More Parries
December 2008
Stop Yesterday
Is the goal of Israel’s assault on Gaza to discourage Hamas from firing rockets, or is it to render Hamas incapable of firing rockets? These are two very different projects, yet we are hearing about both from the government, which worryingly suggests that the government isn’t quite sure.
Short-circuiting Place-based Longing
If there is one tangible benefit to having lived in a variety of places it’s that it furnishes evidence of the futility of longing to be elsewhere.
October 2008
Ebullience, Please
A President of the United States must be ebullient. At the presidential debates we should have seen McCain like we saw him at the Al Smith dinner.
September 2008
History Tonight, McCain vs. Obama
McCain pulled through but he’d better improve, better get relaxed. This was the big one, and Obama came off a 21st century Brat Packer.
Encounter at Wetherspoone’s
As if those glass double doors belong to a wild saloon wherein one must repulse brigands just for a peaceful drink.
August 2008
A Crawl Across Crawley, Part 1
Irit, the Jam and I walk from Brighton to Gatwick Airport.
July 2008
Suddenly Seymour
Time was, Seymour Hersh’s dispatches were a cause for minor celebration. They were full- and deep-throated journalistic tours de force, possible changers of paradigms. But his latest, “Preparing the Battlefield” on funding covert ops in Iran, leaves too many clues that reveal precisely where he’s coming from.
June 2008
Another End of Times
With the recent reported training exercises over Crete, perhaps Israel’s strike on the Iranian regime’s machinery of genocide has already begun.
Dead Till Eilenspiegel
Beyond steadfastness and vigor in prosecuting Islamofascism, John McCain seems an American president I’d love even more than the great liberator George W. Bush (most of you just left, I know) because he is more American on immigration than either his party or the other.
All So Simple
First, there is a general moode and desire to write.
March 2008
Why AAPL
Apple’s operating system will, I believe, become in time the dominant one, and with a current market share of only 6% or so, that’s a lot more computers to sell. And as the only operating system seller that also sells the computers it runs on, as well as owning the shops they’re sold from, Apple stands to become a colossus, even a frightening one.
Clash of the Midgets
My phone! One of the reasons I didn’t want an iPhone is that I’m invested in the T9 text entry method and like it. But while I do like the Nokia N95’s slider, it creates discomfort when entering text because all the weight in the phone is further up.
January 2008
Dangers of the Gaza-Egypt border breach
Hamas may try to use Egyptian territory to stage cross-border attacks on Israel, aiming to operate in parts of the Sinai as Hezballah does in southern Lebanon.
Glick Dismisses Gaza Border Breach
Caroline Glick, the strident Jerusalem Post columnist, seems to see the Gaza-Egypt border breach as yet another in a long line of Israeli strategic disasters by incompetent leaders. I’m not convinced however of her arguments, mainly because she doesn’t make any.
Israel’s Greatest Victory Since Osirak
The great tactician Ariel Sharon steamrolled through Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and today we see another step in the unfolding of this masterplan to staunch the damage caused by the victory of the Six Day War in 1967.
I Do Like Mondays
First procedure: clean out the 2-cup mokka from the previous usage. The sink here is metal and I enjoy lightly bashing the coffee holder against it to knock the damp grains out then putting them in the rubbish before swilling out the remains under the tap. The sound is just the same as baristas make in cafes.
The Small Adventures - Part 2
There in the empty restaurant by the water at Dieppe I had toast with foie gras, a carafe of red wine, a huge plate of mussels and chips, and finally a creme brulee. Somehow, though I’ve eaten in restaurants hundreds of times, I felt grown up sitting there alone on my travels.
December 2007
The Small Adventures
Of course we were late for the train. We enquired frantically among the taxis for one who would accept the two dogs—mine and Davide’s—and take us to Termini Station so I could catch the 11pm train to Milan that would be one third of our journey to Britain.
Tony Blair and the Four-State Vision
Ariel Sharon’s disengagement policy reflected an understanding that ownership of the Palestinian issue is shared with Egypt and Jordan. Once Tony Blair acquires this view, he can help facilitate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Spooked, They’ll Annoint Rudy
Because of the recent US National Intelligence Report, the electorate will turn to someone who demonstrates not only the ideological conviction required to continue to prosecute Islamism, but also the administrative savvy to reform entrenched bureacracies.
October 2007
A Restoration and Return
There she was, sitting outside the apartment block! How did she do it? Dogs must have some sort of navigational sense we don’t understand.
Curs to Fate
Yesterday I lost Jam in Villa Borghese, the central park here in Rome. She has not turned up since.
This Trip’s Last Day
I went to Astor Place Haircutters. I crossed Manhattan Bridge on foot. I walked west along Canal St, seeking a bamboo steamer.
I, Thou and Pastor Bob
At Rome I felt queasy that they would paint and revere scenes that occured in Israel, but here, looking at the Calvary Church campus, I felt that the religious energy is actually here, that we are far enough away from the places of the events themselves that they can finally become abstracted and spiritualized and kept relevant. An ocean and a small continent separate Fort Lauderdale from Afula.
September 2007
The Big and Easy
The moon is shining through these tropical September clouds, directly above a neighbor’s palm tree, and it’s completely full. An airplane is landing at a nearby airfield. I ramble, unable to reach what I mean, perhaps because what I mean is an almost meaningless jumble of contradictory thoughts that are less thoughts than incomplete attempts to label fleeting tumbling emotions.
Flightblogging
With the squeaks from the front and the clatter from the bulkheads and the smell from the toilet, there’s a reason to prefer Gatwick and the train over Heathrow and the bus. It’s very misty but we’re here. Korean Air Cargo. A parking lot.
August 2007
A Drop in Time
To have a camera back again a personal epoch later feels like a time machine squared. Your chronicling device—itself a time machine of sorts—is suddenly back to what it was years ago, before much was changed, which in itself somewhat returns you to those times.
Sauna Losing Heat
Rather than reaching the heights, to exciting thoughts and feelings, I tend increasingly in the sauna to just sit and think about the work I’ve just done and the work I’m about to do after. Something’s missing.
A Ride to Gatwick Airport
Gatwick is my airport now, largely unchanged since 1986, so it now looks tawdry. Airports. They’re so charged, so symbolic, and so empty once you’re at one; I dream of them often.
July 2007
Busy, Busy City
There’s a bridge in London’s St. James’s park where you can see Buckingham Palace at one end of the pond and Whitehall at the other, with the London Eye behind. Whitehall looked less a thumping fast haven for bureaucrats than a fairytale town, with the improbable slowly-moving Eye completing the fantasy.
First Time in this House All Day
One reaction (in The Times) to Islamist terrorist doctors: “Nowhere can inequality be so devastatingly stark as in a well-resourced British hospital.” So now we know: it’s understandable that after removing an annoying woman’s varicose veins, why, one sets a car alight and drives it into an airport departure hall.
The Soft Ache of Cold Hotels
The back yard is now set up and quite effortlessly picturesque, with its greenage and raw brick walls. Until we start trying to grow wee vegetables nothing else need be done except the daily maintenance of clearing the butts from the ashtray and the leaves from the ground.
June 2007
Only the Rustle in the Trees
We all, like twinkles on a sunny day’s waves, shine briefly. That I do know to be true. Other perspectives are futile. Grief, loss—these are the great teachers surely. Understand that what one has will pass.
A Rash Appointment
I have a rash on my face these days, reaching from my forehead down the sides of my nose and to my mouth. It went away while I was in America but now back in Britain it’s returned. How can that be?
A Cabaret Old Chum
It’s a last bastion of civility, Brian mused ruefully (with that inability of his to be really rued), as we had a beer walking through Penn Station to his train. I realized that I don’t know people like him anymore: libertarian Democrats.
Fatahland and Hamastan
Wherein I obsess about developments in Gaza rather than recording the sights and sounds of New York City in the springtime.
Squelching in a Bath of Me
I rode the Metro subway for the first time—didn’t even known Los Angeles has one. It’s cheap and clean, but the problem is there just aren’t that many trains, as if the city sabotages its own public transport system and wants you to have a car.
Stars, Stripes and Superlatives
Here in Los Angeles I am bombarded with superlatives. Daniel’s record collection. The Bikram Yoga College of India world headquarters. Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Cutting-edge web applications by people down from the Bay Area. All mixed in with the most ravaging mediocrity.
Pursuit of Hashemesh
Welcome to three weeks in America. Top story in USA Today: Tiger Woods is going to design a golf course.
May 2007
Bikram’s Yoga, Meet David Allen’s GTD
Both systems are comprehensive in their respective realms and, controversially, ground-up rather than top-down.
Notes and Chords on the Levant Right Now
Palestinian Arabs, quasi-sovereign for the first time, are descending into civil war in Gaza. Lebanon, acting militarily for the first time, is going after al-Qaeda cells within its Palestinian camps. And Israel is undergoing political convulsions, hammering out a new political system it seems. And all these developments among the neighbors are in play each with the other.
My City to Your City
A bunch of loud white kids came running down from the promenade shouting vilely to each other. I was reminded of El Topo (we saw it yesterday at the fabulous Duke of York cinema) and I was reminded of the scene when the three bandits gradually build up their cackling harassment of the man in black as he rides into their valley.
Shite on Brighton
“Like many provincial towns,” the Private Eye reviewer stabs, “Brighton, as depicted in this hacked-together tribute, defines itself more by what it isn’t than by what it is. It’s not London, for one thing.”
From DisneyWorld to Watford
I needed my wallet more than the gypsies did.
Back in Black
Please pardon the unannounced, unplanned and unbecoming two weeks off. Following are some memorable moments from them in the order they popped into mind.
Daily Yin
For my first test of the day as day, I open the back door and step outside to the little patio to see the sky and feel the air. I realize not everybody does this, so if people tell me I’m a miserable bastard then perhaps this little habit will correct their impression.
April 2007
Wetherspoones and Raisins
No that’s not right, said I, sipping strong tea just brewed. Klement wanted me to read over an email he wrote. “Thank you for taking your time to interview me,” it began. My Dad also called to tell me of his new socks.
Mind the Dream
Dreaming about our passed companions as if they are alive requires tricks to the dreaming mind to overcome what it believes and knows to be true.
The Meaning Addiction
I’m reading Shardik by Richard Adams, famous for Watership Down. I chose it because it’s about religion, and Adams demonstrated such insight there with the rabbits’ religion—“Oh Frith on the hill, he made it all for us!”—that he’s clearly a contributor to our understanding of ourselves and our meaning addiction.
Short Stuff
Persian civilization typefaces, Palestinian innovation, Flood worries, that’s life with websites, Brighton is slow, and bad Jajah.
ver since I can remember flying has been one of the joys of my life. I remember as a child in the early- to mid-70s flying down from Glasgow to Birmingham with my parents, mesmerized for much of the flight by the propellors. I knew they were whirring and I tried to catch their motion. How disappointed I was with the introduction of jets—what was I supposed to look at the entire trip?
Early in my thirties I spent 18 months working for Israeli billing software company Amdocs, and even when I had to take long-haul flights just days apart, I still loved it—the work was boring but that was the price I gladly paid for the fabulous flights. Speeding in a smooth big Mercedes taxi from home in Tel Aviv to Ben-Gurion Airport through the dewy morning, still dark; striding through the terminal at Hong Kong Airport, the green mountains visible through the huge glass windows on either side—the whole experience of flying has maintained its glamour for me, despite the indignities of queuing and the anxieties of running late for the airport.
I love the possibilities for cameraderie at airports. People who are travelling are much more amenable to talking than they are during their routine lives, and generally have more interesting stories. Flying can be a very gregarious few hours.
And if I’m not feeling gregarious, once I’m on the plane I find I’m almost spoilt for choice recreationally. For a start, I can look out the window and glory in the privilege of seeing our fair world from above. (Is it fair to judge people by whether they are window or aisle choosers? Window people see the world as half full, are still up for wonder and awe, while aisle people are more concerned with what ails them, with how easily they can get to the toilet.) An attractive woman brings me my choice of drink. (Again, can you judge someone based on whether they take Bloody Marys or not when flying?) Then a meal, all packed up in cosy containers, and usually darn tasty as well, despite how people like to complain about airplane food. I can read my book guilt-free, as there’s precious little else I can do. Or I can watch one of the movies they’ve generously laid on for my entertainment. Or I can sit straight up, look straight ahead, close my eyes and think, ie, doze, marvelling when I remember it that I am in a metal tube up in the sky. Open my eyes. A look down below. Switzerland and the Alps? India and the Himalayas? Forgive me, but I truly am in heaven! How nice if they could just keep flying me around up here, rather than landing me where I’m supposed to be going.
Of course, sometimes you don’t get a window seat. Sometimes you get an oversized or foul-smelling seatmate. Sometimes you’re crowded between two people. And not everyone is as short as me, so they feel more cramped in an airplane seat than I do. And not everyone has the foresight to immediately remove their shoes upon sitting down, feeling right at home there up in the sky. Nonetheless, more often than not, the seating arrangement does work out okay.
What spawned this eulogy to flying is an article on Ryanair in BusinessWeek: ‘Wal-Mart With Wings’. I’ve flown Ryanair once and hope I’m not lured by a low fare into flying Ryanair again. Today we look back with reverence at the early years of commercial aviation, when only the rich could afford it and the cultural norms were set: pretty hostesses, uniforms, etc. Obviously, it’s great that flying is now affordable to so many more people (despite its new status as environmental no-no) but I fear that together with that democratization will come a lowering, that future generations will be awed by current levels of service. Gee, grandpa, you mean they just brought you food and drink on airplanes back then, and it didn’t cost you nothing? And you could look out a real window?
On a commercial flight there’s little room for moving about, so in order not to feel like a crated sardine, any feasible level of service should be encouraged. The problem is, I think, that Europeans, despite their high standards of living, do not really have hugely high internal standards when faced with what looks like authority. They enjoy the munificence of their economies certainly, the dozens of brands of honey at their local supermarkets, but at the same time are quite willing to undergo inhumane conditions. I don’t know at what depth they say enough’s enough—if at all. In Rome, one of the cradles of Western civilization, a place that prides itself on bestowing dignity upon the individual, people climb aboard buses to the point that when the doors open they must hold on otherwise they’ll spill out. This includes elderly people, whom I’ve seen missing their stops because they simply couldn’t get to the exit, the bus was so jam-packed.
And in Britain, in a phenomenon I’ve read about but not seen, people queue up all night then get into fistfights for their place in line outside after-Christmas sales just to pick up a few bargains after their own holiday gift-giving season! English writer Julian Baggini wrote recently that the English are a working-class people with middle-class money, but I think this may apply to Europe in general. Whereas the two countries I know best, Israel and the US, have relatively short histories so that the middle class has always been the norm, in Europe the middle class is a relatively new phenomenon: for centuries there have been only the few gentry and the teeming masses of poor. Maybe it’s a daft notion, but I’m speculating that this background lets Europeans allow these indignities to be heaped upon them. As one analyst in the BusinessWeek article notes, it’s unlikely that Americans will accept an airline that makes them pay for their Coca Cola. Not that Americans mind paying for a Coca Cola. It’s just that there’s a minimal level of decorum and hospitality expected when captive in the air. Despite their reputation for being money-obsessed, they would rather pay a bit more up front than suffer the indignity of having to cough up for every little transaction throughout a process. There is no widely-used UK expression, so far as I know, for being “nickeled and dimed”.
Ryanair kills the joy of air travel. Usually when you fly you feel privileged, that this is a special place to be, that you are a somebody. The fact that many airlines are national carriers adds to this: the prestige of the nationstate is at stake. But when you fly Ryanair, the second nature in the cabin is stronger than the first nature of being on a new Boeing 737 speeding through the air. That second nature is a general feeling that you are a nobody, that you are only where you are right now because you couldn’t afford anything better, and that the staff are there because they couldn’t get hired by a better-paying airline. That atmosphere infects the entire experience, from pulling up at the city’s least liked airport to being told snarkily by the cabin staff that they are there “also for your comfort but primarily for your safety.” The whole experience of flying Ryanair was so luridly lumpen that it made me question whether I really needed to bother going to my destination in the first place.
Even their website is determinedly ugly, so ugly that it appears to be deliberate. Given how profitable Ryanair appears to be, I am fearful that this is the future of air travel.
Update: ‘Ryanair forces boy with broken leg to stand all the way from Italy’
∞
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