hehe

My punctuation generally comes off the faster I go, like post-it notes on a sportscar. --Ben Hollingum

cheap thunder effects

After an all-too-brief trial period of warm, clear weather, Kent decided to click "Cancel" when prompted to pay for the full subscription. The depressing haze has returned, and the constant sky-dribbling along with it. Yesterday was dominated by this--a slow, constant "bleh, you are now wet" noncommittal sort of rain. It couldn't be bothered to stop or get harder and more interesting, so it just kinda spat everywhere in that typical English way. See, England is famous for its tupperware-grey sky and the nagging rain that keeps the grass steamed-broccoli green. That's part of the reason Brits feel like leftovers; that and their little empire being knocked out from under them to make room for American global dominance. (Don't let them fool you--they still resent losing us.) The UK is not known for its extreme weather in the slightest, so when the dull dripping yesterday was suddenly punctuated by a brilliant flash and a clap of thunder like artillery fire, quite a few dove for cover. Those indoors opened their doors and windows and searched the sky--for spitfires, horsemen of the Apocalypse, or both. I must admit that a "holy shit" escaped even my lips, though this bit of atmospheric percussion wouldn't hold a candle to the drum-and-light shows put on by southern skies. In fact, this particular peal of thunder sounded somehow fuzzy and distorted, like a bass line played overloudly through cheap speakers. This repeated twice, quieter and further away, then ceased. I doubt we'll be hearing from the thunder again anytime soon after that embarrassing and disheartening performance.

Biscuits: The Greatness Of. Discuss.

Few people are capable of appreciating both the British and Southern biscuit equally. I, luckily, am one. The thin, crispy dunk-in-tea-ishness of the British biscuit and the hot, steamy buttery flakiness of an American stand side-by-side in my personal Snack Hall of Fame. Similarly, hot tea with milk and sugar bears different qualities from sweet, light iced tea, but it is difficult to decide which I prefer. Thin, flat biscuits are ideal for dunking in hot tea, but a big fluffy biscuit goes excellently in a meal with iced tea at any time of day. What we have established here is a direct correlation. If the biscuit is cold, the tea should not be, but if the biscuit is hot...well, actually, it goes with either hot or cold tea. Or coffee. or coca-cola or milk or even kool-aid. Similarly, British men correlate well with British culture, and American men with American culture--both have their perks, and both suit their specific circumstances. But where an American man is generally less desirable in Britain--they're useless for helping to understand culture, they're loud and boistrous where most people here are quiet outside of pubs, and they'll never admit that perhaps their culture and political stance are not the only "right" ones in the universe--a British man can be quite palatable in America. They're certainly something to brag about to your friends and enemies. T o have an English boy on your arm in Bum-Fuck USA--unless his mouth contains a gnarled mass of greenish tooth-like material--is to have a glittering, smooth-talking trophy. It is unfortunate that this is rarely the case for English women, but they've really asked for it by being one of the ugliest races of female on the planet. It amazes and astonishes me that British people can bring themselves to reproduce, though I guess some poor souls get desperate enough that they'll even go for sheep. Not that the typical boy here is much to look at either, but unless he's a serious cockney or chav his voice will redeem him to you and your peers. (one must search for the atypical here to find a male counterpart who is not only audibly but physically attractive. If he's also intelligent, interesting, and attracted to you, be sure to bring a net to your next dinner party--you've found a serious diamond in the rough) For some reason, the female version of the British dialect involves an unholy cacophony of shrieked and brayed curse words followed by evil cackling and incomprehensible shouting (frequently at 4 in the morning). It is inadvisable to bring one such demon-posessed donkey into the States as it will probably be confiscated at customs as a "contaminated and possibly dangerous foreign plant or animal." The male ones can Get through the gate, though, and once Your bags are in hand and you've gotten your Passport stamped, you can start impressing your neighbours. I'm not sure if the same can be said for American women in Britain, but i've been rather successful with only my mediocre looks and my watery SC accent to compete with the local Quasimodo-ettes for attention. I guess my point is...i don't have a point.

On Big Movie Stars

I never gave much of a thought to Ewan McGregor until today, but today I saw Guys and Dolls at the Piccadilly Theatre in London's West End. And I gotta say. Wow. That's one fine piece of man. He sings and dances and looks good doing it too.

Dover

castles are seriously cool. Especially ones built on a big cliffs. Big White Cliffs. of Dover.


(i took this picture 19 May 2005)

in other news, one of my housemates plays loud rap. i closed his door in hopes that it would grow quieter. he bitched at me, not because i wanted things quieter, but because I touched his door without asking. i think he's a twat.

pointless babbling

if something requires thought and/or energy and/or talent but is completely without function or use, i have decided it shall be called "Art." anything that is presented as art but does not require thought, energy, and/or talent can be disregarded as "crap."

germs

why is it that if you keep your house fairly clean and wash your hands after you go to the toilet you're more likely to get sick than people who never have? i swear i have the weakest gastric system ever. i just can't take the germs when i eat at a greasy spoon or a kebab shop (not that i've done that since i learned my lesson last term). seems that kids who grow up eating bugs and sneaking handfuls of dog food either die really young or grow up to have kevlar stomachs. i don't have any food allergies or diseases, so i think this must count as some sort of disability handling the strains of everyday life. or maybe just red meat.

phew!

i've just been travelling my little tail off this month--i spent an inordinate and unfair amount of time in paradise (Cassis, France) and putzing around London and Paris. generally had a good time, but it wasn't all fun and games--i had to go with my parents. its amazing how quickly and effectively a uni student is capable of blocking out all knowledge of having parents (besides being that distant and little-heard from ATM) but when one is forced to be in their express company for no less than two weeks one would swear that they'd developed a nervous tic. I had about four full-on migraines surrounded by a constant headache for the entire trip--though that may have been my body trying to adjust to the incredible food and clean air, i'm not sure. believe it or not, i slept in 2 fold-out beds that were much more comfortable than my school one. i'd never encountered a camp bed that was actually sleepable before this trip, but france showed me. neato. anyway. we had a nice time and i encourage everyone to get a passport and visit Cassis. you will be amazed by the water.

Reduced Shakespeare

The Reduced Shakespeare Company's show The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is very, very funny. If you've ever been forced to read ol' Billy in school you should appreciate it. It's under two hours long and the humour runs in a similar vein to most renaissance festival comedy shows, if you've had the pleasure to experience those. though the performers in this show definitly had more classical training, if their swordsmanship was not as finely developed as some i've seen.

I also had the pleasure to see The Mousetrap this weekend--good show, well written, though the actress playing the guest house owner was horrendous. Everyone else was good, particularly the flamboyant homosexual and the disappointed guest. A well-played whodunit, with enough laughs and scary moments that it doesn't drag or become tedious, though it also keeps you on your toes trying to figure out from context who the killer is. Oddly, it's not something the audience can figure out and is instead a startling revelation at the end. I thought Agatha Christie was more of a clue-dropper, but it was a good show regardless.

frickin' art

Maybe its just my cold, heartless, unenlightened interior showing through, but something the world would be better off without is post-modernist art. Drama has some entertainment value, as do music and even dance to an extent, but nothing positive can be said for red, black, and gray paint poorly rolled onto a cheap canvas and named "Exposed Painting Scheveningen Black Cadmium Red Deep" that has been purchased by a gallery and put on display. I'm sorry, but the gallery owner has been played the fool. That "artist" had no talent, expressed no emotion, and has succeeded only in laughing his socks off while pretentious dipshits look at his poorly painted wall covering and exclaim "i really see what the artist feels here" or "so true, so true." So much of what is passed off as "Art" today is simply useless, meaningless crap. If someone does submit something to a gallery that could possibly mean something or that requires skill or at least effort to produce, it'd be hard to find in the sea of bullshit that most people are submitting so they can eat rather than packing up their ego and getting a real job. Though the idiots wandering around babbling "oh yes, i see what the artist is saying here" even though they obviously don't ('cos the artist is actually saying "i have put color on a piece of paper. give me money") are just as bad as "artists" if not worse. They can belittle you for laughing at something poorly drawn (for any longtime reader, we're talking about shit that makes the grossly disproportionate doodles inside Canterbury Cathedral look like da Vinci's) just by saying "you just don't understand. You're not one of the elite who can appreciate True Art." Well honey, if the Elite consists of people like you who choose to delude themselves into thinking they've got some higher universal understanding, i sure as hell don't want to join. All "artistic" means is "functionless." Anyone who shares this belief would do well not to visit London's Tate Modern or the Whitechapel Gallery--it'll only serve to piss you off.

Pallid and Unhealthy

If there's one life-choice i absolutely cannot stand, its veganism. Go ahead and be vegetarian if you want--plenty of people are very happy not eating steak--but you've got to draw the line somewhere to define the difference between being a picky eater and being in denial about having an eating disorder. Being vegan is not healthy. You have to replace all sorts of vital vitamins, fatty acids, proteins, and loads of other things the hard way--with pills and gelatenous tofu-based products--just to stay alive. Just admit it, vegans--YOU HAVE AN EATING DISORDER. I just read through a list of candidates for PETA's "Sexiest Vegetarian Alive" contest and though most of the vegetarians looked somewhat healthy, the vegans literally had to tint their photos so their weird green skin didn't show up. Without taking proper vitamins vegans' hair and teeth fall out, their skin flakes off, their eyes lose lustre, parts of their digestive system break down, they lose muscle tone and flexibility, and they essentially waste away like an anorexic. These are not physically healthy individuals, and as they do this to themselves willingly, we may infer that they are not mentally healthy. If you or someone you love is vegan, I urge you to seek assistance from a dietitian or psychologist to help you realize that you're an omnivore and its okay for you to eat meat. (my mom's best friend is a dietitian, now a major in the Air Force, and she eats and encourages her family to eat meat.)
Recently in the UK several parents have been convicted of child abuse for raising their kids vegan. All of the children in question were malnourished even though they ate the same quantities of filth as their parents. Children especially need calcium and protein and even cholesterol and fat that you're not going to find without some form of meat in their diet. I hope their mothers at least thought to breastfeed. "No! I can't! Breastmilk comes from me and I'm an animal, so i must be being cruel to myself!"
My policy has always been "If a tiger would feel no qualms about eating me, why should I feel bad about eating it?" (except that I've heard tiger meat is pretty tough. But the tiger and I could happily share a cow.)
At the beginning of high school I went through about a year of vegetarianism because i realized that chicken legs look pretty disgusting before they're cooked. Now, though I still think chicken legs are pretty gross, I've realized that I don't have to eat them but can still find a rare filet mignon scrumptious.

frickin' snow

It has been snowing all day today in Canterbury. So far that makes the third snow in three weeks, though when it snowed on Monday it melted the following night. But now its back in full force--somewhere around 4 inches, and town is closed down. Interestingly, there's a spot on campus where you can usually look out and see all of town and the surrounding valley (the cathedral in particular looks neat from this vantage point) and as of today all of it was completely erased from the map. No light, no outline of a building--it was a uniformly gray mass from campus. Looked....odd.

Bill Bailey

3 blind mice go into a bar. but deriving any humour from the fact that they were unaware of their surroudings would be exploitative.

-for the pupose of remembering the joke.

fighting chickens

so i submitted my column on schedule to the Viewpoints editor. he made his mark and sent it to a copy editor, who also made his mark and sent it on to the editor-in-chief, who looked at it and sent it to the online editor, who apparantly lost it. what an efficient system.

it's been snowing for three days straight. its pretty but its getting slushy. i'm running out of dry trousers. may have to go naked. pity.

Cold Heretics

Gamecock article for 2/22/05. I wrote it in about an hour after having to spend two hours hiking around Canterbury to find a cap gun for a monologue (i had to go into literally 8 different shops before i found one that was suitable and reasonably priced) but i actually impressed myself with my writing capacity--to write 600 words off the top of my head in an hour and have it sound okay and fall into a fairly recognizable essay- or article-format maybe doesn't take skills, but it does take a world of patience. Look for it in all its edited glory tomorrow on www.dailygamecock.com .

Its snowing outside, and rather than bundle up and go down to the pub to stay warm I thought I might examine a couple of entities that England, for whatever reason, doesn't have. I've been in Canterbury for about 5 months now and have gotten to know most of the ropes of this area (besides the whole driving thing) so I think I can mention a bit more than the usual “they don't have American accents” and “nobody has SUV's because they don't fit on the narrow roads“ etc.

For instance, most folks here don't have religion. Whether they're atheistic or simply apathetic, church just doesn't come into play much here. Churches are tourist attractions and are usually full of beautiful tombs and relics of old, but the actual number of people who attend services could barely fill a pew. The clout Christianity has in American legal matters is often equated to religious policy in Islamic nations by the English, so they have a hard time judging just who are the fanatics. The new constitution being written for the EU omits religion completely and, aside from irritated comments by a few Catholic groups in Poland, everyone is pretty comfortable with it. If you are religious here no one is going to hassle you, but they may smirk about it behind your back. Secularism is just the only policy that all the different countries and cultures in the EU can agree on. Better to have no religion at all than pick one and fight over which it should be. It also prevents varying religious motivations for criminal actions (like jihads, crusades, and ethnic cleansing) from letting murderers and invaders evade punishment.

Another thing the English don't have is the diet craze. When news of the Atkins Diet came to England most everyone had a good chuckle and went back to their daily lives. They love carbohydrates here. My favourite food on this continent is, hands down, the Pasty (with an “a” sound like “agriculture”, not “Cambridge”) which is a wonderful beef-and-potato stew in a thick, crusty pastry. One goes great with a pint of lager. Pie, also, is not just a dessert food. Mince pie is lovely, along with Cottage, Shepherd's, and varying Potato pies--all of them full of fat and calories. The English generally don't count carbs, you can feel comfortable eating a candy bar in public without fending off remarks about “500 calories in one sitting” and the number of Kent students who use the gym fails to justify its existence. But most people here aren't obese, though a good percentage of girls are pleasantly pneumatic. It's a good look, to have curves. Most young people here don't have cars so they walk a lot, so by their very lifestyles they stay healthy.

Unfortunately, a third thing they don't have here is sunlight. I've never been so pasty (with an “a” sound like “pain” not “amicable”) as I am since I moved over here. It doesn't help that it's chilly most of the time so you have to wrap up in coats and scarves. Interestingly, because it is chilly most of the time, the coat and scarf have become leading fashion accessories here, unlike South Carolina's winter-wear look of “I had to dig for this in the back of the closet for our one cold day of the year.”

So I guess the English are a bunch of cold heretics, but at least they're fat, happy, cold heretics. Personally, I find them to be excellent hosts, and I almost, but not quite, fit in seamlessly.

Ugh, Children

Last night I witnessed a brawl from my bedroom window. While there was nothing particularly interesting about the fighting itself, I must say I was alarmed and disappointed as to how it was handled. Besides being allowed to run on far too long at far too late an hour--i'm sorry, but ridiculous noise in a small housing court is unacceptable under any non-emergency circumstances at 4 am on a Tuesday--the measures taken by security to end this problem were dangerously insufficient to say the least.

The young man who was at the heart of the fighting, a skinny little rat of a kid who lives next door to me, was dangerous. He drove the heads of several kids into walls, used lighters to threaten and burn folks, kicked at least one male in the groin repeatedly, and continued hitting another chav around the head long after security had arrived and tried to settle things. He even audibly threatened the guards themselves. The kid was obviously angry and irrational, possibly just under the influence of alcohol but chances are on something a bit stronger, and was a threat to anyone within fifty feet of the court. Yet the security guards, after having asked the kids to return to their houses, simply left. They may have taken names but so what?

Kent University policy states that if you have a problem with your neighbors making noise, you should call them up and politely ask them to quiet down one or two times before calling security. You do not call the city police but let security call them if it comes to it. However, had I called next door and asked them politely to hush, chances are one of those nutjobs would have come over, thrown a rock through the window, climbed in, picked up a shard of the busted glass and stabbed me through the throat with it. The security guards did not actually approach the boy who was trying to crack skulls but let the other students try to restrain him. I'm sorry, but that's unacceptable.

A proper handling of someone who is persistently violent (this went on for over two hours, and security had to come over twice) requires calling the real police, having the asshole wrestled to the ground, kicked around a little, handcuffed, and dropped in a squad car to be taken to the station. Once there it is only proper to test the kid for illegal drug use, lock him up overnight, and make his mother come down from London to bail him out in the morning. Within a week the university would have him at least evicted if not expelled, and things would settle down again.

However, it looks like the kid may be getting off scot-free for this infraction. I can hear just about every word said through the walls of my house and at no point did i hear the boy being reprimanded, ticketed, or taken away. I'm sorry, but i think they're being a little too trusting. I don't care what they have to do to him so long as I can feel safe walking to my front door after the sun goes down (i.e. after 5 pm). With my current neighbor, however, i don't. I will be speaking to the reception desk for my housing development and informing them that unless they take measures to improve their security policy, i will be telling USC's study abroad office that I feel threatened. You better believe they'll talk and Kent could lose school participation and a good deal of money.

I don't want to see that happen--I like this school and Canterbury is a beautiful place to study--so I sincerely hope that something is being done about this and I won't encounter this sort of behaviour again.

Gamecock article

This gamecock article started with good intentions but began to wander and ramble near the end. Oh well--i had fun writing it. And since my editor seems to be flatly refusing to put me in print, my internet-published articles can be as lousy as i want, as i know nobody but my mother is going to read them. (Yay mom!) Anyway, I entitled it "Not So Different" but if you look at it on the 10th of February on www.dailygamecock.com, chances are you'll find that the published version is Quite Different from the draft I'm putting here. (They usually are, anyway.)


In going about my life in Canterbury, UK it has gradually dawned on me that, like it or not, there is not a whole lot of difference between Brits and Americans. Sure the English culture is older and has the written history and crumbling buildings to prove it, but the age of the country has little to do with the sophistication of its people. Though we may go about achieving our goals differently, in the end we generally wind up in the same place.
For instance, Brits like to pick fights with me over gun laws. They claim that England is a lot safer than America because they don't have guns. The number of Brits that are shot every year is low even in the seediest parts of London, but what they try to hide is the fact that stabbing crime is as high as ever and spreading to schoolchildren. It's because human beings are going to find means of killing one another no matter what. If they ban knives the number of people who are brained with big sticks will rise proportionally. Its just the government's cruel experiment in natural selection. At least guns level the playing field.
Another embarrassment that America and England share is the trophy wife. As much as Europeans blather on about being progressive, you cannot deny that almost every rugby, football, and even cricket player has some svelte, blonde, brainless piece of arm-jewelry waiting for him when he comes off the pitch. The girls generally have job titles like “aspiring model” or “freelance karaoke singer.” As long as they're happy, I'm not going to nit-pick. It's just that English folk seem to enjoy chastising Americans for objectifying our women. Pot, meet kettle. At least our girls dress like it's 2005, not 1992. The shoes in this country are ugly enough to replace syrup of ipecac for expelling harmful substances from the body.
Seriously, I've got to hand it to SC girls. We value comfort over style on our way to 8:00 lectures. I went to class in my pajamas once here and received scornful looks from every pointy-toed, dolled-up female who crossed my path. I almost pity the ladies here, trying so hard to look nice so that they can be upset when boys don't notice.
One would assume that they would learn before university age how male/female interaction works, but you must be patient with the English. It's not that they mature slower here, just later. Many grade schools here are same-sex and the first time boys and girls come into contact is university. The only reason I can find that they're able to grow up while they're still young enough to start families is a low drinking age.
The University of Kent has 9 bars on campus, run by the school. The drink is cheap and plentiful, the lights are kept low, and the music is loud enough to drown out your inhibitions. I'm pretty sure the function of these watering holes is to bring the students up to speed in social interaction and dating. It's a need-based drinking age. So while American kids spend the better part of a decade fretting over our inadequate bodies and drooling over that cute boy in the third row, Brits are undisturbed by teen angst as they dress in their smart little uniforms and focus on their schoolwork. We take the long road, they take the dull road, but we all wind up in the same place--hung over in some stranger's bed, searching for our underwear.


This column seems short somehow. Maybe i've just gotten used to writing 5,000 word essays full of bullshit and waffles for grades here, but i know i couldn't say all i wanted to and fit in the 600-word limit. Pity--i didn't have the heart to cut anything but i wanted to put in some sort of conclusion. Oh well.

turning evil

Its finally happened. I guessed this day would come someday--i couldn't hold it off forever. I've grown comfortable enough in my surroundings that i have allowed my bitter, cruel, backbiting and generally unpleasant interior to show through. I usually don't notice i've started acting that way until i look around and notice i have no friends. I am no stranger to this passive course of alienation but i really thought i'd grown out of it. I guess it shows that you can take me out of my nasty world but you can't take the nasty out of me. This is not an American thing, nor a woman thing, and it has nothing to do with my company or surroundings. It's just me, and I'm not nice.

culture clash

There are a few things that i can honestly say are strikingly different between the US and the UK, for better or for worse. This is by no means a complete list of differences--or even a complete list of things that i've noticed--but it may act as a springboard for other people to comment on other things they've noticed and ways they've overcome adversity in their lifestyle. by all means, add to the list, contradict it, tell me i'm wrong...go for it.

In the US it is cool that:
DUI is illegal (not saying that it isn't in the UK but nobody really seems to care)
guns are legal
mace/pepper spray is legal
(both comments are in reference to self defense. i do not feel that my safety is a concern here.)
roads are wide
cars are large and can seat several people comfortably
(in the south) the weather is reliably good, but don't try to reason with hurricane season
food is cheap
technology is comparatively inexpensive
fuel is comparatively inexpensive
southern-style biscuits and sweet tea exist and are consumed
education is well-rounded


In the US it is uncool that:
the government encourages us to be terrified of Arabic people
our economy is unstable
religion is politics
the Christians! the Christians!
our government's policy makes us very unpopular with the rest of the globe
popular music comes from a can and is seriously lousy (like canned potato soup after you've had your mom's made-from-scratch kind)
stupid adults are allowed to vote
we invented the "reality show" (i do so detest oxymorons)
there is not enough tea
there are not enough biscuits
it is bereft of pasties

In the UK it is cool that:
we're where the history comes from
you can drink alcohol at the same age that your country can tell you to go die
when you're an adult, you're an adult
they really don't care about marijuana use
the musicians in the tube are talented
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
if there isn't a train between you and where you need to go, it means its within walking distance
the people are generally pneumatic, but not over-fat or over-skinny
lifestyle is generally healthier, except when the air over London is brown
the popular music, besides the American crap (that gets shipped in in 50-gallon drums) is generally fun
there is less plastic food

In the UK it is uncool that:
guns are illegal except in agricultural settings
its illegal to defend yourself from attack unless you kill your assailant and say the weapon was theirs
you have to pay to get into churches (over-secularization means nobody really goes to church anymore, so they can charge you for going in and looking at pretty architecture)
bars close at 11
beer is expensive
the bums make you feel guilty for not giving them free money
the boys are, in general, hideous. ('cept mine)
the driving situations are downright scary, and the drivers themselves are worse
the media is obsessed with hating the US to the extent that all other news is secondary
money is expensive

My Personal Drink

I would like to share with the world a drink which I believe I invented personally. I would appreciate it if no one claimed this drink as their own by merely copying my recipe as I worked hard on it and would like to get credit for it. As it is, Flamingo's Bar and Grill on Carowinds Boulevard, Fort Mill, SC has already encountered--and fallen in love with--this drink, so I think it's time to share it with other people now, too. Share and enjoy.

Jamaican Nutcase
shake over ice, strain into rocks glass.
1.5oz. Frangelico
1.0oz. golden or dark Rum
.75oz. Kahlua
2.0oz. Half and Half