"I can't remember the sound that you found for me" is on my all-time most devastating lyrics list, and I listen to a lot of the Mountain Goats so I know what I'm about here.

Yeah, I definitely agree

Wait, which one?

First "When I Write My Master's Thesis" and now "Postdoc Blues?" John K Samson is determined to provide me with songs for my "Sad Academia" playlist, I see. (I'm a grad student, so yes, I actually do have such a thing.)

Well, tomorrow I'm going on vacation/to a relative's wedding. The wedding is in another country, so it's not just a weekend thing. ANYWAY. I loaded up on books for transatlantic travel.

Wanna second a bunch of things in this thread. Part of CAH getting old is the shock value wearing off over the years, but the fact that certain cards won every time just because they were funnier non sequiturs became an issue. And the time thing really is awful—after half an hour everyone's numb to the whole thing but…

I finished "The Quiet American" recently, which is a really interesting book about America's growing intervention in Vietnam in the 1950s. What I appreciated the most (other than the tautness) was that it was published in the 50s as well, so it isn't just smug retrodiction.

Still plodding along through Veep, which is beautiful (currently about halfway through season 3)

You might be interested in a recent episode of the NPR podcast Invisibilia, which was all about the experience of traditionally-gruff Russians learning to smile all the time when the first McDonald's opened in Moscow.

Just want to echo that. I've started bookmarking this so when I'm at work, not sure what to listen to, I can turn to something fresh.

It's just odd for me because it's happened a lot lately, maybe because I've been trying to make those kinds of classics part of my library diet. A few months back I read Crime and Punishment and apparently that was also pretty thoroughly covered by other people's curricula.

Totally understandable. I would say that after God-Emperor, the plot really goes off-the-rails silly (and stops resembling even the universe, not just characters, you knew before), though I kept reading out of…I dunno, man, I was in high school and I have a completionist streak.

Just curious, how far did it take to get "too silly"? I think we all agree it gets there at some point.

Well, I finished Jane Eyre a couple of weeks ago, which I really enjoyed. It joins the list of things that everyone else apparently read in high school that I'm just now getting to. I really liked the first-person perspective; I'm fairly certain it wouldn't have been nearly as good without Jane's voice.

In undergrad, my physics department had its 100th anniversary and sponsored /produced/whatever a showing of Copenhagen. (I mean, the theater people did all the actual work.) They did it very sparse, in the round, and I really loved it, found it very harrowing. Usually, as a quantum physicist, I roll my eyes when it…

the legal profession loves Atticus Finch too much for this to end well in court for Pinkus