Monthly Archive for December, 2004

happy new year, chumps!

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on December 31, 2004
in Cheese Sandwich and Vintage Imports
. 0 Comments

Because I am boring, this is all I thought of to resolve this year:

Watch fewer soap operas.  It doesn’t matter if they figure out whose the baby is or who killed the Puerto Rican mob boss.  My life will never be this interesting, therefore must focus on practical-yet-exciting personal situations rather than situations generated by network daytime TV.

Write more.  In every situation: i.e. not just dissertation but also poems, letters (on paper) to friends,  diary, angry customer letters to businesses, threatening letters to government figures, etc.

Start having more fun-and-amusing pointless crushes rather than depressing pointless crushes.

Play more music: on saxomophone,  in the shower, in the car, in the office, while teaching, etc.  Also eat more beans, as they are “the musical fruit.”

Train cat to use the toilet and to fetch coffee in the mornings.

Train neighbors not to slam the front gate and not to steal my Sunday papers.

And, as every other person in the world: save money, exercise, eat and drink less, read and study more.

Have less boring resolutions for 2006.

open letter to blockbuster video

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on December 31, 2004
in Correspondence and Vintage Imports
. 0 Comments

Hey Asshats!

Thanks for the great customer service.  I especially appreciated the irony of your shirts–you remember, the ones in that acidic, nuclear shade of yellow proclaiming “THE END OF LATE FEES.”  Yeah, those were pretty smoove.  The best part was how you and your unnecessarily surly manager were trying to charge me illegitimate late fees while clad in said shirts.  Nay, even better still was how you both acted so grand when offering to charge me only some of the illegitimate late fees–quelle largesse!

It’s a good thing I am the sort of person who appreciates irony.  Otherwise I might have to set your shabby-ass popsicle stand on fire.  Hopefully, were that the case, you’d be the sort of business who appreciates pop-culture-film references.  Not bloody likely.

Switching to Netflix,
Your Worst Enemy

“I don’t hate it; I don’t hate it!”

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on December 26, 2004
in Cheese Sandwich, Travel and Vintage Imports
. 0 Comments

Some notes about being in the South again:

Coffee here is still served in styrofoam cups.  There might be two reasons for this: No Starbucks here yet (one of the few unsullied spots on the planet); also we don’t care about that hippy environmentalist crap (not to remain unsullied for long then).

No bicyclists to avoid killing with your car; also must drive instead of cycling.

Air very dry in Winter, thus bangs do not do weird pixyish flippy thing off to the left side of one’s head but rather lie flat as intended; also snows sometimes.

Every single car has some combination of “W-04″ /American flag/yellow ribbon stickers on it.  This must be the best way to avoid speeding tickets.  Must drive carefully, as parents’ car does not come so equipped (but also does not have Kerry sticker either–cowards.)

No green at all as all trees seem to be deciduous, except for the skanky long-needled white pine trees.  I prefer to refer to these as “redneck Christmas trees.”

Huge market for canned vegetables.  This freaks me out to no end.  Why should this be?  Shouldn’t everyone prefer fresh? Hurricane season is over, folks.  If anyone has an answer to this, the greatest problem of my evening, please let me know.

Title of post from Absalom, Absalom!

yes, this is the sort of thing i think about

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on December 19, 2004
in Grammar, Lists and Vintage Imports
. 0 Comments

Because it’s on my mind, here is a list of the most irksome words I can think of.  It’s not that I find any of these especially offensive or vulgar; rather they are phonetically ugly or otherwise unpleasant:

lubricate
commode
thumb
crate
tit(ty)
inject
wriggle
regular
finger
escalate
thigh
nug(get)
thespian
jar

But, in the interest of balance, here are some lovely, fun, words with nice sounds and rhythms:

investigate
clever
flugelhorn
abscond
knee
crackle
scintiller (fr)
belletrist
diaphanous
translucent
trickery

Oddly, I only like “scintiller” in French, and am disinterested in “scintillate” in English.  I also wonder why so many of the words on the first list are body parts.  Is this some Freudian sublimation thing? I’m sure my students could sort it out.

Feel free to submit your own lists!

memo from the desk of business-casual-clad condescension

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on December 18, 2004
in Grammar, Life in the Cube and Vintage Imports
. 0 Comments

In addition to my fondness for complaining about teaching, I also take great pleasure in complaining about my second job, the glorious, storied bank.  Loyal readers may recall my series on wacky financial lingo from this summer.  Well, just before I left for my vacation, I had to undergo another training day through the new company that handles our credit insurance.  We were taught how to explain the insurance’s features and benefits by using “bridging statements” like this:  “[Feature], which means/so/therefore [Benefit].”  Here is an example:  “Rates are the same for all age groups, which means everyone pays the same.”  Are you fucking kidding me? It’s bad enough that we should have to make such an explanation in the first place, even if the customer is an utter turnip-brain, as so many of them are.  The worst bit is that they think their employees are so illiterate that we don’t know how to express causality without a special workshop and power-point presentation depicting the subordinating conjunctions marching jauntily across little cartoon bridges.