Don't Lay a Heavy Scene on me, Man

But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up
on somebody that you used to know - From "Somebody That I Used to Know", Gotye, 2011

"This is the song I played while I deleted my FB." - Essjaiveille's comment (June 29) on the YouTube clip of "Somebody That I Used to Know"

A hundred years ago, 'Kool-Aid' brought to mind the Tom Wolfe novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, rather than "drinking Kool-Aid" - as in  accepting an unquestioned belief.

Back then I lived in rural Australia. A housewife.

My ex-de-facto-sister-in-law  and brother were  visiting.  I stopped washing the dishes, those being in the days when I was married to the man-who-didn't-believe-in -dishwashers, when I heard de-facto ex-de-facto-sister-in-law saying to my brother, "Don't lay a heavy scene on me man!"

Perfect seventies-speak. I don't think people say that any more, except for me when I want to annoy people ...  So many lost words. But "hang up" has survived. "Don't be so hung up," we'd bleat to our parents and to anyone in mainstream society. Those were the days.

I was reminded of seventies-speak last week when I was having coffee at a Prêt à Manger, or should I say à l'Anglaise, Pret a Manger. Suddenly, breaking out from the ever-present Manhattan  hum that is a blend of traffic noises, jackhammers, A/C emissions and the babel of New Yorkers, came a complete and distinguishable sentence.

"Oooohhh that's MY song!" screamed the gap-toothed black girl behind the counter. I put down my cappachino and listened to the song that was playing. And recognised the opening bars, cords? whatever of Luiz Bonfá's "Seville". Swallowed quickly by Melbourne singer, Gotye's, "Somebody That I Used to Know".

"But that was love and it's an ache I still remember", swoon-sang the girl behind the counter, turning the volume up full blast.

Kimbra's sweet voice singing, "Hung up on sombody that I used to know."

"Somebody That I Used to Know" is the song of preference in New York stores and coffee bars this summer.

On my way out, I stopped and told Gotye's Pret a Manger fan that I was from the same town, Melbourne, as the singer. "Oh Goatee, he is so wonderful!" she answered.

I smiled and agreed, not wanting to disillusion her with the correct pronunciation of his name. After all, life's to short to disillusion people, and it has been a long hot and confusing summer.

Why, just yesterday, dear reader, I was taken completely by surprise. "Somebody That I Know", the title of Gotye's hit, applied to me! I discovered, quite by accident, that one of my dearest friends is ... gasp! ...

a Republican!

Stay tuned.

Stomping on the Level Playing Field

Well, I don't figure I'll be back
There for a spell,
Even though Rita moved away
And got a job in a motel.
He still waits for me,
Constant, on the sly.
He wants to turn me in
To the F.B.I.
Me, I romp and stomp,
Thankful as I romp,
Without freedom of speech,
I might be in the swamp. - from Motorpsycho Nightmare, Bob Dylan 1964

Corner 58th and Second

Last week I posted about old people and drinking cappuccino, at what was then, my favorite brunch restaurant - the Zebu Grill.

But as the song says, "Well, I don't figure I'll be back there for a spell."  As to why, the lest said, probably the better.

This week my interest is in economics, rationalism and "Obama care" - the name being given to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010  bills that could have lead America into the 21st century, albeit grudgingly.

I just don't get it. The health care "system" in America is so inefficient. Since 1986 everyone in America has a right to health care treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. So the insured people are still paying for the uninsured,  just in an inefficient and round-about manner.  The hospitals providing the "free care" do not get  reibursed by the government. So it's the insured users who have to pay even more.

So this past week I decided to listen to Mitt Romney in the hope he would explain why it isn't a good idea for all Americans to have health insurance.

I tuned in to CNN and listened to Romney and his guys explaining how unfair everything was, and how China was a bad country because China can manufacture products cheaper than the US can. "We want a level playing field," one of them whined.

Huh? "Level playing field". Isn't that what Republicans DON'T want. Certainly they don't want every American to have health insurance. And what about capitalism and competition?  Not to mention the proclaimed benefits of a free market economy.

In my opinion, the Republicans are the new socialists - socialism for the rich. For the big banks. For Wall Street.

Bail out General Motors but heavens, don't provide health insurance to the poor and unemployed.

Yes a true socialist, Mr Romney is all for the workers.

According to the Sun Times, "Romney's campaign released a new ad on Friday - titled 'First 100 Days: Ohio,' where an announcer says, 'Day One, President Romney stands up to China, demands a level playing field for our businesses and workers.'"

It must be about having one's cake and eating it too. Or let them eat cake. Someone Left the Cake out in the Rain. Divying up the cake.

And as for the photo above, it has nothing whatsoever to do with health care, China or Mitt Romney. I took it because I just liked the sign. The smaller sign on the left says, "Feed a pigeon, breed a rat".

Yep, I just don't understand Republican logic.

Perhaps it's a rat thing.

No Country for Old Hippies

Carpe diem, carpe diem
Carpe diem, carpe diem
Well it’s an old cliche
Yes, it’s an old cliche
But you better make your love today
Death is a’coming in - from 'Carpe Diem', Tuli Kupferberg (The Fugs) 1965

I did a double take. I was crossing 42nd Street, having just emerged from the Second Avenue bus and a daydream.

The daydream was about the reaction to my last week's post, Rated Oh! for Old People. People had emailed me, berating me for writing about being old.

Yes they were right, I mused. Think young.
And then I saw it. A huge poster. You can see it here  above left. A poster proclaiming loudly and boldly, "Get Old".

Had I entered the Twilight Zone? Twilight years, more likely. Walking west down 42nd I saw even more posters telling us New Yorkers to "Get Old".

Some of the posters had little word-bites, meant to be encouraging. Such as, "Live longer. Live Better". And "Live long enough to see them make the same mistakes".

On and on they went, poster upon poster. Encouraging us to teach our children, to think "I told you so", but all with the same tag line, "Get Old".

"Who was putting these out?" I wondered. And then I saw in small print at the bottom of the posters. "Pfizer". I googled "Pfizer Get Old" when I got home, only to discover that Pfizer has applied for a TRADEMARK on  "Get Old". Milking the baby boomer generation for all they can get!

So much for getting the getting-old idea out of my head!

Which reminds me - I thought of another worst thing about getting old. People calling me "dear". Or even worse, "sweetie". When did this horrible thing start happening? Is is purely an American thing? Lots of people use these "terms of endearament" when addressing me.  People I know. People I've never met before.  Friends. Bank tellers. Waiters.

I have decided to counter-attack. Anyone calling me "dear" or "sweetie" gets it straight back. Let's see how THEY like it!

And so to Sunday. Father's Day here in America. I decided to go back to my favorite brunch restaurant. I was dreading it, fearing I'd see the waiter who had thought I was dead (Rated Oh! for Old People). But I decided to be brave ad venture out.  Then, oh no, I got another getting-old reminder. Second Avenue was full of old men. It should be Grandfather's Day. Old hippie men. They were everywhere. Long gray hair. Jeans. Generation X-ers in tow.

From my table at Zebu's - Father's Day 2012

All that was missing was the beads. Was that marijuana that I could smell above the pollution of the Second Avenue subway construction?

At the restaurant I took a table near the door, all the better to observe my generation on the sidewalk opposite.

The waiter-who-thought-I-was dead wasn't there. He must only work on Saturdays. And the new one, being VERY young, around ten, didn't call me anything.

Things were looking up! I started reading my new book. "Cain" by José Saramago. I love Saramago's writing. Sentences that span pages. Hardly any paragraphs. "Cain" is Genesis for atheists. It's excellent. So good I had to put it down to savor what I'd read so far.

Over my cappuccino I reflected on life. On Adam and Eve and getting old. On the wonderful Fugs. Carpe Diem. My generation.

Oops. What was I thinking? The words from "My Generation" by The Who came  blasting  their way into  my new-found short-lived moment of tranqulity.

People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old

My generation.

How little did we know!

Rated Oh! for Old People

Where Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped their bedroll
Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole
And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul
To the old folks home and the college - from "Tombstone Blues", Bob Dylan, 1965

Youth and Age - Me and my Dad many years ago! 

My mother misled me.  "The worst thing about growing old," she told me, "is that your toenails turn yellow."

What a thought!  Mine aren't yellow yet though. Perhaps when THAT happens I'll agree that it's the worst thing. But not now.

I have a whole heap of worst things about growing old.

People saying I look like Maggie Smith is just one of them.

And people thinking I have possibly left this world!

Last weekend I went to my favorite brunch place - Zebu Grill. They make the best eggs benedict. I went with a book. When I first came to New York I imagined I'd make heaps of friends and have a busy social life, just like I'd had in Melbourne. That was before I knew that Americans - or is it just New Yorkers - aren't so much into friends. So I brunch alone with a book for company.

I generally go to the Zebu Grill every weekend, but I'd missed the week before. When I got up to leave the waiter said, "You weren't here last weekend? The waiter who is generally on in the weekends noticed, and asked if I'd seen you. He was concerned."

What did he mean? And then I realized.

Yikes! I went pale. He'd thought I'd carked it. Passed on, ceased to be, expired. Surely I didn't look THAT old. The feeling of enjoyment I'd had from the eggs benedict and my book, "Bring Up the Bodies"  died.  The very title of the book evoked death. The world turned gray.

Is this indicative of a new phase where people see me as something akin to the John Cleese parrot? Another worst thing! Even worse than being compared to Maggie Smith!

I am so sensitized to growing old, so obsessed, that I experience its awfulness when it isn't even there. Walking back from shopping last Sunday,  I noticed the poster on the left in the window of a laundromat. What did it mean? Where was the name of the show? I stopped, transfixed.

I must have read it through three times trying to figure out the name of the play, before giving up and assuming I was losing it. Aging had done me in! I could no longer make sense of a Broadway poster.

Perhaps what I hate most about growing old is losing the ability and the chance to redefine oneself. To imagine a different self. In my younger days I'd think things like, "I am going to change and be a neat person." Or "I am going to be more tolerant and cheerful".  Now I'm just me and stuck with it! Nothing's going to change. I've been me too long for any significant change to happen. So boring!

A bored Maggie Smith. Scary. What could be worse?

And back on the topic of Ms Smith ... I had quite a bit of feedback to my post, I Ain't Gonna Be Maggie Smith No More. Most people felt I should be honored at being told I was like her. "Such a wonderful actress", I was told by several friends. ASIF people thought I was like her for my acting ability. Clearly I was like her because of the nasty characters she played. Or her looks.  My uncle emailed, commenting on Maggie - "As my old man would have said : 'a face like a pound of tripe'". Charming!  It has not been my week!

There's not much worse than looking like Maggie Smith, having no dreams for the future,  not understanding Broadway posters, and having waiters thinking you've died when you don't have brunch one Saturday.

Unless it  is perhaps the color of one's toenails.

I daren't look ....

I Ain't Gonna Be Maggie Smith No More

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
No, I aint gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
Well, I wake up in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin' me insane
It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more. - from "Maggie's Farm", Bob Dylan, 1965

Old Shoes, Second Avenue, Manhattan

The last week, if not a week from hell, was far from pleasant. A whole heap of bad stuff happened, and as they say in America, 'and then some'.

The worst single thing though, came  from two very different people. Two women who have never met  and who are different in age, nationality and location, living about 2,500 miles away from each other.

Independently, without prompting, out of the blue, for no reason that I can fathom, each told me, on the same day, that I reminded her of British actress Maggie Smith. You know the one. She's about a hundred and was the nasty mother in Downton Abbey. More recently she played a major role in "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", a film that I had no interest in seeing when it came out, and now have even less so.

Here's what the New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden had to say about the Maggie Smith and her Marigold Hotel character. "The character has the screenplay's meanest and snappiest lines, but it is beyond even Ms. Smith’s capacity to make Muriel's eventual metamorphosis, from monster into sweet, caring old lady who befriends a low-caste Indian servant, remotely credible." (Seven Tickets to India, Please, and Reservations for an Adventure.)

Old Woman, Third Avenue, Manhattan

Two women independently telling me that I am like Maggie Smith. Yikes! Of course they each back-peddled. "Oh I mean your AURA!" explained one. "I just mean that she's funny in a sarcastic dry sort of way," apologized the other. It was getting worse and worse. As they dug themselves in deeper I tried desparately to change the subject, for both our sakes.

Two hours and 2,500 miles apart they simultaneously echoed, "But you would just LOVE the movie!" Sure. ASIF!  Do these people even KNOW me?

The next day was my birthday. I kept looking in the mirror. Looking back at me I saw a worried looking woman who looked as if she had no aura whatsoever, and who couldn't crack a joke if her life depended on it.

The birthday emails started coming in. The first one was from  my uncle. "Happy Birthday" in happy bold 42 pixel high red letters.

I replied in an instant - "Two people independently told me I look like Maggie Smith so am in deep depression! Quelle horreur!"

He answered me with, "Well, as the cliché says : The alternative is unthinkable."

I was devastated!

"The unthinkable alternative? That SHE looks like ME? Oh no!"

The hypocrisy of clothes

I'll sit in church and hold your hand
I'm gonna give up heifer fuckin'
I'm gonna buy me a suit from the Sear's catalog
Clara June! Clara June!
Come Back! Come Back! - from "My Baby Done Left Me" The Fugs (Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, and other Greenwich Village types), c. 1966

In New York, suits have ventured out of their typical neighborhood boundaries of Hells Kitchen and Murray Hill to find the "cool and hip" spots such as the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, and have burned their credibility. This has caused hipsters to quickly flee and create a new place for themselves. - Urban Dictionary definition of "Suits"

Bus People, Manhattan

Sitting on the bus going north up Madison, I experienced an epiphany.

Life is so much easier for men as they have such a limited range of clothing styles.

For business it's a suit. Of course suits come in various shades of black, brown and navy and can be varied by wearing shirts and ties of varying colors, but basically it's the same old same old.

I was staring at the man in the green tie. Probably he'll wear a red on tomorrow. Probably his wife will select it. So simple. No thought required

Then there's jeans shorts and tee-shirts. They don't even have to be color-coordinated. Denim goes with just about anything.

And for those who want to make a statement, there's the black polo-neck favored by the late Steve Jobs, or the Zuckerberg hoodie. I find the black polo-neck preferable - at lease it is age-appropriate whatever one's age. The hoodie is for little kids. My son gave up wearing his around thirteen.

I think of hoodies as comfort clothing - having a sort of back-to-the-womb effect, sheltering the wearer from the harsh realities of modern life. Hardly suitable for anyone past puberty.

Financial Times ad, Fifth Avenue, Manhattan

Hoodies have had bad press lately in the US. Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen was wearing a hoodie when he was shot and killed the night of February 26 while walking back to the house where he was staying in a gated community. The shooter, George Zimmerman, 28, the neighborhood watch captain, was following Martin because he thought the 17-year-old, looked suspicious. When the two got into an altercation, Zimmerman fired the gun he was carrying.

People were outraged. Congressman and women and Occupy people wore hoodies to show solidarity with Trayvon Martin's family and outrage with what many saw as racial profiling. Perhaps that's what Zuckerberg was doing when he wore his hoodie on Wall Street. I hope so. But don't think so. More likely he was showing contempt for the "suits" of this word. If so, he's just a tiny bit hypocritical.

In any case,  he didn't wear a hoodie at his wedding.

So, back to talking about grown-up men, the range of clothes is further reduced by acceptable color and pattern. Jeans, shorts, shirts, ties tees and  black polo-necks, all further limited by a colorless color rage and patterns restricted to stripes and the occasional flower for those with a Hawaiian state of mind.

So simple. And what's more, no one even notices if men wear the same clothes day in day out  ... as long as they wash them.

Women on the other hand, not only have to choose their clothes according to the fashion, season and their age - lest they are ridiculed as being mutton dressed up as lamb - they are expected to paint their faces. Secretary of State Clinton, recently had to defend herself for wearing no other makeup than lipstick. And in March this year, Germaine Greer stooped to criticizing Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard for her dress sense.  Apparently, "once a feminist" is enough.  Consistency is just not necessary.

Yet another example of the hypocrisyof clothes!

I'm so hung up on clothes lately, I thought Fifty Shades of Grey was a style book for men's wardrobes.  Gray, the color of male fashion. Especially in New York where color is gender-neutral.

New York - sexless gray, as gray as a Melbourne winter. Livened up by a few avant guard artists such as Bill Cunningham - the  fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, who has been photographing street fashion on the sidewalks of New York for fifty years.

I watched an film about Bill Cunningham where he spoke of color, street fashion, women's hats, and his love of women's clothes from the 50s to now. To illustrate his views he displayed  a heap of photos he took in the heady days of the 1960s.

Unfortunately, in that brief window when the world was full of love and color, he shot all his photos in black and white.

Fifty shades of gray.

Stay tuned.

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 ....