Seasonal affective distaste

Today is back to school day for most Belgian kids and for the F-word. I feel sort of bad for them and the cold, dark, wet air has a general charge of desperation. I didn't mind back-to-school when I was a kid because I got sick of summer by the end of it, but this year is different as I haven't had a summer to get sick of, either in terms of time off or summery weather. It isn't elegant to whine, but let me tell you - the fact that it's September now and there were only four days this summer when I felt like I had enough sun and heat feels like an object I love very much has been taken away. Oh well. This weekend was nice and some friends gave me a little tutorial in survival and culinary Portuguese. Leaving in a little more than a week - a week Wednesday. They say it's 33° and sunny there right now . . .

One other thing I'll write about this morning. I am shameful prey to gossip pages - well, two of them, and I won't shill for them here. I really have to get over it. They bring me nothing but misery. One, for example, mentioned last week that Nicholas Cage is being courted to star in the film adaptation of Magnum P.I., which makes me want to vomit. They both go on about the tortured genius of Amy Winehouse, especially the tortured bit, so I tried to balance it out with the 'genius' part - listened to some tracks from Back to Black and felt stupid for not listening to Sarah Vaughn instead. She has a nice voice but so do thousands of other chicks who sing with instruments better and complain less.

Finally I actually got sucked in to listening to the new Britney Spears single on Youtube this morning because both sites had been fussing for weeks about all the exciting producers she was or wasn't working with, so I had to see if one of them managed to make a serviceable purse out of a sow's ear. I suppose I had forgotten she was execrable at the best of times and I paid for my forgetfulness. It's Shitney, bitch. What's more the production sounded dimestore. How easy is it these days to get a public reputation as a producer? Somebody buy that man a Mac and an instruction manual. Thin and gruely, and about as dancey as whale music.