Europa Aliena (Our Three Strangest Continental Incidents)

1. Metz: Freestanding Shower

At the Hotel Bristol we asked for a three person room. The receptionist looked at us strangely. When we saw the shower, we knew why. It's position and size created, um, modesty issues, since it stood in the middle of the bedroom and had glass walls.

2. Interlaken: The Funny Farm: Laundry

The name says it all--dirty carpets anonymous bedmates (human, canine, insect and rodent), Australians (drunk, high, smashed, stoned). After 10 days on three pairs of clothes, we were desparate to do laundry. We should have waited. The machines out by the "potshed" were broken. The ones inside were out of tokens. So we did laundry in our questionable looking bathtub. I washed, Ann rinsed, Matthew dried. In his boxers. On the terrace. A bus suddenly disgorged 2 dozen Japanese tourists who started taking pictures. He thinks they were taking pictures of the Jungfrau in the background.

3. Rome: The Metro

The train is so crowded that we have nothing to hold on to and Matthew bumps into a dark skinned and sinister looking man who offers him a drink from his whiskey bottle. Matthew declines. The man explains in broken English that there are many pickpockets in Rome but he is not one. Further, he is from Translyvania but is not a vampire. Later that day Matthew is offered a sandwich for one of his sisters.

Back from Europe!

...back from absorbing foreign cultures and microbes. Back from the splendor and squalor of Rome. Back from the polite murmur of Parisians and the cheerful gutterality of Germans. Back from the crusty bread, ripe cheese, and new wine. Back to the Baptist heartland where water is ever so much more common than wine. Back to the world of macro-cars, macro-breweries, and macro-fat cells. No more paying for water, sleeping on trains, and traveling like turtles. Don't ask me how I liked it--my mind is still processing flying butresses and exchange rates.

The USA's New Lake-Snatching Conspiracy

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian village was left baffled Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.

NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately.

"It is very dangerous. If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival. The trees flew downwards, under the ground," said Dmitry Zaitsev, a local Emergencies Ministry official interviewed by the channel.

Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.

"I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us," said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.
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Preparations

It's raining and I've been reading travel books all day (I realize that was a run-on). It seems hard to believe that in less than a week Europe will no longer be seen only through the media of guidebooks, hostel websites, and Ricola ads. After booking so many hotels and reading so many travel logs, it seems as much of a created world as Middle Earth or Dune. By creating an itinerary, I have compiled, from snippets of other people's experiences, a set of presuppositions about what we will experience. I hope it is something entirely unexpected.

Disconnect

There are three types of people: those who like to rule, those who like to be ruled, and those who like to be left alone. People in the first two categories understand one another other. People in the third category resist those in the first and despise those in the second.

Looking in the Mirror

This is what I will look like when I am old, I say
As I glance in the reflection across the room,
Greyed and obscured by the lowered shade,
So that only the tired stress lines around the mouth
Really show.

And the large black eye sockets
That get larger with coffee
And other artificial life stimulants.

The smooth translucent skin of youth is hidden by the dark
And in imagination the many wrinkles of age fill the blank
The wrinkles that will suit the deep lines of apathy
And the bitter jaw set that alone shows in the dark reflection.

Downsizing

hermit-crab
Originally uploaded by DeaSuperba.

Hermit crabs do not form their own shells but instead use the cast off shells of other animals. On some beaches, where shells are scarce, a crab may be forced to live in a shell that is too small for him and his grotesque, bristling body protrudes from its crowded prison.

Like hermit crabs, people do not make their own organic reputations, but must conform to pre-made categories, which fit their real selves with varying snuggness. In our democratic society, there is an abundance of shells and we are all encouraged to dwell in the largest ones we can carry on our backs. This leads to discomfort, as we drag our inflated reputations behind us, or the loss of our shells, as they slide off our backs.

Slogans like "you can do anything" and "be all that you can be" are destructive. While we thankfully don't have to live in uniformly small shells, our culture creates new misery by pushing mediocre people to live in oversized shells. Stop and consider yourself--your natural abilities and your true desires--and find a shell that fits.

10 Reasons Why I Shouldn't Be a Man

rex harrison
Originally uploaded by DeaSuperba.

1. I would forget flowers and things and all women would hate me.

2. I would be a misogynist.

3. I would be like Henry Higgins.

4. I would be five inches taller with broader shoulders so all the guys would be jealous of me.

5. THEREFORE...I wouldn't have any friends.

6. I might have to live in Red Hill (ick).

7. My brother would have killed me by now.

8. I couldn't be a feminist without being weird.

9. I couldn't listen to Sinead O'Connor without being really weird.

10. I couldn't wear red scarves and flared pants without being gay.

From the Miasma of My Mind to Yours

It is 11:40 at night. Normally, being the sluggard I am, I'd be in bed. But I'm not. I'm writing a paper. Yes, the night before it is due. I have a minor stomach ache and a major buzz from the several servings of Starbuck's Java Chip icecream that I've consumed. A lot has happened. We've solved certain ladies' marital problems. We've eliminated Brianna's Armenian heresy. Emily's play has been a success the first night. And I learned a new word - MIASMA.

Yes, miasma, from the book I'm supposed to be reviewing, The Myth of Rome's Fall. The OED defines miasma as: Noxious vapour rising from putrescent organic matter, marshland, etc., which pollutes the atmosphere; a cloud of such vapour. How lovely! Hopefully the excitement will keep me awake for the next three hours....

The Omniscient OED

...where I can always find a new and useful word....

wanrufe - [f. WAN- + rufe var. RO n.]: disquiet, unrest

c1480 HENRYSON Robene & Makyne 28 Bot I haif mervell incertane Quhat makis the this wanrufe.

I was filled with wanrufe this morning after seeing the little apartment off campus with a miniature gas stove.

She's Back!

Allis Emily Me
Originally uploaded by DeaSuperba.

The only person who also likes Huxley, who will make a pact to go on a mescaline trip with me in ten years, the most tolerant, most gullible, most chic ALLIS WEBB!

Reason 27 why I hate politics: The Republicans sent Allis to Medina, Ohio so she's been gone all semester.

Leaves in a Stream

ems17
Originally uploaded by DeaSuperba.

Parts of our lives touch and cohere for a second until a whirlpool pulls us apart and reorganizes the relationship. There is an appearance of intentionality and permanency in the arrangement that is false. Some of us are delayed as we encounter a rock and the rest hurry down an eddy. We're still bright and waxy. We're not brown and soggy yet, not porous and slowly absorbing the water until we sink below the surface and become part of the muddy river bottom.

The Umbrella Monster

umbrella1
Originally uploaded by DeaSuperba.

Emily has seen fit to retract her comments of my last post in her blog. I'm sure we are all thankful to learn that she does not, in fact, hate intellectuals. Perhaps she merely has an inferiority complex about serious thinkers. Indeed, someone who wears umbrellas may be presumed to have many inferiority complexes. One can only conjecture...perhaps she got frustrated with her business casual wardrobe...perhaps she's been watching too much MTV...perhaps she has fantasies of being a male bullfrog.

Emily: Prolific Writers Are Boring

I: "Calvin wrote the first draft of Institutes when he was twenty-six!"
Emily: "What a boring man."
I: "You think creating a system of theology and studying under the two greatest legal humanists in Paris is boring?"
Emily: "He must have done nothing but write."
I: "So you would have preferred that he go out and impregnate his lover and get himself castrated like Peter Abelard?"
Emily (unconvincedly): "Oh, fine - Calvin wasn't boring."
Moral of the Story: Don't write too much if you want Emily to think you're interesting.