[books 2010] Dandy in the Underworld

42. Dandy in the Underworld:an unauthorised autobiography by Sebastian Horsley

I have to admit that I'd never heard of Horsley until I read about the play that's currently running in London. And then he goes and dies two weeks later. It turned out my local library had a copy of the book in stock, so I grabbed it. I didn't want to buy it because, as Jason put it "he's either going to be brilliant or a complete tosser".

Overall, I incline towards the latter, though the book is readable enough and even very funny in places. The first third of it pretty much reads itself, and I thought it was going to be fully of really quotable aphorisms[1]. He is at his best in the parts about his family (though the part of my brain that works in children's mental health wouldn't shut up about how it's a perfect clinical study of a damaged adult being the result of childhood abuse & neglect, and that if his family weren't rich he'd likely have been taken into care).

Eventually the grandiose self-loathing and self-indulgence got to me. The misogyny would have bothered me more if he didn't hate everyone, including himself, quite a lot.

At least he admits that he wants to be Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine & Marc Bolan rolled into one (particularly Wilde). I've read almost everything the first two wrote and he's not even close. This did remind me, at least, that I never got around to reading Rimbaud and Verlaine back in the early 90s when I was heavily interested in the Decadents (mainly because I was still making myself read French works in French) and I should probably do so.

[1] The only one that my brain has chosen to recall is "the problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard".

Too much time on my hands, I haz it

By the time I got to work at 2:00 this afternoon (downtown meeting am, then dentist) the weather was shifting so I had a pounding pressure headache, and doing any work would have been pointless (I'd just need to do it again tomorrow).

Somehow reading up on recent events in TO turned into clicking on an ad for Workopolis and checking out the employment situation in various parts of Canada.

There are a surprising number of employment opportunities in Yellowknife. Some are even not in the mining industry.

Actually, I would, for a year, if I'd done the math properly and could guarantee I'd bring back half the money I made to buy a house in TO, and get my teeth fixed and eye surgery. As long as I had broadband. It would at least take care of the to-read pile once and for all.

Edit: This is embarrassing - for a while there I thought Yellowknife was the city in the Yukon, which for no logical reason scares me much less than the NWT. Eventually I remembered the word I was looking for was "Whitehorse" and unless you want to be an extreme adventure-sports wilderness guide, there's no jobs there.

Also, note to self. Do not browse employment opportunities when you don't mean it. There's a job in TO where the closing date is Friday which is medical secretary/data wrangling/technical writing at an organ donation facility. Most of my abilities in one, in a really cool field. It's an agency thing so it doesn't say how much they pay or where it is. If I didn't have a member of my staff off sick, I'd be tempted to phone in and pretend to have a domestic emergency tomorrow to write an application. Anyway, I don't think "not only can I only do a phone interview, but I'm on holiday for all of August & then I'd have to give my notice at my existing job, and pack my shit, and move...can I start in November?" would fly. I'm good, but I'm not that good.

To all my TO (and other Canadian) friends:

I've not had the time or brain power to read half the links you've been posting over the last few days, but am shocked and saddened and trying to educate myself as best I can.

My thoughts are with you and I wish I could be with you tomorrow to protest.

It's weird what really gets you at times like this - I just found out today that Steve's Music is one of the businesses that got vandalised & I almost cried. For non-TO folk, it's the original "no Stairway" (as made famous by Wayne's World) store and my friends and I devoted more of our twenties than is sensible to daring each other to go in there and play it. Would not have been wise, though, as it's a damn fine establishment from where we might have wanted to purchase instruments.