Shyness is vulgar (apparently)

Actually. You know what? Bollocks to it. It's my blog and I'll write if I want to.

It is February 14th 2009. Well, actually it's February 15th 2009 and I haven't gone to bed yet. Not because of some extraordinary romantic encounter, but because I prefer to sit and scowl at my laptop than go to bed. Seriously. That for me is a good night in.

I've been in Los Angeles for two months now. It seems I escaped one bitch of a winter. Everything is going to plan, just as slowly as expected. I just had the unexpected delight of meeting up with a dude who wanted to drive to the inauguration. So we did that. Took two and a half weeks and I saw a lot of stuff. Obama waved at me, which was ever so sweet. I know it was me because the other million people surrounding me weren't looking him in eye like what I was. Yeah.

Everything here is completely and utterly unforgivably wrong. Upside down. Wrong side of the street, Baked Beans with pork in them, wrong words for things, criminal lack of sidewalks and public transport, far too big, far too bright, far too confusing, far too different, far too foreign. Just wrong.

So it's exactly what I expected really. I'm an alien. Good thing about being an alien is the other aliens and/or space travellers (SPELT WITH TWO 'L's GOD DAMN IT). LA, like London, is full of transition and other completely lost and confused people taking a chance on life. In that respect I fit in beautifully. I've honestly never met such friendly people in my life. Though in Spain it was hard to tell because I couldn't always understand what they were saying. They smiled a lot though.

But I'm coming up against some interesting internal conflict. That of my parents' (and England's) cultural snobbery towards America. And then what I am seeing with my own eyes, hearing with my own ears. I'm trying not to fall in the trap of being a racist whilst also entertaining my running critique of people and places. But there is a deeply inbed intolerance into some things American.

So this is something I intend to keep an eye on. My father would leave the room rather than watch a US show. I and my closest friends and family are disgusted by the American use of the English language. Is that fair? Hardly matters because I can't see an end to it. Drives me crazy. I simply love my language and it is very hard to listen to it sounding apparently warped. No reflection on the people at all - just a thing that most British people suffer with.

Anyway, that's one part of what I'm doing here. So what am I doing here? Doing everything I ever wanted. Little by little.

One thing I have discovered, an absolute, and would like it entered into wikipedia. The month of February sucks beyond the telling of it no matter where you are or what you're doing. It is shit. There's no escaping it, and believe me, I've tried. Maybe that's why they made it the shortest one. And we're over half way through the bastard now so onwards and upwards.

I will be detailing one or two of my recent adventures, probably this week seeing as rain is forecast. But for now I really need to sleep. I've had Bruce Springsteen stuck in my head for hours and apparently there's no cure.