Thank you! So relieved not to feel like I have to buy the series right away.

I checked out Over The Garden Wall. I liked it, but my kid absolutely fell in love with it. I didn't DVR it and can't find it streaming for him anywhere!

Finally got to watch The Babadook. Was not disappointed. It had a lot of cringe-inducing verisimilitude to it, and it took a while to really get going, but then it was great. Really scary, didn't know if the kids would make it to the end. But then we hated how it embed. Made no sense.
In other news, I'm about 9/10 of…

Who read Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki all the way through and thought it was overrated crap? I'm genuinely curious as I loved it so much I thought it unassailable…

I finally read Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of NIMH (The Secret of NIMH) this year. As a person of a certain age, I was scared by having viewed the movie adaptation of this work, and was this predisposed not to even want to read the book (once I learned that there was a book at all). But I picked it up out of curiosity,…

I hated Handmaid s Tale too, and nobody made me read it. I could not get past the fact that she is essentially positing that Christians want to enslave women and bring back polygamy and get rid of modern medicine, etc. I wasn't even a Christian back then, but I knew quite well that that want what they were about. If…

As to whether the cliffhanger ending was effective in any way, I think it was. No, of course Constantine isn't going to die, it's his show. But, I liked how they had him admit he has no idea what to do to save them from the invunche. I really want to see how he gets himself out of the predicament. And I ended up…

I certainly don't enjoy detailed descriptions of tits in my literature, but Colorless Tzukuru Tazaki is so much more than a collection of those. I was really, deeply moved by it. Mostly it is about relationships and loneliness, and his description of those things rang very true to me. I liked it better than I had…

Last month, I read Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I loved it so much! I wanted to re-read it, but it was a library book and someone else had requested it. I wanted to read another great Murakami book (I also recently read Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World), but all my library had…

At the university where I used to work, it was called "gift of body" you might go to the website of your nearest teaching hospital and search on that. Also, that's really admirable!

That article was terrible! I graduated high school in the 90's and remember them well. Yes, lots of things about the 90's sucked. The only good point made was about Courtney Love. Why no, I don't spend my time watching marathons of the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire… How did you know?

Your question is a good one, however the sad fact is that people who want to rape kids are quite adept at figuring this out without a manual.  Frankly, if they don't figure it out on their own they either 1) Don't get to rape kids (keep in mind that for a perp this is a bad outcome) or 2) They get caught (which…

Thank you! All I can think of when I see these spots is how bad an idea it is to take advice from small children. I say this as the parent of a small child. My kid's suggestions are cute and all, but they're objectively terrible. I watch these spots and think to myself, well, if a roomful of small children think…

I did love it.  Now I'm reading comments on this article and wishing I was watching more Beck instead of cleaning and packing.

I had been wondering how that turned out.  Thanks for the recommend and the link.  I'll give it a listen in a little while!

That's a good question, Djur.  I mostly don't either.  But have you never been through a traumatic breakup?  It doesn't have to be exactly like what he experienced for you to be able to relate it to your own experience.  But that's just my opinion.  I love Beck.  I love albums that make me want to cry.  So Sea Change…

I always thought this myself.  I loved Beck before I heard Sea Change, but normally I like song lyrics that make logical sense over those that are clever but also senseless.  I didn't think Beck could write meaningful song lyrics.  I was wrong.  Dead wrong.  And I've never been happier to be wrong.

Clearly, I need to go out and buy Mutations, cause that sounds like something I'd love.  well, that and it is a Beck album.  I forget since I have like, 8 of them, that there may be more out there. 

But haven't you ever watched a commercial and thought "What the hell are they trying to sell here?" Or "Who thought this would make anyone want to buy the product?" This column gives us a space to contemplate these questions publicly, in a way some of us never would do in real life after all, on the rare occasions…

My understanding is that you have to prove you are related to the person in order to do a baptism for the dead. I also was told that they don't like to do them for people who were around when there were Mormons in their community. The thinking is that if you were likely to have heard of the church when you were alive,…