Wherein I pretend to sometimes think about things I can't eat or fuck

Ahhh. Finally, after crap and worse crap, a documentary focusing on corporate wickedness I can sink my teeth into. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room backs up from its subject far enough and offers a facts-and-document based picture clear enough that I could sit there without thinking "this is Naomi Klein-esque bullshit that mixes up revolution, ethics and pop-counter-culture whining." Yeah - I still haven't got over The Corporation. Fuck, that was a shitty movie. An hour with Naomi Klein is about as appealing to me as an hour with Bill O'Reilly; I get the feeling they both spit when they talk. For anyone who's been over-exposed to Naomi Klein recently, try reading Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Won't be Jammed. Written by academics in philosophy therefore for therapeutic use only.

Anyways, Enron is really good. The makers let the actors involved do most of the talking, either in person or from records, and one of the makers, Bethany McLean, was actually an actor from her role as a critical Fortune magazine columnist. The bit about bleeding California dry during the rolling blackouts was especially interesting, with its relation to the fall of Gray Davis and the rise of - fuck - I forget how you spell his name. The Austrian movie star Republican. Make sure to watch the bonus material to get a clearer illustration of that.

While I'm on the subject of whatever I'm on the subject of - social criticism, I guess - yesterday while the doctor kept me waiting FOREVER I read Dark Age Ahead, by Jane Jacobs. It's not that great, which is a shame, because there really is a central argument to it someone needs to have made. Jacobs discusses five deteriorations she thought led to a culture's descent into a dark age (of family and community, of the relevance of education, of scientific practices, of responsible and transparent taxation and professional codes) by allowing a sort of mass amnesia; mass forgetfulness of how things ought to be, in a sense. That should have been really interesting.

The problem is she discusses them in such a meandering, querulous tone one can lose her gist for pages at a time. One is irresistibly reminded this is the work of a woman well into her eighties - kudos to her for that, but it ends up serving her ideas badly as her style no longer has the limpid clarity of, say, The Economy of Cities. Both books were written in a very non-academic tone, but while that resulted in a friendly accessibility in the The Economy of Cities it results in a overly-specific personal mess here. Dark Age Ahead is a good reminder of why staid, dry academic writing models are really not all that bad . . . the ideas end up getting short thrifted with something this personal, and the ideas here are good enough to deserve much better.

Hungover ranting

Good morning, my doves. I’m feeling so funky I don’t know what to do with myself. It will probably involve going to work, though. Before I do, I’d like to share a story I heard last night about the first time in eight years Mr. C was forced to say a pre-dinner grace (is there any other kind?) at the request of a client, whose family he was wining and dining. Rising to the occasion, Mr. C bowed his head and prayed,

“Lord, bless this food we are about to receive, and everybody have a nice day.”

Praise Him!

So they caught the pisseurs. Am I betraying a fatuous indulgence when I say the phrase ’23 year old man’ sounds completely oxymoronic? How many 23 year old men have you ever known? I’ve known none. Not one single goddamn 23 year old man. Any male creature I’ve known of that age could have a lot of nouns applied to him, but ‘man’ is not one of them. Well, there was one. But he was a civil war veteran from Lebanon so he was special. Also he was really hot so I might have been misled.

I’m not saying there shouldn’t be legal consequences for a retard who pisses on a war memorial or a tomb, of the Unknown Soldier or whoever else. Just that we’ve collectively allowed a society wherein little is asked of young men, so it’s unreasonable to only blame them when we start expecting something of them all of a sudden. I’m pretty sure 80% of my male acquaintance of any age would consider it fairly acceptable to piss where they stood if they were drunk enough, and 100% of my male acquaintance would have considered it a jolly lark to piss wherever they thought they shouldn’t when they were 23 if they’d drunk at all.

Too many video games and lousy media role models, that’s the problem. Too much Adam Sandler and not enough Tom Selleck. And women giving it up for men who don’t hold doors open for them. Ladies, can’t you tell he’s trying as hard as he fucking can to select himself out? You’re not going to turn around that wild horse! Nail someone more polite!

Sugar coated sweet thing

Of course I came back from North Bay loaded down with foodstuffs, and extra bulk around my always-slovenly midriff. I suppose most parents - those that aren't pushing thier daughters into anorexia - have some sort of instinctual compulsion to overfeed thier offspring. That's cute. The things I'm really excited about in terms of the food I've been loaded down with are all yummy yummy sugar substitutes. Starting with:

1. The fruits of a trip to Board's Honey Farm. Apiary is maybe my favourite word in the English language, besides "fuck", "goddamn", "twunt" and "bonobo". I know that it sounds all counter-intuitively like a place where you keep apes, which is probably what I like about it, but I wish they called themselves The Board Apiary instead. Anyways. They make fucking delicious honey. You can't see it on their product list, but one of them is a creamed raspberry honey which is just to fucking sit there and eat by the spoonful. I just got their clear, pale unpasteurized wildflower honey and then for the good of my health (hah!) some buckwheat honey.

I have a nice honey provider in Toronto too - John Alecu of Bees Universe, who sells a great product harvested from GTA conservation regions, which is awesome. Not to mention, he calls me "princess" whenever I buy his stuff, which is definitely my favourite familiar name. But the odds of me getting to the farmers market where he sells on a regular basis are poor at best.

Mmmm, I love honey. But not as much as I love

2. Maple syrup, from Dave Matthews' sugar bush. Doesn't that sound naughty? I have a fairly strong dislike for the music of the musician Dave Matthews, his voice sounding so very constipated to me, but the excellence of the wares out of a very different Dave Matthew's sugar bush rehabilitates the name. Every grade of syrup you can imagine, from the most subtle, lightest, slippiest amber to a dark and broody molassesey opaque. Just stick it all into my fucking veins. I usually go simple amber. Mmmm. Sugar can fuck off and die.

Except we need mighty bags of it to make

3. Strawberry rhubarb jam. I don't have much to write here about a homemade product, except people should get over pectin being gross. Sure it's fucking gross. I really doubt what that link says about it, I'm sure it's made out of ground up animal bones or something, but what you've got to understand about pectin is that it lets you use fewer mighty bags of sugar to make the jam set, which lets you get a subtle whiff of the rhubarb through the sweet, not to menion keep the strawberry taste.

I love sweet.

Oh gross.

I was meant to go to yoga for four this morning and my beautiful new phone didn't alarm me properly - but my smartass body, nonetheless, took the trouble to wake me up at 4:20. Thank you, body, well fucking done. Still, it gave me a chance to finally drive a stake through the heart of Miss P's goddamn botany project, so it's not all a shitty lining.

Which reminds me, I have a new phone number, so don't use the old one. The new phone I got last night has a camera. It's exciting. So far I've only photographed my cat, some roses and my chest. I don't know what it is about holding a camera that makes me photograph my own tits. Sometimes I feel like a Soviet experiment gone wrong. Fuck. This is going to be a sleepy day.

So Italy is through to the finals - my daddy must be over the moon. I'm shocked. Del Piero? Scoring a goal? Four strikers? What's that now? When I look at Del Piero, the last thing I think of is a soccer ball. That's just too surreal. A soccer pitch, maybe. With a big jar of lemon curd and a couple of parachutes. Mmmm. Italian soccer players. Why are the beautiful ones always so evil?

Can't you see that I am not afraid?

Goodness, it's good to be back. Back in a city where they serve menu items with ingredients with names like 'compote' and 'tapenade' and 'bocconcini'. Back with my cat. Back with my gym and my lack of processed foods in the cupboard. Being at home, this time, was just like PMTing; crankiness, insecurity, angst and non-stop eating. I feel loads better now. Partly because of Figaro being a little surprising. It's so strange how you can adore someone and still underestimate them.

Part of the problem with being home was the annual shadfly infestation; a distinguishing feature of North Bay. What wikipedia doesn't tell you is how they smell. Jeebus, do they ever smell. When they congregate around streetlights and whatever and then die in a big fucking pile - piles which don't take long to accumulate, because actually a shadfly's only tasks in life are to fuck off and die - they fucking reek of dead fish. North Bay smelt sooo badly of dead fish. And of course it meant I didn't want to go swimming in Nipissing, which they spawn and emerge from. As for Trout Lake, well, I was too fucking busy acting premenstrual and eating, I guess.

Upwards and onwards.

The only tummyache is in my head

I eat too much here. We picked a kajillion strawberries so I made pie and tarts, and then the Mum made jam and milkshakes, and then the Dad roasted a goat and fried up wild mushrooms, and maaaaan. So this entry will reflect my indigestion/biliousness - you've been warned. Being home - not just the debauched overeating, but something else too - makes me want cigarettes like nobody's business. And whenever I even smell them, my body starts to tease: "You want that, huh? You want it? You want it? I'll make you PUKE if you put that in your mouth, bitch!" Oh ciggie poos. Yeah. I'm in a shitty mood.

I wasn't raised to feel entitled and being here reminds me of that. That's not a whinge, or at least I don't think it is; nobody was nasty to me when they were raising me so I'm lucky and I know it. They tried to be realistic and helpful when they raised me by teaching me the world was unfair, that virtue and merit are nescessary but go unrewarded. But now I've decided that's not helpful anymore and what matters are balls. Now I'm frustrated over feeling blocked and unentitled about doctoral programmes when I shouldn't be either.

Part, but not all, is my ex-advisor's unhelpfulness. I'm not this blocked over the applications just because my cunty ex-advisor is being a cunt and I have to butter him up like fucking Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris. The block is more about fear; about asking people for what I just think should be mine automatically and being piss-scared of them saying no. And then being piss-scared that if they don't say no - that if I get it and fuck up, or hate it, lapse into another lethargic depression, it's me, 100% me, who fucks up or hates it or lapses into a lethargic depression.

There's the problem. I know the idiocy and misery I'm capable of, and I don't have the balls to trust myself to not do that again. I wish there was some knight in shining armour around who'd kick me in the head until I stopped being an idiot forever, but there isn't. Figaro is awfully important, but I know he'll never kick my ass into gear, nor should I expect that of him. I also know that no matter what happens with or without Figaro, Magnum PI is imaginary and will NOT come and inspire me to flights of marketable genius with his wry good humour and Rusyn good looks.

Holy fucking shit, do I ever need to grow a figurative set of balls; become the man I've always wanted to have, more or less. Does that sound icky? Because I'm pretty sure it's true. From now on, whenever I feel myself turning into a piss-scared, defeatist, hateful gloom merchant, I'm going to ask myself what Ghengis Khan would do. And then I'll do whichever version of it won't send me to prison.

Happy confederation

So last night I watched the fireworks being shot off to celebrate my nation's b-day. Since we were close to the launch point they were right overhead, so they looked just like the inside of my brain during an orgasm. It was mortifying, because it sounded like orgasms too, since everybody was making moan-y sounds whenever there was a particularly good one, and I was there with my mum and, like, a hundred small children.

So one half of my brain was pissed off that I was watching orgasms and not having them, while the rest of my brain was like "Dude! Make these perverts stop moaning in front of my mother and the minors!" Some of the minors present were francophone, which reminded me that the French term for fireworks is 'feu d'artifice," which made me think about faking orgasms. That made me sad. Faking orgasms. Shit. What a weak realm of human activity.

And then I realized whoever had coined the term 'feu d'artifice" probably hadn't been thinking about faking orgasms, but about how fireworks look like bombs and artillery and whatnot, but nobody dies, just sits on the beach watching and feigning orgasms in front of my mother. And for once I could have some sort of imagination on a more human level of some poor fucking sucker living in Gaza or Fajulla or somewhere else people get blown up alot - not sleeping anymore, never being sure when the bright blowy-up thingies were going to fuck all your shit up. There are some things that are just so insupportable the brain shuts right down . . . and supports them.

I fucking hate fireworks.