...as another Red Sox fan would have said.

1. Cary, you go to great pains and great length to tell the readers that you -did- empathize with the woman who has just given birth and whose husband chose now to tell her he never loved her. You say your response "hit a nerve." No, what it hit was compassion from most of us. You say your response was deliberately constructed. In that case, I'd say you need work on your constructions. It made you sound like today's LW, only a little less self-assured.

2. LW, at some point, the fortunate -- or the clueless, who rack up scores while people around them crumble -- get hit by the karma-by-four and have to decide whether they're people or a curriculum vitae. I think I've reached that point. Yes, okay, all right already, you're special and accomplished. So much so that you see your family crumble about you and make judgmental comments, detached from the faulty beings with whom you have (unaccountably -- sorry for borrowing a parenthetical expression) been unaccoutably associated. At least you're not pulling what the husband in the previous letter pulled. Yet. People like you sometimes find girl "disciples" who "understand" them.

3. I'm sorry about your cat. Mourn the cat, then pass some of that compassion on to the humans about you who also need it and are still on the planet to benefit from it.

As Laurel says, films have gotten extremely expensive.

By the time I buy a film ticket, popcorn and a soda, I'm over $20.

For the same $20, I could stand in line at the Metropolitan Opera and (if I were lucky) get a cheap seat anywhere in the theatre. Or standing room. Or I could scan the programs of the major houses and see where the nosebleed seats are.

For people who live in places with slightly saner prices, it ought to be easier: colleges, universities, local theatres...

Interact with some live artists. The dynamic is completely different, and the audiences aren't as talkative.

And people tell Trekkers to get a life.

It's a mermaid. It stands to reason Starbucks' early logo would be a mermaid: the family was Nantucket-based, therefore connected with whaling and other maritime activities.

I don't buy there because I think it's overpriced, and the fancy names for the various sizes annoy me.

But this is precisely as stupid as that lunar profile that some of the same nuts said was Satanic. Which company was that, again? It was actually quite an attractive logo, too.

We're losing 100,000 people from a monsoon; oil is over 120; people are losing their homes; and these fools are worrying about a mermaid on a paper cup full of overpriced (but not overheated, not after McDonalds) coffee.

GMAFB.

First, it's not at all odd for a Jewish woman to marry at age 19, especially if she's -frum- or from a -frum- family, in which the familial expectations could be driving her round the bend.

Second, JAP just isn't polite to say.

Now, to "Me": congratulations on earning your degree. If you did this with a very close family distracting you in the name of love, a young child, and a drinking problem, it's quite an accomplishment. Simply surviving this long is.

However, at 28, you're at a point at which you have to make some decisions -- and I am going to say "have to" -- that will affect your entire life. First, you've earned the degree. Your letter shows why. And you've got the endurance to have faked it this long.

But the structure's breaking down. You're feeling trapped. You're taking it out in booze, and there's nothing nastier than a mean drunk. So far, you may have gotten away with it because hitting one's sister over the head with a purse CAN be construed as funny to people who are smashed and have seen too many cartoons or stereotype filled movies. My guess is that your husband's pleasant passive-aggressivity -- he's so nice, but I feel like KILLING him -- is driving you 'round the bend too, and let's face it; kids are need machines.

So far, you've got your mother in your corner kindasorta, and a grandSON? She'll stay there for a long, long time.

Until you lose it. And if you keep on like this, you will become the family "shikker," and the world will form a small black hole and engulf you. Your husband will move on, and you will be the one about whom, at family dinners, people sadly shake their heads as in "she had EVERYthing, how could she DO that?" And on some level, you have to know it. You grew up in it.

Is that what you want?

Do you want a job, really truly? Because if you do, HR and hiring managers are screening more and more diligently, and they can imagine neurosis where none exists. In your case...if you're getting interviews, the weird is coming through and spoiling them. If you're not getting interviews, you MAY be sabotaging your own presentations, having unreal expectations, or simply not following through. I HATE job hunts. I know a lot of screw-ups you can make: "not settling" becomes soldiering on the job-hunt job, which is awful. Right now, you need to build your portfolio. If you have to work for free -- being economically entitled by your marriage and family perks -- DO IT.

But get yourself a shrink, one who understands writers. Lay off the booze. Some people can take it. You can't. And if you've been not telling these things to your family, hell, you've got a mouth: use it. What else are holiday dinners FOR?

Are these tough enough, or would it take branding or flogging to satisfy your needs?

Honestly, we need a better class of trolls. Cary, when you come back from your workshop, bring us some better trolls, please?

This is a rhetorical question.

Does anyone think that this story represents much too much information?