September 30, 2008 by ms. xandra
Not exactly what I asked for, but thank you Santa. Thank you for:
1) the Conservative Party of Canada being guilty of plagiarism,
2) Mary Walsh launching an attack on Stephen Harper, “iceberg of a Prime Minister,” and his sweater vests.
This has been an excellent afternoon. My only complaint right now is that it is inexplicably 38 degrees (Celsius, bitches) outside, so if you could take care of that, Santa, that would be great.
Love,
Alexandra
Category Canadialand, Politics | Tags: | No Comments
September 30, 2008 by ms. xandra
1. Well, the class that I’m TAing for is bigger than my entire high school was, and currently the student body seems to be having a lot of trouble with the following concepts:
a) Days of the week,
b) the alphabet.
Oh, good.
2. I am reading Hegel for class. Or rather, I was reading Hegel. I got as far as halfway through the first page when I reached the following sentence and then had to stop and stare at dresses on the internet for an hour to help put my brain back together:
“All that it says about what it knows is just that it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing.”
Weirdly, now that I have typed that sentence out, I suddenly actually know what it means. Sadly, this implies that the only way to understand Hegel would be to transcribe his collected works.
Category School | Tags: | 1 Comment
September 29, 2008 by ms. xandra
“Cheese. I can’t think of anything in the world that is better than cheese.”
“I can. Revenge.”
Category Rhetoric | Tags: | No Comments
September 28, 2008 by ms. xandra
Is it too early for this? No way. It’s never too early to write to Santa. I’ve actually been composing a blog post about how really upset the concurrent election campaigns in Canada and the US are making me (so upset that I have been waking up with weird stomach cramps) but I can only spend about two minutes at a time on it because otherwise I go plummeting into despair. So to distract myself from despair, I have composed the following list entitled “What I want for Christmas, 2008 Edition.”
1. A Nigella Lawson cookbook. Either How to Eat or Nigella Express, but preferably Nigella Express because it has more pictures and we all know that the entire point of cookbooks is FOOD PORN. (Yesss! And now I will get a hundred hits to my blog from people googling for pornography featuring naked ladies covered in food. Hello, creepy weirdos! Thank you for making the internet a wildly uncomfortable place!)
2. A citrus reamer like the one my mom got from the Pampered Chef. Not only is it perfect for margarita making, it also serves double-duty as a self-defense device because it weighs approximately 57 pounds.
3. A pair of really good headphones.
4. A solution to my boy problem (problem being: boys exist and are stupid but I still want to make out with them) that does not involve celibacy.
5. A North America presided over by a team of kind, fair, benevolent, intelligent, democratically elected Philosopher Monarch-type people who just happen to agree with and enforce all of my opinions.
6. Another new X-Files movie. One that isn’t TERRIBLE. I know it is possible. I just watched Jose Chung’s From Outer Space. I know it is possible.
7. Somebody to go out dancing with. I miss going dancing with my Sassyladyfriends.
8. UNICORN. (Item 8 could also be combined with Item 7: A unicorn to go out dancing with. That would be quite acceptable.)
I know I can count on you, Santa! Don’t let me down!
Yours,
Xandra A.
Category Awesome, Books, Culture, Food, Internet, Media, Politics, X-Files | Tags: | 4 Comments
September 25, 2008 by ms. xandra
“Musicology? What are you ever going to do with that? Open up a dinky little sheet music store?”
Why don’t you go fuck yourself.
Truly, madly, deeply, yours,
Alexandra, who has had a very long day.
Category Angst, Musicology | Tags: | 4 Comments
September 22, 2008 by ms. xandra
Friends,
DID YOU KNOW that on facebook you can set your language setting to “English (Pirate)”?
Now you know. Now your life is about 73% better. I know mine is.
Yarrrr’s truly,
Captain Xandra
Category Internet | Tags: | No Comments
September 22, 2008 by ms. xandra
Look, if the orange juice you serve at breakfast is going to be presented to us in a punch bowl, the very least you could do is spike it. Nothing says “Happy Monday morning!” quite like a screwdriver.
Sincerely yours,
Alexandra, who ditched the conference and went out for hipster coffee instead.
Category School | Tags: | No Comments
September 21, 2008 by ms. xandra
Dear Canadian friends:
Have people seen the Anti-Harper Vote Swap facebook group and how do you feel about? (I tried including a link but it only works if you’re logged into facebook – so just search for it.) While I appreciate the motive behind it, and agree with what they are trying to do (stop the Conservatives from getting a majority, thereby saving the world), the idea of vote swapping makes me very uncomfortable.
In other news, I got my mail-in ballot yesterday. Weirdly, there are no boxes to check – you just write in the name of the candidate you’re voting for. And it was kind of exciting to get my Elections Canada envelope. I still sort of get naively excited about the concept of voting, despite the period of despair that inevitably follows the election, due to a depressing outcome that is a result our completely undemocratic way of counting votes. But I still have a few weeks left to hope in vain.
Arrg,
Xandra A.
Category Canadialand, Politics | Tags: | 3 Comments
September 21, 2008 by ms. xandra
So, I spent most of my afternoon today completely convinced that my bedroom was the site of a bedbug infestation. I made and stripped the bed several times, searching for signs of bugs, and, despite seeing none, researched area exterminators, and placed a panicked call to my ever-indulgent roommate, who was out and missed most of the melee, and actually happens to be an expert on bedbugs, having dealt with them in the past. Please note that there is no reason for me to think I have bedbugs. When you have bedbugs, there are pretty obvious signs, including:
1) Gross, itchy, horrible bug bites all over your body;
2) Bugs and bug crap in your bed.
I do not have any bugbites. I do not have any bugs or bug crap. Rather, I became convinced that I had bedbugs basically because bedbugs exist. This is not unlike the “clearly it is syphillis because syphillis exists” incident of several weeks ago. Or, you know, the countless “clearly I am pregnant because pregnancy exists” incidents that I bravely faced as an 18-year-old virgin.
While I have learned to laugh (drunkenly) at the memory of my virginal naivety, the fact remains that I have a problem. I would not call it hypochodria, because it’s not that. It’s more like an inclination towards leaping at worst-case-scenarios and just assuming they are true. Good Sir Roommate was like “it’s like pessimism…but really extreme.” So I guess that’s it. Extreme Pessimism. I might actually amend that to be Extreme Paranoid Pessimism. Also, fuck you, internet, for enabling my Extreme Paranoid Pessimism. Fuck you and your little wikipedia, too.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 1 Comment
September 18, 2008 by ms. xandra
So, this nice lady I volunteer with at the Egyptian tipped me off to Charles Phoenix, who is a sort of local eccentric/author/quasi-celeb who has published some books on mid-century modern culture and kitsch (which, you may have gathered, are things that I heart very much) and who collects people’s old slides at flea markets and thrift stores and estate sales and does slide shows with them wherein he basically, well, makes fun of them but at the same time demonstrates how totally fucking rad they are. Anyhow, I went to one of his shows tonight and it was SO GOOD. I can’t even properly express how hilarious it was. You should go to his website and sign up to get the slide of the week! It’s not quite as hilarious as when he provides colour commentary in person, but it is still super awesome. Anyhow. Charles Phoenix. I love this man. He showed up wearing a yellow blazer and a fez. Fuck yeah.
And also! The slide show was held at the Petersen Automotive Museum, which is a place that I knew existed but is not a place I would ever have thought to visit (in fact, I think I found out about it and thought “a fucking car museum? That is one place I will never go,”) but it turns out that the car museum is also fucking awesome. They have the Micheal Keaton Batmobile, and, more importantly, the Adam West Batcycle. And there was a special exhibit of vintage camping trailers, which is amazingly fascinating. And they had Roosevelt’s car, and Eisenhower’s car, and Nikita Kruschev’s car, and a Bugatti owned by the former Prince of Persia, who I always thought was just a videogame character, and a car that looks exactly like the Fluevog car, and just really a lot of beautiful, beautiful vehicles. And the circular-door Rolls Royce pictured here is, in person, the most fucking impressive and imposing and glorious and terrifying thing I have seen in a long time. I think it is safe to say that I have changed my mind about cars because, apparently, cars can be art? Who knew. So, yes, I am now the kind of girl who would go to the fucking car museum, even though I really know nothing about cars at all. No, actually, I know one fact about cars: Never date a man who drives an Audi. But that isn’t so much fact as it is Life Lesson That Was Learned the Hard Way.
ANYHOW. It was really super. Really.
Category Awesome, Culture, Los Angeles | Tags: | No Comments