"thoughtful and tender undoing ..." sounds like you've been peeling off your skin after a bad sunburn.

My first teaching job was at a community college (where a couple of relatives also worked), so I have a certain sweet spot for such institutions. Plus, I was a college flunk-out who scrambled back to school in my 20s and took a while to finish, so what can I say? I identify, and I suspect lots of other people do too.…

Placenta! It's what's for Donner.

I just puke at the way the world worships this phoney. The Vatican is about as genuine an institution as a Hollywood studio or the Pentagon: powerful moneymakers/moneymovers who need to get the masses on their side.

Her younger sister died a suicide a few years ago and Letizia broke down sobbing on camera while speaking to the press outside the funeral home. It was a really startling moment, and even super commies I know who despise the royalty kind of went, uh, ok, no comment here. The Spanish royals at least show a lot more…

Actually, I remember her weeping at the protest march the day after the bombings and at the mass for the victims, as she spoke with the victims families. The whole royal family did.

I live here and I've never heard her be public about her supposed abortion, which has only been bandied about by the right-wing press anyway (not that I care one way or another.)

I've had surgery to remove an ovarian cyst and three uterine fibroids, and my GYN made sure that I had several abdominal and vaginal ultrasounds before they even thought about the surgery. Who the hell decides to yank out ovaries in a young woman before making absolutely sure that every diagnostic possibility has been…

Paul Simon started it with his kid in 1972. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Si…

Was about to post this same video. Glad to see that cultural references like this live on.

Melanie had an awful time with the press here in Spain when they first got married. Back then, there weren't that many foreigners in the country (except for the Costa del Sol vacation apartment hoardes) and they made fun of her then limited Spanish and her accent and just about everything. I don't wonder that she felt…

Paul and Joanne had an apartment in Manhattan near where I grew up. I used to see them going down to the local Italian deli some evenings to get (yet) more beer for Paul. They always looked happy to be together.

Antonio belongs to a "cofradia" (one of the groups that marches in the Holy Week processions) in his hometown in Málaga, Spain. He seems to go home to join them practically every year. I'm impressed that his Catholicism isn't just for a pap opp.

She may well be, but...I've seen people in other professions start out with the shock marketing approach, swearing that they'll never really sink so low in their personal lives. They almost always go as bad as their image.

I'm not belittleing people at all. Just a culture of entitlement. And it's odd to call me a dick while you're supposedly defending friendship and love.

Look, you can buy a gift for one of your friends even if all they finished was breakfast. What were're talking about here is a something that was a pleasant tradition that has warped into a giant global "gimmee gimmee" temper tantrum. It's nice to treat your friends and family. It's sick that it's become some type of…

Who apart from maybe parents gives any body a gift for grad school? It just seems the wedding that demands a response.

Of course. However, it irritates the hell out of me when people who have been independent adults for years, even living together, and expect to be gifted cash "because we already have everything we need".

I truly believe we all need to help each other and no one makes it alone. But I just don't see why marriage entitles you to an automatic wad of money.

I've never understood how getting married, having invited people to a wedding or not, should entitle you to ask for money. Period. I'm happy to help you move, paint your apartment in exchange for a little pizza and beer, and will pet-sit , baby-sit, give you money for food or take you to the hospital or let you stay…