‘Academe’ Category

  1. My personal favourite is “stake driven through the heart.”

    January 26, 2009 by ms. xandra

    Hey, remember that time I got really depressed about boys and started quoting Sylvia Plath, like an angsty 17-year-old?  I promise it won’t happen again, at least not this month (note that there is hardly a week left to the month).

    But anyhow.  On to more important things, like…

    DJ mixing class!  So great.  It is me and Shelina and a bunch of 18-year-old boys who needed to be told that the term “mix tape: comes from “cassette tape” which were these things we used to record stuff onto back in the 1990s.  Golly.  This week I am going to mix The Shangri-Las with MC Lyte and it is going to be super awesome.  Also, today I picked up a record of horror movie sound effects (including:  Arm Chopped Off, Sawing Leg Off, Grave Digging (In Stoney Ground), Grave Digging (In Wet Ground), Eerie Wind, Weird Wind, Wind Howling in Ship’s Rigging, and, inexplicably, The Electronic Swamp), which clearly means that I am going to be named Most Likely to Succeed by my DJ School Yearbook.

    And now bedtime, for a have a long day ahead of me tomorrow in which I will read that entire Paul Gilroy book and think of lots of intelligent things to say about it for my meeting on Wednesday.

    Oh, hey, also:  someone is finally starting a Fringe Festival in Los Angeles!  Which means that I might finally have a venue for this one-woman show I am working on (as of this morning) about how shitty everything is!  Tanya is my Associate Producer.  WE’LL SEE YOU AT THE TONY AWARDS!!!!!

    Category Academe, Angst, Music | Tags: | 5 Comments

  2. And then I flew a rocket ship to the planet Marva.

    January 19, 2009 by ms. xandra

    Zarah and I went to the Pasadena Doo-Dah Parade, which, basically, is a parade for the mad.  And, in many ways, it renewed by faith in humankind.  Here are pictures!  And also, my new goal in life is to be a Lady in a Fancy Dress, Sitting on a Car, Waving at the Masses when I grow up.

    In other news:  I have figured out how to write a musicology paper about space (outer).  It is ostensibly about the B-52s, but mostly it will be about space.  This will require many trips to the Observatory so that I can learn everything there is to know about space. I actually went there this Friday already, which made me flash back to those days when Young Alexandra, Age 13, saw the film Contact and decided that I would be an astronomer, until I realized that such a career choice would probably involve knowing lots of math.  So then I gave up on that and decided to be an opera singer, until I realized that I actually hate other opera singers, and only wanted to be an opera singer because my voice teacher told me that I did, and so now I am a musicologist who writes papers about space.  Ah, memories.  All alone in the moonlight.

    And also, at the Observatory there was a Tesla coil for no reason at all.  Tesla coils, as you may know, look pretty neat and shoot sparks in the air but don’t really have much purpose, other than to broadly indicate “SCIENCE” in a certain breed of science fiction film with which I am intimately familiar.  Ergo, awesome.

    Category Academe, Adventure, Culture, Los Angeles, Musicology, School, Space | Tags: | 2 Comments

  3. So, this one time, we went to Hawaii.

    January 16, 2009 by ms. xandra

    I was sustained by the transcendental coffee, delighted by the drinks made of fruit and rum and blue curacao, made vaguely uncomfortable by the culturally insensitive luaus, and seduced by the pineapples.

    And also I presented some conference papers.  And spent a respectable amount of time wearing leopard print.

    Category Academe, Adventure, Coffee, The drink | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Currently stressed out about:

    December 29, 2008 by ms. xandra

    1. Teaching section this quarter because I don’t know how,

    2. Masters’ exams in the spring because they are scary,

    3. What if there is no money for the Echo conference because all of the money in the world has vanished (see: “economic crisis”),

    4. Dying in an earthquake because I live in California.

    Luckily, in a week and a half, I will be in HAWAII! I will be in Hawaii where I will be presenting two papers. On the same panel. I have been put on a panel with myself.  But luckily the Xandra Show is on the first day and then I am going to spend the rest of the conference sitting around in my leopard-spotted bathing suit, making unreasonable demands of cabana boys.

    Category Academe, Angst | Tags: | 6 Comments

  5. Career prospects

    December 21, 2008 by ms. xandra

    So, given the state of the economy and how it has resulted in a staggering number of academic job openings being canned, I have been thinking of what other career prospects might be open to me (besides the obvious top two: burlesque dancer, mistress to a wealthy executive). Last night I went to see James Bond, and in one of the final scenes of the movie, we meet this woman who is, inexplicably, a Canadian intelligence agent, which of course made me laugh and laugh and laugh because why on earth would they make her a Canadian intelligence agent? It’s ridiculous. But anyhow. That’s what reminded me of CSIS! If the academic job market is still shit in five years, I am applying to CSIS. And thanks to this handy, comprehensive, eight-question quiz, it is undeniable that I am fully qualified to be a Canadian Intelligence Officer. Based on the picture that accompanies said quiz, I have surmised that the job entails modeling a pantsuit in front of some currency symbols. I can do that.  I excel at striking poses.

    Category Academe, Canadialand | Tags: | 5 Comments

  6. Pretty good.

    November 26, 2008 by ms. xandra

    Things are pretty good.  I mean, yesterday I touched my favorite human being in all of history (ie:  David Lynch), today I am drinking Mexican mochas (most delicious coffee incarnation yet) and am productively writing a paper about Beth Ditto (fuck yeah), there is only one more week left of classes this quarter and then it is time for holidays, after the holidays I am going to Hawaii where I will give a paper and then sit around in a hammock wearing an Esther Williams swimsuit and drinking mai tais, then next quarter I am taking a pop music seminar in which I plan to finally do some Very Serious Scholarly Work on the B-52s (it’s about time) and an independent study in which I plan to . . . probably read a lot of French theory and curse a lot (but I asked for it and am pretty excited about it), and IT IS RAINING.  Mostly I am just very happy about the rain.  The rain has made all of my angst and woes disappear.  Did you know that constant sunshine can really get oppressive?

    I am thinking of going away for spring break to some place really dreary.  Maybe Seattle?  I hear it rains all the time in Seattle.  And I could take that train that goes from LA to Seattle along the coast and takes, like 36 hours.  I think I would like that.  I like traveling on buses and trains because it is an excuse to not do anything, because what can you possibly do?  I also enjoy doing those kinds of things alone.  I like spending days without talking to anyone because it lets me get really weirdly self-indulgent and introspective and decadently melancholic and I don’t have to care about what anybody else thinks.  (Unfortunately, this tendency probably means that eventually I am going to die alone and be found days later, half-eaten by my pet ocelot, but what can you do?)  I want to go on holiday and I want for there to be no sunshine for days.  I want to be able to wear boots and my raincoat that makes me look like a Russian spy.  With a cardigan underneath.

    Oh, and I am so excited right now because the radio in the cafe where I am working is playing The Shirelles!  I love it when The Shirelles happen.

    Ok, I should go home because I have been here for four hours.

    Category Academe, Awesome, Coffee, Los Angeles, School | Tags: | 1 Comment

  7. Example of how grad school enables one to become completely disconnected from reality.

    November 15, 2008 by ms. xandra

    The other day, in a restaurant, I saw a news item appear on the TV screen with the  headline “DEATH OF AN AUTHOR,” and I thought to myself, “How interesting!  CNN is doing some kind of piece on Foucault, or perhaps Barthes!”

    Of course this was not true.  CNN was doing a piece on Micheal Crichton, who is an author who is dead for real, not theoretically.

    Category Academe, Books, Culture, School | Tags: | 2 Comments

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