Monthly Archive for October, 2006

damn them for making me write this post about german grammar

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 18 October 2006
in Grammar
. 6 Comments

The day I got cable installed, Bravo was having a Project Runway Marathon (something I would later learn happened nearly every weekend day), and I got hooked pretty much instantly.  It’s only about a million times better than that other fashion show hosted by an ex-Victoria’s Secret "Angel."  You know the one, and you know how I feel about Miss Eighthead, so there’s no need to continue down that particular thread.

Project Runway is pretty damned great.  I love the clothes (I especially love the ones that turn out hideous, like, say, everything Vincent and Angela ever made); I love the bitching; I love Tim Gunn.  Love.

There is, predictably, one thing that I do not love, and that is what I am here to talk about. (I’m cranky, okay?  And this blog was not built for gushing!) It’s a leetle something I noticed when reading some of the TWoP recaps:  the expression "auf’d," which they were using to describe a contestant getting eliminated at the end of the episode (i.e. "I was so thrilled that Vincent finally got auf’d!  What a no-talent freak!"). At first I thought it was one of their cutesy sort of TWoPisms that had been invented by someone who didn’t speak German.  Annoying, for certain, but forgiveable. 

Lo! I was very wrong.  It’s not exclusive to TWoP, as I discovered when I saw the phrase in one of those pop-up graphics Bravo puts at the bottom of the screen during an episode–you know, the little pink box asking "Who will be auf’d next?  Stay tuned!"  Uh-oh. Oh no they didn’t.  Surely not.  But oh, in fact, yes they did.

That was far from the worst of it, however.  I nearly died when I heard Announcer Guy intone the odious expression during a promo once, and he pronounced it "offed."  "Who will be offed next?  Tune in on Wednesday night!"  Oh no.  OOooooh no.  THE HELL YOU SAY. People, this is so, so wrong and for so many reasons. First of all, the word "auf" in German means "on,"  not  "off."  It is, in fact, the very opposite of "off."  On.  Off.  On.  Off.  They do not mean the same thing, do they?  Moreover, the word "auf" is not pronounced like the English word "off;" it is pronounced like "owf." 

To be perfectly clear, for all of you in the cheap seats, the German word "auf" does not mean the same thing as the English word "off," nor is it pronounced like the English word "off."  NOT THE SAME WORD. 

Does Heidi Klum know about this?

oh my good glaven

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 16 October 2006
in Academia and Paedagogy
. 5 Comments

As if I don’t have enough things stressing me out, the pace of school and the list of scholarly duties just keep increasing.  More, more, more!  Faster, sooner, better! Delivered to your door!  Yeesh.  I am too stressed out to even enjoy the blatant sexual dooble entendre that I just made. 

Teaching continues apace, with only one or two slackers still affecting the slouchy-posture, pulled-down-cap, consumerist attitude to education.  ("Entertain me," they wither from the back row!  And when you don’t, they reply with their generation’s resounding battle sigh, "meh.")  The rest of the class is fine, being "a bunch of participators," as an annoying colleague attested today.

I am getting observed in class, you see.  The department’s n00bs have to come and watch the seasoned professionals comme moi in the classroom, learning from our ripe wisdom, jaded and self-deprecating lecture styles, dry interjections, and ability to toss French phrases into everyday conversation.  Hooray for having achieved seasoned status! I tell myself.  Sadly, the whole endeavor mainly involves some painfully awkward young grad student who tries to sit all unobtrusively in the back row with her clogs and mid-calf-length skirts and her staunch refusal to use "product" in her hair (honey, I should really be helping you with the fashion! please!).  And then she comes and interviews me and is all, "oh your class is a bunch of participators ha ha," with about as much enthusiasm as that unpunctuated sentence suggests.

Bitch, please!  You had better bet they are all a bunch of participators! That is what I do!  I cultivate an atmosphere of engaged intellectual inquiry!  I facilitate discourse!  I’d like to see her again after her first term of teaching, when her wee little mumbly paedagogical forays are met with resounding silence and shifty eyes, and see what she thinks about my room full of participators then.  Bitch better wish she had a bunch of participators. 

Anyway, now that that nugget of righteous indignation is out, I shall continue my list of other stresses, for example, the tit zit!  (Now nearly gone, FYI, and thanks for caring–you guys are so sweet.  Now please to purge the image from your brains.)

Guess what else?  I looked at the Associated Departments of English job postings today.  That’s a huge effing deal for me, since it’s one of those paralyzingly frightening things I have been putting off for months.  That shit is scary.  As I read through the ads (most of which seem to want specialists in "latino/a literature(s)," dubious PC punctuation and all), I felt my heart rate and blood pressure each jack up by about twenty points and an elephant sat on my lungs.  Fucking elephants.  I was on the verge of having a fit ? la Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30, where she’s all "I need a glass of water and a fluffy pillow.  I NEED A GLASS OF WATER AND A FLUFFY PILLOW."   And if any of you makes fun of me for that cinema reference, I will cut you.  Now is not the time to fuck with me.

Anyway, I am trying to feel better about things, but the only reassurance I can give myself is that "things will fall into place, like they always do."  And yeah, I have been lucky in the past, but I am starting to cut it a little close these days.  I need a glass of wine and a fluffy pillow and maybe some cheesy romantic comedies about time travel.  Also some Valium.

things that are relished

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 7 October 2006
in Lists
. 9 Comments

Afternoon Naps

Compliments

Dog Walks

Whiskey Sodas

Kisses

Proustian Sentences

Pickles

it’s all limbo and whiskey at zembla u.

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 4 October 2006
in Paedagogy
. 13 Comments

It’s the second week of classes, which means it’s time for me to get all het up all over again about the students and how they aren’t as smart as I think they should be.  I know, I know.  I keep lowering my expectations, but I just can’t get them low enough.

I teach a fiction class (for those of you who don’t know), but occasionally I make the kids read some non-fiction, like, say some theoretical or critical shit.  Shit that’s outright argumentative in nature.  Shit that is making and defending assertions, you know? They seem to have a problem with this.

It may just be that I have a particularly hoopleheaded group this term–they love participating in class, and are all Lisa-Simpson hands-up all the time, so I have got that going for me, which is nice. The things they have been saying in class, though,  are just eye-crossingly ignorant.  Their comments about the fairly easy-reading novel I assigned last week should have prepared me for this.  One woman, for example,  just started yakking on about how her mom died when she was young, and her sister is a drug addict who is pregnant and who lives in California, and, like, OMG, you guys, that totally could have been her, if she hadn’t joined the Air Force and all.  As you may imagine, this had nothing to do with the novel in question.

Another launched into how she thinks homeless people have a "different understanding of the world" than we do [me thinking: um, OK, sweetie], and everybody should try to have lunch with a homeless person at least once a week, like she does, not to toot her own horn, or anything.  It was somewhere in the middle of this speech that one of her classmates interjected with "yes, but only if it is safe to do so." The rest of the class just kind of tittered while I sat there looking, I’m sure, utterly nonplussed.   

Now, if you will, take that degree of inappropriate cluelessness and apply it to the theory I had them read for today, and you will have some small idea of what I am dealing with.  One of the people whose task it was to lead discussion today started off by asking, "So, like, didn’t you guys think this was, like, totally hard to read?  ‘Cause I did."  Her presentation partner topped that gem when he asked the class if we didn’t all agree that the theorist in question was, like, totally contradicting himself.  I attempted to do the paedagogically sound thing (let students respond to his question hoping a peer will correct or clarify the issue), but when that didn’t work I was forced to explicate the entire passage to which he was referring.  I finally had to explain that it was the author’s rhetorical strategy to address and refute a counter-argument.  He wasn’t, like, totally contradicting himself, but rather, like, totally contradicting his detractors, I explained.  This is how argumentative writing works.  Cut to a room full of 28 blank stares and two people asleep. 

I am penciling a major nervous breakdown into my schedule for the week when their first essays are due. Please send whiskey.

hated things

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on 3 October 2006
in Life in the Cube and Lists
. 7 Comments

Office Drama

Busted Underwires

Heartburn

0.7 mm Pens

Accidentally Buying a Frozen Pizza with Alfredo Sauce Instead of Tomato Sauce