The Good, the Bad, and the Curious (Links!)

I'm not sure T.S. Eliot had stacks of papers to grade, books to read, essays to write, and committee meetings to attend in mind, but April is indeed the cruelest month, especially when the weather is finally nice and you can't go out and play!

Whining aside, here are your links for the week. This is what I've been reading that made me happy (The Good), sad (The Bad), and thoughtful (The Curious).

Let me know what you've been reading (or writing! self promotion's great!) in the comments. 

The Good

• I'm a total sucker for pop culture academia, so these 18 academic papers about 90s TV shows was right up my alley. The y-suffix to mark group alliances in Buffy? Archetypes in the Golden Girls and Sex and the City? More please. 

• What were you doing when you were five years old? Maybe you thought tying your shoes was a big deal. Well, this five year old discovered a new dinosaur and then named it after herself.

• This post from Musing Momma on parenting biracial children and answering questions about physical differences is sweet and smart.  

• Turns out that teaching aiming rape prevention strategies at men actually makes a difference. Who'd of thought?! 

The Bad

• A Kansas City man is denied hospital privileges to visit his husband even though he had power of attorney. He was then violently arrested and mistreated by the police.  

The Curious

• Mama Nervosa has a great post on how sex positivity, feminism, and parenting little girls who love shiny clothes and Bratz movies intersect. 

• School of Smock has an excellent discussion on how to embrace the filth of our messy houses.

• The student response to Rand Paul's Howard address was probably not what he was looking for (or maybe it was; political strategy perplexes me). 

• Cracked gives us five fan theories about cartoons that will ruin your childhood. Did you know Wall-E was a sociopath and Pinky's really the genius?

• This post over at from two to one about wanting a God of verbs instead of prepositions is really moving:

I believe all of these prepositional aspects of God. I trust in them and appreciate them, especially God being with us and for us. But I want there to be something more.

• Watch Melissa Harris-Perry brilliantly explain what we all [should] already know about raising children and the collective responsibility of humanity: 

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