The Music Maker's Wife

Or - How to Remove the Cover from a Kindle Touch

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx

My dreams of making millions of dollars with my invention "Book" are dashed.

I had a number of people offer to hollow out a hardcover in order to be able to insert and thus hide my Kindle Touch from the prying eyes of New York bus riders, and was about to employ the most promising.

All I needed was a suitable dead-tree hardcover book for my prototype. I even had a working title - "Book" as suggested by one of my regular readers, Vanessa.

I needed a hardcover large enough to hide my Kindle Touch yet small enough to not be too bulky. I chose "Slammerkin" by Emma Donoghue. AS I wanted to check it would be sure to fit my Kindle I decided to remove its Amazon Lighted Kindle cover first.

Therein lay the problem. No way would the cover budge. I checked out the Amazon Kindle help pages. "Push the lower right hand corner of the cover to separate it from your Kindle Touch. Grasp the separated lower corners of your Kindle Touch and the cover and pull to remove your device from the cover."

Well, the lower right corner of the cover measures about 16th of an inch (0.0625 mm). I've marked it with a red blob in the photo on the left (insert). I couldn't get a grip on it. As to pressing down, don't even go there.

I called Amazon Help Desk and after a reasonable wait time, a woman answered.
I explained the problem and she answered with a question. How do you take the cover off a Kindle Touch?"

"That's what I am asking you." I explained.

To answer she put me on hold and after several minutes a "Kindle export" came on the line and asked my what sort of day I was having. How I love American help desks. Or do they do that everywhere? "Comment s'est passée votre journée ?" Whatever.

As I predicted, the help desk man, who identified himself as David, paused while he looked up Amazon's help pages and repeated verbatim, "Push the lower right hand corner of the cover to separate it from your Kindle Touch. Grasp the separated lower corners of your Kindle Touch and the cover and pull to remove your device from the cover."

"I looked that up too," I explained, knowing that any further conversation would be useless. But my inner annoying masochistic self just had to persist. During our conversation David came up with the following helpful comments:

"Push harder" "
Why do you want to take the cover off?"
"I don't actually know what the Amazon Kindle cover looks like."
"I don't have a Kindle Touch."

To be fair, he did say he'd recommend Amazon make a video to help people but it would take several weeks .... So much for that idea. Goodbye Book.

Perhaps it is better I actually write one.

Twenty minutes of market research, lead me to an interesting avenue of opportunity. Yes, I know I've been in America too long. Imagine a writer market researching for a title before putting finger to keyboard. Talking about fingers, when talking to Amazon-Help-Desk-Man David, I suggested that one would need to be a hobbit in order to "press down" on  11/16th inch width piece of leather. I was answered with silence. David is obviously too young to have heard of Tolkein.

My market research American style resulted in my finding a title that will sell. All you need to do is put "Daughter" or "Wife" in the title.

Without even trying I found the following Amazon.
"The Baker's Daughter"
"The Shoemaker's Wife"
"The Hangman's Daughter"
"The Tiger's Wife"
"The Time Traveler's Wife"
"The Apothecary's Wife"
"The Memory Keeper's Daughter"
"The Shoemaker's Wife"
"The Rock Star's Daughter"
"The Paris Wife" "The Reverend's Wife"

All published by Amazon within the last year or so.

Obviously it is better to have a profession in front of the "wife" or "daughter", although an animal or a place name will do. I'm on to something here. I might even do a series.

And in dedication to my faithful reader Van, I will name my first novel,  "The Music Maker's Wife".

Stay tuned.

A Hollow Victory

"He probably entered the bag alive, Wilcox said, reading her ruling to a court around the corner from the home of the world's most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes." - from a CNN report British spy in bag was poisoned or suffocated, coroner rules, May 2012

With a keyboard click, Facebook users can now donate up to 100 body parts, which is a good thing. But why aren’t we worried about friending our organs in a public way for any nut to consider and digest? - from Fred Sepkowitz on "Facebook's Organ-Donor Option" in the Daily Beast, May 2012

My Zaarly Request

Where do fictional people live?

Not necessarily in fictional houses, that's for sure. Some fictional people actually have real addresses. Physical addresses. Addresses so real that you can locate them on Google maps.

I first encountered a real-life fictional person's residence last century when I came across a gawkle of tourists clamering to get into "Juliet's house" at Via Cappello, 23, 37121 Verona, Italy.

Of course Ms Capulet wasn't home, but the tourists were there, looking up at the balcony, a-wishing and a-hoping.

And then, last year, I walked past Jane Austen's house in Bath, England. There was a man covered in talcum powder standing outside. I hurried on. Tourist stuff. Only to be expected in provincial cities that are trying to assert themselves on the maps of modern travel.

The stuff of tourist literature and glossy pamphlets advertising packaged tours - one doesn't expect to read about pretend places the news, even if it's American-flavoured news. But there it was last week, in the middle of a CNN report on Gareth Williams,the British spy.

Bath, England

The coroner was described as reading her report to a court "around the corner from the ... home of Sherlock Holmes".

Ridiculous must be contagious - Katy Lee (AFP), writing about the same news item, reported that the same coroner concluded that the spy, whose naked body was found padlocked in a bag in his bathtub, was "probably unlawfully killed". Yeah, sure. ASIF there was any possibility that death by being padlocked in a bag in a bath could have happened by natural causes.

The silly season must have arrived early this year. A few days later I read something equally fantastic. Kent Sepkowitz - New York infectious-disease specialist; - wrote an article about the dangers of Facebook's recent organ donation initiative. "Facebook users can now donate up to 100 body parts", he warned. Adding, "why aren't we worried about friending our organs in a public way for any nut to consider and digest?"

He wasn't alone in his paranoia - I heard views similar to his voiced on CNN. "Friending" organs might result in ghouls going after  you to harvest them. Apparently no one could possibly know we had organs unless we posted them on Facebook. Heartless, liverless, pancreasless, we are all organ-less until we Facebook post ....

And what did the good doctor mean by "friending" organs? It is bad enough having a Facebook word entering into the English language, but at least use it correctly.

The week was drawing to a close. I'd decided not to read or even listen to the news - it was all too silly. Riding home on the Q60 bus, I was engrossed in novel. Instinctively I knew that the man sitting next to me was one of those "is that a Kindle?" people, about to interrupt my reading.

It turned out that his comment was even more ridiculous than I had anticipated.

"Is that Facebook?" he asked, pointing to my Kindle. No "Excuse me," or "I hate to interrupt..." but New York style sans any courtesy, a no-frills question.

Waiting for the Q60

Without looking up I replied with a "no" and continued reading.

"It's hard to know what's what," he babbled on, "I wrote a paper once about how people would stop reading with all this modern stuff and I was right ..." Ramble ramble. What a fool.

But I suppose I should be thankful for his idiocy, as it gave me a brilliant idea. An idea whose time has come. I am about to make a prototype and hence my Zaarly wanted ad above.

I am going to get a heap of hardback books and have them hollowed out. Hollowed out just enough to hid my Kindle in. Then I can carry it with me, camouflaged. I'll be able at last to read in peace.

A paper add-on to an e-book! The ease of reading with the added bonus of the "feel of paper" - a feel that is apparently so important to the non-reader bus people of this world - that it prevents them from buying Kindles. Those "I-love-the-feel-of-paper-in-the-morning people". In true American spitit I have perceived a need, and will meet it and make my fortune.

The paper e-book camouflage cover.

Now all I need is a name for it.

Stay tuned.

Generation TeXt and the Death of the Question

4COL - For crying out loud - from Text Messaging and Online Chat Abbreviations

Generation TeXters, Queens, NY

Little did I know way back last century when she was a little girl, that my daughter was ahead of her time. "Dear Grandma," she wrote to my mother, "I will "C U 2morrow."

Will this abbreviated cyber-texting talk become the new written vernacular? I expect so - at least it will influence it.

What concerns me however, is not so much the accelerated spelling "reform", but the reliance on the internet that is pervading nearly all areas of our lives. Face-to-facing will become so much Face Talk.

Look at the three guys above left. They were obviously friends but communicated through their cell phones. There were obviously six virtual people sitting on that bench. Perhaps even more.

I am well aware of the advantages of having the internet, but sometimes I spare of getting sawy from it.

The crunch came when I asked (via text of course) a good friend, what "split heating" meant. Beep beep, almost before I'd hit the send icon his answer came back, "Google it." Hmmmm I see.

Questions are so twenty seconds ago!

Questions in verbal form to another human being that is.

Even in Queens, NY, There's No Escaping the Internet Highway!

Today I asked a young woman the way to "Pie Face" - a new Australian joint somewhere on 53rd Street. I wasn't sure whether to walk east or west. She was responsive but didn't speak - well not to me that is. She simply asked Siri on her iPhone, and then showed me the map.

For a moment I was in a quandry. How could I answer with a smiley face? Surely that was the least I could do. But by the time I had worked it out, that we were two human beings and not simply two iPhones, she'd disappeared.

I would have asked Siri myself, but it doesn't understand my Australian accent. I once tried setting it to speak Australian, but was put off by the fact that the Apple creators have decided to model the Australian accent on our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I just don't speak Bogan. To top it off, if you DO speak Bogan - Apple for Australian - then Siri explains (in Bogan) that she only knows places in America.

"I'm in bloody America!" I feel like screaming.

I never did get to Pie Face. Instead I just checked out their website, after all, why actually GO there?

The Pie Face site proclaims proudly that Pie Face originated in Sydney. That explains a lot. I won't bother giving you the URL as it is really Sydney, really annoying, and advertises coffees with names like "Kiss My Arse" and "Start My Heart". It seems to have a lot of stuff about pies - real pies, not chicken pot pie or apple pies à la Americaine - but I can't stand websites that make noises on loading, although I must admit I've never come across one quite so gross as Pie Face's, which screams out burp noises every few seconds.

I couldn't hang around long enough to find the stop-noise button, but I WAS there long enough to hear a non-burp noise that sounded like someone wiping their nose on their coat sleeve. So it's bye bye Australian
Pie
Face

Stay tuned.

Eating Acronyms

how was last night's
performance babe?
was it better than
the night before?
are the old credentials
any good any good any good any more
or is the act beginning to bore you? - from Dory Previn's, "Don't Put Him Down"

If I hear another person say, "Do you LIKE reading on your Kindle?" I'll scream.

I get it all the time. And now that there are so many of us with Kindles or other e-readers on New York's public transport, it has become a daily chant. If they aren't saying it to me, chances are they are interrupting another reader with their banal, "I-just-love-the-feel-of-books" rubbish.

What annoys me is their holier-than-thou smugness. Implicit in their tone is their misplaced belief that they are REAL readers, that THEY are somehow superior than the Kindle/Nook people who they so rudely inerrupt. Talk about Luddites! I've given up answering them.

Maybe I should, hey yes that's what I'll do. Next time I see someone reading a dead-tree book I'll interrupt them and say, "How do you like reading on paper? Me, I can't imagine etc etc." But of course it is never the paperback readers who interrupt us e-book people. Now I think of it, it is invariably the non-readers.

The people who crow proudly about how much they love paper books have nary a book in sight. Not any sort of printed media. No New York Times. No Murdoch tabloid. Not even a K-Mart pamphlet.

Truth is, they are not readers at all.

Talking about annoying people; I just have to mention a fellow Aussie, a Mr David Thorne. He has a blog which I once found amusing. But like the paperback, it has had its day.

Blurry Man Chatting Up Red-headed Girl at Union Square

He wrote some genuinely funny stuff, mostly in the form of email correspondence between him and people he doesn't like. I remember one particular funny post where he tried to pay of a water bill or something with a graphic of a spider. The back-and-forth emails between Thorpe and some bureaucrat who was just doing her job was amusing.

His latest party trick was to use the Penguin paperback icon on his new book of emails. "Penguin" bit. I am sure Mr Thorne was delighted and in his cutesey impish I-am-an-aussie-and-I-don't-care-about-you-yanks, he re-worked the drawing of a penguin on his book cover so it held a bunch of flowers and then claimed it was a cat. This nonsense elicited more emails from "Penguin" to which Thorne happily replied.

In the heady days before FaceBook, when people conduced serious discussions on "newsgroups", such behavior was called "trolling". Maybe that's where Mr Thorne learned his trade ...

Like a little kid, who once he gets a laugh or two, continues to perform the same trick to the adoring eyes of his parents, Mr Thorpe seems to think he can keep his act going by writing insulting emails, or provocatively violating copyrights and then answering back with what I suspect he perceives as delightful Aussie irreverence. Unfortunately for Mr Thorne, it's all getting to be the same old same old.

What can one say?

I can't say it better than Ms Previn, a much under-rated lyricist, who had the nouse NOT to repeat ad infinitum, some old party trick that no one was listening to.

"he can sing!
he can dance!
he can juggle!
he a regular one-man band
his costume's a little tattered
his label says
made in japan"

Stay tuned ....

A Taste of Honey

Yours was the kiss that awoke my heart,
There lingers still, 'though we're far apart,
That taste of honey...
tasting much sweeter than wine. - "A Taste of Honey", Scott & Marlow, 1960

"I look at Guy Fieri and I just think, 'Jesus, I'm glad that's not me.'" - Anthony Bourdain as reported in Bob's Blitz

It was a blast from the past. From the days when the world was black and white and gray. Rita Tushingham - I'd forgotten about her - in the British movie, "A Taste of Honey", directed by Tony Richardson who was later to become one of the big names in British film.

Apparently the movie wasn't popular in America when it was released, and I'm not surprised as the main actors were not good looking, the setting bleak, and the ending - far from happy.

"A Taste of Honey" was a "kitchen sink" film - a new genre at the time epitomized by social realism, and which often depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons.

A time when there were no cell phones, no color TV, no Internet, no iPads, when travel by air was a luxury and women were not allowed to fly airplanes in Australia.

I tried to think of what was better back then, and it was hard. What new thing has happened that we in the West at least, were better off without. And the answer, for me at least, is ... celebrity chefs.

The first celebrity chef I didn't like was, and still is, Gordon Ramsey. I used to watch his aptly-named reality TV show "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" when I felt like being annoyed. Watching "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" would take my mind off things I really needed to be annoyed about - like preparing US tax returns, or George Bush. Ramsey yelling at some poor family for daring to have a lousy restaurant that was losing money. Talk about kitchen sink! Talk about nightmares!

Michigan Meals

Now we live in even more enlightened times - we don't have Bush. So I don't need to watch Ramsey anymore thank god.

Still there's Santorum, a possible US presidential candidate who thinks that god created the world in seven days and that all Americans have the right to be unable to have health care. If HE gets in I'll need more than Ramsey to get me up in the mornings.

I'm so not into celebrity chefs. The only one I sort of like is chef Anne. I think it is because she has a boring name and looks a little vague and fey.

Possible second to Ramsey is Jamie Oliver. "Jamie" - it's a child's name. Grown-ups aren't called Jamie! ASIF! Jamie Oliver who called an Australian reporter a "bitch" for asking about his apparent weight gain, when he was visiting Australia this month to promote a healthy food initiative.

Next to Jamie is Anthony Bourdain. I used to quite like watching his TV show, "No Reservations" where he went to different countries and tried out the local cuisines. Who couldn't like a man who ate a raw seal eyeball and an unwashed warthog rectum, and who says the most disgusting thing he has ever eaten is a Chicken McNugget. But when he started to get stuck into other celebrity chefs I became fed up with his boasting ways.

Not content with making money from TV shows and cook books, celebrity chefs are dominating kitchen speciality shops and the kitchenware sections of major department stores. What's the difference between a Wolfgang Puck fry pan and a Gordon Ramsey fry pan? Apart from the fact that they are both most likely made in China?

Still, the way the run-up to the 2012 American elections is panning out, I might surprise myself and start watching Gordon Ramsey again.

Anything to keep me from thinking of a "President Santorum".

Asymmetry on Madison

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? - William Blake 1757-1827, "The Tiger"

The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue - Bob Dylan, 1965

My Jensen Rings Minus #1

When people comment on my Georg Jensen rings (I normally wear round five at a time), I explain that there is one from each of my lovers. A lie really. In fact only three of my lovers have given me a Jensen ring and two of them have given me several. But it's the thought that counts, as they say ...

My first Jensen was given to me, appropriately, by my first lover. I've written about him in past posts, most notably in Breaking Up Is Hard To Do. Although we'd split in circa 100 years ago, we'd kept in touch, remembering each other's birthdays, for decades. Then I wrote something about black and white movies and men in the sixties and he "spat the dummy". (For my American readers, a 'dummy' in OZ is a pacifier and spitting the dummy is akin to having a temper tantrum.)

And that was that. It's all over now baby blue!

Back to the ring. I loved it. He got it for me when I turned 21. I kept it on, wearing it for years. Occasionally it broke in half and I had it repaired. The first time it broke I was on the top of one of the Swiss Alps. It was so cold that the ring literally snapped in two. It's a design fault. I have a vivid memory of one half of the ring going down one side of the mountain, and the other going down the other. Of course this cannot be true but that's what I remember.

I used to have a thing about that ring. I had an obsessive compulsive belief that bad luck would come if I wasn't wearing it. You can see me here with my baby daughter (insert) wearing it. Then, when we officially broke up, me and lover #1, after I wrote something about not understanding Fellini movies and men in the sixties, the ring broke in two again, and I thought, why bother even fixing his bloody ring! But later when I was on Madison Avenue having my latest lover buy me another Jensen at the New York Georg Jensen store, I had ring #1 put in for repair.

It must have sat there for over six months. I heard nothing from them, but wasn't expecting it to be returned quickly as all Jensen repairs are sent to Denmark.

But I found the receipt last Wednesday and decided to pick it up. I was having a bad day. The passport section of U.S. Department of State had called to tell me my name was too long to fit in their database. "Really?" I queried. There must be heaps of people like me and what about Poles and Indians?

The woman at the other end of the phone agreed. I've been calling people all day" and added that she'd shorten my name and put an endorsement on the back page of the book explaining what my legal name really is. "But won't this cause problems at Immigration?" I asked. She assured me that problems were surprisingly infrequent, leaving me, a worrier at the best of times, feeling uneasy.

Juliff, Texas - at least my name fits on the sign!

So it was probably a silly day for me to pick up the ill-fated Jensen ring, but I did. I don't much like Madison Avenue at the best of times. The store people who are now called "associates" seem to believe they are superior sorts of human beings and that they are doing the public a BIG FAVOR by deigning to attend to us.

Still, I waited at the counter and gave my legal name (not my passport one) and after much dilly-dallying a gentleman associate presented me with my ring with a flourish.

I put it on. "It's crooked!" I told him, taking it off. "Is not!" he said. "Is too! I said. Shades if Simon and Garfunkel. It was like being Back in the Schoolyard with Julio.

A female associate came over to give her opinion. Of course she sided with Julio. "It is asymmetrical by design," she claimed. I later discovered that she couldn't even SPELL symmetrical. Perhaps she doesn't know what symmetrical means. That'd explain it.

Julio was frantically looking up catalogs and pointing out faded images of my ring to prove his point. He even photocopied a page and waved it in the air triumphantly.

Julio's Photocopy

I persisted. "I've had that ring for a hundred years," I told them. "It breaks a lot because of the bad design but I like it and want it fixed properly."

"It is properly," repeated Julio. I was getting to really dislike the man. I looked at his photocopy. "That photo was taken at an angle," I said. "You need to see a photo taken front on to see the symmetry".

Meanwhile the female associate was filling out a receipt. She looked at the old one. "You took a long time coming back," she complained. "I've been sick," I said hoping to shut her up and get out of the store. "What was wrong with you?" she asked.

"What sort of shop is this? I didn't come here to be argued with and be asked for my medical history." "I was only asking as I care about you," she lied.

I was about to go when Julio said to her, "Write down, 'customer prefers symmetrical.'" "NO! Write down, 'fix as originally designed,'" I countered.

"Same thing!" he shot back.

I gathered my things and as I turned to leave I made one parting shot. "You don't like to be wrong, do you?" I said, addressing Julio.

He looked stunned and asked me to repeat it.

"You don't like to be wrong, do you?" I said again.

"Yes I do," he said back at me.

"Good!" I replied, "You should be happy then."

A Long Black, a Flat White, and a Spider

If this is coffee, then please-bring me some tea. But if this is tea, please bring me some coffee" - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Can I get a three quarter double-shot fifty-fifty coffee decaf soy latte with one and a quarter Equal in a take-away cup; make it bonzoi" - from "The Life Organic", Dom and Adrian

Oh no! The Melbourne coffee scene is coming to New York.

But I suppose it was only a matter of time, because in reality the Melbourne coffee scene is quintessentially New York; in fact it WAS "New York" even before it came here. Pre avant garde if such a thing is possible.

The coffee culture à la Australien hit the "Menu Pages" column of New York Magazine (February 2012) where "flat whites" and "long blacks" are described in words that New Yorkers can understand.

A long black is defined as "a sort of antipodean reverse Americano (hot water first, expresso second)". And a "flat white"? "a single or double shot topped with milk that's been steamed into velvety 'wet' foam, smaller and less milky than a latte, served in a cappuccino cup but without the froth."

Surprisingly "Menu Pages" doesn't go into the decaf soy thing; perhaps because they've already arrived here. I wouldn't know, as I never get to Brooklyn, which I think of as a soy decaf latte organic kinda place.

When I'm not at work I tend to stay on my island, in Manhattan that is.

Most Manhattanites are like me - loathe to stray into any of the other boroughs, though most of us HAVE been to Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. That leaves Staten Island. I've never been there. I used to think that I was unusual in that respect, but recently one of my New York friends mentioned in passing, with an element of horror in her voice, that she had to go to Staten Island to meet with her new attorney. "What's it like?" I asked her.

"Oh I have no idea," she told me. "I only went there once and that was forty five years ago on a school excursion and we only just stepped off on the pier for a sec when the ferry stopped before taking us back."

There's so much to do in Manhattan, and even seasoned New Yorkers can always find something new. Last night for example, my friend Babs who has lived here since the seventies, took me somewhere she's never been before - to "Bill's" on East 54th. She wanted to go there because it is about to close and so it was now or never.

"Bill's Silver Dollar Bar" opened in the mid 1920's when Bill Hardy converted the five-story brownstone into one of New York's most prominent and celebrated speakeasies.

"What are the bar's favorite cocktails?", Babs asked the food waiter when we were seated in restaurant upstairs. "We aren't that sort of place; I suppose you could get you a Manhattan or a Whisky Sour," he said.

"Oh, I don't like whisky," said Babs, declining the Manhattan. "I'll take the Whisky Sour." ... That's the sort of night it was.

Sergio's "Doggie Bag"

The waiter was right about the drinks menu. We ordered wine from the less than extensive wine list, and then crab cakes as the main course. Babs could only eat one crab cake, and New York style asked the food waiter to wrap the left-overs for her to take home.

When the waiter returned he was flourishing his own creation - "Sergio's Doggie Bag". It is meant to look like a silver swan. Fitting, as Babs is from Western Australia.

It was Babs who gave me the cutting from the New York Magazine about the coffee. We chatted on and on, until we both got our second wind when we chatted on some more. When we left to go home, we passed the Silver Dollar bar, now raucous and crowded.

Drinkers at the Silver Dollar Bar

On my way home in the cab I fished out the cutting Babs had given me, and thought about Melbourne. And remembered an old Leunig cartoon from last century - a diner at a café is being offered a "flat white", a "long black" or a "spider", and the bubble showing his imagination contains a flattened white guy lying Casper-like on the street, a tall black guy, and, well yes, a "spider". A real one that is, with eight legs. Not the drink.

Yes, the drink, for the Americans out there, which is a glass of Australian lemonade flavored with a pink, yellow or green coloring with a ball of vanilla ice cream dissolving in it.

Those were the days my friend ...

The Sound of Single

Prim Julie Andrews and cute singing kiddies
Old-fashioned movies with nursery ditties
God-awful plot-lines about nuns that sing
These are a few of my least favorite things
- from "My Least Favourite Things" - The Chaser's War on Everything

"I envy you," a friend told me at dinner last Thursday, "having a part-time husband who only lives you for with a few weeks of the year!" I nodded, only half-listening as I read the menu. Then, looking at the menu she asked, "What's spaghetti bolognese?"

I'm becoming a misogynist, I decided. Did I really want to KNOW someone who doesn't know what spaghetti bolognese is? After all, I recently dumped my hairdresser when she asked me - we were discussing the famous (in America "Tot Mum", Casey Anthony case) - what does "manslaughter mean?" Better to dump her than to explain by example ...

There are some things a person just cannot be expected to tolerate.

Could it be that I am intolerant by virtue of my genes? I remember both of my parents couldn't tolerate most people gladly. Perhaps the worst (or best) memory is of my mother coming home from lunch, where she'd been meeting a past work acquaintance - a woman who had left work on becoming pregnant. "I just HAD to get up and leave!" my mother explained. "That silly pregnant Arlene, she was sitting opposite me at the restaurant at Myer, when she suddenly vomited all over her lunch! I just got up and walked out!"

"You mean you just LEFT her there with the vomit and all?" the then innocent caring Katie, yet to become the misogynist Kate, explained.

"There's such a thing as self-control," my mother explained, adding "and besides, I frequent that restaurant often."

And there you were thinking that I was mean about the spaghetti bolognese.

Part of being intolerant is, I think, brought about from living alone. I read a New York Times article, One Is the Quirkiest Number - The Freedom, and Perils, of Living Alone. It's a definite must read. 50% of New Yorkers live alone.

Alone and yet ... I discovered that I was not alone in some of the "quirky" behaviors recounted by the the people New York Times writer Steve Kurutz had interviewed for the article. Amy Kennedy, a school teacher listed among her "domestic oddities ... removing only the clothes she needs from her dryer, thus turning it into a makeshift dresser". Exactly. I do that all the time. Why take them out to put them some place else only to be removed again?

In fact I indulge in a number of oddities listed in Mr Kurutz's article. I tried to think if I had any behaviors that were NOT listed. I could only think of one. When I need to wear something that is sitting in the dryer not quite dry, I don't have time to run the whole dryer-full for say, a pair of undies. I warm them up in the microwave. Apart from making them completely dry it is extremely fast and it always feels good putting on warm undies.

Now I realize that I haven't even gotten to what was to be the main subject of this week's post - my least favorite things. So dear reader, you will have to ...

Stay tuned.

Let's Get This Off the Front Page - Thank You Mr. Santorum

"It's not about you," he told about 300 suburban Columbus Tea Party members. "It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your job. It's about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology."
- Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum February, 18 2012

Front Page of Australians Abroad

I wasn't happy with the lead photo of my last blog posting. It was a bit spooky as you can see from the clip of the left.

I usually post a link to my latest Letter from New York on my website, Australians Abroad website. Oops, this current graphic IS going to look at little odd - if I choose it as the front page lead ...

I've wanted to replace that old spooky one, but I haven't been blogging much lately.

To use a bit of Australian vernacular, I've been a bit butcher's, or as the English would say, I have been "feeling poorly." How do Americans say it? "Feeling sick". I should know, as believe it or not, I am American. I won't say "and proud of it" because I didn't do anything special to become one. Well, I did, but that's another story. I don't say I am proud to be Australia" either, because I didn't do anything to deserve being Australian (and I'm still an Australian citizen) because I was born there, an event that I can hardly proclaim as being proactive on my part.

When I was at school, the forbidding forboding headmistress Miss Barrett at Mac Robertson Girls' High, used to tick us off if we said we were sick. She told us that "sick" meant "vomit".

So in the interests of being trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific and tran-century I will merely say, I have been unwell.

Ideas for "Letters" have been few, and the energy to actually write them, rarer still. I was beginning to think that there'd be no more "Letters".

Peak District, UK - Now That's What I Call Secular!

Then along came good ol' Rick. For the non-US readers, Rick Santorum is I believe, the Tea-Party preferred candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination for President of the United States.

Now that I am an American I can really understand the way Americans talk, as if the rest of the world should know all about us. It is just easier, and when it comes to people like the Tea Party people, less embarrassing.

If I'd just said "good ol' Rick" and gone on without explaining, most non-Americans would assume that Rick was just some loon I'd maybe met in a bar in the Mid West. But I AM a bit of a pedant and like to make myself clear so, I admit it, one of the front-runners for the position of the next president of America really did suggest that our President, PRESIDENT Obama, is molding America according to some non-Christian theology. Oh the shame of it. The Tea Party should be hidden away so that we could hold our heads up high. But I can't blame the press for shrieking Santorum et al's idiocisms to the world. It's just too bizarre to ignore. Even the ober-conservative Murdoch press will have a field day with this one!

Yes, Mr. Santorum really did say, "It's not about you,it's not about your quality of life. It's not about your job. It's about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology."

Now I know that most of us rational people would see this as a positive - the non-Christian bit that is - but "theology"??? Was Mr Santorum implying that our democratically elected president is a non-Christian. Of course he was.

"Home of the Brave", Babylon, NY

He's trying to wheedle his way out of it now, claiming that the other boy made him do it, that he was talking about something else - like oil, or that by "theology" he meant "secular".

Whatever.

He got me out of my sick bed, and for that I thank him.

And thank you too, all my Australian friends who have been telling me to "enjoy being President" tomorrow - yes it's a holiday here, "Presidents' Day". Yes I intend to enjoy it. And no, we don't all dress up and pretend to be our choice of president. ASIF!

But looking beyonf Presidents' Day 2012, there is a possibility, albeit slight - that our next President will be able to heal the sick!

Yikes! I am beginning to have an inkling of what "President Santorum's" health-care package would be based upon ...

Stay tuned.

The Reality of Reality TV

"Watch a horror movie right there on my TV
Horror movie right there on my TV
Horror movie right there on my TV
Shockin' me right out of my brain
Shockin' me right out of my brain" - from Skyhooks, "Horror Movie", 1975

Horror Reality: Halloween House, 96th Street, October 2011

I didn't even know I was watching "reality TV" till I came across a listing of my channel offerings, and found "Judge Judy" categorized as such.

Oops. Well too bad. "Judge Judy" is reality TV and I watch her. It seems I am if I am not already, I am on my way to becoming a reality TV junkie.

Mea culpa. If my greatest sin is that I watch "Judge Judy", then I am prepared to be cast by the first stone.

But it got me thinking ... if "Judge Judy" is reality TV, then what about the other shows that I watch? "New York One Weather" - ye gads! Piers Whoever on CNN? I started going through my regular TV shows. It didn't take long. "Judge Judy" and "New York Weather" and the occasional CNN candy - and that was it. I don't watch anything else "live", and "live" isn't even "live" anymore. It is removed, by several degrees of separation.

Remember "Repeats". "Presequels" "Sequels"? By definition they don't even exist anymore. Not in "real time", that is. If I turn on the telly and start looking at something, how do I know it is "live".

Even if it isn't a repeat, it doesn't mean it is happening in the here and now - in the present.

And if it ain't live, and if it isn't drama, it's reality???

"Reality TV" ... it almost has a Jean Paul Sartre ring to it. I am reality therefore I exist. Or was that Descartes? Whatever.

I daren't turn on the Food Channel. If cooking isn't reality, what is?

"The News" would be the ultimate in "Reality", if it could be believed. But that's taking it a bit too far. I want to be fair.

And so, I won't turn on the telly. I will just watch what I have recorded.

In the past.

Where I belong.