Let's Make This a Weekly Thing

After my Queer Bop debut, the bop season continues with the Fetish Bop tomorrow. The problem is that I don't own an extensive amount of leather, latex, fur, or anything else remotely kinky (unless someone really gets off on polycotton blends), so I'm going to have to go the dork route again. And this means I'm probably either going as religious fetishism, legal fetishism, or commodity fetishism. It still feels like I'm conceding defeat by wearing more clothes than I absolutely have to.

P.S. Never Google "fetishism." Pretty sure my IT department is going to have a word with me on Monday.

On Impeccable Timing

I was brushing my teeth yesterday and somebody knocked on my door, and because I figured it was probably Brian or Chase or Dan, I opened it thinking that I'd nod apologetically and go spit. But it turned out to be one of the maintenance crew, who blinked at me and then dumped a space heater in my arms. Apparently, all the heaters in my building have been shut off for no apparent reason, and they're sending someone to look at them on Monday. I wanted to ask why the heat was off and why it would take five days to have it looked at, except I couldn't, because my mouth was full of toothpaste and a toothbrush, and I couldn't remove that because my arms were full of space heater.

So it looks like I'm heatless until Monday, which is why I've set up my two space heaters directly across from each other to create an artificial weather pattern on the floor in the middle of my room. It's like twenty degrees colder when you leave that bubble, so I'm kind of worried I'll just be trapped in it all weekend. This is like some fucked up contemporary version of the Little Match Girl, where they'll find me frozen to death with like a half dozen space heaters piled up around me.

Ryan, You're Barely Alive

I'm not so stoked that the second chapter of my thesis is due on Monday, but I will be thrilled if I survive until then. Ever since I went to Queer Bop wearing nothing but jeans and ink, I've had that sneaking suspicion that I was getting sick and kept pretending like it wasn't happening, until I finally woke up this morning feeling like I'd contracted the plague. My timing is awesome.

Luckily, this is the weekend that I finally take my inner Organization Kid out behind the woodshed and unceremoniously shoot him. We elected a new president of LGBTSoc on Tuesday and I pass that off at our handover meeting this weekend, we have our last Queer Studies Circle of the term on Saturday, the president of our MCR gets back this weekend and I can go back to being the snarky, sarcastic secretary instead of politely and skillfully running meetings and dealing with administrators, which I'm terrible at. When all this is done, there's a very good chance that I'll just build a fort out of blankets again and spend a couple of days in pajamas watching really bad teen movies and reading literary theory. (And by "a couple of days," I probably mean "the month of December." I love winter break.)

Queer Bop

...was a smashing success. I put photos up on Facebook, but this is maybe the first time that I've ever screened things out for being beyond the usual boundaries of sketchiness. (I make enough of a spectacle of myself when I'm shirtless on a dance floor with poles, but they also had a bucking mechanical phallus that we'll never speak of again. Except I should say that movies with drunk middle-aged women who hop on a mechanical bull and ride it sexily make it look much easier than it actually is. I hurt everywhere.)

The body as text was also a fantastic costume, and it only required a tiny shirt to start off the night and two Sharpies when things heated up. The downside was that when I looked in the mirror this morning, my body was covered in marker and had a lot of lewd commentary, plus "I am teh gayz," a little bit of German, a little bit of Spanish, the sentence "queer is an anti-identitarian term for sexuality," "problematic," "hegemonic," "identity" (in scare quotes), lots of arrows pointing into my pants, and the word "foetus" with a picture of a tiny fetus among many, many other things. Someone also poured a cup of cider down my arm and managed to spill half a bottle of Smirnoff Ice IN MY HAIR, so aside from the fact that I had to scrub off about four layers of skin and my body is now sort of bright pink and sort of post-Sharpie grey, it was about the most satisfying shower I've ever taken.

So basically, Queer Bop is magic. I'd imagine that this is what Cinderella's morning after would have felt like if she were queer enough to leave her dignity and keep the shoes.

And This Is What Happens If You Don't Clap Your Hands

I accidentally cut my finger last night and thought I'd stopped the bleeding before going to sleep, but I was apparently wrong. It kind of looks like Tinkerbell was murdered in my bed.

Overstating Our Case

D: "That smells delicious, what are you making?"
R: "Penne with celery, onions, peppers, and mushrooms. Want some?"
D: "God, no. Celery is the devil's vegetable."

Fashion Emergency!

So Queer Bop is this Saturday, and I managed to snag a ticket (it's the sole perk of being entrusted to sell the last fifty tickets), but now I have to think of a costume that's a) scandalous and b) impossibly clever. Last year, I used up Winona Ryder, a power lesbian, Narcissus, and heroin chic, so those are all out of the question. I think scandalous should be easy, but I want something that's witty and racy instead of just straight-up racy.

I like the idea of going as some type of abstraction in feminist or queer theory, so with that in mind, I have a couple of options:

- the body as text and/or the marked category
- penis envy
- scopophilia
- Cartesian dualism
- the lavender menace

The bop's on Saturday, and I have to get shopping that afternoon. Go!!