Fuck, I forgot!!

I promised a chick I'd write her a poem and she thought I was hitting on her and using the poem as an excuse to get her phone number. So I told her I'd post it on this blog, and she could leave a comment to notify she'd read it.

I was supposed to post it yesterday, but unfortunately, I forgot!!! The poem HAS BEEN WRITTEN and I'll post it asap. Giulia, if you're around and alive, leave a comment. Otherwise she might have forgot about this stuff too, then I don't know if I'll post. :D

Ok, so the big news are taking longer than I expected

I thought it was a matter of a few weeks, but it looks like it'll be a while still. I'm not going to play up the tension anymore (for anyone who's left tracking this place anyway) so I might as well say now what's happening - I'm changing domain.

"And that's big news why?" you'll all be wondering.

Well, because this blog was noticed by someone who understands the world of blogging much better than I do. He saw it, liked it, and offered it to bring it to a broader audience. So the new blog should become something like a column in a new site that is being planned. Which site? I'll give you the link soon. But we're talking about a pretty serious number of readers and some real responsibility (even, with a little time and luck, some actual profit. But that's just the 'someday,' and I want to focus on the now).

About focus - the peripheral effect this must have had on these pages is that I've abandoned the blog. In practice it is true since I'm not, you know, POSTING anything, but conceptually it's as far from it as possible. I've already written four or five entries in the past month or so, I simply did not publish them. I'm saving them for when I go up on the next place. When is that? Well - who knows. But I'm hoping within thirty days. The site is still under construction, but we're reaching the end.

In the meantime, of course, The Rant Machine has no more reason to be. I will publish one last post when the new site is up so that I can provide a link to it (so, don't de-tag or de-favourite this site quite yet!). Until then, however, thank you if you are still reading this and thank you if you've been with me all this time. Writing is normally a solitary trade, but even those few comments that this blog earned me have made me feel a world of good. I started this blog because I was planning on writing a book, but it looks like it's evolved into something of its own. That's a good thing. When I put up the link to the new site and effectively put the last nail on the rant machine's coffin, I hope to see at least some of you there.

Lots of love.
Andrea.

Organising a dinner with girls Part II

So. I meet my firend in the reception. I am a little bit snop-dogged from the waiting, but she seems not to notice. We go on to discuss what we are going to make for dinner. Her friend is right outside, chatting on the phone, and we consult her as well. Ultimately we opt for a carbonara, and in the process of this decision we decide to invite another girl who is notoriously appreciative of the dish. So it's going to be four of us, after all. We send texts to the other two girls to meet us at nine at my block, then we head out of the reception. The girl kindly offers to contribute some of the ingredients, so I suggest we quickly pass by her room before reaching mine, just as a way of making a pit-stop.

Thus began the most sensational Odyssey in my entire life. After reaching her place and picking up the eggs, we walk out and are so rapt in conversation that we manage to get lost and walk to the opposite end of the college before we even figure out where the hell we're going. I do so hate it when architects build blocks with those counter-intuitive doors which lead sideways away through a staircase rather than just straight-as-logic out of the building. We turn and are going in the right direction this time around when we meet a friend of ours who is walking alongside some guy we don't know (the scenario is vaguely mystical and looks like something out of a poem by Thomas Harding). We stop for a quick chat and we decide to invite him over for the dinner. He says he'll be coming with some beef for the second plate because he is as hungry as a polar bear (dear friend). We're halfway home now when the girl turns and says, 'If he's bringing some meat, shouldn't we also make some mash?' It hadn't occurred to me and it's not a bad idea by any standard, but I don't have the ingredients for it. 'Oh, no worries, I do,' she pipes. So we head back to her place to pick up the ingredients for the mash. On the way, we meet a girl I rather like. 'Oh, hello,' I exclaim, my levels of attention leaping upwards. 'Hi,' she says, 'why are you carrying eggs in your hand?'

I hadn't realised - as a result of my original assumption that the trip was only going to be a minute, I hadn't bothered to put the eggs in a container and am now walking through campus randomly holding eggs in my hands like some Spanish farmer. I try to joke my way out of the question, and of course the joke sinks like the Titanic. We walk away, with sobriety.

We are in the original girl's house again, and we pick up the ingredients for the mash. This time I put the eggs in a container. We take a quick break at the room of the girl below us because my friend needs to organise tomorrow's Miss Marple tea-session or whatever the fuck and obviously she can think of no better time to do this than now, then we head out. It goes without saying that we bump into someone again. This time it is a girl who works with my friend every day and is currently heading home. As though we gave anything like the remotest of shits, she starts telling us about recipes on how to make yoghurt. Yoghurt. Who the fuck asks anyone about yoghurt recipes on a pathway in the middle of the night? Anyway. My friend counters by inviting her over to the dinner. (Unspeakably inspiring. I can't wait to hear her speak about yoghurt until three. Besides, this is starting to look crowded). We are about to leave her to her de rerum yogurtae when we are joined by another group of girls, also friends of my friend, which of course extends the chat and engages them for the better part of the next ten minutes. I for my own part am not so much bothered as a little surprised by the amount of people who seem to be around at this hour of night, you would think there's a convention of some sort. Still, I let them have their girly chat and let my mind wander in the meantime. After a solid five minutes finding out whose friend of whose colleague was thinking of banging whose boyfriend of whose sister of whose uncle, I say a couple of words to make conversation with a girl in the collectivity and my friend turns sharply towards me: 'Andrea, stop hitting on my friends.'

Oh. Right.

We are now three-quarters of the way home and I am thinking we just might make it. We do meet a friend of mine's this time around, and I stop to chat with him - not because I had any inclination to, merely because I wanted to keep the girl waiting to piss her off in revenge. We finally reach the house (my heart was pounding on the last fifty metres - I was convinced that on this final stretch we were going to meet some astrologer friend of hers who was going to keep us there for half an hour to explain the history behind the constellation of Orion and I would die of starvation in the wait).

No-one is there yet, so me and the girl have the time to get things ready for dinner. At around quarter to ten someone knocks on the door. I open and I find one of the girls I had invited - standing there with other five individuals! 'Took some friends with me,' she said, 'hope you don't mind.'

So there's seven of us in a room the size of a ship's cabin if the ship has been intended for wire-haired Fox Terriers, and another half-hour later the lad who was supposed to bring meat comes over with no food and another friend of his. The munch I have is now starting to look sparse, so they both go out to fetch some more ingredients, and while they're out the two girls we'd originally sent texts to come over (alone, thankfully). I am by now so hungry I'm starting to see spots before my eyes, so I say:

'Well, let's get started.'

'But Andrea,' one of the girl reminds me, 'we've got to wait for the two lads to come back.'

I just about faint temporarily and they reanimate me with massages. I am still half-conscious when the two lads come back. Finally, at around quarter to eleven, I can start cooking. I look around me and notice there are, in total, no less than eleven of us. So much for the 'intimate dinner at around eight.' I'm just thinking that this is beyond my capacity when the door knocks again. I open, and there's two girls standing in the corridor.

'Well, what is it?' I ask.

'Hi, you invited us for hot chocolate after we were done with our dinner, remember?'

Oh fuck. So there's thirteen of us now in a room the size of a ship's cabin if the ship has been intended for wire-haired Fox Terriers, and I have to go out and find someone else still up at those hours - my crockery is not enough to cook the food for everyone and I have to employ borrowed pans and stuff. When I finally start eating, it is one of the sweetest moments of my existence. I was going to call it a night at around one, except that the guests had one of those Mother Teresa moments that people sometimes get and they offered to do the washing for me. Per se it was meant to make the night easier and smoother, except that someone started passing around spliffs while they did 'to make the job easier' and it took them two hours and forty-five minutes for two frying pans and the dishes. I don't know if it contributed to the washing in terms of efficiency - it certainly made it a much more jolly experience than it usually is.

We closed around ten past four. I had work at eight thirty. I set the alarm for seven with several thoughts going to historical suicides like Socrates or Mark Anthony, after which I put my head on the pillow. At the split instant that I do that, the alarm goes off. It is seven already. My hand reaches across and switches the devilish instrument off, then I faint into the bed. By this I do not mean that I fall back asleep; I mean that I literally lose consciousness. My head fell back into the pillow without even the time for the usual 'I'll just close my eyes for ten seconds' kind of thought that you usually get before dozing off. When I open my eyes again, I see through the blinding headache (oh yeah I forgot to mention there was vodka alongside the spliffs, just to make sure we'd go to sleep early) that it is ten past eight in the morning.

Oh. Fuck.

I managed to badge in at work only eleven minutes off schedule on that day, but the state I presented myself in has already earned me the reputation of 'Vodka Goofy' among my colleagues. I guess I can live with that. Huzzah!

Organising a dinner Part I

Ok, so the big news are taking a bit longer than I expected. But we're getting there, believe me. When? Provisional date is May 15th (if the force is with us). Start the countdown. until then, I'll tell of what happened to me two nights ago.

I have recently decided to invite some girls over at my place for dinner. I did this after an intense feeling of exhaustion which resulted by cocktailing some heavy days of work with nights out at the pubs (in other words, cocktailing them with cocktails). I thought that a quiet night in would make for an opportunity to relax and recharge. I also assumed that this would be a social gathering rather easy to organise and execute. Never have I been so sorely mistaken! Putting together a dinner with the girls turned out to be so hard that if they used it in the army as an entry test to become a soldier the world would be obliged to revert to pacifism out of simple lack of troops.

I meet two girls at work today and I tell them, 'Shall we have dinner together tonight?' They ponder and seem to think it's a good idea; however, they have to consult their housemates, see what's going on and all the usual yadda yadda. So far so good - I'm not Prince Richard so it's not like I expect a shot-in-granite 'yes' from the moment I open my mouth. I tell them I'm bound to be free tonight (because if I go out one more time I'm going to have a face like a fucking murena tomorrow, seriously, there's a limit even to how much you can go out), so if they fancy having a plate at mine's, then they can send me a text. Otherwise, I'll just chill out on my own.

'However,' I am quick to stipulate, 'if you do come, let's make it an early one. I've got to wake up at seven tomorrow, so let's eat around eight so that we can be in bed by ten, ok?' They earnestly agree, and in fact add that they were about to suggest that themselves.

6:25 pm. I am walking home and I receive a text. One of the girls lets me know that they're all going into town to have something at a McDonalds, then they'll be off home. She invites me to join them. I invite her to kiss my ass: the idea of going to town is looking as attractive as Queen Victoria's asshole when she's on her death-bed and doing that for a meal at a McDonalds of all places is so stupid it wouldn't pass the shit-test for a con on Peter Griffin. So I politely decline the invitation. However I compound that by saying that if they pass by my place when they get home, I'll offer them a mug of hot chocolate before they go to sleep.

7:20 pm. I am home and I have taken the meat out from the freezer. I am as hungry as a pack of Bavarian wolves. I am about to tear open the plastic over the meat when I recall that I've only heard back from one of the two girls, and she had not specified whether the other had joined her group of McDonalds adventurers. So I call girl number two - I do this almost distractedly, as though it were a matter of no consequence.

'Hi there, are we still having dinner together tonight?'

Oh yes yes yes yes abso-fucking-lutely she says, to put it succinctly though not quite in her own terms. 'I'll be at the college by eight,' she tells me.

At eight. Forty minutes of wait is not exactly ideal for my cavernous stomach, but I decide the company is worth the wait. She has a friend with her and I tell her she can bring her along if she so wishes; she says she will, so that'll make three of us.

8:00 pm. The silence.

8:12 pm. Hello darling, where are you? 'I am on my way,' she tells me, and furthers this by saying that I should meet her at the reception at 8:30. (Fuck).

8:30 pm. I am standing at the reception. It is a catacomb for all the activity that there is in here. The only sign of life is given by three Dutch girls who are sitting on the floor with laptops and speaking in that absolutely incomprehensible language of theirs. They vaguely remind me of three hens clucking in a sty at three times the normal volume. A background of the most pleasant nature, let me tell you.

8:35 pm. WELL? 'Oh, I'm already at the college. I'm at a friends' place in room 102. I'll be there immediately.' She hangs up after that, so I decide to wait for her over there.

Now, there are more or less sixty metres from her block to the reception, seventy-five if you include the staircase. It takes approximately ninety seconds to walk it, even if you're on crutches or if you're carrying dynamite.

So how the fuck in hell she managed to take twelve minutes from the door of her room to the reception is something beyond all my powers of cognition. Seriously, what is there to do outside of picking up her coat and maybe locking the door? Ok, there's saying good-bye to her friend, but she's off to the reception, not to fucking Tibet. She'll see her tomorrow, so the ceremonies in theory should have been limited.

I do meet her in the reception eventually, but I'm running out of space! Part II of this stuff up in two days, ciao!

In the meantime

So here I sit, with a pair of headphones on my head telling me the chronicle of a football match I couldn't find a way to watch (and before I get the rolling eyes from the girls for my superficiality, I was meant to write an article on it) and trying to plan a pub crawl for my birthday. It looks good enough on the map, but of course these things need to be tested out on the field, so I think it'll be Paris tonight. Whether I already get drunk depends on whether I have company. If I'm alone, on the other hand, I might just try to pick up.

Come to think I'd probably try to pick up even if there were two of us. Whatever.

This is a bit of a filler post, really. It's not that I haven't had the time to write - on the contrary, I've been producing quite a bit of material. Why, then, have I not been posting it? Well, because of the big news that I mentioned in my earlier post. Until that stuff happens, I've got to put a handbrake on just about everything.

So let's think of trains now. I need to a.) go home and eat something because I'm starving and if I start drinking on an empty stomach it will not go well with the fact that I have to work tomorrow (admittedly I have said this phrase about five times in the last two weeks and it hasn't really had much effect, especially not last saturday; I ended up slaughtering myself in a club and taking the 6:10 a.m. train back to work, where I started at 9. How I managed to keep myself up on my feet is something which depended on the Red Bull, that stuff probably burns out one month of life for every can you drink of it but man does it do its job). b.) find someone to come to Paris with me and convince him/her we will NOT be drinking. c.) Lure him/her into a pub and start drinking. d.) Get home before one a.m. Sounds good.

We're off!

Big news on their way.

Have not been ignoring the blog, fellas. Quite to the contrary. I've been preparing because something is about to happen here. Regular posts are not what I should be thinking about right now, but I'll get back to them soon enough.

Major news on their way. Stay tuned.

Rethinking 007 (and again irritating female academics)

Here is a post I've been wanting to write for a while.

Let's talk James Bond. I've never been a fan of the man. He's always been as sappy as a British gay waiter, and he has that bloody side-looking smile seeming to suggest 'I am so much better than you at rolling a yo-yo' which drives me wild (firstly: I do not give a fuck about how well you can play with a yo-yo. Secondly: even if I did, would I actually make competitions out of it and put it in film?).

However, a couple of years ago I walked out of a Casino Royale showing feeling distinctly impressed. Shortly thereafter, I was joining the scholars on the internet discussions (read: negotiating with the retards) to claim that Casino Royale was in fact the best Bond movie ever.

I've said this so often now that I'd like to spend some space to explain why. Often when people defend the claim of 'Best Bond movie ever' (which admittedly is as significant to me as 'best Miss Marple episode ever' considering how much of a fan I am) they do so on account of the great action, increased realism and greater sobriety. I don't subscribe to these notions. 'Quantum of Solace' has pretty much all the same stuff and is still as flat as a pizza (leaving aside pizzas from New York and thereabouts, which are something like the chain of the Himalayas and you could probably use them to take down helicopters). (Also, 'Quantum of Solace' is the goofiest title since 'Moonraker'. That's the kind of expression I'd expect to find in an undergraduate essay trying to copy Derrida).

Look! The turtles are having a bit of Quantum of Solace.

Personally, I think Casino Royale really hits home and becomes memorable because of its depth. Even though on the surface it just looks like an espionage movie, there are some really creamy themes in there which reverberate through the movie and give real meaning to the action.

(This is, in fact, what people who claim to like the movie 'just because of the action' seem not to get. The quality of the action in a movie is directly proportional to the meaning that underlies it. The sophistication of the choreography and the quantity of the punches is really quite secondary. When you look at the first fight between Neo and the agent, it is far more exciting than when they meet again in the sequel because their fight becomes a metaphor for each character's assumption of his identity. Neo is affirming his being Neo (rather than Mr. Anderson) by means of his punches, while Smith is affirming his authority as agent by means of his own, and their conflict encapsulates the wider conflict of humanity versus machines or free will versus determinism that is at the heart of the rest of the film. The emotion that results from this action is called pathos, and it is the measure of quality in all action movies. In the sequel, when there's a million Agent Smith's, the choreography is in fact more elaborate than in the first movie and the fight lasts longer; yet it's as bland as a day-old cheese-grilled sandwich because those punches SAY nothing).



Going back to Casino Royale, then, what is the film actually saying that the other Bond films not only never said, but never even stooped to consider?

Let's start from one of the core differences - the representation of women and Bond's relationship with them. Usual Bond movies tended to have women as one of two kinds: 1.) Shag-dolls whose main role was that of affirming the secret agent's virility (and heterosexuality) by helplessly falling in love with his unsurpassed abilities at fighting and fucking (the two skills which define the guy's masculine identity - to excel at these two things is what makes one a 'man'). 2.) Female alter-egos of Bond, that is to say, female secret agents from other countries, assassins, soldier-operatives, WHATEVA. In this case the films are trying to make a concession to the female sex ('see? Girls can fight too!') but it ends up being a misappropriation anyway - it assumes that girls are not inferior to men because they are capable of mimicking (the) man, not because of qualities inherent to them in their own right.

Casino Royale, by contrast, seems to divide its female characters into flashy, glamorous dolls of the kind we were used to find in the previous James Bond movies (among others), and intelligent, classically beautiful women.

(Admittedly 'classically beautiful' is a bit of an arbitrary statement, since the fact that they are pretty even with toned-down make-up, hairstyle and clothes does not make them 'classical.' I think the prejudice may just result from the fact that I consider the female protagonist in Casino Royale to be as hot as molten lead).

This...

...versus this.

What is interesting is how this dichotomy seems to correspond almost perfectly to the usual dichotomy of good and evil. Flashy dolls are situated on the evil side, and Bond displays a truly striking indifference towards them, while he falls in love (and out of his ego) with the good / intelligent one. One can even read a quasi-feminist message in the fate that is reserved to the first doll, the French woman – she ends up maimed and killed in a situation where she is completely out of control, and previous to that leads a life which she defines as unhappy (a statement which we can trace back to her being a doll). It is a harsh statement to women who think it 'wouldn't be that bad' to be a doll and be seduced by Bond (or a masculine equivalent). If you think that submitting oneself to seduction is a natural role to hold, then just look at where that leads you.

The doll / intelligent woman division is in line with the film’s general tendency to comment (critically) back on itself – see the reference to over-complexified tortures or the alteration of classic lines ('shaken or stirred?' 'Do I look like I give a damn?'). At the heart of this tendency is the foregrounding of gender issues - Vesper has a style which Bond defines as 'androgynous,' and her last compliment to him is that 'even if all that were left of you were your little finger, you would still be more of a man than anyone I have ever met before.' Their constant interplay within each other is foregrounded in terms of gender - she contests and attacks precisely his status / value as a masculine fantasy, the expression of which was the whole point of the other Bond films. Such a contest, or such a critique, invests a new meaning on other features of the film which otherwise seem perfectly in line with the notion of the male fantasy - for instance, Bond's physique, which loses its state as the part we 'take for granted' in a real man, and instead goes to underline the necessity of stepping out of normality in order to achieve one’s aim (or even merely professionalism). It is an expression not of fantasy but of natural truth (especially as it is implicit in the pursuit of our desires and ideals).



It is also a merit of the film that the female protagonist doesn't suffer from an inferiority complex towards Bond: she is “good” (morally and at what she does) in very different ways from him, and the film suggests that her not being a killing machine doesn’t make her in any way inferior to Bond (if anything, more humane at times).

Even as the film foregrounds questions of genre, it closes with a strikingly bleak statement on the possibilities of communication between the two genders. The semi-Utopian, topical happy ending that the film initially lulls us towards seems the resolution of the conflict between James and Vesper - the two have reconciled their differences and are now living happily together ever after. But the revelation that this was a false truth reveals that message as a fiction. The final part of the film has Bond rushing to save his girl - a typical 'knight in shining armour' scenario. But not only does he fail to save her, she does not want to be saved. The film refuses that fiction. This refusal is a direct implication of the statement which is made by that beautiful, poignant final scene - for me the most memorable scene in the whole James Bond filmography: Bond is trying to reach Vesper in an underwater setting, where language is impossible, under the slow movements and diffused illumination of a fairy tale, in a silent scenario where the mutism of the two specific characters becomes a metaphor for the condition of the two sexes - that is to say, both incapable of speaking a single word, for all their desire, their frustration and their resolve. Bond's and Vesper's incapacity to speak to each other is symbolic for the impossibility of communication between the two genders. Ultimately, the old-style knights are not enough to break through the barrier of man and woman, and through the wall of cold water and the iron bars the most that we can hope for is a fleeting, speechless kiss - a kiss which, alas, does not represent dialogue. It is given by Vesper as a disillusioned blessing, as Beethoven's 'it must be so,' as a statement of love despite and beyond the (linguistic) bars which divide the two lovers. It is condonement, but it is not innocence.

When Bond finally breaks through the barrier and reaches through the elevator, Vesper is dead. The fictional feat has been useless, and the (tonally) driest decease by drowning in the history of cinema comes in a form which unsentimentally acknowledges death as the end of dialogue.