Shocking.

I saw The Piano Teacher last night, jesus. I know I have sort of a Victorian thing going, but that's really limited to manners, gagging at horrible smells and my distaste for handling money. Oh and the colonial heritage thing. But Isabella Huppert masturbating with a straight razor was a bit much for me. It was excellent though, shocking and disturbing, but subtle and funny as well. Isabelle Huppert is a daunting, prim-looking conservatory, master-class teaching piano teacher who lives with her demented mother and her 'love' interest is a gorgeous blonde puppyish boy who literally bounces around with enthusiasm, talent and everything beautiful and shiny. She says at one point, to paraphrase, "You're so good looking that you will never have to suffer anything". It was oddly easy to identify with her, even taking into account her extreme sadomasochistic urges, I guess all marginal people in the world have to unite against the blonde, brilliant and beautiful (he even played hockey). But she isn't a victim either, she lashes her students and uses her intelligence as a weapon. I thought of my father who took this movie out from the library by mistake. He called me up to tell me, because he was so horrified, but was too prim to tell me why it was so shocking...

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5, lost a point for the razor scene). If you think you're into S&M because you liked Secretary, this movie is not for you.

I woke up with heartburn this morning, I think I got it from watching this movie. Downgrade. 3.5 stars.

Spear of bees! If another shitty day like this one happens along, I will cut through it with a spear made of bees. I'm not crazy, this phrase was originally coined to describe PJ Harvey's guitar skills, but I'm adopting it. Reasons why today sucked so hard:

1. Nor'easter.
2. Because of Nor'easter, flat hair and having to wear most-hated coat ever that makes me look twelve
3. Avalanches and snowballing effect of work-related woes and fires that needed to be put out that I was instead fanning in hopes that it would burn the whole damn thing down.
4. A nice blogger was fired from Conde Naste (bastards, want to hire me?) for putting work-related stuff on his blog
5. Cute art department boy spoke disparagingly about girls who wore all black as I walked by to pick up my ugly art (the only non-black thing on my person, including my thunderous face)
6. My mother called me three times at work on my cell
7. I forgot to put on antiperspirant.
8. I woke up before my alarm and couldn't go back to sleep
9. My coworker, who is the willing/captive ear for all my work-related woes and otherwise (don't feel bad for him, I make them funny) is on vacation. I'm talking to myself mostly.

Reasons why tonight will be better:

1. Netflix
2. I love my cat
3. Red wine
4. Nor'easters sound lovely when tucked into bed
5. I still love my fishnet tights I wore today, I will give them an approving pat on the shoulder before I throw them in the wash ( invariably, to be chewed up. Wash them by hand, jerk.)
6. Listening to PJ Harvey and imagining all bad things in the world being eaten up by a swarm of skinny, but fierce English bees.

Ciao.

On the UPN news last night (whatever, I was watching America's next top model) one of the top stories was about angry Park Slope parents (aren't they adorable?) who got a racy billboard removed because it was across the street from a school. I assume they accomplished this by throwing millet at the offending billboard, firing off irate letters to their local city councilperson on recycled protest paper, and shielding their children's eyes with handknit balaclavas. What are Park Slopers worried about anyway? It's not like this will encourage their children to have sex. They grew from pods, as will their children. Why hate on Park Slope so much, you ask? Because there's a fucking crack house across the street from a primary school in my neighbourhood that hasn't quite made the news yet. From Eugene Mirman's column 'Around Town':

Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill and Park Slope are beautiful neighborhoods filled with everything from delicious restaurants to shops that sell weird crappy glass things from Europe. Hey, do you know where I could get a children's shoe made of silver to hang in my kitchen? Yes, there are five stores for that. Where can a guy go to get a glass penis with eagle wings (hand crafted in Vermont!)? Where can't you buy that, fuckface? Is there an accessories store whose tag line is "Peace is always in fashion"? Yes. Finally, a skirt that says (through its spirit of design), "We should not have entered Iraq under false pretenses," or a pair of mittens that frown upon America's actions in Chile.

To all Torontonians should recognize this wasteland as Yorkville sounding, but at least there are fucking couture shops there. This is just food co-ops, bad clothing stores and gelaterias (go Brooklyn!). For about five more minutes, my neighbourhood is going to stay dirty, with no bookstores and one Brazilian coffeeshop and real children playing in schoolyards (pity about the crackhouse though), just the way it should. Until the pod people move in. You can't defeat the pod people. I've always wanted blonde hair in braids and a Che t-shirt, I could maybe do it.

A man was standing on the median at Broadway and 23rd, in front of the Flatiron during the 1pm runtogetfedbeforerushingbacktothecubes witching hour, just lounging. A brave woman/coworker/tourist asked, "Are you getting some fresh air?" and he said, "I just got my divorce settlement and thought I would just hang out here and think about it". Really, I couldn't have made up a better joke that had to be followed by a drum roll.

I'm locked up in my office feeling very antisocial right now. Inexplicably, because it's beautiful outside and I just had spicy tuna rolls and seaweed salad. I think it's the lag time between eating and the nutritive proteins getting metabolized and in about twenty minutes I'll be my normal tweaking self.

I went to see Neil Jordan's latest movie, Breakfast on Pluto, last night. It was good, even very good. Cilian Murphy makes one beautiful woman, but unfortunately, is only really hot when his head is shaved, when he's covered in blood and being chased by zombies. But still, he rocked a turquoise peignoir and platform boots.

Your Personality Profile

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs. For you, comfort and calm are very important. You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection. You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

All of this is true, of course. I mean, either they are true (thriving on own like camel, cactus etc!) or they are the things that I would love to be true (elegant, wtf). I find myself wondering about Patti's baby, what kind of personality is she going to have. I just got new pictures, here's my favourite.

Ode to Anna

You are red and white and beautiful
(can you get any more Canadian?)
Forget secession, frenchies, this is a
maple-leaf baby
Your poop is a weapon
There's vomit in Patti's hair
Don't lick the cat litter
If your parents teach you French
I'll teach you Greek or Latin
(not both, because I want you to have friends)
But, if you ever get me sick
This love affair is over.
Babies are Typhoid Marys
I'll still send presents, though.
Clash CDs and smutty poetry
Grow up fast
We already love you more
Than we do your mother.
Love, Aunt Yasie

p.s. bad purple can happen to good people. I chose it as the accent colour on my business cards and it looks like a muddy brown. This purple looks pretty shitty too. Thanks, Anna.

I have something against watching movies with 'happy' or 'good' in the title. They are often quite the opposite. Except for Happy Gilmore and Goodburger. Don't get me wrong, I prefer morose to peppy all the time, but if I know from the beginning that something is going to be stab-you-in-the-heart depressing, it's hard to get motivated to see it. But I saw Happy Together (love love love Netflix) finally. It was so beautiful, of course, and I have a hardcore crush on Tony Leung (for obvious reasons, see right) and I would give anything to see the world in Wong Kar-Wai's reds and oranges and yellows and shadows. It was achingly, squirmingly, and ordinarily sad, with the occasional laugh that jarred you out of your complete absorption in the movie. Moments like being woken up in the middle of a feverishly ill night to cook for your lazy, broken-handed boyfriend, like having to buy cigarettes for him at 3am, it was the ordinariness that was both touching and funny.

About the humour in everyday life, I fell down the stairs yesterday. Just another highlight in a miserable week of trying to quit smoking and failing, of worrying about my friend and her cancer scare, and then feeling depressed that the threat of cancer looming all around isn't quite scary enough to make me quit smoking, and then feeling ashamed because somehow everything always has to be about me, thinking I was head-injured, and having a battle of wills (in my mind, but as she probably doesn't give a fuck, I guess that means she wins the battle of wills hands down) with my useless fucking roommate who will never clean the kitchen. Oh, and I killed a huge Chernobyl cockroach that FLEW into my room this week. I thought cockroaches only flew in the southern hemisphere (payback for hot weather, mangoes and lychees all year round). Money also makes me feel blue. I have to pay back my student loans and the monthly payments are not small, so I want a laptop (need) and want to go to Paris to use up my vacation before I lose it (yeah, I know, Paris is so over) and I can't do either. Wow, tears just filled my eyes, I have to stop and have a laugh-at-myself-for-the-pity-party and get-some-perspective moment. I guess I just have to get my ass in gear and try to get more freelance work.

I guess this is what mundane sounds like. It's not expansive blue-washed waterfall scenes and beautiful people looking sad in cabs. It's killing fucking cockroaches, forgetting to buy cat litter, being poor, hating your roommates and having an ugly bruise on your shoulder that looks like stretch marks.

Here's something that isn't false advertising. A list of truly happy movies. Not poignant happy, or a succession of tragedies ending in one small happiness, or huge romantic happy movies that make you feel sad about your life, but real I-feel-like-hugging-myself-afterwards and kissing the world happy movies:

1. Anne of Green Gables (epic, romantic, CANADIAN! orphan makes good story, what more could you ask?)
2. The Cutting Edge (included in the 'any dance movie is cheerful' category)
3. When Harry Met Sally (you must sing 'Surrey with the Fringe on top' for this to work)
4. Any Jane Austen book adapted for the screen. I highly recommend Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma (shudder, Gwyneth). Hijinks in pinafores, repressed lust and choreographed dances in drawing rooms!
5. Whale Rider (uplifting movie, totally kickass little girl and Maori tattoos)
6. 200 Cigarettes. (Great music, Dave Chapelle, and finally the right girl ends up with the right guy, Janeane Garofalo + Elvis Costello)
7. Se7en (happy movie only for me because Gwyneth Paltrow's head gets chopped off)
8. Sneakers (any hacker movie with themes of bringing down big business. See Hackers, Antitrust, WarGames, The Net)
9. Eat, Drink Man Woman (most movies about food fall into this category, not cannibalism a la The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her lover or Hannibal (both very cool though), or stupid Big Night, but greats like Scent of Green Papaya, Like Water for Chocolate, Mystic Pizza...which brings me to the final and the most perfect happy movie ever, that is romantic, uplifting, funny, and murderous and empowering and timeless and perfect....
10. Fried Green Tomatoes. Everything about this movie is wonderful, and just because you cry everytime doesn't mean it isn't happy. We just do that sometimes.

The funniest morning commute, ever. Picture it. Skinny little punk girl, wearing a black anarchy t-shirt, studded belt, mullet and camo pants and converse (old or faux-aged?). Her t-shirt was pretty cool, actually. Graffiti font on the front with the big A, and on the back it read "People are not dispensable, government is". She was also reading 1984. I checked around to make sure I wasn't on candid camera, but sadly, this was just harsh reality. People are sad, but mostly their unoriginality is fucking hilarious (and that the intrinsic inviduality of humans is the main tenet of anarchist philosophy makes it funnier) . And I didn't describe the best part. There was another girl in the SAME, my car, standing near little Emma Goldman, wearing the same shirt (it wasn't me). She also had the same ear-cartilege piercing. (They clearly didn't know each other, either). That's when I was sure someone was getting pranked, but I guess it was just the cosmos obliging me with a morning laugh.

Even though this particular government is dispensable, I don't think all governement is. It's perfectly normal to want to destroy the things that oppress you, but I think that's too easy. And statelessness is terrifying. Freedom and equality are necessary to facilitate human progress, but while this progress is predicated on differentiation among individuals within a society, society cannot be defined by personal moral sovereignty. Human nature tends towards egotism, and I don't think we can trust that we will be moved to look and act outside of ourselves by the higher call of sociability. That's taking a lot on trust. Has the functioning of our society given us any evidence of this ultimate altruism of the human spirit? There are still people eating dog food on the street last time I checked. At least they're wearing original Converse. I don't believe in a government that will suppress my civic and personal freedoms and inhibit my expressivity, but I also want a government that will force our *altruistic* asses to pay BIG taxes so we can have roads and the NEA and welfare and hospices and community centers and meals-on-wheels, so we can read 1984 in school, wear black, and tear everything down again.

So what's the difference between an anarchist and a libertarian? Other than the obvious libertarians-have-small-dicks difference, there are quite a few. Like anarchists tend to be smart and well-read, except they come with explosives and goatees. Libertarians can't seem to escape the I fuck my sister in a wooded Michigan utopia stereotype. I once had an argument with a libertarian (weird, because I usually try to avoid eye contact) about welfare and taxation. Never the twain shall meet, right? Except when you're drinking. I suppose anarcho-capitalist is maybe a better term because he spun some sort of fairy tale about voluntarily-funded institutions (competing businesses) taking over the role of taxation. Yawn, fantastists are boring. So, other than finding out that Christian fundamentalists love the Jayhawks, apparently the freedom to trade, a free-market economy and owning personal property should be our only inalienable rights. I suppose they just shoot people who fall by the wayside. People who rent, smoke weed, can't build fences and hang out in museums, have illnesses or were born into or fell into poverty. Scum, all of them. Anarchists sound warm and fuzzy in comparison, right?

So remember, when deciding between extreme political ideologies (like most of us do over our lunch hour), think about the things that matter to you. If you think white men need to get richer, that's cool. Vote Republican. If you think white men need to get richer and feel guilty about it, vote Democrat. If your inalienable right of choice is tax-free flannel (how come libertarians look so damned dishevelled and dirt poor if they're capitalists at heart, anyway?), don't vote, hole up in your cabin and dream about secession, you wooly-haired hearbreaker. And if you like throwing acid on World Bank-ers and and hating liberals, you can't vote because Bush has taken your criminal, anarchist ass off the voter registration rolls, so eat your kasha and start a Tom Morello fansite.

I know good criticism shouldn't be reductive, but should provide constructive advice and promote new thinking and creativity. But I'm lazy, so I just read a lot. La vraie bombe c'est le livre, right? I'm afraid of the police and hate crowds, so I won't protest. I haven't done a tour of New York's socialist landmarks (worst date ever, by the way), I think that System of a Down is funny, and feel very sad about Dennis Miller's life-change. I'll probably buy an SUV, start wearing Cherokee belts and join a book club later in life, but I'm not there yet.

P.S. How hot does Milton Friedman look in this picture, by the way?

Wow, it's been a week. Let's see, what's new? Moms against Bush, Gaza, Nate is dead, they're all dead, some good movies and more bad movies opened and closed (I still haven't seen 2046, I know, I'm ashamed, pickle). I'm a bit bored at work, and I was bored at home. Everything seems the same and it seems like it always be that way...

Clearly, in the dumps (summer cold). When feeling this way, I've been told that one should pick a small good thing and focus on it. Okay. I'm listening to this rocking song "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" ( not that they need more buzz or anything, but for other songs, not this one: http://www.clapyourhandssayyeah.com/shows.php ) . It's pretty unintelligible, with the hipster keening and all, the sky holds the wind, sun rushes in...but it's making me feel better. A lot. I kind of feel like dancing, actually. And those of you who really know me will know that this is not implausible. Thank the healthy strain of manic in my gene pool. I'm still sniffly and I left my crack-like cold medicine at home (Coricidin Cough and Cold, apparently used more often recreationally than for cold-cureness. I highly recommend it.) but I'm going to take my booty-shaking mood and go out for the night.

So about music and its central role in my life. A la Rob Gordon, I can map out eras of my life with music, in 30 seconds. Leaving home: nine inch nails, obviously. freedom: pulp. love:elvis costello. loneliness:wilco, whiskeytown, obviously. nervous breakdown: one ash song on repeat for 6 months, you don't do sensible things while having a nervous breakdown... add alcohol and garnish for effect. Is that supposed to be hard?

I can't do the same thing for literature, not that my tastes haven't changed at all, but I think there's something less casual about one's relationship to literature. Maybe music plays somewhere in the background of our life and books are the underpinnings, or touchstones. My dad and I bonded over books when I was little, and even though he was fairly judgmental about what I read (my harlequin romance phase at age 13 didn't help things any) and he tried to 'suggest' authors to me (I will never read John Irving), he did teach me that books are where it's at. I used to go to the library with him every Saturday, from the age of about 6 or 7 until I was about 14 and take out a stack of books. And then I would cocoon myself in my room for the rest of the day, in bed, reading. Blissed out. I didn't know I was a nerd yet, so I was just happy.

The very first time I travelled to New York by myself, I took the Chinatown bus and found myself somewhere under a bridge with a suitcase and a dream...kidding. I was really lost in Chinatown, though. I wandered down East Broadway, getting more and more flustered, bought a soda and had a cigarette and landed in front of the Chatham Square branch of the New York Public Library. This is the biggest afterschool special story ever (minus the cigarette), but I went in, grabbed a book, sat down with some homeless people and felt better. Instantly. So there you go, I'm easy to please. For my enjoyment, I choose escapism all around, rinse and repeat.

Eye-sores

So, my eyes are 'fine' now. I had a dry patch on my left eye. I know, it sounds like I made it up. But it's pretty common, and even though I know that, I spiralled into a frenzy of hypochondriac whining and generally made myself intolerable. But remember, it's me. I have had a rogue eyelash that punctured my eye and created a hematoma on my cornea. I've had pinkeye and allergic conjunctivitis and once, I scratched my cornea so badly that I had to wear the pirate patch for two weeks, during summer school calculus (I didn't fail, remember, it was to boost up my shameful 89% to 96%? I guess my pirate patch was the least of my problems back then (but you will be glad to know that smartypants did fail organic chem, magnificently, two years later in university)). And when I'm forced to wear my glasses, I'm rocketed back to when I was 12 years old, with glasses and headgear, to the year of the UGLY, the year that we moved to the suburbs, the year I got my period, glasnost, the year I fought to shave my legs and lost, the year I protested Thatcher's reelection and lost, etc. I was very busy, but also, very ugly. Glasses, shudder, eau de Reagan. But everything is fine now (Reagan's still dead) and I celebrated with sushi, seaweed salad and minimal work done this afternoon.

I also saw a man sitting on a standpipe (the MTA standpipes that I ripped my pants on, remember?) masturbating, on 23rd street in front of Wendy's. I guess I wasn't the only one celebrating today.

Instead of doing my waist-high pile of laundry tonight, I am going to have pizza at Franny's, I think. I tried to go to L & B's this weekend, but it was overrun with fat men with fanny packs and fat women with eggplant boobs coming back from the beach. Pizza is verboten in my vocabulary, but today, the masturbator inspired me. Grab life and don't let go. Wring every bit of enjoyment you can out of it. And if that includes having sex with oneself on a piece of MTA hardware, it definitely includes pizza.

So, it's Saturday and I'm at work. If I don't let myself get weirded out by the ghostly grey cubes, I think I love it here by myself on the weekend. No big surprise that I'm happiest when alone. I can play my music without headphones (listening endlessly to interpol lately, they were even playing it at Tilly's this morning, seems everyone is feeling a bit like knives and drowning and tight black suits) and curl up in my chair. And read about a dead general. Seems appropriate.

I wandered around the city yesterday after work, bringing me to my next promised topic, tattoos. I went to Barnes and Noble to look for Jane Caplan's (teaches at the alma mater of Despair) Written on the Body (almost as interesting as the novel) to read about the cultural history and anthropological theory of tattooing. Well, it was fascinating. Tattoos have been punitive, sacred, emblems of ownership and slave-branding, masochistic and decorative. There's even a Greek amphora depicting a maenad with a thrysos in one hand and a tattoo on the other arm (forgot the date). Darwin wrote about tattooing as a global, eternal human practice, and King Harold II's body was supposed to have been identified on the field of battle by the tattoo on his chest of his sister's name and 'England'. Very cool of him, and considerate too.

People get them for any number of reasons, and I think mine is that I feel I'm really an adult now (how sad that it took 30 to get me to admit that). My first job (don't be jealous of my freewheeling life), my first office, my dabbling in an American life, my first business card, falling in love with this city, living in a shoebox with strangers (fucking stop leaving your dishes in the sink), paying (or not paying) my student loans back, and generally joining the teeming hordes of workaday-life people should be commemorated in some way. Imagine what I'll get when I fall in love again and have a kid. I'm going to be that gross, sagging and inked mom that my bright and shiny, clean-living, preppy child is going to be so embarrassed of. And I can't promise that I won't wear cut-off Molson's tshirts and hot pink heels either.

I will not be swayed by a hot tattooist to get a giant coi fish sleeve tattoo on my arm (though they can be very beautiful), or to add tons of color and a few grinning skulls (though that's cool too). I think it's going to be a slinky dragon on my right ankle/lower leg. What do you all think?This is Apala, an Indian dragon that converted to Buddhism, tried to convert the other dragons who blew him off, and ended up converting humans. I think it's fitting for my soapboxing self.

So, everyone I know has a blog. The most boring people I know have a blog. Being equal parts boring and pompous, I decided I should give it a try. I think funny things happen to me, I see strange things all the time, and spend a lot of time alone thinking about things, so I'm going to inflict all of this on the void. Who will even read this? Maybe I'll do the ultimate, alienated New York person-who-has-lost-touch-of-what-is-real-and-true-in-the-world thing and ask my nearest and dearest to update themselves on my life by checking out my blog. That's the ticket!

My plan is to go topical. Whatever catches my fancy, like that moronic new radio station. If I feel like writing about fashion theory today, then I will. Actually, I do. That, and the use of pink as a feminist issue.

the pink manifesto
Being femme is not giving in to sexism. I had a professor at the Unnamed College of Despair who told us that when she was a struggling graduate student, she didn't have time to do her nails, she was too busy contributing to the field of Despair Studies. I guess she did so, in her boring, conservatively structural textual critical kind of way. But why did she have to deny herself a pedicure?

Same thing with my book cover. One of our designers did a book about women in shocking pink. He's a genius, by the way. Well, I couldn't even see straight through the shitstorm of twittering old political scientists who could not believe that a book about women and by women, in this day and age, should be pink. The editor was similarly upset. Even though I did make my opinion known, the cover is now a suitably pukey colour (the designer is a vengeful genius).

The moral of the story? You have to take those 'feminine' things, those 'feminine' stereotypes and rework them so they work for you. Why should we stick to any one rigid form of femininity? I wear pink all the time (it's my favorite way to break up black), I wear lipstick and most importantly, I'm not a self-loathing feminist who has to diminish other women to validate my own life. We should decorate our beautiful selves however we want to, because beauty is not frivolous or trivial. So glory in your birkenstock-wearing, bowl-haircutted, wooden-bead-necklace-sporting, labrador retriever-owning beauty, and I will keep my purple toenails. Pace.

oops, I forgot about fashion theory. Inspired by another genius friend of mine, I started reading about fashion, about the body and its clothing as a springboard for discourse. I actually miss graduate school sometimes.

On that note, an obvious cry for help, Lord Leighton's Acme and Septimius gets to grace my first posting because its a beautiful illustration of my favorite postmodern Catullan love poem. Next time I'm going to talk endlessly about plans for my new tattoo. I love my selfish life. Other people my age are saving money, getting knocked up, (except you don't call it that when you want to get pregnant) and buying houses. I, on the other hand, will sing to my cat and get a tattoo.

Septimius, holding in his arms, Acme
Says "Acme my dearest dear,
I love you desperately and am prepared to die
If it's not forever, for all the days of my life,
If I lie, give me to a lion on the desert sands."
He spoke, and there was a love-sneeze
Somewhere as approval in the trees.
Now Acme lightly flicking back her hair,
And pouring kisses on the dear boy's eyes,
Kisses from that soft, vermilion lip of hers,
"My dearest love, Septimy, let us serve
The lord of Love forever, for I feel
Deeper even that you, this strong desire
Burning in my bones, in my deepest being. "
Love again sneezed in the trees, approvingly.
From this good beginning they proceed evenly
Loving and loved together, her he sees
Finer than any lady in this whole wide world,
She has eyes and soul for him alone, in him
She fashions all her dreams of love and fantasies.
Now tell me, have you ever seen anywhere
A better match, a more perfect love affaire?