What the letter writer said is not so much common as universal among people who want to be writers. You leave university, you want to be a writer, it doesn't happen.

OK ... this is the deal: society values writers. In terms of social status, not financially. If it's money, security, professional advancement and so on you want, or may want at some point in the future, then don't bother. The world isn't going to run out of writers. It needs teachers - good waitresses for that matter - more than more poets.

But lots of people want to be writers, few get to be writers (in any meaningful way, ie: getting paid for print publication or having your scripts performed). So it's seen as a desirable career.

Imagine a world where everyone wanted to be a waitress. Now take what you wrote, making the appropriate substitutions - 'I've always wanted to be a waitress, but fear of failure overwhelms me', 'my college professor made encouraging noises about my waiting on tables' and so on. Imagine you had a friend who blathered on about wanting to be a waitress, but who never got their shit together and spent all day on the internet and drunk instead.

Silly, isn't it? It sounds foolish and clueless.

Writers write. Simple as that. If you don't write, you're not a writer. Readers, for the most part, don't care about the writer's state of mind, they care about the writing. Agents and publishers primary concern is the writing.

There's nothing indulgent or narcissistic about wanting to express yourself artistically. There's nothing *but* indulgence and narcissism in moping around pretending you're going to. So, pick one: write or don't.

My main concern is that there's nothing in your letter about what you want to write. It sounds like you want to be, in abstract, 'a writer'. You don't get to be a writer by wanting to be a writer, you get to be a writer by writing. If fear, wasting time on the internet and alcohol are always going to stop you from ever writing, give up on the idea of being a writer now.

The EU already did this.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/4222445/Power-hungry-plasma-screen-televisions-to-be-banned-under-new-EU-legislation.html

... and the EU's a bigger market than the US, now, and if TV manufacturers in the US can't manage to make ones that comply, then don't worry, someone else is already doing it.

There's a lesson to be learned from the car industry. American car manufacturers thought that the way to survive was to lobby to keep making primitive, inefficient cars. There's simply no export market for them, now, there is a huge demand for small, advanced cars ... which people have to import.

Instead of pretending there's nothing to be done, TV manufacturers shouldn't need prompting or pushing, they should be at the forefront of making their products more efficient. If they're not ... well, don't weep for them when you see news that they closed on your German TV in a couple of years.

... when I say that if she'd have been playing for Chelsea at the weekend, the referee would have let her get away with it.

Exactly. Golden rule, folks: data's not data until it exists in two places.

Yeah, well, life's unfair. Rape a child, you get called a child rapist.

It's not as though she was the only child he had sex with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nastassja_Kinski

He drugged and raped someone. That someone was thirteen. How about we stop worrying about exactly what we call that and start wondering why people would want to queue up to defend him? Because he's the auteur behind such landmark cinema as The 9th Gate and Bitter Moon?

So, if someone anally raped your thirteen year old daughter, and you knew where the guy lived, how long would you leave it before deciding it wasn't worth the authorities going after him? Less than thirty two years? Five years? Ten days? Five minutes?

And that's the epitaph for the Bush administration right there - they could (and did) boast about how they were able to shape perception and therefore reality and that all they needed to do was say it and it became true. But all the media control and endless, mindless repetition of talking points in the world won't stop planes flying into skyscrapers, levees from breaking or conjure WMDs into existence.

Here lies the Bush administration, sticking to what they were best at.

Holy crap, if 'releasing endorphins' is why we execute people just buy those relatives a puppy.

Here's why I'm anti death penalty - ultimately it comes down to a politician, a governor, signing a piece of paper saying 'kill someone'. I don't really understand how so many people who oppose 'big government' object to politicians earmarking money to give health care to poor people but get a little thrill at the thought that politicians have the power to kill people.

As noted by others here: no, no, 100% wrong. The word 'cunt' is used as punctuation in Britain, in many circles at least, and I use it frequently myself, but in no way, in no circumstances would anyone I know, even another woman, ever use it to describe a woman.

I think the gender studies analysis of the word works in the US. I'm British, I moved to America, and everyone here, men and women, has a problem with women in positions of power, any position of power. Here, it's used by misogynistic men to insult women. That's America's peculiar little foible, though. Hint, guys: when *Pakistan* doesn't have a problem with female leadership and you do, it's time for you to sit back and realise that the US has always been a generation behind the rest of the world on social issues.

And you're terribly prim when it comes to swearing, preferring the mall-level, off the shelf, unimaginative 'fuck' franchise to all the various bespoke options. Why have a hamburger when you can call someone an otterquimmed nancy face?