Read, drink, and be merry

Fairy tales (modern, ancient, in-between) go well with spiked lemonade, ale, and honey-wine. Although Gregory Maguire goes better with scotch, and I mean real scotch, none of that donkey piss that is often disguised as scotch. And Kate Atkinson goes well with bubbly.

Crime novels and hybrid crime novels go well with red wine.

Spivak goes well with absolutely nothing.

Modern Brit Lit that doesn’t involve dragons and time-travel goes well with beer (or “burrrr,” as the case may be).

Juicy anatomies of famous sex-scandals go well with just about anything.

My books are some of my best drinking buddies.

Adrift in Wonderland

Hmm.

These lines in particular jumped out at me:

Our university is unwilling to take on the role of the guiding parent and, in the absence of an administration or student groups who aggressively push morality, some of us have gone adrift. I’m not saying that I want an administrative moral crackdown, but I am saying that without it, we need some other incentive to examine our moral behavior.

I agree with the notion that so many of us, both in college and afterward, become adrift at one point or another.

However: We. Are. Adults.

If, by the age of eighteen, you require a den mother to make sure that you make the right choices in life, you seriously need to step back and re-consider the last 1.8 decades of your existence. If you want someone to blame – start with the parents who “guided” you to the point of making sure that your fragile infant skull would threaten to crack open the minute a serious moral dilemma threatened to invade your weighty, SAT-busting brain. If I seem bitchy – I’m not trying to be – I had an impossible time deciding between Peach Tea and Lemon Tea Snapple when I first got to Duke; questioning my own morality, or lack thereof, was a feat worthy of Hercules, Joan of Arc, and that badass bear from His Dark Materials combined. But if Little Miss Prissy Pants (i.e. me) could figure things out for herself, so can you.

Being born, growing up – these things are messy. In fact, life is messy in general, from dirty pacifiers and dribbling applesauce to blood and guts. Even the most pampered generation in this country’s history can learn to frickin’ deal with that. And the only real incentive we can ever hope to have is our own desire to do the right thing. No?

Thinking is overrated

But having been complimented so thoroughly by Solnushka, I turn my weary, bloodshot, slightly maniacal gaze to the Thinking Blogger award meme nonetheless.

Once you are tapped, you nominate five more blogs.

I’m still getting over the fact that someone out there thinks I think – as opposed to experience a series of mundane physical reflexes whilst logged into WordPress – but I am honoured, and pleased, and blushing quite prettily still (and it doesn’t have anything to do with the salmon-tint sunburn I am currently sporting).

Perhaps these folks will also feel the same:

1. Litlove is an art-blogger with a sense of style. I look at Litlove and think (well, when I do think, that is): “WORD.” And if blogs that centered on the reading world were brands – Litlove would be Chanel: classic, glamorous, and yet accessible.

2. I discovered Maha recently, while embarking on a massive Gerard Butler cyber-binge, and am hooked. Maha’s writing is sensitive and sweet, but not in a cloying, artificial way that evokes ponies and pre-adolescents and Velveeta – a style that has grown like a pink, fluffy tumour on the Internet since the invention of the blog. There are personal websites… and then there are personal websites. Maha’s stands out because it’s so engaging, bearing a precise mixture of vulnerability and humour. I should also say that her blogging persona bears more than a passing resemblance to my Yaroslava, who died in 2005, but is still with me – I see her everywhere. I see her in Maha. This is, clearly, a Big Deal.

3. Kyla Pasha is a real poet – and that should sum it up. And if you’re not into poetry, and you don’t understand what I’m trying to say, it’s not my problem.

4. Writing about politics is, to me, akin to doing warm-ups. Salvage of Hairy Fish Nuts, however, is a marathon runner when it comes to this. He’s lovely in motion. He’s one of the few committed liberal bloggers who somehow manage to give you warm fuzzies even as they talk about, you know, Iraq. This is the sort of thing that would normally make me want to slit my wrists, but Salvage makes it infinitely readable. Oh, and he and I will totally have beer and watch “300” when it comes out on DVD.

5. Hedonistic Pleasureseeker is a sultry sorceress with a kind heart – so she is basically someone who should, theoretically, exist solely in the realm of fiction. The fact that she is actually real makes me feel as though the world is NOT a complete drag after all. Her combination of images and, well, hedonistic pleasureseeking, alongside a number of astute observations about shopping, love, kids, dating, body image, and a whole lot of other stuff – it all manages to go down smoothly whilst being compelling. Reading her blog is like watching a Sofia Coppola movie.

Anyhoo, there are actually a whole lot more people that I ought to be writing about – but I should probably get back to thinking (or, rather, un-thinking, or de-thinking, or having at least one of those beers I am saving up for the Spartan-fest with Salvage, har har). I’m currently working on a story about a rich cokehead from Moscow who seduces her poor country cousin, and… Well, I’d just like to say that this may possibly live up to Solnushka’s description of me on her blog.