One of the difficult things about writing a novel is that there are so many details to research. The list is endless. If I were Margaret Atwood I’d have a team of researchers to help me, but alas, I am on my own. I thought I would turn to the internets for help. Does anyone know the answer to any of these questions?
1] What are the names of a couple well-known American military generals from the Vietnam War? [If not generals, then men in the top ranks.]
2] I haven’t been back to NYC in a while. Are there bars/pubs that have outdoor tables? Here that is very common, but I don’t recall seeing this in NYC. [I am particularly interested in the West Village.]
3] Does anyone know any rap songs with vile, misogynist lyrics? I need to find some of these lyrics so I can use them as inspiration for satire.
4] A couple airplane questions…Are there skydiving planes that can fit upwards of 20 people in them? Why can skydiving planes open their doors in the air and not crash, but if a jetliner did that everyone would get sucked out? Is this just because of the altitude of the plane or some other feature? I need a pilot to steal a plane that evil people can be thrown out of mid-air. I was thinking of a skydiving plane since the doors can open, but any other ideas?
5] Acid attacks against women are widespread in countries like India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. I’m wondering what legitimate uses sulphuric acid has? I’m guessing it must have some legitimate purpose, otherwise it wouldn’t be so widely available to the general public.
6] If you put $700 into a bank account every month for twelve years (from 1995 – 2007), anyone have any idea how much interest you’d earn on this sum of around $100,000?
7] If you’re applying for a handgun in NYC…where do you actually apply for the license?
8] Would 4 women of reasonable strength be able to roll over a small pick-up truck?
I should have known that Christopher Hitchens would offer the most insightful commentary on the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy that I’ve read. He touches upon some of the issues I raised in my own post, particularly this notion of “tolerance.” And he also comments on this issue:
Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance.
This whole controversy is emblematic of American politics and the left-right binary. It seems that very few people are capable of nuanced, complex thought nowadays and so our political debates resemble two little kids in the backseat of a car, fighting on a road trip. She hit me! No, he hit me! Wahhhhh!
It’s possible to condemn the right-wing’s lunatic hate campaign against the “mosque” while also refusing to become a cheerleader for religion in the most idiotic, thoughtless and dishonest way.
Under pressure from the influential and growing ultra-orthodox community, some bus lines in Jerusalem have introduced segregation, with women confined to the rear of the vehicle.
As we can see, a major theme of the world’s major religions is this: Women have cooties. Religious nutjobs have their misogyny accommodated and validated by forcing women to alter our behavior and bodies. Wouldn’t it be great if religious crazies were forced to alter their behavior instead? After all, who has the problem here: a] women, who have committed the heinous crime of merely existing? or b] religious crazies who hate women? I think we all know the answer to that.
Here is what I advocate:
If you’re a man who doesn’t want to ride a bus or a train with women, here are some alternatives for you:
a] Crawl to your destination on your hands and knees;
b] Tie a rope to the back of the bus and let it drag you to your destination;
c] Jump off a tall building, thus killing yourself, thus guaranteeing you’ll never need any form of transportation again because you’re dead.
Easy peasy. Do you see how this works?
If you’re a religious man who hates the sight of “immodest” women because they might fill you with lust and temptation, instead of having women cover themselves from head to toe in fabric to accommodate you, I have another idea. You can avoid seeing immodest women in the following ways:
a] Blindfolding yourself at all times;
b] Gouging out both your eyes with a salad fork;
c] Pouring acid into your eyes.
With options b and c, you’ll never see immodest women again. I guarantee it!
A shift in our way of thinking is all that’s needed to solve these problems.
I’ve finally succumbed to Twitter for a variety of reasons that I won’t bore you with. It’s not connected to the Anglofille brand, since I’m going to start transitioning away from the Anglofille name online. I’ll always maintain a blog/website of some sort, but ideally, within the next year I will be moving towards a web presence that is me and not a pseudonym. I’m coming up on the 5-year anniversary of Anglofille in a couple weeks, which is difficult to believe. I started this blog when I began my PhD and now I am a few months away from finishing it (I hope), so it’ll soon be time to shake things up. Anglofille isn’t going anywhere right now though. Baby steps.
Anyway, my Twitter account is only semi-anonymous, so it’s a small step towards putting myself out there sans Anglofille. I won’t be mentioning the blog on that account, since a lot of people don’t know about it. I also won’t be including such inflammatory content (!) and will likely focus a lot more on books and such. I’m not going to link to it from here, but if you want to follow me on Twitter, drop me an email. The email address is the name of this blog @gmail.com. Please put TWITTER or some such in the subject line, since this account receives a lot of spam. There is nothing of interest on my Twitter page right now and I only have a couple followers, but a girl has to start somewhere.
It’s the one-year anniversary of the “Lockerbie bomber” being released from a Scottish jail on allegedly compassionate grounds, since his death from cancer was supposed to have been imminent. Not surprisingly, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is alive one year later. There are American calls for investigation regarding why Megrahi was ever released and there is increasing acrimony on both sides of the Atlantic.
The bombing of Pan Am 103 killed Americans overwhelmingly and was a crime against America, but in a lucky break for the perpetrators of this crime, the plane blew up over Scotland.
We’ll probably never know who actually blew up Pan Am 103, but a panel of Scottish judges convicted Megrahi of this crime, a conviction that has never been overturned in the Scottish justice system. Therefore, the Scottish government believes Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was the perpetrator of this horrific crime. No other conclusion can be drawn.
One year ago, the Scottish government released a mass murderer from prison because they said his death was imminent, even though this was not true. The aforementioned mass murderer was given a hero’s welcome upon his arrival in Libya. Now American lawmakers are making a lot of noise about this issue, though why it’s taken so long is unclear. Has the BP oil spill prompted this? I don’t know. Regardless, as they attempt to investigate Megrahi’s early release from prison, American senators show that they do not understand the internal politics of the UK at all. They refer to Megrahi as being released by the “UK,” but this matter was something the Scottish justice system controlled internally, separate from Whitehall. This point is key to the entire issue.
In my view, there are three main reasons why Megrahi may have been released from jail:
1] The Scottish government secretly believes Megrahi is innocent of this crime, but instead of overturning his conviction, released him on “compassionate grounds,” which gives him his freedom but will not change the fact that he is forever branded a mass murderer and terrorist, while the guilty party/parties remain free;
2] There were secret oil deals made between Libya, BP and Tony Blair when he was still in office;
3] The Scottish government, desperate for more internal decision-making power and sovereignty, saw this as their chance to seize the world stage and make a “bold” decision regarding a major international incident, which had the benefit of angering America (score!) and making the British government look bad (score!).
You’ll notice that I did not include a fourth option, which would have been that Megrahi was released for the stated reason: compassion. That, my friends, is laughable.
So in my view, it’s possible that Megrahi was released because of a combination of all the above factors, but regardless, #3 is key here and was likely the biggest factor. And this is what American lawmakers do not understand. They have absolutely no understanding of the power struggles that exist between Scotland and England, which affected this case. Demanding that Alex Salmond and other Scottish officials appear in Washington is a huge mistake; it allows people like Salmond to play the big badass who stands up to the Yanks. This is like 1,000 Christmases rolled into one for this guy and every other British politician. Lockerbie and what happened there is secondary to these power struggles, both Scotland-England power struggles and UK-US power struggles. It’s a pity the Americans don’t understand this.
It’s also a pity that the many living victims of this crime, overwhelmingly American and still suffering the affects of this tragedy, have been completely disregarded and forgotten.
I’m really sick of hearing about the “Ground Zero Mosque” and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Since this is the story that won’t die, I want to address it.
I was quite surprised when President Obama came out in favor of the mosque the other night. Actually, I was stunned. Obama took a stand on a controversial topic? But then the very next day he began to backpedal and I thought – now there’s the Obama I know!
As someone who believes all forms of patriarchal religion should be wiped off the planet, I am not in favor of a giant mega mosque or religious community center being built anywhere. I am not in favor of a mega Christian or Jewish center either. What we need is less religion. Build a mega human rights center that educates people about the damage religion has done throughout history and continues to do. Then you’ll get my full support and as many donations as I can afford.
Now, it’s clear that no one can stop this mosque being built, just as you can’t stop any place of worship from being built, so it’s pointless to even discuss it. I am not going to address the views of the right-wing, the Newt Gingriches and Sarah Palins, because I don’t engage with the right-wing. They don’t interest me and they aren’t worth my time.
What I want to address, and what I want to write about here, is the response of people in favor of the mosque, mostly liberals, though this also includes Mayor Bloomberg. When these religious debates spring up, as they do all too often, the word “tolerance” is always used. We, as Americans, must be tolerant. This irritates me like nothing else, since religions are the least tolerant institutions in society. Why should I be tolerant of something that isn’t tolerant of me as a woman? Yes, on a technical level, I must be “tolerant” of religion because they have a right to exist and there’s nothing I can do about it. But the use of the word “tolerance” in regards to the “Ground Zero Mosque” and other issues of religion implies there is a two-way street here – that we should be tolerant of religion because religion is a force for tolerance and goodness. We as a society need to stop spreading these lies.
I abhor the Daily Mail and try to never post links from it unless I’m making a critique, but I’ll make an exception today. A mother published a photo of her son, a soldier who was critically injured in Afghanistan and is now fighting for life in a hospital. It’s disturbing to see the photo and particularly to contrast it with the photos published beneath it, showing him before he was injured. It made me think about how this war is so sanitized in the media and how the true horror of it is shielded from public view. I think we need to see more images like this.
Today I found out that my PhD viva (what Americans would call a PhD defense) will likely take place in early December.
Repeat after me: Oh. My. Flipping. Hell.
I’ve been freaking out all day and haven’t gotten much work done. For your viva, you have two examiners (who’ve read your dissertation) conduct an oral examination of 2-3 hours. The viva is the examination/defense. The two examiners decide whether you receive the PhD or not. This is probably slightly different from the American system. I don’t know the examiners and they are not from my university. I’ve never had any contact with them, so they are completely objective. My supervisors and I have to nominate the examiners and we’ve chosen two female novelists/academics who have already agreed to examine me. The college has to approve them, but I don’t anticipate a problem there. One of the examiners is going away after the holidays, so the viva has to take place in early December. This is what I just found out today, which has me totally panicked! I have been planning to submit my PhD by October 30th, but I really wanted some wiggle room in case I needed more time. I didn’t think the viva would take place until sometime in January, which for some reason was comforting, probably because it seems far away, in the new year. If the viva were in January, I could probably submit the PhD at the end of November or even early December if needed. Now that’s not possible. I have NO wiggle room. And I haven’t even finished the novel yet! And I still have to complete the academic part!
Deep breath.
It’s all for the best, really. It would be fab to have this done before the end of the calendar year, before the holidays, before my birthday. And my visa expires at the end of January, so if I can pass the PhD in early December (If! If!) then I’ll have a better chance of changing to a work visa before my student visa expires on January 31st, without having to leave the country, etc.
I can do this. I can do it! The sudden news has just thrown off my equilibrium, that’s all. Will I be done with this in 4 months? Is that even possible? I have a hard time imagining it, but it’s for real. The paperwork is done.
Rent day. Six stacks of twenties. I just wanted to caress it before losing it forever.
I have to move out of this place on August 31st. I’ve lucked into a six-week house-sitting job that begins in early September. It’s a 4-bedroom house in Clapham South, which is a very nice area. It’s a done deal – the couple interviewed me and I have the job. But given my luck with housing…I won’t feel comfortable until I actually move in. I know I shouldn’t be so pessimistic, but after what I’ve been through the past few years (being evicted from my apartment in Paris on New Year’s Eve…that sorta thing) I take nothing for granted. Still, if everything works out as it should, then I’ll get to live all alone in a 4-bedroom house rent free during the final days of my PhD! How cool is that? I really needed a break like this. Of course I’ll still need to find another place to live beginning October 20th, but I’ll worry about that later.
Not a great day, really. I couldn’t face the novel; the thought of it made me want to weep. I’m suffering from terrible sciatic pain too, which I blame for my mood. So I accomplished nothing today, though tonight I read de Maupassant’s short story Butterball. Reading this description of Butterball -
“Her face was a russet apple, a peony bud about to flower; above, two magnificent black eyes opened wide, shaded by great thick lashes that cast a shadow all around; and below, a charming mouth, with pursed lips all moist for kissing, well furnished with gleaming microscopic baby teeth.”
…was the highlight of my day, particularly the bit about the peony bud. Lovely.
Chelsea Clinton’s wedding is this week and the surprising thing is that anyone cares. Today there are three pointless articles on The Daily Beast website about it (one, two, three) and I’ve seen articles in the NYT and many other places. I understand a bit of coverage about it, and summer is a slow news time, but why the breathless excitement over every detail? Chelsea Clinton is not a figure of interest. Has Chelsea Clinton ever done anything interesting in her entire life? I imagine people are surprised she has grown up to be fairly normal, given her family, but she’s not a public figure and has never wanted to be one. When I think of Chelsea Clinton, I think: zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Since I have been barraged with coverage, I have developed my own thoughts on the upcoming nuptials:
1] I’m surprised that Chelsea Clinton would even want to get married. Having Bill and Hillary Clinton as parents could not have provided a very positive view of marriage. Bill Clinton cheated on his wife every chance he got and he is, essentially, a sexual predator. Hillary is a feminist who has stayed married to him for reasons unknown. If Bill and Hill ever do spend time together, which I can’t imagine, then it must be like a scene out of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” or possibly worse. So again, I’m surprised any offspring of theirs would even consider matrimony;
2] Chelsea is marrying a man whose father is a former politician and convicted criminal who spent several years in prison. According to Wikipedia, prosecutors called him a “one-man crime wave.” Now, I realize his son cannot be held responsible for these actions and I guess it’s a good thing that Chelsea’s future husband can relate to having a dad with questionable morals, but still…I’m wondering how many ethics violations one family can handle.
3] These privileged and corrupt political families sorta make me ill.
This concludes my coverage of Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. Mazel tov!
I just got back from seeing Inception. Okay, if you’ve seen it, please check the comments. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone, so I won’t raise my questions here. The comments will have spoilers, so be warned!
In this short commentary, I’m not going to describe the plot of the film – it’s too convoluted, but there are plenty of reviews out there that attempt to explain what it’s about. I really wanted some escapism this evening and that’s exactly what I got with this film, so I’m a happy customer. It’s a fun summer popcorn movie. From my POV, it’s entertainment and nothing more. I didn’t find it profound, nor do I think it has any deep meaning. To me, it’s a just a sci-fi action flick not worthy of analysis, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. I know others disagree with this assessment and find it meaningful, but I didn’t. As for the film experience itself, the plot lurches along in places; in fact, the first 45 – 50 minutes are very slow and even boring in places. (The guys sitting near me were playing games on their Blackberries.) Some of the film is silly and sentimental and I felt that the story could have been much better, but overall I enjoyed it. The effects were interesting, particularly when the streets of Paris folded up (as seen in the photo above) and there were enough questions raised that I wanted answered. I think this film has tremendous hype attached to it, which is an interesting phenomenon to behold. This summer has been pretty dismal for films so far (at least in my view), so perhaps that’s one reason Inception is doing well. It fills a void for those of us who want something fun, but not completely brainless and stupid or kid-friendly.
The one thing I wasn’t looking forward to was Leo DiCaprio, since I’ve never liked him (except in Gilbert Grape). To me, he’s always seemed like a 17-year-old boy in perpetuity, but in this film, I have to give him some credit. He has really matured and seems like a believable grown-up now. He finally has a bit of gravitas. I like Ellen Page too and it’s refreshing to have an actress in a leading role who seems like a normal young woman and not a brainless sexpot. Before this film I’d never seen Tom Hardy…but he is mighty fine!
To close, I want to include this section from A.O. Scott’s NYT review, which sort of sums up my view of the film. Those who have seen the film – don’t forget to check the comments!
The accomplishments of “Inception” are mainly technical, which is faint praise only if you insist on expecting something more from commercial entertainment. That audiences do — and should — expect more is partly, I suspect, what has inspired some of the feverish early notices hailing “Inception” as a masterpiece, just as the desire for a certifiably great superhero movie led to the wild overrating of “The Dark Knight.” In both cases Mr. Nolan’s virtuosity as a conjurer of brilliant scenes and stunning set pieces, along with his ability to invest grandeur and novelty into conventional themes, have fostered the illusion that he is some kind of visionary.
But though there is a lot to see in “Inception,” there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness — the risk of real confusion, of delirium, of ineffable ambiguity — that this subject requires. The unconscious, as Freud (and Hitchcock, and a lot of other great filmmakers) knew, is a supremely unruly place, a maze of inadmissible desires, scrambled secrets, jokes and fears. If Mr. Nolan can’t quite reach this place, that may be because his access is blocked by the very medium he deploys with such skill.
And the limitations of “Inception” may suggest the limits not only of this very talented director, but also of his chosen art form at this moment in its history. Our dreams feed the movies. The movies feed our dreams. But somehow, our imaginations are still hungry.
Today I mailed my supervisor 80 pages of my novel and then on the walk home from the post office, I was hit by a car. A coincidence? I think not. The evil forces of patriarchy will do anything to keep me from finishing this book. A lesser woman would stop writing, but I must soldier on.
Yes, I was hit by a car. I crossed the street in the middle of the block, behind a car that was stopped. For reasons unknown, the car backed up and the driver obviously didn’t see me. Thankfully the car gently hit me on the upper arm and then stopped. I wasn’t hurt, but if they hadn’t stopped…who knows? I don’t want to think about it. Perhaps I should have called the police, but the police in London rarely come when called and since I wasn’t hurt, I didn’t see the point. I shouldn’t have been crossing in the middle of the street anyway. The driver was really apologetic – he kept invoking god. “Thank god, thank god, god protected us,” etc. etc. I yelled at him and said maybe he should pray to god for some glasses. (Oh yes I did!)
Dangerous times, my friends. Getting near the end of the book now. Having panic attacks, losing the will to live, and now…assassination attempts. Salman Rushdie never had it so bad.
The issue of face veils and burqas has been in the news a lot lately, with France and other European countries banning the face veil or considering bans. Today, Syria has announced they are banning all face veils in their universities, so this isn’t just an issue confined to Europe. I have previously written on this issue and so want to touch upon these latest controversies.
In my new neighborhood, I see many more women wearing face veils and this is right in Central London. The other day I even saw a woman wearing a complete veil over her face, with no slit for her eyes. It was essentially a hood. I have no idea how she could see at all, but she appeared to be walking down the street unaided. Tonight I went into a Subway sandwich shop and saw a woman wearing a face veil. She was sitting at a table with her husband and kids. As is almost always the case in such situations I’ve seen, the husband seemed to be in his late twenties and was casually dressed in jeans and polo shirt, while his wife was shrouded from head to toe in black fabric. Tonight in Subway, this woman had to lift up the veil in order to eat her sandwich.
I am not a cultural or moral relativist and so I do not hesitate to declare that this practice is dehumanizing and misogynist. End of story. Either a woman is forced, coerced or otherwise compelled to wear a face veil like this, or she has “chosen” it herself because she has completely internalized a patriarchal ideology that devalues her existence. To me, these are the only options, none of them good.
The question of whether to ban this practice is another issue. It’s clear that there are right-wingers who use this issue as part of an anti-Muslim agenda. That’s obvious. But there are others, like me, who abhor patriarchal religious practices, regardless of which religion we’re talking about, and a face veil or burqa is at the extreme end of any religious practice meant to oppress women. I have known Muslim women who said those wearing these face veils are from extremist families, which I think is clear. Many of the women wearing these face veils in Western society have all of their movements controlled by men.
This is Iranian artist Shirin Neshat’s first feature film. It’s playing at a few of the art-house cinemas in London, which is where I saw it recently, but it may be out on DVD soon. Neshat lives in New York now and this film is banned in Iran, as is the novel by Shahrnush Parsipur upon which it’s based. I don’t have time to write a proper review, but see the links at the bottom for more info and the trailer above. Women Without Men is visually a very beautiful film, with magical realist elements. It is the story of four women in Tehran in 1953, a politically turbulent year, thanks in no small part to the actions of the British and Americans. The film links the narratives of four women, who find their way to a house in an orchard outside Tehran, taking refuge from the men in their lives. I found the characters Munis and Zarin to be the most interesting. Munis doesn’t want marriage and yearns to be politically active, but lives under the control of her brother. Zarin is an anorexic prostitute whose story is particularly harrowing and unforgettable. While this is an excellent film that I recommend seeing, I felt towards the end the director lost control of the narrative somewhat; the film became a bit too abstract and symbolic, I think, but this didn’t detract from the overall experience.
Women Without Men is a feminist film, which makes it worth seeing for that alone. How refreshing to see a film that deals with the lives of women in a bold, honest, creative and unforgiving way. While this film is about Iranian women in the 1950s, it is universal in its themes. To find contemporary feminist narratives, I have to search outside the Anglophone world and outside Europe to a large extent, though there are certainly more feminist and politically engaged novels and films coming from mainland Europe than the US and the UK. There seems to be a rich tradition of feminist writing from Iran – or at least Iranians in exile. There is more urgency in these stories, perhaps because complacency is a luxury the authors don’t have. Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men has gone to the top of my reading list.
As has been widely reported, the Vatican has announced that the “attempted ordination” of women as priests is a grave sin, on par with pedophilia. Interesting. I didn’t think that the Vatican considered pedophilia (or maybe we should just call it child rape) to be a grave sin at all. They don’t seem to take it seriously when their priests and bishops do it. So I really think they believe that women priests are worse than pedophiles. Let’s just be honest.
I really have nothing more to say about this, since the rantings of delusional woman-haters don’t interest me. I do think, however, that it’s time the Vatican leadership are treated the same as someone like Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran. Ahmadinejad is an international pariah and deservedly so, but I think the pope and his cronies should be treated just the same. There is no room for people like them in civilized society.
Anglofille is an American living in London, finishing up a novel and a PhD, taking photos, and blogging about expat life, books, feminism and perpetual angst.
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