This just in: The life of a graduate student is pathetic. I am in my office at 12:28 am supposedly writing in preparation for an appointment with my advisor tomorrow. I could have been doing something else tonight, such as a) watching a movie with friends, b)eating dinner with friends, c)going out with friends, or even dare I dream it d)all of the above. But no, instead I am experiencing the mercifully infrequent option e)finally getting my comeuppance for all that procrastination. Luckily, plenty of other people I know are at least equally pathetic. And that, folks, is the beauty of Schadenfreude.
Monthly Archive for September, 2004
Lebowski?sm
n. The practice of inadvertently echoing another person’s speech patterns.
I needed to come up with this word today while reading and commenting in the margins of my Faulkner. The characters in As I Lay Dying sometimes exhibit a behavior I first noticed when watching The Big Lebowski for, oh, about the millionth time. One character will use a strange term or turn of phrase, and the character with whom he is conversing will (even occasionally against his will) later incorporate it into one of his own utterances. For example:
DUDE: …ah, fuck it, just stay away from my fucking lady friend, man.
DA FINO: Hey hey, I’m not messing with your special lady–
DUDE: She’s not my special lady, she’s my fucking lady friend. I’m just helping her conceive, man!
And then moments later:
DUDE:I was just with my special lad—I mean my ladyfriend!
So anyway, that happens a lot in Faulkner, too.
See also the forthcoming entry on the Taxovitch
Yesterday at the bank I had what I quickly (and accurately, albeit uncreatively) dubbed the worst phone call of all time. Don’t try asking someone who barely speaks English what their “gross monthly income” is. Don’t try asking them how much they “earn” or even “get paid” “per month.” Just skip right ahead to “Money? yes, money. Monthly. January, February, March, money, April, May, money money money?” The call, which was to open a new membership and take out a car loan, lasted for over an hour. By the end of it all we were both laughing hysterically. Sometimes I think hysterical laughter is the only appropriate response to a situation like that. It’s also good for the abs, and certainly less bad for the skull than hysterically banging one’s head on one’s desk.
Disgruntled with the email I received notifying me that some library patron had recalled Name of the Rose before I finished reading it, I decided to do my part in the circle of library karma by recalling some books for myself. I am on my way over there right now to relinquish Umberto Eco and pick up Paul de Man’s Aesthetics and Ideology, Critical Writings 1953-1978, and Blindness and Insight; as well as Brian Boyd’s Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Take that, library recallers! Harumph!
freudenschade
n. suffering due to the joys of others. Not to be confused with schadenfreude, of course. Freudenschade, for example, could be used to describe the resentment one feels when one’s friends seem to have more Freude than oneself. This neologism I owe to a friend, and I wish I’d thought of it myself. Which itself is a possible cause for Freudenschade.
See also the forthcoming entry on the frienemy.
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