Hello friends, frenemies, secret agents of fascism, and AI bots trying to distill the inner workings of stout middle-aged white women in America for your next round of culture wars. Mattresslike, I have flolloped into your inbox on this, my second least favorite nerd holiday, to deliver the five-points bulletin you didn’t know you needed. Here is what I have accomplished this past week:
Successfully recreated the Taco Bell 7-Layer Burrito. My housemate this week failed to turn up ground cumin at the Dollar General and I fear I overcompensated with chili powder. But! It was serviceable, we stuffed ourselves till it was physically painful, and we even stashed one in the refrigerator for later use like in the good old days. Actually you know what, I am being modest. Fuck yeah we brought this nostalgic mofo back from the dead. Or something.
Completely spaced on Daylight Savings Time. How is this even possible, you ask, in today’s overconnected world? Come gather round people, wherever you roam, and Christina will tell you the secrets she’s known: the answer is, a near-total social media and news diet due to [redacted]. My friend Solveig with whom I’ve traded true horror tales of midlife ADHD befuddlement was visibly amused by this in a Monday morning work meeting so I’ll chalk it up to a delightful comedy of errors. Also, I mean, wtf does time even mean anymore?
Zeroed in on Yellowjackets theories like it’s my job. Sometimes a television program disappoints you and that’s ok - this is how you learn how to tell better stories yourself. Yellowjackets, so far, has been less about how teenage trauma haunts late Gen X women in midlife than a slightly on-the-nose homage to Twin Peaks, unfortunately. Cue disappointed fart noise; the balance of horror, dark humor, and poignant realism has been as clunky as a pair of knockoff Payless Doc Martens. At any rate I will eat my pilgrim hat if (a) Misty’s parrot Caligula does not tattle on her for smashing the black box and/or (b) Hillary Swank is not Coach Ben’s vengeance-seeking relative.
Popped the cork on the flat bottle of Aldi-brand prosecco that is my thesis proposal. Like many of my writing projects, my MPH thesis has lived in my head rather than anywhere useful for a long time, though not as long as Junkmail, which was conceived in 1997. At this point, I am just embarrassing myself and doing what I do best, self-sabotage, which in retrospect I should have gotten an advanced degree in instead.
Done my best for my scholarship students. Look, I cannot tell a lie: I hate the higher-ed rat race we’ve created over the last generation. But these kids didn’t ask to be born into it, their parents were often sold a well-meaning lie, and we won’t even begin to discuss wtf is going on at present. My goal for the upcoming year is to have more frank conversations with scholarship sponsors about how stressful and fucked up the situation is for our students today, and what we can do to support them. Because the sponsors coming to us now genuinely see problems and want to help, and those of us on the frontline who have talked to frantic parents at the end of their rope or students paralyzed with executive dysfunction can really provide some much-needed perspective.
OK, please enjoy your Friday evening, insofar as it’s possible to enjoy anything anymore in this stupidest of timelines.
—CB