When I read your comment above I assumed the asterisk was there for emphasis, and discovering that it wasn’t there initially tends to piss me the fuck off.

While we’re at it, we must also worship the kodkod cat.

Hash browns aren’t fries either. And neither are home fr—oh shit, that just fucked my argument.

Oh, you beat me to it...

She must have been selling by the square meter (approximately 11 square feet).

The average sale was for 2 euros. Not very hot water.

According to one of the linked articles her average sale was worth 2 euros, which seems like a reasonable amount to pay for a joke gift.

My guess is that most or all of the buyers did it as a joke.

I never understood why people were so freaked about this to begin with.

So, all the “if you don’t like this, there’s something wrong with you” comments are really pissing me off. I’m going offline, because it’s really not worth getting upset about, but first I want to explain something:

True. Anybody who doesn’t react the same way I do is deficient in some way. I have always known this to be true.

And what “tone” would that be? Seriously. If you’re going to express sneering hate for people who react differently than you do, just own it.

Sure. I don’t think anybody is advocating yelling at these folks to shut the hell up. If I was there and didn’t like it, I wouldn’t complain (audibly). But I still wouldn’t like it.

My first thought is of all the women whose partners will start badgering them to take this drug.

I hate traveling and I hate airports, and one of the main things I hate about airports is the constant noise. I block it out as much as possible. Before I had a kid I used to wear earplugs, but I can’t do that any more because I have to keep an eye on her. So basically I feel trapped and awful, and even things that I…

It’s so annoying when annoying people annoy me with annoying whining about being annoyed.....

Yeah, me too. I hate to be curmudgeonly, but there it is.

The title is a reference to a painting called “The Treachery of Images” by Magritte that depicts a realistic drawing of a pipe with the words “ceci n’est pas une pipe” (this is not a pipe) written underneath. So it’s a commentary on the relationship between a thing and a depiction of it. Or something like that.

I don’t like anybody in this story.