I’m going to Glasgow tomorrow and I haven’t slept much the past few nights because I’ve been finishing my “portfolio” for my English classes.  So this post about final exams from Hipster Runoff was especially timely:

“n e ways…I am s000000000 stressed. Shoulda studied more all year! I am suuuch a procrastinator! It’s kinda weird cuz I actually like learning, and I like interesting stuff but I never study until the last minute! h8 myself! …There is s0 little time between now and exams. I won’t get to do the things that I’d like to do for recreation, but sacrificing these desires once every six months makes me a complete person.”

Carles, it’s like you read my diary.

I wish the head of the European Cultural Studies department would learn how the internets work and stop marking every one of his e-mails “High Priority.”  I’M JUST SAYING.

Hello all and a belated Happy Thanksgiving.  They don’t celebrate T-gives here (obviously) so my flatmate Ellis organized a delightful celebration.  I made garlic mashed potatoes (with 3 whole heads of garlic)!  Not trying to brag, but they were delicious.

The next day I went to the Sigmund Freud museum in Hampstead.  Sigmund Freud is the personal hero of two of my personal heroes who are:

Tell me someone else besides Molly Jane loves this show!  Anyway, the Freud Museum is a little house where he and his family lived after fleeing from the Nazis, which technically means he only lived there for ONE YEAR before dying (I think he killed himself because the pain caused by his cancer was too much?  Am I remembering that right?) but I can’t fault them.  How many Edgar Allen Poe houses does the U.S. have?  Answer: like a million.

I saw the famous couch his patients used to lie on and learned some “fun facts,” like that, at the peak of his career, he used to hear patients for ten hours a day.  I also saw this painting which depicts the famous “Wolf Man”’s dream:

School is winding down here and I have papers to write.  Unfortunately, I cannot be bothered to give a fuck.  Why should I?  I am damn tired and my grades here don’t affect my GPA.  Right now, I am on my way out the door to go to a very famous and cool used bookstore instead of working on my last Shakespeare paper because I don’t give a fuck.  DGAF (don’t give a fuck).

I just made a record number of British people uncomfortable.

On my way to one of my seminars, I ran into the seminar leader.  ”Hello,” he said.  ”Hello!” I said, wondering why he was walking in the opposite direction of the classroom.  Then I walked into the classroom and realized it was empty.  I’d missed it, making two seminars I’d inadvertently skipped.  So I went to the English office to ask if attendance affects your grade.  Turns out it doesn’t and that the secretary doesn’t think I’m very funny (“Sorry I’m incapable of following simple instructions,” I said.  She looked slightly perturbed.)

I told her I would e-mail my seminar leader and tell him I was sorry for never going to his class.  She said she thought he would appreciate that.  But then, on my way downstairs, I saw him again.

ME: Hey, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I keep missing your class.

HIM (visibly uncomfortable): That’s…okay….

ME: I just keep getting mixed up with the times.

HIM (visibly uncomfortable): That’s…okay….

ME: It’s really rude of me.  You take time out of your day to, um.  (Long pause)  Well, I guess I’m keeping you from something.

(Exeunt ME)

Goddammit readers.  While this means that I am now free to skip my remaining seminars, which are boring, I am still deeply frustrated.  I am not trying to be a dick and yet everyone thinks I am one.  This must be how Kanye West feels every day.

My friend Zach tells me my last blog entry was “depressing.”  Not as depressing as the number of young women I have seen wearing formal shorts in the past two days.  Seriously.  It is cold out.

Fuck, I am running out of British things to write about.  Did you see Bill O’Reilly’s “expose” of San Francisco? It’s a pretty big WTF.  Don’t know why conservatives are still obsessed with fighting the 60s counterculture war.  Also, I have been to San Fran and it is overrun with yuppies, though, to be fair, there are a lot of homeless people.  But the homeless people come for the same reason as the yuppies: the warm climate.  Anyway, Fox clearly interviewed every black person within city limits.  Oops, forgot Republicans are ~colorblind~ and this has nothing to do with the deep-seated racism of their reactionary and geriatric viewers.

My mom sent me an “e-card” telling me I should go to the National British Library.  Guess I will do that.

Last night I went to the theater again, where I saw a production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land.  Shit was fucked up. I enjoyed it. The guy sitting two seats away from me was weezing the whole time, which was sort of gross and distracting at first, but if there’s any play that’s conducive to heavy breathing in the background, No Man’s Land is it.  Michael Gambon (a.k.a Dumbledore from Harry Potter movies) was in it, as was David Walliams from Little Britain.  Dumbledore was great, David Walliams was the youngest actor onstage and looked a little out-of-place.  I don’t really know that he’s enough of a sicko to handle Pinter’s dialogue, you know?  It’s a little like watching Jerry Seinfeld do No Exit.

A cab driver gave me the finger for LITERALLY NO REASON yesterday.  I was like, “Fuck u.”  Hell’s Bells.

I am annoyed that I have to do work for my classes, which are annoying.  I am at a weird point in my time here where nothing is really exciting anymore, but I don’t have a routine to fall back on because I don’t actually live here.  I want to go back to my “real life.”  Boo hoo, look at this hilarious jpeg:

kurt cobain and bear

We do not make enough jokes about Kurt Cobain.

I have confirmed that I am going to Scotland to visit my friend from high school in December.  Hurray!  I considered going to Scotland instead of London and I kind wish I had–I feel like it would be more “authentic” and maybe I would have some friends besides the five Americans that I hang out with.  To celebrate, here is a music video from scottish band The Jesus and Mary Chain:

dsalfdkjsdlakflkasdfaksfdsakljafsdklj;sdfklj;fsjfklasjklflsaalss

Emma’s not feeling very well this morning, kids.  Might have over-indulged with one can too many of Super-Strongbow last night.  Damn you, Super-Strongbow.  You and your alcoholic content that is twice that of regular Strongbow.

(Before I begin, a quick disclaimer: when I was a youngin’, I used to feel bad about myself when I saw media depictions of drinking and drug use because I thought addiction was cool and—-since I was not a addict—-I could not be cool.  I have no idea who reads this blog, but if you happen to be an impressionable young person, know that binge-drinking is not glamorous, I am legally old enough to drink in England and nothing I’m about to say should make you question your personal choices, whatever they may be.)

Last night began with a trip to the theater.  I had been talking to my mom the previous day and she was making me feel guilty because I did not remember that it was her and my father’s anniversary and also insinuating that I was going to forget her birthday (I didn’t, though I would have if she had not reminded me).  Anyway, she is always telling me that I should “see as much theater as I can” while in London, so I bought tickets for the cheapest and best-reviewed play I could find: Václav Havel’s Protest.

Protest is a “moral dilemma” one-act about a Czech novelist who has made political compromises to keep his job writing for television and his friend, a dissident playwright, who has just been released from prison.  The play was really good, but no one in the audience was under the age of 70, which was somewhat embarrassing.  In addition to being geriatric, they were also very posh—-a little ironic given the content of the play, which is why I did not feel that guilty about being dressed like a slob.

Then I went back home.  I do not remember very much after that.  What follows is what I have able to piece together thus far:

• It was a sort of “American-style house party.” My friends were playing drinking games.  I was not allowed to play beer pong because I do not understand the rules.
• I remember talking to someone about Rachel Maddow, though I don’t remember the context.  I think I might have also admitted that I have a crush on Keith Olbermann?  I don’t think it went over well.
• I feel like I was doing amazingly well at Flip Cup, but perhaps this sensation was born out of the euphoric effect of alcohol and not my actual performance.
• At one point, we drunkenly went to the convenience store to get more Strongbow.  Now I can never go back there.  Great.
• I was embarrassed that people were in my room because it was messy, so I turned off the lights, which, in retrospect, was an inappropriate response.
• Possibly made fun of Beth for being Irish?  Don’t really know.
• Towards the end of the evening, I lay down on the kitchen table.  Not in a seductive way.  I just needed to lie down.

This morning I drank a cup of coffee while sitting with my head in my hands for a very long time.  I also wasted a huge amount of time making potatoes because I felt like it was the only thing my stomach could handle.  They were really good, actually.

Finally, am I the only person who doesn’t watch Mad Men?  I have not felt this left out of a nationwide television phenomenon since the early days of Lost.

I get really nervous when I have to interact with real-life Brits in a “high-pressure” situation, but now I just remind myself that Barack Obama is president and that means that I can do anything.  I’m not even kidding: I’m super-nervous about the discussion section I’m about to go to, but I just keep reminding myself that if a black liberal can get elected to the highest office in the United States, that means that I handle talking about Ford Maddox Ford with judgemental post-adolescents for a couple of hours.  I hope you understand what I mean.

Well, folks, I flew back into the U.K. this morning and I have to say I am glad.  It’s not that my Italian vacation wasn’t fun, but I accidentally only packed 3 shirts and, as a result, smelled kind of rank.  Here’s the breakdown by city.

ROME: We flew into Rome and went to the Colosseum, where I was heckled by a man dressed as a gladiator.  Colosseum was closed, so we left.  We did the basic sight-seeing stuff: National Museum, lots of churches, Spanish steps/Trevi Fountain, Vatican (although the Sistine Chapel was heart-breakingly closed), eventually went back to the Colosseum and did that and the forum.  Rome was the only city we visited that I’d never been to before and it is really cool.  Everything looks sort of ruined and bombed-out—-I kept thinking of the scene in Catch-22 where Yossarian is wandering around past curfew and keeps seeing all this weird decadent shit.  You know which part I’m talking to?  It’s either right before or right after Orr pushes the girl out the window?  I thought Mike Nichols did it really well in the film version where Nately is played by, like, Art Garfunkel or somebody?  Eh?

VENICE: Full disclosure: I fucking hate Venice.  A large part of it stems from the fact that I get motion sickness and you have to take these big, wobbly water-buses everywhere, but I still maintain that it’s boring and doesn’t hold a candle to either Rome or Florence.  Plus, it’s really touristy.  Obviously, I don’t mind doing touristy things as long as they are cool and “worth it,” but it bums me out to be stuck in a huge crowd while a terrifyingly aggressive vendor tries to sell me a rose.  At the end of our stay, we went to the Eurostar ticket dealer in the train station to get tickets to Florence and the dude blatantly tried to rip us off, first by POCKETING the fifty-dollar bill I gave him (believe me, if I put money a customer gave me any other place besides the cash register, I would have gotten fired on the spot in front of the customer.  At ANY job I’ve ever worked.)  Then he claimed we didn’t give him four euro, which devolved into a huge argument between all of us, which was only settled after I gave him a five-euro bill and said, “Here you go.  Buy yourself a nice drink.  You’re a fucking scam artist, do you know what that means?”

FLORENCE: Ahh, Florence.  The most beautiful Italian city.  We unfortunately stayed in a really grody hostel which was run by a man named Franco, who rapidly became my bitter enemy.  Franco made us “pinkie-swear” upon arrival that we would “have fun and feel at home” in his hostel, and I guess he felt I was not living up to this promise when I freaked out at discovering the bathroom was COVERED IN SHIT.  He wouldn’t speak to or make eye contact with me after I brought it to his attention, and I was like, I’M THE ONE WHO SHOULD BE MAD, FRANCO.  Seriously, I was so grossed out, I literally called my dad and cried.  But apart from that, Florence was great.  The Uffizi and the David and all that jazz really live up to your expectations—-there’s no sense of let-down when you see them.  And we went to the Palazzo Pitti, which I had never been to.  It was probably my favorite thing we did the whole time.  

In addition to having the best sights, Florence is also nice because it’s really chill, though it does seem to have a sizeable gypsy population.  One day we even went up to this villa in Tuscany to have dinner.  We walked through an olive orchard and watched the sunset over the hills.  If you ever have the opportunity to do this, I recommend it.

Oh, yeah, something else important happened while I was gone.  What could it be?  Hmm…

Needless to say, I’m deeply proud and very moved, though there’s no place for that here.  Congratulations, Barack Hussein Obama.  I knew you had it in you.

I cannot believe the Philadelphia Phillies just won the World Series.

(I’m leaving tomorrow to go to Italy.  See you in a week!)