I don't know how I've missed out on it for so long, but I'm finally reading DeLillo's White Noise, and I'm enjoying it very much.

I usually spend $20-25 including tip. I can't say whether it's reasonable. I hate haircuts. I don't think anything about them is reasonable.

. . . OR ELSE!

Yeah I know a baby Evelyn, which I like. The name. Also the baby.

I think Poppy, Phlox, and Isobel would all be destined to become hipsters, if hipsters are still a thing by then. But maybe they'd just be cool artists.

Why?

I will stop this car and turn right around!

Can everyone stop with the whole "Big Bang Theory is geek minstrelsy" thing? It's reductive and inaccurate.

Yeah none of the questions I had were concerning the literal narrative, but I did have a lot of questions about the Pig-dude's (oh, sorry, the Sampler's) story/motivations. Like how did he know how to draw the worm-people to his trailer? And did he know taking away pig-Kris's piglets would freak human-Kris out? If so,…

No I gotcha — it's entirely possible I'm remembering it as more puzzle-like than it actually was. It's also entirely possible I'm kind of slow. REGARDLESS, looks like I have an excuse to re-watch it.

As I learned in my Intro to Stats course approximately 300 times, CORRELATION =/= CAUSATION.

I feel like those two examples are conflating two pretty different kinds of overinterpretation. I don't really understand the impulse in the second example where it seems more like an overinterpretation of the plot itself, which isn't that interesting to me (and for which the conspiracy theory analogy definitely makes…

I guess if I'd gone to see Mulholland Drive with someone and afterward all they had to say about it was "Repurposed TV pilot. Dream. Big deal." I'd think we'd seen entirely different movies.

Yeah it's been a while since I've watched it, so maybe I just remember the surreal aspects of it much more vividly than the rest. And mostly I just remember having a very similar post-movie experience for both movies, sitting in a bar and piecing shit together with friends.

I think Lynch and Malick are also really good examples of that kind of filmmaker. And I think their movies have actually become more mood-based or abstract as they've gotten older, for whatever reason — which is probably one of the reasons critical opinion has gotten more divided (from what I've seen). They're still…

The closest analogue to Upstream Color that I can think of is probably Mulholland Drive. Because you can kind of "figure out" both movies, but you don't really have to to enjoy them.

Dino . . . droppings? Droppings?

Wasn't there a teacher with an ear on top of her head? And a substitute teacher who came in wearing a bunch of coats and then when all the coats were removed it was just a rat?

Yeah I think my issue is that I just don't re-read books very often, and when I do, they're usually things I read in high school or college. This Q&A though is inspiring me to rediscover some books from my youth before I become a grumpy old man who hates children and hope and any form of magical adventure.

Man, you idiots, what about some Salinger?! EVER HEARD OF HIM? I guess everyone's just a huge idiot except for me!