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livin' on a prairie Can you daydream at night, or does it have to be in the day? Similarly, can you have a nightmare even in the daytime? And what happens when the clocks go forward? Don't they always go forward? My clock went backwards once, and into the next apartment. 'Spring forwards, Fall backwards', they say here. I'd like to truly save some daytime. Keep it stored up somewhere, then use it in the winter, or late at night when the electric goes out. The newsreaders here have all but stopped talking about the Iraq war. It really is a case of "Don't mention the War," but make sure you mention all the ridiculous research some quack-pot scientists have wasted other people's money conducting, such as whether other people's prayers really do make people get better, assist in major heart surgery, etc. I mean honestly, it's like all those books ('the Science of Harry Potter'), people have to have a scientific explanation for stuff like this in order to justify their own beliefs in it. I ain't knocking people's prayers, and I ain't knocking people's religious persuasions, that's the business of y'all - but this is a waste of time. Let people just say their prayers, it makes them feel better about themselves, even if it has no external magical effect whatsoever. If it had any real material effect at all, people would be using it all in wars all over the world. Oh, errr... |
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3.4.06 23:15 |
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Week Twenty-Seven: Let The Wookiee Win
Sometimes, when the absence of thought and the distraction of mind take us to places where we find it impossible to sit and think of anything beyond ‘it is still raining’ and ‘I hate the newsreaders’ (well, I do), it is necessary to simply reflect, allow the stream of consciousness to take you away (although whenever I think of stream, I think of the one in Watling Park, whose stickleback and piss infested waters take you on a twisty-turny journey through the sewage system of Burnt Oak, bringing you out somewhere beneath the old Scout Hall behind the shops). You see where this week’s entry is going.ffice I have been job-interviewed a couple of times lately, with one on the way. It never rains, but it pours, and the rain is pouring right now, thundering against the skylight. I will be seriously wet when I reach the bookshop later. I’m enjoying it there, entering invoices, making origami muppets, wowing people with my ‘intelligent-sounding’ British accent. Davis is a Republic, you know, or so they say – it’s full of Democrats, but I know a few prominent Republicans too, and I don’t hold it against them (though I’m more Moses minded, I’d like to see Bush burning – but not dying, of course, I’m anti-capitalist punishment). I’ve ventured into space, also, but not on a rocket: I have a myspace now, like many social-minded Americans (though I am not particularly social-minded). It’s ‘all the rage’. I have taken workside doodling to new extremes – I am still trying to perfect messers Bush, Cheney and Blair, as well as a million different faces for a shady literary character I am calling The Prince. He is half Fomorian, and has one eye slightly bigger than the other. And I am planning not only a trip back to ffice:smarttags" /> Mrs Pete is busy with her studies and her job; Mr Pete is reading Neil Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’. I’m about a third into it, and it is pretty good, some interesting ideas about the old folk gods and sods of the various immigrants, pitted against the new American gods, which I think include TV, shopping malls, the internet. Maybe the gods are all out there on myspace? Maybe there should be a site for all the old gods, such as ‘deities reunited’, or ‘myheaven’. There’s a lot of stars in space, but a lot of wannabes as well. And thus concludes this stream of barely consciousness. Until next time, y’all come back now, y’hear… |
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5.4.06 00:10 |
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ffice" />|
What is "the theme tune to Jeopardy" I don't care what anybody says. I don't care if it is blasphemous to say so. The theme tune to 'Jeopardy' is really just 'I'm a Little Teapot'.
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6.4.06 02:59 |
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george takes a leak on america (again) I don't know who is doing the plumbing at the White House, but they have definitely had the cowboys in, because it's been finally revealed that the leaking comes right from the top. Dick-tater's disgraced former aide 'Scooter' Libby has revealed that authorization for the leak that outed a CIA agent whose husband had dared to criticize Curious George's Reasons For War came from none other than monkey-boy himself. Tut-tut. Cowboys indeed. Howard Dean had this to say: "The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put interests of his political party ahead of Americas security shows that he can no longer be trusted to keep America safe." So why do people think Bush will keep them safe? Is it just by default - he's the Prez, he's in Command'r'n'Chief, he's King George, Saviour of the Off-roader, Protector of the Gun Club, Trust him... Surely that sort of thing doesn't wash with everyone? Nothing will come of this. Bush will stay in office, smirking and eating bananas, Dick will continue to shoot his friends in the face, the rich will get richer, the poor will get killed in financial wars, and the planet will suffocate under the toxic fumes of denial. Because, my friends, people care more about American Idol than what the Pres is really getting up to. It's easy when you're drugged up on TV and strip-malls to forget how criminally corrupt (and willing to let people other than themselves take the fall) the government is. George knows it, Cheney knows it, and if you complain about it you're a 'defeatist' and a 'whiny liberal'. |
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6.4.06 20:44 |
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bunny boiling Oh, no. Honestly, this is too ridiculous. There is a criminal President in power committing criminal acts, and what are people concerned about? What is the new focus of people's ire? The Easter Bunny. They are banning the flipping Easter Bunny. I am not joking - this is what made the news last night. Several malls have decided the Easter Bunny has to go. The Easter Bunny!!! The EASTER BUNNY!!!!!!! It's not like he has myxomatosis. What's he ever done to you? Did the eggs he delivered give you salmonella or something? Apparently it's because Easter is a religious holiday, and you have to be 'inclusive' now or risk offending non-Christians. Never mind that neither the Bunny nor the word 'Easter' has flip-all to do with Christianity. I don't remember that part of the Passion story, the bit where Jesus is on the Cross and the Bunny comes unto him and lo! offers him some eggs, but alas! He cannot eat of them, for his hands are nailed into solid wood, and the Bunny cannot climb that high. That bit was always edited out. As for the word 'Easter', it is related to the Old English word ''Eostre', a cognate with similar words across Europe which related to an ancient pre-Christian Goddess of the Dawn (the word 'East' as well as the word 'Aurora' have etymological links to this). The bunny legend itself is thought to date from pre-Christian times (see the German 'Osterhase'). So if the fanatical Christian religions managed not to be offended by the use of the term 'Easter' at the time of their most sacred festival, why should bloody shopping malls suddenly decide that the rest of the world should now??? They want to compromise by re-branding him the 'Spring Bunny'. Honestly. Bush is blatantly lying to the public and committing war crimes more terrible than we like to realise, Dick 'Elmer Fudd' Cheney is shooting his friends in the face, and yet people think that changing the name of the Easter Bunny to the Spring Bunny will solve all the world's problems. |
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7.4.06 20:59 |
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happy birthday Not only is today my sister's 23rd birthday - Happy Birthday Loz! - but also the first birthday of this bloggerprise. It's a weekend of sports, with Arsenal losing and Spurs winning (didn't get to see it), with the Grand National (didn't get to see it), and the golf - the Master's. Angela's watching it of course, and I am not allowed to make the regular silly comments and jokes about the players' names. For example, I'm not allowed to say that Davis Love is ill again, because it says so after his name; nor am I allowed to say that this is the only place you'll get to see Couples swinging on daytime TV. Last year I joked that Tiger Woods' dad was sick, so when took a shot he'd say "this one's for pa" - but then when he won the green jacket, he revealed that his father really was very ill, and he dedicated his title to him. Oops. Won't be making that joke again (at least not about Tiger). 10 April: And, speaking of birthdays, today is the prophet Mohammed's birthday, and the fewer jokes made there the better, I think. Better not draw no cartoons, either, lest people in the Middle East stop buying things made in Burnt Oak. |
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9.4.06 20:56 |
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Week Twenty-Eight: Prints Charming ffice The office is a strange place. Office society is like medieval ffice:smarttags" /> I am not very good friends with technology. Sure, we keep in contact, but it’s not in my speed-dial or anything. Sometimes I will walk past this photocopier and it will growl at me. I try not to look it in the eye if I can avoid it. I have given up wondering why, when there are five trays filled with paper, it insists on using the tray which is not only empty but impossible to open without a crowbar. I have not even begun to tackle the many options on the control panel; I’m sure that if I really wanted to I could get it to wallpaper the living room, but it’s just best if I stay away. The little printer we have at home is even more scullyphobic. It seems to be pretty straightforward: you load the paper, you press ‘print’, it prints – couldn’t be simpler. Tell that to the bloody printer! What really happens is that you press print, and the printer says ‘no’, stating its reason as ‘out of paper’. “No,” I tell it, “the paper is THERE, right there in front of you.” “Where?” it replies childishly. “THERE!” I moan. I hold its hand, feed it the paper like a baby in a high-chair, and then, halfway through the first bite, it chokes up, flashing “Paper Jam! Paper Jam!” on its little LED screen. So I take the paper out. And press ‘Continue printing’. And, like a schoolkid trying to wind up the teacher, it continues wailing about there being a Paper Jam, despite all the paper being removed from its guts and several threats of hammer-induced destruction are thrown its way. Oh, I really hate printers, why can’t they just grow up? And the worst thing is, you know that when that printer does grow up, it will be a smug, self-important photocopier. It’s nature’s way. |
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11.4.06 21:13 |
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Week Twenty-Nine: Eggciting Times The Sun has come out, after record Californian rainfall, and Spring is well and truly in the air. The once sun-crisp brown hills and fields of northern California are now alive and green, while the mountains are still thick with snow, and the rivers full to overflowing. Pete has begun murdering all spiders that look even remotely like a widow or a recluse ("execute Order 66"), and the Easter Bunny has been defying his asbo and bringing baskets of colourful eggs to all. The White House has been holding its annual Easter Egg Hunt, though despite the President's insistence that there were mobile chicken pens and painting equipment on the White House lawn, the UN teams of specialist toddlers have yet to find any evidence of coloured eggs. Easter is slightly different here than in Britain. For one thing, they don't get Good Friday off work, nor Easter Monday. Secondly, they don't have the big hollow chocolate Easter Eggs so common in the UK. Thirdly - and this one I really missed - they don't have Hot Cross Buns. Here in the US it is the custom to give big Easter Baskets, stuffed with colourful candies, little chocolate eggs and other sweet goodies; moreover, the art of painting eggs is more popular here than in Britain (I just draw eyes on them). There has been a recent trend, however, to rebrand Easter as the sterile "Spring Holiday", with terms such as "Good Friday" being seen as too offensively unsecular. Personally I like the name my brother-in-law Kris gives Easter, "Zombie Jesus Day". Now, where shall I draw the parallel with the Zombie Jesus and the Church's long history of eating people's brains..? Every holiday here has its associated colours. Christmas has red and green, Thanksgiving has brown and orange, 4th of July has red, white and blue; Easter has, well, pastel colours. Yellows, light greens, a bit of soft pink, maybe a touch of pale blue. It's a very wimpy holiday, colour-wise, as if it can't really make its mind up. Cards show baby rabbits and newly hatched chicks, rather than bloody nails and splintered wood, surely the true spirit of Easter. What would Jesus do? I don't know, but I know if he were alive in today's America, he would probably be deported because of his Mexican-sounding name. And so, to close this week's entry, I'd just like to point out (in my best Cockney rhyming slang) that as long as Bush is in office, there will always be a bunch of easter egg hunts at the White House. Happy Vernal Equinox! |
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18.4.06 08:34 |
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whose fault is it anyway? Today marks exactly 100 years since the great San Francisco earthquake and fire which utterly devastated the Bay Area, reminding everybody just how fragile our cities really are. Until New Orleans, it was considered the worst natural disaster ever to have struck an American city, though the epicentre was actually in Santa Rosa, my wife's home town, in Sonoma County. There have been a few biggies since then, most notably in 1989, but everybody around here knows that we are living on borrowed time, and that the Big One could strike at any moment. It could strike right now. Earthquakes are not like terrorists - they are far more indiscriminate. And are we any more prepared than they were a century ago? I was watching a show about it last night, and it seems that back then people believed that their buildings were strong enough to withstand a powerful tremor, and the fire fighting service, with its fancy horse-drawn cart, was the envy of the US. Now when the quake hit, not only did it topple large stone buildings - including some of America's first skyscrapers - it also ruptured both gas pipes and water mains. The fires that ensued were impossible to put out, and San Francisco, which had a great deal of wooden houses and buildings, became a massive firestorm for days. It would baffle me that anybody would want to build another city on top of such devastation, were it not for the fact that many great cities have been destroyed and risen again, London being an obvious example. So with our modern technology, with everything we know about earthquakes, with our supposedly retro-fitted architecture, are we still at as much risk as they were back then? A lot of people seem to think so, and many of the people that are worried are those out here in the Valley, who live away from the major faultlines. They foresee a major earthquake in the Bay Area rupturing the delicate levee system that protects the Delta, not only severely flooding many areas and cities including Sacramento, but contaminating the water supply for the whole of northern California. Ouch. New Orleans has shown us how a modern city in a modern and supposedly wealthy nation can be brought to its knees by the merciless forces of nature. Citizens are encouraged to prepare for such emergencies by stockpiling fresh water and non-perishable supplies. Children are taught how to correctly react to an earthquake. But when the Big One comes, will California able to cope? |
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18.4.06 20:39 |
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good riddance to: the voice of the burning bush Resignation at the White House! No, not Rummy, not this time. This time it was Scott McClellan, the Metatron himself, Pinocchio's twin brother, the Lying Puppet, the Mouth of Bush. He's had enough of spouting lie after lie after lie, of arrogantly brushing aside any criticisms of his holy masters. Time for a change, he said, and that's every bit the truth. He's going because Chief of Staff Karl Rove is going. Going, going, gone. Bush has said that he looks forward to a future time when the two of them can sit out in the Texan sun, and share memories of "the good ol' days". "Heh-heh, Scaat, rememb'r when we, heh, invaded Eye-raq? Killed thousands of people an' tortured thousands more? Heh-heh, the good ol' days, Scaat!" So what's going on with Rumsfeld? Is he going to resign or not? Of course not. Those retired generals who said he should go because he has completely mismanaged the war in Iraq and consistently puts troops at risk have, of course, been rubbished and condemned. Apparently, to criticize Rumsfeld is, in the words of some pro-Rummy currently-serving (and therefore interested in keeping their positions) generals, inappropriate and hurts the morale of the troops. It hurts their morale. Criticizing the rich lie-mongering people who sent them into a war on false pretenses - yeah, that's bad. War should never be used as an excuse to suppress dissent, but that's what this is. Nevertheless, Rumsfeld is going nowhere. Why? Because Bush won't let him. "I am the decider!" Bush exclaimed. Oh yes, you're the decider George. Actually, I thought it was Dick the Tater who made all the decisions. You're too busy living in your delusional world, soaking up as many of the "good ol' days" as you can, before impeachment comes your way. Jeez, Scooter's in court, Rove is walking, and Scott the Metatron is posting his cv on monster.com - surely one of you guys is next? |
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20.4.06 07:30 |
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