An object of desire is an object nonetheless

So John McCain picked a woman as his vice-presidential nominee.

Two reactions.
1. Savvy, short term choice. Upstages coverage of Obama's convention speech last night. Attracts the "Hillary Harridans". Makes McCain seem more progressive.

2. Dumb choice. She's inexperienced. Media frenzy will eat her up and spit her out. Pander pander pander.

Okay, and a third reaction.

3. Objectified.

The reaction isn't "John McCain chose Sarah Palin!" It's "John McCain chose a woman!" It seems like for the purposes of the McCain campaign it could have been any woman. That he had to reach all the way to politically distant Alaska and pick a woman with less than two years of governing experience underscores how desperate he was for that second X-chromosome. I can't shake the feeling that the only reason he chose a woman was because she was a woman, not because she was qualified.

And that is a form of discrimination as much as sexism is—to judge someone solely on the basis of the gender, whether the judgement is positive or negative, is unfair and wrong. It reduces 51% of the population to a pair of chromosomes and effaces the complex differences within that group.

Moreover, McCain's choice undermines Hillary Clinton's hard-fought and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to be the Democratic nominee. Whether you like her or not, whether you agreed with her campaign tactics or not, there is no question that Hillary Clinton worked her ass off trying to get the nomination. On the other hand, Sarah Palin was almost magically selected to be on the ticket for the Republicans. There's something disturbing about the idea of a powerful, patrician old white man plucking a young, attactive political ingenue from obscurity to run alongside him for the White House, as if to say, "well, you can't get here on your own hard work and merits, so let Uncle John give you a hand." How patronizing. How sexist. How... political.

Adjustments

Still jetlagged from returning from the UK vacation, but it's the little things that are throwing me off:

1. The first time I paid for something (a coffee, of course) with Canadian money, it felt weird. I'd also forgotten how much a cup of coffee costs in Canada.

2. The first time I was in my kitchen again after being away for five weeks, I had to pause to remember where I kept my dishes.

3. Still working on getting the temperature of my apartment perfect. My landlady likes to switch off one of the two furnaces when it gets really hot out—which it was in the week leading up to my return, but not any more.

4. I have yet to go to campus. Will do that this afternoon.

5. Some of the people I would see during the year are still away. And I haven't had time to see Edmonton friends because I've had houseguests. This will be remedied tonight.

I'm back, but it doesn't really feel like I'm back yet.

Not funny

A seven hour flight delay (plane late getting in from Calgary, then mechanical issue that required replacing a part) meant that my travel day back from London was much longer than anticipated. Thankfully I was able to call Anna and let her know about the delay. Minutes after stepping off the plane in Calgary (at ten minutes to midnight, on a flight that should have gotten in at 5:15 p.m.), I turn on my cell phone and get a text that reads:

Funny. The website says your flight's been cancelled. Not funny? Where are you?

Um, cancelled? Yeah. Here's the screenshot:



I don't even want to get into waiting at Gatwick or the guy who managed to reach Globespan's head office by phone and talk to a mid-to-high-level manager who a) didn't know that our flight hadn't taken off yet and b) offered no compensation for the inconvenienced families who had been delayed an abnormally long time. Somehow the passenger commendeered the announcement apparatus in our waiting lounge and described the conversation. He also mentioned that Globespan has recently been fined £5,000 for flying with faulty cockpit equipement, which definitely gave me pause.

Yeah, I know it's a budget airline. But the passengers weren't kept informed of what was going on, the boarding time kept changing, and they didn't offer any kind of compensation except multiple apologies (plus the pilot's request that we not take out our frustrations on the flight crew).

On the plus side: despite a preponderence of babies and children on the plane, the flight was very quiet. And, well, I got home.

English/English

British English: voucher
Canadian English: coupon

British: disabled
Canadian: handicapped

British: queue
Canadian: line up

British: boiled rice
Canadian: steamed rice

British: jiffy bag
Canadian: padded envelope

British: Bag
Canadian: Purse (and bag)

British: Purse
Canadian: Wallet

Karine (holding up her little wallet): what do you call this?
Karine's roommate Hannah: "A wallet."
Me (holding up a slightly bigger wallet): What do you call this?
Hannah: "A purse."
Me: "AAARGH!"

Edinburgh Fringe fest

Okay, I'd been saying it about Edinburgh since I walked out of the train station, but it's still true: "Oooh! Pretty!"

Georgian and Victorian houses, a centuries-old castle, and—in August—lots and lots of Festival goers.


In Edmonton, I live mere blocks away from the second large Fringe theatre festival in the world. This year, I decided it was high time that I attended the much-bigger largest Fringe Theatre Festival in the World in Edinburgh. Edmonton wears its "second largest Fringe" designation proudly, but seriously, in every possible category, it's a distant second compared to Edinburgh. The Edinburgh program is larger (as thick as a Sears catalogue), there are over 100 venues spread out over the city (many concentrated in the Old Town area), the festival lasts for over three weeks, some bars stay open as late as 5 a.m., and you can buy booze and bring it into many of the performances.

My Edinburgh set-up was obviously very different than my Edmonton set-up—I was without a proper "home base", without my usual Fringe buddy, and without a plan since the schedule was so daunting. I was also with three other people and we proceeded to drink a lot, eat a lot, and see some shows. If I were to do Edinburgh Fringe again (and I would), I would certainly book accommodations earlier (no fault to Nicole on this, who did her best) and read trusted reviews sooner. I'd also scope out the Scotsman each day for their coupons for shows and take more advantage of the e-ticketing system and the half-price same-day tickets. I realize now that it would have been relatively easy to see some great shows. While a good early review at Edmonton Fringe will sell out a show's entire run, Edinburgh runs for so long and there are just so many competing shows and events that you can still get tickets for a five-star show the morning of. At least, in the beginning days of the festival, which is when I was there.

Some highlights:

• I saw two excellent shows on my last day (when I finally clued into how to do things), an incredibly well-written, well-acted one-man show, Scaramouche Jones, about a clown whose life was a metaphor for the 20th-century British colonial experience (sounds heavy-handed but it really wasn't). I gave it a standing ovation, though not everyone in the crowd did so.
  
• I also saw one half of a pair of related plays, The Bird and the Bee: The Bee, about a fifteen-year-old girl who commits suicide. My only regret was that I missed seeing The Bird, which is about the boy she loves, who commits suicide with her. Depressing? Yes. But also lyrical, intelligent, and really well acted and directed. I should have given this a standing ovation, but I was crying too much.
  
• of course, X-files improv
• my student card got me discounts on lots of tickets! Wo0-hoo!
  

Lowlights:

• One of the shows I had marked out in the program was a "could-be-good, could-be-horrible" puppet show whose program description ended with "Sophisticated wordless puppetry from Poland." Well, it was puppetry and I'll assume that the three puppeteers were Polish, but it was not sophisticated at all. Nicole was right when she called it self-indulgent. The show needed a plot to add cohesion, the movement work wasn't detailed or musical, the themes were superficial, and there was a lot of repetition. I don't mind pretentiousness in my art, but it still has to be good.
• I almost walked out of another show, The Gullibility Factor, a series of supposedly satirical sketches that were just annoying. The last sketch, a critique of the selling of the war in Iraq, was heavy handed without contributing to the debate. And another sketch hinged on the mocking of a character's Canadian accent, specifically the pronounciation of the word "Saskatchewan", but the actress playing the Canadian couldn't actually pronounce "Saskatchewan" correctly. It really really irked. I hated the show so much that when I left I walked up to the box office and bought a ticket for another show nearby just to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.
  
• With the number of people in Edinburgh for the various festivals (book, comedy, music, and the military tattoo), you'd think there'd be relatively good audience numbers. Not so. I saw a show where I was one of three (!) people in the audience. The venue was small (essentially, a large reception room in a house) but it could certainly seat more than three people. It was a one-man play that was only okay, but the poor actor deserved more than the £17 he made that night.
• I missed out on getting a ticket for what promised to be an amazing show, How It Ended, a physical theatre/dance performance. I was on the stand-by list, but there were no stand-by tickets to be had. I picked the show based on the description, not knowing that it had received amazing reviews, and had I gotten a ticket it would have been my Fringe "discovery", that show that you have no expectations of and that completely blows you away. Alas.
  

My five days (more like 4.5, really) were not spent solely on the Fringe. A conscientious researcher, I also went to the National Archives of Scotland (the building in the middle of the photo below) and looked up some of Robert Adam's letters. They were, for the most part, useless, but being in the lovely archives and getting to read and touch letters written in 1755 was pretty fucking cool. Last summer I'd e-mailed the archives asking for a quote on photocopying and mailing the letters I was interested in to Canada. The quote came to £115. Having now seen the letters, I'm very very relieved that I didn't get them.


Also, I ate haggis for the first time (the stuffing looking food underneath the chicken). It had the consistency of dried stuffing but tasted good.


And then, after five days of on-and-off rain, hit-and-miss theatre, disappointing research, and confusing navigation through the windy streets of Edinburgh, I was on a train to Sheffield.


I miss the Canadian summer.

Edinburgh: Story 1 (in two parts)

Part I:
The story behind this photo:

On the left we have Dean Haglund, whose main claim to fame is that he played one of the Lone Gunmen on the X-files. We went to Mr. Haglund's improv show at the Fringe (because Nicole found a flyer at a venue) and Nicole snagged a photo afterwards.

The story behind this photo is more interesting:


The show was essentially an improvised episode of the X-files in which an audience member went up on stage and helped with traditional improv games, like providing sound effects or random words when prompted or reading out lines previously written out by the audience. Because I'd had a pint and a half and because I'm kind of a jack-ass at improv shows (I once suggested "magic realism" as a genre) I gladly yelled out suggestions. Thanks to my suggested profession of "theoretical physicist", I got pulled up to the stage and got to play Dean Haglund's arms.

(photo courtesy Nicole's Facebook)

The set-up was that Dean Haglund was playing a government scientist at a press conference. For the final part of the section, he took questions from the audience. One of the questions was "Can you still touch your toes?"

As you can tell from the photo, Mr. Haglund is quite a bit taller than me. So it was clearly physically impossible and the audience member was clearly just being a jack-ass. So in response, I gave him the finger.

[no photo due to Nicole's laughing too hard]

Afterwards, though, it did lead to the multi-middle finger photo above, which I will treasure always.

London: in pictures

I am blogging from a National Express East Coast train travelling from London to Edinburgh. Is it a sign of crappy Canadian wireless that I'm shocked to discover free wireless anywhere (Edmonton airport, for example), much less on a mode of travel? I'm totally plugged in to my seat: power cable, charging cell phone (through USB port) and earphones to block out the two groups of chatty people in front of me. (In honor of this train's ultimate destination, I'm listening to the Glaswegian band Travis). My total isolation from the world would be an affront to Nicole if she wasn't in another train car altogether.

I am heading to the Edinburgh Fringe after a lovely few days in London which I spent wandering around. Nicole and I saw and giggled at this tavern:

I stumbled around Picadilly and found 10 Henrietta Street, the house where Jane Austen's brother lived and where she would stay when visiting London.

We went to a beer festival where Nicole's friends won a cute little stuffed ram. And where we sampled beer from many different places (alas, no Canadian beers were present).

I saw a Banksy:

And, in a nod to the second chapter of my dissertation, I wandered around Portman Square. It's only 2-3 blocks from Oxford Street (a major shopping drag) and the exteriors have been mostly redone or demolished. On one side it looks like a Metropolitan police office, on another it's a hotel (the Churchill), on the third it's businesses and the fourth converted flats and a private club. The private club is at No. 20 and is historically relevant to my work, being designed by Robert Adam. Alas, I couldn't get up the nerve to knock and see if I could walk around.

Yesterday I took the bus to Greenwich (technically still in London) where I saw the gorgeous buildings of the Royal Naval College

and the Maritime Museum


and the Queen's House, which features an absolutely beautiful spiral staircase designed by Inigo Jones in the early 1600s.




A short walk up the hill behind the Queen's house led to the Royal Observatory, a place of major astronomical import and, for better known purposes, the home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian.

That silver line that I'm standing on? Zero degrees longitude, baby.

Next up, the Edinbrugh Fringe, for which I have done no planning except to have Nicole secure accommodations. The Fringe program is as dauntingly thick as a Sears catalogue and I've barely gone through 1/4 of it.