The Dissertation Code

No, this is not the magic formula on how to write a dissertation. Instead, this is the code of behaviour for dealing with dissertation writers, a handy guide for anyone who has a loved one currently writing a disseration, and some simple rules to ensure your loved one's santity and your own survival. Consider it a public service.

1. Never ask about the dissertation or the dissertation chapter.
This includes general questions, specific questions about page counts, progress reports, meetings with supervisors, passive-aggressive questions about convocation dates, and the like. If the dissertation writer wants to talk about it, they will bring it up first. Sometimes, even a "how was your day?" will be construed as a question about the dissertation. In fact, it might be best to stop asking the writer questions altogether and stick to simple declarative sentences.

2. Never ask when they are going to finish.
Especially not constructed as a "so you'll be done by _____?" inquiry. Grad students don't do well with deadlines, actual or hypothetical.

3. Anyone who is also writing a dissertation should never talk about how well their own writing is going around someone who is struggling.
This will only provide someone with an anguished benchmark against which to measure their own poor progress. Writing a dissertation already feels like a battle against yourself; you don't need any new competition.

4. Do not talk about Fight Club.
Oops. Wrong list. Substitute "dissertation" for "fight club", though, and it could work.


Pages written today: 2
Pages so far: 7

Chapter Three: Beginnings

After a false start last week, I've started writing chapter three for realz, yo.

And I have managed to produce the dirtiest sentence of the dissertation so far.

The nested spaces in Belinda offer the promise of knowledge if one can penetrate deeply enough, yet also frustrate such attempts.

Hmm. Could use some editing.

But seriously. Dissertations must be filled with unintentionally dirty sentences. Every dissertation has a "dirtiest sentence". I wonder what other examples are out there.


Pages written today: 5
Running page count: 5

Chances that I'll be this productive tomorrow: zero

So.

(click to enlarge)

This ad appears on a the website that posts funny messages from Asian immigrant moms (FOB="Fresh Off the Boat"). How does it pander? Let me list the ways.

1. It's advertising a website about Asian American movies
2. It features a Toyota
3. It features a Toyota Corolla
4. That Asian lucky cat

I have no idea what's going on with the winged hot dogs, though.

Fully animated ad here, though probably for a limited time only.

Jane-sploitation*

This has got to stop.

The publisher who brought us the explicably but undeservedly popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has moved on to its next target: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

The concept itself makes me wearily angry but the publisher's press appearances make me furious.

First, the concept, from the Canadian distributor's website:

"SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS expands the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, swashbuckling pirates, and other seaworthy creatures."

People, if you wanted to combine Austen and sea monsters, the logical novel would be Persuasion. That you opted for the catchy alliteration and easy title recognition confirms that you don't really care about the original text. Thankfully there are no more Austen novels with the "X and Y" title structure to be used.

Next, there's editor Jason Rekulak's absurd claim that he's resisting the trend to do something with vampires: "I know there are a lot of vampire fans, but the genre feels exhausted to me." Because remember, when he published P&P&Z, zombies weren't trendy at all.

Instead, he draws on a genre that hasn't been overplayed, mainly because it's not an actual genre (note also the sentence fragment):

Whereas Sea Monsters allowed us to draw inspiration from so many rich and diverse sources—most obviously Jules Verne novels and Celtic mythology, but also Jaws, Lost, Pirates of the Caribbean, even SpongeBob Squarepants!

Spongebob Squarepants might be a little tongue-in-cheeck (unless little Margaret Ferrars breaks into a plaintive rendition of "Where's Gary?") but the rest of the listed inspirations (Celtic mythology?) are too diverse to be brought together into anything cohesive.

But who needs cohesion when we have—wait for it—originality!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies fans are counting on us to deliver something original, and I don’t think they will be disappointed.

Following up a bestselling Austen literary mashup with another Austen literary mashup? Very original.

And how does one achieve such originality? By employing the Grandpa Simpson method of literary adaptation: a little of column A and a little of column B. No, I'm not exaggerating:

Quoted in the Guardian story, original here:

"I thought it would be funny to do a 'new and improved' version of a classic that kids are forced to read in high school," he [Rekulak] told Publishers Weekly. "So I made a list of classic novels and a second list of elements that could enhance these novels—pirates, robots, ninjas, monkeys and so forth. When I drew a line between Pride and Prejudice and zombies, I knew I had my title and it was easy to envision how the book would work."

Because a title is totally a strong enough concept to base a book on. And because classic novels need improving: "Fix me, Jason Rekulak! Fix me! Readers throughout the decades and centuries didn't know what they were missing by reading Moby Dick without robots!"

We have crossed a line from the mashup, in which disparate elements are brought together to create a cohesive and new original, and are well into exploitation terrority, in which a popular author in the public domain is used to sell half-baked, poorly written books. It is disrespectful to the Austen, to Austen's novels, to those who appreciate the novels, and to anyone who values real originality and creativity.

The first defence against such criticisms is that extreme Austen-lovers have no sense of humour and take themselves too seriously. But bad writing is not "literary mashup" and exploitation is not originality. Someone needs to put her foot down and that someone might as well be me: Stop it, Quirk Books. It's fine with me that not everyone likes Austen. But there are a lot of people who like Austen very much, and they would prefer that she be left alone.


* credit for the term to the Guardian caption writer

How is the following headline not an Onion story?

Bad culinary compromise

There's a dim sum place in Edmonton that, in a bid to appeal to its mixed clientele, uses a table setting that consists of chopsticks, a fork, and a large plate. That is the default table setting and I have to ask for bowls each time I go. The table setting perplexes and irritates me. I want to use chopsticks for dim sum, but chopsticks are not the best utensils to use with a plate. A bowl makes more sense because you can hold it closer to you when eating and also because you can bring it forward to the little basket you want to take food from. I suppose I could use a fork since that's the plate's logical utensil pairing, but then I would spontaneously combust out of shame.

So basically: why give us chopsticks at all if we don't also get bowls? And what's wrong with the traditional table setting of a bowl that sits on a little plate? And why not make forks the optional utensil?

I get that the establishment doesn't want to alienate its non-chopstick-using customers; I just wish they wouldn't condescend to everyone else at the same time.

Two ends of the same spectrum: Michael Jackson and J&K+8

For over a week now I've been trying to figure out why I've been obsessed with the unseemly details of the demise of Jon and Kate Gosselin's marriage. For five seasons (over 2-3 years), they've let TV cameras into their home to document life with a set of twins and a set of sextuplets, and then kept the cameras rolling as they grew apart and eventually filed for divorce. There has been no end of pop culture analysis of what this could mean (just Google for examples, okay?), how terrible this is for the children, how selfish and immature Jon is being, how awful and controlling Kate is, and how the show has declined since the Gosselins are no longer a typical middle-class family with an unusally large brood (see: increasingly brazen product placement and cross-promotion, new $1 million house and acreage bought with proceeds of show, increased emphasis on the parents at the expense of the adorable children).

And then Michael Jackson died.

And the world exploded in mourning. (and went to Youtube. But that's a post for another day.)

But what, exactly, have we been mourning? As the Onion has astutely pointed out, what people want to remember is the cute, talented kid with a great voice and dance moves, not the increasingly odd, increasingly white eccentric who would be aquitted of child sex abuses charges a mere four years ago. I think it would be interesting to ask people at what point in time, what day/month/year, they would like to stop the Michael Jackson timeline and not know about anything that happened afterwards.

At first I thought the connection between Jon&Kate and the reaction to Michael Jackson's death was about time, specifically that clichéd yet universal and base need to stop time at the best moment. In our own lives, we don't know what that best moment is, so to try to pick a point in the middle of living would be like hedging a bet. But with Jon&Kate's marriage (and the show) and Michael Jackson's public image (because let's face it, that is all we're ever going to know), we have the benefit of retrospect, of seeing the finite end, and can locate what we think are highlights.

But I think it's more than just the need to freeze time at the optimal moment. I think both events and the public fascination therewith touch on a need to be optimist about time, to think that the world can be better tomorrow. And that both events demonstrate how that need is constantly unfulfilled. We want to remember things at their best, suspended in time, not because we are optimists, but because we are pessimists, because we fear that life might not get any better. The desire to stop at the highlights is rooted in the deep, gnawing fear that time forward is not necessarily time better.

Jon&Kate Plus Divorce and the death of Michael Jackson represents the two extremes of how that desired optimism is dashed. On the one hand, we have a marriage of two rather banal people falling apart on television, though with unusual stressors (big family of multiples, reality-show-level celebrity). On the other hand, we have the protracted demise of Michael Jackson, whose physical death was preceded that of his music career and the protracted erosion of his public image. If regular people like Jon and Kate can't make it work, and if someone as talented and rich as Michael Jackson can die hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, then where's the hope for the rest of us?

And finally, it seems only appropriate to bring it back to the children, the "hope" for our "future". Specifically, to one child, a 12-year-old on the Ed Sullivan show singing "I Want You Back" with his four brothers. What if it had stopped there? What if his voiced had changed, if an injury prevented him from dancing as well, if he had left show business? What if he really had died at 12? Would people have mourned the lost potential, wondering about the records he could have made when he'd matured as an artist, the future he could have had?

What if they knew everything that was to come? Would they still be mourning then?