The tomatoes and tomatilloes my daddy got going during his visit a few weeks ago have, now that I've taken a bunch of sick days, successfully (I think) got transplanted. I thought they were just tomatilloes, but now I see the Roma package is open too, even though Dad said they weren't likely to do well in a container. Well, we'll see how it all goes, and if any of them even reach fruit, because I don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing. While my aunt was here, I wished aloud that I'd paid more attention to Dad's garden when I was little - and she pointed out that there had been no way either I, my brothers, or my cousins would ever have been allowed into our guinea daddies' gardens for fear we'd fuck something up (ethnic slurs and cuss words are mine, not hers). Which is a good point. I guess I'll just have to struggle blind for awhile. Thank god for the internet, let's put it like that.
Also today seperated our giant mummy aloe from her pups - an operation the internet told me would be easy but which I continue to find nerve-wracking, and will until I see the mummy keep growing again and the pups getting going on their own.
Also nerve-wracking is that the F-word and I are now two gardeners on one balcony. He had been the only one until Dad got the tomatoes going and I started feeling proprietary, just as he got into a major painting jag that has taken up time he might have previously spent on toying with plants. Fine so far, except since I started I've noticed half our plants are infested with fungus gnats, which I understand are from over-watering, and now every time the F-word goes to water the plants I get all pained. No doubt unfairly since, as I pointed out, I don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing. Anyways. I'm using cinnamon, a very weak hydrogen peroxide solution, and nagging about checking to see if the soil is damp to get rid of the gnats. I'll let you know how it goes. I've wanted a garden for awhile now, but now I want one for territoriality issues if nothing else.
Last nerve-wracking thing is that I've noticed some little patchinesses on our Madagascar dragon tree. It's still growing gangbusters and probably needs to get stuck into a yet bigger pot before long, but it's been such an unfussy duck of a plant that any sign of ill health on it disturbs me, as it deserves better. Isn't that a great name? Madagascar dragon tree. For such a wee little unassuming thing that comes in the most basic imaginable gift baskets next to African violets, too.
venerdì, aprile 10, 2009
giovedì, aprile 09, 2009
Of squeaking and sicking
I'm at home having a massive sick, and next week we're gone Thursday and Friday on vacation. Dear oh dear. And you know what, good. On Wednesday, not only do we have the pleasure of meeting our normal deadline, but also a meeting at which I shall be obliged to be confrontational; better the stress of confrontation, I'm operating on the assumption, than difficulty in sleeping because I'm quietly letting myself get fucked up the ass by people who aren't even thinking of giving me a reach-around. Part of my problem at the moment is that the person they're threatening to replace my old boss with is the same age as I am. More experienced, yes, but I'm feeling a whole new emotion at the moment in terms of not wanting to have a boss who's my age. Oh well. I should just get over that. I think it's more difficult for some colleagues at the office, who are both older than the threatened new boss, and vastly more experienced.
Oh boo. This massive sick is making me feel bad. My head hurts, my lungs hurt, it looks like I've got two black eyes, and I am absolutely full of doubts about everything that I can't ingest and digest. Which, this morning, is turning out to be everything except dried bread soaked in cafe latte. I want to hippy out now. Not nine fucking months from now, now. What if I fucking die? What if I get fucking cancer when I'm fucking forty and have to think, fuck, I squandered years of my life not being a hippy? That's the sort of mood I'm in.
Well, life isn't all bad. The F-word introduced me to Last.fm. I'd heard of it before but thought it was just crap. It turns out I like it. Although the endless Mark Lanegan on the Nick Cave Radio is starting to piss me off, but not quite enough to ban it. It's just the repetition that gets to me. It also turns out I don't like PJ Harvey's new album at all. I resent her singing in that little squeaky pitchless voice when I know she's capable of yelling 'I can't believe that the axis turns on suffering while my head burns' in key and loud. If I want squeaky and pitchless I'll take the chick from the Arcade Fire, thank you very much.
Oh boo. This massive sick is making me feel bad. My head hurts, my lungs hurt, it looks like I've got two black eyes, and I am absolutely full of doubts about everything that I can't ingest and digest. Which, this morning, is turning out to be everything except dried bread soaked in cafe latte. I want to hippy out now. Not nine fucking months from now, now. What if I fucking die? What if I get fucking cancer when I'm fucking forty and have to think, fuck, I squandered years of my life not being a hippy? That's the sort of mood I'm in.
Well, life isn't all bad. The F-word introduced me to Last.fm. I'd heard of it before but thought it was just crap. It turns out I like it. Although the endless Mark Lanegan on the Nick Cave Radio is starting to piss me off, but not quite enough to ban it. It's just the repetition that gets to me. It also turns out I don't like PJ Harvey's new album at all. I resent her singing in that little squeaky pitchless voice when I know she's capable of yelling 'I can't believe that the axis turns on suffering while my head burns' in key and loud. If I want squeaky and pitchless I'll take the chick from the Arcade Fire, thank you very much.
mercoledì, aprile 08, 2009
Your boner, my problem
You know what's funny? Premature ejaculation. I understand they can't help doing it and that it's very psychologically painful, but I can't help laughing at it, because it's very psychologically hilarious. Or at least it's hilarious now that I don't have to put up with it anymore, because at the time I never found a way to see the situation as funny or laughable or anything but me not getting the servicing I deserved, and it was infuriating. The massive egoism of a girl in need of a massive bang, I know, and the inability to not jizz right away was probably not associated directly with a conscious wish to disrespect and frustrate me, but the pain was real. Good lord, sexual problems are problematic.
My favourite historical sexual problem was probably Catherine de Medici and Henry II of France. I have a general fascination with Catherine de Medici - you could hardly find a more remarkable life. She'd be a feminist icon, but the English have always hated her, and the French obviously under-appreciate their monarchs, and she was far too evil to be palatable, I suppose - but sadly that's part of what feminism is - having as much power to be evil as the men. Or else we're working on the assumption that women are somehow morally superior, and I think that nasty bint Margaret Thatcher killed off that idea in the post-feminist context.
Anyways. Catherine de Medici. Her husband didn't love her and neither did her husband's family, after her uncle Pope Clement died and the new Pope wouldn't pay her dowry. And she was married for a decade not getting pregnant, while her husband managed to impregnate other people. Disastrous. But eventually she managed to conceive - and did she ever manage, having a grand total of seven children who made it for awhile, at least, and some miscarriages and infant deaths into the bargain. The story goes this was after the physician Jean Fernel, who in many respects looks more useful than physicians seemed back in the 16th century, examined both Catherine's twat and Henry's gear, saw some irregularities, and recommended a series of sexual positions that would facilitate impregnation. What were the positions? I'd dearly love to know. Not necessarily to aid in my impregnation, which we're still trying, in fact, to avoid - just because I don't think monarchs are good for anything but perving on.
Another of my favourite historical sexual problems, more for the way it's been perceived over time, was Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves. Almost any way you look at the history of this marriage - and there have been many ways - the odds look good that Henry was simply not able to get a boner for her. The way the English interpret their history and (bizarrely) internalize the lives of their monarchs means the view continues to dominate that this was her fault - that she was unpalatably ugly, though the Holbein portrait of her was commissioned to be an exact likeness, and it shows one of those pretty, calm women that Belgium, the Netherlands, and northwest Germany are full of, and frankly who I'd fuck, and I don't have a monarchical imperative to impregnate them.
But after a jousting accident in 1536 - probably not coincidentally, the last year he managed to impregnate a woman - Henry began to get vastly fat, and covered in fetid boils, and blessed with a revolting, weeping ulcer on his upper thigh, which didn't heal before his death eleven years later, at which point he was too vast and unhealthy to walk under his own power. The man was a disgusting, suppurating mess by the time he was in a position to get a boner for Anne of Cleves in 1540, seven years before his death. Think end-of-life Marlon Brando, except oozing pus and having people executed.
And yet despite this, and despite the commissioned-to-be-realistic, rather lovely Holbein, your typical English asshole has been raised in the certainty that Henry couldn't get a boner for Anne because she was ugly, and not because Henry was a living, bleeding, decomposing whale who would make any sensible woman kill the mood by vomiting uncontrollably as soon as he started taking his clothes off, assuming his willy was still in any way actually functional. And those pretty, calm women that Belgium, the Netherlands, and northwest Germany are full of are nothing if not sensible. It's amazing, the different persistences of nationalism in the way a people see their history. Henry VIII was a disaster of a man and king but it's simply received wisdom that his failure to get or sustain a boner was his wife's fault, even today.
Oh, historical sexual problems. Is there anything more human, or historical? I think a Spike Millligan quote is in order:
. . . whereupon she ate (of the fruit), and gave of it to her husband. 2. And the eyes of them were both opened and they knew they were both naked , and Adam said to her, 'Stand back, I don't know how big this is going to get.'
My favourite historical sexual problem was probably Catherine de Medici and Henry II of France. I have a general fascination with Catherine de Medici - you could hardly find a more remarkable life. She'd be a feminist icon, but the English have always hated her, and the French obviously under-appreciate their monarchs, and she was far too evil to be palatable, I suppose - but sadly that's part of what feminism is - having as much power to be evil as the men. Or else we're working on the assumption that women are somehow morally superior, and I think that nasty bint Margaret Thatcher killed off that idea in the post-feminist context.
Anyways. Catherine de Medici. Her husband didn't love her and neither did her husband's family, after her uncle Pope Clement died and the new Pope wouldn't pay her dowry. And she was married for a decade not getting pregnant, while her husband managed to impregnate other people. Disastrous. But eventually she managed to conceive - and did she ever manage, having a grand total of seven children who made it for awhile, at least, and some miscarriages and infant deaths into the bargain. The story goes this was after the physician Jean Fernel, who in many respects looks more useful than physicians seemed back in the 16th century, examined both Catherine's twat and Henry's gear, saw some irregularities, and recommended a series of sexual positions that would facilitate impregnation. What were the positions? I'd dearly love to know. Not necessarily to aid in my impregnation, which we're still trying, in fact, to avoid - just because I don't think monarchs are good for anything but perving on.
Another of my favourite historical sexual problems, more for the way it's been perceived over time, was Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves. Almost any way you look at the history of this marriage - and there have been many ways - the odds look good that Henry was simply not able to get a boner for her. The way the English interpret their history and (bizarrely) internalize the lives of their monarchs means the view continues to dominate that this was her fault - that she was unpalatably ugly, though the Holbein portrait of her was commissioned to be an exact likeness, and it shows one of those pretty, calm women that Belgium, the Netherlands, and northwest Germany are full of, and frankly who I'd fuck, and I don't have a monarchical imperative to impregnate them.
But after a jousting accident in 1536 - probably not coincidentally, the last year he managed to impregnate a woman - Henry began to get vastly fat, and covered in fetid boils, and blessed with a revolting, weeping ulcer on his upper thigh, which didn't heal before his death eleven years later, at which point he was too vast and unhealthy to walk under his own power. The man was a disgusting, suppurating mess by the time he was in a position to get a boner for Anne of Cleves in 1540, seven years before his death. Think end-of-life Marlon Brando, except oozing pus and having people executed.
And yet despite this, and despite the commissioned-to-be-realistic, rather lovely Holbein, your typical English asshole has been raised in the certainty that Henry couldn't get a boner for Anne because she was ugly, and not because Henry was a living, bleeding, decomposing whale who would make any sensible woman kill the mood by vomiting uncontrollably as soon as he started taking his clothes off, assuming his willy was still in any way actually functional. And those pretty, calm women that Belgium, the Netherlands, and northwest Germany are full of are nothing if not sensible. It's amazing, the different persistences of nationalism in the way a people see their history. Henry VIII was a disaster of a man and king but it's simply received wisdom that his failure to get or sustain a boner was his wife's fault, even today.
Oh, historical sexual problems. Is there anything more human, or historical? I think a Spike Millligan quote is in order:
. . . whereupon she ate (of the fruit), and gave of it to her husband. 2. And the eyes of them were both opened and they knew they were both naked , and Adam said to her, 'Stand back, I don't know how big this is going to get.'
martedì, aprile 07, 2009
MBAs and NGOs
Had a lovely visit from my aunt, my mother's sister, who is also the wife of my father's brother. Yes, I have my eye on her children's bone marrow. We went to Bruges, of course, and all the touristically worthy things here - lots of Art Nouveau and defensive Catholic pomp. The highlight was probably Michelangelo's Mother and Child in Bruges. The lowlight was probably having to work yesterday, during the day off I took to go to Bruges with her. It could have been worse. Interviewing a very important person from a very important NGO during the whole hour of the train ride from Brussels to there, and then typing nine fucking pages of transcript - it was a fun interview to do, though, and he was very interesting, and said some things that made me feel better about being alive at the moment.
I guess that's the thing about switching from the corporate world to an NGO, as he did; nothing is going to drive you to do that but optimism - just as nothing is going to keep you in the corporate world except pessimism. Which reminds me that this ABC podcast is really worth listening to. I fucking swear, the researchers for it must have been spying on my fucking office. You have a job like this - I have a job like this - and people get MBAs to get jobs like this but better - because we're scared of uncertainty, and then we act all surprised when an entire economic system based on fear and paranoia collapses beneath us. It was bad for our ideals and now it turns out it was bad for our wallets, too. Marvellous.
I guess that's the thing about switching from the corporate world to an NGO, as he did; nothing is going to drive you to do that but optimism - just as nothing is going to keep you in the corporate world except pessimism. Which reminds me that this ABC podcast is really worth listening to. I fucking swear, the researchers for it must have been spying on my fucking office. You have a job like this - I have a job like this - and people get MBAs to get jobs like this but better - because we're scared of uncertainty, and then we act all surprised when an entire economic system based on fear and paranoia collapses beneath us. It was bad for our ideals and now it turns out it was bad for our wallets, too. Marvellous.
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