Archive

May I Direct You Elsewhere?

Last night I had a lovely evening of cheap Mexican food and a bad movie — a winning combination for any Saturday, I’m sure you will agree.  I dragged my friend B. to see Twilight (shut up). It was almost exactly what I expected it to be — and if you want to know more than that, you’ll have to read my brilliant, in-depth review over on the media side of this blog. There are also pictures of sexy vampires. Go look.

I am currently planning a minor creative-type project that could possibly involve you (yes you there, at the computer!), so stay tuned for more on that later.

Case of the Secret Sweaty Balls

In college, one of my favorite professors once commended me on having a “strong, masculine prose style.”  Go ahead, take a moment to unfasten all of the weird cultural assumptions underpinning that statement — I’ll wait.

Now, whether or not you have an English Grammar professor on hand to evaluate the relative femininity or masculinity of your prose, you can still find out if you write like a girl:

Yes, thank dog, the internet has everything! Here are the results of their analysis of this very blog:

Judges’ scores are in. Clearly I do have a strong masculine prose style! So strong, in fact, that they are 95% certain I am a dude.  That is even more sure than they were the first time I tried their site, back when Blandwagon posted about it a few days ago.  Then they were only 87% sure they knew how it was hanging.

I’m just dying to know what it is that makes them so confident that I am secretly in possession of a big, hairy nut sac.  Is it the active verbs? The cussing? My love of pants? My love of whiskey?  “We have strong indicators,” they claim, but what are those indicators?  They will not say.  Maybe they have just been talking to my old grammar prof.

Case Status: Manly

Thanksgiving Break: Already off to a Whiskey-Soaked Start

It was finally cold today! Let me tell you, internet friends, how freaking excited I was to wake up this morning to temperatures low enough to warrant tights, boots, and The Paris Coat: very freaking excited. Not only do I like my winter wardrobe better than my summer one, I can also almost always be guaranteed better hair and makeup results in New Wye’s drier winter weather. Let’s face it: I just feel prettier in winter. This leads to a good mood all day as I stalk around campus in my tall boots, scarf flapping behind me, high on my own sense of crispness and self-satisfaction.

Last winter, it was only cold enough for a coat and boots maybe once — thus I realized that today could be the high point (wardrobe- and weather-wise) of the year. I have to be prepared for the possibility that it could all go downhill from here.

So when I got home from the store tonight with a brand new bottle of whiskey and began to make dinner and a cocktail, it should have come as no surprise that disaster would strike. Trying to put the whiskey on the shelf with wet hands, I managed to drop the bottle on the hard tile floor, helplessly watching as it shattered in slow motion. I had that brief moment when, after you drop something and before it hits the floor, you think to yourself maybe it won’t break.

Oh, it fucking broke all right. Whiskey pooled on the floor, soaking quickly into my sneakers and through my socks (luckily I had changed into my scuzzy Chucks when I got home and The Precious Boots thus escaped unscathed), and broken glass seemed to fly everywhere at once. I managed to stop the dog from “helping” me clean up before he either got drunk or ate any glass, and then managed to calmly finish making dinner while mopping, drying, and trying to sweep/vaccuum up all the glass. Then of course I had to run out to the liquor store again, where I’d just been an hour before (I was all, hello, liquor proprietor, déjà vu much?) to replace the bottle. A necessary step after all that nonsense, I think you will agree.

In other news, it’s officially Thanksgiving break, and I have grand plans: grading student essays, revising/editing a couple of my own essays, and dog sitting a certain little chihuahua. The beauty is that all of this can be accomplished while cozily ensconced on the couch in sweatpants with a huge mug of coffee. Also, as it is break, I am free to make that coffee Irish any time I want.

What are you doing for Thanksgiving, my fellow Americans? And to those who don’t celebrate Thnksgiving, what are your weekend plans? I must know!

“Mmmm, sweatpants.”

I have just come home from a dinner out with the ladies — it’s almost break and we needed to have an evening of fun before everyone dispersed for Thanksgiving. The evening involved an unspecified quantity of risotto balls, Manhattans, and a delicately seared tuna. Oh, indeed.

And you know how silly I get in any situation involving top-shelf cocktails and risotto balls. (Yes, risotto balls.) All the fine liquor and fine food is commingling in my stomach to make an intoxicating, nutrifying elixer of happiness, sloth, and gluttony.

I’m feeling much too satisfied and cozy now to do the chapters of reading I am supposed to be doing for tomorrow and yet I must do them, right? After all, it would be horrible if the teacher showed up unprepared for class, wouldn’t it? Or would it? Must focus. Focus. FOCUS.

Nah, must change into sweatpants. SWEATPANTS.

“Look, I’ve had my peace with the fact that everyone [...] here is a notch above brain dead, and that the pennies I am thrown each week are in exchange for me dealing with these people in a nonviolent manner. And usually that is fine, but today, sorry lady, I have ennui.”

I am hiding in my office and not grading. I am also not revising essays or compiling job applications. I should be; I really should be. But after yesterday’s horrific, bloody marathon of reading and evaluating student writing, I just cannot face working today. I have ennui.

My feelings are softening toward my Literature students these days — possibly due to their better participation in class lately and possibly due to the fact that I have exchanged my morning coffee for a stiff Manhattan — but that doesn’t make me any more eager to dive headfirst into the giant pile of their verbal excrement that currently sits, untouched, on my desk.

What I really would rather do instead is sit here staring at the wall, drinking Diet Coke, and listening over and over again to the Blitzen Trapper album I just downloaded. That album is fucking great. Read all about it over at Another Portland Blog, then listen to the ballad of werewolf love and longing, and then die complete. I am saying.

And now, how early am I allowed to sneak out of here today?