So having arrived in the professional middle class, I've got a Blackberry, and it's really great. I had no choice of which sort of clever phone to buy, as work dictated it, and what we do is so very very secret that we needed all the secretude inherent in Canada's finest export since the Diva Cup.
But I am enjoying it, and that in ways that really disgust me as an anarcho-syndicalist. Enjoying flying the flag a bit, although I'm sure it was made somewhere in Asia, and enjoying the entire mobile internet experience, and enjoying having a keypad, and most WTF??? branding isn't supposed to work on me of all, really enjoying it not being an iPhone, so that everybody knows I'm a grown-up, and not a spoiled teenager whose helicopter parents got them one for Christmas.
Anyways while it's the greatest thing since sliced bread etc. the thing that I like most about it is Word Mole, a game where you find words in a jumble of letters, which is the greatest thing since Viz magazine to enjoy while you're in the crapper. (Please ask to borrow my phone.) And initially the worst thing about Word Mole, but now one of the more useful things, is it has a Grade 5 vocabulary, and rejects me when I try to spell words like 'byzantine' or 'odoriferous'. And that is useful because I live in Australia, and when I say words like 'byzantine' or 'odoriferous', people's eyes get this look of sort of panicked blankness and the thread of the conversation grows dangerously taut.
Sigh.
I'm not saying Australians are ignorant; at least I'm not saying that at the moment. I have vague memories of the same thing happening in England and I know in Canada I lapse into Canadian. When I caught myself calling menstrual cramps 'the crampy things you get every month' to a girl here because I suspected she wouldn't recognize the word 'menstrual', it was only awkward because I don't know the jargon here yet; in Canada I probably wouldn't have said 'menstrual' either, I'd have said 'the curse', as unembracing of our mighty feminine powers as that word is.
But the thing is when you live in an expatriate community, as in Belgium, either everyone has English as a second language so they just learn new words, or they're educated, multi-lingual Anglos who also know lots of words. By that token I'm really not sure it's Australia I'm linguistically adjusting to now, so much as being sedentary.
Anyways, the F-word is lapsing into Australian, of course, as would be predicted. Yesterday I heard him say 'yiz', in the sense of 'youse guys', ex. "it'd be great if yiz (Can.: youse guys)'d come for a visit". Jesus. In revenge, I taught his three year old cousin to say 'tomato' the right, Canadian way.
martedì, dicembre 28, 2010
venerdì, dicembre 24, 2010
"It's not the Second Coming"
You know I complain, I could complain professionally, but I also enjoy a healthy capacity for schadenfreude (sp?), there-but-for-the-grace-of-Jeebus-go-I-ism, and sympathy for the Mistress La Spliffe and F-word in a parallel universe who opted to spend an extra school semester in Belgium before attempting to fly out to this incredibly-fucking-white-but-at-least-it-fucking-works Winterless Wonderland here below.
Poor George Gegechkori, you've got a way with words. I hope you got to Atlanta, buddy, though Jeebus knows why you'd want to.
Merry Christmas to everyone, especially you poor fucks stuck in European aeroports; though I laugh in relief that I am not you I feel your pain. I was one of you last year on our way to Madrid, which should really just rub salt in the wound, since the stupid fucking cunts administering the aeroports should have figured out at this point that Winter Sometimes Involves Inclement Weather and Christmas Is In Winter. Sometimes "dherrrrrr" is just not strong enough a mocking sound.
Poor George Gegechkori, you've got a way with words. I hope you got to Atlanta, buddy, though Jeebus knows why you'd want to.
Merry Christmas to everyone, especially you poor fucks stuck in European aeroports; though I laugh in relief that I am not you I feel your pain. I was one of you last year on our way to Madrid, which should really just rub salt in the wound, since the stupid fucking cunts administering the aeroports should have figured out at this point that Winter Sometimes Involves Inclement Weather and Christmas Is In Winter. Sometimes "dherrrrrr" is just not strong enough a mocking sound.
giovedì, dicembre 23, 2010
Mangiasponge
Noun, for a group of people so fucking white that they make Canadian mangiacakes look like the United Fucking Nations. The F-word warned me before we came here, warned me repeatedly, to expect this massive fucking cultural ignorance, this wall of fucking fishbelly incomprehension of anything even vaguely non-white, and when I say non-white I mean WHITE, that milky fucking blankness of the Anglo-Saxon skin that you get glimpses of here when people's shorts ride up and you get glimpses beyond the tanline . . .
(Speaking of which, you may have noticed in the commission of your daily business that Australians have a certain look, ergo est a funny little aspect around the eyes that is particularly and peculiarily Australian, which is odd in a mixed population that hasn't been around long enough to inbreed to the point of sharing that sort of quirk. Russell Crowe has it, Guy Pearce has it, that weirdo mongoloid Mel Gibson has it. It's from squinting. Lamarckian, not Darwinian, to bullshit a bit. Mystery solved.)
Anyways the F-word warned me and the F-word warned me right, and I'd thought I was prepared, but I fucking wasn't. This is the whitest fucking place on the planet. No, correction. Right now we're in Shepparton, a fruit-picking town in Victoria, which is pretty fucking white but which is leavened with some Sikh farmers and restaurants, and a bunch of African and Iraqi refugees, and even enough Orientals to broaden the cuisine a bit. L---, where we live, is the whitest fucking place on Earth. The fucking whitest fucking place.
We went to see a fucking funk band that didn't have a fucking bassist, that's how fucking peaches'n'cream that fucking place is. It's so fucking white that the nice lady whose house we were staying in returned some of our post to sender, because our last names, which are just about the most guinea-ish last names that can exist without actively and magically smelling of garlic, looked African to her. I have never. EVER. Felt exotic before. I do now. HOLY SHIT. Because I am white.
martedì, dicembre 14, 2010
Terra Promessa
While the F-word and I were in Calabria, of course everybody was interested in talking about Australia. Differently than you might imagine considering many of the people we were speaking to had never set foot beyond the confines of that most insular of non-island provinces. After all, they're a bunch of people who're used to seeing their families go somewhere, ANYWHERE else . . . Canada, Argentina, Germany, Ethiopia and Eritrea back in those dear dead fascisti days . . . Oceania is old hat to them as a destination concept, indeed apparently Adelaide is full of people with my last name, but not my 'sopranome', which is a topic for another time.
Anyways, only one of my cousins made much of the distances involved, concluding her speech with a rather bleak 'voi cercate la terra promessa et non la troverete', a sentiment I decided to ignore, on the basis of it coming from a woman who decided it was okay to marry her first cousin since she's now beyond child-bearing age (seeing him swing between calling his mother-in-law 'zia' and 'mamma' is something that will stay with me for years, despite my goldfish memory).
But she was right, we were looking for the promised land in Australia, and we haven't found it, indeed instead what I've found is the following:
1) There is no promised land
2) I have a personal sense of style.
To elaborate on 1). This country is fucking beautiful and the people are nice, even if they can't shut up about how much they hate Muslims, and I love it here already.
BUT. Outstripping Canada, indeed second to none in my experience, Australia is a land of funny money and a citizenry thrown to the privatization sharks as incredibly corrupt and incompetent state governments cash in. Services are EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE THAN IN NORTHERN EUROPE and inflationary rates are huge because there are no price controls on anything and monopolies are rife.
And the federal authorities are too chickenshit to do what they can to stop it because that would mean jacking up the interest rates so high property prices would fall, and everybody's investments, either in their super-annuation funds or in actual holdings, are in real estate.
The country has become a slave of its own bloated prosperity and if I wasn't being paid an absurd amount of money for my contract here I would insist we turn tail and leave; this isn't a place to scrape by. It has everything Europe doesn't - space, courtesy, natural beauty, pleasing weather (though what with La Nina it's now in the flood part of its flood/drought cycle - god, this is a stupid place for the sort of intensive agriculture they get so knicker-twisted about maintaining - but that's a post for another time) - but also semi-responsible government and attempts, however byzantine and annoying, to protect the common citizen.
Socialism as a concept here has been absolutely stymied over the last 25 years by a labour movement who decided to shut up the potential pinkoes by throwing huge amounts of money at them. It worked. It's really interesting.
To elaborate on 2). I remember when I was on a girly holiday in Dubrovnik, I could relax in an extra-relaxing way because the German tourists lowered the bar so absolutely in terms of personal appearance on the beach. Australia is like being on a beach with German tourists, EVERYWHERE. If you had told me two months ago that I had a personal sense of style and certain standards for how I dressed, I'd probably think you were just trying to get into my pants, or shared my philosophy about always wearing natural fibres so as to forestall the possibility of candida infections. Now I'd have to agree with you without reservation though.
The gamut of female fashion in most of rural Australia only has three points - uncomfortable professional (7%), whore (43%), and slob (50%). I'm fitting nicely into the slob category but this place does make me feel like I pull of 'slob' with a certain panache. For example, my mumus have waist ties.
Yes. Mumus. That's right. I live in the land of fuckin' mumus. That almost makes up for the corruption and pseudo-capitalism gone mad.
Anyways, only one of my cousins made much of the distances involved, concluding her speech with a rather bleak 'voi cercate la terra promessa et non la troverete', a sentiment I decided to ignore, on the basis of it coming from a woman who decided it was okay to marry her first cousin since she's now beyond child-bearing age (seeing him swing between calling his mother-in-law 'zia' and 'mamma' is something that will stay with me for years, despite my goldfish memory).
But she was right, we were looking for the promised land in Australia, and we haven't found it, indeed instead what I've found is the following:
1) There is no promised land
2) I have a personal sense of style.
To elaborate on 1). This country is fucking beautiful and the people are nice, even if they can't shut up about how much they hate Muslims, and I love it here already.
BUT. Outstripping Canada, indeed second to none in my experience, Australia is a land of funny money and a citizenry thrown to the privatization sharks as incredibly corrupt and incompetent state governments cash in. Services are EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE THAN IN NORTHERN EUROPE and inflationary rates are huge because there are no price controls on anything and monopolies are rife.
And the federal authorities are too chickenshit to do what they can to stop it because that would mean jacking up the interest rates so high property prices would fall, and everybody's investments, either in their super-annuation funds or in actual holdings, are in real estate.
The country has become a slave of its own bloated prosperity and if I wasn't being paid an absurd amount of money for my contract here I would insist we turn tail and leave; this isn't a place to scrape by. It has everything Europe doesn't - space, courtesy, natural beauty, pleasing weather (though what with La Nina it's now in the flood part of its flood/drought cycle - god, this is a stupid place for the sort of intensive agriculture they get so knicker-twisted about maintaining - but that's a post for another time) - but also semi-responsible government and attempts, however byzantine and annoying, to protect the common citizen.
Socialism as a concept here has been absolutely stymied over the last 25 years by a labour movement who decided to shut up the potential pinkoes by throwing huge amounts of money at them. It worked. It's really interesting.
To elaborate on 2). I remember when I was on a girly holiday in Dubrovnik, I could relax in an extra-relaxing way because the German tourists lowered the bar so absolutely in terms of personal appearance on the beach. Australia is like being on a beach with German tourists, EVERYWHERE. If you had told me two months ago that I had a personal sense of style and certain standards for how I dressed, I'd probably think you were just trying to get into my pants, or shared my philosophy about always wearing natural fibres so as to forestall the possibility of candida infections. Now I'd have to agree with you without reservation though.
The gamut of female fashion in most of rural Australia only has three points - uncomfortable professional (7%), whore (43%), and slob (50%). I'm fitting nicely into the slob category but this place does make me feel like I pull of 'slob' with a certain panache. For example, my mumus have waist ties.
Yes. Mumus. That's right. I live in the land of fuckin' mumus. That almost makes up for the corruption and pseudo-capitalism gone mad.
giovedì, novembre 25, 2010
Merci, ma petite belle
Years ago, a young Miss La Spliffe did the present-day Mistress La Spliffe a huge favour when she saw the F-word on a bus, listened to his Australian twang pleasantly modified by the need to communicate with non-native speakers of English, and decided that she was going to have that. I find I am able to look back on the past me's and be quite judgemental in a negative way about their actions, or, as taught by my Jungian therapist, to comfort them over their various injuries, but it's not nearly often enough that I look back on my past me's and thank them for what they've done.
Maybe I fear that's tempting fate - maybe it's the death-worshipping, fatalist Catholic in me that makes it so easy to condemn or pity my past selves, but makes it usually just outside the realm of possibility that I'd be grateful to one of my past selves for the awesome thing that they did that's made my life so much more awesome. Or maybe - rather more likely - when I look back at the mistakes I made in the past, or humiliations I suffered, I don't want to own them, and so fall back on the Jungian idea that that was another self who went through them, and when I look back on the awesome things I did in the past, it feels like ME - the ever-present, ever-conscious I - who did them and is willing to take full responsibility for them! Any non-abstract thought is some sort of cop-out, I often think.
Anyhoo. Whatever is the case, 20-year-old Miss La Spliffe has done freshly 32-year-old Mistress La Spliffe a massive fucking favour in her choice of the man she had to have. I've been very aware of that for some time in terms of romance and companionship and all that. Now I'm aware of that in terms of the fact that the demands of Miss La Spliffe's voracious poon has led Mistress La Spliffe to Australia via the medium of the lovely Australian man, where a bunch of people who were strangers to me less than three weeks ago gave me a lovely birthday and where everybody has just been so goddamn sweet and so unannoying.
Maybe I fear that's tempting fate - maybe it's the death-worshipping, fatalist Catholic in me that makes it so easy to condemn or pity my past selves, but makes it usually just outside the realm of possibility that I'd be grateful to one of my past selves for the awesome thing that they did that's made my life so much more awesome. Or maybe - rather more likely - when I look back at the mistakes I made in the past, or humiliations I suffered, I don't want to own them, and so fall back on the Jungian idea that that was another self who went through them, and when I look back on the awesome things I did in the past, it feels like ME - the ever-present, ever-conscious I - who did them and is willing to take full responsibility for them! Any non-abstract thought is some sort of cop-out, I often think.
Anyhoo. Whatever is the case, 20-year-old Miss La Spliffe has done freshly 32-year-old Mistress La Spliffe a massive fucking favour in her choice of the man she had to have. I've been very aware of that for some time in terms of romance and companionship and all that. Now I'm aware of that in terms of the fact that the demands of Miss La Spliffe's voracious poon has led Mistress La Spliffe to Australia via the medium of the lovely Australian man, where a bunch of people who were strangers to me less than three weeks ago gave me a lovely birthday and where everybody has just been so goddamn sweet and so unannoying.
domenica, novembre 21, 2010
Mistress La Sploof
Apparently I'm a success with the in-laws, as the F-word had anticipated, by merit of not being a meth addict or a pregnant teenager. Well, good. But of course it's the difficult moments that stand out, or rather just one of them, which funnily enough came during a fit of me looking for something nice to say. That will learn me, as they say.
So now that concern has been replaced by another: I am fucking out of shape. Travelling this past month - the combination of periods of enforced inactivity, sudden bursts of activity, and mammoth binges of Italian and Asian cuisine - has conspired with my final two months in Brussels - enforced physical inactivity as I dealt with a shitload of work and organizational matters - to turn me into a fucking winded maggot who can't take a relaxed 20 minute bike ride over level ground without feeling like a fifty year old. Luckily so far that's not taking the form of becoming a fatty, because I can't imagine how lousy it would be to be a fatty in a lovely stinking hot place like Australia (even though I believe millions live it every day). But it's still no good.
The thing is we're becoming acquainted with what is unreasonably expensive here, and one of those things is gyms. If you live somewhere without a YMCA in it and you're middle class, you're looking at $1000 a year, and I'll be fucked if I pay that. At the same time I'm determined not to follow my id and set myself up with a Wii for $500, because I'm working at home, and if I'm working out at home too I'm going to turn into a shut-in. So it looks like I'm going to have to buy a lovely new kayak and join some sort of kayaking club.
Poor fucking me.
So now that concern has been replaced by another: I am fucking out of shape. Travelling this past month - the combination of periods of enforced inactivity, sudden bursts of activity, and mammoth binges of Italian and Asian cuisine - has conspired with my final two months in Brussels - enforced physical inactivity as I dealt with a shitload of work and organizational matters - to turn me into a fucking winded maggot who can't take a relaxed 20 minute bike ride over level ground without feeling like a fifty year old. Luckily so far that's not taking the form of becoming a fatty, because I can't imagine how lousy it would be to be a fatty in a lovely stinking hot place like Australia (even though I believe millions live it every day). But it's still no good.
The thing is we're becoming acquainted with what is unreasonably expensive here, and one of those things is gyms. If you live somewhere without a YMCA in it and you're middle class, you're looking at $1000 a year, and I'll be fucked if I pay that. At the same time I'm determined not to follow my id and set myself up with a Wii for $500, because I'm working at home, and if I'm working out at home too I'm going to turn into a shut-in. So it looks like I'm going to have to buy a lovely new kayak and join some sort of kayaking club.
Poor fucking me.
mercoledì, novembre 17, 2010
Conspicuous consumption
So for a variety of excellent reasons we're not letting on to people here about how much I'm making at my job. When the F-word pointed out the non-disclosure would be necessary I admit shrugging a little, because who goes around talking about how much they make anyways? Besides pricks, and while I'm a prick in many ways, that isn't one of the ways. But I've realized that's going to be harder than I thought.
Case in point: I am going to buy this fucking gorgeous sewing machine today. The Bernina Bernette 82e, the nicest mechanical machine I can afford, worth around $400, which is (in my head at least, because not having the brain for math I like to pretend 1 euro = 1 A$, which also stops me from spending too much money) four times as much as I spent on my last sewing machine, which I sold on my way out of Europe for half of what I paid for it.
Fine, right? I'm all excited and happy about it, and quite proud of myself for overcoming my extreme hesitancy to spend any money on myself. I accepted a good fifteen minutes of consumerist pep talk from the F-word - normally even tighter than myself - about how I could afford four of these things if I wanted, how I needed a machine anyways and would have to buy a nice-ish one sooner or later, how I'd proven to myself I was going to use it by using the shit out of that Singer until things went apeshit when M disappeared, how I deserved to reward myself after all the shit I've been through over the last 14 months - and when the F-word starts saying shit like that I believe him because he never says shit like that.
Here's the problem. When I went into the sewing shop yesterday, it was on a tip from someone in the F-word's family about how there was a big sale on Janomes and how I could pick up a basic machine for $100. I couldn't, actually, none in stock, but there was a big sale on Janomes, and I could have picked up a machine for less than half of what I'm going to pay for this one today. Now, we reckon this member of the F-word's family gave us this tip on the basis that she reckons I don't have a lot of money. So when we tell her that I just spent four times what she was expecting me to spend on the new machine, what is she going to think?
I've never had in-laws before, you know, certainly never Italian ones. Less than two weeks in, and I'm already concerned about what she is going to think. For heaven's sake. With the extended family, I think I'll just build an image of myself - since we'll be living in another state, it shouldn't be hard to maintain - as a naive and recreational shopper who has no idea how to handle money. Probably less trouble than the alternative.
Case in point: I am going to buy this fucking gorgeous sewing machine today. The Bernina Bernette 82e, the nicest mechanical machine I can afford, worth around $400, which is (in my head at least, because not having the brain for math I like to pretend 1 euro = 1 A$, which also stops me from spending too much money) four times as much as I spent on my last sewing machine, which I sold on my way out of Europe for half of what I paid for it.
Fine, right? I'm all excited and happy about it, and quite proud of myself for overcoming my extreme hesitancy to spend any money on myself. I accepted a good fifteen minutes of consumerist pep talk from the F-word - normally even tighter than myself - about how I could afford four of these things if I wanted, how I needed a machine anyways and would have to buy a nice-ish one sooner or later, how I'd proven to myself I was going to use it by using the shit out of that Singer until things went apeshit when M disappeared, how I deserved to reward myself after all the shit I've been through over the last 14 months - and when the F-word starts saying shit like that I believe him because he never says shit like that.
Here's the problem. When I went into the sewing shop yesterday, it was on a tip from someone in the F-word's family about how there was a big sale on Janomes and how I could pick up a basic machine for $100. I couldn't, actually, none in stock, but there was a big sale on Janomes, and I could have picked up a machine for less than half of what I'm going to pay for this one today. Now, we reckon this member of the F-word's family gave us this tip on the basis that she reckons I don't have a lot of money. So when we tell her that I just spent four times what she was expecting me to spend on the new machine, what is she going to think?
I've never had in-laws before, you know, certainly never Italian ones. Less than two weeks in, and I'm already concerned about what she is going to think. For heaven's sake. With the extended family, I think I'll just build an image of myself - since we'll be living in another state, it shouldn't be hard to maintain - as a naive and recreational shopper who has no idea how to handle money. Probably less trouble than the alternative.
lunedì, novembre 15, 2010
Week two in Australia and so far I have to say I love it, though I'm relieved we won't be settling in the town where we are at present. Too many of the wrong kind of farmers. Today we bought a car, my first car ever, a 1996 Hyundai station wagon that we have re-christened the Shitneedle - and it was painless. Registered for Medicare, got a bank account, tax file number, all painless. Belgium is already starting to seem dreamllike and impossible; yesterday we got a passel of bitchy mail from a bunch of institutional morons there, and it was like the final scene of Carrie, except that I don't give a shit. Fuck 'em. May the cunts rot.
The birds here are mind-blowing and sometimes - since the spring weather is temperate, and many of the trees are European, and culturally the place is like England and Canada made a baby together - the birds are the only thing reminding me that I'm on the other side of the planet from where I've generally been. It's a shocking case of convergent evolution that kookaburras and I came to be on completely different continental landmasses but that I still sound like them when I climax.
So I'm happy but I have to admit to the occasional wave of absolutely crushing homesickness. That isn't something that ever happened to me in Europe, or at least not since I was 19 or 20 or so. And I think it has more behind it than simply the vastness of the distance seperating me from my family, which is what I'm really homesick for (although when I was talking to Luke Duke the other day and he told me that Toronto was getting the first little knife-like gusts of snow blowing through the air I did get a knifey sort of pang). After all, neither Europe nor Australia is exactly walking distance back home, and now that I've joined the overpaid classes the tickets back are not prohibitive in either case. I think what's more at issue is that my brain is understanding that I'm going to stay in this place - something it never had to consider in Belgium - and that this place is already so much like home, but it doesn't have my family in it.
Oh well. When the waves come I accept them, and remember that it would be a thousand times worse to have a family I wouldn't miss.
The birds here are mind-blowing and sometimes - since the spring weather is temperate, and many of the trees are European, and culturally the place is like England and Canada made a baby together - the birds are the only thing reminding me that I'm on the other side of the planet from where I've generally been. It's a shocking case of convergent evolution that kookaburras and I came to be on completely different continental landmasses but that I still sound like them when I climax.
So I'm happy but I have to admit to the occasional wave of absolutely crushing homesickness. That isn't something that ever happened to me in Europe, or at least not since I was 19 or 20 or so. And I think it has more behind it than simply the vastness of the distance seperating me from my family, which is what I'm really homesick for (although when I was talking to Luke Duke the other day and he told me that Toronto was getting the first little knife-like gusts of snow blowing through the air I did get a knifey sort of pang). After all, neither Europe nor Australia is exactly walking distance back home, and now that I've joined the overpaid classes the tickets back are not prohibitive in either case. I think what's more at issue is that my brain is understanding that I'm going to stay in this place - something it never had to consider in Belgium - and that this place is already so much like home, but it doesn't have my family in it.
Oh well. When the waves come I accept them, and remember that it would be a thousand times worse to have a family I wouldn't miss.
lunedì, novembre 08, 2010
The Unquiet American
I'm in Australia and I must say it is quite a headfuck. I'd never understood before what the F-word had tried to explain about how far away you feel from everything. But after spending a week in Singapore, the most exotic place I've ever been and probably in the running for the most exotic place in the world based on how fucking cosmopolitan it is, and then getting off a plane eight hours later in a place that looks like Canada with more money and less cold - well, my head is fucked. The fact that I know more about this continent geologically, environmentally and historically than anywhere I've actually lived probably is making the headfuck more extreme. I'm pretty happy though, or I would if the headcold I'd fought off over the time in Singapore through a religious diet of various kinds of fucking spicy food hadn't kicked in with a vengeance. Oh well.
Anyways, nobody here can tell I'm not American, so I've decided to deal with my head being fucked and my fundamental Canadian anti-Americanism by giving random Australians stories about retarded Americans to take home to their families. For example, this afternoon we went to a bakery and I got a drink, and asked if they happened to have straws. They did, and then I made a big fuss about how Australia has straws, and everybody laughed, except the F-word, who turned bright red. Maybe I should save my idiocy for the moments he's not actually around.
Anyways, nobody here can tell I'm not American, so I've decided to deal with my head being fucked and my fundamental Canadian anti-Americanism by giving random Australians stories about retarded Americans to take home to their families. For example, this afternoon we went to a bakery and I got a drink, and asked if they happened to have straws. They did, and then I made a big fuss about how Australia has straws, and everybody laughed, except the F-word, who turned bright red. Maybe I should save my idiocy for the moments he's not actually around.
martedì, novembre 02, 2010
Palms and clean sidewalks
Singapore is like a hospital for those of us overexposed to winter and people who let their dogs shit on the pavement. I know, I know, oppression, caning, but Heaven is an authoritarian regime too, you know.
Kisses to all - normal service will resume after we hop across to the Antipodes.
Kisses to all - normal service will resume after we hop across to the Antipodes.
mercoledì, ottobre 13, 2010
Kablooey
This morning, completely unexpectedly, our issue with Belgacom was resolved, in a grown-up manner, that actually saw them act like a company instead of a demon spawn and saw us come out ahead a little bit. I sat and stared at the letter for a good three minutes, realizing this Belgian utilities mess was now behind me forever and all I'd had to do was write one angry letter, and suddenly all the excitement involved in an imminent two-week Italian vacation followed by emigration to Australia has hit me like a tonne of bricks. I may puke with happiness. Even the prospect of the etat de lieux de sortie tonight, while not filling me with glee, suddenly doesn't seem overwhelming anymore.
Wow. The imposed depression has lifted. That was all of a sudden-like.
Wow. The imposed depression has lifted. That was all of a sudden-like.
martedì, ottobre 12, 2010
Mistress La Spliffe gets teary
Over the weekend that came out, rather uncharacteristically if I do say so myself, by tearing a strip out of the F-word's ass over the phone. It turns out leaving your girlfriend for a month while she does the heavy lifting and organizing of a move to the opposite fucking side of the planet really pisses her off. What surprises me about it the most is how long it took me to freak out; I'd already given him a quiet, calm, measured piece of my mind about what a motherfucker he was soon after his departure, but the shit really hit the fan on Sunday, less than a week before I'm free, and at that point I only had about six more things to do, versus roughly 50 fucking million.
Now I'm down to 1.5 or two things. I'd say 1.5, because the possible 0.5 is with Belgacom and I've got documentation on my side, which these beastly pedants care about, so I'm just going to ignore it. The full thing is a bit of a bastard, that's the etat de lieux de sortie with my landlord, who has a real talent for making me want to beat his fucking brains in with a crowbar, or even my own as long as it means I don't have to listen to his querolous motherfuckingness anymore. Usually, in fact, I delegate responsibility for him to the F-word, but while that motherfucker's off on his fucking Roman Spirit Quest I'm left to it myself.
Anyways, all of this would be easier to take if the apartment wasn't already empty, which means I'm sleeping on a camp bed in an echoing Art Nouveau cavern, a spotless one at that because we had the cleaners in yesterday (a lovely experience which convinced me that we're going to get some domestic help in Australia, because I will never ever like cleaning shit but it's nice when shit is clean. Also this way we can split the bills on the cleaner and then not resent each other for not doing housework - just take the hit financially) and now I'm afraid to touch anything for fear of making it dirty again and having to clean it up with my now rudimentary store of possessions.
And, of course, France's unions are ruining my careful, long-cherished plan to go to Italy via the Paris-Rome night train by starting an open-ended strike today. No idea when it will wrap up, they're overdue for a great big multi-week extravaganza in historical terms, so as insurance I bought a refundable plane ticket; I'm determined by hook or by crook to get the fuck outtta here this week. But do I ever fucking hate flying and a life in Australia will involve a fuckload of it; I just wanted this final experience of comfortable international train travel, the fuckers.
Now I'm down to 1.5 or two things. I'd say 1.5, because the possible 0.5 is with Belgacom and I've got documentation on my side, which these beastly pedants care about, so I'm just going to ignore it. The full thing is a bit of a bastard, that's the etat de lieux de sortie with my landlord, who has a real talent for making me want to beat his fucking brains in with a crowbar, or even my own as long as it means I don't have to listen to his querolous motherfuckingness anymore. Usually, in fact, I delegate responsibility for him to the F-word, but while that motherfucker's off on his fucking Roman Spirit Quest I'm left to it myself.
Anyways, all of this would be easier to take if the apartment wasn't already empty, which means I'm sleeping on a camp bed in an echoing Art Nouveau cavern, a spotless one at that because we had the cleaners in yesterday (a lovely experience which convinced me that we're going to get some domestic help in Australia, because I will never ever like cleaning shit but it's nice when shit is clean. Also this way we can split the bills on the cleaner and then not resent each other for not doing housework - just take the hit financially) and now I'm afraid to touch anything for fear of making it dirty again and having to clean it up with my now rudimentary store of possessions.
And, of course, France's unions are ruining my careful, long-cherished plan to go to Italy via the Paris-Rome night train by starting an open-ended strike today. No idea when it will wrap up, they're overdue for a great big multi-week extravaganza in historical terms, so as insurance I bought a refundable plane ticket; I'm determined by hook or by crook to get the fuck outtta here this week. But do I ever fucking hate flying and a life in Australia will involve a fuckload of it; I just wanted this final experience of comfortable international train travel, the fuckers.
sabato, ottobre 09, 2010
The joys of the childless bourgeoise
Few objects make me 'get' objectophilia but my new shoes get me pretty close. My emotions toward them stop just short of sexual but there's no doubt that their kind and caring embrace of my feet makes me feel warm and fuzzy. They are fucking beautiful and feel as though they were made for me by fucking German fairies in a good mood. Meindl Como. Lovely and wide to accommodate my big fat fucking flipper feet.
I'm so glad that they're Meindls mostly because that means they should last forever and I'll never have to throw them away*. My last shoes really broke my heart. They were Keen PTC laces. I wore them every day I couldn't wear sandals and didn't have to look pretty for a year, because they were comfortable as hell and could take five or six hours walking without my feet getting sore. And then by the end of the summer the soles had practically worn away and the leather uppers were falling to bits despite mending over the year. Beautiful design, especially for people with fat fucking feet like mine, but absolute peices of shit. Like Ava Gardner in The Killers.
So anyways as I was paying for them I realize I buy really expensive shoes. I don't know how they compare to the retarded pretty designer shoes television tells me women fetishize because when I buy 'pretty' they tend to be artisanal clogs or Clarks factory seconds (oh please, let me be an extra on Sex and the City III: The HRT Diaries), but there is no doubt they cost a fuck of a lot of money. And there's also no doubt that despite being as tight as a healthy asshole I don't really hesitate to drop the money on shoes.
Or mattresses for that matter. Which is on my mind, because yesterday I sold our bed to a nice American girl. As she drove away with it I reflected nostalgically on all the fantastic fucking that had been done on it, and also on the F-word, who's even tighter than a virgin's asshole (you can thank Das Boot for that bit of tastefulness), telling me once that I'd been right to insist on us buying the most expensive mattress in Ikea with the most basic frame (men, never hesitate to tell your women when they're right; it softens their hearts and creates cherished memories). The thing is dropping tonnes of money on mattresses and shoes feels like a good thing to drop it on, like an investment in not having to have back surgery in twenty years.
Which got me to thinking about something else he'd said: that once I move to Australia, because of the contract I got, I'm going to be fucking loaded in a way that will change my life. An idea I poo-pooed of course because it'll be contract work, it could end any time, I'll be saving for dear life, I disdain lifestyle inflation, I already feel like I haven't been denying myself anything, etc, etc. But he pointed out it wasn't so much that as that I can buy the things I reckon I need - super fucking awesome shoes and really nice mattresses among them - without worrying about debt and things like that. That I'd be able to fly Lexie over to Australia without worrying where the money is going to come from if she doesn't work out at Sugarplum's. The big life-changing, he felt, would be in me losing a certain class of worries.
I like that.
*Because they're the men's model of course, Meindl's women's models are CRAP that fall apart if you breathe on them, I know from experience. I always get men's shoes/sandals now for any purpose that doesn't involve looking pretty because a) I'm fucking butch and b) they actually last more than a season.
I'm so glad that they're Meindls mostly because that means they should last forever and I'll never have to throw them away*. My last shoes really broke my heart. They were Keen PTC laces. I wore them every day I couldn't wear sandals and didn't have to look pretty for a year, because they were comfortable as hell and could take five or six hours walking without my feet getting sore. And then by the end of the summer the soles had practically worn away and the leather uppers were falling to bits despite mending over the year. Beautiful design, especially for people with fat fucking feet like mine, but absolute peices of shit. Like Ava Gardner in The Killers.
So anyways as I was paying for them I realize I buy really expensive shoes. I don't know how they compare to the retarded pretty designer shoes television tells me women fetishize because when I buy 'pretty' they tend to be artisanal clogs or Clarks factory seconds (oh please, let me be an extra on Sex and the City III: The HRT Diaries), but there is no doubt they cost a fuck of a lot of money. And there's also no doubt that despite being as tight as a healthy asshole I don't really hesitate to drop the money on shoes.
Or mattresses for that matter. Which is on my mind, because yesterday I sold our bed to a nice American girl. As she drove away with it I reflected nostalgically on all the fantastic fucking that had been done on it, and also on the F-word, who's even tighter than a virgin's asshole (you can thank Das Boot for that bit of tastefulness), telling me once that I'd been right to insist on us buying the most expensive mattress in Ikea with the most basic frame (men, never hesitate to tell your women when they're right; it softens their hearts and creates cherished memories). The thing is dropping tonnes of money on mattresses and shoes feels like a good thing to drop it on, like an investment in not having to have back surgery in twenty years.
Which got me to thinking about something else he'd said: that once I move to Australia, because of the contract I got, I'm going to be fucking loaded in a way that will change my life. An idea I poo-pooed of course because it'll be contract work, it could end any time, I'll be saving for dear life, I disdain lifestyle inflation, I already feel like I haven't been denying myself anything, etc, etc. But he pointed out it wasn't so much that as that I can buy the things I reckon I need - super fucking awesome shoes and really nice mattresses among them - without worrying about debt and things like that. That I'd be able to fly Lexie over to Australia without worrying where the money is going to come from if she doesn't work out at Sugarplum's. The big life-changing, he felt, would be in me losing a certain class of worries.
I like that.
*Because they're the men's model of course, Meindl's women's models are CRAP that fall apart if you breathe on them, I know from experience. I always get men's shoes/sandals now for any purpose that doesn't involve looking pretty because a) I'm fucking butch and b) they actually last more than a season.
venerdì, ottobre 08, 2010
Beautiful degeneracy
I've been reckoning I'm done with Europe, but I just booked us a B&B for the night before we fly to Singapore and it has a balcony looking over the Vatican (albeit distantly because we're cheap). Despite me feeling the Vatican is a monument to hypocritical, degenerate and enduring cupidity, that still gives me a little frisson. What better way to say goodbye to Europe than to take our breakfasts staring at the Vatican before flying off and spending a week gorging ourselves on lovely, lovely Asian food in a tropical climate? I guess dropping a tab would make it better, actually. But I freak out in aeroplanes as it is.
In a week I depart Brussels, and I think that's what I'm really looking forward to, more than departing Europe. The F-word tells me that my time here will become very distant and dreamlike very quickly, and that Romans are quite lovely people, much nicer than the people in Florence, where we bonded more than a decade ago over tales of tourist-gouging cuntitude. Well. I'm starting to get stoked over it all. Also he tells me it's still sandals-and-t-shirt weather down there. Fucking A+.
And despite me being sick of how fucking crowded the whole continent is we do have plans to come back. I want to learn German which means some months in Berlin, and we both want to learn Spanish which means some months in Spain - for some reason I'm not too curious to go to South America, besides Brazil, and even that I could take or leave. And it won't even be too long from now since it's something we want to do before the potential kiddies are school age; my guess is that getting canned at work will be our cue for a mammoth trip.
In a week I depart Brussels, and I think that's what I'm really looking forward to, more than departing Europe. The F-word tells me that my time here will become very distant and dreamlike very quickly, and that Romans are quite lovely people, much nicer than the people in Florence, where we bonded more than a decade ago over tales of tourist-gouging cuntitude. Well. I'm starting to get stoked over it all. Also he tells me it's still sandals-and-t-shirt weather down there. Fucking A+.
And despite me being sick of how fucking crowded the whole continent is we do have plans to come back. I want to learn German which means some months in Berlin, and we both want to learn Spanish which means some months in Spain - for some reason I'm not too curious to go to South America, besides Brazil, and even that I could take or leave. And it won't even be too long from now since it's something we want to do before the potential kiddies are school age; my guess is that getting canned at work will be our cue for a mammoth trip.
giovedì, ottobre 07, 2010
Anger ligament snapped
Oh boy oh boy. The clock's a'tickin' on this fucking place. Been idlly planning our trip up the Pacific coast of Australia and I'm starting to get totally stoked. Fuckin' animals and botanical gardens and beaches the whole way. Fucking A+.
The upshot is that this morning when I was doing my qi gong and on the fifth movement of the cycle - I forget what it's called but it's the 'angry' move, a sort of haka on ketamine, when you're intended to focus your anger - I realized for the first time in literally years, I'm totally short on anger. No joke. I've been fucked around like crazy since getting back here by institutional types, as has been normal and infuriating, but I don't fucking care; in fact I've laughed in three people's faces after they've presented me with one logical monstrosity or another.
The thing is it doesn't matter anymore - I've got my tickets, my cat's safe, I'm willing to walk away from my apartment deposit, I'm leaving a fake address, I am so outties - and these poor trogs are stuck in this mildewy puddle of a failed state for the rest of their naturals. Schadenfreude and anger are simply not compatible. The sad part is I think they know it. I've got more passionate, hurt responses out of people from laughing in their faces these past few days than I ever did from becoming visibly angry and spitting out insulting truths. Oh well. As long as no one stabs me, I'll be good.
Oh yeah, except one of the institutional types to fuck me around and who I started laughing at was at the post office, so I'm not getting my mail forwarded, so definitely don't send anything to me here. Ever. Again. Fucking A+.
The upshot is that this morning when I was doing my qi gong and on the fifth movement of the cycle - I forget what it's called but it's the 'angry' move, a sort of haka on ketamine, when you're intended to focus your anger - I realized for the first time in literally years, I'm totally short on anger. No joke. I've been fucked around like crazy since getting back here by institutional types, as has been normal and infuriating, but I don't fucking care; in fact I've laughed in three people's faces after they've presented me with one logical monstrosity or another.
The thing is it doesn't matter anymore - I've got my tickets, my cat's safe, I'm willing to walk away from my apartment deposit, I'm leaving a fake address, I am so outties - and these poor trogs are stuck in this mildewy puddle of a failed state for the rest of their naturals. Schadenfreude and anger are simply not compatible. The sad part is I think they know it. I've got more passionate, hurt responses out of people from laughing in their faces these past few days than I ever did from becoming visibly angry and spitting out insulting truths. Oh well. As long as no one stabs me, I'll be good.
Oh yeah, except one of the institutional types to fuck me around and who I started laughing at was at the post office, so I'm not getting my mail forwarded, so definitely don't send anything to me here. Ever. Again. Fucking A+.
martedì, ottobre 05, 2010
Like the guy in the thing there
Back in Brussels and exhausted, sick, but recharged. Spent the afternoon trying and failing to do administrative things and the silly Kafkaesque impossibility of it all is just funny now. Since Lexie is safe and on the road to happy at Sugarplum's and our stuff is being shipped and I'm 10 days from my departure, I'm starting to feel footloose. Nothing left here I couldn't walk away from in 30 seconds, as the guy says in that movie.
Sort of crappy to come back to the empty apartment though. I used to pride myself on my self-sufficiency, but take away my man and my cat and suddenly the place that's been my home for three and a half years feels like a temporary kennel when I come back to it from a sojourn at an old friend's house and Luke Duke's basement. Love is quite a thing; love is home. I don't think I'd ever quite realized that before. And there's no love for me left in Brussels, so it is very strange to be back, especially coming from Toronto, which is so full of people I love, and despite years of seperation is off the chart, relative to Brussels, in terms of what feels like home.
Anyways, I'm not self-sufficient. And I see how I could be, and it looks like shit. I have a new respect for cat ladies; they've really made quite a psychologically healthy choice by having all those animals to love, relative to your typical modern Western shut-in.
Sort of crappy to come back to the empty apartment though. I used to pride myself on my self-sufficiency, but take away my man and my cat and suddenly the place that's been my home for three and a half years feels like a temporary kennel when I come back to it from a sojourn at an old friend's house and Luke Duke's basement. Love is quite a thing; love is home. I don't think I'd ever quite realized that before. And there's no love for me left in Brussels, so it is very strange to be back, especially coming from Toronto, which is so full of people I love, and despite years of seperation is off the chart, relative to Brussels, in terms of what feels like home.
Anyways, I'm not self-sufficient. And I see how I could be, and it looks like shit. I have a new respect for cat ladies; they've really made quite a psychologically healthy choice by having all those animals to love, relative to your typical modern Western shut-in.
giovedì, settembre 30, 2010
Mrs. Slocum weeps
Sorry. No heart for the food stuff today. I'm going to spend this evening stroking my pussy, and for once I don't mean . . . oh for fuck's sake.
I guess in one way I'm feeling better about Lexie. The vet, who feels really bad about what happened, and I had a good talk about it when he came round to trim her fingernails and fill out her forms; if she's happy at Sugarplum's, and I'm sure she will be, that's excellent, and if she's not happy at Sugarplum's and comes to Australia after all, at least we'll be settled down by then, and in all honesty there's no way to look at the situation without having to admit dropping her off in Canada tomorrow is the best thing for her.
But I'm so fucking sad. It's like being dumped by a guy you really love because he has to fly back to Mars or else he'll slowly choke on Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere, and neither of you are into the long distance thing. She's been my constant companion of years and years; my comfort when things were shitty and my darling when things were lovely; my dainty little southern belle, despite being so fucking fat; my familiar, my outlet for all the excess tenderness I used to waste tending to my own useless mental complexes.
She's moving in with Sugarplum tomorrow, close to where Neil Young grew up for awhile, in the Kawarthas. As soon as I realized that I started getting "Helpless" stuck in my head and it's got progressively sadder with every repeat. Thank god it's the Nick Cave version, or else I'd be cripplingly sad over a cat while a tomcat croons in my head.
(The F-word and I were just talking about Neil Young, in relation to where Lexie is going to be living and in relation to "Helpless" being stuck in my head, and he asked if I liked Neil Young, and I think I actually burst into laughter at the idea of liking Neil Young. Coming home from a long day at work, wondering what to listen to, and deciding - "yep, I'm going to listen to some nice Neil Young" - it's less ridiculous but no less hilarious than the idea of doing the same with Bob Dylan. But actually I really do like Neil Young, and have ever since I saw him in concert, and I would really love to see him in concert again, but the idea of sitting around listening to one of his records still makes me laugh out loud.)
Anyways, this is how I'm feeling. Now excuse me while I go cruising for some pussy:
I guess in one way I'm feeling better about Lexie. The vet, who feels really bad about what happened, and I had a good talk about it when he came round to trim her fingernails and fill out her forms; if she's happy at Sugarplum's, and I'm sure she will be, that's excellent, and if she's not happy at Sugarplum's and comes to Australia after all, at least we'll be settled down by then, and in all honesty there's no way to look at the situation without having to admit dropping her off in Canada tomorrow is the best thing for her.
But I'm so fucking sad. It's like being dumped by a guy you really love because he has to fly back to Mars or else he'll slowly choke on Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere, and neither of you are into the long distance thing. She's been my constant companion of years and years; my comfort when things were shitty and my darling when things were lovely; my dainty little southern belle, despite being so fucking fat; my familiar, my outlet for all the excess tenderness I used to waste tending to my own useless mental complexes.
She's moving in with Sugarplum tomorrow, close to where Neil Young grew up for awhile, in the Kawarthas. As soon as I realized that I started getting "Helpless" stuck in my head and it's got progressively sadder with every repeat. Thank god it's the Nick Cave version, or else I'd be cripplingly sad over a cat while a tomcat croons in my head.
(The F-word and I were just talking about Neil Young, in relation to where Lexie is going to be living and in relation to "Helpless" being stuck in my head, and he asked if I liked Neil Young, and I think I actually burst into laughter at the idea of liking Neil Young. Coming home from a long day at work, wondering what to listen to, and deciding - "yep, I'm going to listen to some nice Neil Young" - it's less ridiculous but no less hilarious than the idea of doing the same with Bob Dylan. But actually I really do like Neil Young, and have ever since I saw him in concert, and I would really love to see him in concert again, but the idea of sitting around listening to one of his records still makes me laugh out loud.)
Anyways, this is how I'm feeling. Now excuse me while I go cruising for some pussy:
mercoledì, settembre 29, 2010
Crack jojoba
Best insult I've heard all week: 24-carat pissant. Delivered and, as far as I know, created years ago by former Australian prime minister Paul Keating when he explained to a journalist who'd moved from public to commercial news broadcasting his opinion of the transition. Courtesy of the Paul Keating Insults Archive:
"You had an important place in Australian society on the ABC and you gave it up to be a pop star...with a big cheque...and now you're on to this sort of stuff. That shows what a 24 carat pissant you are, Richard, that's for sure."
Anyways, onto today's oil, and a non-edible one for a change, though continuing on yesterday's mention of the cosmetic application of sesame oil: jojoba. Actually you can eat jojoba oil without getting sick, as long as your definition of sick doesn't include anal leakage, a side effect it shares with the notorious olestra. That's pretty funny. And apparently it's pronounced "hohoba". That's pretty funny too.
What isn't funny is how fucking good this shit is for your skin. I'm not a conventional beauty; in fact I'm not any sort of beauty; and going by all the sick shit I'd like to do to my institutional enemies, I'm not even an inner beauty. That's fine with me. Beautiful girls have to put up with a world of shit; in fact, someday when I have more time on my hands, I'd like to write a heroic cycle about the trials and tribulations of a beautiful woman, and her eventual triumphant emergence into the Valhalla of invisible menopause.
What I do have, though, is lovely skin, and the way it covers my imperfect body goes some way to making that body pleasing. So I like to take care of it, and of course keep it as nice and tick-free as possible. Which is a touch of a challenge, what with sun (not that there's been much here), artificial heating (MUCH bigger problem here), marijuana smoke, and a recent development over the last few years . . . breakouts of eczema on my elbows when I get stressed. Eeeurgh.
So. I mentioned awhile ago that I've started making moisturizers at home, mostly for the sake of the F-word's fussy skin. I whipped up a coconut butter-jojoba-tea tree oil solution for him to take to Italy and left the jojoba oil on the counter in my abstraction (liquid at room temperature, solid in the fridge). Also in my abstraction, I'd forgotten to mix myself a new batch of moisturizer, so when I got out of the shower the next day I just grabbed the jojoba oil and used that.
The results were SUPERB. I've been using it since - every other day or so - and it's been working so well that I'm having an even harder time than I usually would during a month of enforced separation from the F-word not touching myself constantly. And elbows still lovely and unblemished despite crippling stress. And I do mean crippling, I'm one fuckwit away from a nervous breakdown. And yet my skin looks so fucking good.
Apparently that's because jojoba oil acts like sebum, the goo your skin excretes and that gives you pimples, so by smearing it on you it's as though you're fooling your skin into thinking you're actually a teenager exuding all sorts of goo. Or something. I don't know. I'm going to slow down on using it now, since my skin profile is more dry, and it's most recommended for oily types; the conventional wisdom is that it fools your skin into thinking its producing enough sebum, so the sebum production slows down and your acne goes away. Whereas my skin doesn't produce enough goo to give me more than the occasional pimple, and I don't really want to throw the balance off.
That all sounds like bullocks, doesn't it? That's the trouble with home moisturizers; I'm not a chemist and I don't know anything about anything, and I'm not sure the people publishing the recipes do either, so I have to be sparing with everything in case something is actually horribly bad for me. But the jojoba oil is addictive. It just makes you look so good. So look it up and try it if you dare; I haven't found any contraindications, and am probably just suffering some Catholic guilt over becoming so attractive to myself.
And for the macho among you, fear not, as it doesn't smell like anything; or it shouldn't anyways; certainly nothing girly. But if you like being smelly, you can add a few drops of sandalwood oil or some such and have a certain class of woman falling all over you. Personally I prefer my men to smell like something edible; once more, however, I'm aware I'm not the voice of the majority, more fool the majority.
"You had an important place in Australian society on the ABC and you gave it up to be a pop star...with a big cheque...and now you're on to this sort of stuff. That shows what a 24 carat pissant you are, Richard, that's for sure."
Anyways, onto today's oil, and a non-edible one for a change, though continuing on yesterday's mention of the cosmetic application of sesame oil: jojoba. Actually you can eat jojoba oil without getting sick, as long as your definition of sick doesn't include anal leakage, a side effect it shares with the notorious olestra. That's pretty funny. And apparently it's pronounced "hohoba". That's pretty funny too.
What isn't funny is how fucking good this shit is for your skin. I'm not a conventional beauty; in fact I'm not any sort of beauty; and going by all the sick shit I'd like to do to my institutional enemies, I'm not even an inner beauty. That's fine with me. Beautiful girls have to put up with a world of shit; in fact, someday when I have more time on my hands, I'd like to write a heroic cycle about the trials and tribulations of a beautiful woman, and her eventual triumphant emergence into the Valhalla of invisible menopause.
What I do have, though, is lovely skin, and the way it covers my imperfect body goes some way to making that body pleasing. So I like to take care of it, and of course keep it as nice and tick-free as possible. Which is a touch of a challenge, what with sun (not that there's been much here), artificial heating (MUCH bigger problem here), marijuana smoke, and a recent development over the last few years . . . breakouts of eczema on my elbows when I get stressed. Eeeurgh.
So. I mentioned awhile ago that I've started making moisturizers at home, mostly for the sake of the F-word's fussy skin. I whipped up a coconut butter-jojoba-tea tree oil solution for him to take to Italy and left the jojoba oil on the counter in my abstraction (liquid at room temperature, solid in the fridge). Also in my abstraction, I'd forgotten to mix myself a new batch of moisturizer, so when I got out of the shower the next day I just grabbed the jojoba oil and used that.
The results were SUPERB. I've been using it since - every other day or so - and it's been working so well that I'm having an even harder time than I usually would during a month of enforced separation from the F-word not touching myself constantly. And elbows still lovely and unblemished despite crippling stress. And I do mean crippling, I'm one fuckwit away from a nervous breakdown. And yet my skin looks so fucking good.
Apparently that's because jojoba oil acts like sebum, the goo your skin excretes and that gives you pimples, so by smearing it on you it's as though you're fooling your skin into thinking you're actually a teenager exuding all sorts of goo. Or something. I don't know. I'm going to slow down on using it now, since my skin profile is more dry, and it's most recommended for oily types; the conventional wisdom is that it fools your skin into thinking its producing enough sebum, so the sebum production slows down and your acne goes away. Whereas my skin doesn't produce enough goo to give me more than the occasional pimple, and I don't really want to throw the balance off.
That all sounds like bullocks, doesn't it? That's the trouble with home moisturizers; I'm not a chemist and I don't know anything about anything, and I'm not sure the people publishing the recipes do either, so I have to be sparing with everything in case something is actually horribly bad for me. But the jojoba oil is addictive. It just makes you look so good. So look it up and try it if you dare; I haven't found any contraindications, and am probably just suffering some Catholic guilt over becoming so attractive to myself.
And for the macho among you, fear not, as it doesn't smell like anything; or it shouldn't anyways; certainly nothing girly. But if you like being smelly, you can add a few drops of sandalwood oil or some such and have a certain class of woman falling all over you. Personally I prefer my men to smell like something edible; once more, however, I'm aware I'm not the voice of the majority, more fool the majority.
lunedì, settembre 27, 2010
Open sesame season
I'm lucky in my life partner in a lot of ways, but definitely one of the ones I feel smuggest about is that we can have a panicked conversation about how we're going to have to get a lady-goat or something for its milk so we can keep having some sort of raw cheese in Australia, where it's fucking illegal, and that any time we get a serious jones on for really stinky, artisanal raw cheese there we'll just a really fucking slap-up Asian dinner and count our fucking blessings. I took the F-word out his last night here for an attempt at a slap-up sushi dinner and it was fucking R-U-P-T rough. I'd never known before that tuna had gristle. That's fucking Latin Europe, man. Not enough Orientals.
Anyways, that segues me into two topics:
1. Last night I bought four kinds of cheese, in a wild bid to stuff so much into my tummy before leaving for Australia that I don't miss it as much as I know I will anyways. Most of them were hard so theoretically we'll be able to keep getting them in Australia, but I know from practice in Canada it just doesn't work that way - it'll be shitty knock-offs, the dregs of production, because the manufacturers will understand it's being exported to a country that's used to its food dead. Anyways: parmigiano reggiano, pecorino primo salata (a squeaky, soft sheep cheese, almost but not quite bland, comforting, and studded with peppercorns), Castelmagno (which I'd never had before and was a real success - imagine a parmigiano reggiano but with its soul still imprisoned in it, and only emerging with a holler of triumph as you take a bite), and then feta - but the feta was stuffed into pickled spicy green peppers. Holy shit. There aren't very many edible things that are better than pickled spicy green peppers stuffed with feta. It's a very pleasing combination. I think we can make that, after moving, though.
2. Today's oil (tying back into the slap-up Asian dinners we'll have when we miss the cheese too much): sesame. Sesame oil, and sesame seeds too, are important to me as a nut allergy sufferer. Sesame seeds, toasted, or sesame oil as a dressing, or tahini, or halva, that fucking priceless, delectable and horribly addictive ambrosia, can almost fool my tastebuds into thinking they're finally getting some peanuts or something, so there's an element of naughtiness to eating them - it just feels so deliciously wrong, like getting head from someone who's still doing their undergrad but who has figured out how to do it. So there's the naughtiness as well as an element of deliciousness. For delicious all these things are are.
Not only that. Sesame oil is a super-useful hair thing. It's been years since I demanded my hair suffer chemical abuse but back when I was rehabilitating it, sesame oil was the trick. Your scalp loves it. If you bias toward dryness, like I do, it's a rare and lovely pleasure to get a deep, langorous scalp massage with sesame oil; and then one quick wash later, or extended comb with a rough wooden comb to pick up excess goo, your hair looks ace for a week.
It's also reputed to be a cure for baldness. That, I couldn't say. My deductive instincts tell me that if it was I'd be priced out of the market by panicking men, and there wouldn't be any bald people. But it's hard to say. The thing is, once you've had a sesame oil scalp massage, you smell quite distinctly of sesame. To me it's rather nice to smell like a Japanese seaweed salad but I'm aware I may not be the voice of the majority on this one, more fool the majority.
Anyways, that segues me into two topics:
1. Last night I bought four kinds of cheese, in a wild bid to stuff so much into my tummy before leaving for Australia that I don't miss it as much as I know I will anyways. Most of them were hard so theoretically we'll be able to keep getting them in Australia, but I know from practice in Canada it just doesn't work that way - it'll be shitty knock-offs, the dregs of production, because the manufacturers will understand it's being exported to a country that's used to its food dead. Anyways: parmigiano reggiano, pecorino primo salata (a squeaky, soft sheep cheese, almost but not quite bland, comforting, and studded with peppercorns), Castelmagno (which I'd never had before and was a real success - imagine a parmigiano reggiano but with its soul still imprisoned in it, and only emerging with a holler of triumph as you take a bite), and then feta - but the feta was stuffed into pickled spicy green peppers. Holy shit. There aren't very many edible things that are better than pickled spicy green peppers stuffed with feta. It's a very pleasing combination. I think we can make that, after moving, though.
2. Today's oil (tying back into the slap-up Asian dinners we'll have when we miss the cheese too much): sesame. Sesame oil, and sesame seeds too, are important to me as a nut allergy sufferer. Sesame seeds, toasted, or sesame oil as a dressing, or tahini, or halva, that fucking priceless, delectable and horribly addictive ambrosia, can almost fool my tastebuds into thinking they're finally getting some peanuts or something, so there's an element of naughtiness to eating them - it just feels so deliciously wrong, like getting head from someone who's still doing their undergrad but who has figured out how to do it. So there's the naughtiness as well as an element of deliciousness. For delicious all these things are are.
Not only that. Sesame oil is a super-useful hair thing. It's been years since I demanded my hair suffer chemical abuse but back when I was rehabilitating it, sesame oil was the trick. Your scalp loves it. If you bias toward dryness, like I do, it's a rare and lovely pleasure to get a deep, langorous scalp massage with sesame oil; and then one quick wash later, or extended comb with a rough wooden comb to pick up excess goo, your hair looks ace for a week.
It's also reputed to be a cure for baldness. That, I couldn't say. My deductive instincts tell me that if it was I'd be priced out of the market by panicking men, and there wouldn't be any bald people. But it's hard to say. The thing is, once you've had a sesame oil scalp massage, you smell quite distinctly of sesame. To me it's rather nice to smell like a Japanese seaweed salad but I'm aware I may not be the voice of the majority on this one, more fool the majority.
domenica, settembre 26, 2010
Slick – Pumpkin seed oil
I love vegetable oils more than animal fat, and I love animal fat a lot. Butter is indispensable for some soups and sauces if you live in a wintry environment, and when it comes to fries – sorry, Hindus - cow lard is the fucking acest. But otherwise, vegetable fats are so adorable and various and smashingly awesome. So to focus on the positive this week, I’m going to write about all the vegetable fat that I love. Especially since I've realized that there's a range of things I've started consuming here that I don't remember in Canada (possibly from want of looking) and I'm worried I won't be able to get in Australia.
I’m the sort of person who feels stress in a) her brains and b)her tummy. At times like this, especially after the whole turning-bright-yellow following the massive self-abuse leading up to my thesis defense years ago, I pay careful attention to what my tummy is asking for, food-wise.
And lately it’s been asking for pumpkin seed oil by the shot-glass. God bless the fucking Germans for introducing me to it. Have already gone on about the glories of pumpkin flesh, and could go on about the delights of pepitas as well; pine nuts are off my radar at the moment until they get cleared by an allergist, so pumpkin seeds have been making their way into our pasta and salads and pizza and everywhere else – lovely little fuckers. (Really very, very versatile, but bear in mind they burn pretty fast, so if you top any oven-cooked thing with them pop them on or in close to the end).
But pumpkin seed oil; that’s a lovely fatty nectar of the gods. I drizzle it onto crumpets in the morning instead of butter now. And salad. Decorating soups. Vanilla ice cream and granola. Actually just about every other dish where I don’t have to cook it. Fuck, is it good. It has this sort of clean richness to it. It’s heavy, it’s almost like you can taste its colours, and its colours are one of the strangest things you can see in a food, because it looks like a straightforward green, but when the light shines through it, it turns wine-red. But while it’s almost as though you can taste the bizarreness, it doesn’t leave any clingy traces, like most oils; just a nice sort of mouth environment of “mmm, I just ate a bunch of pumpkin seed oil”.
Well, as you can read, adjectives are failing me. This shit is good, let’s put it like that. Also – and this is just second-hand anecdotal as, to my knowledge, I've never fucked a vegan man - its absurd amounts of zinc, which us normals tend to mostly get through seafood or other animal flesh/product, help vegan men fuck more enthusiastically and frequently.
In fact it has so many touted health benefits that I'm paranoid that when I return to the New World the only place I'm going to find it is in horrid little new age 'pharmacies' that smell like mothballs, with the oil sealed into a animal-free soft-wall easy-swallow capsules designed to prevent you from actually tasting it when you consume it. Like this. Fucking travesty. More on that when I get to the flax oil, but for fuck's sake; the medicalization of society in general is a hideous enough prospect, leaving the medicalization of fucking food to one side. Pumpkin seed oil is a fucking delicious gift of the gods. Any company that suggests you consume it without feeling it is a bastard who's out to screw you out of one of life's unique, even transcending pleasures (I really like it, okay?). It's fucking evil.
I’m the sort of person who feels stress in a) her brains and b)her tummy. At times like this, especially after the whole turning-bright-yellow following the massive self-abuse leading up to my thesis defense years ago, I pay careful attention to what my tummy is asking for, food-wise.
And lately it’s been asking for pumpkin seed oil by the shot-glass. God bless the fucking Germans for introducing me to it. Have already gone on about the glories of pumpkin flesh, and could go on about the delights of pepitas as well; pine nuts are off my radar at the moment until they get cleared by an allergist, so pumpkin seeds have been making their way into our pasta and salads and pizza and everywhere else – lovely little fuckers. (Really very, very versatile, but bear in mind they burn pretty fast, so if you top any oven-cooked thing with them pop them on or in close to the end).
But pumpkin seed oil; that’s a lovely fatty nectar of the gods. I drizzle it onto crumpets in the morning instead of butter now. And salad. Decorating soups. Vanilla ice cream and granola. Actually just about every other dish where I don’t have to cook it. Fuck, is it good. It has this sort of clean richness to it. It’s heavy, it’s almost like you can taste its colours, and its colours are one of the strangest things you can see in a food, because it looks like a straightforward green, but when the light shines through it, it turns wine-red. But while it’s almost as though you can taste the bizarreness, it doesn’t leave any clingy traces, like most oils; just a nice sort of mouth environment of “mmm, I just ate a bunch of pumpkin seed oil”.
Well, as you can read, adjectives are failing me. This shit is good, let’s put it like that. Also – and this is just second-hand anecdotal as, to my knowledge, I've never fucked a vegan man - its absurd amounts of zinc, which us normals tend to mostly get through seafood or other animal flesh/product, help vegan men fuck more enthusiastically and frequently.
In fact it has so many touted health benefits that I'm paranoid that when I return to the New World the only place I'm going to find it is in horrid little new age 'pharmacies' that smell like mothballs, with the oil sealed into a animal-free soft-wall easy-swallow capsules designed to prevent you from actually tasting it when you consume it. Like this. Fucking travesty. More on that when I get to the flax oil, but for fuck's sake; the medicalization of society in general is a hideous enough prospect, leaving the medicalization of fucking food to one side. Pumpkin seed oil is a fucking delicious gift of the gods. Any company that suggests you consume it without feeling it is a bastard who's out to screw you out of one of life's unique, even transcending pleasures (I really like it, okay?). It's fucking evil.
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