BOOB ALERT!

 you know, sometimes i say to myself, “self, can this country become any stupider?” and then i’m smacked in the face with something like this and reply, “yes. yes it can.”

and boy, howdy. apparently, british women need to be told to breastfeed their children. so much so that the NHS has got these spanking-hot posters to remind women that their breasts are for treats AND eats.

“Breastfeeding is cool as well as healthy, according to the message behind an exhibition that opens in London this week.” well thanks, Independent! all this time, here I was sitting around thinking that these two ol’ bin bags were just for the nightly “show and tell” sessions i have with the mister.

lord jesus mercy. you mean that women have to be TOLD to breastfeed their children in this country?! did they not wonder this whole time what that white liquid was coming out mt. vesuvius and mt. st helen? because call me mental but unless the word ESCOBAR is involved, i’m pretty sure that’s milk we’re talking about here. also, how LAZY do you have to be to prefer to bottleup your kid with formula/milk that you have to pay for when the holy spirit is giving it to you for FREE? oh, the questions. it’s amazing my brain doesn’t explode under strain of it all.

and these posters – what the hell is that all about? would i be so exasperated if they weren’t so stultifyingly moronic? ’tis a riddle for the ages. here’s a good idea: let’s show women’s top three concerns, boozing, bras and men, and reassure them that breastfeeding wont upset them any further. innit.

how about you all get bent instead.

i especially like the very responsible message of the drinking poster: hey moms! with all the £££ you’ll be saving on baby formula, you’ll be able to spend it getting SHITFACED on margaritas, ready to spend quality time with your newborn joy. RESPONSIBLE!

i also enjoy the vacuous overtones of the designer bra one. lemme get this straight: you just gave birth; you have a new life to take of; your ankles are still the size of the hoover dam and your stomach looks like a play-doh experiment; your entire home, nay, life, are now covered in diapers, talcum powder and hourly night feedings.

GETTING YOUR NASTY SHE-BEAST NAILS ON A DESIGNER BREASTFEEDING BRA ISN’T YOUR BIGGEST PROBLEM RIGHT NOW!

and let’s not think too much about the final magnum opus poster with baby and daddy coppin’ a feel. oughta way to get them started young. again, let us picture the scene: your body has just gone through the most traumatic experience it will ever have to endure, save maybe for an evening of entertainment involving the words “anal” and “probe”. concerned about what your man thinks about your boobage? DON’T BE. hell, he’s probably never seen that cup size filled out without squeaking plastic involved.  need to bond with your man? looks like you already did a pretty good job of that.  he doesn’t like the look of your new ready-to-feed breasts? NOT HIS PROBLEM.

and one last note. my man? since when did all mothers magically require/want there to be a man in the picture?

it’s a rare and talented poster that manages to be both offensively stupid and stupidly offensive. GO TEAM!

my white noise

my battle between loving london and hating england rages on…

oi!
you let yourself down
and you don’t know why
i’m the original
i’m the original
when it comes to the suburbs,
I’m the original

being english isn’t about hate
it’s about disgust
were all disgusting

and then you move move move move
and you push push push push
and you trip over yourself and you think to yourself
why am I here?
i’m here cos I got no fucking choice!

and furthermore, furthermore
you’re boring

- Blur

hit the north, part 1

i’m back at work in london, sitting at my desk contemplating two things:

1. all the commie goodies my parents and sister claim to have bought for me during their recent trip to cuba (including, like all good pirates, a bottle of rum)

2. the increasing pain in my stomach from the chicken corriander wrap had for lunch. seemed like a good idea. then again, acid wash jeans and feathered bangs seemed like a good idea. (how?) so instead of digesting it, i am now contemplating what was in it…BY GOD, TELL ME WHAT WAS IN IT!!

to treat my cough medieval style, ariana suggesting that we venture up to her father’s temporary abode in chester to drink red wine and eat roast meats. and so with the house empty and with mark away in ireland, we descended upon colin’s nest – ariana beating me by a few days to test out the fireplace and assess the ransacking potential of the house.

leaving friday after work, i wrestled my way to euston station to see the 7:38 train pulling away. but i was unphased; i was armed with hummus, wholemeal pita bread and the march 08 elle uk magazine (travel size, of course). woot woot.

finally on a liverpool bound train until crewe, i was kicked out of various reserved seats until i found a bunch of empty seats in the wilds of Coach F with a table. SCORE. i threw my stuff everywhere and promptly made a mess of the area in an attempt to establish my territorial trail. a youngish boy (19, 20?) asked if the seat was reserved. no way, kid! KNOCK YOURSELF OUT!

and then i must have fallen asleep as the i woke up about an hour later, sprawled out over a decked-out elle shoe page and “crease face”. i look up to see buddy boy wave and move over to another section of the train.

why? what did he just do that accounted for his little smirk? did he rob me? rape me? SOMETHING THAT STARTED WITH AN “R”?

a quick look down to my bag and crotch confirmed that all was well. arriving in crewe, i had a few minutes to find my connecting train to chester. not too difficult expect that the screen clearly stated platform 10 and my train was huffing & puffing at platform 9. GOOD JOB, PEOPLE! YOU SHOW THOSE NUMBERS WHO’S BOSS!

taxi-ing it up to the house close to the witching hour, i arrived ready to rock and/or roll.

the everlasting gaze

i wonder if i’ve ever been happy since moving to this country. every opportunity that london gives, england takes away. i’ve come to the realisation that i love living in the city but i hate living in this country.

i wonder if my happiest days have passed, those that i had previously dismissed as my darkest. the anguish and rage of being in high school  – the constant dreaming of who i would become, who i would meet in life and where i would end up. the constant dreaming of making music or moving to london or making music IN london. i raged against my own image in the mirror, chopping at my hair and eyelashes, in a vain attempt to change my face. i raged against my family for not allowing me to breathe. i raged against my city for not allowing more to come to me.

and then the politics of university. how has it really been eight years since i began my degree? what have i become, my favourite friend?  are the cds waiting obediently for me in toronto truly over fifteen years old already? and not since they were recorded – since they were bought.

i think of all the pain i had in my youth and wonder if those were my happiest days. not because the anguish was less than i felt it to be – but because the present one is so much more than i imagined.

“is this what WASPS mate to?”

it’s saturday morning and i’m sitting in my GP’s waiting room, surrounded by my semi-deafness and vomiting children (the latter did not belong to me, sweet hail mary). this morning was the third morning in a row that i woke with blocked up ears and a pressure headache so i thought to myself, “self, time to get this shit checked out”.

good god. i loathe going to the saturday morning drive-thru clinic. during today’s installment, i was introduced to a colourful cast of virus-ridden locals, including the woman that simply could not hold on to her vomiting kid. the way she kept going, she was going to get a fresh one in the face. true, having her kid vomit all over the carpet a few centimeters from my shoes probably wasn’t the best way to make friends, but the kid was obviously sick and probably just as pissed off with his dumbass mother as i was. so much so that every time he was put on the ground, off he went running out of the waiting room. so naturally, dumbass mother goes running on after him. about thirty seconds later, she would put him down again and scram! off the kid would go again, in a vomit-laced bid for freedom.

his went on for half an hour! NO SHIT!  woman – keep a hold of your goddamn kid!

i tried to make the three hour wait by listening to the morning’s musical selections made in honour of last night’s viewing of the brilliant Juno : belle and sebastian, sonic youth and the freshly-downloaded juno soundtrack. more on juno in a later post. ariana had already seen it and insisted on viewing it with me since as she put it, “you ARE juno – just not pregnant.” so i held out on downloading it just to be able to give my whole £9 to michael “i want his virginity” cera. unsurprisingly, ariana wasn’t wrong and i even had my own little bleeker sitting next to me in mark; juno’s rapore with the jason bateman character even reminded me at times of my own with a certain someone.

clearly not everyone in the GP was in a similar frame of mind. buddy sitting next to me reading The Times proceeded to give me the stink-eye for about a good five minutes before returning to his rupert murdoch-owned trash.

what’s the problem here? is the weepy scottish indie to loud for your racist ears?

fucking hell. and The New Yorker magazine. what the hell is that all about? shit knows why but someone had left a tattered copy of the july 2 2007 issue. having never properly flipped through this particular rag before, i decided that even questionable political writing well past it’s best before date was better than doing eye karate with the murdoch disciple sitting next to me.

HOW WRONG I WAS, GOOD PEOPLE. this magazine is so fragrantly awful that i stole it from the waiting room in order to yell about it at a future date. essays about how rich michael bloomberg is, how pretending to be richard nixon can get you out of childhood punishment, an article asking if MRI scans can detect liars (or what about terrorists, hmm? HMM? see what they did there?), how the depression was actually a great time in american history and a review of michael moore’s sicko, which was of course, simply a sloppy disguise for condemning universal health care as a socialist red evil.

jesus christ. it was like leafing through a WASP manual. i mean, do they get off and breed on this gobshite? need i say more? no, i needn’t. into the fire it goes.