The day I revived this blog, or why grad school is like a rigorous swimming race run by pirates.

Hello! I apologize for my long absence. At the beginning of the summer, I had this quaint notion that I would keep up this blog while writing my MRP (Major Research Project, required for the completion of my MA). I remember reading somewhere that it's good to just be writing, regardless of what it is--the more you write, the more you write! So I thought that keeping up this blog would inspire me to write my MRP. That, clearly, did not work out this time. I have faith in future me--I think she will eventually figure out this whole working from home/coffee shops and writing and revising endlessly without the brain exploding thing. I have faith in her. I really do. But current me struggled a bit.

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that grad school is a lovely little stepping stone between undergrad and the "real world." (Granted, these people aren't usually grad students.) They think that it's a place for the undecided, those who aren't ready to leave the "student life" (read: binge drinking and watching full seasons of Mad Men in one sitting), those who aren't ready to grow up and accept responsibility for themselves. Well, if those are your reasons for doing a master's degree, you will be thoroughly disappointed. Grad student is no entry-level position. It's sink or swim, baby. I've learned that it's not so hard to deviate from your rigorous swimming, to stop for a moment to tread water and look around only to end up drifting away...slowly at first, so you don't even really notice, but eventually you get lost in the abyss and no helping hands or ropes appear to pull you back on track.

There are support networks, of course there are. There are your fellow students and your supervisor and  other faculty members. And they tell you what you need to do. Hand in your proposals by this day, present your ideas to your peers this day, have a first draft done this day, try and schedule in some time to have between 1-5 mental breakdowns. And for someone who likes deadlines (I really like deadlines...), this seems great. Until you realize that apparently academics are all a bunch of bloody pirates and the "code" you thought you were following is really just a bunch of guidelines and no one is actually penalized for missing deadlines and so you start to just not follow them and no one cares and you start to drift farther and farther away from your goals...

But as much as I'm learning that grad school is not a nice, refreshing, relaxing, safe dip in the kiddie pool before diving into the deep end of "real life," but instead is some sort of rigorous swimming race run by pirates (I think this metaphor got away from me...)*, I'm also learning that I'm learning a lot from it. I finished my MRP, and it passed, but I didn't love the finished product, and that's okay. I did what I could in the time that I had, and I got some really great stuff out of it--stuff I want to come back to later, once I've taken a break from that particular piece of writing and gotten a bit of perspective. I tried to do too much at once and I couldn't see the forest for the trees. The kernels of really good stuff, like my exploration of the homosocial relationship between Nick Carter and Brian Littrell of the Backstreet Boys or my reading of the Backstreet Boys' "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" video alongside Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, got lost in my attempt to weed through way too much theory that I was unfamiliar with. But I really learned a lot from that experience, and I'm excited to continue to work with that material.

And now that I've started my final year of coursework (!!!), I'm really starting to see how much I've learned in the past year, and how much I've unlearned. Doing readings for my first week of classes was SO MUCH EASIER this year than it was last year. When I started reading the articles for my first term courses last year, I was completely and utterly overwhelmed. I grasped maybe half of the readings--and I only grasped them, I couldn't make any sort of complex argument about them. I didn't know how to respond except to say, "Yes, I understand this one," or, "No, I have no idea what the fuck is going on." And by no means am I an expert this year, but at least I feel competent. I don't feel so lost. And that's an absolutely wonderful feeling. I've also "unlearned" quite a bit too, and I think I'm still in the process of letting go of some things. I'm unlearning some of my perfectionism--ideas do not need to be fully formed and perfect before you speak up in class or you share your writing with others. In a lot of cases, it's almost better that these ideas aren't perfect, so we can have the opportunity to help each other out. But that's something that the pirate-run swimming race can ruin a bit. It's hard on us, so we're hard on each other. Someone once crushed our spirits, so it's our turn to crush someone else's. And complaining about the harshness of academic culture just invites criticisms about "my generation" and how we're too  "soft" and we've been "coddled" and told we can be whatever we want and are never criticized and were hugged too much as children or something. I'm sorry, but if you are of an older generation, it was YOU who coddled us and told us we could do anything and hugged us, so stop whining about how soft we are. And also, what is so terrible about being nice to one another and expecting kindness in return?!?! Seriously, I thought the idea was that I was supposed to be holding onto my youthful optimism as long as possible before becoming jaded and bitter. I'm only 23. Give me a break and let me be idealistic for a little while longer.

I've gone off on a tangent here. I think the moral of this story is: "Just keep swimming."

Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

* I tried Google imaging "pirate swimming race" to see if I could find a silly picture to include. The first three images were of women's butts. I don't understand.

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 the nervous energy took hold, or why I'm telling my term papers to BRING IT.

In a couple of my classes over the past few weeks, we've been discussing the idea of "happiness" as something that cannot be understood as a neutral, obvious "good." Happiness is inevitably tied up in ideas of what it means to be the "right kind" of happy, the "right kind" of person. We've been discussing how unhappiness, melancholia, stress and fear can be productive feelings, and perhaps not always so "bad" that they must be done away with as soon as possible and replaced with happiness. Sometimes that is not possible. Sometimes that is not desirable. Sometimes that involves forgetting "bad" things that should not be forgotten. Sometimes that involves anaesthetizing one's self, checking out from a situation or a life that needs to be paid attention to.

This morning I took a good, hard look at my calendar. Today is April 10. Between now and April 25, there are three term paper due dates written in bright blue marker. Despite the fact that I hadn't had my coffee yet, I felt a little more awake and my heart started to beat a little faster. I went online and read my professor's feedback on an essay proposal I submitted last week. She suggested about nine thousand other amazing sources I should look up. This essay, at approximately 20 pages, will be the longest essay I've ever written. I want to make it good enough that it will also be the first essay I ever try and submit to a journal. My heart started thumping... I could feel the blood moving through my veins, warming up my limbs. I felt the adrenaline. Suddenly I felt the urge to do something, anything, to be productive and get 'er done.

Am I relaxed? Hell no. Am I at peace, am I smiling, am I displaying all those usual signs of happiness? Not at all. Will the faint wrinkles that are developing under my eyes and between my eyebrows be a little bit deeper by April 25? You bet. (Side note: The media would have you believe that there are a good ten years or so between acne and wrinkles. NOT TRUE. Apparently there's this lovely period in your early- to mid-twenties--and perhaps beyond, I haven't gotten there yet--when you notice you have both pimples and little wrinkles. Oh joy.) But is this a "bad" feeling? Do I want to trade in this stress and fear and nervous energy for a life of no worries and eternal "good feelings"? Fuck no! As I said in my last post, my life is fucking awesome--stress, fear and all.

Term papers, BRING IT ON.

Time for an academic smackdown, Courtney and Whitney stylez.

The day I wrote about boy bands, or why grad school is hard and kittens and celebrities are fun.

As I sit here attempting to write my major research project proposal (it's like a proposal for my master's thesis, but it's called a research project because it's shorter than a thesis...it's just semantics), I keep catching myself devaluing my own research topic, and I feel like that's really detrimental to this process. You see, I'm writing about boy bands. And that's usually how I present my research interests to people: "I write about boy bands!" And then I wonder why people don't take cultural studies seriously, when clearly I don't. I don't bother to tell anyone the context in which I'm researching boy bands, nor do I even explain WHY I'm researching boy bands. I suppose you could call it's self-preservation... If I don't admit that my research is actually grounded in anything serious, then no one expects anything of me. Set the bar low, then you can't fail, right? Plus then I don't have to actually try and "talk smart"--I don't have to talk about critical theory out loud, I can just hide in my apartment with stacks of books around me and write about theory there and never tell anyone. Because if I don't tell anyone, no one can judge me.

But now I have to write this proposal...which has to explain to other people why the hell I'm doing this. And I find myself doing the opposite of what I was doing before. I know, deep down, that I'm not doing this for silly reasons. But I keep making these bizarre qualifications, like that "the queer potential of boy bands is not an excuse to celebrate them" or something along those lines. Which, I mean, is a fair point, I suppose--I'm not arguing that everyone needs to love boy bands immediately because they're the best thing ever. But is that ever anyone's argument in an academic context? People writing about Judith Butler or Derrida or, I don't know, George Orwell are sitting there thinking OMG HOW CAN I MAKE SURE PEOPLE KNOW THAT I'M NOT JUST SOME HUGE FAN AND THAT I ACTUALLY HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO SAY. Because like seriously? Do people ever write about things they don't enjoy? C'mon, you know y'all are fans of Judith Butler. I am. (Okay, I've never said "y'all" before in my life. I'm from Ontario, not Texas.) And the nature of writing about anything you like in an academic context is, sure, you praise it when it deserves it, but you deconstruct it. You critique it when it deserves it, too. Obviously I am not just writing: "Boy bands are cool because gay boys and straight girls love them and everything gay boys and straight girls do on their own is awesome because they're both marginalized in a sexist, homophobic society. Yay!"

 If you'll allow me to analyze my own behaviour for a moment (not that I'm really asking--I'll write this whether you want me to or not! Muahaha...and they said the Internet would be a democratic space...), I think the reasons behind my attempts to defend (or avoid speaking about) my research are twofold. First of all, despite all of the changes in academia within the past few decades, particularly with the rise of cultural studies, popular culture is still not "serious" enough. For all the talk about not condemning people for having "mainstream" tastes, academics sure like to talk about how obscure and artsy their tastes are and how informed they are about things taking place outside the mainstream. Sure, that's a huge generalization, but as Carl Wilson argues in his book Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (it's about his allergic reaction to Celine Dion), people's cultural capital nowadays depends on their ability to be a cultural omnivore. You need to be able to discuss Buffy or Dr. Who or Lost or Community as well as independent films and documentaries and local bands and also have a working knowledge of classic literature and classical music and Renaissance painting. And if you can only discuss the first bit...the "pop culture" stuff...well, you might just be "mainstream." Now I feel like I'm critiquing hipsters, not academics. But I feel like in both categories, similar feelings manifest themselves in somewhat different ways.

And here's the big catch, that leads to my second point: Never should you discuss Gossip Girl or Justin Bieber or Friends with Benefits or Confessions of a Shopaholic. (Disclaimer: I love GG, I like Justin Bieber, I saw Friends with Benefits and I read Shopaholic but it made me want to shoot someone. Not that that means you can't like it.) Regardless of what other shows you watch or bands you know, this is cultural suicide. And yeah, boy bands fit into this category. And you wanna know why? I'm sure there's a long, complex answer I could give, but the gist of it is this: Because that stuff's for girls. And by girls, I specifically mean girls, not women (despite the fact that our culture seems to think it's totally appropriate to call any woman, regardless of her age, a girl--that's not infantilizing at all, is it?). As Diane Railton argues in her essay "The gendered carnival of pop," pop music

is temporally bounded, seen only as a fitting taste for very young women. The pleasures of 'pop' are something that we must learn to grow out of.... [And it] is not only the music that must be left behind, but the physical, the sexual, in the music. The feminine in music must be abandoned as women grow up. It is only permissible for girls and young women. (2001: 330)

And this is why, Railton argues, pop music is not a threat to "real" music, and therefore will never be considered "serious," as a pastime or as an academic subject:

The carnivaleque of pop can provide no real challenge to the masculine world of popular music [meaning rock music or rap or anything popular that is marketed to and enjoyed by men] until it becomes acceptable not to grow out of 'pop pap music,' but to carry its pleasures with us into adult life. (2001: 330)

So this is what I'm up against, y'all. (There, I said it again. I DON'T TALK LIKE THIS IN REAL LIFE. The voice in my head is apparently some sort of combination of a Southern girl and a Valley girl.) And then there's the whole feminist argument that the third-wave tendency to praise anything that's girly just to elevate "girly" to the same status as "boy-y" (or, you know, masculine) is kind of useless because it's not critiquing the "girly," it's just putting it on a pedestal. Which is totally a fair point. So, it's a struggle. And I mean, really...I do understand, to a certain degree, why people might balk when they hear I'm researching people who dressed like this:

Like, seriously, Justin? This makes the fedora obsession look normal.

Anyway, if you are having similar struggles to me, know you're not alone! Here are two other posts I've come across from women experiencing some of the same issues: Maria Bustillos on romance fiction and Chloe Angyal on romantic comedies.

Also, I've found that looking at pictures of cats up for adoption in local shelters is very therapeutic. If you're in my area, look! and look! I want one but Jimmifer says I can't have one until we move into a bigger place. Which is probably a good idea because I don't want to have a litter box in my kitchen. And my kitchen is sort of in my office/living room. *Sigh*

Also, another exciting distraction is Suri's Burn Book (a Tumblr dedicated to all of the celebrity children who "disappoint" Suri Cruise) because it's awful and mean and vapid and who does not love a five-year-old that can pull off this much attitude:

this much poise:

and these shoes:

The girl is a force to be reckoned with.

Reading week needs to end. I cannot be left alone in this apartment to do work any longer.

The day I defended our grammatical right to choose, or why people need to stop arguing about the Oxford comma.

You know what I am SUPER sick of? THIS PICTURE:

I appreciate its humour. I really do. The bottom picture? HILAIR. (Okay, I've never said "hilair" before in my life. It felt weird.)

WAIT. WAIT. Do you want to know what I just did? I was seriously IN THE MIDDLE of writing a works cited page for a response paper I was working on...like all it says right now is:

Works Cited  

Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds

That's not even the full title!! And I have the book open on my lap as if I'm going to get the rest of the information out of it but I HAVEN'T DONE IT. How did I end up here writing about strippers and Oxford commas? Let's try this again.

Okay. Works cited done. Back to the commas and the strippers. I am not sick of this picture because it's not funny. And I'm sick of it only partially because it's been circulating for like a year or so now and it still pops up in my news feed every once in a while and people are all like "LOLOLOLOLOL punctuation is funny" and I'm all like SERIOUSLY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS SEEN THIS 900 TIMES? STOP LAUGHING. AND ALSO I'VE BEEN TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE TO PAY ATTENTION TO PUNCTUATION MY ENTIRE LIFE AND THIS IS WHAT IT TOOK TO GET YOU TO PAY ATTENTION? DEAD WORLD LEADERS IN LINGERIE?

The real reason I'm sick of this picture is because people use it as an excuse to get into a Facebook photo comments debate about the Oxford comma. First of all, debates should just not take place there. Too many people get too many notifications they don't want and inevitably the conversation turns into one person saying "I CAN'T TRUST YOU BECAUSE YOU SPELLED SOMETHING WRONG" and the other person responding "ONLY PRETENSHUS DOUCHEBAGS CORRECT SPELLING ON FACEBOOK," which is hilarious in this instance because the entire argument was about a comma in the first place and also they spelled "pretentious" wrong because only pretentious people know how to spell that. Second of all, THIS DEBATE IS STUPID. Yes, there are instances where the Oxford comma clears up possible misunderstandings, like when you're inviting the strippers, JFK and Stalin somewhere, or when you're having eggs, toast and orange juice for breakfast. (Is the orange juice on the toast or alongside it?!?! What?!?! How can I tell?!?! THINK ABOUT IT, YOU KNOB!) But you know what? Sometimes the Oxford comma is the CAUSE of these misunderstandings. What if I write: "We invited JFK, the stripper, and Stalin"? OMG THAT SOUNDS LIKE JFK IS A STRIPPER. I'm so funny.

So here's the deal. Sometimes using the Oxford comma can cause problems, and sometimes not using the Oxford comma can cause problems. And sometimes these problems are funny! And we should totally giggle about them! But using the Oxford comma (or not) is a stylistic choice. Neither way is right or wrong. If you're following a specific style guide, check with that style guide to see if they use it or not and then do what the style guide says. As Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Henson point out in The Great Typo Hunt, the Associated Press style guide eliminates "anything deemed unnecessary for communicating an idea," including the Oxford (or serial) comma (81). (LOOK. I cited it. That's how professional I'm being about this.) From what I remember about copy editing for my undergraduate student newspaper, the Canadian Press style guide doesn't use the Oxford comma either. I have just consulted my copy of the seventh edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers and apparently MLA uses the Oxford comma (67), although I don't. Here is what Lynne Truss has to say about it in her book Eats, Shoot and Leaves:

See that comma-shaped shark fin ominously slicing through the waves in this direction? Hear that staccato cello? Well, start waving and yelling, because it is the so-called Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma) and it is a lot more dangerous than its exclusive, ivory-tower moniker might suggest. There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken. Oh, the Oxford comma..... In Britain, where standard usage is to leave it out, there are those who put it in--including, interestingly, Fowler's Modern English Usage. In America, conversely, where standard usage is to leave it in, there are those who make a point of removing it (especially journalists).... My own feeling is that one shouldn't be too rigid about the Oxford comma. Sometimes the sentence is improved by including it; sometimes it isn't. (84-85)

The woman, who calls herself a stickler and was berated by many (including Deck and Henson) for being too strict with the rules, says it doesn't matter.

So I don't care what you have to say about it. I refuse to argue with you about it. You can use it, or you can leave it out. It's a stylistic choice. And I believe in your right to choose to make your sentences as clear or as opaque as you like. If you want people to think your mother is a pirate, go ahead and write, "I invited my mother, a pirate, and my high school English teacher." (Regardless of whether or not your mother is the pirate, this sounds like a fascinating get-together.) Please respect others' right to make this choice.

The (soon-to-be) Master has spoken. Get over it.

In other news, this video is HILAIR. No strippers. No commas! Just one word.