Thoughts while watching Pride and Prejudice

Inna: So... The moral of the story is... Don't marry for money, because if you wait and marry for love, you'll catch someone richer?

I (heart) Italy

Happiness is...

Pasta with properly made tomato sauce.
Good agnolotti.
Roasted artichokes.
Prosciutto.
Foccaccia.
Fresh mozzarella.
Good tomatoes.
Proper pizza.
Pandoro with home-made Nutella.

I love being home.

Unfortunately, however, happiness is also coming back to Boston without the addition of fifty pounds, so we're going to have to work on that.

And now... Casablanca on TV, cat on my lap, comfy sweater, knitting. Perfect.

Let's go to the Hop.

Not to turn this blog into "Ohmigod look at me and my friends aren't we cuuuute?" but here are some of the pictures from the Tri-House Formal this weekend.



Here we have myself and Jon. It's a cute picture, I should say, though I look rather squished. You can't see it, but I'm wearing a beautiful black silk halterneck dress. Below-the knee, tight waist and flowing skirt. I rather enjoy it. In fact, I generally have to restrain myself from publicly petting my stomach.




Here is Jon, looking... brooding? Wistful? He complains that putting on white tie requires more time for men than it does for women. I just think the result is pretty darn cute. Shirt studs!




Here we have my roommate Inna and her boyfriend Clay. They are ridiculously cute in this picture. Ordinarily, I would make some silly comment about Inna having cleavage for the ages or cleavage that just won't quit, but I think she might hit me, and she is scary and Russian, despite being only 5'3.





Proof of scary Inna.




And last, but not least, the man responsible for all the pictures, Chris!



Chris was my hot date to see Brokeback Mountain last night, and held my hand through all the sad bits. Chris has an ambiguous relationship with my boyfriend (not to mention, he introduced me to him) but somehow still manages to be straight. Chris has pretty hair and lets us mess with it, and Chris constantly has a swarm of pretty girls cooing over him. Chris is AWESOME.

Impossible problem sets are the new black...

Rhetorical Question o' the day...

If I always wash off the top of my Nalgene, and only ever put water in there, because of my pathological fear of sugars decomposing into deadly mold-bacteria, why is it that the neck/ top of it always starts smelling nasty? And then why does it arbitrarily stop smelling nasty? Is there some special brush I can get to clean out the threads?

Ouch.

I woke up in the middle of the night (by which I mean 5 am) with excruciating, stabbing pains in my stomach. I lay there for a little bit, cursing the dawn light that was coming in through the part of the window where Jon managed to pull the curtain down. As I writhed about, trying various variations on the foetal position to spread out the pain somewhat, Jon stirred, muttered something, wrapped his arms and legs around me, buried his face in the crook of my neck and went back to snoring, a blissful grin on his face. About half his body weight was now on my stomach, and I tried hard to convince myself that it was helping. It wasn't. I squirmed out from underneath him, while he muttered "sorry if I was bothering you, I was just having an active dream..." and managed to contort and massage myself into a position of minor comfort. Two hours later I woke up to the sound of the construction trucks starting up.

All this to say, I'm writing a paper, my stomach is hurting again, I'm having an extremely busy day, and my room is messier than I even want to begin to think of. I'm also wearing pants that are a size too tight, since I'm trying to stretch them out, but they're hard denim, so the only result is that I feel rather... constricted. A little bit like what I imagine what wearing a latex bodysuit must feel like, but without the sexual implications, and with more pain involved, what with all the flesh rubbing against the hard denim. Though I guess that kind of pain doesn't trump the pain that could be, and, I suppose, usually is inflicted on you while wearing a latex bodysuit, so...

Agh. If this is how my writing is right now, I'm fucked. Cigarette time.

The Bulgarians are coming!

This school is officially overpopulated with Bulgarians. Today, while hanging out with my friend Boris, also hailing from that fair nation (where my mother was once roped into being the "lovely assistant" in a knife throwing demonstration) we ran in to not one, not two, but SIX of his countrymen! With a school population of 6000, and with Bulgaria being in a way a small and random nation, I must say that those odds are a little off.

One of the aforementioned Bulgarians, a very unfortunate mathematician, discovered (through Boris) that I have a stumbling acquaintance with the Russian language and chose to call out to me in Winthrop dining hall as I was scurrying down there today, ready to grab my enchilada and run back to my room. Speaking all the time in heavily accented Russian, he forced me to sit down at his table, where he began to sing "Katyusha", a very lovely folk song which was a little out of place in the dining hall. To add upon the horror, my former crush from the beginning of the school year was sitting at the table behind me. He gave us a weird look, which grew even weirder when the Bulgarian discovered I was Italian and started declaiming Dante. I sat there and profoundly cursed dead Florentines.

Everything is funnier when said with a Russian accent.

Teacher: The man who read the book recently bought the bucket.
Student: Bought the bucket?
Teacher: Bought the bucket? KICKED the bucket! Bought the farm.

While I'm still on my bizarre Ivan the Terrible is fascinating kick

The Repin painting I was talking about:

Freely lifted / mistranslated from my Russian homework:

[talking about Ivan the Terrible]

When prince Kurbskii ran from the Russian army in Poland, he wrote a letter to the tsar Ivan the Terrible. In the letter he wrote why to him had appeared the idea to exit the country for England. Kurbskii was a man from the upper class and his letter expressed the view of those among this class that supported his ideas. He didn't like how Ivan the Fourth ruled the country, an that he had absolute power in the state. Kurbskii wrote, that Terrible created new laws, which to him seemed illegal. ...

Now, I think the important part of this paragraph is not all the historical stuff that goes on, interesting though it is to me, but the fact that a former ruler is freely referred to as "Terrible". The man's nickname, a fairly ridiculous adjective to have just hanging out by itself in English, has become the sole appellation by which he can be called. Seems a bit overly-irreverent, in an odd way, no matter how evil this guy may have been, what with his son-killing and all (has anyone here seen Repin's painting Ivan the Terrible Killing his Son? It makes me tear up a bit to think about it. He killed his son accidentally. Admittedly, it was after they had a fight because Ivan IV had beaten his pregnant daughter-in-law and made her miscarry, but still, killing one of your children has got to twist you inside, just a little bit.) and yes, I am aware that the Russian term can also be translated as something like "awe-inspiring", with a more Old English bent to the meaning of terrible, but still, it's quite an appellation to be bandied about so casually in a pseudo-historical text in an intermediate Russian textbook. Makes me a little sad. He reportedly was all right as a youth, crowned at the age of 16 or 17, chose his bride from a local virgin competition, and went a little more mad after her death. Up to that time, he had actually been a quite good monarch, implementing reforms and doing like enlightened deeds, but after her alleged poisoning he went on a rampage, forming Russia's first secret police, a group of thuggish sectarians sworn to do his bidding at any cost, torturing people by the thousands, and holding constant orgies in the Kremlin. He married six more women, keeping them around for a short while before shunting them into prison or executing them for "exceeding whorishness" (new favourite phrase). He died playing chess. When his remains were exhumed, an inordinate amount of mercury was found in them, indicating that he might have been poisoned. Alternately, the mercury could have been part of a cure for syphillis, with which he was thought to be afflicted, like every good royal of the day.

Moon shoes!

I'm trying desperately to figure out who I can give these to for Christmas:


Find them here.

Grr.

Here below is what my math homework for today looked like on the handout:

Tmcqubucubpd Sdcerqbqa 28:
Ufd Xcabl ro Qmxvdse
Frxdirsn 25
Ceebaqdg rq Gdldxvds 5
Gmd cu 5:00 w.x. Gdldxvds 7
Wydced emvxbu wsrvydx edue ur ufd vrhde rmuebgd ufd Xcuf Gdwcsuxdqu’e
xcbq roobld, rq ufd ufbsg oyrrs ro ufd Elbdqld Ldquds (Srrx 325).
Sdcgbqa:
Asree-Fcssbe, Lfcwuds 21
Wsrvydx:
Wydced dhwycbq jrms sdcerqbqa cqg efri jrms irsn.
1. Lrxwmud ufd edpdquf srru ro orms (xrgmyr dbafuj-obpd).

I know we're doing codes, but this is kind of ridiculous. Actually easy, but it was annoying that 1 was an actual problem, not some cute little message. Hmph.

Non sequiteur

Boris, running up the library, 45 minutes late for a Russian study session: "I'm sorry I'm late. I was in office hours, and my TF wants to fuck me."

The Zep

So, I'm bumming around my room, listening to Houses of the Holy instead of studying for my Russian test like the conscientious student I aspire to be, and I've come to the startling realisation that all Led Zeppelin songs sound pretty much the same to me.

There are, of course, discernible songs in their oeuvre (and yes, unfortunately, "Kashmir" makes me think of P. Diddy just a little... I hate that man) but for the most part, they all meld into one long progression of sorts. An amazing one, of course, but listening to them too much just vaguely feels like you've been tuned in to one of those musical journey albums. Which I suppose they do, in a way, but they're one of the few bands I know who can make you feel vaguely as though you're stoned, even if you haven't touched a j in months. Not in a crunchy hippie band way (hell, I shouldn't speak. I happily listen to stoner music.) but in their own special way that shows just how it is that people "have, like, a connection, man" to the music."

My father is now spinning furiously in his grave, by which I mean his executive chair in his office. It was he who brought me to the almighty altar of Zeppelin, tiptoeing carefully in through the darkness, looking around uneasily to see if St. Robert of the Plant was in anyway distracted from his hijinks with fish and groupies by the introduction of a six-year old to the adoring masses gathered to worship. At that age, I was heartily convinced that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the same band, but I clamoured heartily for "D'yer Maker", chanting along tunelessly with the oh oh ohs.

I never learned how to play Stairway on guitar to perform earnestly at talent shows with stringy-haired boys. My 6th grade penchant for public belting out of the Doors aside, I preferred to cover bands fronted by women, dammit. Lack of public pretention aside, I do confess to long nights up on the phone with my friend Josh counting down so we could press play at the exact same moment and have the music going on both ends while we went "whoa" and analysed it to death. He was a lot more into it than me, but I liked talking to him on the phone and reading into the music made me feel deep, so I didn't really care. I did this later with a whole succession of cute artsy boys, through Pink Floyd (actually, also Josh) to Radiohead to small artsy bands until finally I decided I don't like talking on the phone very much. Come over, I'll make you some tea.

Still, Zeppelin was my favourite band for a long long time, and is still up there in the pantheon. It greatly influenced my love for music from the seventies, and current bands feauturing beautiful-voiced long-haired men. But now I'm listening to them again, for the first time in a little while, and... all the songs are pretty much the same.

The same amazing song, but still the incredibly similar. Sure, they do different things, and the riffs change and come in different part, but they just feel like different stages in some rock operetta.

I think my mind, and my perception of the world, might just have exploded. Not too insightful a post, but mind-blowing, I tell you. Like, woah.

Chris' Birthday Presents

These two pictures were taken a few nights after my friend Chris' birthday. Jon and I decided he needed presents (as he is, after all, the one who introduced us) and so to the vintage store we went.

Chris is possessed of a black leather hat that was edgy when he first acquired it, but after long exposure to time and the elements, it has assumed the delicate appearance of a piece of jerky. He is far too handsome to have this atop his head. Jon and I decided his headwear needed to be taken in hand. The hunt for the perfect hat was on, born out of a few too many jokes, and Chris getting offended.

Jon made a few phone calls, and discovered that the amusingly named Proletariat claimed to have bowler hats, fedoras, and "a really awesome one with a big black brim." The hat that bored the closest resemblance to a bowler, if you squinted and pretended to have no knowledge of the greatness of bowlers was emblazoned with the Playboy label and so would not fly. The fedoras were made of decomposing straw. The really awesome one? It lived up to the hype.



On our way to the checkout counter, we saw The Poncho. It called to us, whispering of Chris' Mexican heritage and and the magic in its pattern. It sang songs of moonlit nights in Guadeloupe and mustachioed men wielding guitars among the saguro. If worse came to worst and he hated it, I could pretend the Latino portion of my ancestry was not Cuban but Mexican and rock it myself... in the privacy of my own room, of course. The poncho needed to be bought.

So bought it was. Breathless with hilarity, we ran back to my room, intersecting Sabine, who wanted to see what all the fuss was about. She stayed on for the first giving of the gifts, with some singing and dancing. After she left, Chris asked what we really would have done, had she not been here to force us to censor our performance. I leave you an image of the result. Draw conclusions on your own...



(However, while drawing conclusions, remember that Jon will strip down to boxers and a scarf given the slightest provocation.)

Boobies!

I have developed breasts all of a sudden. I truly don't understand the provenance of this phenomenon. All the females in my family are flat as boards-- I've always been the busty one with my meager B, but now, with these new-sprouted oranges, I suddenly look like I've gotten implants when standing next to my mother or my cousins. Double Js, I tell you. These can have no earthly provenance-- perhaps they sprang fully formed from my boyfriend's head?
Observe the picture to the left. Look harder. Yes, I know that little line of cleavage isn't a big deal. Nothing to get excited about. But if you consider that I mysteriously went down to an A cup last year, you'll see where all the fuss is coming from. I have BOOBS! 100% real, bona-fide titties! And they're AWESOME. I like being flat, too, and this is making me reconsider some of my outfit choices, but at the same time, I am hard-put to avoid fondling myself in public.
REAL LIVE BREASTS!

I wonder what kind of weird hits I'm going to get with this post.

The Catholic Church, again

In August 1994, the Catholic church decreed that you couldn't be a priest if you were an alcoholic or had celiac disease (allergic to wheat). (Popbitch)

The things I find out seriously just keep on getting better and better.