Do the corporation with me

I am not insane, or at least not when it comes to monk parakeets. They have taken over.

Yesterday was the corporate party, which is the first such thing I've been to, this being the first honest to goodness corporate type entity I've ever worked for; the television and energy things were non-profits, ridiculous as that may be. It was fun. The locale was pretty and played Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Temptations and such. I guess I like corporate type music. The communist hippie in me, who bulges through the skin in a few places, is still trying to process that people involved in big business are still often fun, nice, witty and intelligent, and that I'm one of them, both for the moment and probably for years to come.

I think what has been stopping me from doing that is that most of my prior corporate-type exposure was to the direct money generators, the sales people. At the party is was so easy to tell who was on the sales team, though I'd met them at most once before - they were taking off their shirts and playing volleyball really seriously. They also told lots of stories about themselves. It was interesting. And I don't mean the stories.

Death struggle between a hippo and a crocodile

Last night I dreamt I was on a tepid jungly littoral, with one bit of safe clean beach and one bit of scuzzy, ominous algaeish beach. I wandered between the two, going 'ewww, eww', until I saw an old man on the dangerous side who had been irresistably drawn to somehow get in the middle of a hippopatamous and crocodile locked in a death struggle there, even though he knew it would mean his own demise. We watched a giant oyster swim away and then I took him ashore. He put on a nice trench coat and his face turned heart attack red. I also dressed, as the weather had turned and we were in something like Vienna, with pagodas and shit, and wet snow falling dully from the sky.

My father, who had also been on the beach, joined us, also wearing a trench coat, though much more dapper of course; my father has a tailor and Brillantine. He offered the suffering old man a cigarette and a slug of scotch from his flask, which he enjoyed briefly before he expired and I woke up. In my dream, I gawped at my putatively non-smoking, non-flask carrying daddy as he handed his contraband over to the gasping man, who was obviously pleased with the attention on the cold, drizzly afternoon it had become.

'Yeah,' my father said, in response to the semi-admiring semi-accusation in my eyes. 'That's right.'

Less defiance, than a note of 'aren't you dense for not cottoning on that I'd been carrying around a flask of scotch and some quality smokes longer than you've been alive, and it's my right, my girl, because I raised you from a blob, what's more this poor old man has probably never had good shit like this in years, and that's the only reason you're finding out about it now.' Except my father is Calabrian, and Calabrians don't need as many words to get things across with crystal clarity. I love that about Calabrians.

I try to tap into my Calabrian heritage at work, when I cram maximum information into my reports, which shouldn't go past a thousand words; I miss 10,000 word academic type essays because I'm a mangiacake. No more reports until the end of September now. That's nice, except I like writing them more than the normal articles. Oh well.

Yesterday there was a mighty explosion at work, as one of my seniors quit and HR asked her to leave right away, paying out her notice instead of her working it out. Something I'd jump at, of course, as every time I quit a job I feel ripped off as if I'd been fired I might have got some free money, or at least pogey. But the manner of the request made her really angry and there was a 'scene,' as us cakers call it. Afterwards, both management and the senior in question were very, very apologetic. Management even took us out for lunch. A nice one, with smoked salmon and buffalo mozzarella. I'm not complaining.

I am wondering what the big fucking deal is, though. People explode, people fight. At the office we button ourselves in so tight and I don't know why, because we aren't any less people for being there. Part of that thing, I think, about how it's rude to discuss your pay when obviously discussing your pay would be a really useful and interesting thing for employees, posing a problem only for the employer who might be held to account for discrepancies.

How did something against employee interest get to be the norm? Why are we all so tame? Okay - we're apathetic about the 'big issues' that happen in countries we can't see and haven't visited: we can go days without thinking about children starving to death or lepers or any number of constant realities. But why approach our own lives and the realities we spend hours of the day living in as though we were potted plants? It's a very caker quality and it's something that pisses me off, about cakerism and about myself as a caker.

Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand

Last night, mined a rich vein of Simpsons we'd found streamed that I'd never seen before. Oh, the pleasure. And I found the answer to the question I'd asked myself so many times, every time I caught an episode of South Park - 'why do I only watch this accidentally?'

It turns out it's because I don't care. South Park could go off the air tomorrow and it would be pretty much okay; considering I get my TV free and on a computer after searching, waiting, and snatching, I might not even notice for a few months. But the Simpsons - oh, I care, and it's hurt not to have it, fucking intellectual property protection.

There's also the fact I'd take five minutes of the Simpsons over a whole season of South Park because it's way fucking funnier. It may be comparing apples and oranges - fewer writers for South Park, lower budget, rightwards Libertarian political sloping, blah blah blah - but then I've never had a problem saying oranges are way fucking better than apples.

What is reality?

A parrot fighting pigeons for scraps on a Saint-Gilles tram track.

Air conditioned discomfort

Like any good colonialists, the F-word and I complain about shitty winter weather but as soon as it very hot we flee towards the air-conditioning, in yesterday's circumstances meaning the Cinéma Arenberg (in the Royal Passages close to the Grand Place, which are full of amazingly useful stuff for a tourist centre feature, like Haagen Das - not the best ice cream but they make milkshakes - book and music stores, and the Taverne du Passage, where the food is both reasonably priced and delicious).

And we fled there because it was playing Inland Empire, the newish David Lynch, and holy shit. I loved it like I haven't loved a movie in years and years. It really appealed to me as a sort of savage fairy tale with all the attendant surreality, with magic, enchantment and cursing all playing roles as though they were people - but for the first time I'd ever seen, done on film perfectly. Not like a film that tries to copy a surreal fairytale book or narrative, but a film that films a fairy tale, letting narrative slide a little since there's only so much you can do in two or three hours, and picking up on the images and the linking. I had never seen that before. Unless you count The Princess and the Warrior, but next to Inland Empire, I don't.

Laura Dern is fantastic as the hero; she made me suspend my disbelief when I didn't even know what I was believing. Great supporting actors. As for the rest I don't really know what to say. David Lynch has a talent for throwing in the most visually disturbing images, and he threw a lot in here. Lots of beautiful ones too. I guess that's what made the three hour progress not really countable or long. There was a lot to fill the eyes.