join da party

May Day: a bank holiday off work, red banners and angry poor kids running around with sticks (i would fall into the latter category).

COMMUNISM: WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE HERE?

check out Papa Marx with the lampshade on his head. does this bad boy know how to party, OR WHAT? that’s the point in the evening when you know that anything can happen. i wonder if he spend the night wandering the streets drinking bottles of 50 beer, waking up next to lenin. use protection, boys! fidel’s busy hitting the booze and we got mao running around asking for change. that cultural revolution ain’t gonna pay for itself, ya know.

the revolution continues…

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!

fidel on his dude ranch, circa 1971*

* probably

tonight’s discussion (discussion? yell-a-thon?) with ariana began with “jeremy paxman is the shit. he just grills every fucker in the room.” and ended with “HERE BE DRAGONS! that should be SCRAWLED upon entry into the US!”

and that just about sums everything up.

“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.

notes from the road: day 1 – LDN to ATL

Arrive into Atlanta after one of the most harrowing days ever. PIN number stops working; no trains to Gatwick; taxi to Victoria; expressway to yr skull. Never have the children and elderly of the Gatwick North terminal been more afraid than when we arrived with our suitcases and grit.

3 films and 2 half-eaten “meals” later, we finally land in the ATL, not fully aware of the ordeal that awaited us. Mark and I fill out our required landing cards (never have I been more thankful to be a Canadian and yet, simultaneously ashamed, knowing that I have been given preferential treatment over the passport I chose to fly with.) In the foreigners line, I am surrounded not by fat loud Americans but an armful of Britons about to be photographed and fingerprinted due to their alien status. I begin to grow a quiet rage in my stomach, slowly realising the inevitable: that I would have to be stamped and photographed by the US fucking government.

Welcome to America! You are a criminal in our eyes.

And then with a flash of my passport, it was over. No photogrpahs, no black ink, just walk. I am Canadian and thus apparently deserve special treatment. But I’m not – I’m a Spaniard as well and as such, would have been subjected to the humiliations that the Homeland Security buffoons deemed acceptable. I have not changed yet my suitability somehow has. White mask – I want to pull out my other documents and slap them all in the face.

The Atlanta airport was the most disagreeable experienced I’ve ever had in an airport outside of Canada. It is only here that one can truly understand the nature of American hypocrisy and ignorant indignation. From the security checks out of the airport to the claiming and re-claiming of luggage to the BA office deciding that my suitcase was a threat to national security, I have never hated a country more in my life than I hated America in those two hours. No one bothered to answer questions or provide justification for any requests, no matter how inappropriate the act in question. In fact, it is you, you with your questions and concerns and above all, logic, that is the problem. Everything in the interests of American security.

Including my luggage, still in London, far away from my strained face and tired body.

“Ma’am, did you have a gun in your bag?”
“Did you have something in the shape of a gun?”

All reasonable questions, I’m sure. That is, if I was entering a war zone. But then, as the Weather Underground campaigned, Bring the War Home.

Before we left London, I semi-joked with Mark that I was liable to make a scene or at very least ask a few questions. Of course, this was never an option if I ever wanted to be let into the country. However in the end it was Mark that came the closest to making a scene over the outrageous treatment we were all receiving, infidels and Yanks alike.

“Why do you have a Visa for Yemen in your passport?”
“Well then, why were you going to go to Yemen?”
“Why would anyone go to Yemen?”

I like the kebabs.

No one is spared from the humiliating subordination. The different is that only some of us are outraged by it all.

Once freed into the Atlanta air, we began the drive to Athens. I counted five Wal-Marts and eight Waffle Houses until I became blind by it all. I never realised the extent to which saturation can infest landscape. Saturated fat comes in many different forms of packaging and just like its artery-blocking cousin, the saturated fat of the brain clogs the cells of reason and capability. i.e. everyone is too friendly here. Canadians have the reputation for being nice, boring and nice yet again. God. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a huge city or maybe it’s because I’m just a cynical being in my true form, but the over-friendliness of this service industry hurts my teeth. I just want to get some dinner and instead I feel hostile. Saccharine smiles and all round plastic fantastic. No wonder they’re all packing heat. I couldn’t stop giggling at it all- not because I was amused or even entertained – but because it was the only way of releasing a reaction that did not encourage the potential gunshot wound.

But then there are the woods. Mark’s house is on the edge of Athens and is enveloped by forest, deer and a quiet beauty. It seems much like America itself: there is beauty here in vast amounts but it is hidden beneath the garish and nausea-inducing vulgarity. I wonder at the time what America could be if everyone woke up from their selfish comas for the first time and fulfilled the potential they have squandered through their greed.