belgianwaffle

Siblings

Sympathy


Posted in: Siblings

Email from my feckless brother:”Checked in to the Blog for the first time in a while today…….it seems you were unhappy with the level of sympathy your rash was getting with the
family and turned to your blog readership for some more.

Good to see the Blog still survives notwithstanding the pressures of parenthood, ‘serious’ illness and gainful employment. Strange to see you out past your bedtime when I called last night…..hope you had a good night”

Comments
jackdaltonon 17 April 2005 at 12:43

I think that’s a very commendable and brotherly sort of email. Telling it straight and yet no eviseration or excoration involved.
In fact, I’d be proud if I’d written something like that to my feckless and self-indulgent sibling….

belgianwaffleon 17 April 2005 at 13:58

Heather, that is the correct response. Jack, go to the back of the class.

poggleon 18 April 2005 at 10:33

The cheeky b…. – erm – brother.

belgianwaffleon 18 April 2005 at 19:56

No, no pog, right the first time.

Impressed


Posted in: Siblings

More complex anecdotes from my brother’s skiing holiday. He managed to annoy his instructor by getting into some mild difficulty on the chairlift. I am not quite sure how this happened but he placed himself so that the instructor ended up sitting on his lap and had to jump off the lift from a height.  Apparently this had never happened to the ski instructor before in 20 years instructing. How empty his life must have been.

It appears that the ski instructor was a bit of a rough character and he started telling his class racist jokes.  My brother said to me “I didn’t know where to look”. I was a bit surprised by this, because my brother is a bit of a lad and I would have thought that hearing racist jokes would have formed part of his past experience. But this is not all. My brother decided that something would have to be done and that night while buying drinks at the bar, he said to the ski instructor “You know man [favourite word of my brother’s – it works very well in a Cork accent], you can’t tell those racist jokes”. Gobsmacked, I asked “what did he say?” “Well” said my brother ” I thought he might be a bit annoyed but in fact he said – yeah, I suppose you’re right”. And that, apparently, was that. No more racist jokes for the week.  I am quite proud of my laddish brother. Whereas I, bleeding heart liberal that I am, would have been appalled but never had the nerve to say anything.

Comments
Friar Tuck

on 21 February 2005 at 16:54

Re your sister: I worry less about her than I do Cher. With all her silicon bits, I wouldn’t think she would need anyone’s support.
Re your brother’s skilift incident: I tried that once with my English teacher. She saw right through it.

belgianwaffle

on 23 February 2005 at 19:52

Pog, you are correct. FT, you are probably correct also.

Security


Posted in: Reading etc., Siblings

Those of you who have been concentrating will know that my sister lives in the US. Her important job involves her flying to Mexico next week, business class whereas mine involves me flying economy to a ludicrously less glamourous location, but this is just a bitter digression.

We were chatting yesterday and she told me that her (American) bridge partner and his (American) girlfriend went out for a drive last week and they stopped to take pictures of a beautiful sunset with the girlfriend’s Christmas present, a snazzy new digital camera. Silhouetted against the sunset, romantically (we have to take their word for this) was an oil refinery.  As they were going to drive off, they were stopped by the police who asked for their driving licences. They opened the window and handed them over. Then they were asked for the car keys. They handed them over and the police wandered back to their car with these items. The bridge partner was a bit distressed by this as his car has electronic windows and they were open and it is cold in the North of the US in winter, I understand. But he didn’t like to protest. And as his car windows were open he was able to hear the following dialogue:

Policeman to radio: Will we take them in for questioning at this time?

Radio: Cackle, cackle

Policeman to radio: Ok, not at this time.

The policemen returned to the car, gave them back their keys and drivers’ licences and wiped their photographs. Then they said “your details have been passed on to the Department of Homeland Security and you may be called in for questioning in relation to this incident any time over the next 12 months but you are now free to go”.

I’m only glad my sister wasn’t there, she’d probably be deported by now.

And does all this not chime rather depressingly with the extract below from December’s LRB?“The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben does not want his fingerprints taken and, unlike like most European critics of the evil empire, he has been willing to forego an academic visit to the United States in order to prevent it happening. What is at stake, he explains, is the ‘new “normal” bio-political relationship between citizens and the stateÂ’. Fingerprinting makes ‘the most private and incommunicable aspect of subjectivity .. the bodyÂ’’s biological lifeÂ’ part of the system of state control. […] For Agamben, fingerprinting is not just a matter of civil liberties: it is symptomatic of an alarming shift in political geography. We have moved from Athens to Auschwitz: the WestÂ’s political model is now the concentration camp rather than the city state; we are no longer citizens but detainees, distinguishable from the inmates of Guantanamo not by any difference in legal status, but only by the fact that we have not yet had the misfortune to be incarcerated – or unexpectedly executed by a missile from an unmanned aircraft  [this] political development  is not, according to Agamben, peculiar to the United States under the Bush presidency. It is part of a wider change in governance in which the rule of law is routinely displaced by the state of exception, or emergency, and people are increasingly subject to extra-judicial state violence.

Comments
poggle

on 17 January 2005 at 11:54
(
Comment Modified) Mr Agamben is, depressingly, absolutely right ….
See UK ID cards: The Chief Constable for the Manchester area, who is pro, said in justification of his support for the scheme something along the lines of: ” for instance, just look at this weekend when there is a street festival – I have no idea who is in the city.”
Well, forgive me for wondering why the f**k it’s his business to know where I am at any time at all?

Beth

(Homepage)

on 19 January 2005 at 02:08

Cross my heart we aren’t all psycho freaks – just the ones in power at the moment.

belgianwaffle

on 21 January 2005 at 22:38

Pog, it’s all very depressing.
Beth, I know, especially the bloggers clearly..

belgianwaffle

on 21 January 2005 at 22:40

Bobble, kind of funny all the same about them not being able to get your digital print…

Double standards


Posted in: Siblings

My brother came for a lightening mid-week visit.  It was very nice to see him.  I find that family make for relaxing visitors.  My brother arrived and slung his coat over the chair and I barked “hang that up”.  With other visitors, I tend to say “Will I hang that up for you or would you prefer to leave it there on the chair?”  He went out with some friends on Wednesday night and I said to him “Take off your shoes when you come in and tiptoe down the corridor.  I swear to God, if you wake my baby, I will rend you limb from limb”.  With other visitors, I tend to say “ok, see you later then, we might be in bed when you come in, but we’ll leave a light on and, oh, don’t worry about the baby, she sleeps like a log”.  Still, I don’t think many visitors would ring me in the early hours of Thursday morning and say without a trace of guilt or shame “Where is it you live again, I’ve forgotten and the taxi driver needs to know”.

Swings and roundabouts then.

Comments
jackdalton

on 05 November 2004 at 11:59

I wish I had a sister like you…. 🙁 0

Locotes

on 05 November 2004 at 17:00

I’m highly suspicious he did that on purpose to teach his overly-strict sis a lesson…

belgianwaffle

on 06 November 2004 at 11:55

Norah, thank you, and a sweetie too. Jack, really?? Loc, no, that’s how he is. He is a middle child who prides himself on his vagueness, he was also born under a lucky star.

jackdalton

on 06 November 2004 at 12:12

yep… really.
on 06 November 2004 at 12:35

Jack, am touched. You clearly have no older sister of your own who used to torture you…poor Jack.

Friar Tuck

on 06 November 2004 at 17:28

Hey, I resent the implicatoins of your “middle chlid” comment!
BTW, would you mind taking care of those misspellings? Thanks.

belgianwaffle

on 08 November 2004 at 10:02

FT, v. funny.

Goody bag and correction


Posted in: Siblings

My goody bag has just arrived from the publishing executive.  And it is wonderful.  I am so pleased.  It has three books including a very well reviewed just published hardback and loads of books on tape.  Oh yay.  I am thrilled.

Also, I wish to post a correction to my previous entry about Mr. Waffle’s brother.  I know what side my bread is buttered on.  Text supplied by the pub exec:

“…blog talks about how ‘like his brother’ he speaks perfect French. Like his brother AND SISTER, I think you meant! We have a new French inmate in our flat so I have been practicing with her, it’s very improving.” Yes, yes, of course that’s what I meant.  Must go off now and investigate my haul further.

Comments
silveretta

on 30 September 2004 at 14:40

Our turn soon then?

belgianwaffle

on 01 October 2004 at 12:00

Jack, book shrouded in secrecy. And somebody wobbled pog but it certainly wasn’t me. Silver, you are one third of an action hero. Be grateful and give me a pun for all seasons. Or an appropriate venn thingy.

jackdalton

on 01 October 2004 at 13:32

woose…. 🙂
And as for th pog-wobblin’ of course it was you or if not it was your hapless and tragic creation/creature – LJS.

belgianwaffle

on 05 October 2004 at 20:01

Down, silver. Jack, not tragic, steely eyed etc.

Further feckless brother information


Posted in: Siblings

Today the following sniffy mail arrived:

“I’m not sure the Blog is a suitable forum for discussion a sibling’s misfortune, but feel free to bring it in if you think it would edify your readers.”
Do you feel edified? Also the following:
“Got a new phone yesterday, however, there are a few issues to note.  After my phone broke like a complete Cavan man I had a look round to see what deals the other networks were offering.  I decided it was time to leave Vodafone and I got a ready to go Meteor phone. Having a ready to go phone puts me in with an elite group of college kids, drug dealers and non nationals. (BTW non national is a PC word, I heard it on the news). There is a slight problem however (isn’t there always).  I was supposed to be able to keep my old number, however due to technical problems I now have a Meteor no. (the shame).”
Frankly, it’s beginning to look like his luck may have run out. Which must mean it’s my turn, right?
Comments
jackdalton

on 30 September 2004 at 11:00

Oh we’re edified… it’s great to read about and howl at others’ misfortunes…. 😉
And of course it’s your turn…

belgianwaffle

on 30 September 2004 at 11:05

Nah Sammy,sorry, but I need it all. Thanks JD, you’ll see that I’ve been doing some work on one third of your alter ego. Am alarmed that you have been shot at. It’ll be all that travelling to exotic hotspots.

jackdalton

on 30 September 2004 at 11:12

Would you believe Donegal? 🙂
And you should give up that LJS thing before it becomes an obsessive compulsive blog disorder. Or before the squirrel gets you….

belgianwaffle

on 30 September 2004 at 11:14

Course I’d believe Donegal, I understand it’s very rough up there.