24 March 2012

it had me in tears.

something a favourite professor of mine (Jeremy King, otherwise known as El Rey by his Spanish Linguistics students) once posted que me tuvo cagándome de risa:

The highlight of the LASSO conference (from a talk on linguistic strategies in literature):

"Y las salesgirls porteñas una bola de snobs and I know I'll have to take a size 3 (can you imagine a country donde the largest size is a THREE????) por 'y...el tema del busto', as they delicately put it here and F***, ni que fueran tan y tan BIG, sólo que estas washed-out faux blonde social X-ray lollipops no tienen, directamente, tetas."

I can only imagine that talk as playful. sparkly, even.

but it must be said, in due seriousness, that porteña salesgirls are actually incredibly snotty, most especially the ones at the little "cueva musical" shops along the peatonal downtown, suffering all day as they do the ceaseless playing of Gotan Project's "La Revancha del Tango", a delightful little electronica petit mal of several tango standards.

I should think that listening to the words "el capitalismo foráneo" repeated ad nauseam over some gauzy beats found in a shoebox portishead left out by the kerb would probably make anyone surrounded in their work by tourists feel less than pleasant towards ignorant foreigners whose deepest knowledge of inventive tango interpretations is astor piazolla. but given the average age of the porteña shopgirls I saw, they'd have been far more likely in the club after hours popping it to kelis (it was 2006, let's be clear) or playing pool to cumbia villera (that, on the other hand, may approach eternal), and may conceivably have never heard yo-yo ma's celloriffic take on their national cultural heritage. lucky situation, that; a good number of porteños in general were convinced that chinese people were taking over, as evidenced by their ownership of virtually every small supermarket and buffet restaurant, and might've violently resented such a flagrant incursion.

now, never having had to buy feminine attire in Buenos Aires, I cannot speak to the disposition of dress-shop attendants. I can and do favourably speak of the nice ladies in the feria in parque centenario who will gladly sell you a nice woolen overcoat for a very reasonable price, even before the customary price negotiations. they also do not fit the description given above in even the slightest, at least, not that of faux blonde lollipops. yo-yo ma, tampoco.

10 March 2012

in prior times this would have been called a salon

an exchange
for 2 interlocutors

> : I confess that it's so bro I can't even finish it
just like most him 'novels'
- : same here
I tried to read it in high school and got so bored
i didn't yet realize it was EWWWW FOR DUDES
> : and I picture most of the characters as crusties
a la them what stand at esplanade and claiborne and spange
- : hahahahahahahahaha yeah
TOTALLY
> : and deep in my head a crabby man in a rocking chair says 'get a damn job ya sorry bum'
but I think some of kerouac's personae crustamatae were following jobs anyhow
- : hahahahahahahahhahaha
that man sounds muddy mudskipper in my mind
i just found it unbearably boring. i didn't get the characters at all.
"and then we got drunk and fucked some bitches in a new town. something america. the end." - my brief summarization of On the Road.
> : I tried reading satori in paris or whatever
and it was like
tu passes tout le jour dans le maudite beauty parlor
which was slightly better than
'git drunk fuk bitchez'
- : hahahahahaha
> : but even so I couldn't tolerate it, and stomped it on the floor at aunt tiki's
to no one's horror.
- : HAHAHAHAHAHAH! TO NO ONE'S HORROR!
i just don't understand american masculinity. i think the less i understand it, the better.
sometimes it seems like the more i understand, the less interested i am in actually having sex with men, so you know, i'm okay with just letting it be this thing i don't want to know the particulars of
> : strangely, it's got a line of 'naked ancient greeks at the gymnasium being sods' to it
which is strange to think about
but this is why no one should read ancient greek plays
it's like 'hmmm damn 3000 years ain't shit changed'
- : i think kerouac was a totally closeted homo with a homophobic streak
> : uh, ya think?
didn't he schtup ginsberg?
or did I eat some bad acid
anyway he hung round with a buncha drugged up buttpirates so whatever
his cred is nil
- : HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
> : on that account, anyway
- : DRUGGED UP BUTT PIRATES
I AM DYING