Blogging Brains, Books, Bad TV, Badder Movies

One of the medications I take on occasion causes depression. It’s a unique kind of depression that I can feel in my head, almost like someone has soaked cotton balls in vinegar and then stuffed that sodden mess into all the nooks and crannies of my mind. I can feel the sour, musty thoughts press [...]

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I Am Tired Of Truculent Christians

Of course, the very title of this post makes ME a truculent Christian of sorts, and so I must be tired of myself. Which I am, so there. But setting that little irony aside… Here we are, in the long shadow of yet another Christian Holy Day. Easter looms on the horizon, supposedly the zenith [...]

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Academia Makes My Eyes Bleed

So I just finished reading The Lost City of Z. And I’m going to spoil it for you if you a) haven’t read it or b) haven’t read any major archeological journals in the last 8 years or so. The book ends with the recent discovery of the ruins of what is thought to have [...]

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A Proper Blessing For The Czar

“Rabbi, Is there a proper blessing for the Czar?” “A proper blessing for the Czar?!” “Yes. ‘May G-d bless and keep the Czar…far away from us.” My first exposure to the term “Czar” (although it was then spelled ‘Tsar’) was as a five year old girl listening to the Original Broadway Cast recording of Fiddler [...]

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At Least There Are No Bullets Involved

I’ve finally gotten around to reading The Lost City of Z, several years after it was so highly acclaimed. I’m like one of those college students who goes to their cousin’s Senior Prom. I’ve been very much incredibly down lately about the limitations of my illness and how much of a waste of a person [...]

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Beware The Ideas Of March

To pay for the changes, the legislation includes more than $400 billion in higher taxes over a decade, roughly half of it from a new Medicare payroll tax on individuals with incomes over $200,000 and couples over $250,000. I’m not happy about the vote, obviously. I imagine that I’ll spend the next decade shaking my [...]

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Waving A Red Cape In Front Of The Bull Called ‘Fate’

Never, ever, ever post on your blog that you might be getting better. Or that your new treatment regimen seems to be working. Because when you do all of a sudden you will be facing the worst flare you have EVER had in the history of RA. Your joints will fill with shards of glass [...]

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News From The World Of K

I don’t feel excessively wordy in non-fiction these days, having most of my steam poured into novel writing. One thing they don’t tell you about novelling is how exhausting it is. There is so much emotional energy poured into emoting a journey for people you’ve created out of whole cloth. It’s both cathartic and cumbersome, [...]

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Johnny Weir

I have always liked figure skating–the watching, not the doing. My first remembered encounter with skating came from a novel. I first read it when I was 8, and had been prewarned that one of the sisters died. Then that wretched Amy with her pickled limes, clothespinned nose and novel-burning wicked self fell through the [...]

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Erin Go Blah

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: Isn’t this a little like complaining about Santa Claus at Christmas, or pumpkins at Halloween? It’s St. Patrick’s Day. Not a holy religious experience. Heh. The complaint was that all the drunk leprechauns in observance of St. Patrick’s Day was offensive. This was one of the responses. Really. I had to resist [...]

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