...who to blame for that abominable flip-flop trend on the campus where I work, like I want to look at grotty adolescent male feet while I'm waiting for my sandwich at Panera. And those horrible jeans that DON'T FIT, and the shirts that are supposed to look cool but just scream "suburban mall rat" and communicate to their professors that they're just there for the grade, and don't make them think or do math because they've got a night of hard partying ahead. Milling around on campus, screaming themselves hoarse outside the bars on Friday nights, what the vast majority of them don't seem to understand is that they're headed for a life of invisibility. They won't be the kids who go far, both in and out of academia. Do you think Bill Gates or Steve Jobs would have worn Abercrombie and Fitch? Maybe, but I doubt it.

And Jeffries--himself probably once a skinny kid who got his head dunked in the toilet one too many times for walking funny--may be making up for lost time, but he's probably also laughing all the way to the bank, marketing a delusion of coolness that'll tide these poor tykes over until hard reality socks them in the face and they wake up to a faux-Anglophile vinyl-sided development with a minivan and a pointless paper-shuffling job and three screaming brats of their own.

would make him no less creepy, I'm sorry. It would just make him a slightly different kind of creepy than the dirty old man who ogles young girls. Yuk.

If you all want to wear Abercrombie and Fitch in some parodic hipster way in order to "taint" the brand, go right ahead. From their website, it also looks like those with less-than-supermodel physique could get into some of those pants--the fit would probably be slightly more snug, but I'll bet they'd still fit. Jeffries won't care, though--he'll just get to sell more poorly-made, tacky clothes that make people look like bums.

...this was funny. I haven't laughed so hard since you published excerpts from Harrison Ford's diary way back in 2001. There needs to be more of this and less of the (sincere) navel-gazing.

with Zaynab's and pookastew's advice is that it's even less likely that the LW's father will pack up and go with his son. In fact, I'll bet the LW has entertained these thoughts, maybe even voiced them aloud, but he may already know that his father is so enmeshed in this situation that he could never leave, at least not voluntarily.

But going to a meeting of other people who have something in common with him, people outside his family who might give him the friendship and respect and decency he won't get at home--that's a baby step. And maybe one that will help him on the way to moving out.

I speak as someone who has an older parent who's not nearly this dysfunctional, but whom I know--no matter how much help I might offer, no matter how prepared I am to take her on--she will never take me up on it.

West Coast...that's what set off red flags for me, too. The absolute best advice so far has been given by the commenter who wondered if this student is a plant trying to ferret out godless academics to give right-wing "academic Gestapo" groups ammunition. In this climate, that is not a paranoid reaction.

Send this student to whatever version of the United Ministries (main line Protestant, usually a mixture of Methodist, UCC, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Lutheran) you have on campus. They have a very ecumentical approach to faith. In my student days (late 80s), before I lost my faith altogether, I found our campus's organization to be thoughtful, open-minded, respectful of students' beliefs, deeply understanding of the "dark night of the soul," and above all, kind.

And, speaking as a former academic myself, I also have to warn you against becoming too closely enmeshed in student problems. It's good to know that students feel they can come to you for advice, but it's better to know where to send them for help. Don't tell students what you think. If there's no reason for this reason to have been public before, they have no business knowing your private beliefs. Please watch your professional boundaries; it will help you avoid some sticky situations.

the same group of men who are afeard of smart, educated wimmen are afeard of the funny ones, too.

So if you meet one of those men, girls, don't just sit there simpering at his dull patter. RUN FAR AWAY. He doesn't sound like much of a catch.