sabato, marzo 18, 2006

The only boy who could ever teach me

You know the days when you look so good you just wish to goodness you could do yourself? Yesterday was one of those days. We all need them - we need more of them. And then to share them with someone we like so much it feels like we ARE doing ourselves.

Cue Grieg's Morning Mood.

Then cue the Marseillaise. Yeah, this is the country I'm thinking of moving back to. You know, it's like Rhett Butler said; there's money to be made in the building of an empire, and money to be made in its decline. . . j'exagerre. France has always had a sulky-misfit-teenager-and-hedonistic-baby-boomer-father relationship between populace and government. And it's always been France - always will be. Plus ca change, et cetera. We all have our stupid national nonsenses. For example, in Canada we have a socialist tax burden and shitty public services. And we tolerate lunar winters.

Lady is barricaded in her hospital room like Natasha Henstridge in the Species movies. They don't fool around with that radioactive shit. Miss B is off ballroom dancing, I think. J*Fish is on the mend, and the Brunswick House is in Good Working Order. Mr. N gave me a copy of Dusty in Memphis. Still going through massive quantity of music FEB gave me. Despite being at the 'happy' week in my hormonal cycle I'm very prone to temper these days still - extremely. Not my standard passive-aggro stewing, either. But flashes of profanity and violence, quickly replaced by cat-like readiness. It's fine.

Hello beasties

That 'no-drinking' shit didn't work at Terroni's - dear oh dear. I managed to keep the fat intake low and rewarded myself with as much wine as I could hide inside my stomach, reasoning that it's the gall bladder that's the real problem, not the liver, so I should balance shit out a bit. So I did get wasted for St. Patrick's Day after all, royally wasted even, despite turning down a co-worker's drink offer with the observation that it's a bit of a silly holiday for me to celebrate since my ancestors hunted the Irish for sport.

My, how do I keep the boys at bay?

Incidentally, people who only drink Guinness on St. Patrick's Day sicken me.

Anyways, I reccomend Terroni's. The waitresses look like extras from Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a hot way, and the food was good - the cheeseless pizza I ordered with all the vegetables had too much salt to compensate, but the bresaolo was fresh and soooooo soft, served with almost moist flakes of padano. And the sweets were lovely - I only had a bit of the tiramisu because of all that evil mascarpone, but it was some of the best I've had in Toronto. The flourless chocolate cake was AWESOME. Fuck not eating fat. I ate that. Mmmmm.

venerdì, marzo 17, 2006

Wuthering Mountain

Brokeback Mountain would have been lovely and emotionally cathartic if edited down to 45 minutes. As it is, Wuthering Heights it ain’t. It bored me senseless. I cried when he sniffed the shirt, though. How come the way they smell always sticks to the shirt collars like that? Why do the backs of their necks smell so . . . damn . . . good when you love them?

I really liked the Shipping News, loved it even, to the degree that I refused to see the movie. And I thought, since Brokeback Mountain was beautiful despite being so fucking boring, the original short story by the same author would be a nice thing to read. Then I read her Guardian rant. Look at this beauty of a sentence:

"The prize, as expected, went to Philip Seymour Hoff-man for his brilliant portrayal of Capote, but in the months preceding the awards thing, there has been little discussion of acting styles and various approaches to character development by this year's nominees."

Also she uses the metaphor ‘yeasty ferment’ for something which has nothing to do with alchohol or infections, and she uses ‘lighted’ as a past participle - not strictly wrong but makes me want to vomit nonetheless.

Maybe she was just too pissy to read over what she wrote? Please?

Onwards and upwards. So I remember talking to someone awhile ago , someone whose opinion I've essentially worshipped my entire life (so let's call him Magnum P.I.), about online dating. I said it was a lousy idea because the artificiality of the forum wouldn't let you get to know someone the way I believed you need to for something really nice to come about. Magnum contradicted me. I'm not much of a one for being contradicted and I had been oh-so-sure of what I was talking about, but the reality of Magnum having that belief made me revise my entire outlook on online dating in seconds, from 'that shit can't work' to 'that shit probably works for people in thier thirties'.

Last night the same sort of radical overhaul of an opinion happened in analysis. We did an imaginal exercise involving being seven years old, and it worked. Not just, it felt nice, it felt liberating, it felt helpful - it worked. And now I'm going to be very impatient with people who are skeptical about such exercises, although two days ago I would have been skeptical myself. So this is probably the last time I write here about what goes on in analysis, because now there's too much room for emotion in terms of how I deal with people's reactions. But just to let you know . . . that shit works.

Not much other news. Miss B is coming this evening, haven't even seen her in years, that should be nice, we have reservations at a nice little Italian place. The weather is good enough for my cat to go outside hunting again, and I'm in a cracking fine mood. Good news seems to be coming from many quarters, for many people. I love spring.

giovedì, marzo 16, 2006

Health Whinge

Give me fat. GIVE ME FAT. PLEASE. BIG FUCKING SPOONFULS OF IT.

FEB and I had a lunchtime talk about the sort of foodfight I'd like to have to celebrate my next birthday. Big handfuls of fatty, greasy food, smeared all over the place.

Hey, look at this: bilious. That's meeeee! I'm bilious! The 'peevish' bit fits especially well. I cannot stand even the most minor stupidities today - but I swear I go looking for them - straight to the people, magazines, newspapers, and websites that are guaranteed to be stupidest. But I think that's excess tension I need an outlet for, and it's from missing the fat, more than from whatever has happened to my bilious organs, or my body from the surfeit of bile coursing through it.

Here is a description of what is happening (this is obviously because I'm swimming in my own estrogen and obesity; a walking Venus of Willendorf. You know, they fill teen magazines with pictures of the Venus of Willendorf so all the young chicks aspire to it, BUT THEY NEVER TELL YOU THE HEALTH RISKS) and what I have to eat. J*Fish is under the weather again - if I had to choose between his or Lady's afflictions and gallstones, I obviously choose gallstones, hands down.

But I really like fat.

I LIKE FRIED THINGS.

I WANT A BLUE . . . BLOODY . . . STEAK. NOW.

Staying Alive

I always figured myself for a passionate person, but maybe I'm not. There's a funny thing to think. There are alot of emotions I'm unwilling to demonstrate. Jealousy is one of them. I'm not saying that to prop myself, because I have a feeling jealousy is important, a good marker of how much you care for someone; the best evidence for that is the people who get upset when you don't get jealous, I suppose. What can I say - if you want me, try to get me, if you want someone else, then chase that beautiful butterfly and get your mopey face out of mine. Is this supposed to make me angry?

I guess it should, actually - the one time I was left for someone else it depressed me so bad I couldn't get out of bed for days, and the one time I was conscious of a friend 'replacing' me (a phenomenon that's been on my mind since reading Lady's archives and realizing there was one day shortly after I moved back from Europe she thought I was her formally-educated replacement - you silly monkey - and I don't look like you, I look about three times Jewier) I calmly hooked up with her ex boyfriend - a nice vicious OPEN bout of jealous rage would have been faster and easier for all concerned.

But I'm cool. I'm SO cool. Too cool? . . .

Frigid?

You can tell by the way I use my walk.

No matter what happens, the next few months are going to have 4-dimensional emotional puzzles in them. Do I solve them with cold, calculating rationality? Do I hack through them like a petulant Farrell-esque Alexander at the Gordian knot? I don't know. And this morning, I'm happy to not know. One thing I do know is a reason to not watch medical dramas. I saw Grey's Anatomy at Lady's last Sunday while locked out of my flat, and it featured a staph infection; staph infections got a write-up in one of the papers I had to read for work, and now I have a little hive-y thing on the back of my hand which could be the first mosquito bite of the season, could be a badly-placed bit of uncharacteristic acne - OR COULD BE A STAPH INFECTION. My hockey career could be over before it even began.

mercoledì, marzo 15, 2006

Ho hum

So yesterday I kept thinking I could feel spring in the air, and then looked out the window to see CRAP that eventually turned into CRAPPY SNOW. This has been the warmest Canadian winter on record and at no point during it did I shut my face about how fucking cold it was. I have no choice but to emigrate – it’s either that or have my ass kicked regularly as the planet starts to really suffer from global warming and I let my SUV idle on the curb just to speed things along a little. I don’t think I’ll be happy until I live in a climate where I can walk around all year in a – what do you call those sheets Polynesian chicks wrap themselves in? – you know, one of those. The irony of that being Polynesia will probably be swallowed by the ocean by the time I could do that anywhere I’m likely to live.

You know, if God was really looking out for us, he’d have made our capitalist-pig-excess-fuck-ups result in global cooling rather than warming. I bet you’d get some pretty goddamn fast industrial action from executive classes everywhere, even in the petrol and automotive industries, if their trophy wives or rent boys had to conceal their flauntable assets to avoid frost damage. Not to mention from we the consumers. Right now we can imagine global warming is only going to really impact society after we reach the age that we’ve promised ourselves the indulgence of a heroin addiction and will have to live rough anyways; but when it’s cold it’s TOO FUCKING COLD RIGHT AWAY.

Sadly, God only helps those who help themselves. Whoever those noble souls are. Probably the executive class.

Still reading North and South on, as mentioned, Miss C's reccomendation. Oh god, there are two important Miss C’s. Okay, opera pseudonyms – Rodelinda for Oxford Miss C, and Carmen for Paris Miss C - twee enough to annoy them both, but likely to stick in my mind since I've listened to Handel and Bizet with each of them variously. Anyways, I'm still reading North and South. I like having books reccommended not just for themselves but for what they tell you about the person who reccommends them.

The puzzle I'm examining now as I read is why Rodelinda dislikes both Charlotte and Emily Bronte - who I reckon have little enough in common besides creating flawed but eventually fully believable heroines and messy but visually evocative narrative passages - but enjoys their contemporary Elizabeth Gaskell. Who is also messy, whose writing is less visual, whose heroine is less believable, but seems to have, so far, a much deeper grounding in the historical context. (Don't get defensive, Bronte/Gaskell fans - as far as I'm concerned, messy writing is great - if all Western classics were written with the tidy precision of Henry James or Ernest Hemingway, I'd shoot myself or buy a television.) I guesss it's not rocket science, as Rodelinda is doing a doctorate in history, and not English literature. Anyways.

martedì, marzo 14, 2006

You might think I'm crazy, but I'm still in love with you

Feeling better about being back now that I’m in my apartment and seeing my beautiful, lovely Lexie cat again. Oh, with her darling twitchy ears and constant demands for attention. So cheerful now I think I'm ready to stop being angry with Little G for fucking me over with the keys. Also, there's no trace of the films that the poor rental place left all those messages with me about. Hopefully she brought them back - but if there are late charges waiting for me . . . no, no, time to chill and be happy. Things are quite, quite happy at the moment. Quite happy!

Gross big pile of mail when I finally got in – besides delicious and nutritious cheques and some back issues of the Economist, rien d’interet sauf invitations for Miss T’s shower and wedding. Some Ottawa/Montréal action approaching in the future then. I suppose it had to come sometime. Miss T’s young man is a mathematician. Apart from Miss S, I don’t know any mathematicians; certainly I don’t know any boy mathematicians. To hear some girls talk, they’re the ultimate antidote to the cosmetics culture our physical insecurities keep in motion; apparently you don’t even have to wash your hair, and they gaze at you like a 14 year old vegetarian at frying bacon. Mmmm. Bacon.

Anyways, seems like everyone is getting married or procreating or something these days, loads of ladies at work have one in the oven; yesterday we had a ‘baby shower’ over lunch for the HR/admin head, who is due to pop any moment. You know who catered it? Swiss Chalet.

Swiss Chalet sucks.

Food in Canada can suck. I mean SUCK. I miss Italy. I miss France. I even miss Oxford. Yeah, you read that right. I even miss Oxford. At least they had clotted cream and lemon curd. Mmm, and gingersnaps and fresh plump raspberries. Mmmmmmmm.

lunedì, marzo 13, 2006

And here we are again

So far, Lady and Gigi's sweet faces and the imminent expansion of my family notwithstanding, being back has been a foot up the ass.

I got into Canada late, and then had to put up with fucking Customs because I was travelling on a British passport and somehow this confused them enough to send me to the immigration desks - I guess because of the thousands of British citizens illicitly streaming into Canada for the clandestine sex and drug trades. . . then I was carrying three bottles of hard liquor and three bottles of wine - well, one of VERY nice champagne Miss C sent my mum, and somehow they found this quantity humourous, as if I, as a normal non-Muslim person, wouldn't have bought more from duty-free if I'd been able to carry it in my weakened condition. AND they tried to make me pay taxes on it, but by this time I was so fucking pissed I just pushed through the 'nothing to declare' line when the guy got busy and went to meet my poor brother, who'd been waiting patiently at the aeroport for the couple of hours of lateness. I think he'd come to meet me because he had some news, which is that he's having another baby. So I was - and am still - pretty fucking happy about that.

But then when I tried to call Little G, who has my keys, she didn't pick up - when we got to the apartment no one was there. Finally Brother dropped me off at Lady's, who lives close by, and I got snaked with her and Gigi, and gave them thier presents, caught up, and felt sorry for myself. I had to sleep there - Little G called at midnight and said she'd forgotten yesterday was the 12th. She could AT LEAST have had the respect to make some medical excuse up. If my cat is looking malnourished, the shit and the fan will have a violent collision.

I woke up at 4 am fresh as a daisy, didn't want to wake the Lady or her roommate, and so just came to work. Fucking bitch mood on me now. FEB and I are having a complaining competition about how much we miss each other. At this rate I'll need to think of a better euphemism for him.