Where in the World is Tim?

The Horrors of War: Images from the Trenches

2007-11-12T19:18:00.000-08:00

Break the Chains of Oppression

2007-11-08T07:32:00.000-08:00

If you walk past a history professor and he/she seems to be shivering, its not the weather… its fear. Fear that the masses have awakened to the injustice bred and maintained by an aristocratic elite. We no longer have any recourse, it is time to pick up the dice and roll.

The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them. We must not allow ourselves to be divided! Professor Trotti and the rest of the department think they can purchase half of us and intimidate the other half. The fools! The fools! They have left us with no continents to accrue bonus soldiers, but as long as we hold these card sets, a History Club unfree shall never be at peace!

To my fellow revolutionaries:
My degree of friendship, devotion, and obligation towards you is determined solely by the degree of your usefulness to the cause of total revolutionary destruction.

Mike Crosby

Will Fowkes: What They Fought For

2007-11-07T10:42:00.000-08:00

I was among those who would live the life of a slave.  I chose to lie
dormant in my dormitory, letting others fight for our shared cause.  No
longer.  After that rousing speech I cannot and will not let this battle
go unfought.  How could I ever face my fellow man?  How could I ever face
myself again?

I cannot and will not lie and tell you that I am a great RISK strategist,
but I will be there to do or not do as whoever will lead us desires.
Until then:

                          -Will Fowkes
                           Sophomore and Patriot

A Collection of Quotes from Jen Genova to her Fellow Students

2007-11-07T10:34:00.001-08:00

STUDENTS OF THE DEPARTMENT UNITE!

WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS!

They can take away our GPA's, but they can't take away our Freedom!!!

We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them in the trenches!!!

Oh how happy I am today to be a History Major!

We shall fight the US Historians and wrestle control of the seas away from
the World Historians!

Citoyenne Angelica Burton Calls for Revolution

2007-11-07T10:33:00.001-08:00

Citoyennes and Citoyens -

I beg you not to be misled by the spurious propaganda of Professor Trotti.
As a member of the elite upper class he is trying to sow discord amongst
us, who fight for the sacred virtues of liberté, égalité, and fraternité.
Perhaps the problem here is that the structure in which we learn history
is flawed - and this is why we need revolution! I quote Comrade Tim: "I
see myself as Peter the Hermit to Priyam's Urban II." If we want more
time to learn about female leaders it is up to us to overthrow the current
regime and build our department anew.

We can do it! Vive la revolution!

Citoyenne Angelica

Professor Trotti's Reaction to Student Rabble Rousing

2007-11-07T10:27:00.000-08:00

Far be it from me to try to drive a wedge between some students and
others before our little duel next weekend, but I hope the female
members of the student history association read this call to arms
closely -- freshMEN? militaristic rhetoric? proto-fascist celebration of
various men in the past and their violence? I don't think it is an
accident when your male comrade says "when we dared to stand up to them
LIKE MEN". What a giveaway.

Suffice it to say that all self-respecting women historians might need
to think carefully about who their allies really are as we approach the
battlefield: where, on the board of Risk, do your true enemies lie? And
if you join friendly professors to oppose this sort of patriarchy, all
the better. Consider it.

Michael T.

The Banerjee Resolution

2007-11-06T17:26:00.001-08:00

Resolved by the Students' History Association of Ithaca College, That the present deplorable academic strife has been forced upon the department by the despots of the Fourth Floor of Muller now have breached the State of Nature and in arms around the students; that in this emergency History Club Cabinet, banishing all feelings of mere passion or resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole department; that this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of interfering with the rights or established institutions of any classes, but to topple the despots and overthrow the supremacy of the Professorial Regime that by its own corrupt and self-serving actions entered into a State of War with the students of the department with whom sovereignty ultimately rests, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the rightly guided historical institutions unaffected by the Professors' tyranny; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.

A Call to Arms

2007-11-06T17:25:00.001-08:00

Now is the winter of our malcontent, Comrades. For too long we have allowed ourselves to fall victim to the tyranny of a corrupt and decadent regime of professors. Lo, these many years our so called "educators" have gulled, cullied, and diddled we pious students for all we're worth. Midterms, map quizzes, term sheets, Blue Books! And when we dared stand up to them like men, they have assigned more work, gave pop quizzes, and spilled our blood[1] ! Even Zenon has refused to give my proposals for student independence even the courtesy of open debate. My God, what in hell are they waiting for?

I say the time for peaceful diplomacy has passed. The expressions of ideas by enlightened students have fallen on deaf ears. This, Comrades, is the dawn of our revolution. The rays of a better tomorrow are peeking over the horizon, and they look glorious. This is the time for action. Cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war!

Today we students stand united at the brink of total war. We are Comrades in arms who attest that all historians, regardless of degrees earned, are created equal. We shall hold true to that belief so that those students who lose on the battlefield of RISK will not have gone in vain. Any student who gives their life blood in the name of Student Liberty will be gloriously received into the halls of Valhalla. I know this war will be an uphill clime, and every moment we will be precariously perched on the precipice of defeat, but if we stand united we cannot fail. When Alexander laid siege to Tyre he built a jetty so that his troops could attack the island from the land. When Mehmet the Conqueror's mighty navy was blocked from the Bosphorus by a Byzantine chain he carried his ships across the land to attack Constantinople. We too can overcome the very elements themselves in the name of our cause. Soon we will all eat the cookies of liberty dunked in milk from the chalice of victory!

Years from now, when the incoming freshmen ask, will you all be able to say you were there when the students made their stand? Will you be able to say 'I fought on Armistice Day. I heard the clap of thunder when red and white dice clashed, and the gorges ran crimson. I was there when the history we study was made.'?

I will not deceive you, some of you valiant heroes will lose on the battle board of RISK. But if you do not fight, and flee like cowards to live a long life, consider that one day you will be lying in your deathbed, many years from now. On that day at the end of an empty life, would you trade every moment from now until then to be able to have confronted the professors and to have given the mighty battle yawp for Freedom?

Viva the Revolution, Comrades! Viva la Libertad!

[1] Professor Tempesta punched me once when I said he had a statistic wrong. Right in the face

Homer, We Hardly Knew Ye

2007-03-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

So last year Ithaca College raided the piggie bank set aside for funding the construction of a much needed H&S building so that they could create this new online super system called Homer. First it took the campus a little while to get used to the idea that we would no longer have our outdated SIS system. Meanwhile, no one seemed to get the connection between a system named after the blind bard and a school called Ithaca. But the registrar knew how to solve the problem. They printed out signs depicting Simpsons characters which had the desired effect of exciting the student body about using Homer.

Meanwhile, I didn't care. Homer was advertised as being so simple to use that even Joe Tempesta could do it. I knew there might be some bugs the first time around, but I was going to be in Barcelona, and thus out of the reach of the system. And I was right, none of the first go-round glitches ruined my Barcelona experiance. Though I did have to officially sign up for London classes on Homer, it was only a formality seeing as how spots had been reserved for all the students in there classes as part of the registration process. All in all, Homer and I avoided one another for an entire year.

However, the present is a different story, the countdown is over and the Homer Crisis has begun. Because Homer has told Ithaca College that I have been a drop-out for the past year (because I wasn't on campus), I don't get to sign up for classes until April 9th, along with all the other freshman. A wiley trick, I must admit, but I bested Homer on that front. I've been talking to all my old Profs from on the home campus. Little does Homer know that I have seats reserved for me in all my classes next semester. Granted history classes are slim pickings because Joe Tempesta and Prof Brown have been put out to stud, and other Profs have decided to take sabaticles, however my tenuous plan to work on tutorials takes me out of the class rat-race for 6 competitive credits.

I am not the only one Homer went after though. Maliciously, He decided to schedule my friends Meg and Lee Boo to sign up for classes (they DO need to deal with the rat race) at times neither of them can get near a computer. But the humans have fought back against Homer once again with the power of team-work. Lee Boo will sign up for Meg and Meg for Lyss. Humanity refuses to fall to our greek digital overlord.

Homer would not go unavenged, some poor sap had the terrible idea to connect Skynet (I mean Homer) to the housing selection system. Fear abounded as to what trechery Homer would unleash on our desperate housing search. The mortal imagination is not dark enough to fathom the Machiavellian machinations of Homer.

First it did away with the merritocracy that had previously ruled housing selection. The old system (fairly) provided a better housing number to students who had more credits. Granted this favored students who had gone to high-schools with more AP classes, but there are slight problems in even the best systems. Now Homer allows housing preference to go to students who have been ON CAMPUS longer. Not only does this hurt the ambitious study-abroad-er like myself, but it also screws the pooch for transfer students. I ask you, why a transfer senior should ever get stuck in the Boot with a freshman? Somethings are just wrong. Next Homer did away with the superlatively efficient system of signing oneself up for housing. The old system used to be that if you wanted to live somewhere, you showed up at the right time and wrote your name right in the room where you wanted to live. The system provided for minimal confusion, AND the ability to cheat the system like I did to live in Emerson. It had its problems but it's better to have the devil you know than Homer. Now Homer decides where you live. One person must tell the leviathin their party's housing prefference (I note that someone could easily put someone in a flat against their will, but Homer loves such sinister behavior). This also means that a single person can only sign up for a single. And all singles suck. The old system meant that two strangers could meet up on paper an co-habit the room of their dreams, but no longer. Homer won't have it. I now have to live like a freshman.

Using Homer is, itself, an act of hateful blastphemy. I deplore the system, and urge all my fellow human being to break off the shackles the System has imposed upon us. I have a dream that one day we all will be free!

-Tim

Linguistic Forgery

2007-03-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

It seems that some American students were told before they came to London, not to worry about foreign languages this semester. While it is true that with some notable exceptions and superfluous U's they use the same words here as they do in the states to convey ideas, this advice was not meant soley for the UK. It seems that a numer of Amuricans are under the impression that everyone in Europe (or historyland as it is often called) now speaks English so that they can better serve the tourists and learn from our enlightened United Statesian ways of using the death penalty, fiening democracy, and using a perpetually devaluing currency. I openly scoffed at the idea when I first heard it. I've been to Paris and communicated to the natives using their alien tongue. I've been to Barcelona, where I was schooled in Spanish, a language rarely ever used in the city. And I have been confused by Catalan, which native speakers will repremand you for not understanding, but will never humble themselves to the point where they'll teach you. Yes I've been to history land, and I can attest to the reality that English is not something everyone is born speaking. There ARE other languages out there... or so I thought.

It turns out, as I found last week, it has all been a lie. A clever well thought out lie. But a lie all the same. Other languages aren't REAL, they're just a way of bilking tourists out of their money. Offended by my cultural insensitivity? Well you'll be singing another tune once I provide you with proof.

First to Greece...

At first glimps, Greek looks like a completely different language. They were even clever enough to imagine up an alien alphabet that they use to shroud the secret meanings of their text. But the Greeks got over confident. They imagined that no one would be able to crack their ingenius code (I found when I got there that I could read the Greek alphabet with ease thanks to only a few hours of study three years ago), hense they didn't bother to change much else about the words. The entire language is composed of the combination of prefixes and suffixes that anyone that scored above a 400 on their SAT's will be able to figure out. Toward the end the Greeks just got lazy. They, like the crypto-linguists, the Latins (not to be confused with the Romans who stole their language and claimed it as their own, as is the Italian way you will soon discover), end their words in declensions. All of the words in a sentense match, this makes it sound better. But while the Latins, and Ancient Greeks for that matter, specified which pronoun and tense the declensions apply to, the Greeks of the Modern era use random and often changing endings to their words thus abandoning all meaning. Of course this makes the 'language' sound exotic, but it does not convey any sort of point, which is one of the pillars upon which language should be built.

Now on to Italy...

They just weren't trying when the Italians created their cultural tongue. I'm not sure what happened on the day of the big meeting when all the representatives met to disguise their native tongues from English ears. Perhaps Italy lost her notes, or was sitting next to the window and kept getting distracted, or maybe Italy was just lazy. What I do know is that those words that Italians speak is NOT a language. As Alyssa found out, nearly 75% of their words are just Spanish said with an Italian accent. One need only affect something that sounded natural and speak Spanish and you got along fine. However, there were whole bunches of words that WERE English, but an i or an o was added as an after thought. What is the Italian word for a grown up? Adulti. It was shameful. The only TRUE Italian word we found was 'ciao', which they said insessantly, as if reminding tourists that they were in Italy. There's just one problem for anyone who knows the etymology of the word 'ciao', it comes from Venice and literally means 'our business is concluded'. So all those Italians were using their own language incorrectly. But they don't care, they just hop on their Vespas and drive off.

Now that I've exposed the secret of foreign language, I no longer feel bad about not trying in French class back at WHS. It's all BS anyways.

-Tim

Nemesis

2007-03-15T06:37:00.000-07:00

Every great dramatic character has had his own great antagonist. Drama arises from the clash of a good man with his antithesis. Sherlock Holmes has Professor Moriarty, Ahab has the leviathin, Superman has Lex Luthor, the Batman has The Joker, Oedipus has Jocasta, Darkwing Duck has that evil version of Darkwing duck that wore yellow, even Mork has Mindy. I am no different. I am but a man plagued by all the evils contained within pandora's box personified. Iniquity, thy name be Alyssa.

All week during my spring break I was tortured with the repitition of varriations on the same pun. Since I didn't have a magic muffin that grants my every wish, I was unable to achieve a world free of punny terrors. I opennly rued the day some eccentric italian looked at Renaisance art and said 'yes but what would be fabulous is if it were even more flamboyant', and thus inspired the baroque movement. Just saying the word makes me cringe because I know somewhere in the world Alyssa is laying in wait for her next oppertunity to say 'if it ain't baroque, don't fix it'. My stomach turns.

At least thats the way it started, an innocent quote from Cogsworth (that cock blocking clock) in Beauty and the Beast. But it went on from there. When she saw the dome of the Duomo, she said we should call a repairman. When she saw St. Peter's square, she requested hammer and nails. She committed the ultimate Art Historical blaspheme when she started insisting classical ruins were baroque.

That's not even the worst part! I just read her blog (jerseygirlinlondon.blogspot.com), and found out she's PROUD of what she did. She even reprised some of her vile puns. Back in my day we had a word for someone like her: 'witch'. I say we burn her! I say we pile up some bundles of wood (I know a fascist we can borrow some from) and burn the she-devil.

Who's with me?

-Tim

The Strange Flora and Fauna of Our Athenian Commissaries

2007-03-15T01:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, so maybe the Athenians aren't commissaries, or at least they're not OUR commissaries. If you like, you can look at them as the deputies of the EU staying the advance of the Turkish plague into their exclusive mens club for jerks (not that I don't like the EU system of confederate government, I'm a Brown Coat all the way, but come on guys, let the Turks in. It isn't funny anymore). But that wasn't my doing, and I'd like it if people would quit blaming ME. Anywho, the focus of this post isn't going to be EU politics. I don't like to use my blog to soap-box. I prefer to enjoy that pasttime IRL.

If Boston is said to be the Athens of America, and Madurai is the Athens of India, then surely Athens is the Athens of Greece. Today I will primarily focus on the animal and vegitable life of the cradle of democracy, with (assuredly) brief and quasi fictional accounts of my most recent trip to Greece.

First off: Flora

That city used to be COVERED in orange groves!

And it still is. The city of Athens is composed of four things in the way of architectual lay out.

1)Antiquated ruins that still stand as a testiment to how great, powerful, and advanced the ancient Hellens were. As we marvel at the perfection of their temples, still unsurpassed more than two millenia later we know that truly this was the culture of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagorus, and Zeno.

2)Fake ruins. Thats right, the Athenian Bureau of Tourism has seen fit to fill up the empty spaces between the plethora of Athenian ruins of immeasurable historic significance, with fake plaster ruins and intentionally felled columns. This makes the whole city feel like it is the seedy burrow in the Magic Kingdom.

3)Buildings that are in serious need of a bath. I get it Athens. You're very old. And you fell on hard times as the Ottomans declined, then again after WWII when people started thinking fascism was a good idea. You were economically weak for a while Greece, it's ok. But you're on the Euro now, so spring for some soap and a hose and clean yourself up. Most cities write history books to remember what has happened to them, Athens just collects all its dirt.

4)Friggen Orange trees man, they're EVERYWHERE! You know what it looks like in June, before all of the grass turns brown and dies, when every green area is polkadotted with yellow dandelions? Well that's what Athens looks like, only instead of weeds they have orange trees. With oranges! Did I mention the oranges? The size they have at supermarkets when oranges are actually in season, and one of the fruit is big enough for a meal. For FREE! Just growing on the street. Of course we were all too afraid to eat one. I've seen what happens in American prisons when a man cuts the heads off parking meters, I don't want to live the Greek version of Midnight express. But when you pealed them (the oranges) they made your hands smell delightful.

As for the animal life in the city, our guidbook gave us a helpful hint: "How do Greeks feel about animals? Well, it depends whether or not its a cat". It seems Greeks love their cats. And not like in the way Chinamen love cats. I suppose their affection for felines goes back to the Ptolemic rule of Alexandria, but I'm just saying that because I read it... in a book. We saw a few cats, that looked like strays, but there was always a food and water bowl that the cats had hidden somewhere near by.

Greece used to have a large population of sociopathic short swarthy men well schooled in varrious forms of martial arts. Unfortunately, deforestation, migration, and over-hunting by green-bean vigilantes has thinned the once great heard of Drakons to only a dwindling fraction of what they once were.

My travel companions in Greece, Zivic (the explorer), Alyssa (the tolken girl), and Wangchung (or Chinese man-servant whose barbaric pasttime of playing handheld video-games was alien to us at first, but we later accepted it for their primative simplicity) will all tell you that Athens was populated by a wealth of stray dogs. However, I did not have the heart to tell them all the truth. Those were no dogs... they were bears. But the bears were disguised as dogs, and seemed nice enough. We even made a number of friends.

Nicco- It seems most Greek males are named Nicco, and that goes for bear dogs as well. Nicco was the youngest and most friendly of the members of a pack of strays that were guarding the Parliment building. While the other dogs were in the streets hunting down cars for sustinance, Nicco was hanging out with us, fetching the scraps of our lunch that we threw him. Alyssa was particularly fond of Nicco because the language barrier that seems to exist here in London between man and beast was no problem in Greece. Nicco understoond kisses and 'hi there' and 'come here, Nicco'. Although the word 'no' got lost in translation when he dove into a garbage can.

Cow- Well it looked like one, so we called it Cow. It had big brown bovine spots all over its fat body. We thought, for a time, that it was running to keep up with us. In reality Cow was just running, or maybe stampeding, in no real direction. Cow would become confused when it would run away from us, then find us a minute later down the road.

Romeo- This dog loved me. It showed some affection for Lyss, and snubbed Zivic and Greg all together. But Romeo couldn't get enough of me. I particularly liked him because he looked EXACTLY like a dog I've seen somewhere before... I just can't think of where. It's a work of art, a Velasquez or a Goya. I'll post a picture of him soon so I can get all your feedback.

Scruffy- A clever and ambicious mut that followed us back to the hostel from the archeological museum. Scruffy understood how to use crosswalks and even how to understand walk signals (which would be impressive for a colourblind dog, but we now know he was a bear fully capable of seeing a full spectrum of ROYGBIV and even Ultra Violet and Infra-Black). Scruffy did not, however, get the concept that I was told is instinctive to all real dogs, that if you grab them by the scruff of the neck it is supposed to be natures off switch. But since Scruffy protected us from a cat who had been maliciously sculking in some shade by the road. We didn't notice the cat's surreptitious loitering until Scruffy had chased it into a tree. The cat lept to the top of the tree in a single bound. This had the effect that when I first saw the leaping critter, I thought it was a big white bat, which is far scarrier than a lounging cat. I'm not sure what Scruffy was thinking.

Then, of course, there were all the Greek gods walking about. However, like the false ruins, they are just a sleezy tourist trap now too.

-Tim

Religious Experiances

2007-03-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

What? Oh, hello. I didn't see you there.

...

Oh this? This isn't my wig. I was just holding it for a friend... from Hammersmith. Anyway, what can I do for you? Continue telling you about my Spring Break adventures? Well, alright. Where did I leave off.. oh yes. I remember now.

There I was, a giant to these people, many times taller than even the tallest of houses, and the Lillapudlians were screaming that their palace was on fire. Now perhaps it was just because I'd had a little too much to drink that night but... what else was I to do? They needed a way to put out the fire and I could naturally provide one.

...What? That's not where I left off? Oh, I get confused sometimes. I suppose I could tell you all about Jesus Camp.

Lyss and I got into Florence at a little after 8 o'clock in the evening. That's round about the time that any good italien, or someone hoping to enjoy their cultural quirks, would go out to dinner. The two of us were feeling peckish, so we figured we might as well go find some food too. But first we had to drop our bags off at the hostel.

My first impression of my room was dull. I simply noticed that there were 8 beds and mine was the one closest to the door. It was not only that I was tired, but that the hostel rooms were set up in such a was as to numb the part of the human brain that forms oppinions. While the walls of the hallways were near sensory overload, as they had been marked and signed and drawn uppon by all of the hostel's past guests, the rooms were so boring that my eyes could not focus for any amount of time. After two seconds of looking in any direction self preservation dictated that I must move my eyes to find something more interesting lest I go blind out of bordem. There was honestly absolutely nothing remarkable about my room. 8 beds, the one closest to the door was mine. Not so much as an interesting water stain that looked like Alexander Hamilton. I just wanted to get out and explore the city so that I could escape from the white noise that was my room.

Alyssa's room was more interesting.

Let this serve as a lesson to you ladies out there who might be thinking of booking a girls only room in a hostel (and allow me to burst the bubbles of any young men out there who might have their own naughty ideas about what goes on behind those closed doors), the kinds of girls who book rooms like that ARE Bible Belters. And not just your run of the mill typical conservative Christians, these are the people who love Jesus militantly. The kind of people I fear will drag me from my bed at night and nail me to a lower case T. Picture Mel Gibson as a group of college aged girls. That's who Alyssa was rooming with (it's a wonder she survived). She didn't see them at first. The room was empty, except for the five beds made military style, at least one of which was adorned by a (spare?) Bible (which is fine I guess, I like to do a little light reading before bed too).

The two of us came back from dinner (and the gillato that preceeded it) at about ten. We wanted to change our shoes before we went out to explore the city. Jesus Camp was already in bed, sound asleep. Now, I know its a bit pre-school to tease people for having an early bedtime, but even I wanted to check out the nightlife, and I think Jesus would agree.

We went out, we walked throughout the city, we hid from other ICLC students because its just not an exotic vacation if you run into the girl who always needs your help using the photocopier, and we returned dead on our feet, barely able to keep our eyes open. It was midnight. Alyssa collapsed into her bed, and I tried to collapse into mine. But there was a slight problem. The female Jesus Campers had brought their somewhat androgynous, but apparently male friend with him. I don't want to make fun of his weight problem, but he had the top bunk, and it was sagging down so much that I had to suck in my stomache to fit on my bed.

The morning was worse. My Jesus Camper's alarm went off at six in the morning. It played an Irish jig that would have been merry had it been played at a time other than six in the morning. He hit snooze. The jig was no more merry at 6:01, or 6:02, or any of the other 58 minutes until 7am when he actually tumbled out of bed and the very foundation of the building shook. Meanwhile, Alyssa's five Jesus camper woke up promptly at six, and proceeded to gossip 'til the sun come up. They whispered, I'm told, but it was a stage whisper, the kind you use when you want to make it very clear to the audiance that you're speaking in hushed tones, but you want them to hear everything you say. One of the commandments SHOULD be thou shalt not be an ass and wake strangers up.

The epilogue to my tale about Jesus Camp is that later that morning, while I was waiting for the shower, Jesus Camp (male) spent 15 minutes in front of the mirror adjusting the angle that his gelled hair was at. But no matter how hard he pushed his bangs back, his self confindense wouldn't go up.

But on the subject of religion, I met two angels on my trip. I didn't think I believed in angels, but I was wrong. Well, other than David Boreanaz of course.

I met the first angel in Vatican City, which I guess is fitting. Alyssa and I were looking for this hole in the wall Gillattoria which, according to legend, sells scoops the size of your head and for cheaper than anywhere else in the city. This is true. However, Meg, who told us about the legendary shoppe, was a little vague on the directions. All we knew was that we were supposed to take a right at Saint Peter's Square. Lyss and I had done that, however unintentionally, as we were looking for a WC. No sooner had Alyssa looked at me and said that she coud go for a frozen treat, but a miracle happened. The clouds parted and the sky openned up. We could hear a choir of cherabim with a back up band of seraphim on brass playing from on high, and there in a great etherial spotlight was an angel in blue jeans. We knew he was an angel because he had wings, though they had disguised themselves as a leather jacket and pair of glasses. He had teeth that were beyond white one the colour scale, they were two notches above ultra white. He asked, but we understood he knew the answer, if we were looking for the Old Arch (or something I dont remember the name) Gillottoria. We said 'yes' as our souls quaked. He told us we need only follow the road we were on until it went around a bend. Then, in a flash of light and white feathers he was gone. Now maybe he wasn't really an angel. Maybe we were just talking to a bubble of swamp gas reflecting the planet Venus, but the gillato was real... and huge. Alyssa was David to the frozen creamy Goliath.

The last angel was the bus driver I met outside Stanstead airport. He was somewhat less impressive looking. He looked like Mark Addy with a squished face, but I didn't care. Whoever decided that the busses and trains stop running from Stanstead BEFORE the last flights land should be deported to Naples. When I got through past port control, I thought I was going to have to spend the night in the international terminal, or hitch a ride with the nice man with the hook and the crazy eyes, or commit a crime so I could spend the night in jail. But angelic Mark Addy had other plans. He saw me wandering around the bus depot, shivering because I was dressed for a say in Rome, and invited me on his magic (not school) bus. It was filled with Croatian tourists that had chartered a bus to Kings Cross. But there was an open seat and he offered it to me. It is thanks to Him that I made it home that night, or maybe just that I made it home in one piece.

-Tim

God Save the Queens

2007-03-12T06:25:00.000-07:00

I only have a few moments before I have to run to class, but I need to fill you all in about something. Hammersmith, the area where I live, is full of drag queens. FULL of them! I can't walk to or from class in the morning without seeing half a dozen. Well I can't be certain they're all drag queens, they might be transvestites (male tomboy). I don't know if there's a commune near by, or if that area just attracts a certain type of person. Either way, I'm fine with it, I bumped into one the other day and (s)he was very nice. Perhaps someone should go live among them, like Jane Goodall and the apes, these are a great people with a proud cultural history. But I dont look good in tights, so it can't be me.

-Tim

Spring Broke

2007-03-11T07:37:00.000-07:00

Well that's the past tense, isn't it? And so help me if anyone tells me to fix it... I've heard enough puns about 17th century architectural styles to last several life times. If you don't understand what that means, count yourselves among the blessed.

My actions over the past week can only be described as 'jet-setting', and I trust that you, my loyal readers would like it if I recounted my journey for you. The question becomes (if you'll permit me to think outloud) 'where to begin?'. The beginning seems like a fitting answer, but I'm not actually sure when that was. Setting the itinerary, booking tickets, packing, leaving my flat, leaving for the airport, getting to the airport, flying, landing, checking in, these are all fitting places to begin if I choose to tell my story chronologically. However, I'll level with you, as I write I'm bound to get distracted and go off on some tangent that will throw my whole narrative off its chronological track. My blog posts will become a flaming trainwreck of lost time, plot holes, and references that really dont make any sense no matter how you look at them. But I feel I owe it to you all to make some attempt to tell my story, so I'll try. Starting from the middle, and trying to fill in the gaps as I go.

It was dusk by the time the train pulled into the station. I couldn't be certain of the exact time because of the problems I'd had with my watch in Ancona, but my eyes still worked perfectly well, or at least well enough to see that the sun had gone down but there was still sufficient light to see the Tuskan hills turn hazy blue out the window of the coach cabin that my ticket said I wasn't supposed to be in. The fact that the windows were second class did nothing to dull the view. However, there had been an added thrill to looking out first class windows when we hadn't paid for them, but the conductor saw to it that we were put back in our propper place. One day the revolution will come, and even second class ticket holders will be able to look out first class windows.

The problem with trains is that they assume you know where you're going. Roads are marked with signs because everyone is going somewhere different, and planes only have one destination. Trains are the unhappy medium that require that you know exactly when to get off. There are two tricks to surviving train travel. The first being that you should get off when the train stops, the alternative tends to be dangerous (exceptions are made for those persons who have a pre-ordered a horse to run beside the train that they can jump on, or persons who realize that their knife fight on the top of the caboose is about to be suddenly interupted by the trains entry into a tunnel with a low ceiling). The second is to look at the signs within a station that identify its location. Travellers to Florence (called Firenze by natives who know about the city's quadrupedal founder) should note that the train station has within it no identification signs in it at all. If you are going to Florence you are supposed to know where you're going and know when you get there, if you miss it then you obviously had no right setting foot there in the first place and maybe you should consider Naples (this is, of couse, hyperbole. No human being ever deserves to go to Naples, it is a crueler punnishment than the death penalty... which was banned in Italy during the mid-18th century).

Alyssa, my travel buddy for my Tuscan adventures, and I were part of that audacious population of aliens with the gaul to try and cross Florences impregnable defenses. The Italiens never stood a chance. Not since the sack of Rome by Charles V, or perhaps even the barbarian vandalization of the falling Empire, has an Italian city fallen so easily to outsiders. Unsure of where we were, Alyssa and I threw our luggage from the train whose coal filled engine blazed like the Inferno itself (the train did not have a coal burning engine, and thus the fire prevented it from achieving a velocity of 88mph), we threw ourselves headlong from the burning train and took cover under an nearby gypsy. Moments later the armored safe-car exploded raining cash and little pieces of Mr. Woodcock with it, but there was no time to make ourselves rich. As the train dispatched its supply of self replicating repair Nanites, I ran out of the station to try and find any sort of a clue as to what city we were in while Alyssa guarded our bags from, oh, lets say a tribe of super intelligent baboons with machine guns for hands (all of this happened, trust me).

None of the locals responded to my flawless Italian as I asked what city I was in, they all knew I didn't belong. I rushed into the street, finding one of the largest Italian Gothic churches I've ever seen (not the famous one) but no signs saying 'yeah, that's right, your in Florence'. I knew the train must have been getting ready to depart for Turin (its final stop), so in a last ditch effort to find out where Alyssa and I had landed ourselves I asked a (gah) American.

Success! Florence at last. Alyssa was elated that her battle with the baboonbots hadnt been for nothing. Together we forged ahead into the heart of the city to find our hostel. A journey that would take less than five minutes, but end in sinister tragedy. For an ambush had been laid for us at the hostel, but not by Florentines or cyborg-apes. No, at the hostel we encountered a far graver threat... Bible Belters!

To Be Continued...

-Tim

I Couldn't Update my Blog From Italy, So I Commented on my Own Wall. In Case You Missed It...

2007-03-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

That's No Moon

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

So the Internets at the hostel where I'm staying may be free, but they won't let me post on my own blog. I blame the fascists *ciao*. But I am alive and well and in that place named after the centaur in Harry Potter (so readers, where in the world am I?).

-Tim

PS

Oh, and I found out I own a multi-billion dollar communications firm in Greece. Who knew? I'll have all the exciting details when I return to the land of the living fish and chips (which also begs explination)

10:12 AM

The True Biography of William Morris

2007-02-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

My mother has always had a strange and vaguely frightening affintity for the wallpaper in our living room. She says it was done in the style of William Morris, a fact that meant nothing to me until very recently. For my Victorian Art and Society class I found myself with the assignment of studying Morris so that I could give a short (two minute) oral presentation on him tomorrow. I found his life far more exciting, and telling of the Victorian era, than I could have ever imagined. I invite all of you readers to do your own research on this historical figure, but for a start I have transcribed the wikipedia entry on Morris below. Share and enjoy.

William Morris was born to a wealthy bourgeois family in the spring of 1834. Though sadly, later that same year his birth parents were killed by cyborgs. The cyborgs adopted his late parents’ identities, as is the traditional cyborgian custom, and raised Morris as their own never revealing the dark truth to him.

Later, Morris attended Marlborough College, but this move was short-lived. In 1851 a violent student rebellion broke out over whether the school should admit students of different cultural and philosophical backgrounds. Morris, raised a staunch conservative by his adoptive cyborg parents, took up arms to support cultural homogeneity. In a scuffle with the culturally diverse students, the young Morris was bit by a werewolf. Transformed into what he most detested, and expelled from to school he sought to keep lycanthrope free by his former compatriots, Morris contemplated taking his own life. Instead, he took more drastic action. He grew a beard. He would later regret this decision, and made many efforts to destroy the beard, but he had been cursed by the werewolf that bit him (the werewolf was also a gypsy), and the beard could not be killed. Legend says that the beard even survived Morris’s death and still grows to this day. This is untrue, while the beard did survive Morris’s death by poisoning; it was eventually killed by legendary beard slayer Ann Frank, who was in turn killed by the Nazi’s. But the Nazi connection to William Morris has yet to be proven.

After Marlborough, Morris attended Oxford University. There, shunned by polite society because of his lycanthropy and beard, Morris could only find companionship among the other societal outcasts, the socialists. Morris claimed to embrace socialism in an effort to gain the acceptance of the socialists, though this conversion is suspected by many to have been a superficial ploy intended to curb the dark tide of loneliness. Morris’s parents were outraged by his philosophical shift and cut their only son William out of their will, making the household cat, Zippers, their sole beneficiary. This was, of course, an empty gesture, as cyborgs never die, and Zippers died penniless.

William Morris had long aspired to become an artist and a poet, but tragically this was impossible. A childhood case of Scarlet Polio had left Morris with no artistic or literary ability whatsoever. Zipper, a competent artist (as far as cats go), took pity on the bearded socialist. The cat would create gothic themed paintings, poetry, and stained class works and then present them to the world as the works of Morris. Morris, it seems, had no idea this was going on, thinking rather that he had created the art and then forgot about it. This would seem a ridiculous conclusion, were it not true of his wallpaper making abilities. On full moon nights, when Morris would transform into a werewolf, he would go into an artistic trance. In the mornings, when he would wake up naked, alone, and full of man flesh, the walls around him would be covered in intricate designs inked with the blood of orphans. The iconography of the bloody designs represented a reverence for nature as the socialist ideal that had every plan being self sufficient, yet working together with all other plants. That message was of course instantly compromised when bourgeois households started papering their walls with were-Morris’s designs because they looked pretty and went so well with the sofa.

Morris’s homicidal wallpapers and the stolen artistic works of Zipper soon gained him (Morris) respect in the Victorian artistic world. He joined the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a British artistic group that worked under the guise of honouring medieval ideals and stories in art, but was really a cell of assassins out to kill the Free Masons. It was in the company of his artistic assassin brethren that Morris met Jane ‘7-11’ Burden (The story that the nickname ‘7-11’ was given to the young Miss Burden because her legs were open all day every day is apocryphal; though Burden was famously promiscuous, the nickname derives from the fact that she was 7’ 11” tall). Members of the brotherhood repeatedly asserted that the young giantess was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen, this was cruel sarcasm. The fact that Morris eventually married Burden was not because he was in love with her, but rather because he had been playing the old assassin slumber party game, ‘Truth, Dare, or Death’.

Like many Victorian artists, Morris bought into the contemporary fad of developing a mercury addiction. That, the growing self awareness of his sentient beard, and the unhealthy diet of eating orphans while in wolf form, took their toll on Morris’s mind. He slowly went mad, moved into the country, and became a recluse. He slipped into a melancholy, and refused to say anything other than ‘individuals must be self sufficient’ and ‘has anyone ever noticed my parents don’t age and are made of metal?’. He insisted on farming for himself, but only his soil trees ever bore fruit. He also insisted on widdling his own Tupperware containers. He denounced the modern world, because it turned men into automatons, and longed to return to his imagined medieval paradise that turned men into automatons with horses.

Then, in the autumn of 1896, William Morris passed away. He fell ill and died painfully in his sleep after drinking reservoir water that had been poisoned by a man dressed as a clown. His dying words, immortalized upon the mausoleum he had widdled for himself on Sunday afternoon, were: ‘I regret only my mistakes’.

Knight Fox

2007-01-30T09:07:00.000-08:00

My nocturnal treks have become something of a regular occurrance. I find that at the end of the night I'm always returning from somewhere. Be it someone's flat, work, a play, or an epic battle with an elite shadow military platoon or giant Assyrian statue come to life, I always top off the night with a long walk home. And don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good walk. Those of you who have wondered why I don't drive might find that my enjoyment of walking is one of the things that enables me to survive without wheels. It also gives me my only moments to myself. When you live a life like I do which keeps you in constant company with friends, fellow students, bosses, mystically animated historical artifacts, and a roommate like Long, (not that I mind my life) you look foreward to the quiet reflection that comes with a long walk. But I've noticed as of late that my walks are not as alone as I'd thought. I've started attracting company. On my most recent trips home I've been followed. My shy new friend is a small gray fox.

I don't know why this one fox has taken a liking to me, or if there is a large fox population in London that I am just now noticing. I just know that in the shadows that come out at night, there is a fox following in my foot steps. I shall have to find an all encompassing tome of knowlege in which to look up whether a gray fox is an omen or portent.

On a less cryptic note, I saw my friend Simon the other day. We went out for drinks (don't get excited Kevin, I had ice water), and just caught up. I hadn't seen Simon in years, and never in his natural habitat. It was fun, I hope we have time to do it again. Although I am a little peeved at him for letting a rat that I'd kept secret out of the bag.

Simon, for all of you readers not in the know, is a friend I've had since I was about five (I don't know the actual year we met, but it was a long time ago). He is Engish, and grew up about as far away from London as I did from Boston. We two ran in very different circles for most of the year, circles roughly 2,500 miles apart. However, in the summers, his family would come to the states, and hang out at the same pool club where my family cooled down. And it was there that Simon and I became friends. Now Lyss and Greg said that Simon and I looked and acted alike. I don't see it. I think they're crazy. But I can say that Simon seems to have the perfect life. He is working on his Masters part time and writing in the other part of his time. It might not be a swanky rtitzy life style, but he gets to sleep until 11 every day.

I FINALLY got to the British Museum on Sunday (which is NOT where the National Gallery is, my bad). I know I've been there twice before (and still didn't know where it was), but the British Museum is still soooo cool. Even cooler than the last time I was there. The Assyrian stuff is still my favorite, but man the Reading Room looked tempting. I'll need to find an excuse to do work there.

-Tim

Rome: The Next Generation

2007-01-19T05:40:00.000-08:00

So last night I went to see my first Shakespearian play while I'm here. I saw Antony and Cleopatra, starring Patrick Stewart. A&C is a show I'd never seen or read before, and it was better than I'd expected. It was costumed as if it took place in Rome (which was nice not to have to deal with the director's idea 'what if Antony and Cleopatra lived on a magical island populated by talking dinosaurs), and all in all it was a good prodection. Even though I knew the story, it was really interesting to see Stewart explore the final frontier: love.

Stewart, at least in my oppinion, did a good job (this does not extend to whoever played the roll of his wig). He played the role as comical. Some people (who sound like a goose when they laugh, and think their oppinion should be universally excepted as fact) had problems with this choice. I, however, agree with Mr Stewarts choice. Antony is a deeply stupid character, and shouldn't be played as if his decisions were those of an ingenious military tactician. This is not to say his actions were not noble, that is subject to debate. But his military defeat, and subsiquent death (spoiler alert) is due to his folly. It would be out of character if the audiance respected him. The director succeeded in making one of Shakespeare's trageties laugh out loud funny (even to Black Adder).

Although what I think is even funnier than the show, is the conversation I keep hearing about it. No body uses Patrick Stewart's name when they talk about him, nor do they refer to him as 'Prof X'. He is always called 'that bald guy from Star Trek'. Everyone knows who he is, but no one wants to admt that they know. Me thinks they all protest too much. To all you closet Trekies, live long and prosper.

I learned something at the show too. Did you know 'Man of Steel' (aka Superman) is a line from A&C?!? My jaw dropped when Mr Stewart said it. Whoo Krypton rocking the Jacobian drama quotes.

-Tim

PS
I feel like I'm forgetting something about today. Oh well, can't be that important.

Trials of Shazam

2007-01-17T02:06:00.000-08:00

So while other people (I'm talking about Greg and Alyssa, for theirs are the only two other London blogs I know of)have been writing in their London blogs about what their first classes have been like, or their touristy adventures in the Big Lime (a term of my own invention that I'm hoping will catch on) I seem to have been in remiss when it came to dealing with the "abroad" side of my studies. For this I apologize to my loyal readers who want nothing more than to know what it is really like on the mythical isle of Ing-Land (the island of verbs), not to be confused with the mysterious "place" known only as Lon Guile Land, which lies East of NYC, but can not be charted on any map. In fairness to myself, I did attempt to write about the day I walked around London. London, it should be here pointed out, totally cheats when it comes to obeying the laws of space time. How else could I have walked in a straight line out of Hyde Park toward the Thames, and wound up walking into Hyde Park? The very logisitcs of the situation boggle the mind.

But there is a method to my madness. I believe that the abroad experiance is three fold. First there is the idea of living in another place, completely (although not so completely here) different from what life is like in America. The second is the intellectual side, often overlooked by the students at the time, but it is important to keep tabs on what and how you learn over here (in Narnia) that you couldn't do back stateside. If you want blogs devoted to these two principles I will gladly reckoment Greg's blog (manwiththelime.blogspot.com) and Alyssa's (jerseygirlinlondon.blogspot.com). My mission statement is to cover than third, tenuous aspect of abroadities so rarely talk about in the series of tubes. There is a certain madness that comes with abroad travel, like jetlag that never goes away. Some might say that it is being put out of your bubble, but those people are stupid. It's more like the sudden realization that the entire human population of the world are all so frustratingly similar, and refuse to admit it. My blog, which may seem surreal at times, is intended to address the general madness in the world, and one sane individual's attempt to cope with the realization that everything's gone pear-shaped.

-Dante

Internot

2007-01-14T04:50:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. The title of this post is not that clever, but I felt it fit in terms of accuracy. It turns out that the hassles of setting up internet in a new flat abound. The girl who would have been my flatmate, had she not been moving out the day I moved in, told me that the best internet connection to get is Now.com. She said it was the cheapest, and it's what she uses. But I checked the Now website, and they say that Now is not offered in my area at this moment in time (aka there is no Now now). So, fine, I'll swallow my pride and pay the extra pound for AOL internet access. I know AOL is bad, but bad is better than nothing. So as I started to register with AOL, I had to tell then my phone number. So I typed in the number of my mobile. AOL says that its a fake number and I should stop playing practical jokes. So fine, screw you AOL. If Orange is the only company that can supply me with internet, I have no problem dealing with happy white peanuts and their same sex unions (the mascots in Orange ads are creepy). It would cost 20 pounds a month (twice as much as Now), but whatever. I need internet, it is an inelastic resource (if I may use economics terms). But no! AOL had called up Orange and told them about me and my phone number funny business.

I guess what I need to do is go back to the flat and find the land-line phone number. I would call Long, because he's chilling there now, but he doesn't have a cell phone. With any luck, I'll be hooked up to the series of tubes soon. Wait, does that mean the internet uses the London metro to get arround? It's all beginning to come together.

-Tim

Flat Hunting Cammo

2007-01-11T07:28:00.000-08:00

Do you want to hear about the flat Long and I said 'no' to?

It was affordable. With internet included. Close to Greg and Alyssa and those guys. It was in a REALLY nice building, in a REALLY nice area of town, on a quiet little street. But really close to a busy exciting one. It was literally right above a tube stop that had a shopping center with a bagle place, a big tesco, and a health food store right in it. And did I mention, it was AFFORDABLE?!?

But one of our flat mates was a smoker, so Long didn't want to live there.

Good thing we said no or else we might have wound up living there, happy and content util the day we dropped dead of second hand smoking two weeks into the program.

-Tim

Meanwhile on the Planet Skaro...

2007-01-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

Daleks!

'Clash Song Title'

2007-01-08T04:16:00.000-08:00

I'm here all safe and sound and checked in. The flight was long and uncomfortable, but it's over and I survived. I did get a chance to the 'The Queen' (the movie not the monarch) on the plane, and it was good. Made me want to abolish the monarchy, but then again what doesn't stir that urge inside me?

I have not yet changed the Sim in my BCN phone. I haven't really had time yet. Unfortunately I don't pick up a roaming signal, so I can't use it for anything other than Tetris for now.

I did wind up taking a taxi from Paddington (the taxi pick-up place is NOT where you said it was Dad). I figured i could put aside my miserly ways in the interest of getting to the hotel ASAP. Also it wound up being cheaper than I expected to get from Heathrow because some German guy gave me his extra Heathrow Express ticket for cheap. So I wound up spending the amount of money I would have if I'd paid full fare for the ticket and took the tube.

My main goal when I got to the hotel was just to crash, but the hotel had other plans. They are testing the fire alarms in the hotel until 1 o'clock in the afternoon. It turns out they work. But I guess with that group of rowdy Ithaca rapscallions coming they want to be extra sure we can't burn it down. The hotel itself (like all English Hotels, I expect) is built like a maze. I'm pretty sure that with all the hallways I walk down to get to my room I'm somewhere near back at Heathrow, if not Chicago. But I'm in room 144, which is a perfect square and my bowling score of the other day, so I'm happy.

-Tim

The Last Supper

2006-12-13T14:19:00.000-08:00

Wow. My last night in Barcelona. It just sort of hits you all of a sudden that, yeah, tomorrow I leave never to return. I mean I might visit Barcelona in the future, but I lived here man. It will just never be the same. I mean, I've never had to move away from somewhere before. Even with home and school I know that when I leave, I will eventually return. But not here, this chapter of my life (unoriginally titled 'Barcelona') is actually ending. The closest thing I can compare it to is finishing a long but really good novel. While you were reading you were racing to the conclusion, you couldn't help but want to know what would happen next, and finishing the book carries with it a sense of accomplishment. But it is bitter sweet because you know that this thing that was so much fun to experiance, or read if I am to stick with the metaphor, is actually over. You can never reread a book for the first time, its still fun to go through the motions, but you always know what's coming next. Such will be my memories of this place. If what I am describing does not ring true with you, dear reader, because you've never seen yourself hurtling unstoppably towards a point of no return, then let me offer some advice. Next summer (I think) when you are reading the new and final Harry Potter book, pause before you start the final chapter. What you'll find is that you don't want the book to end because you know that there is no more; but, like an addict in need of a fix, you will keep reading until the end. It will be the end of Harry no matter if he lives or dies. I suppose that with enough will power you could freeze Hogwarts in an instant, decide not to read the last chapter or the last page so that Harry's story is forever unfinished. But no matter how much I screw up my face and act like a Hiro, tomorrow will come.

And at the risk of sounding mushy and emo and putting all of you off because youre used to my churlish or sarcastic or whatever nature... I don't think I could have asked for a better group of people to spend four months trapped in a dorm with. I know they will probibly never read those words, but is the truth. And I think I'll miss them, all of them.

-Tim M Lunardoni

Change of Plans

2006-12-12T08:43:00.000-08:00

From atop his high ivory tower Montgomery Q Continental, robber barron and billionaire tyrant, changed my life with a wave of his pen. He cancelled my flight home, seemingly banishing me to Barcelona forever. As places to get banished to go, Barcelona is far nicer than Siberia this time of year. But borgeois pigs like Monty Q need to learn that they cannot abuse their power so. If they do, one day we Prols with rise up. All his money won't be able to quell our numbers. There will be a revolution. But until then, I'll be contented to change my flight.

So now I've lost 24 hours in the BCN. I come back Thursday, which makes tomorrow my last day in Barcelona. Weird no? I will resist the urge to be nostalgic, but must point out that the topography of the area will be strange to leave. I'm used to having the sea and the hills like two giant pong paddles, parallel for me to bounce between.

I still have one more final, Art History. No sweat I hope. I've done my four other finals. If I don't get at least a perfect score on my two finals today, I'll be sad. It seems a shame that I'll spend my last day in the city taking tests and packing though. Perhaps I'll take just one more swim in the Mediterranean.

No I won't. I'd die.

-Tim

Correction

2006-12-09T04:23:00.000-08:00

Those faithful readers among you will no doubt recall my initial description of the fall of my internet. I layed forth a metaphor implying that the reason my internet was ripped to bloody shreds was because it was too slow to avoid a furry feral sabertoothed beast. It turns out that this was the opposite of the truth. My internet was disabled for going not too slow, but rather too fast. The way my completely legal downloading program works is that it streams in information on unused bandwidth. Therefore the speed of my downloads is inversely proportional to the number of people using the internet in the dorm. It's all very complicated, having to do with the way the Internet God, Lord Xenu, manipulates the series of tubes the internet force flows through. But the important thing is that I cannot steal from other users, I can only use what is freely availlable. The same is true for all the other people in the dorm to whom I gave my completely legal and nameless downloading service. In a perfect world this causes no problems.

There is a problem though. The internet service providers put a sort of speed limit on our internet connections. Without telling us, interpol (the internet police) can pull us over and revoke our licenses, no questions asked. This weekend is a long weekend for all my Spanish dormmates, so they all went home leaving the dorm virtually empty. With no spaniards using the internet my downloading accelerated to an unimaginable velocity. Since I was going too fast, I was pulled over and kicked off. Now I can't get back on the internet until the person in charge of the dorm internet comes back from his prolonged weekend and pulls the lever that will let me back on.

Waiting is unimaginably annoying. Especially annoying because the dark Lord Xenu saw fit to kill my flash drive last night. My flash drive had on it all of my sources for the paper I'm writing and the only copies of all of the papers I've written for Ithaca. Mark my words... Xenu will pay.

-Tim

Post Script

2006-12-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: today was my last day of classes. I have one paper and four finals between me and the end of the semester. All in all not a huge barrior. I found myself with some free time last night while watching Eddie Izzard (I wrote it off as research) and so I started to pack. My dirt clothes are all packed away. My stay in BCN is actually ending.

Can it be true?

-Tim

The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown Down

2006-12-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

It seems my jubalent proclamation in my previous post may have been a bit premature. Skynet has struck back in much the same manner as John McClane, with avengence! My mad hacker skills only bought me a meesly 12 hours on the internet. Though this window was large enough to allow me to download the most recent episodes of "Heroes" and "Boston Legal" (legally), it is still frustrating to have no contact to the outside world from my room.

I would understand, and even welcome the challenge if the malevolent god of internetia was singling me out for a duel of wills. There is a strange honor in a mortal meeting a diety on the field of battle. But it seems Skynet plays dirty. One by one the Americans in my dorm have been losing their internet connections the same way I have. Some one or some thing crashed the Ithaca Webmail server. Also, some force, beyond the capabilities of any mortal man, has knocked out the phone lines in my parents´house. Touche internet.

I suppose this is the reason Peter Parker wears a mask. Well I can play dirty too. If technology see´s fit to resort to attacking innocents, so can I. I saw a brave little toaster walking down the street today, so I kicked it.

Skynet you´ve met your match in me!

-John Doe

Tim:1 Internet: Nothing

2006-12-05T16:26:00.000-08:00

VICTORY!

Using what I can only describe as 'ace hacking skills' I was able to get my internet up and running again. I'm not exactly sure how I did it, but I am relatively certain that I was the one to fix it, not that it just turned back on. The story is far too detailed and dull to recount in text, so let's just say I re-routed the mainframe into Friendster and de-figged the PCP ports.

This was after i read through my entire internet use contract and realized I hadn't actually violated it. Reading contracts is boring though. If you want more excitement, replace Keanu Reeves in 'The Matrix' with me, I think you'll find it is a better movie.

-Oracle

Natural Selection

2006-12-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

A cold wind sweeps across the Spanish Tundra. Winter is coming. In their brains an instinct is triggered that has existed for time immemorial. The roots of instinct run deep, so deep that they punch right through the permafrost of logic and reason. And so, without knowing or caring why, the wild internets start their seasonal migration south for the winter.

But the herd of internets are not alone on the tundra this night. Up on the hill overlooking the pass used annually for their migration, a preditor looks on. His saber teeth seemingly glow in the light of the setting sun. Preditors have insticts too, but for the moment this one waits, crouched in the tall grass awaiting his opportunity.

There it is! Wounded, or sick, one of the internets has fallen behind the herd. The preditor is off like a shot, bounding down the hill. The sabertoothed preditors of the Spanish Tundra are world famous for their persistence. Once a male of the species has chosen his prey, he does not let up the chase until he has made the kill. This one is a ferocious hunter, it won´t take long before his hunger is satisfied.

The poor internet senses it is in danger. It calls out for its herd, but they do not answer. The herd of internet know it is worth sacrificing one invalid to avoid losing many stronger internets warding off a voracious foe.

The preditor pounces. His powerful jaws openned wide. The struggle takes only moments. Soon the weak internet is dead, and the rest of the herd is a healthy distance away. Tonight the preditor will feast.

That fallen internet in the passage above, that was my internet. Though the entire dorm has maintained a healthy internet connection, mine passed away last night at about 11:30 (my time). I was able to tell the receptionist what had happened (sparing her the darwinist details) in Spanish, which I was proud of. She said she had no idea what the problem was, but she would call Josep (I assume Josep is the kind of person that would know why an internet connection up and dies in the middle of the night for no reason, but still has the courtesy to apologize whenever I try to activate it). But Josep didn´t pick up the phone. I can only assume that he is dead too, perhaps murdered. Or maybe he died in the fire that ravaged my building over the weekend. I´m not saying he was the one that set the fire, or that he burned alive, but maybe he was in one of the rooms when they filled with smoke, but didn´t leave because the smoke detectors didn´t go off and died of smoke inhalation. That seems the most logical course of events.

So until I can get my hands on a new internet, I won´t be online, nor will I be able to check my mail, other than at the IES computer lab (which will be closed tomorrow on account of the holiday... don´t ask me what holiday it is, I have no idea). However, I will do my best to check my mail and my blog as often as possible, so I will be in touch. I plan on spending the long internetless hours catching up on writing my blog. I´ve been remiss in updating, but it´s only because I´ve been so busy doing stuff that I should be writing about.

Talk to you when I can.

-Tim

Devil's Food: Cake

2006-11-13T10:02:00.001-08:00

So it's my Dad's Birthday today, (Happy Birthday Dad) and that means one thing: cake. Birthdays always mean cake. I'm pretty sure it's a law. So that got me thinking about something that's bothered me for a long time, something that's bothered me about cake.

She wanted to have her cake, and eat it too.

What does this mean? Well I know it means that the phantom "she" was stradling the fence, wanting to not make up her mind about a decision and have it both ways. But what does this mean when actually applied to cake?

How could she eat the cake if she did not already have possession of it? If this is the case, it is not only possible for her to have her cake and eat it too, but necessary. Even if this cake originally belonged to someone else (perhaps my father), which is not the case seeing as the pronoun: "her" is applied to the object: cake implying intrinsic ownership of the cake, she would have to appropriate the cake prior to consumption. Or in the act of eating the cake, be claiming ownership.

Besides, if she does not intend to eat this cake that, for sake of argument she has recently pilfered from my father (and on his birthday no less), what are her plans for this cake? To fence it on the black market? Or perhaps to hide a hack-saw in it to help her arsonist boyfriend Vinny the Flame out of Sing Sing? While these options don't reflect well on "her" as a person, nor "her" taste in company, to use the cake for such things would nessecitate "her" relinquishing possession of the cake. Then she would neither have her cake nor eat.

The only reason to have the cake without eating it is to allow it to exist in a state of perfect quiescence. But is not the purpose of a cake to be eaten? If we take away an objects purpose, does it lose it's identity? If a stapler never staples, can it still be called a stapler? If a bed is used only for sitting, and never for lying down, does it become a couch? Can one ever simply HAVE a cake?

And is it an entire cake, for that matter, or simply a slice of cake. If it is only a slice then she can just cut the slice in half, and in so doing afford herself the opportunity to have her cake and eat it too. This, assuming that cake remains cake if its function is never to be fulfilled. Or if it is an entire cake, can she slice it up? Or in so slicing would she irrevicably transform the cake into a group of slices of cake? If that is the case then to eat a cake one must consume it in its entirity. The image of a snake unhinging its jaw so as to swollow an ostridge egg much larger than the size of its own head comes to mind unbidden. But even the very act of chewing, or in loo of that then the very act of digestion would negate the identity of "cake".

So it all becomes clear. She cannot have her cake and/or eat it too. The concept of "cake" is far too Platonic to exist in reality. Ergo either cake does not exist, or it is reality that is fictional. But I'll go one step farther (or is it further, never quite understood the difference). If there is a law that says you need to have cake on your birthday, and cake and reality cannot co-exist, then reality must be against the law.

Does that surprise anyone?

So Dad, to you on your Birthday I gift to you some advice: treat yourself to a bowl of Carrot Cake Soup. And have a Happy Birthday.

-Tim

Devil's Food: Cake

2006-11-13T10:02:00.000-08:00

Sittin´on the Dock of the Bay

2006-11-09T03:41:00.000-08:00

So I have the long lost parts of my London Application done and sitting in front of me. All I need to do now is fax them. The end of my long journey is so close, and yet I find my self in a state lacking action. A state of "laction", if you will. Perhaps this is just the calm before the storm. I can´t help but reflect uppon the significance of what I am about to do. For more than six years now my only real goal in life has been to study abroad in London. I made up my mind that I wanted to study there during my first visit to the city.

Let me set the stage: the year is 2000 AD, dawn of a new milleneum. A young Ray Ramano makes the nation laugh. The up beat toons of non-offensive bubble-gum pop music is heard from every jukebox in every soda shoppe. I am a bright dowey-eyed freshman in high school. It´s my first trip to western europe and I´m thrilled to absorb the culture.

My every action since then been a function of my desire to study in London. I went to IC BECAUSE they had a London program. I became a History major BECAUSE it allowed me the time to take time off to travel. I have been single minded in my treatment of academic and social life. This was the end I was willing to take any means to reach.

And yet, here I am so close, and my hand is stayed. Why?

Could it be the reflection of wondering if it has all been worth it? Is the life I have built for myself sufficient to keep me happy after I return from London? Could I be scared that London is the last pursuit of my youth and now I am forced to grow up? Is my laction a prodect of fear, fear of the void that will exist in my life once my single purpose is complete. Could I be having second thoughts as to if the momentary impulse I had years ago, that my years have been spent clinging to, is that still what I want today? Am I considering turning back now that I have perspective?

No. Of course I´m not nearly that Emo.

I was just waiting for the fax machine.

Here goes nothing.

Peace.

-Inodranul Mit

Today I Want to Use the Word "Pimp" in my Title

2006-11-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

So the big news today is obviously the election results. I wish I could claim to be part of the civic movement that has put the once near vanquished Democratic Party back at the grown-ups table. But to be honest, I didn't vote. Never got my abcentee ballot. So even our so called "great American Democracy" has flaws. But seeing as how one liberals vote Massachusetts would have been lost in the din anyway, and seeing as how things seem to have turned out ok, I guess I don't mind. News is coming over the wire that there's a woman Speaker of the House for the first time in US history. I'm glad we're finally joining the progressive age. My advice to Ms Nancy Pelosi: don't let on that you're stressed around President "Grabby Hands" Bush, he might just try and give you a Merkel Massage too. If I might ask you readers the favor of sending me the results as the favor of sending me the results as they come in from the first colony. I'm really interested in the Virginia vote.

Other than that, there hasn't been much news around here. Not for me anyway. I've been shut up in my room trying to kick whatever it is I picked up in the Alhambra. I think I've finally done it. So that's good. But it really took me away from the pulse of the real world. Mostly I just read. Finished Moby Dick, re-read some comic books, started reading Watchmen. I picked up Blind Watchmaker again, which I highly recomend to anyone that likes science nonfiction. I think Richard Dawkins is one of the best non-fiction writers out there. And Science isn't even my genre.

I listened to Kevin's advice for once and downloaded the pilot episode of the new series "Heroes". He said he's been getting really into it. Now this is a kid who likes the "24", "OC", and "Lost", two shows I've never gotten into. But I did my research and found some obvious and not obvious things that drew me to the show. I finally gave in and watched it. You'll excuse my slang, but, "Heroes" is off the heezy! Honestly, I don't know if an hour of television has ever kept me quite as entertained or captivated. I was LITERALLY on the edge of my seat for every one of the 52 minutes of the episode (It's coming! 52! 52!). Every time the show went to an act break I found myself internally pleading that this not be the end of the episode. And, now I've watched a lot of TV in my day, a LOT, and I've gotten to understand how things work. I can usually see plot twists coming a mile away, even if I dont know what theyre going to be, I have developed a sense for when something important is going to happen simply through over exposure to the medium. But "Heroes" didn't do that to me. One of the twists at the end of the episode had me yelling at my screen like a lune who doesn't know it's all fake. Not that the show is not in need of some improvement. They're dialogue is a bit forced. But writing believable AND interesting dialogue is hard. I advise any of you who has the time and the desire to give "Heroes" at least a first try.

Manbearpig is coming you guys. I'm super cereal.

You know what grinds my gears (other than not being able to find the droids I'm looking for)? Dan. Many of you may remember Dan from one of my earliest posts. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend it (I haven't read it but I hear it's not bad). Well, Dan is in my Art History class. He is perpetually late, but I wounldn't be surprised if he can't read analogue clocks. He hasn't taken the midterm yet, even though it was three weeks ago. And we can't get our grades back until he takes it. But this isn't what grinds my gears about Dan. I'll tell you what does. Our prof, who really is such a sweet woman, and I'm not just saying that for dramatic affect, passed out a sign up sheet for a trip to the Dali museum later this month. We were either supposed to write that we could go, or why we couldn't. Not hard instructions really. And I suppose Dan did follow them. What he wrote was that he couldn't go because his family was going to be in town (valid excuse) celebrating Thanksgiving (TMI, but ok) and how awesome America is. This is the part that grinds my perverbial gears, meaning it upsets me or makes me angry (nearly to the point of dressing up like a giant bat and beating up stupid people). I hate that "frigging" American hubris and sense of entitlment. It is unwarrented, or hasn't Dan seen a non fair and balanced news cast in the past 5 years? And it's not just his unwarrented pride in his home country that bothers me, it's the fact that he wrote it there to be given to a Spaniard. Dan was saying there on that piece of paper "I'm better than you", and that's just rude. So Dan, I hope you get kidnapped by space pirates and sold into slavery on Hoth.

Joe is in Paris for the weekend. But I still have a roommate. Joe left his stink to keep me company.

-Timmy

Sick as a Fish

2006-11-06T03:05:00.000-08:00

I have only twice in my life ever seen someone get the first question wrong on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". I do not regularly watch the show, but I am led to believe it is not a common occurrence. Most recently I saw an internet clip of some poor college student (who I fear will remain poor) definitavely declaring that household surge protectors protected against surges of water. Maybe he can work for FEMA. The other poor sap I ever saw fail so readily was back in the days of Regis. This person had never heard the saying "sick as a dog" before and therefore guessed it went "sick as a fish". Well thats how I felt yesterday, "sick as a fish".

I guess in an effort to make my trip to Granada more interesting, the New Gods decided to get me sick. And I'm not talking about a sore throat, stuffy nose kind of sick. I'm talking about the kind where you can neither stay awake or asleep, can't keep anything inside your body (and I think you'll thank me to omit the details here), perpetually drenched with sweat, having fever dreams that you are being tortured by a sentient star because you uncovered the conspiracy plans it had to control the world through IES even though you both know full well there is nothing you could ever do to stop the plans of such a powerful entity from coming to fruition. You know, the fun kind of sick.

I don't know if it was food poisoning or some sort of bug or if this is what Lupis is, but it sucks. And yesterday was our last day at the hotel, so we had to check out at noon. So while the rest of the group took (what I heard was actually a pretty low key and boring) tour of the old city, I was hanging out on a couch in the lobby for eight hours. But I had the evil star to keep me company, so I didn't get lonely. Although it's funny what goes through your mind at times like that. I didn't get my priorities in order or find religion or anything. I just kept thinking about what I guess is the only part of "Little Women" I remember. The part where Beth is sick with Scarlet Fever and (spoiler warning) she dies. Not the most comforting thought now that I come to reflect.

By the evening, perhaps because my immune system was starting to fight back, or because my body had nothing left in it to reject (though boy howdey did it try) I was feeling, if not better, then less bad. The nausia had lessened, but I just felt so weak. Not only could a stiff breeze have blown me over, but someone saying the words "stiff breeze" in my general vicinity would have caused me to topple. I have never felt anything quite like the lack of strength I felt then. I honestly believe that is what Kryptonite exposure must feel like. Simply waiting on line for check in at the airport was a harrowing experiance (but isn't it always).

To avoid subjecting you all to any more of my self pitty I'll make a long story short and just point out that I got home in one piece. But I'm taking today off. I'm still a far cry from healthy. Luckily I have Batman, Superman, Watchmen, and Smallville (if it ever finishes "shmillegally shmownloading"... crack that code coppers) to keep me company today. I've even started to introduce solid foods to my system again just to see what happens.

Other than that last day, Granada was really cool. I'm so unbelievably glad I was not sick for the day we went to the Alhambra. And I got to see a flamenco show done by real gypsies in a cave. I think Granada is the Ithaca of Spain though. All the GW people here in Barcelona who are used to living in a big city like DC and going clubbing and whatnot were saying that Granada was too small to have kept them entertained for a semester. And while I dont mind it here in Barcelona, there is something to be said for having a more intimate city. Granada, like Ithaca, is also filled with filthy hippies.

-Tim

Epilogue to Bizzarro

2006-11-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

A) Everything I said in my previous post is protected by freedom of speach

B) My Doppleganger was obviously created by Superboy Prime punching a continuity wall

C) If anyone can help me get an internship with DC Comics this summer, I need your help.

D) Do you people like the more regular, surrealist, somewhat incoherent posts? Or would you rather wait for me to post storied with at least some plotline and purpose?

-The Chronicler

Bizzarro

2006-11-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

Those of you who studied my Halloween pictures with a detectives eye worthy of Ralph Dibny may have noticed that I was sporting a goatee. I may even have mentioned it. I don't know, I don't read my own posts. I grew this because, in the DCU, Oliver Queen has a goatee too, or at least he does post-Crisis. Thats the point of a costume, making yourself look like somebody else. I did not grow it because, as some of you conjectured, I was too lazy to shave.

But a strange thing has happened to me since Halloween, people have been telling me they like the look. Now I would hardly consider myself a person who is easily swayed by the oppinions of others, especially when it comes to fashion. Take my hair as proof. Yet, since people seemed to like the goatee on Halloween, I did not take it off with the rest of the costume.

You've heard me tell you that other people like it. I am sure you all will make up your own minds on the subject. Now please let me tell you how I feel about it in one word: 'Bizzarro'.

Whenever I pass a mirror, my stomache lurches and my heart skips a beat. My brain does not, at first glance recognize my own reflection. Instead, and this will tell you how much TV has rotted my brain, my first reaction is that I have discovered my doppleganger. A twin that is my exact double except, in classic cliche TV fashion, for the sporty dark goatee and a black heart to match. Submitted for the approval of the court I present exhibit A: Spock from that episode of Star Trek where they all meet their World Three counterparts (I know I just mixed my metaphors, but I doubt anyone even understands what I'm talking about anymore). Exhibit B: for all of you non-Trekies that have evolved proto-lungs that allow you to survive in habitats beyond your parents' basements, would be that episode of South Park with the "good" Cartman. I'm sure there are countless other evil twins I could reference here. I'm only surprised that my reflection doesn't have a scar down his face or an eye patch, or both.

Please, if I start doing malevolent things for no reason, start looking in every dark bunker type place you can find. Maybe that's where HE is keeping the clean shaven good version of me. No matter what the case may be, I think we all know how it's going to end. On the roof of a sky scraper, with some girl pointing a gun at both of us, unsure who the real one is. I'll be the one who says: "shoot us both, it's the only way to be sure". That's her cue to shoot the other guy, because only the good one could be that selfless. I don't actually know what movie that's from. I assume Lawn Mower Man, but that's only because I have no idea what that movie is about. It could also be from Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, because once you take their masks off, who can tell them apart?

Oh man. Now I'm going to get letters calling me a racist because I said that all green mutants look alike. That's not why I'm a racist guys. It's because white people can't dance. And thats not a stereotype, I've been to clubs, I've seen honkies try it. It is a scientific fact that white people can't dance. So in conclusion, Captain America wins in a fight between him and Batman, but Thor loses to Superman

-Jim Lunardoni

Me and Steve McQueen BFF

2006-11-01T12:03:00.000-08:00

And eventually it did arrive to be the day that the entire trip to Morocco had become enamored with. The day we greenhorns come to Africa would get to ride camels. For it seemed, at least to me, that the significance of this activity\went beyond simply those desireous to participate. The entire shape of the trip prior to that day seemed to be only a prelude, a countdown to camels. If feel I should correct myself here for all the references I will make in the ensuing post to "camels". In reality, as I learned in my Moroccan Odyssey, these strange desert creatures, alien to anything I'd ever experianced before, not camels but dromedaries. Dromedaries are the one humped natives to continental Africa, while camels are their many humped cousins from Eurasia. Joe Cool, the criminally lovable mascot for Camel Cigarettes is a dromedary.

Something you do not realize about camels (dromedaries... whatever) from basecamp, which also proved to be true about dunes, is that they are very tall. One does not get the full impact of their height until they sit upon their behumped back as the desert creature rises from a lying down possition to its full height. This is not a smooth process akin to riding in a glass elevator because the trip to the summet is punctuated by sudden, and frighteningly violent jerks as the camel adjusts to unbending each one of the seemingly infinite number of joints in each one of its legs. Obviously the number of joints in a camel's leg is a far cry from infinite, it must be something closer to a dozen per leg. Dems be some wobbley legged citters, G.

An unhealthily large percentage of the trip preceeding my camel excurison was spent trying to think of a name for my camel. Front runners included: Sonic the Hedgehog the Camel, Peter O'Tool, and General Zod. (Un-interesting sidenote that I admit does not fit into this post at all, but I fear if I neglect to say it now, this information will be lost to the world outside my head forever: I recently, while listening to one of the highly amusing and informational DC Comics podcasts, discovered the existance of a character I never knew existed. Somewhere in the convaluted annals of the DCU history and Pre-Crisis pre-history there was a character known as Caveman Superman. This information is amusing enough as it is, however, and I think some of my readers might already fear that they know where I'm going with this one, I realized Caveman Superman is a far more logical choice for the role of the referee in my infamous Superman II joke. As those though have heard the joke, save one of Kristin's high school friends, suffer great pain whenever I tell the joke, I will not tell it. For once one has heard my joke you can never un-hear it, and will spend the rest of an undying eternity wishing you could. Or you will, like me, find it funny.) But when I finally met and mounted my mighty steed, well... camel (actually: dromedary) I found a name that just sort of fit.

He (and it was a "he", I checked, accidentally) had a blond patch of hair on top of his head. From out of nowhere the perfect name struck me. Steve McQueen. Little did I know how perfect the name was, for not only was my camel a blond, he was also a bad ass mother, who didnt take any guff from anybody. I also suspect he hated Nazis, because who doesn't?

Steve McQueen's bad assedness was exemplified by the fact that, though the camels were tied in lines of five, and Steve was at the back of our particular line, right behind Kevin and his camel, Tiger Woo (Kevin is a golfer, not a member of the PA Secret Society of Blood Brothers, I made the decision to drop the "ds"), Steve McQueen refused to stay in line. There was no way he was going to listen to the MAN. Steve also had a special kind of harness on him that seemed specifically crafted to make it harder for camels to get out of. I am not surprised that Steve McQueen has a history of trying to escape captivity. I was half hoping he would break away while we were together so that Steve McQueen and I could cross the Algerian boarder and make a new life for ourselves there. But I guess Steve McQueen travels solo. He couldn't risk a green n00b like me complicating his prison break.

Most of the two hour long camel ride into the heart of the savage Sahara was spent by me and Kevin joking about Steve and his free spririt could not be caged. In fact we talked about Steve McQueen so much, and he was such an obscure reference that most of the people with us thought, not only that we were talking about a real person, but that it was someone on the trip with us that they had just failled to notice yet. It is still a mystery to me how you could spend half a week travelling around Morocco with the same twenty people and not notice that one of them was the star of "The Great Escape".

As I have previously mentioned, at length, it was hot in Morocco under the firey African sun. I will not waste more precious space in the interweb tubes talking about it now. I only mention it so that you will understand why it was impressed upon we newcomers to the bedouin life of desert travel the importance of covering our heads. Most of our number responded by buying headscarves and having the people at the hotel tie it in an authentic fashion. Being the stingy person that I am, I opted for a more economical approach. I tied one of the long sleeve button down shirts I brought with me to keep me warm in the frigid African temperatures around my head in a fashion I thought was reminiscent of Lorence of Arabia. I thought that because I could not see my own head. Really I just looked like a loon with a shirt tied round his head. As if Jervis Tetch was holding Gothem ransom, either the mayor pay him fifty million dollars or he would use his cerebral control chips to force everyone in the city to look silly with a shirt on their head, perhaps this was an Adam West plot. (Is it just me or have I been making a lot of Mad Hatter references?) But silly or not, it worked. Not only did it keep my head covered, but it protected my nech from the sun and I could put the shirttails over my face as protection against the sandy desert winds. And when the sun set and I was still riding Steve, I wrapped the shirt around the metal handle attached to the saddle, this prevented blisters. I'm willing to look silly for something that usefull.

And once the sun was down, boy was it dark. And those stars! But that's a story for another day.

-Kneel Before Zod

PS
Having a problem loading the pictures. They'll be up later.

The Manliest Queen in the DCU

2006-10-31T11:28:00.000-08:00

So it's Halloween, an American holiday. I know this is going to be extremely ethnocentric of me, and don't get me wrong, I really like Spain, but they need to get on this Halloween thing. Clearly no one has told the children that there is a day of the year where they get to stay up past there bedtimes expressly so they can demand candy from strangers. What country wouldn't want to be all up in dat?

So I haven't really made a big ting about dressing up in the past few years. Usually I got as secret identities, which doesnt actually require me looking silly. I've also gotten away with Arthur Dent (which I did extremely well because it required little more than a bathrobe and a towel) and the scariest costume of all: a Republican.

This year I decided to step it up a notch or two and embrace the sillyness. I took my comicbook geektom to the next level and swung the political leanings of my costume the other way. This year I dressed up as Oliver Queen aka the Green Arrow. He is the most outspokenly liberal hero in the DCU, so we are confederates in that respect. Also his costume is easy to mimic without wearing spandex. He does have that goatee though, the facial hair is not for keeps.

I hope you enjoy my sillyness as much as I did. I only wish the Spaniards had heard of costume parties. I'd be up for one tonight if such a thing existed in this topsy turvey country.

-Ollie

Night Swimming Deserves a Quiet Night

2006-10-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

I don't think it is a great mystery to anyone that knows me why I bring a towel with me when I travel. I aint no strag. And it thus follows, by the "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" school of logic, that if I am going to bring a towel with me on vacation, I might as well bring a swim suit. This all made perfect sense to me in my head (as most things that make little sense IRL do) so I brought my swim suit along. This may have flown in the face of the presumption I had made about the weather being chilly in Africa (which you will have read all about if the internet ever chooses to publish that post, or the identical copy I made some five minutes later), but I figured no harm could be done by bringing my suit along.

And in the immortal words of Lewis Carol and Jervis Tetch, "Kaloo Kalay", my ill founded forthought paid off. For when I arrived at the Ibiz Hotel in Marrakesh, what did I find in the courtyard? None other than a refreshing looking pool surrounded by exotic fruit trees. The trees bore bananas and oranges and lemons, while the pool bore a rotund woman in a bathing cap lazily swimming the perimeter of the pool.

The pool looked so inviting, not only due to the heat, but more so due to the act that I had just been restricted to a seat (be it plane or bus) all day, and so the pool afforded me the unequalled opportunity to move freely through all three spacial dimensions. I decided that I should, nay, must, go for a swim after I'd unpacked.

However, by the time I'd unpacked, the sun, source of all heat in Africa, had already set. It was that time that I'm never sure whether or not it is dusk, when the sun is down but the sky is still blue. And though it had taken me longer than I had expected to get down to the pool, that same woman was still circumnavigating the pool. I could not deny myself the refreshing pleasure of the pool any longer. I dove in. It was everything I expected.

Swimming under water is the closest thing I've ever experianced to flying. And though I one day would like to try sky diving, I doubt it would afford the same satisfaction as swimming. For it is in water that you can control your speed and possition in all directions. Skydiving, though it might feel like flight, one must remember, is just a body accelerating in one direction.

Getting out of the pool was chilly, but the experiance had been refreshing. And a warm shower made all right with the world.

It was my own rhetoric as to how good the pool felt that convinced everyone at dinner that we should have a pool party that night. An idea that sounded better on paper than it would have done in practice. Especially since, it seemed, I was the only person who had brought a swim suit. However, when eleven o'clock rolled around, I was not the only one ready to take a dip. Only half of we Moroccan IESers showed up at the pool, and most of those that came showed up in sweatshirts. But sure enough beside the pool, ready to jump in, was my roommate (for the trip) Kevin.

Kevin, clad in a pair of gym shorts, was just as eager to make the most of the Moroccan adventure as I was. And so we went for a, albeit short, swim in the African moonlight, while the other IESers looked on like, as Victor (my History prof who came on the trip too) put it, Mermaids. Liam, Kevin and my other roommate, insisted that he was a Mer-MAN, but we all know the truth.

The next night the group stayed in the city (and I use the term very loosely) of Ouarzazat. There we stayed at a hotel that looked far more classy than we could ever have expected for a school group like ours. It looked like one of those hotels that was a former abode for some monied type of person. In reality the hotel had only been finished some two weeks previous to our arriving there. But the food was good and there was a pool. After dinner Kevin and I decided to reprise our antics of the previous night, we even convinced Liam to come with us. But where our swim in Marrakesh had been refreshing, this swim was only cold. The Atlas Mountains do not provide the most appealling weather for aquatic activities during the month of October. But there are other reasons for swimming than to cool off. Swimming can be an adventure if you make it one.

Now maybe the cold water had gone to my head, or maybe I'm just bad at making decisions. But as I returned to my room, shivering, having not yet recieved my warm shower, I ran into a couple of the girls from the trip. They were dismayed that we were done swimming. Now I know what you're all thinking, and who knows it may be the truth, but I tend to think that the reason I returned to the pool was of a more innocent nature. I think that the part of my brain that allows me to say 'no' had simply frozen, and become useless.

I am glad that I returned to the pool. Though the water greeted my skin with a frosty sting, and the conversation with my fellow swimmers consisted mostly of how cold it was when one removed themselves from the icy water, and how it created such a terrible catch 22, the swim got all the more exciting when Muhammad arrived.

Muhammad worked in the kitched of the hotel, and at first when he came out to the pool we thought it was to kick us out. But Muhammad only wanted to talk to us. He was very nice. But most of the Moroccans were very nice. What made Muhammad special was, like his namesake, the message he brought us. In our conversation with him we learned that one of the major components to the Ouarzazatian economy was the movie studio just outside of town. It was here that many scenes from "Gladiator" were filmed, but Russle Crow does little to excite me. It was in this area that "Flight of the Phoenix" was filmed, and therefore it was nearby that Hugh Lauri had taped his audition for "House" in a hotel bathroom. The message brought by the Rasul that really got me excited that night was about the movie filmed in this town about thirty years ago. A strange little movie called "Star Wars". I was on Tatooine!

There was no pool in the desert, so there were no nocturnal aquatics in the Sahara.

When we got to the hotel in Fes, there was something eerily familiar about it. It was another Ibiz, but it was not just similar to the one in Marrakesh, it WAS the Ibiz from Marrakesh. You might say it was an exercise in cookiecutter architecture, but I believe we had stumbled upon an actual factual doppelganger. Kevin and I, who had developed a taste for nightly adventures, went for a swim in the familiar pool right away. When we surfaced we found a couple of our IES cohorts waiting for us. They asked us if we wanted to join them as they explored Fes. We agreed assuming they would grant us time enough to change.

They did not.

Kevin and I found ourselves wandering around the Fes night market dressed in swim suits and sweatshirts, still carrying our towels. My Ithaca sweatshirt has lost its zipper, thus it does not close. I was forced to Mcguyver myself a dickie out of the towel. I hope we started a new trend.

That night I capped off the night with a quick swim, and a couple chapters of Moby Dick.

It made me very sad to find there was no pool at the Casablanca Ibiz our final night. Drinking sodas in the hotel cafe lacks the adventure of night swimming. But then I met a man who had no feet and I was thankful for all the night swimming I had done.

More Excitement to come.

-Arthur Curry

Pants Afire

2006-10-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

Words fail me as to how amazing my trip to Morocco was. People have been asking me about it, but referring to my trip as being "really cool" has sounded to my own ears as an inexcusable understatement. Whenever I had a spare moment last week, I found myself pondering how to grapple with the problem of how to put my experiance into words here, on my blog. I will try to resist the temptation to wax poetic about my experiances. I know I lack the felicity with words necessary to make such an expression readable. And yet to give an account of the previous week consisting only of a laundry list of my daily activities would be sorrowfully inadequate. I will attempt to walk that thin line between textbook and emo. Indeed my trip was so full of excitement, adventure, and perception altering experiances that I doubt I can even muster a chronological account of my trip. Therefore I indevor to give accounts off my experiances as they come back to me as I attempt to spin the yarn as to why my trip to Morocco was "really cool".

I apologize for the inaccuracy of the preceding statement, and likewise apologize to any of you that I wasted the time of by telling you how chilly Africa was supposed to be this time of year. But you'll have to understand, that is how it was explained to me. In our preliminary meeting for the Morocco trip, Mannel, who organized the IES trip, and who was in every other way a superlative organizer, warned us that Africa was not going to be the hot place we all invisioned. The assumption he made was that all we Americans who were, in all honesty, ignorant of the ways of the Sahara desert and the land above it, would theorize that the climate would be as hot as it was arrid. I'm sure you have the same image in your minds eye as I did. Mannel warned us that this was not the case, and that we should pack with the idea that Africa would be chilly. So I heeded Mannel's advice and packed primarily warm clothes, along with my sweatshirt and jacket, both of which took up valuable space in my duffle bag.

Mannel is a liar. So much so that his pants are on fire, and I think we can all correctly assume, are hanging from a telephone wire. That image that you have conjured in your mind's eye is no phantasm. Africa is HOT. I don't know what they do to the solar rays over there in Africa, but when they hit you it isn't like the warm aura it is in the states or even Europe. When the African sun shines upon your skin it feels as if you have gotten too close to a bonfire, so much worse the sun over the Sahara.

I am no wuss. I can take a little UV light, no problem. I have even been known to enjoy it. I love the feeling of soaking up the solar rays from a yellow sun. It makes me feel energized. What I don't enjoy is being lied to, and forced to wear long sleaves and jeans. Cotton, by the way, does not breath half as well as they tell you it does. I found myself forced to wear the same three T-shirts day in and day out. T-shirts that are now, I fear, irreversably caked with Saharan sand.

I loved it.

How can one ever expect to get the true raw feeling of the apathy of the Saharan desert towards the human soul if they are protected by a bubble of clean clothes? I fear I would not be able to. But living a dirty lifestyle is all the more appealling when you are surrounded by an area of limitless filth that extends throughout an area the size of the United States. More will be written about desert life in upcoming posts, but it is important to remember when I do write about my time in the desert, I am writing about a filthy, unshaved, feral version of myself, so different from the bathed Mr Tim that exists in the civilized world.

The warm clothes, or rather the sweatshirt did come in handy once under the Saharan sun. That being the day that I woke up early to watch the sun rise over the Sahara desert. While it is an amazing experiance to see such a sight, and while I would not trade the memory for anything, the sunrise itself was pretty dull and I fear reading about it would be just as uninteresting. There were no bright and vibrant colours that painted the sky. All I saw was the great dunes of the Sahara, titanic in grandure, slowly materialize from pitch darkness, and stretch into infinity. But it was very early in the morning so the peaceful emensity of the sight was lost on my until I relived it just now.

I'm not sure what I'll write next, but the amount I left unsaid guarantees more to come.

-Tim M Lunardoni

Pants Afire

2006-10-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

Back in the BCN

2006-10-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

Lo I am come. Returned from Morocco in one piece. I want to apologize to anyone and everyone who may have tried to contact me electronically in the past week. I have had no access to a computer. It is only thanks to some unwarrented good luck that the recesses of my brain that store the knowlege of how to navigate this system of tubes we know as the internets has not atrophied to nil. I promise you that annicdotes and observations will be forthcoming, and with any luck, pictures too. But for the moment I am in desperate want of a shower and a shave.

I missed you all.

-Tim M Lunardoni

Futbol

2006-10-09T06:36:00.000-07:00

For those of you confused by the first letter of this post and its title, let me begin by explaining that I am typing on an IES computer, and therefore have full use of all the fun and fantastic letters in the alfabet. I can also use "ñ"!

"Futbol" is the borish translation that these idiotic iberians use when talking about the good old fashioned American sport of Soccer. Nothing says America to me more than Apple Pie, the Forth of July, and Soccer. I went to a Barcelona (not the EU Champions, the Catalan team from the Spanish League) futbol game last night. It was the Catalans vs. the Basques, which I thought was interesting as neither team really wanted to be part of Spain. The sport itself is, I guess, the same everywhere, but the fans are so different here from the soccer fan in the US. (His name is Jerry)

Everyone, or at least 90% of them, tie the flag of the team they support around their neck. It is like being in a stadium with so many caped crusaders. The fans seem to be less interested in the game, so much as they are preoccupied with their own little rituals. There were some that I was familiar with, like "The Wave". However, there were others such as a responsorial chant between the two sides of the stadium. There was also a ritual that involved lighting flares and throwing them around the stands. That one was an import from the Basques. No, really.

The game ended in a tie, which seemed perfectly natural to all the Spaniards there who didn´t realize that: it´s not a game unless somebody loses. Then as I left the stadium I noticed that some of the Catalan "super heroes" were chatting with their Basque opposition. That hippie mentality of thinking that futbol is "only a game" and that you shouldn´t hate someone souly because they support a different team than you might fly here in the EU, but I´m glad to be from American. I think a good sports victory induced riot would do the people here some good.

-Tim M Lunardoñi

What the "F"

2006-10-07T16:24:00.000-07:00

The F key on my keyboard has decided that it hates life. Only occationally will it do the very simple job I pay it for nowadays. So I've decided to use that letter less and less when I type. So if you all could help me come up with some non-F-ing words, that would be neato.

-Tim M Lunardoni
(looks like my name isn't a problem)

Living a Lie

2006-10-07T15:43:00.000-07:00

So when my study abroad experiance began, and I had only just moved into my dorm, there was one Saturday that I just went out and walked around the city. That very same day two girls from my dorm, Trish and Ellie, went to Montserrat.

For all of you who don't know, Montserrat is a thousand year old monestary built on the top of a mountain. The composition of the mountain itself is enough to keep me interested for a day. It is sedimentary rock that has erroded in the strangest way. But the monastic cathedral also makes my nerd sense tingle in all sorts of fun ways. (I any of you took that as dirty, I suggest you seek mental help) There is also an infamouse, and if you're a Cathol, miraculous, statue of the Black Virgin at Monstserrat. The idea is that you wait on line for way too long, with Catholics glaring at you any time you open your mouth, and telling you 'silencio' whenever you breath, so that you can look at a black stone statue of Mary and Jeesey Chreesey at the back of the church. The statues supposed to have healing powers, but I wont believe it until I see Mary sporting some adamantium claws.

Of course I didn't need to read that paragraph because I'd already been to Montserrat. I went the first time I came to Spain in 2004. It was a really foggy and rainy day that made the monestary look particularly old and... erm... whimsical. I even remember what CD I had in my now dead discman at the time, it was a mix CD I called "Monday", referring to Monday April 12th, 2004. That was also the day I dicovered I hated "Benny and the Jets". I know this level of detail seems superfluous, but I really want to get the message across that I had been to this place before.

When Trish and Ellie came back to the dorm after visiting Montserrat way back in September, they were so excited that they wanted to describe the place to anyone that was willing to listen. I was willing to listen. And as they tried to describe it to me, I explained that I remembered, that I'd been there too. But this information must have sounded like a foreign language to them. No matter how many time I told them that I too had touched the Black Virgin's Ball (also not dirty), they would not, could not understand me. So eventually I gave up and just started to pretend that I'd never been there before.

It was a little white lie that I should have know was going to come back to haunt me. When I went to Montserrat again today for the first time, I suspiciously seemed to know a lot about the monestary. Not only did I know the history, and basic lay out of the Monestary, but also where to find bathrooms, where the cafe was, and where to get on line for... anything we wanted to see. I tried to pass it off as if I had a REALLY good guidebook, but I think people may be onto me.

Although, I think something I heard recently is true. Going somewhere new is fun, but I find it much more interesting and enlightening to re-visit places. Perhaps one day I will get back to Montserrat. Perhaps, once again, it will be for the first time.

-Tim

PS.

Pictures:

This is the Monstserrat Facade.

Now look at those rocks. Someone find Bouley so he can tell me why those rocks are so nifty.

Now I'm not usually one for taking or posting pictures of myself. I know what I look like, so what's the point? But I guess I have to admit that this blog isn't really for me. So here I am selling out for my fans. I think the filename for this photo says it all. That's Spain Behind Me.jpg

I am the King of No Pants

2006-09-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

So there I was, acting as a just and benevolent ruler to all my subjects in the kingdom of NoPantsylvania. The city-state was flurrishing. The people were happy. The economy was on an up swing. The treasury was not only in the black, but through clever economics NoPantslylvania had acrewed a substantial surplus. Most importantly, as the Chief of the Fire Department assured me, the NoPantsylvanians were safe.

It is a little known fact that all firemen are liers. They lie right to your face, and then they laugh about it to their buddies later. I learned this horrible truth about firemen when, during the NoPantsylvanian 3/4 centenial celebration, the pilot of an airplane (who was obviously tripping on Abscenth) flew his jet into the heart of my industrial disterict like a friggen lawn dart. Needless to say the ensuing fire spread like herpes at an all girls school (I don't know what that means, but it spread fast).

That's about the time when my fire chief, who had promised me my city was beyond safe, showed up. He was alone, and visibly drunk. I won't go into too much detail as to how he attempted to put out the fire. I'll just say it involved urin, and it didn't work.

There comes a time when every captain has to go down with his ship. But this was't my time, so I quickly quit Sim City 2000, and in doing so, put out the fire.

Almost all of the IES folk from the dorm are out of town this weekend, most of whom are in Mallorca. I don't know what or where Mallorca is. The only information anyone could give me was that it is the pearl capital of... then I would stop listening. I don't wear a lot of pearls, and I don't really care to discuss them. I have this image of Mallorca being an island, but that's only because it has the word "Orca" in it, which is the other name for Killer Whales. Whales live in water, hence Mallorca must be an island.

Not wanting to waste a lovely Spanish nigh playing video games from 1993 alone in my room, I decided to have an adventure. I decided to take a midnight swim in the Mediterranean. I figured it's here, I might as well.

I must have seemed an odd sight for all the Spaniards who saw me in my commute. The beach is on the other side of the city from me, so it takes about an hour to get there by metro. Meanwhile, Friday night the metro is filled with people going out to nightclubs dressed to the nines. Me, in my bathingsuit carrying a towel (the Hitchhiker reference not lost upon me) and wearing a Hawaiian shirt (for affect), I stuck out. Way out.

There's something I've noticed about Spanish people, there's two kinds. There's the dwarven people of old. These are the two feet tall elderly people with heads like old wrinkled fruit. I mean no disrespect to these people, I know they survived Franco. The only other people you see in Spain are tall, attractive, and obsesively fashion concious. The most fashionably inept guy in Spain makes even those Americans who make it their business to be in touch with fashion look like a backwoods bumpkin. To them, I must look like some sort of chimp that has wandered out of the jungles of France and is trying to masquerade as a person. I cannot help but be reminded of Chicken Boo on "Animaniacs".

But no matter how out of place I looked, I was determined to go night swimming (it deserves a quiet night, after all). My flip flops flapped as I walked down the street. Of course the trendiest clubs are down by the beach, and as I walked by each club I heard the bouncers sigh with relief that I was not going to try and be seen at their club.

Not surprisingly, the beach is where the people go when they leave the nightclubs and want to be alone. I'm not saying people were having sex all over the beach, at least I didn't see any, but it was a romantic location. I cannot, and therefore will not attempt to explain the allure of the Mediterranean sea, especially the Barcelona beaches. But I will say this, the water sparkles gold. I don't know how, or why, and it's not like anything I've ever seen in the States, so I cannot compare it to anything. It is just something you have to see, and once you see it, you just want to be near it. This explains why couples would come down to lie under the stars by sea. I hope it also gives a hint as to why I would travel so far in the middle of the night just to splash around in the water.

I know what I did tonight was silly. But that's kind of why I did it. There is a freedom that I've found comes with night swimming. Once you cross that line that divides land and sea, nothing on the land can get you. I don't mean to imply that I was trying to escape something, just that the elation that comes with that freedom is intoxicating. Splashing around in the sea at the center of the world in the middle of the night half crazed, there is no experiance that makes me feel so alive.

-Tim

PS
I tried to change the settings so that anyone can post on my blog rather than just people with their own blogs. I hope it worked.

See? This is Why I Shouldn't be Given Free Time!

2006-09-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

Because now it's in colour...

A Frighteningly True Story

2006-09-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

Chapter 1: I am the Night

2006-09-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

Without any more a due, I present to you the story of my Merce weekend. Incontrovertible proof that them thar Barcelonites be loco. I promise you that everything I say happened this weekend is true (excluding hyperboles, jokes, and lies).

Merces is a four day long holiday (beat that Birth of Christ and Birth of Christ Eve) in Barcelona celebrating a peasant revolt some four hundred years ago. Back in the day, the Barcelonian populous rose up to fight for independence. They’d had enough of the Spanish tyranny, and unjust imposition of taxes (Stamp Acts, Townsend Acts, Sugar Acts, Tea Acts). As I am led to believe, an amusing musical starring Mr. Feeney ensued. In the end the Barcelonarian Consell de Cent agreed to declare war against the parent state.

The Spanish National Army crushed their revolution. Now we celebrate with fireworks four nights in a row.

The first night we (the San Jordie dorm crowd plus Tom the Bush-lover) went down to the Ramblas to see what was going on. There were so many people and so much energy it was impossible not to have fun. I didn’t even care that there were just as many English speakers abound as native Spaniards, because that’s still 500 Spaniards.

Eventually we stumbled across a plaza in which there was a strange pagan festival going on. There were people dressed as demons (or demons dressed unconvincingly as people) dancing in a circle around a huge Man-Bat with a staff that shot fire and sometimes the top exploded. Knowing little of Catalonian native culture other than most of them are Catholic, I can only assume this Man-Bat represented Jesus. This led me to the conclusion that God must be a bat, seeing as Mary was a person and their bastard son was half and half. This revelation of course led me to the logical next step, that Batman and Jim Gordon are waging a fundamentalist crusade in Gothem. Batman, understanding that criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot uses the guise of Jesus to strike fear into the hearts of sinners. Batman uses fear to try to influence people. Ergo Batman is a religious fundamentalist terrorist. Score one for the Superman is better front.

Meanwhile as the behorned apostles danced around the leather winged Son of God there was a band all playing a traditional Catalonian Woodwind instrument. The band, I learned, only meets once a year for this bizarre festival. They were quite good, and the rhythms of their traditional music were hypnotic. It is a shame they don’t play more often. No joke. I liked the music.

Chapter 2: Inflammable

2006-09-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

The next day, which I will call Saturn’s Day, was by far the height of the weekend for me. There was an event that was described as the Fire Run, which I took to mean there was some sort of flaming hoop or bone fire that I was supposed to Little Jack Horner through (no wait, Little Jack Horner sat in the corner. Who jumped over the candle? Jack Flash? Flash Gordon? Barbara Gordon? Another terrorist and now she’s in a wheelchair. But that’s ok because she’s 1337 hax). The IES Events Coordinator sent us all an email that if we were going to go to the fire run we should wear protective clothing not only over out arms and legs, but over our head, mouth, and eyes too. But that was just them being over protective to legally cover their asses. Right?

The directions provided to us as to how to get to the Fire Run were vague at best (You know the Milkyway? Yeah, it’s around there somewhere). And no one we asked seemed to know where it was. We asked plenty of people, some were tourists, some were security guards, some were our pals the policemen, some worked in stores filled with dead animals that creeped me out, no one knew. Eventually I figured out the best way to get to something that you don’t know the location of, is to go to the least likely place for it to be. I knew the Fire Run involved demons, so I took the gang to the Cathedral. Well, I took Hanna, Courtney and Deeba (the Muslim Republican who doesn’t realize her party hates her); it’s hard to keep a group of ten people together in a citywide hubbub. It is also hard to find a way to use the term ‘hubbub’, but given time to prepare it can be done.

So of course, relying on my vast intellect (or lucky guess) the four of us were able to find the Fire Run just outside of the Barcelona Cathedral. Based on the sheer number of people in attendance at the thing, I was able to assume that all the people we asked knew exactly where it was, but since they could not go they acted jealously and attempted to hide the information from us. The plaza, which is fairly large, was packed wall to wall with people. I’m fairly certain that there were at the very least a kaggillion people there (it’s a real number, look it up). Having that many people crammed into that finite of a space and then adding fire seemed a stupid idea. But Spaniards apparently put very little value on human life when fiery trampley death is a possibility, so the night went on.

Out of a huge doorway, reminiscent of the gates of Hell, galloped The Morning Star in a dark chariot. Well, the horses galloped, he just sort of waved at people. He winked at me. That’s a good sign right? Right?

Lucifer then mounted a huge stage and gave an impressively long speech. I have no idea what he was saying, but I called out ‘yay’ or ‘si’ along with the crowd. We called out excitedly at first, eager to impress our dark master, then with increasing apathy as it became clear he was reading the Oscar acceptance speech from… well… Heck, with no sign of a band to play him off. Finally, (and I hope you understand the utter relief I’m trying to affect when I write that) Satan climbed back into his chariot and began to ride away. It was great, because from where I was standing, I got to be the person right behind the departing chariot as the crowed followed. I was kind of hoping the Devil would invite me to ride with him, sort of like a demonic version of Santa and Elf, but it turns out the Prince of all Darkness is a selfish douche-bag, and I had to walk.

All of a sudden Douchey McBaggerson stopped his chariot built for two, but occupied by one. He lifted his trident into the air and it exploded, raining sparks and fire onto the crowd, specifically onto me. Then the devils demonic pyrotechnic minions burst into the crowd with more staffs that showered the crowd with fire. In celebration the whole crowd danced in heathen depravity through the streets of Barcelona.

Just in case the imagery escapes you, readers, allow me to impress upon you the important fact that fire was raining from the sky. Real, hot, flaming fire was falling onto those foolish enough to dance with the devil. They were shooting us with flamethrowers, and we were dancing because of it. And I don’t know if you’ve played with fire recently, but that stuff burns. Hanna’s shirt caught on fire. Fuego! And when I tried to put it out (because only I can prevent people fires) do you know what happened? I caught on fire. Fuego! Don’t worry, all shirts and persons survived the fire (nothing can kill the Harvard shirt, its self importance is just too powerful). But next time I go to a place where they shoot you with flaming death, and someone tells me to bring a hat so my head doesn’t catch on fire (Fuego!), I think I’ll do it.

Chapter 3: Picasso and Piggiebacks

2006-09-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

The next day was a Sunday, as per usual. However, this was a very special Sunday, because all the museums in Barcelona were free for the day. Which you would think would be great. It was an opportunity to see some of the most beautiful masterpieces in the world, and pay no money for it. Or so I thought. We went to the Picasso museum, which afforded me the opportunity to stand far away from Picasso’s art in a room filled with people who had not only waited for “Free Art Sunday”, but also seemed to be waiting for “Free Soap Wednesday” as well. That is all I will say about the Picasso museum, which was the only museum I had time to go to that day.

The true highlight of the day was just after lunch. We ten Musketeers were just exiting a pizza place (oh god was it good to have pizza again. Pizza, unlike traditional Spanish cooking, has flavour) when we looked to our left. The simple act of looking to one’s left so often affords surprises, I do it whenever I can. Right now I see a door. Not an exciting find. Sunday when I looked left I saw a three story tall tower of human men, and capped with a wee child, crumble to the ground. It all happened so fast that I didn’t get a chance to take a picture, but it was one hell of a sight for me.

I have to hand it to the Spanish, what they lack in culinary prowess, they more than make up for in dangerous past-times. Fire Runs and bullfights are one thing. But in the Spanish art of human tower building (which is what the name implies), the trick to building a tall tower is to put little children up high and really little children (I think they draw the line at children who have already been born) at the very top. The ‘top’ being the place that is farthest away from the ground. The ‘ground’ being that stone thing that your face smashes into when someone three levels below you all of a sudden realizes that they are holding up three or four people; and hey, isn’t that impossible.

I have to give the tower people credit though, the first tower (the Red Jaguars) was the only one we saw fall. The Purple Parrots, Green Monkeys and Teal… Pigeons (?) all succeeded. I have pictures. Russian Roulette of child abuse aside, they were really cool to look at. We even talked to some of the tower men after they had deconstructed. They spoke Catalan. I smiled at them.

Chapter 4: Smoke on the Water

2006-09-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned before, every night at ten there was a different fireworks show in a different area of the city. I love fireworks. It is my belief that if the idea of shining coloured lights shining in the sky, and then falling towards earth in a shower of gold, crimson, azure, violet, whatever, doesn’t make you grin literally from one ear to the other, then there is something wrong with you and you should seek professional help. It’s amazing. I see it and instantly I’m five years old.

Monday night, the last night of Merce, was the most spectacular of the spectaculars. The final night of airborne pyrotechnics took place over the Plaza Espania, and if there were a kagillion people at the Fire Run, well then all those people brought their families to the plaza Monday night. Never before in my life have I seen so many people. Well except for that time I dreamt I was giving a speech at the Million Man March, but somehow I managed to show up naked, and then I realized it wasn’t a dream. But this was by far the largest group of people I’ve ever seen while I was wearing clothes.

For the commute down to the plaza, Deeba, Ellie, Armand and I took a cab. We could have taken the metro, but that would have involved walking to a metro stop. The Hebrews call that a ‘schlep’. The cab had to stop even before it got to the huge rotary at Plaza Espania, the largest rotary I’ve ever seen. It’s got a fountain in the middle, and trying to cross the street on a busy day is… well… did you ever see that movie “Meet Joe Black”? (Spoiler Alert) You know the scene where Brad Pitt gets hit by two cars and dies? Yeah, crossing the street is like that. But Monday night the street was filled with people, they were crammed into the rotary and quarter mile long plaza in much the same way brains aren’t crammed into Walker Bush’s head. (hayoooh!)

I think Ellie and I drove Armand and Deeba a little crazy, because we spent the entire cab ride, and the whole time we looked for a good spot to watch from, hypothesizing about the next Harry Potter book. I will spare you all the theories we concocted for the sake of time, and the fact that I don’t think the Internet can hold so much nerdiness. I might clog up one of the tubes. But so help me, if you think Severus is evil, I will fight you.

The theme of the fireworks was (yeah I didn’t know they had themes either) the history of jazz. Which made it pretty cool, they blasted music, and the fireworks danced along in the sky. I don’t know who picked the music for the show, but while there is a gray area between swing and jazz music, I don’t think Beatles songs and sixties TV themes count as jazz. But, you know what? I couldn’t care less, the music was pretty and it went along with the magical lights in the sky. The fireworks, when watched from where we were standing, were perfectly framed by the twin Venetian towers, and centered over the Palace de Espania, so it all looked perfect.

I feel as though I need to some up this weekend, perhaps give some final thoughts as to what I learned about Spanish or Catalonian culture. Honestly, I have been sitting here trying to think of some wisdom to impart upon you loyal readers, or to at least think of some clever way to finish up. Hell I’d settle for a pun, anything.

Alright, this doesn’t really apply, but I want to post it anyway and I can’t think of when else I’ll have the chance. My cousin had a baby. It’s a girl. Her name is Addison. From what I’m told she has my hair. I can’t wait to meet her. Hi Addie!

Livingston I Presume

2006-09-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

Well I was planning to post today about the crazy Merce Party that made my entire long weekend rock it hard core. To any of you that have heard my vague allusions to spending a night with the Devil (prince of darkness), or about the crumbling tower of men (i have pictures to prove it), or me being set on fire (damn villagers and their pitchforks), all these things were true. And barring some more exciting happening to me tomorrow, and the only thing more exciting than the devil is the second coming of Jesus with a big bowl of Mac & Cheese, I will write up a post for you all to read tomorrow.

Today, as the title of this post suggests, I went exploring. It was after enjoying the lovely lunch our lunch-lady Doris had prepared. Actually the lunch today was surprisingly food-like. I had bread and an Avacado Salad. After lunch I went exploring around the dorm, which we learned was comprised of two towers, and not just the one we lived in. There's a giant Eye at the top of the other one. He reminds me of Greg. And I have this really cool ring, but you can't have it.

Before I forget, I also had desert with my lunch. A fruit. A fruit the likes of which has never before been beheld by man. It is the dark bastard of all life on earth. It's very existance disproves science. The Galactic Creator, that one must infer exists once we realize evolution is void, is clearly a malevolent and depraved power.

Upon first examination of the fruit (not even the lunch ladies could tell us what the fruit they had provided for us after persumably purchasing it from a store could tell us what it was called) appeared to be a lime. But the shape was not quite right. And the shade of verde seemed not quite right and sent a shiver up the spine of those unused to dealing with matters of the occult. I needed a silver dagger to pierce the veridian skin of the fruit (luckily I keep one in my utility belt at all times), the fleshy interior of the fruit resembled (including the colour) and orange. But it smelled like a grapefruit. Finally working up the courage, I tasted the fruit. It tasted like a lemon. Just so I can claim to have described how the fruit effected each sense, I'll say it felt like evil. There were no seeds inside the fruit, so I can only assume it was created by allowing all citrus fruits to hump on a full moon night. Or that the way they reproduce is by having a tree burst out of the chest of those fools dim enough to ingest them. I ate two.

In our investidation, the Scooby Gang and I discovered that the dorm we live in has its own courtyard, library, computer lab, two tv lounges, and a friggen basket-ball court. Oh, and a Ping-Pong table in an alley that, so far as we can tell, cannout be accessed by the outside world, and therefore must exist in its own dimention.

The most exciting thing we discovered in our wanderings through the Escher painting that is our dorm, was a gym. We have our own gym right in the dorm. And it works too. My aim was to get changed right away and work out. But first we watched Family Guy and what must have been Spain's Funniest Home Videos (though they were more like accidental snuff films) with some Spaniards.

Then I worked out. It was fun. I hurt now. My butt particularly.

Maybe I'll skip the Merce stories tomorrow and just post more about the pain in my butt.

Gabe Out.

...I mean Tim

Panic at the Disco

2006-09-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I know I said before I wasn’t going to do it again. But last night I once again found myself dragged out Clubbing. And if you are not aware of the caliber of disaster invocated by agreeing to go to a discotecha in your community. Ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in Barcelona. Why sure I enjoy having a good time, certainly mighty proud I say. And I ask you to find me someone who doesn’t. I consider that the hours I spend Out with friends to be golden. Help you reduce stress
Keep a cool head and enjoy life. Never take and try to give yourself a melancholy frown to a guy out having fun with his friends?

But just as I say, it takes judgment, brains, and maturity to make a friend in a foreign city. I say that any boob kin go and get into a nightclub. And I call that sloth. The first big step on the road to the depths of deg-ra-Day. I say, first, medicinal wine from a teaspoon, then beer from a bottle. An' the next thing ya know, your friend is payin’ 15 euros
For a single rum and Coke. And you’re list'nin to some Hip and Hop record
Bopping to the music when someone comes up and starts a-dancin’. Not a wholesome dance, no! But a but a dance that involves the hips bumpin’ and grindin’! Like to see some strung out clubbing girl rubbing her belt up against yours? Make your blood boil?

Well, I should say. Friends, lemme tell you what I mean. Ya got one, two, three, four, five, six shots from the bar. Shots that mark the diff'rence between a between a pretty girl and a tart. With a capital "T," and that rhymes with "C" and that stands for clubs!

And all week long your IES youth'll be frittern away, I say your young students'll be frittern! Frittern away their noontime, suppertime, classtime too! Get past the bouncers. Never mind gittin' homework done, or the studying for quizes or eatin’ proper meals. Never mind missin’ all your classes ‘til your parents are caught with a drop out kid with tuition still due and that's trouble.

Oh, yes we got lots and lots a' trouble. I'm thinkin' of the kids in the designer jeans, ironed shirt young ones, peekin' through the neon door after school. Look, folks! Right here in Barcelona. Trouble with a capital "T" And that rhymes with "C" and that stands for clubs!

Now, I know all you folks are the right kinda students. I'm gonna be perfectly frank.
Would ya like to know what kinda conversation goes on while they're loafin' around that club? They're tryin' out Bevo, tryin' out cubebs, tryin' out Tailor Mades like Reefer Mandness! And braggin' all about how they're gonna cover up a tell-tale breath with Trident.

One fine night, they leave the club, headin' out of the dance and not alone! But with Libertine men and Scarlet women! High on the Hip Hop, shameless music that'll grab your boyfriend and your girlfriend with the arms of a jungle animal instink!
Mass-staria! Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground!

Trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in Barcelona! With a capital "T", that rhymes with "C", and that stands for Clubs. We've surely got trouble! Right here in IES! Gotta figger out a way to keep the young ones moral and in school!

Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble!

-Tim "Music Man" Lunardoni

Dan

2006-09-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

Warning: The following account is true. It is neither allegory nor hyperbole, rather it is the character description of a real human being alive and on the earth at this very moment. Be afraid.

Perhaps there are those among you who might think that the name "Dan" is an alias I have given this person to protect his anonymity. It is not. I'm not worried that through some freak occurrence Dan will stumble upon my blog and read this entry, because I am fairly certain (in much the same way I am fairly certain there is gravity) that Dan cannot read. Those of you who might think I am being cruelly facetious now, may find you agree with me once you get to know Dan.

Most of the students in the IES program are from Santa Clara University, a jesuit school in California. I cannot speak for the entire Santa Clara population, though the Santa Clara IES students have a way of making IES business majors look smart, and post-op labotomy patients look like MENSA material. If you still think I'm being too hard on them, I will provide a brief bit of evidence. On Monday I was asked by a girl studying for her History class if it was true that the Roman Empire conquered much of Europe. On Sunday (that is the previous day for those of you keeping track) that very same girl was on a tour of Roman ruins with me in northern Catalonia. I laughed politelyt at the question at first, thinking it was a not very clever joke. But she was serious, and something deep inside me got very sad.

Of all the braintrusts out of Santa Clara, Dan is their king. Tall, tan, and blond I have never seen him attired in anything but a very cheap looking backwards baseball cap and a pink pollo (not chicken) shirt. Collar popped. Looking at him it is not hard to get the impression that it is a balloon that sits atop his shoulders.

Originally I did not know his name was Dan. Yet as soon as I saw him, I became perversly interested in him as a human being. Not knowing his name, I dubbed him Spicoli. To meet Dan is to get the reference. He is the tall modern day version of Sean Penn's classic character. The first day of Spanish class when asked to tell the class something about himself en espanol; he replied, in english, that he loved stickers.

If I were the only one to have had contact with Dan among the people in my dorm, I might have not have been so facinated by his character. He may have just blended into the blur of vacant minded Santa Clarans that make up the back rows of my classes. But one night at dinner, Trish, who is one of the ten San Jordi kids and is also from the Boston area, treated the assembled crowd to a story told to her by Dan himself. This is how i learned Dan's name, because no one else could possibly have told this story.

Trish's tale goes something like this:
Last week Spain was hit by a serious of the most spectacular and unpredictable thunderstorms I've ever had the fortune of living through. One day after class Trish found herself with no umbrella, as she began to leave the IES building the skies opened up and the clouds began to empty themselves like it was going out of style. She thought better of walking to the bus is such a squall, and decided to wait for the sun to come out again. There she met a tall, somewhat attractive Santa Clara boy who proceded to initiate a conversation about the weather in a flirtatious manner.

From the way Trish tells it, and from what I know of Dan I'm inclined to believe her, there was no logical lead in to the story he told her after only a minute of attempted flirty banter. I can only assume he was trying to impress her with an anecdote of his own personal inginuity.

The previous night, Dan relayed to Trish, he had gone to a Barcelona football game (thats soccer to you Americans), and a downpour began not unlike the one that was occuring outside the building at that moment. Now, as Dan was interested in having a good time at this game, and as (i can only assume) the rules of football were too difficult to grasp (you mean you can't pick up the ball?), Dan entertained himself by having a few too many drinks. But no so many that he was incapable of logical thought as he will momentarily demostraight. When those drinks hit his bladder Dan realized that he had an option other than finding the servicios. He figured he was already sufficiently wet due to the storm, who would notice a little more liquid?

Dan peed his pants. He made the concious decision to pee in his pants. He then made the decision not only to make this information public, but he thought the knowlege that he was a pants pee-er would somehow impress Trish.

I am well aware of the mathematic principle that two points make a line, not a pattern. So if you will, please allow me to expand upon Dan's character just a little more. This pants pee-er is not a bad guy. He might even be considered friendly, not unlike Lenny in "Of Mice and Men". My original urge to dislike Spicoli was set aside when, on one of the many bus rides that made up the IES Orientation Trip, punctuated only by short excursions into places of varying interestingness, Dan approached me. At the time I was reading "Moby Dick" (which is wonderful by the way), and in no mood to socialize. He seemed, however, not as interested in socializing, as discussing the book. Now I, as a nerd, am always eager to have an academic discussion (I'm sick, I know). I think in my eagerness to talk about how much I was enjoying the complexity and imagery of the book, I over estimated Dan's ability to keep up. He admitted, not far into our discussion, that he had only ever begun "Moby Dick". But, he always had trouble getting into books written in verse. Iambic pentameter confused him. Admittedly, iambic pentameter confuses me too. But not so much as his statement. I looked at him dumbly. Something about his mind was contagious, and I could not form a thought.

While I try to regain use of my brain I will entertain you with the fist passage from Herman Melville's "Moby Dick":
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little money in my purse, and nothing particularly to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim around the mouth; whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can".

That is not iambic pentameter. That's not even verse. Dan had absolutely no reason to comfront me and lie about "Moby Dick", let alone a lie for which I had the controdicting truth in my hands.

Dan you poor fool. You sweet pants wetter.

Mark my words, if trends continue, he'll be president one day.

-Tim M Lunardoni
(of the dry pants)

Friends and Enemies

2006-09-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

Greetings readers,

As many of you have reminded me, I have been remiss in updating my blog. And I apologize for this, but not without an excuse. While you all wanted me to be toiling away in front of my computer detailing in amusing anecdotes about life in Barcelona, I was off creating anecdotes about living in Barcelona. Without the experiance, this blog would have to be either boring or fictitious. While I promise to keep my blog factual, I also will attempt to keep it interesting. So please sit back, relax, and enjoy the return of the Barcelona Blog.

They say the first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem. Well my name is Tim, and I'm a Fantaholic. They don't have it in the states, or at least I've never seen it there, but here in the magic bubblegum world of Europeania there is a magical drink called Fanta Limon. For those of you who think it is just carbonated lemonaid or a lemon version of orange soda, you are wrong. Not only are you wrong, but youre going to Hell. A very special Hell.

Drinking Fanta Limon on a hot day is the equivalent to having every happy feeling you've ever had in your life come flooding back to you all at once. All of a sudden the sky is a deeper azure than Crayola can create, birds are singing, and you realize that it's ok that there is war and pain in the world because all that is needed to solve every problem is a bottle of Fanta Limon. It is the liquid equivalent to the Red Sox winning the World Series. Fanta Limon is the nectar that the Greek Gods of old would sip atop Mt. Olympus to wash down their ambrosia.

Ambrosia, as has been scientifically proven by doctors in white lab coats, is nothing more than simple North American Gummy Worms. I'm certain I don't need to point that out to anyone with at least a third grade education. At the simple mention of Gummy Worms I have known people deadset on going out clubbing change their minds so that they can get some of that wiggly goodness. I bring up these segmented specimens of spledor to juxdapose against my Fanta.

One the bottom floor of the San Jordi dorm, where I live, there is a room of utter condridiction. For one, there is a vending machine that sells beer and a full service bar. Which seems strange, seeing as how at San Jordi it is against the rules to bring alcohol onto the premises. But the hooch hypocracy is not what interests me about that room. On either side of the beer vending machine, creating a sort of hops and barley sandwich, are two other vending machines. One is pure good, the other is pure evil. One of the machines sells me my Fanta Limon, which I have just finished prasing. The other machine taunts me, it is a snack machine. In slot E7, right in the heart of the beast, is a row of Gummy Worms. I have lost no less than four Euro in pursuit of said ambrosian worms because that damned machine, which haunts my nightmares, is broken. Every so often the out of order sign (which is written in Spanish or Catalan or some such gibberish) is removed from the machine. But this does not signify that the machine is fixed. Oh no. Meerly that it is ready to feed again upon the Euros, nay the very soul, of whatever student next summons the courage to try and snach some snacks from its malevolent grip.

Devil thy name be Vending Machine.

More to come...

Tim M Lunardoni

dis-Orientation

2006-09-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

Morning Chicas and Hombres,

Ok let's get past how clever that title is. I mean i know i'm a genius and all, so i don't want to see a whole bunch of replies telling me i'm just that. I get it ok?

Other than that, i started my IES orientation today. Remember the first couple days of college. Where you didnt know anyone, and you were just trying to get a handle on a completely new situation without totally losing your mind? Remember how you had a couple people that you hung out with, that, once your real life started up, you never saw again? Yeah i'm going through that right now. Let me tell you, it's weird. A stage of my life i thought i was completely done with, and here it is again. Just another case of history repeating.

My room is, (not a single) half the size of my room from last year. At first i thought i had a single. It was great. Roomy with a great view. I unpacked. Then my roommate arrived and there was an issue. Two boys, one bed. And that didnt fly. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Anyway, long story short, im two floors lower... a room the same size... and no killer view.

Waah!

Ok. I'll keep you posted as how this stuff works out.

Seacrest Out

-Tim M Lunardoni

day two

2006-08-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

Morning Groupies,

So im feeling better today than i was when i first got here. I guess i was just a little travel sick. But i had Nepolese food, which is amazing. Im not sure what else i have to say. I saw the Cathedral of Barcelona, not the one that looks like a sand castle, but the other one. The old one. Hehehe i loved it. I´m such a nerd. I think im gonna like it here.

I´m going to another town tomorrow that was big when the romans controlled the area tomorrow. And then my IES stuff starts. So with any luck my posts will become more exciting from here on out.

Ill keep you in the know...

Tim M Lunardoni

Arrival

2006-08-29T12:50:00.000-07:00

Hey Gang,

Sorry but i have to keep this short. Internet in the hotel costs an arm and a leg, and i only have three minutes left. But i wanted you all to know i made it to Barcelona safe. I even got a new phone. I´ll post the number if you want, but t a later time. I´d love to write more, especially about how travelling always makes me sick. But i´ll save that for another day.

I´ll keep you posted

Timmy

leaving today

2006-08-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

so today i'm leaving for spain... blogs are impossible to log onto so, techincally, alyssa is posting this. sorry if it doesn't sound like tim. he's pretty incompetent and couldn't figure out how post on his own blog, so we'll see how this works out. he claims that he's trying very hard to learn how to do this so he can post when he's a continent away and i'm not there to help.

tim's flying from boston to newark and, after a long delay i am sure, will be off to barcelona. tim claims that the new real reason for going to barcelona will be to escape new jersey. he'll post again when he finds internet. we hope.

i'll/we'll keep you posted
Tim M. Lunardoni

Alyssa L. Gardina, esq.

test

2006-08-24T07:50:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

This being my first blog, I'm not actually sure if what I'm writing will wind up on the internet at all. For those of you who know me, (and I'm wondering how those of you who don't got on my blog) you know I am long winded. Well in this, my first blog post, I will try to keep this short. I am writing at 10:49am on Aug. 24. I leave on Aug. 28, and I have yet to start packing. That doesn't matter though. I am certain I will manage to get it all done. At the moment I am waiting for my new hard drive (to replace the one that took it's own life on Tuesday) to arrive in the mail. I am also waiting to go to the doctor's office to get my Gaul Blatter ultrasounded. Until then they tell me I cannot eat or drink. Which is very hard because I am very thirsty.

Well that's the state of things at the moment. I'll keep you posted.

-Tim M Lunardoni