So where do bears shit?

Yesterday I wrote a news brief about luxury and telecommunications products for bathrooms. In-shower tanning, a full-length towel warmer with a built-in flat screen, LCD television/bathroom mirror/touchscreen computer combos, a new line of ‘chromatherapy’ Jacuzzis, toilets with a three-setting bidet and an air-dryer incorporated. Are people fucking lame enough to spend their money on this shit? It’s all shit! Besides the fucking awesome toilet, of course. Bidets are great. But I can still think of thousands of better ways to blow 5 Gs. If we get a situation wherein ‘bathrooms become the new kitchen’ and people race to turn their erstwhile Fortresses of Solitude into a satellite office/wealth showcase, I’ll be disappointed. Not in the marketers, but in the consumers. Mass insecurity makes them race to spend their money on what they’re told is needed to demonstrate their status. And of course that proclivity brings out the marketing ‘wolves’, in the same way someone will always come up to bring a needy hooch home. In that situation, who gets the censure? The hooch or the opportunist who nails her? So yeah, disappointed . . . I always thought I’d wait until menopause or a major health-scare before becoming a recluse somewhere, but I’m starting to wonder.

On fleeing civilization . . . I watched Grizzly Man yesterday. It aired on the Discovery Channel, I suppose after the Oscars told it to fuck itself, completely ruining my plans to get my defence done in one sacrificed Friday night (though I’m very audibly sick, so it wasn’t much of a privation) because I’d also rented the Aristocrats (yeah, it was funneeeeeee) and decided a double-bill of Oscar-snubbed documentaries deserved getting really snaked. Werner Herzog danced a genius line by pointing out the follies of a laughable man without making us laugh at him. The only time I really guffawed was when a friend of Treadwell’s from California described how Treadwell had pretended he was Australian ‘but his accent was more Kennedy-esque’, and, upon Herzog asking if he wasn’t hurt by the lie, answered: “If it doesn’t scare the cows, who cares?”

It was a great movie, I recommend it . . . thing is, I still don’t get where Treadwell's head was at. Okay, he had abused alot of substances, maybe he was dim to begin with, sexually insecure - seems a little too familiar to me, but there’s still a massive disconnect I’m not getting. I love bears - they’re beautiful, cute, anthropomorphic and porcine at once, great attitude. When I lived in the middle of nowhere up north, especially when I was care-taking on the old bishop’s estate, there were often bears around, and I loved them being around. As long as ‘around’ meant quite far away, and the mommies and cubs not being separated by me. Though they weren’t at all scary if I felt they were sufficiently far away, I had absolutely no temptation to get closer. And these were black bears - grizzly bears are bigger and have more of a history of eating people, I think. So where I stop understanding altogether is how he could initially decide to close the safety space which seems so natural and instinctive. No matter how dim you are. Although I’ve heard from people who worked in provincial parks out west Americans can be really fucking dumb about bears, the favourite example being the parents who put honey on their kids’s hands so they can get really cute photos.

If we’ve got to a point where people can’t take a shit without turning off the TV and can’t think a massive indiscriminate omnivore is cute without going up and petting its nose, what have we come to as a species? We’re going to stupid ourselves extinct.

Gotterdammerung was beautiful. Mats Almgren as Hagen and Frances Ginzer as Brunnhilde were especially fabulous; the Norns and Rhinemaidens were both beyond fantastic. The Rhinemaidens especially – their little theme-y funny-keyed bits, when I shut my eyes, were transporting. But there's the problem with this show. It was really boring to look at, besides a glitch that stopped the curtain from opening before Siegfried and Brunnhilde’s love scene in the Prologue. Though the singers took it in stride, that glitch just added to an overall dime store feel. And you can’t have dime store feel with a fucking 5.5-hour opera, certainly not Wagner.

Here’s what I mean – here's Wagner’s stage directions for the final scene of the opera after Brunnhilde sends Wotan’s ravens to Loge to tell him to burn down Valhalla, decides to immolate herself and her horse in Siegfried’s funeral pyre, and tells the Rhinemaidens to regain the Ring by plucking it from her ashes (oh, yeah, spoiler alert):

“With a single bound she urges the horse into the blazing pyre. The flames immediately flare up so that the fire fills the entire space front of the hall and appears to seize on the building itself . . . At the same time the Rhine overflows its banks in a mighty flood, surging over the conflagration . . . the hall of Valhalla comes into view, with the gods and heroes assembled . . . bright flames seem to flare up in the hall of the gods, finally hiding them from sight completely. The curtain falls.”

The COC had the nerve to quote that in their programme so I was expecting some serious fucking sweetness. You know how they did it? Brunnhilde sang a final song to her invisible horse and calmly got into a bed with Siegfried’s corpse, the Rhinemaidens took the ring off her finger and offstage red light was used to show Valhalla burning. WHAT THE FUCK. No, no, no. The whole point of Wagner is that he was about the whole package – the music, the words, and the STAGING. The STAGING.

And you know what counted as a Valkyrie costume in this production? A black Victorian dress with a bustle. NOT COOL. Valkyries are killing machines who ride around battlefields on flying horses. Why would they wear a black Victorian dress with a bustle? And all the warriors were wearing business suits. And the Norns had crappy secretary black skirt suits going on, and the Rhinemaidens had three different costumes, two of which were stupid (Norn-ish secretaries and blue-haired pseudo-raver chicks messing around in very substantial underwear) and one of which was boring. And the power-line set was lame and didn’t make sense most of the time. And . . . and . . . fuck you.

The idea of a minimalist Wagnerian production is as just plain wrong as a quiet riot or an aggressive marketing campaign for Steal This Book. Wagner knew when he put his stuff together that it was more than an opera; it was a complete artistic event. INCLUDING THE FUCKING STAGING. Have I written that already? Anyways, this idea was probably why it was cool to make his operas five point fucking five hours long. And why I feel cheated by last night.

For once I’m not blaming television, I’m blaming tobacco advertising laws#. Gotterdammerung was damn near sold out on a Thursday so I doubt the COC is hurting for ticket revenues, but I understand you need more to mount the sort of production that has highly paid sopranos galloping into funeral pyres. Tobacco advertising gave Canadian arts organizations that more. But noo, gotta protect the poor brainless consumers from a product you don’t even have the balls to criminalize, even if that means subjecting them to fucking minimalist Wagner. The feds really should have thought of a strategy to get the slack that the cut-off in tobacco ad revenue caused in the arts community. Maybe not direct funding, but a better system of tax-breaks or something.

I don’t know.

To accentuate the positive, musically it was thrilling. The thing that shocked me the most is how happy and triumphant it was at the end – echoes of the 1812 Overture. As though the twilight of the Gods was something to be celebrated. Not only natural, but desirable. So I don’t feel like I wasted 5.5 hours, but I think the COC should have spent its budget on something it could afford to mount properly, like Der Rosenkavalier or something. Also, a lot of the people around me spent the last act profoundly asleep.



#I think the site was put together by Du Maurier, so grain of salt, please.

Brain stuck at work

Yesterday I wrote my inaugural article for work about Product Red, a group brand being launched through AMEX, The Gap, Nike's Converse, and Giorgio Armani. The three clothiers are going to market product lines, some made with African materials or labour, whose revenues will go in part to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. AMEX is launching a Red Card (oh, AMEX, you so funny!) in the United Kingdom. One percent of every purchase made with the card will go to that same fund. Now there's some talk of Apple issuing a Product Red iPod. Yesterday I wrote about it in terms of branding and marketing, but I still feel a little rant inside . . .

I'm not sure how seriously the idea is being taken, since the clothiers haven't universally disclosed the exact slice of the revenue from the Product Red lines that will go to the Fund. In my exhaustive hour of research, the idea was getting the most flack in the right wing press (that is, the National Post), which is silly. It's an excellent marketing idea and a neat intersection of corporate irresponsibility and consumer conscience - the invisible hand of capitalism visibly at work, really.

You know, sometimes I wonder, in the eternal struggle between Left and Right, if the winner might be the side that doesn't contrary itself out of existence . . . oppse things because they sound righty or lefty, and not out of a real conviction they're good or bad.

People is dumb.

Anyways, invisible hand, capitalism, yeah. I, for example, only shop at the Gap under extreme duress because I find their shit boring and I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from all the sweatshop reporting. But if I need some t-shirts and I have a choice between something made in a sweatshop from H&M (a store that only came to Canada after people stopped bothering to make a deal about sweatshops in the media, so I don't have negative emotional associations with it) and something made in a sweatshop from the Gap that will offer some small benefit to Africa, I reckon I'd go to the Gap. So there you are. I reckon I'd get the card too. Half the country is already paying stupid interest rates for cards with features they don't really understand how to use (or is that just me again? Fucking Air Miles. What the fuck?). For the companies involved in the brand it's excellent marketing, and for consumers a way to feel nice without having to think about their giving strategy too hard.

The other reason it was silly that the right-wing press was laying into it so is that Bono (yeah, I know, he fucking bugs me too with his girl voice and snowboarder sunglasses - don't you wish Johnny Cash had lived long enough to re-record the whole U2 library? I might actually listen to it then. Not to mention he calls everything 'sexy'. NOT EVERYTHING IS SEXY, BONO, THINK OF A NEW FUCKING ADJECTIVE, FUCK), the 'face' of the brand, basically issued an invitation at the Davos summit for any corporation to jump on the Product Red bandwagon. He even said out loud he expected a few naughty companies to get in on the action and embarrass the fund a bit. This is free marketeering, for heaven's sake - even the face of the Product is open about how corporate participation in the brand is for the sweet press that'd result, not about being nice or going to heaven or something.

Yeah, so, I think it's a great idea. Even though Bono called it sexy. It's not sexy, fuck. Vincent Cassel is sexy. Monica Bellucci (see above) is sexy. Product Red is a fucking brand. Sexy. What the fuck. Anyways, there'll never be such a thing as a corporate conscience because it isn't in people's natures to have a collective conscience. The only way to make corporations nice is to ensure they appeal to individual consumer consciences, and this seems like a cute way of doing it. I hope it catches on, and that it's transparent enough for people to trust.

Yeep.

Shitting myself. I just got a date for the defence - a date I want - and now panicking AGAIN, fuck. On top of that, I can feel a nasty depressive paralysis creeping up on me, and this is not a good time for it. In part because of the defense preparations, in part because of the new job which starts as soon as I finish my latté and walk to work, in part because depressive paralysis leads to impulse shopping and I’m trying to save for Europe, and in part because depressive paralysis bites.

But sometimes people seem so scared by the world – much older people, who I’d prefer to think have things much better figured out than I do. So when I see them scared, it unsettles me. I want to think some day life will be an un-intimidating piece of piss. But the natural follow-up to that is that I’m full of shit, because if life was an un-intimidating piece of piss I might not be so interested in it. Fuck. I hate when I think myself on to hamster wheels. And I’m going to Gotterdammerung, so I’m missing analysis, so Mr. B can’t help me analyze my way off it. Is it possible I’ve become dependent on analysis so fast? That in itself could be depressing. But if one’s in the mood to be dependant, it’s either dependent on that or dependent on something else, I suppose. Anyways, opera usually cheers me up. Don’t know about five and a half hours of German opera, though. On verra.

Maybe this mood is just some early roaring from the Red Dragon. I did have an uncontrollable jones on yesterday for a Cadbury Cream Egg, and did make little orgasmic noises while I ate it which made my office-mates promptly go out and buy their own.

L’hiver me fait chier. When I took my little sick-girl constitutional Monday I wore my spring jacket – not foolhardiness – I would have been miserably overheated in my winter coat. Maybe it was the contrast that made me realize my winter coat makes me look like a Spanish galleon in full mourning sail. Especially when I wear a skirt. I do not have bandy legs – I have fucking awesome legs – but that bloody coat makes them look like two straws stuck into a volcanic boulder. Gawwwd, I’m pissed off today. And listing all the wonderful things in my life, of which there is a seemingly ever-growing list, isn’t helping. I wish I knew what I needed. I have a clear idea of so many things I need and can work for and fight for, but there’s something else I can’t put my finger on, and it’s that fucking inability to put my finger on it that gets me into this stupid box.

Hee hee hee . . . box.

UPDATE

Statcounter tells me I have a reader in Finland who has come back to the page several times by searching the keywords Elisa di Rivombroso in Suomi Google.

Gentle Finn:

The first series ended with Elisa dressing as King Emmanuele's murdered cousin so she could intercede with him on the very scaffold by showing him the list of traitors before the Duke was executed. The naughty man whose name escapes me was busted by both the list and the fact that, as he had had the King's cousin killed, he expressed horror and shock when she was 'ressurrected' in Elisa. The King was happy, the Duke was happy, Elisa was happy, the Duke and Elisa got married, the naughty man got his just deserts, and that redhead aristocrat whose booty you could see in a few episodes fled before all this went down, mortified at her inability to save the man she loved - for he scorned her! Oh, and I think Elisa was pregnant, which is cool, because they were all thinking she couldn't conceive again after getting pushed down the stairs, right? Oh again, and the doctor hooked up with the Duke's sister after her husband died of whatever VD he had, and . . . uhm . . . you know that little guy Elisa was going to marry when she was trying to forget the Duke - it turned out he was nice. That's everybody, right? I think the Duke's bastard son was re-united with the happy couple at the end. Anyways, he wasn't dead.

There is a sequel in the works, my cousin Giuseppe informs me. All I can tell you, because it's all I know, is that the grapevine is saying the Duke gets killed off pretty fast. So I hope you were tuning in for the naked ladies, not the naked Duke. There. I hope you can stop Googling that show now.

I, by the way, was tuning in to help with my conversational Italian. And the naked Duke. Shut up, you.

Recharged

Wow, chilling was everything I thought it would be. Back to work today. Ho-hum. When will I get to chill again? Probably not until my vacation after my defence. Oh well. I figure I can make it until then.

So Freakonomics was good enough to swallow in three hours. The sort of book you can lie in bed and guzzle. When it came out it caused a little furore because it talked up a correlation between the Roe vs. Wade decision from the United States Supreme Court and the dramatic drop in violent crime there in the mid-90's. That was sort of interesting; I found the discussion of crack's impact rather more interesting, and most interesting of all the crooked sumo wrestlers. One got a CSI-y feeling with this book - that it was designed to make economics seem as fascinating as possible to persuade people to go into it, like CSI wildly romanticizes crime scene investigation. But maybe I'm full of shit because I'd already found economics fascinating. If I don't go to Jung school, maybe I'll get an economics degree instead.

Fuck, Spliffe, one degree at a time, please.

Anyways, Jean de Florette wasn't as great as I remembered. That having been said, I'll need to watch Manon des Sources soon to see Emmanuelle Beart wreak her revenge on all those smug French bastards. And March of the Penguins was cute - the birds were, anyways, but thier lifestyle seemed like a vision of hell. One must suffer to be beautiful, I suppose.

Otherwise, the day was spectacular. Just spectacular. Lung-coughing notwithstanding. I braved the 'elements' - whatevs, it was fucking lovely and warm and sunny - and took my revolting lungs for a walk. I love Toronto. Today's entry on DDOI sums up some of our sweet-ass urban decay - thumbing our noses at every pretty-boy city that's been turned into an amusement park for grown-ups. That we aren't. Things grow and fill up and empty out and fall down here. Like a proper jungle. And then we have the Riverdale Farm a three minutes' walk from the roughest downtown projects. And my apartment. Fucking sweet.

I need a job with a three day weekend. My actual weekend was very nice and the people filling it were among the world's best, but it was all running around, you know? Even with the thesis handed in, at any given point I had somewhere else I needed to be as soon as what I was doing was done. It didn't help that I had to spend some time at work. I'd really like to have a Fuck-Everyone-But-Me Day like yesterday at least once a fortnight. In the context of a relationship, such days always seemed like the clearest indicator of love (being able to have such a day with M. Whoever that was even more satisfying than an alone one) as well as the clearest symptom of something fundamental being fucked (NEEDING that alone-day and seperation from M. Whoever because he was a net contributor to your stress and misanthropy). Not to re-hash old shit, but I'm still confused when I remember the unhappiness and bitterness I seemed quite content to be feeling for long periods in the context of some relationships. You know, Lady, like that thing Margaret Cho said - it's morning, the sun is shining on the angelic, sleeping face of your lover, you lift yourself onto your elbow, gaze on him, and scream inside,

"I HATE YOU SO MUCH! I WISH YOU'D NEVER WAKE UP!"

Or something like that. No more of that, please and thank you.

UPDATE

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! SCHOOL JUST CALLED! DEFENCE TENTATIVELY SCHEDULED!

Maybe I can see Stéphane Rousseau and then double back for the Go! Team on the 9th . . . Fuck, I'm nervous now, I have to get my defence ready.

UPDATE BIS

I've hated the Oscars as much as any institution for as long as I can remember. Every year they do something totally fucking retarded that makes me think if the Academy had one head, I'd kick it in. And I just can't seem to get used to it! It's like an older brother who always manages to find a way to make you go apoplectic, no matter who cool you think you are. They manage to find a new way to piss me off every year. This time, it's the near shut-out of Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Dear Oscars:

Fuck you, fuck your shitty costume design award, and fuck Memoirs of a Fucking Geisha and its fucking six nominations. The night you air I'm getting royally snaked, watching three Johnny Depp movies in a row, and then boycotting every product that advertises during your broadcast. And if that covers every feminine hygiene product on the North American market, I'll start ordering them from abroad.

Until next year,

Fuck you.

Languor

I feel like raspy snakeshit. But I’m chilling. You know the last time I chilled? I don't. So I also feel great. Funny how physical problems bring us down less than stress-y or emotional ones. I suppose because 80% of the time our physical problems are reasonably transient shit like broken legs, nasty colds, torn ligaments, headaches, papercuts, menstrual cramps, food poisoning, alchohol poisoning and such, and we can always understand with problems like those that eventually they'll be okay - the knowledge the pain is temporary helps us ignore it while it's there. I wonder if it's possible or healthy to do that with our emotional problems. Maybe the point of a strong emotion is how it consumes all your attention and all your thoughts of the future – your unconscious more or less throwing down and saying ‘Sort me out, bitch! We’re not moving until you do!’

Hmmm. I wonder if I have any objectivity left about mental health after falling for Jung like a tonne of bricks. It’s become hard to believe, for example, that there are people who think about their minds without splitting them up into a conscious, unconscious, shadow, persona, et cetera, et cetera. Yet it looks quite arcane when I write it down. This must be what it’s like to be religious – a complete lack of comprehension about why people don’t believe the same things you do when they seem like big self-evident truth. I should be careful, but I don’t want to be. So there.

And so, I’m chilling. Reading Jung and Freakonomics, watching March of the Penguins and Jean de Florette, sleeping, smoking little hits, and occasionally hacking up a lung. Yes, I see a problem there. I think I’ll go make some brownies. After a little nap. Happy Monday, everyone.

The triumph of the will

Last night I didn’t make it to the Orbit Room to see the A-Team, which means the most culturally significant time of the evening was Mr. N’s Romeo y Julieta. Like smoking a palm tree and a Mojito, bitch. He liked his late birthday presents. My burner is all fuck-y so I couldn’t record the playlists I’d made for him – gave him a loaded cigarette case with the print instead – he seemed happy. I try not to be selfish but I think I’d rather get a mix from Mr. N than make one for him. He does such a good job – surprising choices that work as a whole – when I’m Queen of the World, he can take care of the soundtrack. And it was good to see everyone at J*Fish’s. Nice to get quite fucked up for the first time since the thesis went nuts. Which is only two weeks, but somehow that feels like a lot. I think I’m ovulating, or else really relieved at handing in the thesis. Yeah. I don’t know the difference anymore.

Evidently, I need some vacation time. I also need to prepare the defence. But not today. Today I’ll work for a few hours and then chill. Chill like God wants me to.

It was warm and sunny yesterday – fucking lovely, and now we’re all happier, but a lot of us over-reacted too. I expect every country has a way in which the most of the population denies the fucking blatantly apparent – in England I found it was how one can’t anticipate winter after winter one's pipes will freeze and break, in Italy it was how one can’t stop speeding blind around hairpin turns, in France how one can’t resist having long vacations from elderly relatives during a heat wave and expecting the government to take care of them in the interim. Here, it’s ‘Oh! The moisture isn’t freezing in my sinuses when I inhale through my nose! I'm stripping down, man, because this shit is summer!’

I may have found someone to go to Gotterdammerung with me, but I doubt he'll go for it after he's had time to reflect on the 5.5 hours. However, I think he's got a line on some mushrooms. Shrooms and opera go together like reefer and cartoons, or crystal and jungle, or brownies and loving. I remember the first opera I saw after munching. Barber of Seville, Opera Lyra, Ottawa 1998. When Figaro launched into 'Largo al factotum' I started crying, it was so beautiful. Couldn't stop until the end. Opera gets the shitty end of the lollipop these days - as usual I blame television. Particularly Hanna-Barbera cartoons - 'Largo al factotum' being the 'Fiiiiiiiii-ga-ro, fiiiii-ga-ro, figaro figaro figaro' shit Bugs Bunny was always fucking around. Well, mushrooms fixed the damage that wascally wabbit wrought.

It's Tom Selleck's birthday. This will probably be a national holiday for our children's generation, so I suggest we all take tomorrow off to celebrate. Or, you know, because we're sick after over-exposing ourselves whilst drunk and spring-fevered.

I see you baby

When I listen to Mozart, I feel like I'm full of little splinters I'd forgotten about that are being painlessly pulled out. The concert was a series of pieces he'd written for specific singers, sang by three Canadian singers with similar strengths. Karina Gauvin, the soprano, was fucking divine. Gigi gave me a CD of her singing Handel - listening to her sing 'Barbara' right now. So clean, so beautiful, like Handel should be. Yet not even Handel gives me that sensation of something bad being taken out.

The songs were interspersed with Colm Feore reading passages from Mozart's correspondence with his singers, his father, and his wife. Mozart wrote a pretty fucking solid dirty letter. Teasing, funny and filthy. As soon as I stopped laughing at it I got a lousy voyeuristic feeling, though. This was a unparalleled genius who could knit reality together in the most beautiful way, and suddenly a sold-out concert hall is laughing (on his 250th birthday no less) at a dirty letter he wrote to his wife? Seems hellish in a way. Perhaps he wouldn't have minded.

I wonder why we don't mind. Why are the lives of the famous open season to us? Is it a fascination with the creative process, and some instinctual or unconscious equation of celebrity with creativity? Is it cool to hear Mozart's pet name for his wife's snatch in a super-public forum because we need to understand as much as we can about a man who could do the almost supernatural things he did? And does whatever emotion that allows that have any relationship with what allows us to be interested in the marital dynamic of Spederline? Or is it just sheer nasty schadenfreude, consoling ourselves about not being rich and famous?

Hmmm. Went from dirty Austrians to dirty Americans with the late-late showing of the Scientology episode of South Park. This episode was banned in the United Kingdom and may not re-air in the United States due to the efforts of poor Tom Cruise. It was a Mormon episode style exposé of the belief system, but much less gentle. This one was one-flying-bird in the face of Scientology. Closeted-Tom-Cruise was the least of it, although that was funny enough to almost pee over. Splashing out the 'secrets' of Scientology and the dare to sue at the end. . . I bet the Tom Cruise brou-hah-hah was no more than a device to spin attention away from the Scientology exposé. Although it would be socially interesting if it really was about someone trying desperately to stop any suggestions he's gay. He may be the last A-list actor this gets to be some crazy issue with, if our society keeps evolving towards Renton's vision of 'no men, no women, just wankers' from Trainspotting. Must be frustrating for him.

But, you know, fuck him. What can I say. Both Trey Parker or Matt Stone are - what they are. Which is something I don't have words for. Something really fucking awesome. They have balls, and their balls make me laugh. Is there anything more lovable than that? Besides baby penguins and Lady's dealer.

Love notwithstanding, I'm still not getting television in my own place. My goodnight spliff last night in front of Bravo saw a video of Dolly Parton covering John Lennon's Imagine. Oh Dolly. I love you, but I think I'll just listen to Jolene again. It also saw that Il Divo's two albums are occupying the top two spots on the 'classical' charts. I can feel the bile rising in my throat. But maybe that's from having to work today to prepare for Wednesday's transfer. Oh well. Tonight should be fun.

Lovely dirt

Mr. C has the best view. You can see the sunrise over the lake, and Toronto being Toronto you have a gorgeous shoreline of rotting factories and tumble-down smokestacks. Wish I had a camera for y'all. I wonder if it was growing up in a forest that makes me love urban decay. Maybe it's Toronto. Daily Dose of Imagery, linked in the sidebar, is heavy into the beautiful urban decay of Toronto. I just read Camera Lucida, a Gigi loan, by Roland Barthes. Pretty yummy, and it's made looking at photographs more fun. I can't wait until the defense is over! I'll forget the Canadian cannabis industry and the French language and read semiotics books and Jung and study Italian and smoke reefahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Today, my dulcet darlings, is the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Oh, Mozart. I bet in 1756 God realized the end of January was the most depressing time of the year, so he threw down a bit of fucking perfection to make the world a better place. Can we please invent some new adjective to describe Mozart? Some mix of 'lovely' and 'perfect' and 'spell-binding'? Saying Mozart is perfect is like saying the Beatles were kinda nice and the Temptations had decent harmonies. To celebrate, Gigi is taking me to Mozart: A Life in Letters tonight. I'm wiggly with excitement because it's Mozart, and it's mostly singing. This is going to be a long day. I want to go now! NOW!

Last night my analyst and I worked with a dream whose dénouement featured me and Gigi struggling to explain to one of my ex-boyfriends why Sebastien from Invasions barbares was hot - in non-physical terms so Ex wouldn't feel inadequate. As if hearing things like 'he's hot because he's supremely competent without having to talk much' isn't going to make somebody in the mood for inadequacy feel inadequate. Anyways, at the end of the session the analyst delivered it:

'You have a problem with men.'

Ah, all is clear now. Cue Eroica, please.

Really, last night it came clear that I can roll around in singledom like a happy little pig in shit as much as I want but the men I love - my family, my friends, any possible male spawn - deserve more affection and understanding than I give now. I think this is what bothers me about the self-help industry oriented around gender relations. There's a lot more to gender relations than romance, yet that industry objectifies the opposite sex through the prism of romance because that's what pre-occupies most people enough to pay for help with. But these tend to be the easiest formed and easiest broken emotional bonds. So do they really deserve so much proportionate attention? Is the fact that I can take my non-naked men for granted a reason to take them for granted? Surely not.

Moving on. Riding the metro when I'm snaked always opens up paranoid and shocking visions of human existence. Last night I was borrowing a handsome man-purse that I'd used to get my thesis out of Kinko's without getting hurt, obviously worth a couple hundred, and I think it made more people approach me for money than I get when I'm wearing my six-year-old courrier bag. Anyways, that made the paranoia a touch worse, so when I was tired of it I started reading Naked Pictures of Famous People, the Jon Stewart book Lady gave me for Jesus's birthday. Oh, how I laughed. I think that was the first time I've laughed alone in public since the glass-dick joke FEB told me in 1999 popped into my head while I was shopping at H&M this summer. People don't laugh enough.

Coffee, assassin of youth

For those of you who care, which could be nobody, Country Style is introducing espresso machines. You should care. I’ll tell you why.

If I’m in Italy, want espresso and am not able to make it myself for some reason, I have some options:

1. Go to a sit-down pasticceria or any gelateria
2. Go to a café and throw it back at the bar
3. Go to a bar and throw it back at the bar
4. Go to a vending machine (I promise, 80% of the time it’s drinkable)
5. Have a Pocket Coffee – oh Pocket Coffees, I miss you soooooo much.

What do you not see in that list? I’ll give you a hint – our options in Canada outside of a downtown core or non-caker neighborhood:

1. Starbucks

And our options in Canada outside of gasoline alleys, suburbs, and shopping complexes:

1. Dick

Dick has its places, but my coffee cup isn’t one of them. Starbucks is what fucking gets me. Selling insanely over-priced coffee in the equivalent of Holiday Inns, coffee which is at best reasonable and at worst horsepiss, offering no particular benefits but an essential monopoly on espresso, some Fair-Trade products, and a successful brand image. And the people who work there talk to us in the morning when we have sunglasses squished over our faces, a deep green complexion, and one hand held over our stomachs, bracing ourselves to get a latté down there to fuel the Walk of Shame.

All of which is to say, I fucking hate Starbucks. There was a line on the Sopranos once touching on this – I think it was Pauly who called these places the rape of a culture. Comedy? Hyperbole? Sure, but not a lie. Starbucks has successfully branded espresso as a luxury drink in this country, and charges accordingly. But espresso is for the masses, not just for those of us who have the time, money and patience to put up with that shit or who live in a city with real cafés. So the fact that Country Style – the Burger King to Tim Horton’s McDonalds, no less – is going to get it out there thrills me to my toes. I doubt it will hurt Starbuck’s present business much since people are unreasonably addicted to the brand. But I wish to fuck it would. And I sincerely hope it's just the first step leading to a large population of cakers who drink espresso without ever having set foot in one of those dens of thieves.

Now, if only the Fair Trade shit caught on . . .

Good morning good morning good morning a

I've got nothing to say, but it's ok. Except that to point out that in the 1980's Bruce Springsteen was a damn fine-looking man. Bit of a horsey-face, but I reckon I like that. It's possible he wasn't fine at all, of course. I could probably live comfortably without ever hearing one of his songs again, but the lyrics of Born to Run are everything I've ever wanted my men to say to me that they haven't, so there you are.

I blame television.

My heart is sore today. Sort of a general tenderness, like it spent ten minutes too long on the elliptical trainer. I think it's contrary to my breeding to take a step back from the ridiculous power struggles of loviness; I can feel at least five different emotions chomping at the bit to jump back into the fray and scream,

"I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WROOOOOOOOONG! ALL HAIL SPLIFFE."

But I shan't. I need to restrain my megalomania to the political arena, or I'll never take over the world. And then who would take care of y'all? Also, for once I'm not sure I'm right.

Mercy mercy me, look at that sunshine. I have to go walk in it, though it's looking colder than a defence secretary's tits out there. Last night I noticed my skin and the 'whites' of my eyes are damn close to the same colour. Gross. Although I'm feeling physically better since I started eating normal food and going to the gym again, I need the weekend a little, I think. It will be hectic, but there will be music and long lazy mornings involved. Sweet.

Mostly, I want to see Lady's hair. Where's your hair, bitch?

I don't know if you ever look at the food blogs I have linked in the sidebar, but I really must advise you to look at the salmon galette recipe posted on Cindy's Kitchen today. It's fucking pornographic. I think she has a function to read the page in English, for all you monophones.

Oh fuck . . .

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Somebody get me a fucking paper bag to hyperventilate my fucking rage into. Honestly, first the Hollywood establishment tries to obliterate my fond memories of John Schnieder's fine motherfucking ass, and now this. What the fuck kind of nasty fucking world do we live in?

No, no, no, tell me this is a nightmare, slap me, pinch me, fist me and punch me in the fuckin' face. This is the sort of shit that happens when you vote Conservative. Fuck all y'all. Bitches. That's it, that's the fucking living end. I'm going to form a tribe, live a nomadic life on horseback, and descend on your cities like the wrath of God every couple years for gold, grain, and booty. Then you'll be sorry this idea ever even fucking entered civilized consciousness.

Hee hee hee . . . booty.

So since the COC accidentally sent me two season passes I have a spare ticket for Gotterdammerung. 5.5 hours of pure Wagnerian bliss. Gigi is otherwise engaged that night and I don't know anyone else willing to spend 5.5 straight hours with Wagner, including my opera teacher, her husband, or any of the other students. Seems rather a waste.

California dreamin'

Last night, instead of sleeping like a sensible girl, I watched the Colbert Report. He reported some British psychologist issued a paper about the 24th of January being the roughest day of the year, depression-wise. I hope that’s true. I felt fucking r-u-p-t rough yesterday – ready to burst into tears between 16h and 19h at the slightest provocation and fucking irritable all day. Not Lady irritable, but if-I-stab-this-dick-in-the-face-with-a-pen-will-the-relief-be-worth-the-guilt-and-incarceration irritable. The crappy thing about language classes is the other students, you know what I mean, jelly bean? Especially when you have to work in pairs with one with a selective mental debility about the subjunctive tense.

I had just ascribed the pig-shit feeling to sheer physical and mental exhaustion from the thesis. But then it makes sense that this would be the most physically and mentally exhausting time of year for people generally, what with being broke from the holidays, back at work, plunged in darkness for most of the day, and all the relationships snapping like twigs after people had held out for those few extra soul-destroying months to score Christmas presents. All that physical and mental exhaustion throws you right into the arms of depression, so it would be the most depressing time of the year for most of us I suppose. This is cool, because really I wasn’t all that depressed yesterday. I mean, I wanted to stab other people in the face, not myself, so it’s all good.

So yay. This bitch of a month is almost over, and the short bitches of days are getting longer, bitches. Soon we'll be porting around that sexy sunscreen smell and smoking outside because we want to, and not because we have to. Sooooooon, my pretty. We'll be getting hooled and tanned on our roofs and drinking right from the keg under the stars. Our biggest seasonal worry will be getting badly-placed sunburns or poison ivy rashes while making love in the warm, bright outdoors. The men will strip down. The ladies will start waxing again. The hibernating animals are already twitching in thier sleep, cranky-ass bears are starting to wake up and look for food, and the leopard frogs frozen into the mud at the bottom of the swamps are dreaming up cacaphonous symphonies of sexy song.

And I'll start calling y'all 'sweetie' and 'darling' instead of 'bitch'. Give me time.

On my way out of work, a manager asked what I'm going to do with my time now that the thesis is submitted. The easy answer is re-learn sleep, watch cable while I house-sit, and think about how I should prepare the defense. The harder answer is,

"Uhhhhhhhhhmmmmm . . . ."

There are too many things to wrap my brain around. And I'm having a hard time thinking about it when I should be thinking about preparing the defence and all the Europeanity that will be surrounding it.

Scratch that. I have a hard time thinking about it when I should be sleeping. Why can't I sleep?

I require narcotics.

Do your time, then come home for good . . .

So the electioneering is over for a few years. I can't wait to see the feeding frenzy for the Liberal leadership - have a serious soft spot for Ignatieff. Not based on the fact that he's fine. Being the anti-TV trog I am, I hadn't knowingly seen a visual of him before yesterday.

Anyways, I'm not looking into emigrating to Finland quite yet.

Asking myself if I dealt with the thesis crunch well. First because I'm thinking the jury won't care it was submitted before the election results came in and I was playing a game of 'run-away-from-the-pyscho-killer-by-getting-into-your-apartment-extra-fast' with myself. Anyways, it got the bug out of my ass. Second because I went cocking crazy panicky Saturday. Never used to do that over academics. Of course, academics used to be my undergrad, which was a piece of piss.* I reacted to the panic by gorging on Korean junk food, canned coffee, and cigarettes. If I'd been sensible, I would have kept up my energy with perogies, ginseng, cardio, and NOT cigarettes. Now I feel gross and cranky as I stop smoking again. Not to mention I'm still looking like yellow translucent hell. I need to find better ways to panic, apparently. I should do that BEFORE the next time I panic.

In other news, it's the 1965th anniversary of the assassination of my favourite examplary case of why patrician classes self-destruct, Caligula. Winston Churchill died today too. Rather later, of course. Edith Wharton was born. The Age of Innocence was nice, don't be scared off by the Martin Scorcese film. Neil Diamond was also born on this day, once upon a Jonathon Livingston Seagull. I read something else by that author, Richard Bach, when I was fourteen or something - Illusions - don't remember it too well except I liked it and it made me really hungry.

*I wonder how 'piece of piss' got to mean super-easy. You reckon it's because you're saying something is as easy as peeing a little? Or because pee is liquid so it's easy to seperate into little sections which would be pieces if they weren't liquid? I reckon it's the first one.

It's finished. It's printed. It's delivered. It's gone. Well, three of them are gone. One of them is with me. I've been showing it to everybody, like photos of my grandkids. You know, I was completely wrong to compare this to a dead-on-its-feet relationship. I love you, little thesis, with your nice laser pages and your pretty maps and exhaustive references. I luuuuuuuuuuv you. I know you only hurt me because you love me too.

It's the joke of all time that I'm at work. I can't even talk.

I have J'attendrai stuck in my head, because I've heard the Dalida disco version a few times and the smoking hot captain in Das Boot listened to another. For once, I like the French words better than the Italian words. Obviously because I'm a bird who's been flying away, and who now needs to seek unconsciousness in her nest, because I haven't slept in a few days. But thinking about that for two minutes, I don't know how to translate 'l'oubli'. It just occurred to me it could also mean the forgotten one, right? Like, the other bird the bird who flies away flew from? And there's no-one I'm in a hurry to fly back to today. Maybe tomorrow. These things come and go, don't you know.

So, if you know me you probably have a good idea of who I'm voting for. Let me show you something that is having absolutely no impact on my decision in any way, except to think dude's a fucking dick:

>>>Michael Moore Statement on Canadian Election>>

Michael Moore is currently in production on his next movie. As an avid lover of all things Canadian, he has issued the following statement regarding Canada's upcoming election on Monday:

Oh, Canada -- you're not really going to elect a Conservative majority on Monday, are you? That's a joke, right? I know you have a great sense of humor, and certainly a well-developed sense of irony, but this is no longer funny. Maybe it's a new form of Canadian irony -- reverse irony! OK, now I get it. First, you have the courage to stand against the war in Iraq -- and then you elect a prime minister who's for it. You declare gay people have equal rights -- and then you elect a man who says they don't. You give your native peoples their own autonomy and their own territory -- and then you vote for a man who wants to cut aid to these poorest of your citizens. Wow, that is intense! Only Canadians could pull off a hat trick of humor like that. My hat's off to you.

Far be it from me, as an American, to suggest what you should do. You already have too many Americans telling you what to do. Well, actually, you've got just one American who keeps telling you to roll over and fetch and sit. I hope you don't feel this appeal of mine is too intrusive but I just couldn't sit by, as your friend, and say nothing. Yes, I agree, the Liberals have some 'splainin' to do. And yes, one party in power for more than a decade gets a little... long. But you have a parliamentary system (I'll bet you didn't know that -- see, that's why you need Americans telling you things!). There are ways at the polls to have your voices heard other than throwing the baby out with the bath water.

These are no ordinary times, and as you go to the polls on Monday, you do so while a man running the nation to the south of you is hoping you can lend him a hand by picking Stephen Harper because he's a man who shares his world view. Do you want to help George Bush by turning Canada into his latest conquest? Is that how you want millions of us down here to see you from now on? The next notch in the cowboy belt? C'mon, where's your Canadian pride? I mean, if you're going to reduce Canada to a cheap download of Bush & Co., then at least don't surrender so easily. Can't you wait until he threatens to bomb Regina? Make him work for it, for Pete's sake.

But seriously, I know you're not going to elect a guy who should really be running for governor of Utah. Whew! I knew it! You almost had me there. Very funny. Don't do that again. God, I love you, you crazy cold wonderful neighbors to my north. Don't ever change.

Michael Moore


Gosh, that letter is inspiring in its inappropriacy. In fact, it's inspiring me to write quite an emotional letter to a man I've never met.

Dear Michael Moore:

In Bowling for Columbine, you showed serious disrepect for the truth not only when you presented some slightly sauced chick in a bar and a 21 year old Starbucks pedant as typical non-door-locking Canadians, but worse, when you ignored the copy-cat killing that took place in Alberta soon after the Columbine massacre. I think you ignored it because contradicted your central idea about America's violence being about fear and not self-righteous jerkdom combined with easy access to firearms. You strike me as the sort of man who would be happy to adjust the facts to suit his thesis, even if it meant treating the death of some poor highschool kid like something that didn't and couldn't happen. You also strike me as the sort of man who would fire off a ridiculous, condescending letter to my country because a Conservative majority would make the ideas of Columbine look dated and even sloppier. You know. As a jerk.

Of course that incident may have escaped your fine-tooth research comb because the perp could only get his hands on a rifle (gun control laws, ya know?) so there was only one death. But if that was the case, then instead of being a jerk, you'd just be a dick. The sort of dick who'd naturally assume Canadians are as ignorant of the nature of their political system as Americans.

Either way, nothing could make me vote Conservative this year, but your letter made me think about it.

Stop being a dick, you jerk,

Mlle La Spliffe

All of which is a way for me to say, vote the way you think is best. That's what democracy's about. But really, voting Conservative just because they aren't Liberals is a touch petulant. I hope whoever votes Conservative does it for real ideological reasons. No matter how half-baked, stupid, and self-defeating they are.

So - I dozed fitfully for a few hours and then went to Kinko's to check the proof. As I did - checked the silky pages gently like a daddy checking for all his newborn's fingers and toes - I felt a feeling I haven't felt for awhile. I think the kids call it 'pride'. Highly reccommended. It makes you feel like what I imagine having the biggest whang in the boy's room would feel like. I've blitzed this bitch for the past two weeks in an almost unholy way, and at the risk of not living up to my self-deprecatory mangiacake half, I do believe it's good. I hope the French agree. On verra.

Now I wait for the finals. Go to work for a few hours, despite my visually apparent sleep-deprived uselessness, work off some of the stress and Benson toxins in the gym, come back to Davisville, and sleep with a final copy of my thesis tonight instead of a teddy bear or a slut.

Take care of your darlin' selves.

I sent it to Kinkos. The Kinkos guys I talked to were awfully helpful. I'm guessing they're accustomed to dealing with a massive quantity of cracked out grad students sending them things in the middle of the night and not being absolutely sure what needs to be in colour.

MADD has some great don't-drive-stoned ads out. Don't drive stoned, y'all. I have no idea if what I just sent to Kinkos makes any sense. My brain, my beautiful beautiful brain. I wonder if I can sleep.

The only emotional experience I can compare this ordeal to at the moment is a long break-up. The same sort of empty, what-have-I-been-doing-for-the-past-year-and-a-half feeling. I look like that kind of hell too. Still, if the defense isn't just a way for France to dig its knives into me one more time, I think I'll feel pretty good when it's ACTUALLY over. And the empty feeling might have something to do with the dénouement of Das Boot. Don't have wars, y'all.

Fucking dark before the dawn

Panicking again. This time because I'm so close to finished I know something has to cock up. And people ask why I'm in analysis . . .

I don't know what I would have done without Lady, without Gigi (who just did some beeeeyoudiful last minute revisions for me), without Mlle C or Mme N - I don't know what I would have done without ALL y'all who held my hand through this garbage. It'll be over soon, bitches, and then I'll re-grow some sort of personality, and make it allllll up to yiz.

I had a point, though - yes, I remember. The house I'm sitting has History Television. It fucking rocks. I'd forgotten how nice it is as background during revision. Still not tempted at all to get cable, but I'm enjoying it. Except the Serta mattress/bed ads. Now I'm going to book out of the office and watch Das Boot on History Television as I do the final revision. That's probably a bad omen (make it through the writing just to get mown down by the aerial firepower of the defence! Nooooooooooooooo!) but now that it's occurred to me it's a bad omen it'll probably be a worse omen if I don't watch it.

Anaaaaaaaaaaalysis . . .

UPDATE

I did say something awhile ago about accentuating the positive, right? So I'd like to take this opportunity to point out Koreans are awesome and sometimes the ones with shops sell cans of iced coffee there. Therefore I have to thank them along with everybody else, in terms of getting this thesis done. Props to you, Koreans. Mad props. You've always been there when I needed you.

Also, the captain in Das Boot is just astonishing. Like, drop-my-drink astonishing. Blue eyes don't often work, but when they do . . . aw, fuck it, brown's still better.

The eye of the storm

The word processing programme appears to be requiring a breather from the sheer fucking genius I'm lathering it down with, so I'll let y'all know I'm not dead yet. I was supposed to go to the Lula Lounge tonight to help celebrate the anniversary of Mr. N's auspicious birth. By three o'clock, it was clear that wasn't going to happen. By four o'clock, it was clear I wasn't even going to pass by to drop off his present. I called to let him know.

"Man, that thesis is going to be the death of you."

"Yeah, I can't get it together, I'm panicking. I'm getting out of town until this is finished."

So here I am, out of town. In Davisville. And the retarded thing is that I really meant it, and I really feel like I'm out of town now. When I first spent the summer in Toronto back in the last millenium, some smart-ass told me Northern Ontario started at St. Clair. I probably said something rude in response, and now I'm out of town in fucking Davisville.

The place, which I'm nominally sitting while the owner's in Ireland, is giving me a taste of the 80-k plus life. Hot men live in this building. Hot straight men. They move uptown, it seems, like spawning salmon moving upriver. Beautiful view of the skyline, clean both in basic sanitary terms (neither Little G or I have got the dish-soap we so desperately need for five days - 'nuff said - we're both Sag and can live in filth indefinitely) and design terms. Big flat-screen, fake fireplace, tasteful colours, Coldplay CDs, a swimming pool downstairs that isn't open at any of the hours I'd dream of using it. Five things that definitely do not exist in my apartment. It turns out Coldplay is good revising music. Who'd a thunk? I don't have a particular problem with Coldplay, I'd always just thought it was the sort of thing sensitive-type men put on when they light some candles and touch themselves. Which is fine. Me, I like the Magnum P.I. theme.

Hunkered down as in a barrack here, with my evil friend-in-need Benson H, $15 worth of Korean junk food (which, for those of you unversed in Korean junk food, is a whole fucking fuckload of Korean junk food), two computers and you, gentle reader. When I emerge, I'll be $15 of Korean junk food fatter and this fucker will be ready for presentation. I found a huge factual error running through it that made me suspect I'd been slipping myself crack, but I think the damage is controlled now and everything will eventually be hunky-dory. Now go. Get out. It's Saturday night. GO!