Saturday 27 November 2010

Vag Magazine

Emma has gotten me hooked on the Upright Citizens' Brigade's "Vag Magazine" webisodes, which are a sendup of feminist magazines and are tremendous. I watched all six episodes back to back after David and I got back from the Christmas Market yesterday, where I was sprayed with fake snow and developed mild frostbite after being too busy to buy a coat, hat, and gloves after throwing mine out during our bedbug infestation last spring. Fennel is possibly my new favorite TV character. (Sorry, Eric Stonestreet.)

This is what I miss by not Googling "vag" periodically.

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Finishing the Hat

I've been listening to the Sondheim on Sondheim soundtrack on a loop for approximately the last twenty-four hours, and it is getting to the point that I'm going to have to thank Vanessa Williams in the acknowledgments of my dissertation. Nobody told me you could do Sondheim mash-ups. IT IS SO GOOD. I'm running on a deadline to finish my first two chapters, so it's totally possible that she will be the only thing keeping me awake as day breaks tomorrow.

Monday 22 November 2010

So Begins Phase IV of Operation: School Until I Die

"Oh, sweetheart, you don't need law school. Law school is for people who are boring and ugly and serious. And you, button, are none of those things."

I'm apparently all of those things, because I just got the green-light for law school. I'm trying not to watch Legally Blonde all afternoon. And failing.

Friday 19 November 2010

A Brief, But Long-Coming Rant

Is it a good sign if you can't explain a piece of queer theory that you're writing to someone over dinner? Is that a bad sign? I DON'T KNOW. I thought I knew exactly how I was wrapping up this journal piece that's due at the end of the month, but it turns out that when I try to explain these ideas out loud, and somebody is like, "give me an example," that is suddenly impossible. (I almost was like, "you don't need an example, just think in abstract and unverifiable terms." And then I hated myself deeply and so I resigned myself to rewriting it.)

I've been staring at a blinking cursor and three documents full of disjointed paragraphs that now have next to nothing to do with each other and do not make a coherent argument no matter what order I put them in. I also made a really good frittata. I'd call it a wash if the writing I have to finish by the end of the month wasn't very, very close to giving me a nervous breakdown.

Sunday 14 November 2010

Obnoxious DPhil Update

25,000 words down, 75,000 words to go. As long as I don't think too hard about how much of that is actually usable, that's semi-encouraging. More importantly, it legitimates me watching four hours of queer cinema tomorrow night, which is really all I need it to do.

Monday 1 November 2010

This is What We Call Declining Quality

I just sent in my first set of weirdly scattershot paragraphs to my supervisor, with a note saying that I realize that it's all over the place but that I think it's productively all over the place. (When I wrote up my MPhil thesis, I basically wrote the first two chapters meticulously, then ended up scrapping them entirely when I ended up writing about something completely different. I think he understands why I'm taking this approach.) But although the transitions are weak, a lot of the ideas are there - and there were over 10,000 coherently structured words on the page, which puts me at 10%. I hope it's okay that the death knell for this blog will probably be its slow decline into percentage points, until it can be replaced by an illustration of a thermometer and then finally a blank page that just says 404 page not found. That is when you'll know I'm a doctor.