When dissertations get kinky...

... it doesn't bode well.

The most recent description I have come up with to describe my feelings towards my dissertation is: "I feel like I'm in a S&M relationship with my dissertation and I was never given a safe word." This is also the most accurate description. Safe words are important, kiddos. Otherwise you're just left dominated, tied up, and abused.

On a related note, it was suggested that "cloaca" be my safe word, but I've concluded that it'd be far too easy for me to work that into pillow talk.

Other people have put their grad school sentiments more tactfully. For example, in a recent article in The Nation a Columbia University professor was quoted saying, "Going to grad school's a suicide mission." How vanilla. This article, of course, was re-posted on Facebook by half my graduate student friends with various messages of "woe is me", and half my tenured friends with various messages of "sucks to be you". Unfortunately, I can only support this hypothesis with my own empirical evidence. Woe is me.

Looking at my Facebook profile and TweetStream, I guess this has been a pretty rough week between me and my dissertation. Somehow I've taken a flogging without even realizing it. And I find it rather disconcerting that it takes my social media updates to act as a status report. All of my posts from the last week have documented my tenuous relationships with my dissertation, with a highlight being, "If my dissertation is the Battle of the Bulge, then I'm sitting in a snowy foxhole getting the shit mortared out of me." Obviously I need to post more cute kitten videos to negate the documentation of my downward-spiraling soul.

I can really only end this bitchfest with the reflection that The Simpsons really provides a perfect social commentary on pretty much everything. And might I add, that middle video clip was a lot funnier before I turned 30...

(On a side note, when I first heard the term "blog" I thought it stood for Bitch LOG. I fully realize that this post is totally living up to that sentiment.)