Earlier in the year we resolved to drink better wine or at least wine with a pretty label. Two weeks in America excised all hope for an improved future and we bought a 1.5 liter plastic jug (sort of a fuck-it bucket full) of generic Cabernet Sauvignon.
A running buddy in Tucson who had a thick German accent once told me that he had been in the States so long that he no longer thinks (nor even dreams) in German and that it takes him a few days back home before he can understand everyone completely. I thought that was a bit far fetched until this trip when I realised that the dialects I overwhelmingly deal with here have become mine (despite the fact that I am told more and more frequently — and on both sides of the pond — how surprising it is that I still have my Atlanta accent); the first three days there, I was hard-pressed to decode even simple, spoken phrases. My alienation from my former people has never before been so profound.
About halfway through this bottle of plonk, it became marginally challenging to follow conversations here, too. I guess I would score it as, “adequate.”
Left under the flight path of Hair Farce One as the Orange Dictator flew to Stansted, a simple message from a teenager mown into a lawn. I believe the children are the future.
We bought a box of Goody’s powders our first morning in the States. The packaging has changed and, while the formula is still the same, the entire Goody’s powder experience is ruined. A metaphor for this visit to the Fatherland as a whole…
↑ This sign’s text should be tattooed on my forehead. ↑
Speaking of signs, the first signs of the impending war with Iran came in the form of two C130 ‘s flying through the Sequatchie Valley a few days into our stay on the mountain. Our host (a former Marine aviator) said they are doing radar evasion training. The last time the Valley was used this way was just before the abortive Tehran rescue raid during Carter administration — the landscape is strikingly (no pun intended) similar to that of Tehran.
I put on weight at places like this buffet set up in a former bowling alley (the skating rink is still operational)
Paranoia and fear permeated the populace. I found myself more alien in my homeland than ever before as I watched people react to all strangers with suspicion and at times hostility.
In one store, I was browsing through some disarray at a counter when the ambient music’s lyrics seeped into my consciousness. It was a typical and inoffensive country music melody but the words were along the line of “we’ve got to get back like it used to be…when you didn’t have to worry about your kids getting taken from the street and murdered.” [Note…I don’t think I’m exaggerating these lyrics, merely paraphrasing.] Then, I started listening to other songs more attentively and they were all this hireath, nostalgia, and longing for an America of 50 years ago that, to my 57 year old memory, did not exist.
Perhaps the beefeater needs to step away from the Beefeater.
This was all a bit stressful, so we massaged our discomfort with alcohol and pot. Stoned as I was throughout the visit, I was never so paranoid as the random person-on-the-street that we encountered.
Budweiser seems to embrace the sexual liberation that might foment some of the national fear of change. I found this butt plug shaped beer bottle in a charity shop in Dunlap, Tennessee … Buttweiser — when you say, “plug,” you’ve said it all.
We also stuffed ourselves with foods that the proper preparation of has eluded the Brits. We had four pizzas and enough Mexican food to have our children put in detention.
BBQ also featured prominently.
This 1950 Studebaker Champion is The Shit:
Just. Fucking. Awesome.
If I had it to drive, I could have taken it out to the far end of Window Rock Road to see how it handles the terrain:
Granted, whilst running the road was a challenge.
At the more civilised end of the road, the actual Window Rock sits:
On my return, some colleagues wanted to discuss the trip but, as you can see, I’m still wrapping my head around the depressing situation that is the present day United States. Gun culture came up and that led to coppers shooting people in the back. “To be fair,” I argued, “the police HAVE to shoot people in the back because they are too fat to chase anyone.”
“Is that really true?” challenged one of the grad students.
“I have photographs,” I countered.
Shadows of curtains on the wall of T’s house.
All nightmares end and we packed for our escape. Each of us padded a liter bottle of tequila in our laundry and immobilised it with books we picked up (that’s atheist Jackie’s Bible and Auden collection, if you must know; mine is the Marcella Hazen cookbook).
Friday was good. At work, there was new business (a medical school professor who used to work with a friend of mine at Oxford wants work done by my lab but is treating it as a collaboration instead of a client thing … so, that’s cool), and more than the usual amount of business came in this week (so the instruments stay busy all weekend and offset our costs … for a change).
Then, I had a lovely run home and poured up an evening cocktail as an appetizer ahead of some spicy Mexican-style chicken and turned on the radio to catch the end of the news. The breaking news: the Mueller Report came out! Can this day get any better?
We assembled our dinner wraps and enjoyed this deep, rich wine, Nero Oro, toasting the eventual demise of Donald Trump –and decades of aging for his precious offspring — in prison: “Il appassimento di Jared e Ivanka…eccellente! Cin cin.” Not sure if I had that right, but I was using my new vocabulary gleaned from the bottle in hopes that they, indeed, wither behind bars.
As a bit of a political fetishist, I find the 2018 US Midterms especially titillating. We are all stakeholders in the result, but as a foreigner I have to sit out the plebiscite. Or, as they would say in my native Georgia, “fer-uh-ner” (my people put the “pleb” in “plebiscite”).
Poll security guard taps on side of voting booth structure.
“Sir, is everything okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been in there an awfully long time, and ….”
“Heh. Heh-heh-heh. I’m just, y’know, ‘exercising my franchise,’ if you know what I mean. Heh-heh.”
So, no shit, there I was … 10pm GMT, an hour before the first polls close on the East Coast, eating a PBJ&M to put an edge on it all. Its transformative effects came on quickly and were a bit physically and psychologically disturbing (I hate eating fresh mushrooms since hearing the porn star description of Trump’s junk).
Now, at midnight, an hour of dread behind me and I’m tuning into election coverage for at least the next several hours. I’ll probably nap a bit at work, tomorrow; it remains to be seen just how restful that sleep will be.
Pick a GOP candidate and tie them to any of the heinous crimes Trump followers perpetrate in his name or that they feel they can get away with under his watch. For instance, here’s another:
You can bet on ANYTHING here, and the Trump Specials are grand (Paddy Power Trump Specials link, here, for more odds). Check out the screen grabs…the odds makers at PP think it is more likely (based on the odds they published) that the White House will reveal that Melania is a robot (repeat, MORE likely) than the Trumps to be in some sort of reality show.
It is also roughly as likely (9:1 odds) that he will name a Navy warship after himself as it is (10:1 odds) that he will reference a nonexistent country in a press conference.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 