Earning My Title

I've heard complaints (well, one) that while occasionally engaging, my blog is poorly named because, bread and cheese notwithstanding, I'm not actually doing all that much grumbling. So OK, refunfuño it is.

It's a mostly gray, mostly rainy day here. As a treat, I decided I'd go back to the Oliverio Girondo show I liked so much to take a guided tour they have on Friday's at 4:30. The subway was late-arriving and crowded (it always crowded nowadays. I don't know what happened, but a lot more people seem to be taking the subway lately). So by the time I got off, I had to hurry. Of course, I walked in the wrong direction, thanks to a street sign that was exactly 90 degrees out of whack. I figured that out fast enough, turned around, hurried to the museum, and arrived just a minute or two late. I knock on the door (because they lock it all the time, even when the museum's open. You knock, they let you in, then they lock it right behind you, I guess in case you're tempted to make off with the art.) and the desk clerk lets me in. I ask about the tour. "The guide didn't show up." No explanation, and clearly no expectation that she's likely to arrive any time soon.

So much for my afternoon treat.

On to a more personally wounding grouse. I finally wrote an e-mail to Marcelo Damiani, the professor of that literature class I'm taking. We never get to speak during class, but he did say once that if we wanted, we could write to him. So after the Kafka class, I actually had something somewhat interesting I wanted to mention. I spent quite a while crafting what I thought was a suitably compelling and fairly error-free e-mail and pushed send, imagining the beginning of a sporadic but writerly e-mail exchange in which he and I banter ideas about whatever books happen to be inspiring us at the moment. You know, just a once-in-a-while tossing-around of ideas among peers. So I waited patiently for his response. Which never came. During the next class I listened alertly for a wee reference to the topic I'd mentioned. Nope. After class, while he was talking with Martha, he parenthetically apologized to me for not answering my post, and then immediately complained that he gets 30 to 40 e-mails a day.

So much for our great correspondence.

And speaking of grousing, Bobby complains that I don't mention him enough in this blog. There.