Previously: Ryan Atwood was a lesbian.

1. Always wearing plain black T-shirts, fitted jeans, and black boots.

2. Friends with famous lesbians like Seth Green and Donny Osmond.

3. Based on beloved lesbian icons Elvis Presley and The Fonz.

I'm sorry I forgot to meet any poor people--
I'm sorry I forgot to pay attention
To the bad kind of masculinity
That doesn't result in wealth.
Please join me as I experience self-abasement and other intriguing feelings.
Watch as conservatism’s ugliest turn yet makes me rethink my column.

Yesterday Entertainment Weekly ran a piece about debut novels with six-figure advances and why publishers are willing to take big financial risks on (relative) literary unknowns. The answer is, among other things, "because they believe they will make even more money later," but the part that really leapt out at me was this:

Sandy knows she’s sentimental. She knows she has weaknesses. In her first solo song, she sings that she’s “out of her head” over a fantasy. For all the talk of Sandy’s naivety, “Hopelessly Devoted to You” is a remarkably self-aware song. But it’s self-aware self-pity. There is nothing more grating to Rizzo than self-pity -- especially over a boy.

These new ads for bleach are raw as hell and I'm honestly not ready to live and die in this world. I'm not strong enough. I'm soft and afraid and my bloodline is weak; I know this. Rome has lost its breed of noble bloods, and I'm the most lost out of anybody. Have you seen this? Are you prepared to meet God?

My son tasted his first Kraft Dinner (or the pathetic American equivalent) and became the Canadian he always was inside.

From the outside, there appear to be two kinds of single parents. You can do it all, strive for perfection, and pull it off. Or you can barely get by, almost fall apart, and struggle for breath. For me, though, it has always been both. Strength and struggle seem to go hand in hand.

I finally got to see Shanghai Express , which coincidentally was also my first movie with Anna May Wong, which I was TREMENDOUSLY excited about, and who did not disappoint. Oh man, her delivery of "I must confess. I don't quite know the standard of respectability that you demand in your boardinghouse, Mrs. Haggerty" made me lose the entirety of my itness.

TEA AND SYMPATHY : okay this is Tom, who is Morrissey
Tom has beautiful hair and ten thousand sweaters and no one understands him

ME [quietly, from the audience]: oh my God
I understand him

Think of a long quiet river; think of the cold salty sea. Think of all the places your thoughts can carry you, when your days feel like too much.

No really, I mean it. Why don't we?

Honest, no kidding – I think we could do it
Well, what have they got that we haven't? Exactly!
Well gee whiz, it can't be that hard

"I believe I left my shoe here, thank you."

A little sea-bathing would set me up forever.

Any day you eat an entire wafer cake is a good day (is cake the appropriate term for what's essentially a large KitKat?)