Musical Cars

People ask me what it’s like to be back in America/Los Angeles. Usually I tell them about how I spend my unemployment watching movies about Amish people on Netflix. Often I talk about how totally hollow Episcopalians are. Sometimes I mention both.

But I should probably mention how great it is to have music again. And by music I mean a car.

I should probably back up and explain to foreigners and less fortunate Americans that Angelenos have quite a car culture. Everything is so spread out, and you have to drive everywhere. Last week, during my quest to find a kiddie pool at Toys R Us (I want to vomit just writing that name), I ended up on a trek across the parking lot that took longer than did my walk from my flat in Oxford to the city center, which was in a different zip code.

Granted, I had parked on the edge of the parking lot because it was full—for some reason everyone decided to congregate at Toys  R Us at 2 p.m. on a workday. I mean, I know why I have nothing better to do with my life, but what is the rest of Los Angeles’ excuse? Are we ALL unemployed? This parking lot the size of Oxfordshire is full, and Holy Hank there are cars all over the road. Traffic everywhere. Good God, is the recession so bad that about 50% of all Angelenos at any given moment are loitering, and loitering in a moving vehicle?

Anyway, my point is that I am in the car a lot. Usually marveling at the traffic and screaming at no one in particular, “WHERE THE FUCK ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING AT 11 A.M. ON A WEDNESDAY?!”

When I’m not screaming at the world to get a job and get off the road, I sing. Really loudly. You might know that I do not sing in front of other people, even when others are singing, instead preferring to lip sync or stand in rigid silence like a small child wanting to stay up after her bedtime: “Maybe if I stand still enough they’ll forget I’m here.” Fair enough, I can think of two notable exceptions:

1)      In elementary school I joined the choir. Not because I wanted to sing, but because my friends could sing and I didn’t want to be alone at lunch when they rehearsed. I lip synced at all the concerts and rehearsals, except when we did “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

 

      My God did I get into that song. 11 year old Sam felt born to sing that song—heck, I STILL feel born to sing that song. So into that song was I that I tried to do not only the a-wee-mo-weh parts but also the high pitched howl, even when the two were supposed to be sung simultaneously by different people. “Fuck you,” 11 year old Sam said to the rest of the choir through her singing, “I got this one.”

2)      Then there was the kibbutz laundry room. I’ve mentioned it a million times before, but in case you didn’t know, I once spent half a year of my life folding towels in a laundry room in Israel. When I wasn’t folding towels I was accidentally getting parts of my body (namely my chest) burned by the industrial iron, having my fingerprints seared off by freshly laundered tablecloths that seemed to come straight from the fire pits of Hell, and (most frequently) finding elaborate ways to avoid having to fold my Hebrew classmates’ underpants.

Anyway, my coworkers (the Women of the Wash), whom I hated and still hate with a fiery passion on account of which I am perfectly willing to go to Hell, would frequently sing along to the radio. And, this being Israel and the land of Ben Yehuda, obviously most of the songs were in English. And horribly dated. So, to them, the first two lines of “St. Elmo’s Fire” would, instead of “Growin' up / You don't see the writin' on the wall,” be a melodically daring interpretation of the lyrics “Gerrn op / You doesee a wraton a oll.” Or something. As the only native English speaker in the room, several months of nonsensical lyrics from a random assortment of 80s, 90s and occasionally medieval songs started to wear on me.

Finally I could bear it no longer. Neil Sedaka’s “Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do” came on the radio, probably right after Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

 

And as I sat there folding yet another dishtowel, I decided I needed to show the Women of the Wash how it’s done. THIS is how we sing English, you kibbutznik bitches. So I went big. I sang along with Neil as loudly as I possibly could, hoping even the Jordanians could hear my crackling voice. They’d think to themselves, “Well, I can tell the lyrics are Sedaka, but the tune is unlike anything we’ve ever heard…” Who cares though--my musical ability wasn’t what I was trying to prove, but rather my ability to speak English. See how clearly I enunciate the lyrics? See how I indisputably know how each sound I sing fits within the boundaries of a coherent, English word? Enjoy the free English lesson in this one-woman concert, you rancid communists.

Anyway, my point is that with these two exceptions (and a few others over the years, like the time in senior year when I was driving a freshman to school, forgot she was in the car, and ended up performing a noisy duet with Elton John), I don’t sing.

Except when I’m by myself in the car. When I got back in my car on August 1, there was eight months of pent-up diva that needed to be released. I’ve since then driven hundreds of miles around LA, singing at the top of my lungs.

Car song of the moment?

 When I’m in the car, I feel like Fun. need my help. And I’m happy to oblige.

Now, it’s nearly midnight. Diva needs her sleep.

Some things, like hair, are more important than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

If you're in my curriculum group you probably think this blog post is going to be about how I got into an argument with our guest lecturer today over the disgusting ease with which he switched between sets of terms (Israel and the Palestinian Territories, vs The Occupiers and Palestine) depending on whether he was speaking to Palestinians or Israelis.

But no. I have an even greater injustice to speak out against.

So this guest speaker enters the room. I take a quick look at him--besides the tie that's slightly too loud for England he looks pretty normal. Typical man in a suit from an organization. However, as soon as he was invited to begin his talk, things quickly went downhill. With an ounce of hysteria in his voice, the first words out of his mouth were a desperate insistence that the windows be opened. As he threw off his jacket, tore off his tie, and rolled up his sleeves, I was starting to worry that he was having some kind of an extreme male menopausal hot flash that would result in us having a naked and crazed guest lecturer standing in front of us.

I froze in panic as some classmates hurried to the windows to allow cool air in. I know it must seem as though I'm making a bigger deal out of this man's uncomfortable warmth than perhaps I should, but I know that if I were in the same situation (a guest in unfamiliar territory who feels uncomfortably warm) I would just grin and bear the heat. I don't care if I'm dressed in more layers than a Victorian woman and the classroom's heat is so intense that the friction of pencils on paper causes small brush fires to break out--I don't give a shit. If I'm a guest speaker somewhere I'm STILL not going to perform the professional equivalent of a burlesque show by removing even a blazer.

My God, I thought. My God, this man must be crazy. The tie is off. And beneath his polite requests there is a palpable sense of urgency that seems to scream, "I AM SO WARM! I AM SO WARM! WE HAVE TO OPEN THE WINDOWS IMMEDIATELY!!!!"

With the opening of windows and speedy professional nudity this man's thirst for coolness was immediately quenched. For a second I was ready to forget the fact that this man was OH MY GOD SO WARM!, but then he turned his back to the class.

I saw it, and for a split second I continued my usual daydreaming. Today's reverie involved Robin Hood asking me to give up the whole teaching thing in favor of simply being a badass. This then morphed into imagining Robin Hood, St Stephen, and Ronald McDonald having a picnic together. They were just about to--WAIT. WAIT. Hold the phone. Stop the presses. Get into your nuclear bunker. What in the name of Hank F. Effington is attached to the back of that guy's head?

From the front he looked totally normal. Okay, maybe his mustache was slightly too big and slightly too ginger for his gray beard, but otherwise he looked average. Slight receding hairline, gray hair, glasses...nothing too weird here. I found myself employing my Jedi powers to get him to turn again so I could catch sight of it. Come on...come on...

BINGO!

I took a moment to just stare at it in all of its rattail glory. I've really never seen anything like it. It looked like if he grew it out for another couple of months he could tuck it into his belt loop and use it as an alternative to suspenders. It was so long, a nearly never-ending braid, and my God was it tiny. At its widest it was about the width of my pinky, but it quickly withered away into a tiny braid that would make a fine toupee for a fetus. Such a tiny braid, how could he do it himself? Does his wife braid it every morning as she silently dies inside? Can such a man even attract a wife?

I briefly got a hold of myself and turned away from the hypnotic hairdo, but unfortunately I made eye contact with one of my classmates. And we just knew. We just knew. This man has a goddamn RATTAIL.

Well fuck, I thought to myself. I came here today to learn, but there goes any hope of me not having at least three inappropriate and uncontrollable giggles today. All of them hair-related. As it happened, I did manage to control my giggles (though I did have a couple of spontaneous fits of shaking). I did, however, find myself unable to stop myself from imagining what it would be like to pull on it. Not just a slight tug. I mean a serious yank that throws the man around the room like a rag doll tied to a ceiling fan. I wanted to grab hold of that rattail and drag the man around the room. I wanted to use that rattail to turn that man into a human hammer like Miss Trunchbull does. How much force would I need to apply to floor him simply by tugging on his hair? I wondered to myself. Could it be used like a leash? When he gives horsey rides to his children (assuming he has any I think we can safely assume they all--even the girls--have rattails), do they use it as a whip?

But enough about this man's hair. There's one more thing that must be addressed:

The Snort.

Look, I know what it's like to laugh. Sometimes you get a little carried away and you might snort a little bit. But provided you commit ritual suicide immediately afterwards, this snort is completely forgivable. This man, however, apparently thought he'd forgo the laughter that accompanies this embarrassing and unholy noise and simply have a snort in a vacuum.

What am I talking about?

Here's a normal snort laughter:
[*Punchline of a joke*]
Hahahahahhaha--SNORK--HaOMGthatwassoembarrassinghahahah

Here's this guy's laughter:
[*Punchline of a joke*]
SNORK!


I'm sorry, but simply making a snort noise is not an acceptable alternative to laughter. I can forgive his gross political views, his hot flashes, and even his rattail. But I feel that snort laughing without actually laughing is a character flaw that should be grounds for immediate termination. And I don't mean firing him.

Bitches love Iceland

So this one time I met this bitch who fucking LOVES Iceland. I mean, I thought I had a passion for England, but what I thought was my love for England is nothing but a slight fluttering of the heart that one might feel if England were a passing hot man on a bus, compared to this girl's infatuation with Iceland. See, when she would talk about Iceland I was tempted to ask if the two of them needed a moment alone.

Speaking of needing a moment alone with a country...


Everything we saw around us would remind her of something she saw in Iceland when she was on vacation there last week. She had a sip of beer and then talked about how she had a beer back in Iceland. I asked her if it tasted anything like the beer she was drinking now, and is that why she brought it up? And she said, "No, it was just a beer. The beer reminded me that I drank beer in Iceland." She then pointed at her sweater and revealed that it was bought in Iceland. We passed postcards in shops, and she informed me that (shockingly) they do in fact sell Iceland postcards in Iceland. We were in Paris at the moment, and she thought it important to tell me (lest I think otherwise) that, unlike these Parisian postcards, the Iceland postcards didn't have the Eiffel Tower on them. If it drizzled, the drops of rain would be compared to the size of the raindrops in Iceland. The five words she knew in Icelandic were unfavorably compared to the three words she had learned in French, and her understanding of the Icelandic governmental system (gleaned from about four days spent there) was used to give comparative analysis of the French governmental system (the understanding of which was gleaned from about two days spent in Paris).

Anyway, I met Mrs. Iceland when I was staying in a youth hostel in Paris back in December when I got so upset that I had to leave the country for a good ol' fashioned mope. She was exactly my age and, when compared with our other roommate who on our first night went on a tirade against toilet paper, she seemed relatively normal. Sure, I said. Sure I'll go touring with you tomorrow. I figured maybe this trip didn't have to be all about moping and feeling sorry for myself (though there'd still be plenty of time for that), and maybe I could even make a new friend.

Though I guess I should've taken the hint when she kept demanding that I do a British accent for her. She was Australian and for some reason was obsessed with the fact that I now live in England. "Speak in an English accent!" she'd shriek at me. "COME ON, SPEAK IN AN ENGLISH ACCENT!" The first few times I laughed it off and said that I couldn't do a good one. But then after about the tenth time she asked me I began to wonder if this girl had escaped from some sort of a treatment program for people with perverted obsessions with poorly done foreign accents. By the twentieth time I was contemplating suicide. I shrugged it off though and still agreed to spend the day seeing the sights of Paris with her, embracing the excuse to stop lying face-down on the bed and acting almost paralytic with sadness.

Spending the day with Mrs. Iceland turned out to be quite the eye-opener. I guess the major lesson I learned is that never, in ANY circumstances, tell people that you teach. I've learned that people take the line, "I'm a teacher" as an invitation to have explosive diarrhea of inane questions that would make even your 6th graders think, "What a retard." Like, it's to the point where I would now prefer to tell people I have a thriving career as a rapist, because then at least people would leave me well the fuck alone.

I guess I should have been relieved that for once this girl was expressing an interest in something other than my ability to do a fake English accent or the noble nation of Iceland, but in reality I just wanted to stuff a rag into her mouth. A rag that was attached to a Molotov cocktail. The soundtrack of Paris was replaced by this girl's constant stream of "What is that? What is this? Where are we? How do you say French fries in French? How do you say toilets in French? How do you say how do you say in French? Comment d---wait, how did it go? Comment dit-on France in French? Comment dit-on I like in French? Okay, j'aime Iceland. Is that how you say I like Iceland in French? How do you say fjords in French?"

She asked for a steady stream of vocabulary in French, and for some reason understood only by Mrs Iceland and God, she felt it necessary to specify "in French" at the end of every request. As though I'd suddenly assume she were asking me about Hebrew if she didn't clarify each and every goddamn time.

"Where are we again? Wait, where's that? What is that? How do you say Notre Dame in French? Notre Dame? That's weird."

Finally I suggested we visit the Sainte-Chapelle, as I had fond memories of the windows when I last visited a few years ago.

And then this girl came up with a winner: "Tell me the history of Sainte-Chapelle." What? Like, what about it? "Yeah, just tell me the history." Um...
I told her I didn't remember, that last time I was there about about four years ago. She then changed her question: "Oh. Then how much did the entry cost?" I reminded her that, again, it was four years ago and I didn't remember. And she just about had a stroke, so shocked was she. How could I not remember how much something cost four years ago???? THAT'S RIDICULOUS!!!

Yes, because what I remember about vacations is ticket prices.

I guess the clincher though was sitting at a sidewalk cafe, the kind of place where you pay 8 euro for a hot chocolate. Trying to make conversation, and perhaps sensing that I had long since checked out of the conversation, she asked me a question about religion. "Tell me the difference between Islam and Christianity," she asked.

Hmm. I honestly told her I was happy to talk about religion, but I didn't know where to even begin with that kind of question. Is there anything specific she wanted to know? Could she narrow down her question and then maybe I could help her out?

She carefully considered my request, and then asked, "So is Abraham a prophet in Islam and also in Christianity?" I answered her question by backing up a little, explaining what a prophet is, and then answering that, yes, Abraham is a prophet in both.

And she responded by nodding sagely and saying, "Ah, so they're the same religion then?"

I got a little flustered, "Well, not exactly. They have some things in common, and they both like Abraham, but they're also quite different."

"Right," she argued, "but if they both have Abraham as a prophet then they're the same religion, yeah?"

"Um. I..."


I guess now would also be a good time to point out that Mrs Iceland was the daughter of Methodist ministers.

At this point I gave up. You have a creepy fascination with English accents, you basically want to have sex with Iceland, you ask stupid questions, and now you think that having anything in the middle part of a Venn Diagram makes both sides of the Venn Diagram the exact same thing. Learn the concept of Venn Diagrams, lady, and then we'll talk. So fuck you, Mrs Iceland. We're done. Tomorrow I'd rather take a gamble on Miss "Toilet Paper is the Devil's Work."

Cheetos, Chariots and Chets.

On the journey to Hebrew School I often felt nauseated. Some of the nausea might have had something to do with the fact that I hated Hebrew School, but most of it had to do with the vile chariot that transported me there. Twice a week after regular school from the age of 9 until dropping out at 12 I was transported over hill and freeway overpass to my synagogue to learn Hebrew, and apparently the woman who drove me had religious objections to cleaning her car. And, mind you, this is a complaint coming from the individual who proudly (hell yeah!) didn’t wash her car for over a year and a half. Verily I tell you, the amount of crushed Cheetos in her seat cushions could have fed all of Minnesota for about five years, or at least they COULD have had they not been rotting. Hell, I didn’t even know Cheetos were capable of rotting since until that point I hadn’t been entirely convinced that they were actually made out of food.

Shit man, this journey to Hebrew School was so educational. There was more learning going on in the backseat of this car than goes on on The Learning Channel. You know what else goes bad that I didn’t know goes bad? Water. Did you know water has an expiry date? Well it does, and this woman had cases of water in her backseat, and all were expired. And they smelled RANK.

To top it off, I quite vividly remember finding a half-eaten moldy sandwich in that seatback pocket where (in normal cars) you would find crumpled maps, expired coupons and McDonald’s Happy Meal toys from the late 80s, and I feel like the armrest was some sort of a time/space vortex of rotten food, because every time I opened it I would find different horrifically expired food items. Though the food was different each week, it clearly hadn’t just been rotting since my peek last week. Let me try to explain that better: one week I’d open it up and see a black sandwich. The next week I’d open it up and see a cupcake with such intense mold that it HAD to have been rotting for longer than a week. Meaning, either some funky time hole thing involving the Doctor was going on where this was food from the future being transported back in moldy state or something, or this crazy bitch was INTENTIONALLY putting rotten food in her car. Then again, I think I’m the even crazier bitch for opening this armrest every week.

Again though, I’m not squeamish about a bit of mess or dirt involving food. If you ask me whether or not I have ever eaten from the floor a Skittle that someone had quite clearly stepped on, I will answer, “I plead the Fifth.” With that in mind, imagine the level of filth this car must have reached if it grossed even me out.

If you are retarded enough that I still have to explain that this car smelled like shit, you should probably stop reading and just go sit in the corner right now. No, accept it as a given that this car smelled like shit, but specifically it smelled like the taste you would get from eating chocolate and lemon together, and then having acid reflux. The worst part of all of it was when we would turn on the air conditioning (a necessity in LA!), and then directly into our poor, innocent faces it would spew out flavored air conditioning. Specifically, ass-flavored.

I don’t normally get carsick, but I used to get so sick from hurtling down the freeway in what smelled like the men’s bathroom at a curry restaurant. Even though I hated Hebrew School, once we arrived at our brick temple I would leap out of the car and run up the stairs, not giving one solitary shit that my school uniform skirt was flying up and flashing everyone in my desperate bid to get away from the Manky Mercedes. I’d pause in the hallway and try to steady myself, feeling as though if the teacher asked me to read a Chet (the “Khhhh” noise) then I would have no choice but to violently vomit over everyone.

Once the car-induced nausea wore down and I remembered that I was, once again and like every week, the only jackass(besides my brother) wearing a school uniform, the other kind of nausea would set in.

And then Julia went home and sobbed quietly as she hugged her knees on the floor of the shower

Our last education lecture can only be described as a machinegun fire of awkward, uncomfortable and just generally unfunny jokes and comments. A couple times a week all 180 of us are locked into a claustrophobe’s nightmare, this horrific lecture theater with rows so tight that, come Hell or high water or the Apocalypse, once you’re in you’re in it until everyone else in your row decides to leave, and we are forced to listen to someone drone on and on for a little over an hour about how to deal with kids with problems*. Because apparently there are absolutely no healthy or “normal” children in the entire county.

*I probably shouldn’t say that they talk about “how to deal with kids with problems.” These lectures rarely offer useful solutions, and instead it’s more like an hour of simply being told that these problems exist. So rather than a lecture on “how to deal with kids with problems” it’s a lecture on “Kids have problems—deal with it.”

Anyway, this Thursday’s lecture was particularly awful. It was given by two people, one boring lady named Julia and one socially inept artard that I’m going to call Carla because I can’t be bothered to remember what her actual name was. And I’ve found that socially inept people tend to be named Carla—that is, of course, when they’re not named Samantha.

See, this bitch actually talked about having piles, which (based on the translation I received) are like hemorrhoids or perhaps some other form of unpleasant butt sore unique to the British. I mean, even I know not to talk of ass sores in polite company, and this is coming from someone who the other day, probably trying (misguidedly) to propose an interesting topic of conversation rather than trying to be malicious, mentioned to someone how their last name looked a bit like “to fart” in French. So for me of all people to think, “Wow, that person really crossed the boundaries of appropriateness,” that person must have the social skills of Rain Man.

I’ll tell you what it felt like. It felt like when you’re in a public restroom and the lady in the next stall over is chatting on her cell phone. You feel horribly violated, not only for your own sake but also for the sake of the poor bastard on the other end of the line who probably won’t realize that he’s being violated until the cell phone picks up the sound of the toilet flushing. And suddenly the cheerful/friendly/businesslike tone of the conversation descends into a feeling of, “Oh God….you weren’t….were you?”

That’s basically what this lecture was like. First we were chatting away about ADHD and how to shoot Ritalin into kids, and then Carla decides to pull the figurative toilet flush handle (by mentioning dealing with painful ass syndrome) and then we poor souls in the audience have that feeling of “Oh God…you didn’t just….? God, you did…”

What was really delightful about this whole lecture though was that whenever Carla/this bitch would make an awkward comment about colorectal issues that she should really bring up with her GP instead of with 180 trainee teachers, or whenever she would make a joke about something random that fell flat or whenever her endless stories got boring, she would then turn to Julia and say something like, “…isn’t that right, Julia?” or “am I right, Julia?”

And poor Julia, who clearly should be in the running for sainthood now, just had a look on her face, that weary and glazed look of a government employee that seems to say, “There is no fucking way I’m getting paid enough for this shit.”

So while I’m not entirely sure I learned anything new about ADHD or how to deal with kids bouncing off the walls, I have learned one thing: that from now on when I make an awkward or TMI comment I’m going follow up the awkward silence with, “…isn’t that right, Julia? Or “Julia knows what I’m talking about.”

The adhan is looking like a preferable alternative

I know I haven’t even been here for two full months yet, but I’ve already grown to hate somebody. And when I say somebody I actually mean an inanimate object that I’m convinced is determined to ruin me—and obviously if something is conscious enough to have a vendetta against me, it is a “somebody” as opposed to a “something.” Clearly I’m referring to my college’s chapel bell.

Being me, I don’t have the normal complaint that some non-future-priests in this college have, namely that the bell wakes them up. To be honest, the first time since my arrival on September 12th that I have ever been woken by this bell was this morning, when it went off at the buttcrack of dawn (okay, it went off at around 8:30).

No, my major complaint about this bell is that I think it is trying to make me crap my pants in complete and utter terror. Before I tell you how, you have to understand how skittish I am: the other day someone came through a doorway a little too quickly and I literally fell over with fright.

Okay, so now for this bell. Each morning I stumble, half-asleep and freezing cold, across the garden to the dining hall so I can have some breakfast. I’m sleepy to the point of disorientation, to the point where even remembering if I put pants on that morning is an intellectual challenge. The entire college is in silence, silence so powerful that you can probably hear the likely disgusting noise snails make as they ooze along. And each morning, just as I reach the most acoustically ideal place in the entire garden, the bell lets out a hearty:

BONG!!!!!

And just in case you didn’t hear that first earth-shattering BONG! the bell follows it up with about 30 more BONG!s in quick succession, like it’s the jackhammer of church bells. Like it's rubbing it in. My understanding is that the bell tells people when services are about to start, so I used to think that the bell was yelling at the ordinands, “GET YOUR LAZY ASSES OUT OF BED AND INTO CHAPEL!” (Note: I’m not suggesting that the ordinands are lazy, but rather that this asshole of a bell thinks that they are.)

Now though I’m pretty convinced that the first BONG! is actually a “BOO!” and the bazillion follow-up BONG!s roughly translate to “hahahahahahahahahahaha!”

Why is it laughing, you may well ask. Well, because after the first deafening BONG! I usually react pretty strongly. Sometimes I do a subtle flinch, like someone has just raised a hand to slap me. But sometimes I react in more obvious ways, like screaming “JESUS!” (always welcome in a seminary), or involuntarily flinging everything I’m carrying as if in self-defense, or sometimes I just fall over. Maybe I've made it obvious, but the terror I feel at hearing this bell is immense. The absolute terror I feel after hearing such a sudden BONG! shattering the sleepy silence is the sort of thing that, on a good day, makes me require a hug afterwards and that, on a bad day, makes me question the existence of God. I won't explicitly tell you how much of this is exaggeration for an effect, though if you've known me long enough you'll know that this likely isn't much of a stretch of the truth.

The obvious conclusion here is that this bell is an asshole who won’t stop his campaign of terror until I piss myself with fright .But I refuse to change what time I leave my apartment for breakfast so as to miss the bell. If we change our normal routines because we fear a terrorist will kill us make us pee our pants, then the terrorists have already won.

Talk during Doctor Who and I'll have you put on the sex offenders register

Yesterday I watched the season finale of Doctor Who. I ended up camping out on the common room couch for some time beforehand just in case anyone would dare try to watch something besides Doctor Who. Then again, since England only has 1 ½ channels I’m not sure what else they’d be watching. Test patterns maybe?

Anyway, before Doctor Who there’s this terrifying show called “Strictly Come Dancing,” which I think is what the American “Dancing with the Stars” is based on. It’s terrifying because I don’t know all the endearing backstories of the celebrities because, coming from America, I’m used to actual celebrities. So instead of viewing their dancing from a sympathetic perspective, all I see are a bunch of old, sad tarts clad in sequin disasters being rather violently flung about on the dance floor by some eternally cheery young thing who has the almost impossible job of hiding his disbelief at how shit his partner is at dancing. And, frankly, it makes me fear old age. I don’t mind making an ass of myself, but I prefer KNOWING when I’m making an ass of myself. And it seems that when you’re old you lose your awareness of how ridiculous you are, and instead do a dance routine on national television in which you look like an overweight corgi chasing after dropped table scraps.

But I’m not here to talk about Strictly Come Dancing. I’m here to talk about child molesters. And by that I mean people who talk during Doctor Who. So I’m sitting there, practically pissing myself with excitement from watching the resolution of the huge mystery of the entire season, whether or not the Doctor does actually die, when suddenly an entire battalion of visitors to the college decided it needed to have a tea party in the common room RIGHT THEN. “Team, we need to have tea RIGHT NOW, and we need to very loudly and passionately discuss and sort out all of the world’s problems. RIGHT NOW. The world’s depending on us. And to show the world just how seriously we take our responsibility, we’re going to clink our cups and saucers loudly enough that even folks in Siberia are aware that this historic discussion is occurring.” …Sometimes I truly think universities should be made illegal and their students sentenced to 20 years hard labor in kibbutz laundry rooms. Whatever, I tell myself, that’s fine. I turn up the volume a bit and try to keep up with all the crazy shit that’s coming out of Matt Smith’s mouth, which is sometimes challenging enough even if you’re in a silent room…and you’re Stephen Hawking.

But then (and this person is so nice in every way, I just want to make that clear) someone decided to ask me about my day. A slight grunt was my response. Part of me felt so rude to not respond properly by reciprocating the question (or even simply responding with anything besides what was essentially a mouth fart), but the part of me that won out thought that anyone who talks during Doctor Who is clearly some kind of a pervert. And, dear readers, I just don’t have time for perverts.

Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m an awful person who prefers TV to human beings—the reality is that I’m an awful person who prefers Time Lords to human beings. And to be fair to myself, I may not have the patience to exchange pleasantries during Doctor Who, but if someone came to me desperately needing a sympathetic ear during Doctor Who I wouldn’t be angry. Hell, if it were something serious and urgent like, “Sam, I’m contemplating suicide,” I might even turn down the volume. A bit.