Gender Roadblock, the genuflecting Head Cheese at the Normal Studies Corporation, contends that once a year has passed, it, like many things that are past, can no longer exist, not even in memory. He/she cites as his/her main evidence for this confusing argument (which, if true, one shouldn't be able to recite it at all, since one can only have heard it in the past) the album Darkness On The Edge Of Town by Bruce Springsteen, which, of course, Gender Roadblock claims to not have any recollection of, since he/she first heard it as a teen in 1978.
However, in the interest of academic tomfoolery, the prankster-professor Jennifer "Physical Therapy" McGoo has spent long minutes listening to that album, long held to be a rock masterpiece by people who would rather have spent the time listening to Van Halen's debut record, also released that year. Meanwhile, extremely snobby people with virtually no friends in common suggest that everyone should be listening instead to Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine, although of course the original German version & not the one with English lyrics translated by the band as a form of commercial abdication.
McGoo has concluded that she is strangely attracted to Gender Roadblock, although both ironically & therefore intellectually, rather than physically, which is understandable, since Roadblock has had so many gender reassignment surgeries (to be fair, some people gave him/her some of those assignments) that people fear she'll end up like an Alan Moore character in a comic book space tale. McGoo's main fear is that Roadblock may forget the sex after they've had it, which would frustrate McGoo, as she requires her partners to blog about their experiences with her once they've had them, although she has in the past few months settled for a tweet or even a retweet.
At the newsdesk of the former Washington Flim-Flam, now the West Virginia Gotchernose, where the alleged coupling might take place, newshound Mary "Shelly" Shelley explains that all of this is in lieu of a standard year-end series of lists & pictures of celebrity nudity. "Indeed," says Shelley, "I am so tired of getting things for free so that I can say nice things about them at the end of the year that I feel marginalized & not even middle-class anymore." A lightbulb appeared over her head at this point, & she began pitching that particular story to major magazines, although she concedes it will probably end up on Salon.
So why then does Gender Roadblock feel the need to write column after column extolling the virtues of the past year? He/she says it her/himself in his/her most recent column, guest-ghosted by her/his mother/father: "Those people who wear crowns & hold scepters just seem so nice, don't you think?"
