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.

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?

Yeah, yeah, I’ll get back to talking about the dissertation when I get back to thinking about the dissertation.  Baby Steps, you know.  I saw my advisor coming my way in the hallway yesterday, so I stopped dead, turned around, and started walking in the other direction.  In the animal kingdom, this is what is known as “running away.”  And speaking of being sneaky and gross…

I am kind of, a little bit, internet-stalking my husband’s ex-girlfriend (who is not, by the way, his penultamour.  I guess she’s a pre-penultamour, though in fact she was his last serious relationship before me, my direct predecessor being an “I don’t want to be alone on Valentine’s Day” fling).   And do you know why I do this, the internet stalkery?  BECAUSE IT IS FUN.  And it requires all of my research skills and none of my brain.

If this admission of mine bothers you, stop reading.  Because you and me, we have sort of a thing here, sort of a thing where maybe I make you smile or maybe you shake your head ruefully or woefully, but let’s face it, you like me.  And you don’t want me to be one of those people, those immature overshare-y internet people, so if you stop now, I’ll never be those people, and later we can proceed as if this never happened.

Okay, backstory: I used to be a pretty cool girlfriend in that I didn’t care if my boyfriend stayed in touch with his exes.  I probably wasn’t as cool as some people, but, you know, I wasn’t one to declare that all previous friendships ended with my arrival.  This is more wondrous when you consider that I don’t maintain friendships with exes.  Personally, by the time I’m done with a relationship, I’m done. Nothing salvagable remains.  Perhaps because, as was established above, I can be immature.  But I don’t think this is necessarily a sign of immaturity; I think it’s just that I invest a lot in the friendships I do maintain, and for me, there’s no point making that investment in people whom I’ve effectively ejected from my life.

Point is:  in my last relationship before the marriage, the boyfriend would regularly call his ex.  While sitting on my couch.  And sometimes, while using my cellphone.  Because he was a broke-ass quasi-musician with a barely-functioning car who didn’t own a cell phone and her number was long distance, and it made me feel good about myself to accept their friendship, and holy shit, who am I trying to kid here, he broke up with her to date me, and what was I supposed to do, pretend that didn’t happen?  And OF COURSE they got back together after WE broke up, and no, they aren’t together anymore, and Perpetua, did you learn this via any other means besides Internet Stalkery?  NO.  No I did not.  I learned it from the ex/un-ex/re-ex’s Myspace.  Because I am Like That.

But I don’t count that one as stalking.  I count that one as Gentle Curiousity.  Because I was in a relationship, and it turned out to be this relationship, the marriage one, and I was feeling all kinds of wonderful about the world, and so I looked her up on Myspace (I don’t have one of those, by the way, because apparently I think I’m too good for it), and I was sad that they were apart again, because I genuinely wanted them to be happy and settled and together.  No, I seriously did.  And you know it’s true because I’ve already told you how gross I am, so why would I start pretending otherwise now?

So anywayz…I’m in this relationship, the one that has led to marriage, and pregnancy, even!.  Hey now, don’t judge, it’s not like I’m those people with the Hitler Baby.  I do have smarmy habits, but I’m hoping they don’t impact my mothering potential.  At the beginning of our relationship, Wizard and his penultamour were friends.  He even, I kid you not, called her while on our first date because she was going abroad for a month and he wanted to say goodbye.  But what did I care?  I was smitten, and by dinner that night I knew we were in it to win it. I was thinking marriage, and so was he, though neither of us confessed to that for a good six months at least.  Don’t throw up.  It happens.  And the reason it happened was that I trusted him from minute one.  And I don’t trust anyone.  Ever.  I barely trust the laws of physics or nature.  So I was confident that this was it.

Problem was, his ex was buoyed by his relationship failures.  He dated a lot (via online sites, mostly) and so did she, and neither of them ended up with anything until I came along, and then, BAM, all his dating site profiles are deleted and he has a new girlfriend.  Smitten is a two-way street, you know.  So it was a bit of a surprise for her to suddenly be deprived of her best friend who was similarly unattached (and really, despite their history, it was no different for them than it was when you have a same-sex non-ex friend who ups and gets attached to a partner–it can be a bit of a shocker/downer).  And you know me.  I’m nice.  So it’s not like I’m going to object to them hanging out on occasion.  I was always invited.  I just had better shit to do, and it seemed “nice” to let them hang out together, just like I had fun hanging out with my friends by myself.  We were smitten kittens, no lie, but we weren’t annoying about it.

So all’s well, all’s going swimmingly, until…the Storm of Drunk-Dialing.  Followed quickly by the Onslaught of Even Drunker Texting.  And then, and then, dear readers, came the night when your faithful Perpetua had to deliver the more articulate and urbane version of “Bitch, step off.”  This was the night, the fateful night, of “There are animals! Animals!  Loose in my house! Can’t I sleep over?”

Oooohhhh, yeah.

This has gone on long enough, far longer than intended.  Conclusion in Part Two.

As the whine-a-roo post below indicates, I’m immersed in 9/11 lit, and it’s depressing the hell out of me, so I’m not capable of posting something coherent right now (which is not to say I’ve ever posted something coherent, come to think of it). My dissertation is not exclusively on 9/11 texts (note to self: update wholly inaccurate “Dissertating” page), but a lot of what I’m reading right now will most likely make it into some of the chapters.  So in lieu of something interesting, here are some back-to-school observations:

1. This year’s cycle of freshmen?  Young’ns.  It’s amazing how different the groups look from year to year.  The class of 2012, despite being the first group of true 90s babies, has the puffy look of youth and abandonment about their wide eyes.  Last year’s group was more sophisticated, more “grown up.”  These kids are more my style: shlubby, pale, undone.  I hated the year I taught a MWF 8 AM full of freshmen who consistently came in full hair and makeup.  I looked a bit like their zoned out, dressed down drug dealer in comparison.
2. There’s an asshole in every class.  Part of my new, non-teaching fellowship requires me to make quick visits to classes to talk about writing (and yes, it’s even worse than it sounds).  So far I’ve only been doing this for a week, but initial studies show that, wow, everyone gets saddled with that one dickhead kid who, according to law and contract, you’re not allowed to throttle.  Or perhaps it’s one of those “nature abhors a vacuum” things, so that in each class an asshole is made, if not born, out of necessity.  At any rate, I used to think it was just me.  Or, just me and most of my friends.  But I’ve been to a bunch of classrooms this week:  tenured profs, well-respected and adored profs, even the class of the “cool guy” prof, and in each case there was some smirky, dicky, slimy jerkoff.  Gender analysis aside, they were all male students.  One might blame that special blend of “gotta get laid before Labor Day” hormones that accompanies all of them this first week.  All’s I knows is, NOT MY PROBLEM.  Not my students, not my smirks, not my grading, not my annoyance.  Woo.
3. College isn’t a mall, but you wouldn’t know it to see it.  I don’t know what’s going on on the rest of your campuses, but at my school (which needs a nickname, does it not?  It’s a religious-affiliated school, so let’s go with Jesus Loves U–JLU) they just keep buying up property and turning that property into…no, not classrooms, try again.  Parking?  No way.  What about a state of the art multimedia facility?  Stop kidding around.  No, they’re turning that shit into a strip mall, complete with restaurants and coffee places and a freakin’ Barnes and Noble (which, granted, is the way all school bookstores are headed, but still).  I don’t know if this is on the meal plan.  I don’t know if this is just supposed to assure anxious parents that their kids don’t have to leave campus for bad burgers and stationery.  But let’s just say that if the school REALLY wanted to be helpful, they’d have built a small, maybe even low-price supermarket so that the students wouldn’t have to travel several miles through The Scary Unwalkable Part of Urbanville just to get their poptarts.  But hey, that would have benefited the surrounding community, too, and we can’t have that.  So let’s just knock down the affordable (though admittedly decrepit) housing and put up a Starbucks.

So, that’s what I learned at school this week.  How about you?

I was supposed to write about being disorganized, but why tell when I can show?  Instead of a coherent post, here’s a list.  A lovely little whiny little list:

• I decided to start playing the clarinet again. I don’t know why.  Just an urge.  I was never that good at it;  I was average, maybe.  And I haven’t played seriously in ten years, though I still remember the mechanics of the thing.  Likely I will play for a couple of a days, realize I sound like crap, and quit.  But I think I’m hoping it will take my mind off the fact that, beyond the perils of the dissertation,
• I have an ugly soul.  Mein soul, she is plagued by envy, greed, jealousy, hatred, and all the other smelly bottom dwellers of personalities.  This is clearly the fault of grad school.  Over the past six years, I’ve become so…mean.  I’d be happy to see my classmates fail at any and every thing.  Okay, not all of them.  But generally the lot of them disgust me, and I in turn disgust myself. I want them to fail…at school, at marriage, at child-rearing, at friendships, at grocery shopping, at walking down the street.  I want their computers to break, their spouses to cheat, their children to smoke crack, their friends to hate them, their food to rot, their sidewalks to crack.  I want their well-manicured lives to implode.   I can’t survive this way, and I know this.  I don’t even know what fuels this ire; it can’t just be work-envy, because there will always be someone better than I am at the work that I do.  You can’t out-Butler Butler.  Or out-Fish Fish.  And you certainly can’t out-Bloom Bloom, though I’m convinced that someone eventually will–all it takes is an army of RAs and a closet full of jaunty scarves.  But it’s not about the big names; it’s about the desk next door, and I want a meteor to fall on that desk.  I have to get over this shit.  I swear to god it’s giving me jowls and a pot belly.  But on the bright side,
• I’m seeing the point of blogging.  I used to view it as merely an exercise in self-absorption…and it is, of course.  But self-absorption might not be so bad if it makes you face up to things, such as the fact that you haven’t been reading as much as you need to, or that you spend too much time worrying about office politics, or, you know, that you’ve become a mean little nasty ugly person.