Pretending to care about movies or music. Now I just admit I’m a robot - my favorite entertainment-input is the book. I like some music, and I like some movies, but I don’t care enough about them as a whole to spend any time keeping up with what’s current.

It is apparently true: The kids today have all gone soft, and the people of yesteryear were infinitely more hardcore.

Your true love is never going to come home from sea with that attitude.

I can’t tell if Twitter is pointless because 140 characters is not enough for anyone to say things worth reading (after “IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL” it has only been downhill) or if I am just too old to “get it.”

I’m turning 30 this year and I’m already jumping the gun and saying that’s my age. It just adds a little gravitas to things, I’m so excited for it to actually happen (it helps that I’m going on a dream vacation over my birthday, it totally knocked out any potential woe-is-me feelings that might have arisen).

I am 100% pro- anything that is absurd in general, and especially if the absurd thing happens to piss off rich people. I think this whole thing is hilarious.

Not to be all “my parents beat me with an electrical cord every Tuesday at 8 sharp and I turned out fine” about it, but millions of people eat things including sandwiches and yogurt that have been packed cool in a closed container for more the 2 hours and they are fine. If you really must slap an ice pack around it,…

I think the easiest way to overcome the insanity about abortions is the same way we (slowly, and still with work to do) largely overcame the insanity about homosexuality: by normalizing the thing.

Considering how it concluded that with my reading speed of 315 words per minute, it would take me 0 hours and 0 minutes to finish In Search of Lost Time, Volumes 1-7, I’m not sure how seriously to take this.

Because nothing that was good at home is going to go bad in 3 hours at room temperature in a sealed container.

This would be less funny if it didn’t come immediately after a commenter having exactly this breakdown, but in earnest.

But how can you see to pack your kid’s lunch when your vision isn’t even good enough to identify whole-wheat bread and the same cucumbers you decry as “watery” in one place and then brag about putting in your kids lunch in another?

There is basically no realm of advice where somebody won’t try to derail the conversation by talking about what an ostentatious luxury it is. You can talk about eating healthy and 80% of the replies will be about how out-of-touch you obviously are, and that’s regardless about whether you’re writing like Gwyneth or…

That’s why I have a daily flight alert through Kayak that tells me every morning what the general flight cost is to go from my nearest airports (I’m in DC, so lots of choices) to 8 or 9 European capitals. Because of this, I was made aware when a budget Icelandic airline started going to BWI, with some truly insane…

Mesmerism may be bullshit (it came with a lot of hocus-pocus occult baggage, because it was marketable that way) but to call hypnotism bullshit is to be asking for a bunch of links to peer-reviewed studies which show its many potential beneficial effects.

Two down, seventeen thousand eight-hundred and thirty seven to go, and they’ll start giving Florida a run for their money.

Unfriended looked absolutely horrible in the trailers and I would love to hate-read a review of it if you would write one.

I was an English teacher at a small primary school there. I had been 98% finished with my M.A. for ages, but had been struggling and fighting with my thesis for about a year straight (a few compounding issues - for one, I had the first draft of my thesis on a laptop that was stolen, and of course it wasn’t backed up…

I’ve had a few good wedding favors (a pretty paper fan from my cousin which was a lifesaver when I moved to Sudan and/or when I get stuck on an a/c-less metro car in DC, and a wildflower seed bomb from a friend’s wedding) but even with those experiences under my belt, I will 100% back anyone who wants to upgrade their…

It is truly hideous and dumb, and not in that hideous and dumb way that some shabby-chic things that you can kind of see being nice if you squint are, but just a straight double shot of “ugly as possible” and “pointless as shit.”