The day it was "that time of year," or why life is awesome and I love you all.

I apologize for being MIA for the past month. I would say, "It's that time of year," but isn't that always the excuse academics give for, well, everything? And I mean, seriously, what exactly is "that time of year"? Yes, March was hectic, it always is--courses are really in full swing, there are presentations and response papers to do, term paper proposals to do, major research project proposals to hand in, marking to do, etc., etc., etc. But April is bad too--marking to finish up and term papers to write. And then there's a conference in May, and research to do for my MRP, and then there's my MRP to write and I'm moving in June (a two bedroom!! My computer won't have to be in the living room! And we get a washing machine!! And a deck!!) and I want to spend some time at the cottage and visit friends and maybe go to Halifax in August and then I start coursework for my PhD in September (I got in!! Yay!)... And September's always hectic, because there's so much to organize and you have to settle in, and then October is busy because you're getting into the swing of things and things start to be due and if you're applying for OGS and SSHRC your applications are due and you probably have your first batch of marking and November is just like March and December is like April and January comes much too soon and it's kind of like September except Christmas break was way too short and way too busy with family and friends and in February you are so ready for a break but reading week is way too short and there's marking to be done and....so it goes.

So yeah. It's that time of year! It's always that time of year. So no excuses. I just had other things I was doing and this fell to the side. But that's okay. I'm tired of complaining about how busy things are at "this time of year" or in "this day and age"--yes, it's true, life is stressful and there is tons going on and we never get a break because we're always plugged in and there's no jobs so we have to stay plugged in or fall behind. But I find it hard to believe that this is the first time in the history of the world that people have been stressed and things haven't been absolutely relaxed and perfect and easy. So I've decided to refuse to embrace the negativity. Too many of my conversations with my friends and colleagues end up being about how busy and stressed and sleep-deprived we are--never about how excited we are about something, or about anything positive or fun. We're breeding anxiety and negativity and it's bumming me out!

But you know what? I think things are going pretty fucking wonderfully. I'm in the process of building a life right now, and I'm pretty pleased with the way things are turning out. I've built a home with Jimmifer, a man I love very, very much (mostly because he lets me call him Jimmifer), and we're upgrading to a home where I hopefully will not get attacked by the soap dish, and we live close enough to our families that we get to see them on a regular basis, which is important to me. I have wonderful old friends that I still keep in touch with, and I've made wonderful new friends this year and I'm excited to spend the summer hanging out with them. I'm almost finished my master's coursework, and I feel like I've developed a strong theoretical foundation, which makes me confident that I can pull off this whole PhD thing. I'm finishing up TAing for the first time, and as much as marking is painful, it is awesome to see how much my students have grown over the year. And my students were just absolutely lovely, and I got wonderful feedback from them, and it feels SO GOOD. I get to spend my summer writing about queer theory and boy bands, which is awesome, and it turns out that apparently boy bands are making a comeback, so hopefully someone will find my work relevant and I can get published. I'm going to my first conference in May. I'm staring my DOCTORATE, which is pretty much all I've ever dreamed of since I started my undergrad. And I'm going to get a kitty at the end of the summer, which is pretty much all I've ever dreamed of since I was four. So yeah. Life is fucking AWESOME.

Like this awesome. For realz.

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 did nothing of importance but wrote about shit anyway, or why conspiracy theorists should be worried about Bob Dylan and possibly also about my fat earlobes.

I know it's been a few days since I handed in my last term paper, but I'm still fairly certain that I'm incapable of writing an intelligent, coherent post. But cut me some slack! I mean, in a week and a half I wrote and handed in approximately FOURTEEN THOUSAND WORDS (it looks soooooo much more impressive written out like that than if I just write "14,000 words") of academic writing. That is a lot.

Anyway, I'm here to show you my dedication to my craft of blog-writing. Despite my lack of intelligence and coherence, I'm going to write something anyway. Are you ready?

Did you know I have weirdly large earlobes?

Conspiracy theorists should stop worrying about 9/11 and start focusing all their attention on Bob Dylan. Seriously, I know the dude's 70, but HE IS FUCKING WITH OUR MINDS. For realz. I wrote a paper about it. Well, I wrote a paper about his Christmas album, but he's totally using his Christmas album to fuck with our minds. I mean, look at this video!

He's going to kill us. Or just repeatedly change religions and political viewpoints until all the Dylan scholars explode. So I QUIT, MR. DYLAN. YOU WIN. Except you don't because I WIN because I will not explode. I refuse to explode no matter what kind of crazy shit you do.

Although, Mr. Dylan, I think you may just explode if you keep trying to sing. "Hard the Herald Angels Sing" sounds like it nearly gave you a stroke. Or maybe you were just shitfaced when you sang it. SEE. THERE HE GOES AGAIN. HE'S DELIBERATELY CONFUSING ME SO I SPEND TOO MUCH TIME ANALYZING HIS SHITTY ATTEMPT TO SING A CHRISTMAS CAROL. You can listen to it here. And don't tell me what you think. BECAUSE I QUIT, BOB.

Back to earlobes. Okay, so, a couple of years ago I discovered that my earlobes are abnormally thick. I used to have three piercings in each earlobe, and I'd usually just wear studs in my upper two holes. (That's a weird phrase. "My upper two holes." ...let's not overthink that. Moving on.) But I kept losing the studs! Turns out my earlobes are so fat that the backings were barely staying on. My earlobes are so fat that they EJECTED my earrings from my ear. And then the other day I was squeezing Jimmifer's earlobe because I'm five and I like to bug people by squeezing their earlobes and I realized that the surface area of his earlobe was considerably smaller than the surface area of the pad/thumbprint area of my thumb. (You know, like the part you touch stuff with and the place where your thumbprint is...) THE SURFACE AREA OF MY EARLOBE IS BIGGER THAN THE SURFACE AREA OF MY THUMBPRINT/PAD/THING. What the hell. I have giant earlobes.

In my defence, Jimmifer absorbs smells. Yes, that's "in my defence." I have giant earlobes and he smells like food, so we're even. Before I was down by one. But I defended myself by attacking him and now we're even. It makes sense. Maybe. ANYWAY he absorbs food smells. Like he'll eat curry or be near curry and he'll smell like curry for two days. The other day he made chicken stock from scratch (which is super cool by the way because how many of you live with people who cook all your meals and make shit from scratch and all you ever have to do is peel potatoes and wash the dishes?). He finished making the stock and put it in the freezer and rinsed the pot he was making it in and went to bed. I stayed up for a while, and by the time I went to bed, the kitchen and living room no longer smelled like chicken. But then I went into our room, and our ROOM SMELLED LIKE CHICKEN. And I got into bed and IT WAS JIMMIFER. HE SMELLED LIKE CHICKEN. He hadn't even EATEN chicken. He'd just stood near boiling chicken bones. WTF. Weird.

I randomly started watching The Cosby Show the other day except it wasn't totally random because I had been watching Community and I saw the episode from the second season where Shirley's ex-husband comes back and he's THEO from The Cosby Show and he's old and kinda hot and he's wearing this crazy striped sweater with snowflakes on it and Jeff's all like, "I like your sweater," and ex-husband Theo says, "Thanks. My dad gave it to me." And I DIED of laughter. I realize it's not THAT funny. But I died. And then proceeded to watch the first eight episodes of The Cosby Show in one day. But my point is is that at some point during all this I found this. Clair Huxtable: Mom Style Icon. And she was. She was. I mean, just look at this:

Maybe when I get my coherence back (likely after the holidays), I will write something intelligent about The Cosby Show. I think there's something intelligent to say there. Who knows? We'll find out.

So I e-mailed the lovely Nicole who writes the hilarious and wonderful blog Nicole is Better and told her about the chocolate vagina lollipops that we used to order and sell at the Vagina Monologues at the school where I did my undergrad. (I acted in them four times and directed them once and Nicole writes about vaginas a lot so this all made quite a lot of sense at the time.) Anyway, a few days ago Nicole tweeted about these vagina lollipops. Of course, she didn't tweet about the regular ones that we used to order - no, she tweeted about the fucking weird ones. Like CRISPY VAGINA COOKIES. Seriously. YOU CAN ORDER THOSE ON THE INTERNET.

How creepy is that? But I suggested that a better gift idea this holiday season would be the PINK FUZZY VAGINA LOLLIPOP. Yeah, fuzzy.

Who DOESN'T want to eat chocolate pubic hair? Mmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!! Also, why is it PINK? It just looks...I don't know. Weirder than the chocolate-coloured ones. I don't even know.

It is so windy outside that our windows are rattling and the blinds are blowing in the wind even though the windows are closed and WHY DO I LIVE IN A SHIT HOLE? Oh yeah. I'm a grad student... The hole in the shower is gone though! It has been replaced by a rather large floor tile so it looks slightly ridiculous. But at least there's no hole. And we have fewer fruit flies now! Although one of our traps now has fruit fly larvae in it and I'm getting scared.

In conclusion, I'm going to go mark essays now. Or maybe watch The Cosby Show and then mark essays... One of the essays I have to mark has the phrase "GIVE ME YOUR BRAINS" in its title, so I'm kind of excited. I apologize to the student whose essay that is. If you ever happen to stumble upon this blog, dear student, I realize that you did not give me permission to share that with the world, but it's really freakin' awesome so I hope you don't mind.

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.

The day I was attacked by a soap dish, or why I may need to start showering 7 times a day

When the man-friend and I moved in to our tiny, one-bedroom apartment (aka the love nest) at the end of August, we noticed a few...quirks. Loveable ones, for the most part. Like the white man's shirt hanging in the hall closet. (Oh my god, I just reread that...I mean the man's shirt which is white, not like the shirt than can only be worn by the white man or some twisted shit like that. Great first impression, Jocelyn!) And the collector's popcorn bucket from The Golden Compass (aka The Atheist Narnia) under the sink. Others were less loveable. Like the fruit flies (more on them later). And the missing tile in the shower that exposed a small hole in the bathroom wall.

Now, this missing tile didn't originally seem like a huge problem. Sure, there was a small hole, but it was shielded by the soap dish, and the building superintendent dude would be by to fix it before any real damage was done, right?

WRONG.

The other day I was showering away, minding my own business, when the soap dish, which had been diligently shielding the hole in the wall from filling up with water, suddenly quit. The soap dish, and A LARGE CHUNK OF THE WALL, decided to jump ship and attack me in my vulnerable showering state!!

And do you know what your gut reaction is when a soap dish and part of a wall try to attack your feet? (Probably not, because I doubt this is a common occurrence in anyone's life, and if it is, WTF?) YOU JUMP. Which is really not the smartest thing to do when you're naked, wet and slippery. (Your mom is naked, wet and slippery!) Anyway, I lived. But BARELY.

So I called the building superintendent and was all like WTF THE SOAP DISH TRIED TO KILL ME and he laughed at me and then told me he would come first thing Monday morning to fix it. Excellent.

Monday morning rolls around, and I get up at 8:30 to ensure that I am up when he comes to fix the demon hole in the shower. And I wait. And wait. And wait. And then I have to leave for class at noon and THERE IS STILL A DEMON HOLE IN MY SHOWER. At like 7:30 p.m. he calls me and is all like "Oh! I came by at 1 p.m. and you weren't there!" Because 1 p.m. is now first thing in the morning. Right. Anyway, now he's coming at 1 p.m. tomorrow. And if he's not here by 1:30, I am going to march up to his apartment (oh yeah, did I mention he lives right above me? showing up on time should soooo not be an issue) and be like COME DOWNSTAIRS OR I WILL ROT YOUR WALL BY SHOWERING SEVEN TIMES A DAY. True story.