I, Muehlenhaus. U, Riedermaus.

The curse of Mayan cuisine continues... yesterday (i.e., Sunday) we were sitting around rearranging furniture for the hell of it -- what else is there to do on a Sunday when you are dreading Monday? -- and the phone rang. It was Urgent Care calling for Birgit. They needed to talk to her. She has a weird ass intestinal infection, it turns out. This on top of another weird ass intestinal infection she had just begun taking anti-biotics for several days earlier. Man, oh man, whatever she ate... it was toxic!

What else is new. I've sworn off Shockra, Chackra, or whatever it was. It was a great foot massage, but as therapy it seemed iffy. My Mum is still a believer in it, though, which makes me happy. At least the lady can stay in business a while longer.

***

Getting stoked. I'm thinking about a major change in my academic trajectory. Moving into Political/Critical Cartography or something. I'm kind of sick of reading about neoliberalism. In fact, I swear I have begun to lose my mind from it, and I've come full circle -- I've decided that people that subscribe to the whole neoliberal critique are the ones that are insane. It all makes sense, until you read Nikolas Rose's "The Power of Freedom" and then it makes too much sense and your brain turns to mush and you just don't care anymore. I don't care anymore. I mean, I was critiquing myself for going to Shockra -- as it is a tool of individualization. But who cares... if you can't experiment or enjoy life without worrying about the "social" -- which as a self-identified introvert I have a hard time buying into anyway -- than life becomes quite shit. I'm not even convinced that "social" or "class" exists, which is blasphemy enough to get me thrown out of the program as it is. I mean, I believe “class” could exist, but merely as a social construction of those believing in it. Thus, in a way, it is no different than those believing in the miracle of prayer… i.e., it has no scientific basis. At least… that’s what I’m thinking today. Who knows… tomorrow I might re-pin up the Lenin portrait on my wall.

***

Mum came down from Duluth this past weekend. It was great fun seeing her. She always cheers me up. It is incredible how similar we are – even if she does buy into the whole shakra shindig. She just comes in, sits down, and starts talking about real shit. She brought her hair salon stuff and gave Birgit and I new cuts in the kitchen while chatting about… well, I don’t even remember what we were talking about now, to be honest. But it was nice. Saw a bizarre, and I thought pretty good flick called “Me and You and Everyone We Know.” Sat around drinking coffee and reading the Sunday NYT. On Saturday we took off to Ikea on a shopping binge of sorts. Man, it rules when you start making real money and can just do that… not that I would know, but Birgit makes real money and it is a “union” so I get to go shopping too.

***

On Friday I didn’t feel like updating my literature review, so while Birgit was at work sucking on antibiotics, I moved all of the furniture and books out of her office up to my second floor office. My office, um, “our new office,” is about 30’ by 12’. It was a bachelor pad before – a twin bed, two computers, cable television, VCR, DVD player, 100s of books, etc. Well, it’s still quite the little alcove, and definitely a fine attic space in which to start a revolution, but now it has three computers and even more books, sans bed. I moved the bed downstairs to Birgit’s old, tiny office, and made a guest bedroom with nothing but the bed, a dusty plant, and a bookshelf covered with Bukowksi novels, Hunter S. Thompson memoirs, and some e.e. cummings poetry books. It got a thumbs up from our first guest – my mum. The office is better than ever too. Spent the entire weekend just putzing away, reorganizing bookshelves, throwing out about 40 pounds of recycled syllabai from last semester and tons of unread, photocopied articles about everything from neoliberal cities in Toronto to Hungarian prostitutes.

***

Brasilia!

My brother, whom I don’t talk to much due to the messy political scenario that is the Oas family, called today. He invited me to go visit his new villa on the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil, about 100 clicks north of Rio. I haven’t seen him for 10 years – excluding two days at my grandpa’s wedding. Did I write “wedding”? I mean funeral. It’s just that we all partied like it was a wedding. It was the largest and most raucous family reunion ever.

Anyway, I’m seriously thinking of going. He would schedule it so I fly down to his house in Orlando at the beginning of Spring Break and then we’d take off for Rio that day. Hitch a ride on a rickety bus up the coast and work on this mansion he bought from a bickering divorced couple who were throwing things at one another while my brother signed the deed and handed them a briefcase full of $US 100,000 in cash. (That is how they conduct the real estate business in Brazil, according to my brother.) I’ve seen pics of this place and it is surreal. It’s in a small city overlooking a bay and has a ~60ft long balcony on the front of the house looking out toward the ocean, which is about 100 yards away. It’s like 5000 square feet or something. The living room looks like a football field and he has a courtyard with Papaya trees. (He’s had to chop a couple of them down, because when the fruit falls it takes off the clay shingles, I guess.) He’s restoring the thing, as the previous owners kind of let it go to hell. And since he is only down there about two months a year to work on it, it is nearly devoid of furniture. The pictures just show these massive empty rooms with a table in the middle, etc. Insane! If Birgit weren’t still recovering from Latin American bacteria – both of which are deadly when left untreated, the doctors noted, to make sure she came in to get her drugs – I would be reserving my tickets tonight. But I’m a wee-bit reluctant to go back there so quickly. But fuck it! Rio and small city Brazil? Yeah… that is one helluva a spring break! May even beat my trip to Israel in ’98 – when I was strip searched on the way out of the country for having yoghurt that wasn’t kosher. Ah… we’ll see. My brother often comes up with grand schemes like this, many of which don’t come to fruition. But he didn’t sound drunk on the phone yesterday, which means this one might just work!

***

That’s all the news that is fit to print for this morning. More someday. Maybe.