• If your ringtone is going to be an orgasm (ugh, totally lame), turn it off before you are in the midst of a courtroom. Manners, people! (news.com.au)

• London residents panic over chemical spill…I mean, 5-alarm chili! Literally. (timesonline.co.uk)

• Alabama woman: “My motto has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up.” Haven’t we all thought that at some point? (TBO.com)

• Father makes 6 year old son chug a beer. Hilarity does not ensue. (tbo.com)

• An Alabama couple celebrates their 80th wedding anniversary. “After all these years,” he said, “I still enjoy being with her.” Does this give us hope or does it make us morbidly depressed? I’m going with depressed. (sfgate.com)

• Ditzy cheerleader bloopers are always a great way to wake up in the morning. (COED Magazine)

Whenever I’m having a down day I tend to wallow in my own self pity.

Whether it be the choices I have made, the cards I have been dealt or the things I have seen, I don’t want to escape it. I want to embrace it; by listening to sad songs or reading sad stories.

On these days it is like nothing is better than feeling sorry for myself.

And the only way to get out of it – I have found – is to check in with other people in the world to remind myself that my life isn’t so bad…and that I am quite fucking lucky.

The best place to do this when OC Mix 1 just isn’t cutting it? Postsecret.com.

Solmaaz, another CC writer, has mentioned Postsecret before. Unlike my fellow CC’er, however, I don’t watch this site as some sort of guilty pleasure; rather, I watch it as a reminder of the very real things very real people deal with every day. Read More »

Antidepressants are supposed to make us happier—but are they actually doing the opposite? According to researcher Helen Fisher, Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other antidepressants may alter brain chemistry in a way that zaps desire to find a mate and dulls the euphoria felt when people fall in love—a process that Fisher calls “temporary insanity.”

I’m sure anyone who’s been in love would not hesitate to agree with that description. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if many people on antidepressants began them after the breakup. I can’t help but wonder…since the prescription of anti-depressants has more than doubled in the past 30 years, perhaps we should be asking what came first—the chicken or the egg? Read More »

It may sound shocking, but Paris Hilton has managed to actually help someone by being constantly plastered all over the media. An overweight British woman named Parris was tired of being compared to the waif-like celebrity on a daily basis.

At a size 22, the mother of three felt humiliated by her body and this insecurity heightened every time someone referred to her namesake. She suffered from depression and binge-ate to deal with her overwhelming emotions. Parris avoided social situations at all costs and completely gave up on her decaying appearance.

During a routine trip to the grocery store, overweight Parris piled an excess of junk food on to the check out conveyor.

A tabloid featuring Paris Hilton stared her in the face. Something inside the middle-aged woman snapped. She realized that the only way to combat her over eating was to confront the problem head on.

She discovered a diet program called LighterLife and proceeded to eliminate her status as “Fat Parris”. Read More »

If you’re like me, college has put a severe dent in your wallet. So much of a dent, it seems like the day you’ll finally pay back all those loans will be the day you check yourself in a retirement home.

When it comes to finding ways to make cash, my motto is “anything except prostitution and drugs” (I’d even strip, but sadly, I dance like a blind five-year-old and would most likely kill myself in five inch heels). I’ve worked a lot of odd jobs, and sometimes feel like I’d do almost anything for an extra hundred bucks.

That’s where science comes in.

Poor college kids all over the country have found a way make money fast, easily, and by doing almost no work: they become lab rats.

Log onto to your city’s Craigslist, look up at subway ads or even in the classifieds in your school’s paper–advertisements for “study participants” are everywhere. Research experiments usually need people, and who has time to take a few hours out of their day to watch simultaneous images of turtles and hard core pornography? College kids. Read More »

Loneliness doesn’t just suck, it blows. I know this because I have dealt with it first hand. The emotions, the weight gain, the boredom. With a new city, a new job and no new friends to speak of, loneliness and I were pretty tight.

If I told you I had a sure-fire way to beat it, I’d be lying. Because if I had found the magic formula, it wouldn’t have taken me 8 months to realize that graduating from college in four years wasn’t the worst decision of my life.

Fortunately for you, I have a few good tips about what NOT to do. Whether you are kicking it at home for the summer or making your way in a brand new city, these tips are sure to keep you from going as crazy as, well, I did. Read More »

After spending a portion of my day listening to a friend detail a particularly painful break-up she’s currently going through, giving her the best advice I could while recognizing her little painful moments all too well, I started thinking about the process of breaking up itself. Not the actual nuts and bolts of the deed, those always vary, but the way we react afterward.

No matter who we are, our pain tends to mirror each other during these times. We make the same decisions, fall into the same bad habits, give ourselves the same pep talks, and feel the general shittiness so strongly that most of us, by our mid-twenties, have experienced some kind of life really can’t go on moment.

When a girlfriend goes through a break-up, we give advice, comfort her, but most of all, completely understand what she’s feeling. We completely understand, and never really want to go there again (although most of us will, according to the numbers. Damn you statistics! I knew I got a B- in your class for a reason!). Read More »

Alright girls, we all do it. Strangely enough, I think less of us will admit to this than masturbation. More hands will rise when asked if they watch chick on chick porn than when asked if they do this. This is the sort of thing we really don’t want anyone to know about.

What’s this?

Soundtracking our sadness.

Yup. I’ve playlisted my pain more than I want to admit, and have walked in on friends doing it often. No matter who the perpetrator is, it always looks the same; sad figure lying languid on a bed, fully clothed, eyes leaking, while Rufus warbles or Iron and Wine whines or Kelly Clarkson cries. A sad scene made even sadder by the underscore.

Even those of us who don’t fancy ourselves drama queens have, once or twice, tearfully sat at our computer compiling a “Sad” mix and retreating back to our beds to moan over our handiwork. Come on, Love, admit it. Sometimes you download that song because you know, you know, it’s gonna come in handy the next time you need to have a good old fashioned cry. Read More »