I am in a state. A state, I tell you. My snatch has shut down my brain as absolutely as punk-ass students with a totally unearned sense of entitlement shutting down France. It does this a little around this time every month, but this month it is laying into me, I think in punishment for falling back in with a man in a different time zone.
I'm sorry, Snatch. You know I'm doing this for the both of us. It hurts me more than it hurts you, et cetera.
I need drugs. I just spent 24 straight hours with my family; they're a superb, stellar family, but that alone would be reason to need drugs. Now I need strong drugs. Strong, fun drugs, that can convince my brain it's not being kicked in by my angry, angry steel-toed snatch.
UPDATE
Didn't work. The powder made my nose itchy and sneezy instead.
sabato, marzo 25, 2006
venerdì, marzo 24, 2006
First day of spring
The robin. In this case, the American Robin (turdus migratorius -pfffft!), a member of the Thrush family (pfffft!); not to be confused with the European Robin (erithacus rubecula), an Old World Flycatcher that the American Robin could probably eat for lunch. They have a couple of things in common besides their bright tits: they sing superbly, and spotting one of them is incontrovertible evidence that it's springtime. Incontrovertible, damn it.
I saw a European Robin when I was staying with my winterphobic grandparents in Yorkshire, and it made their day. Good, but not too helpful to my not-living-in-Yorkshire ass. But yesterday as I was walking to analysis, I finally saw an American Robin. I looked at it. It looked at me. My Shuffle called up, "She takes my money . . . when I'm in need . . . yeah she's a trifling . . . Friend indeed . . . ah she's a gold digger . . . way over time . . . that digs on me."
The drum machine kicked in. AND I SWEAR THE FUCKING TURDUS MIGRATORIUS GOT DOWN. Bobbing its head, stepping from side to side, pecking at something. With perfect fucking rhythm. Either I'm losing my mind, or I have some bizarre sort of Beastmaster quality, or Kanye West and Jamie Foxx do.
Whichever way, happy spring, everybody!
I saw a European Robin when I was staying with my winterphobic grandparents in Yorkshire, and it made their day. Good, but not too helpful to my not-living-in-Yorkshire ass. But yesterday as I was walking to analysis, I finally saw an American Robin. I looked at it. It looked at me. My Shuffle called up, "She takes my money . . . when I'm in need . . . yeah she's a trifling . . . Friend indeed . . . ah she's a gold digger . . . way over time . . . that digs on me."
The drum machine kicked in. AND I SWEAR THE FUCKING TURDUS MIGRATORIUS GOT DOWN. Bobbing its head, stepping from side to side, pecking at something. With perfect fucking rhythm. Either I'm losing my mind, or I have some bizarre sort of Beastmaster quality, or Kanye West and Jamie Foxx do.
Whichever way, happy spring, everybody!
giovedì, marzo 23, 2006
Fuck the west coast and fuck everybody on the east
What's a meme? Anyways, I found one when I paid a little too much attention to my Statcounter watchums at work yesterday. It's called the Page 123 Meme and apparently it's somewhere on this site.
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.
Here's mine:
They're all eligible for the death penalty, according to the War Crimes Act passed by the 1996 Republican Congress. (123)
That's Noam Chomsky, bitches, I was reading that last night in an effort to be a more understanding and sympathetic partner - I'm trying not to hate Noam Chomsky because of a very dear friend who really likes him. It's not working. I'll just have to deal. After all, I expect him to put up with my fondness for Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion and sandwiches with big chunks of raw garlic in them. But I think I need a nice therapeutic rant here.
Look: I know I write stuff about how much some left wing publications annoy me, and that seems rude because if I have an individual wing, it's left. But let's put it like this: if I never write blog entries about how retarded, say, Mark Steyn is, that's because I hold certain truths to be natural and self-evident. Any self-respecting man who writes things like
Why doesn't the House of Representatives buy the port operations (being resold by the company from Dubai) with the money earmarked for prescription drugs for seniors or Hurricane Katrina "relief"?
in an effort to invent associations with which to slam political antagonists despite 'his side's' fuck-up of prescription drug money for seniors and Hurricane Katrina relief, in a situation where his poor wee head must be spinning because the fact the Dubai company purchase had very little impact on port security operations would be too subtle a concept for his readers to appreciate so he's forced into the revolting position of implying a moral distinction between 'monarchs with oil' and 'dictators with oil' - what can you say about a man like that? The choir he's preaching to enjoys him, and the rest of us can giggle about the egg smeared all over his and thier faces.
I have a hard time with Noam Chomsky because he writes equally irresponsible things BUT which smear eggs into the left-wing, to the degree that I've asked myself if he's some sort of Republican shill. He draws obviously intellectually offensive and commie-esque parallels, like comparing the American attitude to Cuba during the missile crisis to the American attitude to Iraq during the build-up to war there. He does it in language that's more suggestive than straight, I suppose to avoid sound-bites he knows would make him sound crazy. He persists in talking about Communism and Bolshevism as seperate things, which just pisses in the figurative eyes of all the people both things killed or ruined. Worst, he implicitly excuses the travesties committed in communist countries over the Cold War by saying it was shitty in the Western Bloc too. You know? The man talks all the time about the power of language in an interesting way, but the way he exercises it is hard to respect.
The thing bothering me most today is he puts things in quotation marks when describing a historical situation to imply that they're sourced from a historical document, and when you look at the note it's from a modern document - sometimes his own modern documents. I'll give you an example:
The first co-ordinated propaganda ministry, the Ministry of Information, was set up in Britain during the First World War. Its "task", as they put it, was "to direct the thought of most of the world." (19)
The source of that quotation is a 2002 book from Randall Martin. Doesn't it make his eyes cross to do something so - ooooo! - so academically irresponsible, so misleading, while writing about propoganda? Oh, it makes me mad! Mad!
See, someone like Mark Steyn, besides making me chuckle, scares me because people unquestioningly follow his contradictions and get led down some very silly garden paths. Noam Chomsky scares me for the same reason, but he doesn't make me chuckle. He makes me mad because his tactics cheapen his whole argument, and some parts of his argument are important enough to deserve real mainstream exploration. Particularly what he touches on about the power of language. But the mainstream isn't forced to explore them, because they can be written off as coming from a rotten source.
Alright, I feel a little better now.
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.
Here's mine:
They're all eligible for the death penalty, according to the War Crimes Act passed by the 1996 Republican Congress. (123)
That's Noam Chomsky, bitches, I was reading that last night in an effort to be a more understanding and sympathetic partner - I'm trying not to hate Noam Chomsky because of a very dear friend who really likes him. It's not working. I'll just have to deal. After all, I expect him to put up with my fondness for Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion and sandwiches with big chunks of raw garlic in them. But I think I need a nice therapeutic rant here.
Look: I know I write stuff about how much some left wing publications annoy me, and that seems rude because if I have an individual wing, it's left. But let's put it like this: if I never write blog entries about how retarded, say, Mark Steyn is, that's because I hold certain truths to be natural and self-evident. Any self-respecting man who writes things like
Why doesn't the House of Representatives buy the port operations (being resold by the company from Dubai) with the money earmarked for prescription drugs for seniors or Hurricane Katrina "relief"?
in an effort to invent associations with which to slam political antagonists despite 'his side's' fuck-up of prescription drug money for seniors and Hurricane Katrina relief, in a situation where his poor wee head must be spinning because the fact the Dubai company purchase had very little impact on port security operations would be too subtle a concept for his readers to appreciate so he's forced into the revolting position of implying a moral distinction between 'monarchs with oil' and 'dictators with oil' - what can you say about a man like that? The choir he's preaching to enjoys him, and the rest of us can giggle about the egg smeared all over his and thier faces.
I have a hard time with Noam Chomsky because he writes equally irresponsible things BUT which smear eggs into the left-wing, to the degree that I've asked myself if he's some sort of Republican shill. He draws obviously intellectually offensive and commie-esque parallels, like comparing the American attitude to Cuba during the missile crisis to the American attitude to Iraq during the build-up to war there. He does it in language that's more suggestive than straight, I suppose to avoid sound-bites he knows would make him sound crazy. He persists in talking about Communism and Bolshevism as seperate things, which just pisses in the figurative eyes of all the people both things killed or ruined. Worst, he implicitly excuses the travesties committed in communist countries over the Cold War by saying it was shitty in the Western Bloc too. You know? The man talks all the time about the power of language in an interesting way, but the way he exercises it is hard to respect.
The thing bothering me most today is he puts things in quotation marks when describing a historical situation to imply that they're sourced from a historical document, and when you look at the note it's from a modern document - sometimes his own modern documents. I'll give you an example:
The first co-ordinated propaganda ministry, the Ministry of Information, was set up in Britain during the First World War. Its "task", as they put it, was "to direct the thought of most of the world." (19)
The source of that quotation is a 2002 book from Randall Martin. Doesn't it make his eyes cross to do something so - ooooo! - so academically irresponsible, so misleading, while writing about propoganda? Oh, it makes me mad! Mad!
See, someone like Mark Steyn, besides making me chuckle, scares me because people unquestioningly follow his contradictions and get led down some very silly garden paths. Noam Chomsky scares me for the same reason, but he doesn't make me chuckle. He makes me mad because his tactics cheapen his whole argument, and some parts of his argument are important enough to deserve real mainstream exploration. Particularly what he touches on about the power of language. But the mainstream isn't forced to explore them, because they can be written off as coming from a rotten source.
Alright, I feel a little better now.
mercoledì, marzo 22, 2006
Oh so funny
I guess it's pretty obvious, what with my overwhelming physical and emotional attraction to Trey Parker (and Matt Stone in a pinch, but I'd be thinking of Trey Parker) how I feel about the South Park/Scientology/Isaac Hayes/Tom Cruise kerfuffle. . . namely, that it's all a ploy by Paramount to fire interest in two franchises that have both peaked in terms of popularity. But a fantastic ploy. It reminded me how funny South Park is and actually made me consider getting a television so I could start watching it again. Curse you, Paramount, you clever bastards you!
Just bringing it up because of stumbling on this - pretty safe for work but with audio, so exercise caution.
Just bringing it up because of stumbling on this - pretty safe for work but with audio, so exercise caution.
Grrrrrrr . . .
Do you ever wonder if most of the massive insecurities and complexes we're hauling around are possibly no more than an ongoing, tacit plea to be reassured, because being reassured feels so good it makes up for the hours of not being able to concentrate on, oh, say, the challenges and opportunities facing the broadcast television industry when you're too busy wondering if so-and-so still wants to do naughty things with you with the same passion and energy he or she once did?
Eesh, that was a beast of an Annie Proulx of a question.
Speaking of which, last night I had my first Brokeback Mountain fight. There's a spoiler here, if you care . . . I've had discussions about the movie already with people who loooooved it, but I've been such a fucking cranky beast lately that people haven't been fighting with me. This man, however, seemed to think I was flirting with him or something, and rose to the occasion, as they do.
Sir, if I was flirting with you, you'd know.
It comes to this: with children starving across Eastern Africa, there is no way you can justify that movie being SO FUCKING LONG. I don't have a natural inclination against long movies. I can watch a Das Boot/Apocalypse Now Redux double bill two or three times in a single day with a great deal of pleasure, given enough marijuana. Because they have characters and stories and situations that need more than two hours to be expounded. The in-and-out of closet adventures of a repressed shepherd and his unrepressed boyfriend probably needed about 45 minutes to get the admittedly effecting and cathartic emotional message across. Beauty shots of mountains? Please. That's why I watched Grizzly Man.
If I sound angry, it's because I am; Last Night Boy accused me of discomfort with the idea of a gay romantic storyline at one point; at another, of being insensitive to foreshadowing after I complained about sitting there for two hours just to see Jakey get beaten to death. And of course that rode up my ass a bit. I know Jakey getting beaten to death was foreshadowed. It was just foreshadowed for TWO FUCKING HOURS IN A BORING BORING WAY.
But more seriously, there's probably a million people out there who think they've made some earth-shattering discovery with this movie about the existence of Gay Romantic Storylines, and I think it's better I just don't talk to those people anymore . . . they make me angry the same way east coast Americans do after they read their first Noam Chomsky essay and start lecturing everybody about how Israel has to get out of Palestine. Watch Lilies and get back to me, bitch . . . or not.
Man, I'm so CRANKY. I think I'm still bilious.
Eesh, that was a beast of an Annie Proulx of a question.
Speaking of which, last night I had my first Brokeback Mountain fight. There's a spoiler here, if you care . . . I've had discussions about the movie already with people who loooooved it, but I've been such a fucking cranky beast lately that people haven't been fighting with me. This man, however, seemed to think I was flirting with him or something, and rose to the occasion, as they do.
Sir, if I was flirting with you, you'd know.
It comes to this: with children starving across Eastern Africa, there is no way you can justify that movie being SO FUCKING LONG. I don't have a natural inclination against long movies. I can watch a Das Boot/Apocalypse Now Redux double bill two or three times in a single day with a great deal of pleasure, given enough marijuana. Because they have characters and stories and situations that need more than two hours to be expounded. The in-and-out of closet adventures of a repressed shepherd and his unrepressed boyfriend probably needed about 45 minutes to get the admittedly effecting and cathartic emotional message across. Beauty shots of mountains? Please. That's why I watched Grizzly Man.
If I sound angry, it's because I am; Last Night Boy accused me of discomfort with the idea of a gay romantic storyline at one point; at another, of being insensitive to foreshadowing after I complained about sitting there for two hours just to see Jakey get beaten to death. And of course that rode up my ass a bit. I know Jakey getting beaten to death was foreshadowed. It was just foreshadowed for TWO FUCKING HOURS IN A BORING BORING WAY.
But more seriously, there's probably a million people out there who think they've made some earth-shattering discovery with this movie about the existence of Gay Romantic Storylines, and I think it's better I just don't talk to those people anymore . . . they make me angry the same way east coast Americans do after they read their first Noam Chomsky essay and start lecturing everybody about how Israel has to get out of Palestine. Watch Lilies and get back to me, bitch . . . or not.
Man, I'm so CRANKY. I think I'm still bilious.
martedì, marzo 21, 2006
The only boy who could ever reach me
So yesterday the Globe and Mail made allusion to the 1996 Brit Awards, when Jarvis Cocker rushed the stage and danced his way into my heart during one of Michael Jackson's Messianic travesties. Siiiiiigh . . . which has got two things on my mind: first, why the Globe claims Jarvis Cocker briefly kidnapped one of the performers (a claim that could be why the article isn't available electronically, seems a very naughty thing to write to me - I don't think even Camp Michael ever claimed one of the performers was abducted. Naughty!); second, what the best song EVER is.
Because 'The Love You Save' from the Jackson Five is almost the best song EVER, but Germaine's backing vocals sound bored and uninvolved until about halfway through. Not to mention, there's a certain creepiness factor in little Michael Jackson singing with so much raw passion when his nuts probably hadn't descended yet.
Then there's 'Jolene' from Dolly Parton; again, perfect for what it is outside of the backing vocals, which sound like a chorus of squirrels. Fucking country music. . . then Johnny Cash's cover of U2's 'One', which is probably only hurt by the fact that it's hard to not remember Bono Vox's original yodelling when it's on. I'd throw in 'Lovely Day' from Bill Withers too . . . but with that last one I start wondering if that's a little subjective, because that song makes me feel so good personally, like being woken up by someone adorable nuzzling your legs.
Opera standards I'm not including since way too much depends on the plethora of performers who tackle them - the most beautiful thing I've ever heard was Danielle de Niese singing 'Se'l mio duol non e si forte' from Rodelinda, but there's no way I think that's the best opera standard ever. Ya know? Ya know.
So a song whose sheer fucking perfection surpasses all others could well be 'Papa was a Rolling Stone'. I mean, there's absolutely nothing in that song which isn't perfect. Very hard to put it on and not listen to the whole thing raptly, while thinking something along the lines of 'Holy shit!'
Other candidates?
Yes, I'm having a hard time concentrating at work. Good guess.
Because 'The Love You Save' from the Jackson Five is almost the best song EVER, but Germaine's backing vocals sound bored and uninvolved until about halfway through. Not to mention, there's a certain creepiness factor in little Michael Jackson singing with so much raw passion when his nuts probably hadn't descended yet.
Then there's 'Jolene' from Dolly Parton; again, perfect for what it is outside of the backing vocals, which sound like a chorus of squirrels. Fucking country music. . . then Johnny Cash's cover of U2's 'One', which is probably only hurt by the fact that it's hard to not remember Bono Vox's original yodelling when it's on. I'd throw in 'Lovely Day' from Bill Withers too . . . but with that last one I start wondering if that's a little subjective, because that song makes me feel so good personally, like being woken up by someone adorable nuzzling your legs.
Opera standards I'm not including since way too much depends on the plethora of performers who tackle them - the most beautiful thing I've ever heard was Danielle de Niese singing 'Se'l mio duol non e si forte' from Rodelinda, but there's no way I think that's the best opera standard ever. Ya know? Ya know.
So a song whose sheer fucking perfection surpasses all others could well be 'Papa was a Rolling Stone'. I mean, there's absolutely nothing in that song which isn't perfect. Very hard to put it on and not listen to the whole thing raptly, while thinking something along the lines of 'Holy shit!'
Other candidates?
Yes, I'm having a hard time concentrating at work. Good guess.
lunedì, marzo 20, 2006
The way to a woman's heart
This super-people-oriented weekend was vividly bittersweet, as it was the first free of the thesis but the last free one for awhile - the next one is the family (but I'm still up for disco Saturday, Lady), and then a series of three weekend trips for more family and wedding showers. I have Orfeo tickets for Easter weekend - not sure Gigi will be able to make that; will you, Cali? I'm thinking that makes for a good excuse for staying in Toronto and relaxing for four days together, then celebrating Jesus's resurrection in Northern Ontario the next weekend when the chocolate goes on sale.
By relaxing I mean, of course, smoking reefer and cooking. (Although weighing instant pain against possible pain, I've switched to butter which has made my habit much more portable. . . 'It's just fortified, Daddy.') Yesterday Luke Duke and I went to Little India; I found a curry paste which has stolen my heart - Hanif's Green Masala. Before tumbling into dreamland last night I put together a dish with the pollock and vegetables I had sitting around, and it makes me want to come. I actually want to go to work just so I can wait for lunch and eat this bit of coriander-drenched paradise.
What I need, however, is some time - at least a free evening - to Spliffify the Cornish pasty. I can't really complain about Cornish pasties, they can be beautiful things, but I feel an urgent need to add to the canon. The prospect of a free evening, however, is a distant one - like next Sunday. Work's for the birds . . . for the birds, man . . . why do I work?
By relaxing I mean, of course, smoking reefer and cooking. (Although weighing instant pain against possible pain, I've switched to butter which has made my habit much more portable. . . 'It's just fortified, Daddy.') Yesterday Luke Duke and I went to Little India; I found a curry paste which has stolen my heart - Hanif's Green Masala. Before tumbling into dreamland last night I put together a dish with the pollock and vegetables I had sitting around, and it makes me want to come. I actually want to go to work just so I can wait for lunch and eat this bit of coriander-drenched paradise.
What I need, however, is some time - at least a free evening - to Spliffify the Cornish pasty. I can't really complain about Cornish pasties, they can be beautiful things, but I feel an urgent need to add to the canon. The prospect of a free evening, however, is a distant one - like next Sunday. Work's for the birds . . . for the birds, man . . . why do I work?
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