Nonsense, Drivel, and Balderdash

More things I am learning... 2) Bold Contentment I have always been one that has lived a restless and unsatisfied existence. I am slowly learning how to retain my restlessness and get rid of my discontentment. It is hard to say exactly how, but slowly it is getting easier. One of the biggest things I have realized is that I am both at home everywhere and nowhere, therefore where I am really doesn't make as much difference as I first thought. Before I left gordon I was sure that coming back to Spain was the solution to the questions about my own identity and destiny. But the more I live and see the world I realize that I am equally unsatisfied in Spain as in Boston as in Oxford. Actually, perhaps I was more at home in Oxford than in either of the other places because I was fully a foreigner and not a quasi citizen. In a way, my place in the world is more defined than in either of my "home countries." This discovery has been quite liberating. To know that you will never be ...

A friend recently wrote a blog entry answering the question "what have you learned during ....." She then went on to talk about how she has developed during the last year in a certain situation (ambiguous I know, but its not my story to tell). It was a great bit of self reflection and meditation and it got me thinking about my own life and my current state of affairs. What have I learned this year? How have I grown? These are those typical job application questions that everyone seems to dread or that unleash angsty, self-centered tirades, yet nevertheless I think they are good to ask from time to time. We'll do this one in chunks though... 1) love for life. It is strange, one of the things that I have really started to pick up on is the way I really love life. I know that probably sounds strange to those of you who know me as the cynical ryan or whatever, but it is strange, I dont necessarily love the events in life or its multiple complexities, but I really get a kick o...

I added some blog links. If you dont want yours on there then tell me.

Today, in one of my classes, a student was trying to remember how to say "magic carpet" and ended up saying that he would like to fly on a "magic carpenter." Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of was Jesus when he said "magic carpenter"? For some reason I stared trying to figure out what that would be like and the first thing that came to mind was someone surfing on jesus. But then I began to think about the nature of a carpet. I think most people would differentiate a rug from a carpet in that a carpet covers the whole floor (I found a definition that said "Carpet is a textile floor covering that is distinguished from the more general term "rug" by being fixed to the floor surface and extending wall to wall"). A rug generally does not cover an entire room, though it may cover a substantial part of it. So with that in mind lets consider the following "magic carpets": Here is the world's most famous magic carpet. It...

Before the inimitable Peter Sellers died, he had stipulated that he wanted his funeral to be a certain way. There were some little details that he wanted to go a certain way. Being the comic genius that he was, he requested that Glen Miller's In the Mood be played at the ceremony. He chose that song because he thought that it was the most irreverent funeral song that he could possibly come up with. Imagine the scene, a bunch of people trying to mourn while the band picks up and starts swinging'. I love it. However, I think I could come up with a couple doozies of my own. Of course, Bicycle Race would be quite good, but any of Queen's vaudevillian songs would be ideal. I think Seaside Rendezvous (from Queen's Night at the Opera would be a great pre-sermon song for the memorial service. It all depends on how I die as well. Car crash? Then how about Paradise by the dashboard light by Meatloaf. Gunshot wound? Shot through the heart by Jon Bon Jovi. Cardiac arrest, t...

Do you know what it means to pee your pants with glee. Ryan does. Ryan has changed his pants 7 times since he found out just how good the line up for the Primavera Sound music festival is this year. Yes. He is going. He HAS TO: (in bold are the groups I am particularly happy about) 6PM » Girl Talk » Nathan Fake » The Apples In Stereo » Girls Against Boys » Oakley Hall » Architecture In Helsinki » Grizzly Bear » Oliver Huntemann » Band Of Horses » Grupo De Expertos Solynieve » Patti Smith » Barry Adamson » Hell » Pelican » Billy Bragg » Herman Düne » Play Paul » Black Mountain » Isis » The Rakes » Blonde Redhead » Ivan Smagghe » Reinhard Voigt » Bola » Jonathan Richman » Robyn Hitchcock And The Venus 3 » Bonde Do Role » Justice » Shannon Wright » Brightblack Morning Light » Kid Koala » Slint » Built To Spill » Kimya Dawson » Smashing Pumpkins » Buzzcocks » Klaxons » Sonic Youth » Comets On Fire » Lisabö » Spank Rock » David Carretta » The Long Blondes » Spiritualized acoustic mainline...

In Europe we love to put our neighbors into little boxes. We enjoy compartmentalizing and analyzing and stereotyping and labeling. The english are pasty and disheveled, the germans are stiff and overbearing, the dutch are stingy relativists, the swedes are naked, the italians are sex fiends, the french are aloof and pretentious, the irish aren't sober... the lists go on and on. And spain? Well, in spain we are proud and arrogant apparently. However, I am starting to believe that there is something to the claim the more I study language. You can learn a lot from a language: The way gender and society have interact, the way social trends and economic values have shaped expression, but most of all you really get a feeling for the values and attitudes of a culture through its language. I saw that once again today as I tried to teach my students the meaning of the word Humility and its derivatives. Now, in spanish we have the word Humildad (which means Humility ) and the word Humillaci...

check out these videos of this savant. He sees numbers as colours, memorized all the known digits of pi, he learned friggin icelandic in a week!!! It blows my mind and makes me feel ripped off. The capabilities of the human mind are astouding. Madness

A couple of weeks ago I got a message from Charli. Now, most of you dont know charli, but you wish you did. He is one of the kids that I taught english to in the English camp last summer. Now, receiving a message from him isn't really a cause for a blog post, as I receive messages from several of my students from time to time (no death threats surprisingly). But in this case Charli told me that his family was coming to madrid and that he wanted to meet up. I was a bit surprised because we had talked about it a couple times in passing like one of those things that you simply say to be polite or something. But I was happy to hear he was coming and amused with the very thought of meeting up with him. You see, he comes from a small spanish town of about 8000 people and you can totally tell when you talk to him. Anyway, yesterday we met up. I waited for him next to the cathedral (which his parents were going to see). I wondered if it would be weird to talk to him in spanish. At camp las...

Last night I had, yet another, random dream. I was back at Gordon College (I think) and was hanging out with some friends when we noticed that there was a group of children playing soccer on the grass. It is always amusing to watch 6 year olds playing football because they look so strange kicking a ball that is almost as big as them. For some reason the ball ended up rolling over to us and I kicked it around a little bit and started messing with the kids. You can still remember how it was when this sort of thing used to happen to you; the adult running circles around you with no effort, pulling the ball away right when you think you have it, kicking a goal just above your head where you are too short to reach it... that is what I was doing. Apparently it was hilarious because a crowd started forming around us. Most of the people half feeling sorry for the kids and half hoping I would foul one or two of them. But anyway, somehow the more people watched the more pressure there was to act...