On my good friend Christian, who amazes me

My friend Christian, solicitor by day, dj by night, is currently on a 1,000 mile bike ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats to raise money for tsunami relief.

Christian was in Sri Lanka with his mum when the tsunami hit; thankfully they were all right, suffering no more than a ruined holiday.

Christian loves that region of the world and has spent quite a bit of time over there. He has great stories, mostly about eating weird stuff in Vietnam and Cambodia (and their digestive consequences: he loves telling stories about shit), and he does great, very un-PC, impressions of Bangkok street merchants and tuk-tuk drivers.

When Christian was first in Thailand he went to visit one of his countrymen in a Thai prison, and subsequently ended up representing him under his law firm’s pro bono scheme. While Christian was still a trainee solicitor, in 2001, the Law Society named him Young Human Rights Lawyer of the Year. Christian was given the award “for his outstanding pro bono work in highlighting the civil, political and human rights violations of prisoners abroad and his instrumental role in the changing of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's policy regarding support for clemency pleas of Britons imprisoned overseas.”

And Christian is really really fun to hang out with.

Gun Story 3: Moscow

I was visiting my friend Dan in Moscow in July 2004. This is us leaving a trendy club in the wee hours of the morning...

We decided that Nadia should come home with us; Dan had put another bottle of champagne in to chill that we had not managed to get to before dinner. Dan waved down a car (as you do in Moscow; no one bothers with taxis). We got in and Dan was chatting away (in Russian) with the driver who turned out to be Georgian. He was very friendly and Dan seemed to be enjoying the conversation very much because when we arrived back at the flat Dan invited the driver up to have champagne with us. I do not remember if we ever learned his name so I shall call him “the Georgian”. We could not all fit into the lift in Dan’s building. I think Nadia and I took the lift while Dan and the Georgian walked up four flights of stairs. We got in and put the Georgian on the couch. Dan opened the bottle of champagne for me and Nadia but the Georgian declined because he was driving. Dan drank whisky. We had not been sitting there for long when the Georgian apologised for removing his gun from its holster and placing it on the table. It had been digging into his hip, he explained. I remember being surprised but not really worried that we had a strange Georgian man with a gun in the flat. We carried on drinking and chatting. The Georgian asked if he could smoke. I imagined that Dan was about to say ‘no’ so I suggested that he make an exception on this occasion. So now we had a smoking Georgian on the couch, a gun on the dining table, an open bottle of champagne that was not being drunk and Nadia asleep on the armchair in the corner. The Georgian just stayed and stayed and stayed and Dan was very reluctant to ask him to leave so he asked me to do something about it. I must have simply announced that I was very tired and that I would have to go to bed soon, I pointed out that Nadia was already sleeping, I told Dan that he should go to bed too and I may or may not have asked the Georgian if he was not tired as well. It seemed to take a long time from that point to when the Georgian finally left. He wanted to take Nadia with him, said he would be happy to drive her home, but Dan and I felt a lot more comfortable keeping Nadia with us. The Georgian finally left, gun in holster under jacket. Dan and I put Nadia to bed in my room and then we went to sleep as well.

Wednesday Morning Diary of a Drunk

Wake up, look at clock: 6.24 - excellent, another hour to go. Ouch, head hurts. Why does my chest feel like I smoked last night? Remembering: I was drunk and I smoked. Okay, I can handle that. Fall asleep again. Wake up again, remembering things from dreams. Imagine self reaching for notebook but can’t quite muster the effort. Reach for phone: text message from Monkey – feel better. Remember posting very stupid comment to blog while drunk – feel worse. Manage to dig notebook out of handbag on floor at foot of bed, write stuff down. Sink back into pillows. Alarm goes off, hit snooze. Get up before alarm goes off again.

Bathroom, shower, etc. Mess up routine by getting online to delete stupid comment, hoping that no one has read it. Realise going to be late to work, don’t care. Notice that bra smells like cannabis because of placement of said substance in wardrobe. Throw substance in with shoes. While putting on eye make-up, realise forgot moisturiser. Finish putting on eye make-up, then attempt to moisturise without smudging make-up. I hate when I do things in the wrong order.

Walk to work, sunglasses on in spite of clouds. See woman with two small children, wonder if being a mom would be better than being a drunk. Quickly decide that no, it would not. Think of the famous Dean Martin line: “I feel sorry for people who don't drink. They wake up in the morning and that's the best they're going to feel all day.”

Max loves Maureen Dowd

On yahoo this morning: Weapons Inspector Ends WMD Search in Iraq. “…the CIA’s top weapons hunter in Iraq said his search for weapons of mass destruction ‘has been exhausted’ without finding any.”

I was surprised to see this story because 1) I did not realise the US still had people dedicated to searching and 2) I did not think the US would ever admit the search was over if nothing had been found.

On Sky News last night: Michael Howard, the opposition leader in the British government, was being interviewed. There is a general election in the UK next week so Howard spent a great deal of energy emphasising that Tony Blair had blatantly lied, “with intent to lie,” to the British people about WMD in Iraq. A prime minister lying should be a serious thing, yet in the six major polls Blair’s Labour party remains from 4 to 10% ahead of Howard’s Conservatives.

We also know that George W Bush lied to the American people about WMD and we re-elected him. It is as if we have accepted that politicians will always lie to the people, and that acceptance even extends to lies that bring dire consequences.

I believe in the concept of ministerial responsibility, something that seems to have fallen out of fashion in the US. I thought that Rumsfeld should have resigned as soon as the abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light but that fascist pigfucker is still in the government too.

The people need to rise up and take the country back, but everyone seems to be too damn comfortable to try to change anything. Our next president will probably be Jeb Bush. But if we do not do anything, then one day something is going to happen to force change, and I expect that whatever that is will not be pleasant.

Gun Story 2: Paris

My friend Devastatin' Dave likes his knife, but I am from LA: I have gun stories. I have 3 stories but I think I will skip the 1st as it is not entertaining without loads of background information. Here is the 2nd, which took place in Paris in October 2003.

Jono and I walked into a bar on the edge of the Marais after dinner on a Saturday night. We had been upstairs in the same bar for karaoke the night before at about 4.30 a.m. This time we sat downstairs near the bar. Jono got the beers and we noticed that the barmaid was missing a few key teeth. The we noticed that one of the waitresses had tattoos all over her back. And then we noticed that certain people who appeared to be the bar's regular patrons also appeared to be completely cracked out. We also noted the man with the shaven head who had Chinese characters tattooed on his scalp in a highly irregular fashion. Then the bouncer started covering the shop-front windows with pieces of wood which had clearly been cut for that purpose. He covered them completely and then came inside and the next customers had to ring a bell to be let in. Jono and I were puzzled because we did not remember the bar being at all like this the night before. We realised however that it could have been even worse and we would have been oblivious to it. Jono said he felt on edge; I said it was fine, the place had some colour and character. Then the bald man reached around and scratched his back. His shirt came up a bit and I spotted the gun that was tucked into the waistband of his jeans. I told Jono, he said 'drink up' and we were out the door within about 90 seconds.

On Separation of Church and State

I realised that the US was truly a Christian country when I was 15 and my family moved from an urban ethnic ghetto to the suburbs. My urban ethnic ghetto was West LA where almost everyone I knew was Jewish, and the suburbs were Orange County, which was the most shockingly white-bread place I had ever been in my life.

More recently I was teaching at the Czech military university in Vyškov where we had a guest speaker, Charles Moss Duke, Jr, an Apollo astronaut and one of only twelve people to have walked on the moon. He was an interesting speaker, as you would imagine, until he finished talking about space travel and started talking about Jesus.

The Czech Republic is the least religious country in Europe according to how people report their religion in the national census. I love the fact that there is no religion in daily life here. No one preaches to you or tries to tell you how to live, and you can be as irreverent as you want and no one gets offended.

I have just read the first two instalments of an article by Steve Weissman on www.truthout.org entitled “America's Religious Right - Saints or Subversives?” Weissman reminds us of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and that the founding fathers of our country intended to keep religion out of government.

“The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” -- Treaty of Tripoli, signed on June 10, 1797, by President John Adams

Weissman goes on to write about General Boykin, known as the “Christian General” who has claimed that his god is bigger than Islam’s and that we are fighting “in the name of Jesus”; and David Barton, the leading spin artist for Christian nationalism, who uses revisionist history to try and prove “that America once was and should again become a Christian nation.”

I really do not care what religion people are or to what degree. I just want them all to keep their religion out of my government, and stop trying to use the name of one god or another to take away my freedom.

I want to be political today too

I remember my reaction as a child to learning of the existence of the Geneva Conventions. I thought it was absolutely absurd because, I reasoned,

If they can make rules to dictate conduct in wars, then why can’t they just make a rule that we won’t have any wars?

And it turns out that I was right all along. We have these rules on the treatment of prisoners of war and it is an absurd idea and no one is following them. Perhaps US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was right when he called the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete”.

I have been worried about the deterioration of freedom in the US and elsewhere. The Patriot Acts in the US and the Terrorism Acts in the UK are taking rights away from us in the name of protecting us from some great undefinable danger. People accept this because they believe what they are told, they think our "security" is the most important thing and/or they believe it does not directly affect them, as in “I’ve got nothing to worry about because I am white and christian”.

But this is the fascist way. The government takes small steps because people do not object to them. Other people’s rights are taken away first; the majority can usually live with that. But we need to be aware and we need to be very cautious because the small steps will eventually cover a lot of ground.

Patrick Henry said in 1775:
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Iceland

Two nights ago I dreamt of Iceland and I feel that it has to mean something. I have been asking people and even looking in online dream dictionaries and no one knows what it could mean. Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you.

Thursday Night Drunk

It is 1.30 in the morning; I have just got home from U Zpěváčků. It is a work night and I should have been in my bed over an hour ago. I was at work until 8.30 and was supposed to go see friends play at a benefit concert for the legalisation of cannabis but could not be bothered trying to get to the club in time. Instead I went to U Zpěváčků, the obvious alternative. I was tempted to go home after 2 small beers but it is hard to leave when you are friends with the barman. Then after 3 beers, Dan showed up so I had to stay to have a beer or two with him. Then when I was really going to go, Dan ordered another beer for me; everyone knows it is rude to refuse a drink that someone has just bought for you. I left after that beer and I was about a block and a half away when Mike called me to come back because I had left my folder at the bar. The folder contained tax documents that I had been forgetting to bring home with me from work for at least 10 days. (Please see The Chronicles of Devastatin' Dave for more information about taxes.)

On my second try at going home, I saw a man on the street who looked like my friend Adam, at least in the dark and at a distance. Adam died last summer because he had a big tumour in his brain that would not go away. So I spent the rest of my walk home, which to be fair is only 10 minutes, talking to Adam. He never answered.

On working for women

It has been said that working for a woman is more difficult than working for a man. I will not go into the reasons for this generalisation; they do not matter. I have always thought anyway that this could not be the case, probably due to my feminist sensibilities. But this morning when I told another friend about my run-in with the managing partner of my firm, his first question was whether the partner was a man or a woman. I thought about this on my walk to work, and I realised that I actually have had a lot of problems with female bosses.

However I have also had problems with male bosses, and I have not had problems with every female boss I have had. My mother has said that I simply have a problem with authority, which is also true.

One of the best bosses I ever had was a woman. She was a high-powered, high level executive recruiter and I worked as her secretary twice in between bouts of studying. She was demanding and difficult and no one else could work for her, but I got on with her very well because we respected each other.

The worst boss I ever had was a man. I know people who work elsewhere for him now, and they hate him too.

I am still thinking about it and I think that yes, I have had more problems with female bosses than with male bosses. I shall have to think about it some more in an effort to determine the reasons.