Heavens, head so stuffy. Why do I have things to do? I want bed. Hours of bed.

Anyways, I have a new love in my life. I always swore I was finished with the trans-oceanic relationships, but I think the gingersnaps and I have a real chance of making it work. Lovely to see one of the Miss Cs yesterday (three of them in this blog at last count - I should get more creative with the pseudonyms, but my head hurts) and besides her bringing her lovely self she brought me into a whole new world of chocolate coated gingersnaps. Oh yes. I love presents but I especially love presents that the gifters know I'll love. Like the Esthero album. I love that.

Gahhhh. 2005 seems to be on its way to going out on a flood of tissues and groans.

Ahhhhh

Back to the pollutants, cat dander, drug addicts, and cult-shah. It's fucking ace. Last night I hotfooted to HMV to spend a gift certificate on that sale before the welcome wagon arrived. It may still be on today, but once I get through this fucking delectable goat-milk latté made with the fine espresso my brother gave me I have too much to do to check it out. I got a compilation of Marvin Gaye 60's hits since aside from that all I want of his are the Tammi Terrell duets and What's Going On. And yes, yes, I know he's dead, but sometimes I just want to come home, put some Marvin Gaye on the stereo and then just fucking listen to Marvin Gaye for awhile. So file-sharing won't do. Gosh, he was a fine-looking man. With a voice like that and a face like that, I'd have lost my mind too.

I also got Verve Remixed 2 and 3. Which are also fucking ace. Each of them are a two CD set with the unmixed version of the songs in question on the second CD, so all four CDs are fucking lovely. I've been 'sharing' so many Verve Remixed tracks for so long that I thought it was time to buy and I was so right.

Before I go, some prostletyzing since you're too far away to slap me. Look what I read on the excruciatingly slow train ride last night:

'The anima (woman in man) has an erotic, emotional character, the animus (man in woman) a rationalizing one. Hence most of what men say about feminine eroticism, and particularly about the emotional life of women, is derived from their own anima projections and distorted accordingly. On the other hand, the astonishing assumptions and fantasies that women make about men come from the activity of the animus, who produces an inexhaustible supply of illogical arguments and false explanations.' Carl Jung, 'Marriage as a Psychological Relationship', The Development of Personality - Collected Works, Vol. 17, as in The Portable Jung, page 174

I remember one awfully clever stoned post-coital conversation years ago about how men and women are fooling themselves equally with porn and modern notions of romance, and others about how the fashion among English poets of the 17th and 18th centuries of dictating the bondaries of woman-hood was awfully provoking, and how the View and that bloody industry of books instructing women how to ensnare appropriate men make me want to puke, but not until now does someone give some sort of explanation for all that. I'm rapidly losing the ability to suspend my disbelief - I wonder if I'm hitting the transference period of my analysis.

This site was started to document the exciting cultural whirlwind of my existence, forgoing details of my increasingly ridiculous sex life and variably naughty social life. I don't know how well I've kept to that, but have I got a cultural experience for you now.

Last night I worked at a local bingo hall to fundraise for my mum's symphony orchestra. This is a fucking pitfall for us children when we visit home - bloody fucking bingos. Selling tickets to people who can't afford them, dealing with weird Troll-y talisman-y finger-cross-y superstition, walking the fucking floor for HOURS waiting for people to break the silence by screaming out 'bingo!', and yelling confirmation numbers to the fucking mentalist bingo caller. Fuck, it sucks! The thing is the profits the symphony reaps from running bingos are huge, so they really have no choice but to do it, but nobody bloody wants to volunteer for it because it's motherfucking purgatorial, man. However, we all love our mum and our mum loves the symphony, so we do it. And it fucking sucks, fuck. THESE PEOPLE BLOW A FUCKING C-NOTE A NIGHT ON FUCKING BINGO CARDS. And think they're playing the odds, or something, and aren't even all that happy when they win because they just think of it as an overdue pay-off on an investment. Faaaaaack. If they spent the money they spend on bingo on drugs they'd be fucked up 24/7. I mean they could be carrying off a really great coke habit. And they're 75% franco-ontarien. What the fuck is bingo's fucking proportionately higher fascination for the franco-ontarien community about? That's some fucked up shit, man.

Anyways, there's talk the local reserve is going to put up a casino so that will shut the bingo right down. And if the casino is on the reserve it doesn't have to profit-share with local charities and non-profits, so that will probably shut down the orchestra and lots of other local groups unless they find another way to bring in the money or the government starts coughing funds up in a smarter way. That really sucks, even though it means I won't have to work at one of these fuckers again. But what really sucks is how fucking dumb people are. I know I have the fiscal discipline of a grasshopper so I shouldn't talk, but why in the name of sweet suffering fuck people sink their money into slots and motherfucking bingos is beyond me.

Back to the city, back to reality, in a couple hours. Thank goodness. Everything and everyone moves too slowly here. I have had a wonderful Christmas because of my fantastic family and the Bs, Cs, and Turtle Soup being in town, but this place gives me, what the fuck is that thing tigers in captivity get? Cage fatigue? Stir craziness? All I know is, I NEED TO SMOKE ME SOME FUCKING REEFER AND GO TO A MUSIC STORE. Fack.

2005 and its goodnesses

Usually I only mention movies to talk about how much they suck, but yesterday the Cs brought over the 40 Year Old Virgin on their way out of town and, unbaked, I nearly peed myself. Solid all around - solid supporting cast, solid plot, and Steve Carrell was awfully sympathetic. But I won't go on about it because this movie got on everybody's 2005 'Top Ten Something Good' lists so just breathe in and out a few times and you'll hear an ode to its praises.

Top 10 lists are an interesting way to take stock of the year. Here's my Top Ten Something Good list for 2005 - the order is subjective so I'll just use symbols:

!: The reefer from the man on the west side with the huge pitbull and the loft furnished only with a ping-pong table. That's some yummy fucking reefer. Definitely the top reefer of 2005, although

@: Lady's adoooooooorable dealer was another top something-good of 2005. That boy makes me want to make babies with him who look just like him. And then pinch his cheeks, and go 'awwwwwww!'. Which reminds me

#: Getting to know Lady and her circle better was a top something-good thing of 2005. She's smart, even when she pretends not to be, and funny as a 40 year old virgin. Her friends and family live up to the standard.

$: My cat, Galaxy. Yes, she has her own webpage. Yes, she write haikus. Fuck you. Ever since she moved in it's like my apartment has been haunted with cuteness.

%: My apartment. If I'm of the mental state to create a web page for my cat, it's probably time I lived alone, so I do, in my favourite apartment ever. As I write it's possible someone has broken in and stolen my stuff because that neighborhood has more than a touch of sketch. But if not I'm as happy as a clam in shit there.

^: My job. I complain about it a lot, but the money is fun and it gives me the mental liberty, shall we say, to maintain this blog and do alot of other fun stuff.

&: Toronto. I think it's taken this long for me to settle down into this city after the years abroad. France was a shit-storm in a lot of ways. Toronto and its people and charms have helped me get back to %100. It's a good city for entertaining, and has been good for the guests I've had who have really needed entertaining. It's also acting as a sort of seive, catching people I used to know who I'm getting to know again as they move there. I miss Toronto. Tomorrow, my precious, I'm back in your arms.

*: All the reconciliations: with the people whose exes I'd slept with, with FEB, with my advisor if he behaves his motherfucking self, and talking properly with highschool people. The only spot of negativity is the promise to kill me someday from the Swiss. But I probably need one nemesis to keep me on my toes, and he's Swiss, so I like my chances. As long as I don't have to face him in a chocolaterie, defensive nuclear conflict, or profiteering-from-a-global-descent-into-martial-chaos type situation. Joking. I still love the Swiss, as you can tell from the next top ten thing:

): Carl Jung and finding religion. I've found a belief system my intellect is permitting me to fall head over heels for, which is what a good Catholic girl searches for from the time she turns thirteen and realizes the Church is corrupt, conservative to the point of evil, and wants her to squeeze her brand new titties back into her chest.

(: Opera. Opera lessons, opera recordings, opera performances, three motherfucking cheers for opera. That shit makes me physically happier than all the sex I've had over the last two years put together.

Is that ten? There were alot of others - discoveries of older things, like Denys Arcand movies; ongoing enjoyments of old things, like whacking off; renaissances of old dormant passions, like Blundstones after a couple of years of Docs (laces are for suckers, fuck); and things that first came out this year, like Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 2005 had its moments, for sure. Here's to it.

So sick. How could someone consuming as many nutrients as I have lately be sick? Fuck. So now that my body has said 'Ha! Stay still for a bit, bitch!' my brain has time to think about New Year's Resolutions.

1. Learn how to read sheet music properly. God, I'm dumb. How could I have studied music for so long as a child, albeit with a huge amount of resistance, and not learnt how to read music properly? Fucking hell. Which reminds me of resolution 2.

2. Cease to beat myself up over all the dumb, dumb things I've done. They're done and I have to deal with them, like some sort of natural disaster. A retardanami. A volcanic retarduption. Also me beating myself up over the dumb, dumb things is probably a psychological cause of the necessity for resolution 3.

3. Stop imagining all the men I think about in a naked way will turn out crazy. It's statistically likely they won't, right? I doubt I'll ever slip my sunny slut shoes back on (without moving back to Italy and re-thinking my attitude to cocaine) but I should really be less, what's the word? Frigid? Misandrist? Cowardly? Think of them as real people with their own hopes and dreams and all that instead of the mindless agents of entropy and disequilibrium. And then nail them.

All other resolutions like murderizing France, dropping weight, bleaching my teeth, learning Arabic, and becoming a professional crimefighter will have to wait for a resolution-making season when I'm feeling less realistic and more physically fit.

Fox hunting might be fun, mightn't it? I wouldn't know. When I ride horses I like them to sort of amble, eat flowers, sniff things, maybe have a healthful little trot on the beach, and essentially not give my ass the vicious pounding of a good stiff gallop. But I imagine that if you were used to it, it could be a good time. Going really fast, super cute hounds baying, an animal getting ripped to peices, yelling gibberish, the sweet dangerous possiblity of braining yourself on a low-hanging tree branch and all. You could say it's quite bacchanalial, really. Which is retarded. If you're going to go all bacchanalial you should have some wild open-air orgies of sex instead of just violence. Your ass is already getting a vicious pounding anyways.

Anyhoo. I'd be all for the hunt if there was a Godiva-esque wager on it: every year that the hunters ride naked, the tax burden on the English that ends up supporting the household of the royal family should be cut. At a blow, poor people get to laugh at the sagginesses of the apparently idiotic hunting class (and I do mean idiotic) and the hunting class gets to have their brainless ass-pounding fun, simultaneously pulling the fangs of class conflict and impoverishing a backwards institution. Which hopefully means we in Canada can start having more attractive figures on our money (like him). As for the fox himself - I've just spent three days eating baby cow and swollen goose liver. So you know what I've got to say? Dick.

Shall I say that in the last 24 hours I've eaten more than in the whole preceding week and that I've eaten more meat than in the whole preceding month? Shall I describe the torpid glassiness of my eyes as I contemplate the upcoming trip to church with more lethargy than spirituality? Shall I list the delicacies, each more delicious than the last, that have been presenting themselves before me?

I think the easiest way of communicating the sheer fucking oral debauchery is in haiku form:

the olives are hot
fresh veal soothes my burning mouth
bread is for the birds

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Last minute shopping

Before jumping back into the holiday fray after everyone's naptime is over and their hunger returns, there's a very special shout-out I want to give today. It's not to the people I love, who I try to talk to directly at this time of year if no other; it's not to the people I hate, who I don't hate anymore because December 21 is the Let-go-of-that-shit Day in the Church of La Spliffe. It's not to people at all. It's to my tits.

After a brutal workout this morning (trying to get my hunger sharp enough to truly appreciate the culinary delights awaiting me) I had a pure moment of amour-propre-tetons as I undressed and saw this sweet-ass pair in the mirror. I know there are nicer breasts out there; don't get me wrong. But my darling tits, I want you to know right now: I wouldn't trade you for any goddamn rack in the world.

We've been through almost everything together. Remember the day you'd sprouted out of nowhere and made my family laugh because your undersides got covered in breadcrumbs when I leant over the table? Remember where we bought our first whore-y bra? Remember the hours of fun we've had when our favourite men have had fun with you? Remember the orgasmerrific denouement when we posed for that British artist we had a crush on in Italy the day before we left town forever? That was you, ladies. You, just by being you, got us what my brain was too smitten and stupid to ask for. I love you for it.

I know that as the years go by, gravity and the fulfillment of our biological destiny will change the way you look and act, but if anything I'll love you the more. If I ever lose you, I'll try to pick up the pieces of my life and move on. But then if I lose you, I don't know how much longer I can move on for, because there's not a cure right now. I'm convinced that in the not-too-distant future, people will look back on our ways of dealing with cancer, particularly those specific to women, and shudder at the barbarity, guesswork, and pissing-in-the-dark of it all. I hope the three of us can make it through until then. Never leave me, babes. Please. I fucking love you.

And to those of you who happen upon this while panicking because you haven't bought all the crap you need for some special lady, why don’t you consider making a donation in her name? Hmm? Hmm? You wouldn’t even need to haul your ass off the chair, and it's a great present. Because I don’t know anyone anymore who hasn’t cried themselves to sleep over the ‘c’ word. Not to mention the lady in question, no matter how fucked up her body image is, probably loves her tits, deep down, just as much as I love mine. And we hope you love them too.

Dee dee dee dee dee dee dee-dee-dee dee-dee-dee dee-dee dee-dee dee dee

Please do yourself a fucking favour. Stop paying attention to Mariah Carey carols, the shit-pot over taking the Christ out of Christmas, and whatever bullshit toy whatever bullshit anything is promoting. And tell yourself that Christmas in particular and the New Year in general is about the magical, renewal, and making this world a little more beautiful.

For me, the best way to do this seems to be the Nutcracker. Maybe I ate too many mushrooms during my undergrad, maybe I'm insane, or maybe Wednesday's dream analysis session peeled back a few more layers than I was expecting. But the beauty of the National Ballet's production last night made me cry, and I wasn't the only one. I'm still too enchanted (and fucking exhausted - this week has been a cocktail of heavy work, heavy drinking, heavy cannabis consumption, intelligent conversation and emotionally cathartic experiences so I'm a little spent) to dip into it.

Instead, a plea. Please treat yourself to the combination of flawless music, artistry of human movement, and communication with all the most beautiful parts of the human unconsciousness that a good production of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker can provide. Failing that, pay attention to something else that reminds you of the divine in us.

And you've got a one-joke limit on the 'nut' in the title, infant.

Ohhhhhh kiddies

Hold tight. Almost holidays. No time to write. So discuss: Militancy in the women's movement was the inevitable consequence of a default in a tacit Western gender balance contract (i.e. women's accepted roles had little political or economic power, but also small likelihood they and their under-age children would be wholesale slaughtered during martial conflict). The recent and present blurring of traditional Western gender roles is a result of an effort to balance this default and of the self's will to survive rather than a simple civil rights issue.

L8ers.

Equal and opposite

Yesterday work pissed me off something royal. FEB told me: 'the blues will pass'. Blues? thought I. What the fuck? I'm angry! But is there a difference? My blues are reactive. I wasn't raised to sit and mope - doesn't make the blues less the blues. I'm not sure sitting and moping is all bad. Some snap decisions I've made while having the blues could have used a few moment's reflection.

Anyways, yesterday's snap decision was to start looking for a job more in line with my aptitudes, aspirations, attitudes, and other none-insulting A words. I have two interviews already. We shall see what we shall see. It doesn't feel like it was one of the bad snap decisions, like contracting that Swiss asshole. But that could be because when Miss C showed up from Van City last night at 1, we killed a bottle of wine and some bowls, discussed the human mind for hours, and are now too tired to be self-critical.

Nonetheless. It's been awhile since I understood reactions are still decisions. In a North American bourgeois milieu blaming the world, the people we love or hate, or our age for what we choose to do is totally counterproductive. I just wish I could remember that all the time.

As Lady constantly says,

SUCK IT UP!

The Quick and the Dead

To those of you considering gifting me: please don’t. My profligacy adapted to my income and I’m broke. If you do, don’t buy me opera. It's fucking expensive and getting something I already have is likely because of the way the repertory works. If you buy music, buy somebody who gets royalties and who you reckon I’d like. But not these, which in my fiscal discipline I ordered yesterday:

Kanye West, Late Registration: Ever since Mr. S played Gold-digger for me, I’ve been wondering if I should buy the whole album on the off-chance the other tracks might be even a fraction as good. How can he be saying ‘Get down girl, go head, get down’ with that much resignation and still make me want to dance? Then on Saturday night when Lady’s gingerbread was in full wheresmyface flight, Mr. S played Diamonds in Sierra Leone. It was as good. Maybe better. So there we are.

Astrud Gilberto’s Finest Hour: I’ve had a soft spot for Astrud Gilberto ever since hearing Thievery Corporation’s remix of ‘Who Needs Forever?’ Such a pretty voice, and so APED. Aped by a generation of ‘intelligent’ folk-renaissance singers who were supposed to sound stripped down and just sounded flat. But calling Astrud Gilberto flat is as apropos as calling Stolichnaya colourless. This weekend someone told me she was alive so I decided it was time to stop 'sharing'.

K-Os, Joyful Rebellion: My brother has hot friends, or at least they were hot during my formative years and will therefore be Forever Hot. Just like Magnum PI. Last time I was in my hometown, one of my brother’s hot friends played K-Os for me – Man I Used to Be – saying “I know you’re musical so I know you’ll like this”. He was right. I like boys who know I’ll like things and don’t get all dumb because of my opera hang-up. Especially when I really like the things they know I’ll like. And I fucking liked that an awful lot.

Here are some people who aren’t dead whose things I thought of buying this morning and didn’t because of my awesome fiscal discipline:

Blossom Dearie
The Meters
Nick Cave (pre-Murder Ballads)
Al Green

And even though he’s dead, I guess Serge Gainsbourg things should be bought. I can imagine he’d have a plethora of children out there who need the money from the royalties. Fuck, only in France could that man have got the action he did. Brigitte Bardot, for heaven’s sake! Fucking France.

Speaking of gifting and Brigitte Bardot . . . you may want to think twice before giving any of your younger relatives a certain iconic plastic doll. And check out what FEB suggests he's sending me.

Soundtracking

1. Listening to a well-played harp is like eating a tray of reefer brownies and nailing someone you care about. Just – so – nice. I wonder if heaven was inspired by the sound of harps, or if the religious people thought heaven was so awfully pretty that harps would have be there. Kristen Theriault, the harpist from last evening, looks angelic when she plays. Anyone would, I think. Plucking with long fingers, pulling delicately away from the strings to get some lovely reverb or placing the hands gently upon them to dull the sound. Renie's 'Fountain' in particular was darling. Ah, when I’m rich I’m going to have a wicked ass funk band follow me around everywhere, and a harpist to play me to sleep.

2. This week will be retarded with busy-ness (Hah! Busy-ness! Business! I just caught on this very moment. Well, I’m a moron) until noon sharp on Thursday. Then, I predict everything taking a turn for the better. Fingers crossed. I picked up the Nutcracker tickets yesterday. Damp with anticipation.

3. A little Statcounter Bust:

Germany
G0812.g.pppool.de (80.185.8.18)
Costume JewelryCostume Jewelry
search.msn.de/results.aspx?q=dragon ball fucking&first=41&FORM=PERE4

Not cool, you sick fuck. I'm sure you can find enough standard anime porn online without seeing childish characters from a children's show fucking. Geez. It's shit like this that gets the world thinking Germans are all naughty.

4. Bolivia elected Evo Morales with a higher margin than alot of people were anticipating. I find it hilarious that in the American media, it's Morales' coca stances that get most talked up when his election was due to lots of important things like tension between European and indigenous people, poverty issues, and the economic organization of the entire country. I guess we know what's important to Americans - cocaine, and lots of it. Lots and lots and lots. Don't tell me there aren't literally hundreds of thousands of people there whose noses are a-twitch with glee this morning because they think cocaine prices are going to take a tumble.

Spirits

I've been having a shitty attitude all weekend. I haven't yet entered into the spirit of season and am feeling the bare minimum of good will towards men. To fight this, at twilight I'm off to listen to a soprano and harpist do seasonal things at a caker church. Gotta say the Catholics are sucking for the sacred music this season. Catholics are sucking generally. You'd think they'd have to counterbalance all the nuttiness with this new German dink by doing lots of pretty music. But nooooo.

My art-pusher, who I had a good chat with whilst buying things Picasso for my brother (having to order Bum, nobody seems to have it, which is shocking), may have a line on a part-time job for me that lets me listen to three TSO concerts a week. Some extra scratch wouldn't be remiss considering all the ways I run through my income, especially as I need to save money for the thesis trip and the notion of saving money is completely counter-intuitive for me. Also, three concerts a week, fuck. And they finish early enough to carry on with one's night afterwards. Still, how? What habits can I give up to get time to do this? I'm thinking either thesis or paying attention to boys.

At Lady's do last night (which came nearer to getting me into the spirit of the season than anything else so far) Mr. R talked up his frustration about not having time to write. I sympathize. Besides dream descriptions, I'm not writing anything (including, incidentally, my sisterfucking Christmas cards). I can't complain the writing phase of of the thesis is finished, oh heavens no, but at least it provided justification for not writing properly. So what habits can I give up to get back into it again, if 'thesis and paying attention to boys' time goes to the symphony? I should outfit my bike for winter - knock 40 minutes a day off the work commute alone. But that's counter-intuitive too - fucking winter. I fucking hate fucking winter.

By the by, did you know Word, while recognizing ‘fuck’ as a verb (I fuck, I am fucking) and as an adjective (fucking winter), won’t recognize it as a verb modifier (I fucking hate fucking winter)? Fucking Word. I think I know what the programmers need to listen to.

Mercy mercy me

There was drama at the birthday party last night. Living up to my apparent Sagittarian live and let live whateverness, I don't get the existence of drama in a bourgeois milieu. But drama there was. Argh. Anyways, I didn't get in any fights. But it was a near thing, and then I got to watch some.

Last night was a 40th birthday. My fortieth is coming up in a little less than 13 years. I should start planning now. The thirtieth I've already planned - tropics. Somewhere reefer grows wild and clothes are optional. If I make it through my twenties and I'm still living in Canada, I plan to take whole fucking stupid snowy piece of shit winter off. Weeeeee! Fortieth I haven't thought through, but I think I'd like a party a little bit like the bits and bobs I remember of Charles and Diana getting married; Dame Commander Kiri ti Kanawa singing, old prelates blessing me and my loved ones, a dress so fucking big people have to help me with it. And then, and only then, I'll snort some crystal. Enter my middle age so fucking happy I'd punch the world in the face for it!

The Red Dragon is fucking busy

. . . but has some sort of posting ethic. Unlike some. Most of my department has chosen today not to be in, the advertisers are as bitchy as rabid dogs with herpes, and last night I didn't do anything except launder, get psycho-analysed, and make mixed CDs for Christmas. So I'll post the dream I discussed with my analyst last night. He had some great insights. I just enjoyed having the dream. Dreams are fun.

I was in a typically sketchy mall in Quebec, about to catch a train at the adjoining station. I was looking for a bathroom, some fresh fruit, and a notebook. I could only find a large (letter-sized) notebook, and the store selling that only sold Doritos otherwise. I bought it and went to look for fruit elsewhere. The bathroom was odd; the women's cubicles were two thick with little halls leading from the first row to the second. I went to the second row and didn't actually pee; just sat there for a few minutes like a drunk chick at a club trying to pull herself together.

There was a mix-up with the train so a group of us took a minivan. My old roommate and another university friend were there. I had no thought of where we were going. We were talking about exes, and I was about to say something bitter about the Swiss when we went over the crest of a hill and I saw our destination. It was Florence - the Duomo and other landmarks were there, as well as the distinctive roofs. But it was strange because it was on the shores of a large body of water instead of the Arno, and the weather was sunny, crisp, and a little snowy.

We took the cab (for the minivan was now a cab) down to the frozen waterfront, which looked like Scarborough, a spa town ran to seed in Yorkshire I used to go to every summer. The uni friend and I were cracking gay jokes about Batman and Robin. We all piled out mid-conversation and started walking somewhere - the friend and I walked in the wrong direction and then the other three, Ex-Roommate most stridently, called us in the right one. I don't remember where we were going, but it was somewhere very familiar - the apartment of a friend, or even my own apartment - that I should have known how to get to.

And then I woke up.

And here I am at work again.

Work's for the fucking birds, man. Hey! Guess what! The American Senate rejected the Patriot Act. So the questions are - has the Democrat party grown balls, or has the Republican party lost it's? Is it a question of people being stroppy in the lead-up to the next presidentials? Or is everybody figuring out that the word 'patriot' stuck on something doesn't make it unpatriotic to oppose it? Will Elisa succumb to her irrestistible attraction towards il Duca di Rivombroso even though he can't marry someone of her social class? Will John realize Marlena, is, in fact, possessed by Satan himself? Shit. American domestic politics. How can something be so boring and so important at once?

The Red Dragon Goes to the Launderette

I watched CNN out of the corner of my eye at the launderette last night. CNN's a joke, right? Tell me it’s a complete fucking joke. They had a segment called 'Life’s Little Annoyances', which was about pet peeves and dealing with them. And then a segment with this awful, awful woman called Paula something.

SUDAN! TURKMENISTAN! KURDISH HOMELAND! BREAKDOWN OF THE FRAGILE PEACE BETWEEN ERITREA AND ETHIOPIA! FUCKING GORGEOUS ITALIAN FOOTBALLERS! SCIENTISTS GENETICALLY ALTERING MICE SO THEY NO LONGER FEEL FEAR AND THE IMPLICATIONS THAT HAS FOR PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS! These things are news. America's pet peeves are not.

CNN! YOU SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! YOU PACK OF EMASCULATED SISSY BARBIE DOLLS, IF WATERGATE HAPPENED NOW YOU’D SNORT LINES OF COKE OFF IT! You know what floods me with patriotism, even when it’s dumb? CBC Newsworld. Because at least it isn’t fucking CNN. I HATE CNN!

Besides CNN, and the fucking awful voice of the fucking awful Paula woman, sitting waiting for my drying was lovely. I got to read something that wasn't thesis-centric, which I hardly ever have time for except before falling asleep or in the metro going to lessons. It was Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, and I read the sort of passage that makes converts. You know when you see yourself in the dogma, and then are far more able to take all the zany things about the belief system with a grain of salt? I saw not only a description of myself (which any putz could manage as is evidenced by the bitter testimony of my exes) but an explanation.

So I now belong to the Church of Jung. If I try to proselytize, slap me. OH SWEET MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A LOUSY WHOREMONGER'S BITCH! I HAVEN'T DONE MY POXY PANTSY CHRISTMAS CARDS YET! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Red Dragon versus Christmas

My goodness. So many people have been in a shit mood lately. I've been snappier myself, but I have the luxury this week of writing that off to red dragon riding. Every Christmas the way people turn on each other like animals shocks me. The pressure is fucking mental. Work goes nuts (in my case anyways, with agencies foaming at the mouth to get their commercials on air before we close for the holidays), relationships melt down, and gifting people you care about is NOT FUCKING EASY. Last night I spent hours making people TWO mixed CDs when I should have been at the gym, washing my hair, doing laundry, or sending out my bloody fucking Christmas cards. I need a servile doppelganger, is what I need. All I can say is thank fuck I did my shopping back in October. I just can't stand that motherfucking vapid ball-less X-mas cheer shit they pipe into the shopping malls and to circumnavigate being subjected to it, the shopping has to be pre-Halloween - bloody sick if you ask me.

Yes, yes, we're happy Jeebus was born, and we understand everybody is on holiday in August so that would be a dumb time to celebrate it. We're happy the time is fast approaching when the days get longer instead of shorter. We're all looking forward to a new year when we become better people because we follow through on our awesome resolutions. But I personally don't want to celebrate all these things by listening to a sisterfucking synthesizer playing 'Santa Baby' over some shitty PA while a bunch of fat guys paw through lingerie, brows furrowed in confused desperation, getting in my way and pissing me off, please and thank you.

Clemenwhatnow?

'It's a good thing there is not much pain,' he observed, 'when the head falls off.'

'Do you know,' Myshkin answered warmly, 'you've just made that observation and everybody says the same . . . But the idea occurred to me at the time that perhaps it made it worse . . . the chief and worst pain may not be in the bodily suffering but in one's knowing for certain that in an hour, and then in ten minutes, and then in half a minute, and then now, at that very moment, the soul will leave the body and that that's bound to happen; the worst part of it is that it's certain. . . It was of this torture and of this agony that Christ spoke, too. No, you can't treat a man like that!'

Maybe you can’t, but he can. I don't know what a murderer deserves, but I'm not sure killing it after "studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences" is possible for a moral man with any imagination at all.

I linked the Online Etymology Dictionary under What? Words in the sideboard. In the interests of saving you the trouble of looking it up, click here to learn about 'fuck'. Then move on with your life, infant. Oh, and just in case you forgot . . . Jacques Chirac is a big whiney weenie and everybody hates him. And he's not the only one.

Ridicule

Yesterday was a waste of consciousness by most standards, but it was nice anyways. I got rid of the pain in my legs by spending some time at gym and by getting all snaked at - let's call him Gigi, since Lady does - at Gigi's home. There, we watched Ridicule, a film I hadn't seen for years and years. A very nice film to watch on a stoned and lazy Sunday. What bugs me about Ridicule, besides the disjointedness of the different storylines and the occasional narrative flatness that results, is the fact that some people of a certain social class who I spent time with in France still consider the useless Versailles aristocrats with their insulting yet predictable humour and parasitic lifestyles as a standard towards which they must struggle, despite a couple of revolutions and a whole whackload of republics. And then they get upset the rest of the world thinks they're hypocritical assholes. Hear that? It's the drip-drip-drop of my heart bleeding.

Oh, when will I get over this France thing? It puts me in the company of idiots. Why does France have to suck so bad I end up in concordance with people who hate it because of Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, and the really comfortable ass-print they've worn into their couch?

Fucking France.

Two buckets of ice, please

Last night my legs and I had a good discussion about our mutual needs. Today they hurt, but our relationship is healthier for it. Boa was great. Lady knows the names of all the clever men; I don't but I remember the Buddha-esque figure of the downstairs man smiling while he made weird moon man music that I couldn't help but dance and dance to. I think I had a crystal flashback. Is that possible? The party before was nice too. That funny boy who sings Beatles songs and looks like Peter Cook was there. He went to some club that wasn't Boa, and I went to Boa. That's hardly even two ships passing in the night. That's like a dangerously under-maintained oil frigate from Spain and a hollow-hulled drug runner masquerading as a garbage sloop from Italy both registering as Liberian vessels to avoid safety or legal regulation. What am I talking about? I don't know. I get confused when I find people attractive for qualities besides being right there. It was a good night, anyways.

I'm looking forward to next weekend's three Christmas parties, but I'd also like to try the Screww night at Buddies' - looks like it might be nice retro, which I haven't experienced in yonks. We'll see.

I knew it

I knew there was a reason I woke up in a pisser on a Saturday morning, besides that fucking dream about being Milou and having to find a treasure-chest in a booby trapped castle while Tintin hung around outside giving me completely useless advice. Man, I can't even giggle over writing 'booby' today. Today is the day the laughter died. What did we do that Richard Pryor had to die? Fuck, man. Fuck. This is one naughty world.

Blown away

Started psychoanalysis last night. It was odd to talk about myself so much, but not too threatening. I'm relaxed with Carl Jung's ideas. They provide a practical, concrete framework for all the philosophy and classical writing I studied, and you would not believe how fun it is to trace archetypes through the dream you had about Eminem doing Mad Scientist magic tricks in a dormitory of your old university. We talked alot about anger, which is odd - synchronic, if I may - since my head is about to EXPLODE this evening with the anger I'm feeling towards some of the ad-bot simpletons I have to deal with.

But the real psychically important event last night was watching Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and the St. Crispin's day speech that lets you know language is Shakespeare's loving bitch:

What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Oh, the goosebumps. Isn't it something that back in the day the great military leaders also had to be great orators? You had to be able to convince men that they wanted to throw themselves into a deadly situation; prepare them to slaughter another creature that looked like them; you had to take away their fear, suspend their sympathy, and fill them with energy. Imagine! It probably helped that they had a better sense of eternity and a friendlier relationship with death than the Occidental world does now, but all the same. I read somewhere that Julius Caesar's legendarily inspiring rallying speeches were filthily obscene. Naughty Italians.

Speaking of inspirational, has anyone made a movie about this guy yet?

You're lucky you got your looks

I love Italy; I love Italians; I love myself. Natch. But they are so fucking lame sometimes. In case you're silly enough to not subscribe to the New York Times, the linked article finishes with the line 'And the Italians should reconsider their approach. . . That would require an extreme act of political bravery. So don't bet on its happening anytime soon.' Holy shit. There's a wee encapsulation of their whole lameness.*

I don't want to get too deeply into Italian lameness today because I still feel the need to focus my nationalistic contempt on France. But I will say that for Canada, in the context of the approaching election, Italy is a topical cautionary tale. Things here are generally good, yes. The issues being argued in this election don't have cataclysmic implications, no. And our electoral system is more representative and accountable than that of the United States, yes. Those are hardly reasons to get complacent and start ignoring our political process like a bunch of Italians. PAY ATTENTION, BITCHES! Or you'll end with the governance the inattentive deserve - a sequence of instable minority governments whose parties have sold their ideology to the highest bidder and which are sometimes headed by the Berlusconi-esque.

Feel them. Feel the goosebumps, motherfucker.

An exhaustive description of Italian lameness can be found in this week's Economist, which contains a damning survey of the country's economic and political situation.



*That article fails to mention a peice of shocking hypocrisy: the Museo Egizio di Torino is the second or third best egyptology collection in the world, depending on whether you're talking to a Brit or an Italian. The collection was 'built' and 'recovered' during the north African colonial era. . . but I guess national interests forbid such mentions. Any G-7 country starting that sort of war of words would be a pot or kettle calling some other pot or kettle black.

Fancy seeing you here

Had a breakfast workshop with hundreds of ad-bots, one of whom I'd been on a few dates with and hadn't called back. Thankfully I live in a big city so dumb 'chats' like this morning's only happen once in awhile. In Piemonte it was bloody constant, so I went to Paris, and we know how that turned out.

So, I'm one of those, I've realized. Is it wrong? Possibly. I don't call anymore either, so I don't recall how no call-back feels. I guess it depends on whether you'd rather assume 'this person doesn't think they owe me an explanation' or hear 'I'm not into you and I don't have the energy to pretend'.

Anyways, it would be nice to be into someone; I used to be from time to time. It isn't so much an involved relationship I miss as having the guts to take a real fucking header for someone - to make an impassioned decision and say, 'yes, I love this person'. Or at least 'yes, I would pull out one of my own teeth to get my hands on him'. That's balls, man. That's palle. That's hot. When did I get so cold?

Geh

Feel ill today. Will take off at lunch probably. This made me feel a little sicker to my stomach. Man, what people will do to other species. Take the miracle of God's creation and turn it into ugly contests. Ugh.

Well . . .

I suppose the day had to come. From a civil liberties point of view, I cry, 'full steam ahead!' From a physical point of view, I cry, 'the only good sex with a prostitute is free sex with a prostitute!' And from a moral point of view, I cry.

Fine black bitches

The title of this post is what somebody searched to find this site. The 'dating assholes' thing I can understand, what with all the abstract discussion of romance garbage, but 'fine black bitches'?

Got a draggle-on birthday present this morning from Marks and Spencers. What does it say about me that I miss Marks and Spencers so much? But merciful fuck, it isn't fair, the gingersnaps alone should have kept their Canadian business afloat. That should be about the last birthday present for the year besides a mystery package whose existence I've been warned of driving in from the West Coast. Mysssssssssssssss-tery. Must be Bigfoot.

Fwaaaaaaaaaaa . . .

Vendetta's off. Advisor accepted my word I didn't plagiarise, probably because I told him my dear mother's suggestion that I copy out a kajillion of the drafts I saved and explain the transition from one to another, and Mr. S's suggestion that I find a Canadian professor with a background in contemporary North American relations who'd be able to say I didn't copy. Perhaps Advisor thought it would just be more for him to read. So I won't kill France, after all.

Other good news: Stéphane Rousseau got to my apartment this morning. The ten minutes I watched before my opera lesson made me laugh three times. I'll need to watch them again before I know if I was laughing at the funniness, or out of happiness that I know another language enough to watch stand-up comedy in it, or if I was just giggling because, you know, I saw one of his nipples.

Stuck by the man

This site is censored in China! Fuckin' A! Probably due to Lexie's participation - that is one fucking reactionary civil libertarian of a kitty cat. You should hear what she has to say about the autonomy of Tibet and the plight of the Muslims in Ningxia province. To paraphrase: 'Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'.

Speaking of all things censor-worthy: try to guess which one won without Googling.

At the office, Friday night, and going to stay because it's cleaner than my apartment and I need to put together documentary proof I didn't plagiarise the sack of shit that has been wrecking my life for more than a year. I may go out for a drink later, but the crooked way that last mochaccino went down suggests I'm more likely to go home and cry myself to sleep. People have warned me that when this fucker is done I'll feel a vaccuum in my life. I think I'll try filling it with a huge mountain of cocaine. Like this:
Because I doubt snorting a whole Andes-worth, if properly paced, could fuck up my head worse than writing a thesis for a French institution.

Frosted flake-y post

So this is Yahoo's version of me. My chin has shrunk, I've lost about 40 pounds, and my calico cat has become a red dragon. Yay.

Speaking of . . . I'm still purple with rage today. Considering the walking fury I become when I'm riding the red dragon, I resent being infuriated at other times of the month - just another thing to resent in this case. I'd rather be called ugly, stupid, evil, a lousy lay, smelly, or most other pejoratives I can think of than be called a liar. I wonder why. Probably some past-life shit. Anyways, according to my co-worker's Sun Signs book I need to chill, because I'm a Sagittarian and when we Sagittarians get extendedly upset over something it hits us physically. It's true, you know. The first time my heart broke I spent a week puking and having the funniest hallucinations. Is it material that the first time my heart broke was concurrent with the Florentine Plague Season, and that Florentines don't cover thier mouths when they cough? My biographers will be the judges.

Yesterday I was both purple with rage and very upset, because I have that stupid girly thing of crying the first time I get angry about something. The second time I might be all 'say hello to my leetle friend!', or some Dench-esque 'Are you telling me you had the temerity to accuse me of blah blah blah dripping icicles blah' shit, but the first time, it's waterworks and no fooling. Anyways, at the end of the day I remembered to book an appointment with a local Jungian analyst - I realized awhile ago that I need to have gone through around 100 hours of analysis before even applying to accredited schools - and as I was on the phone with him, waves of fury kept washing over me and I could hardly keep the tears out of my voice. He must be expecting one happy little package to arrive on his doorstep next Thursday.

Help

My brother hardly ever asks for anything specific, but this Christmas he said he'd like a print of what he thinks is something by Picasso, but maybe it's Matisse. He says it's a painting of a woman, from the back, her being a little cello-shaped. But it is not the one you see here - he says it's just two fluid black lines on a white background. Does anyone know the name of it, or if it's by Picasso, or does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

***********UPDATE*************

Turns out to be this, which Picasso simply called 'Femme'. Guess he wasn't a breast man. My brother plans on calling it 'Bum', which seems a little more accurate. Much love to Mr. N for referring me to www.art.com.








My thesis advisor finally got in touch. Turns out - and I'm sure this is absolutely independent of me, say, contacting the school to ask why the fuck I hadn't heard from him for seven weeks - he thinks I copied it. This isn't the first time a French professor has accused me of plagiarism. But you know what? It had fucking better be the fucking last, because I am way too pretty for jail, and I am thiiiiiiiis close to murderizing all of fucking France. I don't know what pisses me off more: the accusation, the self-servingness of the accusation, or the fact that now I'll have to go to mad documentary trouble to prove that I didn't copy when I've already gone to enough trouble actually WRITING the fucker. Oh sweet fuck on a stick. Someone is going to pay.

Uhmmmmmmm . . .

I know they have assistants who do this for them, but . . . but . . . he ;-) me! My mum went to Beatles concerts in Liverpool back in the day. Must remember to ask her next Sunday what the appropriate scream-y noise to make in such a circumstance would be.

De: Mlle LaSpliffe
Date: lun. 21/11/2005 16:43
À: Stéphane Rousseau
Objet : aucun

Bonjour,

M. Rousseau est actuellement en tournée à Paris? Je suis obligée de rester en cette ville pour quelques semaines en janvier et j'aimerais bien voir son acte.

Merci,

Mlle La Spliffe


De: Stéphane Rousseau
Date: mar. 29/11/2005 16:43
À: Mlle La Spliffe
Objet : Je serai à Paris...

Bonjour Mlle La Spliffe!

Je suis en tournée depuis presque 6 semaines en France, un peu partout dans ce beau pays. Je serai en spectacles à Paris au Bataclan à partir du 17 septembre jusqu'au 28 février. Au plaisir de vous divertir et surtout de vous faire rire! ;-)

Stéphane

Shake Hands With the Devil Is Not Bedtime Reading

Had the worst dream last night about trying to conclude a peace accord in a small Latin American republic. It was going swimmingly, and then an extremist walked in, blew the other negotiators away until he ran out of bullets, and started cracking necks. After wrapping that up he began slicing off my fingers in an effort to make me do a radio announcement handing power over to his party. And the worst part of it all was that the whole negotiating team just stared dumbly at him while he did all this; we couldn’t believe it.

The dream made me want to puke. So did this.

Time for more Brontë sisters and some George Eliot, I think. Roméo Dallaire will be strictly for the subway and lunchbreaks.

Merde, je pue

I smell awful today. Not awful like stinky, soap-averse, insert-name-of-favourite-smelly-ethnic-group-here awful, but Ralph Lauren Romance awful. This shit makes me smell like a Victorian whore trying to cover up some unspeakable disease. But I looked at the bottle this morning, thought in my CaWASPrian way ‘oh, better use that up before it goes off’, sprayed myself with it, and immediately lost every trace of my vestigial homosexuality.

To help the more clueless among you buy smelly things for Christmas, I’ve got a few other perfumes on the go, all infinitely better than this, that I can reccommend. One, Calvin Klein’s Truth. Good sexy smell, totally without nauseating revolting hints of sweetness. Never would have bought it for myself before, but now enamoured. Two, Clinique’s Happy. Smells like a freshly-scrubbed flower or something. Picks you up and makes you feel like you didn’t smoke too much reefer the night before. The man-scent of this is pretty good too - very fresh but not twee to the degree a straight man won't wear it. Finally, Lancôme’s So Magic! Hints of violet without too much alchohol, and again, glossing over the sweetness. Probably what that Ralph Lauren shit was trying for.

Oh FUCK, I smell bad.

Birthday!

I had a smashing, stellar birthday. We descended on this fucking unbelievable Peruvian place, El Bodegon. The barbequed cow heart, the grilled shrimp, the calamari, the ceviche, and oh sweet Jesus the coconut caramel birthday flan - we came. After El Bodegon, the Orbit Room across the street. The band was . . . the band. Couldn’t remember the name before we went, can’t remember now. Don't care. The drummer from the Neville Brothers showed up and played a few songs, he was awesome. But the set list was all over the place. Nice when they did Bill Withers, and I didn’t take the AC/DC amiss either. However, the whole final set was crap. Never knew how long Led Zeppelin songs were until I had to listen to them while hoping desperately for some funk. I guess variety isn’t always the spice of life.

In closing, I know presents aren't the point of birthdays, but you must excuse me for going on about them a little bit. I can’t get over how thoughtful all the gifts I got were – how well everyone had chosen things they knew I would love from shared experiences, jokes, or enthusiasms. I leave you with the story of the first present I opened. It was from the splendid Miss S, presently in Tibet, mailed as she traveled through China. Using my amazing superpowers of Discipline, I managed to not open it for a week, and finally dug into it birthday morning. It was a scroll covered in beautiful Chinese calligraphy, apparently reading "May Mlle La Spliffe be strong like a bull”. Here’s her response to my thank-you email:

Spliffe! I was wondering all day if it had arrived in time. To your personal address, I'm sending a pic of the calligrapher drawing it for you. In terms of the message, I did my best given I was limited by a Chinese-English dictionary from 1960. Some folks gathered around to watch it being done and laughed and made muscles, so I suspect the translation is pretty much correct. :)

Ha ha! I'm not incompetent!

Oh goodness gracious me. 27 years old today! Do you realize what this means?

1. My workplace has ordered me the cake you see in the picture

2. I’ve lived away from my parents for nine years without dying of incompetence

Pour the champagne!

Yesterday an office lady asked me how old I was turning; when I told her she cocked her head and said ‘why, that’s not old.’ In a voice that implied it was, indeed, old. It’s certainly older than it was last year. Shitheads, if we're older then we used to be it's because we didn't die in the interim. That rocks. NOT DYING IS MY FAVE. Fuck. I don’t get people.

Maybe my birthdays aren't as hard as people seem to expect because I’ve done so many monumentally stupid things. All the uber-stupid stuff I’ve done makes the aging process easier, I think, because I’m moving farther away from it as I get smarter. So I end up having no real regrets. Although I am fucking bitter about the thesis stretching into a new year after I nearly had a nervous breakdown over it. Putain, if France only had one eye, I’d start smoking again just to hork a nasty loogie into it.

And it’s true this birthday’s making me take stock a little, which is nice. It’s lovely to be able to put your finger on what’s wrong with your life so you can fix it. For example, at the moment, it’s winter. That’s wrong. I think I can fix that. Mostly by waiting until the winter goes away, or moving somewhere warm. Possibly by wearing another layer of clothing. Oh - and at the moment I’m not being firmly loved down by this. That’s wrong. That’s so wrong I could cry. I doubt I can fix that, though, unless someone has really gone all out on the gifting tonight. We're going to a South American restaurant where they serve grilled cow hearts. Can't wait!

If you had one neck I'd hack it through

British slugs. Insert throbbing melodic bassline here. Or possibly gently inspirational Cirque de Soleil musique - I really can't tell how the spirit is moving them.

Spoke to yet another Catholic who used to be whipped by the nuns in her school. Câlisse! I never thought I’d identify with Caligula , but now I find that if Vatican City had one cheek (and if I could dodge the hail of Swiss Guard bullets) I’d slap it. Does anyone else find the Catholic Church deeply depressing in the same sort of way France is deeply depressing ? That is, a bunch of people absolutely unwilling to respond to obvious realities by making changes to an anachronistic system that was wrong even when it was created hundreds of years ago?

The notion of mandatory celibacy for priests or teaching monks and nuns is retarded. A cloistered monk or nun, sure. Someone who chooses a contemplative lifestyle and a union with God that approaches a mystic, spiritual marriage; power to them. But to have someone in constant contact with the community, someone who plays the public roles of moral leader, social adviser, and sex ed teacher, who isn’t expected to know the emotional primacy of the family, the comforts of a supportive spouse, and the real social and physical importance of fucking? They’re supposed to guess all of this while tending to the spiritual health of the flock? Or is a bunch of other mental castrati in Seminary supposed to teach it to them? I suppose any authoritative position will be abused, but there’s a reason we haven’t heard the same quantity of horror stories out of the Orthodox and Protestant churches.

And instead of some note being taken to this, the present slap-down on gays is, one assumes, the response of choice to the public outcry regarding sexual assaults on children. It’s hard to see an equation of homosexuality and pederasty, harder to know that many people will now feel the Catholic Church is really doing something to address the rash of accounts of sexual and physical abuse, and tear-jerking to imagine anybody'd think this was enough.

Instead, it might be fun if the Catholic Church had human priests. It needn't be afraid letting them get married is going to make the Church less special. After all, when it comes to shitting on women, it’s still a superstar.

Co co co co co co co co co co co cocaïne

Someone found this site by searching 'dating assholes'. And I thought I was being so discreet about my sex life! Joke, joke. Out of the however many men I’ve been with, only a few have been assholes. I’m sure any bitches-I’ve-had ratio would work out essentially the same in reverse as calculated by any man of my age and proclivities. So it’s odd my site got found with a phrase like that when I’m sure the internet is littered with sites bitterly decrying whatever asshole whoever is seeing, in plate-throwing, anger-fucking, curse-tossing detail.

I guess I wrote about dating assholes in that thing about how it isn't nice guys who finish last, but unattractive ones. Shall I qualify this once more by saying the concept of 'attractive' is a very flexible, indeed manifold thing? Shall I expand by pointing out just about every man comes off as a bland, generic Mr. Nice Guy until you nail him and he relaxes the public persona he'd assumed to get you to nail him, so after a few fiascos a woman learns to trust her gut feelings, which, while frequently erroneous, make more sense than a man trying to persuade you to nail him? Is it clear how little that’s saying?

Did you know, for example, that for some of us the physical sensation of romantic attraction (as distinguished from emotional or sexual attraction - think about it - no time to explain, and into the rhetorical questions right now) is essentially indistinguishable from how our tummies feel when we drink too much coffee without having breakfast, minus the shits? So indistinguishable, in fact, that there have been mornings I actually believed that I had fallen madly in love only to eat a bagel and come to my senses?

Does this look like a series of excuses for all the things that I've done?

Maybe it is. I doubt it, because I only have a few regrets – though you wouldn’t know it if you’d talked to me when love-things were bad. When things are bad, you want to work it out and that takes words, and when things are good, either you’re too busy enjoying the goodness to go on about it, or people mock you and get bitterly jealous if you do. It’s like finding three million dollars in small unmarked bills in the box spring of a guest bed that you bought at Goodwill. When the cash is in hand only an idiot would talk about it, but once it's stashed up your nose or in an Austrian bank account it makes a great fucking story. You know?

I finished reading The Game and I officially don't reccommend it. My own fault for reading the biographies of the authors, perhaps, but the mirror-facing-mirror thing - which A.S. Byatt brought up more than once in the second half of the book - started to feel more like an exercise in emotional exorcism than literature. As though the author was racing to get a book done encapsulating the situation and the personalities; framing them herself before her sister could. I think I need some Mark Bowden now to get all the girly angst out of my mouth. Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo were both so good.

Tum tum tum tiddly um pum pum pum pum

Last night I did laundry and thought about God for awhile. Wondered if we ever really stop believing the religions we're raised with, what counts as a religious belief, and what people's brains are like when they're raised without a religion. Wondered if everybody has some sort of system for trying to understand existence that is perhaps defined in their own heads, but that they never express in case people make fun of it. Or if they just don't think about it until some crisis comes along, and then come up short with any sort of spiritual what-have-you, and then grab at the nearest belief system that makes them feel special. Or if there are people who are always fine with the idea of a universe daily descending into increasing entropy from an original organisation that arose in a completely random way. Wondered if Jung's idea that extended analysis and a healthy connection with the unconscious could really replace the role of religion in men's lives made sense, and if therefore religion really was some sort of expression of the collective unconscious, or if that's just navel-gazing, revoltingly self-centred nonsense consciously or unconsciously designed to line the pockets of therapists like the pockets of the Church got lined.

Then I did stuff, got sleepy, went to bed, and read more of A.S. Byatt's The Game. Not my favourite by her, I've decided. Maybe I should have read it without reading her biography - seems like a portrait of her crap relationship with her sister (also a novelist, Margaret Drabble - don't know her from Tuesday - anybody read her?) and I think I just possibly might know which character is meant to be A.S. Byatt and which character is meant to be Margaret Drabble. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and the writing is still silkily beautiful and the character portraits crystal-clear, but it's making me a little uncomfortable. I feel the same way when I read something I've written and see a little too clearly whose soul I tried to steal. Of course, A.S. Byatt being A.S. Byatt, that theme - the ripping-off of a person theme - is central to The Game, which ends up creating a feeling of a mirror held up to a mirror and a little eternity within, making it (so far) a very neat little package of a book. Just not my favourite.

I'm freaking the fuck out today. Stir-craziness. I need a beach, some mountains, or a forest. NOW, fuck. When I don't get such things, I end up thinking about God and A.S. Byatt and her sister too much.

Ow

Glossary booooooo. My thesis has broken my brain. It is limp and floppy like a crushed, nerveless hand. All I can fix my mind on is sleep and how I've never had a threesome, ever, and the one time I came close I was too speedy to stay in the room.

Man. Alive.

WHERE IS MY ADVISER?

My little StatCounter tells me someone found this page by searching using the words 'Patsy Kensit fucking'. Isn't that adorable? Why they didn't try a Google image search is beyond me.

Saw a Russian movie called The Cuckoo as a reward for making Part One defensible (although that was mostly through the aid of the darling Miss C in Paris). It was a very twee idea – three mutually unintelligible protagonists in Lappland during the second World War – a Sami woman, a Finnish man, and a Russian man. It could have just been cute and basta, but the actors were all so adorable in their ways, especially the lead actress, Anni-Kristiina Juuso. The music and boreal lighting was lovely too. I really recommend it; I think I can promise you’ve never seen anything like it. The pacing was odd, and maybe a bit slow in parts, but what can I say? Russian films are one of the reasons God gave us reefer.

Everybody is dumb

The only person named in this article who comes off as not being a total idiot is Lloyd Newton, who's quoted right at the end. You know, after you've read the rest and already decided everybody involved in the dramatic and operatic arts in Britain, including the author of the article, is an irredeemable jackass one way or another. I especially like the "it's a bit like saying to play Macbeth you have to be a murderer" simile.

Oh la la la la. It comes to this - it's opera, people. Don't mess with it.

Or I'll mess with you.

Fuck.

Fucking pirates

Fuck them. I watched a pirated copy of A History of Violence last night and it stopped, like, five minutes before the end . . . and those five minutes would have probably made up my mind about whether or not I liked it. Bloody bootlegs! I've never bought one myself and now I guess I won't in the future. It has decided me to reward myself for finishing my glossary today (I shall overcome) by going to see The Constant Gardener in an actual cinema somewhere someday.

Anyways, I'm in a Red Dragon Pisser today. Nothing's actually the matter, besides your standard creepy zeitgeist and my life being eaten by my thesis and - hmm - something I can't quite put my finger on. Oh yeah. Viggo Mortensen has never gone down on me. Ever! Isn't that the richest bullshit you've ever heard? I pay my taxes and put my pants on one leg at a time. So what the hell is up with that? Oh shut up, Mlle. One day, when I have the money and the professional flexibility, I'm going to ride out the Red Dragon liminal-style during spirit-quests in the forest; eating raw meat, smoking reefer, and howling at the moon. Until that day, here's an utterly too-too photograph of the inspirational tsunami hippo-tortoise pair to cheer me up and make you feel better for reading my whinge.

Argh

You know what sucks? Writing a glossary. It's like kicking yourself in the teeth. You know what rocks? Eating persimmons. I went to Chinatown East, and there they were, 3 for a dollar. You can do the most marvellous things with persimmons.

Winter has its points - like persimmon season, that sweet sharp kick in the air that's so nice when I'm dressed warm enough, and hot chocolate. Winter in Calabria is beautiful. They leave orange peels on top of thier woodstoves to flavour their houses.

And their days are more than four. Fucking. Hours. Long. Come back, Mr. Sunshine. Come baaaaack.