Return of The Crazy

Ah, off-hours at the RCMP. This was quite possibly the most surreal conversation I've had since speaking with the Queen of the Universe.

Me: "GRC-RCMP Montréal bonjour, good afternoon!"

Male Caller: "Yeah, are you guys going to come help me with my problem, or what?"

Me: "What seems to be the trouble, sir?"

MC: "I keep calling, but no one's coming to arrest these guys?"

Me: "Okay, why don't you tell me what's going on? What's the nature of your complaint?"

MC: "My landlords are growing pot in the other apartments."

Me: "I see. For that you'll have to contact your local police. I can provide you with the number and connect you, if you want."

MC: "No, they don't want to help, they're all in on it together. It's the Russian mob!"

Me: "The Russian mob."

MC: "Yeah. They're forcing the other tenants to move out, but we're not going to be intimidated!"

Me: "I see. If someone is threatening you, that's also the jurisdiction of the local police. I can connect us to them now, and we'll speak to them together."

MC: "They're not threatening us. They're using voodoo to hurt us!"

Me: o_O "Voodoo?"

MC: "Yeah! They're sending electric shocks up through the floors using voodoo!"

Me: ...

MC: "The elderly lady down the hall says she can feel them too. We thought she was nuts but it turns out she's not."

Me: *deadpan* "Well, voodoo certainly doesn't come under the RCMP's jurisdiction. For your other two problems, though, like I said, it'll be your local police."

MC: "They won't help us. We've made dozens of complaints but they say they don't have a record of any of them."

Me: "In that case, I suggest asking for your file number when you make your next complaint."

MC: "No! I want the RCMP to tell them to do their jobs!"

Me: "I'm afraid that's not within our purview. You can, however, go along official channels and make a complaint that they are not following the code of ethics, and that you would like Internal Affairs to investigate. I can provide you with that number as well."

MC: "No, they're all in it together. Why aren't you helping me?"

Me: "I am attempting to help you, sir, by giving you the available options."

MC: "If you won't help me, we're just going to go up there, break down their door, and take care of them ourselves!"

Me: "Sir, I remind you that you're on a recorded line. Uttering threats against your neighbour is a criminal offense, and this could be used as evidence should you choose to follow through on that threat."

MC: "You people are useless! I pay your goddamned salary and I still have to take matters into my own hands. You're telling me I have no choice!"

Me: "Sir, I have given you two perfectly viable options. If you choose neither of those, I can't help you further. But you do have a choice."

MC: "No I don't!" *swears colourfully at me and hangs up*


So, yeah. That was my weekend. Pot-growing, Russian mobster voodoo practitioners of DOOM.

So, y'know, maybe I should update once in a while

Hi world! My name is Phnee, and I have been living inside my head since late last October.

So, I'd apologize for being AWOL and not reading LJ and as a result missing everyone's news and not commenting and all that... except that I have a vague feeling that all I've been posting here (when I do post) are apologies, interspersed with random stupidness.

So, uh. Yeah. I dunno. I got nothin'.


You'd think that with the return of the sun, I'd be back to my old self. I sort of am, but I'm sort of not. I'm okay with people once I'm out and with them, but I have to kick myself in the pants to get there.

The short version is that I've been ignoring the real world in favour of a couple of fantasy worlds. They're a lot shinier, don't involve peak oil or the Canadian government, and while the problems in them are pretty awful, they aren't my problems, and that makes them fun to disappear into for a while. Like, five months or so. Anyway.

There's no one big reason for all this. For the most part, I'm okay. I'm not hiding in a corner all depressed and angst-ridden and what have you. I'm just not interacting at all much with my regular internet folk, and the longer I go without checking LJ the guiltier I feel about it, and the more overwhelming it seems because I know I'll never be able to catch up.

In short? I suck. I owe a million people emails, I'm behind on a ton of semi-obligations to friends, and I have been getting sad phone messages from my mother because I haven't spoken to her in a while (which isn't exactly true: I saw her last week and speak to her on the phone regularly, but she doesn't think that counts).

Okay, in retrospect, maybe I should apologize. It just feels inadequate for how much I've been sucking at keeping in touch with anyone lately. :(

Catching up on emails from my mother

Hi new folk to this LJ!

Ever wonder why Phnee is the way she is? Wonder no more! If you look up the word "eccentric" in the dictionary, there is a picture of my mother. She is also way awesome.

In short, I come by all my crazy honestly, as well as how I write, why I write, and why most of my opinions are the way they are. I am nothing if not my parents' daughter.

Sent February 24th:

Angel,

Can't resist telling you about my visit to Kim Phat today.

A Cambodian (?) marché on a discreet side-street off Cote des Neiges. I was looking for a vulgar celery when I was confronted with rows and rows of strange veggies (that might actually have been fruits) I have never seen before. Some looked like bundles of long green rope, some like glass beads, some fermented black beans... (I was told). I discreetly poked and smelled and wound up with a small shriveled cucumber-like object with a skin like an armadillo - all it needed was four little feet and two beady eyes to take off.

I was so fascinated with its bumpy skin covered with weird extrusions that I bought it. I forgot the celery.

Daddy was not impressed.

But I hope it won't evaporate so you can eventually see it.

Tons of love, Mim


Sent February 28th:

Angel,

A brief word to advise you NOT to buy tickets for "Les Essais, d'après Montaigne". Daddy wanted to walk out halfway before the end of the play. It was turned into a Québécois burlesque farce, dans le genre of Juste Pour Rire. Appalling. The Molière was apparently in the same vein.

Mim

A/N: Too bad. I usually love the stuff produced by Le Théatre du Sous-marin Jaune," but I am inclined to believe my mother on this one, and so I gave it a miss. The last production had me in stitches.


Sent the same day, titled "A small rant about Greece & art."

Angel, re the finacial débâcle in Greece:

I understand virtually nothing about derivatives or currency trades - but I do love the new phrase, "creative accounting". Actually, I didn't even know that a country could be a client of a particular bank & its accountants.

I read in the Financial Post that Goldman Sachs creates "custom-made financial instruments" for countries on the Continent. What are those things? Do I not understand English any longer? Why can't my accountant create these lovely things for me? I will definitely suggest it to him.

And I thought the art world was dead! (Note the Whitney Biennial in NY). The art critic of the NYTimes writes it:

"... reflects the retrenched art-about-art spirit of the day". What in the world is this man saying? About the Boltansky exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris - the one made up of old clothes. It inspires me to lay out all my old clothes on the living-room floor, making sure they point in the same direction, and presto! ART for posterity. Whoever would have thought my old underwear was worth millions.

Are all the latent Tiepolos now working for banks?

A/N: Be it known that my mother actually has a MFA, and not only is a painter, but was trained by Arthur Lismer (part of the "Group of Seven") and actually studied art history among other things. She knows whereof she speaks, in this case, and isn't just spouting off randomly.


Sent March 18th:

Angel, thought you might want to know this:


There was a very successful Tarzan exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris in autumn last year.

Apparently the curator of the exhibition has a sense of humour. His comment on the law passed in France during the 30's banning the Tarzan movies:

"For the Catholics, it was the nudity, for the Communists, it was the fact that he was a violent, unemployed aristocrat who ate bananas."

So much for pure cartesian logic.

Trillion bises, Mim