13 things

I stole this "MeMe meme" from Jessica's blog. And she got it from someone else, so if you want its origin, wander over to looktouch and find out for your damn self.

13 Things About Me that Are Weird (only 13?)

1. I don't like ice cream. That's right, you heard me correctly.

2. I can't burp. Have never done so. It's rumored in my family that this is some kind of hereditary medical condition, but I have never bothered to find out as I don't really care if I can or cannot burp.

3. I drink neither beer nor pop. (See above)

4. I get hives from especially difficult coursework.

5. Nervous puke-r.

6. I find furniture... difficult. This is possibly a manifestation of my fear of commitment. Ditto houseplants.

7. I am possessed of an uncanny ability to locate the cheapest plane-tickets online.

8. I love dickering with car salesmen; hence, I am invaluable to those buying a new car.

9. I have a stupendous sense of direction and can find my way around anywhere. Except, oddly, Detroit, where I have lived for 2 years. If you put a gun to my head I could not get from point A to point B in Detroit and, this being Detroit, that scenario will probably be realized someday.

10. I'm 30 years old and I still babysit.

11. I'm 30 years old and I still call my mother "Mommy."

12. I only use red toothbrushes. I arbitrarily made this decision several years ago just to see if I could stick to it, and so far I have.

13. I own so many alarm clocks that I have lost track of the exact number.

cliche-spotting: academia edition

i was just looking through this week's cpf and i realized that it is time to put the kibosh on:

"queer" as a verb, as in "to queer," or "queering."

this word is officially overused. i don't know why this bothers me so much, but see my Louisville post for more tired academic cliches. i guess i feel like once certain buzzwords become institutionalized, nobody really thinks about what they mean anymore. so now that everybody "queers," it's no longer necessary to think of what the process of queering entails. queering has in effect become reified into just another academic thing that doesn't really need to do anything anymore. one just inserts it in one's paper title, or sentence, or abstract, and POOF! the entire project is magically queered (no pun intended). which, of course, sort of misses the whole point of queering by rendering it, like, not at all queer.

although i should say that i know people who have used, and continue to use, "queering" to do actual work because they are simultaneously using the concept and problematizing or developing it. so, okay. keep on queering in the free world.

hey, "queering": it was fun while it lasted. you had a good run.