Monthly Archive for June, 2005

open letter to my former desk

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on June 27, 2005
in Academia, Books and Correspondence
. 3 Comments

Dear Illogically Heavy Pile of Lumber,

We’ve been through a lot together.  I remember when I first brought you home from Target to the White Apartment in South Carolina.  I assembled your heavy ass in four separate chunks, carried them up the stairs, and cobbled them together in my room.  I wrote my B.A. thesis on you (remember Ana?s Nin and Marcel Duchamp?  Those were the days, Old Buddy!). 

When the time came to move you to Zembla, though, that’s when the trouble began.  You are a bitch to move!  My dad, my brother, my old roommate, and at least two ex-boyfriends can attest to this.  Anyone recruited to help move you has wound up cursing my name and begging, please could they maybe just buy me a new desk?  Please?  But no.  I was staunch in your defense.  I’d built you myself, written hundreds of pages on your laminate particle board top.  I wasn’t going to give you up. 

Over the years, though, you’ve become wobbly and unreliable.  You barely have room for my favorite old blue Underwood manual.  You shuddered as I wrote my doctoral exam papers on you (72 furious caffeinated hours, 71 pages of utter pap, remember that?  Thomas Mann and Aim? C?saire and John Dos Passos and Andr? Gide and James Joyce? Huh?  Yeah I don’t really remember that either).    I knew you wouldn’t be making another move with me. 

But how to dispose of you?  I had often considered dragging you out into the alleyway with a can of lighter fluid and a match, but in these parts, such activity would be viewed by the police as attempting to start a riot.  A more recent plan involved heading back over to the old apartment with nothing but a pair of work gloves, safety goggles, a bottle of Jameson’s, a Tool CD, and a sledgehammer.  What fun that would’ve been–our last hurrah, just you, me, Jameson, and the sweet sweet strains of "Eulogy." 

As it happened, though, all I needed was a Phillips-head screwdriver and an Allen wrench.  As I carted all your dusty bits out back, I happily imagined some neighborhood hobo finding you and using your parts to build himself a house.  Or something cool like a time machine.  Great circle of life, you know. 

Picking out splinters,

Vague

this must be a delayed reaction from watching arachnophobia on cable last night

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on June 27, 2005
in Vintage Imports
. 0 Comments

It is three in the morning.  I think I just opened my eyes in bed and saw a giant tarantula hovering above my face, hanging from my canopy.  Can’t be certain, though.  Do tarantulas even live in Zembla?  Before I could get a good look, I’d already leapt out of bed faster than you can say “GAAAAAHHHH!”, thrown off the duvet, which landed on the other side of the room, and flipped on the light, which is brighter than a thousand suns.  I was already blind by virtue of not having my glasses on, now I am blind from the light, and I CAN STILL FEEL ITS HAIRY LEGS CRAWLING ALL OVER ME.

Common sense tells me I must be imagining  the scuttle-scuttle of its feet against my calf, though.  Surely it is more likely hiding in the folds of the duvet.

brought to you by heat, humidity, and summer reruns

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on June 27, 2005
in Television and Vintage Imports
. 0 Comments

Come Summer, I am horribly, horribly deprived of new episodes of Alias.  In their absence, I have been trying out new shows.  Wonder Showzen, a bizarre faux-children’s show, has provided some recent amusement.  A kid’s voice-over of a trip to a hot dog factory, for example:

You disgust me.  I am going to be sick.  Hold out your hands…so I can vomit…into your lower-class hands!

Like Sesame Street, it’s often “brought to you by the letters X and Y…,” or, occasionally, “brought to you by White People.” Please note, however: intoxication of some kind is definitely a must.  Don’t watch this show sober.  I am not joking.

Tallying up the literary and pop-cultural allusions on Gilmore Girls has been an ongoing project as well.  While it’s my own personal version of The Donna Reed Show (pretty, idyllic setting; all conflicts resolved in 42 minutes a week), it manages to be at least a bit complex with witty,  lightning-speed dialogue dropping references to everything from Tom Waits, Belle & Sebastian, and Leo Tolstoy to Donna Reed herself.   Sadly, like Wonder Showzen, it’s resigned to be a guilty pleasure, as whenever I mention it, I get those “sigh…she’s such a girl” looks.

I suppose I should also admit that Zerlesen has got me hooked on Deadwood as well, though we’ve exhausted season one and must wait for season two to be released on DVD (no HBO; I am poor, people).  It’s tempting to emulate Al Swearengen, as (in the old apartment) I often had the urge to stand on the balcony scowling down at the street below and calling everyone “cocksuckers,” then follow it up with an inevitable shot of whiskey.  E.B. Farnum, however, with his hilarious Shakespearean soliloquies and Tennessee accent is my favorite scene-stealer.  Just listen to the way he says a “wh-” word as if is begins with a very audible “h” :

Hhhwy should I reward E.B. with some small, fractional participation in the claim?  Or let him even lay by a little security and source of continuing income for his declining years?  Hhhwat’s he ever done for me?  Except let me terrify him every goddamned day of his life ‘til the idea of bowel regularity is a full on fuckin’ hope.

case of the rock-star boyfriends’ bad hair

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on June 24, 2005
in Gumshoe, Music and Vintage Imports
. 0 Comments

When I recently watched Dinosaur jr. play on Craig Ferguson’s late-night show, I was baffled by yet another mystery.  J Mascis, the man after whom I pined during my entire high school career, had apparently dyed his usually-dark-brown locks a frightening platinum blonde.  This was the man whose lyrics I had painstakingly copied in my best calligraphy pen and hung on the wall of my bedroom;  the man whose carelessly disheveled hair and nimble guitar fingers were the stuff of adolescent fantasy–and he looked like some kind of circus freak.  My assistant Jameson was present on the scene, but (once again) he seemed to have nothing helpful to add.

I considered launching another investigation, but had to temporarily shelve the idea until I would be on the East Coast for a show–prime territory for close observation, I thought.  I put the problem out of my mind, waiting for the summer concert season to make my move.  But, then tonight.  Tonight.

A loyal friend sent me the following email:

Your boyfriend, Ben Folds, is playing on David Letterman tonight.

And indeed he was. Ben Folds, jumpy, preppy pianist of the witty lyrics and the cute Carolina accent.  “What a thrill!” I thought to myself.  But when the camera panned over to dear Ben, he was wearing an out-of season velvet blazer and contrasting pants, and a greasy, combed forward ‘do typically found on the heads of nerds in 1960s sitcoms. “Ben, Ben!  Did your wife [sob!] let you leave the house like that?”

This set my plan.  While on the East Coast, I and Jameson (and my sharp, clever friend/informant who tipped me off to tonight’s show) will begin our official investigation of the bad, bad, REALLY BAD coiffures currently maiming the heads of my rock and roll boyfriends.  Anyone having any information on the subject, or a bottle of shampoo to spare, please contact this detective at your convenience.

Case Status: Pending

further onanistic diarism

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on June 24, 2005
in Academia and Books
. 11 Comments

NEWS FLASH: I AM A COMPLETE DORK. I have been waiting for the perfect night to organize my books in my new study/office, and tonight was the night. It’s quite pleasant to have to go though all of your books and decide where to put them; how they relate to each other. Does Zora Neale Hurston go beside Richard Wright or Djuna Barnes? Or beside Kate Chopin, maybe? Where the hell do I shelve that wretched book by Richard Brautigan that made me want to stab myself in the neck with a spoon if only it would put a stop to the self-congratulatory weirdness? I could have sold it back to any of our many local independent book shops, but I never get rid of my books. It’s a rule, I just can’t.

There is one glittering exception to this, though: John Steinbeck, the depressing dullard. I would find it hard to feign any outrage or sadness if his entire oeuvre were burned on the streets. In fact, I would raise a glorious cheer and run for a gas can. I haaaaate him. The Fucking Pearl, my ass.

So I wound up taking an inventory of the books I have, but have not yet read–The Alexandria Quartet is one example, but give me a goddamned break. Did anyone actually read it? Then there are those other books widely recommended by friends, critics, and the entire effing canon, but which I have not yet read. I consistently feel like a fraud–after all I am a card-carrying member of the Future Literary Critics of Zembla.

Here’s the rub: I don’t think it’s really all that tragic not to have read certain things. One of my best friends (also in a literature doctoral program) has never read Catcher in the Rye. But why bother now? Catcher in the Rye will never be as good to the reader in her mid-to-late twenties as it is to the reader in her mid-to-late teens, am I right? The same can be said for anything by Jack Kerouac or Jean-Paul Sartre. The worst thing you can do with their books? Re-read them.

Having said all that, I now offer the top five books I haven’t read but should (in no particular order):

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (just bought and may actually read)
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

And five you might not have read, but should (again in no particular order):

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight - Vladimir Nabokov
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
History of Danish Dreams - Peter H?eg
The Spider’s House - Paul Bowles
Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera