The gentleman who is lead historian at the IWM and who helped to develop the Holocaust exhibition gave a talk to our class today. Pretty cool, eh? Well, for reasons not entirely clear to me, he felt the need to state that he and his team spent a week at the Holocaust museum in DC and explain all the ways in which that this US museum kept a scoreboard on all the camps that US troops liberated and, oh yeah, the Russians liberated Auschwitz and this was listed way down there. He pointed out that in terms of lives liberated, the Russians had a far greater number at Auschwitz alone than the other camps the US liberated. How biased are the Americans?! Then he patted himself and his museum on the back by stating that many critics praised the IWM for their very objective view on the Holocaust.

Really, I am understating this. He basically repeated this sentiment in at least 3 different ways, all summing up how the DC museum was for an American audience, but THIS exhibit was special, because it was located so much closer to the actual events, whereas the US basically fought in the Pacific. Meanwhile, I was all “WTF?!” and my classmates were looking at me sideways as I kept my big fat American trap shut and let the steam pour out my ears.

So, here’s the thing. I absolutely love, love, love to give shit to any European I meet who loves history by talking about how Americans “saved” everyone in World War 2. I get it, it’s a joke. We Americans -do- love that myth. But, where this dude got it wrong was on a few points.

Numero uno: the Holocaust museum in DC is about, ummm, the Holocaust. Not necessarily WW2 and the US involvement thereof. Yes, there is an emphasis on what camps the US troops liberated. But, guess what? At the end of the IWM exhibit, come liberation, it talks about Belsen and the British troop liberation of. Fair enough! It’s a British museum! Who am I to fault them for focusing on the part that is particularly relevant to their achievements?! I’d expect no less from a Russian museum big upping themselves on liberating Auschwitz. It’s what nations do.

Point the second: Why you gotta slag off another country’s museum to up your exhibit? If it’s good, it’s good. My gosh, do you really want to argue about who represents the Holocaust better? Jesus. And, did I mention, the DC museum is so much more about the experiences of the -Jews- during the Holocaust versus what the Americans did at the end? I mean, really, if all you take away from that museum is that the Americans liberated a few camps, you have issues, American or English or bloody Nigerian, I don’t care where you’re from. I would think a better argument would be the fact that maybe the Holocaust museum focuses on the Jews to the exclusion of the homosexuals, Roma, commies, POWs, and Resistance fighters that lost their lives in the camps, but whatever.

Finally: how bloody unfair is that comparison? Besides the fact that this dude was comparing an entire museum to his exhibition within the IMPERIAL War Museum, how many of my classmates were actually ever going to go to this museum a thousand miles away to see for themselves if what he said was objective or not? Not that slagging off any exhibit to up your own is fair, but it might make more sense if the museum in question was in, say, Cardiff or even Paris versus DC. You know? Some place relatively feasible for people to go to on their own and make up their own minds, rather than simply being fed the party line.

But, as an English classmate of mine said, there are two acceptable prejudices in England and that’s against the French and the Americans. To be fair, most of them sought me out afterwards and were quite sympathetic to my barely concealed rage. I explained that I’m hardly patriotic, but they countered with, well, of course, it’s a natural reaction. That being said, I can see how the British, former rulers of the known world, would be a bit salty about having some whippersnappers come along talking about how they saved the world, but my word. How about knowing your audience before coming out with such craziness as if it were fact? Were dude talking about it in a joking manner, y’know, I could have laughed it off, certainly, but ’twas not in a joking manner. It was stated as a matter of fact.

And, incidentally, the Holocaust museum in DC is, in fact, much better. But, guess what? It’s an entire museum, whereas this was an exhibition within one! Apples and oranges, my friends.

I sat. “Umm…Ghislain?”

He turned towards me, squinted. “Yes?”

“From Chicago! I cut off all my hair!”

Incredible. I rarely see people that I know around London, never mind people who live in Montreal! It was amazing. I was amazed. He was going to Chalk Farm, too. Sometimes, I suppose, things are meant to be.

So, I made it to where I was going, and it turned out the people that I was meeting were going to a punk rock-ish show near Mornington Crescent. It made me so happy. Like being in Austin again, just a dingy club full of tattooed people with hoodies and the like.

I miss Austin. I miss Chicago. Sometimes, I wonder why I gave it all up to live here in London. I wanted to experience another country. Well, now I’m here and there’s no place like home. I want to go back. You can never go home again!

I would never go back. I would suck dick for a living in New York City or Jakarta – anywhere! – if it meant not going back to that shit hole. Really. I feel that strongly about it. I have moved half a world away, to a place that, frankly, half my family members probably could not pick out on a map. For a reason.

One of the first memories I have in life is eating a plate of rice in a kitchen with a boarded up window. My estranged father broke that window and set fire to the apartment where my mother and I lived. Apparently, we were kicked out shortly thereafter. We were on pretty good terms with the local police, which probably explains my rather positive feelings about cops to this day.

I have only met my father once in memory, and I hated him. Oh, but he’s your father! Even my favorite uncle said this to me up until he died, even though in the next breath he would say that my mother was such a sweet girl until she met my father. Yes, well. My mother was a raging bitch of a cunt for most of my childhood, so who do I have to thank for that?

Possibly, I think I reminded her of him. My siblings may beg to differ, but I feel that I bore the brunt of her rage. That may be par for the course for the eldest child, though.

But, I have to think of the two closest female friends I have in my life and how they feel about their fathers. We all have our daddy issues, I suppose. I think it is more than that, though. Certainly, I feel that the majority of my rage is reserved for my mother, in her choosing this man that so affected her life that it affected mine.

It’s hard to explain. I am out of practice in writing my thoughts, sorry to say. There’s my step-father who was really my dad. A kind man, but so ineffectual when it came to the force that was my mother. We all lived with her insanity. I think, at heart, she is – was – a good woman, but so flawed. In many ways, I want to be a mother to prove her wrong, but in other ways…I see her selfishness in myself. I want to be left alone. I do not want to be bothered by other people’s needs.

I was a needy child. I am a needy person. But, I want to be alone, to an extent. I want to take, much less to give. All the ways in which we fuck with each others’ heads fucks with me! You know?! There’s not a person in this world whose lives we touch that we do not make better/worse and that can be such a scary responsibility.

And, although the title of this particular entry comes from Death Cab for Cutie, I was reminded of Modest Mouse tonight and all the ways in which Isaac Brock of all bloody people speaks to me. For the past 12 years of my life, this man has sung my life! Crazy. Take, for example, the song, “Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset.” That’s me, if ever there was a song. Shit, when I die, you should make that song my epitaph.

I don’t know what I want anymore, and I probably never did.

Pet peeve #37310: when you confide in someone and receive a reply of, “I don’t know what to say.” Umm, well. You don’t have to say anything. In fact, saying nothing is usually better than saying that. Maybe people think of this as a way to express that they have heard/listened, but do not, in fact, know what to say and believe this to be acceptable, but. I do not.

Companionable silence is preferred. I will infer that you do not know what to say, because you are not saying anything. In fact, I will take it as, perhaps, your digesting what I have said. Saying, “I don’t know what to say” says – to me – “I am a person with weak empathetic abilities and/or imagination. Moreover, as I have replied to what you have said with a verbal stalemate, this will be the end of the discussion. Now feel sorry for having said anything to me.”

How did I wind up so upset? I don’t know what to say.

I will now experiment with embedding video, because I am a YouTube junkie as of late:

Illegal immigrants. Many were employed by my parents, who then helped them dress so as not to draw attention to themselves. These “undocumented” strangers lived with us. I count an “illegal” among my friends in London. These people have documents–just not documents that your country respects.

Why don’t you think your country respects them? Because they are bad people? Are they all rapists and minor level drug dealers? They must be, because I assume your sense of justice will not allow you to believe that good people would willingly break the laws of another nation. Really, THEIR governments ought to be taking care of THEM.

Buh? Because someone was born in a certain country–that’s it? Tough shit for you! People, people, people. Please.

Got a job, against my stronger desires and better judgment. Working generally serves to deepen my distaste for the general public (as if the internet was not enough), and this Christmas, I will be working retail. We will see how it goes. Lord have mercy.

You know, feminism is great and all, giving us “choice” and “stuff” – but the more of my life I spend as a wage slave the more I think that I would rather be a slave to my man than to The Man. Of course, being independently wealthy via long lost dead relative trumps either of those options, but yeah. I’d rather take one asshole’s bullshit than a long line of upper management type’s. Not that my husband is an asshole; I’m just sayin’.

That is in no way a reflection of you, Employer, Boss, Big Brother, I love you. In the event that you are reading this on the secret internet. Thank you for giving me a job in This Economy. Who needs sleeping until well past noon and doing what one wants? I get to wear my own clothes. Wooo, a shred of human dignity.

Speaking of human dignity – what is the problem with assisted suicide? I fail to get it. We are not talking cute baby here a la abortion (which I believe in, but will not get into, cos whatevs), just sick and/or old people who want to die. Soooooo, what’s the problem?

Maybe I do get it. Sanctity of human life. No man is an island. Ending your life is so selfish for those you leave behind. Well, maybe forcing one person who does not want to live in pain or senility to live for you (when you have 5.9999999 billion other people whose company to choose from) is even more selfish?

Mmm. Maybe next time I will give writing about cake a whirl. Or rape. We’ll see how I feel.

Went to go see 2012 today, and I think it might be the best end of the world film ever. I freakin’ loved it. No apologies. I dare Hollywood to top the epic ridiculous awesomeness of this film. Spoilers ahead.

Ready? OK!

America (FUCK YEAH!!!11 TM) saves the world with the help of a bunch of cheap Chinese labor which is really a bunch of exploited Tibetans. They build arks. The entire world is flooded except for Africa in a wink wink nudge nudge to WHERE HUMANITY WAS BORN. That is where all these noble Americans who appealed to the other countries to SAVE THE RICH PEOPLE WHO HAD MADE IT THIS FAR and a couple of Chinks who were kind of there on account of, you know, being worked half to death GET TO REPOPULATE THE EARTH.

So except for the part where a bunch of undeserving twats get to live (with the exception of a couple of Russians who were kind of noble in the end anyway but someone had to die), I really loved seeing everything go BOOM BOOM BOOOOOM and WHOOOOOSH goes the tidal wave. Well, tsunamis, but are you really going to question my believability?

Dear God, if in your infinite wisdom you see fit to, y’know, strike us all down, please just give me enough notice to get myself some pickles.

At any rate, there’s my funeral to look forward to. Not that I am expecting it any time soon, but I think of it a lot. So, I figure I ought to write my expectations down, so I don’t get shafted at the end.

What to do with my remains:
- donate my organs
- cremate
- scatter them all over Pere Lachaise in Paris
- yes, I mean scatter them…who needs to buy a space for an urn? Get a bunch of handfuls in those old abandoned sepulchres from the late 1800s.

I expect a memorial service. Please, no photos. And, don’t think I’m the type to say “no tears”. I want tears. I want wails, gnashing of teeth and rendering of garments. I want Old Testament style mourning. You better wear black. Bonus points for veils.

As for flowers, tuberose and jasmine would be nice. Lots of jasmine. It reminds me of my grandma’s garden in better childhood days. Also notes in my scentof choice, Robert Pigeut’s Fracas.
.

To help you cry until you laugh, there should be music. I like music in life, sometimes, so I do not think death should be any exception. Some suggestions are:
- Smokey Robinson – “Tears of a Clown”
- Milton Nascimiento/Lo Borges – “O Trem Azul”
- Yann Tiersen – “La Noyee” (Ideally played on accordian by two crazy gypsy punks)

You get the picture.

P.S. – Don’t ever let me be a vegetable. Someone, please, have the decency to smother me with a pillow if I’m ever reduced to shitting myself.