Figaro and I are watching the Terry Jones series on the Crusades that came out eons ago. Figaro hasn’t read much about the Crusades before and I think he’s finding all the horrible stories especially disturbing – for me, what I have read before has all mixed up into a welter of dates, names and atrocities that are too gruesome to make the effort to remember in detail, and this series calls them back.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a failing that North Americans generally are incapable of thinking historically, that we don’t frame our selves and our experiences directly against a background of ancestors and tradition. Committed, rabid Jungian that I am, I believe a good, honest study of how one is in oneself and how that oneselfness must confront the world makes up for the stability lost from sacrificing old religions, old prescribed but reassuringly predictable gender roles, and safe, established life patterns. I think the intellectual and physical freedoms we’ve gained through such sacrifices make them well worth it.
I think what is a fairly specifically North American failing – especially an American failing, because their national identity cuts them off even more abruptly from their ancestral identity than the Canadian one – is not understanding most of the people in the world think far more historically than we do, because they live and breathe the consequences of history. For us, history is a pretty story of how we reached our present comfort and prosperity; for almost everyone else, it’s anything but. We can afford to ignore history in our daily lives, take it for granted, and other people can’t. And our great practical failing is mindlessly blaming other people for that inability instead of factoring it into how we work and negotiate with them, or how it plays into their relationship with each other.
The other day - coindentally, the day Figaro suggested renting the series - I met an old Dutch man who told me he was Jewish within five minutes. He seemed pretty nice, and had some stuff to say about things, and somehow - I think because of the flap over the Pope quoting some Byzantine over the violence inherent in Mohammed's message - the Crusades came up. He told me that the Crusades were about the rampant running of Muslims all through southern and eastern Europe, and started rapid fire talk when I tried to suggest they came about because of Peter-the-Hermit-type Christian fervour, the appeals of the Byzantine emperor, and the desire of some younger artistocratic sons to get property. I can't stand that - especially since he was about 70 and I can't find it in my heart to talk over 70 year olds. They remind me too much of my grandfather. Then I feel like I've got no balls.
My point is, if I was an idiot or if I hadn't received the education I had about the huge divisions of ethnicities and spheres of influence within the Muslim faith that rival those of the Christian faith, I probably would have bought what he was saying wholesale. When we - secular or "Jesus-loves-me-and-has-a-pointy-beard" type North Americans - look at Muslims through the filter of our media and the prominence of insane terrorists, we see one angry group who won't let go of ancestral grievances we don't understand or sympathize with, and no doubt having such a perception it would be reassuring to be told one of the ancestral grievances - the Crusades - Wasn't Your Fault.
Anyways. The series is okay. Kind of funny and sparks the urge to research, don’t you know. Alright if you don’t have a television but want to allow yourself an hour of video stimulation a night.
Now a nicer ancestral story. I was locking up my bike the other day when a limo driver with a thick accent who uses the dry cleaners next to my flat said hi and offered me a lift, as he always does. He sees some humour in offering a girl on a bike a ride in a limo. Heh. Anyways, then he asked me where I'm from, and when I told him he started talking in Italian! He was Ethiopian - you know, from that soveriegn country, the only soveriegn African country at the time, I think, that Mussolini's Italy invaded and annexed. My nonno worked there well into the second world war. I told him that, shook my head, and said Italy in Ethiopia was a "storia brutta"; he just shrugged, and said in perfect Canadianese, "Ah, whatayagonnado".
If only it were always that easy.
venerdì, settembre 22, 2006
giovedì, settembre 21, 2006
More television ranting
Would anyone like to make a sporting bet that Germaine Greer is kicking herself for unloading her vitriol on Steve Irwin’s barely-cold corpse when, if she had waited a matter of days, she could have laid into the critically injured body of Richard Hammond? Considering the macho tenor of his show Top Gear, she could have dressed such an attack up as feminism and so contributed something to the movement besides her recent call to pederasty. What a crop of boys being boys and tragedy ensuing we’ve been having for television lately.
The wildly popular show Hammond co-hosted for the BBC, Top Gear, is great television. For a feminist who doesn’t drive or have a television, it was a miracle of production genius that the twenty-seven objectified-Pirelli-Girl featuring minutes of a Top Gear I saw at a friend’s house meant anything to me, let alone entertained me. But it assuredly did. In some television contexts, long shots of beautifully pneumatic women interspersed with car assembly/racing/breathless semi-sexual description make sense.
Steve Irwin, unwatchable as I found him and hard as I laughed at South Park’s parody of his animal anal manipulations, also made television that made sense. Thousands of viewers developed a new relationship with the grosser, more forbidding animal species, which probably did conservation efforts some good. Top Gear, if anything, makes more sense. Exciting wet-dream cars and suggestions of the macho culture that goes along with them are interspersed with demonstrations of middle-class market models. The combination brings in a wide audience, including thousands of self-respecting women, who get useful consumer information and are amused in the process.
Despite Irwin’s and Hammond’s shows making sense and being helpful, good television, tragedy has struck twice in almost as many weeks. How? Who do we blame for what has happened to these men?
Media parasites like Greer crawled out of the woodwork to point the finger at the body when Irwin died and more will probably come out now. Irwin, the rant will run, died out of his own ambitious yobbishness, but at least he had a cause. Hammond, however, wasn’t helping anything except his own pocketbook, and in the process encouraged unsafe driving, dismissive representations of women – well, I’ll let the people who want to make such arguments think up more themselves. But if Hammond survives the accident, he will live to survive such censure.
Here’s the problem, though. Irwin and Hammond both had spectacularly stupid jobs and obviously made a poor decision in taking them, and the people who love them the most may have a hard time forgiving them for that. But we – the viewers, who enjoyed the context of their shows – we’re the ones who gave them their spectacularly stupid jobs. In a very practical, direct sense we pay the salaries for those jobs, because advertisers measure how much we watch such shows and buy ad time accordingly. Make no mistake. We aren’t television’s customers; we’re television’s commodity and at the same time its director.
One doesn't measure a television channel’s success by its number of viewers; one measures the quantity of ad revenue generated in an effort to reach viewers. Television networks make every effort to get huge numbers of viewers with specific spending patterns – those who are likely to travel abroad, for example, or those in the market for a new car. They go to absurd lengths coming up with the exact programming to please us and draw us in. They spend millions of dollars a year on hundreds of pilots they’ll discard overnight if it doesn’t engage the right demographic. Once the channel has the right viewers, it ‘sells’ them to the companies who purchase advertising time on their programmes.
Seen from that perspective – which, I assure you from industrial experience, is the perspective television executives and media buyers see it from – we the viewers are very powerful people. Powerful enough to give Steve Irwin and Richard Hammond the spectacularly stupid jobs that now cause their families so much pain. We enjoyed the events that led up to their tragedies the same way Romans enjoyed gladiatorial combat; we created the market that encouraged them to ever greater foolishness. But where the Romans took advantage of the gladiators’ slave status, we’ve taken advantage of Irwin’s and Hammond’s media ambitions and recklessness.
We haven’t stopped there. We watch reality shows by the dozen featuring progressively more outlandish or dangerous tasks performed by non-professionals. We scorn the people who appear on them and mock their obviously overweening desire for fame, but we give them that fame and so encourage others to chase it. First Irwin, now Hammond; inevitably someone will be seriously hurt or killed making one of the more extreme reality shows and no doubt we’ll be quick to condemn them for their own tragedy too. And probably have to hear to what Germaine Bloody Greer thinks she has to say about it.
Alternatively, we could embrace the power that we have over the television market and stop using it for cheap vicarious thrills. But then we might have to, god forbid, read a book or talk to our loved ones or something while network executives desperately search for something to broadcast that doesn’t involve people being seriously hurt or worse. In the meantime, we could do the families of Irwin and Hammond a favour by thinking of the pain they’re going through and not loudly blaming their men for the tragedies our voyeurism pushed them to.
The wildly popular show Hammond co-hosted for the BBC, Top Gear, is great television. For a feminist who doesn’t drive or have a television, it was a miracle of production genius that the twenty-seven objectified-Pirelli-Girl featuring minutes of a Top Gear I saw at a friend’s house meant anything to me, let alone entertained me. But it assuredly did. In some television contexts, long shots of beautifully pneumatic women interspersed with car assembly/racing/breathless semi-sexual description make sense.
Steve Irwin, unwatchable as I found him and hard as I laughed at South Park’s parody of his animal anal manipulations, also made television that made sense. Thousands of viewers developed a new relationship with the grosser, more forbidding animal species, which probably did conservation efforts some good. Top Gear, if anything, makes more sense. Exciting wet-dream cars and suggestions of the macho culture that goes along with them are interspersed with demonstrations of middle-class market models. The combination brings in a wide audience, including thousands of self-respecting women, who get useful consumer information and are amused in the process.
Despite Irwin’s and Hammond’s shows making sense and being helpful, good television, tragedy has struck twice in almost as many weeks. How? Who do we blame for what has happened to these men?
Media parasites like Greer crawled out of the woodwork to point the finger at the body when Irwin died and more will probably come out now. Irwin, the rant will run, died out of his own ambitious yobbishness, but at least he had a cause. Hammond, however, wasn’t helping anything except his own pocketbook, and in the process encouraged unsafe driving, dismissive representations of women – well, I’ll let the people who want to make such arguments think up more themselves. But if Hammond survives the accident, he will live to survive such censure.
Here’s the problem, though. Irwin and Hammond both had spectacularly stupid jobs and obviously made a poor decision in taking them, and the people who love them the most may have a hard time forgiving them for that. But we – the viewers, who enjoyed the context of their shows – we’re the ones who gave them their spectacularly stupid jobs. In a very practical, direct sense we pay the salaries for those jobs, because advertisers measure how much we watch such shows and buy ad time accordingly. Make no mistake. We aren’t television’s customers; we’re television’s commodity and at the same time its director.
One doesn't measure a television channel’s success by its number of viewers; one measures the quantity of ad revenue generated in an effort to reach viewers. Television networks make every effort to get huge numbers of viewers with specific spending patterns – those who are likely to travel abroad, for example, or those in the market for a new car. They go to absurd lengths coming up with the exact programming to please us and draw us in. They spend millions of dollars a year on hundreds of pilots they’ll discard overnight if it doesn’t engage the right demographic. Once the channel has the right viewers, it ‘sells’ them to the companies who purchase advertising time on their programmes.
Seen from that perspective – which, I assure you from industrial experience, is the perspective television executives and media buyers see it from – we the viewers are very powerful people. Powerful enough to give Steve Irwin and Richard Hammond the spectacularly stupid jobs that now cause their families so much pain. We enjoyed the events that led up to their tragedies the same way Romans enjoyed gladiatorial combat; we created the market that encouraged them to ever greater foolishness. But where the Romans took advantage of the gladiators’ slave status, we’ve taken advantage of Irwin’s and Hammond’s media ambitions and recklessness.
We haven’t stopped there. We watch reality shows by the dozen featuring progressively more outlandish or dangerous tasks performed by non-professionals. We scorn the people who appear on them and mock their obviously overweening desire for fame, but we give them that fame and so encourage others to chase it. First Irwin, now Hammond; inevitably someone will be seriously hurt or killed making one of the more extreme reality shows and no doubt we’ll be quick to condemn them for their own tragedy too. And probably have to hear to what Germaine Bloody Greer thinks she has to say about it.
Alternatively, we could embrace the power that we have over the television market and stop using it for cheap vicarious thrills. But then we might have to, god forbid, read a book or talk to our loved ones or something while network executives desperately search for something to broadcast that doesn’t involve people being seriously hurt or worse. In the meantime, we could do the families of Irwin and Hammond a favour by thinking of the pain they’re going through and not loudly blaming their men for the tragedies our voyeurism pushed them to.
mercoledì, settembre 20, 2006
Napalm in the morning
Fuck, I'm pissed off. Yesterday’s conference was awful in its repetitious quality. Maybe I went too soon after reading Brave New World. Like all of them always are, it was about Engagement – Audience Engagement, that is, and how to both measure it and create it. That’s pretty self-explanatory, right? Advertisers want a way to figure out how much money should be payed for such and such an ad’s ability to create an emotional or ‘engaging’ relationship between a potential consumer and a potential buy – that is, a relationship ‘engaging’ enough that the viewer will go out and buy the product advertised.
People don’t shut their bloody faces about this because television advertising used to work (and still works to a certain degree) on the Reach and Response model. That is, advertisers pay for the number of people they think they are showing their ads to by advertising on such-and-such a channel at such-and-such a time (which is why we have things like Nielsen ratings to measure show’s viewership), and in an airy-fairy hypothetical type way for the number of people who will probably go out and buy the product.
Obviously the Reach and Response model has some big problems. It was invented back in the 1950’s, when you could ‘reach’ 85% of the North American market by advertising on a total of three shows. Now even basic cable packages offer such a plethora of themed choice that audiences have become segmented, particular, grouped in new ways.
And this is what is getting people’s nipples in a twist about Engagement. For media buyer types its important because it’s just common sense that advertisers are going to push for new buying models now – wanting to advertise during a particular show, for example, rather than a particular time slot, making things like sponsorship and aggressive product placement more important.
What’s driving me to distraction is the degree to which Engagement is being taken over the top by both advertising creatives and executives – creatives because they want to build a special media identity for the brand they’re advertising, and executives so that they can find a flattering measure letting clients know how great the ad is and how many millions upon millions of dollars the advertising agency deserves for making it. The problem with both takes-over-the-top, the big fucking rabid elephant in the room that’s steadfastly ignored at all these fucking conferences, is that advertising probably doesn’t work that well, or certainly not in this ‘engagement’ sense.
Consumers buy products because something sets that product apart from competing brands and makes it unique; be it the appearance, the functionality, a low price, ease of access, or things like that. Red Bull’s ‘guerrilla marketing’ campaign, which everyone is always jizzing themselves over, had the effect of making Red Bull a lot more accessible than most energy drinks at the time it was launched. iPods, something else they won’t shut the fuck up about in terms of the marketing behind it, made programming a huge tracklist an absolute piece of piss that anyone picking up the highest-memory device could figure out in 45 seconds.
The idea behind engagement is to make the product unique through clever, targeted marketing that creates a ‘unique’ emotional connection between the potential consumer and the brand being advertised. It assumes consumers are stupid enough and superficial enough to allow an advertising experience to morph into some sort of love or loyalty for a product. It, to paraphrase Figaro’s summation when I whined at him endlessly last night about what a wicked, parasitic and unnecessary industry I’m analysing for, assumes you can package turds well enough and make people think they need them.
I’m a misanthrope and I think the worst of everybody, but I don’t think that’s true. Which annoys me, because it means that our society invests millions of dollars and thousands of white-collar college grads in an industry that is essentially a wasteful exercise in disrespect. At this point the advertising juggernaut has become a self-perpetuating industry, like the arms industry, and while the results haven’t been so spectacularly inhuman there’s certainly a sickly dehumanizing element to it that has filled me with fury.
Ah, fury, better than coffee at waking me up.
People don’t shut their bloody faces about this because television advertising used to work (and still works to a certain degree) on the Reach and Response model. That is, advertisers pay for the number of people they think they are showing their ads to by advertising on such-and-such a channel at such-and-such a time (which is why we have things like Nielsen ratings to measure show’s viewership), and in an airy-fairy hypothetical type way for the number of people who will probably go out and buy the product.
Obviously the Reach and Response model has some big problems. It was invented back in the 1950’s, when you could ‘reach’ 85% of the North American market by advertising on a total of three shows. Now even basic cable packages offer such a plethora of themed choice that audiences have become segmented, particular, grouped in new ways.
And this is what is getting people’s nipples in a twist about Engagement. For media buyer types its important because it’s just common sense that advertisers are going to push for new buying models now – wanting to advertise during a particular show, for example, rather than a particular time slot, making things like sponsorship and aggressive product placement more important.
What’s driving me to distraction is the degree to which Engagement is being taken over the top by both advertising creatives and executives – creatives because they want to build a special media identity for the brand they’re advertising, and executives so that they can find a flattering measure letting clients know how great the ad is and how many millions upon millions of dollars the advertising agency deserves for making it. The problem with both takes-over-the-top, the big fucking rabid elephant in the room that’s steadfastly ignored at all these fucking conferences, is that advertising probably doesn’t work that well, or certainly not in this ‘engagement’ sense.
Consumers buy products because something sets that product apart from competing brands and makes it unique; be it the appearance, the functionality, a low price, ease of access, or things like that. Red Bull’s ‘guerrilla marketing’ campaign, which everyone is always jizzing themselves over, had the effect of making Red Bull a lot more accessible than most energy drinks at the time it was launched. iPods, something else they won’t shut the fuck up about in terms of the marketing behind it, made programming a huge tracklist an absolute piece of piss that anyone picking up the highest-memory device could figure out in 45 seconds.
The idea behind engagement is to make the product unique through clever, targeted marketing that creates a ‘unique’ emotional connection between the potential consumer and the brand being advertised. It assumes consumers are stupid enough and superficial enough to allow an advertising experience to morph into some sort of love or loyalty for a product. It, to paraphrase Figaro’s summation when I whined at him endlessly last night about what a wicked, parasitic and unnecessary industry I’m analysing for, assumes you can package turds well enough and make people think they need them.
I’m a misanthrope and I think the worst of everybody, but I don’t think that’s true. Which annoys me, because it means that our society invests millions of dollars and thousands of white-collar college grads in an industry that is essentially a wasteful exercise in disrespect. At this point the advertising juggernaut has become a self-perpetuating industry, like the arms industry, and while the results haven’t been so spectacularly inhuman there’s certainly a sickly dehumanizing element to it that has filled me with fury.
Ah, fury, better than coffee at waking me up.
martedì, settembre 19, 2006
Conference THIS, baby
Must dash to some dumbfuck conference today. So I’m cheating and directing you to a Brazilian Girls review I wrote elsewhere. Yeah, as if the people who read this blog lack anything substantive to read and their mornings are going to be ruined without a minimum of 300 words that come out of my head.
To make up for the awesomeness of the latest Brazilian Girls album in the great equilibriating pissing competition between yin and yang that is life, I’m reading a book I fear may be crap. End of the Line, by Barry C. Lynn. I’m sorry, if I want emotion from my books I’ll read a novel with first person narration written by someone with a far better style, or possibly I'll read Steiglitz. The subject, the frailty of our globalized economy, is sober enough but the delivery is whiny and ridiculously emotive – I keep expecting him to write phrases like “curse that naughty old Willie Clinton and his sneaky ways”.
I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and finish it, though, if nothing else it’ll teach me not to get my book reccomendations from the Wall Street Journal. Viva the Economist Books & Arts section! And yes, the Guardian. The Guardian also reccommends good books. Serious.
To make up for the awesomeness of the latest Brazilian Girls album in the great equilibriating pissing competition between yin and yang that is life, I’m reading a book I fear may be crap. End of the Line, by Barry C. Lynn. I’m sorry, if I want emotion from my books I’ll read a novel with first person narration written by someone with a far better style, or possibly I'll read Steiglitz. The subject, the frailty of our globalized economy, is sober enough but the delivery is whiny and ridiculously emotive – I keep expecting him to write phrases like “curse that naughty old Willie Clinton and his sneaky ways”.
I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and finish it, though, if nothing else it’ll teach me not to get my book reccomendations from the Wall Street Journal. Viva the Economist Books & Arts section! And yes, the Guardian. The Guardian also reccommends good books. Serious.
lunedì, settembre 18, 2006
La rentrée
What a lovely weekend. It feels as though I’m coming back from a holiday this morning, which is good as next weekend will be my undergraduate reunion – I think I’ll enjoy it but it won’t be particularly restful – and the week after that I’m going to England, and both of those things will be far away from my sweetheart.
Last night was the final Music Garden concert of the year, and maybe the final one altogether if the Island aeroport expansion goes through. I shall miss them, if that’s the case, or I would if I was planning on staying in Toronto. So idyllic, last night, seeing the Kirby Quartet in front of a sunny clump of flowers, variously gentle and thrilling strains of Beethoven, Britten amd Purcell while bees and butterflies drank.
At the same time I’m not sold on the idea of pushing aeroports and flights constantly out to the ‘burbs, especially when the GTA has to give up so much of its tax revenue for crappier regions in Ontario and apparently can’t afford to improve the dismal transportation links to Pearson. But then the proposed expansion is totally half-ass and will probably just involve more Montréal flights, as if that investment wouldn’t be better made and cleaner getting us some TGVs. If I were in charge of everything, wouldn’t the world be lovely? Yes. Yes it would.
Speaking of which, I read A Brave New World this weekend. What a brainfuck. You should read it if you haven’t – everybody should. I wonder what the narrative would have been like if Huxley had had the balls to make the Savage a pure Savage, and not the traumatized child of a normal Englishwoman who was marginalized in the native community because of her sluttiness, but, you know, who the fuck cares. That book is wow.
Last night was the final Music Garden concert of the year, and maybe the final one altogether if the Island aeroport expansion goes through. I shall miss them, if that’s the case, or I would if I was planning on staying in Toronto. So idyllic, last night, seeing the Kirby Quartet in front of a sunny clump of flowers, variously gentle and thrilling strains of Beethoven, Britten amd Purcell while bees and butterflies drank.
At the same time I’m not sold on the idea of pushing aeroports and flights constantly out to the ‘burbs, especially when the GTA has to give up so much of its tax revenue for crappier regions in Ontario and apparently can’t afford to improve the dismal transportation links to Pearson. But then the proposed expansion is totally half-ass and will probably just involve more Montréal flights, as if that investment wouldn’t be better made and cleaner getting us some TGVs. If I were in charge of everything, wouldn’t the world be lovely? Yes. Yes it would.
Speaking of which, I read A Brave New World this weekend. What a brainfuck. You should read it if you haven’t – everybody should. I wonder what the narrative would have been like if Huxley had had the balls to make the Savage a pure Savage, and not the traumatized child of a normal Englishwoman who was marginalized in the native community because of her sluttiness, but, you know, who the fuck cares. That book is wow.
venerdì, settembre 15, 2006
Go on, you little minx, you know you want to
This entry should be full of insh’Allahs and knockings-on-wood because it’s about a future event and I try not to tempt fate. . . but insh’Allah, knock on wood, the Scissor Sisters concert is going to be so awesome!
I finally heard the new single yesterday and came to a realization: they make me feel funny. Like that week of the month when you want to wrap your legs around the whole world and wriggle. I love men who don’t fear the falsetto and Jake Shears embraces it. It makes me amorous. Yes. Falsettos make me amorous. His makes me want to speed away home and express some affection for my sweetheart, and then dance, or vice versa. So does Shear’s cute little rat face and the way he jiggles. His friendly dirty sexiness makes me feel like I’ve drank way too much coffee, eaten way too little, and been keeping my standards way too high for way too long.
So I’ll be back from England before the concert Mr. N picked up tickets for. This will be a fucking, fucking hard trip but the prospect of a Scissor Sisters concert immediately afterwards feels comforting. Which is strange, because I don’t get this way about pop. I’m also comforted by the upcoming COC performance of Cosi Fan Tutte – that’ll be fucking shweet – but I can’t think of another pop act that would make me get all giggly and blush-y and randy. Maybe Arcade Fire or seeing the Brazilian Girls again. I like pop, but it usually doesn’t make me want to do things. The Scissor Sisters are magic. (That reminds me of a Zinédine Zidane quote I just heard that seized on my imagination – “Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all.” Isn’t that nice?)
The Scissor Sisters, besides being a force to make us appreciate the beauty of the world around us, have found a place in my subconscious. Yesterday was the second time they came up in analysis – they swim up into my conscious mind whenever I need a reminder of how to approach and embrace upheaval in my life, everytime I need to remember fortune favours the brave and one has to holler out the awesomeness. In token of that, I’d like to introduce you to a man who wasn’t afraid to remind us to Lift Every Voice – I give you the Human Horn, Shooby Taylor accompanying Johnny Cash. When you want more, and you know you will, you can get it here. Don’t watch the footage of him at the Apollo, though. It’s too sad. Fucking people.
I finally heard the new single yesterday and came to a realization: they make me feel funny. Like that week of the month when you want to wrap your legs around the whole world and wriggle. I love men who don’t fear the falsetto and Jake Shears embraces it. It makes me amorous. Yes. Falsettos make me amorous. His makes me want to speed away home and express some affection for my sweetheart, and then dance, or vice versa. So does Shear’s cute little rat face and the way he jiggles. His friendly dirty sexiness makes me feel like I’ve drank way too much coffee, eaten way too little, and been keeping my standards way too high for way too long.
So I’ll be back from England before the concert Mr. N picked up tickets for. This will be a fucking, fucking hard trip but the prospect of a Scissor Sisters concert immediately afterwards feels comforting. Which is strange, because I don’t get this way about pop. I’m also comforted by the upcoming COC performance of Cosi Fan Tutte – that’ll be fucking shweet – but I can’t think of another pop act that would make me get all giggly and blush-y and randy. Maybe Arcade Fire or seeing the Brazilian Girls again. I like pop, but it usually doesn’t make me want to do things. The Scissor Sisters are magic. (That reminds me of a Zinédine Zidane quote I just heard that seized on my imagination – “Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all.” Isn’t that nice?)
The Scissor Sisters, besides being a force to make us appreciate the beauty of the world around us, have found a place in my subconscious. Yesterday was the second time they came up in analysis – they swim up into my conscious mind whenever I need a reminder of how to approach and embrace upheaval in my life, everytime I need to remember fortune favours the brave and one has to holler out the awesomeness. In token of that, I’d like to introduce you to a man who wasn’t afraid to remind us to Lift Every Voice – I give you the Human Horn, Shooby Taylor accompanying Johnny Cash. When you want more, and you know you will, you can get it here. Don’t watch the footage of him at the Apollo, though. It’s too sad. Fucking people.
giovedì, settembre 14, 2006
Thursday, hmmm?
I like my job but I'm in one of those states where every day is a hump day. I'm going to go work it out at the gym, and then eat at my favourite Jap place in Yorkville whose name I don't remember so I can't even plug it here. My parents are in town to cuddle the new arrival and that means, of course, that I'm overeating and don't care.
Anyways . . . thanks to La Boome for direction to the page where I found this:
Anyways . . . thanks to La Boome for direction to the page where I found this:
If I were a hygiene product, I'd be
Click here to find out which hygiene product you'd be at BRAINPUKE.COM!
mercoledì, settembre 13, 2006
Turn down the suck
Figaro and I saw Polyester a couple of days ago. We went to the vid store in search of that and of the Christopher Guest mockumentary A Mighty Wind, which was a little unfortunate because I couldn’t see it on the shelf immediately, and so asked the owner lady who I know well enough to salute on the street, “N-y, do you have ‘A Mighty Wind’?” just as she was exiting the toilets. I don’t think either she or I noticed the timing but Figaro did and nearly had a little stroke as we left the store later. So that’s what men do instead of multi-task. Search the subtext of life for poo and flatulence jokes.
Anyways, my point is Polyester really sucked and we weren’t expecting that because we’d both liked Pink Flamingoes. Figaro blamed too much studio interference and I blamed the fact that it just sucked. The timing blew so bad the only excuse I can think of for the level of suck was shitty drugs. I mean reeeeally shitty drugs. Like barbiturates or some other type of crap pill that made housewives all vague back in the 70’s.
I don’t know if we’ve missed the TIFF yet, where another Christopher Guest film premiered (For Your Consideration) but we’re in the process of missing it, no question. There’s been so much else to do, and both of us are trying to sit on our money a little; besides the Reunion I just bought a ticket for England. I’ve asked to work remotely so I can take a full week there; my grandparents have been moved into a residence so besides visiting them and all that other family stuff I’ll have more than enough time to work on the bloody site. I won't be losing money much, but, you know, things are tightening up.
More time . . . I would have liked even more time to go to France, to Calabria, to see everyone again and let them know how I love them. . . Carmen is well again and Paris isn’t going anywhere, but that new beautiful creature of a baby in my family and the situation of my grandparents are making me think of time differently. Not as though there’s just too little of it but as though it’s precious; not like a finite stash of diamonds but like 70% cocoa chocolate that needs to be savoured or else lovingly double-boiled with a little cream into an Italian hot chocolate. Mmmmm. Or a Dufflet Pastries Cointreau chocolate cake. Mmmmmm.
Anyways, my point is Polyester really sucked and we weren’t expecting that because we’d both liked Pink Flamingoes. Figaro blamed too much studio interference and I blamed the fact that it just sucked. The timing blew so bad the only excuse I can think of for the level of suck was shitty drugs. I mean reeeeally shitty drugs. Like barbiturates or some other type of crap pill that made housewives all vague back in the 70’s.
I don’t know if we’ve missed the TIFF yet, where another Christopher Guest film premiered (For Your Consideration) but we’re in the process of missing it, no question. There’s been so much else to do, and both of us are trying to sit on our money a little; besides the Reunion I just bought a ticket for England. I’ve asked to work remotely so I can take a full week there; my grandparents have been moved into a residence so besides visiting them and all that other family stuff I’ll have more than enough time to work on the bloody site. I won't be losing money much, but, you know, things are tightening up.
More time . . . I would have liked even more time to go to France, to Calabria, to see everyone again and let them know how I love them. . . Carmen is well again and Paris isn’t going anywhere, but that new beautiful creature of a baby in my family and the situation of my grandparents are making me think of time differently. Not as though there’s just too little of it but as though it’s precious; not like a finite stash of diamonds but like 70% cocoa chocolate that needs to be savoured or else lovingly double-boiled with a little cream into an Italian hot chocolate. Mmmmm. Or a Dufflet Pastries Cointreau chocolate cake. Mmmmmm.
martedì, settembre 12, 2006
The real scam
Another 9/11 has come and gone. I didn't mean to add to the blog noise about it, but I find I'm too angry to resist. Maybe now those of us who were fortunate enough to not lose family and friends in those attacks can let the next few anniversaries pass in relative calm until the 10th. I doubt it, though.
Underplaying the importance of that day should be impossible, but there should also be an element of discussion, even shame in American sentiments. Around 3000 people dead, and what do they do? Clumsily topple an evil, oppressive regime in Afghanistan that had already been evil and oppressive for years by arming corrupt, heroin-pushing, evil, oppressive warlords to the teeth? Kill thousands and thousands more who had nothing to do with it in Iraq? And not learn a goddamn thing about how the world works? I have never heard so many conspiracy theories about the attacks get bandied around as I have this year, but it's as though Americans are completely incapable of seeing the real scam; they've bought hook, line and sinker that Muslims are by nature America's enemies, and that Muslims somehow have it in their power to make up for or be punished for those attacks.
Americans saw dancing Iranians and Palestinians after the attacks and found it easier to believe they were dancing because Muslims hate the United States than because of very immediate reasons that have more to do with living standards than religion. They rant at Muslims for not having spoken out louder against the attacks, never having worked out lots of Muslims did, and that the real reason they didn't hear them is because it wasn't attention-grabbing enough or newsworthy enough. "Global Jihad" and warring civilizations sell more newspapers.
I remember back in the fall of 2001, though, being confused by the apologies of all those clerics and Muslims off the streets. I wondered, how can one Muslim apologize for the actions of another? Muslims as a group didn't plan and certainly didn't benefit from 9/11. The Qu'ran isn't a peaceful book, but that sort of mass murder is contrary to it. So why should they apologize as a group? Did Christians apologize when the Branch Davidians set themselves on fire? Did mainstream conservatives apologize when that building in Oklahoma got bombed? Did all the British tourists in Brazil apologize for Menezes's head getting blown off in London because he was wearing a jacket on a warm day?
What the fuck do they want from the Muslims of the world? How can Muslims help Americans deal with the pain of that attack? And why should they when most of them live in countries with their own horrible problems? How can Americans whine about Muslims "sheltering terrorists" when post-colonial Muslim countries are in such fucking messes that people getting blown up on the other side of the world are the least of a common person's worries?
Think about the Taliban. The population of Afghanistan was miserably oppressed under them. The fact that it gave amnesty to Bin Laden was the least of a typical Afghan's worries, not least because there'd be no reason for him to know. But the Taliban were able to keep power for a long time because they had enough guns and men to keep the country stable after years of civil war sponsored by Pakistan, the Soviet Union and the United States. People pay high prices for stability. Bush won the election in 2004 after the snatch that was the 2000 election because people wanted stability during uncertain times, right? And Americans didn't even have a civil war, territorial encroachment or heroin-cultivating warlords to worry about.
I've had enough. I'm sad this has become an anniversary of useless, spurious, propogandized finger-pointing. I'm horrified Al Quaeda's aim of setting us on a course to a clash of civilisations has worked so well so far. I don't understand how the fact more people worldwide care about the murderous after-effects of 9/11 than about those poor 3000 people who were killed on the day hasn't taught America a lesson about its place in the world. Or even fucking empathy. I wonder how many Americans actually read the article instead of glancing at the headline about the same number dying in Bangladesh every year because the government is too impoverished and corrupt to fix flood barriers. I wonder how many moments of silence dead Iraqi children get at Lockheed Martin. Jesus, it's frustrating.
Underplaying the importance of that day should be impossible, but there should also be an element of discussion, even shame in American sentiments. Around 3000 people dead, and what do they do? Clumsily topple an evil, oppressive regime in Afghanistan that had already been evil and oppressive for years by arming corrupt, heroin-pushing, evil, oppressive warlords to the teeth? Kill thousands and thousands more who had nothing to do with it in Iraq? And not learn a goddamn thing about how the world works? I have never heard so many conspiracy theories about the attacks get bandied around as I have this year, but it's as though Americans are completely incapable of seeing the real scam; they've bought hook, line and sinker that Muslims are by nature America's enemies, and that Muslims somehow have it in their power to make up for or be punished for those attacks.
Americans saw dancing Iranians and Palestinians after the attacks and found it easier to believe they were dancing because Muslims hate the United States than because of very immediate reasons that have more to do with living standards than religion. They rant at Muslims for not having spoken out louder against the attacks, never having worked out lots of Muslims did, and that the real reason they didn't hear them is because it wasn't attention-grabbing enough or newsworthy enough. "Global Jihad" and warring civilizations sell more newspapers.
I remember back in the fall of 2001, though, being confused by the apologies of all those clerics and Muslims off the streets. I wondered, how can one Muslim apologize for the actions of another? Muslims as a group didn't plan and certainly didn't benefit from 9/11. The Qu'ran isn't a peaceful book, but that sort of mass murder is contrary to it. So why should they apologize as a group? Did Christians apologize when the Branch Davidians set themselves on fire? Did mainstream conservatives apologize when that building in Oklahoma got bombed? Did all the British tourists in Brazil apologize for Menezes's head getting blown off in London because he was wearing a jacket on a warm day?
What the fuck do they want from the Muslims of the world? How can Muslims help Americans deal with the pain of that attack? And why should they when most of them live in countries with their own horrible problems? How can Americans whine about Muslims "sheltering terrorists" when post-colonial Muslim countries are in such fucking messes that people getting blown up on the other side of the world are the least of a common person's worries?
Think about the Taliban. The population of Afghanistan was miserably oppressed under them. The fact that it gave amnesty to Bin Laden was the least of a typical Afghan's worries, not least because there'd be no reason for him to know. But the Taliban were able to keep power for a long time because they had enough guns and men to keep the country stable after years of civil war sponsored by Pakistan, the Soviet Union and the United States. People pay high prices for stability. Bush won the election in 2004 after the snatch that was the 2000 election because people wanted stability during uncertain times, right? And Americans didn't even have a civil war, territorial encroachment or heroin-cultivating warlords to worry about.
I've had enough. I'm sad this has become an anniversary of useless, spurious, propogandized finger-pointing. I'm horrified Al Quaeda's aim of setting us on a course to a clash of civilisations has worked so well so far. I don't understand how the fact more people worldwide care about the murderous after-effects of 9/11 than about those poor 3000 people who were killed on the day hasn't taught America a lesson about its place in the world. Or even fucking empathy. I wonder how many Americans actually read the article instead of glancing at the headline about the same number dying in Bangladesh every year because the government is too impoverished and corrupt to fix flood barriers. I wonder how many moments of silence dead Iraqi children get at Lockheed Martin. Jesus, it's frustrating.
lunedì, settembre 11, 2006
Auntie Mistress!
I have a new nephew. Slowly but surely the list of potential bone marrow donors grows . . . as does the list of bone marrow demanders but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What a beautiful boy he is. It’s almost criminal for a family to be as good-looking as we are. Criminal.
That sort of dominated the weekend – otherwise the brunt of the dragon ride played out to the accompaniment of pain, pain, pain and Figaro illustrated to me how absolutely I grew up in a house of men, that he had to be the one to tell me, based on the experiences of ex-girlfs, that I should be cuddling a hot water bottle. That helped while it was on but hindered my walking.
I did pull myself together for the Cabbagetown fair/massive garage sale thingummy to buy a salad spinner, books and assorted other crap. I also managed to graze the yummy food at the street festival and admire how awesome it is that my neighbourhood is so diverse that at one end of it you had an Elvis impersonator and at the other you had blaring Singhalese horns while a Falun Dafa brass band marched around.
And yesterday we joined Mr. C at the Junction art festival. I like that neighbourhood so much! I know it’s the way it is because it’s at the back of beyond . . . still wish it wasn’t the back of beyond though.
That sort of dominated the weekend – otherwise the brunt of the dragon ride played out to the accompaniment of pain, pain, pain and Figaro illustrated to me how absolutely I grew up in a house of men, that he had to be the one to tell me, based on the experiences of ex-girlfs, that I should be cuddling a hot water bottle. That helped while it was on but hindered my walking.
I did pull myself together for the Cabbagetown fair/massive garage sale thingummy to buy a salad spinner, books and assorted other crap. I also managed to graze the yummy food at the street festival and admire how awesome it is that my neighbourhood is so diverse that at one end of it you had an Elvis impersonator and at the other you had blaring Singhalese horns while a Falun Dafa brass band marched around.
And yesterday we joined Mr. C at the Junction art festival. I like that neighbourhood so much! I know it’s the way it is because it’s at the back of beyond . . . still wish it wasn’t the back of beyond though.
venerdì, settembre 08, 2006
Wheels within wheels
Yay! Got a raise and some praise. And a sort of warning this place may be going under some dramatic overhaul in the near future, but I’ll still be writing.
On to abstractions. Sometimes I wonder if the real reason I'm in analysis is anything to do with entry requirements or mental health and more to do with being desperate for the opportunity to talk about things like martyrdom. Nobody's interested in that shit anymore. It's all why-do-people-suicide-bomb-this, self-immolation-that, tut-tut-tut-when-will-those-silly-people-learn. Nothing about what is so intimately you that you can't change it without being yourself anymore. At what point do you decide "this thing about me can't change, because if it changes I won't be me anymore"?
It’s hard for me at the moment – knowing a decision is going to seem selfish when your life up to that point has been made up of mocking selfish people who hurt the people who love them in the name of ‘finding themselves’ or whatever rubbish jargon baby boomers are using these days. And knowing that vast amounts of energy are going to have to be invested in saying, “So-and-So, I have to do some things that will hurt you, not because I want to hurt you but because I have to or my life will be wrong, and I love you” over and over until they hopefully understand.
Sorry if I’m being unclear. I’m not going to self-immolate or break up with my darling or anything like that, and the CSIS people whose computers started beeping when somebody typed ‘martyrdom’ into a blog can re-holster their guns. Let me try to clarify with two saints, my patron Catherine of Alexandria and Thomas More. Catherine is celebrated far more often in art and saints books, and her feast day is much more important, and she’s so popular as an intercessor that she got reinstated in the calendar in 2002 despite stupid fucking Vatican II pretending she didn’t exist, while Thomas didn't even get canonized until a few decades ago
She got done on a spiky wheel and when that broke she got her head done off. Thomas got his head done off too after he got off of getting drawn, quartered and hanged. They were both scholars and philosopher types, but Catherine didn’t leave any words and Thomas left a plethora, so back in ’59 or whatever Thomas got a great play written about him by Robert Bolt about the refusal to compromise the self.
If Catherine was as smart and philosophical as all that she probably understood her identification between her faith and herself and was content to die because a compromise of her faith would have meant a compromise of herself. But that’s not how the Catholic church used her; she and all the other early martyrs got used as examples of the surrender of the self, the complete compromise of the self, as the Catholic church became a tool with which to keep nations obedient.
I am not going to allow myself to get done on a wheel or get beheaded if I can possibly help it, but as I do things that hurt and confuse the people around me I have to make sure I explain like Thomas so I don’t get co-opted for other people’s purposes like Catherine, even if that means I don't, figuratively speaking, get canonized until 400 years after I die. You know what I mean, jelly bean? No? Well . . . never mind. Maybe next week I’ll write something that makes sense.
On to abstractions. Sometimes I wonder if the real reason I'm in analysis is anything to do with entry requirements or mental health and more to do with being desperate for the opportunity to talk about things like martyrdom. Nobody's interested in that shit anymore. It's all why-do-people-suicide-bomb-this, self-immolation-that, tut-tut-tut-when-will-those-silly-people-learn. Nothing about what is so intimately you that you can't change it without being yourself anymore. At what point do you decide "this thing about me can't change, because if it changes I won't be me anymore"?
It’s hard for me at the moment – knowing a decision is going to seem selfish when your life up to that point has been made up of mocking selfish people who hurt the people who love them in the name of ‘finding themselves’ or whatever rubbish jargon baby boomers are using these days. And knowing that vast amounts of energy are going to have to be invested in saying, “So-and-So, I have to do some things that will hurt you, not because I want to hurt you but because I have to or my life will be wrong, and I love you” over and over until they hopefully understand.
Sorry if I’m being unclear. I’m not going to self-immolate or break up with my darling or anything like that, and the CSIS people whose computers started beeping when somebody typed ‘martyrdom’ into a blog can re-holster their guns. Let me try to clarify with two saints, my patron Catherine of Alexandria and Thomas More. Catherine is celebrated far more often in art and saints books, and her feast day is much more important, and she’s so popular as an intercessor that she got reinstated in the calendar in 2002 despite stupid fucking Vatican II pretending she didn’t exist, while Thomas didn't even get canonized until a few decades ago
She got done on a spiky wheel and when that broke she got her head done off. Thomas got his head done off too after he got off of getting drawn, quartered and hanged. They were both scholars and philosopher types, but Catherine didn’t leave any words and Thomas left a plethora, so back in ’59 or whatever Thomas got a great play written about him by Robert Bolt about the refusal to compromise the self.
If Catherine was as smart and philosophical as all that she probably understood her identification between her faith and herself and was content to die because a compromise of her faith would have meant a compromise of herself. But that’s not how the Catholic church used her; she and all the other early martyrs got used as examples of the surrender of the self, the complete compromise of the self, as the Catholic church became a tool with which to keep nations obedient.
I am not going to allow myself to get done on a wheel or get beheaded if I can possibly help it, but as I do things that hurt and confuse the people around me I have to make sure I explain like Thomas so I don’t get co-opted for other people’s purposes like Catherine, even if that means I don't, figuratively speaking, get canonized until 400 years after I die. You know what I mean, jelly bean? No? Well . . . never mind. Maybe next week I’ll write something that makes sense.
giovedì, settembre 07, 2006
I promised you substance today . . .
but substance you shall not have. One or two science-esque articles instead. First of all, who here has heard of aural-visual synaesthesia? I think I have. A Finnish girl I used to live with claimed she could see music – or else that she could control the wind – or both. I was smoking my weight in reefer back then so I’m not sure. Anyways, I’m glad I learnt about it properly in relation to Kandinsky , who even for the most tone-deaf viewer would be a lyrical painter, I think. I’m fond of him.
Next, Figaro sent me this at work yesterday. I’ve had a thing about chimpanzees ever since I wrote a paper on The Second Sex that worked bonobo orgies into a discussion of human marital practices. That was back in 2000 and it was the point I started wishing we were more like bonobos than pan trogs and could settle our territorial disputes with lesbian orgies placated males sat around jerking off to. I’m not really into the ladies, mostly due to my unsurpassed laziness – when I look at a woman’s bits and look at a man’s bits and consider the pleasure of my partner, it’s like considering the difference between dealing with a rubix cube and a freshly peeled banana. But I’d dive muff if it meant an end to human strife, no question.
So it turns out that human beings have a closer genetic relationship with bonobos than to pan trogs, the normal chimpanzees who bash each other with sticks instead of have orgies to settle territorial disputes . . . that discovery filled me with hope for the future of our race, spuriously no doubt, but there you are.
Nonetheless, I assume the subject of the Guardian article was pan trogs since they don’t specify bonobo or pygmy at any point, and once more spuriously I thought that was interesting on a human level . . . identifying chivalry, you see, with what I think of pan trogs, and with what I think of the European social climate in which the warrior classes raised it to such cultural importance. It’s boggling my mind all of a sudden – an ethos to protect and encourage seemingly weaker members of societies in an environment only the physically dominant can be expected to survive – is chivalry a quantified example, I’m starting to wonder, of some great evolutionary leap forward?
And there you see my religion creeping out. I see evolution as an advance, a gradual process of perfection and becoming more saintly, which isn’t guided by a divine hand but was set in motion by it. That’s why I like to pick and choose my science, I guess . . . just looking at it as a bunch of pretty stories, like the Catholic Church was for me once.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Next, Figaro sent me this at work yesterday. I’ve had a thing about chimpanzees ever since I wrote a paper on The Second Sex that worked bonobo orgies into a discussion of human marital practices. That was back in 2000 and it was the point I started wishing we were more like bonobos than pan trogs and could settle our territorial disputes with lesbian orgies placated males sat around jerking off to. I’m not really into the ladies, mostly due to my unsurpassed laziness – when I look at a woman’s bits and look at a man’s bits and consider the pleasure of my partner, it’s like considering the difference between dealing with a rubix cube and a freshly peeled banana. But I’d dive muff if it meant an end to human strife, no question.
So it turns out that human beings have a closer genetic relationship with bonobos than to pan trogs, the normal chimpanzees who bash each other with sticks instead of have orgies to settle territorial disputes . . . that discovery filled me with hope for the future of our race, spuriously no doubt, but there you are.
Nonetheless, I assume the subject of the Guardian article was pan trogs since they don’t specify bonobo or pygmy at any point, and once more spuriously I thought that was interesting on a human level . . . identifying chivalry, you see, with what I think of pan trogs, and with what I think of the European social climate in which the warrior classes raised it to such cultural importance. It’s boggling my mind all of a sudden – an ethos to protect and encourage seemingly weaker members of societies in an environment only the physically dominant can be expected to survive – is chivalry a quantified example, I’m starting to wonder, of some great evolutionary leap forward?
And there you see my religion creeping out. I see evolution as an advance, a gradual process of perfection and becoming more saintly, which isn’t guided by a divine hand but was set in motion by it. That’s why I like to pick and choose my science, I guess . . . just looking at it as a bunch of pretty stories, like the Catholic Church was for me once.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
mercoledì, settembre 06, 2006
My tummy, my tummy, my tummy tum tum
I have the feeling things are piling up on me. First time since Figaro got here that’s happened – maybe my Catholicism is punishing me for the decadent indolence of Lady’s island or maybe I’ve been a bit of a general lazy tosser lately. I have to find a way to integrate sharing my life with someone and not being a lazy whore. It stresses me when the things pile up, you see, and there’s enough peripheral stress coming in from things I can’t control. It tells on me – my organs are starting to hurt a bit again, and while that’s probably from all the fat-binging at the cottage I know it was stress that brought it on last time. So I must deal with the stress.
The thing is the last time my organs started hurting, I was under mammoth and remarkable stress. The thesis and its defense, sharing a city with my psycho ex, seeing various controversial people again and all the rest of it. This time I’m not saying I’ve got no stress, and that everything is easy-peasy, but the sort of stress I have now is the sort of stress that I can expect about 70% of the time for the rest of my life.
I’m not daunted – I mean, last time I collapsed and turned yellow and slept for a few days, and this time I just ate vast amounts of fatty animal and have what feels like a little tummy-ache – but I’ll confess I’m fucking pissed I may have to adjust my diet permanently and that I can’t just let stress pile up and have a nervous breakdown like other people because my tummy starts hurting too bad first.
Al-riiiiiight! Did you enjoy that literal little navel-gaze? Me neither! I’ll be back with substance tomorrow, perhaps.
The thing is the last time my organs started hurting, I was under mammoth and remarkable stress. The thesis and its defense, sharing a city with my psycho ex, seeing various controversial people again and all the rest of it. This time I’m not saying I’ve got no stress, and that everything is easy-peasy, but the sort of stress I have now is the sort of stress that I can expect about 70% of the time for the rest of my life.
I’m not daunted – I mean, last time I collapsed and turned yellow and slept for a few days, and this time I just ate vast amounts of fatty animal and have what feels like a little tummy-ache – but I’ll confess I’m fucking pissed I may have to adjust my diet permanently and that I can’t just let stress pile up and have a nervous breakdown like other people because my tummy starts hurting too bad first.
Al-riiiiiight! Did you enjoy that literal little navel-gaze? Me neither! I’ll be back with substance tomorrow, perhaps.
martedì, settembre 05, 2006
Playing through time
Back in Toronto, I think at the right time. I'd missed Lexie and being able to flush the toilet whenever I liked. But still feeling the effects of Northern Ontario's landscape - the most primordial I've ever appreciated. The glaciers scraped all the rock clean not that long ago and what grows there now is what's able to survive on exposed granite that bakes in the summer and freezes during the winter. The places that have gone marshy burgeon with all sorts of weird life, and the places that haven't have all these old, old plants - lichen, moss, and huge spiky trees that take the rocks with them when they get blown over. If dinosaurs weren't such cold-blooded wusses, you could imagine them walking around up there.
So that was nice. And we didn't stop eating and drinking all weekend, which was nice too. Lady has a beautiful cabin on a beautiful island, and I think being on an island makes it easier to be more decadent. I'm not sure how. But it did.
Anyways. Got back to news a stingray killed Steve Irwin and my old adviser has said he will, indeed, write me a reference. His intention is to send it to me, though, not the schools in question, which evidently proves he's a fruit. Has he never written one of these before? Fack. City headaches coming back. Now I have to stop being a punk about my proposal. Faaaack.
Any suggestions about where I can find the cheapest possible England ticket?
So that was nice. And we didn't stop eating and drinking all weekend, which was nice too. Lady has a beautiful cabin on a beautiful island, and I think being on an island makes it easier to be more decadent. I'm not sure how. But it did.
Anyways. Got back to news a stingray killed Steve Irwin and my old adviser has said he will, indeed, write me a reference. His intention is to send it to me, though, not the schools in question, which evidently proves he's a fruit. Has he never written one of these before? Fack. City headaches coming back. Now I have to stop being a punk about my proposal. Faaaack.
Any suggestions about where I can find the cheapest possible England ticket?
venerdì, settembre 01, 2006
The mess within
This morning I woke up because a loon was shouting over the lake next to my parent’s house. I don’t think the sound of the loon itself woke me up, but the way it melded with the dream I was having did, because I came to mumbling crankily ‘someone get that fucking loon a towel already.’ Sleeping with me must be an adventure in surrealism. Beautiful sound, though. The loon's call is a beautiful sound, that is. The beauty of the sound of sleeping with me is a more subjective affair.
I am generally cranky these days. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. I know that sounds like a complaint, and I reckon it is, but really I’m just trying to figure out how I can work out properly to build up the muscle mass required to carry the world on my shoulders. I have no problem with the world being on my shoulders as long as I can carry it comfortably. It’s better than me thinking it’s up my ass, I suppose, or it being on the shoulders of an idiot.
I have nothing non-personal to write today so I’ll see you after the cottage – my brain needs some sorting. It always does, around a North Bay run. One thing’s more or less for sure – I’m going to have to make an England run sooner rather than later.
I am generally cranky these days. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. I know that sounds like a complaint, and I reckon it is, but really I’m just trying to figure out how I can work out properly to build up the muscle mass required to carry the world on my shoulders. I have no problem with the world being on my shoulders as long as I can carry it comfortably. It’s better than me thinking it’s up my ass, I suppose, or it being on the shoulders of an idiot.
I have nothing non-personal to write today so I’ll see you after the cottage – my brain needs some sorting. It always does, around a North Bay run. One thing’s more or less for sure – I’m going to have to make an England run sooner rather than later.
giovedì, agosto 31, 2006
Complicity Redux
I avoid the personal, but here’s something personal in the extreme.
Last night I was biking home from Luke Duke's after we dined with his family and Magnum and my mum, and I was thinking how it would just be ludicrous if there was a better family than them, and thinking how nice it is to be enjoying my man and all, and then the moon rode low and curvy in the cityscape viewed over Riverdale Park. I bellowed at Figaro, “look at the moon!” Pointing. Not slowing down. Just going. Thinking, should I slow down and catch this with my crap little camera phone? And then thinking, as Fig ooed and ahhhed – no – it’s enough that we both saw it.
In Singing Neanderthals, Steven Mithen wrote wonderfully of the physical and chemical power of harmony and rhythm – singing and dancing – to create a real bond between people. I’ll extend it totally unscientifically here and say sharing beautiful things has the power to create, not only a bond between people, but a bond between each person and the world.
Motherfuckers, I’ve never been paying so much attention.
Not much else to say today. Off to the North tonight and hoping for the continuation of the pleasant weather. Mostly finished Kinzer book. Brief, dismissive review to come.
Last night I was biking home from Luke Duke's after we dined with his family and Magnum and my mum, and I was thinking how it would just be ludicrous if there was a better family than them, and thinking how nice it is to be enjoying my man and all, and then the moon rode low and curvy in the cityscape viewed over Riverdale Park. I bellowed at Figaro, “look at the moon!” Pointing. Not slowing down. Just going. Thinking, should I slow down and catch this with my crap little camera phone? And then thinking, as Fig ooed and ahhhed – no – it’s enough that we both saw it.
In Singing Neanderthals, Steven Mithen wrote wonderfully of the physical and chemical power of harmony and rhythm – singing and dancing – to create a real bond between people. I’ll extend it totally unscientifically here and say sharing beautiful things has the power to create, not only a bond between people, but a bond between each person and the world.
Motherfuckers, I’ve never been paying so much attention.
Not much else to say today. Off to the North tonight and hoping for the continuation of the pleasant weather. Mostly finished Kinzer book. Brief, dismissive review to come.
mercoledì, agosto 30, 2006
Devastated by liquor
En couple, no less. Adds a new dimension to co-habitation. I have nothing to say this morning, except I want some hash browns and have no energy to make or buy them. If anybody helpful is reading, please ship some over . . . thank you . . . in advance recompense, please enjoy this fucking, fucking criminally funny Channel 102 offering. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Doctor Miracles.
martedì, agosto 29, 2006
Sister, when I've raised hell, you'll know it!
Remember that show I couldn't stop watching, Deadwood? Have you ever checked it out? If so, click here and prepare to wet yourself.
Mummy gets home from England tomorrow, nobody is quite sure when. I'm glad. She'll be able to relax a little more here - we can take care of her some. And then Figaro and I will go up North with her and my brother the next day, ending up eventually in Lady's cottage. I miss J*Fish, I miss his bitch too, and they'll be there so hurrah - I'm looking forward to it as much as a city girl like me can look forward to a cottage trip. Which turns out to be a lot. I don't really want a cottage for myself - seems like a bit of a space-squander - but think I really want a farm. Not a money-making farm. Just a few hectares where I can have a couple of goats, a pony, and some ducks. It can probably be made to happen.
Anyways, a little while ago we watched Miller's Crossing. Holy fuck, what a great movie. I like it as much as Raising Arizona, which I'd consider dating if it had a working dick. I love the Coen brothers, I'll admit it flat out. I mean, Miller's Crossing was 1990 and The Man Who Wasn't There was 2001, and there was no slip in quality that I could see, no surrender of authenticity, of duty to the material, of making every line and every shot count without making the film feel miserably laboured. And to be able to do that in comedy OR noir OR both at the same time! Fucking adorable! It makes it harder to explain Intolerable Cruelty, though. Unless I accept the voice inside telling me Catherine Zeta-Jones is a crap actress and George Clooney would mug himself to death if not forcibly restrained.
Anyways, Miller's Crossing was intensely good, the actors were flawless, and Gabriel Byrne used to be the tastiest fucking treat in cinema, apparently. God, I love a nice big nose. So check it out if you're in the mood to brood and laugh at the same time.
Mummy gets home from England tomorrow, nobody is quite sure when. I'm glad. She'll be able to relax a little more here - we can take care of her some. And then Figaro and I will go up North with her and my brother the next day, ending up eventually in Lady's cottage. I miss J*Fish, I miss his bitch too, and they'll be there so hurrah - I'm looking forward to it as much as a city girl like me can look forward to a cottage trip. Which turns out to be a lot. I don't really want a cottage for myself - seems like a bit of a space-squander - but think I really want a farm. Not a money-making farm. Just a few hectares where I can have a couple of goats, a pony, and some ducks. It can probably be made to happen.
Anyways, a little while ago we watched Miller's Crossing. Holy fuck, what a great movie. I like it as much as Raising Arizona, which I'd consider dating if it had a working dick. I love the Coen brothers, I'll admit it flat out. I mean, Miller's Crossing was 1990 and The Man Who Wasn't There was 2001, and there was no slip in quality that I could see, no surrender of authenticity, of duty to the material, of making every line and every shot count without making the film feel miserably laboured. And to be able to do that in comedy OR noir OR both at the same time! Fucking adorable! It makes it harder to explain Intolerable Cruelty, though. Unless I accept the voice inside telling me Catherine Zeta-Jones is a crap actress and George Clooney would mug himself to death if not forcibly restrained.
Anyways, Miller's Crossing was intensely good, the actors were flawless, and Gabriel Byrne used to be the tastiest fucking treat in cinema, apparently. God, I love a nice big nose. So check it out if you're in the mood to brood and laugh at the same time.
lunedì, agosto 28, 2006
Overblow
So I’m reading Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, and it’s pretty whatever and all of that. This is from the author who wrote All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, which I unqualifiedly enjoyed a few months ago. Overthrow has the same themes in it, about how clumsy regime changes are worse than no regime changes in terms of advantages for the dominant culture, not just morally but in terms of physical and economic security.
I guess the reason Overthrow isn’t all that fascinating to me is that Kinzer’s language does get a little emotional and moralist-y while pushing this point when I want cold hard facts, talking heads, things to beat down the unrighteous with, et cetera. That girly stuff was fine in All the Shah’s Men since there's more space for point-and-click facts in a dedicated book, but Overthrow is a 322-page survey of more than a dozen regime changes and there’s not the room for Kinzer to talk about American’s great and abused moral qualities as much as he does. Then it feels messy when such an ambitious project needs surgical precision.
Anyways, maybe it’s my problem for starting with All the Shah’s Men and then going back to a more general book. It has struck me Overthrow would be a good primer specifically for Americans who hadn’t been educated to figure out why essentially everyone kind of hates them. And I am learning new things, of course. Now I understand Puerto Rico and Hawaii’s relationship with the mainland United States a little better, and the mess that was United Fruit, and things like that. Anyways. It’s worth a read on a rainy afternoon, I guess.
I guess the reason Overthrow isn’t all that fascinating to me is that Kinzer’s language does get a little emotional and moralist-y while pushing this point when I want cold hard facts, talking heads, things to beat down the unrighteous with, et cetera. That girly stuff was fine in All the Shah’s Men since there's more space for point-and-click facts in a dedicated book, but Overthrow is a 322-page survey of more than a dozen regime changes and there’s not the room for Kinzer to talk about American’s great and abused moral qualities as much as he does. Then it feels messy when such an ambitious project needs surgical precision.
Anyways, maybe it’s my problem for starting with All the Shah’s Men and then going back to a more general book. It has struck me Overthrow would be a good primer specifically for Americans who hadn’t been educated to figure out why essentially everyone kind of hates them. And I am learning new things, of course. Now I understand Puerto Rico and Hawaii’s relationship with the mainland United States a little better, and the mess that was United Fruit, and things like that. Anyways. It’s worth a read on a rainy afternoon, I guess.
venerdì, agosto 25, 2006
Dear Caker World:
You’ve figured out café lattés are better than drip coffee. Good for you. It long-a-fucking-‘nuff, but now many, if not most of you seem to understand that café lattés are a good thing to be drinking and not just something to mispronounce at Starbucks. Although you still do that very enthusiastically too. Felicitations.
Now, what continues to disturb and disappoint me is that soy and skim café lattés are ubiquitous yet goat milk lattés only make appearances in my kitchen.
Let’s forget that goat milk is cheaper to produce and more globally ubiquitous than cow’s milk because I understand the divide between caker logic and macroeconomic rationality. Let’s even forget that goat milk is easier on the system than cow’s milk and that soy milk is a processed abomination only people with dairy sensitivities should even consider putting in their mouths, because I understand cakers got NO logic when it comes to feeding themselves.
Just remember this: goat milk makes much, much better lattés, and it makes my heart bleed for youse guys that you don’t get to experience that in the course of a normal day. Try. You’ll believe.
Fuck, I hate Starbucks,
Mistress La Spliffe
Now, what continues to disturb and disappoint me is that soy and skim café lattés are ubiquitous yet goat milk lattés only make appearances in my kitchen.
Let’s forget that goat milk is cheaper to produce and more globally ubiquitous than cow’s milk because I understand the divide between caker logic and macroeconomic rationality. Let’s even forget that goat milk is easier on the system than cow’s milk and that soy milk is a processed abomination only people with dairy sensitivities should even consider putting in their mouths, because I understand cakers got NO logic when it comes to feeding themselves.
Just remember this: goat milk makes much, much better lattés, and it makes my heart bleed for youse guys that you don’t get to experience that in the course of a normal day. Try. You’ll believe.
Fuck, I hate Starbucks,
Mistress La Spliffe
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