Watch the episode of the UK Kitchen Nightmares set in a vegetarian restaurant in France - the way Ramsay deals with the Scottish chef India who comes in towards the end warms my crusty old heart every time!

Skype-relationship with parents here too. It took my folks a while to get used to using it - mostly my mum holds the device so that all I see is her left ear or the wall above her head or something. She also tends to shout 'because I'm really far away'. My dad invariably gets bored during conversations and starts…

That reminds me of my dad - for a while my sister was going through an awful time at work, so he got into the habit of texting her every day, when he hadn't really before. He took pictures of the pet rabbits we had and sent them with little 'Far Side' type captions, so like a picture of one bunny pooping on top of a…

I feel you on the waiting for payday nightmare! This is probably too late a reply for you, but Louis Theroux's 'Weird Weekends' documentary series are fascinating and often hilarious.

Internet hugs to you! Enjoy killing ALL THE THINGS

He knows why I'm upset before I do.

'The penis is readily accessible in real life.'

Yes! I came here to make the point about blue and pink. You can see it in a lot of classical paintings of Jesus and Mary - Mary is almost always in blue and Jesus is often in a pink shade.

Although 'phobia' does mean fear, homophobia is commonly understood to be an extreme dislike of gay people. I don't think she's afraid of gay people, I just think that, deep down, she has a dislike of gay people that probably comes from some warped understanding of homosexuality.

I see your point, but I think there are degrees of homophobia, like there are degrees of racism. You could be against lynching but still not want to live next to a black person, for example. Although O'Brien is against some more open homophobia I think that she displays a homophobic attitude with regards to the issue…

Yeah - much as I love Ireland (I'm living in Dublin ATM) it's not all sweetness and light for LGBT people here. See the shitstorm that blew up around Rory O'Neill (drag queen Panti Bliss, in video below) after he publicly named some people as being homophobic:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXayhUzWnl0

I loved that book! My boyfriend is currently ploughing through Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson (2nd book in a series) and I am waiting impatiently for him to finish so I can get my grubby little hands on it. I feel your pain!

It's a brave new world alright.

Details are needed!

I demand statistical evidence of this!
(Ideally presented in colourful pie-chart form.)

Most people are white? Like, in the world? I'm not sure that's true.
This pie chart is from 2010, but I'm betting there hasn't been a huge demographic shift since then.

Thanks so much! Have a cute penguin :)

Hello fellow substitute! I know that money worry feel. I have been teaching English language the past couple of summers - I did a short course to get a qualification in it, and generally find short term employment easily enough due to the influx of foreign language students in the summer. Other than that, a summer…

Thanks so much for going to the trouble of finding that! As well as the budget issue, I also only have this class for another week (during which time I have to get an essay out of this poor kid), so even if I could buy it I don't think it would get here in time (I'm in Ireland). I appreciate you finding the…