In our ongoing practice and experimentation preceding a planned serious hippy-out in eleven months, we've gone four fifths of the way to deciding that we're going to try to live without an electric washing machine. Or the laundrette. Or dirty clothes. Or nudism. Instead we're getting a Wonder Wash and a spin dryer. I'd like to tell you it's because of our desire to live a greener lifestyle or some such shit, but of course you know me too well (erm, how many long haul flights have I been on in Q3 2009? I think it was six but I may have forgotten about a couple already . . . and how many will I be taking annually after moving to the Dustbowl Down Under? I'd have to plant the fucking Amazon to make up for that shit) and the truth is that when our washing machine died a couple of weeks ago, so did my fucking patience. I'm fucking tired of dealing with a kajillion household items I don't fucking understand so that when they fucking die I have to call some fucking cunt to come fix it for some fucking extortionate price.
Also we're leaving Brussels in eleven months, as noted above, and I don't feel like sinking another €150 into another used unit (even though €150 is quite a bit less than €450, which is what the new washing machines start at here) if there's a possibility I can just sink €50 into a Wonder Wash and a used spin dryer for largely the same results.
Finally I want to check into the Vatican's assertion that the washing machine was a greater boon for the women's liberation movement than the birth control pill. God knows, personally speaking, I'm no great fan of the pill, but God also knows I'm no great fucking fan of the Vatican, so I have to do some personal experimentation before believing the shit that it comes out with. There's a slight problem in our household, ergo est the man does most of the laundry here, but I can ask him how liberated, or not, he feels with the new eqipment and try to run some hypothetical models to see how liberated, or not, a woman would feel in his place.
giovedì, ottobre 01, 2009
mercoledì, settembre 30, 2009
The trough behind the wave
My brain is nearly broken today. Too much stress but good prospects of it easing off, and a trip to Germany planned for the weekend. With more kayaking. Yay! That will make five countries I've kayaked in. Not bad for someone who hardly knows how to fucking kayak. Next summer I'm going to treat myself to some real coursework with rolls and rapids and things like that. For now it's just the pretty.
Reading The Economic Decline of Empires. You know, for fun. I've only read the first one about the late Roman empire and I'm close to following my advice to Sam - chucking my household into a car and driving away like a madwoman, because it's open season for the rich! So us.
This came in the mail yesterday. I have to start paying more attention to TED.
Reading The Economic Decline of Empires. You know, for fun. I've only read the first one about the late Roman empire and I'm close to following my advice to Sam - chucking my household into a car and driving away like a madwoman, because it's open season for the rich! So us.
This came in the mail yesterday. I have to start paying more attention to TED.
martedì, settembre 29, 2009
Thar be monsters
This is a super-stressful week at work, the sort of week that makes me zone out on videos of kittens and unchallenging American sitcoms just so my brain can untense enough for me to be reasonable with the F-word and then fall asleep. But instead, last night, I watched Coast and then, from the same provider, a BBC documentary about lake monsters.
Coast is a cute show. I don't know if I'll watch the 2 to 4th series, though, as they get rid of the skinny geographer host whose endearing manner reminds me of Geoff the First Time Cottager and put pretty Scottish longhair Neil Oliver on the marqée instead. If I want hot, I'll go ogle the chef at my favourite pizzeria, thank you, when I go to the BBC I want pure fucking geek. Also my part of the coast gets covered in the first series, and now that it's behind me I find myself not caring as much anymore.
We'll see.
The monster one was great. I have a thing for people who spend loads of time and money hunting lake monsters. There's something really sweet about it, almost as sweet as it is silly, but I also find it annoying, as there are so many really phenomonally beautiful and interesting things in the world that actually exist, and why not gawk at those?
But since I started kayaking alone once in awhile, I understand the psychology of sightings a little better. When it's silent and the water is dark, and shapes loom out of it occasionally, and the sounds are odd and once in awhile the way the waves hit your boat sounds like a big solid thing brushing against it, all that shit could be anything. I nearly screamed once on the La Vase when I spotted some bizarre bladdery water weeds because I thought they were a corpse - it took seconds of frantic reasoning with myself to keep looking at them instead of paddling away like a madwoman, and realize they were bladdery water weeds. Also once in Scotland I saw a seal playing on the surface of Loch Lomond, and the way those wee animals swim around, weaving up and down on the surface of the water, looks like all the classic bumpy monster descriptions.
Anyways, here's the documentary, it's good for the evenings your brain hurts and you want to hear the funny way people from Vermont and upstate New York talk.
Coast is a cute show. I don't know if I'll watch the 2 to 4th series, though, as they get rid of the skinny geographer host whose endearing manner reminds me of Geoff the First Time Cottager and put pretty Scottish longhair Neil Oliver on the marqée instead. If I want hot, I'll go ogle the chef at my favourite pizzeria, thank you, when I go to the BBC I want pure fucking geek. Also my part of the coast gets covered in the first series, and now that it's behind me I find myself not caring as much anymore.
We'll see.
The monster one was great. I have a thing for people who spend loads of time and money hunting lake monsters. There's something really sweet about it, almost as sweet as it is silly, but I also find it annoying, as there are so many really phenomonally beautiful and interesting things in the world that actually exist, and why not gawk at those?
But since I started kayaking alone once in awhile, I understand the psychology of sightings a little better. When it's silent and the water is dark, and shapes loom out of it occasionally, and the sounds are odd and once in awhile the way the waves hit your boat sounds like a big solid thing brushing against it, all that shit could be anything. I nearly screamed once on the La Vase when I spotted some bizarre bladdery water weeds because I thought they were a corpse - it took seconds of frantic reasoning with myself to keep looking at them instead of paddling away like a madwoman, and realize they were bladdery water weeds. Also once in Scotland I saw a seal playing on the surface of Loch Lomond, and the way those wee animals swim around, weaving up and down on the surface of the water, looks like all the classic bumpy monster descriptions.
Anyways, here's the documentary, it's good for the evenings your brain hurts and you want to hear the funny way people from Vermont and upstate New York talk.
lunedì, settembre 28, 2009
The director maintained that Geimer was sexually experienced and consented
I wonder if I'd have more sympathy for that kiddy fiddling frog if I liked his shitty movies any better, but even Chinatown left me cold. I'm pretty fond of Charlie Chaplin, after all, who also ditched the States for Europe after banging teenagers. Somehow it doesn't seem like the same thing though. Call me naive but I believe Chaplin's kiddy-fiddling ways never ran to acting like he was the victim of a Lolita and a puritan conspiracy when he got into trouble for giving a thirteen year old Qualudes, stuffing his cock into all of her orifices while she told him not to, and then running off to Europe because he didn't know what the big fucking deal was after he'd told the law, yeah, sure, he'd done it, and what's more the girl hadn't been unresponsive. Damn those Yankee prudes!
But it's alright, Hollywood types are flocking to his defence, using big words like "philistine collusion" that I'm pretty sure they're not aware of the actual literal meaning of, because let's face it - actors aren't paid to not be absolute fucking morons who don't know when to shut up, which is part of what makes the US's cultural and political dialogue so fucking simple-minded. And the French government is leaping in too; why should one of their more successful citizens be thrown to the lions because of ancient history? Sadly the cinematic tastes of the French cultural elite don't outweigh the 'scary' way California doesn't have a statute of limitations on skipping the country when you've pled guilty to drugging and raping a 13-year-old. God, I hate the French political class. Fucking chinless misogynistic dysfunctional emasculated elitist losers.
Have these semi-literate fucktards actually sat through Bitter Moon? The mediocre little turd should have been locked up for that moronic waste of the time/space continuum alone. Only in a culturally impotent vaccuum like western Europe could a man who managed to make sado-masochism gloomy, stupid AND boring get any cultural traction, certainly enough for national ministers to have a little hissy fit when he gets arrested for kiddy-fiddling. Hyperbole aside, just tell me what other culture he could have managed that in. You can't because there fucking isn't one. Fucking hell.
But it's alright, Hollywood types are flocking to his defence, using big words like "philistine collusion" that I'm pretty sure they're not aware of the actual literal meaning of, because let's face it - actors aren't paid to not be absolute fucking morons who don't know when to shut up, which is part of what makes the US's cultural and political dialogue so fucking simple-minded. And the French government is leaping in too; why should one of their more successful citizens be thrown to the lions because of ancient history? Sadly the cinematic tastes of the French cultural elite don't outweigh the 'scary' way California doesn't have a statute of limitations on skipping the country when you've pled guilty to drugging and raping a 13-year-old. God, I hate the French political class. Fucking chinless misogynistic dysfunctional emasculated elitist losers.
Have these semi-literate fucktards actually sat through Bitter Moon? The mediocre little turd should have been locked up for that moronic waste of the time/space continuum alone. Only in a culturally impotent vaccuum like western Europe could a man who managed to make sado-masochism gloomy, stupid AND boring get any cultural traction, certainly enough for national ministers to have a little hissy fit when he gets arrested for kiddy-fiddling. Hyperbole aside, just tell me what other culture he could have managed that in. You can't because there fucking isn't one. Fucking hell.
domenica, settembre 27, 2009
Beneluxury
Dordrecht did the job. I'm almost back on the rag, have another week of absolute shit in front of me, and our washing machine gave up the ghost a few days before we left, but still both the F-word's and my own bad moods were gone by Sunday morning after hours and hours of bike riding on Saturday. And then the Sunday morning kayaking in the Biesbosch was rather grand, many many different types of birds and a fairyish mist coming off the water - also the channels were narrow and overgrown so one got double that little kayak thrill, of "I'm going somewhere other people can't." And flowers, and green, green, green.
As the morning wore on there were more and more people, so I was almost not upset the park centre had "fucked up" (read: "purposefully altered when they got an afternoon group booking") our reservations so we only got three hours instead of five. Not to mention, in the bigger channels my crappy little tub of a kayak handled like a donkey on amphetamines and made me miss my lovely Jemima, that big beautiful 14.5 foot bitch who tracks like a crow flies. But it was magical and it did the job.
We've decided, or rather the F-word has acquiesced following some very undignified begging on my part, to head to the other Stayokay hostels in the Netherlands for weekend trips over the rest of our tenure in Europe. I'm very fond of the Netherlands as a generality, and its proximity, impressions of wide open empty spaces despite super-high population density, and high-functioning marijuana market would be enough to make it a really attractive weekend destination in any case. But on top of all that it has something most of Belgium, northern France and Germany lacks: complete bike-friendliness.
I think it's only in the Netherlands, and possibly some of the Flemish parts of Belgium, that I feel absolutely comfortable hopping on a train, arriving, renting bicycle at the station, and then having absolute liberty and security of movement for my stay because the dedicated bike paths are everywhere, without having to fart around with unfamiliar public transport systems. And I don't have to wear a helmet so I can feel the wind in my hair. That's important. It's something I hadn't really experienced otherwise since being an uncomplexed child of the mid-80's and it's something that it's a goddamn shame drivers are too shitty and dangerous to let children experience now.
It's a feeling I don't doubt people who drive feel all the time, and explains why so many people (especially men) of my acquaintance insist on taking their cars everywhere, even to places like Paris where they'll beggar themselves in parking fees alone. So while I still can, I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of it here in the Benelux; I think it's quite unique in the world.
As the morning wore on there were more and more people, so I was almost not upset the park centre had "fucked up" (read: "purposefully altered when they got an afternoon group booking") our reservations so we only got three hours instead of five. Not to mention, in the bigger channels my crappy little tub of a kayak handled like a donkey on amphetamines and made me miss my lovely Jemima, that big beautiful 14.5 foot bitch who tracks like a crow flies. But it was magical and it did the job.
We've decided, or rather the F-word has acquiesced following some very undignified begging on my part, to head to the other Stayokay hostels in the Netherlands for weekend trips over the rest of our tenure in Europe. I'm very fond of the Netherlands as a generality, and its proximity, impressions of wide open empty spaces despite super-high population density, and high-functioning marijuana market would be enough to make it a really attractive weekend destination in any case. But on top of all that it has something most of Belgium, northern France and Germany lacks: complete bike-friendliness.
I think it's only in the Netherlands, and possibly some of the Flemish parts of Belgium, that I feel absolutely comfortable hopping on a train, arriving, renting bicycle at the station, and then having absolute liberty and security of movement for my stay because the dedicated bike paths are everywhere, without having to fart around with unfamiliar public transport systems. And I don't have to wear a helmet so I can feel the wind in my hair. That's important. It's something I hadn't really experienced otherwise since being an uncomplexed child of the mid-80's and it's something that it's a goddamn shame drivers are too shitty and dangerous to let children experience now.
It's a feeling I don't doubt people who drive feel all the time, and explains why so many people (especially men) of my acquaintance insist on taking their cars everywhere, even to places like Paris where they'll beggar themselves in parking fees alone. So while I still can, I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of it here in the Benelux; I think it's quite unique in the world.
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