"If a girl posts a halfway-decent photo and expresses a taste for George Saunders, "Lolita" and the Clash, she is guaranteed an e-mail asking her to elaborate over drinks next week. (I speak from experience.) "

Of course if you post a preference for one of the most suggestive books of the 20th century and the one band that every boy loves, you're gonna get alot of dates... that's just shooting fish in a barrell!

That's the one with Gogol's best advice on business and office politics...

Is it me or is this the kind of thing that even shallow, emotionally-challeneged dullards figure out for themselves sometime before their 25th birthday? And something most well adusted folks figure out sometime before the end of their freshman year? Jesus Christ, Megan. Some people have real problems in this world - have you missed the food riots and failed states and human trafficking and dismantling of our Constitution that adults worry about? And you're just realizing that people have more to offer than their fucking playlists? When did Salon become the province of overpriveleged, cossetted, navel-gazing children who think their every obvious utterance and banal observation is a miraculous and praiseworthy milestone in human history? I have to remember not to anything here except "How The World Works" and the Cartoons... These features make Julia Alison look like David Halberstam...

Great Advice - couldn't have put it better myself!

Divine inspiration that spans generations:

http://www.amazon.com/Quotations-Chairman-Mao-Tse-Tung/dp/083512388X

Probably because most people living below the poverty line are too busy trying to survive to waste their time obsessing over immature, shallow nonsense like this. When your economic status seriously limits your purchasing power, you tend to consume based on what you can afford, not based on fear of what other people think of your purchases. Also, nobody said all middle class problems are frivolous, just THIS one.

Are you new to the GTA series? You could kill hookers in GTA as far back as 2001. That was like 3 versions ago. Not sure how you missed all the furor that each new release has caused among the moral majority types. Don't you ever read Wired or even Newsweek? Your warmed-over outrage is a day late and a dollar short. Try to keep up...

I think that's the REAL difference between a blog and a column.

Helen Hunt just made a GREAT film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2UBHepKLak

With Bette Friggn Middler as her estranged birthmom for fuck's sake! It doesn't get more Steel Magnolias than that!

Meanwhile, Tina Fey and Amy Pohler are kicking ass at the box office.

The only way this weak story even remotely works is by willfully ignoring what's actually happening in the box office or radically redefining trends in Cinema to reflect the agenda and bias of the story (calling the Sex In The City women "gay men in drag" says it all).

Lame story.

... maybe we should blame the incredible lameness of Kate Hudson for the current lack of decent rom-coms and complex women's roles in current cinema? I mean who would want to take the risk of greenlighting a funny, complex women's role when Hudson is stinking up the screen with garbage like "Fool's Gold" - she and McConnaghey have destroyed the rom-com for a generation. Which is why Judd Apatow's flims have filled the void - grossout comedies become rom-coms by default. Thanks Kate! That's Matthew! Ugh!

... and she just isn't telling the LW.

Honestly, I don't care about stupid, self-destructive people anymore. But I think the LW should tell Jan's boyfriend that she's a big old ho before he ends up with the AIDS.

Silly Tracy, Ecudor is currently experiencing one of the most radical moments in its modern history under Evo Morales (who I happen to think rocks). Still, the one thing I agree with the Conservatives on is keeping the government out of the bedroom. It's kind of a silly idea to write pleasure into a country's constitution, no?

I totally mixed up Ecuador and Bolivia today... that's what happens when you mix lack of sleep with too much of the Brian Lehrer show... but Rafael Correa is still a bit of a radical (wants to cancel IMF debt, sided with Chavez and Morales vs. Colombia, etc)... and I still think it's a bad idea to legislate pleasure.

Why can't some women simply dislike one another without it becoming a trend? Men do it all the time. The problem isn't with women's friendships - it's with the media-industrial complex's neverending need to create fake trends so that the the women who write for women's magazines and gossip rags can keep plying their "trade." Women's mags create and maintain a market for fake "trends" that make sensible people roll their eyes in disgust. I'm all for women's liberation - from the godawful women's magazine industry that enslaves so many of their minds.

Just when you think the French can't get any pervier... Vive la France!

Trashy fake journalists and jumped-up gossip columnists like her and Geraldo and Larry King and John Stossel are the reason that our media is broken and unnable to stand up to the lies of the Bush administration. Her critics weren't criticizing her for being a woman breaking barriers, they were criticizing her for being a hack lowering everyone's standards. Remember to thank Walters the next time you have to sit through the antics of some drugged out celebutard the next time you're watching the news. Baraba Walters should only be remembered with disgust and anger.

You know what's fucked up? I don't really have any empathy left for our soldiers in Iraq anymore. All I can think about is how fucked up our economy is and how much this war is costing us taxpayers. How much of my money is that Colonel burning up in his helicopter ride?

...and his UN Peacekeeping Force action pack...