‘School’ Category

  1. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. So, how’s school?

    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

  5. Dear whoever organized the largely useless TA conference,

    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