Thoughts on The Social Network

1. Why the hell are they making a movie about Facebook? This will be terrible!

2. But with this cast and director, it can't really be bad...

3. No, it has to be bad.

While watching the trailer:

4. This cover of Creep in the trailer is almost as good as the original. And the song is really perfect for this...

5. An awesomely bad movie?

6. Maybe just awesome?

7. This is probably every exciting scene.

8. Definitely see this movie.

Modern Dating?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knN5NsKbggo&feature=player_embedded

Or I could just look at this: Cute Boys with Cupcakes

More Signs of a Post-Grad Summer

11. Embarrassingly high Text Twist scores.

12. You finally learn those life lessons/heed the advice that would have been more helpful months ago, when you were too busy staring at your thesis and drinking on Wednesdays to pay attention.

13. Those few words about Lady Gaga? Maybe after I get around to actually opening my GRE book and finishing unpacking (yes, from Vassar).

14. You're blogging at 2:15 am, and it's not because you're awake avoiding homework. In fact, there's no real reason you're awake, and you're kind of tired, but you probably won't go to bed for another hour or so. That would involve moving.

HAPPY BLOOMSDAY!!

Perfectly timed for my reading of Ulysses, even if I'm not that far along.

World's Largest Cupcake?

Okay, I know I promised Lady Gaga, but first: cupcakes, a subject very close to my heart.

Last night, I happened to catch a rerun of the Ace of Cakes episode where Duff makes the "world's largest cupcake" (certified by the Guinness Book of World Records!) for a charity bake sale at the Mall of America. There are a lot of things wrong with this, but let's focus on the major two:

1. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a cupcake is a "small iced cake in a cup-shaped foil or paper container." According to Alton Brown, the term cupcake came into use because back in the day, a cup was the most convenient container to bake a cake in. So, if a cupcake is really just a small cake (and I think we can all agree on that), then the world's largest cupcake is...a cake. Just a cake. Not a cupcake. Duff, as a baker, should understand this. I missed the beginning of the episode, but I'm pretty sure Geoff (the best person on the show) agrees with me. And the "cupcake" didn't even meet the second part of the definition! It was not in a cup-shaped paper container, but just had fondant mimicking the folds of a cupcake paper.

2. So maybe Duff doesn't agree that a large cupcake is just a cake. But he should at least know that a cupcake is a single entity. Not a vaguely cupcake-shaped shell filled with cakes and frosted on top to make it look like a cupcake. It's just a whole bunch of cakes put together to masquerade as a cupcake. Luckily, the Guinness Book of World Records agrees with me, and took away Duff's claim to the world's largest cupcake because his was made in multiple parts.

Common sense, Duff. Stick to your cakes.

The best, snarkiest quote about celebrities that I've read this week (in reference to Katy Perry):

You look like what would happen if someone dipped Zooey Deschanel and a funfetti cupcake in a vat of toxic waste and topped it off with a few hundreds pounds of high grade trucker meth.

Coming soon: a few words about Lady Gaga

10 Signs of a Post-Grad Summer

1. You set your alarm for 10:30 so you can be "productive," wake up at 11:15, realize you don't really have much to do, get up anyway, and need a nap by 12:45.

2. You kind of relate to a Ke$ha song... and it's not Tik Tok (Note: If you relate at all to any Kes$ha song, it may be time to reevaluate your life. Good time the summer after you graduate is the perfect time for that!).

3. A glance at your bookshelf prompts 45 minutes of Wikipedia-searching about the author of your favorite YA novel, which leads to more internet searching to see if they are in fact making one of her books into a movie. Even though it wasn't your favorite book of hers, this would be the most exciting thing to happen since graduation. (This was followed by hearing Lifehouse's Hanging by a Moment on the radio... Hello, middle school!)

4. Unpacking one suitcase took almost a week, and there's still more to be done.

5. At an awards night for high school seniors, hearing how special the Class of 2010 is makes you simultaneously want to cry, run away, and throw things.

6. Job applications are generally filled out in a 1am frenzy.

7. The absolute last question you want anyone to ask you is what you're doing in the fall, but you can't seem to start a conversation that doesn't somehow bring up next year.

8. Number of daily Perez Hilton visits? Too embarrassing to admit.

9. Your only real summer plans are applying for jobs, studying for the GREs, and growing out your bangs (and reading big books, of course).

10. Coming up with a tenth sign of a post-grad summer is too daunting. So are most other things.

What do you do with a B.A. in English?

It's been a long time since I've written here, and in that time, I've finished my thesis, written my last undergraduate papers, and graduated college. Time for a sappy post about how much the last four years have meant to me, right? Wrong. As I'm sure many of you know, the job market out there is tough. Particularly for someone with two majors that don't give you any real specialized skills. So, of course, I've been wondering, as I hunt for a job for next year, what do you do with a B.A. in English? It seems there are at least a few options:

1. publishing

2. try to be a "writer"

3. editing

4. journalism

5. more school

Many English majors will do at least one, probably a few, of these. I thought I wanted to do #4, hope to do #5 after next year, and will never, ever do #2, if only for lack of talent. And yet, none of these quite cover my perfect English major plans. If I could do anything with my major, it would be something along the lines of this: The Displaced English Major. Will I get a job for next year, and later in life? Yes (or at least I hope so). Will I go back to school, learn more things, etc? I plan on it. But mostly, I just want to read. Not even talk about what I'm reading or write about it, but simply take in the information that's on the page in front of me, think about it on my one, and keep going, book after book.

Except for some travel, and applying for lots of jobs, this is roughly my summer plan. I'm planning on reading both Ulysses and Infinite Jest, the first because English majors and professors are obsessed with Joyce and I've already read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and the second because my postmodern literature class ruined my life this past semester. Very different books, but I feel like I just need to read both.

Which brings me to projects like the Displaced English Major. This sort of thing is absolutely something I would do, reminiscent of my Oscar movie project (more on that in a later entry), and many of these books are ones I've either read or would love to read. But looking at this list makes me question why exactly I want to read them. If there's one thing I learned from my liberal arts education (besides, of course, that the patriarchy is holding me down), it's that the "canon" of literature is sort of bullshit, at least partly because it's created by the patriarchy of white men. In some ways, it's obviously true. Canonical literature is heavy on dead white men, who don't quite represent the full range of literature. But there's also some extent to which the canon is the canon for a reason. These books are widely considered the best-written, the most interesting, or somehow important. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to read books with those qualities. I wouldn't read a book just because it's canonical, just as I wouldn't read a book by someone just because the author is a woman. To do that is ridiculous, and so the Displaced English Major project makes me a little wary. Being well-read isn't particularly impressive if you read the books because you feel you should, rather than because you want to. I hope Rense is reading these books because she is truly interested in them, but it's a bit hard to tell.

Either way, it makes me a little sad that my reading plans stop at two books, even if they're very long books. Perhaps I'll create an even more epic reading list, and blog about all of them here, but like I said, I really just want to read, not write about the books, at least for now. So if you need me, I'll be sitting outside, taking a break from wondering what the hell you do with a B.A. in English to read some Joyce.