BARE BODKIN.

befuddlement, bewilderment, bemusement, b+ average

Monday, October 31, 2005

Ain't Enough Pumpkins

I've a habit of reading ghost stories, written by people who believe in the veracity of their tales and experiences. But I've never been able to understand the psychology of ghosts themselves.

It seems to be very common, among ghosts, to turn the water faucets on, FULL BLAST! Personally, if I was trying to communicate from beyond the grave, I think I'd find more effective methods than sink manipulation. Maybe they just think we're really afraid of wasting water, I don't know.

Ghosts also stomp and clomp around. They're a heavy-footed lot.

Then, of course, they also like kitchens. They like to swing cabinet doors around at night, often slamming them. TAKE THAT YOU USURPERS OF MAH PROPERTY! OOGA BOOGA! Yeah man, don't take your anger out on the kitchenware. Watch the Cuisinart, those ain't cheap. Ghosts just really enjoy slamming stuff around. But I guess if I was an invisible entity, I'd mess with people's kitchens too. You'd think that once in a while, there'd be a friendly kitchen-ghost who readies a nice cup of tea for you, but noooo, they're much more concerned with testing the durability of your new Home Depot cabinet purchase.

They just need to learn some manners, really.

Yeah, this post is an obviously desperate attempt at avoiding schoolwork.

I was going to commemorate this Hallow's Eve by wandering over to the wonderfully aged cemetary down the road and, I don't know, stumbling around in the dark, but 1) if the British have any understanding of the true spirit of Halloween, and they don't, there would already be drunken kids over there, curbing my sobre/macabre inclinations, and 2) I'm about 72 hours behind schedule, academixly speaking.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Stratford-upon-Avon

There ain't a whole lot to see in Stratford-upon-Avon. Anne Hathaway's cottage has a shovel exhibit. I did not purchase a small plastic keychain effigy of Shakespeare, despite not knowing when I'll next have the opportunity to obtain pocket-sized bard figurinos.

But the Royal Shakespeare Company's As You Like It was super duper.

I feel the need to quote myself. Not because I'm just so super duper , and I'm not saying that I am not super duper, but... I don't have an end to this sentence. Using quotation marks allows me to leave context at the door.

On bears in Alaska versus bears in San Diego:
"We don't have bears in San Diego. But we have immigrants. If they're illegal, you're just supposed to back away slowly, don't make eye contact."
(And hide your pic-a-nic basket!)

On my pocketsized leatherbound Hamlet:
"This is literary porn. 'To be or not to be'... there are no other phrases in the the English language."
(...minutes later... "Did you just refer to it as porn?")
Stop looking at me weird. I don't know, I just mean it's some sort of written indulgence.

On vegetarianism:
"Do vegetarians eat jello? I think it's made of hooves and things."
"Do vegetarians eat Gummi bears? Because, you know, they're animals."

And you know, that really gives rise to the whole debate about, I don't know, fashioning food in the image of cute forest creatures, thus making them more fun to mash between your teeth. That whole debate. Which reminds me that they don't sell Lucky Charms here, that the cereal aisle is far too sparse, and that there are almost no halloween-themed kid snacks. I really needed a cereal with fun shapes, preferably with a halloween theme, and there just aren't any soul-satiating products that fit the bill. Sure, Marks and Spencer offers a few overpriced ghoulie candies, but I just don't know how I can live with myself without having marshmallow spiders and bats and ghosts in my cereal. Frosted Mini Wheats? They only have the technology to frost one side of the goddamn chunks! (But I'll also mention that they dropped 'mini' from the name here, realizing that "full-sized" wheats have gone the way of the dodo. By which I might be suggesting that they are mummified in the university museum. But I'm not suggesting that).

So, yes. I'm turning this in to my tutor.

Friday, October 21, 2005

London

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It's not like you've never seen a picture of the clock tower. But you've never seen a picture of the clock tower that I took. Anyway, there's a few more. You might wonder how I can spend a day in London and only have 13 pictures. I took 60, actually, but you know, most pictures aren't worth showing. I was in the National Gallery for most of the day, anyway, and Westminster Abbey.

Something I said about Edinburgh, I have to say again about Westminster Abbey: you can’t really describe something like that, at least not when you’re a blogging know-nothing wisenheimer. I almost didn’t go in, because it costs six pounds, and I knew that later this month Stanford would pay admission for me. That, and I’m totally cheap. It holds within the kings and queens of the past billion years, as well as countless other people, including many literary figures, which makes it quite crowded with tombs and memorials and stuff. Makes Stanford Memorial Church look like a backcountry plywood chapel.

After writing a paper on Shakespeare's Richard II, and then by mere coincidence seeing the play performed, awesomely, I'll mention, and with Kevin Spacey, I'll mention, because who knows, maybe you're just a big Spacey fan, after that, and then passing by his fairly nondescript tomb in Westminster Abbey, I feel, you know, like we really get along, me and Rich. Dick Deuce is what I call him.

The National Gallery, as you might expect, is big. Many paintings. I was pretty burnt by the time I got there, and wandered around in a zombie-like lackadaisical daze, trying not to miss any rooms. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rubens, Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, they’ve got all that, and plenty more. It’s a completely exhausting place to be if you have any remote interest in art. I planned on going to other museums on this day, but I was physically unable. The Louvre will indeed kill me.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

October 18, 2005, conclusion: London is an international stone metropolis where it rains.

Also, to amend my previous post: A man, in a suit, who looked like Kofi Annan, asked me for directions in London. This of course, as previously stated, validates my very existence. I was leaning on a pole outside a grocery store, and he came up to me and asked where the Old Vic was. Now, in London, I know two locations: the grocery store that I was waiting outside of, and the Old Vic theatre. He asked the right person.

So here's unrelated pictures.
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Sunday, October 16, 2005

Finally solicited for directions

That’s how you know you’re no longer a tourist, when the tourists start asking you the questions.

And there really isn’t any story to it, other than some guy pointing to the library and asking if it was the Bodleian Library. But I sure as hell looked like I knew where I was going, I tell you. I looked informed, like a wandering concierge of Oxford. He must have noticed that I walked right under the Bridge of Sighs, and didn’t even look up, or that I passed the gates of All Souls College without ogling the empty courtyard (“… nobody ever goes in and nobody ever comes out!”… “then who makes all the candy?”).

Oh, the library is closed on Sundays.

Friday, October 14, 2005

My bonnie lass

Thursday, October 13, 2005

The Divinity School

Divinity School

And, the Progression of the Pink Scarf:
Bodleian courtyard

Monday, October 10, 2005

The Broom Cupboard

I was caught by the Children’s TV Society, officially called the Broom Cupboard, at the school fair. Their booth was pathetically crayoned together and their spokeswoman was entirely amiable. I gave them my email address. I showed up to the first meeting.

I’d like to give you an account of what I saw there, and what I heard, and indeed what I felt, but I my immediate vocabulary does not contain the necessary describers to accurately convey the entity of British children television shows. The night was capped with an episode of Thundercats, which felt to be a sort of documentary, grounded in a completely solid reality of thunderous cat people and their swords, relative to the hootenanny tripfest of nonsense that preceded. I watched a show about a man made of pots and pans and spoons, who flew to the moon on a rocket. I watched a show about an empowered teddy bear that befriended leprous cyborgs and battled an evil cowboy. I watched, I tell you sir, or madam, a purple potato man and his hairball friend ride their insectoid companion to a picnic. Indeed, I am a greater man for having seen these things, these wonders of a foreign culture. Dare I return on Monday the next? It is not necessarily an effective venue for meeting Oxford students, for only awkward freshmen, freshers, as they say, were drawn to the prospect of late night cartoons. But there is allure.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Becoming Oliver

In recent days I’ve become acquainted with some charming British bugs, germs, viruses, and whatnot, giving me sort of a weak, raspy voice akin to the spawn of Eartha Kitt and Harvey Pekar, if, you know, they were to have a cigar smoking baby. I theorize that when I emerge from this brief bout with an Anglo virus, and my voice returns to its angelic pitch and vibrato, I just very well may have an accent. It’s a sort of metamorphosis; a cultural puberty. Additionally, perhaps because I’ve spent such a wide grasp of my time just, you know, walking ‘round, checking things out, I’ve also found myself with a sore leg and a subtle limp. Someone get me a disheveled orphan’s pathetic top hat. I know, Oliver Twist has neither a sickly voice nor a limp nor a top hat. Tiny Tim would have been much more appropriate.

On Saturdays, Sundays, and maybe Fridays, Vaults and Garden does not give a student discount. Thus, if my patronage finds its way there, I am so inclined to get a small mocha rather than large, where large is, completely sensibly, a Starbucks tall, and small is small, which Starbucks, being American, does not offer. Indeed, small is small. You will, however, be surprised how long a Dixie cup of coffee will last, while you wait for Sainsbury’s to open. Most stores don’t open ‘til 11 on Sundays. The loafers.

These are, I assure you, the real adventures of the English Experience.

Marks and Spencer is a unique thing, if I may say so. For those of you not in the know, which are likely to be most of you, it’s sort of like Macy’s, but with a grocery store. There is an inexplicable appeal to a store which offers suits, sandwiches, sweaters, and milk. However, the self-checkout machine was completely uncooperative with me, or maybe I was fairly incompetent in my usage of it; I attributed it to culture shock and limped my way back here.

At the river’s edge, there sat an old couple on a bench with their dog running about, and on the other side, across perhaps 60 feet of water, there stood some rapscallions. One yelled to the old couple, “’AVE YOU GOT A LIGHT?”
The old man responded, “’OW YOU GON’AH GEH’ IT?”
After a moment’s reflection, the young man pointed to a bridge about half a mile away. Another minute later, he yelled, “CAN YOUR DOG SWIM?”

Finally, inanely, here is a minute of High Street: MP3.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

At the student fair, the admissions office was giving away toothbrushes.

I was accosted by what I think was a Hare Krishna on my way to the Vaults and Garden Coffee Shop. As I walked through a sort of open market, I saw the little man in a dark blue pea coat, head shaven, with a clipboard in hand. There was an entire crowd slowly walking through this street, but the little man, a scant 5’2” or so, walked directly to me. I attract people like this. He came uncomfortably close and started talking with an incredibly thick cockney accent; I’m pretty sure he said something about Hare Krishnas. I really couldn’t understand him for the first few seconds until my mental de-accentator kicked in. He had a small scar across his cheek and his eyes were an uncommonly light milky green. And he paused. “Ah you ‘ere studee’in?” Yes, I was. I am. He only wanted students. Then he continued on, saying something about feeding the homeless and inner peace, and then handed me a little book, a spiritual guide of some sort. It said YOGA on the front and was illustrated with fanciful far-east imagery. They were raising funds by selling these inner-peace-for-dummies handbooks. And I suppose that’s why he only wanted to talk to students ----- anyone paying +$40,000 a year to sit in a library and not sleep probably doesn’t have inner peace. Sorry mate, not today.

Vaults and Gardens is my new 10am hangout. It’s in the side of St. Mary’s Church, the university church, which dates to 1460. I prefer to sit outside on the gravestones, between the church and the Radcliffe Camera. At 10am, you can see, it isn’t particularly busy.

Vaults and Garden Coffee Shop

st marys

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Hampton Court Palace

Went to Henry Eight's digs today. Word. The last of my paid-for Bing adventures, I think, besides Stratford. Totally opulent, of course. Absolutely astounding wall paintings. I can't remember the term, but some ceilings were painted as to look like the architectural features depicted were actually there, 3Dish. That's a terrible description of fantastic artwork. The chapel was also stunning. No photography allowed, dearies. Countless huge wall tapestries too, if that's your thing.

To quote King Henry VIII, "Build me a palace in my image. It shall resembleth a large fat man covered in gold, and shall hold within many GLORIOUS gift shops for the visiting peoples. Include a hedge maze to fucketh with the peoples."

Oh Henry.

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Monday, October 03, 2005

The Garden of Edin(burgh)

There isn’t much to say about Edinburgh. That’s Eh-din-boroh, not edenberg. There isn’t much you can say when you’re left breathless (oh how romantic of me). I can’t really describe what I saw; castles, gothic, classical, renaissance, baroque, all that fun stuff, everywhere. Wondrous in every direction. I took about 90 pictures, and none of them give a sense of the place. I'd call it a Scottish Paris, but I've never been to Paris.

The castle seems to have fallen from the wet clouds, onto the jutting acropolictic stone, overseeing everything, and is almost Winchester house-like in disunited continuous construction.

I went to The Bad Ass. It was a small, quiet pub, deep red cedar, only slightly smokey, and had a kicking 70s soundtrack quietly playing in the background. Maybe that’s a Scottish thing.

But Edinburgh, or at least, Edinburgh around the hotel, stops in its tracks far too early. Unless you want a pub. Princes Street, the main street, the High Street of the area, where High Street is the University Avenue of Oxford, where University Avenue in Palo Alto is meant to symbolize some sort of social extension of the Palm Drive appendage, in essence the main street, and I exaggerate what’s available in Palo Alto, but I also digress, and this sentence is pretty long, shuts down early. Did you get that? Me neither. It was 8pm and everything was closed, that’s what I meant. I didn’t have high ambitions; I just wanted to look around, be a consume whore, maybe sit in a Scottish Starbucks, perhaps. Just the usual. Anyway, only pubs, and there are plenty, are open after dark.

British television news is terribly boring. There’s no flash bang musical segues. Or charisma. I guess that’s why the pilgrims left. The rapping CG animated female camels, advertising a grocery store, almost make up for it.

There’s a sitcom about a bunch of priests living together, called “Father Ted.” Ted’s the normal priest, the leader. In traditional English fashion, it’s painfully unfunny.

On a field, under the sun, amid the flock, there was an upside down sheep. The bus ride through the Scottish countryside, near the border, was stunningly beautiful. The sky was smudged with large, lumbering clouds and sunlight drifted from hill to hill, from the distance to the immediate. The bus driver was kind enough to stop at a particularly scenic point for a photo opportunity. A sizeable flock of sheep were grazing over a glowing landscape. It looked like something they’d print on a cheap jigsaw puzzle. The cameras came out in our flock, but suddenly, gasps. Oh! Look! A sheep was lying on its back. Look there! Oh my god! Ha! Ah! Oh! Upturned! Is it alive! Its legs are wiggling! God! Poor sheep! Haha! ------- These people had seen some of the most stunning historical, artistic, architectural sights in the past few days that one can see, and this little lamb, belly to the sky and wool against dirt, drew more attentive emotion from the crowd than any cathedral, castle, or masterpiece of art. Of course, I enjoy an upturned wiggle-footed lamb as much as anyone, but, you know, I wasn’t that impressed. I’d rent the DVD, but I wouldn’t go to the premiere.

pano1

Anyway, don't let my cynicism towards British comedy and sheeps mislead you; it's the most beautiful city I've been to. No, I'm not well-traveled, but what other major cities have kilts in their gift shops?