Meh

I used to think and say that I've gotten more tolerant since I came to Germany.

I realize now that I've just become more restrained. "Tolerant" is too strong of word for someone who wishes (daily) that he could kill people with his mind.

Wasn't Lullaby a great book?

Anyways, I'm blogging this (and the post below) because I have absolutely no motivation at the moment. And because my heart is as black as coal.

A Few Belated Words on London

Due to completely arbitrary time constraints (as opposed to the non-arbitrary sort of time-constraint, I suppose…), I'll not go into detail about the trip to and from London. Suffice it to say that it took me 17 hours to get there and 26 hours to get back.



London is great. It's incredibly elitist and stuck-up, with no respect for the unwashed masses. It's full of museums and that strange commodity we inexplicably call "culture" and, because of the accent, the stupidest Londoner sounds like that old guy from Masterpiece Theater. London has dozens of great pubs: the best places to eat and hang out.

That being said, London is expensive and wet. With the exception of (delicious) Strongbow Cider, everything there costs at least twice as much as it does back home. And, given my staunchly anti-umbrella stance, London's cold and rainy climate (which requires those emasculatory devices) couldn't be worse.



Here are, from right to left for a change, the Lawrentians I hung out with in London.

First: The Politician, again. Next to him, with a slightly smaller head, is Rock Show Girl. Last in line is her roomate Jen, a cool person who I didn't really know before last weekend. She's not a bland person, but she gets a bland description because I don't know what to say.

Lighting courtesy of a cool exhibit (which we all called "The Sun") at the Tate Modern.

The people on the floor behind Jen are making out.



And here's all of us at a cocktail bar on the last night, enjoying Vodka Smoothies. Hurrah!

So this is Prague. Nice city, no really well-known landmarks. Except, possibly, the Charles Bridge, known to many a tourist as "the bridge with the statues."





Ah, sweet reunion. The Politician and I, looking like our regular selves.





Our group in Prague, conveniently enough, included everyone I hang around with here. From left to right: two girls, the first a go-go New Yorker, a reader of Sandman and a lover of horror films, the second a Minnesota-nice Minnesotan who no one in the world could hate. I haven't thought of witty nicknames for them yet, and I'm only here for a month more so I might not bother. The next person is The Suburbanite, followed by, on the right, The Urbanite. You could read about them (and The Pancake Man) here, if so inclined.





And here are the guys. On the left is The Politician, a fellow Lawrentian who you, Dear Reader, have probably heard about before. He's one of the dozen or so Republicans at Lawrence, and a good "good acquaintance" of mine, as they say at school. The next person on the left is The Pancake Man, the same would-be filmmaker who sent us to the bridge later this same night to re-shoot Mission Impossible. I'm the good-looking fellow in a hooded sweatshirt (said hoodie has gradually become my fall jacket) with his hair shaved short (it's free and easy). Next to Our Bold Hero, on the right, is The West Coaster, looking very pseudo-bohemian and unwittingly blocking park of my face from the shot.

Stories from Prague come back to me now: the drug dealer that followed us around, trying to sell us pot (but of course she didn't ask me, which I chose to find somewhat offensive) and giggling when we told her no… the jolly accordian player at the restaurant shown above… walking across town from our flooded hostel… The Pancake Man's unacceptable generousity… the evil official on the train who "du"-ed the Czech woman in our cabin.

Eating a delicious snack that looks exactly like communion wafers. Mmm… host.

Good times…

The Obligatory Clash Reference

Taking care of the many many things I need to do before I go off to London tomorrow night.

Which meant skipping class; I'd rather skip than come in an hour late to an hour-and-a-half class.

So then… Prague

First of all, absinthe is over-rated. I took a tentative shot of the blue-green liquid during dinner on Saturday, our last night in Prague, and I didn't feel much of anything.

I could feel an odd dry spot in my throat, just above my Adam's apple, and, alcohol-wise, the absinthe felt a bit stronger than a regular shot, but my reaction fell well-short of my Moulin Rouge expectations. Thankfully.

While I'm near the subject: Bohemian beer is probably the best beer in the world. If an average beer in Germany is better than all but the best American beers, an average beer in the Czech Republic is better than all but the best beers in the land of Oktoberfest.

Budweiser, so the story goes, stole its name from a Czech beer with a very similar title. Which is why you can't find the Czech beer in the states. But I know (admittedly, as you can see) very little about American beers and even less about imports. So I'll move on.

Prague. There we go.

Prague is a very cheap and beautiful city with lots of crystal and amber and t-shirts. Electronics, sadly, were just as expensive as they are at home. I was secretly hoping to find a ridiculously cheap Xbox, I admit.

That was Friday. We wandered around town with The Urbanite and The West Coaster, seeing what there was to see (the castle, the church, the usual), and ate at some wonderful restaurants with the whole group.

The Pancake Man, our tow-headed little filmmaker, cast us in his remake of Mission Impossible, tentatively titled Mission Impossible 0.9.

From the Charles Bridge (where that old guy is ambushed and falls into the water) we could see the other locations from the beginning of the movie, and to the great surprise of The Politician, The Pancake Man refilmed said beginning shot-for-shot.

This being the whole reason he came to Prague, basically.

The next day, having completed our contribution to the arts, we wandered around yet again, this time more aimlessly. We didn't do much of anything, so I really don't have much to brag about, but Prague is a wonderful city, in an intangible sort of way.

Sehnsucht nach Lawrence

I met The Politician on the Charles Bridge (of Mission Impossible fame, for us at least) about an hour after we got to Prague.

It was nice to see someone from Lawrence, I have to admit. I don't really think I'm homesick (pardon the unintentional irony, if you happen to find any) but nostalgia is one of the world's most delicious emotions, and it was nice to talk about home.

I've missed, in general, in order:
1. Having a computer on the Lawrence network
2. Daily cynicism, sarcasm, and wit
3. Bashing annoying acquaintances
4. Pseudo-intellectual "discussions"
5. Unlimited food at Downer/Lucinda's
6. Dozens of video games

Oh, and I miss not feeling like a dork for enjoying such things. Soon…

Of course the Lawrentians themselves are in there somewhere, but I'm trying not to get too sentimental.

Going to Prague tonight. I figure if I strangle The Man in the Black Hat to death right before I get on the train, I'll be out of the country by the time they find his body.

He won't shut up. Perhaps he can't shut up. It's justifiable homicide…

Hmm…

In other news, I saw Kill Bill vol. 1 again last night, this time in English. The "Trix" reference, which I missed in the German version, was awesome. Even better than the "Tasty Wheat" billboard in The Matrix Revolutions.

Splitting the movie into two parts was not awesome. It's the aesthetic equivalent of a warcrime.

This Year's Less-Inept Job Search

Looking at internships again, six months earlier than last year. A good start.

There seem to be very few paid internships at publishing houses, but given that said houses often pay idealistic young authors next to nothing for their books, I'm not surprised to find that they treat idealistic young students just as kindly.

Newspapers it is. I'm delving into the style guides once I get home, to try to make myself more qualified for a copy-editing internship. It seems way more my style than reporting, but (as was the case last summer) my aversion to college newspaper writing (and, more generally, the often mundane streetwork of "real reporting") has left me with very little to put on a resume.

And an English major at Lawrence is a few steps removed from J-school, albeit not necessarily in a bad direction.

I need clips, I'm afraid, in order to prove that I have a rudimentary amount of experience. I think I have three or four more-or-less usable ones from this summer… the NASA article, the ex-Gov interview, the… hmm.

Well, I have no idea what else. There was something about a scientist. They're in my room at home.

And I'm proud of my work on the post-war casualties database, which helped my boss at Scripps create this article, among others. But I can't exactly claim credit for a story, there.

It looks like I'll have to write something or other for The Lawrentian, maybe. I treasure my free time too much to join the time-intensive, unpaid, hurly-burly world of campus newspaper writing… but perhaps I can do some freelance work. Representative Man, a fellow Fritzellian and a big wheel down at The Lawrentian, may have mercy. We'll see.

The goal, then, is to work and live in the Twin Cities… I'm applying to a few "reach" internships elsewhere but, on paper at least, I still look unimpressive, and my resume is all these places are going to see. So I'm not holding my breath.

(Honestly, the Star Tribune internship sounds so ideal that I'd be both incredibly lucky and incredibly happy to get it.)

Let the logistical work begin. It's time for me to play the application game.

Sick of Subtraction

Starting to care about my economic situation.

Not that I'm in trouble. It's just that I have no job, can't get a job for a while, and have a steady stream of expenses.

Like… food, something that's all taken care of when I'm back at Lawrence.

But mostly, I want material goods. And, truth be told, I'm going to buy myself lots of shiny things (new books, an Xbox, a computer) once I get back in the states.

There's just one issue that mucks up the whole situation: The Deathtrap.

My beloved van may be on its last legs; I'm willing to drive it until it blows up spectacularly on the side of some country road, but eventually it's going to die.

I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope it makes it to this summer, when I can supplement my writing-tutor money with a paying internship.

Or I could get a real job and stop worrying and whining, but that would require entering the real world.

Character Sketch: Flo

Or: Too Many Uses of the Word "Goth"

Visited Flo, my oft-mentioned goth former exchange student, this weekend. He's got a very nice one-bedroom apartment in Leipzig. He's studying Chinese (one of the most inefficient languages in the world) but doesn't know what else he's going to major in. He's still thinking about going to film school, once he's done with college. He just got back from two months in Japan. He can cook several different varieties of oriental food, including the best Thai food I've ever had. He finally bought himself a computer. He's learning some obscure martial art. He doesn't have a girlfriend at the moment, as he's trying to avoid falling into an "outpost relationship" in a new city.

That's what's new with Flo.

I didn't take any pictures of Flo, mainly because I feel awkward photographing people and I know that Flo hates posing for pictures.

He looks, for what it's worth, prettymuch the same. Which means: like a successful east-european arms dealer. Black clothing, big brown coat. Shaved head, big black eyebrows over shifty, mischevious eyes. Years of mandatory school sports and voluntary martial-arts training have made him somewhat built.

Flo's best quality (most of his German friends would agree) is his ability to bring out, conversationally, the best in people. I've never had an uninteresting or normal conversation with Flo; we talked about the state of modern American culture, exotic languages, H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories and the RPG they spawned, and the strange truths behind west indian voodoo.

(Read the Haitian constitution sometime, advises Flo, if you don't believe in zombies.)

Like me, he's still interested in RPGs; unlike me, he still plays. His friends run the social gamut from straight-edge to grudge to goth, but that's pretty normal; German subcultures to be much less cliquey than ours. At the very cool, very gothic clubs we went to, no one cared that I'd forgotten to bring black clothing and, to put it in Flo's own words, "looked like a skater."

(Hopefully I'm not actually pulling that look off, as I have no desire to be thus pigeonholed. I'd rather stay with the worldwide fellowship of nerds and geeks, if I'm going to be an involutary member of some stereotypical social group. Plus, I'd like to point out that I'm not even coordinated enough to walk, much less skate.)

Back to Leipzig. Flo's friend Domi, a lanky type slightly more partial to spikes and leather than my exchange student, was also visiting Flo that weekend. I'd never met Domi while I was in Konstanz, which is suprising, but he's an alright guy.

We talked about mutual acquaintances from Konstanz. It seems that Simon (occasionally known as Pseudosym), one of my favorite Germans, took the old Millerian "don't let other people waste your time" philosophy to a new level, and is now making up for a year of school he didn't attend. Killian, another old acquaintance, is still Killian: an equally funny turn of events.

The first night was a bust, more or less. We each had a bottle of Tannenzapfle (or simply "zapfle"), a beer made from pinecones, along with some good homemade japanese food, then sat around until midnight talking, rather than show up at an empty club. That was probably the highlight of the night.

Then we went to a bad concert at a (I'm taking Flo's word on this) normally chill and relatively mainstream club built into the ruins of a 16th century fortress. Flo had planned a "normal" night and a "goth" night, but the club was invested with goths on account of the aforementioned bad concert.

Since even Flo and Domi, though used to hearing mumbled English lyrics set to heavy bass, thought that the concert was crap, we left as soon as it became clear that there would be no D.J. that night. We wandered (unsuccessfuly) around town looking for a bar without "Irish" or "American" in the title, then went back to Flo's.

The next day Anna B., an unpredictable (and, frankly, occasionally sulky) goth I knew from three years ago, joined up with our group. Possibly for the sole reason of making us look as mismatched as possible.

In review: Flo looks like a east-european armsdealer, Domi looks like a spiky hardcore goth, and I (apparently) look like some sort of skater in my hoodie and Negri-brand knit cap.

Anna B. (it's always Anna B.) looks (and acts) like the punky American goths I vaguely know from home. That being said, she's actually quite nice/intelligent when she wants to be.

Our mismatched group went to the Leipzig "Zoo", where I was as close to a lion as I ever hope to be. Also, there were monkeys and fish and sea lions. I hadn't been to a zoo in a while, and it was actually pretty enjoyable. Afterwards, we took leave of Anna B. and bought the necessary ingredients for Flo's amazing Thai food.

As always, we had to kill time. Clubs here are dead before eleven, or so the legend goes. We ate, talked, and (after realizing we still had three hours left) went to Kill Bill. Fantastic film. Then we went to Dark Flower.

Goth clubs…

Since my hoodie has somehow become my fall jacket, I looked exactly the same as I did the night before. Which means: I was, by goth standards, underdressed. Gray is almost black, but it just doesn't cut it in this particular subculture.

Dark Flower was smoky, everything was painted black, and fake spiderwebs covered every wall. Even better, the tables were shaped like coffins. I'm told that the club was empty that night, but it was pretty crowded as far as I'm concerned. The D.J. was pretty good, although I'm not the best judge of such things.

The Villa, the next club, was very empty. Domi and I fell asleep at intervals while a half dozen goths, including Flo, danced nearby. Goth dancing apparently involves a lot of grinding on invisible people no one else can see.

We got back at five, and in twelve hours (spent at Flo's, sleeping or chit-chatting idly) I caught the train back to Freiburg. It was a weird leave-taking, as if it won't probably be another three years before we see each other again. Well, here's hoping.