As my husband is essentially an even taller and cuddlier version of Marshall, I completely agree with this.

My dad was actually one of her first fans, from the early 60s on, met her several times, and probably still has her in his address book. She was very nice to him when he wrote her what was probably the very first piece of Pern fanfiction — Master Robinton discovering, and trying to decipher as a message from the…

The weird thing is, Anne McCaffrey totally meant that as a positive thing, and had gay friends and positive gay characters in the books when that wasn't a thing in SF. She didn't think being gay was disgusting: she just really thought that sexuality was fixed by your sexual experiences, and so saying the above was…

Yeah, agreed. I'm always going to have a soft spot for them, they're hugely important to my dad and they were my gateway, but…the books are very much a product of their time, place, and author.

I did a reread recently (as they were my gateway to adult science fiction/fantasy). The Harper Hall trilogy holds up, the rest…there's an issue with consent, namely, there generally doesn't need to be any. Especially if dragons are having sex.

Simpler solution: ensure they die first!

As someone who used to be an inveterate snooper among my significant other's things, once I was with a person I could actually trust, I realized I no longer felt the need to snoop.

I was so pleased that saying it was Windows 95 functioned both as a callback and a way for the lie detector technician to get even more pissed off.

I assume you meant that as a positive, but with each standard sitcom line you mentioned, my interest drained right out of watching this.

The leads are people I definitely want to see more of, and the story isn't terrible, but it really feels like this should have been an above-average romantic comedy. As it is, there's not enough story for more than 100 minutes — and that's if both random best friends having their own kuh-razy subplots.

Aw man, the first link was excellent, and I think the error was formatting on my part. Try again, which explains the historical associations of Charismatics and snake-handling more clearly: http://jsr.fsu.edu/issues/v…

"I'll show you the juice of my pomegranates, baby."

Okay, now that you've clarified your tone, I will also put down my guards and go yay, time for research! Sarah Palin was a member of the Pentecostal church Assemblies of God until 2002, and was attending occasional services of theirs as of 2008. There have been videos of her attending services with some pretty fringe…

My research is based on my day job, but in your sense of misplaced outrage, you're misunderstanding what I said, which is that because both snake-handling and speaking in tongues are associated with Charismatic Christianity, and not with mainstream Catholicism or any other mainstream Christian interpretations, putting…

@PaulKinsey:disqus - Actually, snake handling and speaking in tongues are both characteristic of Charismatic Christianity and not characteristic of any other form of modern-day Christianity, so yes, putting them together does make sense. Not all Charismatics are snake-handlers, but it's far more widespread than just a…

I once was on a plane back from Israel where, in order to escape my family, I offered to take a single seat next to a cute guy who happened to be a missionary.

The other day my husband quoted a line from The Simpsons I didn't remember, and then suggested we watch the episode and see if we had it on our DVDs.

I prefer young kids not to be raised to be total assholes, so I would like to raise mine to be very much not like you.

I've heard complaints that episodes like "Virtual Systems Analysis" were Harmon crawling up his own ass.

Britta's not taking his class, while Annie is/was. It is generally a fireable offense to date one of your students, at least while they are in your class.