The caliper measurement was the most dreaded day of the school year for me. I remember kids snickering audibly when I was up in line. I just wanted to die. What a great story, btw.

My parents made a similar offer! And I was *barely* chubby, but this was back in the days when few kids were overweight. I was super active and ate normally but just happened to be a bit soft around the middle. Still am. My parents offered me so many "incentives," from toys when I was little to cash when I was older,…

When I see photos of myself as a kid, I think, yeah, I was a teeny bit chubby. Not unhealthy, mind you. I was very active and spent most of my time running around outdoors. Yet you'd think I was morbidly obese by the reactions. My mom was always trying to get me to diet. It was understood that I was supposed to…

Here in the US, we simply ship our horses elsewhere to be slaughtered for meat. It's not like we are putting all the old Nellies out to pasture on some idyllic farm upstate. Canada now refuses to accept our horses, so we just send them to Mexico. These animals spend their final days traveling in horribly cramped and…

Seriously! If I were working on a set all day, surrounded by people milling about and barking directions, I'd hightail it out of there for lunch, too. I maybe had lunch with coworkers once a week max when I worked in an office, and many of those were suggested by my boss so I couldn't bow out gracefully. Otherwise, I…

Right, I knew that would come up after I posted. French-ish, in pronunciation anyway, as Laura Beck points out.

People are just lazy. I have a five-syllable Italian name that is totally simple to pronounce yet everybody — EVERYBODY — either shortens it (a major pet peeve) or calls me by my initials (which have become my nickname). I think Quvenzhané is a lovely name, but I'll be honest that I too was butchering it until I…

Seriously, that's what I thought too. And I like STFU's stance waaaaaaaaaay more. As for the poop posts on FB, I find it a Herculean task already to "like" the ten million photos and inane updates my best friend posts about her kid daily. If she starts posting about his poop, that's it, our friendship is over. She…

First time commenter on this site. Can I just say how immensely refreshing it is to read comments about MO's haircut that are not loaded with racism, both subtle and blatant. I nearly lost my shit reading some of the 2,000+ comments on a bangs-related Yahoo story, some of which likened this powerful, beautiful, and…