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Some things I'm grateful for: By mid-June, I'll have paid off about $4000 worth of debt...in just over four months. I really, really dig my hair. And I'm glad I'm not going bald. I have some truly great friends. I'm in the ideal situation for someone who doesn't have access to affordable healthcare - I'm young and healthy. I love what I do. I don't live in Russia. I've never been shot. I live in an age where cars drive themselves and I have a computer that is always connected to the Internet in my pocket. "Game of Thrones" comes back next year. I still have an entire season of "Vikings" to catch up on. I live in the age of Netflix and Hulu, so I don't have to deal with the nightmare bullshit of cable companies. I was born white, male, and American, so in a lot of ways I lucked out; I'll never have to deal with a lot of shitty things that the majority of the world has to deal with.

While everyone's attention has been fixed on the gun control debate, the royal wedding and Trump's failure as a diplomat, another story broke yesterday that should perhaps be getting just as much attention as the first and third on this list...it should definitely be getting more attention than the third thing on this list, but people do love their distractions. The NFL just slapped the first amendment in the face. An official ruling  yesterday decreed that NFL teams will be fined if a player residing on the field during the singing of the national anthem does not stand, or in the words of Roger Goodall, "show respect for the flag and the anthem." ...it's downright fascistic. There's no better word for it. While it's true the first amendment's jurisdiction does not extend to the private business sector (the NFL is not publicly traded, believe it or not), that doesn't change the fact that it's an act that shows blatant contempt for the...

WARNING: Spoilers for both "Infinity War" and "Watchmen" ahead. I know the latter is almost 10 years old now, but heads up anyway. "Infinity War" explores a deep question: if you had the choice to let one person die in order to save ten lives, would you do it? It's a heavy concept, and it's more complex than the film seems to argue. Kill One, Save Ten Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olson) and Vision (Paul Bettany) have a series of moments in which Vision, fearing capture by Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his thugs, implores Scarlet Witch to kill him by destroying the Mind Stone. The Mind Stone is the Infinity Stone that serves as his power source. Though extremely reluctant, Scarlet Witch eventually does so. "It's not fair, but it has to be you," Vision says, pleading and apologizing at the same time. Earlier in the film, it was revealed the relationship between them implied during "Captain America: Civil War" had ful...

"This is America" is a music video released last Saturday by Donald Glover, AKA Childish Gambino. ...there's a lot to unpack about it. Other sources have covered to death this video, which felt to me less like a typical viral music video and more like an interpretive dance piece. With my background in psychology, I had a very specific reaction to it. It's the kind of video you have to watch at least a few times. Fortunately, that's made easy on the viewer since it's just as catchy and full of jaunty, fun dance moves as it is horrifying Kubrickian scenes representing everything from biblical signs of the apocalypse to the Rodney King beatings. The brilliance of the video comes from the fact that Gambino and his backup dancers spend most of the video distracting the audience from what's going on behind them, occasionally shocking us with gun violence and abrupt tempo changes. This can best be demonstrated by an experiment I first saw in a psych...

This will doubtless upset a lot of people if it's true, particularly those who favor direvolves over dragons. That's why I'm using this sentence to pad the preview, so people who don't want spoilers can't see the thesis for this article I've written in the next paragraph. Arya Stark died in Braavos. The real identity of the person who took her place is The Waif, her otherwise nameless rival from training with the Faceless Men. The fight with the Waif The Waif was clearly better than Arya - more cunning, more ruthless, better at face-changing, and with greater weapon proficiency. Evidently, she's strong as hell, too - pause the frame on Lady Crane's corpse and try to wrap your head around what the hell happened to her. Remember, Arya had been stabbed several times  by the Waif. The entire time she was running, she was losing blood. With her fight-or-flight senses activated, her body was coursing with norepinephrine and adrenaline, s...