Random Blatherings

Well, I still feel like the previous entry was the single most frustrating thing to happen to me in some time, and I also get the distinct feeling that I'm the only one reading this, but hell, all of my other previous attempts at journals (diaries are for girls) have been written in a "I'm talking to someone" style, so maybe this will just be my personal journal, and if someone should happen to stumble upon this thing, well then, so be it.

So, I'm home taking care of the kids.  Seriously, my folks went to Detroit for a wedding (a family gathering I actually wanted to go to, and yet didn't get to...how weird is that?) so I got to sit for my brother and sister.  My sister and I have always had a relationship that is some weird hybrid between fraternal and paternal, since I'm 10 years older than her, so we don't usually have the classic sibling fights.  This weekend, I must say, definitely pushed the bond further in the paternal section.  It's weird for me to say this, but after babysitting Kayla for just one weekend, I am already beginning to understand why some mothers quit their jobs to raise their kids.  I'm sure that a large part of it is responsibility, you know, and the necessity to take care of the kid when s/he's not at school, but honestly, I know now that a large part of it is also some sort of visceral need to be there for your child, regardless if s/he wants/notices/cares or not.  I mean, even though Kayla would be out at a friends and I would have time to myself, I still wanted to be at home, in case she needed to reach me.  I'm sure you're all pointing and laughing at me, but it's true, I definitely wanted to be there for her, regardless of whether or not she needed me to be.  Yeah, it was pretty pathetic.  Luckily, I dumped the brat on my brother and then on some other poor, unsuspecting family with a daughter her age and so I get to go out tonight with my best buddy Mike.

Yeah, that's about it from this end.  On a final, strange note, I have to say that it's a little depressing how quickly one can regress into a previous, less healthy state.  I watched Old School last night (not as good as Road Trip, is my final opinion) and Will Ferrel's character experiences this huge regression during the film.  Likewise, even though I like to think that I am a mentally healthy person, at times I regress so quickly into an unhealthy, jealous beast that it scares me.  I swear to God I am like a werewolf or something.  Sigh.  But I suppose all you can do is work on it.

5 days.  I cannot fucking wait.  Is that all I can think about any more?  And if so, is that a bad thing?

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

I just finished writing this huge, witty, brilliant rant about 28 Days, the Seldins, Disney, Homosexuality, the Conservative party, Britain, London, Sociology, and Jerry Springer, and my FUCKING INTERNET TURNED OFF.  ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.  FUCK IT!!!!

Fine, if that's the way it's gonna be, that's the way it's gonna be.  Fuck, I'm pissed.  Yeah, yeah, I'm back, and I'm posting again.  Read it, ya bastards.  Fuck.

Oh, and read Count Zero, by William Gibson, or I swear to God I will shove a metal pipe up your pee-hole.

OMGUPDATEWTF?!??!

Well, lucky for all of you who are reading this (Flaming_Crystal, who are you??) I get to do an update from Connecticut.  That's right, from the high mountains of Colorado to the rolling hills of Connecticut, this young man gets to go all over.  Actually, I'm just here visiting my family.  I have a new cousin, Jessica, who I hadn't met yet, and now that I have I can't believe that I missed out on the first 18 months of her life.  She is ridiculously cute, as most babies are, but she's also like Gumby.  I shit you not, I can throw, toss, chuck, spin, and slam this girl into nearly any surface and she just giggles and smiles for more (she's walking but not talking yet).  It's great, and it reminds me of my sister when she was little.

Anycase, being here in Connecticut with my dad and my uncle is like being in one big biking orgy.  If you simpletons don't know, the biggest and best sports event in the world is currently underway: the Tour de France, and my favorite athlete (John Elway pulling a close second), Lance Armstrong, is kicking ass.  So, the schedule here is that in the morning, we go biking, in the afternoon, we go biking, and in the evening, we watch the Tour (more biking).  It's a little ridiculous, to say the least.  Also, being in London kind of limits your ability to go cycling.  I mean, between having to buy a new bike to ride, a new air filter to actually breath semi-clean air in the polluted streets of London, and a goddamn deathwish if I wanted to brave the streets of the city, there are just a few obstacles in the way of my training.  I'm not kidding about the air filter, either.  For those of you who haven't been in London for a year, probably around 50% of anyone who is doing any kind of physical exercise in London wears an air filter.  No joke.  It's pretty scary.

Anycase, as you can probably guess from my hints, I'm a little out of shape.  I did some rockclimbing in the city over the past year, but that does shit for being in biking shape.  And the first day I get here, what do we do but a nice, easy, 45 mile bike ride.  Yeah.  It actually wasn't that bad, but it did give us all a chance to see what happens when David bonks.  For those non-bikers, "bonking" (a verb, as in, to bonk, he bonks, they bonk) is when you completely run out of food/energy and lose your ability to do anything but eat.  It is not a pleasant experience.  And, if you know David (or anyone on my mom's side of the family) you know that when I get hungry, I get bitchy.  I'm not talking about petulant or whiny, I'm talking about bitchy.  I mean, fuck you to the world and get the fuck out of my way because I need some goddamn food.  Parents, siblings, best friends, girl friends, all have been victims of the bonk.  And you'd think, with my uncle suffering from the same genes, that he would be aware of the dangers of the bonk.  Yet there we were, Tuesday afternoon, 27 miles into the ride and 3 miles into a 5 mile uphill, when all of a sudden, I bonked.  Hard.  Let's just say, as my parents put it, I let loose some "colo(u)r."  It was not a pretty sight.  Luckily, a pizza place was at the top of the hill with calzones the size of bicycle helmets (I'm not kidding...think about trying to eat one of those things) and so all was made well.

Well, that's about it for my status update from Connecticut.  Tonight I'm cooking for my entire family.  If any of you haven't already guessed, the one semi-fancy dish I can make is a curry dish taught to me by none other than the giant Canadian himself, Matt.  Well, the Patak's (that's the curry paste) has been bought and the greek yoghurt is in the fridge, so tonight, the curry comes to Connecticut.  If you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I killed off my entire family.  Or I'm in DC.  Did I mention I get to see KT in 2 days?  Yeah, there may not be enough, uh, "time" for me to write a blog.  But I'll try.  Until then, happy biking, and GO LANCE!!

Final thoughts: 50.5 hours.  I'm so fucking pathetic.

Written on the flight from Newark to Denver.

Right, so hopefully I can somehow get this up on the web when I get home, but I figured since I have all this time on the plane with nothing to do I would do a little Xanga post on my own computer, especially since today has been so eventful. Of course, once I mention the fact that I had to fly today none of you should be surprised. In case you don’t know, I seem to suffer from a "David Schwartz Curse" when it comes to flying. Somehow, the airlines or the fates or whatever always conspire against me so that I can never just fly without a hitch. It is always, and I mean always, something. Like when I went to Australia, KT, my brilliant, intelligent, well-read baby, forgot to mention the tiny fact that you need a VISA to actually get into Australia, no matter how long you stay. And no, I’m not talking about the credit card. That was one of the mild cases; the worst has been when I tried to fly back to Middlebury from Santa Barbara after Thanksgiving of my freshman year, in which a 12 hour flight turned into a 36 hour one, including a lovely stay over in Chicago’s finest (read: cheapest) airport motel. Oh, did I mention my bag beat me by 12 hours? That’s right, I could have just zipped myself up in a duffel and gotten to Middlebury 12 hours ahead of myself. Fucking airlines.

Today, though, the airlines haven’t been so bad. Instead, I am now thoroughly convinced I have a spider sense. You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. My proof comes from this morning (God does that seem like forever ago). I tried to get to bed early, so, you know, 1:30 am, but to no avail. I just couldn’t fall asleep. Something was wrong. Eventually, after 3 hours of tossing and turning (and other nightly rituals, moviegoer knows what I’m talking about) I gave up hope and got up to fuck around on TTB. As my computer is loading up, I happen to glance at my ticket for the shuttle from Bankside to Heathrow, and I notice that it is for the 18th, not the 14th. That, as they say, is a shame. In reality I’m guessing that this was probably my fault, since with my horrendous handwriting (have I ever told you how thankful I am that everything is typed these days? Well, I am. A lot) my 4s tend to look like 8s, but nonetheless, the damage was done. I threw on last night’s clothes, ran downstairs, and attempted to do battle with British Telecom’s (that’s BT, to all you non-Brits, and no, I’m not talking about the fantastic trance artist) payphone. Which I promptly lost. I may be able to have a glorious victory over the Office of Inland Revenue, but they got nothing on the horror that is a BT telephone. Anycase, the security guard was either extremely tired or stoned, or both, but in any case he was no help. So I did the only thing I could do: I called a cab.

This story, unfortunately, is not as climactic as I’d like it to be. As it was I was bringing my first duffel downstairs to the lobby (a huge green behemoth of a thing, by the way, I think I may have actually done damage to my back) I noticed that the shuttle service was pulling up to pick up one person from Bankside who got the date right. So, I quickly asked the guy if he could take me too, which he did, and I made it to the airport in plenty of time. However, the point here is the Spider Sense. This is not the first time I have been unable to sleep because I feel like something’s wrong, even though I couldn’t plausibly know that something actually wasn’t. Does this happen to everybody, or am I just lucky? Or perhaps the wrong date on the ticket slipped into my subconscious while I glanced at it while packing up last night, and it took those three hours to bubble to the surface. I don’t know, but either way, I’m pretty thankful for it. Except for the fact that I actually didn’t get any sleep last night, which, combined with a lack of food, made me a might puckish this morning at the airport.

Evidently I have a big sign around my neck saying, "screw with me, please" that everyone but me can see, because I definitely got the runaround today at Heathrow. Nothing major, just that I swear to God I got the world’s most incompetent United Airlines check-in crew. I literally had four different people trying to puzzle out how to charge me for an extra bag. FOUR FUCKING PEOPLE! Idiots. That, and I think I got the most I’ve gotten in months during my search (because of course I look suspicious…with this punnum??) at the gate. The guy was running his hands all over my ass and thighs and all I could think about was one of my dad’s greatest lines that he said when this happened to me last time we were traveling together: "shouldn’t he buy you dinner first?" And really, he should. I swear to God, I have had to go on three dates before I get that kind of access to a girl. And I didn’t even get a kiss.

Anycase, aside from my normal travails and bitching, the flights haven’t been that bad. My bags have made it ok, which is a good thing, and to tell you the truth I’m actually glad to be in America. I know that being patriotic is some horrible thing these days and that as soon as you say you are proud to be an American you might as well say that you enjoy killing babies (which I also do…) but seriously, it’s good to be back. If only for the accent, because for some reason, hearing that thick New Jersey accent from an obese New Jersey cop today in Newark just made me smile.

That, and the fact that America just has hotter women. Ok, maybe that’s not true, maybe what it is is that Britain just doesn’t have as many attractive women. This is a theory I’ve expounded on several times, and I will do so again so it is in print and all you Brits (and ladies, probably) can revile me for it. My theory is that every society has similar levels of attractive women. That is, every country has a certain amount of ugly women, a certain amount of mediocre women, a certain amount of hot women, and so on. Britain is no different from any other country in that it has the same amount of ugly and mediocre women that every other country has. It’s just that, for whatever reason, Britain seems to be missing that top strata of hot women. And they are acutely aware of it, too. This is why the Sun has all these topless women; British society, because of its severe dearth of attractive females, feels obsessed to prove to the nation that, "see, we have hot women. No, really, we do! Look, see!" And thus they get as many hot (and, more often than not, mediocre) women to get naked in some kind of communal self-reassurance that yes, there are indeed attractive women in Britain. Just nowhere near the amounts in the rest of the world. And, in perhaps the cruelest trick of fate, it’s my personal belief that all of Britain’s hot women went to Israel, because…damn.

Final thoughts: I get to see Kayla, I get to see Kayla, I get to see Kayla…

My last few hours in London

I'm gonna keep this short because I need to get some sleep, but here I am, enjoying my last few hours in London.  This year has been amazing.  I was walking home from my last trip to the kebab shop with Niko (who's back, for some scary reason) and I said to him, "you know what, I'm really glad I did this," and then I realized that it was true.  I am really glad I did this.  Sure, I missed KT like nothing else and the month of February sucked hard, and there were tough times, and awkward times (Silente...) but in the end it was worth it.  I'm pumped to be going home and getting the rest of my summer started, but I know I'll always miss this place.  And I'll always remember it, fondly.  Sigh.  Goodbye London.  You've been good to me.