You’re being watched: Despite being observed by CCTV cameras, elusive grafitti artist Baksy managed to create his latest - and biggest - work to date under the cover of darkness

word up. all the cctv cameras, and pervasive warnings of cctv cameras, stick out in my mind from my trip to the uk. they are everywhere, and i feel like i can say that without exaggeration. it was enough to make someone who only jokes about wearing a tinfoil hat actually wear a tinfoil hat. i’m not sure who thought this cctv thing was a good idea because it clearly sucks. ‘

england prevails.

via the daily mail via nymag vulture

i am jetlagged and awake at 4am. and my luggage didn’t arrive with me (fuck you, heathrow terminal 5), though that’s not why i’m awake, it’s just something that happened. because i am awake, pictures get posted early. i didn’t take many and what i did take has been edited down.

i’m not sure if there are a lot of costume parties here or just an assload of whores, pirates, and royalty.

briefly:

• the bbc is infinitely more watchable than american tv. i think it’s because they don’t have commercials. and there are only four channels.
• i look forward to no more tv.
• i also look forward to no more sundowners (though i learned that from quann in mexico).
• mia ‘channa’ steinberg and i had a two-week curry tour of edinburgh. we’ll miss it, as it’s much better than the average indian food in seattle (though not redmond).
• i’ll miss match of the day on the beeb. i like football.
• it’s nice to find a place that makes seattle’s weather look good.
• i have been here for one month and haven’t learned how to use the money (all the coins kind of look the same).
• we went mountain biking last weekend at glentress. it was laid out like a xc ski center on managed forestry land. if we had a place like this in seattle, i’d have a new sport.
• my ears perk up whenever i hear some american, trying to figure out what they’re doing here, and to figure out maybe what americans sound like to edinburrowers. i don’t have enough distance to actually know.

ok, i guess that’s it. more soon from seattle.

every day, someone will walk over to my desk and ask if i want to go to tesco to pick up lunch supplies, and when they say ‘tesco’, they never sound particularly happy about having to walk across the office park.

it’s always the same boring play-the-same-first-level-of-mario-brothers adventure at tesco: buy fruit/nuts, attempt to use credit card that doesn’t have a ‘chip’ in it. no chip means i can’t merely insert my card, i have to swipe, and with swiping comes needing to sign the receipt. this isn’t a big deal except that no one ever has anything for me to sign with, so i’m stuck making painful smalltalk with the cashier until someone comes over with a pen.

the other day when cashier 2 came over to cashier 1 with a pen, i thanked her. she immediately turned to cashier 1 and said, ‘och, ee as en accen un im, don-ee?’

yeah lady, you sound like groundskeeper willie and i have the accent. i will not be missing tesco.

water in the toilet. no, really.

i’m really into mellow yellow (i’m a giant hippie, i know). turns out that mellow yellow only really works if there’s water in the toilet, otherwise it’s just a big pot of piss that smells like an outhouse (apparently my hippieness has a limit). because of the lack of water, we have to flush more often.

so while i admire the uk’s water conservation initiatives, this one seems kind of misguided. as does the washing machine that takes 1.5 hours just to wash. drying takes three weeks.

my baby brother, who just emailed me this gem:

i went to see a friend’s band play at the hollywood house of blues last night. super-weird night. i was in the bathroom next to dee snider when “we’re not gonna take it” came on. pretty awesome.

i have no idea how he kept a straight face, i suspect that he didn’t.

the other day, i went to the edinburgh hippie food grocery store to pick up some produce and snacks. while perusing the dried fruit aisle, i saw that they were selling dates grown in iran(!), which of course i bought and devoured. this will probably come of no surprise to you good brothers and sisters, but the forbidden fruit really is sweeter.

given my history with completely humorless customs agents, i will be unable to bring any of these fine iranian dates back to the united states. i apologize in advance.

mia ’squeamish’ steinberg actually watched the bbc airing of passion of the christ last night. i opted to go to sleep. i think i made the right choice. mia startles/gets grossed out pretty easily, which is why watching that seems so out of character.

she came to bed around 1pm and woke me up around 1:30 to ask me if i heard ‘that’. i told her that she was freaked out by the snuff film she just watched, but then i heard ‘that’ too.

‘that’ was someone screaming/bellowing at irregular intervals. it didn’t sound like sex, and it was coming from somewhere outside. mia asked me if i thought he was being stabbed. i told her that if he was being stabbed that he would probably be screaming at a higher pitch and that it sounded like he was being bludgeoned. (being in the uk has turned me into miss marple, apparently.)

she asked me to check if i could see anything, so i got myself out of bed and went to the window. nothing doing, i told her. i then added that there were two choices: go outside and give a look-see or go back to bed. she told me not to go outside. i went back to bed.

i didn’t remember that this happened until about noon today and i’m not sure how to find out if someone was beaten to death or not.

it is late march in edinburgh and somehow it’s still snowing, which isn’t great for cycling but did allow me to find something out that i otherwise wouldn’t have known: the only thing than worse than cycling on dry cobblestones is cycling on snowy cobblestones. i am full of silver linings.

skip it.

edinburghers (edinburghians? edinburrowers?) aren’t known to be the friendliest people in scotland and it’s rare that one will make eye contact on the footway, let alone say hello. i don’t think this is bad, it just is what it is.

so this morning when an edinburghian(?) motorist pulled up alongside me as i was riding my bike to work and started talking, i was kind of surprised. i think he said something like, ‘hey, fuckstick! you went through a red light back there!’ but i can’t be 100% sure because i was listening to my ipod.

i guess you can’t make a left on red in the uk. good to know for next time.

not sure whether it was the fursty ferret beer, or the vegan haggis that mia ‘adventure’ steinberg found in the co-op (i think i’m maybe done with vegan haggis), but i finally had my first dream about the royal family last night.

in summary:
i was invited to meet the royal family at some sort of huge gala, and decided it would be an awesome idea to take some ecstasy and act like a fucking lunatic. hilarity ensued; security called; alarm went off.

steinberg has arrived. steinberg is now pronounced stein-bur-ah. unclear whether she likes this or not. it’s funny to see mia go through what i went through last week: the not-looking-right when you step off a curb; the inability to not peer in curtainless windows; the constant this-place-is-so-old line of talk.

i was telling my coworkers this morning that i have to remind mia to look right when she crosses the street, and it took me about a week to do regularly, so i wonder how long it’s going to take her. i then said that i should do some science and not remind her so that i can compare results.

they said: signs? what kind of signs?

me: huh? oh. not signs, science!

it turns out that i’m not the only one who’s having trouble with accents around here.

i always knew that i liked those soma new xpress tires, but i didn’t realize just how awesome they were until i got to a place that has incredibly poor pavement and cobblestones.

also, i’m realizing now that there are many downsides to cobblestones:
- slow going
- once there’s broken glass between cobblestones, it stays there forever
- jarring
- whenever you do road work, you have to pick ‘em up and put ‘em back, which seems much harder than digging and repaving

bikes here are like any other vehicles, though they have these pretty awesome marked places for you to wait when you’re at a light that are in front of cars. good job, uk.

the downside to being any other vehicle is that you’re pretty much not treated like bad things could happen if you got hit. for instance, i was coming off the bike path this afternoon and crossing a street when someone turned in front of me. instead of getting furious, i realized that it’s just what’s done here. it’s kind of an elaborate (if seemingly sketchy) dance between bikes and cars and i kind of love it. in the states, i would have confronted. here, i just sort of shrugged it off and realized that riding on the sidewalk and then crossing the street onto the road in front of his car was maybe not the smartest thing to do. though really, he should have signaled (he signals, i don’t go). so yeah, 50/50. we smiled and moved on.

i ride past this place every day. tony blair went to school here. it’s fancy.

mia is here now. going. bye.