Jennifer Coolidge. She plays the same character in everything she’s in, and it’s a character I don’t find funny at all.

Which moment in Dragnet?

In my experience, Hinge is still the best, but all of the apps have the same fundamental flaw. Imagine every person in your area who is single is one big room and you line up to meet each other one at a time. That’s basically how they work. Want to skip meeting people with different political or religious beliefs? No problem! Just pay up (and by the way, it’s not cheap). Also, the filters are critically limited and largely superficial. It’s a slog no matter what.

From what I’ve heard, OkCupid used to work properly as a way to find people who were actually a good match for you, but Match group bought them and stripped all the tools that made it useful. I actually recently saw a great comment about exactly that.

A podcast called Almost Plausible, where a couple of friends and I take an ordinary object (such as a ceiling fan, a paperclip, or a toilet brush) and we create a movie plot based on that object.

You can find the show anywhere you listen to podcasts.

When I first read your question, I thought it was a hypothetical situation. Like an improv exercise or something.

Anyway, I was bitten by a racoon once. Everything turned out alright in the end for both me and the racoon.

Just in case anyone wanted to actually learn something from this…

PS is short for postscript. If you have a postscript after your postscript, it’s a post-postscript, or PPS, not PSS.

I grew up in Honolulu, and every once in a while there would be a tsunami warning. I don’t know how old I was—I would guess 6 years old, give or take a couple of years—but during one tsunami warning my parents drove up a ridge and parked on the side of the road to wait it out. We had a VW Vanagon, and I remember sitting in the van playing with toys to pass the time. At some point, a girl around my age joined me in the van. Her parents had the same idea as mine, and I guess they invited her to play with me while we all waited.

I’m in my 40s now. I still think about that girl from time to time.

My thinking is along the same lines. I think OP and his wife both have good arguments for making certain dishes certain ways. And indeed, it seems (to me, in my unqualified opinion) that they need to have an ongoing conversation about which dishes each wants made which way.

OP’s wife is nostalgic for a certain boxed pancake mix because it reminds her of her deceased mother? Cool, that’s pretty low-stakes, just make the boxed shit. But part of OP’s self-care routine is cooking food from scratch, and that’s important too.

OP is right that fighting over this is silly. OP is wrong that scratch-made will always be better. Oh, I’m sure it will taste better, but in the long run it will be worse for OP’s marriage.

And crucially, they both need to be flexible. If OP takes pride in their cooking and the couple is having company over for brunch, then maybe leave the boxed pancake mix in the pantry and let OP wow the guests with their delicious and fluffy scratch-made pancakes. And of course, OP needs to remember that that flexibility is a two-way street.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, but IIRC, the film isn’t saying the Christian Jesus we all know about is immortal, but that this character in the film who is immortal (and a white dude, BTW) was assumed to be the son of God because people 2,000 years ago found out he was immortal and had no other explanation.

ETA: Looks like I remembered reasonably well. Here’s the scene in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bXtdr5BI74

Patreon = pay-tree-on

Patron = pay-trun

We had talked briefly a few times prior to my approaching her.

So it wasn’t completely out of the blue. I feel like this part is pretty critical. You had established yourself in a positive way before making the ask. If your first-ever interaction with her had been asking her out on a date, I doubt it would have gone as well.

Really cheap, off-brand chocolate

Who in 2024 is still buying Palmer’s? How does this brand still exist?

Brain Damage. I definitely should not have seen that movie at whatever age I was.

I host a podcast called Almost Plausible where a couple of friends join me to create movie plots based on ordinary objects. For example, some of our episodes are paper bag, axe, and toilet brush.

You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts, or on the Almost Plausible website.

A friend’s dad feels so strongly about this that he has cafeteria style trays so each food item can have its own little area walled off from everything else.

I sometimes use bacon fat to make stove top popcorn. It’s so tasty!

The $3,000 is a protection plan, kind of like insurance. So if you use that lock and your bike is stolen, they’ll give you up to $3,000 to replace it. I don’t see a price listed for the lock itself.

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Whenever I’m talking with someone about my podcast and they ask, “can I find it on Spotify?” a little part of me dies.

Like, yes it’s available on Spotify, because it’s available everywhere. But I strongly dislike what Spotify tried to do to podcasting, and there are much better apps out there.

In truth, mine isn’t great either. It’s not all shaky and squiggly like these folks, though, just sloppy.