shutitdown: livin' for the anecdote

shutitdown: taking one for the anecdote

November 11, 2008
The hardships of getting what you want

Now that I have a forum for my angst, I've run out of things to say. That website is willing to pay me, wants me to write more about music and seem to be agreeable to the fact that I cannot do this unless it is in the context of my romantic dalliances. Accordingly, I've lost interest in music, love and the written word.

Posted by Lina at 10:52 PM | Comments (5)
File under: writing

November 10, 2008
me too

Patrick: like, i wish you were as cool IRL as you are on your blog

Posted by Lina at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)
File under: chatting it up

November 07, 2008
stalksies

The greatest pleasure I have in life is stalking and obsessing (mainly obsessing). This is because in real life, people are generally disappointing. In my head, or on their blog, or deep in the public archives they are fascinating. I wish I could like people up close as much as I do from afar.

Posted by Lina at 10:15 PM | Comments (2)
File under: life

November 06, 2008
In regards to the American election

It's not often that I'm proud to be an American--in fact, I've spent the last while trying neutralize my accent and hide the fact altogether, but today I really am. The cover of the London Metro says in 2 inch high letters 'The Day America Became a Little Bit Cool Again.'

To be honest, although a staunch Democrat, I sometimes shake my head at the way the party operates. It's as if they have the overwhelming desire to fail. Snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory, if you will. Take this election--we were basically guaranteed a win. So what did the Democratic party do? Have our top contenders for the job be either a black man and a woman. It was if we were destined to fail. And yet, we didn't. I love that the race didn't become about race and I love that I come from a country that still seems to have some sort of social mobility. I love that we did the right thing this time.

Posted by Lina at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)
File under: current events

November 05, 2008
My googleganger

So I finally have a googleganger. I've sort of known it in the back of my mind, but it's like a cavity, slightly painful and something I'm not yet ready to face. Until recently I've been fairly protective of my name, and I don't use my surname in most places online. Part of this is because I've been the only Lina G. on the internet, so when I use my full name it comes right back to haunt me, usually within about 12 minutes or so. Although I'll happily tell people on first meeting the story of my first menarche, the idea that they could look me up online and find out things about me without even knowing me seems crazy. That's because I'm from the last generation, the one that valued internet anonymity.

The new generation, on the other hand, was raised on Facebook and Bebo and Myspace and loves nothing more than to revel in the flushed glory of putting it all out there. They don't like to compartmentalize. They find our views on anonymity quaint, antiquated, the way we feel when our parents tell us that buying things over the world wide web isn't safe. And now, one of these internet demons has come of age, and she's got the same name as me.

I noticed it coming on gradually over the last few years. The Google alert I have set up on my name were arriving more frequently, and now they weren't just about long-dead German women. There was a new Lina G. in town, and if the school sports pages were any indication, she was just hitting high school. At first I ignored it, pretended it wasn't happening. Then I realized that I was getting to watch another Lina G. grow up without having to actually go through the horrors of actually doing it myself. She started joining sites and using her, our full name to post inane comments about teen celebrities to forums. I cringed, and prayed that no potential employers thought it was I that had gushed about how Josh Harnett was lyke, totally talented. This may seem like a small thing, but with only two Lina G.s in the world, when one Googles our name, the results give the impression of one, if slightly disjointed and insane, person. This other Lina G. could ruin my rep.

And as the sports victories piled up, I started to realize that as this Lina G. reaches adulthood, her potential to disrupt my life grows. When will she, I wonder, ever stop using our name on the Internet? Doesn't she realize that being born into a unique name engenders responsibilities? I realized the time had finally come to register my name as a domain, if only to preempt the other Lina G. from doing it. And now that she's started posting slutty pictures of herself on Facebook, I know that I made the right choice. I look at them, and sigh in frustration. This girl is just learning the pain of being Lina G., something that I've been living with for decades.

Posted by Lina at 06:02 PM | Comments (2)
File under: interweb

November 04, 2008
Election day

Although I'm too old and crotchety to stay up and watch the results, I can say that even from 5,000 miles away, I managed to throw a vote to Obama. My friend Rene has made a fantastic poster to show his support.

Today one of the free London papers had a cover showing a white Obama and a black McCain. Really bizarre and sort of creepy. One of the headlines read "it's a race thing." Maybe I'll feel differently once this is all over, but right now, from what I can see in Jolly old, it really feels like it isn't a race thing. At all. And I'm proud of Americans for that. Because based on some of the coverage here, to the outside world, it is a race thing. God bless the UK press--they've really made me feel less badly about being an American. Frankly I can't believe that I'm so bored that I've started blogging about current events. How often does that happen? (Dear god I've also started taking yoga)

Posted by Lina at 11:16 PM | Comments (2)
File under: current events

November 03, 2008
The little blogger that could

Guess what? I've got my first article up at Splicetoday.com. It's a combo pack of my favorite things: complaining about my ex boyfriends, tunes, reminiscing, rare vinyl and romance.

For those of you faithful shutitdown readers (are there any of you left??), it's a re-write of a blog post from years ago. I knew I'd be able to mine this material someday. Read it here.

Posted by Lina at 11:37 PM | Comments (6)
File under: writing

November 02, 2008
On Americans

Tonight, as I uncomfortably watched one of my London pals squirm while an American friend gave a detailed monologue about circumcision and foreskins, I realized, proudly, that I'm becoming more English. Despite my contributions to said conversation, I was troubled. And yet, still proud of myself. For this discomfort, this repression, can only mean one thing. I'm assimilating.

Posted by Lina at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
File under: assimilating

November 01, 2008
An email from Squeefers

My pal Aoife called me recently, all in a flutter. She had, she told me, pulled a Lina. She told me the story there's no way around it, it was so Lina. I asked her if she'd put pen to paper and let me print it here. She's a bit of a blowhard so it's about twice as long as it needs to be, but that's part of what we love about her!

"If you had said 2 years ago that I would have gone up to someone and purposely put both of us in rather an awkward position, I would have said “head off”. But, I am delighted to inform you, it was with great pleasure that I did just that not 5 days ago.

Breheny ( I don’t know his first name nor do I care to) pushed me over the edge. The guy has taken a strong disliking to me for some reason that I am sure neither you nor I could ever understand (I mean, I’m just so goddamn loveable!!) After hearing not one but 2 sly comments made about me to Shane on Sunday night I became incensed. First, he hurried past me on the way in to the Village ‘whispering’ to Shane that I didn’t see them so they should run inside for fear that I might. The second jibe came after I coldly greeted Shane when he approached me. He whispered a nasty comment in his ear about me relating to the night he first decided to hate me. Oddly enough that was also the first night he met me…

I decided to keep on ignoring him but after about an hour of us standing one or two feet apart we accidentally bumped into each other. He turned around and said “oh hiya how’s it going? I didn’t see you there!” so I said “no no, I thought we were both just pretending we didn’t see each other.” He stuttered over his words in response “ no..i…we…i…I didn’t..”

Just to help the poor lad out I decided to finish the conversation with one low but deserved blow. “No, it’s cool. I don’t like you either.”

He walked off, flabbergasted, and I stood back to allow myself a few moments to bask in my content. Dutch courage is a beautiful thing. "

I'm sort of delighted that being outrageously direct, making people uncomfortable and saying all of the things that people usually keep in their heads and out of their conversations are now associated with me. Party on.

Posted by Lina at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)
File under: life

October 29, 2008
The great pumpkin and city living

Today it snowed in London. I've been tromping around everywhere in a bright orange coat. Having a bright orange coat is a nice thing when you only wear it every few weeks. I didn't think about this when I packed, and ended up moving with only the bright orange coat. It's been so cold that I wear it every day, and looking sort of like the inside of a melted Butterfinger bar.

I've become citified again. No longer do I cross the street with mouth agape, staring in wonder at buildings more than four stories high. Already I sneer at those people, and know that stories is spelled storeys in this neck of the woods.

Living in a huge city is like having a big, fat scab. When I first arrived, I was like a raw nerve, the twitching whiskers of a mouse waiting to get trapped. (Incidentally, I know a lot about mice after living on Piccadilly Circus for the last few weeks.) The only way you can survive in a large city is with a substantial layer of scar tissue and a heavy set of blinders. If you ever stopped for even a second and thought about how you practically have your head in someone's armpit on your morning tube commute, you'd grow hysterical. If you admitted to yourself that a man less than 7 inches from you was picking his nose at 8:15 in the morning, or that you just stepped over a bloody pigeon carcass, or that you spend $10 a day to take the subway, or that your housing crisis has left you living in a room with no windows, you might just have to die in response.

By keeping quiet and not acknowledging that there's anything wrong, you become a member of the secret society of city dwellers. This gives you access to pissing away 40% of your pay on rent, but also a plethora of delivery food options. I think it's worth it.

"What are we all doing here?" my friend Jenn would ask dramatically when we lived in New York City. "Why are we doing this to ourselves?" It was her theory that living in New York was a form of masochism--we only did it because we felt that on some level, we deserved to be punished. Combined with a healthy dose of something to prove, and that's half of New York summed up. Otherwise, why would we have moved from our great suburbs, our roomy, new homes with affordable groceries and warehouse stores?

Posted by Lina at 12:11 AM | Comments (1)
File under: assimilating

October 26, 2008
Flathunting and xenophobia in London

I have a book signed by Martin Amis. As I was getting in line to have him sign it, I debated whether I had the courage to request that he sign it "Pussies are bullshit." As it turns out, I didn't, and it just says something like "To Lina Love, Martin." During his talk, though, he discussed what an incredibly racist society Great Britain is. This didn't make much of an impact on me because at the time I was living in California, the land of political correctness and avocados. But now, after flat hunting in London, I'm starting to see what he means.

First, I learned that in my flatshare queries, there were certain things I should leave out of my emails. Like the fact that I'm an American. Like my grossly semetic last name. These are things that my housemates don't need to know until after I move in. Once they cop on to my accent and maztoh balls, they're going to be in for a surprise.

I had a relocation company ostensibly helping me with my home search. They were very eager for me to live in either Clapham or Islington, but not the place that my I had my heart and wallet set on, the East End. They finally agreed to take me on a tour of different neighborhoods to help me better decide where I wanted to live. As part of the deal, I was given an unrepentant racist as a tour guide.

Immediately after we started off on our tour, Stephanie said, "So you've been living in Ireland...how did you find the Irish? Are they as bad as everyone says?"

I wasn't really listening, so just assumed she was asking what everyone always asks "Are the Irish as friendly as everyone says they are?"

I started my usual response, "Yeah, yeah, they're real friendly" and Stephanie interrupted me.

"They're sort like how you feel about Mexicans in the States, aren't they?"

I still couldn't fathom that this woman would be saying something so beyond acceptable to a complete stranger, and assumed she must mean that both the Irish and the Mexicans have had a positive effect on the nearby dominating super power.

But later, when she started complaining about the blacks, muslims and Jews, I started to realize that Martin Amis was right, pussies are bullshit.

I spent four hours with this woman, getting driven around London hearing about how to best avoid anyone with a skintone darker than myself, and how immigrants were ruining the country. Probably not the best person to be doing orientation tours for a relocation company, eh. She complained about how Labour had put housing projects in nice neighborhoods, forcing real English people to live side-by-side with animals. (Her words, not mine.) "You can get a good sense of a neighborhood by seeing who lives there," she said, driving me through Bethnal Green. "Look! Blacks!" she said, pointing.

My favorite bit, which I actually recorded with my new snazzy phone, was when she did an impersonation of someone who might shop at Banglatown (crazy accent and all!). I kindly suggested to her that perhaps if Englishwomen were doing their part to keep up the British birthrate, perhaps her country wouldn't have to rely so much on those dirty immigrants, like me.

She wailed, at one point, "Where have all the English people gone?" as we drove down the main thoroughfare of Whitechapel.

"There are loads of them in New York," I kindly suggested.

Later, when I had nearly reached the limit of what I could tolerate and Stephanie was complaining about how dirty Africans are, she admitted to me that her husband is a UK immigration judge. God help this country.

Posted by Lina at 11:15 AM | Comments (3)
File under: assimilating

October 05, 2008
Lina: Pig in the City

My first day in London left me chastened. Despite all of the dire warnings from the Dublin taxi drivers, ("You'll not like it there, love, everyone always in a rush") I was certain that London would be no problem for me. I've lived in New York, after all. New York has twice the population density of London, so I was confident that I was twice as tough as I needed to be to live in the Big Smoke. I was surprised, then, when I found myself being the sort of person that would stand still in the middle of crowded pedestrian thoroughfares, looking up at gigantic buildings, mouth slightly open, until I've been run into and yelled at by loud, angry Britons.

I'm still confused as to which way to look when crossing streets, and the added traffic of a major metropolitan city has me completely befuddled. I'm not yet familiar with the coins yet, so rather than holding up lines of people, I've been paying only with bills. After two days, already, I have a huge pile of useless change. I went to the store today to buy sugar and stood at the counter for a few minutes, desperately trying to figure out which coins to hand the woman behind counter. I was embarrassed and sweating, and finally the woman took pity on me and grabbing my hand, took the appropriate change out of it, and handed me the remains. Awkwardly I thanked her, trying to neutralize my accent, and trotted out the door.

Then yesterday, I decided to explore the cities Korean restaurants. My first stop (Korean Kitchen. 32 Windmill Street, Picadilly Circus, London, W1D 7LR) served me a bowl of soup with a hair in it. I showed the waitress, and she sent it back. I waited 10 minutes for another soup, and when it arrived, it had a black hair delicately balanced on top of a piece of tofu. Interestingly, I was not offered a free meal or anyone's firstborn, but they did suggest I wait for a third bowl of hairy soup. I left, and made my way to Jin Korean Restaurant, 16 Bateman Street London W1D 3A. As I was eating my lunch, a cockroach crawled out from the in-table bbq equipment and pranced across the table. He finally crawled back in, and I attempted to ignore the situation until a pair of antennae poked out and waggled at me, as if laughing. I put an upside-down plate over the hole, and mentally teleported to my safe space.

Last night I went to visit some friends in Whitechapel, in London's East End. When I left, I didn't take directions, confident that with the help of my A-Z I'd make it to the tube station. "It's Ay to ZED not Ay to ZEE, Lina. Yank."

Of course my ingrained sense of direction--my father calls me a topographical cretin--got me completely lost and as I wandered the streets of Whitechapel at midnight, I grew increasingly more terrified.

Lina stream of conciousness: I'm going to get mugged. That will be so humiliating. Wait, I know this street name. This is exactly where the serial killer Jack the Ripper stalked his prey! I'm going to get murdered here. Hang on, Jack the Ripper only killed prostitutes. I'm not a prostitute. I'm going to be fine. Oh shit. Everyone here thinks all Americans are whores. I'm so dead. I'm so dead. I'm so dead. Oh wait, there's the tube station. Yeah, I'm street smart. Phew.

So my first 48 hours left me feeling less cosmopolitan than I had hoped.

But then this morning, after having a crumpet and a cup of tea (seriously), I hit the streets and found a Chinese market, a Japanese market and a Korean market all within 7 minutes of my flat and I perked up. Even the local Spar (it's like 7-11) carries strange Asian snacks. After stuffing myself with a half-dozen Korean delicacies, I sat back, content with my new geographic position. I know that going to a couple of Asian markets and eating a little banchan doesn't sound like a big deal, but to me, it is. I'm so delighted to be back in a big city and to have access to all of the funny little things that one can't find anywhere else.

Posted by Lina at 09:06 PM | Comments (2)
File under: assimilating

October 03, 2008
Shylater, Dubs

I'm at the airport, 122 pounds of luggage safely checked, waiting to move to London. It's almost two years to the day that I first arrived in Dublin, and for all of the things that I've complained about, for all of the abuse that I've taken here for my exotic accent, I'm really going to miss this crazy old country, so.

Posted by Lina at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
File under: assimilating, world travel

October 01, 2008
I love stuff

In case you've been worried that I don't like anything or that my internet presence was waning, I've posted a number of updates on Ilovethisworld recently.

I love Real Genius

I love 'I'm a funky robot'

I love Hiberno-English

I love Intergalactic Gary

I love Child of Glass

Posted by Lina at 12:32 AM | Comments (0)
File under: interweb

September 17, 2008
My pals on accents and slang

Frances: you know, you type like an irishman now
Frances: i mean, when i imagine your voice, it sounds irish

...

"Wait til they get a load of you in London with that big American accent on top of all of that Irish slang." Andrew, paraphrased.

...

Me, trying to understand Londoners: "Will they know what I mean when I declare myself sound?"
Aoife: "Yes, but they don't say 'deadly' which is a bit shit."

Posted by Lina at 10:25 PM | Comments (2)
File under: assimilating

Older entries...