I think you are severely underestimating schools' need for substitute teachers. Hiring and retaining substitutes is a thankless, endless slog. The ones with the right qualifications don't last that long because they get hired out as long term (maternity/paternity/medical) leave replacements or get jobs as classroom…

I understood what you meant. Where I'm diverting from you is the onus you're putting on that last moment and how it casts everything that came before it. I don't think this episode was built around that last moment being the crux of the father's admission. Nor do I think that just because the show dropped some of its…

Fifth Graders definitely have books read to them (as well as Fourth Grade). I work in an elementary school as well as having multiple friends who also work in elementary schools. It's extremely common. If you've ever spent any extended time around kids that age, they are this kind of amazing clash of surprising…

I may or may not have screeched out loud in glee over that costume.

I just saw "humblebrag" and got incredibly sad. Fuck, it's been a while since the death of someone I didn't personally know made me this fucking sad.

It really is fantastic! I'm not usually a lover of short story collections, having a vast preference for long-from narrative, but the way the stories inform one another and have their timelines intertwine makes the collection feel more like a novel anyway. I also read Brief Wondrous Life first and there's some…

I just finished Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her. Having lived in Boston at one point in my life and having gone through a difficult break-up (where said person was also tied to the city) in the last several months, the last chapter left me a sobbing mess. Not the ending chapter I was anticipating, but it was…

I think what really bothers and frustrates many LGBTQ people of color is this niggling idea that white queer people have to reach peak saturation in the media before queer poc can get any attention, that our representation can never occur concurrently with white LGBTQ people but after the fact. That's extremely…

You have no idea how fucking happy you just made me.

Holy shit, wish I'd read this before I posted my own comment above, ha! I pretty much just reiterated everything you said.

Yeah, I feel compelled to push back against this article a little bit. I think we're being a little liberal with the word "radical." I find Swift to be a largely innocuous presence. I don't have any strong feelings towards her one way or the other outside of being amused with myself when I find myself popping along to…

I will watch this show, often with teeth clenched, until it goes bumbling off the air because I can't stop myself, but that was the most boring boring that ever boringed. There is so much wheel spinning on this show, and it keeps resulting in everything returning once again to the status quo.

Upvoted for "Not today, Satan"

Far forbid me to excuse anything in this turd of a show, but I work at an elementary school and the children are allowed to use metal forks, even the ones in PreK. Granted, for the smaller children, a teacher is always sitting at their table (and there are never more than 6 children at the table), so it's not like the…

While I completely agree with your sentiments, as I said above, I think Tom's statements came across as more…lecherous than anything. Still, I too find myself smiling for some of the reasons you've posted. One thing I do try to remember to temper it, though, is that while I know what you're indicating is that it's…

YES. That same batshit cadence. They all use it, and once you notice it, you can't unhear it. Not to mention, I was supremely creeped out by Tom going on and on about beautiful Oliva was. Something about the way he was saying it—with that loony tunes monologue cadence—was making my flesh crawl.

You made me laugh out loud at work, thereby disrupting the illusion of my labor.

No, it's not. I was in High School when I played the second game and was surprised by how emotionally invested I was in it, Disney ridiculousness and all—and I still have a place in my heart for it, even as an adult—but even I laughed just now remembering that incident. It sounds so ludicrous, but somehow in the…

Uh, Crane was living in a time period where a race of people was systemically enslaved, raped, tortured, and routinely murdered all for the sake of free labor. It's not as though human atrocities just sprung into being in the mid-twentieth century, as horrifying as both of those events are.

I saw Dear White People months ago at a NY film festival and though I definitely need to see it again before offering any in-depth assessments, I can say that my initial thoughts were that it was a lot more coherent and surprisingly funny. Then again, as a 20-something black lady the characters also struck a lot…