Foreign

There's something quite lonely about spending a weekend in a hotel in a generic business location. Particularly one that is so close to where I lived for 10 years. It's like I sense this used to be "home" but now I'm just a visitor.

Yes, hotels on the weekends are in that changeover period, gearing up for the next business week and hosting wedding receptions or the odd בר מצוה.

I can see how it must be strange travelling back to old stomping grounds. New environs cause some tension within us, when we live in a place for a while we become familiar with it and the tension eases. How long do you have to be away from a place to feel that tension again when you return to it? 2-3 years perhaps I think.

These days I do like the odd trip stateside to stay in a hotel but I've had to decline two offers already this year, plus as offer to go to Amsterdam - for family reasons - so enjoy it while you can! Everything in moderation :)

and where relatively obscure English actors are allowed to quietly project a personality onto the screen -- is my favorite kind of movie.

Heh those are good movies. I will have to check out Amazing Grace. I recall a lesson on Wilberforce at school in the late 70's, all about the emancipation of slaves. How Christian nations ever allowed slavery is odd, but then again I guess there are slaves metioned in The Bible - did Jesus ever campaign against slavery? I don't recall so, but then again He knew Wilberforce would do so some 1800 years later.

It occurs to me that in some ways we are all slaves.

A very different type of movie I saw recently is Pans Labyrinth ((El Laberinto del fauno) a Spanish movie by Guillermo del Toro. I cannot recommend it highly enough, I get DVDs sent to me all the time by the rental company and this one really stands out. It's set at the end of the second world war in Spain, it's about the Spanish civil war and how that pits neighbour against neighbour. It is so well done, and you're left with the realization that the only real monsters out there are humans.

If I have such a cause, I'm not sure what it is. Your cause right now is your daughter.

Maybe your cause is to enlighten the world with your clarity of vision? You're very good at taking complicated things and boiling them down so that non-rocket-scientists can understand them.

Caring for a child is very rewarding and is indeed a good reason to "keep going", but I'm not sure if I have "a cause". If anything it would be along the lines of encouraging humans to live in harmony and to make the best of their abilities without necessarily seeking an advantage over their fellow man -- that is my wish, not sure what I am doing for it as a cause though.

Are the British stereotypes shown amusing? Or annoying?

I love that episode by the way, only having seen it about five times now ;) One of the best Bart quotes ever are in that episode here. I love it when the lady behind Barts voice does her "Old English" way of speaking. Such stereotypes don't annoy me at all, especially when they are done in a parody of the way that some Americans might think of the English. I often wonder if any American folk actually think English people in England are really like that? I would bet "yes", and I think it's those folk that The Simpsons is making light fun of.

There was a chorus of "That's great!" and "She deserved it!" from others on the forum.

That's what we do isn't it?

We have a preference for the familiar and this has the benefit of leading us into group behaviour (pool resources, fight predators, etc)

The trouble is, this same behaviour which benefits our survival also creates wars between the groups -- they are unfamilar - "not us" so cause stress. So the group of "bikers" fight the group of "mobile phone users". It doesn't matter who the groups are, they will fight. Natural selection in action.

I am so tempted to argue back on the forum ... but a little birdy in my conscious is telling me to walk away

What would fighting achieve here? If you can convince the biker group not to be slaves to their DNA then that would be a miracle. Mind you, Wilberforce did get that bill through Parliament :)

It's really hard not to fight sometimes isn't it?