Wishing everyone a beautiful and prosperous new year

I made it to the MLA about 31 hours and many a Heineken after setting out for San Francisco. It was well worth it. I am back in the Deep Red for too many days before I reunite with The Someone at home and get to work on a new semester and a new year.

I have made a few resolutions. Last year's comical and purposely simple promise to do some "light stretching" worked out really well. It turned out to be more of a prophetic understatement than a resolution, as my life expanded in amazing and wonderful ways. This year I resolve to:

1. Say sweet things to self, rather than mean and nasty and self-defeating things
2. Become catlike in ability to get as much sleep as necessary (nap at will)
3. Develop ballerina-like posture--head up, shoulders back, chest forward (pirouette when and where appropriate)

So basically I will be a sweet-talking feline ballerina in 2009. I like it.

Brautigan Saturday on Poetry Friday

The Sidney Greenstreet Blues

I think something beautiful
and amusing is gained
by remembering Sidney Greenstreet,
but it is a fragile thing.

The hand picks up a glass.
The eye looks at the glass
and then hand, glass, and eye
fall away.


Indeed.

One more class and then it's a much-needed week off for me. I refuse to call it "Spring Break" as that conjures up images of tropical settings and drunken debauchery or at the very least implies something related to Spring (which doesn't really come for me until May) or at the very very least denotes an actual break.

I have a lot of writing to do. A lot. This is not unusual for Spring Breaks March Writing Marathons of years past. There will be much writing but there will also be sleeping in and movies and wine and maybe just maybe a night or two out.

Do they still have the MTV Spring Break beach house or party house or whatever? If MTV were to do a Spring Break professor house, there would be a lone dishevelled woman in strange outfits (which I, like many of my comrades, tend to wear when I write), books and papers everywhere, a bored chihuahua, maybe something like The Maltese Falcon on the television, and several bottles of red wine in various states of fullness--one on the desk, one by the bedside, one by the table. Every once in a while in the MTV Spring Break Garret, the dishevelled prof would rouse herself from the laptop, put some Led Zeppelin or Violent Femmes on the iPod and dance wildly. Then it would be back to the writing.

OK, now I am kind of looking forward to my lame non-Spring Break alone with my own bad self.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all! It's a beautiful day in the Deep Red. I have a couple more days here and then I shall return to Crowded American City. My New Year's thoughts are simple. I do not feel about 2007 as I did about 2006. All in all it was an okay year, which is what I think I wanted and needed--some stability. That said, I am looking forward to a sparkling fresh new year.

My New Year's resolutions tend to be tongue-in-cheek (e.g. the wildly doomed "budget for cocaine" of the coming-of-age decade), and I tend to make "real" resolutions only on my birthday (e.g. the wildly successful "quit smoking" of 2005). I have one this year, and I am quite serious about it: light stretching. By this I do NOT mean figurative stretching of any kind, i.e. intellectual, spiritual, creative--not that I am opposed to any of these, but these are things I tend to do easily and greedily and therefore do not need to resolve to do. No, by "light stretching," I actually mean literal light stretching of each part of the body each day. And do not even suggest that this sounds suspiciously like yoga or some other kind of Fascist Stretching Regimen. Note I did not say I resolve to be a fascist hippie in 2008.

There are other big and important things that I plan and want to do in the '08, but this is my one and only resolution. As I somehow decided in the comment thread about leftovers below, I am also bringing back my motto of the dissertation-finishing year, "It is what it is," for the '08. This is hilarious in many ways, to be explained when I return to regular blogging, but I am also quite serious about it. Other things I must remember to blog about: the most vile 24-hour illness I have ever had in my life, which I am convinced almost killed me and which I will refer to as simply The Evil and about which rest assured I will only discuss in the most metaphorical of details; the oh so very emotional, so very dramatic family visit; and the blindingly dazzling super-fabulousness of Lenny Kravitz (I feel I might save this one for Crazy Medusa's Lounge).

Until then, the Chalupa and I wish you the happiest of happy new years!

(Medusa image by David Revoy)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you celebrating the tryptophantabulous day! Happy Thursday in late November to those of you not celebrating the joys of colonial conviviality!

I have holiday company. It's okay. Really. I also have wine. Lots of it.

Happy happy!

That year we went for vapid and pale and slutty

Dr. Crazy, our dear reader Ambiva, and yours truly may or may not be somewhere in this photo.

*poof*

Happy Halloween to all!

Medusa's Holiday Weekend

This holiday weekend has been pretty low-key, something that I usually do not mind but that this year feels like a kind of lame "kickoff to the summer," as all of the local news station insist on calling it. It's not like I made plans or anything, since this weekend falls during the three weeks before I begin the summer travels (which I have dubbed the Three Weeks of Six Weeks Worth of Work ), and it's not like I have not done some socializing and some relaxing. Still . . .something feels too lonely or quiet to me. Maybe it's that last year's Memorial Day weekend involved having a huge party with friends new and old, engaging in an ugly public argument and breakup with my boyfriend, and unexpectedly leaving town for a few days with the rock-n-roll circus. Maybe it's the sense that I should be doing something, that holiday pressure that I think we all succumb to sometimes. Anyway, I am not nearly as sad or mopey as this post has so far made me sound. What have I been doing with myself on this unholidayish holiday weekend during which I seem sad and mopey but am not?

• Well, the weekend began with me Building an Outfit over at the superfantastic Manolo's blog. You can check it out on the forum. I did not win but it was still superfantastically fun. My thoughts on my non-winning outfit are: a) I took a risk with matching the open-toed ankle strap pump with a city short (as really I prefer only flats with the city short or if a heel, a casual wedge); b) something is somehow off with the cut of the off-the-shoulder silk top, along with the placement of the ruffles; c) the necklaces, bag, and sunglasses are brilliant (and I may have ordered some of these items as a part of the retail madness part of this weekend, see below); d) I was never sure about the bracelet, though it does tie in with the shoes, but I think that's precisely why I do not like it, and I think it is too much with the necklaces; and e) the whole outfit might be a little boring--cream and brown with cream and brown. In any case, it was great good fun and I am very much looking forward to the next contest. Incidentally, I count this as the weekend's (only) "work."
• I have been following A. and Crazy's Vagina Power Weekend 2007 telephonically and on Dr. Crazy's blog. By yesterday they were feeling hungover and remorseful but I think this is wrongheaded and perhaps the undue influence of penis power. I am hoping they will reclaim the Vagina Power today, as Dr. Crazy and A. are fun and charming and witty and fabulous.
• I continue to work out as if it is my job. As you might surmise, working out like it's your job, which is to say for about an hour and a half every day, prevents you from doing actual work. Anyway, I am on some sort of mission that apparently involves seeing what will happen weight-wise, body-wise, and mood-wise if I work out for many days in a row. Today will be Day 14, and I think I might be (insanely) going for 30. The results thus far: I have lost 3 pounds; my legs, arms, and waist are visibly toned; and I feel almost too good--tons of energy, almost zero anxiety, and hence no work on looming projects this week, oopsie. I also feel like I might be living in the 1980s--the fitness-crazed 80's, not the cocaine-fueled 80's. I wonder what I would be feeling like if I had decided to live in the cocaine-fueled 80's** for 30 days. I would definitely have lost more than three pounds but I might be dead.
• Speaking of death, I almost choked on a cherry pit yesterday. During the near-choking, I thought about how funny and convenient it would be to die on Memorial Day weekend. I also thought it would be kind of nice to die by choking on a cherry pit, theoretically of course, as I am sure it would be a real nightmare physically. But how could you not smile just a little when in answer to your how did she die question, you got "she choked on a cherry pit"? Not only is it an alliterative death, but it prevents a maudlin and melancholy response. It's comical. By the way, I am not feeling particularly morbid this weekend, though the holiday inspires a kind of morbidity. I am always and have always been this morbid. There's this extraordinary line in Little Children (which I watched last night, see thoughts below) about all people being "miracles" because they know that everyone they love will die and they still go on. When I was very young, I realized just this--that everyone I loved would die and that I in fact would die. I completely freaked out and starting alerting everyone to this fact, like "Wake up, people! Do you not know what's going here? Why are we just walking around like this is OK?" Eventually I decided that this fact made life absurd and was a sign of God's excellent but sick sense of humor. (Around this same time, I started planning my funeral and have found such plans drafted out in various journals and diaries of my youth. I also was convinced I would die at the age of 24 right up until midnight on my 25th birthday, but that's another story.) So anyway, yeah, I was a freaky and morbid kid. But I still have that idea in my head. I still believe that this knowledge of certain loss and this refusal to let it stop us makes this life absurd. But maybe it does make us miraculous? Absurd or miraculous? An absurd miracle?
  
• Friday night I took a friend out for a belated birthday dinner and then we went to see another friend play music. I have been hanging out with the belated birthday friend since September. How to describe this relationship? We are friends but there is also an attraction and he has tried to make it a thing but ultimately it has gone nowhere and in the end I think we are just not that into each other. It's as messy and boring as the construction of that sentence. And the fact that I have now actually talked about him on the blog probably means that I am about to end it, at least in its current ambiguous configuration. Anyway, the other music-playing friend is the person some of you know as Demetrius or One True Love. Going to see him play with Ambiguous Friend (uh oh, a pseudonym, a sure death knell) was a kind of worlds-colliding experience, as it was at the bar that was my practically my living room during grad school and that contains at least three people I have slept with at any one time (Friday night's count was four) and everyone I had ever met was there. But it was actually kind of lame. My friends were nice to Ambiguous Friend. Ambiguous Friend was very laid-back but also seemed kind of bored. I was "meh" about the whole thing, even after two Sapphire and tonics. Who knew worlds colliding could be so uneventful?
• This weekend has provided the climax to the retail madness of the past two weeks, during which I have ordered far too many glorious treats from places like Sephora and Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and a gluttonous number of books from Amazon and local shops. Hmmmm. . .seems like I might be living in the mindless-consumerism 80's as well. Yesterday I went into Marshall's to pick up a sports bra and a pair of running shorts and ending up spending $116 on neither a sports bra nor running shorts but on things such as a DKNY chemise and the piece de resistance, for only $39.99, a new dog bed and burrowing blanket for the Chalupa:
  Isn't it wonderful? As you can see, it is most luxurious and absolutely perfect for our very girly-girl bedroom. Yes, it is big enough for a German Shepherd but she loves her super king-sized chihuahua princess bed.
  
• Ignoring Major Project due in June and the unwritten syllabus for my summer class and instead watching stupid T.V. (the Real World Las Vegas marathon, the kind of boring Shear Genius with the mechanical and unlikeable Jaclyn Smith, What Not to Wear, this new fixer-upper show with my imaginary boyfriend Andrew Dan Jumbo, who I have figured out reminds me of my second fiance, P.) and good movies like Blood Diamond and Little Children. Continuing with my reviewing style that is part Ignatius J. Reilly and part obvious pointer-outer that movies cannot resist the force 0f the heteronormative train, I will say that I thought Little Children was spectacular--the strangely funny darkness of it, the performances of Winslet and Connelly and really everyone, and the clean yet somehow stifling and oppressive look of it. Just a fantastic film, really. But the end feels odd to me. Is the optimism supposed to be ironic or does it seriously want us to think traditional family values will save us from our post-9/11 world of fear-mongering and bullying? Is it just Tom Perrotta? He does seem to be obsessed (Election, Little Children) with the cheaters-never-win theme. On the one hand, there is all of this wonderful questioning of the joys of marriage and child-rearing; on the other, there is this idea that the reason we are not being good mothers and fathers and partners is because our growth is retarded and we are behaving like a bunch of adolescents. Perhaps that is the final message: grow the fuck up and handle your dissatisfaction in a less deluded state of awareness. Blood Diamond slams the American marriage industry, indirectly blaming heteronormativity for massive bloodshed. Among its political messages is an unexpected one about family and life choices and the ultimate luxury of such choices. And that Leo. My my my.
  
• Hanging with the Chalupa. Here she is with a friend, known as "Baby," watching a home-decorating show featuring a bedroom that looks eerily like my own. If you look through the window in the shot, you can kind of see Hairy Yoga Guy's porch.

That's all from Medusa Central. I must go out into the sunshine with the Chalupa, perhaps break up with someone who is not my boyfriend, and at some point sweat profusely on an elliptical machine, perhaps in some sort of Jamie Lee Curtis-inspired head band. Happy holiday weekend to all!

**Updated to add: Apparently Lindsay Lohan was doing my living in the cocaine-fueled 80's for me this weekend.

Random Bullets of Cranky Easter Morning

• What's up with the cold weather, people? 31 degrees Fahrenheit with an expected high of 40 degrees. This reminds me that every single May I vow to make plans for a mini-vacation to a very warm locale for the next May. I always pretend I will have the money or will somehow find the money to do this. I never do.
• Money. I don't have any. I don't care at the moment if it is incredibly crass to talk about it. It's an enormous struggle every single month. I am tired of it. It also occurs to me that it's RIDICULOUS that I am putting 5% of my paycheck into a retirement account when I have to panic and scramble right now to pay my bills. I have let my father pressure me into doing this. (And, yes, I suspect the reason I am woefully financially unsuccessful at this late age is because I have let my father continue to have a major influence on my financial decisions.) I am actually paying some bills with a credit card that doesn't charge interest until August, because by then I will be able to pay it off with a check from teaching summer school. Pathetic.
• I am teaching summer school. Boo.
• Paloma has invited me to a wonderful Easter dinner. She's cooking for her entire family and a few friends, all of whom I would really like to see. I know this should be a good thing and not a cranky-making thing, but I had no idea what she was talking about when on the phone Friday night she was "reminding" me of Easter this and two hams that and scalloped potatoes here and cobbler there, all at her house. She had thought she had told me weeks ago. Normally this would not be a big deal, but I am so so behind in my work. I was way behind before the weekend began, and the past three days of seeing out-of-town friends and going to papers at the conference that is in town has royally screwed me. I estimate I need about 10 hours each day today and tomorrow to get through the work and that may be a little on the conservative side. I can see squeezing in an hour tops for Easter dinner. That would be extreme eating and running, though. On Easter. Rude. What to do? Go for a bit? Say I am not feeling well?
• I actually am feeling sick. I don't know if it's allergies or what, but I am exhausted, achey, and, as is abundantly evident by now, cranky.
• There is a very large hawk in my neighborhood. I wish I could say something Thoreau-like about its mighty beak or the gold of its tilted feather in sunny flight (I heart Thoreau, in spite of myself, I really do), but as he seems to have taken a loud screeching interest in the Chalupa the past few mornings, what I will say is this: "Get within 100 feet of this yard in any direction, you filthy scavenging coward, and I will rip you apart with my own hands."
  
• I have been having these amazing dreams that I am in a reality that isn't real. I am not talking about lucid dreaming, which is standard dreaming procedure for me. I mean in the dream I am projected (for various reasons, by various forces, some friendly, some not) into a simulated reality, a holodeck-like projection, and have to navigate my way through it. At first, it feels like I am travelling through a muddy-feeling substance that looks like the world but has thick heavy mass and texture. As I learn how to walk, to breathe, to talk in this new environment, it begins to feel natural. I bounce around as I would in my normal environment, but there's no gravity. There is only substance around me, and I can walk through it in any direction--down into the earth, up into the sky, up walls and upside down on ceilings. I can find the substance is moldable and I can create things I need from it. Am I a) stepping precariously closer to the edge of psychosis; b) really getting into a certain something I am teaching right now; c) spending way too much time in virtual environments; or d) fabulously creative and brilliant?
• Have you noticed blog cliques? I have been branching out in my blog reading, and I have seen a few groups of blogs that seem to discourage outsiders and seem to encourage a certain exclusiveness--in posts, in comments--among a limited amount of people. I am not talking about those bloggers who have a combination of new readers, IRL friends, and readers from a certain community. What I see from those bloggers is an at least implicit generosity with all visitors, except of course those commenters who are hostile. What I think I am seeing are some blogs that are the virtual equivalent of the "cool kid" table in the high-school cafeteria. I do not comment frequently even on the blogs I regularly read and I have never commented on these cliquey blogs I mention, but I am fascinated by what it is that gives off this exclusivity vibe on certain blogs.
  
• How did I forget what a great movie Moonstruck is? I watched it last night before bed. Best forgotten line, between Olympia Dukakis's character and the NYU professor (played by John Mahoney): OD: I am not old for you. JM: I am too old for me!. HA! Think I actually told The Grand He that he was too old for himself once, not remembering that I had stolen that line. I do this constantly, by the way--steal lines from movies and forget they are from movies and think they are mine. A huge amount of them are from the 80s.
  
• Finally, in way of an apology for all of the crankiness I have just dumped on you: Happy Easter, Happy Spring!

Goodbye 2006, You Nasty Nasty Bastard

I am not in the least sorry to see you go. You will go down in my personal history as the mocker of all best efforts, the minion of seemingly inescapable negative truths, and the enemy of faith and humor. No need to dwell in specifics, as the brand of failure you dished out has no redeeming value.

It's a bright new day and a bright new year.

Hello 2007! I am already half in love with you.