1. It really is amazing how Tasmania looks like a snatch, isn't it?
2. I'm still fundamentally happy with the reusable rags in terms of comfort and all the rest of it, but can't deny all the extra laundry is hugely inconvenient since we don't use a washing machine (yep, the hand-crank one is still doing for us, but the F-word has taken it over and quite honestly I don't feel right asking him to wash my rags. Ergo the 'huge inconvenience' comes from me actually having to do laundry), and it uses a vast amount of water and energy to keep them in good shape, stain free, and sterile, since we don't use bleach. Which is sorta fine now that I'm living in a temperate rainforest called Belgium, and may be less fine when I'm in Australia, living through drought/flood cycles.
So I bought a silicon menstrual cup. The only brand I could find here is the Divacup, retailing at a 105% markup from its Canadian price - and oh yes, it's made in Canada. Nice to have a little of the homeland up my twat. I paid the markup because the Red Dragon snuck up on me when I was away from home and unprepared, but anyone else buying in Europe, UK included, should order it from an NA Amazon site or iHerb, it's a fuckload cheaper even with the delivery. It's pretty ace, works a treat, comfy, and tidy. Also can't lie that the reusable rags are bulky: it all feels a bit more svelte walking around with my business tucked up inside. Still bleeding out into the rags o'nights, though. The idea of lying down for eight hours with all that blood trapped up there is as gross as imagining David Cameron's O face.
So seriously, and at the risk of sounding harsh: between resuable rags and the cup, as far as I can tell, at this point any chick still using disposables is a fucking idiot. After lots of usage, as should be clear above I understand some of the objections to rags. But the cup up the twat is actually tidier to use than disposables, and a hell of a lot more 'hygienic' if that's what makes you go ick, since you don't have biohazards hanging around your house for the dog to find and chew on. And it doesn't desiccate your twat like tampons do. And it's safer. And cheaper. And that's all not counting the environment and whatnot. So stop being a fucking idiot. That is all.
venerdì, maggio 21, 2010
martedì, maggio 18, 2010
The Shoddyssey part II
It would be an exaggeration to say things are coming together, but at least they're starting to seem a little less entropic.
1. My X-ray has been found. It turns out the hospital - instead of sending it to my doctor on the other side of town, a task for which I gave'em five euros in postage, and doctor about whom we had a little gossip at the front desk - instead took the initiative to pay about fifty euros and send it to the department of immigration in Sydney or Canberra or some such.
Luckily somebody there noted the Belgiumness of it and all and contacted the Berlin embassy (Belgian visa requests go through Berlin, the embassy here in Brussels is teeny-tiny) and the Aussies sorted it out between themselves. Not until after, however, the hospital had told me they'd probably sent the X-ray to a bunch of other Belgian doctors with the same name as my doctor and I should call all of them to track it down - I did of course, including one very friendly and very confused dentist - fuckers.
Anyways, the upshot of it all is that I'm irritated and amused in equal measure, and thrilled that I'll be moving to a country where the civil servants are able to successfully complete "If . . . then . . . so" statements.
2. Now the only pending documentation for the visa is my Canadian criminal background check and the fuckers of Mounties don't even know if my request is in their building yet. Fuck me, in excess of four months in my homeland vs a week in Belgium and France, two of the stupidest countries in the developed world. Brava, Canada, atta play with the big dogs. Would like to go back to Canada for a week or so to just get the three-day electronic request one, but unless I do it, like, next week, there's no fricking time until the end of July, in between work, travel for work, and people coming here to visit. In fact we're so solidly booked until the end of July that I caught myself feeling a touch of relief one of our visitors got a staph infection and had to cancel her trip. What kind of monster am I turning into?
3. Lexie finally got her rabies test. I'm starting to hesitate about taking her again. We have got an offer now from a very dear friend in Canada to take her in, Sugarplum of yore, and it's hard to imagine a better home for her, especially if her family decamps to the country house they're moving to buy. And a 24 hour plane ride in the hold followed by a month of quarantine, versus nine hours in the hold, a car ride, and then a warm loving permanent home . . . But I'm her human, she's my cat, and I reckon she'd like Australia, where we can get a biggish house and a garden. Sigh. It's all very confusing. I think I will judge as the months wear on on the basis of her health.
1. My X-ray has been found. It turns out the hospital - instead of sending it to my doctor on the other side of town, a task for which I gave'em five euros in postage, and doctor about whom we had a little gossip at the front desk - instead took the initiative to pay about fifty euros and send it to the department of immigration in Sydney or Canberra or some such.
Luckily somebody there noted the Belgiumness of it and all and contacted the Berlin embassy (Belgian visa requests go through Berlin, the embassy here in Brussels is teeny-tiny) and the Aussies sorted it out between themselves. Not until after, however, the hospital had told me they'd probably sent the X-ray to a bunch of other Belgian doctors with the same name as my doctor and I should call all of them to track it down - I did of course, including one very friendly and very confused dentist - fuckers.
Anyways, the upshot of it all is that I'm irritated and amused in equal measure, and thrilled that I'll be moving to a country where the civil servants are able to successfully complete "If . . . then . . . so" statements.
2. Now the only pending documentation for the visa is my Canadian criminal background check and the fuckers of Mounties don't even know if my request is in their building yet. Fuck me, in excess of four months in my homeland vs a week in Belgium and France, two of the stupidest countries in the developed world. Brava, Canada, atta play with the big dogs. Would like to go back to Canada for a week or so to just get the three-day electronic request one, but unless I do it, like, next week, there's no fricking time until the end of July, in between work, travel for work, and people coming here to visit. In fact we're so solidly booked until the end of July that I caught myself feeling a touch of relief one of our visitors got a staph infection and had to cancel her trip. What kind of monster am I turning into?
3. Lexie finally got her rabies test. I'm starting to hesitate about taking her again. We have got an offer now from a very dear friend in Canada to take her in, Sugarplum of yore, and it's hard to imagine a better home for her, especially if her family decamps to the country house they're moving to buy. And a 24 hour plane ride in the hold followed by a month of quarantine, versus nine hours in the hold, a car ride, and then a warm loving permanent home . . . But I'm her human, she's my cat, and I reckon she'd like Australia, where we can get a biggish house and a garden. Sigh. It's all very confusing. I think I will judge as the months wear on on the basis of her health.
lunedì, maggio 17, 2010
If I have to I'm gonna die last
We watched Out of the Past the other day. I just wanted some Hero Robert Mitchum to wash Max Cady Robert Mitchum out of my mouth (we watched his Cape Fear a few days before Robert Deniro's Cape Fear; all in all I preferred the first one even though Gregory Peck interfered with my suspension of disbelief because I can't look at the man without thinking "he must shit ice cream") and oh my goodness it did. Out of the Past is the best movie I've seen since . . . hmm. Casablanca, I guess. In both cases it was the dialogue. Making Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum really quite attractive.
You know it's a fantasy of course, a fantasy that any hard-bitten man in a trenchcoat with shoulders that look like three axe-handles laid end-to-end can deliver lines like "you're going to find it very easy to take me anywhere", as much of a fantasy as that dumb young girls have about the epilated blue-eyed floppy haired personal-trainered pretty boys they poster their walls with being heterosexual or not so narcissistic as to be reproductively useless. But still, man, hawt.
Out of the Past also has the famous "Baby, I don't care" line, and like Casablanca with its catchphrases you can know the line is coming and even have played it in your head before, and it's still a fucking good line . . .
You know it's a fantasy of course, a fantasy that any hard-bitten man in a trenchcoat with shoulders that look like three axe-handles laid end-to-end can deliver lines like "you're going to find it very easy to take me anywhere", as much of a fantasy as that dumb young girls have about the epilated blue-eyed floppy haired personal-trainered pretty boys they poster their walls with being heterosexual or not so narcissistic as to be reproductively useless. But still, man, hawt.
Out of the Past also has the famous "Baby, I don't care" line, and like Casablanca with its catchphrases you can know the line is coming and even have played it in your head before, and it's still a fucking good line . . .
domenica, maggio 16, 2010
What was I thinking
Last week, I randomly picked up a copy of The French Lieutenant's Woman, a favourite book of mine in late adolescence, and found I had to read it from cover to cover once more. It's a smashing book in its way, and a real testament to the power of the narrative voice: hard to imagine a narrative voice more pompously aware of its own importance (which was intentional, I believe, considering the structure of the ending) and yet not over-the-top to the point where it was too annoying to read, for me anyways.
Anyways, I'd loved it when I was 17 or 18 or whatever, but realized pretty quickly I hadn't understood it all that well. I'm not capable of judging if this was because of my way of reading back then (speed) or just my almost complete inexperience of life in a challenging form. I should probably re-read more books. Like the fucking Name of the Rose. Teenage Mistress La Spliffe and Mistress La Spliffe in her early 30s probably have quite different brains.
But what distressed me a little bit as I read is the realization of how teenage Mistress La Spliffe had projected herself onto the fairly blank-slate character of Sarah Woodruff. I think Fowles created her as a 'projectable' character - made her the age his female readers in the 60's were likely to be, gave her just enough definition to make her acceptable as a character - but really only defined her by her frustrations, and completely unknown by the characters around her. A woman who should have been about in the late 20th century, dropped into 1876; a real invitation to his readers to think through what it would have been like.
The thing is, I loved that book and misunderstood it so badly when I was a teenager that I think it marked my interactions with the male of the species for a few years afterwards. One does sometimes wonder why one used to be a bit of a bitch, and while I'm not blaming the French Lieutenant's Woman because no doubt it only gave some sort of reinforcement to something pre-existing in my own personality that had already accepted men are manipulable and disposable, I have a strong suspicion that pathologically projecting myself onto Sarah Woodruff didn't help matters.
Well, thank goodness for small mercies, at least I never took The Magus to heart.
Anyways, I'd loved it when I was 17 or 18 or whatever, but realized pretty quickly I hadn't understood it all that well. I'm not capable of judging if this was because of my way of reading back then (speed) or just my almost complete inexperience of life in a challenging form. I should probably re-read more books. Like the fucking Name of the Rose. Teenage Mistress La Spliffe and Mistress La Spliffe in her early 30s probably have quite different brains.
But what distressed me a little bit as I read is the realization of how teenage Mistress La Spliffe had projected herself onto the fairly blank-slate character of Sarah Woodruff. I think Fowles created her as a 'projectable' character - made her the age his female readers in the 60's were likely to be, gave her just enough definition to make her acceptable as a character - but really only defined her by her frustrations, and completely unknown by the characters around her. A woman who should have been about in the late 20th century, dropped into 1876; a real invitation to his readers to think through what it would have been like.
The thing is, I loved that book and misunderstood it so badly when I was a teenager that I think it marked my interactions with the male of the species for a few years afterwards. One does sometimes wonder why one used to be a bit of a bitch, and while I'm not blaming the French Lieutenant's Woman because no doubt it only gave some sort of reinforcement to something pre-existing in my own personality that had already accepted men are manipulable and disposable, I have a strong suspicion that pathologically projecting myself onto Sarah Woodruff didn't help matters.
Well, thank goodness for small mercies, at least I never took The Magus to heart.
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