there’s an american expats forum that i’m a member of. every so often we get people enquiring how about how they can move to the u.k., because they’re so disgusted with the direction america is taking, particularly with regard to civil liberties.

i have to laugh. if only they knew.

today as i was coming home on the train, the police had once again implemented random stop and search at clapham junction station. they do this every few weeks as far as i can tell – force everyone transferring between platforms to show their ticket, then pull aside “random” people to go through metal detectors, and prowl around with drug sniffer dogs. no surprise as well that the majority of the people being forced through the metal detectors are black. reasonable suspicion of, you know, having actually committed a *crime* not necessary, thanks to section 60. me? as a white female, i just sail on through.

oh, and here’s a little tidbit i discovered today. did you know that the audit commission routinely requires local councils to submit personal information about their constituents for “data matching” without individuals’ consent? the data protection act doesn’t apply to them, natch.

and now they’re requiring them to handover all council employees’ bank account details. yep, that would be *my* bank account details. because i might be committing fraud. (never mind that they’re still losing this info left and right.)

some days i really can’t believe i live here voluntarily.

radiohead – karma police

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ugh. currently updating my cv for the canada application preliminaries. because in local government you *cannot* submit a cv with your application, i’ve not bothered to update it for the past three jobs.

go on – you try remembering what the feck you were doing three jobs ago.

consider this a cautionary tale – don’t let this happen to you!

in the same vein, i pass along this morsel of advice i gleaned from a guy i saw on the street today: if you are noticably balding, do not try to pull off a hoxton fin. they’re sooo passé anyway.

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i’m watching the closing ceremonies of the olympics, and the “handover” of the flag and flame to london for the 2012 summer ceremonies.

i wish i could be excited about the prospect. i wish i could say i’d still be here and be proud to be hosting the festivities. watching the olympics live and in person has been one of my lifelong dreams ever since i was a little girl. i should be ecstatic at the opportunity.

however day after day, i am continually astounded by the sheer ineptitude and poor infrastructure of this massive city. when i can’t reliably get to work on time, do errands after 6 pm, or get customer service that even remotely resembles anything like *service*… well i despair of the idea of adding *millions* of tourists to the mix.

i mean, they couldn’t even get the bloody logo right, the budget has ballooned from an initial £2.3 billion to over £9 billion, and the london olympic committee is already downplaying expectations.

whilst i have no doubt that four years from now it will be a sparkling televised affair, i can only breathe a sigh of relief that i won’t have to be subjected to the unmitigated disaster it will make daily life for ordinary londoners.

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as many grave concerns as i have about sharing my own personal information with officials, i have absolutely none when it comes to my cat.

zeke is officially on the matrix.

this is how he consoles himself after the indignity of being poked, prodded, vaccinated and microchipped – by incessantly licking the space where his jumblies used to be.

foo fighters – the one

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i recently caught up with some old friends on facebook. they’re friends from back in a time when we were living 5 to a flat (8 with significant others) in brooklyn, new york. early twenties, finishing university, working, partying, creating art, paying bills, owning pets, getting married. we we so certain that we had arrived as adults. no one could tell us any different.

we drifted, as young friends do. life takes you down divergent paths and you wind up places you never could have expected – as much as folk try to warn you that *you too* are fallible, you never believe it will happen to you. there is a certainty and hardheadedness that comes with that age, a kind of protective bravado that sweeps you along in its inexorable current.

inevitably, of course, things change. relationships crumble. you make costly mistakes borne of inexperience. jobs dead-end, distances grow and friendships fade. if your early twenties are all about bravado, your mid-twenties are about learning the painful lessons that come when the shield of invincibility falls away.

and here we find ourselves now, more than ten years since last speaking. most settled, with ties to homes and families and careers. solidly mid-thirties and heading upward – a little thicker in the middle, a lot more staid. it’s humbling to see just how human we all turned out to be, how very ordinary. in those heady years, we passionately believed we would be the ones to set the world on fire. bright, young and blazing – how could we not?

but for all the days that have passed since then, as much we’ve left behind, i can’t help but feel we’ve gained more than we lost. for along with the extra padding on our bones, we’ve gained experience, and with the healthy sprinkling of grey hairs, comes stability and perspective. our certainty is that of wisdom, our settling that of maturity. looking back, i think we’re all much happier now than we could have ever hoped to be back then.

our younger selves would have derided the us of today, would have sneered at this post.

but what the hell did they know anyway?

peter bjorn and john – young folks

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every once in a while, you just need to wallow. since i’m missing home, here’s a playlist of homesick blues. they’re beautiful songs, but not particularly cheery – you’ve been warned.

Bon Iver – Blindsided
The Good Life – You Don’t Feel Like Home to Me
The Weakerthans – Left and Leaving
The Morning Benders – Mother and Child Reunion (P. Simon cover)
Feist – How My Heart Behaves
Wilco – How to Fight Loneliness
Regina Spektor – Somedays

MP3 playlist (M3U)

and here’s the feed for downloads.

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only 10 of the 10,500 atheletes competing in the olympics are openly gay. only one of those ten is a man.

considering that research statistics say that anywhere from 500 – 1000 of them are likely to be gay, that’s a sad indicator of how tolerant we judge our society to *really* be. pretty piss poor if you ask me.

compare that with the even worse statistics to be found in professional sports, where out of thousands there have been only the smallest handful… and certainly no big male names, certainly not while still competing at their peak.

as much as i love sports, i find it disheartening that at all levels, it’s one of the domains where people feel least free to be themselves for fear of discrimination or harassment.

a solemn reminder that for all the gains made so far, there is still so far to go.

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it always kicks in about this time of year, like clockwork. triggered by cooler mornings and shortening evenings – perhaps a little earlier this year as the summer has come crashing to a wet and chilly end – my stomach fills with longing for my new england autumn. *my* new england autumn – it is embedded in my bones and sinew, as much a part of my dna as my brown eyes. that ache rises within me like a swelling tide, in rhythm with the wax and wane of the harvest moon. it pulls on me, tugs on the ties of my heart that cross the ocean like long distance telephone wires, anchoring deep in chilled beach dunes and jewel-coloured woods. anchoring in the smell of crisp leaves underfoot and bonfire smoke. anchoring in the deep golden sunlight playing off the water. those visceral sense memories… i close my eyes and the waves of yearning for home wash over me, saturate me, and i spill over.

regina spektor – the call

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someone turned me on to this website today, and i haven’t stopped laughing since:

cake wrecks.

grossly inappropriate cake themes? check.
misspellings and wildly random quotation marks? check.
haphazard use of icing and airbrushes? check.

here’s a teaser:

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we’re watching this (at 8:33) high bar routine from a japanese gymnast.

my mouth drops open, agog at the amazing feats of mid-air acrobatics.

me: wow…..wow…*wow*!!! did you see that?!?

jonno: i can do that.

me: (dripping sarcasm) reeeeeally.

jonno: (earnestly) oh yes! i just decided to let other people have a chance this year.

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more on how reprehensibly the victims of rape in the u.k. are treated:

apparently rape victims who were drinking when they were violated don’t deserve as much compensation as sober rape victims. twenty five percent less, in fact. by that logic, i wonder if that same judge would agree that rape perpetrators who were drinking don’t deserve as much jail time? should they get 25% off their sentence? it’s a shameful farce that even when a rape victim manages to successfully prosecute her rapist (a shockingly rare occurrence in these parts), she’s still somehow blamed and shamed for being a victim of violence. it’s a nauseating mentality that makes only-too-clear how prejudiced the judicial system is on this crime.

and for men, rape is a matter worthy of ridicule. as the rag the “daily mail” reports it, a man being kidnapped and raped is just part of a “saucy” and “titillating” tale. saying things such as:

Fearing he would be kept prisoner for weeks (later there would be a body of male opinion which felt pangs of severe jealousy at his plight)…

they clearly imply that sexual abuse isn’t *really* abuse, because, hey – what man doesn’t love sex (forced or not)? never mind he was held against his will at gunpoint… he must’ve enjoyed it.

time and time again, stories like these demonstrate how rape victims are dismissed and demeaned in this country. rape is just not taken seriously. it’s truly shameful, and until this mentality is addressed, victims of rape will continue to find themselves abused not once, but twice over.

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today has been one of those days when i just want to be anywhere but here. that itch – that incipient compulsion to *change* that cannot and will not be ignored – has begun to crawl beneath the skin. at a certain point, once the idea of change has gained purchase and taken root, it only becomes more and more insistent – twitching at the edges of consciousness, presenting its shimmering mirage of alternatives every time frustration and annoyance arise. “this is what *could* be, if only…” and in comparison to the dream, everyday reality becomes even more disappointing, becoming a looping cycle which only amplifies itself, like feedback from a microphone. until finally, you have to just yank the plug.

the dream is never as dreamy as imagined, of course. but try telling that to the heartsick and weary soul looking for escape. i live in one of the biggest, most vibrant capitals in the world. yet every day, i feel myself retreating from this city – mentally and physically. more and more often, I find myself happy only when curled up at home, with my husband, in our cozy flat, with our cozy cat. and that’s fine every once in a while – but it’s no way to live.

for a long time now, i’ve held the practical plans of our projected move at bay, content merely to know that it was going to happen at some unspecified point in the future. no longer. j has enrolled us in french classes, our savings is slowly growing, the cat has an appointment for a microchip, and i’m ready to do whatever is necessary to bring this about as soon as possible.

some internal tipping point has been reached. let’s get this show on the road.

frisbie – let’s get started

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i’m a champion of the underdog.

i’m not quite sure how or why this came to be, but it’s indisputably true. it’s part of my fibre. if there’s a no-hope candidate, i’ll vote for it. if there’s a lame horse, i’ll bet on it. if there’s a sure-fire losing proposition, i’ll back it all the way.

i was thinking about this at work the other day. i’ve recently changed jobs, from a chronically underfunded, overburdened inner city one, to a full-coffers, white upper class, leafy suburban one. as part of my new starter intro, i had to attend a corporate induction, where they paraded in a few veeps to talk about the corporate “profile”. and when they started talking about how little grant money they get from central government, i could barely hold back a guffaw. when they started talking about “pockets of deprivation”, i nearly laughed out loud.

and i realised that the reason i have a hard time taking such hardship claims seriously is because i identify so strongly with the underdog. organisations trying to achieve so much more, with so much less. teams who have to surmount huge obstacles just to get on the same playing field as everyone else. people who face the kind of daily challenges most of us never encounter. they’re the ones i always gravitate towards and ally myself with. perhaps it comes from a childhood where i was always the last selected for the side, always the quiet overlooked one, always the one left out, left behind. after all – there’s no one else who knows better how it feels to be lonely in a sea of people, than someone who’s been there.

it’s a theme that permeates all areas of my life – from the political causes i identify with, to the sports teams i support. i’ve invested years of emotions rooting for a baseball team that was synonymous with “runner up”. when i went to the animal shelter, it was only the dog with the bum leg and medical problems that i wanted. i drifted into a career in a field working for some of the most ignored and devalued members of our society. there’s no coincidence there.

so it should come as no surprise that the olympics play upon my bleeding heart tendencies. i vividly remember the performances of Eric Moussambani, the jamaican bobsled team, and even “eddie the eagle”. if there’s an athelete who hasn’t a prayer of winning, but has the courage and spirit to show up anyway, you can bet i’m behind them.

and so it was yesterday, when jonno and i found ourselves watching the lowly ranked kerry lee harrington from south africa, against the number 8th ranked badminton player in the world. it was one of the first qualifying rounds – inconsequential, really. the result was a foregone conclusion, 21-4 21-4. but somewhere in there was a 41 second rally – a stretch where ms. harrington ran down every shuttlecock in every corner, returned every shot her opponent threw at her, and left it all out there on the court. we were on the edge of our seats, willing her to win at least this one hard-fought point.

she lost it, of course.

but for a brief moment, it almost seemed like the force of our wishing could make it so.

that’s the love of the underdog. siding with the let down and left out. taking on the unpromising odds and seeing them through. celebrating the small personal triumphs in the face of overwhelming defeat. and sometimes, wishing for the impossible.

i don’t think i’d trade it for all the gold medals in the world.

spoon – the underdog

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what a lovely way to start the day! get-well parcels from my sis and friend bethany in the post this morning! i feel better already.

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oh, olympics! how i love thee!!

the spectacle and human drama never fail to entrance me completely. i’m watching the recap of the opening ceremonies (which i missed while at work), and getting goosepimples. it just moves me so deeply.

i said before:

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.

oh, the seven atheletes from iraq just came on! to think of what they’ve had to overcome to participate here… there i go welling up again.

see, it’s that stuff that gets me right behind the leaky eyes. that’s what it’s all about.

bring on the games!

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thanks so much stacey and kim!

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so my “routine” surgery turned out to be a little less than routine.

the surgery itself went fine friday morning, and all the doctors and nurses were really nice and very attentive and kind. unfortunately i had some really, really bad pain directly afterward. generally, i have a high pain threshold – but this was really bad, and involved moaning and crying. so bad that they considered admitting me. they gave me tons of morphine and it eventually subsided enough for me to go home… but not before the morphine made me puke all over the floor, bare-assed in front of all the other post-op patients. (i was still attached to the bed and machines, and there wasn’t any sort of container nearby, so i tried in deperation to get to the sink…embarassingly at the expense of any modesty.)

as this was a laparoscopic surgery, my stomach was rather sore and very bloated from the carbon dioxide they use, but i was able to get home and relax on the couch. uncomfortable, but otherwise fine.

unfortunately one of the lovely side effects of all that morphine was what they call “urinary retention”. in other words, i couldn’t pee… for more than 24 hours.

thus all saturday afternoon was spent at a & e, and involved humiliating rubber tubing.

all cleared up and sent home again to try to rest and recuperate.

sunday morning i woke up in the worst pain of my life. i seriously thought I might pass out from the pain. i was crawling on my hands and knees, sweating profusely, and crying.

as much as i hate the idea, must call an ambulance.

ambulance rings back. they’re going to be about an hour and suggest i take a taxi instead. i agree, so they cancel the ambulance.

i take several painkillers to see if I can work up the ability to stand and take a taxi, because at this point, i’m doubled up on the sofa unable to move.

as the painkillers kick in, i manage to fall asleep on the couch for about a half hour. i wake up and try to get up – *sweet jesus*, that’s not happening. i’m shaking and sweating and involuntarily screaming.

call ambulance again. they still have several “priority” calls. i take more painkillers. lay down on couch.

wait another hour. in meantime, i foolishly try to put clothes on… bad idea. unbearable. poor j is there completely unable to help, watching his wife scream on the floor. i take more painkillers. nothing makes it better – i feel completely out of control and terrified.

ambulance finally arrives. i can’t stand up, and am taken out by chair. in the tiny lift, where i have visions of getting trapped with the most horrific, searing pain of my life. they give me gas and air which is worse than useless, and only gives me the worst cottonmouth ever. every bump makes me scream, and they keep telling me to suck on the gas and air. my mouth is stuck together, and i’m hyperventilating because i feel like i can’t breathe. the blood pressure cuff keeps inflating and making my arm go numb. i’m trembling so much that they try to put a blanket over me, but i’m insanely hot. we have to take the long route and still get stuck in traffic – eventually my desperate moans convince them to turn the sirens on. we live less than a mile from the hospital, but that was the longest mile in the world. on a pain scale of 1 – 10, that ambulance ride was a 10, and i literally thought i might die.

i am brought screaming into the a & e, saying, “please help me, please help me, please help me.” the a & e people are soooo nice. my blood pressure is extremely low, my heart rate way up, and i really think i’m going to die.

hallelujah, they give me some painkillers that work, and i start to relax my deathgrip on the bedrails. a few minutes later and i can uncurl from the foetal position. for the first time in five hours, i begin to think i just might survive.

they’re all very concerned, so they do blood tests and xrays and decide it’s just a bad infection. after several hours, more drugs of various sorts, i’m feeling about 1000 times better, so i’m sent home with antibiotics and painkillers.

i can walk, i can breathe, i can even take the tube home. i feel like dancing.

life, as it turns out, is pretty good.

and thank god for the NHS. huge drawback: having to wait an hour for an ambulance in excruciating pain.

but every single person was incredibly professional and attentive and genuinely concerned. the hospital was clean, people were efficient – the nurses who heard me come in screaming even came back to check on me. and they didn’t even charge me for the prescriptions because as they said, “you have enough to worry about right now.”

i was truly thankful that (once i got there) i got great care, and was feeling much better quite soon.

goldfrapp – a&e

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