Paul’s DVD Reviews

“If you speak of this, you and your parents will be killed.” — Glynn Turman as Dr. Woodward in Super 8 Bridesmaids (2011, USA) One of my buds watched Bridesmaids with his wife and hated it. I thought, apart from a few flat spots, it was pretty funny. It’s basically a guy flick turned into […]

Idiocracy Now

My experience with new year’s resolutions has been generally unsatisfactory.  With me … and with almost everyone I know … resolutions are prescriptions for self-induced stress, ultimate failure, and consequent depression.  They suck. That’s not to say I haven’t made deals with myself and stuck to them: I successfully quit smoking years ago and more […]

You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books. “What is the criteria for banning a book? Who gets to make that decision? Is it one person’s opinion? Everyone sees things differently; where will it stop?”  Ignoring district procedures for making decisions about restricting student access to books, school superintendent […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: SF & Fantasy

“It’s not me but the world that’s deranged. At some point in time, the world I knew either vanished or withdrew, and another world came to take its place. Like the switching of a track. In other words, my mind, here and now, belongs to the world that was, but the world itself has already […]

Me and Julia

2011 went out with a bang; 2012 came in with a boeuf … Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon.  And if you think that sounds tortured, you should have seen me in the kitchen trying to make sense of the recipe! Three Christmases back I gave Donna a copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French […]

Out with a Bang

The year, that would be.  Out with a bang.  Shot right through the brain. This Christmas we added a compact 9mm pistol to our arsenal, so Polly and I took it and its big brother (a .357 revolver) to an indoor range this morning.  I wanted to get the feel of the new pistol, and […]

The Best Present

Remember me telling you about the tangled history of Maxie, our newly-adopted dachshund?  We’ve been worried that Lauren, Lorrie’s daughter … and Maxie’s most recent owner … might want her puppy back some day, and no wonder … the dog is absolutely loveable, and who wouldn’t want her back? So yesterday we went to Christmas […]