I'm not sure if anybody has mentioned it, but it seems like nobody is aware that the "What do you mean, 'born again'? Like a baby?" thing is actually from the Bible.

Doris was fuckin' dope, losers.

I'm very into it so far (just finished part one), but it demands enough concentration that I have to ration it along with my academic reading. (Master's program.) I probably won't finish until the summer, unfortunately.

Hm, that doesn't bode well for me, considering that's one of two of his I have on my shelves.

In the midst of Demons (Dostoyevsky), and read Wolf in White Van as well, this last week. (Liked it a good bit, and it was quick- only took two sessions of a couple or three hours each.) Also have designs on finally getting to some Murakami.

It's important to keep in mind that Ali had an unworldly physical gift, himself, if not nearly as eye-catching as Tyson's power: the chin he had in his prime years. I would have to give the (slight) edge to Prime Tyson, but it would've been damn close, and in terms of total corpus, Ali has him by a distance.

Somehow I dodged that particular bout of linguistic renovation, despite being still two days under 24 and going to school in one of the bluest states (Massachusetts). I'd never heard anyone use that term until a couple years ago.

If I recall, the Visigoths were Arians (at least Alaric was), whereas the Italians were not. So you can blame anathematized Christian sects…? I guess that's somewhere in between.

No love for Xanthippe's evaluation of Grant? "He's so old he fought in some war with Germany. The guys from soccer."

Possibly my favorite piece of dialogue in any Anderson movie.

Bizarrely, I think it's Shepherd Book for me. Slow to violence but courageous and competent when necessary, principled, selfless, kind. Let's just skirt around the back-story stuff.

That wasn't what your last comment implied. "I don't need Augustine" does not mean (necessarily), "Augustine is equally meaningless as self-help programs." I think you're roughly 600% wrong, incidentally, but that's beside the point.

Not quite my point.

I know it's unfashionable to say, but I mean, surely (for instance) Augustine has something ever so slightly more substantial to say than the self-help guru du jour, right?

This entire show thrives on (symbolic) double-entendre. As much as the "That was amazing" was meant as a dark joke, Philip's response was at least part-way sincere. And Elizabeth's laughing with Philip over Paige's endorsement of prayer is at least partially meant to reassure herself. There was genuine curiosity in…

The French Revolution wasn't atheist, it was anti-Christian and (more specifically) anti-clerical. They enthroned the goddess Reason in Notre Dame.

Okay, yeah, sounds familiar.

Fair enough.

I'm a '91 baby, but it freaked me the fuck out yesterday when I realized there's already four-plus months of teenagers born after 9/11.

It might have been a "thirty shekels" reference (you know, Judas), but I could also be inventing that.