29 April, 2009 | Comments are off
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P.S. While we’re on the subject of pig flu, the ‘fat tax’ promoting head of Ryanair says only Mexican and Asian slumdwellers are at risk. If only there were a flu for bigoted assholes!
Archive for April, 2009
29 April, 2009 | Comments are off
Oh Kate, how I’ve missed you! I haven’t been able to update Kate Watch for months, but today, a gift from the Daily Mail. Behold this headline:
‘I was bullied for being chubby. Girls told me nobody would ever fancy me, reveals Kate Winslet’
Ha ha. Kate Winslet reveals this, as if we haven’t heard it a million times before; even an illiterate peasant living in the most far-flung region of the globe without access to electricity would have heard this at least 10,000 times already.
Apparently, the Daily Mail has lifted these Kate-isms from the June issue of Marie Claire, with Winslet on the cover. She tells Marie Claire: ‘Even now I do not consider myself to be some kind of great, sexy beauty. Absolutely not.’ Yet she decides to pose for this photo anyway:
28 April, 2009 | 6 Comments
I’m teaching back at the language school now, which I’m not too pleased about. I should have taken this term off, since I notice that my patience is running thin. You need a lot of patience to deal with students who are not fluent in English, but I’m struggling to be the nice, kind, patient teacher. I find myself sighing a lot. At this point in the academic year, I’m burned out. I’m also stressed out by my own PhD work. So anyway, big mistake taking the teaching job, but now I’m stuck with it.
Okay, now a funny story. Obviously, all of my students are foreign. Many Asian students ask to use “English” names in class. For example, a Chinese student may ask to be called Jane or Mary instead of her given name. This is a very common practice, but sometimes it can cause problems.
A couple years ago, I had a female student from China who wanted to be called Fanny. I thought this was fine, but when my boss found out she had a heart attack. She said this girl could not call herself Fanny. It was then I learned that “fanny” means “vagina” in British slang. [You shouldn't use the term "fanny pack" here.]
27 April, 2009 | 10 Comments
Although I’ve been living in London for a couple years now, sometimes I still struggle to understand what people say. Two recent examples:
I was in the lift with one of the students recently. “Are you off out?” he said.
I had no idea what he meant. “Huh?”
“Are you off out?”
“Am I what? I don’t understand.”
He looked at me puzzled. “Are you off out,” he said very slowly. “Are you going out?”
Ahhhh! He was asking “Are you off?” and “Are you going out?” combined into one confusing phrase. I felt like a moron. There are lots of these little turns of phrase that are sometimes difficult to understand.
This evening, I had quite an embarrassing encounter. During dinner, a student said to me:
“Arklena is the best.”
I said, “Who is Arklena? I don’t know this person.”
“Arklena,” he said, looking at me as if I were crazy.
“That’s a strange name,” I said. “I don’t know anyone named Arklena.”
He said, “Of course you know her. Arklena!”
“Nope.”
He said, “She’s on our floor everyday.”
“Oh!!!! You mean OUR CLEANER! Yeah, she’s the best,” I said.
If people would just say the ER at the ends of words, life would be so much simpler! Actually, I’ve had many discussions about this with people here and they get upset when I say they drop the ER. They claim that they are saying the ER but that it sounds different. Um, nice try, but no. My surname ends in ER. Trust me, you are dropping the ER. It’s as if it’s not even there!
I should clarify that my experience is with people in the southeast of England. There is a lot of regional variation with accents. Round these parts, when I go into a shop or cafe and ask for water, they sometimes cannot understand me. I say ER words with a very hard R at the end. Of course there are many Americans with regional accents who drop the ER at the ends of words, such as people in Boston, but I speak with the standard American accent. One time recently I had to ask for water three times before the woman behind the counter understood what I was saying. I kept saying “water,” but she had no idea. Then she said, “Oh, water!” but she pronounced WATER as WA-UH. So now sometimes I just ask for “a bottle of wa-uh” and then there’s no problem.
24 April, 2009 | 6 Comments
There’s an outcry over the extreme thinness of this contestant from Australia’s Miss Universe contest:
Her picture and articles about her have been widespread in the press, where medical experts and others claim they are shocked and aghast at her appearance. She’s gross! She needs medical intervention! She has an eating disorder! She sets such a bad example for young girls!
See: Guardian, Herald Sun, Sky News, Independent, Access Hollywood, Daily Mail, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, Telegraph, Washington Post, NZ TV, Adelaide Now, Perth Now and too many more. Here’s my favorite graphic, from the Reuters blog:
According to Reuters, this skull is “the look she was going for.”
My question is, what’s the point of this story? To humiliate someone with an eating disorder? To gleefully show that whatever you look like as a woman, it’s never good enough? If you’re fat, they’ll laugh at you. If you’re too thin, they’ll laugh at you. You can’t win. In the aftermath of the Susan Boyle controversy, that much is clear.
24 April, 2009 | 1 Comment
I’m friends with a group of ladies from my PhD. We’re all feeling a bit down. The work isn’t going well and there’s the fear that in this economy, there’ll be no jobs for us when we graduate and no publishers to take our books. It’s hard to summon a lot of motivation at the moment. But now we have an anthem, available on YouTube. Yes it’s cheesy. Yes we’re dorks. But having an inspiring anthem helps and here’s the proof: I wrote four pages today!
22 April, 2009 | 10 Comments
Ryanair has announced a new “fat tax” for passengers. They are floating proposals on their website (where you can vote) to either weigh passengers or simply charge them more if their waist touches both arm rests at the same time. This is yet another desperate publicity seeking stunt from the low-budget Irish “airline.” [They recently announced they were going to charge people to use the toilets on their planes.]
I know there are a few American airlines that charge fat customers more and I don’t want to get into a debate about that issue right now, but the way that Ryanair is going about this (with a poll on their website and using terms like “fat tax”) is hate-filled and offensive. A representative even said: “These charges, if introduced, might also act as an incentive to some of our very large passengers to lose a little weight and hopefully feel a little lighter and healthier.” Anyone who flies on Ryanair clearly doesn’t value their life very much anyway, so there’d be no point in losing weight and becoming “healthier.”
21 April, 2009 | 3 Comments
This article in today’s NYT is a chilling example of what the health care situation is like for countless people in America. It’s really beyond shameful.
20 April, 2009 | 5 Comments
Behold the photo of the day:
As you can see, this Caribbean fast-food restaurant in East London was raided by the Metropolitan Police yesterday. You might be wondering what sinister acts took place here – drug dealing? terrorism? No, I’m afraid not. The police swooped in because this “fast food” restaurant opened too close to a school. You see, Waltham Forest Council in East London has decided that, given the “obesity epidemic” sweeping Britain, there can be no [new] fast-food restaurants near schools. So this little establishment selling jerk chicken must go – by police force. Here is the owner being served with papers:
Resisting the urge to use “Orwellian”…resisting the urge to use “Kafka-esque”…someone please tie my hands behind my back. ARRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!
20 April, 2009 | 3 Comments
I’m pleased that the U.S. is boycotting the U.N. racism conference that begins today. To have the president of Iran address a conference on racism (on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day) makes this whole conference a joke. Not only does this man hate Jews, but he also oppresses minorities in his own country. Perhaps the head of the Klu Klux Klan can be the closing speaker.
What really thrills me about the boycott is that it has highlighted one of my big issues – the attempt to curtail freedom of speech by making it a crime to “incite religious hatred.” Many Muslim countries are at this conference attempting to insert language into the UN declaration on racism that will “ban all criticism of Islam, Sharia law, the Prophet Muhammad and other tenets of their faith.” The U.S. State Department has said this is one reason it is boycotting the conference – because the right to freedom of speech is being threatened. Yay!
One of the biggest failures of the British Labour government and other European governments is their embrace of such religious hate speech laws, which I recently wrote about in regards to Geert Wilders being banned from Britain. Rather than trying to protect the world’s major religions from “hatred,” we should pour our energy into combating the hatred spread by the major world religions. That’s the far bigger threat.
18 April, 2009 | 5 Comments
I never expected such a flood of comments to my Susan Boyle post. Thanks to everyone who commented – I had intended to wade in and respond to some of the comments, but then they just kept piling up. I really don’t understand why Susan Boyle has launched this trans-Atlantic craze. Perhaps people are happy to see someone who looks like them on television? That must be part of it.
In other news, I have no motivation at all. I’m not getting any writing done and barely any reading. Total lethargy has set in. Usually in the spring, I am bursting with energy, but right now…not so much. I’m in a rut. I’m also on the verge of a big change (moving out of this place in two months, leaving London for the summer). When one chapter of my life is winding down, I often experience this torturous feeling of extreme restlessness. Perhaps it’s like feeling stir crazy. I didn’t anticipate being struck by this feeling or maybe I thought it’d manifest itself in a more positive way this time – such as fueling me to write a lot out of excitement. But no.
16 April, 2009 | 44 Comments
I suppose I should write something about Susan Boyle, given all the attention she’s getting here and abroad. She’s received 6 million YouTube hits so far. I happened to be near a TV last Saturday night and saw her performance on Britain’s Got Talent, the nationwide talent show that features Simon Cowell as a judge. Unlike American Idol or X Factor, this show is not just singing, but dancing, comedy and variety acts as well. Plus, the contestants aren’t just twentysomethings but all different age groups.
I’d never seen this show before and happened to click on it right as Susan Boyle was taking the stage. What I saw made me sick.
Susan took the stage. She’s 47, wearing frumpy clothes and no make-up and she’s “fat” by TV standards. Given their reaction to her presence, the judges of this talent show – Cowell, Piers Morgan and some Barbie clone – had apparently never seen a woman like this before in real life. I guess this is not surprising. In the entertainment world, women like this – regular, normal women – do not exist. They’ve been erased and deleted.
15 April, 2009 | 3 Comments
I recently wrote about the horrific new law in Afghanistan that legalizes rape, requires women to ask men’s permission before leaving home and even requires them to wear make-up if their husbands demand it, among other things. This law was signed by President Karzai, who was originally installed thanks in large part to America and its allies in 2001.
Above is a photo from today’s New York Times of a group of very brave women (about 300 in total) who risked their lives to protest the law in Kabul today – right across the street from the mosque that houses the cleric who drafted the law. They were far outnumbered by men and women calling them whores and throwing rocks at them, yet they walked all the way to parliament These women are so inspiring. I don’t think any of us can understand what kind of courage it took to engage in this protest.
15 April, 2009 | 7 Comments
I’ve been following the controversy regarding Amazon – it’s a complex situation, but in a nutshell they seem to have removed books tagged “adult” from their sales rankings in an attempt to make their bestseller lists more “family-friendly.” [Sales rankings are vital - for one thing, they determine what comes up when you search for a book. If a book loses its sales ranking, it will be harder to find on Amazon.]
Usually “adult” means pornography, but this not how Amazon uses the term. For Amazon, “adult” means gay and lesbian themed books, as well as feminist books and books on reproductive health. Classic novels by Jeanette Winterson and James Baldwin lost their rankings, whereas a Playboy photography book featuring the images of 600 naked women was not affected at all. So apparently, Amazon considers books that may offend members of the Republican party and the religious right to be “adult.” That would explain why pornography for straight-male customers, such as Playboy, was not affected.
13 April, 2009 | 2 Comments
Exactly two months from today, I leave for NYC! I got my ticket for only £313/$466, round-trip on Virgin Atlantic. Amazing! I am returning to the UK at the beginning of August. I thought I better get back to this side of the pond for housing/job searching purposes. Still, I may spend August in Paris if I can find a cheap enough place to live. I wonder if my evil landlady in the Marais has a vacancy?!
Speaking of Paris, two years ago on this very day I arrived back in London from Paris. My life was a bit of a train wreck back then and I really didn’t know where I’d end up. It was a struggle there for a while, but I’ve really achieved more in these two years than I thought was possible. I wasn’t even writing back then, but now I’m almost finished with my novel. I’ll be finishing my PhD in less than a year (I hope). And I’ve been a lecturer at the university, including teaching an MA course. I never thought I would achieve so much. I have a difficult road ahead of me and I feel a tremendous amount of pressure, but it’s important sometimes to focus on the good things. I don’t do that enough!
13 April, 2009 | 5 Comments
This weekend I had yet another encounter with someone in the street. I really don’t know what’s going on. Maybe it has something to do with the warmer weather?
I was walking up Queensway on Saturday night. I turned off onto a side street and all of a sudden this guy was walking in step next to me. I knew he was doing it on purpose, so I stopped and motioned for him to go ahead. So then he said, “Excuse me.” I immediately waved him off and kept walking. The guy had a foreign accent and it’s been my experience that when certain foreign men approach you kindly with “Excuse me,” you should just keep walking.
So I kept walking, but this guy persisted. “Excuse me, I just want to talk to you for a minute,” he said. The usual tactic.
I called back, “No thanks,” and kept going. But he was following me. He said, “I saw you and I have to tell you something. Don’t be afraid.” This guy was dressed in a suit and was very stylish. I stopped walking and turned to him, but kept my distance.
The guy said, “I just want to tell you that you have a very beautiful aura around you. It’s very spiritual to see. I just had to tell you.”
I said, “Uh, okay, thanks.”
“God bless you,” he said, then walked way.
I have no idea what to make of this, but I guess it’s better than being insulted.
9 April, 2009 | 4 Comments
This really isn’t my week. Tonight I was out and a drunk homeless woman asked me for money. I ignored her because she seemed scary. Because I ignored her, she started screaming that I’m a c— (what is commonly referred to as the C word), then threatened to beat me up, then kept screaming. Perhaps I should count myself lucky, since the next person that walked by she spit on.
Sometimes London is not a nice place. Now that I reflect on it, I’ve definitely suffered more street harassment here than in New York and I lived there for longer.
7 April, 2009 | 13 Comments
Imagine that you’ve just gotten a new job, which requires you to meet with various clients. Before you start the job, you are given this list of safety tips:
Don’t carry knives or guns with you. These can be used against you!
Look through the whole house to check for other people, signs of danger and exits.
Carry a mobile phone with you to the job. At the start of the booking call someone (a friend, maybe a relative or even your own answering machine). This will let the client know that someone else knows where you are and that your whereabouts can be traced.
Warn that you will leave if the client gets too rough.
Pens, screech whistles and breath sprays can make good weapons, and may allow you the opportunity to get away.
Have your belongings near the door in a pile so you can grab them if you need to get away quickly.
If in danger, don’t hesitate to smash one of the client’s windows or his stereo with a lamp, ashtray, or anything heavy. This will startle (perhaps even scare the client) and it will let your driver know you are in danger and require help.
If you have to defend yourself, do it with the intention of hurting. It is a good idea to do a self-defence course. If a client becomes aggressive or violent let him know you can trace him through his credit card, address, car registration number, etc.
As this list illustrates, your new job will expose you to a high risk of being assaulted, raped or even murdered.
In addition, you should know that while performing your work, you may pick up any of the following diseases: chlamydia, genital herpes, genital warts, gonorrhea, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis A, B & C. You could also become pregnant, suffer abrasions inside your body or suffer permanent damage to your reproductive organs.
Sound like your dream job?
5 April, 2009 | 3 Comments
I’ve decided to refer to my encounter last Friday as my Thelma & Louise moment!
Spring break has sprung, so the hall of residence where I live is virtually empty. This is a good thing – don’t get me wrong – but it’s also lonely. I feel kinda sad that I’m not going anywhere, but I’ll be in NYC in a little over two months, so I just have to keep that in mind. I have so much writing to do and I begin teaching again the week after next.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of what I do (that is, being a writer). Since I live in a hall of residence, I’m surrounded by students studying all sorts of things. A lot of them are studying subjects like law and medicine – you know, big serious subjects. They will often imply that my work is not actually work and that it’s not really that important compared to being a doctor or some such. I get this a lot. Today at breakfast, one guy told me this point blank. An upper-class, spoiled twenty-three year old who is going into medicine largely for the money and status told me that what he does is more important than what I do, thus degrading my entire life’s work.
3 April, 2009 | 8 Comments
This afternoon I had a rather upsetting experience. I went out to run a quick errand and as I was walking down the street, a guy walked up beside me and said something very rude about my appearance. I was stunned that he would say something like this to me and before I could think of a response, he walked on by. This man was drawing quite a bit of attention to himself as he walked – he was walking down the sidewalk as if on a fashion catwalk, swinging his hips back and forth and singing along to his iPod. Interestingly, as this guy was walking down the street, a man who passed by him called him “ugly.” Clearly this man, being so flamboyant, is subjected to a lot of street harassment, which makes it all the more puzzling that he, in turn, would harass me with his vicious comment.
As I reached my destination a few minutes later, I was surprised to see this guy standing outside a nearby building talking on his mobile phone. I hesitated for a moment and then I decided to confront him. I have never done anything like this before, but I walked up to him and said very loudly:
“Excuse me? What gives you the right to speak to me that way?” He had headphones in his ears and was pretending to ignore me, but I could tell he felt very uncomfortable.
So I continued: “It’s surprises me that anyone as horrifically ugly as you would dare to criticize another person’s appearance.”
He appeared stunned that I was saying this. He said, “I think you look fabulous.” It was a crowded sidewalk and other people were stopping and listening.
Then I shouted at him, “F–k off. And if you ever come near me again or ever say anything to me again, I will call the police.” And then I walked off.
After this I was shaking but soon calmed down. I am so glad I told this guy off. It was a liberating experience. Instead of taking his comment and internalizing it, I threw it right back in his face. Street harassment is a fact of life in a big city, but today I decided not to be passive. Maybe he’ll think twice next time before he insults someone. I realize that it can be dangerous to confront a stranger like this, but it was broad daylight on a crowded sidewalk, so I felt safe.
This is a side of myself I’ve never seen before – but I like it!
