is a blog by Brendan
I am listening, right now, to the live stream from a Canadian university radio station that is rebroadcasting our giggly high-noise recording of Clockers. At least the DJ (one “Jordie Sparkle”) asked our permission first. Wait, no, I meant “forgiveness, after they started, in the hopes that Clockers was CC-licensed because NFD is.”
Okay! Let’s go to the phones!
Ever wondered about my mental self-image, as a lifelong Kentuckian landing in London for the first time, back in March? Uncle John provides.
I keep track of Anacrusis anniversaries in an idiosyncratic way, which means that I don’t notice things like June 21st, the day I first went public with it. But Mister Munson did, two days ago:
“Something seems to have worked in your googlebombing efforts. Bobrulez is higher in the google results than your blog site.
Hey, Happy Birthday to Anacrusis tomorrow, and as a nod to that spirited bit of rhetorical dabbling, I have posted my xanga entry in 101-word-anacrusis form.
It’s no great shakes, but it was fun. It is actually more of a writing exercise, isn’t it? It’s like Soduku for the literate.
Not sure I want to get on face book, it just seems so public. Xanga is so much more anonymous.
By the way, this email was an anacrusis!
I’m hooked.
Bryan”
I’m not sure whether I prefer “Sudoku for the literate” to “fiction for the attention-deprived,” but it is a nice dig at Sudoku. I’m not a huge fan of crosswords, but at least they’re not entirely computable.
MySpace:Windows::Facebook:Mac?
It works for user base, cleanliness of interface and general safety, but I’m not sure I like it. I am definitely a Facebook person, yet sitting here next to my iPod typing this on my MacBook, I am still not comfortable identifying as an Apple guy.
Fourteen hours ago I was on top of an Alp. Three hours ago I was getting lengthily hassled by Immigration about my months-long residence in the United Kingdom with no visible means of support. Eventually they decided they couldn’t really deport me and grumpily let me back in, but not without permanently detaining–get ready for it–my London library card. That is the pettiest thing I can imagine! I am going to write a book about petty people just so I can use that as an epitome!
But the hassling and bag search and back rooms and subsequent two-hour night bus ride don’t really take away from the experience of looking down on Innsbruck from four miles up (a good quarter of which we hiked) with a really good song on my headphones, learning the secret of Hafelekar summit. The secret is this: it’s fucking covered in poop and bugs. I guess the mountain goats and snow rabbits just love to use the lookout point as their special private time space, but man. They grow the flies big on Hafelekar summit.
My interaction with the world has always been, and remains, mostly text-based; maybe this is why not being able to read holds a particular terror for me. Seeing the shapes of a familiar alphabet in configurations I can’t parse is a constant reinforcement. That would explain why I’ve handled London better than I did Rio, and why (cognitocultural dissonance ahead) I am now, in Innsbruck, missing London.
I like Battersea, man! I like the little library and the big park and fresh bread every day for lunch. I like living too far away from the bookstore or the electronics shop to spend money easily. I like my housemates most of all, and I’ve only got forty days left there, and it will be very hard to leave.
Apparently there is wireless all over Innsbruck. And all it costs is money!
I have no doubt that Caitlan will enter a full report that details the fantastic services of Ryanair (you get what you pay for) (although I’m not sure we paid for the riot cops), our midnight bumbling around Bologna, finding our contacts (Christi and Melissa) almost by chance at the train station, and getting vaguely interrogated in our compartment upon crossing the border very early this morning (Polizei: “Gesundheit dachshundt ein knockwurst Deutschland?” Us: “…” Polizei: “… Americans?” Us: “Yes!”).
But we are here now and the mountains keep sneaking up on us. They look like giant matte paintings. I am suspicious that somebody keeps wheeling them around behind the buildings and will eventually jump out to say “Boo!”
We got here at 0700 today and couldn’t check in until 1700, so we crisscrossed the city a few times–almost on purpose–before finally filling our unwashed selves with bread and cheese and fruit and passing out in a park for a few hours. Now we are checked in, and scrubbed up, in a bright and breezy hostel where I understand they will shortly remove our eyes with blowtorches.
Okay! EUROPE!
In Austria! Not dead!
All right, I freaking live with The Surrealists, it’s about time I memed it up, right?
Presenting Dr. O’Callaghan’s Scientific Fist Names Generator.
This is all 30 Rock’s fault really, even if they didn’t invent the gag. I love 30 Rock.
On Sunday I was supposed to meet Caitlan here so she could drop some things off before she, Kristi and Melissa went touring in London. The original estimate was that she would show up at 1:00, give or take an hour. Kevan and Holly left to go to Kew Gardens at 2 and Caitlan still hadn’t made it. By 4:00 I figured they’d just decided to lug things around rather than spend time getting here and back, so I decided to try air-drying all my laundry simultaneously. In my small upstairs room, this means festooning every available protuberance (coathooks, shelf corners, light fixtures, etc) with my underpants.
By 6:00, Catriona was home and I went out running. Circa 6:50 I returned and was greeted by Kevan. “Oh,” he said, “your sister and her friends came by. They’re upstairs.”
My life is a sitcom, second in a series.