Some random travel ramblings (which, as the Internet cafe I´m in is playing Britney Spears, I´m unable to assemble coherently): I finished White Teeth by Zadie Smith a few days ago. Brilliant. Proof: three consecutive chapters are entitled "Molars," "Mitosis," and "Mutiny." Passed it along to Andrea who read nearly all of it in our 14 hour train fiasco yesterday. She agrees to it´s amazingness. Yesterday was a day of hate-sleep and hate-food. These would be the kinds of things you get on trains (i.e. fitful naps and kinked necks, and cheetos and orange fanta). I even had some hate-reading - after White Teeth, The Beach by Alex Garland was rather lousy. The spiky haired dude running the Inet cafe keeps peeking over his partition at me. Either I´m quite the sexy nerd or he had too much cappucino this morning. Ah, Europeans.
In Barcelona, the people don't speak Spanish; they speak Catalán. "Chocolate" becomes "xocolate" and "rebate" is "rebaixa." V's and Z's also flourish. Drea said it's like the country raised its hand and volunteered for all the reject letters.
From the guide on my bicycle tour of Paris yesterday: "Now, you guys gotta understand that in the 1500s, France wasn't the bomb-diggity-diggity."
Things you can do to fill the void that will be this weblog for the next month:
- Play with the new Blogger API
- Marvel at the splendid german filmmaking in The Princess and the Warrior. Particularly beautiful is the mechanical letter-sorting background during the title sequence.
- Ponder when it is appropriate to end a list item with a period
- For the ubernerds out there, you can read the paper on banner ads I just submitted to a conference. Cross your fingers with me that it's accepted
- Listen to bootleg recordings of John Mayer shows. Guitar wizardry and lyrics like "I wish I was a cold beer, 'cause then you'd hold me."
Nathan Lane, knowing of my impending trip, hosted a pbs special about Venice this evening. Pointing to a chandelier in a palazzo, he commented that "this is what God would build if he had the money."
Mel asked me to pay attention when I'm in London as to whether adolescent British males quote Monty Python as much as their American counterparts do. Her theory is that they quote South Park, instead.. Do we see this as an equal cultural exchange? "Your mother was a hampster and your father reeked of elderberry" for "I want my cheezy poofs, damnit!"
A good friend of mine is teaching science in an underfunded school on the east coast. Aside from being a role model for us all, she's picking up some rather exciting new words from her seventh graders. Thus, for your edification:
Seventh grade vocabulary words of the day (direct from NYC, no less):
yo - All purpose word to be used at the beginning and end of every sentence. See "beastin" for example.
beastin'- To give someone a hard time. Ex. "Yo, why you beastin', yo?"
(Not for the delicate of ears) Hop off my sack - Request that someone stop giving the speaker a hard time. Ex. "Yo, why don't you hop off my sack, yo!"
Plagued with dsl troubles and general web ennui, I've been neglecting my post here for the last few days. And there's more to come, as I'm leaving for Europe in a week. Like Bryce, I'll probably give you the stories from my travels long after I return home. But here's a tidbit for you:
Word of the day:
- copyleft - to require that a program remain freely open for modification by the public (as opposed to copyright, in which the original programmer's work is protected). Fundamental principle of the open source movement. A more extensive definition can be found at everybody's favorite, dictionary.com. Term found in Pekka Himanen's The Hacker Ethic.
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