We’re Doing It Wrong

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My hatred and loathing for my home country of the UK has been well documented both on these pages, on Twitter and in various other places that I’ve deposited little pockets of mental detritus around the Web. The reasons for this are manifold, of course, but the recent US elections highlighted one of the reasons that I don’t feel proud to be British, English, United Kingdomish, whatever you want to call me.

Congratulations, by the way, America. You made the right choice by electing Obama as President-elect, the first black President the US has ever seen (a fact the BBC were fond of reminding us roughly every ten seconds during their coverage). You have elected a leader who is intelligent, articulate and inspirational – a leader who certainly gives the impression that he can make a difference and who inspires trust in the things he says. His acceptance speech made me want to shed a tear and made me feel proud and patriotic… towards America.

I’m sure pretty much everyone has seen this by now, but here we go again:

The man is a fantastic public speaker, it can’t be denied – even if you don’t agree with everything he says, or doubt he’ll be able to get the job done, or whatever… there’s no denying that he knows how to instill confidence and pride in a crowd.

We get this:

This is Gordon Brown. He is our Prime Minister. Our unelected Prime Minister, I might add, who sat waiting for Blair to resign like a rabid dog waiting to pounce on a hunk of meat before jumping in and continuing the mess his predecessor had created.

There are many things I object to about Gordon Brown and his government. The biggest thing that struck me about the US election is that I actually cared about the outcome. I cared about the candidates. I was keen for Obama to win because I supported him as a person, I supported what he stood for and I found him an inspirational candidate. I felt uneasy about McCain and particularly about the Evil Ice Bitch that stood with him with her strangely plastic face. Conversely, I’ve watched several UK elections over the years and not one of them has inspired the same kind of pride, patriotism and edge-of-the-seat excitement that the US elections did. This is largely to do with the fact that our politicians are boring and uninspiring, as clearly demonstrated above.

Couple this with the fact that they seem to make consistently stupid decisions, particularly when it comes to things like criminal rights, education and the like, and I can say with some confidence that I have roughly 0% confidence and trust in our government… and the trouble is that the “other sides” don’t inspire much confidence either. David Cameron is a posh public-school boy who is widely regarded as “out of touch” with much of society. I will likely vote for him in the next election purely because I’ve seen what a hash Gordon Brown and the Labour Party have made in the last few years, but I know that it’s unlikely there will be any great change. Our “third option”, the Liberal Democrats, may as well not exist because they consistently gain so little votes in the elections that their presence is merely an annoyance to the “big two” parties.

Our MPs are fond of that particularly odious brand of management-speak and obfuscation of what they actually mean through dumb buzz-words. (I realise “obfuscation” may qualify as one of those words, but I like it.) None of them will ever answer a direct question. I realise that this is nothing new, but it does little to inspire confidence. Obama has, conversely, in the speeches I have witnessed so far, been relatively plain-speaking and comes across as honest. Time will tell if he can live up to his promises, but at least I’m feeling pretty good about him at the moment.

I don’t see any change forthcoming in the UK. Each new generation of politicians in this country is more boring, dull, morose and out-of-touch than the last. Each new generation is doing more and more damage to the country in the name of being “progressive” and encouraging “diversity” when in fact all they are doing is removing rights from people who deserve them and providing them to people who don’t, like criminals and poorly-behaved children in schools. As a result, the country is becoming apathetic, with little to no respect for authority. There’s no chance of any kind of “revolution” forthcoming because the country is so weary and exhausted by the constant beatdowns and the amount of effort it takes to get a straight answer out of a politician.

I realise this all sounds a bit Daily Mail-ish and for that I apologise. But I wanted to share my thoughts, post-election. I am filled with pride and “patriotism” (for want of a better word) towards America at the moment, but it only highlights the fact that we’re doing it wrong here.

A Jedi in New York: Day 5

I’m writing this post retrospectively as Jane recovered yesterday and I spent the day feeling rather unpleasantly ill, finally experiencing the unpleasantness of vomiting first via my mouth then via my arse at about 5am. I feel a bit better now though, if tired. Maybe we’re allergic to New York, maybe we picked up some weird virus, I don’t know. But I think we’re both over it now having spent some time talking to God.

Despite this, we had a great day yesterday. We visited the Natural History Museum which, despite getting up the earliest we’ve managed all week, we somehow didn’t manage to get into until after lunch. This may have been partly due to our practical demonstration of the difference between “local” and “express” Metro trains – the latter of which was the first one we boarded today, then wondered why it sailed past the station for the Natural History Museum, then streets beyond it until we were well over 40 blocks away from where we wanted to be!

We’re going back to the Museum today to see some other bits because we didn’t have a lot of time to see things in the end, though we got a chance to see the dinosaurs and an interesting section on Asian peoples. We got kicked out at closing time though – 5:45 – so we decided to head down to the south end of Manhattan to take a look at Bodies… The Exhibition. I think most people know about this by now, but for the uninitiated, it’s an exhibition showing how our bodies work via the means of real-life dissected bodies.

This wasn’t as gross as I was expecting, interestingly. It was, however, interesting to see the different body parts, how they interact and what they actually look like. There were also some interesting displays on the blood supply to various parts of the body, where they had injected the veins and arteries with a special dye and then chemically “decomposed” the rest of the body, leaving only the blood vessels.

The other great thing about Bodies which I hadn’t really considered before was its stunning use of lighting. The whole exhibition hall was very dark, with pools of light surrounding each major exhibit, but also focusing very tightly on small “body trivia” signs on the wall. The overall effect was very distinctive and memorable, and lent a huge amount of atmosphere to the whole exhibition.

Finally, once we had done this, it was time to go out for dinner to a restaurant I’d heard a little about from a few people and was intrigued to try, though it had a reputation for being expensive. I am referring to Ninja New York, a themed Japanese restaurant where you are served by ninjas and the food is self-proclaimed “high-end Japanese cuisine”. The food was indeed tasty, and the “interactive” dishes, which often involved something exploding or having to pull a sword out of something followed by it emitting an atmospheric mist were great. We also got an after-dinner magic show by “New York’s tallest ninja” who displayed some Derren Brown-style tricks to us which he admitted were inspired by the performer, and that he secretly hoped Derren Brown didn’t get too popular in the States because he’d then be relegated to the status of “Oh hey, you’re that guy who does stuff a bit like Derren Brown”. His mastery of manipulation and misdirection was excellent though, and it was a great display to finish the meal with.

The only things with the Ninja restaurant was you need to be 1) really hungry (we had a five-course banquet…) 2) really rich (…for $50-$70 each) and 3) not mind that “recommendations” sometimes turn into “orders” without you remembering having ordered them (and to counter this, if something unexpected arrives, simply tell them… they’re ninjas, they can handle it). All in all though, it was a fantastic meal that is worth experiencing, particularly, I would imagine, if you have kids.

We’re flying home at 10pm local time tonight. Neither of us want to go home. We’ve started to feel “settled” here now and are coming to terms with New York’s own little idiosyncrasies, although the Metro still occasionally bamboozles us. We’ll definitely be back, without question.

A Jedi in New York: Day 4

Still here! Again, another short entry as it’s pretty late, once again, and we both need our sleep! My legs are exhausted from the amount of walking we’ve both been doing.

Today we went to the Museum of Sex (surprisingly work-safe – the website, anyway) as it was something that little bit “different” to the norm, plus it was somewhere that we could again use our New York Passes.

There are three exhibitions on at the Museum at present – The Sex Lives of Animals, Sex and the Moving Image and a selection from the Museum’s permanent collection.

First came the Animals section, which presented an interestingly “alternative” take on natural history and biology by focusing exclusively on the sexual behaviour of animals, mostly looking closely at unusual behaviour which in many cases, the curator describes, goes against Darwin’s theories of natural selection, against Creationism and instead presents a third possibility.

In practical terms, this meant we got to look at videos of animals masturbating, fucking every possible way they could and even some discussion on homosexuality in animals, including the story of the gay penguins And Tango Makes Three which got banned from many, many educational institutions. It was interesting and, yes, different, as expected.

On the floor above was the Sex and the Moving Image exhibition. As the name implies, this exhibition charted the use of sex (or lack thereof) in movies from the earliest black and white silent films, where sex was mostly implied (with the exception of “stag” movies – early porn films, very few of which have survived due to their illegality at the time, but some examples of which were on, err, “display”) through the more liberal approach that developed over the years, taking in (no pun intended) Russ Meyer and Deep Throat all the way to modern porn and celebrity sex tapes, contrasting hugely with how mainstream film deals with sexual encounters. There were also some shorter videos from Beautiful Agony (NSFW) showing different people’s faces during orgasm, and a selection of sex-themed commercials from over the years.

Then in the final room we had the selections from the Museum’s permanent collection, which included male and female RealDolls (sex dolls that run into the thousands of dollars due to their supposed “realism”) to a selection of sex machines, including a terrifying-looking one that was essentially a rubber cock attached to a Black and Decker drill.

So that was nice.

Anyway, we spent rather longer in the Museum than we had intended, as we’d originally planned to move on to Bodies… The Exhibition and also potentially to go and see Ground Zero later in the day. However, we’d also made plans to meet up with the fine gentlemen Papapishu and Regulus for dinner in St Mark’s Place at a Japanese joint called Kenka which is often filled with Japanese ex-pats, is very noisy, serves traditional Japanese food that isn’t sushi (which I’ve never had before, and which proved to be delicious, even the deep-fried garlic) and serves terrifying “specials” such as bull penis.

So it’s been a good day, only marred by the fact that Jane’s not been feeling too well off-and-on since last night. I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing her a big “get well soon”.

A Jedi in New York: Day 3

Hello again! This has to be the most blog updates I’ve done in a week since… ever, I guess. Nothing like having the time to sit back, relax and not have to worry about anything. Jane’s currently soaking in a nice hot bath, we’ve had a nice meal at the hotel’s restaurant and another great day.

Today we did two main things. Firstly, we revisited Central Park, this time to go to the Central Park Zoo. Jane was very excited about this – so much so that she appeared to be regressing to childhood. I have to admit, it having been a long time since I’d seen a zoo also, I was also keen to see the animals.

Central Park Zoo is relatively small in the grand scheme of zoos. We later discovered by finally reading the guidebook that we bought a couple of days before the wedding that the Bronx Zoo is the one to go to if you want a full-on large-scale zoo/safari-style experience. That’s going to have to wait for another visit though, I think! This isn’t to say that Central Park Zoo isn’t good – far from it, in fact, as the relatively few displays of animals on offer mean that you can easily get around all of them and take plenty of photos.

We started by looking at the Rainforest section – an area where it is impossible for people to walk in without going “Oooh, it’s hot in here!”. Well, duh. In the Rainforest area we saw a huge variety of tropical birds and some amazing monkeys whose species escapes me for the moment, but they had huge bushy tails like squirrels that were very “expressive” in their own peculiar way.

Next up, we saw the polar bears, who were asleep. It occurred to us that it was entirely plausible for someone to go to one of these zoos and not see any animals if they were all asleep. I felt a little sorry for the polar bears as it was a relatively warm day today, but then I remembered how cold it had been for the last couple of days and determined that they were probably all right.

Moving around, we then saw a red panda, which looks more like a tree-hugging fox than a panda. It too was asleep, but at least it had the decency to sleep in a tree where you could see it.

Next we saw the snow monkeys of “see no evil” fame. These little guys were extremely active – running and jumping around and picking things off their feet. It’s strange how watching a creature like a monkey do something that we do – picking fluff from between your toes, for example – is infinitely more interesting and amusing than seeing another human doing it.

Then we saw the penguins, which Jane was very excited about. The penguins lived in a darkened room that smelled of fish, and were extremely docile, swimming right up to the edge of their enclosure and posing for pictures. I was also impressed at their speed in the water considering their clumsiness on land – and the fact that they can throw themselves out of the water at high speed and then land upright without breaking a sweat.

So that was the zoo. Fun, and a worthwhile way to spend the morning.

This afternoon we took the three-hour Circle Line Island Tour, which circumnavigates the whole of Manhattan with a guided commentary. The tour we elected to go on at 3:30 also happened to coincide with sunset towards its end, so it was likely to be a good photo opportunity. Photos to follow when I’ve been through all of them – over a thousand now, I reckon. 🙂