Charmaine X

hair A+, attitude "must try harder"

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:10:00 +0000

For years I've been convinced that my lack of success with women was due to a single factor. Not my boyfriends, no! My hair. And now I have the proof: last night, while I was checking out post-Britneyite fedoras from a street vendor, this hot, athletic, willowy chick who was totally my type put her arm around me so she could get a photograph with the shaven-headed foreigner.

I bought the hat. Then I cycled home alone to organize my Chinese flashcards in alphabetical order.

death days

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:05:00 +0000

On the third-and-a-half floor stairwell in my apartment building were sticks of incense and a metal bowl full of blackened bits of what might once have been paper money, the whole thing emitting thick clouds of smoke. Perhaps someone keeled over of a heart attack in that spot. I thought of dumping water over the stinking mess for the sake of air purity, but that might have been perceived as some kind of bad omen.

It was one of the many days on which the Chinese make offerings to the departed. I have never so much as seen the graves of any of my family members, much less swept them with a broom or thrown them a picnic, as one is wont to do in southern China. (The advantage of having stubbornly atheist Jewish grandparents, now deceased, is that if they were "on the other side", they wouldn't dare make themselves known -- because it would prove them wrong.)

The next day, the ashes and incense were gone; but my apartment on the 4th floor -- the number of death -- was instead filled with a pungent aroma of tobacco without any visible source. A ghost sneaking a quick one on the stairwell? No: they've closed the cheap ethnic restaurant at the end of our street; they've chased the snack vendors away and the shop selling freshly squeezed fruit juice -- but construction is now complete on the new cigarette factory, and they've started roasting the killer weed right below our windows.

If you love the dead: why not make more?

baby got back

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:21:00 +0000

Hello. Hi. HI! Hey, you over there -- yeah, you, the one with the MacBook and the rumpled copy of the left-wing newspaper. Put your latte down and PAY ATTENTION TO ME!

That's better. I know I've been gone a while -- almost three months, in fact. I've been all over Yunnan and Yurrup with nary a blog post to show for it. But I've been busy, you see.

First, I travelled to the Thai border to meet the man I will call the Third Canadian, for reasons known to anyone who's been keeping a-tit of my sex life. Then I moved in with him. Then I came back to Cambridge to (*gasp*) work on my PhD thesis. In between library visits I made a flying visit to Berlin to talk pots, pans and politics with the Epicure.

More soon. Charmaine X: meta-blograstination.*

*When you procrastinate from blograstinating.

photo: (il)literacy

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:06:00 +0000

Like spam,* it's almost poetry: a T-shirt in Kunming exhorts "chunkily-penised boys" to "do her right... to her good". Seduce her with Chinglish!

*Freestyle spam e-mail poetry? Spam lunchmeat haiku? It's all good.

Sighting [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:25:00 +0000

Sunday. The Doña and Doniño, on a rare visit to Cambridge, are taking me for an (OMG-it's-) early morning stroll. Because babies don't get hangovers. "Bowl!" "Mo bowl!" He absolutely lurves churchbells. I've rarely been more of an atheist.

Not far in front of us, Delphine, on a rare visit to Cambridge, emerges from a college not her own.

Ah.

I don't make introductions. No, I just watch her by; she grabs her bike and cycles off towards Bridge Street. When she disappears, I turn to my son and say "Breakfast time?"

And that's your Don. All the awkwardness, jealousy and poignancy of adultery, with none of the sex.

On that note, term's over again, and the Don is returning to domesticity. Adios. Hopefully Char will be back any minute.

Oh, wait, the end-of-term party...

It's 1 am the day before. For some reason my jacket is sporting a bunch of fake grapes, inserted into its breast pocket by a cute ex-blonde dressed as a Fate. The older husband of a European friend has just squeezed them, like they were a boob, and he a teenager. He's not the first. He is, however, the first to follow up by slipping his hand inside my jacket and rubbing my nipple. "It runs in the family", he says, by way of clarifying that this is, in fact, weird. Charmaine, I think I have some more friends for you.

Sightings [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:40:00 +0000

Email contact from Char! And she promises stories. Yum.

(And about time, too, Ms X. I was on the verge of changing the blogname to something brand-faithful but slightly more accurate, like "Charmaine X: Doesn't live here any more. No forwarding address. Try: China", or "X Charmaine".)

In other rara avis news, I've learned that this blog has a reader! At the Other Place. Just in case this heralds a new era of cross-institutional popularity, I'll repeat this warning that I, Don Mace, am a semi-fictional writer of semi-fictions.

So, for example, if I write that last time I was at the Other Place, a lovely young woman took me to her room after a group formal to watch her "change her shoes", and later followed me up to mine to "help me fetch my whisky", and ended the evening by asking if I was going to "walk her home", that might look... ambiguous. But, it wasn't! And that's how it's done.

Finally in avis migrans news, Titania has disappeared again. Presumably it was something I said. Any of you drawing broad conclusions about the survival of friendships despite romantic tension should probably stop before you fall over. I know I'm going to try.

Update: no she didn't.

Oops, I did it again [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:20:00 +0000

Can one apologise for treating someone badly without making them the bunny in the relationship? Just askin'.

Almost Mainstream [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:34:00 +0000

Wired.com's Regina Lynn on polyamory:
Internet Pushes Polyamory to Its 'Tipping Point'

Oddly enough internet magazine Wired.com's internet sex columnist thinks you lot can all thank... the internet.

"You can argue that before the internet, the poly community didn't exist," says Franklin Veaux, author of What, Like, Two Girlfriends?, a respected polyamory FAQ. "There's no question that the rise of the internet and the rise of polyamory coincided, although poly does predate the net by 6,000 years or so."

And it's not just internet sex columnist Regina Lynn. No, you're all geeks.

Geeks have not traditionally been viewed as relationship experts, yet as a subculture, we are open to alternative ways of life. We immerse ourselves in science fiction and fantasy, imagining other cultures and experiencing relationships not necessarily bound by puritanical traditions.

Thanks, Blake's Seven fanfic!

Which reminds me, one day I have to do that cybersex post. Ah, reminiscences.

Ambiguity [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:30:00 +0000

Reader poll. Late one night last week, after a formal dinner¹ there were four of us in my room sampling (I would say tasting, but by that stage we really weren't) some whiskies. Smoking girl was one of them. The first boy left at 2:30. The other boy (the straight, single one) left at 3. Smokey just waves goodnight, smiles and pours another whisky...

I turf her at 3:45. (Though it's all I can do to tell time at that point.)

Now, no one made a move. There wasn't even so much as an "in other circumstances". On the other hand, if that sort of thing had happened when I was single I would happily have drawn the obvious conclusion. So am I being cynical/egotistical/jumpy? Answers in a comment please.

But really, no one comes here to read about me not having sex. And with Char alternating between not-getting-any and too-busy-getting-some-to-blog-about-it, the polyamorous content of this blog has rather evaporated. So, to the mailbag:

Dear Mr Vanilla Person,

I've been with my boyfriend for four years now. We got together at university, have been together more or less happily ever since, and now we own a dog together. My parents have started showing him invitation stationery. But I'm only 23! What if I'm settling? What if I change? I don't want to lose him if he's the one, but how can I find out without actually having other boyfriends? And should I really be getting drunk with you and asking you these questions?

You know, polyamory would be a good solution to this tension between the fundamental human needs for commitment and strange. And, probably not. I'm feeling a bit egotistical at the moment.

I have a friend who calls herself polyamorous. And indeed, she has three boyfriends. But she's following the n+1 rule: boyfriend n+1 knows about boyfriends 1..n. But not vice versa. (And boyfriend n has a girlfriend who's, er, his #1.) Isn't this just logistically sophisticated cheating?

Absolutely. Polyamory is about openness and communication. (And, of course, sex with several people.)

[1] Much like Eskimos don't have forty-seven different words for snow, and Australian English is composed almost entirely of synonyms for "fuck", Cambridgese has thirty-odd words for binge drinking. "Formal" means "binge drinking in hall with suits on". Similarly "garden party" means binge drinking outdoors, and "punting" means binge drinking on a funny little boat.

Update: other synonyms for binge drinking include "evening seminar" and "term".

back soon

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:28:00 +0000

Apologies for the temporary blogging absence. Busy falling in love.

Things I hope he doesn't say in public [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:41:00 +0000

Besides his various "fuck"-like monosyllables: "guck" for truck, "cuck" for cuddle; not to mention "cock" for crocodile (and for horse, which had better be phonetic or I'm going to have a word with the nursery people)...

The Doniño has now taken to greeting me in the morning with "Hot Dad!". He's talking about my coffee. (Tea is "Hot Mum!", which reveals the etymology. And is also more accurate.)

Mummy issues [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:19:00 +0000

So it's official, Carla married Sarko.

Presumably she'll be on the market again before long, but during this brief time of sadness it's fitting that we take two minutes and twenty-seven seconds to reflect upon what we've lost.

Ahh.

(Video via AFOE.)

A hard man is good to find [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:38:00 +0000

Next up on the Charmaine X book club: "Love and Sex with Robots" by David Levy.

Short version: since people love pets and fuck dolls now, it's only a matter of time before sophisticated robots become the object of both kinds of attachment.

Well, quite. Once again, I'm glad I got married already: I wouldn't fancy my chances when sybians know how to make breakfast.

Metapsychology review here. (I'm not sure "metapsychology" means what I thought it meant.)

ain't no fun (if my comrades can't have none)

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 12:03:00 +0000

You know why the Democrats keep messing up -- as one commentator said a propos their 2004 election failure, "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory"? Sure, they fight for the nomination like a pack of teenage mothers squabbling over their shared crackhead boyfriend on Ricki Lake. And yeah, they did change their mind about the war, and change their mind again, and then claim they never changed their mind in the first place, much like the aforementioned boyfriend claiming they're not his babies when everyone done saw him hanging around at Sharon's place when he wud supposed to be at Sayenna's. And okay, so the Democrats have an uncanny knack for gaining the support of one minority voter group by alienating all the others, much like talk show rivals taking turns pandering to the non-booing half of the live TV audience.

But -- and I hope you will imagine this spoken in the authoritative tones of Dr Phil -- those are not the root issue. No, the real problem here is that the Democrats don't have any good music.

Think about it. Hillary Clinton's official presidential campaign song: "You and I" by Celine Dion. Nasal wailing? Is this really the image she wants to associate with her candidacy? Worse, when I think of Edwards or Obama, no music comes to mind at all. What is this, the anti-party Party?

Ladies, gentlemen and other, I don't know about you but I reckon it's time to prune the Shrub and his cronies till they're bonsai. To paraphrase the commander guy himself, we're gonna smoke 'em outta their holes (he was referring to Ay-rabs, but it works just as well for Republicans). And what better way to rally the troops than your good old-fashioned protest lyrics? That's right, we'll sing them out of office!

I hereby present to you Charmaine X's official Only-Bush-I-Trust-Is-My-Own campaign song of 2008, to be sung to the tune of the eponymous Snoop Dogg number:

Ain't No Fun (if my comrades can't have none)

When I met you last night, baby
Before you showed me your income gap
I had respect for your political party
But now I take it all back

'Cos you fucked up the economy
And you didn't tax your cash
You did a number on the immigrants
And your supporters like to gay-bash

Next time I'm feeling kind of angry
Don't try to tell me, 'cos I'll cut you off
And if you're on your ranch in Texas
Even better -- don't open your mouth

'Cos I have never met a boy
Who's so oblivious to the geopolitical implications of his actions in the
whole wide world*

Ain't no fun
If the comrades can't ha-a-ave none
Ain't no fun
If the comrades can't ha-a-ave none
...

[punch chad, repeat.]

*If you have trouble making this line scan, I recommend that you study the classic syllable-compressing style of il ritmo e azzurro as epitomized by the oeuvre of Divo Craig David.

the trouble with saving the world

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:29:00 +0000

is the people who are trying to save it.

when popstars poledance: an investigative documentary by agent j

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:18:00 +0000

It's got high heels, guns, and vinyl-clad strippers*. It's even got a gratuitous hot Chinese guy pursued by a fembot superagent (though I suspect he may be a Korean in disguise). You can pause and rewind and pause and rewind and pause the part where Jolin does the splits in your face. The only thing that would make this video any better would be if she caught the dude, tore his pants off and they made hot sexay love on the balcony and she tortures him a bit. Whaddaya mean you made better music on your Casio keyboard in 3rd grade? There's music?

I hope this is a James Bond tie-in, otherwise watch out for lawsuits. For bonus points, try not to think about the fact that this is exactly what Victoria Beckham would have done if she were, like, better.

*The faux-bondage outfits are lame. I don't care.

towards a less internet-mediated reality (my break-up with the 'book)

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:01:00 +0000

Achtung: this isn't about the sexay, but it does contain non-Aunt-Sue-approved material. Be warned.

Today I purged facebook. I deleted favorite films, quotations, personal information. If I couldn't put a face to a name or it was someone I queued with for cafeteria lunch or blind-dated two years ago, I took them off my friends' list. I poured bleach all over my profile to remove the prelapsarian graffiti of a more innocent networking time.

Like many bad relationships, my affair with the 'book started out fun and flirty. Gradually, though, the problems got harder to ignore. First my professor joined. Worse, he friended me. I accepted the invitation without thinking. I had forgotten Mr Spoon's humorous odes to my backside plastered all over my facebook wall.

The professor's intrusion into this not-so-well-guarded personal life could be damage-controlled with a few tweaks of the privacy settings. But then all these old high school friends starting showing up, and by "friends" I mean people who slammed me into locker doors so often it left a combination dial code permanently imprinted on my pelvis.

In eleventh grade they had the easy sophistication that comes from a six- or seven-figure parental income and access to class A drugs. Now the same girls and boys were putting up pictures of waterskiing holidays with their hedge fund colleagues while I was saving up money to buy cappuccinos. One of the few dropouts, a sweetie who'd been serving pizza in Amsterdam a year after graduation, had posted photographs of his wedding. I'd always felt guilty about fucking his Swedish girlfriend in Cannes during the 1998 film festival; but in the great race of life, he had clearly overtaken me at the quarter-mark. My inadequacy complex clawed its way out of the grave like a long-haired assassin in a Tarantino splatfest.

I could overlook the warning signs for the sake of everything we'd built together, the 'book and I. But then came the nail that broke the camel's coffin, the straw that made the vase drop: Mark.

He looked much the same as I remembered him; a little jowlier, perhaps. He still had that apologetic yet oddly sinister look in his eyes -- the look of a man who, if you ribbed him enough, might buy an automatic assault weapon to use indoors. His profile revealed the existence of a blonde wife and two blonde toddlers who probably wouldn't approve of the Metallica licks he played obsessively every night after finishing math homework. He didn't say why he'd made contact. He didn't have to: I couldn't forget the boy who broke my hymen no matter how hard I tried.

All the intervening adventures haven't erased the memory of Mark climbing through my bedroom window and positioning himself, with the wrong kind of stiffness, for the usual teenage fumblings. I didn't need his face popping up on my 'book. It's a denial of my right to history: to my history, which means change. It means bad relationships end.

So after a long inner debate, I'm leaving facebook. It will be a slow break-up, because our CD collections are all mixed up, and we still have to decide who gets the dog at weekends. I'll miss the jokes we shared, that familiar presence on my browser; but for the last few months we both knew we were just going through the motions.

And maybe someday, if I'm lucky, the 'book, despite its deplorable privacy policy and connections to the CIA, will finally discard the last mementoes of our time together; the shadow of a song, Spoon's haiku to my ass.

Relationships in a teacup [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:30:00 +0000

So, a while back now in the confessional blogosphere there was a mini-trend for paragraph-length relationship summaries:

Megan:

He wanted everything about it so bad I couldn’t refuse. The time he told me that he sat in his dark room waiting for me to get off work shocked me still, almost paralyzed, for minutes. In the end, it would be hard to say who ripped the other up worse or for longer.

He wrote to me first and wrote to me more and kissed me. Then he was gone and I was grabbing at air.

Of course Charmaine could encapsulate the pants off these people with one hand tied behind her ankle. But she's not here, so I thought I'd have a go...

Our first date, we carved pumpkins in Madison Square Park. Mine looked like I'd punched it, but it was the thought that counted. She taught me what good head was, then did the fade.

We were high-school sweethearts. She started college first and dumped me without telling me. Ten years later, after a blissful reunion, I went to New York and dumped her back. I told her.

She was my secretary. She was a paralegal. She was tech support. I was getting a reputation.

She was Christian, but I knew what to do. I shouldn't have laughed when she couldn't pronounce "clitoris".

I found out years later she hadn't dumped me.

She was a delicate, gorgeous Haitian named Sheila. Being Haitian, she didn't appreciate the irony.

She rejected me; I hankered for three years until we kissed.

I read her the Hitchhikers' Guide scripts, with voices. She gave me a plush dog my son plays with. I called her in Karachi but she didn't answer.

She rejected me, changed her mind, then dumped me. We're married.

and I hear they can't jump, either

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 02:34:00 +0000

"The primary splits in American progressive movements are generally between white men who can't dance and everyone else."

- S&W poll for Urban Progressive Magazine

In Praise of the Whip [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:21:00 +0000

No, I'm not coming out. It's a book! A new non-fiction, serious bookshoppy one. From the metapsychology review:

Largier displays the form and function of the whip through long textual citations and detailed commentary, but then links these stagings with the corresponding spiritual, pornographic, medical discourses that lend them their specific cultural resonance.

Something for everyone, then. Especially if you're Catholic:

Arousal is perhaps the most prominent and most ambiguous component of self-flagellation, and it is this ambiguity that allows the whip to be conscripted by both the hermetic desert Christian and the modern libertine, presumably for antithetical purposes. Largier challenges and complicates this presumption by exploring the intersection of the religious and the erotic...

So f'rinstance,

[After Bolleau, at the turn of the C18th] The desire behind self-flagellation comes to be seen as libidinous and the eroticism of the whip driven by sadomasochistic images and affects. This explains the rise of an anti-clerical polemical literature which appears in the fifteenth century and continues into the twentieth.

I did wonder. In the end,

The libertine has exposed the voluptuous side of the ascetic's whip and cultivates this for its own sake, while the priest has now become the potentially perverse voyeur--at least, that's how he is imagined.

And there you have it. Don't say I never do anything for you kids.

Update: It's really not obvious that the title of this post is a link to the Amazon page, is it? Well it is. And here it is again:
Amazon.co.uk

if you try to convert me one more f%$#?!ing time

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:14:00 +0000

You know I have morals and becoming a Christian wouldn't make a difference on that front, right? You're not dumb enough to think I need God to tell me not to kill and steal and all that shit. You don't think I'm some sort of psychopath? Okay, good. In that case you must be trying to convert me because you think my heathen soul is damned to hell unless I accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior.

See, you're doing this for my own good. I get that. So I'm going to try to remain cordial and not tell you to BACK THE FUCK OFF if you try to convert me one more f%$#?!ing time.

I'll try not to laugh at your sheer prideful ignorance in thinking your religion is the One True Way. I'll try not to pinch myself when you attempt to reconcile your alleged love of humanity with your evident contempt for Muslims and homosexuals. I'll try not to slap you in your self-satisfied face when you write off centuries of massacres, persecutions and socio-political disasters committed in the name of your church. Really, I'll do my best.

I'll try not to doubt your intelligence and powers of logic when you put forth the specious argument that it's true because the Bible said so, as if your holy book hadn't been written and compiled by humans, who are known for lying, fabricating and plain old getting things wrong. What's that you say? They were transcribing the word of God? Bahai'i, Mormons and Scientologists say so too. What makes you so damn special? I'd have more respect if you told me Jesus manifested himself before your eyes as you were eating a hot dog and told you to go easy on the mustard.

I'll try not to be insulted when you rudely attack my world view, even though I'm man enough to leave yours alone, because, for fuck's sake, we're at the dinner table. Let's just have a friendly conversation. Leave abortions and Iraq until coffee, at least.

But if you even think of telling me you're going to "pray for my soul", I swear I'll sit on your face until you choke on your holier-than-thou-flavored bake sale jam slice.

Come to think of it, let's do that. It'll be fun.

silent night (r.i.p. oscar peterson)

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:04:00 +0000

On his 1964 Trio album We Get Requests, there is a moment -- maybe more than one -- where pianist Oscar Peterson slips into pastiche. He effortlessly resolves a pop song played as a jazz tune with a riff taken from classical music.

It's easy to hear why in a CBC interview, Peterson once described jazz as an "intellectual form". He was nothing if not an intelligent musician; but while the phrase accurately reflects his virtuoso style, it fails to do justice to his playful grace. On We Get Requests he takes tired old mules like People and Girl From Ipanema, beaten to death in a thousand divebar jazz pits, and summons their spirit from the grave to dance with unbearable lightness.

Note the significance of the album's second title word: not we play requests; we get them. And, the subtext reads, you're lucky if we take them. It's a good thing neither Peterson nor his partners Brown and Thigpen played horn; they would have had a hard time blowing with their tongues lodged so firmly in their cheeks.

Miles Davis's famous diss -- that Peterson "makes me sick because he copies everybody" -- missed the point. Peterson indeed recycled as prominently as Al Gore on a book tour: few jazz musician don't. I once played in a band where the trumpeter's favorite joke was to find a way to add the Simpsons' theme tune to every solo without the audience noticing. Peterson quoted and studied others with a flair that left no doubt the talent was entirely his own.

Ten days ago he passed away from kidney failure; an old man's death, quiet and dignified, as deaths go. His prolific career saw him accompany the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, even Billie Holliday herself. Few of his former collaborators survive to mourn him.

If you ask me, the best we can do to honour his memory is put on one of his records -- the aforementioned We Get Requests, My Favorite Instrument, or Night Train perhaps -- and laugh: remembering, in true Oscar spirit, not to take ourselves too seriously, but to finesse our way through life with redemptive good humor; and a Petersonian sprinkling of pastiche.

Quote of the Day [Don Mace]

noreply@blogger.com (Don Mace) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 17:16:00 +0000

"I'm monogamous occasionally but I prefer polygamy and polyandry. Love lasts a long time but burning desire, two to three weeks."
--Nicolas Sarkozy's girlfriend.

So, Char, which world leader will you date this year?

(Polygamy?)

and while we're on the subject of homoerotic germans...

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 07:59:00 +0000

...a bit of Fry and Laurie.

presents of mind

noreply@blogger.com (Charmaine X) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 08:02:00 +0000

Christmas: a time for fatty foods, family drama and bad puns. Being in China, I had to settle for eating lots of the former and making my own of the latter, with absolutely none of the middle. I wasn't planning to celebrate; the Roommate and I shared similar misgivings about emotional coercion and financial exploitation, but Angel threatened to sulk if we didn't watch at least two Christmas movies. And so, in the spirit of the season, we lay aside our cynicism to humor the most naive member of the household.

In the end we settled on Love, Actually followed by the first Die Hard, set on Christmas eve. Both feature Alan Rickman as a Bad Person (preparing to cheat on his wife of thirteen years / preparing to blow up a building with thirty hostages). As a member of a left-wing terrorist cell from Munich, his Evil German joins the ranks of Adrian Edmondson's Red Baron in Blackadder Goes Forth: cold, calculating, and slightly homoerotic. Delicious.

Aside from Alan Rickman's German accent I didn't get much for Christmas, having put a whole continent between me and the people most inclined to pander to my affections. Nevertheless, what I did receive seems most telling. Here is a list of presents accompanied by analytical commentary. Charmaine X: Freud'R'us.

***************************************************************

Gift: 1 double-headed dildo
Donor: my gay brother*

As Freud might have said if he were a lesbian, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a double-headed dildo is just a double-headed dildo. What better gift to express the inherent dualism of the Christmas spirit, the joy created both by giving and receiving, in one tidy phallic package?

***

Gift: 2 cigarette holders (1 stone; 1 imitation ivory with dragon carving)
Donor: the Roommate

Continuing with the theme of the double phallus, I received not one but two cigarette holders from the Roommate. Apparently I have so much animus it cannot be expressed by a single-headed phallic symbol alone.

***

Gift: 1 pair binoculars
From: my father

What am I supposed to do with these? Develop a Peeping Tom fetish? Probably not what Dad had in mind. Restraining orders are for life, not just for Christmas.

***

Gift: 1 automatically extensible self-defense stick
From: Angel

This is a black metal tube approximately the length and girth of a large penis which extends out to a metre's length when flicked with a sharp wrist motion.

We are now moving into the aggressive expression of phallicism, its violence symbolically hidden inside a neutral exterior -- just as the fullness of the self-defense stick remains hidden inside its case, ready to be deployed at the flick of a wrist. From a practical point of view, it's very good for hitting people. Angel says it's to defend against overzealous natives.

***

Gift: money
Donor: my mother

Calvin: "If you could have girls, power or money, which would you choose?"
Hobbes: "Money, because then you can buy the other two."

***************************************************************

The final count: five phalluses, a pair of binoculars, and cash. According to my Christmas loot I'm cold, calculating, and slightly homoerotic.

Anyone got a number for Alan Rickman?

*My mother once accused me of making him gay by putting lipstick on him. I told her the lipstick had nothing to do with it, but if it did, I'm very proud. I have taught you well, young Paduan. Stand by for further destruction of heteronormality.