I was just telling my wife the other night how often I think of the well and the circumstances surrounding it. I re-read the book often mainly because I enjoy the atmosphere so much, probably more than any other contemporary fiction. I remember very little of the actual plot, but the mood has stayed with me since I…

"Underground" is heavily abridged, if you want to count that. It was actually a series of magazine articles. Only like a third of them were translated. I was going to try to read them in Japanese, but my wife steered me away, saying that it's the only writing of his that a non-native speaker would have significant…

Squirrel!

You could read "Norwegian Wood" in an afternoon. If you haven't read other Murakami you should keep in mind it's pretty much straight contemporary fiction. No science fiction or fantasy elements like 1Q84 or W-UB.

It's a real shame that his travel stuff hasn't been translated. He lived extensively in the Mediterranean, and my wife calls those her favorite Murakami, and she's read everything he's ever written.

I'm only a third of the way through, but nothing I've read yet merits a D. In fact I'm enjoying this far more than I did "Kafka on the Shore", which I did end up liking, despite finding it rather difficult to get into.

They learn English in school, yes, but for people who don't go to school, that doesn't really come into play. Girls especially may be pulled out of school at a very young age to help out around the house. If they're just in some random village, only 20 or 30 percent of the population may actually speak passable…

Meters? lol no

Laurence is just sort of old-school male chauvinist pig. I actually don't think he has too many "ugly American" tendencies, and he's clearly well-traveled enough to take things like crowded African buses in stride.

I don't know that I'd call her the villain. If she is then she's the weakest villain in TAR history. The complaints about the hut were a little much, though. Maybe it's the two years of Peace Corps in Africa talking, but I thought that place they spent the night looked like a palace. Slap an air conditioner in the…

Well, this leads to another aspect of the whole "reality TV is bad" thing. In the beginning, Survivor was pretty much the only one that could be called good by today's standards. There were so many imitators and so many were so bad that it just left a bad taste in people's mouths. Don't get me wrong, there are…

Hipster elitism about reality tv? Shocking.

Those are pretty good criteria, and while I thought that the two top pieces were completely underwhelming, at least on screen, I could see how someone who saw it live would apply those rubrics and declare the Prop 8 thing the winner.

I just wonder about the timing of the filming. There may have been a small window where the piece was relevant, during which this episode was filmed. Probably not, though, and he was just being uncool.

Pop pop!

Bully is one of the great under-rated titles of the aughts. It also seemed like they could have done a lot more with a bigger budget. The school and town could have been way bigger.

lol I wish. With a three-month old in the house, one's TV-time is severely curtailed, so it's necessary to pick and choose.

See also:

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

Only 7 reasonable discussions as I write this? Hardly surprising. What a waste this show is turning out to be. No mystery, no real drive. I have no compulsion to find out what's out in the trees. I still need to watch last week's Fringe and I'm only on season 2 of Doctor Who. Those shows have probably 1/8 of the…