12.30 - 13.00 Mission Beach USA

The following description, which I swear I am not making up, is for a TV show that airs every two weeks on BBC 2:

Youth reality-tv

Eight British teenagers tackle sun, sea and survival in the real life O.C. Eight UK teenagers arrive in San Diego to train at the San Diego Junior Lifeguard School, but its only a matter of hours before a rude awakening throws them into deep water. Watch them as they experience the California lifestyle complete with beach barbecues and volleyball.

Everything that you inferred from description is correct: 8 people, who are either 16 or 17-years-old, come to the ‘real life O.C.’ to do the San Diego Junior Guards summer camp. It’s a little sad, really.

Later days,

The Wee Scotsman

I have come a long way in understanding the Scottish language. When I first got here, I was completely and utterly clueless. I was like Alicia Silverstone in that one movie where she was without a clue. Now, I am like Reese Witherspoon in that movie where she was legally blonde: I am sassy and fully of spunk ready to take on the world and converse with people on their level.

I have had the ultimate test. Yesterday I was sitting on a bench when I saw a wee Scotsmen. ‘Wee’, for those of you who don’t know, is a word that the Scottish like a lot. It means small or short; but they say it all the time and it is used in a strange context. For example, when I went to have an interview for my national insurance number, the man asked me if I wouldn’t mind taking a wee seat while I waited for my appointment. I asked if he wouldn’t mind my taking a regular seat, my arse being rather rotund, and he just gave me a funny look. Although I am pretty sure he was checking out my backside when I walked away, you can see how ‘wee’ is an often utilised word.

Anyway, all of this wee talk has been to explain what I mean when I say that I met a wee Scotsman. What I mean is that I met a Scottish midget. I was sitting, minding my own business, when I saw a tiny little man in a kilt walk by. It turns out he wasn’t actually wearing a kilt, he just had his shirt untucked, but he was still clearly of Scottish ancestry. He was even ginger.* So, this ginger midget sat down next to me and started talking to me. Now not only did he have a high pitched squeaky midget voice, much like that of Andy Rooney**, but he also had a Scottish accent, much like that of the woman who does my dry-cleaning. And guess what? I totally understood him like! Yeah, I’m getting pretty good at the whole Scottish thing.

I think that I am ready for what will surly be one of the greatest challenges of my life. When I get back in the US I am going to watch Trainspotting – without subtitles. I know, it is a lofty goal indeed; but I think I’m up to it.

*Yes, Britta, I met a Scottish ginger midget: are you happy now? The world is so cruel.

** yes, I mean Andy and not Mickey Rooney. Do not question my analogies.

Later days,

The Lord of the Tubes (London, Part II)

I would like to start off by saying I have already written these words. Well, not these words- these are new- but the words that follow are old. I wrote them yesterday and then I left for class and my computer ate them and now I have to re-write them. Computers suck.

Ok, so, obviously when I got to London it was too late to do anything except to walk briskly down the street to my hotel. As I walked, I kept looking over my shoulder out of fear that a cloaken man would mistake me for a prostitute, which happens to me more often than I would like, and slit my throat and do horrible things to my internal organs; as my readings about London have lead me to believe happen there. Thankfully, I made it to my hotel without being accosted, molested or murdered; but I was repeatedly asked for spare change.

When I arrived at the hotel, the door was locked. I rang the buzzer and a tiny Arab man answered the door. I told him that I had a reservation and he looked puzzled. I got the impression that they do not get many guests and I felt horrible for being such an imposition on the staff. I should explain that there were two factors that influenced my decision to stay in this hotel. First, I wanted a place that was close to the British Museum because I’m a nerd and second, because my company was only paying for the other nights and this place was inexpensive and I’m a cheap.

As I walked to my room through the concentric concrete corridors I couldn’t help but notice the dripping sound of water as it leaked from the exposed piping and onto the uncarpeted floor. Above my head the halogen lights made a hissing sound and turned on and off sporadically as I progressed to my bedroom. I don’t want you to think that I am a racist so I won’t tell you that I was terrified I would be grabbed from behind, dragged into a room, gagged and subjected to testicular electrocution. I won’t mention any of that because I don’t want you to thank any less of me.

I arrived in my room and it was about the same size and had the same aroma as an elephant’s rectum. It even had a small black and white TV, which research as shown, is often to be found in the anus of larger mammals. Because of my long journey from Glasgow, I only had to stay in the room for a few hours so I curled up into a small ball and went to sleep. At least the room was warm.

The next day I went to the British Museum and for those of you who don’t know I have wanted to go there since I was like 10-years-old. I love Egyptology and remember reading books when I was in elementary school and all of the photo credits were from the British Museum. I spent about 5 and a half hours there and it was fantastic. I even saw this cool print on the wall of the cafeteria and thought, ‘hey is that an Albrecht Dürer?’ and I was like totally right. Now anyone that knows anything about art history can tell you that identifying an Albrecht Dürer print is about as impressive as reading a poem and saying, ‘hey, I bet Dr. Seuss wrote this’ but shut up, I felt really cool and smart.

I left the museum and arrived at the hotel my company had arranged for me and it was pretty much the nicest place I have ever been. It was absolutely awesome. My room was so grand I could have easily set up an entire croquet course if I had only remembered by wickets. They are always the things I forget to pack. The room was so awesome that I felt unworthy of being in side it; so I thought I should take a shower. I walked into the epic bathroom, which was so cool I would not at all be surprised if it had inspired ballads, and saw what was surely the single most amazing shower to have ever doused a person with water. Seriously, this shower looked like the one from Flashdance. Thank God I did remember to pack my high heels and my folding metal chair. Needless to say, I had enjoyed good nights in the hotel room.

On my first day I woke up early to get ready. I took a flashdance-like shower and went to get dressed. Now, remember in my last entry when I said I stooped at TK Maxx to get a dress shirt? Well if you don’t, I did and if you do then you’re an awesome reader. When I got my shirt I had a bit of a problem because, you see, they have different sizes in the UK than they do anywhere else in the world. I have purchased clothes in the US and in Germany; but never in the UK and I had no idea what size I would be. I was trying to choose between the arbitrary size 15 and the capricious size 16 and decided to go with the larger size thinking that it would be better to have a shirt that was a little too big than once that was too small. This proved to be an error in judgement. The 16 fit me like a moo-moo; honestly, I looked like Rosanne Bar but with a better hair cut. I thought, ‘ok, I’ll be fine once I put on my coat and my tie no one will be able to notice’; but the coat and tie did not help the situation. Not only did I have to fold up the cuffs to keep them from falling over my hands, my tie looked like a necklace that dangled around my nipples. Yeah, I was a model of professionalism: a true businessboy. I guess it served my right for buying a dress-shirt.

On the final day of the meetings they kept me there a little but too long and I really had to dash if I wanted to make my train. Here is the rundown, I left my office at 5:25 and my train left at 6:08. It was possible for any person with normal intelligence to make the train, but was it possible for me? By this time, I am sure you all know the answer to that question. Remember, I’m retarded.

Now, what I should have done was taken a taxi to Euston station and then causally strolled into the station and walked onto the train like Dagny Taggart. But what I decided that the prudent thing to do was to walk to the train station around the corner, take that train to the train station across the street from Euston, walk to Euston, find which platform the train was leaving from and miss the train by 4 minutes. That’s right. I got there at 6:15. Now, intellectually, I know that I should not have been any more upset about missing the train by four minutes than I should have been if I had missed the train by forty-five minutes; but I am not always a particularly cerebral person. I was pretty upset about missing the train by four lousy minutes although, I should say that looking back on it, it might not have been the four minutes I was late that made me so upset as it was the five and a half hours I would need to wait to get on the next train. Yeah, actually that was really what it was: the 5.5 hour wait that was so aggravating.

But, I made the best of it. I ate at this great English delicatessen called ‘the Olde Burger King’ and sucked down chai teas like, well, like how Julia Roberts just plain sucks. I staked out a really nice couch and just read for what seemed like hours upon end. I didn’t even notice that by about 10:00pm Euston train station becomes really sketchy. At about 10:45 some guy who looked about my age interrupted my reading marathon asked if he could sit next to me and I said I didn’t mind. He told me that he had done about 3 laps around the train station trying to find someone to sit next to who didn’t look like they would rob and/or molest him. I told him that I was glad he sat next to me because I had been watching him and seductively put my hand on his thigh whist making my sexy, come hither, face. It was the beginning of a good friendship.

The guy is called ‘Charlie’ in the real world; but ‘charlieissocoollike’ in the youtube world. It turns out that charlieissocoollike is the most popular person on youtube.* I never really thought about the people who post videos on youtube, I sort of figured they got there magically and that when I needed them they were there for all of my procrastination needs. Apparently there is a ‘youtube community’ of ‘people’ who ‘vblog’ about their ‘lives’ and charlieissocoollike, having over 95,000 subscribers, is their God. Honestly, it was a little lost on me. I can’t imagine recoding videos about my life and wanting people to watch them, that would be like writing everything down – and – posting it on a website – and expecting people to read it – but even worse because no one likes to read - I think I might need to re-examine my ‘life’ now. Hum.

Charlieissocoollike and I had a fun talk before I got on my train I left for Glasgow. I totally slept the whole way. It was amazing and in the end, it took longer to go from that London train station to Glasgow than it did to fly from LAX to Heathrow. Yeah, that’s not depressing.

If you are bored enough to read my blog, you should check out Charlie’s youtube page:http://uk.youtube.com/user/charlieissocoollike The song that he just put up, in the absence of Christmas, is actually reall really cool.


* Charlieissocoollike has corrected me: he is actually only the third most popular person of all time on youtube. He is behind panacea81 and a person ahead of BBCWorldwide.


Later days,

The Businessboy, or There and Back Again (London, Part I)

Being the professional businessboy that I am, I went on a business trip to London last weekend. These are the sorts of things that as a highly paid business administrator, I am prone to do. I had to go in for a meeting on Monday and I figured that since I was heading down to Olde London Towne, I should make a weekend of it. What I forgot to take into account, however, is that I am prone to bad luck. By prone by bad luck; what I really should say is that I am retarded. So, let me rephrase: I went on a business trip last weekend and forgot to take into account the fact that I am retarded.

I left in the early afternoon on Saturday. I decided to take the train. I wish I could say that I choose that particular mode or transport because I am a romantic and wanted to experience the joys of the English countryside whist smoking a cigar and drinking whiskey; but the only reason I took a train and didn’t fly was because I was too lazy to go online and get a plane ticket. So, I decided to take the train and my journey began.

I walked the mile and a half to the city centre, stopping in TK Maxx (yes, the discount clothiers here is called TK Maxx) to buy a dress shirt, before arriving at Glasgow Central Street Station. After arriving at the station and looked at the sign and had a sudden epiphany: Glasgow has two train stations and I was at the wrong one. To anyone watching me as I turned on my heals and hurriedly walked way from the train station, I must have looked like homosexual middle schooler who was confidently walking up to the cinema to see High School Musical 3; but then wimped out and the last minute and walked away before any of his friends could seen him.*

And so I found myself, again, at a train station. I bought my ticket and planned my route. I would go to Edinburgh (1.5 hours) and then non-stop to King’s Cross (5 hours). I didn’t think it would be too bad and I had recently been given a collection of sort stories from the Ender Series** and I was keen to read them. I got on the train and started reading. I was slightly perturbed when a smelly Scotsmen decided to sit next to me rather than take a seat in any of the empty rows further up the train and decided to just focus on my reading and listen to my iPod. This decision turned out to be my undoing, and the blame surly is partly shared by the smelly Scotsmen. I was so engrossed in my Ender readings that I didn’t notice that I was the only person sitting on the train and, in fact, the train was no longer moving. We had arrived in Edinburgh and I had absolutely no idea how long I had been sitting on the train by myself reading my book. I felt a bit foolish and rushed off the train fearing that it would soon leave the station.

I had 15 minutes until my next train and was waiting at the platform when I realised that in my haste I had left my bag on the train from Glasgow. I rushed back just in time to see it leave the station. (this is the part where I first remembered that I am retarded). I went to the station manager and told her that I had left my bag on the train and she phoned Glasgow to have them put it in the lost baggage area. Now, part of me just wanted to go on to London without my bag; but then I remembered that my suit and shoes were in that bag and I didn’t fancy buying another suit to wear to my meeting.
Now, Of course I did not have a return ticket; but being the resourceful person that I am I, snuck on another train that was bound for Glasgow. When it arrived I hid behind a woman with abnormally large hair to sneak past the gate guards and into the station. I was able to retrieve my bag from the lost property desk and sneak back on the train, this time by hiding behind a man selling balloons.

When I got to Edinburgh there was only one option for going Kings Cross. This journey involved not one, but two, trains and a bus. I got into London about a quarter past midnight. Yeah, I’m retarded; but the return trip was an even greater debacle.


* You all know that my thing about gay marriage was facetious right? I have gotten some strange comments from people.

** Fuck you, Orson.

Later days,

Kids Say the Darndest Things

International Law Professor: There are three ways to do international politics: The right way, the wrong way and the Karl Marx way
Me: Isn’t that the wrong way?
International Law Professor: What do you mean?
Me: Sorry, I thought you were alluding to The Simpsons.
International Law Professor: I wasn’t.
Me: Oh.

Halloween

As some of you know, I got to see the new James Bond movie a week before you all did. I know; I’m just that awesome. It came out on Halloween, and so naturally I felt as though my costume sound be along that theme. The problem is that in my day to day life; I am, pretty much, a less emo version of James Bond. It seemed silly to go as him, so I went on an adventure to the Salvation Army where I found a rather frumpy-looking black dress and knee high boots. I went to Staples and bought a small thing of glue and some glue sticks. I was a bond girl … get it? I know: I’m so droll.

My friends and I went to ‘a fancy dress’ party that was going on in my building to start off the night (Fancy dress, for those who don’t know is British for costume party). I had no idea who the people where who where actually throwing the party; but when you look as fabulous as I did, you as welcome at any party. I am sure it will not come to surprise any of you that with my knee high books and short skirt, I was the belle of the ball.*

At some point during the party, between being asked to take photos with random people, I found myself by the refreshment table eating what I believed at the time to be the greatest cupcakes ever made when a witch came up to me and told me that she had made the cupcakes that I was now enjoying. I called her a witch because she was dressed as such. As I was in the witch’s house and eating her cupcakes; I thought it was only appropriate to try and make conversation seeing as I had never actually met her before. We talked for a while and judging from the amount of whiskey that she kept putting into my drink, it seemed as though she fancied me. We got onto the topic of music and it came out that the witch was BFF with Jenny Lewis. I guess Jenny is dating a Scottish guy and somehow the witch and her met and became friends. She told me that she had some pictures of the two of them together and we went to her room where she showed them to me.

I’m not sure how exactly it came up; but as always the case with Europeans, we started talking about American politics. It turns out that the witch is a rabid socialist who decided that it was her mission to convince me that capitalism had failed and that Marxism was therefore right. Her logic was specious to say the very least.

I don’t quite understand how it is that so many Europeans actually believe in Socialism. Everywhere I look and around every corner I turn, there is either a socialist society poster or a person handing out a socialist newspaper called, aptly, the Socialist Worker. These people have meetings every week and the posters are all over the city like. Oddly enough, the Socialist Organizations seem to be extremely well funded as their posters are always quite fetching. The thing is, these people who seem completely normal and sometimes even intelligent actually believe in Socialism. They were, at one time, card carrying members of the party; but somewhere along the line they had to cut up their cards and give them to new members. It would have been wrong for some people to have had cards while others did not.

Talking to a Socialist is like having a conversation with someone whose life experience is limited to having lived with a pack of wildebeests in a cave cut off from human civilisation. There is simply not a common background to even frame a conversation. It’s like trying to talk to someone about astrophysics if their only point of reference is Euclidean geometry. Their minds are too narrow to fully understand the universe. They can only live in a world where the sum of the angles of a triangle equal 180 and the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. There is not enough knowledge base to understand the world because their construction of it is too limited.** For this reason, it is absolutely impossible for me to have a conversation with a Socialist.

I needed to escape from the Red Witch; but I didn’t know how to make a clean break. My friends wanted to go to a club; but I know that because the Red Witch fancied me, I would have no way to escape from her grasp. Then I had a brilliant idea. I decided to chance the subject in such a way that I would be able to join my friends without her following me, in fact, without her ever speaking to me again. I started to talk about her costume and said: ‘You know you must be really good with makeup. I have been wondering all night, how did you manage to put that hideous looking mole on your face?’ The mole was clearly not part of the costume.

I made my escape to the club where I imbibed in calibration.

The next day, Saturday, a friend that I made from the Rotary Weekend in Birmingham came to visit me and stay for the first part of the week. After living in Ghana and Indonesia and working on water projects, she is studying development at the University of Manchester this year. She and I really hit it off during the weekend and had been talking via the facebook for a while. She had a reading week and we decided that she should come and stay with me for a few days. We had a great time doing the tourist stuff around Glasgow that I had been way too cool to do when I first got here.


* You may wish to refer to the Facebook for photos; but I will tell you must of the good ones were bared from the public domain.

** This is the single greatest analogy I have ever come up with in my entire life. Shut up.


Later days,

Why I am Against Gay Marriage.

So, it is early in the afternoon here in Scotland and we have a kewl president whose biggest weakness is that he is a little too awesome. This is all fine and dandy; but I can’t concentrate on my work because I keep hitting refresh on my computer to see what the results are for California’s Prop. 8. If this passes, there will be a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and for the first time in history a constitution will be used to limit the rights of a people rather than expand them. Frankly, I say it is about time and I can’t do my reading until I know for sure what is happening with the gays back home in California. So I decided to write this blog entry explaining why I am against gay marriage and why I hope Prop 8 passes without any issues from those damned liberals.

I think that my favourite author of all time, Orson Scott Card*, said it best when he explained that same-sex marriage is not necessary to ensure equal rights, since ‘any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law.’ Amen to that, sir! I know that that pretty much says it all; but I want to go into more detail about why I am personally against allowing the gays to enjoy the rights of husbandhood.

1. If we let gays get married it will encourage other people to be gay. I mean I know that when I hangout with tall people, I get taller.

2. It is a slippery slope because if you let gays get married you will have to let anyone marry anything. I mean I am living in the UK and we have Welsh people here. Everyone knows that they shag sheep. If we let gays get married some people will want to marry sheep, and what’s to stop that from happening? I mean animals and inanimate objects have the same protection under the law as people do. Our legal system allows sheep to enter into legal contracts, so if we let gays get married we will have to let people marry sheep too.**

3. We have never changed marriage before, why should be change it now? Women are still considered to be the property of their husbands and I expect to get a pretty sweet dowry when I take a woman to wife. Plus we still don’t let people from different ethnic backgrounds get married. I mean it’s illegal for a white person to marry a black person (Chinese people fall into the second objection to gay marriage). Plus divorce is illegal and I know there are some people who tried to get that changed. Thank God we have always had the same definition of marriage throughout time.

4. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. When you live in a theocracy like the United States, the values of one religion are placed over the ideals of another and if you don’t agree with the majority, frankly it doesn’t matter. Thank God we have a government which has adapted the values and morals of a single religion. Think of how crazy things would be if there was some kind of separation between church and state.

5. Straight marriage is more valid because they can procreate. What’s the point of getting married if you can’t have children and raise a family? This is why infertile people and old people don’t get married. Why would they even bother if they can’t have children?

6. If we have gay marriages and they adopted children they would raise them to be gays. I mean straight parents only raise straight children. Why do we want to have more gays in the world?

7. Children will only succeed if they have a male and a female role model. This is why we don’t allow children to be raised by a single parent. It is just impossible for children, in that circumstance, to develop into normal and mentally healthy adults.

8. Gay marriage is not natural and part of being an American is rejecting everything that is unnatural. That’s why we don’t have synthetic fabrics or 80-year-old men taking pills to get hard-ons. That’s just not what God intended when He created the world.

I hope that this list has shown you why I am so fervently against gay marriage and why I can’t concentrate until I know what is happening in California with Prop 8. Come on California, show me the kind of moral character that I know you have.

* et tu, Ender?

** This same election also had a proposition to expand the rights of farm animals. This proposition passed. It's so rewarding to live in a democracy that has the power to expand rights as well as take them away.

Ps. I will now return to my regularly scheduled blog. Sorry for the last few random posts. I will return to talking about my crazy Scottish adventures.

Later days,

Belt up, Canadian

Some of my American friends and I were sitting in class today and got reamed by a Canadian. She came up to us and said: ‘hey, will you guys be at the Student Union watching the election?’ We all gave a responded with a resounding ‘no’. We told her that the last place in the world a bunch of Americans would want to be during an election is with a bunch of drunk European people. We also explained to her that the earliest polls do not close until midnight here. This means that the absolute earliest time we can get results is 1.00 in the morning. Why wouldn’t we just wake up early and get the results instead, we asked. The Canadian then proceeded to say how horrible we are for not caring about the election and that we arrogant Americans should be ashamed of ourselves. She told us how pathetic is it that Europeans (and Canadians) are more concerned with the American election that we are.

I’m sorry, I just wanted to share this story because it makes me really frustrated and I don’t think I have really articulated that. What makes me mad is that for some reason Europeans seem to think they are better than Americans and that they are more cosmopolitan than we are. Anyway, Canada should just settle down and go back to being our hat and Europe should stop feeling inadequate. It’s not our fault.

Ps. What’s the deal with robocalls?

Later days,

It’s Erection Day!

Well, it is for me because politics is hot. I have my sweet Kiss My Democrat shirt on and I am ready to go. It is just really confusing to listen to CNNTV radio when you are in the future and they keep talking about how early it is.

Later days,