j and i are headed off to south africa late tomorrow evening. really looking forward to it, as haven’t been there since our wedding 4 years ago. going to get a tan or die trying!
all of which is by way of saying blogging will likely be non-existent for the next two weeks – play nice everyone, and see you when i get back!
i swear one day immigration is going to arrive at my front door and revoke my burgundy passport on the spot. i simply *cannot* get the hang of a proper bath.
i’ve written here about my difficulty with baths before, but they say god loves a tryer. i had scoured the bathroom yesterday ceiling to floor – a not-small feat considering the things that were growing in there – followed by a run and some yoga. after all that exertion, and with a pristine bathroom to take advantage of, i decided to make good use of some of the lovely lush bath stuff my dear husband gave me on our anniversary the other day.
i ran the bath in optimistic anticipation as it filled up with clouds of scented foam. dimmed the lights, grabbed a book, and hopped in.
unfortunately a) i hadn’t regulated the temperature of the bathwater well enough and b) had grabbed a less than compelling book, so after a mere few minutes, i was smelling good, but bored and chilly and cursing the waste of a gorgeous bath bomb. i managed to hold out for a full fifteen minutes before conceding defeat.
today, i had a 12 mile run in the damp and cold, as well as a still-sparkling tub, and decided that this presented a perfect opportunity to enjoy-this-if-it-kills-me-dammit! determined to avert the problems of the previous evening, i selected another luxurious bath fizzy, ran a *hot* bath, and brought my ipod to listen to. sorted.
except that after about 5 minutes, i began to perspire – lightly at first, then sweating profusely. the room was a bit steamy, the too-hot water was weighing heavily on my chest, and i was suddenly having a hard time breathing and feeling a bit faint. hanging over the side of the tub, trying to figure out how to put my head between my knees when my knees were underwater, i felt like an idiot – visions of the headlines after i drowned from passing out in the bath swimming before my eyes.
i officially give up. i have two more bathballs left in the box. they smell fantastic, but after my near death experience this evening, i think they’ll be relegated to perfuming the back of my closet.
“What are the dangers to a democracy of a national police organization, like the FBI, which operates secretly and is unresponsive to public criticism?” – (optional question on the University of California’s 1959 English aptitude test for high school applicants, said to have infuriated j.edgar hoover)
(via andy)
met police hold a secret databank on thousands of protesters.
Police are targeting thousands of political campaigners in surveillance operations and storing their details on a database for at least seven years, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal.
Photographs, names and video footage of people attending protests are routinely obtained by surveillance units and stored on an “intelligence system”. The Metropolitan police, which has pioneered surveillance at demonstrations and advises other forces on the tactic, stores details of protesters on Crimint, the general database used daily by all police staff to catalogue criminal intelligence. It lists campaigners by name, allowing police to search which demonstrations or political meetings individuals have attended.
Disclosures through the Freedom of Information Act, court testimony, an interview with a senior Met officer and police surveillance footage obtained by the Guardian have established that private information about activists gathered through surveillance is being stored without the knowledge of the people monitored.
Police surveillance teams are also targeting journalists who cover demonstrations, and are believed to have monitored members of the press during at least eight protests over the last year.
The Guardian has found:
•Activists “seen on a regular basis” as well as those deemed on the “periphery” of demonstrations are included on the police databases, regardless of whether they have been convicted or arrested.
•Names, political associations and photographs of protesters from across the political spectrum – from campaigners against the third runway at Heathrow to anti-war activists – are catalogued.
•Police forces are exchanging information about protesters stored on their intelligence systems, enabling officers from different forces to search which political events an individual has attended.
if all this sounds terribly familiar, it’s because it’s almost the exact same tactics employed under hoover’s fbi and specifically the “cointelpro” covert surveillance programme which kept secret information files on people it believed to be possible political dissidents, potential radicals, or their sympathisers.
according to the church committee report which investigated the cointelpro programme:
The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government… has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous — and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations — have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity. Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable…Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.
try substituting “british” for “american”, “prime minister” for “president”, and “parliament” for “congress”, and then see how it reads.
particularly distressing is the police surveillance of the journalists:
The National Union of Journalists… documented at least eight protests since last March where its members were “routinely” photographed and filmed by police. Several journalists said police officers they had never met knew their names. “We have put this to police and the Home Office several times but they have always denied the practice or sought to avoid answering the question,” said Jeremy Dear, the union’s general secretary. “With this evidence there is no credibility in doing so any longer.”
a free press is one of the cornerstones and guardians of democracy. this too, however, harkens back to the more nefarious hoover tactics. in particular, cointelpro also targeted the alternative media and press, for the purposes of intimidation and harrassment.
ringing any (alarm) bells yet?
sunday, march 8th is international women’s day – since 1911, this day has been recognised as a day to promote the social, political and economic equality of women.
today, amnesty international uk is using international women’s day to draw attention to their 1:10 campaign, highlighting the unconscionable statistic that one in ten women in the uk are the victims of rape or gender-related violence every year (domestic violence/female genital mutilation/forced marriages/”honour” violence/sexual abuse/sex trafficking).
i’ve written many times here about how the uk law enforcement and judicial systems are failing rape victims in horrifying fashion, and one in four local authorities offers no services for violence against women.
if you live in the uk, go to the map of gaps to petition your mp for services and funding to combat violence against women. if you live elsewhere, take action on amnesty’s global campaign to combat rape against women in conflict zones – “rape is cheaper than bullets”.
international women’s day has been much needed for nearly a hundred years now – how many more?
thanks to the miracle of podcasts, i now find myself spending much of my free time listening to public radio and news. i am fast turning into my mother – which simultaneously scary and comforting.
however, if i begin to lose my glasses every 30 seconds, or start collecting endless piles of tupperware, someone please take me out behind the shed and shoot me.
watching television does not make babies smarter.
duh.
now, i’m certainly not one to tell parents what to do – i fully recognise that we live in a world where television is a inescapable and pervasive medium. today’s childhood is not like it was when i grew up.
when i grew up, we had one television. it was black and white, and had about 7 watchable channels. the only children’s programming on offer at my house was “sesame street”, “the brady bunch” and a few mild cartoons. we didn’t get a colour television until i was 10. my television viewing was limited to the hours after my parents got home from work, and until i hit the teen years, i wasn’t even allowed to watch t.v. after 9pm. adult shows like “hill street blues” were off limits until i was about 15. my dad used to go so far as to put a lock on the television during the afterschool period so we couldn’t watch it until he’d made sure we’d done our homework and chores. certainly no surprise then, that we never had our own televisions, and we definitely never had cable.
and this was in the *70s and early 80s* – an era that looks positively innocent, nearly virginal really, by comparison with today’s standards.
i would never suggest that today’s parents be quite so draconian as my parents were, because quite frankly, these measures resulted in a lengthy period in my early adulthood when i was positively glued to the t.v. set, ingesting television like a starving man at a junk food buffet, as if to make up for lost time. moderation in all things, i say.
but my parents (and many others) knew back then what many of today’s parents have lived in denial of for far too long: t.v. is not good for the developing brain. we are, by nature, creatures who learn best through social interaction, and a brightly lit box simply cannot substitute for a parents attention and engagement. my parents generation called it the “idiot box” when they saw us sitting in front of it, gazing at it adoringly with glazed eyes – and they weren’t far off.
yes, i learned a lot of spanish through watching “sesame street”. but i learned a great deal more by reading and playing and creating and imagining. and my parents ensured that i did a lot more of the latter than i did of the former.
the “baby einstein” programmes and their ilk offer too many parents a panacea – assuaging their guilt at using the television as a substitute babysitter by convincing them they’re actually enhancing their child’s brain power. hopefully this study puts paid to that.
and though i don’t praise my parents often enough, let me give credit where credit is due. while you may have tried too hard at times, you never took the easy way out, and i benefited enormously from that – thanks mom and dad. you may have saved me a few extra i.q. points 
if ever there was an upside to the ever-deepening economic recession, this is it:
fewer people may die as a result of the death penalty in the u.s.
nine states have bills seeking to abolish or repeal the death penalty, while others are delaying or halting costly death penalty trials.
A 2008 study by the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy research group based in Maryland, found that an average capital murder trial in the state resulting in a death sentence costs about $3 million, or $1.9 million more than a case where the death penalty is not sought.
people may not care much about the principle of “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”, but they sure care when the state coffers are empty.
i saw them out of the corner of my eye as i ran past – the shy yellow heads peeking above the muddy parapet, the gentle green hue touching the ends of bleakbarren branches. so subtle, i could almost believe they were a trick of the eye.
every year, there comes a day when i sense it – some primordial intuition which signals at the back of my brain. it’s here, it’s arrived. independent of any calendar, there comes a day when i know i can begin to breathe a little easier, that the worst is over, because spring is here.
today was that day.
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leafOne by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leafBut now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken
from “spring and all”, william carlos williams
so as you can probably see from the new widget over yonder in the sidebar, i’ve been sucked into the world of twittering, tweets, and tweeple.
i’ve been reading a lot about social networking media lately: articles that posit their popularity is due to some kind of pathetic psychological transferrence mechanism and quest for identity; articles warning against the “dangers” of next generations losing social skills in real life; and articles that wonder what the fuss is about, and if it’s all just much ado about nothing. after all – what’s so compelling about what someone had for dinner?
the thing is, they all miss the point.
i recently said the attraction to twitter rests largely on the notion that at any given point in time, what you’re doing is probably of interest to someone else. somewhat narcissistic – but also true. the reason twitter (and other networking media) are so successful, so addictive, is precisely because they allow people to share the boring minutia of their lives, with everyone else who’s also living out the boring minutia of their lives. think about your friends – when you talk on the phone or get together for coffee, you don’t analyse sartre, or ponder the larger mysteries of life. what you do is share the minutia of your lives – you bond over teething babies, and silly office politics, and pet care. and in many ways the more you know about the mundane intimacies of someone’s daily life, the closer you feel. reading about someone’s root canal on the internet is really only one step removed from talking about it on the phone. except that the internet allows you to share this experience with people you might not ever get a chance to meet in real life. it broadens your ability to connect to people, rather than narrowing it. if i were restricted to talking about the start of baseball’s pre-season with people i met in real life here in london (who in general neither no nor care about baseball), i’d feel incredibly isolated. yet i can send out a tweet to the world at large that says “baseball’s preseason starts today, woot!” and get an answer from someone who has the same interests. and that may lead to talking about our favourite teams – or it may not.
because in essence, the explosion of social networking media has turned the world into a giant cocktail party. you mingle, you chat, you move on. and like any cocktail party, there will be some wallflowers, and some social butterflies, and a lot of people in between. no one would advise spending your whole *life* in a virtual cocktail party, but in reality, few people ever do. in other words, it is what you make of it – it can be light fun, it can be business networking.. or it can lead to real friendships, with real people. and far from being scary, there can be real value in that.
just watch out for the loud drunken guy wearing a tie around his forehead and doing the macarena, and you’ll be alright 
(postscript: literally, as i was finishing writing this, russell brand tweeted, “twittering is the new wanking.” never let it be said i didn’t present an alternative point of view! )
private message – weezer
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happy mardi gras! for those of you stateside, the uk celebrates “pancake day” for shrove tuesday. which entails eating pancakes for dinner – an enterprise i could thoroughly get behind, except that “pancake” here refers to a crêpe. with lemon and powdered sugar. or golden syrup.
they do sell bisquick here though, thank goodness, so we had fluffy american shortstacks with maple syrup and butter.
the bottle of maple syrup we purchased says, “delicately smooth taste of butterscotch and creme caramel.” um, no. butterscotch tastes like butterscotch. caramel tastes like caramel. and maple tastes like maple.
we went to a wedding in the yorkshire dales this weekend. i’d never been, and omfg it is gorgeous. like, beautiful in the way i dreamt of when i read “all creatures great and small” as a kid (fitting, as james herriot was writing about yorkshire). and no, i clearly never watched “emmerdale”, either.
i’ve never been particularly enamoured of the english countryside except in a drive-by-on-the-motorway-oh-wow-look-at-the-sheep-and-pasture kind of way. i know that rolling green hills and quaint thatched roofs is what everyone thinks of when they think of pastoral england, but most of the countryside i’ve seen has been of the home counties – and it has never really appealled.
but something about the dales just struck me. had me daydreaming about living out in the sticks in an old stone house and going for brisk rambles with a dog by my side. (working remotely from a london job, natch.) how could you not?
the sad reality is that my marriage simply could not survive rural living – i would get bored, drive jonno insane, and then he’d have to kill me.
but a girl can dream…
dear j -
tomorrow (today) marks exactly 5 years that you and i have been together, four years that we’ve been married.
tonight, i’m sitting here watching a nature special about cassowaries with you. you’re doing a running commentary, as you do: “look at the little fuzzy chickies”, “ooh, he’s doing a jump!”, “that bird could eat little zekie”. i yell at you often when you do that, because you talk so much i can’t even hear the television – but really, i find it incredibly endearing and entertaining.
five years on, i love you more than ever. i know you probably don’t believe it – after all, i’m hardly as gushy as i was before. but the highs and lows have smoothed out into a steady, rhythmic, comforting pulse. a presence i rely on like air.
and yet you still manage to surprise me with the small tendernesses that catch my heart unawares. the other night i came to bed and found you’d thoughtfully turned on my electric blanket for me so i had toasty sheets. me, with my reptilian circulation that you endlessly complain about.
and while it doesn’t sound like much, compared to flowery poetry and professions of love… it is, in fact, everything.
you are the endearing, entertaining, tender and surprising constant of my life. thank you.
crowded house – fall at your feet
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i’ve posted about gay marriage here quite a lot in the past. and even with all the evidence about how archaic and retrograde the states can be about civil rights, i choose to believe that plain old fairness eventually will win out. i concede that there is much struggle ahead, and i concede that it may take some time. i have no doubt however, that no matter how scary it may be for some, in the end, love can conquer that fear.
which is why it is simply incomprehensible to me that there are people who would deliberately seek to retroactively dissolve those unions celebrated in california during the months that gay marriage was legal. 18,000 couples stood up with their family and friends, and with their whole heart and soul said “i do”. with all their love, they pledged to be together for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, til death.
anyone else notice what’s wrong with this advert?
yes, that’s right – they’re implying that you jump through basketball hoops. which makes no sense whatsoever. and then you realise that in a nation which knows less about basketball than probably any other american sport, it’s probably not so weird that it went unnoticed.
i think what they meant was something more along the lines of this:
some days i feel like a stranger in a strange land.
walking down the pavement today, not paying much attention…
i did, in fact, slip on a banana peel.
valentine’s day doesn’t particularly mean much to me and j. we’ve never really done very much, mostly because our anniversary is in a week, and it seems silly to celebrate twice.
what valentine’s day *does* mean to me, however, is another yearly opportunity to take part in vday – a global movement to end violence against women and girls.
i’ve been terribly lucky – no man has ever tried to hurt or abuse me. unfortunately, several friends and millions of women cannot say the same – in the u.s. alone, one in four women have been raped or assaulted by their dates or partners.
that’s one in four daughters/sisters/mothers. raped or assaulted by people they knew. think about the women in your immediate family. chances are that one in four of them will be a victim at some point. in a country which considers itself civilised, that figure is sickening. and in other parts of the world, women are routinely subject to rape, genital mutilation and sexual slavery.
sexual and domestic violence continues to be perpetrated against women everywhere, and until it stops for all, none of us are truly free from that threat.
so if there’s a woman in your life that you love and respect – mother, daughter, sister, wife, lover – please consider taking part or contributing in anyway you can. this valentine’s day, do something to help protect and respect women everywhere.
(and if you’re in the london area, consider taking part in the march to end violence against women, being held on 7th march.)
this is the kind of thing that gives the whole “childfree by choice” contingent a bad name.**
calling kids a “pain in the ass”, bemoaning their ability to “talk, scream and cry”, being “grossed out” by the thought of pregnancy…
*none* of this has anything to do with not wanting children because it’s not the right choice for you, and everything to do with being an immature, selfish twit. *i* certainly don’t want to be identified with this kind of idiocy,
the sad thing is that this sort of thinking is not representative of most people i know who’ve elected not to have kids. but this is the kind of thing that gets put on cnn.com. it does a disservice to everyone by deliberately inflaming and polarising the issue.
the writer claims her biological clock is broken. sadly her common sense seems to have gone awry as well.
**i must add that i do not identify as “childfree”, precisely because i feel it to be a term loaded with the kind of connotations set out in the article.
officially beginning to train up for the edinburgh marathon at the end of may. first and foremost, i needed new running shoes. you’re supposed to change up every 300 – 400 miles. when you’re training, you’re generally clocking anywhere between 20 – 50 miles per week, which means a pair of shoes can start wearing out in just a few months. but because they cost around £100 a pair, i don’t switch them up as often as i should.
witness the most recent pair to be retired:
there’s something a little sad about retiring a pair of shoes. i always hang on to the last pair, even though i never actually wear them again. i guess i just like to remember the good runs. and luckily, much like the pain of childbirth, the mind seems to block out the memories of the bad ones.
running shoes are, as a rule, hideous. seriously, who designs these things? it’s almost like the ugliness is a badge of honour – if your shoes are ugly, you must be a serious runner. i also admit to being one of those judgemental runners – i can tell at a glance who’s a serious runner, and who’s not, based on what they’re wearing and how they’re running. people who choose their outfits based on the cuteness quotient, people who run by swinging their legs to the side, people who run wearing completely improper shoes. and the number of women who don’t have a proper sports bra makes my chest ache just thinking about it.
i’ve developed a *fantastic* running playlist – a small portion of which i will unselfishly share with you here. no matter how leaden my legs, these songs get my ass moving a bit faster.
and here’s the 
feed for downloads.
i watched revolutionary road last evening. it portrays the quiet small time dramas of a young, ambitious couple who find themselves smashed up against the limitations of the settled life, and chafing against both the restrictions of circumstance, and the traditional expectations of traditional society.
for the couple who live on revolutionary road, they get caught in the web of the trappings of suburbia that smother the life out of their hearts’ aspirations. they consider themselves different, special – and yet, seven years later realise how common and dull they’ve become. they discover the ugliness the belies the appearance of perfection: that so many of us invest ourselves in the pretense of happiness, the shellac of smile…all the while searching for answers, a different version of reality we hope to find in someone or someplace else. hoping that with enough energy behind the lies, with enough paint on the facade and alcohol to dull the pain, we can turn the lies into truth.
and yet, like crabs in a pot, what frightens us most is when others come close to realising their dreams – because the strength of their conviction only highlights the fragility of our own.
i found myself wound up in the story, identifying so strongly with those longings for escape and those feelings of struggle and panic that find you beating your fists against the invisible walls that box you in. because while for many people, families and houses and security are their version of the american dream, i’ve never wanted any of that. the serene and placid lives in the chocolate box houses on revolutionary road are the stuff of my nightmares, and the existence which the wife finds so soul-deadening would make me want to flee for my life.
this is my greatest fear: that i too, could somehow unknowingly find myself trapped in a life of my own making. that i too, could wake up one day and wonder where all my hopes have gone. it sounds terribly melodramatic, but i have this impulse to pre-emptively rail against expectations because i dread one day wondering if this is all there is, and didn’t i always want something more out of life? i am terrified of leading a life of quiet desperation.
in the end, she takes the only avenue of escape left to her – she is determined to have her freedom at any price.
and i never, ever want to feel that way. but given her choice, her life, i imagine i’d do the same.
death cab for cutie – cath…
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it’s midnight. the people in the flat one down, one over from ours are having a party. which apparently includes extremely loud techno music, lots of screaming/yelling/shrieking/singin at the top of ones lungs, and stomping (??!). the whole apartment is shaking and it’s just ridiculously excessive, even for a friday night.
in the uk, you do not call the cops for this. noise is a council problem. this is what we pay our council tax for. so at about 12:30, we ring the emergency noise line, and they say they’ll send someone out. even more shockingly, no one in the flats immediately adjacent or above/below this craziness has bothered to complain.
a little green wandsworth car comes out. and then leaves.
jonno rings back the noise line. apparently they cannot ask the people to turn it down because there were people “loitering”, and they deemed it unsafe.
loitering? at a party? well i never!!
seriously. they tell us they can file a report. that’s it.
we try to go back to bed. j has to go into work in the morning. it’s 1:30.
and finally, i spring up, put on slippers and go downstairs. there’s a 20-ish guy outside the flat with a beer, the door open, insanely loud music blasting out.
he seems a bit unsettled by the approach of a woman half-asleep in pyjamas. i ask him what time it is. he (in all seriousness) looks at his watch and tells me it’s 1:30. he begins to look sheepish.
i say, “which means that that noise is beyond ridiculous, and completely unacceptable. i live here too, and it’s incredibly rude to be this loud at this hour of the morning.”
he starts apologising, says he’ll take care of it, and immediately begins to start yelling at the people inside to turn the music down.
i shuffle back upstairs. the noise drops off immediately.
climb back in bed and fall asleep.
the damnwells – bastard of midnight
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this is crazymaking:
EU attacks ‘Buy American’ clause
The EU has increased its pressure on the US to reconsider the “Buy American” clause in the $800bn (£567bn) economic recovery package now before Congress.
The clause seeks to ensure that only US iron, steel and manufactured goods are used in projects funded by the bill.
A European Commission spokesman said it was the “worst possible signal”.
…
The EU spokesman said Europe would launch a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) if the clause remained.
“There isn’t a great deal of scope for doing much more, but if America went ahead and did this we would have to take it up with the World Trade Organization,” the European Commission trade spokesman, Peter Power, told the BBC’s Chris Mason in Brussels.
European and Canadian ambassadors to Washington have already warned that the clause could provoke protectionism and trigger retaliatory moves.
EU Ambassador to Washington John Bruton said that, if passed, the measure could erode global leadership on free trade.
“We regard this legislation as setting a very dangerous precedent at a time when the world is facing a global economic crisis,” he said.
what do they really expect? first and foremost, the u.s. president and congress are responsible to the american people, and secondarily accountable to the voters who put them in office. and they simply will not stand for a $800 billion stimulus bill which a) does not seek to protect those few manufacturing jobs still in the u.s. or b) sends their hard earned tax dollars out of the country.
this bill is not about fixing the global recession, it is about keeping the u.s. out of a seismic economic *depression*.
any other country would do the same - of course it would. is it really that hard to understand?
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