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The whole world may be going to hell in a handbasket, but why not help carry the load in reverse when you can?

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Cylinder-to-Face Addictions

Two things that people know are bad but continue to use:

cigarettes

Q-tips

The only logical conclusion we can draw from this data is that humans are detrimentally drawn to holding tiny cylinders between their fingers and sticking them in their faceholes

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A Rant About Store Hours

I checked Google and saw that AJ Newsagents was open until 9 pm. At 8:30, I left my flat.

It was raining lightly. Not the nicest weather to be out in, but I wanted to get this errand taken care of.

As I approached the shop, I could see the shutter rattling downwards over the blue storefront. I ran the last ten metres, then quickly reached down and rapped my knuckles on what was still exposed of the door. (About eighteen inches at this point, but the shutter kept rolling noisily downward until it hit the ground.)

I checked my phone -- it was 8:38 pm. I could bang on the shutter and be an asshole, but (a) it wasn’t an emergency and (b) I’m not an asshole. It’s a small business and maybe they don’t keep their Google hours updated.

I returned home full-handed (which is like empty-handed when your intended errand is to drop off a parcel), which meant another six blocks of walking through the rain.

The next day, I made another trip to AJ Newsagents for a second attempt at the same task. Once again, it was raining. But at least it was daylight this time.

After the fellow behind the counter scanned my item, I asked, “What time do you close on weeknights?”

He asked me to repeat myself three times. I know for a fact I enunciate clearly, and I even changed the wording once or twice in case it was the phrasing that was difficult to understand – I tried “How late is this store open” and something else. Maybe it was my mixing up the wording that kept throwing him off, but I had a feeling the hearing problem might have been partially due to the headphones he wore in both ears.

Finally, he got it. “Nine,” he answered. Pause. “Eight to nine.”

“Oh, you close between 8 and 9?” If closing time was somewhere within a particular range, depending on how busy the shop was each night, I could understand that. There are bars that observe such practices, and when I used to work as a barista, there were some nights we closed a little early or continued serving a little late. If there are no customers for long spans of time, it would be stupid for a business to continue to pay employee wages and electricity for zero income.

But – “No,” said the man. “We are open from 8 in the morning until 9 at night.”

“Well,” I reported, “Last night I was here at 8:40 and the shutter was down.” I have worked in customer service for 17 years, am gentle by nature, and will never throw a fit, so this is the most argumentative I get.

The man scoffed audibly. “Psh. 8:40, 9:00, same thing.” His tone was irritated and self-righteous. What a fool I was, huh?

Now I was angry, because that is fucking bullshit. If the store’s hours had been different than the online listing, and Google was simply wrong, I would not have minded. If the bloke had told me that sometimes they chose to close early when it was slow, I would have been only slightly irked but not held anything against them.

But for this guy to ridicule me for expecting them to be open at twenty to nine, and say that 8:40 was “the same thing” as 9:00? I had even been giving him the benefit of the doubt. It had been 8:38 when the shutter rolled down that night.

But I only bristled silently, turned, and left. As I stepped out through the doorway, I thought I heard the schmuck mutter under his breath, “8:40.”

I fumed internally as I walked back up Whitecross Street, Old Street, St Luke’s Close, Mitchell Street, and Bartholomew Square. It was still raining. I counted in my head – two trips there and back meant that I had walked twelve blocks in the cold and wet to complete one simple errand, in addition to being subject to derision.

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Composure

I work at a print shop that doubles as an art store in East London. There are three universities in the neighbourhood, and when portfolio due dates approach, we get swamped. It's stressful as shit when a bunch of high-strung, under-rested students count on you to deliver perfect, presentation-ready printed projects with no wiggle room on the due date.

Outside of deadline crunch time, we still get a steady flow of these students purchasing art supplies. The other day, one girl laid her selections on the counter and remarked, "I've been in before when it's been really busy.”

“It does get mad sometimes,” I agreed, scanning her items.

“It's impressive how calm you stay at times like that,” she said.

I was both surprised and flattered to hear that I was perceived that way. I’m anxious by nature but have been working to mask it for years. The words of a Vulcan came to mind:

“Do not mistake composure for ease,” said Lieutenant Tuvok, Chief of Security to Captain Janeway on Voyager. Contrary to popular belief, Vulcans are not impervious to emotion, just skilled at managing it.

I paraphrased for the customer’s sake, rather than directly quoting Star Trek.

“Thank you,” I replied, “but I assure you, I don’t always feel calm.”

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Viet Street Food at the Jamie Oliver Cookery School

My mom gifted me and my partner and a voucher for the Jamie Oliver Cookery School ages ago – perhaps last Christmas? Or maybe for Steven’s birthday in June? – and we finally got around to booking a cooking class.

It wasn’t that we weren’t excited about the idea! There were just so many factors to consider that, for a while, we simply couldn’t make a decision. The Italian course we ruled out quickly – Steven had made pasta once and vowed never to do it again. Japanese would have been cool if the object of instruction were sushi, but the main dish was teriyaki, which we make ourselves at home on a weekly basis. Our final decision was between Vietnamese and Thai, since both are cuisines we enjoy and aren’t already practiced in the preparation.

The other big concern before booking was whether our meal could be Kosher-friendly. I sent a message through the website with the query and received a clear and thorough reply in less than 24 hours: They could offer vegetarian alternatives for the food, but the environment was not Kosher. That was fine for us – This household adheres to certain rules of Judaism more strictly than others.

The evening class we settled on for “Vietnamese Street Food” was attended by about ten other pairs. The class instructor / head chef, an approachable young woman named Emma, worked on creating two pots of phở, one chicken, one vegetarian, while announcing an introduction to the class. She then demonstrated the two dishes we would be making before sending us off to our stations.

First on the menu was pork dumplings, except for us and a handful of other vegetarians, who made an #aubergine stir-fry. Frankly, I was quite pleased with the substitution. I prefer aubergine to meat most days, and the stir-fry was excellent!

We also made summer rolls, that most refreshing of appetizers. With the fresh veggies cut into ling thin strips and the herbs chiffonade, I dipped circles of rice paper in and out of a shallow pan of water with some trepidation, but ended up rolling decent summer rolls, especially considering it was my first time. It was easier than I’d expected. Steven, a more worldly soul than I, had told me many times before about how shite he was at working with rice paper.

When all was done and the food ready to serve, we deposited the stir-fry into lettuce cups, artfully arranged the two diagonally cut summer rolls, tucked in a handful of salad made from leftover vegetables, and splashed everything with a dipping sauce we’d prepared in the very beginning. Said sauce was a calculated blend of sharp flavours that give Vietnamese food its signature taste: lemongrass, garlic, birdseye chilli, palm sugar, fish sauce, and rice wine vinegar. (We were offered soy sauce instead of fish, but opted for the as it was still Kosher-friendly. Turns out fish sauce is made from anchovies. I’d been under the impression there was shrimp in it, but must have been thinking of something else.)

This photograph, of course, is the resulting meal. A platter of summer rolls, aubergine stir-fry lettuce cups, and dipping sauce all made by myself and Steven; bowls of phở made by Emma, bubbly beverages, and a group of increasingly satisfied student chefs.

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Automotive Review Review

In January, my uncle sent me this link: https://youtu.be/rgESfH3_4Pc While watching, I took the following notes.

"Evo - Car of the Year 2022" on YouTube

·        One note I have is that supercars (and all cars, for that matter) should really name their models with WORDS as opposed to a daft series of letters and numbers. I can’t help thinking that perhaps posh manufacturers are trying to set themselves apart from "pedestrian" and "mainstream" automobiles, even though “Mustang” and “Eclipse” and “Intrepid” and even “Nova” are more appealing names than a handful of random characters. Plenty of words remain unclaimed, but shit, if the existing dictionary isn’t good enough, surely they could make up something that sounds cooler than "MC20" or "CSL2".

·        But I digress. The Audi sounds genuinely intriguing and I want to drive it.

·        My other big issue with modern sports cars is the paddle shift. I've driven a few electric cars that are powerful and fun, but I cannot imagine owning something so automated without feeling like a little bitch.

·        The Ferrari 296 GTB (despite epitomising the cringey title I condemned in my first point) sounds like a dream to drive. I did laugh out loud when the bloke reviewing it said "I wish it was louder".

·        The BMW M4 CSL looks stupid.

·        Okay, one driver got behind the wheel of a manual transmission (dear to my heart) and made fun of the clutch pedal and the gearshift pattern. Though it seems he's taking the piss, I am hurt and now questioning the credibility of Evo entirely.

·        The dude driving the Ferrari is filmed from the interior with the sun behind him, i.e. coming through the driver's side window in such a way that illuminates every speck of dust in the air in the car and every drop of spit that sprays from the man's mouth. It's terribly distracting. There's no way post-production didn't notice, but I have a feeling the actor didn't see the footage before it was released. No one would agree to such visible embarrassment... would they?

·        Well. Video finished. What a rollercoaster. I'd like to thank and congratulate all the cars involved. Incidentally, I've never driven a McLaren, Ferrari, or Maserati, and if anyone owning one is willing to let me behind the wheel, there's £5 in it for you.

·        In researching the winner (btw, McLaren, kudos for creating a lightweight car that handles well and is named Artura instead of GLX325), I learned that a dual-clutch transmission has two separate clutches for odd and even gears. 

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International Emergency Medicine

My friend Annie is squeezed beside me in a booth at the Exmouth Arms in Clerkenwell (north-central London). She and I used to work together at a coffee house in New Jersey, but we last saw each other in Chicago. Now, she’s telling me about a recent visit to her Dutch girlfriend.

Lydia’s house in the Netherlands is tall and narrow with a winding staircase that wraps along the perimeter to access the floors on each level. One day, Annie slipped when exiting a room on the second floor. She fell hard and slid – rapidly, awkwardly, dangerously. Her head hit steps and wall before her body came to a stop.

The others in the house heard the bangs and came running. Annie, at the bottom of the stairs, was dazed and embarrassed. She assured her friends she was okay and tried to stand up. Then she passed out.

Annie’s friends called emergency services. An ambulance arrived on scene, and EMTs ran tests on the young woman then and there. After determining that she was healthy, not concussed, and in all relevant terms safe from harm, the medical professionals had to address the uncomfortable business of payment for the house call.

“I’m terribly sorry,” said the head EMT, with genuine remorse in her voice, “but since you aren’t a citizen and did not purchase traveler’s insurance, you will have to pay for this medical bill out of pocket.”

My friend braced herself for the number.

The total of the bill poor Annie had to pay for emergency treatment? 44 euros (almost exactly the same amount in USD).

Relaying this story, Annie is so amused that she struggles to convey the ending. Coming from the land of notoriously outrageous medical bills that bankrupt families and destroy lives, we Americans laugh and laugh. We lament the lack of such affordable care in our homeland, but thank goodness we’ve moved to Europe.

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Daniel Dunlevy’s second album comes six years after the first, which was entitled “But That’s the Thing.” In 2023, Dan describes his naïve debut as having been rife with inflated expectations. Now, he’s a little older, a little wiser, and a touch more cynical.

“Hoping For A Pyramid” is the new album that just hit Spotify on the 10th of February. The name alludes to the lofty goals of youth – and the inevitable disappointments that succeed them.

When Daniel recruited me to create the cover art, he had a vision. He supplied me with a photo of a sculpture that exists in Fort Lauderdale, Florida: The original statue by Daniel Popper is called “Thrive” and depicts the torso and bust of a woman holding her chest cavity open, with ferns hanging inside and moss growing on parts of the outside. Since there are many cracks on the sculpture’s concrete exterior, Dunlevy chose to use this image to represent the album’s theme of imperfection. He asked me to isolate the statue, remove the greenery, and, if possible, portray a beam of light emitting from the chest to represent the honest voice of Dunlevy’s songs.

I used Adobe Photoshop to trace the silhouette and delete the background. The particular photograph we were authorised to use was cropped, so I had to visualise extensions to the left, right and top, and create those additions. I used the clone stamp tool and others to create a lock of hair, the edges of the shoulder and upper arm on the left side (left of the image, which would be the stone woman’s right), and the hand on the other. Hands are notoriously difficult to draw, but in this case, the texture of the stone seemed easier to emulate than flesh. I was quite pleased with what I was able to produce, but then, of course, the next step obscured my handiwork. I found a starburst png that could be manipulated to fit in the space and match the musician’s vision for the projection of light. I separated the sculpture into layers based on depth and placed the partial-opacity lightburst between them; in this way, the side of the chest cavity closest to the viewer would occlude the light source while the beams shot out in front of the other side.

After the core image was edited and approved by Daniel, I used Adobe Illustrator to design several options for the final cover art. Daniel Dunlevy, his band, his manager, and a few close friends were polled on their favourite iterations. The end design for the album cover of “Hoping For A Pyramid” features the meticulously adjusted female statue with split beams of white-gold light erupting from the heart, laid in the foreground over a monochromatic star-riddled galactic sky, with the album title and artist’s name at the top centre and bottom right, respectively.

All of Daniel Dunlevy’s music may be found on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3oOWYKcxsq58mSgVOLLmHh

The best way to contact me, the graphic artist, is by e-mailing rrbranstrom@gmail.com.

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Strikes in the UK during December 2022

I don’t know if any of you in the US have heard about the strikes in the UK, but the month of December has truly made this winter one of discontent as nearly every sector carried out multiple strikes.

I think the biggest driving factor for worker indignance is the rising energy cost. The outrageous explosion of gas bills is what got Lynn Truss elected and then immediately ousted from office as Prime Minister. (In short, she had said she would put a cap on rising energy costs, but her promise proved impossible to keep.) Gas and electric bills have close to doubled in under a year, and of course salaries haven’t, so lots of people are struggling. I’m sure the various unions have different specific demands – benefits, holidays, working conditions, hours – but I won’t pretend to know all the ins and outs.

The organisations whose strikes most noticeably affected the public: Royal Mail, NHS, and transit. (For transit, various lines were down on different days.) Since the first TfL (Transport for London) strike months ago brought the city to its knees in chaos, the nation now tries to prepare better. Unions announce the dates of their planned strike action weeks in advance, and we brace ourselves. When there are tube strikes, more busses are added to routes, people plan to work from home, events may be rescheduled, etc. When considering Royal Mail strikes, people must factor in additional delivery time. At my work, that meant sometimes calculating delivery costs from couriers instead of regular post. And not only were post offices closed and employees not working on strike days, the Royal Mail website was also shut down! We learned this one day when a customer asked where their parcel was; though we had shipped it and obtained a tracking number on a day everything was operating, it was not possible to check the parcel’s tracked status on a strike day. I thought that was pretty impressive and clever on their part.

Impacting the NHS, a nurses’ union was striking several days, and so were ambulance drivers. When the media was reporting on this at the beginning of the month, they warned people to be careful and not require hospital care on Christmas Eve. One day it was reported that the government refused to meet with the nurses to discuss any sort of negotiation. Army doctors were brought in to fill the gaps in hospital staff. When arguments were raised that people would die if ambulances weren’t running, one doctor retorted, “Drive them yourself.” His quote landed as the front page headline of the Evening Standard.

In regards to transit, Londoners can usually work around strikes as there are so many modes of transportation in the capital. It’s not always easy, but at least a person can hail a black cab or catch a bus or two to get across the city when the Piccadilly line is shut. But there are far-flung regions that are only connected to the rest of the country by one train line. For example, my colleague’s son attends university in Wales. He and hundreds of other students were stranded at school for three whole days after term ended, because the operators of the only train line to their area went on strike for that entire time.

I had to save and keep referring to a December Strikevent Calendar at work.

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Vincent & Rachel

I had a customer, an artist, a middle-aged man with a long black coat covered in paint. The e-mail he sent arrived under the name “Vincent Van Gogh”.

I looked up at the ginger-bearded man before me and remarked, “I see the resemblance.

“Oh! Thank you!” After a pause, he opened up a longer discussion. “You know, I was born on the day he died.” He proceeded to tell me that he runs painting classes in Brixton at the Cafe Van Gogh, operates a social media page under the name Van Gogh Vegan, and feels a strong connection with the late artist in several ways.

“And what’s your name?” he asked me.

“Rachel,” I replied with an expectant half-grin.

“Oh! Rachel!” he exclaimed, and clapped his hands together. “Do you--?”

I nodded. “I know Rachel was the girl he cut his ear off for,” I blurted, bluntly and with zero decorum.

“Well, I tell a different story,” said the man, and then he told it.

Vincent painted most of his masterpieces very quickly. We’re talking about seventeen minutes. His friend Paul Gauguin would say, “Vincent, you paint too quickly.” And Vincent would reply, “You look too quickly.”

Now, there was a young woman named Rachel. One day, there was an accident. In town, there was a commotion; a horse spooked, and Rachel was kicked in the face full-on by this horse. She never healed and was disfigured for life. In her state, many people shunned her. She lived in a brothel and wasn’t close with many people.

But Vincent saw her. He liked her. He saw past the surface, and told her, “I don’t look too quickly.”

One night, they were all at the Arles Café, and Paul pulled Rachel down into his lap. Vincent became upset, and a fight broke out. Before the brawl had climaxed, Paul and Vincent were thrown from the café. Outside, Paul, who was an excellent swordsman, drew his épée. He lobbed off Vincent’s ear in one flick of the blade, then, as his friend doubled over with a howl, Paul disappeared into the night.

Bloody, holding the severed piece of flesh in his hands, Vincent tried to reenter the café to speak to Rachel, who was still inside. The doorman refused, told Vincent he was too drunk. The painter tried to explain that he just wanted to see Rachel, to tell her what happened, to give her his ear to show her how much she meant to him. But the doorman would not entertain a word Vincent said. So Vincent threw the ear at the doorman, saying, “Here, you take it, since you clearly need help listening!”

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The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg.

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Ice Boats

Englishman Geoffrey Pyke was a scientific advisor to Lord Louis Mountbatten when his idea for ships crafted out of ice gained interest and support. In the 1940s, innovations in certain areas were particularly in demand -- the Allies needed to be prepared. Winston Churchill was enthused at the proposal of “berg-ships”, as Pyke called them.

Mountbatten ended up hiring a Canadian engineering company to construct a block of “Pykrete”, which is what the material of wood pulp and ice came to be known. A demonstration for the Quebec Conference in 1943 proved that it was resilient -- a bullet ricocheted off its surface. Several trials to utilise Pykrete for shipbuilding were undertaken. None succeeded.

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Tourist Season in London

                                                                         17/08/2022

 Ugh. Tourist season. As I say those words, something I’m sure I’ve heard said by some fogey or seen printed somewhere comes to mind: “Why is it called tourist season when you’re not allowed to shoot ‘em?!” Naturally, that is in somewhat poor taste. I don’t wish anyone ill health, let alone death, and I know what it’s like to be a tourist. I’m happy to help them when I can -- truth be told, I’m thrilled when someone asks me for directions and I can provide them with the correct answer. Makes me feel like a true Londoner. (I’m an immigrant, myself.) I’m sure some of my irritation towards tourists in the city is simply redirected frustration at the reminder that I’m not on holiday myself. I’d love to be aimlessly gawking while frozen on a sidewalk in a foreign land, but I’ve got places to be, folks. I don’t enjoy my commute being extended by clueless fools mumbling silly questions to the busdriver, or being forced to stand because all the seats are occupied by sightseers. The latter example bothers me less. Sure, I love that I usually get to sit because I’m fortunate enough to ride a bus route that’s not as in demand as others. I have bad legs, and standing causes me some pain, but it’s not so extreme that I’ve ever asked another passenger to give up their seat for me. A few months ago, when it was worse and I walked with a cane, people recognised the obvious sign and would offer me places to sit. But now, I can stand, so although I’d prefer not to, I do without complaint. And I do think people should visit and explore London; it’s a great city with a lot to offer. And of course they should utilize our public transit system -- it’s one of the best in the world. Recently some bloke from New York made a TikTok that went viral as he broadcasted how much better the tube in London is compared to the subway in NYC.

What becomes a problem is when these people interfere with necessary daily life. Today, as I was headed to a doctor’s appointment and queuing to top up my Oyster card at Aldgate East station, only one ticket machine was working. The woman directly in front of it was dawdling, either with her decision or trying to find a card in her purse. But she wasn’t pushing buttons. The man immediately before me and behind her in the queue finally lost his patience and simply pushed past her, cancelling her transaction and completing his own before storming off towards the gates. Never so bold and rude to do such a thing myself, I prepared for this delay by pulling both my bank card and Oyster card from my wallet, keeping one eye fastened on the screen that showed train times, ready to dart down to the platform using just the bank card if I didn’t have time to top up. (Both preloaded Oyster cards and contactless bank cards are acceptable tender on TfL. But I prefer to keep only Oyster at the ready, with my debit cards safely tucked away in a wallet pocket deep inside my bag.) The Hammersmith train I needed was departing in two minutes when the lady finally started tapping the screen. She fortunately completed the task relatively quickly, and with a lightning-quick top-up I made it down to the platform with a whole minute to spare. But the most ridiculous thing I witnessed this week was on the bus. Now, not infrequently, a potential passenger will step onto the bus and ask the driver a question before tapping their card. “Is this the way to XYZ” or “Do you stop at QRS” et cetera – and usually the specified destination is a particular stop or at least a street. For instance, last week, someone boarded the Paddington-bound 205 at Liverpool Street, asking, “Are you going towards Brick Lane?” The problem with trying to speak to the driver, though, is that they’re behind a thick plastic divider reaching floor to ceiling, and the holes have been taped over since the pandemic began. The driver sees your lips moving, but only hears muffled nonsense unless a person speaks loudly, clearly, and slowly. Most don’t. So in this instance, I, seated in the second row, piped up. “No. Other side of the street.” I also used a large demonstrative gesture, RiderCoach style, to indicate the opposite bus stop. The person looked at me, offered a small nod and a wave, and stepped off. That was a normal interaction. Now for the weird one.

It's not outrageous, really. It just seemed to me a bizarre utterance. And I couldn’t chip in because I didn’t know how to answer.

It was in Whitechapel, at Aldgate East. A young woman, maybe in her early twenties, said very softly, “Do you go past central London?”

It was a strange question because (a) she didn’t mention a particular destination and (b) this was central London, according to some definitions. Sure, many consider Whitechapel “East London”, but these terms are terrible vague and not defined. Why did she not name a place? All routes go through London, across it in one direction or another, so the use of the word “past” was also weird.

She spoke so softly that the driver had to ask her to repeat herself four times. I heard because I was in the front row, but as I mentioned earlier, I had no idea how to reply. This woman, who was accompanied by an older woman and a younger man who hovered on the pavement, also had an accent, so it’s possible English wasn’t a language she was comfortable wielding at a volume. But I reckon she was just a low talker. After the third very quiet repetition, the driver eventually opened his door and leaned in to hear her. I didn’t catch his response, but the trio did not end up riding with us.

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Clouds

Two parts, close sticky stringy fingers reaching, grasping connecting pulling towards an embrace to Join I wanted to watch them longer but they slunk out of sight behind a tree for Privacy.

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Inada

I met a young woman with a beautiful, unique name, and what I love most might be how it came to be.

The girl’s mother is Jamaican. The father is Scottish. The couple christened their daughter with the surname of their best friend, a Japanese man. Inada.