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 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 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 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.