From What Now?

I probably need to calm down my reaction to people using the redundant and thus wrong "from whence." It's really not the point of that post, and interferes with my enjoyment of the piece.

And yet, my pedantic nature means that I don't really want to do so. And I probably won't.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I just logged onto BBC Radio fivelive to catch a report about the rather thrilling draw - no, not a contradiction in terms - in the third test at Newlands. I heard an excellent report by Michael Vaughn, who is becoming fast the most incisive and interesting commentator TMS now has - bright, perceptive, honest and very likable - I'm really impressed.

And then. Oh, BBC, really? Really? The next piece was about how Gordon Brown survived a leadership coup yesterday, which was fine. And then we descended into utterly offensive bilge as we heard about how women need to train their men and "withhold" things - presumably conjugal relations, was the wink wink nudge nudge behind the "expert's" tone - to stop them throwing their clothes on the floor. This is, apparently, an inherent problem with men because the expert's two sons did it - what more proof do you need? Furthermore, it is "the classic mistake of marriage that women think they can change their men, and men think their women won't change, but do." That's what the fivelive presenter, Peter Allen, stated, and we all laughed and went along with it because women are awful uncompromising nags who mother their husbands and men are little boys who need to be trained and are just naughty scallywags, really.

So I got all angry and annoyed and disgusted at the general hetero-dominance and inherent sexism that demeans men and women by these assumptions... and then I took a breath and laughed. Because I am so utterly grateful that this is not our relationship, this is not TOH and I; at least, I really truly hope it's not.

And then I read Two Gentlemen of Lebowski and all grumpy things were forgotten. This is utterly magic. Sir Donald; thou art out of thy element.

Tott(er)ing It Up

• Hours spent asleep out of last 48: 8
• Average count of despairing plunges of head into hands/onto desk: 1 per 20 minutes
• Pairs of tights ruined by being unable to put them on without laddering/ripping them: 3.
• Coffees drunk: 6 (am not yet onto double espresso shots but am, for the first time in my life, considering them) plus four cups of Yorkshire tea.
  
• Drop in temperature between Las Vegas and NYC: 40F, more or less (about 22C)
• Self-pitying thoughts: incalculable.

There are some jobs that provide you with some of these, but for genuine self-pity, mine right now is the best.

Subliminal

I'm pretty sure Netflix is supporting the Republican Presidential ticket. It took me a while to cotton on, but looking at the login page just now* it's right there, staring you in the face. Look at the examples of emails you might use to log in.

A coincidence? I think not. Much like a friend's attempt to warn you of the evil power of Dewar's, this is my own little conspiracy theory. Has Netflix officially endorsed a candidate yet? No, but unofficially, it's there for you to see, my friends. Yes, my friends, not that one, but this one.

* (yes, should be working right now, but I'm not - master of my own time, me).

Arusha-Dar-Zanzibar - August 9

We got up at 4.45, after a few too many beers, it must be admitted. As in, we had 3, and that was two too many. We were in a bit of a panicky state, as we really weren't sure we'd make it to Zanzibar (the bus might be delayed and we'd miss the 4.15 ferry), we were fairly sure we were locked into the annexe, and weren't sure George, our taxi driver, would actually turn up. All in all, not a good way to start the day, particularly after having a half hour patch in the middle of the night where we were both boiling hot.

Anyway, there was a guy specially up, wrapped up superwarm to give us our packed breakfasts, as we weren't going to be having regular breakfast. Honestly, I love love loved L'Oasis for that alone. We got there, had to tip George a ton because we ran out of smaller denominations (note to self: stop using smaller denominations - get as much change as poss!). Then we got on the bus. That wasn't too bad - we were both fairly excited, watched the sun rise, and then slowly drifted off to sleep for several hours.

The problem was when we got to Dar. The book had said the bus would take us into town after the bus station. It didn't. We were bamboozled by a million people wanting us to take their taxis. Finally, we stepped away, took a deep breath, then chose the guy who'd used the magic words - "I like Barack Obama" - and bargained him down, a bit, for the journey to the ferry. Turns out his sister had studied law at Northwestern. That's so why I love the States - you hear stories like this everywhere here. It's amazing. We get to the ferry and it's utter chaos, the porter won't give me my bag back and then I had to fight with him because he wanted to charge me for TC's bag (which he didn't carry)... and we were both exhausted and just couldn't sit without talking. Which sounds bratty and grumpy, but that's how we both felt. There was some cool stuff with the guys around us teaching us some Swahili, but it was still an effort to be nice when I just wanted to sleep. Then, one of the two engines stopped worked and instead of 2 hours, it took three.

Still, we finally finally arrived, the driver from our hotel was there, and when we arrived (after going through many dark, twisty alleys) we found out our room had air conditioning. I've rarely been so happy. Even better - the place opposite had hummus, great passion fruit juice, and a couple who lived in Greenville, NC, after meeting I'm not sure where, but the wife was from Zanzibar, there from the summer to help with the restaurant and be on holiday. You see? Stories like that all the time... And after a shower and food we felt human again. And we were both asleep by 10.15.

Me Faltan...

Thanks to the joys of the Bar, this summer the concerts I am probably going to miss out on are:

• Santogold, Diplo & A-Trak at SummerStage
• Sonic Youth at Battery Park
• Jarvis Cocker at Terminal 5 or The Venue
• Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band at Giants Stadium
• Spiritualized at Terminal 5
  
• RZA as Bobby Digital at Webster Hall
• The Beat at Irving Plaza
• Spoon at Prospect Park Bandshell
• DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist at McCarren Park Pool
• Bon Iver at Bowery Ballroom

Boo.

Oh, and the weddings of three of my best friends.

Boo.

Laid back... relaxed...

Yep, I feel the sunshine. It's such a ridiculous mood enhancer to know that it's going to be fairly warm out, no matter what, until October. So it occurs to me to talk about things that are making me happy rather than grumpy for a change.

1. Midnight Boom by The Kills - I'm just lovin' it, lovin' it lovin' it (like that). Sort of a cross between the White Stripes and the Fiery Furnaces with, I think, a real Pixies sensibility thrown in - the way they use her voice to cut through everything really minds me of Kim Deal, for some reason, particularly on Cheap and Cheerful. URA Fever and Sour Cherry are worth the purchase on their own.
2. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. A friend lent us it and we've only just got around to watching it, but it is genius. For the abortion episode alone - particularly as it's got Taylor from The OC in it - sheer awesomeness. I love working out which one is the worst human being in each episode - and it's always, always, ALWAYS Charlie.
   
1. Other tv shows currently loving - Torchwood, Buffy re-runs.
   
2. Annoyed at (STILL) - waiting for new Pushing Daisies.
   
3. Outside drinking. Holy cow I've missed it. And it's time to bring out the rosé - hallelujah.
   
4. Maria moving back to NYC - hurrah!
   
5. Football - two victories last weekend, for the first time ever, for the two teams I play on. Playing at this time of year is utterly perfect - and at the moment two two matches are the sandwich to my weekend, and love it.
   
6. Rediscovering the good songs from The Great Escape by Blur - and yes, there were a few - I love Entertain Me and He Thought of Cars - I'd completely forgotten that song...
7. BLOSSOM! It suddenly appeared from nowhere, and so now I can have lunch in the park, with the sun on me and enjoy scent. The smell of hyacinths is glorious, hypnotic - there's a patch of purple ones right by our football pitch in Chinatown, and it's wonderful. The magnolia and cherry trees are out, and I am just extremely happy about it all.
   

Of course, I wouldn't be me without a grumble - bad things about better weather are, of course, self-tanning streaks and having to maintain fairly decent toenails. But I can manage that, of course.

I Think I'm Going To Be Sad...

... I think it's today. And yesterday. And every other day in which I remember the abomination that I saw last night.

I went to a really interesting theatre, saw a couple of one act plays, one directed by a dear friend of mine (with, btw, one of the best names EVER, ever, ever). That wasn't the abomination.

That came after.

I have never watched American Idol, nor the British original. I just haven't got room for that sort of reality show despite my utter incapability of switching off an episode of crap like Charmed* or You Are What You Eat.

Last night, in the bar chosen for the after-play gathering, I unfortunately happened upon Top 12 Do Beatles - so long as you substitute "Do" with any of the following more apt verbs: Massacre, Slaughter, Abominate. There were screens everywhere - it couldn't be escaped. It was honestly one of the most embarrassingly dreadful things I have ever seen - these brats with pretty but bland, vacant and soulless voices annihilating some of the greatest pop and rock songs ever written. It was also insulting to anyone who vaguely appreciates the Beatles. The only kid who did the songs anywhere near justice was the one who rocked out to She's A Woman (one of my favourite tunes and I think criminally underrated). The most awful moments are so hard to choose between: The countrified version of Eight Days a Week; the "soulful" troubadour (he can play! a guitar! wow, he must be awesome! he's a MUSICIAN!) trying to do You've Got To Hide Your Love Away; and the idiot who didn't realise that if you're going to cover Across the Universe, you really should be Rufus Wainwright.

Therefore, to cleanse the dirty feelings of shame and disgust from my system, here's my fave ten Beatles songs of the moment - please, comment in with yours! Also, what are the greatest covers of Beatles songs? Obviously Rufus does a good job, but I'm struggling to think of others right now...

1. She's a Woman - Paul's voice is so, so, so great on this. And the next two...
   
2. Get Back (favourite of ALL TIME)
3. The Night Before
4. Ticket to Ride
5. Norwegian Wood
6. Carry That Weight
7. I'll Cry Instead
8. Blackbird
9. Twist & Shout (yeah, a cover, but recently saw Ferris again- how can you mess with that?)
   
10. I Saw Her Standing There
    

* Yeah, I said it, outed myself. It can't be helped. I am aware it's not a reality show, by the way. Sort of.

Through a Lens*

This weekend was pretty culturally rich: Four movies, and a trip to the Met that was one of my most enjoyable in ages. TOH bought me a book of 1001 Paintings to See Before You Die, and we'd selected the Met's paintings featured** to guide our trip. It did add something, meaning that I didn't spend the whole time sitting in the Velázquez and El Greco rooms, Mark didn't just try to drag me around the armour, and we looked at things differently. We also got to look at the musical instruments, which was a surprisingly good and interesting room.

However, I was struck by the phenomenon of photo-taking as viewing yet again. One of the things that I utterly fail to understand is the taking of photos of the exhibits. If it's for a sketch, maybe that's fair, but why not just buy a print or a postcard? What particularly bothered me was the instrument room, where so many people just walked through and didn't stop, they just paused to take photos without actually looking at anything. It really is as if having seen the object is more important than the object itself.

This ties in with WUB's extremely thoughtful post about Cloverfield, in which she states that documenting is increasingly more important than responding. It extends to everything, but nothing quite brings it to mind like a museum. I really wish art at school had instructed us in ways of looking at things; just as useful, and more so for completely untalented hacks like me. In fact, that might have helped me with my own artistic attempts. Nonetheless, I do try to look, understand, and slowly I'm learning. It takes a discipline that you have to instil; most of us are so lazy, it's just easier to snap and not think.

* I almost entitled this "Life Through a Lens" and then remembered it was a Robbie Williams album title, so no go there. Although, of course, "thru" was the spelling he used, which is particularly repugnant to me.
** Dude, if you're going to write a book like this, then having an index by location might be pretty effing useful. Just a suggestion.

Priorities

A couple of things have quite severely upset me over the past few days - the crap Lewis Hamilton has had to endure, plus me reading the comments on Marca which seem to indicate that the people posting really do not understand that calling someone a "fucking black" or a "black shit" is a problem, not that using the word "black" is a problem; also apparently he's "not really black" so it doesn't count. Also, I keep stumbling upon this ad - when reading sports pages, reading about dining, whatever - in the nytimesonline for Secondlook.org, which simply reads "Roe v. Wade allows termination of a pregnancy throughout the nine months. Isn't it time we rethought?"

Ugh.

And then, someone you love goes through something awful and you realise that all this anger really is something for another day.

Frittering Away

I have recently, traumatically, decided to give up my old, beloved email address, for a spanking new gmail. I had my own domain; it spawned the name of this blog, and then others (well, one).

Alas, I have had to let it go for the simple reason that every hour I am getting something like a hundred delivery failure notices, all responding to accounts along the lines of gethairyjim@gracegoesabroad.co.uk. It has utterly paralysed my old account. Which makes me very sad indeed. It seems like a watershed; I am still going abroad, yet somehow I have to relinquish my symbolic statement. Now, I'm just like everyone else, not obviously linked to Blighty, with my metropolitan and ubiquitous gmail.

Apparently this sort of problem is due to email spoofing, whereby someone latches onto your domain and writes a programme that sends out hundreds of emails "appearing" to be from your account. According to my ever helpful host company, that's just something every internet user must bear, because the hackers are so much cleverer than the good guys and no one knows how to combat it.

What I honestly don't want to understand is why someone would write a programme that would annihilate someone's system like this; I can't see how it's for monetary gain which - have I been in the cradle of capitalism too long? - I would understand. It's the sheer maliciousness behind it that takes my breath away, because all it does is attempts to make your life difficult and miserable, which it has done.

Bugger

Last two yorkshire teabags used this morning. No chance of those for ANOTHER MONTH.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggghhhhhh.

Note the way my posts move from the earnest and intellectually probing (for me, at least - bear with me folks, low standards here) to this. I'm a chameleon, me.

grrrrrrrrrrrr

It's been a horrible week, for various reasons - awful things happening in the world, in the judicial system here...

but what has pushed me over the edge? I really, really, really hate Grey's Fricking Anatomy and now they've used my favourite Amy Winehouse song and now tons of heinous people are going to buy that album and pretend they like her.

I am a scarily shallow human being.

Plungers Please

I am feeling extremely mentally limited right now.

When dear friends, who I have not seen for what feels like ages, ask me how I feel, I find it hard to even articulate a response.

When I want to blog, I cannot, because I honestly have nothing of interest to say. (Plus ça change, plus ça rien, yes I know)

Hence an even lower calibre blog will be coming your way. Fortunately, however, it will also be more sporadic due to work levels or, more likely, guilt that I am obviously procrastinating. Whereas if I obsessively check dlisted, you won't know.

Sweet.

Ridiculous

I'm sorry to fulfil so many stereotypes about British obsession with weather, but... it's snowing. On the FIFTH OF APRIL.

Bloody ridiculous.

Life Without Coffee

I am reduced to drinking something described thus:

Just as a lovely waterfall brings a sense of refreshment to your eyes and ears, Mint Medley® will bring this same quality to your sense of taste. Enjoy Mint Medley® - its lively flavo[u]r refreshes any time of day.

That's according to David & Eunice Bigelow, anyway.

Pah.

Maldito Chico

Damn you, Joshua Jackson! Pacey, Pacey, Pacey, how do I love thee? Before you got bloated and stupid facial hair, which I'm sure is a metaphor for the rest of this dreadful programme. But I am a sucker for anything Philadelphia Story-related, and that your boat is called the True Love still pulls me in and makes me root for you. Despite it being for Joey-too-poor-to-afford-a-bra-Potter (TM Scuttsy).

Incidentally, today is the THIRD DAY IN A ROW that it is too cold for civilised human beings to be outdoors. Apparently, in the mid-west they solve this by needing cars to get everywhere. Thank goodness for grey, cloudy, rainy London next week which will be at least 40F warmer than here. HUZZAH.

Yeeeeeurgh

It was so cold today my eyeballs hurt.

Conjugal Rights & Rites

Marriage, marriage, marriage. It's everywhere here, right now, due to the New Jersey legislature giving gay couples union rights, but not marriage.

We had a long talk with friends at dinner last night about what that meant, precisely. Why not the word marriage? Is it simply that it's a religious thing? If so, why do you have to register your marriage separately if you get married in a Hindu ceremony, for example? Therefore, maybe we should separate out the church's and the state's role in sanctioning a union. Nonetheless, I can't help thinking that behind this is actually the belief that gay unions are somehow "lesser" than straight unions.

Anyway, I then read the G2 this morning and found this horror of an article about men asking permission from their future fathers-in-law for the hand of their daughter. Some of my political concerns about marriage stem from the ongoing idea of "property", and this article tapped straight into those fears. Why is asking a father "about respect"? If it's about a parent's relationship with his daughter, what about a mother's relationship? Why isn't she asked? Because she's his property, obviously. Any other answers...? Postcards to the usual address...

Rabia

Yesterday, I made a rather stupid decision, which was to have three cups of coffee between the hours of 5 and 5.45pm. Foolishness, yes. Well, dear readers, I am paying for it now.

You see, caffeine in that sort of quantity, and after 6pm, usually (think severe effects were due to sheer amount consumed), doesn't keep me awake in the way it does with others. No, I get to sleep more or less fine. What I then do is wake up, every couple of hours, all night, finding it immensely difficult to get back to sleep. Which is, of course, exactly what happened last night. I was very sensitive to noise, so the thumping and bass from downstairs was particularly effective in waking me.

Yet the real impact of the sleepless night has only just surfaced. Right now. One of my real foibles is that I cannot bear to hear other people eating. I find it disgusting and irritating. This is not a ridiculous phobia--I don't think I'm the only one. However, I am extremely oversensitive; the day after very little sleep, unbelievably so. Whoever left the popping candy sweethearts in the office today is lucky I do not know who they are and that I do not have some sort of sharp weaponry (or, indeed, a tomato ketchup & mustard uzi). I have also developed an irrational hatred for someone I've never talked to, whose existence I was only made aware of on Thursday.

Today is one of those days that I really shouldn't be allowed to have contact with other living creatures.