Enough to give you the shits

You wouldn't believe what's happening at my office. Or maybe you might. I don't know how typical this sort of thing is. I'll keep my account neutral as possible, just in case some sort of magical filter picks up the fact I have a blog (which I don't update from the office, of course), but I'd like to start by saying I'm fucking shocked.

The European branch of my company used to operate out of the entire floor of a prestigious high-rise address in this city - classy yet silly, since there are so few of us working there. The cubicles were punctuated by long empty stretches that were occasionally pressed into use for some sort of ball game, interpretive dance, or emotional scene, and since my department is on a flexible schedual we could go for months - really, months - without seeing some of our co-workers. Very sensibly, a couple of months ago the Powers That Be sublet half the floor to another company and lumped us all together on the other half; it still isn't crowded, by any sensible measure. But I remember the Powers That Be worrying that there could be some sort of mounting personality conflict dynamic that would be unleashed by crowding us all together. And I remember scoffing at the idea. Ha-ha, I said, we're all grownups and it's not like we'll be crowded anyways. Right?

Wrong. Or rather, I don't know how the men are doing but the women are in a state of crisis over the bathrooms. It started with a calm, objective email from the Powers That Be about how now that we had reached something like normal office density we would have to be a little more careful not to let our food start to rot in the single communal kitchen, or to crowd co-workers out of the sink by leaving all our dirty dishes there instead of in the dishwasher, and not to filthify the bathrooms too much . . . you know, standard office stuff.

This was followed by a flurry of emails from the women about the bathrooms; about how people should change the roll when they finish it instead of leaving the sad little cardboard tube on the holder, about how it was gross to leave replacement rolls sitting on the bathroom floor, about how it wasn't rocket science to refill the paper towel dispenser, about how we should turn the lights off as we left the john, about how we should make sure there was no one still in the john when we turned the lights off as we left the john, about how we should wipe out the sinks after use, and - most contentious of all - about how we should use the toilet brush to efface any traces of poo from the sides of the bowl if we took a remarkable shit.

Now, I'm of the opinion that once people reach our age - youngest 23, oldest at some point in her 60s - their bathroom behaviour is pretty much defined. Sure, you can encourage people to be more thoughtful about sharing a communal space, and sure, they're kind of rotten or bitchy if they don't make an effort in that regard once it's brought to their attention that their behaviour is grossing people out, but if they're not going to make the effort they're not going to make the effort, and what are you going to do, fight against their entire scatological selves and pursue the issue?

Yes.

Despite the flurry of emails (which were phrased with varying degrees of formality, shall we say) empty rolls were left to languish, the paper towel dispenser was dispensed with, replacement bog rolls continued to be stored on the floor next to the bog, and little poo tracks continued to show the progress of Turds Past down the side of the bowl. Cue a second flurry of emails, this time exclusive to female staff members (though I would love it if the situation was being caused by a wicked male co-worker trying to sow dissent in the ranks of Eve by slipping into our privy and fucking it up when all our backs were turned - but the men at our office are pretty well-bred, and I'd be surprised if any of them had such a scatological sense of naughtiness), and this time more exasperated in tone.

No change.

Cue a list of printed-out demands posted on the door of each cubicle of the ladies' privy, as well as on the mirror and over the paper towel dispenser, enumerating in point form the demands listed above. I'll admit at this point I was getting a little annoyed by the petty maternalism of it all, but whatever. People feel very strongly about how things should be in bathrooms so I didn't really care. Someone else, however, did, printing out a confusing, angry rejoinder about how such things are the cleaning man's job, and that if he didn't do it he should be sacked; the rejoinder was taped up above the list of demands.

Now a colleague, the colleague who I'm quite sure posted the list of demands but of course I didn't ask her because I just don't want to be talking about this, told me she'd taken them down because she felt like they were causing hostility, and another colleague who overheard this conversation joined in and said she was picking them out of the garbage and putting them back up directly, and then there was some general confusion about whether the first colleague had taken them all down herself or whether someone else had torn down at least one of them and crumpled it up in a fit of pique, and the upshot of it all is that now, in the interests of clearing out the cloud of general suspicion lingering over the gentler sex at the company, there's a sting operation in place at my office to work out who the Miss Messer is.

The thing is, everybody already has a pretty clear idea. There are two offenders whose historical behaviour has convinced all concerned that one is responsible for the poo track type offenses and the note about sacking the cleaner, and the other for all the bog roll offenses, but the sting operation is nonetheless in place because, I suppose, these two miscreants need to be confronted with the evidence of their malfeasance.

Fuck, do I ever wish I could telecommute.

If Grusinskaya was a graceless Canadian . . .

Dear oh dear, I'm in rather a bad way. I don't seem to have the same skill in shrugging off frustrations that I flatter myself I once did and anger is finding a way to bake inside me; last night I went to bed angry, angry, angry, congratulating myself for the small victory of restraining myself from kicking Lexie across the apartment after she left a big juicy hairball on the exact part of the floor we'd walk across when coming home tipsy late, far too late . . . Poor girl, obviously it's not her fault, and poor F-word, obviously it wasn't his fault when he horsed around a little too playfully by digging his finger into my ribs just as I'd gone into some closed-eyed-deep-breathing-get-it-together-get-it-togetherness whilst reflecting on the strains of the day, but in both cases I could have decapitated them and walked away smiling.

Counterintuitively, because I think a part of my frustration comes from being away from my family a little too long - it's been well over a year since I've seen them, besides Mum and Dad - I want to be alone. Just for a couple of days. Just a couple of days of not having to talk to anybody or do anything in a different place where I can be quiet, and not see any news, and not have to have an opinion, and not have to do a goddamn thing but sit and think and nap. Not have to struggle to express myself in a second or third language, and not have to listen to people struggle to express themselves to me in my own language. What I really want is to be utterly taken care of by someone I don't have to be grateful to, just for a couple of days. But I'd settle for just being alone.

I get it in a month when I go to Marseilles for work. It's the one conference I go to where there's absolutely no question but that I'll stay in the super swanky five star hotel and dine on the finest cuisine man has to offer. The conference itself won't be restful as I'll be obliged to network but then I'll have two days in Provence to chill and not have obligations. Hopefully it will be warm and sunny. Hopefully I can find myself a patch of something nice. But it's a month away, and by then I probably won't want to be alone anymore.

Up at the Vilification

That shit with Fortis is now ongoing as well. Doing anything in this retarded dump of a country is like herding incontinent cats. We'll never do business with those fucknards again and will definitely switch our house insurance to ING next year, as we've already switched our current accounts, also because of sheer blue incompetence at Fortis . . . The F-word is fed up. I am triple dutch fed up, because as the household 'francophone' I get the fun job of having to talk to these damnable bungling cretins, to try to help them sort out their own fucking mistakes. Plus he gets to soothe his flustered soul with two months of vacation, and me . . . but these sorts of comparisons are not healthy for the life of a couple. When we go to Australia he'll have to be the daddy because I won't have a clue what the fuck I'm doing and then I'll be glad of having once been useful. In the meantime we have an in-bank appointment today and I'm already concerned I'm going to get so pissed off I cry.

Moving on. I've decided the driving school is a scam. Since I won't need to purchase car insurance here in Belgium - thank heavens for small mercies! - and since San Francisca has offered to teach me on and let me use her automatic at the exam, and since I already know how to drive automatic from the Liviu lessons in Canada, and since I'm pretty sure I can teach myself the theory here with a book and some concentration, and since the nearby schools, contrary to the one downtown an acquaintance employed by the EU used do not help with the requisite paperwork at the Belgian equivalent of the DMV, fuck that. It would have come to about €1200 if I used one of the nearby schools. I can spend that money relaxing in Australia, learning how to drive stickshift on my own time. Kiss my ass, Belgium. I don't want to give you a cent more of my money. What a pointless mess this shithole nation is. But I will go to school if I keep failing the exams, which luckily have no effort-limit - à la carte and as cheaply as possible.

Not much else fit for print today . . . read another Somerset Maugham book, Up at the Villa. A bit of fluff compared to The Painted Veil, Of Human Bondage, and The Moon and Sixpence. Not that there's anything wrong with that - it was refreshing. And it gave evidence that Maugham, for all his difficulties constructing an elegant sentence, at least had the gumption at some point in his life to have a frank talk with a female human about her sexuality - something E.M. Forster, Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, and George Orwell, three 20th century authors I generally like better than Somerset Maugham, all apparently failed to do. Anyways, it was fluffy enough that I wouldn't mind watching the movie. And I'd like to see Sean Penn not suck. I don't know why. I guess it's because he's still managed to hang on to a career as a serious quality actor and yet I just find him so fucking annoying to look at in every movie I've ever seen him in.

The naked every day he clad when he put on his clothes

Bought the complete works of Somerset Maugham this weekend, after finding them in a very handsome 15-volume set selling for 14 euros at a charity shop. Snapped them up, I think partly on the basis of their handsomeness. It's hard to say - hard to say how I feel about Somerset Maugham. The Moon and Sixpence is among my favourite books, with its repulsive central character being driven through life by his vocation the way normal assholes are driven through life by their ids. No romance to that book - no romance to the idea of dedication to the artistic process - just a lousy fucking asshole who paints and dies of leprosy because he can't do anything else. I love it for the author's descriptive powers, but I think what I like best about it is the way it strips away the romance from the idea that an artist, like any dedicated person, must be something of a masochistic prick if they're going to have time for it.

But then I think that's Maugham's shtick - stripping away the romance from things - and it can also be wearying, as in Of Human Bondage. I enjoyed that one as well, but not nearly as much as The Moon and Sixpence; in fact, proportionately less than The Moon and Sixpence by the measure of Of Human Bondage's greater length. While The Moon and Sixpence's insights were couched through the first person narration of an acquaintance of the protagonists - saving the narrating voice from being too God-dy - Of Human Bondage read like a cold biopsy of human weakness - a loooooong, cold autopsy of human weakness. But you know, I still liked it. Sort of.

So anyways, I purchased the complete set, and read The Painted Veil lickety-split so I could imagine Edward Norton being something besides a corporate shill in the shitty new Hulk movie. I liked it mid-way between Of Human Bondage and The Moon and Sixpence. More biopsy than autopsy compared with Of Human Bondage, though still with that God-dy voice, so not as smooth a read as The Moon and Sixpence. Slightly more sensible description of female sexuality than one is used to from male writers of the time, though not setting any records certainly.

But what I enjoyed about The Painted Veil in particular was the way it explored injury and forgiveness, and the cold necessity of forgiveness if one is to recover from an injury. It explores how and why forgiveness for emotional damage is a two-track train; the need to forgive the person who hurt you is tied to the need to forgive yourself for allowing the hurt, and one without the other hasn't really got you anywhere yet, but both are very and seperately difficult. In my experience it's a way of thinking about forgiveness that rings very true indeed and it's an admirable focus for a book; especially one that is also enjoyable for the author's skill in describing the physical backdrop of the emotional action.

And it's why I don't think I'll be able to bear to watch the movie. It looks like they totally punked out on the lovelessness of the plot and while that makes sense due to Edward Norton's presence (who wouldn't fall in love with that piece of ass if you were stuck together for a few months?) it doesn't fit in with the central theme of forgiveness in the book. The movie looks like some sort of artsy love story aimed at chicks who enjoy crying. But in the book, by the time Walter Fane died, he and Kitty were no closer to loving each other than they had been when he discovered her infidelity. The book wasn't about love, not a bit about love, except about how love becomes something you are obliged to forgive yourself for if you loved the wrong person.

In case you doubt me, here's the Oliver Goldsmith poem whose last line was Walter Fane's last words after Kitty begs his forgiveness. I know some readings see it as a tacit apology from the dying man - that he is sorry he was the dog that bit her and now he is dying for it - but that interpretation misses the unmistakable sarcasm of the poem (the dog died because he bit the 'mad' or unwholesome man, giving the lie to the townspeople). There is no forgiveness here. Walter, dying, didn't hear Kitty's plea, or it wasn't enough for him. Typical cold, clinical, bleak Maugham. Do I like him? I still don't know.

Good people all, of every sort,
Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,
It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man
Of whom the world might say,
That still a godly race he ran—
Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad—
When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wond'ring neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost its wits
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seemed both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;
And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light
That showed the rogues they lied,—
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died!

On Holes (too many and too few)

I love when American politicians are caught with their dick in the wrong hole. Right wing, left wing, I don't care. You know why? In that country once they have any stature whatsoever, they're all part of a juggernaut of suits struggling and struggling to pretend their penises have nothing to do with anything. You know why? Because ideologically speaking, that country's political scene is a black hole whose destructive powers are controlled almost exclusively through the industrial groups that quite legally pay them off. And so to keep a country that continues to be influenced by its insanely idealistically God-dy settlers engaged in the 'political process', they have to fetishize their preternatural sexlessness, with similar disastrous consequences as with Catholic priests, who are also operating in a destructive ideological black hole and also distracting their adherents with hocus-pocus.

The focus of the hocus-pocus needs to go off the cock and on to the ideology. We need another Obama to come along, but this time, instead of turning the weed and the blow into a non-issue before the campaign even starts, he'll have to admit to fucking everything that didn't run screaming in the opposite direction before the campaign even starts. Arnold, I'm waiting for you . . .

But not to ruin another Batman franchise. Got high and saw The Dark Knight this weekend; it was the greatest superhero movie I've ever seen. I was hesitant to watch it, after liking the first Christopher Nolan a good bit and then hating the new Hulk movie so much after looking forward to it so much . . . but the new Batman surpassed all my repressed but very high expectations. My disbelief was suspended; that never happens anymore, at least not with superhero movies, no matter how much reefer I suck into my lungs. By the end, when Batman said 'set your dogs on me,' I was into it enough for the Bad Seeds' 'Ship Song', ordinarily one of my least favourite, pop into my head and play for the rest of the day without irony. Goddamn, Christian Bale is a piece of ass.

And you know, the first 30 seconds Heath Ledger was on the screen, I thought 'it's such a pity that poor boy's dead, he's really great!' But then I didn't think about it again for the rest of the movie. Now I'm back to thinking it's a crying shame. I haven't enjoyed his past performances besides in 10 Things I Hate About You, which was otherwise stupid, and I thought Brokeback Mountain was also rather stupid (though I did cry when he sniffed the shirt), but he always struck me as a boy who was going to grow up into something worth watching, maybe not Spencer-Tracy-worth-watching, but probably Robert-DeNiro-worth-watching. Now I figure he would have been Spencer-Tracy-worth-watching, and was, for one glorious super-hero movie. Poor, poor boy. Boy, whatever, a year younger than me. That counts as a boy.

An aside on the poor dead boy: last week, San Francisca and my boss, in commenting on the movie, said no one would be talking about an Oscar for him if he hadn't died. How prestigious do they think the Oscars are, for fuck's sake? This is the awards ceremony that recognized Titanic as a contribution to anything besides making me want to puke. This is the awards ceremony that recognized Russell Crowe's Gladiator as anything but a marketing concept successful at being both a wank fantasy for girls into butch and boys . . . well, boys. And that's not even the most embarrassing things that have happened at that mighty industry circle jerk.

I guess that aside was more about the Oscars than the poor dead boy. Sorry. It's just that I really hate the Oscars, and I can't bring Heath Ledger back.

Already can't wait for the third Batman movie . . . it will be a bitch without the Joker character but writing-and-casting-wise those Nolan boys haven't let me down yet. Memento was awesome and I even liked The Prestige, despite Hugh Jackman not being the most convincing actor in the universe, and despite the fact that David Bowie managed to fuck up a Nicholas Tesla cameo - holy shit, how can someone suck that bad? That's like Madonna-bad. Anyways, they've never let me down with the writing, and they always cast male leads who I want to have pile on top of me like duvets on a cold winter's night. After the first Batman movie I dreamt of a Christan Bale/Mistress La Spliffe/Cillian Murphy sandwich, but throw in Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger too, and heavens, they'd all have to take turns. Even the fantasy would last for hours, and I'm a premature imaginator. But now, sadly, I must go to work instead.