But We're Never Gonna Survive, Unless We Get a Little Bit Crazy

Working at Big Red is a really strange experience. It teeters between soul crushing, at which point I often imagine myself diving in front of a metro car on my ride home, and wonderfully amusing/educational. Whatever else it is, I find this combination oddly thrilling. Some quick examples:

-A coworker came into my office the other day and said, "Do you know what the biggest problem with education today is? Universities aren't teaching kids the skills they need to get jobs." I clenched my jaw, turned my head, and responded by acknowledging that we had fundamentally different approaches to education, and I didn't really feel like getting into it that early in the morning. I'm pretty proud that I didn't take the bait.

-Another coworker, while watching Bloomberg television (a staple at our office), decided to make fun of Obama by doing a Bill Cosby impression. Racism is alive and well in right-wing America. But then, when I mentioned, in my most innocent, definitely never, ever sarcastic voice, that I had read recently that Barack actually turned down his Jello endorsement deal, I was met with blank stares. If you're gonna brave the 1930's racism of an Obama/Cosby joke, at least know your history, guys. But mostly, just knock it off!

-I've made it my goal to say "God Bless America" at least once a day. Usually people just smile affirmatively, but I've also gotten two high-fives out of the deal. I don't think anyone knows how much I'm kidding when I say it. I'm also not sure they realize when I make fun of them, more generally. God bless stoic sarcasm.

-Between the job and my extracurricular reading habits, I now know more about economics than I ever wanted to. The tentative title of my forthcoming econ textbook is going to be, "Stop Giving a Shit about Pie Charts." Depending on who you are, you'll be excited/disappointed to know that I still can't bring myself to worship the dollar. Sorry, Dad.

One small bit of news that genuinely offends me, and to which I am not quite sure how to respond: In our company's quarterly newsletter*, they have a section where they list new employees, their positions, and a short bio. Well, I had to think carefully about the short bio, because I had a hard time writing anything that didn't read, "I am the homosexual menace, and here are my various fetishes." After some brief agonizing, I finally managed to put together a short, deliberately vague bio that basically read "name, degree & certificate, does a little writing, now has job." I even managed to pepper it with some pithy humor! Well, in the editing process, they completely sanitized the bio. The published bio read something to the effect of "Will Danger went to QTU. Now, he works here."

Alright, sure. Republican editors can't be faulted for being generally humorless. What I find insulting is that they refused to list my degree/certificate, when everyone else featured in this section, regardless of age/career status, had their various communications/marketing/super-lame-shit degrees listed. It wasn't a spacing issue, because my bio ended up being considerably shorter than everyone else's. There was even another former English major who had her degree listed, so I can only assume that they refused to print the fact that I have a certificate in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies.** This conclusion is simultaneously obnoxious, unsurprising, obliquely homophobic, sort of insulting, and (eventually) kind of funny. I'll make up for it by one day writing an exposé about my time in the conservative trenches. And the cover of the book will just be an image of my LGBT certificate punching my boss in the nose.***

I'll leave you with another Alanis anthem (a Seal cover, this time), whose sentiment has pretty much been getting me through the week: "But we're never gonna survive/Unless we get a little bit crazy."

Please don't think me unoriginal for repeatedly ending posts with a video. Just sing along.

*I can't believe that phrase has become part of my vocabulary. The world takes us to some very strange places, doesn't it?
 
**I made the deliberate decision in the bio to spell the entire thing out.

***We'll have to draw arms/brass knuckles on the certificate, obviously. Actually, the more I think about it, including a pair of brass knuckles with all future certificates seems like a good idea. Who do I see about making that a reality, Roxie?

Sitting on a Dock, Watching the World End

In light of a really rough week and a seemingly-endless string of terrible dates, the possible subject of future writing, I feel the need to begin this post by taking stock of a few sources of stabilizing optimism:

1. I don't sleep all that much anymore, but I'm managing to stay (mostly) on top of both my reading and gym-going habits, despite my entry into the work-day grind.

2. In spite of the occasionally soul-crushing (and usually racist) nature of my new job, the strains of political and economic thought it has forced me to engage have opened for me much more nuanced understandings of some academic arguments about politics and culture. Between my job and increasingly-frequent social outings in DC, where the general etiquette is "BE AS OBNOXIOUS AS POSSIBLE ABOUT YOUR POLITICAL BELIEFS,"  I'm finally able to locate myself within the political narrative that Lisa Duggan traces in The Twilight of Equality?. All of this is really just to say that I am still learning.

3. I recently saw The Cabin in the Woods, which is in serious competition for the title of "smartest horror movie I've ever seen." More on this point in a second.

4. Whether through my own sporadic efforts, Roxie's deeply energizing and critter-affirming optimism (for which I remain boundlessly grateful), or Historiann's repeated refusal to put up with anyone's bullshitte, the blogosphere continues to offer me intellectual sustenance  and emotional fortification.

Now, on to The Cabin in the Woods. This post got a little lengthy, but lie to me and tell me that you read it.

Anyone who's had a conversation with me for longer than thirty seconds knows that Will Danger loves loves loves horror movies and would go even gayer than usual for Joss Whedon, who wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among other things. That being said, Joss hasn't actually produced anything of particular merit lately. Dollhouse fell pretty flat, and I've never been in love with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Nevertheless, Whedon's newest movie, The Cabin in the Woods is one of the smartest/most entertaining horror movies I've never seen. I want to take this opportunity for my first sustained crack at thinking through horror movies.

SPOILER ALERT. SRSLY GUYS. I haven't held back any plot details. Read at your own risk.

Of course, the plot gets a little hokey. Joss leans into science fiction pretty hard, presenting a mysterious company of scientists whose sole job is to stage horror-movie rituals, where they kill off co-eds in an effort to keep "the ancients" from waking up. From what I can gather (some of the details are deliberately vague), these mysterious ancients (old gods who used to rule the world, but are now sleeping) require a horror-movie body count to be appeased. In this case, the slaughter-worthy breakfast club includes a Slut, a Jock, a Brain, a Stoner, and a Virgin. At the movie's end, the Stoner has managed to survive and the main character (the archetypal Virgin) is tasked with killing him, in order to save the world. She ultimately refuses, the ancients wake up, and the world starts to end just as the credits begin rolling. 

There are some pretty straightforward readings of this meta-narrative available, but I don't want to spend too much time on them, because they're pretty readily available and kind of boring (I hesitate to pass over them entirely, just because the straightforward and seemingly self-evident are seldom so). Among other things, it appears that the audience is meant to identify with the Company that stages these horror movies. The film's meta-narrative becomes less stable and less straightforward the longer I spend thinking about it, but in its more brilliant moments, I think the film questions our attachment to horror movies, horror's broader role in culture, and the kinds of narrative violence unleashed by our uninterrogated attachment to the conventions of horror.

The movie's most interesting moves, however, come in the last five minutes. In the film's final scene, Dana and Marty, (the Virgin and Stoner, respectively) are sitting on some stone steps, passing a cigarette back and forth and apologizing to each other as the world comes apart around them. I love how much the scene comes to resemble this image, a kind of "relax and watch the sun set" moment, except Whedon substitutes a sunset for the end of the world. I find the moment's calmness wonderfully interesting. Literally apocalyptic thought it might be, this moment indicates a resolution to the movie's suspense and is free from the tension that otherwise pervades horror movies. Though perhaps a generous reading, I think this moment has genre-redefining potential. What would it mean to end a horror movie with such a moment of calmness, clarity, and (most importantly) safety -- especially when the trope is typically to end a horror movie with a "final scare," in which we discover the villain is still alive and kicking, often at the expense of plot/narrative coherence.

In this scene, the Stoner also apologizes for ending the world. I’m absolutely enthralled both by the idea that ending the world is something that you would apologe for (why bother?) and by the idea that destroying the world is something for which you can be forgiven.

This decision to end the world is where The Cabin in the Woods most approaches queerness (Importantly, I'm not actually arguing that Cabin is a queer film, only that this moment hinges on a queer sensibility and contains mostly-unrealized queer potential). In the beginning of this scene, the Company's mysterious director (played by Sigourney Weaver, no less) lays out the Stoner's options pretty well: "You can either die with them, or you can die for them." He is going to die either way, the crux of his decision is whether or not he wants to take the rest of the world with him. This is pretty much a no-brainer, right?

The twist comes when both the Stoner and Virgin refuse this choice, opting to destroy the world, rather than to save it (This choice seems particularly strange for Dana, who opts to die AND destroy the world, rather than kill Marty. Her life is actually still at stake, here). I'm enthralled by the movie's determination to make the wrong choice and it's insistence on choosing the un-chooseable option. In his disavowal of correctness and his determination to fail in saving the world, Whedon opens up a host of previously unthinkable cinematic possibilities, the most immediate of which is that, paradoxically, failure might be the most successful option. This makes me feel much better about the fact that this post itself might indulge in failure.

Seriously, you guys. Go see this movie. Even if you hate scary movies, the writing really, really shines. Joss Whedon is back, y'all. I'm even managing to garner a little excitement for his version of The Avengers coming out this summer.

Drowning, Resurfacing, and Being Entirely Unable to Find Kansas on a Map

My life is undergoing a radical restructuring, and change is always difficult to blog. I've imagined several incarnations of this post, the titles of which were things like "How my Liberal, Hippy-Dippy Education Taught me Everything I needed to Know About Doing Your Job," "How Blogging Got me a Job Working for the Devil," and "Everything I Needed to Know about Life I Learned from Blogging." As I put fingers to keyboard, though, my thinking feels much less stable than it did when I was only dealing in possibility. Isn't that always the case? With these various potential posts floating around my noggin, I begin by saying that Will Danger is being forced to adjust his privacy settings.

I have news, dear readers, that will partially explain my recent absence, and then immediately make you stop reading my posts: Will Danger got a job.

What kind of job, you ask? Where would a comic book-reading, pop culture junkie like you get a job? Are you ready for it? (Hint: You're not)

I work for the most conservative book publisher in America, who for blogging purposes I'll simply call Big Red. That's right. I get up every morning, put on a suit (a suit!), hop on the metro, walk past a picture of Ronnie Reagan on my way into the office, and sit down at my desk, where I have Ann Coulter's phone number hanging on my wall. My weekends are spent trying to wash the taste of the Devil's dick out of my mouth. [Sample experiences: I think there's a copy of Donald Trump's new book on just about every desk in my office. I also caught a coworker with a book entitled The Terrorist Next Door. Dorothy Gale has nothing on me.]

I'll give you a moment to recover from your initial reactions, most of which I'm sure were very violent and/or visceral. As you reassemble your smashed keyboards, return from your various vomitoriums, and try to reign in your laughter, I'm going to continue to muse about privacy in the face of the professional world. Most simply put, I don't know what I can write about anymore. Obviously, I have some very, very strong feelings about this bizarre right-hand turn my life has taken, but my ability to think through them is compromised slightly by the fact that I was hired based on my experience with the blogosphere. No need to reread, you read that sentence correctly. They've visited New Queer. They took one look at this ongoing farce and decided that I was the editorial assistant for them. [The fact that my anemically-funded, queerly-slanted education in the humanities has more than prepared me to do this job is perhaps a topic for another day.]

And so, I am unsure to what extent I can blog about work. I'm going to err on the side of safety for now, but I will say the following: if there's any terror running through your heads about the state of my life (and it's obnoxiously narcissistic of me to assume that there would be), it's running through my head as well. I don't take my titular "drowning" lightly. Good or bad, I'm gonna need some more time to assemble anything coherent about my newly-found case study in American conservatism. But I am writing through my frustration as best I can, in less public spaces. 

In spite of what I may look back on as the specific moment where my life went wrong, I have to keep the following in mind: I am (finally) employed. I'm getting out of my apartment, which after the last few months, is something I will never again take for granted. Better yet, I'm writing (ghostwriting, mostly), researching, and actually publishing. Occasionally,  my job resembles that of a professional blogger. Even if it comes with a healthy conservative slant, I'm being forced to be politically present in a way that I never quite have been before, and in this sense, I can see this job being great prep-work work for graduate study in public affect/political theory/public sphere stuff. I am more obsessed than ever with the mess that's America.

All of that being said, of course, I am still being required to make ideological and moral compromises, the likes of which I will be required to account for, should anyone ever attempt to take stock of my life. Nancy Botwin and I could probably have a sit-down to discuss the fact that we both know where our efforts are leading us. I cannot say for sure if I'm doing what I should be doing, or what I'd like to be doing. All I can say definitively is that I'm doing something, which at this particular impasse, I have to label a good.

On Seeing Rent Again at Twenty-three

Why don't these people just pay their rent, again? The twenty-something slacker in me appreciates the sentiment, though.

Bear with me, dear readers. I've been wrestling with a particularly nasty bout of writer's block. In partial penance, I offer this really neat cover of Mr. Springsteen's Thunder Road:

The Boss and I don't always see eye to eye, but this is one hell of a song.

Birthdays and Death-days, an Absence/Presence Story

I'm having a particularly difficult time writing this, because of the way in which this post has needed to inhabit a space that is simultaneously celebratory and morose. The post is motivated primarily by two concurrent events. First, today marks the one year anniversary of my plunge into the blogosphere. The second, infinitely weightier event, is the untimely passing of an old friend's father. I had concluded that the easiest, and perhaps most reverent, course of action would be to write two separate posts and to leave it at that. In the midst of my emotional and intellectual head-scratching, however, we lost Ms. Whitney Houston, which has made it feel even more important that my celebration and mourning remain intertwined. I've tried to let this potentially insensitive tension guide my thinking but, as with anything worth writing, it remains difficult.

In spite of my Danger-prone blogging pseudonym, I am very fortunate to have only experienced death in the most peripheral way. I've witnessed the death of acquaintances, friends-of-friends, and distant relatives, but never a passing in which I had real emotional stakes. Even now, my attachment to both of these losses is distant. I obviously didn't know Whitney as anything more than a diva figure (a position we shouldn't undervalue), and in the past ten years, I have lost touch with both my friend and his father (though I was once close to both of them). Nonetheless, I do feel both of these deaths, and they have both occasioned serious thought on my part. I think this paragraph treads some questionable ground, so I should be clear: my thinking centers around these two passings because of their temporal proximity, not as a way of analogizing them. Tragedies cannot be analogized; grief can't really be compared in any productive way. All I can concretely say is that both have affected me, and that my (admittedly distant) grief in both cases shares a similar affective core.

What is it about death, exactly? It wounds us, it scares us, it fascinates us in some strange way. No small part of my own attachment to death is the fact that every death I encounter reminds me of my own potential to end. In that way, my reaction to death feels inappropriately selfish, a discomfort which I find quite interesting.

Having just come from a funeral service, I am struck particularly by the awkwardness of grief, both our own and other people's. Though perhaps outside of culturally available scripts for grief, this awkwardness feels really important. Unbalancing as it is, extreme awkwardness makes us feel our proximity to other people in the most visceral sense. It underscores the fact that death organizes and mobilizes us in ways that life, commonplace as it is, cannot. Death creates strange intimacies and brings us into contact with figures from our past, friends-of-friends, and total strangers. Funerals become both a staging of grief and an environment in which these oblique and decidedly un-permanent relationships play out.

I don't have any concrete conclusions to draw/arguments to make, but I am wondering about the publics of grief and the way in which the performance of death becomes about diagraming a particular life. At the funeral, the priest proposed (correctly) that everyone present had their own interlocking and overlapping stories to tell about Mr. Rob. To me, this indicates a desire to map out a life and to account for our own (inevitably complex) intersections with another person.

At its core, though, our mourning always brushes up against celebration. Dear old Emily Dickinson wrote, "The absence is as the presence" (I cannot find a citation for this, forgive me if I've misquoted). Said another way, we do not mourn that which we did not celebrate, and mourning is celebration of another kind. And so, if feels strangely important that my halfhearted musing about death should coincide with New Queer's first blogoversary. Despite my uneven posting habits, this sustained writing project indicates a definite presence, in contrast to the sharply felt absence of death. My blogging efforts have helped bring about, or at least chronicle, a noticeable improvement in my ability to write and think, a progress that stands in opposition to death's haltedness. There's an appropriate symmetry to celebrating my blogoversary on the heels of a funeral, continuing to build and progress in proximity to death, and to celebrate every step, movement, and blog post along the way. When I die, let them pour streamers (or possibly Pokemon cards) into my open coffin.

So, I am left thinking about birthdays and death-days, about progress and passing, about the euphemisms we invent, the stories we tell, and the emotional baggage that we try to avoid. (As a short side-note, the copy of Nella Larsen's novel sitting on my nightstand has me thinking about the numerous conceptual puns we might explore regarding "passing." Why do we use an action verb as a euphemism for death, the most literally immobilizing human experience?) Mr. Rob, Whitney, you are both missed in complex and surprisingly simple ways. Happy Birthday,  New Queer. Let's toast to many more years of sporadic posting and bullshit before Will Danger finally lays his pen, his party hat, and his ten-inch stilettos to rest.

A short note for my own funeral: Drag optional, presents not expected but encouraged. In lieu of flowers, you may drop jewels/pages from Mrs. Dalloway/pogs into my casket. Whitney was slated to perform, but I guess that's probably not going to happen. Bjork, maybe? Alanis?

At any rate, here's to more years, while we have them. Let's let the late Queen of the Night sing us out:

The Impossibility of Dating: A Terrible Quarter-Lifer's Guide to Being Terrible

Good Catholic that I am, I want to reenter the confessional for a moment. I've been itching to do some more autobiographical writing lately (even if my teenaged attempts at the genre suggest that I'm not very good at it). "Twenty-something confessional" or, dare I say it, "Tales from the Bad Years," was never quite the project I imagined for this blog. However, bearing in mind that blogs need to be as malleable as the assholes that pen them and that we almost never know where we're going until we get there, I am now deviating from the blog-path I originally imagined. If you're looking for a smarter, more discursive post, go here. Or even here.

One of the most frustrating things (so far) about my unmoored twenties, other than the permanent gnawing sensation that's lodged itself in my stomach, is that I find myself totally incapable of really comprehending anything. More than any other time in my life, I find myself needing to learn and re-learn the same lessons; nothing seems to stick. I know, for example, that going to the gym will make me feel great and is occasionally the only part of my day that gives me any sense of forward momentum, but convincing myself to go is still quite the chore. Every time I go, I learn this lesson anew, only to forget it the following evening. And calisthenics are not the only area of my life in which this lack of retention has surfaced. I really hope this inability to actually know anything doesn't become a permanent fixture in my life.

Perhaps the strangest occurrence of the past six months or so is that I've had my first sustained brush with dating. I don't know what it is, but the strange combination of desperation/anxiety/immaturity must be some kind of pheromone for gay men. On this seemingly endless string of first dates, I've picked up a few ideas about dating (only to forget them 48 hours later). So, without further ado, I offer you the [Never a Grown-Up] Quarter-Lifer Who's Never Really Done Much Dating but Now Finds Himself Thrown into the Romantic Deep-End's Guide to Dating, for the Neurotic Self-Saboteur in All of Us :

[A legal disclaimer: There is no one on the planet less qualified to talk about dating in any sort of successful way. These simple tenants were generated by a string of humorously unsuccessful first dates (with a few successful ones thrown in the mix; even a stopped clock is right twice a day). I can guarantee, however, that these thoughts will enrich your post-date Last Five Years sing-along, which is the cornerstone to any successful self-medication attempt.]

1. There's always more: Seriously, look around you. All the most obnoxious people you know are dating someone, sometimes multiple someones. Even if the date is going really well, there will be more awkward first dates in your future, whether a week/month/year/decade from now. When the person sitting across the table from you decides to stop answering your calls, there will always be another painfully attractive asshole waiting in the wings to repeat the experience. You will go on other dates. And they will suck just as hard as this one does. I'm wanting to say something about fish in the sea, but in a much shittier formulation. Dating feels less like fishing and more like guest-starring in Two Girls, One Cup the sequel.

2. Sometimes it really isn't your fault: That really cute guy sitting across the table has stopped answering your text messages. And you're sure, neurotic as you are, that it's because you accidentally mentioned the time when you celebrated Tyra Bank's birthday (December 4th, incidentally) by wearing a yellow sundress and having a photo shoot/walk-off. Or else you showed up to dinner wearing the same shirt you've been wearing for four consecutive days. Without trying to sound like a deluded seventeen year old prom queen, sometimes it isn't something you said. Really. Bad timing, lack of chemistry, or a weird head shape can mean that you've done everything right and still aren't getting a callback.

3. Sometimes it really is your fault: You accidentally made a joke about wearing his skin as a suit (we've all made that mistake once or twice), you got drunk and vomited on him, or you made some comment about transnational sexualities that he 115% misunderstood. In any case, this date went sour as a direct result of something you did. Well, the joke's on him, because you are going to fuck it up over and over and over again for the rest of your life. Two years into a relationship, you are going to continue to say exactly the wrong thing. I might even argue that interpersonal relationships are about failure above anything else. If that's the dealbreaker, fuck 'em. As someone whose foot likes to live in his mouth, I repeat: fuck 'em. There's only so much apologizing (or accommodating) you can do for your inept mode of communication.

4. Don't be scared of other people: Admittedly, this is the lesson on this desperation checklist with which I am most uncomfortable. That 6'2, blond, crazy attractive former-athlete you suddenly find yourself sitting across the table from (God only knows how)? He's a person, and probably a less interesting person than you are. Glitter/sunshine doesn't fall out of any of his orifices and 7-9 times out of 10 (depending on how attractive/what a basket-case you are), he's every bit as jittery as you are and just as likely to say something stupid. No one escapes the horror of dating. No one has an upper hand. This dinner is about to suck for both of you.

5. Hide the crazy: In the car, on the way to this date, you listened to the Rocky theme four times, followed immediately by The Greatest Love of All, And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going, Shake It Out, All I Really Want, and any other determination anthem that occurred to you. Plus, you showed up 45 minutes early so you could accomplish this sadness sing-along and still be on time. Whatever you do, do not mention this. As an Ally Sheedy-sized basket case, I can tell you that no good will come of it. You might think it's quirky and endearing, especially if you've just finished a lengthy conversation about Liz Lemon, and maybe one day it will be. For now though, nothing cuts a date short like tipping the hand of your neuroses. Hold it in, even if that means you cry all the way home because you're pretty sure there's no cat heaven.

6. Bring up Tina Fey: Seriously. My 30 Rock fanaticism has smoothed over more first dates than I could have imagined. I'd always suspected that quoting Liz Lemon at length would be terrifying on a date, but it has almost always worked out nicely. Thank you, Tina, for facilitating my access to a slowly revolving door of mediocrity (with an actual good date every now and again).

7. Don't over-think: There's so much bullshit circulating about the right and wrong ways to approach dating (the previous paragraphs included). Wait three days to call, make sure they don't think you like them too much, retain some air of mystery, be as oblique as possible, etc, etc. My general feeling is, messy and complicated as people are, dating them can be surprisingly simple. If they like you, you've got a lot of leeway in terms of approaching them. (When's the last time you were put off because someone you really liked was texting you too frequently?) If they don't like you, it really doesn't matter how long you wait to respond to their message, does it? Despite all the terrifying minutia which dating induces, isn't it ultimately governed by a relatively simple bottom line? They either like you or they don't. You either like them or you don't. I think we can probably all benefit from being told not to worry so goddamn much, right?

Obviously, the state of my quarter-life existence means that I will need to be reminded of each of these (variously useless) bullet points 24 hours from now, but hopefully my writing them (and your reading them) has provided us occasion to examine our various approaches to the black art of dating. Or maybe I've just made you extremely glad that you are no longer a single twenty-something. In either case, you're welcome.

As a final observation, this is the least queer and most lame this writing experiment has ever been. Whoops!

Edit: An infinitely more public version of this post can be found here.

2011: A Retrospective Drinking Game

I'm nearly two weeks late on my retrospective, but 2011 was a weird year, so let's take a moment to take stock. Though the year brought a few really great moments, I'm pretty thrilled to have it behind me. Overall, nine or ten of the last twelve months can burn in hell, where they will be kept company by the majority of my dignity and self-esteem. In honor of such a horrific year and with Elaine Stritch as my muse, I've organized the Will Danger drinking game. The rules are simple: Clutch your gin and tonic tightly and take a drink for every recounted event. One drink for something bad, two for something good, and three if you can't decide how to categorize the occurrence. Also take a drink for every typo you find. Vodka Stingers are acceptable for this game as well, but if you opt for the Stingers, you must also drink one for Mahler at every turn. Without further ado, I present a short, harrowing, and uncharacteristically sex-laden list of 2011 occurrences (in no particular order):

1. I dun graduated college: Many, many years in the making, Will Danger finally finds himself outside the ivory tower's comforting walls, without salary, purpose, or a clear way to keep from bleeding out in his bathtub. Sometimes lost is best, but the real world is still a work in progress here on the Block.

2. On a related note, 2011 was also the year in which I completed my PhD apps. It was a long, obnoxious process, but I learned a lot about beginning to negotiate academic bureaucracy and also finally started to get a handle on the editing process (something I never quite managed to pick up during my undergrad). I'll drink to that.

3. I developed a taste for and subsequent addiction to coffee. Growing up, I was always taught that coffee made you jittery, but it turns out that it just makes your brain work. Who knew?

4. In 2011, I had my first threesome (this is a great way to find out if my mother is reading. My money's on no), and it was great. I don't plan on making a habit out of it because of the inevitable sexual competition it engenders, but seriously, give it a shot, folks. It was pretttty good.

5. I've been sort of silent about it 'round these parts, but I also rectified my eating/exercise habits this past year. Though it's turned me into a bit of a health nut and been a little pricey, I gained 10 pounds of muscle in 2011. The endeavor's been great for my self-esteem, anxiety, and general health. Plus, if #4 is any indication, I've gotten some pretty good sex out of the deal.  Blogging about this feels vaguely narcissistic, but I set the goal about a year ago, just to see what would happen. Think of it as an exercise in self-crafting.  I don't think I'll ever be as comfortable topless as my gender demands, but I feel pretty good about being a queer Dungeons and Dragons/book nerd who woke up one morning, decided he wanted to be a little less scrawny, and is now just shy of benching 225. Drink two for that one.

6. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I also gave my first conference paper this year. It seems to have been pretty well received and was more fun/less gut-wrenching than I had expected. Speaking of which, check out what's going on on this year at Queer the Turtle University (phrase thieved from Roxie). Some really neat stuff. It's good to know they haven't been completely lost without me.

7. The word "dude" and the phrase "fair enough" have both crept into my everyday speech. I'm not sure how to feel about it, which strikes me as fair enough.

8. Let's pour some out for the various celebrities we've lost this year. Here's to you Amy, Patrice, Kim Jong, Liz, et al.

9. Finally, 2011 was the year in which this cozy slice of the internet was born! As we ring in the new year, let's all toss one back for my first sustained (if under-trafficked) blogging effort! Somehow this post and this post managed to garner some pretty significant traffic (I suspect people were just image hunting). What does 2012 hold for New Queer? Perhaps an attempt to live-blog the apocalypse? Who knows?

For the tl;dr among us, have a few drinks to catch up with the rest of us and toast the end of a pretty crappy year. Sorry/You're welcome for encouraging heavy drinking on a Thursday morning and drunken commenting is always encouraged. Happy New Year, everybody.

This is the most autobiographical, perhaps the most livejournal-y this blog has ever been. Let's hope this doesn't become a trend, eh?