Back from the USA

It’s been a week, but I’ve been rubbish. Now, I blogged a few things while I was in the US, but even though I had wireless broadband Internet access for most of the period, I didn’t upload the blog entries. Feh. I so such. Anyway, here they are.

Monday 7th 12:38pm

I never expected that the first use of the laptop on this trip would be to blog official paperwork. But only a few minutes after remarking to Cleodhna how good paperwork was these days, thanks mainly, I think, to the Plain English Campaign, I sat down and went through the US immigration stuff.

The form itself is rather dire. It’s laid out in a very rigid manner, which means that the space allowed for country of citizenship is larger than the space country of residence gets (and United Kingdom doesn’t fit in that one). The design also makes it confusing which line the date of birth goes, and requires you to write your gender in full rather than tick boxes. (This extra effort may well, I warrant, push already fragile nerves over the brink. No, really.)

It also doesn’t cope with the idea that people may travel around when coming to the US - given that we’re planning on staying with Tom for a few days, heading off to Vermont for another two days before heading off to Texas for five, which address am I supposed to put down? (I put Tom’s because that’s the first one we’re going to, and then realised that I only had directions, not full details. If I never post this, you’ll know why. Er…)

I like some of the things they don’t allow. You’ll have problems entering the country if you have a “physical or mental disorder” (quite where they draw the line I’m not sure), or if you are “seeking entry to engage in […] immoral activities.” Does this mean that the US immigration service want to prevent you from gambling or cheating on your wife?

The customs, meanwhile, want to know if you’re bringing snails into the country. Quite right so - I’d be curious too - but I’m not sure why they’re rather alarmingly lumped in with disease agents and cell cultures. Are snails a potential source of biological weapons? I think we should be told.

As an aside, a chance glance at Cleodhna’s book in the plane revealed to me the phrase “Kuomintang carpetbaggers”. It took a few seconds before I parsed that as English. Would make a great band name.

Monday 14th 10:20pm

I have been watching US news (and reading the US version of Newsweek). It’s not pretty.

A stupidly large amount of time is spent on covering US POWs and how their families are looking forward to them coming home, how they’re so proud that the US military got them out again, and so on ad nauseum. As Cleodhna points out, this is a luxury that they can afford because nothing else is going wrong for the US in this war against Iraq. But it’s also symptomatic of the culture of the US, that they’re spending ages on people who, ultimately, epitomise mediocrity. These people didn’t get themselves killed - which is either stupidity or bad luck, neither of which are popular at the moment. But they didn’t demonstrate great qualities of intelligence, quick thinking, or even bravery. Instead, they got themselves captured, and they’re on the front covers of all the news magazines.

US TV isn’t all that bad, of course. We were watching PBS tonight, which had a very good reason for why Iraq started developing a chemical and biological weapons programme: it’s cheaper than rifles and tanks. Neither of which Iraq has the ability to manufacture, so it had to buy them from foreign countries, in a buyer’s market and with no guarantee that the supply would continue.

Bush Administration things that annoy me part 94: one of their friendly think-tank people kept on referring to “biologic weapons”. The spell-checker in this machine doesn’t throw that up as a misspelling, but, damnit, it should.

Meanwhile, I have the opportunity to blog because I’ve stopped travelling for the first time in about a week. We’re at Cleodhna’s grandmother’s (I suppose my grandmother-in-law), after a lot of hectic travelling around New York (Cleodhna’s visa is now done), Vermont (we inexplicably failed to see Stalsve’s basement stream) and Texas (Southwest airline crew: “… when instructed to do so by uniformed Southwest crew; the naked ones are not to be trusted.” I gather they say this sort of thing a lot.)

Dorothy, as grandmothers are wont to do, dug out the baby photos, and we found a few more when she wasn’t looking. In the early ones, before Cleodhna developed height and stupid glasses, you can’t tell her and Stalsve apart, so I would ask Cleodhna which was which. I am very pleased to say that Cleodhna often wouldn’t know either.

Tuesday 15th 23:01pm

Wonderful mixed metaphor: “Fly with her own two feet”.

Cleodhna’s aunt Pat on how to do research: Don’t set foot in a library, just write to your Congressman saying how much you appreciate his work, and can you have a sample of his stuff on subject X? So he sends his researcher to the Library of Congress, and his researcher sends you stuff, and you’ve got your work done for you.

Thursday 17th 5:20pm

I appear to be doing most of my blogging from airports.

I’m sitting in an airport bar, which has the usual extortionate prices but a not bad draught beer (which I originally wrote as draught bear - must be recollections of PvP). There’s a sign on the wall that says that people must be 21 or over, and that they will card you if necessary.

For some reason, I still feel the need to mentally confirm that I’m over 21.

I suspect this will go away when I turn 30. This may or may not be a comforting thought.