No, 2 years, right after high school. Lets have everyone choose between civil service/volunteerism or military service, 2 year minimum, if there's a way to work minimum wage into that, great. Face time with the great unvarnished public should be obligatory, even if your parent is a senator.

I'm with you. Continually amazed at the things my friends and acquaintances think it is necessary to spend money on. Nobody cares how trendy you are—if they do, you should ditch them.

This "harsh" reality is best dispensed from an internet access point that is likely in a comfortable, air-conditioned environment, naturally. If you're dishing out this wisdom from a hovel with zero soft places to sit or lie down, it is a reasonable argument.

Either you're slow on the uptake, or you liked it. ;-)

One Summer I spent a few weeks caravanning around the South of France with a friend I met through a foreign exchange program in my teens. We were covering a lot of ground on the cheap, she wanted to hit every tourist destination she had ever heard of in this part of the country—if we didn't, it wasn't for lack of…

I think it is amazing that science is actually required to step in and disprove a myth that is patently observable on your own damn self if you just think about it for a minute. I recently had a friend of mine repeat this crap to me; she has a graduate degree in a scientific field. This makes me think that this kind…

She sounds fine, why do we require our singers to be aerobics instructors AND singers? It's fine to be good at one or the other, not both. If you happen to be good at both, more power to you, but I don't want the music industry to be restricted to those unicorns, I'd like a little more variety.

Oh good grief, please tell me you spent as much time as possible baiting this person. Guys like this are just asking to get their ass handed to them.

How does this chart compare with infertility rates in general? Not to be alarmist, but it might be a whole lot of things, and environmental stresses might be one of them. Sex ed and acceptability is way up, but so are stress levels at younger ages. (Let's have more education assessments!!)

[Insert favorite popcorn eating whilst riveted to incipient disaster .gif here]

Well, doesn't Perry look like he just ate the canary. Does anyone know if you're allowed to wear non-prescription glasses in mug shots? I'm wondering if he skipped the hipster shades because he had to, or he's sending a secret message to his legion of minions.

I read the original article in Jerry Lewis' "Heey Laaaadies!" in my head. It made more sense that way. This revision does not need the special narration as much.

Gah, who are these mystery children who enjoy back to school shopping? I believe the office supply love has been successfully transferred, but anything to do with the prison that is school is eschewed by our spawn. I'm trying to change their perception, but it is difficult when I agree with them. (Holding out for…

Graphic design for a software company in the 90's: MacArthur fellow/genius tantrum throwing tantrum thrower CEO kept people up all damn hours of the night because that's when he liked to work. Got fired for misplacing a semicolon at 10pm. Got rehired by phone at 2am. Rinse, repeat. Got to design cool stuff, but boy…

It's wonderful that they do this. But given the other stuff going on, it seems wrong to go overboard patting them on the back. Sorry.

I blame Dr. Who.

I have a friend who's son really wanted a phone (13 at the time), so they had him write an essay on what he would do with it and how he would pay for it. It took him 3 tries, but he finally prevailed, and got a dumb phone through tracfone, paid for from his allowance and odd jobs. This is pretty much all they need…

I feel your pain. I wish they spent as much time playing Minecraft as they spend watching other people's videos of themselves playing Minecraft.

When ex-military are commenting that they rolled lighter in Afghanistan than "police" in St. Louis, I think that is an indication that the terrorists did actually win.
They have turned us into them.

People can be snobs about Spam, then eat chicken nuggets at the drive through with no thought as to what exactly those are made of.