For me it was like OH GOD THIS SUCKS IT’S REALLY PAINFUL for like 30 seconds, and then okay. For some reason, for a couple months I’d briefly get cramps every day at about the same time of day I had the IUD put in, but then they disappeared. After that, my period stopped too. If you’re seriously considering it, don’t…

A friend of mine who got an arm implant had constant spotting — every day, as long as she had it. She got moody as well. Of course this was a while back, and the problem may not be very common anymore.

Isn’t he supposed to be racist? I remember back on Crazy Days and Nights there was a blind item about a British actor who has made really demeaning comments about black people, and either he was a very popular guess or the site’s author named him in a reveal.

Buffalo, New York also has a woman in white. There are different stories about her — that she was part of some religious group, that she’s said she was molested as a child and wears white to “keep pure” because of it, etc. There’s also a story that she was a nurse, and when he husband left her for a white woman (she…

It used to be a common cause of death for small kids, pre-1950's or so. When my brother got it and my mom told my grandmother, she fainted because she thought he was going to die. However, he got it in like 1978, so all he had to do was take medicine for like a week and was cured. Even though I was about eight years…

Or saline drops/spray. The thing I hate the most about trans-Pacific flights is how dry the air gets — it’s given me a nosebleed before. To avoid that, now I bring saline and shoot some up my nose whenever I’m in the bathroom, or I do it discreetly under the airplane blanket if the person next to me is asleep.

Ugh. Once I was in a situation where the woman sitting next to me was very heavy and wanted to raise the armrest, which I’m sure was cutting into her. The thing was that she was already taking up one third of my seat, so that I had to sit with my legs crossed. If I had raised the arm rest I’d lose even more space. I…

Was the dog with her? You can’t fly with an animal in business or first, unfortunately (on United, anyway). I wonder if she didn’t even clear travel with an animal with the airline like you’re supposed to, and if she did, why they didn’t tell her it wasn’t allowed.

Apparently, my ideal partner would be a person who enjoys rain, who can vote in Hong Kong, and who thinks of having a winter carnival.

I’m in Hong Kong and get a lot from places like Omaha, Nebraska. Once a guy from Gaborone, Botswana messaged me, but that was just to ask why I like Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency novels.

Dang! It’s awful to hear that he’s going through a rough time. He was one of my students back when I was at IU. He was a really great guy, really intelligent, very hardworking, with a ton of personality.

I was reading a book about Naziism in Poland called “No Time Limit for These Crimes” and found a Nazi execution notice for people who were just referred to as “Polish criminals.” There was a person on the list who was probably related to me through my mom —he had her last name as originally spelled when they arrived…

There’s something I’ve always wondered about Helena Christensen — I’ve never, ever seen a picture of her smiling where she is showing teeth. When she smiles, it looks kind of artificial to me, like she’s trying hard not to show them. Is there anything strange about about her teeth? Has she talked about being insecure…

A technical explanation: The reason people on BBC productions are often hard to understand is that they tend to mic from below, rather than from above like in US productions. The human voice goes “out and up,” so if the boom mike operator holds the mic over and a bit in front of your face, it’ll catch the sound really…

This doesn’t work for the first time, though. Although a hairdresser should always strive to do a great job (and I’m sure most do), I’ve found I get a way better cut if I go in dressed up, with my hair styled, wearing makeup. If I go in looking all random, I get much worse service and a worse cut even if I have a…

In my experience, you’ll also get a way better haircut if you go in looking good. Wear nice clothes, wear makeup if you’re a woman, make sure your hair is clean and styled. It might seem dumb to do your hair when you’re about to have it wetted and cut off, but unfortunately you get way better service from lots of…

What? You missed out on JAM in the late 1990’s? “So pity!” as my ESL students used to say. Here’s a guide on the Jewish Alternative Music craze (?) movement (?) — I’m not sure what to call it — that was going on in New York at the time:

Near U. of Texas in Austin there’s a church that is either Baptist or Church of Christ — I forgot. It has these signs on the front doors saying, “Don’t sit on the steps, “No sleeping on the steps,” and “Anything left in front of the building will be thrown away,” clearly aimed at the homeless people in the area.…

Oh — another comment — when I was working at a primary school in Shenzhen we all went to the gynecologist as a scheduled thing. Everybody went, got a transvaginal ultrasound and everything (I’m not kidding). They didn’t make any distinction about who was married and who wasn’t, as far as I remember. I went, and I’m…

If this is true, why have I been able to go to the gynecologist, why have I seen other women who are single at the gynecologist’s (sometimes because they are pregnant), and how come nobody in China who I have ever known in more than a decade of being there has been turned away by a gynecologist? I call BS. If people…