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  1. Oooh boy!

    February 1, 2012 by ms. xandra

    Hey, maybe I will write an advice book on HOW TO HAVE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE.  You would buy it, right?  Because I am an expert at positive attitudes, right?

    Here is today’s tip for having a positive attitude:  When an obnoxious person sends you an obnoxious email for no point other than, it seems, to be obnoxious, delay responding for as long as you can.  As long as you have not responded, you are in control, by willfully creating a state of entropy.  The longer you go without responding, the longer you go without having to deal with the inevitable obnoxious response to your response* and you can just blissfully occupy a state of willful ignorance.  Of course, really all you are doing is biding your time in the calm eye of the shitstorm, but maybe that’s really the best place to be, all things considered.

    (This is a variation on a technique I used when I was dating that guy who never answered my emails or returned my calls because, it turns out, he was dating probably about 57 other women who looked exactly like me at the same time.  ”He can’t not respond to my email if I don’t send him an email!”  FOOLPROOF LOGIC.)

    Anyhow, I am developing a theory about how all attitudes are, in fact, positive attitudes.  Because as long as you have an attitude, you are having feelings, right?  So you haven’t completely lost your soul.  Ergo, even a bad attitude is a positive attitude because it’s better than having no attitude or emotions whatsover.  Or maybe I’m grasping at straws.

    *Which is obviously very polite and diplomatic and professional.

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  2. This post brought to you in part by My Positive Attitude

    January 29, 2012 by ms. xandra

    Positive attitudes!  I decided that this year, I would try to have one.  It is going about as well as you’d expect.  What I have learned so far from this experiment is that anything that moves me to say to myself “I’ll just try to have a positive attitude about it!” ends up not being worth the effort.

    Anyhow, here are three things that I think are going to be helpful to me in maintaining my positive attitude:

    1.  Coping Bundts.  Is there anything more comforting and delightful than a pudgy, round little cake?  Nothing.  I have decided to make myself the most popular lady in every unpleasant situation by appearing bearing Coping Bundts to share with the people I like (and only the people I like).  My Gentleman Caller got me this double bundt pan for Christmas, and it is perfect because you can get about four little bundts out of one regular recipe of bundt batter.  And also, you can hold it up to your boobs and pretend it’s a really great breastplate.  And then when you are stuck in an interminable, hours-long union meeting where someone insists that Roberts Rules states that anyone can do what they want and that there are no actual rules, you can just sit there with your personal-sized bundt and put cake in your face, staving off that feeling of lurking despair for at least fifteen more minutes.

    2.  The “FUCK IT!!!” Point.  THIS!  This is revolutionary.  This will change dissertation writing forevermore.  I have realized that whether or not a dissertation chapter is finished has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it is finished, ie.: done, complete, as good as it can be, well argued and cogent, etc.  Instead, it is done at the moment when one divests all emotional attachment with it, says “FUCK IT!!!!” and closes the word document forever (or at least until it’s time for final revisions).  I have found that the “FUCK IT!!!” point comes suddenly, without warning, often after a period of protracted despair.  But when it comes, it is the most glorious and liberating feeling in the world.  I just LIVE for the “FUCK IT!!!” point.

    3.  Baskerville and Franklin, Cats.  Ugh, you guys, how are you so cute all the time????  I can’t even handle it.  Ok, fine, here are some gratuitous cat pictures:

    Baskerville’s interests include hoarding receipts, candy wrappers, and other small things that make a crinkly sound in a secret spot under the bookshelf; hiding his collar where nobody can find it; and sleeping beside your legs in such a way that you are trapped in bed in the morning.

    Franklin’s interests include racing across the room to steal my desk chair whenever I stand up, sitting on top of the refrigerator and glowering down upon his underlings, and the ladies.

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  3. Things that I am officially too old for:

    January 12, 2012 by ms. xandra

    Bear in mind that I am not technically actually old.  However, I still feel that I am too old for the following:

    1.  Greyound buses;

    2.  Shared rooms in hostel-like accommodation (this is actually something that I declared myself Too Old For at the age of 22, an ambitious declaration to make at the age that might be really considered prime hostel-dwelling age);

    3.  White zinfandel, or really any rose, unless it is the kind of rose I make myself by pouring the end of a bottle of red and the end of a bottle of white into the same glass (A LADY IS NEVER TOO OLD TO INVENT HER OWN WINE);

    4.  Getting a bottle of Bailey’s from my grandparents for Christmas every year because of that one Christmas at their house when I was 15 and drank a lot of Bailey’s because I hadn’t really drunk before and it tasted like milkshakes, a seemingly innocuous event that returns to haunt me in the form of a giant bottle of Bailey’s every Christmas;

    5.  Any kind of musical event that involves being outside in the burning sun (or, more likely pouring rain) with a bunch of people who are/are dressed like hippies;

    6.  Camping, much to the disappointment of my Gentleman Caller, who often alludes to willingly spending the night in the great outdoors as though it is actually a fun past time;

    6.  Skirts that fall above the knee, which have the effect of making me look like an overgrown five-year-old.

     

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  4. Holiday Miracle!

    December 30, 2011 by ms. xandra

    WHO DOESN’T like a good holiday miracle?  That is what I ask of you.  Well, fellow holiday miracle fans, I have happened upon the holiday miracle to end all holiday miracles.  Look at what I have done to a pile of once-unassuming and humble oranges:

    I have transformed them into cherry and frangelico-striped oranges.  VOILA, HOLIDAY MIRACLE.

    I could keep my methods a secret and I could claim my magical act of orange transformation was achieved through the powers of alchemy, but instead I will err on the side of honesty and admit that I learned it from a book.  Specificially, I learned it from Jellies and the Moulds, by Peter Brears, which I purchased at the British LIbrary bookshop and which has proven to be the single most important book purchase that I have made since I upgraded to a new copy of Harriet the Spy.  Brears is a food historian, so this is not just a recipe book, but is really a social history of jellies in the UK, from the middle ages (MEDIEVAL JELLIES!  My eyes have been opened to a new and slightly revolting world) to the 20th century.  I have learned so many things from this book:  disgusting things about boiling calfs feet until they became gelatin; fascinating things about flummeries, which are soft gelatins made by boiling gultinous stuff like wheat and rice down and extracting the goo; the use of gelatin as a food for sick people, which was useless as it has basically no nutritional value; and about the manufacture of moulds, which grew more and more elaborate and fussy through the 19th Century.

    The stripey oranges are called Oranges a la Bellevue, and the recipe dates from the British Regency period, although, according to Brears, it enjoyed popularity well into the Victorian era.  I don’t know a whole lot about the Regency period, but from what I’ve seen (ie: fancy jelly recipes and the Brighton Pavilion) I have to say that I really appreciate the spirit of utter idiotic frivolity that characterizes the Regency-era approaches to both decorative arts and cuisine.

    Anyhow!  Here is how I made my Oranges a la Bellevue.  The original recipe calls for the jellies to be orange and almond-flavored, but I opted for cherries and booze because I can’t leave well enough alone.  The results were delicious!  One warning:  I am impatient and tried to rush the setting period for the jelly layers by popping them in the freezer.  This resulted in some expansion and contraction of the layers, so they weren’t as perfect as they could have been, and they shrank a bit once they’d thawed.  If and when I do this again, I will put on my patience pants and just wait for things to set at refrigerator temperature so that the oranges are prettier.  Also, I used regular gelatin, but I think this recipe would be an excellent candidate for using agar agar to do a veggie-friendly version.  Agar agar sets a bit firmer and crunchier than gelatin, which I think would work well for slicing and presentation here.

    On with the oranges!  Click an image to enlarge and to show recipe steps.

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  5. Paris is for dead people.

    December 17, 2011 by ms. xandra

    I went to Paris a few weeks ago to visit my fabulous friend Jill!  And we visited at least one burial site every day that I was there.  This began by accident, with trips to Pere Lachaise and Monmartre cemeteries, but then we just decided to EMBRACE the deathliness.  I like travelling with themes in mind.  That way, if say, you only have three days and during which you couldn’t possibly see everything there is to see in Paris, you can at least see most of the bones there are to see in Paris, and still feel like you’ve accomplished something substantive.

    In addition to dead people tourism, we also went DANCING! and it was GREAT! because unlike other places in the world (ahem, Los Angeles) it was so much less of a scene and so much more about just DANCING!  And also you can get a bottle of wine for, like, three euros, which is cheaper than a god damn shitty cappuccino in Londontown.  This makes dancing even greater.  Not uncoincidentally, I sustained a larger number of very minor but still inconvenient flesh wounds (got thumb stuck in door jamb, fell off curb and banged up knee, etc.) during my three days in the city of light than I normally do in, like, a year; and I also managed to ruin about one pair of stockings for each day that I was in Paris.  Life is not easy when you are a fashionable young lady in a city where the wine is cheaper than the water!

    ANYHOW, here are some pictures of cemeteries, etc.


     

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  6. London is for Wandering

    December 5, 2011 by ms. xandra

    I’m not in London anymore.  This is sad!  I like London.  London, I like to think, likes me.  But I will be back again, I’m sure!  Right now, though, I’m in Ireland, with Aaron, who came over to join me for a pre-Christmas holiday, and we are in Galway, and it is cold and windy.  But we are also the only tourists here, so, you know, you win some, you lose some, when you travel off-season.

    One thing I will miss about London, though, is the way it enabled me to wander.  And wander and wander and wander.

    I like wandering both purposefully and aimlessly; with a goal in mind mind or simply to while away an afternoon. Is purposeful wandering an oxymoron?  I don’t think so – sometimes I will deliberately set out with the goal of wandering to a specific place.  I like wandering by myself, because then I can truly go wherever I want and and not feel like I have to worry over whether or not someone else is having a nice time. But I also like wandering with other people, because sometimes you need to witness the world with someone else there, so that you can laugh, ensemble, at the ridiculous and delightful things are in the world, which, I think, one is more attuned to whilst wandering.

    Los Angeles, I love you, but you are not always the most-wandering conducive. Sometimes you are! You are good when it comes to EPIC JOURNEYS, like walking to the beach from downtown, or walking home from school, which I haven’t done but which I keep meaning to do. Or, on a less epic level, walking through the residential streets between Santa Monica and Melrose, winding my way through mid-century low-rise land to the Fairfax trading post on a Sunday afternoon. But, Los Angeles, you are hot and sunny and sometimes you make me too tired for wandering. Also, you are a grid. A giant grid. Without tiny little sidestreets that might lead god knows where, I find my path can feel a bit prescribed . And while this makes not getting lost easier, sometimes I want to be a little lost, you know?

    So, I’m sorry Los Angeles, but London is superceding you right now. It could be because I only have a week and a half left here, and I am feeling pre-emptively nostalgic, but what can I say? In London, it is CLOUDY! And on days when it is sunny, it doesn’t actually get hot! Cool weather is good wandering weather, it’s a fact.*  Also, there are streets in London on top of streets, streets so small they are just called paths, streets that appear and go nowhere, streets that go around in circles, streets that can be frustrating, but can also be fascinating.  And there are parks full of paths that mimic those streets; parks where you feel like you’ve stepped out of the city into the countryside, even if its only for a few moments.  The parks are full of ponds and trees and dogs that look like people dressed up in dog costumes (I have noticed that most animals in England look like tiny people dressed in animal costumes.  I’m not sure why this is).  And most of London’s museums are free, yay socialism, which means that even when the weather is TRULY terrible, there is wandering to be done.

    And so, in London, I did lots of wandering, and here are some pictures of my wanderings over the past few weeks:

    *And, on a slightly tangential note, I’ve also decided since I’ve been over here that fall is my most flattering season because I can layer warm sweaters and tailored coats and look put together, whereas in Los Angeles, I’m always a bit afraid that I’m a hot, sweaty mess who is showing too much skin.

     

     

     

     

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  7. Things you can learn from Lady Robin Hood

    September 8, 2011 by ms. xandra

    Aaron and I went to Vegas a couple of weekends ago.  Most people, I have heard, go to Vegas for gambling.  Personally, I am less interested in such things, and more interested in shiny lights, showgirls, and tightrope-walking cats, all of which Vegas has in abundance because it is a magical place.  Other things that Las Vegas has that are relevant to my interests include:  restaurants that offer unlimited free wine (relevant quotation from our waitress:  ”the red is a Burgundy, the white is a Chablis, and if you mix them together, you get a rosé!”); diners with purple and pink velour booths, Tiffany lamps with flamingos on them, mirrored ceilings, and giant fake cherry trees; an entire museum about atomic bombs; all of that great fake crap (Eiffel Towers, New York Cities, etc.); and the Pinball Hall of Fame.

    Oh, the Pinball Hall of Fame!  More museums need to be like the Pinball Hall of Fame.  It is in a warehouse space in a strip-mall, and it is free to get in, and it is filled chock-a-block with restored pinball machines dating from the 1940s to now, you can play all of them, and they donate all the profits to charity.  I may or may not have used up all of Aaron’s parking meter quarters.  What was really amazing about all those old pinball machines was their art, which is fantastic and elaborate.  I’m also very interested in how femininity is represented in the art on those old pinball machines – lots of the ones from the 1940s and 1950s, in particular, featured images of women, and while most were predictably pin-uppy, a few seemed to feature ordinary girls, which makes me wonder if some of the machines may have been marketed to a young, female audience.  Basically, I would like a pinball historian to write me an interesting quasi-academic article about pinball machine art, because I think it would make for fascinating social history.

    I am not going to write that article.  Instead, I am going to tell you about how the ladies on pinball machines can teach us SO MANY THINGS about FASHION!  These are all pictures that I took of the backglass and playing field of some of the more fabulous pinball machines.  Titles of the pinball games link to their respective entries in the fantastic Internet Pinball Machine Database.

    Centigrade 37:

    Magenta tights.  I think that is the message that this is sending us:  if you are a Lady Mad Scientist, you need some magenta tights.  What is Lady Mad Scientist up to?  Is she cloning herself a Lady Supersoldier?  Reanimating a Lady Zombie? Is she putting a fellow Lady Mad Scientist into cryogenic deep freeze?  A mystery!  Frankly, it does not matter what she is doing, if she is doing it in magenta tights, she is doing it in fine style.

    Starjet:

    This is all about hair.  It when you ride your Starjet to your Starvaction spot (I am going to assume for our purposes that this gang is headed for Starlas Vegas), it is very important that your hair be perfectly coiffed.  Also, who doesn’t love pointy, pointy collars?

    But wait, there’s more!

      You really ought to make sure that the shape of your hair lines up exactly with the shape of your space helmet.  This is very important.  Like, you know how you don’t want to layer shirts with collars that don’t line up nicely?  It’s like that.

    Domino:

    The Domino artwork raises many important questions:  where can I get dominoes the size of my head?  Why does red-shirted fellow have such poor posture?  What song are the couple in the corner serenading us with?  (My money is on Toto’s “Africa.”)  And most pertinently: why am I not wearing an op-art polka dot mini dress right now?  It is perfect for every domino-playing occasion.  And I have so many of those in my life.

    Spin-a-Card:

    Stripey tent dress on the left?  Fabulous.  Fitted sun-burst print sweater on the right?  Darling.  Blue wig?  Transcendent.  This, ladies, is how you should be dressing when you harness the powers of witchcraft to make playing cards grow to 10 times their normal size and then levitate.

    Bowling Queen:

    Again with the hair, right?  I love the pincurls on the redhead and the blonde, and the beehive on the waitress.  Also, what a lovely patriotic bowling shirt.  That girl isn’t just bowling for the title of Bowling Queen.  She is bowling for freedom.  Or whatever.

    Lady Robin Hood:

    Oh, Lady Robin Hood, you impress me so much.  There are no words.  But I do have words for the way ingeniously pair the green chapeau with yellow feather and a red outfit.  Those words are: to die for.

    And just look at your band of Merry Women!  They are also fabulous.  And they have taught me a very important lesson.  You see, I had always wondered why I had never managed to make it as a Infamous Lady Outlaw, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, running an Outlaw empire based out of a complicated network of treehouses that run through Sherwood Forest:  it is because I never thought to pair hot pants, a bustier, and pumps with a bow and arrow.  WHAT WAS I THINKING.  Perhaps it is not too late.  I will head to Ye Olde Americayne Apparelle on the morrow, because I’m pretty sure they will have that entire outfit in stock.

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  8. Makeover, makeover!

    May 26, 2011 by ms. xandra

    It’s blog makeover time! Pardon the current state of disorder, things will be shiny and lovely soon!

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  9. A SONG FOR XANDRA!

    May 12, 2011 by ms. xandra

    I appreciate the Eurovision Song Contest so much this year.  I mean, I appreciate it EVERY year, and I am obviously going to have a Sandie Shaw/Lulu/Eurovision dissertation chapter, but this year, it has taken on new meaning in my heart.  After the disappointing and yet also somewhat exciting Canadian election, and after the disastrous and soul crushing union election that made me lose my faith in human decency, Eurovision is a blessed change, because it is a voting-related event in which, no matter what the outcome is, it can only end well.  It can only ever end with singing and dancing!  This is an election I can COMPLETELY get behind. I can also get behind Serbia’s entry, because look at these go-go dresses.  This is probably my favorite of this year’s crop:

    And I can get behind Ireland’s entry, because look at that hair on those two fabulous young lads who are inexplicably called Jedward:

    ETA:  BREAKING NEWS.  Do you know what we are missing by not living in the United Kingdom?  We are missing the fact that last year, THIS was Jedward’s debut single.

    Macedonia, I can sort of get behind, because there is kind of a profound and belligerent idiocy to this song that is nonetheless somehow endearing:

    The only way I can explain Belgium’s entry is that Belgian used car salesment are, like, really into Glee, or something?

    And Portugal, well, sadly Portugal did not make it past the semi-final.  Possibly this is because their act basically already looks like what a Saturday Night Live parody of a Eurovision act might look like.  Possibly it is because these people cannot actually sing.  But, my heavens, they do have the one essential quality of a Eurovision performance down pat:  EARNESTNESS.

    And I was going to end with some profoud remarks on the gloriousness that occurs when artifice and earnestness spectacularly collide, but I am tired, and thus I will leave you with my personal Eurovision muse, Lulu, singing the greatest song of all time:

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  10. Men Seldom Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses

    April 5, 2011 by ms. xandra

    Last Friday, the UCLA library hosted the Edible Book Festival, wherein one creates an edible representation of a book of one’s choice.  Here!  You can read all about it! My lovely and talented friend Jill and I entered, with our rendition, in cake, of  my (BFF 4-eva!) Dorothy Parker’s first collection of poems, Enough Rope, a compendium of wit, cynicism, lonely hearts, and booze.

    That, my friends, is a whiskey, coffee, and chocolate cake (recipe snatched from Epicurious) with a cigarette smoke flavored glaze of our own creation – we made it by melting some butter and powdered sugar, and stirring in some bourbon and liquid smoke.  We were trying to represent, in taste, what this book is about.  The cake is decorated with pills, rope, and wilted flowers that we made out of gumpaste during a meeting of the Fashionable Ladies’ Gumpaste Sculpture Society, which is an exclusive club, comprised of Jill and myself,  that I made up just now.   The board that it’s on is not edible – it’s parchment that I painted with ink and mounted on foamcore – but everybody kept asking if it was.  I should probably have told them it was a giant cookie, then maybe we would have won.

     

     

     

    We did not win, sadly, as it seems that cute carries the day at the Edible Book Festival, and it turns out that not everyone thinks booze and cigarette and pills and rope are cute.  (Not even when they’re made out of gumpaste!)  I also question the gastronomical credibility of the judges, because I overheard one of them ask the girl beside me (who made a lovely If You Give a Mouse a Cookie Cake) if fondant is made out of cheese.  HOWEVER, our cake was pretty amazing, if under appreciated.  As a non-smoker, I wouldn’t know, but I was told that it tasted just like smoking a cigarette, in a good way.  The epicurious cake recipe is good – really good – you should try it.

    And special thanks, as always, to Aaron, my Man Friday and official photographer!

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