Dance & Drink & Screw

I'm reading at the moment Swamplandia! with verybadhorse. I've read until the end of Chapter 6 and this is what i think so far.

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I refuse to believe this man is behind the current hacker attacks on LJ!!

Do foxes eat cats? On Saturday night, on the way home from a pub north of Victoria Park, we spotted a ragged fox in a front garden. It stood right behind a fluffy black cat that didn't seem aware of it. Both looked at us with glassy eyes before the fox leapt into the bushes and disappeared. The cat never moved its eyes from us. Was it about to be killed?

Sunday night, our friend T shared with us his memories of living in New York in the late 70s. He remembered seeing Grace Jones play her first gig, before she was known or had her first record out ("Portfolio"). T saw a picture of her in the Village Voice advertising her gig, dressed in a vintage look that reminded him of Billie Holiday. Off he went with a friend to the gig, a train ride to the middle of nowhere followed by a walk across a busy highway before they reached the disco she was performing in.

Her voice was flat but it was undeniable she had star quality. She changed costumes after every song (she still does it today), had two Muscle Mary's accompanying her on stage and performed the final song in a bridal dress with S&M gear underneath.

With the divine powers granted on me I command you, Livejournal, to rise from the dead. Rise, rise and live again!

And you, Russian cyberpunks - I foresake you. I cast you into the wild pigs that roam Siberia. I curse you to roam the land and roll in mud for the next thousand years.  Begone! Out of my sight! Leave our beloved Livejournal alone!

On my train ride to Toulouse I sat beside a girl with a dog on her lap. On my train ride to London yesterday I sat beside a girl with a cat on her lap. The dog was called Diana and was as blond and shaggy as her owner. She got slaps whenever she growled at loud small children wandering past us. Her owner's laptop had Dexter's cast members as its desktop image. I think the cat was called Emel and it was quiet, dignified and gorgeous. Its owner fell asleep often but the cat never tried to jump away. The three children in front of us kept peaking over their seats at it.

We stayed with wink_martindale's sister and her french boyfriend in a modern apartment by the river. Our blinds went up and down with the help of a remote control ("I feel like I'm in L.A.!") Later in the week, Wink's other sister and her husband joined us from London (there was minor drama with this because of all the flights being canceled thanks to the snow). They stayed with Wink's parents, who were in an apartment nearby rented specifically for the holiday.

Our typical day consisted of breakfast followed by walks through Toulouse and its shops. We did most of our Christmas shopping there. The city's centre ville reminded me of a Parisian neighbourhood, perhaps Le Marais sans les pédés. The architecture hinted at medieval but had very modern homes, pretty shops and restaurants. At night, we had dinner back at one of the apartments.

The whole point of the trip was to have a Christmas dinner with the french boyfriend's family. They consisted of the boyfriend's brother, parents and grandparents (a couple in their eighties and a "papi" who was 93) . Real characters - a very boisterous, fun-loving group of people who spoke perhaps 5 words of English between them. Thank god for my previous french courses! They gave us a banquet on Friday that consisted of a whole bunch of sea food I'd never eaten before in my life. I had a go at oysters, bigorneaux huîtres (small snails for you and me), langoustines (just the meat in their claws) and bulots (large snails that look like fuzzy, pinkish snot). And a pie that contained fish brains. It all tasted good, but what a trial! When the plates arrived, I felt like Indiana Jones in that scene from the Temple of Doom. All this food was topped with trays of cheese and dessert - and a lot of great wine and champagne.

The eve ended around 4am. We returned the next morning as soon as we woke up for more sea food, foies gras ("just keep telling yourself it's hummus"), haricots verts, gratin dauphinois (potato bake) and a franken roast that was delicious, composed of duck, pig and a few more animals. It was prepared by the young brother, who is a butcher. Again, followed by cheeses, dessert (ice cream and fruit salad). Plus the usual wine and champagne.

We took loads of pictures but the camera is still with Wink. When he's back in London (on the 3rd) I'll upload the photos and post a link. Tomorrow morning a friend from Brasil arrives to stay with me for a week or so. It's her first visit to Europe. I'm looking forward to seeing London through her eyes.

I found a family of baby rats today.  I was digging the compost heap at the community garden when I noticed something shiny and grey wriggling amidst the rotten egg shells, mud and wood lice.  Soon the viscous thing broke apart into three tiny sets of blind eyes searching for a way back inside the heap.  Everyone stopped what they were doing and gathered around me.  "Baby mice!" I said.  Someone lifted one by its very long tail and corrected me: "baby rats."  "Where's the mother?" someone else asked.  We all stared silently at the heap and shuddered.  There was something trying to poke out of the mud - like that bit in Alien - so I raised my shovel in self defence.  It turned out to be four more baby rats.  We pulled them out and put them in a cardboard box.  Nobody knew what to do with them.  We couldn't exactly rehouse them but nobody had the guts either for drowning the lil cuties.  When I came home, the impasse still stood.

I'm on the third episode of Dynasty's first season.  During a glamourous dinner, Blake Carrington's daughter smokes a spliff in the garden with her cousin while her closeted gay brother reads Emily Dickinson to one of the guests in the library (the guest that just came out of the loony bin.)  I'm loving it.  (I'm quite surprised at the amount of versions for the theme song on Spotify; and the same for Dallas.)

It would be kinda fun to write an 80s style bonkbuster centred around a rich and powerful family (much like the ones I used to write when I was fourteen - inspired by my mom's Sydney Sheldon collection).  Or a reboot script for Dynasty.  I think there's a market out there in these banker bonus times.

This weekend, wink_martindale and I will be babysitting our landlady's tiny fluffy white kitten Blanche. My landlady has to go to Spain for the weekend and asked if we could stay over her place and make sure Blanche doesn't misbehave.

My journal entries during the weekend, therefore, shall be known as The Blanche Diaries.

The landlady's Wii also apparently needs a lot of attention so I grudgingly agreed to make sure it stays happy and out of trouble.

Michael Connelly, The Last Coyote, 1995
The fourth book in Connelly's series about L.A. detective and loose cannon Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch is an ode to crime writer supremo James Ellroy. Like Ellroy's "Black Dahlia", Bosch has a mother whose brutal unsolved murder in 1961 shapes his later life and depressive personality. Suspended from work after attacking his commanding officer and evicted from his condemned home after an earthquake, Bosch goes solo - like the straggly coyote he occasionally spots on the Hollywood hills - in an investigation into what happened to his mother and why her murder was covered up by the police and local politicians. It's a cleverly constructed, slow-burning plot with the right dose of action and mood, though genre aficionados may spot the final twist a mile away.

I really needed some alcohol yesterday. And I got it, in the form of a delicious pint of Guiness at the Haggerston (previously Sam's Bar) on Kingsland Road, followed by bottled lager in Passing Clouds, where friends joined me for an evening of films and conversation. I needed all the distraction I could get from this data entry temp job I landed in March. It's not the end of the world, but it sure is boring me already.

Do you know what is permaculture? I didn't until last night, and now I'm  glad I attended Naturewise's Permaculture Picture House, where two films were shown on the topic of growing food and forests. One of them is a fairly recent production - The Agro Rebel - focusing on an Austrian farmer and the sustainable farming practice he introduced into his community; and the other was a British-Canadian animation from the 80s about a French man who loved to plant trees and eventually helped create a national park. I thought this last one was based on a true story but, alas, I was wrong.

I love Passing Clouds and was happy that blu_bear , denalyia , woodsrule and her boyfriend T also enjoyed the place. Plans were made for a future weekend excursion, when the ground floor has live music, and blu_bear and I came to the conclusion that it would be worthwhile following up on one of the courses on offer, and definitely going back for the next Picture House in April.