Method in the madness

Last night was odd. First watching the Notorious C.H.O. with J*Fish was odd, since I'd listened to it in Paris with people who I'm having dinner with in Paris on Friday. Then J*Fish's roommate, you know, Lady, Whatisname, explained the mechanics of flight to me when I voiced how freaked I am by flying. That used to be the Madman's job (people around me are acquainted with my phobia to the point of tedium and find ways to deal with it as quickly as possible. Sometimes it's with drugs; sometimes it's by explaining flight.) Whatsisname looks a lot like the Madman. And I was pleasantly fucked out of my skull on reefer and codeine, which added to the exchange.

I've been realizing for awhile I had a major victim complex coming out of that relationship and last night drove it home. I can admit now there were reasons I was there besides engaging in some bizarre sado-masochistic self-mutilating experiment. There were alot of things about the Madman that were really nice, like the explaining of the mechanics of flight when I was sure my aeroplanes would drop out of the sky like rocks unless I furiously concentrated on keeping them up with the power of my mind. When he went crazy it was hard to accept, since he'd been great before that.

So why is this important? It's not as if he's any less crazy or I'm going to have any less of a fight-or-flight mechanism kick in whenever I think I see him. It's important, though, because I'd forgotten that relationships can be nice. That maybe I've been concentrating on the horrible times with the Madman to help me not feel any regret about the good ones being toast, and that may have warped my outlook. That the key thing is knowing when to walk away, and not automatically assuming that's RIGHT AWAY because if they're hot and nice they must also be crazy.

I'd apologize for writing such a personal post and promise not to do it again, but I probably will, so, you know, there you are.

Déja vu

Are you getting used to my Friday morning posts starting 'last night's analysis session was great'?

Last night's session was great - we had the best 'what do you want to do with your life' discussion I've ever had with anybody and dicussed this mad dream I'd had that involved, among other things, a tropical paradise, a dynastic marriage, throwing myself off a skyscraper and having sex in a furniture store. The transferrence period has started - he was the man I'd been making love to in the furniture store. I'd been expecting it and I'll deal with it, but I wish it had manifested itself differently, like the insane hero-worship crushes I had on a couple of university professors back in the day.

Still, I see the benefits. I could hardly even bear to look on, let alone talk to, the godliness of those particular profs when they were teaching me, which was a distraction from the subject at hand and which would make analysis more or less impossible. So this hasn't really changed the talking dynamic we have, as hero-worship would have. But you try telling your analyst you'd dreamt about him doing you on the floor of a furniture store. NOT EASY.

Anyways, I didn't; we just discussed other parts of the dream. We also discussed the upcoming trip. I think it's fair to say that if I survive it (fucking aeroplanes, fucking murderous ex-boyfriends, fucking maghrebin hash), I'll be coming home with a different sort of brain. It's funny to know that about the next three weeks - to know at the end of that time you'll be, you know, different.

Well, onwards and upwards.

The sexiest man in Jamaica

The title of this post is apropos of nothing, except it's severely stuck in my head. I think my brain had been starving for music featuring a man yelling something happily, confidently, and aggressively after a steady KEXP work diet of lyrics about missing old highschool sweethearts and being somehow emotionally delicate. That sort of thing seems to have taken over indie as well as pop these days. Speaking of which: look! Nickelback got twice as many Juno nominations as the Arcade Fire. Let that sink in for a moment. Sometimes there are no words. Only dry heaves.

Yesterday I covered the Canadian Auto Summit. The theme of the Canadian Auto Summit was “It Really Is About the Car.” I shit you not. Redundancy has been turned into an MBA course, apparently. Advertising was only mentioned in dismissive terms so for the purposes of my magazine it was a waste of a dining subsidy to send me there. And admittedly I spent a lot of time thinking about boys and wondering how many people in the auditorium were flying the dragon. I did pay some attention, though, and all I can say is the new Camaro concept looks really sexy, and I’m glad I’m not an American with a manufacturing job.

Because redundancy, in its metaphorical sense, figured large in the agenda. It was set up as a question and answer period between some Globe journalists and a bunch of car type big wigs, and of course, especially in the case of the GM man, the journalists wanted to know how many jobs were going to be lost to outsourcing or imports, or gained from low property prices and increasing technological acumen among Canadian workers . . . the president of Toyota Motor got fêted for having created a couple of thousand jobs in Canada . . . all Strong Canadian Dollar this, Exploiting Asian Markets that . . .

You know how it’s easy to laugh at Western Communists because you usually know that they’re figuring themselves dressed in a Party uniform and directing the grunt workers of the Revolutionary Paradise and not lifting anything heavy themselves? That’s one thing I thought about these capitalist barons, last night, even as they chilled my blood talking about the massive migration of jobs that’ll probably end up causing environmental catastrophe in China and social crisis – well, maybe not here, but definitely in the United States. They know, or should know, their own jobs are likely enough to be made redundant eventually – they run the same sort of employment risks as the people whose lives they were messing around with. I know the REAL risks are nothing like the same because of their offshore accounts and property investments and all. But the world they promote is just a straight dog-eat-dog one, with no nationalistic alignments except for whichever ones would be effective in terms of marketing to a national population.

Because it seems lthey know we, as consumers, cling on to such quaint old-fashioned ideas, about a corporation and its country of provenance having much in common. A couple of days ago I wrote for work about the marketing impact of the cartoon chaos in the Middle East. What’s happening is a little hilarious. A lot of the European companies doing business there were in a rush to exploit the hole left by the boycott of all things Danish. The best example was Carrefour, a French retailer, which withdrew all the Danish products from its shelves and posted notes in their place expressing solidarity with the Islamic population. Then, of course, a series of French papers re-published the cartoons.

People, fuck. They don't make any sense.

Coax me, cajole me

Last night after Italian class we had a spirited discussion about the finer points of seduction, as it was Valentine’s Day and as both Lady and J*Fish are in the mood to seduce. What a mood to be in. I had a lot to say, considering I still can’t talk and I haven’t really seduced anybody for – how long? Six years? When I say 'really seduce', I don’t mean realizing you’re going to be sleepy in two hours so you move a situation you've already been sensing along a little faster by taking off your pants or something. When I say 'really seduce', I mean creating the situation out of nothing. Moving from zero to 70 in three seconds or less, or, to refer you to Johannes again, jumping from the Friend ladder to the Fuckable ladder without falling into – ah, that theory’s a bit too half-baked for me to get into.

It's true as Lady mentioned last night that sort of action is really sticking your neck out and letting the object of your affections know they have a carte-blanche to kick you in the head – but more than that, it’s an emotion or an urge or whatever that’s powerful and arrogant (in the best sense) enough to let you over-ride all the inhibitions standard people walk around with. There was only once I fell for a near-complete stranger to the degree that I had to chase that beautiful butterfly down the country road. I’m not a cocky person at all, but when I approached him and he told me had plans to meet another girl for lunch, I remember instructing him with complete self-assurance to blow her off and have lunch with me instead. When he and I discussed that conversation years later, he said I’d been telegraphing the message ‘Be nice to me, and I’ll sleep with you’ throughout the exchange – I suppose that’s why it was so effective. I think using the word 'blow' helped too.

I think in a way it's harder for girls. Or do I mean easier? Maybe both. But I do think girls get antsier than boys about dealing with strongly preferring one person, and trying to balance out some perfect cocktail of cool and gush in their approach to letting that person know just how lucky he is if that person doesn't immediately suss out the situation. You know what I mean? Because legions of books have been written and sold about Rules and gender dynamics and shit like that and I don't think it's men buying them. But in the end, since penting things up makes them gross, I think the most important part of seduction for boys and girls is having emotions and urges, being comfy with them, and responding to them as honestly as they can.

That and taking off your shirt, drawing an arrow on your tummy pointing to your crotch and miming “I love you” across a crowded room.

Throw me a bone

Work is fun. I base most of my research on right-wing magazines and papers. Anything you've ever wanted to know about corporate naughtiness and market insidiousness is laid out in the Wall Street Journal in fine detail, sourced and stamped. They have lots of other good shit too. One source this week tells of doctors' favourite way to commit suicide - a compund that stops the heart right away. Just like that. Stop! Try finding shit like that in Le Monde Diplo.

Yesterday I decided that I'm going to want peripheral vision to better see France, Italy, and England once more. I also remembered it doesn't matter that I'm broke because I have insurance. So I got my contact lense watchum refilled after so long I don't remember the last time I had them. I put them in right away to enjoy that slightly dizzy feeling you get for the first hour - and the only comments I got all afternoon and evening were along the lines of

"Geez, Spliffe, you look sooooooo tired."

I'm not tired. My eyes always look like this. It's called cannabis. Fuck.

FAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK.

YOU LOOK UGLY.

I'm in a mood . . . never mind me . . . I'm just pissy because I can't talk. I feel fine, I feel dandy, but I can't say a word without coughing up a lung. I'm starting to think it's psychological - that I've got some major hang-up about the viva for the thesis and all the big talks that have to happen during this trip generally, so my body is taking away my voice. Either that, or, you know, I'm actually sick. Whichever. It's grinding my fucking gears.

So before Lady tells me to 'suck it up' and I have to kick her ass, let me change the subject to something pretty. Something pretty named Bob Blumer, otherwise known as the Surreal Gourmet. Go to the sidebar in the food section and bask. Bask in the Blumerness. What an adorable creature he is. If everybody in the world was a little bit more like Bob Blumer . . . oh, let me lose myself in the beauty of that thought for a moment.

Weeeeeeeeeeee . . .

Okay, I feel better. Now, a question. Has the Canadian media not fucking watched Guys and Dolls? Does it not understanding that betting, gambling, and gaming are part of the natural cycle of life; indeed, sometimes even a young Marlon Brando needs to gamble his way into the heart of Jean Simmons? Why does it matter that Wayne Gretzky's wife gambled 500 Gs? OF COURSE she gambled 500 Gs! If you had 500 Gs to gamble and a husband who was so good at sports he was a character on ProStars, wouldn't you? What's the problem? There isn't even a suggestion of game chucking or rigging right now. So is it that she used an illegal gambling ring? When you drive a car, do you ask the dealer if the poor bastards in the steelworks hurt their backs processing that materials for it? People need to grow the fuck up.

Minor crisis

I'm having a hard time facing the day, because I left my Shuffle and headphones at J*Fish's house. What will my working day be like without KEXP or 3wk?

Eep.

EEP.

You know, I like my co-workers, but they spend their downtime playing Seinfeld trivia games with each other. I always hated Seinfeld, and smoke too many drugs to remember anything that I can't place in a historical context, so it annoys me way more than it should.

Maybe I can buy some headphones at lunch. I'm sick of those buds anyways. They don't keep my ears warm at all.

UPDATE

To all the fuckwits who have challenged the rightness of using the word 'reckon': The Economist uses it. And if you're the sort of snotty jerk who doesn't think words like 'reckon' are real because the likes of the Dukes of Hazzard county use it, I reckon the staff of the Economist are a whole fuckload smarter than you.

Now, if only they'd start using 'youse' . . .

Housebound

Going out last night was a mistake. Not that it wasn't nice; much better music than the last time, much better decor, and got to see Gigi and Lady win Sexiest Couple award. But I should know by now that if I can't even speak without swigging from the Buckley's bottle, no matter how absolutely fine I feel, I shouldn't be going out. I left at 2, went to bed, and woke up an hour later incapable of breathing in without exhaling a coughing fit. When I woke up definitively, starlings were huddled for warmth outside my bedroom window. So I'm not going out at all today - going to cook something with reefer in it, play with the keyboard, but mostly continue the ongoing French immersion project, courtesy of a few loans, gifts, and purchases seperate from my thesis advisor's increasingly interesting books:

1. Food. Tortiére, to be specific. Gigi went vegetarian and gave me a tortiére someone had given him, which had been sitting in my freezer until now, since I haven't had the fucking time to stay in my apartment long enough to defrost it and make it yummy. It looks sooooooooooooo good.

2. Music. Karina Gauvin singing French songs arranged or something by Canteloube. They're traditionals from Auvergne in a pretty heady dialect, so fucked if I have any idea what she's singing about, but my oh my it's pretty. Gigi had also copied Carla Bruni's first album onto my Shuffle - lost when I decided on a soul soundtrack for last night's commuting. I'll get it again because I liked it, which surprised me. I'd thought the hugely popular title track, Quelqu'un m'a dit, was cute - she has an adorable raspy little voice - but sappy; wasn't interested in getting the album. Turns out as a whole it doesn't feel sappy. It recalls those bizarre half-hours when you're right chemically fucked up, and crawl into bed only to have an unexpected burst of clarity, creativity and emotion that usually gets murmured into your pillow or the ear of someone even more fucked up than you are because you're too physically exhausted to get up and find a pen. And considering Carla Bruni is a retired supermodel, that's probably more or less what happened. Except she was clever enough to keep a pen in arm's reach.

Anyways, I like her lyrics a lot, but maybe someone more used to French lyricism wouldn't. Who knows. The more I listen to French music the more I get the impression the lyrics dominate, but that might just be the nature of the stuff that's crossed my path or the fact that I haven't been really struck by English lyrics lately. Yesterday Mr. N told me to expect some Benjamin Biolay, which he thinks I'll like. Mr. N is usually right about me liking things.

3. Screen. Les Dangereux - I watched the first 15 minutes and it looks like complete shit. But, you know, it has Stéphane Rousseau in it. Lady also lent me a Québec series called Grande Ourse - I've watched the first of 10 episodes. It's a difficult format, going for the twee-small-town creepy, you know? Twin Peaks didn't manage it consistently and it looks like this doesn't either. But it has some nice visual gags and whatevs, it's practice.

UPDATE

Would someone please give Silvio Berlusconi something to eat? His blood sugar levels are way off again . . . the man is just fucking monumental. I'd love to set up a timeline of the dumbest things he's ever said and work out if they're conscious efforts to distract the world from some really contentious but essentially forgettable issue, like the cartoon fiasco; you know, get everybody to throw down their arms just to smack themselves exasperatedly on the forehead and mutter, 'Well, that's Silvio.' One way or the other, the man is a living joke.