Oh. All right. Now I´m double-sad. Thank you for explaining. I had not seen this information anywhere and did not understand the connection.

Our government (stupidly) expects you to tip so that the server can receive pay for serving you ... because they won´t. The paltry minimum wage for tip-receiving servers is $2.13 in 42/50 states. It goes straight into taxes.

Tipping is one of the worst situations in the US, and I hope dearly that it changes for every member of waitstaff and food service out there. I´ve worked as a hostess, and it´s BS.

I don´t know what she said, but I think Joyce Carol Oates is terrible and overrated.

This whole thread is depressing, and I agree that the situation under which this book is being published is shady in the extreme. But can someone explain HOW the lawyer plans to profit?

Very true. It´s hard. I love him, I want to have a healthy sex relationship with him, but it´s not happening and I tend to blame myself for these things.

Have heart. This happened a lot in the late 70s/early 80s as romance novels were gaining legitimacy as a genre and the sexingtons was being portrayed on the page in great detail for the first time (so much for Lady Chatterley´s fire-and-feathers). A lot of the great romance writers´ early works were peppered with…

I was just thinking about this earlier today. I was in a long-term relationship for almost a decade, starting when I was very young, and when it finally imploded and I was released back into the wild, I did some serious oats-related sowing.

I read it as 'RuPaul...' and then I was sad to find out who it was really about.

At first I was like, 'WHAT?' But then I was like...

DAMN. They got a huge cunt on that board, calling anyone who would like something like this 'immature' and 'childish'. I am so over making other people feel bad for a choice that is completely personal and has no reflection on anyone else!

I´m not a Potter-head, but I love the Lord of the Rings. I study Icelandic…

Yeah, my mom was always big on that. She used to tell us that 'Blood is everything. Everyone else is just a stranger.' Then she treated us like shit, particularly with verbal abuse, sometimes with physical. It got to the point where my brother would say that he wished she would just hit us all the time, because he…

Word. My mother and I have a functional relationship but her coming to visit causes me extreme anxiety and stress. I have to have, say, 6 months notice that she´s coming in order to get my head in order. I´m thankful that my husband isn´t American and I live in a different country with him.

Last summer, someone gifted…

That´s the hardest part of being from a less-than-happy background. If you´re lucky enough to find yourself with a partner (or friends) who have not had any kind of experience with abuse, they just don´t get it. It´s one of those things that´s, I think, nearly impossible to understand if you had a relatively stable…

That´s awesome! Good for you! Clear out the clutter and surround yourself with people who make you feel better.

You are a really good friend. Good for you!

Preach. I think that was the first time I realized how shit high school really was, how it was a lazy, meaningless facade populated mostly by jerks who were there to count minutes and collect paychecks.

I had a great teacher who was in charge of the school paper. He believed in letting us run with ideas, as a good…

Yeah, that is a good point as well. It sounds awful no matter which way you look at it. Either she´s a bit of a jerk for making the pamphlet or the family may be only polite and not really caring about her responses.

The question I have in all the responses like yours is ... do you really want to spend time with people like this, if this is the case?

If they don´t really care about you and are only talking to you to be polite, is it worth your time and effort to mouth bland platitudes at everyone, over and over, at dinner? Why not…

It seems to me that if the family was closer and not obligated to seeing each other on a mandatory holiday gathering, they would know more about you than meaningless chit-chat of the kind that is reserved for the neighbor down the street whose husband you can never remember the name of and that one chick who can…