I agree! Those and the sequel trilogy were my absolute favorite books as a kid.

I have an aunt like that (but with nuts—and she’s not allergic either). I just don’t get it. Unless a restaurant has a totally separate kitchen for allergen-free food, you are going to have cross-contamination. These people must expend a ridiculous amount of energy arguing about food.

I have celiac disease too, and literally no one is going to get sick from whatever small crumbs a toaster might emit (and if a person really is that sensitive, they probably have tons of other health problems to worry about and shouldn’t be eating out anyways). A separate toaster might be a nice thing to have at home,…

I used to have a roommate who was absolutely paranoid about leaving the crockpot on while we were away (why even bother with a crockpot then? Who knows). So it might have been her. My apologies, she was a weirdo.

I once had a speech class where another student proposed solving the problem of overpopulation by “legalizing gay people” so that “they could turn everyone else gay and people would stop having kids”

He isn’t. His brother was a student, and the professor came to work with DJ.

Well, part of the issue is that facilitated communication itself is kind of an iffy idea.

Somewhere Beneath Those Waves is her second story collection and my favorite (the other, The Bone Key, is also good but it focuses on one character and I prefer the variety in Waves). My favorite specific stories are “Katabasis: Seraphic Trains” “A Night in Electric Squidland” and “Three Letters from the Queen of…

How would you compare it to her short stories? I adore Monette’s short fiction but I’ve been hesitant to pick up the novel because it seems like such a departure.

Well, stopping hormones doesn’t actually stop sexual desire all the time. Interestingly, I was just reading an article about how to prevent pedophiles from abusing children. A big part of the problem is that there’s no attempts made to stop pedophiles until after they’re already in the legal system. There’s a couple…

“Overserving” is when you allow people to consume a dangerous amount of alcohol. 7 pre-mixed cheap margaritas are not going to kill you, but they will make you too drunk to safely drive.

I think the issue is she has to record in the presence of Dr. Luke and can’t just go to her basement and turn out shit.

My point isn’t that all museums are thoughtless plunderers, but in this sort of situation (a private museum, artifacts being removed illicitly from a warzone) the artifacts will probably never return. We should also question whether its ethical at all to purchase cultural heritage from places without stable…

Well, they’re actually probably underwriting Saudi/foreign looters willing to go into Iraq to smash-n-grab artifacts.

Whole papers have been written on the ethics of this. Yes, by leaving them in Iraq it’s possible they will be destroyed, and that’s a very real concern. However, by taking them from Iraq they will almost certainly never be returned. Countries can make noises about repatriation all they want, but the truth is that the…

The name of the school is Richland Two. It’s not for just two-black-parent households.

We simply should not have armed officers in schools. Especially not “safety officers” with dubious credentials and training. The track record of brutality against students of color and disabled students is appalling.

You know, of all the times I’ve been scammed, it usually wasn’t by people who were actually poor.

What if we framed this in terms of money? Speakers at colleges are paid. Can’t the students say, “I dislike that my tuition is being used to support a person who preaches bigoted things about my fellow students”?

PSA: