My mother can be a bear. She’s usually a nice, decent person, but she has almost zero tolerance for things not going her way. Not getting what she wants or getting attitude from a service rep sets her off, as does the prospect of spending more money than she expected. My stepfather had to make her go back into the…

Yes, exactly. And Axis II conditions are not easily treatable with medication. You can take some of the edge off, but that’s about it. Long-term, intensive, trauma-focused work is the only real solution, and that’s both expensive and difficult to pull off.

Whatever issues she may have, she clearly knew what she was doing. It’s her lifelong lack of a relationship with the truth that is so obviously pathological. A trait that many sociopaths and psychopaths have in common. Just because it fits with a diagnosis found in the DSM does not mean that the individual isn’t…

That’s the thing. This guy may not have been a raging asshole on the surface, but he KNEW perfectly well what he was doing, and he knew he could get away with it. I’m sure that if he went to work and was told that he would only be getting $2 for these two hours because the customer got the items gratis, he would not…

We’re really getting into the boundaries between descent, race, ethnicity and nationality here. “African” in the context of African-American identity and reporting for demographic purposes refers to race, not nationality. A person who is ethnically Chinese but was raised in Mauritius would be considered Mauritian by…

HAM ARM. Like RUM HAM but for autocannibalism.

Have you ever seen a britcom by the name of May to December? It’s about a middle-aged man who marries a much younger woman.... who becomes stepmother to a man almost her own age. And the tone of the show is “wacky shenanigans with heartwarming endings.” Again, not saying it’s any worse than Real Housewives or any…

LOL. John Lydon never gets tired of taking credit and being a general arsehole. He’s my birthday twin, by the way. Explains a lot.

Precisely. It’s not that the bulk of British TV is any better than American TV. We see the cherry-picked favorites because that’s what gets distributed here. They have crap TV, too, we just don’t see it as much.

At the library where we worked we got our shipment of Deathly Hallows and separated them into reserve copies, which would go out immediately to the people who were on the 300-deep reserve list, and shelf copies, which were available to anyone. We put a few of the shelf copies out on the circulation desk at the…

I work in the human service industry, so Kat’s story is particularly fun for me. At one point I worked for a home health agency as an office assistant. On my first day, my coworker presented me with an envelope covered in handwritten phone numbers. He said that I should just call the numbers and find out what was on…

Rizzo? Is that you?

Both my first kiss and my date to the 8th grade graduation dance were gay. I thought they were super cute, and in the mid-90s it was even less common for kids to come out at that age. I’m sure she remembers you fondly.

The pig lives with his old driver, in a huge backyard.... and they facetime. He facetimes with a pig. A pig who lives with his old driver. It took me a while to process this item, and I’m still in awe at how completely bananas it is.

Good god, Pinkham. What did you do to deserve this miserable Greek chorus of Snoping blowhards. You only give us sweet, delightful, hilarious human frailty, week in and week out, asking little in return. I would like for the masturbating space wizard from Denny’s to visit all of them at their jobs. If only so we could…

Good point. Also noted as to the issue of tips not going to counter staff at counter-service places. I try to use my judgment there. If the place is locally owned, and seems to be an upstanding establishment in the community, I feel more inclined to tip because it seems more likely that the staff will actually get the…

This would appear to be the happy medium. From the podunk-ass part of New York I’m in, everything south of the Western PA/NY line is downstate. From within the boroughs, everything north of the boroughs is upstate.

That type of assistance should be available for anyone with a child or expecting a child. I also think it's great if churches provide that for their communities, and if they don't provide abortion or contraception, just say so up front. If we truly respect women's choices in reproduction, we need to also respect the…

HBO needs to get their stand-alone streaming subscription service up and running, and available through my blu-ray player, like, now. So many good things I need to see!

This was my reaction when the gyno explained to me that male partners can't feel the Nuvaring, and if they do, they don't mind. What the hell do I care? If they MIND my preferred birth control method, they're not welcome. I can't imagine anything I would use being more intrusive on the act than a male condom, and if…