NOBODY'S DIED. IT'S NOT THAT BAD. I'm just feeling depressed (what's new).
Got a knock at some properly unearthly hour on Saturday night. It was Windorello downstairs (another person I've not really mentioned. Reformed crackhead windowcleaner.) He and a rather chic Irish woman with Chanel style bob. Both had the most massively dilated pupils I've seen in quite a while. They looked like they should have been waving light-sticks at the front of a rave. I didn't ask what they'd taken but I'm sure it was the killer "sweeties" ("E"). Did you know ecstasy pills cost just $1 or 50p each nowadays? How weak must they be perishes my thoughts, but WOW! That is cheap. First time I ever tried one it cost £15! For one white tablet with a bird stamped into one side ("love doves").
Unlike the so-called "love drug of the 1960s" LSD which only perhaps 2% of my parents' generation ever took, if that, ecstasy, I would say has been sampled by a third of my generation (and that's a conservative estimate). Also, unlike the fantastical but unpredictable LSD, ecstasy really does make you feel "love". Love for everyone in the world. (And unfortunately the sort of nonsensical talk that accompanies such "love".) If you could capture in pill form the sensation of a really good tune and wanting to dance, together with the first full flush of falling in love, that's Ecstasy.
Unfortunatlely the more frequently you pop the pill the more quickly the "lovey" feeling dies. What remains is a "feeling of heightened perceptions" and the wanting to dance thing. But the eurphoria is never the same as the first few times.
There have been some dramatic cases in the British news of young people dying on ecstasy pills. Something like 15-20 people a year used to die on ecstasy during its 1990s heydays. (Not sure about now.) A statistic that had police chiefs foaming at the mouth! What went unreported was that more people in this country actually drowned in the bath over those years than died taking ecstasy. And nobody campaigned to ban baths!
OK onto less controversial topics I'm making beef stew and our central heating pipes are being drained (yet again).
Baby Itchy's really furry and I'm going to try and get a youtube video of her done.
When, over the weekend, I knelt over them and cooed "Come out you tiny tubbies! Come out! Come out you tubby gremlins!" in the kind of voice that would have a young puppydog tearing about the room and baying at the ceiling all three pink noses appear and Itchy, being pluckiest starts pinging tube to tube and burning butter on her wheel (it's oiled with butter (well you can't use WD40 on a hamster wheel, can you?))
On that note I'd better go.
Have a click on my video of the day if you're in a Spanish cultural mood.
Video of the Day:
Jeanette (Cria Cuervos): Porque te vas
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THEE most marvellous-looking Chocolate Brownie recipe
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Her Majesty the Queen is on BBC1 tonight at 21:00 hrs sharp so all loyal citizens (sorry WHAT am I saying: SUBJECTS) are hereby called to the Cause!
STOP PRESS: VIDEO OF THE DAY II
HM THE QUEEN'S REPRIMANDY ENCOUNTER WITH VULGAR PLEBEAN ANNIE LIEBOWITZ
Citizens of the United States and Canada should be able to watch it on BBC America/BBC Canada. Though my brother, who used to have a very posh address in Los Angeles said his last building was too vulgar to have BBC America so it does depend on your "cable provider". (Here satellite is far better. For one thing you still get 100+ channels after you stop subscribing so why mess around with crappy old cable. I did notice the box at the end of my street hanging open with "virgin cable" signs and wires everywhere but have no idea how to pirate cable. Can you do that with digital cable? Nobody uses analogue over here except one person I know who used to subscribe, plugged her telly back into the old cable socket - and presto! - gets 12 channels instead of the analogue 5. I'm the ONLY person I know, apart from Laundretta, who still watches analogue TV. Even mother hubbard has the 30-channel "ghetto" version of digital. I'm waiting till I can get a flat digital TV the size of a lady's powder compact. Not THAT I would watch. (Must be high definition. Of course...)
Re my Annie Liebowitz clip of the day: I've been searching since that docu started showing for youtube clips and for some reason NOBODY in Britain's posted ANYTHING up. Guess where this clip came from? CHINA!!!
Silly cow Liebowitz. I am SURE she was briefed on what to call the Queen. And she kept on banging away at "Your Majesty" you only call her that the FIRST time you address her. Every subsequent time she is "Ma'am" (only to her face, my own 3rd person ma'am is my little joke, in case I ever do meet her, at least I'll think of her as ma'am then. Well that's what I tell myself.)
And REALLY. Buckingham Palace booking Her Majesty the Queen, NOT the most overbeamingly stellar person in the world for HALF AN HOUR to get FOUR SETS of lovely photos. Whoever did THAT wants FIRING. I've seen the Liebowitz with "crown" (it is actually a tiara) by window in drawing room photo. It is terrible. Her Maj looks THUNDEROUS. There is a stray chair in the background as if someone had been jumping around on the furniture just before and couldn't be bothered to move it. No! PUT HER IN THE TOWER! I say (Liebowitz. Not the Queen.) Right:
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Thing on the news about American Iraq deserters. They don't get much of my sympathy. I'm sorry but what do you join the army for? To do lots of obstacle courses or to kill foreigners? Who ever told these young idiots you ever got a choice of which foreigners you got to kill and why.... I don't know
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So Rickky Hatton LOST against the American. (Boxing: 4:20am our time Sunday morning.) The rude British crowd managed to outsing the American national anthem (surely the only song on earth LESS catchy than "God save the Queen" (!)) Glad I forgot to get to the betting shop on Sat night, else I'd have lost my money on Hatton by round four! Why did nobody tell us HE was the challenger and the reigning champion was so very formidable~??
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My stew is fantastic by the way. Cubed beef (not lamb full of boney bits). And finally I remembered to get Worcester Sauce (the Brit ex-pat's fantasy cooking ingredient)... yum...
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When I grow up and move abroad I'm going to start up an English takeaway. Yes I know this has been the butt of jokes for... since as long as Chinese takeaways have existed in Britain. But I'd really do it. (Not fish and chips: I'm talking about roast beef, chips (fries) and steaming seasonable vegetables with cauliflower cheese and YORKSHIRE PUDDING (sorry I left that out originally) and gravy type takeaway. The type that does not to the best of my knowledge exist to this day...
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I want to go for a poke round Harrods one of these days ...
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Robos: Bashful is asleep. She has been grooming poor Itchy to within an inch of her life. Itchy was so bashed up with hamster-salyva when I first got her out of the box I honestly thought she was covered in mites. Just turns out because she's smallest she's lowest peck and so has to endure her relatives' endless "attentions" all night and day ...
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Wonderful pictures of Argentinian December summer!
I would HATE e - I can't stand being touched by people that I don't know, I hear that there is a lot of hugging involved with it as well....ew. I guess that is why i never went to raves and always had a soft spot for punk rock....hippy dipppy raving with glo sticks and huggin strangers isn't my cup of joe....
ReplyDeleteAnd there ya have my 2 cents that you didn't ask for ;)
The feeling of love E's give does not make me want to try it - I'd rather have the real thing or none at all. I like the idea of a proper British take away - you'd have to do Yorkshire Pudding as well though! :)
ReplyDeleteEileen: well if you'd said that a decade ago i would have thought you couldn't be my friend. but now i'm getting older i'm glad to be set free of my old narrow mindset ... haha!! ;->...
ReplyDeleteAkelamalu: yes that is a good point. The "love" bit as I implied tends to make people behave embarrassingly...
SORRY I MISSED OUT YORKSHIRE PUDDING that would be an utter STAPLE of my menu on the Wandering Dragon/Happy Family set menus!!!
hi there, how bizarre! how did you stumble on our dylanwhincop blog? We are australians living in Britain so you are forgiven for not knowing where we are from. PS we don't look like Americans - what DO Americans look like??
ReplyDeleteNOT like Brits or Australians. More likely to wear baseball caps. More likely to dress younger in the twilight of their lives. Type of thing.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder I couldn't tell where you're from if you're from extracticated British stock brought back to Britain!
;->...
Funny--I was just talking to someone about Argentina.
ReplyDeleteIt's the same climate as here, but the opposite season.
So it would be really cool to go to, like, NOW--or especially in my opinion in the middle of a heat wave in the Summer, when it would be, like, 54-degrees Farenheit.
I don't think I've ever had E but it sounds like fabulous fun. If the door to door Mormons ever solicit my door again, I shall ask them if they are holding! Something keeps those sneaky cheeky bastards smiling.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about starting an English takeaway just reminded me that there is small English centric shop in beautiful Milford, Michigan. I've never been in it though so I don't know how proper English it is, but a sign on the outside says it is all about the UK.
ReplyDeleteI know of a British ex-pat couple who run an excellent bed and breakfast in Breckenridge, Colorado. The outside of the bed and breakfast is authentic 1800's Colorado mining shack with the tin roof and all. The inside is proper English through and through. Well it has paintings of British military men who were ancesters of the owner (a retired Royal Engineer) and regimental colors and plenty of reminders of the days of the Empire so it is as British as a Colorado mining shack can be. It's not really a shack as it has been nicely fixed up. I just don't have a better description. The place is called the Fireside Inn. I think you can google it to see pictures.
Now you've made me hungry with the yorkshire pudding and steaming vegetable talk.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very full post...from E to food to the Queen to hamsters. I think you covered it all. ;)
Is there any place that I can send stuff to you by mail? I have a Christmas card for you and no address. Email me if so.
Zen Wizz: America seems to have a really HOT climate these days... VERY HOT INDEED! On climate maps you're depicted as being equivalent to Mediterranean Europe. True it does sometimes in heatwaves get up to 120F in Greece and southern Spain. But you don't hear of 100F days in November like they seem to been having in LA of late!
ReplyDeleteJimD: you need good music and a party and I feel OLD just thinking about it! ;->...
Molson: do the B&B couple have really strong Northern accents too?!? (Just like traditional Brighton Beach or Skegness landladies haha!)
Debs: o! Re mail I have to ask about that as arrangements are somewhat complicated if you see what I mean as it's not going to my house!
Hmmm. I have no idea as how to identify different British accents Gledwood. All I can say is that the British ex-pats in Colorado sound 'middle of the road British'. Not upper crust or bottom rung. Just middle of the road. Does any of this make sense? Probably not though as I am pretty clueless when it comes to these sort of things.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid to try ECSTASY. As is, this morning I had to deal with a bit of a marijuana hangover, if there is such a thing! AHAHAHAHAH! I rarely smoke weed, but last night decided to indulge a bit.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to get home and check this Liebowitz and HER MAJ clip out, but I'm at work right now and can't really enjoy it as much, even with my headphones here.
I'm in Los Angeles too, and our BBC programming here is kind of lame.