Our Christmas Driving in License Plates

I'm either offended or impressed

The two big DC papers (the Post and the Times) put out mini-versions that are available for free to commuters. I rarely pick up my own copy because I am rarely able to do anything but focus on keeping the contents of my stomach inside when I ride the Metro (I find this problem bizarre. I have very little trouble with motion sickness in any other situation, but for some reason, the DC metro is regularly nausea inducing). However, I am sometimes tempted by the copies that people have left lying on the seats or the floor in their rush to de-train at their station.

The column below, an advice column written by "Manolo" the shoe blogger, caught my eye last week and I risked making a pukey fool of myself to be able to bring it to you today. Aren't you grateful?



Now, I'm not sure how to react to this column. Or rather, after finding it quite funny, which it obviously is. Either Manolo has a very sad view of graduate students to which I would like to object or she's so spot on in her analysis that it's hard to believe she's not a graduate student herself. Maybe both.

On the one hand, as a host of a few graduate student christmas get-togethers myself, I hope I can safely say that neither tofurkey nor macrobiotic sprouts are likely to appear (even when one does have a plurality of vegan guests, one is far more likely to get boston cream pie cupcakes...). Impressive culinary achievement has been a hallmark of all the grad student parties I've attended, actually. I mean, I believe elaborate cooking projects are an essential feature in the procrastination tactics of most graduate students I know. And, perhaps most importantly. The fact that Manolo belives that grad student holiday parties imply "the sort of lugubrious hilarity ... one associates with Moldovan politburo lunches, sans the lubricating effects of vodka," suggests that she has never actually been to a grad student holiday party. I mean, what grad student party worth the name would happen "sans the lubricating effects of vodka"?

On the other hand, I'm afraid she has us nailed. If her ignorance of the alcohol tendencies of partying grad students implies that she's never joined them, her description of the morose dissertator suggests she might co-habitating with one. Talk about being hailed by a passage: "the misanthropic gloom settles in, brought on by the ... low, muffled beating of the unfinished dissertation, which, like the tell-tale heart, lies insistently beneath the floorboards of the mind."

Yikes. Maybe I am as enjoyable as a Moldovan politburo lunch sans vodka. Perhaps Manolo knows me better than I know myself.