exciting, informative, snarky, and very likely fabricated tales of life as an american expat in london

and we’re slow to acknowledge the knots in our laces

by Jen at 8:55 pm on 5.04.2008 | 2 Comments
filed under: mundane mayhem

i’ve taken a few random yoga classes at various points in my life, the last one probably 5 years ago or so. i’ve enjoyed them for all the stretching and breathing stuff, less so for the touchy-feely “connecting with the life force and aligning chakras” stuff. i was looking into classes again recently, but a) they all require travel to get to and b) they’re not particularly cheap.

so i got a video and yoga mat from amazon instead. total cost: £20. location: living room floor. i figured if i really stick with it, then i’ll see about investing the energy and money into classes.

wow. your body can age a *lot* in six years.

where i’ve always been a fairly limber and balanced person, today i was seeing stars and falling over. my wrists hurt. my knees hurt. i was tilting and leaning. i was wheezing and straining. i felt fragile.

i am physically beginning to feel the signs of aging.

it’s not very fun. i don’t think i like it.

someone please make it stop.

dr.dog – heart it races (architecture in helsinki cover)

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the original: architecture in helsinki – heart it races

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friday funny

by Jen at 6:19 pm on 4.04.2008 | 1 Comment
filed under: eclectica

flickr song chart meme

milkshake

too sexy

birdhouse in soul

lady lumps

dick in a box

dont cry argentina

friday im in love

two days to sorry

billie jean

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another fine day, another fine example of gross misogyny in your elected officials

by Jen at 1:48 pm on 3.04.2008 | 4 Comments
filed under: like a fish needs a bicycle, rant and rage

i fear for little girls growing up in a world where someone like this is elected to public office. it makes me deeply, deeply sad that there are sick people like this in positions of power.

A senior BNP leader with a strong chance of winning a seat in the London Assembly next month has written that rape is a “myth” and that “some women are like gongs – they need to be struck regularly.”

The Standard can reveal that Nick Eriksen, the BNP’s London organiser and the second-highest candidate on its list for the Assembly, is the author of “Sir John Bull,” a notorious far-Right blog which has regularly advocated hatred and abuse against women. The disclosure will be a serious blow to the BNP’s hopes of London electoral success.

On 24 August 2005, Mr Eriksen wrote: “I’ve never understood why so many men have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the feminazi myth machine into believing that rape is such a serious crime … Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal.

To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that forcefeeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched.

“The demonisation of rape is all part of the feminazi desire to obtain power and mastery over men. Men who go along with the rape myth are either morons or traitors.”

On 5 November 2005, in an item entitled “Give her a slap!,” Mr Eriksen approvingly quoted Noel Coward as saying: “Some women are like gongs – they need to be struck regularly.” On 8 November, he claimed that “the vast majority of domestic [assaults] are initiated by the woman.” Mr Eriksen also wrote on 24 November 2005 that mothers “should never go out to work” and described career women as “unnatural and vile… it is a strange kind of woman who would want to invest [her] energies into her job rather than into a man.”

Eleven of the 25 Assembly members are elected on a London-wide basis using a form of proportional representation. The BNP is likely to win at least one of these seats, for which it needs around five per cent of the vote, and has strong hopes of winning a second, for which it needs around seven to eight per cent. If the BNP does win two seats, one of them will go to Mr Eriksen and one to London party leader Richard Barnbrook.

Contacted by the Standard last night, Mr Eriksen admitted the blog postings were written by him, but said they were “deliberately provocative” in order to stimulate debate.

“I was trying to make the point that there are two kinds of rape,” he said. “There is stranger rape and there is so-called rape by somebody the woman knows. I was raising an important issue in a provocative way to allow people to make up their own minds.”

Mr Eriksen insisted that he “did not condone violence in any way,” but was “trying to highlight the fact that violence against men is unacceptable.” He said: “It’s typical of the media to distort what the BNP say.”

Mr Eriksen, a former Tory councillor and ex-civil servant at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport who lives in Richmond, says he will not resign. If he and Mr Barnbrook are elected, BNP leader Nick Griffin says the party will be invited on the BBC’s Question Time.

i’ve taken the liberty of linking the appropriate blogposts, for your edification.

luckily he hasn’t had to resign. he’s been sacked.

4 Comments »

my iron fist is turning into tin

by Jen at 8:12 pm on 2.04.2008 | 1 Comment
filed under: rant and rage

the tiny ember of hope i’ve held on to for zimbabwe’s future, shows signs of leaping up inside me and flickering into full light.

it looks like change might be on the way.

i only hope there is also peace.

acorn – brokered heart

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what a fool believes

by Jen at 6:05 pm on 1.04.2008Comments Off
filed under: eclectica

i completely forgot it was april fools’ day until this evening. i sat down and tried to think of a good april fools’ blog post. totally lacking in inspiration, i drew a blank – every idea was either too trite, or unnecessarily cruel.

deep in thought, it suddenly occurred to me, a full 12 hours later, that the news item i saw this morning about flying penguins *probably wasn’t real*.

:: sigh:: never the fooler, always the foolee.

doobie brothers – what a fool believes

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