We just finished up week 4 of staying at home. In one sense, I didn’t have much going on before this; grad school and parenting a young child don’t really leave much space for doing things. But I’m realizing now how I do have even less going on, because I’m not even going on playdate outings or whatever.

We started watching Animaniacs with M, just in time to get excited for new episodes coming sometime ever.

Like so many other people, I’m growing weary of doing all of my communicating with people who don’t live with me via Zoom call. I do like being able to see people’s faces; I hate phone calls. But it’s wearying, right?

I found out that I didn’t get a dissertation completion fellowship from my school. That would have covered my tuition, fees, and health insurance, and given me a (very modest) stipend to cover living expenses. Because life, I have missed the deadlines for all similar awards. (Though I only found 4 I was eligible for anyway.) This has prompted a lot of questions for myself about what comes next, specifically in terms of being able to contribute to my family’s financial wellbeing, which is going to need a lot more help because our childcare costs are more than doubling next year. I’m reluctant to take a (eventually) face-to-face full-time job, because I want to be with my kid in the afternoons. He’ll get out of school at 3:15 and I want to be there to pick him up, not put him in aftercare or delegate that to somebody else.

So, what can I do, that will pay me, lets me work from 9 - 3, and is flexible enough to accommodate both dissertating and chronic illness? I’ve landed on freelance editing, which I did for a few months after getting my MSLS. (And maybe a little writing, but it doesn’t pay as well.) My current assistantship contract ends on May 15; I’m open to taking on new work any time after that. If you need an editor, get in touch. I’m hoping the university will be able to work with me to at least fund my tuition and fees, but tuition doesn’t buy groceries or pay preschool teachers, soooooo…

That was kind of the biggest thing that went down this week. I spent a day moping about it and not feeling like doing much else. But I did read some Internet things. Let me share them with you!

I will be soothed, actually

Why We Turn to Jane Austen in Dark Times I love Jane Austen. This does a great job of explaining how her works are soothing without denying that life is hard sometimes.

I try to check Tumblr’s Week in Review most weeks, because I want to know what people are fans of. When I saw #cottagecore pop up, I was intrigued. It’s kind of like… hygge with more fairy rings and fawns? And also, from what I’m reading, a queer-friendly aesthetic in a way some other Internet aesthetics aren’t.I wanted an explainer, and the Internet gave me one. And then it gave me two more. This has me pondering Internet aesthetics. I’ll let you know what I’m thinking about those as I develop my thoughts further. (But FYI, two of my favorites are vaporwave and [seapunk]aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Seap….)

Also, I’m fairly certain the appeal of cottagecore/farmcore is related to phenomena like the Joy of Missing Out and the general consumerist move toward coziness more broadly. (I even briefly thought, “Maybe I should crochet big cozy blankets and sell them for exorbitant sums.” None of us are immune to this sort of thinking, I fear…) Also I got a little grouchy reading about grandmillenials, who I guess seem to me to be wee babes rediscovering the New Domesticity and sharing it online as though Gen X didn’t already do that over 15 years ago…

Currently

📖: Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols, A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland
🎬: ST:TNG in 40 Hours
🦸‍♀️: The Power of X
🎮: Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, Lego Marvel Superheroes 2

My preferred comedy format, though I’ve not really performed it, is sketch. Yes, I did improv for years, but basically because a sketch teacher was like “It’s like sketch if you didn’t write it first.” It was only recently in conversation with my mother-in-law and W that I realized that this love of sketch dates from when I was around 3 years old (like so many things!), and that aside from my parents’ churchy sketch parody show “Sunday Night Live” (which was one of my favorite things my parents ever did when I was a kid), this love of sketch also came from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

(A friend signed my high school yearbook, “Maybe you will become a writer for Saturday Night Live and then I can start watching it again.”)

Now that M is deep into Muppets and I’m more familiar with comedic structure, I’m noticing how good Sesame Street and The Muppets are at these things. This sketch with The Martians is a great example of a fish-out-of-water situation, playing the game of the scene, the rule of threes, and breaking the pattern.

Kind of makes sense that Muppets would be the source of solid comedy, given their background on SNL and everything.

Facebook Live museum tours on my calendar today, The Dark Crystal exhibit at the Center for Puppetry Arts and Tim Burton at the Neon Museum.

Because it’s seasonally appropriate, today we’re listening to Christo Graham’s Muppet Christ Superstar.

Guess I have to not Internet until after our copy of FF7R gets here… See y’all later, probably with lots of thoughts on books I’m reading to take my mind off not having the video game, I guess?

📺 My wishlist for Picard Season 2:

1. Geordi
2. More Spot II

Feeling like hiding today, but I worked on recruiting for my dissertation and put my CV on kimberlyhirsh.com. Also tried avocado-based chocolate “ice cream” and it was delicious. I radically prefer it to any other non-dairy frozen dessert. Marco Polo continues to make me happy because it’s kind of like texting with somebody’s face and voice. Plans for future blog posts include continuing my series of Steal Like an Artist for scholars (and then moving on to Show Your Work and Keep Going), advice on streaming aquarium cams, and watching Groundhog Day.

I definitely have some sensory processing problems & they’ve gotten worse since isolating. I have to hide when my kid gets loud & chatty after dinner & suddenly I can’t stand the feel of fabrics that never bothered me before.

I submitted proposed changes to my research design to my committee today. I had to make these changes in light of COVID-19 eliminating the possibility of in-person fieldwork and the fact that my work has been both delayed and slowed due to not having my regular childcare/daily rhythm.

Here are the changes I’m making:

CONSENT

The consent document will be distributed to participants as a form in Qualtrics; they will certify that by submitting the form, they are consenting to participate in the research.

SUMMARY

1. Information horizon interviews will be conducted remotely via Microsoft Zoom, rather than in person. Participants will draw their information horizon maps, photograph them, and send them to the researcher via email or text.
2. The interview protocol will include a question about the anticipated impact of COVID-19 on the cosplayer’s future information practices.
3. Instead of inviting broad participation from the cosplay community, the research will use convenience sampling, inviting participation from cosplayers that she met at a con in 2019 and use snowball sampling to find additional participants to invite. She will only open up broad participation if she is unable to meet the minimum number of participants (10) through these methods.
4. Artifacts for the artifact analysis component will be selected, not based on the sustained, systematic observation of affinity space ethnography as originally described, but based on the responses of participants during the information horizon interview. Historical artifacts may be more prevalent than current artifacts, as most conventions are being postponed or canceled and cosplayers may not be working as intensely to meet cosplay deadlines.
5. There will be no participant observation.

I’m reading Lori Morimoto’s (@acafanmom on Twitter) book, An Introduction to Media Fan Studies and it’s so good. Highly recommend, look for a + review once I’m finished.