So I come to Los Angeles and there is an earthquake in England.

Bizarre.

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I feel fantabulous.

Just thought you should know.

And I am wearing contacts for the first time in a year and a half. (I have been too lazy to get an eye exam in London. Went to my old eye doctor and got a few boxes.)

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At 6 I gave up any hope of sleeping. Fuck it.

Got up. Drank coffee at Starbucks across the street. How nice to order a cup of coffee and they understand you. Try saying, “Venti drip. Room for cream.” in London. Trust me. Hilarity will ensue.

Read the LA Times. Apparently one of their sportswriters is becoming a woman. Always interesting.

Walked past my old apartment building. See. You can go home again. It’s just that now other people live there.

Walked to Vermont. Buttermilk pancakes and bacon (American style) and coffee. Read the LA Weekly (Think Time Out only it’s a big paper and it’s more liberal and it’s more hipster and it’s free). Apparently they have a new column called, ‘Ask A Mexican’.

The first question this week is:

Dear Mexican: How come all the Mexicans who came here two or three generations ago look like “almost-white” people while the ones coming now look like those little guys who live naked in the Amazon and kill things with blowguns?

—No Indios Need Apply

When I can be bothered to do the HTML to the answer I will. In the meantime, if you want to know the answer to the shades of brown question go to www.laweekly.com yourself.

Hopped on the bus to Pasadena and started to feel like ass. Got a half hour massage and a manicure and pedicure. Felt better.

Ate some lunch. Felt like ass.

Bought a pile of underwear at Victoria’s Secret.

Felt better and yet like ass all at the same time.

Hit the Gap and Origins. Told myself what I bought is stuff that I need. That it isn’t a matter of want and that it a smart buying decision to buy it here. Spending money is saving me money.

Met Jolie for ice cream. Nearly pass out. (No not really. But I have decided that if sleep deprivation torture was used on me, I would confess that I shot JFK even though it wasn’t possible as I was a zygote.)

Jolie drove me back to the hotel.

Here I am.

Here.

Feeling a bit like a nut.

Sort of like an Almond Joy.*

I am going to bed now. it’s 5PM PST. (1AM GMT)

It was a good day.

*Dopy reference to Almond Joy and Mounds chocolate bar commercials from when I was a kid. “Almond Joy’s got nuts . . Mounds don’t. Because. . . Sometimes you feel like a nut! Sometimes you don’t!

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woke up at 1:30 PST. still awake. it’s 5:08 PST.

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What a day. Tube to Paddington. Had wanted to leave at 7:00 but was happy to be cuddled up in bed with Stuart so I ended up leaving at 7:45. He’s been sick- it appears that the oyster has been acquitted since it looks like he had the same thing that I had. (Between the two of us our room is rather toxic at the moment. If you lit a match the room would be a fireball from the methane.)

There was a guy on the train that looked like he was dieing of cirrhosis. He was half passed out a droplet of snot hanging on the tip of his nose. He came to, pulled out a rolled cigarette and lit it. Of course no one said anything. We all just shared bemused looks with each other, “Look at the crazy sick man smoking when he shouldn’t be. Isn’t he disgusting? Aren’t we better than he is?” The whole thing depressed me because he was obviously in a bad way, but no one said anything. We all had places to be.

Heathrow Express. Get to the airport at 9:20. Stand in queue for 1 HOUR to check my bag. 1 flipping hour. Buy my dollars (ah the exchange rate going this way is a beautiful, beautiful thing), do the take of your shoes security dance and then get on the plane.

Excellent movies on board. Saved some for the way back. Watched Little Children (excellent) Dreamgirls (very good and some fantastic performances) and Infamous (the other Truman Capote In Cold Blood Movie). Infamous isn’t as good a movie as Capote, but there are some really wonderful bits in it. (Juliet Stevenson does a wicked Diana Vreeland impression.) Get off the plane- zip through immigration and wait for baggage. And wait. And WAIT. For an hour. . .

There was a delay getting a good portion of the luggage out and some muppet stuck a bunch of luggage over in the over sized area. . .so we are craning our necks at the carousel and the bags were stuck in the corner the entire time.

Found Jolie who sweetly saved me paying for a cab during rush hour. Driving toward LA I pointed at the horizon and squealed, “Oh! Look! Smog!”

We drove up Sunset Boulevard from UCLA all the way to Hollywood, checked me into my hotel, (free wireless!), got a bite (at the fantastic Village Pizza) and now here I am about to crash. It’s 9PM PST - 5AM GMT. Feeling awake and tired at the same time.

I think sleep would be good.

Is funny- everything is familiar and foreign at the same time.

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The Northern Line was packed. It was warm. But I had a pole to hold onto and I wasn’t stuck under someone’s arm pit. . . then I wasn’t fine. Ears ringing, dark crept in the sides of my vision. I had an image of the entire Northern Line being shut down because of a passenger being ill and that passenger being me.

When a seat didn’t open up at Kennington, I asked a man near me if I could have his seat and he was very nice about it. After sitting for 30 seconds I felt fine and instead of being about to faint, I just felt rather embarrassed. At Waterloo I tried to give the seat back but he was very nice about it and said no.

I must remember however, if I am ever desperate for a seat, it would be a rather clever ploy.

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I was not born under a rhyming planet. . . But I do love the Bard. It has been a while since I have read a play and longer since I have seen one. . . I will need to remedy that this year. Wonder what is on at the Globe?

I came to Shakespeare in High School. I took drama classes and we went up to Southern Utah University (where I would eventually go to school and is well known for their Shakespeare Festival) one weekend for a theatre competition and I wanted to know more. When my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas that year I said a Collected Works and my Grandmother gave me a lovely edition that my 16 year old self was smart enough to not mark up.

I would love to get in a time machine and see a play at The Globe or The Rose or The Swan.  . .

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I ate an oyster Saturday. Three actually. I don’t know if it is the oysters fault that I spent all of last night vomiting into the toliet but they are the most likely suspects.

I feel very old.

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One week from today I will be on a plane and will be about to land at LAX.

Haven’t been home since I moved here.

Going to hang out with friends and when I am in Vegas will hang out with my nephew all Saturday and will bring him back Sunday before I go to the airport.

I will gain a stone in the week and a half that I am away.

It will be worth it.

And check out the Pound Sterling to USD baby. Mama is going to be hitting the mall. She needs a new pair of shoes.

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I know I have been quiet recently. Frankly Scarlet, I just haven’t been in a bloggy mood. I’m not bothered. I can’t be arsed. I got me the I don’t know what I wanna talk about and when I do get a flash of blogerspiration it sounds like insipid drivel in my tiny sad little brain blues.

Over the Easter bank holiday in between soaking in glorious sun and going to various pubs, I watched 28 Days Later again.

There are two things that resonate for me with that film now that I have lived in London. The obvious bit is the scenes in Westminster where there is absolutely no one about when the place should be teaming with morning rush hour pedestrians.

The 2nd part is a bit more subtle. . . the social rage that is growling in the belly of every Londoner just asking for an excuse to explode out. For example, yesterday a woman on the tube took a seat that I was about to sit in. It sounds stupid, but I could have happily broken her nose. Today a guy was holding on to a rail above him and the angle was such that I had to tuck my chin to my head to prevent his arm from hitting my head. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a choice either, there was room enough for him to put his arm somewhere else.

Of course, I didn’t say anything. I think that New Yorkers might have the right idea. A New Yorker never would have tucked their chin in sending death rays out of the corner of their eyes. A New Yorker would have said, “Hey, dipshit! As much as I am enjoying getting a whiff of your body odour, I would rather you don’t rest your armpit on my head, capiche?”

If there are regular people like me, people who have a reasonable grasp on reality having Walter Mitty moments imagining disembowelling the wankstains that push on the train before people can get off, what fantasies are the toasted flakes out there cultivating? Especially the ones with guns?

I grew up around guns. It’s been a while, but I know how to use one. However, I think the ‘right to bear arms’ is beyond archaic.

After what happened at Virginia Tech, my favourite quote of all comes from a gentleman named John Markell who said regarding the shooting this week, “Students are thrown out if they are found to carry guns on campus and professors are dismissed if they carry them. If you had responsible folk on that site carrying firearms, this would never have got so out of control”.

So. . . if everyone had a gun. . . we would be. . . safer!!????

In America more than 30,000 people die a year from guns. Each year. 30,000. If 30,000 people a year died from picking their nose, you can be sure there would be anti nose picking legislation.

Well. Maybe. Okay, probably not. Given that 400,000 people die in America from smoking. . . I have a feeling that if 30,000 people a year died from picking their nose, there would be a nose picking lobby.

Fat white trash families with mullets would be interviewed on FOX “news”, “These liberals are taking away my rights to pick my nose. As an American, I got the right! People died so I could pick my nose. Gaaawd WANTS me to pick my nose. Next thing you know they’ll be telling me I can’t eat it too.”

Hell, I don’t know. I know you can’t legislate all the monsters out of the closet. Every school has the weirdo that you look at thinking that he might snap and climb a clock tower one day. Sometimes you wonder if it will be you. (Bitch better not think of taking my seat next time.) But I don’t think America’s current gun laws are what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. I don’t think 30,000 deaths and professors and students dieing in a classroom is freedom.

That’s not my land.

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