I like holiday music (and that's even after working in the mall every winter in college, hearing the same 4-hour tape repeat again and again and again). I like that I can decide to shop for luggage, in person, at 9pm. I like last-minute shoppers, with their sense of humor. I like shiny things and wrapping presents and tacky lights and candlelight. ( Read more... )

Costa Rica manages to simultaneously smell like Pennsic and the US Navy and highway onramps and my friends' kitchen in Hilo. It's an interesting mix ( Read more... )

Breaking news: Psychologist who still refers to adult women as 'girls' is nonetheless taken seriously enough to have theory published!

That's not even plausible evo psych. It's just the sort of crackpot theory one might make up over dinner. Probably during the cigar course...
George old pal, why do you think the girls love shopping so much?
Why, ( Read more... )

I think brooklinegirl and pearl_o have turned me to skater bands. SRSLY. They & several other hilarious and earnest writers are making all kinds of adorable happen with their words ( Read more... )

Please take a pen and a sheet of paper. Go to the foot of a tree or to your writing desk, and make a list of all the things that can make you happy right now: the clouds in the sky, the flowers in the garden the children playing, the fact that you have met the practice of mindfulness, your beloved ones sitting in the next room, your two eyes in ( Read more... )

I know. It's a cheery Thanksgiving topic. I'll post a second, actually cheerful, topic in a moment.

But. I have a question. Why is unemployment so much worse for people in non-professional jobs vs. managerial ones, people without college degrees vs. people with them? The nifty Times graphic shows it off pretty nicely (or depressingly). And why is ( Read more... )

They could be super-fun.

This is my favorite thing about vampires: when they are written as actually old, and perplexed by the present, nostalgic for the past, and just generally anachronistic.

They'd be even funnerer if they were crabby about it. Not just in lack of respect for social convention, though - since that's kinda their whole schtick

I enjoy vampire/werewolf ridiculousness muchly. Mostly I like how we keep trying to use the popularity of a few books and movies to Explain Our Culture, as if it will respond to such fat-fingered analogies.

But Cleo's thing about romance and tenderness and eyeporn, like the best of the vamps/weres wank, has actual interesting stuff in it ( Read more... )

Cauliflower is a comfort vegetable! I always knew this about broccoli, but it turns out they're related in more ways than taxonomy. Cauliflower makes excellent gratins and casseroles. Nom ( Read more... )