Good doctors who listen are worth their weight in gold! I've been tagging along to as many of my wife's appointments as I can to be a human shield against dismissal/steamrollering, but it's infuriating how often it proves necessary.

We're currently in the process of trying to get a POTS diagnosis for my wife. Months of seeing every specialist under the sun to "rule things out" and she still can't get a referral to the one place in town that specializes in POTS. Thank God my job has great health insurance and an FSA.

I warn everybody who talks to me about wanting to go to cons to avoid any con he touches--which sucks, because he runs so many of the ones that are easily accessible from where I live. Fuck that predatory piece of shit. (And hello, fellow paralegal!)

For full transparency, the organization in question is AnimeCon(dot)Org, which runs a number of cons each year in the Midwest.

The whisper network is loud as hell around this guy, but that only reaches the people with connections in the convention community. Casual congoers have no idea what goes on behind the scenes or who until/unless it hits the news...or happens to them. It sucks.

I was never targeted by this guy myself--the people he went after were younger and usually con staff. But it fills me with rage and despair that half a decade later, he's still running well-attended cons--and new performers are now working for him under our old troupe name.

Boromir and Faramir are the token humans. Denethor is played by both Statler and Waldorf (a la Marley becoming a dual role in Muppet Christmas Carol). The fact Boromir and Faramir's dads are Muppets is never explained.

Musicals are meant to be happy! Just look at the cheerful, upbeat titles they have: Parade, Carousel, Cabaret...

I have always assumed people are thinking of it as a toast, like "l'chaim"--a new year's wish rather than a new year's greeting. But the real answer is probably people with minimal Hebrew vocabulary getting "shana tova" and "l'shana tova tikateivu" jumbled up.

I'm reminded of the Harold Courlander/Alex Haley lawsuit over plagiarism in Roots, where a key piece of evidence was the fact that Haley had copied specific "field calls" Courlander had made up for The African.