b l o g o s

Dear Courtney Love,

It has recently come to my attention that you claim to have originated the phrase "kookoo bananas." First off? you don't even spell it right--it's "cuckoo bananas"--and second? My bff E! has been using that phrase since at least the the fall of 2007, and I have cited her here before and could offer much earlier emails as proof if you like. JM even used it in his class this past spring, after I visited E! in the ROC in January and brought it on home with me, like a little catchy head cold, and one of his students wrote on an evaluation form that JM was not only a great professor, but that he used the student's new favorite phrase, "cuckoo bananas"!  We called E! at once to tell her about the phenonemon she had created. That student, Ms. Love, has probably never heard of you, having barely entered elementary school when your band Hole slipped back into the ether. (I still spin to "Awful," btw--it's a great little sprint song.)

What is more, your claim to have coined the phrase, or to own the phrase "kookoo bananas" reminds me of my off-and-on grad school boyfriend (or whatever) who swore he invented the phrase "fuckin-a taco" in college. He kind of liked Nirvana too, for what it's worth. Here's something: I never really believed that he invented that phrase; in fact, I have been known to tell people about his claim when I want to thumbnail his cocky mofo-ness. (grad school bf, if you're reading this, hi!) People don't exactly "invent" phrases like that, and when they do, they often don't take. I can think of two exceptions: 1) Metaspencer's "undergrounduate library", and 2) E!'s "cuckoo bananas." C.b. is a very handy phrase, because a lot of things these days are in fact c.b., like, just to take a random example, the fact that the nominee of a major political party can't even talk about googling, let alone do a google search without the help of half his staff.

sincerely,
debbie

dear chicago,

When I first moved to Illinois, I would visit you occasionally, pay lots and lots of dollars to park my car, catch a glimpse of your shimmery dark blue lake, shop on Michigan Avenue, eat dinner on Rush. We flirted from a distance, you and me. I pretended to know you. But I did not know you. You remained something of a puzzle to me, the insides of so many color-coded parking garages, the glimmery storefronts. Without the Sears Tower in my view I never knew which direction I was going.

But today while I was walking the not-very-scenic two miles down Chicago Ave from the Newberry to my salon, past the Tribune building (really, what westerly route doesn't take you past the Tribune building? That thing is a monster), across the terrifying draw bridge and then (later, on Ogden) the vertiginous interstate overpass, past a shrill and rather uninventive shouting match at a bus stop--"you a punkass bitch!" "no, YOU a punkass bitch!"--I began to realize that seven + years later, I know you so much better. And now, having eaten my way through the entire menu at the Chicago Diner, having gotten lost on foot and on bike in your north and midsections, and having learned the crucial lesson to avoid Michigan avenue altogether, I have finally pieced you together in all your complexity, and I can say with all sincerity that I love you.

yours,
debbie

dear last caller,

Yes you, the one who called into C-Span last night from Utah while the Wisconsin results were trickling in and who suggested that if Obama or Clinton takes the white house, their plan to roll back Bush's tax cuts will spell doom for a hypothetical couple working at starbucks pulling down 60K a year*, and then when the host tried to hang up insisted on making one more point which was that whites ought to "get credit" for helping make this country better for "those blacks," because now some of "them" are lawyers,**

You have GOT to be fucking kidding me.

most sincerely,
debbie

*!?
**i am not even making this up

dear virus,

I like to think of myself as a fairly good host. When someone visits I'll try to have their favorite drink on hand and make sure they have clean sheets and towels, and I try to prepare something yummy. But my guests are usually courteous and fun. You know, they offer something in return, like funny stories or financial advice. Good company. But you are the worst. You take everything and give nothing. I don't blame you for wanting to take those pancakes I ate last night, because they were fluffy and delicious. But then you decided to take EVERYTHING left in and around my digestive system, all at once, including the acid, the bile, the oxygen. Get out of here, you impatient, greedy fuck. And take this fever with you.

sincerely,

your host

dear animal collective,

Please play in Chicago again soon. Or Indianapolis. Or St. Louis. Or Madison.

Strawberry Jam is so deliciously noisy I can't stop listening to it.

dear person sitting behind me at the tea shop whose laptop keeps yelling "You've Got Mail!" in AOL's distinctively cheerful computer-man voice, circa 1997:

Are you fucking kidding me?

Sincerely yours,
the person in front of you

dear brothers and sisters at u of minnesota,

What an unspeakably terrifying event to have visited on your lovely city, this bridge collapse. I hope you and yours are all okay, and of course wish just as strongly that this tragedy hadn't happened in the first place. It's all rather mind-boggling.

Dear Midmodern Scholar,

Thank you for your eloquent comment on Angel. I am so glad to know that you got DSL up in no-man's land (heh), because I swear I was thinking of digging up your address to write--as in handwrite--you a letter. Who does that anymore? But then I realized I probably only had that address on my old computer, and I figured I'd wait until I had a big list of things I needed to extract from said computer.

In any event, now that you have DSL I can tell you the things I wanted tell you:
1. Thank you for dropping off the entire Buffyverse. We love her. I have looked through all the dvd covers to see how SMG's hair changes and to compute the number of weeks we can make them last without feeling deprived (answer: about 10). Also, does something happen to Willow? Wait, don't tell me. Seriously.
2. We started a compost.
3. Even though we miss you desperately, JM and I decided it's probably best that you are away for this textbook phase; otherwise I would ask you to elaborate proverbs and compose long meditative inquires into people, laws, and ipods. But soon that will all be over, and you will be back.

til soon,
debbie

an open call:

Last week two friends wrote me with apologies; they thought they had mortally offended me because I had not replied to their emails. This morning a wonderful graduate student dropped by because I hadn't replied to his last-minute request for a letter of recommendation. In all cases, I had done what I sometimes do: not reply immediately because a reply required a little thought for one reason or another. And then other stuff tumbled in to my inbox (both the metaphorical one and the actual one), and--this is very atypical of me--I forgot to write back. In one case I actually forgot that I forgot and assumed I had replied. Nice.

I admit I've got a lot of shit going on, and I fear that I might be accidentally forgetting something else. So if anyone feels slighted by unreturned emails, please, I beg you, call me, or give me another e-nudge. And know that if I ever am mad at you, I will most likely not ignore you!

(If you have asked me for a rec letter, I think I turned it in today.)

In the meantime, I will be joining my friend Elizabeth in fending off distractions

ah, dammit. While wading through my giant to do list, and anticipating the arrival of a certain houseguest. (hooray!)

Dear People with Compelling Arguments about Computer Allegiances:

I am at a point where I am considering switching back to Apple from PC. I was a Mac Person before it was a full-fledged identity category, writing my first graduate papers on one of those little SEs that seem to have been gobbled up by a place like Sharper Image and repurposed into teeny office fridges and microwaves:

 

At some point in graduate school I bought a PC desktop, mostly for price--that, and this was at a point (1997 or so?) when the two seemed more compatible than they had been previously. And aside from occasionally wanting to gaze at the lovely wide screen of my friends' ibooks or whatever the new ones are called, and occasionally noticing a smarty pants ad, oh, and once or twice going shopping for i-pod speakers at the Pittsburgh Apple store and noticing a slight shallowness in my breathing as I passed the glass tables full of clean-lined machines, I admit I have lost track of the distinguishing factors (or maybe they have lost track of me).

Lots of grad students here use Apples I've noticed, and last semester when I had a projector in my seminar room we would on occasion cable up one to watch a video clip, and I did notice what seemed like higher res with their machines v. mine. But it's also important to note that while I do frequent You Tube, I still use my computers for fairly basic file storage and transfer and composition.

I believe that one is not born but rather becomes a Mac person, and I don't even care about becoming one. But I would like to hear more reasons for changing over (or not). It may be that the aesthetics are enough of a draw, but I would like to know how else mac aesthetics would register on a daily basis to this user's tactile and visual sensibilities. I know scholars in computers and writing are interested in how technology changes our writing practices, but what about Mac v. PC? Has anybody studied THAT? Anecdote, in my case is unreliable: my first grad papers were crap, but I don't think I can blame that on the maker of my word processing machine. Let me have it!