"Richard, you're our youngest panelists. You were how old when Channel Four started?"

"Five?"

"D'you remember anything about it?"

"I..I didn't mind it. I thought it was fine. It was all right. I...I approved it, I thought, yeah, go - go ahead. To be honest, I wasn't massively consulted on the whole process."

The Bartender's mother lives far far away from The Bartender.

Since moving to a relatively rural prefecture in Japan to teach English, I've often been mistaken for or passed as a Japanese person, and perhaps this is no surprise. Though not fluent, I can sustain a basic conversation for at least a few minutes. But I'm not Japanese—my nationality is American, my ethnicity Chinese, and my feelings, when I am taken for a Japanese person, are conflicted.

I have long regretted that one of my first lesbian-antennae moments wasn't the result of a better movie. It was the scene where Andrea cuts her hair off to disguise herself as a boy in Motocrossed , a Disney Channel Original movie that ran continuously during the summer of 2001 that I saw, conservatively, four hundred times.

Please enjoy your Friday links.

I think a lot of adopted children feel they are Not Allowed to be angry; I think a lot of adopted adults feel, still, that we are Not Allowed to be angry. The predominant narratives of "National Adoption Month" explain why: most adoption narratives, particularly those available to children, leave no room for pain.

Well, I guess...I guess it's time to call it. PBS – the Public Broadcasting Service – just filmed a video investigating Ronbledore.

If Rami Malek were your boyfriend, you would often be asked, “And where are you guys from ?” with that pointed, exacting look, and the two of you would make up a new country and a fake history on the spot, every single time. Last time it was "Cloaca," a tiny island off the coast of Croatia -- so beautiful, but entirely surrounded by sharks.

Long-time readers will remember that both Nicole and self have a deep, abiding, uncritical love for Deep Springs College, the bonkers, hyper-isolated, working cattle ranch slash all-male two-year university in Eastern California.

More wonderfully clever "Little Ones" from Liana Finck!

THE UTILITARIAN ISSUE

Sansa: still very fluffy and good.
The world: generally less so.

The Garden

My father bends over the koi pond to count the fish,
which are fewer now, dwindling in number.

First it was the birds, then it was sickness,
then age, something in the water—

Then death settled in, comfortably,
made up a bed and boiled pond scum for tea.

I found this article about why we'll probably never be able to escape earth in a fleet of chrome-y, salvific starships to be beautifully written and surprisingly moving! Won't you join me in the reading of it?