boo, brr, blah

The gulf between deciding one is a fat lardass and actually doing something about it is particularly difficult to span if the temperature is 1 degree above freezing and the two inches of snow still on the ground have been pummeled into so much dirty grey slush. PMS doesn't help, either, since all I want to do is sit around and eat chocolate while obsessing over how I am a failure at life. Ugh. Can this day just end, already?

I see married people.

In terrifying news, I have discovered that YET ANOTHER one of my ex-flames, The Rebound, is engaged. This comes hot on the heels of discovering--all in the same 6 months, mind--that The College Ex got married and the ex-boyfriend immediately following--the guy who broke my heart so bad I didn't even think about kissing anyone else for about two years*--is not only married but has HAD A FRICKING BABY.

...I am comforted by the fact that they are all world-class morons, of course.

I am further comforted by the fact that I have somehow, despite all odds, completely inexplicably managed to secure the attention and affection of a strapping young whippersnapper of an Aussie boyfriend. This sort of luck bemuses me--if anyone knows who spiked his punch and how I can make sure I have that person on staff in perpetuity, please contact me ASAP.


*Ok, that's a slight exaggeration... understatement. Whatever.

the best time of my life

Hogwash. And the next person who tells me that being in one's 30s is so much better than being in one's 20s is going to get a swift kick to the head. Let's put it this way:

• I'm turning 30 on Sunday.
• The most recent Ex moved across several continents to be with Girlfriend 2.0.
• My college boyfriend is engaged.
• The English boy who broke my heart in 2001 is married.
• My little brother is married.
• I haven't dated anyone seriously for almost 2 years.

And this morning I learned that:

• My little brother's wife is PREGNANT.
• Also, I'm turning 30 on Sunday.

I think I deserve cookies for not starting to bawl on the phone with my super-psyched brother, for being able to suggest that they name the child Biscuit (good for a boy or girl!). No, I did not start crying.

I waited until I hung up.

Listen, I know I am ridiculous. But I'm turning 30 on Sunday (did I mention that?) and it kind of sucks in the "personal life" department right now. Thank God I have Blythe on speed dial to talk me down from the ledge.

jam-packed

As I was taking a break from the 19th-Century art history conference today at Columbia, I heard a guitar piddling around, and it sounded kind of like one of my favorite bands. Which was weird, because why would VAMPIRE WEEKEND being playing at Columbia today, when I'm supposed to be in a darkened lecture hall from 9am until 5pm and it's 79 degrees outside? Well, turns out that it was indeed Vampire Weekend testing out the old sound system and that they were going to play at 3pm, followed by Talib Kweli. (Yes, really.)


Needless to say, I skipped out on the afternoon sessions (though I returned, of course, for the cheese and cheap wine at the reception) and stood on Alma Mater's feet to enjoy the 45 minute set and the blazing sunshine:


It was, as the French say, LE AWESOME. I mean, really, I'm just wandering around campus, happen to hear a few random notes of music and discover that one of my favorite bands is playing that day? And it's beautiful out? And the band is LE AWESOME live? This, my friends, THIS, is why I love New York City.

...And for those of you out there who aren't jealous enough, I give you a snippet of the closing number, "Walcott":


Fantastic.

pity me

I was all feeling depressed and mopey last night for some reason, and it only got worse this morning, when I was listening to Kiri Te Kanawa sing "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, which is used about halfway through the clip from Room With a View below, which happens to be one of my favorite scenes from that movie, which happens to be based on one of my favorite books, when I realized, mouth flapping open like a fish:
I'm going to be living ...there. THERE. In about a month, I'm going to be LIVING THERE (there being Florence).

I mean, URGH. How depressing! I'm going to have to deal with eyesores like:and
and
and, worst of all:

Poor me!



...Uh, rest assured that I'm elated and that I'm just trying not to gloat too much. (Okay, that last statement was a lie. But you know what, I haven't been on a decent vacation in YEARS, and I deserve one.) I'm excited and terrified--I don't speak Italian, and did I mention I'm sharing an apartment with 6 other people who are in my graduate program? ... I just can't wrap my head around it. Awesome. One of my many goals is to return with a decent salami. Mmmmm.

And sorry, no, there is no extra room in my backpack for an extra person. Though if you send me your post address, I'll mail you a gloating postcard.

I want to go to there

I want to go to a place that has the following things:
unhappy Ex-boyfriends
free hot chocolate
kittenheads
art
my brother's dog
magical wrist-ligament-healing water or fairies or wizards or whatever
lots of sunlight
a beach
friendly people who want to give me money

If you know of a place like this, please contact me ASAP.

GimpMaster 3000

Yeah. Thanks to being too flexible and undermuscular, I've reinjured myself. I have to immobilize my wrist for SIX F*ING WEEKS. Ya'll better get used to seeing some poorly typed posts.


...Also, I did mention I'm a grad student, right? THAT MY LIFE CONSISTS OF TAKING NOTES AND WRITING?

Balls.

business of ferrets

For those of us nerdbombs out there that actually enjoy this sort of stuff--Blythe, I'm talking to you--here are two fabulous things, both related to my favorite dictionary website, AskOxford.com (what, you don't have a favorite dictionary website?):

1. Their FAQ is the awesomest thing I've come across in at least a week and a half (slow week). Sample question and answer:

Is there a term for the 'study of love'?

There is a word 'erotology' which is defined as "the 'science' of love". This is a rarely used word, except in anthropology, where it is found slightly more often. This term really relates to the study of sexual activity and techniques rather than to the study of love itself.* The only word this editor can think of for that is 'marriage'!**

2. They have also posted a fairly comprehensive list of terms of venery*... by which, of course, I mean collective terms for animals. Some of my favorites include:
cats: clowder
owls: parliament
rattlesnakes: rhumba
ferrets: business ...and this one wins for just sheer, wonderful absurdity:

Illustration--and interesting etymological background--may be found at Le Pen Quotidien.

Oh, also, Oxford University Press is having a sale through March 3.



* Not, say, life as a singleton in NYC?
** Madame Editor, your answer scares and depresses me.

where were you?

I was in MarieBelle chocolate shop, preparing to purchase a delicious gourmet hot chocolate to assuage my sad conviction that I had missed the speech whilst hair modeling, when I heard Obama's tinny voice echoing from somewhere in the depths of the store. I watched the inaugural speech streaming live on one of the dishwashers' computers in the back of the store, promptly started crying, and then got an "inaugural" hot chocolate compliments of the house.

A good day.

Also, I'm going blond: Exciting times, people.

hypomania doesn't clean the apartment

It seems not taking prescription uppers for the past three days means that I have lost any filtering mechanisms and all my patience. It also means that I am constantly engaged in either:
a) falling asleep on things,
or
b) dancing around the apartment and leaping over chairs and cats at 100mph to this song:

So mainly I just skank around the apartment jumping around and scaring the cats and then I pass out on the bed. And then I wake up and do it again. This is pretty much all I've been doing all day long. I'm telling you, ADD is no joke, and when you have to clean the apartment, it does NOT help get the job done.

she's baaaaaaack

Yes indeed, here I am to delight your senses once more (all 5 or 3 of you who actually read the blog). I had about a perfect storm of crap that prevented me from both a) finishing a paper and b) posting on this here blog. Now that the perfect storm and said paper are over, I am sleeping about 12 hours a day and avoiding cleaning up my room. Not bad. This lack of motivation (aka, absence of ADD meds in the bloodstream) unfortunately also translates into me falling asleep on most horizontal surfaces. Like, for instance, the computer keyboard in the school's computer lab (yesterday), the changing room stool at Banana Republic, most chairs, or this table. zzzzz.

my face: it hurts me more than it's hurting you

I have returned safely from the wilds of South Cakalacky, where many notable presents were exchanged, my favorite being the massage I got from my sis-in-law. Finished the paper on masquerade topoi in romance novels (which I'll send to you if you ask really nicely), met the world's most wonderful dog, and

I am alone, in my apartment with two cats, Indian food, and a sinus infection, writing a paper that was supposed to be due on December 18th. Have a happy effing new year, people.*


*Not that this prevented me from going out to a wine bar last night with former gallery boss and allowing a food stylist to arrange confetti in my hair all night. I live a weird life.

I blame the yellow shoes

Please see this post for an explanation of why.

My gallery went out of business--last night was the closing party--and I got bombed. Very sad, especially considering that it's just about the coolest, most laid-back, down-to-earth gallery on the planet. SO much better to go out with a bang than with a sniffly whimper.

How To Accurately Label Your Pets, PSA

[Posted in tandem with Kittenheads.]

Have you ever been frightened by an animal whose identity is unclear? Confronted by a strange beast in the morning that may or may not be a flesh eating dragon? How do you know? The most effective resolution is to ensure all non-humans are appropriately labeled. These videos were part of the short-lived public service program "How To Accurately Label Your Pets." For example, as you can see from the label, the animal in these videos is a cat. What a relief!

Step 1: Create a label. It is especially helpful if the label has some sort of directional indication system (e.g., an arrow) so as to avoid confusion.
Step 2: Afix the label to the correct animal (please refer to chapter 4.37 of the Label Guidebook regarding matching animals with names). Note that this may be harder than you anticipate, especially if said animal has experienced many previous labelings.
Step 3: Voila! You now have an accurately labeled pet. Watch carefully for any hints of shapeshifting (see Example II, below).
(Step 4: Re-afix label to animal.)

Example I:



Example II:



Easy as pie.

off the record

Yeah, so I'm busy. I work all the time, have too many papers to write, etc etc. Blah blah blah.

It's too bad, really, since there is SO MUCH that I want to post on the blog but that the never-entirely-anonymous nature of blogging is preventing me from writing. Shame. Because otherwise I would tell you that, last Monday, I very stupidly decided to go to class on migraine meds. Not only did I almost pass out on the walk there, but I arrived late, which ensured that the ENTIRE CLASS witnessed me walk into a closet door--thus creating an enormous lump in the middle of my forehead (which blossomed into a bruise later in the week). Not my finest hour.

I would also tell you that on Friday there happened to be yet another encounter with the elusive Rebound from last year, in which the following conversation took place at approximately midnight:
Me: "Are you seeing anyone?"
Him: "Uh, no."
Me: "Well. Do you want to see me?"
Him: "Ok."*
[There may have been partial nudity involved. Maybe.] I would confide in you that the migraine that seemed to have gone away on Tuesday returned so forcefully Saturday morning that I had to go beg at the health center for a shot of medication I hadn't had to resort to since 2003, after which I went home, split a bottle of Lindeman's Framboise with my fabulous roommate who made me pigs in blankets, and slept until about 5 minutes before going to work on Sunday. I would also tell you that, on Sunday morning, the heat and hot water were out, which meant that I hadn't showered for about three days** when, Sunday night at the gallery--less than 48 hours after seeing the Rebound and approximately 56 hours since my last shower--I got asked out on a date by an attractive man.

...IF I were to post about all this on my blog--and this is NOT EVEN COUNTING the making out with fellow students, the debilitating inability to get to bed before 2am which is seriously f*cking up my life, the very ambiguous email flirting with professors (which may just be in my own mind), the not-so-ambiguous flirting with artists, the annoying cigarette habit I seem to have developed over the summer which has proved obnoxiously hard to quit, the encounters with ex-boyfriends, etc.--alls I would be saying (if I were to be saying this, you understand) is that these must be some DAMN strong pheromones I'm pumping out. And also, that the dude I'm meeting up with on Wednesday is clearly blind. But I'm cool with that.


* I am not known for my subtlety.
** Okay, seriously, if you don't sweat all that much and the hair isn't too greasy, then it's not that big a deal. ...Unfortunately, I sweat a lot and my hair gets gross after about 36 hours. So, clearly: dude is blind.

And we now return to our regularly scheduled hibernation.
See you in January!

purple-headed womb ferret?

I am too busy to write down all the crap I have to do these days, but I have to bring myself out of semi-hiatus to post the following video of Kate Winslet on the English TV show Extras:

Some of the best euphemisms I've ever heard (and that's saying a lot considering my most recent paper) delivered by Kate Winslet wearing a nun costume? I almost stopped breathing I was laughing so hard. The lines after the jump:

"Why don't you just start off with something light, you know. Like, um, 'I'd love it if you stuck your Willy Wonka between my Oompa Loompas,'--you know, something a bit fun, a bit jokey. And then you can get more hard-core, rattle off the old classics, like, 'I'm playing with my dirty pillows. I'm aching for your big purple-headed womb ferret.' And then go straight in hard, like: 'Get 'round here 'cause I'm fudding myself stupid and I'm bloody loving it.' Alright?"

jumping for joy; or, [almost] all my research dreams have come true

Oh my god. After I emailed the professor [of my class on African masquerade (subtitled: "Rhetoric, Theory, Practice")] a few sections from books I'd read recently, she suggested and approved a research topic on the trope of masks/ masquerade/ masking in contemporary romance fiction. She thinks it might be publishable. You know what this means, right? I’m going to read romance novels FOR A RESEARCH PAPER. OH MY GOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD. I almost just jumped around the campus screaming with glee. Seriously.

Philippe Halsman, Dalì Atomicus, (1948)
I connect more with Dalì in this photo than with the cats.

Yes, I'm an art historian. No, as yet there's not a whole lot of any art involved in the paper. No, I haven't really studied literature since my Shakespeare class eight years ago. So, you know ...if any of you actual literature scholars have any thoughts or suggestions on the topic--i.e., masks as a theme, pulp fiction as a research topic--I would be forever grateful. Rex, I'm looking at you, sir.

Woohoo!

The paper proposal itself--along with more happy jumping--after the break...


PROPOSAL:
For a genre as widely popular as mass-market paperback romance novels, there is much that lies unexplored and, therefore, unproblematized in scholarly discourse.[1] I propose to write about the role of masks/masking (and potentially masquerade) in [primarily] 20th and 21st century romance novels. Has masking as theme and plot device remained stable within the literature? How has it changed? Who is masked and why? What do they mask? What are the gender politics involved? How are masks and the act of masking structured in these writings? I anticipate that the story of Cinderella as an archetype will be a pivotal part of my inquiry; I may briefly explore masks and masking in fairy tales. The Regency era, being frequently depicted in such literature, will likely provide the bulk of primary source reading material.

For example, Julia Quinn’s novel, Romancing Mister Bridgerton, with its heroine who feels more "herself" at a masquerade—and who secretly writes a society column under a pen name—uses masks, masking, and masquerade as both explicit and implicit themes. Another example is that of Gaelen Foley’s Lord of Fire, in which a grotesque, carnivalesque masquerade is a scene of revulsion, arousal, and revelation; that this event occurs in the house of a spy, whose profession he conceals from everyone (except, in the end, his beloved), is only fitting. Eloisa James’s Duchess at Nightwill serve as [this proposal's] final example: the heroine spends a large portion of the book in drag as a male. Using these and other examples, I plan to explore different uses of and reactions to masks both literal and metaphorical, masking as an act of concealment, disguise, or liberation, and masquerade as setpiece and long-standing leitmotif.

The proliferation of masking themes extends beyond the sphere of plot and even beyond that of the book itself. The covers of mass market paperbacks often consist of a titillating scene of seduction, peril, or high drama concealed behind the title on the cover. The act of purchasing and reading these books is often fodder for derision on the part of serious-minded folk—with concomitant shame on the part of the reader. In response, many readers of such works of fiction hide or deny reading them—indeed, they are often said to mask their enjoyment. A corollary is the double life that an author of such books sometimes chooses to lead: a high-profile example is that of Mary Bly, a Fordham professor who pens novels under the name Eloisa James.

I am also trying to feel out what sort of links there may be with Bakhtin's conception of carnival (if any)—both are escapist forms of popular entertainment underpinned and dependent upon levels of fantasy and inversion of "everyday life" (where the heroine always gets her hero, and the hero is always worth getting). (There are significant and enormous differences, of course; I am not going to claim that they are the same thing. ...On the other hand, carnival is only one type of expression of utopian fantasy—perhaps, as Nancy Scheper-Hughes suggests, a particularly male one[2]—while a more introverted activity (like reading) functions as both ideal for and idealized by a still-disenfranchised and often sexually exploited population.)

[1]They are read by millions—a glance at the New York Times bestseller list almost invariably shows a romance novel among the other escapist fare listed. Indeed, the Romance Writers of America data show that in the past five years the percentage of male readers of romances has shot up to 22 percent, "a shift that surely warrants someone's critical attention." Selinger, Eric Murphy. "Rereading the Romance," Contemporary Literature XLVIII, 2 (2007), p. 320.
[2] In Nancy Scheper-Hughes, "Carnaval," Death Without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 480-504, 555.

And now, because I've just got to put this photo in, variants of Dalì Atomicus:
According to Wikipedia, repository of all known knowledge and supposition, it took 28 attempts before both Dali and Halsman were satisfied with the result.

Halloween is my favorite holiday

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah! Spooky scary...

word of the day: palimpsest

palimpsest |pælm(p)sst|
noun
A parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been effaced or partially erased, and then overwritten by another; a manuscript in which later writing has been superimposed on earlier (effaced) writing.
· In extended use: a thing likened to such a writing surface, esp. in having been reused or altered while still retaining traces of its earlier form; a multilayered record: [Cy Twombly's art] is a perverse sort of palimpsest.*

Cy Twombly (American, 1928-), The Italians, 1961, oil, pencil, and crayon on canvas, 6 feet 6 5/8 inches x 8 feet 6 1/4 inches (199.5 x 259.6 cm), Museum of Modern Art, NY.

*Roland Barthes, "Non Multa Sed Multum," (1976) in Nicola del Roscio ed., Writings on Twombly (Schmirmer/Mosel 2002), p. 94.

I am obsessed

I know I'm supposed to be writing about art and whatnot, but I cannot stop fixating on the economy. I mean, I know only the bare bones about what's going on, but it all makes me anxious. There's not even much reason for me to BE anxious; even if the gallery I work at were to go under, I still have my meager little stipend (for the next year, at least). But anxious I am. I see pictures of the Great Depression (come on, you were thinking it, too) and wonder how people lived through it. Am I going to have to put on a coat and hat and wait in a huge line for a handful of soup? Am I going to have to go to California and pick peas with my seven children (2 cats, 5 pairs of shoes)? WILL I HAVE TO SELL MY BOOKS?! Ahhh.