Category: Uncategorized

05.23.2002 – dream

Originally written .

dreamt that i was playing in some bizarre golf tournament. it was like golf mixed with extreme sports where there was this crazy wall climbing/rope swinging obstacle course before you even got to the green. the tournament was in some weird hotel, and i remember being bummed because i had to eat a pork chop in the hotel restaurant as part of the tournament.

05.23.2002 – if only it were a dream

Originally written 05.23.2002.

the crisp wretch of a dry heave followed by the splash of a more successful attempt. rolled over and hoped it was just a nightmare. it wasn’t. it was nat from downstairs. i wrote a haiku:

sound breaks silent night

dry cough then stomach empties

puddle of vomit

05.23.2002 – day

Originally written 05.23.2002.

what i really want to say, but will never get a chance: “that kid has more issues than a compiler for a vliw architecture”. hehe. revision delerium setting in.

wasted valueable revision time playing guitar last night. getting things sorted out for our 06.10 gig @ tron in the ‘burgh. almost have a set together which, surprisingly, is mostly original songs. it’s cool to write songs just for fun for a project that you take seriously but don’t care deeply about. you can just make up characters, or use someone else’s voice rather than trying to write something sincere. helped marco pen the line: “and i know that it’s time i get over it. in my mind, but my heart just won’t let it quit”. finalized the lyrics for a song i wrote about trading sexual favors for drugs and roles in hollywood (see above comment about making up characters), self-penned a misogynistic little rock ditty titled “you’ve got a pretty face (so i’m gone)”, and worked on some hilarious drop-d nu-metal tunes. haha.

media check. tim is like a music pusher or something. he uploads albums to an ftp drop and i get hooked. so here’s what i’ve been listening to lately: alec empire’s intelligence and sacrifice, superchunk’s art class, the fucking champs’ v, and belle and sebastian’s if you’re feeling sinister. i’ve never really liked electronic music other than as background chill out music, to support my friend’s gigs, or for the cultural experience of going to a party. i guess what i often don’t like about electronic music is that the music seems so seperated from the person making the music (though artists like moby, matmos, and fat boy slim and probably some others that are too cool to be on my radar are able to overcome this to a large degree). alec empire’s take on electronica, however, has a certain directness that is lacking in a lot of electronic music. it combines breaks, beats, general noise, punk rock, and politics to create an end product that isn’t so much genre defining as it is genre defying. that is, it plays by the rules of electronic music, or punk rock, but creates something that is only vaguely discernable as either. i don’t always find it enjoyable, but there’s something about it that’s irresistable. alec empire’s solo stuff will at times remind one of his old band, atari teenage riot, but it goes beyond the old musical formulas and the “fight, destroy, fuck, riot” vocabulary to create something that is generally much more satisfying. i think that alec empire represents in a lot of ways, the cutting edge of music – combining styles of music that themselves are on the fringes of pop culture to create something that stays one step ahead of mass media. so alec empire is important, but perhaps not as influential as superchunk. listening to the art school single (or ep or whatever – actually, i later found out it’s a single. the title track is on the full length here’s to shutting up) you realize what the better bands of the recent onslaught of pop-punk grew up on, but are also so far away from capturing. the titular track is just a great pop/rock song, filled with melody, hooks, and power, but also that quirkiness, even nerdiness (“welcome art class, so get your acid free paper and glass … welcome to art class and yes it does involve shaking your ass”), that for me puts the “indie” in “indie rock”. this is what gets lost in the translation when i see the latest jimmy eat world video on viva+ (though the older video for lucky denver mint comes a lot closer). the song is pure bliss and it’s been running through my head since i’ve heard it. i give props to anyone who includes the lyric “everybody dance now” in any song, and i’d almost say that’s the feeling that is purveyed by this track. i highly anticipate their 06.30 show in dc. v is the fucking champs’ highly anticipated follow-up to the rocking iv. the album is more of the same – indie rockers playing what i call “viking metal” (soaring, clean, technical guitar solos), and i still can’t get enough of it (though iain will surely strongly disagree – he prefers more ‘heavy’ in his metal). i haven’t listened to iv in a long time, but the new album seems to be more unabashed about it’s cheesiness which is fine by me. actually, i take that back. this album seems to have a distinctly math rocky feeling to it. make your devil signs with your hands and rock out. if you’re feeling sinister is essentially belle & sebastian’s first release and i’m giving it another listen because peter is really stoked on the record. it’s definitive belle & sebastian, and sets the groundwork for the sound of all their subsequent albums – 60’s folk-rock melodies layered on top of a killer string section. the instrumentation is beutiful, but the lyrics have an intelligence and humor that make the band irresistable. i wrote last month about seeing them live, and listening to this record brings back happy memories of everything that was so great about the show. the album is worth checking out if only for the excellent judy and the dream of horses which is just an amazing song. period. (note to self: make a copy of this for my dad. this might be one of the few contemporary records that he’ll listen to)

without fail, the second i walk out the door to go skate, it starts raining.

quote of the day – i’d rather by smart than a movie star

Originally written 05.23.2002.

“I don’t care if [college] ruins my career … I’d rather be smart than a movie star.”

– natalie portman as quoted in a fox news article discussing actors and actresses (including math nerd danica mckeller, winnie cooper from the wonder years, and mayim bialik, from blossom) who gave up the silver screen for academia

skips a beat …

Originally written 05.21.2002.

by the promise ring is perhaps the best pop song ever. well, maybe that’s an overstatement, but it’s pure pop bliss and i think it’s rad. i wanted an album that was just cheesy and pure pleasure so i grabbed the very emergency album off audiogalaxy and have been in a good mood ever since. by no means their best stuff, but it’s good stuff nonetheless.

this album is so wussy. iain’s going to make fun of me and then turn on guns and roses or motorhead or something and make fun of me some more, but i don’t care. i love it. simple happy songs. a good prelude to the summer, and a good way to get my mind off of impending exams. i’m getting stuff sorted out for this summer, seeing lights at the ends of tunnels (and being pretty sure that they’re not trains) and this record offers a perfect soundtrack for that. i don’t care what iain will think. besides, there’s no way i’m going to take shit from a guy who bought the new korn single. sucka!

shows, shows, shows

Originally written 05.21.2002.

so i’m pretty sure i’m going to go see tguk and superchunk on 06.30 in dc and i’m heading down to ky (that’s loo-a-vil to you sucka) to kick it with the youth crews and scenesters at krazyfest from 06.21-06.23. if anyone’s reading this is going to be at either show, drop me a line at ghing at pa dot net and we’ll hang out.

basic windows xp network security

Originally written 05.21.2002.

my friend yon’s computer is totally brain fscked. she has a couple of viruses
and from the fact that she says that her computer mysteriously types "national
rifle association" every once in awhile, she might have a cracker getting
in through a back door. so, to help her out and to help anyone else who wants
to make use of basic windows xp security features, i’m writing this little howto.

enabling the internet connection firewall (icf)

most computers on the network (including yours) run programs that open up various network ports which allow incoming connections to your computer. while this can provide useful functionality, it can also open up vulnerabilities to system intrusions. a firewall is a program which prevents or restricts connections to your computer. windows xp has a built-in firewall that can be used for this purpose. it’s probably a good idea to run it though it might cause some network software (e.g. peer-to-peer file sharing applications like morpheus or kazaa) to be unable to work properly. no worries, you can configure the firewall to allow these connections, but first, let’s just start with enabling the basic firewall.

1. open the network connections control panel (start->control
   panel->network and internet connections->network connections)
2. open the settings for your internet connection by clicking the icon under
   lan or high-speed internet. the connection will probably be labled local area connection this should open a window titled local
   area connection properties.

4. click on the advanced tab.
5. check the box labeled protect my computer and network by limiting or preventing access to this computer from the internet.
6. click the ok button.

enabling firewall logging

this is useful if you want to keep track of the network address of who connects or tries to connect to your computer. you’ll need this if you want to report would-be crackers to your isp.

1. open the network connections control panel (start->control
   panel->network and internet connections->network connections)
2. open the settings for your internet connection by clicking the icon under
   lan or high-speed internet. the connection will probably be labled local area connection this should open a window titled local
   area connection properties.

3. click on the advanced tab.
4. click the settings button (at the bottom of the window).
5. click on the security logging tab.
6. check the log dropped packets and log successful connections.
7. click the ok button.

viewing the firewall log

so you want to see who’s been trying to acces your computer. here’s how.

1. unless you changed the log file in the log settings (as described above), the firewall log should be in the file C:\WINDOWS\pfirewall.log.
2. open notepad (start->all programs->accessories->notepad)
3. click on the file menu and select open.
4. in the field labled file name: type the log file name (this should be C:\WINDOWS\pfirewall.log).
5. click the open button

reason 1,000,100 (and counting) …

Originally written 05.21.2002.

why i’m straightedge. fire safety. last night, i had just finished having a really nice phone conversation with erin and was about to go to bed when the fire alarm went off. i ran into iain in the hall and he asked me if i smelled the noxious smoke that had been seeping into our rooms. i said i had,and was a bit relieved because i had initially thought that i smoked some electriconics somehow. so we evacuated the building, and the firefighters came, as is a pretty common occurence here due to numerous false alarms, but this time, we thought, it must be the real deal, because, as the old adage goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. so this senior resident comes across the street looking for people in flat 2. flat 2, we thought, that can only mean one thing. nat! our suspicions were confirmed when we saw a sheepish, and smoky nat emerge from the building shortly before the firefighters arrived. once the firefighters entered the building, we saw them throw nat’s dustbin into the street, fetch buckets of water and fire extinguishers and throw half of nat’s room’s contents out his window. we’re not sure what the whole story is, but what i gathered is that somehow a lit cigarette was either thrown in a dustbin or on the floor and quickly ignited a bunch of clothes and whatever other shit nat had lying around his warzone-like room. i can only imagine nat trying to put out the fire. that kid’s a liability and a half.

paybacks …

Originally written 05.21.2002.

are a bitch. left over antics from the weekend. saturday night iain, marco, and i were sitting down in our common room watching dvds when we realized that the flat next to ours was having a rather loud party. the following tactics of inter-flat warfare may sound really lame, but to contextualize things, at least one member of the the flat had indicted at least one member of our flat in various wrongdoings, bringing the full pressure of the man down on the inhabitants of 29/5. now my flatmates are certainly no angels, but iain and i have never done anything wrong, and lately, even marco has been really, really, good. so getting the finger pointed at you for things you haven’t done, by people who commit the same damn offences is lame. besides, we were trying to watch dvds, and given the poor quality of iain’s computer speakers, we couldn’t hear it very well.

so, iain placed a call into the local police department reporting a noise disturbance. address? “i’m not sure, i think it might be 29. i know it’s a student flat” identity? “i’d rather not say if that’s alright”. i told him that he should have said that he feared reprisal by the vicious, out of control students. haha. so, the cops took forever, but when they arrived, they couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. the partiers had just finished throwing bottles from their windows and were starting fights with people on the street. the cops came in, and by the time they left, the snobby american girl from across the hall was in tears and saying things like “i don’t want a criminal record”. sucka. i think the incident spawned a bit of intra-flat infighting as well. so our psy-ops strike was successful. we may have our differences, but dammit, 29/5 sticks together. represent.

it bitch

Originally written 05.21.2002.

so lately, despite the fact i live in scotland, i’ve become everyone’s it bitch back in columbus. first it was my girlfriend’s house’s windows xp cablemodem nat setup, and now it’s my friend yon’s poor little virus-ridden laptop. luckily, they both had windows xp which has a feature that is actually useful and doesn’t just make the os crash and die a horrible death. remote assistant allows someone to connect to and control your computer a la vnc. i’m positive the feature was added because windows crashes so much that ms thought it would be clever to add a feature that would cause people to go to their friends for help rather than calling support. i’m also sure that the thing is a huge security risk, but in the end, it makes my job easier. it was surprisingly easy for people on the other end to set up, and despite the transatlantic connection, the interface was fast enough to be useable. rad. summer project that will probably never happen would be to set up a wrapper for vnc that would allow users of older versions of windows and linux to have similar funtionality.

juxtaposition

Originally written 05.20.2002.

so i’m reading the latest big brother (#85) which iain graciously let me borrow, and i’m struck by the fact that despite this magazine is published by porn king larry flynt and the fact that it has been decryed by parents everywhere and serupticiously been hidden under beds by kids everywhere, it’s the best mainstream skate magazine out there. i remember it as being the ‘zine where the mystery girl from the next town over posed in her underwear and bra while stratling a skateboard, but how the times have changed. sort of. the letters page has a letter discussing the finer points of pre-socratic philosphers with respect to mike vallely?!? preceding a letter accomonied by a photo of a gargantuan turd. further on in the issue, there’s a 16 page article about the all girl’s gallaz australian tour (which, in my knowledge is the most print and photos that has ever been dedicated to female skaters anywhere) followed shortly by an article depicting the punk-as-fuck hollywood tour that features numerous pictures of very drunk women exposing their breasts to also very drunk hollywood pros.

some people think i’m a zealot. i don’t drink and i don’t particularly like porn. i don’t go to keg parties and i don’t go to the meatmarket dance clubs. i come off as a film snob and a record snob (though i’m not really knowledgeable about either enough to be cool enough to be a genuine snob) and i’m allegedly far too serious. the truth is, all i want is a little balance in this world. it would be a hell of a lot easier to walk past the frat parties without bursting into a rant if i could convince myself that the world will be only partially run by people like them, and might even be remotely influenced by people like me. and i might be vastly more tolerent of girls in backless shirts if they weren’t typically accompanied by guys who treat everyone like shit. i really don’t care what people do except for the times when i feel like everything i find beautiful in the world is under constant attack by everything i think is horrible. so, i guess what i’m trying to say is that it’s cool every once in a while when i see some things i think are really great happily coexisting with things that i don’t particularly agree with or like. maybe there’s hope for me after all.

quote of the day – “to most people in the rest of the world, he is acting in a completely random and irrational manner”

Originally written 05.20.2002.

“That’s a very good question. I think the obvious choice would be somebody who I won’t name, but I’ll try and give you a few hints. He is probably one of the most powerful men in the world. He’s been in the news a lot lately. He seems to be doing the right thing in the eyes of many Americans; howerver, to most people in the rest of the world, he is acting in a completely random and irrational manner and is threatening the safety of most of the peace-loving people in the world. And this very powerful person does not run Microsoft.”

– josh the scientist in response to the question “is there anyone on this planet who you think might be a robot under their skin?” as asked by russell bongard in an interview in the aforementioned issue of big brother

aftermathtour2002

Originally written .

a skate tour dubbed “the biggest skateboard tour in history” and sponsored by g-thug shoe company osiris among a bunch of others is skating it’s way to columbust, oh on 06.18.2002 @ the flow. chances to crawl over 12 year olds for free stuff if nothing else.

tguk – on a wire

Originally written 05.16.2002.

tim hooked me up with mp3s for the get up kids’ recent release: “on a wire”. listening to the record as i’m writing this. i’ll agree with the review that peter pointed me to that called it “different”. it’s different alright. i wouldn’t say it’s not poppy, i don’t know if that’s possible for the get up kids, but it doesn’t have some of the infectious cheesyness that marked their last release. it also doesn’t have many of the stylistic elements that they used to define the proto-emo genre on their early records. in a lot of ways, that’s refreshing since the genre has become a bit saturated of late, making tguk a favorite target for the buddyhead set. i still like it of course because, as usual, i’m a late adopter when it comes to music. i started listening to tguk at least a summer after dana first pointed out the record. this album is more of a straight-up rock and roll record – well a poppy kind of rock and roll, but rock and roll nonetheless. it comes off as much less burlesque and histrionic than past releases. not as meditative and plodding as the new amsterdams, but a departure from past recordings to be sure. gone are the simple keyboard hooks (well except for on “the worst idea”, which competes with “stay gone” as the most get up kids of the songs, and my favorite track, but even there they don’t feel the same). they’re replaced by moody guitar licks. also, the vocals sound a bit out of place now. sure there’s melody, but the get up kids vocals have always had a certain haggardness, a bit of raw emotion, and that roughness around the edges, in the context of these new songs, seems like a blemish. all in all, it’s a good record, and perhaps the kind of record that the get up kids need to make. i just can’t seem to get into it in the way that past recordings have captured me. still, as the album winds down with “the worst idea” and “hannah hold on”, i’m reminded enough of their past song writing conventions to nod my head gently and smile. highlights: “stay gone”, “hannah hold on”, “the worst idea”.

i just gave this record another listen, this time with the songs scrambled in between those by other artists. i want to mention that i really like the song “campfire kansas”. i really like it when people write songs that capture moments in their life that are meaningful. this is just a little song about a camping trip, but i find it particularly endearing, probably because i can’t remeber the last time i went camping, but look back fondly about the many days i spent out in the woods during my tenure as a boy scout.

justin sane – life, love, and the pursuit of justice

Originally written 05.17.2002.

already wrote about this record, but i figured while i was writing about records, i might as well write about this one some more. i really, really like it. i think what makes this record good is that it transforms the politics from the anti-flag records into personal politics. “for pat”, “we found a place”, and “thanks for the letter” are all prime examples on this record. in some ways, this is the best sort of political music. fugazi is rarely an explicitly politcal band, but always has a strong sense of personal politics. another thing that this record does is that it gives a look on what’s underneath all of anti-flag’s politics. the beauty of the world that is seperate from materialism and worldly ugliness. in “on the streets tonight”, justin certainly wears his heart on his sleeve, and some might almost say that his crooning about an evening with friends and the gentle pulse of city life is ridiculous. i might even think this, it’s almost too pretty a picture, but it’s a picture that i’ve painted myself, and it’s a view of an idealized world that i would like to be real for some substantial period rather than just the fleeting moments in my life or the three minutes twelve seconds of the song. two tracks later and it’s “61c days turned to nights”, a perfect love song. the lyrics aren’t sublime, but they’re blunt and direct with an honesty that is rarely seen when humans talk about each other. this record isn’t the sound of a thousand kids in a room raising their fists and decrying the government in unison, it’s the sound of a thousand kids sitting in their rooms and reflecting on the state of the world and the state of their lives. while being in the former crowd gives one a sense of accomplishment at the token effort at sedition – you always leave the concert hall sweaty and happy, then you go to bed, the rumble of kids listening to records in their rooms, feeling devestated and hopeful at the same time is the sound that may shake the world off of it’s foundations because all those kids don’t have the satisfaction of a sweaty post-concert night, it’s a night of restless sleep, or maybe, just maybe, a few heavy steps out of the bedroom and into the hollow daylight to make a mark, a mad painter’s brush stroke towards a more beautiful portrait of a broken world. the next to last track on the record “casette deck, road trip, grand canyon” made me laugh the first time i heard it. it sounds like a fucking saves the day song off their acoustic ep. there’s even a part where justin goes “ayeayeaye”, drawing out the vowels like the std vocalist always does. so of course the song sounds great. but on listening to the song again, i realize that the song is better than any std song could ever be. the std songwriter has explicitly stated that he plain makes up characters and situations in his songs, which is cool enough, but even songs that might have some personal commentary are clouded in a certain ambiguity. there’s none of that on this song. it’s personal and blunt and staggering. a great song. quite frankly, i haven’t heard a record that has been this empowering and has made me as excited about making music or listening to it.

refridgeration

Originally written 05.17.2002.

thankfully, the refridgerator in the flat got fixed faster than the phone. the think had been broken for about a week, and it was really nasty. between the rotting food inside and the mildew that was beginning to grow around the area where the freezer had defrosted, the common room reeeked. apparently the gas that provided cooling for refridgerator all leaked out making refridgeration impossible. it will be nice to be able to keep proper food once again.

project – 05.16.2002

Originally written 05.16.2002.

• went into king’s buildings to see if i could get hermione booted. it seems that she had some problem with the console. rebooted the physical host which seemed to fix things. also, it seems the default route doesn’t get set which is a problem for remote admin.
• compiled a version of the syslogging bash that is linked against the glibc that comes shipped with redhat 6.2. put the binary in CVS.
• compiled my own stripped down version of the 2.4.18-24um kernel and put the configuration in CVS.
• applied Jeff Dike’s kernel patch which logs all data that goes over a tty to session files.
• the aforementioned patch logs all the files to the current directory. not really useful for my purposes. so, i did a little hacking and made it so the uml kernel takes a log directory as a parameter (tty_log_dir=) and logs the tty data to files in that directory. put my patch in cvs.

summer plans

Originally written 05.16.2002.

got a hurried phone call from erin where she said that the internship that she had applied for had already been given to someone else. so, it looks like my plans to live rent free in sf are dashed and i’m going to be in columbus this summer. not a big deal. the biggest hassle is going to be telling the EFF that i can’t do SF this summer. maybe i can still telecommute. i hope it doesn’t appear to unprofessional. at least i’ll be closer to tim this summer, and maybe we can catch a couple of shows or something.

quote of the day – “teens are sexual and do have desire. it is our obligation as adults to respect their sexual autonomy”

Originally written 05.15.2002.

“Feminists have made the argument that women can tell the difference between coercion and consent. Women also have desires of their own. A similar argument can be made about teen sexuality. Teens are sexual and do have desire. It is our obligation as adults to respect their sexual autonomy.”

“Feminists have pointed out that there is violence against women, and when it happens, we need to punish that. We need to create a culture where women have the ability to protect themselves. For children, the issues are similar. Children are going to be out in the world; they are going to be seeing media. So we need to prepare them with personal skills and good information. We need laws to protect them if they are harmed, but we also need to empower young people to express themselves sexually.”

– judith levine, author of the controversial Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, as quoted in an article about feminist resistance to censorship laws like COPA

mario

Originally written 05.15.2002.

looks like mario is posting to tim’s blog now.

project – 05.15.2002

Originally written 05.15.2002.

• fixed problem with log rotation script. the portion that tarred/gzipped the snort tcpdump log did a filetest for a non-existant file.
• looked at the console for hermione, she just sort of hangs on boot. She doesn’t really provide any good info. I’m trying to compile my own uml kernel to see if that fixes anything.
• figured out what the problem was. my modified version of bash was linked against the libs for rh7.2 and obviously this wouldn’t work for the rh7.2 filesystem

05.14.2002

Originally written 05.14.2002.

pink has a new video out. i saw it the other day on viva+. it’s like a pop-punk song almost. really teen-angsty and rock-sounding. apparently the girl from 4 non-blondes writes a lot of her stuff which might account for some of the more rock-sounding stuff. pink’s better than most pop stuff at least.

whatched “ring 2” last night, the sequal to the j-horror flick i watched last week. as with most horror films, the sequal wasn’t quite as good, but i still really liked it. perhaps the most perfect modern horror movies ever made. the idea of the television transferring deadly evil to the viewer is an incredibly powerful device for getting the viewer scared. maybe one of the few films that is better on the small screen. the “blair witch project” uses similar innovation in story devices, but the problem is, if you’ve never really been lost in the woods or wandered around the woods after dark, the potency of the film is lost. however, almost everyone has watched tv, and that seems to make the ring series universally scary. aside from the main device, there are a lot of nice subtleties that makes the film build up to a frightening finish. the film relies on the strangeness of the imagery rather than it’s graphicness which again, seems to have a more potent effect than typical horror blood and guts, to which many viewers seem desensitized.

went on a long-ass run yesterday. i’m in awful shape now, too much time in front of the computer and not enough outside, but sometimes when i run, i just get really into the freedom of the activity. i take a turn off my planned route and get excited by the notion of seeing a new part of town and just keep running until i realize that i’m really far away. ended up on the west side of town out towards the mcewans brewery and the big ugc cinema. edinburgh’s weird because although there’s neighborhoody stuff all around, but most of the essential locations are near the center of the city, so there’s not a whole lot of need to explore. it’s convenient for me, since i don’t have a bike or car, but i sort of like having to go see different parts of town. the columbus neighborhoods can be a hassle if you don’t have a car, but it’s kind of cool to go to clintonville for laundry and the food co-op, short north for art, bexley or grandview for the cinema, etc, etc.

started revising for exams today. ugh.

tim sent me justin sane’s (of anti-flag fame) solo release, “life, love, and the pursuit of justice”. this guy sure wants to be billy bragg, but in a good way. just really simple songs. personal, intimate, everything that a solo album should be. in some ways, it has a depth that most anti-flag records lack. it’s amazing. who would have thought justin sane could sound like saves the day? these are songs that i would write if i had more musical talent. i’ll be listening to this record a lot.

project – 05.14.2002

Originally written 05.14.2002.

• put my paper and the setup scripts into CVS
• switched hermione’s filesystem to a redhat 6.2 install, unfortunately, she doesn’t network anymore

desensitized

Originally written 05.12.2002.

last night rob, iain, anais, and i had a really unsettling experience, and one that i was surprised to have had in edinburgh and not in columbus. we were having a movie marathon. rob rented “the lost world” (lame) and i rented “the others” (cool, but not so much when you already know the twist – cheers tim). We set up rob’s computer monitor and speakers connected to my laptop in the common room so we could all watch the dvds in comfort. we were halfway through “the others” when we heard a girl screaming outside. at first we thought it was just somebody carrying on, as screaming tends to be commonplace around the student housing, but the screaming carried on enough for iain and i to go to the window. we looked out and heard some more shouts, and saw someone dash around the corner into the alley. soon we saw a bunch of people crowded around outside, and later the cops came. this seems really uncharacteristic for the area as it’s pretty well-lit and highly trafficked. and i never felt as though my sense of security in this city was false, as can sometimes be the case back in columbus. we’re still not sure exactly what happened. it could have been a mugging, rape, hit and run, who knows in the end? it’s just frightens me a bit that my first reaction, on hearing screaming, was to think “that’s someone fucking around” instead of “that’s someone who needs help”.

glamis

Originally written 05.12.2002.

yesterday i went on a bus trip with my study abroad program to go see glamis castle. i wasn’t too keen on going, but felt i should take advantage of the opportunity. glamis is up near dundee, so i at least got to see some of the scottish countryside and cross over the firth of forth. the castle was pleasant enough, and had been modified many times since it’s original conception as a hunting lodge. it is still the home of the bowes-lyon(sp?) family, who live in a wing of the castle not converted into a museum. the castle is famous, for one, because it is the setting of shakespeare’s macbeth, though historians suggest that shakespeare’s account is historically dubious and doubt that any of the action actually took place at glamis. it’s also unsure as to whether shakespeare had ever been to the castle himself. more recently, the castle is famed as the childhood home of the late queen mother. the thing that i was struck with more than anything by the castle was the utter lack of pretense. the collections of heirlooms seemed jumbled and like those of any family, though certainly more valuable. poorly painted paintings; ridiculous displays of stuffed game, arranged together in glass cases depicting scenes that would never occur in nature; and just tons of miscellaneous memorabilia from the ages. the whole place gave me a sense of the demise of royalty and heraldry. everything was so normal, so homey. outside the garden, there was even the graveyard for family pets. sure they had actual stone tombstones (i mistook them for human graves until i saw an epitaph that read “… our beloved guinea pig”), but it still seemed surprisingly normal. it was a beautiful sunny day, and after i took the tour of the castle, i sat in the italian garden and read some d.h. lawrence. i really don’t like his stories. he creates interesting enough characters, but seem to have little need for plot development. the last short fiction collection i read was 9 stories by salinger, and salinger is able to somehow craft scenes of intimate human interaction that are engaging in a way that lawrence’s just aren’t. sitting in the garden too, made me think that the castle, and the institution that it represents, was slowly decaying. the flowers were fresh, but some of the leaves of the trees were going brown, and the garden seemed cold and isolated inside it’s aging walls.