On Brexit

Somewhat to my surprise having torn myself away from the 24/7 raging dumpster fire that's American politics at the moment, it turns out that an ocean away there's another electoral sink hole taking place back home.

I mean, come on Britain, I turn my back for a few years and half the country seem to have lost their minds and started roaming the country bellowing Churchillian rhetoric about sticking it to Johnny Foreigner and flexing their biceps in the vague direction of Brussels.

Politics!

Until the last week I've been fairly sanguine that people probably weren't stupid enough to actually consider Brexit (a term, incidentally, that doesn't really do justice to the national economic suicide pact that withdrawing from a common market with our biggest trading partner would represent). I should have known better of course. The portents were all there; the birth of a two headed cow in Dorset. The fire wreathed comet in the night sky over Leeds. And, of course, the fact that in my inherent belief in the decency of the British people, I had somehow ended up on the same side as David Cameron.

Admittedly, we're there for different reasons. After all, it's his fault that we face what he's described as some sort of apocalyptic choice. There would be no referendum at all if it weren't for his pre-electoral courting of the Eurosceptic vote, a promise that I can guarantee he made with absolutely zero consideration of the fact that people might vote the wrong way on this. For future reference, if one side of a decision actually is such a cataclysmic disaster, it's probably not a good idea to give people an option to choose it.

Cameron's hope here, it seems, has been that Britain's instinctive complacency would prevent us from withdrawing out of a (reasonable) fear of the unknown. It's unsurprising then that so much of the argument from both sides has been doom-mongering of the potential consequences for and against Brexit, with very little in the way of actual reasoning about how Britain actually benefits from being a part of the EU, beyond the fact that without it the entire nation would probably slide beneath the ocean.

That kind of makes sense in a way though, because frankly any conversation that you could try to have about the EU fairly quickly runs into the insurmountable obstacle that nobody knows what it is that the EU does. I say that with such certainty because, as luck would have it, I graduated with a degree in International Politics, studied the EU and still couldn't tell you with any accuracy exactly how it works.

I used to think that was simply a side effect of the colossal scale of the European project; half a billion people in twenty eight countries casting a lazy triangle from Portugal, to Finland and down to Cyprus.

But, that's kind of the problem. Because having moved to America it's quickly become clear that while they're also ruled by an unaccountable, oligarchic Government, a bureaucractic erection on the body politic, they at least know what their Government does and how it works. Maybe not perfectly, but they can probably tell you who the President is. And what the branches of the Government are. Maybe even tell you about a few laws that the government has passed, or what the aims of the parties up for election are.

Now; can you honestly say, that having sat through the entire Brexit campaign, you know the answers to any of these about the EU? Let's start with an easy one: who is the President of the EU?

Got it?

Well, jokes on you, sucker, because you were wrong. You see, there's not actually any such thing as the EU President. Or perhaps more accurately, there's four; Jean-Claude Junckler (President of the Eureopean commission) Donald Tusk (President of the European Council), Martin Schulz (President of the European Parliament), and ... err... The Netherlands (President of the Council of the European Union). I guess by that point they just though, 'Why not give it to an entire nation?'. Really we're lucky that they stopped there and didn't just devolve power to Europe's pot plants, or anyone named Steve.

Literally every single one of these men are the EU President

All of this would seem like so much fuel to the Brexit fire, and yet I don't think I've heard, at any point, the argument that the problem with the EU is the lack of transparency. Instead the arguments seem to boil down to not really liking current levels of immigration (which wouldn't actually be solved by withdrawing from the EU), disliking the amount of money we send to the EU, and a weird assertion that the EU itself is somehow fundamentally anti-democratic when compared to the UK.

This, for me, is the most bizarre of the Brexit arguments. Sure, there's great appeal to the argument that we're no longer able to control our own country since some sweaty palmed German or French bureaucrat has unilaterally decided to ban British measurements, or outlaw fish, or whatever fantasy was last pulled out of the void.

But putting aside for a moment that we get to elect representatives to the European Parliament every 5 years (and that our representatives have the worst record of attendance in the Union, in part because we repeatedly elected people who don't think the EU should exist), we're leveling the charges of the EU lacking democratic foundations while being profoundly undemocratic ourselves.

Our head of state is a 90 year old product of centuries of selective breeding to ensure we have someone whose face you can stick on currency and stamps. Meanwhile, the House of Lords, or to give it its full and ridiculous title, 'The Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament Assembled' is literally full to overflowing with 800 apppointed peers, selected for their services in giving money to politicians.

Of course, just in case you were concerned, we do have an elected lower house, which is currently run by a party which won just 36% of the 66% of the population who bothered to turn out to vote, so there's that.

In fact, the Government is so democratic that when the population overwhelmingly decided that we should name our new research vessel Boaty McBoatface, and yes, I realise that I'm late to this party, they immediately rejected it in favour of RRS Sir David Attenborough, because screw the voting public.

Look. Sir David is wonderful. Frankly, I think we should be naming more things after Sir David Attenborough. If the decision was made to rename every street after him, even, it would only be his just desserts for the incredible work he has done, and I would put up with the inconvenience of having to try and arrange to meet someone on the corner of Sir David Attenborough Drive and Sir David Attenborough Road, only to find out that they're actually at Sir David Attenborough Street and Sir David Attenborough Walk, you know, up by Sir David Attenborough Crescent, at the intersection of Sir David Attenborough Boulevard and Sir David Attenborough Lane.

Sir David Attenborough and one of 500 animals named after him; Sir David Attenborough Lemur

It's a testament to how loved He is that the Government were able to effectively use him as a flak shield for their decision not to accept the results of Votey McVoteface. Using his name is like invoking some strange, unknown God. It has a special power to it. Who is going to argue against Sir David Attenborough? Who would begrudge him a ship. Nobody, that's who, which is convenient for when you want to jettison the poor choice that the people made.

So look out for us to remain in the EU tomorrow, or, if the results go poorly, for us to instead end up part of the Sir David Attenborough EU.

At this point, all I know is that whatever choice we make we really need to get better at understanding what exactly it is that Europe does, and why it's worth us being a part of it for the foreseeable future. Leave or Remain, we at the very least ought to be able to name some of its functions, beyond stealing our money, propping up Greece, and swamping our shore with baguettes and paella.

On the birth of Tobias Ezekiel Zapfletts

So, Jalyss and I had a baby a few weeks ago. I'm still struggling with how to get that fact across to people who don't know. It seems quite gauche to just drop it into conversation. There aren't a whole lot of avenues that particular thread can go down after you've unleashed the verbal one-upmanship of having produced a child.

Tobias Ezekiel "Chames" Zapfletts

Consequently, I'm leading with the news. "Hi, I'm James, and I've just had a baby." Of course, that in and of itself isn't ever truly enough for people, because then you have to give them his vital statistics. He's a boy, he weighed 6lb 12oz, and he was 19.5 inches long. He's currently 12 days old. At some point I assume that people will stop requiring all these bits of minutiae for us to be able to move ahead with what I actually want to talk about. I'm not sure what age he has to be before they stop caring about his birth inseam, or the girth of his infant head. It doesn't currently happen to me, so I do know that somewhere between being two weeks and twenty nine years old, there's a cut off point at which it's impolite to ask about how much someone weighs and how long it took his mother to eject him.

The thing is that these statistics aren't even the salient details of what make him a person. Even at this point, where he's a very simple pooping potato creature, he has some easily discernible things that are so much more relevant than his weight, or length, or depth.

I am not a series of accurate but ultimately irrelevant personal numbers.

The things that are actually interesting about him, the things that I wish people would ask, can't really be catalogued like that. They're things like the fact that he'll only cry at night when he needs to do a really giant poo, or that he gets the hiccups every time he eats. He clearly favors lying on one side of his body, and will suckle on anything that gets too close to his mouth. You can't distill that down to digits, nor would you want to, but those give a more accurate reflection about him than anything people ever ask.

The first time that I got away from him to go outside and run, I found myself wondering what he was doing. Which is nuts, because he currently doesn't do anything. When you see videos of foals, or sea turtles, or whatever, being born they don't seem to have the same built-in defectiveness of a new-born baby human. They're up and about in, like, days. Max. Meanwhile Toby alternates between sleeping, eating and pooing and will do only this for months to come. Sometimes, if he's feeling really advanced, he will do two of these at the same time, but even that seems more accidental than planned, and while he's evidently pleased with himself when he manages it there's no real sense that he could do it again next time he wanted to.

Jalyss shared with me an article about the first three months, where it spoke about how it's essentially a fourth trimester, just his head is too big to allow him to escape the womb if he stays in, so he continues to develop outside as he would in utero. This makes an awful lot of sense to me. He is functionally useless, with an enforced dependency put onto his mother and I.

Our purpose has been reduced to parenthood. We no longer have roles, identities, pasttimes that aren't focussed on this small goblin that's lying on his back in our living room, repeatedly and agressively pooing himself for attention. We are purely ambulatory food and comfort givers, our existence is only for his benefit, to meet his needs. There is no James, only Dad.

Coincidentally, these are the exact expression our sleep deprived faces now make, thanks to our own tiny Gozer.

Instead of lying awake trying to think up new jokes that I can wake Jalyss up to listen to, which up until now has been my standard nightly routine, I spend my time attempting to discern the difference between the grunts that means the baby continues to be alive, and those that means he's in distress. It's an inherently stressful task, which makes it the perfect pastime for those brief few hours between being awake because you're putting him to bed, and being awake because he's enraged that he doesn't have a nipple in his mouth right this instant, Mom.

And yet there's a real sense of tranquil euphoria about it. Sure, that comes from the fact that Jalyss is pumping out a pharmaceutical level of pheromones to trick the two of us into looking after our progeny, a sedentary lump of frequently evil smelling flesh. As you can imagine, being doped up on post-natal hormones, we couldn't be, like, happier, man. We know that, like soup left too long to simmer, we've been reduced down to our purest, most necessary functions in order that we take care of him, and we just aren't at all bothered.

You'll notice, of course, that this suggests some kind of negativity towards the adiposeal being we now share our home with. This is a pure defence mechanism, because if I were to start trying to list the things he does that are so delightfully adorable, or the exciting new skills we imagine he learns each day, or the gorgeous little outfit that he just looks so precious in, if I tried to catalogue these, I'd turn into that most annoying of creatures - the Online New Parent. I'm already aware that my facebook feed is full of the baby. While I'm sure people are happy, there comes a point at which I have to accept that my friends aren't actually friends with me so they can see where Toby pooped today. Of course it's a big deal, it's dominating my life right now, but I'd like to be able to divorce myself to some extent from the appearance that all I care about is Toby.

Because that wouldn't be true. I still care deeply about a great many things, and lots of things are happening in my life currently. Writing up a post about how truly terrific Toby has turned out is the start of a slippery slope. It's the reason why Batman doesn't just kill the joker; it'd be too easy, and pretty soon his Instagram account is just pictures of him with other villains he's offed. Here's Batman at the abandoned botanical gardens, with dead Posion Ivy. Here's Batman at the zoo, posing next to the Penguin's corpse. Here's a selfie of Batman in front of a blazing Arkham Asylum, and if you look closely you can see his enemies trapped inside, beating in vain on the reinforced windows, while he pulls a duck face.

Once you do that, there's no way back. So this will, probably, be the only blog I write about the baby, and I'm not even going to touch upon the birth experience, mainly because it's a Thing That We Will Not Speak Of, other than to say that you don't truly know your wife until you've watched her force a living being out of herself, and that at one point my emotions overcame me and for a brief moment I was overcome by very, very masculine tears.

For this post only then, here's Toby. He's 19.5 inches long, weighed 6lb 12oz at birth, and is 12 days old today.

On Super Tuesday Two: Too Super, Too Tuesday

Last night, as I headed to bed, a storm rolled in. It was one of those occasional Spring storms which lives out its whole course in a single ten minute span, the cacophany and fury of the event being totally unrepresentative of the amount of time it lasts.

I mention this because today is, once again, a huge day in American politics. And like that storm the pressure has been building over the past few weeks for an event that has the potential to be a last stand for at least two of the Republican candidates seeking to delay Donald Trump, or a clearing of the air.

As the primary race starts to shift to the winner takes all states starting with Florida and Ohio, alongside Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina, gone are the days when the votes cast lead to a proportional delegate breakdown; we're now into a situation where one good win can net scores of those crucial delegates in one go.

Last week your retired Third Grade Teacher, Bernie Sanders, scored a major upset over rejected Skynet prototype, Hillary Clinton, by winning Michigan. So far Sanders has been struggling in the more diverse states, despite boasting the endorsement of Killer Mike,one half of rap duo Run the Jewels, and very probably the only non-white person Bernie Sanders has advising him. Despite his weakness among the strongly Democratic African-American base, Sanders has succesfully cornered the market on the kind of white, middle-class, socially conscious liberals whose comfortable lifestyle means they face little real adversity and who are therefore unconcerned about the impracticality of Sander's reform agenda.

In winning Michigan Sanders overturned a 20 point polling deficit to open up the Rust Belt, the states which were once the manufacturing heartland of America, and are now more akin to the Elephant Graveyard in The Lion King.

Not pictured: actual Hyenas.

This upset has the potential to keep the race going at least until the convention, especially if Sanders can pull off further victories tonight (watch Ohio and Illinois, two big states that could unexpectedly swing for Sanders), even though the delegate math still says that he has no real chance of winning.

On the Republican side a torrid two weeks have seen Donald Trump spend a debate reassuring the world's last great superpower that he has a big dick. Opposition to Trump has finally switched to Ted Cruz from Marco Rubio, whose once sparkling campaign got Cinderella syndrome and revealed itself as comprised of a few fat mice and a pumpkin.

For a candidate who was meant to be the Establishment wing's '1812 Overture', Marco Rubio has at times seemed more like he's orchestrating a movement of Sad Trombones. Watching his political aspirations die in real time, to the point where he told his own supporters to vote for John Kasich, the least interesting man in the race, has been sad. Not, admittedly, upsetting sad, but more the kind of sad where someone's trousers fall down, and as they bend to pull them up their underwear splits and they topple over and roll down the stairs, while the Benny Hill Theme plays out. That kind of slapstick sad.

It's left American conservatives to weigh up the evil of two lessers; men who in any typical year would be among those knocked out in the opening rounds of the electoral destruction derby. When the Republican Establishment is forced to swing behind someone who was once described, by his own colleague, as being so disliked that if he were "shot on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the senate" nobody would ever find the murderer guilty (source), you know that they might be in trouble.

The problem is that nothing seems to be slowing Trump down. Even an explosion of violence at his rally's over the last few days has only cemented his position as the 'says it like it is' candidate. The threatening rhetoric, hate speech, and race-baiting he's displayed have only endeared him to the significant reactionary sections of the Republican Party who sincerely believe that conservatism means a return to the days of white's only drinking fountains. There have been better articles than this about the way that Trump uses racially charged language, subtly calculated to appeal to the exact people who he's currently sweeping - here's one, And here's a video.

When Donald Trump deliberately travels to cities that are being torn apart by issues of racial identity, they cannot express surprise when their brutally racist tone causes a reaction.

It's hard to even express at times the utterly shocking way that Trump's vile ideas have suddenly gone mainstream. It's worth remembering that even now Trump is yet to win over a majority of the voters in the Republican Party, and certainly there's an increasingly vocal cross section of Republicans waging a guerrilla war for the soul of their party, with reports of party officials drawing up ways to run Senate and House races campaigning against their own presumptive nominee.

But so far, despite all the back room chatter, disquiet and outright attacks, there have been few Republican leaders prepared to stand up and distance themselves, unequivocally, from Donald Trump. When asked if they would support Trump if he were the nominee, Kasich, Rubio and Cruz all said yes. At this point it's difficult to imagine what Trump has to do for them to say he's gone too far, and that they wouldn't vote for him.

If he wins, as it seems more and more likely he will, it will be the fault not of good men doing nothing, but selfish, hypocritical men choosing their party's interest over that of their country.

On the average Wednesday after Super Tuesday

It may seem strange, but Super Tuesday's result wasn't actually the worst outcome possible for the terrified majority who're currently freaking out about the possible reign of Dystopian future President, Donald J. Trump. Certainly, it was a pretty bad result, until you consider that some advance polls had him sweeping every states available, like the vengeful broom from the Sorcerers Apprentice.

So instead of Trump being the inevitable presumptive nominee, we now have him as just the almost-inevitable, presumptuous nominee. There is, mathematically speaking, a chance that he could be beaten, although considering that there isn't really a viable alternative candidate and he's projected to win in virtually every upcoming state, that hope seems more than a little forlorn.

For everyone hoping that Marco Rubio might have been able to staunch some of the arterial bleeding of the GOP's body politc, there was the last gasp victory in Minnesota, a victory which meant he won a state on just the 15th time of trying. That puts him slightly ahead of the people who haven't won a single state, Ben Carson, John Kasich, and 99% of America. Unfortunately, as our generation's Shakespeare, Taylor Swift, points out, "Band aids don't fix bullet holes", and Rubio undermined his own insistent rhetoric about being the only credible roadblock to a Trump victory by coming third in most of the other states, and not picking up any delegates in nearly every state that required candidates meet a certain threshold of votes.

That delegate math thing is really important, because it means that of 700 or so pledged delegates Rubio has just over 100, Donald Trump has 320, and even Ted Cruz, a man who looks like an anthropomorphic paper bag full of wet garbage has 225.

Ted Cruz, 2016

In the race to amass the 1237 delegates needed Rubio is falling behind, leaving him with less room to lose the states still in play, and without the moral high ground necessary for him to appeal to the rest of the field to drop out and unite behind him to tackle their true enemy.

And that's really important, because the accepted view is that nobody can possibly stop Trump until it becomes a one on one race. There's a indisputable scientific law called the 'Conservation of Ninjitsu' which is used to explain why a single ninja will be able to beat the hero, but as soon as multiple ninja's appear, they're all easily defeated. Under the 'Conservation of Ninjitsu', there is only a certain amount of competence and fighting ability to go around; in one person it's enough to make them a powerful force, but once it's diluted across the multitude, they're all weakened.

The same principle applies to the race to stop Trump, in that the anti-Trump vote hasn't been able to coalesce around a single candidate, with each taking away some of the support from the others. Inevitably, Rubio's people immediately blamed Ohio Governor John Kasich for stealing voters from the demographics most likely to support their man, but unfortunately declined to follow up with the accepted Ninja practice of slaughtering their enemies and eating their still beating heart to gain the strength of their foe. Although there's still time.

Now, though, for the first time, the Republican Party seems to have realized that in order to defeat Trump, they may have to team up with their old enemy, Magneto. Oh, wait, sorry, no, that's the plot of X2: X-Men United.

What I meant to say was that the Republican Party are suddenly looking to the only man they actively hate more than Donald Trump: Ted Cruz. 

The poor man's Magneto

To say that Ted Cruz is an unlikely hero for anyone to look to is really, really underselling how awful Ted Cruz is. If Donald Trump vocalises the populist view from the gutters of American intolerance, then Ted Cruz is the sewer that scum water drains into. Having based his campaign around winning over the kind of white, evangelical voters who're anxious to reject un-Godly concepts such as sex education for teenagers, vaccines for children, equal rights for gays, and taxes for anyone, he's been ignored in favor of the one guy running to the right of him on the hot button issue of immigration, an area where he struggles by being of both Canadian and Cuban descent.

Even his own colleagues in the party are reported to hate Cruz, the man responsible for the disastrous shutdown of the Government in 2013 over whether they should get money to run essential services. In recent weeks though he's been most damaged by the public perception that he's a liar and a cheat, to the extent that he was forced to fire his own head of Public Relations for misrepresenting Marco Rubio's comments that 'the Bible was a good book, with lots of answers', as "you won't find any answers in there."

Still, he's somehow found a place as the choice of voters who don't trust Trump's conservative credentials, and crucially he's won 4 states and 225 delegates, and that alone could be enough for his Party to grudgingly get behind him, however much they don't want to.

On the other side, Bernie Sander's equality and economic justice revolution was derailed by Hillary Clinton's campaign for "some equality and economic justice maybe, although probably not actually, thanks for voting tho anyway guys." Bernie picked up wins in Vermont, Colorado, Oklahoma and Minnesota (yes), while Hillary Clinton won the South by broadening her appeal to include voters who weren't white or under 25, the one demographic that Bernie had concentrated on. If his support in this age group holds firm then Bernie Sander's will almost certainly win the Democratic nomination, and the subsequent Presidential election.

In 2044. When he's 102.

This isn't to at all downplay what he's achieved so far, though, because in pushing Hillary Clinton to actually engage with voters and come up with some policies he may well have pushed her a hair closer to being a genuine liberal candidate, rather than a posessed mannequin with a nice line in pant suits. In reality, there's almost nothing wrong with Hillary Clinton that isn't also wrong with every other American politician. She's simply a disappointing standard bearer for the left, and when you stick her next to Bernie Sanders, a genuine progressive titan, with his own CD of protest anthems, and an ideology that excites people, she looks even less appealing.

I mean, let's face it, nobody is going to be travelling to Vermont to get a free tattoo of Hillary, are they.

A genuine thing that is happening

On Super Tuesday

Today is Super Tuesday, and I am Super Excited.

It may seem like this is an odd post to be writing, considering that my blogging has been so absent for the last year, and there are far more interesting things going on in my life at the moment.

I don't really want to say that this is the most exciting day of the year, because obviously that'll be Election Night. And then it'll be Super Tuesday. Also, Jalyss and I are having a baby so I imagine that'll be in the top 5 or so.

For those of you who aren't aware, Super Tuesday is part of America's horribly convoluted political process, whereby citizens elect their President by first voting on a candidate for each party in each state, which then sends a certain number of delegates based on an archaic algorithm sorted by population, state size, and which states each party finds most important. Each candidate tries to get enough of these delegates to secure the nomination, but delegates can switch to support other people, even if they're only really there on the basis that the people of their state voted for them to support a certain person, and some of them aren't democratically selected but are literally just people whose opinions are considered to be more important.

It's somehow both too democratic, and not democratic at all, culminating in a situation where someone can win the popular vote, or the majority of states, or even more delegates, and still not get the nomination.

And the cornerstone of this hastily built edifice is Super Tuesday, when roughly a quarter of states and a third of the delegates are selected. Basically, it's where campaigns to become to the Presidential nominee live or die. Lose big on Super Tuesday and you should probably drop out; win most and you're likely to win it all.

It's incredibly fascinating, especially because this year it's likely to lead to the coronation of two candidates who will somehow be both the most and least popular politicians running. Donald Trump, a hairpiece with a mouth, is hated by 60% of the population, to the extent that his own party is currently trying to work out how to run against him, while Hillary Clinton is loathed by 59% of the country, including a significant proportion of the population who believe she should be in jail for "crimes" she committed while Secretary of State.

Behind them come Marco Rubio, a young (-ish), Latino Republican running on optimism and compassionate conservatism, who would seem to be exactly what a party with historic difficulties in attracting minorities would want to be able to win an election, were it not for the fact that those difficulties steam from a significant part of the party who are just out and out racist.

That isn't hyperbole, by the way; 31 % of Trump supporters (and 21% of all Republicans) think that White's are a "superior race", a third support banning not just all Muslims from entering the US (74% support that idea) but also all gay people. 38% wish that the South had won the Civil War, and 20% disagree with the Emancipation Proclamtion, Abraham Lincoln's Presidential decree that freed Southern slaves during the Civil War. By any measure, those are pretty extreme and pretty racist, positions - sourced here).

This week, in an amazing display of pandering to racists, Donald Trump refused to disavow the former head of the KKK, then said he didn't know about the concept of 'white supremacy', then blamed a microphone for not immediately distancing himself from them. In fairness to him, this may simply be down to the fact that Donald Trump is convinced of his own personal supremacy over everyone else in the world, and his own skin tone is default Terracotta, with a tinge of Oompa Loompa.

Unsurprisingly, Marco Rubio is struggling despite being the choice of the majority of the establishment Republican Party , because it turns out having million of dollars, dozens of endorsements, and an actual coherent policy platform, as well as wide appeal to a broad base, and a photogenic, articulate charm, doesn't mean much if you're a little bit browner than Edward Scissorhands.

Scissorhands for President, 2016

Behind him, or sometimes in front of him, and this is where it gets difficult, because at some points all three candidates have claimed victory in a state where only one of them has actually won, is Ted Cruz.

There's a bit in Shrek where he inflates a toad to act as a balloon, and Ted Cruz looks exactly like what I imagine that toad to look like now. He looks like someone has deflated a fatter man.

Ted Cruz looks like a cheap rubber Halloween mask of Ted Cruz's face came to life, and is running a Presidential campaign on the platform of unending winter. I would not be surprised to learn that Ted Cruz is actually an animatronic being controlled by a small slug floating inside his watery centre.

Nearly 40% of people can't conclusively tell you that he wasn't a serial killer who operated years before his birth (source), which is a good indication of how little people like him. His own colleagues have refused to endorse him, and he's running on the campaign slogan of 'trusTED' whilst facing charges of sending potential voters fake letters from the state to vote for him or face fines, and of lying about whether other candidates were even in the race anymore.

Tell me, does that this looks like an actual human being? Or does it look like what an alien visitor to Earth might think a human being looks like having intercepted our radio signals for decades.

He's the Christian candidate. Actually, he's one of the Christian candidates, but Ben Carson is so irrelevant to this process as to not warrant anymore mentions than this single sentence.

One the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton has been forced to remember that she's supposed to be on the left of the political spectrum, as uber-Pensioner Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist who joined the Democract's 6 months ago just to run for President, has run a grass roots campaign based around reminding people that Capitalism is a bit shit if you let a few people keep all the money for themselves.

Now, Sanders has about a 0% chance of actually winning the nomination, but it's now got to the weird point of Republicans being able to legitimately call their potential opponent a socialist, a word that's thrown at anyone who's a bit left of Eisenhower in America. He is 'Boy Who Cried Wolf'-ing it, in that it's actually probably part of his appeal that the word socialist has been so undermined by years of using it to describe anyone at all, that now an actual Socialist is running, everybody assumes he's just another liberal.

He's the kind of raging extremist that would look fairly standard anywhere else in the world, what with his calls for such un-American abominations as paid maternity leave, free public education for all, and regulations on banks to prevent future financial crises. The maniac.

So this is what I'll be doing all night - following along with the updates as they come in on who has won what. And probably crying at who has won what.

On Everything That I Haven't Written About Over The Last Six Months

Jalyss and I have now been married a little over ten months. That means we've passed the marker of when we could have had our first baby, which is important to note when you're a young Christian couple in America. Forget cleanliness because fecundity, here at least, is next to Godliness.

In fact, when people meet you and find out you're newly married, they immediately start looking for the baby. "How many babies you had?" is their way of measuring the time you've been married. So now we measure all units of time in terms of how many children we could have had, with actual calendar anniversaries being of significantly lesser importance.

This is all just a long winded way of saying that we're not pregnant yet. Definitively. Jalyss took a pregnancy test on Father's Day, just so I could see whether I needed people to make a fuss of me.

This kind of fertility update is exactly what I imagine most people are interested in about our life, but just in case you were actually hoping for more than a gestational confirmation that we're still without any additions to the family, here's what else has been happening.

Jalyss and I continue to compete to see who can work the most jobs. For a long time she was winning, as I couldn't work legally in the US. I got around that by doing some babysitting and writing reviews of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; a show with too much punctuation in its title, and too little characterisation or plot in its episodes. Neither of these roles made me the primary breadwinner, as I only earned $2 a article.

Fortunately I am now able to work and the jobs arms-race has really taken off, as we now have three jobs each. I work part-time at a local independent coffee shop, the delightful Mocha Monkey, where my main role seems to be confusing customers who think that I'm Australian. I've just started working two days a week at The Blessing House, which is hard to actually describe other than to say it's someone who has opened her home so that anyone can come in and relax there at any time of the day, and they need volunteers which I'm helping them find.

Finally, I work overnights at a crisis centre for disabled young-adults with behavioral problems. My first day there involved me being locked in the office by other staff to prevent a client from attacking me, so it's got the sort of whimsy that means you can't predict what will happen day-to-day, and frequently don't want to try. Usually, however, it's not that exciting; I'm there solely to support the main members of staff should there be a behavioural or medical emergency, so I go downstairs and sleep in the games room, which is a fair-sized space whose homeliness is undermined by the persistent stench of urine (a consequence of working in a place where people combine their responses to stress, displays of anger, and favorite activity into one ongoing attempt to find exciting new places to piss).

We've started to build some great new friendships with a few local couples which has served us well as through them we've got hold of an air-conditioning unit. This is essential, as I am already starting to wilt from Minnesota's summer. As fierce as their winter is, their less talked about summer is proving more of a burden for someone who is unused to temperatures in the double digits. Actually, it turns out that A/C has an exciting history in Minnesota, as the worlds first in-home unit was installed in Minneapolis in 1914. Of course, there's also the horrible correlation between the rise of air-conditioning and Southern Republican presidencies which is startlingly direct.

The VISA process continues, as glacial as ever. Entire civilisations have risen, fallen and risen again (although, it should be noted, not here in America) in the time it's taken for my four month VISA approval to happen, but I've finally been accepted as a 'Conditional Permanent Resident', an oxymoronic statement which says I'm able to live here indefinitely unless they decide I can't.

This is great news though because it means we are hopefully going to be able to come back and visit the UK this December. I couldn't leave until my VISA was at this point (or rather, I could leave, but I couldn't reenter). I'm looking forward to a real English Christmas; i.e. one without any snow.

On Winter

Forget war and other people, to listen to the people of Minnesota, winter is hell. The French learnt it in 1812 when they invaded Russia, the Germans learnt it in 1941 when they invaded Russia, and Minnesotans let me know all about it from the moment I moved here, months ago,

Minnesotans have a proud tradition of hyperbolic apprehension about the onset of the winter, and whilst they love to emphasise their ability to overcome the obstacles that the treacherous weather will bring, they also want you to know that you will get frostbite and die should you ever step outdoors between November and May. This slightly schizophrenic traits of describing a terrible, all consuming threat whilst also acknowledging that it won't actually make that much of a difference to their day-to-day lives is essentially the opposite of England's approach to the inclement climate.

We, after all, will readily accept that our weather is probably best described as tepid. Our summer is lukewarm but rarely scorching, and our winter is best described as 'nippy'; a word containing all the threat of a teething toddler. The worst we're expecting to face is a day of sleet, followed by three days of ice on the pavement and a national decision to take an ever increasing series of snow-days. Ditching work to go sledging is helped by a transport system that's crippled by a brisk nor'easter, let alone an actual cold front. We're a nation moving around on trains that can't navigate the wrong kind of ice, cars that collapse under a blanket of snow and entire airports abandoned for fear of frost.

But we take a perverse pride in our inability to deal with an annual event, as though every time it somehow comes as a surprise to us that the seasons have changed. The fact that it only happens once each year seems to be enough of an excuse for us to greet every snowfall as an excuse to just surrender to the weather and not go take part in our actual life commitments.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota it snows a foot overnight and nobody even notices.

Wampa Cave, Hoth Minneapolis, MN

Jalyss sent me out to shovel the snow a few days ago, A shovel isn't the same as a spade, I've learnt. You have to scrape the pavement, shattering through the lower layers of permafrost in order to shift the snow above. It's deep, compact stuff, forming the kind of strata usually reserved only for geology. On the top is a fine powder of fresh snow which blows around in the constant gusts, creating an icy fog that drops the line-of-sight to a few hundred metres and freezes the hair on your beard.

A beard is essential in Minnesota. It's not just a hipster affectation (like my record player), but a facial necessity. It constantly astonishes me that women make it through the year, because the extra cover of coarse hair is sometimes the only thing that prevents my face from sloughing away and my entire jaw dropping off, like a sub-zero approximation of the Nazi's at the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc, with less melting and more straight up shattering. When I say that my beard freezes, that isn't hyperbole. In the time it took me to clear the drive, my beard solidified, and the really crazy thing is that I didn't even notice until I came back inside and the heat melted it down the front of my chest. You know you're acclimatising when you no longer feel the need to keep track of whether your facial hair is forming it's own snow cone.

All of this is observed by the locals to be the hallmarks of an exceptionally mild winter, and whilst it's true that I haven't pulled a Captain America and woken up totally encased in ice more than two or three times, I don't especially appreciate the assumption that it gets worse than a wind chill of -40. That's -40 F, by the way. In C, it's - 40. - 40 is the temperature at which temperature conversion apparently just gives up and stops bothering.. Frankly, I don't know how to deal with double digit temperatures in either scale. I didn't even know that temperatures went down like that in anything other than a theoretical way. Meanwhile, everyone here seems quite disappointed by how easy this winter has been, as though all their doom-saying and warnings have been in vain, and the inevitability of my awakening to the harsh reality of life here has been lessened. It's as if I'd gone out on the moors during a full moon and come back the next day without having been attacked by a werewolf, and everyone is bitterly aggrieved about it.

It's like I won't be truly accepted until I've lost at least three digits to frostbite. Fortunately, it's only January, so we still have four more months of Winter to go. So I'm just going outside, and may be some time.

On a Nation of Immigrants

Tonight, as President Obama takes the politically incendiary step of executive action to reform immigration, it seems like a good time to write about something that I've experienced first hand over the past year. America's immigration system is broken.

Let's start off by setting some stuff out. I'm utterly uninterested in how exactly reform happens. Whether by bipartisan dialogue, Senate and House bills, or Presidential decree, the method doesn't really matter. Whether articulated by Republican, Democrat or Independent voices, from politicians, activists or ordinary people, the person speaking doesn't matter. I'm not concerned at all with how reform is delivered. I'm pretty unconcerned about whether the President has the necessary authority to do this alone (because, he does). I don't write in defense of President Obama, with whom I agree with very little, or in defiance of the new Republican majority, with whom I agree on even less.

What matters is that we recognize that those we are talking about are not simply 'immigrants', 'illegals' or 'aliens', but families and individuals. Our shared humanity is more important than nationality, country of origin or label. Whether they look to escape day to day lives defined by conflict, flee economic systems that deny them fair wages and equal treatment, or simply desire a better future, a fresh start and a new home in the US, they seek those most American pursuits of life, liberty and happiness.

Not every immigrant has fled hardship. Not every immigrant has suffered. Not every immigrant is in need of our charity or concern. But every immigrant is a person, and every immigrant deserves the right to be recognized.

It's true that not every immigrant is here legally. Not every immigrant contributes to society, not every immigrant works, not every immigrant obeys the law.

But, those are not every immigrant. Those are individuals. And their misdemeanors are no more real, and no more weighty, than the lives of the average immigrants who quietly maintain themselves and their families, without reliance upon the Government. We have a system already in place to deal with immigrants who break the law, and it's the same system that is necessary for those Americans who do the same.

I am an immigrant. To get here, I spent nearly a year applying for a Fiancee VISA. I followed the process. I did things the right way. I entered the US legally. And I did it that way because I am incredibly fortunate to have the capacity and tenacity to overcome the unnecessarily obtuse barriers of immigration. Along with my now wife I completed the initial forms, and the follow up forms, and the forms that came after that. I attended interviews, submitted to medical exams, and paid thousands of dollars to get here and get through the process.

I am University educated. English is my first language. I had the assistance of others. I had enough time to devote to completing everything. I had enough money saved to pay the fees. I had every advantage available, in other words, and yet I found the process to be confusing, repetitive and stressful. I repeatedly had to clarify or resend forms that had been incorrectly completed. An initial K1 Visa is expected to take four to six months to complete, for us it took ten. Due to the sheer amount of time it takes to get a VISA, and, yes, some administrative delays, I arrived in America just five days before my wedding. 

Usually, when I explain the process and what I had to do to get to my wedding in America, people recognize that it's unreasonable. I've written before about how the expectation is that I should have been able to get in easily, that as an educated, British male, with savings and a decent job, I should be someone who finds it easy to get a VISA and enter the US. There's the thing. It was. My experience was slow, irritating and almost disastrous, but eventually my perseverance paid off and I got my VISA.

The flip side of my experience is not an easy entry into the country; it's exactly the same trials as I've faced, but worse.

Imagine what that process would be like if you were trying to do it with a lower level of education, in a second language, without any help. Imagine that you're trying to escape from desperate poverty or violence, that you have a limited amount of time, that you're worried about your family's safety. Imagine that you don't have the money to pay the fees. And then imagine that every time you submit a form it gets returned to you, or worse, ignored altogether, because you missed a question, or accidentally ticked the wrong box. Imagine waiting months for the system to work for you, without any idea of whether it will.

I have seen first hand what happens when immigration is politicized. It raises barriers and obstacles for all. With the aim of keeping out a few criminals it refuses access to any and all. My VISA application was made more difficult because of an over zealous attempt to keep people who would abuse the benefits of society out. Instead it simply prevents those in most need from accessing the vital opportunity to make a new start.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that people try and dodge this system, not because they are hardened criminals, or are intent on undermining the country, but because the process for legally entering the US is intended to make it as difficult as possible to do so. Every step is made intentionally difficult, and then we act confused when people try to avoid that perniciously constructed difficulty. We punish the people who have got here illegitimately, but attempt to deny them the chance to do so within the law.

The system, as it is, is broken.

President Obama's executive action today is a good start to fixing it, but it is just a start. There are 11 million undocumented people in America. There is no benefit in keeping those who are here already from being able to legally work. There is tremendous harm in maintaining the status quo as it currently is - Jim Wallis at Sojourners has some great stuff to say here. This is not a full amnesty, but a chance for some immigrants to gain some recognition. It's a half-measure couched in qualification.

Eventually it boils down to this; we in America sit on unparalleled wealth, privilege and comfort. Too much of our immigration policy is about denying access to this to others. How often do we hear the language of economic impact used to describe immigration? We worry about loss of jobs, about benefits going to the undeserving, and ignore the plight of those in need because we're concerned about the economic consequences.

One of my favorite political speeches is from Lincoln's First Inaugural Address. In it, he delivers an impassioned plea for the avoidance of secession by the South, and for calm and reconciliation between the two sides. It ends with one of the most famous pieces of Presidential oratory, and a lasting appeal for brotherhood and grace.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.

Tonight, President Obama is echoing the sentiments of Lincoln's address, calling not for fellowship between opposing states, but an attempt at recognition, openness and acceptance from Americans towards those who seek entry in. Decriminalization allows already productive workers to become part of society, but it requires society to welcome them in. 

The immigration reform he proposes is imperfect, certainly. There is much for both sides to discuss, But its core principle is an attempt to alter the terms of the conversation we're currently having, to recognize that this is not just an academic debate but one about peoples lives and futures.

This is the most fundamental reality of immigration reform; all immigrants are just people, and they matter.

On October 31st

American Holidays, eh. What are they about? Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day. Like all the other made up American holidays which clutter up the year they mostly seem to revolve around the heroic consumption of canned produce and the willful misremembrance of historical atrocities.

Of course October is the 30 day prequel to Halloween; the cheerful holiday about the dead. It's the only holiday which is specifically designed to encourage children to decorate their house, and dress up, as the things we fear the most. Or rather, the things that pop-culture thinks we fear the most, rather than the things that anyone actually fears.

Fear of the Student Loans Service trying to recover the money I blew on '"bettering myself" through "education"

I guess it's because it's hard to market the theme of 'psychologically-crippling existential angst', or 'the fragility of an insignificant life in the face of the uncaring universe's eternal, infinite vacuum', or 'our meaningless day-to-day existence guarantees that most of our dreams will remain forever unachieved'. Which is a shame, because I'd love to see a 6 year old dressed as 'the constant but uncomfirmable worry that my parents may not love me as much as they say'.

Still, I guess it's easier to sell a pointy hat, a mask and a broomstick, and brand a kid as a witch. Monetising our fears is something of an American pastime, which is why Halloween is indelibly linked with the American pop-culture psyche. Ever since FDR said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, America has been busy rewriting that list to 'fear itself (and also the supernatural)' and slapping a pricetag on its likeness.

I freaking love Halloween, you guys. I mean, I love pretty much all the holidays, but Halloween has a special place in my heart, just because of how under-exposed to it we are in England. It just is not a thing, which makes watching any TV show or movie featuring Halloween seem much more glamorous for being so alien. I've been really excited to get a taste of that, and it's been stoked by the massive amount of pre-Holiday lead up America goes in for.

Unlike the UK where Halloween is a strictly one day event, America has decorations appearing from the very start of the month. Pumpkins sprout from lawns, ghosts appear floating in trees, and I'm pretty sure that somebody was probably releasing live vampire bats into the neighborhood, just to add to that holiday atmosphere. When it's still two weeks from Halloween and there's a glow in the dark sarcophagi in peoples front yards, you know you're in for a treat.

In fact, the whole country went full out for the spirit of Halloween, by getting irrationally terrified about Ebola; a disease whose status as disaster du jour belies the fact that, so far it's had about as much of an impact on America as a whole as incidences of people accidentally lighting the black candle and raising their towns witches from the dead.

Threat of Sanderson Sisters returning > Threat of an Ebola epidemic in the US

On the night itself my friends, the neighbourhood Moms, invited us out with their families. The kids were banding together to go trick-or-treating so while the Zapf's went to the movies, JJ and I took Mina out with them. On a float. Meaning that as the kids went door to door the parents sat on a decorated trailer being pulled along behind a four wheeler, drinking Jello shots and beer. This is doing Halloween right. At the end of the evening, we passed a house that was giving out warm apple cider and mini sausages around a house fire. America. you guys. Give them your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and they'll give out cocktail weiners at Halloween.

Unfortunately, even the offer of sausages and cider couldn't keep us outside much past an hour. Whilst winter hasn't properly come yet, even into November we've not had any of the long promised snow, the temperature has dropped incredibly. I'd reused my Superman outfit from my stag, but was disappointed to find that whatever flammable material it's made out of isn't suitable for withstanding sub-zero degrees. Which is probably legit, because I doubt Superman even notices temperature differentials; dude flies in space, and it gets chilly out there. He's not likely to have a costume that emphasises utility. I also didn't shave my beard, because, rationally, how would Superman do that?

Finding a comics appropriate, weather suitable, scientifically accurate Superman costume is hard.

What it would be pretty easy to do, and definitely something I will consider for next year, is to get a theme costume going with Mina. I wanted to dress him as Professor X, JJ as Jean Grey and find a Cyclops costume, but I've since come up with the much better idea of going as Bane, with Mina as post-Knightfall Bruce Wayne.

May need to work on getting some spherical chest implants first.

This year however, Mina refused to go as Batman, thwarting the 'World's Finest' team up I had looked forward to.

JJ refused to dress up at all, because she hates fun of all kinds.

On the Corner of Main Street and Kennedy Memorial Drive

We've just moved into our new apartment, a two bedroomed flat in St Bonifacius. St. Boni is Minnesota's version of Tatooine, as far from the bright centre of the universe as it's possible to get without being able to see Russia from your house, and it is gorgeously, ridiculously wonderful. Our house is a purple-brown pastel shade straight out of the '50s suburbia of Edward Scissorhands, with white wooden window frames, and a screen door. It is, in all honesty, an unlovely edifice, a squatting hump at the top of the hill, raised at the back over a slope but with the rooms spread only over a single floor. Yet there is a curious personal splendour to it; it's our first apartment, and thus it receives the kind of attention and love which it would never get from those less enamoured by the freshness of the experience.

Plus, it's on the corner of 'Main Street' and 'Kennedy Memorial Drive', an address as American as Sam Eagle, the Muppety embodiment of Americanism.

'Merica

Main Street and Kennedy Memorial Drive; it doesn't get more American than that. It's as American as remembering the Alamo, hearting New York, celebrating the 4th of July, or forgetting all about Canada. As American as root beer floats and warm apple pies at a diner, saluting the flag before a Superbowl game, and drone strikes on Pakistani children.

Even more American than that, maybe, because on the other corners of the cross roads stand a launderette, a whiteboard church and a cemetery. St Boni. has everything an American town needs; seven bars and liquor stores, two churches, a gunshop and a laundromat. Standing out front gives me a great view of the local water tower. It is so quintessentially, stereotypically American that I sometimes suspect that I'm in some weird, cross continental version of the Truman Show. Everything is too perfectly Americana, to the extent that it appears inauthentic.

Wednesday was our first day in the apartment, and also the day they tested the St Boni. tornado warning system, which is just a 5 minute siren. Presumably, in the event of an actual tornado, it would be just a five minute siren and then the sound of a cow being hurled through your house, because I've seen Twister, and this is what happens, you guys.

Seems legit.

Because I'm at home whilst Jalyss works long hours in two jobs, I've been responsible for setting everything up, by which I mean I arranged all my books on the shelf and then threw all of the clothes on the floors of the closets. Closets, plural. Walk in ones. Ridiculously American.

I've set up a work space, and a book case next to it. I've got it into my head that as I'm unemployed and currently unable to even look for work I may as well enjoy the life of dilettante writer; getting up for a coffee and a pastry at noon, drinking wine and eating cheese in the evening, and every now and then writing an incisive, witty and humorous article that earns me enough to continue buying myself coffee, pastries, cheese and wine.

Instead I get up around noon, eat a stale doughnut, look at Buzzfeed, wait for Jalyss to get home and write a weekly review of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D for GeekBinge that's rarely funny and never insightful, and for the kind of money that makes awful American cheese look pricey.

But, if you're going to be just married, without a job, and failing to succeed as a writer anywhere, St Boni. sure isn't the worst place in the world for it.

And guys, I'm fairly certain that could be the town motto; "St Boni. Not quite as bad as you would think to look at it."

On USCIS

It's 7:58am, and for one of the first times since I've arrived here there's a steady rain falling on me, and on the other few dozen people patiently stood waiting for the door to open. Even on an unusually grey day, this early in the morning, Minnesota hasn't yet got so cold that I bothered to pick up a jacket on my way out the door, so instead I balance a box of documents on my head until a Good Samaritanesque Rihanna invites me under their umbrella.

We are waiting for a USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) processing centre, where I've been summoned to go for my biometrics. In preparation for me staying in the US the Government wants to harvest and catalogue all of the most intimate aspects of myself; my fingerprints, DNA, and probably my soul. Ostensibly it's so that they have this on file should there ever be a problem, for instance, if I abscond with all the benefit money I'm not receiving from them.

It's the kind of post-9/11 state overreach that should make natural conservatives screech about the boundaries and limitations of what Government has a right to take; about privacy, about safeguarding, about presumption of innocence. But it's only being taken from immigrants, so the total amount of a damn that they actually give is somewhat less than none.

In a display of Governmental irony the USCIS centre is based in a solitary wing of the ground floor of a Chinese restaraunt. If ever one building was the picture of American policy, this is it; zealously guarding the frontiers of a nation that Capitalism has already sold out and overrun. It's a truly ugly building, but very clean. Kellie is singularly impressed by this. I'm not; if anyone has access to the vast pools of cheap labour from abroad that they can exploit to keep it tidy, these guys do.

As the rain starts to slacken into the misty drizzle, and the horde forms itself into a natural, orderly line, I find myself feeling quietly content.

Honestly. Rain and queues. It feels like I'm home.

At exactly eight, the doors are opened and the crowd moves through - there's enough space in the reception for everyone to comfortably fit in, and so we move up to allow the end of the line to get out of the wet. It's an unhomogenous collection, a real American melting pot of ethnicities. The lady in front of me tells me she's from an East Asian country whose 'real', non-English, name is unintelligible, so I nod politely. She's with her sister-in-law, who's there to enforce the weight of American citizen approval. This, I've learnt, seem to be very important. Having an American with you lends an air of authenticity; you are not simply some over-the-fence, fresh from the dock illegal. You have contacts, American contacts, and so, by association, the presumption of legitimacy to be here.

Kellie is with me for today, and once the queue has made its way in out of the rain she joins me. I wave her over.

"Is that your wife" asks the American.

"Err, no. That's my Mother in Law". I reply. I am starting to wonder just quite what age a woman needs to be for people not to assume she's my wife. It's a really awkward question to ask unless you're pretty sure of an affirmative answer, but apparently Americans don't feel shame in the same way as normal people.

The biometrics itself is disturbingly simple. No tissue, blood or saliva samples, no invasive procedure. I didn't even need to pee in a cup, which is unfortunate because I had already bought one from home.

Instead, I simply had to give fingerprints, a short written record of my height, weight and eye colour, and have a photo taken. I had been worried about this at first, as I seem to have a hereditary disorder, passed down from my Mother, that makes fingerprinting me difficult.

Whilst on our honeymoon in Flordia we went to Universal Studios, which in part offers lockers and ticketing based on a scan of your finger. I eventually gave up using this service, and simply put Jalyss' hand to the screen each time, as whilst I could open the lockers to put everything in, they never seemed to recognise the same fingerprint by the time I returned minutes later.

Apparently though, the Government has better equipment and systems than a big business, because my fingerprints read correctly every time. Turns out that I do have them, after all. Who knew.

On the Police

"Hello" says the policeman "we've had a complaint about a child driving a truck at this address".

"Oh, hello" I reply. "Yes, that would be Mina".

I've been left in charge of Mina for the afternoon whilst Jalyss goes to work and Jim has a nice lie down. I am beginning to regret my benevolent stance on child care; I remain happy to do it up to the point where the police arrive at the door.

Looking after Mina is usually fairly easy. He wants to do two things when he gets home - drive his wheelchair or drive one of the cars. Half an hour before Jim had put him out in the truck, where he happily sits in the drivers seat and turns the steering wheel. With a block behind the front tyre and no way to reach the pedals he's arguably safer in the truck than he is in his wheelchair.

A few days before, on our last trip down the road with him in his new electric wheelchair, he ended up being carried back home after driving into traffic and biting me when I tried getting him out of the path of oncoming vehicles. I'm wary of allowing him out in his new wheelchair. I still have the puncture wounds in my arm from where he sank his teeth into it. Fortunately I had a tetanus shot before I moved to America. It's genuinely amazing that they foresaw the possibility of me being bitten by my brother in law. Thanks NHS!

Whereas we used to be able to at least keep up with him when he started playing chicken with an eighteen wheeler, Mina has just received two new wheelchairs to test out. Both are too big to stop, too heavy to hold and too fast to catch. So, he's basically in the wheelchair equivalent of Gypsy Danger, making preventing him from doing what he wants fairly difficult. This is especially hard when what he mainly seems to want to do is drive into things as fast and as often as possible.

So putting him in his wheelchair without containment procedures firmly in place is out. The neighbourhood kids playing across the road from us wouldn't stand a chance beneath the bone breaking wheels of the iron chariot. As I'm unemployed and sitting around the house all day, I've made friends with a few of the stay at home Moms. I don't want to jeopardize that by letting Mina crush their children into the lawn.

Instead then, we put Mina in the truck, and leave him to play at driving. Today, I had just bought him back in, and fixed him a drink.

A knock on the door, and through the screen, on the porch, a cop. His car is pulled up at the bottom of the drive. A passing neighbour has reported a child is in the truck, and the police have come to check it out.

As I'm currently here reliant purely on the patience of the Government, it's slightly worrying to deal with law enforcement at this point. I still haven't quite got over the idea that they may just rescind my stay, and send me home. Having the police appear on your doorstep is not what you ideally want under these circumstances.

"Are you in charge here?" he asks. Currently I am, but only by virtue of the fact that Jim is in bed, and I suspect would be even less pleased to see the police at his door than I am. I am, nominally in charge here, I suppose. For a house that's usually so full of people it suddenly seems the rest of the Zapfs have deserted me. Only Mina has dragged himself over to the door. He's heard the word truck and thinks the policeman is going to take him outside to continue driving, which is going to be a difficult moment for everyone.

I explain that I'm his brother in law and that whilst we do let him in the truck, he's unable to reach the pedal and drive. I'm asked who I am. His brother in law, I explain.

The policeman asks for my details. I AM ABOUT TO BE DEPORTED. I give them numbly, and then things take a downhill turn. "What's Mina's full name?" I have absolutely no idea. I know his first name, and his last name, but I am drawing a total blank. "What's your middle name" I ask Mina. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't answer me. He doesn't know his middle name either. The cop looks incredulous at our lack of knowledge.  

Still, as it turns out me not knowing my brother in laws middle name isn't actually a crime. And isn't even, in fact, the most concerning lack of knowledge. He asks me for my dates of birth, I give it, and totally confused him because it's in the wrong order. Despite me clarifying that when I say 22/12 I mean the 22nd of December, he writes 22 for the month. I am beginning to get less worried about whether or not I'll get arrested. A policeman who doesn't know that there are only twelve months in the year; he's probably not inclined to launch a wider investigation.

Transferring dates between English and American is an ongoing battle. For some reason whilst I can adequately translate that when the month and day is out of order, I just need to switch them for it to make sense to me, this is beyond many Americans. Every time I tell them my date of birth, and lead with 22, their eyebrows descend into a frown and start to smoke as their brain flails for the extra processing capacity needed to overcome the complexity of reversing a pair of two digit numbers. It is apparently a national failing; confronted with calendars that don't work America gives in. It's fortunate that the wars on drugs and terrorism haven't been joined by a War on Unexpected Dates, because it would be a short and unsuccessful one.

Confronted with a round birthdate for his square hole the policeman gives in and leaves with some unspecific warnings about letting children drive into the garage door, and an earnest reminder that if I do let Mina drive, I will end up being killed by him. I find it unlikely that I will, but as a middle class white guy, I trust that this policeman is there to do good, thank him and watch him leave.

As he pulls away, Mina tug on my trouser leg. He wants to go outside and drive. I close the door and decide that maybe we'll put him in his wheelchair instead.

On Running

I'm running home from Crown College, the local University that Jalyss, and virtually her entire family, graduated from, and which her Dad teaches at. The day is hot; as hot as it ever gets in England. It's the kind of heat that is best explained outside of the conventional binary of Celsius-Fahrenheit. It's more the kind of day which can best be measured in Katy Perry lyrics, a day hot enough to melt your popsicle.

We've been exploiting the post-wedding calm and nearly empty University facilities to work out. I've very swiftly realised that being able to run, and having a generally good level of fitness means nothing when exercising with the Zapfs.

Working out with Jalyss's family is like playing Cluedo with Batman. The humiliation is near total. Still, I'm faster than them, so I've been taking the opportunity to run home afterwards. But because I'm doing this after an hour in the weight room, by run I actually mean limp. It's a dragging, wheezing lope; unglamorous, and unhappily completed. The gym is not my friend, and it ruins me for my run.

Still, running the few miles home is a unique view of America. A continent spanning nation, virtually every trip out is by car, and consequently everything is at one space removed. I recently leafed through a friends copy of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', which puts it perfectly that:

"In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realise that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you."

There's a self imposed disconnect between people and nature that's in part to do with the fact that travelling cocoons us from the outside. We are swaddled in steel and plastic, perpetually air conditioned and temperate, wrapped in layers of habit and convenience that keeps us away from the reality of life outside our houses and offices, and the vehicles we use to travel between them.

But as I run, I do not simply pass by this world, but through it. I run, and the steady tramp of my shoes, the low impact vibration of sole on kerbside, disturbs the life that exists on the periphery of our own.

The side of the road is scrabble. A top layer of sandy dirt and gritty pebbles, broken up with the choke-weeds and wild grasses that thrive in the dust and sun. As I kick through it, the floor around me comes alive with crickets, their movement akin to running within the Gallimimus herd in Jurassic Park.

Every step disturbs another, and they leap heedlessly into my legs, beneath my feet and away. Bounding and rebounding from me and into the long grass. They're big, bigger than any grasshopper's I've seen before this, as long as my thumb. Their movement carries them in a quick arc over a few feet, and they routinely smack straight into anything in their path, their ascent interrupted by whatever unmoving feature they failed to take into account before launch.

It's glorious, and serene, and so quintessentially foreign, to be running through this swarm of leaping, kicking nature as its most unheeding and unheeded. Everything about America still has the freshness to it for me, that sense of wonder at the everyday. Birds and insects that are totally commonplace here are a source of real excitement. Every day is different, everything is new.

I'm enjoying it, I suppose you could say, That's new too - but the real enthusiasm here is contagious. I guess I'm becoming one of them already. This is what assimilation feels like.

On Zapfletts

When my kids grow up I've decided I'm going to talk to them about the decisions I made about getting married. I have what I feel are good pieces of advice for them, mainly around exactly what 'tulle' is, and the coma inducing pointlessness of spending loads of money on chairs for the service. But above all there are two decision that I'm going to want to be able to point to without any hesitation and say that these were good things.

The first is in my choice of wife. I hope that she's their mother, because otherwise it's an awkward conversation to be starting with them. I hope that she's around still, I hope that they see her not just as their mother, but as a person. I want them to know Jalyss not just as a role, like their teachers or their pet, but as the individual she is. I hope they'll know her as someone I love and respect, who makes me happy, pushes me, teaches me, steadies and comforts me, and who can cook up a mean homemade pizza.

The second thing though is that I want them to know that they are part of a family that wanted them, values and loves them for who they are, and that they will be respected and cherished whatever they do. Unless they're a vampire, because then they're on their own.

I'm being quite serious here. If they ever start living in a coffin, adopting a range of, admittedly rad, capes with high collars, and rise only at dusk to go and feed on the still warm blood of virginal 19th century women as part of a dubious allegory for sexual awakening, I am disinheriting the heck out of them.

I have very strong feelings about vampires, you guys.

But, so long as they steer clear of vampirism, I also want them to know that they are part of a family that spans two continents and three immediate family names. Because as well as being a Willetts and a Zapf, they will also be a Zapfletts.

I've always been pretty adamant that I didn't want Jalyss taking my name. Much like asking permission from her father to marry, I see it as an outdated way of codifying women as property. My wife isn't an object, she isn't defined by me or her father.

Giving her surname up to take mine is denying her the agency to exist as a being separate from myself or her father. To me it suggests that her identity is conditional upon whichever man has responsibility for her, and whilst that works fine in a society or culture which denies women their own identity and agency, I didn't really want the first act of our marriage to be the transfer of ownership from Jalyss' father to me.

Jalyss, whilst not wanting to take my name, would have been quite happy to hyphenate her surname or just keep Zapf.

But I want us to share a name, to be a team, so having us just keep our own names didn't seem a good option. I want us to be linked by that thread of commonality, the unequivocal connectedness of having a shared identity.

I'm going to be honest here; writing this. I find myself getting uncomfortably close to expressing myself in such a way as to make it seem like it was solely my decision that Jalyss change her name. Which would be a betrayal of much of the sentiment behind the name change, as it means her actions were still based on my desire to not have her becomes Mrs Willetts. And so whilst it may look like this is just a groovy, granola eating left wing version of the same white, cis, male privilege showing through, I'd like to really make it clear that this was not the case of me simply coercing Jalyss into taking a new name so I could get my way.

I love Jalyss' maiden name, mainly, it has to be admitted, because it sounds like the noise of a futuristic weapon discharging into the vacuum of space.  So we wanted to maintain it, but I was also really keen that we do so through a gesture; a resolving commitment to one another that as we got married we each became part of a new family.

From Zapf and Willetts came Zapfletts,

Because that, for me, is what marriage is; a commitment to a new family. It's what Jalyss and I are, or at least what I hope we are. And part of that is sharing not just our lives, experiences, joy, frustration, money, passions, hobbies, illnesses, annoyances and mundanities with one another, but setting ourselves apart and distinguishing ourselves by name.

When I married Jalyss I did so knowing that it meant leaving behind a lot of what I had grown up with. I left my culture, my country, my job, friends and family. And I did so to form a new life, and a new family. It won't be the same as the life I had before, and my family will be new too. I've gained brothers and sisters in Jalyss' siblings.

And I've gained a wife, too.

But there's a part of me that also sees myself as having lost something, as well. I won't get to see my nephew grow up. I won't be there for birthdays, holidays, or weekends. I won't get to hang out with my Dad and watch the football, or go out for a cup of tea with my Mom after work. I won't get to irritate my Sister, or hang out with my cousins.

So, part of marrying Jalyss is me getting the opportunity to extend what it means to have a family, and who my family are. I love the grand gesture, and the radical deed. And the most obvious commitment we could make to one another, and to our new family replacing our old, is for a name change that represents that. From the distant, separate lines of Zapfs and Willetts', a brand new one. A joining of two families that creates a third.

I love that. What better way of signalling this new union, this new family than a distinct new break. And what better way of defining ourselves than a new name; one which speaks of where we came from whilst also placing us together.

And so, Zapfletts. I'm looking forward to explaining that to my kids.

On the DMV

"Is this your wife?"

The lady is pointing at my 16 year old Sister-in-law, who looks exactly as young as she is, and thus makes the very obvious age gap between the two of us more than a little too wide for comfort. Jaidyn is going very red.

"This is my sister in law, she just drove me here" I explain. This isn't 'To Catch a Predator'.

"Oh, I just thought, when you said you were together" the lady continues, oblivious to the embarrassment she's causing Jaidyn. I'm forced to cut her off to clarify, "No, we just came here together. We came here together in a car."

We're at the DMV, to register me for an American licence and for me to sit my theory test. The DMV, I'm realising, is where bureaucracy goes to die. You go in to speak to the greeter, who assigns you a ticket to talk to someone else, who gives you a form to take to a third. I'm pleased that I can do my bit for the stuttering US economy by providing employment for the population of a small town, but maybe one of them could do a little more towards the process, rather than pass responsibility on to the next in line.

Applying for anything in the US as a British citizen is a chore; routinely carrying a packet of documents containing my passport, my birth certificate and my VISA entry form, which are pored over, analysed and remarked upon at every stage. Today I've also brought my counterpart driving licence with me. This will turn out to be a mistake.

The lady taking my documents has never seen a counterpart driving licence before. The lady she is working with hasn't either. Nobody in the building has seen it before. My counterpart licence is the Turin Shroud of the DMV; people like it, but to quote In Bloom, they 'know not what it means'.

I only want to get on a computer so that I can sit the theory part of the test, 40 multiple choice questions about driving laws in Minnesota. There are some excellent bits of knowledge on there. One of the actions it suggests could increase road rage in others is forcing their car off the road. Presumably that's not the only reason to not force people off the road; just the most important one.

I've been studying for the last few days and am pretty confident. Jaidyn uses the drive over to test me. We get lost, leaving us plenty of time of study. Her main advice is to remember that Minnesota state law means I have to leave six feet of space when I pass a cyclist. Six feet, I mentally file that one away.

After nearly twenty minutes of investigation, I'm told that I can't get a licence today and will have to take the permit test. That's what I'm here for. I'm relieved to find that the licence I voluntarily provided to them won't disqualify me from starting the whole process.

The test begins with a routine example question asking me to identify the capital of Minnesota. I get it wrong. An inauspicious start.

The remainder of the test is routine. I have to get 90% of the answers right. Most are obvious, a few require actual thought to answer. One is a straight up true or false. Some have the fourth answer as 'All of the above'. In any situation where all of the above is an option, answer all of the above. It's always the correct answer. This is one of the ironclad rules of testing, along with 'read the question carefully' and 'if you don't know just guess'.

I read the questions carefully, I don't know but guess (correctly as it turns out), and finally I reach a question about the distance to keep from a cyclist. I know this one. Jaidyn's advice is going to pay off. I confidently enter the answer. Six feet of space. Wrong. It's wrong.

I mind-swear profusely.

Disbelief. Crushing, wincing disbelief. Jaidyn has lied to me. I am overcome with doubt. Can I complete this? Are all the answers she gave false? How do I even know what's ... oh, wait, never mind, the test is over. I've passed.

I reenter the casual flow of senseless paper moving. The nice lady who was so confused about my UK licence sends me back to the initial greeter with some papers, which I fill out, hand over and have returned along with a new ticket, to go see a new staff member. She takes my papers, then takes my photo and administers an eye test. I pass that one too, and I'm free to go drive.

In three months I can come back and get tested for a full licence. Jaidyn reminds me that this will be just in time for the infamous Minnesotan Winter, a perpetually capitalised event distinct from regular winter in both the length and severity of the season and the sheer amount of time everyone spends discussing it.

It's like living with the Starks, and I wouldn't be entirely shocked to learn that somewhere around Duluth there may well be a giant ice wall manned by grim, black clad watchers, defending the US from all the wild men, mammoths and ice zombies Canada throws at them.

In the meantime we leave. I'll have a licence sent to me soon, and won't have to carry my customary ID bundle. We set off, and I start to tell Jaidyn about exactly how far from a cyclist you have to be.

Because it definitely isn't six feet.