The other night I developed a slight sniffle and then lay awake in bed convincing myself I had swine flu. By the morning I had full on sinus issues, and fell asleep in the car on the way to work and dreamt I was climbing a giant red Lego. Four hours later, I was on the bus trying to make my way home, and fell asleep again. I feverishly dreamt I was sitting in strawberries. Possible swine flu-induced delirium is apparently limited to the red end of the color spectrum.
The next morning (or NOON as some folk like to call it) I woke up and realized I had never been home sick in this country, and didn't know what to do with myself. In the states, I would drink loads of 7up and watch re-runs of Little House on the Prairie. There was nothing even remotely resembling this anywhere on television. The closest I could get was Hollyoaks (filmed nowhere near a prairie), which I get confused with Eastenders, which I get confused with Neighbours, even though the Neighbours live in Australia. You see my predicament. I was two steps away from being back in Lego land (which, strangely, is an ACTUAL PLACE in Britain, but that's for another time).
I simultaneously discovered two things. 1. A show called "The Kitchen Pharmacy" where some girl with perfect skin tells you how to cure everything short of the apocalypse with herbs and 2. A show called "Come Dine With Me", where some strangers make food for each other and compete for £1,000 while the narrator mocks them and they secretly mock each other. Both very, very British.
I really hate finding two interesting shows at the same time, because I have to flip between them and try to watch them BOTH, and my brain doesn't keep up with that even on my good days. I always end up thinking that everything would be better if the two shows merged. (Or I get convinced that the two shows I am watching are actually one.... any difference between "Antiques Roadshow" and "Cash in the Attic"? I mean, really?)
British daytime television is a unique cultural slice. It is like ancient sawdust pie served with all best efforts (and then secretly rated by the guests in competition for £1000). We get 35 channels, and among these I found two antique shows, two shopping channels, a show about individuals trying really hard to get in some yellow garden guidebook, and a show where farmers invite archaeologists to their farms so they can dig up old roman walls (that last one sucks you in, I swear. The part of my day spent wondering if they were in fact going to find the roman kiln was nail biting. I’m not even joking, I was THAT entranced).
But that Kitchen Pharmacy woman totally sold me. Check it out: http://www.medicinechest.info/series/kitchenpharmacy . By the end of the day I was completely convinced that I was going to have a little herb kitchen just like hers where I can make hops/lavender pillows for insomnia. And she’s just so cute, and looks so healthy, I’ve become determined to take up her mantle. I know nothing of home remedies, but I am on the hunt for an aloe plant. And lavender, as apparently that goes in every remedy. I might start putting it on my cereal, as it seems to benefit every type of ailment.
This could prove somewhat problematic, as I don’t tend to discriminate when it comes to my enthusiasm for plants. I’ve been known to pull up grass and eat it, thinking it was chives. Stupid-ass grass masquerading as chives, why to they have to look so similar? I’m lucky that I hate mushrooms, or I could have met an untimely end years ago.
We went to the garden centre and tried to find me an aloe plant, to no avail. We did come home with a Venus fly tr
ap though, which is really fun to poke at. I keep looking for bugs around the house to feed to it. I swear though, once that thing came through the door it was like all the bugs KNEW. And they vanished. The plant didn’t eat them, it is still sitting on the windowsill, all toothy and hungry. Poor famished plant. If I don’t find any bugs for it soon, I may have to see if that Kitchen Pharmacy woman has any remedies made of Venus fly trap. I bet she has some kind of carnivorous plant infused balm to cure indigestion or something. Then it won’t be pitiful and hungry anymore, but I bet those damn bugs will show up again.
the case of almost-not-really swine flu
welcome to england
SO. Tori Amos totally got me through the day. I’ve had her new album on in a loop and I’m positive that without it I may have come dangerously close to sticking something sharp in my eye. Around noon I had already been staring at my computer screen for so long that the colors in the type started to peel apart so that when I looked at black type I also saw red and blue.
And then I looked her up on youtube. She is in Seattle singing “Welcome to England” and someone has taken a video on their phone. But the point is, TORI went to SEATTLE and sang about ENGLAND. It was like three pieces of me that are normally far apart suddenly came TOGETHER. And she wore shiny gold leggings. (For the first minute and a half I was convinced you could see up her skirt, but she is wearing amazing shiny gold leggings).
Check it out, and try not to yell at the people talking at the beginning or the people whose heads totally get in the way. It’s a video, they won’t listen (I totally forgot that). Plus, the person with the phone has way better seats than I could afford if I could have gone myself, and I didn’t get to go myself, so I salute you little miss phone-cam, for allowing me to watch live Tori on youtube.
She has three pianos. I have one piano that I can’t even play properly and she plays three. New incentive to practice. Anyway, after my recent trip home to Seattle, I was being a little brat about England. I was cranky and homesick. I’ve even been known to complain about the air not smelling as nice over here. (Though sometimes I stand by that one, yesterday when I took the bus it smelled of cat urine).
Anyway, one of the reasons I love Tori so much is that her songs take awhile for me to digest, and also because they often change meanings for me as time passes. So I’m not going to deconstruct this one. You have to let any song exist as it immediately falls upon you before you gain the ability to let it speak to you properly. And even then, you can’t commit yourself to one meaning, you have to be open to letting things change. Because people change, so why should songs be any different? Or books? Or paintings?
But back to England. I decided to think of things that define my in-between moments over here. Things that I can love or not love depending on my moods. Because that’s what any perspective really consists of, isn’t it? The little things that slip in and become old or new, good or bad at different times simply to prove that nothing is ever static.
Anyway, here are a few:
When we go on coastal walks, my phone thinks we are in France.
If we leave the house before 7:10, we get stuck in traffic behind the same set of cows being moved from a field on one side of the road to a field on the other.
I cannot get a double espresso at my office before 8:30, and I drink breakfast tea without milk.
BLUE VINNEY CHEESE
I cannot say the word “lolly” without sounding drunk. Try it, I bet you can’t either. Especially if you are actually drunk.
Dogs in pubs make me happy. Chickens in pubs freak me out. Even in sandwiches.
When we drive in the summer, the leaves overhead are so thick that the world becomes one big green leaf-tunnel.
Last year, when it snowed, the bus driver suddenly pulled over and ran out. We all thought he’d hit someone, but it turned out he’d seen an old woman slip and fall on the sidewalk and went to make sure she was ok.
Heels: They get stuck in cracks between cobblestones, and I wear them down to the screws in about 5 months. My mind is so used to hearing the high clicking of metal on stone that when I get shoes re-heeled, the absence of that sound makes me think I’ve got gum stuck to my heels or something.
NO DOG-FOULING SIGNS
NATIONAL TRUST VOLUNTEERS. They teach you more than history class.
There are ammonites in the walls.
People on the bus talk themselves. There are enough people on the bus who talk to themselves at one time that it is almost like they are talking to each other. This leads me to wonder if my understanding of conversation is skewed. When I talk to other people, it is likely that I talk to myself, and then they talk to themselves back. I suppose if this is true, then only truly lost people would have misunderstandings.
And then I looked her up on youtube. She is in Seattle singing “Welcome to England” and someone has taken a video on their phone. But the point is, TORI went to SEATTLE and sang about ENGLAND. It was like three pieces of me that are normally far apart suddenly came TOGETHER. And she wore shiny gold leggings. (For the first minute and a half I was convinced you could see up her skirt, but she is wearing amazing shiny gold leggings).
Check it out, and try not to yell at the people talking at the beginning or the people whose heads totally get in the way. It’s a video, they won’t listen (I totally forgot that). Plus, the person with the phone has way better seats than I could afford if I could have gone myself, and I didn’t get to go myself, so I salute you little miss phone-cam, for allowing me to watch live Tori on youtube.
She has three pianos. I have one piano that I can’t even play properly and she plays three. New incentive to practice. Anyway, after my recent trip home to Seattle, I was being a little brat about England. I was cranky and homesick. I’ve even been known to complain about the air not smelling as nice over here. (Though sometimes I stand by that one, yesterday when I took the bus it smelled of cat urine).
Anyway, one of the reasons I love Tori so much is that her songs take awhile for me to digest, and also because they often change meanings for me as time passes. So I’m not going to deconstruct this one. You have to let any song exist as it immediately falls upon you before you gain the ability to let it speak to you properly. And even then, you can’t commit yourself to one meaning, you have to be open to letting things change. Because people change, so why should songs be any different? Or books? Or paintings?
But back to England. I decided to think of things that define my in-between moments over here. Things that I can love or not love depending on my moods. Because that’s what any perspective really consists of, isn’t it? The little things that slip in and become old or new, good or bad at different times simply to prove that nothing is ever static.
Anyway, here are a few:
When we go on coastal walks, my phone thinks we are in France.
If we leave the house before 7:10, we get stuck in traffic behind the same set of cows being moved from a field on one side of the road to a field on the other.
I cannot get a double espresso at my office before 8:30, and I drink breakfast tea without milk.
BLUE VINNEY CHEESE
I cannot say the word “lolly” without sounding drunk. Try it, I bet you can’t either. Especially if you are actually drunk.
Dogs in pubs make me happy. Chickens in pubs freak me out. Even in sandwiches.
When we drive in the summer, the leaves overhead are so thick that the world becomes one big green leaf-tunnel.
Last year, when it snowed, the bus driver suddenly pulled over and ran out. We all thought he’d hit someone, but it turned out he’d seen an old woman slip and fall on the sidewalk and went to make sure she was ok.
Heels: They get stuck in cracks between cobblestones, and I wear them down to the screws in about 5 months. My mind is so used to hearing the high clicking of metal on stone that when I get shoes re-heeled, the absence of that sound makes me think I’ve got gum stuck to my heels or something.
NO DOG-FOULING SIGNS
NATIONAL TRUST VOLUNTEERS. They teach you more than history class.
There are ammonites in the walls.
People on the bus talk themselves. There are enough people on the bus who talk to themselves at one time that it is almost like they are talking to each other. This leads me to wonder if my understanding of conversation is skewed. When I talk to other people, it is likely that I talk to myself, and then they talk to themselves back. I suppose if this is true, then only truly lost people would have misunderstandings.
i love the smell of communists in the summertime
Two really entertaining inductions into British life came to pass for me this weekend.
The first was a football match (Southampton), and the second was a leftwing village festival (Tolpuddle). I’m not going to be drab and compare football to communism, even if both had people dressed in red singing and waving their arms. As interesting as the marriage of sports and political metaphors can be, I will sum it all up for you so you don’t have to use up any more time on the matter: blah blah football blah international differences blah blah camaraderie blah. There you go. Feel free to thank me anytime.
Anyway, the football match was hilarious for me, as you don’t really get that volume of singing and shouting at any American sport. I don’t care how many Americans might argue the contrary out of loyalty, you just don’t. I was as equally captivated by the pen of singing people as I was by the game. I’m pretty positive some of the songs were more than a little bit rude, and the fact that half of the people there had their kids singing along just made it all the more beautiful. You’ve just not lived until you’ve seen thirteen year olds swearing at Portsmouth in song.
Anyway, the pen of singing people (which I can only deduce is fuelled by beer) taught me a bit about football. I learned that even when your team is really sucking it up, you can will them to play better just by emanating beer-favored good vibes. I saw it work, no joke. I also learned to yell at someone named Rasiak. As in “move your ass Rasiak!” because apparently he doesn’t. Though as a result of that lesson, he’s the only Southampton player I can actually name. After awhile I think I started shouting at Rasiak even when he wasn’t actually on the field. It’s ok though, he’s always there in spirit, because one of the other lessons I learned about British football is that there must always be someone for the crowd to yell at for being a lazy git.
After we watched Southampton lose like no one has ever lost before, we went to Tolpuddle festival. Tolpuddle is an amazing little village where apparently there were martyrs a long time ago who paved the way for trade unions. Every year they celebrate these guys and use it
as an opportunity to talk about all sorts of other stuff. I was all excited to find out the back-story, because everyone likes a good juicy martyr story, and then I found out that they didn’t actually die. What the hell kind of martyrs don’t die? Someone TOTALLY used the wrong terminology here. Because I looked into the whole “sacrifice” thing, and here’s how it went. They got in loads of trouble, and tragically got shipped off to Australia as convicts. I can deal with that as a term of their martyrdom, because back in the day it is possible that Australia could have been pretty crappy. (You know, poisonous snakes and fanged kangaroos and all.) But then, after some serious campaigning by their friends and families, they CAME BACK. So… that pretty much ends the sacrifice then? They were away in Australia for a few years and then they were done? That’s like someone throwing a bucket of water on Joan of Arc after her feet were slightly crispy (I mean, she’d be traumatized, sure, but not dead) and saying, “ok, we’re done here now, thanks”.
I was hoping I got this whole martyr thing wrong, because let’s face it, it has been a few years since I’ve read the dictionary cover to cover (real page-turner, that one). So I consulted the source of all concrete hard-hitting knowledge, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr Notice the focus on death throughout the entry. So it’s not just me.
I don’t want to stomp all over a really great little festival though. There were some amazing highlights. I loved the people with the banners and causes and petitions. Inside me lives a good ol’ fashioned protestor. I wished I had a sign to carry, I really did, their excitement was contagious. The wind was so intense that they were all like little campaigning ships.
While I sat there snapping pictures of them on my phone, I started thinking back to my old protesting days. During the Iraq war protests I went to, I took the most amazing photo. I don’t have it anymore, because sadly this was back in the days of actual film. It was shoved in a shoebox in a closet somewhere and is likely halfway to Narnia by now.
Anyway, the following excerpt was part of my novel, but I’ve since decided that the novel is junk and that I need to start over (you know, part of the “process” apparently). So I’m going to be a lazy ass and recycle it here (which only seems fitting, as I recycled actual bits of my life into a novel in the first place, so now I’ve come full circle. Kind like being sent to Australia and then getting to come back again.)
It was a picture I had taken when I went to the Iraq war protest at the state capital building in Boise. Most people there were university students or retired hippies, but there were a few housewives and businessmen and people you don't usually peg as the protesting type. All of us university students were trying to recapture the vibe our parents had tapped into when they protested Vietnam. We'd even borrowed their slogans. People carried signs that said things like "Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity" and "The ones who call the shots are not among the shot." I was also a big fan of "My parents went to the polls and all I got was this crummy Orwellian nightmare." There were a few that were original to this particular war, like "Let's bomb Texas, they have oil too" and "The last time we listened to a Bush we wandered in the desert for forty years." It was all very illuminating.
My photo was of a woman about age 25, who had her son (who couldn't have been more than three) in a little red wagon. The wagon had a sign on the side that said "Peace Train", and her son was sitting in it playing with a GI Joe. His GI Joe was about a foot tall, complete with cammo and mini plastic machine gun. I remember watching them, all of us (including his mother), shouting "No blood for oil!" and watching him playing with his toy soldier and making war sound effects to himself. The American flag that hangs on the capital building is just visible in the background, and I thought to myself as I snapped the photo, if this isn't a sign of the times then I don't know what is.
The first was a football match (Southampton), and the second was a leftwing village festival (Tolpuddle). I’m not going to be drab and compare football to communism, even if both had people dressed in red singing and waving their arms. As interesting as the marriage of sports and political metaphors can be, I will sum it all up for you so you don’t have to use up any more time on the matter: blah blah football blah international differences blah blah camaraderie blah. There you go. Feel free to thank me anytime.
Anyway, the football match was hilarious for me, as you don’t really get that volume of singing and shouting at any American sport. I don’t care how many Americans might argue the contrary out of loyalty, you just don’t. I was as equally captivated by the pen of singing people as I was by the game. I’m pretty positive some of the songs were more than a little bit rude, and the fact that half of the people there had their kids singing along just made it all the more beautiful. You’ve just not lived until you’ve seen thirteen year olds swearing at Portsmouth in song.
Anyway, the pen of singing people (which I can only deduce is fuelled by beer) taught me a bit about football. I learned that even when your team is really sucking it up, you can will them to play better just by emanating beer-favored good vibes. I saw it work, no joke. I also learned to yell at someone named Rasiak. As in “move your ass Rasiak!” because apparently he doesn’t. Though as a result of that lesson, he’s the only Southampton player I can actually name. After awhile I think I started shouting at Rasiak even when he wasn’t actually on the field. It’s ok though, he’s always there in spirit, because one of the other lessons I learned about British football is that there must always be someone for the crowd to yell at for being a lazy git.
After we watched Southampton lose like no one has ever lost before, we went to Tolpuddle festival. Tolpuddle is an amazing little village where apparently there were martyrs a long time ago who paved the way for trade unions. Every year they celebrate these guys and use it
as an opportunity to talk about all sorts of other stuff. I was all excited to find out the back-story, because everyone likes a good juicy martyr story, and then I found out that they didn’t actually die. What the hell kind of martyrs don’t die? Someone TOTALLY used the wrong terminology here. Because I looked into the whole “sacrifice” thing, and here’s how it went. They got in loads of trouble, and tragically got shipped off to Australia as convicts. I can deal with that as a term of their martyrdom, because back in the day it is possible that Australia could have been pretty crappy. (You know, poisonous snakes and fanged kangaroos and all.) But then, after some serious campaigning by their friends and families, they CAME BACK. So… that pretty much ends the sacrifice then? They were away in Australia for a few years and then they were done? That’s like someone throwing a bucket of water on Joan of Arc after her feet were slightly crispy (I mean, she’d be traumatized, sure, but not dead) and saying, “ok, we’re done here now, thanks”.I was hoping I got this whole martyr thing wrong, because let’s face it, it has been a few years since I’ve read the dictionary cover to cover (real page-turner, that one). So I consulted the source of all concrete hard-hitting knowledge, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr Notice the focus on death throughout the entry. So it’s not just me.
I don’t want to stomp all over a really great little festival though. There were some amazing highlights. I loved the people with the banners and causes and petitions. Inside me lives a good ol’ fashioned protestor. I wished I had a sign to carry, I really did, their excitement was contagious. The wind was so intense that they were all like little campaigning ships.
While I sat there snapping pictures of them on my phone, I started thinking back to my old protesting days. During the Iraq war protests I went to, I took the most amazing photo. I don’t have it anymore, because sadly this was back in the days of actual film. It was shoved in a shoebox in a closet somewhere and is likely halfway to Narnia by now.
Anyway, the following excerpt was part of my novel, but I’ve since decided that the novel is junk and that I need to start over (you know, part of the “process” apparently). So I’m going to be a lazy ass and recycle it here (which only seems fitting, as I recycled actual bits of my life into a novel in the first place, so now I’ve come full circle. Kind like being sent to Australia and then getting to come back again.)
It was a picture I had taken when I went to the Iraq war protest at the state capital building in Boise. Most people there were university students or retired hippies, but there were a few housewives and businessmen and people you don't usually peg as the protesting type. All of us university students were trying to recapture the vibe our parents had tapped into when they protested Vietnam. We'd even borrowed their slogans. People carried signs that said things like "Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity" and "The ones who call the shots are not among the shot." I was also a big fan of "My parents went to the polls and all I got was this crummy Orwellian nightmare." There were a few that were original to this particular war, like "Let's bomb Texas, they have oil too" and "The last time we listened to a Bush we wandered in the desert for forty years." It was all very illuminating.
My photo was of a woman about age 25, who had her son (who couldn't have been more than three) in a little red wagon. The wagon had a sign on the side that said "Peace Train", and her son was sitting in it playing with a GI Joe. His GI Joe was about a foot tall, complete with cammo and mini plastic machine gun. I remember watching them, all of us (including his mother), shouting "No blood for oil!" and watching him playing with his toy soldier and making war sound effects to himself. The American flag that hangs on the capital building is just visible in the background, and I thought to myself as I snapped the photo, if this isn't a sign of the times then I don't know what is.
the mirror of the spectator
I have only just picked up a copy of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray". I read the preface twice, closed the book, and will likely carry it around everywhere I go in the next few days before I start to read it again. I do this with books from time to time, but it is a habit that marks my contempt at adulthood more than anything else. I'll explain.
When I was in high school we read "Cry, the Beloved Country" one year. I remember loving it. It was honestly ten years before I picked it up again, but I was reading it on a flight from Seattle to London when I realized everything about it for me was suddenly different. The book itself has this pulse of its own, and it beats out in repetitive language as it slowly pulls you apart. I sat there in my tiny little seat, elbows prodding me from either side, reading about despair and fear. "Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child, who is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply..." "Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end." And the engines came to life on the plane, and I felt stretched thin between the idea of pushing up through the air at however many hundred miles an hour and the pulse of the despair on the pages in front of me. I had never been an anxious person before, and I realized at that point what it must actually mean to be an adult in this world. I felt my own mortality ringing in my ears. I took the idea that we could plunge back to earth and set it lose in my mind, let it mingle with the language still bouncing around in there. "Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley."
I had to close the book, close my eyes, quickly down two glasses of crappy airline red wine, and try my best to figure out what the hell had come over me. I was feeling the loss of things that weren't lost. A part of me was mourning children I didn't have, wishing for places I'd never seen, and clinging to some sort of connection to everything around me that I didn't know was there. And I suppose that's when it started. My humanity became full and unforgiving, and from now on I'll have to fight not to cling to it, even when it isn't threatened.
So I still pick up books with reckless abandon, but I no longer read with it. Literature is sticky now, like walking through cobwebs and compulsively brushing them off for ages afterward, even when you know they've gone. "The Picture of Dorian Grey" threatened to stick to me with its heavy implications, and I sat with it tonight, reading the preface over and over and thinking about art and spectators. I ran my mind through all the things the preface was suppose to draw up in me, possibly missing some of the more important ideas but adding unimportant ones of my own, and soon I felt the sentences become leaden and once again felt that fear of loss that I've only felt in adulthood.
Wilde writes:
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
I plugged my brain back into the circle of all this. While on that flight from Seattle to London I went beneath the surface, let the language of the book prod at my senses, and was left in peril. I couldn’t do that at sixteen, and I haven’t decided yet if this new talent means that I love my life too much, or not enough.
just trying it out
So. Blog. How fantastic. I was actually profoundly excited at the prospect of starting a blog until I sat down to put a first post together. It took about five seconds for me to realize that I am not actually as exciting in print as I am in my head. Why I hadn’t realized this before is beyond me, as things are ALWAYS more exciting in one’s head than in any actual form of reality. The most exciting thing that has happened to me all week was when I opened my desk drawer at the office and accidentally mistook my green Expo marker for my pack of Polo mints. I can now say with full conviction that green Expo markers freshen breath in a far superior (albeit hallucinogenic) way and that Polo and Expo should definitely merge their formulas. They wouldn’t even really have to change their names much. Exlo? Personally I like Popo. But I can be flexible.
In my defence it was easily done, and I had to take a photo just to prove my point.
In my defence it was easily done, and I had to take a photo just to prove my point.
Notice also that my desk drawer comes complete with 80s calculator and the BIGGEST wad of blu-tac known to humankind. I’m basically planning on sticking a dinosaur to my wall. The more I rummage in there, the more amazing vintage nonsense I come across. I am hoping that if I close my eyes and wish hard enough, I may dig up some Whitney Houston cassette tapes and then my work day will be complete. (Nobody’s work day is complete without Polo-Expo and “One Moment in Time”. Nobody’s.)
I found a nice little blog template, but I can’t get it to stop speaking Spanish. And the fact that my blog speaks Spanish is not enough of a reason for me to start learning it. Sorry Spain. And Latin America.
Anyway, I was all perplexed about what to write that was blog-worthy, and then I got over it by reading the Guardian online. I love LOVE those guys. And not for the reasons that you’d think. I went through a Charlie Brooker phase (here you go: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charliebrooker, of the recent ones I recommend the Michael Jackson one) and then gradually grew out of it, because apparently when reading Charlie’s work online everyone is obligated to comment with “Ah, yes, Charlie does it again!” or with things that equal the wit expressed in the above column. And he is witty. Disconcertingly so. I don’t think there actually is a Charlie, there’s a team of writers that were cast-off from the Family Guy for being too crass and obscure who thought, “who would take us, we are so very crass and obscure… the Guardian!” and then they invented a persona so that they could slyly infiltrate the paper. And it is working, because loads of people are trying to be Charlie, apparently. Lately I’ve become much more attached to Tanya Gold because Guardian readers seem to hate her and that makes reading the comments much more fun, and beats smug witty team-Charlie. (here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/29/dirty-weekend-glastonbury-tanya-gold). Read the comments, people flay her! It’s ok Tanya, I find you endearing and relatable. But only until people start to like you, then I will turn my back on you and invent conspiracy theories to pretend you aren’t real.
But then I found this on the books blog, and this has to be the best ever. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jul/07/words-wince-hated-poets
Post after post of amazing reasons why people hate certain words! I personally vote for “deplane”. So clinical. Ugh. And that was my epiphany. I went from Charlie to Tanya to language analysis, and thought I’d take the easy way out. So I’ve blogged about blogs. And my office desk drawer. Enjoy.
I found a nice little blog template, but I can’t get it to stop speaking Spanish. And the fact that my blog speaks Spanish is not enough of a reason for me to start learning it. Sorry Spain. And Latin America.
Anyway, I was all perplexed about what to write that was blog-worthy, and then I got over it by reading the Guardian online. I love LOVE those guys. And not for the reasons that you’d think. I went through a Charlie Brooker phase (here you go: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charliebrooker, of the recent ones I recommend the Michael Jackson one) and then gradually grew out of it, because apparently when reading Charlie’s work online everyone is obligated to comment with “Ah, yes, Charlie does it again!” or with things that equal the wit expressed in the above column. And he is witty. Disconcertingly so. I don’t think there actually is a Charlie, there’s a team of writers that were cast-off from the Family Guy for being too crass and obscure who thought, “who would take us, we are so very crass and obscure… the Guardian!” and then they invented a persona so that they could slyly infiltrate the paper. And it is working, because loads of people are trying to be Charlie, apparently. Lately I’ve become much more attached to Tanya Gold because Guardian readers seem to hate her and that makes reading the comments much more fun, and beats smug witty team-Charlie. (here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/29/dirty-weekend-glastonbury-tanya-gold). Read the comments, people flay her! It’s ok Tanya, I find you endearing and relatable. But only until people start to like you, then I will turn my back on you and invent conspiracy theories to pretend you aren’t real.
But then I found this on the books blog, and this has to be the best ever. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jul/07/words-wince-hated-poets
Post after post of amazing reasons why people hate certain words! I personally vote for “deplane”. So clinical. Ugh. And that was my epiphany. I went from Charlie to Tanya to language analysis, and thought I’d take the easy way out. So I’ve blogged about blogs. And my office desk drawer. Enjoy.