A New Hope

My second cousin was born earlier today, a healthy 6.5lb boy. No name as of yet. But very exciting, and reminded me that I can never work out how you'd be once removed or how you're a second cousin. Aha, I was mistaken. Apparently, according to this very useful (if still somewhat confusing) article on genealogy.com, the little ball of joy will be my first cousin, once removed, because my grandparents would have been his great-grandparents. There you go. The "removed" bit is to indicate a difference in generation. Second cousins are those with the same great-grandparents. Blimey. Congratulations, anyway, to the happy parents - I now have three once-removed-first-cousins. So the giant family grows some more!

Also good, as it counteracts the news that my cat has lost half her tail. The other new addition to our family is a guinea pig named Darren. As you do.

So here, on that familial theme, is a photo of my gorgeous first cousins. Not removed, just young.

This Week In Short

My endlessly amusing (or, in fact, often incredibly depressing) look at the world around us for the first week in October brings me to the following:

1) Yet another observation that the more titles like "people", "democratic" and "republic" you have in your nation's name, the more likely it is that you have a crazy dictatorship on your hands. Case in point: Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea as the rest of us know it. Am currently reading the Human Rights Commission (now disbanded due to complete inefficacy, particularly on Darfur and Uzbekistan) report from 2001. Report from DPROK only a mere fourteen years late. There is a part of the criminal code which allows for punishment of offences not included in the criminal code - GENIUS!

I AM NOW GOING TO BE CHEERY!

2) Although this is very scary indeed - how much information they have about us... it's crazy.

3) Russians are ingenious.

4) The joke in popbitch today made my day. It's the Bono one, by the way, which hasn't been updated, as of time of publishing.

5) I still feel a sense of pride that my alma mater is a rather good place... but I don't get the American idea that Oxford is better than Cambridge, given that every bloody survey of this thing and rankings for the last umpteen years has stated, rather clearly, that the light side beats the dark side. But the US folks are convinced. Wrong, but convinced.

6) Buy a TOTALLY AWESOME T-shirt!

Break up the sun there's nothing better left

Yes indeed, Days Like This Are Sweet.

The sun is SHINING, and I have tickets to the first game of the National League Championship Series, if the mets makes it!!!!!! So, lads, you'd better do me proud and get there. OR ELSE. WHOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEE.

I've been rumbled, I've been sold

Oh, the joys of nostalgia - finding a ten year old album of wannabe-Smiths-foppish types is available - an album that used to curdle your soul and make you feel the passion, the pain, oh yes. It's hard to be Left-Handed, you know.

I've been listening to very little else other than Sleep Well Tonight, which is cheesy, yes, but my god I loved it. I also loved getting it mixed up, when trying to find it online, with a song of the same title by the guy from Busted's band. Oops.

Which reminds me of a great playlist I put together of songs I, inadvertently, happened to have two versions of on the old itunes - the cover and original (or older cover, in some cases). I know I said I would keep this rubbish for myspace, but, quite frankly, it seems ridiculous to compartmentalize (and using a "z" there because it's a ridiculously American word/theme/idea, my British friends) such important parts of my life i.e. talking about myself (this blog) and my musical passions. My particular favourites are:

1) Night And Day - Fred Astaire/Ella Fitzgerald/Sondre Lerche
2) Billie (or Billy) Jean - Michael Jackson and Shinehead
3) Black Steel [in the Hour of Chaos] - Public Enemy and Tricky
4) Across the Universe - the beatles and Rufus Wainwright
5) I Idolize You - Tina & Ike Turner and Purple Wizard - particularly love the latter as they remove all the very dodgy submissive misogynistic crap that Ike somehow persuaded Tina to sing...
6) Float On - Ben Lee (weedy, it's true, but sweet) and Modest Mouse
7) Bills Bills Bills - Destiny's Child AND the GENIUS Beelzebub
8) Can you count having the sample and the cover? If so, I'm going for Can It All Be So Simple? by the Wu-Tang Clan and Ex-Factor by Lauryn Hill (although of course the Wu-Tang, in turn, sampled Gladys Knight).
9) The Greatest (TM) Cover Version of All Time (1): Heard it Through the Grapevine - Gladys Knight & Marvin Gaye. Yes, indeedy, it wasn't his version first.
10) The Greatest (TM) Cover Version of All Time (2): All Along The Watchtower - Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. As said in the Guardian, genuinely good cover versions are "a form of theft - Jimi Hendrix stole All Along The Watchtower from Bob Dylan and never gave it back".

And the reason for the gloomy, rain-stricken scene of a boat crossing the Panamá Canal is because I am gloomy over my lack of control, still, over my life. Still, that will lift due to both the win of Spurs sinking in, and the start of the MLB post-season, and, of course, because I am going to see the third (formerly first) most-watched movie in the U.S. tonight - embracing the zeitgeist, it's Jackass: Number Two for me. To balance this out, I am reading Nabokov, and then shall read Sebald. Yes indeedy.

When the Grass is Jewelled

Someone somewhere has authorised the weather to get cold. I don't know who, but I'm annoyed about it. But, then, it is now October. It is very strange, however, to realise that all of a sudden I'm going to have to wear outerwear again and socks/slippers indoors until the heating comes on, and even so, then they might be necessary. Coats, scarves, tights, gloves: all will have to come out of hiding. Yikes, I'll have to wash my thermals.

This is the distressing thing about winter in NYC - the knowledge that, basically, once it starts getting cold, that's it until about April. I find the lack of blossom and leaves on the trees until then upsetting, that it's so bleak. Yet, there is something exciting about the preparation: getting the gloves and scarves out, buying winter coats, gloves, a new hat here or there. Plus, what the winter months will bring in order to keep warm - hot apple cider, cherry and cream cheese strudels at Hungarian Pastry, Sunday nights huddling in watching American Football games where the players on the line of scrimmage look like dragons, breathing smoke, hearty soups made from all the root vegetables that we get in our vegetable box... and that joy of the first snow before it turns to dirty slush, and the elation that comes from that sunny, sunny day with the bluest sky in February. M is a huge fan of the change of seasons, and his excitement is infectious, for all my grumbling about the cold. I just wish I had better circulation. I'll have to start eating the raw garlic again.