honestly

i seek neither recognition, nor adulation, nor affirmation, nor fame for my pursuits. the things i do i do because they feel good. i am a hedonist in essence, and self-centered (why in God's name would anybody be anything else? are you alive in someone else's body or accountable for someone else's actions or experiencing someone else's pleasure?) in practice, which is a fairly accurate way to pigeonhole myself.

i do not need validation or sympathetic agreement for my choices, and really could live without the little bit that i do manage to accumulate through the affections and warm feelings of my friends or their assumption of my purpose, however appreciated their intentions may be. my professional life is a well-known and oft-trodden path whose sole and strict purpose is to ensure that i am never mired in the everyday or, God forbid, find myself at the mercy of the society in which i live. at any time, i can leave this armpit of socialist paradise if they finally do succeed in separating and send the last vestigial remains of our economy down the 401. at any time, i can uproot from this continent and re-establish myself in europe ahead of schedule, should the legislature in canada finally pass laws decreeing that all working business-owners must directly purchase 3 houses and a car for each politician. my father always said i should live on an island, due to my constant raging against what i perceive as societal garbage, the misdirected stupidity of western society and capitalism in general, among other reasons, and the best island i can think of is one made of money. i'm being as honest as i can with myself here by stating that the only way i can conceivably or comfortably co-exist in a village containing millions of adversaries-to-each-other is by sheltering myself as much as humanly possible from the notions and whims of that wonderful capitalist paradise i was born into.

rambling on, my work life doesn't define me in the slightest. i could take it or leave it and never look back. i don't need to accumulate more products, build more whatsits, or drive a bigger car to my office in order to feel fulfilled. i was born for a life of leisure; of that i'm certain.

the pursuits i find myself involved with in my leisure time are mine and mine alone. i enjoy them for what they are, and have often had trouble making my friends understand that, for example, i truly don't need to have my writings published in order to enjoy them more. i don't care about the associated fame, and only care a little about the financial gain (see "island" above), though i'm concerned that if any of my pleasures become financially viable they will lose some of their endorphin granting ability to me.

my physical fitness kick as of late has nothing to do with how i will look, as do my fashion choices. unless i lapse, which is only human when inundated with marketing as we are, i choose things i like and generally shun ostentatious anythings. this can actually be a negative, as some products i would otherwise enjoy i turn from sometimes without realizing it, if that product is represented by a particularly ubiquitous or aggressive marketing campaign or overly-presigious image.

i appreciate spending time with friends, and even overindulging our mutual desires to be heard and to be Important to Others, and thus far have managed to maintain a few (friends, that is) even though i tend to exhibit massively self-centered tendencies.

dunno. this kinder gentler america pseudo-motif is lost on me, i guess, or my folks didn't instill enough family values in me when they had the chance.

give me a piazza in Firenze, and a cafe whose outdoor table at which i am sitting is shaded, with no vespa parking permitted nearby (the fumes, man) and a comfy seat. give me enough money to sit there most days to my heart's content, and a decent espresso, a book of my choice, and like-minded company to share the occasional overwhelming sense of happiness with, and i'm content. when my eyes stray from the pages of the book, they should be caressed by buildings constructed during the Rennaissance, and a certain blonde/blue eyed princess sitting next to me should meet my gaze. my nostrils should be rewarded by perpetually brewing espresso, and pancetta or soffritto frying in olive oil promising an incredible meal to come. my ears should never, EVER, encounter a language whose roots weren't nurtured during, or at the very least encountered by, the Empire, unless it is spoken by a friend who happens to be sitting with me at that moment. The sounds of Dante's dialect should be prevalent, snippets of my family's sing-song Neapolitan brogue sneaking in from time to time from neighboring tables, along with waves of distant ristornelli or favourite melodies from operas i adore drifting occasionally at the edge of hearing like the sounds of waves on the beach in south florida as heard from a high building. upon achieving cultural saturation, i retire to a very small (500 or 600 square feet) flat on whose six hundred year old windowsill i can sit and see Il Duomo, and whose gas-stove-equipped kitchen provides me with a culinary canvas. fresh basil, rosemary, and thyme grow from my windowsill planter, my fridge always contains a piece of Grana Padano and slightly soft local tomatoes, and from time to time i come home with two beautiful Tuscan beefsteaks. i have no television, but i do have a computer on which i watch the occasional television show at my own time and with no commercials, enduring no unresolved cliffhangers or season finales should i choose not to. my bedroom window is never fully closed, and my sheets are always white linen. the old Alfa Spider we use when cars are required is kept in a garage on the outskirts of town, as our little electric golf cart serves well day to day.

This is what i want. This is why I am working right now, with the painful hope that one day I'll be there. Not a "best of all worlds" compromised look-at-the-brighter-side version. Now that it's clearly (subjective observation, i know) put down here in my online mental bookmark, I should find it easier to keep my eye on the prize.

even more cooler

were last night's netherworld romps. the first one began with me on a plane just about to land in Rome. the feeling i had when i was standing just outside the terminal staring at some of the typical renaissance buildings of the city was unbelievable.
it suddenly flashed over to me in a highrise hotel room with my folks and ali, and we're in NYC. i took her to the window and we marveled at the population density and the cool buildings. again, awesome feeling.

but the sensation of realizing i was in ROME and not coming back was as pleasurable as the realization that it was just a dream is sad.


in hilarious news, i came across this quote. absolutely incredibly undoubtedly exactly my sense of humour:

"SCORPION DOES NOT APPRECIATE BEING IN MATTRESS. SCORPION WILL ENVENOMATE SLEEPY HUMANS."

how very interesting

my subconscious can be. dreams last night were vivid and waaaay existential (i really enjoyed Clueless).

it's tough to shake the aftertaste from that romp into old-wound territory, as We don't smoke cigarettes anymore. for some reason, a post Peter-Gabriel-In-Your-Eyes type moment cigarette tended to re-center me, and i haven't found its substitute yet.

tonight, we go to the McGill music building (Greetings, Queen Victoria!) to listen to the season ending concert, this year a Beethoven performance. of course, this is the only reason we're going. in this "cultural" city (*SIGH*) you'd be surprised how hard-pressed one can be for legitimate art performance. i ain't talking about the francofolies version of Stomp or some St-Denis UQAM funded theatre's rendition of Blue Man Group.

more to the point, i'd like more Deutsche Grammophone worthy performances of the meat-and-potatoes classics, be they one of the Tschaikovsky ballet thingies, Prokofiev crazies, or Beethoven masterpieces, and less with the Mahler Symphony He Wrote While Pooping at Rachmaninoff's House. The molecular gastronomy of theatre and music that seems to get the "cultured quebecers" so hot and bothered has started a little rage fire in my head.

in other news, you think i'll have success campaigning for a lakefront cottage in Saint-Adolphe-d'Howard? the one we have up at La Minerve, while very amazingly awesomeful in the summertime and non-skiing winter, is not conducive to weekly use due to its equidistant status with re: montreal and the ski hills...

oh what beatings i would administer.

last night i found out i had to be in the office by 7am to babysit an embarassment of an employee as he tries to de-fuck-up what was once a very important and lucrative project but has since become a God-damned comedy of errors and a masterful exhibition of incompetency and stupidity.

no problem, says i. i'm the noble leader, after all, and it's my duty to etc etc...

well, at about midnight the fucking neighbor's 18 year old future benefactor of my tax dollars and about 12 of his mensa club-mates were out on the balcony whooping it up.

i rose from my Tempur-pedic (BUY ONE! BUY ONE! YOU HAVE NO IDEA!!!) mattress and put on my bathrobe, with Ali (FINALLY!!!) saying to me: Oh, just let them have it.
y'know, usually she is cautioning me to avoid confrontation, not to get into trouble, to be careful, that i'll regret it later.

so i go out on my balcony, blinking stupidly, and look over at the posse of fucktards next door. i figure i can make the jump, as it's only about six feet away. as i am figuring this out and moving a chair to the railing to be able to get up onto it, they notice me and all turn. i say to them: Enough is enough. How else shall i explain the importance of you all shutting the FUCK up?
sorry! sorry! they all say.

when i came back in, ali was laughing in bed. i asked why, and she replied that she heard their inane chatter and laughter, our balcony door opening, a chair being dragged to the railing, and then silence. she assumed i frightened them inside without speaking. hehe. cute.

highly satisfying though the experience was, it did nothing to curb the insomnia i was saddled with, which kept me more or less awake for the following 4 hours.

i've had 2 hours sleep, and i'm not some poor overcaffeinated med student intern. i'm a delicate flower business person type. not pleased. oh, and at 2:30 i've got to babysit another one of our "executives" to make sure we don't screw the pooch on another important meeting.

ZZZZzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz

i stand, or rather sit, corrected

yeah, i guess Dylan is correct. however, i do love the show. not knowing the name's spelling has saddened me a little, but i'll make it up to dylan somehow.

oh, Al, when do you want me to ship you the box? you know which one.

it pleases us

so i'm waiting for my colleague to pick me up here at my hotel in Toronto, and i heard on Global that Jennie Garth (Kelly Taylor) will actually be in the 90210 spinoff thingie!
I didn't know there was going to be a 90210 spinoff thingie!
I can't wait to tell SWMBA about this, as we're nostaligically reliving our (well, "my") youth while re-watching that iconic show. Ali was like 12 or so when Dillon and Brandon were rockin' the old-school sideburns and furled brow that served me so well in my formative years.

i REALLY like being in Toronto on business.
wow. that may be the only time that sentence has ever been put together.

Oh, Alan, I've some advice for you relating to your last post on your journal. with the freedom folks still possess while i perfect my mind-control spray, they can turn away or stop paying attention to stuff that bothers them. this is particularly true of stuff that requires a positive action on their part in order to even gain access it. don't fret the whiners. everyone at some point or other feels that theirs are the Most Important Sufferings and therefore merit all possible indulgence.

go get golf lessons, you scottish bastard! you live in a state where you can play 12 fucking months a year.

frackin' spellcheck

you have diminished me. i misspell werdz now and don't even notice anymore, because when i type in microsoft word, it bloody autocorrects. i have lost the step of proofreading for spelling errors, which i think has carved out a small piece of civilization from my soul.

you know, it was bad enough when computers replaced typewriters. with typewriters, i would pull out the page and have a satisfying read while checking for mistakes and whatnot. that's an experience that is long gone for all but the most ardent and determined of traditionalists. and maybe argyle-wearing pipe-smoking writers who insist on living by themselves in old decrepit apartments while the shoeboxes full of money threaten to topple over and crush them where they sit.

oh, my friend's new car is fantastic, and i'm enjoying his old one far too much.

congrats!

my good friend is picking up his dream car today. ja, ja, i know, consumerism, blah blah.
in this case, though, it ain't a status symbol thang at all, but in fact is a lifestyle thang, which i approve of.

if you're buying visible things for the impression they'll make or the supposed status they confir, then you are in my humble opinion horribly misguided.

if, on the other hand, you buy things for the actual and real pleasure they'll bring you independant of outside opinion then huzzah! you're eating the creamy filling of capitalism without getting the stomache ache of llemming-land one-upmanship.