An Englishman in New England

currently. . .

[Playing] Oh, holy Halo 2, Xbox
[Reading] War of the Worlds
[Songs of the Moment] Freelove Freeway, Ricky Gervais/David Brent & Noel Gallagher (The Office), Let Me Love You, Mario
[Movie(s) of the Moment] Before Sunset

highlight reel

Pussy Perspectives
The Laid List
Liquored Up and Lookin' Fer Pussy
Orphan Rampage
The Office and David Carradine
Urkel's Calling
A Wee Turtle's Head
Non-Event Horizon
Taxatives
The Illusion of Time
Born To Run
Bush Humor
Fiendster: The Anti-Friendster
Crusoe and the INS
Peak Oil
Smile for me, Mona
Spin the bullet bachelor party
Spin the bullet part II
Heaven and Home
Heal the world

Atom Feed me, Seymour

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Thursday, April 29

I think that equality for same-sex couples can easily be achieved, if GLBT groups take a lesson from the civil rights movement of the 60’s, in that the hand of lawmakers was and is gripped by economic and corporate forces. Sounds cynical, to be sure, and I’d be quick to say that giants such as Martin Luther King definitely advanced the cause and more than deserve their places in history. However, despite their efforts I think it would have taken much longer to get to the point that America is at today unless the economic advantages of allowing minorities to move up in society were realized.

Corporations running short of qualified manpower on the whole didn’t care what color their workers were, as long as the red ink was absent from their bottom line - it simply didn’t make economic sense to withhold the necessary education from a sizeable chunk of the population while the corporate sector desperately needed them.

In this way, I believe the GLBT movement can achieve the equalities it seeks by taking an introspective look at the economic benefits employers could realize from the existence of gay marriage. I think they’ll find if they can sell this issue to the corporations, the struggle for same-sex unions would be much less of one.

Everyone should have the same rights, period. Unfortunately, when it comes to gaining them, I believe ethics are part of an entirely different equation. Convince the corporations to convince the lawmakers - they've been doing it for years.

Same goal, cynical and realistic route. Eh, sue me.

thus spake The Englishman at 5:21 PM
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A Wee Turtle's Head

Messages come to us in the strangest of ways. They float through the ether, searching for the right medium to be recieved, and always seem to arrive at just the right time. Flicking on to just the right bit of dialogue on TV, a book falling open to just the right part of the right chapter, overhearing the right part of a conversation on the train - most of what we encounter in these situations is just so much noise, but hey, even spam has to resonate with someone out there.

The catch is that you have to pay attention, which does take effort. Remember this when you find me huddled down in the bushes underneath your living room window with an ear-horn. Don't mind me - just looking for messages, that's me. Doo tee doo. I'll be off, then if that's how you feel about it. No, no, there's no need to call them, I'll leave. No, I'm not on that registry - yes it's the same name, but it's a completely different person. She told me she was 19!

My most recent message was of the overheard-convo-on-the-train variety. See, my pseudo-jobless marathon has given me a lot of time to ruminate on what kind of legacy I'd like to leave to the world. You know, besides several tonnes of pollutants in the atmosphere, a small Starbucks cup-shaped contribution to some landfill project, and a few gainfully-employed sweatshop children. We in the Western world all seem to manage that without trying, and ideally I'd like to produce something more with the fleeting quantum energy allotted to me, before I croak in an entropic return to chaos.

Having just concluded a rather enjoyable project helping a friend with his senior engineering thesis, and hearing the appreciation of my work, (actual quote "Ah, Jesus - I think I just shit myself. How much is he paying you again?"), I was wondering if maybe I should quit waiting to be involved in some radioactive spider biting/wife and family's murder by mobsters avenging/contact with turtles and a mutagenic substance incident preceding my debut in the crimefighting industry, and instead answer my calling as a graphic designer.

Mulling this over on the train yesterday, I overheard a conversation by some annoying type waffling on about something of huge significance to himself and pretty much noone else. Like I said before, just so much noise, however my ears perked up when he inadvertantly schlepped into my sphere of giving a fuck and mentioned that he used to be a graphic designer, but didn't enjoy spending so much time in front of a computer.

I'm ruminating upon this little revelation - it doesn't appear to be a deal-breaker, although I would like an occupation that doesn't preclude the lifegiving rays of our Sun in the line of duty once in a while. Perhaps I've found the perfect cover for the newest crimefighting vigilante, who is a borderline psychotically-mannered graphic designer by day and at night is the masked hero known only as. . .

The Englishman.

Now where can one find the nearest vat of mutagen and a turtle?

thus spake The Englishman at 7:55 AM
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Sunday, April 25

Earth Day? Well of course I remember what it used to be like.

Compared to the Earth Days of yore, this one was a bit of a damp squib.

Yes, kids, I remember the good ol' Earth Days, when we'd celebrate by building a roaring bonfire, made up of as many old tires, refridgerator coils and CFC-laden spraycans as possible. Mother would spend all day roasting stacks of hormone-grown 3lb steaks, and we'd come tramping in, drenched from gasoline fights with other children in the neighborhood. Ah, I can still taste the thick, refreshing glasses of crude we drank to wash down all that pesticide-ridden food. Then, when we were done, as a special treat, father would fire up the SUV, an-

*whisper whisper*

What? What do you mean, 'it's about conservation'?!?

thus spake The Englishman at 4:56 PM
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Wednesday, April 21

Pass me the tourniquet, I need another hit

Dear Sega,

VX poison gas. DDT. The atomic bomb. Rosie O'Donell.

The history of mankind is littered with mistakes that we fervently wish we could take back. And yet even with the benefit of hindsight, we continue to repeat the sins of our fathers with a seemingly endless supply of innovation and God be damned if we're going to think of the consequences.

I am deeply disappointed that you, Sega, with all of your innovation in the past (a blue hedgehog in a pinball machine? Genius!) have fallen, lemming-like, into this glaringly obvious trap. I am talking of course, about what everyone is calling the New Crack. Don't play dumb with me. I am talking about Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller.

The CIA in collusion with the Columbian drug cartels has nothing on you guys, you purveyors of mind-controlling electronic. . .uh. . .substances. Shame on you! How, when you were shown the soulless, drooling, husks of the former beta testers for this product, could you see fit to release something so dangerously addictive, so psychedelically imbalanced, so insistent upon the repeated and emphatic use of the word 'Crazy' upon your fellow man?

You want examples? How about hitting a home run with a flaming yellow cab? How about leaping onto the roofs of San Francisco while carrying three penguins in the back of your car? How about cursing at the top of your lungs while trying to deliver your fare in record time, desperately weaving between the gutted, fiery wreckages of cars that are raining out of the sky after an encounter with a raging tornado? How about that? How will you explain to the next generation that YOU did this, when they look at the emaciated, warped and utterly fingerless 'hands' they have inherited from their parents?

I'd have been divorced by now if your damn creation wasn't so addictive that it sucked in M too. Poor M - I knew we'd hit the bottom when phrases like "The Crazy Hop is fun, but it'll be even better once I learn how to do the Crazy Drift and the Crazy Hop Boost!" began to encroach upon her voice of reason.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll even able to write these words - my mind keeps drifting in and out of the task at hand, as the sweet siren-song of the commentary ("Hop in, and let's make some kerrrr-azy money!" - surely voiced by Satan himself) lures my sanity closer to its foamy doom, wrecked upon the rocks of your shores. . .

Crazy Hop to a Double-Dash with a Brake Drift - gotta pick them up, gottapickthemupgot ta pickt hem uppickthemuppickthemup.

Ahem.

You know what you did, Sega. You know only you can make it right. The sooner you own up to the opening of this Pandora's Box, the sooner you can get on with making Crazy Taxi 4: All Your Base Are Belong To Us. We are waiting.

Yours,

Crazy Cabbie #24356

thus spake The Englishman at 10:13 AM
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Tuesday, April 20

Marathon Man

As the exhausted runners dragged their chapped asses across the finish line here in the 87 degree heat, I couldn't help but ruminate on the similarities of their physical trial to my mental one, which coincidentally started yesterday. No, my brain has never had diarrhoea on the go, nor have I ever had to put intellectual vaseline on my mental nipples. This is something different.

Officially, I've been out of work since yesterday, you see, but I'm neither incompetent, obsolete, nor lazy. Of the 'Willing and Able to Work' category, I lack the 'Able' part. Thanks to an abrupt law-change at the INS, I now exist in the shadow land between visa statuses. Regular readers will already know how my dealings with this particular branch of government typically proceed. The upshot of these shenanigans means that my ability to work has been amputated, yet I am allowed to stay while I wait for them to reattach it.

It's a very strange thing to be barred from being useful - especially when the verbiage that dictates such an unorthodox situation is contained in the Fair Labor Act, a document which I feel justified in thinking is not quite all it's cracked up to be.

Legally, I'm not allowed to even set foot in my employer's office building, so I sit here at home, and engage myself with such varied arty-crafty activities that Martha would be hissing with jealousy from her cage.

This is my marathon, and I'm in it for the long haul.

thus spake The Englishman at 7:23 AM
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Friday, April 16

Most Excellent

Uma Thurman is back in Quentin Tarantino's little-known third installment to his hit Kill Bill movies:

Maim Ted

This time, the Bride travels to a nondescript american suburb to open up a can on Bill's most excellent time-travelling partner in crime Ted, for allowing his former co-star Keanu Reeves (who in reality is a botoxed-up David Carradine) to live and go on to ruin the Matrix movies. Guest starring Ted Danson as a guy who gets his throat slashed for being a fucking awful actor and looking like Hellboy without the makeup - in theaters now!

thus spake The Englishman at 7:04 PM
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Non-Event Horizon

A peculiar thought:

Email is a fairly dependable way of communicating with fellow human beings, however, as with all systems, it is not perfect. In just ten short years, more emails have missed their mark and gone shooting at close to the speed of light into the electronic Ether than probably all humans born in history. Where exactly this Ether is, we do not know, but it has to be around here somewhere.

If we consider that each of these wayward communiques has a mass, however tiny, we must also realize that this mass is expanding at an appreciable rate every second. If the Internet is not fixed in time, and this email behemoth in the making reaches such a mass that the electrostatic repulsion of the atoms from which it is made is compromised, the Earth will be consumed by a black hole created entirely from aeons' worth of messages touting penis enhancement pills, private webcam wank sessions with teenage girls and mortgage refi deals with the lowest interest rate of the century.

You have been warned. . .think of the children!

thus spake The Englishman at 6:45 PM
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Thursday, April 15

Taxatives

"Today is Tax Day" I sang in a jaunty rhumba, as a I chickenscraught* hefty jolly zero's on Lines 2, 3, 8, and especially 12 (jealous?). It was after I had signed with a flourish, and my bank account number had been triply checked for the direct deposit of my "shit that's a lot of cash"-sized refund that I remembered something I'd hitherto forgotten.

The IRS is my buddy.

That's right, the same taxman who reaches into your pocket every year and squeezes your testicle/ovary/nondescript and frankly worryingly ambiguous genital organ until it turns purple is someone I hold near and dear to me.

He is one of the best things about being a foreigner here - he's dependable (he visits me on the same day every year without fail), omnipowerful (who doesn't want a friend that strikes fear into the hearts of all men?), and doles out money whenever I see him. I love it. I feel very much like a tourist in Taxland, in that sure, they rip chunks out of my pathetic immigrant paycheck, but they make sure to politely give it all back when they're finished using it for, I dunno, bribing voting machine manufacturers.

Today is the day that I forget he's been squeezing my worryingly ambiguous genitals all year round with the rest of you, and rejoice at the coming of the refund I liken to my birthright.

It's a doomed relationship though - the IRS is a jealous lover, and once they find out about my immigration and Green Card shenanigans with the INS, their acronym will change its meaning to the 'Internal Raping of you Service'. I can't wait.

*It's more english-sounding than 'scratched'

thus spake The Englishman at 2:27 PM
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Wednesday, April 14

Mostly Bloody Arrogant, they are

As a business major, and having worked with numerous incompetent MBA's in positions of authority over me, I concur with (but am mindful not to embody) the stereotype of our esteemed area of study. This article gives me hope that perhaps things might change.

You know, before the oil runs out, society implodes, and we regress to the Dark Ages.

thus spake The Englishman at 2:35 PM
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Thursday, April 8

A little from column A, a little from column B

If those who like to cycle are cylists, are NASCAR drivers racists?

thus spake The Englishman at 2:24 PM
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Wednesday, April 7

While walking to work yesterday, I came across some interesting graffiti.

"Orwell was right", it proclaimed loudly in the artist's angular magic marker scrawl. I paused to consider the state of affairs we are in right now, and concluded that he really was, as well as a downright great storyteller with a flair for incisive satire of big government.

Then I wondered how many people would understand what the graffiti meant, how many had read or even heard of Animal Farm or 1984.

It was the this thought that truly chilled me. I hunched my shoulders against the cold and hurried home.

thus spake The Englishman at 4:19 PM
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Other People's Words Where My Brain Should Be

"If I were to die tomorrow, I'd be cool with it, because for 23 years, I was invincible" ~ D

thus spake The Englishman at 11:58 AM
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Tuesday, April 6

Something to consider:
"Time consists of past, present and future. Even though we have records of the past, and memories of certain events that have taken place, it can no longer be considered to exist. The future, on the other hand, has yet to unfold, and therefore does not exist either. This leaves the present, which is defined as the dividing line between the past and the future. Surely the 'Here and Now' exists. But although we 'feel' that this line is steadily sweeping through time gobbling up the future and converting it into past, it is nevertheless just a line, and as such, does not have any thickness. The present, therefore, is of zero duration, and cannot have a real existence either. And if all three components of time do not exist, then time itself is an illusion!" ~ Jim Al Khalili, Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines

thus spake The Englishman at 3:31 PM
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Monday, April 5

Born to Run

Boy meets boy. Boy likes blasting Springsteen at 3am, throwing parents' money, ego around, hollering; finds out other boy likes same. Boys hook up, incorporate anal penetration into Springsteen proceedings loudly and regularly over past three weeks. Wake Englishman up last night, yet again; Englishman pissed, calls cops.

Cops come, tell boys to shut fuck up. Also tell Boy he's been in jail before, this is last warning. Cops turn around to leave. Boy talks shit to cops, along lines of "I'm not turning down shit, pig", and "Do you know who I am?". Englishman, M, sit in bedroom, listen to rapidly escalating situation below floor.

Cops decide not to leave, to put shiny bracelets on boy, while other boy apologizes profusely to cops, and attempts to calm situation down. Boy doesn't want shiny bracelets, grabs liquor bottle, tries to cave in cops' skulls.

Loud thuds, crunches, tinkles as boy eats floor thanks to cops. More bangs. Boy manages to break free, barricades self in bedroom. Englishman and M get out of own bedroom, anticipating shots, crossfire, don't want to get hit by them coming through floor/boy's ceiling. Other boy tries to persuade boy to come out. Boy scuffles around, goes silent.

Cops get bored of being nice, draw guns, force door open. Boy has already jumped out of 2nd floor window, is nowhere to be found. Cops put other boy in shiny bracelets instead, take him 'Downtown'.

Englishman lies awake rest of night listening for boy's return, anticipates confrontation with boy in the next week or so. Morning, cops call, tell Englishman he may have to speak with District Attorney, testify at boy's trial. Englishman currently at work, zombie, lack of sleep.

How was your weekend?

thus spake The Englishman at 2:54 PM
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Friday, April 2

Cinnamon Ring

This is the breakup letter we all wish we could've written to that certain ex.

It's much more effective than a crumpled sheet with chickenscratch that says "Fuk u, hore", don't you think?

thus spake The Englishman at 5:10 PM
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Thursday, April 1

You're standing in the kitchen, cutting up tomatoes for dinner. The kids are watching cartoons after school, and you can hear their gleeful yips of joy as Yu-Gi-Oh triumphs yet again over. . .whoever.

Out of nowhere: "They have to die"

You jump - "Who's there?" you whisper fearfully, dismissing where you think it came from.

You look around the corner to check the kids are okay - they're fine, as if they didn't hear a thing. You look around the house - there's noone there. You start to relax a little - must've been hearing things.

Then once again, calmly, rationally: "They have to die. Don't ask why - it's just faith, that's how it works. I will show you how to do it. Look for the signs."

Once again, you check on the kids, who are chortling at the TV still. Something on it catches your eye - Wile E Coyote, in his trademark style, yet again has a large rock introduced to his skull.

"You see?" says the voice "That's how you 're going to do it. That's how it must be done. You're not crazy - you've been chosen. But you must prove yourself."

You try to ignore it, you think you must be going nuts. But over time, the voice persists.

A few weeks later, you start to think that it might be telling the truth. . .

This woman is easily dismissed by the majority of people as crazy. They're probably right. But they think it couldn't happen to them.

"What a nut job", they scoff, contemptuously, "I mean, how could you kill your kids??".

I would ask "How couldn't you?"

After all, when you really think about it, we've all thought about swerving into oncoming traffic, of leaning over the edge just a little too far, of pulling a revolver on the guy who just cut you up on the highway. We 'hate' this TV show, and 'want to kill' that person. And I think all it would take is a little persuasion for us to put iron in our words.

We're all, all of us, tenuously clinging to sanity by a thread.

thus spake The Englishman at 4:18 PM
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