I’m thinking I might like to be a Freemason. Can anybody help me set that up? It’s not just about the symbols and handshakes. I believe in a Supreme Being and doing nice things in the name of nice friendly rationalism, and the Magic Flute rocks.
Yesterday I tried to figure out a retirement plan that would see me out comfortably until the age of 100, pffffffting as I did so. My family has lots of old people and there's been a couple of centegenarians, and I know medical science has advanced horribly and all, nonetheless I find it hard to believe I wouldn't die before that. I like naughty things too much. But just in case, I want the heroin to last right until the end.
You reckon it was hard for Bach to die? I bet it wasn't. It’s hard for me to listen to his music without thinking he had some sort of intimate sympathy with God’s will. More so than most people who write lovely music, even music I prefer. It’s like Bach just knew how the universe worked and was either able to explain it beautifully or else explained it because it was beautiful. Either way, I bet he had a nice attitude to all the things we don't know about and wasn't such a scaredy-cat.
sabato, maggio 20, 2006
venerdì, maggio 19, 2006
Mmmmmm naked
I watched The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie yesterday as part of an ongoing book-and-film binge good bye to Muriel Spark, and as part of an ongoing effort to eat less reefer (it didn't seem like a very reefer-y movie), because even though it's so delicious I've been struck with a sudden paranoia my rates of consumption will make my babies have tails or be stupid.
It's weird to see beautiful naked people from the 60's. It's wierd enough to see beautiful people from the 60's on-screen when you know what they look like now - especially Jane Russell, I mean, that woman was HAWT, uber-hot, jaw-dropping hot (here's a bathtub picture because I'm so nice), and now she shows up on Italian television talkshows still looking remarkably good for her age, but - fack - I suppose when someone is as hot as Jane Russell I expect them to be a more than human, for that quantity of beauty to not be transient. There's something quite ass-backward about existence, but oh well.
Anyways, it's weird for me to see beautiful naked people from the 60's on-screen, as Pamela Franklin was in The PFMJB, and that must have been what sparked the dream I had that night about being one of Miss Brodie's students and attending a presentation/rally she'd organized in Edinburgh of the 1930's of Italian fascisti. Somehow there had been some misunderstanding and instead of the fascisti, a bunch of Australian Chippendales showed up and did their thing. Miss Brodie was perturbed but all of us thought it was pretty funny. It's nice to know my unconscious has a grasp of none-too-subtle literary subtleties.
It's weird to see beautiful naked people from the 60's. It's wierd enough to see beautiful people from the 60's on-screen when you know what they look like now - especially Jane Russell, I mean, that woman was HAWT, uber-hot, jaw-dropping hot (here's a bathtub picture because I'm so nice), and now she shows up on Italian television talkshows still looking remarkably good for her age, but - fack - I suppose when someone is as hot as Jane Russell I expect them to be a more than human, for that quantity of beauty to not be transient. There's something quite ass-backward about existence, but oh well.
Anyways, it's weird for me to see beautiful naked people from the 60's on-screen, as Pamela Franklin was in The PFMJB, and that must have been what sparked the dream I had that night about being one of Miss Brodie's students and attending a presentation/rally she'd organized in Edinburgh of the 1930's of Italian fascisti. Somehow there had been some misunderstanding and instead of the fascisti, a bunch of Australian Chippendales showed up and did their thing. Miss Brodie was perturbed but all of us thought it was pretty funny. It's nice to know my unconscious has a grasp of none-too-subtle literary subtleties.
giovedì, maggio 18, 2006
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today is a proud, proud day.
First of all, I published a 400 circulation newsletter (almost) all by myself.
Second, I had a phone conversation with my sweetheart wherein I wanted to mention a clitoris, but was in the middle of my open plan office, and so got the point across instantly by using Toys'r'us as a euphemism.
Third, Google the phrase "She was such a fine cocksucker" and see where it takes you. Thank you, Statcounter.
First of all, I published a 400 circulation newsletter (almost) all by myself.
Second, I had a phone conversation with my sweetheart wherein I wanted to mention a clitoris, but was in the middle of my open plan office, and so got the point across instantly by using Toys'r'us as a euphemism.
Third, Google the phrase "She was such a fine cocksucker" and see where it takes you. Thank you, Statcounter.
More cookies
I'm trying to create (normal) vegan cookies for Gigi, which is going so-so. I eliminated milk from my recipes awhile ago, just because sometimes I can't be arsed to go out and buy milk, but I've been using an egg as a binder. Gigi suggested I use ground flax seeds instead, but I'd already been using flax in my normal cookie recipes because I'd discovered flax makes me higher faster when I add reefer. Which apparently EVERYBODY KNEW BUT ME, including J*Fish's girlf, who doesn't even like reefer.
Oh well, I love the thrill of discovery.
Anyways, experimentation made me realize I can probably use a puréed banana as a substitute for the egg, but this morning I only had one banana in the house and I needed to eat it instead of put it into the cookies for Gigi, because that's the kind of woman I am. So I used puréed rhubarb instead. As a substitute choice, that was completely arbitrary, except my mum makes a wicked rhubarb upside-down cake so I know it can be yummy. I'm going to see how they turned out now . . .
OH MY FUCK, it's fucking delicious. Ha! I'm shocked in an "I-knew-it" sort of way. And the fibre from the rhubarb makes it look like the cookie has little hairs after you take a bite, which is gross in a purposefully-gross-11-year-old's-Halloween-party kinda way. On it goes. The thrill of discovery once more, this time thanks to the fact one's friend has made the decision to stop eating anything that comes from something with a nervous system. Necessity is a motherfucker.
I admire Gigi for his decision to stop eating things with a - a face, let's say (because I bet he'd eat a Venus Flytrap if they tasted good, and those have something like a nervous system, right? Fuck, I'm ignorant.) Gigi and I used to binge on cheese and patés and what have you, so I'm sad I'm missing one of my animal-products binging partners, but, you know, good for him. I don't think I could ever do it, mostly because I don't think I would ever want to do it. Figaro claims he's vegetarian, but he's the sort of vegetarian who'll eat fish whenever and will order a big, juicy blue steak in a restaurant with a reputation for good, big, juicy blue steaks, which might not be the best kind of vegetarian, but is certainly my kind of vegetarian.
Oh well, I love the thrill of discovery.
Anyways, experimentation made me realize I can probably use a puréed banana as a substitute for the egg, but this morning I only had one banana in the house and I needed to eat it instead of put it into the cookies for Gigi, because that's the kind of woman I am. So I used puréed rhubarb instead. As a substitute choice, that was completely arbitrary, except my mum makes a wicked rhubarb upside-down cake so I know it can be yummy. I'm going to see how they turned out now . . .
OH MY FUCK, it's fucking delicious. Ha! I'm shocked in an "I-knew-it" sort of way. And the fibre from the rhubarb makes it look like the cookie has little hairs after you take a bite, which is gross in a purposefully-gross-11-year-old's-Halloween-party kinda way. On it goes. The thrill of discovery once more, this time thanks to the fact one's friend has made the decision to stop eating anything that comes from something with a nervous system. Necessity is a motherfucker.
I admire Gigi for his decision to stop eating things with a - a face, let's say (because I bet he'd eat a Venus Flytrap if they tasted good, and those have something like a nervous system, right? Fuck, I'm ignorant.) Gigi and I used to binge on cheese and patés and what have you, so I'm sad I'm missing one of my animal-products binging partners, but, you know, good for him. I don't think I could ever do it, mostly because I don't think I would ever want to do it. Figaro claims he's vegetarian, but he's the sort of vegetarian who'll eat fish whenever and will order a big, juicy blue steak in a restaurant with a reputation for good, big, juicy blue steaks, which might not be the best kind of vegetarian, but is certainly my kind of vegetarian.
mercoledì, maggio 17, 2006
Aaaaaaaaahhh . . .
ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa! It's a Gherkin! Foster's Gherkin! Foster's shiny Gherkin! Oh Jesus, this day has just got a whole lot brighter. MY GOD, THERE'S A GIANT SHINY GHERKIN ON THE STREETS OF LONDON!
(falls off chair and promises self to never eat magic cookies before work again)
(falls off chair and promises self to never eat magic cookies before work again)
A few points of business (one egregiously and personally bitter*):
1. Yesterday I had to pay two dollars for a pound of rhubarb at a farmer's market. This is bullshit. Rhubarb is a weed; organic or not, it's worth its weight in piss, no more. That sort of egregious overcharging is what's letting supermarket chains take over the organics market. Remember, it's not just what the market will bear; it's what the market thinks isn't fucking pseudo-hippie bullshit.
2. There is a cost-benefit analysis involved in the choice between friendship or walking away at the end of an affair. The friendship of ex . . . uhm . . . whatevers can be beautiful, but walking away lets a person deal with any issues arising from the affair alone. Choosing friendship means dealing with these issues together, which may well be impossible unless friendship was the strongest feeling throughout the affair. Because the end an affair, however inevitable, is a disappointing admission that a special brand of intimacy won’t happen in the case, and it takes understanding and respect for people to help each other get beyond that that.
Sometimes it’s MANIFEST that it’s not worth dealing with that disappointment à deux. For example: people who fuck through their inability to understand or respect each other. When the fucking ends, they must face the fact that the other person is a tedious choice to spend time with compared to all the other people available. That realization may be a reason one realizes the above-mentioned special brand of intimacy isn’t worth it and ends the affair. In such a case, the other person may feel shame - not only over repeated coitus and the hope for a special brand of intimacy with someone they can’t understand or respect, but also over rejection by someone they thought they were slumming with, and shame over the ignobility of thoughts about ‘slumming’ . . . eesh. Issues best dealt with alone, in short, or possibly with a Jungian analyst.
So one runs a cost/benefit analysis:
Cost: Accepting disappointment attendant on seeing putative friend without fucking/wanting to fuck them - and leave us not forget explaining the ongoing presence of putative friend who has made you come to one's present lover
Benefit: The continued presence of putative friend’s good qualities in one’s life - conversation, cooking, grossly intimate/hilarious flirtation, et cetera
Analysis: If you’re a twitchy prat who bored me when we weren’t fucking and then rejected me, we won't be friends no matter how much I get over it or how many times you request me to get over it. It isn’t rocket science, so please leave me be. It's been more than a year now that I've been acting as politely as possible like you should fuck off and die, and now you've made me be rude on a semi-public forum. Kudos.
3. Advertising is fucked and soul-destroying - here's interesting evidence to that effect - and writing about it pays shit. I need a new job that pays much, much better. If anyone knows of one - anywhere, especially somewhere my sweetheart and I are both legally entitled to live, tell me, like, yesterday, please.
* The rhubarb, obviously.
2. There is a cost-benefit analysis involved in the choice between friendship or walking away at the end of an affair. The friendship of ex . . . uhm . . . whatevers can be beautiful, but walking away lets a person deal with any issues arising from the affair alone. Choosing friendship means dealing with these issues together, which may well be impossible unless friendship was the strongest feeling throughout the affair. Because the end an affair, however inevitable, is a disappointing admission that a special brand of intimacy won’t happen in the case, and it takes understanding and respect for people to help each other get beyond that that.
Sometimes it’s MANIFEST that it’s not worth dealing with that disappointment à deux. For example: people who fuck through their inability to understand or respect each other. When the fucking ends, they must face the fact that the other person is a tedious choice to spend time with compared to all the other people available. That realization may be a reason one realizes the above-mentioned special brand of intimacy isn’t worth it and ends the affair. In such a case, the other person may feel shame - not only over repeated coitus and the hope for a special brand of intimacy with someone they can’t understand or respect, but also over rejection by someone they thought they were slumming with, and shame over the ignobility of thoughts about ‘slumming’ . . . eesh. Issues best dealt with alone, in short, or possibly with a Jungian analyst.
So one runs a cost/benefit analysis:
Cost: Accepting disappointment attendant on seeing putative friend without fucking/wanting to fuck them - and leave us not forget explaining the ongoing presence of putative friend who has made you come to one's present lover
Benefit: The continued presence of putative friend’s good qualities in one’s life - conversation, cooking, grossly intimate/hilarious flirtation, et cetera
Analysis: If you’re a twitchy prat who bored me when we weren’t fucking and then rejected me, we won't be friends no matter how much I get over it or how many times you request me to get over it. It isn’t rocket science, so please leave me be. It's been more than a year now that I've been acting as politely as possible like you should fuck off and die, and now you've made me be rude on a semi-public forum. Kudos.
3. Advertising is fucked and soul-destroying - here's interesting evidence to that effect - and writing about it pays shit. I need a new job that pays much, much better. If anyone knows of one - anywhere, especially somewhere my sweetheart and I are both legally entitled to live, tell me, like, yesterday, please.
* The rhubarb, obviously.
martedì, maggio 16, 2006
Life without napping
My family likes drinking and napping. Me, I like drinking but I’m not so hot at the napping. I’d love to be – the ability to catnip is an indicator of personal greatness – but I’m not. Anyways, this past weekend, spent almost exclusively with my family, meant I was at loose ends while people took their nap shifts. So outside of food preparation (I reccommend everyone use more coriander in garden salads, ça marche super-bien!), I managed to read In Evil Hour, which I think is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s first novel.
It’s been two or three years since the last time I re-read the sheer fucking treat for the inward eye, ear, nose and mouth that is One Hundred Years of Solitude, which In Evil Hour seems to prelude into a bit – it mentions the town of Macondo a few times, as well as the gypsy whose name starts with M that I’ve forgotten already. But I do know In Evil Hour has a different feel altogether. OHYOS is hardly feel-good, but it doesn’t have the same vein of edgy creepiness that runs through In Evil Hour where just enough about the town it’s set in is left undefined – juuuust enough – that it almost makes one nauseous.
As I was reading it, a niece who was being bored shitless by her stupid homework asked me what I was reading. I told her, and when she crinkled her wee brows over the author's name, pointed out that it was a Latin American book, to which she asked if Latin American books were different from English books, which is just such a great question. It’s an obvious yes, but so yummy to think about why and how. I’ve only read a handful of Latin American authors – just Paolo Coelho, and then from him only The Alchemist (I know you’re a fan, Lady, I should borrow some), Isabel Allende (who was buggered for me so bad by all the film adaptations that I stopped after The Infinite Plan - I should start again now that all the new films coming out are based on true stories and older films), Laura Esquivel (and by the end of Like Water for Chocolate, I’d had enough for a little while) and – oh man – you know, that’s it, besides all the Gabriel Garcia Marquez I could lay my hands on. So I suppose this is a call for recommendations.
Anyways, people used the term magic realism once upon a time to describe authors like the above – I’m not sure that terms gets across what I get from them, but I’m not sure I can think of an alternative. The way detail is laid out in their books seems, at first, so fucky to someone with a reading background like mine, but then after ten pages it makes perfect sense and any other way seems cumbersome. If you think about, say, the way Fermina in Love in the Time of Cholera flip-flopped over how she felt about eggplant, it tells you more about her calm marriage than Ellen’s descriptive passages in Wuthering Heights about Catherine Earnshaw’s calm marriage to Edgar. Not to say I don’t love Wuthering Heights, but jumping straight from LINTOC to Wuthering Heights might hurt it for me and I don't think the reverse is true.
Long story short, the Latin American lit I’ve read is so yummy it makes me want to learn Portugese and move to Brazil with Lady. I brought up Brazil with Figaro a couple of days ago. He started laughing, but in an “I’m thinking about it” kind of way.
It’s been two or three years since the last time I re-read the sheer fucking treat for the inward eye, ear, nose and mouth that is One Hundred Years of Solitude, which In Evil Hour seems to prelude into a bit – it mentions the town of Macondo a few times, as well as the gypsy whose name starts with M that I’ve forgotten already. But I do know In Evil Hour has a different feel altogether. OHYOS is hardly feel-good, but it doesn’t have the same vein of edgy creepiness that runs through In Evil Hour where just enough about the town it’s set in is left undefined – juuuust enough – that it almost makes one nauseous.
As I was reading it, a niece who was being bored shitless by her stupid homework asked me what I was reading. I told her, and when she crinkled her wee brows over the author's name, pointed out that it was a Latin American book, to which she asked if Latin American books were different from English books, which is just such a great question. It’s an obvious yes, but so yummy to think about why and how. I’ve only read a handful of Latin American authors – just Paolo Coelho, and then from him only The Alchemist (I know you’re a fan, Lady, I should borrow some), Isabel Allende (who was buggered for me so bad by all the film adaptations that I stopped after The Infinite Plan - I should start again now that all the new films coming out are based on true stories and older films), Laura Esquivel (and by the end of Like Water for Chocolate, I’d had enough for a little while) and – oh man – you know, that’s it, besides all the Gabriel Garcia Marquez I could lay my hands on. So I suppose this is a call for recommendations.
Anyways, people used the term magic realism once upon a time to describe authors like the above – I’m not sure that terms gets across what I get from them, but I’m not sure I can think of an alternative. The way detail is laid out in their books seems, at first, so fucky to someone with a reading background like mine, but then after ten pages it makes perfect sense and any other way seems cumbersome. If you think about, say, the way Fermina in Love in the Time of Cholera flip-flopped over how she felt about eggplant, it tells you more about her calm marriage than Ellen’s descriptive passages in Wuthering Heights about Catherine Earnshaw’s calm marriage to Edgar. Not to say I don’t love Wuthering Heights, but jumping straight from LINTOC to Wuthering Heights might hurt it for me and I don't think the reverse is true.
Long story short, the Latin American lit I’ve read is so yummy it makes me want to learn Portugese and move to Brazil with Lady. I brought up Brazil with Figaro a couple of days ago. He started laughing, but in an “I’m thinking about it” kind of way.
lunedì, maggio 15, 2006
Good morning little sunbeams
On Saturday night, to initiate Mother's Day celebrations, I took my mum and dad to Roy Thomson Hall to see a casual TSO performance, which means the orchestra was dressed in white and blue shirts and khaki pants instead of black. That gave me a moment of pause, wondering about when orchestras started wearing black. Do you fancy it was from when they were all in a pit during ballets and rubbish and didn't want anybody to see them? Or even when they're on stage they don't want you to notice them and just pay attention to the music? Or possibly to the soloists' very attractive dresses? I don't know.
Anyways, we missed the first two things, which was a bitch, because my mum is a violist and there was Teng Li doing some crazy beautiful Mozart sinfonia, which we only sort of heard while we waited for applause from the vestibule so we could get our seats. But we did hear - from spectacular seats in the first balcony, which is lovely in lovely Roy Thomson Hall - Haydn's 100th Symphony and the overture to the Thieving Magpie from Rossini. I've never jizzed my pants over Haydn but I was so impressed by all the percussion in the 100th on Saturday. It was pretty hot. So funny now with a modern ear to hear percussion not as a throbbing underlying beat but as a melodic section that can turn into and out of something throbbing and underlying - honestly, it was hot. Not hot like "good", but hot like "Haydn must have been a beast in the sack."
As for Rossini - I have jizzed my pants over Rossini. Love him - he and mushrooms made me love opera, but I bet he could have done it alone, which is something because my other druggy musical fondnesses like speed and jungle or reefer and Captain Beefheart really need the drugs. Anyways, I've resigned myself to maudlin tears at most operatic performances, drugged or not, because my brain doesn't know what to do with that much beauty, but I don't cry at symphonies. Just sort of bop my head and quash the urge to "dum-dum-dum-dum" along. But mum was a veritable fountain of tears. That woman - when she goes to see nice symphonies, which tend to be more economical than operas, it must be like being on mushrooms. Lucky. Anyhoo, it was worth crying over - a really tight, almost tense performance of the overture - way better than any recording I've ever heard of it. And once more, HOT percussion.
Yaaaaay.
Fucking hell, another work week.
Anyways, we missed the first two things, which was a bitch, because my mum is a violist and there was Teng Li doing some crazy beautiful Mozart sinfonia, which we only sort of heard while we waited for applause from the vestibule so we could get our seats. But we did hear - from spectacular seats in the first balcony, which is lovely in lovely Roy Thomson Hall - Haydn's 100th Symphony and the overture to the Thieving Magpie from Rossini. I've never jizzed my pants over Haydn but I was so impressed by all the percussion in the 100th on Saturday. It was pretty hot. So funny now with a modern ear to hear percussion not as a throbbing underlying beat but as a melodic section that can turn into and out of something throbbing and underlying - honestly, it was hot. Not hot like "good", but hot like "Haydn must have been a beast in the sack."
As for Rossini - I have jizzed my pants over Rossini. Love him - he and mushrooms made me love opera, but I bet he could have done it alone, which is something because my other druggy musical fondnesses like speed and jungle or reefer and Captain Beefheart really need the drugs. Anyways, I've resigned myself to maudlin tears at most operatic performances, drugged or not, because my brain doesn't know what to do with that much beauty, but I don't cry at symphonies. Just sort of bop my head and quash the urge to "dum-dum-dum-dum" along. But mum was a veritable fountain of tears. That woman - when she goes to see nice symphonies, which tend to be more economical than operas, it must be like being on mushrooms. Lucky. Anyhoo, it was worth crying over - a really tight, almost tense performance of the overture - way better than any recording I've ever heard of it. And once more, HOT percussion.
Yaaaaay.
Fucking hell, another work week.
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