valentine’s day has been co-opted by the greeting card companies for schmaltz and profit. so i urge you to celebrate something meaningful this day instead. recognise v-day – until violence against women worldwide is a thing of the past. donate, volunteer, promote. give of your heart.
for all the women you know and love. and for all those you don’t.
v-day, domestic violence All these months later after katrina, I still can’t talk about it without intense rage. but I will repeat what I said before:
because of *him*. he had the personal power to save them. he’s finally decided to rescue the last survivors in a great show of bravado. like magic, troops and food and water and boats and helicopters have appeared en masse.
i wonder how i would feel if my survival came down to praying to george w. bush for help?
i hold him personally responsible for every single one of those deaths. every baby that died of dehydration. every man woman and child who died hoping the president would save them.
…those americans died on his doorstep, on his watch, on his say-so
but it turns out my scathing indictment wasn’t so far off, according to the congressional report being released:
(emphasis mine)
katrina, congressional report …shit that makes my bloodpressure soar.
The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity….It is the federal government’s latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens’ privacy…Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). ..ADVISE involves data-mining – or “dataveillance,” as some call it…
advise, government surveillance, data mining the rare weekend where I actually *did* something more than sit around noodling on the computer. my work friend had her 30th birthday party on saturday – drinks and a big dinner at a nice pub in greenwich. but it was also one of the rare occasions where i was completely surrounded by brits i didn’t know. i was a bit nervous, since it was quite a large group, and the only person I knew was alison – but i’d completely forgotten that the novelty of being an american in an unknown group is a bit like being a walking conversation piece. it’s been so long since i was in an social situation where i was the foreigner, since most of my friends here are expats, that i’ve forgotten just how the topic of discussion always seems to revolve around the interrogation of the american: “how long have you been here? why’d you come over? where in the states are you from? what do you think of london?”
and the people i met were all perfectly lovely (and suprisingly pro-american) but it was a bit of a shock to the system. it made me realise how i’ve inadvertently insulated myself in a non-british bubble of my own making. not through lack of trying, since god knows, I really have put myself out there to try to meet new people. i took all sorts of classes, went out by myself, and generally tried to make friends any way i could. but somehow it’s never really borne any fruit. the brits, while very nice, seem to be somewhat wary of the newcomer.
whereas all my expat friends and i automatically have a commonality. we can talk easily about what we find love/hate about living here without worrying about accidentally insulting someone’s country or culture. more often than not, we all use the same lingo, and have similar experiences. conversation isn’t stilted because you have to interrupt a story to explain the background (such as people felt the need to do last night about the school system, television programmes, etc.) it’s just *easier*.
and it makes me feel a little sad – i know i’m not getting the most from this experience because i don’t know what it’s really like to live amongst brits. outside of work, i live amongst south-africans and other americans. not by choice, but by default. it’s easy to see now, why immigrants from other countries form little communities, cultural pockets. when you’re never fully accepted as just one of the group, no matter how long you’ve been here, it’s almost instinctive that you would gravitate towards others who immediately recognise you as one of their kind.
i don’t want to feel “cut-off” from the people around me. i like britain and brits in general, and have tried hard to make myself open to learning about them and accepting their culture. now if only they would do the same.
something has been bothering me for a few weeks, and as i was reading the news about the endangered polar bears this morning, it occurred to me that what’s been niggling at the back of my brain is my puzzlement over the seeming about face by the bush administration on america’s oil dependence. george’s recent declaration during the state of the union address, that america is “addicted to oil” was particularly perplexing if you consider his political stake in perpetuating petroleum consumption – common sense says you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and bush has long played patsy to the lobbyists of the industry. not to mention the potential implications if the more controversial allegation that bush was in bed with the saudis, (who were, in turn, supporting bin laden, who then carried out the september 11th attacks over oil negotiations), is true.
i can only presume that since heretofore he’s only encouraged furthering oil consumption through supporting suv tax breaks and drilling in alaska, (and implicitly supported those industries already dependent on petroleum through his refusal to sign up to the kyoto protocol, as well as watering down official climate research results), that the sudden 180 is not inspired by any sort of sudden revelation or change of heart. the thing that confuses me is what the political motivation behind the curtain is.
bush has called for investment in alternative energy sources as a way to break our dependence on the middle east. yet only days later it emerged that the national renewable energy lab faced a $28 million shortfall due to budget cuts. he said we had to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy”. yet only days later has tripled the estimated profits that ANWR drilling would contribute to the gdp. the contradictory signals are coming fast and furious, and none of it makes sense.
none of it makes sense, that is, until you consider that the element which is missing in the equation above is “conservation”. because conservation would require people to use less and recycle more, and that spells bad news for an economy designed to be driven by consumer spending. And conservation is the one thing which bush has continually failed to call for. he’s never suggested we drive smaller cars, or make less plastic. he’s never suggested that our resources are finite, and that the environmental benefit might be a reason to wean ourselves from gas and oil. even the california electricity crisis, (a wakeup call if ever there was one, with the spectre of a country-sized state cast into darkness), was used as a call to find more fuel, not use fewer televisions.
and somehow it all now sickly makes sense. bush has no intention of saving the world – his motivation is to save his ass with those voters who blame him for spiraling energy prices and our inability to flex more muscle in the middle east. it’s another self-serving initiative which will fail spectacularly due to the inability to grasp the global implications of petroleum politics. and the fact is that no matter how many cars switch to ethanol, or houses heat by solar…as long as we continue to consume (and are encouraged to do so) at the current rate, we will always be beholden to whoever holds the most land/oil/water…
when the trickle from the tap is as precious as gold, it will all be too late. the only question is whether bush has any real interest during the rest of his term in helping to head us in the right direction before we arrive at that dead end.
bush, oil, fuel, anwr, drilling, alaska, economy, state of the union address … otherwise, how do you explain the fact that I married a man who doesn’t like opera??!
i *love* the olympics. lovelovelove the olympics.
i love the pomp and circumstance. i love the cheesy opening ceremonies. i love the goofy sports that no one watches, like curling and biathalon. i love the underdogs. i love the stories of personal trial and triumph. it just stirs me.
i remember the los angeles olympics and mary lou retton’s perfect 10 vault (when I was still in gymnastics myself), and i think that’s what hooked me. i remember greg louganis smashing his head open on the diving board and coming back to win. i remember watching carl lewis and michael johnson. i remember kerry strug being carried out by bela karolyi. i remember dan jansen trying to skate the evening of his sister’s death. i remember michele kwan’s stunning loss, and the nancy and tonya drama. i remember zola budd and mary decker. eddie “the eagle” ski jumping, and the jamaican bobsled team. flo-jo. the u.s. women’s soccer win. derek redmond, who fell during his race and whose dad came out of the stands to help him walk to the finish. the american swim team beating the aussies in the relay. muhammed ali lighting the torch.
i know – i’m cheesy and schmaltzy and soppily sentimental. but i love them. i have been known to call in sick to work to stay home and watch them. getting to see them in person is on my list of things to do before i die. it absolutely thrilled me when they put the winter and summer games on opposite years, because i no longer had to wait so long between events. i get more choked up at the olympic theme song than i do at my national anthem. i’ve been moved to tears and profoundly proud within the same event.
i love it so much, not only because i love sports and drama, but because for me it’s a symbol of everything i still believe in about this world. what i choose to believe, in spite of scandal and war and grave injustice. namely this: that you can strive mightly for something good in the face of all obstacles, and achieve your pinnacle moment of self-realisation, your personal triumph that makes all the sacrifice and blood/sweat/tears worthwhile. and you do it not for riches or fame, but because you want to prove to yourself that you can. to my mind, there is nothing purer than that.
and now, i’m off to watch the opening ceremonies… let the games begin!
olympics, torino, winter games titillating tidbits for the end of the week…
ladies: since valentine’s day is basically all about us, here’s an occasion to show your man just how much he means to you! 14th march is steak and blowjob day! (thanks for the link, s!) then again, do you really need a reason for steak and blowjobs? hell, it could be “jellied eel and blowjobs day”… it would still be every man’s number one favourite holiday.
free robot sex is always appreciated.
finally, this is thekind of quality journalism exemplified by “the sun”: lesbian lovers licking in loo. because that’s news.
sex, march 14th, steak and bj day one thing i’m definitely looking forward to when we get back is getting our own place.
i’m 33, and i’ve spent the majority of my adult life sharing apartments with other people.
my first setup was the all girls dormitory at mcgill university. the building was pretty big for a dorm, and i lived in the “new wing”, which meant i was lucky enough to have my own room, but unlucky enough to live in what was essentially a small walk-in closet. desk, cupboards and bed were all built into a space approximately 8 feet wide and 10 feet long. i enjoyed the privacy, but the environment didn’t do much for the major depression i went through.
after my first year, i moved into a flat with my friend elisabeth. it was a peculiar little setup, with one large bedroom, one small, and a living room just long enough to fit a couch. it wasn’t a bad starter pad, all in all, and it helped that my flatmate spent most of her nights at her boyfriend’s place. of course, that also meant that her dirty dishes piled up until they began to mold. and trying to fit three people in to watch television (my 4″x4″ black and white telly which got exactly 2 english channels) when he came to visit was practically impossible. also, it was on the first floor an my bedroom window looked right out onto the alley, which meant i was woken up by the garbage trucks going up and down in the mornings. still, i felt really grown up because we had a subscription to the montreal “gazette”, and grocery shopping for myself was such a novelty. at the end of the school year, we decided to get another place, and signed a new lease together. unfortunately, over the summer i decided to drop out of school and move to new york, irreparably severing my friendship with elizabeth by leaving her in the flatmate lurch. bad jen, i know – but i was young and stupid and in love.
my next flat was a place in new york city where i moved to live with my fiancee and new british best friend. i found us a place in a quasi-dodgy area of town, which was cheap, newly done up, and had a skylight. we were on the fourth floor, and had access to the roof (only discovering the stairs *after* some scary clambering up the rusted fire escape). the skylight leaked, the fiancee was chronically depressed and unemployed, and we were constantly broker than broke – paying for groceries and cigarettes with subway tokens at the local bodega. our entertainment on friday nights was getting stupid with a 40 oz. of malt liquor and a nickle bag of weed up on the roof, looking out over the east river at the manhattan skyline. my friend shelley and i worked long minimum wage hours at domiciliary care, and we had no furniture save a doubled over mattress serving as a couch. we invented games around who could find the cheapest macaroni and cheese at the ghetto supermarket. we were poor. but hell, we had so much fun, we didn’t care at all.
after that lease ended, we moved to a more upscale neighbourhood, to a much bigger flat. but to afford it, we had to bring in more flatmates. four bedrooms meant that at one point in time, I was living with 7 other flatmates. we called our place “the real world” apartment, and there were constantly vodka parties taking place in our living room. we *still* had no furniture, but we spent hours doing “the bus stop” to old diana ross albums and gallon jugs of cheap white wine. the finacee was still unemployed and depressed, and i was working 50 hour weeks at a home for troubled teenagers, whilst going to n.y.u. full time. so while everyone else was having a never-ending party, i was hiding in my bedroom trying to bang out 10 page papers at all hours of the morning. not to mention that the walls were so thin that at any given point, I could hear three other couples having sex… while the fiancee and i were having *none*. bills never got paid, and the phone was continually getting cut off. i ended up getting one of the first generation of cell phones, that I locked so no one else would run up the account. but we had some amazing, zany experiences – like the time we all decided to make homemade candles, or the fact there was a fur men’s thongs on the sofa, a replica of a pierced nipple stuck on the wall, and a freezer well-stocked with good russian vodka. it was wild fun and hell, all at the same time.
after a year of the party house, the fiancee and i finally moved into our own place. it was an ideal neighbourhood, with all the conveniences directly outside our front door (chinese, bagles, coffee shop, pizza, post office, movie theatre, bakery, subway station, and 24 hour corner store – all within a two block radius), gorgeous prospect park across the street, and (the holy grail of new york apartments) rent stabilised. In the four years we lived there, our rent increased by $20 every year. it was tiny – we learned to store everything *vertically*, and our kitchen was so small that sitting in the middle, i could open both the oven and the fridge on opposite sides. but it had unbelievable amounts of character. we painted the walls with murals and did the tin ceiling with stars. it had a bedroom with (the second holy grail of nyc apartments) closet space. we added a dog and a bird to the two cats, completing our menagerie. we had great landlords, and wonderful neighbours. we had a roof to hold summer parties on, and left our door open at all times. it was an incredible little community, and i have never felt so at home anyplace as the idyllic four years i spent at that apartment. too bad the (now) husband was still unemployed and depressed…
… and so we moved to boston.
where we had what became our first real “house”. it was the first floor of a two-family house, with two bedrooms, giant living room, foyer, a separate dining room with built in china closet, a large kitchen with dishwasher and pantry, front and back porch, back yard with garden, and space galore. I loved that house – i became a regular fixture at the hardware store for diy projects. i grew vegetables and barbecued. i mowed and weeded. i oiled the woodwork and re-installed the original french doors. we had a car, and a washing machine, and a canoe. i *loved* that house. the upstairs neighbours were friendly. i shoveled the walk and took out the rubbish bins. i was domestic happy homemaker.
then i got divorced, got a new roommate (who was fine, but seemed to think the bathroom was self-cleaning), hellish new upstairs neighbours… and the shine quickly came off the place.
so i moved to london. i gave away the blenders and couches and all the accoutrements i’d manage to accumulate over the years. i wept as i threw out the cappucino machine. i put all my clothing in two large suitcases, and moved into a cute little flat with a woman i hardly knew. she was great – really sweet and nice – but her taste in men sucked. i didn’t know anyone, so i never went anywhere. i spent days holed up in my room, smoking out the window and listening to music. which wouldn’t have been so bad except that eventually her boyfriend was practically living with us… and the too-small flat became absolutely tiny. i got tired of hiding in my room listening to them fight or have sex in the bathroom or both. i owned nothing. i felt like a prisoner.
then along came j. and within 4 weeks, he’d asked me to move in with him. into a huge two bedroom flat, situated directly above a car dealership (!) it was all windows and light, with a two balconies and two bathrooms. it was kitted out in “bachelor minimalism”, with a community of friends parked directly next door, and i came with almost no baggage. our first flatmate was a – a dim witted girl with a penchant for ruining stuff thoughtlessly. cigarette burns in the couch, pint glasses used for paint brushes, etc. she also had a particular knack for inviting her sketchy friends around for drinks just after j and i had scoured the house. she seemed to think that being home infrequently meant she didn’t have to clean anything more than her dirty dishes, but she paid her bills on time, and had a large beanbag that was perfect for some impromptu saturday afternoon delight in the living room.
this would soon prove to be a huge advantage (the paying bills, not the beanbag!), for our next flatmate (another a) has become what we call “the lord of the manor”. a little background: we considered just keeping the flat to ourselves, but realised that would mean saving an extra £3000 for our trip. meanwhile our neighbour had a bandmate who was looking for a place, and all seem to fall into place. our new flatmate, A, *used* to have a full time job, until he got sacked for calling in sick a few too many tines. a called in sick because he was hung over nearly every morning. a has slept in doorways on the street when he considered getting home too great an effort. a lost his job a full 5 months ago now, and has been living on money his parents sent him. a is 30-something years old, and can’t manage to get out of bed before afternoon to find a job. a recently applied for benefits because he can’t be bothered to seek out gainful employment. a has his breakfast around 4pm, dinner around 2am (invariably fish, which stinks up the house in the middle of the night), stays up until 6am, then heads to sleep just before we awake. a has, to my knowledge, not gone on a single job interview since his unfortunate (but not altogether unpredictable) sacking. a seem to have forgotten that the first rule of job-searching includes getting out of bed before noon. a is a full grown adult who seems to think he should claim the dole because he’s too lazy to get a job and who may be going home to south africa because he’s unable to get it together enough to secure a steady paycheque. a sleeps all day, watches telly all night, gets spaghetti sauce everywhere (and i mean *everywhere*), has cleaned the bathroom exactly once since may, and is an all around lazy loser. every evening when we come home, we ask what the “Lord of the manor” has been doing. more often than not, neither of us has seen hide nor hair of him. difficult to find work when you’re holed up in your bedroom all day!
it will be fabulous to have our own place.
a friend of mine has begun the process of buying a house. and she’s been feeling down because she’s been waiting for this for a long time, but none of the houses they can afford at the moment are the kind of house that feels like “home” to her. and i can completely identify with that, because i know that when the time comes, i’ll be the same way.
and i fell into the trap of cheerleading for her, trying to say things to make her feel better about the sucky choice she has to make, the decision to settle. trying to make her feel better about giving up on her dream. trying to smooth the path to downsizing her expectations.
of course you feel you *have* to say those things. because we all know as adults that you *can’t* always get what you want, and that sometimes you have to do a mindshift when the reality doesn’t match up to the dream, because otherwise we’d spend our lives miserably pining for things we can never have.
but would we? i begin to think about all the times i’ve given up on my high hopes of what i wanted, and instead consciously decided to be happy for the best i thought could get. what would have happened if i’d held out for nothing less than the ideal? we all convince ourselves that we have to be pragmatic and reasonable, and that sometimes we have to adjust our expectations because that’s what you do to live in the “real” world. but what if, what if, we were brave enough to keep our eye on the prize? what if second-best is really a test? what if it’s the universe’s way of syaing that those who would allow themselves to be placated with the runner-up don’t deserve anything better? what if everything you wanted was just around the corner but you always quit before you got there?
i don’t know. i think it’s impossible to know. and perhaps, ultimately that’s the difference between the idealists and the realists. i used to think myself squarely in the first camp, but as I get older i find myself visiting the second more and more. is that a function of age or cynicism? or do the two automatically go hand in hand? and sure, as the DL* says, “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck”. I’ve personally experienced that many times. the difficulty is that it’s impossible to know the future, and who the hell wants to be on the side that encourages someone towards inevitable heartbreak?
part of me wants to tell my friend, “don’t do it – don’t buy any house you don’t absolutely love because you and your family deserve nothing less.” and part of me thinks that’s a completely untenable position to take, and only a fool would encourage that kind of thinking about something as real and concrete as buying a house. which would be doing her the greater disservice? but i can feel her bitter disappointment, and as a friend i just want to say the thing that will make her feel better.
i just wish i knew what that was.
___________________
* Dalai Lama – though it’s one of those internet attributions, so really, who knows?
If you listen to podcasts (or even if you don’t), this week’s “newsweek on air” has some excellent insight into the Hamas election, the iranian nuclear situation, and more. A worthwhile listen.
the best article I’ve read so far on the context of the muslim cartoon controversy:
Muslims rage at affronts to their faith because the modern world puts their faith at risk, precisely as modern Islamists contend. [3] That is not a Muslim problem as such, for all faith is challenged as traditional society gives ground to globalization. But Muslim countries, whose traditional life shows a literacy rate of only 60%, face a century of religious deracination. Christianity and Judaism barely have adapted to the modern world; the Islamists believe with good reason that Islam cannot co-exist with modernism and propose to shut it out altogether.
this to my mind explains why so much of the reaction seems to be a lashing out in fear. Fear of losing control in the face of an information age. Fear of losing ground. Fear of the erosion of faith through widespread exposure to the secular world. Fear of social constructs collapsing.
These seem to me to be the desperate measures of desperate people trying to stop the march of the inevitable.
muslim cartoon controversy this is why the "inciting racial hatred" laws in this country are such bullshit – i’ve been watching a series on chinese immigrants to this country, and this particular episode focuses on three takeaway owners.
their shops are continually vandalised – locks broken, windows smashed. they have abuse hurled at them day in and day out. the police do nothing in response to their calls. a group of youths came into one shop and *shat* on the floor.
and finally, one poor shopkeeper was beaten to death. his head kicked in by teenage yobs.
laws like this "racial hatred bill" lull us into a false sense of security – they don’t stop the festering endemic of racism and xenophobia. this is not about "having regard to all the circumstances, the words, behaviour or material are (or is) likely to be heard or seen by any person in whom they are (or it is) likely to stir up racial or religious hatred." This is about loathing someone of a different background enough to kill them.
they didn’t walk around with placards, saying they were going to kill him because he was chinese. they didn’t write anti-asian slogans on the wall whille they were breaking his shop windows. they just stomped his brains in because they didn’t like him.
their words didn’t kill him. their boots did. the "racial hatred" laws would have been powerless to save this mans life.
until there’s a law against murder, they can’t stop this from happening.
oh wait – there already is.
racism, uk, chinese, racial hatred laws things i will miss whilst we’re away…
Things I will *not* miss whilst we’re away…
i’m nearly sick to death of discussing the muslim cartoon thing, as i feel i’ve been arguing it all day with some other expats, but it seems i have a few other points to make after all.
there’s been a lot of anger over the protesters in london who are holding up signs calling for beheading, execution, etc., and much of the prevailing opinion is that it is “incitement to murder” and the protesters should have been arrested.
to which I say: Holding up a piece of cardboard is incitement to murder? If I thought I could actually get people to do something that crazy on my behalf, I’d be out there holding up a placard that says “The EuroMillions winner must give me all their money!”
I’m exaggerating, of course. But the outraged public give them too much credit. Someone who’s crazy enough they’re actually going to commit murder certainly doesn’t neet a cardboard sign to “incite” them to do anything. They already have bigger mental problems, and i don’t think anyone seriously believes someone would commit violence on the say-so of a stranger with a sign. the real reason they want them arrested is not that they think it effectively incites murder, but because it *does* effectively incite fear.
the other thing which seems absolutely blatantly obvious, is that *none* of this is over cartoons. the cartoon were published in september, for crying out loud. this is about recognition and fear. a small group of crazies out of *a billion* muslims worldwide manage to gain notoriety, and suddenly everyone is shocked and scared of everyone who’s of middle-eastern descent and abuzz once again over the “fundamentalism islamic agenda”.
Violence, while abhorrent, is hardly unique to Muslims, nor is it part of a religion – it is part of *politics*. Whenever you hear about radical WTO protesters who set shops on fire, or guerilla movements in South America that kidnap people, or the IRA executes someone, no one runs around saying “I’m growing suspicious of Catholicism/Protestantism/etc and its followers.”
People have to stop lumping the entirety of a religion in with the radical politics of a few, because that kind of irrational fear only exacerbates the situation. when people stop distinguishing between the individual zealots and the mass faithful, suddenly people who were not invested in a situation which had nothing to do with them, feel the need to take a stand.
irrational fear is just as harmful as irrational belief, and neither is helping anything to calm down.
protest, fear, london, muslim cartoons Frustration mounting. site working momentarily. no idea what’s happening. please come back again soon.
superbowl sunday in the states. i’m not a fan of either team, but i suppose i’m rooting for the steelers as the underdog. the seahawks strike me as a bit of a wussy team – besides, what the hell is a seahawk?
today makes me miss home, though. Back in the states, I’d be hanging out with family or friends, most likely, having beer and burgers and chips in front of the television, jumping up and down, and just generally enjoying the “holiday” atmosphere. even if my beloved pats are not in it, it’s a cultural thing, and missing out on it feels wierd. for brits it’d be like missing the world cup.
finished watching “long way round”. boy, has that got me excited. if they experienced that much in just 3 months, how fantastic is six months going to be? plus now, i really do want to learn to ride a bike, so that my lifetime experience on a motorcycle is not summed up by the one time i was on one and fell over in the carpark (an embarrassing story in which I broke andy’s first bike. way to impress, jen!) ‘coz that’s just dumb. but in canada, i want to own a bike. (aside – it’s strange that americans call motorcyclists “bikers”, but a “bike” is just a pedal bicycle. here, a “bike” is a motorbike, and a “cyclist” rides a pedal bicycle. peculiar.)
returning to the muslim cartoon furor, I wrote this elsewhere, but it sums up my current feelings, particularly with the recent protests and threats and calls for beheadings:
none of this is new (salman rushdie??), and the media just enjoys adding fuel to the fire, which only riles up the protesters even more. if the media coverage went away, the story would be over tomorrow. i truly believe that. it’s almost as if this is the sort of thing the original publishers were hoping for.
i think even saying ridiculously inflammatory things is okay. i think acting on them is another thing entirely, and any of the violence/arson is to be condemned.
but at the same time, i don’t think your average law-abiding, Muslim should have to disavow stuff they’re not involved with to begin with. that pisses me off.
and that is my hit and run update… hope y’all had a less frustrating weekend than I did!
superbowl, motorcycles, "long way round", muslim cartoons by the time I finish writing this, my site may be down again. i posted via email, but apparently my cronjobs are not running either. any and all webhosting suggestions (or warnings) entertained.
so – to keep myself from checking my non-functional site every three seconds and obsessing while my bloodpressure soared throught the roof, i spent a very entertaining 5 hours watching “long way round”, which i originally bought for a b-day gift for andy, and then “borrowed” (cheeky, i know!) in case you haven’t had reason to see this, it’s all about ewan mcgregor and his best friend undertaking a round-the-world motorcycle journey. it’s really resonating with me as our own trip approaches. the need to just lose your head in experiencing the moments unfolding in front of you, immersion therapy. i think for me, this trip really will be a good bit of therapy. i’ve needed to challenge myself, grapple with the unknown, get a change of scenery to put it all in perspective.
I’ve mentioned this here before, but I was recently discussing it with other expats. I like the UK, and I love the opportunities I have here. And I invested a lot of time, money, and effort to get here on my own terms.
I wanted to live here for a few years. March will be 3 years I’ve been here. I think I’ve adapted well, and I don’t feel homesick. I (finally) have a small group of friends. I’m fairly content.
But: I feel very stateless. Here, I am a square peg which has forced its way into a round hole. I will always be a square peg, even if I have managed to fit. And I can’t go back to live in the US – it’d be like trying to fit a square peg into a triangular hole. I’m not sure I ever fit there to begin with.
So where do I fit? I never realised that by coming here I would change in ways that would make it impossible to go back. I always figured that would be *there* for me.
It’s a bit wierd feeling at times, being rootless. But I think that the upside of it is that I now think there are a lot of places I could be extremely content to live. I think, in a lot of ways, it makes me rather balanced – the fact that I’ve changed, means my happiness is no longer tied quite-so-tightly to something external.
For me, it’s like the idea that one has a soulmate. I don’t think people do – but I think there are lots of people I could love very deeply.
I love my hometown. I love NYC. I have lots of fond memories of other places I have lived. But I’ve “outgrown” them (for lack of a better word). There may be someplace I love passionately again. That place may be Canada. But I’ve adjusted to the idea that if there isn’t, that’s okay.
It *HAS* taken some adjustment. It takes a little mindshift to see it as a positive rather than a negative. You have to go through the feeling of losing that idea of having a place which matches how you feel. You can’t change back to who you were – but then you come to realise you really wouldn’t want to anyway.
If I had to put it in a nutshell, my happiness is now more about *how* I live, than *where* I live. I’m at peace with it, but it’s happened over time – only really in the last year have I embraced it. And now I think to myself, “I could go live in Canada.” “I could go live in South Africa”. It’s freeing.
I don’t think Ewan and Charlie are searching themselves for anything in particular on their trip. But I do think they’re surprised at what they find. I very much want that.
(as an aside, i am developing a complete crush on mr. Mcgregor. i never thought he was particularly attractive, but now that i’m watching him be himself, i am finding his sense of humour so very sexy. mmmm, mmmmm, mmmm. yes. )
expat, travel, long way round Watching some *bullshit* programme on how feminism is dead, has in fact been detrimental to women, and how they “can’t have it all”. The upshot of the argument is that women have tried to become men, and instead have made themselves less happy, less appealing to men, and less able to have children and care for their families. That they end up undermining the institution of marriage and destabilising society by wanting to have it all.
I can’t even begin to tell you how vehemently I disagree with this hurtful and self-sacrificing load of shite. People bemoan the ladette culture and ask if women are really happy behaving like sexually liberal drunks. They ask if they’re happy earning less and working harder at the same jobs. People ask if women who postpone having children are happy to go through fertility treatments and adoption. People ask if mothers who work outside the home are happy given their general exhaustion and stress levels.
These are all the wrong questions.
What they should be asking is: just how would society change if it was *men* caught in the above scenario? Because if there was true equality in salary, opportunity, expectation, responsibility, and choice in today’s society, none of this would be an issue.
Where is the expectation that men take on half the childrearing? Where is the expectation that men sacrifice their careers for the good of their children? Where are the egalitarian salaries so that families can decide what’s best for them, not what makes the most financial sense? Where is the expectation that men stop acting like drunken sluts? Where is the expectation that men make some of the hard choices about going back to work? Where do we get off lauding ourselves as a progressive society because a few elite women have made it to the top, instead of working diligently to change the fact that the women who do get there only do so at great personal cost?
Women’s roles have changed tremendously over the past 50 years. Yet men’s roles have changed hardly at all. So why, on top of everything else are *women* responsible for changing society? Why the hell aren’t we taking men to task for not doing their part?!? Why the hell should women have to downsize their expectations of society? Certainly no one expects men to self-sacrifice like that.
Instead of asking if women are happy with their modern expectations and responsibilties, we should be saying, “Women aren’t happy with their current expectations and responsibilities – now what the fuck are you gonna do about it?”
oh happy happy happy dance! The tix are in the mail! Everything is paid and confirmed!
Work just bites, though. This is a bit of an email conversation I had with a friend recently, but I thought I’d post it here since it so succinctly captures how I am feeling lately:
Work has become insufferable. I was never the most motivated person to begin with, but now, I just resent having to leave the house every morning. I feel like standing up in the middle of my warehouse-like office and shouting, “I don’t give a shit.” Every second I spend there is a second of my life I’ll never get back, and it makes me seethe inside. I hate it with the white-hot burning intensity of a thousand suns.
So I’m wishing for a case of mono right about now – something that will get me out of the next two months of work, yet is not too painful or debilitating, and will help me drop 5 pounds or so. That’s bad: when you start praying for a communicable disease to get you out of work.
what I really want is a deus ex machina.
In the meantime, I am dilly-dallying as best I can, trying very hard not to accomplish anything. It’s getting harder, and even though J told me not to get excited until I officially hand my notice in (in three weeks), I can’t help it. But boy does it make the days drag. And drag some more. The excitement just makes everything else so painfully mundane.
still… hooray! we’re really, totally, officially going! there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
I wasn’t going to weigh in on the anti-muslim cartoon brou-ha-ha, since most people can probably already guess where i stand, but I’ll spell it out anyway.
I believe very strongly in *absolute* freedom of speech. I think the media have a right to say or print whatever they like, and that it *MUST* remain that way if we are ever to preserve a kernel of truth. Once they give in to special interest groups, everything they produce is suspect.
However, that being said, I think that there is plenty of media that *does* pander to the outspoken sector of the Christian public and would never dream of satirising Christ. How is it okay to deliberately poke fun at one religion, when you would *not* poke fun at another? For example, I can quite easily conceive of FOX media satirising Muhammed, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that they would NEVER lampoon Jesus. And while that’s perfectly within their right to do, it doesn’t speak very highly of their ethical stance.
And those papers who won’t reprint the cartoons in question are considered wishy-washy, or too p.c. to show solidarity.
The thing that kills me, is that if it were a cartoon that at was offensive to Christians and they apologised, no one would accuse them of caving to some fundamentalist agenda. Yet it has pout Muslims in an impossible position: if they take offense and speak up to defend their religion, they’re lumped with (potentially terrorist) fundamentalists. And if they don’t say anything, the public continues to think it’s okay to desecrate their beliefs.
(here’s where i go off on a tangent…) The more I think about it, the greater respect I have for the Muslim community I live with. Because in spite of all the terror Christianity has sponsored over the course of history, in spite of all the white-faced crazies like timothy mcveigh and the unabomber and hitler and eta and the ira – in spite of everything horrific anyone white or nominally christian has done, no one has *ever* assumed that because *I* am white and nominally christian, that i might do something terrible. no one has *ever* made me feel like I had to renounce what other white christians have done. yet a small handful of crazy people who happen to be arabic and muslim have caused *all* middle-easterners to be on the defense, all day, every day. they have to continue on with their daily lives constantly playing apologist for muslim terrorists, or face being accused as a sympathiser.
(and this is where i bring it back to the topic at hand…) and on top of all of this, the most sacred symbol of their faith is caricatured, and reprinted in papers around the world, and they’re expected to swallow it and smile. and as the row grows deeper and reactions more extreme (such as the palestinians threatening to kidnap europeans), they risk being tarred with the same brush if they so much as peep in dissent.
it’s no longer about freedom of speech anymore, when a cartoon has become a worldwide symbol of resistance to an extremist islamic regime.
and how ironic then, that that same freedom of speech no longer applies to the people who are the subject of the cartoon itself.
cartoons, muhammed, islam, freedom of speech 
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