Saturday, November 23, 2002
 

I have charge of my feline friend Jake again, this time for all of Thanksgiving break. He's still fat, still a sweetie. At the moment he's quite content, because he just got the meat that I picked off a slice of reheated pizza, which is probably the only meat he's going to see in this apartment. The pizza is left over from our Thursday night shindig at his mommy's apartment; we hostesses ended up with too much in the way of pizza, chips, drinks, etc., and I ended up with the bulk of the leftover pizza (a mix of extra cheese and olives, olive and onion, and supreme). It was fun, though, and a good way to begin the break.

Yesterday was a first for me: Since entering graduate school in August (from before the time classes officially started), it was the first time that I had not done one single academic thing all day long. Bliss! I watched X-Files at 5:00 (6:00 on TNT, for those of you who are EST), as it was one of my favorite episodes (the two-parter that follows up my all-time favorite episode, "Fallen Angel"). Between that time and the 9:00 (or 10:00) special showing of CSI, I had planned to do some reading, but that plan fell through for a variety of reasons (including me getting a magazine in the mail today; Jake needing attention; the sudden and compelling desire to file my nails; the need to channel-surf for awhile; etc.). Not least among these reasons involved an e-mail I was trying to type; I ended up watching Law & Order and was attempting to type a joking e-mail about my little TV binge. I wanted to quote TNT's "we known drama" slogan but accidentally typed "we know trauma" instead. I didn't notice this error and sent the message; I only caught it when deleting sent items soon thereafter. This little Freudian slip convinced me to jettison the trauma theory etc. for the evening and veg out entirely. Really, I kind of alarmed myself.

End of story is that I finally wrenched myself from the TV and went to bed, with Jake under my arm like a stuffed animal. He eventually migrated down to my feet, which didn't stop me from waking up with hives on my face this morning (I think the problems arise when my allergy meds come to the end of their 12- and 24- hour durations in the morning).

Today's activity is rerereading Absalom, Absalom! in preparation for writing a paper about it. I was going to attempt to be inflammatory and claim here that the novel is ever so much more brilliant than Ulysses (it is), but I read the same claim in a book a few days ago, so I guess I'm not being particularly original here. I chose this forum rather than class, as I was already about to be stoned for being the only person who A) agrees with Leo Bersani's "Against Ulysses and B) gives the novel the "negative" reading. Fortunately, the prof did agree with me (and others, certainly) on the point of questioning the existence of postmodern literature and film, so I'm good to go there.

Well, the cat is sleeping, and the fish (I'm also caring for a beta fish; let's call it betasitting) is being awfully active, by its standards. And I should be reading. Joy.

Elvisette philosophized at 1:40 PM