Nonsense, Drivel, and Balderdash

It is weird, I have been back in Madrid for half a year and I feel very much back in the swing of things here, and yet every now and then I get that feeling that I have been gone for 4 years. This morning I had a high school flashback. One of my students had to cut the class short so I left around 9 AM. Suddenly I felt like if I was walking to school again, going along some quiet madrilenian street with my backpack on my shoulders. The square tiled sidewalk was still wet from the morning dew between the cracks. The smell of a wet city was in my nostrils: water, dust, mud, grass, gasoline. I was chilly, like I used to be often in high school when I would under-dress for the mornings in order to not carry around a coat during the hotter afternoons. I found myself missing my friend Charles, who used to walk to school with me for 5 years. I was surprised by the sudden flashback. Like I said, I have been back here for quite some time now and I thought I was over my nostalgia. Then I realize...

As we speak (or write, I guess), I am a prisoner. And yes, if that would sound like a very angsty/emo introduction if I didn't mean it quite so literally. I Yes, it's true. I am stuck inside 4 walls and a roof, behind a locked door, and with no way to get out. My apartment-mates left for work this morning and, forgetting that I dont leave earlier than them on wednesdays, locked the door from the outside once they left. Unfortunately for me, my key won't open it from the inside once this happens. So I am stuck. I am supposed to go to work in an hour. I called one of the guys and he is coming to open up once he gets off of work, so maybe I will make it out on time. These things only really happen to people like me.

You know what annoys and confuses the heck out of me? Girls, but not just any girls (ok, most, but these in particular) but the girls who are always pulling at their pants/skirts. You know the ones I'm talking about. I see them on public transportation, in bars, and on the street all the time. The skirt wearing kind are usually seen with some sort of strip of material around their waist, either a skirt or a belt (its hard to tell these days). The thing that annoys me isnt even the length of the garment, rather the fact that they keep pulling it down as it rides up a little, trying to cover that precious one inch of flesh that I suppose they consider inappropriate. Then you have the pants wearing kind (trousers to our english readers). They have those tight, low riding, jeans that keep riding lower and lower as the night goes on, revealing more and more thong and other things. These girls spend all night trying to pull the back of their jeans up. So here is my annoyance: if you are ...

Congratulations Rachel, you have achieved immortality via my blog via the web. Via. I just figured some people deserve a little Ebert and Roeper styled "two thumbs up." So why is Rachel getting a tribute? Well, because she is a kick-ass friend, that's why. Here are a couple examples: - Sophomore year I was going through one of the darkest moments of my life. Bummed, depressed, confused and feeling very much alone. It was late one winter evening, I was sitting in my room, wishing I were dead already, trying to distract myself with a movie or something. Enter Rachel, stage right. "Ryan, you should probably go check out the kitchen." Sophomore year I was an R.A. (resident advisor). I was basically the guy on my dorm floor that was in charge of making sure that everyone was not planning on killing themselves, or breaking any serious rules. The kitchen, being a common area of the dorm, was every RA's responsibility. "Why?" I inquired, hoping that noth...

I walked past a large clothing store on my way home. They still have the giant "Sales" banners hanging in the storefront windows, advertising a January sale that has probably long become stale. So stale, in fact, that even the mannequins in the display had been stripped of their wares. Now, I dont know why, but I always find it extremely comical when I go past a giant display filled with bare mannequins. I dont know why, perhaps it is just the random change that the whole street gets with these nudie displays. The neighborhood is turned from a respectable place to a red light district tableau. Of course, the mannequins are in denial. They stand there awkwardly, trying to keep their composure while exposed and vulnerable. They seem as if they are pretending that they are still doing their job. Perhaps this is what strikes me as funny. Futility and denial are always a bit comical, and to see a whole store putting "The Emperor's New Clothes" on display always bring...

It's sunday night. Tomorrow morning I am up with the crack smoking dawn and I'm off to work. While this is normally depressing enough; on top of it all, my predicament from last week still remains. I am stuck with some shoes that have lost their interest in keeping my feet dry. Instead, they have this crazy obsession with one of two things: becoming sandals, or giving me some sort of foot disease. I don't get paid until thursday, therefore the shoes must remain on my feet for another 3-4 days until I can find replacements and have them fired. I had some pretty high hopes for them this weekend. I thought that perhaps luck would shine its face upon me by having the sun do the same thing. But lady luck is a whore. The sun shone brightly this weekend and now, the night before I have to work, the rain is coming down, covering the streets with water, soaking my shirts on the clothesline, and washing my 'hopes for a dry week' straight into the gutter. Though my attempts at...

I may wear a suit, but I only "seem" suave. It is all a clever ruse, an external appearance that I work for... well, work. Beneath the layers of fine wool and cotton lies the same slovenly t-shirt wearing kid who forgets to iron things and wears mismatching socks as long as they are in the same "color group." Gray with dark blue? Why not! Neither are in the "brights" group. My scraggly beard may seem like it was grown to give me a sense of maturity and experience, but it is not. I gave up on ties months ago and instead opt of the business casual look, which in my dictionary means anything in my closet with a dinner jacket on top. Too hot for a shirt? wear a t-shirt under the suit jacket. Too cold? wear a sweater under your jacket. Is everything else too dirty? Wear whatever is left under... you guessed it, the suit jacket. As the spanish idiom goes, Aunque el mono se vista de seda, mono se queda , literally translated: "even if the monkey is dressed u...

Sometimes your life takes a certain turn, or encounters a challenge or situation that makes you sit up in bed and exclaim "eureka!" in horror as you realize something about yourself that was always there but that you never faced before. A couple of weeks ago I realized that I have been sabotaging myself for years now. It is the kind of thing that people tell you but that you never fully assimilate, or that you do but with a touch of dramatic despair, "woe is me, my greatest enemy awaits inside me." But suddenly I realized it. It happened after a long discussion with someone about the way I was handling a situation and I realized that my attitude towards life, my fear of failure, and my preemptive strikes of pessimism were really keeping me from enjoying life and perhaps even succeeding in the areas that I was really passionate about. I automatically assume failure and therefore don't try to accomplish anything. I am terrified about finding out that I am actually...

9. Will we have superpowers in heaven? (Can we fly? Will our bodies be superior to the ones we have now? Will we have bodies at all?) --I like to think so. I mean, I dont know, and I doubt that we will be the holy troupe of x-men, but I mean a place with no death and pain must have superior products than the home grown earth stuff. 10. Will we have to go to the bathroom in heaven? Will we sleep? Eat? --I sure hope so, you just mentioned my 3 favorite daily activities. In fact, doing ONLY those things would be heaven to me as long as there is a good book by Gods toilet and some music during dinner. 11. Will we recognize people in the afterlife? --I think so, though our perception of ourselves and others will have changed so radically that our shallow emotional ties with each other will be shattered. It seems really sad from my perspective here, but I am just a shallow human being. 12. Are there rewards/punishments in the afterlife for what we’ve done during our lives? --Yeah dog, its sc...

One of the girls I went to Oxford with last year sent me this. She is a biblical studies Major and made this survey for some sort of religious beliefs study that she is doing at gordon and stuff. I figured it was interesting stuff to paste here. I'll do it in two posts 1. If you had to define your religious views (even if you don’t regularly), what would you say? (e.g. Jewish/“spiritual”/agnostic/atheist/pick-and-choose/Christian/etc) ***Umm... I guess christian, though I dont like the social overtones that the word has accumulated throughout history. Admirer and attempted follower of Christ, i guess. 2. Quick! Before you think any “deep”/philosophical thoughts! Word-associate! Write down whatever images or ideas come to mind after reading the following words, even if you don’t actually agree with those images/ideas. heaven: musical, puffy, shiny, extra orbital, light, weight off my shoulders, legally high, cosmic rave hell: bad, lonely, painful, tears, alone, required chapel gho...

I generally like Madrid's subway system, or "el Metro" as we call it here. There are some things that irritate me about it though, like its incessant expansion and repairs that seem to plague it of late. But there is one thing that goes farther than irritating me and that is the Metro televisions. I dont trust them. I never have. 5 years ago, they started installing flat screen tvs in all the major subway stations around the city; slowly they added them to the smaller ones as well. Now, it may be because of the undercurrent of paranoia that seems to flow through my subconcious, but the first thing that I thought when I saw the everpresent screens was the brainwashing potential of the metro television. Think about it, at any given time there are probably over 500,000 people watching the same channel, a channel they cannot switch or turn off. It used to not have any sound to it, merely with subtitles, but now they have speakers as well so you cannot simply turn away. The s...

I have had this blog for a couple of years now. It has changed form, heading, and style over time, but generally it has remained fairly constant. What has not remained constant has been my frequency of writing. There have been times when I have updated this puppy every single day for months on end, and other times that I have only written something every couple of weeks. Sometimes my writings have been more in the style of newsletters, sometimes the blog has served as a springboard to other areas of interest on the web, while other times my posts were outlets for angst or confusion, but usually falling somewhere in the middle. It has been interesting to see many of the people I began blogging with lose interest in their blogs and those of others. Perhaps our collective apathy has served to foster collective disenterest. Lately I have been guilty of the apathy. Strangely, the fact that I refer to it as "guilty" suggests that I have some moral obligation to keep this thing up a...

Another year has come and gone, and all around the globe people have been scrambling to put it into some sort of hierarchical perspective. What was the best about the year, what whas the worst, who landed somewhere in the middle ground of mediocrity... Everyone from Time magazine, to Popular Science has been dying to tell you all what or who was the best part of the year. Fortunately, I am here to set you straight. Lets start with movies shall we? Here they are, in reverse order. 8) Apocalypto 7) Squid and the Whale 6) Borat 5) The Descent 4) Little Miss Sunshine 3) Casino Royale 2) Sons of Men 1) Brick

I have mentioned before how dreams constantly impress me. By dream I mean what your brain does while your consciousness is involved in the physical act of sleeping... it blows my mind. I often am impressed about what people dream about, because they have actually come up with the whole thing. There are a lot of people who claim to be unoriginal or uncreative that then have crazy dreams on the side. Those dreams are not created by some sentient dream being who then hands out the plots and ideas randomly. Dreams are created by the actual person's mind. If you dream about a blender that can turn into a semi automatic machine gun, then you came up with that idea; your mind created it. My mind has recently been on an interesting dream spree. This week I dreamt that I was speaking with Brett Johnson's parents. I spoke with them for a long time in the dream. The thing is, I don't know his parents. In all honesty, I barely know Brett except that he was in the Gordon choir with me ...

And knowing is half the battle

My metabolism is slowing down. After years of having the metabolism of a rabid wolverine on a forty day fast, my body is finally saying "yo dude, if you eat that it will go straight to your hips." OK, not quite. My hips (as well as the rest of me) remain morbidly skinny, nevertheless I can tell that I am starting to get the normal body functions of a (*gasp*)... twentysomething. But yeah, I guess ye ole bod has decided to settle down with the psychological and lifestyle changes that have ushered me into the scary, responsibility filled, latte soaked, subway covered life of the modern working man. I have noticed other changes that lead me to believe that soon I will be buying a cane and investing in a nose hair trimmer. One tell-tale sign of my encroaching retirement is that the other day, whilst on public transportation -digression: I sometimes think that I have lived out most of my life on public transportation. I have had most of my major revelations with people pressed up ...

Life has been fairly even keeled lately. Slowly my life is turning into a routine of work and urban travel. Get up early, get on bus, go to work, get on subway, go to work, get on train, go to work, get on bus, come home, go to sleep, get up... The monotony of it all is mind numbing, but I am slowly getting used to it and learning to make other goals to keep myself entertained. I am a bit strange, I think most people that know me will concede that this is true. While some people would set long term goals for themselves, I tend to try smaller day to day ones to keep myself entertained. Sometimes I get up and decide that I will walk two bus stops down instead of getting the bus from the normal place. Or I see if I can get away with wearing tennis shoes with my suit, or I think 'today I will have tea and steak,' or go out a subway exit that I have never been out of, or any number of strange tiny changes that will make me view my repetitive life from a different angle. That is not ...

It is weird, all I could think about when they told me that Will died was "he should have gone to the game." You see, he had a ticket to a world cup game, a good World Cup game. For anyone that knows about events such as that one, you know how hard it is to get a hold of a ticket. Will entered a raffle months before the Cup and months before we finished our time in England. A couple of weeks before we finished he found out that he was the proud owner of a ticket. It was late in the year and he had already bought his ticket back to the US. To stay meant that he had to postpone his flight by a week and find places to stay until the game. It also meant that he would miss a job interview. He agonized over it and ended up selling the ticket and going back to the US. It seems pointless now. The job he interviewed for, the couple dollars he saved, they are all dust now. His plans for the future now mean nothing, the only thing that counts is what he did, the experiences he had. In t...

Will was a Westmont student who attended the Gordon-at-Oxford program I was at last year. He was the only non Gordon student there, which speaks loads about his character. He wasn't afraid of life or of challenges and was never afraid of joining something where he would be an outsider. Of all of us 15 students in our program last year, he was one of the ones that I thought would be most successful. He had the heart and spirit of the western settlers and was constantly looking for new and unexplored land to take on. He lived life with zest. Everything he did was done enthusiastically, whether it be going up and down the stairs (which me did 3 steps at a time) or playing sports (which always left him caked in mud and bruises). He was a great person to party with, an unpredictable poker player and had a great sense of humor. I am heartbroken to hear that he died this weekend, while driving to Phoenix to join a business firm that had recognized the potential we all saw so clearly. Rest...

The past week has been a fairly idle one. After training with my job I was told to wait until they called me with my hours and classes. That was over a week ago. The rest of the teachers in training have not received any hours yet either. It seems that the companies that use our English teaching services do not start their language programs until around the 2nd of October. I really don't care though, I am fine the way I am because I am still getting paid regardless of whether I work or not. It has actually been really nice to have a week off after the stressful weeks of training. It was especially nice since it was the week that everyone really moved into the apartment and we got everything in order. In fact, by the time I do start work I will probably be in the mood to do so, so this break is excellent. I went to the mountains on Saturday with the two apartment-mates that were around, Kenny and Dan (pictured left). It was quite cold this weekend and especially so up on the top of ...