The lemon cucumber plant has been putting a lot out there. I'm not sure why I planted lemon cucumber instead of a normal kind, I think I'd been given to understand that they take up less room. But they're taking up a fuckload of room, and it's been a struggle to keep them from overwhelming the tomatoes; the fuckers grow so fast. They're growing only slightly less fast now as they fruit, and we ate the first one yesterday. Fucking awesome. It might be because it was fresh off the vine but it was way better than any of the cucumber varieties I've ever bought, and I'll even daresay better than the standard big green cukes Dad drew in the back garden, which were seedier. These lemon cucumbers are real fleshy motherfuckers, and picked young, not too seedy - just a lovely tennis-ball sized lump of cucumber flesh with a slightly richer taste than the long green ones.
(Incidentally, Paul Theroux wrote in the Pillars of Hercules that in Turkey, the word 'cucumber' has become inextricably linked to its idiomatic meaning, penis, in a way that makes me think of our word 'cock' - people avoid saying it in its literal meaning because it's so very suggestive. While we have some synonyms to choose from, like rooster or chanticleer, because heaven knows I fall all over myself to say 'chanticleer' when cock will do, in Turkey they'll make allusive references instead, like 'green salad things.' And when there's a fake bomb scare, the defusers will often open the suspicious package and find a cucumer with a note pinned to it: "This is what you are." I wonder if that's true, I can't find it on the Internets.)
Anyways, feeling quite smug about how yummy the lemon cucumbers are because apparently they need to be eaten fresh off the vine, going soggy and gross three days after picking, which is why they aren't commercially grown and sold, I've heard from somewhere. And we have a supply on our back balcony. Sweet. I always wonder about unsellable foods like that. I've heard there are a kajillion banana varieties, for example, most of them inexpressibly delicious, and we just get the one we get because it's the only one that tolerates being picked green, transported, and sold weeks and weeks after harvesting - I've heard pawpaw is fucking amazing, for example, and grows in temperate climates - even up close to where I was living in Toronto - but that it goes off so fast no one sells it. Someday I will have a big big garden and eat like a queen . . . but at the moment I'm thrilled with the one lemon cucumber we ate yesterday.
Generally speaking the back balcony garden is going stupendously, though I don't want to count my tomatoes and cucumbers before they're plucked. It's sheltered from the wind but gets quite good sunlight, as good as you can get in this fucking wet pig of a country, so I should count my blessings. But Croatia went a fair way to making me sicker of this place than I already was.
giovedì, luglio 23, 2009
mercoledì, luglio 22, 2009
In which Rupert mends my annoying morning
Very little to say today too. After my holiday, the maison communale's bridge holiday (because why should civil servants take the one publicly funded holiday everybody else gets when two is so much better), and the acquisition of a new set of passport photographs, which took visits to four booths, two studios closed for the summer break, and one excruciatingly stupid phone call to the booth-company (following their instructions to call a hotline to find out the closest machine when one was busted and instead having a conversation with a nincompoop), I'm actually going to go to the Belgium equivalent of the Ministry of Transort or DMV or whatever and get my actual license, which will involve queueing from 8 am until . . . I don't fucking know.
Except, Belgium being Belgium, I probably won't get a license today, despite a Belgian licence being nothing but a folded piece of printed salmon bristolboard with a photo attached to it, because these people are fucknards. My hope is to get it and an international license sometime within the next month before I go to Canada. You see how effectively I've lowered my expectations . . . it really helps me get through life here.
Let me just leave you with a quick reminder of what celebrity is good for: occasionally one of them will say awesome things. Like this:
"He (Michael Jackson) personified the pain and anxiety of a black man in a slave country. We all watched as he changed from black to white. He was living performance art."
Oh Rupert Everett. Don't ever change, no, don't you ever change, oh promise me you're always going to be as . . .you know . . . as you are.
After a mere two hours of queuing - lengthened by the desk workers 'forgetting' to hit the button inviting all ticket holders after 61 to advance for 15 minutes or so - I got both my Belgian and international license all in one shot. I am now indistinguishable from a grown-up. Yay!
Except, Belgium being Belgium, I probably won't get a license today, despite a Belgian licence being nothing but a folded piece of printed salmon bristolboard with a photo attached to it, because these people are fucknards. My hope is to get it and an international license sometime within the next month before I go to Canada. You see how effectively I've lowered my expectations . . . it really helps me get through life here.
Let me just leave you with a quick reminder of what celebrity is good for: occasionally one of them will say awesome things. Like this:
"He (Michael Jackson) personified the pain and anxiety of a black man in a slave country. We all watched as he changed from black to white. He was living performance art."
Oh Rupert Everett. Don't ever change, no, don't you ever change, oh promise me you're always going to be as . . .you know . . . as you are.
UPDATE
After a mere two hours of queuing - lengthened by the desk workers 'forgetting' to hit the button inviting all ticket holders after 61 to advance for 15 minutes or so - I got both my Belgian and international license all in one shot. I am now indistinguishable from a grown-up. Yay!
martedì, luglio 21, 2009
Happy Leopold Day
The minimum to say for myself this morning, as once more I've stopped up late and once more don't have time before work. This time it was staying up late for work, which I wouldn't ordinarily do, but then we watched the fireworks from my office skyscraper, which were in celebration of the crowning of Leopold I, who was, however I feel about monarchy, at least a fuck sight less worse than Leopold II, and gave some small thought to the plight of labour in his industrializing country.
I'd never seen fireworks from above before, and frankly I don't reccommend it, it's diminishing. Nonetheless as we smoked a pipe down by the pond with the crocodile in it, and I heard the explosions start to go off for more minor shows, I came to an important realization: I'd be one of those people shitting myself and losing my mind if I was in a war situation. There's no way I would be able to keep it together with a bunch of bombs going off. Hopefully that peice of knowledge will never be useful . . .
I'd never seen fireworks from above before, and frankly I don't reccommend it, it's diminishing. Nonetheless as we smoked a pipe down by the pond with the crocodile in it, and I heard the explosions start to go off for more minor shows, I came to an important realization: I'd be one of those people shitting myself and losing my mind if I was in a war situation. There's no way I would be able to keep it together with a bunch of bombs going off. Hopefully that peice of knowledge will never be useful . . .
lunedì, luglio 20, 2009
In which I strive to avoid spoilers
Finished Vanity Fair tonight, which is why this post will be so short, me having stayed up late to do so and then slept in. Smashing ending all around, nearly one of the best endings I've ever read, except I can't help but feel Thackeray really caved by having Amelia write to Dobbin before Becky showed her George's letter - that awful, wonderful Becky! What a great character. A perfect mix of Scarlett O'Hara, with her lonely good points, her odd spots of pity for those obviously weaker than her, and Machiavelli's ideal prince.
Anyways, the letter was the only part of it that didn't ring true to me - I suppose it wouldn't have been appropriate to have angelic Amelia really, unignorably, practically in debt to devilish Becky, although she was obviously in her emotional debt as it stood . . . if I have a problem with big flabby Regency/Fat King George/Victorian monster novels, that's it - that there's a realism-damaging hesitation to make all those lovely anti-heroes agents of good in a practical, plotty way, a way that could possibly alienate the ladies reading at home, or make them keep the serials away from their young ones. I should like to know if Thackeray had been planning to have Amelia write Dobbin before or after Becky showed her the letter.
The fact is evil people are almost never unremittingly harmful and literature has to reflect that to keep its humanity. Despite a millenium of schisms the most Calvinist, Protesting of us European descendants is Catholic enough to have a bit of faith, unconcious or not, in the notion of one good deed - a useful penance - expiating hundreds of wickednesses (to paraphrase that lying, fornicating, bigamist Rochester, who even romantic little Charlotte Brontë had to put in his place through mutilation, amputation and blinding before Jane Eyre could be permitted to marry him).
Anyways, the letter was the only part of it that didn't ring true to me - I suppose it wouldn't have been appropriate to have angelic Amelia really, unignorably, practically in debt to devilish Becky, although she was obviously in her emotional debt as it stood . . . if I have a problem with big flabby Regency/Fat King George/Victorian monster novels, that's it - that there's a realism-damaging hesitation to make all those lovely anti-heroes agents of good in a practical, plotty way, a way that could possibly alienate the ladies reading at home, or make them keep the serials away from their young ones. I should like to know if Thackeray had been planning to have Amelia write Dobbin before or after Becky showed her the letter.
The fact is evil people are almost never unremittingly harmful and literature has to reflect that to keep its humanity. Despite a millenium of schisms the most Calvinist, Protesting of us European descendants is Catholic enough to have a bit of faith, unconcious or not, in the notion of one good deed - a useful penance - expiating hundreds of wickednesses (to paraphrase that lying, fornicating, bigamist Rochester, who even romantic little Charlotte Brontë had to put in his place through mutilation, amputation and blinding before Jane Eyre could be permitted to marry him).
domenica, luglio 19, 2009
Vanity Eyre
Croatia was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Mostly it was the company - two of the brightest women in my life and lots of talking and arguing - the Mitford sisters without the money or Hitler. But I'm not into talking about my people so instead I'll just say Croatia was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
How the sun shone! How the delightful little coves of beaches sparkled blue and turquoise! How the air baked! How the kayak instructor's damp skin glistened over healthy young muscles in the sun! And how sweet it was to have myself to myself, neither of my companions being the sort who hijacks other people and our holiday having been nominally billed as a writing retreat. . . the Cultural Apocalypse Novel didn't get written, and after about 10 minutes of trying to do it on the first day I realized I was being a knob; it's going to need months of devotion just to work out and nail down the narrative voice, and sadly it will need to wait for semi-retirement, or else it'll drive me crazy. But lots of smaller writing, lots of poetry. And lots of sleep. All three of us arrived there stressed out to the point of practically exposed nerves - I think all three of us left as new women, partly because of being somewhere so beautiful, partly because of each other, partly because we could take it fucking easy.
That having been said, I utterly ruined my last two nights of sleep by buying Vanity Fair when I went into Dubrovnik looking for a present for the F-word. I'd brought Dicken's Pictures of Italy and was utterly disappointed, and Paul Theroux's Pillar of Hercules, which I'd swallowed whole on the trip to London and Gatwick (certainly the worst travel book of his I've ever read - very superficial, far more self-obsessed than his better work, much more "I said . . . my eyes danced . . . I was scared" than any of the others), and got Vanity Fair on a whim, mostly because of how much Thackeray showed up in Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. Vanity Fair definitely needs its own devoted post, and probably a great big one, and not today because I still have 100 pages or so to go.
And probably the impact of Jane Eyre on Vanity Fair needs its own devoted post too, or possibly an academic paper . . . surely there is such a paper, Charlotte Brontë dedicating Jane Eyre's second edition to Thackeray, who was partway through publishing Vanity Fair when it came out. But there might not be, because it's not apparent in a very obvious way - though it is. The thing is, Jane Eyre reads as though it's influenced by Vanity Fair, and not vice-versa, because Charlotte Brontë's great strengths weren't in satire, and Thackeray's definitely were. The facility of Thackeray's satire makes it almost hard to believe Jane Eyre was published first, as Jane Eyre certainly contains efforts at satire - and to me, they're the less successful parts of the book, that the author looks least comfortable with, that would be borrowed from elsewhere if anything was.
The charade scenes in each book, for example, are so similar, but Jane Eyre's charade is all about Jane geeking on the fucking unattainable hotness of Mr. Rochester, and Vanity Fair's charade is the rather gruelling presage of Rebecca gutting her husband while illustrating how she gives London society a collective boner. Unless you're into the romance of Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair's looks ten times better, because it's so much more effective as a cultural illustrator - unless you're getting swept up into Jane's hard-on for Rochester, Jane Eyre's looks derivative of the work that came after it. Luckily Charlotte Brontë was a stunningly competent romance writer, at least as far as Jane Eyre goes, so most of the audience that hasn't gotten alienated and stopped reading at that point has been swept up into Jane's big old hard-on.
Anyways. Back to work. Ew.
How the sun shone! How the delightful little coves of beaches sparkled blue and turquoise! How the air baked! How the kayak instructor's damp skin glistened over healthy young muscles in the sun! And how sweet it was to have myself to myself, neither of my companions being the sort who hijacks other people and our holiday having been nominally billed as a writing retreat. . . the Cultural Apocalypse Novel didn't get written, and after about 10 minutes of trying to do it on the first day I realized I was being a knob; it's going to need months of devotion just to work out and nail down the narrative voice, and sadly it will need to wait for semi-retirement, or else it'll drive me crazy. But lots of smaller writing, lots of poetry. And lots of sleep. All three of us arrived there stressed out to the point of practically exposed nerves - I think all three of us left as new women, partly because of being somewhere so beautiful, partly because of each other, partly because we could take it fucking easy.
That having been said, I utterly ruined my last two nights of sleep by buying Vanity Fair when I went into Dubrovnik looking for a present for the F-word. I'd brought Dicken's Pictures of Italy and was utterly disappointed, and Paul Theroux's Pillar of Hercules, which I'd swallowed whole on the trip to London and Gatwick (certainly the worst travel book of his I've ever read - very superficial, far more self-obsessed than his better work, much more "I said . . . my eyes danced . . . I was scared" than any of the others), and got Vanity Fair on a whim, mostly because of how much Thackeray showed up in Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. Vanity Fair definitely needs its own devoted post, and probably a great big one, and not today because I still have 100 pages or so to go.
And probably the impact of Jane Eyre on Vanity Fair needs its own devoted post too, or possibly an academic paper . . . surely there is such a paper, Charlotte Brontë dedicating Jane Eyre's second edition to Thackeray, who was partway through publishing Vanity Fair when it came out. But there might not be, because it's not apparent in a very obvious way - though it is. The thing is, Jane Eyre reads as though it's influenced by Vanity Fair, and not vice-versa, because Charlotte Brontë's great strengths weren't in satire, and Thackeray's definitely were. The facility of Thackeray's satire makes it almost hard to believe Jane Eyre was published first, as Jane Eyre certainly contains efforts at satire - and to me, they're the less successful parts of the book, that the author looks least comfortable with, that would be borrowed from elsewhere if anything was.
The charade scenes in each book, for example, are so similar, but Jane Eyre's charade is all about Jane geeking on the fucking unattainable hotness of Mr. Rochester, and Vanity Fair's charade is the rather gruelling presage of Rebecca gutting her husband while illustrating how she gives London society a collective boner. Unless you're into the romance of Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair's looks ten times better, because it's so much more effective as a cultural illustrator - unless you're getting swept up into Jane's hard-on for Rochester, Jane Eyre's looks derivative of the work that came after it. Luckily Charlotte Brontë was a stunningly competent romance writer, at least as far as Jane Eyre goes, so most of the audience that hasn't gotten alienated and stopped reading at that point has been swept up into Jane's big old hard-on.
Anyways. Back to work. Ew.
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