Jobs: The Dolls’ House

Mpepper/ August 2, 2020/ Uncategorized

Any time I talk about places I’ve worked, my kids are like, “You need to write about all these things!” I suppose it’s never all that interesting to the person who has lived it, but today I’ll post about one of the many jobs I’ve had in my life: a clerk at a doll shop. That is, I suppose I

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Movies: Palm Springs

Mpepper/ July 25, 2020/ Reviews

This… was part Groundhog Day, part Hangover, and pretty much all stupid. So if you like that kind of thing… Andy Samberg stars as Nyles, a man who has been living the same day repeatedly for longer than he can remember. That day includes the wedding of his girlfriend’s bf Tala, an event Nyles isn’t terribly interested in, maybe because

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Books: Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry

Mpepper/ July 20, 2020/ Reviews

Richard Lloyd Parry is a foreign news correspondent in Tokyo, and this book is comprised of numerous interviews with survivors of the March 11, 2011 tsunami that hit the Tohoku region of Japan. I only heard about this book from a YouTuber of all things (Chris Broad of the Abroad in Japan channel). But I have a dear friend who

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Art/Artist

Mpepper/ July 17, 2020/ Uncategorized

I have a degree in cultural media studies. What that means is my university didn’t have a screenwriting degree track, so I had to do “cultural studies” and then focus on screenwriting since that’s what I really wanted to do. But what that also means is that I learned fascinating ways to look at media, “read” it, dissect it, discuss

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Fan Fiction

Mpepper/ July 9, 2020/ Uncategorized

I was making up stories about my favorite book, television, and film characters long before I ever thought about writing them down. Writers have a tendency to fall in love with characters and stories, and many hone their skills by practicing on others’ characters before playing with their own. There is a somewhat mean-spirited saying in the writing world about

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The Shape and Color of Your Piece

Mpepper/ July 5, 2020/ Uncategorized

Today my 11-year-old daughter came to me upset because her older brother was being mean to her. “Do you ever think he might just be a bad person?” she asked. It would be a lie to say I hadn’t wondered that about myself and all my children at different times in life. But I explained to my daughter that her

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Books: Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch

Mpepper/ July 4, 2020/ Reviews

It might be best (it usually is) to start at the beginning. Lies Sleeping is the seventh in the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series of books. I previously reviewed a number of the earlier books on my spooklights site, but I’ll give a small recap here, too. Peter Grant is a police constable in modern-day London. But he has an

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Movies: Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Mpepper/ June 30, 2020/ Reviews

If you’ve seen Blades of Glory and you liked it, this is probably the movie for you. Honestly, I expected something more like Documentary Now! or This is Spinal Tap, but this does not have the mockumentary style in that it doesn’t pretend to be following things as they unfold, nor does it interview characters, etc. It is, in fact,

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