The A-Train

This camera.

This camera is incredible. Now you can review all your hilarious party fouls AT your party, like some mental time-travelling party goofer. Also that is what the top, left and right part of my door look like.

Yikes

I really wish I could say that this was the first time I've ever woken up to the clear and immediate thought: "I need to go to the emergency room."

I was all hopped up on Mamet, Claire from ANTM cycle 10 in Pianos, and a day spent with surprise-Edinburghers (and maybe some whiskey sours), and I hopped out of the taxi with gusto. Into a ditch. Onto my talofibular ligament. Then I went to sleep. Then I woke up. And there we are.

Additionally, Nurse Jackie has utterly destroyed my ability to not act like a spaz to hospital staff.

My favorite UNY RA

Last night I had a dream about this man:

on one of these:

I hope that the tickling wit of my subconscious won't be lost on the very few of you who know what those two things are. Moreover, I hope that this dorky dream speaks more about the intensity of this NYU course than anything I could blawg. And I certainly won't subject anyone to a description of how great New York is (concise answer: quite). For everyone else ...

My ear is on the internet

What a great day

 

Spoke to Spike Jonze today! Fancy that!

Front row at the Q&A with Spike Jonze and the WTWTA crew at the Mac store in Soho. Track down the podcast and listen for me asking questions about the trailer. As a side note, I have officially asked this film's screenwriter and primary crew who cut the trailer and I still have no one appears to know. I know you are out there.

I also started NYU today, and the person I am learning digital film editing from cut this:

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch...

I am not in Brooklyn yet, and I have been filling the interim doing Rosetta Stone Français Level 1, thinking about how I only forget how incredibly baller my California friends are when I don't see them for long stretches of time (after which funpocalypses like Treasure Island 2008 occur), and watching autotuned footage of Carl Sagan circa 1976.

Brooklyn

I am moving to Brooklyn. This is not, strictly speaking, news, as many people have known about it for quite some time, I left work several weeks ago, and I have been spending the subsequent weeks preparing myself for the move. Actually, that last part is in no way true -- I have been living the most ridiculous, denial-fuelled life of leisure for the last two weeks, speaking about but not really processing leaving London, occasionally doing one or two tasks that could, I suppose, be described as "packing" to some.

Now I am left with a half empty room, a hangover, and not the slightest clue what is going on. If I know you and you're reading this and you were unaware that I was moving, don't feel forgotten about. I haven't told many, many people because, as stated, I have been in utter denial about this particular chapter of life, this interlude between moments of shit-having-together, as it were. So that's what this post is, I guess. Hey guys. Moving. Be back soon.

And finally, let me expand on "soon." I am doing a trainee certificate program at NYU which is related to the work I've been doing in London, and after which I will think about where in the world I want to be. The course itself is no more than two months.  I will definitely be returning to the UK within three months (there is a dormant birthday gift ticket to Edinburgh, and a family inheritance dispute to mediate in Denmark. Have I written about this? I am not joking about this). So, as I've been telling myself and anyone who asks for the last month, I will be back soon. Also I think people underestimate how much I like London. Oh and I want to live in Berlin I decided. I just need to visit first. This would be way more cutesy if this kind of decision-making process isn't how I've actually determined the majority of my living arrangements in my adult life.

I'm gonna stop. Hopefully more from New York soon. Can't wait to crash some Gawker events. 

Oh and PS, the BBC's Ruth Mayer has all my clothes.

If you look close you can see a band aid tan

I remember talking about the proposed mandatory HPV vaccinations in British schools a few years ago over dinner with flat mates. Like 90% of our discussions, it ended with me yelling about nihilistic relativism, and one of them shouting that my unconditional faith in science was self-defeating, and then we ate spag bol, watched Hollyoaks and fell asleep on a mattress.

But as always, Amanda Hess (my DC gender-politics blogger crush) has looked at recent media coverage of Gardisil (the branded Human Pappilomavirus vaccine which prevents at least four "types" of the virus, two of which are the cause of 70% of cervical cancer -- sorry if this is sex-ed-ish, but HPV is more of a US thing, isn't it?  It is.) and how McCarthyist (HAR HAR) pseudo-sciencey vitriol is dumb, damaging, et cetera et cetera.

HPV Vaccine Gardisil Officially Scariest Thing Ever, Media Reports

Obama and the issue of race -- Devin Reiche

Devin Reiche wrote an article which I am re-posting because if I tell him to get a blog he'll  call me a dumpsterslut or something.

I feel that any one of the one-in-three or so Brits I've heard recently who have adopted a "Wow Americans are so much dumber than I had believed for the past eight years, never mind that the reactionary masses with media attention are now necessarily in opposition to my and most of Britain's pro-Obama stance" mentality needs to read this immediately. 

Obama And The Issue Of Race

First off, I predict that it will be necessary to establish from the outset that I am not claiming that anyone who doesn't support Barack Obama is a racist. The people I'm discussing right now are not those who take perfectly legitimate issue with Obama's stance on any of the policy decisions that comprise today's political landscape. What I'm talking about is the faction of the population who believe that the President is not an American citizen, or that his presidency represents a threat to uniquely American values.