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.