Recent Contributions from Claire Readhead

Graduation Fling: A must for the disconnected generation texter

Claire Readhead — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Leaving Mojo: n. 1. an individual’s heightened ability to attract the opposite sex, or an individual’s general willingness to take romantic risks, due to his/her imminent departure from a town, city or region.

The Flute Lesson

Claire Readhead — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Sitting in my rusted out ’89 Toyota Camry, chain smoking and swilling from a bottle of non-celebratory champagne I contemplated the lyrics to an old jazz standard, “You can’t have a dream and cut it to fit.” I wasn’t planning on driving — I was smashed — but I had to smoke in my car because it was too cold to smoke outside and I was living in a mad woman’s attic, so I was not allowed to smoke inside. The reason that I was living in the attic of an elderly woman — a very Dickensian moment of my life — was that I had arrived in Milwaukee with four dollars. My choices amounted to living out of my car for a week until my ballet contract started or living with an old woman who was so lonely that she would let a stranger — me — live in her house rent free for a week.

Sloppy Fifth, Flying Cabbage

Claire Readhead — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I was fired from a rather prominent ballet company (for anonymity’s sake let’s call it the “Northern Ballet”) for having a “sloppy fifth.” In the process of being fired, I contritely sat on the director’s couch, which was really a hard-backed chair, and grappled with the pressing question of whether his spectacles were hexagonal or pentagonal. Such a pedantic interest in the geometric intricacies of eyewear, in addition to my getting frequently fired, ought to have alerted me to the fact that I was in the wrong profession, but I remained blissfully unaware.

Emotional Botox

Claire Readhead — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

My Auntie B liked to refer to anti-depressants as “pack-up-your-troubles-pills,” and regarded the quest for “balance” and “happiness” with unabated derision. When I went to visit her in Shrewsbury, England, fresh-faced and 14 years old, she admonished me for trying to clean her kitchen. She liked it the way it was: filthy, disorganized and pungent with that oh-so English smell of mildew, old-people and slightly rotten vegetables. She regarded my enthusiasm for cleanliness with stern disapproval, and rarely called me by name, but instead referred to me as Polly-bloody-Anna.

No Tigers in Africa

Claire Readhead — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This Christmas I went to South Africa to do the whole roots thing, only to find that mine are twisted, gnarled and thorny. There’s not a lot of pride I can have in my ancestry as a white South African. Both of my parents were born and raised in South Africa, and my mom’s side of the family immigrated to the country five or six generations ago. This means that my ancestors were stealing land, diamonds and various kinds of resources. But the reality is, if you’re white, yours probably were too.

So, I have this overwhelming guilt as a liberal, middle-class, educated white person … and as if the guilt couldn’t get any worse, just add the fact that I am a white South African into the mix, and I may as well smother myself with a pillow from my armchair-liberal’s armchair.

Testocracy: Tests or Testes?

Claire Readhead — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

As fairly successful members of society, all of us in the Ivy Leaguers like to believe that we have legitimately earned this place of privilege in the academic arena. Many of us are deeply wedded to the idea that we are living in a “meritocracy,” where we have been granted an elite status because of our merit and talent. Sadly this is not true if you’re white and middle class. (Granted there are plenty of white middle class kids who didn’t get into Cornell, so don’t feel too bad.)

Stephen, Are You My Soulmate?

Claire Readhead — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I feel really disillusioned that Stephen Colbert is a fictional character — that he plays a person named Stephen Colbert on TV, which is different from the private Stephen Colbert … Oh, don’t we all create fictions of ourselves, tra-la-la … The difference is that he has made a substantial amount of money doing it. Bravo, Stephen!

The Dark (Sock) Side

Claire Readhead — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

You can live in L.A. and be a perfectly respectably dressed individual without ever owning a pair of dark socks. Well, actually this might not be entirely true for businessmen, but as a lady, the combination of fabulous weather and decadent style render dark socks utterly useless. You know what dark socks mean: sensible shoes. Sensible shoes are taboo in the greater Los Angelean area — unless you are a Caltech graduate student.

When I left for the East Coast upon my admittance to Cornell, my brother warned me not to become a “dark sockser,” i.e. someone who would deign to wear dark socks. I heeded his advice for the better part of two years, struggling up and down the rocky Ithacan terrain in tottering and inexcusably impractical shoes. I had yet to join the dark-sock-side.

The Tao of Barnaby

Claire Readhead — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

For those of you who are a little foggy on what Tao means exactly, this column is pretty much about what I’ve learned from my dog, Barnaby (a ruby-colored Cavalier King Charles Spaniel) but I deemed that too unsophisticated for a column title.

I heard a rumor that part of the 12-step program is that you can only have a (romantic) relationship with another person if you can first keep a plant alive for some substantial period of time and then keep a pet alive. So, I tried to do a little research on this urban myth and came across a whole bunch of 12-step literature, which basically espouse the importance of God. I had no idea that the fundamentalists got ahold of the winos — it hardly seems fair to force feed religion when someone is recovering from a serious addiction.

The Diagnosis? Seniorosis

Claire Readhead — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 01:00:00 -0400

Big Red Flag

Claire Readhead — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:00:00 -0400

Body:

The paradox of mental health services, generally, hovers around the issue of consent. Most mental health services require voluntary participation from the patient, except in extreme cases. Thus, the question becomes, how can someone suffering from mental illness possess the wherewithal to seek help? Even those who are not clinically ill, but just unstable, may feel that the stigma attached to mental health services is a huge repellent. In light of the Virginia Tech Massacre, all educational institutions should begin to reconsider old notions surrounding mental health and seek to make services more accessible to students.

30 Signs That You're Approaching 30

Claire Readhead — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Deckhead:

Silk Blue Stockings

Body:

Undergrads: You may not think this applies to you, but it will — before you know it ... dun ... dun … dah …

1. The highlight of your weekend is when a bouncer gives you shit about your I.D. because he thinks it’s fake. In fact, I have never really gotten over the fear of getting carded, so I still act nervous … this is probably why everybody thinks my I.D. is fake, although I like to believe I actually still look under 21.

Shitty-Shitty Bang-Bang

Claire Readhead — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 02:44:43 -0400

Body:

Note: I learned a few things from my last column: Joni Mitchell is not dead, I’m an unstructured writer and a chronic asshole. Apparently, Janis Joplin (not Joni Mitchell) offed herself in the seedy hotel on Sunset.

Panty-Thieves, Boy-Toys, Dior and an Onion

Claire Readhead — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 01:00:00 -0400

Deckhead:

Silk Blue Stockings

Body:

You know that you have reached a new level of sophistication when your life philosophy and self-perception is based on a cartoon. Yes, I am relating to the animated character Shrek. I often feel like an obese, green ogre. Hmmm … maybe I should talk to my shrink about that. And like this fictional, obese, green ogre, I view myself as an onion.

A Triflin' Friend Indeed

Claire Readhead — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 01:03:28 -0500

Deckhead:

Silk Blue Stockings

Body:

Yeah, she maybe a gold-digger, but Kanye, I think you got the pronoun wrong. I think it should be he’s a gold-digger, for this land of so-called equal opportunity really means equal opportunity to be an asshole. And, for all of our kumbaya-ing, the equal opportunity thing is a load of horseshit because minorities and women are still struggling for autonomy in this culture. Okay, that shouldn’t really be news to anybody, but honestly it is going to take more than a few red arches and smiling, ethnically balanced portraits in pamphlets to turn things around. For instance, as much as professors hum and hah about gender equality in lecture until they’re blue in the face, the young men at Cornell, generally speaking, still treat women extremely poorly. I find it frustrating that as much as young men here are aware of gender hierarchy, the practical application of this knowledge is left in the classroom and quickly dissipates on Friday and Saturday nights.

Dr. Phil's Wet Dream

Claire Readhead — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:17:13 -0500

Deckhead:

Silk Blue Stockings

Body:

I am Dr. Phil’s wet dream. I sleep eight to nine hours every night; I eat five servings of fruit and vegetables each day; I exercise regularly and always use a condom.

Dr. Phil would be so proud.

London Crush

Claire Readhead — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:33:46 -0500

Deckhead:

Tarnishing the Tiara

Body:

I wanted to visit Virginia Woolf’s London; instead, the shimmering cobblestones reflected the lights of Micky D’s and the enigmatic double tail of the Starbucks mermaid. (Yes, she has two tails — check your cup and consider whether it’s more disturbing that she has two tails, or that you’ve never noticed.) At any rate, I made the horribly American mistake of thinking London was going to be a Mecca of pinky-waggers and refinement. Unfortunately, capitalism and globalization reared their heads, and had I not assiduously avoided it, I could very well have fallen into the all-too-familiar lap of corporate America.

The GF Bomb

Claire Readhead — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 01:00:00 -0500

Deckhead:

Tarnishing the Tiara

Body:

The “cutting-edge conservative commentary” of Cornell University slammed my column; I take this to mean that I am doing something right. “Sounding the Trumpet” accused me of being lazy, to which I respond that I view laziness as a continuum. There are many degrees of laziness. Some have refined it to an art; others dabble.

Follow These Guys

Claire Readhead — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:12:15 -0400

Deckhead:

The Hidden Cameras' Awoo

Body:

Hidden Cameras, Canada’s celebrated, openly gay, pop group, has come up with a fabulous album, A-Woo. The singers of the group sound vaguely like the Bare Naked Ladies, but maybe it is just all the cold air and Canadian beer that gives them a similar cadence. The first track begins with the masochistic self-loathing of a romantic obsessed with an unresponsive person. “Death of a Tune” is about the blissful agony of being ignored. Lead singer Joel Gibb calls out, “Silence from you is like the death of a tune.” He repeats, “Wordless and you, wordless and you/ It’s been the same forever.” Dude, we’ve all been there.

Textbonics

Claire Readhead — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 20:53:53 -0400

Deckhead:

Tarnishing the Tiara

Body:

There is a land called Passive Agresseeva*, where the subjects communicate solely through tiny typewriters, small enough to fit in one’s pocket, which are attached to ringing boxes. This tiny-type-writer-ringing-box magically transmits messages written in a cryptic language that nobody really understands. The tool of Passive Agresseeva is implemented to mitigate feelings of solitude and rejection, but leads to much miscommunication, misinterpretation and frustration.

Hankering for Panky-Tap

Claire Readhead — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:20:02 -0400

Deckhead:

The Streets' Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living

Body:

Crude and clever, The Streets sound like the Broadway cast of Oliver Twist meets Snoop-Dog. The disparity between the British Cockney accent and the Compton hardened attitude provides for a strangely delicious sound. Upon further research it appears that the name of the band, The Streets, threw me off by implying plurality. The truth of the matter, however, is that The Streets is comprised of one man, a man named Mike Skinner.

Top Five Men at Cornell Not to Date, Part Two

Claire Readhead — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 01:00:00 -0400

Deckhead:

Tarnishing the Tiara

Body:

Back by popular demand, I am finishing what I started two Mondays ago with the column “Top Five Men at Cornell Not to Date.” I nearly reconsidered the content of this article because fellow columnist Andrew McCue’s comments were so clever/witty/biting. Dude, Andrew a) the Andrew that was featured as the number one guy not to date wasn’t you, so keep your panties on, b) though you made fun of my article you stole its premise and c) wanna grab coffee sometime?

Top Five Men at Cornell Not to Date

Claire Readhead — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 01:00:00 -0400

Deckhead:

Tarnishing the Tiara

Body:

1. The Social Amnesiac

His Line: “Have we met before?”

Game: He will approach you at the bar, at the library, in a café and often in the street. He will seem relatively harmless, not entirely unattractive and somewhat entertaining. The problem is that he has hit on you 45 times and he never remembers you. The only explanation for this inexcusable behavior is that he hits on such a large number of women that it is impossible to remember individuals. This is what some term the “shotgun approach,” which is when a guy believes if he fires enough shots he’ll eventually hit something.

Mod Clockwork Orange

Claire Readhead — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:34:38 -0400

Deckhead:

Jim Noir's Tower of Love

Body:

There must be something in the water of British suburbia that produces phenomenal musicians; either that, or, more likely, the combination of rain, boredom and a tambourine is just the right ambiance to birth aspiring rock stars. Well, Jim Noir is no exception.

Candy-Cane Progression

Claire Readhead — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Deckhead:

Tarnishing the Tiara

Body:

At the age of eighteen I was vaguely resentful, as most middle-class children are, that my parents did not imbue me with sound advice upon my leaving home. As I sit here feeling a not wholly unwarranted maternal concern for the freshmen, I realize the dilemma my parents must have faced regarding preparation-for-the-world-advice. There is really nothing I, nor anybody, can say which will prepare you for the hurly-burly chaos of life. However, I can give a few pointers that may guide you through those half-dozen blocks that comprise Collegetown.