Me: Did you launder my black pants?
S: I don't remember. But I have to say, I would never use the word "launder" to refer to washing laundry. I did not take them to a shady bank and exchange them for similar ones as part of a fake loan.
Me: Thank you for not doing that to my pants.

My grandfather showed me once, when I was fairly young, how a message was still fairly readable if you removed all the vowels. He told me that they used to do that in his youth to save money on telegrams ( Read more... )

My mother decided to drag me kicking and screaming into the 21st century by buying me a smartphone and putting me on her phone plan. Hey everybody, this century is kind of nice! I see why you've all been hanging out here ( Read more... )

Background: S is reading a supposedly nonfiction book that has its history hopelessly muddled. It claims that Herodotus expressed an opinion on Cicero and that Plutarch coined the term "Dark Ages" to refer to the Early Medieval period, among other things. So we were talking about that ( Read more... )

Imagine that you are reading a book, and you discover partway in that the author is using the book to espouse views that you disagree with. (Could be any kind of views - political, social, aesthetic...) Because of this, you find the book annoying and dislike it. Do you keep reading? What are your considerations as you decide ( Read more... )

"The Bible, Observed ( Read more... )

I fear that a slip of the ear of mine, in which I misunderstood S saying "six ears of corn" as "six years of porn," may become a standing joke in our household.

A coworker loaned me Dark Star Safari, by Paul Theroux, with glowing recommendations. The subtitle is "Overland from Cairo to Cape Town," and that pretty much describes the idea of the book: the author traveled through East Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town, via bus, train, car, and boat (and a few planes when land borders were closed). It's an ( Read more... )

Even if you accept astrology completely--indeed, perhaps especially if you accept astrology completely--you cannot explain problems happening now by saying that Mercury is about to go retrograde.

As far as I can tell, there are exactly two good things about this book:

1. The cover
2. The fact that it's written in standard English with correct punctuation.