"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
Unsolicited opinions on books, movies, TV shows, consumer products
Q, our grandson, has been here the past week, bunking in our home office. I barged in this morning to check email and update the blog. While I was at it, we took a selfie. It’s been a domestic week, watching young people’s stuff on TV (Battlebots, which was too frenetic to endure; Zootopia, clever […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News Right-wing conservatives get upset about book banning too. But are schools in Portland, Oregon, actually banning textbooks that deny or call into question climate change? Not really. Texas schools were encouraged to teach Mexican-American history. They’re off to a great start with […]
Our friend Angie’s here for a week, visiting from Tampa. She and I once worked together in the A-10 program at Davis-Monthan AFB here in Tucson. Her company, CAE, sent her from Tampa to Tucson when the USAF awarded it the DMAFB A-10 training contract. I signed on a year later and that’s when we met. She’s back at […]
How do you like my new eyePhone? Grotesque, no? It makes me think of teratomas, those legendary tumor-like growths that contain hair, teeth, and bones (sometimes even eyes). I don’t have a valid reason for showing you this photo other than to disturb your dreams. You can thank me later. I write book reviews and post […]
As I remind Donna every year, she’s not my mother, and Mother’s Day is a Hallmark holiday. I know exactly what Donna’s thinking when I say that: the hell you say.
“There’s the imperative to keep secrets, and the imperative to have them known. How do you know that you’re a person, distinct from other people? By keeping certain things to yourself.” —Jonathan Franzen, Purity Purity Jonathan Franzen People I follow on social media no longer like Jonathan Franzen. He must have said something […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News In the last YCRT! I mentioned a Canadian comedian who is being investigated by a Quebec human rights commission over a joke. Well, get a load of this: a German comedian is being prosecuted for mocking Turkish President Erdogan. And no, not in […]
“The witch hunt stands as a cobwebbed, crowd-sourced cautionary tale, a reminder that—as a minister at odds with the crisis noted—extreme right can blunder into extreme wrong.” — Stacy Schiff, The Witches: Salem, 1692 Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice Adam Makos I thought Devotion an excellent book: a true story, well […]