Things

Exciting Things.

1. Today Beauty & the Beast comes out of the Disney vault, woo!

2. Apparently Chelsea Handler & 50 Cent's camps AREN'T denying reports that they are romantically involved. Best Hollywood couple, ever.

3. Chanel's Spring 2010 RTW line.

Unsurprising Things.

1. Todd Palin does not know the difference between inflectional and possessive apostrophes. http://gawker.com/5656514/leaked-emails-sarah-palin-doesnt-give-out-endorsements-for-nothing. And is also rude and childish.

2. Tea Parties are not libertarians, they are just crazy Christians posing as reasonable people who are upset at the economic climate of our country. http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/05/tea-party-is-much-like-the-religious-right-only-moreso-surve/

arachne's surprise

i will graduate college in less than a year. i have done nothing amazing by normal standards. i have a vague ambition, which is to pursue that feeling i get when i'm silently reveling in something beautiful and nobody knows it because i'm just sitting in some coffee shop, reading some silly words. there's some couple in the corner breaking up and some harried student sitting next to me and neither party is aware that my world just shifted just a bit. i look up, shocked that no one has noticed that there is a crazy girl crying into her book, but i look back at my book and god is still waiting in the margin. if i'm late for something, i shut him away and promise myself later. if i'm not, i order another iced mocha and wedge myself sturdily in those words.

i want to spend my days, 9-5, in barnes and noble. i want to greet the woman who is at the first stand, trying to sell the b&n version of the kindle, like a next door neighbor who's watering her flowers. i'll take a sneak peek of the magazine section while i walk to get a coffee. then i'll begin the day with the heavy stuff, like A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and try to get through everything David Foster Wallace has ever written and take a crack at Anna Karenina one of these days, maybe even Vanity Fair. i'll take a quick glance at Joyce, sigh, and say not today damnit, it's friday. then i'll spend an hour or two on pop culture stuff, maybe work my way through oprah's book club and the bestseller lists and whatever Michiko Kakutani liked most as of late, even though she's a bit harsh for me. (ps, did you know she won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism?? i mean, obviously literary criticism is implied, but damn, i didn't even know they awarded pulitzers for that kind of shit. isn't that the prize for being the biggest bitch of them all?)

with my hectic morning done, i will abscond to the sections with big picture books about Warhol and Escher and the roman emperors and how to draw manga and the books of 1,000+ personality tests and fluffy bits on astrology. back to the coffee section for a quiet lunch paging through a book called Sex with the Popes, shooing crumbs away from the crease. i round out my day in the journal section, smelling the books bound with leather and writing all my thoughts in the oldest looking ones, aka definitely not the Ed Hardy one, which is pretty janky. same goes for the one with audrey hepburn on it, because i'm just kind of over her, and because sequins have no place in books.

by the end of my days i will have woven the most gorgeous tapestry. i will weave, even if the best weaver is an ungainly, unremarkable spider. even if the only one who can appreciate the beauty is the spider herself, because that will be worth enough.

i don't even know what 'baccalaureate' means

so, my friend emily suggested i relate a particular experience of mine, and while i'm loathe to put real life situations involving the embarrassment of others in my blog, in fear that i will be somehow followed and killed, i will take a chance on this one because it's just that good. also, i do not remember his name. (sidenote- the vehemence of my irrational fear of being followed and killed via something i said online can be directly traced through my mother, who, if you know her, is always suspicious that some sort of new adventure will end in death. this is mostly a good thing to remember.)

being the lazy, maternal sort, nannying for a summer job is incredibly appealing, and while i've since accepted a job offer from a normal family now, i had been trolling the uw-madison job center website for about a month. mostly, these listings are penned by women, but every so often a man is the primary contact for nanny jobs. this is rare, and as my mother has pointed out, amazingly dangerous. apparently awhile back a girl answering an ad for a babysitter on craigslist was murdered upon arriving at the house of the man pretending to need a babysitter. it's a very serious concern, and thank god my mom is always cognizant of any chance, remote as it may be, of bodily harm or death.

obviously, craigslist is ridiculously shady, and normal people would always, always use caution if for whatever reason they are driven to this site, which is, in conjunction with porn sites and chat rooms, basically the underworld of the internet (sidenote- if my parents stop reading my blog i'll relate the story of how some of my guy friends at madison ordered strippers off craigslist, but here are the sparknotes: "strippers" on craigslist are actually hookers).

for reasons related to his home life situation and NOT in any way related to a quiet yet yearning romance, i will call this man Mr. Darcy.

i emailed Mr. Darcy responding to his ad for a part time summer nanny, and he promptly returned my email, asking when it was convenient for me to meet for an interview. i immediately phoned my mother, hoping to ameliorate her growing resentment toward me for what some could deem chronic unemployment. upon telling her i was meeting with the father of the children, she kind of flipped and said that was dangerous. as always, more hilarious than my mother's actual fears are the ways she intends to neutralize any threat. her first advice was that i bring my roommate kathleen along, who aside from having an actual job herself that she must get to, ostensibly could find nothing more thrilling that coming to a nanny interview with me as my bodyguard. her next piece of advice went something like this:

"okay, ali, what you have to do is drive by his house tonight WITH kathleen and look for some sort of evidence that he actually has children. you know, toys in the yard or something".

after i rejected the admittedly brilliant idea of a late night drive-by, she arrived at the most logical and non-psychotic way to go about this, meeting at a neutral location in the daylight. i emailed Mr. Darcy and we agreed on a local starbucks. i roll up to the starbucks, kinda nervous, and am greeted right away by a normal looking guy. emphasis on the "looking". we exchanged the customary pleasantries and then, the firecracker that started off this mess of an interview, he goes "so, i've never done this before".

maybe it's just me and my addiction to MSNBC's late night special To Catch A Predator, but that sentence carries a weight that no first time nanny interviewer really wants to wield. feeling more like a predator/escort than is decent at 9am on a wednesday, i laughed nervously (the prototypical reaction to hearing "i've never done this before" ) and was absolutely silent for about 3 minutes as Mr. Darcy told me that he's always been home with his kids, and has thus never required a full time nanny.

the following half a hour was minefield of red-flags: firstly, he mentioned that he works "odd hours", which for me, immediately connotes bouncing at a seedy "burlesque club" named Cruisin' Chubbies, or something. next, he casually mentions that his wife will be home but, and i quote verbatim, "she never really leaves the bedroom, and hasn't been in the kids' lives in a while" (disclaimer: the actual reality of this situation, especially for said children, is incredibly unfortunate and a bit sad. however, for the sake of entertainment, i am portraying it as simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, which it veritably is.)

now, the previous statement begs the question, how can a mother who lives presumably down the hall from her two children be absent in their lives? answer: she is an obvious recluse, mentally insane, or hidden in the attic. with each of these options sounding more appealing than the next, i was getting a bit weary and really weirded out by about 9:15am.

the rest of the interview with Mr. Darcy consisted of him alternating working in some really interesting gems ("how would you work conservation of the environment into my kids' every day lives?") with casually dropping some real bombs ("my son has some serious behavioral issues and my daughter sometimes refuses to eat altogether, how would you deal with that?")

the whole time i was basically feeding Mr. Darcy droid-like answers to his asinine questions while imagining the ways in which Mr. Darcy's troglodyte of a wife would inevitably murder me, were i to accept his employment.

i left the starbucks feeling confused and vaguely dirty, not unlike an escort. foiled again, damn you Mr. Darcy!

in an unrelated, unwarranted, and i'm sure largely unappreciated tangent, i am so over people taking time out of their days to imply how superior they are for NOT reading the twilight books. go do something else so we cave people can wonder about those big bright dots in the night sky while you reconcile the impossibilities of the human condition by NOT reading guilty pleasure books. assholes.

and let me just point out that the 8-16 year old girls who, while admittedly ascribing to the long and unhealthy tradition of those pesky Unrealistic Expectations for future relationships, are learning what words like "irrevocably", "masochistic", "omnipresent", and "disconcerting" mean. that, in this english major's opinion, is worth a little self-indulgence.

excuse me, maitre d? i did not order this.

the one thing too many people take for granted is that sometimes it is necessary to stop the truth from getting in the way of telling other people how you feel. i won't let the truth stop me from telling you how i feel, and i'm committed to that. it used to be an act of protection, and now it's an art.

(ps i'm typing with rubber gloves on)

in a crisis, it is always better to have a cat around. when your live-in leaves you, dogs will always be an inappropriately endearing reminder of the male sex. instead of a dog's optimistic and eager demeanor, a cat will simply brush by you, suggesting that you stop whimpering at once, you silly thing. you are far more fabulous than that, go do something posh and stop moping.

there is no music in a teflon reality

the end is nigh, citizens.

i went to the end of my good friend's college graduation the other day, and as i was walking up to the kohl center, watching all the grads flood out of the doors like little sentinels, i just about vomited and passed out. many college kids will be quick to agree that increasingly, college has become, oops, kindofajoke, and that they don't feel like they did too much to earn a college degree (obviously real people with real majors such as Sciencey Things and Businessy Things are excluded). being an english major, i wholeheartedly agree with this. it's not as though i haven't put my fair share of hard work in these past years. my hours logged at memorial library have served in improving my writing skills and for sure my critical thinking/analysis skills.

so, is it just pre-graduation jitters that make me feel as though life after undergrad is an endless dark abyss filled with looming loan payments and unsatisfying jobs that we call 'temporary' but end up staying in to pay off said loans until we find ourselves 37 and divorced, unable to access even a lingering whiff of our younger days of whimsical naivete and insatiable lust for life?

i wish i lived in a time in which the economical crisis (that seems to NEVER end...) forces baby boomers to keep working, making it harder for postgrads to break into the job market. i also wish i lived in a time where there weren't innumerable editions and editions of The Princeton Review's telling you what the odds are that you'll ever live your dream (they are astronomical, by the way), all the while referring you to some sort of booklet that in 500 multiple choice questions determines what field you should go into (that field is amazingly competitive, by the way). All these sources or references or compilations of bullshit seem to be some sort of bullshitty sentence ending in an ellipsis, suggesting that Clinical Pyschology Is a Highly Rewarding Career, However It Requires At Least 7 More Years In A Graduate School, Is Expensive, And Also Amazingly Competitive...sooooo, you might as well get that marketing degree. Also, There are At Least 250 Asian Immigrants In The Twenty Mile Radius Who Are Willing To Work On A Saturday While You Are Watching A Marathon Of Law & Order: SVU.

but then there are those statistics that make us feel so much better, like that a college degree more than doubles average annual earnings, and that only 28% of the population (as of 2004) hold at least a bachelor's degree.

ah, the sorrows of those raised in an uppermiddle class midwestern suburb, whose parents are paying for his/her higher education and want him/her to go into a field that actually makes him/her happy.

it really doesn't help that i loathe the entire aura and experience of professional interactions and relationships. its so glassy and it tastes like the smell of new car and burnt plastic. also, i make really weird first impressions and have a joke of a resume. maybe we suffer from being easily discouraged. what a horrible, debilitating quality.

italy softened me. it stripped me of my cold calculated view of what would have been my rigidly planned entrance into the real world. before i saw dars reports and professor recommendations, and now i am filled with images of uncomfortably dewy beds of grass and drifting conversations, asking the earth we lie on about the last time it danced.

i wish to read and sing and post sassy blogs and visit cool places and talk with people about what they love most in world. double points if it happens to be "80s power ballads".

the remains of a deity

Ahh, there you are, America! You old cod, right where I left you. It's always in the LAST place you look, isn't it? Damn.

Now that I have returned from my enlightening sabbatical abroad, I find American ohsovery droll. These crazy kids and their wide streets and free water. Damn I'm cultured!

I find it really difficult to answer the ubiquitous query, "How was Italy?", largely because of my well-documented and eternally vexing battle with adjectives, those tricky bitches. My first reaction is, I don't really remember. It's very much like a dream, which is crazy considering that for four months nothing else in the world, or about my old life, seemed real. I think it's because almost everything in your day-to-day is in implicit compromise with the other aspects of your life, whereas study abroad was the sole focus of my attentions last semester, and anything else I experienced fell under that umbrella. It seems as though my Study Abroad Experience is wrapped up in a neat little bubble that is a distant yet pleasant memory, floating further and further away.

I've just started telling people something along the lines of, "Oh, it was amazing. It was by far the coolest thing I've ever done". That seems to suffice. It makes me feel awkwardly over-privileged.

The difficulty is expounded when anyone asks me what my favorite city was or what the best part was, and my first instinct is to say, well to really understand why it was so amazing, you have to know about the doctor and her clavel, as well as Art's female magnetism. And then that means nothing to anyone else. Now I'M okay with that, but I don't know how anyone else reacts to my kind of vacant expression a vague assertion that yes, in fact, I DID love being abroad, despite how dopey I look.

You might be saying, stop indulging yourself, the "how was study abroad" question is obviously obligatory. Praise Blogah for bestowing the ability to wax poetic about the trials and tribulations of returning from a whimsical jaunt in Europe. Ay me!

It's odd to return from my suspension of time & reality.

Unrelated, but I like to think I'm not the weakest liquor in the cabinet, but I'm losing faith; I have recently realized I am not even remotely smart enough to keep up with Lost. I've watched all the seasons previous to the latest, and I've been trying to keep up, but I can barely follow it. I have such a limited understanding of the goings-on and I'm feeling a little left out. Maybe it's because I hate all the characters.