This is something I wrote back in the day for a now-defunct website called Tea At the Ford (TATF), run by my friend macha. Actually, this was written before the site existed, when we were just a mailing list. macha had set up a little exercise for anyone who wanted…

My father died the day before Thanksgiving, when I was twelve. I was actually surprised when I looked up the date, because I recalled that it was the week of the holiday, but didn’t realize it was the actual day before — I think that’s because it was a very…

Here’s what happens:

Students will start by writing an introductory paragraph of three to four sentences. Here they will explain why their story is relevant and worth documenting. They should also indicate their overall point, making sure it relates to social media and journalism/information. This is a tweet with an image, so…

Oh, god, I hate it when they do Italian and I get distracted by how godawful the accents (and translations) are. Why can’t they stick to languages I don’t speak? Although the priest who summons Moloch the Disruptor into the book is pretty good, actually. I’m sure it’s not his…

It’s hard for me to put myself in a mindset of not knowing who Angel is. Since I was a latecomer to the series, I already knew he was a vampire before I’d watched a single episode, making this big reveal a bit anticlimactic. …

This is the episode that first really caught my attention. “Huh,” I thought. “I did not expect this show to go there.” The frivolous distraction behind my frantic-yet-tedious thesis edits had just become a little bit less frivolous. If only I’d known… We open at the zoo. You know, the…

The title of this episode always makes me think of a book I acquired in the eighth grade, titled How To Get A Teenage Boy And What To Do With Him When You Get Him. It had all kinds of fascinating, if already dated for the time, advice about how…

Xander has a white knight complex, and also fantasizes about being a white knight to some helpless creature who looks like Buffy, but doesn’t act like her at all. Almost like a… bot version of the real girl. But Buffy catches him drooling, so I’m kind of okay with the…