My husband, 23, and I, 22, have been married for three years and we have a beautiful 4-month-old daughter. I have a few questions that I hope you can guide me in a good direction....
1. I like sex, but I stay home with our baby and I get tired at the end of the day. My husband and I would have sex every day when we first got together and now it has slowly diminished to about 6 times a month. How do I get my energy up enough to make our relationship hot again?
2. My husband wants me initiate sexual activity. He has a lot more experience in the bedroom then I do and I dont want to look stupid. I always feel like he is judging. How can I get over the fear of judgment and make it happen?
3. Our biggest problem is that I dont trust my husband putting anything in my vagina. When we have sex I have to put his penis in myself and it takes forever, because I tense my legs up. It isn't my husband's fault, I have always been this way. I have tried to let him do it, but I fear he will hurt me (accidentally) and stick it in "wrong." He has been so supporting about my screwed up issues, but I can tell he is getting frustrated. How can I trust my husband and get over it?
Thank you so much in advance!
Brand New Mom
My response after the jump...
Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman spent $178 million on her 2010 campaign for governor of California, $144 million of her own money, more than any other candidate in US history. And yet voters rejected her, choosing Democrat Jerry Brown instead.
So unable to impose austerity on all of California, she's instead doing it at Hewlett-Packard, where eight months into her tenure as CEO she just announced the company would lay off 27,000 workers. HP recently reported quarterly profits of $1.6 billion on revenue of $30.7 billion, down from the same quarter last year, but higher than analysts had projected. But despite helping HP earn a profit, those 27,000 workers have to be let go, because apparently that's what successful executives do.
If your afternoon is not going well, maybe this will help: Rick Santorum is still begging for cash to pay off his failed presidential campaign. At least you don't owe tens of thousands of dollars to the people who helped support your very public humiliation!
A tip last week suggested that Bumbershoot organizers One Reel may not be including American Poster Institute's Flatstock at this year's festival. I sent out an e-mail last Wednesday, and One Real Associate Director Aubbie Beal responded to my e-mail late yesterday with this statement: "It's true that Flatstock is taking a break from Bumbershoot this year due to current space constraints. However, we are hopeful that we will find a mutually agreeable, suitable location for them next year, when new spaces become available after the Next 50 Celebration has ended."
Democrat Maureen Judge (yes, she's my ex-wife) won endorsements today from Planned Parenthood and NARAL/Pro-Choice Washington in her 41st Legislative District state senate race. Perhaps just as significantly, these are endorsements that her opponent, Republican incumbent Steve Litzow, has now lost. Litzow, who claims to be pro-choice, and is a former NARAL PAC Board member (as is Judge), shared a dual endorsement from NARAL with Democratic opponent Randy Gordon in 2010. Not this time:
In describing their endorsements, each organization cited Judge’s adamant and unwavering support of women’s reproductive rights, as well as Litzow’s votes to kill the Reproductive Health Parity Act in the 2012 Legislative session. Although he has described his votes as “procedural,” it is clear to women’s health organizations his votes equate to a broken campaign promise.
“Women and families don’t understand what a procedural vote is, but they do understand when a candidate runs on a platform of protecting women’s health but then votes three times against protecting women and families,” said Dana Laurent, Political Director at Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest.
Judge also received the endorsement of the National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington.
As the incumbent, and a relatively moderate Republican who voted for marriage equality, Litzow still likely holds the edge in this race. But Litzow only beat Gordon by less than 200 votes in a Republican wave election year, and while the 41st got slightly less Democratic after redistricting, it still leans in that direction. Women vote. So this'll hurt.
Always-entertaining nerdblogger MightyGodKing wants Hollywood to stop sticking the Wilhelm Scream into their movies. (For a brief history of the Wilhelm Scream, this very-low-resolution video will explain all you need to know.) MGK writes:
...the problem is this: whenever I hear a Wilhelm Scream I am taken out of the movie experience. My suspense of disbelief ends and I am just a guy sitting in a movie theatre who realized he just heard the same damn scream for the umpteenth time, because I recognize it. Every time.
I get his point, and the movie that inspired his post—The Avengers—does have an especially noticeable Wilhelm Scream in it. But I like the Wilhelm Scream. I think it's an endearing part of moviemaking. It's a split-second salute to all the people who work behind the cameras, and it's a tradition that has stretched through decades of filmmaking. Sometimes, a good Wilhelm Scream can be the only refreshing organic moment in an otherwise-stultifying CGI death march. I agree that it's a shame that the in-joke has gone public in such a huge way, but it's more than an in-joke now. The Wilhelm Scream is that one shared moment where we all, filmmakers and filmgoers, come together to recognize that we're watching a movie, and movies are fun, dammit.
But which side are you on?
Now that the AP has followed up on and confirmed the story Eli and I broke a few weeks back on the hundreds of campaign documents gathered from Rob McKenna's King County Council office, and stored in the county archives, the rest of the media is following suit. Thanks, AP!
Of course McKenna's people have denied that this is evidence of anything improper, and maybe that's true (maybe) in a purely legalistic sense, given that the chain of custody cannot be verified. We only know that these campaign documents were found in McKenna's office (where they shouldn't have been). We can't be certain how they got there.
But, you know, come on... hundreds of pages of campaign documents scattered among McKenna's official council records? Are we really supposed to believe nothing improper was going on?
What was different about McKenna's office than that of other council members of the day is that McKenna used his taxpayer salaried council staffers to simultaneously run his election campaigns. That's legal, as long as these staffers perform none of their campaign activities on council time, on council premises, and using council resources. But what these documents suggest is that this is a helluva lot more difficult to accomplish in practice than in theory, and that McKenna was at very least negligent in enforcing the ethics rules.

Everything you need to know:
William Friedkin, aka the guy who directed the best horror movie EVER, is coming to SIFF this year to receive a lifetime achievement award. We DARE you, Seattle, to make a short video that will entertain us so severely that it causes our heads to spin around and green soup to shoot from our mouths fire-hose-style.
RULES OF THE CONTEST
Your film must be 30 seconds or less.
Your film may be live-action and/or animation.
You may not simply edit together fragments of scenes from The Exorcist.
Points will be awarded for originality.
Deadline for entry is June 4, 11:59:59 p.m.
Upload your video to a site with no password restrictions. (YouTube, Vimeo, your own website, etc.) After you have done this, e-mail the link and your contact information to promotions@thestranger.com with the subject “exorcist.”
The Stranger will use this link to show off your work to our readers! We will announce the winner on June 5 on SLOG!
Get hopping, and may God have mercy on your souls.

Last week, a terrible thing happened: The I Love New York Deli in the U-District closed (with outcry in comments over here).
Now we have learned that, horribly, the original I Love New York Deli in the Pike Place Market is also gone, gone, gone, as of this past Sunday.
I just had a rather heartbreaking conversation with owner Jon Jacobs. He was at his Big Apple Deli in Maple Valley, which remains open. Among other factors in the closures, he mentioned that his meat costs had nearly doubled. "We tried raising the price 25 cents and people went insane," he said. "Look at the price of gas versus seven years ago... and I wasn't going to cut back on quality." He says the micro-neighborhood of the U-District shop, which opened near Scarecrow Video in summer 2009, has suffered mightily because of the economy and construction in the area this past winter (as noted in comments here—and it was arguably never a great location in terms of foot traffic in any case). "Business really dropped off," he said, "a lot of businesses had trouble—the hot dog place went out of business—they've been there forever. Five businesses went under."
"It sucks, but there's nobody to blame but myself," Jacobs said. "Financially, it just wasn't feasible anymore. It just got to be where it was ridiculous... You just get to a point sometimes where you just can't fight anymore."
"Those were the love of my life, those stores," he said. "You get behind in the rent, and you just can't catch up."
Jacobs mentioned filing for bankruptcy (the Maple Valley store is a separate entity). "I don't want it to be this way," he said. "Those days that i was at the Market, I loved those days. This is the hardest time of my life... if I could pay the bills right now, I would. I know I'm not the only one, but I feel like I am. I work 20 hours a day—I work my ass off. It's really hard."
Meanwhile, Jacobs is trying to negotiate a lease on a space on the Ave to resurrect the U-District store, which would involve a loan from his father.
"... if you're not fucking, then the absence of fucking is occurring!"
Classic Reggie Watts. He opens by asking who in the crowd is from Brooklyn. They cheer. Then he asks who's from Manhattan. They cheer, and he flips them shit for sounding a little "nose-forward." Then: "How many people here have ever had sex?" Hesitancy from the crowd. "That's okay! You don't have to be embarrassed! It's okay!" And then this song:
Chalk it up as another step on the quest to articulate what should be obvious to everyone.
When he's not bragging about the 100,000 tens of thousands thousands possibly dozens of jobs he created at Bain Capital, Mitt Romney has been saying that in his first term as president, he'll get unemployment down to 4%. But like his job creation numbers, Romney is backing up on his unemployment numbers, too, according to Talking Points Memo:
“I can tell you that over a period of 4 years, by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, or perhaps a little lower,” Romney said, “depends in part upon the rate of growth of the globe as well as what we’re seeing here in the United States, but we get the rate down quite substantially.”
Given that we’ve been hovering near eight percent for months, that sounds like a major improvement. But many models — including the one used by Congress’ non-partisan budget and economic scorekeeper — suggest we’ll reach that level whoever happens to be president. The table on page 129 of CBO’s 2012-2022 outlook forecasts an average unemployment rate of 5.8 across fiscal year 2017, which begins October 1, 2016, just shy of four years after Romney’s hypothetical inauguration.
So now Romney is promising he'll lower the unemployment by two percent in four years. By some metrics, the unemployment rate has lowered almost three points in the last two years under President Obama.
From this week's I, Anonymous:

I understand weddings are the shit to you. It's your chance to cut loose in the big city, get drunk on free booze, and dance your ass off. This is also the first time you've met a real-life gay. I'm certainly in favor of changing the hearts and minds of rural folk, but please remember I'm here to enjoy myself, too. Being an advocate for the entire species is pretty damn tiring. Here are some ground rules for the next time you meet a gay at a wedding. (1) Please don't tell my boyfriend he looks like Jesse Tyler Ferguson, "that gay guy" from Modern Family. (2) Don't ask me if I think your redneck boyfriend is (a) hot, (b) gay, (c) all of the above. (3) Don't ask me to use my gaydar on any of your other redneck friends whom I've never met. (4) Don't ask the DJ to play "Vogue" and then say you did it just for me....
Read the whole thing here.
The Great Gatsby directed by Baz Luhrmann will be in movie theaters this Christmas in 3D. (WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WRITE?) It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire. Here's the trailer:
Those are some very good actors (Mulligan, as far as I'm concerned, hasn't made a misstep yet; even in terrible movies, she's exceptional) but they have a lot of work to overcome the basic premise of the project.
Posted by news intern Mike Gore.
In my Saturday Slog post about Andrew Hughes, challenger to Jim McDermott's Congressional throne, we included the following controversial bit:
Strolling through Burien, our chit-chat turned to more serious matters, such as the recent National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for the indefinite detention without trial of “suspected terrorists" —both citizens and foreigners alike. Hughes said he would have voted against the act, just as McDermott did. However, Hughes brought up a point that after 23 years in Congress, McDermott should be able to do more than cast "just a protest vote."
Kinsey Kiriakos, spokesman for Rep. McDermott, shot me a stern email stating that McDermott actually did a lot more than cast a protest vote:
But Dominic thinks that new wave is the genre's most recent development [This is a blatant lie that I made up and now feel terrible about], so we'll not even get started on him today. Paul, however, has debatably been paying attention and, in this week's music lead, entitled The Caretaker: Only Jack White Can S(t)ave Rock and Roll from Obscurity, writes:
Rock and roll made that shift from an active idea into a passive idea a decade or two ago; this is what most people mean when they say that rock and roll is dead. You can smush rock together with some other regional sound for an explosion of novelty—remember Vampire Weekend?—but every major idea behind rock and roll has been dissected and examined to death. When you're dealing with white guys playing electric guitar, all you can do is maneuver around the different parts of the ceremony to make aspects feel slightly fresher, but it's all ultimately a tribute to some idea that's been leached clean of nutrients by previous generations.
What say you readership? Weigh in here.
What did he just say? Was it something spiritual and profound? Thanks, Perry! And you don't even drink!
Fox News does not prepare you for questions about news:
The study concludes that media sources have a significant impact on the number of questions that people were able to answer correctly. The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly — a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all. On the other hand, if they listened only to NPR, they would be expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly; viewers of Sunday morning talk shows fare similarly well. And people watching only The Daily Show with Jon Stewart could answer about 1.42 questions correctly.“These differences may be small, but even small differences are important when we’re talking about millions of people”
The study claims that partisan media is to blame—they say MSNBC is almost as bad as Fox—but I think it has more to do with credulousness. NPR and The Daily Show are both much more likely to question the conventional wisdom they're reporting, and the Sunday morning talk shows at least spend a lot of time on a single subject, even if they are echo chambers.
Remember when Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and Republicans were accusing him of being a Democrat or a racist? (The idea on that last one was that Powell was just supporting Obama just because they're both black.) I think they're about to jump all over Powell again:
Earlier in the interview, Mr. Powell described Mr. Romney’s foreign policy advisers as “quite far to the right.’
“Sometimes, they, I think, might be in a position to make judgments or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought,” Mr. Powell said.
He's telling the truth. Hopefully, this will bring much more attention to Romney's advisers, who are almost entirely made up of ex-Bush people. The press has given Romney a pass on his associations so far; maybe now thanks to Powell, they'll be forced to do some vetting.

Highly recommended for tonight, Mike Birbiglia's entertaining mashup of reality and fiction, Sleepwalk with Me.
This American Life regular Mike Birbiglia writes/directs/stars in a dramatization of stories from his own life. He plays Matt, a guy working as a bartender and trying to start a comedy career; his longtime girlfriend (played by the adorable Lauren Ambrose) is ready to grow up and get married. As his anxiety about his life gets worse, he develops a sleep disorder where he acts out his dreams physically, eventually resulting in the infamous “La Quinta Inn incident.” The film is funny and interesting and full of cameos by some great comedians.
Sleepwalk with Me plays tonight, Wed May 23, SIFF Cinema at the Uptown, 9 pm. Tickets here.
These women better know that human males have got it like that. Gorrillas are ones who got it bad.
Dave Segal writes:
Some asshole stole this poor college student's bass guitar and he needs to get it back posthaste in order to fulfill his course work. Keep an eye out, if you could.
From this week's New Column!:

P.S. The actual, non-pornographic, and perfectly delightful Safety Not Guaranteed plays tonight at the Seattle International Film Festival.
Here's a video explaining the premise for the Paul Festival, a music and activism festival celebrating Ron Paul's birthday just in time for the Republican National Convention in Tampa:
There is nothing I can say, except this: I want to go there. Maybe in a Ronvoy:


Cienna Madrid digs into a report in this week's paper that contends Sound Transit's light-rail line is gentrifying the Rainier Valley and pushing out racial minorities: "It highlights the divide between two factions of the progressive community: the pro-development, mass-transit environmental camp and a social-justice camp that has long warned that light rail may entail social costs."
Read the whole story.
We're observing Slog silence from now until 11 a.m. while we have an editorial meeting, but look—we made an entire paper's worth of stuff for you! Here's what Din Tindleson has to say.
While watching this video, I recalled this passage in Jared Diamond's book The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal:
To begin with, we do not discuss the Indian tragedy much - not nearly as much as the genocide of the Second World War in Europe, for instance. Our great national tragedy is instead viewed as the Civil War. Insofar as we stop to think about white versus Indian conflict, we consider it as belonging to the distant past, and we describe it in military language, such as the Pequod War,Jared Diamond's point is this: In the colonizing moments of Australia, Tasmania, and America, the indigenous people were mostly killed not by the army but by civilians, settlers.Great Swamp Fight, Battle of Wounded Knee, Conquest of the West, and so on. Indians, in our view, were warlike and violent even towards other Indian tribes, masters of ambush and treachery. They were famous for their barbarity, notably for the distinctively Indian practices of torturing captives and scalping enemies. They were few in number and lived as nomadic hunters, especially bison hunters. The Indian population of the US as of 1492 is traditionally estimated at one million. This figure is so trivial, compared to the present US population of 250 million, that the inevitability of whites occupying this virtually empty continent becomes immediately apparent. Many Indians died from smallpox and other diseases. The aforementioned attitudes guided the Indian policy of the most admired US presidents and leaders from George Washington onwards (see quotations at the end of this chapter). These rationalizations rest on a transformation of historical facts. Military language implies declared warfare waged by adult male combatants. Actually, common white tactics were sneak attacks (often by civilians) on villages or encampments to kill Indians of any age and either sex.
When I read this piece of news...
Astronomer Jill Tarter, the inspiration for heroine Ellie Arroway in the novel and movie "Contact," is retiring after spending 35 years scanning the heavens for signals from intelligent aliens....I recalled the passage in The Third Chimpanzee and that video in The Guardian and thought: Why are we looking for intelligent aliens? What in the world (or in world history) makes us think that such an encounter will be peaceful? The last thing we need are settlers from space.Tarter is stepping down as the director of the Center for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., the organization's officials announced today (May 22).
I don't know whose idea it was, but Governor Chris Gregoire deserves a ton of credit for executing a political maneuver yesterday that could end up keeping control of the state senate in the hands of her fellow Democrats. Just days after the candidate filing deadline, Senator Cheryl Pflug (R-Maple Valley) announced she would step down July 1 to take a $92,500 a year appointment by Gregoire to a six-year term on the Washington Growth Management Hearings Board, suddenly putting Pflug's 5th Legislative District into play.
Hey, thank you, Governor, for the lovely parting gift.
Pflug has been one of the more moderate members of the senate Republican caucus since being appointed to the seat Dino Rossi left to run for governor in 2004. She will be perhaps best remembered for her crucial vote on marriage equality... a vote that had earned her a Republican primary challenger from the right, Snoqualmie businessman Brad Toft.
But Pflug was also facing a tough Democratic challenger in Issaquah Councilman Mark Mullet. No Democrat has held this seat since the single term won by Kathleen Drew (now running for Secretary of State) in 1992, but Mullet is considered a bit of an up and comer, and given his name ID, experience, and lack of being a one-issue rightwing Christianist like Toft, insiders tell me that Mullet has the early edge in this suddenly competitive race.
Republicans need to pick up three Democratic seats to take control of the senate. They have a virtual lock on the seat Senator Jim Kastama (D-Puyallup) has left open to run for Secretary of State, and a decent shot at unseating senators Mary Margaret Haugen (D-Camano Island) and Rosemary McAuliffe (D-Bothell). Add in races for open seats left vacant by Lisa Brown (D-Spokane), Derek Kilmer (D-Gig Harbor) and Craig Pridemore (D-Vancouver), and senate Dems have little room for error.
With Pflug's departure, the 5th LD now becomes the Democrats best shot at a pickup, followed by the Democratic-leaning 41st LD where first term Senator Steve Litzow (R-Mercer Island) faces a tough challenge from Maureen Judge (D-My Ex-Wife). If Dems can pickup one or both of these seats, the Republicans once promising takeover math becomes awfully complicated.