Exciting news, Bristol Palin's "much anticipated" new reality show, Life's a Tripp, will be premiering in June on Lifetime.

The program will show Palin-lite's day-to-day struggles as a single mom. Palin-Lite has "dedicated her life to being an advocate for the prevention of teen pregnancy." Of co… Read full post »

A life can spin out of control easily.  The young man was in trouble.  Never, arrested before in his life, suddenly he was facing serious felony charges.  There was a potential to spend years in prison.  On top of this, he was an immigrant who had come to the US as… Read full post »

The better half and I try to vacation at least three times a year — my birthday, his birthday, and our anniversary.  This being the Internet, I won’t tell you which one occurred last week, but we weren’t able to get away, and so decided to celebrate at… Read full post »

Victoria Jackson, a novelty act whose main talent was headstands, has become a full on “birther” and right-wing activist, trying to push her “conservative version of The View” featuring anti-Islamic rants and song, in which she and her cohorts bitch and moan on Youtube abo… Read full post »

It’s the racism.
It’s the racism and the firearms.
It’s the racism, the firearms and vigilante culture.
It’s the racism, the firearms, the vigilante culture and everybody wanting to be a hero and enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame.
It’s the racism, the firearms, the vig… Read full post »

As I write these words, somewhere on the Internet someone is comparing a business decision made by Smashwords (a digital publishing enterprise) to the Holocaust.

Most likely this is being done through the use of Martin Niemöller’s oft quoted, “First they came for….”

Sm… Read full post »

Like many obsessed with reading and writing, I keep an eye on the publishing industry, and try to make sense of pronouncements and prognostications, especially as they regard e-books and the future for those of us outliers.  But here’s something that still mystifies me:  Who buys… Read full post »

Email to a friend:

Hi Susan,

Are you in Colorado?  Happy New Year.  Hope the snow is fresh and the crowds are reasonable.   Just wanted to update you on my whacky life.  So last Friday (a week ago), Maizie had a seizure, which I wrote you about. Then… Read full post »

Warning: If you still haven’t seen the Dexter Season 6  finale, go hide someplace because spoilers are all over.

What a disappointing mess, season 6 was.  They started off with a serial killer whose nickname was lifted from Thomas Harris novel, and if that wasn’t derivative en… Read full post »

"I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham." -- Fielding Melish, Bananas

In an age when the "self" may have infinite online iterations and an… Read full post »

Amazon has recently come out with a whole bunch of new products, including a low cost tablet that sells for about third of what an I-Pad costs, and allows you to watch those premium cable shows you download for a buck from Amazon.  With bookstores closing,  free shipping on orders over… Read full post »

It was 2001, and I’d been away from New York too long, it was time to come home. 

I’d heard about the teacher the shortage and had seen the Board of Ed’s commercials making teaching sound like it required great courage and a sense of… Read full post »

… Read full post »

PD James at 91 is about to publish her novel, Death Comes to Pemberly, a mystery-murder sequel to Pride and Prejudice.  No need to worry — Wickham, seducer of teenagers and the rake you love to hate, is the one who gets it.

James has stated she always wanted to do… Read full post »

Following my mother's stroke, she sometimes knew she was in a hospital in Albany.  Other times she thought she was in a library in Queens.  However, when asked by the Bollywood-handsome resident whether or not she wanted the feeding tube, she replied quite coherently, "Not if it'…

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 "It’s like a live action metaphor. The head of the IMF trying to **** an African. It’s like he’s posing for his own editorial cartoon”

— May 16, 2011, The Daily Show with… Read full post »

The New York Times Magazine has a story, which is only slightly condescending, about Amanda Hocking, the twenty-something self-publishing phenom whose paranormal romance/fantasies have earned her over $2 million.  Ms. Hocking recently signed a seven-figure deal with St. Martin’s/…

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Many people are mystified that a smart man like Anthony Weiner, who did his job well, and seemed to have everything, could blow it so spectacularly.  But what he did had nothing to do with intelligence, or even with lust in its usual form. (One-handed surfing could have… Read full post »

Yes, bookstores are disappearing.  But I am shocked to find myself asking, “Does it matter?”

You had to feel just a touch of schadenfreude when the Barnes &Noble branches started to close.  Barnes & Noble in my youth was a store on lower Fifth Avenue.  It billed i… Read full post »

Woe onto us.  The earth was not destroyed, and despite some backtracking on the part of Mr. Camping, judgment does not appear to be upon us.

Yet, verily I say unto you that the entrepreneurial spirit is upon me and I am CALLED to start a new Church. … Read full post »