Everything is still about me

I feel a little better about Jemima because now my mum and dad are both taking her out for paddles quite regularly. I was shocked my dad is taking her out. He has a cat-like relationship with water. But I must have enthused enough because apparently he's taken to it like crazy. That makes me happy. I still miss her but I'm glad she's getting some without me, and say what you will about the inappropriacy of love for inanimate objects, but that's a less selfish emotion than I've ever been able to drum up for any man I've ever nailed.

In other news, much of the major flooding in Istanbul rolled out on the highway between the aeroport and the centre. We've gotten reassuring letters from the conference organizers about how everything is still a go but I suppose I'll reserve judgement until the day before or the morning of. I'll be very sad if I can't go there after wanting to for so long, but I'm not into disaster tourism. All those poor people.

So much rain, so little water

Sigh. A week today is the last time I went kayaking, with my awesome nephew, on Lake Ontario. I miss my family incredibly and I miss kayaking too, not quite as much as my family but pretty bad, and I miss my kayak. According to all that market profiling I used to have to follow, I have a real masculine streak when it comes to toys - I don't buy a lot of them, but when I do I research the hell out of them and then just love love love them when I get them. And I love Jemima. She was money well spent just for the use I got out of her over two weeks, and now Mum is taking her out, and the kids and my brothers will too, hopefully, and I will too when I go home - I don't regret the purchase at all but I was not expecting this horrible sensation of missing her so bad.

And so futilely. What would I do if she was here? In this fucking waterless city. This fuck-all of a city. This fucking pavé jungle of a city. I could have every kayak in the world here and I'd still be fucked. Except I could sell them and use the money to move to a better fucking city with some fucking water in it. Sigh.

All this whining just to get to a point that actually is of fairly universal interest: a couple of weeks of kayaking for a couple of hours every morning totally made my tits way more perky, and I was already pretty happy with my tits. I've had to revise my plan to get them chopped off when I turn 50 and they're no longer good for much besides hindering me when I run for trains: instead I'm just going to move to a place with some water in it and kayak for a few hours every day. And hopefully, so doing, the ladies will accompany me into a ripe old age, standing proud until the end.

Maybe the songbirds needed universal healthcare

Canada was a little funny. Missing it in a fierce and generalized sense at the moment because everybody was just a little polite to each other - a sort of generalized, unconscious consent to not be absolute bastards to everyone around you in the unvocalized understanding that it would help stop everyone, including you, from losing their shit. Not an understanding that's penetrated too far into the Belgian unconsciousness, I'll fucking tell you that. Also it was cleaner, the air even in Toronto was roughly 50 times more breathable than here, and there were lots of birds and crickets, again even in Toronto. I was a little unnerved this morning when I listened to how quiet it was - just the screeching invasive parrots and the magpies - though I did miss the magpies. Just birds left here, essentially, who have good enough reasoning skills to change their eating habits to be eating our shit instead of all the native insects and vegetation millenia of too many fucking Europeans has killed off.

Anyways, that was a bit tangential, when what I wanted to write was that Canada is a little weird because nobody there called it 'swine flu' anymore, they all called it H1N1, and there were hand sanitizers fuckin' everywhere. I guess a bunch of people there died of SARS so the caution is a little excessive; either that or we've been living next to those paranoiacs in the States for too long.

Speaking of paranoiacs in the States, and health, my boss sent me this clip:



I've been doing my level best to just ignore what's happening in the States now because it just drives me batshit. I can have a higher level of discourse with my used menstrual pads and as far as anyone has been able to figure out my only diagnosable mental disorder is SAD. It did feel nice to see some old Jewish guy (he is Jewish, right? I have this game I like playing here in Europe called "gay or French", and when it comes to Americans I'm thinking of starting one called "eloquent or Jewish") respond to the healthcare/Nazi thing as it deserved to be responded to - which is, not.

But the very fact that question gets asked in a public forum - how ass-clenchingly embarassing. I'm starting to feel guilty that the US is going high comedy as it turns in on itself - that like Italy, it's just turning into a place you can laugh at until you cry. But I guess the big difference is in the States the electorate handed out such a clear whine for change and if they don't get it they won't deserve not getting it. I don't know, man. It's like watching a car crash that can either end in absolute fucking carnage (likely) or a perfect triple-axle spin and triumphant landing on the opposite lane, speeding off in the other direction (less likely, judging from the historical record).

And this little piggy cried "waaaaaaah" all the way home

Back to work today - yesterday worked from home, which is completely different. Gah. This little time coming up won't be days of wine and roses but at least I get to go to Turkey next week. Extra painful because the F-word is back at school now, and I hadn't fully realized how much I like him being on vacation (ie, more present, less stressed)- combined with not having quite realizing how much I'd missed him. In a healthy world I'd be able to cuddle him all day today, getting it out of my system. In this unhealthy world, we'll both work ridiculous hours, come home cranky, and I'll snap at him when he treads in my cat's puke and fails to clean it up and he'll snap at me when I do whatever revolting, inconsiderate thing it is I do, and the cuddles will be under-realized.

Fuck you, work.

At the moment, also missing my family and my kayak like crazy. My family rather more. Especially the kids. It does my head in to be so far away from the kids. And Luke Duke too - I don't have favourites but he's the one who's always been most present whilst having the excuses to be the least present, so it's usually rather more of a tear to go away from him. God, they're so great. And while there was no hesitation in my heart about rushing back to my lover, I am FUCKING PISSED to be in this stupid shithole of a country if I must be away from my awesome family. Oh my god, what a nasty, soulless crappery Francophone Europe is.

I knew I was fucking home when I went to the TGV platform at Charles de Gaulle aeroport, put up my feet, waited for my 7:45 train, and got told off by some cunt of an SNCF worker for waiting on the platform when my train had just been cancelled, and to get up to the main concourse immediately to find out what I'd have to do to move my exhausted self and my fucking 70 kilos of luggage to Brussels instead. That's this fucking place, man. That's Francophone Europe. When some absolute bullocks happens to someone, like their train from one shitty European city they don't want to be in to another they don't want to go to getting cancelled when they've just been on a fucking overnight transatlantic flight and shed a kajillion tears saying goodbye to their awesome, awesome family, the institutional reaction is aggression to the victim.

And the thing that really fucking pisses me off about that is that it's not because of an unfocussed aggression or film-y frenchy existentialist angst or anything that fucking picturesque; it's pure fucking laziness, because minute-for-minute it saves time to pre-emptively aggress someone who might get justifiably angry into going away from where you are instead of just presenting the situation to them like a fucking grown-up and possibly having to listen to them get upset about their fucking, fucking train to Brussels getting cancelled.

One more year, one more year, one more year. I can do it. If the past two weeks flew by so unbearably fast, I can do it.

Wet rolls and dry panties

Alright, I don't know if it's not getting laid for a near-record (in the context of this living arrangement) of three weeks (my time in Canada plus the F-word's dad's time here - I'm a bit of a screamer and it's a smallish apartment) but Ken Whiting has suddenly become the sexiest thing on legs. Or on the water. Whatever. Damn. I watched his sea kayaking video with other people in my family who like kayaking the other day and liked it fine, but didn't realize until halfway through the plane ride back across the Atlantic more than 24 hours later that he's filthy hot. Those preternatural hips and that cute Ottawa valley accent. Is it just me? Possibly.


Anyways, after I realized Ken Whiting is filthy hot, I sat there watching Air France's marginally less-shitty-than-last-time cinematic offering, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past - oh, I don't know actually, it may have been as shitty as 17 Again - it'd be quite a shitfight between the two of those.

But I digress. I was sitting there watching Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and thinking about how some Hollywood producer type somewhere was obviously expecting girls like me to wet their panties over Matthew McConnauwhatever, but my panties stayed dry, not only because I think it was intended to be a romantic comedy and romantic comedies don't get me there, but because Matthew McConnauwhatever doesn't demonstrate sea kayak rolls in swimming pools topless like Ken Whiting does. Also I'm pretty sure Matthew McConnauwhatever waxes, and I don't believe in men waxing. Even though I've seen plenty of them do it. It's just gross and it makes me wonder what sort of bizarro natural body-hair patterns they're trying to hide.