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,
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