it's not exactly quantum theory
NOTES FOR SOMETHING ELSE OR MAYBE NOTHING AT ALL: WRITTEN ON A RECEIPT FROM TARGET
Winter, economize. On everything—food/sleep/sex, new experiences, the number of notes in my listening material. (The drone is now compulsory.)
I loved her because she didn't know how not to look at people. Eye contact like a torn map and we'll never get back home now.
ONE LINK AND ONE REASON WHY I WON'T BE TRAVELING TO TWICKENHAM
The best thing I have read today. Actually, the whole blog is gold, particularly when it hurls insults at Indiana. Sorry Indiana but I don't like you either! You are a silly place indeed!
Check out #2. What did I say? What did I say, oh odd little British Lit professor of my junior year, whose face haunted my dreams from the day I realized that it would look exactly the same upside down? I believe the poem under discussion was “The Kraken,” and I believe I freaked out mid-lecture and started Holding Forth (an unfortunate habit at the time), and I believe the phrase I used was “a C+ poem at best.” And you looked at me with your upside-down (or right-side-up???!!???) face and we never really trusted each other after that.
Also, my all-consuming Tennyson hatred that semester inspired my boyfriend to regularly climb out onto the roof of his apartment and declaim Alfred's tepid verses to me as I took the “walk of fame” back to my place. That should have been my first clue, but did I listen? No. Reader, I married him.
YOU'RE COMING TO THE 21st CENTURY WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
Notifylist is well and truly hosed (it refused to notify anyone of the last three entries) and I have dropped it like Reggie Brown drops footballs. I put another email sign-up thingy on this page, but who knows if that works. If you like personal notification, you should start using Bloglines or some other type of RSS feed, now that Diaryland supports that sort of thing. But be sure to still send me email once in a while, because I get lonely otherwise, and I think there was something about the notification email from me that encouraged people to write back. I think comment threads on a personal website are worse than useless, but I will become all saddified without a huge backlog of email. To which it will take months to reply. But if we can't drink beer together email is the next best thing.
NOT BOOK REVIEWS
1. I read the much-reviewed The Year of Magical Thinking and found it sort of blah—I appreciate that there are not many good words to be found about grief and loss but the repetition of ordinary phrases in an effort to give them emotional weight is kind of a facile trick. It almost felt like a weird Vonnegut-style echolalia, except not funny. That said, what really struck me was how often Joan Didion—Joan Didion!—eats at McDonald's. She mentions it three times by my count and whoa, maybe I'm a snob but Joan Didion! Eats at McDonald's!
2. Now I am reading A Spot of Bother, which the reviews usually call “enjoyable,” and I have to agree. It is strange how this word can feel like an insult, with its implications of mass-market appeal or a breezy lack of gravitas. This book won't change your life, but the characters are memorable and there is enough dry good humor to hold it together. The cover has a picture of a bunch of people standing on a wedding cake, the whole thing in silhouette, but I am bothered by the presence of a silhouetted dog because there is no dog in the book. I have 70-odd pages to go, so I guess a dog could still show up. REQUEST FOR SPOILERS: WILL THERE BE A DOG TELL ME PLEASE I MUST KNOW. (Kidding.)
TWO MORE BITES AND WE CAN ALL HAVE DESSERT
1. Nora starts swim lessons Saturday. I figured we should probably take advantage of her utter fearlessness at this age, where she will willingly hurl herself into whatever void is available. Jumping in the pool, jumping off the couch, foolishly telling me of her plans to climb on the dining room table and leap into a pile of underpants*—if it's extreme, she will try it. She is old enough for the swim class to NOT be a “mommy-and-me” type deal (thank god), although I do get to watch from the bleachers. I give it two lessons before Nora starts asking for scuba gear or stunt-diving tips or barracuda to be released in the water to make things more interesting.
*Plans promptly squashed. Also, when I inquired about the underpants (?), she reasoned that she has a lot of underpants (true), and that, piled up, they would make a nice soft place to land, and further added that she planned to use only clean underpants because clean ones would be fluffier and safer. Oh well okay then!
2. Sometimes my morning bus ride is this strange, slightly magical journey where I look out the window from my regal height (is it just me, or is there something queenly/horse-drawn-carriage-ish about the perspective of the bus seat?), anthropomorphize building materials (seriously, there are certain bricks for which I have a deep and abiding tenderness), and think interesting thoughts. There are other times when my bus ride is twenty minutes of unwelcome proximity to unwashed strangers and being rattled about in an overheated metal box. I have had many more of the latter recently. Bring back the happy bus feelings!
—mimi smartypants asked you nicely.