Your attention, please: This is a mandatory age check. Fill in the following information fully and accurately, under penalty of law:

A. Your Age:

B. Age of your significant other:

Subtract the smaller value from the larger one. If the difference is greater than five years, you're a sick, contemptible individual and should report immediately to the nearest Salon letter column for thorough castigation.

All people are the same. Every 23-year-old is just like every other 23-year-old, and every 41-year-old is just like every other 41-year-old. No variation may be admitted to exist.

That is all. Return to your normal activities.

(To the tune of - oh, you know)

The Dems take five steps right
The GOP takes ten steps right
Dems do the hokey pokey and take five more steps to the right
The GOP and press call Democrats terrorist-loving scum,
That's what it's all about!

(repeat ad infinitum)

"Fantasty"? Is that the opposite of "fanflavorless"? :D

An interesting coinage!

Interesting article, but I found this a bit jarring:

...WallBuilders, a Christian advocacy group working to restore God to His central position in American history, and in the history and social studies curricula of the nation's public schools.

The way this is written, the author seems to be accepting without qualification the Wallbuilders credo - i.e. that God indeed does have a central position in American history, and deserves the central place in public school classes.

I suspect that the author does not, in fact, agree with that point.

Therefore, it would have been more appropriate to (at least) put quotation marks around "restore God ... public schools", to indicate that this is what Wallbuilders themselves claim, but is not necessarily fact.

Sorry to be going on about such a minor point, but it rankled me.

According to an NPR story this morning, a spokesman for President Bush replied, in regard to Warner's suggestion that some troops should be withdrawn, that "The President's vision hasn't changed."

I guess he's still 20/5000, huh?

(To the tune of "O Canada")

O Senator
You gay-denouncing man
True hetero love the voters all demand

So you can't go in
a bus station
and grope a plain-clothes cop

You can't suck off
teen-aged prostitutes
This gayness has to stop

The Senate must be
homosexual-free
O Senator, cops stand on guard for thee

O Larry Craig, cops stand on guard for thee!

Okay, the most obvious point to make is to see a goddamn lawyer, fer chrissake!

That said - and I kind of cringe to say it - something about the LW strikes me as terribly familiar. I may be mistaken, but I think I recognize this level of doormatishness, because I used to be one myself.

The clue: what does the LW's girlfriend/boyfriend have to say about all this? Apparently nothing, because they almost certainly don't exist. Why? Because if they did, they'd damned well have gotten pissed off and spoken up months ago.

It's not my intention to humiliate the LW. As I said, I was a doormat virgin myself for longer than I care to tell. That's how I recognize the symptoms: an almost pathetic willingness to do anything that anyone asks, no matter how unreasonable - and particularly if the requester is female and attractive.

So my advice is to get a lawyer, for the excellent reasons which have been repeated 1,000 times in previous comments. And then, please, get a good therapist (assuming that the LW doesn't already have one). Frankly, a full behavioral evaluation would not be the worst idea either - you might be surprised at what could turn up.

Can someone explain this one to me? Because from where I'm sitting, I don't quite see the point. Sad story, I guess, but it doesn't seem to have a punchline.

No, I'm not saying that every (or any) WayLay has to end in a Ziggy-style joke. But usually there's some little twist or something at the end, something to make it worth reading. If there's a twist or spark of humor in this one, I totally missed it.

Odd. Actually it parallels something that happened in my family. A relative protected their spouse from the consequences of Alzheimer's, going so far as to keep it secret from everyone. When that relative died unexpectedly, the spouse ended up out of control - and was soon institutionalized.

I still don't see the joke, though.

"I often don't know how to read signals or to respond when I recognize them."

That immediately made me wonder if the LW might have nonverbal learning disorder. Having difficulty reading social cues, body language, and non-verbal communication in general is probably the most common symptom of NVLD. It's generally considered to be in the autism spectrum, occupying the place between Asperger's and normalcy.

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

Unfortunately there's no cure, but therapy can help the patient develop coping and compensation abilities. That might be something for the LW to look into; even if she doesn't have NVLD, there does seem to be some sort of issue there that should be addressed by a psychiatrist.

You blew it, Cary. That one got my vote for the worst answer ever.