As much as I think Starbucks is the McDonald’s of the coffee world, I do appreciate their free music downloads. Here’s a surprisingly nice track off of Big Deal’s debut album:

The perfect track for romancing that cute punk chick you’ve been stalking lately:

This one just makes me feel cheerful and way cooler than I actually am. Fun fact: “wayoy” is a Jamaican Rasta term used to call people together for joyous celebration. That’s nice

A newly discovered, wickedly awesome, patriotism-inducing track from one of my fav Canadian indie-rock bands, Yukon Blonde:

Another indie band that does what they do oh-so-well:

I’m a bit concerned about how much I like this group, seeing as the lead singer is still in high school… erm.

And finally, a very good friend recommended Ed Sheeran to me, and not only is his music sweet, BUT RON WEASLEY IS IN THIS VIDEO!

What have you guys been listening to lately?

I like to think that no matter how bad my jokes are, at least somewhere a monkey is laughing.

Here’s the thing: I get that reading Shakespeare can be dull, but that’s because anyone who KNOWS Shakespeare’s stuff KNOWS that his plays aren’t meant to be read, they’re meant to be performed! These plays are so amazing that they’ve lasted for 400+ years, and if a student thinks Shakespeare = weird English words in a really boring book, then obviously they’ve never seen a kick-ass Shakespeare play. So because this blog is about my experience as a grad student, and since I’m a TA who does not want to deal with two weeks of Othello seminars consisting of blank stares and cricket noises, I thought I’d sketch out my teaching game plan here. And thus I present to you:

“Shakespeare Got To Get Paid, Son:” Sarah’s Sketchy Shakespeare Seminars

First, I’ll show them this:

HA! Cuz it's like Shakespeare's a gangster, but you still learn something about how he wrote. But mostly I like the gangster thing.

And then I’ll regale them with tales about how Shakey (as I call him) was in the ENTERTAINMENT business, and he was ALL about drawing in the crowds and impressing them with his word magic. The take away lesson here is that even in a play as dark as Othello (erm), Shakespeare wanted his audiences to enjoy themselves as he led them on this incredible dramatic journey. Then I’ll tell my kids that the first one to find the most hilarious metaphor for sex in Othello gets a prize.

This came up when I googled "excited readers".... it kind of works though, yeah? Albeit creepily. Very creepily.

I’ll then spend the majority of that first seminar going through the play with my students, making sure they understood what actually went down and hopefully getting them to make some analytical connections. At the very end of seminar, I want to take ten minutes to introduce the “Sketchy Shakespeare Activity” which will either make me the best TA ever or get me fired:

I believe that Shakespeare is best when you get to play around with him, and so, for the awesome reward of a +5% overall participation mark increase (and maybe some candy), I’m going to invite my students to prepare a brief, personal, somewhat unorthodox interpretation of Othello. Now, these are first-year university students, so I doubt any of them will be up for performing a scene from the play in front of their peers (if they are though, bully for them and they’ll get the points). What I’m banking on is the fact that their sense of humour is about as immature as my own, meaning that they’ll most likely really respond to the following, which I think is brilliant:

This is the Sassy Gay Friend’s first Shakespearian take, and there is a video for Othello, which can be viewed here (it makes more sense if you’ve seen the Romeo + Juliet one first). I’ll show my students both videos, and then invite them to prepare a similar sketch for next week. Again, I doubt anyone will be willing to perform (but if they do want to, huzzah!), so I’ll just ask them to write a brief script that they can then read aloud to the class. What I really want to see is them interacting with the characters, either cheering them on or similarly asking “WHAT, WHAT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING” (so it’s character analysis, but fun!). I won’t give too rigid a structure, because I want them to be as creative as possible. Finally, in the second seminar that we have set aside for Othello, I’ll open once again by fielding questions that might have come up from that week’s reading/lecture, but then we’ll dive right into what I’m thinking could be a potentially hilarious and memorable discussion of the Bard, of whom I am so very fond.

What do you guys think?

Hurray for visuals!

A fan of British humour since my dad sat me down at the age of 11 to watch Monty Python’s Life of Brian (he appropriately prefaced the film by saying “you’re welcome”), Bennett’s writing is the epitome of English wry wit. The story is about Queen Elizabeth (the one that’s not dead), and what happens to her when one day, randomly, she begins to read. I don’t want to say too much else about the plot because it’s so short and so sweet, and I don’t want to give anything away. I will say though that this book is not only just about the joy of reading, but what reading can DO. Maybe I like this book so much because it celebrates what any true reader already knows, through a story that in and of itself is delightful and giggle-inducing.

And since we’re on the subject, and because my brain has the attention span of a ferret on meth, all this talk about the awesomeness of reading reminds me of this other equally (though… less mature) celebration of books:

And for those fellow Community fans out there, because I KNOW you’re thinking about it, click here, and here, and oh hell, here. YAY FUNNY! YAY BOOKS!

Aw, hun, you woke me up early to bring me breakfast in bed? Come closer so I can backhand you.

This particular morning, however, I powered through the rage and stumbled out of bed because it was FIELD TRIP FRIDAY, and we were going to OTTAWA! The past week in class we had been learning all about libraries and archives, and what better way to finish the week then by checking out the Preservation Centre in Gatineau and the Library Archives Canada building in Ottawa?

The English nerd's standard reaction to a library.

Our first stop was a tour of the Preservation Centre, the name of which is misleadingly dull. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a building that looked like this on the outside…

Oooooooh, aaaaaah....

…and had a fourth floor that looked like it had been designed by someone who clearly had a thing for Prairie architecture and colourful K’Nex construction toys. The top floor is deliberately set up as a “village” dedicated to preserving the documentary heritage of Canada, which makes for a surprisingly fun and inspiring environment. There were so many gadgets and bubble-like rooms–there was even a movie theatre. Unfortunately I don’t have any decent photos to share here, because by the time I thought about taking some, our tour of the fourth floor had finished and I nearly got locked inside trying to get my stupid phone camera to focus on a yellow silo thing. Fortunately, however, you can learn more about the Preservation Centre by clicking here, including how to book a tour for yourself and your friends. CUZ YOU KNOW YOU WANNA.

After that tour, we had the opportunity to see some of the texts that are kept in the Preservation Centre, particularly the journals of Catherine Parr Traill, and various documents belonging to P.K. Page and Carol Shields. Very much an English nerd-gasm moment. It’s weird to think that someday in the future, when I make it big as something or other and become a millionaire (or billionaire, I’m not picky), my future documents could be kept in similar brown cardboard boxes. Like the post-it note on my desk right now, which has my “To Do” list for tomorrow on it, visible under the splattered bits of spaghetti sauce–that could be relevant to understanding Future Famous Sarah! RIGHT? Right.

It could happen...

Our next and final stop on our field trip was the Library Archives building in downtown Ottawa. While the Preservation Centre was slightly–dare I say it–kooky, LAC was everything you’d expect from a fancy government building, demanding respect and reverence from the moment you walk inside. One of my colleagues described the style perfectly as “Roman Egyptian,” what with all the marble, the pillars, the sexy muses etched onto glass partitions, not to mention all the gold plating. It’s nice to know that anything you could EVER want to know about Canadian history can be accessed from inside this building… except for factual information underlying perhaps one of the more amusing events of the day:

Whilst I was trying to make sense of the Jackson Pollack portraits housed within the Preservation Centre’s Art Vault, my Roman Egyptian colleague grabbed my arm, pointed at a portrait that had been separated for some reason from the others, and whispered, “Doesn’t that look like Mike?” For those of you not in the Public Texts program (and for those you considering it–WHY ARE YOU STILL CONSIDERING APPLY RIGHT NOW BY THE BEARD OF ZEUS), Dr. Michael Epp is one of our program’s main “big cheese” faculty members (…I don’t know how else to describe it). Our theory portion of the program was bravely helmed by this man, and so to see what I choose to believe is his great-great-great grandfather on a canvas was probably a bit too thrilling for me. I have included below a comparison of the two:

So the picture quality is terrible, but there's still a visible resemblance, right???

Now, seeing as I have no idea who I’m actually comparing my respected professor to, I’m going to go ahead and assume he’s not the Canadian grandfather of Stalin. I’m a fan of selective realities, and in this particular one, I’ve just compared Mike Epp to Wolverine’s biological father. I MEAN LOOK AT THE SIDEBURNS. Plus any true X-Men fan knows Wolverine is Canadian, but you may not know that he occasionally liked to wear an onion in his belt. Because it was the fashion at the time. Duh.

Why this duck has devil claws is anyone's guess.

I find myself thinking about the poster’s message a LOT, not because I think it’s inspirational, but because it irks the hell out of me. Why do I find it irksome, you ask? Well, dear reader, I’ll tell you via a cathartic rant.

You know how people say that money can’t buy the important things in life? I’mma gonna go ahead and call bullsh*t on that one. I’m not saying that money can buy you true love, but it sure as frack makes living life that much easier/less-stressful, relationships included. One of my favourite internet writers wrote an excellent article on all this a while back (NSFW text), he says it better than I could here.

You can go ahead and disagree with me (that’s what the comment section is for), but after spending the past week or so realizing that 1) the funding I was counting on to get me through the rest of this semester had fallen through; 2) due to the collaborative nature of my program, the government is having a hard time agreeing to shell out the student funding I need to cover basic expenses that would prevent me from dropping out of school and, oh you know, starving; and finally 3) the people in Financial Aid now know me as the “Stress Crier.”

C'est vrai, c'est moi.

Here’s the thing: I know I’ve now got people doing their best to ensure that things work out for me financially, but that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like a moron for how “un-ducklike” all this stress made me this past week, especially in regards to handling my school work. I joke about having no shame, and for the most part I don’t, but in truth I promise I’m pretty self-aware about everything I do. It’s ok if you want to laugh with me over my un-ducklike ability to make any and every situation awkward, because I think that’s funny too and I like making people laugh; it’s not ok when my un-ducky-ness somehow translates into “she fails at life.”

Why is there this constant pressure to hide the fact that life can be stressful? Why is it that when someone publicly admits that they’re struggling outside of a therapeutic context, the response is all too often one of social awkwardness instead of compassion? I’m not saying that I look forward to the day when society can undergo a communal nervous breakdown, I’m just saying that I think it’s ridiculous to feel uncomfortable or surprised someone honestly answers “not so good” to the question “how are you?”

BOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Alls I’m saying is this: life is hard. Admitting that this is so shouldn’t make you feel like a lesser person. Just because grad school and I weren’t exactly best friends this past week doesn’t make me a bad student, or any less deserving of my place in this program than any of my colleagues. People aren’t ducks, and they shouldn’t feel the need to be in the first place.

Can I get an amen? Or not. Whatever you feel like, comment away!

Except substitute "7" for the number "3"... WHAT IT'S ADDICTING. Also I found this on Pinterest. It has everything. Wicked.

By the time I was able to drag my butt out of bed, it was only to discover that I had forgotten to buy coffee during my weekly grocery shop yesterday, and horror of horrors, I was going to have to go to class and discuss theory that I only had the faintest of grasps on without any caffeine in my system. I barely made it through; I even succumbed to drinking the horrible coffee available in our department’s communal kitchen, tragically discovering afterwards that it was DECAF and that’s why my headache had yet to disappear.

All I desire is a perfectly made latte whenever I want it--IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR UNIVERSE?

After class, me and my pounding head went back to my apartment in order to get on the phone with Financial Aid and spend the next three hours on an emotional roller-coaster ride encompassing rage, confusion and panic attacks. When the emotions finally went away and left me feeling dead inside, I decided to leave my apartment for a bit of fresh air to help clear my head. And then… I saw it. There it was, waiting in my mailbox, a package that I knew contained the cure to all my ailments. It was the book I had ordered from Coach House Press a couple of weeks ago, All My Friends Are Superheroes. I grabbed it, sprinted up the stairs, ripped it open, dive-bombed my couch and began to read.

Pictured above: happiness.

It was lovely, exactly what I needed on a day like today. It’s short, tender, and true. Kaufman gently tells a story about Tom, a man who has literally become invisible to his wife, the Perfectionist. As she boards a plane to Vancouver, prepared to use her superpower to forget the husband she thinks has abandoned her and all the heartbreak she feels, Tom follows, desperate to make her see him again. Kaufman’s storytelling is unique and original, unlike anything I’ve ever read. His characters and their relationships are unreal, yet painfully familiar: a girl cries TVs while the Wild Mood Swinger makes you feel a bit self-conscious. If you had told me yesterday that a brief description of a superhero named “The Spooner” would leave me choked up and on the verge of tears, I’d have raised a quizzical brow and pointed it in your direction. This book manages to be hilarious and poignant all at the same time, as it describes superheroes that I promise you will recognize in the people around you, and maybe even in yourself. All My Friends Are Superheroes is one of the best stories I’ve read in a very long time; it made me feel things, which I think is one of the greatest things a novel can do. It’s my new go-to-for-comfort book. Forget flowers and chocolates this Valentine’s Day, give a copy of this instead.

Listen to Angus and Julia as you ponder YOUR favourite comfort books, and let me know about them in the comment section!

I feel as though Cosmo Jarvis and I could be friends. This song is hilarious AND catchy, and was #85 on the list:

I like this. I like this a lot. #70:

This isn’t a new find for me, but I love it so much that I’m telling you about it anyway. #47 on the list:

Also not a new find, but she’s amazing, and everyone needs to like her as much as I do. SO LIKE HER DO IT DO IT NOW, and download the free track here. #23 on the list:

Smoooooooth. Get the free track here, whilst enjoying #22 on the list:

It makes me sad that more people don’t know about The Jezabels. Ignore the slightly disturbing video and listen to #9 on the list:

This song will get stuck in your head, and you will like it. Lucky #7 on the list, plus free tracks here:

I wasn’t sure I liked this track when I first heard it, but it’s growing on me. #5 on the list:

I’m not sure what I like better: the track or the video. If you haven’t already heard/seen this, you’re welcome. #2:

And finally, #1 on the list is Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know (ft. Kimbra).” Most of you have probably already heard this, especially from all the attention it’s been getting these past couple of months. If you’re like me, the first time you heard it you stood there slack-jawed thinking “HOW DID GOTYE KNOW? THIS IS MY LIFE I FEEL VERY EMOTIONAL RIGHT NOW” … or if you’re one of those “normal” people you probably just appreciated Gotye’s musical genius, as can be heard below:

‘Scuze me while I go huddle in the fetal position and replay this track 8 billion times. Later hipsters

Ok kids, putting on my Sarah the Scholar Hat for this post, but to help keep things upbeat:

This past week, I wrote an essay and presented it to my colleagues in the core course of our program (radically entitled “Public Texts”). Despite the trauma of the writing process, I actually rather enjoyed thinking about my topic. For the assignment I was meant to compare Bourdieu’s “The Field of Cultural Production” with Janice Radway’s analysis of one of the first ever (we’re talking 1920s) Book-of-the-Month Club’s basis for book recommendations. Bear with me folks: despite my brain’s refusal to understand the majority of Bourdieu’s writing (to comfort myself over this, I started calling him “BORED-EW“), I did walk away from his stuff with a renewed awareness of how there is a hierarchy of “Literature,” and whether you like it or not your cultural “capital” (i.e. how well do you understand Art? How much DEPTH do you have?) is partly determined by the books that you read.

Essentially these articles (how much Bourdieu and Radway agree with their subject matter is another issue entirely) communicate the following key idea: you are what you read. If you are one of the privileged few with access to understanding and appreciating literary works of art, then you’re at the top of the literary food chain and can be snooty to everyone else beneath you. If you’re the type of person who thinks James Joyce is a self-indulgent lunatic who makes no sense, there there, don’t worry your pretty little head about it and go comfort yourself with some bestsellers. I’ve heard vampires stories are popular these days, try one of those, and leave the good stuff to us snoots.

My problem with this kind of thinking is that while I DO have the training to tackle someone like Joyce, the thing is I’d much rather go flipping through my beloved childhood collection of Captain Underpants stories. I’m the kind of person that’s drawn to a story that I can relate to, but also that’s told in a unique way that changes SOMETHING about how I think/read/think about what I read (one of those “I know a good story when I read it” deals, of course all of which is contingent on the “I” in that statement). My bookshelf is a ramshackle collection of texts from all over the literary map, so what kind of a reader does that make me? Is there a better kind of reader? Is there a better kind of book? Does it even matter?

I suppose the answer to this question depends on how you define “literature” itself. Personally, as much as I enjoy anything by Nick Hornby or Helen Fielding, I can’t call either a better writer than Charles Dickens or Cormac McCarthy or Sylvia Plath, etc., etc.. But that’s the thing: it’s a different form of writing, and to me each form is equally valuable. So while yes, Austen is most definitely the better “writer,” Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code still occupies the same shelf space as Pride and Prejudice. In the end, I think a book’s literary status doesn’t matter as much as what it can do for its reader. As much as it pains me to hear people claiming that the Twilight books are the “BEST THING EVAAAAAAAAA”….

This both bewilders and frightens me.

…at least they’re reading. What do you guys think?

Reblogged from The Expendable Citizen:

I am going to be publishing a version of my lecture notes for a theory course as blog posts, because, let’s face it, the writing style for blogs is more entertaining than academic writing and it’s vastly easier to include images and video in this space than in, for example, Word. Print culture is a relatively new field that has a long history. Seems like a contradiction – right? How can something be new but have a long history? What I mean is that capital “P” Print and capital “C” Culture as …

Written by one of my professors, this is right up the Public Texts program alley.