| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7394 Registered: 05-2005 |
I hope all our US contributors are having a nice day. The last time I was in America on July 4 was 25 years ago. That's a day I'll never forget. I'm eating Lays chips and Hershey's miniatures in honour of today (Aldi has a US products special going on). | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3523 Registered: 03-2005 |
Thanks Padraig. Someone sent me one of those online greeting cards for the occasion last night. It made me think how odd it is for us to celebrate Independence Day. It's been an awfully long time since independence was anything special for us. If I were in a place like Slovakia or Latvia a celebration for Independence Day would really mean something. As I have for the past handful of years I'll be on a seventh floor balcony scanning the LA horizon for impromptu fireworks displays, but out here in California we need to seriously think about the fireworks tradition. We are deep into a drought very much like the one gripping Oz when I visited in 2007. I'm taking Brisbane showers! I've done it so long that I find I'm too impatient to take an old fashioned water-all-the-time shower. I'm pouring the semi-dirty water from dishes in the kitchen sink into a watering can and emptying it every night at the base of a 90 year old jacaranda tree in front of my house. I'm worried this tree may be irrevocably dying. On the other hand, when I check the weather of other Northern Hemisphere cities that I have a relationship with Los Angeles looks pretty mild by comparison. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7401 Registered: 05-2005 |
It's good to hear you took that from Brisbane, Randy. Much of Australia is back in drought, which is getting worse in this dry winter we're having. As for Independence Day, at least America became a republic, unlike Australia which still allows a London-residing German-Greek family exclusivity on being our head of state. One of the reasons, and there are many others, why Australia Day means nothing to me. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3524 Registered: 03-2005 |
I'm sorry to hear that Oz is heading back into drought Padraig. I took quite a bit from my Brisbane visit. In California we've had a traditional ten year water cycle with a drought and heavy rains at the extremes, though never rains as heavy as Queensland experienced a few years ago! So before Brisbane I had some experience conserving water in little ways such as washing and rinsing the dishes in a single sink of water, washing the car with a single bucket of water (and then pouring the remains on a plant or a dry spot on the lawn), turning the water off while shaving or brushing my teeth. But none of our droughts were as severe as what I saw in Australia in the winter of 2007. In the back of my mind I knew that I was probably seeing the future coming to California. I suppose it's a little bizarre but I find it to be fun to figure out another way to trim water waste while keeping my plants going. When the environmental realities of California assert themselves it just gives our life here a little needed romance. We have to engage with Mother Nature and we are forced to decide whether we care and thus start giving our home some love or whether it's time to move on. I'm hoping for a more committed involved breed of Los Angeleno in the coming years, instead of the usual person here solely to advance his or her career and then back to New York or wherever. I remember a line in one of Clint Togbill's songs (Bell Divers)--"I'm not a Republican, but tonight I am"--and wondered what that meant, as it would be something quite different here! I have a weird emotional and psychic relationship with the U.K. as well as France and Oz. I begin to suspect it's in the blood, creepy and racial as that sounds as my ancestral background is 3/4 British Isles and 1/4 French. From my youngest childhood I read English novels and listened to British pop music and watched British TV shows and movies. Where I'm going is that I can't help wondering whether a formal tie between the U.S. and the U.K. might not stabilize us somewhat. The U.S. seems unmoored right now. A huge proportion of the population here do not realize that they have squandered the opportunity of having what I firmly believe will eventually be recognized as one of our great presidents. They threw every obstacle at him and pissed that chance right down the drain. Too many Americans fail to recognize that IF we have any fundamental advantage in the world, it is our long practice at exploiting the various cultural assets of a wildly polyglot citizenry. Now, who does that sound like? Hopefully this is nothing more than a 58 year old wannabe hippy picking flowers in the Elysian fields of nonsense. But don't you get some sort of consolation thinking that Tony Abbott is not really your sole head of state? | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7402 Registered: 05-2005 |
No, I don't, Randy. Abbott was elected by the citizens and that's how democracy works. I have far more of an issue with him being an ardent monarchist. Monarchism is a medieval anachronism which, unfortunately, is perfectly suited to our celebrity-loving times. Should Kim Kardashian be Kween of America? | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1162 Registered: 08-2004 |
I think us Brits are fed US TV news as a warning of how bad things could/will be. Since the return of Thatcherism with the Cameron government, this harsh swing to the right is destroy the welfare system infrastructure daily. The poor people are taking the brunt of the hit since the bank bailout. I think we're meant to be glad there are no major drought problems here, however flooding has been. Also that police shootings on racial grounds here are incredibly rare. I can't see how the relative importance of the banning of a flag is as significant as state sponsored murder. I'd probably feel different if I lived in Belfast or Glasgow. Our own Queen is another matter. Padraig, I completely understand your distaste for the Royals. They are the biggest benefit cheats in the country but the media refuse to call them out on this. Any monarchy fans tend to feel they are an investment worth keeping. It's the one state funded service I'd like to see privatised. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3533 Registered: 03-2005 |
Jerry, for some reason I thought you were Australian! Sorry! That's an interesting idea: showing U.S. news as a way of keeping the locals contented at their better but perhaps diminishing conditions. Here, unless we look for it we get virtually no foreign news. The only foreign places reported on are the dystopias--many exacerbated by us--such as Afghanistan and the middle east. Like Oz the U.S. is a huge geographically isolated country, even if not quite as geographically isolated as Oz of course. It is so incredibly expensive to travel from most places in the U.S. to anywhere in the U.K. or Europe--absolutely impossibly so if you have an entire family to move--that next to no one in the U.S. ever sees these other places. This makes the U.S. population, much like the Russian population I imagine, very easy to propagandize. People can be told that our way of life here in the U.S. is so flush and free that everyone wants to come here and the folks in the E.U. are sapped of all life energy by their oppressive welfare system. That's the kind of crap that people simply assume to be true here. State-sponsored murder. I suppose we won't come to our senses on this subject until the gun fetish dies out. If it ever dies out. I hope I haven't told this story on here before. My last overseas vacation was to Paris and London, a very simple Eurofix for me. As is usually the case when I fly from Heathrow I got back to my house in Los Angeles in the evening, dog tired from being wedged in an airplane seat for over ten hours and then slogging through our customs. I'm always a little depressed at this time. I needed to restock basic items in the refrigerator so I walked over to the local supermarket. My neighborhood is an arty, comparatively gentle place where we've quietly accepted a substantial influx of homeless people forced out of downtown by aggressive development there. On the sidewalk approaching the market was an elaborate collection of shopping carts and blankets and bags assembled by some folks living there on the sidewalk. Two women were walking in the same direction as I, immediately in front of me. One of them declared in an unmistakable British accent "this is a third-world country!" Welcome home Randy. It really is amazingly raunchy here now. When I last visited my mom in my hometown on the western edge of flyover country I saw homeless people in places I'd never seen before. It is NOT an arty, comparatively gentle place and homeless people are not tolerated but their numbers have increased so much regardless. And a huge proportion of the populace--especially in places like my right-wing hometown--believes that this is either their fault or the fault of Central American immigrants. And in the meantime, folks in the middle are consumed by their fear of finding themselves in the same boat but they don't ever figure out that if they did it would NOT be their own fault and, well, maybe it wasn't the fault of the folks who already have been knocked off the merry-go-round. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1163 Registered: 08-2004 |
Immigrants tend to get the blame for social problems here too, Randy. It's not a new phenomena. Every recession it's either foreigners or benefit cheats that are focussed on by the media. Not the sanctions that are aimed at the sick, disabled & unemployed. I believe there are technical laws in place to criminalise homelessness here now. Like that's a lifestyle choice worth seeking. Yesterday Prince Philip actually said to a volunteer group "Who do you sponge off?". I think the irony may have been lost on him. On the news, this is reported as another of his gaffes which are not intended to offend. There are whole books on the subject of his gaffes. The general consensus is that he's a bit mad. I think being rude, when it's your job to pretend to be nice to folk, is a sackable offence. He would surely be exonerated from public engagements were he diagnosed any actual mental illness. These are the levels too which the working people of Britain are meant to aspire. Anyway, I digress... |