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semester abroad spent drinking with other american students

I saw this article in The Onion, and thought that it was far too true for many kids I’ve encoutnered over here in Scotland.

From the article:

Blevins, who said Seville is “in the Moor part of Spain,” has not visited such landmarks as the Catedral, the largest Gothic edifice ever constructed, or the Museo Provincial des Bellas Artes, a museum in a former convent which houses works by Murillo, Ribera, and El Greco. He has, however, made three trips to the American Club, “this great bar near campus where they’ve got Dave Matthews on the jukebox and Sam Adams on tap.”

going out

Last night started innocently enough. After skating, Iain, Rob, and I headed for the slick supermarket on the outskirts of town to do our weekly shopping. It was pretty rad, despite the fact that I took forever on account of the whole supermarket-layout-adaptation phenomenon. Once again, I was struck about how nice it is to have foods that are clearly labled “suitable for vegans” or “contains milk, eggs”. Furthermore, I realised that the place has a ton of fair trade food, like chocolate, coffee, and tea. I picked up some fair-trade banannas and will certainly enjoy consuming them, knowing that they weren’t picked by slaves.

After getting back in one piece (perhaps a feat given that Rob fancies himself Michael Schumacher), I made some pasta, and Rob proceeded to get pissed. Unlike some people, Rob is a talker when he’s drinking, and he’s surprisingly insightful and coherent. The most amusing thing, however, is that when drunk, Rob makes statements which he soon quickly regrets. There were some rather frightening revelations that I’ll leave out as Rob’s my mate, but to give a case in point, when we were getting out of a cab, Rob told the cabbie “£3.60? Make that £3.70”, and then groaned, “did I just say that?” Hilarious. So, after a totally fun evening of watching the tele and just talking crap, Iain and I both ended up going with Rob to this club called the Cavendish on the other side of the meadows, thinking that Rob’s banter might make the night worthwhile. We had heard from the girls upstairs that some kid Rob had gotten in a fight with a few weeks before would be there, and at least I wanted to go along, partly to see what madness might develop, and partly to help make sure it didn’t get too out of hand.

Well, nothing got out of hand. In fact it was a pretty boring night out. The club was, I was told, sort of scuzzy by the girls standards, and the music was shit for sure. I guess I’ can mark it up as a cultural experience. Surprisingly, the girls in general were dressed far more conservatively than the club kids in Columbus, though I did witness quite a few girls who were pretty far gone. It wasn’t really my scene, but conversation made it bearable.

At the end of the night Rob had an encounter with the lad that he had fought with, and it was, from what I witnessed, congenial. The best part was the cab ride home when Rob kept talking about the fact that the guy was so much larger than he. There was a bit of noisy talking up in flat eight before I retired around four AM.

the bristo square experience

There are a bunch of student run clubs in the two student unions surrounding Bristo square, and the adverts hawking cheap vodka and Red Bull dub this “the Bristo Square experience”. For me however, the real experience is being at a public square absolutely seething with skate kids of all ages, and neither the police nor cantankerous old people even lifting an eyebrow. This became exceptionally apparent to me yesterday (a cold but at least sunny and dry day) when I saw an old woman walking (actually it was more like hobbleing) straight through the mad skate thrall, completely oblivious to the many perils that her stateside counterpart would perceive. The woman, as well as multitudes of other elderly folks, parents with small children, and other passersby, despite easy circumvention of the square, choose to walk through the square-turned-skatepark, and from what I can tell, have yet to encounter even a near-miss. I don’t know the reason for it, but I sure wish that people were as laid back with regards to the use of public spaces in the states.

talk about the weather

The weather here sucks, but not because it’s particularly brutal. I haven’t encountered a day that was any worse than what Columbus or Carlisle has to offer. The reason it sucks is that it messes with your emotions. A few days ago, I walked out of my flat to go to King’s Buildings for class and was blinded with sunlight. This was pure, unadulterated sunlight without the moody grey clouds that seem omnipresent about these parts. If there were clouds, they were the whispy white variety and nothing more. Well, it was the first sunny day for a while, so I was in a good mood, and the first thing I thought was, of course, skate! So, walking back from lectures, the weather was still good. I dropped by my flat, grabbed my board, and headed for bristo. There were some dark clouds forming, but it was sunny for the most part. I got to Bristo and skated for maybe twenty minutes before it started raining. Mother naturer you whore! From the window of my tutorial I could see that the rain had subsided. But could I skate? No, I could not as it had rained just enough to leave large puddles waiting to rust my bearings and delaminate my 7-ply. It’s just not fair

reason 1,000,001 i’m sxe

Originally written 07.02.2002

Reason 1,000,001 that I’m straight edge would have to be the movie Requiem for a Dream which I watched tonight on my laptop connected to Iain’s monitor. This movie doesn’t have any of the lovable, cudly, heroin addicts that Trainspotting has. It just paints a horribly bleak picture of drug abuse from a couple of different perspectives. It’s one of the few movies that I can remember that has made me cringe and recoil in my seat. I suppose that one could dismiss the film’s graphic nature as being indiewood sensationalism, but Iain, who worked at a chemist’s during high school, recounted an anectdote of a women who literally tripped over her own small child to get to her mescaline tablets, which affirms that addiction is every bit as ugly as movies portray it.

Reason 1,000,002 would be giving myself less opportunities to dick over people I care about.

Reason 1,000,003 is that Marco drank more than enough for the both of us yesterday, though he was more comical than anything. And hey, who doesn’t want to hear a musical version of “The Owl and the Pussycat”?

googlewhack

Ian describes googlewhacking as:

first go to www.google.com
enter a combination of words in the search box
click “search” if your results come back as search result 1 of 1, you’ve got a googlewhack

I wrote a googlewhacking cgi. You can check it out at http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/cgi/s0130561/googlewhack.pl.

creepy

This was originally written on 03.02.2002.

This is pretty creepy, though not in the same way as Rob’s dream (see below). I was reading Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier and found this passage towards the end of chapter 4:

Key escrow has considerable disadvantages. The use has to trust the escrow agents’ security procedures, as well as the integrity of the people involved. He has to trust the escrow agents not to change their policies, the government not to change its laws, and those with lawful authority to get his keys to do so lawfully and responsibly. Imagine a major terrorist attack in New Yorkl what sorts of limits on the police would be thrown aside in the aftermath?

I agree with Schneier that escrow is a bad, bad idea. Primarily, it’s very clear that it won’t keep criminals and terrorists from using non-escrowed crypto. Similarly, there are enough empirical examples to be reluctant to entrust one’s keys to the government or to big business. However, I think the idea of mandatory escrow is going to continue to be thrown around, and it is probably only a matter of time before key escrow becomes overwhelmingly frequent, if not mandatory. So why not establish a network of escrow agents who can be trusted to a greater degree than government or business? “Sure I’ll use escrowed keys, but you, Uncle Sam, can only have part of the key, the other parts are escrowed with the ACLU and the EFF.” If the hypothetical ACLU escrow service is implemented and used, say for the keypair that I use to send my grandmother birthday e-mails, then such escrow agents become a legitimate entity in the escrow debate and could offer an additional level of protection against state abuse of escrow systems.

flower of scotland

This was originally written on 03.02.2002.

Here is my flatmates, Iain and Marco’s, rendition of the Scotish anthem, Flower of Scotland.

hook (oh my god)

This was originally written on 03.02.2002.

It seems I have a new nickname, and that nickname is “Hook”. How did I aquire this nickname, one might ask? A horrible childhood accident with a lawn mower. No such luck. While I was out today, my flatmate Rob annonced the content of one of his dreams. It involved an attractive girl who proceeded to take off her clothes in the middle of the flat. This figment of Rob’s (obviously warped) subconcious, apparemtly, only had eyes for me and I, again, apparently, in a fit of dreamland infidelity, had my way with her on the top of the kitchen table, with, get this, my hook shaped phallus. It was described by Rob as like “that muppet’s nose”, “gonzo”. If you don’t hear from me in a few days call scotland yard.

the sound of music

This was originally written on 02.02.2002.

A typical Friday night. The flatmates were debating whether to go out or not. Iain was downing the cider, and Rob the cider. Marco was sober on account of having consumed a ton of headache medicine. We were just chilling out, making diner, talking shit (of course), and watching TV. Top of the Pops, a show that plays taped live performances by chart leading artists was one, and some of the acts were utter shwill. So, I made the comment that I could write a song every bit as good as the one being played on the television. Marco asked if I wanted to try, and we retreated to my room with Iain’s guitar. Twenty minutes later we had produced a short ditty, an ode to Iain. It was awesome. Marco has this great, resonant, voice, and when we performened the song for Iain, it was filled with all the bloated cliches of pop and alternative music. “Don’t you knowowow … He looks good in a kilt. Don’t you knowowow … That he’s sturdily built.” Hilarious.

After we were done dorking around with the car, Pete announced that he was going to an electroacoustic concert and asked if I wanted to go. Sure, I said, and we ran off to the concert hall. The show wasn’t free as I had suspected, but it was well worth my three quid. The concert was part of a weekend production titled “Sounds Found and Fixed: Weekend of Sonic Art”. Electroacoustic music seems to be a collection of found sound and electronically produced sounds, or sounds that are tweaked out of an instrument in a way that it was never meant to be played. You’ve probably heard this music before. Think the dark soundscapes that come with the opening credits of movies like Seven. So, I had heard music like this before, but never in a setting like this. The room was wired with over twenty speakers of different sizes and power. The performers played compositions off of CD or computer and worked the mixing board to fill the room with these strange sounds. Pete studies music technology at the university and he was telling me about how one could hear different songs and reverberations depending on where one sits in the room. Sitting in the theatre, I thought, this is why I came to Edinburgh. Edinburgh is really a cultural mecca of sorts for fringe art and it’s so, so good to discover new things for the first time.