Excuses, Excuses

Current Mood:

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I haven't really done anything interesting lately. Today I got back from yet another journey to the Museum at the End of the Universe, and got to see some more interesting behind-the-scenes stuff. You probably already know this from Scooby-Doo or whatever, but museums tend to have tons and tons of stuff sitting around in the basement that's not on display. It's too bad, because there's lots of cool stuff lying around in the Museo della Culture, such as not one but TWO different kinds of canoes, and a bunch of kick-ass Congolese swords.

Still, it's pretty annoying that we keep having class at the museum, which is definitely not what the course description suggested. I was thinking we'd go there, at most, once every other week, but between last Wednesday, this Wednesday, and next Wednesday, it's going on three weeks in a row. Oh well, at least I'm learning to navigate Lugano. But my Wednesdays are really long, slogging days for me, and there are almost no opportunities to get food on Wednesdays for me. Assuming I wake up at around 2 in the afternoon (I do), I go straight from Italian 100 to my Academic Travel Preparation Meeting, and from there to the five-hour free-time vortex of Anthropology of Art. I'm busy from 2 to around 9 at night, which isn't that bad for a once-a-week thing, but it still sucks. At least in public school they feed you. The problem is that by the time I'm done with class, no stores are open and I'm too tired to even bother going to a restaurant. Tonight, for instance, I dined chez moi on some delicious Migros Budget Crackers coated with Migros Budget Hazelnut Spread. And I will say that Nutella, even off-brand budget generic Nutella, is damn delicious.

So to sum up a long, exhaustion-induced rambling, actual content will resume soon. I plan on telling you guys about the wonder that is the Migros experience, because it is a story that must be told.

Okay, the REAL reason I haven't posted? I cannot stop listening to THIS:



Super Smash Brothers Brawl: March 9th!

So...

...The whole Dungeons and Dragons Extravapalooza, uh, never...actually...happened.

Yeah, no one showed up. I guess people DO have better things to do on Friday nights than play DnD, like drinking.

So I'm kind of miffed, but I'll persevere. I'm sure once we get going people will make time for it.

Although last night I did laundry AND made ravioli AT THE SAME TIME, so it wasn't a total loss.

Tiamat vs. Jörmungandr: WHO YA GOT???

Getting into the nerd spirit, I give you:

JORMUNGANDRTHE WORLD-SERPENT!
THE SCOURGE OF MIDGARD!
SLAYER OF THE MIGHTY THOR!

VERSUS

TIAMATQUEEN OF THE PRIMORDIAL ABYSS!
MOTHER OF THE GREAT DEMON LEGION!
SHE IS UMMU-HUBUR, WHO FORMED ALL THINGS!

IN A PANTHEON-SHATTERING WAR TO END ALL WARS!

THE SERPENT THE SIZE OF THE EARTH!

THE DRAGON AS LARGE AS THE SEAS!

WHOEVER WINS...WE LOSE!!!

Down with the Sickness

Aak. It would seem that my hours of walking about in the forty-degree cold wearing a Legend of Zelda tee-shirt and pajama bottoms has taken a ghastly toll, and I have been infected with some bizarre Swiss contagion. Scrofula, perhaps, or maybe Dropsy or The Grippe or the dreaded "Phthisis Pulmonales." (Seriously, the names for 19th-century diseases were awesome.)

However, I am resolved, with a will like unto a thing of iron, that this present malaise will not prevent me from this weekend's upcoming "Dungeons and Dragons Diceapalooza 2008: Dungeonocalypse Crawlmageddon!"

Yes, it is ON. My geekdom knows no bounds, and I've managed to find a fine bunch of fellow misanthropes who would like nothing better than to spend their Friday nights pretending to be magical warriors.

Roll initiative, fools!

*cough cough*

You Dirty Slat, You

I don't mind practically anything about my room, although of course the view could be nicer. And also the lights keep burning out, and the only way to get new light bulbs is to put in a work order to the maintenance staff. And there was mold on the bathroom ceiling when we got here, which maintenance fixed over the course of three hours by using the painstaking detoxification technique of painting over it. And the Internet jacks (both of them) are on one side of the room and my bed is on the other, so in order to have a semi-decent connection there has to be a cord running across the length of the room, which is often kicked or tripped over and thus comes unplugged. And it's located on the third floor, which adds another layer of Fate's impish taunts after a long day of hiking to and from class. And the halls echo so much that the sound of people walking up and down the stairs sounds like the Wehrmacht marching through Paris. And, of course, it's a double which seems to me to be barely big enough for one person to live sanely in.

...there are A LOT of things that I mind about my room, but there's one thing, Scarecrow, that I'm going to hate most of all:

The slats on the goddamn bed keep falling out.

Yes, the bed keeps breaking. It happened the moment I first lay upon it, it happened a couple minutes after I started writing this post, and it happens...IT JUST HAPPENS TOO FECKING MUCH.

Now, there are, of course, factors that I would think would cause the slats on the bottom of a bed to give way. These number two: One, really raunchy sex (I wish), and two, being extremely overweight (no...well, not yet at least). But no, this apparently is the kind of bed that just plumb don't work right. With regular and reasonable levels of use, this bed will collapse, on average, once per day.

I have seriously considered putting my mattress on the floor and being done with it, but due to the aforementioned eeeeetty-bitty living space, that would mean no access to the fridge and plenty of steps on my head. My other idea is to get a piece of plywood that would go over the bed frame, but short of stealing one from a construction site I have no idea how to get a very specifically-sized piece of study board.

Oh, Bitch, Bitch, Bitch!

Museo della Culture

So, as part of my anthropology class today, we hit up the Villa Helena, which contains the Lugano Museo della Culture, which contains ethnic Indo-Africo-Oceania artwork, which contains much awesome. It's the perfect place to take a bunch of students in a class called "Anthropology of Art," except for one tiny detail:

IT IS APPROXIMATELY ELEVENTY-BILLION LIGHTYEARS AWAY.

Yes folks, today was a day of walking. Yes, there was a bus involved, but I'm convinced it was provided only at the point where we were in danger of physical collapse, and only long enough for our legs to regain a modicum of integrity before we trudged ever onward. To get to that damn museum, I had to walk from my dorm to the reception desk to meet the group, walk back PAST MY OWN DORM on the way downtown, go under a train station, go down a hill, go through a maze of back alleys, escape from the island of the witch Circe, get on a bus, go through ANOTHER maze of back alleys, then go down ANOTHER hill. Yeah...

Still, the museum was super-cool. We talked a little bit in a classroom with one of the curators, and then he took us on a tour. Highlights include a mask covered in real human hair, which was harvested from the beards of men who did not cut them for a year in mourning, and a set of carved wooden bludgeons that were meant to both display the bearer's wealth and split open human skulls (Madison Avenue, I await your response).

For my money, though, the best thing there was a giant ceremonial pole carved with human figures, from Papua New Guinea. This wasn't some wussy pole meant to bring rain or cause fertility or whatnot. No, this pole was there to remind you which of your enemies you need to get around to killing and eating.

Its like a twisted grocery list...that could kill you if it fell on you...MADE BY CANNIBALS.

So after that delight, I made the arduous trek home, and made it back just in time to enjoy a hearty meal of The Dining Hall Is Closed, with a side order of despair.

And THEN a bunch of suitors were after my wife!

Today's Moment of Multicultural Goodness:

Today I realized that I can order pizza in Italian, and I can also understand the part of "Psycho Killer" that goes:

Ce que j'ai fait ce soir-là
Ce qu'elle a dit ce soir-là
Réalisant mon espoir
Je me lance vers la gloire... OK

I did a little jig. In my head. No one noticed.

This one's for you, Nate

Nate, one of my awesome DMs, has demanded it, and so it shall come to pass:

That right there? That's a Swiss Alp.

Now, if THAT Alp could cut things in half with its shadow, we'd be in for some trouble. 'Cause, you know, it's shadow is about a mile long.

Thank God it doesn't have its hat, though.

Unfocused Rambling: Snow!

Well, when it rains, it pours. Or rather, snows.


On the off chance that you have ever waded ankle-deep in beef stew, imagine it. Then imagine the beef stew was freezing cold, and instead of hearty chunks of beef and carrots there was naught but chunks of ice, and it was slowly killing you.

That was basically the situation here the other day. It actually started the day before, with a day-long thunderstorm. And then that thunderstorm turned into a blizzard as night fell and the temperature dropped. That blizzard continued into the next day's afternoon, when the temperature rose again, and it turned back to thunderstorm.

So yeah, someone up there likes us.

When I wasn't slogging through the unflavored Slushee that was the roads and sidewalks, I was partaking of a few rounds of good-natured downhill plastic lunch tray sledding. I wish I had gotten pictures, although in some ways I'm glad I didn't, because if I had that would mean I would have had to bring my camera, which would subsequently have gotten soaking wet.

I was, however, accosted by the stone-throwing devils of LDV residence (stands for Leonardo da Vinci, and it's where I live, which is something I probably should have already mentioned), who from their perch on the second-floor balcony rained icy death on random passersby.


None escape their imperious gaze!

Naturally, I deflected their attacks with kung-fu ninja skills, but soon I tired of the game and went into the door beneath them. They thought themselves the victors...


But then I was among them, like a tiger falling upon the helpless flock! Blood flowed like a silken carpet! Each in their turn fell to the mighty sword of the Cimmerian!

Oops, got myself mixed up with Conan for a bit there. Never mind.

So anyway, in the end it turned out fine, except for a car accident that caused one of my classes to be canceled. Only now I've made myself really hungry for beef stew.

Photo Dump: Bellinzona Castle

Hey!


Pictures for you!


My lovely dorm. Note my pile-based organizational system. And my awesome hobo pillow, made of a towel and a semi-inflated beach ball. In a pillowcase. I'm a regular goddamn MacGuyver.

The view out the window is...a wall. An ivy-covered wall, but still a wall.

And here's what I could be seeing out my window. But don't.

Bellinzona Castle. Not the biggest castle I've seen, but it had its charms.

To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!

The rest of the orientation group. We're at a kebab restaurant, being served by a man who is either thrilled or horrified at the prospect of feeding all of us.

And finally:

Three giant knees. See, kids? Cartilage is powder blue. Science!

And that's it for this (belated) photo session! Yeah...this was actually three days ago. Sorry. But never fear, blogging will commence unabated!

Departure Diary, part 2: Just Plane Amazing

Holy crap, that was a lot of girls.

Seriously. Imagine you are getting on a chartered flight to Europe with fifteen nubile young coeds. On the off chance that you are a rock star or Hugh Hefner, this is probably rote to you, but to me, even coming from Goucher College (60/40 women to men), I was amazed. They were all really nice and personable, even to me, the hulking, oafish male-creature. Okay, okay, there were a few other guys, but precious few. To give you an idea, I traded my window seat (next to a girl) to a different girl, and I wound up sitting in the middle section with, yep, three other girls.

Now, “chartered flight” probably makes you think of luxury, ample space, and a flight experience refreshingly free of the usual horde of assholes, morons, and unpleasant smells. Not so much. We were on a packed-to-capacity Swiss Air flight, jammed into economy class, and surrounded by the aforementioned assholes, morons, and unpleasant smells. In particular, the latter was provided by (and I say this not with malice, but as a simple statement of fact) the fattest, smelliest Orthodox Jew I have ever seen. Flying from New York, I wasn’t terribly surprised to find a large number of Jews on the plane, and none of them were any trouble except for this guy who, naturally, sat across the aisle from me. I mean, come on, does the Talmud have something against Right Guard, man?

The three girls I sat next to were Brittany, from Texas, Amanda, from Los Angeles, and The Girl Who Sat The Furthest Away From Me and I Never Caught Her Name, from Alpha Centauri. We wiled away the hours chatting about this and that, like the time when Amanda was living in Germany and one of her housemates broke the toilet by flushing a whole ear of corn down it. We tried sleeping, and I personally failed, which always frustrates me. I can fall asleep in the barrel of a moving cement truck, but for some reason I can’t fall asleep on planes. So I sat around reading some of the fifty-five million Chris Millar articles I had queued up on my computer before I brought it on the plane and lost Internet access. I also read some of the books I had brought, and at one point I looked over and realized something. My choice of reading materials consisted of “The History of Hell” and “A Field Guide to Demons.” The girl next to me? Pocket Bible. D'oh!

I also played the in-flight video game system, which was stocked with only the finest in 1987-era technology. I mostly played the trivia game (news flash: I’m a nerd!) and the in-flight video game version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Unfortunately, the version they had was cruelly stacked against me, as it was apparently based on the British version of the show and all the questions were nonsensical British claptrap. I managed to bluff my way through “What’s the bobbin’s jackstrap on the ruddy bunting, then, ey?” by using a 50/50 Lifeline and guessing “C: Bob’s yer uncle, bally crumpets all about!” However, I lost my shot at £2000, incorrectly identifying what colour knickers the left midfielder for Morton of the second division was wearing when they won the division title in 1897. And yes, it was the third-easiest question. I pulled the hell out.

Then unpleasantness occurred. I could tell you about what happened when I accidentally left my boarding pass and passport behind on the plane when I got off in Zurich, but, to borrow a phrase, that story would be very sad and not at all interesting. Suffice it to say everything worked out fine, although the stress has probably shortened my lifespan by several years.

However, that unpleasantness was quickly replaced with a flight in a two-prop plane over the Swiss Alps. I had never flown on a small plane like that, especially not over the most beautiful snow-covered mountains I had ever seen. I really wish I had taken pictures, but sadly my camera was buried in the checked baggage.

But fear not! That camera has been exhumed from the bowels of my luggage, and it’s been a-blazin’ all over the beautiful Swiss countryside! Next: Photo-Dump!

Departure Diary, part 1: 1,680 New York Minutes

So, here I am.

Yes, to make a long story short, I'm really here in Switzerland. Yes, the view is lovely, yes, the campus is cool, yes, I've met lots of new people. That will have to wait, while I tell the aforementioned long story against better judgment.

My journey began with a 4-hour car ride from my home in Maryland to a hotel in Manhattan. My flight left from JFK International Airport the next day, and my family and I drove up and stayed overnight. The drive there was uneventful, i.e., I was passed out in the car. Waking up at, gasp, 9:00 AM really took it out of me, and fortunately my parents were pulling chauffeur duty. When I woke up we were parked outside the Guggenheim art museum, which, as you might imagine, was rather disorienting. “We’re where? Why? How? What time and date is it?”

The Guggenheim was cool, although at the time it was showcasing a certain artist and the whole experience was rather single-minded. The artist, Robert Prince (that’s right, the artist known as Prince), was famous for writing dirty jokes on giant, monochromatic canvasses, and, I suppose, for getting them put in art galleries. It was interesting the first time, but after the sixth twenty-foot-tall “There once was a man from Nantucket” it began to wear. Personally I derived more enjoyment from the annotations, which would always say things like “Early in Prince’s career he was influenced by new-wave photographers such as blah blah blah,” and imagining an art gallery full of the works of the, er, other Artist with the same moniker.

After the Guggenheim we took the subway to the Carnegie Deli, where we got truly monstrous quantities of meat. Seriously, I estimate they took a good 35% of a cow and put it between two slices of whole grain, and served it to my 15-year-old brother. I personally got a hamburger that looked like it was traced with a full-size Frisbee. We followed this up with a wad of strawberry cheesecake that would probably put a diabetic into a coma from fifteen paces, and then we all promptly died.

Dr. Hibbert: Looks like beef poisoning!

Diners: *GASP!*

Dr. Hibbert: ...Probably from some other restaurant.

Diners: Aaah. *go back to eating*

Hotels in New York are crammed in wherever they can possibly fit, and ours was wedged between a pizzeria and a, quote, “Hair Traders.” Although suspicious that I would wake up the next morning bald, we checked in and made our way to our bizarrely-shaped room. Because of the cramped area they had to warp and twist the room in such a way that I’m not sure it followed conventional laws of spatial geometry. Unfortunately, the inflatable mattress that I had taken to sleep on happened to be a regular rectangle and was at odds with the non-Euclidian R'yleh of a hotel room, and so it was kind of difficult to find space for it. Naturally I got stepped on repeatedly even with the best placement possible. Plus, like all inflatable mattresses, it deflated during the night, leaving me to wake up in the rather unenviable position of being denied sensation to the left half of my body. Hey, they did say it was “inflatable,” not, “will inflate and stay that way.”

Before I was due to leave at the airport we visited the Museum of Modern Art. Looking for parking, we spotted an empty section of curb across from the building and a meter. After paying, though, we noticed that there were some vaguely-worded signs indicating that the spot was for “commercial vehicles.” Looking at the other cars parked there (perfectly ordinary vans and sedans), we didn’t notice any indication that this was true, so we decided to chance it and park there anyway. We went in and had a lovely time for about an hour and a half.

Then, we were hitting up the gift shop which just happened to have a large glass window that looked out at the curb where we parked. I was browsing various artistic doodads when I heard my mom yelling, “Hey! They’re towing our car!” Her tone was not overly surprised, nor very urgent, simply an announcement of her intention and its cause. I freaked out and looked around for my dad but I couldn’t see him. I ran for the door and caught a glimpse of him, looking confused, as I left.

Across the street the tow truck was blinking its lights as my mom was scrambling to escape its clutches. As I got outside she was already backing up and pulling away from the curb. She crossed the street and pulled up alongside us, and we ran after the moving car, opened the door and jumped in like action heroes, and sped off before any more disasters could befall us.

I like to imagine the tow-truck driver describing that day’s adventure: “Aye, she was a beaut’, that big red ’03 Honda Odyssey. Catch o’ the day, big as yer livin’ room. But she slipped right off me hook. Arr.”

Then, to make a long and emotional three hours short, I arrived at JFK International, said goodbye to my family, checked my luggage, and got on a plane. The rest...to come!

Addendum: Ha ha ha, the Prince site I linked to had gotten a cease and desist notice from the courts.

Did You Know...?

Tonight I was talking with my younger brother Steven as he played Super Mario Galaxy. According to him, the following people and things are, quote, "douchebags:" Time travelers, superheroes, anyone who rises from the dead, gas giants, carpets, elves, Zeus, "Magic Eye" puzzles, shoelaces, vests, and paintings by Rothko.

You can see, clearly, why I need to be in constant webcam contact with this individual and his startling intellect.

Unfocused Rambling, chapter the first

Well, now that I've got THAT out of my system...

But seriously, though, I'd just downloaded Portal last night, and, naturally, had finished it before dinner. But what it lacks in length, it makes up for in brevity. Also awesome, awesome gameplay. And an excellent Half-Life 2-ian story. It is mysterious, chilling, and darkly hilarious.

Between Portal ("The cake is a lie") and Psychonauts ("Take that, genetic memory of Napoleon!"), which I also recently downloaded on our glacier-slow Steam connection, I believe I have found the motherlode of sheer quotable awesomeness.

I am, naturally, a little late to the Psychonauts train, which departed for Sleeper-Hit Station in 2005. However, I can tell you with confidence that it is perhaps the most enjoyable 20 bucks you will ever spend in gaming. It, like Portal, is not terribly long, but it is consistently hilarious and enjoyable on many levels. Part of the fun is looking at a situation you're in and realizing that no other game could possibly feature such circumstances. For instance, when you're doing acrobatics in a circus made out of raw meat, which is a mental landscape you've entered, produced by the co-mingling of your own brain and the brain of an insane military general, which occurred because you sneezed your own brain out of your head and then used psychic powers to throw it into the cockpit of a brain-powered tank. It is every bit as awesome as it sounds.

So, I hope you leave this post with two impressions: First, Portal and Psychonauts are things of purest beauty. Secondly, this blog will ramble. I will talk about all sorts of things that I like and that, by extension, you should like as well, and not necessarily about my trip to Europe. Because, honestly, that will get boring, and plus I haven't even left yet. So let it be known that if you don't want to hear about my DnD characters, cool video games, or other pointless junk, I advise you to read a different blog.

However, that different blog will likely be as unfocused and self-obsessed as this one, but with far worse grammar, so maybe you're better off just staying here. Perhaps it is best if we die.

Goodbye, Old Friend

We interrupt this blog to give you this important message.

IN MEMORIAM
Weighted Companion Cube 2007-2007
In Pace Requisat

That is all.