Yes, it’s always the responsibility of each driver to avoid or prevent an accident, no matter who is obeying the letter of the law. In this case it looks to me like the swerver, a choleric and impenitent old man, acted out of ire and impulse, which makes this an attempted vehicular homicide in my eyes. That said, the…

When I was in rehab, there was a woman there on the second or third day that the leader asked to read our little inspirational paragraph to the group. She started “reading” but all of her words were totally garbled; not a comprehensible syllable came out of her mouth. The leader gave me a significant look, like “take…

So where is John O’Hara territory?

You’re absolutely entitled to your strong feelings and responses, as are we all. (I didn’t even know there was such a thing s “tone-policing.”) But you can be passionate and forceful without being abusive, which STFU is. Maybe my own background with my mom made me wince, but it is actually a distraction from your…

Geez, I hope you’re not that choleric with your kids. Seriously, I had a hot-tempered mother with a low flashpoint and I grew up walking on eggshells. Maybe you feel strongly but you don’t need to tell people with differing opinions to STFU and fuck you and call them an asshole etc. etc. Try tempering that abusive…

Yeah, but a baby is an attention magnet. You sort of can’t help focusing on which way those first little squeaks and fusses are gong to go: either the baby will settle back down, or the baby will grow increasingly noisy and then kick out the jams. So you have one ear/eye on the baby and one on the speaker: which way…

I have two major exes with whom I have stayed friends; one is my ex-husband, with whom I have a daughter, and one other man. Both of them broke it off with me. I’m perfectly fine being friends with them (although their women get uncomfortable, so I let them call me, I don’t call them). I am much happier being just…

I don’t think opiates or cocaine are considered teratogenic, although being born addicted is of course dreadful. (I don’t think Frances was born addicted either.) Exposure to alcohol in utero is much riskier, from what I read. And it’s weird that cat feces are potentially more dangerous to the fetus than shooting…

Frances is 5’9” according to the Internet, so at least she got a nice height despite the drugs, although she looks a lot shorter than Courtney in that picture.

Sad to see this. I’m going to read some of her books. I was a little English major litsnob who would only read sex scenes if they were in DH Lawrence or some other faculty-approved “great writer.” Insufferable.

First-rate research and writing. As a Californian, I'll know what to look out for now.

Some of this is crazy-making. Like does the recency bias cancel out the conservation bias or vice versa?

I think they just suss out the more courteous people to inflict their disorder on —- whatever their gender. There’s even a name for their condition: “speech urgency.” They have such a powerful, often anxiety-driven need to get their own words, experiences, and feelings out that it overwhelms their sense of propriety…

I’m a woman, and I get cut off and interrupted by both men and women. I must be The Universal Audience" or something. Maybe it’s my affect. Or I have an “interrupt me” pheromone. I don’t talk endlessly; I barely get a word out when other people hijack the interaction with long-winded anecdotes and instructional…

I love the Beverly Hilton. OK now I get to say that I stayed there when the movie I wrote was being filmed. I invited my whole extended family to dinner at Trader Vic’s and played the big shot. I sat out on the balcony of our room dangling my feet and feeling like life couldn’t get any better. Two years later I had to…

When my daughter was in high school, I lost the fight against the temptation to peek in her diary. Okay, I took one anxious, stomach twisting sneaky read while she was running an errand and left it out. She had a sometime boyfriend who was fat —- I was sure they were just platonic because... well, he was fat (and I…

It’s horrible for either sex to do what she did, but there’s something strikingly “unwomanly” and sadistic about her kicking children (it looks like she got that little girl in the crotch) and tripping a father running with a small, vulnerable child. She’s a real Rosa Klebb and would have found her true bliss as a…

The issue here is not that the company failed its contractual agreement. It did. The question is one of damages, which would be “pain and suffering” associated with the clinic’s gross negligence. How damaged are these people, and how damaged will the child be throughout her life by being of mixed race? It’s really…

He wasn’t far off, though, douche or not. He told the unpopular truths.

You may well be. Ghengis Khan himself was so prolific with his 500 concubines that males overall in the areas he conquered still carry his definable genetic imprint. About 0.5% of the world's population are descendants of Ghengis Khan.