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http://www.google.comMoving from Britain to Rochester, New York was pretty smooth, and I lived comfortably around the German and Italian communities there. Life was quite European in style. So when I moved to Los Angeles, I was prepared to slide right in. After all, two years in Upstate almost qualified me as an American. I stepped off the plane at LAX with a naïve belief in my adaptability.
Culture shock hit me like an earthquake. Los Angeles is big and Labor Day, on which I had foolishly |
A Definitive Answer to the Meaning of Life
Is this, like, supposed to be about something. I mean, profound and all that. Potentially, about two billion humans could read this, not to mention a few hundred very clever dogs, and six or seven genius parrots. No, not dolphins. How the hell is a dolphin going to get his or her laptop to work under all that water. And what about electrical outlets down |
The Queen came to visit not long after my interview with our immaculate leader. None of us had figured out the length of a piece of string, and, elite troops in the British invasion of the high-tech ground, we had scored no victories, gained no ground, and had indeed retreated into our own little foxholes to enjoy tea and crosswords.
They installed a new computer for the Queen. Possibly she would get carried away by the flashing lights and whizzing tape drives and would call for her sword |
A lot of strange people
I’ve met a lot of strange people in my time. I’ve worked in factories and foundries, stores and halfway houses, government offices and a slaughterhouse. I’ve been a welfare worker and a debt collector, a barman and a traveling salesman, and more. In jobs like these you meet a fair collection of strange characters. But the person who taught me all about strange was a systems analyst, Tom the Australian. Always neatly dressed in a black suit, twenty years out of style, |
After the War
After the war, I wanted to leave the 'Black Country', around Birmingham, England, where the factories and
foundries worked all night, making cars and guns and |
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