Probably the only romance movie worth watching.  An article about the above.

When Harry Met Sally is also pretty good.

I turned in my (hopefully) final copy of the Land Trust article on Friday:

In fact, even the most acutely aware pedestrian may have difficulty discerning the boundaries of the official park land versus the privately owned yards of neighboring Lake Claire residences. The Land Trust is almost completely fenceless, and the premises are surrounded by numerous lush acres of privately owned forest. As Charlie points out, park visitors have the ability to wander freely between the Land Trust and the neighboring Amata Community. One can easily make the mistake of stumbling into one of the neighboring backyards. The park’s open nature becomes problematic on the first and third Saturdays of each month, when the community hosts large drum circles after dark. As attendance has climbed over the last few years, the Land Trust community has built and installed temporary fences to keep drum circle attendees tightly corralled within the park’s amphitheater.

And I just got out of my first class. Showing up on the first day of classes was probably a mistake. Everyone seemed very clean. I should have worn a pastel shirt - everyone else was.

I feel bitter and wrinkled.

Send beautiful naked people. With tambourines and booze.

I am currently in Goreme, a town in Turkey's Cappadocia region, about 12 hours bus drive from Istanbul.

I don't like this town much.  It's so small - reminds me of Oxford, where the only roads out of town are in the cardinal directions, and only South and East are interesting.  Except, here, the road out of town is also the road into town.

In theory, there are interesting things, but I can't seem to get the hang of walking around and saying "oh look.  I see some nature."

I mean, I do it anyway, and my feets and hands are permanently caked with white powder from climbing the sandstone formations and crawling through caves.  But I'm starting to exhaust the supply of cool stuff I can see within 2.5 hour's walk (2.5 to get there, lunch and maybe a nap, then 2-3 hours back, depending if I get lost).  I'll post pictures sometime.

It's pretty, but what isn't?

I want ugly in interesting ways.

Bitch bitch bitch.

There were some people I was supposed to talk to about beers, but I don't think it's gonna happen.  Feel terribly ackward for the last few days.  Second day of new haircut.  Did not speak barber's language.  Was able to indicate desired style only by gesturing and curse words.  So he just said fuck it and shaved the whole thing.  Damnit.  Maybe I'll just go back to the mohawk.

There's a friendly dog here, but he is not friendly in a pushy way.  Awesome.

Also, a few days back, I tried my hand at writing reviews of various Turkish candy.  It was mainly an excuse to have chocolate bars for lunch.  But!  What does it say about ones reviewing abilities, if one makes three seperate references to Thai hookers over the space of six paragraph long reviews?

Answer:  It says you're only half the reviewer you could be.

"Shhhhh - this is a library"

Not that I hate being American, America, etc - but, when I'm quietly working on a paper, and the library is suddenly filled with a million idiot babbling Southern Californians, that's when this American thing becomes a little embarrassing.  I mean-

"Guys, try to stay quiet, people are working here"

-I mean, I'm all for talking.  Talking is great.  But at some point Americans, or perhaps only American college students from Southern California, switched from "talking" to "babbling".  "Babble" is a form of communication, but it is a communication whose only purpose is to convey the sense that the person using it is the sort of person who talks.  Much like the tweeting of birds, or the mating calls of bullfrogs.

"Guys -"

It is a stream of noise meant to establish the importance and vitality of the person speaking.  The content of the words they speak is basically unimportant.

"shhhhhhhhhhhhhh - Guys!"

They might as well be saying "look at me look at me look at me look at me this is my sweatshirt this is my team this is my college I have money my hair costs money I am in England this is me this is me this is me I need to check my email email how do I sign on why don't these keyboards work right my hands my hands my hair my hair sweatshirt".

I'm not implying that students in other countries don't say stupid shit - I've heard plenty of it, here and everywhere else.  But at least they're quiet about it.  Sometimes they realize they've said something stupid, and they apologize, or at least blush.

"These computers don't have USB ports?  How am I supposed to plug this in?  Why don't they have USB ports here?"
"Dude!"
"I mean this is fucked.  Seriously man what the fuck?"
"Will, Nathan, could you two keep it down?"
"Oh.  Sorry."
"My bad."

I'm not going to be the only one forced to hear this bullshit.

Hi.

I love all of you dearly, and will get around to reflecting this affection through mutual friendings at some point in the future.

For now, I sort of hate the internet.

Oh, also:  I don't have any money, and you should give me yours.

Yrs,
Ben

PS:  Kitty!

Looks like it's gonna be another night of "where's your self esteem now, mr writer man?"

Churning out another Joyce paper - 2 down, 6 to go.  And I need another 1000 words before I sleep tonight.  It really shouldn't be this hard.

Do you know how many words I've written trying to describe trees?  A fuck of a lot more than I've ever spent on Joyce.

Trees are hard to describe - they look really funny.

EDIT:  Sweet jesus my desk is falling apart and I don't know why.

C'mon caffeine
do your thing
needa write some shit
about sick of it

EDIT 2:  It is morning time, coffee still isn't working.  I think I may be immune to caffeine.  I am become as Bob, destroyer of worlds.

Also: Maz, I will stab you in your eyes, then replace them with robot eyes on extendable eyestalks, so that I may pool the eyes away from your head so you can look at the ruins of your gore bathed face.

Also Part 2:  Your mother is a whore.