The company I work for published Wally Shawn's book Essays a couple of years ago—and that year he sent our office pears for the holidays. I took a pear and couldn't help but think "Inconceivable! I'm eating a pear from Wallace Shawn!" (Luckily I've never said it to his face. And yes, he is a really wonderful human…

FYI, it appears that the School District Superintendent is Vern Minor, and his email is: Vern.Minor@republicschools.org; the Assistant Superintendent is Vicky Neal, and her email is: Vicki.Neal@republicschools.org; and the school principal is Shelly Sprague, and her email is: Shelly.Sprague@republicschools.org.

If anyone would like to write a letter of protest, it appears that the School District Superintendent is Vern Minor, and his email is: Vern.Minor@republicschools.org; the Assistant Superintendent is Vicky Neal, and her email is: Vicki.Neal@republicschools.org; and the school principal is Shelly Sprague, and her email…

What, no Dead Zone? I would've thought a social studies teacher would appreciate the creeping fascist politician story and the "would you kill Hitler" debate.

Irin - The new design is making it impossible for me to reply to you directly, or on the thread itself since it's been moved—or I would, so I apologize for posting this here. (In fact, I only saw your comment to me because I happened to click on your profile in order to try to send you this.)

Irin - the new design is making it impossible for me to reply to you directly or I would. I object to this comment being moved. I may have been snarky, but I think it's a legitimate point to add, whether or not Gawker and Jezebel make their coverage decisions independently.

I really wish this had included an acknowledgment that one of the media outlets which initially heavily pushed the story and implied that she might be lying was GAWKER. Seriously. Some of the Gawker coverage (especially initially, before all of the stuff about Breitbart and the right-wing Twitter users who pushed the…

Me too! I just was paging through it recently after downloading it from Project Gutenburg. There's a passage with Marilla explaining she didn't want a French orphan because the French are basically all sneaky thieves/criminals. Anne of Avonlea I think has some similar passages of this kind of casual anti-French…

In picture books, "The Paper Bag Princess" is a great read for girls. I also love George Saunders' "The Very Persistent Gappers of Fripp" (the illustrations are a knock out). For older independent readers, lots of Roald Dahl books are good (especially for kids with darker senses of humor). China Mieville's "Un Lun…

One caveat about Anne of Green Gables (which I was addicted to as a kid)...I was paging back through it recently, and there's some pretty disturbing anti-French racism...most kids will probably gloss right over it (I know I did). But it may need some explaining to a kid.

Ever seen the movie "Deranged"? The interior of that spooky-ass house and the mannequin sort of reminded me of it...

Yup...he plays a Criss Angel-style "illusionist."

The man worked for Nixon. He has always been a tool.

I remember protesting the Bush inauguration way back when. Cold and rainy day in DC made a thousand times worse by the fact that where we were was stationed close to the emcee—Ben Stein— who kept making jokes like, "How many college girls does it take to screw in a lightbulb." (I never heard the punchline, since I and…

Goddamn right I'm crying. In a cafe too. Sheesh. I never learn not to read stuff like this while working in cafes. Shame on you for making me read it.

Apparently, Rick Santorum tipped off Ensign that Hampton was going public so that Ensign could get out the story first...making this whole thing even tawdrier and more gross. (But of course, you know that will be the case with anything once Santorum gets involved.)

Well, except apparently the main dude leading the charge on this stuff predicted the end once before...and when it didn't come he claimed it was because he hadn't taken some biblical book into account. So now he says he's 1000 percent sure.

It's pretty frightening...NPR profiled all these people a few days ago, including a young couple with small kids, elderly people, etc., talking about how they've quit jobs, given away all their savings, spent their retirement, because they think the rapture's coming May 21. They won't even entertain the possibility it…

The tail one is straight out of Geek Love, but really, any of these could be...

Um, no thanks. Not "everyone" want to "bone" them.