First day of internship down, 12 weeks to go!

Today was a mixed bag. I really wish there were some other interns here now, but they'll be arriving starting next week, I believe, and throughout June. I'm gonna need reinforcements on this project because my supervisor is a terrible, terrible communicator. That is, he talks a lot, but is not interested in linearity or conciseness. So sometimes it takes AN HOUR to understand what he wants me to prepare BY FRIDAY. I am absolutely certain that this community mapping project is entirely clear in his head, but I am less certain that it will ever be clear in mine.

Worst of all: THE COFFEE MAKER DOES NOT WORK. And this is Anacostia -- there are no corner stores. There are no stores. So only people with cars can get drinks and snacks in the middle of the day. Unless you want to take the bus, which would be, like, a 2-hour trip because the buses run every 30 minutes.

Mixed bag, though, indicates some good things. There's a volunteer, Kevin, who's a good guy. Young, works at a bar in Adams Morgan at night and does this ACM thing during the day. Went to Howard! I dunno if he's there every day, but that would be cool. And the rest of the staff is pretty lively -- the lunch room today was fun. Ladies (and Kevin, and some young white dude) spoke of Trader Joe's, Transformers coming to the IMAX, and the fact that Botox is poison. All subjects I have an interest in.

TERRIBLE JOKE OF THE DAY.
Looking at a map of the neighborhood with Kevin, while he shows me this mapping software.
Kevin: There's Woodland Terrace...
Claudia: That's an apartment complex?
Kevin: Yeah -- you just go out the door, turn left, then turn right. They're right there.
Anthony, from the next cublicle over: Woodland Terrace? Throw a rock. Throw a crack rock.

OTHER TERRIBLE JOKE OF THE DAY.
Anthony, who is white, talking about crime in the area: I've never been mugged. They probably thought I was a cop.

See how both of these came from Anthony? I may need to post daily. Also: Do not repeat these. They are inside jokes, and you don't have the proper cultural capital.

Packing up the last third SUCKS.

Okay, I leave for DC on Saturday at 9:30am. It is now 4:30am on Thursday. (Do not ask about my sleeping/waking schedule. I couldn't explain, anyway.) Between now and then, I must:
a) pack my bags for the summer;
b) pack everything else in my room and move it into storage (just downstairs, thank heaven);
c) finish this 25-30 page research paper, which was actually due yesterday, and is still hovering at about 23 pages. I think I'm too old to play with margins, but in about two hours, it may come to that;
d) do all of the last-minute errands like getting my mail forwarded, returning dozens of library books, washing last-minute laundry, etc.

I am slightly concerned. But I think that if I can just get this goddamned paper finished, then I can send it in (with an apologetic email), and I can just stay awake until Saturday. 'Cause you don't need a full night's sleep to stand in line at the post office, right?

Crap, writing about Native Americans in Westerns is a real problem. In summarizing a film, I just had to write, "Unfortunately, that same night a group of Apaches go on the warpath." I hope that doesn't sound snide when it's read; there's just no way to talk about these films without using their own stupid language and ridiculously off-kilter frames of reference.

Okay, I just changed it to, "A group of Apaches staged an uprising." Better.

I have got to write faster.

I just realized that I have gotten really angry since I started graduate school, or sometime recently. Because I'm drafting an introduction to my paper on black characters in 60s Westerns, and I just wrote:

As the genre of literature and film that draws most directly from US history and speaks most directly to national narratives, it is perhaps appropriate, then, in a really crappy way, that Westerns are built on multiple racist narratives. Most notoriously, they treat Native American like -- well, like the United States government has through its policies of Indian extermination, removal, and reeducation.

Maybe I need to go back to musicals. Except they're built on spectacularized patriarchy, so maybe I'd just bleed all the happy out of them, too. Race and gender are such buzzkills.

Damaris is disappointed that I didn't acknowledge Mother's Day. In appeasement, I paste below the card I sent my mom, which she agreed was honest. Which I then took offense to.

My mother was disappointed because I didn't send her an e-card that sings, as I have done for the past few years. So I re-linked her to this card, which I sent last year, which cheered her up, and she spent Sunday re-playing the card and giggling with my dad. Which was also what she also did last year. My mom is sometimes like those toddlers you buy expensive toys for and then they end up playing with the box.

So many things I'm doing wrong right now, at 4:30 in the am:
(1) Watching a Taylor Swift music video on YouTube.
(2) Not writing my paper on the beach party movies, due Monday.
(3) Correctly recognizing the dude from the Taylor Swift video as the dude from Hannah Montana: The Movie.

*sigh*

Two weeks 'til DC, though! That's exciting. Two papers in the meantime, though. Less exciting.

I finished my Hannah Montana paper, and I'm on to the Beach Party movies. You know -- Frankie, Annette, rock and roll, frolicking in the sand. This assignment is actually a proposal for a longer research paper, and this was a good rehearsal because I have realized that I absolutely don't want to write the longer paper. Critical lesson: Don't choose films to write about based on some vague memory of having found them pleasant at some point in your past. Because sometime in the middle of Bikini Beach, you'll find that you'd rather gouge out the eye on your dominant side than watch five more minutes of this movie. And that moment really sucks, because you have to keep watching, with both eyes, and then, after you're finished, you have to watch Beach Blanket Bingo. Learn from my example, and save yourselves.

Today's sad conclusion: I am not such a big fan of Connecticut. Rainy and cold spring? No, thanks.

You may already know that I am leaving the graduate dorm and will move into a one-bedroom apartment after my DC internship ends in August. I am SO excited. Here's what's most exciting: the guy who's moving out is moving in with his girlfriend, and so he's selling a bunch of his furniture. So here's a list of things I'll be buying that will be waiting for me in the apartment when I get there. Total price: $400.

bed + mattress
sofa
office desk
armchair
dining table + 4 chairs
television
tv stand
2 floor lamps
2 table lamps
4-slot toaster
microwave
kitchen storage cart
bookshelf
3 end tables
rug
window a/c unit

Again $400, and no moving anything up or down stairs! This is gonna be amazing.

But that's all in August. Now, I have to go back to fighting with a tween superstar. (shaking fist angrily:) CYRUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My work day:
11am-1pm -- Workshop with visiting professor. Unexpectedly-free lunch; awesome.
1pm-4pm -- Parked in Blue State Coffee, working on Hannah Montana paper when not interrupted by Josh Glick.
4pm-6pm -- Lecture and Q&A with aforementioned visiting professor.
6pm-7pm -- Ad hoc dinner with film studies graduate students.
7pm -2:30am -- Parked in Blue State Coffee, working on HM without interruption because no Josh Glick. Still don't finish though. Damn it.

I'm a little tired now.