FUN AT THE OFFICE (D25)

There may be a rumor that I have a "sex blog".

From another corner of the internet: What do you do if you're the government of a struggling country trying to improve your image in the world and move beyond your Soviet legacy but western European leaders threaten to boycott your very important sport events (EURO 2012!) because of alleged "human rights violantions"? Invoke the Cold War!

The great thing about having a job with long hours and very little work is you can come up with all sorts of pointless ideas and then BLOG ABOUT THEM.

One example: Reading Swann's Way and Herzog at the same time makes me want to create some sort of psychological therapy that involves forcing people with mild neurosis to read a series of works with main characters that are completely neurotic. I think this could either work really well or be a complete disaster. Perhaps this strategy could be expanded with the help of experimental psychiatry. In the meantime...any other suggestions for such a list...please share in the comments.

WEEKEND ONCE AGAIN (D23-24, BACKDATED)

Another great non-grad weekend.  Hanging out on a dark and smokey terrace watching people try to move to deep house, cafe hopping and clothes swapping, sunshine and finally watching some Game of Thrones.

I also went to a Goya exhibit that's in town. Mostly just engravings, two large and unattractive commissioned portraits and some paintings of Spanish children running around in the street. Philistine as I am I found it difficult to enjoy the more tame of Goya's works; I much prefer Saturn Devouring His Son to Maja, naked and clothed. [Note: the most extensive wikipedia article for La maja desnuda is written in...wait for it...Turkish!]

 I really liked the series of etchings called Follies or Proverbs, darkly shaded engravings depicting "folly" of all kinds: Feminine Folly, Folly of Poverty, Animal Foolishness, Loyalty... animated yet subtle depictions of moral ambiguity and dispair.

I was drawn to these two the most, Feminine Folly and People in Sacs. Look carefully in the black sheet the women are using to launch the children up in the air and you can see a dead donkey defying the laws of physics.

Some might say you can see stirrings of surrealism here but I just say how deliciously dark and delightful!

TODAY IN CONSUMERISM (D23)

1. I want her chandelier. And her bathtub and all of her clothes.



2. Melville House Books is publishing an adorable series called "The Art of the Novella." As someone who has recently been able to read a shitload of books mostly because they were all novellas, I appreciate this. Can I have all of these even if I don't read them?! Pretty like candy!

3. I hope it is still ok to like deep house because I am in love. This makes me want to be back huddling in that cold little building on that dirty Berlin waterway.

4. Shoes.

AFTERNOON UPDATE, BECAUSE THIS ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR ITS OWN POST:


5. THIS BOOK

ADVENTURES IN PROUST (D22.2)

Today I started reading Proust's Swann's Way (yes I WILL finish Remembrance of Things Past, unlike my earlier attempt to learn the Arabic script) and I hardly got very far at all without coming across a passage I absolutely had to share with all my imaginary readers.

I typed it out just for you, these three very long sentences!

Even the simple act which we describe as 'seeing some one we know' is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. And so, no doubt, from the Swann they had build up for their own purposes my family had left out, in their ignorance, a whole crowd of the details of his daily life in the world of fashion, details by means of which other people, when they met him, saw all the Graces enthroned in his face and stopping at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier; but they contrived also to put into a face form which its distinction had been evicted, a face vacant and roomy as an untenanted house, to plant in the depths of its unvalued eyes a lingering sense, uncertain but not unpleasing, half-memory and half-oblivion, of idle hours spent together after our weekly dinners, round the card-table or in the garden, during our companionable country life. Our friend's bodily frame had been so well lined with this sense, and with various earlier memories of his family, that their own special Swann had become to my people a complete and living creature; so that even now I have the feeling of leaving some one I know for another quite different person when, going back in memory, I pass from the Swann whom I knew later and more intimately to this early Swann - this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as though one's life were a series of galleries in which all the portraits of any one period had a marked family likeness, the same (so to speak) tonality - this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and a sprig of tarragon.

I loved how this passage brought to mind a few people I know who just seem to move and behave in a way that seems to perfectly embody my impressions of them. A friend whose hand holds a pen and writes with all of the whim she brings to everyday life. A relative whose awkward yet confident walk fits perfectly with her musings on everything, especially herself. And then thinking about people who you seem to understand so much better, or at least read much more charitably, after learning previously unknown bits and peices of their pasts or presents. Here I am thinking about an American I thought was a total bitch until I learned she had just lived in Russia for two years. It makes so much sense now (can we be friends plz?)!

DAY TWENTY-TWO - WORD OF THE DAY

Time for a new feature - TYCDIGS WORD OF THE DAY!

Today's word is: demoralized

Google image searching "demoralized", one of the results was this adorable demoralized puppy in a bunny suit. Trying to find the original page, I found that the only result on the first page with the actual slideshow was BLOCKED by Sonic Wall, classified as "Social Networking". I couldn't bring myself to go to the next page, knowing certain disappointment awaited.

Other than that, most of the pictures for "demoralized" kind of suck. Le sigh.

DAY TWENTY-ONE

TYCDIGS NEWS: I have received my first visitor from an organic google search.  This visitor was from Chicago and was searching for "pudendum bare".

EVEN BETTER TYCDIGS NEWS:  I'm thinking of going somewhere to learn how to surf this summer.  Portugal? South Africa? Morroco? Bali? The dreaded Phuket?

DAY TWENTY - INTERESTING THINGS. THREE OF THEM.

1. What do you think...if you were going to make a big deal out of opening a collection of galleries to celebrate the beauty of Islamic and Middle Eastern Art, keeping in mind that the many diverse styles of art the galleries were built to present have long been overshadowed by "European" art which is more widely "understood" and appreciated in the good US of A, how would you celebrate its opening?  Would it be by finding a slightly odd Turkish pianist who first plays peices by European composers before then presenting his own compsitions which, with names such as "Four Dances of Nasreddin Hodja" and "Istanbul Album", are sufficiently Turkish to count?

The Met thought so, but your answer might be a bit different. That's the beauty of this world, so many different opinions.

Don't get me wrong - I loved listening to Say's music and watching him play in the video below and his other work available on youtube, especially as he pounds away while also manipulating the piano strings with his other hand.





2. Lots of press lately about scientists with a lot more political credibility than Timothy Leary who think drugs such as MDMA and psilocybin (the fun part of mushrooms) should be used to treat all sorts of things from anxiety in terminally-ill patients to shitty marriages to alcoholism. Think of all that wasted potential.

3. Turkey wine tip: wine jelly, for the class of wines that aren't even good enough to mull.

DAYS EIGHTEEN-TWENTY (BACKDATED) - A TALE OF TWO AIRPORTS

Berlin was great.

Flew into Tegel, then was informed that the airport is in its last few months of operation.Quite disappointing, as Tegel is the most relaxing airport I've ever been through: check-in, security and your gate are all bunched together so there is very little to get confused about (with a walk of as little as 30m from airport entrance to aircraft boarding), and the shops are so unintrusive you hardly notice them. Of course those are the very same reasons Tegel has become financially untenable, because the airport is not designed to maximize waiting time in areas with lots of shops, and every new security guideline must be adopted at each gate's separate security checkpoint.

Tegel's last day of operation is schedule for June 2nd, 2012, which will be marked by a charter flight in which over 150 lucky golden ticket holders will be treated to a sightseeing tour of Berlin by air by night. This is also opening day for Berlin's new airport ("Willy Brandt"...yes, really).

Sad, indeed! Berlin also has another former airport, Tempelhof, which is quite central and is now used as a park with the name Tempelhofer Feld.

[HT for officemate:  Tempelhof also doesn't have an English language wikipedia page.]

DAY SEVENTEEN - BERLIN CRAM SESSION

Leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning, so very little work can get done, as clearly I need to spend as much time as possible on the internet looking at artists somehow associated with Germany so I can launch an intelligent argument about why officemate should accompany me to art museums.

So many fascinating artists coming out of Germany, and of course Berlin!  Everyone may have already known, but sometimes I'm a bit slow, and learning more details is good.

First up in George Grosz...associated with the Dada and New Objectivity movements in Berlin (who can say no to that?)...fumbling around I found quite a few I really liked, including these portraits of author/poet Max Herrmann-Neisse (1925 and 1927):

   

And then there's Otto Dix, Grosz's pal in New Objectivism...which really makes me want to be a part of something politically alternative and artistic, but alas here I am, instead writing from the trenches of economic development. But Dix...the office's security software seems to think he is a pornographer. Do you think that Sonic Wall just doesn't know art when they see it?  Or are they concerned about the latent potential of the long-passed Dadaist movement to rise once again and destroy everything upon which Sonic Wall has built its empire?!

      

Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926) and Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berman (1925).


Dörte Clara Wolff, a young Jewish woman, decided to try her hand at art and design at age 16, calling herself "Dodo." She eventually produced drawings and paintings, working for a satirical publication titled ULK. In her complicated personal life, she ditched a lawyer for a Jungian, and upon seeking out the expertise of Jung's mistress regarding her tumultuous second marriage, she followed her advice to try out a therapeutic ménage à trois. She emigrated to London in 1936, and her work has only been recently "re-discovered," as they say, with an exhibit currently running at the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin to honor her life and work. HT to the officemate: Dodo has no English language wikipedia page!

       

DAY SEVENTEEN - KIDS IN VIDEO

Three recent music videos starring mostly children.  Some much more talented with others.

"Sixteen Saltines" - Jack White (You'll have to click through to watch this one)

tUnE-yArDs - "My Country"





"Shady Love" - Scissor Sisters and "Krystal Pepsy" [=Azealia Banks]

DAY SIXTEEN

Today I unveil a new segment:


Things I'm embarrassed to admit I first learned about in the New York Times


1. This story about DJ Venus X makes me, among other things, want to live in New York.

Within a year, GHE20GOTH1K was widely recognized as reanimating New York’s underground night life. It was one of the few parties where a wide cross section of the city — gay and straight, black and white, goths, punks, hip-hop heads, artists, music snobs, fashion designers like Mr. Ervell and even the occasional celebrity like Diplo — came to dance under one roof. Ms. Soto said she views D.J.-ing for such a diverse audience as a defiantly political act, and frequently peppers sound clips from the Al Jazeera news network, audio from the riots in Egypt and sound pings from submarines into her sets.
“I’m going to play Al Jazeera in the club, and you’re going to like it,” she said. “And it’s going to be cool, but not weird cool. It’s going to be like Kanye West and Jay-Z cool.”

"It's going to be cool, but not weird cool."

2. Kutluğ Ataman (go to Turkish artist for the NYT?) is using the concept of silsel to piece together a quilt of tiny "letters to Turkey" written on colorful shapes of fabric that will be sewn together during a performance as part of the Istanbul Theatre Festival. The story behind the idea is quite beautiful, although I haven't been able to confirm with a google image search. While Ataman was recently on his way to work on a project in Syria, violence in the area kept him in the Turkish city of Mardin, where he met a woman with an unconventional ceiling.

Once inside the traditional house of a woman known as Nasira Hanim, Mr. Ataman was intrigued by its ceiling.
“It was painted bright turquoise in a zigzag pattern,” he said recently by telephone. “It was very graphic, very contemporary-looking in design.”
“She told me that in the past the Syriani were scared of going outside, fearing for their lives — they were being attacked and killed by others. It doesn’t matter who, but I think she meant in ethnic clashes,” he said. “But because they were trapped inside, they painted a symbolic sky on their ceilings to alleviate their yearning for the real thing.”
That motif was called silsel, a word he did not recognize as being either Turkish or Arabic.
“I researched further and discovered it was Aramaic, the original language of the Bible and what was spoken at the time in that region,” he said. “It seems to have had a double meaning, either the fluttering of wings, or the sky.”

A single word sharing both the sense of "fluttering wings" and "the sky"...a painting on the ceiling to quench one's dangerous desire for freedom.  For anyone in the area, I believe the exhibition opens May 12th at noon in the Galata Rum Primary School (Kemeralti Cad No 25). But don't count on me for anything.

DAY FIFTEEN - MORE COOL CZECHS

I was going to save this post for tomorrow but I'm just too excited not to immediately overshare with my imaginary readers.

Following my re-discovery of Bohumil Hrabal this morning (one of this blog's loyal readers first suggested him a few years ago), I've become one of those annoying people that becomes momentarily obsessed with the art and literature of a country on nothing more (or less!) than a whim.

Look at these paintings by František Kupka and tell me they are not amazing! (You can use the comments to do so)

And have you ever met such a sexy surrealist as Toyen? (Perhaps NSFW)

And omg Antonín Slavíček (this too) and Josef Čapek.

Now how else to expand from Kafka and Kundera? Starting with The Good Soldier Švejk seems a good option.


Perhaps after Berlin I need to go to Prague? 

DAY FIFTEEN - GOOD BOOK

Time for a new feature in TYCDIGS: "GOOD BOOK." These will not be real book reviews, because that sounds too much like work.

Too Loud a Solitude is about a man whose job is to destroy books (as "wastepaper" that has been confiscated or banned) and whose passion is to pour over the classic works and rare volumes he manages to save. He stores them in a canopy above his humble bed, even though he is sure the weight of his collection will one day destroy him, as he destroys the flies and mice that make their way into his underground wastepaper compactor. This one really got me, passing on that physical feeling usually only associated with heartbreak or hunger or loss.

This story was the basis for a 1996 Czech film and beautiful puppet film released in 2007. Would love to see the full versions of both of these.






Looking up some of the book's references brought me quite a few interesting places as well.

It's a pretty short read, so if I don't get anything else to do at work today I might just read it again.

DAY FOURTEEN - HOW AM I DIFFERENT THAN A PERSON PAID TO DO NOTHING FOR SCIENCE

HOW MY JOB IS BOTH SIMILAR TO AND DIFFERENT THAN THAT OF A NASA PILLOWNAUT


Pillownauts are those people that NASA pays to stay in bed as some sort of experiment in low or no gravity simulation.  While wondering around the halls of the office today searching for sunlight, I wondered...how is my lot in life similar to and different from these brave souls who have sold their living bodies to science? Here's what I've got so far.

- We both get paid to do nothing. 

- Pillownauts make more to do nothing than I do. But perhaps not after taxes!

- Thrown off balance by the vortex of energy and spirit known as our respective workplaces, we both are prone to blog about shit most people don't really care about.

- While a NASA Pillownaut is paid to NEVER GET OUT OF BED, I am paid to never leave the office.  But I can leave my chair and hang out in the kitchen. And occasionally I need to get things from the copy machine.

- NASA Pillownauts are contributing to a growing body of knowledge about the effects of space travel on human beings. I am contributing to absolutely nothing.

- When the Pillownauts spend hours upon hours online to numb themselves to the boredom of their existence, they aren't blocked from accessing the best parts of the internet, i.e. tumblr.

- They don't feel guilty, I'm guessing, for watching movies at work. 

But how is my job different than this guy's? Unclear.

DAY FOURTEEN - BERLIN BOUND

This just in from the trenches!


TYCDIGS and comrade FTS are headed for Berlin this weekend. Reuniting with college friends, reuniting with expat friends, reuniting with tasty beers and quality footwear...

Yesterday in NON GRAD LIFE: 

shopping for overstocks and rejects in anticipation of warm weather, wandering, and hanging out at a metal bar relieved that the band actually just played rock.

DAY THIRTEEN - LETTER FROM A READER!

Another letter from yet another loyal reader!

Dear TYCDIGS,

My question for you is a two parter - 
a) must i wait for sex bruises to completely fade before getting laser epilationand b) is the brazillian the new tramp stamp? Especially given the semi-permanent nature of laser epilation?

Kind Regards, 

A Curious Office Worker 

Dear A COW,
This is a very important question. Thank you for giving TYCDIGS the opportunity to engage in a distracting research question with non-rigorous research methods!
Regarding part a) ... As you are a north American of Catholic European ancestry living in a predominantly Muslim country, naturally your first instinct might be to preserve the snowflake-white reputation that us white girls have come to enjoy, and, indeed, deserve. It may seem that going in for a laser appointment while you are decorated with a variety of "sex bruises" would be an embarrassing or inappropriate move. But I am sorry to say, A COW, they are on to us, and they are on to you too.  


Two possible solutions:  1) wear a wedding ring or 2) claim you were daggered.


But do not forget the possibility that the laser attendant is not judgmental but instead jealous.   That laser is mad painful, and if the bitch suspects you're getting more than your fair share of quality sexy-time, she could give you a few extra zaps on your fundament.


Regarding part b) ... I have polled the audience on this one, following up with in depth questioning. Let me break this down by gender. Women have overwhelmingly responded that you should do what you feel comfortable with. That sounds like something women would say.  Some men seem to think you should just take it all off and argue at the same time that tramp stamps can be quite sexy in context. hyfr! But this is my favorite, and most descriptive, reply:

you just need to be conservative
with how much you take off
so, something wide enough to not be a strip?
The place you want the hair gone is the actual vagina
the mons pubis can be a jungle
just leave the pudendum bare
okay, I gotta pass out though

"Something wide enough not to be a strip" - sounds like a good standard. Sexy in the short-term, and yet in the long-term there you have plausible deniability - you were a lap swimmer and not a tramp.

Love,

TYCDIGS

DAYS ELEVEN AND TWELVE - BACKDATED

Hanging out in parks with over-priced baked goods, cafe-hopping with an adorable soon-to-goddaughter and her parents in tow, and too many evenings at Cheers.

I will otherwise remember this weekend with these two videos:






Following the failed bar crawl (maybe next weekend?) a new idea for a themed party:  Dress to be daggered!

DAY TEN - LETTER FROM A READER!

Now time to answer a letter from one of my dear readers.

Dear TYCDIGS,
Should I go to grad school?
Thanks,
SIGTGS

Dear SIGTGS,

This is a very important question in any young or youthful but aging person's life, and the answer can be reached with a complex decision calculus.

If you are interested in gender/race/sexuality/"popular culture" with no background in any particular social science, you should strongly consider going to grad school, unless you have any creative talents, in which case you should consider becoming a blogger, artist, hat maker or cupcake baker.

If you identify as a radical, anarchist of any shade, socialist, leftist, or Occupier but still like to feel better than most people around you, you could probably just go into non-profit or union organizing. Or move to Detroit. But if you can come up with at least two reasons why these options just perpetuate the structures that oppress you and others, and eventually want a shot at making over $50,000 a year, you could try out grad school if you don't mind eventually abandoning everything that led you there in the first place.

If the proudest day of your life was the day you graduated from college, you should most certainly go to grad school.

If you enjoy impulse shopping, promiscuous sexual relations, travelling, sunshine, the possibility that at any given time the next step in your life might bring you to something completely different, shallow analysis of anything at all [=news, non-academic non-fiction, emails from your friends and family], do NOT go to grad school, unless you don't mind losing enjoyment from everything you used to love, which is, by the way, one symptom of depression.

If you've always thought you might want to go to grad school but don't really know what for, resist the urge to study Urban Planning, Comparative Literature, or Ethnomusicology. If you must go to grad school, fork out for a professional degree related to something you've actually done before, and then go get a fucking job.

If you want to go to grad school because you don't know what else you could do with your life, you could become a yoga teacher, or English teacher, or teacher of any kind, really.  But then again, that is also the end goal of going to grad school. So you’ve got to figure that one out on your own.

If you want to go to NYU, CUNY or Columbia, and have never actually lived in New York, then you probably just want to move there, and probably wouldn't really make it anywhere anyway. So why not just try your luck as a barista in a cute mid-western city? Cincinnati is really quite quirky these days.

If you're exceptionally good with numbers, computers or chemicals, the answer is no. 

Did any of this apply to you? 

Love,

TYCDIGS

It's Friday! But the LA/Tehran contingent brought a bit too much LA to this city, and now I'm not even sure I can go out this weekend. At the very least, the recently planned pub crawl must be postponed. I know, this is very non-NON GRAD. 

DAY NINE

Today I started learning the Arabic script. Now this post may be a little tricky to understand, because learning the Arabic script is something you can most certainly do in grad school. But the thing is I'm learning it now for funsies! And for grad school.

UPDATE: I've given up.

DAY EIGHT - BACKDATED

I've got a destination! I said yes to one, no to all the others, and there marks the end of the beautiful time period where I was on the receiving end of all sorts of attention from grad programs and professors that wanted me to join their misery. Somewhere Warm!


That will be all for the backdated post eight, as I am recovering from not being at work yesterday.

DAY SEVEN INSTALLMENT TWO

TOWARDS A NEW GENRE IN TASTING NOTES
or, why I should probably just learn Italian instead


A recent language log post talks about text analysis by comparing ranked wines with the words used to rank them. Numbers...ick! But I'm just mostly interested in the 20 words most strongly associated with poorly ranked wines:

detergent 80.3
ungenerous 80.4375
shrill 80.5714
mean 80.6154
? 81.2
odd 81.24
meager 81.3333
sulfur 81.6333
aspirin 81.641
bobbing 81.6905
cardboard 81.7955
limp 81.8276
chemical 81.931
oxidized 82.0714
dull 82.1048
stemmy 82.1321
bite 82.1333
jumbled 82.2
scorched 82.25
tough 82.25
tired 82.2581


And I loved this example:

Hazy, pale golden color. Funky, old canned vegetable and lemon detergent aromas follow through to a bittersweet medium-bodied palate with wet hay, fruit stones, orange drink, and honey candy flavors. Finishes with a tannic citrus peel fade.

Funky, old canned vegetable? This reminded me of something. So I started cruising for cruel tasting notes. But then I realized that no one who was able to write a half-decent tasting note would  subject their pallate to Turkish non-exports. And people who write tasting notes dress up their contempt in such a way that it isn't really very satisfying to read - not enough zingers for my style.

For example...I read these:

Sarafin Shiraz 2007 Turkey 15 Drink 2009-11 
Contains 5% Cabernet Sauvignon apparently. 
Dark crimson. Rather reduced? And very taut and austere on the finish. Not much juicy fruit in the middle. Young vines and reductive winemaking?

Doluca, Kav Boğazkere/Öküzgözü 2006 Turkey 15.5 Drink 2008-10 

Boğazkere 55%, Öküzgözü 45%. 
Healthy red. Sweet and a little spritzy even with some rather obvious acid. You can taste the tannins and maybe some added acid? Not very harmonious.

Doluca, Signium 2006 Turkey 15 Drink 2010-12
Shiraz 54%, Boğazkere 33% (don't know what else is in this blend which was aged in a mix of American and French oak for 13 months).
Very dark crimson. Quite a bit of oak on the nose, lots of acidity and a bit of hole in the middle. Astringent. Not quite whole.

Doluca, Karma Shiraz/Boğazkere 2007 Turkey 15.5 Drink 2009-12
Shiraz 82%, Boğazkere 18% aged for 15 months in two-thirds US and one-third French oak.
Bright vibrant crimson. Full on, fruit-driven nose. Very direct, no subtlety and rather dry tannins on the finish. Very New World. 

Those are nothing compared to lemon detergent and funky old canned vegetables!

What I think the world needs is a new genre of tasting note - the burn. Like the one above but a bit meaner...this is pretty scathing...let's expand this to conform with the cultivated lexicon and formulaic style of the tasting note and we will have something fun for me to read at work. And to memorize and perform, a bit like a party trick but perhaps with an audience perhaps somewhat more limited than your average party trick. It will have a lot of shock value, because I am sure the trained ear it will sound quite horrifying.

I suppose on the other hand I could just learn more about wine and tasting notes and then perhaps the bitchiness in the above reviews will become more legible and they will be therefore more satisfying to consume. OR maybe I should just learn a new language. Although that might take a good deal longer than it would to be able to pretend I could talk about wine, I would be able to talk about a whole lot of things other than wine, so I think on balance it would be the better choice. So, clearly the answer is Italian.

DAY SEVEN

One theme of today at the office is "competing interests." This came up planning a Friday the 13th pub crawl. Let us say for the sake of this post that people go on pub crawls for two reasons*: a) to drink large amounts of alcohol b) to go to new places [that one would assume would also be filled with new people].

But a and b do not mix quite as well as grenadine in your shitty cocktail; showing up to a new-to-you bar you've "been wanting to go [to] foreeever" completely shitfaced may not be a very good idea.  This causes some difficulty when planning such an event, as prioritizing b [cool new bars] would seem to detract from a [getting shitfaced], but a can't really be compromised, because if you honestly after the vital components of b [new places and new people], wouldn't you just join salsa?

This reminds me of the sad, sad day I planned a pub crawl during GRAD LIFE.  We went to three bars, although at first we were going to go to four, because there were in fact four bars in the entire neighborhood. Unfortunately just two bars in we had to redirect our route because it turned out that one of the bars closed at midnight on Saturdays, so we ended up a bit early at Cheers, which that night happened to be filled with some kids from a midwestern university who unfortunately had decided to spend their spring break in a neighborhood with only three functioning bars.


*Please excuse the reductionism. STRUCTURALIST THOUGHT CAN BE HELPFUL.

DAY SIX

In my first dabble in grad school, I once listened to nothing other than Wye Oaks for almost a month because I didn't have time to make a new "write" playlist and I was starting to go mad from listening to Spain, Bibio and Nouvelle Vague on constant repeat.

Did you know there are many, many people in the world who only make playlists for the purposes of relaxation, dancing, social gatherings and sexual intimacy? There are people who do not only have playlists organized as follows: "productivity", "writing - thinking", "writing - concentrate", "reading - light", "muststayawake". For the next few glorious months, I am one of those lucky many!

Do you know anyone more adorable than Grimes? I thought that perhaps I knew one (Katie M) before I learned that this super-cute Canadian lost both her houseboat and chickens to the Minnesota police. Proof can also be found in this video at 0:41




I like staring at this next video almost as much as I liked staring at Rihanna in All of the Lights before I had seen that video, like, a thousand times.




Let's get bodysuits with cool backs, plz.






And now I want to vomit pearls and have ugly friends dance with me

DAYS FOUR AND FIVE

Weekend catchup.

DAY 4

Very cool visitors make weekends more fun.

I bought a bunch of trashy dresses on super-sale at a trashy dress store. Then I wore one of them and it looked pretty amazing(ly trashy).

[EDIT (15:23, 09.04.2012): One reader claims that one can most certainly wear trashy dresses in grad school, especially to "trashy dress parties." ]

I also met someone in the midst of the GRAD LIFE.

me: so what do you do?
grad boy: I study
me: where?
grad boy: in the US
me: where?
grad boy: in [city]
me: where?
grad boy: at [school]
me: um. what department?
grad boy: political science
me: what kind of political science do you do?
grad boy: political theory
me: who's your man?
grad boy: actually my favorite theorist is a woman
me: Oh, so you like Hannah Arendt.
grad boy: Um, yeah.

Oh, political theory boys! I love the delightfully predictable ways you think you're unpredictable.

DAY 5

Brunch on a sunny terrace, picnic in the park with a duckling.

One more friend arrives in town, and we must accomodate him by pretending Sunday night is still the weekend. But he is the best so we'll push through to Wednesday.

DAY THREE

Starved of intellectual stimulation, last night I went to a "poetry event," which, much like Frommer's list of the world's 10 worst airport terminals, was absolutely terrible. Text back and forth with the bffer beside you like you're 14 years old terrible. Constantly hold your drink up to your face because it is the only way to not crack a vicious grin terrible. While I can't wait until I go back to the comforts of intellectual elitism and spend all of my time with other people like me who hate on almost everything all of the time, there is a very special feeling that comes with knowing that you are too good for everything around you. I shall miss that.

Sigh.

DAY TWO INSTALLMENT TWO

Another great thing about not being in grad school is taking the time to turn your over-educated and bitter mind towards statements that have been made on the basis of research you find less than methodologically sound.  

For example.

Frommer's slideshow of the world's top 10 worst airport terminals, I take issue with your ranking.  You think that both LaGuardia and JFK's Terminal 3 deserve to be in the top 10, but then just because you've ranked Sheremetyevo you can just move past all other airports in all other post-Soviet countries?  What the hell are you basing this on?

Oh, right: "Assembling this top 10 list of misfits I scanned professional surveys and delay statistics and asked my frequent-traveler friends to come up with the ten airports where you'd least like to spend an extra hour."  Pppfffff. I could rip that apart. But I won't, because I really don't care, and more importantly, it is time for lunch.

DAY TWO

Everyone knows that any grad student with an internet connection is probably reading a good deal of online content at best tangential to their research interests (even you, media "scholars"). It even feels so good to do this when you know you have hundreds of pages of real stuff to read.

But it also feels so good to read article after article, post after post, that lives nowhere other than in the wide world of the web and know you have absolutely nothing of intellectual substance that you'll be needing to throw yourself into afterwards. It even makes you think about doing things that for people with actual time constraints are a complete waste of time, such as leaving comments, editing wikipedia articles, and keeping up with not only the newest music and film, but what people who keep up with that kind of stuff think of it.

And conducting this endless click and click and click again research to the tune of the guitar and accordion duo that wonders around the sidestreets outside the office and serenades the neighborhood's office workers really makes it so much better.

Would you believe that running up to Turkish President Gul's visit to the Netherlands, a museum exhibit to celebrate 400 years of Turkish-Dutch relations displayed a 17th-century drawing depicting a fez as a makeshift toilet and pages of the Koran as makeshift toilet paper? Would you believe there exists a clearly superior rival to the douchebaggery of Tucker Max? Would you believe that I do not find this person particularly impressive?

DAY ONE

So it is decided! Instead of starting a real career, I'm throwing caution to the wind and have decided to accept an offer to sit in a library to read, write and grade papers for the better part of a decade!

I don't exactly know where (therefore when) I will go this fall, so instead of counting down, I will count UP, describing my life, which is filled with all sorts of fantastic things you can't do in grad school.

I may also be drawing inspiration from a favorite blog of mine, but to CONCEAL MY TRUE IDENTITY I will restrain myself from linking!  But remember what they say about imitation.

So here it begins.

DAY ONE!

I sat at my desk where I should be working, but since I don't really have that much work to do, I read some Murakami. And when I needed to take a break, I gossiped with officemate for a long time about a variety of people I don't really care about that much. And some people I guess I kinda do. And when that got boring, I drank my free liter of freshly-squeezed orange/carrot/ginger juice that arrived one hour later but I still graciously received. Well I didn't drink the whole liter. Then when that got boring I went back to the most difficult task of my day: reading more Murakami.  No, he's not a particularly difficult author, but sustaining interest in a SINGLE story over 900 pages? Ugh!  Who has that kind of sustained attention? Not a non-grad!