Asides

Given today’s date, and the fact that I’m spending the holiday alone, I was thinking about posting a translation of another bittersweet (well, OK, perhaps more bitter than sweet) Catullus lyric. So I was looking through old notebooks for translations I’d done in the Latin poetry seminar I took a while ago, and in the back of one of them, I found these questions that I’d copied from somewhere — I can’t recall where, but they seem to be about writing. I had to grin, because taken together, I think they make a fine little found poem of questions to ask about your relationship. Enjoy.

Valentine Questions

Have you failed
To imagine ways to create tension?
Have you used dreams
Ineffectively?
Have you made insufficient use
Of irony?
Have you drifted
Too early
Into lyrical passages?

Mason and Dixon. Bread and butter. Marx and Engels. Chocolate and peanut butter. Woodward and Bernstein.

Texas holdem and phentermine?

Why do these things always appear together in comment spam? I’m trying to imagine the spammers’ reasoning process: “Let’s see; they’re going to be sitting at their computers, placing multiple bets. . . So. . . Oh! They might get fat! Let’s make sure they don’t get fat! If they’re gonna gamble online and risk getting fat, it’s imperative we also offer them an anti-fat drug with their online poker game!”

What’s next? A free credit report with your dirty pictures?

John kindly pointed out that my comments aren’t working. After a comment spam flood, I tried installing a couple anti-spam plugins; apparently, there’s a problem with the plugins, said problem likely being located somewhere between my keyboard and my chair. My apologies if you haven’t been able to leave comments — I’m working on getting it fixed.

Update: well, comments seem to be working again, and the spammers are back. Sigh.

So, yeah, Sir Paul’s Super Bowl performance bored me, which — in retrospect — seems kind of amazing. But, I mean, you’ve got a man who’s a proven pop-musical genius, and he’s handed the biggest stage he could want, and he does . . .oldies? (Yes, I own Rubber Soul and the White Album. Lay off, already.)

Heck with that. Twenty minutes is twelve hundred seconds. Here’s my performance wish list for next year’s Super Bowl half-time.

1. Dead Kennedys, “Trust Your Mechanic” 2:55
2. Outkast, “Bombs Over Baghdad” 5:03
3. L7, “Wargasm” 2:42
4. Marilyn Manson, “The Beautiful People” 3:38
5. Patti Smith, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger” 3:23

Total: not quite eighteen minutes, which I figure leaves time for pyrotechnics and wardrobe malfunctions.

The eyes of America are upon you: for twenty minutes, what sort of a musical show would you give us?

Well that was an underwhelming Super Bowl. I’m a ‘Skins and a Steelers fan, so I wasn’t rooting for either the Eagles or the Patriots, but still, even though it was a close game, it wasn’t like either team played particularly well. Couple that to an insipid half-time show (I certainly wasn’t looking for a wardrobe malfunction, but come on: just about anything is more engaging than four songs’ worth of Paul McCartney doing played-out AOR) and not even a single marginally interesting commercial and I’m reminded, yet again, why I rarely watch anything other than rented movies. I mean, even The Simpsons sucked tonight.

Meh. It even got to the point where I was reading Lindquist while waiting for the game to end. Well, there’s always next season, and maybe Coach Gibbs will hit his stride with the ‘Skins. Right now, I think it’s time for a little catnip and Post-It note action with the girls.

My New Year’s resolution was to cut out alcohol as of January 1st. I’m doing fine so far, which is what I was hoping for, and also maybe a little bit expecting (knock on wood), given past experience: I quit smoking on my 30th birthday after having had a pack-a-day Camel filters habit for fourteen years, and I’ve never had the desire to go back. Which isn’t to say it’s easy, exactly: just like when I ditched the nicotine, I’ve had a terrible sweet tooth for the past three weeks. Today, it was an ice cream bar, picked up on my way home from campus and saved for after dinner. So I’m sitting there at my desk, with my ice cream bar, and Zeugma decides that this is very interesting. No dice when she stretches out a paw for it (maybe it’s the food on a stick thing that does it for her?), so she quickly dashes into the other room, and comes trotting back with a Post-It note in her teeth. Deposits it in front of me, looks at me expectantly, and then — when I don’t do what she clearly expects of me — stretches out a paw for the ice cream again. Post-it note, ice cream: that’s a good trade, right?

It’s the last day of final conferences with students, and I’m getting a little punchy. Like, I’m having a hard time resisting the impulse to make chicken noises.

Student: Hi, Mike. Here’s my portfol–

Mike: PUCUUUCK!

I have no idea why I have this impulse.

I’ve still got grading in front of me — and, yes (argh) Christmas shopping too — but the semester is, for the most part, done, and so I’m tallying student weblog entries while seated in the stereo’s sweet spot, listening to Solti conduct Beethoven’s 9th with the volume too loud, and feeling a bit holidayish. For the very first year, there’s a Christmas tree in my living room, adorned with the ornaments I inherited from my mom, and when I go to bed, I turn off all the lights except for the ones on the tree, and stand and look at the multicolored pine needle shadows across the living room ceiling, and feel like a kid again. The girls were at first terrified by the huge green thing in the corner, but as soon as I hung the first non-fragile ornament from the lower branches, it was on, baby.

As always, I’m gonna miss my students; as always, there are a couple who — in their various combinations of generosity, intelligence, caprice, perseverance, talent, and sheer stubbornness — I really hope might stay in touch.

I decided to take down the start on the short story that I put up yesterday. It’s something that I’d been scribbling down notes and ideas for back in 2000 and 2001, but reading it over today, with all the guys dying in Iraq, it seemed wrong to post a comedic story so closely linked to that context and using the idea of a ‘dead’ (i.e., war game pretend kills) platoon. When I was in the Army, there was a lot of funny stuff that happened, but a lot of unfunny stuff, too, and this just doesn’t feel like the time to be cracking jokes.