One way to get tenure

Remember Mrs. Ralph, from The World According to Garp?

Florence Cochran Bowlsby, who was best known to Garp as Mrs. Ralph, would live a life of larkish turmoil, with no substitute for sex in sight-or, apparently, in need. She actually completed her Ph.D. in comparative literature and was eventually tenured by a large and confused English Department whose members were only unified by their terror of her. She had, at various times, seduced and scorned nine of thirteen senior members--who were alternately admitted to then ridiculed from her bed.

I heart Mrs. Ralph. I haven't stop laughing, at various points of the day and out loud, since I recently re-read Garp. (Not to worry, I am still also re-reading Eat Love Ni-na-ni-na Bleak Anna.) She "was eventually tenured by a large and confused English Department whose members were only unified by their terror of her." Hee hee heh heh HEE. Oh how the thought of such a thing warms my little black heart.

A report on my Dickens

As I reported a couple of weeks ago, I lost my Dickens but then found it hiding in the hallway with the kiddie lit and Pope. Wol popped in to say "hello" for the Great Mofo Delurk 2007 and wondered which Dickens I had decided to re-read.

Well. You see, before I had even lost my Dickens, I decided--based on various predictions and recommendations regarding the winter, gathered from sources such as my old Portuguese neighbor (who was raised on boats), the Farmer's Almanac 2008, and my own inner Eeyore (who suffers from S.A.D. and should probably permanently wear one of those therapeutic light visors)--not to take any chances with the winter blues/comfort-inducing effects of Dickens ratio and therefore to re-read (naturally) Bleak House. But the night I lost my Dickens, I still had to re-read something to fend off the chill and brace myself for the season. Anna Karenina Ni-na-ni-na turned out to be the obvious substitute. The next day I found my Dickens, AND to make matters worse my copy of Eat Pray Love (brought to my attention by Dr. Crazy) came in the mail.

So, you got it, now I am attempting a simultaneous reading of Anna Karenina Ni-na-ni-na, Bleak House, and Eat Pray Love. I feel like no good can come of it, like the time in graduate school when I completely intertwined White Noise and The Counterlife in my head and almost wrote a seminar paper about Nathan Zuckerman's multivalent fear of Mr. Gray and Nyodene D (not that that wouldn't have been a totally brilliant paper). On the other hand, I feel like Eat Love Ni-na-ni-na Bleak Anna might be just the kind of super literary comfort food combo I need to face the winter.

Missing my Dickens

I wish this were a euphemism, folks, but I mean this literally. Every bit of my Dickens is missing, as in not a Copperfield, Nickleby, Pip, Tale, or House in the house. Even Drood is nowhere to be found.

I love autumn like no other season but when the air starts to get a little chilly and the light a bit scarce a touch sooner each day, I feel the need to brace myself for the coming winter. For whatever reason, my winter preparations include reading some Dickens. Go figure, but it makes me feel like everything is going to be okay. Henry James can do in a pinch but nothing comforts quite like my Dickens.

How could this have happened? Am I just not seeing them on any of the shelves? Do I have some kind of neurological disorder that makes me blind to the Dickens? Did I decide to take all of my Dickens to my office at school? I tend to hoard my books at home, so this seems unlikely. Did a poor anglophile thief come in the night and make off with my Dickens? Do I have a friend with a very specific cleptomaniacal bent or an odd odd sense of humor? Has the Chalupa distributed all of the Dickens to her secret book group? Did I have some sort of drunken blackout during which I flew into some kind of rage against the Dickens and threw them all away?

I am totally baffled.

Updated to add: Found! They were on the small bookshelf in the hallway with the Children's Lit and the Alexander Pope. Of course!!????????? I may have been drinking when I last reorganized the books. Now. Which should I re-read? Which of the which??

Calling all audio book lovers!

I have come up with the awesome-in-theory plan of using my elliptical time to listen to books on my iPod. I am planning to start with Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, which I have read multiple times but which I MUST MUST MUST re-read (or hear read) before The Golden Compass is released in December. (By the way, I was flipping out during the preview for it in the theater and was positively overstimulated by the time the Potter, which I was there to see, started.)

Anyway, I was just going to buy the books to download. Expensive. Like $25-$30 per book. I might as well buy the actual CDs so that I could also maybe listen to them in the car as well, right? Then I considered joining one of the audio book rental clubs like audible.com, at least for a short time at a reduced special offer price (about $8 a month for three months), but then I realized you only get one book per month.

Any ideas? Should I just suck it up and buy them? I am not usually such a cheapo, but the money. . . it is tight.

'Twas the day before Potter!!

I will admit it. I am giddy like a child. Who else is picking up a copy at midnight and reading it immediately? Just me and 12 million twelve-year-olds?

I haven't figured out a way to stay awake if I want to keep reading all night. Coffee? No-Doz? Would trying to score some cocaine for the purpose be inappropriate?* Heh. Now that's a Saturday Night Live skit I would love to see, Harry Potter Crack House.


*Explaining the joke ruins the joke paranoid tenure-track asterisk: This is only funny if you know I do not do drugs.

Letter of Irritation, Girly-Girl Edition

Dear Otherwise Good and Nice Boy,

When I say I am going to hang out at home and call it an early night (yes, on a SATURDAY NIGHT), I mean it. No matter how sweet and charming and sexy and caring and cool and funny and smart I think you are, I am probably not going to be persuaded to change my mind. In fact, I do not want to be persuaded.

I am not being coy. I really do want to get into my flannel pj pants and outrageously large, mismatched wool sweater (it's 16 degrees fahrenheit outside) at about 7 p.m. and curl up with my chihuahua and a glass of red wine and finally watch Marie Antoinette, which I wanted to see in the theaters until reviewers convinced me it was a girlish mistake. And then I really do want to be in bed by 10 p.m. and maybe read a little of this book and be asleep by midnight on the outside.

And if I want to spend a Girl's Night In with Sofia and Kirstin and Martha and the Princess Puttalily Fandango (Chunk-o-Pup's name when she's feeling fancy on a Saturday night), I do not need to be ridiculed. Making fun of me in a playful affectionate ("You are so goofy and pathetic but it's cute because I know how punch drunk this month has left you") way is one thing, but making fun of me in a kind of belligerent and coercive way? Unh uh, not okay. Do you really want to shame me into hanging out with you?

See, I know when I need me some me time. I know how and when I need to take it. I know that tomorrow I will wake up refreshed and happy. I know that I will end up having LOVED every irreverent and visually absorbing minute of Marie Antoinette. I know that I will have really enjoyed that Southgate opens her novel with this Wilt Chamberlain quotation: "Everything is habit-forming, so make sure what you do is what you want to be doing." I know I will make some coffee and Irish oatmeal in my sunny kitchen. I know I will do a little morning reading and find this and feel real excitement for the coming Spring. I know I will feel a little more ready to face a positively bone-crushing March with its no less than a million and fourteen academic commitments.

Your contribution to my evening and my morning will have been to introduce a little bit of worry that maybe I will die alone because maybe I am lame and boring and pathetic. And then I will worry for you because I will be concerned that I hurt your feelings and I will see the beginning of the end of an otherwise very nice sort of friendship and I will fret that you are pushing my buttons and that everyone KNOWS what happens when my buttons are pushed. And then I will worry a little bit about my buttons and if they are neurotic or narcissistic or irrational buttons.

In the end, though, I think I will decide that my buttons are just fine, thank you very much, and I will get another cup of coffee and curl up under my puffy pink comforter and forget to be irritated about anything at all because I am happy by myself and with myself. And that really is worth something, isn't it?

Yours,

Medusa