See this film

I finally had the chance to see Pan's Labyrinth tonight, and I must say that even with the excessive gore, it's an excellent film. The fact that I gave up several weeks ago and read the synopsis on Wikipedia did little to dull the film for me - the cinematography is excellent, the fantasy-Fascism juxtaposition is well done, and now I can't get the theme music out of my head.

It's definitely not a movie for kids - a creature with eyes in its hands who bites the heads off fairies isn't your standard Disney fare. There's more of the proper fairy tale to this film than the saccharine version, anyway, which makes it infinitely more interesting. Good people die, and fairies aren't always pink and frilly. Such is life.

Definitely could have done without the sewing bit (if you've seen it, you know what I mean). The audience reacted appropriately, though I'm convinced all the gasping and eww-ing was done by a single, rather macho, fellow somewhere in the audience. Or not. I admit, I did close my eyes a few times, but I've sat through much worse - I don't remember actually seeing large chunks of The Grudge, for instance.

Hey, that kid was creepy. I don't want to hear about it.

Long distance

As I was crawling into bed at quarter of twelve tonight, my US cell phone began to ring. Seeing as the only person who calls that phone is my sister in Chicago (international calling rates are ridiculous, and her Mac won't work with Google Talk), I jumped out of bed to answer it, only to find a strange 205 number on the ID.

What the hell, I thought, answering. "Hello?"

"Hello," a young, female, distinctly southern voice replied. "My name is Jane Smith, and I'm a sophomore at Indian Springs School. Is Miss Laura Simpson available?"

"This is she, and this has to be quick, this is an international call."

"Oh." She seemed flustered. "I was calling to see if you might be able to give this year..."

"No, I'm sorry, I'm a grad student. I have no money."

The poor dear seemed confused by my flat refusal, but we parted amicably (and quickly), and I returned to my sudoku feeling slightly guilty. Then I ran the time difference and realized that my dear solicitor was calling at 5:45 CST.

Dinnertime, sweetheart? That's a no-no, and I don't care what they told you when you sold your soul to ISS.

With a lighter heart, I now return to bed. Jen, if you see this, don't call me for the next eight hours unless your funding for Africa comes through. That I care about.

Well...it's Monday

Not a particularly exciting day. I rose at seven to make gym time before class (it's great when 10 AM class is described as "the middle of the night"), had lunch out, and have been trying to write ever since. More interesting things happened elsewhere in the world, however:

1) The sad: Barbaro was euthanized (http://msn.foxsports.com/horseracing/story/6421288?MSNHPHCP&GT1=9012).

2) The, um, funky: Miami's Committee to "Discuss an event at the Orange Bowl in case expected events occur in Cuba" (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16872448/?GT1=8921).

Oh well, perhaps tomorrow will be more thrilling. On a happier note, the sun is coming up sooner and going down later (almost 5 PM...whoa), and we're going to see Pan's Labyrinth on Wednesday!

Missing sopranos

Today was the quarterly Communion Sunday at church, meaning that the servers all sat around the table this morning instead of out in the pews. I didn't realize this until I got there and was told that all the women, and possibly both men, would be absent from the choir.

Fortunately, we had one man, and so we decided to try everything duet-style. Emily slipped in after the first song (with a half-hour walk, I can understand the tardiness), but that still meant only three people, two of them typically altos, and three unfamiliar hymns. Fine, I thought as we processed (still without Emily), if I'm carrying the treble section, I might as well sing the melody.

Today, however, happened to be the day that most of the melodies were in the stratosphere. Fortunately for me, my nerves about reading this morning were pushing my voice up (and making my legs shake, but that's another matter), so the first E wasn't much of a stretch. It wasn't until the final hymn, "Christ is Made The Sure Foundation," that I started to feel the burn. Not only was there a written E, but it was modulated up.

"I don't like playing in A," Roy explained after the fact. "That was only B-flat."
"But that made it an F," I pointed out, wondering how badly I had squeaked.
"Well," said Emily, "at least my abs got a workout."

Over lunch, I caught a few minutes of American Idol auditions, which made me feel somewhat better.

Quality programming

Ah, Saturday. One of the two days of the week during which I genuinely don't feel guilty about slacking off. Most of the time.

I'd like to share my appreciation for several people. First is the guy who has uploaded entire episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to Google Video. Now I always have something to watch (as long as the network feels like cooperating).

Second is the kind soul who uploads episodes of The White Rapper Show to YouTube. I salute you, sir, for giving me a weekly dose of the South Bronx and the white kids trying to make it in the 'hood. Must admit that I was sorry to see G-Child go tonight (come on, anyone who claims that Vanilla Ice is her idol has some serious guts), which means that the female representation is down to Persia, since we also lost the British chick in Episode 2.

Now, how to get Fifty Pence on...he can't be any weirder than the King of the 'Burbs and his "Ghetto Revival."

Jonesin' for BBQ

Last night, over Burns Night drinks, I got into a debate with a certain North Carolinian about the nature of proper barbeque. Taking a more liberal stance, I admitted that I was willing to accept pork, chicken, or beef covered with a tomato-based sauce. She screamed something in the spirit of "Begone, Satan!" (not those words, but there was a look in her eye that frightened me...maybe it was just the Strongbow) and told me that barbeque can be pork, only pork, and must have a vinegar-based sauce.

Whatever, Leigh.*

We let the matter drop, but I left the pub with a desire for barbeque comparable to Leigh's nacho cravings. Only one problem: no one over here does proper barbeque.

To really make decent barbeque, you need a grill or a smoker. There should be fire involved, and the end product should have delicate overtones of charcoal or mesquite, or something else that lets you know it's been slow-cooked over an actual flame. Then there's the sauce - tomato, vinegar, and even mustard are all legitimate bases for it, and prize-winning family recipes are the way to go.

That said, I'm in a dorm in Scotland. Certain elements, like a real grill and a real sauce, just can't be had.

Undaunted, I went to Tesco and picked up a pack of chicken breasts (yes, chicken), then headed over to the condiment aisle for sauce. There was only one type of barbeque sauce in the entire store, and it was by HP. HP, the makers of "brown sauce." What the heck is brown sauce?!? Even Shaw's, the Grocery Hellhole of New Haven, had more than one type of barbeque sauce. Well, I figured I didn't have room to be choosy, since God knows I don't have a trusted sauce recipe of my own, so I took what I could get and headed back to the dorm.

My dad has started doing this barbeque-ish thing with leftover pork roasts, basically shredding the meat and dumping a bottle of sauce on top. It works in a pinch. Not trusting myself to use the grill on the stove, as it always makes my meat come out dry, I boiled the chicken (after looking up how long one needs to boil chicken...yeah, I'm a mess in the kitchen). Lacking a food processor, I settled for shredding the result, burning my fingertips in the process, then dumped half the bottle of HP into the dish and mixed it up.

It's not half bad. Jim & Nick's isn't going to come calling any time soon, but I now have a few more dinners sitting in my refrigerator. The Fourth of July is looking more promising...

*To sum up the issue (thanks, Wikipedia):
Although regional differences in barbecue are blurring, as are many other aspects of U.S. regional culture, variations still exist, and it is still possible to get into heated discussions of the superiority or inferiority of particular regional barbecue variants.

Alabama
In Alabama, there are currently more barbecue restaurants, per capita, than any other US state. Alabama barbecue most often consists of pork ribs or pork shoulder, slow cooked over hickory smoke. Pork shoulder may be served either chopped or sliced; some diners also specify a preference for either "inside" or "outside" meat. Alabama barbecue is typically served with a spicy, tomato-based sauce. Two Documentary films have been made concerning the Alabama barbecue phenomenon, "Holy Smoke over Birmingham" and "A Taste of Hog Heaven,"
Famous Alabama barbecue restaurants include:
-Dreamland Bar-B-Que
Founded in 1958 in Tuscaloosa, there are now over 8 locations statewide. In the original restaurant in Tuscaloosa, there are no side dishes, only ribs, bread, and sauce served on paper plates.
-Big Bob Gibson's BBQ
Founded in 1925 in Decatur, the people from Big Bob's have won many world championships in pork and chicken, as well as for their award winning sauces. They are particularly famous for their unique "white" sauce with a mayonnaise and vinegar base. This style of barbecue was well-documented in Fannie Flagg's bestselling book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which was cooked and served at the Whistlestop Cafe that is at the center of the story.
-Golden Rule Bar-B-Que
One of the oldest barbecue restaurants in Alabama, The Golden Rule has remained a faithful representation of times long past. Founded in 1891 in Irondale, the original location was a roadside stop for travelers making the journey to and from Atlanta. Although the location has changed many times due to progress and growth, the original concept has stayed the same: Slow-roasted, finger-lickin' barbecue.

North Carolina
Within North Carolina, there are multiple regional traditions, all based on the slow-cooking of pulled or chopped pork. On the east coast, the dominant ingredients in the sauce are vinegar and hot peppers. Proceeding west into the Piedmont (as in Lexington), the sauce (called "dip" by the locals) becomes more tomato- or ketchup-based, but usually not as thick as commercial (Texas-style) sauces. In the eastern part of the state, the whole hog is typically used; in the west, sometimes only pork shoulders are used for barbecue. But under any circumstances, North Carolinian use of the term "barbecue" will refer to slow cooked pork, and not to backyard cookouts, or any sort of beef, chicken or other meats, regardless of how they are prepared although it is commonly acceptable to call chicken barbecued if the sauce is the same used on pork. Some North Carolinians will deny that "barbecue" exists outside of North Carolina.
In general, a hog half (Eastern) or shoulder (Lexington) is placed in a "hog cooker" over wood coals and cooked slowly, usually overnight. What wood to use is subject to some debate (often oak or hickory; never pine). In modern times, gas, electric, or charcoal heat are often used for convenience, although most will agree that the long exposure to hardwood smoke improves the flavor of the final product and is generally preferred. Other variations include cooking times, turning during cooking, and how finely the meat is chopped after cooking. For both Eastern and Lexington style, hushpuppies, barbecue slaw, boiled potatoes, corn sticks, Brunswick stew, and collard greens are commonly served as side dishes at North Carolina barbecue restaurants. Also popular is the "barbecue sandwich," consisting of barbecue, vinegar/pepper sauce, and sweet cole slaw served on a hamburger bun. Lexington's Annual Barbecue Festival is well known within the state and normally held on one of the last 2 Saturdays in October of each year.
A gathering centered on the cooking and consuming of barbecue is frequently called a "Pig pickin'" by North Carolina residents, and is popular for church gatherings, family celebrations, reunions, weddings, funerals and often as an event which occurs before the start of a collegiate football event.

Burns Night

Today is a national holiday in Scotland, a celebration of the life and works of Robert Burns, Scotland's Bard and notably the author of "Auld Lang Syne." Since Burns also wrote an ode to the *cough* noble haggis, there are many haggis-themed activities involved. Paramount is the actual consumption of the haggis, which many of the Americans in the building avoided. A bit of a nasty trick some locals play on dim-witted visitors is the "haggis hunt," akin to the Snipe hunt. As Roy the organist explained, you give the exchange students butterfly nets and whistles and send them into the woods in pursuit of the elusive haggis.

Right...

Being a haggis-shunning American myself, I joined some friends for an hour out at The Peartree. Strongbow doesn't qualify as a wee dram, per se, but it serves my purposes. Richmond Place had a Burns Night party for us, but we elected not to go - it's all well and good to serve haggis to unsuspecting foreigners, but when you don't provide the dram that makes you forget what you're eating, well...some things just aren't cool.

Random mirth

While killing time on Wikipedia this afternoon (What? Everybody does it...), I ran across a listing of the worst films ever. Having now read the plot summary for Plan 9 From Outer Space, I can honestly say I don't feel compelled to ever see it. The Star Wars Christmas Special, yes. Plan 9, not so much.

I did, however, find a link to the people who made my favorite B-movie, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. (The name doesn't begin to describe it...it's a Canadian film with a Mexican wrestler, among other things.) Much to my amusement, their website has a downloadable version of the end song, "Everybody Gets Laid Tonight." In the realm of "so bad it's good" films, anything featuring a song with the lyrics, "He came from Heaven/Two stakes in his hand" has got to be near the top.

Thank you, YPMB, for showing me this cinematic gem. I still have no idea where you got the video.

Giving credit

Props go to Ryan for orchestrating tonight's entertainment, the monthly "Golden Hour" at The Forest Cafe.

Props also go to Nick, Ben, and David for reading.

Props should go as well to the musical acts, especially the guy with the bass. You have to seriously love your instrument to be a bass player.

Some consideration should be given to the adorable border collie who made a guest appearance, though not as much as would have been given if the dog were brown and white and answered to Thunder Lizard.

Special thanks to The Forest Cafe for £1.20 pots of tea and £1 corkage fees.

The Dubious Achievement Award of the night goes to J&H Productions. Below is the link to the article Ryan was talking about...and yes, it was a long way to go for a punchline. There are thirteen minutes of that letter, which was mercifully cut off after ten. Not all was lost, however, as a drinking game has been devised:
-Drink every time he says "J&H productions," "Cincinnati," "coliseum," "producing," "label," "stars," or "agencies".
-Drink twice every time he says "pertaining".
-Finish the bottle when he says "P.S.".

Dreamworks SKG Signs J&H Productions To Six-Year Deal

CINCINNATI-Steven Spielberg of Dreamworks SKG confirmed the industry rumor Monday that Cincinnati-based J&H Productions International has been signed to a landmark six-year contract.

Research

No one tells you this at first, but creative writing often involves a significant amount of research. Eventually, "Write what you know" turns into "Write what you like, but make it convincing."

I'm not afraid of a little light research - I spent a good few nights with the Big Book of American Tornadoes (TM) for a literature class last year (we love you, K. David Jackson), and I've grown rather fond of Wikipedia, that catch-all of potentially verifiable facts, since then. I spent most of the summer online, doing research on everything from Texas hotels to Civil War battlefields, wildlife parks, and bespoke gifts. As I recall, I spent one enjoyable afternoon with the Cedar Point website (http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/park/rides/coasters/) which lets one "ride" the coasters from the comfort of one's desk. Since I don't do well with roller coasters, watching the track from the POV of the camera mounted on the cars is about the closest I'm going to come to riding any time soon.

Given that background, I wasn't daunted by the prospect of research for class this year, as long as it didn't involve thousand-page biographies or in-depth studies of World War II, or something else along those lines. I've become overly chummy with Wikipedia since September, and I've found a little bit of everything (thanks to Google) along the way.

There have, however, been some interesting moments. In no particular order:

-For a novel I wrote in college, I ended up researching ferry times between England and Ireland.

-The piece I've been doing for class all year involves a lot of roadside Americana, much of which I've yet to visit. There are some great sites about this stuff, including pictures, but two sites stand above the rest. The first is the Graceland site, which offers 360-degree panoramas of some of the rooms. Second is Historic Route 66 (http://www.historic66.com/), which takes one turn-by-turn down the Mother Road.

-Speaking of roads, I've logged a few hours on Mapquest this year, too. That aerial view Google Earth-esque thing they're doing now? Priceless.

-When my semester portfolio was returned last week, my professor told me to research the Church of Elvis. Turns out that it's a subgroup of the Universal Life Church, which will ordain anyone with only the completion of an online form. For $4.95, you, too, can become a Jedi Knight.

-I've been called out a few times, too. Someone in class suggested that a severe burn victim couldn't take morphine because it would leak from the skin. I don't know about that, but I did find that third-degree burns are less painful than they appear because some nerves are destroyed.

-Best yet though, by a large margin, goes to my friend in China who read a draft of one of my pieces and spotted a D&D anachronism - I was using terms from the wrong edition of the game. Since most of my knowledge of D&D's rules and characters comes from Wikipedia (honestly, Ian, I swear), I was most grateful to him for having that particularly obscure knowledge set.

Exercise video

Now this would make the gym much more entertaining...



Of course, I'm not that coordinated at 8 AM.
Or any other time, for that matter.

Football madness

The Super Bowl is almost upon us, bringing in its wake its unique form of insanity. The commercials are the best part, of course - I watched the game last year in the Dive, sitting with a copy of Malory's Works in my lap for those boring bits between commercial breaks - but the casual viewer is also treated to the antics of some really, really strange fans.

My dad just informed me that this afternoon is playoff time - one game at 2, one game at 5. Some fans take this more seriously than others. Consider this poor woman, who had her labor induced so her husband wouldn't miss the Bears-Saints game today: http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/6391994?MSNHPHCP&GT1=9012.

Labor of love, eh?

I have made fire!

Or...erm...casserole, but the feeling was similar.

Tonight, I attempted to act like an adult, by which I mean I actually decided to prepare a dish whose directions did not include "add boiling water and stir." I went on Cooking Light's website (thanks again, Rosanna!), printed a recipe for a broccoli-rice casserole, made a shopping list, and went to Tesco at a time other than ten minutes before I wanted to eat. I made substitutions (cream of chicken for cream of mushroom), added ingredients (Tesco had pre-cooked chicken, but no water chestnuts...curse them), made conversions (just how much of my 500g box of uncooked rice will constitute a cup, anyway, and how much of a 250g block of cheese is 4 oz? Also, where's the danged F-C calculator site again...), and managed not to set anything on fire. The dish made it out of the oven without landing on the floor. More remarkably, the casserole was actually palatable. (Let's see if it still is by the time I finish it, say Wednesday or so.) It resembled what it was supposed to resemble - a bunch of melted cheese mixed with soupy rice atop a bed of broccoli and chicken.

(Yes, disbelieving family, it worked. It was not nearly as visually unappealing as my rice stuffing, the picture of which you can take off the fridge any time now, nor did it turn out to have a weird consistency, unlike the result of Jen's and my unrelated oatmeal cookie incidents. You remember the cookies with that lovely nickname...)

British television

I've harped on British programming before, but now it's getting ridiculous in an all new way.

On Channel 4's nightly news yesterday, there were three main stories. Besides the 80-mph gusts that knocked down buildings and trees and killed seven people, and the station's continuing coverage of global warming, live from Antarctica (and let's not forget Princess Anne's interview down there, since she's such an expert on climate change and all), the big news of the night was the "Celebrity Big Brother" debacle.

Haven't been following this sordid affair? To summarize, some of the C-list inhabitants of the studio bunker, who are mostly of the white trash variety (notably Jade), have been saying some rather unflattering things about Shilpa, an Indian actress. Could be that Shilpa's the most attractive person down there and that Jade's career is in the toilet, but in any case, charges of racism are being thrown around, Carphone Warehouse has pulled its sponsorship of the program, and some 4,500 complaints have been recorded, a station record. There was an eviction tonight, but the usual crowds were not permitted to gather around the exit and heckle the loser. Wonder why. (See http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=4408 for further details.)

And I thought American Idol generated a lot of media flak...

Snow!

Well, I never said it was a lot of snow...

The rain mixed with some vaguely frozen precipitation this morning in intermittent bursts, producing this effect on Arthur's Seat. Other than up there, and in the Pentlands on the other side of town, it's just wet today. And cold.

At least I came prepared. Thanks to college, I now have a variety of Davenport-themed winter apparel, including a warm fleece hat that does horrible things to my hair.

Who am I kidding, this is Edinburgh. The most popular hairstyle is "windblown," followed by "wet."

Suburban logging

I just saw a web update from home about the Bradford Pears lining the median in Vestavia, one of the Birmingham suburbs adjacent to mine. The trees, which resemble enormous white (slightly odoriferous) puffballs for about two weeks before going to leaf every spring, are apparently a safety hazard because drivers can't see oncoming traffic when cutting across the highway.

Granted. Vestavia's section of US-31 is annoying for several reasons, notably visibility, traffic density, and the smart-ass traffic cops who park at the bottom of the hill and wait to catch speeders. Some wise guy decided that Vestavia should be a 40-mph zone. Is this a safe idea? Undoubtedly. Does anyone between 16 and 65 actually keep to 40 in Vestavia when no cops are visibly present? No.

The current plan is to cut down the strip of trees, beginning last night, and to replace them with low-growing alternative foliage. I see the logic behind it, but something in me protests the removal of the Bradfords - they're gorgeous, right up there with the Japanese Cherries and the tulip trees for all-out spring blossoming. It's a shame to lose these lovely trees, especially because they've been in the median for so long.

Then again, I don't want to get broadsided by oncoming traffic, either. Decisions...

A winter wonderland it ain't

Edinburgh...tsk, tsk.

Apparently, while I was taking my half-hour nap at eight tonight (hey, Pasta Coma happens, and at least I'm no longer taking pre-bed naps on the floor during L&O: SVU like last year), it snowed. You couldn't prove it by me. When I looked out the window, the pavement was wet, but nothing flake-like was falling. The only way I knew anything had happened was by a few "Is is snowing?" IMs from Anurag. Maybe his side of the building got snow. Mine got jack.

Another thing: it was beautiful today, cold but lovely and clear-skied. Where did the hypothetical snow come from, and why is it wet now? Edinburgh, for all of our sakes, make up your mind!

Off topic, I highly recommend Brookstone's "Nap" socks, which are quite warm, blue, chenille-y, and fit nicely over the other socks I wore to class (you know, with the suede boots, since it wasn't raining today...oh, wait...).

National holidays

I had approximately the following conversation with my mother this afternoon.

Me: What's up?
Mom: Just got home from work. Your father is making me potatoes.
Me: (Realizing it's about 9:30 AM in Alabama) What's Dad doing home?
Mom: It's Martin Luther King Day...
Me: [Silence] Yeah, I thought MSN was saying something about that...

Amazing how one can forget those national holidays. Ah, MLK Day...when all the other schools got off but Springs was still in session...when the Native American group staged "Indigenous Peoples Day" on Cross Campus...when Levin finally relented and gave us a national holiday off...

Well, it wasn't like I was in class today, anyway.

Twister, British-style

Amazing. Simply amazing.

I just watched part of a special entitled "Tornado Britain," which covered the '05 Birmingham tornado and the December '06 London tornado (how did I miss that?). Oh, Equinox...not so hot, people, not so hot.

I've never personally lived through a tornado, thank God; the closest I've come is straight-line winds as a kid. I am, however, from a state where tornado drills are mandatory for grade schoolers, and I have many fond memories of being freed from one class or another to sit in the tunnel with my head against the wall, giggling at the inanity of the exercise and of the ungraceful butt-up position we were required to take. I was watching ABC 33/40's tower camera when a tornado came over the mountain into Birmingham in 1998, and I know that 10 AM on the first Wednesday of the month is siren testing time (believe me, one was across the road from my high school, and class had to stop until the test was over). I've seen what tornadoes can do.

After listening to half an hour of this documentary, you would have thought a pack of rabid, hungry Yetis had descended upon Birmingham and London and started smashing things up. The reactions were unbelievable and frightening - no one expected it, and so no one knew what to do. One shopkeeper tried to rescue his sidewalk merchandise. People stood by windows, taking footage with their mobile phones. A TV cameraman, who just happened to be in the park when the Birmingham tornado came through, was blown to the ground but kept the camera rolling. People were frightened, obviously, but completely clueless.

In the aftermath of the Birmingham storm, the announcer told us, 112 roofs were damaged and 90 cars wrecked, though no one was killed. Considering that this was a neighborhood of old Victorian row houses and that the tornado had a seven-mile damage path, 112 roofs doesn't seem like much, but to the announcer, this event was roughly on par with Hiroshima.

Enter the tornado experts from Texas.

I love these guys. First, they cut to Texas Tech's debris lab, in which burly guys load beams into a cannon and shoot them at various types of housing materials, supposedly for research purposes. The announcer seemed suitably impressed with the way a flying beam could punch a hole in your average Victorian brick wall, and I was suitably impressed by the producer's show of restraint in not subtitling the Texans. Next was the tornado chaser and wind expert (he's seen something like 175 tornadoes live in the last 26 years), who did two things that made me grin. First, he said the Birmingham twister was probably an F2, nasty but hardly earth-stopping. Secondly, he pronounced 'Birmingham' correctly - you know, like we do in Alabama.

Did I mention that I love these guys?

If Equinox is right and Britain is going to be seeing more tornadic activity due to global warming or stampeding Yetis or whatever, someone needs to put out a PSA with some basic guidelines. Seek shelter away from windows in the lowest floor of the house or basement. Don't try to outrun a tornado headed your way. And folks, just because there aren't any cows flying by, you do not have license to stand outside and gawk while your lovely row of Victorian houses disintegrates - this is common sense time.

Also, TORRO, I don't care how fancy your scale is, Fujita it was and Fujita it will stay. It was an F2 (excuse me, T4-5), and by American standards, that's pretty wussy. Deal with it. Just by comparison, the Birmingham, AL tornado of 1998 was an F5, 31 miles long, and killed 32 people. If using the T-scale, it would most likely have ranked a T-9 or T-10.

By the way, I know of some folks who make great storm shelters...

One of those days

Let's begin with the rain. When I woke at 8, the crack in the curtains was letting in a particular shade of deep blue light reserved for overcast, pre-dawn mornings, the rain was coming down, and the wind was picking up. I hit the snooze button and rolled over.

The Creative Writing class had been told to expect the results of our semester hand-in on Friday by 5, but sadly, I was informed at 5 that mine might not come today.

It didn't.

That didn't stop me from checking my inboxes compulsively all day long, which at least gave me a respite from the second half of The Satanic Verses. The book's excellent (too bad about the fatwa calling for Rushdie's death), but it's 547 pages long, and I didn't want to spend the weekend with it. Struck me as strange to be reading a book that's still banned in some countries almost 20 years after publication. Granted, I can see where certain passages might be construed as blasphemous, but no more so than, say, the entirety of Dogma, or that scene at the end of one of the Vampire Chronicles where Lestat meets Jesus. Fatwa or no, Rushdie writes quality fiction.

The bright spot of the day was making (thanks to About.com) a halfway decent shrimp fried rice. The plusses? More shrimp than I'd get anywhere else, no scallions or sprouts, no soy sauce in those ridiculous packets, and significantly less fat (I used a Pam-like spray instead of butter or oil). The minuses? Scrubbing the pan when I was finished, egg that likes to stick to the pan, wrong kind of rice (all long grain or basmati at Tesco, curse them), and a slightly higher price tag than takeout (with student discount, Karen Wong's is £4.95, but I paid at least £3.50 for the shrimp and £1.50 for the rice packet. At least I had eggs and soy sauce on hand). Oh well, I'm learning, and I would have had shrimp left over if they hadn't been stinking up the fridge. I already pop popcorn in there, so I'm not going to subject the rest of the floor to odoriferous seafood.

Best worst SF story ever written

Thanks to the fine folks at the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/), I was reintroduced tonight to what is widely regarded in SF fan circles as the worst story ever written: "The Eye of Argon."

TEOA was published in a small magazine in 1970 by one Jim Theis, who was only 16 at the time. All I'm going to say is that there's no excuse for it. It's horrible. For the curious, the copy circulating on the Internet was transcribed from a mimeograph of the original, and is presented with Theis's typos. Regrettably, the accompanying drawings have not been reproduced. (http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/sf/eyeargon/eyeargon.htm)

I didn't know one could query bustily until I read TEOA. Thanks, Jim, for opening my eyes, but I really didn't need to know that Grignr has a g-string. Too much information, man.

Perhaps it's not fair to be quite so hard on Jim Theis. In a recent interview, he was rather miffed that TEOA was still being mocked 30 years after its publication, and though he had gone on to get a degree in journalism, he never wrote fiction again. Theis died in 2002, four years before Wildside Press reprinted his immortal classic. His legacy lives on in the form of a TEOA-based game: each participant takes a turn trying to do a decent reading of the text, misspellings and all, but is forced to pass to the next person when he (almost inevitably) cracks up.

If TEOA could get published, maybe there's hope for me yet.

A new tour low

Every winter break (and sometimes, spring break or summer break), Yale's sixteen or so a cappella groups and the Glee Club go on tour around the country (or, if you're the Whiffenpoofs, you take a month-long world tour. The Whiffs can do that). All that quality time togther means that craziness happens over these tours - hookups, breakups, back-of-the-bus makeout sessions, hosts who freely dispense alcohol, getting lost, getting put with truly sketchy hosts (see Whim's recent trips), skinny dipping in front of a restaurant in Melbourne at lunchtime - and those are mostly verifiable. It's Tour, though, so everyone expects a little insanity.

There's a rather common stereotype about the members of all-male a cappella groups that doesn't bear repeating (I've know many exceptions to the rule), but suffice it to say that one would not expect a group of them to get beaten up after being heckled as gay in San Francisco, of all places. Yet that's just what happened to the Baker's Dozen after a house party on New Year's Eve. One of the poor guys, a freshman, now has permanent titanium implants in his jaw, is on a liquid diet for the next eight weeks, and can't sing or play varsity squash until he recovers. "Gentle people," indeed.

Don't believe me? Here's the YDN article: http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/19384. For the morbidly curious, the photos are available on IvyGate.

Employment

As I'm currently living on the Mom and Dad Dole, I'm trying to pick up a little spare cash in the form of a part-time job. This is trickier than one thinks - legally, I can work only 20 hours per week, and then there's this business with an NI number (basically, I pay into a service I can never use), plus scheduling issues.

I've submitted an application to the Edinburgh Woolen Mill, which is one of the few stores on the Royal Mile that doesn't continually play bagpipe music. Barring that, my friends have begun to come up with suggestions:

Bean Scene (coffee and bad nachos)
Starbucks (more expensive coffee, no nachos)
Kilimanjaro (coffee, not sure about nachos)
Favorit (nachos, and Belgian waffles with ice cream)

See a trend?

Thanks, y'all.

Grade shock

After awaking from my afternoon nap today (yeah, still a little jetlagged, in spite of it all. And come on, it's cold and wet out there, and it's 4 PM, so the sun's going down), I received an e-mail to the effect that our Postmodern Lit final essays - the ones that determine 99.9% of our course grade - were ready for pickup. No preamble, no warning.

Well, it's been a month. About time.

I popped in to see Anne Mason, the registrar, for the second time today, and she laughed when I told her I'd come to take one off her hands. She said I had no cause for worry. I told her that the professor had warned us that she'd be tough, and had given the Americans a repeat of the "chill out, the grading scale is different" speech, then made my exit and tore into the envelope.

Funny thing about British universities - no grades are permanent until the end of the year, when readers from other British universites go over our stuff and modify the grades as necessary. I suppose this is a good way to keep professors from taking out grudges on students, but it seems a waste of time to me. Anyway...

She'd given me a 68. Considering that 70 is the beginning of honors, I wasn't too upset, but I wanted a more formal conversion.

One of the lovely study abroad websites, however, explained that there really is no formal conversion between UK and US grades, but they offered four charts of rough UK-letter grade approximations. 68 is probably an A, maybe an A-.

Hmm. Thanks for telling me, guys. I can live with that. It's Postmodernism, for crying out loud!

Hibernation

My jetlag finally caught up with my yesterday after lunch, and I crawled into bed for what turned out to be a four-hour nap. I had to wear my bathrobe over my pajamas, as my lovely storage heater had no heat to release at the time. (Actually, it's just now started to heat the room, and it's 7:45 AM. Thanks, heater.)

I felt pretty good upon waking, and made dinner, though I discovered that Tesco doesn't sell much in the way of dishes and pans. Aluminum pie plate? Uh-unh. I settled for a Pyrex "roaster" and went on my merry way.

With dinner cleaned up, I returned to my room and bummed around for a bit before deciding that an 8:30 bedtime was in order. I woke a few times during the night, but it took the alarm to wake me just now, almost twelve hours later. Must have something to do with the lack of sun and the now-functional heater.

Now, to figure out the gym...

I'm baa-aack...

It's 9:25 AM, on a looks-to-be bright, sunny Sunday morning. The sun's still coming up, so time will tell on that count. I landed in Edinburgh about an hour and a half ago, I've showered and unpacked, and I'm feeling slightly more human again. The fact that my body has absolutely no idea what time it's supposed to be (3:25 AM, but who's counting?) means that I'm currently riding the jetlag high, and that I'll sleep like a log tonight. I'm trusting myself to go to church, pick up the assignment for Tuesday, make a run through Tesco, and maybe make gumbo. That's about all; I'm still a bit too scattered to do anything of extreme importance.

The flights, thank God, were uneventful, and my luggage arrived both on time and intact. The only real snag in the evening was the flight from Jersey, which was completely full. A third-year at St. Andrews and I were in seats D and F, respectively, and would have had a more pleasant evening if seat E hadn't been occupied by the Creepy Professor. (Well, he struck me as a professorial type...) CP read something about the rise of the middle class work ethic in America or some such (didn't pay much attention, as I was reading Everything Is Illuminated, which is quite good), then drank a mini bottle of cabernet sauvignon and proceeded to take a nap. I have nothing against people who can sleep on planes - more power to them - but St. Andrews Girl and I were a little peeved because CP tended to list in his sleep. Also, his knees kept slipping into my space, which was cramped enough because the **** jerk in front of me decided to fully recline his seat. I couldn't recline mine because the row behind me was against a wall, and the man would have been awfully cramped, so I was stuck in a tiny hole, fighting for space with CP's knees and my backpack, looking for my lost battery (found it), and trying to convince myself that vertical sleep is possible with a stiff back.

Nice try, but at least the book was good.

On a special note, the Yale Glee Club performs at my high school tonight. Guys, I love y'all dearly, but our timing sucks. In any case, knock 'em dead!

Another special note: my parents have been married 29 years today. Congrats, and I love you, Mom and Dad.

Leaving the Mother Land

My bags are packed, my groceries are purchased, and I've had my last steak for eight months. Yes, the time has come - 7:30 AM, to be precise - for me to leave home once again and take the three-hour drive to Atlanta to catch my flight out.

The unfortunate bit about this trip is that the flight isn't direct; I have to hang out in Newark, home of the $7 sandwich, for two hours. Whichever idiot dubbed New Jersey the "Garden State" never spent time in the airport. Reinforcing the difference between North and South, Newark also lacks something Atlanta gave me last September: free Wi-Fi in the international terminal. No, Newark wants me to pay to get online after I purchase some overpriced cold cuts. Well, screw you, Jersey. No one likes you, anyway.

If all goes according to plan, my box of gumbo mix and I should arrive in Edinburgh around 7:30 AM Sunday, theoretically in time for church. I'll consider it, but I'm willing to bet God would give me a pass if I skipped this once...

All I need now are three pair of oxen

Just about any kid who grew up in the States in the '90s remembers Oregon Trail. You know that bit at the beginning, when you give the other members of your party inappropriate monikers and skimp on the goods, assuming you'll just buy replacement axles and shoot buffalo down the road?

Yeah, we all remember how that turns out, even without the cholera and dysentery.

Having learned my lesson the first time out of the country, I went to my friendly neighborhood Bruno's today to procure a few rations in anticipation of my trip back to Scotland on Saturday. Besides my 50 or so pounds of clothes and shoes (hey, Santa was good to me), I've squirreled away the following:

Six boxes of cornbread mix
Four packs of assorted biscuit mix (Biscuits, Ian. Not cookies, honest-to-God biscuits.)
Seven packs of Zatarain's yellow rice, which will not end up on the kitchen floor this time.
Greek seasoning
Meat tenderizer
More SmartPop, this time (accidentally) in Kettle Corn
Two boxes of 25-calorie hot chocolate (Time to discover low-cal varieties, Tesco.)
Splenda, as Tesco has decided not to sell it any longer. Curse you, Tesco.
Vitamins, since they're cheaper here, and because I miss my Viactiv chews.

Leigh, Cali, if anyone wants to bring Reese's Cups, now's the chance...

Kubrick confuses me

I finally watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time last night, thanks to my friend, and I'll give it this: it's interesting. If I had read the novel (written concurrently with the film), I would have better understood what was going on, and why the men in the monkey suits were screeching at this black rectangle thingy. I knew vaguely about the Star Child, thanks to the back of 2010, which for some reason my parents acquired at some point, and I knew about Dave and his good buddy, HAL 9000, but a lot of it looked like Kubrick was having fun with acid.

We have lots of looooong, slow shots of spaceships and floating astronauts (and that scene in Spaceballs suddenly makes more sense...). We have the trippy light show at the end of the film. We have the Chorus From Hell. We have Dave turning into a fetal sort of being.

Huh.

The sequels are trippier. Clarke wasn't a big stickler for continuity in his novels; he claimed instead that each was in a separate universe or some such. As a result, we have monoliths and lifeforms on Europa, Jupiter turning into a short-lived star, HAL being awakened and turning into another Star Child to be Dave's companion, that guy from the start of the movie whose kid wanted a bushbaby being split into human and Star Child, HAL and Dave merging into Halman to save Earth...

My friend insists I should read Foundation. Asimov liked robots, granted, but he seemed to be off the drugs.

Goodbyes

Today was a national day of mourning for President Ford, meaning that my dad and the rest of the federal employees had the day off to mourn, watch Fox's live coverage of the funeral, do housework, or just goof off. Extended vacations are always nice; no one wants to go back to work after New Year's.

We also put Jen on a plane back to Chicago tonight. Her classes start tomorrow at 11, and her plane just got in (it's about 9 PM), so she's going out with her friends to party and catch up. Winter quarter is apparently a pain at Northwestern because Evanston is so abysmally cold this time of year, but at least she's off the crew team and can now sleep in past dawn. For me, soon to be back in Edinburgh, this would mean sleeping until at least 8:15. I will miss Alabama's significantly earlier dawns next week, though I won't be too sad to leave Jack, the neighbors' dog, and his 7 AM bark-fests.

Happy New Year!

First post of 2007...

Jen and I had an awesome night last night, during what would turn out to be a 25-hour beach extravaganza. We headed south after church, armed with a single piece of luggage and the green Beetle, and wound up in Gulf Shores five hours later. The first stop was Scoops, the adorable ice cream parlor on Highway 59, because 1) it's so cute, 2) we were hungry, and 3) I was Fluffy-hunting (if Mary ever sees this, she'll know. But no sightings. He had the night off). Satiated, we then checked into the Holiday Inn, dressed for dinner, and headed over to Lulu's.

Jimmy Buffett's little sister started her own restaurant and moved it to Gulf Shores a few years back, and it's now a happening spot on the Intracostal Waterway. Though the wait was an hour and a half, it was in the low 60s, the Wet Willy Band was playing, I had a frozen key lime pie drink in hand (vanilla ice cream, Licor 43, and lime juice), the locals were sloshed, and the ring toss game was in full swing. They gave us beads at dinner (quality shrimp...Edinburgh, "prawns" don't cut it), and around nine we drove over to the Wharf for their "street party."

The "party" was more a gathering around the stage for what would have been a bad 50th high school reunion band, but the beer was plentiful and the big screens were showing muted football. I was getting cold and we were a little bored, so we headed for Starbucks (inevitably), then stood on the balcony for the rest of the concert/muted broadcast of Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve. At midnight, they dropped a light-up anchor (this is Gulf Shores, after all) and shot off fireworks, and we somehow managed to beat the line out to the road.

This morning, we had a nice hour on the beach, which would have been better if the air and water temperatures had been out of the 50s. Sadly, the sand was freezing, and an hour was all my feet could take. Numbness is unpleasant at 8 AM. We tried to go to our favorite breakfast place, but they were closed (New Year's Day? Who'd have thought?) and so we continued out of town.

Five hours later, we were back in Hoover, and I had managed a beach trip without a sunburn. Amazing.

There would have been video, but I sort of suck at it, especially in the dark. Sorry.