I’ve struggled all my life with being an outsider. Overlooked, unseen. Any crumb of praise or attention from a teacher was a godsend. Most of the time, though, I was just one of dozens, if not hundreds, that each teacher saw on a regular basis. Even as an only child, I was often forgotten. Left sitting outside the dark Girl
A while back, I began to notice a specific kind of YouTube cinema coverage. These videos begin as a “review” of some film but then become the YouTuber’s “fan fix-it.” Like, what they really want to do is rewrite the movie, but they’re too lazy (or untalented?) to sit and actually write anything, so they make a video telling everyone
Over on Bluesky, I’ve been participating in a “game” (trend?) of posting—once per day for 20 days—the fictional characters I would invite to a dinner party. I’ve made some rules for myself in this, such as not choosing any of my own original characters and not allowing more than one character from a fictional world (with one key exception). And
It has been pretty popular lately for Democrats/Liberals/Progressives/General Dumpster Haters to crow about his tanking approval ratings. And I am as happy as anyone to see them continue to fall. But I don’t think they’re as important as most people believe (or hope), or at least, not for the reasons some might think. The majority of commentary that I’ve seen
A few weeks ago, I received an unsolicited email from someone offering to make me a Wikipedia page. However, based on his description of why he thought I deserved to have a Wiki, this person seemed to think I was some combination of a chef and humanitarian. In short, he either had the wrong person or was fishing (phishing?), so
Behaviors are bad all over. They have been for a while, but they seem to be getting worse (or I’m turning into one of those cranky old people with no tolerance for tomfoolery, which is just as likely). Movie cinema owners and operators bemoan that fewer people are going to see movies on the big screen, but they do nothing
We recently passed our “Caliversary,” which is the anniversary of the day we put our family on a plane in Massachusetts, flew across the country, and transplanted ourselves in California. I had lived in Massachusetts for over 12 years (12 years, 7 months, and 4 days to be precise), but I’ve now lived in California longer than that, which got
Leopards are feasting on faces right now. Social media is rife with posts about Trump supporters who have found themselves hoisted by their own petards. Some go so far as to post pleas directly to their clay idol to have him undo the specific harm that they have been caused. “Please hire my wife back!” “Please don’t deport my son-in-law!”
Yes, “can’t” in quotation marks because, of course, we could have education without charging ridiculous amounts of money for access to it, but… I have one child at university and two more in high school, so wouldn’t I just love it if the United States offered tuition-free options for higher education? You betcha. Germany is often pointed to as the
You’re on a road trip. You don’t know the exact destination, but you trust you’ll know it when you see it. In the meantime, you do have some thoughts about the kind of place you’d like to end up. Maybe you want to be near water. Or you want a hot, dry climate. Maybe you’re set on someplace urban. Alternatively,