Ultimate bullshit

Just take a look at these. Did you scroll down and see what I saw? I love how it says you can put any image or text on there. I think they should come pre-loaded with a message that reads, "I'm an insufferable jackass", since that is what everyone will think when they see someone sporting these. Seriously, whiskey tango foxtrot on these.

So Nalley, when are you getting these fitted on your Escalade? You could project the Arctic Circle logo and try to write them off as a business expense.

Shakespeare wept

Don't ask why, but I was just looking up some stuff on Passenger 57, the Wesley Snipes movie from the early 1990's where he plays John Cutter, the wise-cracking cop with an attitude. Imagine Die Hard, Air Force One, and almost every Will Smith movie mixed up in a blender, and you get this piece of hilarity. This is a film that gave birth to one of my favorite catchphrases, which comes at the end of this little exchange.

John Cutter: Charlie, ever played roulette?
Charles Rane: On occasion.
John Cutter: Well, let me give you a word of advice. Always bet on black!

I love that. Always bet on black!!1!1!1!1!! That is "teh awesome", as the kids might say. But while researching this film, I saw another quote listed for it, one that I had absolutely no recollection of, but now that I have read it, I can't help but be overcome with a desire to rent this movie just to hear it. When Snipes puts the bad guy on ice at the end, this is what he punctuates the event with: "Boo-ya, checkmate on the flipside!"

I find that I am now absolutely overcome with laughter, and can't stop saying that. "Boo-ya, checkmate on the flipside!" Honestly.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Much like any big city, London has its share of religious zealots out preaching the faith to the masses. Oxford street, the West End's main high street for shopping, usually has at least bloke with a megaphone telling the thousands of people on the street how they are going to hell. A good time is had by all, then.

But even in the smaller outlying burgs you still get accosted by those with a burning fever for God, and in Oxford I noticed that there was a group of people passing out books. Now, I was initially a little wary about taking a text from them, since one of the favored tactics of these groups is to give you something, and then try to guilt you into giving them a fairly substantial amount of money as a "donation." But as the cheapest man in the world, I knew this wouldn't be an issue for me. After all, I am the man who stole a pen from the Idaho State University Campus Crusade for Christ. And this was after I signed up my friends for their mailing list. What a great guy I am, huh?

So when one guy thrust a book in front of me, I grabbed it and kept on walking purposefully ahead. He walked beside me for a moment and, unsurprisingly, asked if I would like to make a donation for the book. "No, I'll just keep it", came my reply. This book is titled "Survivors: You'll be surprised who gets left behind." It was written by Zion Ben Jonah, and after reading through the introduction, it turns out it is all some sort of response to the Left Behind series of books.

Looking over the book now, I have to say it stinks. And that is not any sort of scathing literary criticism; this book quite literally stinks. It smells like it was printed on greasy napkins and was bound together with some concoction these guys ginned up in their garage from kerosene and WD40. It really is quite repellent.

What is great, though, are the small details. Like the cover art, apparently done before 9/11, as it shows a mushroom cloud over a New York with Twin Towers still intact. I don't know, maybe Condi Rice had a hand in drawing up the cover. And the bar code on the back reads "666", and has the words "Don't take the mark!" overlaid onto it, while inside one of the chapter is called "Soul Harvest." Classy.

Accuracy, thy name is the Onion

Just in case anyone is interested in how the people I live with at my student hall here in London are can get a pretty accurate recap here. By the way, this equally applies to a great many students I knew while I was living in Budapest, although it doesn't fit in the least with the handful of Americans I knew while living in Helsinki. Enjoy.

Best Little Whorehouse in London

London is divided into a series of boroughs, and I happen to live in the borough of Camden. When I search through the Camden Borough website, I can find out all sorts of wonderful information about my community. For instance, my local ward councillors are Penelope Abraham, Peter Brayshaw, and the wonderfully named Fazlul Chowdhury. I absolutely adores that name. Fazlul Chowdhury. I think I'm going to call him up and feign some problem with Camden's services just so I can get on the horn and ask to speak to "Mr. Fazlul Chowdhury". Wonderful. If I ever go into politics, I'm going to need an equally cool name, something along the lines of...oh, I don't know, Humberto McGarnigal. Yeah, that sounds appropriate.

The best thing I found online for my borough were my local monthly crime statistics. I love this website. For instance, I can see that for the financial year of 2004-2005, there were almost 19,000 reported cases of theft, some 6,200 cases of violence against people, and more than 400 sexual assaults. And you can even break it down by month; this January (the most recent month currently up) saw about 400 burglaries, and, more troubling, five rapes to go with three murders. How safe do I feel?

One thing I like about England is the sense of common history and shared purpose with America. In political circles, it is known as the Trans-Atlantic Bargain (or Alliance), and it is obvious that the US and UK have a great deal of inter-mingling culture and history. They have York, we have New York. They had the Madness of King George, we have the stupidity of President George. They have a crime-ridden area going by the name of Camden, we have Camden, New Jersey, the most dangerous city in America. Simpatico, baby!!

Beyond its obvious need for some kind of Robocop to clean up the area, Camden is famous for two things: its canal and, more notably, its market, which comprises a shopping area famous enough to draw somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million tourists a year through its cramped corridors. But it was the canal that commanded my attention this last Sunday, when I decided to take a walk along its banks in search of the promisingly named area known as Little Venice. I could make a post about the blatant false advertising that went into naming this place, and the fact that I had to walk almost five miles roundtrip to see this area, but I think I will let things slide with just making a suggestion to the tourist board of London. If you want to more accurately rename this area and yet still incorporate the words "Little Venice", then I recommend the following slogan: "This area bears very little resemblance to Venice."

Anyway, that's not the point of all this. The point of all this is that I think I was propositioned by a floating brothel Sunday afternoon. A single, thin canal boat was motoring upstream, the same direction I was going, moving at a rather leisurely pace. I feel confident in guessing that the boat was powered by a motor from a Hoveround, since I was merely walking and ending up not only catching up to this boat, but passing it on the fly. A couple sat at the controls, and as I came up on them, the woman, at this point a mere fifteen feet away from met (it's a fairly narrow canal), said to me, "Hey pretty boy, do you want to join us?"

I honestly have been trying to think of any way that this sentence could be said to a complete stranger without it involving them operating some sort of cat house on the open waters of London's canals, but I am failing to think of any alternatives. I can't help but feel I dodged some sort of bullet on this one, as I may just have been another number on the sexual assault list for Camden's March statistics. Whew.

If my one eye doesn't deceive me, Frodo lives!

Whenever I'm in a crowd, say in line at the supermarket or somesuch, I get a sense that people around me really aren't that tall. I'm hardly towering, I'm probably a hair under 6' 2'', although I tend to wear some thick boots which give me an extra bit of stretch, but I honestly feel like a giant sometimes. What is the cause of this paucity of height in England? I've developed a trio of scientifically sound theories to explain this phenomenon. The first is poor nutrition. I had initially chalked it up to a lingering effect of the food shortages of WWII, but the greater culprit is the cuisine out here. The food is, to be generous, heart-wrenchingly bad. And I saw this as someone who has eaten Arctic Circle's infamous boiled hamburgers. Zing!

Just to show people I'm not talking bollocks, listen to this expert testimonial from French President Jacques Chirac:

The president, chatting to the German and Russian leaders in a Russian cafe, said: "The only thing [the British] have ever given European farming is mad cow." Then, like generations of French people before him, he also poked fun at British cuisine.

"You can't trust people who cook as badly as that," he said. "After Finland, it's the country with the worst food."

"But what about hamburgers?" said Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, referring to America.

"Oh no, hamburgers are nothing in comparison," Mr Chirac said.

Mr Putin and Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor,
laughed. Mr Chirac then recalled how George Robertson, the former Nato secretary general and a former defence secretary in Tony Blair's Cabinet, had once made him try an "unappetising" Scottish dish, apparently meaning haggis.

"That's where our problems with Nato come from," he said.

Mr. Schröder and Mr Putin laughed again.

If nothing else, the French know food. The prosecutor rests his case.

The second factor deals with the respective levels of gravituity and polarity in Idaho and London. I come from a high-altitude state, while the Brits reside at near sea level, resulting an ever-so-slight gravity differential between our two areas. Without having to constantly strain against the awesome powers of our earth, I was able to achieve a greater height than the Brits. This is the same scientific basis for the existence of Paul Bunyon and Babe the Ox, photographic evidence of their existence can be seen here, after they were captured and imprisoned in Brainero, Minnesota, after clear cutting the entirety of South Dakota:




You might not think that is big, but realize that snow globe is actually 73 feet tall.

Finally, I think that once the Brits colonized the Irish Isles, the resulting cross-genetic pollination introduced a dominant "shortness" gene into the population. To give you an idea of the difference in height at the time of initial Irish/British contact, here is a historic photo of the Irish Ambassador sharing an ale with his British counterpart several hundred years ago:

Fine, now we have the background to this story dispensed with, here is the key point: while in Oxford this weekend, I found just how small some of the Brits are. I passed a house that stood on the opposite side of the street, and my friend hollered out, "look at that tiny door!" I cast my gaze up on said door, and while I thought it to be a tad on the small side, I thought little of it.

Now perspective can be a tricky mistress. I have a friend who is blind in one eye, so he doesn't have much depth perception, yet he manages along just fine because he has always been monocular, so he has no conception of what he is missing out on. And for one dizzying moment, I think I realized what life is like for him. As we crossed the street, I expected this door to get bigger as I approached it. Yet it did not. While other details around me seemed to get bigger as I neared them, each step I took seemingly brought me no closer to this door; it seemed to simply recede into the distance.

When we finally stood up next to this cottage-like building, I realized the door was no more than four feet tall. I was terribly tempted to walk up to the door and measure myself against it, but I am pretty certain I saw Frodo throwing me a very stern look through the curtains, and decided to quickly go about my business.

Militant Marley

While in Oxford I visited the Ashmolean Museum, where I came across a strange mishmash of European cultures. A common sight among vaguely hippy-ish people are vintage German military jackets. You know, the ones that look like this, with the German flag on the shoulder:


Another common sight amongst these hippies is Bob Marley merchandise. But what made this particular chap I saw in the museum unusual was that he had managed to combine these two into one self-contradictory piece of clothing: a military coat with Bob Marley's visage screened onto the back. Yes. I'm sure that Bob would really approve of the military, you twit.

On the topic of Marley related trivia, I came across some information in the Sunday about a royalties dispute concerning Bob Marley's former bassist and co-writer, Aston 'Family Man' Barrett. Why, you might ask, is he nicknamed "Family Man"? Well, it is because he has, and I want to be clear that this is not a misprint or a mistaken bit of typing on my part, fifty-two [52] children. Here is the article in question, in case you don't believe me. Yup, that averages out to having to send birthday presents off once a week, every year, for the rest of your life. Now I know why he was a bassist, cuz he sure 'nough got the rhythm! Zing!

Megafeces

Just about the cheapest way to travel between cities in the UK is via a discount bus service called Megabus, and let me just say that the old adage of "you get what you pay for" is wholly accurate with this company. When we booked our trip to Oxford this past weekend, we received a confirmation email that said our bus left from a particular street near Victoria tube station. Fair enough, although that description is a bit vague. Undeterred, we arrived a good half an hour early to give us time to locate our stop.

Upon arrival at 7 a.m., we realized that it was in no way obvious where our Megabus would stop, so I went and asked two different drivers from rival companies, who directed me to a well hidden internal bus garage at the base of a building, where several Megabus busses awaited. Confident that one of these was our bus, we kept our eyes open for the one that would leave at 7:35. We slowly realized that none of these were leaving at this time, and I finally asked a driver where the bus for Oxford left from, and was informed it was on the other side of the road, outside the buildling. Right.

We then waited out on the street, at stand 9 as indicated, for our Megabus to arrive. None did. We waited about twenty minutes, until we asked again, and it turns out that our bus arrives at stand 10, and is not actually a Megabus, but rather some other company named Oxford tube. What the hell? We booked on Megabus, although this company has its own website, and there was nothing on our booking slip about actually taking Oxford tube, which have very visibly different busses, and in no way have any signs showing their affiliation with Megabus. So Megabus, you get the lost in translation rubbish communication award for not telling me where my bus stop was, or even that I was being shifted to an entirely different company.

Like my loafers? Former gophers!

One of my weekly luxuries is picking up the Sunday edition of the Observer newspaper and reading it while either relaxing in my room with some honey-sweetened camomile or peppermint tea, or, weather permitting, going to the park and sitting in the shade. There is a weekly travel section in the paper, and there was an article that immediately made me think of a disturbing episode in which Montgomery Burns plans to turns 25 greyhound puppies into an article of clothing for himself. He even has a song he sings during the episode, set to the tune of "Be Our Guest":

Some men hunt for sport, others hunt for food,
The only thing I'm hunting for is an outfit that looks good.
See my vest, see my vest, made from real gorilla chest,
Feel this sweater, there's no better than authentic Irish Setter.
See this hat? 'Twas my cat. My evening wear? Vampire bat.
These white slippers are albino African endangered rhino.
Grizzly bear underwear; turtles' necks, I've got my share.
Beret of poodle on my noodle it shall rest;
Try my red robin suit, it comes one breast or two,
See my vest, see my vest, see my vest![with hat and cane]
Like my loafers? Former gophers! It was that or skin my chauffers,
But a greyhound fur tuxedo would be best.
So let's prepare these dogs --
Woman: Kill two for matching clogs!
Burns: See my vest, see my vest, oh please, won't you see my vest?
[spoken] I really like the vest.

This newspaper article was about a birdwatcher who took a trip to a sanctuary in Trindidad, and she was describing some of the exotic birds she viewed there. As she listed her sighting, I was struck by a particularly Burns-esque moment concerning the "oilbirds". Here is a photo of these charming little creatures:





While writing this I've been wrestling with how to approach this part of the story. Should I go the comedy route? Should I try to make it as horrific as I found it when reading it initially? Honestly, since I cannot summon a description that is more matter-of-fact and chilling than than author, I'll simply reprint the relevent passage here:

They are called oilbirds because the chicks are so fat (at 70 days, they weigh 50 per cent more than the adults) that their bodies used to be used for lamp oil, or sometimes travellers would cut the heads off the chicks and then just light them and carry them round as torches.

Sweet. Zombie. Jesus. I cannot shake the image of people, like C. Montgomery Burns, ripping the heads off baby birds, lighting their bodies on fire, and using them to walk around at night. Wow.

Back on track

Okay, so things haven't been splendid for me, but I'm taking a stab at getting back to posting more often, probably mainly about my day trip to Oxford (see below). Things to look forward to include my visit to Frodo's house, the militant Bob Marley and his band's many children, and Megacrap bus services.

Look at that awesome spine!

So this last weekend I went to Oxford on a day trip, and while planning the trip I was laboring under the assumption that the main sights could be seen in a day or two. I hoped to knock down most of what I wanted to see, then maybe take another trip there in a few months when the weather was better. How wrong my initial assumptions were.

First, the main sights of interest were all closed. Oxford University is actually comprised of over 30 different colleges all under the Oxford banner, and of these colleges Christ Church is the biggest tourist draw. This was closed for some function, so we couldn't attend. Maybe Christ returned and was giving a speech.

The second main sight was the Bodleian Library, which has long been famous for its beauty and architecture, a fame that has only been burnished by the fact that several scenes from Harry Potter have been shot there. Here is a short list of things in Oxford shot for Harry Potter, as well as a brief picture show of some Oxford movie locations. Naturally, with my rotten luck, this was closed as well. To make matters worse, it was absolutely ice cold in Oxford, and out bus wasn't due to leave until 9 at nine. In search of warmer quarters as well as something to do, I decided to see some of the museums I was keen on, one of which is the Museum of the History of Science. The brief description in the guidebook mentioned that it included Einstein's blackboard from when he gave a lecture at Oxford in the 1930's, complete with his original equations left on them. Excited, I exclaimed to my friend, "Hey, they have Einstein's blackboard there!"

The confused reply came, "They have Einstein's backbone there?"

Light posting

Not much posting going on right now, as things have been...um...not so good. I'll try to pick up the pace in the near future, when my life hopefully isn't a non-stop cavalcade of disasters.

Best regards all,
Andy