August 2008
77 posts
Imagining McCain's 9-minute bio video...
I look to Nora Leah Sherman for election analysis that is both insightful and entertaining. My only question: what’s the soundtrack? I suggest ‘Reach For the Stars’ by S Club 7, to give it that necessary infusion of youthful verve.
noraleah:
00:00 to 00:46: Birth of a Maverick.
McCain is born on a military base to wealthy parents who teach him about service and sacrifice....
America is choice
When I was young and used to visit my mother’s native climes (the Borders region in Scotland) the differences were more remarkable: compared to America, my impression was that the UK just had less stuff to choose from. In the 1980s, there were four television channels, small cars, and all the kids wore uniforms to school. There was only one flavour of ice cream: lurid yellow Wall’s...
A thing I love about America
Every time I come home, there is a Law and Order marathon on TNT, which is presented as if there has never been a Law and Order marathon on TNT ever before.
Things you can't take back
What strikes me as most astonishing about the nomination of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice-presidential candidate is what it says about the pathetic state of the relationship between the GOP and their female constituents. If a woman who has been governor of one of the least-populated states since 2006, following a stint as a mayor of a town of 9000 (not even 10 times larger than my...
Two impediments to writing
1. As a sometime-literary critic myself, the anticipation of how another critic might be able to unpick and deride every sentence that I write is slowing me down. Although, of course, I should be so lucky that someone should care enough to unpick and deride my sentences.
2. I don’t have any cake, nor any way of accessing some unless I get my mum to drive me to the grocery store, which is a...
Don't sway
Sarah Palin, eh? Not a bad pick, McCain, especially when you were considering Mitt Romney as an alternative. But, dear fellow lady Democrats, now is not the time to dither just because McCain is appearing to have realised that he should attempt to convey some degree of progressivism. This reminds me of my own realisation back in February, when I was trying to choose between Obama and Clinton:...
Post-game analysis
Mumelstein: Can we go over on to CNN to see if they say anything else?
Dadelstein: CNN? But they'll be JERKS.
“America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this...”
– O-BAM-A
My parents watch the DNC
Mumelstein: I kind of love David Brooks.
Dadelstein: Really? I think he's a pill.
“You need a president who puts Barney Smith before Smith Barney.”
– Barney Smith, a usefully-named, plaid-shirted, former autoworker from Indiana addressing the DNC.
I’d love to know how many Barney Smiths they phoned up until they found this guy.
Help!
NPR! NPR! Switch it on immediately - they are having regular Americans speak and it is mind-blowing.
somethingchanged:
How do I watch Obama’s acceptance speech - or listen to it - as live as possible? I can’t use Demconvention.com because I’m not allowed to install Silverlight on my work Macbook… there must be another way.
Just when was I beginning to feel properly Obama-tastic, PBS interviews some delegate from Texas who apparently thinks that the last eight years were OK because they were just leading up to this wonderful historical moment. Sigh.
“God wants you rich, and as if to prove it His golden forefinger is pointing down...”
– Religion: Pentecostalist gathering draws worshippers keen to get richer | World news | The Guardian
I am missing all of the fun in London.
Garamond, back by popular demand
“[your new font is]not ignorant. but i think it would be better suited to someone who writes kids’ books. you are more sophisticated and hilarious than that.”
- Lauren, a discerning critic
Writing a book is hard. →
miss-r:
clembastow:
jeanhannahedelstein:
I am hoping now that I have put that out into the ether, it will get a bit easier.
* * *
Definitely. It means people will say “How’s your book going?” and then you’ll wince and sweat a little bit behind the ears and say, “Greaaat!” while mentally scheduling ‘writing only’ time for the weekend.
Amen to all that. As the lass whose launch I’m off...
Writing a book is hard.
I am hoping now that I have put that out into the ether, it will get a bit easier.
Books and love, redux
I was terribly amused yesterday to receive a press release from Penguin announcing their new endeavour to help the bookish find love in conjunction with Match.com, through a new Penguin-branded dating site. Setting aside the obvious problem that Penguin owes me a giant amount of money for giving them this brilliant idea, I am fascinated by the website for two reasons:
1. Is reading now such an...
I am not ashamed to admit that Hillary’s speech made me a little teary-eyed.
Well, not very ashamed.
Good morning, Baltimore!
(I had to say it.)
Operation Three Thousand Words a Day commences now.
I shall let you know how it goes.
A girl can dream
I have arrived in Baltimore. I would like to complain about the fact that the bus dropped me in a parking lot at the edge of the city. I would like to be critical of the fact that then I was made to schlep my luggage across a grassy verge, into a van. And I would like to express my displeasure that the man who was driving had no idea where he was going, and had to be directed by another...
Prescience
Jean: I just met you...in sixty years. You have a small dog and shoved in front of me at the deli, shouting, 'bacon, egg and cheese!' I let you, in deference to your superior New Yorkness.
Sebastian: There's only one thing you got wrong: there'll never be a dog. Besides that, you're probably right.
Jean: Oh, but there will be a dog - it will be my dog, which as a good BFF you'll be looking after while I am in the hospital, recovering from my face-lift.
Health insurance...
…is one of the major reasons I don’t live in the USA. I was reminded of this tonight as I cabbed home from Amy’s: the little TV in the back of the cab was showing a story about the HPV vaccine. “It costs $1000”, the anchor said, in much the same tone one might use to inform viewers of the price of a car.
Good morning, New York
I am jetlagged, so I have watched out the window as the sun has risen since before six, gradually illuminated the brick of the building opposite and the fire escape. A fire escape! My imaginings of New York are largely formed from picture books I read about it when I was a kid - the constrast to my suburban surroundings fascinated me. And amongst other things I was fixated on the concept of a fire...
“Williamsburg is like a college campus where everyone is majoring in AWESOME.”
– Laura takes me on my first visit to Brooklyn.
I survived the Fokker! It was a little violent and unpleasant, but I survived. A testament to the power of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (a story for another post one day). Good practice for the future, in case I ever find myseelf shuttling around by private jet. Ha!
Anyway, now I am in Schipol, a place that I’ve never been before, amongst tall handsome people and a lot of tulips, armed...
SO much to do...
Organising my life in order to leave it behind for a month is rather more complicated than I thought. The next 24 hours are going to be slightly ridiculous.
Jean: ...so I think it is time for me to start talking about Fake Boyfriend.
Ross: Oh, good old FB!
Jean: Yes. I think today his name will be...uh, Terence.
Ross: Terence? No, how about a more interesting name, like Theobald?
Jean: I don't think I could speak in convincing loving tones about a fake boyfriend called Theobald.
Oh, what a Fokker
Checking my flight for Thursday, I discovered that in my efforts to be thrifty in July, I booked myself to fly through AMSTERDAM in a plane called a FOKKER 50.
I have not been on a plane that size since 2000, when I boarded a turboprop to fly from Albany to Boston, had a panic attack, and had to get off.
I am sure that I saved at least £16 choosing this flight over a direct LHR-JFK one, which...
Tips for New York?
I’m going to New York City for five days on Thursday, for the wedding of a childhood friend and to see some of the various people from different stages of my life who have ended up there. I haven’t been there in a couple of years, and feel a little bit like I don’t know where to begin. What, dear readers who have been there more recently/live there, should I make a point of...
I am watching the women's triple jump
Viewing this Olympic event is always a poignant experience for me, because when I was 10 I inexplicably set a massive school record at triple jump. Inexplicable because I was totally crap at all sports. However, the triple jump didn’t trip off my asthma - for some reason, we didn’t do the run-up, just the jump - and I suppose I was probably quite a bit taller than the average...
“Very attractive, with a shock of thick blonde hair. Quite small, but with an...”
– Wife’s fury as Labour lord and a ‘stick thin Barbie doll’ set up home together | Mail Online
Reading the Mail on Sunday is one of my guilty pleasures - the features are just second to none for comedy value. How rather amazing and wonderful that there are still people in England...
“Smell him. If his genes smell like yours, steer clear!”
– Via text message, Lauren draws on her primatological expertise to offer me romantic advice.
Having my say, anyway
Hm. That was a little disappointing: after booking me to do a phone-in interview, the Beeb never called, and I was all ready to rail.
So I’ll do it here instead. Following this court case, in which it came to light that a British rape victim’s compensation money was docked 25% because she had been drinking when she was attacked, the UK media has been abuzz with the question of...
On air: Can a woman’s behaviour make her more... →
I will be on tonight at some point during the first hour, saying, “NO” and variations thereof.
“You have GOT to revise your attraction to weedy men.”
– Unsolicited, but useful, advice from some guy smoking a cigarette on the pavement outside The Russian Bar in Dalston…
Progress
One of my most secret character traits is that I am outstandingly, astonishingly, at times debilitatingly sentimental. It is a secret because over the years I’ve trained myself to cope with this inclination through being extremely selective about what I permit to sneak through to make me verklempt, because when I get misty-eyed about something or someone - oh! do I ever get misty-eyed. It...
My shower is fixed, so I no longer have to take baths every morning, which is both inefficient and bad for the environment (obviously), albeit relaxing and good for reading The New Yorker. I am so excited that it is mended that I even wrote to the property manager to thank her, in an attempt to establish good feeling before the inevitable Rent Increase Smackdown 2008.
NBC's Olympic crying games | TV & radio |... →