Jerry Fabin, see, comes home from first grade one day, with his little books under his arm, whistling merrily, and there, sitting in the dining room beside his mother, is this great aphid, about four feet high. His mother is gazing at it fondly.

“What’s happening?” little Jerry Fabin inquires.

“This here is your older brother,” his mother says, “who you’ve never met before. He’s come to live with us. I like him better than you. He can do a lot of things you can’t.”

And from then on, Jerry Fabin’s mother and father continually compare him unfavorably with his older brother, who is an aphid. As the two of them grow up, Jerry progressively gets more and more of an inferiority complex – naturally. After high school his brother receives a scholarship to college, while Jerry goes to work in a gas station. After that this brother the aphid becomes a famous doctor or scientist; he wins the Nobel Prize; Jerry’s still rotating tires at the gas station, earning a dollar-fifty an hour. His mother and father never cease reminding him of this. They keep saying, “If only you could have turned out like your brother.”

I spent almost $700 on butternut squash and assorted seasonal gourds.

Will and I have done a few ranked lists for Vulture, but our latest is our biggest: We run down 42 of Meryl Streep’s performances, from worst to best. This was a massive undertaking, and I’m quite proud of the results.

For example, Bloom goes on for an entire chapter about the Dictyostelium slime mold, yet continuously calls it a bacterium (which it is not, and is like writing about dogs and calling them snails).

Valijarvi notices a particular trend among the students who choose to learn Finnish. “They tend to like heavy metal music and fantasy fiction,” she laughs.

Young people who identify as goths may be at increased risk of depression and self-harm, a study suggests.

Researchers could not fully explain the link, but suggest a tendency for goths to distance themselves from society could play a part.

You can, if you wish, chug a beverage of your choice every time a Hideous Repast™ gets mentioned.

Imagine sipping a fine bordeaux in a tucked-away Parisian bar while wearing your favourite little black dress. The opposite to that must surely consist of standing in a bar in a boiler suit with your eyes wide open to get maximum eyeball alcohol absorption.

Pleasure was given (even) to the worm.

In 2005, Trump opened the non-accredited, for-profit Trump University. In 2010, four students sued the university for “offering classes that amounted to extended ‘infomercials.’” Following the suit, the “university” changed its name to “The Trump Entrepreneur Initiative,” before ending operations one year later.