Home again home again. It was hard to leave Marseille because after the conference ended, or rather after my patience ended and I did a runner, I fell deeply in love with the city.
I've never been so relieved in my life to do a runner, I think. You have to understand, and I consider it a problem beyond the credit crises and political brouhahas (but I'm being paid in euros and most of my savings aren't on the stock market), that our Kings of Industry are damnable cunts. They know some things are right and some things are wrong in moral terms, but they choose to do the wrong things. That can't be pointed out often enough. I think they're often presented as being the agents of the invisible hand of the market that really wants to help us all out . . . but the way the international financial system runs in terms of companies with publicly traded stocks is a deeply flawed one - very deeply, very fundamentally flawed.
In terms of my industry, that means a complete disregard for sustainability as anything but a half-hearted marketing tool, and even that wouldn't play any sort of part in their thoughts unless consumers weren't getting more clever about entire life-cycle, chain-of-custody issues (so you are making some sort of difference, angry people, just get angrier, and keep being angry). . . but of course the most illustrative example was the Yes Men prank re Dow Chemical and Bhopal. The text in the link is interesting for the omissions Routledge lawyers demanded, but for me the whole key to the story, the whole interest is here:
"We expect the story to be retracted immediately, but Dow takes two hours to notice that alas and alack, it's done the right thing. The full interview therefore runs twice, and for two hours the story is the top item on news.google.com. CNN reports a Dow stock loss of $2 billion on the Frankfurt exchange. After Dow notes emphatically that it is not in fact going to do right by those non-shareholders in Bhopal, the retraction remains the top Google story for the rest of the day. Back at Andy's apartment, we help Dow make its share price rebound by mailing out a more formal retraction on its behalf . . ."
I love the Yes Men. They do brilliant things. Seriously, Morgan Fucking Spurlock, you may be more famous but eat your heart out in terms of quality. That is, if your kitchen slavey vegan girlfriend will bend her principles enough to cook it for you they way you reckon women should.
Anyways. I did a runner from the conference and fell in love with Marseille because the final speech on Friday started sounding like a Yes Man prank, but I knew it wasn't as I'd heard the guy before at conferences. The level of contempt for consumers, for the people these companies rely on to keep the profitable, is just staggering, just repellent - I don't know if that's because the link is indirect or not but I'll tell you it even makes me miss the moral bankruptcy of television - at least television execs care what you think over time, even if they are willing to exploit the very worst parts of you.
Maybe tomorrow I'll write about how lovely Marseille was, and how lovely the sea kayaking was, and about how I reckon I'll have to sea kayak even in Australia despite the sharks because it's just so fucking awesome. But now I have to go to the office and do a monumental amount of work. Let's just say that part of Marseille faces west over the sea and the sunsets are tear-jerkingly magnificent from the promenade; when I arrived back in Brussels, happy to be heading home to the F-word but inestimably sulky to be away from the raawk that is Marseille and saw the sun setting over the repellent Gare de Midi, it was like some sort of covenant between me and the world that I would keep being able to see beautiful things.
domenica, settembre 21, 2008
giovedì, settembre 18, 2008
Temper fray
The bad news: I'm earning my salary at this fucker.
The good news: I'm earning a salary.
The best news: 14 hours to go.
The good news: I'm earning a salary.
The best news: 14 hours to go.
Seperate but equally fucking annoying
What little I can say about Marseille after 14 hours - the cab drivers are nice, the five star hotels don't offer enough freebies, the internet doesn't work well enough for me to check my Outlook (which is sweet), it does get cloudy from time to time, the sea is pretty, and Finns seem to find it a relief.
What I can say about first class travel in the TGV between Brussels and Marseille - it's less about sensual luxury and more about who's not in the car with you. And I don't approve. Rich people are just as annoying as economy class people. They have smelly little lapdogs and bitter marital strife that can be audibly explored over five fucking hours - just because they're not yelling doesn't mean it doesn't bug me, anyways I can deal with volume via my MP3 player. The rich older people smell like diapers. The rich younger people smell like perfume, which makes me sneeze. So come on. If I pay for first class travel, I want the neck massages, the dancing girls, the in-car wading pool, new releases, drink and song. I don't just want to be segregated from annoying working and middle class people with equally annoying middle and upper class people.
Same with this five star I'm in. What the fuck the point of this place is besides segregation is beyond me. At least last year in Lisbon there were some touches of real luxury and in the Scandinavian five stars they serve caviar. Not to mention, even in a Scandinavian three star they'll have a sort of neat-o shower bidet so you can bathe your bits after every evacuation. Here there's not even a fucking bidet. Conference rate Euro 220 for a double, normal rate more than a hundred north of that, and not even a fucking bidet. What a crock of shit. Let's admit the only point of this place is that the proles are all deferential and in uniform.
Got in late last night and watched BBC World make an arse of itself over Ukraine and Russia and the global credit crisis. Crisis my ass. Ever read Gone With the Wind? I recommend it. Seriously. Weirdo book but moments of clarity amid all the slavery apologias and nostalgia for a society worse than fascist. At one point Rhett Butler tells a whiny Scarlett O'Hara that there's slow money to be made in the building of an empire, and fast money to be made in taking it apart. All we're seeing now is fast money. Lloyds and HBOS merging in an absolutely uncompetitive and unethical way with the encouragement of the British government, whose job should be to prevent this sort of rubbish - their customers will pay for that and the executive class will walk away singin'. Vomit.
Now I'm going for a calming walk along the seaside.
What I can say about first class travel in the TGV between Brussels and Marseille - it's less about sensual luxury and more about who's not in the car with you. And I don't approve. Rich people are just as annoying as economy class people. They have smelly little lapdogs and bitter marital strife that can be audibly explored over five fucking hours - just because they're not yelling doesn't mean it doesn't bug me, anyways I can deal with volume via my MP3 player. The rich older people smell like diapers. The rich younger people smell like perfume, which makes me sneeze. So come on. If I pay for first class travel, I want the neck massages, the dancing girls, the in-car wading pool, new releases, drink and song. I don't just want to be segregated from annoying working and middle class people with equally annoying middle and upper class people.
Same with this five star I'm in. What the fuck the point of this place is besides segregation is beyond me. At least last year in Lisbon there were some touches of real luxury and in the Scandinavian five stars they serve caviar. Not to mention, even in a Scandinavian three star they'll have a sort of neat-o shower bidet so you can bathe your bits after every evacuation. Here there's not even a fucking bidet. Conference rate Euro 220 for a double, normal rate more than a hundred north of that, and not even a fucking bidet. What a crock of shit. Let's admit the only point of this place is that the proles are all deferential and in uniform.
Got in late last night and watched BBC World make an arse of itself over Ukraine and Russia and the global credit crisis. Crisis my ass. Ever read Gone With the Wind? I recommend it. Seriously. Weirdo book but moments of clarity amid all the slavery apologias and nostalgia for a society worse than fascist. At one point Rhett Butler tells a whiny Scarlett O'Hara that there's slow money to be made in the building of an empire, and fast money to be made in taking it apart. All we're seeing now is fast money. Lloyds and HBOS merging in an absolutely uncompetitive and unethical way with the encouragement of the British government, whose job should be to prevent this sort of rubbish - their customers will pay for that and the executive class will walk away singin'. Vomit.
Now I'm going for a calming walk along the seaside.
martedì, settembre 16, 2008
Evil under the sun
To paraphrase the proverbial Irishman's foreplay, brace yourself, Marseille, I'm coming! Two days of the same event I attended last year that gave me my first glimpse of the way the rich and powerful tick pleasantly along. Looking forward not to it, per se, but to Marseille. I won't have a vast amount of time to explore the city, aside from where our event will be shuttled to - another series of beauty spots, judging from the brochure - because though I'm staying in town afterwards, it will be on the water for my first foray into sea kayaking. Fuck, I'm excited!
Especially since if we move to Australia I think my hitherto-unstarted sea kayaking days will end, because yesterday I saw this shark attack/fatality chart in the Economist with its absolutely disproportionate-to-the-population numbers for Australia. I could probably imagine a worse way to die if I concentrated on it but there's something awfully unpleasant about the thought of having one of those things swimming around you and your last moments being caught up in the idea of 'will I bleed to death, or have my head bitten off, or will I just drown?' Australia is weird, man. You have the sharks that eat people, and then the crocodiles that eat people, while Canada is so much bigger and the only thing that eats people there are polar bears, and they're totally where I don't go.
Anyhoo. I'll be on the Mediterranean, which is so polluted that I doubt anything but the aquatic equivalent of cockroaches can survive, and so full of tourists thrashing around like injured seals and hapless Africans desperately making their way to unfriendly, racist post-colonial shores in flimsy leaking boats that even if a hungry shark does stumble through the straits of Gibraltar I doubt a kayak will be the first thing she sinks her teeth into. But we'll see. I'll try to update over the next couple of days to keep things in perspective but on that score as well, we'll see. The next two days of work, despite the luxury, will be difficult in more ways than one but I think I've thought up a couple of ways to deal - one of them so clever, so Machiavellian and yet so morally tidy, and so very Memento, that when I thought of it I yelled 'yeah dude, I rock!'
Thankfully at the time I was in the gym completing my rowing machine ordeal, so nobody noticed, as my gym is full of people shouting exclamations about how awesome they are. If we do move to Australia, I'll get my exercise kayaking on the crocodile-free rivers instead of at the gym - less onanistic screaming.
Especially since if we move to Australia I think my hitherto-unstarted sea kayaking days will end, because yesterday I saw this shark attack/fatality chart in the Economist with its absolutely disproportionate-to-the-population numbers for Australia. I could probably imagine a worse way to die if I concentrated on it but there's something awfully unpleasant about the thought of having one of those things swimming around you and your last moments being caught up in the idea of 'will I bleed to death, or have my head bitten off, or will I just drown?' Australia is weird, man. You have the sharks that eat people, and then the crocodiles that eat people, while Canada is so much bigger and the only thing that eats people there are polar bears, and they're totally where I don't go.
Anyhoo. I'll be on the Mediterranean, which is so polluted that I doubt anything but the aquatic equivalent of cockroaches can survive, and so full of tourists thrashing around like injured seals and hapless Africans desperately making their way to unfriendly, racist post-colonial shores in flimsy leaking boats that even if a hungry shark does stumble through the straits of Gibraltar I doubt a kayak will be the first thing she sinks her teeth into. But we'll see. I'll try to update over the next couple of days to keep things in perspective but on that score as well, we'll see. The next two days of work, despite the luxury, will be difficult in more ways than one but I think I've thought up a couple of ways to deal - one of them so clever, so Machiavellian and yet so morally tidy, and so very Memento, that when I thought of it I yelled 'yeah dude, I rock!'
Thankfully at the time I was in the gym completing my rowing machine ordeal, so nobody noticed, as my gym is full of people shouting exclamations about how awesome they are. If we do move to Australia, I'll get my exercise kayaking on the crocodile-free rivers instead of at the gym - less onanistic screaming.
lunedì, settembre 15, 2008
We're gonna have a real real cool time
So wrapped up with Hirst-hating and Hughes-loving yesterday that I neglected to point out what a chart-topping mood I'm in. As you know last week was the height of frustrating, as far as work is concerned. Now I'm not saying I'm so great at dealing and don't take my anger out on the people I love in an inappropriate fashion, but for some reason my troubles with the Yankee management have made me more than less aware of how super-great, uber-great, Mohammed-Ali-minus-sexism-and-brain-damage great the F-word is. Romance aside, that man rocks.
And that combined this past weekend, among other things, with a lovely trip back to Antwerp on the sort of crisp sunny autumn day that makes Europe seem worthwhile, and a wade through the art gallery there, with all its Ensors and oils and old things. The Ensors were the highlight of the gallery for me, besides the single sultry Modigliani, who was looking at the F-word that way, and of course that's great, because my reptile brain registered her as a threat as well as a beauty and I love it when tricks are played on my reptile brain.
Anyways, for much of the weekend, I was at that point of happiness where the only fly in the ointment is that not everybody is this happy. Even the trembling under-knowledge, the teenage paranoia of 'if you let yourself be this happy you stand to lose so much' was just the lime in the sorbet. And any troubles from work seemed part of a little part of a little something, like braces getting tightened, a nothing, a bagatelle that wasn't even a story yet, an unobtrusive skin rash.
Of course that set off its own worry for me Monday morning as I walked to work deafening myself with the Bad Seeds' last album and visualizing a violent burlesque routine (still love it but it sounds more and more like stripper music to me); I wondered, does ignoring work like that, thinking 'work is not real life, real life is real life, work is a task I do to fund my real life until I retire or get a job that counts as real life' lead into the kind of evil professional behaviours that allow people to do truly horrible things with no guilt at all, just because it's their job to do them? But that's not enough of a worry to ruin my mood. I don't do horrible things at work. I just write about other people doing them. And that may be a moral cop-out, but as Baywatch pointed out last week this only is a temporary nightmare.
Anyways, another good thing about Antwerp was the train reading, which was the rest of the Mosquito Coast. Eesh. That's a fucking great book, an epic of a lip-smacking good read. My favourite by Paul Theroux, possibly. Over the travel books, even, which I love. Adventure and Oedipus-complexes and adulthood and puberty and jungles and marital strife and racism and religion and murder, oh my. Speaking of Oedipal-complexes, how do you describe the father with a complex about his son, or a grown man with a general complex about young men? As having a Laius complex? The fact that there's no popular name for something so apparent when we're attributing formative murderous hate to all the little babies in the world makes me hate Freud more than I already did. Atta blame childhood, Herr Doktorb, obviously none of the shit in your brain is anything worth dealing with if it came up post-pubescently.
A lot of things going on there in the Mosquito Coast, in short, and yet never too busy, if you know what I mean, never hard to fix the mind on because of all the things and words going on, like books by that World According to Garp guy, which are just too magenta for me to get into. I recommend Mosquito Coast 100%.
And that combined this past weekend, among other things, with a lovely trip back to Antwerp on the sort of crisp sunny autumn day that makes Europe seem worthwhile, and a wade through the art gallery there, with all its Ensors and oils and old things. The Ensors were the highlight of the gallery for me, besides the single sultry Modigliani, who was looking at the F-word that way, and of course that's great, because my reptile brain registered her as a threat as well as a beauty and I love it when tricks are played on my reptile brain.
But Ensor wins. He combined absolutely inappropriate colours and a sort of shimmery pointillist-without-the-headache movement (his people - and his objects and corpses, for that matter - look ready to bounce off the surface of the painting) with a deep morbidity, or skepticism, or fatalism, or something to do with death and vanity in a way that really satisfies me. The Antwerp museum has tonnes, versus the fucking none in Ensor's home town of Oostende.
Anyways, for much of the weekend, I was at that point of happiness where the only fly in the ointment is that not everybody is this happy. Even the trembling under-knowledge, the teenage paranoia of 'if you let yourself be this happy you stand to lose so much' was just the lime in the sorbet. And any troubles from work seemed part of a little part of a little something, like braces getting tightened, a nothing, a bagatelle that wasn't even a story yet, an unobtrusive skin rash.
Of course that set off its own worry for me Monday morning as I walked to work deafening myself with the Bad Seeds' last album and visualizing a violent burlesque routine (still love it but it sounds more and more like stripper music to me); I wondered, does ignoring work like that, thinking 'work is not real life, real life is real life, work is a task I do to fund my real life until I retire or get a job that counts as real life' lead into the kind of evil professional behaviours that allow people to do truly horrible things with no guilt at all, just because it's their job to do them? But that's not enough of a worry to ruin my mood. I don't do horrible things at work. I just write about other people doing them. And that may be a moral cop-out, but as Baywatch pointed out last week this only is a temporary nightmare.
Anyways, another good thing about Antwerp was the train reading, which was the rest of the Mosquito Coast. Eesh. That's a fucking great book, an epic of a lip-smacking good read. My favourite by Paul Theroux, possibly. Over the travel books, even, which I love. Adventure and Oedipus-complexes and adulthood and puberty and jungles and marital strife and racism and religion and murder, oh my. Speaking of Oedipal-complexes, how do you describe the father with a complex about his son, or a grown man with a general complex about young men? As having a Laius complex? The fact that there's no popular name for something so apparent when we're attributing formative murderous hate to all the little babies in the world makes me hate Freud more than I already did. Atta blame childhood, Herr Doktorb, obviously none of the shit in your brain is anything worth dealing with if it came up post-pubescently.
A lot of things going on there in the Mosquito Coast, in short, and yet never too busy, if you know what I mean, never hard to fix the mind on because of all the things and words going on, like books by that World According to Garp guy, which are just too magenta for me to get into. I recommend Mosquito Coast 100%.
domenica, settembre 14, 2008
More like beautiful up your own ass forever, shitbird
Love-hate relationship with my prime loved, hated Robert Hughes coming down hard on the side of love following this little diatribe about the Hirst auction. Oh, those sentences of his! So damn sloppy and so fucking horrible in his stupid fucking autobiography and so damn tedious in The Fatal Shore, and yet so punchy in his art criticism, like a lighthouse beacon punching its way through the fog. Seriously, I get physical pleasure from beast sentences like this one:
The now famous diamond-encrusted skull, lately unveiled to a gawping art world amid deluges of hype, is a letdown unless you believe the unverifiable claims about its cash value, and are mesmerised by mere bling of rather secondary quality; as a spectacle of transformation and terror, the sugar skulls sold on any Mexican street corner on the Day of the Dead are 10 times as vivid and, as a bonus, raise real issues about death and its relation to religious belief in a way that is genuinely democratic, not just a vicarious spectacle for money groupies such as Hirst and his admirers.
Obviously I love it so much because I agree. And then, I've never seen a single work by Damien Hirst whose spirit couldn't be encapsulated in 30 words or less, and if you can do that, what the hell is the point of appreciating that it has been brought into existence as an object? Especially when it has no merit as a craft or technique. I can't stand the notion it, Koon's shit, or anything, for that matter, has some intrinsic value merely because it reflects the spirit of the age. You know what else does? Events. Beliefs. Conclusions. Traffic jams. Silicone spatulas. Words. The problem is you can't pretend those are art and sell them to fuckwits for 50 million a pop, though I'm sure some Hirst-esque cunt will have a go with the spatula, given enough time. Pack of parasitic whores.
The thing is with Hirst, I get the sense his brain doesn't work well enough to use words instead of uberobvious symbols he can hire people to create for him. He responded to Hughes' criticism by calling it Luddite, which actually made me laugh out loud. I know Luddite and Philistine both sound clever, but that doesn't make them mean the same thing. How exactly is it that Hughes would like to smash the industrial machinery of the modern world, you stupid bourgeios fucker? Unless, of course, you're pointing out that your own activities are not art, but industrial machinery - much like an HP printer that provides a clear but annoyingly useless metaphor for the modern rhythm of existence by jamming all the fucking time. Which begs the 50 million dollar question . . .
The now famous diamond-encrusted skull, lately unveiled to a gawping art world amid deluges of hype, is a letdown unless you believe the unverifiable claims about its cash value, and are mesmerised by mere bling of rather secondary quality; as a spectacle of transformation and terror, the sugar skulls sold on any Mexican street corner on the Day of the Dead are 10 times as vivid and, as a bonus, raise real issues about death and its relation to religious belief in a way that is genuinely democratic, not just a vicarious spectacle for money groupies such as Hirst and his admirers.
Obviously I love it so much because I agree. And then, I've never seen a single work by Damien Hirst whose spirit couldn't be encapsulated in 30 words or less, and if you can do that, what the hell is the point of appreciating that it has been brought into existence as an object? Especially when it has no merit as a craft or technique. I can't stand the notion it, Koon's shit, or anything, for that matter, has some intrinsic value merely because it reflects the spirit of the age. You know what else does? Events. Beliefs. Conclusions. Traffic jams. Silicone spatulas. Words. The problem is you can't pretend those are art and sell them to fuckwits for 50 million a pop, though I'm sure some Hirst-esque cunt will have a go with the spatula, given enough time. Pack of parasitic whores.
The thing is with Hirst, I get the sense his brain doesn't work well enough to use words instead of uberobvious symbols he can hire people to create for him. He responded to Hughes' criticism by calling it Luddite, which actually made me laugh out loud. I know Luddite and Philistine both sound clever, but that doesn't make them mean the same thing. How exactly is it that Hughes would like to smash the industrial machinery of the modern world, you stupid bourgeios fucker? Unless, of course, you're pointing out that your own activities are not art, but industrial machinery - much like an HP printer that provides a clear but annoyingly useless metaphor for the modern rhythm of existence by jamming all the fucking time. Which begs the 50 million dollar question . . .
giovedì, settembre 11, 2008
Too pissed off to blog
Holy shit. I mean, holy shit. Holy shit. You know, yesterday, when I was dealing with work crap, the thought kept beating through my head - god I wish they'd fire me, god I wish they'd fire me. Today it's a roar - a massive, internal roar. Between you and me, I'm pretty fucking good at my job. I report. Oh, how I report! Like a madwoman. I make connections. I've even brought a degree of clarity to some number-y messes, and numbers and I have had a difficult relationship in the past. And I won't surrender my game, because it would leave the rest of the staff on my magazine, who I like and enjoy working with, in the lurch. All that leaves is being rude to executive management. Luckily, executive management are making it easy by being rude to me.
Anyways. I'm off.
Anyways. I'm off.UPDATE: In one of life's great ironies, which the non-Sagittarians of the world call 'luck', the day I come to the office pissed off enough to sabotage any future career I may have here by saying 'fuck' to the CEO is the first day I ever get called up by a headhunter. My head is fine where it is, thank you, but flattering nonetheless.
mercoledì, settembre 10, 2008
Cholera, the musical
Hell of a pisser this morning, and I'm blaming it on the combination of reading the first couple of chapters of Mosquito Coast, the shitfight at work, and this ludicrous lipstick flap in the States. Let me start with the lipstick.
On leaving North America, and meeting lots of lovely yankee expatriates who've become good friends, and being constantly mistaken for a yank myself, talking like a yankee and working at a yankee company as I do, I've struggled against the widespread European notion that the United States is a nation of fucking retards. And you know what, it has been a struggle. Especially lately, speaking to Americans at work whilst in the company of Europeans, and hearing these Americans are satisfied about the way things are going in Iraq now post-surge when those poor fucking people are getting cholera - cholera! That's a sign of things going well? Holy fucking shit! What the fuck is the matter with you? Oh Lord, the depth of Your mercy, patience and mystery that You suffer such coldblooded idiocy to blight the face of Your creation and to employ me at my present company! Fucking cholera! Holy fuck! Do you know what happens to a person when they get cholera? Fuck!
Anyways. You know what some more, lots of people are dangerously under-informed or misinformed about the horrible things their countries did or do abroad. The two most anti-American countres I've spent any length of time have been here and France. And in France, despite your typical asshole on the street having a better generalist education than most Anglos and a better understanding of international, well, everything, people generally had very little idea of their own country's relationship with Africa. And here - well, let's just say that they haven't quite got around to revamping their Congo museum yet - it remains an unironic trophy case touting how they rescued the darkies from the Arabs and brought civilization to the jungle - civilization that involved rape, murder, kidnapping and slavery on a truly staggering scale - fuck Belgium, in short. So, yeah. There you are. People are all idiotic assholes; Americans haven't cornered the market. Hence my struggle against European opinions on the intelligence and moral fiber of your typical American.
However. If this lipstick thing flies - and by this lipstick thing flying, I mean Republicans winning the next presidential election - I'm fucking done. I mean, it's right there. The stupid is right there. The lie is right there, the bullshit is right there, it's right fucking there. It couldn't be more obvious if John McCain whipped out his cock and started slapping you around the face with it. And if these unabashed crybaby liars are voted into office, I'm going to have to assume all those European ideas of Americans - too lazy, selfish and stupid to do anything but go with their ENORMOUS guts, like goldfish gorging themselves to death - are simply not worth struggling against anymore. It's right there.
Anyhoo. Moving on. Shitfights at work. One thing to say: my main problem is the disgust. Similar to my disgust at the prospect of the lipstick smear working, actually. Disgusted that the two men who are giving me grief at the moment despite having left records about how they obfuscated, fucked up - lied, in short, about the two different issues at hand have a) conveniently edited the truth out of their memories: b) no relationship with the truth, but function from moment to moment like sharks swimming through the sea, doing whatever seems right at the time, or, c) the theory that if they're loud and bitchy enough it won't matter that they're full of shit because I won't want to be confrontational. And you know what? I don't want to be confrontational. Confrontations give me headaches. They fill me with disgust. They make me feel like I'm lowering myself to some sort of adolescent level. I hate confrontation. But I'll fucking do it, and be all the more pissed off they've forced me to! This isn't a presidental election and I'm not a political party tip-toeing around, trying to get a black man elected in a racist country.
Anyways. Combine the political disgust with the professional disgust, throw in Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast, and you've got the shitty mood I'm in this morning. So far (50 pages in or so) the father, the 'hero' of the book, is the sort of insane I can feel pounding against the inside of my own chest when I get over-indignant, as I am at the moment, about all the rottenness in the world. Great, I think, cholera in Iraq, threats of pandemic stupidity in the most overarmed country in the world, and apparently I'm a fucking lunatic too. Perfect. That said, the book's pretty good so far, and I hadn't been a fan of Theroux's fiction up to the moment. He has a child's voice narrating and I think it was a good choice for him. When he uses adult narrative voices or perspectives he starts writing about sex, and his way of writing about sex is one I find to be both squicky and sterile. Like ultrasound gel.
On leaving North America, and meeting lots of lovely yankee expatriates who've become good friends, and being constantly mistaken for a yank myself, talking like a yankee and working at a yankee company as I do, I've struggled against the widespread European notion that the United States is a nation of fucking retards. And you know what, it has been a struggle. Especially lately, speaking to Americans at work whilst in the company of Europeans, and hearing these Americans are satisfied about the way things are going in Iraq now post-surge when those poor fucking people are getting cholera - cholera! That's a sign of things going well? Holy fucking shit! What the fuck is the matter with you? Oh Lord, the depth of Your mercy, patience and mystery that You suffer such coldblooded idiocy to blight the face of Your creation and to employ me at my present company! Fucking cholera! Holy fuck! Do you know what happens to a person when they get cholera? Fuck!
Anyways. You know what some more, lots of people are dangerously under-informed or misinformed about the horrible things their countries did or do abroad. The two most anti-American countres I've spent any length of time have been here and France. And in France, despite your typical asshole on the street having a better generalist education than most Anglos and a better understanding of international, well, everything, people generally had very little idea of their own country's relationship with Africa. And here - well, let's just say that they haven't quite got around to revamping their Congo museum yet - it remains an unironic trophy case touting how they rescued the darkies from the Arabs and brought civilization to the jungle - civilization that involved rape, murder, kidnapping and slavery on a truly staggering scale - fuck Belgium, in short. So, yeah. There you are. People are all idiotic assholes; Americans haven't cornered the market. Hence my struggle against European opinions on the intelligence and moral fiber of your typical American.
However. If this lipstick thing flies - and by this lipstick thing flying, I mean Republicans winning the next presidential election - I'm fucking done. I mean, it's right there. The stupid is right there. The lie is right there, the bullshit is right there, it's right fucking there. It couldn't be more obvious if John McCain whipped out his cock and started slapping you around the face with it. And if these unabashed crybaby liars are voted into office, I'm going to have to assume all those European ideas of Americans - too lazy, selfish and stupid to do anything but go with their ENORMOUS guts, like goldfish gorging themselves to death - are simply not worth struggling against anymore. It's right there.
Anyhoo. Moving on. Shitfights at work. One thing to say: my main problem is the disgust. Similar to my disgust at the prospect of the lipstick smear working, actually. Disgusted that the two men who are giving me grief at the moment despite having left records about how they obfuscated, fucked up - lied, in short, about the two different issues at hand have a) conveniently edited the truth out of their memories: b) no relationship with the truth, but function from moment to moment like sharks swimming through the sea, doing whatever seems right at the time, or, c) the theory that if they're loud and bitchy enough it won't matter that they're full of shit because I won't want to be confrontational. And you know what? I don't want to be confrontational. Confrontations give me headaches. They fill me with disgust. They make me feel like I'm lowering myself to some sort of adolescent level. I hate confrontation. But I'll fucking do it, and be all the more pissed off they've forced me to! This isn't a presidental election and I'm not a political party tip-toeing around, trying to get a black man elected in a racist country.
Anyways. Combine the political disgust with the professional disgust, throw in Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast, and you've got the shitty mood I'm in this morning. So far (50 pages in or so) the father, the 'hero' of the book, is the sort of insane I can feel pounding against the inside of my own chest when I get over-indignant, as I am at the moment, about all the rottenness in the world. Great, I think, cholera in Iraq, threats of pandemic stupidity in the most overarmed country in the world, and apparently I'm a fucking lunatic too. Perfect. That said, the book's pretty good so far, and I hadn't been a fan of Theroux's fiction up to the moment. He has a child's voice narrating and I think it was a good choice for him. When he uses adult narrative voices or perspectives he starts writing about sex, and his way of writing about sex is one I find to be both squicky and sterile. Like ultrasound gel.
martedì, settembre 09, 2008
Checkmate
If this is our final day or existence, which would be more than we as a species deserve but rather less than all those lovely creatures on all those David Attenborough documentaries deserve, I've at least found a track to make us shake our fucking booties on our way out:
I don't know if I've ever heard a better song than that. But wait! A song for dressing to slaughter! A song for all us women without the social skills to pretend to be admiring acquiescent retards, whose main baiting assets are our vertiginous curves and voracious sexual appetites, a song about a dress so awesome, so horny, so transcendent, that it's - why, it's a fucking soulful dress . . .
We've all had soulful dresses - I used to have one that I had to actually throw out after wearing three or four times; it was just too powerful for me to handle, and I got tired of picking of all the jizz crusts at the end of the evening.
Ahhh. How utterly tasteless. I needed to press the taste barrier a bit this morning - cheer myself up - I'm in a foul mood. Problems at work. Stupid problems. Other people's problems they're trying to make my problem. Not enough to stress me out - if work chooses to stress me I'll choose not to work - my escape route is so clear in my head that stress is not really an option. But enough to put me into a bit of a foul mood, a defensive mood, a 'fucking try me' mood that is not appropriate in terms of dealing with the people who give me money, the sort of mood which makes me think I need to establish my own business so the only incompetence I have to deal with is my own, and my suppliers, and my own employees, who I'll be able to sack.
Like Chris Rock said once upon a time, we all have a bitch at work who we like to complain about - I'm no different. Remember the office poolitics? I'm pretty sure I know who was doing that, and yeah, I like complaining about her, though not about the way she poos, because it's a fucking indelicate conversation. More about the way she's not nice to people. But she's small fry - all the bitches at work are small fry - compared to a much crappier class of people - the aging exec whose glory years were during the boom times when the company could afford to give him an assistant to keep his shit in order, and who obviously doesn't have one now, and is incapable of remembering or unwilling to remember what he approved and didn't approve, and will attempt to hang other people out to dry when he's caught tweaking his own numbers to give himself a better result, despite having left a paper trail a mile fucking wide. What a waste of the world's time.
Oh well. At least I have my escape strategy, and at least the F-word has downloaded the Chess Story, a wonderful compilation full of fucking bitching tunes like the two above.
I don't know if I've ever heard a better song than that. But wait! A song for dressing to slaughter! A song for all us women without the social skills to pretend to be admiring acquiescent retards, whose main baiting assets are our vertiginous curves and voracious sexual appetites, a song about a dress so awesome, so horny, so transcendent, that it's - why, it's a fucking soulful dress . . .
We've all had soulful dresses - I used to have one that I had to actually throw out after wearing three or four times; it was just too powerful for me to handle, and I got tired of picking of all the jizz crusts at the end of the evening.
Ahhh. How utterly tasteless. I needed to press the taste barrier a bit this morning - cheer myself up - I'm in a foul mood. Problems at work. Stupid problems. Other people's problems they're trying to make my problem. Not enough to stress me out - if work chooses to stress me I'll choose not to work - my escape route is so clear in my head that stress is not really an option. But enough to put me into a bit of a foul mood, a defensive mood, a 'fucking try me' mood that is not appropriate in terms of dealing with the people who give me money, the sort of mood which makes me think I need to establish my own business so the only incompetence I have to deal with is my own, and my suppliers, and my own employees, who I'll be able to sack.
Like Chris Rock said once upon a time, we all have a bitch at work who we like to complain about - I'm no different. Remember the office poolitics? I'm pretty sure I know who was doing that, and yeah, I like complaining about her, though not about the way she poos, because it's a fucking indelicate conversation. More about the way she's not nice to people. But she's small fry - all the bitches at work are small fry - compared to a much crappier class of people - the aging exec whose glory years were during the boom times when the company could afford to give him an assistant to keep his shit in order, and who obviously doesn't have one now, and is incapable of remembering or unwilling to remember what he approved and didn't approve, and will attempt to hang other people out to dry when he's caught tweaking his own numbers to give himself a better result, despite having left a paper trail a mile fucking wide. What a waste of the world's time.
Oh well. At least I have my escape strategy, and at least the F-word has downloaded the Chess Story, a wonderful compilation full of fucking bitching tunes like the two above.
lunedì, settembre 08, 2008
Why Europeans age with some small grace
Got an email from my conference flame yesterday, checking if I'll be at the next one. Tush, you say, or some other disapproving sound. But don't fret. My conference flame is simply the man who I would allow myself to be pursued by every time our paths cross at conferences (which they often do) if I was on the market (which I'm not) and if I was the sort of girl who baited men at conferences (which I'm not) and if I was attracted to Teutons (which, you've guessed it, I'm not). Things being what they are, our relationship is comprised of eating our buffet breakfasts together and chatting about things that are more interesting than our jobs or the conferences at hand, like Brazilian cuisine or European foreign policy.
Obviously I'm touched to have heard from my conference flame because my self-esteem is a voracious monster that undiscriminatingly devours any reinforcement at all. But he is illustrative of a larger point, or rather I am, by enjoying his company, and it is this: business people, yuppies, are not by definition boring, soulless creatures. They haven't necessarily given up their dreams (although if he's ever dreamt of us having room service instead of buffet breakfast, he should) or their interest in life. I'm talking out of more than defensiveness here - I have an escape strategy from Businesswomanland, so I have a hard time identifying myself as a current denizen. I'm talking against the conviction that I see from far too many people from where I come from that once you take the good upwardly mobile job and decide to keep it, that's it - that's the end of a thoughtful life.
Most Europeans, I think, would agree that's wrong. A small part of this is that Europeans tend to have a better generalist knowledge of the world around them than your average Anglo because of all the things that get crammed into their head in highschool, and it gives them the right background to stay interested in things in general as they age. Anglos, Brits included, are the ones who tend to fall into the trap of thinking yuppies can't possibly be interesting or interested. And yet I appreciate the Anglophone method of education, which is far more self-directed, far more critical, far more egalitarian, and far more creative than methods in France, here, Italy, and Germany - also far less generalist; I did one non-arts course in my final year of highschool in Ontario, which I was quite happy about at the time but which is also a fucking travesty which has left me, at the grand old age of 29, furrowing my oft-furrowed brows at the 1946 British version of 'Geology for Dummies'.
But I don't blame Anglos' education for the way they think a thinking, thoughtworthy life ends upon entry into the rat race, to be re-started again only with the sort of midlife crisis that has spawned an entire revolting genre of movies about wretched men getting their boners back and wretched women getting their groove back. No. I blame how our holidays are too short, our working hours are too long, and we watch too much television.
I would love to think that sort of quality of life issue was up for debate in the upcoming Canadian election (which I won't be participating in, not paying taxes there anymore) or the upcoming American election. But no. No, no, no. God fucking forbid. Instead it's all bread and circuses without the bread. Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country; for example, you can work twice as many hours as is necessary from a productivity point of view, and you can abstain from clinging to any 'spare time' that would give you the freedom to learn about the most urgent political issues at hand, or to make informed decisions as an electorate, and or to educate your children to be anything but a semi-literate cog in the wheel of a car that's lost it's brakes and is careering down into the rising sea levels of our own suicidal societal stupidity.
Obviously I'm touched to have heard from my conference flame because my self-esteem is a voracious monster that undiscriminatingly devours any reinforcement at all. But he is illustrative of a larger point, or rather I am, by enjoying his company, and it is this: business people, yuppies, are not by definition boring, soulless creatures. They haven't necessarily given up their dreams (although if he's ever dreamt of us having room service instead of buffet breakfast, he should) or their interest in life. I'm talking out of more than defensiveness here - I have an escape strategy from Businesswomanland, so I have a hard time identifying myself as a current denizen. I'm talking against the conviction that I see from far too many people from where I come from that once you take the good upwardly mobile job and decide to keep it, that's it - that's the end of a thoughtful life.
Most Europeans, I think, would agree that's wrong. A small part of this is that Europeans tend to have a better generalist knowledge of the world around them than your average Anglo because of all the things that get crammed into their head in highschool, and it gives them the right background to stay interested in things in general as they age. Anglos, Brits included, are the ones who tend to fall into the trap of thinking yuppies can't possibly be interesting or interested. And yet I appreciate the Anglophone method of education, which is far more self-directed, far more critical, far more egalitarian, and far more creative than methods in France, here, Italy, and Germany - also far less generalist; I did one non-arts course in my final year of highschool in Ontario, which I was quite happy about at the time but which is also a fucking travesty which has left me, at the grand old age of 29, furrowing my oft-furrowed brows at the 1946 British version of 'Geology for Dummies'.
But I don't blame Anglos' education for the way they think a thinking, thoughtworthy life ends upon entry into the rat race, to be re-started again only with the sort of midlife crisis that has spawned an entire revolting genre of movies about wretched men getting their boners back and wretched women getting their groove back. No. I blame how our holidays are too short, our working hours are too long, and we watch too much television.
I would love to think that sort of quality of life issue was up for debate in the upcoming Canadian election (which I won't be participating in, not paying taxes there anymore) or the upcoming American election. But no. No, no, no. God fucking forbid. Instead it's all bread and circuses without the bread. Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country; for example, you can work twice as many hours as is necessary from a productivity point of view, and you can abstain from clinging to any 'spare time' that would give you the freedom to learn about the most urgent political issues at hand, or to make informed decisions as an electorate, and or to educate your children to be anything but a semi-literate cog in the wheel of a car that's lost it's brakes and is careering down into the rising sea levels of our own suicidal societal stupidity.
domenica, settembre 07, 2008
Men aren't only good for fucking
I can come off as sexist from time to time because of my belief that the only thing that seperates us from other primates is the rhythm of female life, featuring as it does menopause - the cessation of childbirthing duties and the transformation of Woman into the repository of her group's acquired knowledge and artistic consciousness - and of my belief that if you segregated men from women, putting each group on an island by themselves, the men would universally revert to pan trog behaviours within a month, and women would carry on basically as usual except with a great deal more complaining about how there's no cock to be had.
So maybe I am sexist. Fine. But. From time to time boys say things that surprise me with my own stunning lack of insight. For example, about six years ago Bluebird and I were sitting around eating rösti and smoking his cigarettes, talking about nuclear holocaust, and I sez to Bluebird, I sez, 'nuclear armament is too dangerous because you saw how the Americans flew off the handle and blew up those Japanese cities to end that war quicker and that wasn't good, was it?' And he sez no, the Japanese had already lost, and the Americans blew up those Japanese cities to show the Soviets they could and would, and that was the rather hot beginning of the cold war.
'Oh,' I sez. Bluebird and I never saw eye to eye about much in terms of how the world works but trust a broken Swiss to tell the right time at least twice a day.
I'm far more accustomed to agreeing with the F-word about almost everything, but nonetheless I was a little shocked this weekend when we were talking about the upcoming American presidentials and the global economic downturn. 'I don't know if the Democrats can lose,' I sez to the F-word, I sez, 'they always win when them yanks are more paranoid about the economy than about the hostile world around them.'
'Yeah,' he sez, 'well, last May, when we listened to that show about Georgia, you said you never thought a teeny tiny country like that would risk pissing off a great big country like Russia by trying to reclaim their breakaway territories before getting into NATO. And now four months before the presidentials, something made Georgians think it was okay to risk pissing off Russia by trying to reclaim a breakaway territory before getting into NATO. What made them think it'd be okay? I don't know, but they had 2,000 troops in Iraq. Their military is supplied through American contracts. They're a big recipient of American foreign aid. Why would they be stupid enough to risk pissing off a great big country like Russia by trying to reclaim their breakaway territories before getting into NATO unless their biggest partner had told them it was okay? And why would their biggest partner have told them it was okay, when it so obviously wasn't, four months before an American presidential election wherein heretofore the main preoccupation of the electorate has been the economy?'
'Oh,' I sez. The F-word is probably about 4 more degrees paranoid than I am but let's face it, it wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing has happened, would it?
Anyways, if the American media wants a break from breathlessly waiting for that lousy pork barrel fiend from Alaska with the fuckable husband to talk to them about her 'positions', and if it wants a break from desperately basing the slant of its reporting on unscientific opinion polling about how much people want to fuck each of the candidates, maybe they can look into why this bullshit is happening now. But any mention of how maybe, possibly, there was some American complicity in all this is always tied to some idea of Russians being conspiracy theorists - even in an article about how America is dumping a billion dollars on Georgia in the middle of its own economic meltdown. Fucking tossers. The fourth column has erectile dysfunction.
So maybe I am sexist. Fine. But. From time to time boys say things that surprise me with my own stunning lack of insight. For example, about six years ago Bluebird and I were sitting around eating rösti and smoking his cigarettes, talking about nuclear holocaust, and I sez to Bluebird, I sez, 'nuclear armament is too dangerous because you saw how the Americans flew off the handle and blew up those Japanese cities to end that war quicker and that wasn't good, was it?' And he sez no, the Japanese had already lost, and the Americans blew up those Japanese cities to show the Soviets they could and would, and that was the rather hot beginning of the cold war.
'Oh,' I sez. Bluebird and I never saw eye to eye about much in terms of how the world works but trust a broken Swiss to tell the right time at least twice a day.
I'm far more accustomed to agreeing with the F-word about almost everything, but nonetheless I was a little shocked this weekend when we were talking about the upcoming American presidentials and the global economic downturn. 'I don't know if the Democrats can lose,' I sez to the F-word, I sez, 'they always win when them yanks are more paranoid about the economy than about the hostile world around them.'
'Yeah,' he sez, 'well, last May, when we listened to that show about Georgia, you said you never thought a teeny tiny country like that would risk pissing off a great big country like Russia by trying to reclaim their breakaway territories before getting into NATO. And now four months before the presidentials, something made Georgians think it was okay to risk pissing off Russia by trying to reclaim a breakaway territory before getting into NATO. What made them think it'd be okay? I don't know, but they had 2,000 troops in Iraq. Their military is supplied through American contracts. They're a big recipient of American foreign aid. Why would they be stupid enough to risk pissing off a great big country like Russia by trying to reclaim their breakaway territories before getting into NATO unless their biggest partner had told them it was okay? And why would their biggest partner have told them it was okay, when it so obviously wasn't, four months before an American presidential election wherein heretofore the main preoccupation of the electorate has been the economy?'
'Oh,' I sez. The F-word is probably about 4 more degrees paranoid than I am but let's face it, it wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing has happened, would it?
Anyways, if the American media wants a break from breathlessly waiting for that lousy pork barrel fiend from Alaska with the fuckable husband to talk to them about her 'positions', and if it wants a break from desperately basing the slant of its reporting on unscientific opinion polling about how much people want to fuck each of the candidates, maybe they can look into why this bullshit is happening now. But any mention of how maybe, possibly, there was some American complicity in all this is always tied to some idea of Russians being conspiracy theorists - even in an article about how America is dumping a billion dollars on Georgia in the middle of its own economic meltdown. Fucking tossers. The fourth column has erectile dysfunction.
giovedì, settembre 04, 2008
The Red Dragon comes to the tough conclusions*
*and invents a brand spanking new swear word. A big shiny prize to whoever spots it first.
San Francisca and I talk American politics a bit. Mostly we talk other things because she's been so embarrassed by what a farce it's become - Sarah Palin has tipped her over the edge. I find that encouraging because she used to be a Clinton supporter. But then San Francisca is a smart girl so I don't know if all her compatriottes who were pro-Clinton will feel the same way. I'd imagine they wouldn't be retarded enough to take up the sop that is the Alaskan yahoo, and only my misanthropy would make me say that I'm sure they're not retarded enough.
But yesterday San Francisca and I had a little talk about who would have been a better sop, which I needed to discuss with someone, because for the life of me I couldn't figure out why it hadn't been Condoleezza Rice. In image terms she's certainly come out best from this lousy shitfight of an existing administration; she has so much experience, all of it unbeatably pertinent to the job; and she can string three words together without sneering. In fact she has a lovely soothing voice. Would I ever vote for her if I was able? No. Would I invite her over for dinner? No. If I bumped into her on the street, would I abstain from pelting her with high-absorbency menstrual pads whilst screaming 'oh my god, it's leaking all the way from Iraq!' No. But if I was an American woman, I wouldn't find her nomination to the vice presidency the least bit inexplicable, condescending, stupid, or worrying.
But as San Francisca pointed out, it was just too much for the Republicans. A woman - edgy! A black woman - erm . . . A black woman who has not Chosen Life through good clean heterosexual breeding herself and who can't evade saying she's pro-choice? No. No, no, no. These are the Republicans we're talking about, aren't they? Better to nominate an inexperienced yahoo with a secessionist husband, condomless daughter, and pork barrel politics than a woman who, for all her indisputable qualifications for the job, is black, not a baby factory, and doesn't expect anyone else to be. Because choosing an inexperienced yahoo with great tits will be enough to make all the women who are upset about Hilary Clinton losing swing their politics 180 degrees. It will make them vote for two lousy shitheels who are willing to criminalize rape victims that refuse to bear their violators' children.
Conclusions:
1. Seriously, one million fuck yous to the Republicans. They couldn't shit in a pot if it insulted their mother.
2. And if their shit works, America will get the government it deserves. This isn't 1990 anymore. The last eight years have turned its dollar to mush, its economy into a repo man orgy, its military into a fragile, overstretched blanket snagged in two of the crummiest countries in the world where it's driving up the price of a commodity that makes its political rivals richer by the second, and its yuppies into indigents. All of that may be fine and dandy as far as the Republican Party is concerned, and as far as the witless fuckels who are willing to vote for it AGAIN are concerned.
But now the rest of the planet has better things to do than put up with a country run by the political equivalent of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. Even fuckin' Paruguay has better things to do these days. Empires have to fall sometime and if it's in the next four years, all of us who WON'T be getting the government we deserve will live with it. Maybe we'll even be better off.
3. And Palin's secessionist husband is a total piece of ass. State's right on top of that! I wouldn't kick him off my snowmobile. I'd fish his salmon. I'd handle his state trooper. And et cetera.
San Francisca and I talk American politics a bit. Mostly we talk other things because she's been so embarrassed by what a farce it's become - Sarah Palin has tipped her over the edge. I find that encouraging because she used to be a Clinton supporter. But then San Francisca is a smart girl so I don't know if all her compatriottes who were pro-Clinton will feel the same way. I'd imagine they wouldn't be retarded enough to take up the sop that is the Alaskan yahoo, and only my misanthropy would make me say that I'm sure they're not retarded enough.
But yesterday San Francisca and I had a little talk about who would have been a better sop, which I needed to discuss with someone, because for the life of me I couldn't figure out why it hadn't been Condoleezza Rice. In image terms she's certainly come out best from this lousy shitfight of an existing administration; she has so much experience, all of it unbeatably pertinent to the job; and she can string three words together without sneering. In fact she has a lovely soothing voice. Would I ever vote for her if I was able? No. Would I invite her over for dinner? No. If I bumped into her on the street, would I abstain from pelting her with high-absorbency menstrual pads whilst screaming 'oh my god, it's leaking all the way from Iraq!' No. But if I was an American woman, I wouldn't find her nomination to the vice presidency the least bit inexplicable, condescending, stupid, or worrying.
But as San Francisca pointed out, it was just too much for the Republicans. A woman - edgy! A black woman - erm . . . A black woman who has not Chosen Life through good clean heterosexual breeding herself and who can't evade saying she's pro-choice? No. No, no, no. These are the Republicans we're talking about, aren't they? Better to nominate an inexperienced yahoo with a secessionist husband, condomless daughter, and pork barrel politics than a woman who, for all her indisputable qualifications for the job, is black, not a baby factory, and doesn't expect anyone else to be. Because choosing an inexperienced yahoo with great tits will be enough to make all the women who are upset about Hilary Clinton losing swing their politics 180 degrees. It will make them vote for two lousy shitheels who are willing to criminalize rape victims that refuse to bear their violators' children.
Conclusions:
1. Seriously, one million fuck yous to the Republicans. They couldn't shit in a pot if it insulted their mother.
2. And if their shit works, America will get the government it deserves. This isn't 1990 anymore. The last eight years have turned its dollar to mush, its economy into a repo man orgy, its military into a fragile, overstretched blanket snagged in two of the crummiest countries in the world where it's driving up the price of a commodity that makes its political rivals richer by the second, and its yuppies into indigents. All of that may be fine and dandy as far as the Republican Party is concerned, and as far as the witless fuckels who are willing to vote for it AGAIN are concerned.
But now the rest of the planet has better things to do than put up with a country run by the political equivalent of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. Even fuckin' Paruguay has better things to do these days. Empires have to fall sometime and if it's in the next four years, all of us who WON'T be getting the government we deserve will live with it. Maybe we'll even be better off.
3. And Palin's secessionist husband is a total piece of ass. State's right on top of that! I wouldn't kick him off my snowmobile. I'd fish his salmon. I'd handle his state trooper. And et cetera.
mercoledì, settembre 03, 2008
Awwwwwww, GEEK OUT!
Le geek, c'est chic.
Which is Mistress-La-Spliffe shorthand for 'I've become a fucking podcast addict.' Can't be stopped. I'm that sort of boring learner who was always pulling in the big marks in uni without being all that competent - the sort who can sit there and listen, maybe read from time to time, and learn all she has to learn to get the fuckin' As that way. All of which means I am prime podcast country and they have settled me like crazy. I fuckin' love them. Listen to them an hour a day whilst trekking to work and back, and even at work if all I'm doing is transcribing, and I swear to you no subject is too boring that I can't listen to a nice podcast about it.
The CBC, Canada's national broadcaster, has some nice ones. So does the ABC, Australia's national broadcaster, which have the added benefit of getting me used to that ridiculous accent in people other than my own sweet darling F-word, who would be my own sweet darling no matter what retarded accent he talked with - even if he talked like me, who easily has the single most retarded accent in the Anglophone world. Think one of the whores from Fargo who's been living with an Australian for a few years in a Francophone country, and you've just about got the sheer fucking ugliness of it. God, am I ever glad I don't have to listen to my own voice during sex. It must be fucking atrocious.
Anyhoo, yesterday I heard an absolutely lovely one from the IIASA that I must reccommend from heterodox economist Ha-Joon Chang. Don't be scared by the 'economist'. It's a lovely talk that cuts through all the political cant about free-trade-good this and protectionism-bad that - far more of a historical than numerical focus, as it was a talk given to a bunch of non-economists. Go on. Give it a listen. For nothing else, then for Ha-Joon Chang's adorable accent. I could listen to Koreans speak English all day. Fuck the French and the Queen and Southern Belles and everybody else who's supposed to be all cute when they talk English. The Korean accent easily beats them all, both for clarity and prettiness.
Which is Mistress-La-Spliffe shorthand for 'I've become a fucking podcast addict.' Can't be stopped. I'm that sort of boring learner who was always pulling in the big marks in uni without being all that competent - the sort who can sit there and listen, maybe read from time to time, and learn all she has to learn to get the fuckin' As that way. All of which means I am prime podcast country and they have settled me like crazy. I fuckin' love them. Listen to them an hour a day whilst trekking to work and back, and even at work if all I'm doing is transcribing, and I swear to you no subject is too boring that I can't listen to a nice podcast about it.
The CBC, Canada's national broadcaster, has some nice ones. So does the ABC, Australia's national broadcaster, which have the added benefit of getting me used to that ridiculous accent in people other than my own sweet darling F-word, who would be my own sweet darling no matter what retarded accent he talked with - even if he talked like me, who easily has the single most retarded accent in the Anglophone world. Think one of the whores from Fargo who's been living with an Australian for a few years in a Francophone country, and you've just about got the sheer fucking ugliness of it. God, am I ever glad I don't have to listen to my own voice during sex. It must be fucking atrocious.
Anyhoo, yesterday I heard an absolutely lovely one from the IIASA that I must reccommend from heterodox economist Ha-Joon Chang. Don't be scared by the 'economist'. It's a lovely talk that cuts through all the political cant about free-trade-good this and protectionism-bad that - far more of a historical than numerical focus, as it was a talk given to a bunch of non-economists. Go on. Give it a listen. For nothing else, then for Ha-Joon Chang's adorable accent. I could listen to Koreans speak English all day. Fuck the French and the Queen and Southern Belles and everybody else who's supposed to be all cute when they talk English. The Korean accent easily beats them all, both for clarity and prettiness.
martedì, settembre 02, 2008
The Red Dragon asks the tough questions
The American political cycle has spiralled down into farce, in-your-face slapstick that many of my friends who traditionally ignore the American political cycle can't help but comment on. I'm left with four questions:
1. Was it just a random chick pick, or is Sarah Palin the sort of thing that John McCain personally feels is both representative of and appealing to American women? A gun-toting, equal-pay stimying, global warming denying sneer machine who is against women's right to choose and - to me far more importantly - a girl's right to learn, and who'd even dream of allowing her teenage daughter to get married just because she got pregnant? Teenage. Pregnant or not the whole girl's life is ahead of her. If I'd married who I'd wanted to marry when I was 17 I'd have shot myself by now, and I think I'm quite typical in that.
2. Is he right? Or is he the biggest cocksucker in the world?
3. If Americans are stupid enough to vote a 71 year old cancer survivor into office whose immediate successor is the gun-toting, equal-pay stimying, global warming denying sneer machine whilst the country is engaged in two wars, the global economy crashes, Russia confronts NATO in its near abroad, ocean level rise threatens to create a refugee class the size of which the planet has never seen before, and China keeps being China, how long will it be before Japan just buys up everything south of the Canadian border and north of the South American leftist nationalists who don't play ball anymore and turns it into a Toyota factory?
4. And at that point, will the price of Toyotas go down? Because I sort of want one when we move to Australia. They get fantastic mileage and they're safer than my emotional choice, a Mini Cooper. I know they're already pretty cheap but I'm the world's biggest skinflint.
1. Was it just a random chick pick, or is Sarah Palin the sort of thing that John McCain personally feels is both representative of and appealing to American women? A gun-toting, equal-pay stimying, global warming denying sneer machine who is against women's right to choose and - to me far more importantly - a girl's right to learn, and who'd even dream of allowing her teenage daughter to get married just because she got pregnant? Teenage. Pregnant or not the whole girl's life is ahead of her. If I'd married who I'd wanted to marry when I was 17 I'd have shot myself by now, and I think I'm quite typical in that.
2. Is he right? Or is he the biggest cocksucker in the world?
3. If Americans are stupid enough to vote a 71 year old cancer survivor into office whose immediate successor is the gun-toting, equal-pay stimying, global warming denying sneer machine whilst the country is engaged in two wars, the global economy crashes, Russia confronts NATO in its near abroad, ocean level rise threatens to create a refugee class the size of which the planet has never seen before, and China keeps being China, how long will it be before Japan just buys up everything south of the Canadian border and north of the South American leftist nationalists who don't play ball anymore and turns it into a Toyota factory?
4. And at that point, will the price of Toyotas go down? Because I sort of want one when we move to Australia. They get fantastic mileage and they're safer than my emotional choice, a Mini Cooper. I know they're already pretty cheap but I'm the world's biggest skinflint.
lunedì, settembre 01, 2008
Lovely as a sleepy lizard
Like everybody, I could complain about my job. Really only about the hours - I'd like to work as hard as a rentboy at a televangelists' convention three days a week and then have four day weekends. I suppose I could also complain about the fact that my office is in Brussels, but that's not my office's fault, and if it was in a better city where apartments aren't so cheap they'd have to pay me more, or else I'd be complaining about my salary. So there you are. And my job has great benefits, like the way I'm being paid to fight with people on the company blog - I gave up looking at comment sections of anything a long time ago because of the contribution it makes to my misanthropy, but hey, if it's my job, cool - and knowing about what's happening in Mozambique and the way I get to go sea kayaking in Marseille in a couple of weeks.
And yesterday my job benefited me by teaching me, in the course of research for one of my articles, that Abu Dhabi has a falcon hospital. And it's one of several in the region. Can you believe it? That little scrap of information took my breath away - slapped me across the face with the fact that not only do people live so differently from me, but people love birds in an absolutely different way from me. There are so many wonderful things in the world. Obviously I shouldn't have had to look all the way to Abu Dhabi to realize that, but you know how things jump out at you from time to time.
Also varied and wonderful is something the F-word got for me, Life in Cold Blood, narrated by the mighty Attenborough. I don't know the last time I've seen something so pretty, though there're so many reptiles and amphibians making it that from time to time I feel like I'm watching porn that's missing my horny mark. It's all the relationships within a species that really gets me though, not just the jissoming relationships, or not just the jissom in the jissoming relationships. Like the je t'aime moi non plus of Australia's sleepy lizards, who spend two months together a year, and then split up, and then get back together, and who mourn their partners if they die. Or the ritual combat of king cobras, who can kill a large animal with a single bite but whose menfolk content themselves with wrestling and pinning each other down to settle territorial disputes. I swear the more we learn about animals, the more mysterious they get.
And yesterday my job benefited me by teaching me, in the course of research for one of my articles, that Abu Dhabi has a falcon hospital. And it's one of several in the region. Can you believe it? That little scrap of information took my breath away - slapped me across the face with the fact that not only do people live so differently from me, but people love birds in an absolutely different way from me. There are so many wonderful things in the world. Obviously I shouldn't have had to look all the way to Abu Dhabi to realize that, but you know how things jump out at you from time to time.
Also varied and wonderful is something the F-word got for me, Life in Cold Blood, narrated by the mighty Attenborough. I don't know the last time I've seen something so pretty, though there're so many reptiles and amphibians making it that from time to time I feel like I'm watching porn that's missing my horny mark. It's all the relationships within a species that really gets me though, not just the jissoming relationships, or not just the jissom in the jissoming relationships. Like the je t'aime moi non plus of Australia's sleepy lizards, who spend two months together a year, and then split up, and then get back together, and who mourn their partners if they die. Or the ritual combat of king cobras, who can kill a large animal with a single bite but whose menfolk content themselves with wrestling and pinning each other down to settle territorial disputes. I swear the more we learn about animals, the more mysterious they get.
domenica, agosto 31, 2008
Refreshing a tired businesswoman's brain
Lots of quite nice things happened this weekend, only a few of which I'll write about in the interests of space and decency. After getting such a lift from the preceding two weekends of countryside and kayaking, we see we have to use our weekends, and use ourselves on the weekend. My own conclusion is that I need to spend more time staring at trees and birds, and less at people, as my misanthropy threatens to become unmanageable. I'm not unhappy these days, either in my personal or professional life, but I'm starting to feel a bit like an extra-terrestrial. Not in the sense of being above it all, or being a super-evolved intergalactic voyageuse, but in the sense of just not getting it a lot of the time.
Anyhoo. Weekend extended backwards by a staff trip to an adventure park on Friday - one of those places you chain yourself to security lines and swing around the trees. I lasted three hours before my vertigo insisted I sit down and start drinking, which is three more hours than I'd been expecting to last. Not one panic attack, though I did consider it as a possibility at one point. Out in a town called Wavre, which was lovely, green and much cleaner-smelling than Brussels - helpful, considering the sudden onset of warmth and summer. I like the people I work with well enough. The ones who I'm not actively fond of don't demand too much of my attention so it's all good.
Yesterday dealt with the continuing warmth and green by going to Tervuren for some fresh air, where we had a nice picnic in the grounds of the African museum. The F-word went in to draw some of the weirdo stuff they've purloined from the Congo and I went for a long walk in the woods, reflecting on my misanthropy (set off hard by the allegorical statues in the entrance hall of the Spirit of Europe rescuing the Spirit of Africa from the Spirit of Barbarism and Arabs; I've never seen such an elegant and unabashed translation of murderous hypocrisy into expensive kitsch, but then I don't listen to American political speeches), and then settling down to read about half of Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel. A neat little book, suitable for tired businessmen's brains, which means it's suitable for mine. It'd be perfect for a three hour flight. Opens a window on a time when our societal paranoia was the same, but with a different object. On a time when academics and scientists were just as territorial and bigoted, but in the sphere of Royal Commissions instead of universities, broadsheets and books for pop audiences. Oh, the humanity.
So enjoyed both Wavre and Tervuren, though my enjoyment of all that fresh air in Wavre would have been tempered if I'd known there'd been a radioactive gas leak from a facility close to Charleroi (Wavre is halfway there) which the government has been falling all over itself about after trying to cover it up or downplay it for a week or so. Fuck, Belgium is a mess.
Anyways, lots of other nice things happened. For example, I invented a new technique for making tomato sauce which is so revolutionary and so delicious I think it will become a Spliffe Family Secret. I also made rhubarb upside cake in the skillet for the first time, which is a work in progress - it was good but it could be brilliant, and when it is I'll release the recipe. And custard. I've never been the world's biggest fan of it, but I discovered that if you whisk it continuously as you heat it, adding the corn starch as you go, it gets all foamy and ethereally exquisite. Expect that to be posted soon, under some charming name like Fairy Cum or Mermaid Corpse.
Anyhoo. Weekend extended backwards by a staff trip to an adventure park on Friday - one of those places you chain yourself to security lines and swing around the trees. I lasted three hours before my vertigo insisted I sit down and start drinking, which is three more hours than I'd been expecting to last. Not one panic attack, though I did consider it as a possibility at one point. Out in a town called Wavre, which was lovely, green and much cleaner-smelling than Brussels - helpful, considering the sudden onset of warmth and summer. I like the people I work with well enough. The ones who I'm not actively fond of don't demand too much of my attention so it's all good.
Yesterday dealt with the continuing warmth and green by going to Tervuren for some fresh air, where we had a nice picnic in the grounds of the African museum. The F-word went in to draw some of the weirdo stuff they've purloined from the Congo and I went for a long walk in the woods, reflecting on my misanthropy (set off hard by the allegorical statues in the entrance hall of the Spirit of Europe rescuing the Spirit of Africa from the Spirit of Barbarism and Arabs; I've never seen such an elegant and unabashed translation of murderous hypocrisy into expensive kitsch, but then I don't listen to American political speeches), and then settling down to read about half of Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel. A neat little book, suitable for tired businessmen's brains, which means it's suitable for mine. It'd be perfect for a three hour flight. Opens a window on a time when our societal paranoia was the same, but with a different object. On a time when academics and scientists were just as territorial and bigoted, but in the sphere of Royal Commissions instead of universities, broadsheets and books for pop audiences. Oh, the humanity.
So enjoyed both Wavre and Tervuren, though my enjoyment of all that fresh air in Wavre would have been tempered if I'd known there'd been a radioactive gas leak from a facility close to Charleroi (Wavre is halfway there) which the government has been falling all over itself about after trying to cover it up or downplay it for a week or so. Fuck, Belgium is a mess.
Anyways, lots of other nice things happened. For example, I invented a new technique for making tomato sauce which is so revolutionary and so delicious I think it will become a Spliffe Family Secret. I also made rhubarb upside cake in the skillet for the first time, which is a work in progress - it was good but it could be brilliant, and when it is I'll release the recipe. And custard. I've never been the world's biggest fan of it, but I discovered that if you whisk it continuously as you heat it, adding the corn starch as you go, it gets all foamy and ethereally exquisite. Expect that to be posted soon, under some charming name like Fairy Cum or Mermaid Corpse.
giovedì, agosto 28, 2008
Im gonna try 2 tame a little red love machine
I'm excited about learning how to drive. Pity it hasn't begun yet. I guess everybody of a certain age, having got back from holiday, has the same idea I do and the driving schools are all booked up. Oh well. This is Belgium and I mustn't expect things to be easy. I must be patient, and remember it's not like I have anywhere to go. I live in the centre of a high speed train system that can direct me towards anywhere in this weird and diverse continent; in a couple of weeks I'm taking a direct train to Marseille - it'll take about 5 hours - driving would take twice that, at best. I must remember that getting the license is not in aid of my life here, but of my life when I move to a country with remarkably bad infrastructure, which is unlikely to happen for a couple of years yet.
Most of the phenomena in my life can be at least partly explained by laziness, and my failure to get a driver's license to date is no exception. But another part of the explanation is that I think cars are absolutely fucking retarded. Over the last 12 years of cycling, how many grim-faced traffic jams have I breezed past? Over the past 30 years of being a passenger, how many times have I seen the driver cuss and fret and look desperately around like a turtle trying to decide whether or not to panic, searching desperately for a parking spot? How many times have I cursed the filthiness of the air in Canadian, Belgian, French and Italian cities - especially the Italian cities, where the pollution is visibly chewing its way through the cultural patrimony? How many of my contemporaries finished university in my mercifully debt-free position, and then proceeded to run debt up on a lease or the other expenses - insurance, parking, and all that motherfucking gas - that I've never had to think about?
My 'cars are bad' notion owes a lot to their contribution to overall pollution, both in tree-hugging terms and in human health terms. But it also owes a lot to the fact that, out of all the people in my life I can think of who were very taken before their three score and ten, one bought it from suicide, two bought it from cancer and a dozen bought it in car accidents. In blunt statistical terms that means I should hate cars 6 times as much as I hate cancer, and as for suicide, well . . .
So it's not just the gas-guzzling and the pollution that makes me think cars are stupid. I don't think they're simply a technology that can be improved by changing the power source to something 'cleaner', and I don't know that batteries are all that much 'cleaner' anyways; they have all their own attendant disposal problems and you know everyone except the Dutch, Germans, Scandinavians, alternate South American and Spanish governments, and the Japanese is going to fuck that up. I just think they're a really stupid way to get from point A to point B. Inconvenient, dirty, dangerous, farting, annoying, frustrating, expensive things, that people carjack no less. And I think it's the goddamn height of the problem with modern society that the governments we've chosen have been so lazy, so pandering to corporate or industrial interests, as to allow urban and national planning that makes something so inconvenient, dirty, dangerous, farting, annoying, frustrating, and expensive the centrepiece of how we all get around. We suck. Except the Dutch.
That having been written, I am quite excited about learning how to drive. Though I think cars are absolutely fucking retarded as a cornerstone of the transportation system, and though I think future generations, if they exist, will look as askance at our dependence on cars as we look askance on the Roman's dependence on lead piping for their water systems in rich neighborhoods - stupid fucking Romans - it looks like it will be jolly fun to drive one. Cars shouldn't be for getting us around, they should be for fun. For Nascar and racing and amusing television programmes like Top Gear and Magnum PI and The Dukes of Hazzard and the one where the car talks to David Hasselhoff. For Prince songs, and Beach Boys songs, and chases in Bond movies, and to show off at masturbatory shows, like purebred dogs.
Or, indeed, like ducks dressed as geishas. Give a listen to the mp3, it's the cutest thing in the world. Especially the part about how going to Hong Kong will be such a big change. I wish Brian Harrington was my uncle. The only thing I've seen this week that even rivals that story for cuteness is the obituary of Jack Weil in this week's Economist, the 107-year-old who invented cowboy chic.
Most of the phenomena in my life can be at least partly explained by laziness, and my failure to get a driver's license to date is no exception. But another part of the explanation is that I think cars are absolutely fucking retarded. Over the last 12 years of cycling, how many grim-faced traffic jams have I breezed past? Over the past 30 years of being a passenger, how many times have I seen the driver cuss and fret and look desperately around like a turtle trying to decide whether or not to panic, searching desperately for a parking spot? How many times have I cursed the filthiness of the air in Canadian, Belgian, French and Italian cities - especially the Italian cities, where the pollution is visibly chewing its way through the cultural patrimony? How many of my contemporaries finished university in my mercifully debt-free position, and then proceeded to run debt up on a lease or the other expenses - insurance, parking, and all that motherfucking gas - that I've never had to think about?
My 'cars are bad' notion owes a lot to their contribution to overall pollution, both in tree-hugging terms and in human health terms. But it also owes a lot to the fact that, out of all the people in my life I can think of who were very taken before their three score and ten, one bought it from suicide, two bought it from cancer and a dozen bought it in car accidents. In blunt statistical terms that means I should hate cars 6 times as much as I hate cancer, and as for suicide, well . . .
So it's not just the gas-guzzling and the pollution that makes me think cars are stupid. I don't think they're simply a technology that can be improved by changing the power source to something 'cleaner', and I don't know that batteries are all that much 'cleaner' anyways; they have all their own attendant disposal problems and you know everyone except the Dutch, Germans, Scandinavians, alternate South American and Spanish governments, and the Japanese is going to fuck that up. I just think they're a really stupid way to get from point A to point B. Inconvenient, dirty, dangerous, farting, annoying, frustrating, expensive things, that people carjack no less. And I think it's the goddamn height of the problem with modern society that the governments we've chosen have been so lazy, so pandering to corporate or industrial interests, as to allow urban and national planning that makes something so inconvenient, dirty, dangerous, farting, annoying, frustrating, and expensive the centrepiece of how we all get around. We suck. Except the Dutch.
That having been written, I am quite excited about learning how to drive. Though I think cars are absolutely fucking retarded as a cornerstone of the transportation system, and though I think future generations, if they exist, will look as askance at our dependence on cars as we look askance on the Roman's dependence on lead piping for their water systems in rich neighborhoods - stupid fucking Romans - it looks like it will be jolly fun to drive one. Cars shouldn't be for getting us around, they should be for fun. For Nascar and racing and amusing television programmes like Top Gear and Magnum PI and The Dukes of Hazzard and the one where the car talks to David Hasselhoff. For Prince songs, and Beach Boys songs, and chases in Bond movies, and to show off at masturbatory shows, like purebred dogs.
Or, indeed, like ducks dressed as geishas. Give a listen to the mp3, it's the cutest thing in the world. Especially the part about how going to Hong Kong will be such a big change. I wish Brian Harrington was my uncle. The only thing I've seen this week that even rivals that story for cuteness is the obituary of Jack Weil in this week's Economist, the 107-year-old who invented cowboy chic.
mercoledì, agosto 27, 2008
I can see all the incredibly stupid obstacles in my way
Maybe it's because yesterday was a remarkably good day; maybe it's because my boss's advice about how to live in Belgium (be wildly happy when anything goes right and accept things going wrong as the status quo) has finally sank in. But I feel like I'm making some progress in terms of not trying to think of a way to make this shithole sink into the sea.
The driving theory test: 44/50. First go, in French. Rock! I'd forgotten how much I love acing tests, which I'm starting to think is my real motive for having got so much education. Rampant, insecure self-regard. I love when strangers tell me I did good. Makes me blush all over, like when you give an attractive man a hard-on. And then I hoped I could get my provisional license right away but I could not - have to do 20 hours of lessons at a car school first. And then I hoped I could do those 20 hours in the next month, but I could not - all the schoolkids back from holiday had the same idea, I suppose, and my lessons will stretch into early November. Once they're finished, it is a further three months until I can take my final exam and get the full license.
Good thing I revised my goal to getting the permit before I turn 31. Neither wrench in the works killed my mood. It's not like I have anywhere to drive at the moment so six months is about as good as three months. And six months, though twice three months, is a mere fourth of how long this process would take in Canada or Australia. And here I'll be learning on stickshift, and in, if not an urban jungle, and urban dodg'em course; that means I'll be able to drive anywhere. See? Two stings-in-the-tail and not wishing Belgium would sink into the sea at all.
Work: Also got a full body blush from being recognized for a job well done. Got an email from my big big boss, which was a forward from my big big big boss, who had written it to both my big big boss and my big big big big boss about how he thought my first editorial, published a couple of weeks ago, was remarkably good. Now all three of these men are bosses so big I have no idea who the hell they are, though I'm meeting the big big boss next week when he comes to Brussels and we have a series of meetings with him and my boss and my big boss, and somehow that just makes the positive feedback nicer. It's not the Pulitzer but hopefully it will make up for the way I never brush my hair at my performance review.
The driving theory test: 44/50. First go, in French. Rock! I'd forgotten how much I love acing tests, which I'm starting to think is my real motive for having got so much education. Rampant, insecure self-regard. I love when strangers tell me I did good. Makes me blush all over, like when you give an attractive man a hard-on. And then I hoped I could get my provisional license right away but I could not - have to do 20 hours of lessons at a car school first. And then I hoped I could do those 20 hours in the next month, but I could not - all the schoolkids back from holiday had the same idea, I suppose, and my lessons will stretch into early November. Once they're finished, it is a further three months until I can take my final exam and get the full license.
Good thing I revised my goal to getting the permit before I turn 31. Neither wrench in the works killed my mood. It's not like I have anywhere to drive at the moment so six months is about as good as three months. And six months, though twice three months, is a mere fourth of how long this process would take in Canada or Australia. And here I'll be learning on stickshift, and in, if not an urban jungle, and urban dodg'em course; that means I'll be able to drive anywhere. See? Two stings-in-the-tail and not wishing Belgium would sink into the sea at all.
Work: Also got a full body blush from being recognized for a job well done. Got an email from my big big boss, which was a forward from my big big big boss, who had written it to both my big big boss and my big big big big boss about how he thought my first editorial, published a couple of weeks ago, was remarkably good. Now all three of these men are bosses so big I have no idea who the hell they are, though I'm meeting the big big boss next week when he comes to Brussels and we have a series of meetings with him and my boss and my big boss, and somehow that just makes the positive feedback nicer. It's not the Pulitzer but hopefully it will make up for the way I never brush my hair at my performance review.
martedì, agosto 26, 2008
Okay.
For serious this time, I'm doing the fucking driving theory test this morning. And hence not blogging. What a pain in my ass it all is. Last night, after trying to wedge the umpteen useless fact into my brain, I could only make myself feel better by shopping online for kayaks, with that false but widely-spread feeling that oils the smoking axles on our steeply descending consumer society: 'I deserve it'.
UPDATE
Yeah dude I rock!
UPDATE
Yeah dude I rock!
lunedì, agosto 25, 2008
Why the birds are singing
Feeling gloriously pummelled by our two day escape to the sticks of Dinant. Same area as the weekend before, but this time we brought our bikes and went a little further afield. On Sunday we arrived in Dinant, and then rode the 15 minutes or so to Anseremme, where we got a super cheap hotel room at Ansiaux; that was the same place we rented kayaks from the next day. After buying a picnic at the Spar underneath the giant motorway bridge, we rode our bikes to Furfooz:
View Larger Map
The bit where it goes down from Anseremme along the river was nice and quite flat, but the bit where it goes back up again into the little peak was uphill, and there were several times I caught myself panting for air like an overexcited Jack Russell. But I enjoyed panting for air there. It was clean and pure and didn't smell like anything except trees and/or cowshit. And it was a series of beautiful views and vistas, what's more - forests, one castle, and those fantastic limestone cliffs that water and time have sculpted in the most 'whaaaaaaa?' ways.
Speaking of, a bit attraction of Furfooz Park are its strange caves. Strange stories attached to them - of a golden fleece, of a race of mortal but magical dwarves called the Nutons who would do work for the villagers in exchange for sweets - and a long history. The park had been continuously occupied over several thousand years and had some Neolithic burial grounds in it. A creepy, beautiful place, to which we didn't bring cameras, because of what we got up to the next day - more kayaking - and this time, rather wetter.
We took the five hour trip (from Houyet to Anseremme) instead of the three hour one (from Gendron), and I believe we stretched it out to six or seven. Fewer people on the river this time and we each got a monoplace kayak, so we could arse around a bit until we started feeling like we knew what we were doing. I was continuously challenged by my disabilities in discerning right from left, as I will be when I hit the road with a driving instructor - oh boy - but very quickly it started feeling like second nature. So manoeuvrable, so comfortable, so soothing. I think when we move back to a country with space we'll buy a couple of real kayaks and be serious about it.
But in the meantime, in this country without space, it was very beautiful. Most of the route was clearly inhabited, with chip stands and caravans and little dogs barking, but in the first two hours especially, from Houyet to Gendron, we often had the feeling of paddling our way through a wet, primeval forest, much like our predecessors might have.
In Canada as well, during any sort of nature adventure, that is a feeling that stays with me and makes the experience charming - going across the lake on a canoe, hiking through a forest, sitting next to a fire - thinking 'this is much like our predecessors might have done.' It's as much a part of the experience for me as the beauty of the nature itself, because as I look there's the knowledge that I'm seeing it from the physical perspective that people have been seeing it from for thousands and thousands of years. And it casts me onto wondering about how perceptions of beauty may have changed, or, before that, if they came into existence. It's hard to believe that they didn't always exist.
Part of thinking about that was looking at the beautiful birds on the way, including two I hadn't seen before, the European kingfisher and the little egret - both very beautiful, and I don't know if there's a more dramatically coloured bird in northern Europe than the kingfisher. At first I only noticed them as electric blue flashes darting over the river, like massive dragonflies, but as I learnt how to stop being so damn splashy with the oar I saw them roosting or waiting to kill fish - saw their bright gold bib as well as their insane blueness. And the whole way, without all the screaming Wallonians of last weekend, was filled with birdsong.
And it made me ask myself: when we think of male-to-female display in the the natural world, and most dramatically in the bird world, doesn't it make rather more sense to assume the lady birds have some abstract notion of 'ooo, that's a lovely one' than some concrete notion of 'ooo, that plumage/trilling indicates that the male bird is in a fine state of health, which means if I let him fuck me our offspring will be in a good competitive position in regards to the offspring of less well-plumaged/trilling male birds'? Doesn't it make rather more sense to assume, that is, that a well-developed aesthetic sense is probably innate in many, many species?
If you consider people, for example; men have cocks that hang outside their bodies even when they're not using them, although all our closest relatives do not - chimpanzees keep them nicely tucked in, as do gorillas (who are hung like crickets, by the way). I believe the consensus is that this is because cocks are instruments of male-to-female display in our species, wherein men and women are rather closer to the same size than they are in our relative's races, making straightforward rape an untenable reproductive strategy more than some of the time.
And considering the scientific idea of natural selection is only a century and a half old, and that the similar idea of animal husbandry is probably only about 17,000 years old, but that cocks have been awesome for at least 200,000 years (I expect that the ancestors of homo sapiens also had awesome cocks, but for some reason this is never mentioned in the speculative scientific literature *cough written by male scientists cough* that I've read on the subject), I think the assumption that women, at least, have had a well-developed abstract aesthetic sense ('ooo, that's a lovely one') since the dawn of our species can be taken as true.
And I think a corollary of that is that you can expect a sense of beauty in any species where the sexual dimorphism is slight enough to make reproduction about the female response to beauty, rather then big males competing with each other for the privilege of mounting their little sisters. I wonder what sort of poem a bird would write if it could. And I wonder if we would be so casual about killing them and taking their stuff if we believed that they would write it if they could.
View Larger Map
The bit where it goes down from Anseremme along the river was nice and quite flat, but the bit where it goes back up again into the little peak was uphill, and there were several times I caught myself panting for air like an overexcited Jack Russell. But I enjoyed panting for air there. It was clean and pure and didn't smell like anything except trees and/or cowshit. And it was a series of beautiful views and vistas, what's more - forests, one castle, and those fantastic limestone cliffs that water and time have sculpted in the most 'whaaaaaaa?' ways.
Speaking of, a bit attraction of Furfooz Park are its strange caves. Strange stories attached to them - of a golden fleece, of a race of mortal but magical dwarves called the Nutons who would do work for the villagers in exchange for sweets - and a long history. The park had been continuously occupied over several thousand years and had some Neolithic burial grounds in it. A creepy, beautiful place, to which we didn't bring cameras, because of what we got up to the next day - more kayaking - and this time, rather wetter.
We took the five hour trip (from Houyet to Anseremme) instead of the three hour one (from Gendron), and I believe we stretched it out to six or seven. Fewer people on the river this time and we each got a monoplace kayak, so we could arse around a bit until we started feeling like we knew what we were doing. I was continuously challenged by my disabilities in discerning right from left, as I will be when I hit the road with a driving instructor - oh boy - but very quickly it started feeling like second nature. So manoeuvrable, so comfortable, so soothing. I think when we move back to a country with space we'll buy a couple of real kayaks and be serious about it.
But in the meantime, in this country without space, it was very beautiful. Most of the route was clearly inhabited, with chip stands and caravans and little dogs barking, but in the first two hours especially, from Houyet to Gendron, we often had the feeling of paddling our way through a wet, primeval forest, much like our predecessors might have.
In Canada as well, during any sort of nature adventure, that is a feeling that stays with me and makes the experience charming - going across the lake on a canoe, hiking through a forest, sitting next to a fire - thinking 'this is much like our predecessors might have done.' It's as much a part of the experience for me as the beauty of the nature itself, because as I look there's the knowledge that I'm seeing it from the physical perspective that people have been seeing it from for thousands and thousands of years. And it casts me onto wondering about how perceptions of beauty may have changed, or, before that, if they came into existence. It's hard to believe that they didn't always exist.
Part of thinking about that was looking at the beautiful birds on the way, including two I hadn't seen before, the European kingfisher and the little egret - both very beautiful, and I don't know if there's a more dramatically coloured bird in northern Europe than the kingfisher. At first I only noticed them as electric blue flashes darting over the river, like massive dragonflies, but as I learnt how to stop being so damn splashy with the oar I saw them roosting or waiting to kill fish - saw their bright gold bib as well as their insane blueness. And the whole way, without all the screaming Wallonians of last weekend, was filled with birdsong.
And it made me ask myself: when we think of male-to-female display in the the natural world, and most dramatically in the bird world, doesn't it make rather more sense to assume the lady birds have some abstract notion of 'ooo, that's a lovely one' than some concrete notion of 'ooo, that plumage/trilling indicates that the male bird is in a fine state of health, which means if I let him fuck me our offspring will be in a good competitive position in regards to the offspring of less well-plumaged/trilling male birds'? Doesn't it make rather more sense to assume, that is, that a well-developed aesthetic sense is probably innate in many, many species?
If you consider people, for example; men have cocks that hang outside their bodies even when they're not using them, although all our closest relatives do not - chimpanzees keep them nicely tucked in, as do gorillas (who are hung like crickets, by the way). I believe the consensus is that this is because cocks are instruments of male-to-female display in our species, wherein men and women are rather closer to the same size than they are in our relative's races, making straightforward rape an untenable reproductive strategy more than some of the time.
And considering the scientific idea of natural selection is only a century and a half old, and that the similar idea of animal husbandry is probably only about 17,000 years old, but that cocks have been awesome for at least 200,000 years (I expect that the ancestors of homo sapiens also had awesome cocks, but for some reason this is never mentioned in the speculative scientific literature *cough written by male scientists cough* that I've read on the subject), I think the assumption that women, at least, have had a well-developed abstract aesthetic sense ('ooo, that's a lovely one') since the dawn of our species can be taken as true.
And I think a corollary of that is that you can expect a sense of beauty in any species where the sexual dimorphism is slight enough to make reproduction about the female response to beauty, rather then big males competing with each other for the privilege of mounting their little sisters. I wonder what sort of poem a bird would write if it could. And I wonder if we would be so casual about killing them and taking their stuff if we believed that they would write it if they could.
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