Swedish meatballs. IKEA. Abba. Free health care and education. As if those riches weren't enough for one nation to hoard, now comes the news that over the weekend, Eva Brunne, above left, was ordained as Sweden's first openly gay bishop. Another female pastor, Tuulikki Koivunen Bylund, was also ordained as Bishop of Härnösand in northern Sweden. Around 75 percent of Swedes belong to the Lutheran church.

Brunne, 55, is in a civil union partnership with another woman and both of them are the parents of a three-year-old child.

Did I mention that Sweden also allows same-sex couples to adopt children and was one of the first countries to marry gay people in a major church? Yeah, I'll stop now, but I could go on. Sweden seriously has it going on.

In a funny and kind of sad essay, a writer on Salon discusses how sex with men who watch porn (or maybe she means too much porn) can sometimes make her feel like she's starring in a private porno against her will. The moves are too rehearsed, too cheesy, too porn-y. "It’s hard to feel fully in the moment," she writes, "when you’re thinking of what it would be like to watch it."

For some women, porn and its influence can make sex more varied and exciting, but for others, it may feel like their partners are just busting out moves they've seen in a porn film that do nothing at all for them. If you're sleeping with a man who is copying porn moves, what's the one you wish he'd stop doing?

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Kittens in casts. Babies nudged to laugh every five seconds. Stuffed teddy bears left at killing-spree sites. We are so surrounded by the tyranny of cute that even multibillion-dollar corporations have cute names like "Google" and "Twitter," and the uncute business of insurance is represented in ads by a cute lizard with an English accent. (And yes, I too am guilty of spreading cuteness.)

What's up with the cute? Writer Jim Windolf has had enough and decided to try to get to the bottom of what he calls the "self-infantalization" of Americans. His conclusion? There's a dark, manipulative side to cute. If you want to know what it is, read more

"[Y]eah, money's tight. If people are going to spend their dollars, they want to know it's a good product. People are staying home more, so we've directed more marketing efforts toward cheap date nights — for the price of a movie and dinner, buy a vibrator, stay home and have fun."

— Good Vibrations rep Jackie Strano, responding to a question about what the sex business is like during the recession. Good Vibrations is a popular woman-friendly adult sex toy store in San Francisco, CA.

Photo by Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera