One of my friends who has an ethnic first name, but not a particularly difficult one (if you say it twice, you’ve got it, it’s not objectively any more difficult than something like Stephanie) was telling me that her co-workers at her new job are pressing her for a nickname, to make things “easier” for them. I’m so…

This is why you should run these things past a trusted and somewhat clever friend. For a while I thought I’d like to name a kid Eve Ophelia, before my best friend mentioned that said together, it’s a wash for hemophilia.

I went to college with twin girls, one of whom had a name that was interesting and old-fashioned in that way where you just KNOW it’s going to have a huge swing of popularity soon, and one of whom has a completely boring nothing name where you’ve known 10 people called that in your life but none of them made an…

One of the kids in my middle/high school went by his last name so consistently his parents even called him it... which is weird, when you consider that it was also their last name.

Whose job is it to position the tiny gelatinous fetus into position so that the anti-abortion organization can have a freaky picture to spread around?

Look, the best way to sell an absolute lemon of a car is to find some fool who will take it off your hands without ever giving it a test drive. That’s how I sold my first car, and the only way I ever could’ve done so.

I recently went through the hassle of trying to get a chipped debit card from a bank - everyone’s “thinking about it,” and it’s definitely going to come, but no one’s exactly rushing around to get it done in a timely manner.

It makes me so angry that it’s taking so long for this technology to reach the US. The last time I was in the UK, I only had my debit card, which needs to be swiped. It was a pain in the fucking ass to work around in London. Every few days, I had to make a trip to the Post Office and take out cash, because that was…

On the one hand I agree with you about motivation, on the other what I’m worried and angry about is the waste of time and money and what this will mean for some of DC’s lowest-wage workers.

Ah, I forgot this and because the shutdown debate is mostly focused on what’s happening in the House, got confused. Thanks for the correction!

I don’t want to get into it with every moron trying to shout at you, but boy, do I ever love it when people start quoting “power of the purse” as a reason why it’s okay to shut down the operations of the world’s greatest superpower as a political maneuver, as though the Constitution says “Lo, and when thy dost not get…

New Jersey doesn’t even phase me. I would’ve paid for RI to be more like NJ when I was stuck there.

That’s where the part of my story about “How many of my peers would even attempt this instead of paying someone to do it?” comes in.

If you live in Ted Cruz’s district, just remember that he’s up for re-election in 2016. In fact, everyone should be prepared to divert a little bit of attention from the Presidential showdown to think about the Congressional battle that will eventually pick up speed.

He’s right about Scotland, too (I mean, if you like it slightly barren and harsh as fuck) so I guess he’s got my vote!

Boston is truly the best of in America.

Right, but those things are still indistinguishable from a digital clock except in how they’re functioning. If the argument is “If it was meant to be a normal clock, why does it look like a COUNTDOWN CLOCK,” then the answer is, because a “countdown clock” looks like a digital clock.

My dad was helping me install some new cabinets a few weeks ago. It was only the two of us, the cabinets were heavy, and I had injured an arm immediately beforehand, so I was down a limb. I was wondering how the hell we were going to hang these new cabinets, when I couldn’t even lift them into place so that he could…

I just did my first trip on Amtrak (DC-New York, so no distance at all) and I have to say that unless they upgrade the food options available on the longer hauls, I wouldn’t tout that as a perk. It’s essentially the same as the stuff you can get out of a vending machine back in the station.

Right? And people try to be all cute, coming out with “But you can always put more clothes ON if you’re cold, you can only take so much OFF when you’re hot” like they’re the first fucking person to ever say that.