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!

The day before the day before, or why Africans do in fact know it's Christmas. (Hint: it's because they're not stupid! Whoa!)

I'm going to probably be taking at least a week off from blogging to celebrate the SWAGmas season with my lovely friends and family, but I thought I would write one more short post today. A few weeks ago, I wrote this post about the condescending racism hidden in the lyrics of Band Aid's "Do They Know Know It's Christmas?" Of course, Glee decided to perform the song a week or so later during their Christmas special. (Who else thinks they should have just foregone the plot for that episode--ha, like Glee has a discernible plot--and just aired a longer version of the black-and-white Christmas special? Because it rocked. Kurt and Blaine as "best friends and holiday roommates"? THE BEST.) Anyway, personally I found Glee's version of the song EVEN WORSE than Band Aid's version and I even had people who didn't really agree with my original analysis of the song say to me OMG HOW INSENSITIVE WAS THE GLEE VERSION?!?!?! Because, seriously, THEY SING THE SONG TO HOMELESS PEOPLE. They sing about how glad they are that they have charmed, privileged lives to people in a homeless shelter. "And tonight thank God it's them instead of you! Well, actually, it is you, SUCKERS." Last year they managed to make "Baby It's Cold Outside" sound a little less rape-y. But this year they made "Do They Know It's Christmas?" sound more condescending. Trying to achieve some twisted sort of balance?

Anyway, yesterday a friend of mine tagged me in a post on Facebook informing me of the existence of a response to "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by an ensemble of unemployed African musicians who have called themselves Plaster Cast (like Band Aid but tougher! Ahahaha...haha...ha.......). They call the song "Yes We Do." When asked why it took them well over 20 years to release a response to Band Aid's song, they said "it had taken a while ... to realise that it wasn't actually an elaborate joke." However, the group had always "been irked by [Bob] Geldof's assumption that hungry Africans were also stupid" and that "despite the poverty and hunger that had inspired Geldof and his friends to create the song back in 1984 that Africans had developed their own ways to remember Christmas." Interestingly enough, people DON'T need to be inundated with Christmas-themed commercials starting in October to realize that Christmas is coming! Weird, eh? The proceeds of Plaster Cast's song "will go towards teaching discipline, literacy and contraception at British schools." The article about the song from Hayibo.com, where I got all this information from, can be found here.

Alright, time to make my way back to my parents' house to officially get SWAGmas started! Merry Christmas and SWAGmas or happy holidays or happy getting-paid-extra-for-working-on-a-holiday or happy weekend or just happy time! Yay! Enjoy!

In conclusion, here's an adorable picture of the Biebs and his three-year-old sister on stage during his Christmas special Home for the Holidays:

Awwwww. See you in 2012!!!

The day before the day before the day before, or why I need to learn to explain myself better. Or become a secret ogre.

Last night I could not sleep. No, it wasn't because I was too excited about it being the day before the day before the day before SWAGmas. (It's plausible, though, because now that Jimmifer has bought my present all he does is talk about how excited he is to give it to me and now I'm really really curious dammit.) And no, it wasn't because I went out for all-you-can-eat sushi for lunch yesterday and still felt too full to lie down.

It was because I could hear violins.

I'm serious. Violins. I'd be lying there, and suddenly I could hear this sound... You know, one of those sounds that's so faint that you're barely even sure you're hearing something. But I was hearing something. It was music. So I sat up. And then I couldn't really hear it. So I tried to go to sleep. Ten minutes later, I could hear it again. This continued for quite some time until I was ABSOLUTELY SURE I was hearing music. And it sounded like violins. Definitely violins. I became convinced that one of us had left our iPods on and music was coming through the headphones. I tried to figure out where our iPods would be. I didn't want to get up, you see, mostly because I'm kinda afraid of the dark and I didn't want to wake Jimmifer up by turning on all the lights and having to be all like "I'M TRYING TO FIND THE VIOLINS!" because that's the sort of shit you get put in a straightjacket over. Also, I started to really overthink it. Like maybe the soft sounds of violins function in the same way as the light at the end of the tunnel. Like if I went to find the violins, at the source of the violins would be DEATH. And who wants to die like that? Crawling around on the floor searching for violins?!?! Not me. (I'm not entirely sure why I would have been on the floor. In my head, I was convinced that the source of this music was on the floor so I'd have to crawl around to find it.)

Eventually I remembered that I left my iPod headphones at my parents' house, which meant that if it was my iPod that was playing it would actually be really quite loud because it has those built-in speakers. And I don't think Jim has that much violin music on his. Not that I do either. But I have Christmas music. And sometimes Christmas music has violins. Then I also realized that we live in a bloody apartment building and PERHAPS this sound was coming from someone else's apartment. Perhaps someone was watching a movie with a soundtrack of violins? Who knows. Anyway, those are the sort of shenanigans I get myself into alone at 1:30 in the morning.

ANYWAY, what I actually wanted to talk to you about today is related to grad school and SWAGmas. So as we all know, this is the time of year where you see lots of family and friends and family friends and just a whole lot of people that you don't usually see on a day-to-day basis. And don't get me wrong, I love this. I am a huge supporter of the SWAGmas family party. However, people have a tendency (and rightly so, I suppose) to ask young people, and students in particular, the dreaded question: "So what are you doing?"

If you don't see the person often at all, usually a simple "I'm doing a master's degree in cultural studies" will suffice. And sometimes the person will take the conversation in a relatively simple direction after that, discussing where you live and such. That conversation I can handle. It's when people want specific details that I start to falter.

People say, "What is cultural studies?" And I go, "Well...uh..." And they say, "Do you study India or something like that?" And I go, "No." Because I know the answer to that question.

(Sidenote: while thinking that people in "cultural studies" study "cultures" is not that farfetched, why does every single person who assumes that cultural studies means studying the cultures of the world assume that I would be studying India specifically? Seriously, everyone says India. Is there like a large group of non-academics who are just waiting for someone to publish a comprehensive study on India?)

But the thing is, someone in cultural studies COULD be studying something to do with India. So when I try to explain that no, cultural studies isn't the study of different cultures around the world, sometimes I lead people off track. Then they think, like my chiropodist did the other day (yes, I was having this conversation with my foot doctor... I realize that's not exactly a family Christmas party, but still), that we only study current North American culture, but that's not true either. I mean, I primarily study current North American culture, but it's way more specific than that. So I try and explain that people do a lot of different things--like I look at popular music and gender representations, but other people look at pedagogy or animals or whatever. But then that sounds SO UNFOCUSED. So sometimes I try and explain how we use critical theory to look at these things. But bringing up theory--especially feminist theory--can be dangerous. And I never know how to explain it to someone whose never read stuff like that before. (Obviously my chiropodist did a lot of grad school and med school so she grasped everything fairly quickly.)

Some people take a more practical approach and just ask how my program is structured. So I explain that it's a one-year program, and I do two terms of coursework (three courses per term) and then in the summer term I write a major research project. To university graduates, this usually makes sense. But sometimes only if they have an arts degree. To my hairdresser (and a few others), this is quite confusing. (Yes, I know, my hairdresser was not at a family Christmas party either.) They ask, "What do you do in your courses?" and I try and explain, but the concept of a 15-20 page term paper is confusing and they ask, "What do you write about in a term paper?" and I explain that you do research based on the material you learned in the class and then they get confused because term papers don't actually have to incorporate texts from the course and what is the POINT of the term paper and don't you do research in the summer so what are you doing research for now?

And then I'm like, "Well currently I'm applying to PhD programs!" And then they give up on you and walk away.

So how do YOU, my fellow grad students and other readers who may have input, explain what it is that you do? Because I'm at a bit of a loss. Sometimes I just shout "I STUDY BOY BANDS AND FEMINISM AND QUEER THEORY" in the hopes that people will just run scared. But that's not really helping bridge the gap between academia and the so-called "real world," which is something that's really important to me. Because in my mind, it is not other people's failure that they don't understand what I do. Their questions are valid. It's my answers that suck. So, in the SWAGmas spirit of giving, give me some advice! How can I explain the importance of grad school and cultural studies? How can I explain what it is?

In other news, Jimmifer just walked in on me writing this and I have my tea tree oil face mask on which is bright GREEN (he wasn't supposed to be home yet!) and he asked me if I was a secret ogre. So maybe that's what I'll tell people when they ask what I do. I'm a SECRET OGRE. Yeeeeeeeeah.

Merry the day before the day before the day before SWAGmas!

The day I realized there won't be snow in Orange County this Christmas, or why Bob Geldof, Bono and Sting badly need anti-oppression training.

Sorry it's been a while, but I've been writing term papers. So. Much. Writing. Le sigh. But I get to hand in two of them tomorrow! Only one more to write. For Monday. Wahhhhhhhhhhhh I just want to watch Christmas movies...and Pretty in Pink. I don't know why, but I have a sudden urge to watch every Molly Ringwald movie I can get my hands on. Jimmifer and I watched The Breakfast Club last weekend. It was glorious. Except I'm still confused about why it's called The Breakfast Club. Like, Brian signs that letter from "the Breakfast Club" but they never decide that that's their name and they don't even eat breakfast together. Weird.

Anyway, as promised, I will now answer the question: WTF is with that Band Aid song "Do They Know It's Christmas?"? Well, I can't promise a definite answer. But I will demonstrate how it is completely bizarre and hugely problematic and just kind of rude.

Now, I am fairly tolerant of the lyrical content of Christmas music. I will sing along regardless of what the words are. And usually, I don't really pay attention to what the words are, possibly because I learned the words when I was too young to fully comprehend their meaning. Or possibly because I'm not actually Christian and don't really want to bother thinking about the fact that I sing loudly about Jesus for about a month every year. I learned the other day while singing along to "Mistletoe and Wine" that I've been singing "children singing crispy and white" instead of "children singing Christian rhymes" and never questioned it. Because, you know, CRISPY AND WHITE CHILDREN aren't something I should be concerned about. Nevermind that it sounds kind of racist, but WHY ARE THEY CRISPY??

Anyway, my point is that it's rare that I will find a Christmas song problematic, mostly due to my own willful ignorance of the words. But while decorating our SWAGmas tree and listening to "Do They Know It's Christmas?", I suddenly became conscious of the words I was singing. (Also, I just noticed that I have three copies of this song in my iTunes. WHY?!?!) What first caught my attention was the line: "There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time." Well, no shit, Sherlock. (Not that I am up on the climate of the entire continent of Africa. Maybe some parts get snow. I don't know what time of year it would snow there, though...) Since when is a lack of snow at Christmas a cause for concern? I mean, sure, snow at Christmas is pretty, but that's a pretty geographically limited view of Christmas. Lots of places don't get snow at Christmas, like California. And Australia. And Mexico. Should we be sending aid to Orange County this Christmas? Plus, if life in Africa is as destitute and awful as this song suggests, I think snow might make it worse. Snow means cold. Cold means people freeze to death.

And then this line is followed by the line: "The greatest gift they'll get this year is life." You know what, that sounds like a pretty awesome gift to me. If I could pick ONE THING to get for Christmas, that would probably be it. I hope that everyone gets life for Christmas this year. Please survive Christmas, readers. It would mean a lot to me. (I understand that Band Aid is implying that their needs beyond the basic need of survival are not being met, but come on. That's a stupid way of phrasing it.)

And then it just gets absolutely generalizing and patronizing. Like, not EVERYONE in Africa is homeless, starving and dying. Some of them might actually have radios and CD players and computers and other music-listening devices! So some of them might hear you (I'm looking at you, Bono. I know you sang this line.) sing, "So tonight thank God it's them instead of you." Okay, really? That's insulting. "I'm so glad I don't live in Africa!" Shut up, Bono. And I may not be Christian, but I'm PRETTY SURE the purpose of prayer is not to be like, "Hey, God, thanks for making other people's lives shitty and not mine!"

And then there's the whole thing where they sing, "Where nothing ever grows / No rain or river flows," and then Sting chimes in and is all like, "Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears," which I'm pretty sure he said just so he could say his own name. But like, generalizations much? (And emo much, Sting? Srsly.) The entire continent of Africa is not completely dry. There's like this river...the NILE. It's pretty effing huge. And I see other bits of blue on the map. (Dear lord my knowledge of geography is pitiful...at least I know the blue on the maps equals water, right?) So if you're going to talk about desert-like conditions, maybe you should do your research and talk about the ACTUAL PARTS OF AFRICA that suffer from drought. I'm not pretending like I know exactly where they are, either, but I'M NOT SINGING A SONG ABOUT IT, AM I?

And then there's the best part! The repeated line: "Do they know it's Christmas time at all?" ARE THEY CHRISTIAN? IS EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN AFRICA CHRISTIAN? It's likely that many of the Christian people living in Africa KNOW VERY WELL THAT IS CHRISTMAS. And the lack of snow is probably not keeping them from being aware of this, FYI. Do you think it's Christmas every time it snows? No, no you do not. So the snow thing really has nothing to do with it. Anyway, if they don't know it's Christmas, it might very well have something to do with the fact that they aren't Christian. And if they are Christian and don't know it's Christmas, then yes, that's sad. But still. Your song is stupid. And it creates this weird us/them dichotomy that I am really not comfortable with.

(I'll let you in on a secret, Bob Geldof: People in Africa...they're people too! And they can hear you. So stop referring to them as if they can't. It's creepy and weird, like when parents talk about their kids in front of their kids...like "Ryan is being difficult these days and refuses to wear pants or eat his vegetables" and nine-year-old Ryan is standing right there with all his friends and now is embarrassed because everyone knows he doesn't wear pants at home and is "difficult"...except that this is worse, because you're talking about a whole continent of people like they can't hear you. And granted, some of them can't. But it's still not cool to talk behind people's backs. Especially, you know, when the people from your continent have this history of being really racist and violent towards people from their continent because they think people from Africa are inferior to them...you know, like they're children or animals or something. And you kind of sound like you think they're inferior, like children or something...hmmm.)

In conclusion, I love writing blog posts because I can write "and then ... and then ... and then ... and then" without getting docked marks. (Seriously, four of my paragraphs in this post start with "and then.") Take that, term papers!

The day the Jocelyn stole SWAGmas, or why I'M SO EFFING EXCITED ABOUT CHRISTMAS

So yesterday was December 1st. Which meant that my man-friend Jimmifer* officially lifted the ban on Christmas music in our apartment that I have been breaking every day since about mid-November. He's at work all day. He doesn't have to know. Also, it meant we got to put up our very first CHRISTMAS TREE (it's three feet tall and adorable and has garland and bells and a star made of paper and coloured with highlighter because we forgot to buy a tree topper) and I got to wear my Christmas socks and my Christmas underwear and drink hot chocolate and YAY I LOVE CHRISTMAS. (I wore clothes over my Christmas underwear, you perv. I just felt it was important to point out that I did, in fact, make a point of wearing Christmas underwear when decorating my first Christmas tree in my first apartment with Jimmifer.) Look at our tree!!!!

It's like we're our own little family now!!!! I feel so...grown up. Because grown ups put their Christmas trees on coffee tables and make stars out of printer paper and highlighters. But seriously. I am so happy that we finally get to have our own little Christmas. It makes it feel more special. Aww.

Anyway, the greatest part about me loving Christmas is that I love it for no particular reason. I get super duper excited and watch the Toronto Santa Claus parade (on TV while drinking hot chocolate because it's too cold and crowded and far away to actually go watch it in real life but I haven't watched it yet because I never watch it before I'm done my coursework for the term SO DON'T TELL ME HOW IT ENDS) and decorate things and watch tons of Christmas movies and yell at the sky until it snows and get Christmas drinks from Starbucks and Second Cup (there's this amazing one that I keep calling "Santa's orgasm" because the first time I tried it I was all like "OMG IT TASTES LIKE SANTA EXPLODED IN MY MOUTH" but now I can't remember what it's actually called and I think if I ordered a Santa's orgasm I would not get what I wanted so I'm sad) and wear Christmas outfits and Christmas jewelry and then Christmas comes and usually pretty much nothing happens except I get gifts that I picked out myself because my mom got bored of trying to surprise me and then we eat a lot but it's never as good as Thanksgiving dinner but I AM NEVER DISAPPOINTED. It's like all I need is the excitement. It doesn't matter that Christmas Day pretty much unfolds the same way every year and nothing really that amazing happens. I still get excited.

Part of what is adding to my excitement this year is this abso-fucking-lutely absurd and wonderful remix of Little Drummer Boy by Justin Bieber and - wait for it - BUSTA RHYMES. He raps about eggnog and Twitter. I don't even know what's happening. But it's like a Christmas dance party, which is totally a combination of my two favourite things. Here they are performing it live at Rockefeller Christmas 2011:

Yes, I do believe Justin insinuated that he should have been in the Bible and compared himself to Michael Jackson all within the first verse. So because this is just the most amazing and ridiculous thing happening this holiday season, I officially dub Christmas 2011 "SWAGmas" in honour of the Biebz and his effervescent swag. (I'm not going to lie, MTV totally tweeted something about SWAGmas and I was like I'M TOTALLY STEALING THAT. And then I did. But I'm totally copyrighting the phrase "effervescent swag.")

I have like fourteen other things I want to say about Christmas SWAGmas but I'm trying to keep my posts short and sweet and to the point (if there is a point...) because I have a tendency to be a tad wordy...so I'll leave you with a teaser for my next post about SWAGmas: WTF is with that Band Aid song "Do They Know It's Christmas?"? (Weird formatting there with the double question marks...)

HAPPY SWAGMAS!!!!!

*Yes, if you've been following my blog thus far you will have just realized that both my father (Jimand) and my man-friend (Jimmifer) are named Jim - I dare you to try and come up with an Oedipal complex/daddy issues joke I haven't heard. Seriously. Go for it.