Things That Don't Go Together

Only 5 more weeks until I head back to London! I can hardly wait. I'll be there for almost 2 weeks instead of 4 days. I'm sure time will fly, too, as I still have a lot to accomplish between now and then. If anyone in London who reads this wants to catch up with me while I'm there, you can e-mail me at sororbrigid@yahoo.com. I probably won't be back in London until at least May after that, unless something big comes up (defined as: something for which I want to drop everything and high-tail it across the pond). I know there are no UK John Foxx shows coming up in 2009--in fact, I believe he's coming here to tour with Vincent Gallo, so I'll be hanging around the States for that event...

Which brings me to the topic of this post: things that don't go together, and other odd things I've observed over the last month.

First:

The Unexpected

Since I mentioned the John Foxx/Vincent Gallo match-up already, I'll talk about that first. When John asked me if I'd heard of Vincent Gallo, my dim, fuzzy mind at that point recalled the name, maybe something about him being an actor, did not recall him as a musician. So, after the show, a friend pointed me to Vincent Gallo's MySpace, where you can hear some of his music:

Vincent Gallo's MySpace Page

Regardless of what you may think of Gallo's musical offerings (and I realize that what he has on his page is a different project from what he's doing with John), you do have to admit that Gallo and Foxx are a highly--UNEXPECTED combination. Especially if you consider that they are recording an acoustic album together. One of the wonderful things about John Foxx is that he defies categorization--when I'm asked what his music is like, it's hard to pin down. I consider that one of the hallmarks of originality. With regards to this project--I must say that I am anxious to see the fruits of that creative collaboration. I can't even imagine what that's going to be like, and I'm curious as hell.

The same friend sent me another Vincent Gallo link:

Vincent Gallo Merchandise--Personal Services

It's funny how he posts this in such a way that you are not sure if he's kidding or not. Nonetheless, it occurred to me that any woman looking to get his sperm at a discount could hire him for escort services, and get him drunk enough to get knocked up that way. I'm not suggesting I have any interest in this--it just seems to be a glaring pricing loophole.

Another entry in the unexpected category came from the Religion news service this morning:

Michael Jackson Converts to Islam

I feel sorry for the Muslims. They get enough bad press. You have to wonder what the sheiks were thinking during his conversion ceremony.

A bit lower on the intellectual scale, we have this (with thanks to Nothing To Do With Arbroath):

Three-Quarters of Brits Unable to Name Great Britain's Three Countries

This is only unexpected because there seems to be this assumption that Brits are smarter than Americans. I'm not sure where this conception comes from, because frankly, people are stupid everywhere. Perhaps it is because Britain is older, and they have the benefit of the European community right in their back yard. But that rides on the erroneous assumption that people will take advantage of cultural and educational opportunities if they are right in front of them.

What's interesting about this article is how similar it is to the "American's can't identify their States on a map" articles. While there is no excuse for that either, you could argue that Americans have 50 states to identify, whereas the United Kingdom is only made up of 3 countries (sort of 4, if you count Northern Ireland). I am reminded of a the time I was at the University of Reading (UK, not Pennsylvania), and talking with a young man--mind you, he was doing his course in American Studies--who, when the American Independence Day was mentioned in conversation, wanted to know who Americans won their independence from. (And yes, he left a dangling preposition at the end of the sentence). None of this really proves anything about collective intelligence--but I don't want to go down the road of what I think about education these days in general, so...

Moving on to:

The Twisted

Another Arbroath link:

Breaking Bad News With Baby Animals

I have an aversion to the overly-cutesy and gushingly precious, especially when it comes to greeting cards, so I loved this when I saw it. On another tangent to this, there is the Cute Fuzzy Animals As Evil genre. A good example of this is Happy Kitty Bunny Pony, a graphical book with all kinds of cute kitties, doggies, etc.--and the author points out that all they really want to do is eat you or trample you to death painfully.

That's all I have for now--for those of you following bbfiction, I have about 4 things posted (7 posts total), and I'm working on 2 others right now, one will probably be posted by next week, the other is part of a larger story compilation I'm working on called Dasa Mahavidyas, so I may not post that one. I'm trying to disengage myself from a tangled plotline for the former story, hence the delay. I used to complain of writer's block, now I can't seem to stop writing. I could have worse problems...