The Red Dragon live blogs

Unearthly din here. A couple of guys in cleaning our ancient gas heaters. My laptop is on the fritz or I'd take pictures of the things for you, they're fucking museum objects that roast you if you're close and seem to suck all the warmth out of the chilly fucking air if you're far. But I have some fondness for them. Just a general concern that one day they'll poison us. Hence the entretien.

They arrive five minutes early, and after the pleasantries (because Belgians are pleasant, no matter how badly I've been annoyed from time to time over the last year because of moments I felt were evidence proving the theory that Belgians are the Newfies of the old world - having laid into Paris and northern France all week I should really point it out: when I bitch like that I'm bitching about the French, when I'm prejudiced like that I'm prejudiced about the French, and not about Francophones, who aren't so much peas in a pod as a big international smattering of incredibly diverse people who make Anglos look like a race of identical, overweight cyborgs) they've got straight to work. In a way I wish they'd slow down, dwaddle a bit. The longer they take, the more of today's all-day meeting with the yankee marketing team I can miss. I've tried offering coffee but they've said no. I think they're in a rush.

One of the guys just held up a pile of crap he'd taken from inside the living room one. 'That's ten years," he said, laughing, "since the last entretien". I made an angry/disgusted face - tenants are supposed to get these fuckers cleaned out every year for safety's sake - and then he laughed some more and held up a fuckin' cigarette that had been in there for god knows how long (our friends who smoke tobacco roll their own, for obvious practical reasons). Gag. "This thing is old," moaned the other, working in the dining room. "It belongs in a museum," I confirmed. "You heard that? Straight to the museum!" he moaned at the heater.

Now he's banging it. This is much better entertainment than a yankee marketing meeting. I don't think they're going to be able to re-light it. They're getting that resigned look Belgians get five minutes before they announce something's impossible.

Anyways, while they wrap up, onto something completely different. I've been putting it off because I've got such a strong resistance to spending the money and because I'm a little nervous about driving again, but I've found a place here that rents out dual command cars, where the business owner will drive around with me. You see, I have my provisional license now, and towards the end of the month I can get my full license if I pass my exam. In the meantime, to practice either I need to buy my own car - not fucking happening, mainly because the parking is impossible and the insurance costs the earth, and I live a twenty-five minute walk from work - or buy more Euro 50/hour sessions from the fucking driving school, or take my driving instructor up on his backdeal offer of giving me half-price Sunday sessions, which wouldn't be a bad idea, but he smelt like wine a lot of the time and that made me nervous. So the dual command rental it is. I start again on Wednesday. Shit, this shit is expensive.

Anyways again. The heater guys have wrapped up and managed to re-light the dining room museum peice, but there's bad news. "The heater in the bedroom and the dining room are fire hazards," said one. "Talk to your landlord, they've got no safety controls." Fucker. My landlord is a fucker. But I'd been expecting to hear it and the longer they talked, the longer I didn't have to go to the yankee marketing meeting, so it didn't blow my mood. "You're very lucky," said the older heating repair guy on his way out the door, "because you're really beautiful. Isn't she?" he said, turning to the younger man. "Whhhhhhhaaaeeeeee," he said in that long drawn out Gallic way, like it was wearying him to have to point out the obvious, "very lucky." They ran off to the next job and here I am, thinking about what to do with my fire hazards and typing out this final sentence in the seconds I should be using to pack up and fuck off to the office.

Popery dopery doooo

So let's say you're born in Germany at a spectacularly bad time to be born in Germany, and you get forced to be in Hitler Youth because that's the law in those days. And then after a stint in Hitler Youth, you're forced into support corps for a military carrying out one of history's more obviously lamentable agendas, because that's the law in those days. And then after the war you become a priest, and life goes on, and one day you want to be pope. Should the sole condition of having participated in your country's genocidal war effort when refusal to do so could have meant your death at worst and your discomfort at best prevent you from being pope? No, right? Because that wouldn't be fair, right?

Wrong. Let's try another question. Let's say you're born at any time in history with a clitoris. After you do whatever else you do, you become a nun, and life goes on, and one day you want to be pope. Should the sole condition of having been born with a clitoris prevent you from being pope? YES! Because the Catholic Church is not about fair. And Ratzinger being pope even though, as a child, he didn't resist the murderous Nazi war machine even unto death is not about fair. The Catholic Church sets its own rules, and its rules are that women aren't allowed positions of authority, and former members of Hitler Youth are allowed to be pope. Don't like it? Heretic! Because the one thing you really, really need to be a Catholic and not a heretic is to respect the hierarchy of the church. At the moment that means respecting Ratzinger, and in general terms it means respecting the fact that women cannot lead or preach within the church.

Anyways, one group of people who Ratzinger is working himself into believing respect him are the Lefebvrists, otherwise known as the Society of Pius X. Since he has decided this, and started to convince himself their rebellion against the hierarchy of the church and rejection of Vatican II might not be as schismatic as all that, some of them are allowed to be Catholics again instead of just another bunch of racist traditionalist fruitcakes who dress in frocks and vote for extreme-right parties.

Now, is that mentalist Aryan Williamson a nutcase Holocaust denier? Yes, and now that the Merkel herself has raised a stink and everybody in the world is pissed off about it, the popists are doing something about his re-admittance. But that's not all. This group that the church is working itself into reintegrating into the hierarchy didn't feature Williamson as an adherent by accident. Did Lefebvrists attempt to shelter Paul Touvier, the fugitive from justice wanted for the hands-on murder of seven Jews, and who may have facilitated murder of many more? Yes. Did they express heartfelt nostalgia for the murderous Vichy regime, calling those who threw it over 'barbarians without faith or law'? Yes. Did they encourage their French adherents to vote for the ultra-right party headed up by Jean Marie Le Pen? Yes.

Are they a bunch of racist, fascist shitwads? Look, if it shelters, expresses and encourages like a bunch of racist, fascist shitwads, it's probably a bunch of racist, fascist shitwads. But you know what? Fine. Being Catholic isn't about not being a racist, fascist shitwad, it's about respecting the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, and not consecrating bishops unless the pope tells you you can. And the pope, in the case of Williamson and some other Lefebvrist 'bishops', has decided to effectively give that permission 20 years retroactively. Because Ratzinger is magic. So . . . Welcome Back, Cracker.

Like it or not, that's the nature of Catholicism; it blows. I respect individual Catholics, particularly those who love the Church too much to abandon it to its own iniquities, and who struggle as they can to make it a kinder phenomenon; the massive outcry they've raised about Williamson has got a pope, for the first time in living memory, to admit he might have made a mistake about something.

But that's the thing, there's a limit, when you go beyond these smaller squabbles. Struggle too much with the Church on a more macro level – confront it with the dictates of your conscience in terms of, say, believing that women who are fit for it should be allowed to preach, that priests would be able to serve and understand the lay community better if they were allowed to openly lead loving and reproductive lives with the partner of their choice, that women should force their husbands to wear condoms if they've already got more mouths to feed than they can afford, or that being a racist, fascist shitwad should preclude someone from having a position of authority in your church – and suddenly you're not quite Catholic anymore.

Everything's gonna be alright

Buttermilk is awesome. I love the pants off it and it has given me back my love of baking, previously just for girls. A cup and a half of buttermilk makes things taste as yummy as a cup and a half of cream with a quarter of the fat, three times the digestibility, and an extra lovely piquancy - a sort of tamed sourness. To us woppy types, good food is all about digestibility. We talk about the progress of various dishes through our innards and bowels the way the British talk about the weather. To me that seems quite natural. Sure, something can taste like Heaven-on-a-stick, but if a few hours later you're bloated like a beached whale in the sun and wondering if you'll ever take a shit again, it's got to play in to your opinion towards that dish, the same way texture or taste or appearance does. Because blockages, as Screamin' Jay says, are real pain.



If Iron Chef was serious about quality, they'd do a time lapse and get the judges' opinions next day, after they'd attempted their morning evacuations. And the digestibility issue is yet another reason I despise those French people who insult Italian cuisine, which they sneer is 'too simple'. Northern French cuisine is certainly much more complicated, and indigestible into the bargain. Their desserts are indigestible. Their sauces are indigestible. Their pastries are indigestible. Their breads are indigestible. I really don't like it, and while it may seem crude to point out that their cuisine makes taking a shit more difficult, I think it's fundamentally less crude than half the city of Paris walking around in a constipated rage, which I think explains why Parisians are so famous for being such fundamentally unpleasant people.

Anyways, buttermilk products progress through the innards and bowels beautifully. Top marks. And using it has helped me arrive at what I feel is the perfect clafouti recipe, in that it's easy, delicious and digestible. A real woppy bastardization of a French cream-laden intestine-blocking classic.

3 eggs
pinch salt
3 tablespoons honey
1 1/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup flour
1 to 2 cups fruit

Grease a 10 inch or thereabouts deepish pie plate, and pre-heat oven to gas mark 3 (or, you know, just low heat). Prepare fruit by peeling it, coring it, etc. The traditional clafouti fruit is cherries, but really you can use whatever fruit you like here - I've used bananas, mangos, apples, nectarines, basically any starchy fruit - and dicing it into smallish chunks. My favourites are with blueberries or blackberries or cherries, and that's even easier because they don't need dicing, besides the stoning of the cherries, though purists say you shouldn't. Weirdos. Anyhoo. This isn't a purist recipe. This is a digestible recipe. Once the fruit is prepared cover the bottom of the greased baking dish with it.

Beat eggs, then beat in salt, honey, buttermilk, and flour progressively. At this point you can also add a touch of extra flavour you feel compliments the fruit you've chosen; cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla - consult your taste. Pour the batter over the fruit in the baking pan, and pop it into the pre-warmed oven, leaving it there for half an hour or so, or until it isn't runny in the middle when you poke it with a fork - you want moist but not runny - a firm custardy sort of texture. And then it's done. Easy peasy.

Initials, initials, initials wtf????

You know something about girls from the north of France? They're fucking insane. I still have good friends from those years in Paris I was writing about last week. Only one of them, recently, has been a real live northern French girl. Maybe I was phenomenally unlucky in who I got to know, but they're so high maintenance – they give new fucking meaning to the term. Even the hippies, even the career women, even the academics. Jealous, obsessive, bitter, needy – and that's to other women.

When it comes to men, it's that times infinity, and I've seen them note what sort of credit cards their prospective mates use in the same the way mentally healthy women note how pert his ass is or how kind he is. There's a reason even fucking ugly men from the north of France manage to pull beautiful tourists so consistently; they're trained to be so browbeaten and miserable by their women that when a halfway normal chick comes into their lives it's like they're born again. And being the cause of someone's renaissance is irresistible, of course. I have no doubt that's why they fuck around like sparrows - must be a perpetual, desperate instinct that there's a relationship less soul-crushing out there. It's an unhealthy societal gender dynamic altogether, like so many societal gender dynamics are, but northern France is the only society wherein I blame the women.

Anyways, the worst thing about chicks from northern France is that when you have a quarrel, they accept your apology when you haven't made one. I hate that. There's nothing better calculated to get my goat that doesn't involve stabbing me or otherwise threatening my life. That's on my mind today because the last northern France girlfriend just bit the dust, because she just accepted an apology I didn't make.

This one is still a bit raw, and stupid into the bargain, so instead I'll tell you the story of the end of the affair with the second last one, which is old enough now to feel more anecdotal than personal. This was years ago, when I was still with Bluebird. One night in Paris she and I went to a club alone, because Bluebird wasn't into dancing but I was, in those days. She'd told me it was jungle-y, but it wasn't, it was a fucking top 40 meatmarket. I hadn't been totally unsuspecting it because she was a bit of a cougar, so fine. She found a pair of men who claimed to be a professional tennis player and his trainer or coach or whatever you call them, and tossed me the player while she ground up against the trainer. So I danced with him, and when he started rubbing his cock against me I stopped, and when he followed me off the floor, kept rubbing his cock against me and stuck his tongue into my mouth, I told him to leave me alone, I was going home alone that night.

Fine, right? Or at least I thought so. That's the nature of a top 40 meatmarket. That's why I don't go to top 40 meatmarkets except when my cougar friends need moral support. The men there are gross and horny, and you have to be brusque to make them leave you alone from time to time. But Tennis flipped out and rushed over to his trainer or coach or whatever bullshit they'd invented and wanted to leave. Carried on a bit, apparently. I didn't notice, because the club started up a Jackson 5 half-hour and I was dancing my arse off with the first real live black man from Virginia I'd ever met; a big thrill for a young girl from northern Canada. My cougar friend came over, shook me, and asked what I'd said to make Tennis freak out. I told her, and she got pissed and told me to apologize to him; I thought she'd lost her mind, so I shrugged and kept dancing with the real live black man from Virginia. A few minutes later she plucked me away whilst he was telling me exciting tales of his business dealings in Japan in that beautiful accent, maybe the most beautiful accent in English. 'Come on,' she said, 'I got us a drive home.' It was Tennis and his trainer. Uncomfortable. But I was British about it and made them drop me off close to my flat.

So the next day she called and started yelling about my bad manners in being so rude to poor Tennis, and I hung up on her. Mature? No. But it seemed like the best thing to do at the time as anything I would have had to say would have been nasty. The incident was the last straw, as far as I was concerned, after a bunch of other episodes like calling me at four in the morning from her ex-boyfriend's driveway and telling me to get over there so I could confront him with her about what an asshole he was (a call I could have accepted much more easily if she hadn't been sober as a fucking judge at the time) and repeatedly trying to get me to fuck other people behind Bluebird's back whilst talking shit about him - okay, since then I've talked my share of shit about Bluebird, but I still think she was unfair to him, and I didn't get why she was so anxious to start me cheating on him, it seemed creepy - so I didn't call back. And I didn't take her calls, either. Mature? No. But again, it seemed like a better option than explaining to her what a big loser I thought she was.

Anyways, after a few days I'd cooled down, and she invited me over for dinner, and I went, and she said lots of lovely things about what great friends we were, and we were having a jolly time, and then she said she'd accepted my apology for all that had happened because she understood I was from a different social class and hadn't had the same education she'd had. That sewed it up, of course. I left and never talked to her again. Although the bizarre thing is that she told mutual friends I had. And not in an angry way, either. She'd tell them about whole friendly conversations we'd been having about absolutely random subjects. It was strange.

So that's the story of the second-last one. I've often felt sort of bad I just got real quiet on her. And she's not the only one I got real quiet on. There's a small trail of women from the north of France who I got real quiet on. If northern French women are dastardly bitches courtesy of the horrible things they say, caker women like me are dastardly bitches courtesy of our way of going real quiet.

It's a difficult bad feeling, because I'm not exactly sorry. I didn't want to spend any more time with them, I didn't want to talk to them anymore, I don't miss them, and I don't know if it's my pride or my fondness for order in the time/space continuum of the universe or both that would make it difficult for me to apologize to them for going all quiet when they've already accepted my apologies that I hadn't made yet, especially when all I'm sorry for is going real quiet, and not when I'm sorry that I don't talk to them anymore; and I wouldn't really like to talk to them anymore, except for a brief conversation about how I'm sorry for having gone real quiet. You see? The implication of all this being, with this final northern French girlfriend, I will not go real quiet. I'll tell her what the problem is. As bleedingly obvious as it seems. And then I'll go real quiet.

Report back to me when it makes sense

Having to go to work today causes me great personal pain. It was a good weekend but busy, I was on me feet all day as they say, and there are a million more things I could be doing today besides work. Oh well. One of the things we did is go all the way across town to watch Burn After Reading at a cinema where the F-word had won some tickets. That was nice. It wasn't Raising Arizona, but you know, nothing ever will be again, and at least it was better than No Country For Old Men. Very funny. And for the first time I enjoyed Brad Pitt. I'm not saying he's metamorphosing into John Fucking Gielgud before our very eyes or anything, but he plays a light-hearted boob fantastically.

There was a strange extra dimension to enjoying his performance because we'd been subjected to a trailer for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button beforehand, and had to listen to him and the Australian Cate Blanchett mince about in Oscar-begging southern US accents, which just looked so repellent, but it's been getting so much buzz. What the fuck is it about American cinema that all you have to do is add some retarded new vig to the basic tearjerker format (He Ages Backwards! She Doesn't!) and people will think it's more than schmaltz? Okay, maybe it isn't schmaltz. I haven't seen it. But after sitting through that monumentally fucking schmaltzy trailer I'm pretty sure I won't. Jesus, if you went by Hollywood you wouldn't know people in the southern US did anything except schmaltz all over each other or burn crosses/try to stop each other from burning crosses on their front lawns. Anyways, the trailer looked absolutely craptacular, absolutely like every other bit of Brad Pittish schmaltz I've ever been accidentally subjected to on aeroplanes, and it was so interesting to keep in mind he's getting all sorts of accolades for that, whilst I haven't heard anyone talk about how great he is as a dimwitted puppy in Burn After Reading. Fucking weird.

We saw two other movies than in their way I preferred to Burn After Reading, though I did enjoy Burn After Reading. First, City of Lost Children. I'd resisted watching it because I'd thought Amelie was sentimental boring garbagey French garbage with a pretty colour scheme that would have been unwatchable if Audrey Tatou wasn't so cupcakeish. Also I'm getting broody as fuck these days and films where children are threatened or in trouble are really unattractive. But the F-word, a big fan, finally prevailed and I'm glad he did - it was rather sickly and strange but very, very good. The Octopus was classy. Really worth watching. Also, the 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Because it had cyclops and dragons and a dancing snake lady. Yay!