The News

Originally posted 3.October.2006

Typically Americans are given grief for not knowing what's going on outside their borders and in general being pretty abysmal at geography. The jokes are pretty standard and cemented in the minds of those abroad. If you watch the local news, it's pretty apparent what they're on about. I'm mean the news here is pretty, er, localised shall we say? " School children in Pine Hills are assembling the largest noodle picture on construction paper in the history of modern education. Weighing in at 3 tons and requiring enough pasta to feed a small army, they've been hard at work for weeks..."

Being hyper conscious of this, I've always made it a policy to try to catch headlines for international news at the very least. Since I studied Political Science at university it was a requirement, since graduation I am at bare minimum a skimmer of global news.

The trouble is that I've just about stopped watching local news. As such the typical American 'localised news malady' if not in effect with me. My particular affliction seems to manifest itself in reverse. The result is that I'm happy to update you on the 'local' news of the military coup in Thailand, give you an opinion on the Israel/Lebanon conflict or brief you on what I glimpsed about a dengue fever outbreak in India. The part which now plagues my mother's already fragile internal maternal alarm is that I have no idea what is actually happening in my own part of the world. When I say my own part of the world, I'm talking less about America and more about say Florida or western Florida or if you want to get technical the towns I work and live in.

Let me demonstrate the scope of this by saying the last storm alert we had for a hurricane, people were gearing up as is their wont and I strolled into work one morning, cool as a cucumber, not a worry in my head beyond work. Everyone asks about my plans for the predicted storm. It's rather disturbing to have to look at a small number of concerned faces and answer "what storm?"

"The storm that's all over the news!" People and Amanda in particular exclaim to me.

"I didn't hear about it..." I say defensively.

"Well, what the hell are you watching?" they ask.

"BBC World News...did you know Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon yesterday?"

So Amanda has, I believe, (much to my mother's relief not doubt) taken on the responsibility of ensuring that should we have a major storm that I'm verbally alerted in person and relocated to a safe place.. as opposed to still sitting in my living room glued to the latest middle eastern conflict on BBC while the entire state evacuates around me.

In my defense, this is probably why I missed the thing about the spinach too. My mother rang and said "I wanted to make sure you knew about the spinach."

"What about spinach?" I asked.

"You're not to eat it if it's bagged, there's been an Ecoli breakout!" she warned.

"What before lunch?" I asked.

"What? Days ago. What lunch? What did you have for lunch?"

"Salad.... with a bit of spinach"

"Well how much spinach is that?'

"I dunno," I answer "enough for a full plate of salad. Like a half bag or something."

"A half a bag? Bagged spinach? You ate bagged spinach? Why would you do that?" she asked as if I'd just told her I'd taken a bath with the hairdryer plugged in as a dare.

"No reason not to." I answered reasonably.

"IT'S ALL OVER THE NEWS! HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW, CHILD?" You can tell she's getting exasperated when she calls me 'child.'

"I was watching BBC....hey, did you hear about China?"

It is a testament to my mother's concern for her children, despite our advancing ages, that she will call me later that night to ensure I haven't some how become infected with the bacteria since lunch that day. It is a testament to her penchant for worrying that will lead her to leave a message saying that she's now even more worried because I haven't answered the phone and would I please call her back as soon as possible so she knows I'm not bacteria ridden.

It's unclear if my calling her back the second I got the message, is a testament to my wanting to reassure her I was okay or that I was too impatient to wait an extra day to make fun of her for the latest worry-wart-mum tale which I'm adding to my collection. We'll just go with the dutiful daughter theory, shall we?

Boarding and TSA Security

I've been spending quite a bit of extra time in airports recently. Yesterday, bad. Arrive airport 3pm, depart airport 11pm... yeah. Long time. Having finally come through my door at 2:25am this morning and needing leave now to go pick my boss up, I leave you with these thoughts. Please take notes and pass them along to other people you know who are traveling, maybe then one day we'll all get on a plane more quickly. Maybe...

Why can't people board airplanes in an orderly fashion? It doesn't matter what order you tell us all to get on in, there's still going to 50% of the people repacking in the aisle to slow everything down. Stand aside! There is absolutely no need to adjust yourself and all your worldly possessions whilst standing in the middle of an aisle. Same goes for airport security. You're in a line, there are signs every three feet telling you to remove your laptop from your bag, people with TSA uniforms are repeating "take your shoes and belts off, remove your cell phones, check your pockets" every ten seconds. Why, WHY, must you wait until its your turn to go through security to do all these things and thus slow us all down? You've just spent the last fifteen minutes either standing in line with a bored look on your face or complaining about how long it's taking. THIS IS WHY! Everyone else is just like you!

You're standing there doing nothing while you wait; get yourself organized for God's sake. The procedure isn't going to miraculously change before you get to the front of the queue. There, you can keep your nail clippers, happy? Now take your shoes off!

And children [*audible sigh*]. They have nothing to speak of that will set off metal detectors. No jewelry, cell phones, laptops, belts, steel toed shoes, maybe a game boy, maybe. Put the game boy in the Sponge Bob back pack, place on x-ray machine, end of story. NO! This class of air traveler which should be quickest are in fact the slowest because they don't listen. They're strangling themselves with the straps of their back packs, kicking their shoes off in all directions, running to go fetch far flung shoes, taking off their coats off in reverse, all while trying to keep poking their sibling to retain a semblance of familial annoyance. New plan: allow child to keep game boy, Sponge Bob back pack, coat, shoes and finger in sibling's ear. Pick child up, put child on x-ray machine. *Ding!* Security cleared, new land speed record set. If they can survive all the x-rays for baseball, football, bicycles and general running/tripping/falling/climbing accidents, I'm sure a few seconds twice a year when you go to visit the grandparents out of state won't adversely affect them. They're young, they'll bounce right back.

Check In

Originally posted 22.August.2006

I have this tendency to get stuck behind odd people in queues at the airport. Frankly its annoying because no matter where I choose to stand it ends up being the place with the person hidden a few people ahead who is just mere minutes away from bringing everything to a screeching halt. Its always the loon who cant see the objection to packing fireworks in his luggage or has trouble understanding why an antique machete poses a security risk. I once missed a flight out of Ohio because an individual with a license to carry a concealed weapon forgot to pack it in his checked luggage and when an automatic hand gun goes through an airport x-ray machine, bad things happen. Everything shuts down. Literally, the metal gates were dropped from the ceiling and that was that, I stood there with several others on my flight for the next 30 minutes until our flight left, at which point they felt it safe for us to go through to the departure gate.

If its not a complete pratt like that then its the person whose been standing in line to check in for 10 minutes and finally gets up to the counter and cant find their photo ID or reservations and have to search every pocket in every article clothing and every bag before proclaiming that it was in their coat pocket the whole time.

So today I was waiting to check in at e-ticket counter at Logan. I'm stressed out. If you've ever used Logan International Airport on a regular basis you understand why I'm stressed out. The airline's on-line check in hadn't apparently been working all morning so there's a medium sized army of us waiting to use the e-ticket self check in machines. An over crowded check in area at an airport, two weeks after an upgrade in airport security levels, is not the time to show your 6 year old how to use the e-ticket self check in machine. I mean I applaud the initiative, I really do but there's a 3 mile line behind you of people waiting to check in. I, myself, am slowly turning into a ball of rage Incredible Hulk style. Have you no sense of the urgency which is almost visibly pulsing through those of us surrounding you as we look at our watches every 26 seconds and each time mentally recalculate how much time is left to get to our gate?

So I applaud you for the right idea but this is the wrong time. Now, even though, I think you're swell progressive parents and all, I'm deriving twisted pleasure from thinking that at least when your child decides to runaway from home for the first time at the age of 10, she'll get considerably further than the postbox at the end of the road. AND, if shes stumbled across any of my blogs shell probably even be able to clear security in a quick, no nonsense fashion, and be through it before you can reach her.

The Great Cucumber Debate

I went grocery shopping and the woman at the check out asked me what I was planning to do with the cucumber.  This caught me off guard, more so as the rest of my shopping (meat, lettuce, spinach leaves, carrots and celery) seemed to lend itself to the idea that I might be about to make a salad of some sort.

She wanted to know how I was going to eat the cucumber.  What sort of question is that?  When I advised her most of it was going into the salad and the rest might be used with cheese and crackers she found this puzzling and told me that was a foreign thing to her and anyway most people don't buy cucumbers. Whole thing was just bizarre, do Americans not eat cucumbers? Am I the sole cucumber seeker in U.S. super markets?

Bastards, Bleeps and Bias

&$#@    &$#@   &$#@  Bleeeeeeep.

That went on for some time for me following the England-Portugal match today. So I'll spare you the grisly details and the near group suicide that followed our loss and just focus on the bits I think you ought to know about.

Owen Hargreaves- FIFAs man of the match and he earned it too, he played well and he converted his penalty kick.

Beckham came off in the 52^nd minute or so. Yes, I think sometimes people are overly critical of him, but let me say this: Are you mad? YOU BASTARD!

I cannot, CANNOT, believe he came off. He practically took himself out of the game and gave up. Fine, he was limping about a bit, alright maybe he was hurting but that's what the World Cup is about. You're the given the armband, you lead by example. I'm truly hacked off about that ESPECIALLY as it came down to penalties.

Which brings me to Mr. Rooney. What the hell were you thinking? You get sent off with a red card ostensibly for stomping on Carvalho. I've seen the replay and it looks like he was just trying get his footing as they were all tangled up, he wasn't even looking where his feet were for Gods sake. But Wayne- did you have to PUSH Ronaldo after? I know he was being a complete w*nker trying to get you booked, but hold your temper in check man because we need you for penalties too! Christ then he missed that perfect opportunity from Lennon before. Aaarrgh, I don't want to think about it.

On the subject of fouls, apparently just being English was enough to get you called on a foul. I don't know what the final count for the match was but at some point, England had been called on fouls something ridiculous like 17 times to only 3 on Portugal. And those guys deserve Oscars for best dramatic performance. Every time they were challenged they took a dive and rolled about. They should have been getting yellow cards for buggering about instead of PLAYING FOOTBALL. Useless officials today. 

If you were wearing white it looked like this:

Oh, you're English- foul.

Look you kicked the ball- foul

I distinctly saw you running on the pitch- foul

Oops, you're a Portugal man- here have a free kick.

Another Englishman trying to run- foul

And on and on it went. Horrible. Call me biased but I don't think Terry deserved a yellow card for a mid air collision either. And the referee (Argentinian- typical. We won that war fair and square.)... bastard. And, AND, you made Carragher re-do his penalty kick after he scored the first time! BASTARDS!!

The only good thing about today is that the place I go to watch matches was packed with England fans. Until the actual official loss, the atmosphere was electric. The owners had free breakfast for everyone, beer was flowing like water (there was actually a glass crisis by 11am as they had run out of clean ones so you had to hang on to your glass for refills). And the footballs songs were sung by all including the guy from my bank, an American who showed up to see what all the fuss was about. By the extra time, he was abusing Portugal as much as the rest of us. He seemed to be entertained by our songs as well and sung along to such classics as "The ref-er-eeeeeeeee is a wank-eeeeeeeer" and "You're shiiiiiiiiiiiite and you know you aaaaaaaaaare."

I'm pretty certain the owners (Americans also) were overwhelmed with our, er, enthusiasm as 50 people were transitioning between shouting at players, rousing choruses of Rule Britannia then back to England chants. Interspersed of course with the inevitable orgasmic build up anytime it looked like we might actually score: yes, yes, come on, yes, yes, YESYESYESYESYESYENOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Anyway, its a good experience. Everyone should try it even if youre not even remotely English.

So. That's it then. We're done. I don't think the best team won but there you are (this is saying a lot based upon the fact the I previously admitted how crap we were when we won). Our lads played their hearts out today. Playing 2 hours  in the heat, one man down after Rooney was sent off. I think everyone should be proud of them. Its too bad half our team will probably not be on the roster for the next WC in four years but there you go.  

Beckham I'm sure will probably regret leaving the match as it was likely his last World Cup appearance. And Rooney had better learn to keep that notorious temper in check.

Now it's down to France v. Portugal and Italy v. Germany for the Cup and *sigh* not a single team I can get behind in the bunch. Although, Portugal had better not win. Bastards.

Other than what can be said?

"I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England and Saint George"

We wait for four more years. Sigh...

 

Baby Radar

What inescapable law of nature is it, do you suppose, that dictates that any child on any flight will cry at ear splitting decibels for almost the entire length of the journey and inevitably stop and fall asleep ten minutes prior to landing? Its the equivalent of a human egg timer for any one using laptops, gameboys and mp3 players on a plane.

1. Uninterrupted wailing for four hours.

2. Absence of screaming for thirty seconds

3. Announcement: At this time, please turn off all portable electronics and return all trays and seats to their up right locked positions.

Do babies have some undiscovered psychic link to air traffic control? Its uncanny.

Solace in the Arms of Three Lions

Despite a miserable week and depressing outlook on life at the moment, there is hope. That hope is the World Cup. Specifically England in the World Cup. 

We played our last two international friendlies this week beating Hungary 3-1 and this morning, I got up early to watch us play Jamaica. We just won 6-0.
Good things are coming. It's been exactly 40 years since we won the world cup. We've got our retro kits this year. I'm sporting my own England jersey with my Corona boxers this morning. Sexy!

So, here's my disclaimer: the next four weeks are all World Cup. I shall be distracted and potentially uncommunicative. So it'll be just like now only I'll be mumbling to myself out loud about football instead of the usual annoyances. How sweet it is.

Good luck out there to rest of you one billion viewers supporting your national teams but make way, the three lions are coming through!

[Editor's note: should all communication cease abruptly prior to the World Cup Final on 9th July, please check team standings and obituaries.]