On Feeling Like Blogging When One Has Nothing of Substance to Say

Ok, so I'm in the mood to write a blog post. I am in this mood because a.) I feel chatty, b.) I don't feel like polishing my conference paper or like checking off any more to-do list items, c.) I don't feel like watching TV or a movie or something (especially as I just got back from seeing the BEST. MOVIE. EVER. - Knocked Up), d.) I don't feel like reading any books or magazines, e.) I would enjoy reading some blog posts, but my bloglines cue is woefully empty (because apparently other people don't feel like blogging as much as I do in the summertime).

I'm sick of writing about professional identity crap and the grad school stuff. I think I've said all I've got to say for a while on that. And I don't particularly want to moan about my to-do list, as I'm in too good of a mood for that.

So what's a girl to do? What do I want to write about?

I suppose I will do a post about random things that occur to me, and maybe some will be interesting.

1. Katherine Heigl
First of all, as I noted over at Medusa's blog, I am clearly beautiful because I used the ever-so-accurate celebrity face recognition technology and it said I resembled her (as well as many other beautiful people, like Kate Winslet, Heidi Klum, and Karolina Kurkova, to name just a few). Second, it occurred to me while watching Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up that her gift to the small and big screens is that she's this gorgeous creature and yet it is somehow believable that she will totally fall in love with dudes who are just average joes. And it makes sense, even though it totally doesn't make sense at all. How does that Katherine Heigl do it?

2. A. and I had a great conversation the other day about showering.
First off in the conversation was that I have this thing where I don't really believe in showering with other people. Not as a universal, but as I told her, it's on my list of things I'm "saving" for marriage. Call me crazy (and I know you all do :) ), but I think some things are special, and the coed showers are among those things. But then we were talking about showering alone, and it occurs to us that for those of us who tend most often to shower alone that we have absolutely FILTHY backs. Because you know nobody really washes her own back. Maybe the top of your shoulders, maybe the lower back, but the middle of your back? You know all you do is rinse it off. Even if your mom bought you a back-washing implement of some kind, you know it just is a decorative touch in your shower at least 360 days out of the year. But THEN here's the other thing: even if one chooses to shower with a buddy, probably one doesn't do that every day, and so even if you do that your back is probably not terribly clean. The only people who probably shower together ALL THE TIME are "lovahs" who use sensual massage oils regularly, and they have to shower together all the time in order to wash each others' backs because if they didn't they'd get terrible back acne from all of the cherries jubilee flavored gunk that they're rubbing all over each other. And we'd rather have filthy backs than be those sort of people.

3. You know, I say I suck at handling criticism, but actually that's not really true.
Or, rather, it is kind of true, but what I realized upon reading a reader's report on an essay of mine is that I've improved in this area, and so I have to thank my dissertation adviser for toughening me up on that score, as ultimately nothing has ever hurt my feelings more than his criticism. In the reader's report experiences I've had, I've totally been able to detach and to see the few good things in the midst of all of the "wow, you really fucked this up good and proper" that surrounds it. It's like when diss. adviser would write up his evaluations of my work (and he did write them up, just like reader's reports, referring to me as "lastname" throughout, which I think was the most horrible part of it because it was so cold and cruel feeling at the time) I initially only saw the bad stuff (which is why I cried like a baby when I got my comments on a seminar paper for which I received an A) but after he did this over and over again, and refused to say nice things about my dissertation except for when I broke down and said to him outright, "I need you to say something that's good about this, just this once," I became the sort of person who could see such seemingly brutal comments as helpful and as a demonstration that the person actually read what I fucking wrote. And so now, it's like I'm this whole new "I can take criticism" person, even though I'm not naturally that person because naturally I just want people to praise me constantly. And not only that but I'm now also the sort of person who can take that kind of "advice" and just run with it and I'm not in any way committed to my original vision once the reader gets a hold of it. This may seem like a bad thing, but I think it actually is the key to the whole publishing thing. Just have absolutely no commitment to your ideas! Just do what they say! Most of the time it makes for a cooler paper, it turns out. This has all been a total revelation to me. I should note that this terribly zen approach does not in any way translate into my personal life, and that if people criticize me in a personal context I become incredibly combative and quite difficult to handle. The word "tantrum" might be appropriate to describe my usual way of "handling" such situations. I blame the fact that I'm an only child. I also might be a little bit of a spoiled brat.

4. That Prince. He's really a musical genius.
You know how I know that this is true? Because even when people who aren't Prince sing songs that he has written, it is always awesome. I heard "Manic Monday" on the radio today, and wow, it's fabulous. And just think of all of the awesome covers of Prince's songs: "Nothing Compares 2 U" (Sinead O'Connor), "When You Were Mine" (Cyndi Lauper), "If I Was Your Girlfriend" (TLC), and, perhaps the most awesome of them all, the trio The Be Good Tanyas' blue-grass-y rendition of "When Doves Cry." I'm telling you: all those people who thought that Michael Jackson was the musical genius of the 80s were so totally wrong.

5. Dude. People. Don't bring your dirty-footed bare-foot clearly able-to-walk toddler to a yuppified place with restaurants and a movie theater and a bookstore in a stroller.
Children should have clean feet and they should wear socks and shoes (or sandals or whatever) in public. I'm not saying that you should go the route that my mother did throughout much of the 1970s and put your kid in socks and sandals, but that does not obscure the point that one should wash the feet of all children, and put children who know how to walk in shoes of some kind. Anywhere in public. Not just at the yuppified places, though it really does stand out there. Oh, and another thing. Don't let your 7 year old with those roller-skate tennis-shoes come to the same establishment shirtless and to skate along in the street where cars are. Just saying.

6. Woohoo! Good news!
Just found out I've got 20 mins. for my upcoming conference paper, not 15! Thank you, Goddess! The stars are aligning all in my favor! Hurrah! (This is such a boon, mainly, because I have this whole "I should have been an actress" thing where I actually slow down and get into the whole "reading of a paper" thing and I love the attention, so I really need the full 20 minutes for a paper that should only take 15 to read. I should note that I'm not a rude panelist, and I make every effort to keep to time, even if it means I have to write only 6 pages.)

7. I'm thinking Summer 2007 is going to be awesome, and perhaps even the reprise of The Summer of Love.
There's no real reason for this, other than that Naomi went on a date (when she's been totally out of the pool in recent months), A. has her Accidental Husband, who does continue to win Emotional Cave-dweller of the Day Awards, Disney Heather is in l-o-v-e LOVE.... And Crazy? Well, Crazy has a Crazy Fake Boyfriend kind of. And no, it's not a Not-Boyfriend, even though I do realize that the distinctions are fine. And no, I'm not going to go into this anymore on the blog, but let us just say that my life is like a bad made-for-tv-movie. In not-made-for-tv-movie news, a friend from grad school may have fertility-treatment-assisted babies by week's end! I'm telling you! Summer of love!