We’re leaving for vacation tomorrow, at which point I will be closing all commenting capabilities, but this time I won’t leave a picture of a 1980s dude’s belly on the front page for days.

How about this.

It looks like a flawless computer animation - a pitch-black aircraft silhouetted against a cloud. But this U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor has no need for artificial effects.

The tactical fighter plane is surrounded by a cloud known as a ’shock collar’ or vapour cone as it approaches the speed of sound.

The effect is known as the ‘Prandtl-Glauert singularity’ and is caused by pressure differences around the aircraft. A sudden drop in pressure associated with high speed allows water vapour, which is normally invisible, to condense as fog.

I have another cool pic. This might be upsetting to some of you as it was for me, but it’s all right - the baby seal got away, after completely freaking his shit - and lived despite the ingenuity of the Killer Whale.

Where is your God now? I kid. Just look at the picture:

Apparently, some killer whales have learned how to essentially “beach” themselves in order to feast on baby seals. There’s a whole series of photos at the link, and I’m pretty sure I won’t sleep tonight after looking at them.

Don’t know if it’s the killer whale or the baby seal that makes me most think of Sunny, but it reminds me to mention that I talked to my parents today and they said that for unknown reasons, Sunny lately has been waking them at roughly dawn with yelps and cold dog noses to their sleeping human faces. She used to randomly do the same thing to me and Rupert, and there is no explanation. Maybe she had a bad dream, or possibly a good dream about green beans and bacon, and she doesn’t know how to separate dream from reality, and is sure if she shoves her cold wet snout in Dad’s face at 5 a.m., he will give her a treat.

My sister took this pic of Sunny a few weeks ago. Something really freaks me out about the gloves being upside-down.

Anyway, we’re going to Vienna, Prague, Krakow (and of course Auschwitz), and Warsaw. As usual, I will take many pictures, and will have official Hillbilly Travelogues when I get back. We aren’t taking any computer stuff so I won’t be online for a solid 11 days, and it’s going to be pretty great.

There was a time, back in Texas, when I would see articles from Britain and Europe about their troubles with summer “heat” and I would laugh - quite haughtily, and as smugly as possible. I would scoff when seeing headlines like this one, which is from today: “Britain bakes on hottest day of the year as temperatures soar to 83F“…

Although today was the hottest day of the year temperatures are set to rise even further, forecasters have said.

…The Met Office confirmed today is already the hottest day of the year so far, with Charlwood, near Gatwick in Surrey, recording a temperature of 28.4C (83F).

Previously the hottest day was last Thursday at Heathrow at 28C (82.4).

…Hospitals have been put on standby to deal with sunstroke victims as the Met Office issued its first ever heatwave warning amid fears that it could become dangerously hot and humid.

…The mercury could hit a high of 91F (33C) by the middle of the week - and temperatures are expected to remain a warm and sticky 64F (18C) at night.

I used to read that sort of thing and think, “it’s 110 here so fuck off.”

Well. I was being a jerk.

There’s something I didn’t consider from the comfort of my air-conditioned home, air-conditioned office, air-conditioned grocery store/bank/post office/doctor’s office; my air-conditioned life that was air-conditioned at every moment except when I walked to and from my air-conditioned car. It’s what any of you who are still thinking those things still aren’t considering or taking the proper measure of in your analysis, and it is that THERE IS NO AIR CONDITIONING OVER HERE.

my indoor/outdoor thermometer as I type this

I reckon some places do have it, such as hospitals and fancy hotels maybe, but the shops do not, nor does the bank or the post office or anywhere else I’ve been (except the gym, thank GOD). If any of them actually have the equipment, they still haven’t turned it on as of today, which as you can see by the photo up there, is hot enough for some goddamn A/C.

Rare few pubs or restaurants have A/C because at least in our city, all the pubs and most of the restaurants are in 400-year-old buildings that have hardly been updated, which is totally awesome except when it’s hot. The only restaurant I’ve seen with A/C was one that only had some wall-mounted individual units, the kind only poor people have in America. And they weren’t on, even though it was over 80F when we were there this past Saturday.

Even in the past, when kinder, gentler people would point out those realities to me, about how nothing is air conditioned over here, still I would be a bitch. Well then why don’t they turn on their ceiling fans? Why don’t they buy window A/C units?

A better question is, why would you invest money in something you may or may not need for about a week every 3-4 years? See because that is the thing. Up until this week, the summer here in the south of England, though bright and sunny, has been average, meaning in the low to mid 70s during the “heat” of the day. I’m here in our flat all day, and our main wall faces west and there’s nothing shading it, and yet I never felt the need for A/C or even a fan until a few days ago. Just open the windows and turn the blinds so the sun doesn’t blind you, and you’re set!

We live in a building that was only built a few years ago, and still there are no ceiling fans. I don’t know about all you turkeys outside of Texas, but where I come from, ceiling fans are as ubiquitous as toilets in new construction. Here, no.

I taunted my parents about the weather for the last few weeks when we’d be on Skype talking about Mom’s new knee, and Dad would forlornly mention that his outdoor thermometer said 102 degrees. I’d snicker like George W. Bush and announce that my outdoor thermometer said 75 degrees, and they would then tell me I’m adopted and they never loved me.

But that was before it got up into the 80s, and something happens when it gets to that here. It becomes untenable, I tell you.

Point is, I will never again laugh at people who complain about the heat in the UK or Europe, and you shouldn’t either. Just remember…no air conditioning.

This not being my first blog post, I anticipate Wave B of potential comments. These will be the ones saying: But Rachel! Humans survived tens of thousands of years without electricity and thus without A/C or fans! But Rachel! I personally right now do not have fans or A/C! But Rachel! When we grew up in the 1970s and 80s, we didn’t have A/C either and it got hot and we survived!

Yes and it sucked. I remember spending entire days at age 9 or 10 laying on the floor in a stupor in front of the one fan in our house in Missouri. It was an “attic fan” that was positioned in a doorway to the outside, blowing in. That’s what people did then, we got by, we didn’t die, but it sucked. It was hot and shitty and uncomfortable.

And all those millenia during which humanity survived much worse heat without any powered cooling apparatuses? I bet you your own nuts that if you traveled back in time and asked them, they’d say that it totally sucked.

And if you personally right now don’t have A/C or fans, and the temperature where you are is above the lower 80s, then you have mental or medical problems, or possibly you’re in prison or somewhere else you definitely do not want to be. Or you might be a soldier, in which case, thank you; but the heat sucks, doesn’t it?

In any case, it’s almost never this hot in the UK, and summer here is painfully gorgeous. Things are richer, greener, and more lush now than they were in spring. It’s frankly startling.

Several weeks ago, we bought tomato and pepper seeds, and some baby strawberry plants, which quickly started producing fruit.

We had our first harvest two days ago, when Rupert and I cut in half one lovely plump strawberry that was so sweet and delicious that it made my face hurt. Today I plucked off eight more perfect red berries and quickly devoured three of them like an animal. Rupert’s out of town and will be until after they go bad so they are mine all mine but look how pretty.

I know they’re just regular strawberries but they grew on our balcony and thus are special, because it’s guaranteed they never came in contact with cow shit or farmer’s hands that had just been down farmer’s pants.

It is pathetic how the media is fixating on Michael Jackson. Forget Iran, forget everything that truly matters to the future and well-being of millions if not billions of human beings. The King of Pop has died! OMG! Honestly it makes me want to throw up.

Imagine what could be accomplished in this world if all those people - who are out there on the streets, gathering at his house and the UCLA hospital, making signs and bringing flowers, crying, hugging each other, talking to the news - imagine if all those assholes used that time, energy, and emotion on things that actually matter.

I wasn’t going to post about this at all because I don’t want a comment thread full of terms like “child abuse” and “molestation” and “Demerol” and “heart attack” and “sperm donor”, because that will send my spam filter into hyperdrive and I don’t have the time or inclination to jack with that, and also it is just depressing. So don’t talk about those things in comments. If you want to talk about the moonwalk or how admittedly awesome of a dancer he was about 25 years ago, go for it, but none of the seedy stuff. Get your own blog for that - I don’t want it.

Did you know the House of Reps has held a moment of silence for Jackson today? If that doesn’t make you shake your head until it hurts, there’s something wrong with you.

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg says exactly what I think:

…in the last ten days, we’ve seen or heard of remarkable people who’ve given their lives for freedom in Iran. We’ve heard of innocents killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the last decade, America has lost thousands of heroes in noble causes and thousands of innocent bystanders who were denied the simple joys of life through no fault of their own. Those deaths are tragic, and we’re hard pressed to think of more than a handful of names to put with the long line of the dead.

If anything, Michael Jackson’s life, not his death, was tragic.

Every year at the Oscars they show a montage of people who died over the previous year. Invariably, the audience only applauds for the really famous people. This has always offended me. Not necessarily because the famous people don’t deserve praise but because it’s so clear that the audience is clapping for the fame. Michael Jackson had many accomplishments. But the press is sanctifying him because he was famous, deservedly so to be sure, but not because he was good. So much of the coverage seems to miss this fundamental point, as if being famous made him good.

I feel sympathy for Jackson’s family and friends who understandably mourn him. But I can’t bring myself to mourn him any more than I mourn the random dead I read about in the paper everyday. Indeed, I confess to mourning him less.

Every channel says this is a sad day for America. I agree. But not for the same reasons.

And I agree too. Read the whole thing, it might make better sense that way.

This whole Jackson fixation thing is just very weird. I don’t get people.

If you can live through some of the general jabs at America, and some specific swipes at Dubya, the German paper Der Spiegel has been great lately. Just thought some American readers might like to see some stuff that Germans say about Obama. It’s quite a bit more thought-provoking than the blowjobs he gets daily from the American press.

Merkel Faces Difficult Talks In Washington:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is traveling to Washington this week to discuss the financial crisis and climate change with US President Barack Obama — two issues where Germany and the US are deeply divided. In the new world order, Europe is looking increasingly irrelevant for the US.

When US President Barack Obama recently met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Dresden, he did something completely unexpected in the middle of their conversation: He deviated from the program.

When high-ranking politicians meet, the briefing book is one of the most important elements. It includes the agenda and the things a politician is expected to say. Chancellors and presidents like to stick to briefing book, because it gives them security.

…It became clear to her, once again, that this president is a challenge, both for Merkel and for German politics as a whole…She could face the same experience this Friday, when she meets with Obama in Washington.

…The tone will be amiable, and yet it will become clear that the American and German positions are far apart when it comes to the question of how to handle these crises.

It is an unsettling situation. The prosperity and well-being of ordinary people are more threatened than they have been in a long time, and yet Germany and its most important partner seem unable to agree on a common course. It isn’t even clear that the United States still perceives Germany and Europe as important partners. The emphasis is shifting toward China, and Merkel will find herself having to campaign on behalf of Germany — something which makes it difficult for her to voice criticism of the US.

A clash of cultures is raging between Berlin and the United States on the issue of financial policy. The administration in Washington is combating the financial crisis by taking on more and more new debt…[T]he White House believes its policy of printing money is necessary, not risky.

…Obama’s visits to Dresden and Buchenwald also ruffled some feathers in Germany. The US president’s advance team, which had been sent to help prepare for the trip, made a negative impression on the Germans through their coarse language and overbearing behavior. German officials were shouted at, treated like schoolchildren and told to wait their turns.

“We have never experienced such a hardline approach during any visit,” says an official from Germany’s Foreign Ministry. The Obama team, for its part, is trying to reclaim for itself the mechanisms of the modern media society, arguing that it was important to prevent the Buchenwald visit from being spoiled by images of a smiling and joking president. The spin doctors call it “message control.”

As it is, the US president in person is by no means the charming and smiling character many have come to expect from his television appearances. He cultivates a cool style or, as one of the members of the delegation describes it, “an almost unfeeling style.”

In other words, he’s arrogant and rather dickish?

I cut out a LOT from that article; you really should read it, not so much for the Obama stuff specifically as for the interesting details about the money crisis. They (the piece’s byline is “Spiegel Staff”) write about how the American monetary policy right now is dangerous, which it is. They say that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is on a crusade against Merkel, and that Obama is “stonewalling” on the climate. They also point out:

Archaic fears, combined with the memories of two different years, are at the root of the two countries’ fundamentally different positions on the purpose and tools of monetary policy. The Americans remember the 1929 global economic crisis with horror. For them, there is nothing worse than a shrinking economy, which they see as the epitome of hunger, hardship and ruin. The Germans, on the other hand, think of 1923, when hyperinflation destroyed assets and plunged many into poverty.

Something to think about. And I don’t know about you hickbillehs but I’m with the Germans on this one.

Here’s another piece in today’s Spiegel, titled Obama’s Mistakes: Chancellor Merkel Visits the Debt President:

The occupant of the White House may have changed recently. But the amount of ill-advised ideology coming from Washington has remained constant. Obama’s list of economic errors is long — and continues to grow.

The president may have changed, but the excesses of American politics have remained. Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it has become clear, are more similar than they might seem at first glance.

Ex-President Bush was nothing if not zealous in his worldwide campaign against terror, transgressing human rights and breaking international law along the way. Now, Obama is displaying the same zeal in his own war against the financial crisis — and his weapon of choice is the money-printing machine. The rules the new American president is breaking are those which govern the economy. Nobody is being killed. But the strategy comes at a price — and that price might be America’s position as a global power.

…Obama’s Cheney is named Larry Summers. He is Obama’s senior-most economic advisor, and like the former vice president, he is a man of conviction. The financial crisis may be large, but Summers’ self-confidence is even larger. More importantly, President Barack Obama follows him like a dog does its master.

The crisis, Summers intoned last week at a conference of Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society in Washington, was caused by too much confidence, too much credit and too many debts. It was hard not to nod along in agreement.

But then Summers added that the way to bring about an end to the crisis was — more confidence, more credit and more debt. And the nodding stopped. Experts and non-experts alike were perplexed. Even in an interview following the presentation, Summers was unable to supply an adequate explanation for how a crisis caused by frivolous lending was going to be solved through yet more frivolity.

…Just as the US public initially rallied behind the war President Bush — even to the point of re-electing him — Americans have now thrown their support behind the debt president Obama. The mistakes of the Bush administration are now widely accepted. The mistakes of the Obama administration are still not recognized as such. They are seen as the truth.

Erm, not by all of us, pal.

The article goes on to list all the reasons Obama is wrong - which he is - and of course, it ends by criticizing Bush once again, but I don’t care. It’s worth it to see Obama be bitched about by Europeans, who had such starry-eyed boners for him 6 months ago.

And remember - before you get all pissed off that some German writers are bitching about American policy and American voters - what we do affects them. A lot. It’s just how it is and if you were on the other side of it, you’d probably say the same things.

Meanwhile, I took this picture at almost 10 p.m. on the day before the summer solstice:

Right now, it doesn’t get completely dark here, in the sky, until almost 11 p.m., and the sun is starting to peek back up in the east around 4:30 a.m. I love it so much I can taste it. Reminds me of Minnesota, except even more daylight hours. Which yes I know means even more dark hours in the winter. I’ll deal with that then. Possibly with hardcore clinical depression and a crying jag every day. You can’t wait! Neither can my husband!

Remember this dipshit?

Unsurprisingly, we were of course all completely right about her being full of bullcorn.

A teenage girl who claimed 56 stars were tattooed on her face as she slept when she’d only asked for three has admitted she was awake the whole time - and lied because her father was ‘furious’.

Belgian Kimberley Vlaminck said last week she woke up in horror to find her face covered in the stars of various sizes which spread out over the left-hand side of her head.

She went on to blame the Flemish-speaking tattooist for not being able to understand her French and English instructions.

…But the 18-year-old has finally confessed she did not fall asleep, that she wanted all the stars and was ‘fully aware’ of what Toumaniantz was doing.

Miss Vlaminck told a Dutch TV crew: ‘I asked for 56 stars and initially adored them.

‘But when my father saw them, he was furious.

‘So I said I fell asleep and that the tattoist had made a mistake.’

This is something I especially enjoy in life - when someone is too stupid to even know how stupid and transparent their lies are, and totally getting their chops busted over it.

Dude. I just bothered to look at my own web site today, to make sure I haven’t been hacked or shut down by The Man. And the fact of the matter is, I am so much cooler than you, because the ad running on my topmost sidebar ad space - which earns me oh maybe 15 bucks a month, not joking, it’s pathetic - is for AIRWOLF GEAR.

In case you don’t know, I don’t pick the ads, they just run based on content of my front page. And thus right now, because I awesomely blogged about Airwolf last week, there are Ebay ads over there for Stringfellow Hawk coffee mugs and “1984 Factory Wrapped” Airwolf helicopter toys. It’s so sweet.

Also, I wonder if you hickbilly fools back Stateside even see the same ads I do? The one I’m talking about is actually for Ebay.co.uk, and the prices are listed in pounds. Is that what you see?

I’ve decided to experiment with a new style of blogging, wherein I post whatever I think needs posted even if it’s both dumb and stupid, and if you don’t like it, well tough shit, Sugartits. All this Twitter talk about the Iranian riots has made me feel very attention deficit disordered and I feel I should artistically manifest this on my web site. It’s just the right thing to do.

Also by the way, I do have a Twitter account and have for almost a year but haven’t used it in 3 months, and when I did use it, it was mostly about dog poop. I am @ rachellucas and you can follow me if you want to hear a lot about nachos.

While I’m rambling, I should say that I know my email inbox is full, and I haven’t even tried to access it in over a month, because last time I did there were 600 spams and 200 real emails, and I’m still suffering from the PTSD from all that. At some point I will set up a new email address with yahoo or gmail or something. Until then, if you really need to say something to me, put it in comments please. I really don’t give a shit if comments are off-topic, unless they’re stupid at the same time.

Airwolf is on again right this moment, as is Falcon Crest and also the A-Team, not to mention two channels showing two different episodes of Starsky and Hutch. I’m not making it up. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with British TV programmers. Mummy didn’t walk them in their prams enough.

A-Team is on constantly and I took a few shots last weekend. Please note the multiple showings in one evening, and also the description of the plot, which, can you imagine a plot like that nowadays? Helping a diamond mine owner in apartheid-era South Africa? Jesus.

I want to mention Mr. T several times. Mr. T, Mr. T, Mr. T. Mr. T pities the fool.

Am hoping that gives me some more bitchin’ cool ads.

Here’s something piquant: the programming info here, even for American shows, is put into Britspeak. As in:

Also, beyond TV, I’ve noticed the press even occasionally changes an actual quote. I’ll save and quote next time I see an example of this, but a few weeks ago, there was a story in one of the British papers here about the American woman who called the police and said she and her kid had been kidnapped, and that she was calling from the trunk of the car (which turned out a hoax). Except the story here (before hoax was known) was written something like, Desperate mum tells police: “I am in the boot and we are on the motorway!”

The snorfles never end here; I love it.

The other day, I had to look up “WAG” on Google because I saw it in headlines here so much. Means wives and girlfriends, but they use it to label any individual wife OR girlfriend of a famous man, particularly football players, by which we hillbillies mean soccer players.

It confuses me a little, because a woman is EITHER a wife OR a girlfriend, is she not? They call Victoria Beckham her husband’s “WAG” and that makes me tilt my head like Sunny does when she senses bacon. Victoria is his wife. Not his wife and girlfriend. Mayhap an English reader can set me right on this.

I also had to look up “natter” because I see it in so many ads, usually for phone plans, as in “Have a nice natter!” and I was all, that sounds dirty. And they pronounce it nattah, which makes it sound even more naughty somehow.

But it simply means a long, idle chat. What I love is the site I landed on gives synonyms, and they touched my ‘Murrican heart: “chew the fat” and “shoot the breeze”. They natter, we chew and shoot.

That crafty clever bastard Iowahawk has the president’s Special Message to the People of Iran.

Now, I know that our two nations have had our differences in the past, and so it would be totally understandable if some of you were possibly upset by my previous statements expressing “troubled concern” and “measured consternation” over your current situation. Please, do not interpret those statements as somehow taking one side or the other. I was not trying to be provocative or inflammatory, and far be it from me to interfere or play favorites. As we say over here in the Great Satan, “I don’t have a dog in this fight,” and so I was merely “calling ‘em like I see ‘em.” Frankly, if America is going to regain respect as a geopolitical superpower, we need to make the tough call to sit quietly on the sidelines. That’s why I have instructed my diplomatic team remain strictly neutral and to “let ‘em play.” With time and patience, I hope you will come to think of us as a bigger, flatter version of Switzerland. With less yodeling.

Heh.

I’m also fond of the post Iowahawk put up just after that one, a nice twofer. “Widow of Murdered Fly Seeks White House Apology, Shit”

“Bob was wonderful husband and provider,” said the widow, Mrs. Vivian Vvzzvzwwzzz, wiping tears from her compound eyes. “Even though he was always busy at the Rose Garden turd pile, he always flew home in time to tuck in our maggots.”

…Vvzzvzwwzzz described the “abdomen-wrenching horror” she experienced while watching the President casually assassinate her husband during the live broadcast.

“It was just before supper time and I was predigesting the evening shit for the kids,” she recalled. “When I looked up at the TV I saw Bob there, and of course I was pretty excited. He started waving at me, and then, all of a sudden, SLAP! My whole world, my life, layed smashed across the back of Obama’s left hand. And with 360 degree peripheral vision and hundreds of eye facets, it was impossible to look away.“

I snorfled out loud. SOL’ed, I sure did.

And because I know if I don’t mention it, buncha y’all will bring it up, so in case anyone doesn’t know it, PETA said something about the fly execution, but in all fairness, they didn’t bring it up and they’re really not being weird about it. And truth be told, I don’t like to kill insects myself; I usually try to catch and release them outside, even spiders, no lie. So what they did say about it doesn’t bug me in the least. Haha get it. Bug. I’m a comedic genius.

I know someone is dying to tell me how, technically, my pun doesn’t apply because flies aren’t bugs, since flies have two wings whereas bugs have two pair of wings.

I don’t care.

What I do care about is the giant swarm of mosquitoes that may be headed directly for me.

Anti-insect assault helicopters are being used to wipe out swarms of killer mosquitoes heading towards Britain. The drastic and hugely expensive clearance is being carried out by environmentalists in the skies above northern France. There is particular concern about Asian tiger mosquitoes, which can carry numerous deadly diseases.

Many are lurking in swampland close to the France-Belgium border – less than 100 miles from the south coast of England…‘The threat to public health across Europe is immense,’ said a spokesman for the Nord (north) Department environment agency, which is coordinating the airborne assault.

…‘If we don’t take such firm action then the problem will proliferate as far as Britain and beyond.’

Awesome.

Even more awesome is the lone comment on that story, from someone in London named Florence:

First it is swine flu from Mexico and now a plague of disease carrying mosquitoes from France, what else is waiting to come over here to afflict us? WE NEED TO SECURE OUR BORDERS! What are the government doing about it? NOTHING! They say serious diseases are unlikely, but DO WE BELIEVE THEM??

It’s brilliant, really. This person is either truly insane, which is always fun to watch, or she’s really good at mocking the truly insane. If I were her though, I would have added a little more, such as how we need to SECURE OUR BORDERS!! against wind and storms and all manner of weather fronts, too. I mean if you can keep the airborne French mosquito swarm out with border-securing, imagine the possibilities!