Monthly Archive for February, 2007

On Love, Tulips, and a Clean Bar of Soap

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 10, 2007
in Cheese Sandwich, Music and Vintage Imports
. Closed

(Because apparently one is meant to talk about love this time of year.)

I don’t write too much about my dating life, mostly because I don’t exactly have one at the moment.  For me, it has historically been (as the silly saying goes) feast or famine.  I am either entangled in a bunch of scandalousness, likely as not stepping out on at least one person, or I am alone for extended lengths of time, likely not even looking for anyone.  Lately, it has been the latter situation, mainly because I don’t know anyone I would consider dating who is single and not already my friend.  I think this singleton life is just fine, because after the slew of unsavory dudes I had been dating before this recent phase, I think I deserve some damned time off.

The hits of the past include, but are not limited to: possessive control-freaks, drug addicts, felons, bi-polar alcoholics, dudes with girlfriends, dudes who never want to ever have a girlfriend, dudes who are also hitting on my girl friends, and dudes who split up with me and then slept with other dudes.  I have been in dubious long-term, long-distance relationships; strange short-term relationships that were always just on the cusp of something intriguing; relationships where I only saw him every two weeks (but for twenty-four hours at a time, wink wink); relationships that were such a secret from everyone uninvolved that I often wondered if I was imagining them; and relationships (and I wished I was imagining these!) where I was afraid to ever look in the dude’s refrigerator, toilet, or shower.  I have split up with dudes I happily never saw or heard from again; dudes who remained my best friends for a dozen years after the fact; dudes who dated slews of nineteen-year-old skanks after me, only to suddenly realize at the point of some “life-changing” event that it was me they still “loved,” so they snuck up behind me and dropped an anvil-like love-letter on me from the safe remove of a mailbox thousands of miles away.


<br /> <bgsound src="http://zemblangrammar.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/adventurous.mp3"><br />

So, yeah, I needed a break.

It’s not that things had been all bad — not at all.  I have been with amazing people; some of my favorite people; some of the best, funniest, smartest, kindest people I know.  And the moments!  Oh, the moments!  The moments you know you have to remember, so you do; you write about them and draw them out and color them in and play them back time after time, because they are the tiniest moments and they contain so much.

You don’t have to try so hard, though, because they are moments that can write themselves into your memories and into your chemical composition without your knowing.  They are the memories you come back to again and again, when you need them, when everything else seems total shit and you have to explain to yourself once more why you don’t kick his alcoholic, commitment-phobic, deceitful, secretly-gay, felonious ass to the curb already, because fuck it all, dude ain’t going to change.  And you know that.

It’s easy when you’ve been single for a while to forget about the whole dating thing — after all, there is only so much time in a week, and it’s more than enough to squeeze in a PhD and teaching and writing and a part-time job and friends, and it’s impossible to imagine giving any of that up (or even just partially shirking it) for something about which you feel completely ambivalent.  I mean, love is awful, isn’t it? It can be all pain and anxiety and sacrifice (but it can also be a gleeful, bubbly stomach and goosebumps and moments of complete solace or pleasure or elevation or all of those at once). It’s fucking exhausting, and you just have to forget about it all, because everything else you have has got you full-to-bursting and, in this moment of selfishness, you can only tend to yourself.

I totally bought these for myself.

I totally bought these for myself.

It’s just as easy, though, to get sour on the whole idea, fixating on things like the utterly insignificant but telling fact that in the last ten years, the only people who have given you flowers are your mother and your college roommate, and both of those bouquets were given on the same day, making that a ratio of approximately 3549 flowerless days to 1 flowerful day. And all that would mean nothing, except that, embarrassingly enough, you care.

It seems hard to end this discussion, not because I don’t know where it’s going, but because I don’t exactly know where I’m going.  But I can’t exactly sit around forever waiting for someone else to come to the rescue with a bunch of red tulips when they are there — right there! — at the grocery store. So I take things into my own hands (heh), I open my own pickle jars and squish my own spiders and check my own oil in the car. I try not to get sour, and I try to stay on this comfortable even keel, which is a good life: sleeping diagonally across the big, big, too-big bed and puttering around in the mornings, talking to the cat and the dog, walking around in my underwear, and never, ever finding someone else’s pubes stuck to the soap.

Reading Lolita with Chowderheads

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 8, 2007
in Books and Paedagogy
. 19 Comments

Do you guys have any suggestions about approaching Lolita with my pruritanical undergrads? My fellow literature teacher Oedipa offered a really good comment, and I figured the rest of you probably also have some clever ideas, or maybe just anecdotes about your experience reading the novel. I would appreciate any thoughts on the matter. Thanks!

Oh, my Whippersnappers, I have only words to play with!

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 8, 2007
in Books, Neologisms and Paedagogy
. 8 Comments

I teach something by Nabokov every term, to keep my testy little soul satisfied, and that week is universally my favorite week of the term.  Next week is Nabokov Week and I am uncharacteristically dreading it already.  I am doing Lolita this term, and the guileless rubes are already being total shits about it, apparently because "not only is it creepy, but it’s hard to read, whine, whine, whine." 

I’m sure they have no interest in the fact that is is one of the most beautifully written novels, like, ever, dude; that it has been called "the only convincing love story of our century" and one of the four greatest novels of all time; or that it is not, in fact, an endorsement of pedophilia.  Oh, no.  Why bother delving into the matter, after all?  The structure seems pretty straightforward, just like all of Nabokov’s work.  Vladimir Nabokov: simple and sincere; no hint of irony, manipulation, or complexity.  As always, the students’ subtle insights do not fail to shake me.

I am planning on telling them that if they want to become successful scholars (unlikely, but still), they are going to have to learn to be better, more thoughtful, more thorough close readers, and that frankly, this pruritanical [puritanical + prurient] attitude will not stand. 

(Was this entire post an excuse to test out my most recent neologism?  Yeah, probably.)

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 7, 2007
in Grammar
. 21 Comments

breathe - This is a verb. It is an action; a thing you do. For example, when you breathe through your mouth like that, it makes you look like a dumbass.

breath - This is a noun. It is a thing you have, like that really stank coffee breath. Dude, do you need a mint?

psyche - Psyche is a figure in Greek mythology; the psyche refers to the ancient Greek conception of the self. That is all.

psych - This is the common abbreviation for psychiatric. Note that there is no "e." There is no "e" in psychology; there is no "e" in psychiatry or psychological or psychiatric. THERE IS NO "E." When you are mentally ill and have to check yourself into the psych ward, and when you blog about it later, quite famously, be sure to spell the effing word correctly.

faze - This is a verb, and it means something similar to "daunt." Yes, this is really how you spell it. Not that my exasperation fazes you.

phase - Not the same. Dude, stop saying you are "unphased." You?ll have to stop eventually. I mean, this is just a phase you?re going through, right? Right?

demure - This is an adjective; it describes things, such as your coyly decorous behavior, you little minx.

demur - This is a verb. It takes action! It objects to that suggestion!

bate - Hello friends, here we have another verb! What does it mean?. You are waiting with bated breath over there, aren?t you? Well relax, dude, because I am here to tell you that this word is another form of abate.

bait - Jail bait. Bait and switch. Bait the hook. Not the same as bate, above. Unless?.wait, are you able to bait your breath somehow? It?s the mint I gave you, isn?t it? Fess up.

rein - If this is a noun, it?s the leather strap you use to steer your horse, or the one your kinky boyfriend uses to?oh, never mind. If it?s a verb, it means hold back or keep in check. I see you?re excited over there, but please try to rein it in.

reign - A period of rule or sovereign power. You are entering the reign of reason; please wear your seat-belt at all times.

schwag - Dope. Pot. Mary Jane. Ganja. Weed. Bad weed, at that. The dry, seedy stuff. The brown frown. Don?t even think about bringing that schwag over to my house when I know you?re sitting on a bag of Northern Lights. Seriously, dude, that is just bad form.

swag - Loot. Booty. Free stuff, such as the fancy-schmancy free stuff they give actors just for showing up to awards shows and shit. Entertainment "journalists" of America, please stop saying that the Oscars gift bags are going to be full of great schwag this year. For one thing, great schwag is, by definition, an impossibility; for another thing, I don?t think you want to get Lindsay Lohan and Woody Harrelson all excited over something that is just going to turn out to be a free watch.

the point where i throw up my hands and head for the bar

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 6, 2007
in Paedagogy
. 4 Comments

Well, my nemesis continues with her nemestuous ways, entirely unashamed and unabated, predictably not showing up to class when her paper is due and generally being abrasive and annoying.  That, however, is not what I have come here to bitch about, oh no.  Instead, I have (as they say in grammar) a whole nother bunch of laggardly dullards dampening my spirit. 

I have two kids who haven’t bothered to show up to class at all in the last three weeks (of course neither of them showed up to turn in a paper either), and I keep checking the enrollment to see if either of them dropped, and neither of them has.  I guess they just like to receive failing grades, or something.  No, really, this baffles me.  Why sign up for a class if you are never going to show up nor do any assignments? 

You would think the annoyance would end there, but no.  If I never had to deal with these people, I wouldn’t really care, to be honest. If they want to disappear in to the ether, fine. If they want to fail, let them, I say.  Apparently, however, these two aren’t satisfied with merely failing; rather, they have to waste my time with stupid emails, too. At some point last week I sent out an email to the class reminding them of some various information, and BOTH of these clods replied to the email, clearly without having read it, asking questions whose answers had already been stated in the email I had sent out.  I am strongly disinclined to even validate that kind of stupidity with a response, but I wound up replying anyway, something along the lines of  "Please see the first paragraph of the email below."

I mean, god damn, what do they think, I have time to sit around typing out the same information over and over and over, just because they are so high all the time that they can’t read or comprehend a simple email? Of course I don’t have time for that, please!  I am busy drinking this whiskey and banging my head on the desk over here, so maybe they can get back to me when their reading comprehension abilities have reached the first-grade level.  Or, you know, when they have bothered to show up to class even ONE EFFING TIME.  GOD.

On another note, their failure to even submit an essay (hey, even plagiarizing one only takes ten minutes) means I will just have fewer of them to grade, right?   And more time to drink.  Right.