a cluster of over-generalizations

man, it is really easy to hate people in classes. usually i enjoy a good Pretentious English Major Thought-Joust, but today was nearly unbearable. (tangent: the woman with whom i take issue, to begin with, wears frosted pink lip gloss, every class, at 9:30am. FROSTED. if it were 1999 and she had a lisa frank trapper keeper, i would be absolutely burning in envy, but in 2011, it's sort of sad and misplaced. like girls who regularly wear white eyeliner, or use under-eye concealer that is about eight shades too light for their skin tone.) to promote anonymity, i wont say what class it is exactly but suffice it to say it is a medieval literature class. we'll call this woman "Sasha", because i imagine her mother must have been one of those women who wanted her daughter to be as annoyingly feminine as possible, from the get-go. Sasha is sort of sweet in that she tries hard, but is inarticulate and sort of stupid. i'm an asshole, whatever.

usually only her visage (and infuriatingly high baby-voice that seriously HAS to be a conscious decision, enacted to seem more feminine, even though she just sounds creepily infantilized) bothers me, but today she offended the entire pantheon of English Gods. I already knew I hated whatever she was about to say because she started with "i mean, so like kind of going off that...". that sentence is a precursor to vague, redundant comments, and nothing else. usually sentences beginning with that go a bit like this:

"so like, kind of going off that, i almost feel like Shakespeare like wanted to like make people think about like, maybe Gertrude knew that Claudius killed King Hamlet!"

...

Check out that criticism. You've done it again, Oscar Wilde.

Anyway, that's not what Sasha said today, but something far worse. Basically, she suggested that medieval/early modern literature is sub-par compared to more modern and "relatable" works of literature. I'm paraphrasing here... "like, i just feel like modern literature is just so much more meaningful". Of course you do, Sasha, because you were born in the late 20th century and you are a product of your culture and era, which invariably favors literature it has produced, especially versus literature from other time periods which we perceive as outdated and inaccessible.

After a tangible silent groan, one classmate responded, asking for a specific example of "modern literature" of which she spoke. i was really hoping she'd say something truly horrible, like Stephenie Meyer, but she said something that somehow pissed me off more. She said "Like, Jonathon Safran Foer or something".

It was obvious that Sasha thought she had shut everyone up by citing an author she perceives as the apex of original, modern literature. She preened in a self-satisfied way, proud of herself for sticking it to those uppity other English majors who never dreamed she'd be so intimately knowledgeable of this titan of literature. this makes me mad because she thinks, apparently, that Safran Foer is the T.S. Eliot of the 21st century. i also got excited because i think Safran Foer's novels (Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close) are overly sentimental, suffocatingly nostalgic, excessively detached self-indulgent fodder. i shared this with the class. i went on to share how Safran Foer's writing style is exactly why i don't love modern literature as a whole. it should be noted that when i say modern literature, i actually mean what critics call postmodern literature, which is marked by metafiction, intertextuality, irony, paranoia, etc.

i don't want to attack postmodernism because generally it is awesome. however, there is something going on in literature with that, i-feel-so-alone-in-this-crowded-room, at-least-one-of-my-parents-is-heartless-and-now-i-can't-love, i-can't-reconcile-the-drudgery-of-menial-daily-tasks-with-my-inner-pain, brand of self-indulgence and i think it's boring.

it can be done well, i think (see: American Beauty). but it can also go horribly awry while getting by because it sounds good. and yes, Safran Foer is a good writer; he can turn a phrase and his sentences are beautifully written. i just think the content and latent stylistic narrative is tired.

to exemplify what exactly i hate about this style, i've included a passage of Safran Foer's.

“Her life was a slow realization that the world was not for her and that for whatever reason she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table ivory elephant charm rainbow onion hairdo violence melodrama honey…None of it moved her. She addressed the world honestly searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her but to each she would have to say, I don’t love you.” –Jonathon Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated.

i mean, yeah, it sounds good. and it makes you go all, omg me too! It's simultaneously understated and overly dramatic. if that makes sense. look, i can do it too!

His lover had only ever known his lie-and when he found himself letting the truth slip through his teeth, he knew she would only hear the music from the parlor. she held onto her naivete as steadfastly as she could, committed to her own airy understandings in life- the understanding that the tea would always be sweeter than she would prefer to take it.

okay, that's horrifying and shitty, but am i even remotely making a point? shakespeare is a bad ass because he literally changes the way your brain works.

Safran Foer, in this instance, is a reflection of the most annoying type of literature (for me at least). literature didn't use to be so annoyingly self-indulgent. i mean, obviously definitions of "self-indulgent" vary. and yeah, my argument is pretty flawed. but really, pink frosted lip gloss?

a poem.

Account

Czeslaw Milosz

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own—but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.

Obscure Thought of the Day

Does anyone else think that the relationships in SpongeBob SquarePants are a sort of profound (if latent) argument for the social acceptance of homosexuality, and by proxy, legitimacy of gay marriage?

File Under "Yikes"

1. The LOST series.

before you start chanting that series of truly random numbers that really only arbitrarily pervade the LOST series at me, i would like to let everyone know that I have, in fact, watched the entire series, and seen every episode, some of them twice. there are two things i liked about the show: the beautiful landscape, and how hot some of the actors were. so basically the scenery and the scenery. for me, LOST was a labyrinthine collection of "tortured", moronic characters with amazingly arbitrary and entirely unexplained allusions that quickly became (however abstrusely) redundant and self-indulgent and ultimately offered no actual satisfaction.

2. Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair bill".

i don't want to get too much into this because it's already everywhere but it is truly beyond me that many people don't see what's actually going on. there's a reason most academics are liberal: it's because they are smarter than you. this whole attack on unions is only thinly veiled as "budget repair", and people who don't see through that are stupid. nothing in politics is new, it's the same shit. Walker is masquerading as a civil servant while cashing in from the GOP which has successfully convinced a portion of the middle class that letting the wealthiest 1% of our country do whatever the fuck they want is good for the economy.

3. conservative legislature against Planned Parenthood, abortion, and stem cell research.

all three of these conservative obsessions are the pathetic, modern manifestations of Christianity's rich history of sex-shaming. i know america is all politically correct and God is a beautiful benevolent being and jesus is your savior or whatever, but religion has been systematically ruining everything for just about 3000 years. doesn't our legislative body have anything better to do than worry about women's decisions about whether or not to have a baby? is that seriously priority one? and where in the world do conservatives get off on this ridiculous hatred of stem cell research? stem cells are MICROSCOPIC PLASMA. i don't care what the bible says (almost ever); that is not a baby. maybe if you let the actually intelligent people do the research all these presumptuous american citizens could stop bitching about not having healthcare, or whatever.

4. actors/actresses saying that they are "blessed".

how pretentious is that? just say it, you are SOME combination of talented and lucky. the exact ratio varies.

5. katy perry and rihanna.

these two are fiery, SEXY entertainers (omg!!!!!), but they can't sing their own songs without the help of a recording studio. if you can't hit the notes in a song every time, that means you can't sing that song. Re: "Firework" and "Love the Way You Lie". (subtext: gaga wins*.)

6. Justin Bieber's opinion on Gaga's fashion/aesthetic sensibilities.

as quoted from his appearance on Chelsea Lately, in response to Gaga's entrance to the Grammys, Bieber astutely noted: "People say it's artistic and stuff. I'm just like, 'you're an egg.'"

...

thank god america (& canada?) has minds like Bieber's to sedulously dissect the nuances of modern art.

*for future reference, dear readers, "gaga wins" is always the subtext of my work.

a massive, circuitous shitstorm of misogyny

if you haven't heard, the GOP and Speaker of the House John Boehner are pushing a bill that would only allow federal funding for abortions if they are a product of what they are so eloquently coining as "forcible rape", a term which is an absolute clusterfuck of sexist redundancy.

the GOP & John Boehner want to fix the economy, but first, let's take away some womens rights! before i rock your world with how right i am about how fucking immoral and inherently misogynistic this bill is, it's important to note that i will be NOT be discussing the fiscal ramifications of this bill, but its effect on american's perception of what constitutes "rape", and more importantly, how it takes power away from women who've struggled on a daily basis to feel like they have any power at all.

one would hope that the concept of "rape" is resoundingly clear. in the modern american vernacular, it denotes a sexual act without consent of one of the parties. before our legal understanding of "rape", it entailed, as taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, "The act of taking something by force; esp. the seizure of property by violent means; robbery, plundering".

so obviously robbery doesn't equate "property rape" in our american legal understanding, but the point i'm trying to make is that rape is predicated on force. whether it be violent or emotionally abusive, it semantically HAS to entail an element of force. i know i use a lot of words, so here's something for you math-y science-y people:

sexual act + force (including force of influence, which is at play in statutory rape) = rape. once again for clarification,

sexual act + force = rape

.

mathematically, if you remove "force" from the above equation, rape does not exist. i'm going to argue that the same is true in real life; legislatively, and in respect to the american people's collective and individual conceptions of "rape". if our government continues to qualify the legal definition of "rape" with implicative and arbitrary adjectives like "forcible", our collective public opinion will warp some kinds of rape into lukewarm rapes, or "minor rapes", thereby lessening the severity of "rape".

the relationship between word or term and the semantic concept is incredibly complex; some more than others. if important people in our country continue to qualify "rape", and repackage the term on a continuum of severity, rape will cease to connote the intense, horrible act that it always, always is, whether John Boehner thinks its "forcible" or not. if we allow this bill to pass, we risk diluting and weakening the concept of "rape" in america.

congressional republicans, many of whom are anti-abortion, would be doing a couple heinous things with the passage of this bill. namely, they would only offer federal funding for abortions to women who find themselves pregnant as the result of "forcible rape", which doesn't include statutory or "date" rapes. Boehner is explicitly arguing that there are only some rapes worthy of abortions, and implicitly arguing that he (or his political party) gets to decide where exactly to draw the line. conveniently enough, Boehner and the authors of this piece of shit fail to define "forcible rape" in the bill, which is interesting considering that their fiscal plans are singularly contingent on knowing exactly what "forcible rape" is.

this is such a classic example of how our politicians rhetoric warps american's view of the world. by coining "forcible rape", Boehner is basically saying that there is such a thing as "real rape", because "forcible rape" sounds so much more violent and EVEN MORE WRONGER than regular, boring old rape. Jimmy cracked corn! Boehner is just so over boring rape.

strap yourselves in, because this is where the real fun begins. according to congressional republicans, date rape isn't included in "forcible rape". date rape does not qualify under John Boehner's (and the republicans) conception of real rape because, in their fucked up, misogynistic minds, the act of drugging someone so as to make them vulnerable enough to let them have sex with you isn't "forcible". now, ideally, any sane, rational person would agree that drugging someone without their consent is forcible, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THE WORLD "FORCIBLE" FUCKING MEANS.

it's important to identify that date rape doesn't always necessitate GHB. the definition also includes women who were sexually assaulted after losing consciousness/coherence as a result of their own decisions; i.e., they knowingly took a drug/drank a lot, and then were violated. this is an even more fun part, because it's where Boehner implicitly suggests we punish women for passing out at parties.

i am assuming that Boehner wants to separate date rape from "forcible rape" to preclude funded abortions for women became pregnant as a result of a rape that occurred in an instance in which Boehner thinks they should have known better, like a girl who passed out at a party. i mean like, it was like, totally their fault the rape happened because i mean, they are the ones that like chose to drink to begin with, and if a guy happens to walk by a woman's unconscious body, or she is too incoherent to consent, it's like totally her fault if he rapes her because she like knew what she was doing.

this essentially results in women losing government assistance for not anticipating or being able to prevent getting drugged, and for getting too drunk and passing out at parties.

of all the ways to Cut Back Government Spending, honestly. which congressional asshole do you think it was spinning in his big leather chair thinking "you know what is outrageous?? the fact that women can get funding for abortions if they were victims of rape. you only really get to deserve an abortion if it was like, really REALLY brutal."

ALL RAPE IS BRUTAL. the amount of actual physical damage varies. the completely arresting, isolating psychological ramifications are worse than bumps and bruises, and that part doesn't change. the whole point of the legality of abortion is that women have the right to choose, and how dare you dictate that the women who find themselves pregnant under the most despicable condition should be judged within the arena of "rape".

i'm getting too frustrated to articulate my thoughts. this whole situation is fucked.

Linguistic Rebellion & Concepts of "Nothingness" in Shakespeare's King Lear

JUST KIDDING! I won't subject you to that. I still hate Taylor Swift, && 18 days til Gaga's single DROPZ. I just got a twitter and i'm treating it like I treat my college education; I'm not quite sure what to do with it but I know I should have it.

and now, a poem in iambic decapentameter.

I'm going to graduate school and everyone can suck it;

i concede to be in this world but i will not be of it.

also, a fish does not know it is wet until it is forced out of water.

so, this is the new year

i find New Year's Eve/Day to be the mother of all anticlimactic, dull thuds. like the head of a unknown peasant loped off by a guillotine, January 1st falls hard and aimless, rolling about til we've all cried, sighed, and moved on.

most disappointing, the New Year occurs at my region's most depressing time, when all wintry nostalgia has been exhausted with ample family time and exchanging of gifts.

as someone who has been steadily slaloming along on the Sisyphean continuum of naivete and cynicism, "new beginnings" are annoyingly tempting. i, personally, only like to be optimistic when no one is looking.

that said, i feel pretty good about 2011.

a different kind of monster

Hi, I'm Ali, and it's been 3 days since my last fiery pontification on why I hate Taylor Swift.

Screw it; I'm leaving Taylor Swift Hater Rehab. Although that's not really an apt description of this particular hatred of mine. I'm sure Taylor Swift is lovely, doesn't deserve to be degraded, and makes all the little woodland creatures flock to her when she skips through the forest.
What concerns me is that the media/people around me extol a figure who subscribes to and owns such a lurking brand of latent, archaic sexism in her music.

Why aren't people talking about how heinously disenfranchising Swift’s schema of relationships are? Swift, who is now 21, NOT FOURTEEN, is a grown woman, yet the media coddles her like she's the next coming of christ. The media rewards Swift for writing her own music as if she singlehandedly invented the process itself. Swift writes decent and predictable songs, and that's okay. Every song is about the same unrequited love, unmet expectations, and tragic heartbreak.
She's the musical equivalent of the Twilight Series, except that, for whatever reason, no one criticizes Swift fans like they do Twilight fans. As a huge Twilight fan, I accept said criticism and derision, and admit that it is in fact, horrible writing. Which is why it is perfectly fine to like Swift, as long as you don't subscribe to just about anything she says or emulate her in any way.

Is Swift a "good role model"? Absolutely not. If my daughter were ever to submit herself to the sort of helplessness and self-victimization that Swift not only has sustained but basically reinvents with every new song about a boy who broke her heart, I would smack her with a copy of The Feminine Mystique. Every time a young girl puts up a poster of Swift up in her bedroom, Betty Friedan convulses in her grave.

The fact that Swift thinks she is the quiet, comely girl in the corner who the boy never notices in lieu of the shiny, morally bankrupt cheerleader is a complete mockery of girls who were ever ACTUALLY quiet and comely. In Swift's video of You Belong With Me, she purposefully looks dowdy, mussing up her otherwise perfectly curled mane and donning a pair of enormous glasses. Which she has to do to make the point, because she's actually tall, blonde, and gorgeous (despite unbecoming narrow shoulders).

Swift's definition of "outcast" is a carbon copy of the classic archetypes; outcasts are in the band, wear T-shirts versus short skirts, and dance around their bedrooms awkwardly. This is nothing new. As far as I'm concerned, all the "villains" of Swift's teenage dream/nightmare (aka the cheer captain who straightens her hair at 5:15 in the morning every day before school) deserve the guy, because they play dirty and look slutty, which is an awesome combination.
"I'm in my room it's a typical Tuesday night/I'm listening to the kind of music she doesn't like"

...

..

.

Someone enlighten me; what music could Swift's protagonist possibly be listening to that has more street/indie cred than the hotter cheerleader's music? I'll wait.

But honestly, this isn’t about a specific weird and misguided lyric of hers. It’s about the fact that somehow Swift is considered a better role model than Lady Gaga (I know I can hear your groans, this bitch is going on about Gaga again, but let me assure you that everything, absolutely everything, relates to Gaga) or Nicki Minaj. Are they sexually suggestive and explicit? Yes. But they also threaten to poison and kill people, which is awesome. The level of empowerment that prominent female figures such as Minaj and Gaga are promoting and asserting is so much more exciting and creative than the predictable drivel that Swift is pumping out. Also, if you base your outlook on romance/relationships/boys on one of the many misled popular beliefs/coping techniques of Swift, it makes you a stupid person.

BOOM, ROASTED!

Dr. Douchebag & Awesome Sluts Vol. I

[Despite the title this is not about cheesy porn, sorry to disappoint.]

Ali here, blogging from the couch. Scintillating, I know. I'm watching Chelsea Handler and for whatever inane reason, Dr. Drew Pinsky, that Hollywood "rehab" hack, is judging the shit out of Miley Cyrus for the now-notorious video wherein she smokes salvia.

First of all, it's obviously just awesome the Cyrus is tripping with her friends instead of "dating" Taylor Lautner and sleeping with Hollywood's worst playboy and writing mediocre songs about it, all the while clinging desperately to some ridiculous, infantilized, virginal ideal. Anywayz... more on that later.

Cyrus 18. She's clearly been wanting to slut it up since she was 14, when she first realized that she was a pop icon and that she could date hot aussies. I think we should congratulate her for making it to 18 without any DUIs or sex tapes. 18 is the age that you should be smoking weed with your friends which should be considering more scandalous than smoking salvia, seeing as the latter is actually legal, but whatever...

So, why is Dr. Drew suggesting she "get help"? Obviously, Billy Ray will tweet some shit about disappointment, and TMZ and E! will speculate about the public's reaction to it in a shocked and scandalous tone, but honestly, this shit is legal. Thank god Pinsky is on a show as irreverent as Chelsea Lately, because as soon as Pinsky tried to lace his "joking manner" (i use this term loosely. every time Pinsky tries to be funny a D-list celebrity injects meth into their eyeballs) with serious hints that Cyrus should seek help, Chelsea and the other panel guests would shove his bullshit back in his face with comments like "when are you even a doctor", and "why would you want celebrities to get clean, your career is based off the probability they won't".

While salvia isn't exactly my thread count of Egyptian cotton, it's not the predecessor of some sort of Lohanian breakdown of Cyrus' in the future. Might this happen anyway? Possibly. But I'd hazard a guess that Cyrus and her friends were driving back from somewhere and passed the token, weird, goth shop (Madison's is called Amsterdam) and were like oh em gee Miley, it's totes your bee day, and decided to trip. The media is obviously about to try to make this a huge deal, but Pinsky is just vainly trying to assert his legitimacy in the public eye.

I hate "Dr." Drew Pinsky. Why is he awkwardly toned? Go be a real doctor. And I think Miley Cyrus has too many teeth but I so respect her for acting out and wearing slutty clothes and having awkward stripper hair, because at least she isn't pretending, or adhering to absolute caricatures of the least constructive sort of archaic feminine archetypes, ahem, Schmaylor Schwift.

I'm up too late and ranting.

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.

lately, you have not been mommy's favorite child

OOPS! Forgot about this for awhile. My last month in Europe has consisted of a triage of sorts; deciding what I have time, money, and energy for. it turns out the blog has come last, right behind putting on makeup and checking my bank statements. Anyhow, here I am, spending my last couple days at the Villa and dragging my feet on finals.

Since I left you, I went to the Amalfi Coast, which was another kind of Sicily; pure, slightly tropical, relaxing heaven. The weekend after that my parents came to visit which was a very different kind of fun for awhile! I've just wrapped up my last full weekend in the Villa, and am "preparing" for finals. If possible, the completion of homework has fallen even slightly behind updating my blog on my priorities list. Classes are incredibly hard to take seriously since we're abroad. Other abroad programs vaguely claim to have similar standards to their home school, but it is rarely true, except for here. Tons O' Fun!

Today was my last day teaching my little Italian 3rd graders which was incredibly sad because I want to adopt almost all of them. Except Cristoforo, that little rascal! Pictures will be on the ol' facebook any day now.

This Saturday I will be joining my brother Pat and his girlfriend Melissa, and I'm really excited! Barring the possibility of some remote, previously dormant volcano exploding, sending thousands of pounds of blinding ash into the atmosphere, halting all air travel in Europe, causing the most drastic cancellation of flights since 9/11, we'll spend the next week and a half in Venice, Milan, Cinque Terre, Florence, and Rome.

Wait... oops.

chapter 290, "willingness to be a mutant"

this step began with an awkward stretch, an ungainly gallop, and an overconfident gaze. deafness followed.

venezia & verona

Well kids, I've really been jetting around town lately. Our program organized a one night trip to Venice, so early Friday morning all 44 of us hopped aboard a coach bus for a 3 1/2 hour ride to Venice. It turns out that buses really aren't for me. Or anyone who chooses to travel WITH me. But anyway, we arrived in the city around 11am. I always knew Venice had canals instead of streets, but I guess I never fully realized how deconstructed it is compared to other, cohesive cities. Venice is literally hundreds of little islands, sometimes connected by bridges but mostly by little canals. It also has a fascinating history of being a mercantile and subsequent cultural checkpoint of Eurasia in the past thousand years (I don't have any energy to expand on that, although the vagueness of that statement begs more attention. Whatevs, wikipedia it later).

Our first stop was the glass-making island of Murano, where we saw the glass master in one warehouse blow glass into a reared-back horse, which was pretty damn impressive. Our guide was telling us that it takes about 15-20 years to become a master of glass-blowing, which was interesting considering how easy this man made it look. The glass itself was in a glob at the end of a hollow, metal pole and he rolled it around a lot, blew it in a bit, poked at it with some tweezers and BAM! a glass horse, perfectly balanced rearing back on its hind legs. So, yeah, generally unimpressive stuff. We then went upstairs to their official store and saw some of the most ornate and beautiful glass products in the world probably. Everything from stemware and chandeliers to jewelry and animal statues were crazy impressive and delicate and shiny.

Next we went to Piazza San Marco, which was easily the most spatially stunning piazza so far. It's really enormous, lined on three sides with three levels of loggias, and faces toward the truly magnificent, staggering Basilica di San Marco. All in all, it's an impressive space, and its right on the Grand Canal. (Fun fact: Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp are currently filming their new thriller The Tourist in Venice, and we totally saw the light crew setting up shop in front of the Palazzo Ducale adjacent to the Basilica that night. Apparently Jolie is really stuck up and Depp is short but very nice and humble. The name of the movie doesn't really light my fire but the fact that those two are on the screen together should make up for the shitty title. Also, until the end of time I will tell people I was on their set)

Anywho, we tooled around the city for a bit, had a nice relaxing lunch and then went back to the Basilica at 7:30pm for a private evening tour was was amazing. We walked into the church and it was nearly pitch black, except for some satellite lighting the seemed light the space just enough to give us a feeling of how truly grand it is. We sat in the first couple rows of seats and some sort of lackey or priest or what have you began turning on lights. It was actually really dramatic, the first ones that came on were all the way up by the altar, and everyone ooh-ed and ahh-ed when they shed light on the brilliantly golden interior. Once the place was completely lit, we saw it had six domes, making the standard cruciform shape of churches, but every inch was covered it golden mosaic telling stories of Jesus and Saint Mark. Gorgeous.

Another reminder that Venice is basically underwater, while leaving the Basilica we had to jump over a fairly large puddle, which apparently appears every evening as the water in the canals rises. When we saw the Piazza it was similarly puddled, and I heard from some other people that it's usually much worse, almost filling the entire space in a couple inches of water. I'm heading back there in about a month with my brother and Mel, so I should eventually have a follow-up.

Verona was not at all what I expected, in the best way possible. You can tell its a northern city, it's much bigger and there is definitely more money there. It's incredibly clean for one, and also much larger and better preserved than many other historic Italian cities. Pictures should be up on facebook soon, it was all this beautiful white and beige stone mixed with natural oases with robust trees and beautiful, blooming flowers. We rounded out the day by going to the Castle of Verona, and tanning on one of the turrets, such a tourism success!

I'm leaving for the Amalfi Coast on Thursday! More after that. Beaches here I come.

(i couldn't resist)

"Republicans have long seen themselves as synonymous with America, and everyone else as deviant and marginal. This article of faith is impervious to evidence. Surveys show that a majority of Republicans believe that Obama stole the election with Acorn’s help, a conviction that allows them to deny a political reality they find intolerable. More subtly, conservatives have long derided the Democratic Party’s 'dependence' on minority voters, as if these voters are somehow less valid. The GOP’s belief in their right to rule has an unmistakable racial aspect; hence the racial slurs hurled against black congressmen last week, and the right’s repeated comparisons of health-care reform to slavery. This is, in part, white men reacting in furious disbelief that they can no longer rule as a majority, because they aren’t one. Since Nixon, the idea that Republicans constitute a silent majority of decent people—all recoiling from the noisy demands of anti-war protesters, black militants, and radical feminists—has been fundamental to Republican identity. " -Michelle Goldberg, The Daily Beast

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for encapsulating all of my problems with many of those who identify themselves as Republican. The good news is, America is slowly waking up. Good morning, liberty.