…well, if I eat another baguette, I’ll be happy.  That’s why they serve bread without butter/oil/vinegar at restaurants.  Because it doesn’t need anything else.  To somebody as gastronomically challenged as I am, this excursion into the world of wine, cheese, bread and Entrecote was a definite plus.  They might be proud, but they have a right to be, on the basis of the culture alone, if not more.  

I’ll lay it down now: I don’t speak French.  And, after a very nice tour of the countrysides in southern France, I now found myself in Paris on my own.  Yes, it’s a global city, but do I look like a person who wants to stand out?   (Stupid question, really: I only have to remember the waiter who asked me puzzlingly at L’Alsace on the Champs-Elysees: “Do you want the English menu?  —French?  —Japanese…?”  What, you can’t tell who I am instantly?  A Chinese person from America with anglophilic tendencies, trying desperately to be as white as possible, while speaking bad French?)

Anyway, I can sort of order food:

—Me: “Je voudrais une entrecote avec la soupe aux lentilles, s’il vous plait.” 

—Waiter: “Oui, merci.” 

—(I smile satisfactorily and close the conversation, pretending to do something with my napkin)

—Waiter: “[something there is no way I will understand without another year of learning French, phrased as a question]?”

—Me: (hoping desperately that I can pull this off) “………Oui?”

—(Waiter looks distraught.)

—Waiter: Umm…………….how did you want the steak cooked?

Of course, usually the waiter skips to this step as soon as I open my mouth, because it isn’t that hard to tell that I have no idea what I’m talking about.  By the way, the answer is supposed to be “as raw as possible” which is a problem for me, because I usually eat well-done.  But in France I’ve had a couple mildly-rare steaks.  And it’s not bad after all.

By the way, the photo is of me in Vieux Lyon, on the hill somewhat near the Basicilica of Notre-Dame de Fourviere.  These are very old ruins.  Sorry I can’t explain further, I’m not a history buff.  This is my Facebook profile picture, and the caption is: “See I can be emo anywhere!”  ’nuff said. 

Whan that English pub, with its cider soote,

The droghte of me throat hath perced to the roote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour…

In fact, I did spend my first night in Cambridge bathing my veins in quite a bit of liquor, promptly afterward throwing up behind a trash can outside the local club.  And afterward managing to get kicked out of the same club by a security guard, despite the valiant efforts of two very nice girls inside to get me in the back door.  I also tried cider, which is like beer but sweeter.  Just as much not a fan of it as with beer.  Oh well, I tried it.

My twenty-first birthday is going to be very anti-climactic.

Anyway, one of the first things I’ve realised about the British is that they are indeed much more conscious of speech, spelling, grammar and typography, which I very much appreciate.  I also much appreciate their sayings.  From now on I’m always going to say “that’s pants” instead of “that’s a load of shit” whenever I encounter something terrible. 

I’m debating which of above photos, taken in a meadow outside Kent University, is more hipster.  Two girls in summer dresses and stockings frolicking a distance apart in a flowery sunny meadow, or a line of people asymmetrically trudging ahead in the same flowery sunny meadow, with the little English schoolhouses in the background?

Ironically, I haven’t really met any British people yet.  The people I’m staying with at Kent are mostly international (Americans and French).  Canterbury itself, though, is extremely English.  Castles, gates, cathedrals, ghosts, brick everywhere, greenery, afternoon tea of course, people walking on cobblestones, but when driving, doing it backwards, cricket, etc.

Oh, and Catholic school students in awesome uniforms.  This inspires me to write an epic novel about a young boy who goes to a school for witchcraft and wizardry, where they all wear awesome uniforms with crests on them and live in castles with common rooms and fireplaces and go to a town with narrow cobblestone streets to buy supplies and flirt awkwardly, wands and owls at their sides—  wait.  Damn.

“It’s been so long!  I’ve been so busy!  It’s good to finally be back with a post!”  Load of bullshit.  I have no excuses to not write.  There is never an excuse to not write.  (We’ll see how well this holds up.)  

Anyway, I’ve had the fortune of not really having had to write an analytic paper in the last year — although come this summer, I’ll have to brush up my skills, as I’ll be studying literature in Cambridge (where I will obviously enter the world of Harry Potter and lounge in a common room or Quidditch grounds all day, and fall in love with cute British girls in robes).  So, to prepare, I’ll share with you some great techniques that will get you started with writing in academia, just like Calvin:

- Titles

The format is: “A Pretentious Way of Describing the Topic: Another Pretentious Way of Describing the Topic”

Examples:

“Dislocating the Self Through Different States of Being: Multiple Identities and the Double-Consciousness of Guilt in Hamlet”

“Choreographic Explorations of Urban Divides: A Discussion of the Poesy of the American Musical’s Introduction of Contemporary Ballet to the Propagation of the Metropolitan Collective Image”

“Technicolor Tots: Childhood Exposure to Homosexuality Through Racially Socially Gender-Constructed Manifestations of Cross-Identification as Represented by Color in The Teletubbies”

“Student Roles and Performance in Environments of Inebriation and Intoxication: The Effectiveness of the Mating Rituals of Homo Sapiens in Fraternity Settings”

“The Dynamics of Engaging in Possessive Consumption of Frozen Dairy Treats in the Domestic Eating Arena: Why My Roommate Shouldn’t Eat All the Goddamn Ice Cream That I Bought From the Store Before I Even Get Back Home”

- After this, the rest of your essay is easy.  Just use lots of words like “implications, ramifications, exploration, cross-______, counter-_________, overarching, significant, thus, therefore, engages in _____, intersects with ______, contributes to _____, problem, showing that ___.”

Example:

“Thus, the implications of his cross-societal explorations intersect with and contribute to the problem of his not obtaining success with members of the opposite sex.  By exploring the overarching failures of his counter-productive social behavior, we engage in the idea that his significant misfortunes in the romantic sector are simply ramifications of a decidedly unattractive demeanor.  Therefore, he goes home by himself, showing that he represents the dislocation of self through different states of being (as mentioned in my previous examinations of Hamlet), and eats a tub of his roommate’s ice cream in an emo stupor.”

Hey Kids!  Brooding over your breakfast cereal in the morning?  Why waste away unproductively when you can channel your angst into shitty poetry?  Here’s how:

WORD BANK

Using any of the following words in your poetry will garner you some instant cred:

sorrow, pain, die, fate, tears, love, apart, heart, crush, failure, desire, deceive, dream, cry, sleep, night, black, dark, cut, slice, gouge, rain, cloud, feed, rot, fall, sullen, betray, never, fear, wish, infection, wound, pity, cheat, mourn, lament, curse, anonymity, abominable, reprehend, desecrate, alleviate, aggrieve, assuage, barren, underlie, affliction, effulgence, amour, deprecate, self-flagellate

BODY SIMILES

[something going on in my body] [does something] [like something else]

Tears fall down my cheek like rain

My heart beats against my chest like a rabid woodpecker

My sighs escape my chest like winds of a storm

My hand flutters like a butterfly trapped in a radiator

REFERENCES TO THE PERSON WHO LEFT

Ever since you went away, I’ve died a little more inside

A piece of me has gone missing since you departed

I watched you turn around and walk out of my life forever

I’ll never forget the sight of her golden hair disappearing down the stairs

Without you, [add body simile]

BAD RHYMES

tears / fears / sears

rain / pain / insane

cry / die / try / vie / lie

bleak / weak

breath / death

love / dove / above

PRESENTATION

- Should ideally be written in a Moleskine notebook.

- Poems written around nature are best.  Preferably placid lakes, mountaintops, woods, snowscapes, grasslands, and other places where one can look out into something.

- The more bodily fluids (sweat, tears, blood) on the paper, the better.  Certain other fluids are acceptable, but would imply a different sort of method of angst relief.

- Should never be given/read to anyone else, particularly not the person it’s written about!  Emo poetry should be left somewhere, crumpled/torn-up, burned, held out in the rain to dissolve, cast into the winds, scribbled out, etc.

EXAMPLE

Let’s put our skills to use, in this concise piece written last fall by my friend James K. Paulding:

Tears fall down my cheek like rain

And mingle with my sighs of pain

Without you here my heart is bleak

I can’t breathe, my blood is thin,

And

I

am

weak.

—-

It was found wetted with tears and crumpled up in my Moleskine notebook on a wooded rustic mountaintop during a nostalgic rainstorm.  I had to wrestle it from the despairing grip of a rabid woodpecker.

The amusement park should be a place to revisit a world of wonder, joy and happy memories, in order to escape from the pain of everyday life.  In Emoland, however, there is only one purpose: to bask and revel in the general longing and desire that characterize life’s moments of heartbreak and self-deprecation.

What, you ask, would there be to do in Emoland?

1. The Tunnel of Other Peoples’ Love

- You sit in the back of a boat while a couple makes out in front of you the entire time.

2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Ride

- The 3-D/electrode-interactive/virtual reality experience.  Feel the memories of your love life fade and decay into restless oblivion,  just like Joel Barish’s!

3. Pain-O-Meter

- How much anger and frustration can you channel into yourself?  Besides the conventional methods of self-inflicted pain, you can bang your head against a wall, cry or rip hair out, for instance.  Higher scores earn you prizes like a gallon of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and a copy of “Pinkerton”.  Bonus points if you write bad poetry.

4. Why-Does-it-all-Matter Cars

- Like bumper cars, except no one bumps into anyone; they all just sit there brooding over their failures with their love interests, and why it’s even worth it to ram cars into each other when it doesn’t make any difference in the grand scheme of things.

5. House of Horror

- Danger: not for younger participants.  Experience the terrors of the awkward party situation!  Watch as cute indie girls are snatched away from you by douchebag frat guys, and you twitch helplessly, unable to gather the balls to do anything about it.

—-

I have all the Emoland blueprints in my room, and I’d start financing the operation, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s going to make any difference in the grand scheme of things.

Okay, so we’re all made of stars that blew up millions/billions of years ago.  I’m eternally grateful to my astronomy class last semester for making this especially clear to me.

Here are a couple of questions:

- What is the significance of this fact?

- Are we the only such intelligent self-reflective life that has been created by these lucky permutations of the universe?

- Are we the pinnacle of the universe’s evolution — the universe’s way of thinking of itself?

- Does any of that make a difference to think about when it comes to girls?

No.  If I see a girl like that at a party, my astronomically existential meaning takes a backseat to whether or not I can get over being such a lame-ass wallflower.  Either way, I end up more emo at the end of the night.

Footnote: This is my one allotted Zooey Deschanel photo for this blog, ever.  Otherwise it will be much too easy of a go-to subject / muse and I won’t feel creatively un-handicapped.  However hard that might be.  I actually like Ben Gibbard, too, so go them, rah rah, etc.

Me: “Ben Gibbard took Zooey Deschanel away from me!”

B: “You mean you had a chance with her before?”

Me: “Well, now I have less of one!”

— My reaction to the relationship lives also of any celebrity I fancy (see: Jenny Lewis, Emily Haines, Emma Watson, Amy Adams, Rachel Weisz in The Brothers Bloom, Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation)