Is Taylor Swift's New Album Worth Buying?

I have no shame in admitting it: I’m a T-Swift fan. Say what you will, but at the end of the day youknow one of her songs is going to be stuck in your head like the never-ending soundtrack to your life. Now, I'm a fan, but I'm also a scrooge who hates paying for things. Usually I'll buy one or two songs out of an entire album and occasionally try to catch the others on the radio and think, "Well, that's just as good, right?" So if you're in the same boat—scoot over, there's a lot of us in here and if we break it, we buy it. Also, here's a rundown of her latest album, Red, so you can make an informed decision as to whether it's worth your hard-earned cash.

The Good:

State of Grace—This song is like an ethereal concoction of spooky drums and it will make you feel like you're in a misty forest.

Red—At first I thought this one was kind of "meh," but a few hours later I realized it was stuck in my head, and even now I can't get it out, and I fully expect it to be stuck in my head several years in the future. Even weirder, I'm okay with that.

Treacherous—I will freely admit that I listened to this song relentlessly for three days straight until I hated it, and even then I was still partial to its kickass backup vocals.

I Knew You Were Trouble—This is kind of like what would happen if you crossbred Miley Cyrus with dubstep.

All Too Well—THIS SONG IS A JOURNEY EVERYONE NEEDS TO TAKE. This song is what falling out of love feels like.

22—Definitely the kind of freakishly upbeat pop song I would love to blast in my car with all the windows rolled down.

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together—If you haven’t heard this one by now, hurry on back to the ROCK you’ve been living under and STAY THERE, because this is torturously catchy. As soon as you hear it once, it's all over.

Stay Stay Stay—Cute and fluffy, like sponge cake. This song is essentially sponge cake.

The Last Time—Prepare yourselves: this is the song that NEVER ENDS. Okay, okay, not really, but it's very repetitive and I was getting impatient because I had to go get my laundry before somebody threw it on the floor. Regardless, I love duets, and I enjoyed this one once my laundry was secure. It was very “Set the Fire to the Third Bar,” most likely because it has Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody.

The Lucky One—Some people are comparing this to Britney Spears’ “Lucky,” but come on. That little ditty came out twelve years ago. (I had to check the math on that, because it feels like it was just yesterday that I was screeching “iiiisn’t she looovely, this Holly-WOOOOOD giiiirl” into a hairbrush.) It’s about time someone else came along to remind us that being famous is hell.

Everything Has Changed—This is kind of a mixing bowl of all my favorite things, like warm cookies, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and puppies, thrown together and embodied musically. Mostly because it’s a duet with ED FREAKIN' SHEERAN! (I wouldn’t say no to a JGL/T-Swift duet, though. I wouldn’t say anything. I’d probably implode.)

Starlight—If you can keep from dancing to this, you’re some kind of robot oblivious to normal social conventions and I’ve got my eye on you.

Begin Again—This song. Dude, THIS SONG. This song is what hope sounds like.

The Meh:

Holy Ground—It's not that it was bad; I just didn't fall in love and want to marry it.

Sad Beautiful Tragic—The title doesn't lie. It's sad, beautiful, and tragic. I can see myself listening to this while staring out the window on a rainy day as I'm pretending I'm in a music video, but alas, right now it's sunny and I can't do much with that.

I Almost Do—This is song is all country and break-ups; in other words, it's classic Taylor. It's not phenomenal, but it's not like I'm going to skip it every time it comes up on shuffle.

Final Thoughts: If you like Taylor Swift, you’ll probably love Red. If you’re set in your ways thinking she’s some pop-country princess-devil here to poison our radio waves with her catchy tunes, it probably won’t change your mind. In any case, I bought it, and considering I decided last week that I don't really need silverware (that's what fingers are for), you can rest assured that it's money worth investing.

7 Halloween Costumes for Groups

So you've wrangled together a group of friends (or random strangers off the street—I'm not here to judge) to go trick-or-treating, and you're wondering, how can I make this night of mischief and inevitable sugar overload even better? I'll tell you how: by coordinating your costumes. Why? Because there's nothing more whimsical than strict costume coordination, especially if it's one of the following:

Tetris pieces. If you do it right, this will be one of those costumes that won't even need an explanation. If you don't, at best all the neighborhood kids will be curiously asking their parents why a bunch of teenagers are running around in colorful box-outfits. At worst, they'll throw eggs.

Pac-Man and the ghosts. If you want something scary, this is it. How many times have you turned a corner to grab those last few pellets and found yourself staring down Pinky, Blinky, Inky, and Clyde with zero lives left, at which point you release an inhuman scream and everyone else in the arcade slowly backs away? Answer: too many. That is hell, my friends, and every time you toss a few quarters into that machine and embark on a "quick game" of Pac-Man, you're living it.

Rock, Paper, and Scissors. This will suck if you have a fourth friend, because they'll want to be part of the group and go as something like "fire" or "cherry bomb" or, God forbid, "shoot." Ultimately, at some point in the night whoever dresses up as Rock will begin to resent the fact that paper inexplicably beats rock, and this resentment will grow until, just to prove a point, he attacks. Be ready.

Crayola crayons. This is straightforward, really, and all that's left to decide is who gets to be Tickle-Me-Pink and who gets stuck being mustard yellow.

Clue characters. Everybody should get a weapon, and occasionally someone must shout something like, "It was YOU! With the wrench! In the dining room!" Full chase ensues. End scene. (But we all know it was Mr. Green, because c'mon, just look at him.)

Supporting Mario Kart characters. The main drivers like Bowser and Yoshi are overrated, so I propose instead that you all go as the supporting cast. If you're the Blue Shell, zoom ahead and attack the person who's at the front of your trick-or-treating gang. Shy Guys will simply lurk and look creepy. Whoever is the Bullet Bill must charge ahead, shoving little kids aside with impunity, and they won't be sorry. Chain Chomps will grab people and drag them around, and perhaps throw them off a few bridges. Lakitu will wave a checkered flag and won't contribute much, but if you fall off said bridge, he will take about eight or nine lifetimes to put you back on the track. Goombas will pretty much just be in the way at all times. And then one person has to dress as Peach so everyone has somebody to attack, because Peach is just such an asshat.

A chain gang. If you're pressed for time and/or you really just want to reap the sugary rewards without any of the hassle, buy some cheap plastic handcuffs and handcuff everybody together. But know this—if sitcoms have taught us anything, it's that someone will lose the key, and zany hijinks will commence. Either that, or the zombie apocalypse will finally happen and they'll take you all out in one fell swoop and feast on your handcuffed limbs, but that's just what you get for taking the easy way out, you lazy freeloader.

Other Awesome October Holidays (Because Halloween Shouldn't Get All the Credit)

October plays host to some of the greatest and most delicious holidays of the year. I don't know who decides any of this; maybe there's a committee somewhere that thought our lack of National Greasy Foods Day was one of the greatest oversights in history. Nonetheless, October's here, and so are all the yummy, dangerous, and cheese-related holidays that come with it.

October 1: Homemade Cookies Day. (Let's be serious. EVERY day is Homemade Cookies Day.)

October 2: Name Your Car Day. (Anecdote: in my friend group, you did not choose your car's name. The name was bestowed upon your car. Needless to say, there were disputes about the validity of names like "the Loser Cruiser" and "Poop McVolvo.")

October 3: Balloons Around the World Day. (On their website, when asked, "Why October 3rd?" they say, "No particular reason, but it's a great way to start to National Pizza Month." These people know the way to my heart.)

October 4: National Taco Day, World Animal Day. (Does this include all the animals that go into tacos?)

October 5: International World Teacher's Day, World Smile Day. (Make your teacher smile and you've celebrated two holidays in one! Or just draw one on their face.)

October 6: Mad Hatter Day, National Noodle Day. (Get a top hat and some penne and prepare to wreak havoc.)

October 7: Bathtub Day. (Celebrate with caution. Historically bathtubs have been the sites of both epiphanies and murder. Also, this is not to be confused with Bathtub Party Day, which is December 5th and sounds dangerous, or Read in the Bathtub Day, which is February 9th and sounds heavenly.)

October 8: Columbus Day, Canadian Thanksgiving, National Fluffernutter Day. (If your life has passed thus far without any really ecstatic fluffernutter consumption, you're doing it wrong.)

October 9: Leif Erikson Day, Moldy Cheese Day, Fire Prevention Day. (Vikings plus cheese equals fire?)

October 10: Tuxedo Day. (Here's a bunch of pictures of Joseph Gordon-Levitt rocking various tuxedos. You're welcome.)

October 11: Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work or School Day. (Side note: nobody seems to know what day this actually falls upon. The general consensus is mid-October, ish, so I say take your teddy bear to school whenever you damn well please.)

October 12: Moment of Frustration Day. (Channel the year's frustrations into this single glorious day of pillow-punching and therapeutic journaling.)

October 13: Yorkshire Pudding Day. (Cheerio! Did I do that right?)

October 14: International Dessert Day, Chocolate-Covered Insects Day. (Should these two fall on the same day? Discuss.)

October 15: Global Handwashing Day. (Think of all the wild times you could have with THIS.)

October 16: World Food Day. (Here, have a link.)

October 17: Big Yellow Hat Day. (Finally, the day has arrived wherein I can swagger proudly down the streets donning my Curious George hat and not be judged.)

October 18: Alaska Day, National Chocolate Cupcake Day. (Grab your favorite Alaskan and whip up some chocolate cupcakes. Or even your second-favorite Alaskan.)

October 20: Sweetest Day. (Only in some Midwestern states? Apparently? I don't know why this is so exclusive.)

October 21: Apple Day, Babbling Day. (My babbling is at its most incomprehensible when there are apples, so this works out perfectly.)

October 22: National Knee Day. (Do you spend enough time appreciating your knees? I didn't think so.)

October 23: National Boston Cream Pie Day. (There's a reason Boston Cream Pie gets its own day, and that's because eating it is a sensation some people associate with religious epiphany.)

October 24: United Nations Day, National Bologna Day. (Apparently United Nations Day didn't garner the right celebratory reaction, so they threw in a little something extra.)

October 25: National Denim Day, National Greasy Foods Day. (Ditto.)

October 26: National Pumpkin Day. (Did you know that the largest pumpkin ever recorded was a whopping 1,810 pounds? Now you do. And that guy probably didn't even use an umbrella-wand, HAGRID.)

October 27: Boxer Shorts Day, Swamp Buggy Race Day, Cranky Co-workers' Day. (This is the one day a year you can storm out of the office in your boxers on your way down to the swamp buggy races. Take advantage.)

October 28: National Chocolate Day. (Forget Chocolate DAY. I think we should do like the Chinese and have Year of the Chocolate.)

October 29: National Cat Day, National Oatmeal Day. (I dislike both cats and oatmeal, but have you ever Googled cats eating oatmeal? It's PRECIOUS.)

October 30: National Candy Corn Day. (Did you know there's also Bunny Corn for Easter and Cupid Corn for Valentine's Day? I can't figure out if that's brilliant or just plain wrong.)

October 31: HALLOWEEN! (C'mon, I had to.)

It's also...

Lupus Awareness Month, National Squirrel Awareness Month, LGBT History Month, National Pizza Month, Adopt-a-Shelter-Animal Month, and National Popcorn Popping Month. So try to smash those all together to create what could potentially be the strangest, most amazing party ever.

Movies You Really Shouldn't Watch with Your Parents

There are certain movies you should never watch with the people who made you. Now, sometimes there’s just a line or two in the entire movie that's uncomfortable, and this can be easily rectified with a well-timed snack or bathroom break. But sometimes the movie is simply doomed to be a big party of awkward. Not in and of itself—if you were with friends, this would be hilarious and barely worth noting. But with your parents, you’re squirming and mentally tabulating the number of times someone says the word "sex."

That being said, there are some basic categories that constitute an awkward cinematic viewing experience with the parental units, and they are as follows:

Too Much Sexy Time
Whether it’s a harmless innuendo or a full-blown steamy scene, there’s nothing like too much onscreen HND to make Family Movie Night unbearably awkward. Your parents are always going to see you as their kid, and there’s no way in hell your impressionable child eyes should be beholding things that are far above your maturity level. And there’s no reason you should be hearing, much less understanding, the inappropriate jokes that are flying fast and furious.

Movies to avoid: The Hangover 2, Showgirls, Black Swan, American Pie, Brokeback Mountain,The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Borat, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (as a general rule, you should probably avoid all movies with the word "porno" in the title).

Too Many F-BombsSome parents are cool about curse words. Some are less than cool. If you grew up in a household where swearing earned a time-out of the highest caliber, and was the rough equivalent of punching your sibling in the face, then every naughty word is going to be like a knife in your soul. This includes the frequency with which they are used and the context in which they are spoken. A casual I-just-stubbed-my-toe or I-really-wish-that-building-hadn’t-exploded swear word may not warrant a flinch, but a colorful string of elaborately woven curses will do the trick.

Movies to avoid: Tropic Thunder, Superbad, Knocked Up (anything by Judd Apatow is practically a guarantee), The Usual Suspects, South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut (I really can't stress this enough).

Too Much Violence/Gore (a.k.a. “the Ick Factor”)Sometimes a horror movie has so much gore that it’s hard to watch it yourself; no way are you going to bring your parents into the mix. Every time someone gets gruesomely axe-murdered, you just know they’ll be cringing and mentally wondering about your taste in movies and what kind of psychopath they have brewing here.

Movies to avoid: Battle Royale, Battle Royale 2 (probably... I haven't seen it yet, but nothing about the first one suggested to me that its sequel will err towards the romantic comedy genre), The Human Centipede, The Human Centipede 2 (ditto), American Psycho, Fatal Attraction, anything from the Saw franchise.

Movies That Somehow Incorporate All ThreeSometimes you’ll hit upon a movie that includes the full spectrum of sexy time, swearing, and gore in a trifecta of discomfort, and if your parents have camped out on the sofa with a bucket of popcorn, it’s going to be a harrowing journey.

Movies to avoid: Most of the movies on this list overlap categories in some form or fashion. The writers are thinking, “If we’re going to make this weird for kids to watch with their parents, there’s no point in making it anything less than a FULL-BLOWN AWKWARD NIGHTMARE THAT WILL DEFINE THIS RELATIONSHIP FOR YEARS TO COME."

12 Weird Facts About Dreams

Dreams have been fascinating people since the dawn of time. Ancient Egyptians thought they were the gods sending messages. Sigmund Freud believed they were the window to every forbidden desire your subconscious has ever repressed. Whatever they are, we all have them (that's scientific fact), so here's a helping of dream facts you may or may not find interesting:

1. We forget 90% of our dreams. So for all that bizarro crap your brain churns out every night, leaving you to wake up and wonder, bewildered, "What was that?"... well, there's plenty more where that came from.

2. Animals dream too. Anyone who's ever seen their dog yelp and twitch while they're sleeping (or has at least seen the YouTube videos) knows this to be true.

3. Our muscles are paralyzed while we're dreaming.

4. Dreams have been thought by some to be precognitive, and not just back in ancient times. Abraham Lincoln purportedly "foresaw" his own assassination in a dream, and Mark Twain dreamed of his brother's riverboat accident before it ever happened... right down to minute details like the coffin and its placement in his sister's living room.

5. Life-altering ideas and inventions have been conceived from dreams. Elias Howe, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Stephen King, and Paul McCartney have attributed their sewing machines, classic novels, and famous Grammy-winning pop songs to dreams.

6. Some say dreams can be symbolic. This explains the dream where Joseph Gordon-Levitt took me to prom. Prom clearly symbolizes marriage forever, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt clearly symbolizes himself. (Is it too much to hope that that's precognitive?)

7. Birth order tends to sway dream aggression. First-born females act more aggressively in their slumber fantasies, certain as they are that they are ENTITLED TO ALL THAT POWER AND INFLUENCE. (Yes, I'm a first-born child.)

8. "Dreamed" and "dreamt" are both acceptable. Not about dreams, per se, but it needed to be said.

9. Stages of sleep are responsible for whether your dream is a sloppy mess of indistinct characters and limited focus, or a complex plot-driven masterpiece with themes and motifs. Stage 1 and 2 sleep errs toward the former, and REM sleep toward the latter.

10. "Lucid dreaming" occurs when the person becomes aware that they are dreaming, thereby giving them control over their dream. So theoretically you could fly or do perfect cartwheels or eat twice your weight in pie, or turn your nighttime adventures into your own personal Hogwarts.

11. We only dream about faces we've seen. There are no strangers in dreamworld. So it follows logically that the sombrero-wearing mystery man that tried to run me over with a motorcycle in my dream last night... I've seen him before. I just don't know where.

12. Scientists are working on being able to record dreams, which is equal parts awesome and horrifying if you've had as many naked-in-a-public-place dreams as I have.