For "We Think Alone," July asked friends to choose an email from their "sent" folders; the email must cohere to one of 10 themes. The first of 10 aggregations of stars' private thoughts went out today -- organized around the theme of "money" -- and readers found that "Girls" creator Lena Dunham is just parsimonious enough to turn down a $24,000 sofa, but spendthrift enough to consider it.

According to the sent email forwarded to "We Think Alone" subscribers, Dunham's assistant wrote her with the specs on a custom Swedish sofa:

TOTAL PRICE (estimate) INCLUDING SHIPPING $24,035.24

TOTAL TIMEFRAME: 10 Weeks to make it, 6-10 weeks to ship it from Sweden.16-20 weeks

The price to make the Liljevalch Sofa is $14,878.93 plus the fabric which is $283.56 per meter and we would need 20 meters of fabric. So the entire cost of the couch would be $20,554.39.

Shipping the sofa:  It will take between 16 and 20 weeks to make and ship the sofa to us (from Sweden and will cost $3,080.85, plus $400.00 in customs charges.

whenever you pick the fabric I can order for you! :) xox

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In a statement announcing the change, the FDA said it was complying with an order from U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman, who had previously slammed the Obama administration's obstructionism over access to emergency contraception as "politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent."

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"This report shows that the HPV vaccine works well, and the report should be a wake-up call to our nation to protect the next generation by increasing HPV vaccination rates," Frieden said in a statement on Wednesday.

Rates of infection dropped 56 percent among girls ages 14 to 19, a response rate that exceeded researcher's expectations given relatively low inoculation rates in the United States.

That may be because the vaccine benefits people who haven't been vaccinated, as Reuters notes:

[Lead researcher Lauri] Markowitz said the higher than expected response rate could be the result of so-called "herd immunity," in which the vaccine is also reducing infections among those who are not vaccinated. Or it could mean that the vaccine was working even among women who had not received the full three doses, which included about 49 percent of women in the study.

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The members of the ring use the Internet in order to locate celebrity addresses -- in particular, a fake version of Google. That in and of itself isn't so novel: Because of copyright issues for pretty much every film other than Google infomercial "The Internship," many works of entertainment use fake search engines (one popular one across many TV shows is "Finder-Spyder"). But the teens encounter gossip blog posts that very plainly state where in the world celebrities will be going, with no shades of meaning. Even at the height of her fame, Paris Hilton wasn't likely to get a Dlisted item stating in its headline what country she would be visiting in the near future, and those blogs barely post anything without a pun or some kind of wordplay. It felt as though no one involved had ever read a celebrity gossip blog. (In most contexts, that's something to be proud of.)

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Here's a sample of what she has to say:

Asked about the response to the episode where Hannah lands a doctor played by Patrick Wilson for a two-day romp: "I get so tired of having to cry out "misogyny," but that's what's going on in this situation. People questioning the idea that a woman could sleep with a man who defied her lot in the looks bracket hews so closely to these really outdated ideas about what makes a woman worth spending time with. Really? Can you not imagine a world in which a girl who's sexually down for anything and oddly gregarious pulls a guy out of his shell for two days?

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And yet, more than anything, the pre-season-3 excitement about a new cast member ("This Has Got to Be Marnie's New Boyfriend on 'Girls,' Right?," asked an Atlantic Wire headline; "Zegen may fill the void left by the sudden departure of Christopher Abbott," noted Deadline, more sedately) may feel like much ado about nothing for those who remember the hubbub over Donald Glover's casting, or Patrick Wilson's.

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1. You've probably seen Zegen on TV or film already. He's appeared in "Adventureland," played Damien Keefe in "Rescue Me," acts as mobster Bugsy Siegel on "Boardwalk Empire" and appears alongside "Girls" co-star Adam Driver in "Frances Ha," currently out in theaters. Here's a reel with some of his scenes:

Michael Zegen Reel from Michael Zegen on Vimeo.

2. Zegen graduated from Skidmore College with a degree in theater and got his first big break on TV playing Dwight the Troubled Teen on "Late Show With David Letterman." He told Black Book Mag:

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So naturally it must be just like "Girls"! Except it isn't. At all.

Hannah Horvath, the hero of "Girls," is younger than Frances and far more confident in her art. Although Hannah's family won't help her pay the bills, she seems to, as of late, magically have enough money to pay the bills every month. Frances, with a few more years of disillusionment under her belt, faces down far more serious challenges than does Hannah -- which isn't a criticism of "Girls."

But none of those differences have stopped the easy comparisons. Turns out there really is a more pernicious and lazy cultural reference than comparing anything in the 1960s to Don Draper's life, or equating anything quirky and indie with "Portlandia." Please, let's come to an understanding: Culture writers of America, we will believe you know about "Girls" even if you don't compare everything about young people in cities to Lena Dunham.

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There is no shortage of professed wisdom on getting through heartbreak: There are women's magazines, advice columnists, self-help books and, of course, the cliche Sunday brunch proclamations of "you deserve better." That's not to mention the prescriptions of a Katherine Heigl movie, a tub of ice cream and some "Jagged Little Pill" karaoke. And yet, enough people still find themselves in search of post-breakup help that Elliott now does breakup coaching full-time and has clients the world over. It was recently rumored, and totally unsubstantiated, that Katy Perry paid a high-priced breakup coach to get over her ex-husband Russell Brand.

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It's "not about what you love -- it's about how you love it" and "finding other people who love it the way you do" is the defining characteristic of "why being a nerd is awesome," said Wheaton.

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Like the fairy-tale forest that turns out to be something more akin to a Hieronymous Bosch painting, Amy Schumer is far less virtuous than she appears. The comedian, whose series "Inside Amy Schumer" premieres on Comedy Central April 30, boasts one of the most subversive voices in comedy, imbuing riffs on porn, abortion and below-the-belt grooming (she refers to bikini waxing as “getting my vagina ready for its first quinceañera”) with a sly, oddly poignant sensibility. A bit from "Mostly Sex Stuff," on hooking up with a man without testicles, is particularly illustrative: “Girls don’t care about balls, but when they’re not there we miss them. You know, they’re like grandparents.”

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Sylvia films her "Super-Awesome Maker Show" with help from her parents, but she is the driving force behind the series, as the Times reports:

The seeds for the show were planted when Sylvia was 5, and she and her father attended the Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif., an annual event organized by Maker Magazine that celebrates makers and their projects. Two summers ago, Mr. Todd began videotaping Sylvia’s demonstrations, as a summer project. “We just wanted to do something fun,” Sylvia said.

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"This has been a weird week," says Poehler. "I love you, Boston."

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Yorke and Godrich fielded questions on breakups, overcoming shyness, and insecurity.

On shyness:

Yorke: “If you have a crush on him, if you're really, really, really, really shy, which is what I was at that age -- also, I was at a boys' school so it was impossible to meet girls anyway -- how about just write him a note? Or if you can’t bear it just throw him against a wall sometime.”

On breaking up with someone boring:

Godrich: “Yeah, of course it’s okay to break up with them. But maybe you can not just say ‘Hey you’re boring me so I’m going to break up with you.’ You can be a lot more politic about it.”

Yorke: “I’d go with that, actually.”

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Abbott, who played Charlie, Marnie's (Allison Williams) on-again (and now off, permanently) boyfriend, "didn’t like the direction things are going in," a source told the Post. He's also apparently "at odds with" series creator Lena Dunham, so much so that he's walking away from the show that first "put him on the map."

Abbott's rep confirmed the news to the Post, saying:

“[Chris] is grateful for the experience of collaborating with Lena, Judd [Apatow], and the entire ‘Girls’ cast and crew, but right now he’s working on numerous other projects and has decided not to return to the show.”

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Laura Miller, a Yankee, was enlightened by former newspaper reporter Tracy Thompson's deeply personal account of the transformation of Georgia, titled "The New Mind of the South":

Thompson gives "The New Mind of the South" a muscular tension that a merely nostalgic memoir or a self-effacing work of reportage could never achieve. She vividly recalls the embracing evangelical church life of her 1960s youth, when the religion was "otherworldly and apolitical" and therefore a marked contrast to the activist fundamentalism that arose in the 1970s or the show-bizzy extravaganza of a megachurch she visits in suburban Atlanta. Yet the latter, an outpost of the "prosperity gospel," turns out to be more multiracial and feminist than she expected. Such churches can’t provide her with the comfort she once found in the small church where her family used to worship, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t doing some good.

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Two weeks after we had sex for the first time, he and I and his best friend got drunk — me for the first time in my life — and I ended up having sex in a park with both of them. It was somewhat miserable for me to have sex consecutively with two young men, ages 17 and 19, and to hear the second one ask, in the midst of intercourse, “Are you using birth control?” and quickly add, “Oh, who cares — if you get pregnant, it’s your fault,” and to have my bra and panties left behind on the grass when they drove me home. I was shaken both by the degrading nature of the incident and by the fact that I had allowed it. But allow it, I did.  Was I raped? No. Did I ever for one second think that maybe I had been raped? No.

Many would disagree.

* * *

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These roles include "caucasian heavy set ages 18-25 patient," "chainsmoking nurse," and "African American patient ages 37-40 well dressed business man with high end suits and/or business casual." Looks like Hannah might be making another trip to the hospital!

The casting breakdown also includes "Latin maintenance worker type" and "Latin social worker type." The series was subject to criticisms, particularly in its first season, that minorities were invisible or relegated to service-worker positions like nannies or, well, maintenance workers; in the second season, Dunham cast the actor Donald Glover, who is black, as a love interest.

Actors who can pull off any of these parts -- or "alcoholic with teased hair," or "Caucasian slovenly, beer gut, balding male" -- should move quickly; Dunham has previously said that season 3 will begin shooting this month.

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So how can we make peace with this Hannah, who, after finally getting what she wants — a good (enough) job and a nice(ish) boy — is overcome by OCD, a terribly crippling condition in real life, and possibly so in drama. A very smart commenter on Facebook recently noted that the ear-poking seems almost an act of desperation, as if Hannah were trying to dig out her neurosis with a Q-tip. It certainly does, but what about losing Adam has caused this syndrome? Is it stopping her from writing the book? Is the book stopping her from writing Adam? Was the plot stopping Dunham from writing an explanation for either of these? Hannah is poking around for answers, lost and alone. As are we.

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