A pox on your priests and grief counsellors. Grief is good. If what you feel when you lose someone close to you were a thing you could "gain control" of, or even wanted to, then it wouldn't be grief or any other human experience, it'd be an ad for a running shoe.

Garrison Keillor is to writing what homeopathy is to medicine.

So is Cary!

Pleading with a misogynistic religion's misogynistic establishment to maybe be a tiny bit less misogynistic is about as pointless and demeaning a waste of time and effort as I can imagine.

Maybe John Haught wants to say something about something. Maybe John Haught wants to make a sensible point and wishes to use words and logical argument to advance a proposition that can then be discussed and debated.

We'll never know.

It's bad enough that the "question" was the the typical two thousand word "how-does-this-make-me-feel" maundering essay by some spineless twit. But the "answer" is two thousand words of Cary finding a way to be completely and utterly wrong in about twelve dimensions at once, being stupid and smarmy and cloying and nasty and repulsive and self-indulgent and vile all at once. Go and taunt a tiger, Cary, you repulsive fool. This is a low point even for you.

"I've turned to you. I'm honestly at the bottom of the barrel."

Indeed.

You can rescind your mailed-in ballot in favour of a new one at the polling station, unless things have changed recently.

A "dating advisor" said something superficial! Damn, I was expecting Patti Novak to be the epitome of informed wisdom. Now, to the barricades! Blog about it! Post about it! Whine about it! Feel vindicated and better about yourself for doing so!

Would it kill you to just let some of this pathetic minutiae *go* once in a while? Do you have to have an immediate and strong reaction to every vapid idiot who blathers stupidly on daytime TV?

And Mandeville got a lot more right than, say, "Go Ask Alice."

Tracy is there! To the rescue! A biting response to a stupid comment about a woman on some crappy TV show, stat! This is what really matters.

How do the poor unfortunate creatures who write for this column get up in the morning? Every day they rail and shriek and curl into a foetal ball of despair over the most pathetic, insignificant non-issues. OH NOES SOMEONE HAS A WEBSITE I DONT LIKE! Good God, could you idiots grow up and gain some sort of sense of perspective? Stop crying and gnashing your teeth in anguish over EVERY damn stupid thing. Your pathetic baitability does a disservice to thinking women.

If you were the parent of a nine-year-old with an eating disorder who was playing this game and blah-de-blah-de-blah. Grow up and take some goddam responsibility for yourself and quit whinging about stupid and trivial websites.

than this tedious, endless drivel about "body image"? Your lack of self-esteem is not my problem. Grow up, take responsibility, think for yourself, and stop whining and crying about stupid trivia.

The person in question has a pair of X chromosomes. People with that particular genetic characteristic get pregnant all the time. And, regardless of what surgery the person has had, what hormones the person has taken, and what pronouns the person prefers to be known by, the two X chromosomes haven't gone anywhere, and nor has the uterus. So how is this so remarkable?

Now, if someone with an X and a Y chromosome were to get pregnant, that would be news indeed. But that is not what has happened here.

You seem to have this strange idea that there is some monolithic entity of WOMEN that marches in lockstep. It doesn't really matter, of course, as the chances of such as you ever having anything to do with a real live woman ever in your life are nil.

It's not entirely fair and it's not entirely your fault, but all these idiots are hoping and expecting that by telling you you'll take whatever step it is they hope you will. They are screwing up their barest resources of courage to tell you whatever if it is they are telling you, because they think that that will somehow break an impasse or a logjam or something.

I've been one of said idiots, and I will loathe the person I trusted and in whom I confided for as long as breath is left in my body because she knew everything and did nothing. That led to everyone else knowing and me not ... and, it got worse. Anyway.

Your friends are telling you stuff because they need something to happen and they're frozen and can't act themselves for a variety of reasons. Help them out.

And I'm sure those involved salute your very public outrage.

Cary's fundamental dishonesty in how he composes the "letters" and pretends to engage with their "writers" is just part of the problem. The main problem is that he is *boring*. Someone who isn't dreary, boring, dull, and repetitive can get away with a litany of other writing sins. But these ponderous, two-thousand word, gassy, bleating letters and their equally clumsy, tortuous responses aren't done in any creative or interesting way. I know Cary makes his stupid letters up and I don't care; what bothers me is the writing, which is just *awful*. Who would want to read a book where the protagonist is Mr. Self-Actualized or the Mrs. My-Husband-Never-Loved-Me? They're not engaging or interesting characters to begin with, and the more words that Cary vomits onto the screen the less interesting they get. Writing isn't just spewing out words, you know ... word after dreary word, one cumbersome, ugly sentence after another in a parade of dense, humourless prose.

I'd rather read McGonagall's poetry than anything Cary comes out with.