This is the first pint of Strongbow I’ve had for months and even though it’s mass-produced crap, and despite it being a poxy American pint, it tastes wonderful. I’m sitting in an Irish pub in Center City Philadelpiha which reminds me a lot of the Marquis, only with American Football on the TV instead of the horses. As soon as my man returns, I’ll be.able to return his house keys, and then return to the flock. But until then it is the perfect opportunity to reflect on the momentous events of the past week.
A word to my Breeteesh choms:
You probably know that I have, on rare occasion, been accused of cynicism. However, as foolish as it sounds, Obama getting elected has injected a weird feeling of optimism into life and for the first time ever, there’s no background voice saying “yeah, but he’s just another well meaning politician who’ll soon be corrupted by power and turn into another [insert name of favourite corrupt political leader]”
Really.
The temptation is to compare this to Blair’s election in 1997, but it’s so different. Everyone on the left knew he was a sack of shit, but after 18 years of the Tories we’d probably have settled for Stalin at his worst…
On Wednesday morning, I genuinely felt the world had changed for the better. Normally I’d have started spouting cynical shit straight away, just in case he turned into George W Gump so I could say “see, I said he was the same as the rest” but not this time. If I’m proved wrong then it’ll be documented here. I think he’s a righteous dude. And the pride we have for being involved in his election will stay with us forever.
Oh yes, in case you were wondering, the vast fortune he amassed for his campaign was raised almost entirely from sub $200 donations from ordinary people who just wanted a change. Like me and Michele.
Excuse typos, this was written on my little G1 🙂
[Update: see http://change.gov/]

We’re snuggled up on the sofa with a parrot, a jug of red wine, and a pizza on the way, watching the BBC’s coverage of the election. Having Dimbleby guiding us through the torture is a real comfort, as is a reassuringly anti-McCain injection of Christopher Hitchens. Sympathetic friends are only an Instant Message away and so the excitement is incredible. Maybe this is what it felt like to be a Phillies fan last Wednesday night ?
Not for a second do I think we’ll know the final result tonight, and my cynical side is predicting some utterly depressing results that will make me want to go to bed.

Apologies for the title. It’s a tribute to Benny Hill; if only he was still alive, we could be treated to his impression of a Chinese man talking about the “Gleat Erection.”

As last night was Halloween, I’d like to present you with two scary pictures. The first is a picture of the Krupp Bagger 288 open cast mining machine being transported across the German countryside (yes it’s a genuine shot). The other is our neighbour, Tim, dressed as a Viking (yes it’s a genuine shot). I’m still not sure which is scarier. But then that could be because we witnessed Tim as he happened.
We had planned nothing for Halloween beyond sitting on our porch, drinking Carlo Rossi’s cheapest, and giving out sweets to the local kids like we did last year. It turned out to be far more entertaining that we imagined. Tim’s dedication to the whole Halloween event (partially powered by his involvement in the past two days celebration) was truly awe-inspiring. All of the massive amounts of “candy” we purchased were claimed by Trick-or-Treaters by 9pm. By that stage we were all very merry, and had been joined by a bunch of other friends and neighbours, so we ordered pizza from Poppa Large and spent and very enjoyable (and boozy) time sitting out on the porches. That’s a good tradition in my book.

For the non-Americans:
The “World” Series involves two North American Baseball teams playing against each other, with the best out of seven games winning. For the first time in 25 years, the Phillies [Philadelphia’s team] are playing and are 3 games to 1 up. In other words, the current game dictates whether they win the “World” Series.

The game started two nights ago and was suspended because of the rain (it’s very much like Cricket in that respect) and so we’re really near to a result this evening. Normally, as anyone who knows me would affirm, I wouldn’t give a flying fuck about such bollocks, but Philly is in such need of an uplift that I’m really hoping they win.

The other reason I hope they win is that Obama managed to pay for a half-hour campaign ad just before the game on three major networks including FOX, who are showing the game. He only managed this because he managed to raise a record-breaking amount of cash from the general public. Call me a blinkered optimist, but I really think that Obama getting elected could change the entire world for the better. Every time I hear him speak, I want to give him a hug. Every time I hear McCain and his simple side-kick speak, I wish that the healthcare system in this country wasn’t as broken so that they could be taken in to a safe environment where they couldn’t hurt anyone.

Even though the most Socialism this country has seen for over a hundred years was produced by George W Bush, the right are still accusing Obama of being a “Socialist”. He’s not. I wish he were, but he’s not. privatisation does not work. I’m not saying that private companies don’t work, I’m saying that privitisation of formally public organisations doesn’t work.

Here’s a case study involving British Gas [formerly “The Gas Board”] and PGW [Philadelphia Gas Works]. Obviously this isn’t scientific, but it’s what the deluded simpletons in social science call “qualitative”. Pity them.

A few years ago, in London, Michele became worried that our combi-boiler was leaking carbon monoxide and so, despite my protestations, called British Gas. Within two hours a guy arrived wearing a nicely pressed British Gas suit and carrying no equipment whatsoever. He turned off the gas supply, placed a “Do No Use” sticker on the boiler, and told us to call a CORGI registered gas engineer to fix the problem. When we asked what the fucking fuck he thought he was doing, he explained he had “made our gas supply safe” and from now on it was up to us. I could have done that! When we did actually get a proper engineer around, he told us everything was fine and turned it back on. Thanks British Gas.

So, when we arrived home the other evening and smelled gas, I was worried. Michele called PGW. Meanwhile, I traced the smell to a pilot light on the cooker that had snuffed out. After lighting it we were cool, and so Michele called PGW to cancel the call-out. We were told that the call-out couldn’t be cancelled and so we would have to explain it to the guy when he arrived, which he did within ten minutes!
He arrived with a big bag of tools and an obviously deep knowledge of gas equipment, which he then used to check every gas appliance in the joint. He declared it all ok.

Now, when I call the gas company, that’s what I expect: a guy turning up in 20 minutes with a bag of tools. Nice one PGW! I told our man how happy we were with his service and described the British Gas equivalent. He told us that they have been trying to outsource the work in PGW for a while and that the unions were fighting it. I hope the unions win; the British privatisation model is a long, expensive, painful, death of a decent service.
Night night.

P.S.
AC/DC – the new album is pure AC/DC. You already know what it sounds like. Love it.

In the past couple of months my job has included writing an iPhone app, and it’s fun! All of those flashy mac-style frameworks on something that fits in your pocket. And Objective-C really is an excellent way to spend time if you’re in the geek zone. But today I received my new “HTC Dream” AKA the G1 AKA the Googlephone AKA the first ever implementation of Android and it really feels nice. Full of teething troubles (of course) but a beautiful, beautiful piece of hardware that smells of new car and feels like proper 21st century equipment. The love affair will surely collapse, but until then I’m going to cherish the beautiful little thing.

The past week has been bewilderingly emotional. We celebrated the start of a wonderful new life, and the ignoble death of a close family member. My boss at work was very understanding and let me go early, and work from home the next day. Whenever someone you love dies, it triggers a load of existential angst (amongst other emotions). But combined with the sense of confusion and astonishment we both feel daily when we listen to the radio, it’s been hard. The USA is a big country, and so it can be very jarring when you hear people, from the same country, talk absolute bollocks. How, now that we have such excellent access to news, journals, books and thoughts, can anyone be so badly…wrong ? The only sensible answer can possibly be brain damage.
The biggest giveaway is the frequency that a well known word is used over here: Freedom.
I work in a building in the “Freedom Business Park”. The building next to ours houses an eatery known as “The Freedom Cafe”. A common soundbyte heard on any news program involves some baseball-cap wearing moron explaining their resons for voting for McCain: “Obama wants to take away our freedom because he’s a Socialist.”
I wish he was a socialist.
Weirdly, the same people who complain about the prospect of losing their freedom, are only too happy to bend over and let the big corporations fuck them up the arse in the name of free market economics.
Anyone from Europe (even from the UK) would be horrified to find out how much Americans pay for gas, leccy, mobile phones, and healthcare. But the stupids here seem to think that because the prices they pay aren’t “tax” means they are free. This is the most subservient, gullible and suggestive nation on earth.
$700bn is enough to sort out all of the health problems of everyone in the world several thousands of times over. So why are we giving it to a bunch of greedy bankers ?

365 days ago, we got on a plane from London to Philadelphia, leaving my family and ten years of our lives behind. Last night we organized a low-key soiree with some nice people at our local Mexican joint. It turned out to be a very enjoyable evening, that ended up with us sitting around our next-door neighbours fire-pit. And then today, to help us celebrate, Michele’s brother generously sired a lovely new baby boy today which makes us aunt and uncle! Oh yes, his wife helped out too 😉
It’s all very exciting, and probably not a good point to start talking about the impending election or what we have learned about the colonies in our first year.
More soon.

A work colleague and I were having a chat this afternoon when her eye was caught by the picture on the screen of one of my PCs.
“Ooh! Is that your family ?” she asked, earnestly. This was the picture. Thanks. Which one is supposed to be my mum ?

Moving that aside, my Venezuelan connection alerted me to news that the leftist governments of Latin America are currently referring to W as “Comrade”.

My favourite quote from this, and possibly the most excellent paragraph ever written, is:

“One of our economists was telling us that Bush has just implemented communism for the rich,” Castro said.

As new members of the middle classes we had to undergo the traditional initiation rites of removing most of our carpets. Our 100 year old floors would clearly be too knackered for sanding and varnishing I thought. But it turns out that everyone I know in the UK who claims to know about such things is a fucking idiot…judging by the reaction I received when speaking to “experts” over here anyway. The ideas I had about taking up the floors, replacing the fucked floorboards and moving the existing ones closer together are apparently the work of drug-induced madness. Nah, said our expert, these will come up lovely (ok he didn’t use those exact words, but I wasn’t there at the time and so am paraphrasing for other Londoners). So, we booked him and his mates, moved all of our stuff out of the affected rooms, and moved our parrots and ourselves back into Michele’s mum’s place. I managed to negotiate for my “office” and the stairs to remain carpeted. I like carpet, and believe that un-carpeted stairs are plain dangerous.
Now, in fairness, the guys worked super quickly, and the end result looks very beautiful (compared to our previous wine and parrot-shit stained beige carpets anyway). I can’t complain, and it looks way better than I imagined but still:

• There are gaps in the floor that allow us to see into the basement.
• The application of varnish caused great globs to pour through these gaps and onto the “precious things” in the basement.
• The birds are still pissed off about the whole thing, and we can only hope they aren’t being slowly gassed by the fumes.
• We have wood-dust all over the inside of our double glazing.

Michele stitched me up quite nicely too. She’s been wanting to paint a wall since we moved in. So, rather than talk to me about the idea, she skipped to asking me for advice on a colour for the wall she was going to paint, and generously provided me with a bunch of colour swatches that ranged from avocado green, to a slightly darker avocado green.
“I was thinking some sort of green” I responded.
So we now have a very beautiful, parrot-scaring, green wall. I call it “Avocado” but Michele calls it “Jalapeno”, and apparently they’re not the same thing at all; one was a very popular colour for bathrooms in the 1970’s and is now a hideous anachronism, the other is a great colour for the living room wall. Other than that they’re identical as far as I can tell.

This weekend has consisted of moving furniture back to their carpet positions, working on installing Debian to a high-spec HP server in London, playing with Michele and the birds, and wandering around South Philly with Kevin and a Burrito.

For many years I’ve tried to understand the whole business of money…and failed. Very knowledgeable, tolerant, patient people have tried to explain the international banking system in the simplest terms they can conjure, and I still didn’t get it.
But today The Tea God directed me to this brilliant description of what is going on. Suddenly, it all makes sense, like some sort of epiphany. Many of you will already understand these basic things, and I ask you to go easy on me for missing the point for so long…money has never made sense to me. Now I realise that it just doesn’t make sense full-stop [period].

It’s a shame to discover this now, just as I’m beginning to enjoy life. Even work is enjoyable at the moment; something that hasn’t happened for many years. I’m doing interesting, mentally stretching work, and that seems to make me happy. Weird eh ? Admittedly another source of pleasure is that my line manager has been able to keep me far, far, away from meetings, internal politics, and all of the other shit that gets in the way of the work. Also, we get to eat some good lunches…mmmmmmmmmm…Wawa…