Good news from work - my boss has decided that our jobs will be a lot more interesting. It will be harder work but that's cool. I was already showing up and that's 90% of the pain in my ass already. Showing up, unlike today, or at least this morning, when I get to "work from home" in anticipation of my trip to the maison communale to finally get my residency card. It will be long and annoying and full of civil servants, but it has to be done if I want to get a high-yield savings account - otherwise I can't imagine why I'd bother, I've been living in this country for more than a year now and nobody else has demanded more than a smile in the way of papers.
More than a year, and it's been a year since I got this job, I reckon. For the first time in awhile, I seem to be more or less where I imagined I'd be 12 months from then. It's okay. And I'm getting fonder and fonder of Belgium as the weather slooooowly warms up. If we get a real summer this year I may forebear from cursing blue at the uselessness of the place. We have committed, between ourselves, to stay here for awhile, but who knows what will happen? We could go apeshit and take off. But San Francisca and her man had been looking at two or so years, and here it is seven years later . . . And others at my office, especially the British, no longer show any inclination at all to leave. The quality of life here versus English cities is not to be compared. Sometimes I wonder that anyone lives in England anymore, though I miss Yorkshire from time to time.
Still, we're both having some mental problems in terms of putting down roots. Easier for me maybe as I'm a bit younger and care rather less, though it does give me a floaty schizoid feeling from time to time, and no doubt alters my behaviour as, practically speaking, I don't give a fuck as long as the money keeps rolling in. Worse for the F-word, probably, as he needs roots. You know what 'roots' means in Australian? Third person singular of 'to fuck'. Hah!
giovedì, aprile 17, 2008
mercoledì, aprile 16, 2008
Anything Sarkozy can do Putin can do better, he can do anything better than him
You know how I thought that the marriage of my eeeeurgh-I'm-gross-crush Nicholas Sarkozy, to the aging professional-slut Terminator was the joke of the year? Well, it just got a little funnier. The Russian press is reporting that Vladimir Putin, an evil, evil man who's got more sex appeal than the entire French cabinet in his index finger (which, by-the-by, can be used to push a much better nuclear button than Sarkozy's - eat your heart out, Carla), has been divorced from his wife from some time, and that when he leaves the presidential office in June he will marry this woman.
That's right. A young, unethical, world champion gymnast. She can put her feet behind her head and then walk to the fridge to fetch you a beer like that. Anytime I need to enter an empathetic mental state to help myself understand the heterosexual men in my life, I will ponder her. And she looks like this:
It's too good. The morning just got a little better as I imagined Sarkozy crying himself to sleep. Every. Night. "Why did you settle, Nicholas? Why did you settle?" All I'm waiting for now is for Silvio Berlusconi to hook up with Paris Hilton, and Angela Merkel to dump that out-of-the-spotlight scientist for Nancy's hot dead husband from Weeds, or possibly Viggo Mortensen, and the circle will finally be squared.
That's right. A young, unethical, world champion gymnast. She can put her feet behind her head and then walk to the fridge to fetch you a beer like that. Anytime I need to enter an empathetic mental state to help myself understand the heterosexual men in my life, I will ponder her. And she looks like this:
It's too good. The morning just got a little better as I imagined Sarkozy crying himself to sleep. Every. Night. "Why did you settle, Nicholas? Why did you settle?" All I'm waiting for now is for Silvio Berlusconi to hook up with Paris Hilton, and Angela Merkel to dump that out-of-the-spotlight scientist for Nancy's hot dead husband from Weeds, or possibly Viggo Mortensen, and the circle will finally be squared.
martedì, aprile 15, 2008
Small mercies
Bit of a funk today. In lieu of whining, I'll post a video from Bulgaria's hottest export since Vladislav the Grammarian. You've all seen it, no? Most popular video on the web, et cetera?
Well, I've never been a fan of Mariah Carey, and I figure the above version makes about as much sense as the original, but watch the classy way she shuts down this wizened French bitch who wants help making fun of the contestant:
Even at my lowest moments - and I am not over Silvio Berlusconi's victory - I can still thank heaven I'm not French.
Well, I've never been a fan of Mariah Carey, and I figure the above version makes about as much sense as the original, but watch the classy way she shuts down this wizened French bitch who wants help making fun of the contestant:
Even at my lowest moments - and I am not over Silvio Berlusconi's victory - I can still thank heaven I'm not French.
lunedì, aprile 14, 2008
Third time fucky
To my father's people:
Congratulations! You're now the joke of the universe, and you've really done something for my relationship with the French by making me resolve to never mock them again without adding "but at least they're not ass-clenchingly moronic enough to vote Silvio Berlusconi into office three fucking times." Thank you for illustrating so beautifully that this goddamn sexist, racist, kleptocratic knucklefucker is the governor you deserve, so I can stop feeling sorry for you. Thank you for giving me a warm fuzzy feeling about my family and all the other people of Italian descent who live outside of Italy, by convincing me that the useful ones have all left.
So have you simply accepted that sponging off your parents until they die of some cancer triggered by the foul miasma of toxins with which your industrial and waste disposal practices have flooded the country is an adequate response to your long-term economic shambles? Have you decided that the enslavement of the south to politically connected organized crime is an august tradition that must not be interfered with? Have you decided that the enslavement of your political system to the industrial class (not such a seperate issue from the last) is the best way to approach the challenges of the new millenium? Or have you just stopped caring?
Well, this year, not caring was the same as participating. Motherfuck, even the Economist was recomending that Roman communist over the fucking thieving filthy monkey you've chosen for the third time. You can't blame the CIA anymore. This was your fault. I cannot wait until he finishes running your institutions into the ground and you get kicked out of the Eurozone because of your incredibly huge national debt, so that I can go on holiday in your country and take advantage of your laughably weak currency (remember that?) to buy up your physical patrimony and ship it to a country that works. That is my hope for Italy now.
Oh, and if you, who benefit from a functioning multi-party system, ever lay into Americans for voting George Bush into office whilst they were stuck with their shitty two party system in my hearing again, I will vomit on you. Do you understand? I will tilt my head back, aim carefully, and vomit all over your overpriced, ill-fitting brand name clothes that make your legs look like sausages and your heads look like pins.
Holy titfuck, three times,
Mistress La Spliffe
Congratulations! You're now the joke of the universe, and you've really done something for my relationship with the French by making me resolve to never mock them again without adding "but at least they're not ass-clenchingly moronic enough to vote Silvio Berlusconi into office three fucking times." Thank you for illustrating so beautifully that this goddamn sexist, racist, kleptocratic knucklefucker is the governor you deserve, so I can stop feeling sorry for you. Thank you for giving me a warm fuzzy feeling about my family and all the other people of Italian descent who live outside of Italy, by convincing me that the useful ones have all left.
So have you simply accepted that sponging off your parents until they die of some cancer triggered by the foul miasma of toxins with which your industrial and waste disposal practices have flooded the country is an adequate response to your long-term economic shambles? Have you decided that the enslavement of the south to politically connected organized crime is an august tradition that must not be interfered with? Have you decided that the enslavement of your political system to the industrial class (not such a seperate issue from the last) is the best way to approach the challenges of the new millenium? Or have you just stopped caring?
Well, this year, not caring was the same as participating. Motherfuck, even the Economist was recomending that Roman communist over the fucking thieving filthy monkey you've chosen for the third time. You can't blame the CIA anymore. This was your fault. I cannot wait until he finishes running your institutions into the ground and you get kicked out of the Eurozone because of your incredibly huge national debt, so that I can go on holiday in your country and take advantage of your laughably weak currency (remember that?) to buy up your physical patrimony and ship it to a country that works. That is my hope for Italy now.
Oh, and if you, who benefit from a functioning multi-party system, ever lay into Americans for voting George Bush into office whilst they were stuck with their shitty two party system in my hearing again, I will vomit on you. Do you understand? I will tilt my head back, aim carefully, and vomit all over your overpriced, ill-fitting brand name clothes that make your legs look like sausages and your heads look like pins.
Holy titfuck, three times,
Mistress La Spliffe
domenica, aprile 13, 2008
The age of vacillation
We are stepping up discussions on where we are going to live one day, partly because more and more I have babies on the brain. My partner in the economist department came to work the other day, taking a break from her mat leave - she's been nursing and hence dropped all her weight and then some, and has stopped dyeing the grey out of her hair because that's meant to be bad for the babe or something. So compared to how she looked last time I saw her, it's like she has a really, really exhausting tapeworm. Her face was happier though.
And the question in my brain is, do we make babies here or somewhere else? The mat leave here is crap compared to Canada but pretty damn good compared to Australia, which is complete crap. But Canada is too cold, and if I have a baby here it will be Belgian. Yeeurgh. Then let's complicate the issue by wondering where to raise the babies. If it's Canada they'll pay through the nose for university and if it's here they'll get free university but it will be crap; in Australia it will be pricey but they have a genius repayment scheme. In Canada, whatever I spawn will have easier access to my people, but in Australia they'd have access to the F-word's people, and my people are so spread out over Canada anyways that they'd only have access to a few of them at a time.
At the moment the F-word and I are both leaning towards Australia to the point of looking at the real estate there but we have years in which to vacillate. No plans to leave Brussels for a good long time, especially now that spring is here, and no plans to get pregnant, as the idea continues to scare me shitless.
And the question in my brain is, do we make babies here or somewhere else? The mat leave here is crap compared to Canada but pretty damn good compared to Australia, which is complete crap. But Canada is too cold, and if I have a baby here it will be Belgian. Yeeurgh. Then let's complicate the issue by wondering where to raise the babies. If it's Canada they'll pay through the nose for university and if it's here they'll get free university but it will be crap; in Australia it will be pricey but they have a genius repayment scheme. In Canada, whatever I spawn will have easier access to my people, but in Australia they'd have access to the F-word's people, and my people are so spread out over Canada anyways that they'd only have access to a few of them at a time.
At the moment the F-word and I are both leaning towards Australia to the point of looking at the real estate there but we have years in which to vacillate. No plans to leave Brussels for a good long time, especially now that spring is here, and no plans to get pregnant, as the idea continues to scare me shitless.
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