Starting at 6:32—yikes! "Just" 8% on a Stafford loan? "Don't worry" because the adjustable rate on an SLS can't go over 12%? Clearly this is financial advice from a time when higher ed tuition (and thus the average student loan payment relative to people's incomes) was much, much lower than it is today.

The problem, though, is that Dan isn't just sympathetic to the alternative view: He prescribes and insists upon it every bit as hegemonically as the allegedly "sex-negative" columnists out there insist upon theirs. His view isn't merely that it's OK to like casual sex, but rather that it's not OK not to like it and…

Yes to all of the above. Dan clearly doesn't actually think that it's really OK to be monogamous and vanilla; I called him out in the comments last week for the same bullshit in his response to Ms. Slut Phase. This is why (well, one of the reasons, anyway) I find most of what goes on in the so-called "sex-positive"…

Yes! I'd totally go as one-half of Daft Punk for Halloween if a.) I knew someone else who'd be willing to go as the other half, and b.) they actually sold replica helmets. Some of the fan-produced replicas I've seen online look awesome, but $350-500 is out of my price range.

@avclub-cfe912f5cb3aa572bd1c9ae2a9b82207:disqus not much to add here except to give a shout-out to a fellow Bloomington resident. I knew some folks who drove over to check out the pride event in Spencer last month, but yeah, it was weird for a relatively progressive (especially by southern Indiana standards) college…

Agreed, especially on letter #1. Has it occurred to BLOCK or to Dan that maybe now just isn't the time for her to start going through her "slutty phase"? And am I the only one who was bugged as hell about the fact that BLOCK wrote about going through her slutty phase as though it's something…

I truly have no clue what Kanye West and Taylor Swift have to do with anything that I wrote.  I gave you a brief analysis of the way that WWT works as a rhetorical tactic and the historical conditions that play into it.  I'm not interested in discussing Kanye or Taylor Swift, because whatever the hell the incident…

Yes!  Cooking Live was awesome.  Man, I'd trade a million of the Food Network's current hosts to get that late-90s/early-00s crew back.  Except Donna Hanover; she was always awful.  Even as a huge David Rosengarten fan, I can honestly say that from Day One she was way over-the-top fucking pretentious.

Given that WWT is a derailing tactic employed almost exclusively by white women, I fail to see in what real, meaningful sense it's irrelevant to refer to the phenomenon in a way that clearly identifies who the people are who employ it.  In addition to the fact that WWT is an almost exclusively white-female-employed…

If calling a derailing tactic out for what it is (which is what the term "white women's tears" does) were actually a genuine instance of oppression, the concept of intersectionality might apply here.  But the term "WWT" isn't oppressive; it's a term that describes the way that people who stand in the social location…

"White women's tears" is a well-known phrase used extensively by people involved in the anti-racist movement; you should look it up.  I used that because it's a real thing that's well-documented among people who are actually working to eradicate racism in American society.

Yep!  (And, to be fair, the he only sat down and ate it in the last short segment before the end credits.)  And it wasn't always fancy meals (though a lot of it was).  But damn he knew what he was talking about, and packed a ton of actual information into every half-hour.  Perhaps too pretentious for a lot of people's…

Truth.  If the right weren't so obsessed with finding generically attractive young women to be the mouthpieces of their ideology (a.k.a., Fox News Syndrome), this know-nothing would be the complete unknown she ought to be.  Just seriously one of the most idiotic public figures on the entire American political…

I want David Rosengarten back on the Food Network.  I learned more about food (knowledge that I actually still use to this day) from his show than I have from just about every other program that network has aired since then.  (Granted, I only occasionally checked out Alton Brown's show, but it seemed to be the closest…

Wow, this is the first time in my life I can remember someone saying a bunch of really racist shit, then pulling out the White Women's Tears, and having it fail so colossally and publicly.  Dare I hope that this means that we're getting closer to a day when racists can no longer get away with calling themselves "the…

I'd love to see a Chris Rock movie remotely good as his late 90s/early 00s standup act. A movie that's only as good as his late 00s-present standup would be … well … it would be pretty much the last two Chris Rock movies.

JB Smoove playing a security guard? Yes, please! Even as only so-so as Chris Rock's previous writer/director efforts have been, this one will be worth the price of admission just to see what sort of mischief JB Smoove can get into. Come to think of it, can we just make "JB Smoove plays a security guard" the whole…

Pink Floyd, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," Part IX
Arcade Fire, "In the Backseat"
Wilco, "On and On and On"