Questions in a World of Blue

"If I had a nickel for every cigarette your mother smoked, I'd be dead," said Donna Hayward somewhere in a time loop I can't figure out.

David Lynch nailed it. Life, like his visions, is really just a reel of ambiguous images jumbled together in a meaningless sequence. But stuff keeps coming up, and even though you question the director's plan — or even if he has a plan or even if the director exists — these weird recurrences beg you to interpolate a meaning.

The Show of Life

A short play by the little-known Billy Shakesbad.

Old Nick: Woe be woman, whose fate it is to serve.

Mephista: May thy tongue shrivel, that it spews such falsehoods.

Old Nick: Ah, but does not a man pull thy strings?

Mephista: We are all but puppets of greater powers.

Old Nick: Puppets? As in the show of life? Truly, birth doth draw wide the curtains. And woman, are thy lines scripted? In that I can be no one but myself, I can say only my lines. So sad, to be so constrained.

Mephista: It is I who feel for thee. Thine own role and fate has ever been written, while mine own changes with each breath. Yea, tho puppet I be, it is hope, faith, and love that pulls my strings.

Old Nick: Woman, mine ears do sting from thy tongue. I shall away in search of easier folly!

I have no idea what made me think of these devilish puppets after all these years. I wonder if I will think of them again.

For Esme, With Love and Squalor

Somehow, El Colegio Road reminded me that I miss this last summer. I haven't thought about places like London and Paris in weeks, but I realized on the drive home from work that I wished I could go back — right now — and then I could appreciate it all again, even though I wanted to leave so badly those last few days.

Maybe it's Isla Vista that's gotten old and maybe it's a good idea that I'm heading home this weekend, even it's to an empty house (plus a dog). I think I remembered Europe on the streets of I.V. because they're so empty and ugly and leading to nowhere I want to go. The Pasado House is different; it's my sanctuary against all the stuff I don't want to deal with. The Nexus office, too, I guess, even with it's high stone walls and drainy fluorescent lights — a womb if I was a stucco-and-wax robot. Like a movie set, kind of, but far from the train station in Florence, for sure.

No, I'm trapped on the set of some workplace sitcom...

[ a [[brackets]] break ]

[twyla cut ten inches off her hair and i think it looks awful but she donated the hair she cut to wigs for cancer children, so i think it actually looks very pretty on her.]


[bonnie is moving back to colorado, to solve the jon benet murder, i imagine. i feel bad that she's not happy enough to stay, because beyond a talent for words she has a quality about her that other people sorely lack, even if i can't put my finger on it. i guess she's a real person, after all, and i shouldn't keep her around to make me feel better. besides, kidnapping is illegal.]

I thought about Agnes and Kristen and Charlie today, too, and those three haven't been a unit in my mind since before school started. I wonder how they are now, in Paris, Capetown, and Berkeley, respectively. I finally triumphed over the Mystery Mono. I guess November must seem dull, especially in the wake of Halloween. It's been a while since they changed of scenery and I'm getting terribly bored.

Medication or not, I've been acting out lately. It's not like me to destroy a painting. To black it out then drown it in red and then let Nate take an axe to it.

Maybe I'm changing again.

f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s

The End of the Mushroom Kingdom

(A weekend tally) Axe: One; Art: Zero. Realizing that my painting would never resolve itself and would therefore continue to dominate my mind like some evil taskmaster, I threw it into the rain. As the canvas glided over me, it clipped the back of my head. I now have a big lump at the site of impact.

Wait five minutes.

Damned if I didn't think the rain streaks somehow improved the painting. I tried to rescue it. I had actually brought it back inside when I realized my follow and handed the piece to Nate and told him to go to town with the axe.

It was for the better.

End intermission. Resume regular broadcast.

Run, Sarah Connor, Run

I leave the Nexus office just as Tuesday becomes Wednesday, twelve chiming bells and all. I did the opinion page all by myself for the first time, yet I'm going to wake up with a new governor — one made of metal and circuits.

Fake Words TV Has Taught Me

• opinionation
  
• perpittity
• bitzelcocker (disagreeable vagabond)
• persefunctant
• acribits (an action stock markets can take)
• kwyjibo (a big, bald North American ape)
• embiggen (to make bigger)
• cromulent (valid)
  
• pathetisad
• sarcastabitch
• vondruke
  
• spooknife (spoon-knife)
• kniffoon (knife-spoon)
• comfortador (not a conquistador)
• crelbow (the spot on your arm opposite your elbow)

And who says TV rots your brain?

Words That Sound Dirty But Aren't

• gesticulate
• fallacious
• hoary
• pussy willow
• muk-luk
• penal
• titmouse
• clean and jerk
• cumin
• cumquat
• frock
• Beefeater
• testy
• highness
• ungulate
• anually
• Uranus
• cock-of-the-rock
• masticate
• matriculate
• angina
• corkscrew
• testaceous
• phalange
• sextet
• shebang
• blowhole
• Mulva
• seamen
• seersucker
• gangbanger
• debrief
• uvula
• dictate
• rectory
• Grand Tetons*
• animal husbandry
• bushwack
• jackanape
• sirloin
• Dick Butkus
• testatrix
• bushtit
• backhoe
• Assowoman Bay
• Lake Titicaca
• crankshaft
• cherry picker
• butternut
• nutjob
• Bangkok
• swallowtail
• pusillanimous
• Tony Danza

* We printed this in Friday's paper, but some guy actually left us a note explaining that the Grand Tetons rightfully are dirty, as the explorers first saw them and thought they looked like big breasts, hence the name.

Four Giants

"Sometimes the only thing worse than the weight of the world on your shoulders is the weight of the moon."

Plink

"Floccinaucinihilipilification," suggested the comfortador meekly.

Casey Becker

And then, out of the darkness, something whistled back. (Lock the doors) The middle of nowhere and thank god I'm not making Jiffy Pop right now.

Casey Becker, R.I.P.

Highlights from My Online Interview With Meg Ryan

Meg says: I like babies

Meg says: Yes, well she's mormon, maybe she wants to have sex

Meg says: Except Splash Mountain and Space mountain and the haunted house will all be closed... I should let them know I am coming, maybe they'll open them for me

Drew says: oh, and what's your sister doing now?
Meg says: right now she's driving to my house
Meg says: she's going to school
Meg says: plays with horses a lot
Meg says: drinks a lot too
Drew says: like, little toy horses?
Meg says: no real ones, she even lived at the "horse unit" this summer
Meg says: basically a converted horse stable
Drew says: classy
Meg says: I think she's happy
Drew says: i guess it's not so bad -- i lived in a converted carport all last year
Meg says: Now she lives with a gay guy who has two chihuahua's and one of them has three legs

Meg says: When I look out the window in my bedroom I see a tall fence with the extra barbed wire slanted because it is the mental hospital's property

Meg says: you're not a slut are you?

Meg says: there are so many cheeses in this world

Meg says: i don't think I could ever make it in a sorority

Meg says: Drew, if I find out you are joking, I swear to god I will never speak to you again

Meg says: and I thought one day we would get married

Meg says: so, why'd you tell me that?

"I Guess I'm Alone..."

When Cate's train pulled out of Waterloo, London ended. Tomorrow's just filler and then I'm gone. I rank Cate above just about everybody else from that previous life I led in an alternate galaxy called high school, so I was glad to share my last memories of London with her: Tate Modern (again) and Richard III at the Globe (again), both experiences well-worth the déjà vu. Saw my old T.A. at the Globe, too. Steve, who I had for a Shakespeare class I took last summer. He remembered my name. Maybe he thought I was something special.

I keep thinking about Gigi and I feel bad for not having seen her when she wasn't well, even if she was a different person — skinny and confused — than the almost-grandma who babysat me sometimes a long time ago.

Two days. No regrets. No time for regrets.

Lightning

When I called home and my mom told me she had bad news, I instantly assumed the cat had died. Far from that, my grandmother's sister Gigi died. Last Monday, meaning I’m probably the last family member to find out. I knew Gigi better than most people know their great aunts, I'd wager. Now I’ve got her funeral as soon as I get back to the states.

The fog I woke up to this morning turned into wind and the beginnings of rain. Mom said she saw some lightning amid the freak summer shower presently raining over Hollister. Somehow, that makes me feel closer to home, this ridiculous pathetic fallacy.

I think I'll appreciate seeing Cait tomorrow morning at Waterloo even more now than I would have. I'm glad she's making the trek from Essex or Sussex or whatever sexy place she's living now.

The Mushroom Kingdom and the United Kingdom

An excerpt from the second Bret Easton Ellis book I’m reading on this vacation, Glamorama:

"Shh, I'm playing," I tell her. "Yoshi's eaten four gold coins and he’s trying to find the fifth. I need to concentrate."

"Oh my god, who gives a shit," Alison sighs. "We're dealing with a fat midget who rides a dinosaur and saves his girlfriend from a pissed-off gorilla? Victor, get serious."

"It's not his girlfriend. It's Princess Toadstool. And it's not a gorilla," I stress. "It's Lemmy Koopa of the evil Koopa clan. And baby, as usual, you're missing the point."

"Please enlighten me."

"The whole point of Super Mario Bros. is that it mirrors life."

"I'm following." She checks her nails. "God knows why."

"Kill or be killed."

"Uh-huh."

"Time is running out."

"Gotcha."

"And in the end, baby, you …are …alone."

Sure, Ellis mistook Bowser Koopa for Lemmy, his weakling son, but he redeems himself in the next chapter by both mentioning Dana Ashbook and Kyle MacLachlan. I'm so owned.

London fog. Three days.

Parsnip Chips and Other Peculiarities

I wandered into familiar territory and ate a Waitrose lunch — kiwifruit, maple yogurt, parsnip chips, and a hummus sandwich — on the steps of Foundation House. Being alone hurt a bit. It seems like a year ago when I would have been surrounded by all those people who I suddenly miss. People would walk by I my kneejerk reaction would be to look them in the face, like they might be someone I knew. They weren't.

Wonderwall

My feet rest again on British soil. That statement is a lie, in the strictest sense of language. An entire story of apartment building — a story, notably, inhabited by Rammstein-loving Poles — separates me from the ground. Nonetheless, I feel happy to be once again in London, a few steps closer to home and rest and sanity and cleanliness. Uncle Andy’s a great guy for letting me stay here free of charge, but oh how I loathe his apartment, the walk to which allowed me two glimpses into London’s seedy streetlife. One: I saw what I believe to be a drug deal. I quickened my step. Two: I was propositioned by a prostitute. Other than that, I arrived safely at the front door of an apartment that twice now the London police have declared a crime scene. Free internet. n8rs81: hey everyone n8rs81: look its really him n8rs81: thats Drew n8rs81: I met him once n8rs81: no you didn't n8rs81: thats kind of how i picture your return from Europe Last night I stood on the Eiffel Tower and looked over a sparkling Paris. This morning I walked through the catacombs, touching skulls that once belonged to victims of the French Revolution. Quite a juxtaposition, and the perfect way to bid farewell to Paris — save the drop of catacomb water I got in my eye… I’ll probably get cholera. I finshed Alan Moore's Watchmen on the Chunnel. Good book. Great, actually. I gave it to Charlie and I wonder how it might find me again. I remember my anthro teacher sophomore year thought it was funny how the phallic, intrusive Chunnel poked England in an area called Kent. Ha. D.A.C.K. has now completely disbanded. Charlie split from me at Waterloo Station and took a train to meet his English uncle in Redding, Agnes’s Paris program begins tomorrow, and Kristen is somewhere in Sweden. It was the best foursome since the Beatles. I’ll miss it, even if right now I’m loving the non-socializing I’m doing. In my heart and in my car. We can't rewind we've gone too far. I plan to enjoy these last few days in London, even if every article of clothing I have is filthy. I miss pornography and sorely need a shave. I’m starting to look more like the bum who looked like me. Even though I saw only a smallish chunk of the world, I am pleased with myself. I saw the other side and I came back.

Today is gonna be the day That they’re gonna throw it back to you By now you should've somehow Realised what you gotta do I don’t believe that anybody Feels the way I do about you now Backbeat the word was on the street That the fire in your heart is out I’m sure you've heard it all before But you never really had a doubt I don’t believe that anybody feels The way I do about you now And all the roads we have to walk are winding And all the lights that lead us there are blinding There are many things that I would Like to say to you But I don’t know how Because maybe You’re gonna be the one that saves me And after all You’re my wonderwall

Four days.

Vol-San, the Sagacious Lightbulb

The French pronunciation of the letter "r" is nearly enough to keep me here, but tomorrow I'm taking the Chunnel back to London, hopefully to see Caitlyn and surely to complete the last leg of my little adventure. I like Paris a lot. Contrary to the American stereotype, the French are a warm, happy people, but I guess anybody living in such a beautiful city couldn't help but feel happy.

I went the Louvre and met the Mona Lisa (if only as briefly as a herd of cows meets the machine that rams the bolt into their heads). The French supplement the painting’s title with the parenthesized apposition "La Jocande." I don't know what that means. I saw the Arc d'Triumphe. I saw Notre Dame. I saw a poodle, whom I named Linda Cardinelli in Kristen and my game of naming dogs we meet. I saw Versailles, which I found somewhat lackluster with its browning lawns and dry fountains. I saw the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night and drank wine within its view. Our hostel, the Three Ducks, is my favorite of all the hostels so far, even if the crew that accompanies us last night reminded me of some horrible all-Canuck Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. They made a joke about freedom fries. How timely!

Kristen has left us to spend her last week in Sweden with Jono. Kinda sucks — she was the glue, and in her absence those who do not clean their toenails now outnumber me. But we're doing fine, nonetheless. Besides, we have Vol-san, the sagacious lightbulb of Japanese origin.

No matter what my outside appearance may indicate, I'm honestly as happy as I am tired.

Bittersweetly, six days.

Saint Couchette

sooner than scheduled and then we didn't go see the sistine chapel because we decided they wouldn't have us and besides i felt too dirty and tired and sore (and not in the good way) and charlie and i went straight for the train station to meet up with kristen and agnes in barcelona which meant a long train ride only i didn't mind and i wrote (transcribed directly from the blank back page of Charlie's copy of William Lycon's The Philosophy of Language) 

I decided Rome is a lot like a bunch of hyperactive children with no concept of foresight or planning who nonetheless build their own city... on the sun. As beautiful and grand as I found Rome, I've got no idea how these lunatics got more than two thousand years of history under their belts. Aeneas would not be proud. During the ride from Rome to Genoa we passed a waterslide park. I contemplated saying "Fuck Agnes and Kristen and the good nation of Spain" and spending the remainder of my vacation as a slide guinea pig. Neither Charlie nor I have a clock and we are not far enough on this trip to worry about time yet — Pisa stands between us and Genoa yet. It's like timeless like a rolling casino... on the sun. By the heat I know it’s day but no real time... The woman sitting next to me appeared to be reading some script for an Italian TV show. She was making marks here and there, so I suppose she might be somebody important. Evidence that, rather, she was crazy, like many people I have ridden public transportation beside: she had stuffed the script, a low-quality photocopy, in a Popo Gigio notebook with dozens of other papers. She did not speak a lick of English and neither did the script (I peeked). I'd like to think it was a family-oriented one-hour police drama about a recovering alcoholic cop divorcé who marries his partner, a sexy teenage witch superhero who hears prophetic messages from her talking log, then raises an eclectic assortment of international ghost children (one of whom struggles with his or her sexuality) and together they all form a rock band that travels the country, uncovering arcane governmental conspiracies regarding the existence of stop motion-animated aliens. Oh, and they have a dog named Tiger. (and a second passage) Everything was different after I left my shoes at the Hotel Stromboli. I did it on purpose, of course. These shoes I've had for more than a year and I still liked them, but foot odor demons possessed them long ago. Plus they had holes in their soles. Perhaps that's how the demons got in there in the first place. Their heaviness outweighed their usefulness. On a similar note, I decided against returning to the Sistine Chapel this morning. I opted to get to Genoa earlier and Charlie didn’t fight it. I'll probably regret this decision later, just like the shoes, which really weren't in such bad condition, now that I think about it. Maybe it’s the way my stomach flipped when I saw the Vatican — stunning, beautiful, damn close to perfect, but it made me feel sad. All that money donated over the years by hardworking Catholics over the years built a palace of marble and gold fancy enough to trap God inside. Glorious and gluttonous, it’s everything that’s right and wrong with Catholicism, my religion, stamped in my brain forever. And the maid at the Stromboli probably just threw my shoes away. Next stop: Livorno. How many to Genoa? Nice? Barcelona? London? Hollister? I’m wearing a t-shirt advertising a Joy Division album I'm not sure I've heard. As beaches blur by in my window, Italians cluster against the water like mussels on a rock, sleek and shiny. I wonder what Justin is doing. How do you say goodbye to an answering machine? 

 i think i thought nice was nice, even if i only saw the nice outside the train station and i think nice is where lucy is from and i thought about how great lucy is and how she's only in san luis now and i could go say hi some day if i only had here number but the train didn't board until way late at night and our car was full of backpackers desperate to get to barcelona and i swear the french punished us by not starting the air conditioning until way late and we were wet with sweat and thirsty and hungry from not eating all day but it did eventually pull out of the station and charlie and i shared our car with all these girls from california including this one named ashley who i found attractive in a rose mcgowan way and she went to the same high school in lafayette as shannon and we saw valeria again and i thought maybe valeria boded well for the rest of the journey since i felt so bad about stranding her back in interlaken and these horrible frenchwomen with sour faces like vinegar got in our car too and gave ashley and i dirty looks for talking and i don't think charlie liked ashley all that much but we had to leave anyway because we were in someone else's seats but charlie found an open, empty couchette and we crashed there and Ah, the couchette. I think I have never have felt such a wonderful embrace as that of the leather bench-bed of that vacant couchette car. I only gained three hours sleep, but the alternative was total zombie status in Barcelona. If I ever become fantastically wealthy and build my dream mansion, I will include a couchette room, in which the couchette experience will be perfectly simulated, rocking and creaking and flashing lights passing through the edges of the window drapes and everything. No sweeter word exists in the French language before "couchette." Saint Couchette, the patroness of the travel-weary. the ride through the spanish countryside to barcelona made me feel homesick because i thought it looked a lot like california, what with the golden hills and agriculture and all and even the people speaking spanish made me wish the train could have just kept going across the atlantic and all the way home only it didn't because that would be silly and instead it took us to the barcelona train station where we saw valeria a third time and i'm totally convinced that little ecuadorian woman is an angel because she serendipitously stopped us directly in front of the internet station where we could check our mail only the news wasn't as good as i had hoped Excerpts from Kristen's bad news epistles, the first of which bore the subject "Big Problem":

ag and i just got to barcelona and the journey went fine, just took a while. on the metro on our way to go find a hostel, ag's money belt was stolen out of her little backpack. no cash was in it but both her passports, her american green card, her student visa for paris, her expired ATM, her eurail pass, and her social security card were in there. we went to the police station and reported it and it seems that she might need to go to paris ASAP because there is an actual canadian embassy there and here... i saw two guys get on, one had an accordion and the other stepped between me and ag. while one was playing the accordion to distract us apparently, the other unzipped ags little back pack that she was holding in front of her and pulled the money belt out we think. ag also saw a third guy that was making eye contact with the other two that may have been involved. ag noticed it was unzipped a little when we got off and the metro was just leaving. if you want to meet us in barcelona or paris, we'll work it out when we find out info from the embassy. but if you don't want to wait to find out or travel that far, thats ok too. i'll be emailing you asap about the next results.

mostly at charlie's urging, he and i went to paris, but not before i cursed both agnes for allowing some swarthy accordion man charm her into dancing away all her valuable documents and the six or so hours we hung out in barcelona, which passed like a kidney stone, although we did meet this cute viennese girl named mary/marie who knew more about swedish rock and david lynch than hot girls usually do and she reminded me of someone i can't quite place in my mind and she said i reminded her of thom yorke (which i kind of have trouble taking as a compliment) and also the lead singer of coldplay (which i guess i take as slightly more of a compliment) and we stayed with her until she went her own way and left us with the stereotype of the american nuclear family where the dad was in the navy and i suspect didn't like me and the mom was a dead ringer for peggy hill from king of the hill and they told us some stories about how they used to be wild before the wed and bred but i suspect their wild was on the wild side of mild I arrived in Paris after two straight days of travailing travel and I arrived in Paris after two straight days of travailing travel and instantly wanted to escape to home by moving my flight up a few days. Upon the advice of the A, C, and K or D.A.C.K., however, I took a hot shower, brushed my teeth, exchanged the brown pants and Joy Division shirt I had been wearing for the last two days and allowed myself time to reconsider. One afternoon on the streets of Paris and I submitted to the city's allure. And now here I write. As it should be, nine days.

Plan B

Too much to write. A promise: the whole story once I get to London. Spain? No. France instead. Not a bad deal. Brass Monkey.

Ten days.

Paper Pants

The Vatican made us wear black paper trousers before Charlie and I could get into the pope's house. Stupid pope. I wish I hadn't given my new pants to a pretty Italian girl, because then I'd make the pope wear them when he came to my house.

What's that on the horizon? Could it be Spain after all?!

Thirteen days. American keyboard.

excuse the lack of punctuation (stop)

the arabic keyboard i am using makes it unnecessarily difficult and i will therefore avoid contractions and improvise question marks and such (stop)

just when the heat relented and sleeping without a puddle of perspiration became possible, the church bells rang and rang and rang

sunday morning in rome

i guess i forgot how overwhelmingly catholic this city is (stop) most of the shops shut down today save the most touristy (stop) church and whatnot (stop) i have seen more nuns since charlie and i got here than i did in elementary school (stop) it is a freaking penguin party here and anyone in a habit is invited (stop) accordions too (stop) there has been a plenitude of braying squeezeboxes (stop) if i saw a nun playing an accordion i think i would jizz my pants (stop) no (stop) that is not true (stop)

chucko and i saw the spanish steps last night (stop) i think they should remove them and install the spanish escalator (stop) (insert laughs here) i saw a priest speaking with a couple in a small chapel at the top of the steps and i realized that he was giving them mass (stop) i miss mass (stop) i should go while i am here in the catholic mecca (stop) no wait (stop) maybe that is an unfit comparison (stop) we also checked out the trevi fountain (comma) which was as impressive as i imagined it would be (stop) i took pictures but i doubt it could do the structure justice (stop) beautiful (stop) the sight of it both made me thirst and want to pee (stop) i filled my water bottle from what i think was a drinking fountain (stop) no sign of cholera yet (stop) i am like ninety percent sure it was potable (stop)

we left the hotel stromboli (comma) (which i liked a lot) and went in search of a cheaper place (stop) the man at the temini sent us to a hostel called the pink floyd (stop) one might think the pink floyd was an exceptionally cool hostel (stop) it was not (stop) if the think layer of graffiti had not been indication enough that the pink floyd was perhaps not the most respectable establishment this side of the tiber, the way creepy addams family elevator clinched it (stop) plus all the guys in the rooms looked like they were strung out (stop) i think i saw too many flies buzzing around too (stop) not wanting to wake up in an ice bath with a jagged (comma) stitched wound where our kidneys had been (comma) charlie and i left making sure to not touch the walls on the ways out

yuck

we are staying at a different place in a somewhat less graffiti ridden area now (stop) however (comma) it seems it is owned by the same people (stop) i hope my stuff is still there when i get back (stop) for a people heir to so much culture and art and history (comma) you would think the romans would no how to not act all creepy (stop) i suspect the entire city of rome is waiting to rip me off (stop)

we are off to the vatican today (stop) if i see any souvenir pope hats on sale (comma) i am buying one

fourteen days (stop) two weeks (stop) a fortnight (stop) half a month (stop)

it is such a paradox (stop) fourteen days is not long enough to do everything i want to do (comma) yet i cannot believe i have to wait that long to see home again (stop)

(stop)

Meg Ryan Breaks the Fourth Wall

Roman holiday.

I’m glad Rome is hot. That’s how I imagined it, reeking of baked asphalt. The sun is presently baking all of Europe, in fact, but it looks like I might not suffer in the Spanish heat, as the train from Milan to Barcelona is booked through August 16. Beyond that, me and Charles-in-Charge split from the girls temporarily so they could go see Barcelona early. No we have to negotiate new plans from opposite ends of Italy.

And now, in true Faulknerian style, a host of surprise guest narrators. First, a note from mom reminding me that, yes, it really is as hot as I think and, yes, Jim Vanderszwann has not also died in my absence:

Hello again Drew,

Just want to let you know that your tube with the posters has arrived and is waiting for you in your room. If you mailed the box with the clothes at the same time I guess it will be not far behind. I was listening to the news tonight and Jim Vanderszwann said it has been unusually hot in Europe this summer. Even London has been hot . . . so hot that they shut down the Millennium wheel because it was too hot inside the capsule that people were getting sick...like being in a giant terrarium for a whole hour! I am supposing you got a chance to go on the Wheel? Anyway, keep us up to date on your travels, have fun, stay safe. Love you, MOM

And that's not all:

Drew--

Okay, so I got my pictures back from London already, and — oh, man — there are some real winners of you. It's great, you amuse me even a zillion miles away. Let me know how your travels go and where they take you. I'm really jealous. Bastard. Lafayette is super boring; I can't wait to start work. Good to hear from you. . .

*Shannon

p.s. "I hope they don't procreate in there" -- Colin, in frustration about the noise level of our fellow students.

An email hilariously sent to me by Kristen — the same Kristen with whom I am travelling — updating me as to what I have done on my vacation:

hey y'all,

Leaving Interlaken today for florence. it was amazing. we got advice about a cool hike to take in the alps in this town called grindelwald or something and it was even prettier than interlaken. drew likened it to a model train town and it was so true, it was the most picturesque perfect little swiss town. and we hiked up to this glacier and it was way way pretty. and in switzerland, they're really into kids and novelty, i have decided. they're just everywhere. on the mountain we hiked, there were these toboggan rides for 4 francs. everybody comes to interlaken for the extreme sports like hang gliding and bungee jumping but those are expensive! so we took the little toboggans instead and it was awesome. the whole town is pretty expensive so the first night, we ended up eating at hooters because it was the cheapest place in town. hooters. hope you all are having a great summer.

love,
kristen

Good to know I'm having such a great time. But Kristen's right about what i said about the model train-like appearance of Switzerland. The whole countryside has, to steal the coinage of Agnes, a "manicuredness" to it that it is nearly too perfect. Italy, with its cracked sidewalks, and overgrown, weedy gardens seems more realistic.

And finally, an email titled "I am addicted" from a newly reintroduced character:

Your "online journal" is like a bad reality show. I just can't stop reading it. You have changed so much, but it's still you. Maybe it's just that I haven't seen you for so long, it's kinda like getting back to old time. Either way, I don't what I'll do once you stop writing.

- Meg

Meg Ryan goes through the fourth wall. I like guest narrators. Fifteen days.

Fiorenze Henderson

Florence. Fiorenze. Florence. Fiorenze. Florence and/or Fiorenze. I don't know where the hell I am. Fiorenze Henderson?

The Florence train station looked like how I expected it to, like a movie. A huge slatted dome like an airplane hanger with light coming through in shafts. Spinning signs and changing lights. Loud, gesticulating people. Stray pigeons. And an instant enclosure of body moisture when we stepped off the train. I think I liked it even better than Waterloo.

I feel farther from home than I ever have in my life.

The Duomo was... cute. Like a half-assed version of St. Paul's and the color of mint chip ice cream. But the city itself is beautiful. The River Arno is also soft and green, but more pleasing and not brown and sick-looking like the Thames. We saw an statue garden outside the Uffizzi that I liked a lot. Mostly men statues. Kristen pointed out that the only female statues were either being raped or the decapitated Medusa. I thought Perseus and Medusa was the best one there — a beautiful and horrible form in green stone on a white marble pedestal adorned with grotesque human forms and skulls. Seems like I've seen Medusa a lot since I got to this side of the world.

I had some good lasagne and we met a girl from Alabama named Nicolette. I would have expected to hate the Alabama accent, but on her it was actually charming. I think I get to see some genuine Renaissance art today, a few more good shots of culture with Agnes and Charlie at the Uffizzi while Kristen's beaching because she spent a month in Florence with Hillary O last year. I saw Michelangelo's grave and Macchiavelli's and Enrico Fermi's. And also the inventor of the radio. They're all in Sante Croce, where the great men of Italy apparently spend their afterlives. Charlie correctly pointed out the oddness of Galileo's presence in the church as well, seeing as how — great as ol's Galileo was — the church condemned his theory of the heliocentric universe up until about a few years ago. Crazy Italians.

When it rained yesterday, the city changed — wet for a few hours and therefore bearable. The veranda at the hostel overlooks the entire city and we could see a wildfire burning in an irregular, red semicircle all night. I think the smoke may have helped block out the sun a bit. The hostel here is odd, but way cooler than Balmer's in Interlaken. We stay in tents that have padlocks on the zippers but can be entered just as easily by lifting up the corners and sliding right in. Next Rome and then Barcelona and then Paris on the night of the nineteenth. I might get to see Caitlyn in London before I fly home.

Something funny: with an pitiful honesty, Charlie said he's never understood why boxer briefs are called boxer briefs. Gelato rocks my face. Sixteen days.

The Further Adventures of D.A.C.K.

and then we left munich and the train ride to interlaken was cool even though we accidentally forgot to get a pass for austria which we ended up seeing anyway through the window after we paid extra money. interlaken is nice but kind of pokey and our hostel was like an american expatriate frat house and i liked grindelwald a lot better because we hiked part way up the alps (or actually just one alp) but not the monsterhorn which is a mountain and not an actual monster horn. fictional.

glaciers are hardy old fucks and all four of us lost our hooters virginity.

three friends we made:

this girl from the ukraine but really washington d.c. who still had an accent and we suspect wanted to bone charlie and her name was alina or irina or sandy.

this girl named valeria (malaria) who we kind of left at the train station and i kind of felt bad and i got scared when she said barcelona and nice and roma were gonna be way hot because she’s from ecuador and anyone who grew up in a country named after the equator must know what heat really is.

this guy named vaughn or von or van or something who i hated initially because he talked about aikido a lot and tried to say madison was the berkeley of the midwest but then he corrected my posture and he told kristen she tries too hard.

we decided against mystery park and teddyland, because they frighten me. teddyland declares its sovereignty next thursday.

but most importantly, i must download “tarzan boy” as soon as i get back. eighteen days.

Baby You're No Good

and then i picked up kristen at heathrow and she told me that our flight was leaving in two hours when i thought i had until the next day so we had to tube back to brixton at the last minute and i got my stuff but we missed the flight anyway and lost our money but we got new tickets on a later flight but the airport was stanstead and not heathrow and a nice cabbie who sang camptown races drove us there and kristen got to see buckingham palace and parliament and big ben and the tate modern and the eye but only from the window of the cab and we get there earlier than we thought (because we thought we were going to be late) and give the nice but slightly off cabbie and extra twenty quid because he got us there on time and he didn't charge us a hundred quid like the first cabbie said he would and the flight was okay and linda ronstadt really made it a lot better and you're no good you're no good you're no good baby you're no good and i couldn't tell if the two ladies next to me were lesbians or just really european and then munich isn't really munich but munchen which confused me a lot and we found agnes and charlie okay and it's way hot here in germany even hotter than it was in london but the germans really like running all their words into these huge compound things that are hard to read because i guess they aren't hip to the space or the comma or even the hyphen and they put and s and an s together and it looks like a beta and german people are way nice and not shitty like kaspar was and i saw a brauhaus (beer house but more like an auditorium or meeting hall than the little pubs in london) where hitler held one of his first big nazi rallies and i guess this used to be hitler's place and the glockenspiel was amazing but it was only built in like 1900 or 1985 or something like that and i realize now i suck for not having gone seen soft cell in hyde park when i had the chance and so we leave in a few hours for interlaken but it's a seven hour train ride and apparently i get to be cameron diaz if we play charlie's angels or three engels für charlie and i'm in an internet cafe and i think if there's one person i would be missing most

Farewell, Aubergine

July's nearly done and — for me, anyway — so is London. I have only one day left with the people in my program, one day in the fanciest places I have ever lived, one day with free internet access, one day in the country that gave the world Jack the Ripper, Johnny Rotten, and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Then Kristen and I leave England, leave Uncle Andy, leave the beaten prostitute district and see the other side of the water. London’s nearly done and I think I’ll miss it.

I will miss Hyde Park Gate despite its dated plumbing fixtures. No, more than dated: radiocarbon-dated. I will miss its proximity to Hyde Park, an expanse of green and brown and blue that the residents of London and their dogs enjoy proudly and every day. I will miss the creaking floors. I will the Dutch embassy and the neverending line of people in the visa application line. (Do that many people want to smoke hash?) I will miss our group’s shared delusion that nasty lurksex toxified the couch in the living room.

I will miss the group.

I will miss Ben’s disinterested stoicism. But I will miss the harem, too. I will miss Chelese and Megan and Apryll-with-a-“y” and Lily whose last name was Field which made her a compound noun. I will miss Melinda/Matilda’s conviction that despite her tiny stature, she can still fit a soul in there. I will miss Tracy’s iconic double ponytail — surely not pigtails. I will miss Shannon’s indomitable optimism I will miss Jihan’s dedicated liberalism. I will miss Kristy’s ready-to-explode nymphomania and Molly’s inky blackness — an entity which only Shannon’s cheerfulness could survive — and Shawna’s drunken inability to hold her loosemeat sandwich. I’ll miss the whole group, excluding the bleeding red thing.

I’ll miss Airplane Window.

Farewell Waitrose. Farewell maple yogurt — no, yoghurt. Farewell lamb and mint-flavored potato chips and physalis and locally brewed Guinness and Tango and — fucking hell! — Cadbury’s creme eggs 365 days a year!

I’ll miss frontal nudity on basic cable after midnight.

Riding subways in other cities won’t have the same Canterbury Tales-like procession that I watched everyday. Chasing pigeons won’t be the same. I can go to other Italian restaurants. Shit — I can go to Italy! But never again will Princess Diana’s favorite one be around the corner. I know I'm never going to be able to bidet my troubles away. Besides, I’m just getting used to colour and honour and programme and those fucking two pence-pieces.

I’m honestly going to miss London. Farewell, aubergine.

It’s the end of July — only two months of summer left. Happily, I can answer the question that has dogged me since college started: where do I go from here? Easy. Munich.

ADDENDUM: I have an unanswered question after all: Who the fuck is Armitage Shanks and why is his name on my toilet?

T

Letter of the week: "T." If Mrs. Dalloway has taught me nothing else, Fortnum and Mason are gods among men, and my homeland should promptly adopt the sugar-coated extra meal known as "tea." Nine cups without a psychotic episode: the Royal Blend.

No longer shooting merely myself in the foot without any foresight, I'm kicking the Koopa shell without heed of what unseen, reflective blocks and pipes await it in the screens beyond.

A doubly perplexing email from Jill:

Hey - I just found out there is a gay bar in the Castro call the "Twin Peaks Tavern." No info yet whether or not it is based on the show.

Jill

Hell's Bells and All's Well

A conclusion worthy of ending on:

Do not despair — many are happy much of the time; more eat than starve, more are healthy than sick, more curable than dying; not so many dying as dead; and one of the thieves was saved. Hell's bells and all's well — half the world is at peace with itself, and so is the other half. Vast areas are unpolluted; millions of children grow up without suffering deprivation, and millions, while deprived, grow up without suffering cruelties, and millions, while deprived and cruelly treated, nonetheless grow up. No laughter is sad and many tears are joyful. At the graveside the undertaker doffs his top hat and impregnated the prettiest mourner.

— Tom Stoppard, Jumpers

Lyle and Linda Lurker

So I have this idea for a new sitcom. It's called "Meet the Lurkers." It's about Lyle and Linda Lurker, the creepy couple I now live with. Living with Lyle, an inconsiderate, hairy, and apparently hemophiliac hobbit of a roommate was bad enough. In fact, it was worse than Greg, Kaspar, or Drunko. But now the missus is here too. For an extended visit. In my room. Replete with kissing.

I shudder.

"Fuck God and all his shitty little angels!" — a quote from tonight’s play that I’m too Catholic to say myself. You’d think a play about he court politics of Louis XIV would be high drama enough, but those fucking lurkers have driven the entire group to gossip like bored housewives. Call me fucking Mabel. Apricots, oranges, and cauliflower.

I thought of a name for my column for next year: "Artful Dodging." It's from Oliver Twist. The Artful Dodger is the boy who seduces Oliver into a life of crime and dresses like a grown man — ostensibly, someone whose premature maturity generates comical situations. He's bad but lovably funny, so he gets away with stuff. Maybe it smacks of literary snobbishness, but it’s not like that wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate either. I considered playing on the word "dodgy," but I think "Artful Dodging" sounds better. And of all places, I got this epiphany not from reading Oliver Twist itself, which I didn't like, but from reading a biography on Alan Moore.

The Changing of the Guard kind of blew. I'm all for ritual and ceremony. Fuck, like I said, I've Catholic. But it's not so cool when you gotta stand alongside representatives of every nation on unforgiving cement for more than an hour. "Girl in pink! Please get off the fence!... Girl in red! Could you please get off the fence!... Girl in mauve...." The marching band was pretty good. Is it me, or did they play "Sound of the Swinging Symbol"?

If I had the offer to live at Buckingham Palace, I think I'd pass.

Speaking of old things, Bob Hope died today at the age of 400. Now who shall regale the nation with golf jokes at the president’s expense? In fact, a lot of people have died since I went all British. Barry White, Drewfish, ol' Bobby Hope, and those incorrigible Hussein brothers. Some good, some bad.

Big Noisy Caterpillar

Things that are on the tube:

• Absolutely no garbage cans
• Loud Americans
• Locals giving dirty looks to loud Americans
• A very particular smell of combined B.O. I have dubbed "the Euro cologne"
• A random shoe
• A boyfriend and girlfriend making out even though they totally look like brother and sister from the same freaky albino family
• A man who looked like BOB
• Hairy moles (not the burrowing kind)
• Hispanic people with British accents (weird!)
• Germs, I’d imagine
• Abundant bad haircuts
• Posters advertising the seventh season of “Buffy” on DVD
• A single exposed breast
• Somebody with an accordion
• The aforementioned man who looked like a male Mimi Bobek
• Thankfully, no ghosts

Odd how some of my clearest London memories are set in the tube.

A Thought on the Sidewalk

Best name for a Sudanese restaurant: Suddenly Sudan

Camden

Camden rocked thirty years ago, when it was the center of the astral plane of cool, and it rocks today, mostly, if not with a lot more people trying to steal my valuable money through trinkets and t-shirts. I bought the t-shirts anyway. Now I can proudly wear the White Stripes, Joy Division, or the frontmost alien from Space Invaders proudly. I can't express how glad I am for passing up the Stonehenge/Bath/Oxford all-day, wake up-at-five-in-the-morning supertour. Camden made me just as happy, only without buses. The trek beyond the comfy confines of Zone One was well worth it and replete with pink and blue mohawked heads. Enough of this faux-hawk shit.

Neon Yellow Journalism

Reminding me of the world of difference between British, one-step-above-Weekly World News tabloid journalism and its American counterpart, the headline for the story containing the photos of the assuredly dead Uday and Qudsay Hussein: "REST IN PIECES"

Sweet Home Stratford-Upon-Avon

While reading the plaque next to a particularly ugly Roy Lichtenstein sculpture during my six hour stay at the modern art holy of holies, the Tate Modern, I finally learned the difference between Benday dots and bindi dots. Benday dots are the little dots of color used in print, like in the newspaper or comic books. I kind of don’t think they use them anymore, but they’re the little specks of red and yellow that they’d use to make really garish oranges. Bindi dots, however, are the third eye symbols that Hindu women wear on their foreheads.

And that’s not the only gift the Tate Modern bestowed upon me. I picked up a pocket-sized book detailing the career of David Lynch. Aside from joyously drawing long forgotten friends like Maddy Ferguson, the Lady in the Radiator, and mean Mr. Eddie to the forefront of my mind. I learned that Lynch himself didn’t start into art until his twenties. He did painting, then some moving mechanical sculpture, and then got into animation and film from there. This means that with hard work, dedication, and development of what raw skill I think I might have, I could actually have a chance at this shit. If Jessica can hold Conan O’Brien up as her career template and Debbie Salt can hold up Gale Weathers, then I could use David Lynch for mine. Maybe. Or him and Conan.

It turns out that I probably don’t have jaundice.

Breaking all rules of the strict code of conduct to which I hold myself, I went out last night to a club. I hate clubs. I hate dancing. And I genuinely loathe dancing to shitty club music. Nonetheless, I had a good time without getting all that wasted. Granted, I ingested two substances that the United States government would have forbidden — (one) guarana, which wired me like a Double Shot Extra Tall Super Espresso Hyperspasm, and (two) absinthe, which didn’t make me see green fairies but did make the night a good one. But I actually enjoyed the clubbing experience. I think the company was good. Shannon and Tracy are good dancers, or at least Ben says they are. Personally, I can’t tell. It looks like everybody’s making it up to me. But when we weren’t protecting the girls from the pouncing cocks of sweaty Anglotrash, we had fun. They played “Sweet Home Alabama.” Do the Britons even know what Alabama is?

I’ve got to say goodbye to all these people in one week. I’ll be leaving them for touring the continent with Kristen and company — including Spain, where the BBC says they’ve been having terrorist bombings in touristy areas. But it will be a sad end to my little "Real World"-esque vacation. Of course, that’s not to say that college life up until this point has ever lacked the qualities of the "Real World." Or even the real world, for that matter.

To the Honorable Mr. Tate

Graham Sutherland's art inspires me; Francis Bacon's drives me to seek counseling.

Elbow Celebration

Insults I have endured thus far:

• “Eat cunt!” (yelled at me by a young British lad from the window of a white limousine near Picadilly Circus)
• “Wait in line like the rest of us, you tossers!” (or something thereabouts, yelled at me and Ben by some British douche bag who thought Ben and I were cutting in line when we weren’t, the douche bag)
• “Boisterous, loud Americans” (a label we unjustly earned on the tube from some German-speaking douche bags who didn’t realize our program’s mole, the German-born Antonia/Tracy could understand everything they said)

“Oh, we’re from California.” — a rejection to the guy at the info desk of the museum of natural history in response to his offer of an earthquake simulator. He understood.

“Elbows are so bomb!” — something somebody actually said.

“Regina,” the Latin for queen, pronounced by our British tour guide to rhyme with “vagina.” I noticed. I laughed. No one else did.

Breath of the Marbol

I know it’s high culture and historically significant and all that, but walking through gallery after gallery of nobility portraits is like flipping through some yearbook from London Aristocrat High, circa the sixteenth century. How can I expected to feign interest when even the portraits look bored? Then again, any museum that houses the likenesses of Samuel Pepys and David Bowie or Queen Elizabeth and Twiggy can’t be all that bad.

Everything in England smells like grandpa breath.

Gloucester Station

We stand without speaking, just like the locals, just like good Americans. Clacking and roaring like a roller coaster.

Bump. Sway. Fluorescent flickering.

The whizzing black interrupted by the occasional beer-yellow safety light slows to a halt, and the scenery changes to the station: more fluorescent lights, flooding the sterile tile platform like the set of some urban movie.

Stand up. Sit down. Shuffle around.

Now we’ve got a new group of friends on the journey home, but God forbid we try to talk to them. A youngish mother has youngish daughters — not twins, but dressed identically like she wishes they were. An old man stares at those girls and I don’t like the way he’s looking at him. In the car behind us, a man who looks like Mimi Bobeck reads the newest Harry Potter and occupies his seat like an overripe pear squished into a shotglass. The station starts inching away again, then runs, then blurs into that blackness that I don’t like.

No one’s sitting directly across from me, and I can see my reflection in the window, shadowed by the whole lot of nothing behind it. I would have never imagined Gloucester Station — one of those overlit tile platforms without garbage bins that I only began frequenting a week ago — would make feel like I was home, but it does. My feet hurt and I wish I was there now.

That Don't Impress Me Much, Either

Good God. This is the longest I've gone without seeing "The Simpsons" in my life. Shania Twain has a concert in Hyde Park tomorrow. Somehow, that doesn't impress me much as the Cindy Sherman exhibit at the adjacent Serpentine Galley.

Armitage Shanks

Just when I think it’s sunk in, I realize it hasn’t and I’m a stranger again.

The novelty of living in this old city never struck my mind more sensationally than when the spit flew from the mouth of an Shakespearean actress on landed on my forehead. The construction of the Globe affords me the privilege of groundlinghood — I’m standing with my stomach pressed against the stage, the cast of an all-female production of Richard III screaming, crying, and dueling no more than six inched from my awe-stricken face. The actress playing Richard defies the confines of gender with a malicious grin; the actress playing Anne, who would be pretty if she didn’t have the nose of the pigfaces from that “Eye of the Beholder” episode of the Twilight Zone, is the one whose saliva has splashed on my head. Her Anne is both dignified and pathetic. It was the second performance of a Shakespeare play at the reconstructed Globe within twenty-four hours, the previous being an all-male Richard II. I never thought I could like the history plays like this.

I live among the unnervingly wealthy here. The bitchy, British judge from American Idol shops at the grocery store we went to the first day. We saw him. The Dutch embassy is our next door neighbors. They’re nice people, I’m sure. Our front window looks out onto Hyde Park, a sprawling green better than any strip of brush we call a park in the States. Aside from the palace within the park, there’s a golden statue of Prince Albert — ahem — and the Serpentine Galley, which is presently featuring a show by Cindy Sherman.

The flatmates are good, certainly better than I expected from a school that admits cows into its undergraduate program. Some of them suck beyond the telling of it, but mostly I’m happy.

In the interest of conserving the flat’s most prized resource — toilet paper — I braved the bidet today. Webster defines “bidet” in a way that makes me smile: “a bathroom fixture used especially for bathing the external genitals and the posterior parts of the body.” Truthfully, I think the toilet’s little sister is a fixture made only for women. The male genitals hang in such a way as to be teased annoying by the bidet’s stream of water. While the stream does clean the desired parts, it strikes the seldom-stuck region to the rear of the nut sack in the process, causing an unpleasant slap-slap-slap that does not make me smile. I think Bidet Town is an area of the European lifestyle I will leave uncharted after all.

And most impressive above all these things: I learned how to use the tube without getting lost.

Where do I go from here?

Somewhere Over Moose Jaw

Holy shit. “My plane just landed in LONDON.” “I’m going through customs in LONDON.” “Uncle Andy’s picking me up in from Heathrow Airport in LONDON.” “I’m taking a bath in LONDON.” “I’m getting drunk with Kiwis at the decidedly American-Ozzie Outback Steakhouse… in LONDON!” I’m fucking here. On a new continent, on a new country, in a new city, on my uncle’s laptop while he and his Polish girlfriend share his bedroom. Holy shit. I have to repeat it. I made it here on my own. I didn’t accidentally board a flight to Libya. I wasn’t deterred by being situated between a monolingual German frau and a narcoleptic British dowager on the flight. And I didn’t get spurned by the hateful customs agent at the airport. Somewhere over Moose Jaw, it hit me: I am making the biggest step forward of my life. A lingering question: why did Uncle Andy’s flatmate Barry ask me what the age of consent for homosexual sex was in the United States?

Trapped in Rosemary Woodhouse's Kitchen

12:21 p.m.

Waiting for Godot. Go-dough. Go-DOUGH. Go go. Gogo. He’s a mimic. Estragon is Gogo too. Vivi? Dodo. They’re extinct. Go dot. God ot. God ought. God dot. Goad ought. Goat odd. An odd goat.

Turnips. (And sprouts.) Talking around something. Talking in circles. What is a turnip? Turn up? Tur-NIP? Like pars-NIP? Language can’t define anything. Language just talks around something, without getting you there. Like this play. Circular. Repetitive. Boring. Cory says funny. Sigrid says funny too. Why is her name Sigrid? An odd name. An odd goat. Is Sigrid God? No, that would be lame.

Für Elise. Fur Elise. Not “for” — Für. With an umlaut. A bagatelle by any other name. Again! Für Elise again? I wonder what the person who keeps butchering Für Elise looks like. She should practice more. Just not now. Where is Elise today?

I am trapped in Rosemary Woodhouse’s kitchen and I have less than twelve hours until I am an adult.

Hamologist

Even though a man might have more hairs on his head than stars in the sky, that doesn't mean he can plan a party movie stars will attend and enjoy responsibly.

Just Lost Peoria

Perplexing slogan on a jar of huckleberry jam in my fridge: "Huckleberry Delights: Everything huckleberry... and more!"

The Far Side of the Creative Subconscious

So I have a dream in which I had this weird epiphany: the force we call creativity is the ability certain people have to see parallel dimension, some of which are pretty abstract and resemble ours in no apparent way, and some of which are much like ours with silght variations. When people create anything, they're merely recycling what they see when their minds drift into other dimensions.

And then I woke up.

Bleep Blorp

A musing on the significance of sound in video games:

Sound plays a great deal more into video games than a lot of people realize, I think. Unlike the cinematic score in movies — music that punctuates the mood and tells the viewer how to feel — the music in video games is usually inconsequential to gameplay. That is, it just loops with the same melody onward to infinity, providing of course your character stays in the same area and there's no time limit. In spite of — or because of — this tendency, you hear the same music over and over again. I’d wager just about anybody kid under 25 and over 15 could hum the original Super Mario Bros. tune in an instance if you asked them to. But while the music and memory of it is just kind of a by-product of playing video games, the sound effects are very crucial, necessitating the player’s memorization and instant recognition of a whole vocabulary of sound effects to succeed in the game.

For instance, going back to Super Mario Bros., every noise has a distinct meaning: one for when Mario snags a coin, one for when he slides down a pipe, and one for when a Koopa shell ricochets off something, whether that be Mario’s foot or a wall or a warp pipe or whatever. Thus, in order to do well, the player would have to hear the noise of a recently-kicked shell bouncing off an upcoming obstacle and then prepare to have Mario jump over it as it comes sliding back. Or take a hit. Whatever.

And Super Mario Bros. is just a simple game, too. Newer games that have for complex sonic capabilities have hundreds of sound effects that people still learn to translate instantly. Funny that.

The Trendburger

So I did it. I bit into a big juicy trendburger and got a blog. I guess some trends are not necessarily offensive, so I think I can reconcile this choice. So why a blog? I'm not sure actually. I'd think I was published enough. But then I think about it and I decide that as many of my words get sent out into the world on a daily basis, I never write for myself. Writing is one way I can actually express myself, so maybe I should use it to sort out how I think about things instead of just letting these thoughts bounce around my head like so many ping-pong balls. Hopefully, people will stray across it and get some insight into why I'm doing the things I'm doing. Or at least get a good laugh. 

You know who you are, people I don't like. Let's see if I can get this to work now.