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Going Postal

If postage stamps are the window to our national cultures, these are troubled times indeed. (Like we needed a postal anecdote to remind us!) It is only in recent years that Britain has strayed from the tradition of having the ruling monarch's visage on all stamps, regardless of denominations. While I find the idea of licking the back of a living person's head to post a letter a bit odd, it nevertheless does avoid the question of finding appropriate and supposedly noncontroversial people and things to commemorate. But in true British fashion, the non-Queenie stamps have been more along the lines of Farm Animals of the World and the Beatles.

Now, I fancy myself someone with a bit of a philantelic impulse. When I stand in line at the post office, I always ask to see their book of stamps before making my selection. A Tribute to Space? Alaskan Wildlife? Breast Cancer Research? Decisions, decisions!

Today, I was looking forward to purchasing some Yip Harburg stamps. Yip Harburg? Why, the man who wrote Somewhere Over the Rainbow of course. A well deserved honor! A stamp you can sing along to while you lick. So imgaine my displeasure when my options today were between Ronald Reagan and the Purple Heart. I have no means to insult veterans whose heroism begot them such an honorable tribute, but in these war-stricken years, it's not the kind of message I'm interested in paying my Visa bill with. And Reagan? Please. I'll risk my credit rating to hunt down a flag stamp for fuck sake before I lick the back of that man's head.

But this post is about options. And how taken aback I am when I loose them. So there I am trying to explain to the nice man that no, thank you, did he have any others? After I rejected Ronnie's smiling face the third time, he dug a little deeper and came up with some guy I had never heard of: Robert Penn Warren. Who the hell is he? Where's Buckminster Fuller or Theodor Seuss Geisel when I need them! Hell, even Sickle Cell Anemia is better then a stranger. The guy behind the counter didn't understand my lament that how could I put someone on a stamp I didn't know. My sincerity failed to amuse him. After politely asking if he could look a bit further, his exasperation began to show and he tried Ronnie on me one more time. I begged for a flower. Anything. Even a stars n stripes. I was desperate. Thankfully, he begrudgenly went to the bottom of the stack and dug up 4 Marion Anderson Black Heritage stamps. I'm exactly not sure who she is either, but I could tell she's a singer from the picture, and who am I to stand in the way of celebrating the arts?

I have full confidence that there is little chance the mail I left with him will actually be sent. Is it my fault I take my stamps seriously?

Ps. Robert Penn Warren is a poet. How was I to know?

A Hallmark Moment

A true friend is someone who goes with you to Nordstrom's Rack on a temperately glorious Saturday afternoon to help you find hot pink shoes to go with your polka dot dress to wear to a friend's wedding the next day where you will see your ex for the first time in months.

And does a Google search to help dig up dirt on your former partner's new girlfriend. Turns out her worst crime is that she used a double
:) :) in a bio. While that is a serious breach of the social online compact and is just all-around bad form unless you are 13 and even then you should be able to filter down to one happy face unless the boy under description is Really Cute, admitedly, it does not a demon make.

Damn.

Well White My Anus!

The options on tely tonight at 11pm included what may be the best bad tv program ever:

"Live Cosmetic Surgery: Anal Whitening...For Men!"

Who can argue that Rupert Murdoch doesn't do public service broadacsting?

Unfortunately, I was already engrossed in a riveting documentary style investigative report: "Who Has Michael Hutchence's Millions" on the 'arts' channel, C4. Ditto comment above minus Rupe. Apparently he had a thing for disreputable tax shelter trusts, if you were curious.

I did flip over to Five just in time to catch a promo clip of a man's hairless ruby red butthole and what looked like velcro strips. Is it just too obvious to ask why?

Paint It Purty

I painted a wall in my room blue. Alice Blue.

Like the sky.

If it were actually blue.

The only problem is that I did it late at night with low level lighting. So the question for today is if it is worth touching up or best to let it be. If I touch it up, I'm justified in the fact I left a wet tray of paint by the front door over night. If I don't, I'll have to put said paint tray soon and if I don't, I can put that off until tomorrow.

Yo gusto mucho la comida Mexican.

Tonight was exciting. I set fire to a tortilla on the stove. It's really not very funny is it?

Rather then write something about my negligable safety skills in the kitchen, I'd rather talk about the tortillas. Besides the weather, my biggest complaint about living here is the lack of Mexican food and Latino culture. Whether it's the corner street cart vendors with finely sliced slabs of fruit doused in lime juice and chili powder or the endless pumping of overly-bassy ranchero blasting out from the dashboard of old Corollas, I'll take a greasy bean buritto over an egg cress sarnie any day. It's no coincidence my fondness for all things Echo Park revolve around smells and sounds. It's not that I get to hang out with that many people from Mexico. But the Mexican sensibility is the most definable and recognizable feature of where I used to live, followed in an unfortunate second by hipsters.

My point is this: a colleague from college who is from Mexico City recently told me that there does in fact exist a place in South East London where the tortillas are corn and the salsa spicey. I was giddy and went to investigate.

When I walked into the Elephant & Castle (get the colonial reference? scary!) shopping mall, I was surprised I had never been inside given my penchant for dodgy bargain shopping and weird urban/suburban enclaves. What I found - besides the first bowling alley I've seen in Britain (!) - was also the first Cuban cafe with the first actual Cubans. Though hankering to sit down and order a coffee, I soldiered on to find the shop in question. El Axteca. It was a very small, clean, orderly room with a counter down an alley way outside the mall. It was very straightforward and limited, but had just the few things you can't find anywhere else - chipotle peppers, hominy for posole, green chili salsa, a bag of 50 fresh frozen homemade corn tortillas for 5 quid.

The funny thing is, there are in fact well over 200,000 Latin Americans in the city. Maybe it's cos Cinco de Mayo is in the air, but even my local Sainsbury's has been sporting an increasingly large selection of Mexican food items. The problem is, they are all of the El Paso brand, and well, though a bottle of pickled jalepenos and flour tortillas is an excellent start, the fact they are surrounded with packaged fajita sauce kits makes it feel a bit like the Paz Easter Egg dye kits and a lot less like Los Angeles.

Which brings me to my final point. I'm not Mexican yet this feels like my home town food. I also don't want to essentialise the whole thing by sounding like I have some connection to the Mexican homeland I don't claim to. But it's a funny thing and it challenged my sense of place in funny ways. I live with a Spaniard and an Argentinian. Spanish is the first language in my house and unfortunately I don't speak it. I know South America is not Central America is not Spain but still find myself surprised by the Mexican and Central American things they are unfamilar with that are second nature to me.

I suppose I could end this on a note of Angelino pride about coming of age in a multi-ethnic city that I try to take part in. Instead I'd rather just make fun of my flatmate for saying my salsa had a kick in it when it was clearly very mild.

Math is hard!

Today I wasted time helping a friend. Though really, is it so bad to step away from the laptop to offer assistance to the needy and numerically challenged?

Point is, today I re-learned my elementary maths!

Yep, while I was a master of my own long division, I actually had to look online to double check my prowess with the fractions. Fractions! Who knew those things were so pesky! Luckily, I was correct on all but the multiplication of fractions.

Now can I take a poll as to how many times since 6th grade anyone has needed to calculate 3/5 multiplied by 5/8? Seriously, I know it's important to be able to add fractions in our heads or else how would we be able to double recipes? But who multiplies fractions?! Not me. Let me rephrase that: who multiples fractions that wouldn't be using a calculator?

Ebay: the Great Cultural Barometer

While avoiding ruminating on the celebrity weddings and funerals taking place across Europe this week, it is worth wasting a few minutes of time on the chatkis of du jour.

Go to Ebay and search for 'Charles and Camilla' and then search for 'Pope.' You might be surprised - or not - to find that the dearly departed pontiff can be remembered on a mug for under four quid. A similar 'limited edition' (if mass produced souvenirs can be called such) cup with the wrong date of Chuck and Cami's wedding now postponed by a day for the Pope's funeral is going for over twenty to fourty pounds. That same dosh will get you a wall clock with the Pope's visage. Hear John Paul speak out against the Iraq war, third world debt and material consumption when the clock chimes twelve, but at six, here him rant against the sins of homosexuality, abortion and Marxism. Confusing times are these.

Of course, there is that supply and demand thing with the consumerism. The wedding kit all must be reprinted with the correct date and though it's not on the scale of the newspaper headline mistakenly announcing Dewey had won the presidency over Truman, the cache of having such an item is not unsimilar. And anyone who's ever been to the Vatican or any other Catholic holy site knows that while us Fenians know our way around fine gothic church architecture, we lack all forms of subtlty when it comes to selling our wares. The number of shops hawking the most brilliantly tacky souvenirs with the likes of the Pope and Mary are mind-boggling. Can you say: Holy Back Scratcher! In Lourdes, there's an entire museum retelling the miracle of Saint Bernadette in lifesize wax figurines. Madame Toussand does Catholicism. Interestingly, there is not so much tack around Jesus. I think the whole cross thing must get in the way.

And whether it's tea and cruppets conservatism or hipster Cool Britania, we really loose the stylish plot over here when it comes to royal tat. I'm sure ever punter shelling out a twenty pound note for a historically inaccurate mug of the latest wedding hopes to sit it astride their souvenir plate from Chuck and Di's storybook romance wedding and the Queen's Jubilee tea towel. Low end excessive consumption for Tories and Yanks.

And lastly, is it not an ironic coincidence that the hier to the protestant throne that itself was created in definace of the Vatican so a King could divorce had to postpone his nuptuals for the death of the head of the Catholic Church? Where the British independence day is a celebration of the hanging of a Catholic who tried to fight the return to protestant rule in his ill-fated and poorly planned efforts to blow up Parliment?

I don't mean to make light of the Pope. He seemed like a really nice man, so far as world leaders go and despite some of his horrific views. He's the Pope, what do we expect, Chomsky? The royal wedding? It's about time for all I care. Good on 'em. That, and the royals are good for tourism, bad for any form of constitution. It's just a shame they all don't have nicer souvenir mugs.

More geek quotes

I am not procrastinating hard enough. I've taken to blagging more things from friends emails.

This from captain geek. What would the Donner Party have done?


Here's a snip from Professor Sterling talking about Mark Yim, who has built a series of modular robots:

"If I ever crash in the Andes and there's nothing
left but small, box-shaped pieces of airplane,
I hope that Professor Yim is on the flight
and we don't make the mistake of eating him
before he finds his pliers."

The best way to procrastinate is to leave town!

So long since my last post...I've been procrastinating on my procrastinator. That, and I went on holiday! Four full days of not tap tap tapping at my laptop or reading anything but a novel. Endless hours of glorious hiking and only once did I start to rewrite my introduction in my head.

That may be a record for me. Oh, and the only time I was asked about my research, I had a serious bout of geographic dyslexia. See, some places morph together for me if I've never been there. Malaga / Mallorca, or in this case, Oxford / Cambridge. What's the difference, right? One poncy prestigious school is same as any other, and they use that bloody Oxbridge term so even they could care less of the distinctions. Nonetheless, it's still embarassing when some nice couple of German origin giving you a lift mention they go to Oxford and minutes later I have launched into a story about Cambridge, telling them of the great community radio station there. To be sure, 10-100 mighty watts of power won't make it that distance! The worst part is, they didn't correct me. Either they were too polite, too confused, or too dumbfounded. My friend who actually went to Cambridge rather enjoyed my downward spiral into silly yank-ville and didn't tell me til after.

The moral of the story is still thus: N=need an excuse to put off work? Go to Dartmoor! Look for the wild poonies, enjoy cream tea, and leave the blogging behind!