The crowning moment of any meal of restaurant Chinese food is when there is a small amount of each dish plus rice mixed together in a small exquisitely flavored mound waiting to be finished. They were always meant to be together at last.

Sometimes I feel desperate that I am running out of time to realize my talent (writing a novel no one will read about a goat and crow who travel across the country together — the naturalistic dialogue is a little monotonous) and then I think about Lindsay Lohan and feel even worse. Why, oh why can she not pull herself…

I spent most of 2015 reading “Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I hope that counts.

It’s 160 years later, and we live in a science fiction future unfathomable to Punch cartoonists. The sad thing is that it’s also unfathomable to some presidential aspirants.

The claim or allegation about Bill Clinton’s lying reminds me of an old joke: Washington could not tell a lie, Nixon could not tell the truth, Carter could not tell the difference. The conservative press actively tries to create a myth that Carter was and Clinton is a liar to delegitimize them. Or even worse, to…

Lamb is a new experience you should give yourself (assuming you’re not vegetarian). Like beef but different. Reminiscent of places like England and Ireland where it rains a fair bit. Satisfying in smaller portions. Eat it rare or medium rare. Don’t bother ordering it if you’re going to go medium well or well done;…

He has an excuse-me-but-I’m-concentrating look. June would have had to pry his claws from her shoulders if he hadn’t been up for a little paddle.

I don’t have my copy of Gravity’s Rainbow handy but there’s a riff about Slothrop getting candies from an old lady in London with flavors like cubeb. “Cubeb? Hadn’t he smoked that in college?” Something along those lines.

You may be thinking of the cardboard black olives sold in cans. Chocolate brown olives sold by the pound in a tub at a high end deli or food store are like butter has entered a new stage of existence.

Also, now that you’ve drawn attention to his pocket, is that a gun? or just a stapler he was holding before he had to go out to the podium?

I’m sincere! I use periods because I like to get to the point.

First you play the part of a teenager, then you play a college student and then you play an adult. At some point playing the part turns into being the part. Next step: playing a successful adult. I left out parenthood, but there, the baby teaches you how to be its parent.

The problem is 21-year-olds keep getting younger and younger.

I had a short but satisfying relationship with a homemade mince meat pie, that “Invention of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, an Hodge-Podge of Superstition, Popery, the Devil and all his Works,” two days after Thanksgiving, The bracing muscularity of its flavor had never struck me the same way before. Then it was gone.…

Related: people who wear socks on the beach with no shoes make me feel itchy.

You should reconsider the no long sleeves with shorts rule. In the spring and fall I take hikes wearing cargo shorts and a flannel shirt or sweater. And sometimes even in the summer the temperature can go up or down and a button-down oxford shirt over a teeshirt can come in handy to ward off the chill in the morning…

My parents had several kids and my father said he never knew how he could afford the next one until he had to. We didn’t have much but we were well loved and didn’t really miss the money. Don’t deprive yourself of the joy of children because you’re not sure you can afford them.

Jagger reportedly contributed uncredited backing vocals to the song. Simon said in 1983 that the song wasn’t about him. the fact that the song was clearly about several people (after a little thought) is part of its brilliance.

“Unfortunately, it’s doubtful any branch of the government—state, local or federal—still accepts cross-stitch samplers as documentation.”

I can take the moon being too large and the light on the moon coming from the wrong angle but the clouds being behind the moon is incomprehensible. Did the moon crash into the earth and Britney survived the death and destruction because she was in an airplane and now it’s a thing that sits there permanently on the…