Skinned up

So, I got some help resisting jet lag and hopefully getting my mental clock in order for Magnum's wedding by reading Rupert Everett's Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins until 3 last night. I'd never have bought it, my boss lent it to me, and I'd say that's not the sort of thing I generally enjoy, but if it reminds me of anything it reminds me of With Nails, Richard E. Grant's With Nails, which I also enjoyed. But call me crazy (I'd call myself 'glowing') - I think both With Nails and Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins are both works of, errrrrm, literature - it's hard to admit that because both of them have big sections about Madonna.

Also hard to admit is that I like Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins rather better, despite my 12 year old crush on Grant. It was funny and merciless to all concerned, the writer too. I don't know how many people stopped speaking to Grant after With Nails but I can imagine a fair number stopped speaking to Everett with his book. But that could be just the construction, the structure that he used -clear story arc, a sort of defacto character development that was none the less obvious for being approached somewhat indirectly - rabidly ambitious boy gets most of what he wants, gets annoyed by it, ages, and quits being a certain kind of celebrity. One nearly cheers for him at the end, though he makes himself sound like a dreadful asshole - of course, he does write about liking Graham Greene and marijuana so there'd be worse people to sit beside at dinner.

Aside from all that it's enjoyable as a book, like With Nails but even more so. Okay. The fact Madonna is presently ending the marriage that Everett deconstructed in the book and things like that add a voyeuristic interest. But I found the best bits weren't the name dropping bits, which were less than half the total - the best bits were really autobiographical or about important people to him in more general terms - and it all came out very well.

Sometimes it's good to have an pseudonymous blog redux

As I happened to be at home during my homeland's snap election, and as my homeland is still dinging me for tax and as I don't believe in taxation without representation, and as my accountant may have fucked up the surrender of my residency in my homeland for tax purposes (so I might need increasing amounts of representation), I voted. And while my ballot is private, let's just say I exercised my rights and responsibilities as the citizen of a parliamentary democracy to vote for one of the weirdo parties who don't even have the possibility of winning built into their platform but whose views best represent my ideological convictions. Don't tell my parents. They're big movers and shakers in one of the non-loony parties.

Yankees, eat your hearts out. Or rather, do what you have to do to get rid of the Republicans, and then hit the streets and protest until you get a functioning parliamentary democracy, instead of the bullshit you have now that amounts to an expensive, well-spun form of fascism, which voting for a third-party candidate merely fucking bolsters.

Oh, and P.S., if I hear one more fucking American defend the nonsense that is their two party system by saying 'at least it's better than Italy', I'll fucking slap them. When it comes to politics, you know what else is better than Italy? The entire developed world. If that's the benchmark they're comparing yourself to, then I don't think they should be allowed to even hold pointy objects anymore, let alone atomic weaponry. One of my Yankee bosses was the latest one to poop out that little gem in front of me, and I think I nearly had an embolism, it was so hard to keep the scorn inside.

Sometimes it's good to have an pseudonymous blog

My reaction was complex. But the dominant thought in my brain, which was being too complex to actually be hurt or whatever you might expect in the circumstances - though what would one expect in the circumstances? - perhaps like it felt the first time, incredulity at the poorness of his decisions, that had led the poor man to the point in his life where, despite our fluid-based association having ended years ago when I'd left town forever, he had failed to realize in the meantime that his balls and all their contents belonged to me in perpetuity in testament to the awesomeness that was his Manhood having been in my Womanhood in a mutually satisfactory sort of way.

Anyways, the dominant thought in my brain, instead, was "aw, why can't I fuck up the rhythm method?", which is a very silly dominant thought to have, as I would never use the rhythm method - "oh, I've got a great idea, I'll contraconceive by refusing to let my man plunge deep and climax in my pulsating Womanhood at exactly the time of the month when every fibre of my physical and emotional being most wants my man to plunge deep and climax in my pulsating Womanhood." Yeah. Fucking genius. That's why no-one ever says 'as smart as a childless Catholic'.

Two conclusions:

1. I'm glad he told me now, when I can channel any possible resulting funk (from complexity, and from the sudden inevitability of acknowledging that the fucking banging in my cranium may not be incipient psychosis but is in fact the 'ticking' of my biological clock) into my rambles through the woodland of my homeland and into the hectic preparations for Magnum's wedding next Saturday, instead of subjecting the F-word to it, who knows as well as I do the logistical problem with replicating our awesome DNA nine months from now.

2. I'm glad you're here, dear readers, to read about things without thinking too hard about who's who and whether it's who you think it is, since so many of you don't know who anybody is anytime I use a pronoun in Costume Jewelry, and the rest of you are almost definitely barking up the wrong tree at any given moment, and certainly right now. I can't tell you how soothing that is, because it's lovely to write the things it's not a good idea to say out loud. But today I think I've already written enough. Some things get to fester, or mature, or distill, or ferment, or something. It builds character. But thank you. Thank you.