SS Starbucks
Only in New York. I was in Starbucks at 7:45AM on Tuesday morning (this is the day before Halloween) killing 10 minutes before an appointment when I noticed that sitting nearby was an SS Officer, dressed in a green wool SS Tunic, jackboots, black jodpurs, mirrored aviators--the full monty. He struggled to put on his utility belt (water canteen, empty clips, etc) and then started chatting with another couple of guys who came in. It looked like they all wanted somewhere to hang out.
His conversation was how the country was going to hell, how the biggest concentration camps weren't run by the Germans but by Stalin, blah, blah...all, no doubt, opinions based on very selective readings of history. He claimed to have guns in New Jersey, (which was worrying) and he wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest as he "couldn't be himself in New York anymore. And he never thought he'd say that." (Lots of survivalist and right-wing weirdos live in the Pacific Northwest)
He'd gone to a lot of trouble to look like a stylized SS Soldier (although I doubt many of the original Nazis had styling haircuts and Rayban Aviators...) but the funniest and most insulting thing was his complaint that he'd watched The View (Women's magazine program shown every weekday in the US, higher brow than most) and "all I'm going to say is that there were three white women, probably Jewish women, arguing with Whoopi Goldberg. You know? You see what I'm saying?" I wasn't sure what cock-headed point he was making to his simpleton friend, other than maybe it was obscene they weren't all anglos (quelle horreur!); but excuse me for being amused by the thought of the SS tuning in to The View, and then getting offended. I guess even pig-ignorant, impotent, fantasists playing at make-believe meanys have standards...
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Spooky Tooth
It's a sad sign of the times when the only thing one does of any note is visit the dentist. Today I went to another dentist to get a root canal done. He couldn't numb it. I know, because every time he put a very cold thing on it to see if it was numb it still hurt like a bastard. He gave me like 6+ shots with a syringe straight out of a Tim Burton movie and was kind of getting tired with me not getting numb; but probably not quite as tired as I was getting with him sticking a freezing cold piece of whatever on my hyper-sensitive tooth. I know, I'm mummy's poor little soldier today...
So now I have one tooth in my head that's cost me $3000.00. It doesn't even look that good but it will, I've been promised, not trouble me any more ("You've lost your nerve!" he quipped to me). This is one good thing as in two weeks time I'll be on a flight to China and I don't want to learn the Mandarin for "What are you doing in there, doctor, because it hurts to buggery?" The other good thing is that I got some vicodin, and only a churl would complain about that. I'm not sure if it's to dull the soreness in my mouth or the red ache of my amex statement. Whatever, lucky me I could afford the treatment.
I wonder what people do here if they can't afford treatment - it's kind of criminal that one has to pay for all this stuff (actually, I think it's true of dentristry in the UK now, too. It didn't used to be--thanks margaret thatcher, you evil old crone. Couldn' we burn you on the bonfire on November 5th instead of a Catholic effigy--you did more to f*** up the country than Guy Fawkes ever attempted with his gunpowder plot). I mean, don't we all pay enough taxes these days to cover things like essential healthcare, or did I get something wrong?
Oh yeah, I forgot. I'm paying Haliburton and Blackwater to get that oil for my SUV. Sorry, my bad.
I think it's time for my vicodin....
It's a sad sign of the times when the only thing one does of any note is visit the dentist. Today I went to another dentist to get a root canal done. He couldn't numb it. I know, because every time he put a very cold thing on it to see if it was numb it still hurt like a bastard. He gave me like 6+ shots with a syringe straight out of a Tim Burton movie and was kind of getting tired with me not getting numb; but probably not quite as tired as I was getting with him sticking a freezing cold piece of whatever on my hyper-sensitive tooth. I know, I'm mummy's poor little soldier today...
So now I have one tooth in my head that's cost me $3000.00. It doesn't even look that good but it will, I've been promised, not trouble me any more ("You've lost your nerve!" he quipped to me). This is one good thing as in two weeks time I'll be on a flight to China and I don't want to learn the Mandarin for "What are you doing in there, doctor, because it hurts to buggery?" The other good thing is that I got some vicodin, and only a churl would complain about that. I'm not sure if it's to dull the soreness in my mouth or the red ache of my amex statement. Whatever, lucky me I could afford the treatment.
I wonder what people do here if they can't afford treatment - it's kind of criminal that one has to pay for all this stuff (actually, I think it's true of dentristry in the UK now, too. It didn't used to be--thanks margaret thatcher, you evil old crone. Couldn' we burn you on the bonfire on November 5th instead of a Catholic effigy--you did more to f*** up the country than Guy Fawkes ever attempted with his gunpowder plot). I mean, don't we all pay enough taxes these days to cover things like essential healthcare, or did I get something wrong?
Oh yeah, I forgot. I'm paying Haliburton and Blackwater to get that oil for my SUV. Sorry, my bad.
I think it's time for my vicodin....
Sunday, October 14, 2007
A Happy Place; Like My Dentist's Chair...
Nothing to post about over the past month or so. Got a Chinese visa, have booked a flight, and have spent the past five weeks working on this:
It's now 115,000 words long and 429 pages high. There's a strange satisfaction in the numbers, regardless of whether its any good or a pile of crap. More type-memory than flight-memory. Arf.
Over the remaining four weeks before my trip I'll be trying to rewrite the 115,000 words as best I can so i can forget about this completely once I'm in China and start work on the next one, which I'm eager to get into like a fat kid with his Christmas chocolate. I'm quite surprised at how dark this one is, and then again I'm not. It makes me laugh, and if I can ever sell it, maybe it'll do the same for you; or not. I really can't tell anymore. I just take what comfort I can from its heft.
In other news, when I've not been rewriting what I've already rewritten (which is the best part of writing for me, kind of like overdubbing guitars when you're in the studio), I've been listening to Keren Ann, Terry Hall, Albert's guitar playing, rediscovering Kate Bush (The Sensual World reminds me of a coach holiday to the Moselle Valey near Koblenz in 1990 with my then girlfriend. The river was glassily placid and there were small fires streaming ghostly smoke across the surrounding vineyards; it was amazing. I wanted a job piloting a barge up and down the river so I could see it every day. I still wouldn't mind that, to be honest), Feist, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. I've even managed-afer 5 weeks of being home-to get my time back for running the course around the park. And finally, on Friday, I went to my dentist and he insisted on giving me gas for a filling which meant that by 8:30AM I was floating around his office like a big, pink blimp and giggling as he gouged a hole in my tooth with a steel spike; it's an unusual place to feel happy is a dentist's chair. Life is good here in New York City. What's not to love?
Which is why I'm considering leaving for a year and going to live in comparative poverty. It doesn't do to get complacent, does it?
Nothing to post about over the past month or so. Got a Chinese visa, have booked a flight, and have spent the past five weeks working on this:
It's now 115,000 words long and 429 pages high. There's a strange satisfaction in the numbers, regardless of whether its any good or a pile of crap. More type-memory than flight-memory. Arf.
Over the remaining four weeks before my trip I'll be trying to rewrite the 115,000 words as best I can so i can forget about this completely once I'm in China and start work on the next one, which I'm eager to get into like a fat kid with his Christmas chocolate. I'm quite surprised at how dark this one is, and then again I'm not. It makes me laugh, and if I can ever sell it, maybe it'll do the same for you; or not. I really can't tell anymore. I just take what comfort I can from its heft.
In other news, when I've not been rewriting what I've already rewritten (which is the best part of writing for me, kind of like overdubbing guitars when you're in the studio), I've been listening to Keren Ann, Terry Hall, Albert's guitar playing, rediscovering Kate Bush (The Sensual World reminds me of a coach holiday to the Moselle Valey near Koblenz in 1990 with my then girlfriend. The river was glassily placid and there were small fires streaming ghostly smoke across the surrounding vineyards; it was amazing. I wanted a job piloting a barge up and down the river so I could see it every day. I still wouldn't mind that, to be honest), Feist, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. I've even managed-afer 5 weeks of being home-to get my time back for running the course around the park. And finally, on Friday, I went to my dentist and he insisted on giving me gas for a filling which meant that by 8:30AM I was floating around his office like a big, pink blimp and giggling as he gouged a hole in my tooth with a steel spike; it's an unusual place to feel happy is a dentist's chair. Life is good here in New York City. What's not to love?
Which is why I'm considering leaving for a year and going to live in comparative poverty. It doesn't do to get complacent, does it?
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