I wonder if you got dry socket when you had your wisdom teeth removed? It’s a terrible condition that happens sometimes the surgery, and it causes excessive pain and long healing times.

All things taken together with the punishments and the extra coursework, he’ll pretty much have picked up a minor in Anti-Hate. I wonder if he can put that on his resume?

It goes back to the Protestant work ethic: America’s wealth and success is proof of the fact that God already loves it best. Lots of money proves God's favor and salvation.

Who the hell has this much free time and energy in their lives to get themselves this angry about a Santa decoration being black? I mean, think about it—first, somebody had to be paying REALLY close attention to the race of Santa as they walked by. Then, they had to get themselves all pissy about it, and then work…

Sorry to hear about the situation with the divorce and the kids.  That must have been particularly difficult last year when people inquired about your plans for the holidays.  Divorce is miserable enough without having kids, so I hope that as you look one year back that things are much better now!

Anyone else scrambling right now so that YOU are not the giver of a crappy gift?

Oh my God, I am SO sorry you went through that! That is just gratuitous cruelty. There are so many foster parents that have absolutely no business taking in children—to them it’s just a paycheck. It’s terrible to take children away from unfit families of origin only to place them with nightmarish foster families.

It’s more of a slippery slope argument: “Homosexuality is a deviant form of sexuality. If we allow gay marriage, we are supporting deviant sexuality. Pedophilia is also a deviant form of sexuality. If we allow gay marriage, soon we will be legally protecting pedophilia.”

You’re right, there isn’t anything wrong with being gracious, and I don’t think being hard-hearted or punitive about this makes sense for her, her career, or her family situation. However, when you are a woman, being gracious is a constant expectation in ways that it is NOT from men. A man would be allowed to get…

One consistent theme here seems to be that doing present swaps inevitably lead to a huge mismatch in gift quality. 

Were you able to keep it?

Did you get the real My Little Pony after that?  Caring for soap is a MUCH bigger responsibility and it sounds like you took it quite seriously, so you were more than ready for the real thing!

Everybody is quick to see if Brady has begun to unravel, but I think it is also noteworthy that this season there have been a lot of times where penalties have hurt the Patriots, and that is something that we’re not used to seeing very often.  Is that a coaching problem? Leadership problem? Lack of experience?

I'm going to have to fight you about the alleged boringness of pears.  A perfectly ripe pear is one of the sexiest fruits ever.

I have had to erect VERY strong boundaries with her, and I have to be vigilant about enforcing them. She lives half a country away, so that is helpful, but I literally have to ban her from having my phone number. I try to limit our contact to the bare minimum of a quick check-in via text every month or two.

I definitely think spoiling kids makes holidays more fun.  I think I would make a big fuss if I had any children in my life.  But I certainly don't envy parents of today because of the ridiculously expensive electronic gifts they are supposed to buy every year; I can't imagine how anyone keeps up, especially since…

Maybe he acted differently because the power dynamic was different. On NCIS, he was ONE of the major stars, but on Bull, he was brought in explicitly to be THE star of his OWN show. That automatically shifted him to a position of top dog, alpha male, whereas on NCIS, there were other male stars who were at his level…

Okay, let’s follow their logic and say that they want to claim the woman brought it upon herself. WTF are they going to do about the officer indiscriminately brandishing her taser at a crowd of people?

YES! It doesn’t take much effort to do grand gestures compared to the mundane efforts of being steady in a relationship all the time. For some reason—I guess largely cultural?—there are a lot of guys who will try make a big effort to do a couple special things for a woman after he has screwed up hardcore, and then he…

I’m so sorry to hear about your work situation. I hope that it ends up working out and that you don’t end up getting laid off, since it sounds like there is a decent chance it doesn’t happen. And if it DOES happen, I hope a much better career opportunity comes along.  I know it sucks even more when you are stuck in…