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[04 Jul 2008|12:06am] |
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| Introduction Post |
[03 Jul 2008|11:33pm] |
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Name: Taylor
SO's name: Lawrence
Your ages: 22, 21 respectively
How long have you been together? 8 months
How did you meet? Historical Reenactment (How wonderfully geeky are we?)
Where are you both from? I'm from California, he's from Ipswich but we're both currently living in Canterbury.
Any plans for the future? My student visa runs out in September and we've been trying to get Lawrence a work visa so he can come with me to California while I finish school. So far, we've been unsuccessful.
Anything else you'd like to share with us? Not that people don't know it already but can I just say I hate politics and laws and everything that's telling us we can't live in the same country...
( picture here )
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| At first I was afraid, I was Petrellified |
[03 Jul 2008|09:52pm] |
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The World Can Wait - The Blow Monkeys |
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Well, that Heroes finale was even more of an anticlimax than the first season's. I suppose I should hardly be surprised, I did spot the writer's name at the beginning. Jeph Loeb could write, many moons ago, but nowadays his name serves more as a biohazard warning than a credit. I suspect that unless I hear extremely good word on the third season - among it, that Loeb has taken an enforced sabbatical - then I'm out.
I don't think it helps matters that the BBC are screening it on Thursdays, the day when those of us who still go to the source for our superheroics are coming home with an armful of stranger, better, truer stories in the same vein.
Chris Morris on CERN; as against certain strands of celebrity journalism, he is at once entertaining and (for the general reader) enlightening. I like this sort of polymathic behaviour; Stephen Fry is the obvious example, but one of the joys of Alex James' Bit of a Blur is the way he loves space exploration every bit as much as cheese, champagne, beautiful girls and all the other splendid things in the world. A lot of autobiographies would do well to take a lesson from Alex James; he can admit that he's moved on in life to the extent of a total volte-face, without feeling the need to retrofit a load of moralistic wangst to the days of debauchery. Drink, drugs and shagging are the right thing for a rock star to do; "All happy endings imply gardens." There is no contradiction between these two statements.
Other links of possible interest: missing scenes from butchered silent classic Metropolis have surfaced - sadly without colour-tinting and Queen soundtrack, but I'm sure that can be fixed - and Iain Sinclair on 'The Olympic Scam'.
Tomorrow doesn't just mark the anniversary of some silly colonial insurrection - it'll also be 106 years since the election which returned Britain's first Labour MP, Kier Hardie. He must be so proud of Tony, Gordon and chums.
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| My j-1 visa interview |
[03 Jul 2008|09:07pm] |
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Very uneventful.
They didn't even ask for any of the things I fussed over getting for so long, only the forms and my photograph.
Not that I'm complaining, it was just a little anti-climactic.
Being properly grilled might have justified my work getting stuff together and worrying, as it was I felt a little over prepared. There was a girl behind me outside the embassy had gotten her appointment date wrong. I can't imagine it mattering SO little to somebody that they don't double check.
ANYWAY
The guy that interviewed me went to another University in the same town I'm going out to, he was very friendly and I was at the window less than 5 minutes.
I was only in the waiting room about...2 hours? That's my estimate based on the amount of my book that I got read. There were some people there for a long time before I arrived and still hadn't been seen.
Anyway, some people asked for an update on my interview, and that was it!
My visa was granted and I'm off on August 23rd.
Yay!
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| Relationships? |
[03 Jul 2008|12:57pm] |
I know this forum is generally for practical reasons within the British-American community, but I have a personal question to ask.
Are you in a long distance relationship with someone across the pond? If so, how did you manage it? What did you sacrifice, if anything? Do you have any regrets?
The reason why I'm asking is due to the fact that, after an intense vacation/holiday with my bloke from the West County, he told me he doesn't think a relationship would ever work out between us (given, I'm pretty sure he was drunk when he wrote this message to me, as it was long and had TONS of grammatical errors, which is not usual for him at all). No details. I'm puzzled and quite hurt--we already knew a relationship was out of the cards for the next year, as I need to finish graduate school and his work forces him to travel a lot (even if I moved to Britain to be with him, he'd be going all over Europe anyway for the next year or so). But now it seems as if he doesn't want to even think about us possibly being together again, even though we talked about me moving out to England after I graduate. Then again, maybe he's just panicking at the thought of a very serious relationship (we're very young--I'm 22, he's 24), as he's told me in the past that he loves me very much, but doesn't want to be tied down right now. I know I'm the same--I love him, but I need to finish school.
**UPDATE** We talked again, for a long time. It's not that either of us don't love each other (quite the opposite, we think there's some sort of mystical connection that brought us together in Denmark), but the situation is unfortunate. And although I adore him and I know he loves me, I don't think he's quite ready for a live-in girlfriend as of yet, and I MUST earn my Master's. And--here's where it gets crazy--I went back to my boyfriend in the states after I left my Englishman a year ago, and got engaged to him, despite the fact that I wasn't in love with him. When I broke up with American Fiance this spring, Englishman swooped down and proclaimed his undying love for me and swore that we would stay together. This thrilled me, but scared me at the same time, as I didn't think I could handle another intense relationship again. But, after visiting me and finding out I was going to graduate school, he went on about how the situation and time weren't right for a relationship, but he went on about how we're 'soul mates' and he wants to stay 'best friends forever and life'. I think putting him on the backburner right now, visiting occasionally, and then making that decision when I have to do my internship (which could be in England!!) is a better idea.
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[03 Jul 2008|06:00pm] |
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MSP - Die in the Summertime |
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In today's Times - where else - there's an excellent column by former England cricket captain Mike Atherton about Zimbabwe, the ICC and the linkage between sport and politics. This is one of the few areas in which football's normally incompetent, grasping and buffoonish world governing body FIFA can be used as a good example to other sports. Probably in an attempt to preserve their own powers to fuck things up, FIFA are incredibly effective at keeping governments from interfering with football authorities in their own countries. Only recently, for example, FIFA threw out Iraq from World Cup qualifying only to reinstate them after the Iraqi government specifically exempted the Iraqi FA from the government takeover of sporting bodies. The sight of FIFA acting swiftly and strongly and securing its own interests within days after sanctions were enacted should be grand example to the ICC, stuck in an attritional war between competing factions over what exactly should be done with a Zimbabwean cricketing board run by, as Mike Atherton puts it and like so much of that country, thugs.
The other thing that struck me about Atherton's column is how good it is and how depressing to realise that, as another football season approaches (hurry up!), the chances of me reading anything similar from a current or former footballer are extremely slim. David James seems to have assumed the role as the footballing public intellectual but, really, he's sort of rubbish; being slightly more intelligent than other footballers and having an odd column in the Observer doesn't make one an intellectual. I mean, Jasper Gerrard used to write for the Observer and nobody would choose to call him an intellectual, not when 'tedious cunt' would do.
Anyway, it's probably a truism that it's a class thing - cricketers generally come from a more middle-class background than footballers (Mike Atherton went to Manchester Grammar School, Tony Adams went to a Dagenham comprehensive, for example). But still, how depressing that not only are there few current footballers prepared to belie the stereotype of the thick working-class boy done good but there are few former ones, let alone former England captains, who could produce writing like Mike Atherton's.
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| OMIGOD omigod you guys.... |
[03 Jul 2008|03:35am] |
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I am GAY not European...so of course I love the arts. Especially theater. And the past few years Broadway has taken some risks and hit major home runs. I mean what would world be without Wicked today? And now I have found my new love: Legally Blond: The Musical.
Though the play has been going on for about two years I FINALLY watched the entire video online and now I see why Laura Bell Bundy (AKA Elle Woods) was nominated for a Tony Award.
The movie was cute but the Broadway show is simply brilliant. Don't let the name and fact that it's a movie turned Broadway show stop you from seeing it. (Actually it was book before it was a movie right? I don't have the energy to Google it right now.)
I stayed up WAY past my bedtime to watch this so I'm kind of loopy right now.
How many princess points did I earn for this?
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| via Twitter |
[03 Jul 2008|12:09am] |
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| via Twitter |
[02 Jul 2008|12:05am] |
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Automatically posted by LoudTwitter
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| LJ Stats - June 2008 - 2527 Comments |
[01 Jul 2008|11:58am] |
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( LJ Stats for anybody who wants to see them.... )
Once again thank you for all the comments!!!!! :)
This LJ is friends only, if your not on the list then comment and i will add you.
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| Glasto Photo Diary Part One: I Want To Be A Hippy |
[01 Jul 2008|09:54am] |
This was the state of me yesterday on the train home from the Glastonbury Festival.
Tired, sunburnt and deeply hungover. I'd been there since Tuesday, volunteering as an Oxfam steward.
Anyway, this is Part One of my Glasto Photodiary. Due to the sheer volume of photos, I'll be posting it in four parts.
( Wednesday and Thursday: Stone Circles, shrine gardens, fires and stewarding )
Coming up in Part Two: Buddhists, Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, The Ting Tings, Editors, and some Tories.
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[01 Jul 2008|09:16am] |
What is the point of Michael Gove's column in the Times on Mondays? After he was elected a Tory MP they dropped his weekly column about serious stuff; presumably either the paper didn't want to be too closely associated with a Tory MP's views (though I don't see why not; it's the Times for crying out loud) or Gove didn't want to Do A Boris and have his previous writing held against him. Either way he was relegated to Times2 and wrote a much less serious column that bordered on irritating whimsy. With the redesign however he's been promoted again, writing on the op-ed pages a column that uneasily straddles serious and irritating whimsy. It's a shame really as he was a good columnist when he chose to be - now he can't decide what he is and so just comes across as confused, a bit desperate to be liked and altogether too earnestly nice; very New Tory, in short. Not a surprise really since he's one of Cameron's closest advisors but I wish he'd decide which way he wants to go when he writes a column - serious or whimsical, few can do both.
Anyway, I say all this because I was struck by his column yesterday. Talking about Iraq, something I tend not to do since it only attracts shrill internet types to talk over each other and besides, I was brutally wrong about it anyway, Gove reckons that since the success of General Petraeus, books "from Thomas E.Ricks's Fiasco to Jonathan Steele's Defeat...are already obsolete". Now I haven't read either of these two books but you don't need to be a genius to work out what they're about; America's sheer incompetence in the region for three years or so will tend to produce books called Fiasco or Defeat. Gove thinks that these books are rendered obselete by Petraeus, which is a novel version of how history works I guess, as if history was some sort of computer operating system and every new development rendered the last pointless.
Books that expose the sheer idiocy of much of the Bush Administration's policy in Iraq are not just important in their own right they are examples of an important use of history; don't be this stupid again, basically. The finest example of this by one of the finest authors is The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman, listing all the political errors, incompetence and blindness in conflicts from Troy to Vietnam. If I had my way it'd be required reading for every incoming world leader; as it is it's just as important - and complements - the memoirs of the general who eventually, seemingly, got it right. Otherwise, if we just stuck to reading the history of things we got right and regard the history of the things we got wrong as obsolete; well, we'd never learn a bloody thing.
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[01 Jul 2008|01:18am] |
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| Rupert and the missing memorandum |
[01 Jul 2008|12:22am] |
The first in an ocassional series.
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| Mystery of fishing boat |
[30 Jun 2008|07:28pm] |
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Welsh Mary Celeste?
An interesting encore to all the UFO stories in Wales of late.
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| Secondary School Qualifications on Job Applications |
[30 Jun 2008|02:08pm] |
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I couldn't find an answer to this in the tagged posts, but I am hoping I might find a bit of help.
I have just claimed my dual citizenship and I am looking to move from Canada to the UK in the autumn.
As I look for jobs, I find I encounter the same problem over and over. Application forms ask for my GCSE qualifications. In Canada, (or at least in Ontario) we do not have any sort of entrance or exit examinations for highschool, so all I can say is 'graduated high school', 'was admitted to University' (as I am still at Uni) which does not look terribly impressive, nor does it give me the ability to show off my specialities or the good marks I received. (Particularly as I am looking at jobs in a somewhat 'academic' setting - e.g. libraries, museums.)
Has anyone else encountered this problem, and, if so, how did you work around it?
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[30 Jun 2008|03:42pm] |
I'm now back from Glasto.
A photo diary will follow, as soon as I've sorted through the pics on my camera. There's 78 photos on there, so I may do it in several parts.
My memorable Glasto moments this year included:
1. Drinking cider at the stone circle while the Sun went down.
2. Chatting about cognitive-behaviour therapy with a Buddhist meditation instructor.
3. Discovering that the guy I'd been dancing next to in Trash City the previous night had been one of the guys from Four Poofs and a Piano.
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