Somewhat ironic how I manage to keep the editorials coming while my parents are here, but as soon as they go away, I play truant. I blame some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I wonder if I could claim relief under the laws here which prevent discrimination against anyone with a disability? I probably could, going by a couple of recent cases in the paper. One woman claimed that she should be allowed to keep her large dog in an apartment complex that didn’t allow them, because it helped her depression (she was a bit vague on why it had to be a large dog), while another woman, fired from her job for lateness due to excessive preening and time spent putting on her make-up, is now suing under the same law, claiming that she has obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Whatever happened to people taking responsibility for their own actions? Or even, it’s your problem, don’t expect us to deal with it? Sorry, mate: not allowed to do that any more, it’s always something else’s fault. And if you can’t find a syndrome to blame, feel free to make one up!

Speaking of excessive preening, there was an entire convention’s-worth of that going on last night, with it being the Oscars. It was my first experience of seeing them live; the time-lag meant that when I was in Britain, they were on in the middle of the night, and besides, the nominees were usually uninteresting anyway. This year was rather different, with both Gladiator and Crouching Tiger getting a sheaf of nominations, so I had something to cheer for.

Overall, it wasn’t as turgid as I feared – the most boring thing was the new Pepsi commercial featuring Britney Spears, which had lost even my interest half-way through the first time it was screened: yes, you’re saying “Drink Pepsi” – we get the point already! Though I confess that we were rarely sitting there in rapt attention: dinner was had, everything cleared away, orders were packed and much chatting was done, in between the actual envelope-opening. Steve Martin isn’t a person I have a great deal of time for, but he did a decent-enough job as host, whizzing through proceedings breezily enough [After one joke he made about Tom Hanks, Mr.H did not look pleased in the slightest, which is enough reason on its own to put Martin up in my estimation a notch or two]

Not all Oscars are equal, however – I noticed that short and long documentaries got cobbled together with one presenter (as did original and adapted screenplays, which tells you a great deal about the position of the writer on the Hollywood totem-pole). Not too bothered about that though, when it looked as if every feature-length documentary was about one repressed minority or other – the bleeding-heart agenda of Hollywood strikes again. I blame Steven Spielberg, myself.

The acceptance speeches were interesting; one of the Crouching Tiger winners seemed to want to name-check everyone in Far East individually, rattling them off with a speed which seemed more befitting dialogue from a Stephen Chow film. At the other end, Steven Soderbergh said he’d thank people later, and just gave a hearty “well done” to everyone who’s an artist. Gee, thanks, Steve! And then there was Julia Roberts in uber-flight; going by that performance, I’m not sure how much of the applause was her brain cells banging together. And finally, I noticed they’d made a point of ditching “And the winner is…” in favour of “And the Oscar goes to…”. Winning implies losing, and in modern America, there can be no such thing.

Or if you do lose, it’s surely just the fault of your obsessive-compulsive disorder. Now, who can you sue?

One morning early last week, I was awoken at some ungodly hour by a strange noise. It sounded somewhere between the rasping of sandpaper, and a drain being unblocked; after a few minutes lying dazedly in bed, wondering whether it was going to stop, I finally decided to track down the source. It was coming from the floor of the room and after tracking down my glasses, I leaned over the side of the bed to be greeted with the disturbing sight of one of our dogs, Max, enthusiastically slurping away on his own genitals.

This was disturbing for a number of reasons. Max is old – in canine terms, he’s got a few years on the Queen Mother, so it was a bit like seeing said Royal in a split-beaver shot. It was undeniably an impressive feat, given that it takes Max longer to get to his feet than it takes a super-tanker to pull a handbrake turn, but it’s really not something I want to see, least of all first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. The sad part is, Max was thoroughly neutered well over a dozen years ago – it may be simply that he hasn’t actually noticed the absence of his testicles yet.

For, let’s face it, dogs are stupid. Loyal and obedient they may bem, but so are most members of HM Customs and Excise – I rest my case. Here, there’s hardly an hour goes past without another doggie-related sound, best summarised thus:
       WOOF-WOOF-WOOF-WOOF-slide–THUMP!-pause-scrabble-WOOF-WOOF-WOOF-WOOF!
We can break this down into stages. The first barks are in response to any life-threatening occurrence – such as a postman – and are given while Cleo and Cody charge down the corridor as if in fear of their life. The slide-thump-scrabble occurs when they fail to make it through the tricky chicane outside our bedroom; they then forget all about the fractures, and charge off down the straightaway once more.

Even an earthworm is capable of learning the right way through a maze, given enough electrical shocks. Cleo and Cody are clearly lower on the evolutionary scale, having failed to learn that right-angled turns on freshly-cleaned tiles do not work, despite having taken (or rather, failed to take) that curve several thousand times in their short, moist-nosed lives.

One might like to compare and contrast the feline approach – while just as keen on reaching the parts us primates can’t reach, and equally vulnerable to newly-mopped floors (albeit with a greater aversion to water in general), there is a major difference to their approach:First, look around to see if anyone witnessed your humiliationIf they did, look at them with a face which implies “I meant to do that”.Remember: “When in doubt — wash”.Make a furry mental note not to go down that corridor ever again, even if it means starving to death.

For a cat, self-respect is just too important to be forgotten about – the worst thing you can do to is laugh at them. But here, I live in hope that one day, the second set of woofs from Cleo and Cody will be muffled because they have driven their heads clean through the wall. Of course, it could just be that the concussions have taken their toll, and we are now sharing the house with the canine equivalents of Muhammad Ali. Anyone know if he has a fondness for licking his own genitals too?

Hooray! Finally, a mere six weeks after my ship came in, my possessions did. Rather than a SWAT team descending, it was a removal firm, who piled the 49 boxes (“I counted them all out…and I counted them all back”) neatly up in the corner of the garage. From there I have been gradually picking my way through them, although at the current rate, it’ll take another six weeks or so to finish the job, assuming room can be found for everything! I’ve started with the more fragile items, and so far the mortality rate has been pleasingly low – my DVD of Poison Ivy 3 was rather crushed, but if that’s the limit of the destruction, I’ll cope. [It almost as if supernatural forces are at work here – my LD of the film got laser rot] Even my beer glasses seem to have made the trip unscathed. Thus, for the moment, Fleet Shipping, who did all the packing, equals top bunch of blokes.

My parents are still here (hence the severe lack of movie reviews this week – the only thing seen has been Bye Bye Birdie with Ann-Margret and Dick Van Dyke, as well as the bloke who did the voice of Dick Dastardly), though tomorrow they head off to the somewhat-chillier climes of Indiana. By then, it’ll be virtually two weeks they’ve been here, which is the longest time I’ve lived with them since graduation. I love my parents dearly ‘n’ all, but it does serve as a good reminder of why I moved out.

I am, basically, an intolerant bastard, and there are very few people whose company I can stand every hour of the waking day. [Indeed, the count stops at one…hi, Chris!] So far, I have just about managed to bite my tongue, but I confess to some sarcasm slipping out when, while unpacking some of my boxes, my mother said, “So, you’re unpacking some of your boxes, are you?”. No, I’m emptying them in order to construct a cardboard glider, in a daring yet likely futile attempt to escape from Nazi-occupied territory. What made you think otherwise?

Mind you, they have pleasantly surprised me in other ways: Mum’s interest in baseball was gratifying, while Dad has bitten the bullet and used the Internet for the first time. Admittedly, this has so far been limited to scrolling up and down the home page for their local newspaper, the Forres Gazette [top story this week: Tesco get the go-ahead for their new store], but this represents a major step forward. I don’t think he’ll ever quite turn into a cyberpunk though.

At least they managed to get our here without needing to get dunked in tanks of disinfectant, which I believe is the fate of most British tourists departing my former green, pleasand and foot-and-mouth infected land. Well, I suppose it makes a change from BSE. I do have to wonder what is going on back there; in the short time since I left, the whole place seems to have gone completely to pot. I mean, as if Railtrack don’t cause enough accidents, we now have people turning the tracks into a multi-storey Landrover-park. And that’s disregarding the tube strikes and the weather.

Okay, with regard to the last, the past week here has not exactly been anything to write home about (even if my parents no doubt did, at length, on their postcards); the trip to gaze into the Grand Canyon ended up being a trip to gaze into five thousand feet of fog. Pity the poor mule riders who had booked, a year in advance, for their scenic trip down. On the plus side, I did get to make my first snowman in a good decade or so (hey – snow here is white!), though later on, I was brought back to earth when I had to drive through a blizzard of the damn stuff, with big rigs whizzing inches past me.

The main revelation for this week is thus: snow is something best viewed as a pedestrian, or better still, from a warm living-room, accompanied by a steaming cup of hot chocolate…

28 working days…no word from Customs… [Sigh]

As mentioned last week, my parents are here, and this weekend was largely spent in a range of cultural pursuits – at least, in comparison to the next few days, when the eventual destination will be the anti-culture capital of the world, Las Vegas. We got to contrast two cultures on Saturday and Sunday: the first day of the weekend saw us at the Arizona Scottish Highland Games; on the second we stumbled, more or less by accident, across a Matsuri or Japanese festival, in downtown Phoenix.

Despite the vastly different backgrounds from which these two sprang, there were some interesting cultural similarities, not least in the way in which both celebrated – or perhaps “wallowed” might be closer to the truth – in history. In Scotland’s case, this is somewhat understandable, given that the country ceased to exist as a sovereign nation the best part of three hundred years ago. While the sons and daughters of the country have done much to be proud of since (and quite a few things we’d rather not broadcast – Sheena Easton comes to mind there), it’s best not mentioned that these have been as the junior partner in a supposedly united kingdom.

For Japan, the situation is different, yet perhaps not so much as you’d expect. For hundreds of years, it was a nation which practiced isolationism to a degree which would be utterly impossible today, and the savage Westernisation which has followed its defeat in World War II is not going to be welcomed by all, leading to a strong sense of nostalgia for older i.e. better times. In both Japan and Scotland, it’s probably true to say that icons such as whisky or bonsai are wrapped up as a significant part of national identity, to a degree which may not be apparent to outsiders.

It would, however, have been nice if either event had made some effort to introduce a contemporary feel to proceedings. Okay, this’d be a bit difficult for Scotland, given their last worthwhile contribution to shared world popular culture was probably the pneumatic bicycle. But Japan’s three biggest post-war cultural exports are perhaps Godzilla, Hello Kitty and anime, and all three were virtually absent from the matsuri. One Hello Kitty book and two wall-hangings, depicting the big G and Sailor Moon, was about the sum total, which is a shame, because they would have brought in a whole new generation for whom the noble arts of flower-arranging aren’t much of a draw. I must confess to having thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition of drumming, performed with rather more enthusiasm and energy than the martial arts nearby! This was hugely refreshing, in comparison to the po-faced and almost dreary nature of some of the items: you could certainly admire them, but they didn’t really spark much enthusiasm in me.

I have to admit though, I don’t think I ever realised before what big buggers koi carp are; they had entire plastic swimming pools filled with them, though my enquiry of whether they were also selling chips to accompany them didn’t go down too well… You need to show relevance to people; you bring nations together by showing that the Japanese have the same sick and twisted interests as we do. Thus, I have visions of a pop matsuri, in which Godzilla would wrestle a barbed-wire death-match against Mima Shimoda, accompanied by a rendition of the Sailor Moon theme played via a cheap, plastic alarm clock. The food would be McSushi, and all the stalls would be manned by over-sized robots and doe-eyed schoolgirls, with the odd tentacle flicking casually in and out of proceedings (if not the schoolgirls). Doesn’t that sound rather more fun?

22 working days since my possessions hit US territory, and Customs still haven’t cleared them… What: me, worry? Went out today to pick up some propane for the barbecue – or is that Bar-B-Q? The British part of me regards such preparations as horrifically premature, seeing it’s only the middle of February, but then in Britain, there are only about two days a year when a barbecue is a viable proposition, and so you can use Halley’s Comet as a handy reminder that it’s time to get more fuel. Ah, yes — many are the grim, soggy afternoons spent round a grill saying, “I think it’s alight now”, and “The rain’s easing off a bit” alternately, both more in hope than with any real conviction.

Anyway, I digress. While at the gas station, watching the attendant fill the tank with a device that looked like a medical instrument from hell (but which would, undoubtedly, make a fabulous flame-thrower), I noticed a small fire-extinguisher behind him. Yeah, right: like anyone is going to hang around and try to put a fire out if it goes anywhere near that propane tank. They’d be better off hanging a pair of running shoes or some clean underwear back there.

But gas-stations are a significant part of the American psyche. Last night, on the way to the drive-in (another part of the American psyche, about which you can expect to read more in due course), I passed a cross-roads which had three of its four corners occupied by different brands of gas – Chris tells me this is not particularly noteworthy and she knew of one which, until recently, had a grand slam of four, one on each side. From the consumer point of view, this does make it very easy to go comparison shopping – provided you’re brave enough to stand in the middle of the junction and make notes – but it’s hard to see how all four could make enough to survive. That they do, proves further that America is indeed the land of the car.

On the other hand, I was delighted to discover that Arizona is one of the few states where parallel parking is not part of the driving test, perhaps because it is the only state with more parking spaces than cars. Given the monster truck which Chris drives (okay, it’s not that big, but you’re talking to someone who has only ever owned a Renault 5 before, and the two-door version at that), I will not be shedding tears at the thought of missing out – reversing the beast is bad enough on its own, without having to steer it, in the manner of a supertanker going round the Elephant & Castle.

This comes to mind, since I will be driving my parents round town for the next few weeks, as they make their first visit to Arizona. That, in itself, promises to be an entire barrel-load of monkeys; I don’t think they’ve been in the car with me for any longer than 25 miles tops, and it’s almost more than that to the airport from here. How they – and I – will take to this is hard to say. Even though I have a pristine driving record (largely because, until I moved out here, it had been almost entirely uncontaminated by any actual motoring), they’ll be nervous; Dad in particular, is far more used to being in the driving seat than being chauffered. My mother has a driving licence best described as theoretical: I think it’s on papyrus.

Still, I look forward to seeing their faces at the Grand Canyon, or when we drive down the Strip in Las Vegas. I remember vividly how utterly gob-smacked I was, and I’ve clocked up a few more countries than my parents. At the very least, it’ll be hard for them do any backseat driving when their jaws in their laps.