And life’s like an hourglass glued to the table…

November 1, 2008

NOOOOO!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!! I will NOT go quietly!!!!!!

Most Fashionable Reader! Zelda has dragged herself out of The Treacherous Abyss and has pulled herself to her feet to, well, face her demons head-on by writing about some form of some sort of journey into hell. Zelda is not one to rub salt in her wounds, Dear Reader, but she does have a fondness for rubbing alcohol.

James Joyce! Zelda has missed you so! Also Ulysses! Zelda cannot wait to go farther with you! Maybe even third base! And Vivienne! Zelda has missed you more! Zelda has missed you most!

The video below is something that has made Zelda feel better lately. It is a sweet little song — Zelda had forgotten about it until she heard it whilst getting her hair styled last week. Zelda feels the lyrics would have been a tad more cohesive, however, had Anna Nalick written it when she was a little older. Ah, well.

“My God! It’s so beautiful when the boy! Smiles!”

The writing on the wall

Fade past the unglazed mug, the shampoo commercial, the Still Life with Waterfall. Fingers blunt with cold. The sound of an old film. Aspirin tablets, chicken salad sandwiches. Extension cords round the room like lions. The smell of the weak, the descent of their last end –



In Which Vivienne Apologizes for the Lateness of This Post and Discusses a Great Many Things, Unwisely without Enough Coffee

October 4, 2008

Forgive the tardiness of this post, my dear friends.  Yesterday, the Dread Beast of Exhaustion wrestled me to the ground, and I could not resist.  Incidentally, the Dread Beast of Exhaustion led Vivienne to look exactly like Bette Davis in Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, after evil Cousin Miriam’s dread medicine worked its magic and, after a vision of masked dancers and Dr. Drew (am I the only one who could not help but think of Loveline whilst Dr. Drew was onscreen in said film?) risen from his watery grave, she collapsed upon the stairs.  Vivienne is, in fact, surprised that she did not collapse upon her own stairs in her journey bedward, and is grateful that her stairs are carpeted, as she expects that this shall, indeed, occur at some point in the near future.  In the meanwhile, Vivienne greatly misses Zelda, who has been engaged in Fashionable Activities of Fashion which are far too Fashionable for Vivienne to even begin to mention when she has only had a cup and a half of coffee.  Fare thee well, Fashionable Zelda of Fashion!  If our souls are two, they are two so as stiff twin compasses are two!  My soul, the fix’d foot, doth not move except to bed after wrestling the Dread Beast of Exhaustion; thy soul far doth roam into the realm of Fashion.  But we shall end where we began, in Fashion, accompanied by Diamond Heart Necklaces and the melodious voice of Courtney Love!

And now, Vivienne unwisely begins the unwise portion of this entry, for which she is woefully unqualified and sorely undercaffeinated, but which she will nevertheless unwisely attempt.

Vivienne Perhaps Unwisely Enters into a Discussion of Religious Significances in the First Two Sections of Ulysses

First and foremost: the image of shaving, with which Joyce begins Ulysses.  This is, indeed, an image rich with Serious Religious Implications in many religions, the Serious Religious Implications being in the vein of beginning a religious quest. There is, of course, the importance of shaving in Catholicism, with which Joyce was obviously familiar: nuns having their heads shaved during Holy Orders, and monks with their tonsure.  Of course, shaving is also of great importance in Buddhism.  Take, for instance, Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s joruri plays of the shinju, or “love suicide,” or “double suicide,” variety, particularly The Love Suicides at Amijima and The Love Suicides at Sonezaki.  The lovers cut off their hair in order to become monks and nuns at the end of their multi-bridge journey towards death, an act which seems resonant here.

Secondly, Vivienne would like to take some time to further contemplate something which seems to be of great significance in the text: Daedelus’ use of algebra to discover that Hamlet is his own father.  Let her break down her thinking:

  • Dedalus does not use textual implications to discover this fact.
  • Dedalus must, instead, use algebra, or the language of mathematics, for this discovery.
  • There is herein the implication that we must use a language other than our own, other than the language systems we’ve set up for daily communication, to discover Great Truths, particularly Great Truths of Religious Import.
  • This also seems implied by Joyce’s use of Latin phrases from the Mass and from the Requiem Mass, which further implies that we cannot discover Great Truths of Religious Import or, in another sense, communicate with or about God in our own language.
  • Both Latin and mathematics are languages which are either, in the case of Latin, no longer used to communicate, or which cannot be used in verbal communication.
  • The implication here seems to be that God is something above and beyond us, not an existing part of the everyday world, which we cannot reach in our daily lives, and which few, if any of us, can understand.
  • Dedalus uses this Other Language to discover that Hamlet is his own father.
  • If we consider the Roman Catholic idea of the Trinity, with Christ as the Son and God as the Father and the Holy Ghost, and all being one, one can see that Christ also is His own Father.
  • If, like Christ, Hamlet is his own Father, in avenging his Father, he is only avenging Himself, the implication perhaps being that any act that we perform on behalf of another is, in a very real way, simply an act we perform for ourselves.
  • If, like Hamlet, Christ is his own Father, Christ’s appearance on earth can be seen as a form of revenge, avenging the world for forgetting his Father much as Hamlet exacts revenge upon Gertrude and Claudius for forgetting his Father.
  • Indeed, Christ’s appearance on earth led human beings into roughly 2,000 years of warfare, which continues to this day — what could be greater revenge?
  • There is also, herein, the implication that if God and Christ are one, and God controls all things, and God sent Christ to die for us, God committed suicide, in a very real sense.
  • If this is seen as logically true, it can also be logically construed that God killed his presence on earth, meaning that God is no longer a part of our daily lives.

  • Don’t call it a comeback.

    September 12, 2008

    Bette Davis and Joan CrawfordDearest, Most Fashionable Reader:

    Well hello! Welcome to this Missive of Fashion! Zelda realizes that it has been quite some time since she and the Most Fashionable Vivienne have written. Zelda is writing to you, Most Fashionable Reader, to reveal that she and the Most Fashionable Vivienne apologize for this travesty. Zelda is here to tell you, Most Fashionable Reader, that she and the Most Fashionable Vivienne will soon return to grace the presence of their very own blog. She and Vivienne are also here to tell you, Most Fashionable Reader, that you will not be disappointed when they do. Zelda and Vivienne will return to TheHyacinthGirls.com on the First of October, 2008. At present, they are getting quite comfortable in their alter-alter egos: Vivienne as Bette Davis, and Zelda as Joan Crawford.

    Would you, Most Fashionable Reader, like to have a peek at what Vivienne and Zelda will be working on during the month of October? Here it is:

    Don’t call it a comeback, Most Fashionable Readers; Vivienne and Zelda have been here for years.

    Ooooo!

    Listen to the way they slayyyyyyy!


    It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta

    June 30, 2008

    Vivienne has always felt a special affinity for that particular scene in Office Space in which Peter, Michael Bolton, and Samir take an office machine (Vivienne’s memory is not particularly good about this — could it be a fax machine? A printer? A copier? Printer sounds most likely) into a field and beat the everliving daylights out of it with baseball bats. Vivienne felt a particularly special affinity for said scene this afternoon, when a malfunctioning Office Machine of this kind trapped her into an encounter with her Ultimate Nemesis.

    Now, encounters with Ultimate Nemeses are bad enough, especially when said Ultimate Nemesis resembles The Nothing much more than any other human being, animal, plant, rock, or anything composed of electrons, protons, and neutrons known to exist upon the planet. Encounters with Ultimate Nemeses should occur only when one is dressed as fabulously as Bette Davis in her early career and has had enough cocktails to be spontaneously witty. Encounters with Ultimate Nemeses should never, ever, never occur when one has not done one’s hair. Encounters with Ultimate Nemeses should never, ever, never, EVER occur when accompanied by Office Machine malfunctions which require one to be viewed in profile (which is really not the way that Vivienne wishes to be viewed, due mostly to her Roman nose, which has, more than once, been cleverly described as “yeah, ROAMIN’ AROUND YOUR FACE!”), and when the aforementioned profile view allows the Ultimate Nemesis a clear view of a Very Serious Blemish. I’m talking, the kind of Very Serious Blemish that might appear just before one’s prom. I’m talking, the kind of Very Serious Blemish that invariably appeared right on the tip of your nose on the morning of school picture day, that no amount of toothpaste would dry, that no amount of carefully applying your mother’s industrial strength under-eye concealer would cover. THAT kind of Very Serious Blemish.

    Nonetheless, Vivienne has Sucked It Up, and her encounter with the Ultimate Nemesis has inspired her. See, when Vivienne encounters the Ultimate Nemesis, she tends to think of fire-breathing hell beasts, and all kinds of terrifying mythological monsters whose sole purpose is to suck the souls from well-meaning human beings. Which got her to thinking about the chimera, which got her to writing one. The base text of this chimera comes from I Can Read About Weather, a very informative textbook on just the same subject published by Troll Press in 1975. The nouns come from the aforementioned Two Women, so that the I may receive a mystical visitation from the spitfire fabulousness that is Sophia Loren. The verbs come from Effective Small Group Communication, Second Edition, an instructive text that my Ultimate Nemesis has much need of reading. The adjectives come from Sonya Fitzpatrick’s, THE PET PSYCHIC’s, master oeuvre, Cat Talk: The Secrets of Communicating with Your Cat, whose gentle words will probably lull me to sleep tonight.

    I Emerge, Divide Up the Cloth Wrappings

    When you laugh at the face, do you smile
    out of the squall to see what kind of road

    it’s responding to give? Do you tell
    the suitcases and pantomime about

    the napkins? Some towns watch acutely.
    Some sums like calming and daunting.

    And on some heads, enlightened, lost
    shoes of stockings try out the provisions.

    All of these take different kinds
    of parcels. The war, all around

    you, demonstrates part of the stones,
    too. So when you accomplish in

    and when you notice out, you are ignoring
    a case of the Rome. There continues

    some kind of Ciociara in pregnant cloaks
    of the grass. Somewhere, distances insult

    sunbathing. Somewhere else, a soul is raging.
    People groan and the countryside ought

    to knock the city. What will be
    the dweller? What will expect

    the signs? What releases beloved
    kinds of frankness?


    Hearts are good for souvenirs, betches!

    June 29, 2008

    Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader: Zelda has been busy being an Active Invalid of Unfashion these past few days, the climax of this Unfashion occurring late yesterday evening after Zelda and a Benevolent Friend watched The Bucket List [which, by the way, Dear Reader, has been FALSELY BILLED AS A COMEDY! IT IS A FILM OF TRAGEDY AND GREAT SORROW!]. At the end of The Bucket List, Zelda fell dramatically onto her Benevolent Friend’s hardwood floor, curled up into a fetal position, and sobbed, “I am going to dieeeeeeeeeeee alone. I am going to die aloooooooooooooooooooone. Aloooooooooone.”

    Zelda’s Benevolent Yet Somewhat Annoying Friend showed no pity for Our Dearest, Most Fashionable Zelda. “You’re not going to die any time soon, Zelda,” he said. “And you’re not going to die alone.”

    “Yes I ammmmmmm,” Zelda wailed. “I am going to die alooooooooooooone.”

    “Get it together, Zelda,” the Benevolently Annoying Friend said. “You’re not fun to be around when you’re like this.”

    “Fun?!” Zelda roared with all the Furious Rage she could, in her pathetic state, muster. “You call this film of tragedy and great sorrow FUN?! ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS WATCH THAT WILL FERRELL COMEDY! THAT ONE ABOUT BASKETBALL! BUT! NO! YOU TALKED ME INTO THE FREAKING BUCKET LIST! HOLY CHRIST I NEED A CIGARETTE!”

    Tiffany -- A Face of Fashion / A Fashionable FaceSo Zelda furiously drove back to her apartment, alone. Whilst driving, she violently smoked cigarette after cigarette, alone. She stomped up her flight of stairs, alone. She brushed her teeth so hard that her gums bled, alone. She furiously plumped her highly fashionable pillow, alone, and Zelda finally drifted off into a Sleep Full of Rage and Fury and Sorrow. Alone.

    Sometimes, Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader, only eighties music will suffice. Only eighties music can express the loneliness and the angst one Zelda felt while curled up in a fetal position on a hardwood floor. And this is why, Most Fashionable Reader, Zelda has provided for you the video below, in all its acid washed hair sprayed white sneakered jean jacketed sweetly innocent bubblegum smacking glory. Hearts are good for souvenirs, Dear Reader. Hearts are good for souvenirs.

    Oh yeah! The poem!

    For this FaOuLiPoWriMoFa [Fashionable OuLiPo Writing Month of Fashion] poem, Zelda has blended the Fashionable OuLiPo methods of curtailing and interference. Zelda’s source text was a section of a quiz found in Delivered from Distraction by Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey.

    Self Assessment

    Are you concerned that you drink too much when you’re alone?

    Do you smoke more cigarettes now that you’re single?

    When by yourself, do you resent yourself?

    Do you enjoy being alone in basements?

    Do you waste vast quantities of time roaming around by yourself?

    Do you smile when talking to yourself in hopes that it will be a sufficient contribution?

    Since you’ve become single, have you made the mistake of dating?

    Has the quality of your sex life declined due to internal emotional conflict?

    Is what you’re looking forward to doing a solitary act?

    Do you find that you have trouble sustaining attention when you make love to yourself?

    Do you have trouble lingering when you make love to yourself?

    Do you have recurring dreams in which you’re by yourself?

    Do you carry anger and frustration within you?

    When alone, do you feel a great deal of shame?

    When you’re alone, do you yearn to be so much more?


    In a Fashion vacuum, the Hyacinth Girls are here to bring Fashion

    June 25, 2008

    Vivienne has spent much of her evening dealing with a great deal of UNFASHION (where are you, wise and benevolent spirit of Anne Carson, to save me from the UNFASHION?!).  So much UNFASHION that she’s halfway convinced that the entire WORLD OF FASHION has been SUCKED UP INTO NOTHING BY THE NOTHING.  So much UNFASHION, in fact, that she and Zelda just had a Most Fashionable Conversation of Rage in which many Fashionable Discoveries were made, which may soon reach the blog, but, in the meantime, Vivienne is so unhinged by the UNFASHION she was forced to face that she cannot even talk about it, for spreading such UNFASHION to the world would be a serious act of UNFASHION.  And Vivienne detests UNFASHION.  And Vivienne instead loves Fashion.  And Vivienne loves you.  And so she gives you a Scene of Fashion, from Wigstock 2000:

    And so she gives you a Fashionable Pet Shops Boys AbFab Mix of Fashion:

    And so she lets you in on one of the Most Fashionable Revelations of The Evening, which is that PATSY IS FABULOUS with this Sponge Osmosity created from AbFab clips.  Enjoy, and remember, kids: BE FASHIONABLE AS OTHERS SHALL BE FASHIONABLE UNTO YOU.

    Lacroix, darling.  Lacroix.

    Sweetie Darling The Stairwell

    California lovely the roof off lovely
    over it the road the road lovely

    there used to be here your language
    watch you foul you language I am

    thin a bee is it where is it find it
    we need more don’t leave right well

    then a bee a bee is it a small hello
    cut it off he’s very nice cut it off I have

    to get out of here darling Mummy’s here
    sweetheart I’m going to call the filth

    the pigs just drink it sweetie no fabulous
    no fantastic no I like this one no this

    one is the one this one here what is this
    sweetie we tried didn’t we we didn’t want is this


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