Where have those beautiful times gone when I had unlimited Internet access on my Blackberry and didn’t have to look for WiFi hot spots all the time? Shouldn’t progress entail things getting better instead of worse? How come we have agreed to go back to the prehistoric times when our Internet usage was controlled by the number of bytes we were accessing?

How are things on other continents in this respect? Do you still get unlimited data plans on your phones?

It is as stupid to say “feminism has failed a lot of women”* as it is to say that “reading has failed a lot of men” or “pens have failed a lot of people.” Feminism is not a person or even a group of people who are supposed to provide anything to anybody. It is a tool people can use to help themselves and / or others.

* I can’t provide a link now because I’m at a doctor’s office as usual but I promise it exists.

What can possibly possess a person to tell her boss, “I only just discovered that client X has a problem with Jews and now I don’t know how to tell him that the company we wanted to put him in touch with is owned by Jews. What if he refuses to have anything to do with them when he finds out?”

Moreover, what can possess one to say that to a boss who looks very Jewish, is Jewish, and always mentions her Jewishness very openly?

If you want to know what the boss responded, it was this: “Now substitute the word “Jew” with the words “woman” or “African American” and you will have your answer.”

I’m less nice, so I would have said, “If you don’t know the answer, you need to look for employment elsewhere.”

It is completely unimportant where and how intellectuals get educated. I’ve known many people who could paper a small room with their diplomas but who were complete blockheads. I have also known many people who never finished high school, yet who were brilliant intellectuals.

There will really be no formal criteria to organize our thinking about this issue.

Belonging to the intellectual class is in no way related to one’s place of employment. It is completely unimportant whether one works at a university or at a used car dealership. I’ve known crowds of anti-intellectual stupid professors and incredibly intellectual, brilliant people in sales. These are folks who think, generate opinions of their own, and don’t just speak, think, and perceive reality in stupid cliches.

Here is, for instance, a brilliant article on why parroting the idiotic cliche ‘Support the troops” is a very stupid thing to do. Who could have thought Salon could publish anything valuable? This way we will end up seeing Huffington Post, the NYTimes and Jezebel publish articles that are not entirely stupid.

It is very easy to categorize people according to meaningless formal categories such as income or place of employment but such classifications are of absolutely no value.

No, I still don’t drive. And this isn’t my car. The car, the hair and the outfit are measures my sister took to make me feel better in the last two weeks of the process.

The measures worked beyond anybody’s wildest dreams. My legs that looked terrifying after a severe case of PUPPPS magically got cured overnight. I went to bed with legs that were swollen, cracked, red, and itchy, but woke up with legs that looked completely normal, just like they looked my entire life. I was so happy to see them again that I wanted to kiss them.

This is the great power of the subconscious.

At my baby shower on Friday, there were many children, ranging in age from 6 months to 15 years. You can really spot the representatives of the intellectual class because they tend to have really amazing children.

The kids at the shower were not inhibited, zombified, or terrorized. It was obvious that nobody scripted their every move or used them as a substitute for professional fulfillment. They ran around, played, and had fun.

At the same time, even the smallest among them were not high maintenance, did not require that everybody stare at them all the time, and didn’t get in the way of adult activities. Also, all of the kids understood more than one language, which is to be expected at a party where most people teach foreign languages.

Children of the intellectual class learn very early on life to communicate verbally in very effective ways. They don’t bray stupidly to transmit their wishes but express themselves in beautiful complete sentences.

A colleague of mine raised 4 brilliant children, all of whom are professionally and academically successful. Given that she raised the eldest two as a single mother on food stamps, this is quite a feat.

“What did you do to make them so great?” I asked my colleague.

“Oh, I never had time to develop a specific parenting strategy. There was always too much work, too many things going on for me to get hung up on parenting models. But the kids grew up hearing intelligent conversations all day and every day, and this seems to have been enough.”

One of the most reliable ways of building an identity is through violence. Teenagers are more desperate for an identity than any other age group, so they rely on violence a lot. Violence is supposed to inscribe marks of identity on their bodies.

Teenage boys tend to use others for this purpose. They pick fights and try to get hurt in a variety of ways.

Teenage girls tend to inflict violence on themselves through starving, cutting, etc.

So has anybody here tried cotton candy grapes? They come from California, look like regular grapes but taste like cotton candy. I’m eating them now and they are causing me intense cognitive dissonance.

Are they genetically modified to taste like this? Will I now grow a tail as punishment for eating them?

The following is precisely why I always severed all and any contact with exes after the relationships ended:

Several years ago, I abruptly and unilaterally ended an 18-month relationship. I stand firm with my reasons, but my (kind and lovely) ex was understandably upset. We haven’t spoken since. I still feel guilty, but that’s my cross to bear.

Eww, how disgusting. Why isn’t enough to end a relationship and just move on instead of using the ex for this offensive and melodramatic bout of drama queenishness? Guilty, a cross to bear – could one be any more condescending?

Despite a happier relationship since then, I’m pretty sure that The Ex hates my guts.

The “happier relationship” is obviously a figment of the loser’s imagination because happy people don’t experience any need to convince themselves so pathetically that the ex must be devastated. Note also the way The Ex is capitalized. This makes it clear that, in spite of the author’s protestations, the ex still is central to his or her life.

Here’s the problem: in a few months, I expect to see The Ex at a mutual friend’s event. Being in proximity will be unavoidable. I want to send The Ex an email, saying that I’m sorry how things ended and that I’d like us to be at least cordial at this event, and that I’m willing to keep my distance if they don’t want to talk to me.

And see how the loser keeps trying to manufacture a relationship with the ex in spite of the ex’s obvious lack of interest. S/he will now follow the ex around trying to get attention by any means necessary. In my culture we use a line from a famous movie to refer to this kind of behavior: “I’ve been pursuing you for three days to tell you how completely indifferent I feel towards you.”

Part of me thinks this is sensible and will allow both of us to enjoy this event without apprehension. The other part of me thinks this email will just sound condescending and melodramatic.

The only piece of good news is that the clingy drama queen still managed to retain some rationality. But then immediately the crazy comes back in full force:

What is the kindest way to approach this situation?

Because the poor ex will totally not survive without the former partner’s kindness.

If this creep does end up writing to the ex, the ex’s only recourse will be to inform that any further contact will prompt a complaint to the police for stalking. There are crowds of these losers who know of no other way to feed their narcissistic personalities than to bug those who have had the good fortune to get rid of them.