Never Laugh at Love
Oct. 30th, 2012 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyHere is an interesting article about tonsillectomy rates. I suffered from tonsillitis as a child. Truly suffered, f-list. I wanted my tonsils out so badly. And yet I still have them. I feel better now knowing that it might not have made much difference.
Here's a spot of online journalism by Guy Rundle, an Australian covering the US election and now Hurricane Sandy. I find Rundle hard to take at the best of times, and I think an extract from today's effort is a perfect example of why:
Sandy, promising epic devastation, but, because it's only a storm, people are responding more sluggishly than the authorities would prefer. Coney Island has been evacuated, the southern tip of Manhattan is a no-go zone, out here in Columbus, Ohio, rains are lashing us, the outer edge of a storm that now has a thousand-mile diameter. President Obama curtailed his campaign stops yesterday; Mitt Romney did the same today, facing the difficult choice -- get the advantage while Obama does Presidenty stuff, or look like a tool for stumping in Dittoville, Iowa, while your opponent deals with life and death matters.
Sandy, an event that may or may not disrupt the whole electoral process, but which news-starved commentators are already dubbing 2012's "October Surprise", the traditional-as-Halloween last minute reversal in an election, now so awaited that it has become its opposite. No surprise is a surprise. Sandy, the storm, kids are already dressing as it for trick-or-treating, parents swirling paper around them. Sandy, the storm which may make Obama look presidential, or may interfere with the early voting he needs, or may stop white seniors from early voting in Virginia and thus stymie Romney's victory in that state, or ... well take any scenario you want.
Sandy, name of a woman I persuaded to leave her husband in the late '90s. He was a recovering junkie, she was a rising novelist. They lived in Oval, a sinkhole of south London. God I was in love with her. How much? Her husband, who had struggled with incredible courage out of junkdom to sobriety, used to come out drinking with us. He stuck to orange juice. He was so determined to go straight -- and so decent, at the eye of his own storm, that he told Sandy that if he ever lapsed, she should leave him immediately. Having heard that from her, it occurred to me at one point that if I slipped crushed codeine tablets into his OJ, he'd be back on the junk before you can say evilevilevil. In the midst of trying to prise her away from him, I had to tell the other woman I was encouraging to cheat her on her partner, that there was someone else. Boy, that's a hard conversation. Thank god for voicemail.
It didnt work out with Sandy, but the intent is the thing. I thought I would burn in hell. Hell came early, like this year. Eh bien. The storm sends us all to the edges of our own lives. Sandy's in Brooklyn now. She published two very good novels, a terrible memoir, and an overrated but very successful anti-novel-writing guide, written with the man she threw me over for again, when she became available, a decade later. Actually, that was soon after Obama was elected in '08, in the bar of the Waldorf-Astoria. I left for Mexico later that day, paying airport price for a ticket. Arrived in Tijuana, took a bus down the coast to Mazatlan, where Kerouac and Ginsberg used to hang out. The Sinaloa cartel run the joint now, and the place was in lockdown. The military patrolled the streets in APCs, wearing balaclavas so the cartel wouldn't identify them and kill their families. But that's another story. The big story at the time was how the cartels were fixing local beauty pageants. Miss Sinaloa was arrested while driving with her boyfriend, who had four rocket-launchers in the boot of his car. She said they were travelling to Bolivia and Columbia to "go shopping".
And that's how you make a news story all about yourself.
Here's a spot of online journalism by Guy Rundle, an Australian covering the US election and now Hurricane Sandy. I find Rundle hard to take at the best of times, and I think an extract from today's effort is a perfect example of why:
Sandy, promising epic devastation, but, because it's only a storm, people are responding more sluggishly than the authorities would prefer. Coney Island has been evacuated, the southern tip of Manhattan is a no-go zone, out here in Columbus, Ohio, rains are lashing us, the outer edge of a storm that now has a thousand-mile diameter. President Obama curtailed his campaign stops yesterday; Mitt Romney did the same today, facing the difficult choice -- get the advantage while Obama does Presidenty stuff, or look like a tool for stumping in Dittoville, Iowa, while your opponent deals with life and death matters.
Sandy, an event that may or may not disrupt the whole electoral process, but which news-starved commentators are already dubbing 2012's "October Surprise", the traditional-as-Halloween last minute reversal in an election, now so awaited that it has become its opposite. No surprise is a surprise. Sandy, the storm, kids are already dressing as it for trick-or-treating, parents swirling paper around them. Sandy, the storm which may make Obama look presidential, or may interfere with the early voting he needs, or may stop white seniors from early voting in Virginia and thus stymie Romney's victory in that state, or ... well take any scenario you want.
Sandy, name of a woman I persuaded to leave her husband in the late '90s. He was a recovering junkie, she was a rising novelist. They lived in Oval, a sinkhole of south London. God I was in love with her. How much? Her husband, who had struggled with incredible courage out of junkdom to sobriety, used to come out drinking with us. He stuck to orange juice. He was so determined to go straight -- and so decent, at the eye of his own storm, that he told Sandy that if he ever lapsed, she should leave him immediately. Having heard that from her, it occurred to me at one point that if I slipped crushed codeine tablets into his OJ, he'd be back on the junk before you can say evilevilevil. In the midst of trying to prise her away from him, I had to tell the other woman I was encouraging to cheat her on her partner, that there was someone else. Boy, that's a hard conversation. Thank god for voicemail.
It didnt work out with Sandy, but the intent is the thing. I thought I would burn in hell. Hell came early, like this year. Eh bien. The storm sends us all to the edges of our own lives. Sandy's in Brooklyn now. She published two very good novels, a terrible memoir, and an overrated but very successful anti-novel-writing guide, written with the man she threw me over for again, when she became available, a decade later. Actually, that was soon after Obama was elected in '08, in the bar of the Waldorf-Astoria. I left for Mexico later that day, paying airport price for a ticket. Arrived in Tijuana, took a bus down the coast to Mazatlan, where Kerouac and Ginsberg used to hang out. The Sinaloa cartel run the joint now, and the place was in lockdown. The military patrolled the streets in APCs, wearing balaclavas so the cartel wouldn't identify them and kill their families. But that's another story. The big story at the time was how the cartels were fixing local beauty pageants. Miss Sinaloa was arrested while driving with her boyfriend, who had four rocket-launchers in the boot of his car. She said they were travelling to Bolivia and Columbia to "go shopping".
And that's how you make a news story all about yourself.