The eye of the storm

The word processing programme appears to be requiring a breather from the sheer fucking genius I'm lathering it down with, so I'll let y'all know I'm not dead yet. I was supposed to go to the Lula Lounge tonight to help celebrate the anniversary of Mr. N's auspicious birth. By three o'clock, it was clear that wasn't going to happen. By four o'clock, it was clear I wasn't even going to pass by to drop off his present. I called to let him know.

"Man, that thesis is going to be the death of you."

"Yeah, I can't get it together, I'm panicking. I'm getting out of town until this is finished."

So here I am, out of town. In Davisville. And the retarded thing is that I really meant it, and I really feel like I'm out of town now. When I first spent the summer in Toronto back in the last millenium, some smart-ass told me Northern Ontario started at St. Clair. I probably said something rude in response, and now I'm out of town in fucking Davisville.

The place, which I'm nominally sitting while the owner's in Ireland, is giving me a taste of the 80-k plus life. Hot men live in this building. Hot straight men. They move uptown, it seems, like spawning salmon moving upriver. Beautiful view of the skyline, clean both in basic sanitary terms (neither Little G or I have got the dish-soap we so desperately need for five days - 'nuff said - we're both Sag and can live in filth indefinitely) and design terms. Big flat-screen, fake fireplace, tasteful colours, Coldplay CDs, a swimming pool downstairs that isn't open at any of the hours I'd dream of using it. Five things that definitely do not exist in my apartment. It turns out Coldplay is good revising music. Who'd a thunk? I don't have a particular problem with Coldplay, I'd always just thought it was the sort of thing sensitive-type men put on when they light some candles and touch themselves. Which is fine. Me, I like the Magnum P.I. theme.

Hunkered down as in a barrack here, with my evil friend-in-need Benson H, $15 worth of Korean junk food (which, for those of you unversed in Korean junk food, is a whole fucking fuckload of Korean junk food), two computers and you, gentle reader. When I emerge, I'll be $15 of Korean junk food fatter and this fucker will be ready for presentation. I found a huge factual error running through it that made me suspect I'd been slipping myself crack, but I think the damage is controlled now and everything will eventually be hunky-dory. Now go. Get out. It's Saturday night. GO!

Soon I will be a dynamo of activity.

Tell me, does cat food really have to fucking smell like that? Galaxy eats hairball control food; maybe that smells worse than most. It just worries me so to hear her make that awful pukey cough. Also, as much as I love her, I can’t get used to the idea of her producing excrement from her mouth. Probably because I love her. It just poses such a challenge to my world-view, to love something that does that. Remember Witches of Eastwick? The book was much clearer in terms of that chick being cursed with the oddments coming out of her mouth and her baffled husband killing her. Also, in the book the Witches were kind of hos (not ‘hoes’, Emlyn, those are garden tools) and smoked lots of reefer, which was cool. Of course, the movie had Cher. Poor Cher. She had her moments. Moonstruck offended me to the very bottom of my genetic structure, though.

I saw the Constant Gardener last night chez Monsieur C. He fell deeply asleep about 15 minutes in. I have a feeling a lot of people would. Me, I like looking at Ralph Fiennes. He could fucking chip the ice out of his freezer for two hours, and as long as he was letting that uncertain delicate smile play across his face while he did it I’d be absolutely fascinated. Man, he could wear his Voldemort makeup and that smile would still make me want to sing Blossom Dearie standards and rock him gently to sleep. Fuck, if Maid in Manhattan was playing on an aeroplane, I wouldn’t avoid looking at the screen; that’s how much I like looking at Ralph Fiennes. I’m pretty sure it was also a good movie. The story was interesting and topical, and the visuals were just lovely. But on reflection I think to really like this movie, you’d need to really like looking at beautiful images of Africa while seeing how it gets fucked over like a $5 rent boy in a frat house during a city-wide stripper strike, or else really like looking at Ralph Fiennes. There was something a little messy about it - one has the sense that things were being left out, and that the book is probably good. Don't know.

Ah, someday I'll read novels again. Mr. D asked if I like spy novels, and I realized I've never read a single one. Someday . . . like Tuesday. I have to hand in my thesis Monday before the election results are announced, because I’m too lazy to do the half-hour of revisions it would take to incorporate whatever new government we’re blessed with into it. We are talking down to the motherfucking wire here. But now it’s opera lesson time. Yay!

Everybody is the devil today

Yeeeeeah . . . so . . . I try to avoid writing personal things here, and today won't be much of an exception. But I had a really good session last night with my Jungian analyst after I told him I was starting to feel a little de-centred as we proceeded. I reckon I'm feeling even more de-centred today, but that's not so bad. My centre was a bit unhelpful when it was there.

Anyways, talk got onto love, and he said that it's like a joke; when you describe love it doesn't sound like love at all. I saw his point. The weird ideas of justice that let you fucking rip right into each other as if you were worst enemies, in a goose-for-the-gander way - all so extra nasty if you combine them with a scrabble for the moral high ground! And then that goddamn refrain, "I'm not angry", when you so, so are. And still are, fucking years later. I bet lots of people stay together just to go on taking out their anger on the lover they figure owes them because they did them wrong. I'm talking mostly about me, but not only. I sense some reckonings approaching in the next eight weeks, and I don't mean writing an angry email to the manager.

I'm dreaming of a day when two people, one of whom is me, says "This happened to you, that happened to me, and it's part of us now, but this mix of us is new - it's never happened before." Clean slate? Sorta-no-not-really. But something like that.

Okay, I'll write something snarky about the Pope later to get the taste of that out of your mouth. This post is so introspective I can't think of an appropriate picture to break up the typing. So here's one of some bizarre deep sea creature washed to shore by that catastrophic tsunami.

UPDATE

No, I'll write about Yahoo. It's fucking evil. Maybe even more evil than MSN. Call me Utopian, but I reckon the invisible hand of the free market and a universal aspiration to the middle class are the only things that will save the world. Obviously, the invisible hand can't do its work without freedom of communication. So MSN and Yahoo can fuck themselves and Chinese law right in the fucking ear, the shitbags. They're businesses like any other - but I hope to fuck consumers make an informed choice about using them so they understand where their interests really lie. Which is in not being fucking dicks facilitating the survival of a repressive government whose Byzantine, fucked up, messy, staggered economic reforms are probably hindering the development of the country. Holy fucking fuck.

It's certainly more worth getting upset about than McDonald's being worse for you than the cooking of your keen vegan-chef girlfriend. God, the more I think about Morgan Spurlock, the more he pisses me off. He goes through that ridiculousness, McDick's recoups its market share in no time by throwing some healthier-looking chicken based items on the menu, and its labour and supply practices don't fucking change at all. Faaaaaaaack.

Moniliose Sativa Indica

I was made to chill. No one chills like me. Like a lily of the field, to toil not nor to spin, or however it goes - probably not like that, since spinning is a sort of toil. But I'm toiling these days. And while it's making me lose weight and get a perkier complexion, it's also making a vein in my forehead throb, and that's not cool.

I need a pep talk. Thank god for the Go! Team. If I miss Stéphane Rousseau, maybe I can time it to see them in Paris on the 9th of March. That'd make up for it. Seriously, day or night, pissy or sunny, sleepy or sound, Bottle Rocket makes me feel like I've snorted two bumps at once and can fight the most dastardly crime in the world.

Okay. I'm getting on the ball now. Maybe I'll write a pope update later. He's fucking hilarious.

Update: Nah, I think I'll save up the Pope. Look at Hilary Clinton being tough. Oooo, she tough. She so fucking tough, man. Just like Jacques Chirac. He fucking tough too. He blow you up! Blow you up vrai bon!!!!!!! (insert a French rebel yell here - non à la semaine de 37. 5 heures! perhaps). Hilary Clinton needs some branding lessons. Here's one: consumers distrust mixed messages in brand presentation. Here's another: a lagging brand shouldn't let the leading brand determine the communicative environment. I mean, if you're going to participate in some ridiculous circus of a political system, at least watch a few beer commercials and pick up some lessons from the Cola wars.

Tender

Did you know that in his 'Try A Little Tenderness', towards the end Otis Redding urges his audience - as one of many proposed tendernesses to try on weary young girls - to 'rub her softly now'? WHY ISN'T ANYBODY LISTENING? The last time I was rubbed softly was in the year 2000, and considering my youth, my occasional weariness, and the quantity of men I've spent quality time with since then - not astronomic, but certainly visible to the naked eye - that's fucking shocking.

Otis Redding was fucking hot. I bet his live shows were fucking unbelievable. Why the fuck someone hasn't made a Johnny Cash/Ray Charles/The Day the Music Died type biopic about him is beyond me considering how fucking lovely he is and how many songs he added to the popular canon. 'Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay' has got the shit covered out of it but his is still it - no one else I've ever heard has managed to make that song plaintive without whiny, bittersweet without twee. Three fucking days before he fucking dies. What the fuck. Oh Otis. He's one of the reasons aeroplanes scare me shitless. If God could let Otis Redding die in an aeroplane crash, I got dick-all.

This entry is full of parolaccie. I think I'm in a bit of a mood. I knew going into analysis that it wasn't going to be all epiphanies and gumdrops, but I'm starting to understand in a practical way that there are reasons we do the things we do to our heads - that our neuroses protect us. Being frozen into a certain mental or spiritual immobility might kill you slowly, but it saves you from understanding what you want and don't have, what you have and don't want, why you don't want what you don't have but want to want it, what you can do and why you're not doing it, why you have to, and alot of other things. Pop songs are becoming meaningful again; as in Yours to Break, post-break-up meaningful. No Suprises has been in my head for a solid day; I haven't listened to OK Computer for months and months.

I think I need to chill in Italy for awhile. Another pop song that is ever so meaningful for me at the moment is Sirénes de la fête, from the Brazilian Girls. Italian pop might suck, but the lead singer doesn't. I think I've listened to that song at least once a week since I first heard it back in the summer. Speaking of sweet live shows - they put on a sweet live show. The Verve label is still lovely, it seems.

Look! The New York Times thinks movies are suffering from a bout of heavy thought. The New York Times is fucking lame sometimes. Hilary Clinton is lame-ass alot of the time. American 'liberals' are fucking lame sometimes. I mean, the way they let themselves be branded by the right-wing is just pussy-rific. And then they wonder why George Bush won the 2004 election. Lame bastards.

Reefer Sanity

Sooo . . . today amongst work, Italian class, the traditional Tuesday family dinner and once and for all mastering the appendices to the thesis, I have to produce a 1000 word article about the politics of the cannabis industry through the centuries. Weeeeeee! It's really superb these opportunities to write for money and for people to look at have come up. At the same time, I catch myself wanting to travel back in time and yell at my 25-year-old self, 'Okay, a master's is a master's, but the subject of your thesis is going to haunt you for awhile!'

And of course my 25 Year Old Self would argue that if we decided to go all bourgeois we could get a job in a law enforcement organisation or that fun thing in Vienna where they talk about drugs all day. I would retort that's not what I bloody meant and I knew it; I should understand writing 150 pages about anything wasn't only going to challenge my interest in it, it was going to put me in a position where I'd probably have to go on being involved with it afterwards, after I had no doubt found the limits of this interest. Therefore, I should choose something as broad as I'd be allowed; maybe parallel market in general. My 25 year old self would have got that fucking half-lidded, dismissive, Calabritchian look, sparked a joint, and pointed out that I seemed PLENTY interested in reefer to stay in the field for awhile.

My 25 year-old self is a dick. She smoked reefer to ignore the world around her, which in all fairness to her was mostly France and the embraces of a madman, but still. If I ever take an anti-reefer stand with my juniors, or anybody for that matter, it will be because it's easy to have the sort of habit that lets you get by nicely while it lets you believe you're too lazy and stupid to change the shitty things in your life. It's far too easy an excuse.

On a somehow related topic, I suppose because I'd smoked some reefer beforehand, I saw the Family Guy movie last night as a reward for finishing my glossary. I found it fucking lame. I loved the original seasons, so the sentiment isn't from a dislike of the Family Guy. This was simply a fucking turkey that was too self-referential even for someone like me, who must have seen all the original seasons twice. In 88 minutes I laughed twice, and what I laughed at wasn't memorable enough for me to recall now. Wow. Did it ever suck. It sucked as bad as Godfather III, in the sense that if I ever see the original episodes again my enjoyment of them will be hurt by having sat through this mess.

Pope Watch: Key word Antipope

Welcome to the first in a series of midday 'I's bored' entries on the adventures of Joseph Ratzinger, otherwise known as the sixteenth Pope Benedict.

The Benedicts, for the benefit of all you unanointed, have been a funny bunch - the tenth in this series of sixteen, for example, was what Catholics call an antipope. I know that sounds scary and Exorcisty, but all it really means was that one pope (in the case of the tenth Benedict this one pope was Gerhard of Burgundy, the future second Nicholas) was able to gather enough troops to wage war upon and then imprison another pope (the tenth Benedict, evidently) for perpetuity. And then say 'Oi! You're the antipope! Hah!'

There have been three other antipopes called Benedict: the first thirteenth Benedict, Pedro Martinez de Luna from the Avignon mess, and the two first fourteenth Benedicts, Bernard Garnier and Jean Carrier. These antipopes were the first thirteenth and fourteenth Benedicts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The second thirteenth Benedict and the second/third fourteenth Benedict were popes in, I believe, the eighteenth century. Is that confusing? Good. For the ways of God are not the ways of men, kiddies.

Did you know that there have been more antipopes called Benedict than anything else, with Clement and John tying for second place? It's an auspicious name for an auspicious man, who as Johannes let us know a little while ago has high hopes for the Christian church based on the fact that the Bible is messier than the Koran. Weeeeeeeeee!

Anyways, here are some of the things the sixteenth Benedict -definitely an uncontested, above-board pope with no rival popes I'm aware of levying armies against his ferocious Swiss Guards - and his magical friends have been doing lately.

1. Sneaking around in disguise
2. Starting a war - no, not that kind
3. Standing up for immigrants, especially the chicks
4. Looking mad hot

Whatever shall he do next? Stay tuned . . .

Final rant of the dragon ride

Hate is a strong word, but I think I hate Simon Cowell. Forget all the pop shit he cranks out like he’s vacationing in Thailand; if he didn’t do it, someone else would. The principal reason I hate Simon Cowell is Il Divo. It’s the final death twitch of the Renaissance, the triumph of economic rationalism over beauty.

‘Unbreak My Heart’ from Toni Braxton was not my cup of tea, but you know, it was good for macking in highschool. ‘Regresa a mi’ is only good for making me want to stick knitting needles in my ears and the ears of those I love. ‘My Way’ (check out the original French lyrics on the link – crazy) from Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Elvis Presley, and even that guy who performs it on Italian variety shows, going “I did it my-my-my-my-my way” instead of “I did it myyyyyy way’, was my favorite post-second-guessy-breakup song. Besides maybe ‘I Changed My Mind’ by the Quannum Project. Of course, that was before Il Divo gave us “A Mi Manera”, a noise as messy as regret itself. What’s next? Are you going to target the Quannum Project next, you sick bastard? No. Worse. On the new album they do ‘Unchained Melody’, giving a cold shower to one of the best oral sex songs ever written, as if putting it in ‘Ghost’ hadn’t done enough damage. Is there so much oral sex in the world, Simon Cowell, that you want us to have less?

Simon Cowell. Jehovah did not plague him with locusts, nor did the earth gape open to swallow him whole when he decided to create a monster that could simultaneously piss on opera, pop, and R&B. For he, in himself, is our God-sent plague, he our road to perdition. We deserve him, for he knew that ‘Unbreak My Heart’ or ‘My Way’, poorly opera-cized from the pretty mouths of two tenors, one ‘vox populi’ and one lonely little baritone, was going to sell like hotcakes to people who want to be too sophisticated for elevator music but aren’t city enough to see classically trained singers like Fides Krucker, Romina di Gasbarro or kajillion others who successfully incorporate pop sounds into their repertoires. And he also had to have known it was going to suck. Suck in a way that is almost impossible to comprehend.

Another reason I hate Simon Cowell is that he ragged on Geri Halliwell in 2004 for being a UN Goodwill Ambassador, saying it made her look foolish as ‘she knew nothing about it’. What sort of dumbass expects a UN Goodwill Ambassador to know anything about anything? Their job is to be famous. That’s why they’re UN Goodwill Ambassadors, for fuck’s sake, and not actual ambassadors. Is that rocket science, Simon Cowell? Is that like ‘lecturing NASA on rocket physics’? Dick.

On a cute note, look what Carlos Marin listed as his personal ambition in the biography section on Il Divo’s website. God, I miss European boys sometimes.

Run towards the light

I feel like cat ass this morning. Two beers with a delicious early supper at the House would not normally have that effect on me. If that idiot at work gave me her puke-germs, there'll be a reckoning. Oh hell, what am I talking about? I'll take the day off tomorrow and send an email to our manager about how people who vomit for half an hour at their desks should be sent home, even if they think they're fine to carry on - I don't think that amounts to a reckoning.

So . . . finished the introduction yesterday, conclusion today . . . I insist. Three pages. Three fucking pages. And then the polish of the glossary and appendices (appendages?) which should amount to a simple downhill roll at this point. But my brain hurts. The intro and conclusion are the only parts the jury is guaranteed to read, you see. Nerve-wracking. So I gave my aching brain a break as frequently as I thought I could afford with other people, and finally late last night with Goodbye Lenin! That's a nice movie that said more about corporatism being nasty than the Corporation and Super Size Me put together, just by drawing a simple and subtle parallel between a repressive communist state controlled from the outside and a newly freed market being flooded with capitalist goods and values. The final newscast for his mother jerked a few socially conscious tears from me - you'll know what I mean when you see it. But of course the makers of the Corporation would have never had the balls for either the association or the subtlety, and since Super Size Me was just a retarded gimmick there was no context to bring it up in. Also Goodbye Lenin! had a lovely soundtrack by Yann Tiersen - you know, the guy who wrote all those cute tunes for Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain.

UPDATE:

I FUCKING HATE EVERYTHING.

FUCKING THESIS.

FUCKING . . . 1.5 PAGES TO GO . . . 1.5 . . . THAT'S ONE HUNDREDTH OF THE TOTAL LENGTH OF THE FUCKER . . . I REMEMBER WHEN I WAS ONLY ONE HUNDREDTH OF THE WAY STARTED AND NOW IT'S ONE HUNDREDTH FROM THE END AND IT'S JUST AS PAINFUL AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK . . .

But that's impossible, isn't it? I mean, the revisions are pretty much finished and really, it's immeasurably better than it was at the beginning. We're talking a couple of hours instead of uncountable months. Alright, I feel better now. I'm going to go finish.

UPDATE BIS:

FINISHED.

JOINT NOW.

YAY.