So today at the conference there was a two point five hour session that had nothing to do, even tangentially, with anything I have anything to do with, so I got my first Turkish bath. I made the mistake of reading about them on Wikipedia right before I went in an effort to not commit any massive nude-y faux pas, which left me agonizing while I lay naked on the hot marble slab about using an institution with so many historical associations with the most exploitative kind of sex slavery. I won't say the agony stopped once the attendant came in, took off her clothes, and started exfoliating me all over; in fact in a certain moral sense it got worse when I realized halfway through that I was 75% passively ready for the dirtiest possible scenario in which the situation could go. But it was still a really lovely experience, particularly getting covered with bubbles and massaged.
But do I reccommend it? I don't know. It's causing me the same level, if not the same brand of moral confusion and disturbance the Berlin Zoo did the last time I skipped out of a conference to enjoy myself. In a certain sense I don't think you should be in a position where you should be able to pay someone to wash you for pleasure; it offends my communist sensibilities. And yet my hard-nosed capitalist side says it's my economic duty as a monied person to hire less monied people to do things for me, even things that my cultural upbringing informs me are actually my job, or possibly the F-word's, except our bathroom is too unromantic.
And then the psychoanalyzed side of me informs me it's fucking weird, though obviously completely predictable, that it's such a pleasurable and relaxing experience to be so infantilized by a woman my age (the attendant) taking a role no-one has taken since my mother when I was about three years old. My psychoanalyzed side is also informing me it's wierd I'm caring about being cleaned off by a professional when I've got undressed and massaged by a kajillion different professional therapists without ever questioning anything about anything except that it was awesome.
I don't know. My guess is I'll probably do it again, though not at a five-star hotel, because the stale atmosphere of bourgeois decadence and entitlement is probably what's killing my buzz. The thing is in view of my nut allergy my pleasures are a little limited here - about 3/4 of the food is off limits - so I'm looking for other ways to spoil myself - I guess this is why I've never travelled in Asia. Oh well, there are enough other nice things, I'll just keep eating bananas and watermelon. Maybe it can turn into some awesome new fad diet.
giovedì, settembre 17, 2009
mercoledì, settembre 16, 2009
The worst joke in the world
Q: What's a five star hotel in Istanbul exactly like?
A: Every other fucking five star hotel in the world.
All over continental Europe, even the bit the other Europeans argue isn't Europe (and this place is fucking Europe, man, it's obvious in everything from the way people dress to the way they overcook their vegetables) it's the same fucking story: anodyne marble and carpet without any ununiformed proles; a Holiday Inn with a health spa and a shitload of overpampered congress delegates.
Fuckin' speed the weekend.
A: Every other fucking five star hotel in the world.
All over continental Europe, even the bit the other Europeans argue isn't Europe (and this place is fucking Europe, man, it's obvious in everything from the way people dress to the way they overcook their vegetables) it's the same fucking story: anodyne marble and carpet without any ununiformed proles; a Holiday Inn with a health spa and a shitload of overpampered congress delegates.
Fuckin' speed the weekend.
martedì, settembre 15, 2009
Eating the balcony
Feeling better, on the mend-ish. Still pretty gross but enjoying staying in my pyjamas all day. Someday life will be like this, and not just when I've got a fucking pandemic.
Not much other news that's fit to print today, so a garden update. My aloe pups, apparently while I've been in Canada, have taken off and look quite good. Christmas presents! Yay! The tomatilloes have also finally taken off too, at least somewhat, on their second flowering; we have five or six fruit on the go. And the capsicum are fruiting too. The lemon cucumbers have done very well, and are still producing; I've lost count of what we've got off them. Not enough for pickling, though - just stuffing in our faces right off the vine. The peas have been and gone, really minimally, but Daddy had warned us not to expect anything out of peas in containers, so I'm not upset.
The tomatoes have been the biggest disappointment so far - no potash and they've mostly got rot spots. Well, we won't make that mistake again. They're still fruiting. We'll see how gentle the autumn is and what we can get out of it - but it's all experimental at this point, in anticipation of life with a fucking garden, man. In Australia we'll have a constant growing season and will actually be able to feed ourselves a fair go - like when I was a child. I want to be ready. I feel ready. It's hard to wait, in fact.
In the meantime, I haven't quite made up my mind if next summer we'll garden again or if I'll have a go at raising some dragon trees for private sale in the nicer pots. A bit of column A and a bit of column B, I think.
Not much other news that's fit to print today, so a garden update. My aloe pups, apparently while I've been in Canada, have taken off and look quite good. Christmas presents! Yay! The tomatilloes have also finally taken off too, at least somewhat, on their second flowering; we have five or six fruit on the go. And the capsicum are fruiting too. The lemon cucumbers have done very well, and are still producing; I've lost count of what we've got off them. Not enough for pickling, though - just stuffing in our faces right off the vine. The peas have been and gone, really minimally, but Daddy had warned us not to expect anything out of peas in containers, so I'm not upset.
The tomatoes have been the biggest disappointment so far - no potash and they've mostly got rot spots. Well, we won't make that mistake again. They're still fruiting. We'll see how gentle the autumn is and what we can get out of it - but it's all experimental at this point, in anticipation of life with a fucking garden, man. In Australia we'll have a constant growing season and will actually be able to feed ourselves a fair go - like when I was a child. I want to be ready. I feel ready. It's hard to wait, in fact.
In the meantime, I haven't quite made up my mind if next summer we'll garden again or if I'll have a go at raising some dragon trees for private sale in the nicer pots. A bit of column A and a bit of column B, I think.
lunedì, settembre 14, 2009
Filthy swine
I've got swine flu, the friendly house-call doctor reckons. House calls. They're awesome. I didn't even have to change out of my pyjamas. It's good to know I can drop out of wondering about commercial-ethical problems with conventional medicine and whether the vaccine race is a big circular scammy money maker or not now because, well, I've already got it, don't I? I fucking knew this would happen. What don't I get that's catchable through nose-picking? Fuck.
He also said that based on when my symptoms began I won't be infectious anymore by Wednesday, so I can still go to Istanbul . . . working on the assumption that the city is open for business after the floods. The rain has stopped and the conference organizers, who are no doubt shitting themselves, have sent out reassuring emails about how everything is still a go. Personally I want the food that will be attached to the conference so bad that I'll cry if it isn't a go. But I really, really don't want to go in for any disaster tourism.
We meant to get me some tree-time this weekend in one of the few national parks Belgium boasts but I was too sick, so instead we watched Bruno and 30 Rock. Bruno was pretty funny, I guess. I liked his assistant, who I can't find out anything about except that he's Swedish, which is probably why he consented to do such outrageous things that would be widely considered career killers outside of Scandinavia. You have to admire the balls of it all but I guess I'd been expecting too much and only got three or four belly-laughs out of the experience. 30 Rock, of course, I love. What a great show. I wrote before it's no Arrested Development and it's true, but it's as good in its own way. Such great characters. At least one belly-laugh per 20-minute episode. The last one that nearly made me die, as the swine flu is putting some fairly severe limits on my respiratory abilities, was:
Kenneth: Well, you know what they say: 'Money is the root of all evil.'
Tracey: I thought that was just a tag line for my movie, Death Bank.
It was actually sort of scary, I think the F-word was mere moments away from calling me an ambulance. . . .
He also said that based on when my symptoms began I won't be infectious anymore by Wednesday, so I can still go to Istanbul . . . working on the assumption that the city is open for business after the floods. The rain has stopped and the conference organizers, who are no doubt shitting themselves, have sent out reassuring emails about how everything is still a go. Personally I want the food that will be attached to the conference so bad that I'll cry if it isn't a go. But I really, really don't want to go in for any disaster tourism.
We meant to get me some tree-time this weekend in one of the few national parks Belgium boasts but I was too sick, so instead we watched Bruno and 30 Rock. Bruno was pretty funny, I guess. I liked his assistant, who I can't find out anything about except that he's Swedish, which is probably why he consented to do such outrageous things that would be widely considered career killers outside of Scandinavia. You have to admire the balls of it all but I guess I'd been expecting too much and only got three or four belly-laughs out of the experience. 30 Rock, of course, I love. What a great show. I wrote before it's no Arrested Development and it's true, but it's as good in its own way. Such great characters. At least one belly-laugh per 20-minute episode. The last one that nearly made me die, as the swine flu is putting some fairly severe limits on my respiratory abilities, was:
Kenneth: Well, you know what they say: 'Money is the root of all evil.'
Tracey: I thought that was just a tag line for my movie, Death Bank.
It was actually sort of scary, I think the F-word was mere moments away from calling me an ambulance. . . .
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