I don't buy it yet either that this is the big reveal for him. I still imagine there is more to it. Even whether he is interested in Pete or not there is still a lot about him that is mysterious, like his career success records, his creepily spartan office (unless it's some kind of temp office), his friendship with…

Yeah, Julie is awful and so many of us have had a friend like that, I think. She also looks uncannily like Dominique Swain in Lolita. I can't help feeling like that must have been intentional.

@avclub-d7b683529752a4d24d84c4941861a363:disqus Me too. Not that I'm a master of schadenfreude but I can't help thinking that I would have grabbed the letter too! I also wonder if after the fact Sylvia did figure out that Sally was coming into the apartment to retrieve that note.

I still find Sylvia pretty repulsive. (Not moreso than Don for cheating with her, but still.) I think her saying that Don helping Mitchell out of personal motivation was a mean thing to say, and especially gross that she took it as an occasion to rekindle their affair. She didn't owe him anything and it cheapens it to…

@avclub-997c221538094d134659141cf61d51e3:disqus Oh cool. Yeah I took a course on magic realist literature in the Balkans (my area of study in college). I am pretty interested in what from Dostoevsky you include in the course. The way he uses unreliable narration is one of my main research interests and a large part of…

Last week I read The Journal of Best Practices which I really liked. I haven't really had a chance to pick up War and Peace again but I have been thinking about it nonstop.

I remember that part with the squirrels so clearly. I love the film too, and The Once and Future King. It has the most accurate, painful description of cheating that I've ever read. The plot between Lancelot and Jenny and Arthur really kills me. Also all the scenes with the Questing Beast.

What kind of course? What books do you include in it?

Sorry to hear that. I have to have one of mine out later this summer. I had thought it was a minor surgery but apparently it's A Big Deal.

Congratulations on your many likes.

I actually tried pretty hard to get into NIN when I was 14 but couldn't. I really liked Radiohead and Marilyn Manson and everyone said I would like NIN too, so I listened to several albums but never got into it. Then I all of a sudden started liking them in my early 20's. This is, I suppose, atypical.

This has inspired me to listen to NIN at work, really quietly. I love that singles playlist.

All languages are different, all communication is subjective. We still talk about Petrarch and Laura and he never met her, but nobody qualifies any reference to Petrarch with "Well he didn't REALLY love her."

As far as I can tell you conduct your life in an unimpeachable fashion. My advice is to discuss the second half of War and Peace with me after I finish it?

Sometimes the pop culture weekend threads make me really want to give people unsolicited advice about how to conduct their lives. (This is something I struggle not to give people at various other times, too.)

I think people can have different definitions of "in love with" and that's ok. You can say that you were crazy in love with your high school girlfriend and also that you and your wife are in love and we know what you mean in both circumstances. I'm reading War and Peace where people are in love with or out of love…

I have a self-admitted immature attraction to jerks and even I value being "nice." Jerks can be very compelling (because of inconsistent reward) but once you reach a certain level of maturity you appreciate kindness more than a false sense of exhilaration. I think people (including myself very recently and perhaps…

@LurkyMcLurkerson:disqus Eh I've gone way longer than that. Toxic shock syndrome is actually quite rare, there are other ways you can get it and 8 hours isn't a magic number. This is truly disgusting, but I know someone who accidentally left a tampon in for a month - forgot she had one in when her period ended, and…

Yeah the OB ones are good too. I would get them in Europe where they don't really have applicator tampons. I am the kind of person things like Diva Cups always go wrong for. I am totally non-squeamish (about a wide variety of things, not just my period) but I just don't want to have to wrangle with mechanical…

@LurkyMcLurkerson:disqus I went through a weird phase of reading obsessively about human disasters and particularly fires. The Iroquois Theater fire in particular really haunts me.