Month: March 2006

Week Twenty-Six: Snow Business

Leave a comment

So I’ve been here six months. Six months since I last saw my family, six months since I rode the Tube, six months since I watched Match of the Day, six months since I heard the terms ‘Asbo’, ‘Happy Slapping’ and ‘Crazy Frog’ (now there’s something I don’t miss). Now it’s all ‘Roseville Auto-Mall’, ‘Ask your Doctor’ and ‘Triple Doppler Radar’. And despite the recent rainstorms and floods (and, um, tornadoes), the weather is still much better than in Britain, though there is one thing I will always miss – snow. Yes it’s freezing cold and causes pipes to burst and cars to slide all over the place, but there’s something magical about a blanket of snow. So on Sunday we decided to drive a couple of hours east of snow-free Davis into the Sierra Nevada mountains to see some of the white stuff close up – and we were not disappointed.

I have never seen so much snow in my life!! The sky was blue, and it wasn’t particularly cold, but I can’t imagine the blizzards that must have raged through those valleys. We stopped at a gas station on the way, and the snow was so deep that we could not read the road signs. Snow over a metre thick was piled up on the roof, bringing to mind ominous echoes of Bad Reichenhall, while small white hillocks were only revealed to be buried vehicles when their aerials poked out of the frozen mush like pathetic grave-markers. Yet with a blue sky and a well-ploughed freeway gliding through the chocolate box landscape, it’s easy to forget the lethal side of snow.

We passed by Donner Lake, a place synonymous with icy death. It was there that the Donner Party, a group of California-bound settlers, met their fate during a ferocious winter storm in the 1840s, resorting to cannibalism. With that in mind, when we reached the town of Truckee for lunch, we both ordered vegetarian dishes. Truckee is a nice little place, whose history lies in the westward expansion of the railroads that united the nineteenth century States. It kind of reminded us of one of those model towns that accessorise Hornby model railway kits.

From Truckee we drove to Squaw Valley, the small but world-renowned ski resort that audaciously staged the 1960 Winter Olympics, fending off Alpine bids from Innsbruck, Garmisch-Partenkirchen and St. Moritz. Nestled comfortably in a valley around a frozen lake, the only thing missing was the White Witch’s castle. Skiers big and small were pouring down the mountains like tiny black raindrops on a window. I have never wanted to ski, ever – lots of danger of injury, freezing cold weather and ridiculous outfits – if I’d wanted that I would have been an X-Man (actually, that would be cool). But after actually visiting a ski resort, even after getting ripped off with an over-priced and under-sized beer, I’m starting to see the attraction of skiing. At least there are no spiders up there.

So after six months I have finally seen a new side to California, the snowy side. We are just as far from the beach here as the breathtaking mountains, and whatever else London might have to offer such as newsagents, Match of the Day and decent news channels, it doesn’t have that. Score one for Arnie’s state.

Week Twenty-Five: It’s a Funny Old Game

Leave a comment

Boy, do I have a red face. Well, half a red face. We went to a college softball match on Sunday, and the midday sun beating down on my left side left me looking like a Feyenoord shirt. To top it off, my Harry Potter-esque scar now glows an ominous purple. After a week of rain, the clouds have finally parted, and it took me by surprise. Either that or Lord Voldemort has moved to Sacramento.

The softball was fun; it was women’s college softball, Princeton vs Nevada. It’s a bit like baseball, except the ball is different (and it ain’t soft, as anyone who ever encountered one at school has ever found out). We sat right behind the batting area, behind the high fence where I thought we would be safe from errant balls. I thought wrong; never mind a sun-hat, I could have done with a helmet, the amount of slices that came our way. All in all though, it was good, wholesome American fun. Princeton absolutely trashed Nevada, despite Nevada’s best efforts to put them off with some bizarre, possibly sectarian team chanting. I half expected them to be standing around a cauldron.

Speaking of sport, local NBA team Sacramento Kings are having an exciting run of form. I managed to watch their televised game against the LA Lakers last week, which despite the clash of purple polyester was a pretty great showdown. The Kings eventually won fairly comfortably, with Ron Artest winning a battle of wits against Kobe Bryant, and Mike Bibby scoring some cheeky three-pointers. Are you impressed I remember all the names? Well, I had to look them up.

And I have decided that I will watch as much of this summer’s World Cup Deutschland 2006 on Mexican TV. I caught a match on Saturday between, um, two Mexican teams (one of them was called ‘Tigres’, I caught that) and I was reminded of how much more fun it is listening to Latin American commentators when somebody scores. Motson, Pearce, Gubba, Davies… you guys just cannot pull off the famous cry of…

GOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Week Twenty-Four: Eight Legs, Two Fangs and a Change of Underwear

Leave a comment

My name is Pete Scully, and I am an Arachnophobe. Snakes, rats, ghosts – none of them scare me, but spiders… they are my great weakness. I knew when I came out to California that this was Black Widow country, and I have feared the Widow since I was very small, but now I have a new venomous arachnid to fear – the Brown Recluse. So far, I have encountered neither. Thankfully. I am always on the lokout, and the other night I got a fright – I was on my way to bed, I didn’t have my glasses on, I lifted up the pillow, and this little brown spider ran around in circles before vanishing behind the bed. I tell you, trying to go to sleep that night, trying to ignore the possibility of a little eight-legged freak crawling across my face, that was a task little short of Herculean. In fact it was Poirotian.

I am fascinated by spiders. When I was a schoolboy, other children would pretend they had spiders in their hands just to see my reaction. Just seeing a photograph of one makes my spine feel like Tornado Alley. California’s Central Valley has just those two dangerous spiders, I’m told, but in some abundance. It is because it gets so darned hot here. I’ve done a little research on my enemies lately, and wow that Brown Recluse does not sound like a friendly old eater of flies. When it bites, it does not poison you in the same way that the Widow does, but leaves behind a flesh-eating bacteria that slowly deteriorates whatever it has bitten. Check out this nasty set of images. Can you believe a spider can do that?

And how big is this thing, this Brown Recluse? It’s TINY!! Less than half an inch long! How are you supposed to know if one is lying in your clothes (as they do), or among your books (as they do), or in your bed (as they do)???  Even as I write I am in a panic – I’m from Britain, for heaven’s sake! We don’t have anything that can do you any serious harm there! Our only poisonous snake is the adder, whose bite is more full of sarcasm than venom. So what is my solution, how am I going to learn to live alongside these fanged menaces?

A big hammer. It’s the best I have come up with. When I finally see one, I want to be ready.

Week Twenty-Three: Bye Bye, Baby

Leave a comment

Today, the Governor of South Dakota (just east of ‘where was that, now?’) signed the bill that banned abortion in the state. It is hoped by many right-wing pro-lifers that this will trigger a much larger, country-wide campaign that will end in Washington DC at the steps of the Supreme Court. It is believed that other states will follow South Dakota’s lead (heaven help us), and ultimately force a reversal of Roe vs Wade, the landmark 1973 case that saw abortion made legal in the US. Many think the movement will run out of steam before it gets that far, but they underestimate the religious right, and the fact that a certain Sammy Alito now sits at the head of that very Supreme Court, and he certainly believes that this particular law is ‘not settled’.

Well, it’s only South Dakota, I hear you say. If a Dakotan girl gets herself up the duff, all she has to do is pop across the border into abortion-friendly North Dakota and bob’s yer uncle, or whatever phrase is appropriate. The thing is, it’s not that easy, is it. What if this girl cannot afford the bus fare? What if she can’t take a few days off working at WalMart to go to Nebraska? There are lots of scenarios, far worse than this, that point to one thing – once more, it’s the poor that suffer. Not to mention the woman’s right of choice being taken away by zealous righteous men. I’m not going to debate the finer points of abortion here; I’m pro-choice where abortion is concerned, and we all know that it is far better that abortions are performed legally by doctors rather than by back-street Vera Drakes on kitchen tables. It may be challenged in court, but rich and powerful right-wing groups have already pledged millions to fight the pro-life cause in the courtroom. I just want to ask this: why do the neo-Con religious right want so many unwanted babies born into poverty?

What do they gain from it, other than an endless factory line of WalMart employees busting their guts for a dime a day, more pimple-faced brats to pack their groceries for them? I’ll tell you what they get – they get people who are faced with no other choice than to join the Army, wave the flag, and end up dead on the side of a road in Baghdad or Kabul. We’ve all seen that bit in Fahreneit 9/11, where the Army recruiters press-gang directionless kids at the mall into joining up, and I’ve seen them out and about here, too, on the university campus, going after the kids with direction (but offering to pay for their fees). even today, universities were told that they can no longer prevent the recruiters from coming onto campus with their sign-up sheets. They can complain, but it will fall upon deaf ears, or at least the ears of those who determine your funding budgets.

Now I am aware that joining the Army can be a noble thing, but when you see how the military target poor people to become their statistics, and when you see how corrupt governments abuse patriotism to send these same youngsters into wars based on lies and hidden corporate agendas, without sufficient equipment, you start to get a sick feeling in your stomach. they don’t like gays because…they cannot produce potential soldiers. They don’t like abortion because…it prevents potential soldiers form being born. They don’t like contraception because…it prevents potential soldiers from being conceived (States such as Ohio and Utah have been making it difficult for people to obtain contraceptives). It’s all about keeping the little tin soldiers churning out, and into the body-bags so that some greedy politician and his filthy-rich backers can cling onto power long enough to ensure that generations more remain in the poverty trap, thinking themselves lucky they live in a land where their leaders allow this to happen to them.

And if you end up in jail, those same rabid zealots are the ones watching you suffer in paralysis during lethal injection, and gloat at your death. Which brings this anger-tinted blog entry to a long-awaited conclusion – how come the people who say they are pro-life are actually the ones who are the most pro-death?