yay! going to greece for a week of azure oceans, yummy food, greek gods and island hopping! we fly out on 15th june. i cannot wait!

more bigger yay! katie b will be coming to visit 28th april to 3rd may! she hasn’t booked her ticket yet, but i’ve already shed-jewelled pubs, parks, and plays into the intinerary. i’m very very excited.

it’s been a very busy week, and it’s not over yet. hectic work, glassblowing, dinners, parties… looking forward to blowing off some steam over the weekend, and recuperating with a lazy sunday in bed. if you don’t hear from me this weekend, that’s where i am.

for your amusement and edification:

this is kinda gross but yet, disturbingly, mesmerising

ditto

no need for these in the Free Open-Container Land of England (yup, peeps can drink wherever, and sadly whenever. like 8 am.)

dirty politrix:

the muddled morals of bush: illustrated

US spied on members of security council before bombing the hell out of iraq

if this isn’t the pot calling the kettle black

spinning the science

finally, many of you may know about my obsession with quantum/astrophysics and superstring theory: godel, hawking predict the end to the illusory “theory of everything”

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happy mardi gras! or as it’s known here, pancake tuesday. don’t quite get the pancake racing?? *i’m* certainly not complaining, but i do have a hankering for some hot-n-spicy jambalaya, washed down with a hurricane or four. sorry ’bout the torrential rains and floods, by the way, but if it’s any solace, it’s the same here in london.

puts me in mind of my 30th b-day two xmases ago, where jo and i ditched the “home for the holidays” obligations and celebrated in bad girl style in n’awlins. luckily, i have no digital pictures as incriminating evidence. but we drank, danced, partied, hooked up with strangers, and stuffed ourselves silly – there were felonies committed, fabulous f-me boots worn, and sunrises seen – that’s all y’all need to know.

glassblowing: amazing fun. but harder than it looks. took me an hour to make a funny little blob-like pendant (not quite as good as jo’s xmas amoeba).

my boyz are back!

now i’m gonna go put up some new tunes to celebrate…

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the random news:

wouldn’t it be great if the guv’ner of texas turned out to be gay?
“sex and the city” ends in the us tonight. nobody tell me!!! the final episode doesn’t air here til march.
the man with 18,000 lives, ozzy nearly died twice in last year’s accident.
an amish reality show?!?!?
wonder where new catchphrases come from?
love him or hate him, you can count on nader to run in an election year.
is that a pang of sympathy i’m feeling? spot dies.

pondering earlier today…things i have adapted to quite easily:

turning everything into a question (e.g. “can you not?” “did you not?”, also saying “i did do”)
spelling (i.e. eradicating “z”, throwing around extra “u”s with abandon, putting “r” before “e”, comes from writing all those government reports!)
no snowboots and mild winters (coulda saved a lot of space on sweaters in my suitcase!)
four weeks holiday (well, duh!)
the art of drinking on schoolnights (and it *is* an artform)

things i still cannot seem to master:

running a bath (always too hot, too cold, spilling over and leaking through the bathroom floor…)
cooking (okay, i admit, this is primarily an excuse for my laziness)
the difference between lagers and bitters (this is practically sacrilege, but i am now at the point where i am too embarrassed to ask!)
metric in general (i think i am just deficient in that gene… okay, another excuse for laziness!)

things i will never understand:

the advanced technology exists to *mix* the hot and cold water *from the same tap*, why not use it?
the switches on plugpoints and the “standby” mechanism on televisions – what purpose do they serve?
the topless women in the daily newspaper (not a *good* paper, mind you, but still…)
bagging your own groceries (trying to juggle money, bags, change while you hold up the queue and they sit there and watch you [quite possibly laughing behind your back as you leave] seems so very inefficient)
indiscriminate use of butter on all sandwiches
how to keep the mass quantities of heavy change from ripping the lining of your pockets (*sigh*, time to drag out the needle and thread again…)
why is there nothing open after 11:00?!?!

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i am back off the candy wagon.

i had been doing sooooo well. ever since I got back to london, i had been able to have just a few twizzlers here, a tootsie pop there, a spoonful of marshmallow fluff every so often. and now it has all been blown out of the water, and i blame it on kindereggs.

this week i started buying my kindereggs again, something i had sworn off since my return. i always start out buying just one, savoring the milk and white chocolate shell, delighting in the toy surprise contained within. they pick me up when i am having a hard day, give me something to smile about over my morning coffee. it always starts with just one.

but before you know it, i am buying 3 or 4 over the course of a day, just to “get me through a rough patch”. and i’m too ashamed to buy them all at once. so i vary my shops, nonchalantly adding one to my carton of milk and loaf of bread while standing at the till. casually buying one with my pack of cigarettes. picking one up with my newspaper on the way home. the toys start to disappoint, as i come across duplicates or triplicates of ones already in my collection. and the thin chocolate shell starts to leave me wanting something more substantial. something creamier, or gooier, or longer lasting. so i begin to supplement with rolls of butterscotches, or packets of jellybeans, or a bag of mints. maybe some nougat, or a few winegums, or a toffee bar. and i begin the downward spiral, where nothing ever satisfies the full range of my cravings, and i start to hide my piles of wrappers or dispose of them in public rubbish bins, and begin to manufacture excuses for “just popping round to the shop”.

one is too many, and one hundred is never enough.

and i keep going until i hit bottom, that point where i am ashamed to be seen yet again at the pic-n-mix counter of woolworths, and turn red under the astonished stares of my co-workers as i demolish a full half pound of sweets sitting at my desk, and i no longer even taste the difference between a caramel cream and a liquorice drop, and i am full to bursting, yet seem unable to stop until the last swedish fish and piece of honeycombe are gone, the sugar dusting my keyboard the only remaining evidence.

and i feel ill. i crash, the insulin flooding my bloodstream to try to regulate all that sugar, and my serotonin depleted. the initial high of having a such a delicious variety of tastes and textures to explore, suddenly gone, replaced by the disgust of gluttony and guilt and loss of control.

and i repeat the cycle again and again and again. until i start to realise that i can’t have *any* sugar. not one little jelly tot, not one starburst. and i methodically eliminate all sugar from my coffee, all cookies from my cupboard, all jams and marmalades from my toast. it gets easier and easier each day, and finally i feel as though i have conquered my demons, i have mastered my cravings. i am disciplined and sugar-free.

and it lulls me into a false sense of security, until, in a weak moment i may have a cherry flavoured cough lozenge, or a bit of honey in my tea, and before i know it my willpower evaporates and i fall prey to my addictions again.

so if you see me standing in front of the convenience store, shaking my paper cup, desperation in my eyes, pleading for a bit of change to just get my daily fix of cadburys, my one hit of tic tac…

…have pity on me

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“lay it on a flat surface, shielded from wind, like a polaroid picture”? not as catchy.

“detroit: the salty city”? not as catchy.

“gimme a break, gimme a break. break me off a piece of that masala-curry-flavoured kit kat bar“? not as catchy.

“rocking-chair the vote”? not as catchy.

“all we are saying, is give electable-centrist-jfkwannabe democrats a chance”?

not as catchy.

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can’t escape it anywhere: the a-rod deal even made it into the papers in london, where they couldn’t care less about baseball. of course, they had to draw parallels to football to explain it…

apparently the riaa’s super-efficient tactic to protect copyrights is to sue file-shares a few hundred at a time. um, yeah. that’ll work. because it makes sooo much more sense than, say, putting time, money and energy into producing music in a format people *want* to legally use.

it’s trying to close the gate after the horse has left the stable and it’s an archaic solution to a 21st century problem. you can’t stop the spread. so instead of trying to dig in your heels, and selectively, punitively litigate a few hundred people who are only guilty of doing the same thing *millions* of others are doing, why not get with the times and spend your resources trying to figure out how to give people what they really want. ‘coz they’re taking it anyway.

the dollar briefly hit $1.91 against £1 today. which is good for me (getting paid in pounds sterling and transferring money back home), good for the US trade deficit, good for stimulating the economy, and sucky for european tourists getting up to hit the shores of america for summer holiday. sorry ’bout that.

in personal news, my kitty hendrix has died back in nyc. wish i had a scanned picture to post, but i don’t. she was just a tiny little kitten when we got her, almost all black with giant ears. she was eleven, and used to walk “tip tip tip tip tip” across the room, rub her head on your bare feet, knead the inside of your elbow, cry like a siamese, like to watch the toilet flush, and enjoy knocking things off of shelves to watch them fall, particularly after 2 am. she will be sadly missed by myself, my ex, my friend shelley, and her brother-cat wamma.

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i find it enormously ironic (no, not in the alannis morisette song way, but in the true sense of the word) that “the darkness” are taken seriously. i’d have more respect for them if they acknowledged they were supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. or maybe they do. gawd, i’m so confused. perhaps therein lies the appeal (confuse and conquer?) i mean, look at the lead singer: give him a haircut and a tie and he could be an accountant for price waterhouse coopers. they’re like a “spinal tap” for the naughties. then again,“spinal tap” actually had multiple albums. so maybe the biggest joke is on us.

ahh, the joys of urban life. in the past three weeks i have 1. been hit by a car 2. been spit on by a stranger and 3. seen a fox lapping up a big pile of vomit.

does any actually *stand* for anything anymore? a-rod is a pussy. in his negotiations with the red sox the man swore he didn’t want to play for the yankees, didn’t want to play third base (derek jeter already in ss), and was desperate to get out of texas, even playing for a lot less money. but in the end, it was all about the benjamins, and he will apparently suck hard on george steinbrenner’s big fat ass if it’s spewing enough dollar bills.

they will go to spring training with a payroll of about $185 million. that’s more than six times what some of their competitors will spend and approximately $50 million more than their closest pursuers, the Red Sox, will part with.

i grew up loving this game. i never believed it was anything holy or pure. i’ve always known it bore as much resemblance to a “game” as a high stakes poker table at vegas resembles “recreational betting”. but i am rapidly losing my taste for anything associated with it that does not occur in 9 innings on a field shaped like a diamond. baseball may be a business, but where’s the sport in that?

i hate linking to salon.com articles, but this article (part 1) and this (part 2) about the cointelpro-like tactics being taken against anti-war demonstrators in the name of “anti-terrorism” is some of the scariest shit i’ve read in a while. worth watching the annoying commercial for.

i’d rather vote for a vomit-eating fox for president than george bush.

and there’s this guy, who reasonably enough assumed that since he was not breaking any laws, he didn’t have to show cops his id, but was arrested for refusing to do so. and he’s managed to take it all the way to the supreme court who have decided his case has enough merit to warrant a hearing in march.

america is becoming one giant police state. rights, liberties and freedoms are being eroded from beneath our very feet, every day. the political mood is leadenly oppressive, the news is sensationalised, ordinary citizens are intimidated and confused and stunned into submission. as the united states goes, so goes the world, and i’m not so sure that it’s any better elsewhere, but if a nation with the power that america has, no longer has any ideal of moral highground (not that we could ever claim we held it, but at least we had the ideal), no sense of noblesse oblige, no hint of a token gesture of trying to lead by example, well then the sad, sorry, state of the world that we spend so much time bemoaning has a bleaker future than any of us could imagine.

as if you needed any more reason, please join the aclu today!

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say it ain’t so. or wait, is it? okay, so I have lost a lot of respect for kerry in the past two years, ever since it became glaringly obvious he had surveyed the scene and decided to start sucking major ass in his bid for the dem. presidential nod. but really now, he’s the best chance we have of kicking bush to the curb, and do we really need to give the rest of the world another reason to say “look at those funny uptight americans, getting all het up yet again over where a politician decides to stick his stick”? i didn’t think so.

speaking of uptight…it’s a puppet.

i know! let’s bomb ‘em

completely unrelated to anything: m&ms and science. my question is: why waste perfectly good m&ms???

okay, i’m gonna say it: yankees suck and then they suck some more.

finally, one last spot-on cartoon about the breast brouhahah (pretty damn sure I spelt that wrong, but anyway… if you are hung up on esoteric spell-checking, go read another blog.)

(tecnical note: i went through all the trouble of setting up an xml and rss feed, only to become convinced that bloglet is not working. i am trying to find alternatives (an rss-or-atom-to-email converter) for the overflowing wealth of people who are interested in staying up to date on my useless daily drivel, yet a)don’t want to have to download an rss feed aggregator application or b) visit a website to read about updates to my website, which is just sooo silly. i will keep y’all informed.)

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happy belated valentine’s day, for whatever that’s worth.

the evening did not get off to a very promising start, as we decided to start off at “redstar” in camberwell, which turned out to be a cold, cavernous bar full of stereotypical, badly dressed, gold-chain wearing wankers and pudgy 15 year old girls tottering around in caked makeup and miniscule skirts, sans tights. they seemed to have pretentions of being some sort of hot spot though, with a multitude of bartenders and bouncers, attitude, a cover charge and a velvet rope even in the distinct absence of any actual queue. it was laughable, really. had no compunctions about helping myself to the free valentine’s sweets, though.

blew that joint, and had a few pints at the pub before finally making our way to another one of the hot, sweaty, crowded late-night parties under the train trestles at loughborough junction, which was loads of fun. energetic ska band, and djs and i jumped around like a madwoman, drank too much, sweated litres, and generally danced my ass off. someone got engaged and shouted, “she said yes!” and there was applause. home at the bird-chirps of dawn, and my ears are still ringing.

and i even got a valentine, of sorts. a south african friend of nick’s that i met at a party christmas night (though i don’t remember too much of our under-the-influence conversation, i do remember that he was cute and funny) apparently remembered me as well, and i was barraged with phone calls and text messages at 2am to come meet up with them, hanging out over at her place in streatham. honestly, how often does a cute boy ever pursue me? precisely.

anyway, it made me smile all night. whatever else may or may not come of it, it’s all gravy baby.

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if I ever get arthritis, i’ll have to shoot myself.

after last night’s rock-climbing, i have no manual dexterity whatsoever. my hands have become weak misshapen claws. attempts to plait my hair this morning were a cruel joke. and i could really do with one of those sticks you attach to your forehead to type. but i love it. iloveitiloveitiloveit. we went up one climb using only our feet, no hands, and even though you’re tethered, being 30 feet up and hanging on to a wall with just your toes is heartstopping and exhilarating. everything about it challenges you to conquer that nagging voice in the back of your head that says “are you insane?!? a) you’ll never be able to do that and b) get down!!!”. and somehow you do it anyway, and the sense of accomplishment is indescribable. but by the end of the evening, i couldn’t have tied my shoes if my life depended on it.

so, i have a new layout, thanks to the (theoretically) simple beauty of css. i still have some tweaking to do to make it pretty, but i think it’s a huge improvement overall. and i still have to do the photo pages.

i am finally going to get to do glassblowing! a six week course starts 24th feb at city of westminster college. unfortunately my firewalk has been postponed for a month. which means that from 18th-22nd march i’m goggling over italian men in rome, 26th i walk on hot coals, and 27th-29th i celebrate by overindulging in illicit substances and mass quantities of liquorice. busy busy busy two weeks.

I seem to have somehow agreed to sign up for the tough guy challenge in july. 8 miles of obstacles and mud. recommended training includes jumping into cold lakes. should be fun.

oh, and I am going to see the pixies! only 16 weeks, one day!

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so i think i finally figured out this fancy external css thing (here’s a hint: this template you are viewing right now is not it) and i can’t check it out because my stupid server is having difficulties. arrgh. did i mention it is 1:00 am?

i’m a loser. i know.

but ha ha ha! i have a pixies ticket!

10:30 – ho hum, bored at work. my work flow could be described as: long streaks of “rushed off my feet”, interspersed with stretches of “twiddling my thumbs”. it’d be really nice to have some consistency, but i don’t forsee that happening.

in the meantime, they are already asking me about doing a service-wide quality assurance post after this integration bit is over. it’d be a nice little pay rise, and a pretty significant amount of responsibility. more money, higher profile, more permanence. however i’m not sure i could deal with the frustration that accompanies it.

working in the council is truly an eye opener into local goverment. think of a snail’s pace. now think of that snail as crippled. now think of the crippled snail as being frozen inside a glacier. that’s about how fast things move, and roughly equivalent to how easy it is to get anything done. you can have initiative and ideas, but by the time you make it through 7 levels of executive groups and sub-committees and stakeholder consultations, you are ready to discard the whole thing completely.

in any case, it could be interesting, so i’ll have to think about it.

observation: this morning at my train station, i saw no fewer than 10 workers installing one cctv camera. apparently 9 were there for moral support…

did i mention i am going to see the pixies?? don’t worry, i’ll only be this annoying about it for the next 4 months.

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hurrah! got a ticket to the pixies on 5th june! (guess that means I have to stick around til then!)

something i find truly annoying: trains being delayed or outright *cancelled* because of “not enough drivers”. this happens all the time. a) i’d rather not know this because it just irritates me to no end and b) can they not come up with some sort of backup plan? other people don’t show up to work, so i can’t get there either?

something i find truly endearing: the woman who knows my coffee order every morning. some days i just want to kiss her. the less i have to think before 9 am, the better.

my last rock-climbing class is tomorrow night, and alas, the palpable super-charged undercurrent of passion which runs between me and my instructor, remains unspoken. perhaps because he has mentioned several times that he has a girlfriend. bah.

anywhoo, after this week, i will be registered with the centre and can bring two guests when i go. which is a scary thought: they’re entrusting *me* with two people’s safety. i can barely look after my own! and i tend to very distracted while belaying, which is definitely not a good thing. but i can’t help it! there’s too much eye candy around! they should make me wear horse-blinkers. my climber could be dangling from a thread, and i wouldn’t notice.

and angela found me a glassblowing course for 6 weeks!

firewalk is in 2 weeks, and i am a bit nervous already.

been messing around with css stylesheets looking to re-design this website. because let’s face it, tables are for sissies. so keep your eyes peeled.

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this is funnier and more touching than anything I could ever write, so I hope mike and alex don’t mind me sharing their account of their engagement:

“Yes, the rumors are true! As of this past weekend, I am no longer on the market (to the collective sighs of women around the world.) I asked Alex to marry me while we were vacationing on the Caribbean
island of Vieques for her birthday, and she said yes. (Actually, her exact word was “Sure”, but I think that counts.) Not that the whole thing didn’t go off without a hitch… For the night, which was also her birthday
night, I thought I had planned the perfect evening. First, we went on a kayaking tour of one of Vieques’ unique “bioluminescent bay”, one of the only places in the world where phosphorescent plankton live in such abundance that when you swim in the water, your whole body glows and looks like it’s covered with tiny little stars….Unfortunately, the romance was tempered a bit when Alex got stung by a jellyfish and had to paddle back with a sore arm. Hoping to bounce back, I told her that I had a special surprise for her, and drove her down dirt roads to a secluded beach where earlier in the day I had stashed all the makings for a romantic picnic. Of course, I forgot that Alex is an arachnophobe, and so she took some coaxing to get out of the car, convinced that there would be spiders on the beach at night. But I cavalierly told her that there wouldn’t be any spiders once we got past the palm trees, and after crashing around in the brambles for a few minutes to find the stuff I left, we made our way down to the surf. There I laid out a spread with all the fixings – a tablecloth, a spread of gourmet food, a bouquet of roses, a candle in a hurricane lamp – and popped a bottle of red I’d brought from home. We sat and talked, captivated by the crashing of waves in our secluded cove, and the full moon rising over the hill behind us. Alex even started to relax, as I nervously rehearsed in my mind the speech I’d been practicing all day, ready to give her the ring. Then….caught in mid-sentence, Alex suddenly let loose the most blood-curdling scream I’d ever heard in my life. She leapt up and ran down the beach into the water, screaming that she saw a spider. Of course, I thought it was just a shadow or something until I looked at the top of the cooler and saw, I’m not kidding, an spindly eight-legged freak the size of my palm, who had apparently wanted to have a sip of wine himself. Needless to say, it took some time before I was able to calm Alex down, get her back to the car, pack up all the stuff, ensure it was all spider-free (I trapped our friend in an over-turned wineglass and left it on the beach just to make sure!), and drive back the way we came. My next thought was to try and get her back to our hotel room which had a beautiful balcony overlooking the beach, but Alex wanted to go to the restaurant we had been to the night before to try and salvage her birthday dinner. I agreed reluctantly but told her that I had another birthday surprise for her later, so we couldn’t drink too much. But we found that wasn’t an option, since the restaurant had stopped serving food by the time we got there, though they did let us have a drink at the bar and a banana-split on the house. Finally we got back to our hotel room, where, dejected, Alex plopped down on the bed ready to go to sleep as I stood panicked about how the hell I was going to propose. Bad luck be damned, I threw a nightstand onto the balcony, put what was left of our feast onto it, and lined up two oversized wicker chairs facing it (of course the chairs wouldn’t fit on the balcony). Telling her I still had a bottle of champagne for her birthday, I coaxed her to sit with me and we picked up our conversation and finished the food and the wine. Then I told her that I had another surprise for her, and brought out a small package wrapped in birthday wrapping paper, and stood with her on the balcony while she unwrapped it. Finally, everything seemed just right – the moon had risen over the ocean below us, and a warm breeze was blowing through the palm trees. Before she opened the box, I started in on my speech, and I think I got through about 2/3 of it before my mind blanked (which is more than I expected to get through), and I simply asked her if she would marry me. She said “sure” and opened the box…. at which point the ring fell out and for a very scary moment we thought it had gone over the balcony. But thankfully we found it under the nightstand, I
put it on her finger and we popped the champagne! To my relief, Alex loves the ring – a 1920’s-era platinum ring with a tourmaline (her favorite gemstone) surrounded by tiny diamonds. As for me, I just figure that after the proposal, the actual marriage should be a piece of cake! For now, we haven’t set a date – we are still basking in the glow of commitment.”

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alex and mike are engaged! hurrah!!

dominican republic, stunning ring, and a pledge of love…sounds like she had a great birthday.

bloody buggery bollocks:

Pixies london date sells out in minutes

why, god, why?!? apparently what happened was this: friday was one of my worst days in a long long time. work was insane. i was knackered and in a foul mood. and that’s the day they annouced the tour dates. the tix went on sale at 9am the next morning, whilst i was sleeping off a hangover.

i would spend some serious money to get some tix, so if you hear of anyone who got some, email me. immediately.

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currently rainy cold and dark here. and this is what alex sends me (celebrating her birthday in the dominican republic):

happy birthday, ya silly cow…

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so one of the first things you have to get used to about living in london: you’re on candid camera. all the time.

seriously, everywhere you go, there are signs proc;aiming “cctv in operation”. on the tube. in the cornershop. in bars and restaurants. on public streets. from the time you venture out your front door in the morning, you are almost continually being watched, in the name of fighting crime. one camera for every 14 britons.

which is a little bizarre, since london doesn’t generally have very much crime to begin with, especially when you compare it to most major metropolitan u.s. cities. i’ve travelled all sorts of places at all hours of the day (generally whilst inebriated), and never once felt unsafe. sure, they have petty crimes like thefts and vandalism, and even some not-so-petty crime like assault or rape. but for the most part, you are statistically pretty damn safe.

it’d be pretty easy to attribute it to all the surveillance, right? people don’t commit as many crimes because there’s a greater likelihood of being caught on tape. and after a while, you kind of do away with the notion of personal privacy anywhere outside your home, and all the little cameras start to fade into the background noise. most people are willing to give up personal freedoms for a measure of security. and you come to understand that you are *not* presumed innocent just walking down the street minding your own business, you are constantly a potential criminal.

the problem with that theory, is that it doesn’t hold water. in my experience, londoners *don’t* feel safer than say, new yorkers. perhaps even less so. i never had as many people warn me to be careful in my seven years in new york, as i have in the less-than one year i’ve been here. in spite of all evidence to the contrary, londoners seem to feel very much threatened.

and the problem is, the cameras don’t deter crime. a recent study shows that “security cameras were effective in tackling vehicle crime but had limited effect on other crimes. Improved streetlighting recorded better results.”

so next time you see a cctv sign, smile and say “cheese” – you may not be any safer, but you are a lot more photogenic…

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just how fucking repressed *are* americans?!?

this is just getting waaaay too ridiculous. janet has become the biggest internet search term of all time. justin says his family was embarrassed. jc chavez can’t play at the pro-bowl. e.r. can’t show an elderly woman’s breast.

and in true american fashion, someone is suing for cbs and mtv for “serious injury”, officially making us the laughingstock of the world.

get a grip people! haven’t we got bigger things to be outraged over???

this cartoon sums it all up perfectly.

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Jayzus, our president is confused. Apparently he never got the memo on separation of church and state.

How can you knowingly continue to define marriage as something “sacred”, and then say it is the government’s obligation to protect it by defining it? Marriage as a religious contract “under the eyes of god” is something the churches have no problem circumscribing for themselves, and most define it as being between a man and a woman. Which we may not like or agree with, but is perfectly within their right to do.

Marriage as a legal and social contract, upon which the government has decided to confer certain rights and benefits, is a whole different animal. because you cannot then deny those rights to a certain group of citizens, based solely on sex or sexual orientation.

The federal government can (and does, to date) leave it up to the states to decide what the requirements for a legal marriage are, what state benefits are bestowed, and what particular arrangements it makes to ensure that people are not discriminated against. thus the civil unions in vermont. You can’t do that and then turn around and say “we don’t like your definition, so we’ll alter the constitution to nullify your definition, tell you how to apply your state laws, and uphold our anglo-judeo-christian religious beliefs”.

he’s dangerously mixing religious morals and federal laws. and what irks me most is that he doesn’t seem to understand the difference between the two (aside: yes i know he also does this on the issue of abortion, however that’s a bit murkier because of the science involved, so one can argue that there is room for debate, even if he *is* only debating from his moral viewpoint). “civil unions”, “domestic partnerships” already exist in many states, and if they confer the same benefits, what does it matter what it is called? they are, for most legal intents and purposes a “marriage”, so for that matter, why not just call *all* contractually binding civil partnerships “civil unions”, and leave the religious “marriage” to the churches to sort out?

hmmm, wonder how his “man and woman” definition applies to, say, a transgendered person?? love to see the pols arguing that one out on capitol hill…

in any case, here’s the mass supreme court brief on proposed “civil unions” as an alternative. some pertinent excerpts:

“Because the proposed law by its express terms forbids same-sex couples entry into civil marriage, it continues to relegate same-sex couples to a different status… The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal… [emphasis mine] Neither may the government, under the guise of protecting “traditional” values, even if they be the traditional values of the majority, enshrine in law an invidious discrimination that our Constitution, “as a charter of governance for every person properly within its reach,” forbids… The bill’s absolute prohibition of the use of the word “marriage” by “spouses” who are the same sex is more than semantic. The dissimilitude between the terms “civil marriage” and “civil union” is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status… The bill maintains an unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples.”

restores some of my faith in our government. god bless the mass. supreme court justices.

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had to take the bus home today, and ran into this poor american woman who had just moved here yesterday and was hopelessly lost and couldn’t find her house. i think i pointed her in the right direction, but who knows, since she lived on a little mews i only vaguely remember walking past once. then i advised her to buy a “london a to zed”. (for those of you who don’t know, the “a to zed” is a londoner’s bible, and lists every teeny little yard, mews, court and close in the city. london is even more illogically laid out than boston.)

funny, i remember what a big deal it was for me the first time i ventured out without it! and i was just thinking on the bus ride that i finally felt like i was starting to get a grasp on this city.

30th march will be a year I’ve been here (excepting my two months of unwilling exile, which in true “jen logic” i have decided don’t count). the older I get, the faster they go. remember when you were a kid and you couldn’t wait for the year to be over? now i want to stall time, rein it in, and make it slow to a speed where i can appreciate things more fully. you don’t get it back.

yes, the times they are a’ changin’: looks like come may, gay couples will be having full legal marriages in massachusetts. sadly ladies, I am already spoken for, since jo has been trying to get me to marry her for some time now. at least we won’t have to go to canada!

interesting experiment: While sitting in your chair, lift your right foot slightly off the ground and move it in clockwise circles. Now draw the numeral “6″ in the air with your right hand. Your foot will involuntarily reverse direction. like trying to sneeze without closing your eyes – you just can’t *not* do it.

hate those supermarket “loyalty cards”? here’s a place to protest, as well as some interesting insight as to what happens to your personal information. scary. but you already knew that. (thanks, tina)

who knew comic strips could be so deep? “Peanuts” and Sartre’s existentialism. i personally think that’s stretching it a bit though.

the pixies are coming to paris! which hopefully means they’ll also be someplace in london this summer! in paris they’re opening for the RHCP, whom i have officially given up on as major sellouts, but what the hell, i’d still pay to see anthony kiedis in a tube sock.

sidenote: it was ridonculously warm out today 15C (60F!). apparently winter in london is only slightly longer than summer…

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*yawn*…uproar about janet’s boob. hasn’t madonna done this like four or five times already??

*sigh*…“grand theft auto” is unsurprisingly un-p.c.

*duh*…photo i.d.’s don’t spell out “evildoer” on them.

*ho hum*…bush and blair attempt to backpeddle. they’re a regular vaudeville act, those two.

so, unsurprisingly, my shoulders are still extremely sore from rock-climbing (yes, that was 5 days ago). because the last time i did any shoulder exercises, was um, never. pushups done this week: zero. chance of seducing hot rock-climbing instructors by showing off super-toned shoulders: zero. cute new outfits purchased in attempt to distract instructors from my undertoned-shoulder figure flaw: zero. ah, well.

funny shop sign i saw: “Possibly the best kebabs around”. if that’s not hedging your bets, i don’t know what is.

completely unrelated but funny tangent: kids take on classic rock. loser: bob dylan’s “like a rolling stone”. attention span: 15 seconds. quotable: “bums on sticks”.

it’s bad enough i was convinced by certain people who called me a “cell-phone luddite” that I *had* to get a mobile or i would be laughed out of the u.k., but apparently now the phone i do not even use is hopelessly outdated, simplistic and childlike, and i should get one that has an mp3 player, email capability, integrated digital camera, and palm-organizer all in one, else i might as well be living in the dark ages.

that’s soooo not going to happen. (excuse me whilst i go rub my two sticks together…)

lastly: at least it’s not arial 10pt.

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Okay, just a little more gloating…

(photo courtesy of boston.com)

didn’t get to see the million-dollar adverts.
didn’t get to see the shot of janet’s bare boob.
didn’t get to celebrate with the crazy bostonians.
won’t get to go to the victory parade.

still, it’s all good.

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