1. He's cheating on his wife.

2. He'll cheat on you.

3. There is zero possibility that any of this would end happily if not broken off now.

I think Cary missed the real question with this one.

It takes only a few seconds on Google to find a multitude of links on the writer's putative topic.

This sounds like another version of, "I want to quite my soul-deadening job but don't know how." (And its corollary, "Am I wrong to want this?")

Why does the writer feel compelled to pull up stakes and move on to a new identity, in effect, every two or three years? That's an issue deserving of introspection, not the apparent (bordering on incredible) inability to find moving-to-France help on the web.

Amazing that any later American president could be compared unfavourably to Herbert Hoover, yet here we are.

Another splendid essay. Thank you.

Appalling dreck like this piece, which can only prompt a loud, "Oh, who bloody CARES" from any sentient being, seems to be Salon's exiting new future.

I think I'll go back to enduring the vodka and imported car ads. I wouldn't pay for this silliness in print; I certainly won't continue paying for it online.

Sandra wrote:

"...the question is: if I want gay men - or anyone, really - to stop hitting on me, then why do I invite it?"

Um, and how is this not an example of (not so) repressed homosexual desire?

Call it closeted, call it repressed, call it a prank letter. However you slice this one, it tastes like a rainbow waiting to shine.

If this is the material coming in this week, imagine the hilarity surely to ensue on April 1st.

The Onion meets Salon...

WIFE'S EARTH MOM TOGS TURN EX-HUBBY HOMO

Custody of Leather Chaps Sought by Both

The notion that unions are necessary to protect workers from exploitation died out about 40 years ago, didn't it?

Oops--wait. There's WalMart. And McDonalds. And a host of other corporations squeezing the blood out of their workforces.

Yet there's something fundamentally unfair about the guild approach--which is what we're facing with pilots, doctors, CPAs, longshoremen, and other workers whose entry into and advancement within their vocations are controlled by workers who got there before them.

There's a shortage of doctors in Canada. Why? Canadian doctors who are already employed continue to do their best to deny medical licenses to otherwise-qualified immigrants. Why? To protect their salaries. A glut of doctors, after all, would only benefit everyone *except* doctors. ( And then they bitch anyway about high patient loads and low incomes.)

Want to practice accountancy in New Zealand? With your 20 years' experience in France, it should be a snap to be licensed, you say. Sorry, but non.

"Seniority" as a basis for increased pay or privileged job placement or scheduling deserves to die, whatever the job. Qualifications should be based on tested or demonstrated merit, and compensation made accordingly.

Oh, what a socialist idea! Surely I'll end up on an FBI watch-list now.

...what Coco wrote.

Only among the privileged is graduate school some sort of back-up plan for getting on with life. And, with due respect to Cary, "writer" isn't far behind.

One could argue that the world does not currently face a shortage of attorneys, MBAs, CPAs, stockbrokers, web designers, or writers of any type (but most especially 20-somethings itching to share their profound insight via fiction).

There *is* a worldwide shortage of doctors. Not the American doctor and his country-club membership, nor the Canadian doctor and her whining about not making it rich like she expected, but doctors willing to treat those who need them most.

So, how about med school?

Not enough hard science in college? Then how about nursing school? Paramedic training? Pharmacist?

Something tells me that in the end upper-middle-class income and comforts will trump all for this young lady.

Back to the ad agency grindstone, eh?

Totally, delightfully, 100% on the mark, Cary.

Does it really matter in any significant way which nation's airline gets us to Africa?

Feeling. Very. Sleepy.

zzz.

An obvious hypocrite has been caught at his own game. Period.

Isn't this what vibrators and gay male friends combine to fulfill?

But seriously.

My impression is that this woman isn't interested in physical intimacy at all, not just sex. The "intellectual" aspects of flirting, yes. But not the physical reality of another human body (note the fart comment).

Hey, I'm with Single Man. Hardly an issue that justifies hand-wringing.

...as usual.

More, more.

Honest to god. Ditch this idiotic "feature."

At first I thought, woo-hoo! A science article on Salon!

Unfortunately, and perhaps echoing the book under review, glibness soon took centre-stage. Scientists aren't creative? Cake icing?

Science books aimed at general readers are particularly demanding of expert review, preferably by scientists, but certainly not by Betty Crocker.

...and, in the (scripted) words of a certain warrior with same actual military experience of G.K., "a load of horse puckey."

Dumbing down?

Dumbing DOWN?

Just look at your monitor, Salon folks. By the time you do, there will be at least three more "cute" pet pics posted, still no science news, and AP stories still increasingly more interesting than the rest of the site.

Scott:

I hope that you and your colleagues recognize the plurality of opinion here.

I, like many other if not the majority of premium subscribers, pay for the intellectual salon metaphor, not the fast-approaching hair salon one.

Seriously written journalism, please, not idiomatic gossip that will appear as dated in three years as "You go, girl," and, "Let's not go there" already did in 2003.

...fewer bloody blogs.