Nonsense, Drivel, and Balderdash

I had arrived in Ireland an had spent and hour finding my way into Dublin. It was dark out and the streets were wet. Eire is generally always wet. But it made the streets pretty when the orange lamplight reflected off the brick and concrete. I followed my friend's instructions to get to her house. "Take the bus from the airport to O'Connell street and switch to the 121 and go to Ardee street." I had followed the instructions successfully and was then waiting alone on some empty back street. I waited 15 minutes. She didn't show up. Was I supposed to call her? I think so. Loaded down with my backpack, I walked up and down the street, looking down alleyways trying to find a public phone. It was beginning to look impossible, but I kept walking. I saw some small children playing outside with some toy guns and an abandoned mattress. Kids only play in the dark if the neighborhood is either a very safe one or or if they havent seen their parents in a couple of weeks. The ...

I was standing in line at the supermarket today, buying a prepackaged sandwich and a bottle of tonic water. The Indian cashier deftly swiped people's items under the bar scanner and counted out the change for the customers. "Do you have a Tesco's membership card" he would ask, in a voice that was dutiful but that had tinges of tiredness. I didn't have a card. I had one for the local supermarkets in Boston, but they actually worked to make things cheaper. The ones here just give you coupons. But somewhere between his question and me reaching for my wallet it hit me. I couldn't remember then name of the supermaket in Beverly that I always used to go to. I stood there, staring in space at the horror of the realization that I could not remember a place that I had interacted with for 3 years. The same place that was filled with memories of times that I had gone there with friends, preparing for parties or meals or just having conversations with apartment mates as w...

This past week has been one of the most academically intense ones I have had in a long time. In actuality it has been the most intense since the first week at Oxford. The first week was actually fairly easy going compared to the rest of the semester, for every week after the first had more work. My usual workload consisted of 3 research papers every 2 weeks. I do not use the term 'research paper' lightly here. These are not the typical 4 page projects that are meant to synthesize a book or a couple of articles. These are the kind of papers that you spend all all week in the library, from opening time to closing time, trying your best to read through the 800 pages of obscure scholarly journals, historical backgrounds, commentaries and of course the primary texts per paper. A lot of it is extremely slow and thick reading, the kind that I will read a couple of pages of and suddenly realize that I have no idea what the author is talking about (curse you Terry Eagleton!!). Of course...

I just got an email about how animal rights activists are protesting in Oxford and how we should avoid the area where they will be protesting because it is common for the protests to end up in violent clashes with the police. What caught my attention was that our tutor mentioned the fact that the riot police use a lot of mounted cops and K9 units. I didn't think much of it because both security measures are common at riots or protests, but then I read that they use a greater amount of them than normal because the animal rights protesters will not fight against or harm the horses or dogs or any other animals that are used against them. I my mind I could picture a protester throwing Molotov cocktails and punching a cop and then getting jumped by a German Shepard. Trying to both run away and confront the dog with words, the protester calls out desperately to the animal as he is pulled down by another k9 eager to get a piece. Curled up in a ball he calls out to the dogs that he is thei...

Well, this year thanksgiving was not spent with a family of any sort. While friday some of us american students made some food, this year, the last thursday of november was spent turkeyless. I was resigned to spend the evening alone, thankless, and in the library researching classical rhetoric or some other nonsense when my friend Kate called and said that it wasnt right to be cooped up, without food or drink or merryment of any sort on thanksgiving night. Looking around me at the pasty faced nerds that were with me in the library at 9 PM, I realized that indeed I needed to get out of that scurvy place. So I packed up my books and headed outdoors, where the blistering british wind buffetted my body like the abusive parent I never had. After introducing the wind to the social services that was my scarf I headed over to the Kings Arms pub to meet up with Kate. There are quite a few Kings Arms pubs in England. No, they are not franchised, they all just have the same name. The name comes f...

The new Sigur Ros draws mixed feelings from me. In many ways it is like Woody Allen's later movies, they are still better than 99% of what Hollywood spits out, but compared to some of his older ones they just don't cut it. Yet perhaps that is a bit harsh. This is a very good CD. Very good. Sigur Ros does what it does best by capturing pieces of rising and falling emotion, minimalistic sounds and epic, orchestral swells. Otherworldly vocals move over fantastic musical arrangements.... But something is missing. Each track in itself is complete and whole, perfect. Yet the album as a whole does not have that same flow as () or Agaetis Byjurn . The latter of the two previous albums creates an intangible and indescribable mood, a flow, a musical emotion that starts of whimsically and progresses with bombastic enthusiasm only to finally settle down into a drowsy sleep, protesting out of principle yet not putting up a fight as it smiles into its finish. () is another kind of mood alt...

So I'm sitting in the library, when suddenly I think my time has come. The smell of burning sulfur fills the air, smoke obscures my senses and I am sure that ye ole devil is going to appear at any moment to eat my soul. But he didn't. I just sat there, confused and sniffing smoke. "From whence cometh this foul stench?" I wondered to myself (most of my reflexive questions are in archaic English). That is when I stopped looking around me and simply looked down at the desk where I was sitting. Smoke sizzled up from the back part of my computer. "This looketh like trouble, methinks." Turning the computer around I was relieved to find that it was not the computer itself, but the power cord. The cord in question has seen some abuse in its lifetime, and this older design has been known to break easily. So I unplugged the infernal cable and the hellfire stopped. But now I am left with a powerless computer. Alas, though it is off for now (I write from the library one...

A couple of nights ago I was dressed up in my tuxedo, waiting outside of Magdalene College's Theatre, in the dark, in the cold. I was in a line, yet I was not waiting for tickets or to get to my seat, I was waiting for my queue to walk in behind the rest of my jazz group. Yes, we had what I consider our first real concert (after a small gig for charity and a set we sang for a college banquet). We sang a total of 9 songs, mostly jazz standards and a couple jazzed up popular songs, which considering that we had only first met each other 4-5 weeks ago... is not half bad. Our show was only half good however, for we messed up bits and pieces and we were not tight. That was a shame really, because, as tends to happen in these things, we had sounded pretty good in various different rehearsals. But I know that time heals all wounds, and when that time goes towards extra practicing it heals the musical gashes that we have at this particular moment. It was still fun though. I am getting to ...

In her book, Women, Men and Language, Jennifer Coates points out that men and women have two different kinds of conversational styles. Women speak in a collaborative style while men speak in an adversarial one. This means that the speaker in a collaborative conversation is much more likely to switch back and forth in turns, with many more interruptions and intercalated comments delivered by various different members of the group. The “rule of one person-at-a-time does not apply,” it is a “jam session” of words where “the speakers co-construct utterances” and “that the speakers talk at the same time.” Men, on the other hand adhere to a adversarial method of speaking. This takes different shapes, such as the monologue and the verbal sparring. In the first method, one person holds the floor about a subject as if he had some expertise on the subject while others listen. These monologues are often brought on by direct questions seeking information, a kind of questioning that women tend to s...

I have recently had a strange idea. Do you know the movie Groundhog Day? In it, Bill Murray finds himself trapped in one recurring day, doomed to repeat the same day every morning when he wakes up until he gets it right. The other day I imagined that the same sort of thing happened to me, only in a different way. I wondered what it would be like if instead of a day I had to repeat my gordon years over again. 3 consecutive years played over and over again. What would I do differently, what risks would I take knowing that I could start over again once they were up or I were dead? I must say that I didnt really play it out as if it were a permanent thing or even such a lasting event as the one Bill Murray had to endure. Just give me a couple chances, 2 or 3 times, to go through Gordon again and try different things. Knowing what I know now, who would I not bother investing my time into and who would I try to get to know much earlier than I actually did? I mean, everyone has had people in ...

Since I've been here I've tried to take advantage of my environment as much as possible. And I mean this in the non academic way. During my free time I really do all the stereotypical things that people do here. I dont know if I am doing them consciously or not either. I dont know if it is because they are things I would normally do or because I am merely here. There are some that I would do normally anyway, such as going to Pubs. I am amazed that more of the Gordonites here do not do it. Its not that they dont drink, there is one group that has wine with their meals, other people have a beer or something on poker nights, and of course you have your binge drinkers. But few go to the pubs. I understand that if you are a binge drinker looking to get smashed then the pub method isn't a financially feasible way of doing so. At first I thought that if you didnt like beer then you probably wouldnt go to pubs, but all the girls that do go with me usually get a glass of wine. So ...

This morning I woke up pretty impressed with myself. You see, last night I invented great things, in my dreams that is. It is one of those things that people rarely think of but that nonetheless is true: You are the one that comes up with everything you dream. So just think back upon your craziest, most original and outlandish dream and realize that it was your imagination that came up with the idea. Don't you feel sort of proud of yourself? The reason I was impressed with myself is that I invented a kind of food in my dream and then when I woke up I really wanted it. In my dream I went to the supermarket to get things for my flight and I was looking at the teddy grahams and I saw that they had a new kind. It was called "caramel snicker-doodle." In my dream I was surprised because I had never seen that kind before but was instantly interested (obviously, I mean, I came up with it!). But when I woke up I realized that it would be a very tasty flavor for teddy grahams that ...

I spent quite a while reading in the library today. Or so I would like to tell myself. I have had a love/hate relationship with the libraries here. The famous Bodleian library is off limits to the Gordon students during most of the day because of our affiliate student status. Our hours begin around dinnertime. During the past couple of weeks, many of us occupied our days in the Faculty Libraries (faculty being the British term for Department). I technically did not have access to it either, but they did not have anyone checking the doors, and I did not see anything saying I could not just go in and read without trying to check books out. Then the directors of the program found out and decided to damn our souls to the everlasting fires of hell for our unforgivable sin of not respecting bureaucracy. Today they told us that they had not realized that the rules had changed, and that "oh wait," we could indeed use those libraries as reference libraries. Go figure. So anyway, toda...

Life has the sweetest ironies ever.

It is nearly 3 in the morning and I just got back from the cinema. Ah, the late showings. Cheaper, and you can find movies that most places do not have. Besides, it was at the Phoenix film-house, which is a more independent cinema than the Odeon owned theaters here. I became a member the first week I was here. So far I have seen 3 movies there, two of them for free because I know the deals going on. So far I have seen: -Howls Moving Castle: A Miyasaki animated film. In the same whimsical style of his other movies. Not as dark as Mononoke nor as lighthearted as Spirited Away. In some ways it was that lack of definition that hurt it. Or maybe it was just because he didnt actually write this one. Do not get me wrong, it was still better than any other animated film to come out this year and better than most non animated ones. Miyasaki is such a master. It is a shame that many animated movies are dismissed as cartoons and assumed that they are meant for children. His stuff is universal, se...

These pictures are from a couple weeks ago. We went for a great walk to a pub for lunch. When kenny was here I took him to the same pub, and we walked the same paths. It is a great promenade and the pub is sweet. So here are some pictures. Here we are... and a cow... geez.. that was pretty self explanatory Nice, nice. Walking through a field... next to the Thames, much smaller here than in london. Ah, here we are sitting on a felled tree. A big one. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote "Binsey Poplars." In it, he was bummed because he used to walk the same walk as we did and would enjoy the trees. Then they cut them down in 1879 and replanted smaller ones (for safety reasons I guess). Ironically enough, this is one of the trees they planted in their place, now also cut down and replaced with young trees: felled 1879 My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, All felled, felled, are all felled; Of a fresh and following fo...

This has been a long time coming I think. My faith crisis has been going on for a couple of years now. Different stages have come and gone. This summer I wanted to give up on my search once and for all. I cannot give up without knowing that I have given it my best. The only way I know how to give it my best is the traditional way I suppose, bible reading, church, prayer. So I give myself until the end of the year to get things cleared up, or I am giving up for good. But I am going to give it my best. A year is a long time. If God wants me, here I am. My faith level is obviously at an all time low, but I want to believe. Hehe, "I want to believe"... I saw that on a poster with a UFO on it once. I am pretty miserable just being in the middle, so either hot or cold, I'm sick of lukewarm. So here it goes, the last hurrah. I know people worry about me, so here it goes: The skeptic's corner A second blog where I will post the problems I have with my search. I am not trying...

I recently received an intriguing email. It read as follows: Ryan, I hope things are going well at Oxford. Also, I hope you haven't been making any prank calls using my name. Take care, Barry Loy Dean of Students The pranking in question occurred over a year ago, some friends and I were in my apartment trying to have fun. But the x-box soon grew boring, and people had pilfered the kitchen as much as they were going to be able to (the girls mostly complained of the lack of foods not relating to the starch or meat varieties). Someone finally suggested the cliché yet funny idea of prank calls. It was late enough that we were more than ready to laugh at anything that happened to even be remotely funny, so the stage for a good set of pranking was set. None of us could do it without laughing except for the master of all that is hilarious, Wuske. We decided not to go with the traditional "Hello sir, I'm calling from CET, it seems that we have detected a large number of pornograph...

Has anyone ever had that experience where you put on a song or album that you once listened to intensely for a small period of time. If you havent listened to it since then the memories of that era suddenly come rushing back in an amazingly vivid way. That just happened to me with Citizen Cope, whom I listened to quite a bit towards the end of the summer. Suddenly I was sitting in my room in Bromley again. The smell of dank clothing and mulch filled my nostrils as I visualized the clothes I wore in grounds crew strewn across the carpeted floor. Funny, I even visualized a specific time, right between the time I got off from work and went to dinner. The sunlight gave it away. Then, of course, all the friends I made this summer came bursting into my memory as well. Each of them with their gifts and glorious imperfections that make each one of them so unique. Strange, I think with all the bustle of departure from campus, and the insanity of settling down in Oxford, I had not really stopped...

I am sitting in my lilliputian sized room, at what can scarcely be called a desk, in the ringing silence of my Oxford house. How was that for an opening line? Catchy? Have a... "ring"... to it? I caught the attention of the reader, by using the slightly esoteric word lilliputian, which would be a nice one for scrabble. We have a board here, but I have not played yet. Of course, my positive critique is sarcastic. It is a terrible line. For one thing, it is whiny, and I have nothing to whine about. Yes, my room is small, but I like it that way actually. I grew up with a small room and I think I am more at home in a manageable sized space. Also, the word "sized" is kind of redundant next to the adjective lilliputian, which already denotes size. Neither did I mention that the small space is mine and mine alone. No roommates or people to have to be considerate towards (not that I am very considerate anyway, just ask David). Yes, I am aware that I am writing in fragmented...