What, may you wonder, could be so ridiculously useless that Sky Mall even deemed it unusual?

Highlights:

-Pierogi Ornament that looks like just a lump of metal in a vague cresent shape.

-Beer Pager because I want to pay $30 to find a $2 can of beer that is within 6 feet of me.

-Jack-in-the-Pulpit. I really have no idea what the hell this is. It looks like a green, grinning hot dog waving and coming out of a giant leaf. You’re supposed to put it with your flowers, naturally. Sky Mall even suggests a whole row of these to welcome guests.

-Bob’s Affirmation Box that says things like “Lookin’ good today Bob!” when you open it, and an ice cube tray that makes ice in the shape of BOB. I think I know who wrote this section.

-A welcome mat featuring the image of a cat looking directly at the observer and text reading “It’s about TIME you got home.” Why not, “It’s about TIME you got home to the only thing that missed you while you were gone. Feed me.”

Thanks for the entertainment, Sky Mall.

Dexter

Dexter is about a serial-killer forensic blood analyst living in Miami. If you haven’t heard about this show, which is in it’s sixth’s season, you must have been living under a rock. The title sequence one of the best I’ve ever seen, and the writers never fail to keep you engaged.

American Horror Story

American Horror Story is new this season and already as a score of 8.5/10 on IMDB. I’m a huge fan of scary movies and this show is absolutely brilliant. The two worst things about scary movies are:

1. It ends unnaturally, leaving the audience wondering what happens to the characters
2. You figure out the plot line within the first half hour

This show solves both of those problems with the novel concept of a horror TV show and excellent writers who keep you guessing. My roommate was curious about the show after I mentioned it, so before bed I played the first episode for him. The next morning he says, “So….. I’m totally caught up on American Horror Story now…” It’s that addicting. Watch it! It airs on FX on Wednesday nights.

Sons of Anarchy

This show is constantly snubbed for awards and I have no idea why. Yes, it’s violent. Yes, it’s dark. Yes, it’s misogynistic. Yes, it’s racial. But while it explores all of these controversial themes, it also shows the human side to a biker gang, and specifically how they reconcile their love for one another with these dark attitudes. I’m really hooked on it. Plus Katey Sagal is a brilliant actress. The first few seasons are on Netflix!

Ringer

Ringer is Sarah Michelle Geller’s latest television project. I don’t think she’s done anything on TV since Buffy, which is one of my all-time favorite shows. It’s about a twin who finds herself forced to live the life of her recently deceased (or so she thinks) sister, and is filled with crime, drama, and intrigue! I think it’s had a great start, though I’m a little annoyed at how rich all of the characters are, except for the drug dealers. It’s all high class or no class, which is a little trite.

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead! Last year this show premiered and everyone went crazy for it. This season they are not letting us down from all of the hype. If you haven’t seen the first season, stop what you’re doing, go to Netflix, and watch it. Tonight. Now. Go. It’s based on a comic book, similar to so many great shows and movies that have come out recently. Sunday nights, AMC!

Runner up: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

I really, really love this show, but last season was awful. This season has been wonderful so far, so they’re on the runner’s up list.

Runner up: Once Upon a Time

Only three episodes in, this show has a lot of promise. Seeing fairy tale characters come to life is really fun and entertaining, but it’s still too early to tell if that’s going to get old. Still, it’s worth it to check it out!

Introduction

Across the country, the Class of 2011 is gathering in football fields, auditoriums, and music halls. The students will eagerly pat their over-sized graduation gowns, straightening out wrinkles, while swaying to and fro to catch a glimpse of their happy parents in the crowd. A speaker will approach the podium, ready to give a heart-warming and inspiring speech to the large crowd of twenty-somethings, a group that has barely learned to do laundry without Mom and to solve complicated chemical equations. She’ll sing their praises and tell them how they are now ready to conquer their careers. This Class of 2011 has completed an arduous four years of school, but something more than just “college-graduate” is about to define them. This year, the Class of 2011 is the most indebted class to ever graduate in the United States[1], and they’re entering into a job market with a 9% unemployment rate[2].

In 2008, 1.4 million students graduated with debt, up 27% from 1.1 million students in 2004[3]. Some speculate on the growing number of degree-holding job applicants, and the subsequent lowering in value of Bachelors degrees. What happens when the Class of 2011 can’t find jobs, or can’t find jobs that pay enough to cover living expense and loan repayments, because his degree doesn’t have the leverage it had 20 years ago? Because of the history of the policy decisions behind student loans, there isn’t much they can do other than pay the debt. Student loans are the only debt that can’t be discharged by bankruptcy. They’re also the only debt that would give an 18-year-old $30,000 worth of credit without being labeled predatory lending.

Federal and private financing for higher education started with noble intentions of giving soldiers money to start a new life and assimilate into the civilian world. They then became means for low-income, female, and minority students gain access to colleges and jobs that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. But after a series of policy changes including the federal guarantee of student loans, the inability to discharge the loans, and federal programs that created a market for a range of private lenders, the amount of student debt quickly rose as tuition prices and loan availability spiked.

With job prospects slim, the value of a Bachelors degree declining, and student indebtedness rising, some scholars and journalists are beginning to wonder: are we now in a “tuition bubble?”[4] There are some obvious similarities to the recent housing bubble. Americans value the continually growing value of education, much like they valued home ownership. But the rate of return for bad loans soon caught up with the housing market, and the bubble burst. The U.S. Department of Education released data last year, reported by the Project on Student Debt, that shows the national “cohort default rate” on federal student loans is 7.0% for those that went in repayment in 2008, up 6.7% last year[5]. But this doesn’t show the default rate over time, given that a loan of $50,000 or more would take a decade to repay.

Will our education bubble burst? Is it a bubble at all? This paper will seek to understand these questions with an overview of the history of student loans, it’s impact on low-income communities, how policy changes affect this financial burden, and the rise of for-profit colleges funded by private loans.

From the G.I. Bill to Direct Federal Lending

Although some timelines of education financing in the United States go back as far as 17^th and 19^th centuries at Harvard[6], the first incidence of widely distributed student aid based on solving a social dilemma started in 1944 with the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, commonly known as the G.I. Bill. This bill was an attempt to avoid what had happened twenty years earlier, when veterans returning from WWI only received $60 and a train ticket home. They had a hard time readjusting and starting their lives again with that paltry send-off. The Great Depression that followed only worsened the situation, and drafters of the G.I. Bill sought a new way to reintegrate soldiers into civilian life.

This bill provided $300 in “mustering out” pay, federal guaranteed loans for housing, farm, and business purchases, and a controversial unemployment allowance. The provision most pertinent to our study, however, is the education clause that covered tuition bills of servicemen and women with an additional monthly living allowance while pursuing their studies.[7] As a result, veterans accounted for 49% of college admissions in 1947. It is estimated that by the time this G.I. Bill ended in 1956, nearly half of the 16 million WWII veterans participated in an education program[8].

This bill, and its massive utilization by the veterans, changed the educational landscape of the United States. Though there had been some small scholarships, grants, and loans previously, none were as widely distributed as this bill that placed men and women in colleges who probably would not have gone without the aid. We can see how this could morph the social field of higher education, although still elite, by removing it from being accessed by only wealthy and privileged white sons of the United States. This also set a precedent for the value of secondary education, and who can and cannot access it. We could make the intellectual leap that 4.3 million babies in the baby boom generation born during this time, 20 years later, would be attending college in large numbers because their parents had wider access to it. In fact, we see the late 1960s-early 1980s as a peak in financial aid policy development.

In 1958 there was advancement to aiming federal student aid at low-income students[9]. The National Defense Education Act and the National Defense Student Loan Program were responses to the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik and an attempt to bolster the country’s higher education by bringing in talented low-income students. This loan was the precursor to the Perkins Loan Program.

The 1960s and 1970s saw a wave of federal policy aimed at expanding access to secondary education through financial aid. One of the most crucial in changing the face of financing higher education was the Higher Education Act of 1965 that, among other advancements in student aid, started the Educational Opportunity Grants and Guaranteed Student Loan Program in its Title IV. The grants were targeted at students with high financial need, while the loans (later to become the Stafford Loan) were targeted at middle-income students by guaranteeing the loans provided by banks or non-profit lenders and paying subsidies on the interest accrued during the student’s college years, while also paying the difference between a set interest rate and the market rate[10].

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s remarks at Southwest Texas State College upon signing the act speak to the changing social conception of higher education in the US. He commented that the bill, and education, is a way “to deeper personal fulfillment, greater personal productivity, and increased personal reward.”

“So to thousands of young people, education will be available. And it is a truism that education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity…And in my judgment, this Nation can never make a wiser or a more profitable investment anywhere.” [11]

Here we see the rhetoric forming that higher education is not only profitable economically and socially, but it’s entitled to everyone regardless of money. Secondary education has an ever-increasing value that can’t be degraded over time and like a new car or a piece of property, and it’s not tangible so it can’t be revoked. It also becomes of national importance that everyone has access to obtain an education regardless of personal wealth. This valuation of higher education, and the raising of student debt as the equivalent of funding a necessary dream are important to consider as the gates open wider, more students are allowed access to higher amounts of loans, and the private market steps in.

The Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) was a part of the 1965 education bill that guaranteed loans made by banks and non-profit lenders. Banks were reluctant to participate because of the slow rate of return and the risk of defaulting students who couldn’t necessarily find jobs straight out of college. In 1972 there was an expansion of the 1965 education act, including the creation of more grants and a government sponsored enterprise, Sallie Mae (Student Loan Marketing Association), to create a secondary market for student loans and entice banks to start financing them. Still, banks were reluctant because there was no property to foreclose or car to impound if the student defaulted and declared bankruptcy.

The 1980s saw President Reagan cutting spending, and the push from focusing equally on grants and loans to just promoting loans, especially with the establishment of Federal Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students (PLUS) that allowed parents to take out more guaranteed loans for the student.

Perhaps there is a connection between the growing availability of loans and the rapid tuition increase since the early 1980s. The College Board provides a study on the changing published tuition, fee, room, and board charges at four-year private, four-year public, and two-year colleges. These prices have risen, when adjusted for inflation, 2.6% annually for four-year private schools and 2.1% annually for four-year public schools[12]. While this is a rapid rise in prices, when broken apart by decade it reveals trends that may be associated with policy changes.

• The average annual inflation-adjusted increase in public four-year college published tuition and fees was about 2% between 1976-77 and 1986-87, but has been about 4 percent for the past two decades.
• The average annual inflation-adjusted increase in public two-year college published tuition and fees was about 2% from 1976-77 to 1986-87, rose to more than 4% over the next decade, and returned to about 2% in the most recent decade.[13]

For private four-year colleges, the published tuition and fees was about 3 percent in each of the past three decades. The numbers suggest that there was a spike in tuition prices and fees between 1986-87 and 1997-98. What could be the cause?

One argument is that there was simply an increase in demand, that more students were attending college in this decade. The numbers certainly support this viewpoint. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1970 52% of high school completers enrolled in college, and in 1980 49% enrolled. In 1985 there was an upswing to 58% college enrollment, then 60% in 1990 and 62% in 1995.[14] But to explain this entirely by the idea that more students were suddenly inclined to pursue college misses a valuable point that policy and cultural changes paved the way.

The 1980s saw a movement towards expanding credit card debt, making Americans more comfortable with the idea of consumer debt[15] and continuously paying monthly for things acquired immediately. With a federally guaranteed loan (FFEL) and the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 allowing discharge of loans from bankruptcy, like any other debt, after five years, financing an education became more reasonable and less risky—especially if it leads to higher financial gains. The College Board’s study on income outcomes based on education shows that in the 1970s and 1980s men and women with a Bachelor’s Degree or higher made at least $10,000 (in constant 2008 dollars) than those with Associate Degrees or under.[16]

The 1983 Student Consolidation and Technical Amendments Act of 1983 allowed students to “consolidate various outstanding student loans into new Guaranteed Student Loans with longer repayment periods.”[17] Three years later the Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act further expanded loan opportunities by relaxing the methodology for discerning financial need, creating Supplemental Loan to Students for graduate and professional students, and officially adding the consolidation loans tested in 1983.[18] In President Regan’s speech on the signing of the 1983 act, he called for less federal spending on student loans, focusing on only those who can show enough financial need. He also argued that “the cost of education is primarily the responsibility of the family,” developing a rhetoric that would shift the financial burden of paying for higher education to the student and her family, rather than thinking of it as the national right that is was in President Johnson’s speech.[19]

The big change for higher education financing came in the early 1990s, particularly with the Higher Education Amendments of 1992 and the Student Loan Reform Act in 1993. While the former eliminated PLUS ceilings and started a direct lending pilot, the latter officially established Direct Lending, increased borrowing limits, and opened access to unsubsidized loans for middle-income students.[20] These two policies essentially established a situation where any student, regardless of need, could borrow federally guaranteed loans from either a private lender through the Sallie Mae market, or directly from the government. As we see from the data presented above, inflation rates for tuition and fees nearly doubled in the 1990s, out-pacing the average family income[21]. This may be why we see the high school completer enrollment rate stagnate throughout the 1990s at around 62%.

The Direct Lending program was initiated as a way for the government to cut spending and reduce the deficit. As it stood, if the federally guaranteed loans originated on the market by Sallie Mae were to go into default, the government would pay the balance and then pay all of the fees for the collection agencies to recoup the debt. The government set up FFEL because of fears on the consequences of holding a large portfolio of loans with a long pay-off period. Creating a secondary market would allow banks to act as intermediaries and set in place a system that allows private loans to flourish, even outside FFEL loans.[22] But the taxpayers would still be burdened with insuring the loans in a secondary market. With Direct Lending, the middlemen and the subsidies and fees would be cut out. There was some partisan debate in the 1990s about direct lending, with the Republicans aiming to dismiss it entirely for a more market-based system, but colleges and institutions seemed to favor it over FFEL loans, which could still be used.[23]

The student loan industry was adamant about fighting the direct loan program from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Because loans through FFEL are guaranteed by the government, there is no risk for the private lending. There is evidence in long exposés by journalists that indicate just how ruthless the student loan market lenders were to keep their space in the system.[24] Because colleges and institutes of higher education could recommend or offer only certain loans to students, mainly opted to continue using FFEL loans instead of direct loans.

In the early 2000s private loan lenders also began heavily targeting students directly, or through for-profit institutes of higher education. In the 2006-2007 year, private loans accounted for 24% of all education loans, up 6% from the previous decade.[25] Also in the press release by College Board that reported this statistic is an account that between 1992-1993 and 2003-2004 “the percentage of full-time dependent students taking out student loans increased most rapidly in the upper half of the income distribution, but the average loan amount of those who borrowed increased least for the wealthiest students.”[26] So while low-income students continued to receive aid in grants and scholarships from the government and institutions (while also taking out some loans), the middle-income students were the most highly targeted for loan increases including private loans. This is congruent with the changing rhetoric of the 1993 policy changes that opened unsubsidized lending and raised loan limits.

Because of the easy availability of loans, the marketing towards middle-income students, and rising tuition prices, there was a continual increase in college enrollment from recent high school completers. Between 2000 and 2008 the total enrollment increased from 63% to 69% steadily.[27] As the number of students enrolling in higher education increased, the portion enrolling in public and private four-year and two-year institutions remained about the same. Between 1996-97 and 2004-05 there was an increase from 3% to 6% in the proportion of all undergraduates who are full-time students enrolled in for-profit institutions.[28] These for-profit schools, like DeVry University and University of Phoenix, offer online classes which lower overhead, and attract middle-income students with the argument that they can obtain their degree easily from home.

As more students are utilizing student loans to pay for their education, two policy changes in Bankruptcy code made it clear that no matter what, they’d have to repay them. In 1998 Congress changed the non-discharge period from seven years post-graduation to never. Students cannot shake direct or FFEL loans unless they die or are severely handicapped. This was seen as a way of protecting taxpayers who are funding the federal educational loans. In 2005 the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act decreed that private education loans also couldn’t be discharged in bankruptcy. Without the risk of bankruptcy nor the statue of limitations on collections applying to any student loan debt, federal or private, financing an education became a lucrative business for market lenders.[29] Because of the increasing interest and the money going to collection agencies, defaulting student loans became highly lucrative as well.

If students can no longer discharge their loans, lenders would theoretically make most of their money from interest rates. FFEL and direct loans set low interest rates, or subsidize them, while private loans can have fluctuating interest rates as high as credit card interest rates. In 2010, President Obama passed legislative that eliminated FFEL, meaning only the only types of federal loans are now direct loans. This was intended to eliminate fees accrued through the lending market and ultimately save taxpayers money.

Private loans contributed to 23% of Sallie Mae’s earnings in 2006, and the market for securitized student loans jumped 76% in 2006 to $16.6 billion.[30] Purchasers of student loan asset-backed securities (ABS) prefer private loans because Congress is making cuts in subsidies and federal loan products are becoming less profitable over time.[31]

According to a report by The Project on Student Debt[32], compiled from data form the U.S. Department of Education’s National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, the percentage of all undergraduates with private loans increased from 5% in 2003-04 to 14% in 2007-08, while the private loan volume increased from $7.2 billion to $15 billion in that time frame. The aggressive targeting for private loans can be seen in the same report, that in 2007-08 64% of private loan borrowers took out less than the maximum Stafford loans, and 26% took out no Stafford loans at all. We also see the influence of for-profit schools, which composed about 9% of all undergraduates but 27% of private loan borrowers. Considering both private school and for-profit undergraduates, these students make up 22% of total undergraduates and 49% of private loan borrowers.

When a national rhetoric of education being the social equalizer and important for personal development, it’s not wonder that students are setting their sites on elite private institutions where they hope to gain the same edge as other students, regardless of income. Money is theoretically removed from the equation and college enrollment is left to a matter of choice, but as shown money is inevitably needed to subsidize this choice. The loans taken out to pay for this choice are sometimes a part of unfair lender-college revenue sharing agreements and other conflicts of interest.

In 2007, after federal and journalistic investigations into these practices and multi-million dollar settlements, federal laws and regulations in the Higher Education Act of 2008 were created to govern the illegal inducements and preferred lenders lists. The year 2007 also saw the cutting of government subsidies to loans, which was considered a push for the secondary market towards private loans, as discussed earlier in this paper.

The market for student loan ABS could be experiencing some slight recoiling as more and more students are defaulting on their student loans.[33] A recent paper from the Institute for Higher Education Policy examined 8.7 million borrowers who entered repayment between 2004-2009 and reports that 26% of undergraduate borrowers who entered repayment in 2005 became delinquent without defaulting, and 15% defaulted.[34]

• A third of less of borrowers at four-year, public or private nonprofit institutions became delinquent or defaulted on their loans, while nearly half or more (45 percent and 53 percent, respectively) of their borrowers were making timely payments on their loans.
• In contrast, only one-quarter to one-third of borrowers at for-profit and public two-year institutions were making timely payments on their loans, and more than half of all borrowers in these sectors were delinquent or had already defaulted.

Newer data released by the U.S. Department of Education this year shows 13.8% of student loan borrowers defaulted on their loans within three years of entering repayment in 2008.[35] The “cohort default rate” at for-profit colleges was the highest at 25%, which are the institutes proportionally taking more private loans.

The bubble that won’t pop

This rising default rate is making some wonder whether student loans are becoming the next sub-prime loan financial bubble.

“Haven’t we heard this story before? It features a high-pressure sales force persuading consumers in search of the American dream to go deep into debt to purchase a product of often dubious value. Default rates are sky high. Taxpayer money is squandered. Top executives walk away with fortunes.”[36]

This quote from a Los Angeles Times story written last year exemplifies the worries surrounding the continual increase in private loans and tuition prices. Like being a homeowner, Americans have a deeply held belief in the value of being educated. Homes were thought to continually accrue value over time, rather than loose it, to the point where people were making unwise financing decisions like speculation interest loans and sub-prime loans. Studies came out showing how certain communities were targeted for these loans, even though they sometimes were eligible to acquire more sound financing options.[37] As the rate of foreclosure began to increase, and this over-eager investment into homeowner equity turned sour, the bubble burst.

Comparisons can easily be drawn to the current student loan market. As shown in this paper, middle-income students are being targeted for private loans, even though sometimes lower-interest rate loans are available. African-American students are the most likely to take out private loans; only 4% AA students took private loans out in 2003-04 while 17% took them out in 2007-08.[38] For-profit institutions are also accounting for the highest number of private loans, and, like sub-prime loans, are also accounting for the highest rate of default.

But student loan market is not quite like the housing market for several reasons. The first is that most student loans are federally guaranteed and if not, they’re non-dischargeable. This makes the student loan business very profitable in terms of default fees and collection agencies, and ensures that no matter what the loan has to be paid back (whether by the government or over a longer stretch of time). The commodity purchased with student loans, an education, is also no tangible like a home. There won’t be any mass foreclosures leaving people homeless. If a student defaults, the account is paid for by the government, then the government hires a collection agency to collect the money, and eventually wages will be garnished and social security withheld until the debt is paid.

One outcome is that there could be a freeze on credit, and a lowering amount of loans available, particularly private loans that are more sensitive to these developments. This freeze will allow the bubble to leak, but not quite pop.

Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager, and venture capitalist is one of the most outspoken about the impending education bubble. He argues that the belief in the safe value of education has been pushed to unhealthy levels and is innately hypocritical.[39]

Thiel talks about consumption masquerading as investment during the housing bubble, as people would take out speculative interest-only loans to get a bigger house with a pool and tell themselves they were being frugal and saving for retirement. Similarly, the idea that attending Harvard is all about learning? Yeah. No one pays a quarter of a million dollars just to read Chaucer. The implicit promise is that you work hard to get there, and then you are set for life.  It can lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. “It’s what you’ve been told all your life, and it’s how schools rationalize a quarter of a million dollars in debt,” Thiel says.[40]

When we consider the first big pushes towards higher education financing, most were enacted so talented, low-income students could have access to education that they never would have before. The 1950s and 1960s expanded rhetoric that it was in the Nation’s interest to educate young men and women, especially in science and mathematics, and that it was imperative for personal growth. But these pushes emphasized the general field of higher education—they weren’t arguing that it was everyone’s right to go to New York University, Harvard, or take online classes at DeVry. But with the wider and wider availability of loans to middle-income students brought a morphing of “choosing to go to college” to “choosing which college to go to.”

And like Thiel argues, prestige for universities is partly defined by their price tag. The harder it is to get in and the amounts of resources for ensuring a high quality education are reflected in the tuition of the school. So when it comes down to choosing which college, students naturally aim for the most prestigious they were accepted into because money is no longer a restriction. Of course not all students base their college decision on prestige, but this speaks to the changing social understanding of college costs and benefits.

To experiment with a world where there is a freeze on loans and not everyone can go to college, Thiel started the Thiel Foundation which gives 20 people under 20 $100,000 over two years in order to start a business.[41] He’s applying the logic that if you took whatever money you’d spend on college but put it directly towards building a career you’d end up farther than if you went to college first. Though his experiment is flawed in several ways, it does speak to the question that hinges on the current discussion of rapidly increasing student loans: how much is an education worth?

Conclusions and Discussion

The Class of 2011 at New York University will have paid about $160,000 each for their education in New York City, paid in grants, scholarships, and mostly loans. For some who managed to have half of that covered by grants and scholarships, they still have $80,000 in loans. By most loan repayment calculators, after six-months they will owe $800 in monthly payments. That is what some people may in mortgage payments.

But the Class of 2011 at NYU is not alone. Across the country the graduates that are celebrating this week are faced with the heaviest burden of debt to date. Equally rising is the rate of defaulting on student loans for students 2-3 years out of college. Because student loans are non-dischargeable, there is no end in sight except repayment.

This paper sought to identify how social, cultural, and most importantly policy changes played off of each other to create the situation we have today. In trying to help low-income students gain access to higher education, public policy started a trend and social precedent that anyone can go to an expensive school and pay later. A continuation of this student would more closely compare the housing bubble of 2008 with the current rate of inflation and interest rates on student loans. Another scope of this study would focus more on gender and race in access to student loans, particularly in private loans.

Brown sugar scrubs are great for the skin, but like most health and beauty products designed for women, they’re ridiculously over-priced. I made mind for about… $2? Who knows really because I had the ingredients just lying around my kitchen.

Last night I was poking around Reddit and saw a thread about a salt and olive oil scrub. The poster said she covered 2 table spoons of coarse sea salt with olive oil, then slathered it all over in the shower. Her skin, she testified, never felt so silky soft despite previously purchasing an array of scrubs, body washes, and lotions. Inspired by the post, I decided to make my own version.

So to the kitchen I went, opened up the cabinet above the sink, and picked up my container of sea salt. I looked at it a moment, then realized that I love using sea salt too much while cooking to potentially waste 1/4 of the container on an experiment. I put it back. Near the salt sat a bag of brown sugar. I vaguely remembered that brown sugar, while also rough, was good for the skin and smelled better, so I decided to use that. I know for a fact that none of my current roommates have ever baked anything in this kitchen, so I figured it was a summer sublettor’s and thus fair game.

I poured half a cup of brown sugar into a plastic bowl. Then I added 1/4 cup of olive oil. It seemed a little too oily, so I looked around and saw the french press still hadn’t been cleaned out. Again, I vaguely had some notion that it was good to rub your skin with coffee grounds. (If anything these “vague” notions I keep getting just prove that subliminal advertising works). So I scooped some of the coffee grounds into my mixture. Then I added a splash of vanilla. Then a little bit more sugar.

All said and done I ended up with a little over a cup of this mixture.

To the shower! I scrubbed this blackish-brown, gunky, and oily paste all over and let me tell you–it was amazing! There’s something fun and perverse about making a giant mess in the shower (yes, coffee grounds and sugar go EVERYWHERE), and it was a lot more satisfying than using a loofa in terms of exfoliation (yeah Dove, those tiny blue “exfoliation” balls in my body wash don’t really do anything). After I rinsed off, my skin was remarkably smoother and silkier. This shit works! I’m glad I used sugar and coffee instead of salt because it left me with a sweet scent afterward. And for practically nothing? Definitely worth it. Don’t spend $30 on a scrub ladies.

A story about Hispanics fleeing an oppressive and invasive ruling, and you use a photo of Hispanic children running? A little bit tasteless.

Love me,
I said,
like you would bury me in your garden
to take the stones
which I sprung
and worship their beauty
more
than any flowers spring could give you.

Florence + The Machine – Dog Days are Over
MIA – Galang
Rilo Kiley – The Moneymaker
Rolling Stones – I Can’t Get No Satisfaction
DJ Danger Mouse – Dirt Off Your Shoulder
Eve 6 – Open Road Song
Shakira – La Tortura
Eve ft Gwen Stefani – Let Me Blow Your Mind
Jay-Z – Empire State of Mind
Wolfmother – Woman
Spiderbait – Black Betty
Rhianna – Only Girl in the World
Missy Elliot – Work It
Katrina & The Waves – Walking on Sunshine
Destiny’s Child – Survivor
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll
Ciara – Gimme Dat
Kid Cudi – Pursuit of Happiness
MGMT – Electric Feel
Kanye West – All of the Lights
Kanye West – Stronger
Kanye West – Monster
Kanye West – The New Workout Plan
Adele – Rumour Has It
Eminem – Lose Yourself
Rolling Stones – Jumping Jack Flash
Adele – Rolling in the Deep
Jimi Hendrix – Fire
The White Stripes – Conquest
Flogging Molly – What’s Left of the Flag

Here’s my old playlist:

Now that I’m looking at it, I think I might run to this old one tomorrow. I think it’s good to always have a few different playlists to keep it fresh.

The dog days are over

The dog days are done

The horses are a comin’

So you better run

Run fast for your mother

Run fast for your father

Run for for your children and your sisters and your brother

Leave all your love and your longing behind

You cannot carry them with you if you want to survive