PERSIFLAGE

May 8, 2008

The spiritual evolution of mankind depends exclusively on the activity of the laws of dietetics and hygiene!

Peter Altenberg

If you're in the waiting room of a dentist's office and don't want to twiddle your thumbs, you turn to Tolstoy.

Art Garfunkel

PERSIFLAGE
is updated on
Thursdays.

Classifieds

For sale: something that is bigger than a breadbox (although not a lot bigger), that begins with the letter B and can be used by anyone over the age of twenty-one to open jars or dry-cleaning plants. Price? I'm thinking of a number between 7 and 832. Box 44.
For rent: My Parsifal costume. Size XL. Great for parties and/or tumbling expostions. Reasonable rates - daily, weekly, bi-annually. Box 19.
Will trade any bacon memorabilia for a framed portrait of Mrs Fallon, my third grade teacher done by Gustave Klimt (if one exists). Box 131375.
This Sunday only Larry the Religious Guy will be selling plenary indulgences at the Sal's in the bus depot. Hurry down as forgiveness is limited (in my experience).
For sale: a beautiful, brand new pencil. Never been sharpened. Complete with eraser. $1 OBO. Box 9.

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Recipe for a Delicious Meal

Dry Roasted Peanuts with Apple Juice and a Thing of Crackers with a Sweet Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:
One can or jug of dry roasted peanuts
one cardboard thingy with the infuriating lid of apple juice
one plastic wrapped thing of crackers like you get with your soup in one of those lower end restaurants
one squeezable packet of sweetened tomato sauce

Directions:
Remove the lid from the container of dry roasted peanuts and shake a reasonable amount out into your hand.
With your other hand stab a sharp knife into the top of the cardboard apple juice container bypassing entirely that joke of an opening flap. Drop the knife on the floor.
Pour 275 ml of the apple juice down your gullet and without pausing shovel the handful of peanuts in afterward.
Swallow.
Picking up the discarded knife slit open one end of the plastic wrap of the crackers.
With your other now peanut-free hand insert the end of the squeezable tomato sauce container into the resultant opening.
Holding both the crackers and the sauce in one hand stab wildly with the knife at that hand until the red sauce flows onto the crackers. Shove it in your mouth.
Spit out the plastic and swallow.
Have another belt of the apple juice. Good huh?

Chef Elrose

Need Another Lecture?

On Thursday, May 8 at 7:00 p.m. at the Winnipeg Film Group's Studio (304-100 Arthur Street), Video Pool will present a live, spoken-word performance by Jeanne Randolph. Randolph will address the myriad, ubiquitous, and often troubling ways technologies operate through contemporary art and everyday life.
Glen Johnson will not be performing due to a family crisis.

Out of the Archives

Due to the outstanding laziness of the staff at PERSIFLAGE we present here a selection out of our archives (as indicated by the title above).

Too Many Nights of Shining Armour

He was off again, staring into the middle distance, so mesmerized by the power of his own words – no, by the depth and power of his thoughts, that he could no longer look me in the face. No need really. He wasn't really speaking to me but to the Gods, to the Ages, to Immortality, to the Universal World Soul. To himself. I attempted to remain fascinated.

I don't think this guy was extraordinarily full of himself, at least as far as your average grad student is concerned, and what was coming out of his mouth was neither highly offensive or insanely pretentious, but it wasn't really a conversation.

Now if I am comfortably seated in a plush chair in a dimly lit theatre I have no objection to listening to a monologue, especially if it is well written and performed ably but I am not interested in sitting in the audience for someone's performing ego on a first date.

As my temporary (very) companion continued on I formed the impression that even if absolutely nothing else happened on this date, even if we just kept sitting here drinking our coffee and I kept this same not very convincing expression on my face until we finally sauntered home to our respective apartments, then he would consider this evening a resounding success and perhaps even tell his friends how remarkably intelligent and interesting I was. In actual fact the person who interested him most at our table (and I suspect in the world) was himself.

Maybe I'm being unfair. Then again maybe I'm not. I have no real objection to a guy being in love with the sound of his own voice but is there any real reason why I have to be there? Can't this little act be performed solo? It sometimes seems to me that male interest in women falls into two categories: women who are smart enough to appear interested in their intelligence and sensitivity and women who are horny enough (or, I would add, good enough actors) to appear interested in their fluids. And, I think I'm not out of line with using the word 'appear'. I don't think it matters that much to most men if the interest is feigned or real.

Not to come across as some hardcore man-hating feminist but male/female relations often seem to be a variation on the old workplace joke: "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work." In this case it's: "They pretend to be talking to us and we pretend to listen."

I'm going over board here. This guy wasn't all that bad. I mean at least he didn't spend the evening staring at my breasts.

Sally Kind