I did a really awesome thing this past semester. I had to write a paper for this class I was taking on feminism and the law. Don't get all nosy and start asking why I was taking a feminism class. Look, I've got a lot of layers, like a seven layer bean dip. There's a lot to me. I'm confusing and mysterious, like an elf lord -- except I'm like an elf lord with a manly beard who's bad at archery, and I don't wear girly clothes and I don't have a stupid long elf name. So I'm basically like an adopted elf lord.
So I had to write this paper for this law class. Except -- get this -- my paper was about rock 'n' roll and not about the law. All my poor sucker classmates were all, like, researching for their papers by reading cases and stuff while I was sifting through websites with titles like "&%!@yeahkathleenhanna.tumbler.com." I don't think you should visit that website, I'm just name-dropping so you can see how cool I'm pretending to be. I'm going to paste in the opening paragraph of my tush-paddling paper, which I titled "I Love Rock 'n' Roll (But I Hate Confining Gender Roles)":
"I headbanged to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” once when I was fourteen and home alone. All the kids in the gym on the MTV video did it.[1] And the cool guys in Goodwill corduroy pants and Vans at my high school dances did it. So I tried too, but I pulled a muscle in my neck. For some time afterward, I had to rotate my entire torso just to turn my head, but I wouldn’t tell anybody why. Maybe I sensed the situation’s irony. Nirvana, and the deluge of dense and thunderous grunge that followed it, signaled a musical catharsis of pent up adolescent frustration and angst, to which I frankly only marginally related. All my peers were mad or disillusioned with life or confused after their parents’ divorce or tired of TV—stuff like that. So I thought maybe I was missing something by feeling content. But my attempt to mimic that iconic release of adolescent anguish—headbanging—only gave me a kinked neck, which, ironically, made me feel kind of frustrated. Nirvana did its job."
[1] Music Video: Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit, on Nevermind (Geffen Records 1991), available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg.
You have to admit that it's at least kind of cool that my paper's first footnote cites to a music video, right? Seriously, compare that footnote with this footnote: [1] Juris. Statement App., O. T. 2009, No. 09–416, p. 56a (hereinafter Juris. App.). One footnote is awesome and the other is lame. I'll give you a hint: the one leading the reader to video of kids moshing in poorly-lit high school gym is awesomer than the one leading readers to page 56a of a Juris. App. Whatever that is.
You're probably curious as to whether my awesome paper received high marks. But, really, my friends, is life truly about marks, or is it about mulattoes, albinos, mosquitoes, and libidos? I think we all know the answer to that timeless question.