On the other hand at my local Sprouts store they tend to hire very young check-out clerks who cluster at the front of the store talking about whatever’s actually important to Today’s Youth and won’t even look at me when I’m ready to check out, much less speak. It doesn’t happen every time but it’s happened more than…

You don’t carry a taser for such moments?

..like there’s a documented amount of smiling (is it calculated in numbers of smiles or minutes spent smiling?) for teachers--in the morning only, though. In the afternoon you can snarl and scowl all you want, I guess.

I hope you get your million! I’ve done the all-night grant writing stint and it gets very surreal in the early morning hours...but sometimes that’s like being drunk without the alcohol, so there’s that.

You could get a cat. My cat frequently grabs my feet and bites me without my consent, so I pick him up and kiss his head until he squirms away with expressions of great disdain and irritation. It’s kind of a consent-free zone that goes both ways up until I get hurt, and then we part ways for an hour or two.

I had a creepy step-grandfather who liked my sister and me to sit on his lap. He would always have quarters and candy, and that’s why we did it—neither of us liked him much but we were mercenary little things. My mother told me later that she never left us alone with him for a minute, and nothing bad ever happened,…

Hoping whoever wins enters the scariest story contest next year.

Yes, IF there was an accident (SABOTAGE??) at the nearby nuclear plant and nuclear waste flowed right into the bag—ANIMATING it with pure evil—and then poisoning the public water supply so that the populace started to believe that a bag of animated rancid cottage cheese should be their president!

Let’s just pray for that person that he actually is wearing a speedo. I kinda doubt it.

A presidency turned into a reality show.... well, it sure would pull in the viewers. “Keeping up with the Oval Office.” “The new Fear Factor: Global Edition.” Donald Trump will give a black rose to the country he chooses to go to war with this week! Watch as he demands that Congress vote off another senator! Are there…

Or “I’m sorry if that hurt anyone.” If it hurt YOU, that is after all because you’re too sensitive! Obviously!

I think older women might have more use for it than you think. They are tired, themselves, of trying to be the perfect sexbot that the world demands they be, and if they aren’t conventionally attractive, many people of both genders consider them invisible. A woman with some money and time, who is sick of putting on…

I would call it for Moe’s on the basis of evocative writing. I would say that if Moe had written the pumpkin seed story, no one who read it would be able to get through either Halloween or Thanksgiving without massive doses of Xanax. She would have by God told us how it smelled. She would have ground our faces in it.

Here ya go. Don’t say you didn’t ask for it!

I thought Moe’s tampon story was 1000% worse. The pumpkin seed story isn’t even about poop. It’s just food in a super-awkward place. But you can smell the tampon story while you’re reading it.

When you were eight years old, did you know whether you were a girl or a boy? Would you have minded if someone called you the wrong one? I think people are pretty gendered by that age. If you know any 8-year-olds, try telling them “gee, you seem like such a nice [other gender]” and see what they say.

Or squirrels. Really, that’s the proper punishment here.

It spends up all that pesky taxpayer money we have nothing else to do with? While at the same time reducing the number of productive, tax-paying citizens so we don’t have as many of them to produce all that troublesome money? A perfect plan, really.

Becoming infertile is not a negatively life altering thing to do?

As I said above in another thread: get a shower chair! I bought mine on Amazon for a bout 20 bucks. It makes me feel a little old, but I don’t have to balance on one foot in a wet slippery environment for any reason (except that tricky moment of stepping in or out, I guess). I call that a win.