The current state of the economy certainly hasn’t created a shortage of first date horror stories. They continue to proliferate, despite (or maybe because of) a lack of dating funds. But cash-strapped guys and gals have been on the dating scene for all eternity, so why haven’t we adapted our first date strategies to make the experience more pleasurable?

There is no question that these are trying times—not only for our nation, but also for the entire world. The most important thing to realize is you are not alone in your struggles.

The idea of “small town values” has been thrown around a lot in this election year, in a way that makes those who profess to support these values appear bigoted, rather than enlightened. In fact, in a hilarious Daily Show segment, none of the attendees of the Republican National Convention could answer the simple question: What are small town values?

  This year’s New York and London’s fashion weeks, in light of the progress the rest of the world’s fashion centers have made in the last year to regulate the health of their runway models, were not only great disappointments, but enormous failures.

Photo credit: shiraf No soap opera writer could come up with stories as twisted and dramatic as those of our Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees. Tragic family deaths, torture, infidelity, drugs, underage pregnancy—it doesn’t get any more theatrical than this.

Pregorexia is a hot new buzzword in our society. It refers to an ailment that seems to be affecting a growing number of pregnant women who strive to stay as thin as possible during pregnancy in the hopes of not only looking fit and thin while pregnant, but also bouncing back to their pre-pregnancy bodies in a blink. It has been called a trend—one that is alarming health officials and causing controversy. Many people have blamed the apparent uptick in pregorexia on celebrity pregnancies, like those of Nicole Kidman and Nicole Ritchie.

The office can be a tricky place to navigate—and not just because of politics. In many offices these days, junk food lurks behind every corner—even out in the open—ready to take you and your healthy-eating habits down.

With hot celebrity couples like Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban purportedly using the in vitro method of fertilization to get pregnant, it’s no wonder women everywhere are becoming interested in this highly-publicized procedure.

Everybody's doing it. Or so it seems. When you're ready to make a lifelong commitment to your partner, it suddenly seems like everyone around you is getting married—Carrie and Mr. Big, Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz, the girl from high school voted "least likely to get married" and a boy she met in college. Next thing you know, June comes around, wedding shows appear on every television channel, and even your single friends are trying to figure out their ideal wedding date (7-7-07 is gone forever, oh my!).