Ask Polly: Jesus, My Struggling Writer Friends Never Shut Up!
Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because you're still fucking up in the same ways you were before, only now you're too arrogant to notice."
Dear Polly,
How many times is too many to listen to a friend discuss their problems? I have several friends (mostly unemployed writers) who talk about the same thing over and over: namely, that they're not successful and don't know people who will help them, and yet don't do anything to change it. I literally have listened for over 30 minutes at least four times this week to the same friend who kept repeating him/herself [...]
Ask Polly: My Best Friend Likes A Guy That I Really Want To Get With
Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because laughter is only the best medicine if you can't afford the other ones."
Dear Polly,
I am recently hot for a man who is also hot for me. But my very closest friend has been hot for him for a year. He told her after one make out session that he just wants to be friends with her, but she has been hoping for more anyway. She has worried about me meeting him because of potential hot times between me and him. I am not some raging slut. I assume she sensed that [...]
Ask Polly: My Best Friend Is In Love With My Sister!
Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Don’t make me come over there!"
Dear Polly,
Recently one of my best friends since childhood started dating my sister (whom I am also super close with). They seem pretty serious about each other and I want to be okay with it, but I'm having a really hard time with it. The main issue is I just have this primal response of UGHGHG NOOOOOOO which doesn't feel totally logical when it happens, but here's what I think it's about:
1. I talk to both of them constantly, all the time, about everything. Particularly dating, [...]
Ask Polly: Only Black Men Like Me, But I Don't Like Black Men
Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because every time a door closes, a few more close."
Dear Polly,
I have a big problem. Actually a multitude of big problems that have coalesced into a giant problem. I am 31, and I cannot figure out what to do with respect to my romantic life. All my friends from college/grad school are married or partnered and I feel really unwanted. I'm attractive and outgoing, which has given me the opportunity to make many, many, MANY mistakes with respect to men. In my early 20s, I dumped every single guy who seemed truly [...]
Ask Polly: The Eventual Death of The Universe Is Making Me Anxious
Usually appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because time is running out!"
Dear Polly,
I am, by all accounts, a relatively happy, well-off, 21-year-old woman. I exercise regularly, eat well, have good friends, a great boyfriend, and I'm about to graduate from a shmancy private college in NYC debt-free (thanks, Mom and Dad!). Here's the thing: lately, while I'm lying alone in bed, trying to go to sleep, I can't stop thinking about death. I'm pretty sure it started when I took an astrophysics class last semester, and read an article about the "eventual heat death of the universe" where [...]
Ask Polly: I Am 40. Will I Be Alone Forever?
Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because the heart is a lonely hoarder."
Polly,
There seems to be an abundance of advice-seekers who are 25 and terrified of being alone or 31 and think they're elderly. What I don't see is anyone over 40 who doesn't have their shit together. Is it that they are too busy being surrounded by loved ones to read blogs? Or are they too downtrodden to bother?
There is a perception that young people are bundles of misguided anxiety and that time will sort everything out. And yet everything in my experience contradicts that. (It [...]
One Ring To Rule Them All
As Polly Esther, The Awl's existential advice columnist, Heather Havrilesky gives advice in this space every Wednesday. Here's an excerpt from her memoir Disaster Preparedness about a bit of advice she once received.
"Find someone early, don't wait!" My father's thirtysomething girlfriend leaned across the table to deliver this advice in a stage whisper. I was only nineteen years old, and my father was within earshot. But Alice had tossed back a few glasses of red wine and she was winding up for one of her soliloquies. She didn't have kids (not that she didn't want them!) and she needed to save me from the same uncertain [...]
The Unpublished Manuscripts Of Aaron Sorkin
Imagine that an intern on HBO's hit show "The Newsroom" discovers a cache of unpublished pages while sifting through Aaron Sorkin's desk drawers in search of a cease-and-desist form letter. Who knew that the man behind "The West Wing" and "The Social Network" had such wells of passion for classic Russian novels—and prescription drug literature?
Big Mouse and Small Mouse! A Children's Story by Aaron Sorkin
There was a little house on a little hill that belonged to Little Mouse. One day Big Mouse rode right up that hill on a big bulldozer and knocked down Little Mouse's house.
"Why are you knocking down my house?" asked Little Mouse. [...]
3 Tired TV Tropes & 3 Shows That Toppled Them
This #NoBollocks content was produced in partnership with Newcastle Brown Ale. If you enjoy this article, won't you be a love and watch a TV commercial on the Internet? Go on, it's right there on the right.
After two or three decades of exposure, watching TV can feel a little bit like going home to visit your family. At first it's comforting to see so many old familiar faces. But… why don't these people ever change? Why are they so rigid and repetitive and tedious? And what makes them think they're remotely interesting, or even marginally entertaining?
On the internets, we refer to these humans as either "stereotypes" [...]
Donald Trump Would Run A Great, Great Country
Defense Secretary: Mr. President, we have a situation developing in the Middle East. President Trump: Do you like what I've done with the Oval Office? Incredible, right? Have you ever seen anything like this? Defense Secretary: Mr. President, there's a matter that… President Trump: I show this place to very few people. Presidents, Kings… and they walk in, they look around, and they really can't believe what they're seeing. Defense Secretary: It's very nice, Mr. President, sir, but there's a situation in Libya needs your attention. It seems that… President Trump: Get to the point, get to the point. Defense Secretary: We have fears that Muammar Gaddafi will begin [...]
Japan Nuclear Crisis: The Experts Weigh In
Reassuring news from Japan! Our panel of experts has assured us that the current levels of radiation are not a huge threat to those outside a 50k radius of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, at least not right at this moment based on the admittedly limited information we're being given, and based on the assumption that no further radioactive material will be released into the atmosphere—which is, in fact, happening at this very minute.
Fortunately, most of our experts agree that a full meltdown of the nuclear fuel at any of the reactors is "wildly unlikely"—although they're not sure what can be done, if anything, to prevent the [...]
Personal Branding Disorders
Are you allergic to Twitter? Do you befriend people outside your target demographic? Then you may be suffering from an undiagnosed personal branding disorder.
As our country continues its nosedive from prominence, we can all rest assured that, even as our tiny fortunes disappear and our little ships sink, our ability to create the illusion of inherent personal value will save us. Remember, in the golden age of social networking, our personalities are irrelevant; our personal brands are what really matter.
Accordingly, psychologists will soon shift gears from diagnosing personality disorders to diagnosing personal branding disorders. After all, you might be obsessive-compulsively checking Twitter all day for mentions of [...]
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