True, true, I mean, I've got British friends who unconsciously pick up aspects of each other's different regional accents. They're infectious even for people who are from there! I think there's a major difference, though, between picking up a part of speech and trying to come home like you're a Londoner born and bred…

That is somehow even better than the "I did a semester abroad in London and magically came home with the accent!" people. I think because the Dakotas aren't even... aspirational? I mean, my family's from the Dakotas, I've spent some summers in Fargo, it's shit. Like it's just not a place I'd be bragging about.

My favorite taqueria just removed their delicious lamb tacos from the menu. I wasn't a jerk about it, though, I just cry quietly into my tacos now.

I don't want to contemplate which is worse, the customers like this or the ones who really lean in on their Italian accent while ordering what is, in most American coffee chains, a totally inauthentic cup of parboiled swill. I've been in line behind a few people like that at Starbucks. The only thing worse is breaking…

It is literally liquid bread. I'm not like, some nutty home brewer, but even I know it's like grains + hops + water + time = beer. You'd think the microbrew craze would lead to more people walking around aware of some portion of these facts, but no.

Even my mom, who is mildly allergic to scallops, loves scallops. As for me, I glory mercilessly in her allergy because that means I get all her scallopy discards when she orders mixed-seafood pasta or the like.

This is people literally saying in more words, "I am fine if my chosen weirdness inconveniences you, but as soon as it starts inconveniences me I'm cutting the act because I do what I want."

Not unless they're also selling this collection on the European sites. On H&M's German site, I've seen women's shoes regularly going up to a size 42 (which fits my American 11 feet) and sometimes even 43, but I've only seen shoes on the American site going up to size 10. I guess they think Americans are less likely to…

I'm glad you know people with such incredible reserves of resources that they are able to relocate based on what is, for most people, a hobby.

Also, just so we're clear, the point is not attachment, it's "If you don't like where you are, move" is absolutely inane advice. It is a drooling-from-the-mouth stupid thing to say. You wouldn't say it to people marching for transparent elections in Hong Kong, or people campaigning for a greater say in the federal…

If I had a strong attachment to any city, it would be Prague, and I've lived away from DC for ages. I just did not care for New England at all, and had strong pushback against any sort of snobbery about my hometown.

I'm fascinated, though. I nearly went to China to teach (I applied to China and Sudan, and Sudan got back to me quicker so I was there for a year) and while I was pleased with the overall Sudanese experiment, I often wonder what China would have been like. Do you have a blog? I want to know everything.

My only real surprise is that nobody's bringing up the fact that Secretary itself is not really that good. I get that there are almost no movies dealing with BDSM issues as such, so we takes what we gets, but please can we stop holding it up like it's actually great and not just the best we've got?

There was literally a LoveLine episode where they got this question, and Dr. Drew's answer was, essentially, this.

I, too, had ridiculously strict parents (or, well, a strict mother) although it doesn't reach the level of yours. I used to sneak downstairs late at night to watch Gundam Wing on Cartoon Network, because the nighttime re-run of the day's episode didn't have the (minor instances of) blood edited out. One time my mother…

I just have a huge kneejerk reaction to the "just move" statement in general. My first year of college, I went from DC to a small school in Rhode Island (and I was only there for a year, so fuck that). Some guy in my dorm had at some point seen a DC license plate, and wanted to know what the "No Taxation Without…

Also, buy a new house when you need to vacuum.

Eh it's whatever. I was good friends with a group of about 10 people in college, two of whom were dating each other, although the guy was more loved and the girl was more tolerated. Then the girl graduated and moved away, but they were still together. I slept with the guy twice. Almost everyone in my friends' group…

This is a lie of self-defense that I wish I had been smart/quiet enough to go with when I was younger. When I was 16 I told my mother this, and she hounded the shit out of me at every opportunity for the next two years. She herself is only the most negligibly Christian (doesn't read the Bible, doesn't go to church,…

To be fair, I commute from Maryland past DC into Virginia. We do crazy things for money.