I just bought the most awesome coffee machine ever. Forget your Krups, your Braun, your Mr. Cofffee. The Technivorm Clubline KB741 from the Netherlands puts all others to shame. First and foremost, it makes excellent coffee, at a professional-grade temperature that all the other home consumer models can’t match. Its heating coil is rated at [...]

I heard “Je reviens” by the French alt-pop act Autour de Lucie for the first time fooling around with iTunes in an Apple Store, testing out speakers. It was one of the pre-loaded tracks on demo machines at the time. I was captivated by Valérie Leulliot’s voice. Went home and downloaded the entire album, Faux [...]

The local tossaway rag, The Green Hills News, has one section that keeps me from tossing it away straightaway — the “Ticked Off!” section. This section provides, inadvertently, weekly entertainment for me. Each week nowadays has at least one rant against immigrants or gays or liberals. Once in a blue moon there is an anti-rant [...]