Going To The Dogs

You may or may not have heard the one about the dyslexic atheist who lay awake at night wondering if there was a dog, but whatever the case, they always say start with a joke. I actually prefer the one about the dyslexic devil worshipper who sold his soul to Santa, and should probably say I think both jokes rather misrepresent the problems of dyslexia sufferers, but my point, and I do have one, is that we went to the dogs on Friday night.

We went to the Wimbledon track, because Walthamstow (which is, incidentally, the first place in London I knew a postcode for – fans of early 90s boy bands should be able to figure out why) doesn’t do Friday nights. It was quite a walk from Tooting Broadway tube station, firstly because it was quite a walk, and secondly because it involved walking in Tooting. As we wandered tentatively past a breast scanning clinic on a deserted road, we remembered a very early date when Alec managed to mistake a VD clinic in Peckham for the Old Vic (a rather long and surreal story, but hey, he got the girl) and were starting to wonder if it was all going a bit pear-shaped.

But we finally got there, and got down to brass tacks. We didn’t win the first few races we bet on, but about four races in, we were starting to get the feel of things. After some discussion, we decided to bet on the trio of Beat Them Melv, Mustang Messiah and Call A Copper. I walked confidently to the counter, asked for a trio on tracks 2, 4 and 5, and was somewhat perturbed when the betting coupon named Ravilello Girl, Quick To Move and Baran Magic. It soon became clear that, tit-like, the pair of us had been scrutinizing the form for completely the wrong race. And of course, it turned out to be the closest we came to winning anything the whole evening.

I think I’m hooked.

Review: Bel Canto (Ann Patchett)

When I was fourteen or fifteen I read a trashy romance novel called Perfect by Judith McNaught. It was about a Hollywood superstar (male, ruggedly handsome) framed for the murder of his wife, escaping from jail and taking a hostage (female, beautiful, feisty) in his bid for freedom. They drive across the country to his remote log cabin in snowy mountains, bonding along the way despite their implacably opposed positions in the situation. Yet even as she gradually comes to believe he is an innocent man, and he is falling more and more in love with her despite himself, the fact that she is important only as his shield from police gunfire lurks continually in the background. Things come to a head one night in the cabin. His paranoia explodes into fury. Terrified, she tries to escape. In pursuit, he comes to a frozen river and thinks her car has gone through the ice. He plunges in to try and rescue her, risking his own life. She saves him, and from then on they take on the world, prove his innocence and celebrate their new-found love. He takes her to parties in Hollywood and she dances with Patrick Swayze and Kevin Costner. Happy ever after. The end.

Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) is Perfect, minus the great sex. Terrorists storm posh party in poor Latin-American country hoping to take President hostage, but it turns out the President skipped the party in order to watch his favourite soap opera. Yes, really. Terrorists say “Oh, poo” but decide to keep everyone else hostage anyway. Japanese CEO of behemoth electronics corporation and opera singer fall madly in love despite the small glitch of not being able to speak the same language. Everyone else also falls madly in love with opera singer, by the way, because she’s beautiful and her voice is wonderful, wonderful, Maria Callas and Kiri Te Kanawa eat your hearts out; it makes grown men cry and gives young terrorists hard-ons in ways that jungle warfare never did; no one can think of anything more wonderful than sitting and listening to her sing all day, every day, because of course everyone loves opera. CEO’s translator and young girl terrorist called Carmen (aha, allusion!) also fall madly in love, but oh my God, she’s a terrorist and he’s a hostage, how will it all end?

[Spoilers follow]

It ends, my friends, in tragedy. The terrorists have been making ridiculous demands – freeing of prisoners, aid programmes, a Playstation 2 for every member of the organization etc., and the government won’t budge. Special forces decide after a couple of months of sitting around scratching their balls that yeah, they should probably storm the compound. In a cruel twist of fate, Japanese CEO is killed trying to protect Carmen the girl terrorist (I forgot to mention that all the hostages and the terrorists really get along by now. It’s quite a love-in. They play football and all, although I think the Latin-American Terrorists vs Japanese Electronics Corporation People fixture would have been a bit of a foregone conclusion). Translator and opera singer are heartbroken. How will they recover from this loving and losing? They will marry each other, that’s how, even if they displayed not a jot of romantic interest in each other all the time they were imprisoned (well, the translator did proposition the opera singer for sex, but that was on behalf of the CEO). They marry in Puccini’s birthplace, and will live in Italy, where opera singers should live. Happy ever after. The end.

I’m thinking the people who gave this book the Orange Prize and Pen/Faulkner Award must have seen something in it that I’m not seeing. I’m thinking I wasted a few days’ worth of reading time on this. I’m thinking Judith McNaught should be sitting in a room somewhere really pissed off.

Installation

I had wall space to fill and a collection of prints and postcards to fill it with – various Eschers (Reptiles, Concave And Convex, Relativity, The Tower Of Babel), Guernica, one of Picasso’s mutations of Las Meninas, Dorothea Tanning’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Jack Yeats’ For The Road, a photo of Cornelia Parker’s Cold Dark Matter and that Flandrin I really love.

The Eschers and Picassos are black and white, the others are in vibrant colour. I had this vision of connecting the black and whites to radiate outward like spokes from a hub, and then surround their tips with the coloured prints. I worked assiduously on the arrangement, Blu-Tacking, sticking, checking for crookedness and congruence with surrounding prints, re-arranging where necessary. Finally, I stepped back and surveyed my work proudly, convinced that despite a congenital lack of graphic or spatial talent, I had indeed come up with something artistic here.

It was a huge swastika. I took it down.

Epitome

I knock on Tamara’s door. I’m wearing extremely baggy grey Gap-copying-Maharishi trousers (my mum calls them my Ali Baba trousers), and a Beck T-shirt under a scrubbly (I have no idea whether that’s even a word, but it just seems like the most descriptive word to use here nonetheless) navy blue Benetton jumper my sister wore when she studied in London 15 years ago. The T-shirt is substantially longer than the jumper and flares out from the elasticized waist of the jumper like a strange skirt. On my feet are black toe socks and Japanese slippers.

I ask, “Hey, where’ve you put the latest issue of Glamour?”

I Wasn’t Made For Diplomacy

The reading on cultural relativism I’ve been doing for my comparative human rights course has been boring me so far. This isn’t because it’s especially tough or dry, it’s because it’s just so earnest and civilized. Human rights are important. Social and political cultures are complex and diverse. It’s really, really difficult to figure out how best to protect everything and everyone, but we must keep trying. GROUP HUG!!!

In contrast, Voltaire once said he would rest in peace only when the last king was strangled in the entrails of the last priest. Philosophical discourse must have been so much more fun in those days.

Michelle Vs Photocopier…FIGHT!

Me: “COPY”
Photocopier: ADD TONER. DO YOU NEED HELP IN ADDING TONER?
Me: “YES”
Photocopier: PRESS “INFO” FOR HELP IN ADDING TONER
Me: “INFO”
Photocopier: [extremely complex instructions beginning with OPEN FRONT COVER and moving on to tasks such as configuration of nuclear reactor, retrieval of lost space probe, removal of own appendix with dessert spoon…]
Me: “CANCEL”
Photocopier: [extremely complex instructions beginning with OPEN FRONT COVER and moving on to tasks such as configuration of nuclear reactor, retrieval of lost space probe, removal of own appendix with dessert spoon…]
Me, exasperated: “NO”
Photocopier: ADD TONER.
Me, giving up but wilful: “NO” (!)
Photocopier: ADD TONER. (!)
Me, starting to find this funny: “NO” (!!!)
Photocopier: ADD TONER. (!!!)
Me, in fits of laughter: Interactive technology my arse!

(Other people present make timid expressions of concern before running away from strange girl.)

Beta Saxophone

It probably says something about the Beta Band when you’ve been listening to The Three E.P.’s, which you’ve owned for a while but somehow never listened to very much, and vaguely wonder why they’ve chosen to end the album with several renditions of the Ave Maria on unaccompanied saxophone, but you shrug your shoulders figuring hey, it’s the Beta Band, this is the sort of thing they’d do, and then you realize the album ended long ago, and it’s been your neighbour practising all along.

Early New Year’s Resolutions

Based on the events of the past few days:

  • I will stop going for tutorials a week late.
  • I will stop going for aforesaid tutorials unprepared, although I realize this is ultimately of no consequence given that I am a week late.
  • I will bother to set my alarm clock(s) for Wednesday mornings, when I have to meet the priests to choose hymns for Sunday. I feel exceptionally rude keeping the clergy waiting and then turning up in pyjamas.
  • I will buy gloves I like instead of going gloveless and freezing due to reluctance to wear my murderer ones.
  • I will never buy Tesco’s vile soya milk again in attempts at health. Self-induced nausea cannot be healthy.
  • I will find music to listen to while studying that is neither so catchy that I end up singing along and bouncing off the walls (Dismemberment Plan) nor so soothing that it lulls me to sleep (Galaxie 500). Unfortunately I think this then means Matchbox 20 but they do say suffering is good for the soul.
  • I will teach myself to like healthy snacks like wheatgerm instead of guzzling Kettle Chips (salsa and mesquite flavour).
  • I will uninstall Dope Wars from my computer. I will also stop publicly discussing cocaine prices and the strategic necessity of procuring assault weapons for use against the police.
  • I will stop getting wound up about things that are ridiculously unimportant in the larger scheme of world hunger etc. as well as pretty damn trivial compared to the problems of some of the people around me.
  • I will spend less time writing lists of resolutions and more time actually carrying them out.

The Rub

From a phone conversation with Ida:

Ida: I left most of my clothes in London so I have nothing to wear tonight.
Me: Borrow something from one of your sisters?
Ida: I can’t, my sisters don’t dress like sluts.