Clemenwhatnow?

'It's a good thing there is not much pain,' he observed, 'when the head falls off.'

'Do you know,' Myshkin answered warmly, 'you've just made that observation and everybody says the same . . . But the idea occurred to me at the time that perhaps it made it worse . . . the chief and worst pain may not be in the bodily suffering but in one's knowing for certain that in an hour, and then in ten minutes, and then in half a minute, and then now, at that very moment, the soul will leave the body and that that's bound to happen; the worst part of it is that it's certain. . . It was of this torture and of this agony that Christ spoke, too. No, you can't treat a man like that!'

Maybe you can’t, but he can. I don't know what a murderer deserves, but I'm not sure killing it after "studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences" is possible for a moral man with any imagination at all.

I linked the Online Etymology Dictionary under What? Words in the sideboard. In the interests of saving you the trouble of looking it up, click here to learn about 'fuck'. Then move on with your life, infant. Oh, and just in case you forgot . . . Jacques Chirac is a big whiney weenie and everybody hates him. And he's not the only one.

Ridicule

Yesterday was a waste of consciousness by most standards, but it was nice anyways. I got rid of the pain in my legs by spending some time at gym and by getting all snaked at - let's call him Gigi, since Lady does - at Gigi's home. There, we watched Ridicule, a film I hadn't seen for years and years. A very nice film to watch on a stoned and lazy Sunday. What bugs me about Ridicule, besides the disjointedness of the different storylines and the occasional narrative flatness that results, is the fact that some people of a certain social class who I spent time with in France still consider the useless Versailles aristocrats with their insulting yet predictable humour and parasitic lifestyles as a standard towards which they must struggle, despite a couple of revolutions and a whole whackload of republics. And then they get upset the rest of the world thinks they're hypocritical assholes. Hear that? It's the drip-drip-drop of my heart bleeding.

Oh, when will I get over this France thing? It puts me in the company of idiots. Why does France have to suck so bad I end up in concordance with people who hate it because of Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, and the really comfortable ass-print they've worn into their couch?

Fucking France.

Two buckets of ice, please

Last night my legs and I had a good discussion about our mutual needs. Today they hurt, but our relationship is healthier for it. Boa was great. Lady knows the names of all the clever men; I don't but I remember the Buddha-esque figure of the downstairs man smiling while he made weird moon man music that I couldn't help but dance and dance to. I think I had a crystal flashback. Is that possible? The party before was nice too. That funny boy who sings Beatles songs and looks like Peter Cook was there. He went to some club that wasn't Boa, and I went to Boa. That's hardly even two ships passing in the night. That's like a dangerously under-maintained oil frigate from Spain and a hollow-hulled drug runner masquerading as a garbage sloop from Italy both registering as Liberian vessels to avoid safety or legal regulation. What am I talking about? I don't know. I get confused when I find people attractive for qualities besides being right there. It was a good night, anyways.

I'm looking forward to next weekend's three Christmas parties, but I'd also like to try the Screww night at Buddies' - looks like it might be nice retro, which I haven't experienced in yonks. We'll see.

I knew it

I knew there was a reason I woke up in a pisser on a Saturday morning, besides that fucking dream about being Milou and having to find a treasure-chest in a booby trapped castle while Tintin hung around outside giving me completely useless advice. Man, I can't even giggle over writing 'booby' today. Today is the day the laughter died. What did we do that Richard Pryor had to die? Fuck, man. Fuck. This is one naughty world.

Blown away

Started psychoanalysis last night. It was odd to talk about myself so much, but not too threatening. I'm relaxed with Carl Jung's ideas. They provide a practical, concrete framework for all the philosophy and classical writing I studied, and you would not believe how fun it is to trace archetypes through the dream you had about Eminem doing Mad Scientist magic tricks in a dormitory of your old university. We talked alot about anger, which is odd - synchronic, if I may - since my head is about to EXPLODE this evening with the anger I'm feeling towards some of the ad-bot simpletons I have to deal with.

But the real psychically important event last night was watching Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and the St. Crispin's day speech that lets you know language is Shakespeare's loving bitch:

What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Oh, the goosebumps. Isn't it something that back in the day the great military leaders also had to be great orators? You had to be able to convince men that they wanted to throw themselves into a deadly situation; prepare them to slaughter another creature that looked like them; you had to take away their fear, suspend their sympathy, and fill them with energy. Imagine! It probably helped that they had a better sense of eternity and a friendlier relationship with death than the Occidental world does now, but all the same. I read somewhere that Julius Caesar's legendarily inspiring rallying speeches were filthily obscene. Naughty Italians.

Speaking of inspirational, has anyone made a movie about this guy yet?

You're lucky you got your looks

I love Italy; I love Italians; I love myself. Natch. But they are so fucking lame sometimes. In case you're silly enough to not subscribe to the New York Times, the linked article finishes with the line 'And the Italians should reconsider their approach. . . That would require an extreme act of political bravery. So don't bet on its happening anytime soon.' Holy shit. There's a wee encapsulation of their whole lameness.*

I don't want to get too deeply into Italian lameness today because I still feel the need to focus my nationalistic contempt on France. But I will say that for Canada, in the context of the approaching election, Italy is a topical cautionary tale. Things here are generally good, yes. The issues being argued in this election don't have cataclysmic implications, no. And our electoral system is more representative and accountable than that of the United States, yes. Those are hardly reasons to get complacent and start ignoring our political process like a bunch of Italians. PAY ATTENTION, BITCHES! Or you'll end with the governance the inattentive deserve - a sequence of instable minority governments whose parties have sold their ideology to the highest bidder and which are sometimes headed by the Berlusconi-esque.

Feel them. Feel the goosebumps, motherfucker.

An exhaustive description of Italian lameness can be found in this week's Economist, which contains a damning survey of the country's economic and political situation.



*That article fails to mention a peice of shocking hypocrisy: the Museo Egizio di Torino is the second or third best egyptology collection in the world, depending on whether you're talking to a Brit or an Italian. The collection was 'built' and 'recovered' during the north African colonial era. . . but I guess national interests forbid such mentions. Any G-7 country starting that sort of war of words would be a pot or kettle calling some other pot or kettle black.

Fancy seeing you here

Had a breakfast workshop with hundreds of ad-bots, one of whom I'd been on a few dates with and hadn't called back. Thankfully I live in a big city so dumb 'chats' like this morning's only happen once in awhile. In Piemonte it was bloody constant, so I went to Paris, and we know how that turned out.

So, I'm one of those, I've realized. Is it wrong? Possibly. I don't call anymore either, so I don't recall how no call-back feels. I guess it depends on whether you'd rather assume 'this person doesn't think they owe me an explanation' or hear 'I'm not into you and I don't have the energy to pretend'.

Anyways, it would be nice to be into someone; I used to be from time to time. It isn't so much an involved relationship I miss as having the guts to take a real fucking header for someone - to make an impassioned decision and say, 'yes, I love this person'. Or at least 'yes, I would pull out one of my own teeth to get my hands on him'. That's balls, man. That's palle. That's hot. When did I get so cold?

Geh

Feel ill today. Will take off at lunch probably. This made me feel a little sicker to my stomach. Man, what people will do to other species. Take the miracle of God's creation and turn it into ugly contests. Ugh.

Well . . .

I suppose the day had to come. From a civil liberties point of view, I cry, 'full steam ahead!' From a physical point of view, I cry, 'the only good sex with a prostitute is free sex with a prostitute!' And from a moral point of view, I cry.

Fine black bitches

The title of this post is what somebody searched to find this site. The 'dating assholes' thing I can understand, what with all the abstract discussion of romance garbage, but 'fine black bitches'?

Got a draggle-on birthday present this morning from Marks and Spencers. What does it say about me that I miss Marks and Spencers so much? But merciful fuck, it isn't fair, the gingersnaps alone should have kept their Canadian business afloat. That should be about the last birthday present for the year besides a mystery package whose existence I've been warned of driving in from the West Coast. Mysssssssssssssss-tery. Must be Bigfoot.

Fwaaaaaaaaaaa . . .

Vendetta's off. Advisor accepted my word I didn't plagiarise, probably because I told him my dear mother's suggestion that I copy out a kajillion of the drafts I saved and explain the transition from one to another, and Mr. S's suggestion that I find a Canadian professor with a background in contemporary North American relations who'd be able to say I didn't copy. Perhaps Advisor thought it would just be more for him to read. So I won't kill France, after all.

Other good news: Stéphane Rousseau got to my apartment this morning. The ten minutes I watched before my opera lesson made me laugh three times. I'll need to watch them again before I know if I was laughing at the funniness, or out of happiness that I know another language enough to watch stand-up comedy in it, or if I was just giggling because, you know, I saw one of his nipples.

Stuck by the man

This site is censored in China! Fuckin' A! Probably due to Lexie's participation - that is one fucking reactionary civil libertarian of a kitty cat. You should hear what she has to say about the autonomy of Tibet and the plight of the Muslims in Ningxia province. To paraphrase: 'Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'.

Speaking of all things censor-worthy: try to guess which one won without Googling.

At the office, Friday night, and going to stay because it's cleaner than my apartment and I need to put together documentary proof I didn't plagiarise the sack of shit that has been wrecking my life for more than a year. I may go out for a drink later, but the crooked way that last mochaccino went down suggests I'm more likely to go home and cry myself to sleep. People have warned me that when this fucker is done I'll feel a vaccuum in my life. I think I'll try filling it with a huge mountain of cocaine. Like this:
Because I doubt snorting a whole Andes-worth, if properly paced, could fuck up my head worse than writing a thesis for a French institution.

Frosted flake-y post

So this is Yahoo's version of me. My chin has shrunk, I've lost about 40 pounds, and my calico cat has become a red dragon. Yay.

Speaking of . . . I'm still purple with rage today. Considering the walking fury I become when I'm riding the red dragon, I resent being infuriated at other times of the month - just another thing to resent in this case. I'd rather be called ugly, stupid, evil, a lousy lay, smelly, or most other pejoratives I can think of than be called a liar. I wonder why. Probably some past-life shit. Anyways, according to my co-worker's Sun Signs book I need to chill, because I'm a Sagittarian and when we Sagittarians get extendedly upset over something it hits us physically. It's true, you know. The first time my heart broke I spent a week puking and having the funniest hallucinations. Is it material that the first time my heart broke was concurrent with the Florentine Plague Season, and that Florentines don't cover thier mouths when they cough? My biographers will be the judges.

Yesterday I was both purple with rage and very upset, because I have that stupid girly thing of crying the first time I get angry about something. The second time I might be all 'say hello to my leetle friend!', or some Dench-esque 'Are you telling me you had the temerity to accuse me of blah blah blah dripping icicles blah' shit, but the first time, it's waterworks and no fooling. Anyways, at the end of the day I remembered to book an appointment with a local Jungian analyst - I realized awhile ago that I need to have gone through around 100 hours of analysis before even applying to accredited schools - and as I was on the phone with him, waves of fury kept washing over me and I could hardly keep the tears out of my voice. He must be expecting one happy little package to arrive on his doorstep next Thursday.

Help

My brother hardly ever asks for anything specific, but this Christmas he said he'd like a print of what he thinks is something by Picasso, but maybe it's Matisse. He says it's a painting of a woman, from the back, her being a little cello-shaped. But it is not the one you see here - he says it's just two fluid black lines on a white background. Does anyone know the name of it, or if it's by Picasso, or does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

***********UPDATE*************

Turns out to be this, which Picasso simply called 'Femme'. Guess he wasn't a breast man. My brother plans on calling it 'Bum', which seems a little more accurate. Much love to Mr. N for referring me to www.art.com.








My thesis advisor finally got in touch. Turns out - and I'm sure this is absolutely independent of me, say, contacting the school to ask why the fuck I hadn't heard from him for seven weeks - he thinks I copied it. This isn't the first time a French professor has accused me of plagiarism. But you know what? It had fucking better be the fucking last, because I am way too pretty for jail, and I am thiiiiiiiis close to murderizing all of fucking France. I don't know what pisses me off more: the accusation, the self-servingness of the accusation, or the fact that now I'll have to go to mad documentary trouble to prove that I didn't copy when I've already gone to enough trouble actually WRITING the fucker. Oh sweet fuck on a stick. Someone is going to pay.

Uhmmmmmmm . . .

I know they have assistants who do this for them, but . . . but . . . he ;-) me! My mum went to Beatles concerts in Liverpool back in the day. Must remember to ask her next Sunday what the appropriate scream-y noise to make in such a circumstance would be.

De: Mlle LaSpliffe
Date: lun. 21/11/2005 16:43
À: Stéphane Rousseau
Objet : aucun

Bonjour,

M. Rousseau est actuellement en tournée à Paris? Je suis obligée de rester en cette ville pour quelques semaines en janvier et j'aimerais bien voir son acte.

Merci,

Mlle La Spliffe


De: Stéphane Rousseau
Date: mar. 29/11/2005 16:43
À: Mlle La Spliffe
Objet : Je serai à Paris...

Bonjour Mlle La Spliffe!

Je suis en tournée depuis presque 6 semaines en France, un peu partout dans ce beau pays. Je serai en spectacles à Paris au Bataclan à partir du 17 septembre jusqu'au 28 février. Au plaisir de vous divertir et surtout de vous faire rire! ;-)

Stéphane

Shake Hands With the Devil Is Not Bedtime Reading

Had the worst dream last night about trying to conclude a peace accord in a small Latin American republic. It was going swimmingly, and then an extremist walked in, blew the other negotiators away until he ran out of bullets, and started cracking necks. After wrapping that up he began slicing off my fingers in an effort to make me do a radio announcement handing power over to his party. And the worst part of it all was that the whole negotiating team just stared dumbly at him while he did all this; we couldn’t believe it.

The dream made me want to puke. So did this.

Time for more Brontë sisters and some George Eliot, I think. Roméo Dallaire will be strictly for the subway and lunchbreaks.

Merde, je pue

I smell awful today. Not awful like stinky, soap-averse, insert-name-of-favourite-smelly-ethnic-group-here awful, but Ralph Lauren Romance awful. This shit makes me smell like a Victorian whore trying to cover up some unspeakable disease. But I looked at the bottle this morning, thought in my CaWASPrian way ‘oh, better use that up before it goes off’, sprayed myself with it, and immediately lost every trace of my vestigial homosexuality.

To help the more clueless among you buy smelly things for Christmas, I’ve got a few other perfumes on the go, all infinitely better than this, that I can reccommend. One, Calvin Klein’s Truth. Good sexy smell, totally without nauseating revolting hints of sweetness. Never would have bought it for myself before, but now enamoured. Two, Clinique’s Happy. Smells like a freshly-scrubbed flower or something. Picks you up and makes you feel like you didn’t smoke too much reefer the night before. The man-scent of this is pretty good too - very fresh but not twee to the degree a straight man won't wear it. Finally, Lancôme’s So Magic! Hints of violet without too much alchohol, and again, glossing over the sweetness. Probably what that Ralph Lauren shit was trying for.

Oh FUCK, I smell bad.

Birthday!

I had a smashing, stellar birthday. We descended on this fucking unbelievable Peruvian place, El Bodegon. The barbequed cow heart, the grilled shrimp, the calamari, the ceviche, and oh sweet Jesus the coconut caramel birthday flan - we came. After El Bodegon, the Orbit Room across the street. The band was . . . the band. Couldn’t remember the name before we went, can’t remember now. Don't care. The drummer from the Neville Brothers showed up and played a few songs, he was awesome. But the set list was all over the place. Nice when they did Bill Withers, and I didn’t take the AC/DC amiss either. However, the whole final set was crap. Never knew how long Led Zeppelin songs were until I had to listen to them while hoping desperately for some funk. I guess variety isn’t always the spice of life.

In closing, I know presents aren't the point of birthdays, but you must excuse me for going on about them a little bit. I can’t get over how thoughtful all the gifts I got were – how well everyone had chosen things they knew I would love from shared experiences, jokes, or enthusiasms. I leave you with the story of the first present I opened. It was from the splendid Miss S, presently in Tibet, mailed as she traveled through China. Using my amazing superpowers of Discipline, I managed to not open it for a week, and finally dug into it birthday morning. It was a scroll covered in beautiful Chinese calligraphy, apparently reading "May Mlle La Spliffe be strong like a bull”. Here’s her response to my thank-you email:

Spliffe! I was wondering all day if it had arrived in time. To your personal address, I'm sending a pic of the calligrapher drawing it for you. In terms of the message, I did my best given I was limited by a Chinese-English dictionary from 1960. Some folks gathered around to watch it being done and laughed and made muscles, so I suspect the translation is pretty much correct. :)

Ha ha! I'm not incompetent!

Oh goodness gracious me. 27 years old today! Do you realize what this means?

1. My workplace has ordered me the cake you see in the picture

2. I’ve lived away from my parents for nine years without dying of incompetence

Pour the champagne!

Yesterday an office lady asked me how old I was turning; when I told her she cocked her head and said ‘why, that’s not old.’ In a voice that implied it was, indeed, old. It’s certainly older than it was last year. Shitheads, if we're older then we used to be it's because we didn't die in the interim. That rocks. NOT DYING IS MY FAVE. Fuck. I don’t get people.

Maybe my birthdays aren't as hard as people seem to expect because I’ve done so many monumentally stupid things. All the uber-stupid stuff I’ve done makes the aging process easier, I think, because I’m moving farther away from it as I get smarter. So I end up having no real regrets. Although I am fucking bitter about the thesis stretching into a new year after I nearly had a nervous breakdown over it. Putain, if France only had one eye, I’d start smoking again just to hork a nasty loogie into it.

And it’s true this birthday’s making me take stock a little, which is nice. It’s lovely to be able to put your finger on what’s wrong with your life so you can fix it. For example, at the moment, it’s winter. That’s wrong. I think I can fix that. Mostly by waiting until the winter goes away, or moving somewhere warm. Possibly by wearing another layer of clothing. Oh - and at the moment I’m not being firmly loved down by this. That’s wrong. That’s so wrong I could cry. I doubt I can fix that, though, unless someone has really gone all out on the gifting tonight. We're going to a South American restaurant where they serve grilled cow hearts. Can't wait!

If you had one neck I'd hack it through

British slugs. Insert throbbing melodic bassline here. Or possibly gently inspirational Cirque de Soleil musique - I really can't tell how the spirit is moving them.

Spoke to yet another Catholic who used to be whipped by the nuns in her school. Câlisse! I never thought I’d identify with Caligula , but now I find that if Vatican City had one cheek (and if I could dodge the hail of Swiss Guard bullets) I’d slap it. Does anyone else find the Catholic Church deeply depressing in the same sort of way France is deeply depressing ? That is, a bunch of people absolutely unwilling to respond to obvious realities by making changes to an anachronistic system that was wrong even when it was created hundreds of years ago?

The notion of mandatory celibacy for priests or teaching monks and nuns is retarded. A cloistered monk or nun, sure. Someone who chooses a contemplative lifestyle and a union with God that approaches a mystic, spiritual marriage; power to them. But to have someone in constant contact with the community, someone who plays the public roles of moral leader, social adviser, and sex ed teacher, who isn’t expected to know the emotional primacy of the family, the comforts of a supportive spouse, and the real social and physical importance of fucking? They’re supposed to guess all of this while tending to the spiritual health of the flock? Or is a bunch of other mental castrati in Seminary supposed to teach it to them? I suppose any authoritative position will be abused, but there’s a reason we haven’t heard the same quantity of horror stories out of the Orthodox and Protestant churches.

And instead of some note being taken to this, the present slap-down on gays is, one assumes, the response of choice to the public outcry regarding sexual assaults on children. It’s hard to see an equation of homosexuality and pederasty, harder to know that many people will now feel the Catholic Church is really doing something to address the rash of accounts of sexual and physical abuse, and tear-jerking to imagine anybody'd think this was enough.

Instead, it might be fun if the Catholic Church had human priests. It needn't be afraid letting them get married is going to make the Church less special. After all, when it comes to shitting on women, it’s still a superstar.

Co co co co co co co co co co co cocaïne

Someone found this site by searching 'dating assholes'. And I thought I was being so discreet about my sex life! Joke, joke. Out of the however many men I’ve been with, only a few have been assholes. I’m sure any bitches-I’ve-had ratio would work out essentially the same in reverse as calculated by any man of my age and proclivities. So it’s odd my site got found with a phrase like that when I’m sure the internet is littered with sites bitterly decrying whatever asshole whoever is seeing, in plate-throwing, anger-fucking, curse-tossing detail.

I guess I wrote about dating assholes in that thing about how it isn't nice guys who finish last, but unattractive ones. Shall I qualify this once more by saying the concept of 'attractive' is a very flexible, indeed manifold thing? Shall I expand by pointing out just about every man comes off as a bland, generic Mr. Nice Guy until you nail him and he relaxes the public persona he'd assumed to get you to nail him, so after a few fiascos a woman learns to trust her gut feelings, which, while frequently erroneous, make more sense than a man trying to persuade you to nail him? Is it clear how little that’s saying?

Did you know, for example, that for some of us the physical sensation of romantic attraction (as distinguished from emotional or sexual attraction - think about it - no time to explain, and into the rhetorical questions right now) is essentially indistinguishable from how our tummies feel when we drink too much coffee without having breakfast, minus the shits? So indistinguishable, in fact, that there have been mornings I actually believed that I had fallen madly in love only to eat a bagel and come to my senses?

Does this look like a series of excuses for all the things that I've done?

Maybe it is. I doubt it, because I only have a few regrets – though you wouldn’t know it if you’d talked to me when love-things were bad. When things are bad, you want to work it out and that takes words, and when things are good, either you’re too busy enjoying the goodness to go on about it, or people mock you and get bitterly jealous if you do. It’s like finding three million dollars in small unmarked bills in the box spring of a guest bed that you bought at Goodwill. When the cash is in hand only an idiot would talk about it, but once it's stashed up your nose or in an Austrian bank account it makes a great fucking story. You know?

I finished reading The Game and I officially don't reccommend it. My own fault for reading the biographies of the authors, perhaps, but the mirror-facing-mirror thing - which A.S. Byatt brought up more than once in the second half of the book - started to feel more like an exercise in emotional exorcism than literature. As though the author was racing to get a book done encapsulating the situation and the personalities; framing them herself before her sister could. I think I need some Mark Bowden now to get all the girly angst out of my mouth. Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo were both so good.

Tum tum tum tiddly um pum pum pum pum

Last night I did laundry and thought about God for awhile. Wondered if we ever really stop believing the religions we're raised with, what counts as a religious belief, and what people's brains are like when they're raised without a religion. Wondered if everybody has some sort of system for trying to understand existence that is perhaps defined in their own heads, but that they never express in case people make fun of it. Or if they just don't think about it until some crisis comes along, and then come up short with any sort of spiritual what-have-you, and then grab at the nearest belief system that makes them feel special. Or if there are people who are always fine with the idea of a universe daily descending into increasing entropy from an original organisation that arose in a completely random way. Wondered if Jung's idea that extended analysis and a healthy connection with the unconscious could really replace the role of religion in men's lives made sense, and if therefore religion really was some sort of expression of the collective unconscious, or if that's just navel-gazing, revoltingly self-centred nonsense consciously or unconsciously designed to line the pockets of therapists like the pockets of the Church got lined.

Then I did stuff, got sleepy, went to bed, and read more of A.S. Byatt's The Game. Not my favourite by her, I've decided. Maybe I should have read it without reading her biography - seems like a portrait of her crap relationship with her sister (also a novelist, Margaret Drabble - don't know her from Tuesday - anybody read her?) and I think I just possibly might know which character is meant to be A.S. Byatt and which character is meant to be Margaret Drabble. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and the writing is still silkily beautiful and the character portraits crystal-clear, but it's making me a little uncomfortable. I feel the same way when I read something I've written and see a little too clearly whose soul I tried to steal. Of course, A.S. Byatt being A.S. Byatt, that theme - the ripping-off of a person theme - is central to The Game, which ends up creating a feeling of a mirror held up to a mirror and a little eternity within, making it (so far) a very neat little package of a book. Just not my favourite.

I'm freaking the fuck out today. Stir-craziness. I need a beach, some mountains, or a forest. NOW, fuck. When I don't get such things, I end up thinking about God and A.S. Byatt and her sister too much.

Ow

Glossary booooooo. My thesis has broken my brain. It is limp and floppy like a crushed, nerveless hand. All I can fix my mind on is sleep and how I've never had a threesome, ever, and the one time I came close I was too speedy to stay in the room.

Man. Alive.

WHERE IS MY ADVISER?

My little StatCounter tells me someone found this page by searching using the words 'Patsy Kensit fucking'. Isn't that adorable? Why they didn't try a Google image search is beyond me.

Saw a Russian movie called The Cuckoo as a reward for making Part One defensible (although that was mostly through the aid of the darling Miss C in Paris). It was a very twee idea – three mutually unintelligible protagonists in Lappland during the second World War – a Sami woman, a Finnish man, and a Russian man. It could have just been cute and basta, but the actors were all so adorable in their ways, especially the lead actress, Anni-Kristiina Juuso. The music and boreal lighting was lovely too. I really recommend it; I think I can promise you’ve never seen anything like it. The pacing was odd, and maybe a bit slow in parts, but what can I say? Russian films are one of the reasons God gave us reefer.

Everybody is dumb

The only person named in this article who comes off as not being a total idiot is Lloyd Newton, who's quoted right at the end. You know, after you've read the rest and already decided everybody involved in the dramatic and operatic arts in Britain, including the author of the article, is an irredeemable jackass one way or another. I especially like the "it's a bit like saying to play Macbeth you have to be a murderer" simile.

Oh la la la la. It comes to this - it's opera, people. Don't mess with it.

Or I'll mess with you.

Fuck.

Fucking pirates

Fuck them. I watched a pirated copy of A History of Violence last night and it stopped, like, five minutes before the end . . . and those five minutes would have probably made up my mind about whether or not I liked it. Bloody bootlegs! I've never bought one myself and now I guess I won't in the future. It has decided me to reward myself for finishing my glossary today (I shall overcome) by going to see The Constant Gardener in an actual cinema somewhere someday.

Anyways, I'm in a Red Dragon Pisser today. Nothing's actually the matter, besides your standard creepy zeitgeist and my life being eaten by my thesis and - hmm - something I can't quite put my finger on. Oh yeah. Viggo Mortensen has never gone down on me. Ever! Isn't that the richest bullshit you've ever heard? I pay my taxes and put my pants on one leg at a time. So what the hell is up with that? Oh shut up, Mlle. One day, when I have the money and the professional flexibility, I'm going to ride out the Red Dragon liminal-style during spirit-quests in the forest; eating raw meat, smoking reefer, and howling at the moon. Until that day, here's an utterly too-too photograph of the inspirational tsunami hippo-tortoise pair to cheer me up and make you feel better for reading my whinge.

Argh

You know what sucks? Writing a glossary. It's like kicking yourself in the teeth. You know what rocks? Eating persimmons. I went to Chinatown East, and there they were, 3 for a dollar. You can do the most marvellous things with persimmons.

Winter has its points - like persimmon season, that sweet sharp kick in the air that's so nice when I'm dressed warm enough, and hot chocolate. Winter in Calabria is beautiful. They leave orange peels on top of thier woodstoves to flavour their houses.

And their days are more than four. Fucking. Hours. Long. Come back, Mr. Sunshine. Come baaaaack.

Rocks off

Birthday list has got bigger as I pay more attention to the deficiencies of my collection of possessions - Opera glasses, subscription to the Economist or Foreign Affairs, music, books, a surprise, a wallet, a proper warm hoodie, pretty winter accessories, or a pasta scoop dealy.

Carrying on. This isn’t the right blog to read if you want details of someone’s emotional or sexual life. Things like ‘I could hardly see it’ or ‘the dumb bastard had stubble on them’ might pop out, and the men concerned might read them. This would suck since I wouldn't want to hurt them by pointing out things they can’t help, and I wouldn't want to point out the obvious fact that they should keep their bits either hairy or naked but not in between. Because any man who's dim enough to let his bits go stubbly deserves the contempt he gets for it. It's like an Early Warning System of catastrophic inconsiderateness.

Meeeee-ow. See, the pure scratch-factor of those last two sentences is why I don't write about these things concretely. But I have been thinking about sex in a couple of abstract ways.

First, I was talking to Little G on November 14 after posting what I thought was an inconsequential blab about semantics, Messalina, and the sad logic of the lousiness of men who sleep with loose girls. I was telling her how some of my Euro-students had a hard time telling the difference between slut and whore, and then I remembered the Italians also had a hard time distinguishing slut-whore from bitch. We chatted a bit about this, and she pointed out that while indeed it was awkward, English was deficient in that we don’t really have a word that embraces all three ideas. So we made one: blorch. It's a very hard thing to call someone without laughing, which is nice but just might block its acceptance into common language. I can't imagine it being yelled in the heat of anger by the sort of lame-ass people who actually use such words in seriousness.

And then, REEFER MADNESS! I was 'outside with the courgettes', as the Italians say, and talking to someone about something, and the question of when to sleep with someone you know you’re interested in came up. Someone argued it should be right away, since if you wait the interest often ebbs before you get your rocks off, or else you get a warped view of his personality because he’s altering his behavior in a wildly unpredictable way to get you to spread. It was probably me who argued that, since though I’m no man-layin’ dynamo I can’t think of a good ‘get to know first’ argument offhand besides not having any condoms. Would anybody like to fill in the blanks?

Real Jewelry

Finished I, Claudius. That’s the last miniseries I’m renting for awhile – at least when I get a mad jones on to swallow a book whole I can take it to work and read it on lunch breaks, maybe on the metro – but then the principal thing is BOOKS AREN’T ON A DAMNABLE SCREEN. I stare at damnable screens all day at work, either the computer or the screening television. Oh flashing pictures.

One lovely-ass book I just finished reading more or less concurrently with watching I, Claudius and drafting my cocksucking thesis for the third cocksucking time is Angels and Insects, by A.S. Byatt. How do I read, write, and watch all these things while drinking, smoking, and socializing too much? A cocktail of insomnia and multi-tasking. Anyways, I read half of Angels and Insects – Morpho Eugenia – some time ago. The other half is the novella The Conjugial Angel.

The novellas are jewels of books. Coherent stories and breathing characters running through an atmosphere of thought, poetry, the body and physical sciences; the sorts of thing Leonardo da Vinci might have written if he wrote intimate suspenseful novellas. All the while using kind, simple language. Language like silk! Provoking the reader to thought while not dictating. The Conjugial Angel, especially; that one novella brings more light to the marriage of the male mind to the female’s than any other book I can think of offhand - all in the framework of the Victorian séance craze. It almost hurts to read because it hurts so little. Like putting on Blundstones after walking around in platforms like a bloody coked-up fool for a month (wonder how I know how that feels).

I heart A.S. Byatt, to rip off an expression from Smellypants. I read Possession a few years ago too. I liked it a lot, though not as much as these novellas. Possession got made into a movie. Hmm. The movie from Morpho Eugenia, Angels and Insects (starring Patsy Kensit among others – remember her? That cute blonde pixie who got with all those Britpop guys?) wasn’t bad; quite beautiful in fact, but suffered from all the texts that got left out. More so than usual with film treatments – read the novella and you’ll know just what I mean. Even though I liked Possession less than Morpho Eugenia, and usually the more I like books the less I want to see the film, I really don’t want to see the movie Possession. The way Gwyneth Paltrow always looks like she’s about to stamp her foot and cry stops me from suspending my disbelief. Except in the Royal Tanenbaums, where it fits into that sweet-ass movie like a key in an oiled lock. Anyways, I’m reading The Game now – first twenty pages are awesome – I’ll let you know how it comes together.

On another note, I fell deeply in love this morning. Five minutes later, my heart was broken. Fastest passion of my life to date. It was a Quebecois man, narrating a series of cooking commercials dressed as a chef, on a campaign for a food store that shall remain nameless. He showed me how to stuff portobello mushroom caps, roast vegetables in duck fat, and make panna cotta - and then the trafficking woman in Montréal told me - she told me - she told me he was just an actor pretending to be a chef. NOOOOOOOOO! OH, WILL THESE DECEPTIONS NEVER END! The lying bastard, toying with my emotions like that. WHY GOD? WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS HEARTBREAK?

All of which is to say, I'm kind of hungry.

One woman metaphor

I installed a message board on this blog. Is that what you call them? It was on the side bar - and it had opinions about dirty words. It bleeped them. So of course the Italian and French dirty words got spouted, and now it's gone, because it was giving Queen Smellypants pop-ups.

My advisor and a dear friend who has taken pity on my linguistic penuries are checking the latest draft of my asshole thesis. So relaxation last night in the form of reefer and more I, Claudius. Watched up until Messalina got decapitated. Man, Messalina. She’s out of fashion now but her name used to be synonymous with a vicious she-beast of an epic super slut. For example, this passage from Jane Eyre wherein Mr. Rochester explains to the title character how his genteel whore mongering was different from his mad wife’s profligacy:

I tried dissipation, never debauchery: that I hated, and hate. That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute: rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it.

We don’t know what nasty shit Mrs. Rochester got up to before being locked up in her husband’s attic, but it does grate on the reason that he should get all pissy about it while describing fucking his way across Europe to the adoring woman he just tried to turn into a unconscious bigamist. Silly Mr. Rochester. Nonetheless, what a marvel a woman’s name can be such a strong metaphor almost 2000 years after her death. Like Jezebel, who’s even more epic since the stories about her aren’t so graphic and she’s even longer dead. It's ironic that these women probably didn’t do half the shit they’re credited with – the impressions we have of them now are likely post-mortem defamations from victorious enemies – yet language remembers THEM, not the victors.

When I was teaching English, I remarked time and again that many of my students - the Italians in particular - had a hard time distinguishing between ‘whore’ and ‘slut’. The notion that whores sell, sluts give, and this distinction is important seemed as foreign as English itself to many of them. At the time I thought that was just a bit of Latin silliness. I’ve since realized that bit of silliness is far more common than I once thought. It’s also less important, since both families of words are used as vicious pejoratives all over the place.

How very insulting. I declare, if I was a straight man I don’t know how I would be able to stand it; a widespread, ingrained notion that if a woman wants to nail you, she’s a crappy person, professionally engaged, or both? You poor bastards. Are you content to be considered so repulsive and sub-human? Rise up, men. Stop letting the world slap you down like naughty dogs by insulting us. It may be a long and hard battle. But one day, you shall achieve equality. You shall overcome!

TV, oh, TV

*****************UPDATE******************

I've been thinking, or rather I haven't but things have been occurring to me nonetheless, and I've thought of birthday presents that are somewhat more easily obtained than a pony or fixing Lebanon. Maybe people can split on them.

1. Opera glasses
2. A subscription to the Economist or Foreign Affairs
3. Music
4. Books
5. A surprise

Hope that helps.

Carry on . . .

*****************************************


So yesterday I remembered how to do schoolwork and finished revision #3 of my bloody cocksucking thesis. The memory/discovery was unwitting. I rented the first few episodes of I, Claudius a while ago and by early afternoon couldn't wait to see them any longer. Once I'd seen the first three episodes I felt compelled to go rent 6 more. Only be sheer force of will did I manage to not go rent the last six episodes after those were done - that and I'd already put on my pyjamas.

So one point of this story is that as soon as I put the first DVD in I remembered I'd done my first degree essentially in front of the television. It helps to have a diversion every time I lift my eyes from the paper/screen so I don't feel the need to get up and do something else, and I manage to sit at one task for hours. I know it sounds bullshitty, but I promise for me it works.

The second point of this story is that I, Claudius is fucking awesome. I, Claudius and Claudius the God have been two of my favourite books for years, and it turns out the way Robert Graves wrote them lends itself well to a long miniseries with lots of detail, characters, and considerable fidelity to the original. It was made ages ago when John Hurt (Caligula) was boyish and Patrick Stewart (Sejanus) was beefcake-y, so the effects and the camerawork are ancient. However, the acting can't be denied. Some of it is stylized as for the stage, but disbelief-suspension is never a problem. John Hurt, Derek Jacobi (as Claudius) and Sian Phillips (Livia) are maybe the super-crazy-excellent performances so far, but everybody is good. The risks the actors were willing to take, the way they put themselves out there, made themselves ugly and terrible. . . It's incredible.

And the plot is beautifully intricate and gruesome. Sopranos and Oz and such didn't break any new ground in that sense. Or course the plot of the book and the history of Imperial Rome were already intricate and gruesome, but the way it's presented in this miniseries drives it home. Felt quite pukey when I went to bed last night after the scene - oh, can't write it. Too gruesome, though not graphic. Essentially, like Oz, you have to accept that all the characters you're identifying with emotionally are going to die in some complicated, violent, sickening way soon. Oh, I can't wait for the last six episodes. I don't miss TV. . . I miss good TV.

Fully cloth'd beauty

Despite the loveliness you see pictured, Renaud, the tenor-hero of Armide prettily sung by Colin Ainsworth, kept most of his clothes on. There was a scene where he kept running on and off stage each time a little less dressed wherein I thought he’d get naked, but no such luck. It was an extremely pleasing spectacle nonetheless. The title mezzo, Stephanie Novacek, was brilliant. The power and emotion of that voice in the context of a stylized Baroque opera was incredible. Bang fucking on. All the singers were good, particularly the baritones, (Curtis Sullivan made Hate look and sound like it was all you needed) and the Tafelmusik choir was lovely.

The Elgin Theatre is a perfect venue for Opera Atelier because of its Baroque splendour and intimacy, a point driven home by using the boxes for the chorus and the occasional goddess-pose of an acting soprano. And far be it from Opera Atelier to shy from Baroque splendour. It was lush – the sound, the set, and the ballet. Without being dumb. The only cringe-worthy lush moments were with the strap-on wings of the dancer playing Love (not securely fastened, so when he really got going they bounced around with an absurd life of their own) and with some dancers dressed up as tables doing their thing around Renaud. Otherwise, so well-put together and beautifully sung was it that despite the lushness, distractingly hot scantily clad (and apparently stuffed - or maybe just huge? a girl can dream) male dancers, and the super-stylized poses of the protagonists, by the time Armide brought the opera to its crashing conclusion my disbelief was suspended somewhere above the rooftops. And I wasn’t even on drugs.

Two complaints, neither to do with the performance itself, but the lead up. First was how it was advertised, and I don’t mean Naked Renaud. Here’s an excerpt from the flyer:

This opera has an extraordinary resonance for us today as it deals with the conflict between the Christian world (represented by the knight Renaud) and its perception of the Muslim world as the “axis of evil” (represented by the Muslim sorceress, Armide).

Except it doesn’t. This opera deals with love/hate relationships, sex, and emotional honesty. It HAPPENS to deals with these things in a plot wherein Armide is a very unlikely Muslim woman (I don’t think Muslims are big on sorcery, nor on parading their women in front of foreign troops) and Renaud is a very unlikely Christian man (his character is more like a Classical warrior than a chivalrous Crusader). We never hear the religious mentioned; it’s all sorcery and pagan addictions to Glory. The idea that this opera has any religious or ethnic ‘resonance’ is facile and irresponsible – especially considering how it ends.

Second complaint: Marshall Pynkoski. Staging Baroque operas beautifully for decades in Toronto must be the artistic equivalent of scaling Everest freestyle twice a year, and I don’t grudge him mad props for that. But dude, shut the fuck up before the shows. He goes on these spiels – he did when I saw Dido and Aeneas/Actéon last spring, and considering last night was the final performance of Armide I think he does it every night. He recites the synopsis – a piss-off because it’s already in our programs and we know how to read, fuck you very much, and because he was giving away theatrical twists that should have came as a surprise even to those of us who know the operas.

Also he explains his interpretation of the story, which I don’t want to hear, I want to experience! That’s why he’s an artistic director and not a professor; or more properly, that’s why I’m a spectator, not a music major. In the words of Monsieur F, he spoonfeeds us. But anybody who is already interested in Baroque opera doesn’t need to be spoonfed, he’s singing to the choir . . . we especially don’t need to be spoonfed crap about how Armide is allegorical of Christian/Muslim relations. Not to mention he’s got the Tafelmusik players waiting in the pit, for god’s sake, with all their Baroque instruments that go out of tune if you breathe on them. Merde, c’était schiant.

Wave that flag or shake that ass

Saw Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at the Horseshoe last night. Good company, bad energy. Everybody was at a low ebb, sometimes reaching actual illness. Some of the company left almost as soon as the show began, and the rest of us trickled out with fluidity. Maybe it was Mr. T’s Flowers, as Lady Smellypants disingenuously calls the reefer from our adorable Man. I don’t think so though, as I was fine outside of an end-of-week exhaustion and I’m known more for my enjoyment of the Handsome Blossom than any high tolerance of its nocive effects. In fact, I fainted at Pride just this summer. Mortifying. If you see me about to faint, remind me to just fall down and not grab onto people as I try not to fall down. Because at such times, down you must fall and no fooling.

I think part of that bad energy was Sharon Jones herself. Nothing to do with her band. They rocked every which way and made my bones feel goooood. And nothing to do with the woman's obvious skills. She has a hell of a stage presence and a wicked voice with the slaphappy power of an atomic buzz saw. Still, she lost us in two ways.

First was political. Marvin Gaye showed the planet soul music can be political and wonderful, but his themes were universal. Sharon Jones belted out the original (not Canadian, god forbid) version of ‘This Land Is Your Land’: that isn’t universal. Neither is George W. Bush, who got his own lengthy number. He’s the elected head of another country, and while the legality of the practices of that country is controversial, George W. Bush isn’t. He’s there because enough people wanted him or because American democracy is flawed; either way he’s no Castro or Hu Jintao. Fuck. Is it so hard to imagine that when we get our fine Canadian booty shaking, we don’t want it to be to United States anthems or denunciations of George W. Bush? It seems no matter what some Americans’ dumb fuck political affiliations are, the notion that people in other countries might not care is beyond them. Second reason Jones lost us was the choice of non-political songs. She gave a high energy but harmonically flat cover of ‘Respect’, for example. We’ve all heard Aretha Franklin give 'Respect' energy and tune too often for that to do. I would have liked to hear Jones singing more typical male-voice standards; her voice has the kick, not the range.

Ah, I’m probably just whining because I was part of the bad energy last night. But I went there expecting some harmonies and tunes and things, and what I got hardly kept me awake. Anyways, tonight is the opera, so hurrah. If the flyer isn’t lying to me, Renaud gets naked, which is fun. Naked opera! I saw a naked ballet in Paris a couple of years back. The dancer performing had a substantial package, which performed a pendulous little dance of its own in response to that of its owner. Packages are awesome.

11/11/11 and Smack

Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Veterans’ Day. The Great War ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Bunch of poncey fucking twatty fucknard cocksuckers. Oh, it gets my blood going. 9 million young men die, civilians get extra fucked-over because any pretence at ‘chivalry’ goes up in aeroplane exhaust, and the Armenian Genocide gets slipped in under the radar (not that I have any confidence in the international community to intervene in any genocide anywhere anytime); there’s no symmetry, no beauty or rhyme or reason here, and the poncey fucking twatty fucknard cocksuckers still have to try to make it all pretty and meaningful by calling it off on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. MAKE IT ALL PRETTY AND MEANINGFUL BY NOT DOING IT AGAIN, COCKSUCKERS. And then less then a generation later . . .

God, Remembrance Day puts me in a foul fucking mood. Usually I can live with the fact that man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards, that conflict is a part of life, that we’re all a bunch of territorial animals, and such. But today I get overwhelmed with frustration about how countryfuls of people get led to the slaughter by more or less charismatic leaders taking cleverly cynical advantage of their nationalism and territoriality.

I recommend a book that, according to the author who I met during a trip New York this September, nobody but me read – Rediscover Toast, by Alfred Wolfgang Truss. Not only does the author have the best nom de plume I’ve ever heard, but he conjured up a very vivid paranoid vision of a patrician class dominating global politics whose purpose was almost wholly to control population growth. I think my paranoia-levels are low, and that most truths are evident if you think about them for a second. But I wear the poppies, I look at the poppies other people are wearing, and today I'm not thinking Flander's Fields so much as the heavy, smacked-out sleep the population goes into when they play along with the horrific.

Okay, enough about how dumb people are and how much I hate them. Time for my new favourite word. 'Schadenfreude'. Guesses? Anybody know already? Bonus points if you can tell me how to pronounce it.

Country music

I'm in a state of damp anticipation over Walk the Line (November 18th, baby, November 18th) which isn't just due to an ingrained genetic need to see Joaquin Phoenix existing. I haven't seen a Joaquin Phoenix film since Gladiator, and I'm not %100 sure I've ever seen another. Was he in Clay Pigeons? Or was that some other slightly doughy but not-to-be-denied piece of fine Americana? Too lazy to Google. As J*Fish and I concurred last night, the internet makes life and knowing stuff absurdly, obscenely easy, but my laziness will prevail. I shall overcome . . .

So, state of damp anticipation over Walk the Line. Johnny Cash is some kind of wonderful. Live at San Quentin is the only live album I'll sit down with and listen the crap out of. I realized when one of my stellar brothers played it for me, at 18 or something, that country music is not irredeemable shit. In fact, Live at San Quentin might have been the album that convinced my stunted little-girl-brain of the basic but oft-ignored fact that any good music is good music.

In that spirit I went to see Colonel Tom's Swinging Door, an incarnation of the Backstabbers, last night at the Cameron House - sweet. Bob Hannen's vocals were especially nice, and the bass player was hot. Hot! What is it with bass players? Bass players and drummers? Bass players, drummers, and guitarists? And pianists? And baritones? And counter-tenors? And painters, photographers, and dancers? Oh artists. But I digress. It was good. Bluegrassy. Bob Hannen's vocals were tenor-y, if country types talk about things like that - harmonies were good. Being born after 1970, a good fifth of my listening brain was confused by the lack of drum. Man, thank FUCK for Motown; it gave us the right to expect a good throbbing line anytime we want it. But it was good. I reckon 'I Still Miss Someone' was what really did it for me, Bob Hannen taking the lead so sweetly I didn't wonder why his kind lilt wasn't a Cash-y growl.

Anyways. This is leading up to the release of Walk the Line, which I'm anticipating. The only thing that worries me is that it will be crappily cobbled together in a rush to dash down the trail Ray blazed for biopics about troubled, inspirational musical geniuses. Incidentally, did you know Ray Charles did an album of country music standards in 1962? And that it's good?

J*Fish thinks the mad-dash thing isn't the case; he thinks that a biopic about Johnny Cash has been in the works for years because of the man's crazy life, getting busted smuggling drugs across Mexican border and whatnot. I'm not sure. Paul McCartney got busted in Japan for smuggling reefer, an intoxicant I've got a more loving relationship with than all those weird-ass pills American musicians poured down thier gullets through the 60s and 70s. And much as I love reefer, and as much as I've been divinely basculated by some of the music Paul McCartney has produced, I doubt I'd want see a biopic about him.

Unless it starred Joaquin Phoenix.

Ah, it's all a complex tapestry.



Speaking of which, the adorability of today's MSN gossip sheet is making me wonder if, in fact, it could be love:

Talk of trouble began at the film's L.A. premiere Thursday night, when Phoenix felt something funny hoppin' on his noggin during an interview with the Associated Press.

"Do I have a large frog in my hair?" he asked the reporter, who assured him his coif was amphibian-free. "Something's crawling out of my scalp," the star explained.

Despite the journalist's assertion that he "looked great," Joaquin wasn't convinced: "No, but I feel it. I'm not worried about the looks. I'm worried about the sensation of my brain being eaten ... What did you ask me?"

"There is no folly so besotted . .

that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission."

Never thought I had much in common with Mr. Rochester - always thought I was more like sweet, morally upstanding, quietly clever Jane Eyre - but here I am. All of which is to say that in my post-needley temperature and illness I dreamt about my crazy ex 'spouse' (or whatever he counts as under French law), which suggests, Bertha Mason-esque, he's still locked in my mental attic. One of those nightmares where you're STILL THERE - nothing has changed and you wake up wondering how the hell to get out.

Can I make some friendly suggestions this miserable morning?

1. Don't use dumbfuck, dumbfuck reasons like these to convince yourself to commit to people, no matter how nice, rich, and loving they seem:
a)he/she is the opposite of the person who broke your heart before him/her
b) he/she is what this naughty world calls a 'catch' (see Mr. Rochester)

2. Leave as soon as you know you're going to

3. Being crazy-in-love-like-Beyoncé-Knowles (oh Pocket Dwellers - somebody let me know if I use too many similes, ok?) might not be all you need to make a relationship work, but take it away altogether and you're fucked

4. Out of all the fleshly sins (lust, gluttony, sloth, and anger), anger is by far the worst. Both to feel, and to watch. Day after day after motherfucking day

5. Reefer is for fun, not to help you ignore all the shitty things about your life you should be doing something about

6. There are far, far worse things in this life than being alone. So single people should stop. Fucking. Whining.




Enough of being a cautionary tale. Time for:

CUTE EXPRESSION OF THE DAY

Roman dialect from the Claudio Baglioni song 'Porta Portese': L'amore fa penà ma nun se mòre

Guess! Try saying it out loud. Clue: in AltaVista German - Liebeursachen schmerzen, aber töten Sie nicht

Don't listen to the song though. Poor Italian music. It's like when Puccini died they all decided not to care anymore.

Cute word of the day

Italian: Ventiquattrore

Guess what it means! Guess guess guess! This word has gone straight into my top ten. Right up there with 'parthenogenesis' and 'fuck'.

Let's see if I can put all three into one sentence to help you guess:

I remembered to put a whole box of condoms in my ventiquattrore, so the only way I'm getting pregnant this weekend is if that fucking parthenogenesis kicks in.

Don't look in a dictionary! Guess!

Updated clue:

Russian = ночной мешок
Dutch = nachtelijke zak

***************JOHANNES WINS!!!!!!!!!!***************

Ventiquattrore = overnight bag; travel bag that contains everything you'd need for 24 hours.

YAY JOHANNES! You win beer on my next trip to Ottawa, if you're unfortunate enough to still be there on that hypothetical day.

Want to know something gross about me?

I was once a finicky eater, willfully cutting myself off from deliciousness like sun dried tomatoes, pickled cabbage, sushi, olives, even mushrooms. I was a beast, a masochistic little beast. When I moved out of my parent's home at 18 I got better, since they weren't around to unimpress by me turning up my nose at my father's beautiful cooking. Also Ottawa, such as it was, offered better dining possibilities than the Bay.

But then I moved to Florence and met the best cook I've ever met in what has been a disproportionately lucky 27 years of meeting stellar cooks. He led me into a whole new world of delicious, delicious food. And it doesn't stop. Yesterday, Mr. Man tore down one of my last food hate-ons; oh, he should go into culinary conflict resolution!

Up until then I hated eggplant. I would only eat it if it was pickled into unrecognizability in oil with hot pepper, garlic, and a lot of salt (a piéce de resistance he laughed at me for not eating back in the day) or if it was cooked into unrecognizability at a North African or Middle Eastern restaurant (and then mostly out of a WASPy need to eat everything on the plate). And yesterday - words fail me so I'll cut and paste his:

'Here's one for you. Slice a Melanzane rather thinly. Then let it stand for a while. Then rinse and cut it in thin strips, almost like chips. Then put them into the oven with oil, garlic and the juice of one lemon. Leave them on a low heat for about an hour. When they're done sprinkle with parsley. It will change your life as it has changed mine.'

Oh eggplant. So many wasted years! Can you ever forgive me? Apparently you have, because YOU'RE SO FUCKING GOOD. So, another gross thing is needles. I had one recently. A flu shot. When it comes to sheer mortal terror, I have a hard time dissembling, and of course the nurse doing me couldn't fail to notice. Here's what happened:


An Autumn's Tale


Mlle La Spliffe enters the room. Her skin is white and clammy; her hands trembling.

MLS: Hello. (abrubtly)

Nurse: (sitting at table) Good morning!

She stumbles to the chair and sits heavily; her chin starts to tremble as she sees the vaccination accoutrements on the table. The Nurse smiles.

Nurse: Scared of needles?

MLS: Yes. (concentrates on floor)

Nurse trembles with silent laughter. MLS's teeth chatter.

Nurse: Right or left-handed.

MLS: Uhhhmmmm . . . (holds up hands and stares at them blankly for a moment) This one. (Indicates right)

Nurse: I'll need the left then.

MLS's mouth gawps open as she envisions her left arm dangling uselessly at her side after being paralysed by the flu shot. She spins in her chair to face the wall, throws her left arm to the mercy of the nurse, and stifles a scream

Nurse: Don't faint, okay?

MLS: Fine.

MLS's chin trembles even more as the Nurse swabs her arm and the sound of the safety coming off the needle is heard. She stares at the wall like it's some nice person who might intervene in the travesty that's about to go down if she just looks sad enough.

The Nurse stabs the needle into MLS's arm. IT HURTS. IT HURTS ALOT.

MLS: Oh sweet fuck!

Nurse: There you are.

THE NEEDLE IS STILL FUCKING IN MLS'S ARM. Her skin turns a completely new shade of green as she realizes she can feel the steel puncturing her rippling muscles.

Nurse: (after far too long) All done. That wasn't so bad, was it?

MLS: Yeeeeeeurgh.

Send flowers.

Speaking of melancholy. . .

John Fowles is dead. And I wouldn't be sad now, except the French Lieutenant's Woman was the first superb modern novel I ever read; really opened a whole new world. Nearly 14 years on and I still reccommend it. Not the movie. That blew. Fucking Meryl Streep. Oh man. Thanks for not blowing, John Fowles.

So many men I'm in love with are dead! Ghengis Khan, Bruce Chatwin, Laurence Olivier, John Fowles . . . all I have left is Joaquin Phoenix, Roméo Dallaire, Vincent Cassel, Bill Withers, Daniel Craig, strippers, Italians, Paolo Szot, Daniel Taylor, Stéphane Rousseau, Banquo, MacDuff, and a few other guys.

Yep, time to shut up. I love every boy!

My beautiful, beautiful navel . . .

I’m still in a mood about Paris – can’t stay there for two and a half years without caring when it goes through one of its periodic freak-outs. But looking over Costume Jewelry I realized I’m doing a lousy job of the obsessive navel-gazing the forum was designed for. So, here goes.

Little G and I talked about birth control pills a few days ago. She just started for the first time for medical reasons, and so far is happy, and I was happy she was happy. Happiness! She asked how I’d felt about them after using them awhile, and I said (thoughtlessly – reefer madness) I hated them and was glad to be off them. She asked why, and I had to think. It's not the idea the sex drive suffers; I'm pretty sure that feeling is just your body knowing you shouldn't be sexing the man in question before your brain does. And it’s not out of a passion for interrupting fine loving to stick icky latex between me and my fine lover. So I said, I don’t like them because they even me out. Little G gave me a look.

Yes, I know. We’re supposed to be evened out, aren’t we? Even out my fine round ass, says I. Unless we’re suffering a clinical state that stops us from getting out of bed or makes us attack ourselves or the people around us, we should embrace our swinging moods. I’m willing to tolerate all sorts of melancholy if I get the corresponding highs. I wouldn’t be pissy about Paris now if the city hadn’t enchanted me; I wouldn’t have had to wipe my weepy, non-smoking nose with cigarettes from time to time over men if those men hadn’t made me happy and enthusiastic; and I wouldn’t get into a bitch-funk over my lifestyle if I didn’t aspire to something nicer that I've tasted and want to taste again. Even myself out? Fuck that. The aftermath of menopause will do it for me someday anyways.

Ah, the voice of madness. It’s probably on my mind because I’m in a really nice maudlin state at the moment. This morning, as I was listening to Bill Withers sing ‘Grandma’s Hands’ in the sunshiny crisp weather, I shed maybe four tears. Even though my Nona died before I was born and Granny, still around, is nothing like Bill Wither’s grandma. I reckon I have the luxury of embracing the vagaries of my moods because I live alone with a really tolerant cat. Whenever one of my moods pisses her off, I just have to scratch her neck for a minute. As pictured.

My imaginary friend can kick your imaginary friend's BUTT

Communism 'started’ in England. It wasn't due to take off in feudal countries like Russia and Mongolia until after a proper industrial revolution - but it did anyways. The socio-economic conditions - hungry people, a rotten power structure- were ripe for the horror that was the Bolshevik Revolution. Even if they weren’t what Engels and Marx were thinking of when they were thinking of a pre-revolutionary society. You get me?

Johannes suggested that the religious extremists reportedly goading on the rioters in France are following the lead of the Saudi Arabians, who ‘started' reactionary Muslim extremism. However, I'm unconvinced that Saudi Arabian extremism is the key to understanding French Muslim extremism, and I'm sure it's got essentially dick to do with understanding the present race riots. Being Maghrebin in France has nothing to do with anything about being a Saudi Arabian in Saudi Arabia. Especially considering most Maghrebins I’ve spoken to on the subject have opined that all the guys in Saudi Arabia are gay. And, that that isn't cool.

This is a socio-economic question, not a religious one. Religions are just a bunch of made-up shitty ass dogmas people get excited about to give meaning to their socio-economic problems and to avoid spending time and energy approaching the divine directly. If it wasn't a bunch of Muslims goading on the rioters, it'd be a bunch of Catholics, Protestants, communists, fascists, anarchists, or whichever other retarded ideological force has turned Europe into a long series of ridiculous civil wars and bloodbaths by taking advantage of the anger of the marginalized and the paranoia of the dominant.

Instead of talking about Christian/Islamic incompatibility, it might make more sense to consider the social history of North Africa and the Near East versus that of Europe. Trying to work out the difficulty of communication between traditionally nomadic and clan-based nations and the more sedentary and mercantile European background is a lot more useful than wringing our hands over the crazy religions that sprang out of both conditions and got flogged to make everybody involved hate each other. Bruce Chatwin had some interesting things to say about this. I bet he was just stinking hot when he was alive.

That was just pillow talk, honey

Race riots in Paris! Quelle surprise! There are some things I would have adored to be wrong about. One of these things was the powderkeg-ishness of the Parisian ‘suburbs’, some of which I lived in and next to. How I harped on! ‘An Orwellian and cosmetic denial of the ghetto dynamic.’ ‘Post-colonial racism and chauvinism, rendering integration impossible and conflict inevitable’. ‘The systemic demonization of the Maghrebin’, ‘fundamentalist trends and reactionary sexism kick-started through police brutality and economic victimization’. Oh, and let’s not forget my favorite, ‘the simultaneous marginalization and abandonment of Muslim women by their own government’ following the headscarf ban.

How I opined! How I used big fancy words! How I attacked French interlocutors for their self-righteous condemnation of North American racism when the natives and the immigrants lived in two very different and very antipathetic solitudes!

Who cares how right I was. We’ll all be dead someday, the Earth will be swallowed by the sun, and everybody plays the fool sometimes. Saying it doesn’t change it. France would be Germany if the natives weren’t chauvinistic enough to put a line about ‘fertilizing the fields with the impure blood of the enemy’ in their national anthem; it wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been an exploitative colonial power in Africa; it would be speaking English if it hadn’t been able to import cheap pools of unskilled labour from its old colonies after World War II; it would be of little diplomatic importance without its domination of ex-colonies’ political establishments now and through the Cold War; and even broker, if such a thing is possible, without its present economic interests in old colonies. France wouldn’t be France if it weren’t on fire right now.

That blows. That blows way worse than being wrong. It’s a beautiful country full of beautiful people, who are suffering the consequences and enjoying the benefits of an imperial history and who have an incredible talent for denying the brutally obvious. I love that country way too much to think about it as a bleak-ass cautionary tale. But what else is there to think?