be cool, soda pop

• Women Writing the Weird, edited by Deb Hoag. I know I’m in this book and everything, but I thought it was pretty good! There are some stories that really stood out for me—Caroline M. Yoachim’s “Blood Willows,” Nancy A. Collins’s “Catfish Girl Blues,” Helen Burke’s “Safe As Houses,” J.S. Breukelaar’s “Lion Man,” Candy Caradoc’s “The Strawman”, and Sara Genges’s “Prayer for an Egg” are some but not all. Plus, did I mention I’m in this book? I tried to read my story like I was not the one who wrote it, but I am too full of myself for that; there was a lot of literal back-patting going on. I read this book in a cabin in the woods.
• Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi. This book is great, five stars, but the sequel’s been checked out of the Carnegie Library for weeks. 
• Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood. I read this for class. It’s pretty good, but I think when you’ve already written probably the best dystopian novel ever, you should maybe quit while you’re ahead?
• Mystery and Manners, Flannery O’Connor. I read this on a bench in the Cathedral of Learning and sometimes laughed at Flannery’s quips (like the famous one about the university not stifling enough writers [obviously I had to go forth on the assumption that Flannery would not have had me stifled in order to laugh at said quip (this is a form of cognitive dissonance that is necessary to my well-being as I continue to approach the completion of my MFA)]) but mostly thought about how I don’t really think I’d want to hang out with her.
• Utopia, Thomas More. I read this for class. It was interesting! I think the main thing I will take away from this book is that in Thomas More’s fictional Utopia, everyone was pretty tolerant of one another’s religions, and in Thomas More’s real life, he regularly sentenced heretics to be burned alive!
• Washington Square, Henry James. I loved this book. I don’t want to sound like everyone who writes about books on the internet lately, but it was a pretty interesting companion piece to Season 2 of Downton Abbey. Because it’s all about, you know, money and marriage and how shitty rich women’s lives were back in the day. Plus—Mrs. Penniman is a great character for people who like to shout “Stop being such a dick!” out loud at books.
• Looking Backward 2000-1887, Edward Bellamy. Read for class. I just finished it this morning and I don’t have a lot to say about it. It’s the time travel novel for people who hate fun!, would be my one-sentence review.

Plus: back issues of the New Yorker whose content I have all but forgotten; One Story issues #155 & #156. Both fine; both pretty dude-centric; neither deserves scorn solely on the basis of my increasing inability to tolerate the dude-centric. 

I just explained to Kevin how Leonardo DiCaprio’s desperation for an Oscar is exactly like when one of your friends is really desperate for a boyfriend, and you’re just like, “Girl, if you just chill out and be yourself, it will happen.” 

Today at the 4:30 p.m. showing of Beauty and the Beast in 3D that I attended as a 25-year-old, the little girl beside us, who was wearing a winter hat made to resemble a polar bear’s head, whispered—cryptically, triumphantly, as Belle descended the staircase in her golden ball gown—”I’M HER,” and I totally knew how she felt. 

I started using the pilates DVDs on Netflix this week because, you know, it’s a New Year, and I’m a cliché, and I don’t want to die before I turn 30 and at the rate that I consume buffalo chicken products, that is an increasing possibility, but I didn’t want to go to gym because I don’t know; I just hate it there; I hate staring at CNN reports of Kardashian goings-on while I ride a bicycle that goes nowhere; it’s too good of a metaphor. I should probably note here that I have only been to a gym twice, and they were both in the last year. All of my experience exerting energy for the sake of fitness before last year came via watching Mousercise when I was in kindergarten. Anyway, I also don’t like to go to a gym because why is everyone there already so fit and good-looking? And so much younger than me with eyes so full of promise and lungs so full of oxygen? And sweatpants with writing on the butts? You can’t help but feel pathetic in those rooms, like everyone’s staring at you, like they notice that you only spent 8 minutes on that elliptical before you had to stop, but of course they don’t notice that; that’s just the panopticon talking, and also did you know that I only understood what the theory of the panopticon actually was within the last two weeks, when I read the young adult novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks? I am jealous of all the teenagers who are going to be able to throw that word around in their high school English classes. Kevin challenged me to use it naturally in conversation over New Years weekend with our friends in the woods; he would have given me $10 if I’d done it but I failed. This is all to say, though, that exercising in front of a television is, as “Kellyn” knew so many years ago, the most ideal of all situations, because I’m pretty sure in real pilates classes, they don’t appreciate you shouting “Nope!” at the teacher when the move is too difficult, nor are you exactly encouraged to say, “Shut up!” and “You smug bitch!” every time they cut to the (silent) blonde lady in a yellow sports bra whose ribs are plenty and countable, who is able to perform every maneuver without losing her white, white, white smile. Fitness!

*Bad

In the last two weeks or so, every time I’ve heard about anyone I know having professional success of any variety, to any degree, I’ve wanted to stick rusty nails into my own eyeballs.