THURSDAY, 17 AUGUST, 2000, LONDON

I am spending the afternoon traipsing about my ole stomping grounds in London. My college off Gloucester Road, old home off Fulham Road, hang-out spots, eating Hula Hoops (foreskin-shaped fried potato treets) and drinking Schwepps Lemonade, which I had quite forgotten existed. Why the fuck don’t they make Schwepps Lemonade and Hula Hoops in the States is what I wanna know. My feet are wicked-ruined so I'm currently sitting in an Irish pub on Earl’s Court having some RFG. (Real Fuckin’ Guinness.) Here’s the cultural difference in Guinness, for you beerophiles: English Guinness has a sort of taupe-hued head on it that, when you poke at it, creates little creamy nipples on the top that don’t go away. When I lived here 12 years ago, I had medium-length, unmanageable bangs that no hair product could tame. Except for Guinness foam. Honestly, it was the only product that could keep my Nu-Wav bangs from slumping straight down my head like Lego hair. I would often go to the pubs before going out on the town, just to reap the benefits of a good hair mousse. American Guinness, while tasty and all, is only a shadow of a facsimile of the real shit, boasting less hair-care prowess, less alcohol content, and less wholesome breakfast-cereal goodness. Then there’s Dublin Guinness which even shames London’s copy. I believe you can utilise the head of proper Irish Guinness Stout as mortar for bricks or grout for your shower tiles. I’ll give you the scoop on Scottish Guinness this weekend, dolls, though I prophesy it will be of British quality, not Irish, but that’s still not a prob here. Anyway, I’m feeling quite the pompous cunt sitting in a pub in the mid-afternoon with my laptop, prattling away at my enviable typing speed — all so very important — so very important. Yup, yup, yup. Rush this memo to my “girl” wouldja, dahl? The cute barwench boy must either think I simply am a dotcomm, or perhaps that I’m merely some yankee wankah who has quite forgotten how to socialise at the pubs. And a pub in Earl’s Court, no less, home of the Lovely People. I should know. I used to live near here and be one of them. Everyone in Earl’s Court is reputed to be simply goh-juss, dahhlink. Goh-juss! For my part, I was 20 years old, and who isn’t their cutest at 20, I axe you very much! Yah, so I could live here again. I desire it, even. I miss London like a limb and being so close and cheap to Europe-Proper is something I could live with again without too much undue stress. I mean, where can you travel cheaply when you live in the States? Answer: To another state, of course. Bollocks. Listen, dear readers, I need your help. I am hereby sending out a formal cry for help. Anyone know any details about becoming a naturalised UK resident? Or, better yet, how one can go about getting dual citizenship? Let’s say, for example, I found some hypothetical British chickyboo to marry (hi, Juju, hi! See you in a couple of days, pun’kin!) — what further must I do to a) get a United Kingdom passport and b) retain my lovely US passport? I’ve got a lot of readers at this point. I accept that. Surely one of y’alls must know something! Please, don’t make me call the embassy. They’re always so terse and angry on the phone. And slimy, bent lawyers give me great heaping blinding piles. I’ve interviewed any number of people on this matter, British and American, and no one can tell me anything consistent. If you know anything… Thank you. In lieu of lunch, I believe I will have another Guinness, thank you. Okay, if I may briefly harken back to an earlier subject, “Building Your Own Persona By Moving To A Zillion Different Cities In Your Twenties”… Today’s topic will be on accent and dialect. When you choose London as your first home-away-from-home, and you subsequently begin to deconstruct yourself atom by atom to rearrange everything from the (ruined) feet up, the first thing you do is work on your diction. In London, specifically, it does you no favours to have a bland, obnoxious, loud Amurkin Ay-uk-sent. So I learned quickly not so much how to mock a Brit accent, but how to tone down the Amurkin in me to become neutral territory. And a lot of that has stayed with me all the years since I left England. Having a non-accent means, in a word, that when in England, you are seen as American, and while in the States, you are often asked if you’re British. Sometimes I make up special make-believe country names as my homeland. But that’s another story. After being here for a couple of days, it’s amazing how quickly I’m slipping back into my faux-Brit thing, used only to not be the recipient of wary looks from attitude-driven shopkeeps and pissy barwenches. I mean, I still say “toe-may-toe” instead of “toe-mah-toe” n’ all, but phrasings and inflections come out differently when I’m here. And the funny thing is, is that I honestly cannot help it. Or that I don’t realise what I’m doing until it’s out of my mouth. I don’t really think I’m fooling anyone, per se, but it does indeed take some of the xenophobic sting from dealing with cabbies, clerks and cunts if I can refrain from saying, in a blaringly loud American drawl, “HEY! Y’ALL MAKE SUMMADEM CHEESEBURGERS AND FRIES OVUR HEE-UR?” I mean, c’mon, when in France, you call your fries “frites” or “pommes frites” if you’re feeling splashy because that’s what they’re bloody well called. When in the UK, you are doing everyone a favour by calling them “chips,” right? It’s just the polite thing to do. My point, you ask? Okay, I have none. But this Guinness is too ripping and I don’t want to leave the pub yet. Oh well. No hurries. No particular plans this afternoon. Going to a special “sneek-preeview” of X-Men tonight. Heh. That’s funny. X-Men has been out, what, a couple of months in the States? You know, I think they still ship American films to Britain via steamers. You knowwww … this laptop battery is supposed to work for five hours. It is getting kinda low. I am a dismayed. The gods! but my feet are fucking killing me. I brought my comfortable Doc Marten hip boots as my only pair of shoes and while they took me to every corner of three Spanish cities last year, they’re just not doing it for me on my extensive walkies about London. Oh, now my foot’s crackling like a fried pork rind. My poor, poor feet. Who will pop into this pub and give the Marquis a nice feetsies massage, uh? You? You? Or maybe you?