I feel like if J Crew clothes came close to matching quality-for-price, they'd be doing better. Everything I've ever bought from them has been flimsy or flawed, and that's saying nothing of their totally skewed sizing that makes it impossible to buy online. It's a shame, because they always have lovely things.

Sorry, my initial reply to this was rude on a second read-through. Just rest assured, the ceremony was in a very lovely garden next to a lake on the zoo's grounds, and the reception was in a big building meant for functions. We were never in or near any facilities that primarily housed animals, and a bird and a…

The best wedding I've ever been to was at the Baltimore Zoo, and featured a kookaburra and a Chinese alligator at the reception. We weren't allowed to touch the animals, but we were allowed to ask questions of their handlers and take pictures standing near them. A lot of people there were the interested-in-animals…

Hey, by all means take them seriously, but you know, maybe also talk about it with rather more enthusiasm than me describing my last dental procedure. I read it and found nothing of the actual fun of the band or the community that surrounds those of us who enjoy them.

The thing is, neither you nor I nor anyone knows which things are going to be 10 second fads and which are going to be selling one million Greatest Hits CDs 10 years from now. So it's best to just be enthusiastic about the shit that tickles your fancy, and not worry too much about its potential shelf life.

Like all cults, One Direction fandom takes things that are appealing on the outside, and once you've bought in, sucks out all the nice things and turns into a whirlpool miasma of resentment looking for the next reason to strike.

One of the first times I was allowed to go off by myself in the mall with money in my pocket, I went to Wet Seal and bought a bitchin' asymmetrical tank top with lace around the straps and an image of a viper and a rose on the front (this was in the early oughties when tattoo imagery on shirts was a thing). I think I…

I think part of it is because before the prices are normalized, you are actually getting the car for less than it's worth, and less than you'd be paying anywhere else. I guess it's kind of sale mentality - "Come buy this thing you can't afford at 10% off - you still can't afford it, but it's 10% closer to affordable…

You must live in a city. I think it's less that people not RSVPing isn't super-atrocious, just that it's by definition a special-event kind of annoyance, and it gets pushed down the scale by the countless unrelenting annoyances that happen every fucking day when you're surrounded by Too Many other people.

It actually makes some sense, though. Your 10 rouble note is enough to buy a loaf of bread today. Tomorrow, you may need 100 roubles to buy the same thing. On the other hand, a diamond ring is always going to be worth a lot, for whatever the value of "a lot" is - $10K or 10B roubles or whatever, if you ever need to…

But as usual, assholes won't budge: both the ones who refused to RSVP after five confirmation emails, and the ones who throw an event so serious that they feel it necessary to send five confirmation emails to track down their RSVPs.

This woman is in DC? Better put the Smithsonian on high alert. You know, since she thinks expensive things in glass cases are free to put in your mouth. I will be totally unshocked if next week we hear that this same lady tried to take a chunk out of the Hope Diamond.

I got a super-cheap one from ELF, like $3, it's dense and soft. The first one I used, the bristles were too long & not dense enough, and the effect was okay but not great. Now I would never go back.

You might want to give the foundation brush idea a try. I was super-100% not into it until one day on a whim I tried it, and my makeup looks so much better now? Like it somehow achieves that full-coverage-but-not-cakey thing that I imagine we're all going for. Part of why I was against it was because I thought I'd be…

To be fair, knowing about a crime and not reporting it is also a crime. Even though married people can't be made to testify against each other, it's still morally reprehensible to keep that kind of knowledge to yourself. I'm not saying she did know or if she did, how much. That's why people are speculating, because no…

Haha. I taught everybody in Prague, but later I taught 1st graders at an elementary school in Sudan. I knew a lot of the older students (6th grade) pretty well, and it gave me just a GLIMPSE of how complicated and drama-filled it could be.

There were a ton of things I loved about it, but yes, student drama is right up there.

You can jump around. I have done a lot of jumping around singing drunkenly in friends' faces to the tune of 'Name of Love'.

I was an English teacher in Czech Republic after college. I taught a lot of different people, but my best contract was with this small company based in a small town outside of Prague.

I do not understand why this does not have six million stars. Literally. Six followed by six zeroes, in stars.