It's been a long eight days - at the start the UK was part of a super-rich, glittering and fully developed world, imperialist privileges well and truly intact. Now we're locking ourselves in our offices to stop getting the sack, money is literally disintegrating in our hands and the entire City of London is worth roughly 17 Ugandan dollars. Sadly, as I've discovered, there are plenty more reasons to not be cheerful...
First up, way back last Monday, whilst lying in a bath full of money, I watched a horrible film called Jesus Camp, where a group of evangelists in North Dakota managed to convince a group of kids that they could speak in tongues and that God was moving through them. It's hard to believe it's a trick, what with under-10s being so wary of new ideas and wholly not gullible. The film revealed that there are 80 million people in the U.S. who consider themselves to be evangelists. Now I appreciate that the people in the film are about as close to Christianity as fundamentalist Muslims are to the heart of their own religion, but the fact that there are even 3 people prepared to exploit children in this way is miserable enough.
If you're feeling sorry for the suggestible kids of middle America, spare a thought for the sizeable Korean population of New Malden. New Malden is the most densely populated South Korean area outside of South Korea itself. Having been through New Malden on the train, I can only imagine that the residents of this enclave must be wondering when they can come out of the bunker and get on with their lives. No offence...
Moving a few miles down the road, we head into leafy Surrey, where you'll find considerably less enthusiasm for ethnic diversity, and the epicentre of the most recent foot-and-mouth outbreak. Foot-and-mouth was, of course, one of the first nails in Gordon Brown's leadership coffin, which now resembles something a circus performer would attempt to lie down on. Perhaps the signs that we were all heading back to the Dark Ages came with this latest outbreak of a bizarre agricultural plague - admittedly one that hasn't affected humans since 1966. Although knowing Gordon's luck at the minute, you wouldn't rule it out.
America are also facing the inevitability of a new guy in charge (though thankly not a greenwashing moon-faced prick) - either Barack Obama or John McCain. Hopefully and probably it will be the former, unless they ditch the votes and go for a 'Nam style endurance test where both are locked in a cell deep in a rainforest until one of them cracks. It's really quite galling that America, who have frankly not been the best at picking presidents, seem to be on the verge of electing a guy who appears to be a half-decent politician and person. Fast forward eight years, however, and once that tricky loophole has been taken care of, it could well be Arnie's turn. America love actors in charge, and Arnie is technically just that - even if he did only have 17 lines in The Terminator, and was generally cast as a giant slab of Teutonic smoked beef rather than a solid character actor.
From a guy who can't act who could one day run the world, to a woman who can't write a half-decent book who earns £5 a second - need I tell you it's JK Rowling. Before you all write in, I know there's a lot of Potter fans out there, but I've got four words for you. I. Don't. Get. It. Incidentally, the K in her pen name is made up - she doesn't have a middle name. So by the time the working week was done, I'd already learnt about bovine disease, overrated artists, trapped Koreans and an awful lot of evangelists. Surely it couldn't get any worse. Then came the news that Rizla papers have more harmful chemicals in than tobacco. This one bothers me primarily because I am virtually certain it is untrue; however when you forget to learn anything until 5 to midnight, this is what happens.
Clearly by this stage, I was losing the will to learn even the most trivial of truth. Luckily on Sunday, whilst watching the end of The Goblet of Fire and thinking about that £5 per second whilst grinding my teeth down to a series of smooth yellowed domes, I learnt that Alnwick Castle, the setting for Hogwarts (such a stupid name - god don't get me started, I beg you) is the second largest inhabited castle in the U.K. The largest is Windsor Castle - which is owned by the Royal Family. It looks like imperial privilege is still alive and well. Finally, to round off a truly joyous week of learning, I discovered that 30% burns is enough to finish you off - even though you'll feel fine for a couple of weeks, before the scorched skin uses up your body's water reserves. Delightful. Thankfully I didn't learn this from personal experience, but from a bizarre work conversation which reminded me why I don't usually look up from my computer when colleagues are in the office.
This brings us to today, where the papers piled up at Earlsfield station greeted me with a rapidly descending line and the words "how low can it go?", as if global share prices were some kind of giant financial limbo dancing contest. They could be, to be honest, for all I know. Inside the previous day's trading had been labelled as Meltdown Monday, in the billionth attempt thus far to come up with the next Black Monday. I didn't know Black Monday happened in 1987 - the one that happened in the early 90s must have been a similar desperate attempt at spinning a nifty soundbite from a desolate landscape of financial misery. In an attempt to get in on the act, I'd like right now to patent Manic Monday, Fucked Up Friday, Worldwide Weeping Wednesday, and Third World Thursday. More later in the week, when I at least don't have to go to work - so there is one positive guaranteed...
First up, way back last Monday, whilst lying in a bath full of money, I watched a horrible film called Jesus Camp, where a group of evangelists in North Dakota managed to convince a group of kids that they could speak in tongues and that God was moving through them. It's hard to believe it's a trick, what with under-10s being so wary of new ideas and wholly not gullible. The film revealed that there are 80 million people in the U.S. who consider themselves to be evangelists. Now I appreciate that the people in the film are about as close to Christianity as fundamentalist Muslims are to the heart of their own religion, but the fact that there are even 3 people prepared to exploit children in this way is miserable enough.
If you're feeling sorry for the suggestible kids of middle America, spare a thought for the sizeable Korean population of New Malden. New Malden is the most densely populated South Korean area outside of South Korea itself. Having been through New Malden on the train, I can only imagine that the residents of this enclave must be wondering when they can come out of the bunker and get on with their lives. No offence...
Moving a few miles down the road, we head into leafy Surrey, where you'll find considerably less enthusiasm for ethnic diversity, and the epicentre of the most recent foot-and-mouth outbreak. Foot-and-mouth was, of course, one of the first nails in Gordon Brown's leadership coffin, which now resembles something a circus performer would attempt to lie down on. Perhaps the signs that we were all heading back to the Dark Ages came with this latest outbreak of a bizarre agricultural plague - admittedly one that hasn't affected humans since 1966. Although knowing Gordon's luck at the minute, you wouldn't rule it out.
America are also facing the inevitability of a new guy in charge (though thankly not a greenwashing moon-faced prick) - either Barack Obama or John McCain. Hopefully and probably it will be the former, unless they ditch the votes and go for a 'Nam style endurance test where both are locked in a cell deep in a rainforest until one of them cracks. It's really quite galling that America, who have frankly not been the best at picking presidents, seem to be on the verge of electing a guy who appears to be a half-decent politician and person. Fast forward eight years, however, and once that tricky loophole has been taken care of, it could well be Arnie's turn. America love actors in charge, and Arnie is technically just that - even if he did only have 17 lines in The Terminator, and was generally cast as a giant slab of Teutonic smoked beef rather than a solid character actor.
From a guy who can't act who could one day run the world, to a woman who can't write a half-decent book who earns £5 a second - need I tell you it's JK Rowling. Before you all write in, I know there's a lot of Potter fans out there, but I've got four words for you. I. Don't. Get. It. Incidentally, the K in her pen name is made up - she doesn't have a middle name. So by the time the working week was done, I'd already learnt about bovine disease, overrated artists, trapped Koreans and an awful lot of evangelists. Surely it couldn't get any worse. Then came the news that Rizla papers have more harmful chemicals in than tobacco. This one bothers me primarily because I am virtually certain it is untrue; however when you forget to learn anything until 5 to midnight, this is what happens.
Clearly by this stage, I was losing the will to learn even the most trivial of truth. Luckily on Sunday, whilst watching the end of The Goblet of Fire and thinking about that £5 per second whilst grinding my teeth down to a series of smooth yellowed domes, I learnt that Alnwick Castle, the setting for Hogwarts (such a stupid name - god don't get me started, I beg you) is the second largest inhabited castle in the U.K. The largest is Windsor Castle - which is owned by the Royal Family. It looks like imperial privilege is still alive and well. Finally, to round off a truly joyous week of learning, I discovered that 30% burns is enough to finish you off - even though you'll feel fine for a couple of weeks, before the scorched skin uses up your body's water reserves. Delightful. Thankfully I didn't learn this from personal experience, but from a bizarre work conversation which reminded me why I don't usually look up from my computer when colleagues are in the office.
This brings us to today, where the papers piled up at Earlsfield station greeted me with a rapidly descending line and the words "how low can it go?", as if global share prices were some kind of giant financial limbo dancing contest. They could be, to be honest, for all I know. Inside the previous day's trading had been labelled as Meltdown Monday, in the billionth attempt thus far to come up with the next Black Monday. I didn't know Black Monday happened in 1987 - the one that happened in the early 90s must have been a similar desperate attempt at spinning a nifty soundbite from a desolate landscape of financial misery. In an attempt to get in on the act, I'd like right now to patent Manic Monday, Fucked Up Friday, Worldwide Weeping Wednesday, and Third World Thursday. More later in the week, when I at least don't have to go to work - so there is one positive guaranteed...
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