A happy Burns Night to all, and may you all enjoy your haggis, neeps, and tatties!

I am pleased to announce that we have a new bundle of joy in our life, recently arrived.
I am referring, of course, to my new PS2.
This is the first gaming console I’ve owned since the Intellivision my family had back in the 80’s. I held off that long because I work out of home, and I was afraid that the temptation of a dedicated videogame console would be more than I could withstand. Over the years, though, I have slowly come to realize that if I want to procrastinate, I am going to procrastinate. That’s what the Internet is there for, after all.
I realize that I’m getting on the PS2 bandwagon just as it is becoming obsolete, but there is an advantage to being several years behind the curve: I haven’t yet had to spend more than five quid on eBay per game.

The second best thing about this news article is the opening paragraph:

A 63-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to blackmail the owners of a Staffordshire guinea pig breeding farm.

The first best thing is that the article never mentions what, exactly, the guinea pig breeders were being blackmailed over, as if it were so blatantly obvious what kind of dirty secret Staffordshire guinea pig breeders are harboring that there is no need to embarrass the breeders, the guinea pigs, or ourselves by spelling it out.
The only hint the article gives is the following cryptic paragraph:

[SCENE: A take-away Greek restaurant counter next to the Tottenham Court Road Tube. The guy behind the counter is waiting on a customer.]
GUY BEHIND THE COUNTER (in a heavy Greek accent): So, where are you from?
CUSTOMER (in a crisp British accent): London.
[The Guy Behind The Counter looks skeptically at the Customer, who appears to be of some non-British ethnic group.]
GUY BEHIND THE COUNTER: No, but where are you originally from?
CUSTOMER: My mother’s womb.
[The Guy Behind The Counter hasn’t heard of this country, but doesn’t wish to offend.]
GUY BEHIND THE COUNTER: Oh, very nice.

If you’ve never lived here, it’s easy to forget just how far north London is. It’s at 51°30′ N, which means that–at least in terms of latitude–it’s closer to Moscow than to Venice. Vancouver, Seattle, and Zurich are all south of London. Still not clear on how far north this city is? There are parts of Siberia that are south of London.
Fortunately, thanks to the Gulf Stream, London has a far more temperate climate than its geographic sisters. Unfortunately, the Gulf Stream can’t carry sunlight.
In winter, the sun can rise as late as 8AM, and set as early as 4PM. After a summer in which there’s still light in the sky until 9PM, the transition to winter is a brutal one, and this is the time it hits me hardest. In a month or so, I’ll be once again used to getting up before, and staying at work after, the sun does the same. But for now, it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning, let alone stay awake until dinner time.

It is an unquestionable theological principle that anybody who is even slightly less religious than I am is a godless heathen, while anyone who is even a jot more religious is a dangerous fanatic. That’s why I’m glad to have found a synagogue in London that is very near the level of observance that I grew up with.
But there’s one major difference that never fails to jar me. In every Jewish service I’ve been to, there’s always been a “prayer for our country,” which asks that wisdom be granted to our nation’s leaders. In the US, I’ve seen some variations that specifically mention the President and the vice-president, and others that just cover all the bases by praying for “all who exercise just and rightful authority.”
But at our synagogue in London, the prayer includes “the Queen and her advisors.” That’s logical enough, but it always feels a little odd to my rebellious Colonial soul to be praying for the Queen.
In any case, shana tovah to my Jewish readers, Ramadan mubarak to my Muslim readers, and to everybody else, erm, have a nice day.

Our minicab driver has a Caribbean accent, although it’s been faded by years in England. There’s a “Dominica” sticker on his dashboard, and one on his windshield.
He tells us that English children have no discipline. He’s carried passengers with kids, and watched in amazement as the kids treated the parents “like servants,” yelling at them, and even cursing.
“My mother would never let us get away with anything,” he says. “When she sent you to the store, she’d spit in a corner, and tell you you’d better get back before it dried. You hurried. There was a tree near the house–it looked a little like that one, over there–and when she wanted to punish you, she’d pull off a branch, and strip it, and–”
He mimes whipping. “Then she’d tell you to go down to the beach–we lived near the sea–and swim in it.”
“Salt water,” I say. “Ouch!”
“Salt water,” he agrees. “And you had to do it, because when you came back…” He mimes his mother running her finger along the back of his neck, and then licking her finger to check for salt. “And if you just put your head in, she’d lift up your shirt.” He mimes the same action, this time on his back. “She knew.”
He drives for another minute or two, and then adds, “My brothers and my sisters, they’re here in England, but they’ve sent their kids to her to raise, so they can just work, and send back their money.”
“Are your sisters as tough as your mom?” I ask.
“No, they’re not,” he says, and then adds, “My dad is white.” I’m not sure if that’s meant as an explanation, or just as a new train of conversation. He goes on, “He’s lived in Dominica for so long, though. When I go visit them from England, he says, ‘Go back to your country, and take your cold weather with you.'”
And then, unfortunately, we’re at our destination. We pay our fare, and go our separate ways.

I just returned from a 5-day trip to Tunisia (about which I hope to write more later) to discover that I’ve won a free pass to every film at the Raindance Film Festival. Given how many free screenings I’m expecting to see over the next few month, this doesn’t seem entirely fair, but that’s not going to stop me from spending most of every day next week gorging myself on movies. (The festival actually starts tonight, but my co-author and I are contractually obligated to deliver “The Government Manual for New Wizards,” our sequel to The Government Manual for New Superheroes, by October 1, so I doubt I’ll have much movie-gorging time for the next few days.)
(NOTE: IF YOU ARE MY FRIEND HUDA, PLEASE IGNORE THE PREVIOUS PARAGRAPH AND READ THE FOLLOWING ONE INSTEAD.)
I just returned from a 5-day trip to Tunisia (about which I hope to write more later) to discover that I’ve won a free pass to every film at the Raindance Film Festival. Unfortunately, I plan to spend all next week hard at work on a long-overdue film treatment for my producer friend Huda, so I won’t be able to go to any screenings. I’ll probably give my pass to my identical twin Jackbo, so if anybody were to think they saw me spending all day at Raindance when I should be working on my treatment for Huda, it would an entirely different person who looks exactly like me but goes out and does fun things when I am hard at work.

I just received a flyer from a group called Dash Arts. Rather alarmingly, their upcoming season includes a play called What We Did To Weinstein. Speaking on behalf of Weinsteins everywhere, I hope the answer turns out to be “Gave him chocolate cake.”

TimeOut magazine has a regular feature where they ask the same question to a driver of a black cab and drivers of a minicab and compare the answer. Last week, the question was, “What bylaw would you introduce if you were mayor?” I enjoyed the black cab driver’s answer: