Monday, 9 February 2009
Beep Beep
I'm slowly and painfully putting together a Powerpoint presentation on my thesis for the rest of the MPhil candidates tomorrow, and I kind of underestimated how much backtracking it would take to put it all together. (I hate Powerpoint, and all of my presentations end up looking marginally more professional than if I would have just bought a box of Crayolas and construction paper and made it myself. This is my least favorite thing to do, ever.)
The upside is that I was dreading revisiting the first three chapters I handed into my supervisor, which I haven't really looked through since I handed them in half-consciously about five minutes before each of my deadlines. It turns out they're kind of awesome, and they actually make a linear argument. (I'm as surprised as anyone.) That doesn't mean that I won't be up all night trying to put them into a logical order, type up a script, and illustrate it with fun pictures, but it is kind of encouraging that I apparently do my best work when I'm frantic and not necessarily awake.
The upside is that I was dreading revisiting the first three chapters I handed into my supervisor, which I haven't really looked through since I handed them in half-consciously about five minutes before each of my deadlines. It turns out they're kind of awesome, and they actually make a linear argument. (I'm as surprised as anyone.) That doesn't mean that I won't be up all night trying to put them into a logical order, type up a script, and illustrate it with fun pictures, but it is kind of encouraging that I apparently do my best work when I'm frantic and not necessarily awake.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
Sunday Morning
I just realized I have four tracks by different artists called "Sunday Morning," and all of them are about love and Sundays.
If forced to actually spend a Sunday morning with any of these people, I kinda think my top choice would be Ani DiFranco, because a) seriously, how cool would that be, and b) she promises that we would lounge around in bed and then make eggs together while we read the paper, and you can't argue with that. Maroon 5 might be a runner-up because they'd be fun and it sounds like we might not be wearing clothes, whereas Lily Allen seems kind of emotionally abusive. And I would definitely put on my clothes and sneak out before waking up No Doubt, because I think calling someone a parasite, like drinking, is only socially acceptable after noon.
If forced to actually spend a Sunday morning with any of these people, I kinda think my top choice would be Ani DiFranco, because a) seriously, how cool would that be, and b) she promises that we would lounge around in bed and then make eggs together while we read the paper, and you can't argue with that. Maroon 5 might be a runner-up because they'd be fun and it sounds like we might not be wearing clothes, whereas Lily Allen seems kind of emotionally abusive. And I would definitely put on my clothes and sneak out before waking up No Doubt, because I think calling someone a parasite, like drinking, is only socially acceptable after noon.
Agendered!
I spent last night at the launch party for Agendered, a new feminist blog and web magazine at Oxford, and it was awesome. Any event combining Queer Studies Circle, a lecture on feminist sociolinguistics, slam poetry, champagne, pyramids of Ferrero Rochers, blogging, my favorite people from Team Hertford, Team Rhodes, and Team QSC, and the overlooked highlights of the Britney Spears canon is obviously bound to be excellent. In related news, I read three pages last night, and will spend the next two days tweaking out about my presentation on Tuesday.
I'm blogging for Agendered (this week, about castration and lesbian separatism) and wrote a review of the L Word for the first issue of the magazine, and all of that is up and running. (I wrote the review in September and tweaked it just before Season 6 began, but HOW GOOD IS SEASON 6. SO GOOD.)
I'm blogging for Agendered (this week, about castration and lesbian separatism) and wrote a review of the L Word for the first issue of the magazine, and all of that is up and running. (I wrote the review in September and tweaked it just before Season 6 began, but HOW GOOD IS SEASON 6. SO GOOD.)
Friday, 6 February 2009
The Winter of Our Content
So it turns out that I'm kind of a baby about the cold, which is embarrassing when you grew up on the tundra and you're supposed to have ice water running through your veins. Everyone was like, "yay, snowball fight!" and I was like, um, I'm going to need to go get mittens, and by "get mittens" I might actually mean "make coffee and snuggle with my space heater while watching old clips from Flight of the Conchords."
But I'm used to the sort of blizzards where cars spin off the road and visibility is zero and skin freezes in a matter of minutes, so I think I especially appreciate this kind of snow, where the beauty to inconvenience ratio is skewed in the beauty direction. And I was running to the gym and realized that I was going twice as fast as everyone and not falling over all the time, and I realized that growing up on a slab of permafrost for the first eighteen years of my life totally gave me the footing of a mountain goat. I'm kinda in my element right now.
But I'm used to the sort of blizzards where cars spin off the road and visibility is zero and skin freezes in a matter of minutes, so I think I especially appreciate this kind of snow, where the beauty to inconvenience ratio is skewed in the beauty direction. And I was running to the gym and realized that I was going twice as fast as everyone and not falling over all the time, and I realized that growing up on a slab of permafrost for the first eighteen years of my life totally gave me the footing of a mountain goat. I'm kinda in my element right now.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Jogging with the Type As
1: "It's on my gym playlist."
2: "Do you name your playlists?"
1: "Yeah, mine is, 'Run, Baby, Run.'"
2: "Mine is, 'Run, Bitch, Run.'"
3: "Hmm. Mine is, 'Run, Motherfucker, Run.'"
2: "Do you name your playlists?"
1: "Yeah, mine is, 'Run, Baby, Run.'"
2: "Mine is, 'Run, Bitch, Run.'"
3: "Hmm. Mine is, 'Run, Motherfucker, Run.'"
Sunday, 1 February 2009
What Happens to a Dream Deferred
Those of you who spoke to me at any point in April of 2007 probably recall my temporary obsession (and I do not use the word "obsession" lightly) with candy pie. Tiffany and I got together while I was at that emotionally scarring conference on torture and human rights at Northwestern and went to Kafein, where they had "candy pie" on the menu and listed chocolate chip cookie dough, caramel apple suckers, different candy bars, and a couple other things. And I was like, "I'll have the candy pie with everything, please!" and the waitress was like, "you have to pick a flavor" and I realized that you could not have the candy pie equivalent of mulligan stew, because it hadn't been invented yet. (Clearly, I was not too stressed about it. I got the chocolate chip cookie dough pie and there's a picture where I look like I might pee my pants because I'm so excited about it.)
So on Friday, David and I were looking at menus and I saw "fruit pie," and I started waxing poetic about candy pie and kind of wouldn't shut up about it for the next twelve hours, and was like, "I'm totally going to make it for dinner tomorrow. I am going to make candy pie."
AND I DID. I can never give anyone the recipe, because there is no recipe, and I literally just wandered down the candy aisle at Sainsbury's being like, "YES PLEASE" and throwing stuff into my basket. The closest we came was a post-it note where we wrote: "pie crust," "dough," "candy," and "awesomeness," and then drew a picture of a pie. But basically, you buy a pie crust, chop up about a billion miniature Mars, Milky Ways, Snickers, Malteasers, Galaxies, truffles, and caramels, and throw in a bar and a half of dark chocolate and then put them in a bowl in a bath of piping hot water and stir it until it all melts with chunks of candy in it. And then whisk instant pudding powder with a half pint of milk, mix that into the chocolate lava until it's sort of fluffy, and pour it all into the pie crust and refrigerate it for like fifteen minutes before smashing up digestives and crumbling them all over the top. I think you could probably reheat it without it liquifying again, but I'm not a scientist, so we played it safe and left it in the fridge for like two hours before eating it with ice cream. The best part is that you can use virtually any kind of candy, although I think it's good to mix it up and use stuff with soft fillings like caramel and nougat and peanuts inside it to give it texture and keep it from turning into a block of crusty chocolate when it reconstitutes. (We ruled out Skittles and gum when we were picking out candy, but otherwise it's all fair game.)
(I hadn't realized this until today, but Tiffany and I basically like to rendezvous on different continents to eat novelty junk food together. It is excellent. And now if she visits England, I can make her candy pie. I also tried to tell everyone at dinner that it was healthy because I used 1% milk instead of 2% milk, but everyone sees through that pretty quickly. And I would post pictures of the finished product when it was sliced open and gooey, but five of us may or may not have eaten the whole pie before I remembered to do that.)
So on Friday, David and I were looking at menus and I saw "fruit pie," and I started waxing poetic about candy pie and kind of wouldn't shut up about it for the next twelve hours, and was like, "I'm totally going to make it for dinner tomorrow. I am going to make candy pie."
AND I DID. I can never give anyone the recipe, because there is no recipe, and I literally just wandered down the candy aisle at Sainsbury's being like, "YES PLEASE" and throwing stuff into my basket. The closest we came was a post-it note where we wrote: "pie crust," "dough," "candy," and "awesomeness," and then drew a picture of a pie. But basically, you buy a pie crust, chop up about a billion miniature Mars, Milky Ways, Snickers, Malteasers, Galaxies, truffles, and caramels, and throw in a bar and a half of dark chocolate and then put them in a bowl in a bath of piping hot water and stir it until it all melts with chunks of candy in it. And then whisk instant pudding powder with a half pint of milk, mix that into the chocolate lava until it's sort of fluffy, and pour it all into the pie crust and refrigerate it for like fifteen minutes before smashing up digestives and crumbling them all over the top. I think you could probably reheat it without it liquifying again, but I'm not a scientist, so we played it safe and left it in the fridge for like two hours before eating it with ice cream. The best part is that you can use virtually any kind of candy, although I think it's good to mix it up and use stuff with soft fillings like caramel and nougat and peanuts inside it to give it texture and keep it from turning into a block of crusty chocolate when it reconstitutes. (We ruled out Skittles and gum when we were picking out candy, but otherwise it's all fair game.)
(I hadn't realized this until today, but Tiffany and I basically like to rendezvous on different continents to eat novelty junk food together. It is excellent. And now if she visits England, I can make her candy pie. I also tried to tell everyone at dinner that it was healthy because I used 1% milk instead of 2% milk, but everyone sees through that pretty quickly. And I would post pictures of the finished product when it was sliced open and gooey, but five of us may or may not have eaten the whole pie before I remembered to do that.)
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