Love when you're carrying a 3 y.o. to his bed from wherever he's fallen asleep and he's conscious enough to help you adjust his pillow but not actually thinking yet... very goofy mental state. Sorry Melvin, I'm probably like that too sometimes but nobody can observe me because I weigh 215 pounds

Kids were playing gross-jelly-bean Russian roulette with their cousins and it looked and felt like a poker game

Merry Christmas

I love the various looks 60s rock stars went with as they reached middle age. Undeniable

Starting to convince myself I should buy an old GEM NEV (glorified golf cart) as a historical curiosity and also because I could legally drive it to work and Nancy's school. Unfortunately they're weirdly expensive, even used; I could buy the marginally more glorified i-miev for like the same price

I think a lot of the anti-small-talk discourse flows from an implicit idea that you're mostly talking to people who have hobbies and interests similar to yours. But another common theme online is that tons of people have inscrutable and tedious Coworker Interests

I read Gaudy Night again... Dorothy Sayers throwing 105 mph with movement the whole way through. Also what were they doing with these dust jackets

Van Weezer is a very forgettable album overall but every few months I get 1 More Hit on shuffle and it knocks me out. Crazy song youtu.be/PZ215JziBY0?...

An unwise bet on Justin Fields blew up my fantasy football season so I'm glad the Jets are apologizing to me personally by starting a Mizzou quarterback in his place

Something very touching to me about sweeping Album Closer statement tracks for albums nobody bought. I like this one a lot; it has the unmistakeable-to-me sound of the records people used to make before there were bad Weezer songs www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnlC...

Shoppers

Dance recital postgame

The They Might Be A Giants Wiki is—in keeping with my assumption that "TMBG fans" and "people who were using Macs to get online in 1995" are different names for the same group—a great reminder of how stuff used to look and sound on the internet before the Clickbait/Universal Wikipedia Tone duopoly

Umarell

Reading Sense & Sensibility in an EPUB with the C.E. Brock illustrations, which are great. But you can't be making all the 40-year-olds fat and bald C.E. Brock... Sir John Middleton won't see that but I will

Endorsed

I really like this picture of Lindsay and Melvin gazing at something in the dark, a cryptic expression on their faces, especially because I know they're gazing at an episode of American Gladiators projected onto the ceiling

As a station wagon owner I must note—with some regret—that sales trends in other countries suggest increasing demand for crossovers is an original sin problem rather than a regulatory problem

Yesterday at daycare they stuck a sticker to Melvin's back that said "Picture day is tomorrow!" He didn't even know it was there. This is how all messages to parents of three-year-olds should be delivered.

Mansfield Park 83 update: Mary Crawford is fitted with the first Novelty Halloween Dress I can recall in my time watching Jane Austen adaptations. Miss Autumn Lady Walking Down Lane With Suspicious Necklace

Had completely forgotten about Rivers Cuomo's Japanese-language project, which is a shameful oversight on my part, so that's what I'm doing today. This one is incredibly lightweight but fun

I guess I'm just going through all of Jane Austen again. Maybe I'll read The Watsons this time. Anyway here's Lizzy Bennet Sephiroth-posting

Successfully ironed a shirt for the first time in my life. Have to make sure I knock all these skills out before I hit 40

I love having cousins and I love walking so I have to say I'm a little disappointed about "cousin walk" being a euphemism

Been watching the 1983 Mansfield Park and it's quite a bit better than I remembered, which is some consolation for the way that every subsequent adaptation hates the book and its main character

Cameo appearance from my poor Buick Roadmaster... someday I'll have a garage again, car, I'm sorry

Mansfield Park is so good. Jane Austen playing on the highest difficulty setting and writing a novel that asks "What if it's kind of bad under certain circumstances to be a charming Jane Austen protagonist"

"I want to eat at the little table." "But what do you want to eat?" "At the little table"

Probably not extremely likely that I'll see the Smoking Popes live again now that I live in Arizona and not Illinois, but the possibility that they'll play Racine if I do—now that it's on a Popes album—means I might have to take emergency measures www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOgZ...

?

Fibber McGee & Molly update: Nancy and I are doing dueling Wallace Wimple impressions and we're both bad at it. "Sweetieface... that's my big ol' wife..."

They're playing "A Little Bit of Love" at this Lowe's. Not a Weezer single I expected to ever hear in public

S&S: 1995 is a very good movie but aging Elinor up really changes the story P&P: 1995 ✓ Mansfield: 1983 is the only adaptation that doesn't hate Fanny Price Emma: 2009 ✓ Northanger: Haven't watched the 2007 yet. 1987 looks great but is nuts Persuasion: 1995 ✓ Something in the water in 1995

I asked my students what the save icon was and they said a skeuomorph

Lindsay finally read Pride and Prejudice so we're doing the miniseries again. Unbelievable casting of every Bennet but especially Mary

At the mall playground eating a soft pretzel and reading about the Chrysler Turbine Car while the kids play. Not an exaggeration when I say I've heard roughly 15 6-7s per minute while we've been here

My children are not static native

Danny Dog's dad has some incredible line readings for "Oh yes, I'm not a sailor any more."

True

Tweets positing that the giant Home Alone house in a beautiful Chicagoland neighborhood probably used to cost $100,000 have given us a festive Christmas version of the "The Simpsons own a home in Springfield on one income" tweet. I don't know why all of these have to be about Illinois

This morning, when I was getting Nancy ready for school, she told me she wanted all of us to act in a Fibber McGee & Molly play. (I put an episode on her Tonie. If you do not know what a Tonie is... huge kindergarten sensation, cross between an Amiibo and a CD player.)

Have seen a Saturn Relay and a Ford Freestar already this afternoon. Great minivan day

Tilney hitting Catherine Morland with a "the girl reading this :)"

Martin Chuzzlewit can definitely be identified as the Dickens novel that would get heavily retooled after Season 1 while you're reading it. Pacing is weird, feels like he realizes he hasn't given you a main character to like, doesn't have his arms all the way around the plot, etc

As always, if you would like to purchase an EarthBound Handbook during our free shipping sale I will try to sign it (or not sign it!) for you when I'm doing my favorite part of my job (being drafted as an auxiliary mailroom packer)

Found Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on VHS at the thrift store this afternoon so Nancy is hosting a watch party in her room

Honestly I'm not going to listen to this but I bet it's just that nobody told him it turns into a real medicine when you take four of them at once. Changed my life when a dentist prescribed me "Ibuprofen 800" after an emergency wisdom tooth demolition

Bruce Hornsby whispering "that's just the way it is" in The Way It Is... inspired choice

Whenever I'm at a restaurant with Pepsi products I get confused by their diet cola lineup. Frankly I think they're expecting too much out of the median coke-drinking American on this front

One thing I like about listening to Odd Lots is the jobs their guests have that I did not know existed. Listening to someone with a thick Wisconsin accent talk about Fairlife and he's a company's "Head Dairy Economist"