"That'd be you. Your half of the conversation is something I've enjoyed immensely and appreciated. I like to say I've got the world's best editor, a readership that catches grammatical errors within microseconds of the column publishing, that points out faulty logic and lazy thinking even faster than that."

Ahem, that grammatical error would be "You'RE half of the conversation." I would not be one of those readers who jumps on such shit in a microsecond. I actually love the grammatical anarchy of the Internet, but when something gets tossed up there like a Tim Wakefield fastball, how can anyone resist?

Please, I'm dying here. I'm dying. It was a frickin' knuckler and I swung, missed and landed on my ass.

Is it true that whenever one of these two raging narcissists looks into a limpid pool, the other is staring back? That may explain why they're never seen in public at the same time. But it doesn't explain why when they do appear, Joan Walsh usually has something to do with it.

To all those who've struggled with mental illness and come forward to give those of us who haven't a broader understanding on what's going on here...way beyond celebrity. Without your perspective, I'm afraid we'd be left with the smug Master of the Universe poses of some of our fellow posters who believe that whatever has happened in their little lives can and should be projected onto ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE ELSE.

Which brings to mind my all time most useful--if not favorite--Paul Simon line: "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest" (that goes for ladies, too, and you know who you are, friend)

This reminds me of the one I heard about a God who set a man and a woman up in a paradise and told them that it was theirs for eternity as long as they just didn't eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil. God/Brother; roommate/Adam; Hoping/Eve. It's a story that just keeps on working and working and working...because it is so US! And that's what makes it just about the best dozen lines in all literature.

I'd say Hochuli has more than paid his debt to society, having to endure 14 weeks of that moron Tony Kornheiser blaming him for killing the Chargers' season. Even that under-achieving band of crybabies in San Diego would never never make such a lame excuse for themselves...at least not publicly.

"This wasn't just a major league problem. I played Little League baseball from 1971 to 1975 and I swung a 27-ounce bat at the age of 7, probably about a 29-ouncer when I was 11."

And you know what? It wasn't just the bats...the gloves were too small, the cleats too clunky, the pants too baggy. And it wasn't just major league baseball either. The tennis rackets, the surfboards, the skis--even the race cars--all needed far more attention from the physics teachers than they were getting. All that fly me to the moon and Dr. Strangelove stuff sucking all the energy out of the lab I guess.

If the Wizard of Oz had responded when Toto pulled back the curtain on him with the same degree of hysteria that the peacock has responded to Jon Stewart's Medal of Freedom worthy plucking, Dorothy would have gotten an ice-pick in her heart.

You would not want to hear if you called a Suicide Hotline:

1. "Others may be too busy doing some of the things I have mentioned to notice your passing, at least very much."

2. "Someone once said to me that suicide is the most selfish thing a person can do."

3. "Travel. Play. Hike the Appalachian Trail."

4. "Write a 'bucket list'"

5. "[Your] logic for the merits of suicide echoes Nazi arguments for the merits of euthansia: those who are unable to contribute to society by means of disease or disability or other "unsuitable" traits should be put to death before they become a "burden" to society. That this poisonous logic has seeped into [your] consciousness, so deeply, so sharply, with no self-critical apparatus, is quite terrifying."

Okay, it's only the top five things, but once you start dispensing the "You're a Nazi!" advice, the rest of the list becomes kind of anti-climatic.

Fortunately, LW wrote to Cary and got the best advice he could have possibly gotten.

By the way, I love dogs as much as the next guy, but if getting a dog is such surefire suicide prevention, shouldn't animal shelters and suicide prevention centers be in some kind of synchronistic relationship with each other?

BTW Part II--insert_screenname_here--I'd insert Brilliant for you.

I must take strong exception to this observation that everyone is a casualty of a screwed up family. Some of us are mere victims of casualties of screwed up families. We had someone marry into our family who not only believes that families damage children (?!!!?), but promulgates that belief like a religious zealot and has, as a consequence, brought about untold emotional damage to our once upon a time relatively normal family. He is like that character in one of those dreadful family dramas who walks around for two acts in brooding judgment of everyone else and then takes center stage in the third act and tells them all how dysfunctional they are. Oh, yeah? Gosh, we didn't know that. Thanks for telling us, asshole.

This is probably just a generational thing, but many posters here seem to think that right wing hatred started with the Clintons. Long before that, however, there was McCarthyism and the Red Scare, the Birch Society and its campaign to Impeach Earl Warren and expose Ike, and as always the Texas fascists and their Wanted Dead or Alive poster for JFK. This is really a dreadful strain in American culture that ought to be treated like the political virus it is. Joan obviously sees it as either benign or amusing...or worse, commercial.