Perdido en el corazón de la grande Babylon

Still full of unwholesome illness, but fever broken, Wilco song offically out of head, and there’s an apparent willingness on the part of a certain organization to hire Figaro illegally if all else fails. So good. Also Magnum is making an impromptu visit to the city so that will be nice as my head seems to have stopped aching and he has a booming type voice – carrying, you know, a good voice, but not the right one for an aching head. No way I’m making it to Footwork tonight. Many things I feel like doing, but dancing, sweating, drinking, or substance abusing are not among them. I think Magnum, Luke Duke, the policewoman and I will go to my favourite Jap place in Yorkville where I can try to bomb the mucus out of my head with spoonfuls of wasabi.

I watched Maria Full of Grace last night, which was a nice thing to watch. I have never seen such a good ad for illegal immigration. Illegal immigration doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me, which I may be saying in part because of my personal situation, but people who don't argue from their personal situations are liars. Illegal immigration seems symptomatic of a free market, and while some may argue that there’s a substantive moral difference between the free circulation of goods and the free circulation of human beings, I agree only insofar as the human beings need more medical and educational attention than the goods. It’s rather ridiculous and illiberal (in the real, not the dumbfuck propagandized American sense of the word) to expect one without the other.

I'll sleep right here on the draining board

So I watched the rest of Deadwood and it went crappy and predictable, thank GOD. Ian McShane’s character, Swerengen, turned downright nice, AND grew a mullet. The way he spoke to his subordinates – caustically, instead of with a boot on their throats like in the first season – made me feel like he was about to start appraising antiques and seducing Lady Jane. As for the rest, baaaaaaah. Fuck the third season. My life is once more my own.

I came to work today. It was a mistake, I feel even awfuller, and I need to recoup my energy to go to the night Lady is hosting at Footwork. I think I’ll go home later and keep looking for foreign paycheques. In something of a pisser because the school that was going to interview Figaro has put it off until such a time as discussing his situation with their immigration lawyer, which to me sounds like a brush-off. Bitches.

Something inside starts burning and my heart's filled with fire

Are there words to describe the existential slap in the face that is one’s doctor fishing around up one's snatch while one discusses one's professional details and eventual plans to breed? I don’t find pap smears particularly uncomfortable – just a bizarre reminder of the parts we humans choose to play in a ridiculous and chaotic universe.

The heat wave is over – outside feels reasonable – but my temperature is becoming more profound. I can tell this because I, who never gets songs stuck in her head, has that goddamn Wilco single is stuck in my head, where it’s been intermittently for more than 48 hours. I don’t have a problem with Wilco, in fact I’m looking forward to seeing them at Bluesfest in July, but by the kazillionth time you hear “I’m the man who loves you” and that fucking fake brass line, it sounds flat, sarcastic and emasculated to the degree that you could throttle.

I’m taking advantage of my indisposition to watch the rest of Deadwood. By the time you hear from me again, I will be a free woman. Much like Alma Garrett managed to shake off her laudanum addiction in one episode, I will detoxify myself of this obsession in one sickday.

Who ever thought a little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?

Argh. A heatwave. May. Toronto. Hey, everybody, how about 2006 is the year we admit the environment is completely fucked up? Because this is some fucked up shit. My brain is turning into mush, threatening to erupt out the ears and eyes, and my body just wants to lie still. I'm considering grabbing a kife and sawing off all my hair to get some relief. This better be the flu and not an inability to adapt to stinking hot weather, because, as pointed out, IT'S STILL GODDAMN MAY.

Toronto is gross. Last summer I didn't notice, probably because I was smoking yummy cigarettes which disabled my body's stupid defensive reactions to noxious environmental conditions that its stupid defensive reactions can't do anything about. Fucking – awesome – cigarettes. Why do they make me puke now? WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME??? Anyways, now that I'm living all clean and shit, the environmental pollution is rubbing down my throat like a cheese grater. It's ugly, too. The sunny sky is sepia. Maybe when I run away with Figaro we can live close to the sea, or somewhere windy, where the air doesn't turn into a thick gooey stew as it stagnates over a big fucking standing noisesome puddle elevn million people dump their poo into.

What the fuck are we doing to our planet anyways? Canada is supposed to be clean - what the hell is Mexico City like? Why do people still have cars? How the fuck did I survive in Paris? Oh, never mind that last question – I survived in Paris by floating around in the grip of a nauseous ennui, wishing I was dead and hence not noticing the discomforts of living in a rathole. Fucking Paris. Why are the beautiful ones always crazy? And I suppose it's worse here than most of Canada because we're in the lower Great Lakes region and get all the industrialized farting of our country and much of the United States pooling over the afore-mentioned poo-filled puddle. Still - 2006 - let this be remembered as the year we stop fucking pretending everything is alright, okay?

In other, fucking splendid news, Figaro has an interview for a school here on Friday. I'm pink with pleasurable tickles – it's a good school and I don't want him to have to wait tables while he waits for me to get a job that pays real money so we can run away together. Mostly I'm just pleased stupid he got an interview so fast – I was afraid over the permit issue but hadn't factored in that his qualifications are insane. Besides, if that man can handle my booty, he can handle the world. And he handles. He can practically juggle that jelly. In a sense it's good he's not here right now though. I'm so fucking hot, if anyone touched my skin I think I'd scream.

I don't think this is normal - I think I'm actually ill. Oh well, I'll show up to work anyways and if the air-conditioning doesn't make me feel better I'll come back here and try to get through the goddamn second season of goddamn Deadwood. Luckily the first two episodes of the second season seem to be quite shitty, noticeably more shitty than the first season. With luck, it'll keep being shitty and I won't have to watch the third season - I have no hope of it being so shitty I don't have to watch the rest of the second.Ah cahn't miss a minute of mah story. Fucking soap opera shit.

I'm TV's bitch

Fucking Deadwood. Last night I finished the first season. THERE’S ANOTHER FUCKING SEASON OUT AT THE VIDEO STORE. Fuck economic models. I gave up television because I spent too much time watching it, and now I have to watch another fucking twelve hours of it. And then I’ll be waiting for Season Three, and I think there’ll be a fourth too. Bloody soap opera crap. Why did I ever start? Will Trixie nail the Jewish merchant again? How is Bollock’s wife going to react to his obvious love for Alma? Whatever shall the Pinkertons do, and what’s going to happen with the Chinese, Cy Tolliver, and Swerengen? And I refuse to spoil it for myself by looking at what happened to the actual historical figures, but I'm so, so fucking curious.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

Possibly because it’s having to compete with Deadwood, I’m not really enjoying the Great Transformation. Reading it sends me into the profoundest slumber. Also, I have some actual background in the bits of the birth of Greek rationalism, or whatever she’s calling it, that she covers, and considering the selectivity and hints of bullshit she takes with her academic sources – more than can really be condoned, even in a survey – it makes me distrust her when the conversation turns to things I know nothing about, like the Chinese, Indian, and Israelite histories.

Secret Shame

For all my self-righteous talk about having given up television, I've been renting HBO's Deadwood. In fact, over the past long weekend I've squandered six hours of precious not-work time watching it. And I believe squander is, indeed, the verb I want, though HBO has an economic model which is more acceptable to me than normal North American television and though the only product placement I've seen so far - it being set in the late 19th century - was for Bird's Custard, which is yums.

See, I'm not sure it's good. Seems kind of predictable, a little formulaic - just an HBO embroidery on a typical dramatic formula, which means overlying titties, horrific violence, and naughty language on relatively simple storylines. Of course, like most people I like seeing titties, horrific violence, and naughty language over simple storylines. But we're not talking the Sopranos Paint Their Wagons here. More Dr. Quinn: Medicine Bitch Who'll Cut Your Eyes Out, Cunt.

But I can't stop watching - I know already I'll rent and watch the whole thing. The acting is quite nice, with Ian McShane - formerly the man who made my mum's heart beat a little faster as Lovejoy - playing the completely stereotypical "devil you know" likeable villain, and a taut little piece called Timothy Olyphant rocking a moustache as well as Tom Selleck as the heroic lead. And even if the acting was utter crap, I'd probably still watch the whole thing because I've got a thing about westerns, and this one is ever so slightly based on actual events. Westerns. Imagine having that history of invasion, dehumanization, and genocide not only integrated into your popular culture, but celebrated in your popular culture. No wonder Americans take so many drugs.

The Red Dragon fucks the po-lice and the hippies

Yesterday, in a case of mistaken identity/address, the po-po broke into my building so the bloody front door was lockless right below my beautiful, helpless hanging city-bike and left my neighbour’s apartment open to the fucking breezes of our ghetto-ass fucking neighborhood. Didn’t leave even fucking crime-scene tape, let alone one of their sorry-ass selves to explain what had happened; I came home from a nice walk-off-the-drunk constitutional to the scene, flipped, called the police, my neighbour came home, she flipped, the police kept not getting there (for five fucking hours), and then when they did the (admittedly taut little package of a) cop who showed up said on his way to the apartment – like, ten minutes before he got there – he’d been radioed with the situation. Pig sisterfucking Judas, I lived in France for three goddamn years without witnessing such sickening institutional incompetence. Then they got the balls to wonder why everyone fucking hates them. Fucknards. So my landlord had to call someone to put in a new front door lock and I missed the first half-hour of a friend’s social activist choir performance while I waited for a key. Motherfucking motherfuckers.

Not that it mattered. A long time ago – it may have been from not being to figure out Rwanda, so we’re talking like 12 years – I think it came clear to me that sometimes you can’t give peace a chance; and though war is the worst possible necessity to arise out of any diplomatic situation, sometimes it is indeed a necessity; that as much as I wanted to look like John Lennon back then real pacifism would be dependant on everyone in the world saying “okay . . . let’s have peace . . . nnnnnnnnnnnnow!” at the same time.

When it comes to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, my only qualms are that it didn’t happen years ago when the West realized the consequences of having supported the Taliban against the Communists was the death of civil society and the social enslavement of what had been a class of functioning professional and educated women; that the forces there now are too few and badly equipped; and that apparently the American militarily is horribly trained to deal with anything. Attacking the abstract idea of having invaded Afghanistan won’t help any of those things. Has the anti-war crowd really thought this out? Or are they just looking for something to get riled about in Canada since we weren’t dumb enough to participate in the dismembering of Iraq? Of course the ideal would have been to travel back in time and respond in a more measured way to Russian aggression in Afghanistan. But until the anti-war movement comes up with a time machine, I wish they’d stop being such unhelpful bitches. They seem to be carrying over so many old tunes from Vietnam and never really answering the question of how it relates when you have a volunteer army . . . I don’t know . . . everyone pisses me off. Everyone.