On the Purchase of Clothing

What do you find to be the most hateful-but-necessary task on your to-do list? Life is full of such errands and duties, but I’m convinced that shopping for clothes is the worst.  At least, it’s the most evil necessity that comes to mind. Shopping for food or household goods?  Not too bad, even if I’m a bit hungry and the shop’s a bit full.  Going to the credit union?  Pretty painless, honestly. Going through voicemails? Takes forever, but I can multitask.  Waiting at the DMV?  A rare occurrence, and you can always take a book.

Shopping for clothes?  I will be exhausted by the end.

It always feels too expensive, considering how cheaply made all the fabric is, and none of it ever looks good.  I increasingly need clothing that does the miraculous, and increasingly find tissue-thin polyester in weird colors and blindingly bizarre designs, assembled into shapeless garments: clothing incapable of achieving even the mundane goal of fitting, much less the miraculous of flattering.

Which means that I take a really careless approach.  If I took a careful approach – hunting for a particular color or style, hemming and hawing over each object as I pull it from the rack, pondering each outfit for several minutes in the mirror – I would never buy anything and, moreover, I would spend so much energy and so many emotions on the attempt.  I don’t have that time, or that energy, so I tell myself “Okay.  Grab stuff theoretically in your size that isn’t black or blue” – sane and generally flattering colors, meaning both fill my closet already – “and hie thee to the dressing room.”

At first I just thought it was a “screw it” approach.  But it’s also a “You won’t know until you try” approach.  Polka dots a size up?  Why not.  A dress that appears to have both splashes of Pepto-Bismol AND the vibrant green of Nyquil?  Sure.  Something virulently salmon?  Trying it.  A dress with the sort of line-based gradient meant to effect an optical illusion of some helpful variety?  Go for it.  Peach lace frock, stripy knit day dress, and a pair of linen pants? For all I know, they’ll work.  Desperation tugs me into a state of open-mindedness like nothing else.

…of course, sometimes you do, in fact, know before trying.  I honestly did know the linen trousers and translucent silk shirts were not going to be winners.  There was a moment where they sort of approached success – grey and salmon were kind of fun and felt daring together! – except for all the spots that neither item fit.  And then there are the garments that are really REALLY long.  This comic? It is the truest thing I have ever seen.  Who exactly are the Amazon giantesses that clothing designers evidently focus on dressing? The fitting room attendant was concerned I’d trip.

All in all, I keep wondering if designers are insane.  Do they not believe in knee-length skirts this year?  Do they not have a full palette of colors to work with?  I hunted for “summer-y” shades, and found white, black, the aforementioned blindingly bizarre patterns, and a few silk shirts in taupe. Are we being punked? Did all the fashion people make a bet about who could get consumers to pay the most for the privilege of looking the stupidest? There are rompers on the racks, for Pete’s sake, and those stupid heavy shoes that look like hooves.

…and then I wandered past the men’s department on my way to the checkout.

There are button-ups in the solid, summery colors I was looking for. There are t-shirts which look to be opaque. The craziest designs in sight were straightforward plaid.

Catch y’all later. I’ll be in the men’s section.

Speed Poems, or What You Will

Last month, I went to Comic Con.

It was fantastic, in the old, heady, fantasy-based, rather terrifying sense of the word.

It was also exhausting.

No, I did not dress up as an anime character. I went as an exhibitor.

My friend, to be known as The Grackle, (that is even how I have saved his phone number,) runs, organizes, prints, and hand binds a literary magazine. This entertaining and enlightening romp through a vale of modern literature and literary critiques is called the Grub Street Grackle.

This Grackle, being tenacious and persuasive, decided to sell magazines and promote the brand name at Comic Con. And he offered me a free ticket to help him man the booth.

Being of a slightly nerdy persuasion, I agreed.

But there was a catch. The gimmick was to offer FREE bad poetry.

“Free baaaaad poetry! Step right up and get your freeeee bad poetry! Give us three words and five minutes, and we will give you the WORST poetry you have heard all day. Guaranteed or your many back!”

It was exciting, intense, and exhausting. I give you here some glimpses of our efforts. (Some are done my yours truly, and some by The Grackle Himself.)

 

Words: hat, peanut, hero

Bad Poem:

How deep are the depths
of my soul?
They about as deep
as the inside of an overturned
hat, like a really big one,
like, think Abe Lincoln
times a million.
How rich are the contents of my
fertile mind?
As rich as the contents of a very
good peanut.
I am my own hero.

 

 

Words: ancient, dead, Tardis

Bad Poem:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the Tardis is spread out against the sky,
Like a walrus, dead on a table.
Ancient in its magnitude,
Rogue in time and space and fable.

 

Words: guinea pig, insomnia, creepy

Bad Poetry:

Oh, my, oh, me, oh, oh,
oh.
Ah me.
I lost my guinea pig.
Now I live
alone.
Except for my room mate.
And he’s real loud and creepy.
Now I have insomnia.
Oh, ah, me, ah, oh.

Words: daisy, girth, testicular

Bad poem:

I travel the cosmic daisy chain,
Hopping form leaf to leaf,
Flying between elaborate worlds
In my ship, the “Absolute Girth,”
Flying my sails occasionally furled,
And avoiding vestigial, testicular claims.

 

 

 

 

 

Words: children, lighthouse, castle

Bad Poem:

We in this world
are all but children,
adrift in a sea of confusion
with no guide,
no lighthouse,
helpless,
sad.
Like kings without a castle,
or something.

Words: chloroplast, amoeba, eggplant (but a the time I could not remember how to spell chloroplast)

Bad Poem:

You are my chloroplast,
My darling chloroplast,
You shake my amoebas,
When I’m on an eggplant fast.
You’ll never know dear,
How wormy my cells are,
Unless you blast light at
a magnified degree
through a microscope
at your eye and see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are many, many more, discovering in varying degrees the cross-section of idiocy and brilliance. The rest, should you wish to pursue them, may be found at the Grackle facebook page. We wrestled with words like Ramadan, cat, Jayne Cobb, regurgitation (that one was given by Captain America himself!) spaghetti, and carcinogenic.

And I know that there is one I wrote about watermelon and love that is actually almost a decent poem, but I cannot find it. If you spot it, let me know!

The rest of Comic Con was fun too. Crazy, obsessive, and bone-wearying, but fun.

Lightsabers, and Other Sundry Issues

A friend recently remarked on the Book of Face that science does actually have the ability to make lightsabers. But most scientists prefer to spend their efforts on more worthwhile endeavors, such as discovering the “hemihelix”.

In the immortal words of this friend,

“Look, I’m not saying the hemihelix won’t end up curing cancer or something — I’m just saying, WHERE’S MY LIGHTSABER?!”

I can only concur, and invite you all to sign a lightsaber petition and send it to the nearest scientists with a degree in  . . . . physics? what type of physics would produce a lightsaber, astrophysics?

But before you run off to do that, I have two things for you to watch.

The first is beautiful, excellent, and well done.

The second is a terrible idea, horribly made, and with very bad props. (Don’t worry, I found the edited version that contains only the BEST 15 minutes of an otherwise hour-long program.)

Guess which one was done professionally.

 

 

Grading Lament

I have two full weeks of school left, and one week of finals. And at the end of finals week, I must have all the finals graded and entered.

Talk about crazy. My school is small, but grading 28 6-page finals (just for Intro Latin) in 2 days is already giving me nightmares and cold sweats. Not to mention the finals for the other classes.

Also, I am suffering from dull but persistent headaches, a stuffy nose, a severely sore throat, bleary eyes, and fits of sneezing. I think it is the stress and boredom of grading. Or the Texas Allergens. Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.

Whatever the cause, I have gone through two bottles of lemon juice and my whole bear-jar of organic honey in this weekend alone.

So instead of doing the grading that I actually have this weekend, I am adapting Adelaide’s Lament into an Official Grading Lament. Behold:

 

It says here:
The average full-time teacher
At the end of school year
Due to some long frustration may react
With psychosomatic symptoms
Difficult to endure
Affecting the upper respiratory tract.

In other words, just from grading a number of tests and essays untold,
A teacher can develop a cold.

You can spray her wherever you figure the streptococci lurk
You can give her a shot for whatever’s she’s got, but it just won’t work
If she’s tired of seeing “a lot” spelled as just one word,
A teacher can develop a cold.

It says here:
The teachers possessing “free time”
Just in the legal sense
Show a neurotic tendancy, see note: (looks at note)
Chronic organic symptoms
Toxic or hypertense
Involving the eye, the ear, the nose, and throat.

In other words, just from spending all weekend grading on and off,
A teacher can develop a cough.

You can feed her all day with the vitamin A and the bromofizz
But the medicine never gets anywhere near where the trouble is.
If she’s getting up early to finish correcting the 80^th quiz,
A teacher can develop a cough.

And furthur more, just from spelling, and grammar,
And the uncited quip,
A teacher can develop la grippe.

When she collects all the homework on Tuesday,
And grades it by Wednesday night
She expects a free day
But remembers the final exams that she still must write,
A person can develop la grippe,
La grippe.
La post nasal drip.
With the wheezes
And the sneezes
And a sinus that’s really a pip!
From a lack of sufficient sleeping
And a red pen clutched in a death-hold,
A teacher can develop a bad, bad cold!
(sneeze)

 

So go on, sing away to the anthem of teachers this time of year! And I pray that you develop no colds of your own.

Why I Haven’t Read That Book Yet: Pastiche

Why I Haven’t Read That Book Yet, Part 5: There Are a Lot of Reasons, Really

I Sort of Encountered It Already/No Narrative Lust – This is basically the opposite problem of yesterday’s post.  Sometimes you read the dumbed-down and sugar-coated version as a child; sometimes you see a movie or stage production or some other medium.  Because you know where the plot goes, more or less, you don’t bother with the unabridged, unadulterated prose of the original book.

This is part of the reason Lord of the Rings took me such a long time.  It’s why I haven’t been especially inclined to read certain Shakespeare plays: A Winter’s Tale, Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Henry V, and Coriolanus can wait.  It’s why I haven’t gotten more than 100 pages into Les Miserables or 3 chapters into Moby Dick or any pages into A Christmas Carol.  Having read a version or two of Arthurian legends, I haven’t read Morte d’Arthur.

But who knows?  Maybe one day I’ll want to see how the author originally wrote it.

Critically Acclaimed and Hated – That is, critics loved it, but a friend/relative/other trusted source reported it as loathsome in some respect.  This is why I never bothered with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and sequels.

I Read It And Then Forgot It – “The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers ‘I’ve read it already’ to be a conclusive argument against reading a work. We have all known women who remembered a novel so dimly that they had to stand for half an hour in the library skimming through it before they were certain they had once read it. But the moment they became certain, they rejected it immediately. It was for them dead, like a burnt-out match, an old railway ticket, or yesterday’s paper; they had already used it. Those who read great works, on the other hand, will read the same work ten, twenty or thirty times during the course of their life.”  Thanks, Jack.  By that metric, I don’t even know how many books I ought to reread.

I Dropped It in the Bath – This reason comes from Thalia.  I have never actually done this, because the idea of dropping a book in the tub has dissuaded me from the salutary practice of reading at bathtime.  The peace and rest would be shattered by frantically grabbing the volume, attempting to towel off the cover, thumbing helplessly and hopelessly at the waterlogged pages.  When it eventually dries out, the crinkled pages remind you of your folly forever.

It’s in a Language I Haven’t Learned (Yet) – This one is also from Thalia, but resonates with me.  Some things are more than adequate in translation, or so we are assured, but we won’t be able to judge that for ourselves until we’ve read the original Greek/French/Russian/Atlantean/etc.

No One Has Commanded Me To So I Figured It Wasn’t Urgent – If it’s a book that has no champions, not even the advertising e-mails from the bookstore, then I will probably pass it over in favor of something else.  But by that token, no one will care if I’ve ignored it.  Victory!

I HAVE NO EXCUSE; I AM A VICIOUS AND SLOTHFUL CREATURE.  Increasingly, this is my answer.  Opening a new book is lovely, but it is a commitment of sorts.  Sometimes I am so lazy that even that teeny little commitment is off-putting, such that I end up wasting all sorts of time online instead.

What’s your go-to reason?

Why I Haven’t Read That Book Yet: Cliffhanger Avoidance

Why I Haven’t Read That Book Yet, Part 4: I Don’t Want Another Cliffhanger

I was among those who started reading the Harry Potter books at age 12 when only the first three books were out.  And so began the waiting: a few months until Goblet of Fire, three YEARS until Order of the Phoenix, another couple years for Half-Blood Prince, and two more until the finale in Deathly Hallows.  In retrospect, waiting was part of why I loved the books so much: no matter how many other books I read from 1999 to 2007, there was always this series I reread and revisited, learning it like the back of my hand, sewing it into my mental map of reality, into my language.

All of which meant I used to get impatient with people who couldn’t remember, say, the difference between a Muggle and a Squib; that’s like confusing albinism with melanism, or worse.  But a year or so ago, I read all the Hunger Games books in 4 days and forgot most of the details in them after a few months.  Sure, I could paint a broad picture of what bad stuff goes down, what affronts to human dignity take place, and perhaps which people die, but I couldn’t name all the tributes or victors or weird technological weaponry that gets used.  None of my Hunger Games discussions can turn on a detail like that.  I realized that my rereading in anticipation of the next installment of Harry Potter made me so much more literate in that universe, and rather insane invested in the storyline and characters.

All of which sounds like an argument for getting into a series, even if it isn’t finished, right?  After all, even if the larger story told in the series weren’t finished, each book has its own plot which can stand alone, more or less.  But the longer and more expansive the series gets, the more loaded each book, and the more pressure there is for the crisis to be reached and resolved, the loose ends to be tied and tucked neatly away.  Years of waiting for that can take their toll; just look at the Sherlock fandom.  Whatever good you get out of the wait, you also get…the wait.  Nor do you have any guarantee that your patience will be satisfied.  Christopher Tolkien and Brian Herbert attempted to finish book projects their fathers John and Frank had begun (reviews on the resulting books are mixed); Robert Jordan died before finishing Wheel of Time; and they are far from the only authors who died, leaving unfinished stories.  I’ve said that I won’t start reading A Song of Ice and Fire until George R. R. Martin finishes writing them, which at his current rate (extrapolated from the other publishing dates) might well be 2027.  Or it might not happen at all.  Some friends want to discuss the extant books and thus urge me to reconsider; I’ve been accumulating Martin’s books gradually in preparation, and I might crack the first two before buying more.

Unfinished series don’t always put me off; I’ve started the Dresden Files and found that there are enough of them to keep me busy for a while (I started reading them over a year ago and am only 9 books in).  And meanwhile, sometimes a series is complete, but I still hesitate to start it because I’m not sure which book comes first.  This is why I haven’t started the Earthsea Cycle yet (do you have to read “The Word of Unbinding” first?  Are there three books or six? Someone please share their wisdom).  It’s why I haven’t read Vale of the Vole, despite my friend’s insistence that I’d love it – it’s the tenth of a series I haven’t tracked down.  Then there are times when I gleefully read things out of order:  I read the Peter-and-Harriet books before I got to Peter’s bachelor days, and Prisoner of Azkaban before Chamber of Secrets.

What series(es) have torn you up with waiting?  Which are tearing at you right now?  Upon which cliffs do you hang?

Why I Haven’t Read That Book Yet: Sleep

Why I Haven’t Read That Book Yet, Part 3: I Keep Falling Asleep

There are a number of wonderful books which, though highly recommended, I have not finished because I fall asleep every time I try to read them.  Even when I’m not reading in bed, I fall asleep: I curl up in my chair, I melt into the couch, I lie on the floor like a cat.  This probably indicates that I don’t get enough rest at night, but perhaps it also indicates something about my reading material.

Some might think falling asleep indicates the book is dull.  I think it mostly reflects the reader’s (lack of) wakefulness, blood circulation, and attention span; it’s not necessarily the book’s fault.  Thalia and I discussed the fact that though Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture is beautiful, lucid, and interesting, we conk out after a few pages.  My theory is that the ideas are heavy.  It’s like trying to balance a number of well-cut rocks.  You can follow where the reasoning goes, but you also have to carry where you’ve been with you, as though you were trying to pick up a road as you walk on it.  That’s the heavy bit, keeping all those premises in mind, and it exhausts my brain.

Presumably this is also why I fall asleep reading Orthodoxy and, to my shame, Studies in Words.  Possibly I made my attempts at both books in a severely compromised state, since by all rights I ought to have read and loved them by now.  It’s why I never finished my Intercollegiate Studies Institute Reading (work by Kirk and Burke, oh my) or Frankenstein (which still waits on my bedside table for me to return to it).

What books have you fallen asleep reading?