Zugenia's Procrastination Salon

It's true that I was several glasses of shiraz in by the time we watched SNL last night, but I thought it was one of the better episodes of what has been a surprisingly funny season. And despite the fact that I'm mad at NBC for taking their clips off YouTube so we're forced to show their ads in order to share video, I'm going to go ahead and embed "The Rock Obama" and "Jon Bovi" (the Bon Jovi Opposite Band) because they're too damn funny not to.





Still giggling at "on a cotton horse I do not ride."

How can one not succumb to that tagline?  Yes, I am about to make D watch Dark Days in Monkey City, a show that he predicts will "anthromorphize animals that have no interest in being ... morphized."

We shall see.

Just watch, as an unlikely heroine appropriates Mariah Carey to unite the Bulgarian people.

Part I:



Part II:

[sung to the tune of "Camptown Races"]

Guess what's on TV tonight
Doo dah, doo dah
Guess what's on TV tonight
Oh doo dah day

The season premiere of Lost!
The season premiere of Lost!
That's what's on TV tonight
Oh doo dah day

My priorities became apparent when I realized I was singing this as I was reading for work.

Also: "leak."

I'll just cut to the chase here, people. As far as I'm concerned, my delicate, innocent ears should not be subjected to the following terms when I watch television:

Wipe
Probe
Urinary
Erectile dysfunction
Genital herpes
Spontaneity

"Fuck," "cunt," "asshole"—whatever. But "wipe"? No. Never.

I know it's time for 2007 to be over because last night I almost cried watching "The E! True Hollywood Story: Britney Spears: Fall From Grace." Oh, it's been a sad year for the Brit. But chin up, girl; if Leslie Hall is any indication, the future looks bright. I'm goin' to a big-ass party at the Old Post Office tonight and kickin' it like this:



This is how we go out, indeed. Happy new year, everyone.

The Colbert Report Writers: Sorry, Internet on FunnyOrDie.com

When it's effing SHARK WEEK and your lousy-ass Dish TV suffers a fatal malady brought on by a goddamn rain shower and the company can't fix it until after you've moved into a new house halfway through the week, just as you have to pack up and go to upstate New York for a wedding anyway. Do you understand what I am saying, people? I AM MISSING SHARK WEEK.

This is so, completely, utterly, cosmically unacceptable.

All I've been able to do is read about Shark Week on the internet, which informs me that I am missing the most awesomest television of the entire summer. From the write-up in Time Out New York:

The overall impression left by Shark Week is that modern civilization is in some sense temporary—that even as we flatter ourselves into thinking our species has subdued the planet, we are, in fact, just visiting. We chew up and spit out nature, but when it bites back—even just a nip—we react with terror, and fume at the very idea that in the 21st century, there are still some beaches or lagoons where humans shouldn’t swim.

“I was down in water with the great whites in Australia, in a cage, and I had this 18-footer come in and ram it,” Stroud recalls. “Here we are doing this film, we’re experienced, we have great equipment, I have this great cameraman, we think we’ve got it all figured out. But this shark, if he really had a mind for it, could just say, ‘You know what? That’s it. You’re all going down.’ ”

I can think of at least one satellite television company I would be thrilled to unleash a fleet of tiger sharks on right about now. ARE YOU LISTENING, DISH TV? I AM MISSING SHARK WEEK AND YOU ARE TOTALLY ON MY LIST.

Will you just look at what I'm going to miss at our local Walton Arts Center because I'll be in New Zealand?



LEGENDS!
Starring JOAN COLLINS and LINDA EVANS

From the joancollins.net press release:

James Kirkwood's Legends! was expected to come to Broadway in the late 1980s with Carol Channing and Mary Martin starring as the two warring Hollywood divas being wooed to do a stage show together, Star Wars: The Play, by a producer with no credibility. The pre-Broadway tour of Legends! began in Dallas in January 1986.

Plagued by negative press (including mostly harsh reviews), by the time it folded in Palm Beach in January of the following year, the tour was better known for the backstage drama between Channing and Martin than anything that happened onstage. Kirkwood later wrote Diary of a Mad Playwright about his harrowing experience on the road with the show. In this new production, Collins will play Sylvia Glenn, the acerbic star originally played by Channing. Evans will play Martin's part, the seemingly sweet Leatrice Monsee.

...

Ben Sprecher will produce the Broadway mounting, which will tryout in 2006 in Toronto. About his decision to produce the piece, Sprecher told the New York daily, "I was looking for a play for Joan [Collins], something she would feel comfortable in. I read the script and thought it was very, very funny. I was prepared for her to think it was too lightweight, but she really enjoyed it."

Collins, who made her Broadway debut in the revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives, will play Sylvia Glenn, the film star modeled on Joan Crawford, while Evans will play the Loretta Youngish Leatrice Monsee. Legends! will mark Evans' Broadway debut.

How is it possible that this extravaganza is taking place in my own backyard and I will be on the other side of the world? Joan Collins channeling Carol Channing as Joan Crawford? Alexis and Krystle reincarnated in a revival of the celebrity deathmatch between Channing and Mary Martin? It's enough to make one's head explode.

I cannot believe I'm going to miss this. Those of you who will be in town for this glorious event absolutely must obtain your tickets NOW. This would also be the ideal opportunity to debut the Joan Collins cocktail we discussed this summer. Now taking recipe suggestions.

I'm back from Atlanta. Of course, most of you had no idea that I was in Atlanta. Well, I was, presenting papers on Bishop Berkeley's "New Theory of Vision" and 18th-century interior decoration and the surprising rewards of reading lewd Restoration poetry with evangelical Christians, and now I'm back.

In just under two weeks, I leave for 10 days in New Zealand for yet another conference. I say that now in case you don't hear from me for a couple of weeks as I try to finish my piece for New Zealand and polish my pieces from Atlanta for publication and grade a stack of papers and a stack of midterms and another stack of papers and write class lectures and enjoy the weather and find a better apartment to live in and then I pop in and say, "I'm back from New Zealand," so I won't have to follow up with a "I bet you had no idea I was in New Zealand," because, of course, now you will have known.

But I really stopped by to inform you that one of my favorite new blogs, Regarding, has explained why Lost is so great better than anyone else has done to date.

It's a great show. The anti-show. So much weirder than anything that has ever been on TV. It's a mixture of Twin Peaks, the nightmare you had last night, and "Dallas."

Read the whole thing. It's a relief from the whole "Do the writers really have any idea what's going on" debate that's currently preoccupying fans—because, frankly, I don't care if anyone's in charge. I like that the plotlines remain narratively compelling while stubbornly refusing to Make Sense. That's the nature of dream logic, the Logic That Is Not One.

And last week's Locke episode, which I just watched on DVR last night, was freaking awesome.

I was about to inform you that I made it back safely from Tulsa, when I realized that you, imaginary reader, probably had no idea I was ever in Tulsa. Well, I was, doing nerdy 18th-century stuff, and I had a fantastic weekend. I entered Monday with an unlikely post-Tulsa glow about me. If you're interested in the nerd content, the panel I chaired received a very nice shout-out over at The Long Eighteenth. Knock yourself out.

But for those of us more vehemently committed to La Procrastination, I offer some choicer morsels. Astute reader Tracy E. kindly sent a link to the following Superbowl ad for Emerald Nuts, featuring one of my favorite nuts of all time, one Mr. Robert Goulet:



(Tracy, who works with my father, wrote that this ad reminds her of my dad, "not because he reminds me of Robert Goulet, but rather because we sometimes find your dad at his desk in a vaguely comatose state." My dad himself confirms that he has often suspected Robert Goulet of surreptitiously messing with his stuff as he sneaks in a late afternoon desk-doze.)

And it would be sheer heresy to leave the subject of Robert Goulet without directing you to Will Ferrell's impersonation, plugging his collection of hip-hop covers, "The Coconut Bangers Ball: It's a Rap." Will Ferrell, you win; you always do.

I've watched the entire Westminster Dog Show on TV, and if I see this commercial one more time, I am really, seriously going to cry.



(Yup, just watched it again as I posted it. I am weeping openly at a marketing campaign and I want to adopt a dog right now.)

Which is why I am unable to peel myself off the couch and away from the cinematic carnage that is Carnosaur 3: Primal Species. I couldn't not turn to it after reading Dish TV's description: "While stealing uranium, terrorists unwittingly unleash formidable man-eating dinosaurs."¹ And an hour and twenty minutes into the adventure, I must take the liberty of clarifying Amazon reviewer Joshua Koppel's claim that "if you like dinosaurs you will want to check out this movie"—he must have meant, "if you've always wondered whatever happened to Scott Valentine, a.k.a. Mallory's dim-witted and eminently lovable biker boyfriend Nick Moore on Family Ties, you will want to check out this movie."


Exhibit A: Scott Valentine

It turns out that in 1996, Scott Valentine was playing Colonel Rance (Rance? Yes, Rance) Higgins, head of the team of commandos called in to capture the formidable man-eating dinosaurs, who have happily devoured the international (i.e. talking in a range of poorly rendered British accents) terrorists and are now belligerently roaming around in a lab or a ship or a warehouse or something, looking uncannily like the deranged second cousins of television's most upsetting creation of all time, Barney.

Exhibit B: Part of a wider dinosaur conspiracy?

Valentine's Col. Rance Higgins proves himself quite the force to be reckoned with, mouthing off to authority ("Excuse me, sir, but I really don't think any one of these soldiers have been trained in hand-to-hand combat with a dinosaur!"), convincing the blond lady scientist to lose the Andrea-from-Beverly-Hills-90210 eyeglasses and the unsexy preoccupation with "research" and start shooting her some raptors, and maintaining through it all a face so straight it hurts. The complexity of his character is subtly drawn out through stoic fragments of dialogue with his soldiers ("Sir, did you ever serve in combat with a woman?" "Yes, once, in Guatemala.") and he displays the admirable ability to cut through the crap, even in times of crisis, and tell it like it is—particularly to blown-up dinosaurs ("You're not dragging me around anymore. You know why? You're dead, you shithead.").

In conclusion, it may not be Mansquito, but Carnosaur 3 is right up there on the list of Utter and Total Wastes of Time. Well played, SciFi Channel. Well played indeed.

---

¹I would like to note that life would be immeasurably more interesting if more sentences began, "While stealing uranium..." or ended with "...terrorists unwittingly unleash formidable man-eating dinosaurs." Do your part, dear readers, and try working them into conversation.

If you are easily upset by the deeply insane, do NOT watch this TV commercial.

Who is this C. J. Chivers? That's what I asked myself when, as I read his NYTimes story on the giant hillside swastika of Kyrgyzstan, I got to these lines:

But aside from the presence of the tree formation itself, unraveling the origins of the lost Nazis’ presumed insubordination is a chore undercut by time. History has become malleable, a yarn by turns sinister, wry, clever and Soviet.

Where does a journalist learn to write such sentences? Does he giggle as he types them, or does his head swell with orchestral gravitas? Which would I find funnier?

So I Googled our mysterious Mr. Chivers, and discovered through this interview that while certain chapters of his training are exotic indeed (he was a Marine before he was a journalist), others hit quite close to home: he attended Cornell (my parents' alma mater), went to the Journalism School at Columbia (my own alma mater), and his first job was at the Providence Journal, the hometown paper I avoided reading during my 7 years of grad school. More importantly, however, I suspect that C. J. Chivers and I may have the same sense of humor, though I'm still not sure he knows it's a sense of humor—he may believe it's a sense of truth. My suspicions were aroused when he stated in the interview, "I still read The Providence Journal on the web, watching the paper tell the story to the state. Who doesn't enjoy smelling all that muck getting raked?" He goes on:

After two years the editors moved me into the capital to cover the police at night and Buddy Cianci's city hall. Buddy's in jail now, but when he was banging around the corner office, swilling his scotch and cursing into his speakerphone, hemmed in by crooks and sycophants and cops in knee-high leather boots, he made my job interesting.

My point is that I am now fascinated by C. J. Chivers, and I wish he would write a pulp detective novel. I would totally read it. Perhaps I'll write him a letter to that effect. I am a bored, lonely woman and Saturday is my oyster.

"He only wants two things: to feed, and to mate."

Please note that as I write this, I am watching a movie on the SciFi network called Mansquito. I firmly believe that when opportunity knocks, one cannot not watch a movie called "Mansquito." I have been rewarded with such rich dialogue as "You were going to break protocol ... you make me sick," given voice by the hot lab assistant with the Fuck Me lips, and by watching this same lab assistant, now stripped down to her lacy pink bra and panties, beginning her grotesque transformation into a Womansquito. Now her cop husband is wrestling with the Mansquito himself, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to a degenerate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. I think my favorite thing about hokey sci-fi horror flicks, though, is how someone inevitably points out the "Factual Errors" in the premise of the film in IMDb's "Goofs" catalog. In this case, some helpful viewer notes:

Factual errors: Since only female mosquitoes bite people and drink blood, the creature Ray Eriksson became should not have been feeding. Male mosquitoes feed on plant juices, so maybe the Eriksson creature should have gone around attacking trees.

Maybe he should have. Instead, he has now cornered his would-be Bridesquito in the lab and is, I believe, attempting to mate with her. I think she is now impregnated with Babysquitos. This is all profoundly disgusting, and it demands my full attention.

Have cable. Need never use brain again.

I thought, when I first approached the computer, that I was going to share all kinds of details about the past week of my life, including how I've been frequenting an establishment called the Electric Cowboy and I'm a little in love with this handsome young cowboy who line dances like nobody's business; and how I hate Bank of America right now with a visceral passion that blurs my vision when I think about it; and how I made my first midnight trip to Sonic last night, officially kicking off my acculturation to southern living; and how it's game day in Razorback country, which is something of which I've never seen the likes, and I'm not kidding about this because yesterday evening as I was having a drink on Dickson Street, a truck drove by carrying a troupe of cheerleaders doing pig calls from the roof of a pen containing an actual boar, who, I later learned, is not really a razorback but a 425-pound male Russian boar named Tusk who resembles a razorback closely enough to serve as our official mascot, and I swear I've been halfway around the world and back and I've never seen anything like that truck driving down Dickson Street, and how I plan to devote the entire day to tailgating and after-parties, which is the one part of football I understand.

But then Z sent me this, and I thought, not even an Arkansas cheerleader calling an actual hog can compare with APACHE:

Muriel Spark, Robinson
I sometimes find it ironic that Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) is generally identified as the beginning of realism in English literature. While Crusoe does, arguably, bookend a tradition of novelistic prose defined by a rational approach to observation, description, and narration of events, it also spawned a tradition of desert-island stories that demonstrate, again and again, how the isolated individual's ability to represent what is "real" strains the devices of realism to the point that they inevitably shudder and break down. From the inexplicable single footprint that sends Defoe's Crusoe into an existential crisis, to the bizarre supernatual whispers of the island on ABC's Lost (NOTE: I have only seen Season 1 and am desperately awaiting the DVD release of Season 2 so don't say ANYTHING about this show to me if you have seen more than I have—I am so deadly serious about this), the shipwrecked narrator is one of western culture's most durable reminders of how, sometimes, the most realistic way we have of telling it like it is plunges quickly into the downright surreal.

Muriel Spark's second novel, Robinson (1958), is an exemplary part of this tradition. More conventionally realist in style than her other novels, its familiar novelistic lexicon, passages of descriptive detail, and explicit invocation of the iconic Crusoe tale lull one into a sense of readerly security—that trust, so vital to realism, that one knows from the words on the page just what is going on around here. Spark's narrator, January, relies on her own powers of observation and rational deduction to make sense of her surroundings and situation, and we in turn rely on her; by the time she, and we too, realize that "the real" behaves differently on an island—or, rather, for the solitary individual mind, untempered by social negotiation—eluding the formula of empirical evidence and rational judgment, more is at stake than we bargained for: for January, her very life; for us, our ability to believe that she, our only guide, is the best conduit of her own story. While those readers expecting a book full of Spark's signature piquancy might be disappointed (which is not to say it's not there; for example, one of January's wreck-mates speaks a "peculiar idiom of English speech ... acquired first from a Swiss uncle, using Shakespeare and some seventeenth-century poets as textbooks, and Fowler's Modern English Usage as a guide," and his dialogue is consistently hilarious), Robinson seems to me an excellent instance of a non-realist's foray into realism, illuminating the genre's frequently forgotten—even disavowed—quirks and mysteries.

Muriel Spark, The Ballad of Peckham Rye
The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) seems more typical Sparkian fare, which is to say more arch, more satirical, and more stylistically bizarre. And yet, while in Robinson Spark uses realism to loosen readers from their moorings so that they founder in the depths of what seemed to be a straightforward story, in Peckham Rye her wry, detached sketches release the reader into a kind of drunken clarity about such Big Ideas as, say, human nature. Reading this short novel, I told a friend at the time, felt like being in one of those whiskey-induced hazes in which certain lines and observations blaze with a delightful, transcendent truth—for example, "Dougal gazed at him like a succubus whose mouth is in its eyes," or "My lonely heart is deluged by melancholy and it feels quite nice"—while the lesser details, like What Is Actually Going On, recede elegantly into obscurity.

It's such a treat to discover a writer like Muriel Spark well into one's career as a reader. I look forward immensely to reading through the whole canon of her work.

As some of you know, I kind of totally love Journey. This morning I saw the video for their epic anthem of lost love, "Separate Ways," for the first time.

It is, shot for shot, all 4 minutes and 31 seconds of it, the funniest thing I have ever seen. For the love of the rock gods, click the image above.

Oh, those lost days of primitive music video.

Following four days of driving, Z and I arrived intact in Fayetteville a couple days ago. Our apartment is not yet ready, so we are camping out on the floor of another apartment for a few days, which I guess is fine since the truck bearing all of our worldly possessions won't be here until Saturday.

If you've never driven through the mountains of Western Arkansas, which I hadn't until two days ago, you are really missing out. I can't believe I live in such a beautiful part of the world.

I thought of you, madame_urushiol, as we drove past Russellville. We're officially neighbors now!

I don't really have any stories right now. To be honest, I'm kind of exhausted and disoriented and disinclined to write. But I can report some updates on the procrastination front, which, of course, is why we're all here:

If you use Firefox, I highly recommend installing the Stumble Upon plugin. It streamlines and organizes the process of random websurfing so that you can really go all day looking up stuff you never knew you needed to know. I have stumbled across many sites that are now at the top of my Favorites list, including:

PollyGlotto: A digital woman translates your text from English into a number of other languages and speaks them aloud. In other words, you can spend hours making Polly say dirty things in everything from Dutch to Chinese.

FullBooks: An eclectic archive of free full-text online books.

The Online Karaoke Machine: This one speaks for itself. If this site does not change your life, then you and I are not living on the same planet. Incidentally, it was here that I discovered that I have been singing Men at Work's classic tune "Down Under" wrong since I was, like, born. Apparently, the chorus goes, "You better run / You better take cover," whereas I always sang "You better run / You better take a bus." I maintain that my version still makes sense. Z thinks I am insane.

And this just in: Pee-Wee's Playhouse is coming back to TV! The Cartoon Network's Adult Swim will begin airing the complete run of episodes on June 10, including the amazing Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special, which we watched about once a week, year-round, in my house when I was growing up. Of course, I already own every episode of Pee-Wee's Playhouse on DVD, so I'm really more excited about the principle of the thing. I firmly believe that a world that televises Pee-Wee's Playhouse is a better world for all.

I was already grossed out by the ads for K-Y Warming Ultra Gel. I didn't need to see the K-Y Warming Ultra Gel lady talk about how moist her Miracle-Gro potting soil gets.

Dear iTunes Music Store,

If someone had asked me, at any point until this evening, if I would pay my hard-earned money to watch the same crappy network programs I can watch for free on TV—would I, in other words, pay actual money for the freedom to watch (on my computer, whenever I want) shows that I don't really want to watch (anywhere, ever)—I would have said no. Clearly, you knew this was not true, which is why you now sell crappy network programs for $1.99 a pop on the internet. You have ruined my life and stripped me of the last vestiges of my self-respect.

Sincerely,
Lady Z

P.S. Please get CSI.

Me: How would one would make a Brokeback Martini?
sillygirl84: Well, it would have to be something really manly, but also, um...
Me: A little fruity?
sillygirl84:Yes.

Thus we shall be drinking something along the lines of a scotch-and-raspberry/cranberry cocktail. I also stocked up on Jake's Fault, a.k.a. the "I Wish I Knew How to Quit You" shiraz.

See you all at the other end of the red carpet.

( Update 1 )
( Update 2 )
( Update 3 )
( Update 4 )
( Update 5 )
( Final update )

If I were the kind of person who cracks callous jokes about painful and untimely deaths, I'd respond to the news that former child star Jack Wild has succumbed to mouth cancer by saying let this be a lesson to children everywhere never to put a talking phallus named Freddy in your mouth, even (or especially) if it claims to be "magic."

But, of course, I'm not. Rest in peace, Jimmy.



Those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about have never watched Sid and Marty Krofft's H.R. Pufnstuf, which is probably for the best.

I finally found video clips from Scarlett Johansson's appearance on SNL! Without delay, go watch this:

Mr. Willoughby

Then this:

Sweet Sixteen

Oh dear I love the internet.

[Thanks, YouTube.]

I'm at one of those interim, it's-outta-my-hands stages of the whole job thing, and finding it very hard to concentrate on anything, even television. (Though last night's all-new CSI, entitled Pirates of the Third Reich, in which Melinda "Call Me Julie Cooper-Nichol" Clark made an appearance as the supersmart dominatrix Lady Heather who at one point straps a neo-nazi mad scientist to a car in the middle of the desert and slaps him with a bull-whip until he cries, kept me fairly enthralled.) Last night I dreamt about the I Love Egg! song, and that Posh Spice and Shakira were the same person and I had a huge poster of her in my dorm room, and that I finally hooked up with That Boy From High School I Never Hooked Up With (that last of which is a recurring event in my dream life, I confess). This morning I found myself finally signing up for the McSweeney's Book Release Club, which I've been trying to resist for weeks, and decided that in the interest of avoiding a full day of buying up my various wish lists through internet book sellers, I should go into the city and wander around. I think I'll go see Capote at some point, at which I'll release In Cold Blood, which I finished a few nights ago, and which puts Law & Order to shame.

I realized this week that I watch Law & Order with religious devotion because I have a serious problem that cries for therapeutic intervention, but I watch CSI with a similar devotion because it's really fucking good.

Someone say something witty and fun. Here we are now; entertain us.

Because last night I found myself watching (horror of horrors) Ghost Whisperer starring the queen of insipidity herself, Jennifer Love Hewitt. (Who, incidentally, is slated to star in a film called She Had Brains, a Body, and the Ability to Make Men Love Her, which is ironic in every way imaginable. The IMDb plot summary reads: "Jennifer Love Hewitt plays a young Odessa, Texas housewife and former homecoming queen who became one of the city's most popular hookers until she, her bordello sisters and 68 prominent Odessa residents were arrested in a scandal that shook Texas." I shall have to see this movie.) Back to CBS: I was so captivated by the sheer fact that I was home alone on a Friday night watching such dross that I couldn't move, and proceeded to watch Close to Home, Numb3rs, and half the local 11 o'clock news before peeling my eyeballs off the television, to the immense relief of my poor, tortured brain.

Now, if I had cable, I could have watched National Geographic's Dog Whisperer instead, which looks fascinating, and would have saved me the plunge into the greatest shame spiral any non-alcoholic Friday night has ever witnessed.

I had planned to get up early and work today, but I stayed up late into the night reading The Moor's Last Sigh (fan-fucking-tastic), which cut into said plan. Now the least I can do as I caffeinate my way into the second half of this dreary Saturday is at least try to focus on something a bit more upbeat than my depressed sleeping patterns, my missing boyfriend, my mind-fucking job search, and the CBS Friday night lineup. Thus I give you the giant squid.



While in New York recently, I visited the American Museum of Natural History, which has been one of my most favorite places in the whole wide world since I was a little, little girl. They have, of course, added a big shiny new section with a planetarium and lots of physics-centered exhibitions since then, because Natural History (as my very educated little sister sillygirl84 explained with stunning erudition) in an archaic category that now contains all those embarrassing elements of 19th-century thought that could not migrate into the modern scientific categories of Biology and Organic Chemistry and such. So now the old section of the museum, with its uncanny dioramas of stuffed natural specimens, among which are scattered, without categorical distinction, models of things that for technical reason couldn't be stuffed and mounted, like giant squids and Native Americans, is (despite the integration of video displays representing the "real" natural world) less an educational exhibition than a hallowed monument of an earlier moment of American scientific and historical culture that we prefer now to hold at a polite distance from the higher technologies of Enlightened Knowledge.

But in the corner of the Deep Sea room, there's a menacing diorama of a giant squid attacking the head of a sperm whale. Walking through that dimly lit room from the upper level, down the stairs, under the suspended arch of blue whale, and across the quiet expanse of floor is so much like plunging into the briny deep that when you come face to face with this horrific spectacle, less Discovery Channel than Melville epic, it's really freaking scary. By some trick of the light (I think), there appears to be no glass between you and the enormous, squid-entwined head of the whale, which produces a visceral thrill very different from the cinematic excitement of watching big animals on TV.

It's so cool.

It's alive! ALIVE!!!

So here's to the giant squid, which (as you may recall) was photographed alive for the first time just a few months ago. In honor of this glorious creature, I'd like to direct you to my new favorite procrastination outlet, Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), which features a very informative Giant Squid FAQ, which are answered by none other than the great squid himself. In fact, through this site you too can approach the giant squid with any of your pressing questions, such as how to quit smoking, how a sperm whale manages to eat a giant squid, and the giant squid's position in the perennial debate on boxers or briefs. Also, you can get instructions on how to knit a squid hat for baby. I invite any- and everyone to knit me squid hats for the new year.

Go visit Poor Mojo and have a merry, squiddy ol' time.

I was just scrolling through bits of yesterday's news that I'd missed and came upon something that made me gasp aloud, bring my hand to my mouth as a gesture of true, old-fashioned shock and horror, and cry, "No!!!" sillygirl84, who is visiting for a few days and and currently sitting all the way on the other side of the room, said, "I know, isn't it sad?" I said, "How did you know what I just read?" She said, "I could tell."

What I'd seen was this: Jon Spencer, who played Leo McGarry on The West Wing, died yesterday of a heart attack.

Now, I gave up watching The West Wing years ago. It was my absolute favorite show for four seasons, but after Aaron Sorkin quit, I couldn't watch it anymore. I tried a few non-Sorkin episodes and it was like witnessing the takeover of all my dearest friends by weird prime-time television aliens. It was deeply upsetting and I haven't watched an episode since.

But I still remember the characters from Sorkin's West Wing like we went to college together or something, and though life intervened and we had to go our separate ways, I think of them often, wonder what and how they're doing, and look forward to an inevitable reunion in the future, perhaps when I get around to buying the show's first four seasons on DVD. So you can imagine how horrific it was to discover via the NYTimes obituaries that one of these dear acquaintences has been taken from us in the prime of his career.

Jon Spencer was so excellent as Leo McGarry.

I also remember being in love with him as Tommy on L.A. Law when I was but a wee girl.

RIP, Mr. Spencer.

What sucks: I came back from Thanksgiving break with a snotty, stuffy, sore-throaty head cold.

What rules: Upon my arrival, I found a delivery from a long-forgotten internet shopping spree containing, among other things, Volume 1 of The Mike Judge Collection. Yes, that's right—three DVDs of Beavis and Butt-head for the invalid's viewing pleasure.

I just popped into the BookCrossing forums for the first time in weeks, and read a thread on TV shows that disappeared too early, which got me thinking about how sad it is to see good shows end abortively. Some of the shows I have mourned: Firefly, My So-Called Life, Sports Night, and Sorkin's The West Wing. I consider the post-Sorkin West Wing an entirely different show that I am not yet ready to embrace, or even give a sporting chance. Maybe one day. Oh, and Undeclared, which I wouldn't say I mourned, exactly, but I did miss when it was cancelled.

Z is off to Boston today to interview for a 1-semester position teaching 19th-century British literature next spring. He's all dressed up in a suit and tie for the first time in his adult life. It turns out he has a flair for classy color coordinating. Who knew. Now he has to shop with me.

Last night Z and I saw Katsuhiro Otomo's anime film Steamboy. It uses a very familiar cinematic vocabulary, particularly for Japanese animation—an old-fashioned backdrop (in this case, Victorian London) framing miraculous mechanical monsters, and a preoccupation with technologies of various kinds of flight—but, like Miyazaki's films, it tells a wonderfully strange story. This film didn't seem as in control of itself as Miyazaki's do; it frequently began to drift away and drag (the pacing of it reminded me very much of Titanic, with looooooong stretches of metal creaking and pipes bursting and cabins lurching and people panicking, where you think, "OK, sink already!" and yet it doesn't for another hour); but, in the end, the opacity of what the film thought it was doing was the most interesting thing about it. For example: the narrative blooms around the invasion of Great Britain, in London, at the Great Exhibition of 1851, by an American-owned corporation (developing state-of-the-art weapons technology) courting a multicultural crew of investors that are conspicuously Arab and Indian, among other things. So there's this explicit pitting of the (19th-century) British Empire against a mythological version of the (contemporary) U.S. corporate empire...but where, exactly, does the rest of the world fit into this schema? I mean, the visitors to the American company that wages war on Victoria's empire look like they should be part of Victoria's empire. There's even a conspicuous shot of the "India" exhibit behind Victoria's throne inside the Crystal Palace right before she's evacuated because the American robot soldiers are attacking. (You have to see the movie. I can't really explain the robots here.) So is the U.S. led attack partially a kind of insurgency? And where are we, the audience, positioned in relation to all this? There's no clear allegory to actual historical events, but each of the narrative's parts—even the most fantastic elements, like the robot soldiers, and the massive "Steam Castle" that is the U.S. company's sublime-yet-primitive weapon of mass destruction—resonates just enough with a familiar cultural memory or reality that it seems to be telling a story about us that we should be able to decypher. As you can tell, I really don't know what to make of it just yet. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. Also, the animation, though not as consistently breathtaking (in my opinion) as Miyazaki's, is really terrific at key moments. There's a scene with an enormous red mechanical claw that was totally awesome.

On the job front...still waiting. *Sigh*

Today's reason why I love Z: I decided earlier this year that my morning coffee tastes better when someone else makes it and serves it to me (it has nothing to do with the skill of making—I make a mean pot of coffee—but with the principle of effort exerted). Rather than (or maybe in addition to) calling me a spoiled brat, Z agreed to bring me my coffee every morning. One morning I entered the living room, walking straight past the mugs and full pot of coffee, and sat down on the couch next to him. He got up and walked over to the kitchen to get me my coffee. I said, "I suppose I could have served myself on the way over to the couch." He said, "Honey, it's not your way." He's a good boy.

Last night I watched an episode of Angel that reduced me to tears. Buffy made a guest appearance, and it was a classic tearjerking Buffy-Angel scene, like the morning-after scene from Season 2 of Buffy, but sadder. If there was ever any question of Joss Whedon's skill as a script-writer, and I don't believe there ever was, it would be settled by the simple fact of his being able to write good scenes featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar, who is, frankly, a terrible actor. Everything else I've ever seen her do has been unwatchable. But her Buffy, in addition to being cute and kicking ass, has made me cry on more than one occasion. Remember the episode where her mom dies? I bawled through the whole thing, and then intermittently throughout the following week from thinking about it.

If Z weren't my boyfriend, then Rhett Miller of the Old 97's would be. As it is, he has to be satisfied as my Secret Pretend Boyfriend. Well, now I guess it's just Pretend Boyfriend.

I'm hungry and the kitchen is all the way downstairs and the food has to be all, like, made. This is where servants would be useful.

Man, I am so lazy.

Oh, I have to move. Yeah, like out of my apartment. It's really a pain. I have the most incredible deal—a two-floor, four-bedroom apartment on the East Side of Providence for $650/month—and my landlords finally figured out that they could be charging at least twice as much rent. My lease is up at the end of May. I could renew it, but I can't change any of the terms, which means Z couldn't move in with me (as we'd planned). Plus, I need to make a decision on this lease before I know whether I need to move to Pennsylvania next year. My landlord really wants me out so she can jack up the rent. So Z and I both have to find a place to live in Providence for the summer, soon, without knowing whether we'll be living here together next year or not. Arg. We're looking at a place today to sublet for the summer. I hope it's good.

OK, that's all the non-news for now. Back to work.

On the Brown Graduate Student Listserv, someone has posted a request for "sound effect audio files"—he writes, "i am especially interested in monotonic sounds, e.g. something being deformed, metal and wood sounds, etc." Which leads me to the eponymous question. I'm fairly sure that today, a thing being deformed sounds like me. I am having a deformed day. My advisors are having me apply for a one-year teaching position in Philadelphia that even they acknowledge I'm not going to get. Why, then, am I applying? you ask. Well, the official line is that if I go through the motions of marketing myself now, I'll be better at it in the fall when I do it in earnest. But I believe it is because my dissertation committee consists of sadistic ogres who get their kicks by ritually humiliating me. For example, one advisor requested a copy of my curriculum vitae to make sure it had all the right parts, and returned an edited version, saying he "tried to make it look a little less like a CV for someone applying to be an ad salesman at a radio station." I don't even know what that means. Also, my director tore my third chapter several new unmentionables, and then said she sees no reason I shouldn't be able to defend in August. Defend what? My radio ad salesmanship?

On the way home, I had my iPod on random, and the Old 97's song "Lonely Holiday" kicked in for the last stretch of the walk. That's the one where Rhett Miller (oh, the lovely Rhett Miller) sings, "I've thought so much about suicide / Parts of me have already died." I haven't actually thought that much about suicide, but it's a beautiful line nevertheless, and a good one for a deformed day. But it's the chorus that seems particularly apt today: "Lonely, baby I'm not lonely ... I got my imaginary friends." All I have these days are imaginary friends. Most of my real-life friends have moved on or, like me, have ensconced themselves in dissertation-writing dens and shun all social interaction. Fortunately, my imaginary friends are gems. grendel1031 kindly checked in today to make sure I wasn't dead, and the ever-gallant psychoprince has sent me more CDs: Tori Amos, "The Beekeeper"; Kittie, "Until the End"; and Louis XIV, "Illegal Tender." Tori couldn't have shown up at a better time. When I'm depressed, I reflexively throw her in the cd player.

I recently read A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, the first novel of his I've ever read. I was inspired by a preview I saw for a Rich Linklater film adaptation, animated in the same style as the strangely beautiful Waking Life. A Scanner Darkly was an interesting companion piece to Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World—they both use a science-fictional version of noir and the figure of the split brain to think about the limits of consciousness and identity. And the "end of the world" in the unconscious of Murakami's narrator is actually very similar in its mindless peacefulness to the ironically named "New Path" rehabilitation center in which Dick's narrator ends up.

Oh, and since I'm catching up in the sci-fi nerd department, last night I watched my first-ever episode of Star Trek, which also happened to be the first episode of Star Trek ever aired. Remember, I like things in order, from start to finish. I'm afraid the more Star Trek I watch, the more tempted I'll be to teach it in a course on definitions of the human. And I haven't come this far to end up Professor Star Trek. You know what kinds of kids would sign up for that class. They'd pass notes in Klingon.

Now I'm reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, which is an absolute delight. It is written in what might be the most readable prose I've ever encountered. I offered it to someone in the Book Relays, but I might have to buy a second copy for my permanent collection.

Feeling more myself again. Thanks for listening, imaginary friends.

Frank Rich has a great column in today's NYTimes on the right-wing war on televised indecency. The best part part, I think, is his paragraph on the Parents Television Council, "the e-mail factory that Mediaweek magazine credits with as much as 99.9 percent of all indecency complaints to the F.C.C. in 2004":

"It is also quite a little fount of salacious entertainment in its own right. On its Web site, the organization's tireless 'entertainment analysts' compile a list of every naughty word used on television and invite visitors to 'Watch the Worst TV Clip of the Week.' An archive of past clips - helpfully labeled individually by sin ('gratuitous teen sex,' 'necrophilia') - is there for your pleasure, with no requirement for the credit card number or membership fee that porn Internet sites use as a roadblock for children."

Now who can read that without clicking? So I moseyed on over to http://www.parentstv.org/ (Parents Television Council—Because Our Children Are Watching), and discovered just what our children are watching, indeed.

( Click to read more about the warped and raunchy world of the PTC, but don't say I didn't warn you. )

If my sister hadn't called this morning and mentioned that the blizzard had already started in Rochester, I would have had no idea I was going to get snowed in in a few hours time. Fortunately, she did, so I had ample time to jump on the pre-blizzard panic bandwagon. Z and I went to the library to print stuff and gather books for the weekend, the liquor store to buy a case of wine, and Whole Foods for snacks and dinner. The parking lot was a madhouse (can a lot be a house?) and the store was even worse. There was a young news reporter earning her stripes on the "storm preparation" beat, followed by a guy hauling a huge TV camera, chasing people around the market as they raced around gathering overpriced organic provisions. Why do news crews fly to the supermarket every time there's a snowstorm? We get them ever year. Everyone knows people go to the store before a storm. It's not really news. It's like how every summer, when the heat hits, they send some junior reporter out to Home Depot to report on how people are buying air conditioners. "So, what brings you out here today?" "Thought I'd pick up an air conditioner." "It's pretty hot out there, isn't it?" "Yep." I did learn today that Whole Foods customers stock up on weird things in an emergency. The baby spinach was running low, and the firm and extra firm tofu had been entirely cleaned out.

I spent several hours yesterday wrapped up in "The Rape of the Lock," trying to spell out what seemed like a very simple point when I started making it. I think I have become progressively stupider in my time in grad school. I really want to get through this part so I can get to the icky poems. I did discover some obscure stuff that looks interesting and possibly important to the chapter, including a series of poems Elizabeth Thomas wrote in response to Swift's. Thank you, Literature Online. I do not know how people dissertated before full-text online databases.

In addition to the big ol' diss, I have the following to see me through the storm: The Pickup, a disc each of Six Feet Under and Gilmore Girls episodes, an episode of MST3000, several books on Georgian interior decoration, and the letters of Horace Walpole, which, it turns out, are as entertaining as all those geeky old scholars of the 18th-century say they are. Who knew. And, of course, the ever-present back-ups: The Simpsons, Pee-Wee's Playhouse, and Mount TBR. I hope it snows for days.

Well, folks, the sun is shining and it's a balmy 5 degrees out there. If that's a touch extreme for you sensitive types, never fear—the breeze will cool you to a pleasant 15 below. They don't call it "Providence" for nothing! God bless Rhode Island!

I have to venture out into this winter wonderland in a little while to attend the grad student meeting with job candidate #3. She gave a captivating and beautiful job talk yesterday on the figure of the child in Romantic literature. If it were up to me, I'd have hired her on the spot. But, shockingly, it's not.

I don't have much to report here because I spent too much time working yesterday. I'm falling behind in my procrastination. I did, however, devote a good bit of time to television perusal last night. Thursday's bounty includes The O.C., a new C.S.I., and a dash of Teen Titans. After that, Z and I topped off the evening with a couple episodes of season two of the Gilmore Girls (courtesy of Netflix), which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the greatest TV shows of all time.

This seems to be everything I have to say about anything at the moment. I leave you with the listing of the Scissor Sisters iTunes Playlist, which is providing the mood music for this bee-yoo-ti-full winter morning. ( track list )

I've been having trouble waking up before 9am or so for at least a year now. I log in at least 8 hours of sleep a night, which I know is what the mysterious "they" say one should get every night, but it's much more than anyone else I know gets or seems to need. Today I am determined to get some real work done before attending a job talk in the department at 4. That means NO lingering in the BX forums, NO updating my friends list, and NO fun reading until I've devoted a solid few hours to the 18th century.

But, since I'm still finishing my coffee, I think I'll write a little bit here, get the blood pumping through the fingers.

Yesterday The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett arrived (Leukonoe's bookring). I've been curious about Terry Pratchett, who seems to have an enormous and devoted following in Britain. I read Good Omens recently, which he co-authored with Neil Gaiman, who is one of my favorite discoveries of the last couple of years. But breaking into the Pratchett circle has been a challenge for me, as a result of my insane, compulsive need to read things that have an order in order. I have not always been this way. I first noticed it while I was reading The Series of Unfortunate Events. My dad bought me The Bad Beginning and got me hooked, but as I continued to eat up the series, I learned that he had been reading the books all willy nilly, depending on which one was in the bookstore, or had a good title, or whatever. I almost went into anaphylactic shock at the thought. I was aware that the problem was obviously with me, but I couldn't shake the feeling that some profound violation of the natural order of things was afoot. Another example: Last season I became addicted to The O.C. I will not apologize for this. I needed a new TV show, since The West Wing had become an absurd parody of its former self following Aaron Sorkin's departure, and the O.C. was on at the same time as The West Wing, which gave me the extra satisfaction of thinking Screw you, crappy new West Wing, I'm gonna watch QUALITY crappy television. So. Seriously addicted to the O.C. I eagerly awaited the start of the second season all summer, all fall. Then I realized that Z and I had purchased tickets to see the Boston Symphony not only for the night of the season premiere, but also for the following Thursday. OK, no problem, we'll tape them. Except that we're idiots, and forgot to set the VCR two weeks in a row. After that, we were at home with nothing to do but watch TV all Thursday night every week, but I insisted we couldn't watch the new episodes until we saw the first two. "Why?" Z asked. Silly man. "Because they come FIRST!!" I raged. So, week after week, we continued to video tape episodes of the show that we weren't allowed to watch until I somehow obtained copies of the first two episodes of the season. Now, for those of you who have not had the pleasure of watching The O.C., let me assure you that the show's strengths are not to be found in its narrative complexity. Basically, the only things you have to know to make sense of what's going on in any given episode is who are currently dating and who are currently not dating. And, as you can imagine, this information is pretty self-explanatory. But it was the principle of the thing, the larger problem of missing links in the great chain of being. The tragic end of this story is that I never obtained the first couple of episodes, and I finally cracked last week and watched a new episode, just floating out there in the televisual ether, and it was awesome, and so I came home and watched the four episodes I'd taped, and now I've put it all behind me and I'm ready to go forth with the rest of the season.

But I digress. Terry Pratchett, as far as I can tell, has written approximately one million books, and most if not all of them are part of the Discworld Series. Yes, SERIES. So, you see, I couldn't begin reading until book #1 fell into my hands, which now it has.

Last night I finished The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk. I have to say, after reading his captivating and beautiful My Name Is Red, The White Castle was kind of a disappointment. It certainly doesn't aspire to do the same thing as Red, but it does want to be a psychological thriller about an identity crisis on a grand scale, and I just didn't feel the thrill. It is quite beautiful in places, but it's also kind of dull in others. It does become more interesting in the last chapter, which remarks explicitly on the narrative twists and paradoxes that the reader ought to have been gripped by all along, but at that point I just wanted to be through with it—I didn't feel like going back to figure out how the book was more interesting than I'd thought. Oh well. Pamuk is obviously a special writer, and I will continue to read his work. This story just seemed like an early effort that didn't quite hit whatever mark it was trying to hit.

Now off to work. Some more poems by Swift today: "The Progress of Beauty," "The Furniture of a Lady's Mind," "To a Lady."