20 years ago today

November 9th, 1989. My wife Elizabeth and I were hold up in some dilapidated campground in Tennessee.  We managed to pitch our tent just before the heavens opened up and transformed our surroundings into a muddy bog.  I had turned 24 the day before and in celebration we abstained from our normal diet of tuna fish sandwiches and potato chips and splurged on a fancy restaurant, Shoney's.

Being stone-broke and living out of the back of my pickup truck we took a pragmatic view of restaurants: if the food was cheep and there was lots of it, we'd eat there.  Thus we tended to frequent all-you-can-stomach chains like Fir's Cafeterias and, when we felt flush, Shoney's.  

Anyone who has passed through the American South has doubtlessly encountered a Shoney's.  They're part of the quintessential Red State dining experience and, along with morbid obesity, inbreeding and homophobia, a proud Southern institution.  In fact, with menu items such as the Deluxe Pancake Platter (1609 calories, 32.3g of fat) and the Sausage and Biscuits Breakfast (1057 calories, 65.7g of fat) one might say that Shoney's is leading the charge to keep redneck asses the widest in the world.  USA!!

Be that as it may, twenty years ago when faced with the choice of having a birthday dinner served up cold with the help of a can opener and an individually wrapped cheese slice or presented to me in the form of a ten-yard long buffet overflowing with deep-fat-fried goodness, I found myself reaching for a plate and elastic waistband trousers.  

But I digress.

The campground where we found ourselves that wet night in 1989 was almost unique in its luxury: it had flush toilets and hot showers- two items of almost palatial indulgence after weeks spent pissing in gas stations and washing our hair in MacDonald's bathrooms (Those hand dryers that everyone hates?  When you're homeless you learn to love their hair drying ability.). 

Even more exciting than the prospect of standing under warm water until our skin shriveled up was discovering that just off to the side of the reception hut there was a heated room with a pool table and a colour TV.  After months on the road, a good portion off which was spent in willful ignorance of the goings on of the larger world, we were positively giddy with excitement at the possibility of whiling away an evening partaking in what, to a sheltered individual, would seem the most mundane of activities: shooting pool and watching television. 

Elizabeth racked up the balls, I bought two grape Nehis and flipped on the tube.  She leaned over to take her first shot, a cigarette between her lips, blue jeans and cowboy boots; black hair almost touching the green felt of the table.  I watched her move around taking her shots, pushing her hair back from her eyes, taking a drag and letting the smoke curl up toward the ceiling.  Totally confident, completely focused, unbelievably sexy.

Elizabeth cleared the table without me so much as getting a cue on a ball and I made a mental note never to play her for money.  She racked 'em up and dropped two stripes on the break.  Seeing that it could be some time before I was a participant in the game I figured I'd try and catch up on what was happening in the larger world; I flipped channels until I found CNN and settled into what at one time was probably a padded chair.

The picture quality was dreadful and it took me several minutes to realize and then come to grips with what I was seeing.  When the reality had sunk in I could only say: 

"I don't fucking believe it!"

"I don't FUCKING believe it!"

"I DON'T FUCKING BELIEVE IT!!!"

By this time my wife had abandoned her game and was standing next to me watching in jaw-dropping amazement as the world changed before our eyes:  The Bornholmer Strasse bridge was open, thousands of people were pouring into West Berlin from the East, there were people standing on the Brandenburg Gate waving German flags and popping corks!  There was no gunfire, no tanks in the streets, like air from a balloon the old world order was deflating and no one, seemingly, was being killed over it.

We looked around for someone to share this moment with but there was no one to be found.  Cold and darkness had driven everyone back to their tents or RVs.  We stood in the blue and white TV light holding hands and crying as half a world away a monumental wrong was being made right.

Now, 20 years on, there is only one Germany and its leader is a woman who walked across that bridge, east to west, on that bitterly cold November night.  There's a lot of old wounds that still need to heal and a long way to go before the formerly divided sides reach socioeconomic parity.  Yet it does seem that they continue to make the best out of a most amazing start.

Apostrophe was not a Greek philosopher

As threatened, a much needed and highly subjective little primer on the use of apostrophes.  Pay attention class.

For several months the horrid pub on our corner displayed the following sign, see if you can spot the problem:

Toilet's are for customer's use only!

The correct answer is, of course, that the sign is redundant.  No one who wasn't suicidally insane would ever think of entering one of their tiled gas chambers.

Eventually one of their patrons must have sobered up enough to point out to the management that "Toilet's" is a possessive, implying that something belongs to the toilet.  However, in their quasi inebriated state they undoubtedly neglected to mention that in the case of nouns which are made plural by adding an "s" at the end, the "s" after the apostrophe is not used.  Thus if the sign writer wished to convey that something belonged to the toilets, the correct usage would be "toilets' ".

Several conversations along these lines must have occurred because the sign went through a rapid series of revisions:

Toilets are for customers use only!

Toilet are for customer use only!

Toilet's are for customers use only!

At last, after all exhausting all other options, they settled on the sign that graces the front door of the pub today:

Toilets are for customer's use only!

Hallelujah.

To be slightly more clear: singular nouns that don't end in "s" (or an "s" sound), are made possessive by adding an apostrophe "s".  Plural nouns that do end in an "s" get an apostrophe after the "s".

• the cat's meow
• the dog's dinner
• two flags' stripes
• thirteen ships' rum pots

These rules also apply when we are talking about time, and since time=money we can safely assume that the rules apply to it as well.

•  A dollar's worth of crack
•  One afternoon's fun
  
• Twenty years' jail time
• Many nights' regret

For singular nouns and proper names which end in an "s" you are on your own.  Cross'  is just as good as cross's and Lewis' works as well as Lewis's.  If it sounds good, that's the one you use.

Just to fry your noodles: if a plural noun is not one formed by adding an "s" (like women,  sheep or rice) then you need to add an apostrophe "s" to indicate possession: women's, sheep's, rice's.  The same is true for nouns which change their spelling as plurals (and end with an "s" or "z" sound): mice and dice become mice's and dice's although to be fair those do sound a bit strange.

There are about three-quarters of a million words in the English language but there are only seven possessive pronouns that don't get an apostrophe tacked onto the end.  They are, in an order which makes a nice shape:

• yours
• hers
  
• his
  
• its
• ours
• theirs
• whose
  

Every single other possessive pronoun gets an apostrophe: everyone's, somebody's, one's, etc.  People who have received government grants tell us that even the most blind-drunk football fan can easily memorize a series of seven digits or short words, if you are that fan, make these your words.

Lest I forget, for the love of God, "it's" is a contraction of "it is" or "it has" NOT the possessive of "it."  If "it" owns something you write it like this: "...its very own little black dress..."

Style guides for the use of apostrophes are like thermometers and religious sects, no two agree.  Even when they do you can come up with some truly bizarre, if perfectly grammatically correct sentences:

• My lovers' friend's sex toys (the sex toys belonging to a lover of several of my friends)

I'm going to skip over all that nonsense like it were somebody else's problem and finish off with dates and sins of omission.

Dates

• The nineteen sixties: The 1960s
• The twenties: The 20s or The '20s
  
• Thousands of years: 1000s of years

Omitted characters

• In contractions (remember the last lesson?): they're for they are, I'll for I will or I shall, ma'am for madam
  
• In abbreviations:  gov't for government
  

There are pages and pages of additional rules governing apostrophes but I've grown bored of the subject so I will leave it up to you to Google any specifics that I might have missed.  Be warned, the improper use of an apostrophe in an otherwise lucid article, e-mail or birthday card is a salient reminder to the reader of that you are lacking in education, moral fiber and don't know the proper order to apply clotted cream and jam to a scone. 

Next up: defective people

You there! Listen up!

It is beyond my limited mental powers to understand how anyone could be let out of school without knowing the correct usage of THEIR, THERE and THEY'RE.  I have just read an otherwise insightful article about evolutionary theory in which the author utterly destroyed his credibility by mixing up "their" and "they're" not once, not twice but three times.  It's a schoolboy error- if you happen to be in third grade.

For those of you who are similarly grammatically challenged, here is a handy primer you can cut out and tape to your computer monitor:

THEIR is a third person, personal pronoun.  "They took their briefcase full of money and left."

THERE can be an adverb ("She went there last year and lost her remaining teeth."), a pronoun ("There is nothing more I can do for your goldfish."), a noun ("From there on you have to take your own lobster bib.") or an adjective ("Talk to that guy there, he saw the cows attack.")

THEY'RE is a contraction of THEY ARE as in "They're destroying the English language because of poor grammar."

Up next, apostrophes.

Finland, Finland, Finland

Thursday evening in Helsinki. I just arrived and had a quick walk around. I've been to Finland several times before but have always stayed slightly outside the town centre. My observations thus far:

* These people really need to turn down their air conditioning. Seriously, the taxi in from the airport felt like I was riding in a refrigerated lorry and my room could double as a meat locker
* Like all of Scandinavia, the women here are supermodel beautiful. Two things set Finnish women apart: their hair is beyond blond- we're talking spun fleece -and they have the most amazing eyes you could ever imagine: sky blue with a dark ring around the iris. Stunning.
* Despite the horrible winter weather and good social safety net, there are still homeless people here. I can think of few places worse to live on the streets than Helsinki in January
* Buskers with bagpipes seem a little out of place
* The have the required Irish Pub
* My hotel is loaded with identically dressed Americans with name-tags
* Swedish might be their official second language but all the signs are in English
* I am now two-hours more jet-lagged
* My hotel room is beautiful. Huge marble bath (complete with rubber duck), comfy bed and enough pillows to build a fort
* €20 a day for Internet access is worse than nuts, it's criminal

I have to admin that after four-years of living this life, a bit of the luster has worn off. I still get off on traveling, no doubt about that but I'm starting to think a bit more about what comes after this, if anything.

In fact, as I was wandering around this afternoon I kept thinking, "if I don't want to buy anything, there is nothing here to do." The bright lights and pretty things are wasted on me- all my needs are already so over-fulfilled that I can't imagine simply buying things for the sake of owning them.

This got me thinking about what it is that I really need- how low and slow could I go with my life before it would start to get uncomfortable. I haven't had a chance to think it through properly yet but beyond decent food, shelter (preferably someplace quiet with trees and an ocean nearby), proper health care and warm clothes, a few other things popped up immediately (these are in no particular order and are subject to change, addition or subtraction without notice):

* My cameras
* The Internet
* A Mac laptop
* A good colour printer
* A mobile phone
* My musical instruments
* Drawing paper
* Good pens and pencils
* Books. Lots and lots of books
* Access to reliable transportation
* Earplugs
* Cooking utensils
* Root beer
* Peanut butter

Since I am talking about things I didn't mention people. Having good lovers and friends is vital. As much as I am comfortable in my own skin and with my own company, I do like to be closely associated with people who catch my drift.

I'd like to carry on along this train of thought but it looks like I just might be completely exhausted enough to sleep tonight and I don't want to waste even a few precious moments hacking away here when I could be investigating what dreams await.

Get OUT!

There should be no children allowed in Business Class, ever, under any circumstances. I don’t care if their parents pay triple for a ticket, put them in an E seat in the back row and surround them with a pile of foul smelling airline pillows. Two of my last four flights have been made torturous by the presence of howling rug-rats. At this very moment, one row in front of me there is a woman with two of the evil creatures. Thankfully she has one strapped down to minimize its impact on humanity. I can barely believe this, or indeed bring myself to write it but she is changing one of their filthy diapers! What the fuck is going on here?! What kind of twisted fuckhead would change their baby’s nappie while seated next to other passengers on an airplane? Get a fucking grip lady, there is a loo with a fucking pull-down baby changing table less than ten feet away. How fucked up does your social programming have to be to think it is right and acceptable behavior to clean up your crotch-fruit’s shit and vomit in the wide open spaces of a BA business class seat?

This makes me think that perhaps it’s parents I despise and not children. No. I don’t think so, children are evil things that serve no useful purpose until they can grow up and graduate from law school. Abortion should be legal until age 23.

Back in Blighty: up all night

I'm back from ten glorious days in California. I spend the first few days of any visit to the US experiencing a major cultural gear shift but after after a week or so I get used to big cars, big piles of food and big people. Having someone bag my groceries is such an unbelievable luxury that words alone can not describe the joy it produces in my heart.

It has just passed five in the morning and I have slept a grand total of fifteen minutes in the past 24 hours. I suffer the ravages of jet lag worse than anyone I know. The eight hour time change between California and London leaves me a sleep-deprived, psychotic wreck for weeks. When I made the journey in March I spent four days without sleeping at all. It was as if that part of my brain that controls my sleep functions had been removed. It wasn't that I didn't get tired, I was appallingly tired. I staggered drunkenly from house to tube to work to dinner, occasionally falling fast asleep in a chair somewhere and then waking moments later with a neck-snapping jerk.

Out of desperation I tried melatonin and it seemed to help make me tired but I awoke the next morning feeling hungover and spent the remainder of the day walking around in a haze- but at least I got some sleep.

Quarter after five now and I know that if I go back to bed I will toss and turn for an hour, doze off and when the alarm goes off at 8:30 I will feel even worse than if I just stayed up. Even if it were possible for me to get to bed now and sleep a full eight hours I would be fucking up my body clock even more.

I wish I could see the humor in all this but I can't. I've always had problems with sleep and up until a few years ago if I didn't get 10 full hours a night I couldn't function. Now my problem is insomnia- days and days will go by where I get only one or two hours of sleep per night. I don't want to drug myself to sleep and all the relaxation exercises I do, the meditation, the deep breathing, don't do a damn thing except remind me that I am still awake, mind racing, pleading with any god that will listen to grant me a few dreamless hours of unconsciousness. No such luck.

Turning into a cult? When hasn't it been a cult?

Absolutely excellent article by John Hart, a columnist for the Independent.

I've been meaning to write a piece on the health care "debate" going on in the US but each time I make the attempt my utter disgust with every single Republican in Congress blinds me with rage and I have to close my computer, take a sip of water and say a silent prayer of thanks to whatever gods are listening for the UK's free at point of delivery, National Health Service (NHS).

They've had the NHS for 61 years and no, it's not perfect but it's a damn sight better than the US alternative: no coverage for the poor, the unemployed, the underemployed, for-profit insurance companies who deny treatment to protect their bottom line, families who are forced into bankruptcy because of a mountain of medical bills, the list goes on.

Once again I'm sitting here across the water shaking my head at the ignorant insanity that is the bedrock foundation of the American Right. The fact that these uninformed fanatics are able to hijack the debate surrounding a vital domestic issue is perhaps more a reflection on the President and the Democrats than it is on the Conservatives themselves.

Obama entered office with a mandate to insure the uninsured and both his moral foundation and political momentum are eroding because the right-wing have grabbed the spotlight and made the public forget that PEOPLE ARE DYING every day in the US because of a lack of adequate health care.

There really can be no consensus. The Democrats must simply push through health care legislation over the frothing mouths and shaking fists of the entire Republican Party. Civil rights was not won through compromising with the Southern political establishment. There are some things that simply must be done, not because they are popular but because they are right.