The day I was behind the times in the blogosphere, or why you should only date guys that like your creepy clay figurines. Or guys that are Jared Padalecki.

I knew this was going to happen when I started blogging. I would get excited about it for a few months, and then I'd get distracted and go weeks and weeks without writing anything, and then people would lose interest and no one would read it anymore and I'd get sad and panic about what exciting topic I'd need to write about to get people's attention again and then I'd never be able to think of anything cool enough because there would be too much pressure and oh dear god what should I write about?!?! I feel like I'm always a week or so behind on online trends and pop culture news or political news so I can't write about anything contemporary because everyone's already weighed in on those issues. The most recent movies I've seen that are worth commenting on are The Hunger Games, which everyone and their mother has blogged about, and What's Your Number?, which I watched last night but every other feminist blogger worth her salt has already talked about because it deals so explicitly with the politics of female promiscuity and includes the douche-bag-man-whore-misogynist-is-actually-a-nice-guy-once-you-get-past-his-emotional-baggage trope which I am very tired of because pretty much all of the douche-bag-man-whore-misogynists I've ever met are actually douche-bag-man-whore-misogynists and there is no way in hell I would put in the time and effort to teach them Feminism 101 every single fucking time they said something douche-y or misogynistic because I AM NOT YOUR FUCKING TEACHER (unless I am, in which case I will teach you Feminism 101 over and over again because they pay me to). That being said, What's Your Number? is actually a hilarious movie and is nice in a find-a-man-that-accepts-you-and-your-promiscuity-and-your-creepy-clay-figurines-as-you/they-are kind of way. Which, I think, is a very important message. Particularly the creepy clay figurines part. Because, lord knows, you should never date a guy that doesn't love your creepy clay figurines. That should be a rule in whatever the straight-girl opposite of the Bro Code is.

Anyway, aside from that, I've been watching Gilmore Girls and Buffy, and I feel like pretty much everything that needs to be said about both of those has already been said, especially Buffy. I went to the Popular Culture Association of Canada conference in Niagara Falls this past weekend and THERE WERE NO PANELS ON BUFFY. It's like all the scholars in Canada were just like FUCK IT, WE'VE SAID IT ALL. I don't know if that's true. But I certainly have nothing new to contribute to that discussion. Although I read an article on After Elton this morning about the five gayest episodes of Buffy and they seemed kind of arbitrary to me. Like...Willow is openly gay for the last few seasons. So pretty much all of the episodes about her in the last few seasons are gay, aren't they? Or I am misunderstanding what makes an episode gay? Their reasoning seemed all over the place... "lots of naked boys!" and "gay actor as central character!" and "Willow's gayness is hinted at vaguely long before she comes out!" seemed to all be valid reasons. Anyway, my point is, I feel like that list could have been a lot longer than five. Or it should have had more specific criteria. Do they mean the episode features queer characters? Do they mean there's a lot of eye candy for queer men? I DON'T KNOW. So I guess I had something to contribute to the discussion about the discussion of Buffy. We're into meta-discussions now. My head hurts. I also watch Weeds and Supernatural, but I'm not up-to-date on either of those, so my comments would be behind the times. But watching the first and second seasons of Gilmore Girls at the same time as watching Supernatural is WEIRD. (Not at EXACTLY the same time--I can't multitask like that...obviously...) Jared Padalecki goes from being tall, skinny cute boy to SUPER MEGA HOTTIE MAN. Also, the wrong person is named Dean in Supernatural. Very confusing. I refer to the two main characters in Supernatural as Dean and Sam-Dean. It's weird because I've had friends who have changed their names and I adjusted to that very easily but I can't adjust to a character on a TV show changing his name when he's on another TV show. And neither of those names are actually his name. His name is Jared. Which is a stupid name, if you ask me. It does not fully describe his hotness. Jared is not a hot name.

Well, for someone who has nothing to say, I've certainly managed to say a lot. I think that's why I decided to start blogging in the first place. It's style over substance. It doesn't matter what I say, as long as it's somewhat entertaining. It's an nice shift from academic writing, where I'm trying to write something substantial about the Backstreet Boys which is like an oxymoron or something. Also, I'm finding it super weird to write about how they were marketed. I mean, it's one thing to analyze their songs or their music videos, because that was the "art" that they put out there to be consumed and talked about. But when I'm talking about how their personalities and relationships were marketed, it feels weird. I forget I'm talking about real people. Like Nick Carter exists, in the real world, as a person, and I have no idea how much of what was written about him in the 1990s was actually him, and how much was manipulated and fabricated to create a certain image. I'm having an ethical and existential crisis here.

Maybe staring at a picture of Jared Padalecki will solve my crisis...

You'll always be Dean in my heart.

The day I didn't shower but posted pictures of myself anyway, or why I feel qualified to give Lorelai Gilmore parenting advice.

So I intended to post something new over the weekend, but clearly that did not happen. I had a whole plan! On Saturday I was going to get a ton of school work done and then Sunday I would write a blog post and then relax. But then I got sick. It was like a cold on steroids. There were the regular cold symptoms and then there was this pressure in my sinuses and this shooting pain behind my eyes that made doing pretty much anything besides drinking echinacea tea and watching Gilmore Girls incredibly painful and dizzy-ing. But I'm feeling much better now! Apparently echinacea tea and Gilmore Girls is the miracle cure. I'm thinking it had more to do with the Gilmore Girls, though...

Seriously, though, I have a question for all the hardcore Gilmore Girls fans out there. How pissed does the beginning of the sixth season make you?!?! I try so hard to be happy for Luke and Lorelai because they're engaged and everything but I can't help fixating on the fact that Lorelai is supposed to be the coolest mom ever and she TOTALLY BLEW IT. I know that it's incredibly annoying when people who don't have children start criticizing other people's parenting skills, but Lorelai is not real, so I feel like this should be considered an exception to the rule. So for those of you not in the loop (and for some reason still reading...), Lorelai's daughter Rory gets torn apart by her boyfriend's family (not literally), then hired as an intern at her boyfriend's father's newspaper, then torn apart for her performance there (again, not literally) which is terribly depressing because all Rory ever wanted in life was to be a journalist, then she (literally) steals a yacht with her boyfriend and gets arrested and then she decides to take some time off from school. Now, after all of that, Lorelai decides to REFUSE TO SPEAK TO HER DAUGHTER because...wait for it......................she's taking time off of school. No, not because SHE STOLE A YACHT, but because she's taking time off of school. And apparently really smart people like Rory never take time off or question what they want to do with their lives or anything silly like that. And then Rory's grandfather realizes that Rory is throwing her life away because she's working for the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) while she's out of school which, again, is completely ridiculous, because the girl is 20 and she's organizing huge charity events and stuff and that shit is really hard and really what boggled my mind more was the fact that politically progressive Rory decided to raise money for the soldiers in Iraq and didn't, you know, mention the fact that she likely does not support the war in Iraq. I mean, I'm sure she supports the individual soldiers, but donating mass amounts of money to the war in Iraq doesn't really seem like a Rory thing to do. Well, except for the fact that unlike her mother, who I usually adore, Rory is a total pushover. Except at the very end of the series. Did you know she goes off and follows OBAMA'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN? The first one, not this one. The show's over. Anyway, that's how awesome she is. And ANYWAY, I think it's really shitty parenting when you refuse to support your child when he/she takes a path that is only slightly different from the one you intended for her. Also, seriously, don't live vicariously through your child. Just because you, Lorelai Gilmore, didn't get to graduate from high school and go to college does not mean you should force your daughter to push her way through the education system at top speed if she doesn't want to. And keep in mind that I'm a grad student--one that's never taken ANY time off from school since I started kindergarten--and I'm saying that it's totally cool and normal and probably a good idea to take time off if you feel like you need it. I think that open-minded-ness on my part cancels out the whole unsolicited-parenting-advice-from-someone-with-no-kids thing.

Okay, Gilmore Girls rant over. And yes, for those of you who were wondering, I am aware that these people are fictional, okay? Don't judge me. I don't judge all you people when you rant for HOURS about Harry Potter. Okay, I do. But there's a lot more of you than there are of me!

Anyway, Thursday is my birthday (yay! I love birthdays!) and my parents came to visit me on Sunday night to celebrate. And they brought me one of my most awesome-est SWAGmas presents that I accidentally left behind.

Check it out:

Okay, so I haven't showered today. NO JUDGING. We've been through this already. Stop judging me. Anyway, it's a SWAGmas mug!!! Look at all the SWAG!!!!! And it's like nine kinds of offensive and I get that but I think swag by nature is offensive and I don't really care right now because I don't feel like caring and it's my birthday so again: don't judge me.

I actually did get a birthday present too, but it was underwear and I'm totally not posting pictures of my underwear online. Although I did open the present at a restaurant and I have to say that despite my general open-minded-ness about underclothing and other things, underwear does not belong on the dinner table. It's weird.

Anyway, I had every intention of talking about something smart today and I DO have something intelligent to say about blogging and resistance but honestly I don't have time because I was sick with the cold on steroids and now I'm really behind on my readings and I have to lead a seminar discussion on Friday and go to a professionalization seminar on academic publishing tomorrow and I want to actually have time to celebrate my birthday on Thursday because I effing love birthdays and I love mine even more this year because I'm not old! I realize that sounds counterintuitive but for YEARS I was one of the oldest out of my friends...not only am I a January baby, but Jimmifer is a year and a half younger than me and for some reason he made friends with a bunch of people even younger than him so now a bunch of my really good friends are more than two years younger than me which makes me feel OLD but due to the whole trend of people taking time off from school (see, Lorelai? It's totally normal and acceptable!), a lot of people in grad school are older than me. Especially the PhD students, because barring any child-genius thing, they have to be older than me. Anyway, now 23 doesn't seem so old. And I'm excited. And I need to go read. Ta-ta for now!