I'm a blackgirl, a blackgirl connoisseur of ratchetness, a blackgirl fascinated by media representations of other blackgirls, a blackgirl who cares deeply about the connection between ratchetness, representation, and lived experience. I probably care about how television curates ratchetness because I grew up witnessing different kinds of unconventional (and regularly dysfunctional) romantic relationships and have on occasion found myself unwillingly and unwittingly participating in such relationships. The 21st century Jezebel, the side chick is the quintessential scapegoat in popular culture at the moment. She is presented and understood as someone who is unethical, immoral and disrespectful of other women and their relationships. Blackgirls, all blackgirls, are worthy of more care and nuance. Let's start by complicating portraits and representations of the "other" woman, because the experience is always more complicated than the trope suggests.

Ben Affleck appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher last night, along with Nicholas Kristof, Michael Steele, and author Sam Harris, where he clashed with both Harris and Maher about what Harris calls the "meme of Islamophobia."

A postal worker in Bellevue, Wash. allegedly went on a hysterical rampage on Friday morning that resulted in hitting a town resident with her truck not once, not twice, but three times, all while laughing hysterically.

The AP reports a woman accused of digging up and rummaging through her father's grave in search of his "real will" said in a written statement that she dug it up "with respect" and that he "would be OK with it." Sounds like a pretty chill dad!

Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, former dictator of Haiti, has died of a heart attack, his lawyer reports. He was 63 years old.

An American BASE jumper died on Friday afternoon after attempting a BASE jump in the Swiss Alps, misjudging his launch, hitting a cliff, and falling hundreds of feet into a gorge.

"I think you're a guitar god, would you agree?" Um, no. "Well, I think you are." All right.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in California, a dental technician who had been assisting in treatment of an abscess in Charlie Sheen's mouth alleged that the buckwild addict actor sexually assaulted her, threatened the dentist with a knife, and flung spit all over the walls of the room. The dentist working on Sheen has denied the accusations.

Children's Hospital Colorado reports that, as of Friday, 11 children in Colorado have been hospitalized with partial paralysis.

Taylor Swift, cat-wielding thrower of pizza parties and newly-anointed pop crossover artist, got a new job. Swift will be appearing on NBC's vocal competition show The Voice as the contestants' key adviser, People magazine reports.

For years, the foodie "movement" was defined by its pretension: complicated cocktails were served in twee Mason jars, exotic spices topped affected dishes, and every trashy pastry was elevated into a delicacy. But that era's over. Now in San Francisco, the new leading exporter of obnoxiousness, there's a new king in the cupboard: monosodium glutamate.

Florida's largest, wildest retirement community, The Villages (population 107,000), apparently has a public sex problem. Deputies arrested a couple Monday for fucking out in the open on top of an electrical box, the second such arrest in 4 months.

After a summer full of flight delays and disturbances due to pugnacious passengers, it's almost a relief that today's big air travel story involves a box of live crabs instead.

Alt lit is caving in on itself. After a week of multiple rape and abuse allegations against prominent authors and editors, the earnest, internet-obsessed literary scene is in full crisis: Today, the alt lit criticism site and scene blog of record Htmlgiant announced that it's shutting down. Meanwhile, in a private Facebook group associated with the blog Alt Lit Gossip, women writers have suggested forming an entirely new scene, "no boys allowed."

ISIS released a video Friday afternoon showing the brutal execution of British aid worker Alan Henning. The beheading video is the fourth released by the Islamic militant group, following ones showing the executions of two Americans and one British citizen.

You say "po-tay-to," she says "alternative form of contraception that would be a good idea to put in your vagina." But medical professionals report she had a potato germinating inside her, so it looks like you win.

In 2010, a teacher's aide carried out a plan to use a special needs student—a 14-year-old girl—as rape "bait" to "catch" a male student who had a history of sexual violence. More details in the case against Sparkman Middle School administrators were revealed today by The Huntsville Times, and they are gruesome.

He is not a household name, but Kirk Nesset is the author of several books — fiction, nonfiction, poetry — good enough to land him a position as a professor of creative writing at Allegheny College. And as of Wednesday, he's also facing federal child porn charges.

As I write this, there doesn't appear to be anyone inside storage unit #4 at 1397 Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn, but it's possible that someone could burst in at any moment.

A person who recently traveled to Nigeria has been placed in isolation at a Washington D.C. hospital with Ebola-like symptoms, NBC Washington reports.