Elizabeth II, the Gnome Queen

The Financial Times just ran a special section about the latest trend in overcrowded London (aka Lun-donn), to create more space for wealthy Londoners growing fat off the financial services sector, the second fastest growing sector of the economy. Obviously it really only dropped to second thanks to the growth in revenue from targeted ads on internet video websites, for the first time gangs of hooded children have been able to monetize shaky cell phone videos documenting the severe beating of random people in the street. Within a month, O2 and Burberry dominated the European economy and the pound appreciated sharply against the dollar, creating "cashmere arbitrage" opportunities for MBAs who really need to get the fuck out of the office and talk to real people more, I mean honestly. This part of my rant brought to you by my irritation at friends who go overseas and call me in the middle of the f***ing night, sorry to take it out on you, British economy and gangs of rosy-cheeked hooded assassins.

Back to my original point, there's a limit to how far out a city can expand without losing cohesiveness, despite the best attempts of certain Wisconsin residents to claim they live in the northern, northern part of Chicago, south of Evanston but north of Green Bay. Eventually expansion must turn vertical, and Chicago is answering this with the gigantic crystalline penis that will loom like a mad rapist over the squirming waves of Lake Michigan. One need only look up and observe the torrent of socks and stinky boxers drifting down from the lofty heights of 1 W Superior to see what is possible when a city turns its eyes skyward. But of course, ever since the Chunnel opened, the English have been spending entirely too much time around the French, so they had to expand London in a snarky, "Right way, wrong way, a la mode francaise" gesture by embracing the vertical, but expanding underground. All over London, wealthy homeowners, and you really have to have money to think this way, are digging multi-story basements, only I think they spell them multi-storey, to put in underground pools with sliding floors and I can only assume sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. If you go building a ballroom that converts into a pool, you really are only one step removed from turning into a Bond villain and you know it, J.K. Rowling... she has wealth and vitality, and nothing left to do but to take over the world... she'll be hijacking nuclear weapons from Киргизия before "Deathly Hallows" hits DVD.

What I want to know is, when the hell did these people become $*&#ing gnomes? The last thing that country needs is less natural light and fresh air... ever wonder why David Beckham was such a beautiful sex symbol who could break down doors with his gigantic dong until he came to America and nobody knew who he was? It's because when you line him up next to a fuck-ugly centre-forward who looks like he came bounding out of a lake in the dead of night to kill Vikings in a mead hall but accidentally stumbled onto the pitch at Wembley, by comparison Beckham looks like somebody Raphael would have painted into a Vatican mural. That whole bunch looks like Sven-Goran Eriksson turned over rocks and put an England shirt on anything that came scuttling out with less than 6 legs. Seriously, get out of the tube and get some vitamin D flowing through those veins, don't dig deeper. There is a possibility of light wells, but I've seen the best the civil engineers at the UofM could come up with to get natural light down to this subterranean lair 70 feet below the surface that used to house this English department TA I had a thing for, and the lack of natural light really augmented her total lack of natural sleep (teaching at two schools and finishing her thesis was taking a toll), making her completely nuts... although that's probably why I had such a thing for her and kept expressing it through passive-aggressive, provocative papers and exam essays explaining how every great work of British literature from the Cotton Vitellius to Joseph Conrad was really about boning people you shouldn't, like an eager student. Later I would recognize these feelings as transference (but I'd still hit that).

Speaking of things I'd hit, there are pleasant looking people from the UK who don't look like they crawled out of a cold, snake-infested hole and tried to brush the mud off of their teeth, but invariably they turn out to have originated far, far away from the ahem, burrows of London, and just fake an proper English accent for export... everyone presentable eventually drops the accent and admits to being Scottish or Irish. (Except for Emily from Islington, left, who's a dish.) There's a reason when Ridley Scott wanted a deformed bastard with half his face missing who could make Hannibal Lecter seem heroic by comparison, there was only one number to call: Gary Oldman.

Back to the gnome infestation, the more sensible critics note that neighbors tend to be a bit put out by the whole super-sub-basement plan, because for one thing, a four-story concrete block dug into the water table sends heavy rain flooding into everybody else's cellars, to say nothing of cutting off the water supply for the green spaces England is wisely trying to preserve. The two years of high pitched whining drills and clanking conveyor belts hauling out debris are also a nice way to bring a community together, and once this becomes a trend, those crews will become a permanent fixture for all London homeowners. As I understand it, this whole problem ultimately goes back to the impossibility of new construction coupled with an unwillingness to expand skywards... as it is the tallest building in the United Kingdom would fit comfortably in the second tier of the Minneapolis skyline. I know London doesn't have the same anxiety over the length of their metaphorical penis that many other cities do, because "We used to own India. Yeah, the one with f***ing elephants," still trumps building a tall building. (Nothing wrong with being a bit below average, Chicago... just don't hit the showers with Malaysia.)

So here's hoping Londoners discover the virtues of sunlight before they discover the delight of emerging from the darkness to dine on the beautiful... no wait, an Englishman already figured that one out, and planted it in the English subconscious. Damn you, H.G. Wells, you cannibal bastard.