Get out!

This weekend is supposed to be about my thesis. It is! Just having a hard time at the moment. So I wrote the little polemic about ‘nice guys’ and then I had to go for a walk before I started work. But it wasn't wasted time. One has to get every drop of goodness out of the autumn before the bloody winter comes. And I got several drops of goodness this morning. Here were some:

1. The leaves. Maybe this is the last weekend, but oh, how they still are there. It twists a knife in my heart – such an extreme but transient beauty, la Dame aux Camellias in season form, La Traviata belting out ‘Parigi o caro’ on her deathbed – eeeeeee. I love autumn colours like I love opera.

2. The lake. Steely grey today, with a good breeze – and a flock of diving birds. Imagine being a diving bird. You get to fly, swim, float, AND walk around. That’s the fucking awesomest thing ever. Not to mention eating all the yummy raw fish you can catch.

3. The Go! Team. That music makes me want to pay Gwen Stefani and just about every other danceable pop act to retire. Poor bastards. It’s been done, and so much better, by the Go! Team. Go! home, Gwen Stefani. Make love to Gavin for the rest of your life, you lucky jerk . . .

4. Peameal bacon sandwich from St. Lawrence Market. Just slab upon slab of peameal bacon, stuck into a slightly crusty Kaiser roll. Oh, holy figurative jizz. With a little Maille and an appetite, that’s some fucking sweet ass shit.

5. Farmer’s market. I bought these darling little organic cauliflowers the size of oranges there – I want to bite into them like fruit. But I think it’s cold enough to give me an excuse to make a really delicious soup for dinner.

6. Le jardin botanique. That place makes living on the East Side worthwhile (as does the St. Lawrence, Jet Fuel, the House, Ben Wicks – hell, the East Side’s fine). I saw an Old Man of the Andes (pictured), a bunch of orchids – orchids always make me feel good – and this plant whose leaves all looked like gorgeous pussies. It was a big beautiful-snatch plant. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

So the walk was not a waste of time, not at all, and I had to share it with you, so you won’t think you’re wasting your time if you head outside and love the autumn as hard as you can. But if this post gets any longer, it risks becoming a waste of time, so . . .

Bon courage, mon amour. Forze, amore mio.

Niceosity

Time to deal with the urban legend that nice guys finish last. Look. When you see us dating assholes, we’re not dating them because they’re assholes, we’re dating them because they’re so fucking hot it doesn’t matter that they’re assholes. Just like you don’t date a hot bitch because she’s a bitch, but because she’s so hot the bitchiness doesn’t matter. When you see us rejecting nice guys, it’s because we don’t find them as attractive as the people we don’t reject. Just like you don’t reject a hot chick because she’s nice. I hope not, anyways, because that would be dumb.

And when you see us actually in love - and not in that same state of retarded weepiness men get in when they fall for a hot bitch, which they do every day without women complaining about how nice girls finish last - it’s with guys who are attractive to us AND nice. Maybe I’ve never been with Roméo Dallaire – see below – but there have been times when I‘ve been lucky enough to be absolutely in love. And it wasn’t with no asshole, whatever I may have yelled from time to time. Born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards, we are . . .

Before you decide niceness is for the birds and you start slipping girls Roofies, think. Are you being nice to be ingratiating, or because you’re a nice person? If it’s ingratiation or comes off as such (excessive attention, playful but premature jealousy, and super-fast emotional declarations are just three ways this can come about) it’s not really nice, and will make gun-shy chicks like me (who are a dime a dozen) nervous. Believe me, the Swiss was about the ‘nicest’ man I’d ever met, and now when I meet someone quite that ‘nice’ I ask myself what levels of sadism he’s willing to drag me through.

Then if you’re nice because you’re just a nice person, you don’t have a choice. All you can do is keep it up until you find the chicks that think you’re hot too. Do you honestly want to be with someone who’s only there for your personality anyways? Because here's the lowdown: NOBODY IS EVER THERE JUST FOR THE PERSONALITY.

Time for a translation-engine exercise in surreality

1. Italian: Marche che del Joaquin Phoenix le mie mutandine ritengono divertenti: "Marches that of the Joaquin Phoenix my mutandine think amusing"

2. Korean: 나의 팬티가 재미있게 느끼는Joaquin피닉스 제작: "My pan mote is a fun and the Joaquin Phoenix production which it feels"

3. Japanese: 私のパンティーがおかしく感じるJoaquin フェニックスの作り: "The Joaquin Phoenix which my panty feels strangely making"

4. French: Marques de Joaquin Phoenix que mes culottes se sentent drôles: "Marks of Joaquin Phoenix which my breeches feel funny"

You guessed it. Joaquin Phoenix makes my panties feel funny. I don't think we should rely on the internet to tear down all language barriers right this minute.

Roméo Dallaire

Reading Shake Hands with the Devil, or trying to amid all the reefer and thesis-revision-procrastination I've been extremely occupied with this week. Impressions:

1. Citizens of developed countries need a shock collar to go off when something insupportable is happening. As I read about the apathy and cheapness with which the Rwandan abattoir was tolerated, of course "Sudan, Sudan, Sudan" pulses through my brain. 1994, all this went down? What were you doing in 1994? 'Friends' or the 'Simpsons'? 2005 now? Reality television and reefer?

Ah, don't listen to me. If you scraped me down before my morning shower you could bottle the residue and call it hash oil. I don't know what to do, besides push for Canada's military budget to be increased so our foreign policy can be an actual policy instead of, you know, making everybody think we're really great by sending a bunch of under-equipped soldiers to Afghanistan. You know our 'tank commanders' in fact command battalions of jeeps? But hell - if we signed the anti-land mine pact, then land mines don't exist anymore, right?

The Cold War is over. Mister Mister to the south isn't going to take care of us anymore. In fact, he wants our stuff. Maybe he'll leave us alone if we throw daisies at him and say, 'You're baaaaaaad!'

Again, don't listen to me. I still can't believe the government stopped paying for me to be able to see stuff without lowering my tax burden, so I don't know where all that magical money would come from. But I would have been tempted to vote for Stronach for reasons besides those blue, blue eyes. Mmmm. Which leads me to impression two:

2. Roméo Dallaire is dreamy. The way he manages to make a moustache look good aside - even though I've never seen anybody besides Tom Selleck pull that off before.

Strong moral drives, so strong you don't even know they're morals anymore, are dreamy. Incredible adversity and trauma being an impetus for action instead of passivity is dreamy. I don't think I've ever been involved with a man with even the same species of moral fibre. Just a long line of hedonists with acrobatic moral codes, and none too few boys who have looked into my 36 C or Ds or whatever and saw their mommy. This is my fault though. Too much reefer, too lazy, too prone to be enamored of whoever is being reefer-y and lazy on the couch next to me. And you know what? He’s never been Roméo Dallaire.

Anyways, how revolting, all the way from Rwandan genocide to my retarded emotional life. This is why everybody hates North Americans. C’est toujours une histoire de cul avec moi, that’s the real problem. If Michelangelo wasn’t interested in sculpting it, I haven’t been able to concentrate on it for more than a few hours.

Self abuse

Had some strong drink last night. That was fine (though Mlle Smellypants was underwhelmed). What did me in was the poutine. Poutine from Mel's. What the fuck, I ask you? How did the evolutionary process producing Mel’s poutine come about?

“Let’s start with a potato, cut it up, and boil it in oil. Once we’ve saturated it with fat, let’s put some extra fat on top of it by covering it in cheese. But, you know, we can’t really put any salt on the cheese – that would be gross – so let’s smother the fucker in rich gravy to give it some flavour. That way the cheese will get all melty, and we can get in a little extra fat. Wow, that's awesome, it looks like puke now! But damn, it’s cold outside and I can still breathe a little through my cholesterol blockages, so let’s dump a pile of Montréal smoked meat on top of the whole thing before we eat it.”

Once more, what the fuck? The only way this dish could be more decadent is if you laid a long line of coke around the rim of the plate and used an exotic dancer as a table. Well . . . for ‘decadent’, read ‘better’. It’s so bloody good. I’m glad I don’t live in the Annex; if I had access to that poutine every time I got a jones on for it I’d be dead by now.

Miss H. once talked up poutine – where was it? Kingston? – running along the same lines, except with confit de canard instead of smoked meat. You can get me that for my birthday, too. Not much else is going on today. I NEED SLEEP TONIGHT. Mr. E sent me a fascinating article about Bach and the creepy organ music, check it out.

Bought some whore-y underwear. Why is H&M right there, so tempting. . . But as far as someone can need a black whore-y bra, I needed a black whore-y bra, so there you are. Last time at H&M, the Mr. Right of brassieres was a 36D. This time it was a 36C, which was nice, as I didn't imagine quite so vividly a bunch of tiny exploited women in a south-East Asian sweatshop wearing my future bra on thier heads, making fun of big fat Western capitalistic pigs with gargantuan breasts. But then, this one was made in Roumania, whereas the last one was made in Indonesia.

Oh geez, my whore-y bras are better travelled than I am.

Lock up your daughters!

The angelic Madame S has procreated and her son looks lovely as the day. And with a mother like his, in a country like this one, in an era like this one, he's really won the big lottery of life. Congratulations is too weak a word.

In celebration, my blog has gone pink with glee. Let's all be in a gratuitous good mood to celebrate, shall we? Also, in honour of the event I'm going to drink until I fall down. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow night. Maybe not for awhile. But the next time I get drunk and fall down, it's dedicated to your good health, little buddy. Even if I'm screaming some obscene commentary about some obscene habit of whatever man I may be superficially or deeply involved with at the time. Don't listen to me. I'll be drunk.

The birth reminds me of my upcoming birthday, which I know is driving all of you crazy. Where? Where do you find the money to get a gift lavish and extravagant enough to express the soaring flights of dizzying emotion you feel, the warm and reefer-y body buzz, whenever my name comes to mind? How do you find just the right thing to thank Fate that on November 25, 1978, She allowed the birth of ALL THIS? To be honest, I just can't answer those questions for you. But here're some suggestions:

1. Reefer
2. Ohhhhhh my goodness . . .
3. Strippers. Men strippers. Straight men strippers, who dig me. Three.
4. A pony
5. Resolution of the tensions in Lebanon
6. An opera called Il trionfa della Signorina Spliffe
7. A little toy gun that I can fire during conversations when I want to add emphasis to certain sentences
8. A license to kill
9. Strong drink
10. Plane tickets

I hope that helps.

I love Italians

My Italian class was cranky tonight. Something shitty had happened in everyone's day. One girl had bought a shit iPod Nano and couldn't get it serviced, another had a lousy time at work, another car trouble, my gas had been cut off; crankiness all around the table. My teacher, I think in deference, was really funny. She's always funny, but tonight she didn't stop. We were doing this one exercise with different forms of the past. I explained we had to use the pretorate in one question because "So and So had to pull the handbrake and then put her seat back; these two actions need to be consecutive, not simultaneous."

"Si, brava." Pause, smile. "Of course, if it was me, I could pull the brake, put the seat back, talk on my mobile, yell out the window, smoke a cigarette and park at the same time."

And it's true. She could. Italians are masters of the multitask. Watch them drive. Watch them have a discussion not just with the mouth, but the whole body and nearby objects too. Watch them in the kitchen! They can sing an opera air, drain the pasta, stir the sauce, flip the cutlets, and hug their kids at the same time. People in my family are hardly ever doing just one thing. Me neither; can't help but feel I'm wasting my time. Something needs to be happening while something else is happening; we have to appreciate the wonder of this life as much as we can at once.

Ah, crackerjack ethnic theories. Are there any other kind? But have you got a better explanation for the beauty and intricacies of the operatic form? The ability of characters in mob movies or Quentin Tarantino films to make us feel four emotions at once? The functioning of the traffic grid system in Naples despite the utter over congested chaos on the lawless streets? The tangled webs of marital infidelity? The Renaissance, people - as in, "he's a Renaissance man because he's good at EVERYTHING"?

I have an ex in Italy right now talking up how annoying Italians can be, and I know where he's coming from. I lived there, I have a huge Italian family, I'm half and I annoy myself daily. What's more, I had an Italian-Australian boyfriend who I met while we were both living in Italy - that very same ex - who threw me some grief. So he whines but he knows the score, just like I and everyone else who cusses themselves hoarse over Italians and but can't stay away from them do. These complaints will pass - that country is just too wonderful. It can carry Berlusconi, insane politics, lethal traffic, hostile bureaucracy, seismic activity, brain fever-inducing romantic dramas, endemic petty and organised crime, and those bloody awful game shows. We still shut our eyes and think about it.

Guilty as charged

Last night was my first choir practice. I love Bach, so I'm in shock at how viciously I murdered him. Questa é una autodenunciata. Last night, I butchered him like Don José butchered Carmen while Escamillo butchered the bull. Poor Bach. The events of the night forced certain official conclusions:


1. Mezzo sopranos have to do too much bloody work
2. I have no idea how to read music
3. I probably never did
4. This choir is the wrong place to meet a really hot baritone
5. The choir master will tolerate any incompetence that's encased in a revealing enough shirt

Point 5 makes me love Italians. They're so nice and predictable. And on top of that, the choirmaster is a vivacious, booming baritone who yells at us (in Italian, of course). Sadly, this choirmaster is in his late 50's, early 60's, which isn't in my range. Tant pis.

Nice, predictable Italians. . . I always keep coming back to the Italians because I understand them, and then bounce back to the blondes because they're a complete mystery to me. I've got a passion for the 'loose' ones of both categories. I'm damn tired of disrespecting men, but God loves a slut and so do I, I suppose. I'm not sure they're any more sexually competent, I think it's something else. Maybe it's the sensation of being picked from a crowd, chosen and special; maybe it's too many Cinderella stories as a child. Thanks, Walt Disney, you fucking Nazi prick.

Somebody bring me to the opera so I stop writing posts this retarded

I need a new bed. My old bed, a clic-clac futon thing I've been using for years, is fucking up my life, or at least my back. I LOVE other people's beds, and I'm not unconvinced the crappiness of my bed hasn't been pushing me into inappropriate beds over the last little while. I sleep, when I sleep over, the way a gourmande gorges on Fazer chocolate. "Ahhhhhh. Lying on my back is nice. I do enjoy this lying on my back. Shall I be a beast? Shall I lie on my tummy? Lordy lou, I do think the tummy is even nicer than the back! Now I'll just help myself to a little turn and try my side . . . ahhhh!"

If I'd been clever, I would have used this free paycheque for a really nice new bed. But, you know. I'm not. Here's what I got instead:

1. Reefer
2. A keyboard
3. Boots
4. Alchohol
5. Make-up for my Halloween costume
6. Uhhhhhm . . . other stuff?

All of which is a way to say, I frittered it away, which is my favourite thing to do with money.

Side note about Halloween. My costume died halfway through the dressing process, I was going to be a re-colourized black and white film character but I couldn't find any green powder foundation - no idea why I thought I'd be able to. I ended up dressing like a Hispanic-y ho to match the lovely and talented Mr. N, who was Scarface. I wasn't the ho-iest ho of the night, but I was pretty tawdry by reasonable standards. And that night, for the first time, lawyers - multiple lawyers - hit on me. Makes me wonder if lawyers, you know. How they relax.

Besides a bed, I need music suggestions for a young relative, who does rhythmic - is it rhythmic? - fuck, those gymnastics on the floor, you know, with the great big mat where they do thier thing with the ribbons and hula-hoops and whatnot. Anyways, she needs music. Something with rhythm, even a beat; no or almost no vocals; and no fucking Gotan Project or other pseudo-tango, that's being done to death by all her little peers. Suggestions?