Obviously, I don't want to know

I've altered this photo and I think it's screamingly obvious where, but I'm still screamingly proud of this first silly Lycrasoft effort. Soon I'll alter the whole world to look the way I want it to. There are a couple of substantial changes I can think of.

I'm off to the north and feeling sad about not being with the man for a few days. You wouldn't believe how pathetic that makes me feel. Why do I have such silly intimacy issues? Why do I have to think all macho? Why can't I just accept my emotions as they happen? That's why Monsieur makes the big bucks I suppose (although I'm still paying on a sliding scale, thank god. I keep thinking I see the end of credit card debt and then bang! Some completely predictable massive expenditure comes along and I take three steps back.)

We had a great session last Wednesday. One would like to leave parts of one's childhood behind but they don't always leave one behind, I suppose . . . people (well, me) resist the idea of impact from childhood carrying on into adult life but that doesn't hold up, really - such an educational time of life and so easy to learn the wrong lessons. And one acts on those stupid lessons over and over, all the while claiming one's dealt with the past and it's over.

Not much else to tell you as we go into this long weekend (or just normal weekend, if you're not meeeeeee - ha ha ha ha), except bundle up, drink lots of ginger tea and vitamins, and gargle salt water every morning to keep colds at bay.

General Meating

Soon I have to go to my company's general meeting, where we hear in shocking, gratuitous financial detail our progress in terms of perpetuating the Great Lie it is all our jobs to defend. I find my position difficult. They are good to me - to us - and will shortly institute a regimen to give us more money. And yet our mandate is morally corrupt. Not morally corrupt like making chemical weapons for use against civilians or anything, but enough to make it hard for me to feel any pride in my job at all.

Something that helps me is Harpo Marx:




And oh yes, Chico - in an undeniably sexy way, too. I've heard he was a massive womanizer. But who wouldn't want to be womanized by a guy who can tickle the upper keys like that? Hehhhhh.



Anyways. Last night we watched At the Circus and I meant to find you Harpo's routine from that which was just shockingly good, but either YouTube doesn't have it or I don't have the patience to find it - not sure which. Figaro has caught on that I've got no problem waiving the mid-week reefer ban if he gets Marx Brothers movies or episodes of Monty Python I've never seen, so I'm laughing a lot these days. Good hard belly laughs. Good for the abs.

Faaaaaack. Time to meat.

Who knows shit about shit anyways

I'm listening to the Charlotte Gainsbourg album written for her by Air and Jarvis Cocker. It's pretty, but her voice hasn't come a long way since "Zeste de Citron." I like the sorts of albums French actresses release but apparently I don't like them enough to buy them, since I resent her voice's presence on an otherwise honestly good album. Lucky ho, except she got to be Serge Gainsbourg's daughter, which isn't really a fate I would wish on anybody. Well, maybe in private he was a really nice, even-keeled guy. Who knows, when it comes to people who end off their lives famous for being famous.

Did I mention I stopped looking at gossip sites? There were two on one day that made fun of a girl actress my neice's age so I just couldn't rationalize my own voyeurism anymore.

Gah . . . instead I'm ploughing through Robert Hughes' memoirs, Things I Didn't Know, and I must say it's craptastic. He finds something nasty to say about anyone, including people he otherwise claims are inoffensive or well-loved, and unlike in his art criticism seems incapable of giving it a context or placing it in a coherent structre - so many fucking textual loopdy-loops which add nothing - makes Katherine Hepburn's Me look like Jane Eyre. I thought asking for a review copy of this book would be like asking for a steak dinner at Boba's; what I've been delivered on a plate are new uppers for my Blundstones made out of rancid, bitter whale blubber.

And if that sounds over the top - my god - you should read this man discuss his sexual life. According to photographic evidence he was attractive when he was young, and hopefully a little less hard-boiled then, because his discussion of what he's sure living in a homo-erotic boarding school DIDN'T do to him is enough to pull the plug on a bathtub full of female sexuality. After reading about 150 pages of him last night, it took me fuckin' minutes to get into the mood.

Anyways, I'll finish it off and try not to hate it. Maybe he'll magically pull everything together when he starts writing about not being in Australia anymore. I doubt it though. He started these memoirs in a spirit of bitterness and - textually and stylistically - it shows. Not in a fun way, either.

Grandad

Now, my British grandparents haven't always been the easiest people for me to get along with, and part of the great blow to me in my grandfather's recent death was being aware we weren't as close as other girls sometimes are to their grandfathers. No fault of his, or even I think my own; he welcomed me with open arms into his home and I went to see them in Yorkshire whenever it was at all practicable. Nonetheless, it seemed talking across the barrier of generations, countries, cultures, attitudes to the boiling of vegetables, ethnic feuds and the sea was a thing that didn't always come naturally to us, and then in the last year or so his mind turned more inwards to deal with his body and its demise. I was fortunate to have visited them last March, after my thesis defence and before he started preparing himself in earnest.

Since he died I've appreciated more and more the bits of me that come from him - a certain not-incompetency with money, the ability to coldly analyse out of a hot situation, an abstract spiritual faith based on love and rational optimism - and while I'm not so sure we'd be any better at being close today if he was still alive than we were a year ago, I am sure that as much as I loved him then, I'd be more understanding of him now. I miss him.

This is on my mind in a poignant but cheerful way today, because the days I used to go to England - in my plans to see him, in reality to bury him - were, with the agreement of my manager, sick days, since I didn't think I had any vacation time left. It turns out I do; and in the almighty fucking wisdom of the Canadian labour establishment I have to use them before the Christmas break instead of cashing them in or carrying them over to next year. So next weekend will be four days long and the weekend after that will be threepointfive.

Now, much as I'd prefer to carry the days over to next year, I'm not complaining; I need a couple of days off to get shit done and organized, and as you all know I'm not crazy about being at work in the first place. But what I am doing is asking myself what I should do with these days, that feel like a gift-from-beyond-the-grave from Grandad, when by any stretch of the imagination I only need one long weekend to get shit done. I feel just as I did back in university, when they still sent me money for Christmas and I resisted, generally successfully, the natural inclination to spend it on reefer instead of something clever like mutual funds or panties.

Maybe I should go home and see my parents. I'm going to see them for five or six days at Christmas but of course that will be all crazy with people and parties. Grandad would no doubt approve. Maybe I should go to Vancouver and see Elvis, who I've never gone to visit out there. Grandad would approve of that too, though not the massive deficit spending it would entail. Also Elvis works in flowers so he's retardedly busy in December. Maybe I should go to Montreal to see the Virgin and Miss T, or Mrs. R I suppose she is now, but in all honesty I neither want to go to Montreal without Figaro (who gets no time off) nor do I want to drop in on friends last minute (for it would be this Friday) at this time of year. Also Grandad would approve less. Especially of the Virgin.

So unless I have some bright fucking ideas or remember suddenly that what Grandad always wanted from life but never did was to find a cheapish flight to Costa Rica and smoke reefer in the jungle for a few days with that nice Roumanian girl I used to work with who moved there six or seven months ago, I think I'll go up north this weekend. Any other ideas?

The Red Dragon Tries to Get Her Dander Up

If I don't miss my guess by a college mile and if my calendar with the twee archaic maps is right, it's the fourth of December, which means there are only 17 days left of the days dwindling and dwindling until any scrap of sunlight feels like a secret swig of bourbon downed behind a dumpster. And then they get longer. Joy. There's a reason we celebrate Christmas then, even though Jesus was probably a Leo or something. Capricorn Jesus? Suuuuuuuure, Catholic Church. And every sperm is sacred, too.

This weekend didn't see me at the top of my game. Thursday's flu shot made me ill in a really bizarre way that included my pointing fingers feeling broken and a bi-polar tummy, which was trying as other physical type aches and pains were on the cards too and I drank far too much on Friday night.

I dealt by smoking lots of reefer and sleeping when I got sleepy, which means not-fit-for-print fun and frolic aside I've got nothing to tell you about besides Robert Hughes' memoirs being bitter and unpleasant, a bit of a nasty slog, but since I was sent a free review copy I have to review it soon or I'll stop getting free reveiw copies of things, and since it doesn't look like it's going to be a glowing review I have to read it carefully too.

Also, the Ansel Adams exhibit at the AGO is really, really worth seeing. It's up until January 4th so there's lots of time to do it. Go. I like the AGO. The special exhibition prices are, I think, prohibitive at $15 (I can't shake the feeling that the whole fucking point of a museum should be that they're free - my inner Palace of the People-type pinko speaking, I suppose) to the degree that one is tempted to go watch the new Bond movie instead. But the Ansel Adams exhibit is just breathtaking, especially to anybody who wants to know stuff about photographing stuff.

Motherfuck, time to start the work week.