I have a low alcohol tolerance and this particular holiday party - a fully paid-for and lovely sit-down dinner - began with the waiters handing out small little harmless-looking glasses that turned out to be ... God only knows, something Scandinavian and terrifying. Dinner is a blur, though apparently I excused myself…

I've been mostly lucky with cabs over the years, with a couple of creepy moments that didn't escalate. That being said, I always text the cab number to myself and/or my spouse. Having a fake phone conversation with someone "waiting" at your destination can also help. And my back-up plan is to get dropped off at a…

Probably? I honestly don't remember. The smoke alarm would've been the least of it, what with all the molten plastic and me cursing.

At the request of the admins, I (and a bunch of other regulars) help over at io9 by approving comments - either starring them or replying to them. But my intervention doesn't mean that those users get permanently approved.

I can't figure it out at all. I'm out of gray at Gawker's main site and at io9. I'm gray at Jezebel and everywhere else, even The Vane. Sigh. I've been through 2 or 3 of these commenter purges over the years, but this one is especially puzzling and drawn-out.

Most of this thread is in the grays. But it's fabulous! We have EXPLODING CHOCOLATE BALLOONS.

OK, that's even worse than the pignoli nuts! Glad she's OK now. And Martha Stewart, what gives??

Pretty much, yeah :)

Ha, yes. Once when very young I ordered Turkish coffee in a Greek restaurant.

High five! I use the things you use. Plus my zester. Give me a lemon or an orange and I start happily zesting away. Can't live without it.

I do it that way - but with milk, in a double boiler.

Oh my God, I so, so sympathize. This doesn't involve any Williams-Sonoma products, but 10 years on my son is still talking about the Christmas I tried to lightly toast some pignoli nuts (for biscotti) and instead they burned and looked like rat turds and when I threw them out - rather vigorously and hastily - they…

"After smoking weed laced with angel dust, Italian designer Michele Daneluzzo decided to go all out with a customer-killing invention for the ages."

Peppermint bark is THE BOMB. I agree with just about everything in this article, but I'm still going to buy W.S. peppermint bark. I just am.

I once saw a 15-month-old grab a pickle from a bowl on the table in a restaurant. OK. But it was an old-fashioned restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas, and it was a jalapeno pickle.

Ha! Familiar. I'm the pre-Colonial-antecedents person in my family, and Mr. Sudden Eyes, who's Italian from New Jersey, finds the whole thing hilarious. I tend to agree with him. Would rather be able to look back at hard-working Calabrians than the long line of fucked-up Southerners I am (mostly) descended from.

As the helicopters swirl above my street on the Upper West Side. Get it together, NYPD, Jesus.

I once got curious and tracked down - thank you, Google - the descendants of one of the early 20th-century robber barons. The current batch is scattered and feckless, as far as I can tell. Some prominent American families seem to try to hang in there; others just give up.

The paternal line was broken repeatedly, was it not? There are female progenitors on or leading to the throne among the Tudors, the Stuarts, the Hanovers, and of course right this very minute the Windsors. The Y-DNA line can't possibly be anything like intact ... Of course, I haven't read the article, so that'll be…

Now 900% weirder, if that were possible.