Thursday, July 17, 2014
MAJOR NEWS!
GUESS WHAT EVERYBODY. I am about to post the long awaited second (or maybe third) to last Fifty Shades Freed review. I know you probably think I forgot about it or gave up, but I didn't, I just had a combination depression/school is hard and takes up a lot of time/everything in my whole life changed at the same time and I freaked out/ wait, where did all my money go so fast? thing going on, and I could barely face blogging AT ALL, let alone writing exceptionally long blog posts about something that I genuinely hate reading and/or thinking about. But I finally got around to writing the review for the chapters I read last November and it's going up in about five minutes, with all the typos and grammatical errors still in it that I will fix after it's posted because for some reason I can see my errors better on the blog itself than I can in compose mode. I don't know, it's a thing. So, yeah. Posting that now. Thought I should warn you. Tell your friends that have given up on me to please come back.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
You Will Be Assimilated. Resistance Is Futile.
Me: Why are you reading? We're supposed to be looking at flights together.
StereoNinja: Why?
Me: Because we're going on holiday together.
StereoNinja: Holibobs!
Me: Oh my god. I just reflexively said that without even thinking about it.
StereoNinja: What?
Me: "On holiday". Jesus. We're going on VACATION together.
StereoNinja: Say "holibobs". Say "happy holibobs!"
Me: I absolutely fucking will not say that.
StereoNinja: Why?
Me: Because we're going on holiday together.
StereoNinja: Holibobs!
Me: Oh my god. I just reflexively said that without even thinking about it.
StereoNinja: What?
Me: "On holiday". Jesus. We're going on VACATION together.
StereoNinja: Say "holibobs". Say "happy holibobs!"
Me: I absolutely fucking will not say that.
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
The Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises
I'm in the midst of a recovery day, my friends. There has not been so epic a weekend since the Epic Austin Weekend of Boobs and Cake. I am in actual physical pain due to its awesomeness and am also having a small existential crisis, and that is the result of only one of the three, THREE!, fantastical events in a roughly 30 hour period.
I would begin at the beginning, but I feel a need to explain something first. I noticed back in autumn that homesickness seemed to be at its worst during times that are important to your culture but just a regular day where you live now. For example, I suspect that Canada Day, for a Canadian who now lives in Spain, is probably kind of a bummer since no one is saying "Happy Canada Day!" or pouring maple syrup all over their naked bodies (is this what you do on Canada Day? I don't know, I'm not omniscient). I felt it a bit at Halloween - because people do Halloween here, but not like it's done in America where everyone goes insane - but when it really jumped up and kicked me in the cunt was on Thanksgiving, which in this country is just known as "Thursday" and everyone goes to work just like a normal day. I had Thanksgiving dinner with my neighbors, but it was on Saturday, not Thursday, and they were all very excited about this novelty dish I made called "cornbread" - I mean, they raved about it (because of course they did, it's CORNBREAD) which was very nice, but delighted surprise is not a typical reaction to cornbread at Thanksgiving dinner. Also there wasn't a shitty Cowboys game going on in the background. It felt weird.
Having experienced this once already, I decided that I would try to head off the "boo-hoo everyone is having fun but meeeeee" feels by having a 4th of July party. Unfortunately this is the time of year that literally half the country goes on holiday so most of our closer friends couldn't make it and also our neighbor The Commodore, so called because he recently became commodore of the nearby yacht club, stole all of our neighbors and took them to a ball at said yacht club, so it ended up being a much smaller affair than I had intended. BUT! It actually worked out great because the people who did come were my American study buddy (hereafter known as the academic) from my masters program and his English husband, my childhood friend the turk, who now lives in London with her English husband, and another American classmate from my program who I don't have a blog name for yet. We did it up American style, with burgers and brat(wurst)s on the grill, florescent yellow mustard, America shaped cookies, buckeyes*, and an enormous pasta salad. I have never seen people so excited about a pasta salad. It's not like pasta salad doesn't exist here- I've eaten some from M&S myself. But it seems using an entire package of pasta to make a party snack is uncommon here. This arrangement turned out to be perfect. We sat in the garden (these people all live in the city and were absolutely knocked the fuck out by the sheer volume of wildlife available a mere 40 minutes from London) drinking beer and/or wine and/or margaritas playing rounds of Cultural Differences and debating the proper pronunciation of words. One I didn't know is the word skeletal is pronounced here as skhe-LEE-tal, which by the way is wrong as evidenced by the fact that He-Man's nemesis is not called "SkeLEEtor". Eventually it got dark (i.e. spiders were starting to surround us) and we went indoors to tell childhood stories of terrible camp songs, fencing lessons (the turk and me, 5th grade) and archery. In the midst of this we saw some flashy lights outside and upon opening the door realized they were accompanied by exploding sounds...IT WAS FIREWORKS YOU GUYS. WE GOT TO SEE FIREWORKS IN ENGLAND ON THE 4TH OF JULY. Having achieved a perfect day, I took some people back to the train station, the academic and his husband (potentially Mr Coffee???) stayed overnight and I went to bed happy and exhausted.
StereoNinja and I got up very early the next day and rudely left our guests to fend for themselves, because we had tickets to the British Grand Prix and it is well known that driving to and from Silverstone on race day is a colossal clusterfuck. Now, I know nothing at all about F1 or any racing really, mostly because I don't have any real interest in cars or going fast and in my country the popular racing to watch is NASCAR, an interest I find fucking hilarious in other people. Conversely, prior to my converting him into an ice hockey fan, F1 was literally the only sport StereoNinja followed or gave a single fetid shit about. I haven't been exposed to his F1 fandom however, because we don't get Sky on principle so he can only watch about one out of every three races which makes it hard to follow. I was excited to go because he was excited and because I got to do a new thing, but my excitement had little to do with with the race itself. We got there and inhaled a shitty hamburger before finding our seats in the grandstand. Which is about when the Red Arrows started flying their impossible formations of awesomeness, complete with red white and blue smoke and a fucking heart that they drew in the sky. I got some sand or something in both my eyes.
And then it was race time. I was all ready to experience my first F1 race and excitedly awaited the first time they would go flying past me. I wound up waiting a long time, since 58 seconds in there was an enormous crash that knocked three cars out before it had even really started and damaged the barriers to a degree that took and hour to replace. But eventually the race got underway again and...You guys. The last thing I needed was another sport to follow, particularly another sport that it was difficult for me to be able to watch due to limited availability. However. FORMULA ONE IS FUCKING AWESOME. It wasn't even a particularly good race as it was clear from about halfway through who the winner was going to be and the only thing in question was who would win the battle for fifth place. But. For serious. Driving inches from each other at those speeds, making a play to get past someone in a corner by breaking later, which is pretty much challenging them to a game of high stakes chicken...I don't know how these cars can even go that fast with how much their balls must weigh. Next thing I know I'm reading in the program about innovations in engine design and strategies for dealing with the new limit of 100kg of fuel per race. So apparently I'm now both a racing fan and burgeoning petrol head. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.
The race ended with with a British racing driver as the winner making everyone mad with joy and patriotism, and me bewildered at myself and realizing that I had a sunburn for the first time in over 10 years (it's all coming back to me now. Having a sunburn SUUUUUUUHHKS). StereoNinja and I hightailed it back to the car in order to drive all the way to London to see Ben Folds with the Heritage Orchestra at Barbican. I've seen Ben Folds with an orchestra before. What I had not seen before was Ben Folds' new piano concerto which he'd spent a year writing and which was a highly unusual mix of classical and modern styles. Nor had I seen him lead an entire orchestra in a spontaneous episode of Rock This Bitch. For the uninitiated, Rock This Bitch is a thing that happens at many Ben Folds shows in which someone in the audience waits til a quiet moment to shout "ROCK THIS BITCH!" and then Ben Folds makes up a song on the spot containing the words "rock this bitch" that is completely different from any version of Rock This Bitch he's played before. This is not the first orchestra he's convinced to play Rock This Bitch with him, but it is the first time I'd seen it live, so I can pretty much go ahead and die now. If you'd like to be ready to die also, here's a video of the whole process:
I would begin at the beginning, but I feel a need to explain something first. I noticed back in autumn that homesickness seemed to be at its worst during times that are important to your culture but just a regular day where you live now. For example, I suspect that Canada Day, for a Canadian who now lives in Spain, is probably kind of a bummer since no one is saying "Happy Canada Day!" or pouring maple syrup all over their naked bodies (is this what you do on Canada Day? I don't know, I'm not omniscient). I felt it a bit at Halloween - because people do Halloween here, but not like it's done in America where everyone goes insane - but when it really jumped up and kicked me in the cunt was on Thanksgiving, which in this country is just known as "Thursday" and everyone goes to work just like a normal day. I had Thanksgiving dinner with my neighbors, but it was on Saturday, not Thursday, and they were all very excited about this novelty dish I made called "cornbread" - I mean, they raved about it (because of course they did, it's CORNBREAD) which was very nice, but delighted surprise is not a typical reaction to cornbread at Thanksgiving dinner. Also there wasn't a shitty Cowboys game going on in the background. It felt weird.
Having experienced this once already, I decided that I would try to head off the "boo-hoo everyone is having fun but meeeeee" feels by having a 4th of July party. Unfortunately this is the time of year that literally half the country goes on holiday so most of our closer friends couldn't make it and also our neighbor The Commodore, so called because he recently became commodore of the nearby yacht club, stole all of our neighbors and took them to a ball at said yacht club, so it ended up being a much smaller affair than I had intended. BUT! It actually worked out great because the people who did come were my American study buddy (hereafter known as the academic) from my masters program and his English husband, my childhood friend the turk, who now lives in London with her English husband, and another American classmate from my program who I don't have a blog name for yet. We did it up American style, with burgers and brat(wurst)s on the grill, florescent yellow mustard, America shaped cookies, buckeyes*, and an enormous pasta salad. I have never seen people so excited about a pasta salad. It's not like pasta salad doesn't exist here- I've eaten some from M&S myself. But it seems using an entire package of pasta to make a party snack is uncommon here. This arrangement turned out to be perfect. We sat in the garden (these people all live in the city and were absolutely knocked the fuck out by the sheer volume of wildlife available a mere 40 minutes from London) drinking beer and/or wine and/or margaritas playing rounds of Cultural Differences and debating the proper pronunciation of words. One I didn't know is the word skeletal is pronounced here as skhe-LEE-tal, which by the way is wrong as evidenced by the fact that He-Man's nemesis is not called "SkeLEEtor". Eventually it got dark (i.e. spiders were starting to surround us) and we went indoors to tell childhood stories of terrible camp songs, fencing lessons (the turk and me, 5th grade) and archery. In the midst of this we saw some flashy lights outside and upon opening the door realized they were accompanied by exploding sounds...IT WAS FIREWORKS YOU GUYS. WE GOT TO SEE FIREWORKS IN ENGLAND ON THE 4TH OF JULY. Having achieved a perfect day, I took some people back to the train station, the academic and his husband (potentially Mr Coffee???) stayed overnight and I went to bed happy and exhausted.
StereoNinja and I got up very early the next day and rudely left our guests to fend for themselves, because we had tickets to the British Grand Prix and it is well known that driving to and from Silverstone on race day is a colossal clusterfuck. Now, I know nothing at all about F1 or any racing really, mostly because I don't have any real interest in cars or going fast and in my country the popular racing to watch is NASCAR, an interest I find fucking hilarious in other people. Conversely, prior to my converting him into an ice hockey fan, F1 was literally the only sport StereoNinja followed or gave a single fetid shit about. I haven't been exposed to his F1 fandom however, because we don't get Sky on principle so he can only watch about one out of every three races which makes it hard to follow. I was excited to go because he was excited and because I got to do a new thing, but my excitement had little to do with with the race itself. We got there and inhaled a shitty hamburger before finding our seats in the grandstand. Which is about when the Red Arrows started flying their impossible formations of awesomeness, complete with red white and blue smoke and a fucking heart that they drew in the sky. I got some sand or something in both my eyes.
And then it was race time. I was all ready to experience my first F1 race and excitedly awaited the first time they would go flying past me. I wound up waiting a long time, since 58 seconds in there was an enormous crash that knocked three cars out before it had even really started and damaged the barriers to a degree that took and hour to replace. But eventually the race got underway again and...You guys. The last thing I needed was another sport to follow, particularly another sport that it was difficult for me to be able to watch due to limited availability. However. FORMULA ONE IS FUCKING AWESOME. It wasn't even a particularly good race as it was clear from about halfway through who the winner was going to be and the only thing in question was who would win the battle for fifth place. But. For serious. Driving inches from each other at those speeds, making a play to get past someone in a corner by breaking later, which is pretty much challenging them to a game of high stakes chicken...I don't know how these cars can even go that fast with how much their balls must weigh. Next thing I know I'm reading in the program about innovations in engine design and strategies for dealing with the new limit of 100kg of fuel per race. So apparently I'm now both a racing fan and burgeoning petrol head. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.
The race ended with with a British racing driver as the winner making everyone mad with joy and patriotism, and me bewildered at myself and realizing that I had a sunburn for the first time in over 10 years (it's all coming back to me now. Having a sunburn SUUUUUUUHHKS). StereoNinja and I hightailed it back to the car in order to drive all the way to London to see Ben Folds with the Heritage Orchestra at Barbican. I've seen Ben Folds with an orchestra before. What I had not seen before was Ben Folds' new piano concerto which he'd spent a year writing and which was a highly unusual mix of classical and modern styles. Nor had I seen him lead an entire orchestra in a spontaneous episode of Rock This Bitch. For the uninitiated, Rock This Bitch is a thing that happens at many Ben Folds shows in which someone in the audience waits til a quiet moment to shout "ROCK THIS BITCH!" and then Ben Folds makes up a song on the spot containing the words "rock this bitch" that is completely different from any version of Rock This Bitch he's played before. This is not the first orchestra he's convinced to play Rock This Bitch with him, but it is the first time I'd seen it live, so I can pretty much go ahead and die now. If you'd like to be ready to die also, here's a video of the whole process:
Once Ben Folds had finished blowing my fucking mind again, we headed home. After a concert, an F1 race, and a brilliant party, I was completely exhausted (also crispy and pink as all fuck) and not looking forward to going home and cleaning up the mess we'd made on Saturday. So imagine my total fucking delight when we finally got home only to find that the guests we had abandoned in our house had cleaned up absolutely EVERYTHING before they left like a couple of magical party debris erasing genies, thus making the entire thing into a PERFECT weekend. Or indeed, the Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises.
Update: I have just remembered another conversation from my 4th of July party between the four Americans that occurred when the turk mentioned she had gone somewhere that had REAL rye bread and the other three of us all sat up and went "Get out. Seriously? With the seeds and everything? WHERE? WHERE IS THIS RYE BREAD?" The reason we all reacted so strongly is that we've all had a common experience, shared I suspect by almost all Americans living here, of having ordered a sandwich on rye or rye toast somewhere and being served instead with bread that is actually white bread and pumpernickel swirled together. Listen, because I cannot stress this enough: that is not rye bread. There's not even any caraway seeds in it, which while some real rye bread doesn't have caraway seeds either, that kind of rye is pointless. If there is one food I miss from America more than any other food it is rye toast to go with my omelette. Without rye toast, an omelette is just eggs with some other shit in it. Rye toast is the shit, man.
I now return you to you irregularly scheduled self deprecation and spider freak outs.
*These were specifically for the benefit of the turk since as a native Ohioan she was the only one likely to have had them before. If you don't know what a buckeye is, as far as I can tell it is a nut (or seed? I'm too lazy to google which one it technically is but I think of it as nut) that is either exactly the same as or indistinguishably close to a conker. The tree it grows on is the state tree of Ohio and it is the mascot of the state's largest institution for secondary education, The Ohio State University. Somewhere along the line, some total fucking snack genius got the idea to make balls of candied peanut butter and dip them in chocolate, which is both delicious and looks exactly like a buckeye. Despite not encountering them before, the group ate the crap out of them and now I don't have any more.
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
Amberance Goes To [REDACTED]
About a week ago, I was doing this temp job for a few days which turned out to be the single most blogable thing that has happened to me since I've been here. And annoyingly I can't really tell you anything about it, because I had to sign a social media non-disclosure agreement that said I wouldn't tell you where I was and I wouldn't tell you who else was there (this was a pointless concern, since if someone important/famous had been there, I almost certainly wouldn't have recognized them because knowing who people are is not my strong suit (witness my once asking my brother "What is a Kardashian?"), so I couldn't tell you who I may or may not have seen even if I wanted to. I would, however like to point out that posh people generally do wees the same as everybody else in my recent experience). It even had specific words in it that I wasn't allowed to use in conjunction with anything I said on the subject, which eliminated most of the nouns and verbs I could use to talk around the situation.
The only word that seems to be left to me at this point is "hat". SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS, WHAT IS WITH YOUR HATS? First of all, where are men even getting these top hats? Is this an item in every Englishman's wardrobe that I didn't know about? Can you rent them? Why don't more top hat wearers grow mutton chops, which in my mind is the entire point of wearing a top hat? Also, god forbid that you take your hat off. There are people walking around, mostly men, also wearing hats, politely taking people aside and saying "Sir, I am afraid you can't be in this area without a hat" and then the other guy goes "Oh sorry, my bad" or something a lot more stereotypically British and wealthy sounding and goes and dons a hat. And I am not kidding about stereotypically wealthy sounding Englishman - StereoNinja does a joke voice which I call Posh Old Man Voice that I think is hilarious, and I overheard a guy talking like that and started giggling, then realized he wasn't "doing" a voice, he actually talks like that.
That is just the men. The women...I don't even...seriously, WHAT IS ON YOUR HEAD? Is that...an aquarium? Mind you, I was also made to wear a hat (which was provided to me because in what universe would I own a fancy hat?), but my hat was just, you know, a hat. And sure, lots of ladies around me were also wearing hats that did in fact resemble a hat, but those hats mostly appeared to have been deliberately created to go with the dresses they were wearing, which I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure mostly were mostly the work of top class fashion designers that people who are not me will have heard of. But then the crazy hats. I am not kidding about the aquarium hat, by the way, but there were others, each one bigger, weirder and less hat-like than the next. Oh and also a camera crew running around the place all day long grabbing crazy-hatted women and stuffing a microphone in their face and saying "TELL ME ABOUT YOUR HAT!" I really, truly, could not have been more out of my element in this setting if it had taken place on Venus.
Oh, as far as who I maybe did or didn't see: I think it is probably within the rules to report that, as predicted, I recognized not one single person. The closest I got was when I was coming out of the ladies toilets (which have baskets full of hair pins and extra nylons and other assorted things it would never occur to me to provide for my guests) and one of the other workers said to me, "Oh, you just missed [REDACTED] going by! She was right over here not two minutes ago!" to which I replied "Huh. Neat." because there was a zero percent chance I would have known who that was without being told even if I had been there when she walked by.
Finally, I would just like to report that [REDACTED]*-drawn coaches look all fancy and cool, but really they just go too slow and back up traffic for miles and shit all over the road.
*For real, the thingy I signed says I can't use that word if I talk about this.
The only word that seems to be left to me at this point is "hat". SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS, WHAT IS WITH YOUR HATS? First of all, where are men even getting these top hats? Is this an item in every Englishman's wardrobe that I didn't know about? Can you rent them? Why don't more top hat wearers grow mutton chops, which in my mind is the entire point of wearing a top hat? Also, god forbid that you take your hat off. There are people walking around, mostly men, also wearing hats, politely taking people aside and saying "Sir, I am afraid you can't be in this area without a hat" and then the other guy goes "Oh sorry, my bad" or something a lot more stereotypically British and wealthy sounding and goes and dons a hat. And I am not kidding about stereotypically wealthy sounding Englishman - StereoNinja does a joke voice which I call Posh Old Man Voice that I think is hilarious, and I overheard a guy talking like that and started giggling, then realized he wasn't "doing" a voice, he actually talks like that.
That is just the men. The women...I don't even...seriously, WHAT IS ON YOUR HEAD? Is that...an aquarium? Mind you, I was also made to wear a hat (which was provided to me because in what universe would I own a fancy hat?), but my hat was just, you know, a hat. And sure, lots of ladies around me were also wearing hats that did in fact resemble a hat, but those hats mostly appeared to have been deliberately created to go with the dresses they were wearing, which I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure mostly were mostly the work of top class fashion designers that people who are not me will have heard of. But then the crazy hats. I am not kidding about the aquarium hat, by the way, but there were others, each one bigger, weirder and less hat-like than the next. Oh and also a camera crew running around the place all day long grabbing crazy-hatted women and stuffing a microphone in their face and saying "TELL ME ABOUT YOUR HAT!" I really, truly, could not have been more out of my element in this setting if it had taken place on Venus.
Oh, as far as who I maybe did or didn't see: I think it is probably within the rules to report that, as predicted, I recognized not one single person. The closest I got was when I was coming out of the ladies toilets (which have baskets full of hair pins and extra nylons and other assorted things it would never occur to me to provide for my guests) and one of the other workers said to me, "Oh, you just missed [REDACTED] going by! She was right over here not two minutes ago!" to which I replied "Huh. Neat." because there was a zero percent chance I would have known who that was without being told even if I had been there when she walked by.
Finally, I would just like to report that [REDACTED]*-drawn coaches look all fancy and cool, but really they just go too slow and back up traffic for miles and shit all over the road.
*For real, the thingy I signed says I can't use that word if I talk about this.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Where's amberance?
I'm not allowed to tell you where I am and I'm not allowed to tell you what I'm doing. I'm not allowed to tell you who else is here, which I find hilarious because I don't know who anyone is to begin with.
More lack of information to follow.
More lack of information to follow.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Cultural Differences
American classmate: What is that thing?
British classmate: It's for your face. It sprays mist, for when it's hot outside.
AC: That's so cool! I've never seen anything like that!
BC: They're hard to find here. I got this in France. I'm surprised you don't have them in America though.
AC: Well in America we have air conditioning.
Note: This conversation occurred when it was 72 degrees outside.
British classmate: It's for your face. It sprays mist, for when it's hot outside.
AC: That's so cool! I've never seen anything like that!
BC: They're hard to find here. I got this in France. I'm surprised you don't have them in America though.
AC: Well in America we have air conditioning.
Note: This conversation occurred when it was 72 degrees outside.
Monday, June 09, 2014
I Should Not Be Allowed At Concerts
A conversation between my cousin Kelly and me on the occasion of StereoNinja taking me to see Arcade Fire, which I was uncomfortable about it because the only thing I knew about Arcade Fire was that I'd heard of them, maybe:
me: We are going to Arcade Fire tonight and I feel kinda bad because I literally do not know even one Arcade Fire song and [StereoNinja] is SO EXCITED and I'm like "whee I guess, I don't know". Am I the only person who doesn't have any idea what Arcade Fire are like? I think maybe I am.
me (now at the show): People are dressed up like it's some kind of masquerade and there are hipster beards EVERYWHERE help help
Kelly: oh shit. i forgot to mention the hipsters. aaaah, masquerade, yeah that sounds about right. is there an opener?
me: Oh my god the opener was AWFUL and they played 45 minutes I don't even
Ok a metal Michael Jackson just popped up on the stage where the djs are and is dancing, why am I not into drugs?!?!?
Ok they are on now...this band really likes hexagons there's like a million of them
A guy has a light box for a head and the curly haired lady was shinning lights on us with mirrors this is hilarious
Pretty sure the entire band raided bono's wardrobe
Kelly: aaah, a few scarves and orange sun glasses??
me: Also bizarre suit jackets. Ok you were right I don't get it at all. It's listenable but I can't tell any songs apart and if I never heard them again they wouldn't be missed. Everyone around me is losing their minds however
Kelly: yuuuuuup.... that's pretty much it
Kelly: I've gotta tell you about arcade fire from my pov.
1. they're talented.
2. there's A LOT of them
3. you're prolly not gonna like the music.
2. there's A LOT of them
3. you're prolly not gonna like the music.
me (now at the show): People are dressed up like it's some kind of masquerade and there are hipster beards EVERYWHERE help help
Kelly: oh shit. i forgot to mention the hipsters. aaaah, masquerade, yeah that sounds about right. is there an opener?
me: Oh my god the opener was AWFUL and they played 45 minutes I don't even
Ok a metal Michael Jackson just popped up on the stage where the djs are and is dancing, why am I not into drugs?!?!?
Ok they are on now...this band really likes hexagons there's like a million of them
A guy has a light box for a head and the curly haired lady was shinning lights on us with mirrors this is hilarious
Pretty sure the entire band raided bono's wardrobe
Kelly: aaah, a few scarves and orange sun glasses??
me: Also bizarre suit jackets. Ok you were right I don't get it at all. It's listenable but I can't tell any songs apart and if I never heard them again they wouldn't be missed. Everyone around me is losing their minds however
Kelly: yuuuuuup.... that's pretty much it
Sunday, June 08, 2014
Commercials That I Hate - UK Edition
I've been here long enough now to start hating television commercials, and rather than continuing to throw things at StereoNinja's perfectly innocent tv set, I thought I'd come complain about them here.
Watch Dogs - I don't know if they are running the same series of promos in the U.S. as they are in the UK for this new PS4 game (that everyone I know who games thinks is total crap). It's a game set in Chicago, and while the commercial shows a graphic Chicago that is well done enough for me to recognize, the voice over is completely nonsensical. It starts out with the phrase "I hacked the city to make it my weapon". Well I'm here to tell you that, no sir, you did not. You are implying a level of organization to the running of Chicago that I assure you doesn't exist. This statement is accompanied by a scene in which some guy pushes a button on his magical city-controlling remote which stops a CTA train at somewhere that isn't a real stop so he can get on. I fell out of my seat laughing because a) you don't need a magical remote for this, CTA trains stop in the middle of the tracks for no apparent reason ALL THE FUCKING TIME, he could just stand at basically any point along the tracks and at some point during the day the train would inexplicably stop near him; and b) I assure you there is no wireless controlling system on the CTA that you could "hack" into to stop the trains. If there were, I wouldn't be able to link to this video from just a few months back of a CTA blue line train pulling into the station at O'Hare airport at full fucking speed before jumping the tracks and hurtling up the escalator like it was about to miss its fucking flight. The CTA is still working on replacing old track, some of which was laid roughly 100 years ago. An upgrade to a centrally controlled hackable train operating system is something I expect to happen some time after we get flying cars. The voice over goes on to say "My enemies may run Chicago, but I control it." I'm sorry, who are your enemies, the Latin Kings? Tony Rezko? I'm not sure how hacking trains and street lights is supposed to help you defeat political corruption or a street gang that boasts Chicago police officers among their membership. But yeah, go ahead and hack that centrally controlled traffic light system that doesn't exist.
Canesten is a UK brand of creams, pills and pessaries for the treatment of yeast infections, or as it is quaintly called here, thrush. They sell these products individually but also in combination packs, much in the same way as American brands like Monistat. Unlike Monistat, however, their new commercials promoting their combi products are illogical and vaguely disturbing. You wouldn't wash your hair without using conditioner, they reason, so why would you use just one product to treat your crotch infection instead of two? I don't know, Canesten, two medicines are probably better than one, but not for the same reason that it's a good idea to condition your hair after you've washed it. There is a huge difference between using a pill and a cream to make your nether regions stop being on fucking fire as soon as possible, and wanting to be able to get a comb through your hair. These things are not even remotely related, or at least hopefully they aren't because if you're trying to use conditioner to get a yeast infection out of your hair I'm worried that you might have bigger problems.
Currys PC World - I don't know if you know this, but the World Cup is starting in about a week. I know it because pretty much anything that can be sold in the UK is being cross-promoted with it, which leads to me thinking I've bought the wrong Coke Zero every time I go to the shop because the yellow and green World Cup logo makes it look like Coke with lime. Currys PC World, purveyor of fine electronic products, has jumped on the bandwagon as well, reasoning that now would be the perfect time to buy that giant tv that dwarfs the rest of your living room and makes your friends think you're a pretentious asshole showoff because HOLY SHIT THE FOOTBALL IS ON, as if the Premiere League isn't on the air constantly. But whatever, that's a reasonable premise for a commercial. The problem is the tack they've decided to take with their sales pitch, which boasts not one but TWO of my most hated advertising tropes: all women obviously hate sports, and mens are stooopid amirite? Because why be offensive to just one gender when you can negatively stereotype nearly the entire population*? These are actually a series of basically identical commercials in which generic huband tries to trick generic wife into getting a new ginormous tv, ostensibly so she can watch some show that's totally for the womenfolk, like a gardening show or Downton Abbey, when in reality, super man type person wants it so he can watch the World Cup, but, you know, BIGGER. Unfortunately, since MANS ARE DUMM, he always screws up his pitch and half of the word "football" slips out by accident, which leaves wife type person with a shitty look on her face because ohmygod my husband is so dumb and also how dare he want to spend time watching a sport that 90% of the country is also watching nearly all of the time? Seriously, everyone knows that marriage is all about tricking your spouse into letting you buy shit they don't want and then them resenting you for it to an unreasonably disproportionate degree. OR, maybe you could have gone with something less tired, insulting and frankly obvious. Something like man comes home and finds wife planted in front of giant tv she didn't tell him she was buying, screaming at the football match like a lunatic and he shakes his head bemusedly and hands her a beer. Maybe something like that could sell some tvs? I don't know, I'm not omnicient, but it might be worth a try instead of the same boring and unrealistic gender stereotypes that everyone advertising to a household market has already (poorly) used. Seriously, fuck this commercial. In the ass. With a football.
*Those not subscribing to the presumed gender binary excluded, but only because they can't figure out an angle for selling you their crap.
Watch Dogs - I don't know if they are running the same series of promos in the U.S. as they are in the UK for this new PS4 game (that everyone I know who games thinks is total crap). It's a game set in Chicago, and while the commercial shows a graphic Chicago that is well done enough for me to recognize, the voice over is completely nonsensical. It starts out with the phrase "I hacked the city to make it my weapon". Well I'm here to tell you that, no sir, you did not. You are implying a level of organization to the running of Chicago that I assure you doesn't exist. This statement is accompanied by a scene in which some guy pushes a button on his magical city-controlling remote which stops a CTA train at somewhere that isn't a real stop so he can get on. I fell out of my seat laughing because a) you don't need a magical remote for this, CTA trains stop in the middle of the tracks for no apparent reason ALL THE FUCKING TIME, he could just stand at basically any point along the tracks and at some point during the day the train would inexplicably stop near him; and b) I assure you there is no wireless controlling system on the CTA that you could "hack" into to stop the trains. If there were, I wouldn't be able to link to this video from just a few months back of a CTA blue line train pulling into the station at O'Hare airport at full fucking speed before jumping the tracks and hurtling up the escalator like it was about to miss its fucking flight. The CTA is still working on replacing old track, some of which was laid roughly 100 years ago. An upgrade to a centrally controlled hackable train operating system is something I expect to happen some time after we get flying cars. The voice over goes on to say "My enemies may run Chicago, but I control it." I'm sorry, who are your enemies, the Latin Kings? Tony Rezko? I'm not sure how hacking trains and street lights is supposed to help you defeat political corruption or a street gang that boasts Chicago police officers among their membership. But yeah, go ahead and hack that centrally controlled traffic light system that doesn't exist.
Canesten is a UK brand of creams, pills and pessaries for the treatment of yeast infections, or as it is quaintly called here, thrush. They sell these products individually but also in combination packs, much in the same way as American brands like Monistat. Unlike Monistat, however, their new commercials promoting their combi products are illogical and vaguely disturbing. You wouldn't wash your hair without using conditioner, they reason, so why would you use just one product to treat your crotch infection instead of two? I don't know, Canesten, two medicines are probably better than one, but not for the same reason that it's a good idea to condition your hair after you've washed it. There is a huge difference between using a pill and a cream to make your nether regions stop being on fucking fire as soon as possible, and wanting to be able to get a comb through your hair. These things are not even remotely related, or at least hopefully they aren't because if you're trying to use conditioner to get a yeast infection out of your hair I'm worried that you might have bigger problems.
Currys PC World - I don't know if you know this, but the World Cup is starting in about a week. I know it because pretty much anything that can be sold in the UK is being cross-promoted with it, which leads to me thinking I've bought the wrong Coke Zero every time I go to the shop because the yellow and green World Cup logo makes it look like Coke with lime. Currys PC World, purveyor of fine electronic products, has jumped on the bandwagon as well, reasoning that now would be the perfect time to buy that giant tv that dwarfs the rest of your living room and makes your friends think you're a pretentious asshole showoff because HOLY SHIT THE FOOTBALL IS ON, as if the Premiere League isn't on the air constantly. But whatever, that's a reasonable premise for a commercial. The problem is the tack they've decided to take with their sales pitch, which boasts not one but TWO of my most hated advertising tropes: all women obviously hate sports, and mens are stooopid amirite? Because why be offensive to just one gender when you can negatively stereotype nearly the entire population*? These are actually a series of basically identical commercials in which generic huband tries to trick generic wife into getting a new ginormous tv, ostensibly so she can watch some show that's totally for the womenfolk, like a gardening show or Downton Abbey, when in reality, super man type person wants it so he can watch the World Cup, but, you know, BIGGER. Unfortunately, since MANS ARE DUMM, he always screws up his pitch and half of the word "football" slips out by accident, which leaves wife type person with a shitty look on her face because ohmygod my husband is so dumb and also how dare he want to spend time watching a sport that 90% of the country is also watching nearly all of the time? Seriously, everyone knows that marriage is all about tricking your spouse into letting you buy shit they don't want and then them resenting you for it to an unreasonably disproportionate degree. OR, maybe you could have gone with something less tired, insulting and frankly obvious. Something like man comes home and finds wife planted in front of giant tv she didn't tell him she was buying, screaming at the football match like a lunatic and he shakes his head bemusedly and hands her a beer. Maybe something like that could sell some tvs? I don't know, I'm not omnicient, but it might be worth a try instead of the same boring and unrealistic gender stereotypes that everyone advertising to a household market has already (poorly) used. Seriously, fuck this commercial. In the ass. With a football.
*Those not subscribing to the presumed gender binary excluded, but only because they can't figure out an angle for selling you their crap.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Fifty Shades Of Dissertation Research
So here's what I've decided on the dissertation front: I'm going to compare Fifty Shades of Grey with the movie Secretary in their portrayals of BDSM and in the responses each got from the public in an effort to determine whether mainstream portrayals of BDSM relationships are creating a more relaxed attitude toward it or just reinforcing negative stereotypes that already exist. I also thought you'd like to know that you all got a big mention in my dissertation proposal as my justification for undertaking this particular research project so thank you SO MUCH for being awesome.
Now that the dissertation proposal is done and I don't have another thing due until July, I'm hoping to get back to regular blogging including writing the last two or three Fifty Shades Freed reviews so I can get that off my docket and light the book on fire. I started writing one many months ago, but it's been so long I might have to actually go re-read those three chapters which is a special form of torture and TOTALLY not fair, but all I can remember about them is being upset with myself for having gotten more angry that E.L. James doesn't understand how a bank works than I did about a man explicitly threatening to rape his wife. Apparently E.L. James has turned me into some sort of horrible rape culture reinforcing monster, you know, like UKIP*.
*Dear Americans, hi. If this reference doesn't make sense to you, it is because our country's major news outlets are crap at covering international news unless it's too sensational to ignore. UKIP is a political party in the UK based on racism and reactionary conservative values, such as that it should totally not be illegal for a man to rape his wife and Romanians are like a plague of locusts and are going to come to the UK and eat all our food or something. I'm not sure exactly, they don't really make any sense and when they open their mouths a pile of bigoted diarrhea sprays out so I try not to stand too close to any of them. Anyway, that's what I was referencing. Straddling two cultures is hard y'all.
Now that the dissertation proposal is done and I don't have another thing due until July, I'm hoping to get back to regular blogging including writing the last two or three Fifty Shades Freed reviews so I can get that off my docket and light the book on fire. I started writing one many months ago, but it's been so long I might have to actually go re-read those three chapters which is a special form of torture and TOTALLY not fair, but all I can remember about them is being upset with myself for having gotten more angry that E.L. James doesn't understand how a bank works than I did about a man explicitly threatening to rape his wife. Apparently E.L. James has turned me into some sort of horrible rape culture reinforcing monster, you know, like UKIP*.
*Dear Americans, hi. If this reference doesn't make sense to you, it is because our country's major news outlets are crap at covering international news unless it's too sensational to ignore. UKIP is a political party in the UK based on racism and reactionary conservative values, such as that it should totally not be illegal for a man to rape his wife and Romanians are like a plague of locusts and are going to come to the UK and eat all our food or something. I'm not sure exactly, they don't really make any sense and when they open their mouths a pile of bigoted diarrhea sprays out so I try not to stand too close to any of them. Anyway, that's what I was referencing. Straddling two cultures is hard y'all.
A Household Divided
"I wish it was my birthday coming up instead of yours," I announced to StereoNinja on Sunday, "because then I could just whine until you bought me that rug." StereoNinja and I generally have similar taste in decorating. In particular we both for the most part hate rugs. Rugs do not go on carpet - that is what CARPET is for, and if you have beautiful hardwood floors anywhere in your home, why on earth would you cover them up with some kind of crappy rug?
Be that as it may, currently I do not live in a house with beautiful hardwood floors, I live in a house with crappy plastic "wood looking" floors because that is what happens when you rent. AND, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed this. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, Think Geek is currently selling a floor rug that looks exactly like Han Solo trapped in carbonite and it's only $50 and IT WOULD FIT PERFECTLY IN OUR FRONT HALLWAY. And StereoNinja won't let me get it because his hatred of rugs apparently trumps my happiness. I even tried appealing to his sense of geekery by pointing out that we NEED this rug in order to enhance our nerd credentials and he PRETENDED LIKE THAT WASN'T EVEN A THING. But it is. It is a thing and not having this rug will come to represent an epic failure of my nerdcoreness that I may never recover from. All this because I got into a serious relationship. I knew Admiral Ackbar was right.
UPDATE: A key tenet of StereoNinja's objection to the rug (other than the mere fact that it is a rug) is that we can't put a Star Wars rug in the front hallway because we have prints of Batman characters hanging in that same hallway and you can't mix genres because reasons. However, he said this whilst walking past the bookcase in our stairway on which are displayed toys from Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, books with the art of H.R. Giger, and two knitted dinosaurs, which I maintain COMPLETELY invalidates his entire argument. I NEED THIS RUG YOU GUYS.
Be that as it may, currently I do not live in a house with beautiful hardwood floors, I live in a house with crappy plastic "wood looking" floors because that is what happens when you rent. AND, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed this. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, Think Geek is currently selling a floor rug that looks exactly like Han Solo trapped in carbonite and it's only $50 and IT WOULD FIT PERFECTLY IN OUR FRONT HALLWAY. And StereoNinja won't let me get it because his hatred of rugs apparently trumps my happiness. I even tried appealing to his sense of geekery by pointing out that we NEED this rug in order to enhance our nerd credentials and he PRETENDED LIKE THAT WASN'T EVEN A THING. But it is. It is a thing and not having this rug will come to represent an epic failure of my nerdcoreness that I may never recover from. All this because I got into a serious relationship. I knew Admiral Ackbar was right.
UPDATE: A key tenet of StereoNinja's objection to the rug (other than the mere fact that it is a rug) is that we can't put a Star Wars rug in the front hallway because we have prints of Batman characters hanging in that same hallway and you can't mix genres because reasons. However, he said this whilst walking past the bookcase in our stairway on which are displayed toys from Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, books with the art of H.R. Giger, and two knitted dinosaurs, which I maintain COMPLETELY invalidates his entire argument. I NEED THIS RUG YOU GUYS.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Just Where The Hell I Have Been
I turned in both of my papers yesterday. It was much easier for me this time than it was the last time I had two papers due on the same day, less because I had done it before than because I cared about them differently than last time. I say "differently" because last term I had the weird experience of having one class that I thought was brilliant - I had strong opinions which were typically diametrically opposed to everyone else in the class and a massive crush on my teacher, and the other class that I spent every single moment of wishing "class" was something you could stab in the face. So when it was paper time, I was riled up and excited to write a paper on the UK's extreme pornography ban and why it is a load of complete and utter bullshit, and the other paper...well, I just gave no fuck whatsoever about that paper, so I just filled it with buzzwords like "discourse" and "paradigm" and my person favorite "lived experience" and turned it in. I had done the exact same thing on the annotated bibliography I'd had to write for the class earlier in the term and received a merit for it so I figured, you know, fuck it.
I now need to begin work on my dissertation, a task that would be much easier if I had ANY IDEA AT ALL what to write it on. My first instinct was, of course, Fifty Shades seeing as I am apparently one of the world's leading experts on how bad it sucks. But "Fifty Shades of Grey: No Seriously, What the Fuck?" is not an appropriate or even reasonably narrow topic and also the main piece of advice on picking a dissertation topic seems to be "pick something you like because you're going to eat, sleep and breathe that fucking subject for the next six months" and I think we've pretty well established that Fifty Shades of Grey is decidedly NOT something I like. I like being semi-internet famous for creative swearing and pushed to the top of reddit lists, but that is not likely to factor into dissertation research so much. So anyway, about three weeks from now I need to turn in a dissertation proposal roughly the length of a module essay on something to do with "gender" or "sexuality" and I have precisely ZERO thoughts on what that topic should be. SO I;ve got that going for me.
Now, since it's been so long, let me switch topics on you entirely and go back to complaining about my adopted country. Which I LOVE by the way - I know I complain about how homesick I am and how everything is too "not-America", but I do genuinely love it here (the sheep across the river had some lambs and I can hear them from my bedroom and the lambs run around all cute and small and then randomly jump up in the air for NO REASON and it is fantastic; in related nature news, the two gay ducks (we think they are gay because they are both boys and are never, ever more than about three feet from one another so they are obviously a couple) that hang out in our marina have taken to coming right up to the kitchen door begging from bread and one of them will eat it right out of your hand). Having said that, I would now like to complain bitterly about Easter and daytime television.
As Easter approached, I asked StereoNinja why the stores had put out all of the Easter basket stuff yet and was greeted with a blank stare followed by "what is an Easter basket?" Because Easter baskets are NOT A THING. You know what you get here? A chocolate egg. One. THAT IS IT. And unlike a chocolate bunny, that egg is hollow, my friends. It probably has less total chocolate volume than a regular candy bar. In Chicago I made StereoNinja buy real Easter baskets with real Easter basket stuff for his children because I found the situation so unacceptable. But wait, there's more! Even worse than that atrocity is the fact the coloring Easter eggs is ALSO NOT A THING. I just...I don't even...WHY DON'T YOU WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO HAVE ANY FUN, ENGLAND? So I bought the Paas color cups when we were in Chicago so as to show StereoNinja & Spawn (TM) what they were missing. And then immediately ran into another problem: all the eggs are brown. Finding a white chicken egg in this country is harder than finding a burrito. I eventually figured out that Whole Foods in Kensington was selling them, but not until AFTER they had already sold out. StereoNinja went and got some white duck eggs from somewhere, which I discovered don't really work as they are quite translucent and not nearly as permeable. Plus then you have a house full of duck eggs which I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with. So apart from the fantastic ham I made, Easter was a kind of a disaster.
Now then: being a full time graduate student and not having a job means that I spend a lot of time at home during the day with the television on in the background for some noise so I don't go crazy and I have to say, there is NOTHING ON TELEVISION DURING THE DAY. Seriously, nothing worth watching unless you count Top Gear reruns I've seen a thousand times. Mainly all there seems to be are episodes of Charmed and an Australian soap opera call Neighbours. Everyone else at home in the day must be bored too, because what I really wanted to complain about is the sheer volume of commercials for a. online casinos and b. predatory loan companies. It is pretty much ALL they advertise during the day, one right after another. I can't help feeling like these things are related, and that they are preying on the weak as I would assume a significant percentage of the daytime television audience is made up of people who are out of work. Frankly, I think that's pretty shitty and I'm not sure why that's being allowed but watching BDSM torture porn on the internet in your own home is is not.
Coming up: Things I did in Chicago, as soon as I can remember what those things are.
I now need to begin work on my dissertation, a task that would be much easier if I had ANY IDEA AT ALL what to write it on. My first instinct was, of course, Fifty Shades seeing as I am apparently one of the world's leading experts on how bad it sucks. But "Fifty Shades of Grey: No Seriously, What the Fuck?" is not an appropriate or even reasonably narrow topic and also the main piece of advice on picking a dissertation topic seems to be "pick something you like because you're going to eat, sleep and breathe that fucking subject for the next six months" and I think we've pretty well established that Fifty Shades of Grey is decidedly NOT something I like. I like being semi-internet famous for creative swearing and pushed to the top of reddit lists, but that is not likely to factor into dissertation research so much. So anyway, about three weeks from now I need to turn in a dissertation proposal roughly the length of a module essay on something to do with "gender" or "sexuality" and I have precisely ZERO thoughts on what that topic should be. SO I;ve got that going for me.
Now, since it's been so long, let me switch topics on you entirely and go back to complaining about my adopted country. Which I LOVE by the way - I know I complain about how homesick I am and how everything is too "not-America", but I do genuinely love it here (the sheep across the river had some lambs and I can hear them from my bedroom and the lambs run around all cute and small and then randomly jump up in the air for NO REASON and it is fantastic; in related nature news, the two gay ducks (we think they are gay because they are both boys and are never, ever more than about three feet from one another so they are obviously a couple) that hang out in our marina have taken to coming right up to the kitchen door begging from bread and one of them will eat it right out of your hand). Having said that, I would now like to complain bitterly about Easter and daytime television.
As Easter approached, I asked StereoNinja why the stores had put out all of the Easter basket stuff yet and was greeted with a blank stare followed by "what is an Easter basket?" Because Easter baskets are NOT A THING. You know what you get here? A chocolate egg. One. THAT IS IT. And unlike a chocolate bunny, that egg is hollow, my friends. It probably has less total chocolate volume than a regular candy bar. In Chicago I made StereoNinja buy real Easter baskets with real Easter basket stuff for his children because I found the situation so unacceptable. But wait, there's more! Even worse than that atrocity is the fact the coloring Easter eggs is ALSO NOT A THING. I just...I don't even...WHY DON'T YOU WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO HAVE ANY FUN, ENGLAND? So I bought the Paas color cups when we were in Chicago so as to show StereoNinja & Spawn (TM) what they were missing. And then immediately ran into another problem: all the eggs are brown. Finding a white chicken egg in this country is harder than finding a burrito. I eventually figured out that Whole Foods in Kensington was selling them, but not until AFTER they had already sold out. StereoNinja went and got some white duck eggs from somewhere, which I discovered don't really work as they are quite translucent and not nearly as permeable. Plus then you have a house full of duck eggs which I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with. So apart from the fantastic ham I made, Easter was a kind of a disaster.
Now then: being a full time graduate student and not having a job means that I spend a lot of time at home during the day with the television on in the background for some noise so I don't go crazy and I have to say, there is NOTHING ON TELEVISION DURING THE DAY. Seriously, nothing worth watching unless you count Top Gear reruns I've seen a thousand times. Mainly all there seems to be are episodes of Charmed and an Australian soap opera call Neighbours. Everyone else at home in the day must be bored too, because what I really wanted to complain about is the sheer volume of commercials for a. online casinos and b. predatory loan companies. It is pretty much ALL they advertise during the day, one right after another. I can't help feeling like these things are related, and that they are preying on the weak as I would assume a significant percentage of the daytime television audience is made up of people who are out of work. Frankly, I think that's pretty shitty and I'm not sure why that's being allowed but watching BDSM torture porn on the internet in your own home is is not.
Coming up: Things I did in Chicago, as soon as I can remember what those things are.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Placeholder Post
Once again I find myself frantically writing two papers at the same time for graduate school and no time to blog. Additionally, I was in Chicago for a week which added lots of things to blog about but was detrimental to my having time to actually do it. Real posts forthcoming in about two weeks. Until then here's the short version:
- StereoNinja saw his first Blackhawks game and nearly left his jaw in Chicago where he dropped it in the United Center. He now totally gets why I thought the Slough Jets and their "arena" were fucking hilarious.
- I WENT ON A SUBMARINE. A SUBMARINE YOU GUYS. (It was not in the water.)
- FYI, if you have an hour and 45 minute layover in Dublin on your way to Chicago, it will not be nearly enough time to get through U.S. immigration pre-clearance and security between flights. This won't be a problem, however, because literally HALF of the people on your flight will be in that same line and they will delay the flight for twenty minutes because my country's obsession with security theater is insane.
Friday, March 21, 2014
They're Baaa-aack
I've been feeding the next door neighbors' cat all week because they are out of town. I say "neighbors' cat", but it's really a stray cat called Hissing Syd, who won't come within 10 feet of people, but who will sit exactly that distance from his food bowls and look around in judgement if they are empty when he gets there much in the way of a normal house cat. I grabbed the cat food and was about to walk through my back door when crumpled in the door jam I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in England. So big in fact, that I looked it over for some moments actually thinking "maybe it's not a spider. Maybe it's a scraggly piece of something that fell off of a bush." But nothing else in the world has leg joints in exactly those places. Nothing. I seriously didn't know they had spiders as big as this here. I think it must have followed me here from the U.S...from Texas probably (I'm made to understand everything is bigger there). It wasn't moving and looked as if it had been smushed by the door, so I made the assumption it was dead and closed the door on it. Then I grabbed the cat food, went out the front door (after very carefully checking the entire doorway for spiders, because if I missed something and then came back and there was one outside THAT door I wouldn't be able to get back in the house), walked halfway across the island to the common entrance to the marina, and then all the way back to their garden while muttering "ohgodohgodohgod" with my heart trying to escape from my chest the entire time to feed the goddamn cat. I am now back in my own house, have texted StereoNinja to inform him that I am NEVER GOING IN THE GARDEN EVER AGAIN. I am checking everything in the house for spiders before I touch it (I looked inside the Dorito bag) and experiencing a mild to moderate level of general panic that I know will subside gradually over the next few days UNLESS another spider appears.
What I hate about this phobia is not so much that it controls where I can go and what I can do - there are work arounds for that, obviously, as I've just walked clear across an island to feet a cat sitting 30 feet from my backyard - but the (I assume, I'm not a psychiatrist) post traumatic stress that I end up living with for days, sometimes weeks at a time. And the effect is cumulative: seeing another spider in that state doesn't just extend how long it lasts but heightens that feeling. I was already in that state before the incident today from a small spider I saw on the outside of my car a few days ago. I've walked the two miles into town twice since then rather have to face getting in my car. I tell myself I'm getting exercise, but I'm really just paralyzed by the thought that if it has gotten in the car I'll be trapped with it and no one can help me.
It's the worst time of year for me. Spring is when all the spiders come back, and just to reiterate, I live IN a river. In the past few weeks, I've seen StereoNinja lunge across a room to step on a spider I hadn't seen yet and go into the toilet and immediately come back out again to get the bug spray before going back in there calling over his shoulder "I didn't just see three spiders in there." I've seen two in my bedroom when he wasn't home that I had to spray myself before texting completely insane yet wholly serious messages to him: that I needed him to remove their dead bodies when he got home and then burn our duvet, or that I was moving to France. And now it's effecting him too. He used to see a spider and not have any sort of reaction at all but now when he sees one he has almost a fear response - not of the spider itself but more like "Oh god holy shit there's a spider in the house kill it immediately before Amber finds out AAAAGGHHHH".
Ugh. You guys. IT WAS SO FUCKING BIG and it was ALMOST INSIDE MY HOUSE. I don't know how to stop thinking about it. Even the "research" I'm doing on "extreme" pornography for my next paper isn't helping me. SINCE WHEN CAN I NOT CONCENTRATE ON PORN?
What I hate about this phobia is not so much that it controls where I can go and what I can do - there are work arounds for that, obviously, as I've just walked clear across an island to feet a cat sitting 30 feet from my backyard - but the (I assume, I'm not a psychiatrist) post traumatic stress that I end up living with for days, sometimes weeks at a time. And the effect is cumulative: seeing another spider in that state doesn't just extend how long it lasts but heightens that feeling. I was already in that state before the incident today from a small spider I saw on the outside of my car a few days ago. I've walked the two miles into town twice since then rather have to face getting in my car. I tell myself I'm getting exercise, but I'm really just paralyzed by the thought that if it has gotten in the car I'll be trapped with it and no one can help me.
It's the worst time of year for me. Spring is when all the spiders come back, and just to reiterate, I live IN a river. In the past few weeks, I've seen StereoNinja lunge across a room to step on a spider I hadn't seen yet and go into the toilet and immediately come back out again to get the bug spray before going back in there calling over his shoulder "I didn't just see three spiders in there." I've seen two in my bedroom when he wasn't home that I had to spray myself before texting completely insane yet wholly serious messages to him: that I needed him to remove their dead bodies when he got home and then burn our duvet, or that I was moving to France. And now it's effecting him too. He used to see a spider and not have any sort of reaction at all but now when he sees one he has almost a fear response - not of the spider itself but more like "Oh god holy shit there's a spider in the house kill it immediately before Amber finds out AAAAGGHHHH".
Ugh. You guys. IT WAS SO FUCKING BIG and it was ALMOST INSIDE MY HOUSE. I don't know how to stop thinking about it. Even the "research" I'm doing on "extreme" pornography for my next paper isn't helping me. SINCE WHEN CAN I NOT CONCENTRATE ON PORN?
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Cockles And Mussels, Alive, Alive, Oh
Having seen the weather report in our area for last weekend (a month's worth of rain in 48 hours), and having failed to remember to plan anything for a trip to Prague (remembering stuff is not StereoNinja's forte and my ongoing depression battle is fucking with memory type things - I'm feeling quite a bit better by the way), StereoNinja and I decided on a last minute escape to Dublin for the weekend. (It's a good thing we did - while the flooding did not return to the levels it was at when our only road got swallowed by the Thames, we found out from neighbors that the power was out to the island from late Friday morning until Sunday afternoon. Everything in our house from the oven to the the heating is electric. It would have been like camping and as previously explained I do not camp.) And I'm kind of in love with it now.
I had never been to Dublin before, and StereoNinja had never managed to go there while also having a good time. Since I really don't know a lot about Ireland, I didn't have any real expectations of what it would be like. What it is like is awesome. Without travelling anywhere else on the Earth I haven't already been, I will say with total confidence that Dublin has the friendliest cab drivers in the world. Seriously, apart from one or two guys (we took cabs EVERYWHERE because we decided to escape rain by going someplace that was also pissing down rain because we're imbeciles) every cab driver wanted to know all about us and what brought us to Dublin, professed to adore America, gave informal city tours complete with history about buildings (which sometimes have no windows because England used to tax windows so they just built them without any because fuck you), gave solicited and unsolicited advice on what we should see and where we should drink, and generally rounded fares down to avoid anyone have to deal with coins which I thought was great because I despise them.
I was a bit worried before we got on the plane about whether there would be anything for me to eat there. Since I don't like potatoes, and the stereotype of Ireland is that everything is made out of potatoes there, I was somewhat concerned that I might starve to death. This turned out to be entirely unfounded. The restaurants in Dublin are universally spectacular, based on the fact that every time one of us said "Do you want to just go in here?" the food there was so good I had to be restrained from humping it. Maybe the best Italian restaurant I've ever been to in my life was in Dublin (amaretto tiramisu you guys. AMARETTO TIRAMISU). We went to a french place for lunch and I loved it, and if you remember I wouldn't eat much of anything when I was in actual France.
We also partook of Dublin's many museums. Recommended for nerds: The Science Gallery at Trinity College, currently running the "Fail Better" exhibit - a collection of inventions that didn't work, but which led to advances in science or some other positive contribution. Recommended for sheer hilarity: The Ireland Natural History Museum, which seems to basically be a room full of taxidermied animals of varying age, quality, and disrepair. The fucking massive extinct deer skeletons near the entrance are singularly impressive. The basking shark hanging from the ceiling, if I'm being kind, has probably seen better days. To be fair to the museum, the upper and lower floors of it are currently closed, but on the other hand it is severely lacking in any information on the animals apart from their name.
Our first cab driver, upon hearing that we wanted to go hear some real Irish music, directed us to the Brazen Head, which is self described as the oldest pub in Ireland. It was described by the cab driver as "nearly a thousand years old". It's actually a little over 900 years old, but I suppose "nearly a thousand" is correct depending on where you're rounding from. We met a nice German kid there, but did not meet the Brazilians who were also in the house. I know they were there because of the gregarious and extremely drunk Irishman who kept shouting at them, "BRAZIL? BRAZIL? THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN DUBLIN ALL THE WAY FROM BRAZIL?" There was a little group in the corner playing, who unfortunately had a broken amplifier and were therefore mostly drowned out by the noise from the table of vapid, oblivious women who were all talking at once AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE and failed to notice either the music or the collective death stare of literally everyone else in the room. That was until an enterprising guy at the next table started a shushing campaign that grew until the ENTIRE pub would hiss at them every time they got out of hand.
I had never been to Dublin before, and StereoNinja had never managed to go there while also having a good time. Since I really don't know a lot about Ireland, I didn't have any real expectations of what it would be like. What it is like is awesome. Without travelling anywhere else on the Earth I haven't already been, I will say with total confidence that Dublin has the friendliest cab drivers in the world. Seriously, apart from one or two guys (we took cabs EVERYWHERE because we decided to escape rain by going someplace that was also pissing down rain because we're imbeciles) every cab driver wanted to know all about us and what brought us to Dublin, professed to adore America, gave informal city tours complete with history about buildings (which sometimes have no windows because England used to tax windows so they just built them without any because fuck you), gave solicited and unsolicited advice on what we should see and where we should drink, and generally rounded fares down to avoid anyone have to deal with coins which I thought was great because I despise them.
I was a bit worried before we got on the plane about whether there would be anything for me to eat there. Since I don't like potatoes, and the stereotype of Ireland is that everything is made out of potatoes there, I was somewhat concerned that I might starve to death. This turned out to be entirely unfounded. The restaurants in Dublin are universally spectacular, based on the fact that every time one of us said "Do you want to just go in here?" the food there was so good I had to be restrained from humping it. Maybe the best Italian restaurant I've ever been to in my life was in Dublin (amaretto tiramisu you guys. AMARETTO TIRAMISU). We went to a french place for lunch and I loved it, and if you remember I wouldn't eat much of anything when I was in actual France.
We also partook of Dublin's many museums. Recommended for nerds: The Science Gallery at Trinity College, currently running the "Fail Better" exhibit - a collection of inventions that didn't work, but which led to advances in science or some other positive contribution. Recommended for sheer hilarity: The Ireland Natural History Museum, which seems to basically be a room full of taxidermied animals of varying age, quality, and disrepair. The fucking massive extinct deer skeletons near the entrance are singularly impressive. The basking shark hanging from the ceiling, if I'm being kind, has probably seen better days. To be fair to the museum, the upper and lower floors of it are currently closed, but on the other hand it is severely lacking in any information on the animals apart from their name.
 |
| Deer: huge; impressive. |
 |
| Basking shark: c'mon, man. |
Our first cab driver, upon hearing that we wanted to go hear some real Irish music, directed us to the Brazen Head, which is self described as the oldest pub in Ireland. It was described by the cab driver as "nearly a thousand years old". It's actually a little over 900 years old, but I suppose "nearly a thousand" is correct depending on where you're rounding from. We met a nice German kid there, but did not meet the Brazilians who were also in the house. I know they were there because of the gregarious and extremely drunk Irishman who kept shouting at them, "BRAZIL? BRAZIL? THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN DUBLIN ALL THE WAY FROM BRAZIL?" There was a little group in the corner playing, who unfortunately had a broken amplifier and were therefore mostly drowned out by the noise from the table of vapid, oblivious women who were all talking at once AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE and failed to notice either the music or the collective death stare of literally everyone else in the room. That was until an enterprising guy at the next table started a shushing campaign that grew until the ENTIRE pub would hiss at them every time they got out of hand.
We also checked out the Guinness Storehouse, home of all things Guinness. For those of you Americans who have been to the Budweiser brewery in St. Louis, just, no. The Storehouse makes that place look like a miniaturized Lego model of a brewery, it is that massive. Additionally, when you get up to the top where your free pint of Guinness awaits you, not only do they take the time and care to draw you a lovely shamrock in your foam, but the 360 degree windows that make up the walls of the room give you an aerial view of the entirety of Dublin and beyond, all the way to the mountains in one directions and all the way to the sea in another. Of course, I used the opportunity to text Cap and taunt him because I am an asshole sister.
Dublin, with its abundant cabs, myriad of pubs, river flowing through it, cool stuff to do, nice people, great food and many college students, reminded me quite a lot of Chicago. Except for this one thing that happened that made me realize how spoiled Americans are. Because one thing we have precious little of in America is domestic terrorism. When bombs go off at the Boston Marathon or Oklahoma City or the Atlanta Olympics, they are weird, isolated things that shock us because it is not a thing that happens in America, so infrequently in fact that we don't even think about it and take that for granted. Meanwhile, in Dublin, in our first cab on the way to the hotel, the very friendly cab driver/tour guide/historian said to us, "This is a great area right here. It used to have statues absolutely everywhere, on all these corners. But of course the IRA blew them all up." And he said it with such casual resignation, because stuff used to blow up there - a lot - and that was his normal. So, you know, be aware of how lucky you are and shit, because you could think that all your statues blowing up is normal.
 |
| Enjoy your beer, insignificant speck of a human. |
Dublin, with its abundant cabs, myriad of pubs, river flowing through it, cool stuff to do, nice people, great food and many college students, reminded me quite a lot of Chicago. Except for this one thing that happened that made me realize how spoiled Americans are. Because one thing we have precious little of in America is domestic terrorism. When bombs go off at the Boston Marathon or Oklahoma City or the Atlanta Olympics, they are weird, isolated things that shock us because it is not a thing that happens in America, so infrequently in fact that we don't even think about it and take that for granted. Meanwhile, in Dublin, in our first cab on the way to the hotel, the very friendly cab driver/tour guide/historian said to us, "This is a great area right here. It used to have statues absolutely everywhere, on all these corners. But of course the IRA blew them all up." And he said it with such casual resignation, because stuff used to blow up there - a lot - and that was his normal. So, you know, be aware of how lucky you are and shit, because you could think that all your statues blowing up is normal.
ANYBUTT, I fucking LOVED Dublin, as evidenced by everything that came out of my mouth while we were there was prefaced by "Next time we come, we should..." and that's just not something I typically say because I am of the television generation and easily bored. You should totally go there if you like doing things that are fun and/or being around nice people. You should probably also be okay with a bit of rain and own an umbrella.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Shove It, Popeye
I am sitting on the counter in the kitchen. StereoNinja is about to fry some spinach because everything he eats is gross.
Me: I guess I should help you or move. I'm practically sitting on the spinach.
StereoNinja: You look like you'd rather sit on it than eat it.
Me: Well it looks more comfortable than delicious.
Me: I guess I should help you or move. I'm practically sitting on the spinach.
StereoNinja: You look like you'd rather sit on it than eat it.
Me: Well it looks more comfortable than delicious.
Sunday, February 09, 2014
Drownin' In The Rain, We're Drownin' In The Rain
Remember when I said the water was receding? Well it's now worse than it was when it crested the last time. Lake Titicacao is indistinguishable from the river and it's all flowing so fast that we've been watching ducks go by backwards since they aren't strong enough to swim upstream or even stay in one place. Also rain is forecast in my town for at least the next five days. The only road out of the island is impassable by anything other than a monster truck, and conversations with other islanders about what we can do about it amounted to "Yeah, you're pretty much screwed." Being as my car is roughly the size of half a semi-truck tire, I'm effectively stranded in my house, conveniently (?) during reading week, meaning I don't have to swim to the station to catch a train to London for class, so I've got that going for me. StereoNinja bought us both waders today, which I put on to try them for size and am now still wearing them. I told StereoNinja it was for safety:
me: I'm leaving these on.
StereoNinja: You're going to just wear them around the house?
me: Well, in a couple of hours the water might be in the house.
But really it's just because I'm pretending to be a fisherman. I'm trapped, don't judge my methods of entertaining myself.
I'd like to point out that the last time it rained this much in England, my country didn't even exist yet. Speaking of my country, sorry about all the snow there most of you, and for those of you in California, if you can figure out a way to get this water over to you, you're more than welcome to have it.
me: I'm leaving these on.
StereoNinja: You're going to just wear them around the house?
me: Well, in a couple of hours the water might be in the house.
But really it's just because I'm pretending to be a fisherman. I'm trapped, don't judge my methods of entertaining myself.
I'd like to point out that the last time it rained this much in England, my country didn't even exist yet. Speaking of my country, sorry about all the snow there most of you, and for those of you in California, if you can figure out a way to get this water over to you, you're more than welcome to have it.
Monday, February 03, 2014
Are You Ready To Explain Some Football?
Last night was my first Super Bowl in exile, and I have to say, seriously, what the fuck. But let me back up a bit.
I had managed to get excited about the Super Bowl in a way that I hadn't gotten excited about Christmas or my birthday. And I prepared for it as well: I dressed up in all the NFL branded clothing that I own, I made Rice Krispie treats shaped like footballs, and I drank an enormous amount of caffeine so I could make it to kickoff at ELEVEN FUCKING THIRTY local time. I commandeered StereoNinja and his teenage daughter to watch it with me because all my other friends have "jobs to go to in the morning" or some shit, and we all ate a cheeseball I had made, despite them both eyeing it with suspicion at first because no one here has ever seen a cheeseball before. StereoNinja had watched some of the Seattle game with me two weeks ago, and so at least had basic concepts figured out like downs and field goals; his daughter had no experience and insisted the game was called "handegg".
The pregame show was that we didn't get a real pregame show. What we got was some Irish guy I've been told is called Colin Murray and is famous for something, and a very uncomfortable looking and disinterested Terrell Davis, whose name Channel 4 managed to misspell. My best guess is that Colin Murray has never seen an American football game before in his life, and I spent the hour before kickoff screaming things at the tv like "FIELD! IT'S CALLED A FIELD." and "NO YOUR HEADSET ISN'T WEIRD THAT'S JUST HOW THEY ARE BECAUSE IT'S A FOOTBALL GAME". Even StereoNinja was annoyed, and displayed his recently gained knowledge: "Yeah. It's not called a pitch goal, it's called a FIELD goal. And why does he keep touching everybody?" because he was, Colin Murray that is, touching his co-presenters on the arm or the shoulder with an an uncomfortable degree of frequency. Meanwhile whatever he was saying was so confusing, Terrell Davis stopped listening to him and and started absentmindedly picking at the edge of the table on live television.
And then the game started. I'm assuming many of you saw the start of the game, and potentially the rest of it, so I don't need to tell you what a clusterfuck that was for Denver from LITERALLY THE FIRST PLAY OF THE GAME. What I did have to do was begin my companions' American football education by trying to explain what a safety is because of course I did. I also had to explain a shotgun formation because I had previously told StereoNinja in great detail and with extensive demonstrations how the quarterback lines up under center, which was not at all an exercise in crotch grabbing disguised as sports education SHUT UP. And throughout the game I was struggling to justify to StereoNinja my belief that Peyton Manning is the greatest quarterback of our time, AND that the mistakes he was making were not always his fault because the offensive line apparently decided not to play. Based on that game I wouldn't have believed me either.
It was actually kind of fun explaining things that it hadn't occurred to me would need explaining because I've just been watching it all my life. Like how a false start works:
StereoNinja: What happened?
me: False start. That guy jumped.
StereoNinja: WHAT? He barely even flinched!
me: I know. Doesn't matter. You can't move until the ball is snapped.
StereoNinja: What about that guy? That guy is moving. And that other guy is moving too!
me: Oh, right. Some of the players are allowed to move. But not the ones on the line of scrimmage.
StereoNinja: On what?
me: Um, on the blue line.
and flags and timeouts:
StereoNinja: Someone threw their gloves on the field.
me: No they didn't.
StereoNinja: Then what are those yellow things?
me: A penalty flag. The officials throw them when there's a penalty.
StereoNinja: Why?
me: .....because that's how they do it.
later
StereoNinja: Penalty?
me: No.
StereoNinja: But they threw that red thing.
me: That's a challenge flag. The coaches throw them when they want to dispute the call on the field. Um, but you can only do it a few times. Also if you get it wrong they take one of your timeouts.
SN daughter: What's a timeout?
me: It's so you can stop the clock. You get three per half.
SN daughter: But the clock is already stopped.
me: No, the play clock not the game clock.
SN daughter: What?
me: Um.
I did get some amusing help from StereoNinja with explaining the game to his daughter, such as first down: "Do you see that yellow line? That's how far the ball has to go. Also that line isn't really on the field." and she did seem to grasp what was happening overall as evidenced by this comment: "The oranges suck. The catchy man can't even catch it."
We stayed up for the halftime show for some reason where I learned that Bruno Mars can play the drums and thinks he's James Brown and the Red Hot Chili Peppers still can't afford to buy shirts apparently. But by then it was 1:30 in the morning and it didn't appear the game was going to be a contest of any sort so we just went to bed. So my first Super Bowl in exile probably could have been better, but I certainly was having a better time than Peyton Manning was.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
England: They Have Stuff Too
Here's another example of "little differences": Last night, StereoNinja and I went to dinner at a steak restaurant called Cattle Grid. It was the most American thing I've encountered since I've been here. Now, I have no evidence that its intention is to come off as American, but it absolutely fucking does. It has a very American decor to it, authentically, not "this is what we imagine America looks like" decor, a menu that list its beef and pork dished under the headings "COW' and "PIG", enormous American sized portions of things including a massive rack of barbecue ribs the likes of which I have never seen here, onion strings which I have also never seen here before and which caused me to actually audibly gasp when they were offered to me and a highly American looking desert menu meaning we didn't order any because StereoNinja couldn't get a cheese plate (also that whole thing about the giant portions). There were only two things that gave it away. One was a completely disinterested server - not a bad server, just a man who was clearly not working for tips. The other is a thing that keeps happening to me every time we eat somewhere which is StereoNinja has to remind me to properly arrange my cutlery. Because unlike America, where they are watching you and waiting for you to slow down, or coming by to refill your drink since it's free refills ALL THE TIME in Fatassland, and they ask you while they're there "Can I take your plate?", the only way to have your plate cleared here is to align your fork and knife right next to each other across your plate. If you leave your utensils either on the table or strewn about your plate all willy-nilly in the wrong configuration, you will be sitting there waiting for the check (cheque) for hours. It's like the Bat signal for "I have finished my meal." And I ALWAYS forget.
Right so, anyway, not my point. What I actually meant to do right now was write about some of the things I love about being here, because I feel like all I've done is complain so far, and it's really not that I don't like it here, it's just that it's not home yet. So here's a few things that I think are fantastic that you have thus far dropped the ball on, America:
Roast dinner. Yeah, ok, we have roast dinners in the U.S., but there are certain designated days for them which are Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rest of the year you just are like "Oh won't it be great when it's Thanksgiving and we'll have roast turkey again?" Yeah, um, yer doin it wrong. Because it is Roast Day here EVERY SUNDAY. You can make a roast at home or you can go to a carvery or you can go round someone else's house - whatever. Oh and another thing: Yorkshire puddings. Get in on that, Murica, you are missing out.
QI. There is not a show being produced right now on American television that I am aware of that is nearly as awesome as QI. A show that is funny AND has Stephen Fry AND you get to learn cool stuff? It's like an arrow of joy aimed straight at my little nerd girl heart. I am particularly overjoyed when there's an episode that has either Bill Bailey or Jeremy Clarkson who say they funniest things and know some of the weirdest shit. And I lose my fucking mind every time I actually know the answer and shout things at the television like "NO! It's because it has a three foot long tongue!" or "Oh my god, I know this one! IT'S A THING FOR EXTRACTING BOOGERS FROM A CORPSE!"
Road signs. I find the road signs here to be generally more helpful than the ones in America. Like, coming up to a roundabout or a slip road (this is an on or off ramp), there will be a sign with a picture of the exact roundabout or shape of slip road you are about to encounter. But that's not even what I like about them. The best thing about the signs is how ambiguous they are if you don't already know what they mean. Before I started driving, I started making up my own meanings for some of the ones I thought were funny.
 |
| Windsocks are dangerous |
 |
| WARNING: Killer duck |
 |
| Sad wiener |
 |
| No perspective |
 |
| I didn't make up a meaning for this, I just want to vandalize it and make it into a centaur. |
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| Beware of men with giant umbrellas |
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| Caution: Bra in the road |
 |
| SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER. |
Friday, January 24, 2014
Answers That Aren't 42 And Also A Thing About My Birthday
MIXED NEWS, EVERYONE! I have finished and turned in both of my papers (yay!) which I am pretty sure are both complete garbage (boo). But I'm back for now and I'm going to write some blog posts, starting with answering the questions you guys left for me in the comments:
exoticchemist said...
I'm curious as to what exactly triggers you to feel homesick. Is it just randomly wishing you were back in the US? Missing family and friends? Or is it specifically the differences between the US and UK? Maybe this is a dumb question...
44 degrees celcius here in Australia today, nature is bi-polar (and yeah that whole global warming thing). my question - did you ever choose a stripper name? or did I miss the big reveal in one of your posts?
What have you learned about Brits/Britain by living here that you didn't learn by visiting?
exoticchemist said...
I'm curious as to what exactly triggers you to feel homesick. Is it just randomly wishing you were back in the US? Missing family and friends? Or is it specifically the differences between the US and UK? Maybe this is a dumb question...
It's not a dumb question, but it is a hard one to articulate. For one thing, I am now having a completely different cultural experience from the rest of my countrymen. While I don't miss snow (AT ALL), and I certainly don't want to be living in temperatures that can kill you in minutes, the whole polar vortex episode was hard on me because I felt...I don't know, left out. I still like to imagine that I am from Chicago and Chicago is my home and everyone at home was having this shitty but nevertheless collective experience and I wasn't there. And what made it worse was the UK was having a different collective experience with seriously damaging flooding seemingly everywhere, which is the experience I had, but it was the wrong one. And by the way, I'm crying right now. Sure I miss my family and my friends, but I can talk to them because the internet is magic. What I can't do is go back in time to when everyone was at the terrifying weather party and show up this time and be in on the jokes and know the stories.
Maya's comment was spot fucking on, and I really just wanted to post it and write "THIS ------>" next to it, but I'll elaborate instead. Maya said this: " I think, for me anyway, it was the fact that most things in the UK are so similar to North America that the differences, even the little ones, felt like a personal affront." I would say especially the little ones; the kind of things you never notice until they are different. In America, almost invariably, when you go inside a public building you just walk into it without breaking stride because the door is going to shut behind you. But in England where many of the buildings are older than my country, you walk into the building and you have to remember to shut the door behind you or it will just swing in the wind until the person at the desk gets up and closes it while glaring at you. There are no screens in the windows because there aren't that many bugs; you go shopping several times a week because the bread and the vegetables haven't been engineered to last for 2 months; the toilet doesn't flush the same way. I cannot fucking find wax paper at the store - grease proof baking paper is the closest thing. I know these things all sound dumb and petty because they are, but they add up into this sick feeling that this is not your home, no matter how much you want it to be.
Ok, that was sad. Let's do a different one:
Anonymous said...
44 degrees celcius here in Australia today, nature is bi-polar (and yeah that whole global warming thing). my question - did you ever choose a stripper name? or did I miss the big reveal in one of your posts?
Well anonymous, I'm pretty sure all of North America hates you right now, despite the fact that if it were 44 degrees there (111 F) they would be complaining that it was too hot. I did choose a stripper name and I did write a (half-assed) post about it. For the show I went with Phoebe Moon because I am a nerd. Now that I am in the UK however, I'll be using Poppy Cox because it's better and people get that joke here.
S said...
What have you learned about Brits/Britain by living here that you didn't learn by visiting?
Many many things, actually. I've learned that the words "noodle" and "pasta" are in no way interchangeable. In related news, I've learned that I'll need to bring a shit ton of Ramen back with me when I visit the states because the equivalents here are yucky in comparison. I've learned that people will fall over laughing if you pronounce squirrel as "skwerl". I've learned that driving students aren't allowed on the motorway, which means that when people get their first driving license, they have not learned to drive on one, which seems kind of dumb. Just last week I learned that when I say "look at those cans" no one realizes I'm talking about boobs. I've learned what stollen is, and that I hate it (raisins. why must everybody ruin perfectly good bakery with raisins? Knock it off already). I've learned that Christmas tree skirts aren't a thing here. I've learned that StereoNinja can't say prosciutto correctly. One thing that I already knew, but can't seem to get used to is being greeted with the phrase "You all right?". The American equivalent would be "How are you?". "You all right?" is what you would ask if someone just fell down the stairs or slipped on some black ice and landed on their head or just was walking around looking all sad. So whenever I'm asked that I immediately am confused about why they think I might not be all right. Gets me every time.
Thank you all for your questions. I like answering questions, so send more if you like and ask about whatever you want: stuff about me or why do Americans do that weird thing or where can I buy dildos or what is it about Patrick Stewart that makes him so sexy or Chris Christie, seriously, wtf is with that guy - whatever you want.
I'm not going to do a birthday wrap up post because it was overshadowed by paper writing and homesickness, but I did want to mention that StereoNinja bought me a telescope. HE BOUGHT ME A TELESCOPE. A FUCKING TELESCOPE. This feeling that I'm feeling is I think what it would be like for a normal person if their partner bought them a surprise Ferrari or a diamond as big as their hand. I HAVE A TELESCOPE YOU GUYS, and I live somewhere that I can actually use it. If it ever stops being shitty weather, that is.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
It Can't Always Be About Raping Zebras
StereoNinja, reviewing my paper on masculinities in boylesque: (reads a passage out loud in a mocking tone of voice)...hahaha you sound so academic.
Me: It's an academic paper. It's not going to read like Bizzybiz.
Me: It's an academic paper. It's not going to read like Bizzybiz.
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