Stick(l)er

It just so happens that one of my greatest peeves in life is stickers on my books. Any kind of stickers. Price tags, those yellow USED stickers, Oprah's Book Club stickers (those are the worst), anything. Hate them. You may have noticed, I'm a little particular about my reading materials. Okay, I'm particular about a bunch of things, and opinionated about almost everything, but for some reason, I cannot stand stickers on my books. As a result, the first thing I do upon roosting after a trip to the bookstore is unpack my bags and peel off whatever thing has been defacing my precious booky. (For the record, pun barely noticeable in today's media, I'm also the same way about immediately unwrapping my CD purchases. And don't even get me started on shrinkwrapped books. It's not like they have to stay fresh.)

Last week I purchased textbooks for the spring semester--which included Stickers, All Kinds. Almost all the books were used, but even worse the college I attend uses particularly odious pricing stickers the size of my hand, stickers that could have patched the Mauritania, stickers that....well, in a word, stick. Since Law and Order was on, I settled down on the floor in front of the television with a trash can, a tower of books almost as tall as a FireCat sitting on a floor, a paper towel, and the industrial size bottle of Goo-Gone. My father was amused enough to take a few pictures of this, but I shan't post them, as the shirt I am wearing is tissue-weight and my slouched posture leaves something to be desired in the body-fat-appearance category. (On the plus side, I have excellent cleavage in both shots. But I digress.) His reason for this was he wanted documentary proof of "the sadness."

Sadness? What? How could anyone be sad surrounded by that many squeaky-clean books? Even if half of them were about the Holocaust and the other half were about visuality, violence and race (hey, it's the only two classes they were offering that weren't about Thornton Wilder, and I've already taken that.) Only one lonely poetry book by Eavan Boland rounded out the group. Anyway. I embrace my nerdliness. He wasn't going to shame me with this.

And then, the next night, I found myself in the same place, polishing my multivitamin capsules one at a time.

I so wish I were kidding about this. But one of the capsules apparently exploded, split along the seam, or just gave up the gelatin ghost, and the contents oozed all over the bottle, coating all the other vitamins with gunk. This wouldn't have been a problem if it hadn't been excruciatingly foul-tasting gunk of the "making a face like a cat eating a peanut-butter sandwich" variety. And this stuff had gotten
e v e r y w h e r e . So there I was, with a little white terrycloth bar towel, carefully polishing each phyto-fucking-estrogen until it gleamed as darkly as my thoughts.

Incidentally, this particular variety of vitamins is also particularly hard to unseal from its hermetic little peel-off lid. Seriously, GNC ought to give some thought to this problem. Do they really want a bunch of women within eyeshot of perimenopause to be so frustrated with their packaging that they must resort to wielding sharp objects? I'm thinking not. But that's another post entirely.

From the Bottom of My....Er, Feet

And now, a timely message from my socks while I finish up my last term paper of the fall semester:

Parenting Strategies in Elizabethan Drama and Its Sources

This was inspired by an email conversation among several colleagues about final paper topics for Shakespeare and His Contexts (the "feckless mice" course).

Parenting rule number one: Do not feed your children to your dinner guests
PR number two: Do not feed their children to your dinner guests
PR number three: Do not have sexual relations with any mysterious, beautiful stranger your child's age. It will turn out to be your child in disguise.
PR number four: Do not leave your children under a rock/on the top of a mountain. This will result in the ultimate violation of rules 1-3 in the distant future.
PR number five: Do not divide your kingdom among your descendants. Most of your children are greedy dirtbags. The only one who really loves you will end up dead if you do this.
PR number six: Do not lock your children up in towers. They didn't do it.
PR number seven: Conversely, do not allow your children to sneak out the bedroom window every night. They are up to no good with your sworn enemy.
PR number eight: Never, under any circumstances, brag that your children are better/prettier/stronger than (insert name of local deity here). It will just end badly.

In fact, perhaps it's just best to dispense with this "having children" nonsense altogether. It just leads to too much disruption of your tidy plans for world domination. Become a nun and lock yourself in a convent.

Oh wait. That leads to the same sorts of troubles, doesn't it. Maybe you should just bite off your own tongue and allow yourself to be tortured to death during a play for the royal palace to expose the murder of your sister.

Schadenfreude, darling, Schadenfreude

Oh, no. No no no no no. They didn't.





Well, yes, actually. They did.

When Bad Things Happen to Good Shakespeare Classes

Reason number one why Dr. Glenn should not refer to characters in a play as "feckless mice" in my presence? The following will immediately appear in my notes and set Mark, who sits next to me, laughing so uproariously he almost snorts a Ricola out his nose.



Really, Glenn? You didn't see this coming?

A Brief Note of Explanation

I have not forgotten this blog exists. I am not dead. I am in grad school full time (again). I am still teaching two classes per semester. I have seven more pages on Schiller, Rousseau, and Chateaubriand to pound out before Monday.

I have a death wish, apparently.

If I can make it through the weekend, I'm due for a nice, long post. But how sad is it that my idea of weekend fun includes a movie about John Keats? And this paper's not even about that!

Sometimes a Manual Transmission is Just a Manual Transmission

Today whilst at work I found out that apparently I've been driving around without car insurance for two weeks! Because my fucking insurance company canceled my policy. Ok, it's not their fault. I love my car insurance company, usually. But they didn't get my check. You know, the one I wrote and mailed the first week of August. Which is apparently on holiday in the Caribbean somewhere, because it sure as hell didn't get to Trenton.

Of course the first thing the insurance company says to me is, "In the meantime, don't drive the car." Oh sure, I'll just climb aboard my MAGIC CARPET and LEVITATE the fuck home. Seriously. I pointed out that I needed this fixed sort of now, because I don't even have an office to sleep in, I'd have to sleep in the hallway, which was pretty embarrassing, and anyway I had to go to Trenton (unlike my check) for a class in literary theory, and while I'm sure I'd be delighted to skip two and a half hours discussing Freud, College B would probably be less so. So they accepted a check by phone. Which should clear....tomorrow. So call us then, to see if you have an active insurance policy again and can drive your car.

Sure. In the meantime, I'll just be STUCK IN PENNSYLVANIA LIVING OUT OF MY CAR. Since that's apparently all it's good for right now. Other than being a relatively soundproof place for me to vent my frustrations safely at Very Catholic College A.

Short version of rest of evening, paid beaucoup bucks (again), emailed College B, drove car home VERY CAREFULLY, exchanged car for mom's car, drove to campus, parked IN CHICAGO because mom's car doesn't have a graduate parking permit and can't park anywhere useful, got to class as they were taking a fifteen minute break.

I came very close to breaking my own first rule tonight.