever I see her coming, just to save time.” Tim (Sound of Music)

4. “That ain’t no etch-a-sketch. This is one doodle that can’t be un-did, homeskillet.” Jaime (Juno)

5. “Dear Buddha, please bring me a pony and a plastic rocket…”

6. “I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Limor (When Harry Met Sally)

7. “I always like going South; somehow, it feels like going downhill.” Andy (LOTR: The Two Towers)

8. “Excuse me a sec. What are you babbling about?”
“Well, what I had said was I’m in the math club, uh, the Latin, and the physics club… physics club.”
“Hey, Cherry. Do you belong to the physics club?”
“That’s an academic club.”
“So?”
“So academic clubs aren’t the same as other kinds of clubs.”
“Ah… but to dorks like him, they are. What do you guys do in your club?”
“Well, in physics we… we talk about physics, properties of physics.”
“So it’s sorta social, demented and sad, but social. Right?” Limor (Breakfast Club)

9. “Mary, you want to go out sometime?”
“What? Are you going to take me out on your “scooter”?”
“Come on, I’m like, totally adorable, besides, it would drive Hilary Faye crazy.”
“I can’t. I’m… not dating right now.”
“What about tomorrow night? Will you be dating then?” Dave (Saved)

10. “What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” Jaime (High Fidelity)

11. “And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…” Limor (Office Space)

12. “You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.”
“You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.” Limor (Princess Bride)

13. “Feminine weaknesses and fainting spells are the direct result of our confining young girls to the house, bent over their needlework, and restrictive corsets.” Tim (Little Women)

14. “Honey, I’m thinking of switching to the mock turtleneck?”

“Is that not breathing?”

“Well, it’s breathing now, but it’ll be hot down there. I could go with the lambswool, but then again, you’ll see a lot of khaki down there and this merlot looks good with the gray.” Jaime (Best in Show)

15. “There will be no rescue, no intervention for us. We can only save ourselves. Many of you know influential people abroad, you must call these people. You must tell them what will happen to us… say goodbye. But when you say goodbye, say it as if you are reaching through the phone and holding their hand. Let them know that if they let go of that hand, you will die. We must shame them into sending help.” Dave (Hotel Rwanda)

Dakota county likes their storm sirens. A lot. If it rains, if their is flooding, a chance of flooding, thunderstorms, if it’s storming in Iowa, if it’s windy, if it’s anything but 70 degrees and sunny, the sirens go off.

It’s the city that cried wolf.

A friend of mine is finishing up her Master’s in Human Sexuality and found this in her reading:

I can’t decide if it’s funny? sad? amusing? disturbing? all of the above?

INSTRUCTION AND ADVICE FOR THE YOUNG BRIDE
On the Conduct and Procedure of the Intimate and Personal Relationship of the Marriage State for the Greater Spiritual Sanctity of this Blessed Sacrament and the Glory of God, by Ruth Smythers, beloved wife of The Reverend L.D. Smythers, Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist Church of the Eastern Regional Conference.

Published in the year of our Lord 1894, Spiritual Guidance Press, New York City

To the sensitive young woman who has had the benefits of proper upbringing, the wedding day is, ironically, both the happiest and most terrifying day of her life. On the positive side, there is the wedding itself, in which the bride is the central attraction in a beautiful and inspiring ceremony, symbolizing her triumph in securing a male to provide for all her needs for the rest of her life. On the negative side, there is the wedding night, during which the bride must pay the piper, so to speak, by facing for the first time the terrible experience of sex.

At this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! A selfish and sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride. One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.

On the other hand, the bride’s terror need not be extreme. While sex is at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured, and has been by women since the beginning of time, and is compensated for by the monogamous home and by the children produced through it.

It is useless, in most cases, for the bride to prevail upon the groom to forego the sexual initiation. While the ideal husband would be one who would approach his bride only at her request and only for the purpose of begetting offspring, such nobility and unselfishness cannot be expected from the average man.

Most men, if not denied, would demand sex almost every day. The wise bride will permit a maximum of two brief sexual experiences weekly during the first months of marriage. As time goes by she should make every effort to reduce this frequency. Feigned illness, sleepiness, and headaches are among the wife’s best friends in this matter. Arguments, nagging, scolding, and bickering also prove very effective, if used in the late evening about an hour before the husband would normally commence his seduction. Clever wives are ever on the alert for new and better methods of denying and discouraging the amorous overtures of the husband.

A good wife should expect to have reduced sexual contacts to once a week by the end of the first year of marriage and to once a month by the end of the fifth year of marriage. By their tenth anniversary many wives have managed to complete their child bearing and have achieved the ultimate goal of terminating all sexual contacts with the husband. By this time she can depend upon his love for the children and social pressures to hold the husband in the home.

Just as she should be ever alert to keep the quantity of sex as low as possible, the wise bride will pay equal attention to limiting the kind and degree of sexual contacts. Most men are by nature rather perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety of the most revolting practices. These practices include, among others, performing the normal act in abnormal positions; mouthing the female body; and offering their own vile bodies to be mouthed in turn.

Nudity, talking about sex, reading stories about sex, viewing photographs and drawings depicting or suggesting sex are the obnoxious habits the male is likely to acquire if permitted. A wise bride will make it the goal never to allow her husband to see her unclothed body, and never allow him to display his unclothed waist, and only permit him to open the front of his pajamas to thus make connection.

She will be absolutely silent or babble about her housework while he is huffing and puffing away. Above all, she will lie perfectly still and never under any circumstances grunt or groan while the act is in progress.

As soon as the husband has completed the act, the wise wife will start nagging him about various minor tasks she wishes him to perform on the morrow. Many men obtain a major portion of their sexual satisfaction from the peaceful exhaustion immediately after the act is over. Thus the wife must ensure that there is no peace in this period for him to enjoy. Otherwise, he might be encouraged to soon try for more.

One heartening factor for which the wife can be grateful is the fact that the husband’s home, school, church, and social environment have been working together all through his life to instill in him a deep sense of guilt in regards to his sexual feelings, so that he comes to the marriage couch apologetically and filled with shame, already half cowed and subdued. The wise wife seizes upon this advantage and relentlessly pursues her goal first to limit, later to annihilate completely her husband’s desire for sexual expression.

–copyright 1894 The Madison Institute.

(HT: becky)

I realized this weekend (when my parents were in town) that we need more glasses. When we got married we started out with a set of 12. Now, mostly thanks to one of my closest friends (who shall remain nameless) we are down to 5. Now I’m not saying she broke 7 glasses, Kevin and I have broken a couple as well. But I’m pretty sure that she’s broken a glass every time she’s come to our house.