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![]() September 30, 1998 |
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ATTACK OF THE LIVER LIPS LADY I have to take this moment to stop and bitch about this girl in my Latin class who's driving me crazy. Not the girl who took the time to talk to me when she saw that I looked all brainy-like and could maybe help her do her homework, then promptly forgot about my existence when she found someone better-looking to play host to her parasitic charms -- no. She's merely annoying. I'm talking about Phaedra, this woman who drives me completely up the fucking wall. If you want to imagine this woman, just think if Brett Butler and Marlon Brando had a kid born with all the wit and personality of Gallagher. Then you've got Phaedra. She's stupid, she's loud, she's incoherent, she has a voice like a toad gurgling butter, and her idea of humor is throwing out tired feminist epithets that no one finds rational, much less wants to hear. The fact that she looks and dresses like a cross between the Swiss Miss and Doctor Frank N. Furter just doesn't help. When asked why she thought the Greek sky god was male, she said "Because Mother Earth is nurturing and gentle and gives life, and the male god is there to add torment and be angry and kill the women with lightning bolts". Great. You're dismissed, Phaedra, I don't want you to miss your lunch date with Andrea Dworkin. It gets better. When the professor starts talking about etymological roots of various words, such as taceo, tacere being the root of the English "taciturn", good old Phaedra (who CERTAINLY doesn't understand the meaning of taciturn, believe me), pipes up with a spirited "Huh!?!?!" and then makes fun of the professor for having a vocabulary, all the while guffawing with laughter that calls to mind images of Boss Hogg choking down baby back ribs. I try to be open-minded. I try to be kind. I try to be a good neophile and accept people for who they are, and not casually dismiss people whom I regard to be subhuman wastes of flesh unworthy of the privilege of occupying space on this planet, but sometimes I meet a person who's so cataclysmically irritating I'm sitting at my desk contemplating impromptu tracheotomies with my Sanford Uniball. I really hate that woman. |
It's been a busy week. I'll tell you why in a bit. I'll also fulfill a promise I made to tell you about Howard's Apartments, but I have to tell you about something else first. Actually, a handful of things. My friend Ace has started a web project of his own. Neuronoise has been in the works for a long time; it was originally intended to house a variety of input and content from our little circle of friends (as evinced by the large number of links on the front end), but has been plagued by lack of time and inclination, and never really taken off as it deserved. Ace's presence project, however, deserves a loot, not only because he is one of my best and oldest friends, but because he is, and always has been, a very forthright person, and has no pretentions about who he is and what he does. And I don't mention this because he mentions me and flatters me to no end. I would never do such a thing, never ever, so don't even think such terrible thoughts. I would never be so vain. By the way, I designed the front end! ME ME ME DAMMIT! Anyway. I thought it needed mention. Now to ramble about obsession for a bit. Anyone who's read this blamed thing at least once through will know that I have my obsessions, like anyone else, and that they run in streaks. Every once in a while I wax panicky about growing old. I go paralyzed with fear over becoming my father. I doubt my own self-worth with such clockwork precision you could time reconaissance insertions with it. Then, of course, I tend to overdose on my own obsessions, choking on them at last, and abandon them for something else. Anything else. At least until they resurface again, a psychological Hydra ready for another Herculean labor of self-pity. Lately, my obsessions seem to be hanging on with more tenacity than usual. The 19th century sailing ship thing is still going, for one thing. I went off looking for sailing ship models with Greg yesterday. God knows where I get these cockamamie notions. I haven't put together models since that misbegotten F4 Phantom II I made in 8th grade (you know, the ones with the giant snot-runners of glue going all up and down the fuselage), and before that a snap-together model of the Space Shuttle Enterprise that was subsequently destroyed through many "realistic" simulations of what would happen if Buck Rogers really flew into a black hole ("I'm Buck Rogers and... OH MY GOD NO!" *CRUNCH ...ZETZ...* "Mom my space shuttle broke!"). Suddenly I read some Moby Grape and I think I'm gonna go out and rebuild the U.S.S. Constitution, complete with authentic sail rigging. Yeah, right. Fortunately for my pocketbook, modeling seems to be dead... at least in this town. The sparse handful of hobby shops we visited had plenty of Starship Enterprise and Chevy truck models to go around, but precious little in the way of galleon, schooner, or what have you. Bastards. Now, and perhaps of some relief to you, dear reader, the 19th century sailing ship obsession is giving way to World War II obsession. I bought Panzer General II last week, and started having a great deal of fun with that, to the almost immediate detriment of my writing and studies. I briefly considered dropping thirty bucks on this multimedia history of World War II, but I managed to beat back that orgiastic consumer urge just long enough to buy thirty dollars worth of books instead. I now have Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, An Illustrated History of the Netherworld, a book on basic Egyptian hieroglyphs, and a dictionary of foreign phrases (always handy to wow 'em at the cocktail party set). I also bought a hardcover of Moby Dick that I gave to James as a gift. I think the book-buying / book-reading obsession may soon reach critical mass, at the point where I realize that there's no way in hell I'm going to get all this shit read anytime soon. Well, not and pass my classes, anyway. Speaking of reading, I'm up to Genesis 25 in the Tanakh, and well into Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. Yay for me. I'm sure that thrills you stupid. So, from whaling to sailing to blitzkrieg to Gregor Samsa and Jarvis Lorry in the space of two weeks. Diverse in interests, or just schizophrenic? You make the call. I also got the University's School of Education pages most of the way finished, and presented them to my boss for perusal. Hearty acceptance and hurrahs all around, which makes me happy and relieved. The greater bulk of that burden is off my shoulders, for now. The one thing I need to attend to is the filling out of my graduation papers, which is now quite late, and needs to get done, pronto. Graduation is altogether a good thing, and I'd like to experience before my first gray hair. Work on THE NOTEBOOK has stagnated lately, if only because I've been catching up with class, doing the University web page, reading, and trying to catch up on all the bills that have stacked up over the summer and fall. Now that I've finally gotten a handle on that, I can get back to the more enjoyable things. Well, that's the story in the Church of What's Happening Now. Tomorrow I'll tell you about Howard's. Promise. No, really. Swear to God. -Dan |