13-year-old: “I learned today that Princess Carolyn is an elf.”
Me: …
13: …
Me: “What?”
13: “Princess Carolyn is an elf.”
Me: “Princess Carolyn is a CAT.”
13: “Oh, sorry, I meant the actor.”
Me: “What? Context???”
13: “Princess Carolyn is in the movie Elf.”
Category: Blog
Teaching with Muppets
I can hear Daniel singing “1, 2, 3, count the batty-bats!” in the other room & I’m pretty sure he’s answering a question from the 13-year-old about why no one’s told them who won the election yet.
A Poem about Kitten
Kitten bite
Kitten claw
Kitten curl up like a buttery croissant
Lorelei Gilmore and Not Cooking
One of the best things about Gilmore Girls is that it normalizes the possibility of being a fantastic mother while not cooking AT ALL or even knowing how.
I know how to cook. I can cook. But most of the time, I don’t want to. It’s easier, quicker, and more fun to order out.
So, I think about Lorelei Gilmore a lot. Because she’s the best possible mother for Rory, and they only ever seem to eat at Luke’s diner or get pizza. Continue reading “Lorelei Gilmore and Not Cooking”
Rewatching Scream
I’ve been showing movies I loved in high school when they came out to my kid & it’s troubling how they all seem to have become Important Works In Film History.
Kid: stares blankly at movie I said was impressive Continue reading “Rewatching Scream”
Am I Furry? — Fandom vs. Genre
by Mary E. Lowd
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” — Groucho Marx

There’s a question that floats around the furry writing community occasionally: how do you define furry fiction? At first glance, this question seems similar to the age-old, what’s the difference between sci-fi and fantasy? A nit-picky question about the borders of a genre that can be endlessly debated. Hours can be lost to arguing over whether Star Wars is sci-fi because of spaceships, or fantasy because of the Force. I would expect arguments about furry fiction to fall along similar lines. For instance, does Robert T. Bakker’s Raptor Red anthropomorphize the raptors enough to count as furry? Or is it simply a piece of speculative naturalism? Continue reading “Am I Furry? — Fandom vs. Genre”
There Should Be More Songs About Centaurs
Music (the album “Hearts” by America: “I’m only half a man…”
Me: “BECAUSE YOU’RE A CENTAUR?!?”
Music: “…when you’re not by my side!”
Me: “It’s a song where a centaur is singing to his horse half!”
Furry Matrix???
Watching The Matrix and thinking about how fun it would be to write a piece inspired by it where the people are sheep and the agents are sheepdogs…
I think I’d start it like this: “To stop the sheep from dying, you must first imagine every possible way the sheep could die.”
All Sci-Fi in a Single Show
The thirteen-year-old, every time I show them a seminal work of sci-fi:
“Futurama has parodied this!”
That show is a crash course in every piece of sci-fi up through the time it ended.
Flash Fiction
Me: finishes writing a flash fiction
Seven-year-old: “You finished the book?!?”
Me: “Uh, no, a short story.” Continue reading “Flash Fiction”