America is really weird. Just when I think I'm starting to settle in and feel at home, something else comes along to perplex me. I am English. We like to keep things simple, not too much fine print with us.
I know that when you are applying for and interviewing for a job, your potential employer is not allowed to ask you things like "Are you married?" or "Do you have children?" or "Do you enjoy showtunes of the 40s and 50s?" - questions that almost anywhere else in the world are considered 'conversational' and 'charming', in a getting to know you, awkward kind of a way. Not here. Here they are considered sinister and incriminating. In order to navigate the dark and seedy world of job interviews when the answer to any of those questions is YES one must develop a steely and cool exterior akin to a captured solider behind enemy lines, so as to not reveal your secret penchant for love, the continuation of the human race or Louis Prima.
So what's so confusing? I thought the point of that, in a really ass backwards way, was so that you could not be discriminated against based on your gender, marital or family status, sexual preference, age or race etc. And yet. AND YET. The number one most important job in the country (nay, in the free world right now) has daily been reduced to an argument over whether or not we should have a woman, a black man, or an old man, in the White House?
Fucking hell America. Make your bloody mind up. Can we discriminate or not? I just want to know so that next time I interview somebody I can crap on and on for hours about how earth shattering it would be to have a woman in the job, not making coffee or operating switchboard.
Blimey.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Duchess of Crazyland
It's been a long time since I worked for the Duchess of York, and I never really talk about it. But this week she's all up in my face, because her show "The Duchess in Hull" is airing on TV in England. This idea came to her several years ago, either while she was fucked up drunk or the next morning when her sensory processing prowess was thrown clear out of whack. The idea was/is that she, the guru of all things awful like poverty, obesity and terrible dress sense would spend a week with a "fat" family and help them see the error or their ways and spew some mindless "spiritual" shit in their faces, they would immediately give up deep fried mars bars and begin a new life complete with yoga at 6am and organic artichokes.
I don't think that I'm alone in my cynism. I wish I could say it came from a good place. But really, everything she does is motivated by self promotion as a means of making money to either pay off huge debts or support an embarrasingly over indulgent lifestyle.
Her first "hurdle" with this family was to explain who she was. None of them knew who this posh person was standing in their council house. At first you might wonder how anybody these days can not recognize a "c" list celebrity such as her, but understand. This family is POOR. That means little to no tv, no magazines,and certainly no squandering money on newspapers (rags or broadsheets). "I was married to Prince Andrew. Diana was my sister-in-law. The Queen was my mother in law". WAS is the watchword here. WAS. WAS. Oh, think the family. So you WERE somebody. Good. Did you bring any money with you? Or opportunity for us to travel, or see the world or open our minds to new cultures and experiences? No, right, just you then.
My sister tells me that at one point she is sitting at the kitchen table with the Mom of the house who is smoking and overweight and obviously poor, and says to her "You and me - we're the same". FOR GOD'S SAKE, ISN'T THERE A LAW AGAINST THIS PATRONIZATION OF THE POOR AND UNEDUCATED BY THE RICH AND RETARTDED? If this woman had been fortunate enough to receive any kind of education, any kind of opportunity in her life, she may have been in a better position to respond:"Yes, we both have a vagina now fuck off out of my house you useless sack of shit".
The family was chosen well. Poor. Misguided easy victims. Probably a bit of money in it for them. The very idea that this woman can pop into this family's life, pay a little lip service about being overweight and unhappy, then fly back to New York to prop up the bar at Fredericks is nauseating. And I'm not alone. Google some of the press from TV critics in the UK. There's a reason she lives here. Everybody in England has got her number. Keeping up the royal connection to keep herself relevant. It's shameless. And smart. Because without it she has no relevance whatsoever to a current discourse on just about anything; poverty, education, obesity. Anything really.
The idea of affluent people preaching THEIR lifestyle choices to people that basically have NO easy choices due to their unenviable circumstance is maddening in and of itself. But to make a TV show out of it is cruel and unusual punishment. Stick your raw organic almonds up your bum and let the rest of us get on with the business of making ends meet the best way we know how.
Our dreams might be dashed. Our self respect however, is still very much intact.
I don't think that I'm alone in my cynism. I wish I could say it came from a good place. But really, everything she does is motivated by self promotion as a means of making money to either pay off huge debts or support an embarrasingly over indulgent lifestyle.
Her first "hurdle" with this family was to explain who she was. None of them knew who this posh person was standing in their council house. At first you might wonder how anybody these days can not recognize a "c" list celebrity such as her, but understand. This family is POOR. That means little to no tv, no magazines,and certainly no squandering money on newspapers (rags or broadsheets). "I was married to Prince Andrew. Diana was my sister-in-law. The Queen was my mother in law". WAS is the watchword here. WAS. WAS. Oh, think the family. So you WERE somebody. Good. Did you bring any money with you? Or opportunity for us to travel, or see the world or open our minds to new cultures and experiences? No, right, just you then.
My sister tells me that at one point she is sitting at the kitchen table with the Mom of the house who is smoking and overweight and obviously poor, and says to her "You and me - we're the same". FOR GOD'S SAKE, ISN'T THERE A LAW AGAINST THIS PATRONIZATION OF THE POOR AND UNEDUCATED BY THE RICH AND RETARTDED? If this woman had been fortunate enough to receive any kind of education, any kind of opportunity in her life, she may have been in a better position to respond:"Yes, we both have a vagina now fuck off out of my house you useless sack of shit".
The family was chosen well. Poor. Misguided easy victims. Probably a bit of money in it for them. The very idea that this woman can pop into this family's life, pay a little lip service about being overweight and unhappy, then fly back to New York to prop up the bar at Fredericks is nauseating. And I'm not alone. Google some of the press from TV critics in the UK. There's a reason she lives here. Everybody in England has got her number. Keeping up the royal connection to keep herself relevant. It's shameless. And smart. Because without it she has no relevance whatsoever to a current discourse on just about anything; poverty, education, obesity. Anything really.
The idea of affluent people preaching THEIR lifestyle choices to people that basically have NO easy choices due to their unenviable circumstance is maddening in and of itself. But to make a TV show out of it is cruel and unusual punishment. Stick your raw organic almonds up your bum and let the rest of us get on with the business of making ends meet the best way we know how.
Our dreams might be dashed. Our self respect however, is still very much intact.
Friday, May 9, 2008
It's Not My Fault
I walked passed a Lenscrafters last week and thought I'd pop in to get my glasses tightened. Simple enough. A kindly twelve year old took my glasses for me (I assumed he worked there because of his badge, but was SHOCKED at how young he was. Or maybe I'm getting really old. Maybe I should report Lenscrafters to the City for their breach of child labor laws. Anyway I digress). He told me that before he adjusted my glasses I should know that "if anything happens while they are being adjusted, it is not Lenscrafters reponsibility".
Yes it fucking is. If I go into an store claiming to specialize in all things optical, and give them my glasses to adjust because they specialize in all things optical, and my glasses break or get cancer, ITS THEIR FAULT. Am I wrong? I don't think that just because before you do something you prefix it with "We are not responsible if X Y or Z happens" it should relinquish you of all responsibility. It's ludicrous. I argued this point for several minutes, realized the time and just thought hey, I feel like living dangerously today, I'll give them to the employee of the store that specializes in all things optical and hope for the best.
Grow a pair Lenscrafters. And everybody else who claims no responsibility when things that they do go wrong. If I have a brow lift (please darling hubby, may I?) and it gets fucked up it would only be MY FAULT if I had asked a cobbler to do it. Or a marine biologist. Surely if an accredited, qualified plastic surgeon does it, and I look more like Tom Brady than Giselle Bundchen, its his fault.
Don't blame me if this blog is shit. I only wrote it. It was YOU that was reading it.
Yes it fucking is. If I go into an store claiming to specialize in all things optical, and give them my glasses to adjust because they specialize in all things optical, and my glasses break or get cancer, ITS THEIR FAULT. Am I wrong? I don't think that just because before you do something you prefix it with "We are not responsible if X Y or Z happens" it should relinquish you of all responsibility. It's ludicrous. I argued this point for several minutes, realized the time and just thought hey, I feel like living dangerously today, I'll give them to the employee of the store that specializes in all things optical and hope for the best.
Grow a pair Lenscrafters. And everybody else who claims no responsibility when things that they do go wrong. If I have a brow lift (please darling hubby, may I?) and it gets fucked up it would only be MY FAULT if I had asked a cobbler to do it. Or a marine biologist. Surely if an accredited, qualified plastic surgeon does it, and I look more like Tom Brady than Giselle Bundchen, its his fault.
Don't blame me if this blog is shit. I only wrote it. It was YOU that was reading it.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Happy Mothers Day You Bunch of Idiots
I have noticed how Mothers Day is this sort of "Dumbass Fest" for women who have been fortunate enough to have a surly, ungrateful brat gestate in their body for almost a year. I get coupons each week from Borders, and this weeks are "Great Movies For Moms!". Yes, if you have only recently mastered the English language. I am a mother, and this Sunday is "my day", but I won't be celebrating by watching a discount copy of The Runaway Bride. Admittedly I won't be celebrating by watching any Ingmar Bergman either, but it doesn't mean I've had a complete labotomy.
As a working mother, I'm looking forward to a day doing absolutely nothing at all, but if Hallmark is to be believed, I'll be lying on my sateen sheets with babys breath in my hair while I patiently sing 48 versers of "The Wheels on the Bus" (for the 48th time).
Get real Hallmark and all you other fuckers who cash in on my special day. If you want to see any of my husbands hard earned cash this weekend, then start selling shit we ACTUALLY want. Very large bottles of booze, very long nights out with our friends, very long nights in with our husbands ;-) and a dinner date with Brett Favre.
As a working mother, I'm looking forward to a day doing absolutely nothing at all, but if Hallmark is to be believed, I'll be lying on my sateen sheets with babys breath in my hair while I patiently sing 48 versers of "The Wheels on the Bus" (for the 48th time).
Get real Hallmark and all you other fuckers who cash in on my special day. If you want to see any of my husbands hard earned cash this weekend, then start selling shit we ACTUALLY want. Very large bottles of booze, very long nights out with our friends, very long nights in with our husbands ;-) and a dinner date with Brett Favre.
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