February, 2009

  1. Dear Intelligentsia Coffee,

    February 19, 2009 by ms. xandra

    It is very nice that you are opening up a pretentious new location in Venice with fancy hydrolic pods or something, but please will you open a store in West Hollywood in the empty storefont near my house. I will give you hundreds of dollars.  Thank you.

    Love,
    Alexandra

    Dear office computer,

    It has taken me an hour to burn a cd on you, what is your problem? Oh, the things I do for Sgt. Pepper.

    Hate,
    Alexandra

    Dear Readers,

    This is the first time I have looked at my blog on this computer and I am dismayed to see that the header banner is not centered which fills my obsessive-compulsive heart with angst. Does that happen to any of you? If so, I will fix it this weekend.

    Love, love, love, and also cookies,

    Alexandra

    Category Canadialand, Coffee, Culture, Internet, Uncategorized | Tags: | 7 Comments

  2. And also I fell and skinned my knee. Luckily, my heart is made of fourtanium

    February 15, 2009 by ms. xandra

    1.  Dear my students:  the question about “which movement is this song associated with” was referring to a social movement.  Therefore the answer is not “the movement of swaying your hips.”

    2.  Dear American Cinematheque:  Thank you for having a Valentine’s day double bill of Baz Luhrmann films about how if you fall in love, things become horrible and then you die (poison or the consumption, your choice), which is basically consistent with my worldview these days.

    3.  Remember in Anne of Green Gables when Ruby Gillis had the consumption and everybody talked about how beautiful it made her and I was eleven years old and had never heard of the consumption before and didn’t know what Lucy Maud was talking about?  Actually, I think it was in Anne of the Island.  Anyhow, I think of Ruby Gillis every time someone dies of the consumption.

    4.  So Sam and I are doing this thing where we are only going to eat fresh fruits and vegetables for an entire week (STOP LAUGHING AT ME, I KNOW YOU’RE LAUGHING AT ME) because we think it will make us feel better and healthier, and I am personally hoping it makes me feel less depressed as fuck all the time.  So basically we are having a week without carbs and dairy and unnecessary sugar.  So, of course, today I went to Cafe Audrey to drink tea and grade midterms and this dude sits at the table beside me and proceeds to consume (and I am not even kidding) buttered bread with french fries on it.  “Would you like a fry?” he said.  “No thanks,” I replied, and my heart wept, for my heart loves carbs.

    5.  This is mostly of interest to Tanya:  Apparently there is this goth bar in Downtown LA that has mod night on Thursdays?  So, like mod goth night?  Or goth mod night?  It sounds…important.

    6.  Because of a conversation I had today, I’ve been thinking a lot about these things and these things, and about how I don’t understand the impulse to lie and to hurt people. It’s frustrating.  It’s even more frustrating when people just get away with it.

    7.  Because of the Oscars (seriously) my bus stop up near the Egyptian was moved from its normal, well-lit corner to a sketchy, scary corner.  Please join me in boycotting the Academy Awards to protest this injustice (not that I was going to watch them anyhow).

    8.  I am 25 years old and I have never owned my own car and this realization makes me feel kind of inadequate, even though I don’t even want a car.  What I really want is, like,  a unicorn.

    9.  This is my 600th blog post!  Only 66 more until I have the blog of the beast.  I think I will celebrate that momentous occasion by drinking red wine out of a teacup and then falling asleep in front of a rerun of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

    Category Angst, Awesome, Books, Food, Los Angeles | Tags: | 2 Comments

  3. Nightmares of the bookish and nerdy

    February 12, 2009 by ms. xandra

    Last night I had a dream that I had submitted an abstract of my Amy Winehouse paper to the AMS and they sent it back to me in the mail with every sentence crossed out in red pen.  And also “FALSE” was written in the margins, beside every sentence that had been crossed out in red pen.  And I cried and I was like “but I read Amy, Amy, Amy:  The Amy Winehouse Story so closely and thoroughly!  How could my entire theoretically framework be flawed?”  But it was.  And then I failed as a musicologist.

    And that is the story of why I’m glad I didn’t submit anything to the AMS conference this year!

    Category Academe, Musicology | Tags: | No Comments

  4. How I escaped the void

    February 9, 2009 by ms. xandra

    So, I have been spending a lot of time staring into the void these days, because, you know, there’s a recession, so what else are you gonna do, right? but I emerged from my endless ponderings of the abyss this weekend and thank goodness I did, because here is what happened:

    I had a birthday, or something! And lots of people came over with wine and cake and muffins and tiny pies on Friday night and then we went dancing at this place that was like The Dance Cave if the Dance Cave was pretending to be in Soviet Russia and only played 80s music, and then we went to the sex shop in the middle of the night and made fun of the outrageous nipple clamps in the clearance section.

    And then yesterday night was a thrilling tour of Los Angeles kitsch: dinner at Clifton’s (quote of the night, from the lovely Ms. Lindsay: “There is something crunchy in my spinach. I think it might be sand.”), and then a show at the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre (which I am not even going to try to describe to you – you will just have to come visit me and we will go there, and if you alreadly live in LA and haven’t gone there, then we will go immediately because it is a magical, magical place) and then drinks at Tiki Ti, where I had something called a Space Pilot. (OMG SPACE!)

    And here is my theory about Tiki Ti because it is such a weird place:

    Most of the patrons at the Tiki Ti were (seemingly heterosexual) men, drinking exceptionally girly drinks, because they only serve ridiculous tropical drinks at this place because they apparently don’t believe in beer and wine (seriously). And my theory is that dudes are able to drink girly drinks at Tiki Ti without their masculinity feeling threatened because they are in a space that represents the conquest of the exotic, feminized other, thereby reaffirming their masculinity and making it ok for them to drink things that are blue and served in a daquiri glass with half a pineapple in it. Probably, though, we should really begin this discussion with a deconstruction of the gendering of the girly drink, because, really, what makes them girly in the first place?
    MORAL OF THE STORY:  Graduate students should not be allowed to go to novelty bars.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 4 Comments

  5. In which there is a dillemma:

    February 5, 2009 by ms. xandra

    Masters’ exams are the weekend of May 23rd, I’ve been accepted to a conference in North Carolina (that I would really love to go to) the next weekend, and the weekend after that is the Echo conference, which I am co-organizing.

    The question at hand is: Do I go to the North Carolina conference in the manner of a work-driven madwoman? Or do I decline the invite and spend that weekend in bed?

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 4 Comments