I’ve grown to appreciate when you take a mini-hiatus from your blog. Though I imagine it’s because you actually have a life to live, I secretly imagine it’s a challenge for us to actually apply the pearls of wisdom you frequently leave here.

I go on adventures. It’s in my nature. Sometimes I write about them, and sometimes they’re just for me. I haven’t decided which this will be, but so far it involves monkeys and waterfalls and healers and flowers and ancient ceremonies and so much profound happiness that I can barely contain myself.

I haven’t even gotten to the full moon party or the photoshoot, so you’ll forgive me if my attention is elsewhere for a few more days. Just know that I am in a wonderful place right now — spiritually, emotionally, and of course, geographically.

I’ll be back soon. You all know that. In the meantime, thanks for being a part of my life. I hope you know how much I appreciate everything that you share with me.

You are all my secret treasure.

What are your favorite TED Talks?

• Sam Harris: Science Can Answer Moral Questions
• Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0
• Gary Wilson: The Great Porn Experiment 
• Roman Mars: The Worst-Designed Thing You’ve Never Noticed
• Yuval Noah Harari: Why Humans Run the World
• Cameron Russell: Looks aren’t everything. Believe me, I’m a model.
• Terri Trespicio: Stop Searching For Your Passion
• Joanne Davila: Skills for Healthy Romantic Relationships
• Robert Waldinger: What Makes a Good Life?
• Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?
• Tracy McMillan: The Person You Really Need to Marry
• Brene Brown: The Power of Vulnerability
• Mark Henick: Why We Choose Suicide
• Alain de Botton: A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success
• Christopher Ryan: Are We Sexual Omnivores?
• Saisha Srivastava: What Nobody Told You About Happiness
• BJ Miller: What Really Matters at the End of Life
• Jon Ronson: Strange Answers to the Psychopath Test
• David Christian: The History of Our World in 18 Minutes
• Clio Cresswell: Mathematics and Sex
• Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts
• Dan Gilbert: The Surprising Science of Happiness
• Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter …

I’ll be voting Bernie if he’s nominated, I’m unbendable titanium in that scenario. But if it does come down to Trump VS Hilary, in special thanks to you being insufferable as fuck lately, I’ll be voting Trump. Keep coming off as a pretentious, broken, lesser-version of the powerhouse badass you once were.

Oh, and:

Embrace the change! 😉 bitch.

Wow. You’ve really set yourself up to fail here. You can use your vote to help elect the Democratic nominee, or you can use your vote just to spite me. Either way, I win. Bitch.

What are your thoughts on NLP? (Useful? Bullshit? Useful bullshit?)

NLP is total bullshit, but it’s very convincing bullshit, because it’s rooted in two very legitimate concepts from psycholinguistics and systems theory.

Back in the creepy half of the 1970’s, two douchebags with one PhD took Chomsky’s brilliant ideas about transformational grammar and smashed them together with the principles of second-order cybernetics to make a shiny but totally useless pile of pseudoscience.

Basically, they took a jet engine and strapped it to a submarine and told everybody that they’d built a spaceship. The problem is, if you don’t know any better, a jet engine strapped to a submarine kinda looks like a spaceship, and the world has always been full of idiots who’ll line up if you promise them free trips to the moon.

The really fucked up thing is that a jet engine is an incredible piece of technology, and a submarine can take you to some amazing places, so it requires a remarkable combination of idiots and assholes to misuse them both so blatantly.

Name your favorite movies. I’m gonna keep submitting this ’til you post em, beeyotch.

Okay, okay. In no particular order and off the top of my head:

• Children of Men
• Beasts of the Southern Wild
• The Princess Bride
• True Romance
• Ferris Beuller’s Day Off
• The Usual Suspects
• Groundhog Day
• Searching for Bobby Fisher
• Defending Your Life
• Interstellar
• Trading Places
• Heathers
• The Imitation Game
• Midnight in Paris
• Goodfellas
• Grosse Point Blank
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
• Heat
• The Big Lebowski
• Dead Poets Society
• Clue
• Black Swan
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• Point Break
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Working Girl
• The Breakfast Club
• Boogie Nights
• Michael Clayton
• Amelie
• Labyrinth
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
• Raising Arizona
• Cold Mountain
• Pretty Woman
• The Godfather I and II
• Love Actually
• Good Will Hunting
• The Fifth Element
• Ordinary People
• Clueless
• The Silence of the Lambs
• Fargo
• Magnolia
• Steel Magnolias
• Monty Python’s Life of Brian
• The Truman Show
• Being There
• Amadeus
• Pulp Fiction
• Tree of Life
• Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
• Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
• A History of Violence
• L.A. Story
• Cloud Atlas

(I know I’m forgetting some, so I reserve the right to revise and extend my list.)

Can you please unpack Kasich and why he is good/bad? Sure, I would be very happy with either Sanders or Clinton, but out of all of the Republicans, Kasich seems best. Would it be that bad if he won? (Again, I am SUPER Bernie and also believe that Hillary would do great things, but Kasich seems like a Libertarian-leaning moderate.)

Kasich is terrifying because he’s the only candidate who could beat Hillary. Trump is a distraction, Cruz is too galvanizing, and Rubio is a child, but John Kasich is that special blend of unassuming, unoffending, classically bland Presidential white guy that could beat Hillary Clinton by boring enough Democratic-leaning voters into staying home on election day.

That’s why I think he’ll be the inevitable Republican nominee. Sure, I could be wrong, but at the end of the day, Republicans don’t fuck around when it comes to money and elections, and nobody seems to have noticed, but Kasich also happens to be the living embodiment of Wall Street.

Everyone thinks Trump is the fat-cat big-business candidate. He’s not. He’s just a clown with money. Kasich is the true capitalist. He’s a former banker, former Chairman of the House Budget Committee, and a former managing director at Lehman Brothers. He also happens to be a popular Governor of a swing state, and he’s been quietly waiting for primary season to swoop in and save the party from itself.

He only seems moderate because he’s standing next to raving lunatics. He only seems palatable because we expect so little from a Republican presidential candidate. The man’s banality is his secret weapon, and it’s dangerous. The guy is a major fucking threat for the very reason you asked the question, “Would it be that bad if he won?”

Yes. It would.

Don’t kid yourself. A Kasich presidency is a win for the American plutocracy and a loss for the common American.

How do you know so much about so many things? I mean, come on, physics, relationships, history, neuroscience, pop culture, international politics, philosophy, economics, spirituality, literature… basically everything! How the fuck do you do that?

The thing I wonder is why doesn’t everybody else? There is so much amazing stuff out there worth knowing, and it’s so much fun to soak it all up.

Let me be the first to say that I am not an expert in any of those subjects. I’m merely fluent in them. I’m a mile wide and an inch deep (maybe a few inches), but that’s all it takes, and the best part is that once you start accumulating subjects, you start to see how they’re all connected. They all intersect.

That’s my trick, by the way. That’s why it seems like I know so much, because I recognize how physics connects with pop culture or neuroscience connects with spirituality or politics connects with history or literature connects with philosophy.

That’s really all I’m doing, just making connections between subjects. I mean, sure. You have to love reading and totally nerd the fuck out sometimes, but it’s so worth it. Once I’m interested in a subject I get voracious. My face is constantly exploding from all the new shit that occurs to me.

Seriously, you should try it. Once you start seeing the patterns that connect everything, it’s fucking magical.

Why do people need therapy?

Asked in a weird general way because I get it’s deeply personal, and my therapist asked in our consultation like I should know what I want from the experience before I’ve had it.

Maybe I’m jaded by my experiences so far but keeping the bar low and seeing what they’re offering is fair, right?

Okay. I’ve noticed some interesting changes in the past couple months. Not only do I have a shit ton of new readers, but I’m getting well over twice the number of submissions.

This is a wonderful thing to watch happen, but there has also been a rather fascinating trend as of late. For whatever reason, I’m suddenly getting an overwhelming number of questions that relate directly to therapy.

I’ve gotten a huge spike in people who are in therapy asking for my opinion about something specific to their treatment. I’ve also gotten a massive spike in questions from people who are considering therapy and want to know whether they should try it, how it works, and what to expect. I’ve also gotten a tremendous spike in the kinds of questions that are very serious where the only responsible answer I can give is, “you should really talk to a therapist.”

I can’t explain this phenomenon, but at the same time, I can no longer ignore it, and I feel like I need to put this out there: I am not a psychologist.

I have tons of thoughtful opinions and personal knowledge about therapy, and I certainly know more about the process than the average person, but that’s all I have to offer you. When it comes to serious questions that need to be addressed by a mental health care professional, the best I can do is point you to the nearest mental health care professional.

I welcome all your therapy related questions, and I’ll always give you my thoughts and opinions, but please don’t ever construe that as professional medical advice.

Okay, that being said, the question here is, “Why do people need therapy?” The simplest answer is that good therapy can provide life-changing insights into who you are as a person that have a dramatic and positive impact on your relationships, your patterns of behavior, and ultimately your well-being.

Good therapy improves the human condition. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If every individual, couple, and family in America would spend an hour in therapy during the hour a week that they’d otherwise spend in church, this country would find itself ushering in a new age of enlightenment in less than a year.

Not that it’s possible, of course, but I really believe that.

Do you really consider yourself part of the 99%? While you sympathize with the poor, most people could only dream about your extravagant lifestyle. Why not donate the money to charity instead of spending it on cocaine and designer clothes?

My first instinct was to tell you to get off my dick, but I decided to make this a teachable moment instead.

To the first question, it’s not a matter of whether I consider myself part of the 99%. It’s math. I simply am. I’ve never even come close to being in the 1%. (Sure, I’ve rubbed elbows and other body parts with quite a few wealthy individuals, but that doesn’t make me one of them.)

As for the political implications of your question, you seem to be suggesting that I’m some kind of hypocrite for not living in abject poverty. That’s silly. Quite frankly, the fact that I’ve peeked over the wall and actually witnessed some of the grotesque decadence of the 1% only makes me that much more fierce of a class warrior.

As to the second statement, you’re both wrong and right. You’re wrong in that I don’t sympathize with the poor. I empathize with the underprivileged. Huge fucking difference. You’re right in that I’ve been in the room for some pretty extravagant shit, but so what? I’m super cute and fun to be around, which in turn allows my lifestyle to have very little to do with my tax bracket. That’s where my privilege comes from. I don’t deny my privilege, nor do I apologize for my lifestyle.

To the last question, I can’t remember the last time I spent my own money on cocaine, and I’ve never paid retail for designer clothes in my life, not that it’s any of your business.

And since you brought it up, I regularly donate to charity and do volunteer work whenever I can. Always have, always will.

WHY would Gloria Steinem SAY that?? I’ve gone from respecting Steinem and what she has done in her lifetime for women to being infuriated by her for her bullshit about women supporting Sanders, but I feel guilty for feeling that way? No real question just totally unsure how to sort out my emotions on this.

Gloria Steinem is eighty-one goddamn years old. Eighty fucking one. She’s allowed to make a slightly out-of-date but perfectly harmless observation, that in all honesty, wasn’t that inaccurate. Women do tend to get more radical as they get older, and for the exact reason Steinem suggested — they lose power with age where men gain it.

Could she have ended the observation there? Yes, that would have been best, but she was sitting across from a political comedian and she tried to get a political laugh and she made an error in judgment. She made a stupid joke at the expense of young women, and it was neither funny nor accurate. She fucked up on live television. Oops.

Now the international association of the united sisterhood of think-piece writing feminists (of which I am a proud, card-carrying member) has gone puppy-monkey-baby bananas over this poorly worded, off-the-cuff remark.

I get it. It’s always think-piece season, but this right here is some weak fucking tea. Did Steinem say something stupid? Yes. Should she issue some kind of apology or statement revising her remark? That would probably be wise. Do the rest of us wish our eighty-one year old grandmothers were half as woke as Gloria Steinem? Of course we do.

This thing right here (and the thing with Madeleine Albright and pretty much everything with Hillary Clinton) isn’t a product of bad feminism. It’s a product of a massive generation gap between old-school establishment Baby Boomers and marginalized Millennials who are rightfully tired of listening to a bunch of crusty old cunts be disrespectful.

Yes, I called them crusty old cunts, but guess what? We’re all gonna turn into crusty old cunts one day. It’s inevitable. In the meantime, I don’t want to burn Gloria Steinem at the stake, I have huge amounts of respect for Madeleine Albright, and I’ll still be happy to vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination.

I recognize this as the old disrespecting the young more than feminists disrespecting other feminists, and sure, that deserves to be addressed, but I’m also fairly forgiving about shit like this.

Maybe I’m used to looking the other way when old people act their age because my own grandmother was half a racist lunatic. Maybe I’m willing to cut a little extra slack for trailblazing women who literally changed the world. Maybe I’m wrong about all of this. Who knows? But hey, I’ve added my think piece to the pile, and now I can go about my day thinking about something else.