1) Super-detective guesses the password he needs to get into the bad guy's computer, in two seconds. (Some people choose simple passwords, but come on.)

Reminds me (in a roundabout way) of a Stewart Lee bit. "Back in the 80s, we all hated the Tories. Comedians, artists, musicians, teachers, students, old people, young people. Everybody hated the fucking Tories. And yet, they kept winning elections. Because more people voted for them."

As I get older, my musical interests get broader, and my prejudices versus certain kinds of music wither away. But it could easily go the other way: some people get more conservative in their tastes (like my parents, who stopped buying new music around 1985).

When someone (whom you don't know very well) asks you what sort of music you like, that's a tough question, unless you happen to have very restrictive or dogmatic taste in music (only Swedish death metal for me!). So, one says "I like all kinds." One doesn't mean it literally: it's just a short-hand way of saying…

My books don't make me feel superior…they seem to be silently judging me for not reading them. E.g., if that copy of the complete Dead Sea Scrolls could talk, it would say: "You bought me for a religion class 20 years ago. You keep me around because I make you feel smart. But you're never, ever going to read me,…

Imagine if the solution to the mystery was, "we're looking for a guy who was eating spaghetti and got it all over his shirt, 20 years ago." That would be asinine. How is the solution they gave us ("we're looking for a guy who might have gotten some green paint on his ears 20 years ago") not precisely as lame as…

Incredibly dumb because
(a) who gets paint on their ears?! (or rather: only on their ears)?
(b) it's a wild guess about the meaning of green ears (which just happens to be correct)
(c) it means (correct me if I'm wrong) that none of the clues they've found over the 20-year investigation really matter (all they needed to…

"We're looking for a killer who has 'green ears'…wait a second…maybe it's a guy who got some green paint on his ears while he was painting…maybe the killer is a painter…"

Themist- (Gk. "many") + -okles (Gk. "sit-ups")

The only thing I remember about that film is the final battle, where you've got your cowboys and witches and Gypsies and armored fucking polar bears and zeppelins and Cossacks with their wolf pets…five years later, I can't begin to explain what was going on there. But I sort of admire the baroque absurdity of it.

Also, Triumph of the Will is not an over-the-top ode to fascist militarism, but merely a film about people who enjoy a nice parade.

I enjoy racism, jingoism, and bad history…but if this movie is going to make me gay, then no thanks.

"Pop" and "punk" are quite expansive categories, but "pop-punk" has a much more specific sound and set of influences. Precisely as described in the primer: sweet harmonies over rowdy riffs, teeny-bopper themes, heavy Buzzcocks influence, etc. (So, nothing at all like the Minutemen.) I think of pop-punk as a very…

Maybe I should have said "almost nobody" instead of nobody. Happy now, nitpickers?

I always liked the term "Specialist." Much nicer sounding than pervert.

The term "hipster" should be retired for the following reasons:

It's still quite satisfying to beat up fifty thugs at once, even after I've done it 100 times…but yeah, Origins is pretty predictable/repetitive. I got through Origins very quickly (since I honed my thug-stomping skills in the first two games), and didn't feel like doing much of the extra stuff this time around (Game…

I remember Silly Putty, but I don't remember what else you could do with it, besides the comics transfer thing.

You should give Hardy another try…but I agree about A Separate Peace. We also had to watch the movie. Never again!

In the digital age, I think we need a more elastic definition of "reading." Some days I won't pick up a book, but that doesn't mean I'm not reading all day long. If you add up all the reading I did in a given day of (say) AV Club articles/comments + Wiki entries on WW2 battles + news items + articles from political…