More Grumblings

On a continuation of the previous theme I thought I should say something about the accommodation here in the United States. This does, rather predictably extend to me extolling the virtues of the British roommate system, or more correctly, the lack of it.

I really didn’t like halls. I was put on a first floor corridor with a load of girls, way out in Zone 2. The kitchen was filthy almost all of the time, we had to share one and a half fridges and there were three showers to twenty five girls. But in general you were free to come and go at your own convenience, watch Buffy all night long without headphones, have the temperature to your own liking and not feel too guilty about the mess. Perhaps these are not things to be encouraged but the option to do them is, in my opinion vital to self-expression. It is self-expression that I find myself clinging to ever more desperately here.

The room is a ‘suite-style’. It sounds fancy but it isn’t. There are two double rooms connected by a shared bathroom. One of the most disturbing things about being this close to other people, and especially girls, is the sheer amount of hair that is shed and the places it gets in. I have very little hair myself so it is immediately evident when it is not mine!

My headphones have become my best friend. I think I should give them a name, suggestions are welcome…

In Absentia

Tags:abroad, food, rant.

The things I miss most are sickeningly typical and predictable. They are mainly, when you remove people, to do with food and drink. If a British reader leaves this page having even a little more respect for any of these things I will be happy!

1. America, land of barbecue and steaks, right? No. Not unless you earn $50 a day and can afford to spend it all on meat. The next time you walk two minutes to the nearest Tesco Express and pick up a pack of beef mince for £4 count yourself lucky, and save me a burger. On that note, also appreciate having more than five cheeses to choose from, and none of which could be used to make shoelaces.

2. Say hello to your nearest ethnic corner shop with the masses of fruit and veg outside for me, and please, buy something. These places need to be kept in business because you will miss them if they go. I can guarantee you that you can get more for your money than I can right now, even if I do make the 20 minute bus journey to the nearest supermarket.

3. Yes, Americans can do snack foods. In fact being able to get tortilla chips anywhere is actually quite nice but I cannot, and will not, respect a country where there can be an entire aisle of cake mixes and ready-made frosting and two shelves of flour.

Yes, these are generalisations, and I appreciate that but my experience is limited. The structure of the British town or city is such that everyone can get into the centre somehow and the centre will have everything they need and a lot more that they don’t. Take that to the next level of being used to London, being used to eateries and markets every few shops and imagine how it would feel to be so far removed from anything vaguely constituting a town centre. Finally, to add insult to injury, I am yet to find a pot of Marmite for less than $5.

Geek Withdrawals

Tags:abroad, geek.

Given that yesterday marked the 1.75 year benchmark for my boyfriend and me, I thought that might shape the theme of today’s entry. As some of you know, I am currently studying out in the United States; I’ve been here about three weeks and I feel I am now ready to begin writing.

I do not need to praise Skype, you all know that it’s easy, free and brilliant that you can use the e-mail account you already have , unlike the dreaded ‘Windows Live’. What I didn’t know is how amazing it would be for communicating across oceans. I was anticipating dropped calls, poor audio quality and satellite lag galore. So far I have experienced a mere two points of poor audio quality and one dropped call (and this was definitely Ryan’s fault!) and these were all at peak UK or US times. Video calling isn’t bad either, but definitely better with a wired connection. Anyway, without Skype I would be at a loss, there would be no inexpensive way to stay in touch with my friends and family, and most significantly, my boyfriend.

If I didn’t know it already, being in a strange land brings an acute realisation of what defines you. Each conversation with my new roommates will bring up a story of back home. When asked in my folklore class which story means most to me I picked the rather obvious ‘Brave New World’ but for a surprisingly new reason. Rather than simply stating that it’s fantastic, I realised that it has become a link to my boyfriend, whose favourite book is ’1984′ and who consistently humours me with the Orwell vs. Huxley argument. You also realise just how many memes and in-jokes you develop with your close friends over time, and how after a while that can impair your ability to communicate with people who have not shared the common experience.

I met my boyfriend through a little thing called GeekSoc. In fact I met all of my friends save a precious few through said organisation. There is no equivalent here, or at least none worth writing home about. Despite being in a ‘liberal’ area of the American South, it is still more acceptable to be gay than a geek; a term that is not widely used here, ‘nerd’ being far more prevalent and derogatory to boot. I have found myself strike up conversations with random guys in Uncanny X-Men t-shirts only to realise that they cannot tell their Uncanny from their Astonishing. Speaking of the X-Men, my darling boyfriend recently bought me my own copy of the Dark Phoenix Saga, and had it delivered to me here. Even my geek connections across the Atlantic.

Perhaps I have painted my experience so far in a negative light. I have not meant to. All the people I know here are lovely, fun and I am sure good future friends of a new kind. However, the strange ways in which my existing relationships are presenting themselves means that I value them even more and miss them a great deal.

Citizen Kane…

Tags:films, reviews.

Peter Griffin, of Family Guy fame, said of this film “It was his sled. It was his sled from when he was a kid. There, I just saved you two long boobless hours!”. I don’t normally agree with things I see on cartoon shows, nor do I usually agree with anything that goes against my normal academic sensibilities. However, this I might have to agree with. This is a film I feel is somewhat undeserving of all the acclaim and praise that the film and culture industries have rained down upon it. I can see why it was on my syllabus and why at the time the film would have been viewed to have such standing but in a modern context it doesn’t do as well as some people still claim it does.

The film is, from a modern perspective, well produced, however the acting is wooden and stilted (probably due to the fact that a lot of the actors were new faces – something proudly announced by the Mercury Studios at the end of the film) and the plot is dull to say the least. It had potential and some aspects of the way the story was conveyed were really very good but the endless, meaningless metaphors get cloyingly tedious.

You are not your post count…

Tags:internet, rant, society.

I write this with the full knowledge and awareness that it will offend somebody. Is that ok, or should I not write it? What if I am fairly certain that more people will be in agreement with me than opposition? Or if I have, in the past been guilty of any of it. Suffice to say, I don’t judge the actual personal character of the people guilty of this, just their behaviour in certain, online, situations.

First of all – getting pissed off or being bitchy in Facebook statuses. There really is no possible way this can go well. In fact it normally just aggravates everyone involved and escalates the situation. This is one of the things I have been guilty of myself in the past and this is the empirical conclusion I have come to. I feel it was summed up nicely by my friend Gina’s statement not long ago: “Gina Lawrence is something subtly bitchy and yet blatantly obvious to all involved” (this is quoted from memory and may not be entirely verbatim). Now this may be viewed as a hypocritical situation but I can reassure you that this isn’t specifically aimed but rather something I have been mulling over for a while (and if you think it’s aimed at you then you’re guilty of doing it yourself! Win/win!).

Number two – the lack of forum etiquette. A long while ago I was a reasonably active member of a political debate forum. I would literally get punched by the forum administrators if I said anything stupid or deliberately off-topic. Of course, this was only possible due to the admin being my best friend. I have always been concerned with what I put into the public realm, now more than ever (resulting in me heightening my Facebook security, yet another friend exodus, stopping to use Twitter and soon an improvement in this blog to hide my identity – although my friends will always know it’s me!) but some people seem perfectly happy to have conversations akin to those you would conduct on IM through a public forum. Perhaps this is just due to my grounded experience of forums being to resolve or debate issues, rather than have a chat…

On a related note – you are not your post count. It seems awfully odd to me how people I know and like and interact well with in the real world can be so caught up in defining themselves by how much time they waste online. Recently a friend (who shall remain nameless) confessed that they have three tabs open at all times and just cycle through them. It is mind boggling that such a habit can form when there is so much, even on the internet, to explore, read and learn, to say nothing of actual books, films and games to enjoy… Again I catch myself doing this every so often but it repulses me so that I will, at that stage force myself to pick up a book, or even just click on Stumble!

As I say, these are niggles, they don’t change my opinion of anyone guilty of them but I do hope that, should they read this they will consider how trivial online interaction is in comparison to anything else they could be doing…

American Studies

Tags:books, education, reading.

So most people say it’s not a real degree. But would they say the same thing if I told them I did English and History joint honours? Because that’s basically what I’m doing. I’m not really mad at them, seeing as I really enjoy my studies and for me that’s what university is meant to be about. Anyway, I have 4 modules this semester; two are literature, one is history and the other is turning out to be a very bizarre form of visual culture. 19th century lit has meant that I have now read ‘Moby Dick’ (as you knew), ‘The Pioneers’ by James Fenimore Cooper and ‘Nature’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Emerson is by far the best – the Beat Generation makes so much sense now.

My other literature module is a lot more fast paced. We have a book a week which would be fantastic if more than 3 people actually read it and had something to say in our seminars. Unfortunately this is reflecting really badly on the English Department (who aren’t our greatest friends anyway) as they form a significant majority in that seminar and only three of them have made a point in 3 weeks and most of them just reiterated something the seminar leader had already strongly hinted at…

In any case I’ve read ‘Sister Carrie’ by Theodore Dreiser, ‘House of Mirth’ by Edith Wharton and ‘My Ántonia’ by Willa Cather. The latter was surprisingly enjoyable. I did get a little too involved in it perhaps and Jamie may have laughed at my outrage when someone insinuated Jake had sold the pig to pay his fine.

Unfortunately all this enjoyable scholarly reading has meant that my ‘reading for pleasure’ has taken a knock, and it’s those books I want to write about on here really. I mean could take you through the Naturalist movement and the Transcendentalism in Emerson but frankly you’d be bored and I’d be wasting perfectly good baking time.

My weird night of horror…

Tags:books, gaiman, horror, lovecraft, reading, reviews.

I have just finished reading the two things I had wanted to complete today – ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ by H. P. Lovecraft and ‘Coraline’ by Neil Gaiman. At first glance these may seem odd bedfellows and yet there are some similar nuances that made their combination so utterly strange I actually had to turn the lights on in the corridor to retrieve a crisp, cold can of coke (something I rarely do due to being unafraid of the dark and lazy).

I began with Cthulhu (partly because I had already begun yesterday but also because I expected it to be more terrifying and ‘Coraline’ to act, therefore, as a sort of light relief). It was a download from the awesome manybooks.net – a site which deserves no small amount of praise and when I am rich I shall be giving them money. On my eReader the short story, typically around 35 pages in paperbacks, reached 71 electronic pages and I polished them off in what I can only estimate to be about an hour (it would normally take me much less time but the announcer on my tube home today was very vocal and kept disturbing me). That said, it does deserve a special kind of attention; I am sure that most of you who have heard of it will regard it as a classic and I am no different. The writing style is unmistakably Lovecraftian, a combination of Victorian detail and mythical, mystical imagery. Written from the perspective of an anthropologist relative to the Professor Angell, in the first person, it brings to mind the techniques exemplified in the earlier novel ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker. I do not wish to bore you with details and I certainly do not want to reveal anything that may be considered a ‘spoiler’ so, in no uncertain terms I shall merely say “read it”!

‘Coraline’ has an entirely separate purpose, for starters it is a children’s book. Again it was a reasonably quick read – an hour from cover to cover – and by virtue of its length, is quite enthralling. I do not believe I would place it on quite the same level as either ‘Neverwhere’ or ‘Stardust’, but it is certainly comparable to American Gods and better, in my humble opinion, than his latest addition ‘The Graveyard Book’. I am yet to see the film but I know that there has been some contention over the artistic style and the mood of the book. From the trailers alone I would say that the film has the right mood but is slightly too shiny – stop motion is perfect but Tim Burton should have done the sketches! Mind you, I am a Tim Burton fanatic and thus my opinion is not unbiased. I would be interested to hear what others think of the book in relation to the film.

Both of these were enjoyable reads and, despite it being a children’s novel, I feel that ‘Coraline’ inspired a little more fear in me than ‘Cthulhu’ – perhaps because my expectations were lower, or because it was written from a child’s point of view (and we all know how they love to be scared – Moomins, case in point) I am not sure exactly.

Some likeable quotes…

Tags:quotes.

“I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”
— Marilyn Monroe

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
— Oscar Wilde

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.”
— Chuck Palahniuk

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
— Gustave Flaubert

“Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.”
— Alan Moore

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.”
— Arundhati Roy

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
— G.K. Chesterton

Mathematics…

Tags:nostalgia.

I miss maths. I wish I could be back at GCSE (and for me that would be year 9/10). The text book alone was incredible, A4 and at least 2.5″ thick, I bet it smelled good too. In fact I can attribute most of my shoulder/back pain to that one book (and the fact that the maths Nazi Mrs Park forced us to bring it every lesson). Don’t get me wrong I hated it back then, the teachers refused to acknowledge that I was too good at it for homework to be of any use what-so-ever.

I think it may be a little too late to change my degree to Engineering or Mathematics (especially as I would have to go back and do different A-Levels) and I am honestly happy doing American Studies, I just wish I had time to be slightly more intelligent.

Mix tapes…

Tags:music, retro.