Fun and More Fun

I am off to join Paloma and My Two Dads at the seashore! My friend from the rock-n-roll circus, the newly dubbed More Fun (because he is more fun than fun itself), has an unexpected few days off and will be here on Monday! The sun! The sea! The friends! The fun! Hurray!

Madonna and Medusa

The whiskey glass background motif was making my head hurt this morning, so I changed it to a detail from John William Waterhouse's "Echo & Narcissus." I now feel I am reaching Madonna "Confessions" tour levels of overdetermination with the design. But instead of Madge's "Hey look, disco! Hey look, AIDS! Hey look, WAR SUCKS! Hey look, ponies!," I have "Look, Medusa! Get it? With the snakes and the hair and the gaze? Right? And Narcissus! Get it? See the mirror, that's a mirror . . . like the water and what not! Get it?".

Raise your glasses!

A little past my self-imposed 4:58 e.s.t. deadline but . . .

The revisions, they are done, the article, it is sent, and the whiskey, it is poured!

And now without further ado, a toast, in the words of my grandmother upon raising her daily glass of bourbon to the room,

"Happy Happy."

'scuse me, barkeep, yoo hoo . . .up here!

As you may have gathered from the new template background, I would very much like a drink right about now. I in fact have wanted one since a very inappropriate hour this morning not long after waking.

With this in mind, I hereby set for myself a deadline of 5:00 4:58 p.m. Eastern Standard Time for the article revisions. By this time I will be finished with the revisions OR, get this, I will send the revised version in whatever revised state it is in at that time. Scandalous. Wish me luck.

Friday poem, Shel Silverstein

An old favorite.

The Battle

Would you like to hear
Of the terrible night
When I bravely fought the--
No?
All right.

Arghhhhhhhhhhh!

Too much academic writing for one year. Four separate projects, all very abstract and theoretical. I am brilliant (seriously, I can only sometimes say this and when I do I mean it) but I am tapped! I am just too exhausted to produce ONE MORE FUCKING WORD.

Above all I loathe "minor revisions." Because, you know, they are not really minor. Minor = make some highly acrobatic theoretical twists in about four very precise words. Right now all of the refining and developing and clarifying is pure torture. The ideas are there, I can see how to better explain and connect them, I can see what the editors need, but if I do not get up from the desk (and I mean get up from it not to return any time in the near future) I am going to scream.

I am wiped. I am burnt. I am sick to death of writing. Too much. Jesus. And no way to say "fuck it" at this point. I just have to keep it up. I do not know how to deal, short of throwing file cabinets and other heavy objects out of the garret window.

Just to be safe, wherever you are, look up.

[Edited 7/28/06, 9:20 a.m. to add: Today I feel like kind of a fuckwit for posting this little temper tantrum. Especially the "I'm a brilliant scholar producing complex brilliance!" bit. Writing continues. No heavy objects thrown. I think the long and the short of the problem is this: it's hard to write without chain-smoking Camel Lights, and this is the first time I have had to do so for an extended period of time. So, I now handily and totally blame Long-Suffering Boy AND the unfortunate dearth of cigarettes in my life for all recent crazy mood-swing problems.]

Messing with perfection

I am fiddling with the already perfect template Clare created, because I too have discovered it as the perfect creative vehicle of procrastination. This one, I think, is rather busy or gaudy or something. Soon I will buy some new canvases and indulge my creative whims in my normal way, by slapping cheap acrylics onto giant surfaces according to bizarre principles of color combination and perspective.

Solar-powered

The sun came out and my energy returned. Although I am not exactly rocking and rolling through the article revisions (because I am stopping to do very important, necessary, before I can do anything I must absolutely do this things like filing all of my stuff from last semester), I am getting them done. The work just never ends, does it? I keep waiting for this "And now, I can relax!" moment and I am slowly realizing it's not going to happen, at least not in the way I have been thinking it would.

After the revisions are completed, there is a course to plan and readings to choose so that I can make a course packet and order books. This is a class I have taught before but am revamping into an upper-level course with a slightly different focus. Looks like at this point I will be doing a significant amount of crapping it together. If I am experienced in anything, however, it is in developing new courses (astonishingly, this will be #15 since I have been in this job) so I am not terribly worried. But then there's a revise and resubmit, a panel proposal to get on the listserv, blah blah blah. Neverending, really. It is all stuff I want to do, but I am seriously feeling like I need a breather before the school year begins.

In the midst of all of this, I have been in regular communication between The Boy (my recent ex-boyfriend) whose angst, which has always been a problem, is now positively oozing from his pores. This has earned him the new pseudonym of Long-Suffering Boy. I am getting Very Serious emails and voice-mail messages from him in which he has Very Serious Concerns about a variety of Very Serious Issues. And of course these Very Serious Issues have nothing to do with anything of actual concern but with how unfairly life is treating him. Severe Victim Mentality + Very Weak Sense of Humor = What the Fuck Was I Thinking? I might be a cold-hearted bitch, but I am Very Seriously Fed-up with Long-Suffering Boy. The reasons for this will become clear, I hope, once I figure out how to post about the last year with him.

Providing a stark and rather hilarious contrast are the emails and text messages from my friend from the rock-n-roll circus, who is More Fun Than Fun itself and who therefore will now be called More Fun. He is still trying to convince me to come on the road and is making all kinds of arrangements for that to happen. I may just do this, at least for a few days. I am also thinking about joining my friend Paloma at the seaside home of our adopted parents, My Two Dads. I could even conceivably get some work done there.

So what do I have to complain about, right? Well, now I am stressing about what I might do in my free time as much or more than I am stressing about work. Isn't that sick? I need to change my ideas about work, I think. No, it never will be done, but I can take breaks from it without the sky falling.

Oy. I blame Long-Suffering Boy. He has infected me with the toxic Long-Suffering mindset! Must run far far away!

Low energy

I spent the day in bed yesterday, hugging my giant fuzzy pink body pillow, reading back issues of New York Magazine, and watching movies like You've Got Mail on TBS.

Pathetic. I have gone from a healthy, productive high to a sulky, depressive low. I no longer have the momentum to finish remaining projects. Going on the road with rocker gypsies does not seem fun. Leaving the house for any reason, in fact, seems unwise. During times like these, I begin to wonder if there is something seriously--mentally, chemically--wrong with me. If no matter what I do I will returned to a natural depressed state.

Then I wonder if this is just a brief glitch, perhaps hormonal. I did cry, for example, at the end of You've Got Mail yesterday. What a wretched movie, offensive in so many ways. First off, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are irritating as all fuck, individually and together. At least in Sleepless in Seattle Nora Ephron had the good sense to keep them apart for all but 5 seconds of the movie. In this movie, their characters are insufferable fuckwits. He is sort of a villainous damp rag. She you just want to kick in the face throughout the entire movie. In fact I think for the movie to work at all you have to want Tom Hanks to kick Meg Ryan in the face. It's a movie kind of about how big business is fucking up the world, but then we are supposed to forgive big business once a human face--Tom Hanks, who is supposed to be flawed but charming--is put on it. In fact, if we are the Meg Ryan character we are supposed not only to forgive but also to fall in love with the person who fucks us over to the point of putting our mother's bookshop out of business and manipulating us into a bogus friendship. Do you know what she says when he reveals that he is the person that she has fallen in love with over email, which is something he has known for some time but has been hiding from her while he squirms his way into her life all with the pretense for the viewer that he does not want her to be shocked and disappointed to find out the email guy is her enemy who has fucked her over? Do you know what she says? "I was so hoping it was you. I was." WHAT THE FUCK?! And do you know what I did? I sobbed. Because it was so romantic. I immediately had to watch Five Easy Pieces in order to wash the romantic-comedy funk off and to have a proper, defensible cry. How can you not cry when Jack Nicholson is on the cliff with his father who is in a wheelchair and who, having suffered a stroke, cannot respond as Jack's character cries, frustrated not because he does not know what to say to a father who cannot respond but because he knows he never knew what to say to his father even or especially when his father could speak?? Fuck you and your brave-new-internet-world, david-falls-in-love-with-goliath drivel, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.

I digress. My point of this little critique is this: hormones are quite possibly involved in current mood. Other possibilities are 1) illness. I do feel like I may be coming down with something. I have very little energy and feel like napping all of the time, which is very unusual since I stopped smoking; 2) weather. While still hot, it's dark and drizzly and gloomy; 3) stress. I am beyond freaked out about money and family problems. These problems seem out of my control so I end up repressing a lot of anger, which is exhausting; 4) lack of social interaction. Most of my friends are at the beach or elsewhere, and I have been stuck here working. The most interaction I have is a wave to neighbors and such when I go on my evening run.

All of this is fixable, but it seems advisable for now (okay, at least through Stepmom, Erin Brockavich, and Something's Gotta Give) to stay under the covers.

Friday poem, Gerald Costanzo

The Meeting

Somewhere along the road
you meet up with yourself.
Recognition is immediate.
If it happens at the proper
time and place, you propose
a toast:

May you remain as my shadow
when I lie down.
May I live on as your ghost.

Then you pass, knowing you'll
never see yourself that way
again: the fires which burn
before you are your penance,
the ashes you leave behind are
your name.

--Gerald Constanzo

I first noticed Friday poetry blogging over at Dr. Crazy's place, but I only recently noticed that there seems to be a weekly theme. I just go with my own theme each week, according to what is going on in my life.

This week I have been thinking about the disciplined work me versus the wild gypsy me. For the past few weeks, my life has been highly regimented. In order to get the article done, I kept a very regular schedule of writing (or being at my desk) for a certain amount of hours, running for 30-40 minutes, cooking dinner, shower, bed--every day for days on end. I was also eating healthy food at regular times and (gasp) not drinking a drop of alcohol. Despite the stress and panic and isolation, I felt happy and centered.

After I clear my desk of the next few projects (article revisions, planning a class, ordering books, etc.), I will quite likely board a tour bus and cruise around the country for x number of days. I will not know where I am going, when I am eating, when I am sleeping. I might find time for a run or two but I cannot imagine the roadie lifestyle will allow for much more than that in terms of healthy living. I know I will feel blissfully disoriented and as happy as a child.

So I wonder which is more "me" or which me would be my shadow and which would be my ghost. Which will face the fires of penance and which lives in the ashes, in my name?

Finally, I just love a poem with a toast and I secretly refer to this poet in my head as "George Constanza," which makes me laugh.

I knew I should have been a boxer (or a dancer or a surgeon)

Your Aura is Red

You have a high level of emotion. This can mean passion, but it can also mean rage. Usually, you don't take these emotions out on others. You just use them as motivation - and it works! The purpose of your life: embracing all the wonders of the life, lots of travels, and tons of adventures Famous reds include: Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Jennifer Lopez Careers for you to try: Dancer, Boxer, Surgeon

What Color Is Your Aura?

On the road again?

I have a chance to run away with the rock-and-roll circus again, pretty soon and for as long as I desire. This is most tempting. Most tempting indeed.

It is also possibly a Very Bad Idea. What business do I have gallivanting (as my father would say) about the country on a tour bus? On the other hand, if I got all of my work done beforehand, what would be the harm? Okay, besides the standard inherent hazards of la vida loca on the road with crazy rocker gypsies? (I am kidding. As crazy rocker gypsies go, these are pretty tame.)

I have been entirely too much in my head lately. I did have an entirely insane year. This might be just the thing before the school year starts, right? I do love a road trip. I really really do.

Free

The article is done and sent. I am so relieved. It was one of those projects that just weighs more heavily than others. It was a bastard to write and I am not sure at all that it will fly. But you know what? I did what I needed to do in the time I had to do it and let the thing go. I will see how it works out in the end, but for now I am pleased with myself that I am freeing myself a bit from the stranglehold of my perfectionist writing self.

I am not someone who needs to have everything in perfect order. For example, I spent all of the money I had on the garret three years ago, which has prevented me from finishing all that needs to be finished in terms of painting, decorating, etc. I do this and that here and there, when I have time. The place is a work in progress, and that's fine with me.

(Having said this, I will admit that I am still bullshit angry at Demetrius for leaving in the middle of building my built-in bookshelves, which he promised to complete BEFORE I moved in, to go on tour with a little punk rockstar whose name I will not mention but who really should do something about that finger-in-light-socket-hair, dippy-singer-songwriter aesthetic. I do not care how good a gig it was, Demetrius, you owe me. So those remain unfinished. The shelves that he managed to kind of finish are now, three years later, ripping out of the wall. The study is totally unorganized and my books are for the most part everywhere in no particular order. This sucks for an academic. The moral of this story is: do not hire a bassist to build your study, even if that bassist is also a carpenter. So, yes, I am uptight about this travesty, but hey it's been three years and a) I have not killed him, and b) work in the disarray of the study continues.)

I also do not mind plans changing at the last minute (unless those plans include my carpenter-bassist going on tour) and actually prefer and most enjoy those activities that are completely spontaneous, whether it's dinner or a Madonna concert or a weekend trip. In short, I am generally and maybe to a fault very laid-back. This drives certain people (like the Grand He, boyfriend of a few brief months last year, who tried to have me scheduled into 2010 before I knew it) crazy.

When it comes to my work, though, I am an insane perfectionist. I am so not laid-back about my writing and research. I am meticulous. The research must be thorough. The argument must be tight. The writing must be precise. The same does not apply to my teaching. I can roll into a class totally unprepared and do fine. For me winging it with no more than an outline of notes or ideas makes for a better class. With the writing, though, I usually give myself fits. I can see myself lightening up a bit. I do not maintain such sadistic control over creative projects, whether it's creative writing or painting or whatever. I can see how importing some of that sensibility to my academic writing would free me up a bit. The insane thing is that I enjoy the rigor of the work. I like working through the puzzle of a certain text or theory, within fairly tight boundaries. But that involves a certain letting go as well, and I am only happy when I get into the flow of it. Much of the time on this project I felt panicky and slightly miserable. I do not think I ever achieved that flow, and in the end it had to done and I had to be less than happy with it. And that has to be okay. So it is. (And that's a breakthrough for me.)

I started this post with the idea that I would blog about being free from smoking. For those of you who were reading here last summer, you know I was quite miserable and quite vocal about it for weeks on end. I have been reading back over those posts, and I want to do a thoughtful post on quitting--not on the "secrets" of quitting but on how there are no secrets, on how it just plain sucks day after day until it doesn't. I also want to post on my disappearance in the fall and winter and, as much as I can, about the reasons for it. It has to do with The Boy of the recent breakup, about finding out who he was and who I was and most of all what we were not together. It also has to do with suckiness in the job because of my particular institution, which is the part of it that I will not be blogging. But I do want to get all of it out and off my chest, in whatever why I can. Sometimes I think the problems I have with writing and writer's block have less to do with my perfectionism and more to do with what I am not saying. I cannot write what I need to write NOT because I do not have the ability but because there is something more important to say, something more vital that I need to express.

So some reflection is on tap. Today, though, I am going to relax and let myself be free free free. I think it might be one of those few glorious days a year that I feel absolutely no guilt about not working.

[Clink, clink] . . .Your attention please

Take a look-see at the old quit-smoking counter on the sidebar. Go ahead.

How long has it been since I, Smoky McSmokerson, smoked a cigarette?

That's right. 365 days.

One year, people!

Not one cigarette, people!

Not one!

I am awesome.

It's time, people!

To get this article that is kicking my ass like no piece of writing has kicked my ass in a long, long time DONE and OFF my desk forever, that is.

But first I want to thank Clare for the beautiful job she did on the template. I love it.

Next, I must stop the flirty text conversation I have been having all morning with a man-child currently somewhere in America on a tour bus.

Then I will do it. I will finish it. It will be done. Right?

Behold!

Clare designed a new template for me! Isn't it beautiful?

Friday poem, Lance Henson

Happy Bastille Day. Storm something.

revolutionary song

dawn brings with it the sorrow of light
of one who does not want to be seen

a voice that must be hidden
in a place
that it does not belong

is it a river or a breeze
or the running water that grieves
onto itself

that makes one wish to be free

the forbidden song of the cricket
lies among the roses

a wind floats by whispering of che
and crazy horse

on a morning of frost
in the soreness of waking
the cry of humanity goes out of itself
as impossible to stop
as the weeping of water
as the weeping of a child

--Lance Henson

What I am famous for on Google

My top google hits over the past few days form an oddly accurate portrait of this blog. Well, poor unsuspecting googlers who innocently stumble upon my blog, I will do my best to provide some answers for you.

lacan fight club
Brilliant idea! I'm in. Rule #1 You do not talk about Lacan fight club. Rule #2 You do not talk about Seminar XII . . .

movie about killing medusa
No! Bad idea! Bad! Perseus, is that you? What are you doing in Perrysburg, Ohio?

hippie dancer
You really don't want to see that.

she spit in my mouth
I am so sorry, dude. That recently happened to me, and it's disgusting.

beautiful retards
Slip under the radar every time. Often end up on reality shows.

tussionex image
OK, you cough-syrup fiends, I cannot stress this enough but I am only going to say this one last time. Tussionex is a highly addictive narcotic! Yes, yes, yes--you can find many an impassioned post on this blog praising it as the greatest drug of all time. Know why? Because those were the words of a fiend, my friends, a lame lame cough-medicine fiend! And now you are looking for an image of it? Shatter this idol, people! At the very least, find a sexier drug.

inverse narcissist
In my understanding, an inverse narcissist, a.k.a "narcissistically wounded," is someone who caters to the needs of a narcissist in order to feel love, including self-love. This person is usually raised by at least one narcissistic parent and is never allowed to experience the stage of healthy narcissism (realization, fulfillment, and validation of needs and desires) normal children do. As an adult, the person is unable or unwilling to express his or her own needs and desires. He or she often seeks a co-dependent relationship with a narcissistic partner whose own needs dominate the relationship. In fact, the narcissistic partner has no idea that the other person has needs or desires separate from his own, which is kind of true when that other is an inverse narcissist. In a relationship with a narcissist, the narcissistically wounded partner does not have to deal with the discomfort of expressing his or her own needs and desires. Interestingly, inverse narcissism is considered a form of pathological narcissism. I believe that the inverse narcissist, though, is obsessed not with the self (as the pathological narcissist is) but with the self through the eyes of others. To my mind, the inverse narcissist is also either consciously or unconsciously obsessed with self-obsession itself. Viewed in this way, the inverse narcissist is kind of a meta-narcissist.

he's brushing me off
Make out with a bassist immediately. You'll feel better.

A Dull Girl

I have not cracked up yet but I have been at my computer all day every day for so many days that scenes from The Shining are popping into my head, which is sort of amusing to me.

(Though I do feel compelled to point out that I think being a fictiousness homicidal maniac driven to murder his family by solitude, demonic supernatural forces, and a nasty case of writer's block is just plain wrong. By the way, Pete is at it again today. The kid still has not learned to dig up. Astonishing.)

Anyway, isn't this a great shot? I love Kubrick. And typewriters. And what ever happened to that Shelley Duvall?

On Pete, genrecide, and the heartless murder of irony

If you have not already been directed by Bitch Ph.D. and many others to this hilarious demonstration of sanctimonious fuckwittage, get thee to Pete's astonishingly dimwitted posts on 1. how being a cheerleader for abortion is just plain wrong and 2. how being a fictional satiric character who is nevertheless a cheerleader for abortion is just plain wrong.

So much in the posts and the 500+ comments has me, a pro-choice feminist and a professor of literature and theory, trembling with glee. The brilliant exposure of a lunatic politics! The drooling attempt and spectacular failure at understanding genre! The beautiful lessons on irony and satire in the comment threads! (I especially appreciate one commenter's efforts to include "A Modest Proposal" in its entirety in the thread.)

Perhaps I should be more thoughtful about the causes and effects of such dangerous stupidity. If Pete and his reading of The Onion are real, he is either functionally illiterate, at least in terms of reading comprehension, or quite possibly mentally ill, as the inability to grasp irony even when it is pointed out is a sure sign of untreated schizophrenia.

But I am in no mood for charity in this case and I am much more interested in how this directs our attention to the importance of satire as resistance in progressive politics and alerts us to the dangers of losing it. On the one hand, I agree with PZ Myers that Pete has served up the final evidence of irony's death. On the other hand, I hopefully wonder if Pete's posts, rather than proving once and for all that irony is stone cold dead, unwittingly do something to resuscitate its power.

If only I could . . .

. . . finish this article, I would finally be done mining my dissertation for publishable nuggets (and therefore also be done with the anxiety and writer's block of the dissertating time, so the logic of Medusa goes).

. . .finish this article, I could go back to the newer happier research (you would laugh mightily at this description if you knew the topic) that I really want to be doing.

. . .finish this article, I would be able to plan my new class for next semester, order my books, and get back to my around-the-house summer projects.

. . .finish this article, I could go outside and play.

Pssst . . .self, gorgon extraordinaire, finish the goddamn article already! You have spent years thinking, reading, writing, and presenting this stuff. You've got it. Move on with your bad self.

Sunday miscellany

--I had a dream last night that I was eating fried catfish and chatting about movies and football with Richard Linklater. It was truly awesome.

--Does anyone know if Rafael Nadal has a Blackberry? Because I am thinking I would like to send him a text message telling him that a) those shorts make his otherwise spectacular body look rather stumpy; and b) we should make out as soon as possible.

--My neighbor to the left is sitting in his backyard under a tree, reading a book, smoking a cigarette, and drinking a cold beer. Not fair! Not fair at all.

Saturday memes

I should be writing. As I fell asleep last night, I had a dream that I was walking down a path, only to be forced to a smaller path on the side by a huge slow-moving train behind me inching closer and closer. The side path became smaller and smaller until it eventually dwindled to nothing . . .and BOOM, I awoke. Yeah, that train would be the big fat deadline I am ignoring but must ignore no longer.

So I might disappear for a few days, but in my absence I am leaving some memes for your memeing pleasure.

The Dictionary Meme: This is kind of an offshoot of the popular photo meme I have seen at Profgrrrrl's and New Kid's. It was suggested by Clare in jest, I think, but I am a geek so. . .for the fabulous geeks among us--post a picture and/or description of your most-used dictionary. Include the last word in the dictionary, complete with definition. You can see mine here, and--yes--it's so old and worn that it is missing some of the y's and all of the z's.

Haiku in the Raw Meme: You can save this one for Friday poetry blogging if you wish. Look out of the window. Write a haiku about what you see. The idea is to be quick. Edit minimally but remember the rules: 5-7-5 (first line is 5 syllables, second line is 7, third line is 5), usually each of the first two lines contains a concrete image which the third line somehow brings together.

Finally, found over at the incomparable Lorna Dee Cervantes's place, The MeMe Meme: Thirteen Weird Things About Me. I think you are supposed to do it on a Thursday (for alliterative purposes), but . . .

1. I don't like chocolate.
2. I meow, mostly to cats but sometimes not.
3. My first published academic article begins with a quotation spoken by my ex-boyfriend in a critically acclaimed film. The article seems to be about politics and art but it's mostly about our breakup.
4. I am terrified of large concrete objects in bodies of water.
5. I am a lucid dreamer. I regularly fly, often speak French (which I do not know in real life), and sometimes shape-shift in my dreams.
6. I only like to swim in very cold water, preferably around 60 degrees.
7. I am obsessed with bears and alpacas.
8. I have what can only be called a phobia of the word "moist." I cannot hear it (or even think it) without being physically repulsed.
9. I wrote a 60-page story about trapeze artists when I was nine years old.
10. I was almost an air traffic controller.
11. My sister has called me Agapita since I was born, even though not one of those letters is in my real name.
12. I am friends with some ghosts.
13. I pray to goddesses everyday.

Friday poem, "i am or some say as much" (1995)

Last night's show was spectacular and tacky and deliciously overdetermined in every possible way. I want to post all about it at some point, including how extreme and downright palpable this woman's power to command attention is, how wild and graceful her narcissism (or more specifically, her performance of her narcissism) is, and how great it was to hang out with a longtime girlfriend I never see anymore.

This is a poem I wrote about ten years ago. In writing it I was fiddling around with chiasmus and some of Lacan's ideas. For whatever reason, I still think about this poem. Certain lines of it knock around in my head.

Today it is for Madonna (of stage and song), for the Madonna (that's right, of the Catholic faith), for my mother, for my sister, for my girlfriends, for women.

i am or some say as much

i laugh less, i me
ratio of she and other
name me, subject me, my subject, man
name the moon and leave demand unnamed
need redeems no one desire.

my desire is anger i hide
beyond demand, dynamic meditation
of that subject, impossible me,
me subsumed, immortal mirror
deemed of late (too late) your muse.

so maniacal master, sister man, call me
call me not a fall but a lack
fond lack, a missed song, sinful metaphor
tripped switch of your gaze.

satisfy café notions of truth
sit with veritas, satire anticipated
depict, entice, incite not
a handmaid in a spyglass
alley cats spitting diamonds.

in the name of the sister
hide desire in me, i
impossible subject
laughless ratio of she and other.

Holy emergency

I have a last-minute ticket to see the Mother of Christ. What in god's name do I wear?!?!?

My woobie

A new one from Amazon came in today's mail, but I am having a really hard time letting this one go.

How can I possibly choose?

Ahhhh, what a delicious quandary. Captain Jack Sparrow or my beloved Linky? On the con side of going to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 when it opens on Friday. . .well, Disney yadda yadda. But then again, as we all know from our studies, there is no outside of power (Foucault) and Johnny Depp is one hot pirate (Nietzsche). On the con side of going to see A Scanner Darkly when it opens on Friday. . . oh Rick, Rick, Rick--Keanu as a cartoon character? Isn't that redundant? Or then again, FUCKING BRILLIANT IN ITS SHEER REDUNDANCY.

I might just have to make it a double feature night.

Fill in the blank

An independence day quiz
(Fill in any or all of the following.)


1. We have lift off. There is something about seeing an immense, shiny, $1.7 billion phallic receptacle ceremoniously thrust into the sky that makes me __________.

2. Fireworks make me ____________.

3. Right now I should be ____________.

4. Today I hereby declare my independence from ____________.

Who recalled my John Irving? (A call for help)

Last night turned into one of my sleepless nights, which is why I was online at 5 a.m. renewing the library books that are due today. I am very very cranky this morning because 1) three hours of sleep after the sun has come up does not a good night's rest make; 2) I spent the sleepless hours finishing one book (Julie & Julia, loved it) and then being very excited to start the next in queue, Irving's Until I Find You only to learn that SOMEONE HAS RECALLED MY COPY OF UNTIL I FIND YOU. Who are you people who will not let me keep even Hegel's lectures on aesthetics for more than a couple of weeks? You are voracious readers with fine and rarefied tastes and YOU MUST BE STOPPED.

Anyway, I am going to take a walk later to the little public town library of the readers who won't let me finish my books to return my Irving. In order to make this in any way bearable I must check out another book to replace it because it was last in the fun, non-work related reading pile. I need a great great read for down time while working, a book that is going to take my mind off my work but not too much off my work because I actually like what I work on and want the book to have some substance in that direction. (For example, I have done some work on Irving and really wanted to read my copy of Until I Find You until IT WAS VIRTUALLY STOLEN BY SOME LITERARY PUNK.) Or maybe I am up for some total fluff. And I could be up for something along the lines of Philip Pullman or the Potter, both of which I do love.

Hell, I might even go to the coffee shop/bookstore to do some work and (gasp) buy an actual book as a reward. Please forgive me for being as annoying and whiney as I know I am when I have not slept and let me know if you have any suggestions.

Working weekend

I often do this to myself. I schedule my life so that I somehow end up having to work during at least two major holidays a year. Part of the problem is the way deadlines fall and is somewhat out of my control. Yes, I could get the work in well BEFORE the deadline, but I am starting to think that is somehow genetically impossible for me. But I also do this on purpose. Rather than deal with the holiday pressure, I say to myself, "Self, gorgon extraordinaire, rather than dealing with the the crowds on the shore or at the ferry or in the bay or in the airports, you shall spend a luxurious weekend alone with hours upon hours to do your work in a leisurely and thoughtful manner. Your friends will be away, and you will have no distractions."

This is all good in theory. In practice, however, I never do my work in a leisurely and thoughtful manner. And then there is the social misfit aspect of the radical decision to ignore a holiday. I end up feeling like a one-eyed humpbacked leprous warthog every time a family member calls ("What?!?! You are spending the holiday alone? You are all by yourself? I am so sorry") or when I hear the sounds and smell the smells of a neighbor's barbecue. It is hard to pretend there is no holiday, which is kind of necessary in order to get any work done, when you live in such very close and cramped proximity to thousands of other people. I have taken to saying "Oh yes, I am having a working holiday," the oxymoronic nature of which tends to confuse people and make me seem like some kind mad and glamorous genius. Or at least I like to this it does. Sometimes I try to feel morally superior to the people having mai tai's and hot dogs on the porch behind me and to the right. But moral superiority is not really my thing and I have a hard time getting off on it. Ultimately, it bores me.

In reality and for whatever reason I like to work when the rest of the world is working, and I end up spending at least part of every "working holiday" having a nice little pity party for myself. Would it be different if I were in a relationship or if I had a family of my own? Would I have these great relaxing holidays surrounded by friends and family or would I still secretly think it might be really great just to send my loved ones off for a great time so that I could have some time to myself and REALLY REALLY get some work done?

Because once I get past the bouts of self-pity and get into the rhythm of writing, I kind of love these working weekends. I never get as much done as I would like and it can get lonely but in the end it is in its own way rather lovely.

Kinda maybe probably not too smart

So after I sent my first text message ever to the sweet lad I spent time with during the weekend that I ran away with the rock-and-roll circus (a 25-year-old man, by the way, lest you had taken me for the Mary Kay Letourneau type), I went out to dinner with The Ex. He wanted to celebrate my birthday in some way, so this was the birthday dinner.

Trouble is, he treated it as a date and kept trying to make an entire night of it with drinks, a movie, etc. I kept it to a quiet, casual, and early dinner. Now, why, you ask, did I not decline the dinner invitation in the first place? Why didn't I tell him that we needed some time before we could hang out as friends? Well, I did. But The Ex is one persistent boy and, after he made me feel like a fool for being so stubborn about "just going to dinner," I caved.

I am good friends with a few of my ex-boyfriends, and in my experience the significant-other-to-friend process takes a good amount of time--first apart, then through talking and seeing each other occasionally, and then having a more steady and substantial social relationship ONLY AFTER you have really separated your lives and have developed a rapport as friends. Rather than being a matter of following a set of rules, though, becoming friends after a (no matter how nasty) breakup has, when it happens, happened naturally and with some deviations from the above pattern. In these instances both of us just kind of felt our way through how to do it and there was a silently shared sense of how to do it, because it was important to both us to stay close in the best or only way that we could stay close.

It is too soon to be friends with The Ex. I knew this. He wants to get back together. I knew this. Dinner was a bad idea. I knew this. Everything I feared would happen happened. It was awkward. It was sad. We did not really have much to talk about. I expected this. But then . . .the madness. The evening ended with him declaring his undying love and revealing his plans for getting back together, buying a house together, and getting married. And, of course, he is "not giving up on this."

Wait? What is that faint sound I hear in the echo chamber of my own personal relationship psychopathology? Nar . . .ciss . . .ist. Yeah, for sure, and of the most friendly, least arrogant, and most dangerously sincere kind. This is why breaking up with him has been like breaking up with a brick wall. He has his ideas of how it is supposed to go and anything I feel, do, or say to the contrary is some kind of anomaly. His ability to propose all he did last night proves that he has a) not listened to a word I have said; or b) completed discounted it.

So, yeah, definitely not so smart to see him and now I doubt we can be friends at all.

Is this too harsh? Is my growing anger justified? Am I a monster? Well, I know I am technically a monster, but . . .