Best Ad Placement Ever

My First Inaugural

I'm thinking about a career change; I'd like to be a speechwriter for Obama. My first attempt (courtesy of the Obama Inauguration Speech Generator):

My fellow Americans, today is a brave day. You have shown the world that "hope" is not just another word for "apple", and that "change" is not only something we can believe in again, but something we can actually running.

Today we celebrate, but let there be no mistake – America faces tremulous and jerky challenges like never before. Our economy is voluptuous. Americans can barely afford their mortgages, let alone have enough money left over for harlots. Our healthcare system is vibrant. If your knee is sick and you don't have insurance, you might as well call a hedge fund manager. And America's image overseas is tarnished like a telephone parachute. But praying together we can right this ship, and set a course for Omaha.

Finally, I must thank my yellow family, my tart campaign volunteers, but most of all, I want to thank National Rifle Association for making this historic occasion possible. Of course, I must also thank you, President Bush, for years of parking the American people. Without your furry efforts, none of this would have been possible.

Now That I Can Dance

This is actually pretty amazing, and makes me smile like a loon every time I watch it.



It features a mass dance routine at Liverpool Station with 350 people seemingly randomly breaking into dance. Effing rad, yo.

Pot, Kettle

This massive loaf of a woman was clutching a map and seeking directions as I rounded Stoney Street this morning on my way to Monmouth Coffee for a desperately needed pre-work latte.

She was in jeans that required more than her fair share of fabric (like, the amount you might need to equip a sailing vessel) and a twee little floral shirt that strained to contain her flour-sack bazongas.

She was prevailing upon one of the area's many pin-stripers to direct her towards the bus stop (which was visible from where she was standing).

As I walked past, she bleated, "Americans don't really walk anywhere, do they? They're so lazy!"

The pin-striper looked bemused, and stuttered, "I think it's just because it's so big, everything's too far away to walk."

I shot her a look of pure loathing as she waddled, thighs mercilessly creating tremendous friction, towards the bus stop three yards away.

Hmpf. Go to New York, you pudding, and maybe you'll drop the 80 or so pounds that have you firmly in Morbid Obesityville. Then we'll see who's lazy.

Limpy Walks Again

After 3+ months on his crutches, Steve is finally gimping around the house like a wobbly deerling, and it's a wonderful sight to see. He won't exactly be competing in the London Marathon and Recreational Pole Vault Society anytime soon, but at least now he can make use of the overwhelmingly expensive bike he put the down payment on a week before he broke the leg.

As I type, he just offered to bring me my glass of wine. Strike that - he crowed "I can bring you your wine, honey!" with the glee of a child who just discovered farting, but it's the first time in a long time he can carry anything (garbage, groceries, my alcohol) and I daresay he's as delighted as I am that his hands are free to do other things rather than lug his body from point to point around on metal sticks.

We just got back from 10 days in the States, and while Steve was still officially Captain Limpy, we did have an amazing time. One of my two oldest childhood friends, Stacey, got married in California Spectacular style. This was the main event of a week spent in the company of my other oldest childhood friend, Allison.

The wedding was beautiful, in the back yard of family friends:


Stacey and I once trashed her parents' wet lawn running through the sprinklers in our finest 12 year-old couture, so seeing her in her wedding dress, looking absolutely gorgeous, totally made me all teary.


Fabulous.

Allie, Stacey and I have known each other for 25 years, which is pretty awesome when one considers we're all 30. These are the girls with whom I sang 'Never Smile at a Crocodile' at age 5 with while wearing blue pinstriped pinafores and bloomers, making crocodile jaw motions with our arms for the Montair Elementary Talent Show. The girls whose houses and families were as familiar as my own. The girls who've known me through every important life experience I've ever had, from the death of my father to junior high misery to high school's abject awkwardness to college flailing to post collegiate flailing, through a long series of dubious romantic partners to finally (hopefully) finding my feet and getting my shit together.

The thing I find most gratifying is that I think we've all landed rather gracefully. Stacey married a wonderful, caring, gentle man:



Allie, too, is in a long-term, caring committed relationship and is thriving professionally:


And, as for me, as David Sedaris said, "You meet a guy, relinquish a little bit of control, and the next thing you know, you're eating a different part of the pig."



Mmmmmmm . . . bacon.

Tube Manners

There’s a few fashion choices London girls seem to make consistently that I’ve not entirely gotten my head around. I get that weather here is famously changeable, but in midsummer, are you aware of how bad your opaque black tights actually look as a style choice? It’s been at least 72 degrees (22 Celsius in my new parlance) for the last few weeks, but I’ve seen the most hideous parade of thick black tights under all manner of floaty summer dresses, uncomfortably short tunics, oddly cropped short shorts, and, once, with what I think was a slightly oversized tuxedo jacket.

Unless you’re Cate Blanchett, if you leave the house wearing only tights and a tux jacket, you’re pretty much guaranteed to look like a douche.

The other prevailing summer clothing trend this sweaty summer is a wide variety of empire-waist tops. For someone like myself, who has a bit of extra gut chunk, these can be enormously forgiving as they skim over the layer of flab I can’t be bothered to lose just yet.

But they also make everyone look pregnant, whether or not they are actually fetally-enhanced. Hence, it’s hard to tell who is actually incubating a child and who is merely trying to conceal a bit of a belly.

The tube here is devoid of many things, like a logical social order and air conditioning. It really does swelter in the subway, and for some reason, riders cluster desperately around the doors instead of moving into the middle of the car like they do in New York, to eke out a little more room for everyone.
So, you’re in a narrow, cramped, hot space, you manage to snag an (upholstered!) seat, and in front of you appears a woman in an empire-waist top.

Crap.

Is she baby-makin’ or just going for comfort? Do you spring out of your seat to offer the sperimnated one a place to rest, or do you risk offending a fatty? While the male riders do their best to studiously ignore her, I usually opt for the meaningful eye-contact/pointing-at-seat gesture when I’m at least 90% sure she’s with child and not with Cornish pasty. If she is preggers, she’ll gratefully accept the seat and hopefully hate us godless Americans a bit less.

But one of these days I’ll blow it, and thus will end pro trans-Atlantic relations as I really piss one of these slightly poochy British bitches off in one fantastic social gaffe.

The Great Leap Sideways

After 6 months of planning, panic, and packing, I write this sitting on my couch in the fabulous cultural hot spot of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom. Wikipedia tells me, amongst other things, that High Wycombe is the only place in the world that weighs its mayors as part of a quaint old custom.

Also, there's a Starbucks, and we all know how I feel about Starbucks.

So, there's mayor-weighing and Starbucks. Is there no end to my suburban bliss?

But there's also Steve, and he's wonderful, and other members of the Johnston family, including new baby Max (who I want to gently nibble on) and the actual cultural hot spot of London a mere jaunt down the road, so I'm not exactly marooned here.

I thank the lord that Steve came into London with me yesterday for my job interview, for if he hadn't, I'd probably still be forlornly staring at the Tube map and trying to figure out what to do when the Jubilee line is out of service and where, exactly, the Thames is in relation to my tears.

I keep telling myself, "I mastered a city like New York; London should be a cinch," but that's total crap. New York, with the exception of the Village, is an extremely simple grid, and the most you'll go in the wrong direction is a block until you figure out the numbers are going the wrong way.

London, on the other hand, makes the maze at Knossos look like the board of Candyland. I am sure that I'll begin to learn London's geography, given time, but right now I'm like 'That's the building that looks like a pickle,' or 'I know I've been to Hyde Park before,' but getting to and from these places, in addition to navigating the Tube, fills me with the dread of the haplessly directionless.

Also, spelling words with unmotivated U's (i.e. colour, flavour, etc) and not even spelling my OWN name correctly (it's now ELL EYE ZED thankyouverymuch) all makes me think that, even though the language is the same, I am very, very different.