Today was the first day of summer vacation and I spent the first 30 minutes trying to decide what book I want to read first. For the last couple of weeks I have been perusing book stores, libraries, and various online sellers, compiling my summer reading list. No matter that I have gathered more books than I will ever be able to read in three months, let alone three months in which I will be taking a class and trying to supplement my meager income with freelance writing gigs. Half the fun is in the gathering.

My first literary conquest of the summer (not including The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I read while I was completing my final paper and grading my students’ final projects) is Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson. Even though I have officially dedicated my life to British Victorian lit, I still have a soft spot for 19^th Century American. Other books appearing on my reading list, in no particular order, are:

• Monstrosities: Bodies and British Romanticism by Paul Youngquist
• Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London by Seth Koven
• Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell
• The Italian Boy by Sarah Wise
• Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
• Frankenstein: A Cultural History by Susan Tyler Hitchcock
• Kafka on the Shore by Murakami
• Discipline & Punish by Michel Foucault (Someone has questioned my patience when it comes to reading this book. Now I have to finish it just to prove a point.)
• The Detective and Mr. Dickens by William Palmer (The author is one of my professors. I’m very curious about his mystery novels.)
• Our Vampires, Ourselves by Nina Auerbach
• A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke (This is a guilt read. One of my professors found out I had never read it and her distain still gives me nightmares.)
• Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

And a bunch more, but I am tired of typing and no one cares but me anyway. This hording of books may seem silly, since it’s a free country and you can read anything you want at anytime. This is not true for literature grad students, who almost always love reading, but must bow to the cruel literary whims of their professors and dissertation committees. The freedom to choose what I want to read is so rare that it’s intoxicating.

In a trip to the library today, to gather more books for my ever growing army, I ran into a student. His surprise at seeing me away from Purdue reminded me of how I felt when I was 10 and I saw one of my teachers at the movies. This surprise might have been enhanced by the fact that I was covered in dirt from weeding my yard, and both my jeans and my shirt had holes in them. I really need to take more pride in my appearance. Anyway, he told me he was going to spend his summer “reading the classics.” He only had one book in his hand, Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country. Far be it for me to discourage a student from reading liberal rhetoric; I have read it myself and thought it was great. But I do wonder what list of classics he is going off of.

I just finished A Tale of Two Cities and I must say that I’m quite disappointed in myself. Do you know the closing lines to this famous Dickens’s novel? It’s quite possible that you’re smarter and better read then me, but just in case I’ll reproduce the lines here:

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

This is perhaps the most famous line in literature and I had no idea where it came from. What’s worse, I have heard this line hundreds of times in silly sitcoms and out of the mouths literary parrots, and most likely parodied them myself, without knowing the origin. Really, that’s rather sad. Why are we, as a culture, using lines that we have no idea of their origin? For all I knew this quote could have come from a KKK recruiting pamphlet. As it is, these lines are spoken by (or thought by) an innocent man walking to his death, because he feels he is not as good as another man who happens to look a heck of a lot like him. “Rest” equals death. Sydney Carton has one serious inferiority complex and, in my opinion, is much sexier than that goody-goody Charles Darnay. But that’s not my point. The point is, unless we know where the quote comes from, we really should not be using it, especially when the lines involve a walk to the guillotine. Or Madame Guillotine, as Dickens would say.

On a related note, while writing this blog I am watching Smash Lab, a show on the Discovery channel where they spend 60 minutes blowing up buildings and the like. The narrator just said, in reference to the Smash Lab team building a fake wall to be blown up, that they like “a fine and private place” to conduct their explosive experiments. What possible connection can that allusion have to the demolition of brick walls? Is our narrator a frustrated Marvell scholar, or did he hear that phrase on a Simpson’s episode? Either way, it made me happy, like I was in on some snobby joke, which is the true secret to why allusions are so popular.

As a child I loved a variety of highly crappy comics: Family Circus, Heathcliff, Beetle Bailey, and above all, Garfield. As all fans of this comic know, Garfield has three eye configurations: closed, half-closed, and wide open. I used to go through my slender, horizontal Garfield books, with such puny names as Garfield Makes it Big and Garfield’s Big Break (Get it? He’s fat!), and put a check mark next to the strips that featured Garfield using all three ocular expressions. Three panels, three eye patterns. Especially prized were strips that started out with closed eyes, moved to half-closed and ended in wide open. Sunday comics didn’t count, as the panels and the visual options did not match up numerically.

Over dinner last night I mentioned this habit to some friend, two of who laughed until their faces turned red, and the last looked so concerned and rather afraid that I started to questions what I had always seen as a rather harmless pastime. What about my other childhood habits, like always announcing myself before I turned on a light in a dark room and chanting a poem I made up five times in a row before I turned my light off every night before bed (it had to do with not having bad dreams). Did I have a bit of OCD, or do all children act this way? Anyway, it’s not like I still do that stuff. Now I’m content with filling in the circles on all memos, worksheets, and handouts. Capital letters are filled in with green ink, and lowercase with blue.

Someone on the third floor of the English building has a real problem with people who don’t wash their hands. Right now there are nine signs in the bathroom begging, threatening, or trying to scare people into washing their hands. Some are just friendly little signs with a happy person washing their hands. Others show close-ups of the influenza virus and tell us that this will be our fate if we don’t wash with soap and water, and preferably repeat. My favorites are the ones geared toward us graduate students, which take famous passages from books and incorporate clever little messages of hygiene. For example:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was a time when people rarely, if ever, washed their hands - in short, it was a very dirty time, full of sickness and disease.”

Oddly, these signs it not last long. I assume some indignant student was appalled to see Dickens, Melville, and Twain used in an advertising campaign, no matter how noble the end may be, and tore them down in a fit of existential despair. I rather enjoyed them and varied whatever stall I was using in a given day so I could read the whole collection.

Last week a bottle of fancy hand soap showed up in the bathroom, with a sign attached stating that it was for “hand washers ONLY!!!!” This shows an odd bout of anger against people who don’t wash their hands and an odd lack of forethought. Is the mystery soap provider trying to entice people who normally don’t wash their hands with a bit of reverse psychology (and the desire to smell like raspberries) or are they trying to exclude non-hand washers from the fun of using fancy soap? Why would people who don’t wash their hands want to use the soap anyway? Was their really any reason to specify who could and could not use the soap? If they wanted to tempt non-hand washers into using soap they should have gotten some of those fancy guest soaps that are shaped like roses or seahorses. Everyone loves those.

The 1^st, 2^nd, and 4^th floor bathrooms don’t have any signs at all, leading me to wonder if we are naturally dirtier on the 3^rd floor and need more policing. I have been keeping my eyes open, but everyone seems neat and clean and I have never seen anyone skip the ritualistic hand washing. I, however, am considering giving up the whole pointless ordeal. I have been washing my hands all year with both fancy and non-fancy soap and I have suffered from the flu and a cold, both illnesses the signs specifically state hand washing will keep away. I might start my own anti-hand washing campaign. My first sign will go a bit like this:

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, probably because they washed their hands like The Man wanted them to and yet they still got sick and eventually threw themselves in front of a train.”

It’s true that I like to read. It has been my favorite pastime as long as I can remember. As a small, geeky child my parents would ground me from reading instead of from going out and playing with my friends. A sad but true tale about me that says way more than one simple sentence should.

I am currently studying for my PhD in literature, which is really nothing more than an excuse to read for a living. I have worked for bookstores, publishing houses, and newspaper, and let you tell you, they get awful mad when you read on the clock. I’m that sad little man from the Twilight Zone who almost gets fired from the bank for reading on the job. However, I would like to point out that he is apparently the only piece of humanity who survives the holocaust, all because he snuck down to the bank vault to read some Shelley. Anyway, after a number of years it became apparent that English professor is the only career that is going to pay me to read, so here I am.

I certainly have enough to read. Between my three classes I have 29 books to read in sixteen weeks. I’m not complaining about this. Even if I don’t really care to read all of the books assigned (like the evil Pamela), I know I’ll probably end up liking them once I get into them (except for Pamela). What I hate is that now that I have rearranged my life so reading and writing about books are my main function, I feel guilty if I read for fun. Anytime I pick up a book just for kicks, I find myself analyzing if this is really how I should spend my time. If I’m reading I should be reading for class, and if I’m caught up, I should be reading in preparation for prelims or my dissertation. Death Note and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao have become as psychotically bad for me as reruns of Friends and The Fairly Odd Parents.

Reading in and of itself has become an indulgence. My mind feels that if I’m holding a book it had better contribute to a class or a paper or a lecture. Often I feel so guilty about reading for fun that I end up not reading at all and instead turn on the TV or surf the net. I make deals with myself, like any reading I do after 11pm and before 8am is OK, since I would normally be sleeping in that time anyway. There is a certain danger in turning your favorite hobby into your career.     

The world’s population is increasing at an alarming rate, if my circle of friends is any indication. We have hit the age where it’s now or never for baby making, and more people then I expected are making good use of their ovaries. The most unfortunate side effect of this unprecedented burst of births is that I am forced to spend valuable time within the hollow, soulless maw of Babies R Us.

 This store is enormous; it resembles nothing more than a dismal, pastel splattered warehouse. Exposed pipes and beams arch over the customers in utilitarian glory, and bleak, characterless music saps what little strength the shopping parents may have left. My first visit lasted less than five minutes. I ran in terror, feeling as if some monster from a David Lynch movie has sucked out my essence. Subsequent visits have lasted longer as my strength and desperation for gifts grew stronger. I tend to wander aimlessly up and down the aisle, peering at items called “piddle pads” and “pee cups” in fascinated disgust. I have no idea what to get or what a baby needs and the store itself offers no clues. Even when there is a registry to follow, the aisle and category numbering is so confusing that I usually end up buying the first thing I’m able to understand the use of. I’m fond of the baby bag. Baby goes in bag. Makes sense to me.

 The one thing I do like about the baby store is how soft everything is. Why don’t they make adult t-shirts or pillows out of this material? I would even put up with the graphic of a giraffe and bear hugging to have a blanket as cuddly as what babies get on a regular basis. I spend half my time feeling around the store like a newly blind person.

 There are two types of people in Babies R Us: people with babies and people who are about to have babies. It’s easy to spot which is which by their stomach size and number of babies they are pushing around. Their attitude is also a big indicator. People about to have babies are still nice, normal humans. People with babies are beasts who would run you down with a cart full of diapers and piddle pads rather than move an inch out of your way. There are of course exceptions to this rule. None of my friends have ever run over my foot with a stroller and smiled at my pain. However, I’m watching them closely and am prepared to perform an exorcism at a moments notice.

I assume there are other people like me, friends of the fertile, skulking around the store, hiding from the triplets and the scary soccer-moms-to-be. Maybe we can get together and make a fort out of the diapers or giggle at the breast pump displays.

Existence is very bleak at 3am when you’re curled on the bathroom floor, exhausted and panting from the latest bout of vomit that has just exited your body. And I don’t just mean because of the obvious pain and suffering you have just gone through, and that you know you will go through again and again and again before the night is over, but the existential crisis that is brought on by the cold and the silence and feeling of absolute meaninglessness that descends on you during any dark night of the soul, no matter what the cause.

With my face pressed hard against a dirty pink rug, staring at a wall splattered with vomit, the inarticulate whine that is involuntarily leaking out of my throat seems like nothing more than the pathetic pleading of some dumb animal begging for release. What would I give for this moment to be over? A month of my life? A year? A week of your life? As a child who was often sick with misery at the prospect of another crushing day, I would mentally go though everything I expected to happen in the next 24 hours, and somehow that would make the pain more manageable; I had already lived through the worst, it was only a matter of pushing through those surprises in-between. But as an adult you have the unfortunate tendency to see beyond your immediate desolation to the weeks and months and years beyond. No mental exercise can prepare you for that.

At 5am I started to worry that the house would catch fire, or the zombies would choose this moment to attack. What would I do? I was in no condition to run or fight. I could picture myself as a dark silhouette against the fiery sun of my imploding home, on my knees vomiting and craping my pants. I would be a cautionary tale, or more likely the punch line to a joke. And what do sick people do in real crises? How do cancer patients in Iraq escape when their hospital explodes? What happens to soldiers with missing limbs and pierced brain pans when the cry goes up to evacuate? What if this is my life, forever and ever, a monstrosity who can only expel, but never take comfort or warmth or nourishment?

I tend to be dramatic when I have the flu.

It’s Thanksgiving and I’m full of spite against my friends who think they have so much to be thankful for. I want more mean spirited rants against selfish drivers and stupid customers. It’s like I don’t even know these people. So to balance out all that goodness and light, here is a list of things I’m not thankful for.

1. Ugly babies
2.  Neapolitan ice cream with all the chocolate eaten out
3. My selfish boyfriend who won’t buy me a queen size bed
4. Daylight savings
5. Sixty thousand in student loan bills
6. FoxNews and anyone who watches it
7. Puns
8. Sweaters that seem cute but are in reality itchy betrayers
9. People who are smarter than me
10. The picture on the box of Tofurky that promises so much more than it can deliver
11. Societies inability to produce a comfortable bra
12. People who prance around in front of me with their adorable dogs that I will never have (see #3)
13. No matter how much I fantasize, I’ll never be a sexy ninja
14. People who don’t list me on their list of things they are thankful for
15. Michael Bay
16. That Boo Berry comes but once a year
17. Buffy and Firefly are never coming back
18. My inability to fly
19. Christian Bale is always snubbing me
20. Overly negative people

On NPR this morning I listened to a story about an Italian football fan that was accidentally shot (twice) and killed by a cop during a football riot. And this is the second such killing in Italy in the past couple of months. This story should have astonished me. After all, I would have cried out in shock if I heard the same story in the context of a Star Trek convention or a cat fancier’s competition. But I have learned that when it comes to football (of both the European and American variety) regular people turn into vampires thirsty for the sweet pain, and often blood, of their foes.

An ice pick in the eye is a more pleasant sight to my boyfriend than the sight of his beloved Colts failing. I have seen him gnash his teeth in terror, drop to the floor in spasms of misery, and claw the air in an agony of pain over what to me seems like more of an “well, that’s just too bad” situation. The season has barely started and his constitution is already shot. After the crushing blow he received last night my boyfriend could hardly sleep, had horrific nightmares, and woke up with a broken spirit. I predict that most of his workday will be spent writing tortured blog entries and commiserating online with other Colts fans, talking about what went wrong like a group of abused housewives comparing bruises. I wish I could stage some sort of intervention, wean him away from this destructive habit that can only end in being gunned down by an overeager cop (if history is any indicator), but I know I will be rebuffed.

The funny thing is that outside of the sports arena my boyfriend is as unemotional as a robot. He treats me like a crazy person when I yell at other drivers and once, finding me in tears over a particularly sad novel, actually suggested I should not read so much if it was going to upset me. But he thinks nothing of doing a jig of joy in a room full of people when the Colts have done well and even less of throwing remote controls or cats around when they do badly. I actually feel sorry for the Colts at time, thinking of how many household around the city must, at this very moment, be cursing their name. They won the Superbowl last year, which I hear is pretty good. Are they never to know peace? Will anyone every say, “Well, that was a rather bad game, but they did so well last year, I think I’ll layoff them for a while. Maybe send them a fruit basket shaped like a football.”

However, I will concede that the jig, especially when other sports fans join in, make it all worth it.

When I was 6 and mom was 23 we lived in a basement apartment in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was a decent apartment in a respectable neighborhood and, even though it did not have a single window, not even those little half-windows you often see in basements, it was killing my mom to pay for it. Every morning mom woke up at 7am, got me ready for school, and then went back to bed until 10. At 10 she got up again, showered, and worked from 11 until 3pm waiting tables at a nearby dinner. She then picked me up at school, helped me with my homework, made dinner, and did normal mother/daughter activities until my bedtime at 7pm. Mom then worked from 8pm until 3am cleaning the interior of airplanes after international flights. The neighbor would look in on me every hour for free.

So free time was in short supply and my mom forgot about Halloween until the afternoon before the hallowed event. I chatted on incessantly that afternoon about the Halloween parade I was going to be a part of. Sharply at noon our teacher was going to lead our whole class through the school, in and out of each classroom, where we would show off our costumes and collect candy. It was a sad little affair, but more than enough to please a six-year-old. Any break from the monotony of school was brilliant. When mom asked about my costume I brought out a paper cat mask I had made. It was cut from a book and hand colored, black then white and black again. It tied on with a piece of yarn, which was already tearing through the thin paper. I was too young to feel any shame about this pathetic little mask. I just wanted to be a cat. It was almost 7pm by this time and mom quietly put me to bed.

At lunch the next day my whole table buzzed about the Halloween parade. I ate very little, leaving room for buckets of candy. I was squishing tatter tots with my fork when mom appeared beside me, clutching a paper bag. The cafeteria monitors were alarmed until she explained who she was, and I was beside myself with happiness, proud that all my friends were seeing my mom, who with the inexperience of youth I considered the most beautiful woman in the world. Silently my mom drew out a wonderful cat mask, silky black with a jeweled nose and ears. I recognize the gems from a much coveted paste necklace my mother owned. Tight filling black leather gloves followed, a necessity when cleaning unheated planes at 1am in Alaska, with a jewel pasted on each finger to represent claws. A long black tail with a red bow at the base and a fancy collar, cut from mom’s fake satin blanket, completed my costume. I was ecstatic. I felt myself the most striking participant in the Halloween parade and refused to take my costume off, which resulted in a visit to the principal and a note to my mother, which, this once, she overlooked.