There's some sort of improv corollary to this thesis as well.

That story is apocryphal to the best of my knowledge. The biggest factor was that Jennifer Lien was struggling with some severe mental health situation and was struggling through the grind of TV production by self-medicating. Combine that with sagging ratings, the writers' inability to figure out what to do with her character, and the inclusion of Jeri Ryan in season 4 as the new sexy character and her removal from the show was all but inevitable. It breaks my heart because Kes deserved better.

Always the correct stance!

Rick Berman resented the young actor who had his own ideas for his character and wanted to collaborate on what Harry's arc would look like, and as a result Garrett got sidelined probably the soonest and harshest of any of the rest of the cast (besides Kes who was written out for several reasons).

You can't turn over a single rock in Star Wars without unearthing entire ecosystems of incredible nonsense.

The quote about boys who watched The Incredible Hulk wanting to, "smash their mommies" will probably live in my head forever because of how shocking it was to hear yet also making perfect sense.

Chapter 5 stuck with me a lot because I've been trying to interrogate sexuality as much as possible, both for myself as well as in a more general sense. As a cishet guy who has been the target demographic of patriarchal continuation for my entire life I've found myself thinking:

Is this desire my own?

Do I want to do this or is this just what I'm supposed to do?

What harm may be done to myself or someone else?

hooks writes about the entitlement towards sex that is encouraged in men. It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I understood that sexual arousal was like any other emotion and didn't demand action every time it occurred. A few years on an SSRI that killed my libido was a big factor in hitting the pause button as well and gave me some room to realize that sex didn't have to claim such a large part of my waking hours. One of the reasons I stopped taking it was I was feeling sexually unfulfilled having no libido, and since then the balance feels much healthier and not alienating for either me or my partner who has undergone her own changes and journey over the years. It was having time to stop and think and having someone to speak with openly and honestly about my feelings that helped facilitate that growth. I know I likely wouldn't have reached these conclusions on my own.

It's so easy as a man to get caught up in the current of sex that permeates everything, especially during this period of extreme isolation and alienation. It's literally everywhere, provides a quick easy high to keep the darkness at bay, and requires practice to recognize it and then reject it. A problem I've encountered is people can be so protective of their sexuality that suggesting that they take some time to truly understand it is akin to asking them to dissect and ruin one of their favorite things. It's this thing where we're taught that our sexuality is our own and no one else's, so who am I to suggest there might be something unhealthy about it?

I'm stuck with the thought that sexual desire and practice are so much more complex than many people want to accept and that we're stuck in a state of arrested development that will need something akin to a Cultural Revolution to uproot the gnarly mess we've made for ourselves. I think about how things might have been different if the Nazis hadn't destroyed the German Institute for Sexual Sciences. I think about the horrible repression every time there's been a Great Awakening in the US where patriarchy reasserts itself as violently as possible. There's millennia worth of thoughts like this to fall into, but that only reminds me of the importance of putting in the work now to change it.

You love to see it.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Because even a chicken knows jaywalking shouldn't be a crime.

ass headlights

What a cruel irony for Cheddar Man to be lactose intolerant.

That is the often referenced West Bumfuck.

The time traveling fetus was always funny to read.

I really appreciate her position of compassion. Patriarchy really does trap many men in a cage and they rage against it without fully understanding what it is that fuels that rage. To see that kind of anger and approach as one would a wounded animal really touched me. I never really conformed to most cultural standards of masculinity even though I'm cis and heterosexual, and I have felt the contradiction of being outside the norm and sensing from a young age that a lot of "being a man" felt forced and unhealthy, yet still yearning to be a part of it so I would feel more accepted. I appreciate this book for being such a good place to recognize the hurt that exists and to move towards healing.

No you got it. It's just a reference to their "Poppy" series on HW Bush and the irony of wearing a hat for an oil company that was a front for the CIA.

It's going to turn out that the whole show is a live experiment listening to Terrance and Tom lose their minds over a period of several years.

Seriously not enough Johnson hate.

All US Presidents are bad presidents but if we're gonna play their game and rank all 47 of them as the worst or whatever then I'd still put Trump and Obama in the uniquely bad category with most post FDR presidents, if only because they weren't the absolute worst of the worst because of limitations surrounding the office at the time of their terms. Every POTUS is awful but not everyone gets the opportunity to demonstrate the fullest extent of their awfulness.

It's always "the worst president I can remember" when this sort of question is posed. Dubya, and now Biden, are strong contenders for the worst of the worst, but these discussions reveal more about the abysmal state of US History education more and the power of recency bias than any thoughtful look at the the US presidency.