Thank God for Dogs and Friends. . .

The mean a lot whether or not they know (mostly it's the dogs that don't know).

But I'm currently having a fight with vodka (and seagram's 7) and my skin. I'm sure the first will probably be resolved pretty soon. My alcohol disagreements never last long. But the skin thing. . .

I've got abnormally dry skin on top of dandruff, excema, and psoriasis (or vice versa). But now I have lovely itchy bumps everywhere. They don't look like the pictures of hives but I don't think they're bug bites because they disappear and reappear in other places (like hives actually). And it's not shingles because it's not painful, just crazy itchy. Benadryl didn't help like WebMd suggested it might. I did find that the vodka helped the other day (the nice frozen bottle) but there are no bottles handy here. . . . Well I guess it's back to Student Health Services for dodgy experimental prescriptions. Alas that's not until Monday, so another two days of ripping off my skin.

Sorry you had to be subject to that . . .

American Lit vs. Euro Lit

I have finally found what has been wrong with my English literature experience. It was all written by Americans. I can't count how many times I fell asleep reading Moby Dick. Melville, who is considered the greatest American writer of our time, could put me to sleep at noon and at 8pm. I completely Cliff Noted my way through Hawthorn, Faulkner, and Steinbeck. I wanted to slit my wrist after The Awakening not for sympathizing but from utter boredom. I had come under the impression that I hated reading (which is strange since I got interested in English because of my love of reading).

Then I took Continental Novels in Translation. There isn't an amazing professor who has changed my life or anything. Class is dreadfully boring (and I unfortunately have to spend three hours there tonight). But I have never fallen asleep trying to read Kundera or De Beauvoir. I even managed through Proust and kind of enjoyed it (though Calvino is pushing it). And I realized that my favorite two authors were already not American--Agatha Christie and Maeve Binchy (do not laugh).

And I began thinking about the difference.



What is the difference between American and European writers?




Europeans are able to write with feeling about feeling. Because they had real shit happen to them. Even if they didn't live through it, it has sunk into the soil and grows in the food. It pollutes the water and chokes the air. Pain, blood, tears, fresh and old, surround them. Kundera wrote about communism dicatorship and censorship through body and sexual metaphors, through laughter and memory. De Beauvoir addressed the ridiculousness of the "Female Condition" with hyperbole and yet raw emotion. Better than Melville's whale and religion convoluted myth building and Chopin's stereotypical feminist awakening.

American writers are generally struck with an overwhelming malaise. As though they sat down one day and realized they had no more indigenious people to kill and enslaved races to oppress. What shall we do next? Vex future generations of scholars with dry writing about The Dust Bowl and crazy farmer families. Or wars that only sort of kind of effected them but not really because they let the rest of the world destroy itself before getting involved. Characters languish in their basically boring existence under crushing middle class apathy and melancholy.

I already live in that world. Welcome to America. Tell me something real. Make me feel something real. Don't bore me to death with whale biology or turtles crossing the road. Don't call everyone phonies and expected me to sympathize or identify with you. Let me live in a magical world where laughter lifts you up into heaven and your very identity can be called into question by years of world wars and civil unrest. The experience may or may not be real but the emotion always is. And that is what American literature is missing.

I don't wanna spend . . .

next Friday night like I'm spending this Friday night. . . .

No those aren't the House of Heroes lyrics but I mean that's life . . .

Last night, I went out partying with my VoxPop family (and our second cousins Connect Mason). It was super awesome. Though admittedly I drank to much (but simultaneously not enough). And yet again I'm being called a hopeless drunk. . . . but that's another story. . .

So what's going on today. Literally nothing but sleep, Tru Tv, and lame attempts to homework/writing. I must say today totally fails at being a Friday.

And I am leaving a sad electronic trail as proof. . .

Absolut Mexican Ad Campaign

This is the billboard campaign running in Mexico on behalf of Absolut Vodka. Naturally there is incredible controversy, mostly in the U.S. The ad suggests half of the U.S.'s Western Territory would still belong to Mexico in a perfect world. A glancing look over the comments on pages featuring the image shows a wide range, or at least a range, of opinions. Some Americans want to boycott Absolut. Others say that the controversy is stupid. Most say that if the land belong to Mexico it would be giant poverty ridden state like that of modern Mexico, the implication being that America did a good thing by warring with Mexico and manifesting our destiny.

I say that America needs to get over itself. Do they really think that every country imagines the ideal world being mapped the way it currently is? Seriously?! Like some British don't still mourn the loss of the American Colonies? Or the Portuguese wouldn't want back Brazil?

Who is still operating under the delusion the the U. S. has been this goodwill nation, mercifully saving natives from themselves and introducing them to true civilisation? Yes, America is a powerful nation. We are not a third world country. But that has come at the price of other possibilities for diversity and culture in the geographical location know as North America.

Empires are built on the destruction of others. All throughout history people have been oppressing others. America isn't the first or the last. Nor the best or the worst. If we are going to be sensitive about our history, we might as well perform extreme revisionists history like Communist Russia and make our own "Absolut World". We can spoon feed it to elementary students and invest trillions of dollars into extensive propaganda programs. There seems to be enough people to buy it.

On a final note, Absolut isn't even that great of a Vodka. I prefer Smirnoff. But I might start drinking Absolut . . . just to say I endorse creative freedom and alternative histories while I'm gettin' my drink on . . .