End of week round-up

It's official. After having the bird-talk with my mother, managing to rein in my finances over the past month, working out a realistic yet generous Christmas budget and making a household decision to only smoke reefer on weekends (mostly), I'm getting the Panasonic Lumix TZ1 for my birthday, which seems easy to use while having a ten-times zoom. It's very exciting. In preparation Figaro has been letting me mess around with his camera, which is much more complicated, so hopefully at this point it just gets easier.

So I've started a flickr page so everyone can look at the gross, retarded or outside pictures I take. There's a lot I want to remember about Toronto too, after I leave . . . things to look at. Toronto has a funny cocktail of ugly, nice and busy. I think it will be fun to have a camera here.

Now for something completely different - last night we watched Fawlty Towers. I didn't like it much. Maybe it suffered because Figaro dug up some old Monty Python episodes a couple of weeks ago, and since I hadn't actually sat down and watched the Monty Python series while I was snaked - like, EVER, now that I think about it - I was amused to the point of peeing myself. I'd forgotten how absurd and unpredictable it was and all that collage animation is cute when I'm high. Anyways, the three episodes we happened to see didn't have John Cleese in them, and you know, they didn't suffer for it. And then Fawlty Towers; well, you know. Too much story. Too much humour based on discomfort. I like things that don't make sense and it made too much sense.

Anyways, here comes the weekend and my birthday. Yesterday a package arrived from Melbine, and I'm pretty sure I know what it is, but I won't open it until tomorrow. Even though I want to because I figure it will make my working day much more energetic. Bootywise. You're the best, lady!

Sexy Russians

We went to the symphony last night for a Russian-themed concert that inexplicably included a piano concerto from Schumann. I like Schumann, but not much. Despite the fucking brilliant pianist Anton Kuerti - like, he was as good as Chico Marx, even if he didn't actually shoot the keys - it was my least favourite of the night. Too smooth. Far, far, far and away the Russian pieces we were treated to were way, way better.

(Pardon me for not being able to think of words that can express 'way, way better' this morning - there was a car crash outside our bedroom window at four in the fucking morning and I'm dopey and sleepy today. By the way, what sort of expression is 'way, way better'? Way is a funny word.)

Anyways, one of them was the Canadian premiere of a peice by Sofia Gubaidulina, The Rider on the White Horse, and motherfuck. Every stop was pulled out. Organ (and Roy Thomson Hall has a BEAUTY), crazy percussion, tubular bells - wow. It was, in fact, very wildy horsey. Until I can afford to buy myself a pony I think I'll content myself be getting a copy of this. I really reccommend it to anyone prone to Byronesque fits of melancholy or frustration.

The second half was taken up with Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade which was a little more tempered in terms of loud, loud emotion - it had quiet emotion too. And a harp. Good god, it was beautiful. Sentimental, like the Schumann, but never once did it creep into treacle or surrender its balls. I want to buy that too. Figaro has it on vinyl in Australia, which is profoundly unhelpful.

I think I have a little crush on the conductor from last night, Gianandrea Noseda. He gave'er. I mean, he was practically conceptually dancing up there while he was directing difficult modern peices, and it came off as note perfect so I suppose it was working. There were several points where I noted he was off the floor altogether. I think that was his modus operandi because you could see his muscles flexing under his conductor suit. Heh.

But what it can't get I can't use

Yesterday was stupid and boring until I got out of work and discovered what a rather staggering rate of compound interest has already done to my retirement 'savings'. How funny that money is such a feel-good thing when it's there or there's the prospect of more!

Our almost imaginary economic system - so abstract, so based on things we usually neither know nor understand - has become so deeply ingrained into our very bones that we can associate numbers on a statement with our basic well-being and not even blink when the news media casually shits on the communist organization of goods as intrinsically flawed without considering we've never had a proper communist system - just a bunch of starving Russians and Chinese et cetera taking up arms and doing what they could with what they'd got. And that may well be the longest sentence I've ever written. Brontësque in its monstrosity.

My point is, I think England should go communist so the rest of us can watch what happens. Wasn't that supposed to happen before the gentle left co-opted the labour movement back whenever?

I'm getting excited for my birthday. Besides celebrations spread out over the weekend, of course I'm excited about presents. Like a camera. Oh boy. And then there's the opera. I love birthdays. Speaking of which, today is Miss G's birthday - she's in New York; does anyone have her address there?

I ain't no monkey

One of the Jungian institutes in Zurich (there are two - I discussed it with Monsieur, who studied there, and he told me there were two because the original one had a meltdown over some issues that seemed piffling. I think my mouth gaped at that and then he told me a strong background in Jungian analysis doesn't always mean you can resolve your own damn conflicts. I think I'll concentrate on tying it in to conflict resolution in my studies if I ever go that route) has started offering distance training by contracting out the requisite 300 hours of analysis to any IAAP-approved analyst you can find in your own nieghbourhood.

I suppose they had to, since these studies involve a pretty big practicum and there aren't quite enough crazy people in Switzerland to go around to all the trainees, or at least not enough crazy people who are poor enough to consent to work with a trainee analyst instead of a real one, or instead of doing lots and lots of drugs.

Anyways, I'm over the moon that if I go that route I won't nescessarily have to live somewhere dark or cold or Swiss while I do it. I would have to go there six weeks a year, but you know, six weeks a year in Switzerland sound okay. I liked Switzerland. Definitely not enough to live there, but certainly enough to listen to the pleasant cowbells and funny moon-man languages six weeks a year.

I'm still riding high over what I've heard from Belgium. We'll see if my defeciencies will be acceptable to them but in any case it's emboldened me to contact other schools. The future is very exciting now, as firmer shapes rise up in the grey mist of often-inscrutable Potential. I guess I'm no closer to knowing what will be happening this time next year but that seems much easier to take this week.

Well, this post is a silly navel gaze that's all about me, me, me. Here's another article I wrote about Turkey and the EU, maybe that will get the flavour of self-absorbed Spliffedom out of your mouth.

Oh frabjous day

My favourite-esque university prospect (in Belgium) has just responded, telling me things look good. And Figaro promised he'd call me "Doctor" when we're feeling amorous. Besides that, I feel like I don't have much to say today. The one thing getting me down is that Belgium might be as I-want-to-shoot-myself dark as Toronto is right now. Everything is fine and I still feel like removing part of my skull just so I can get some direct sunlight to the brain.

One question: how the fuck do you make a makeshift sub? I know some of you reading must know. Tell me. Inquiring minds, et cetera. This is interesting because I just read a 2002 book about how a member of the Russian military tried to sell the Medellin cartel a diesel submarine back in the 1990's - complete with crew - for something like $5 million. Looks like they saved a dollar to spend $90 million.