30 January, 2009 | 13 Comments

Someone at the Daily Mail must be reading my blog.

While the paper normally fawns all over “curvy” Kate Winslet, today they’ve published a rather vicious take-down of her.  They’ve really gone for the jugular:

“Kate was, compared to most screen performers, curvy and normal looking…But like many women who dislike how they look, Kate made a big point of mentioning her size, over and over again, as if she were OK with it, which of course she wasn’t…There is no way Kate – despite her protestations…has not worked supremely, vomit-inducingly hard to get the figure she has today. I can see the fact she has ‘gone for the burn’ etched on her woefully drawn features.  She might say it is down to 20 minutes of gentle Pilates a day but, trust me, it ain’t. I’ve done that amount of Pilates for years and I do not have anything approaching Ms Winslet’s enviable muscle tone…Come on, Kate, just be honest about how hard it is to be that size – don’t pretend you are still normal.”

Don’t you just love that the Daily Mail uses adjectives like “vomit-inducingly”? Such references to bulimia are so subtle!  The article includes all sorts of obnoxious quotes and photos of Kate, “the world’s most irritating actress.”

I would just like to point out that I spotted this horrible Kate Winslet trend before the mass media did.  But here I am, toiling away in obscurity for no pay…

28 January, 2009 | 7 Comments

I mentioned recently that I have a Facebook account now.  And surprise, surprise…people from my past have started to find me.  It’s nice that people are looking for me.  And it’s cool when people from my New York days look me up.  But now people from the deep dark past are knocking on my door.  I don’t know why I find this so unsettling, but I do.

When I turned 20, I moved to NYC, which was 3,000 miles away from where I grew up.  I grew up in a very conservative place and I could not wait to escape.  Whenever I go back there to visit (my parents still live in the same town) I do not see any of these people.  It’s quite an accomplishment that I’ve been able to avoid them for so long.  I don’t have anything in common with the people I grew up with – I wish them well, but my goal in life was not to get married and have six kids and become a housewife driving a mini-van.  That is my idea of hell. Besides my family, no one in my life right now knew me before the age of 22 or so.  That’s the way I like it.

Of course, thanks to the devil that is Facebook, that’s all changed.  My best friend from childhood who got knocked up in high school found me on Facebook this week.  So now I have to look at pictures of her 17-year-old daughter.  17-years-old!  If this girl follows her mother’s lead and gets pregnant at this age, then you know what that means?  My best friend from childhood could, quite conceivably, become a grandmother this year.  My life was better without that knowledge, thank you very much.

I predict my Facebook account will be deleted by the end of the year…

27 January, 2009 | 2 Comments

From today’s Daily Telegraph:

Kate Winslet Ditches Diets and Excercise

From today’s Daily Mail:

Can you figure out the secret of Kate Winslet’s curves? [First line: "She says she is too busy to exercise and eats whatever she wants."]

Just wanted to keep you updated on the latest developments…

26 January, 2009 | 5 Comments

It’s the Hollywood awards season, which is turning out to be the season of Kate Winslet – you know who Kate Winslet is…Hollywood’s fattest star.

For the British media, Winslet is a national treasure (despite the fact that she and her British husband abandoned London for NYC – normally an unpardonable sin for the media here).  Kate is “our Kate,” and every awards show sobfest is given major coverage, from the tabloids on up to the BBC and the Guardian.   It’s as if Hollywood is the Olympics and Kate is representing every UK citizen.

Besides being a major star, Kate is also a media favorite at home and abroad because she is a fearless crusader against Hollywood’s unfair beauty standards.  Yay Kate!  She doesn’t do the insane diets and has a totally healthy body image.  Virtually every article about Kate Winslet uses this template – it’s the “Kate Winslet doesn’t care about diets” template available in every journalist’s version of Microsoft Word.

Kate may have to haul around a lot more pounds than, say, twig-like Sarah Jessica Parker, but porky ol’ Kate knows that being a feminist role model isn’t easy and she’s willing to make the sacrifice.  Hooray for “curvy” Kate! – “curvy” being media code for “fat.”  You know, it’s not easy for Kate.  According to the Daily Mail, Kate recently said: “I feel fat and unhappy next to other Hollywood actresses.”  Oh dear.

I hate to challenge the status quo, but I look at pictures of Kate and I wonder – she’s curvy in comparison to what?  A toothpick?  The little green figure that flashes when you’re allowed to cross the street?  Because it seems to me that if Kate Winslet stood behind a lamp-post, you wouldn’t be able to see her.

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24 January, 2009 | 16 Comments

I appreciate the comments on my two recent Obama posts. I’d prefer to write about something other than Obama and Hillary, but there are two things I need to address, prompted by the comments that were left.  First, I get the sense that history is being re-written regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency, so I want to address that; second, I want to address the views that I am somehow attacking all Obama supporters, which is just not the case.

Hillary’s loss in the primary is now being attributed to various things – her husband’s influence, her votes on Iraq, her sub-par campaign staff.  I’m sure all these things contributed to her defeat, but Obama had drawbacks too, his very real lack of experience being one of them.  There is no perfect candidate, I think we can all agree.  But the misogynist backlash against Hillary Clinton should not be written out of history, because in my view it was a very real factor in her defeat.  I hope – I pray – that journalists, historians, academics and others have documented what went on during this campaign, which in terms of Hillary’s treatment, represents a disgraceful chapter in American history.  When I bring up this misogyny now, just one year later, I am made to feel like a bitter, paranoid loser.  My my, how quickly we want to forget.

Anyone who needs reminding of just how disgusting the attacks against Hillary were should scroll down to the bottom of this post and watch the two videos there.  It’ll be a lovely trip down Memory Lane.  To be honest, I found it extremely difficult to watch these videos, particularly when thinking about the inauguration celebrations of this week.

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22 January, 2009 | 1 Comment

Courtesy of The Daily Mash.  Two excerpts here – click the headlines to read the stories.

Hudson Crash Landing Still Better Than Heathrow

“PASSENGERS on the plane which crash landed on the Hudson river…insisted the terrifying experience was much better than Heathrow…As the stricken US Airways jet drifted over the skyscrapers of Manhattan before ditching in the freezing water, dozens of frightened passengers thanked God they were not arriving in London…Aviation experts said the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, was a hero for guiding the plane to a safe landing and saving the 155 passengers from a Heathrow-like nightmare. Sullenberger said: “I kept saying to myself ‘come on Ches, make it better than Heathrow. Just make it better than Heathrow’”…A US Airways spokesman said the passengers should receive their luggage within 48 hours, adding: “It’s not as if the plane has been anywhere near Heathrow. It’s just partially submerged in the Hudson river.”

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21 January, 2009 | 1 Comment

Since I’ve been thinking a lot about American power this week – the reality of it, not speeches filled with lovely rhetoric – I decided to watch Syriana, a movie I quite like.  I’ve included the trailer below.  If you haven’t seen this film, I highly recommend it.  It might be a nice counter-balance to what’s in the news this week.  [BTW, not to be completely shallow, but I normally do not find George Clooney attractive at all.  But put 30 pounds on him and give him a beard et voila...that's a George I can appreciate!]

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21 January, 2009 | 24 Comments

I’m so glad Inauguration Day is over.  I have no time to worship “Great Men.”  The whole spectacle is distasteful.

I said I would avoid the news coverage yesterday, but it was unavoidable to some extent.  I was so angry at the obsession over what Michelle Obama was wearing throughout the day.  Obama is the Great Man who will reshape America, Michelle just has to look good.  If that doesn’t sum up the Western view of gender roles, nothing does.

I want to weep for all the little girls who see that idea reinforced again and again, including yesterday at the inauguration of the Great Man.  The power of this symbolism cannot be underestimated. Hillary Clinton ran for president and was beaten into submission by Obama’s supporters and the press.  Now the world has its rightful order again.  A man is president.  A man is vice-president.  The right-wing pig that Obama chose to say the prayer at the inauguration opened the whole thing by invoking ‘God our Father.’  And women are judged solely on how they look while standing at their husband’s side.  Well done, America.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

20 January, 2009 | 18 Comments

We’ve made it to the last day of the Bush presidency.  Great work, George.  Seriously.  Two unsuccessful wars, thousands of people dead, countless more maimed physically and psychologically, the economy in ruins, human rights set back for decades.  How you can sleep at night is a mystery to me, but then I guess those with the kind of narcissism, egomania and thirst for power that’s required to become president are a different species from the rest of us.  He’ll probably sleep just fine.

Today is a writing day for me — it’s around noon now and I’ll be writing until midnight or so — so I don’t have much desire to write about politics, nor will I be watching the masturbatory news coverage that will, without a doubt, be yet another shameful example of how freedom of the press is squandered.  My work is more important than participating in this spectacle.  Those of you Obama fanatics, please enjoy your day.  All I can say is that it makes me sad that people look to a politician to change their lives.  We the people have the power to change things, yet we cede our power to politicians again and again.  My hard-earned tax dollars are going to bail out Citibank, for god’s sake.  Where are the riots in the streets?  There aren’t any – we’re all just home watching television or lining the streets of Washington, D.C. to scream for Obama.

I hope Obama is a better president than Bush – it’d be difficult to do worse than Bush, but then I guess anything is possible.  Regardless, Obama will prop up the system we have now. If he weren’t going to prop up the system, he wouldn’t have been elected.  So while Americans pat themselves on the back today about our peaceful transfer of power, power is the operative word here.  Today it changes from one CEO to the next.  It worries me that so many people are willfully ignorant of this simple fact.

I think “the system” that Obama has been elected to uphold is best represented by this image:

This is the New Capitalist Pyramid.  [See the old one here.]

Happy Inauguration Day.

18 January, 2009 | 1 Comment

It’s really amazing how far the British pound has fallen.  I just paid the second installment of my tuition for this year.  I get my funding from the U.S., so a check is sent to my British university in U.S. dollars, which is deposited by my university in their account and converted to pounds.  Normally, because the exchange rate was so awful, when my dollars were converted to pounds, my tuition wasn’t covered due to all the money I lost on the exchange.  I always had to pay money out of my own pocket to cover the difference.  This was usually around $200 to $300 a term, which under the old exchange rate was £100 to £150.  Last September I had to pay something small, around £50/$100.  However, last week I went to pay my tuition for this term.  I didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket.  No, they gave me a £700 refund.

Under the current exchange rate, that is about $1,000.  Unbelievable.  I almost fainted when they told me.  I’m just shocked at how things have changed.  Since I came here in September 2005, I have lost thousands and thousands of dollars because the exchange rate was so bad for Americans.  I know other Americans here who wiped out their entire bank accounts.  On the flip side, British people would fly to the States and go shopping for clothes and shoes, as if the U.S. was a big discount shopping mall.

Obviously, those days are over.  The dollar was weak before, but the British pound was grossly inflated.  I’m glad to recoup some of my money now, but in a way its bittersweet.  Not only is this emblematic of how screwed up the world’s financial situation is, but I would be in a much better position financially right now if I hadn’t literally lost 50% of my money between September 2005 and autumn 2008.  I’m trying not to dwell on this now, but it’s hard not to when I see, as I did recently with my tuition payment, just how much money I’ve lost since I came here.

14 January, 2009 | 7 Comments

The U.S.S. Shit Creek

During the Great Recession, it’s heartening that $150 million is being spent on Obama’s inauguration.  This is compared to the $42m spent on Bush and the $33m spent on Clinton.  And of course, this comes after the most expensive presidential campaign in history.  You’d never guess that so many Americans were on the brink of financial ruin.  But hey, you know, whatever it takes to get Obama elected and sworn in.

What was it that Marie Antoinette said?  “Let them eat…”  Hmmm, nope, can’t remember the rest.

13 January, 2009 | 14 Comments

Thanks to everyone who commented on my previous post: the burka-clad women vs. the bikini models.

There were many ways I could have framed my question.  Given that the women in the burkas were from Afghanistan, the question about who is more oppressed inevitably became a discussion of women’s rights. Clearly, as far as human rights for women go, Afghanistan may just be the worst place to live on earth.  I could have shown photos of women from Saudi Arabia or Iran (who would most likely be wearing the hijab, rather than burkas), and while those countries are better than Afghanistan, women in those countries are still deprived of many basic human rights, so again the discussion would have focused on rights.  As others suggested, I could have shown a woman wearing a burka who lives in Western Europe, but there would have been many questions about that woman, especially regarding how much her life is being controlled by the men in her family.  There are women living in religious communities in Western Europe who subjected to the same kinds of controls as women living in Afghanistan.

For my purposes, I posted these two photos because I am interested in issues of body image.  I’ve been thinking about what is more oppressive – covering your body or displaying it.  When we see the women who are covered, many people automatically assume that the women are being subjected to some sort of patriarchal control, from their government, culture, religion and families.  When we see the photo of the swimsuit models, I would argue that most people do not assume something similar – that these women are being subjected to a form of patriarchal control.  After all, no one is pointing a gun at their heads forcing them to pose half-naked on the front of a men’s sports magazine.  And that’s true.  Unlike the women in Afghanistan, who are literally having guns pointed at them, the models are there by choice.  Not only that, but countless women would love to be in their place.  The patriarchal control of the swimsuit models, and those who wish to be in their place, is not obvious to many, making it much more insidious.

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11 January, 2009 | 19 Comments

Which group of women here is more oppressed:

This isn’t me being cheeky.  This is a serious question.  It’s something I’m thinking about as I write my novel and I would really love love love your feedback on this.  All thoughts and ideas are welcome.  The women on the Sports Illustrated cover are from Europe, Australia, North and South America.  The women in the photo at the top are from Afghanistan.

9 January, 2009 | 5 Comments

Last night I found out that a magazine I used to work for ceased publication in December.  Yes, I know it’s hard to believe I used to work at CosmoGIRL!, but I did.  When I lived in New York, I used to work as a freelance magazine writer and editor; teen magazines were my main source of income.

I also found out last night that many other teen magazines have closed down recently and that Seventeen seems to be the only big one left.  [Yes, I worked at Seventeen as well.  Before you roll your eyes, know that Sylvia Plath worked at Seventeen once.  She also worked at Mademoiselle, another magazine I used to write for regularly.  Plath wrote about her experiences at Mademoiselle in her highly autobiographical novel The Bell Jar.]

I felt incredibly sad last night upon learning the news about CosmoGIRL!  I would have never expected to feel sad. It wasn’t the literal end to ComoGIRL! that upset me.  While the world is a better place without CosmoGIRL! or any fashion magazine, I was sad because an era is coming to an end.  These teen magazines are going out of business in part because of the bad economy, but also because teenagers just don’t read magazines anymore. They go online instead. I’m writing a novel that deals, in part, with a teenage magazine.  I first conceived of the idea for my novel in 1999.  Ten years have passed now and the world I’m writing about doesn’t really exist anymore.  That realization unsettles me.

I’ve been thinking about these sorts of issues a lot lately…

The blogosphere feels dead right now.  Am I the only one who feels this way?  A lot of the blogs I normally read aren’t posting much or aren’t posting anything at all.  I’m talking about personal blogs here, not the corporate blogs or the blogs of people trying to promote themselves or their products.  There’s normally a slump in blogging during and after the holidays and many people have the January blues right now, but I feel like I’m just sending my posts out into an abyss.  That no one is out there.  Increasingly, I wonder why I bother to keep up this blog.  It’s something I grapple with.

All I hear about lately is Twitter.  I’m sick of hearing about it.  I think a lot of bloggers are spending their time on Twitter now, hence the lack of blogging from many corners.  I don’t have a Twitter account, but Twitter seems to be a place where you post updates on yourself throughout the day in little text-message style bits.  I think this is just emblematic of the way our attention spans are so fragmented nowadays.  Blogs, which require a bit more depth of thought, now seem quaint and out-dated.  I worry that people coming of age now are going to have their brains wired in such a way that they’ll only be able to handle information in bite-size chunks, that their ability to focus and concentrate on things in depth is being destroyed.

I also think Twitter is part of this culture of digital narcissism.  I am part of this culture – anyone with a blog is – but increasingly I’m questioning my role in it.  We’ve all become so egocentric that we publish everything we’re doing on blogs, on Facebook and Twitter, as if we need an audience just to live each day.

I have a Facebook account now, despite vowing never to get one.  I had to get one because my department at my university uses it to schedule meetings and events.  I also noticed that some of my colleagues at school will not use email, but are more than willing to communicate via Facebook.  Email requires too much work, I guess.  Well, now that I’m on Facebook, I can confirm that I don’t like it.  I think it’s handy as an online address book, as a way to keep the contact info of people who live outside the realm of your daily life, but beyond that it’s just another outlet for our ‘look at me’ culture.

One big downside to these online tools is that they allow us to keep tabs on people in a creepy way.  There are people reading this blog right now (people known to me, not strangers) who I wish weren’t reading it.  I don’t want these certain people to know where I’m living and what I’m doing, but there’s no way I can prevent them from reading my blog.

One thing about the internet that I really don’t like is that it’s filled with way too much second-rate crap.  [I don't mean to sound like a total snob and I don't mean to imply that the writing on this blog is good, because it's not.  The purpose of this blog isn't to dazzle people with my writing skills.  This blog serves a totally different function from the other writing I do offline.]  The democratization of content that the internet allows is a good thing.  What’s bad is when people begin to think that just because they have a blog, can write a post and hit the “publish” button, that they’re a published writer.  That’s just not the case.  There’s a place for blogs and other online content, and then there’s a place for the leading writers and thinkers of our time and times past, who are not using the internet to distribute their ideas and writing.  It worries me that the line between these realms is being erased.  It’s not a positive development for our culture.  When I teach essay-writing classes, students use blog posts from any random person on earth as “expert” sources to quote in their essays. They see no difference between these blog posts and articles published in a peer-reviewed journal or books from major publishing houses.

These musings probably make me seem very old.  When I was in college, email was a new thing.  And we didn’t really have the WWW in any significant way until I was in graduate school.  So if digital years are like dog years, then I’m extremely old and out-of-touch.  All I can say is that I’m glad my brain was formed before this digital era.  I’m so damn happy about that.  I don’t mean to imply that technology is bad at all.  I’d be lost without the internet, my laptop. my iPod, my digital camera.  Because I live far away from home, instant messaging and webcams are important.  But I think these things should be used to enhance our daily life, whereas I fear they’re becoming a replacement for real and tangible people and things.  I worry that second-rate ideas and writing are flourishing online, while many talented writers can’t get published in the traditional way and when they do get published, they don’t make any money because their books are sold and resold online for two cents.

Increasingly, I turn away from the internet and to books.  I’m even buying CDs again!  I like holding things in my hands.  I miss that and I think it’s important.  My mobile phone contract with T-Mobile just came to an end. I had a contract because I wanted internet on my phone.  While it’s a nice luxury to have internet on your phone, I really can’t afford that and more importantly, I don’t want to carry the internet around in my pocket anymore. It’s enough that I have it at home.  So I didn’t renew my contract and will just have a regular no-frills pay-as-you-go mobile phone now – which, thank heavens, I rarely use.  [My hatred of mobile phones is well-documented!]

A couple months ago when I was very sick with a cold, I had to take some medication every 4 hours.  And seriously, no joke, one time I forgot to take my medication and I thought to myself, “Oh, that’s not a big deal, I’ll just download it.”  That’s scary.

8 January, 2009 | 1 Comment

The weather here has been arctic for weeks.  It is absolutely freezing, the coldest it’s been in decades.  Even the schools are closed in many places. The temperature right now is 30F, but it doesn’t feel like 30 one bit. I’ve spent most of my life in cold, blizzardy places and it feels more like 0F. It’s so cold that it’s just not comfortable to be outside for any length of time. And now the experts are predicting that this summer will be extremely hot.

I said that this past Monday was when I planned to begin working again…and I have!  I’ve gotten a lot of writing done this week.  In fact, I’ve been writing so much that I’ve been staying up until 4 or 5 a.m.  I am a vampire at heart and like to stay up all night.  I guess this is common for creative types.  Writing at night is just better.  But over the past six months or so I’ve trained myself to go to bed early and get up early with great success, thus putting an end to my torturous sleeping problems.  I think it’s just healthier for me to live that way.  Now, partly due to the jet lag I had last week, I’ve started staying up really late again.  I’ll fall asleep at 5 a.m. and wake up at 1 p.m.  In theory there’s nothing wrong with this – my main task right now is to write write write and I could get away with a schedule like this very easily, aside from on Fridays when I have to teach early.  But today, for example, I woke up at 1 p.m.  It gets dark here around 4:30, so that leaves me just over three hours of sunlight per day.  Not ideal at all!  I think I may have to go back to my old schedule again.

I had to put 2666 aside to start reading the books for the classes I’ll be teaching starting next week. I just now finished Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. This book has been on my shelf forever and it’s one of those books I’ve always wanted to read, but could never get past the first page. I’m glad to have finally read it. I know it’s an acclaimed book and all, but I didn’t like it one bit. I guess you may think that I wouldn’t tend to like a book about a womanizer, one that is filled with male sex fantasies and wimpy female characters, but you’d be wrong.  I’m open to liking any kind of book with any kind of characters, as long as the writing is good and the characters are compelling.  I didn’t find this in Kundera’s book.  I thought the writing was bad and the characters weak. The novel takes chances with narrative and structure, which I’m all in favor of, but for me it just didn’t work on any level. There were a few lines here and there that were gorgeous, but the book was filled with cliched language (one character stood “stock still” while another had a “shiver” run down her spine). Perhaps this is due to the translation. I sincerely hope so.  I will admit I’m not a fan of philosophical novels, but this novel just seemed to be trying too hard to be profound. I thought the part at the end where the dog dies was touching, but come on – if you’re going to write about a beloved dog being put to sleep, readers are going to feel sad.  That doesn’t mean the writing is good.  Dead dog = tears.  [I wonder if the movie version with Daniel Day-Lewis is good?]

Anyway, next up it’s more Kundera for me – The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.  I’ll try to keep an open mind…

7 January, 2009 | Comments are off

5 January, 2009 | 3 Comments

I had a relaxing weekend away.  I didn’t even go online for 48 hours!  That is rare for me, sadly.  I need to go offline more often.

My weekend started off in a surreal way.  On Saturday afternoon I emerged from the Green Park tube station (on Piccadilly, near Buckingham Palace) just moments before 12,000 anti-Israel protestors marched by.  Great timing.  I had heard about the protests on the news that morning, but they said the protests were confined to Trafalgar Square.  However, I didn’t know before I left home that after the rally ended, the protestors decided to march to the Israeli embassy in Kensington, which meant going down Piccadilly.

I stepped out of the tube and was getting my bearings when I heard shouting in the distance and could see police blocking off the street.  I needed to cross the street, but I realized that wasn’t going to happen, so I decided to stand on the sidewalk and wait for the prostestors to pass by.  Then suddenly a group of police officers in their bright yellow jackets appeared out of nowhere.  They were running towards me and the ten or so other people standing outside the tube.  They were screaming “Run! Move!”  I had no idea what was going on or why I needed to move.  They kept shouting at us and eventually me and the others began to walk down the sidewalk away from the approaching hordes.  An old woman standing near me was confused and a policewoman grabbed her arm and screamed that there was a mob coming and that if she didn’t move quickly, she’d be trampled.  Eventually we all had to make a run for it, with the police on our heels screaming at us.  The police wear these very heavy boots and they can run much faster than me, with my uncomfortable shoes and heavy bag.  It was sort of funny and terrifying at the same time.  I’ve never been chased by the police before. There was a gate a ways down that lead into Green Park, so the policewoman started yelling “You’re almost there!  Keep running!  You’ll be safe soon!”

Eventually we all got into the park and could catch our breath.  The protestors arrived like a flood and passed us by, which took quite a while given how many thousands there were.  They were moving very quickly and chanting.  One group walked by screaming “Down with Israel!” over and over again.  At this, the pregnant woman standing next to me in the park started to cry.

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2 January, 2009 | 1 Comment

Anglofille’s week so far:

-Terrible jet lag that persists even today.  My body remains on U.S. Eastern Time and will not budge.  It’s utterly strange. I can’t sleep till 4:00 a.m. and then I wake up around 1:00 p.m.  Why, God, why?

-Persistent nausea and gastro-intestinal pain (I am prone to these sorts of ailments, but this week has been particularly awful – in fact, the worst in recent memory);

-Another health-related issue that will remain unnamed;

-A visit to the doctor for a tetanus shot, which has been accompanied by flu-like side effects and arm pain. Plus the nurse scared me when she said the real danger in my case is Hepatitis B, but there’s nothing I can do about that now, so she said don’t “freak out.” (Can I say once again how much I hate Atlanta?  Not just the airport, but the whole city.  The only other time I’ve visited Atlanta in my life, I went home and immediately developed double pneumonia because of a virus I caught while there.  The moral of this story: If you visit Atlanta, wear a Hazmat suit. The second moral of this story: If a loved one is visiting Atlanta, take out a life insurance policy on them and you may just become rich.  This is more expensive than buying a lottery ticket, but the odds of a pay-out are in your favor.);

-Having to be on duty in the hall on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night, plus the whole 24-hours on New Year’s, with virtually no human contact during this time;

-Subsisting on a diet of Lucky Charms, Fritos, chocolate and fennel tea;

-Living in a building that is freezing cold – the heat is turned off between midnight and 7:00 a.m. during the holiday period.  Even when the heat is on (like now) I’m shivering because it’s bloody cold outside.  You know, I’ve always taken heat for granted.  You never miss it till it’s gone.

Because of all this, and because one of my New Year’s resolutions is to take better care of myself, I am spending the weekend in a luxury hotel right here in London.  I have a voucher for part of it and it’s a rock-bottom price (well, rock-bottom considering this is London).  I’ve had a lousy week and I was cheated out of New Year’s, so this weekend will be my New Year’s and 2009 will officially begin on Monday.  I want comfort and luxury and most of all, I want the holidays to end on a high note, dammit.