There is no universe telling you what you should do. If your gut is telling you not to call back because that years-ago blowout was indicative of deeper toxic elements of the friendship or your friend's character, please, do not feel obligated to give her a second chance, even though all of Salon seems to think you should "just call her" and "what do you have to lose?"

What you have to lose is the distance and boundaries you have established in not being in touch after all these years. If this was an unhealthy friendship, it's good that you left it behind, and you may be vulnerable to getting sucked in all over again if you open that door.

I speak from experience. I just noticed my favorite toxic college friend is now on Facebook, and my heart sank. I gave her lots of second chances, and she had not changed or grown. It was always the same old crap, and it was painful to get played all over again when I should have known better. Please, universe, I send this out there: do NOT let her try to contact me.

However, if I am just projecting my own baggage all over your letter, and the falling-out with YOUR friend was more a matter of immaturity and difficult circumstances, and you otherwise had a great connection with this person, by all means swallow your pride and give her a chance.

I don't say that to be mean, but hopefully to give the LW some perspective on the lack of logic in what she's saying.

Therapy did not cause you to lose your job and apartment. Only you (or rather, your depression) were responsible for that. Also, do you really "have to" depend on these emotionally abusive family members? If there's any possible way you could get by without relying on them, then please end this unhealthy contact.

Also, you don't sound sincere when you say you've considered "giving up" and becoming a loner. What? You don't want that -- you want to have a boyfriend, be kissed, and make friends. And you deserve to experience all that.

As they say in the 12-step programs, it's time to get honest. You're depressed, and that's not your fault. But you do need treatment. Stop making excuses and get some. You're worth it.

... if she doesn't want to hang out one-on-one with her "boring," non-party-girl friend, she should graciously decline the invitations to museums and birthday dinners instead of saying yes and then passive-aggressively inviting her own buffer posse along and showing up hours late. Sheesh. There are other ways to send a "message" than acting like an a-hole.

With friends like these, who needs bad boyfriends?

It's not the idea of a dolphin fetish that's so difficult to believe, it's the attempt at soft-core writing and the wife's sitcom-perfect response.

Send it to one of those zoo-fantasy sites, dolphin guy, not Since You Asked!

Points well articulated, and taken. Maybe what I'm suggesting is merely the flip-side of your argument: that the terminal adolescence you describe isn't an act, but genuine Craig Finn.

Anyway, whether or not I'm right, I can certainly understand how one might find the pose tedious and uninteresting.

The Hold Steady are peddling a New Yorker's wet dream of an imaginary adolescent Middle West where everyone is greasy and stoned and horny.

I think what you just described there is Craig Finn's personal wet dream, one that a nerdy, suburban Midwestern kid has been spinning into lyrics for years and years, even before Lifter Puller. I sincerely doubt it's calculated. Whether he lived it or not, Craig Finn means every word.

And perhaps it was going overboard to make a point of replacing those particular signs, but I really don't get why some are so offended by the concept of choosing inclusive over exclusive language in public signage.

We're not talking about the more whimsical fringe revisions such as "womyn," here. Does "Workers Ahead" (or "construction," or whatever) signify such a great culture loss when selected in favor of "Men Working"? What is it that is so outrageous about choosing accurate language that deserves eye-rolling, snarky put-downs, the heaving of sighs, and dismissive comments about those darn feminists?

If the standard term were "White Men Working," would anyone question the superiority of alternate phrasing? Somehow I doubt it.

You may be a linguist, but you would do poorly on the analogy portion of a standardized test. "Get your ass over here" is a metonymy, in which the part (ass) signifies the whole (person). The problem with your comparison is that while we all have asses, not all of us have a penis. Therefore, "men working" is inherently exclusive of half the human population that could potentially be part of that workforce.

I don't personally have a big problem with these leftover expressions from the days when women really were not included in the groups described. However, I do think that changes like these create subtle, positive shifts in the public perception of the genderization of work. (This cuts both ways, btw -- think of a profession such as nursing. No signs are involved, but it's still strongly associated as a job held by women.)

It's not so much that we think about sexism or women working when we see a "Workers Ahead Sign," it's that we are more likely to connect an image of men holding the given job when we see the "Men Working" message. Without that inaccurate specifier in the statement, those out-of-date associations can slowly begin to erode.