In England, and now in the south, where to be blunt and needlessly graphic everybody talks like they have a mouthful of plums washing out the taste of the Queen's special juices. Because of family we spent lots of summers up in Yorkshire - economically depressed, seedy, beautiful Scarborough, which I love and most of all I love the voices people speak with. Rich - the way they say 'fuck' with an 'o' - it's a lovely accent, especially if, like me, you were raised thinking all normal English people spoke like that and there wasn't some sort of stigma attached to not speaking like a twat with a mouthful of plums and royal cuntjuice. Raised thinking that the Bingo down on the south bay of Scarborough was the worst sign of social decline in the country.
I like England but there are so many ways it's a shithole. People put up with so much here that not even Belgians would dream of tolerating. The people are nice enough but I can't bear the way they TOLERATE. And lordy loo, it's expensive. Not Switzerland expensive. More like, way-more-expensive-than-it's-worth expensive. Anyways, there are many saving graces, of which one is the Indian food I am now going to go eat. Bless the Empire and the days when all the world was pink.
sabato, dicembre 29, 2007
venerdì, dicembre 21, 2007
Like a bowl of soup
Aaaaaaaaaah. Vacation. And looking forward to the sitting-still time on the train so that I can finish reading Lord Jim, which rocks. Joseph Conrad is my hero and what's more, because he was a sailor I can believe his first person Marlow narratives are real - that you're sitting listening to this man talk for hours and hours and hours.
Isn't it odd to think of - during those long, long months all stuck in a boat together, before radios or TVs or video games, before universal literacy, before cheap paperbacks, newspapers - all those men would have to talk. Not just the sailors, though. Everybody would have had to talk. Talk and sing. We're probably incredibly shitty conversationalists and phenomanally shitty singers in comparison to people even 50 years ago. Well, it's evident. Most people seem incapable of talking about anything but themselves these days. Me included. My Chris Isaak vocal impression is really coming along though.
I do get frustrated sometimes - I'm not nostalgic for the past, I'd rather be alive now than at any other time in history I know of, but I feel like our great capacities as thinking and feeling beasts are being channeled down purposeless courses, courses encouraging buying lots of things, but not - well, not exploiting that side of humanity which is sublime; our power of empathy and our ability to look to a future that doesn't have us-as-individuals in it.
Mortality and the sublime may be on my mind more than usual because we've been listening to lots of Otis Redding. I've loved Otis Redding for ages and been sad that he died in a plane crash, and been touched that "The Dock of the Bay" was a big smash hit after he died despite that getting to be the Time of the Fucking Hippie Guitar Wankoff. But I'd never realized he was only 26 when he died. Can you believe it? With that voice! It's a strong old man's voice. Listen to him tell you to shake! Shake! SHAKE!!!!
Isn't it odd to think of - during those long, long months all stuck in a boat together, before radios or TVs or video games, before universal literacy, before cheap paperbacks, newspapers - all those men would have to talk. Not just the sailors, though. Everybody would have had to talk. Talk and sing. We're probably incredibly shitty conversationalists and phenomanally shitty singers in comparison to people even 50 years ago. Well, it's evident. Most people seem incapable of talking about anything but themselves these days. Me included. My Chris Isaak vocal impression is really coming along though.
I do get frustrated sometimes - I'm not nostalgic for the past, I'd rather be alive now than at any other time in history I know of, but I feel like our great capacities as thinking and feeling beasts are being channeled down purposeless courses, courses encouraging buying lots of things, but not - well, not exploiting that side of humanity which is sublime; our power of empathy and our ability to look to a future that doesn't have us-as-individuals in it.
Mortality and the sublime may be on my mind more than usual because we've been listening to lots of Otis Redding. I've loved Otis Redding for ages and been sad that he died in a plane crash, and been touched that "The Dock of the Bay" was a big smash hit after he died despite that getting to be the Time of the Fucking Hippie Guitar Wankoff. But I'd never realized he was only 26 when he died. Can you believe it? With that voice! It's a strong old man's voice. Listen to him tell you to shake! Shake! SHAKE!!!!
mercoledì, dicembre 19, 2007
Fuckin' Belgium
So. It's happened. And in fairness to Belgium, it's taken a long time for it to happen. When I moved to Florence I was a furious wreck within hours; Paris took a couple of months at most, and it's taken more than half a year here for the rage to set in, that is, for me to say to myself "fuckin' Belgium."
As always in these cases, it feels like there was a series of triggers setting off big annoyance shots at the same time, like going to Germany and realizing I liked the food and beer better there or realizing what a pain in the ass it's going to be for me to get a residency card despite my European citizenship or the successive ineptitude of TWO Belgian banks in terms of setting up a simple current account. But the one that got to me worst was being told about the Dutroux case, because its implications of deep and dangerous legal and political corruption made me feel like I was living in Calabria, but instead of having parasitic murdering thugs at the top of the socio-political pile there're parasitic murdering thugs who're also the sort of perverts you feel an instinct to kill for the protection of the human race. Also the weather here is exponentially shittier than in Calabria.
Then of course there's the issue that democracy has ceased to function here, following on issues of nationalism, unfair tax distribution, and deeply flawed bilingualism that makes the sometimes acrimonious relationship between Québec and the other Canadian provinces look like the relationship between God and Her nicer angels. Belgium is not bilingual in the sense that much of Canada is bilingual. The French don't learn Dutch, and vice versa though less so. You cross a regional border in a fuckin' train and suddenly the train announcements are only in Dutch or only in French. So they can be that culturally separate from each other on an official level, but when enough people vote for a party promoting greater regional autonomy on the political and fiscal level suddenly the government grinds to a fuckin' halt and the king has to step in. The fuckin' king and the old prime minister who nobody fuckin' voted for.
Oh, their political shit pisses me off. People are still dying in the Congo and Rwanda because of this fuckin' country and they can't even sort out how to institutionalize how little they want to be a country. Fuckin' Belgians.
I could go on about fiscal issues, particularly how it seems here as though the taxation system has been set up to keep poor people in their place or about how publicly funded civil projects can take years and years to complete whilst paralyzing the local economy because the contracts are all crooked or about how when you drive into the country from Luxembourg or the Netherlands you don't have to look at the signs to tell when you've crossed the border - suddenly your ass is being jounced off you by the potholes - but there's another thing that's pissing me off right now: these stupid fucks don't know how to drive. I can't count the times I've nearly been hit by some moron whilst walking across a zebra crossing or intersection where he or she is running a red light. It's just like Italy except, once more, the weather is a lot shittier. And they don't look as good while they do it.
Speaking of stupid fucks: for the last few days it's been below freezing here, which isn't so bad - I like it because it keeps the weather clear and the sun out; no precipitation, which is a fucking mercy in this goddamn puddle of a country. So you'd think, no precipitation, no icy pavements; right? Fuckin' wrong. Shopkeepers - not just a few, a lot - are in the habit of washing off the pavements in front of their shops because Belgians are incapable of cleaning up their dogs' shit. Okay, fine, I'm used to that; Europeans in general don't appreciate that it's fuckin' grosser to leave their dogs' shit all over the place than to bring some plastic bags when you take them for a walk, and pick it up. Whatever. I don't want to pick up shit in a bag either, which is why I don't have a fuckin' dog.
So anyways; shopkeepers are in the habit of washing off the pavement in front of their shops, and just because the temperature has dropped below zero doesn't mean they're going to stop, right? So despite not a drop a precipitation falling since the temperature fell, about a tenth of the pavements in the commercial districts are covered with a fine patina of slippery, unsalted ice during the mania of the Christmas shopping season. The fuckin' morons.
As always in these cases, it feels like there was a series of triggers setting off big annoyance shots at the same time, like going to Germany and realizing I liked the food and beer better there or realizing what a pain in the ass it's going to be for me to get a residency card despite my European citizenship or the successive ineptitude of TWO Belgian banks in terms of setting up a simple current account. But the one that got to me worst was being told about the Dutroux case, because its implications of deep and dangerous legal and political corruption made me feel like I was living in Calabria, but instead of having parasitic murdering thugs at the top of the socio-political pile there're parasitic murdering thugs who're also the sort of perverts you feel an instinct to kill for the protection of the human race. Also the weather here is exponentially shittier than in Calabria.
Then of course there's the issue that democracy has ceased to function here, following on issues of nationalism, unfair tax distribution, and deeply flawed bilingualism that makes the sometimes acrimonious relationship between Québec and the other Canadian provinces look like the relationship between God and Her nicer angels. Belgium is not bilingual in the sense that much of Canada is bilingual. The French don't learn Dutch, and vice versa though less so. You cross a regional border in a fuckin' train and suddenly the train announcements are only in Dutch or only in French. So they can be that culturally separate from each other on an official level, but when enough people vote for a party promoting greater regional autonomy on the political and fiscal level suddenly the government grinds to a fuckin' halt and the king has to step in. The fuckin' king and the old prime minister who nobody fuckin' voted for.
Oh, their political shit pisses me off. People are still dying in the Congo and Rwanda because of this fuckin' country and they can't even sort out how to institutionalize how little they want to be a country. Fuckin' Belgians.
I could go on about fiscal issues, particularly how it seems here as though the taxation system has been set up to keep poor people in their place or about how publicly funded civil projects can take years and years to complete whilst paralyzing the local economy because the contracts are all crooked or about how when you drive into the country from Luxembourg or the Netherlands you don't have to look at the signs to tell when you've crossed the border - suddenly your ass is being jounced off you by the potholes - but there's another thing that's pissing me off right now: these stupid fucks don't know how to drive. I can't count the times I've nearly been hit by some moron whilst walking across a zebra crossing or intersection where he or she is running a red light. It's just like Italy except, once more, the weather is a lot shittier. And they don't look as good while they do it.
Speaking of stupid fucks: for the last few days it's been below freezing here, which isn't so bad - I like it because it keeps the weather clear and the sun out; no precipitation, which is a fucking mercy in this goddamn puddle of a country. So you'd think, no precipitation, no icy pavements; right? Fuckin' wrong. Shopkeepers - not just a few, a lot - are in the habit of washing off the pavements in front of their shops because Belgians are incapable of cleaning up their dogs' shit. Okay, fine, I'm used to that; Europeans in general don't appreciate that it's fuckin' grosser to leave their dogs' shit all over the place than to bring some plastic bags when you take them for a walk, and pick it up. Whatever. I don't want to pick up shit in a bag either, which is why I don't have a fuckin' dog.
So anyways; shopkeepers are in the habit of washing off the pavement in front of their shops, and just because the temperature has dropped below zero doesn't mean they're going to stop, right? So despite not a drop a precipitation falling since the temperature fell, about a tenth of the pavements in the commercial districts are covered with a fine patina of slippery, unsalted ice during the mania of the Christmas shopping season. The fuckin' morons.
martedì, dicembre 18, 2007
Everyday Pipol
A real problem with being functionally bilingual in a Francophone country is that you - that is, I - follow some of the pipol gossip religiously without understanding that I'm being suckered into distraction from issues that matter, as I can't participate policitally here (but who can at the moment? Fuckin' Belgium) and as it's all in a clever artsical fartsical language like French. Of course, Belgian gossip, outside of how everybody who's anybody is a dangerous and unprosecutable paedophile (unfortunately more than just gossip) basically amounts to French gossip, which these days amounts to the fact that Nicolas Sarkozy is being serviced by Carla Bruni.
I've gone on record, and I'll stay there, as saying that her album Quelqu'un m'a dit was not nearly as crappy as I'd been expecting, and that I like it. But there's very little doubt in my mind that the woman is Empress Bitch of the Drama Queens. Only part of that, I think, is having subjected myself to reading Justine Lévy's barely disguised autobiography Rien de grave, which didn't impress me. Maybe my French isn't strong enough to appreciate the force of her language but 200+ pages about getting fucked up, depressed and cranky with your new boyfriend after your husband leaves you for his father's supermodel girlfriend is just not my idea of a good read.*
And maybe another part of it is the way Bruni jumped from Eric Clapton to Mick Jagger. Maybe another is that I don't trust pale-eyed dark haired women.
It's a combination of seperate anecdotes, I guess. Because maybe in your life as a normal non-Queen-Bitch woman you have to choose between one rock star and another. Maybe you date an older man and fall in love with his married son, and then decide that the heart wants what it wants. But you don't do both those things and then, as Bruni did, brag about reading Dostoevosky hidden behind copies of Vogue whilst backstage at the shows during your modelling career. That is, she bragged about hiding her habit of reading bits of Russian literature which, great as they are, are pretty light. I mean, Dostoevsky is really readable, the sort of classic you read in highschool; it's not Proust. It just points to this conception of herself as some sort of beleaguered intellectual in a hostile beautiful woman's world, which is beyond pretentious - it's just insane.
Anyways, that's who the evil-trolly-but-strangely-compelling President of the French Republic is dating now instead of, oh, say, me, which is probably the only reason this is on my mind at all. It's causing a big flap in the Francophone media about the pipolisation of the presidency, about distraction from the issues that matter. Good - the French deserve it, like Paris deserves all those Starbucks, much as I hate Starbucks, due to a native inability to make real espresso. They had the chance to vote for real change in the last election and they fucked it up. Hah. Now their first lady will be a mad raving harpy who thinks she's clever and who'll distract them from how nothing is changing outside of slowly getting worse. Mwa hah ha haaaaah.
*Lord Jim, however, by Joseph Conrad, which I'm well stuck into at the moment, is. But details another time.
I've gone on record, and I'll stay there, as saying that her album Quelqu'un m'a dit was not nearly as crappy as I'd been expecting, and that I like it. But there's very little doubt in my mind that the woman is Empress Bitch of the Drama Queens. Only part of that, I think, is having subjected myself to reading Justine Lévy's barely disguised autobiography Rien de grave, which didn't impress me. Maybe my French isn't strong enough to appreciate the force of her language but 200+ pages about getting fucked up, depressed and cranky with your new boyfriend after your husband leaves you for his father's supermodel girlfriend is just not my idea of a good read.*
And maybe another part of it is the way Bruni jumped from Eric Clapton to Mick Jagger. Maybe another is that I don't trust pale-eyed dark haired women.
It's a combination of seperate anecdotes, I guess. Because maybe in your life as a normal non-Queen-Bitch woman you have to choose between one rock star and another. Maybe you date an older man and fall in love with his married son, and then decide that the heart wants what it wants. But you don't do both those things and then, as Bruni did, brag about reading Dostoevosky hidden behind copies of Vogue whilst backstage at the shows during your modelling career. That is, she bragged about hiding her habit of reading bits of Russian literature which, great as they are, are pretty light. I mean, Dostoevsky is really readable, the sort of classic you read in highschool; it's not Proust. It just points to this conception of herself as some sort of beleaguered intellectual in a hostile beautiful woman's world, which is beyond pretentious - it's just insane.
Anyways, that's who the evil-trolly-but-strangely-compelling President of the French Republic is dating now instead of, oh, say, me, which is probably the only reason this is on my mind at all. It's causing a big flap in the Francophone media about the pipolisation of the presidency, about distraction from the issues that matter. Good - the French deserve it, like Paris deserves all those Starbucks, much as I hate Starbucks, due to a native inability to make real espresso. They had the chance to vote for real change in the last election and they fucked it up. Hah. Now their first lady will be a mad raving harpy who thinks she's clever and who'll distract them from how nothing is changing outside of slowly getting worse. Mwa hah ha haaaaah.
*Lord Jim, however, by Joseph Conrad, which I'm well stuck into at the moment, is. But details another time.
lunedì, dicembre 17, 2007
The house that swallowed a lemon seed
Feeling more or less healthy again after last week's disaster, outside of wanting to sleep all the time. A nasty frost has set in as well, which might have a lot to do with it; in an authentic and untouched Art Nouveau apartment unfortunately bed is the only place that's guaranteed to be warm. I hate being cold. We talk about southern France or Queensland a lot these days.
But who knows, who knows. It's daft to move where the weather is now. I just heard they'd had a snowstorm in Sicily and Calabria - these are provinces far more prone to dust storms than anything else - and I got a chilling sensation the world was going to end, or at last turn inhospitable for everything but dandelions and cockroaches, who'd probably make a better job of it than we have.
Anyways, because of my new found love of sleep I have to hurry off to work now but I thought I'd leave you with instructions to enchant your aesthetic nerves by staring at some Hundertwasser, and tickle your brain by reading about his barmy odd plainspoken - shall we say - wisdom? I think so. He kept coming up in conversation in Düsseldorf as the couple we were staying with actually knew who I was talking about when I went on about 'that Austrian guy - you know, with the colours and the trees growing out of things' and I was so happy to get a name for the images that have been lodged in my head ever since my first trip to Vienna. 
But who knows, who knows. It's daft to move where the weather is now. I just heard they'd had a snowstorm in Sicily and Calabria - these are provinces far more prone to dust storms than anything else - and I got a chilling sensation the world was going to end, or at last turn inhospitable for everything but dandelions and cockroaches, who'd probably make a better job of it than we have.
Anyways, because of my new found love of sleep I have to hurry off to work now but I thought I'd leave you with instructions to enchant your aesthetic nerves by staring at some Hundertwasser, and tickle your brain by reading about his barmy odd plainspoken - shall we say - wisdom? I think so. He kept coming up in conversation in Düsseldorf as the couple we were staying with actually knew who I was talking about when I went on about 'that Austrian guy - you know, with the colours and the trees growing out of things' and I was so happy to get a name for the images that have been lodged in my head ever since my first trip to Vienna.
domenica, dicembre 16, 2007
Don't mention the war
Spent Friday being violently, violently ill. Missed the Christmas staff party no more than a week after reading an article somewhere about how it's career poison to miss the Christmas staff party, which didn't add to the experience. By seven in the evening I'd stopped the violence and decided I was okay enough for us to pursue our Düsseldorf plan this weekend. Glad we did despite typical shit from Eurolines that made me wish we'd had the foresight to book the Thalys, until we realized Belgian trains were on strike. Ho hum.
Anyhoo. The F-word's friends there are good people, warm, engaged, engaging. Düsseldorf itself, which I'd only ever visited once before in great trouble of mind, impressed me favourably as well. Flattened in the last war and rebuilt with some vision - and these days, with some flair, especially in the financial/admin district in the 'harbour' of the Rhine - and what a river that is. Big swollen thing. I miss having water in a city like that. They have a set of Frank Gehrys there - red, white, and shiny. They were really nice to look at.
Another thing that impressed me favourably about Düsseldorf, and which has impressed me favourably every time I've dipped my toe into German waters, is the food. Nobody eats like the Germans, and not just sausages and sauerkraut. Fresh, delicious, varied, and cheap cheap cheap. Döner to write poetry for, big decadent brunches, and oh yes, my new best friend riebekuchen . . .
And yet another thing that impressed me favourably was, when finally we had to go back to Belgium, we stopped in a train station bookstore and found loads and loads of quality English books - a classier selection than you'll find in most Anglo train stations. These are people who like reading, in different languages no less. It pissed me off disproportionately and I went through a good twenty minutes of wishing I was German. I'm going to watch the rest of that BBC series about the Great War and I want to see some damn good excuses for our side winning. Anyways, this sign on the bargain bin in the store considerably lightened my mood:
Anyhoo. The F-word's friends there are good people, warm, engaged, engaging. Düsseldorf itself, which I'd only ever visited once before in great trouble of mind, impressed me favourably as well. Flattened in the last war and rebuilt with some vision - and these days, with some flair, especially in the financial/admin district in the 'harbour' of the Rhine - and what a river that is. Big swollen thing. I miss having water in a city like that. They have a set of Frank Gehrys there - red, white, and shiny. They were really nice to look at.
Another thing that impressed me favourably about Düsseldorf, and which has impressed me favourably every time I've dipped my toe into German waters, is the food. Nobody eats like the Germans, and not just sausages and sauerkraut. Fresh, delicious, varied, and cheap cheap cheap. Döner to write poetry for, big decadent brunches, and oh yes, my new best friend riebekuchen . . .
And yet another thing that impressed me favourably was, when finally we had to go back to Belgium, we stopped in a train station bookstore and found loads and loads of quality English books - a classier selection than you'll find in most Anglo train stations. These are people who like reading, in different languages no less. It pissed me off disproportionately and I went through a good twenty minutes of wishing I was German. I'm going to watch the rest of that BBC series about the Great War and I want to see some damn good excuses for our side winning. Anyways, this sign on the bargain bin in the store considerably lightened my mood:
mercoledì, dicembre 12, 2007
The Red Dragon believes in a Europe of regions
Ah, the joys of living with the awesome. Came home from a backbreaking deadline day to find the F-word's commentary on a photograph showing the Flemish Saint Nick hanging out the the French Pére Noël, because nothing is wrong, the country isn't breaking up, shut up shut up shut up . . . 
must say I'm curious to see what would happen if the country did break up. I believe in small regional representative government co-operating within the framework of continental organizations like the European Union, so the idea doesn't pose huge difficulties for me. Except in that I live in Brussels and no one is quite sure what's going to happen to an 85% French city floating in a sea of Flem. There are lots of French towns around Brussels too, little islands of romance language.
I don't see how the Flemish can seperate peacefully without maintaining official bilinguality. Even with all the nonsense, impractical talk about Brussels becoming a city-state and Wallonia joining up with France - a bad, bad idea for all concerned, trying to incorporate a seriously economically depressed province that's been defining itself in opposition to France for more than a hundred years into one of the most ridiculously centralized national administrations in the 'free' world - though apparently the French French love the idea, despite making the Belgians the butt of their stupid jokes since the birth of Belgium - why don't they concentrate on fixing it so that the Corsicans, Bretagnes and Basques stop wanting to seperate before taking on more territory that will want to seperate - where was I?
Right: honestly, I'm concerned about violence if the Flemish don't maintain bilinguality for the sake of all the French living in Flemland, in Brussels and out of it. Do you know how many French people speak Flemish, even the ones marooned in their townships up in Flemland away from Wallonia? Almost none. Stupid, but true. And if you take away their linguistic status, basically force them to fuck off back to Wallonia, which could be France at that point and who wants to fuck off to the bits of France that aren't on the Mediterranean, I bet at least a few nut jobs would start blowing shit up. After all, this is Europe, and the tradition of making a bad situation worse by blowing shit up has an ancient pedigree here.
must say I'm curious to see what would happen if the country did break up. I believe in small regional representative government co-operating within the framework of continental organizations like the European Union, so the idea doesn't pose huge difficulties for me. Except in that I live in Brussels and no one is quite sure what's going to happen to an 85% French city floating in a sea of Flem. There are lots of French towns around Brussels too, little islands of romance language.
I don't see how the Flemish can seperate peacefully without maintaining official bilinguality. Even with all the nonsense, impractical talk about Brussels becoming a city-state and Wallonia joining up with France - a bad, bad idea for all concerned, trying to incorporate a seriously economically depressed province that's been defining itself in opposition to France for more than a hundred years into one of the most ridiculously centralized national administrations in the 'free' world - though apparently the French French love the idea, despite making the Belgians the butt of their stupid jokes since the birth of Belgium - why don't they concentrate on fixing it so that the Corsicans, Bretagnes and Basques stop wanting to seperate before taking on more territory that will want to seperate - where was I?
Right: honestly, I'm concerned about violence if the Flemish don't maintain bilinguality for the sake of all the French living in Flemland, in Brussels and out of it. Do you know how many French people speak Flemish, even the ones marooned in their townships up in Flemland away from Wallonia? Almost none. Stupid, but true. And if you take away their linguistic status, basically force them to fuck off back to Wallonia, which could be France at that point and who wants to fuck off to the bits of France that aren't on the Mediterranean, I bet at least a few nut jobs would start blowing shit up. After all, this is Europe, and the tradition of making a bad situation worse by blowing shit up has an ancient pedigree here.
martedì, dicembre 11, 2007
The Red Dragon lacks an infinite mental capacity
Rocky and the Melbine have both made their little Sagittarians now. And my grade partner at work is leaving the office to make hers this week. Don't know what a grade partner is? That's probably for the best. Unfortunately the capacity of the human mind is not infinite and knowing what a grade partner is would take up valuable mental space you could devote to remembering how to deal with a snakebite or bake clafouti, neither of which I know how to do anymore. Anyways, she's leaving to make her baby and while she's gone my new grade partner is the CEO of our corporation.
This makes me a little nervous. 'Powerful' men always make me nervous. I can't help but feel they wouldn't have bothered getting that powerful unless they liked screwing people over when the errant mood strikes them. But he seems nice and didn't once mention his car during our meeting, although he did mention his ranch. Or maybe he just told me he lives in a state with a lot of ranches in it. Unfortunately the capacity of the human mind is not infinite and remembering if my CEO lives on a ranch or just lives in a state with a lot of ranches in it would take up valuable mental space I'm devoting to calculating if we have enough reefer to last us until the beginning of our Christmas holiday (probably yes, if I hide it from the F-word during the day).
All of this is secondary to the fact that everybody is having babies and I - don't - do - maybe want to as well. Now would be the first period in my life that getting and keeping pregnant wouldn't be a massive personal disaster, particularly as I'm with the only man I've ever been with who I would consent to make babies with. Does that count as wanting to? Sometimes, maybe. Right now I'm fresh from reading Rocky's account of how his lady, who I only know as a lovely, composed figure singing Adalgisa in a production of Norma awhile back, went through a long long long delivery without drugs. Whereas I presently have mild cramps from clinging on to the back of the Red Dragon, and it's taking all of my forbearance to not get really high before I go to work to get some relief.
Am I tough enough? Not just to pop one out but to protect it once it's out, and then to raise it, and then to let it go? I don't know. Unfortunately the capacity of the human mind is not infinite . . .
This makes me a little nervous. 'Powerful' men always make me nervous. I can't help but feel they wouldn't have bothered getting that powerful unless they liked screwing people over when the errant mood strikes them. But he seems nice and didn't once mention his car during our meeting, although he did mention his ranch. Or maybe he just told me he lives in a state with a lot of ranches in it. Unfortunately the capacity of the human mind is not infinite and remembering if my CEO lives on a ranch or just lives in a state with a lot of ranches in it would take up valuable mental space I'm devoting to calculating if we have enough reefer to last us until the beginning of our Christmas holiday (probably yes, if I hide it from the F-word during the day).
All of this is secondary to the fact that everybody is having babies and I - don't - do - maybe want to as well. Now would be the first period in my life that getting and keeping pregnant wouldn't be a massive personal disaster, particularly as I'm with the only man I've ever been with who I would consent to make babies with. Does that count as wanting to? Sometimes, maybe. Right now I'm fresh from reading Rocky's account of how his lady, who I only know as a lovely, composed figure singing Adalgisa in a production of Norma awhile back, went through a long long long delivery without drugs. Whereas I presently have mild cramps from clinging on to the back of the Red Dragon, and it's taking all of my forbearance to not get really high before I go to work to get some relief.
Am I tough enough? Not just to pop one out but to protect it once it's out, and then to raise it, and then to let it go? I don't know. Unfortunately the capacity of the human mind is not infinite . . .
lunedì, dicembre 10, 2007
How do the angels get to sleep, when the devil leaves the porchlight on
Sometimes - okay, all the fucking time, or at least when I'm not thinking about sex or food or all that other, funner shit in Maslow's hierarchy - I think about why people bother being pricks. Usually getting onto that stream of thought means remembering some episode of my own involving being a prick, and not being sure why I bothered as there's so much fun to be had that doesn't involve fucking over other people or having to invent a thousand beautifully plausible rationalizations for being a prick that might be fantastically useful if life or my conscience was a common-law criminal court, which they fucking aren't.
It all gets shady at a certain point in between trying to understand that we're social creatures who get a kick out of being more important than each other, and wondering if naughty people and nice people eventually just get into the habit of approaching life as two radically different games with radically different rewards. I don't think I'll ever understand. But it bugs the hell out of me. The rewards for being naughty seem sort of crappy.
Maybe if I had to worry about money now I wouldn't feel this way - but 'making it' in the worldly sense seems to involve so little pleasure and happiness, and so much demonstration of your power or wealth, so much display, like a peacock weighed down by a ridiculously ostentatious tail. Like the men one meets from time to time who are incapable of talking about anything except their Audis/Beamers/yachts/other possessions that depreciate by 70% as soon as they leave the dealership even when an infant could see their interlocutors eyes were glazing over, or women who are incapable of leaving their apartments without spending an hour or more of their valuable time decorating themselves when they could be occupying themselves by not being so fucking boring.
Gah. Here's some Tom Waits as all his fire and brimstone is probably what got me into the mood for all this judgementalism.
It all gets shady at a certain point in between trying to understand that we're social creatures who get a kick out of being more important than each other, and wondering if naughty people and nice people eventually just get into the habit of approaching life as two radically different games with radically different rewards. I don't think I'll ever understand. But it bugs the hell out of me. The rewards for being naughty seem sort of crappy.
Maybe if I had to worry about money now I wouldn't feel this way - but 'making it' in the worldly sense seems to involve so little pleasure and happiness, and so much demonstration of your power or wealth, so much display, like a peacock weighed down by a ridiculously ostentatious tail. Like the men one meets from time to time who are incapable of talking about anything except their Audis/Beamers/yachts/other possessions that depreciate by 70% as soon as they leave the dealership even when an infant could see their interlocutors eyes were glazing over, or women who are incapable of leaving their apartments without spending an hour or more of their valuable time decorating themselves when they could be occupying themselves by not being so fucking boring.
Gah. Here's some Tom Waits as all his fire and brimstone is probably what got me into the mood for all this judgementalism.
domenica, dicembre 09, 2007
Under the mangrove tree
No office for the poor sick Mistress today, though a good deal of work. Right now, my 'work' involves finding the most comfy position for writing a market report in - a position that will incorporate semi-lying down, being close to the fireplace and being able to reach food and drinks. I think I've found the place - I had the bright if evil idea of pushing the cat off her favourite spot on the loveseat, half unfolding it, and sticking my feet up on the headrest. Poor cat. Now she's sitting next to me and purring like an outboard motor - I think she's pleased to have another source of heat in the apartment that's not usually there during the week, though she's pissed off when I sneeze.
By the way:
And:
A HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!
I only noticed this today. There's something about 'unintentional plagiarism' when someone invokes Krishna right before launching into it. I mean, what do you think if you're the Chiffons, and one day you turn on the radio and the ugly-but-talented Beatle is using your biggest hit to sing the sort of let's-go-to-India-to-find-ourselves-luckily-they-already-speak-English-because-we-colonized-them hippie shit that helped sink the commercial viability of your doo-wappy girl band stuff? You think 'lawsuit'. But I bet the girls themselves didn't see a red cent. Naughty world.
You see the level I'm functioning at today - territorial disputes with a housecat. Sigh. This weekend had its positive and negative moments. The worst had me in the park close to our flat, staring at the colony of monk parakeets and thinking 'what are the stupid fucks doing in Brussels when they can fly south?' Suddenly the city seemed like a big mangrove island in the middle of the sea, where alien beasts like me and the monk parakeets can eke out a comfortable-enough living, but absolutely isolated, floating in the middle of an ocean of shitty northern European winter, subsidized employment, and fuckin' Belgians. Far away from the sun. Marooned, far away from the sun, because it's easier than getting ourselves to a sunny place.
Anyways, I watched a few episodes of a World War I documentary and got over it. And recalled what I do here will prepare me for doing other things elsewhere, verily in the sun. It's naughty because I haven't even been here a year yet but I still look at other jobs just to give me ideas. No intention of leaving anytime soon as the money is quite good relative to the cost of living, and I'm not bored at work. Also when I do leave I fondly imagine it'll be for a life of leisure or artistic fulfillment. But it's amazing what I'm qualified for after a youth spent getting high and doing whatever I fucking felt like.
By the way:
And:
A HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!
I only noticed this today. There's something about 'unintentional plagiarism' when someone invokes Krishna right before launching into it. I mean, what do you think if you're the Chiffons, and one day you turn on the radio and the ugly-but-talented Beatle is using your biggest hit to sing the sort of let's-go-to-India-to-find-ourselves-luckily-they-already-speak-English-because-we-colonized-them hippie shit that helped sink the commercial viability of your doo-wappy girl band stuff? You think 'lawsuit'. But I bet the girls themselves didn't see a red cent. Naughty world.
giovedì, dicembre 06, 2007
The view from Bluebeard's castle
Depression has taken a shit on our household. Since my birthday I've been okay - bursting into spontaneous song, looking forward to the future, hugging people and heckling television screens as usual. And even on the shittiest days I wasn't too badly off because, let's face it, I spent a year and a half parting with my spare cash to a Jungian for a practical reason as well as for educational and developmental reasons - I know I have some damagingly melancholic tendencies and I knew that I had to learn to live with them so they wouldn't be damaging no more.
The F-word, however, is still wandering around like a particularly pissed off lost soul. You'd think I understand, right? Sympathize? Oh, but I do. Then when he doesn't demonstrate appreciation of my understanding and my sympathy to my satisfaction, they flip into teeth-gritting annoyance so easily! And if I'm perfectly honest with myself, in the end it all boils down to the ignoble but persistent pissy little thought: 'how can you possibly be so depressed for so long when you have me?!'
And that pissy little thought can be deconstructed even further. Because I can recall the most depressive period of my life, the one where I was living in what felt like a glass box without airholes, and that was around the time that I was living with Bluebeard. Life with him was difficult - he was a difficult person. No doubt about that. But at no time then, and not now either, could I say he caused the depressive state I was in. What I can say is that our ongoing relationship was a symptom of that state. If I wasn't in that state, I would have left him immediately. There might have been some nasty chambers in that castle, but the front door wasn't locked.
Nonetheless, having had that experience makes me paranoid now that our relationship is a symptom of the F-word's depression. I can look at that paranoia and see it's a false comparison - for example, I'm not fucking insane and I have reserves of everyday patience that poor old Bluebeard was never educated to have. But I have the paranoia nonetheless. I have it and it drives me nuts with annoyance when I 'understand' and 'sympathize' with the F-word's depression and it doesn't go away. It takes every particle of my everyday patience to not scream at him to do something about his depression instead of subjecting me to it when I'm so great and understanding and sympathetic and not at all like Bluebeard (am I?), and sometimes the best I can manage is a withdrawal from the situation.
And when I step back from the situation and try to analyze it, like this morning, it drives me nuts with annoyance that we piddly little people have to look at the world and each other through the flawed prism of our narrow little selves. We can sympathize, we can relate, but finally that's the best we can do - relating - and understanding anything beyond our own experience is never a sure or even a good bet. How limited, how frustrating. No wonder people get such a kick out of believing in a God who knows all and sees all, which I would assume would include being able to see through all of our eyes. No wonder Christians dream of going to a heaven where they can share in that. No wonder Buddhists struggle to leave the self behind. Et cetera.
Anyways, I suppose I should go count my blessings as I'm not depressed, not at all, very happy in fact. Melbine, who has not been so very active blogwise, may be less so as her new baby just popped out two weeks ahead of schedule, picture perfect and without a hitch. Sweet - another little Sagittarian to get indignant about the rotten state of this naughty world, and to walk into perfectly visible coffee tables! My cup runneth over.
The F-word, however, is still wandering around like a particularly pissed off lost soul. You'd think I understand, right? Sympathize? Oh, but I do. Then when he doesn't demonstrate appreciation of my understanding and my sympathy to my satisfaction, they flip into teeth-gritting annoyance so easily! And if I'm perfectly honest with myself, in the end it all boils down to the ignoble but persistent pissy little thought: 'how can you possibly be so depressed for so long when you have me?!'
And that pissy little thought can be deconstructed even further. Because I can recall the most depressive period of my life, the one where I was living in what felt like a glass box without airholes, and that was around the time that I was living with Bluebeard. Life with him was difficult - he was a difficult person. No doubt about that. But at no time then, and not now either, could I say he caused the depressive state I was in. What I can say is that our ongoing relationship was a symptom of that state. If I wasn't in that state, I would have left him immediately. There might have been some nasty chambers in that castle, but the front door wasn't locked.
Nonetheless, having had that experience makes me paranoid now that our relationship is a symptom of the F-word's depression. I can look at that paranoia and see it's a false comparison - for example, I'm not fucking insane and I have reserves of everyday patience that poor old Bluebeard was never educated to have. But I have the paranoia nonetheless. I have it and it drives me nuts with annoyance when I 'understand' and 'sympathize' with the F-word's depression and it doesn't go away. It takes every particle of my everyday patience to not scream at him to do something about his depression instead of subjecting me to it when I'm so great and understanding and sympathetic and not at all like Bluebeard (am I?), and sometimes the best I can manage is a withdrawal from the situation.
And when I step back from the situation and try to analyze it, like this morning, it drives me nuts with annoyance that we piddly little people have to look at the world and each other through the flawed prism of our narrow little selves. We can sympathize, we can relate, but finally that's the best we can do - relating - and understanding anything beyond our own experience is never a sure or even a good bet. How limited, how frustrating. No wonder people get such a kick out of believing in a God who knows all and sees all, which I would assume would include being able to see through all of our eyes. No wonder Christians dream of going to a heaven where they can share in that. No wonder Buddhists struggle to leave the self behind. Et cetera.
Anyways, I suppose I should go count my blessings as I'm not depressed, not at all, very happy in fact. Melbine, who has not been so very active blogwise, may be less so as her new baby just popped out two weeks ahead of schedule, picture perfect and without a hitch. Sweet - another little Sagittarian to get indignant about the rotten state of this naughty world, and to walk into perfectly visible coffee tables! My cup runneth over.
mercoledì, dicembre 05, 2007
Whale me if you dare
For all my rampant opinionation, I'm a pacific person. My self-image, which owes a lot to the days when I was fatter, is of a clumsy humpback whale gliding through the ocean, dum dee dum dee dum, mmmmm krill krill krill, dum dee dum, oops, capsized a boat of tourists, dum dee dum, and I reckon I swallowed a dolphin with that last mouthful of krill, shit, dum dee dum. By which I mean to say I know I've hurt a lot of people by accident or due to personal insecurities that engendered some pretty damaging behaviour, but I've rarely attacked anyone in anger.
Before I continue and while I have whales on the brain, I really have to recommend Walking With Beasts (outside of Kenneth Branagh's narration - the world wouldn't have lost much if his vocal cords had been surgically removed after filming the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V - ever since that admittedly goosepimply and inspirational bit of celluloid moment he's just sounded like a ponce to me), particularly the episode with the giant carnivorous whales. Get high and imagine if the Japanese would be so anxious to get back to whaling if those massive nasty motherfuckers were sharing the ocean with them. "I know, let's all get on a boat and go shoot at Godzilla." Yeah. It'd be great. Anyways.
My point was that when I get angry, which I do lots, I try to deal with being angry in a non-angry way, which usually works. So it pisses me off when friends make me angry because if we're close enough I can't deal with my anger in a non-angry way, as they tend to notice I'm angry. Thing is, my opinionation is getting more rampant as I age and now some friends are starting to blow my gaskets through - oh fuck, here it goes - the revelation of ongoing behaviour I think is immoral. But who am I to judge their morality, they may say, and then I'll say fuck you, I'm Mistress La Spliffe, and before you know it there's a blow up between me and very dear friends whose ferocity outstrips anything I've approached when dealing with all the cunts who I don't like that litter this naughty world.
I guess my point is that you shouldn't tell me about your naughty behaviour until you've decided to stop it. And that if you'd rather I participated in some sort of rationalization with you instead of bitching you out, well, no. There's a whole industry of mental health professionals you can hire for that. But I'll confess, sometimes I worry I'll run out of couches to crash on if this opinionation drive continues.
Before I continue and while I have whales on the brain, I really have to recommend Walking With Beasts (outside of Kenneth Branagh's narration - the world wouldn't have lost much if his vocal cords had been surgically removed after filming the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V - ever since that admittedly goosepimply and inspirational bit of celluloid moment he's just sounded like a ponce to me), particularly the episode with the giant carnivorous whales. Get high and imagine if the Japanese would be so anxious to get back to whaling if those massive nasty motherfuckers were sharing the ocean with them. "I know, let's all get on a boat and go shoot at Godzilla." Yeah. It'd be great. Anyways.
My point was that when I get angry, which I do lots, I try to deal with being angry in a non-angry way, which usually works. So it pisses me off when friends make me angry because if we're close enough I can't deal with my anger in a non-angry way, as they tend to notice I'm angry. Thing is, my opinionation is getting more rampant as I age and now some friends are starting to blow my gaskets through - oh fuck, here it goes - the revelation of ongoing behaviour I think is immoral. But who am I to judge their morality, they may say, and then I'll say fuck you, I'm Mistress La Spliffe, and before you know it there's a blow up between me and very dear friends whose ferocity outstrips anything I've approached when dealing with all the cunts who I don't like that litter this naughty world.
I guess my point is that you shouldn't tell me about your naughty behaviour until you've decided to stop it. And that if you'd rather I participated in some sort of rationalization with you instead of bitching you out, well, no. There's a whole industry of mental health professionals you can hire for that. But I'll confess, sometimes I worry I'll run out of couches to crash on if this opinionation drive continues.
martedì, dicembre 04, 2007
But the prettiest sight to see are the papers that will be served at your own front door
It's beginning to look a lot like divorce season. God, what a world. People getting so hard-bitten and cynically practical about their situations and carrying that over to the rest of the world. It makes me think, is that what we're supposed to look like when we grow up? Pursing our bitter lips and putting up with soul-destroying situations because we can count the days until we cut them off and perhaps 'benefit' from them?
Fuck, no. I refuse. I double-dutch refuse. Triple dutch. It feels like some behavioral manifesto has to come out of this year's divorce season for me - can't think exactly what though. Some sort of blend of 'to thine own self be true' and 'do onto others as you would have them do onto you' that I don't quite have the words for yet. 'Do onto others as you would do onto your own true self', I suppose.
There must be a catchier way to put it. Once I find it I plan on opening my own church, or founding my own branch of psychoanalysis.
Fuck, no. I refuse. I double-dutch refuse. Triple dutch. It feels like some behavioral manifesto has to come out of this year's divorce season for me - can't think exactly what though. Some sort of blend of 'to thine own self be true' and 'do onto others as you would have them do onto you' that I don't quite have the words for yet. 'Do onto others as you would do onto your own true self', I suppose.
There must be a catchier way to put it. Once I find it I plan on opening my own church, or founding my own branch of psychoanalysis.
lunedì, dicembre 03, 2007
Getting into the spirit cabinet
Really looking forward to the Christmas break. Was only sort of looking forward to it before as we're heading up to England and my dream was to head somewhere warm, sunny and non-Christian for Christmas. I believe that Jeebus was probably the Word Made Flesh, but come on, we all know he wasn't born in December, let's call a pagan New Years' ritual a pagan New Years' ritual. If the celebrations involved an elaborate ritual of the citizenry stripping naked and chasing a sacrificial greased pig across the snow, ripping it to pieces with their bare hands, roasting it on a fire, and then cunningly releasing a cute little greased piglet from below the ashes while everybody applauds and releases fireworks, then I could really get into it.
As it is - trudging along extremely crowded shopping thoroughfares in the biting Belgian rain, wracking your brain to try to remember if you've already bought your brother John Lennon's 'Rock'n'roll', and buying train or plane tickets during the peak price season, nominally to celebrate the birthday of a guy who was probably actually born in a less fucking shitty month, like August - I think Christmas would be a great season for touring the marijuana plantations of the Chefchaouen region in Morocco. Oh well. I'm just whining, really. I enjoy having family obligations very much - the alternative would be crap. So instead of going to the Rif mountains to get monumentally fucked up in the sun, we're going to fucking Scandinavia, which includes the British Isles whether they or Scandinavia like it or not. It's so fucking dark up there. Sooooo dark.
But I'm looking forward to seeing Mum, and the beauties of the Yorkshire Dales even though they'll only be illuminated by about two hours of daylight, and now also looking forward to a couple of days in London where the F-word, a fanboy, gets to see the terracotta army of the first Chinese emperor and I get to see one of my crazy old friends, and then New Year's, which we're spending with some of the F-word's crazy old friends (and I'm seeing our sweetheart in Oxford, Melbine). AND I won't be working. For nearly two weeks. This is a HUGE deal to me. The last time I didn't work for two weeks was my thesis defense trip, and I had to defend a thesis then, not to mention sleep off a breakdown, so it really didn't count. This is why I came to Europe. The periods of not working and still getting money. Oh, the joy.
As it is - trudging along extremely crowded shopping thoroughfares in the biting Belgian rain, wracking your brain to try to remember if you've already bought your brother John Lennon's 'Rock'n'roll', and buying train or plane tickets during the peak price season, nominally to celebrate the birthday of a guy who was probably actually born in a less fucking shitty month, like August - I think Christmas would be a great season for touring the marijuana plantations of the Chefchaouen region in Morocco. Oh well. I'm just whining, really. I enjoy having family obligations very much - the alternative would be crap. So instead of going to the Rif mountains to get monumentally fucked up in the sun, we're going to fucking Scandinavia, which includes the British Isles whether they or Scandinavia like it or not. It's so fucking dark up there. Sooooo dark.
But I'm looking forward to seeing Mum, and the beauties of the Yorkshire Dales even though they'll only be illuminated by about two hours of daylight, and now also looking forward to a couple of days in London where the F-word, a fanboy, gets to see the terracotta army of the first Chinese emperor and I get to see one of my crazy old friends, and then New Year's, which we're spending with some of the F-word's crazy old friends (and I'm seeing our sweetheart in Oxford, Melbine). AND I won't be working. For nearly two weeks. This is a HUGE deal to me. The last time I didn't work for two weeks was my thesis defense trip, and I had to defend a thesis then, not to mention sleep off a breakdown, so it really didn't count. This is why I came to Europe. The periods of not working and still getting money. Oh, the joy.
domenica, dicembre 02, 2007
That wasn't so bad now was it
Here are the views that convinced me, before I saw the F-word again, before I got a passing grade on my master's thesis, before I returned to Italy and had some ice cream, before I remembered they get five weeks of vacation here, that I would move back to Europe as soon as it was sensible:
It's from Carmen's loft, which she's opened to me when I needed it the most - the thesis, transit weekends away. It's a lovely apartment - an old industrial space that she renovated in such a way that seems to reflect her so much. But I reckon my favourite thing about it, besides her being in it, is the view:
She lives in the south of Paris, south of Montparnasse, in the neighborhood dubbed by some as the most boring in the city. But I love the way you can see from the view that people are stacked on top of each other without the cityscape losing its humanity. That's what made me want to move back so much, or one of the things: in Europe it's conceivable to live well in a city, to have a good life without thinking your carbon footprint is morbidly obese. Of course in Paris it helps to be rich. I couldn't have the life in Paris that I have here in Brussels. We'd have to live either out-of-town or in a tiny shithole.
Madame Pariyorker is soon to become Mlle Pariyorker. The marriage is spinning to a disastrous conclusion, which I spent most of Saturday hearing about. Gah. At least as I heard about it, it was a lovely day and we did some lovely things. Started it at Angelina's, a café on Rivoli that used to be classy and a lesbian hangout but is now an undiscriminating tourist trap, but a classy tourist trap with really great hot chocolate and pastries. We walked through the Tuileries after that, and then through Odéon et cetera and sat in the sun for awhile in the Luxembourg gardens. Luxembourg, I noticed during the chronicle of the Marriage That Won't, has many unattended attractive Gallic types in it that keep trying to catch your eye. Not the standard quality of Parisian drageur. These ones carry serious books, have nice shaggy hair, and don't look like they masturbate/sniff glue/piss behind trees.
Anyways. Feasted on oysters once the F-word made an appearance, and walked some more. Down to Notre Dame in the dark and enjoyed the views through the hours when you can't see the rats scuttling around. Fell asleep. We meant to go to the Musée de Luxembourg which has an Arcimboldo exhibition on, open late on Saturdays, but the reefer and chronic exhaustion had taken their toll.
Next day, Picasso museum for the benefit of the F-word, a fanboy. I got museum exhaustion the second we stepped in, as it was the first Sunday of the month and therefore free and therefore chokkers. Escaped to the Jewish neighborhood on Rue de Rosiers to get some cheesecake for the journey hope - best cheesecake ever, which is to the best as I don't really like cheesecake - and went back to collect the F-word so that we could return to Rosiers and go to L'As de Falafel, another tourist trap with awesome food. However, the falafel was slightly soggy in the middle and therefore no longer the best I'd ever had; it's been supplanted by some hippie-type restaurant in Brugges that uses more sesame seeds.
And that's all I have to say about that. Bluebeard didn't get me and I only imagined I saw him once or twice. I really have to grow the fuck up.
giovedì, novembre 29, 2007
Bluebeard: His Part in My Vacation
Off to Paris tonight, I think - after the last abortive effort I'm not making any sweeping committal statements about my ability to get there anymore. I have some skeletons in my closet and the worst one isn't actually in my closet, it's in Paris. So sometimes I wonder if transport strikes and civil unrest aren't Carl Jung's way of saying 'don't go back'. Wondering if stepping on to the coach is like turning the key in the lock of Bluebeard's forbidden room. I don't think so, though, I think I just enjoy the drama of the simile and the aesthetic juxtaposition of a heavy, foreboding, cobwebby door at the end of a dank dark passageway in a eastern European tyrant's schloss and a fluorescently lit Eurolines coach that smells like piss and multi-ethnic impatience. I'm 90% sure that my trouble in Paris was resolved some time ago everywhere except in my own head, which is the only place I'm likely to find any Bluebeard's chambers, though if going to Paris helps me find them I suppose it's all to the best, then I can go on being rescued and moving on with my life.
On to happier subjects. Besides the sweet-ass Meindl boots that can climb a mountain but have so far only climbed to the office and back, the F-word also got me Spike Milligan's war memoirs and they're fucking fabulous. Mostly about his training and then time in Africa as a gunner. The world's funniest man writing about one of the world's most vicious conflicts? Can't lose. The titles of the three volumes tell you most of what you need to know: 'Hitler: My Part in His Downfall', '"Rommel?" "Gunner Who?"', and 'Monty: His Part in My Victory'. Last night I had a very shouty appointment at my bank - I think our relationship is coming to a close, I've been seeing ING behind its back and it's time to stop living a lie - which the cunts had the temerity to keep me waiting for after I'd gone to all the trouble of sneaking out of the office early. I was well primed for a fight and more and more pissed off as each moment passed, but kept breaking into laughter in the waiting area at some - just - fucking - brilliancy in "Rommel?" "Gunner Who?". A wonderful Christmas gift for any war-obsessed Irish Catholic Communists of your acquaintance, speaking of Hilts, which I wasn't but there you go, or for anybody really.
On to happier subjects. Besides the sweet-ass Meindl boots that can climb a mountain but have so far only climbed to the office and back, the F-word also got me Spike Milligan's war memoirs and they're fucking fabulous. Mostly about his training and then time in Africa as a gunner. The world's funniest man writing about one of the world's most vicious conflicts? Can't lose. The titles of the three volumes tell you most of what you need to know: 'Hitler: My Part in His Downfall', '"Rommel?" "Gunner Who?"', and 'Monty: His Part in My Victory'. Last night I had a very shouty appointment at my bank - I think our relationship is coming to a close, I've been seeing ING behind its back and it's time to stop living a lie - which the cunts had the temerity to keep me waiting for after I'd gone to all the trouble of sneaking out of the office early. I was well primed for a fight and more and more pissed off as each moment passed, but kept breaking into laughter in the waiting area at some - just - fucking - brilliancy in "Rommel?" "Gunner Who?". A wonderful Christmas gift for any war-obsessed Irish Catholic Communists of your acquaintance, speaking of Hilts, which I wasn't but there you go, or for anybody really.
mercoledì, novembre 28, 2007
Save the trees
Yesterday was a conference. The conference part of it was actually interesting because it was about a sort of public certification system for environmental sustainability, so that consumers and converters can be made fully aware of how nice to the planet each producer is. My industry isn't really known for its environmental sustainability, so there was lots of moaning and groaning from the floor, lots of 'why us and not the people who make tin cans?'
And you know what else there was? Resignation. Business is figuring out that, if nothing else, being environmentally responsible and transparent is a way to make their products value-added, and it's also starting to realise there's simply no choice. Laws and consumers are intersecting, forcing things to be better. Keep fighting the dirty vicious fight, people, and remember: business is there to serve you; and not vice-versa. Make that bitch your slave.
This morning, at least, I'm very optimistic about the future of our race. Still a bit depressed in my own right, but dealing with it as best I can. Here's a picture so that I can avoid typing about it. I don't know where the F-word took it. Could be anywhere in Belgium as this country is absolutely full of trees on crutches. If I ever have a contract with a publishing house that demands I produce another book for them before I get released so that I can get a much, much better contract with another publishing house, I think I'll release a coffee table book of Belgian trees on crutches.
And you know what else there was? Resignation. Business is figuring out that, if nothing else, being environmentally responsible and transparent is a way to make their products value-added, and it's also starting to realise there's simply no choice. Laws and consumers are intersecting, forcing things to be better. Keep fighting the dirty vicious fight, people, and remember: business is there to serve you; and not vice-versa. Make that bitch your slave.
This morning, at least, I'm very optimistic about the future of our race. Still a bit depressed in my own right, but dealing with it as best I can. Here's a picture so that I can avoid typing about it. I don't know where the F-word took it. Could be anywhere in Belgium as this country is absolutely full of trees on crutches. If I ever have a contract with a publishing house that demands I produce another book for them before I get released so that I can get a much, much better contract with another publishing house, I think I'll release a coffee table book of Belgian trees on crutches.
martedì, novembre 27, 2007
He seems to like me
Conference today. I'm not a proponent of getting high for work but I'd get shit-eyed for this one, except I have to go to the office in the afternoon to wrap up some deadline stuff. Mistress La Spliffe is feeling that she just can't win these days, I'm afraid. It's a little absurd - I have money, love, friendship, a great bike, best reefer of my life, a job I have to think about - everything but sunshine and free time, really. And while those are key, I get impatient with my funks when about 2 billion people would kill to trade places with me. Back when I was in analysis, my analyst used to tell me such thoughts were useless. But I'm not paying for that sort of reassurance anymore.
So how's about some Tom Waits? Googling the lyrics to 'Cold Water' is easier than finding my Yeats collection on those disastrous bookshelves and I desperately need a little lyricism today. Maybe something to remind me as well that my only relationship with freeways is being chauffeured down them.
Well I woke up this morning
With the cold water
With the cold water
With the cold water
Woke up this morning
With the cold water
With the cold water
With the cold
Police at the station
And they don't look friendly
Well they don't look friendly
Well they don't look friendly
Police at the station
And they don't look friendly
They don't look friendly well
They don't
Blind or crippled
Sharp or dull
I'm reading the Bible
By a 40 watt bulb
What price freedom
Dirt is my rug
Well I sleep like a baby
With the snakes and the bugs
Well the stores are open
But I ain't got no money
I ain't got no money
Stores are open but I
Ain't got no money
Ain't got no money
Well I ain't
Found an old dog
And he seems to like me
Seems to like me
Well he seems to like me
Found an old dog and he
Seems to like me
Seems to like me
Well he seems
Seen them fellows
with the card board signs
Scrapin up a little $
To buy a bottle of wine
Pregnant women and
The Vietnam vets I say
Beggin on the freeway
Bout as hard as it gets
Well I slept in the graveyard
It was cool and still
Cool and still
It was cool and still
Slept in the graveyard
It was cool and still
Cool and still and it
Was cool
Slept all night in the Cedar grove
I was born to ramble
Born to rove
Some men are searchin for the
Holy Grail
But there ain't nothin sweeter
Than ridin the rails
I look 47 but I'm 24
Well they shooed me away
From here the time before
Turned there their backs
And they locked their doors
I'm watching T.V. in
The window of a furniture store
Well I woke up this morning
With the cold water
With the cold water
With the cold water
Woke up this morning
With the cold water
With the cold water
With the cold
So how's about some Tom Waits? Googling the lyrics to 'Cold Water' is easier than finding my Yeats collection on those disastrous bookshelves and I desperately need a little lyricism today. Maybe something to remind me as well that my only relationship with freeways is being chauffeured down them.
Well I woke up this morning
With the cold water
With the cold water
With the cold water
Woke up this morning
With the cold water
With the cold water
With the cold
Police at the station
And they don't look friendly
Well they don't look friendly
Well they don't look friendly
Police at the station
And they don't look friendly
They don't look friendly well
They don't
Blind or crippled
Sharp or dull
I'm reading the Bible
By a 40 watt bulb
What price freedom
Dirt is my rug
Well I sleep like a baby
With the snakes and the bugs
Well the stores are open
But I ain't got no money
I ain't got no money
Stores are open but I
Ain't got no money
Ain't got no money
Well I ain't
Found an old dog
And he seems to like me
Seems to like me
Well he seems to like me
Found an old dog and he
Seems to like me
Seems to like me
Well he seems
Seen them fellows
with the card board signs
Scrapin up a little $
To buy a bottle of wine
Pregnant women and
The Vietnam vets I say
Beggin on the freeway
Bout as hard as it gets
Well I slept in the graveyard
It was cool and still
Cool and still
It was cool and still
Slept in the graveyard
It was cool and still
Cool and still and it
Was cool
Slept all night in the Cedar grove
I was born to ramble
Born to rove
Some men are searchin for the
Holy Grail
But there ain't nothin sweeter
Than ridin the rails
I look 47 but I'm 24
Well they shooed me away
From here the time before
Turned there their backs
And they locked their doors
I'm watching T.V. in
The window of a furniture store
Well I woke up this morning
With the cold water
With the cold water
With the cold water
Woke up this morning
With the cold water
With the cold water
With the cold
lunedì, novembre 26, 2007
Now is the winter of their discontent, but I figure we can still go to the Gap on rue de Rivoli
I've got no shame, or fairly little, in admitting I'm homesick. Probably all the birthday messages at once is what brought it on. Maybe knowing they get that extra hour or two of sunlight back home because it's a bit further south - maybe knowing that now the snow has fallen, what light there is will be doubled by reflecting off it. It could be because I know that whether I'm there or not, Time is, and I may not be approving of what he's doing behind my back, and perhaps the people back home will be shocked to see what he's done here. My job has given me acne, for example. Not lots of it, but some. I'm 20 fucking 9 now and I have more acne on my face at the moment than I had in my whole marvellously clear-skinned adolescence put together.
Anyways, enough complaining. We're planning Paris Take Two this weekend so the F-word was a little disconcerted to hear that the riots have started again after the cops killed those teenagers on the moped. In terms of the shopping/visiting/maybe a spot of opera sort of visit the darling and I have in mind, I don't think it'll have much impact. Last time the rioters only popped into the 20th and 18th arrondisements for a little visit and the disenfranchised seemed to be happy to fuck up their own neighborhoods instead of those of the dominant. No surprise there really. I remember watching reportage about Rodney King riots - I was very young at the time, twelve I should think - and wondering why all the black people were getting upset in their own neighborhoods instead of all those famous places in L.A. where surely everybody would pay more attention. One of my brothers helpfully pointed out that if they did that, they'd get fucking killed.
I've never been to L.A. and my knowledge of their police force is based on the Rodney King trial when I was twelve and then the novels of James Ellroy, but I'd imagine the same applies except much more so in France. I don't know if people fully appreciate how not-isolated and how precedented French police killing brown teenagers and getting away with it without even having to pretend to be sorry is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961 - yes, still haven't updated the browser, fuck off, you). Having spent far too much time for my tastes in Parisian suburbs I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty I'd riot too if I was a brown French teenager living in one of them and the police killed another couple brown teenagers in broad daylight, but I wouldn't dream of doing so downtown unless I had a deathwish.
Anyways, enough complaining. We're planning Paris Take Two this weekend so the F-word was a little disconcerted to hear that the riots have started again after the cops killed those teenagers on the moped. In terms of the shopping/visiting/maybe a spot of opera sort of visit the darling and I have in mind, I don't think it'll have much impact. Last time the rioters only popped into the 20th and 18th arrondisements for a little visit and the disenfranchised seemed to be happy to fuck up their own neighborhoods instead of those of the dominant. No surprise there really. I remember watching reportage about Rodney King riots - I was very young at the time, twelve I should think - and wondering why all the black people were getting upset in their own neighborhoods instead of all those famous places in L.A. where surely everybody would pay more attention. One of my brothers helpfully pointed out that if they did that, they'd get fucking killed.
I've never been to L.A. and my knowledge of their police force is based on the Rodney King trial when I was twelve and then the novels of James Ellroy, but I'd imagine the same applies except much more so in France. I don't know if people fully appreciate how not-isolated and how precedented French police killing brown teenagers and getting away with it without even having to pretend to be sorry is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961 - yes, still haven't updated the browser, fuck off, you). Having spent far too much time for my tastes in Parisian suburbs I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty I'd riot too if I was a brown French teenager living in one of them and the police killed another couple brown teenagers in broad daylight, but I wouldn't dream of doing so downtown unless I had a deathwish.
domenica, novembre 25, 2007
Oh Tony, they're beautiful
Had a good birthday. F-word broke the bank on a pair of beeeeeyoutiful hiking/mountaineering type boots and I had a bit of a Carmella Soprano moment when we went into the outdoor equpiment store and told me to choose whatever my little heart desired. It turns out inappropriately inexpensive presents really do make me feel more affectionate. Then we went to Maastricht and smoked away the lousy weather while munching canoli and drinking champagne with a couple friends. Nice.
Paolo Szot is coming to Belgium. Long, long, long term readers of my blog, of which I think there's, oh, none left now that people keep moving to Web 2.0 (spelling mistakes in real time!) know what I think of Paolo Szot, whose schedule is linked on the sidebar so that if I ever get the time and inclination to be a groupie I can do so easily. He was Escamillo in, and the only good thing about, "Carmen" when it went down at the Hummingbird Centre a couple of years ago - besides the orchestra and the chubby blonde who sang the higher part in 'Melons, coupons'.
Anyways, he was sex on legs, or rather sex projected by a booming rich baritone, and my standard forever about what an Escamillo should be. Sexy. Now he's going to be Count Almaviva in "Le nozze di Figaro" in Ghent and my guess is he'll be sexy in that too. Stay tuned.
Paolo Szot is coming to Belgium. Long, long, long term readers of my blog, of which I think there's, oh, none left now that people keep moving to Web 2.0 (spelling mistakes in real time!) know what I think of Paolo Szot, whose schedule is linked on the sidebar so that if I ever get the time and inclination to be a groupie I can do so easily. He was Escamillo in, and the only good thing about, "Carmen" when it went down at the Hummingbird Centre a couple of years ago - besides the orchestra and the chubby blonde who sang the higher part in 'Melons, coupons'.
Anyways, he was sex on legs, or rather sex projected by a booming rich baritone, and my standard forever about what an Escamillo should be. Sexy. Now he's going to be Count Almaviva in "Le nozze di Figaro" in Ghent and my guess is he'll be sexy in that too. Stay tuned.
giovedì, novembre 22, 2007
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy
Soon I'll be 29. On Sunday, to be exact. From the way people go on you'd think it wasn't a birthday at all because it's not my 30th yet. 29 is plenty for the moment, thank you. As I get older I realize it's not getting older that bothers me, so much as feeling more and more unactualized as time passes. 'Unactualized' - I think I made that word up. It's a very late November sort of word. Long, ugly, and meaningless. What I mean when I say it is that I feel I've painted myself into a living corner that bars me from doing the things that I'm best at and enjoy the most, while at the same time confuses me as to whether what I really want is to contribute something that helps celebrate the beauty of existence (good!), have everybody love me for my contributions (weak!), or not get sent to hell when I die because I've squandered my God-given talents (craaaaazy!).
I think I stopped analysis too soon, but my lifestyle right now has no point besides accumulating money so I can change my lifestyle as soon as possible. Money is dominant at the moment; I can't look at money-on-analysis as an investment because it looks like a siphon on my investments. And just because I think I need analysis doesn't mean I'm not still racked with doubts as to whether it's a big global scam or not. But the fact is even the people who love me the most can't give me the sort of help and encouragement I need right now. I suppose loving someone makes you want the best for them - not necessarily the happiest for them - for my parents, the way things are going for me now is just about the best way possible because I'm making the big bucks in a white collar job that 'goes somewhere' and enjoying a stable relationship. For the F-word, I'm squirreling away the acorns for an as yet undefined future period when we can let our artsiness burst out once more and leave this rat race behind. But for me, well, things are a pisser today and I'm sick of living for the future when I might get hit by a bus or a terminal illness. It makes me nervous and cranky.
Anyways. Speaking of money, yesterday my financial advisor asked me out. I think his intentions were honourable because he told me to bring someone else along too if I wanted. I said no anyways, because the place he asked me out to had a dress code and I don't believe in that. But I invited him and some other people along tonight to a soiree a guy from work who promotes on the side has organized - should be good - the music looks fantastic and I figure I can dance all the tedious concerns about 'unactualization' out of my head for the weekend, which will see various celebrations of my success in not getting hit by a bus or a terminal disease over the past little while.
I think I stopped analysis too soon, but my lifestyle right now has no point besides accumulating money so I can change my lifestyle as soon as possible. Money is dominant at the moment; I can't look at money-on-analysis as an investment because it looks like a siphon on my investments. And just because I think I need analysis doesn't mean I'm not still racked with doubts as to whether it's a big global scam or not. But the fact is even the people who love me the most can't give me the sort of help and encouragement I need right now. I suppose loving someone makes you want the best for them - not necessarily the happiest for them - for my parents, the way things are going for me now is just about the best way possible because I'm making the big bucks in a white collar job that 'goes somewhere' and enjoying a stable relationship. For the F-word, I'm squirreling away the acorns for an as yet undefined future period when we can let our artsiness burst out once more and leave this rat race behind. But for me, well, things are a pisser today and I'm sick of living for the future when I might get hit by a bus or a terminal illness. It makes me nervous and cranky.
Anyways. Speaking of money, yesterday my financial advisor asked me out. I think his intentions were honourable because he told me to bring someone else along too if I wanted. I said no anyways, because the place he asked me out to had a dress code and I don't believe in that. But I invited him and some other people along tonight to a soiree a guy from work who promotes on the side has organized - should be good - the music looks fantastic and I figure I can dance all the tedious concerns about 'unactualization' out of my head for the weekend, which will see various celebrations of my success in not getting hit by a bus or a terminal disease over the past little while.
mercoledì, novembre 21, 2007
My body shall be crushed out of the very form of humanity ere it become the victim of thy brutality
Had a vampire dream the other night that turned out to be remarkable. The vampire in question was decadent looking young man, that real fainting feathery cynical romantic Baudelaire-Jude Law type who look like they express erotic affection by tying you up and kicking your ass. Not really my type anymore, and in the dream certainly not my type because I was half-conscious I bore a faint resemblance to that poor murdered British student in Perugia. She's been playing on my mind because there but for the grace of God, but I mustn't keep thinking this way or I'll deny my kids the chance to do all the stupid and educational things I did.
So. I was sitting in some school building studying industriously away. The vampire came along and decided he would drink all my blood, and set about seducing me to smooth his way to do so. While my interest was piqued, I smiled and said "I'm not that kind of a girl", which is a line I'd never use in real life, because let's face it, we're ALL that kind of girl and we're just not interested - shouldn't blame ourselves. But it had an odd effect on the vampire. It became very "Ivanhoe", very Rebecca-the-Jewess-and-Brian-Bois-de-Guilbert; my refusal of his advances inspired him with an adoration of my moral fibre et cetera, and he went from wanting to drain my heart dry to wanting to make me into a vampire too, so we could both traipse about an immortal existence in our feathery cynical romantic way, probably staring dully at waterfalls a lot and writing poetry about decay - you know how it is.
As the love blossomed on his face I realized something was wrong, much more wrong than a persistent young man bothering me, something even more wrong than the prospect of assault. I seemed to smell carrion, and I realized he was dead and would somehow make me dead forever, so I freaked. Got up and ran, which of course you're not supposed to do with a vampire because they can run faster. I realized that and started freaking more freakily. Ran up some flights of stairs with him gaining on my heels, saw an open french window on the fifth floor, and ran full tilt into the void with a grateful heart.
He screamed in despair. "That'll show him," I thought I as I plummeted. And then Batman saved me and took me away from all this.
True story.
So. I was sitting in some school building studying industriously away. The vampire came along and decided he would drink all my blood, and set about seducing me to smooth his way to do so. While my interest was piqued, I smiled and said "I'm not that kind of a girl", which is a line I'd never use in real life, because let's face it, we're ALL that kind of girl and we're just not interested - shouldn't blame ourselves. But it had an odd effect on the vampire. It became very "Ivanhoe", very Rebecca-the-Jewess-and-Brian-Bois-de-Guilbert; my refusal of his advances inspired him with an adoration of my moral fibre et cetera, and he went from wanting to drain my heart dry to wanting to make me into a vampire too, so we could both traipse about an immortal existence in our feathery cynical romantic way, probably staring dully at waterfalls a lot and writing poetry about decay - you know how it is.
As the love blossomed on his face I realized something was wrong, much more wrong than a persistent young man bothering me, something even more wrong than the prospect of assault. I seemed to smell carrion, and I realized he was dead and would somehow make me dead forever, so I freaked. Got up and ran, which of course you're not supposed to do with a vampire because they can run faster. I realized that and started freaking more freakily. Ran up some flights of stairs with him gaining on my heels, saw an open french window on the fifth floor, and ran full tilt into the void with a grateful heart.
He screamed in despair. "That'll show him," I thought I as I plummeted. And then Batman saved me and took me away from all this.
True story.
martedì, novembre 20, 2007
They ain't heavy, they're just big-boned
Hilts went on beautifully on a blog entry I can't link because of the ancient nature of my Safari about how he came to love the Rolling Stones. It made me think, even made me a little misty. My brothers are separate but equal. I love them all. Like I love chocolate, marijuana, and coffee. Separate but equal, and non-carcinogenic into the mix; very different boys, men, brothers, but the best a human female could have.
Anyways, one thing they more or less agreed upon as I meandered my way through childhood and they erupted into oversized zitfarms is that music worked like this:
1. The Beatles
2. The Rolling Stones
3. Other bands
When I was ten I went through a antepubescent pseudoerotic obsession with the New Kids on the Block. It lasted five minutes because my brothers found out. They mocked me until I cried and then we went on vacation in the Laurentian Mountains for two weeks. They would not allow any music to join us except the White Album and Some Girls. The cassettes were on constant rotation as we drove and drove and drove and canoed and barbequed and swam and sailed and ate and dozed. I was cured, or brainwashed, or what have you.
Then my brothers all moved out at once what seemed like just a couple of weeks later, as they're all much older than me. Well, Elvis didn't move out right away but he did enter his acid years and as far as I was concerned all it did for him was make him either unbearably cranky or totally incomprehensible. He did bring home some better looking friends, though. Anyways, I was suddenly an isolated ten year old kid who only listened to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and I despised my peers for listening to tinkly synthesized crap and dressing like idiots.
It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with looking down my nose at people, today extending to Justin Timberlake fans and women who get cutesy tattoos. It's a fucking tattoo, for god's sake, get something cool instead of a twee little star or such bullshit. Someday you're going to be burning your way through menopause, and you'll look at your fancy girly wrist rosebud, and want to punch yourself in the face. And Justin Fucking Timberlake is a joke music producers are playing on the listening public. 'I know, let's buy some crap boyband dancer with a smurf voice and park him in front of some good beats. People will think he's not total shit and buy all his albums. It'll be hilarious!' And it is.
My point is that even now, nearly eighteen years after the trip to the Laurentians and with us all living as far apart as we can manage without moving to continents where we'd be an ethnic minority, I can't hear even the briefest excerpt from the White Album or Some Girls without feeling profoundly safe and loved.
Anyways, one thing they more or less agreed upon as I meandered my way through childhood and they erupted into oversized zitfarms is that music worked like this:
1. The Beatles
2. The Rolling Stones
3. Other bands
When I was ten I went through a antepubescent pseudoerotic obsession with the New Kids on the Block. It lasted five minutes because my brothers found out. They mocked me until I cried and then we went on vacation in the Laurentian Mountains for two weeks. They would not allow any music to join us except the White Album and Some Girls. The cassettes were on constant rotation as we drove and drove and drove and canoed and barbequed and swam and sailed and ate and dozed. I was cured, or brainwashed, or what have you.
Then my brothers all moved out at once what seemed like just a couple of weeks later, as they're all much older than me. Well, Elvis didn't move out right away but he did enter his acid years and as far as I was concerned all it did for him was make him either unbearably cranky or totally incomprehensible. He did bring home some better looking friends, though. Anyways, I was suddenly an isolated ten year old kid who only listened to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and I despised my peers for listening to tinkly synthesized crap and dressing like idiots.
It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with looking down my nose at people, today extending to Justin Timberlake fans and women who get cutesy tattoos. It's a fucking tattoo, for god's sake, get something cool instead of a twee little star or such bullshit. Someday you're going to be burning your way through menopause, and you'll look at your fancy girly wrist rosebud, and want to punch yourself in the face. And Justin Fucking Timberlake is a joke music producers are playing on the listening public. 'I know, let's buy some crap boyband dancer with a smurf voice and park him in front of some good beats. People will think he's not total shit and buy all his albums. It'll be hilarious!' And it is.
My point is that even now, nearly eighteen years after the trip to the Laurentians and with us all living as far apart as we can manage without moving to continents where we'd be an ethnic minority, I can't hear even the briefest excerpt from the White Album or Some Girls without feeling profoundly safe and loved.
lunedì, novembre 19, 2007
What, am I here for your amusement?
Swingers on the brain, as we were wondering if a couple of new friends here are. It got me reminiscing about how stupidly people have approached me about group work in the past. One of my great regrets is that they were all offering absolutely unattractive situations, situations they really should have understood were absolutely unattractive, by which I mean they never involved two gorgeous men who were all about me, me, me, and often didn't involve any gorgeous men at all.
The two hardest ones to put off - not because they were tempting, but because of the men's insistence and my deferential manners - involved my best friends at the time, and as if I want to mess around with my best friends. Gross. One incident made me pretty mad at one of those friends, whose response to the situation - her boyf begging, me repeating negative platitudes I'd never have the patience to produce now when I could just do some slapping and storming out - was minutes of asinine wordless giggling. "My dream has always been to be with two beautiful women at once." Dream on, motherfucker. My dream at the time was to smoke a joint and fall asleep alone, which I believe I did that night. They're divorced now. Hah.
The other, while awkward, was much funnier, because the friend of mine involved also thought it was a stupid idea, and we passed a merry half hour making fun of her pleading hornbag ex-boyfriend. That was much less infuriating, because he was funny. Also because the nature of his begging made it seem like he wasn't so interested in having two women cater to his every whim, but more like he was interested in directing a grand sexual set piece. So less annoying, but still not tempting. Because the thing is, I'm not here for anybody's amusement or edification. I'm a herculean colossus of self-absorption. And the idea of sharing the set with that many people when I'm not the lead/writer/director/producer holds no charm at all.
My experience has been that lots of the men who have the balls to ask for weird sexual combinations don't understand the concept of me being all about me at all, and it makes me wonder if women are generally much more deferential and much less self-obsessed than I am. I was unimpressed when my friend's boyfriend used "it's always been my dream blah blah blah" as an argument that would make me more likely to go for them, but it's not like I hadn't heard it before and didn't hear it again. Do chicks go for that? I'm all for catering to partners and making dreams come true and all - but bringing in a new partner to help those dreams come true? What's wrong with good old fashioned adultery?
The two hardest ones to put off - not because they were tempting, but because of the men's insistence and my deferential manners - involved my best friends at the time, and as if I want to mess around with my best friends. Gross. One incident made me pretty mad at one of those friends, whose response to the situation - her boyf begging, me repeating negative platitudes I'd never have the patience to produce now when I could just do some slapping and storming out - was minutes of asinine wordless giggling. "My dream has always been to be with two beautiful women at once." Dream on, motherfucker. My dream at the time was to smoke a joint and fall asleep alone, which I believe I did that night. They're divorced now. Hah.
The other, while awkward, was much funnier, because the friend of mine involved also thought it was a stupid idea, and we passed a merry half hour making fun of her pleading hornbag ex-boyfriend. That was much less infuriating, because he was funny. Also because the nature of his begging made it seem like he wasn't so interested in having two women cater to his every whim, but more like he was interested in directing a grand sexual set piece. So less annoying, but still not tempting. Because the thing is, I'm not here for anybody's amusement or edification. I'm a herculean colossus of self-absorption. And the idea of sharing the set with that many people when I'm not the lead/writer/director/producer holds no charm at all.
My experience has been that lots of the men who have the balls to ask for weird sexual combinations don't understand the concept of me being all about me at all, and it makes me wonder if women are generally much more deferential and much less self-obsessed than I am. I was unimpressed when my friend's boyfriend used "it's always been my dream blah blah blah" as an argument that would make me more likely to go for them, but it's not like I hadn't heard it before and didn't hear it again. Do chicks go for that? I'm all for catering to partners and making dreams come true and all - but bringing in a new partner to help those dreams come true? What's wrong with good old fashioned adultery?
domenica, novembre 18, 2007
Let me save you and so doing save myself
We tried to go to Paris this weekend and didn't get close. Taking the coach in to circumnavigate the strike - clever, no? But because the traffic had been so built up around that city due to all the car commuters, the coaches were departing from Brussels about two hours late, and we got cranky, cold and drunk waiting. Finally I insisted on a refund and a retreat, which the F-word was fine with; his motives for wanting to go to Paris this weekend were ulterior and satisfied by the 1.5 hours we spent waiting at the Gare du Nord.
Paris during a strike was alright, if you lived downtown, weren't scared of biking, and knew the city well enough to be able to plan alternate routes every time a bunch of brat civil servants demonstrated in your path; even ideal, because it cuts down on some of the crowding. The real problem was the anger. The special regime types promote themselves as a bulwark against a slippery slope - we'll nip the reforms that are geared towards making you die in the saddle in the bud, they tell France, by boldly bringing the country to a standstill with our strikes - the problem being they're doing this as a fair proportion of the French are haemmorageing money because they can't make it to their jobs where they get paid by the hour because it's too hard to get a permanent contract because there have been no successful reforms of the permanent contracts that employers shy away from giving. A bunch of fuckwit Don Joses singing about saving her right before they stab ol' Carmen to death. The consequence, of course, is a reciprocal anger, an anger I remember well from back when I was an hourly worker, and if this round of strikes lasts much longer we shall see some blood on the streets. For an ethnic group that sings about fertilizing their fields with the impure blood of the enemy in their absolutely dreadful national anthem, they've always been quick enough on the draw when it comes to attacking each other, or at least each other's cars.
Anyways, this is a shitty time of the year for confrontation and everything else, it seems. Marriages ending, seniors dying - Grandpa died a bit more than a year ago - carping, endless carping, and eternal swinging between being too hot and too cold. Can't get over how pissy EVERYONE is and of course I'm keeping up nicely. Cannot believe, no doubt because of missing summer, that there will ever be summer again; gaping at my Tevas in the disbelief that they were ever practical. SAD is a bitch. Nonetheless we had a nice weekend here, getting high, trying to shake our eternal goddamn colds and watching Terry Jones' "Barbarian" series. That man could do a documentary about reading phonebooks and I'd be into it.
I'm also blowing through Paul Theroux's magical 'The Great Railway Bazaar'. I think I have a crush on him. He makes himself sound like a bit of a dick with 'modern' and, to me, unpleasant ideas about marital fidelity, though those stay in the elliptical realm; every encounter with prostitutes he writes about is always one where he doesn't go for it, and yet he takes the trouble to point out that he didn't experience the impotency associated with Indian tummy viruses during his journey through the sub-continent. In another sense, the way he notices,, complains and enthuses about things makes me imagine his son Louis Theroux with a harder edge and some nice alcoholic angles to his face instead of the air of good natured incomprehension that helped him build his career as a documentarian. That's, to coin a phrase, hot.
Paris during a strike was alright, if you lived downtown, weren't scared of biking, and knew the city well enough to be able to plan alternate routes every time a bunch of brat civil servants demonstrated in your path; even ideal, because it cuts down on some of the crowding. The real problem was the anger. The special regime types promote themselves as a bulwark against a slippery slope - we'll nip the reforms that are geared towards making you die in the saddle in the bud, they tell France, by boldly bringing the country to a standstill with our strikes - the problem being they're doing this as a fair proportion of the French are haemmorageing money because they can't make it to their jobs where they get paid by the hour because it's too hard to get a permanent contract because there have been no successful reforms of the permanent contracts that employers shy away from giving. A bunch of fuckwit Don Joses singing about saving her right before they stab ol' Carmen to death. The consequence, of course, is a reciprocal anger, an anger I remember well from back when I was an hourly worker, and if this round of strikes lasts much longer we shall see some blood on the streets. For an ethnic group that sings about fertilizing their fields with the impure blood of the enemy in their absolutely dreadful national anthem, they've always been quick enough on the draw when it comes to attacking each other, or at least each other's cars.
Anyways, this is a shitty time of the year for confrontation and everything else, it seems. Marriages ending, seniors dying - Grandpa died a bit more than a year ago - carping, endless carping, and eternal swinging between being too hot and too cold. Can't get over how pissy EVERYONE is and of course I'm keeping up nicely. Cannot believe, no doubt because of missing summer, that there will ever be summer again; gaping at my Tevas in the disbelief that they were ever practical. SAD is a bitch. Nonetheless we had a nice weekend here, getting high, trying to shake our eternal goddamn colds and watching Terry Jones' "Barbarian" series. That man could do a documentary about reading phonebooks and I'd be into it.
I'm also blowing through Paul Theroux's magical 'The Great Railway Bazaar'. I think I have a crush on him. He makes himself sound like a bit of a dick with 'modern' and, to me, unpleasant ideas about marital fidelity, though those stay in the elliptical realm; every encounter with prostitutes he writes about is always one where he doesn't go for it, and yet he takes the trouble to point out that he didn't experience the impotency associated with Indian tummy viruses during his journey through the sub-continent. In another sense, the way he notices,, complains and enthuses about things makes me imagine his son Louis Theroux with a harder edge and some nice alcoholic angles to his face instead of the air of good natured incomprehension that helped him build his career as a documentarian. That's, to coin a phrase, hot.
giovedì, novembre 15, 2007
The Red Dragon ponders where she came from
Pardon me for the lack of links and italics in the following entry but the F-word hasn't updated his browser since Belgium had a goverment. We've been watching a neat-o documentary about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs haven't lost any of their fascination for me because I only watched the first Jurassic Park for the Jeff Goldblum, who I dug whilst pubescent, and also because I'm so into making up bullshit relative to evolutionary psychology. And because they're big. With great big teeth and spikes and shit. Fuckin' A!
So Thursday is the easy day at work, and having dinosaurs on the brain I decided on a little light wikireadiaing about the evolution of mammals, hoping I could find some distant, implausible but emotionally pleasing evolutionary explanation for my various perversions. And did I ever! I happened to be listening to my not-so-secret guilty pleasure, Chris Isaak, of course singing "Wicked Game", as I read that during the Triassic* "acute senses of hearing . . . became vital" for our insectivore ancestors, and "this accelerated the development of the mammalian middle ear, and therefore of the mammalian jaw since bones which had been part of the jaw joint became part of the middle ear."
At that point all of human voice-y things suddenly laid themselves out for me as one extended mating call, one complicated effort made in a billion different ways to get some appropriate person to make babies with you. And that all our various perversions are just a way of maintaining some sort of genetic diversity - if you like wearing socks whilst fucking**, for example, but no one else in your tribe likes fucking in socks, you'll look outside of your tribe and use your incredible talking abilities to work out who likes fucking in socks. And the better you are at talking about them the more you can make those perversions painstakingly precise or subtle, because the cleverer you are about investigating whether other people are into them, and the further afield you'll go to satisfy them. Which is why humans, the best talkers in the animal world, are also unquestionably the biggest pervs.
Not sure how Chris Isaak fits into all this. I reckon as an example, because someone who uses the word 'wicked' so many times in a sexy song must understand something precise about guilty sex that thousands of ex-Catholic chicks like me dig and he's communicating that subtly to all of us at once by having a moaning duet with his guitar. Does jazzing on an abstract emotional concept of sensual good and evil divorced from your partner in any sense except his sheer inappropriacy count as a perversion? I should say so. A wicked game indeed. Well spotted, Chris. But pretty much guaranteed to get you out & spreading your genetic material beyond your own little tribe of Madonna-worshipping Cathos who'd prefer to fuck you through a hole in the bedsheets or have a few glasses of wine and then treat you like a prozzy.
I love bullshit evolutionary psychology, it's my fave. The post-modern way of saying God is on your side . . .
*Why do they insist on such funny names for prehistoric eras? Reminds me of the three-assed monkey from South Park.
**One of the more revolting consensual perversions in existence. I'm pretty open minded but that shit is gross.
So Thursday is the easy day at work, and having dinosaurs on the brain I decided on a little light wikireadiaing about the evolution of mammals, hoping I could find some distant, implausible but emotionally pleasing evolutionary explanation for my various perversions. And did I ever! I happened to be listening to my not-so-secret guilty pleasure, Chris Isaak, of course singing "Wicked Game", as I read that during the Triassic* "acute senses of hearing . . . became vital" for our insectivore ancestors, and "this accelerated the development of the mammalian middle ear, and therefore of the mammalian jaw since bones which had been part of the jaw joint became part of the middle ear."
At that point all of human voice-y things suddenly laid themselves out for me as one extended mating call, one complicated effort made in a billion different ways to get some appropriate person to make babies with you. And that all our various perversions are just a way of maintaining some sort of genetic diversity - if you like wearing socks whilst fucking**, for example, but no one else in your tribe likes fucking in socks, you'll look outside of your tribe and use your incredible talking abilities to work out who likes fucking in socks. And the better you are at talking about them the more you can make those perversions painstakingly precise or subtle, because the cleverer you are about investigating whether other people are into them, and the further afield you'll go to satisfy them. Which is why humans, the best talkers in the animal world, are also unquestionably the biggest pervs.
Not sure how Chris Isaak fits into all this. I reckon as an example, because someone who uses the word 'wicked' so many times in a sexy song must understand something precise about guilty sex that thousands of ex-Catholic chicks like me dig and he's communicating that subtly to all of us at once by having a moaning duet with his guitar. Does jazzing on an abstract emotional concept of sensual good and evil divorced from your partner in any sense except his sheer inappropriacy count as a perversion? I should say so. A wicked game indeed. Well spotted, Chris. But pretty much guaranteed to get you out & spreading your genetic material beyond your own little tribe of Madonna-worshipping Cathos who'd prefer to fuck you through a hole in the bedsheets or have a few glasses of wine and then treat you like a prozzy.
I love bullshit evolutionary psychology, it's my fave. The post-modern way of saying God is on your side . . .
*Why do they insist on such funny names for prehistoric eras? Reminds me of the three-assed monkey from South Park.
**One of the more revolting consensual perversions in existence. I'm pretty open minded but that shit is gross.
mercoledì, novembre 14, 2007
The Red Dragon works (kinda) hard for the money
The Bosswoman is taking us out for lunch today because our deadlines have been advanced for the past week or so and it's been hairy. But you know something - it hasn't been THAT hairy. I'm not saying my job's not hard, but it's not that bad and prrrrrobably it could get a good bit badder before I started really complaining . . . I thought it was important to write that this morning in case it does. I have a review coming up and I'm dreading being told I should be working harder or that since I've been working so beautifully they're going to give me more work to do beautifully - you can see how I might have a sensation of not being able to win, going into this thing.
Though it would be cool if they gave me more money. I just found out that there's no wealth or capital gains tax in this country, and since I have an expat contract that's already getting me more money than I've ever made in my life, even if it's not going to get me a pony anytime soon, and only gets slapped with a fraction of the AVERAGE 50% income tax 'normals' have to pay here*, and since my partner in crime is a master of frugal-but-delectable living, and since the weather is too shitty to spend much time wandering around looking for places to spend money, and since the reefer is fucking cheap, Brussels may be the place that I save enough to retire during my breeding years, or at least move somewhere climactically pleasing.
I also thought it was important to point out my job's not that bad because I have a habit of answering the question "How's it going?" at work in the morning with "Great", "Lovely" or "Fuckin' A!", particularly if I've just got laid, and yesterday, after seven months, I realized that never fails to surprise people. Of course they're mostly English people from the south who're used to displaying no emotion whilst sober besides a sort of frustrated tolerance for the circumstances in which they find themselves, but still, it makes me think there's some sort of value to accentuating the positive. What that is, I haven't quite worked out yet.
*Can you believe that shit? And their social system and infrastructure is no better than France and a good deal worse than the Netherlands - I've stopped blaming the Flemish for wanting to seperate, though that's the topic of another post.
Though it would be cool if they gave me more money. I just found out that there's no wealth or capital gains tax in this country, and since I have an expat contract that's already getting me more money than I've ever made in my life, even if it's not going to get me a pony anytime soon, and only gets slapped with a fraction of the AVERAGE 50% income tax 'normals' have to pay here*, and since my partner in crime is a master of frugal-but-delectable living, and since the weather is too shitty to spend much time wandering around looking for places to spend money, and since the reefer is fucking cheap, Brussels may be the place that I save enough to retire during my breeding years, or at least move somewhere climactically pleasing.
I also thought it was important to point out my job's not that bad because I have a habit of answering the question "How's it going?" at work in the morning with "Great", "Lovely" or "Fuckin' A!", particularly if I've just got laid, and yesterday, after seven months, I realized that never fails to surprise people. Of course they're mostly English people from the south who're used to displaying no emotion whilst sober besides a sort of frustrated tolerance for the circumstances in which they find themselves, but still, it makes me think there's some sort of value to accentuating the positive. What that is, I haven't quite worked out yet.
*Can you believe that shit? And their social system and infrastructure is no better than France and a good deal worse than the Netherlands - I've stopped blaming the Flemish for wanting to seperate, though that's the topic of another post.
martedì, novembre 13, 2007
The Red Dragon warms her chilly bones
Baby steps, baby steps. Everybody in Brussels has a cold except me. Maybe my immune system still exists. Maybe it's even getting stronger. Since I arrived I've been the office's early warning system for each new bug making the rounds but I feel fine and others are out of commission. Maybe some day I'll actually give a round of the common cold a miss.
Fell violently in lust with my tai yogilates instructor last night, which was the highlight of a lackadaisical class. When he was telling us to 'elevez vos hanches' and demonstrating, I certainly exercised my imagining muscles, even if my core muscles remained untouched. Tai yogilates is sexy in French. The gym I joined on Monday is the Easyjet of the health club world - no frills, not a single one, besides a propensity towards hiring attractive instructors. No soap in the showers, no water fountains, nothing. I like it though - all the machines are new and fantabulous, and it only costs 25 a month.
I joined the gym just in time. Though I'm in good shape at the mo from all the walking and healthy living, I need extra aerobic exercise to keep my bones hot because it's fucking COLD here. My apartment is COLD. Also my apartment is now too COLD to shower in so I need to do so at the gym - an excellent incentive to actually show up, as is the fact it's right next to the office.
Fell violently in lust with my tai yogilates instructor last night, which was the highlight of a lackadaisical class. When he was telling us to 'elevez vos hanches' and demonstrating, I certainly exercised my imagining muscles, even if my core muscles remained untouched. Tai yogilates is sexy in French. The gym I joined on Monday is the Easyjet of the health club world - no frills, not a single one, besides a propensity towards hiring attractive instructors. No soap in the showers, no water fountains, nothing. I like it though - all the machines are new and fantabulous, and it only costs 25 a month.
I joined the gym just in time. Though I'm in good shape at the mo from all the walking and healthy living, I need extra aerobic exercise to keep my bones hot because it's fucking COLD here. My apartment is COLD. Also my apartment is now too COLD to shower in so I need to do so at the gym - an excellent incentive to actually show up, as is the fact it's right next to the office.
lunedì, novembre 12, 2007
You turn me right round baby
Dreamt about tornadoes last night. I was in Edmonton, or a place I thought was Edmonton because it was mostly skyscrapers and a few old houses that were being foreclosed on due to variable rate mortgages, and it was really flat. I don't think houses are actually being foreclosed on there due to variable rate mortgages but in my lizard-brain Edmonton and Cleveland are more or less flatter/hotter versions of each other with disenfranchised natives and disenfranchised black people standing in for each other - haven't been to either so I don't know why. In my dream I was in my lizard-brain version of Edmonton, sitting around on the verandah of one of the old houses with my mum and dad and someone else, I think Elvis but I'm not sure. Dad was giving me a haircut because I'm not happy with the one I got here before the Benjamin Biolay concert, and he was a bit nervous because he hadn't cut a bird's hair since he cut mine when I was eight and he hadn't yet banished me to the world of femme-y hairdressers.
We went to a run down old shopping centre and were poking around a chinoiserie shop ran by a middle-aged Asian couple around my parents' age, when I glanced out the door and saw eleven or twelve tornadoes on the horizon that looked big to my untrained eyes. 'There's a bunch of tornadoes,' I said, 'I reckon we'd better go to the basement.' The Asian couple had a look and decided indeed we should, so we did. It was quite a nice basement. I think they were running a childcare/school down there but the kids weren't around, just the desks and bright colours and whatnot. Dad wrapped up my haircut and then I got a little restless, so I told them I'd be back in a mo and went to explore the rest of the basement.
Turns out it was another little commercial complex down there with restaurants and bars and stores full of crap, which was tedious, but then I walked up a half-flight of stairs to where a small crowd of people were watching the progress of the tornadoes. It was pretty neat looking. They were wandering around the skyscrapers, occasionally pushing one to the side and blowing shit around. But suddenly one was RIGHT THERE. I had a little scream, as did everyone else, and then I ran back into the basement looking for my family and unable to remember in my panic which part of the basement they were in. I maintained a degree of calm by reminding myself they, and I, weren't getting any safer than we were in that collective basement, but I was desperate to be with them, and tearing around like a madwoman, backtracking, peering, trying to remember where I came from.
If my subconscious was a television show, it'd have a painfully intrusive laugh track.
We went to a run down old shopping centre and were poking around a chinoiserie shop ran by a middle-aged Asian couple around my parents' age, when I glanced out the door and saw eleven or twelve tornadoes on the horizon that looked big to my untrained eyes. 'There's a bunch of tornadoes,' I said, 'I reckon we'd better go to the basement.' The Asian couple had a look and decided indeed we should, so we did. It was quite a nice basement. I think they were running a childcare/school down there but the kids weren't around, just the desks and bright colours and whatnot. Dad wrapped up my haircut and then I got a little restless, so I told them I'd be back in a mo and went to explore the rest of the basement.
Turns out it was another little commercial complex down there with restaurants and bars and stores full of crap, which was tedious, but then I walked up a half-flight of stairs to where a small crowd of people were watching the progress of the tornadoes. It was pretty neat looking. They were wandering around the skyscrapers, occasionally pushing one to the side and blowing shit around. But suddenly one was RIGHT THERE. I had a little scream, as did everyone else, and then I ran back into the basement looking for my family and unable to remember in my panic which part of the basement they were in. I maintained a degree of calm by reminding myself they, and I, weren't getting any safer than we were in that collective basement, but I was desperate to be with them, and tearing around like a madwoman, backtracking, peering, trying to remember where I came from.
If my subconscious was a television show, it'd have a painfully intrusive laugh track.
domenica, novembre 11, 2007
Ticky tacky houses
Tried to be rigorously efficient this weekend and was only moderately so - still - that exceeded expectations. considering the White Widow that's been sitting around. Took a break to socialize, and as the evening was winding down, or the morning winding up, our hosts showed us the first three episodes of Weeds with Marie-Louise Parker, Kevin Nealon, et cetera . It was pretty funny. I liked it though I don't have time to go into that (time! How did it get so precious?).
What I thought was remarkable was even now, even in our post-Sopranos landscape that has raised the bar so high on specialty television and made the sitcom format seem quaint enough to be radicalized by the adventures of a pot-dealing mum, a 25-minute pilot episode still more or less has to stand alone AND get you hooked, like a trembling young stripper at his first hen party, surreptitiously praying his panties get stuffed with bills and that no one laughs at his willy.
If I was a television enthusiast - which many of you know I am NOT, unless the enthusiasm is for shit-canning them (even the 'high-quality' stuff is just an excuse to make us think cool rich people drink Coca Cola when they don't, they drink fucking pomegranate juice or whatnot, this is 2007 and we have ideas about anti-oxidants now, people), I would collect pilot episodes and study them with rapt attention, trying to see how the creators of the show created what's effectively a half or full hour ad for the show that in its turn will serve as bait to make us watch thousands of other ads.
Puke.
What I thought was remarkable was even now, even in our post-Sopranos landscape that has raised the bar so high on specialty television and made the sitcom format seem quaint enough to be radicalized by the adventures of a pot-dealing mum, a 25-minute pilot episode still more or less has to stand alone AND get you hooked, like a trembling young stripper at his first hen party, surreptitiously praying his panties get stuffed with bills and that no one laughs at his willy.
If I was a television enthusiast - which many of you know I am NOT, unless the enthusiasm is for shit-canning them (even the 'high-quality' stuff is just an excuse to make us think cool rich people drink Coca Cola when they don't, they drink fucking pomegranate juice or whatnot, this is 2007 and we have ideas about anti-oxidants now, people), I would collect pilot episodes and study them with rapt attention, trying to see how the creators of the show created what's effectively a half or full hour ad for the show that in its turn will serve as bait to make us watch thousands of other ads.
Puke.
giovedì, novembre 08, 2007
It's not November all year
What with having given the summer a miss, I'd forgotten all about it, but this is the premier cranky time of year. The Young American stormed out of work yesterday, Madame Pariyorker is in a state, I feel the world is cruelly indifferent to my potentialities and I make everyone around me pay for it, people keep going on stress leave and it's just so fucking dark.
Sigh. Time to join the gym. That'll cheer me up some - and I have to remember it's only going to keep on getting worse for less then a month and a half before it starts getting better.
The good news is the Young American's husband who works in catering keeps getting spare food, so the other day I brought home about 30 oranges that I've been juicing. I consider juicing an abomination because of all the associated wastage but when someone gives you 30 free oranges and you have a hand reamer, you'll make orange juice, even if it means feeling slightly decadent when there are starving people in the world, and even though you're trembling with laughter a bit because you're reaming something. Heh heh heh.
Sigh. Time to join the gym. That'll cheer me up some - and I have to remember it's only going to keep on getting worse for less then a month and a half before it starts getting better.
The good news is the Young American's husband who works in catering keeps getting spare food, so the other day I brought home about 30 oranges that I've been juicing. I consider juicing an abomination because of all the associated wastage but when someone gives you 30 free oranges and you have a hand reamer, you'll make orange juice, even if it means feeling slightly decadent when there are starving people in the world, and even though you're trembling with laughter a bit because you're reaming something. Heh heh heh.
mercoledì, novembre 07, 2007
Roberto Esperanza
Saw a fucking hilarious film the other night with Adriano Celentano and Anthony Quinn, called Bluff: storia di truffe e di imbroglioni. I don't know Adriano Celentano from Santa - he's a very famous Italian singer but I avoid Italian music like the plague - apparently he's like the Italian Bob Hope, by which I mean he grabs women's tits on camera. Anyways, funny.
And that's about all I have to write this morning. There are other things to go on about but they mostly have to do with how suffocated I feel at the moment in terms of a lack of personal space and time because of work and also because I haven't quite figured out cohabitation yet, and with some guilt issues over how bad I've been at keeping in touch with people back home, and such issues deserve no more than the present sentence in this forum.
And that's about all I have to write this morning. There are other things to go on about but they mostly have to do with how suffocated I feel at the moment in terms of a lack of personal space and time because of work and also because I haven't quite figured out cohabitation yet, and with some guilt issues over how bad I've been at keeping in touch with people back home, and such issues deserve no more than the present sentence in this forum.
martedì, novembre 06, 2007
18 hours of travelling = 18 hours of reading
Whilst travelling I read some books to pass the time, and I continue to be amazed at how slowly The Waves goes - not in a bad way, though. Beautiful words, beautiful sounds, that you want to take your time with - like how you always have to slow down during a hurried morning commute when part of it takes you through a lovely park.
In between picking up and putting down The Waves, I read the rest of The Old Patagonian Express, and happily Paul Theroux found a bunch of things he liked. And wrote about it so engagingly that now I want to go to Patagonia, even though the bit about Patagonia was a tiny part of the book. The friend of the F-word that we stayed with in Berlin is Chilean so I could pick his brains a little about it. Maybe one day I'll move there. It just seems so beautifully quiet and I could go for weeks and weeks without seeing people. Of course I'd go utterly barking mad, but having seen what it's like growing old without madness that doesn't seem so bad. Anyways, yesterday by chance in the bookstore close to work I found The Great Railway Bazaar, a Theroux book about crossing Asia by train, so in a few days I might want to grow old and mad in Vietnam - we'll see what he has to say.
Also read The Conformist from Alberto Moravia, as I'd liked the Bertolucci film with Jean Louis Tritignant or however you spell his bloody name so much. The book was different; there was some surrealism to its unremitting narrative realism, to its dictation of Marcello's scared and ignoble thoughts, but not the same as in the film, not as colourful, not as sexy, not as violent - god, that murder scene in the film for example. Wasn't in the book, or rather was in the book, but third-hand, and altogether nobler, less like a messy, horrifying murder. The book read like a cautionary tale being told to you by a literary, well-meaning uncle, and while the narrative was 100% warning you about Marcello by taking his point of view, you learnt far more about the side characters, like his poor wife Giulia, than in the film, where the tangential characters are side more than fleshy effects. But then the film had some marvellous images. Both recommended.
In between picking up and putting down The Waves, I read the rest of The Old Patagonian Express, and happily Paul Theroux found a bunch of things he liked. And wrote about it so engagingly that now I want to go to Patagonia, even though the bit about Patagonia was a tiny part of the book. The friend of the F-word that we stayed with in Berlin is Chilean so I could pick his brains a little about it. Maybe one day I'll move there. It just seems so beautifully quiet and I could go for weeks and weeks without seeing people. Of course I'd go utterly barking mad, but having seen what it's like growing old without madness that doesn't seem so bad. Anyways, yesterday by chance in the bookstore close to work I found The Great Railway Bazaar, a Theroux book about crossing Asia by train, so in a few days I might want to grow old and mad in Vietnam - we'll see what he has to say.
Also read The Conformist from Alberto Moravia, as I'd liked the Bertolucci film with Jean Louis Tritignant or however you spell his bloody name so much. The book was different; there was some surrealism to its unremitting narrative realism, to its dictation of Marcello's scared and ignoble thoughts, but not the same as in the film, not as colourful, not as sexy, not as violent - god, that murder scene in the film for example. Wasn't in the book, or rather was in the book, but third-hand, and altogether nobler, less like a messy, horrifying murder. The book read like a cautionary tale being told to you by a literary, well-meaning uncle, and while the narrative was 100% warning you about Marcello by taking his point of view, you learnt far more about the side characters, like his poor wife Giulia, than in the film, where the tangential characters are side more than fleshy effects. But then the film had some marvellous images. Both recommended.
lunedì, novembre 05, 2007
I was made for loving you
So, Berlin. That city is like a dream. Not a huge Wim Winders fan but it's easier to take angels seriously in a place like that. Not pretty - not even the Museum Island is pretty - but very, very lovable. What made it more like a dream, besides the fine reefer and the early darkness, was the German language, which is like a dream language. When they look at me and natter on, the rhythms are so English that I can't understand why I don't understand. And then sometimes I do understand - the harder I listen the more I understand - and that was dreamlike too. The surreal is ante-ed up by the way that city makes so much goddamn sense and whenever I got confused, everything was sorted out before I got twitchy. It's like I've lived there before, but really it's just phenomenal urban planning.
Regret is futile because there wasn't anything more I could have done about it, but fuck, am I ever sad now Tr@nsparency Intern@tional didn't hire me after shortlisting me last year. Oh well. C'est la vie.
We did lots of fun stuff, of which the most recommendable in a public forum was the Pergamon museum, a staggering cultural rape show well worth the half-hour line and the 9 euros - they brought over the fucking Pergamon altar and Ishtar Gates bit by bit, for god's sake. Also the State Opera, where I saw Carmen - sold out except for the sight-obscured nosebleeders that were going for 8 euros, but great sound.
I'd seen Carmen in Toronto back when they were still using the Hummingbird Centre and frankly comparing the two productions was embarrassing - like comparing the Stratford Festival to a highschool production. Though Paolo Szot in Toronto made a better Escamillo, by which I mean sexier. I think the Berlin production meant to make Escamillo emblematic of death, and I'm sorry, Escamillo isn't emblematic of death, he's emblematic of a fucking sexy bullfighter. But there was just no comparison between Larissa Kostiuk as Carmen and Elisabeth Culman - not putting down Kostiuk but Culman had a lovely rich honey voice that made me think of Maria Callas doing it. A lower and more beautiful register for the part. Heavenly.
Regret is futile because there wasn't anything more I could have done about it, but fuck, am I ever sad now Tr@nsparency Intern@tional didn't hire me after shortlisting me last year. Oh well. C'est la vie.
We did lots of fun stuff, of which the most recommendable in a public forum was the Pergamon museum, a staggering cultural rape show well worth the half-hour line and the 9 euros - they brought over the fucking Pergamon altar and Ishtar Gates bit by bit, for god's sake. Also the State Opera, where I saw Carmen - sold out except for the sight-obscured nosebleeders that were going for 8 euros, but great sound.
I'd seen Carmen in Toronto back when they were still using the Hummingbird Centre and frankly comparing the two productions was embarrassing - like comparing the Stratford Festival to a highschool production. Though Paolo Szot in Toronto made a better Escamillo, by which I mean sexier. I think the Berlin production meant to make Escamillo emblematic of death, and I'm sorry, Escamillo isn't emblematic of death, he's emblematic of a fucking sexy bullfighter. But there was just no comparison between Larissa Kostiuk as Carmen and Elisabeth Culman - not putting down Kostiuk but Culman had a lovely rich honey voice that made me think of Maria Callas doing it. A lower and more beautiful register for the part. Heavenly.
domenica, novembre 04, 2007
Listing dangerously
Berlin was awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. I feel like a new woman and my SAD is fought right back. Nonetheless I have no time this morning to tell you about how great everything is, so let's go on with the list of most weepable songs ever:
6. 'Lover, You Should’ve Come Over', Jeff Buckley. I think Jeff Buckley woke up one morning and decided to write a song that would make girls emotional, sort of like a cat that wakes up and decides it’s the day it waits by a mousehole until it catches a mouse. Well, consider me caught. There’s a demanding urgency in the high wailing and the ‘say it’s not too late’ that Jeff Buckley makes sound universal, as well as like a particularly artful orgasm.
7. 'Laisse aboyer les chiens', Benjamin Biolay This song showcases all the weaknesses of his weak voice, but in context. Theatrical lyrics about female opacity in the face of a man’s despairing love (“You’ve cut me by the roots, I’m pale like a bag of heroin, my angel, etc.”) that make you understand, perhaps by virtue of the cracking, unbeautiful voice that sings them or of the melancholy, beautiful backing instrumentation, that his heart really is irretrievably broken, and now he’s going to fucking kill you. Somehow that's sad instead of infuriating.
8. 'Little Darlin’', Benjamin Biolay. Gone on about it before. More cracking, unbeautiful Biolay-voice, complimented by samples of what’s lovely and melancholy about the Carter Family – he’s a genius for having found it. He found what’s melancholy and beautiful about Marylin Monroe’s voice for a track on Rose Kennedy, 'Les Cerfs-Volants', but I prefer this.
9. 'Crown of Love', Arcade Fire. Maybe our romantic lives get higher stakes as we age, but I know for a fact I shed more tears over one boy when I was 14 than I’ve shed over all the boys put together since. One would rather like to bookend and forget such a shitty, stupid, honest time, but this moaning, soaring, violining protest against one’s own obsession, taciturnity and incoherence is an effectively shmaltzy reminder emotional waltzes aren’t just for teenagers.
10. 'Homesick', the Cure. Speaking of, I owe it to my 14 year old self to have at least one Cure song on the list. I’ve never found the Cure depressing and in fact now I find it almost provokingly, vacuously cheerful. But there’s always this song and most of the Disintegration album to remind me why I spent those years in black. This pretty-little-wrist-slitting-ditty moans out everything about wanting to go home but knowing home’s not really there anymore, not how you’re wanting it anyways. I wonder what I thought it meant when I was 14.
6. 'Lover, You Should’ve Come Over', Jeff Buckley. I think Jeff Buckley woke up one morning and decided to write a song that would make girls emotional, sort of like a cat that wakes up and decides it’s the day it waits by a mousehole until it catches a mouse. Well, consider me caught. There’s a demanding urgency in the high wailing and the ‘say it’s not too late’ that Jeff Buckley makes sound universal, as well as like a particularly artful orgasm.
7. 'Laisse aboyer les chiens', Benjamin Biolay This song showcases all the weaknesses of his weak voice, but in context. Theatrical lyrics about female opacity in the face of a man’s despairing love (“You’ve cut me by the roots, I’m pale like a bag of heroin, my angel, etc.”) that make you understand, perhaps by virtue of the cracking, unbeautiful voice that sings them or of the melancholy, beautiful backing instrumentation, that his heart really is irretrievably broken, and now he’s going to fucking kill you. Somehow that's sad instead of infuriating.
8. 'Little Darlin’', Benjamin Biolay. Gone on about it before. More cracking, unbeautiful Biolay-voice, complimented by samples of what’s lovely and melancholy about the Carter Family – he’s a genius for having found it. He found what’s melancholy and beautiful about Marylin Monroe’s voice for a track on Rose Kennedy, 'Les Cerfs-Volants', but I prefer this.
9. 'Crown of Love', Arcade Fire. Maybe our romantic lives get higher stakes as we age, but I know for a fact I shed more tears over one boy when I was 14 than I’ve shed over all the boys put together since. One would rather like to bookend and forget such a shitty, stupid, honest time, but this moaning, soaring, violining protest against one’s own obsession, taciturnity and incoherence is an effectively shmaltzy reminder emotional waltzes aren’t just for teenagers.
10. 'Homesick', the Cure. Speaking of, I owe it to my 14 year old self to have at least one Cure song on the list. I’ve never found the Cure depressing and in fact now I find it almost provokingly, vacuously cheerful. But there’s always this song and most of the Disintegration album to remind me why I spent those years in black. This pretty-little-wrist-slitting-ditty moans out everything about wanting to go home but knowing home’s not really there anymore, not how you’re wanting it anyways. I wonder what I thought it meant when I was 14.
mercoledì, ottobre 31, 2007
Halloween comes sickeningly
So. Following my plan to embrace my navel-gazing seasonal misery, last night I went to a Benjamin Biolay concert despite a nasty headache from having my long and curlies viciously brushed and blowdried to Afghan-hound-straightness by a sadistic, perfumed, pretty hairdresser who made me feel inadequate in all respects as a woman except, of course, that I have a body like a shapely sack of bowling balls and she had tits like fried eggs. Hah. Now today I have a huge headache and an upset tummy and I'm taking the day off work because I don't get paid by the hour. Double hah.
I wasn't expecting much. I'd heard he wasn't touring with strings or horns, and that he was a wooden and uncertain performer who'd rather not perform - heard that after I'd bought the tickets, of course. But expectations be buggered, for it was a fucking good concert. A rich indie sound, though he's not, of course, he's EMI or Virgin or something. Great texture. Great rhythm. That three-and-a-half dimensional sound you get at a show carried out by people who understand fully how music works as a collaboration. And his voice - I didn't know this was possible with pop acts - is better live than on the albums, and him actually suggesting melody with it goes a long way to making up for the lack of all the recorded instruments.
The best songs to hear live were from A l'origine, an album I like but whose tracks sound much better - louder, angrier, faster, and in the case of 'Tant le ciel etait sombre'* scarier live than they do recorded. A l'origine was apparently a commercial disaster, Trash Yeye selling more in its first two weeks then A l'origine has ever sold, and I thought it was interesting that he played so many songs from an album that tanked. Except it wasn't interesting at all, because the songs seemed like they'd been written for live performance. Certainly more so than the pretty tinkliness of Rose Kennedy (though I'm a sucker for 'Les cerfs volants' and the MacBook Marylin singing 'The River of No Return' brought me close to tears) and the gloomy folk rants off Negatif, which both came before. Not to say the renditions of songs from those albums were lots worse than the songs from A l'origine, but they were different from the recorded versions. He'd arranged them in a way that was more appropriate for a live show and it was good.
As for him as a performer - maybe he got a bit more self-confidence since the last round of critiques. Because while he looked like a freestyle rapper who'd smoked a whole lotta spliffery, and while there was cynicism in his carriage and banter bespeaking an awareness of the absurdity of the audience/rock star dynamic, his musical delivery was fantastic, and not cynical. The right energy, the right pitch, the right emotion. And there were some honest to goodness rock star moments when I would have thrown my panties at the stage if I hadn't been wearing trousers, such as when he started playing the trumpet for 'Dans le Merco-Benz'.
It didn't hurt that he had a great four-piece backing him, of which the drummer was the most obviously great to me. It did hurt that the one backing voice he had was from a very breathy woman who was more sound effect than soprano. He used proper voices to great effect on Trash Yeye and there's no excuse for not ponying up a couple thousand extra dollars for a trained singer who can modulate her voice without sounding like she's just finished gagging on someone's dick. But then that sort of voice seems so popular in French music. I think it's part of their unhealthy gender dynamics, which one day I will write a series of extended angry blog entries about, because, you know, I can. Triple hah.
Also, while him playing the trumpet made me want to throw my panties at him, it also reminded me there wasn't enough trumpeting, that there weren't any strings. Okay, it was a good sound, but it would have been a sublime sound with them, particularly on 'Los Angeles', which was missing its lovely rise-and-fall line in the refrain. Finally, the show was hurt by 'Little Darlin'' not getting played so I could really indulge my SAD. It made me think maybe he needs a full time sampler. But he was a touch of a human sampler, trotting out the refrain to 'Clint Eastwood' while winding up 'Negatif' and making it sound like music to massacre to. And he sang 'As Time Goes By' and made it sound, and excuse me for the earthiness of it all, like music to make babies to. Another rock star moment, when I simultaneously congratulated and berated myself for wearing pants.
Verdict - buy all his shit and see him live.
*Which I think will be my theme tune for this round of seasonal affective disorder, because the ciel in this city is sombre - Jeebus fucking Murphy, Halloween and I already want to shoot myself - happy Halloween, by the way!
I wasn't expecting much. I'd heard he wasn't touring with strings or horns, and that he was a wooden and uncertain performer who'd rather not perform - heard that after I'd bought the tickets, of course. But expectations be buggered, for it was a fucking good concert. A rich indie sound, though he's not, of course, he's EMI or Virgin or something. Great texture. Great rhythm. That three-and-a-half dimensional sound you get at a show carried out by people who understand fully how music works as a collaboration. And his voice - I didn't know this was possible with pop acts - is better live than on the albums, and him actually suggesting melody with it goes a long way to making up for the lack of all the recorded instruments.
The best songs to hear live were from A l'origine, an album I like but whose tracks sound much better - louder, angrier, faster, and in the case of 'Tant le ciel etait sombre'* scarier live than they do recorded. A l'origine was apparently a commercial disaster, Trash Yeye selling more in its first two weeks then A l'origine has ever sold, and I thought it was interesting that he played so many songs from an album that tanked. Except it wasn't interesting at all, because the songs seemed like they'd been written for live performance. Certainly more so than the pretty tinkliness of Rose Kennedy (though I'm a sucker for 'Les cerfs volants' and the MacBook Marylin singing 'The River of No Return' brought me close to tears) and the gloomy folk rants off Negatif, which both came before. Not to say the renditions of songs from those albums were lots worse than the songs from A l'origine, but they were different from the recorded versions. He'd arranged them in a way that was more appropriate for a live show and it was good.
As for him as a performer - maybe he got a bit more self-confidence since the last round of critiques. Because while he looked like a freestyle rapper who'd smoked a whole lotta spliffery, and while there was cynicism in his carriage and banter bespeaking an awareness of the absurdity of the audience/rock star dynamic, his musical delivery was fantastic, and not cynical. The right energy, the right pitch, the right emotion. And there were some honest to goodness rock star moments when I would have thrown my panties at the stage if I hadn't been wearing trousers, such as when he started playing the trumpet for 'Dans le Merco-Benz'.
It didn't hurt that he had a great four-piece backing him, of which the drummer was the most obviously great to me. It did hurt that the one backing voice he had was from a very breathy woman who was more sound effect than soprano. He used proper voices to great effect on Trash Yeye and there's no excuse for not ponying up a couple thousand extra dollars for a trained singer who can modulate her voice without sounding like she's just finished gagging on someone's dick. But then that sort of voice seems so popular in French music. I think it's part of their unhealthy gender dynamics, which one day I will write a series of extended angry blog entries about, because, you know, I can. Triple hah.
Also, while him playing the trumpet made me want to throw my panties at him, it also reminded me there wasn't enough trumpeting, that there weren't any strings. Okay, it was a good sound, but it would have been a sublime sound with them, particularly on 'Los Angeles', which was missing its lovely rise-and-fall line in the refrain. Finally, the show was hurt by 'Little Darlin'' not getting played so I could really indulge my SAD. It made me think maybe he needs a full time sampler. But he was a touch of a human sampler, trotting out the refrain to 'Clint Eastwood' while winding up 'Negatif' and making it sound like music to massacre to. And he sang 'As Time Goes By' and made it sound, and excuse me for the earthiness of it all, like music to make babies to. Another rock star moment, when I simultaneously congratulated and berated myself for wearing pants.
Verdict - buy all his shit and see him live.
*Which I think will be my theme tune for this round of seasonal affective disorder, because the ciel in this city is sombre - Jeebus fucking Murphy, Halloween and I already want to shoot myself - happy Halloween, by the way!
lunedì, ottobre 29, 2007
Daylight, save me!
Daylight Savings Time is fucking brutal. My seasonal affective disorder is kicking in like a soccer playing motherfucker. So I'm trying to be all farmery about it - getting going earlier, spending a bit more time outside despite the weather being execrable. This year, I'm trying something else that worked pretty well for me when I was a teenager; self-consciously embracing the depression. In that vein, here's the first few songs in a list of 15 songs that have a strong tendency to make me cry:
1. 'Parigi o cara', Giuseppe Verdi. I get the feeling people these days would really dislike the public persona of a celebrity like Violetta, to the degree of her illness starting up a morbid Britney-Spears-esque deathwatch. No matter. The mutually delusional swansong of Violetta and her man, whose name I don’t remember, is chilling, sad and beautiful, its little minor notes and slightly jarring end a failsafe way to get me to cry.
2. 'Grandma’s Hands', Bill Withers. Even thinking about the lines “she said ‘baby, Grandma understands that you really loved that man, put yourself in Jesus hands’” followed by the final verse and conclusion ‘when I get to Heaven I’ll look for Grandma’s hands’ sung by a man whose voice is maybe the most effecting in pop music always reduces me to a pile of snot. The musical equivalent of a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West.
3. 'Stand By Me', John Lennon. Only the Rock and Roll version; I've heard him slaughter it elsewhere. This filthy, rich, pebbles-in-a-cheese-grater plea to let good love endure usually makes me shed a couple of unsad, cathartic tears. The backing, especially the percussion, is good enough to make me think Lennon was a selfish fucking twat for not listing the band members on the liner notes. But his vocals here are still the best thing any Beatle did after the Beatles stopped being the Beatles. Though we mustn't forget:
4. 'Starting Over', John Lennon. It’s the most stapley staple of post-Beatledom because even two legless drunkards can dance to it. In fact, this is the song Elvis taught me to couples-dance to and it remains the only song I’m fully comfortable couples-dancing to, besides the 'Stand By Me' above. The thought of Elvis, who made my childhood hell but who now lives too far away from me, a whole fucking planet away, combined with the trembly uncertain joy of love that keeps coming back from the dead without behaving like a zombie, usually gets me weepy.
5. 'Purple Avenue', Holly Cole. When she leans and dips on the line ‘I’ll sleep right here on the draaaaaaaaining board’, my heart remembers all the times it broke and curled up for a long, stunned rest. And I cry. That bell-like voice of hers yodeling out Tom Waits’ incisor words is as satisfying as successful plastic surgery. She followed this album up with an album completely made up of Waits covers and I’m itching to get my hands on it.
Anyways, that's enough for today. Tonight I'm going to a Benjamin Biolay concert, and two of his tracks feature elsewhere on the list, so that will be plenty depressive for me. In that vein here's the least depressing weepable song on the above list:
1. 'Parigi o cara', Giuseppe Verdi. I get the feeling people these days would really dislike the public persona of a celebrity like Violetta, to the degree of her illness starting up a morbid Britney-Spears-esque deathwatch. No matter. The mutually delusional swansong of Violetta and her man, whose name I don’t remember, is chilling, sad and beautiful, its little minor notes and slightly jarring end a failsafe way to get me to cry.
2. 'Grandma’s Hands', Bill Withers. Even thinking about the lines “she said ‘baby, Grandma understands that you really loved that man, put yourself in Jesus hands’” followed by the final verse and conclusion ‘when I get to Heaven I’ll look for Grandma’s hands’ sung by a man whose voice is maybe the most effecting in pop music always reduces me to a pile of snot. The musical equivalent of a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West.
3. 'Stand By Me', John Lennon. Only the Rock and Roll version; I've heard him slaughter it elsewhere. This filthy, rich, pebbles-in-a-cheese-grater plea to let good love endure usually makes me shed a couple of unsad, cathartic tears. The backing, especially the percussion, is good enough to make me think Lennon was a selfish fucking twat for not listing the band members on the liner notes. But his vocals here are still the best thing any Beatle did after the Beatles stopped being the Beatles. Though we mustn't forget:
4. 'Starting Over', John Lennon. It’s the most stapley staple of post-Beatledom because even two legless drunkards can dance to it. In fact, this is the song Elvis taught me to couples-dance to and it remains the only song I’m fully comfortable couples-dancing to, besides the 'Stand By Me' above. The thought of Elvis, who made my childhood hell but who now lives too far away from me, a whole fucking planet away, combined with the trembly uncertain joy of love that keeps coming back from the dead without behaving like a zombie, usually gets me weepy.
5. 'Purple Avenue', Holly Cole. When she leans and dips on the line ‘I’ll sleep right here on the draaaaaaaaining board’, my heart remembers all the times it broke and curled up for a long, stunned rest. And I cry. That bell-like voice of hers yodeling out Tom Waits’ incisor words is as satisfying as successful plastic surgery. She followed this album up with an album completely made up of Waits covers and I’m itching to get my hands on it.
Anyways, that's enough for today. Tonight I'm going to a Benjamin Biolay concert, and two of his tracks feature elsewhere on the list, so that will be plenty depressive for me. In that vein here's the least depressing weepable song on the above list:
Not something to bring up at your next AA meeting
Went to a lovely exhibition yesterday in Ghent, or as the French call it "Gaw(n)" or as the Dutch atrociously call it, "Hxxxxhentt." You remember that scene in Splash when Tom Hanks asks the dewy and delicate Darryl Hannah what her name is in her own language, and she yelps out a shocking, painful series of unfiltered dolphin cries? That's the way I feel whenever a Dutch person says anything. Anyways, we went to Ghent to see an exhibit at their splendid gallery called British Visions - lured in by the promises of Lucian Freud, who the F-word loves, and Turner, who I love, and lots of others - David Hockney, who I never feel is faking it - Hogarth, who's just so heartbreakingly funny - and a bunch of Francis Bacons; poor Francis Bacon. I guess you can't tell much about a man from his work but when I look at anything he's painted I feel he's sure he's going to hell when he dies - an unsympathetic dread of his own future, an uncensored vision of his own futile present. It makes neat paintings but I would not have traded brains with him for anything. And then lots of Stanley Spencer, who was new to me but very appealing, even in the way his second wife's breast wrinkled in the painting of them together.
Anyhoo, we were mostly there for the newer stuff, but it did occur to me as we looked at the older stuff that we don't fully appreciate what Europeans have achieved, culturally. Oh sure. We put the past in museums and we traipse the schoolchildren through them, struggling to instill greater regard for our own narrative than the narratives of our historical enemies or underlings. We protest when newcomers don't slot into our molds, we watch absurd period piece movies, and we devote the economies of cities like Bayreuth, Florence and Stratford to celebrating the glories of the past. But we never consider all the hurdles that our European predecessors had to overcome to create our patrimony, principal among which in my mind today was that they were drunk from dawn until dusk, from being weaned to being shriven. They were drunk, drunk, drunk.
Everybody was full of something that had been fermented or distilled in an effort to kill all the bad bacteria that was swimming around the water in those days, everybody was tolerating sieges where the enemy would chuck corpses into your water supply, everybody was paranoid about Jews or heretics or witches poisoning wells, or whoever. So everybody was pissed out of their tree. They went from their mother's tit to the bottle and they stayed there until they died. And despite this, somehow we had the Renaissance, Goya, the Van Eyck brothers, opera, orchestras, Gothic architecture, the postal service, Yorkshire pudding, colonialism, Shakespeare, guns, the re-invention of the novel, and all the other things that make us go 'how did they do that!?!' when we ponder what our ancestors achieved without laptops, GPS, or a life expectancy much beyond 30. Who knows how they did it, but do it they did, and they did it all drunk.
Anyhoo, we were mostly there for the newer stuff, but it did occur to me as we looked at the older stuff that we don't fully appreciate what Europeans have achieved, culturally. Oh sure. We put the past in museums and we traipse the schoolchildren through them, struggling to instill greater regard for our own narrative than the narratives of our historical enemies or underlings. We protest when newcomers don't slot into our molds, we watch absurd period piece movies, and we devote the economies of cities like Bayreuth, Florence and Stratford to celebrating the glories of the past. But we never consider all the hurdles that our European predecessors had to overcome to create our patrimony, principal among which in my mind today was that they were drunk from dawn until dusk, from being weaned to being shriven. They were drunk, drunk, drunk.
Everybody was full of something that had been fermented or distilled in an effort to kill all the bad bacteria that was swimming around the water in those days, everybody was tolerating sieges where the enemy would chuck corpses into your water supply, everybody was paranoid about Jews or heretics or witches poisoning wells, or whoever. So everybody was pissed out of their tree. They went from their mother's tit to the bottle and they stayed there until they died. And despite this, somehow we had the Renaissance, Goya, the Van Eyck brothers, opera, orchestras, Gothic architecture, the postal service, Yorkshire pudding, colonialism, Shakespeare, guns, the re-invention of the novel, and all the other things that make us go 'how did they do that!?!' when we ponder what our ancestors achieved without laptops, GPS, or a life expectancy much beyond 30. Who knows how they did it, but do it they did, and they did it all drunk.
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