| [December 03 2003] |
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I owe it all to the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Fuckers.
Two things I cannot eat: fish and raw onions.
Three things: fish, raw onions and beetroot. And spam and tinned spaghetti, now I come to think of it.
Five things I cannot eat: fish, raw onions, beetroot, spam and tinned spaghetti.
Oh, and how could I forget the biggest one of all: TINNED RICE PUDDING, TOPPED WITH A BROWN "SKIN".
Why?
I'll tell you why. Fucking nuns and my mother. That should bring up a good bunch of Google search hits.
But anyway. The raw onion thing was not malicious on my mother's part. Unusually. It was all about her having good taste but unfortunately only one wooden chopping board. The one also used for chopping onions and garlic. Mum used to buy very nice unsliced loaves of bread which would rest on the chopping board ready for slicing and toasting. Lovely thick doorsteps of toast dripping with butter. Oh the anticipation.
Oh the fucking shock when you took a big mouthful and got unexpected onion-bread. God, just the memory of of retching at the taste makes me want to retch again. There's nothing like vomiting a mouthful of half-chewed onion toast into the bin to scar an impressionable young child.
In time, (as I'm sure my sister and brother would confirm) I became a chopping-board nazi. Anything SUPPOSED TO BE SAVOURY was banned from resting on the BREAD chopping board. On pain of a giant huge massive tantrum from me. I insisted my mother buy a plastic bread board that was officially ONION FREE and fucking woe betide any fucker who had the temerity to place an onion or any fresh garlic anywhere fucking near my BREAD board of purity. It's about the angriest I would ever get when that happened.
Now I love onion and garlic - don't think I don't. I just don't want my toast to taste of them. Various flatmates through the ages have had to put up with my onion/bread board dichotomy. Mostly they have born it with resigned good grace. But to this day, I can't eat raw onion as it brings back the memory of bread retched into a bin.
But the fish and the beetroot and the spam and the tinned spaghetti and the rice pudding with skin - well they come courtesty of the bitch-nuns of the Insitute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You remember, the ones who caught me with the porn mag.
This school was just chock full of extremely rich children. Unfortunately, they were extremely rich English children, so when it came to food they were used to eating the culinary equivalent of a baked turd. They also had flat feet and teeth that stuck out in that peculiar upper class way. My mother was an excellent cook and made us wear shoes with slightly raised heels and put me in braces to correct my teeth. You can tell we weren't really English or posh.
So at this expensive, rich school they charged about $70 a term extra for lunch. Not like you had any choice about the matter, packed lunches were banned, so you had to cough up. And for that princely sum (and it was a lot in the early 1970s), we got a plate with raw pickled beetroot, lumpy instant mashed potates and a a couple of slices of spam. Jesus wept. But the girls lapped it up.
I think I was initially puzzled by this awful food, and may even have attempted to negotiate with the nuns along the lines of don't make me eat this, I'd rather die. I was an articulate three-year-old. No dice. So I came up with a compromise. I just threw my food on the floor secretly. It worked for a few years.
The worst, the absolute worst was on Fridays when they gave us what they hilariously referred to as "fishcakes". God, I'm grinding my teeth in horror just writing this. These round orange blobs were low-grade fish arseholes ground into a pulp, rolled in batter and vomit and then baked and served to defenceless children. The mere smell of them cooking was enough to send us all into a panic. I tried to think of them as a punishment from God and I was convinced that if I was more pious and studious then God wouldn't send down the plague of fishcakes. Well, either God doesn't fucking exist or I'm just not *good* enough but those fishcakes kept coming.
So they went on the floor, along with the spam and the beetroot and the tinned spaghetti. Until the day that fucking bitch Nina F told on me. I don't hate many people but I still hate that bullying cow even though I haven't seen her since I was 11. She was big and mean and enjoyed sadistically picking on everyone. If she wasn't beating us herself, she was delivering us up to the nuns for a whack. My whole class was extremely relieved when she was in a car accident and had to miss months of school. Even though we knew it was sinful to rejoice in another's misfortune, it was just so fucking fantastic that she wasn't there terrorising us all. I can feel the euphoria, tinged with guilt, as if it were yesterday.
The day bitchface told on me was a rice-pudding day. Christ that stuff was bad. They'd bake the fuck out of it until it developed a brown skin. Then someone from each table of ten children would walk up to the nuns and take two plates and ask for large, medium or small. If you were lucky, you got Sister Philippa who would allow you to ask for a "tiny" of something you really hated. If you were unlucky, you got Sister Peter, who would scoff: "Nonsense!" and heap a giant bastard blob on your plate just for having the cheek to ask.
Sister Philippa was known for being mild-mannered and true to form she gave me a "tiny". I was grateful and immediately began spooning it onto the floor. Bitch-face told on me and Sister Philippa came over and was rather cross. It developed into a classic confrontation. She demanded I eat it, I refused. She demanded, I refused again. She put jam in it and mixed it in. I still refused - just the smell made me want to puke and I did warn her it would make me sick.
Everyone finished lunch and I was left behind sitting with a congealing bowl of rice-pudding and jam and skin. Sister Phillipa demonstrated an unexpected inability to deal with confrontation and decided to take direct action. She wrapped an arm around my neck, reached up and held my nose closed and began to force the rice-pudding into my mouth. It certainly worked, up to a point. I was forced to swallow the stuff or I couldn't breath.
She enjoyed her triumph for a couple of minutes. Until I leaned over and puked all over her shoes. They were black woven sandals and some of my puke ended up seeping through the airholes and into her thick black tights. She was so fucking angry I thought she'd pop but she couldn't say I hadn't warned her. So I cleaned her shoes and mopped up the floor and took my beating and a couple of weeks later my mother got permission for my sister and I to take packed lunches in, as my sister had decided she was a vegetarian. I love my sister dearly for that. And I'll bet Sister Phillipa's puke shoes were in some way responsible the fact that for once, the evil psychotic headmistress Sister Richard didn't even bother to put up a fight.
We were the only children in the school allowed packed lunches. Like I say, I love my sister dearly for that.
Posted by eurotrash at 8:58 pm
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Don't shoot! I'm a liberal and I give to charity.
My problem is that I think if I piss off an American, he'll shoot me or stab me.
You think I'm joking, but I'm not. My first exposure to America was through New York cab drivers in the 1970s and they were frankly the scariest fuckers around. Then in the 1980s you lot invented Road Rage - in California, I seem to recall. We heard a lot about that. It was very big over in Britain. We simply couldn't imagine why you would shoot someone who overtook you on the motorway. Well, times have changed and now the British are almost as angry as you lot. In the 1990s I think it was your shooting sprees in MacDonalds that freaked us out. Until we had our own child-killing murderous effort at Dunblane. You know what they say, America sneezes and Britain catches a cold.
And then there were programmes like Starsky and Hutch, the Streets of San Francisco and Miami Vice, movies like Dirty Harry and Taxi Driver and Scarface. Is it any wonder we figured Americans were all hair-trigger psychos with guns? Who also wore shockingly bad clothes?
This wouldn't be a problem these days, as I've met some damn fine non-psychos since I've been living over here. And few of them own guns.
It's just. Well. I keep sort of getting mugged. I've wised up to the "please buy a bag of M&Ms for $2 to support our non-existent basketball team" scam. But they're usually kids, so they don't scare me quite as much. And I always give to the homeless charity with the big water cooler collection bottles in Manhattan.
It's the other ones. The ones who just ask you for money with an evil glint in their eye. The other day a man stopped me on the street, glared at me menacingly and asked me for a quarter. A quarter?! Was it worth all the menace? Obviously it was as I gave him a quarter because I was scared he was going to stab me if I didn't. Frankly, he could have gone for $10, as I am not only a bleeding heart liberal, but a coward to boot.
The same day a drunk man walked up to me in the street and told me his wallet had been stolen and he needed money to get back to Lyndhurst, NJ. Although scared he would shoot me, I did point out that the police station was up the road, but he said he'd already been there and they didn't believe him. I was tempted to say why not call home and get someone to come and pick you up, but I knew I was seconds away from a serated blade in the gut, so I just gave him a couple of dollars. But I was not a little cross with him, I can tell you.
And there's the dude with the big hair and beard that I see around a lot and he always asks me for money and I always give it to him and he always asks me where I'm from and I always say England and he always asks where from in England and I always say London and he always tells me he's been there and I always just want to fucking slap him hard and remind him we have this conversation at least once a week and isn't he tired of it because I am. And then I feel guilty. He's not going to stab me, he's just going to *bore* me to death instead.
I don't want to turn into one of these people who never gives money to beggars on the principle that of course they're all secret millionaires, earning at least $100k a year on the street, and sleeping in a mansion on the Upper East Side. I figure anyone who spends all day on the street asking people for money can't really have that great a life. And if they want to spend my dollar on booze, well, hell - who would want to be *sober* and living on the streets?
It's just that occasionally, when they're horrid to me, I'd like to be able to say no. But I think it will take years of re-programming, and in the meantime, I'm the softest touch in town.
Posted by eurotrash at 10:37 am
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[December 02 2003] |
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Solid foundations.
Some people don't like to talk about stuff. Sex, death, bodily functions. I can talk about most things, but I do avoid politics, in general, as I think even the highest political institutions in the country have proved the futility of political debate.
But I've noticed there's one thing that people, particularly women, don't talk about in general, which is surprising considering it's something we all do pretty much on a daily basis. You'll be in a bar with a bunch of people and at some point someone will excuse themselves off to go for a pee. Or you'll be out somewhere and someone will say "God, I'm dying for a pee". But they never seem to be dying for a poo. Or if they are, they hide it well.
I've mentioned before that in my experience, women don't usually like to poo outside of their own homes. Being women, we are of course superior beings in many ways. We talk to each other, instead of just telling jokes or discussing cars. We talk about things that really matter to us and we're quite happy to go into gruesome detail about our sex lives, health, childbirth and cooking.
What we don't seem to be happy about is pooing in front of each other.
In Japan, they actually have loos where each cubicle has a flushing noise piped in the entire time you're in there, so no-one can hear you pee, let alone poo. Quite marvellous.
I learned early on, that even in an office with few women, it's very hard to get quiet poo time. You have to develop a kind of guerilla war strategy. You have to be clever and think ahead. I mean, only a suicide poo mission would launch between the hours of 12pm and 2pm. Hello. It's *lunch* time. If they're not peeing on the way out, they'll pee when they get back in. And some freaks brush their teeth after lunch. And they take hours doing it, proving just how dentically virtuous they are. I hate those ones.
When I was a kid, no-one really explained to me about pooing. Consequently I grew up thinking it was something only I did. Some weird form of punishment from God for my share of original sin. So I'd hoard my poos for days. It's called constipation, and I was a religious victim of it. It took me into my 20s before I could actually get my pooing straight. And it was too late for one particular loo, which felt, along with me, the wrath of God.
I was working on a little newspaper in the west of England. It was a small newsroom with maybe 15 journalists, the majority of whom, unusually, were women. And there were only three cubicles in the loo. And the loo was in a corner that no-one ever needed to go to unless they were going to said loo. You see my problem. If I went in and stayed too long, it was like I would come out with a big sign over my head saying "EUROTRASH JUST WENT FOR A SINFUL POO!".
So I developed a good strategy. Poo on the early shift. If you were on the early shift, you were the only reporter in, between 7am and 8am. Excellent clear run on the defecation front. I guess this must have been my first early shift in a while, as I clearly had an urgent need to do a fair amount of business. I crept into the loo and managed a whole Rosary while expelling the monster. Not that I looked at it, oh no, one didn't look at one's poo. One gave thanks to God it had gone, flushed in a businesslike manner and left promptly.
So far so good, except this time, after flushing and washing my hands, I noticed water seeping under the door of the cubicle I'd been in. Shit! Literally. I went back in and found that the sinful waste product I'd given up to God, was having a bit of trouble finding it's way back to heaven. It was so enormous due to my zealous hoarding that it had blocked the loo. And the loo had backed up. And it was now 7.30am and that stupid cow R who was always sucking up to news desk by getting in early was due any second, and she always went straight to the loo to wash her hands. She was odd like that.
Shit shit shit shit shit. I was in a frenzy. Sweating, shaking, freaking. I knew what I had to do, but I didn't want to do it. I stood paralysed looking at the foundations for a log cabin nestling securely in the u-bend. Then I hopped about, groaning for a bit but it didn't make the poo from hell go away.
So I did it.
Yes. I mummified my hand in toilet paper, and, God help me, I pushed that fucker down the bend. It was squishy. I retched. I flushed and that bastard poo finally commenced its journey to sewer heaven. Shaking, I washed my hand and arm and managed to mop up the floor seconds before the Hand Washer arrived to begin her morning neurosis. She looked at me oddly, which was not surprising, as I was drenched in sweat and shaking. "Another puking hangover, Eurotrash?" she sneered. I nodded gratefully and ran.
Posted by eurotrash at 1:44 pm
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| [November 30 2003] |
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Note to fucking self.
- If a gay man dressed as Napoleon tells you that you have beautiful shoulders, it does not make you a supermodel. Or God.
- Ditto when he tells you about your fabulous tits.
- Drink less, for Christ's sake.
- KGB pills may indeed stave off the puking the next day, but they also make you feel like you've had your insides sucked out by a straw. One can come close to feeling like the zen of an empty coke can.
- You may think your drunken Gorgon-Medusa-Robert Downey Jr pre-rehab impression is fun. Others may not.
- Just because a man is tall and English and you're drunk does not make him cute. Even if he *is* regretting marrying that girl in Mexico.
- Friends are people who are prepared to put up with you being an arsehole. But even they have their limits.
- Getting home with your camera, phone and purse intact is great. Next time, pack the self-esteem too and see how far that makes it back.
- Still, at least you woke up alone.
- It could have been worse.
- God knows, it frequently has been.
- Think of the CHILDREN. And Jesus. He'll love me. He's supposed to love everyone.
Posted by eurotrash at 10:00 am
23 comments were posted (add / view)
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[November 28 2003] |
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Sod John Cusack.
The person, or rather people, I most want to interview right now are the people who own the newpaper kiosk outside of Hoboken PATH station. I'm just having a little trouble summoning up the nerve.
Not only have I never seen a dirty movie, I have never bought a porn magazine either. That is not to say I haven't been in a sex shop. Once, while tipsy, a friend and I staggered into Ann Summers on Tottenham Court Road in London. But I'm not sure that really counts as a sex shop. More like the sex equivalent of a Carry On film. All very "Ooooh Matron!" and not terribly hardcore. At least, it wasn't back then. We did a lot of giggling at the edible g-strings and dashed out feeling like we'd done something REALLY RUDE. Pathetic, really.
And then a few years later, a sort of feminist sex shop opened in London called "Shh!". I may have the number of "h"s wrong there, but you get the drift. And I read about it in the newspaper - women were welcome, but they had to make an appointment if they wanted to bring a man with them. Hooo! And they served you coffee while you "browsed", allegedly.
Too good to miss, so a couple of us piled over there. We had to ring a bell and were scrutinised for lack of accompanying Sexual Oppressors before being admitted. Well, they didn't make us coffee. And they looked at us rather suspiciously as we didn't look obviously lesbian. Something of a disappointment, I fear.
There was an atmosphere of aggressively relaxed lesbian-feminist politics in the air, which I found a little unerotic. And the porn was all so, well, *supportive*, is the only way I can describe it. Like a sex education lesson from a womens' group that wants you to understand that your vagina is a rosebud, and take pictures of it and write poems to it. I left empty-handed, but my friend bought a politically correct vibrator and a book that lecutured you on becoming orgasmic and beat you if you didn't.
And now of course we have the internet, so you can get what you want, when you want it, just mind out for those pesky pop-ups.
And then the other day I was standing at the kiosk in Hoboken using the ATM machine. And while I waited for the damn thing to dial up and confirm it would give my money my eyes drifted up to just above the machine and were instantly glued to "Anal Schoolgirls". Oh dear. Shifted them left and there's "Readers Wives - HARDCORE!". Good grief. Turn to the right and, look! There's "Hustler - Barely Legal". Row upon row upon wave upon wave of porn. The only safe place to look was down at my feet, or at three sad arts and crafts magazines huddling together for safety in the bottom left hand corner.
Let's say maybe 75 percent of all the magazines in the display wall were porn. I was astounded to notice it, and then I thought who the hell would buy their porn mags from their local news kiosk? And why buy porn mags at all when you have the internet?
Then I realised that masturbating while hunched over your computer is probably not only bad for the keyboard, but probably eventually a little soul-destroying too. And not good for your back in the long-term, I imagine. So I understand why you might want to buy slightly more *portable* forms of porn, but I still don't understand why you'd buy them from people you see everyday. Especially if you're a big fan of Anal Schoolgirls. I mean, don't you mind people in your neighbourhood knowing that you fantasise about buggering schoolgirls? I would kind of keep that quiet, myself.
And then I wondered how these people went about buying them. Do they grasp their copy of "BARELY LEGAL TEEN SLUTS" with pride, and march up to the vendor shouting: "HAIL AND WELL MET, GOOD FELLOW. HOW MUCH FOR THIS FINE PICE OF PORN?", before slapping their thigh and marching off to read it on the PATH on the way in to work?
Or do they slink it in between Time and Newsweek and shuffle a bit and clear their throat and look anywhere except at the vendor and hope no-one notices and they don't have to query the price for "Red Hot Stacked Mamas" by shouting to the bloke over there who's refilling the drinks cabinet?
Or do they wear a baseball hat and dark glasses and a scarf and put on a funny accent?
I need to know. And I need to ask the kiosk vendors. But every time I've been recently, it's been the nice woman from the Indian sub-continent and I think she might be shocked. But then again, I guess she sells them. But then again, I'm a coward. I'm waiting for the shouty guy who's very Noo Joisey to work there again. Then I can buy him a coffee and pump him about his porn-patrons. I do hope he doesn't get the wrong idea.
Posted by eurotrash at 1:20 pm
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| [November 26 2003] |
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These pyjamas were made for walking.
I don't snore, but I do sleepwalk. I'm unsure if that is a fair trade-off. I know people have killed themselves over their chronic and unmanageable snoring, but sleepwalking is a bummer. Especially if you are partially-clothed and at your boyfriend's friends' house. And they're all still awake. God, I still shudder at that memory.
Now, the incomparable Freddie Firestarter, loser of the War of the Hair, unlucky in love, has a very funny story involving me sleepwalking. Something to do with waking up and finding me standing in the bath. When she asked what I was doing, while still asleep I replied: "DUH! I'm going to bed! What does it look like?! DUH!"
Bitchy, even when asleep. That's me.
But nothing, repeat, nothing can top the Firestarter's sleepwalking classic.
I was in a po-faced business meeting in France when I got a call on my mobile. I could see it was from Freddie, so I was half-tempted to just ignore it. I was in a meeting, after all. But the Gods looked kindly on Freddie that day - undeservedly, I think - so I answered.
There was a stream of gibberish after which I came to understand that Freddie was in someone's else's flat, wearing her sheep patterned pyjamas and was in need of help.
Freddie has been known to take the odd drink or two in her time.
As, I must admit, have I. When we shared a flat we were usually good for getting each other home, even if it was in a cab round the corner. A lot of the time, I'd be at home, asleep when I would be woken by the sound of twenty-odd people outside our front door all shouting: "SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! MUSN'T WAKE EUROTRASH UP! SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Then they would stumble in and bang the door to the living room loudly: "SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! CLOSE THE DOOR, MUSN'T WAKE EUROTRASH UP! SHE'S ASLEEP!" Well, no she isn't. Now. Then they'd all launch into a lively karaoke rendition of The King's "I Just Can't Help Believing" accompanied by imaginary trombones at the tromboney moment. And inevitably. at about 4am, one chap would go and pee Niagra Falls in the bathroom next to my bedroom, roughly parallell with my head.
But this time Freddie was on her own and a right royal mess she made of it. She did, it must be said, manage to get home. She just didn't manage to stay there. She'd been out on the piss, got home and crashed out. She somehow arranged to get into her sheep pyjamas and put her phone on charge. Admirable. Then she woke up. At about 2am. Outside our front door in her jim-jams. She was knocking on the door and calling for me. Alas, I was fast asleep. In a hotel room in France, so no joy there, Freddie. After about an hour of knocking she remembered that I wasn't there, and figured this was probably not a practical solution to her problem.
She staggered upstairs and knocked on the neighbours' door. They answered and pretended they didn't have a phone. I don't blame them. If I'd been confronted by a drunken Freddie in blue pjs with sheep all over them, I'd probably have called the police or social services.
By now Freddie was panicking. No phone, no clothes and pjs with sheep all over them. Not good. So she went to the downstairs neighbours. As she knocked, the door swung open. Freddie crept in, whispering: "Hello? Anybody home?" Let's hope they don't have guns, eh? Though most burlgars don't wear pyjamas, as far as I know.
The flat was empty. Hurrah! There was a rotting couch in one corner and a curtain on the floor. Looks like a bed made in heaven to our Freddie at that moment. She curls up and goes to sleep. Bewildered, but relatively safe.
The next morning she managed to rouse our next door neighbour and called me in France. Luckily, I used to be highly anal-retentive and always kept spare keys in a desk in my office. Once I'd stopped laughing I arranged to have them couriered over to the Fredster. Then I laughed for about another hour and told everyone in my meeting what had happened. Then I told everyone else I knew. Finally, I took out ads in the national newspapers.
I'd figured Freddie had been locked out while saying goodbye to some bloke she'd picked up. She swore, and swears to this day, that there was no man involved. To this day, I almost believe her.
Posted by eurotrash at 12:01 pm
Fourteen comments were posted (add / view) |
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[November 25 2003] |
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The most important thing in the world.
When I was little, there was an advert for some brand of tea on the telly that had the catchline: "Tea. Best Drink of the Day". People still say it today, even though the advert died, woah, probably back in the early 1980s.
So everybody knows the British are tea-drinking, snaggle-toothed ponces, and gay to boot. Well, folks, you haven't met the Irish. The Irish can knock British tea-drinking (and occasionally bad dentistry) into a cocked hat, and then spit on that hat for good measure.
The difference between me and Proust, (one of them, anyway) is that I don't need to dunk anything into my tea to suddenly remember stuff. I'm dunking every day, metaphorically speaking. Tea is there. Ever-present. It's the first thing I drink every morning. I wish I could say it's the last thing I drink at night, but that's usually something with vodka in it. Tea is my childhood, my present, my future. Which is why I get RATHER FUCKED OFF about the American "way" of tea.
NUMBER FUCKING ONE.
It's not "hot tea" it's just "tea". The only thing you should do with cold tea is THROW IT AWAY. We invented tea (sort of), so we should know. Just as it's not "field hockey", it's just "hockey". The other thing is called "ice hockey". And "football" is soccer. The game where heavily padded men run around in tights and helmets is called "American Football". OK?
To make tea, you need one very important thing AND IT'S NOT A FUCKING MICROWAVE. It's a *kettle*, (pron: Keh-Tul). You know, one of those things from the last century that doesn't look anything like a coffee maker and it boils water, instead of irradiating it. And speaking of coffee, if you're all so proud of your coffee-drinking Starbucks-peddling supremacy, then why does most of your coffee taste like ditchwater. I've had cups of warm brown liquid over here that I've had to send to a laboratory for analysis of any trace of coffee, or coffee-related products. I know this will come as a surprise, but coffee *is* actually better if it tastes of something. Try that one at home. And no, you can't just add hot sauce to it.
When I was a child there was always a pot of tea on the table. Always. It came in a tea pot, (pron: Tee-Poht), and contained tea leaves (pron: Tee Leeves) and boiled water (pron: Boy-Ulled War-Ter). It was strong and dark and you poured it into your mug (which was never a brown mug - reeked of poverty in my mother's psyche) - via a little plastic fishing-net-type device called a strainer, which was designed to catch all the tea leaves. At the end of a pot, your strainer had a little turd-like pyramid of tea leaves in it. That was the signal to put the kettle on again.
We even had little knitted hats that went over the teapot, leaving holes for the spout and handle to poke out, so our tea was kept warm. By the bottom of the pot, the tea would be thick and brown and so strong it made you shudder. Chewy, almost.
But if you must use a "teabag" - you know, those little bag things with tea leaves inside them - then you must remember to "mash" them. This is where you stand in a kind of Japanese tea ceremony trance, squishing your tea bag against the sides of your mug, until the tea is a suitable dark brown. Not a watery, "I drink coffee really and this is confusing me" light brown. And you never, ever, ever put the milk in before the water, whatever anyone tells you. One must see the shade of brown one is getting before knowing how much milk to add. The final colour of one's cup of milk-enhanced tea is a highly personal thing. Some like it light (wimps, The English, Americans), some like it dark (the Irish and me).
Do you see what I'm getting at here? Making tea is a labour of love, a ritual, an assertion of roots, a divider of class (only builders take more than two sugars in their tea). It's IMPORTANT.
If you lot took quite as much care over your coffee, you might eventually end up with something drinkable. Just a thought.
Posted by eurotrash at 4:26 pm
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| [November 22 2003] |
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Sins of the daughters.
Can anyone really say they're not at least superficially fascinated by porn?
While trawling through Religious Nutjobs Inc the other day, I was mildly surprised not to see a tract along the lines of: naughty anti-social irreligious bisexual teenager John is given a porn magazine by his gleeful AIDS-ridden pro-abortion liberal arts teacher. Soon he is out dealing drugs and murdering people to feed his porn addiction. He ignores warnings about the evils of porn from a kindly but insistent pastor so he gets AIDS and goes to hell. Hurrah!
I've been lurking around the nether regions of the Internet recently, not because I enjoy reading about human equines and people who get off on watching girls climb ropes, but because I've been doing a bit of research for something. No, really.
Now this murky little world is not porn, per se. It's bulletin boards, info sites, communities of the "weird" banding together to share experiences, photos (often amateur) and instructions on the correct way to wear a bridle and bit. And then there's the nasty porn. And then there's just the common or garden hardcore porn.
While not a real consumer of porn - I've never seen a dirty movie, for instance, it did define a rather important moment in my life. And it involved nuns. The moment, not the porn.
I went to an extremely posh convent school run by rabid sadist nuns, when I was a child. The tribal nun identitity was the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an order which in those days enjoyed beating four-year-olds who were late for school. They didn't beat their parents, which I thought was rather unfair. We got slapped, hit with rulers, had our noses and ears pulled and were generally humiliated at least once a day for the sins of sloth (if we did badly in lessons) or pride (if we did well).
We collected money in little boxes so that starving girls in Africa could be talked out of having abortions and into having another mouth to feed and bury. But we got to colour in little paper figures and have them move up a paper stairway to heaven if we collected lots of money, so that was fun.
Most of the girls there were upper middle class, if not upper class. I was obviously a cuckoo in the nest, but I was foreign, so that was kind of ok. But there were a few children from the *lower orders* who slipped through, and predictably, from the nuns' point of view, that's where it all went wrong.
A girl in my class lived above the pub her father owned. And one day while hanging around the pub (it was closed at the time, lest you get some idea that this was a family of Dickensian vice and squalour), she found a porn mag in a drawer, probably put there by the barman. As I recall, it was a magazine promo for a film called The Starbirds, featuring Britain's then *only* porn superstar, [safe for work? I'm not sure. I don't know if this would even qualify as naughty these days] Mary Millington. There were breasts, some priests, I think, and you could see pubes, but I don't think any split-crotch stuff. All very tame by today's standards.
But we were 10-year-old Catholics. Our biology lessons consisted of drawing badgers and sparrows and moles. It is wholly fortunate that when I went to a more enlightened senior school, they taught us about menstruation a couple of months before I had my first ever period. Otherwise I could be considerably weirder than I am now, because my mother sure as hell wasn't ever going to mention the subject. Think Carrie, here.
So my friend finds the porn mag and brings it to school. Cue much huddling and giggling and we all get to take it home for the night in turn. Bad move in retrospect, seeing as how we had a mother who searched our bedrooms, bags and the wendy house in the garden with sniffer dogs on a daily basis. I had the magazine in my school bag (duh!) and my mother went to put my lunch in it and have a good poke around, but this time she got more than she bargained for.
Meltdown.
I had to confess where I'd got it (SNITCH!), and my mother phoned the head evil-dead nun to expose the filth conspiracy. I was then marched out into the garden for the Ceremonial Burning Of The Filth on the compost heap. Immediately afterwards I was put into a metaphorical communist re-education camp. For the rest of my life. The nuns slapped me. A lot. And while my mother went on to do an MA in Deviancy, I developed a lifelong fascination with the weird. If that isn't a defining moment, then I don't know what is.
Mea culpa. Mea culpa, mea maxima fucking culpa.
Posted by eurotrash at 12:49 pm
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[November 21 2003] |
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It was the pills, you see. Damn the Russians.
A night out in New York City.
I can't type. I can barely see.
Blame her and
him.
Party. Of sorts.
Men with too much hair product.
Secretaries from New Jersey, jiggling.
Investment bankers (enough said).
A pub.
KGB pills.
The strangest bar in the world.
Big fat mad bar tender.
He kissed my hand.
Bouncer. Who we met again somewhere. After we left the pub. Or did I dream that?
Think I got the PATH home, but need independent confirmation of this.
Mildly want to die.
Posted by eurotrash at 10:16 am
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| [November 20 2003] |
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[November 19 2003] |
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I feel so "whelmed".
Like I said. I have things to do today. So I'll leave you with my search hits today so far. I'll be back. Probably.
1. eurotrash
2. blog
3. in
4. bisexual
5. wee
6. upsaid
7. Reeves
8. knickers
9. outside
10. fitnessmadesimple
11. knickerless
12. porn
13. the
14. girls
15. What
16. Keanu
17. peeing
18. Eurotrash
19. interview
20. drunk
21. my
22. is
23. bushes
"Keanu peeing" and "drunk my is bushes." Woooo! How very *me*. And yesterday I had two "salad"+"semen" searches.
I love life.
Posted by eurotrash at 8:19 am
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