13 May, 2010 | 3 Comments

Arrived in Avignon this afternoon, so my trip has now come full circle.  Difficult to believe it’s been almost a whole month since I was last here.  I spent the past few days in Arles and I am still drunk on the experience – what a beautiful, crumbling little town.  It really does look like a Van Gogh painting. I took a gazillion photos, which I will inflict upon you, dear readers, once I get home.

It’s rained on and off the past few days.  This is Southern France – what gives?  Oh well.  Today is some Catholic holiday – Arles was quiet this morning, but Avignon is buzzing, though the rain has put a damper on things this evening.  I’m so tired I haven’t left my hotel since late afternoon.  I’ve been reading in my room and eating Lays BBQ potato chips.  Yeah, I have.  Maybe I should be sitting outside in a lawn chair and chewing on some straw, you know, in order to fully embrace my inner hillbilly.  Speaking of hillbillies, I’m staying in a cheap hotel filled with ill-mannered people, the kind of people who travel all the way to Provence from the UK just to get drunk and party the whole time, when they could get drunk and party at home for much cheaper and spare all of us the experience of having to share a hotel with them.  But then I guess it’s not enough to be a waster nowadays – one must be an int’l traveler as well.

So anyway, tomorrow is the last day of my trip.  Do I want to visit the Palace of Popes?  I’m not tempted.  I don’t really like popes.  Of course I realize it’s a historical monument now and not part of the Vatican (doom doom doom), but for some reason I’m not interested.  Is it worth the 10 euros?  I could have, like, two or three crepes for that price.

One thing I definitely need to do tomorrow is buy some tranquillizers for my TGV ride on Saturday.  The TGV is a special form of hell.  Heaven help me.  I already have a knot in my stomach just recalling the boarding process from the Paris-to-Avignon trip.  The rush for lifeboats on the Titanic could not have been more frantic, could not have involved more pushing and shoving and crying and screaming.  Oh god, I have PTSD.

Maybe I should hitchhike to Lille on Saturday?  Even if the odds of getting picked up by a serial killer are 50%, it’d be worth the risk.

14 February, 2010 | 1 Comment

Anglofille could never believe in anything as hackneyed as Valentine’s Day, but here’s something lovely anyway, so you can’t complain I never gave you nothin’:

Funtwo (Jeong-Hyun Lim) has his own website now.  His Canon Rock is one of my favorites – at least in the “electric guitar playing classical music” genre.

9 January, 2010 | 2 Comments

I bought a new day planner today (what the Brits call a ‘diary’).  Yes, I use an old-fashioned paper one.

I was writing a few dates and things in it just a moment ago. I flipped to December 2010 and then exclaimed “Oops!” and quickly slammed the book shut.  Why?  Because I didn’t want to know how the year ends.

OMG, I am insane.

In other date-related yet less worrisome news, it’s January, the most craptastic month of the year. As of Sunday, we’re in the double digits but will still have three more weeks to go. It’s a long sucker. So far in 2010 I have been most unproductive. I’m not writing, I’m way behind and I don’t even care. This may be because I have drastically reduced my sugar consumption. I am cooking and eating healthily, all good things, but a writer needs vice in her life.  My vice was sugar and now that’s gone. It’s no surprise that without a constant sugar buzz, the writing has dried up. If this writing drought keeps up past the weekend, I may need to go out and buy a bottle of Sprite. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

7 January, 2010 | Comments are off

Daily Mail homepage/January 7, 2010/14:00 GMT

27 August, 2009 | 6 Comments

I didn’t want to write anything about Ted Kennedy’s death, but I have to because I feel as if I’m living in the Twilight Zone.

The media and the liberal and feminist blogosphere are filled with tributes to Ted Kennedy, which is bordering on hagiography. What really gets to me are the feminist blogs that are lauding him in a completely uncritical way.

President Obama today called Kennedy “the greatest senator of our time.”  Just as a refresher for those who may have forgotten our greatest senator’s illustrious past: On July 18, 1969: Ted Kennedy left a party on Chappaquiddick Island with Mary Jo Kopechne as a passenger in his car.  The two of them may have been romantically involved, but no one knows.  Kennedy ended up driving the car off a bridge into the water.  He saved himself and according to him, tried to save Kopechne with no luck.  He walked all the way back to the party, passing houses where he could have stopped to call the police but didn’t.  At the party, he found two men to return to the scene with him to try to save Kopechne, but they did not succeed.  The two men insisted that Kennedy call the authorities, which he said he would do – but he didn’t.  Kennedy returned to his hotel and went to sleep.  There is evidence to suggest that Kopechne may have lived for up to two hours after the car went into the water, so time was of the essence.  In today’s Guardian, Joyce Carol Oates writes: “Kennedy chose to flee the scene, leaving the young woman to die an agonising death not of drowning but of suffocation over a period of hours.”  At the hotel, Kennedy didn’t call the police, though he did complain to the manager of the hotel that other guests were making too much noise and he couldn’t sleep.  The next morning, Kennedy chatted with other people, made calls to his lawyer, etc., but never called the police.  Two fishermen found the car and reported it to the police.  Only then did Kennedy turn himself in – after all, he had no choice given that the car was registered to him.

Why didn’t Kennedy call the police?  Or in other words, why didn’t Ted Kennedy do what probably 99 percent of Americans would have done in his shoes?  It was likely to save his own skin.  Maybe he wanted his blood alcohol level to return to normal before the authorities got involved.  Maybe he thought that no one would ever find the car.  Regardless of why, I’m guessing his Senate career was foremost in his mind, otherwise his bizarre actions make no sense.  This is a man who came from a scandal-prone family.  He knew how to work a scandal and was no dummy.

Writes Oates (who produced a great novel, Black Water, based on the crime): “Appealing to his lawyer [rather than] seeking emergency help for the trapped Mary Jo Kopechne would seem, in retrospect, to have been a felicitous move. If Kennedy had summoned aid, he would very likely have given police officers self-incriminating evidence, which might have involved charges of vehicular manslaughter or homicide. The local prosecutor was not nearly so outraged by Kennedy’s behaviour as other prosecutors might have been: the charges were ‘failing to report an accident’ and ‘leaving the scene of an accident.’ The punishment: two months’ probation.”

(more…)

29 April, 2009 | Comments are off

Click here to find out.

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!

10 June, 2008 | Comments are off

7 June, 2008 | 8 Comments

A few people have asked me why I haven’t commented on Hillary’s exit from the race. I missed her speech. I am just frantically busy because I leave for my trip on Monday and have many things to get done. I will catch up on all the news soon, I hope, but what I will say is this: I already see many pro-Obama bloggers who trashed Hillary and her supporters for months now saying how great they think Hillary is and how she opened doors for women and set a good example for young girls. You know what I have to say to this?  Spare me.  You may think that you’re being dignified, but you forfeited the right to be dignified long ago.

28 December, 2006 | 4 Comments

I arrived in Venezia late last night. It’s quite cold here and the canals are blanketed with fog, which is truly amazing to see. Apparently, the fog isn’t normal for this time of year. I can’t upload any photos because I’m at an internet cafe. (And BTW, in Italy, internet cafes have to make a copy of your photo ID and give it to the police because of terrorism. Insane.) I leave for Paris late tomorrow night. Between now and then I just plan on walking all over. I have reached my museum quota for this trip, I think. What could be more exciting than just seeing Venice? I am hoping for a little sunshine though…
I’ll write all about my trip when I get home…until then, Ciao!

16 December, 2006 | 2 Comments

This can’t be real?

**update** Here’s another one!