Tube this morning. Northern Line Charing Cross branch somewhere around Clapham Common. Packed in like lemmings being pushed to our death by Disney.

Woman moved over to make room for people getting on the train and was looking for space on a pole near me to hold on to. Looking for space so she wouldn’t go flying when we started moving again.

Man next to me. Sounded like he was from Jamaica or somewhere in Africa, I don’t know anymore. I hear so many accents in a given day my little language synapses are crispy. Man next to me says, “Why don’t you stop moving around?”

Woman says, “We’re all jammed in here.”

Man says, “Stop moving around you bitch.”

I look up, shocked (why did this shock me? I’ve had worse happen in Los Angeles. I had a man bray at me like a donkey when I was heavier. I had an old man pinch my ass on the bus. Why was I surprised? Crazy people are everywhere.) I look up thinking, “Fuck You!” and the man read my eyes. He glared at me and said, “Shut up. Shutthefuckup! Just Shut Up!”

But I didn’t say a word.

No one said a word. Safer that way to stay quiet. If we said something he would have gotten more agitated. Maybe hurt someone. He was a big guy. But I was the only one that even looked up when he started to wig. Everyone else kept their eyes down.

Maybe the volume was too high on their iPod.

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“Had my dream again where I’m making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I’d nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me a 5.6. Must have been the dismount.” - Harry Burns in When Harry Met Sally

Must have been the dismount. . . I had the third interview today. Was a phone call with someone in the States. The beginning part was good and then I guess it wasn’t. The what areas of growth would your peers say about you question. I stammered something that didn’t make sense that negated a positive I said a 30 seconds before.

I hate interviewing.

Plus, They are definitely afraid that I am a pushy American, which I had no idea how to defend without looking like a pushy American.

Oh well. We will see in the next few days.

Felt depressed so I ate pasta for dinner and am currently consuming Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food.

Been feeling glum the last few days. Stuart has been great about it. My friend Stephanie sent me an e-mail saying, “I bet it’s super-fun living in London… all the sight-seeing, the shopping, the restaurants and things to do.” And she is right. It is, except right now I’m not feeling the London Love. I know I’m just Grade A stressed about the job situation and that this ennui is fairly normal for expats. I know this.

It still sucks.

And it’s not as if everything was coming up roses in Los Angeles.

Everything will be fine. You’re right. You’re right. . . I know you’re right.

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Got a temporary gig where S works! Their Office Manager has been out sick so I will be picking up the slack. Will just be for a few weeks but it will be good to have some cash coming in.

Getting up in the morning is going to suck.

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By FRANK RICH

IF James Frey hadn’t made up his own life, Tom Wolfe would have had to invent it for him. The fraudulent memoirist is to the early 21st century what Mr. Wolfe’s radical-chic revelers were to the late 1960’s and his Wall Street “masters of the universe” were to the go-go 1980’s: a perfect embodiment of the most fashionable American excess of an era.

As Oprah Winfrey, the ultimate arbiter of our culture, has made clear, no one except pesky nitpickers much cares whether Mr. Frey’s autobiography is true or not, or whether it sits on a fiction or nonfiction shelf at Barnes & Noble. Such distinctions have long since washed away in much of our public life. What matters most now is whether a story can be sold as truth, preferably on television. The mock Comedy Central pundit Stephen Colbert’s slinging of the word “truthiness” caught on instantaneously last year precisely because we live in the age of truthiness.

At its silliest level, this is manifest in show-biz phenomena like Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, juvenile pop stars who merchandised the joy of their new marriage as a lucrative MTV reality series before heading to divorce court to divvy up the booty. But if suckers want to buy fictional nonfiction like “Newlyweds” or “A Million Little Pieces” as if they were real, that’s just harmless diversion.

It’s when truthiness moves beyond the realm of entertainment that it’s a potential peril. As Seth Mnookin, a rehab alumnus, has written in Slate, the macho portrayal of drug abuse in “Pieces” could deter readers battling actual addictions from seeking help. Ms. Winfrey’s blithe re-endorsement of the book is less laughable once you start to imagine some Holocaust denier using her imprimatur to discount Elie Wiesel’s incarceration at Auschwitz in her next book club selection, “Night.”

This isn’t just a slippery slope. It’s a toboggan into chaos, or at least war. As everyone knows now - except for the 22 percent, according to a recent Harris poll, who still believe that Saddam helped plan 9/11 - it’s the truthiness of all those imminent mushroom clouds that sold the invasion of Iraq. What’s remarkable is how much fictionalization plays a role in almost every national debate. Even after a big humbug is exposed as blatantly as Professor Marvel in “The Wizard of Oz” - FEMA’s heck of a job in New Orleans, for instance - we remain ready and eager to be duped by the next tall tale. It’s as if the country is living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief.

Democrats who go berserk at their every political defeat still don’t understand this. They fault the public for not listening to their facts and arguments, as though facts and arguments would make a difference, even if the Democrats were coherent. It’s the power of the story that always counts first, and the selling of it that comes second. Accuracy is optional. The Frey-like genius of the right is its ability to dissemble with a straight face while simultaneously mustering the slick media machinery and expertise to push the goods. It not only has the White House propaganda operation at its disposal, but also an intricate network of P.R. outfits and fake-news outlets that are far more effective than their often hapless liberal counterparts.

The selling of Samuel Alito is a perfect illustration of how our world works. From the moment Judge Alito emerged from Harriet Miers’s penumbra, his supporters’ story line was clear: he’d be presented as a humble exemplar of American values too mainstream to be labeled “out of the mainstream” by his opponents. In his first courtesy calls on Capitol Hill in November, we learned, Judge Alito often cited his father as a proud immigrant who instilled in him empathy for minorities and the poor - an empathy not remotely apparent in the judge’s legal record. A particularly poignant anecdote had it that his father had once defended a black basketball player from discrimination in college.

Yet David Kirkpatrick of The Times reported then that “some colleagues and friends of the elder Mr. Alito, who died in 1987, said they had never heard some of the stories his son has recounted, including the episode about his support for the black student and the fact that his father immigrated from Italy as a child.” No matter. If such questions couldn’t stop an Oprah Book Club selection, they certainly wouldn’t stop a nominee to the Supreme Court.

Once Judge Alito came before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Democrats decided to counter the Republicans’ story by coming up with a fictional story of their own, or that’s what they did once they stopped bloviating. Their fictional biography cast Judge Alito as an out-and-out bigot. The major evidence cited to support this characterization was his listing his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), a conservative group founded in reaction to the upheavals of the Vietnam era, on a job application for the Reagan Justice Department.

Judge Alito testified that he had joined CAP because it supported the R.O.T.C. on campus, adding that he did not remember having “done anything substantial in relation to this group, including renewing my membership.” The Democrats plunged on, betting the house (or the Supreme Court) on Teddy Kennedy’s insistence that Judge Alito could be linked to what the senator described as CAP’s “repulsive anti-woman, anti-black, anti-disability, anti-gay pronouncements.” In one of only two dramatic moments in the whole soporific confirmation process - a “Sunshine Boys”-style spat with the committee chairman, Arlen Specter - Mr. Kennedy threatened to subpoena CAP “documents in the possession of the Library of Congress” to hunt down Judge Alito’s bigotry.

There was only one problem with the Democrats’ fictional story line: it had been exposed as fake on the front page of The Times weeks before Mr. Kennedy presented it to the nation. Mr. Kirkpatrick reported that he had examined the same papers Mr. Kennedy was threatening to subpoena - as well as some others at Princeton’s own library - and found no trace of Judge Alito’s involvement with CAP as either an active participant or a major donor. When the Senate committee did Mr. Kennedy’s bidding and looked at those documents yet again, it found exactly what The Times had in November, calling the senator’s bluff and ending any remote chance the Democrats had for keeping Judge Alito off the court. It says everything about the Democrats’ ineptitude that when they spin fiction, they are incapable of meeting even the low threshold of truthiness needed to make it fly in this lax cultural environment.

THE Republicans would never have been so sloppy. Indeed, hardly had Mr. Kennedy’s melodramatic stunt blown up in his face than they came up with a new story line prompted by the other dramatic incident in the hearings: the departure of Martha-Ann Alito from the committee room in tears. She fled while a Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, was mocking the Democrats, not when the eminently mockable Democrats were mounting their lame assault. Whatever. As Time magazine later reported, a P.R. outfit called Creative Response Concepts immediately pumped up the media volume of her supposed martyrdom, breathlessly producing a former Alito clerk to provide eyewitness testimony of her suffering at the hands of those Democratic brutes.

Creative Response Concepts did similar work for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 campaign. Its roster of clients also includes the right-wing Media Research Center, itself the parent organization of something called the Cybercast News Service. For the new year, Cybercast News has an exciting fictional project of its own: just before John Murtha, the tough Congressional critic of the Iraq war, appeared on “60 Minutes” last Sunday, it started Swift Boating him by rewriting his Vietnam history to besmirch the legitimacy of his two Purple Hearts.

If Karl Rove’s White House propaganda factory is the NBC Universal or Time Warner of G.O.P. fictionalization, then the Miramax and Focus Features of the right are such nominally “independent” satellites as Cybercast News, the Lincoln Group (which places fake news stories in Iraqi newspapers), the Rendon Group (which helped manufacture the heroic image of Ahmad Chalabi) and the now-dormant Talon News (the fake Republican-staffed news site whose fake White House correspondent, Jeff Gannon, was unmasked last year).

Fittingly enough against this backdrop, last week brought the re-emergence of Clifford Irving, the author of the fake 1972 autobiography of Howard Hughes that bamboozled the world long before fraudulent autobiographies and biographies were cool. He announced that he was removing his name from “The Hoax,” a coming Hollywood movie recounting his exploits, because of what he judged its lack of fidelity to “the truth of what happened.” That Mr. Irving can return like Rip van Winkle after all these years to take the moral high ground in defense of truthfulness is a sign of just how low into truthiness we have sunk.

To my readers: Starting next week, I will be on a book leave, writing nonfiction about our post-9/11 fictions. See you in the spring.

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After a day of frantic struggles, the London whale dies a lonely death

Euan Ferguson joined the crowds on a poignant day by the Thames

Sunday January 22, 2006
The Observer

‘He’s lost his pod,’ I heard a mum tell her daughter as she lifted her for a better view above the crowd, back when the crowd was manageable. And then, seconds later, ‘No, darling, not his iPod. He’s lost his … well, his friends. His family.’
It was that kind of day. Londoners getting all friendly and funny with each other but under it all a strange, nagging confusion over how it would turn out. At 7pm on the dot we realised it had turned out pretty badly, when, despite a frantic £100,000 rescue mission, something like half of London’s emergency services shivering all day in the Thames and messages of goodwill from around the world, London’s new best friend perished on a barge, swathed in rubber and lifting gear, near the end of the journey back to salt water. The trauma of the rescue and too many hours out of the water had led to fatal spasms.

Hopes had been high. But it seemed that the only proper reaction to yesterday, as so often with nature, should have been a careful mix of wonder and sadness.

It had been one thing, for instance, to see London’s whale blowing and arcing its way under Battersea Bridge. Perfectly equipped for cavorting 600 feet down in the Arctic Ocean and making life unhappy for squid; less so for the snorting riptides that bedevil the Thames and its bridges - but still, London’s whale made it, coming up 200 yards west yesterday morning with a noisy gust and a welcoming cheer from the bank.

It was quite another, 30 minutes later, one minute before noon, to watch it beached, so obviously distressed. To see its would-be rescuers, up to their necks at times in the Thames, attempting to pat, push, calm, to somehow convey the feeling that there was goodwill from man, while that great tail began to flap so frantically. Were we going to end up with happy children, perfect endings: were we going to free Willy? Or were we going to end up with - there’s no great way to put this - two tons of dead blubber?

There was something both awesome and other-worldly yesterday about walking along Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s Chelsea Embankment, gazing at the forlorn and faded barges rendered somehow even more miserable by the gorgeous sunshine, and then seeing a whale blow.

We walked, the growing crowds, at 11am, following the boats as they followed the whale. We walked at whale’s pace until we darted, hundreds of us, from one side to the other of the Albert Bridge, causing the first traffic jam of the day. Later police closed Battersea Bridge Road leading to, one assumes, some apologetic shrugs from lunch dates - sorry, I was held up by a whale.

We walked west of Battersea Bridge, crowds growing, the sound audible from the embankment of the crunch of hundreds of feet on shingle below as they raced back and forth. And then just before noon, at 11.53, I saw the dorsal fin burst out again, but facing east, towards the sea. Had London’s whale sensed the sudden turn in the tide and started swimming against the (now incoming) tide, as whales do, and would it make it?

The answer was very soon no. For the next five minutes the whale was in danger of beaching - Tannoy calls came from the coastguard warning crowds away from the shingle’s edge - and just before noon it grounded and the worries began, the floats and the cranes and the manhandling.

And the crowds began arriving, in true force - the banks of the Thames can never have been busier. Nobody could see much, but the mood was friendly, not jostling; rescue workers below called up, at 2pm, for some hot drinks and the shouts were relayed by the crowd to the nearest houses.

And, hours later, partygoers in Battersea pressed their noses against pub windows to see the latest developments, the bad news and the end of a strangely gripping story. In a month or less we will have forgotten; but the day will surely serve as some kind of benchmark. In the last day or so lovers will have been taken, jobs will have been won and lost, novels begun, tears shed at funerals, new life conceived and, when asked can you remember when that happened, we can answer: I remember it well, because it was that day. The day a whale sailed through the middle of London; and the people of the city, rather than trying to hack it to death, came in their thousands and lifted it and tried their hardest to sail it back.

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A seven-tonne whale has made its way up the Thames to central London, where it is being watched by riverside crowds.

My favorite part of the article is. . .”at 0830 GMT on Friday, a man on a train called in to say he might have been hallucinating, but he had just seen a whale in the Thames.”

I hope they will be able to encourage it to swim out. . .

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Since New Year I have been trying to eat healthier. The stress of planning an International move and wedding has resulted in expediential ass widening and it was already giving J-Lo a run for her money.

Been thinking about going to Borough Market (where Bridget Jones buys her groceries for her blue soup dinner party). I’ve never shopped there, just wandered through a few times when I’ve walked along the South Bank.

I did a quick bit of research and I discovered a few London Farmer Markets where everything is local within 100 miles of the M25. Borough Market while really nifty is not strictly a farmers market.

“Hey, There’s a farmers market, the largest one in London around the corner from where they had my flat in the spring in Mary. . . Mary. . . Marybone?”

S didn’t look up. “Marylebone”. (Pronounced Marlbone)

“Marylebone. There’s a Farmers Market. I was thinking. . .”

S looked up.

I continued, “I was thinking, I want to try to start buying things more in season and it would be nice to support local farmers.”

S blinked. “Local farmers? We live in London..”

“Very funny. They are within 100 miles of the M25.”

“I moved away from those people for a reason.”

“Wanna go Saturday?”

“To a Farmers Market in Marylebone?”

“Yes.”

S giggles. “You want to go to a Farmers Market in the most expensive neighborhood in London. This is just too much.”

“It’s not going to be—“

“Little girl from Reno—“

“I’m NOT from Reno!”

“Little girl from Cleveland—“

“I’m NOT from—“

“Wants to spend five quid on a tomato.” (Pronounced toe-moat-toe)

“I’m not going to spend five quid on a tomato! (Pronounced toe-may-toe) Besides. They aren’t even in season.”

S laughs harder. “You don’t have a job. And you want to go to a Farmers Market. In Marylebone??? Why don’t you just go to Harrods? It will be cheaper.”

By this point I was laughing.

It was silly of me to mention it to him. S believes fruits and vegetables to be toxic substances and does not consider it a full meal without extra helpings of partially hydrated oil and Monosodium Glutamate.

S was still smirking. “How has your diet been going?”

“Okay. I don’t like the scale. It gives you different numbers each time.”

“You broke the—“

“I didn’t BREAK the scale.”

“There’s a place over in Battersea that weighs trucks. We can go there.”

I blink. I know he is kidding. He’s kidding. He doesn’t really think I am such a big fat thing that I need to be weighed by a truck scale. I know he doesn’t think that. I’m not a big fat thing that needs to be weighed by a truck scale. I know he doesn’t think that but I start to cry.

“Oh, come on. You don’t need to get upset.”

I keep crying.

“Come on. Stop crying. You know I think you have a beautiful body.”

He hugs me. I wipe my nose on his shirt.

“I’m sorry. Tell you what. You can blog about it and then I’ll get flamed in the comments by your readers.”

I sniffle. Deep down I know he was just teasing, but you don’t get opprotunities like this every day to lay on the guilt. Plus it did hit one of my buttons. The only time I haven’t been 20 to 80 pounds overweight was for nine minutes in 1986.

“And we can go to the market Saturday and spend twenty quid on turnips.”

“I would never spend twenty quid on turnips.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t like turnips.”

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Listening to BBC World Service on the radio this morning and they had Paul Templer on the air talking about his experiences he had a few years ago when as a safari guide he was attacked by a Hippopotamuses resulting in his needing to have an arm and leg amputated. A documentary reenacting the attack,Dark Side of Hippos is playing on the National Geographic Channel.

Who knew Hippos were so grumpy? According to Templer they kill more people every year in Africa than any other animal.

So you can add Hippos to your list of animals to be scared of.

A few weeks ago I was exhausted but I started watching one of those “when animals attack and eat people who go in the water” shows. Your usual suspects, sharks and crocodiles as well as octopus and barracuda. Of course I watched the whole thing. There is something in me that loves those shows. The part of me that is like my nephew Mason when he starts talking about the ancient shark, Megalodon. His voice gets deep, he opens his eyes wide and he says the word slowly, with reverence and a hint of delicious fear, “MEG-A-LO-DON!”

When I was his age I was like that with crocodiles. On the show I watched last week, they went down a river in Australia at night that is teeming with saltwater crocodiles. If you wanted to die all you would have to do is go for a swim and they would get you. They shined a flashlight along the bank and there were all these eyes gleaming back through the dark. Brrrrrrrrrgh. . .

Not sure if we have the National Geographic Channel but if we do I am going to try to watch the Hippo show.

I know I am a sick puppy.

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Acropolis,
originally uploaded by treefrog girl.

Click to see the flickr photo set of old shit, ouzo drinking and stray dogs.

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I got my feedback from the job interview so I can be prepared going into the third one and it was a ton of positives. The one potential negative he said that they would probe on is that, “You have a strong personality.” Basically strong personality is good but do I know how to tone it down when necessary?

The funny part is I don’t think of myself as having a strong personality given some people that I have dealt with in my life. I rather like the thought that someone thinks I have a strong personality.

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