a brief word on this portrayal of duchess kate’s white fragility

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whew, PEOPLE. if ever there was a day built for rage?! and it is not yet noon US EST!

between the horrifying story of a police officer murdering an unnamed Black man in minneapolis, the video of amy cooper calling the police on a birder who asked her to leash her dog, the president of notre dame’s op-ed in the times about the risks we must all sustain for the education of students (ie. the continuation of american football), AND the president of purdue’s op-ed in the post about moral responsibility of reopening in the fall (ie. capitalism and the continuation of american football), i would like to go back to bed and spend the day reading my trashy novel about a kept woman falling madly in love a rake with waterloo PTSD while teaching him how to cheat at vingt-et-un in regency england.

ALAS, NO. i cannot do that, because today is also the day that the daily mail posted this nonsense.

which, if we’re in some sort of white supremacy/white fragility/white tears carnival time– and that does increasingly seem to be what was meant by “reopening”– hardly ranks supreme. but it is nonetheless, stupidly consistent with this broader alignment of the racist stars and worth a gander, especially due to the subtlety of the pandering and the broader agenda of thumbs up-ing white femininity. (please, lawd, this is not the gemini season i wanted.) Continue reading →

the pathos of jackie kennedy dolls on etsy, vol. 3, no. 2

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yup. ’tis time. saddle up.

as you know, this ain’t our first rodeo. we’ve peered deep into the hell hole of jackie kennedy doll photographs on etsy multiple times before.

somehow, amid 15 moves and 14 jobs and myriad other responsibilities, over the last five years, i have produced a rich seam of informal, doctoral-level scholarship on dolls. you are welcome.

#thingsforwhichtherearenonationalappreciationdays

Continue reading →

this is what it feels like to be teaching college right now

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it was very overcast. the clouds hung very low.

i think it was probably a thursday. one of the thursdays where i did three shows and then i took my #adjunctfashion and my sore knee home and i collapsed, ate a giant bowl of pasta and watched vanderpump rules for three hours to decompress before falling into bed.

the thing i remember is experiencing such a sense of relief, as i walked up the hill out of campus, past the national basilica, past the nuns and the priests, towards the metro, for what may have been the last time.

i remember so little.

but i do remember the relief. though i do not specifically remember why, on that particular day. beyond maybe the fact that i felt like they were finally all on board, or at least a plurality. we’d reached the tipping point in the semester where, by the sheer force of my personality, i had won them over.

they wanted to write for me. they were ready, i had primed them, i had put in the work and i had earned their trust and they were ready to write for me. it was going to be a good year.

Continue reading →

on jessica simpsons’s memoir

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i am giving myself exactly one hour and thirty-eight minutes in which to write about this. because there are 19 papers that need to be graded and i’m leaving for an estate sale with a friend at 9:45, but there are things i gots to say.

THE JESSICA SIMPSON MEMOIR IS AMAZING. Continue reading →

a deep reading of t.s. eliot’s letter from the beyond

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dear people, yesterday, mister thomas stearns eliot spoke to us from the beyond and revealed himself to be the petty jackass we always thought he was.

this may seem a digression but then that just means you never knew me in my alternate life as someone who twice attended and twice taught at the t.s. eliot international summer school. which was A Time, let me tell you.

to the degree that when tom hiddleston wore that i ❤ t.s. shirt, much of my enthusiasm about it lay in the fact that the eliot school started the following week and we could use it as the opening slide of a powerpoint presentation.

that said, in all honesty, i do not think i’ve thought about this man AT ALL in the last two years. things were going on, time passed, i taught rhetoric and tried to reshape my students’ perceptions of who can be a writer by engineering syllabi almost entirely devoid of white dudes. which means i’ve no longer spent summers thinking about the emily hale letters.

but, whew boy! here they are. Continue reading →

the pathos of jackie kennedy dolls on etsy, 3.0

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people! the end of the year– nay, THE DECADE– is nigh. you know what that means… lots o lists, lots o recaps, blahbity blah blah.

but here, in jackie glamo-land, by now you maybe know it means the return of everyone’s second favorite genre (behind emotions via britney): oline trekks deep into the world of jackie dolls on etsy in order to assess our existential situation and, maybe just maybe– amid the doll feet and the uncanny– finds a glimmer of hope.

BRACE. and you’re welcome.

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short thoughts on aunt becky and the unscrupulous people

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yo. by popular demand/literally one reader’s personal request, i am here to talk about varsity blues.

no. not the james van der beek classic. dry your eyes.

nope. i’m here to talk about the modern day movie of the week starring the dowager queen of the hallmark channel, aunt becky.

ie. lori loughlin. Continue reading →

on andrew garfield’s jeans

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by way of preface… my dear friend EL and i have a friendship ya’ll should all be jealous of.

for many, many reasons, one of which is that, because as part of a larger story that i will not go into here, in the last year we have often communicated through andrew garfield memes.

specifically blonde andrew garfield, to be clear. Continue reading →