Ex-smokers, huddle up. My 1 year anniversary of no-damn-ciggies is this week so I've been musing about how I feel, what's changed, etc. I got to thinking about other ex-smokers I've met, and it seems to me that none of them quit for anything other than their health. I'm talking about former pack-a-day, 2-pack-a-day…

Exactly. And if that is the case, who gets to be the arbitrator? Whose tastes, biases, and moral code gets to be branded the "correct" one, and anything that falls outside of that is branded as heretical, or worse, is quashed entirely?

Bingo! I know a few of them.

I'll preface this by saying that I'm a public librarian.

Yep. They only respond to the "most severe" (in their own words). I think there are 2 or 3 CPS officers for our entire county and they are completely overwhelmed, so there is a lot that slips through the cracks. That's what you get for living in one of the most high unemployment areas in the country combined with an…

So, I spent most of the week waiting anxiously to hear back about an interview I had a couple of weeks ago (I think I spoke about this in GT) and despite sending an email to the big kahuna who interviewed me, I heard nothing back. That's pretty tough, my friends, and I've been feeling pretty low. The only way I know…

I don't care what people do or don't consider to be sex. But good Christ, I'm sick of this "Americans should be more like the French!" trope. It is tired, y'all. It is fucking exhausted.

Yeah, this didn't warrant an investigation. What gets me is that CPS resources and time could have been much better spent actually investigating, you know, just one of the thousands of serious calls each CPS office gets every year but can't respond to because of budget and time restraints. Maybe I'm sensitive to that…

I thought the trolls would fuck off within a few weeks of the kinja launch (from here on out, I refuse to capitalize "kinja"), but there are still a shitload of them, along with ever so charming ads-disguised-as-comments. Oh, and copious amounts of [bad] porn in Groupthink. Yep, kinja's awesome!

It seems as though every time the comments system is changed (and honest to Christ it feels like it happens every two weeks, although I know that's an exaggeration) the editors say, "Oh we love it! It's so much easier to use! This will elevate discussion! Make it easier to see great comments and hide the stupid ones!"…

Hey, so, things will be less insane someday, right? I mean, this level of crazy is unsustainable, isn't it? Someday I can wake up and my nation's politicians and other elected officials won't act like holdovers from the 13th century, right?

I am so ashamed of the level of political discourse in the country the last couple of years (ok, before that too, but it is now at holy-shit-wtf levels). I see wonderful, incredible, inspirational things that my country is capable of - the Mars rover landing being the most recent - but then we have politicians and…

Yeah, I think it might have been 1992 or 1993? So it's possible.

that helps lessen the decline of mobility as you age

I once asked for mouthwash for my birthday. I understand.

Caramel coloring was originally added to hide impurities, supposedly. Nowadays, I think they use caramel coloring just because people expect their colas to be brown.

Yes, I've heard that Crystal Pepsi was basically just Pepsi without the food coloring, but I swear it tasted markedly different from Pepsi, then and now.

Your husband and I would probably get along. It was my favorite soda in the early 90's! And it used to come in those awesome tear-shaped glass bottles!

I think we're missing the real crime point here: none of these kids ever got to taste Crystal Pepsi. That friends, is the real tragedy.

I would be allllll about that.