Monthly Archive for December, 2005

i am serving some really stank cheese at this wine-wasting

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 14 December 2005
in Cheese Sandwich, Food and Drink and Vintage Imports
. Closed

Normally I like nothing better in the evening than to lounge around and chat with people and watch terrible television and slurp away at a couple a few several glasses of wine.  Lately, however, I am having some serious motivational problems. Glass one  is wonderful! Glass two, however, gets poured down the sink, signifying the end of the evening.  It’s so sad to see it swirling down the drain, but  I can not drink glass two. I always pour glass two, but I never drink it.  I am a wine waster!

Of course, this does not apply to restaurant dining, where I happily order and drink glass two, loudly proclaiming “I am in love with this wine!” for all to hear.  Then I get giggly and start talking to my plate.

At home, though, I have become the lightest of lightweights.  I don’t even smoke at home anymore.  What is up with that, people? It is not as if I am suddenly making an attempt at healthy living in my old age–au contraire!–drinking and smoking are two of my favorite leisure activities.  Unfortunately, though, I have become such a wimp that on those rare nights of indulgence (which, contrary to what I might lead you to believe, do not occur all that often) I feel the pain.  I have a sore throat from smoking the other night.  Yuck!  Lung cancer, you are so not invited to my cigarette party!

tyra banks: so skinny, and so poopy

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 11 December 2005
in Television and Vintage Imports
. Closed

Just in case y’all were wondering how I felt about Tyra Banks. And I’m sure you were, weren’t you?  That’s what I thought.  So, what is my opinion of the busty entertainment mogul?  Not surprisingly, I can’t stand her.  Her horrible, horrible talk show is apparently aired no fewer than eighty-seven different times a day. She did a show without her make-up, and later, in a still more obnoxious attempt to show how she is like, so totally keeping it real, she had a sonogram on air just to prove that her huge, perky, orbicular milkbags weren’t fake. Yawn.

But then, of course, she had to jump on the latest bandwagon in American journalism.  I use the term journalism loosely, here, people.  Tyra is now the latest in a line of pretty, skinny girls to don a fatsuit in the interest of finding out how it feels to be fat.  Yes, you read that right:  a FATSUIT.  She put on a suit to make herself fat.  That is what she did.  And then, when it turned out that Tyra didn’t like being fat, she cried about it.  She cried, people.  On her show, in front of her two fat guests, whose eyes were shooting out daggers of hate in her general direction as she continued her display of faux empathy.

So, Mel and I were chatting about this today.  Read on if you want to know how a couple of educated adults managed to go from dissing Tyra to use of the word “poopy” in conversation.

Mel:  I mean, everyone knows that fat people get treated like shit, and there’s just something that rubs me the wrong way about skinny reporters, models, or actresses in fatsuits.

Alfina:  It is so, so wrong. But crying about it is maybe worse.

Mel:  Yeah, I think that’s the thing that really gets me, is that they’re so upset afterward.

Alfina:  I want to slap them upside their skinny heads.

Mel:  Like, “I was FAT for TWO WHOLE HOURS and now I’m REALLY SAD.”

Alfina:  Gaaaaahhhh I know.

Mel:   ”Nobody looked at me like they always do, and I couldn’t fit on a seat and WAHHHHHH…good thing I’m skinny in real life, and now I’ll stay skinny FOREVER cause I know people are mean to FAT PEOPLE.”

Alfina:  I was going to write a blog post about it, but I didn’t want the internets to start thinking I was fat, or something.

Mel:  Everybody is skinny on the internets.

Alfina:  Thank god, because if people I don’t even know thought I was fat, I would so totally CRY.

Mel:  I would go binge and purge.

Alfina:   I would go on an all-laxative diet.  Sooooo skinny.  So skinny, and so POOPY.

case of the conscientious bandage

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 9 December 2005
in Cheese Sandwich, Gumshoe and Vintage Imports
. 2 Comments

It’s never a good thing to find a mystery injury on your person.  Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that happens to me all the time:  I am awfully clumsy and I am forever doing things like riding my bike in heels and then having elaborate crashes that happen in slow motion, me teetering comically from side to side, and eventually falling right smack on top of the pedals.  Usually I just walk it off and forget about it, only to be utterly flummoxed by the huge bruises and scrapes that surface the next day.  This means, of course, that the wounds, having been largely ignored, are never cleaned or iced or  bandaged–that would require foresight and an instinct for self preservation, two characteristics I exhibit sporadically, at best.

So you can see how finding not only a mystery injury but a bandaged mystery injury would be all the more irregular for me–but that’s what happened when I woke up on the morning after my birthday last year.  You know how you wake up really carefully on the morning after a lot of socializing (if, by “socializing,” I mean “consuming ridiculous and unhealthy amounts of liquor”)?  You have to creep slowly into consciousness, as if moving too quickly might bring on a headache or nausea that could otherwise be avoided–don’t open your eyes right away, but rather stretch out a bit first, turn over, take inventory of your digestive system.  Stomach still there? Intestines?  Check and check.  A little delicate, maybe, but certainly still there.  Liver?  OK, no response from the liver yet.  Will check back later.  You see where I’m going here.

So, by the time I finally got around to opening my eyes on that morning, I was pretty well awake already.  Feeling a little stiff and headachy, but nothing too bad or unexpected–until I saw the huge bandage on my left hand.  Apparently, the night before, I’d wrapped no fewer than three band-aids around the tip of my middle finger.  Why?  At that point, your guess would have been as good as mine.  I cast my memory back over the night, but couldn’t recall hurting myself.

There had been a round of shots called “blow jobs” at one bar (I think they’d been meant to settle a discussion between the gay men and straight men in attendance, but for the life of me I couldn’t even figure out what they were arguing about at the time, and even if I did I wouldn’t say so here.  ANYway…),a couple gin and tonics, and then that which had apparently done me in:  an unknown number of tequila shots at another place.  When we had walked in, there were already two loud patrons at the bar, knocking back shots and shouting “TWELVE TWELVE, BABY, AW YEAH!”

It turned out that these two strangers (to me and to each other) were also celebrating their birthdays.  They quickly recruited me (and I am SO not a joiner, but what can you do?) and the bartender kept giving us free tequila.  Let me tell you people:  free tequila might SOUND like a good idea, but I have yet to see proof of it ever BEING a good idea. At one point, one of my concelebrants wound up dancing on the bar and mooning everyone.  I’m sure this guy would support me in saying that the free tequila?  Not a great plan.  I’m saying.

So, anyway, that is all fine and good, but it still didn’t explain to me how I had hurt my hand.  When I finally got brave enough to take the band-aids off, I found a long, clean gash right down the middle of my fingertip.  Looking at it, the memory instantly became clear.  A little background (and yet another of my neuroses):  I have a habit of plucking leaves off plants and shredding them.  Pretty much any time I am in arms’ reach of a plant, I will start to stealthily destroy it.  It is not good for me to have idle hands.  So, anyway, on the way home, one of my friends stopped in at the Circle K to buy cigarettes.  Waiting outside, I had been standing near a holly bush.  You can guess the rest:  I tipsily grabbed at a leaf and the plant bit back.  Damn holly bush!

I suppose the point(s) of the story is(are) this(these):

1. Free tequila–don’t do it.
2. While normally very cavalier about the injuries that result from my usual gracelessness, on this one ridiculously intoxicated occasion, I managed to bandage myself.  Does this mean that I should drink more?  For my SAFETY? I think so.
3. Also, don’t bike in heels. That was sort of a sub-point, but I thought it was worth repeating.

Case Status: Closed

this is a lot of commas!

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 6 December 2005
in Paedagogy
. 17 Comments

There’s this one kid.  There’s always one kid, in every class, who just drives you absolutely batshit crazy. 

In this case, the kid started off on the wrong foot by asking me whether Faulkner repeated certain words "because he has a small vocabulary,"  to which I responded with a ninety-percent involuntary guffaw and a "No, no, I don’t think that’s it." He continued his streak of annoying me throughout the following months with unapologetically late arrivals, early departures, loud, slack-jawed sighs, and a tangible sense of his own superiority.

All in all, though, I don’t really care.  Essentially, this one is a harmless kid, who is not unintelligent and who will wind up with a fairly decent grade.  He’s not a plagiarist; he completed all of his assignments on time; he’s just something of a jerkwad.  So I don’t care.  I don’t have to anymore.  I have spoken to him for probably the last time, at this point.  Momentarily, I am going to head home to the apartment, which, as of yesterday, is sparklingly clean and outfitted with wine, cookies, Veronica Mars DVDs, and wonderful flannel sheets.  The sheets are green and emblazoned with moose and fir trees and snowflakes, and were a birthday present years ago. 

Which reminds me…Monday is my birthday! Yay!  Or not, so much.  Anyway, sometime between now and then, I will tell you all the story of my last birthday, which last year I was too hungover and bleedy to bother writing about.  Stay tuned, chochachos.

calling all monkey butlers!

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 5 December 2005
in Food and Drink and Vintage Imports
. Closed

“Bring me your fanciest cocktail!  Something encrusted with chocolate and brimming over with top-shelf vodka!  None of that vodka on a shelf low enough that the bartender can actually reach it, oh no!  I want vodka from the ROOF!” I command, and moments later the cocktail arrives.  It is, indeed, encrusted with a chocolate powder so rich and sticky that it almost prevents the non-food-touching part of me from putting my lips to the glass.  Eventually, the chocolate- and booze-loving parts of me win, of course.

This is why I love going to nice restaurants, which, being poor-ish, I seldom do.  I kick back in the chair, choose something I would never, ever make for myself–”Risotto Balls,” anyone?  Yes, risotto balls.  Needless to say I couldn’t resist a series of crude jokes at their expense.  (If you’re looking for risotto humor, though, you should check here and here, and all of the following entries.  This will be on the final.)

My ordering behavior verges on the obnoxious: “We will live like kings!” I proclaim.  “Damn-Hell-Ass Kings!”  I order exotic mushrooms and foods stuffed with other foods and make the waiter bring me samples of wines I have never heard of.   I use eighty-seven different forks (bliss!) and sit back amidst twinkly lights, digesting, and composing songs à la Will Smith about my ravioli:  “Welcome to my-yammy!”

This is why I should probably not leave the house, much.