a few things i’ll never really understand:

the notion that british television is somehow superior to american. i’m here to tell you that it just ain’t so. unless, or course, your idea of “good television” is:

a) hour upon hour dedicated to pre-roman british history/birding/ww2 analysis/cookery

b) show after show doing a “top 100″ list. as in, “top one hundred sexiest television moments” and “top one hundred most shocking television moments” and “top one hundred most dramatic television moments”. do ya think there’s much overlap?!?

c) drama after drama with piss-poor production values. now I know that u.s. television is *overly* slick, overly glossy, etc…. but really, who wants to watch a show that looks like it was shot in super-8 with the next door neighbours as lead actors? and here’s a hint: if you’re on television regularly, you’re probably making reasonably decent money, so for god’s sake, go see a dentist!!! i appreciate that they look like real people as opposed to plastic mannequins, but if i wanted that much oral-hygiene reality, i wouldn’t be sitting in front of a television.

d) bad american sitcoms which only *just reached* the threshold number of episodes required to go into syndication. do you remember a show called “daddio”? neither do i. lucky thing i can catch up all 10 episodes over here!

e) “friends”, “friends”, and more “friends”. now, granted there are 10 years worth of episodes to go through, but when it’s on 4 times a day (i kid you not), you find yourself saying, “didn’t i just see this one last week??” even though I stopped watching “friends” in the u.s. after season 7 or so, over here, i was really excited to see it at first – it was soothingly familiar, funny, and eminently watchable. so it was on while i was getting ready for work in the morning, or making dinner in the evening. but now, it’s almost all that’s ever on. really. 24-7 friends. it’s sickening. and the sight of ross or rachel just makes me want to throw up.

f) randomness. on the off chance that something good *is* on, i can never remember when or where. trying to follow the television scheduling over here takes mensa-level feats of memory. because there is no frikken consistency. shows don’t come on at the hour or half hour. they come on at 10:15, or 7:55, or 3:22. and if you want to watch one thing which doesn’t end until 9:25, whilst the other thing you want to watch starts at 9:10, well then… you’re just shit out of luck.

so, no. british television is not all it’s cracked up to be.

i will also never get used to the british paranoia over electricity. i get cranky about it every year around this time, because of christmas lights. see, despite having twice as much voltage as the u.s., (240 compared to our measly 120), the british are terrified of it. this bizarre fear manifests itself in several ways, such as:

a) no outlets in the bathroom. you cannot plug in a hairdryer anywhere within 10 feet of a tub. there are separate “shaving outlets” in some homes and hotels, but you can tell they’re put there only grudgingly. so instead, the carpet in my bedroom is about three feet thick with shed hair, and lacquered with many layers of hairspray mist. this is infinitely harder to clean than just wiping down a bathroom sink. (unless, of course, you are unlucky enough to have a hideous *carpeted bathroom*, a unfathomable notion which sends chills up my spine, and sends anyone with a germ phobia right over the edge.) but allowing water and electricity in the same room is highly dangerous. as is, apparently, allowing cold and hot water to mingle from the same tap… but that’s another post.

b) every outlet has a separate switch, and many have fuses. that’s right – you have to turn the electrical socket on. there’s only so many times you can turn on the electric kettle (an invention, by the way, which is astounding, in that it completely flouts the aforemention water/electricity ban described above), come back 15 minutes later to find it stone cold because you’ve forgotten to turn on the outlet, before you just want to tear your hair out in frustration at the lengths of unneccesary caution these crazy people go to.

c) every plug has a fuse. the plugs here are gigantic, because they have to accomodate the grounding pin (the third prong which you see on some plugs in the u.s., but which is standard over here), as well as a fuse. Yes, if you open up the plug, there is a miniature glass fuse inside. just in case the socket goes haywire. lest you think i am joking about all of this, please read the “plug and socket safety regulation 1994″

d) which brings us to christmas lights. because light strings in the u.k. do not plug into each other, male to female, the way they do in the states so that you can unobtrusively light your tree in such a manner that the cords are almost invisible. nooooo, not here. here, the strings are closed circuits. so each strand is really a loop which doubles back on itself, ending in the clunky giant plugs I explained prior. so you either have to get 2 0r 3 reallllllly long double-thick strands of lights to cover the whole tree, affix an extension strip to the trunk of the tree to conceal all the plugs, or just let your tree go nekkid.

clearly, adults are not to be trusted with things that *turn on*. my entire life i’ve used electricity, and not electrocuted myself, or burned anything down. obviously, this is due to pure dumb luck.

and lastly, i will never understand the phenomenon that is robbie williams. but maybe i’ll save that one for another day.

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