We’re both old, hon.

That is the nightmare of all teachers: a student who knows slightly better than you do.

Oh gosh yes, same for me but with fanfiction. When you just feel different but have no words or starting point to even describe it, and suddenly it’s 2000 and there’s internet everywhere! There’s a whole wide world of people who not only think and feel the same, but have already moved on to the fun parts like it’s no…

This was middle school, not university, so must less space or time for depth. Having been through teacher training, I can understand the mindset - and the pressure - to get all the kids to the right answer that tics the box and works with the state exam, then move on as quick as possible.

I don’t know the specific title or author, because it was almost 20 years ago. But when I was in middle school, we read a short story about a woman, who people called a witch, who knew the 3 secret/magic words about every person that described them and only them. A general in the local war tried to force her to tell…

You sometimes get this with people who have very generic first name but a more distinct middle name, so John Woodrow Smith becomes J. Woodrow Smith. Or, they might have encountered another person already using John Smith and changed it to avoid confusion, especially if the other person is already established or better…

New Zealand’s immigration screening and quota are already very strict, so I expect they could enact a quarantine easily.

This is our hen Krem. My wife and I were very found of the original Krem by the end of Dragon Age: Inquisition. The other chickens include Lampshade, Destructor and Renfield, named after the spider-eating madman from Dracula.

I’m repelled and disgusted just reading about it, no need to see the film. Repugnant.

I knew it was Die Zauberflöte just from the top picture. Wow, I hope they’ll be putting out a DVD, it looks like Mozart by way of licorice all-sorts!

Arthur is the kind of dick that Once Upon a Time specializes in: one whose dickness is completely unrelated to the story he originally came from.

I know media likes to take liberties but honestly, seeing all this made me angry enough that’d - if I were the kind of person - I’d use some strong language. I don’t know which part is angrier, the lit major side or the historian side or the female side or the has-a-brain side...

Please go back to America, we don’t want you here. For all our faults we’re not a nation of children who need someone to take us by the hand - if we’re going to make these decisions, we have to do it ourselves.

I hate how well-known “Yolo” and all it’s associating have gotten, because it’s actually a lovely name for a boy here (with a different spelling but pronounced the same way). My wife and I have it on the name-list, but I’m remembering all the poor girls with the name Katrina once the hurricane happened.

I despise the pink, plastic diamante “princess” image being sold to little girls right now, with it’s almost force-feeding of shopping, fashion, and self-indulgence.

I’ll never understand why Disney adapted The Fox and The Hound - they had to cut out the entire second half of the novel to make it palatable for family audiences, and even then it’s bleak. The novel ends as Tod dies from exhaustion after a lifetime dodging the hunter (who has repeated killed his cubs and mates), and…

There are pictures of the GM plant 5 minutes drive from my first apartment, the one they tore down. The ground is still so polluted, it can’t be built on. It’s now just acres and acres of barren, fenced off grass.

There are photos from the 1942 mining rallies my grandfather remembers attending with his father.

One of the (slightly) more subtle red scare films, where an alien ship lands on Earth and burrows underground. Anyone unfortunante enough to walk over the hidden vessel is dragged underground and a device inserted into their brainstem which gives the Martian leader total control. Kind fathers suddenly strike their…

That episode and “Switched at Birth” have always stuck with me, both stories of mothers who wound up with the wrong children and how they responded.