I used to have a bottle opener that I got at the Vatican back in the 1990s. It had a relief of John Paul II on it. I called it my popener. Somebody stole it from a party though :-/

But what about the senate? (sad trombone)

What does one have to do with the other?

Yay for giving up soda (I can't bear the stuff anymore—even diet tastes disgusting to me). Juice, especially packaged juice in the supermarket, isn't much better but it is a step in the right direction, assuming the direction you are going is to reduce the amount of sugar you drink. As your palate adjusts to less…

I'm assuming that list is in ascending order of priority.

Pugs do it,
Chows do it,
Even long-haired Afghan hounds dooo it,
Let's do it,
Let's take a walk!

He was all over the place this year—both Grimm and American Dad had Krampus in their holiday specials (one in a Santa suit, the other with two cloven hooves—not the traditional one hoof, one foot—you can't just go around changing the facts about Krampus because it makes you uncomfortable!), and I've seen him pop up…

I have an African American friend who has been living in Germany for the past 5 or 6 years. She is never not surprised when she sees Black Peter (or the Germans who dress up in blackface). None of her (white) German friends seem to see even the slightest problem with this.

I think she's generally funny, but yeah, the fat jokes in that show seem so predictable and forced. Seriously, who cares? Retta (Donna on Parks and Rec) is big, but I haven't once seen her size the butt of a joke and her character is hilarious.

Growing up, my family went to a dental practice run/owned by a husband and wife. Twice a year, every year growing up I went there for checkups, my brothers all got braces, there, etc. so I was pretty familiar with the couple. Once, in high school, I was going on a double date with my friend, her boyfriend and her…

I believe recent research has shown that there are several more types of breast cancer than previously thought and that as tumors grow, they mutate within themselves which make it particularly hard to find a cure-all for the array of diseases called breast cancer.

The knock-kneed pose drives me nuts. You're not five years old! Stand up like a grownup (unless you are five years old, then you get a pass).

The first time I went to Iceland, I was amazed and delighted to discover my size was at the front of the rack, not the very back! Of course I think they have the tallest average height at least among Western nations, so...

OK, that makes sense. It just struck me as odd that all of a sudden both an endocrinologist and my GP ordered it as part of my blood workup. I had to kind of fight to get lyme tested though, and that is what all of my symptoms seemed to be pointing to (I live in an area where lyme is a distinct possibility, so I…

I was surprised to discover several years ago that almond milk has was a staple of medieval cooking because of the perishability (and cost) of cows milk.

Weirdly, two doctors from entirely different disciplines have included a blood test for celiac for a workup regarding an ongoing issue that started abruptly last year. At no point had I thought or suggested that gluten had any bearing on how I felt, and I was right—no antibodies or whatever they were looking for, but…

The punchline is that she was a plastic surgeon, so was really unlikely to ever come across any patients who didn't know the word "breast." She just wanted to know all the dirty words. I found diplomat's wives to be the most fun because my class was probably one of the few places where they could cut loose and say…

I LOL'd re: that statistic that Jewish households earn more than the average non-Jewish American or whatever. Ummmm, this is because most Jewish communities are concentrated in a handful of large cities in the United States, where the average household income for ANYBODY is likely to be higher than the American…

I had a teacher in elementary school and a chemistry teacher in high school who had numbers tattooed on their arms. This shit is still within living memory for a lot of us. Growing up hearing stories about relatives you'd never meet because they were murdered when they were children was enough to give me very vivid…

I have a very Jewish name, but was raised Catholic (Mom was Catholic and dad split pretty early in the game). At my first mixer in grad school at a prestigious university in the upper Midwest (OK, UW Madison) the department head made some snide comment about New York intellectual Jews, to my face—from that point…