This week I gave a thesis talk. I outlined my chapters. I gave an overview of significant definitions. And then my most significant discovery started to fall together….

Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you

Love for certain ideas got me into academia. Ideas that were so significant to humanity and yet—due to the isolated nature of the academy—just as distant from its mass. My obsession with transliterating these theories into action drove me to write produce and co-direct a horror film. The film was a distillation of my beloved theories and chock full of genuine cow brain and sheep intestine. To give you a hint: it was a remake of The Breakfast Club only all the characters were female inmates. (you know, feminist-type junk).

How splendid and ridiculous.

This blog is my new horror film. I sneak in a glop of critical theory (Let’s Get Low Low Low) and historicization whenever I can. But I try to make it smooth. So it goes down easy. Only this time I’ve got Mary-Kate Olsen and Facebook standing in for bovine innards. Don’t get me wrong: I love gore. I worship Mary-Kate (those round Chanel glasses cleave a hole in my space-time). I’m no user. And it goes both ways. In my thesis, horror movie superstar The Candyman eviscerates the flaws in academic theory.

A feedback system, for it goes both ways. It is a process, pulling these realities—both in need of each other—into the proximity that they and we all deserve.

Oh how it can burn though. Like Ben Affleck falling for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new character Bruno. After explaining to people who study popular culture what microblogging and Twitter is I feel I’m just like Rick Astley. You see, he is going on tour to take advantage of the rickrolling—from Anonymous (Scientology protesters) to Perez Hilton—Rick Astley is whoring himself out on his own naffishness.

Read my thesis, open my blog.

Isn’t it all just one great big fat autoloading Chantelleroll?

Another heart-wrenching night online. I’m waiting around to bid on Britney’s clothes after her appearance on How I Met Your Mother. For charity or whatever.

I’m after the blue floral cardigan by boutique designer Nanette Lepore. After missing David Duchovny’s black t-shirt by only a few hundred dollars I can’t let this one go.

As if I needed any more stress, I stumble onto Mandy Moore’s uPumpitup at Kraftbrands.com/upumpitup/. Mandy wants me to join hands with her and challenge myself and the world. Now, I’d be against feminism if I don’t join the sisterhood of Mandy. I can’t let Mandy down.

After I join her network, Mandy’s Crystal-Light-quenched smile dares me to be spontaneous and face my fears so I can, “Get a great story you can laugh about over and over again. The only rule in this challenge is to break one!”
(more…)