Yay, another serial petter of bumble bees! Aren't they the fuzziest?

Ever since the posthumous pardon of Alan Turing, there's been a campaign to extend the pardons to all of the gay men in the UK who endured criminal convictions merely for engaging in consensual sex. Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Fry, and other public figures have joined the effort to give it worldwide attention, and…

That one made my head spin around too. "Let's go party!" is not something one expects to hear just before the conversation veers headlong into racist epithets and allusions to lynching.

I live near a Hy-Vee and it's a pretty nice supermarket. I don't think their prepared food is all that great, but I used to live in Wegmans country and am therefore thoroughly spoiled.

That would be awesome. I'd like to see a Million Grandparents' March. Complete with placards bearing old family photos of lost siblings, parents in mourning, kids in hospital beds and iron lungs.

Thanks. Unfortunately, it was not the family's only terrible experience with now-preventable childhood diseases. My fondest hope is that more senior citizens will start speaking up about the terrible things their families experienced in the days before vaccines. Someone like my mom, who lost siblings, or like the…

May I re-use your first metaphor? I think it's perfect, in no small part because I've experienced an anal fissure that required three minor but truly unpleasant surgical repairs before it healed for good. It's now my favorite analogy for something that causes extreme and prolonged misery, has no redeeming qualities…

When I hear the words "boost your immune system" from a layperson, I assume that the person is misinformed. When I hear it from a health professional, I presume that person to be a quack. If you want to boost your immune response to a potentially dangerous infection without actually getting sick, the best way to do…

I also wonder how this "whooping cough is no big whoop" stupidity got started. There are lots of recordings out there of the actual sounds made by kids with pertussis. The idjits who think it's nothing should listen to some of them.

Damn you, Shooty-Z, can't you just go the fuck away? Stay in your apartment and become a recluse or something?

The only possibly self-inflicted mood disorder I can think of is the overwhelming sense of despair and rage that comes from watching or listening to anything affiliated with Fox News or Fox Business.

I had to give up on the flavored chapstick things at an early age, after I got one that was a really yummy lime — so yummy, in fact, that I couldn't stop licking it off and making my dry lips much, much worse.

Not quite 23 years ago, I had a very nice and not at all weird chat, at a cocktail party, with Sir David Attenborough.

I may have to read this, if only for validation of my crankish personality. (Analogous to this, I've had to explain to some of my more new-agey friends that relaxation techniques invariably stress me out.)

Another reactive airway here. Laryngospasm truly sucks. Dying of pertussis in my 50s is not on my bucket list, so you bet I keep those vaccinations up to date.

Ugh. In the early 1950s, my in-laws lost a close friend in his 20s who came down with polio and died a couple of days later. My husband and I were born in 1956, a year after the Salk vaccine came out, and were members of the first cohort of kids whose parents didn't have to worry about their children winding up in an…

TDaP = tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis. The "acellular" part just describes the formulation of the pertussis component of the vaccine.

Maybe douche with almond milk and blueberries? 'Cause I hear Gwyneth likes those things too.

Something about that image of the steam iron is going to give me giggle fits all night. And I don't even have a uterus any more!

I'll stick with chocolate bunnies, thanks.