I'm in line at the post office, discussing politics with the heavily sweating guy next to me.  There's a large red package at my feet, which I'm kicking forward as the line progresses.  We have discovered that I'm from America, and he's here to pick up some cash.

He explains that America's dragged his country into Iraq and Afghanistan.  I point out how lonely our troops get by themselves in unfamiliar countries.

The package is kicked forward another pace.

We spend another few paces discussing our points of origin, and were we are going.

Dang.

I hate the last three days before a big trip.

I think the Fir Tree may be my favorite pub of all time.  Any time I stop in, there's always at least three regulars at the bar.  And two dogs running around the place making nuisances of themselves.  The owners are jolly and talkative even when they're sober (not often).  It's a mile from my apartment, but I still manage to stop by twice a week.

Last night, I dragged Anna over.  We took two other gals - a Brit first year and an American Milwaukeean.  We got in about 11, no more than 20 people in the bar, stood around gathering drinks and playing with the puppy.  After socializing with many a friendly drunk, we retired to a side room with random crap on walls and hugely over-stuffed chairs.  As last call was rung, the owner brought by half a pizza.

That's the entire story.

But it's everything I like about the bar.

I mean, the problem with American bars, is that we don't have much socializing between the age groups.  So, in an American bar, none of the regulars would have talked to us, and the owner would have treated us like Student Scum.  Which we are, but still.

People keep telling me to write poetry, and I keep telling them to go fuck themselves.

Writing my last paper now. Could use a pile of drinks. The soles of my shoes keep getting thinner and thinner. Not sure what to do. Buy new shoes? I wonder if I have any money left. And a haircut, I guess I need one before leaving.

I hear there's fun stuff happening this weekend? Tell me, oh Oxford people - where should I go? What should I do? Does anyone play jazz around here?

Write write write.

I find the homeless to be more chatty on this side of the ocean. Also less crazy. Am not sure which I prefer.

You know, when Steinbeck was writing East of Eden, he would also write letters to his oldest friends. He would keep one sheet of paper in front of him for the novel, and another for whatever letter he was writing. After his death, the hundreds of pages of letters were gathered and published. An excerpt:

“I heard a man tell in a monotone how he couldn't get a doctor while his oldest boy died of pneumonia but that a doctor came right away after it was dead. It is easy to get a doctor to look at a corpse, not so easy to get one for a live person. It is easy to get a body buried. A truck comes right out and takes it away. The state is much more interested in how you die than in how you live.”

“Is it possible that this state is so stupid, so vicious and so greedy that it cannot feed and clothe the men and women who help to make it the richest area in the world? Must the hunger become anger and the anger fury before anything will be done?” (87)

For some reason, I do not find the text layout of this post visually appealing. Also, walking in crowds confuses me lots. Do the rest of you worry this much about colliding with people walking towards you? It is like goddamn Space Invaders.

Just got invited to my 5 year high school reunion.  Ick.  I don't think there's more than two people there I want to talk to, and I'll be seeing them when I get back to Tha A anyway.  I got homesick this morning, so I watched ATL.  I would have watched Deliverance (It was filmed in rural Georgia), but I couldn't find a downloadable copy.

Other things...

Flirting!

Yes!  I think I've forgotten how to do it.  At least, a girl was trying her best to flirt with me today, and I was pretty excited, as I've always been the flirter never the flirtee in this country, but neither of us were any good at it, and I thought it might be impolite to ask whether she was flirting with me, though I guess it was obvious to both of us.  Damn.  I coulda' used a date.  Or a good walk.  That's what I need to do - make some sort of "flirting script" - just figure out what I'm supposed to say and memorize that.  The goal of flirting is to suggest a date, right?  Or something?

I'm sort of afraid that I'll get so used to being a hermit (as I've been for the last three months) that I'll freeze that way.  Has that happened to anyone?  I think Stu's been close, and maybe Anna.  Well, she's definitely a hermit.  But seriously, once you start collecting yaoi manga in the original Japanese, what do you expect?

Two homeless guys meet under my third floor window.

Hobo1: "Hello."
Hobo2: "Hello, I love you."
Hobo1: "Hello - I love you!"
Hobo1 and 2, singing together:  "Hello!  I love you - won't you tell me your naaa - ame!?!"

They gather their bicycles and walk together down the street, still singing.

"HELLO!  I fucken' luv you!"

Several steps later.

"Lemme juhump in yer fuuuukin' game!"

Coincidentally, I am currently watching The Crow.  Writing is still going semi-consistently.  I've discovered the key to writing fiction: have no social life, get so bored that you make up words and memories, put them on a keyboard.

Maybe I miss Atlanta?  Or maybe I'm already missing Istanbul.

I have so much coffee in me.  I feel brilliant.

If you've ever written a paper with me, you know how much I wanna go for a walk and talk about how smart I am/curious properties of my private parts RIGHT NOW.  NOW.  NOW.  Right now.

The coffee maker is busted, so I have placed a big spoonful of ground beans in a mug, then covered beans with boiling water.  Tastes gritty, but full of go-juice.  Also, this is my second mug in the last 45 minutes.  If I was drinking whiskey, this would be "a cry for help".  I'm pretty sure body-part-which-processes-coffee will be crying for help in another hour or so.

The guy in the apartment across the street from mine was playing some pretty damn good punk music, but he has turned it off and left.  Sad face.  I do not write about Steinbeck unless I have loud music.  Up the punx.

Do you know that British people talk funny?  It continues to amaze.

Friday!  London!  I have already started washing my BEST PANTS.

Damn right they're better than yours.

POSTSCRIPT:  I was reading random journal entries, and these are my current favorites:

Zing!
Pow!

Also, pretty much anything tagged 'people' will be good.

I have planned an Adventure for this weekend.

1)  Leave for London Friday afternoon.
2)  Meet up with London Tall Dancing Friend for dinner.
3)  Perhaps go for a walk.
4)  Find bar, make brilliant new London friends.
5)  Return to London Tall Dancing Friend's apartment, negotiate (drunkenly) with her and roommates for a spot of floor to sleep on.
6)  Get belligerent.
7)  Sleep.
8)  Wake.
9)  Take bus to Newcastle.
10)  Meet Scottish friend in Newcastle.
11)  Drink until we're able to have a decent conversation/don't care.
12)  Fight inanimate objects.
13)  Find somewhere to sleep.  If possible, not involving money.
14)  Get in fight with whatever I happen to be sleeping on.
15)  Lose.
16)  Wake.
17)  Take bus back to Oxford.
18)  Write something or other about something related to feminism in Naussica episode of Ulysses.

How strange, to think I've gotten used to this.

I wonder what it will be like, back in Atlanta.  Everytime I leave that city, and I've been gone for five and a half months now, seven by the time I return; every time I leave Atlanta I worry about the people I left behind.  It could be because I'm not caught in the minutia of their lives, but they seem frozen and, even on the slowest days, everything in here moves fast fast fast.

I'll be spending a month in Istanbul, sleeping on a roof in Sultanahmet, the oldest part of the city.

And my closest friends will all be in or around Atlanta, basically doing the same thing they did when I left.

Not that travel changes anything, or that I'm doing anything so different from my life in Atlanta, but it feels...

[I'm going to diverge a second from my main argument here, as there's a word that describes my feelings about it all perfectly, but, more than the word, it's how the word was expressed, and, in order to describe the expression of the word, I need to describe the person who "owned" that peculiar means of expression.

Do you remember how I used to sometimes slip into ultra-Southern accent mode saying "fu-uk" or "got'damm"?  I say it that way because it reminds me of Jeremiah, who lives in Athens.  He was one of the stranger people I knew, a hillbilly, a philosopher, a geologist, a father, a playboy, and currently employed melting stolen railroad ties to sell as scrap.  He's the feeling I mean when I speak like that, and it's a weariness that only Jeremiah could express.  It required a lot of whiskey.

So, this expression I want to use now, it belongs/ed to her just as much as got'damm belonged to Jeremiah.

This girl had a way of being constantly disgusted or maybe distressed.  Either way, it was a righteous expression of the supreme unfair/subreal/ignorant/misguided nature of the world she lived in.  She would call the world "ridiculous", and, the thing was, no matter what she judged, you got the impression it really was ridiculous for the split second she named it.  She believed it, and she was right.  I don't remember how she said "ridiculous"; I imagine she spoke it as the unaccented opposite of Jeremiah's own words, because, unlike Jeremiah's "fu-uk" or "got'damm", his expressions of complete and accurate personal feeling, her word was the simplest and most complicated description of the reality outside herself.]

So that's it:

"ridiculous".

PS:  Why aren't you reading Design Observer?  Or Architecture of Control?  Or Crooked Timber?

Seriously.  Get with the program.

Hi Internet!  I'm Ben.  I'm an English Literature student, studying abroad at Oxford University.  I just turned 23.  I'll be in Istanbul in a few weeks, then Atlanta.  This is my Friday, June 1st.

Friends are cool, with one caveat:  If you'd like to be my internet friend, please tell me something about yourself in the comments section.  And, pretty please, write something no one else has written.  Ever.  In the history of The Internet.

Do any of you read Crooked Timber?

You should.

It's Tuesday night, and that means I'm writing.  This is my second to last week of classes, then I'm staying over for another week.  Maybe I'll hang around Dancer Girl's place in London?  I've only seen her twice, but, Elizabeth from back home told us we should be best friends, so I took that to mean it's okay for me to invite myself over for a few days.  That's what best friends do, right?  Make each other's lives miserable?  Make London flats seem even smaller?

Cocorosie on the 17th.

Oh, and the heel fell off my boot in the middle of Sainsbury's a few hours ago.  Tread?  The rubbery bit, you know, whatever you call that piece of shoe.  I guess I need to buy new shoes at some point, as my left no longer has an appreciable bottom.  These boots have lasted me seven years.  They were awesome.  Maybe I'll mail them back home.

Good places to get good shoes on a budget?

Do you guys have something like a "Big and Tall" store?  My body is on the short side of average, but my feets are fucking huge.  It makes shoe buying an ordeal.

I'm going to have to go to my tutorial tomorrow morning with my shoe sole duct taped on.  Right Fucking On.

Do Your Thing.

Like A Soul Machine.

EDIT:  There is nothing more inspirational than a fresh episode of Doctor Who sitting on your desktop, just waiting to be watched.  As soon as this damn paper is finished.

Rain rain rain.

Forty three mother fucking farhenheit fucking degrees.

Our apartment heater has crapped out, so, as I'm typing this, I'm actually wearing clothing besides only a pair of pants.  Stupid cold.  Stupid not being able to write nude.

I've been thinking about writing a lot lately, etc etc.  I wish there was someone around I could discuss writing with.  Oxford area complain/strategize about writing clubs?  It's a bit late to be joining clubs, as I'll be leaving in three weeks, but still.  Leaving in 2 and a half weeks actually.  Very excited.

As much as I enjoy the people, scenery, architecture, and etc in England, I really only came here to learn stuff faster than I was at home.  I mean, if I could have access to these resources while in Istanbul, life would be perfect.

Have any of you been listening to Midlake?  They're fucking good.  I saw them in Chicago a few months ago, and their live show wasn't too impressive.

Normally when I'm this bored, I just walk until I find interesting people.  Or drunk people.

It's raining, and I am made of sugar, so I'm staying in today.

Which is why you get something like 3 (4?) posts in one day.

On my mind:

When I get emails signed

[person's name]
xxxoooxoxox

I always feel like replying

Go fuck yourself.

-Ben
xo

So, in conclusion.  Please quit that shit.

Also, I think I miss American beer - it's hard to find indie-beers on tap over hear, and the ones I do find are all sort of light.  Not that I'm an expert on beer or beer lingo.  I miss drinking beer that tastes cold, miserable, and face-punching-y.

I have a strange urge to scare away all the new people.  I'm sure, if you search my archives, you can find a detailed essay presenting my views for and against shaving genitals.  I may have included a graph in that post.

Yeah, that should do the trick.

It was windy yesterday, continues to be windy today.  Maybe I'll go look at some swans?

It was my roommate's birthday last night, so she's doing the hungover thing today.  Very qute.  She has setup camp on our couch.  The only part of her visible under that mass of blankets, laptop, and tea paraphernalia is her hair and one ear.

Maybe I should give in to my own (slight) hangover.  I found an interesting girl to talk to at the party last night, but she scampered to assist a drunk friend home.  I grabbed my own posse shortly after, and we went to find cheaper booze, not inside a noisy club.  I don't think I should have to pay more money just to drink bad booze and listen to horrible music, but I find myself in the minority these days.

A question for club going girls: if a guy asks you to step outside with him while at a club, what do you assume his intentions to be?

I was just getting tired of talking in sign language.

Ex:

"You're sleeping with Annie and that guy?"
"No!  No, we sleep under the same roof!  We are roommates!"

I think I will consult a used clothing shop, and perhaps run into Nathaniel, The Christian.

A good sign you've had a bit much to drink:  You are talking to friends, including The Christian, about how "fucking lame" Jesus was.  In a loud voice.  It's probably a good thing he does the "turn the other cheek" thing.

Did I mention that I solved the curtain problem recently?

I had not previously had curtains, and now I do.  It is an amazing transformation.  I no longer worry about the sanity of old ladies forced to look at my genitals in the mornings.  Beautiful.

Also, I found a bike a few weeks ago.  I don't really use it much, because it doesn't actually have any brakes, so, when I want to stop, I've gotta jam my foot down and hope, which means I end up having to apply advanced strategies to bicycle riding.  I hit a car about a week ago - not hard, it was more of a love tap than a real collision.

I have found more things, but they are not as useful.

Like a minifridge, which I ended up giving away to freecycle, as I never had enough food to bother storing.

PS:  Hello new people.  I will get around to friending and stuff soon.

A homeless guy asked me for money, and I explained that I had spent the last of it but 10p on the dinner I was carrying home.  He asked if maybe he could have a few bites, which I thought was a bit of an imposition, given the very small bag I was carrying, but maybe it looked larger to him.

I said, "I'm pretty set on eating this, but I could make you a big bowl of rice, and I think I have some veg which is almost ripe, if you'd like to come inside out of the rain for an hour or so."

(we were talking under a bridge)

He declined, and I had already given him the 10p, so we went our separate ways.  I had a pretty good dinner.  I think the avocado will be the softness I prefer by tomorrow morning, when I will eat it and the rice for breakfast.  Perhaps, if I have the focus for it, I will find some way to mix the red and green peppers with the rice.

Is it only 11?  Feels later.  I was walking in the rain for a half hour or so before deciding on my dinner.  It's warm enough that I can walk without shoes.  I managed to shed shirt as well for about half a block, but, realistically, it will be at least another few weeks until I'm comfortable shirtless and shoe-less.  Interestingly, "shirtless" is considered a word, while "shoeless" is not.

Bloom says that great literature is a result of an artist attempting to create literature by mimicking their favorite writers, than, gradually creating a unique style from this imitation.  While Bloom calls it imitation, the process is closer to interpretation - the artist creates a false image of their predecessors, building their own art upon this image.

Did I mention the professor calling my essay "good"?  It feels like the first time I got an A on a Brightman paper, which in turn feels almost as good as the first time I got an A on a Hyman paper.

Shit.

I still owe her a paper from last semester.

Wooo!  Finished my fourth Joyce paper.  Professor said it was "good" - high praise from an Englishman.

I think, tonights activities are:

1) Drink.
2) Teach Christians to drink properly (Whiskey).
3) Go salsa dancing?
3a) In a retrofitted church?
3b) Pants optional?
4) Take off shoes, rest of clothes.
5) Sleep.

Writing this paper... doot doot doot.

I've been spending way too much time looking at myself in the mirror these past few days.  It's hard to avoid - my muscles have been all sorts of weirdly defined lately, and, when I pass a mirror, I catch them doing weird things from the corner of my eyes.  I've sort of been exercising all weekend, which is also the reason I've been watching so much teevee.

Speaking of prettiness, this:



makes me miss my aborted attempt at muttonchops.  I wonder if Steve's a history major?  All the history majors I know have muttonchops, or at least big honkin' sideburns.

Anyone wanna help explain the last few paragraphs of "The Dead"?

I really hate writing papers for people who have spent their lives studying the author I'm writing about.

Funny story:  I was doing research on "The Dead", looking up books and stuff (yes, quite a few authors have written entire books about a 50 page story), and I found the book my teacher wrote on the story.  The book wasn't stored in the Bodelein archives, but the main literature library.  I believe this means it's important enough to be considered a standard text on the subject.  All 300 some pages of it.

My current situation requires some swearing ingenuity:  Fuckballs-ass-shitdamn.

Rain rain rain.  Another two days of it, then "partly sunny and nice" on Friday.  Have I told you how much I miss the sort of heat which makes movement impossible between the hours of 11 am and 5 pm?  I've been having reaccuring dreams of canoeing through Florida swamps, covered with bug bites and near dilerious from sunburn.  These are my good dreams.

My bad dreams mainly involve leaving messages on peoples' answering machines. 

Fuck all that.  My feeling is, if I need to talk to someone, they should contact me.  Preferably before I know I need to talk to them.

I like things tidy.

Other things:

Weren't the 50's cool?

It is like Daria, but live action.

I just realized my college has its own bar.

Them's good eatin'.

A not too exciting day.  I think I've watched 3 hours of Deadwood so far, and I might watch another hour or two before I sleep.  I had meant to write or draw or photograph something for Mother's day, but I procrastinated.  Now I'm grumbling about made up holidays to make myself feel better.

I was sitting with coffee and laptop and stack of books at the cafe this afternoon, and these two twenty-somethings were talking about boyfriend dumping techniques.  I was amazed - girls are strangely mercenary about these things.  Also, unlike similar conversations I've had with my own guy and girl friends, nothing was ever said about the physical aspects of the whole deal - though I guess you would avoid that sort of talk in a crowded cafe.

[dame quoting some guy]
“if you have a dinner party of more than 5 people, you just have to just have to have people [hired help] in"
[immediately after the quote]
“oh yes, I don't know how you could get on without help” [/sarcasm]
[discussing own boyfriends]
“and of course Tim's from Manchester, so, common”
[...later...]
"...we're sitting on a really British day...”

I like hearing scraps of conversation with no context around them.

I think, next time I do one of these "day in pictures" things, it will be in London.  I'm supposed to be heading down in a few weeks to watch dancer girl's performance, and I'm hoping to wrangle a spot on a spare bed or comfy patch of floor - make a weekend of it, maybe see some of the things I'm supposed to see.  Actually, I think I may be going down even earlier than that, some sort of WISC sponsored trip.

I am listening to the audio track of an Israeli porn movie.  All I hear is Hebrew, moaning, and stereotypical porn music.

I think I just heard a bom-chika-wow-wow.

Anyway.

Why am I sitting at home on a Friday night, listening to porn, as opposed to watching or making it?

Good fucking question.

I miss warm bodies and sympathetic brain-pans.

Also: The Claremont Lounge.

If ever there was a time to watch ugly strippers and drink cheap whiskey with a crew of my closest friends, this is it.