and after spending 6 months worrying about getting sick in a foreign country with foreign medicine, foreign food, and foreign germs…
…i forgot how sick london always makes me. not home even 3 weeks and already i have something which feels suspiciously like the beginnings of the flu. gah.
we had k&t over for dinner last night, and of course, being bonfire night, the fireworks started going off shortly after dark and continued for hours. but around eight o’clock i stepped out onto our new balcony to let some cool air into the flat, and was instantly transfixed. i could see fireworks from canary wharf all the way to wimbledon – a horizon full of electric blooms hanging, glittering and dissolving in the night air, with a luminous milky full moon floating above the haze. it was absolutely beautiful – bursts of colour as far as the eye could see.
if only every night fireworks.
bonfire night, guy fawkes hallelujah! i didn’t even realise it before, but only just noticed today that we have (drumroll please…) proper mixer taps! you’d have to be north american to understand what a huge pet peeve this is for me, but suffice to say the fact I can create warm (not hot, not cold. warm) water in my bathroom without filling up the sink is a very. big. deal. indeed.
(no outlets, of course – but i wasn’t expecting miracles!)
also, i have a dryer. i know drying clothes tends to be quite a different experience over here (i.e. they’re basically cooked in their own steam) , but if it actually works and i can get even a few pairs of underwear dry without festooning every available surface of the apartment with wet laundry like some bizarre dali-esque loungescape and cranking up the boiler til the windows sweat… well then, I will be a very happy girl.
it has a lovely stand-up shower. it has central heating and double glazed windows.
i am loving this apartment. i may never leave.
(internet service, however, will not be connected for two loooooonnnnngggg weeks. so updates may be a bit sparse.)
so i have an apartment… that i don’t want to move into.
i don’t know why i am suddenly so reluctant to move – it makes no logical sense, for sure. i have been wanting an apartment of our own for so long – since j and i got together. i haven’t had a flat that i didn’t share since my ex and i split up more than 5 years ago. ever since, i’ve had a flatmate – some better, some worse. there was johnny, my close friend’s brother back when i still lived in boston, who was funny and cool. there was angela, from my first move to london, who was lovely. there was arlene, who was a ditz and annoying, but kindhearted. there was alex, who was a depressed unemployed slob – not so good. and always, there were our friends next door – kerryn and tracey, who are really just family in the form of neighbours.
i was never alone. i’ve been surrounded by friends and family wherever i went.
and being on the road for 6 months, the one thing you get truly homesick for are your friends. it’s friends you wish were there to have beers at sunset in fiji. friends you wish were there to go snowboarding in nz with. friends you wish were there when you’re at a sidewalk cafe in santiago, or dazzled by the salt plains of bolivia, or sucking down pad thai on khao san road in bangkok. it’s friends you can’t wait to share stories with when you get back. of all the things you leave behind, it’s friends you miss the most.
so since we’ve been back it’s been so wonderful – we’ve been staying with kim and andy at their place, who’ve been so generous and warm. and honestly, like a parched plant, i’ve just been soaking it in. it is so nice to be surrounded by friends again. to have people to talk to, to have the luxury of familar faces and comfortable companions. i am sad to leave this cocoon of embrace.
finally moving means the trip is genuinely over. finally moving means being truly on our own, and facing london again. finally moving means losing our built in circle of family and friends and flatmates that i’ve taken for granted for so long. more than anything else, that’s what i don’t want to let go of.
i know it’s time. i know we’ve worked hard for this. i know our flat is still close by. so it makes no sense, this reluctance.
but if you had the friends i do, you’d feel it too.
what’s the most ridiculous amount of money you’d imagine paying to get a single pair of keys cut?
if you said £12, you’d be right!
when the hell did keys start costing £6 each!?? i wandered down the street, dropped off the keys, came back 5 minutes later, then had my jaw hit the floor when he said “that’ll be £11.80″. i had £8 on me and my phone (because who’d figure a set of keys would cost more than £8??) i had to leave my phone as collateral, take the original keys, go all the way back to the house and get more cash before returning to get robbed pay and collect the bloody keys. what’re they, made of gold or something?
gah.
i’m inordinately happy that if you google “jen”, my site is on page 7.
woo hoo! number 67 out of 104,000,000!
yes, i am *that* pathetic.
we got a flat, hooray hooray! we get the keys this evening.
here’s some pics from the estate agent:
it looks a lot bigger with less furniture!
now we just have to get dishes… linens… a telly… well, everything really!
but it’s all good. watch your inboxes for a housewarming invite soon!
made a full sunday roasted dinner this evening for our gracious househost.
you gotta love a menu so unapologetically stodgy that it calls for cooking with lard. because you can try making roasties** without it. but really, it’s the only way.
**roasted potatoes which are crispy on the outside, yet floury and fluffy on the inside
Woke up a little anxious, after having a dream in which an old, old issue was resolved – but not in the way i had hoped. and if you can’t get biased closure in your own dreams, where can you get it?
but also, i think i’m just feeling a bit unprepared. today is the first day since leaving work that we have no errands to run, and i feel like i should be *doing* something. what, exactly, i have no idea. what else do you do 7 days before you travel around the world? i’ve given myself the task of putting music on my ipod. a fascinating exercise – what was I *thinking* when I bought that janet jackson album??!
i don’t know – it’s difficult to know just how much i should be winging it. j made fun of me the other day, as i was re-organising my pack. i’m taking a 35 litre pack, which is only slightly larger than an oversized book bag. i deliberately chose something quite small to keep me from overpacking (and thus keep the number of instances where i chuck it off in tears and despair to a minimum.) but then i was asking him about travel towels (microfiber ultralight quicky-dry thingies) and he just laughed. i only have a single guidebook about china since that’s all i can carry at any one time, but am worried about not knowing enough about the other 12 countries. i know you learn as you go along, but surely i should have at least an *idea* of what I want to see? do i really want to get to laos without having a clue?
a few weeks ago, i wrote this in an email to a friend:
I’m finding myself surprisingly laissez faire about the whole thing. All I’ve really done so far is flick through an old Lonely PLanet on China. I suppose I’m bearing in mind that aside from the 2 or 3 things I really HAVE to see, I just want to *experience* it all. Y’know, I am convinced that the reason I was so blown away by Rome is because I didn’t even bother to open a guidebook before I got there. So I felt like my eyes were completely fresh to everything. I want that kind of experience. Some friends of our just got back from 6 months in S America… and I’m suddenly acutely aware of just how quickly this once-in-a-lifetime trip will pass.
i don’t know – i’m overthinking all this. where did that chilled out person go? i’ve done very well to remain relaxed and casual about the whole thing so far, but with the realisation that there’s a week left, i am starting to stress a little. j is overly relaxed – and that makes me a bit anxious as well.
but really, if i had to get on a plane tomorrow, i could. there’s nothing i need that i can’t buy on the road. nothing i have to do that couldn’t be done long distance if necessary. it’s a waiting game and i’m *looking* for things to worry about. sigh.
i’m practicing living out of my pack, which makes for some interesting hair days. i finally got a haircut the other day, as i’d not had one in more than 6 months whilst trying to grow it out. because unfortunately when i got it chopped last summer, it foolishly had not occurred to me that i would need to be able to pull it into a ponytail for the trip. hairstyles that you have to actually wash and “do” every day are very cute when you have your own bathroom and access to hot water, but aren’t really all that suitable when you don’t know where your next shower is coming from. when you have limited space, what’s the *one* single styling product you’d bring? I’m going with aveda wax. i have a feeling my bandannas are going to get a lot of use.
what about rain – do you bring an umbrella? or a waterproof jacket? do you really need a pack cover? will I be warm enough with just the fleece? or should I bring the wool cardigan that will be difficult to wash? do i spend £60 to get my malaria tablets here or wait and get them for cheap in bangkok? what if I have side effects?
see, these are the silly things i’m worried about. argh, i’m just in limbo and at loose ends – which doesn’t make for interesting blogging, so i’ll stop there.
I know I’ve been a bad blogger lately. friday was the last day of work – a tremendous relief, even as they were already trying to bribe me back in six months time by offering me a promotion. my leaving do (which I had been dreading, since i avoid any occasion for extra attention like the plague) was actually lovely – a bunch of people turned out, and the wine was flowing freely. why do you have to leave a place before you realise how much you were valued?
then we had the big clear out over the weekend. even though most everything was already packed away, it was all about cleaning and dealing with odds and ends. for example, i know I will never remember that my blue purse got thrown in with the dvd player because it was the last box that hadn’t been sealed up yet. you’re so at loose ends that after a certain point you start just staring blankly at the last few boxes, having moved them from one room to the next 3 times, and wonder how on earth anyone ever gets *out* of a place. and then there’s the guilt, because no matter how organised an approach you take (sifting our stuff to be donated to friends, charity shops, recycled) in the throes of end-stage chaos, you just start chucking shit into rubbish bags because you don’t know what else to do with it, and frankly, you no longer give a flying fuck. and I know I am going straight to hell for throwing perfectly good food in the trash, and it serves me right that i only had to turn around and buy more anyway.
in any case, that was most of the weekend. since then, i’ve been more social than i have in ages! sunday i met up with a friend for a long lunch of moules frites and some great conversation. monday i met up with a colleague (who’s also leaving the council) and we had drinks and dinner to celebrate the end of our working relationship, but start of a friendship. all in all, it’s been about “maxing and relaxing”, with the errant errand thrown in here and there. soaking up the decadence of being gainfully unemployed, which feels wonderful.
there are things i am realising I will miss – some is silly stuff like my pillow, and some is more intangible, like the view from my office over the thames. there is some stuff, however, that i will not miss for even one second. like the tube. this morning, we went down to the chinese embassy bright and early to apply for our visas. we were up and out of the house by 7:30, hoping to get there for the front of the queue. there was some kind of kerfuffle in the ticketing area, where they weren’t letting people through the gates for a few minutes – not a good sign. then boarding the train, it was already fairly full – also not a good omen at that time of the morning. we stuttered our way all the way to stockwell station, smooshed up against the doors, me with my face buried in j’s armpit. at stockwell, the platform for the victoria line was aleady packed – pure aggravation. we waited 6 minutes for the next train, and getting on was an exercise in assertiveness training. my “inner new yorker” surfaced, and I forced my way on. but several stops later, there was a girl who boarded by basically moshing – throwing the whole weight of her body into me multiple times, even though she had actually created quite a bit of personal space for herself. i swear, i nearly punched her in the face. by that point i was so aggro, i was a hair’s breadth away from grabbing her ponytail and ripping it off her stupid little head. holy shit, i have never been that close to picking a fistfight in my life, and the saving grace was that we got off at the next stop. i’m not usually a shrinking violet when it comes to confrontation, but i really couldn’t trust myself to speak. poor j, on the other hand, got quite an earful when we finally made it out. bless him – sometimes it think he doesn’t quite know what he got himself into, marrying me!
the bright spot of the day was buying a nice pair of sunnies, which i’ve needed for ages. buying sunglasses is always so difficult for me – they’re always either giagundo like huge bug-eye glasses with that awful metallic sheen, or too small like some kind of swimming goggles. i can’t be trusted with anything too pricey, as i will inevitably lose or sit on them. (i know, i know – i am a full grown adult and one would hope i could care for something as simple as a moderately priced pair of sunglasses… but one would be wrong.) so although j has had an expensive pair of titanium oakleys for several years, i really can’t buy anything i can’t afford to lose.
but, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles – i found some i actually like!
on another note: there’s been a bunch of adverts for the brasilian “brahma” beer in the tube lately, and for some reason i find them vaguely disturbing…
but i’ve finally figured out why!
tube, brahma, speto, moving, tube rage so there was a big nationwide council workers strike today. and although i’m a council employee, i’m not a member of the union which called the strike, nor did i strike in solidarity. to be perfectly honest, i have mixed feelings over the whole thing.
on the one hand, i believe strongly in the right of workers to unionise. i think it’s a much needed tool of empowerment for those workers whose needs are otherwise marginalised or ignored. to someone making minimum wage, who would otherwise be at the mercy of unethical labour practices, the union is a symbol of strength and protection. “the little guy” always has a voice, no matter how low on the totem pole.
on the other hand, i feel as though over here, in a more socialised political landscape, the unions are so broad, so noisy, so constantly confrontational, as to be counterproductive. they often seem to me, to be spouting the political rhetoric of one party or another, and the idea of workers rights becomes subsumed when they are used to further a party’s agenda. they play a very different role here in the uk, because employees rights are already so well enshrined in law that there’s really very little need to protect “the little guy”. even in the private sector, the employee has so many rights and protections that oftentimes organisations are afraid to sack someone for poor performance, because the employee will just seek compensation via the tribunal system. so when the omnipresent unions start making demans *on top* of what seems to me to be a very generous system already heavily weighted in the worker’s favour… well it just seems like they’re taking the piss.
the issue at the heart of today’s strike was about protecting employee pensions. currently, council workers are entitled to retire at 60 with a full pension – a benefit which is being threatened in much the same way that social security is collapsing: a demographic skew of older workers living longer and fewer young workers paying into the system. but the fact of the matter is that nothing the government does is going to change that reality. it may not be fair, but that’s the way it goes. and i suppose i come from a generation where we don’t expect the government to take care of us in our old age. and we definitely don’t rely on it. that’s sheer folly. i’ve been hearing about social security now since the reagan years – it’s nothing new. and big pension schemes in the states have been imploding for years. pensions don’t work anymore. they’re a relic of an age when people carved out their careers over 20+ year with the same company, then retired at 62 and died within the next 12 years. we all know it doesn’t work that way any more. to expect the same structures to support an entirely different weight, without anyone taking a hit, is ludicrous.
if I thought the cause was just, i’d support it. or even if i thought the strike would accomplish its aims, i’d support it. but all strikes seem to do lately is engender distaste for the cause, anger for the workers and public, and distraction from the real problem at hand. people aren’t angry at central government; they’re angry at the workers who kept the schools and services closed. they don’t support the idea of solidarity for social change; they’re irritated at the inconvenience and power games.
so i didn’t strike today, and i’m not sure i ever will. i’m no norma rae. but then again, this ain’t no 1970s textile mill, either.
council workers strike, pensions scheme well the countdown of workdays now stands at 4. there will apparently be a leaving do, whether i want it or not (nevermind that I really hate extra attention). the list of things remaining to be done includes getting the china visa, cutting off the utilities (on friday), getting a haircut (thursday), and… that’s about it!
we booked two nights in a hostel for when we land in beijing. because i get really cranky when i’m jetlagged *and* homeless.
spent most of the non-hungover weekend working on the bare bones of the trip website (please note, now added in the menu above. not much to see there just yet, but soon…)
i’m starting to get a little anxious/nervous – but in a good way. you know, like when there’s something big and important and a little bit scary, but you can’t wait for it to get here? butterflies.
and i’m avoiding finishing the packing – we’re like 83% packed, and I just can’t bring myself to face the other 17%. but really, it has to be done very soon. 10% of the other 17% is sorting through miscellaneous papers and old bills (which must be saved for immigration purposes) and assorted crapola. gah. also, I have to find good homes for all my plants. anyone want a plant?
other than that, all’s quiet on the western front. sorry it’s not more exciting at the mo’, but I’ll try and make up for that.
Wow. if you haven’t yet seen the bbc’s planet earth series, i just cannot recomend it highly enough. sunday nights at 9:00 on bbc1. it puts you in jaw-dropping awe of this unbelievable planet we’re so lucky to be part of. absolute wonderment, and startling cinematography. you must take a look at some of the video here.
we already own blue planet, and i’m sure that planet earth will be out on dvd soon. a must have for any collection.
planet earth, bbc i made chicken soup with dumplings, from scratch. without a recipe.
and it was goddamn *tasty*. hooray for me!
rediscovering a horrible side effect of tight-wad living… a drastically lowered alcohol tolerance. we’ve been such cheapskates, for so long, that our drinking skills have been temporarily (god, I hop* not permanently??!) impaired. why were we such skinflints that we couldn’t even buy the odd pint? well, it’s not that a beer every once in a while is so expensive. it’s that you can’t go to the pub and buy just one beer.
[sidenote for my american readers: there's a hard and fast rule about pub etiquette in the u.k., which is that you don't ever just byob (buy your own beer) at the pub, but rather buy a round for everyone in your group. so - if you're out with 6 people, your round consists of paying for 6 drinks. now, it's not so bad if you plan to drink another 5 beers (as everyone takes "getting a round" in turn) to get your money's worth. but if you don't fancy poisoning your liver every time you go out, or emptying your wallet when all you want is your *one* beer, you end up either alienating friends and neighbours by flauting the "rounds rules", *or* you just stay home a lot more. there are, in fact various ways to subvert the "rounds rules", but really it's considered poor form of manners to do it more than very occasionally. read more about the "rounds" phenomenon here. the "rounds rule" is really not as onerous as it sounds for the most part, and it's just something you become acclimated to as part of the way of life (and in fact, is often a nice little cheery communal sort of practice), but it doesn't really lend itself to budget living, no matter how you look at it. it *does* however, help build up your alcohol tolerance rather dramatically.]
So, getting back to the story: I had a little pre-departure leaving-do drinks-thing with a couple of my female colleagues after work on Friday. We split two bottles plus a bit (another frequent practice when more than one person in a group is drinking wine, which often lends itself to overconsumption – rather than 2 people having two individual glasses of wine, they’ll split a bottle… which often turns into more than one bottle… you get the idea), so altogether, I had three large glasses of white wine over the course of a few hours.
then came home so that j and i could take kerryn out for celebratory drinks for his recent engagement. (the poor soul has had a “dry” few weeks [including his birthday!] due to extended antibiotic usage for his impacted wisdom teeth.) so kerryn, j and i went to our local up the street, which serves a delightful strawberry lambic (and if you’ve never had a belgian fruit lambic beer on a hot summer night, you’ve not lived – not that list night was hot, or summer, but after three glasses of wine, who needs any excuses for fruit beer?) and I had two pints of that.
so to recap: 3 glasses of white wine, two pints of fruit beer, between 6 pm and 1 am.
and I am suffering for it now. which means i didn’t make it to the post office to mail the fruit pies.
see, I also belong to this american expats forum – which is exactly what it sounds like. a bunch of americans alternately whinging about and glorifying the expat existence in the united kingdom. and one of the members back in the states generously sent a big box of hostess fruit pies for several of the regular posters, which i, gripped by some strangely benevolent impulse, agreed to re-distribute to the others on this side of the pond. a hostess fruit pie delivery chain was set up. now the pies took ages to arrive, and i only finally got them two weekends ago. and of course I was meant to send them last weekend, but we were in the midst of getting rid of all our furniture and fruit pie postage was waaayyyy down at the bottom of the “to do” list. then today, despite all my good intentions, i was far too hung over to make it to the post office, due to my newly discovered “liquor lightweight” fighting class, a direct result of being skint for the past 10 months.
so if you’re an A.e. member wondering where on earth your fruit pies are… i heartily apologise for not being able to handle my fruit lambic. take some comfort in the fact that I’m being soundly punished for not holding up my end of the fruit pie chain.
lambic, beer, hostess fruit pies I think with all this getting rid of stuff, I am inadvertently becoming a buddhist.
spent this afternoon introducing j to the comedic genius that was mitch hedberg. goddamn that man was funny. so terribly sad he’s dead, and even worse that there’s no chance in hell of me finding any of his shows on dvd here in the u.k. if you ever saw him do standup, you can just picture the deadpan monotone slacker-style delivery of his jokes. these had tears streaming out of my eyes…
There is a commercial on late-night TV for this thing you attach to a garden hose. It says, “You can water your hard-to-reach plants with this product.” Who the fuck would make their plants hard to reach!? That seems so very mean. “I know you need water, but I’m gonna make you hard to reach. I will throw water at you. Hopefully, they will invent a product before you shrivel and die. Think like a cactus!” This product was available for four easy payments of $19.95. I would like a product that was available for three easy payments and one fucking complicated payment. We can’t tell you which payment it is, but one of these payments is going to be a bitch. The mailman will get shot to death, the envelope will not seal, and the stamp will be in the wrong denomination. Good luck, fucker. The last payment must be made in wampum!
This one time I was in a convenience store, and a guy came up and asked me, “What’s the score?” and I said, “What is the game? If it’s a competition between me and you, and the object is to ask the other guy questions he doesn’t give a shit about, then you are winning, one to nothing.”
I bought a doughnut from a store and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut. I don’t need a receipt for the doughnut. Man, I’ll just give you money, then you give me the doughnut. End of transaction. We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can’t imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. Some skeptical friend: “Don’t even act like I didn’t get that doughnut, I’ve got the documentation right here. Oh wait, it’s at home, in the file… under D… for doughnut”
You know they call corn-on-the-cob “corn-on-the-cob,” but that’s how it comes out of the ground, man. They should call that “corn,” and call every other version “corn-off-the-cob.” It’s not like if you cut off my arm you would call it “Mitch,” then reattach it and call me “Mitch-all-together”.
I went to the park and saw this kid flying a kite. The kid was really excited. I don’t know why; that’s what they’re supposed to do. Now if he had had a chair on the other end of that string, I would have been impressed. Imagine trying to fly a chair. You’d have to run like a motherfucker.
In England, Smokey the Bear is not the forest fire prevention representative. They have Smackie the Frog. It’s just like a bear, but it’s a frog. I think it’s a better system; I think we should adopt it. Because bears can be mean, but frogs are always cool. Never has there been a frog hopping toward me, and I thought, “Man, here comes that frog…I’d better play dead.” You never say, “Here comes that frog” in a terrified manner. It’s always optimistic, like, “Hey, here comes that frog, all right. Maybe he will settle near me so I can pet him, and stick him in a mayonnaise jar.. with a stick and a leaf.. to recreate what he’s used to. And I’d certainly have to punch some holes in the lid, because he’s damn sure used to air. Then I can observe him, and he won’t be doing much in his 16-ounce world.”
mitch hedberg lovelovelove “my name is earl”. since j and i rarely venture out of the house anymore, we are always parked in front of the telly at 10pm on friday evenings, eagerly awaiting that week’s riotous installment with our cup of tea and pudding.
(for anyone jealous of our upcoming trip, i present this example as evidence of how sad our social life has become: a half hour television show is one of the highlights of our week. the sacrifices we make!)
and yeah, we’re behind the times over here, so I’m late to this party, since it’s already a big hit in the states, but the dialogue is priceless. some of my favourite quotes:
Darnell: I’m already registered to vote.
Joy: What?
Darnell: Not that it matters, because until we reform the electoral college, the popular votes will be ignored, and we’ll keep electing Presidents that only get a minority of the vote.
Joy: That must be some black stuff. I don’t know what he’s talkin’ about
Joy: Woo, this things making me sweat like a whore in church, no offense, Patty.
Patty: None taken. I don’t go to church.
Earl: (on his fabricated stint in Iraq) Well, Buzz, it’s a lot like the beach. Except the sharks have guns, and they’re running around on the sand, shootin’ at you and yellin’ in a fish language you don’t understand.
Joy: I want half that lotto money, Earl.
Earl: Yeah? Well, I wanted a legitimate baby and a wife who didn’t huff paint on Thanksgiving, but I guess life’s full of little disappointments, now ain’t it?
You can’t buy that kind of bellylaugh. brilliant.
show, quotes, my name is earl we don’t really get much in the way of oscar hype here in england, and though it’s somewhat refreshing, it’s also somewhat sad. i miss oscar parties, and the red-carpet bitchfest, and the betting pools. here, unless you have cable and stay up to the wee hours to watch it, you’re relegated to watching the heavily edited highlights show the following evening (where the commentators will invariably bemoan the slow death of the british film industry) after the results have already been revealed in the morning papers. which, if you ask me, kind of negates the whole point.
so, in honour of the oscars being held tomorrow night:
brokeback mountain is expected to run away with the race. having become infamous for being “the gay cowboy movie”, it’s also become nearly as infamous for the spinoff spoofs it has spawned. If you haven’t already checked them out, get a look at what everyone’s talking about here.
i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: we love jon stewart. as master of ceremonies this year, jon stewart should bring down the house. most everyone in america knows him well as the host of the political satire “the daily show”, a programme which has been gaining in popularity of late with it’s particularly pointed lampooning of the current administration. in keeping with the “gay oscars” theme this year, here’s his take on recent civil rights progress around the world.
If you haven’t hear about timothy treadwell, and the movie “grizzly man” (which was tipped for the oscars, but didn’t quite make it), watch the earnest trailer below about this poor deluded man who tragically fancied himself a “bear whisperer” of sorts…
then watch this pants-pissingly hilarious spoof… (if the video is slow to load, you can watch it here as well)
not a fan of the oscars? go check out their “award archnemesis” the razzies. Nominees for worst picture include “the dukes of hazzard” (which I slept through on dvd, even) and the classy “deuce bigalow: european gigolo”, and there’s an epic showdown in the worst actress category between the esteemed tara reid and jenny mccarthy. winners announced 7:30 pst tonight!
happy oscars!
oscars, razzies, satire, grizzly man, brokeback mountain spoofs, jon stewart it’s been a long hard slog this week, and we’ve just got a new vending machine on our floor at the office – much to the chagrin of many, and the delight of… well, just me. so to lift my flagging spirits late on a friday afternoon, i did something I never do: bought chocolate. (now those of you who know me in real life, and know of my sugar addiction, are gaping slackjawed in disbelief right about now, but it’s true. I do have *some* rules. and one of those rules is that i generally don’t buy chocolate.) standing in front of the bright shiny new machine, i was looking for something comforting and familiar. and then i saw the m&m’s winking at me. so i deposited my money, made my selection, tilted my chair back, dipped into the bag, and popped a few in my mouth.
ewwww.
i don’t know exactly how or why they were so… different. and bad. completely not what my mouth was expecting – upon closer inspection of the bag looked as if they had been imported from greece. they were overly crispy. they were gritty and grainy, and felt funny betweeen my teeth. there was too much shell. they were not chocolatey, and at first i thought they were the peanut butter m&ms. (if anything i would have expected them to be more british chocolatey, with it’s strong sensation of eating solidified cream, than american chocolatey, with it’s cloying sweetness. they were not chocolatey.) They were like no m&ms i’d ever had before. nor will i ever have them again.
i have no idea how it is that in nearly 3 years in england i have never eaten m&ms here. like I said, i don’t generally buy chocolate. but trust me, i’d remember it if I had.
i tell you – it takes a lot, to make me say ewwww when it comes to candy of any type. i take pride in my commitment to trying strange sweets of every possible variety – if it’s made of sugar, i’ll try it. i particularly enjoy discovering new and interesting international candies, and the highlight for me of any trip, is discovering what treats they sell abroad. my friend diana once took it upon herself, *on her honeymoon* to bring back for me the strangest confectionery creations she could find in all of greece and spain (countries where, it should be noted, nose-bleed menthol is considered a perfectly acceptable candy flavour and textures run the gamut from break-your-tooth-off *hard* to oozingly runny). she must have brought back nearly a dozen foreign delights and the only thing which i did not and could not willingly eat was a brittle variation on liquorice which tasted like crunchy soap.
even being featured on bad-candy, is not enough to dissuade me – i love circus peanuts, and if i could get my hands on some indy dedos i’d try them in a heartbeat.
but these m&ms…. ewww. next time i’m going for a snickers.
still… i ate ‘em. (what?? they’re sugar!!!)
m&ms, candy, bad candy I *looooovvvveee* peeps. I am addicted to peeps.
I have discovered that peeps are sold at asda. I hate asda. Asda is Wal-Mart. I hate Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is evil. Asda is evil.
There can be only one explanation. This is a test from god.
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