What is stupidity alternative to?

Did I say something about optimism?
Forget it. These jokers are selling a new t-shirt that's been pre-torn to make it look like an old t-shirt. It doesn't come with any sort of cool logo, hipster design, or even a retro iron-on. It's just a frayed t-shirt that costs forty dollars.

Forty god-damned dollars for a frayed t-shirt.

Anyone that would pay that, even in devalued 2007 money, is a fucking idiot. And I don't care how alternative your stubble is.

What's that emotion that's lower than scorn, but not as gentle as pity? That's what I feel for the humans. Every last one of us.

Geek Tagging?

You ever seen one of those big-ass ads projected onto a wall or something? They kind of suck, don't they? Sure would be good if someone could work out a way to do something about it.

Something like this.

Every now and then I start to feel a little bit optimistic about humans. Usually somewhere around beer number four.

[link courtesy Graffiti Research Lab]

Stereotypes dept. part 11

Today I met a garrulous Irish person with a delightful lilting accent, bright red hair, and an actual twinkle in her eye. Within three minutes of her sitting down, I'd heard about her job, her daughter, her daughter's job, her expected granddaughter, her dental history (really), the best places to buy prayer-cards (honestly), her trip to Krakow for dental work (no kidding), and the possibility of her taking a job as a live-in caregiver for a wealthy, elderly VIP expat living in Oman (I shit you not).

It's been far too long since I had one of these conversations, and this one just about made my day.

In the system again...

I think my extended visa application will be approved, which means it looks as though I'm going to be a legit citizen again.

Which means I'll be able to look for full time work. From the point of view of the relative strength of the pound against the dollar, that's probably a good thing. Of course, that also means I'll have to try and be a respectable, employable such-and-such, which may not be so good. The last time I demonstrated any aptitude at work, it was at strangling junior high students and drawing cartoon pictures of monsters and Santa Claus and Kamen Rider and such.

Somehow I don't think that'll do me much good here. Damn stupid non-transferable skills. When is there going to be a job that requires a command of English grammar, Japanese pop-culture trivia, QuarkXPress and a willingness to drink alcohols of many lands?

You got your caffeine in my capsacin!

It ain't easy to get one's chile fix in England. This is one of those countries that sent people around the planet looking for stuff to improve the national diet¹. Yeah, for dinner the curries around here can be great. But something as simple as a red chile breakfast burrito is sadly beyond their capacity. So what's a fella who needs something spicy before noon to do?

I have had exactly one great idea this month, born from this state of adversity: Red Chile coffee. When the ground coffee goes in the filter, a spoonful of red chile flakes go in too. Then brew as usual. That's it. Simple. But now I'm getting my caffeine with that familiar chile heat as a follow-up bonus. Efficient and tasty.

This probably isn't that different from dipsomaniacs² who wind up guzzling cosmopolitans while claiming the cranberry juice is good for their urinary tracts.

¹ I think this is why people here say "send out for a Chinese" or "get an Indian" when they're talking about take-out food; it's a leftover from when they were talking about arranging another colony to send back something of worth.
² "Dipsomaniac" is a much better word than "lush" or wino or something. Even though anyone drinking pitchers of cosmopolitans is more likely to be some sort of lush.

Condom Machine in a London Men's Room

"Hell no, we won't go", say civil servants

I hear that if you join the army then refuse to follow orders, you can be punished pretty severely. Of course, if you follow an order that's later shown to be wrong, you can also be punished pretty severely. I haven't heard so much about punishments for issuing unjust orders, though...

Anyway, it seems that desk jockeys are also balking at being sent to Iraq. While the article mentions possible punishments for diplomats refusing this posting, it doesn't really mention what the government will do if they can't get enough people to keep the Baghdad embassy open. Will they pull people from other, cushier posts? Start drafting armed servicemen/national guard types to fill in behind the (heavily armored and shielded) desks there? Why isn't there some munitions company working on some sort of military robot diplomacy machine?

Corporate incoherence

I've been doing a little freelance transcription work lately. That means I get sent a piece of video and then I write down everything that gets said in the video, and the time that someone says it. Then the script I've made gets sent to an office in Tokyo where it's translated into Japanese so that the video can be subtitled.

I'm sure that anyone who took that class for screen writing who remembers the exercise on real-life dialogue will back me up on this, but most people rarely speak in complete sentences. "So, like, when it's, yeah, like what they were saying when that happened, but, not like, yeah?" is pretty common in the European Tour behind-the-scenes videos I get sent. But even the corporate videos may be worse. Take this gem:

There’s still some variability, both in approach and in the caliber of people, to improving consistency would be a real boon, to Schmucktronics.

Except for the company name, that was all verbatim. And it came from an upper-echelon executive. This clown probably has an MBA, but he can't string a sentence together that actually means anything.

What really kills me is that these executive welcome videos are almost identical, in terms of theme and content, to the video I was shown when I started at KFC in high school. Exact same rah-rah bullshit, only instead of power ties everyone was wearing matching polyester polo shirts and pin-on name tags.

Punk as FUCK

Click here to see a picture of a Hiller Platform, a one-man flying disc designed and tested by the US Army in the 1950s. Now click here to see one that a guy built in his garage and flew in a couple of festivals this year.

Flatpack furniture? An Old El Paso Fajita Dinner kit? You've edited together a swell home movie with flare effects and your own clever closing credits?

Bullshit. Talk to me about Do It Yourself when you've slipped the surly bonds of earth in a machine you put together yourself.

Is Fox still looking for pilot ideas?

One of my friends once claimed I lived a sitcom life. At the time I thought it was just commentary on the sort of goofy hi-jinks that tended to happen week by week. But looking at it from another angle, he may have been issuing a prophecy.

See, I'm a deadbeat graduate student prone to cracking bad jokes who likes cartoons and drinking too much, who's moved to England to be with my special lady, a belly-dancing polyglot who works for a major media company. My friends here include the perpetually-slightly-taken aback Londoner, the sassy gal with the northern accent, and the crazy Iranian guy who's always cooking up some new plan or scheme. Also, my next door neighbor is an ancient Chinese lady who speaks without ever using indefinite articles or conjugated verbs, and has repeatedly told me that only thing wrong with the job market here is all the foreigners.

Oh yeah, the old Chinese lady made it a point to tell the American that it was all the foreigners who are ruining the UK job market.

The first season was mostly fish-out-of-water jokes about trying to get acclimated, with lots of cheesy gags about accents and cultural misunderstandings about pants. But for the second season? Well, naturally you need to up the wackiness stakes. Which is why my special lady-friend's sister, the conservation biologist who practices Shorinji Kempo, is moving in with us.

By the way, did I mention they're identical twins? I kid you not, I live with identical twins, I date one, the other practices kicking the crap out of people. Right next door is a crazy old lady who dispenses financial and romantic advice in broken, Charlie Chan English, and I can count on regular calls from my crazy scheming friend can't go a day without breaking in some new idiom he's picked up.

Where's the Burbank kid or Jer-Dogg now that I've finally got a concept to pitch? Forget waiting for a table or being sentenced to be a butler, this is comedy gold, Jerry, it's gold!

I really ought to be working, but...

I just had to share this little nugget of trivia with you. Certain businesses can be given what's called a "Royal Warrant" from the British monarchy. This is like becoming the crown's official supplier of whatever. Take, for example, Lea & Perrins, Royal purveyors of Worcheshtershercheeshershire sauce. Or Tanqueray, royal purveyors of gin. Or my personal favorite: CH Haygarth & Sons, Gun & Rifle Makers, Gunmakers to HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

Okay, so their royal warrant to the Queen Mother expired this year, being five years after her death and all, but still, come on! The Queen Mother had an official supplier of guns and rifles. If, at some point, she wanted to shoot something or someone, she wouldn't have had to rely on a common Baretta or, heaven forfend, a German-made piece or equipment like a Heckler and Koch, oh no. She had access to custom made rifles and guns. Did the Queen Mum want to pick off targets from a distance? Was she interested in range or target shooting? Or did she just want something concealable to keep in her purse with a maximum stopping power to weight ratio for her own sense of security? Either way, CH Haygarth and Sons had her covered, so she could keep you covered.

Man, royalty is a hoot!

Okay. Back to work. Honest. No more procrastination. Gotta get this paper done...

Don't think I don't love you...

I've just been a bit busy lately. That phoney-baloney degree I was taking is almost through, so there's a couple of thousand words I need to get written. And then there's the other editing/re-writing/layout thing I agreed to do which also needs doing.

Which is to say nothing of all that beer that's not going to drink itself, you know.

But since I figure I ought to make some gesture towards your amusement, why don't you try a little of Rose & Camelia. While the game is simple enough, the introduction is worth a look just for the phrase "Such is the genteel art of face-slapping, passed down from antiquity through generations of blueblood women."

Talk to you later, eh?

Generation gap? Try Snake River Canyon-style crevasse...

Somehow, while I've been grappling with the difficulties of writing like a guy from 1870, my Dad (who has witnessed the ages of Jet, Space, Atomic, Information (both e- and i-) and Aquarius) has somehow become a Skype-using, Blackberry-owning, mobile-SMS-text-emailer.

Seriously, while I was trying (unsuccessfully) to work out whether it was more appropriate for a Victorian dude to say "Japanner" or "Nipponese", my dad was accurately using neologisms like "RU" and "O&O" and "STFU, my lamerz son, B4 you get pwned!"

Okay, maybe the last one was a joke, but not by much. Seriously, what the hell happened to me?

I don't know who to hate more...

Redbook magazine? Can't say as I know know much about it. I think the last time I saw a copy was in the dentist's office. Faith Hill? Is she the one who sings country or the one who sings western?
But if this story about how her photo was overhauled for the cover is true, I've only got one thing to say both Redbook and Faith:

Fuck you.

Indefensible stupidity

Okay, I said that I was going to get to that state of Washington thing later. Well, it's later now. The case I found was Andersen v. King County, which seemed to reverse an earlier ruling that would have allowed same-sex marriages in Washington state.

Stop me if I've got this wrong, but I thought that at the state level the supreme courts are generally meant to ensure that previous rulings are in line with the constitutions of their states. If I understand this ruling, the decision to disallow same-sex marriages in Washington under the Defense Of Marriage Act was defensible for two reasons.

The first is that unless a law can be found to offer a positive protection to a discriminated-against minority, it should be subject to federal standards of equal protection. Am I too far off in thinking that means "it's okay to protect people who have been treated unfairly, but otherwise it should protect everyone equally"? But the court's ruling claimed that

"The plaintiffs have not established that they are members of a suspect class or that they have a fundamental right to marriage that includes the right to marry a person of the same sex. "

Because, you know, there's nothing at all indicating that same-sex couples in the US are treated any differently. And the reasoning here seems to be that this decision is constitutional because both men and women are equally prohibited from same-sex marriages. Shouldn't that also mean that legislating separate water fountains (or hospitals or schools) by race would be okay as long as each group was equally prohibited from using the others' facilities?

Bullshit.

The bulk of this claim seems to rest on the court's argument that the plaintiffs haven't shown that "homosexuality is immutable", that is, an unalterable part of a person's identity. Is there any other group of people who would be subject to such a ridiculous claim? I guess advances in prosthetics mean it's okay to discriminate against people missing limbs. If Michael Jackson can change his color, anyone can, so anyplace can have a whites-only policy. No Jews allowed? Of course, there's churches everywhere that are begging for converts. No women? Sex-changes!

Bullshit.

But leave that aside too, there's another claim that I find less stupid, but more unsettling:

"DOMA is constitutional because the legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children's biological parents. Allowing same-sex couples to marry does not, in the legislature's view, further these purposes."

Let's just skip the arguments about biological-parent homes. Adoption, IVF, sperm donation and divorce apparently have no bearing here. That's too many points to try and argue about. But there's a much larger assumption that's got me worried.

At what point did we cede the safeguarding of the human race to any legislature? Is it honestly acceptable to claim that allowing same-sex marriages jeopardizes the future of the human race? If there is anyone who will honestly claim that people will stop having babies just because same-sex couples can get married, they don't have any business trying to represent people living on earth. Anyone so vastly out of touch with human nature shouldn't be trusted with authority over humans. Anyone with so little faith in the human race doesn't deserve to represent us. And anyone so stupid as to think that anyone will give up sex because other people with a different preference are doing it and still claiming to be married shouldn't be driving, much less making or interpreting law.

There may be all sorts of personal reasons to not marry someone. But I have yet to see an ethical, logical, humane reason to prevent some adult from marrying some other adult. It's just a lot of obfuscation and fear, and it cheapens the legal and legislative processes.

In case you've forgotten...

Your government hates you.

They may be quite happy to take your money, keep you under constant surveillance, tell you what not to do, and who not to do it with1, but they still hate you.

Is there any other way to explain FEMA's behavior?

If you knew something could be dangerous, but chose to expose people to it anyway, I might call that reckless. If you knew it could be dangerous, and told people not to ask questions because that might mean you were aware of that danger but didn't want to be held responsible, I might call you spineless and amoral.

If you did all those things to people who had already lost their homes, possibly due in part to your own mismanagement or indifference, and to people who continue to suffer due to lack of funding, attention or effort on my part, well, a court might call it willful negligence.

I'd probably call you a cowardly, hateful, sack of shit.

If someone intentionally tried to keep me and my family in a box that could possibly give me cancer I'd say that was pretty fucking malicious.

The people who claim to be your government view your possible death by cancer as an inconvenience to their jobs. Your life is less important than their budget review.

Their job is to protect you, and instead they leave you to die.

They hate you.


1 - Short form, the state of Washington feels quite comfortable telling John Doe he can't marry Richard Roe. This is something else that's got me pissed off, but it'll have to wait for another post...

Two thoughts on beverages

In all honesty, I really shouldn't try to talk trash about the way British people drink tea. I don't think there's any way to succinctly explain the precise (and precious) ways in each person here will explain how they "take their tea", while still conveying the fact that they are all (A) somewhere along a wildly varying spectrum of preferred steeping times, brewing methods, additives, and consumption habits, and (B) completely convinced that they are, in fact, drinking the normal, standard cup of tea and while other ways of drinking tea could be conceived of, no one could possibly entertain notions of drinking something else and still think of it as normal.

Actually, I did receive some very good advice in Austin on speeding my acclimatization to UK life:

"You could just drink Boddingtons until you puke on your trousers."

C.F., you are a man of great insight. Thank you.

Not up to speed...

After some four years spent waist-deep in it, I can't say that I had any epiphanies about Japanese culture. It's not possible, in my opinion, to be able to claim any deep understanding of a nation without some greater depth of integration. And most people simply cannot get "inside" in such a short period of time.

Like that crap that John Howard's trying to pull in the Northern Territories with Mal Brough as his mouthpiece is exactly the kind of short-sighted, package-tourism "I understand these people" bullshit I mean. But I didn't set out here to get all pissed off about that. The point is that you can't just drop in somewhere, take a few holiday pics, and think that pronouncing "paella" with a Spanish accent is enough.

Personally, I was disabused of some notions, and ran head-long into a whole bunch of others. In total, though, I can honestly say that I did learn a few things about how (some) people live and think and react to events there.

But I was mistaken in thinking the learning curve would be any less steep for this part of England, commonalities of language be damned. Maybe my biggest obstacle in getting things straight here is my limited contact with the natives. At least when I was working in Japan I was forced to interact with the locals for the majority of each day. You have to make conversation with people for eight (or ten or twelve) hours a day for a couple of months straight, you're bound to pick up something. Besides, y'know, somebody's phone number or the flu or something. But here I just don't have that excuse. And it probably wouldn't work anyway.

"Pardon me, uh, guv-nor, but I was wondering if I could talk to you for, oh, thirty minutes or so about topics generally found of interest to a, uh, toff like yourself."
"[Heavily accented expletive deleted] off, wanker."

Anyway, this discovery is mildly frustrating. At this rate I may never get to understand the esoteric secrets of the "cuppa", much less the mindset of a country that would send colonies and armies halfway around the planet for the stuff before claiming it's "the national drink."

Surprised? You really shouldn't be anymore...

Surprised? You should be...

Cruisin'

Had the opportunity to take a little drive last week. Well, by "little" I mean around 1800 miles, round trip. Now, for the last year or so I've been trying to live in a way that leaves a smaller ecological footprint. Less gas and electric heating in the winter, more open window and less A/C in the summer; more locally sourced produce, less of that delicious Brazilian rain forest beef. Hell, I even got a compost bin.

Incidentally, I can now cross "tried to find a way to get fluid nitrogen supplements into the compost" off my life list. It involved some nocturnal micturition while hiding behind a hedge.

Anyway, in spite of all that, I leapt at the chance to drive across a couple of states. It's a goddamn lot of fun to drive the interstates like that. And with good music and good company, it can be an excellent way to pass a few days.

So among the other things that we'll be able to tell our kids about but that they won't be able to enjoy for themselves, I reckon we'll have to include the road trip. And I will, without hesitating, tell them that they were great and that they have no idea what they're missing when they climb into their hydrogen-cell transport units for a computer-controlled ride across the San Angeles Metroplex or the Mega-City 2 X-Pressways.

Other things our kids won't get to enjoy: beef steaks bigger than their faces, ice cube machines, religious icons treated humorously in comics, sporting fields or events without corporate sponsorship, bowl after bowl of delicious turtle soup and US constitutional amendments 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 15.

Do they have milestones in metric system countries?

It's been about 554 years since the death of the last Byzantine emperor in Constantinople.

It's been around 72 years since the Hoover dam was completed.

It's been almost 18 years since the Tienanmen square massacre.

It's been almost one year since I left Japan.

Two steps forward, one step somewhere else.

Second verse, same as the first:

A little bit louder and a little bit worse.

More of the same changes, more of the same results?

It seems like there are elections and resignations and appointments and complaints and protests all over the news these days. Well, the UK/Europe news, anyway. Maybe it's an easy angle to take for a journalist, but a lot of the stories seem to be about how one candidate (or party or whatever) is trying to make a new start and to recreate the promise of their party (or country or whatever).

After the last ten years of American politics, I find it kind of hard to respond optimistically to any of those sorts of stories. It just doesn't seem likely that any sort of organized rule-playing game is going to bring up a winner who's interested in profoundly changing the rules of that same game. I hesitate to look for any examples that seem to be in line with that metaphor, since the only one that seems to offer a halfway positive result involves William Shatner...

On the subject of old acquaintences

Did you know me before? Did you know me from way back when?
Did I know you?

Whoever we all were then, are we the same people now?

Seriously, if any of you have answers, I'd be curious to hear them. Because I really don't know how to sum up how I feel about the people I see on a daily basis, much less the ones who tried to interact with me when I was even more confused than now about how to function like a human. If you can suggest a way to deal with nostalgia and its concurrent sensations of regret, envy, confusion and caustic-hot joy, I'll listen.

Did I know you then? Did I know myself then?

Do I know myself now?

Dreams, huh? Freud would be proud...

I don't know how familiar you are with the US, but because the nation was formally defined by a bunch of merchants, tax-cheats, religious radicals and amateur philosophers, it lacks most of the a priori guarantees of integrity that most other nations take for granted; like some flavor of religious or historical justification, a tradition of familial rule, or even the actions of a "great leader". As a consequence, the definitions of the nation have allowed some flexibility of interpretation.

Which is why, every so often, questions like "what does the flag mean?" or "what does the statue of liberty mean?" or in this case "what is the American dream?" get tossed around. And like most questions, the answers wind up telling you more about the person speaking than the topic of the question.

So after reading the answers to the last question as posed by Forbes magazine to a bunch of celebrities and such, I found myself in the unusual position of wanting to side with a bunch of the old white capitalist guys and against the hardworking son of immigrants and the swimsuit/lingerie model.

Now, I can admit that I didn't care much for Ms. Banks' choice of words. I suppose saying "to the max" in any context isn't really that bad. But Gonzales' answer makes me taste blood. The arrogance of that man to frame an ideal for an entire nation in terms of his own personal experiences is appalling, but completely indicative of his inability to consider anything beyond his own interests. That a smug, pandering son of a bitch like him is allowed to interpret the laws of any nation is an insult. But the fact that he's allowed to act while under the auspices of protecting freedom and justice should make any conscious American sick and ashamed.

My American dream is that someday the American people will get their shit together so that duplicitous, disingenuous, amoral sons of bitches like the attorney general will be driven out like vermin they are.

Again with the maps...

Because it was easier than getting to work, I spent a few minutes trying to come up with possible aliases using my Michelin map of Great Britain and Ireland, with the provision that the names of places be more or less proximate to each other, and that they appeared in given-name-then-surname order. So if you need to fill in an online form or to make up a porn star name or something, free to try one of these:

Matlock Derby
Sandy Potton
Clare Sudbury
Brandon Thetford
Corby Weldon
Ramsey Huntingdon
Nelson Burnley

Ah, Japan. Technological Powerhouse, Heir to the Discipline of the Samurai...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Three Japanese naval officers who swapped pornography on their computers triggered a scandal over a possible leak of sensitive data linked to Japan's missile defence system, a newspaper said on Thursday...

The officer told police he accidentally copied the confidential data onto his computer's hard disk when copying porn from a computer belonging to a crew member from another destroyer, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

I know it's a easy laugh, but the fact that the software for the state of art Aegis missile detection system was found to have been copied by guys who were trying to trade pornography really deserves serious mockery. The fact that there seems to be an porn-swapping ring that operates between boats should have been enough. But nooooooo, top that off with the fact that they were saving their porn on the same computers that control their anti-missile systems.

C'mon, Japan. All your cartoons and movies and comics about robots and ninjas and psychic android police men have got the whole primed to accept you as a serious peace keeper, then you pull something like this. I'm laughing, but I'm disappointed with you, Japan. You can do better.

Hat in hand, bile in throat

I'm having to devote more time to job hunting now. Not to say that a wolf is at my door, but if I act now, I can avoid dealing with that whole "huff and puff" thing come June. Not such a big deal except I'm finding myself reminded of why I left the US in the first place: having to pretend that taking orders from someone else is totally acceptable makes my marrow hurt. And having to go to one of those people and say "gee, I sure hope you'll find it in your heart to take a chance on a fella like me" is even worse.

I doubt there's much dignity in penury, but I know there's damned little to be had in asking for employment.

At this moment...

I'm supposed to be writing an essay that counts for something like 30% of my degree. The subject on which I'm supposed to elaborate are the techniques by which autobiographical events and information are transformed into fiction.

Given that a majority of my childhood and young adult memories are to do with fictional people, imaginary events, and highly implausible premises, I imagined this would've been easier. Turns out it doesn't exactly work both ways.

Anon and on and on?

Recently I have been forced to acknowledge another of the realities of modern life. This one being the need to market oneself, particularly to try and succeed in the art. If writing can be called an art, that is. Anyway, a great deal of emphasis has been put on the value of maintaining a presence on the interwebs, with some professionals telling me that I simply must get and maintain a "blogging on a myspace-dot-page."

Leaving aside the sniggering of those of us who claim to have some level of esoteric knowledge that others lack, the issue of exposure is a troublesome one. If I am going to use this space to promote myself, I'd have to be more open about it, wouldn't I? And it would probably be a good idea to downplay the laughing about children being systematically mistreated, the fascination with meat-eating robots, and the willingness to admit liking comic books and cartoons. So this particular mask probably ought to stay on as long as I'm writing here.

Which is to say that I'm probably going to have to start another one of these things, but with a goal of establishing a professional profile. Damn it, that's going to be more work. Which will mean less time for binge drinking, bitching about news and laughing at comics with monkeys in them.

This is someone's sales pitch. Seriously.

Apparently banana-mashing and plantain-loss are serious enough to necessitate a rather specific product. The "'Safe Banana' Banana Guard."

How many times have you took a banana to work, peeled it but found it was so bruised it had to be thrown away? Well, thanks to this great product, available from SafeBanana you can transport your banana fully protected during any journey.

There are nine great, funky colours to choose from and all are extremely popular. A tough banana shaped box that protects the banana and slows ripening thanks to small holes that run along the side, allowing air to circulate. A secure lock ensures you do not lose your banana. It is easy to clean and dishwasher safe.

The mind reels. There have been many times that I have "took a banana to work, peeled it but found it was so..." Wait, no. I don't know anyone who is such a colossal weenie that they would throw away a purpose-packed lunch banana because of bruising. And now that I think of it, what the hell are these people doing with their lunches anyway, kicking them down the streets?

For your edification...

The Management presents a short list of some actual place names in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, chosen for their propensity to sound rude when said with extra emphasis. As in
"I say, Nigel, you wouldn't happen to know where Bertram is, old sport?"
"I expect Bertie's down Wapping Old Stairs, if you catch my meaning, old bean."
"So soon? I'd heard he was on holiday, taking a turn up Ashby De La Zouch."

And so on. Try it at home with the following places:

• Slough
• Looe
• Bude
  
• Foulness Point (on Foulness Island)
• Pontypool
• Rutland
  
• Dorking
• Cockfosters

A few thoughts inspired by Shrove Tuesday

Yesterday was "Shrove Tuesday," which is for some reason referred to as "Pancake day" here.
That reason being that people here celebrate the last day before lent by eating crepes, which are for some reason referred to as "pancakes" here.

I hear that people are supposed to eat crepes as way of celebrating their last day before they give stuff up in honor of that Jesus dude giving stuff up. Now, what makes me wonder is this: supposedly there was a sacrifice made on behalf of all mankind, right? That one was supposed to wipe the slate clean for everybody. So why would people want to voluntarily engage in low-level sacrifice after something like that? It almost seems like someone preparing a huge feast for a wedding reception, but then all the guests bringing a combo meal from McDonalds so they won't be hungry.

Also the idea of being like a lamb really doesn't sit well with me. I mean, apart from wolves, coyotes, raptor-type birds, lynxes, cougars and mountain lions, the biggest threat to most lambs is that guy who shaves them, slaughters them and eats them. What's his name again? Oh yeah, the shepherd.

Children are some sort of future...

UK kids: Sucks to be you

Ha ha HAH HAH HAH hah a ha haa ahhh. When I think about the little fuckers on the bus who wouldn't stop howling and climbing on the rails, or the ones crying in the aisles of the supermarkets, or the ones with nothing better to do than sit around in front of Burger King trying to cadge cigarettes from passers-by, and then I see a story like this one, I just want to laugh and laugh and laugh.*

Choke on it, you little bastards.

* The author is well aware that the UNICEF study cites the probable causes of such behaviors, and not the punishments. The author is also aware that the fiery wheel of karma turns in unknowable ways.

What was the old slogan for the US Marines?

When I first started this MA course, there were about 18 students in my group. By the winter break we were down to 15. By the first week of February, usual classroom attendance for the morning session is hovering around 10 or 11. But the biggest loss is in the afternoon. Even allowing that the three part-time students aren't going, the fact that we're down to five people is a little worrisome. So far only two people have claimed a "death in the family" excuse for an absence. Most of the others have just said "screw it" and stopped going. 1

So far the lady running the class has kept showing up, but last week she actually called one of the five of us out into the hall for a brief scolding. I don't know if we can sustain another 20% drop in attendance and still be able to have meaningful discussions.

Oh, wait. We don't really have meaningful discussions in that class. Maybe that whole allusion to "the few, the proud" doesn't really work here.

1 Well, what they actually said was "sod it", but I didn't know if that would translate so well for those of you who don't speak Englandish.

Other skills...

That last post really wasn't so good. There were kind of a lot of different ideas rattling around in my head, and I don't think I was able to express any of them as well as I would have liked. In summary, I am not nearly as satisfied with this course as I would like to be, and last Wednesday was repeatedly unsatisfactory in a number of different ways.
However, one thing that did come up in the writing class last week was a point about Japanese language. Another guy in my class happens to have spent a couple of months working for a Japanese company, and even got to spend a couple of weeks in Tokyo for a job. So he wrote a short piece that involved a person trying to negotiate with a person speaking broken English with a heavy Japanese accent. One of the verbal tics he gave the Japanese character, in addition to the whole L/R thing, was the interjection of the syllable "ka". As in "you are funny person-ka." So when the lady who was ostensibly running the workshop asked what that meant I was volunteered by the author to give an explanation.

"'Ka" is generally a sentence final particle indicating a question. In this case he's using it to elicit assent from the listener, much the same as 'y'know?' in casual English."

As I said last time, the lady running the workshop really didn't demonstrate much in the way of listening skills, so she had to ask me to repeat myself. I spent four years as a grammar teacher, and one of my strong points was explaining stuff like that. It was my job to be able to answer those questions. Go ahead, try me. What is the function of a subjunctive verb? How do I use a semicolon? When is it okay to use "alright" in a sentence?

The subjunctive is used to indicate an action that is not presently true, as in a wish, desire, command for action to be taken in future, or a hypothetical situation. The semicolon is used to link a subordinate, explanatory or elucidative clause to an independent clause, or to separate a list of comma-heavy clauses. And you should not bother using "alright"; you should either use "all right" or else re-write your sentence and use something else.

But I digress. She seemed somewhat surprised at my rattling that off without much in the way of warning, and I was somewhat surprised at her needing the explanation twice. So yes, I could summarize the general use of "ka", but I declined to point out that he actually should have used the conversational question marker "ne" instead.
But lest you think that I have a higher level of competency in another language than I really do, I oughta come clean and admit I've tried, on and off, to post stuff in Japanese too. There are, no doubt, numerous mistakes. Proving once again that those who can't do, teach.

A schoolboy's heart no longer beats within this chest...

I told you all I went back to school, right? It hasn't been all smooth.

Can you imagine what kind of situation I must be in to have to say something like "Dammit, is there reason I'm not getting more homework at this point"? Or "why the crap didn't they give us a reading list?" Or even "I'm pissed off because my damn dumbass teachers aren't working us hard enough, crap damn hell piss fart double dookey damn it!"

That's right. Today, in trying to explain my interests as a writer, I needed to clear up the differences between comic books and comic strips as regards the ways in which they are written, published and distributed to a person who was only theoretically aware of any differences at all between something like Dilbert and something else like V for Vendetta. So not only did she immediately judge me based on her own blinkered world-view, but after asking for an explanation, she demonstrated that she was not listening at all.

"Yeah, so when you talk about telling stories with pictures, I mean, I love Garfield, so that's great that you're thinking about coming up with skits for that."

To add ignorance to insult to injury, our so-called Professional Writing course assignment was to come up with a lesson plan to teach an aspect of creative writing. Now, this was done for a teacher who has a side career in... teaching creative writing seminars. Is there any reason not to think that she just scammed, like 15 free lesson plans for her own damn business? The only up side I can think of is that so many of my classmates have stopped giving a damn that the lessons they submitted were likely to be a load of crap anyway.

Oh yeah, final indignity of the day. In trying to talk about science fiction fandom to a self-proclaimed "sci-fi dork", I tried to ask about a series only to find out that it that debuted a year before her birth.

What the hell, man? How the jumping crap did I wind up like this? Upset about not being asked to study enough, indignant about the ignorance of a writer of Harlequin Romances, and having to explain why a story about a space ship full of hot-blooded young folk would have been popular to a fan of Firefly.

I feel safer now...

It's about time the Justice department got down to protecting the American people from the true threats to the American way of life: teenage boys who are interested in looking at porn.

No, seriously. If there only would have been a direct link between him and the files found on the hard drive of his family computer, this kid could've wound up serving a 90 year sentence. As it stands, he just barely squeaked out of having to be registered as a sex-offender. At age 16. For looking at porn on-line.

Good job, Maricopa County DAs. Good job, Yahoo. Good job, America.



Bunch of freaking idiots...

A message to the citizens of England

We are all well aware that the English feel some sense of ownership towards the language named for your country. No doubt the world would be a poorer place without the works of Jonathan Swift, Geoffrey Chaucer or Iain Hollingshead.

For the record, however, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 million people living in the UK these days. Not to slight the cultures of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland or the Isle of Man, but just about everyone in that total is a speaker of English. That still leaves the UK significantly behind the number of English speakers in the US. Assuming, of course, that the 2001 census estimate of 215 million is roughly accurate. And behind the estimated 200 million Chinese people who are aiming for ESL fluency by the year 2020. Depending on who you believe, there are anywhere from 20 million to 100 million to 330 million people in India with ability right ranging from mother tongue fluency down to casual conversational right now. Do the math. If want to find an English speaker on planet Earth, you've only got about one chance in five of getting someone from the UK. And that's assuming the highest number of English literate UK citizens and the lowest numbers of English literate non-UK citizens1.

Whatever people may have said about the modern uses of Latin, there's not much Latin coming out of Rome these days. I don't mean to imply that the Queen's English is a dead language. But there's not much evidence to point to the future of English as strongly resembling anything heard around Eton. Or Oxford. Or anywhere else "public school" is taken to mean "place for upper class boys to engage in sport and light pederasty." All of which is to say the following.

Attention, citizens of England!
Please be aware that:

1. An accent unlike yours is not unusual by any stretch of the imagination
   
2. Pronunciation unlike yours is not unlikely
3. If the best you can manage for humor is observations about points 1 or 2, don't bother. Those jokes have been made countless times before.
   

Thank you.

1. For purposes of the rather rough estimate made here, I used a UK population of 60 million as compared to 215, 20, 20 and 19.5 millions for the US, India, Australia and Canada. I left out the Francophone Canucks along with everyone in New Zealand, Ireland, the Philippines, Africa, Asia and continental Europe.