Here on Out

its a little after 2am and i'm working my way through all avenues of stock procrastination. i've lit a cigarette, made instant ramen, read a professor's blog, and checked my e-mail.

oddly enough, all of these things are connected. i'm taking a break from my senior thesis - an analysis of the Cold War consolidation of The Closet as a hegemonic way to organize American queer lives. Fun, right? Want to read it when its done, right?

Only if you are an academic specializing in a) the American Cold War, b) Queer stuff, or c), the even more specialized Both.

Now, as with all good thesis breaks, this one involves questioning the very idea of spending a year researching, bleeding over, and then writing a 100-something page project that all of ::gasp:: 3 people will ever read (including yourself, excluding family members who pretend anyway).

My e-mail included a birthday party invitation at some unknown 2nd floor bar deep in the East Village called "Monty's Uncle" or something. My friend can only allude to its chic-ness. He is a very smart graduate of the University I now attend and, in the not so distant past, also bled a thesis. Everything I understood in his e-mail is included above. The rest of this mass invitation was taken up with what read as inside jokes about "problem bars" and "not in my district". What that means is anyone's guess. Who else was inside on and got those jokes is more worrying. Right out of college, he got a very nice job working for a minor gay politician in NYC. He is paid enough, he is out and safe at work, he is not in the heart of homo/transphobic, racist, misogynistic nowhere, and he goes out dancing on the weekend. Really, its one of the best straight-out-of-college work stories I have to go by. But I can't get over those jokes or the buying into of East Village hipster irony. Avoidable? Maybe.

And that brings me to my professor's blog. Its a fascinating, funny, scathing, well-informed, and intelligent diatribe against the tenure process, intradepartmental antagonism, radicalism, idiot colleagues, student entitlement, institution entitlement, and (lately) candidate searches. Did I mention the tenure process? Well, it deserves two in both our books. What is amazing is that there are many other professors reading hir blog, writing their own blogs, and then throwing comments at each other's blogs. Imagine your first trip to your first queer support group-type thing. There are people like you! Now imagine that its also everyone else's first trip, too. Entering their blog-o-sphere is like getting run over by a ticker tape bonding parade. I should say that this professor is actually a delight to learn from and I'm happily auditing a class zie teaches just for my own good. Zie is smart, engaged in class, able to field difficult questions and entire lectures from the top of hir head, never makes anyone feeel dumb (even though they can be dumb), and is willing to throw away entire sections of the carefully crafted, multi-leveled syllabus if the class needs something else. But I can't get over these blogs and the undercurrent of "just keeping my head above water and my resentment/radicalism submerged". Avoidable? Maybe.

Which brings me to my instant ramen. God, I love instant ramen. But its an aquired taste. Acquired, in this case, by being a penny-pinching undergrad for four years (two without a kitchen). If I had time to cook and money to buy organic, fair trade, hand-crafted ingredients, I would. I'm actually a pretty good cook, too. Maybe the life-long elite (and bank-breaking) education my entire bi-continental family pitched in for is actually leading my to Culinary School. Or an idealistic non-profit like all other recent grads. Avoidable? Maybe.

My (new) cigarette, then. I once heard the story that, when asked why so many Americans smoke, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. explained that it was the most socially accepted form of suicide. This stuck with me. Its with me now as I wonder, again, whether I should spend the rest of my life a) fighting a losing battle against my waning integrity as a native New Yorker, b) fighting a losing battle against my waning sense of integrity as an Intellectual, or C) eating instant ramen as a struggling chef or non-profit employee. Avoidable? Maybe.

What isn't avoidable is that I have to get back to my thesis in order to try and avoid all of these things later. Procrastinating? Maybe.

Regulation + Galliano = Something I'd Wear

Now - I was thinking to post something hopefully witty, clever and well-informed on Gold Molar's blog. Not on the subject, mind you, but something hopefully witty, clever and well-informed nonetheless.

THEN - I tried to post, was informed by a small blue link on the bottom of the page that I already had a Blogger account and panicked. Blog? What blog? I reasoned that maybe you just got one automatically for being alive and between 12 & 42. In retrospect, this was not reasonable reasoning, but I've stopped underestimating regulatory technologies.

THEN - When I'd fully spun out my reasonable explanation of the fiasco, it all turned out to be a lie. I did not, in fact, automatically have a blog. So I started one.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY: Regulation is out, devious self-regulation is in. And blogs. Those are in, too - though I am way late on that one.

P.S. Check out the Galliano Kimono deconstruction going on here:

http://men.style.com/fashion/collections/F2007MEN/review/JGMEN