Mug-nifico!

Introducing ... Dogtor Spock and Miaowy Winehouse!

As a three-cup-a-dayer (coffee that is), mug quality is high up on my list of priorities (shallow wench, aren't I?). These are our two most recent additions. They make me smile every time I look at them.

Soup Kitchen

To anyone living in or visting London, I have one aggressive recommendation for you:

Do. A. London. Walk!

A few weeks ago, when Mama Plog was visiting, we arose one early Sunday morn and headed to Aldgate Tube station where we joined a tour of the historically Jewish East End.

I loved it.

(I've also done Oscar Wilde's London and Jack the Ripper's London. I was only savvy enough to have issues with the latter retrospectively. So ... not that savvy, then)

The photo above is of a building formerly used as a "Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor". Now that's a group you don't hear about too much these days! Although they may feature more prominently in a post-Madoff world. Now there's a schmuck! Like we didn't have bad press anyway. Sociopathic dickwad.

Anyway this is how immature my beloved is. Upon seeing the photo above, he giggled like a schoolgirl after three packs of strawberry Hubba Bubba:

"Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poo?!?!?!"

Oh, Mr. Plog! Mr HANKY, more like.

Swedish Couple Keep 2-Year-Old's Gender Secret

This is fucking brilliant. At least until the kid is at nursery or somewhere with other kids. But to be treated as a person for those first formative years rather than a "pretty little princess" or a "big, strong boy!" must be so healthy for the development of an identity unbound by inane conventions.

I wish I had the courage and integrity to put my words into actions, to live my politics, as it were.

We shall see ...

(Thank you, Feministe, for the link)

Truth In Advertising

(Found at a gift fair in London)

A rare thing of beauty!

Glasto Envy

This is the first year since moving to the UK that I am missing Glastonbury.

And I am really, REALLY missing Glastonbury! Couldn't even bring myself to listen to Jo Whiley this morning.

A mate there just heard Pete Doherty and Jason Mraz backstage working out an arrangement of "The Girl Is Mine". Would be so collectively cathartic to be there In
Light Of (I so buy into this whole thing, sorry if you don't. Diana almost killed me!)

Storms or no storms, my heart lies in Somerset this weekend.

"Cher Is On The Airwaves Talking To The DJ"

To Larry King, actually. About Michael's sweetness as a young man.

About Bob Mackie and beaded socks and Val Kilmer and stuff.

So surreal.

And I'm a tad inder the unfluence. And thinking about Chas, the daughter formerly known as Chastity. Who calls a child Chastity? The least sexy of all of the virtues, majorly trumped by Faith, see Paloma.

I'm a bit names-obsessed. The mister chastises me about it daily.

Cheers!

BREAKING NEWS! Michael Jackson Dies

As reported by my second cousin, once removed, Wolf B, on CNN.

Fuck.

Thriller was the first cassette I bought.

How I want to remember him above.

An American Tragedy, RIP.

I didn't cry until I watched this. (Thanks D from J on fb for the link)

Angel Ascending

She was always secretly my favourite, despite the fact that my innate feminist instincts instructed me to always say that Kate Jackson, bookish brunette, precursor to Mirandadyke trope, was the Angel for me.

RIP Farrah. Your name* is Persian (Iranian) for "beauty". How accurate (yours brought you fame) and timely (genuine beauty of humanity currently under attack in Iran). Thankfully you are released from the pain of cancer and the indignity afforded you by modern menaces ("the tabloids", "TMfuckingZ"-grade reportage, a sick, sad, avoid-reality public), especially the series of you suffering that was officially "In Production".

People are sick fucking bastards.

*One of my hypothetical daughter's names was Farrah but I knew I'd have to partner it with a name like "Sage", meaning wisdom, as a middle name. Beauty is SOOOOOOOOOOoverrated in this world while intellect/insight/sensitivity/ordinariness/reality as opposed to "reality" are given the old STFU.

It is so past my bedtime.
Time to board the express to Bedfordshire before backpedalling to Black ...

Restoring Faith

Paloma, that is.

I went to her album showcase last night at ICA (click on link for their brilliant summer series "Film We Love". Genius!)

PF (real surname: Blomfield. The JC must surely be sniffing around) is a real performer and the showcase was like being at a show. Every song was listenable. I can be the biggest painus (Plogish for "pain in the anus") at gigs, shifting my feet, getting tired, sneaking off to the bar every 4.5 seconds ... but the Amy Adamsalike (hence her instant increased likeability factor for me) held court like a true star of the stage.

My heart wept for the other Amy, though.

(Sorry about camera angling. I'm a first timer!)

Cowardly Lions Vs Roaring Jezebels: The Bish Plz Edition

It is mind-boggling to me that on the same day that I am mourning the loss of one who still had so much to contribute, I feel compelled to write about those that offer gurnischt. Hell, make that a whole plate of gurnischt mit gurnischt with a side order of extra-gurnischt. It's what the kids these days called Haterade.

Or what a blog I know and love once defined as a Mean Girl Syndrome, not at all loosely based on a Lindsay Lohan vehicle of the same name.

To those of you who don't spend too much of your life trawling the interwebz, you may still be aware of an undercurrent in our culture that is directly linked to snark - the desire to rip to shred mainly female targets, but anyone'll do! There are hate sites devoted to all manner of people and things. Who the feck are these losers that bitch and spew bile behind the safety of their screens?

Well, we know one ...

I'm not a big believer in corporal punishment but Perez Hilton? Draw enough crudely imagined cocks and stick them in the mouths of babes, slut-shame women, pay lipservice to anti-homophobic politics but then vilify lesbians (SaMANtha R, anyone?) -- dude, you're lucky you don't have to abide my my natural justice - waterboarding would be too soft on you. STFU Perez Hilton.

But please don't tell the Jezebels to STFU (whoever is behind STFU Jezebel, not Perez). What an idiotic target for all your vitriol? Why not Ahmadinejad? Even Speidi, if you're so loserishly inclined you need to "hate" on anyone? Why don't you just log off and go outside? Plant a tree? Volunteer somewhere? You are clearly not unintelligent, why invest yourself in such an ultimately futile and kinda very pathetic venture? Seriously. Seriously!

It's not what you're saying that is all that off-the-mark. It's just why the need to say it? You say you were on Jezebel from the outset so you're clearly simpatico and saw how much misogynist crap they called out so you ... decided to add to it? And by calling out individuals you claim not to know BY NAME? I'm not being glib, but you may want to consider therapy. CBT is good but you probably need to go with something more psychoanalytic; perhaps go back to the womb for the source of your idiocy?

Unless the problem is that you're not long out of the womb (ie, twelve). Which would explain so much. So turn off your TUMBLR, young lady! And take care. Really. I'm not being bitch for bitch's sake but because your site has actually unnerved me.

Dr. P

Doctor D

Dr D, unlike your erstwhile Dr P, was a real doctor. A medical one, with the knowledge of the uppermost consultant and the heart of a saint, the bedside manner of a goddess, the integrity of nobody you will ever meet. She was an angel. She was too good to be true. And some days, it's hard to believe she ever was ...

She was born on this day in 1974. She was killed in a stupid car accident in 2004. She was the worst person to die, worst as far as confirming to an already cynical mind that there is no rhyme nor reason, no method to the madness, no steadying hand helping us along in a pretty, karmic fair-balanced way. There is no Grand Narrative justifying everything. That she died disproved everything faith-related. (My grandfather's Auschwitz days helped along in that regard, but, then again, that didn't happen directly to me. The ego is a powerful thing.)

I have suffered a few episodes of depression, of varying degrees of awfulness. (I am good now, and have been for several years.) But in those bleak times I did think at times, Why her? Why her and not me, when I am concealing myself behind curtained doonas and Xanax fogs, and she would be out there engaging, enjoying, doing, helping, being? It scares me writing this, it's not something I've ever articulated. But it feels safe to recall publicly with regard to her memory.

She was sooooooo amazing - to which all her many, many friends would attest. I wish beyond wishing that I was calling her now to wish her "Happy, happy, happy birthday, my beautiful, darling D!" instead of writing this horrible eulogy. I will never stop loving her and I continue to take inspiration from her life.


xxx

My First Birthday Present

No, not ever (how sad would that be?!) but of the year. Granted, my birthday isn't until next month, but that made it all the more unexpected an arrival and exciting to unwrap.

Thanks to preloved for the gorgeous necklace and earrings. I wear them today in honour of a most beeyootiful friendship.

xxx

Page By Post

En route to Rochelle Rochelle, who was the first to respond to the previous post, although it is unlikely that the page will have an adventure on par with a young girl's erotic journey from Milan to Minsk ...

Banksy Vs The Bristol Museum

Photo quality not great as no flash was allowed but I hope his genius comes across. I've read a lot of anti-Banksy snark of late - oh those internet [t]wits! - but the originality leaps off the walls - literally.

I have loads more - went a bit happy snappy psycho - so let me know if you wanna see them.

"There Are Three Of Us In This Relationship"

Mr Plog got the new iphone.

He facebooked statused about it, too. More than once.

He schlepped all the way to meh Brent Cross (think Chadstone, only uglier), bright sunshine notwithstanding, to buy some accessory for it.

They are inseparable, man and machine. It is near impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends.

I sit and read an article in last weekend's Guide.

Give Peas A Chance

I love this sign.

(Taken on the return trip from Devon on Sunday)

Fuck Off Already, Afterdinnerjazz!

Your people have spoken.

I love the image on this page but can't copy it. If it's your first look at Jezebel, enjoy. This is the site that turned me on to the Web.

The "Little Jew"

I came across this footnote in a book I am reviewing:

"According to Ann Pellegrini, the slang for clitoris in Vienna in the 1890s was the "little Jew," and female masturbation was commonly referred to as "playing with the Jew." Pellegrini, Performance Anxieties, 29.

Apologies to Bob Balaban (above), a brilliant actor (Seinfeld) but he was the first person to spring to mind as physically embodying said little Jew (not that he looks like mine one bit!).

BB was followed swiftly into my brain by Ron Rifkin but that's probably only because Brothers and Sisters has been playing on a loop at Casa del Plog. Mr P lasts longer in those marathons than I do (TV tantra?) because the combination of Walker melodrama and my crying quickly wears me out. It's one of the shows we really love watching together, though (others include Damages, Life On Mars, The Daily Show, ... Jonathon Ross) as opposed to those we can't watch together (his: 24, Doctor Who, documentaries about gross physical/ deeply depressing things; and mine: Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Monk, Psych, et al).

I so love TV. I was reared by it and I continue to nuzzle on its sweet narrative-driven nectar. mmmmmmMMMMNNNNnnnnnnn TV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Time to play with my little Jew ...

(Kidding!)

Duffy Shows No Mercy

... and we are all the better for it!

The following is the first poem from new poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, first woman in the position since its inception in 1599! And it's timely, passionate, ballsy (I hate that word but my version, cunty, has so far failed to catch on). It's called, simply, Politics:

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.

Wedding List = Wedding Pissed

I may be smug, middle class and a Guardian reader but there is little I rally against more in life than Wedding Lists or Bridal Registries or whatever you call that socially ordained entitlement whereby couples in love skip merrily across department store floors, furnishing out their little nests in the hope that the mint green sushi bowls and 1200 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets muffle the sound of their inner ids screeching "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!"

I know all the arguments. I come fully equipped with counter-arguments.

"You'll get ten toasters!"
Um ... we've been living together for five years. I doubt anyone would give us a toaster. Besides - we dig the toast! The toast gets eaten almost daily.

"You'll need things"
We've got things. Anything else is a bonus, an upgrade, a luxury, a gift! But under no circumstances is it a need.

"But you get to kit out a whole place"
Uh ... yeah. At the expense of all our friends and family.

Throw some at me, bitches! This is my area de expertise: gifts, my friends, are my forte. I give them, I receive them, hell, I even sell them! The whole essence of the gift, in my way informed opinion, is the manifestation of feelings between people and about shared experience. What's the "perfect" gift? One given that recalls a private joke or a previous conversation, one sparked by a shared interest or motivated by the interest to share one. And if you don't want to put in that much thought, fine. Buy me a toaster. Buy me forty blenders. Buy me nothing! But money can't buy me love and weddings shouldn't be about fecking things. I have been called idealistic about this, immature. Been told "You can't live on love alone". Duh! Like I didn't know that. Everyone these days knows you must, absolutely, live on champagne and fucking.

Once upon a time (almost) everyone squeezed themselves into the confines of coupledom but not everyone gets married these days. Some people are single by choice. Many are denied the right to marriage on the basis of the sex of the person with whom they share their lives. The world has, thankfuckfully, evolved beyond the married/leper dichotomy that characterised much of recent Western social history. As my dad would say, not always in a complimentary way, our generation, inspired by Seinfeld and Friends, were led to believe that friends were the new family and family were just comic peripheral characters on the side (Estelle Harris, Jerry Stiller, Elliot Gould ... a theme, d'you (jew) think? That's for you, G!). But at least broader thinking about family/ relationships leads to more inclusive policies that concern themselves with affording equal civil rights to all people regardless of whether they find a romantic partner, a platonic best friend or a group of like-minded citizens.

So until those groups, or indeed singles, get to have weddings, those of us who do should use ours as platforms for the demands for equal rights for all! Down to heteronormativity and the really ridiculously reductive Gay/Straight, Couple/Single Binary! Until every last polymorphously perverse intersex collective can swan around John Lewis/David Jones/JC Penneys and kvell about china patterns and DVD stands, this lady behind these words is happy with whatever she gets and whatever she doesn't get. He and I have a million times more than my parents ever had. A trillion times more than Nana and Zaida. Getting married is so so so not about things. And if it is for you, well, I feel so sorry for you.

Sisterhood Of Shoes?!? I Mean, Really?!?

This can't be real?

You have to check out the Trojan Tickler ad on the comments page. Old ladies need self-love too? Gross!
/sarcasm

Thanks to Sarah Haskins for ALWAYS keeping it real and to all my Lady Friends, old and new, for offering something a little more special than sales pitches when we hang out. And especial big hugs to Y, who was mentioned in the clip ...

Walk Upon England's Mountain Green

According to recent surveys, I live in the "least green" (ie, park-filled) borough in London. And yet - and yet! - all that you see above is a mere short walk from my homestead. How lucky am I, ungardened backyardlessness notwithstanding?!

The photos were taken exactly two weeks ago - on a bewwdddiful day (as Con may have said in those halcyon days of yore) during a really rejuvenating two-hour walk. Today is more of a Sedentary Saturday. If I were a wanker I would say today I really need to "regroup", but I'm not, so I won't. Oh, I guess I just did ergo I am. Always had my suspicions anyway.

One of my best buddies, J, studied Latin a few years ago (And people tell me Yiddish is a dying language?!). She taught me a few excellent etymologies, one of which is:

Pro = For
Craste = Tomorrow

And thus we in the Modern World have procrastinating, which is what I am doing right now. And since I don't want to leave this backlog of paperwork, tidying and washing "for tomorrow", I shall bid you good day (or g'day, as my kinfolk would have it) and hope your end suitably justifies your week.

Untying The Knot: The Wedding Porn Edition

Fun Fact! The Wedding Industrial Complex turns over 17 billion dollars annually in the US alone. There are a fuckload of people whose livelihoods depend on the fact that every womanTM wants to be a big white pavlova princess! With photographers and flowers and bands, oh my! I am doing research into porn at the moment and it's amazing how wedding ephemera are fetishised and framed in a similar way to the boobs and bush(less)es on the screen. And I'm actually having trouble working out which is more degrading to women but leaning heavily to the Bride's Side of the Aisle (There is an actually a generic hybrid - link NSFW= Not Safe For Work, ie. dirty images ensue!- unsurprisingly. What is too niche for porn? Absolutely nothing! But that's another post.)

So for years I've had my very own dream wedding in mind. A non-wedding: the dream not to have one, just to be this cool iconolclastic goddess teetering on the edge of respectability, laughing in the face of the bourgeoisie, just me and Susan Sarandon and our Gauloises and arthouse fillums and young toyboys and air of general disdain ... Sorry, where was I? Yes. Not getting married. I'd studied the origins of the institution at university and am not a fan. In fact one of my all-time favourite quotes is Groucho Marx's "Marriage is a wonderful institution but who wants to live in an institution?".

Unfortunately this bloody man comes along and we bloody well have to fall in love and bloody want to make it legal for a variety of reasons so Ms. BigMouth now looks like a hegemony-happy, heteronormative hypocrite of the highest order. And it's bittersweet because I am in love but ultimately shackling myself to something that represents so much of what I viscreally, venally despise. But why can't I reframe the experience on my terms? I like big parties and the accompanying food and booze (a little too much sometimes, to which my not-ready-for-summer-bikini-bodTM attests) and we are doing it in Australia!!! It will be our one and only opportunity to gather our various family and friends from opposite sides of the world in one room, integrating so far disparate fragments of our lives and I can't bloody WAIT! We are lucky to have many people making the LONG trip over. If I'd just said "Party in Oz!" it wouldn't happen, no matter how enticing the invitation. But the biggest bonus for me is the official blending of our families - we only have small ones (mine is just my mum, brother, sister-in-law and me) so now he will have my relatives and I will have his, and life feels more supported, in a way. That's what I'm in this for. And, seriously, to hell with all that excess, misogynist (women = monolithic; Which SATC character are you?! I'm a Carrie!!!) WICrapola!

But what is freaking people the fuck out is that I'm not treating the wedding as the be-all and end-all of my existence and I'm not thinking of myself as some new person getting! married! at all: I'm just me, as me, doing a thing that doesn't define me any more than the fact that I have worn glasses for over two straight months (bloody iritis!) and am nursing some killer cramps today. (Missy P FTW!)

When we got engag[g]ed, I changed my facebook status to:"Doctor Plog is taking on the Wedding Industrial Complex". My old friend N wrote:"Good luck with the Wedding Industrial Complex! You will need all your super powers to ward off their insanity". I'm learning that these super powers include: the ability to block out white noise (venues, blah blah, rabbis, blah, blah) and to resist the temptation to punch anyone who refers to you as a bride/ the bride -- hang on, the wedding isn't for a few months. And lasts for how many hours? THAT'S where I'll be playing the role of "the bride", then and then only. But it's an inane title foisted upon you from proposal until the wedding where you become known as the equally preposterous thing called "wife"! I would have thought you were just the bride at the wedding but I guess for marketing purposes, the second you become engaged you become repackaged as a new consumer - one that is expected not to bat an eyelid at spending ridiculous amounts of money on idiotic things. Capitalism relies on the erasure of individual desire in order to effectively perpetuate the mass-market, so our very own wants come to us genetically modified and prepackaged, via spam email or billboard or word-of-mouth or the cultural osmosis that has kept the world going and institutions standing. Isn't it unlikely that EVERY Western woman getting married (age 17 - 70) just happens to have always "dreamed" of having exactly the same thing, irrespective of variabilities in age, experience and subjectivity?

And look at "The Package" itself, Hegemony-Style (£10,000+)! Big white dress, big white teeth, golden tan, slimmer bod in order that the photos be perfect, ripe for self-fetishisation, post-children, in the mournful knowledge that one will never look like that again. Lucky for me, I don't look like that now! In fact, perversely, post-proposal, I have started rapidly gaining weight. Even my body is rejecting this nuptial nonsense! It wants to become a plus-size bride and at this stage I'm letting it. (Come November I'll more than likely freak out and stop eating though. Disordered Eating Runs Deep.)

So here's a wee anecdote to illustrate the idiocy: My lovely mum was in town for a few weeks. Last Friday, we accidentally caught the the tube to Angel so looked at a few shops and saw a nice dress. Then we caught the tube to Selfridges, looked around for an hour, bought aforementioned Angel-sourced dress (gotta love high street chains and their multitudinous replications!) and a pair of shoes dispayed next to dress. Wedding costume shopping: done! Feelin' gooooood!

Then my lovely, proud mum made the fatal (ego-wise) error of sharing our pleasure with the Bitch Sales Assistant. The following scene ensued:

Mum: (to Bitch Sales Assistant) It's for her wedding!
Bitch: (to me, disbelievingly) For your wedding?
Me: (sheepishly) Uh ... yeah.
Bitch: (bitchily) How come you're not wearing a wedding dress?
Me: (having felt pretty and happy only minutes earlier, now wanting the ground to swallow me whole) Um ... didn't really want the big white dress thing ... (apologetically) It's not really me (attempting humour weakly) And ... um ... not everyone looks good in white...
Bitch: Yeah that's what I thought when I was getting married but then you just get swept up in it. (unconvincingly) Oh well, I guess you just want something you feel nice in.
Me: (gratefully) Yes, exactly.

Silly fucking bitch. She's probably still paying off her multi-thousand pound confection. But mostly silly fucking me for letting myself be intimidated by a silly twat who's probably a decade younger than I am. It gets worse though: I am a fatherless daughter and so many of the rituals are enshrined around that relationship, albeit (a word my dad once pronounced al-bait, as if to rhyme with the 'arbeit' from 'makht frei' - he'd only ever seen it written - how cute is that?) shitty rituals based on the chattel (woman) being traded between older man and younger man. So I may have pissed off my dad with my militancy were he around, but then again, if all this crapola weren't so deeply ingrained in our collective unconscious, I wouldn't have the issue in the first place. So it's also making me really sad too and missing him all the time and it's affecting my sleeping. Boo To The WIC! Causing insomnia as well as Keeping The Woman Down (forcing us to want all this poo and then condemning those who do buy into it with the monstrous Bridezilla trope).

I am not a knee-jerk, pounce-on-every-perceived-cliche feminist -- it's a lot more complex, and beautiful, than that -- but I believe that there are valuable lessons us sad straights desperately need to learn from our gay sisters and brothers in their (necessary) use of gender nonspecific language. Our appropriation of that seems to render the marital roles more fluid, less prescribed. The words "husband" and "wife" are anachronistic to me, aged, outdated and a bit passe, as they carry with them centuries of baggage -- much of which has no place in my home, thank you very much. At their heart they imply a relationship of non-equals, a predetermined power differential. We are partners, equals. We walk down the aisle together, I won't be "given" to him. We wear matching wedding bands, he doesn't get to "bags" me with a diamond (the male-to-female equivalent of throwing a jacket on a chair) which only became a symbol of enduring love in the 1940s when Frances Gerety, a copywriter, came up with slogan "A Diamond Is Forever". If Mr P and I want to live according to the sub/dom paradigm (not an interest to date, as far as I know) then let choice determine who gets to play which role rather than anatomy.

Also, ixnay on the name changing menace. I'm a grown woman and that name is me: I've always been called it! (To those who reply "But that's just your father's name!" - duh! Have I just been renting it these past three-and-a-half decades?) But beyond discussions of patriarchy, it just feels like a weird, flee-from-self type of thing to do. There are only two legitimate reasons a person ought to change their name and I am neither in Witness Protection nor appearing in a porno. (Although re: the latter, who knows what the future holds? I am, after all, getting married, which is the feminist equivalent of lying back, shutting your eyes tightly, and getting well and truly schtupped by the patriarchy. It may as well be available on DVD. Sorry, Sisterhood.)

I hate you, WIC.

But, even more, I love you, Mr P. I especially love the fact that you don't mind living in a state that is perpetually subject to deconstruction and reconfiguration. We're so meta! And it proves your gender identity is far more secure than your friends -- I'm looking at you, D and M! Hello boys and Welcome To The Blogosphere! -- would have us believe.

xxx

Desecration Upon Desecration

It has just been reported that a gunman attempted a shooting spree at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.

I feel sick.

I don't want to see this incident in light of the success of the BNP and other fascist, Holocaust-denying parties in the European Parliament. Nor along side the shooting of Dr. Tiller, in terms of killing sprees taking a nasty political bent. That would just be too depressing.

Never Again.

No more shootings. No more death camps. No more fucking fascists. Boo to the baddies!

I keep harping on this, I know, but: blogging has made me feel more connected, more part of a community than I have in a long time, and in feeling less disenfranchised and less politically impotent, I feel like we could mobilise all us goodies (not Tim, Graeme and Bill) and do something! Or am I just as immature and idealistic as my rejection of wedding registries would have my future MIL believe?

English Is Tough Stuff

A clever poem I found while googling "welsh humour" - go figure! - by Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870-1946), a Dutch linguist and critic who published under the pseudonym Charivarius.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

BNPiss Off!

I have not really been sure how to respond to the news that the British National Party - a fascist, racist, anti-semitic has just won two seats in the European Parliament. My first reaction is RACISTS RAUS! (No offence to any German speakers for using your language but it's potent for me). My second is polemical, fearful: Is Europe being won back by the fascists? The deepest fear of a lot of Jews is that another Holocaust could happen (often used to justify the bloodiest, most unjust right-wing Zionism, but that's another story). Fact is, my grandfather was in Auschwitz and that wasn't so long ago, historically speaking. But my training as an historian instantly combats those initial emotional responses: no, it's not the 1930s all over again, recession or no recession.

But this is still shitty news. Surely, though, there are more of us than there are of them? More thinking, feeling, truly civilised humans than that human detrius of morons, saddos, loons and locos. Nick Griffin (isn't he the father from Family Guy?) just got some feedback from a less than adoring public but it's not enough. What the hell can we do to undermine their support? (Non-violent measures preferred, but all will be taken under advisement ...)

A Very P-ed Off Dr P.

PS. David Cameron, some advice: Maybe stop fraternising with the Polish meshugenneh voytek kholera yasneh brothers, otherwise it won't just be fringe Left-loonies calling you a fascist colloborator. Cheers, mate. x

Surreal

Oddness afoot at the House of Plog:

He is down in his study living, eating, breathing Iraq as his deadline looms.

I am taking notes on a film (see above) for a paper I am co-authoring on Jews and pornography.

So my moans and muzak are providing the soundtrack for his death and destruction.

It is so in my nature to try and make a point here equating war and porn in a grand (but ultimately shallow) statement but, luckily for you guys, it is too early and my brain hurts.

I Am Dr Tiller

This tribute to the abortion doctor murdered last week - as he sat in church* -is so moving and so vital, and perhaps the only response I can posit at the moment given the absolute lunacy involved.

Thank you, Hortense, Jezebel's wonderful weekend warrior, for the link.

And Land Of Meg for the lesson in embedding. Seems you can teach an old doc new tricks.

x

*They say the difference between Islamic terrorists and anti-abortion activists is that the terrorists would have the decency to wait until the target had left the mosque...

Pages By Post

Have you read Zadie Smith's On Beauty? It's a really great novel. But, more importantly, it's a really great novel that has randomly fallen to bits in our spare room-cum-my-study which has given me an odd meta-idea I am sooo gonna regret in the sober ... I mean, um, morning, but:

If you would like a page from this book, please send me a postal address and one will be on its way!! Creeps, sociopaths, trolls, psychopaths, misogynists, homphobes, conservatives, murderers, morons, misandrists, gun-owners, people who have flags on their lawn and anyone who voted for the Tories yesterday or John Howard like ever totally need not apply.

ps. It would help if I know you, either personally or via the blogosphere. If you're a total stranger don't be one! Who are you?, as CSI (the original and BEST!) and Led Zeppelin would ask, more than a few times: Who, who?

Write British (Think Gurnischt)*

I am writing a book review for a British journal. For the first time I have had to adapt my Australian English.

In this country, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is Aids. At home it is AIDS. The first time I saw it in a newspaper here, it took me a while before I could put my finger on what looked odd about it.

*(The title has nothing to do with this post but recalls the supposed philosophy of Hollywood studio heads in the Golden Era to "Write Yiddish, Cast British")

Required Reading For All Ages And Genders

Who in their right mind could ever argue with that?!?

Thanks to Nancy R. Smith, JT Bunnell & Irit Reinheimer for the words and Laura Newburn for the art.

Dr Plog Casts Her Vote

I come from a Land Down Under. Where women glow and everyone votes. We have to - it's bloody compulsory, mate! Which some see as undemocratic "I should have the right not to vote" - you do, you lazy buggers. It's called a Donkey Vote (luckily the Anti-Donkey Defamation Organisation has not yet banned use of this term) and it means you can cover your ballot form with pictures of penises if you so desire. But this law guarantees that all citizens fulfil their basic civic duty, one that women and minority groups have fought for (we owe it to our forebears if nothing else), and it does ensure that all people (the marginalised, the elderly, new immigrants, those physically unable to participate) are included. Compulsory voting forces even the most apathetic to take the mildest interest and that's good enough for me. And I feel that "non-voters" have no right to complain about the government and the general state of affairs. Should have exercised your right, buddy - not only a right but a DUTY to your fellow citizens, a kind of social tax better spent than the monetary kind. I also feel that "pro-lifers" should be properly renamed as "anti-choicers" and murderous terrorist scum get out of their thick heads that foetuses should have more rights than women, but that's a post for another time ... when I have less vengeful steam coming out of my ears, maybe ...

Back to voting, then. It's my first vote on British soil, The X Factor and Grease Is The Word, notwithstanding, and THAT feels bloody exciting, although, irritatingly I can't get : "I feel British!/Oh so British!/ I feel British/And Skittish/And Slight!" out of my head -- North Side Story, maybe?

So I am excited to vote today and urge all other Brits and expats here to do the same. And may the best team (mine of course) win!

Hazel, Hazel, Hazel!

Dear Hazel Blears,

While I definitely err on the side of the latter in the work/life balance debacle, can I just say that, short of having your loved ones gunned down in cold blood, no "family reasons" are compelling enough to justify ones resignation the day before an election? Especially one as crucial as the European Parliament where the BNP are likely to gain a foothold. (Nazi skinheads FTW?!)

Also, Hazel? Your excuse may have been more believable were you not about to get into trouble for that wee expenses snafu. I know it sucks that there is extra pressure on women in politics, given there are so few of you, but, damn, girl! This is not the kind of representation we were hoping for ...

Please unresign. You can always reresign at a later date, maybe one that won't have such a destabilising effect on the party - and more importantly, the constituents - you promised to faithfully serve.

Kthnxbai,

Dr. Plog xo

Sated By Godot

Although I studied Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot at high school, I never really got it. Sure, being a seasoned Artisan of the Shite of the Bull, I knew enough to pontificate ("Existentialism, blah blah, futility, blah, blah") but I neither really understood it nor liked it much. Until last night.

Maybe it's an age thing, maybe it's a play that needs to be experienced as a performance on the stage rather than static on the page. But most likely it was the fact that it was a masterclass in beyond transcendent thespian excellence - Ian McKellen!!! Patrick Stewart!!! Simon Callow!!! Ronald Pickup!!! (Ok, I hadn't heard of the last guy either but his Lucky was sublime) Even the child actor playing The Boy in last night's production at the Royal Haymarket had the clearest, most melodic voice I've ever heard.

Other critics have found this production too comedic, too drained of its angst. But they may also be the type of people who enjoy sucking lemons and killing kittens. I loved it.

**** - 4 Plogs out of 5

(Lost point Beckett's fault, not this production's. This Big Fat Feminist is not a huge fan of Female-Free-Fables. I'm looking at you, Mamet!)