Centers for Disease Control officials say the Texas nurse with Ebola may have been experiencing symptoms several days before she checked herself into a Dallas hospital.

Dr. Christopher Braden of the CDC said today that Amber Vinson—the second Dallas nurse to test positive for the disease—may have been experiencing symptoms much earlier than previously reported.

Vinson flew from Dallas to Cleveland on Wednesday, Oct. 8 and spent the weekend with her family in Akron, Ohio.

Though she reportedly spent most of her time at home, officials say she did venture out with friends to try on wedding dresses at an Akron bridal shop.

"We had started to look at the possibility that she had symptoms going back as far as Saturday, (Oct. 11)," Braden told reporters. "This has to do with the bridal shop. Some more information that has come through recently says we can't rule out that she might have had the start of her symptoms on Friday."

Frontier Airlines said Vinson—who reported a slight fever before her flight on Monday—did not exhibit noticeable symptoms on either flight. The company has reportedly placed the crew members onboard Vinson's return flight on a 21-day paid leave and the airplane was cleaned—but not before flying to Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale.

According to WCPO, eight people in Ohio are now under quarantine. The bridal store reportedly closed down as a "precautionary measure," and at least three Texas schools and two Ohio schools closed down Thursday after staff members and students were linked to Vinson.

[image via Shutterstock]

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital released a video of Dallas Ebola patient Nina Pham joking around with her doctors Thursday night, shortly before she was transported to a Maryland hospital.

Pham was diagnosed with Ebola Friday, making her the first person to contract the virus in the U.S. A second nurse, who also treated Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, tested positive for the virus a few days later.

According to the hospital, Pham's physician and coworker, Dr. Gary Weinstein, made the video and shared it at Pham's request. She was flown from the Dallas hospital to a National Institutes of Health hospital in Bethesda, MD Thursday.

She was given a plasma transfusion Monday from Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, who also donated blood to NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo and Dr. Rick Sacra. All three patients are reportedly doing well.

The family of actress Misty Upham, whose body was found Thursday at the bottom of a suburban Seattle ravine, says local police wouldn't take them seriously when they first reported her missing.

Upham, a Native American actress known for her roles in August: Osage County, Django Unchained and indie film Frozen River, went missing on October 6. Her body was discovered this afternoon at the bottom of a 150 foot ravine after a search party led by a family member stumbled across her purse.

Upham's family told reporters she suffered from bipolar disease and had recently gone off her medication, but a spokesperson told the Hollywood Reporter "The family has stated that, after seeing the body, they still do not feel that Misty Upham committed suicide."

The family has criticized the police response, telling reporters long-standing tensions between the Native American population and the Auburn police force hurt the investigation.

There is apparently a history of hostility between the Auburn police and the Muckleshoot Reservation, on which several thousand Muckleshoot reside, that falls largely within Auburn.

First and foremost," a family spokesperson told the Hollywood Reporter. "the family wants everyone to know that the Auburn police did not help with this situation at all. They refused to help. When she disappeared on Oct. 5, the family knew something was seriously wrong — it was out of character for her to be gone so long without being in touch — and they repeatedly went to the police, who insisted there was no cause for concern."

[image via IMDB]

"You may abandon your own body, but you must preserve your honor." - Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings

Two weeks ago, in the span of two hours, I ate two black cheeseburgers, one at a Tokyo McDonald's and one at a Tokyo Burger King. The worst part is that it was entirely my fault.

Last month Burger King Japan announced a that it would be selling a "black cheeseburger"—black cheese, black buns, black sauce. It looked disgusting: Shiny rubber on a squid-ink oil spill sandwiched by two charcoal briquettes. I was, coincidentally, going to Japan the next week for my honeymoon. I bragged to my coworkers I would eat one of the nightmare burgers. It was a foolish boast that quickly became a point of honor.

For the first couple of days, I put the hell burger—called the "Kuro Burger," literally "black burger," at Burger King—out of my mind. I ate sushi, ramen, okonomiyaki. It was very good. I liked it.

And then on day three, I was overwhelmed by a combination of jet lag, lots of exploring on foot, and way too many of the delicious little vending-machine coffee drinks you can find on every block in Tokyo (this is an exaggeration, but not by much). The Kuro Burger was growling my name.

At a Burger King in the skyscraper district of Shinjuku, I fumbled my way through the order (I went with the Kuro Diamond—the version with tomatoes, mayo, onions, and lettuce). The cashier accepted my request with what seemed to be a mixture of pity and amusement. Partway through the order, I had second thoughts and added a side salad.

When the burger of slimy black destiny was ready, I carried it to a large upstairs seating area, where I did a quick spin around the packed room to see if anyone else was eating a black cheeseburger. No one was.

You've got to put the Kuro Burger in context: Japanese fast food generally tastes really, really good. In the U.S., it takes a special order to get a real egg on your McGriddles. In Japan, it just comes standard, and it's covered in spicy ketchup. Why would the customer accept anything less?

Burgers are kind of a gray area, though. While high-quality beef isn't a problem, the American version of bacon—still the best burger topping, the shadowy Bacon Lobby aside—isn't readily available. (Later that night, over sushi, an American friend living in Tokyo told me it's the thing she misses most about the U.S.)

The Kuro Burger, though? There are a lot of Japanese innovations that the U.S. should import without delay—vending machines for everything, computerized toilets that cover the sound of your farts, the Caramel Pudding Frappucino—but this is not one of them.

Seeing it in the flesh for the first time was...whelming. Japan has a booming industry dedicated to hyperrealistic plastic meals for restaurant window displays, but that same what-you-see-is-what-you-get ethic didn't apply to the Kuro Burger. It was flat, dull, and limp compared to the staged promotional photos. I would describe the overall effect as "Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? after they melted him with the Dip."

I've seen photos of the Kuro Pearl, the bare-bones version of the burger that omits all the non-black ingredients, and it appears to have even less structural integrity than its deluxe sibling.

That bun, though: It was precisely as advertised. "Kuro" means black, and this thing was kuro as hell. It absorbed all light. There may have been an event horizon hidden somewhere within it. A man could lose a not-insignificant part of his soul in there and not realize it until months later. It was pretty dark, for a hamburger bun.

Unfortunately—maybe fortunately, it's hard to say—the bun's infusion of burnt bamboo didn't affect its flavor in any way I could detect. The charcoal cheese had, if anything, a bit less salt and zest to it than the typical processed cheese slice. The black sauce, a mélange of garlic, shoyu, and squid ink, fared a little better in the tang department, but it was kept firmly in check by the Kuro Diamond's generous (well, large, anyway) slathering of mayo.

The real star of this show, other than the stomach-turning visual of eating black goo, is the patty. It's extremely peppery. It might be more pepper than actual meat. If I hadn't been taking notes, it's probably the only thing I would have remembered about how this sandwich tasted.

"It's exactly like microwave salisbury steak," said my dining companion. She'd hit it dead-on.

Final verdict: It's a burger, but grosser. I did not suffer tragic consequences as a result of consuming it. It did not live up to my internal hype as some kind of Labor of Hercules, nor did it live up to the marketing hype as significantly better or different than any burger you've ever had at Burger King. I probably wouldn't travel 5,000 miles for one again.

And that's where this story should end, but it doesn't. Because our hotel in Shinjuku overlooked a massive four-story McDonald's, it was impossible to ignore the fact that they, too, were promoting a black cheeseburger.

Due to some masochistic sense of duty, I decided I had to compare the two sandwiches head-on. So although I had already filled up on an underwhelming dinner that probably should have been ramen, I immediately headed for round two. Kind of a rip-the-Band-Aid-off thing, except the Band-Aid is made of black squid-ink goop and you have to put it in your mouth.

Luke Plunkett taste-tested the Ikasumi (squid ink) Burger for Gawker sister site Kotaku and, let me tell you, that is a plum assignment compared to reviewing the Kuro. The McDonald's entry is superior in nearly every way, including overall flavor, relative non-grossness of appearance, and the ability of light to escape it.

Its wan greyish-brown bun literally pales in comparison to the Kuro's, but what it lacks in goth cred, the Ikasumi makes up for by tasting a lot like an item of edible food.

"Greyish-brown" is never a good sign in a description of something meant for human consumption, but it's all about what's inside the bun. The burger's guts are a vivid artificial orange, and they're quite tasty.

The main selling points here are a heap of crispy onions, a slice of plastic, yellow American cheese, and a goopy, spicy orange sauce that I honestly believed was another kind of cheese until I Googled it. The combination appears neon-bright between the black sauce and black(ish) bun. Taken together, they do a great job of drawing your eye enough that you can forget you're about to bite into something that looks like roofing tar.

And speaking of the ikasumi sauce, the burger's namesake, that's where I'll have to disagree with Luke. The garlic-shoyu pairing probably affects the overall balance of the burger, but its subtle saltiness just gets manhandled by the bolder ingredients. Its main function is as the only truly black thing about this burger.

The patties are pure McDonald's, flavorless and inoffensive—which is a step up from the Kuro Burger's hockey puck of pepper. Just as in the U.S., these guys are there to add texture and act as a conveyance mechanism for condiments and melted cheese.

Overall, the Ikasumi Burger is a step up from most of the American McDonald's menu—the orange sauce and fried onion bits alone pack more flavor than anything you can order outside of the occasional McRib revival—but it matches up unfavorably with McDonald's Japan's vast selection of breakfast sandwiches. I'd rank it as the second-worst thing I ate in Japan, and that includes a stop at Japanese Denny's.

The Kuro Burger was the worst.

A final scorecard:

Tim & Eric's Bedtime Stories (Adult Swim, Thursday nights at 12:15/11:15c.) is hitting this note between horror and absurdist humor right now that's disturbingly accurate to real life. Like if you told me the Venn Diagram that would most accurately represent the day to day world was the overlap between Terror + Mandatory Small Talk I would've been like "Nuh uh" but when it comes to roommates this is actually perfectly accurate.

Anyone who's lived with a Craigslist roommate doesn't need Sartre to tell them Hell is other people, and in the scene above I can easily recognize the breezily cheerful, "defensively normal" brand of chatter you use when you're interacting with the stranger you're sharing a bathroom with and shady shit is continuing to pop, herpes-like, out of their mouth.

I've used this tone myself on several occasions, like that time at the art co-op when my roommate's pallet of homemade, home-bottled micro brews started loudly exploding one by one in the kitchen, or the time a street pup ran into the house I was sharing with a Capoeira instructor and an angry masseuse and rubbed his cute butthole all over my pillowcase because his butthole itched because his butthole had worms and the masseuse took the opportunity to remind me there were "no pets allowed."

You know, you try to keep things light in these scenarios. Maybe this is an LA thing? Tim and Eric were certainly lampooning a very sort of specific Hollywood "type." Or maybe roommates are just the scariest shit on earth.

[ Video via Adult Swim]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow @GawkerMA and read more about it here.

Fort Greene is one of the loveliest, and most expensive, neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It's the neighborhood that inspired Spike Lee's anti-gentrification rant earlier this year. Wealthy Fort Greene dog owners will not put up with homeless people, in the park.

The neighborhood of Fort Greene has gotten very pricey. The neighborhood has a nice park. Lots of people walk their dogs in that park. Sometimes, homeless people—probably people who could have afforded to live in Fort Greene, 20 years ago—sleep in that park. If you were to rank living beings in order of importance in modern day brownstone Brooklyn, from most to least important, you would go: 1) People wealthy enough to buy or rent homes in brownstone Brooklyn; 2) Those peoples' dogs; 3) The homeless. DNA Info reports that the people walking their dogs in Fort Greene Park have HAD IT with these homeless people!

Homeless people, who are humans, who are forced to sleep outside in the park, have reportedly been downright rude to some dogs, who walk in the park for fun, but sleep inside, in heated apartments. Will someone please bring these ruffians under control?

Tensions have been rising between the group and local dog owners who use the park, especially in the early morning hours when dozens of people let their dogs run off-leash, locals say.

The untethered pups sniff, bark and jump on the slumbering people — oftentimes waking them up and triggering a furious response, locals say.

Pip pip! Tut tut! Here is one genuine quote from a Fort Greene Park resident and dog walker that sums up this situation well: "'It is becoming an issue of territory,' he said. 'They are becoming more and more aggressive every day.'"

In case it's not clear, "They" in this case refers to people without a home who are forced to sleep in the park, and the implication of his statement is that these humans are out of line for wishing that their "territory" not be invaded by swarms of dogs as they sleep. What sort of monster doesn't want to be woken up by a wealthy stranger's off-leash dog?

Dogs are cute and homeless people are dirty. Case closed.

[Photo: Flickr]

Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group with ties to al-Qaeda waging war in Nigeria and responsible for the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls, has reportedly reached a ceasefire agreement with the Nigerian government. Discussions between the Nigerian government and the militants have included talks of releasing the girls, who have been in captivity for six months.

"From the discussions, [Boko Haram's representatives] indicated their desire for, and willingness to discuss and resolve all associated issues," Mike Omeri, anti-terrorism spokesman for the Nigerian government, told the Telegraph. "They also assured that the school girls and all other people in their captivity are all alive and well."http://gawker.com/boko-haram-dec...

Nearly 300 girls were kidnapped by the group in April from the town of Chibok, in northeastern Nigeria. Dozens managed to escape this summer, but more than 200 continue to be held.

Negotiations to have the abducted girls released will take place next week in Ndjamena, Chad, apparently "blessed" by Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau. More from the BBC:

Many Nigerians are extremely sceptical about the announcement especially as there has been no definitive word from the jihadists.

The military has in the past released statements about the conflict in north-east Nigeria that have turned out to be completely at odds with the situation on the ground.

So many here will only celebrate when the violence stops and the hostages are free.

"They've assured us they have the girls and they will release them," Nigerian presidential aide Hassan Tukur told the BBC. "I am cautiously optimistic."http://gawker.com/boko-haram-kil...

A Western diplomat in Lagos also casted the reported deal as tenuous, telling the Telegraph that Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan is up re-election next year.

"He's having a tough run with Boko Haram, and he needs a boost," he said. "It's the main thing that people are concerned about, security. If he can score a ceasefire, great. If he can bring the girls back, even better. But we've not yet heard from Boko Haram. Until then, we're taking this with a little salt."http://gawker.com/boko-haram-kid...

[Image via AP]

Two beautiful lands on two different sides of the United States are under the threat of hurricanes today. Hurricane Gonzalo has 125 MPH winds and is nearing landfall in Bermuda, while Tropical Storm Ana is on the verge of hurricane strength as it skirts south of Hawaii.

Hurricane Gonzalo

The biggest weather story in the world today is Hurricane Gonzalo's approach into Bermuda. The hurricane has 125 MPH winds and the eyewall is about 100 miles to the island's southwest. Sustained winds at the L.F. Wade International Airport were 33 MPH at the last observation, and conditions are rapidly deteriorating as the main shield of rain starts to cover the island.

Bermuda is only fifteen miles long and two-and-a-half miles wide at its widest extent, so the fact that Gonzalo's eye will likely pass directly over the nation of 64,000 people is an incredibly rare event. The hurricane will be the strongest storm to hit Bermuda since Hurricane Fabian in 2003. Fabian had winds of 120 MPH and an enormous storm surge that caused $300 million in damages and killed four people.

The island is essentially on lockdown until the storm clears to its north. Most airlines cancelled flights back to the United States and Canada yesterday, stranding any remaining tourists until flights resume at some point this weekend or next week. Schools and government offices are closed, as well, and the island's causeway shut down at 10:00 AM. The causeway is where all four fatalities occurred during Fabian.

After Gonzalo moves north of Bermuda, it will still be a powerful storm as it loses tropical characteristics and makes a glancing blow to southeastern Newfoundland. The area is home to several hundred thousand people—St. John, the province's capital, is along Gonzalo's path—and it could provide some rough weather for the area on Saturday night through Sunday morning.

The Bermuda Weather Service's radar (the username and password are both "guest") has an excellent view of Gonzalo at this hour, and a webcam in Port Bermuda is documenting the intense winds as they quickly build up.

Tropical Storm Ana

In a stroke of luck, it looks like Tropical Storm Ana will skirt south of the Hawaiian Islands and produce little more than some rain, gusty winds, and clouds for the majority of the state's population. The Big Island is still under a tropical storm watch, and the windward side of the island could experience some hefty rainfall totals thanks to the effects of the terrain.

The big story with Ana is that it is a stellar example of why the cone of uncertainty is the most important part of a hurricane forecast.

On Tuesday, the forecast from the Central Pacific Hurricane Center showed that Ana would probably make a direct strike on the Big Island as a hurricane. By Thursday, the storm had changed little in organization and moved all the way to the far western end of Tuesday's cone of uncertainty.

Hawaii residents should still keep a close eye on how Ana develops this weekend, because there's still a chance that the storm could shift north-northwest and produce a greater impact on the islands.

[Images: NASA, author, Bermuda Weather Service, CPHC, author]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

Here's an idea: if you are a tech CEO who was once hit with over 160 misdemeanor charges for planning booze-filled parties for high schoolers, maybe your startup shouldn't offer to ship devil water to strangers.

According to WunWun's recent email blast, Lee Hnetinka's current company is promising to "take your alcohol experience to the next level." How? By doing people's liquor shopping for them and promising delivery in under an hour:

People have been drinking pretty much as long as there's been people. We've refined it a bit, sure... nowadays it doesn't make anybody go blind and comes in nice bottles.

And now, Wunwun's about to shake up the world of alcohol again (yes, a cocktail pun). We're here to take your alcohol experience to the next level—Not even having to buy the stuff yourself. We'll make that run to the local liquor store, pick up your preferred bourbon/vodka/rum/moonshine, and bring it right to you. You just have to handle the drinking (responsibly).

So you want free, fast delivery of all of your weekend liquid needs? Here you go.

To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.

I've been trying to dislike Gone Girl ever since Mary Gaitskill wrote her hatchet job of a review in Bookforum last September. Gaitskill, whose female-focused fiction (of which I am a fan) is often lurid and lightless, called the book "frightening." "I felt I was reading something truly sick and dark—and in case you don't know, I'm supposedly sick and dark," she wrote.

Mutterings among the élite were similar. So I gave away my copy—which I had read and enjoyed—and dismissed it as poorly written, pulpy trash. Clearly I had been wrong to like it. Popularity and quality do not correlate, sure, that's why I still refuse to see Titanic. But then in advance of the film, I was curious. I re-read the book and found myself gripped by it much like the first time I read it, which is a rarity for me. Then I saw the movie, twice. Despite its disloyalties to the book, I enjoyed it immensely, more so than most cinematic experiences I've had this year.

Thus, paltry effort aside, I can't side with the intellectuals on this one (for what it's worth, Gaitskill also hated Bridesmaids). Gone Girl is a masterwork—a truly enjoyable black dramedy about human relationships put on this earth to make people (read: misogynists) uncomfortable. There is simply no better kind of art.

Naturally, the think piece economy is going nuts in response to a film that includes plot points not limited to false rape accusations, adultery with the Blurred Lines Girl, twincest, a fake Nancy Grace, flyover country disdain, and the moral emptiness of America. (To those who are just now seeing the movie without reading the book and then writing a think piece about it, I put on my librarian's glasses and stare you down with shame [Joshua Rothman of newyorker.com, I'm looking at you.])

Why all the fuss? Well, my id would say it has to do with women, and how many people hate them, and how Gone Girl is a very difficult movie to make sense of, because the main character, the vengeful Amy Dunne, is a fully-fleshed out woman with little to no redeeming qualities. She reminds me, at times, of the narrator in Jenny Offill's stunning Dept. of Speculation, whose raw, darkly funny confessions about marriage and motherhood Michiko Kakutani described as such: "Such behavior makes it hard to understand exactly why her nice, earnest husband married her and how he puts up with her willfully self-conscious observations" (The husband basically has no part in the book other than being a lame asshole in the background).

Amy also brings to mind the characters of Elena Ferrante, whose fiery women fall apart and put themselves back together like cubist Picasso portraits. Being a woman is fucked up, and reading about them is way more interesting than any 90-page description of what Karl-Ove Knausgaard had for lunch when he was 12 in My Struggle. You want to know what a struggle is? I'd guess being married to Karl-Ove Knausgaard. I am waiting for that book. That's why I am grateful for novels like Gone Girl, and Dept. of Speculation, and Ferrante's Days of Abandonment. As "real" or not "real" as they may be, they depict a truth about "bad" women and how acting that way—0r being that way—is still oh-so-very frowned upon by society, even when it may just be women being themselves. It's 2014, and yet women must still be lightness, glitter, and the B-plot (unless they're Reese Witherspoon, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or some shit).

This is why Gone Girl, the novel, is so great. In an excellent essay for Vulture on why Gone Girl the film is a sucky adaptation of the book (read it), Amanda Dobbins writes:

"It is Amy's deception that sucks us in, and her angry reveal that turns the story. When everyone talks about the shifting perspectives and slippery personalities of Gone Girl: That's Amy. When everyone quotes the famous Cool Girl speech — a venomous passage about what women will do to please men, and what men expect of women: That's Amy. At least half of the book (and real talk: all the memorable parts) is devoted to her fiery, alarmingly lucid ramblings about men and marriage and disappointment. She is ultimately a sociopathic, morally indefensible character, but she — in her own words — is present to the very last page."

Dobbins also highlights an interview with Gone Girl's author, Gillian Flynn, in the Guardian last year (Flynn also wrote the film's screenplay). "The one thing that really frustrates me is this idea that women are innately good, innately nurturing," Flynn said. "In literature, they can be dismissably bad – trampy, vampy, bitchy types – but there's still a big pushback against the idea that women can be just pragmatically evil, bad and selfish."

Amy chafes people as a main character because she's a female villain (who, I would argue, can be identified with in many moments) acting with male agency. Even Gaitskill:

When I called the friends who'd recommended Gone Girl to talk about how sick-making I found it, they both listened in baffled silence before replying: "But the character is crazy. She's supposed to make you sick." I guess that by "crazy" what is meant is that Amy lies, manipulates, switches personae, in fact sees herself and everybody else in terms of personae and will do literally anything to get her way down to the last possible detail.

Lean in much, Mary?

Anyway, it's better that the world learns now rather than later from a fake story that all women are not the same, but are actually multifaceted creatures. Gone Girl is not about the economy, Fight Club for women, or our country's media climate. It's about our baseline assumptions about how women should be, and how we feel when those are challenged (or not).

[Image via Getty]

By the time it happened, I had considered us a pretty close group of friends. We'd all come from different pockets of the country—Maryland, New Jersey, Philly, New York, Los Angeles—but had arrived at Sproul Hall eager to be on our own for the first time.

We were a pretty lucky bunch. In 2004, Sproul was one of the few co-ed dormitories in East Halls; the region of campus where freshman are corralled until sophomore year. We all lived on the first floor, where I was the only black guy. I was 18 and wanted to make a good first impression so I tried to be as friendly as possible. I grabbed for whatever pop culture reference points I could when talking about sports or politics. Silly as it seems now, it was an attempt to get people to meet me on my terms, in the space that existed between us. Penn State's black student population accounts for only 4% of the school's total student body. Having another person meet you in the middle wasn't always easy.

The first incident happened in November. It was morning and I had just finished showering in the communal bathroom. Standing at the sink, brushing my teeth, I was greeted by a friend's words. "Nice ghetto slippers, man." At first I didn't know what he was referring to—"ghetto slippers?" I thought. Then he pointed to my feet. I was wearing a pair of Nike sandals. I wasn't sure how to respond and felt betrayed so I kind of just stood there and stared at him. There was a cutting silence between us. In that moment I felt like an anomaly—something not seen, but watched and studied. The only thing I remember saying before walking off was, "Oh, ok."

The second incident happened in April. I had buried the bathroom episode somewhere deep in my mind and had made friends beyond the walls of Sproul Hall by then. I still considered many of the guys on the floor buddies, but made a conscious effort to seek out others who looked like me. One night, a friend who lived a few doors down the hall and had recently joined a fraternity asked if he could borrow some of my clothes. "We're throwing a hip-hop themed party at the house tonight," K said. "I was wanting to know if you had anything I could wear. You know, like a large white-t or something?"

Here I was again, believed to be a symbol I wasn't. I ended up telling him I didn't have anything he could wear and made up some excuse so he would leave. K had so easily rooted my blackness while I was still figuring out what it meant. But it was clear what it represented to him.

He didn't invite me to the party.

I don't tell these stories to single me out as some Special Negro who is looking for pity, but rather to highlight their disturbing frequency (there were more incidents, by the way: like the time my philosophy professor thought I was on a football scholarship, because, you know, that's obviously the only way a black kid can make it into college). These things happen far too often, on university campuses, high schools, and in work environments daily. It is the struggle of being "a black face in a white place" and navigating the messy racial terrain in America as an outsider—something director Justin Simien knows all too well.

I've been thinking about my time in undergrad lately, mostly because I saw Simien's debut film, Dear White People, last week and haven't been able to escape the themes and conversations that permeate throughout the movie. It is a film that, in every sense of the phrase, keeps it 100. There is no right or wrong vision of what it means to be black in Dear White People. Authenticity is always in question. Each story is valid. Each character is deserving of space. As Coco Conners, the reality-TV wannabe played sharply by Teyonah Parris, remarks early on: "Boycotting hot combs doesn't make you an expert in CP time."

Set at the fictional Ivy League school Winchester University, where the president believes "racism is over," the film centers around four characters undertaking the alchemy of formation. It is not so much that Simien's characters are facing an identity crisis, but rather each is coming to terms with what they know to be true while trying to rid of the masks others cast onto them.

Sam White (Tessa Thompson) is the biracial campus radio host who becomes the de facto mouthpiece of the black student body despite deep personal and family struggles ("I'm tired of being everybody's angry black woman"). On her show, she offers sharp-tongued, but perfectly measured polemics, verbal jabs meant to provoke self-examination among Winchester's naive white students. "Dear white people, The minimum requirement of black friends needed to not seem racist has just been raised to two. Sorry, but your weed man, Tyrone, does not count." Tragic mulatto bullshit this is not.

But this conflict to self-identify proves true for just about everybody: the ambivalent gay journalist Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams), the all-star student Troy Fairbanks (Brandon Bell), and Coco. It is a film about identity in the abstract—the complexity found beneath the surface, the misinterpretations that arise, and the discoveries made along the journey.

Not unlike my own experience at Penn State, and again at UCLA for grad school, campus dynamics are anything but cut and dry. Social and racial divisions plague Winchester, and culminate in a hip-hop Halloween party asking guests to "liberate their inner Negro." Events eventually come to a boiling point and a race war erupts. Without giving too much away—because, really, no review will do the film justice—each character arrives at an unexpected end. Sam, Lionel, Coco, and Troy don't have it all figured out by the credits, but maybe that's the point: this shit ain't pretty, but we're in it together.

The obvious, easy understanding of the film is that blackness does not exist as a monolith, but instead in multicolor. Which, honestly, if you come away from the film thinking, "Black people are so diverse!" then you've missed some of the point. Because although race threads the film together, it is not its driving force. Dear White People is not just a movie about the expanding and contracting notions of black identity, but equally an examination of sex, gender stereotypes, privilege, and aspiration. Simien's commentary is wide, but no less powerful: interracial dating, pop culture as a sort of brain drain, tokenism, and the ills of appropriation, cultural and otherwise, all get a turn under the microscope.

But, most of all, it's how identity is conditioned by fear that resonates loudest: the fear of falling short, the fear of succeeding, the fear of not being who others want you to be, the fear of not fitting in. The power of fear to shape a false identity, and how we either give in or reject this fear—ultimately accepting or shunning identities projected onto us. Watching Dear White People, I was back in Sproul Hall, sitting in my room as K's words tangled my thoughts about who he thought I was.

I should have said something.

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

Adrianne Jeffries had a simple dream: to "hack lunch" by ordering a week's supply of Soylent, the food of the future for people who have better things to do than eat. It took five months for her order to arrive and now Jeffries, managing editor for Motherboard, can't get rid of it.

It's all part of "the Great Soylent Disillusionment" under way now that users have peeked behind the curtain of messianic marketing and found a six-pack of Ensure.

The company told me my Soylent would take 10 to 12 weeks to arrive. It took 20. If I had been dependent on Soylent as my primary food source, I would have died waiting for it.

Luckily Jeffries could spare the cognitive burden of finding other means of procuring food in New York City. But when she tried to sell her supply on Craigslist, many others had beaten her to it:

There are even more listings over on eBay, where the sellers seem to be more savvy about arbitrage. "You want it, I have it," one guy wrote. Another seller is hoping to get $150 for the box he got for $65. [...]

"I have to say it was not life changing as many have suggested," one user wrote. There were none of the miraculous effects people have described, such as greater energy and clear skin. It didn't save much time, because it took longer to drink than it would have taken to prepare and eat breakfast or lunch. The only noticeable benefit was having fewer dirty dishes to clean. "To those people pining for their first shipment of Soylent, I say temper your expectations."

Why would consumers expect venture-backed food powder to magically change their lives? Oh, right.

Disclosure: Adrianne and I worked very closely together at Betabeat, The New York Observer's tech blog and once accidentally shared an ATM card. "I hacked breakfast" is totally the kind of thing she would say.

Bono, a cosmic warrior sent from the future to save us from rock songs that don't have the word "yeah" in them, has a habit of wearing really doofy-looking glasses. It turns out he wears them because of a disease. Who's the asshole now?

In an interview with Graham Norton, the U2 singer revealed he has glaucoma, and that the shades help him with eye pain. From The Guardian:

Asked by Norton whether he ever removes his shades, Bono replied: "This is a good place to explain to people that I've had glaucoma for the last 20 years. I have good treatments and I am going to be fine."

The singer added: "You're not going to get this out of your head now and you will be saying, 'Ah, poor old blind Bono.'"

No excuse for that camo scarf, though.

[Image via AP]

The University of Arizona's Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter was suspended this week for violating alcohol restrictions and allegedly hazing pledges. The frat hasn't managed to stay out of trouble since last year, when Jackass star Johnny Knoxville accused SAE of slipping him ecstasy during a Bad Grandpa screening. Now Knoxville feels bad they got suspended.

U of Arizona please reinstate SAE because I had a ball. #nohardfeelings http://t.co/ivoTKQssFw

— Johnny Knoxville (@realjknoxville) October 16, 2014

His tweet probably won't help matters, however—assistant dean of students Johanne Ives sounded fed up with SAE in an interview with the school paper earlier this week. "Sometimes, if an organization has a judicial history that is pretty lengthy, the institution may feel like we've run out of options in terms of educational sanctions or punitive sanctions," Ives explained.

SAE is suspended pending an investigation into "allegations that members provided alcohol to minors and hazed new members between Aug. 20 and Sept. 20," according to AZ Central. Knoxville didn't comment on these new allegations.

[Photo via Twitter]

To cast aspersions on another man is as easy as casting sand upon the water. What are you doing there, alone at the seaside, casting sand upon the water? Some kind of pervert?

The koan: "Great Waves"

In the early days of the Meiji era there lived a well-known wrestler called O-nami, Great Waves.

O-nami was immensely strong and knew the art of wrestling. In his private bouts he defeated even his teacher, but in public he was so bashful that his own pupils threw him.

O-nami felt he should go to a Zen master for help. Hakuju, a wandering teacher, was stopping in a little temple nearby, so O-nami went to see him and told him of his trouble.

"Great Waves is your name," the teacher advised, "so stay in this temple tonight. Imagine that you are those billows. You are no longer a wrestler who is afraid. You are those huge waves sweeping everything before them, swallowing all in their path. Do this and you will be the greatest wrestler in the land."

The teacher retired. O-nami sat in meditation trying to imagine himself as waves. He thought of many different things. Then gradually he turned more and more to the feeling of the waves. As the night advanced the waves became larger and larger. They swept away the flowers in their vases. Even the Buddha in the shrine was inundated. Before dawn the temple was nothing but the ebb and flow of an immense sea.

In the morning the teacher found O-nami meditating, a faint smile on his face. He patted the wrestler's shoulder. "Now nothing can disturb you," he said. "You are those waves. You will sweep everything before you."

The same day O-nami entered the wrestling contests and won. After that, no one in Japan was able to defeat him.

The enlightenment: O-nami had discovered the secret to wrestling: hip drive. It's all about how you use those hips. The rest of this is just gobbledygook.

This has been "Zen koans explained." Up short.

[Photo: Shutterstock]

Fleeing for your life is the new staycation, and no one has made it look as fabulous as adopted Muscovites Edward Snowden and his state-sanctioned girlfriend, Lindsay Mills. Vogue is offering some advice on how the leaker's lady can attract as much attention as possible.

For a discreet stroll around Moscow, we think Mills would do best to embrace her adopted countrymen's fondness for fur—and a touch of Bonnie Parker panache—in a camouflage look from Valentino.

The recommended subtle gear ranges from "Moncler Gamme Rouge lapin fur ushanka hat, $1,095" to "Pierre Hardy mixed media fur-front sneakers, $1,145." There's also this ensemble, which costs around $7,000 and includes several shades of neon:

This is all wrong. If you want to keep a low profile abroad, it's best to dress like the locals, and modestly. This outfit is only like $25 on Amazon, and there's a matching "dancing Russian guy" outfit to go with it:

While Vogue's urban tsarina looks are pretty awesome (in taste and price!), we can only assume this feature was planted in the magazine by a DoD counter-intel squad, given how conspicuous those neon chevron stripes would render the pair under Moscow's gray October sky. Nice try, "fashion industry."

Jon "War Machine" Koppenhaver, the former mixed martial arts fighter arrested in August after allegedly beating his ex-girlfriend nearly to death, tried to commit suicide in his jail cell Tuesday night, CNN reports.

Koppenhaver went on the run from police after popular porn performer Christy Mack reported he attacked her and posted photos of some of her injuries, which included 18 broken bones in her face, broken teeth, a fractured rib, and a ruptured liver. He's currently in jail at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas.

A corrections officer found Koppenhaver unresponsive Tuesday, hanging from his bunk by a torn piece of linen. The officer cut him down, aborting the apparent suicide attempt, and he's now being kept in a medical isolation unit.

Koppenhaver reportedly left behind a suicide note, but its contents haven't been made public. His attorney told TMZ there were multiple letters found in the cell, and one of them was addressed to Mack.

Koppenhaver had been scheduled to show up to a court hearing for a possible plea deal later that day. He's been charged with domestic battery and attempted murder.

[h/t TMZ]

Now that the fall season is in full swing, there's a lot of TV to keep up with and the weekend is no different. But if you've exhausted your options and the Weekend Guide isn't doing for the remainder (and you already watched Transparent, obviously) here are some of Morning After's other top picks for the weekend.

The Comeback

A year after Friends ended (2004), Lisa Kudrow debuted this one-season HBO summer series, developed with her longtime creative partner Michael Patrick King (Sex & The City). Thirteen episodes later, the show was quietly canceled by HBO. But now, nine years after the final episode, oblivious Hollywood underdog Valerie Cherish is getting a second season.

Predating Episodes, Bitch in 23 and most of the rest of the "TV actor as person" genre by about a million years, the show took a found-footage approach to critiquing Hollywood obsessions, personalities, and excesses. Memorably, it also presented some of the first behind-the-scenes TV production stories we'd seen at the time: What TV is, how it gets made, and the people that make it. Now, that's nothing, but ten years ago it represented a pretty subversive transparency.

Not to mention it's rough as hell to watch, as Valerie's lack of self-awareness leads her into great success and unbearable humiliation (most of which she barely comprehends, of course). By looking through the lens of her documentary crew's eyes, catching backstabbers and well-wishers outside of Valerie's hearing or presence, we are gifted with a more complete understanding of her life than she, or any of us, will ever have. It's fucking devastating, and funny as hell.

Incredible word of mouth support and a long tail—due, in part, to its prescience—have made this show's original airdate almost impossible to believe as I'm writing this, but its cachet over the last year as a trendy show, beloved by urban legend The Gayz, has placed it gently and squarely in the public consciousness. If you haven't watched it in the near-decade since it first aired, you might be surprised by how well it's aged: Laura Silverman's turn as Valerie's beleaguered documentarian, in particular, is as effective and affecting as ever. (HBO Go, Amazon Prime)

Getting On

Renewed a couple weeks ago for a second season, this HBO comedy is based on a British comedy of the same name (fifteen episodes total, available on Hulu) and set in a long-term care ward of a hospital. That means old people, dying people, and very little vanity for any of the small group of workers we ever see: Temp-to-hire nurse (Niecy Nash), a lifer (Alex Borstein), a bureaucrat (Mel Rodriguez) and Laurie "Aunt Jackie" Metcalf as a nightmarishly complex doctor.

The low-profile, high-prestige nature of the project is intriguing, even if the setting and characters are off-putting at first. There's a lot of that particular HBO comedic awkwardness, that willingness to indulge in ugliness that, if you stick with it, generally ends up somewhere pretty moving. Over the first season's six half-hours, we come to inhabit these women's world of mostly silent patients and stressed-out families through the subtleties of labor: Think of it as an Office for those at or below the blue-collar line, universal in its irritations and indignities but maybe unparalleled in its occasional rewards.

Most important, I think, is the way this American reboot, simply by starring a person of color in the temp role, changes everything. Nash's character is wonderfully portrayed and a pretty wonderful woman, and her inclusion elevates the story—the interactions, the assumptions—to a uniquely American transcendence: My British BFF, almost immediately, asked: "Why's she so angry? She's not like this in ours." I still haven't shaken off the effects of the conversation that followed, viewing our culture through the lens of an experience we tend to think of as basically identical to ours. If the setting or characters turn you off, I'd still suggest watching it simply for that, for its brilliant and illuminating take on our particular history with privilege and race, told through a collection of lives that are usually rendered invisible. In a landscape filled with "US versions" that never really seem to stray from the source, more shows could stand to follow this one's lead. (HBO GO)

The L.A. Complex

This erstwhile DeGrassi spinoff gathers up a generation of Melrose Place imitators and tropes—the sexy youth-hostel apartment complex, the Hollywood wasteland, a singer and an actress and a dancer and a med student—and breathes new and heartbreaking life into them. Imported from Canada's CTV to the CW in the spring of 2012, the show ran for a total of 19 episodes, over two seasons.

To say the show had "heart" is to severely underestimate its bite, and perhaps explains its lackluster ratings, but it was smarter than that: It put a bunch of polite Canadian kids into the meat grinder, then watched them get beat to fuck, and grow. I remember describing it at the time as "Americans' idea of Canadians, stuck in a Canadians' idea of America" and I stand by that: The ultimate entry characters, no less complicated for being polite children, put into a hellish dystopia of sex scandals, compromises and pain. But the show never forgot to leave room for kindness, or hope, in that story: Something a lot of shows never learned in the first place.

One very cool thing the show did: Andra Fuller's Kaldrick King, a closeted and very successful rapper, spent the show's first season as the secret lover of one of the Canadian kids, which escalated to some very scary places. Come Season Two, the enormously compelling Kaldrick had become the show's central character, and his search for redemption (not to mention simple survival) became emblematic of the show's aims as a whole. Hey remember that CW show where the main character was a violent, gay black rapper? Wish you did, because he was fucking amazing.

Similar trades were made for other characters and storylines, as the second season saw fit to reboot itself, but in every case it was nearly as seamless. The world the show created was big, and beautiful, and ultimately a compassionate one: In the battle between art and ambition, art has to win, because people are naturally pretty great. Not a huge hook for a soapy CW show, granted—and hard enough to remember in real life—but then, if I told you what Gilmore Girls is about you'd laugh your ass off, too. (Netflix only)

Also Recommended

• Review (Amazon Prime)—this Comedy Central mockumentary about professional critic Forrest MacNeil (played by show creator Andy Daly) was based on the Australian show Review with Myles Barlow (available on Hulu). Strong back-channel support had this positioned to be 2014's Nathan For You, until that show blew the hell up. Maybe next year. In the meantime, watch it, it's hilarious and spot-on insightful.
• I'm Alan Partridge (Hulu)—Probably the best place to start with the many appearances of Steve Coogan's Alan Gordon Partridge, a parody sports- and newscaster who began life in 1991 in collaboration with the writers of the UK show On the Hour, including In the Loop and Veep's Scottish creator Armando Iannucci, if that tells you anything.
• The Buccaneers (Netflix, Hulu, Prime)—An unfinished Edith Wharton novel that was completed from outline and notes by one author at the same time this miniseries was being developed, resulting in two very different narratives. Tiny 1995 baby versions of Carla Gugino, Mira Sorvino and True Blood's James Frain tell a story about the eponymous generation of American heiresses that inspired Julian Fellowes to create Downton Abbey and its future prequel.

[Image via HBO]

You live in the future now! Almost any media you can think of, you can find from the chair you're sitting in. Even if you can't, take comfort in the fact that the amount of things you can't find online will never go up: Only down. In that spirit, Morning After asks: What are you streaming this weekend?

Occasionally, against all odds, you'll see an interesting or even enjoyable picture on the Internet. But is it worth sharing, or just another Photoshop job that belongs in the digital trash heap? Check in here and find out if that viral photo deserves an enthusiastic "forward" or a pitiless "delete."

Image via Imgur

DELETE

Spider burrows through man's appendix scar and crawls under his skin http://t.co/pbNc9kGcjA pic.twitter.com/DVVTvY5NtC

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) October 16, 2014

This week, news outlets around the world sentenced their readers to indefinite self-detention, subjecting them to the story of a man who found a spider living under his skin while traveling abroad. According to articles by The Telegraph, the Daily News and Buzzfeed, the venomous vagabond tunneled through Australian Dylan Thomas for three goddamn days, until doctors "finally found out it was a tropical spider" and surgically removed it.

Unsurprisingly, experts have disputed the tale seemingly stitched together from Snopes' greatest hits. Speaking to io9 and WAtoday, five different doctors and researchers called bullshit on Thomas' story, most noting that spiders aren't particularly built for burrowing or surviving without air. "[I]n general this is impossible and there is no reason that a spider would do that," said arachnologist Dr. Charles Griswold, reckoning even spiders have enough sense not to try something so dumb.

DELETE

While Ebola itself remains incredibly rare in the U.S., Ebola hysteria became endemic in America this week after two healthcare workers tested positive for the disease.

Perhaps the glurge-iest expression of the collective freak-out was the breathless coverage of Bentley, the quarantined Cavalier King Charles Spaniel belonging to one of the infected nurses. The above photo, used in both the Daily Mail and New York Post versions of the Bentley story, was widely circulated online, putting a Precious Moments™-worthy face on the deadly virus.

But as the Daily Dot noted, that picture is of a different pup entirely, one named Penny. First posted 16 months ago (original hashtags: #ckcs #cavlife #cavalierkingcharles #blenheim #dogsofinstagram #instadog #dogoftheday #puppy #puppyeyes #cute #adorable #omg), Penny's owner seems to be taking the image's misattribution in stride, sharing a headline from Slate on Wednesday that read, "Dog in Quarantine Isn't Adorable Dog in Bath Photo, Remains Cute Nonetheless."

Image via Twitter

DELETE

What a great ad campaign pic.twitter.com/kfC9a8zUvk

— Chuck Vans (@Chuck_Vans) October 11, 2014

After months of dormancy, this long-debunked image of Stevie Wonder shilling for Atari popped up online again last Saturday. Unfortunately for smug present day-ers, the picture is just a doctored version of a much more sensible Stevie Wonder endorsement for the classic Mu-Tron III funk filter.

FORWARD

I've seen some mind-blowing WWII propoganda, but this takes the cake. (1942) pic.twitter.com/RvBlYn6Ozn

— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) October 12, 2014

This incredibly clueless image, however, is absolutely real. Taken from 1942's How Boys and Girls Can Help Win the War, the illustration appears on page 43 of the propaganda rag. Luckily, the comic more than makes up for its racial insensitivity with helpful tips like "All the track stars take hurdles in stride because they make tracks to the table and eat butter and similar spread every single day!"

DELETE

An embarrassing number of news sites published this image on Monday, including the Daily Mail, the Huffington Post and the Daily Express, which asked, "Is this Crabzilla?" Originating from the website Weird Whitsable (dedicated to "Phantoms, Mysteries, Tall Tales and Artifacts"), British papers estimated the creature to be "at least 50 ft. wide."

As a number of sources soon pointed out, the picture is in reality a Photoshopped satellite image, cleverly taken by the forger from the last place anyone would look, Bing Maps.

By Thursday, even Weird Whitsable proprietor Quinton Winter seemed to understand the jig was up, telling Kent Online, "I'm not trying to lie about anything, it's just a bit of fun."

Image via Weird Whitstable

Sometime between Reconstruction, this episode of MTV: True Life, and the hundred-thousandth wedding held on a plantation in South Carolina, the term Southern Belle became just another friendly identifier to put in your Twitter bio, a throwaway regional label no weightier than Cali Surfer Dude. But the difference between SoCal pride and honoring your Southern gentility is that the latter celebrates the ugliest stain in America's history.

The notion of the Southern Belle dates back to the 19th century, when it was a cheery name given to a specific sort of white person who flourished in the American South before the end of the Civil War. Belles were a few very specific things: white, bourgeois, and almost certainly beneficiaries of the slave trade, married to the plantation owners whose wealth was secured through black chattel. From an encyclopedic entry provided by the University of Richmond:

She was beautiful but risky to touch, like porcelain. Every southern belle was expected to be up-to-date on the latest fashions, which often proved tricky and expensive because fashion was constantly changing throughout the nineteenth century. A true lady embodied the ideals of the South, and was thus hospitable and graceful.

Today, the image of a Southern Belle is not just some strange collage on Blake Lively's mood board, but a commonplace compliment used frequently in sorority recruiting and on Tumblr, an inane cheer for a vague kind of Southern pride. Thought Catalog, our most accurate trove of inanities, defines the Southern Belle as a "mindset" that doesn't even have much to do with geography anymore:

Not knowing how to cook is just not an option for the Southern Belle. They were raised to know how to make a good meal, to feed themselves and the people they love, and to have people looking forward to coming over for dinner. When you go to their house, you know that you are going to leave full and happy.

[...]

Southern Belles don't care if not every woman wants to be like them, or if they're considered too "traditional" or "old-fashioned." They are happy to live the life they have, and be who they are, without pleasing some feminist or businesswoman who wants them to be more "modern." They know how much better life is when you live it in style.

The Southern Belle, you see, knows better than you do. She knows what is right—for her family, for herself, and for her country. The modern Southern Belle is a paragon of conservative values, warmth, light, quiet strength, and happiness. It may seem retrograde, but it's just what genteel society women have been doing since the days of the Confederacy.

From the September 7th, 1861 issue of Harper's: "A Female Rebel in Baltimore"

But praising the loyalty and generosity of the Southern Belle is about as cheery as celebrating the camaraderie of the Hitler Youth, the fresh air of the Trail of Tears, or the cardiovascular benefits of the Bataan Death March. You can find something fun in any horror of history! And the Belles of today do exactly that—if you bring up sl*very, they'll point to all the nice parts about the Old South. The architecture, the parties, the sipping of cool drinks on warm porches. Oh, the fields? Those fields are just for growing delicious strawberries and tomatoes for folks to enjoy. Nothing more.

Every perk and beautiful part of white plantation life was created through black slavery. If Belles were patient and gracious, it's because forced black labor enabled it. If the Southern life was pretty and sophisticated, it's because slavery afforded it. Everything pleasant about Belle-hood was a function of human suffering on a vast scale—it's conceptually impossible to separate the society bankrolled by slavery from the slavery itself.

Americans love myopia and general narrowness. Think of how great it would be if we could treat history like a buffet and just pick out nice parts? The chic tailoring of SS uniforms, the athleticism of Roman bloodsport, the loyalty of feudalism.

Unfortunately for the nostalgics, the Old South is synonymous with the Antebellum south, which in turn is synonymous with the slave economy. Bu-bu-but tradition! Sorry. Your tradition was someone else's nightmare. Pining for those days, even if you're too detached from national history to realize it, is pining for the comforts of whiteness when black people were property. You ignore it, you can romanticize it, and you can deny it, but you don't get to pick and choose the portions of history that actually happened; the Old South is a soiled rag, too rank with national shame to be wrung out. Antebellum America cannot be redeemed for the sake of your wedding, fraternity mixer, or lifestyle website.

So: Please pick a different party venue, because otherwise your wedding is going to be shitty and racist.

Image by Jim Cooke