The Austrian Green Veltliner is one of the few wines I always have to have at home.

So it goes.

One word: Papyrus

I fail to see why China should be compelled to help with the Straight. If it’s in their interest to do so, they will, but if there is a more price effective alternative for them, they’d take that one. The same goes for every nation.

Reminder that the name of the music group Counting Crows can be interpreted as “Murder by Numbers”.

I only win imaginary arguments with people I never met, but even those are entirely silent.

Here’s something that will probably mark me as weird: I find it strange, even creepy, when people talk, sing, hum, or make any noises to themselves. Some people tell me it helps their concentration, but I can’t even envision making any kind of sound when I concentrate.

Same here. After Rogue One, I got really excited about the new movies. Thought TFA was a fluke, but the next one was far worse. Stopped going to the cinema after that. Then I had kids, and now I’m going again, to see Spongebob and Super Mario. How the mighty have fallen…

Controversial? Perhaps for US business interests, but not for European consumers.

(From what I know, the farmers in my country are unhappy about the deal, but they have been unhappy about so many things that everybody largely ignores their complaints.)

“You see, I’m a bilingual. I’m a bilingual illiterate. I can’t read in two languages.”

My wife just sticks her fallen hair on the wall tiles. From the moment I first saw it I knew she was a keeper.

Unhinged: You Oughta Know by Alanis Mortisette. Listen closely to the lyrics for way too much information.

Hinged: Hard to Say I’m Sorry by Chicago. Such a sweet melody that I’ve heard it playing on weddings, of all places…

It’s 10 in the evening, and the kids are asleep. The house is organised for the chaos of the next morning. It’s dark and quiet. I browse Flickr for inspiration, and when I find some, I pull out my oil pastels and spend the next hour in bliss, unaware of the passage of time. Just me and colours, their blending, smoothing, scraping what doesn’t work, perhaps some texture with a palette knife, etching out details. Oil pastels are very forgiving, and they don’t let you go into too much detail. They are perfect for people like me who didn’t have too much art training, and who really enjoy the process of art creation. So, in short, I enjoy the process naturally, through a medium that allows me to do so.

(I’ve done my share of charcoal works, but there the final product is far more enjoyable than the tedious process. I prefer the process.)

Well, there goes my childhood…

Yeah. And Jesus still asked his true followers to forgive them.

Luke 23:34

I don’t know about others, but as I grow older and realise I have progressively less time left, I grow less patient of other people’s bullshit. Some people may consider it a symptom of diminished happiness, but it’s more a degradation of my social filters.

Loads of great suggestions in this thread, but I feel it’s missing some lighter, easy to read and fun fantasy. So, let me suggest two series:

• The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist. Enough books to last you a year. Can get a bit dark at times, but the prose is really fast flowing, the books are focused on high adventure, and the characters are really likeable. The series contains a trilogy that starts with Daughter of the Empire, which features a far higher quality prose, but it’s tonally so different from the other books that you may want to skip it if you liked the first trilogy (or tetralogy, depending which edition you pick up).

• The Elenium trilogy by David Eddings, followed by the Tamuli trilogy. Eddings is best known for his Belgariad, but this trilogy is such a lightearted fun that I re-read it every couple of years.

That a huge carpet of ants will sweep into my neighbourhood and eat everything, including me. I blame Macgyver.

I can see why Verne would be considered overlooked. While it’s true that some of his works, in particular 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days, and The Journey to the Centre of the Earth (and to a lesser extent From Earth to the Moon) are well known, others went unnoticed. His Robur the Conqueror series is fun, and so is Off on a Comet, to name a few of his lesser known sci-fi works. I particularly liked his competence porn works, such as Mysterious Island, and some of his romances. The Green Ray had an impact on me, and I’m still trying to find it.

Wells wasn’t nearly as prolific as Verne, so it may appear that both are equally well covered in the anglophone world, but the truth is that just a small fraction of Verne’s works received recognition.