…Because the most horrific consequence imaginable of underfunded public education would be that kids start reading comic books. I’m really tired of people perpetuating insulting myths about my hobbies, especially when those people are Democratic political candidates like Nancy King (running for the MD state senate), whose positions I tend to agree with, especially on [...]

According to yet another reported survey, romantic comedy films mess up people’s relationships (Sorry for the blinky over-advertised link destination) by encouraging unrealistic expectations about what “love” is supposed to be. For some people, this causes much distress when their real-life relationships don’t live up to the storybook perfection presented on the page or the [...]

Last year (YiB 2009, #5), I went against my better judgment and read Twilight to see what all the fuss was about. Based on what I’d gleaned from the pop culture currents, I was pretty sure it wasn’t something that was going to appeal to me. And, I was basically right. For many reasons, I [...]

I’ll just let the original words speak for me here (and if you don’t know from whence these words come, get thee to a library or bookshoppe immediately): A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it [...]

Tuesday evening, after a work day that was stressful for all kinds of reasons that had little to do with the actual job at hand (though the triggering event came upon me too quickly to get nervous about), I shook off the resulting adrenaline rush with a few hours of literary shoulder-rubbing and political commentary [...]

As I’d mentioned previously, and did a bit of twittering about in theater, the family spent the weekend at ravencon, which politely decided to set itself up about 20 minutes from my front door this year. This was the first year doing the whole weekend (last year, we did a spur-of-the-moment Friday night drop-in), so [...]

…stop intruding on my breakfast!: “Hop, step, jump-jump, poo! Let us cooperate yeah-yeah-woo! Magical spell is Ei-Ei-Poo!” …and give me back my caps!

Currently on my mp3 player are a couple of CDs by the now-defunct band Innocent Nixon, who I saw play once upon a time at a now defunct bar in downtown Richmond. One of their tunes is called “Big Big Ugly.” Whenever I hear it, my mind leaps immediately to alien epithets for humans in [...]

Those wily English, with their tea and their Doctor Who and their National Health Service, also happen to have an interesting perspective on the American political circus. The other day, the BBC offered up a solid investigation as to why Americans tend to vote against their own interests. And, oddly enough, it’s not entirely that [...]

After FINALLY closing a long-standing action item Saturday morning (Hoo-Effing-Ray!), The whole lot of us ventured across town to hang out at the VA Comicon for a few hours and rub elbows (sometimes literally, given the crowds) with fans, creators, and geeks of all stripes. This weekend’s show was a much larger than the usual [...]