I guess it was part of a standard school-wide curriculum; the school wasnt *that* big, but there were 5 English teachers and everybody the same read excerpts from Moby Dick during the second semester of their Junior year, regardless of what teacher you had.

My opinion of Moby Dick was not improved by the fact that I read it in high school, and the English teacher who assigned it made no secret of the fact that she hated it herself.

I stand by my oft-repeated opinion that anyone trying to get you to read Moby Dick is upset that they wasted their own time, and just want to watch someone else suffer.

I’ll take that recommendation of Rilla of Ingleside, and to that I’ll add that people should get over their “isn’t that for 13-year-old girls?”-ness about Anne of Green Gables and just read it (if it helps, Mark Twain was a big fan). I never looked into any of its sequels because I recall reading that Montgomery…

Just popping in—as I usually do when R.L. Stine comes up—to point out that R.L. Stine is the pen name of Robert Bob Stine who published humorous books for tweens in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The novelizations of Ghostbusters II and Spaceballs, The Extremely Silly Encyclopedia and Flyswatter!, and (the inaccurately-titled?) Ho…

I understand why you say this, but in my experience that’s not the case. I think a lot of people who became pretty tech savvy prior to the era of widespread internet use developed a tendency to think of upgrades as optional because a new version of Windows (or whatever) was usually more about features and aesthetics…

Disagree so hard on Adventure, because if you don’t have a manual (or some other source of information about the game) it feels like a poorly-designed open world with no ultimate goal. That actually goes for a huge number of Atari 2600 games; there wasn’t enough RAM for user-friendly design, so you’d never know that…

I’d like to invoke my own personal favorite quote by Mr. Einstein: “[A]nyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

I agree with her that she should be able to audition for anything and play any role she wins, with the caveat that (as always) the market will decide the future of her career.

Idk, man. I think Android phones of that era were just fine (except on the low end). The original Moto X, for example, came out nearly a year before the Fire Phone, and was a great package in spite of not wowing anybody with it’s specs. The Fire Phone’s problem, I think, was that it’s hardware and software were about…

No argument there. I was mostly responding to the mention of arborio rice.

I had two Fire phones! The only reason I purchased them was that they had dropped to the price of $120, and still came with a year of Amazon Prime. So, for the price of two early Prime renewals I got a couple of $20 phones.

They’re certainly cheaper.

I’m always mystified by replies like this one. Most of the organizations I’ve worked for allow off-site email access, but I’ve never had been able to access the tools I use for my job from home. I don’t get half as many emails as you do, but ~85% of them require action as soon as possible. The last time I took a week…

Exactly! I was hugely into Lucasarts at the time, and I purchased Bone to Pick because I wanted to put some of those songs on mix CDs.

I was hugely into Rocky Horror for awhile, and there was no easy way for me to see Shock Treatment other than to buy it. I was not a fan at first, but it’s really grown on me. No regrets about buying it on VHS.

This, in a very real way, says almost everything you need to know about who I am.

Do flag cakes actually exist outside of food journalism and Instagram? I don’t believe I’ve ever been served a flag cake or even seen one IRL. Am I just lucky?

That sounds amazing. I once watched The Core with two increasingly-drunken geologists, and I think that was probably a similar experience.

Those ashes always take me out of the movie. Always.