The sensation that familiar things are strange is called jamais vu, and yes, it can signal schizophrenia. That's not what happens to me all the time however; what happens to me all the time is weird ass waiters lying about stuff I regularly order in restaurants. It happens a lot when you've been going to the same place for longer than any of the staff. Look, if the cook just started yesterday, TELL me, don't try to bullshit me that chili rellenos are amphibious.

I thought this comic made an excellent point about why lying is bad. Harry G. Frankfurt wrote a whole essay on this... that when someone lies to you, it destroys your trust in your perceptions.

Well, not quite. Drinking a beer won't land you in jail for years. Given the current national climate, smoking pot isn't compatible with a desire for freedom and self-preservation. I have nothing against pot personally but I just hate prison.

I don't think Cary's advice - telling the guy that you're crazy and you stole his pot - is good if you want to keep the relationship. Tell him you borrowed some and here's some back. Better yet give him money for it and forget the pot altogether, since it seems to make you do bad things.

Nota bene: if you don't like feeling guilty, don't steal. You made a mistake this time; it's in the past, no need to dwell on it. But Cary is right that you should take a look at the deeper needs making you act out.

Too funny. Yes, the train is an excellent symbol for Rand - one way, limiting, doomed to be obsolete almost as soon as it became popular.

I noticed another inconsistency: if all the air in the tunnel was sucked out and filled with fumes by the first train, wouldn't the second train have noticed the bad air immediately? And at some point doesn't it become a moot point because lack of oxygen is incompatible with combustion? If she's suggesting carbon monoxide poisoning, the panic among the passengers doesn't fit... people poisoned by carbon monoxide go to sleep.

I'm still amazed at her notion that diesel is a clean fuel. Maybe it doesn't get visible dirt on you like coal... but anyone who's been near a military motor pool at dawn in a Georgia summer will remember the choking stench of diesel forever.

Oh goodness. This happens to me all the time.

My husband and I have separate accounts plus a shared account where things like bills end up. A shared account doesn't necessarily mean that there are no boundaries in a relationship; in fact most of our family correspondence goes through the shared account, because both of us want to see the latest news, and because he's lazy about writing his sister who gets upset if he doesn't write, so I do it and say it's from both of us. If he wants to write his sister from his own account, he can do that too. It would be easy for either of us to look at the other one's mail, but we don't, because nice people don't read mail that's not addressed to them. No password can ensure privacy where there's not basic decency and respect.

In any case, the letter in question was written before there was a joint account, and she had no business reading it. Having read it, she had no business sharing it with the rest of the family. There's not really a way to whitewash her actions. Assume for the sake of argument she had a valid reason to be offended; so what? When you're offended, do you jump in fighting and start trying to make everyone in the world pick a side? If you do, please stay far from me, because I'm too old for that kind of bullshit.

However, as much as we might wish it, there's no way of punishing someone for being a golddigging, prying, drama-loving bitch, and no way of forcing her to act right. The only weapon the LW has is rising above it all.