I know it’s fun to rag on Thanksgiving, but I like it, crazy relatives and all—mostly because mine involves copious amounts of white wine and Patsy Cline (which would improve any day of the year, if one could get away with it). My sister and I have Thanksgiving
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, if you prefer an acronym that is just as cumbersome as the full name). Every year I resolve to participate, and every year I fail. I have three novels in various stages of development floating around my hard drive that were conceived during
Lesley Kinzel’s Open Letter to Teenage Girls contains some awesome advice. I wish someone had told me this stuff when I was a teenager. I don’t know if I would have listened, but maybe some of it would have gotten through. I’ve been thinking a lot about
A lot of people lead fantasy lives online—as do I. But instead of slaying orcs or posting amateur porn, I live out my dream of being an advice columnist. Five years ago, I joined MetaFilter. MetaFilter began as—and primarily remains—an online space for members to share interesting
Salon’s Cary Tennis is an advice columnist near to my heart because, like me, he is a copy editor, and what I love about his column is that I can see that copy editor’s pathology at work in his advice. As a copy editor, your job is to
When someone has experienced a traumatic event, it seems like the least helpful advice you can give is, “Get over it.” But sometimes it isn’t. When “Repress Yourself” was published in the New York Times magazine in February 2003, it had been 18 months since Sept. 11, and someone
Being Jewish prepares you to be an awesome advice-giver. After all, only 1.7 percent of Americans are Jewish, but 100 percent of Ann Landers, Dear Abby, Miss Manners, and Dr. Ruth are. Emily Yoffe, author of Slate’s thoroughly enjoyable “Dear Prudence,” summed it up nicely: “Judaism is
Explicit content: Please note that many of these links and videos are not safe for work, minors, and those with delicate moral constitutions. My dad is an OB/GYN, and when I was growing up, this meant all my friends thought I must therefore have some secret insider knowledge about
Planning a wedding is weird, wonderful, and hard. Here are 10 things I learned—not necessarily directly—from planning my own wedding that don’t seem to get addressed much in the bridezillasphere. 1. If you really want cash, don’t register for gifts. Enlist your parents and siblings to
Apparently the ’90s are back, although I barely recognize them. The ’90s for me were more Lollapalooza than Nickelodeon, so I’ve never actually seen Clarissa Explains It All, but whatever. That pop-culture nostalgia reminds me of another quintessential ’90s meme: “What would Jesus do?” The thing is, I
