Oh hell, new Southern Tier? I'm all in.

Make sure you read the fine print on their spaghetti policy, but enjoy your birthday!

I used to not shit at work. Then I got on anxiety meds and learned the real joys of a workshit. "Fuck all y'all, this coffee got me feeling a certain kind of way! See you in fifteen!"

Applying for new jobs and not getting any kind of follow-up, which is some s that can get effed right straightaway, particularly when I need to move by October 1st.

Good lord, is that record tough. I started spinning it, but recognized I would have to wait to really delve down into it during a very cheerful and thoughtful time in my life. "Devastating" is the only word for it.

NPR is streaming the new Against Me!

Yeah, King at his best has a lingering effect—I haven't read It in a while, but I get cagey around drains sometimes.

Either that or consult a tank of lobster-monsters.

He did—I picked it up at a beach house and started rereading, and then in the first chapter came to a shoe-horned reference to "can-toi" and chucked it back onto the shelf.

Best spelling bee ever, man.

I remember that feeling of optimism and anticipation quite well, and I'm now enjoying a surge of a kind of nostalgic dramatic irony. We were so innocent then. I ended up enjoying The Dark Tower more than most, as it has a chewy kind of metatextual "aging author tries to determine how much his body of work matters"…

Or, to quote that King, a real "fuckaree."

Ha, right, whoops—clearly, I can't be bothered to recall much about the book.

I'd tell you if I knew, honestly. I can't argue that this book isn't effective, because it's stuck with me for a decade and has a sleazy kind of resonance, like a sticky nightmare. But "off-putting" is probably where I'd land—it does that weird King thing where it's repetitive to the point of a mantra but, like a…

Blerg—thanks for reminding me of the one Hannibal episode during which I hit I 2.5x speed. I just remember how upsetting the concept of this book was—dead husband being eaten by dogs at her feet, necrophiliac standing in the corner, waiting for the protagonist to die, degloving, etc.. No thanks.

Vagintacles! For me, it was Dreamweavercatcher, because I was a dumb kid, but not dumb enough to go "yeah, Down's Syndrome telepath and butthole aliens, cool cool."

Ha, yeah—it took me an embarrassingly long time to tack onto the Robusto brothers' real identities (look, I never read any Hardy books as a kid). Russell's willingness to go incredibly dark without turning it into a sacred-cow-abattoir was pretty appealing, but I'm with you on the Wrinkle in Time bit—too fucked-up for…

Choose-your-own-adventure Hamlet in Ryan North's To Be Or Not to Be (I spent the whole book as Hamlet's dad's ghost, just chilling).

Yeah, it's a very interesting question, because we got the whole "never forget!" part down pat, but I feel like we, as a culture, never determined what we're supposed to be remembering. Is it the largest loss of civilian life on American soil? That's a ghoulish thing to venerate, if we just consider as a Historical…

I actually had a Rogue beer brewed with yeast they found growing in one of the brewmaster's beards. It was palatable, so sure: I'd try Alan Moore's Moor-Bred Beard Bread.