Just want to say congratulations to Dr. Gunn. I took his summer science fiction course at Kansas when I was an English Grad student. I flew from NC and stayed in Kansas for two weeks to experience it. His mind and depth of knowledge on science fictions are phenomenal and he also had a wonderful sense of humor and…

They’re just now getting to Vonnegut?

You manage to have fond memories over something that your mother made sure you and your siblings never felt scared about. Your mother kicks serious ass.

Not the WHOLE vacation, just the trip there...

Your mom is a rock star.

We almost never went on vacation when I was a kid, but when I was about 12, my parents decided to pile my identical twin brothers and me into the minivan and drive 10+ hours to Twinsburg, OH for the town’s annual twins festival after seeing it featured on some TV program or another. Imagine attending your typical…

Does it count if you didn’t fully realize it was awful?

I was about five years old. My mother decides to load four of us kids in the van and take us from Washington State to California, to go to my mom’s cousin’s wedding. While there, we were also going to visit her siblings and go to Disneyland and all sorts of fun…

ooh! Ooh! My mom’s family is from S. Florida, so “family vacation” always meant “visit Gramma and Grampa in Ft. Lauderdale. Cool. It has a beach! My grandparents live like, on the damn beach so my brother and I would jump out of the car, throw on a swim suit and run head long into the water on a semi public-ish beach…

I’m not sure how much of an outright disaster this is, but it was pretty funny, so I figured I’d share.

We went to Orlando for a week and then right after our parents told us they were getting a divorce. Wompwomp.

It was the summer and we were moving from Phoenix, AZ to Chicago, IL. We drove in a mini-van with a broken radio. I was shoved in the back seat, re-reading the same books, unable to move much because my mother’s gigantic plants in their huge terra cotta pots were stuck back there with me.

it’s better to tear because the healing process is faster. some doctors and midwives will perform an episiotomy when it’s not detrimentally necessary, some women don’t tear at all and if so it could be very minor. I tore and only needed 3 stitches and healed in three weeks. my friend who got an episiotomy needed more…

Also Will Wheaton.

fuck off kiwi. Lets just underarm bowl you out of the game ay? (me: australian born with kiwi dad. AFL was banned in our house. All Blacks for every win ever cos they are the greatest sporting team of all time out of all the sports.)

Yeah, no Australian has legitimately sounded like that since ‘Skippy’. My grandfather is Aussie-as (named after Donald Bradman, comes from a part of rural Tasmania where even the policemen engaged in the local sport of stealing hubcaps, wears an Akubra daily and answers the phone with “G’day, Don speaking”) and when I…

She rubbed me the wrong way at times when she would refuse to acknowledge her opponent after losses and the incident where she threatened the judge at the U.S. Open, but she has seemed to humble it in terms of winning and losing like a champion in recent years; she’s had moments of classlessness and lack of general…

Alice Marble won 18 Grand Slam Championships (singles, doubles and mixed doubles) while suffering from TB. Upon retirement she was an associate editor for DC Comics, were she introduced the Wonder Woman character. Her husband was killed in action during WW2, a few days later she suffered a miscarriage and attempted…

Steffi is the only one to achieve a golden slam and she did that during the most difficult (that is, full of peer competitors and idiotic family drama) part of her career, but I would say that Serena is at least equally the best, and considering how play has changed, she likely is the greatest ever in the same way…