Free THAT WAS THE MILLENIUM THAT WAS by John Scalzi

headache; reading it is like driving a car solely by popping the clutch. 
    During the first part of the 20th century, no less than George Bernard Shaw suggested an overhaul of punctuation, advocating the abolishment, for example, of apostrophes in contractions. That's one idea we haven't moved on very much. It's a shame, ain't it.
    The online medium is a perfect example of how punctuation is transmuted and added to: Online, the traditional indentation at the beginning of a paragraph has all but disappeared, replaced by the new method of entering a line break after each paragraph (This only makes sense. Paper costs money to print on, so indentation rather than line breaks in print is an economic consideration. Electronically, of course, there's no worries on that score). 
    And then there are "emoticons" and "smileys," the sideways representations of grinning faces :-) . Many people (myself included) believe that the emoticon is a sign of the apocalypse, as well as further proof that outside of snarky television commercials, we're living in an increasingly irony-free world where fake-happy little expressions aim to rob us all of our dignity. It's only a matter of time before the first layoff order with emoticons is sent to some poor white collar drone ("Due to budget constraints, you've been terminated. Sorry! :-( ") in an attempt to forstall the subsequent disgruntled shooting spree. God forbid the North Koreans ever figure out what emoticons are for. We'd all be dead meat ("We've just sent a nuke into Seoul! >;-P ").
    Even so. One stupid use does not the whole category condemn; the advantages of punctuation on the whole outweighs the emoticon, asinine as it is  (or using the exclamation mark excessively! Which happens more often than it should! Because people want to make their sentences seem more exciting than they are! It's a hateful thing!). You might disagree that punctuation deserves this honor; certainly the paper clip, or Pez, or the mute button, deserve due consideration. On the other hand, think of it this way. If there was no such thing as punctuation, would you actually bother to sit through an entire essay on any of those subjects? 
    Neither would I. And I write the stuff.

Best 15 Minutes of Fame of the Millennium.
    Monica Lewinsky. And if you don't think she deserves it, let's see you provoke a constitutional crisis using only a pizza, a thong, and an oral cavity. 
    Yeah, I didn't think so. Besides, and this is the point that tips the award in Monica's favor, she wasn't looking to be famous. This is opposed to most recipients of a quarter hour of limelight, whose lives up to that moment of dubious glory are often tales of grotesque hunger for adoration, the back and shoulders of all who've known them bearing the claw marks of where they were grabbed, hooked and used for climbing . In contrast, all Monica wanted was a job at a cosmetics firm and a boyfriend. Sure, that boyfriend just happened to be the (married) President of the United States. But that's not her fault. Anyway, Harold Ickes wasn't interested. What else could she do.
    Monica's main problem wasn't that she was a gold digger, or a backstabber, or yearned for fame at any cost, but that she was needy and naive. Her naiveté is amply documented in her choice of friends; Linda Tripp was a friend to her like Neville Chamberlain was a friend to the Sudetenland. 
    As for the needy aspect, thanks to the emergence of that really icky pony-tailed former teacher of hers, who seemed to appear purely to enter his name publicly in the Bill Clinton "Six Degrees of Penetration" game, we're all intimately aware of Monica's "daddy" complex, her unfortunate need for intimacy with older guys in a position of authority (Child of divorce? Oh, my, yes). The thing about daddy complexes, however, is that while the younger women are looking for intimacy, the older men are usually just looking to have sex with someone who doesn't sag  (Why did Bill Clinton have sex with