Stay out of my Va-j.

I'll listen to practically anything. Well, anything spoken. I think it's a product of having a very quiet house while growing up. The unfortunate thing about this is that I'm not left alone with my thoughts for as long as I'd like to be. The fortunate thing is that I can get a lot done without feeling that I'm totally wasting my time. Lately I've been listening to 'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith on audiobook. It's been amusing, but not great. In one scene towards the end, one of the central young female characters. Irie, has intercourse with a set of feuding twins, one after the other, in separate places, for her own reasons. I'm not sure how the story ends yet, but It made me uncomfortable that the Vagina was the place where the two originated, and that it was the place in which they were supposed to be reconciled. The book discussed being the elder and younger son, and fighting their way down the birth canal. I feel like the young woman had nothing to do with the exchange...that her vagina was a battleground or a neutral space for the conflict and reunion of two brothers.
I remember reading something that hit me the same way when I was younger. In Stephen King's 'It' the young people all end up having sex with the female of the group when they are hopelessly lost in the sewers. The sex seems practical and even romantic from the young girl's perspective, although I'm not sure that losing your virginity in a sewer gang-bang would be my idea of a great playdate.
Her vagina is used to 'Unite' and 'calm' the group and they are able to safely find their way out of the sewer.
Glad to be of service.
P.S. Stay the hell out of my loins.

Teach me things

In the car on the way home from holiday visits, I learned a bit about my grandmother's life back in Italy, and her experiences as a new Canadian.
She told me about the school in her small town, where her fingernails and the area behind her ears were inspected daily for cleanliness. Where the child that did not complete their homework had to wear paper donkey-ears with the Italian word for Ass written across the back. A school where punishments ranged from a strapping on the hands to having to kneel bare-legged on dry corn kernels. I learned that she was the first person in her family to learn to read.
It will be 51 years ago tomorrow that my grandmother and her two daughters took the 12 day boat trip to Canada, and I was surprised that I had misunderstood the circumstances for so long. I grew up thinking that they came over, huddled together on the lowest level of the boat, trying to stay warm and not to starve, sleeping on their belongings, frightened and dirty.
Instead, I found out that they shared a cabin with another woman and her two children. They were fed meals in the ship's dining hall, and the ladies were able to try many things that they had never before eaten...like bananas and beef steak. My grandmother couldn't fit into her clothes by the end of the journey-she had never experienced so much food and so little physical labour before. She saw her first ever moving picture, a cowboy film. Shortly after disembarking, she cut off her old world braids, got a perm, changed her clothes and got to work on her new life.
Mille Grazie, Nonna.

Excessively Long and Sinfully Decadent.

Last week's snowstorm postponed a twice yearly tradition: Fancy Birthday dinner with Debbie. Our birthdays are about six months apart, which allows us to indulge ourselves twice a year by dressing up, hauling out the pearls and going out to a restaurant that we'd normally never go to. So far, we've been to the Jamie Kennedy restaurant at the Gardiner ceramics museum, C5 in the ROM crystal, and now Kaiseki Sakura.
We had a five-course tasting menu with different sake-based drinks to compliment the food. Some of the highlights included Tongue in red miso broth, mashed Ginkgo nuts, sweet shrimp with yuzu foam, and whole fresh wasabi root with a sharkskin grater.
The waitress complimented my palate, brought free birthday champagne and strawberry-adzuki cheesecake.
I think it's hilarious that Blogger does not recognize most of the ingredients listed above as words. Titillating sights, scents, and flavours, giddy indulgence and good company made this a wonderful birthday. I'll focus on charity and thriftiness, sensibility and restraint the other 364 days of the year

If I had a minute more

I would tell you about how interested I've been lately in long exposure photographs.
I would tell you about the man that I was on the subway with who, with an air sealed pillow of his personal belongings, had angry imaginary chats on his cell phone about how he just got out of jail.


I would kvetch about laundromat etiquette, and rave about Stanley Kubrick's version of Lolita.
But since I only have a minute, I'd like to discuss the tension between creativity and responsibility. Long ago, I crafted without much thought about materials. I scavenged what I could from the ground, the garbage, or my father's basement and tried to make things.
As I got older, I started to think more about all of the garbage that we produce, and all of the essentially useless things we purchase and collect for pleasure, and what I produced started to get smaller and smaller. My last spurt of pure, functionless creativity was taking apart watches and making diorama inside with the pieces.
While these were beautiful and reused broken goods, they still bothered me because they were not useful. I know, I sound like an art-commie. Living in Japan, being surrounded by ads and consumer goods while living in a tiny, empty apartment made me more conscious of what I bought and picked up and made, because of the lack of space and abundance of waste.
All of these things mean that when I want to give a gift or have an idea for a craft I feel now that it comes with more responsibility.
Is it useful? Is it wasteful? What is the pleasure behind making/giving/receiving the thing, and where will it end up? As I accumulate more buttons and string, more velcro and scraps of old clothes, more paper and packaging, I imagine new ways to be a maker.

Cluck, Grunt, and Low

I really wanted to hate this restaurant.
It sprung up on a cursed corner in my neighborhood, home to 3 or 4 failed restaurants in the past two years. It appeared several months ago - a meat restaurant on a strip that is dominated by vegetarian, Asian and Middle Eastern restaurants.
I didn't know what to make of the name, or the sign. At first I found it cute, then mildly distasteful, and then puzzling:

I believe that these characters are called 'Cluckstein Gruntberg and Lowenthal', which starts a whole other line of questioning.
I can't decide whether or not it's a good thing that the restaurant has animals dressed like humans-lawyers, I think-on its sign. Also that it is named after the sounds that these animals made.
Before they were slaughtered, dismembered, smoked, shipped, seasoned, smothered with barbecue sauce and served.
I really don't care what you eat. Mood is hard to convey in type, but mine is jocular...honestly. I usually don't eat meat, but I've never tried to stop someone else from eating it. My opinions can be strong on this subject, but I won't shove tofu down your throat. Unless, for some reason, you ask me to.
Cluck, Grunt, and Low, with its noisy, mooing website and barn-like decor, made me think about whether its name and theme bring people closer to the facts of who/where their food comes from, or if it's just another case of making things cute and entertaining in order to remove them from reality. One time I walked by and there was a cartoon pig drawn on the sandwich board out front, with a speech bubble in which he invited you to come inside and feast on various parts of him.
Wonder...