How long has it been since I’ve discussed something of or related to pop culture?  What’s that?  Never, you say?  Unpossible!  My world is a Pop Carnivale if you consider the amount of reality tv I consume daily.  If it’s on Bravo, I watch it.  MTV, usually.  TLC, sometimes, if it’s Toddlers and Tiaras or the occasional Jon & Kate. VH1 not so much, at least not lately, since the Flavor of Love and New York spin-offs are too much even for me to bear.  I am mildly obsessed with the Megan Wants a Millionaire murder-suicide scandal, though.  What kind of one-off vetting company do you have to hire to miss a dude with assault charges? Oy.

Anyway, the point is, I don’t watch much in the way of scripted sitcoms and dramas, which is why I have no idea why I’m suddenly hooked on Degrassi. MTV has been running an hour block of reruns all summer–inexplicably starting with the most recent season and then backtracking to the early seasons.  We’re on season four right now, in the (I’m assuming) short run-up to the school shooting episodes.

Which leads me to ask: WTF, Degrassi?  You’re in Canada, are you not?  Not that I’m saying nothing bad ever happens to our Northly Neighbors, but how the hell bad does your neighborhood have to be for you to face all-tragedy all-the-time?  I haven’t seen all the seasons yet, but thanks to some surfing of the Degrassi Wiki, I’ve learned that, in addition to your run-of-the-mill drug situations, pregnancy scares, and near-molestations, the Next Generation will have visited upon it:  the above-mentioned shooting, a bunch of different cancers, an outbreak of GONORRHEA OF THE MOUTH (involving Emma, no less!), and a cute little dude who worried about his penis size getting stabbed in the aorta.

Now.  At this point, if Degrassi were in the U.S., I’d be asking the local surveyor if it had been built over an ancient burial ground, or perhaps a former slave plantation.  Because that’s some bad mojo right there.  And yes, I get it, it’s a CHILDREN’S SHOW, and it’s performing a public service by teaching kids how to address the myriad of fears, dangers, and stresses that plague their not-so-little-kid lives.  But at what point does it become legitimate to ask exactly how much shit one can expect to go down in a fictional universe?  At one point, Ashley, a character I’ve had a hard time tracking through the season-jumps because of radical hair re-dos, says, “Degrassi’s cursed.  I’m getting out of here.”  And that was somewhere in the third season.  She hadn’t yet seen the relationship violence, bipolar disorder, or erectile dysfunction (yes, that too, because one of the shot teens is paralyzed from the waist down) that would soon befall her crew.

I’ll give this to the Canadians: they don’t screw around.  If they’re going to tackle sexual issues, they hit everything from STDs to ED, with pregnancy, LUGs, and penis envy in the mix.  In that sense, it’s a more adult approach to teen drama that recognizes a panoply of concerns, not just the top-vote-getters.  But on the other hand…poor Emma!  She gives one blow job and ends up with freakin’ gonorrhea?  And Manny gets pregnant the first time she sleeps with Craig?  Which, now that I think about it, seems to be a rather conservative sexual angle.  Not that these things can’t happen, of course they do, but STDs are a numbers game just like everything else. Oh, and not to mention the fact that it’s the show’s lone fat girl character (Terri) who ends up in an abusive relationship.  Because of course the violent dudes prey on the fatties who’d rather die than leave a lover.

Perhaps that’s the reason I’ve found myself sticking to “scripted reality” lately: I’d rather concern myself with the flippant frippery of reality fantasy (e.g. Is Jeff going to fire Jenni this season?  Is that what that promo meant???) than the representative reality that is television drama.  Degrassi is far closer to the truth than is The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and I’m not interested in that much truth right now.

But is it too much to ask that the kids of Lakehurst High shoulder some of the burden?  Because Degrassi’s apparently got enough of it to go around.

1. The first deadlines for Infinite Summer
2. Hair (so goes the thick, lustrous hair of pregnancy…down the drain…)
3. An acceptable level of blood iron
4. Uninterrupted sleep
5. Patience
6. The point of NYC Prep (not in an entertainment way, but an existential way)
7. A sunny disposition
8. Coffee
9. A serious plan for how I’m going to function as a working mother
10. Texas
11. My “blogiversary,” or whatever the hell you call it (June 26th it was, and no, let’s not dwell on who I was last year at this time)
12. The willingness to end a list on a uneven or otherwise disturbing number like 11.

I have a cold.  A motherfucking cold.  Even though I douse myself in Purell like I’m a nun with a holy water fetish, I got a cold.

Despite this I went to work today, where I proceeded to spread my germs around.  Because I’m generous like that.  However, I did give the students fair warning, sat far away from them, and didn’t touch their papers.  And they looked at me kind of like, “Hey, fat runny-nosed lady, I tongue-kiss dogs with mono.  It’s all good!”  Would that I had their strength.  Or stupidity.

By the way, did you know that MLA has changed its inclusive language rule so that a sentence such as, “When a person has the flu, they should go to the health center” is now CORRECT?  That’s right, MLA has changed a long-lived and -loved grammar rule so that you no longer need either the awkward he/she construction or the less inclusive gendered pronoun.  I DON’T LIKE THIS.  Really.  Not because I’m that into grammar (see present entry for evidence), but because I think you have to know the rule to break the rule, and students don’t know the goddamned rule.  Also, MLA just likes to pretend it changes with the times and recognizes the beautiful fluidity of the English language.  In reality, it’s just another academic hurdle designed to keep you down.  Or something.  Dammit.

Colds make me swear more.  I do not know why.  Maybe because I’m MAD AT THE UNIVERSE.

Speaking of which, RuPaul’s Drag Race is pretty fucked up.  Here’s the thing.  I like me some drag queens.  I like that they make us question sexuality and “the feminine” and gender roles and all that other stuff.  I admire their ability to make their eyebrows disappear under gallons of makeup and yet somehow fix themselves so as not  to look like painted clowns (unless they want to look like painted clowns, that is).  Yay, drag queens.  However.  WHY the soft focus on every other scene?  Why the weird cutaways to Ru’s panel presentations that make Tyra Banks look like a natural when it comes to voice-overs?   And most of all:

Why can’t someone give me a consistent guide on which pronouns to use when referring to a drag queen?  No, really, this is important to me.  Because when a queen is being a queen, I assume that means you say “she.” I   Then, a “she” when performing becomes a “he” when going about his usual business.  Yet when the men were out of costume and were just combing their wigs and stuff, they still referred to each other as “she.”  And I am totes confused.   Granted, maybe they were using “she” in the pejorative, but….  I don’t know.  I need help.  Help MLA can’t give me.  Because they’d just hand me some “When a drag queen has the flu, they should go to the health center” bullshit, and I’m just not having it.

That’s kind of how my brain feels right now.  Like it’s under attack by an octopus weilding snowballs in all of its eight-arms-to-hold-you.

Also, remember how I was all magnanimous and shit at the end of that post of confessed smarminess?  It’s okay if you didn’t read it.  I know it was long.  I probably would have skimmed it if I were you.  Anyway, point is, I am SO not entertaining those soul-expanding feelings anymore.  Not because anything happened.  Just because…god, I’m a bitter little big person and I hate that woman girl.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  I feel like this third trimester is taking a turn toward bitterness.  Maybe some kind of over-protective fighting instinct is kicking in?

They are not technically “co-,” since I “manage” them.  Yet without the power to fire those I hate, what good is this title, anyway?

This fulfills my blogging requirement for the day.

ETA:

1. I ended up yelling at the despicably happy young people and not feeling bad about it.  Not even embarrassed, which is my usual M.O.
2. At least three people asked, “Why are you being so mean?” today.  I don’t know whether to blame this on some sort of pregnancy hormonal thing or on the license that said “hormonal thing” has given me to be n-a-s-t-y.
3. I said I was done talking about the fetus and his troubles.  I lied.  Oh, and I’m calling him “him” but I don’t have any proof of that yet.