tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32795136513989956792024-03-12T22:50:50.405-07:00ScotByDefaultScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-19143431176545321062014-02-04T19:19:00.001-08:002014-02-04T19:31:31.371-08:00Captain's (B)log: 4th February<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The last two days have been almost entirely uneventful, actually. Aside from patenting a new indoors sport (banana standoffs, see above) that's not so much sweeping across Utica as limping across a small corner of it, the past two days have been an exercise in how much I can possibly nap in a forty-eight hour period between shifts of study. Which hasn't been very unpleasant.<br />
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I did have a pretty awkward moment the other day, though. I was booking a room in the college library for the student literary journal, of which I was elected editor-in-chief for the year when I slid out of the first meeting for a bathroom break. Anyway, the poor lady at the library information centre had lost her voice, yet was striving to communicate with students anyway by way of fierce little whispers and hand gestures. I didn't realise I had begun to whisper back at her in that same way until about fifteen seconds after I'd softly wished her a good day and waltzed nonchalantly out the building. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd put the hit out on me by now.</div>
ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-61656988533637379432014-02-03T01:03:00.004-08:002014-02-03T01:03:51.723-08:00Captain's (B)log: 2nd FebruarySat down with a group of students to watch the Superbowl today. People tell me that the Superbowl is a big deal but, alas, my knowledge of (American) football is only a bit more comprehensive than my knowledge of basketball. I know that for basketball, the aim is to shoot a ball at a hoop, I know for that football, the job of one one team is to get the ball across a field angry obstacles and the job of the other team is to take on the role of said angry obstacles. Still, it was an enjoyable time, even if I - pretty skilfully, I'd say - managed to avoid gleaning any sporting intellect at any point across the four hour time frame.ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-79741780173531014802014-02-01T22:36:00.002-08:002014-02-01T22:38:53.705-08:00Captain's (B)log: 1st FebruaryHad a rather pleasant day today. And, judging how that first sentence went, one straight from an Enid Blyton novel. I spent the first hour or two of the early afternoon - often referred to as 'morning' by students - chatting with some friends gearing up to play some variant of Dungeons and Dragons. I have, incidentally, discovered I'm only a little less clumsy living out an imaginary life than my actual one - the whole idea of Dungeons and Dragons is based around the idea that a team of players can act out in their minds anything they can conceive of, but I always seem to be five fictitious miles away from any action and cowering from anything more fear-inducing than a particularly toothy gerbil.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9f3RSnvZiAJPDs7E9E5vvuY-Tnz1T-v_OKP3C1Ysf46HHGY5jIu5F1kQYmnNJCQd__ZiNS13coHhbkLoQ1JI4XfJDPqZC4sggSwqXbd88Pxc9G0k_NMC7FQXSw2WYByoOtFKDDaQn5HY/s1600/Tool+with+an+iphone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9f3RSnvZiAJPDs7E9E5vvuY-Tnz1T-v_OKP3C1Ysf46HHGY5jIu5F1kQYmnNJCQd__ZiNS13coHhbkLoQ1JI4XfJDPqZC4sggSwqXbd88Pxc9G0k_NMC7FQXSw2WYByoOtFKDDaQn5HY/s1600/Tool+with+an+iphone.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a> Later, I wandered down to an art exhibition put on by UC and for which I'll have to write about for the college paper, and after that wandered down to a Lebanese restaurant with some of my fellow international students.<br />
I spent the remainder of the day seeing if I could take artsy shots with my camera-phone, but packed it in after realising with some dismay I'd skipped so far into pretentiousness I'd need some rations and a serious rope ladder to get back out again.ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-57208777734439764552014-01-31T18:49:00.003-08:002014-02-01T11:02:10.181-08:00Captain's Blog: 31st January If you want to eavesdrop, you go to the Utica College cafeteria (hereafter, Utica College will be replaced with UC. As is said by faculty, it takes 'UC' to spell 'success'. As one of my lecturers pointed out, it also takes them to spell 'sucks'). The cafe - pronounced <i>calf</i> over here - is, for whatever reason, the area where people tend to lower their conversational guard to somewhere just below the earth's crust an let all their hitherto unvocalised thoughts out for an airing. Take, for instance, the conversation I overheard at lunch, where an issue regularly stumping philosophers since Plato was broached:<br />
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"Hey guys, so if a girl has a great body, can she still be a zero out of ten?"</div>
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"How d'you mean?"</div>
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"Well, if she's got a real ugly face, for example." </div>
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"Hmmm. Tricky one."</div>
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"I know, right?"</div>
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A few second's pause. Then:</div>
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"I don't think so. I think no matter how bad her face, that can't cancel out all the other stuff, can it, really."</div>
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Another pause.</div>
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"Yeah, I'd agree with that."</div>
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"Cool. Coffee?"</div>
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Eating aside, I spent the majority of my Friday evening watching my first college basketball game. The players involved moved rather fast - I slowly came to the realisation that if I'd run onto the court at any point during the match I'd have been reborn and as human roadkill and then peeled off the floor- and I also wasn't entirely sure of the rules beyond the standard ball-meets-hoop love story, so I grew a bit tired of the sport after the first, say, four minutes. To try and amuse myself, I turned to my friend and asked if he wanted to place an innocent wager on whom the victors would be. The loser, it was decided would have to fetch the other cups of cocoa for the weekend's duration.</div>
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I'd have said it was a silly thing to bet on. Had I lost.</div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-60399171882330082182014-01-30T17:30:00.003-08:002014-01-30T17:30:51.848-08:00Captain's (B)log: The Return!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If a hypothetical friend came up to me one hypothetical day (preferably a day where large, hypothetical doses of coffee and biscuits are being freely and un-hypothetically consumed), asking me what I thought the biggest disadvantage to living in upstate New York is, I'd have to set down my mug and explain that one of my major disappointments is that nobody at home seems to actually know upstate New York is here at all. </div>
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Of course I'm exaggerating a tad. Most people do know there is a New York that exists outwith New York City. Problem is, it's rarely referred to in the United Kingdom outside of the context of the city and, as such, I've found it often treated as a sort of amorphous blob that everyone knows is out there somewhere and will be found when somebody actually wants to go look for it.</div>
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This is a shame. NY the state, if a little barren of life in spots - barren like the moon, actually - has lots of fun little quirks that generally tend to make up for it. Take the town names strung throughout the place, for example, either blatantly titled after other cities (here you can jaunt from Syracuse to Rome or Paris and be back well before lunchtime) or else holding a definitely half-hearted feel to them. My favourite examples of the latter from my scanning of Google-earth has included <i>Friendship</i>, <i>Otto</i> and the completely adorable <i>Wirt</i>. Can you even imagine how <i>Wirt</i> came about?</div>
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"Hey, Greg, what d'you reckon we should name our new town?"</div>
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"What did you say?"</div>
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"'Wirt', did you say? Yeah, that could work."</div>
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"Sorry?"</div>
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"Oh, that's good too! Write it down for tomorrow."</div>
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But I would also confess to my hypothetical inquisitor, if they hadn't by this stage wished they'd never asked and were already away and looking for some hypothetical decent conversation, the lack of information is partly my fault, at least in terms of the people who I've left in Scotland. It's been four or five months since I've last posted a blog - you can chalk that up to several reasons, as varied as they are dull - and though some people have probably responded to their absence with a miserably lengthy sigh of relief, I've decided to fling the blog back into cyberspace. It's going to be in a different format, though: I'm going to aim for a daily short posting (you have to set up the standards before its possible to let them slip, after all) of a diary of sorts. Some days such a diary that might entail a half page of meandering, some days a perhaps photo or two, some days a pair of sentences standing on their own wondering where the party's got to. We'll find out as the semester progresses with the workload.</div>
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I'm also stop stabbing absolutely every post onto social media. You know where to find me.</div>
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Until tomorrow!</div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-33450321511243634412013-09-21T22:51:00.000-07:002013-09-22T06:31:47.246-07:00Of Pickles and Crossbows - Variety and American Superstores<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">You’ve got to understand: we don’t have anything like Walmart in the UK. We have superstores and supermarkets, sure - huge, square slabs of buildings where you can pick up some food or pencils or toothpaste or whatever else - but we don’t have anything like the sort of variety that you can find a five minutes’ drive away from Utica College. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After a few minutes stationary with the stationery my eye was caught by some other aisle, then another, then another - before I knew it, I’d been sucked up in the irresistible materialistic pull of all the weird, wonderful, and often pretty nasty items on display. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Craving a quick snack? Ty one of our pickles, sealed in with its juices in a handy ziplock bag! </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Take a look at out new range of ‘wildlife’ bathmats - step out the shower and onto the stinking beast of your choice today!</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Feel your firearms are missing the mark? Set your sights on one of our new crossbows, available online!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I couldn’t really buy much of anything, of course. Student budgets don’t usually tend to accommodate croquet mallets or inflatable bounce houses. Even so, it’s not so much my wallet I’ve been fearing for. My wallet has a picture of Batman on it anyway and can probably take care of itself. No, what I’m all too conscious of every time I rumble my cart through the doors of Walmart (and other stores like it) is how much time I could spend exploring in one trip. Truth is, every time I go in I can’t help but get sidetracked and go off exploring. It’s not safe, really - there’s a real danger that one of these days I’ll pop in for some cereal and emerge fifty years later, blinking at the sun, waving a box of fruit loops and apologetically mumbling something about “getting a bit distracted”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Moral of the story, then. If you ever see me half-submerged in the box of discount DVDs, spending half an hour contemplating what kind of thickness my pillow should be or something else entirely unproductive, do me a favor and drag me out of the store. I pay in pickles and crossbows.</span></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/08/my-week-as-recovering-nail-biter.html"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My Week as a Recovering Nail-Biter</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-state-of-states-my-first-fortnight.html"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My First Fortnight at Utica College</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/09/captains-blog-7th-13th-september.html"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Captain's Blog: Diary of an Exchange Student, 1</span></a><br />
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<u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since my last post I've been reading:</span></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last of the Mohicans - James Cooper</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Moby Dick - Herman Melville</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Memories of Ice - Steven Erikson</span></div>
ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-51081483064191928822013-09-14T08:27:00.000-07:002013-09-18T11:25:45.701-07:00Captain's (B)log, 7th - 13th September<h4 style="text-align: center;">
Because every day should be meaningful, except Tuesdays.</h4>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Spent my first eight hours playing Dungeons and Dragons with some new friends and, seeing as I slept in until the back of noon, didn’t manage to do much else. I played as Cain - a middle-aged half elf ranger who had spent the majority of his life roaming oriental plains, eliminating varieties of dangers for less experienced explorers. As it turned out, Cain spent most of today messing around in taverns, interrogating locals in his stilted B-movie monotone way of speaking, and staying away from action for the sake of self-preservation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Overheard a guy having a chat on his phone while sitting in a bathroom stall. “Yeah, I’m doing great, man”, he said down the line as his bowels took off in such a way as to make the Apollo missions hang their heads in shame, “what about you?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Sunday 8th September</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">International department hosted an event - ‘Meet and Greet over a Sweet Treat’ - their way to get older, full-time international students meeting those who’ve newly arrived (with sugar as bribery). Thirty or forty people showed up, and each of us were made in turn to stand and tell the sugar-high group their name, nationality and <i>one interesting fact about yourself</i>. I muttered something about enjoying books. It’s quite painful coming to terms with your own banality, though someone suggested later that I should’ve opened with ‘My name is David, I’m from Scotland and I actually quite miss the colonies’.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Speaking of reading - cracked the spine of Moby-Dick today, which I have to read in the next two weeks for class. It’s a monstrosity; I wonder why Captain Ahab didn’t just take the darned whale down by cracking it over the head with a set of Melville’s complete works.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A friend asked me to write a column for the school paper, perhaps about my experience in Utica as an International. I agreed while immediately starting to wonder what kind of stuff I could get away with...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Created a new game today, though still needs a name. It goes like this - whenever I take the lift (sorry, elevator) up to my floor, I stand to attention and salute just as the door is about to swing back. Had a couple of strange looks so far, and a few people who’ve laughed at/with me as we walked past each other. Still waiting for the hero to return the salute but I’m sure they’re out there somewhere.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Passed page 100 of Moby Dick. Established so far that we’re to call the protagonist Ishmael and that he needs to sit down and define the relationship with his buddy Queequeg. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Finished the day by playing some night-time ultimate frisbee on the football field. In other news, recently uncovered a hidden fear for fast, disc-shaped objects.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A small part of me died at lunch today when I overheard a girl at the table behind us say through her nose “I’m telling you, calculus is <i>literally</i> a killer”.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Aside from that, studied. I can be wild sometimes.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Baking hot today. There was a clubs and organisations fair on at the student lounge which I only managed to attend by peeling myself from shadow to shadow and stopping every fifteen paces for a water break. Somebody brought a snake along with her (<i>“She’s from the bio lab, we were going to bring the tarantula but we thought that seemed a bit much”</i>), which got passed around as people signed up for a few different bits and pieces. I put my name down for the Reading Society and the League of Extraordinary Nerds (you know you’ve found a solid group when they name themselves League of Extraordinary Nerds). </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Also, got a new mattress today after I complained that the old one felt as though I were resting on the bones of the previous occupant. This new one feels a bit moist. Might just sleep on the floor for a semester or two...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Thursday 12th September</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">On a mission to convert the floor to Doctor Who - sat a friend down tonight and made them watch Matt Smith’s entrance episode. I think they enjoyed it, but it was hard to gauge their reactions over my giggles and squeals of delight at every third line of dialogue.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Was informed in a breezy, off-the-cuff sort of way in one of my classes that we have a ten page essay due in a fortnight.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Was a bit late for dinner tonight (meals are fully paid for at the start of each semester)ended up being told the place was closing up ten minutes after I sat down. Smuggled a full loaf of bread out in retaliation. A crime for the ages.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Friday 13th September</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Page three-hundred of Moby-Dick has been breached, and I’m proud. Found out that the Flesch-Kincaid test (which measures the readability of a novel, the lower the number meaning the more difficult the text is to read) measures some parts of the book as low as -146.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;"></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Got a chance to write up my column for the school paper, a piece about Walmart and how they have to stock everything under the sun and then some solar winds just to show off. I had quite a bit of fun writing it, almost entirely because I got to use the line ‘<i>It’s not my wallet I’ve been fearing for. My wallet has a picture of Batman on it and can probably take care of itself’</i>. My number one fan is pleased, at least.</span></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-state-of-states-my-first-fortnight.html"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-state-of-states-my-first-fortnight.html">For an adventure with Krom and the Customs desk, click here,</a></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-wayfaring-adventurer-versus-melon.html">Or for a worry-ridden pre-exchange ramble, click here,</a></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/07/driven-to-madness.html">Or go here for my discussion of a certain socially-dismissive Bangkok driver</a></div>
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<u>Since my last post I've been reading:</u></div>
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Moby-Dick by Herman Melville</div>
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The Last of the Mohicans by James F. Cooper</div>
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Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson</div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-3759051282419299772013-09-06T08:48:00.002-07:002013-09-06T08:53:23.293-07:00The State of the States: My First Fortnight in Utica<br />
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<a href="http://www.retail-week.com/pictures/636xAny/7/8/0/1300780_USA_flag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://www.retail-week.com/pictures/636xAny/7/8/0/1300780_USA_flag.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The name-badge pinned to the hefty chest of the man at the customs desk told me his name was Krom. Krom, the first man I met in the states, was a heavy guy, probably somewhere in the late thirties; he had a crop of shortish black hair and a horizontal, unsmiling mouth. I strode up to his desk, handed over my passport and papers and, already jet lagged, tried hard not to curl up into a ball right there and then and drift off to sleep. It had been a long flight sandwiched between queues, and, by local time, it was only eleven in the morning. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Krom began to tick through what I guess was standard procedure for a teenager with a visa. Thumbprints; paper-checking; having a staring contest with a stalked camera with wires buried somewhere into Krom's PC terminal. I started to buzz with a tired satisfaction. Soon, I realised, I’d be through, off to start my student exchange properly. I let my mind slip to a kind of dazed planning area. I’d have to catch a train to New York City first. Grab a coffee, perhaps have a wander through central park. Take another train north and up to-</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Where are you staying?” Krom's sharp New Yorker’s accent, surprisingly high, sliced through my thoughts. “What’s your purpose of coming here to the U.S?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was an easy question, needing less mental processing power than <i>what did you read on the plane</i> or <i>David, why were there so many typos in your blog posts anyway </i>to answer<i>.</i> For whatever reason Krom's question took me totally by surprise, and I spent at least three seconds standing silently, staring just below the little ‘tache where the question had come from. Krom wasn’t amused.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I let my mouth clunk open to allow what felt like the entire universe poured out:<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sorry just tired I’m an exchange student here I mean an exchange student from the United Kingdom coming here I mean New York for two semesters which starts on wednesday at Utica College and-”</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.omh.ny.gov/omhweb/Statewideplan/2006/testimony/507/NY_Regions.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://www.omh.ny.gov/omhweb/Statewideplan/2006/testimony/507/NY_Regions.gif" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></i>“Where did you say you were studying?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> “-Sorry I though I said I’m studying at a place called Utica-”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> “Where did you say that was?" Concern in his face. "New York?”<br /> “-Yes Utica College New York-”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The man’s eyes burrowed themselves into concerned slits - he'd clearly no idea where I was talking about. Properly awake now, I wondered what happened to persons suspected of making up their destination. A quick google check? A more serious conversation in a darker room? Would Krom just press a hidden <i>eject </i>button and watch the spring-loaded floor launch the liar back across the Atlantic? Probably not, but I thought best to brace and prepare for take-off just in case. There was another few seconds pause, then Krom’s face slackened and his mouth dropped to a small <i>oh</i>. “Oh!” he said. “You don’t mean <i>Ewe-tick-ah</i>. You mean <i>You-deh-ca</i>!” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It took everything within me not to say “No, you-deh-ca!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I smiled, relieved and happy that we understood each other now. Krom handed my papers back to me, flashed me an official - but not entirely cold - smile, and beckoned me past into the land of oppurtunity, where, somewhere, the wake for the letter T was being held.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s been two weeks since I’ve arrived in the country. I’ve savoured (or <i>savored</i>, depending where you’re reading) the delights of Taco Bell and Dunkin‘ Donuts; I’ve been to Wal-Mart and gotten lost, twice. Since meeting other international students I’ve been partially cured of my geographic ignorance and can successfully locate Finland and Serbia after a minute or six with an atlas. The reason I start right back with Krom and <i>You-deh-ca</i>, though, is that my first conversation with my first American was enough to recognise there are some details to American culture that I’ll never properly get to grips with. Pronunciation, as it turns out, being pretty far down the list. </span></div>
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<a href="http://antiqueshopsinmichigan.com/macomb/utica/utica_welcome_sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://antiqueshopsinmichigan.com/macomb/utica/utica_welcome_sign.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>For example, the fist bump. In the UK, the knocking together of two fists only ever occurs as a joke. Here, the fist bump is completely interchangeable with a handshake. It’s not hallowed territory, but it’s not taken ironically either. I can’t get used to it. When somebody greets me with their knuckles all I can do consistently is flinch.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Or, take the driving culture. In Utica, nobody walks. No-one. One day, early on, a few internationals ventured out for a snappy five hour stroll and we couldn’t see a </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">single other human being on the pavement (slash sidewalk) that whole time. If Neil Armstrong was so desperate to step on fresh, unexplored ground, he could have saved himself a lot of man-hours by visiting central New York. The lack of pedestrians is so disconcerting, actually, I’ve started referring to off-campus meanderings as going </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">through the graveyard</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> - it’s got that same </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">you’re-doing-something-wron</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">g sense coupled with the eery certainty that somebody, somewhere, is watching you.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Also, the parties. Well, the party - singular. I’ve only been to the one, a college-organised affair that I assumed would be fairly safe to drop in on. Imagine the look on the face of the almost-entirely inexperienced, bespectacled teenager who still cherishes his childhood toys, therefore, when he walked onto the dance floor and saw a hundred or so Miley-wannabes bent over and gyrating around the middle of some classy gentleman, most of whom looked unsettlingly pleased with themselves. The windows were drenched with sweat, keeping out any light that wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I turned to a friend and tried to calmly explain to her we’d somewhere walked past the dance floor and somewhere into orgy central, but she just laughed. “Oh, that’s just how we do it here!”, she said, moving off into the crowd. I didn’t dance very much that night.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Just three differences between cultures, enough to make the point. Still, the fist-bumping kerb-hating dance-mating qualities of my new home make it all a bit more interesting, I think, and practically every day a new nuance presents itself for inspection, too many to be referenced in a post like this. From now on I’ll try keep a daily diary of my time in the land of the free post chunks of it up between (more sporadic) regular posts. Watch out for the first lot of entries in a week or two. See you then - in the meantime, if you find yourself at a US college party and feel like dancing, bring protection.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-wayfaring-adventurer-versus-melon.html">How did I feel about the exchange before I left? Click here to read some pre-travelling angst,</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/08/my-week-as-recovering-nail-biter.html">Or here to see my world-wide pledge to stop nail-biting,</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/07/all-booked-up.html">Or here if you want to join my little book club. No biscuits, lots of self-indulgence. </a></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Since my last post I’ve been reading</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Nineteen-eighty Four - George Orwell</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Memories of Ice - Stephen Erikson</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Howards End - E.M Forster</i></span></div>
ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-14238076098045518492013-08-17T10:11:00.000-07:002013-08-17T10:11:37.718-07:00 The Wayfaring Adventurer versus the Melon-sized Butterfly: Contemplating a Year Away <br />
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<a href="http://www.carbonelawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Utica_97_002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.carbonelawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Utica_97_002.jpg" width="320" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">You can find Utica pretty much bang in the middle of New York, almost exactly at the shallowest point of the Mohawk river (or so wikipedia says, at least). The city holds a population of somewhere just over sixty-thousand people, as well as the 1993 Guinness World Record for the largest donut. Seriously. Utica has been mentioned several times in the S</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">impsons; s</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">everal films I'd never heard of have been partially shot there. If you try and find if anyone important lives in Utica, a Google search will essentially respond with a ‘not anyone you’d know, silly Brit.’ </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Why the information? Well, because Utica also happens to be the place I’ll be spending my next year as an international student. In just over two days’ time, I’ll be blearily wandering out Newark airport with a bag filled with textbooks and ugly shirts, set to spending a while in the land where colour has one less U in it and where pants are the second thing you pull over your legs each morning.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My year away has, understandably, has been the main conversation I’ve been having of late. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Are you all ready to go?</i> Pretty much, I think so. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>So you've packed everything yet? </i>No, but the David of tomorrow will be all on top of that job. </span></span></div>
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<i style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Okay. And how are you feeling actually going away? </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">That’s a good question. Say, have you watched that new Breaking Bad episode?</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Utica_NY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="160" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Utica_NY.jpg" width="200" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">I’ve not figured out to reply to that ‘how are you feeling’ question yet, at least not succinctly. The truth is, when I sit back and think properly about the fact I’m shunting myself several thousand miles to the west, a </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">whole boatload</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> of feelings rear up in my stomach, sail the hydrochloric seas for a while before firing their cannons somewhere into my internal organs. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There’s excitement, obviously. Taking the initiative of moving to a strange place makes me feel like some sort of wayfaring adventurer, going independent and choosing his own cereal in the morning. Though I’m actually legally becoming a child again by moving to the states, there’s a very real sense that my doing something this dramatic is the big step towards being a fully fledged man. A man who goes into sulks fairly easily and owns several water pistols, but a man regardless.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On top of that, there’s a feeling of potential that comes from the move - that anything-could-happen-ness of flying into a new place with new things. Granted, I’m more one for tea parties than keg parties, but still there’s a new backdrop to poke around in, and not just on a small scale. Utica is situated at the red star, below-</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">- and its position, I feel, gives an oppurtunity to head to a bunch of places during holidays or if there’s a dip in the workload that would be cost a bundle in flights otherwise. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I could go to New York or DC, I can finally visit this Walmart place everyone is apparently so very keen on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Third, last, there’s the fact I’m a bit scared. Am I allowed to say that? When I told one friend I was feeling the nerves they took my hand, but then when I told another he told me to <i>stop being such a tool and man up</i>. Naturally, I sulked for a bit and shot him with my water pistols. </span></span></div>
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<a href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17q70qhist4l9jpg/ku-xlarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17q70qhist4l9jpg/ku-xlarge.jpg" width="320" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There’s quite a lot of fear, actually. What if I struggle with the way things are done? What if the learning jump is too big - or worse, too small, leaving me to play catch up in my final year of my degree? What if people don’t understand my accent? Most struggle in Scotland. It’s all a bit scary. I have to leave my dressing gown behind. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I wasn’t lying about that excitement and sense of potential, but I have to recognise I got a lot of it from videogames and they get me to explore by sitting in the same place and wiggling my thumbs. I’m not easy-going, my DVDs are arranged alphabetically and I get close to breaking down if there are toast crumbs in the butter. Throwing myself into the unknown like this is new, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t as nerve-wracking as it is exciting.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Still, that’s partly why the whole thing will be so good for me. The odds are the opening line of my next blog will be </span><i style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">The first thing I did in America was get lost, </i><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">and getting lost is a learning experience and therefore </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">possibly a</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> good thing. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, excitement, potential, nerves; all merging into a melon-sized butterfly that lives in my stomach and flaps about whenever somebody asks me how I’m feeling. At the same time, though, I couldn’t expect myself to be feeling anything else. I’m ready (as I’ll ever be) to get on that plane, and I know full well - if the worst that can happen is I spend a year in a room reading second-rate sci-fi - I’m going to have a good time, evil butterfly and all. Keep the irn-bru chilled, folks: I’m off for an adventure and I’ll see you in a bit. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Oh, and nobody mess with my DVDs while I’m gone. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/my-week-as-recovering-nail-biter.html">Click here if you want to see my attempts to go cold turkey on my nail-biting habit</a>,</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/all-booked-up.html"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Or, if that’s a bit too high octane for you, I review classic literature here.</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since my last post I’ve been:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reading Dickens’ Women by Miriam Margoyles and Sonia Fraser</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reading ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Watching Firefly/Serenity (and wishing it hadn’t taken me this long to get around to it)</span></i></span></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-46014759018991686892013-08-07T08:06:00.002-07:002013-08-07T09:21:05.848-07:00My Week as a Recovering Nail-Biter<h3>
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<a href="http://content5.videojug.com/54/544944cb-5ffd-1b60-00ab-ff0008cfcdf0/nail-it-converse-nails.WidePlayer.jpg?v2" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://content5.videojug.com/54/544944cb-5ffd-1b60-00ab-ff0008cfcdf0/nail-it-converse-nails.WidePlayer.jpg?v2" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like many addicts, I can point to a single scene as the source of my nail-biting habit</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">. I was somewhere near four years old at the time; my main investments were in orange peel and jumping on things. I wasn’t showing any signs of being a child prodigy, then, but I did get that there was something up when I wobbled into our kitchen one evening. Dad was eyeing the back of his hand, my mother standing beside him. He was looking disappointed in himself, annoyed, like he’d stepped on scales and found out he’d packed on a small cow. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Well,” said my mother, looking at me between the fingers of her husband’s left hand, “Daddy’s been biting his nails again.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“It’s not always on purpose”, Dad told me, dropping his fingers. “Daddy sometimes doesn’t realise he’s biting them when he is, see?”</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here the images flicker and my walk down memory lane comes to a brick wall. Probably, my tiny self-absorbed self said something close to “Ayeonleewanted Abiscut Notchyoorlifestory Gosh” and wandered back out the kitchen, but I can't say for sure. Regardless of what else happened, anyway, that day became the first I thought it might be a fun idea to bite down on the keratin at the end of my digits - and that wild ride has only sped up since. Fifteen years on, I chew my nails when I read, and I chew them when I write. When gaming I chew between loading times, and it'd likely be slower to take a buzz-saw to my hands after each study session. As my days as a teenager begin to dwindle (and thank goodness for that), each finger looks on its way to a party dressed as a car crash.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’m not very proud of being part of the Nail Biting Society. It’s not part of my twitter bio. I don’t join Nail Chewing Rallies and I usually give their Facebook invitations a decided <i>Ignore</i>. Eating the ends of my hands is something I just tend to do. So when - fifteen years after they accidentally set me on my habit - my parents sent me the message </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“<i>Visa appointment fixed. They take fingerprints so better stop biting nails ASAP”</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I wasn’t that worried. <i>Hey</i>, I thought. </span><i>This’ll be easy. </i><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I’m a strong kind of guy, after all. Resolve of iron. </i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I bought myself some of that anti-biting solution along with a few packs of gum. I was travelling with friends so I had people to provide counsel and, if needed, a chastising flick on the ear. Give it a week or two, I was sure, and I’d be hand modelling for cash in my spare time</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">. </span></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.nail-biting.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/nail-biting-disease.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="http://www.nail-biting.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/nail-biting-disease.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Sure enough, I found days one and two on the wagon (a little less crowded and easier to stay on than the gambling or alcohol equivalents) a pretty comfortable ride, though mostly because there wasn’t much to try and chow down on. For those first forty-eight hours, I went about with a kind of happy determination that the world was on my side and nothing could possibly defeat me. When I woke on day three and saw - to my horror - my nails were growing to what seemed an absurdly long length, that optimism dissipated. I felt </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I'd become the Wolverine's gangly second cousin at some point during the night. A small voice at the back of my mind began to slither its way forward; telling me to repent of my wandering ways and get my nails back to what to their standard stubbiness pronto</span>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Regardless, I held on and decided to persevere. <i>I am strong</i>, I told myself. <i>I shall not let my mind fall prey to the desires of the cuticle. My nails will soon be of fair length and my brother won’t be able to point at my fingers as a way to break the ice at gatherings. </i></span><br />
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<a href="http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs17/f/2007/182/7/d/Hand_Sketch_01_07_by_Lyanaling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs17/f/2007/182/7/d/Hand_Sketch_01_07_by_Lyanaling.jpg" width="193" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s hard to explain the allure in biting nails. At bottom, thinking about it, it’s just a nagging sort of feeling that won’t go away until you cave in. Like having to finish a drink even if you’re not thirsty ,or a bad joke that your brain won’t let go until its told. Thank goodness for the solution I had purchased, then - I’d put my fingers in my mouth and get hit with a dose of anti-nail biting solution, a taste next door to running your tongue down Sauchiehall street on a Friday night. Worse, the gum I was chewing would soak up solution and make the flavour stick around until I could find a place to spit the whole mess out.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Day six was worse than the first five piled together - </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">the morning and afternoon were made up of driving down one of Australia's more dull, rain-specked highways with that annoying voice tagging along for the fun. Then, once we’d stopped at our motel for the </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">evening</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">, we were forced, in the name of hygiene, to spend time in a hokey little laundromat and watch our clothes spin themselves clean. Bored, I had to spend most of that time pacing and trying very hard to forget I had hands.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“We’re all very proud of you, David,” one of my friends said, leaving those beside us to guess for themselves what class-A substance I was recovering from. “Real proud.” I glared at him, unwrapped a fresh stick of gum. Somehow </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">I stumbled to the end of the day digitally intact.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I crumbled on day nine. We were boarding a lengthy night-flight to Singapore and my travel buddies had somehow managed to beat the seatbelt sign to switching themselves off. I couldn’t sleep myself but I wasn’t fussed about it. I had a book, after all. And an iPod. I had one of those head-rest televisions...but, </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I realised (with a little jump in my seat that startled a couple of air hostesses a little way off), what I'd forgotten to bring in my hand-luggage was my nail solution. Worse, since we were headed for Singapore and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore">very much hoping not to be flayed on arrival</a>, all gum had been binned hours ago. If I was ever going to give up, I was beginning to realise, it was going to be right about...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Several hours later I walked through the baggage stands with ten fresh stumps where my progress had been</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">. I was back to car-crash hands, and all the battles I’d fought that week had been thrown out the window thirty-thousand feet up. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">. The little nagging voice had shoved to the front of my head, wreaked havoc and, job done, had abated. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The injury I'd done to myself in heading back to my nail biting ways went deeper than my fingers, too -</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> it had l</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">owered my self-confidence the same level as the guy whose girlfriend introduces him with “this is my...friend...”. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">I had taken on my habit, with bravado, and had lost rather easily. </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So much for being resolute, </i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I thought. </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So much for being strong</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, If I stopped the words flowing at that last paragraph, this would turn out to be a fairly depressing post. I failed, after all, and failures as a rule tend not to do very well at things. Why not write up the <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/things-high-school-taught-me-part-one.html">sequel to that high school blog</a> or another post another <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-ii-big-ol.html">game review</a>? People laughed at those. Sometimes even in the right places. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, the reason I'm sharing my failures with you, fair readership,</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> is that I’m going to try again. The second I hit that ‘post’ button marks my attempt to get back on the straight, nicely filed path of hand hygiene and drag myself back onto the wagon. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">I hope it’ll work. I’d like to be able to open canned drinks again without help. That's the dream, isn't it? So, you catch me a week from now with nails looking anything like this:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Be a pal and flick my ear for me, would you? Thanks.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[No nails were harmed in the composing of this blog]</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/all-booked-up.html"><br /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/all-booked-up.html">To see me self-righteously dismissing well-loved literary classics, go here,</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/driven-to-madness.html"> here I tell a slightly distasteful yet unfortunately true tale of a recent car ride.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>Since my last post I've been reading:</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Prince of Thorns - Mark Lawrence</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">God Collar - Marcus Brigstocke</span></div>
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<br />ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-26842050714414490102013-07-24T07:23:00.002-07:002013-08-07T06:22:22.869-07:00All Booked Up<br />
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<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/Books-06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/Books-06.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Somewhere between tuning the keyboard towards schools, cafes and tangents the size of Norway, I’ve mentioned that I study English literature at university (the proper course title is English, Journalism & Creative Writing, but that takes a lot of effort to say).</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When I tell people what it is that I study, I can get a few different responses. There’s the Good-luck-getting-a-job face; there’s the equally probably lets-change-the-subject-before-my-insomnia-gets-cured body language. The best, rarest, reaction, though is when somebody asks if what I've been studying is any good.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you fall into that last camp, this post is for you. Here, you’ll find a mini-review of six texts I’ve studied in the past two years - three that struck me as especially worthwhile; three I’d rather eat than reread. Just my opinions, obviously.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">May your literary adventures be strong. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anthropology-Dan-Rhodes/dp/1847675506/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1374672773&sr=8-4&keywords=dan+rhodes">I liked: Anthropology - Dan Rhodes</a></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’m cheating already. Why? Because I actually studied <i>Anthropology </i>in writing class, not literature. I know you’ll forgive me if you pick up, though. The book is a sparkling collection of flash fiction (short short stories) exploring aspects of love and relationships. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Put like that, it kind of sounds like a gushing mess, but most of the stories Rhodes has put together are way too sharp to ever be labelled ‘gooey’. Almost all the hundred-word escapades are bizarre, too - more likely to make you go ‘aaah’ than ‘oooh’. Look down to see what I mean.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">See? Best of all,<i> Anthropology </i>is as cheap as they come. Buy this, you. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Land-Green-Plums-Herta-Muller/dp/1862072604/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374673229&sr=8-1&keywords=land+of+green+plums">I didn’t much care for: The Land of Green Plums - Herta Muller</a></i></b></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kwcZ6o5jNCw/TBIzv60i2xI/AAAAAAAAFRg/KsQF7MnUshc/s400/the+land+of+green+plums.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kwcZ6o5jNCw/TBIzv60i2xI/AAAAAAAAFRg/KsQF7MnUshc/s200/the+land+of+green+plums.JPG" width="134" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“So”, our lecturer said at the start of our second or third ever lecture, “Has everybody almost finished the novel?” Most gave some sort of acknowledgement that they had overcome the urge to commit seppuku with their copies and had managed soldier through to the end.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Good”, said the lecturer “Because if you can read that book, you can handle really anything else we throw at you.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It was a good point, but what a way to give it. Honing in on the lives of characters living under Ceaușescu’s Romania, <i>Land of Green Plums</i> is admittedly really clever. Annoyingly, though, it’s always striving to make sure you don’t forget how clever it is. The amount of symbolism crammed into each paragraph makes it hard enough to work out the main points of the story let alone how the band of merry metaphors fit in. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For sure, my reaction has been influenced by the fact the lecturer didn’t so much throw us in the deep end as bury us several meters under the pool. Maybe if I pick the book back up as I go further into the degree I’d enjoy it more, but for now it’s staying on the shelf to think very hard about what it’s done.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Faustus-Thrift-Christopher-Marlowe/dp/0486282082">I was quite fond of: Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe</a></i></b></span></div>
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<a href="http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/9780451531612_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/9780451531612_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG" width="122" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A Renaissance play wherein a man sells his soul for twenty-four years of near-unlimited power. Sounds good, doesn't it? I’ll be even more blunt than that - <i>Faustus</i> is a text four centuries old and still manages to be more entertaining than Paranormal Activity Five will ever be.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In another blog, I talked about <i>Faustus</i> consuming my life as I neared exams. A month or so after that post, I saw got the chance to see the play being performed. Though I knew the whole thing back to front, Marlowe's play <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Faustus_(play)#The_two_versions">- or at least what we have of it </a>- </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">still managed to keep me rapt all the way through (apart from when the theatre decided to replace a couple of scenes with their own. That was scary for other reasons). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">The play bounces around comic and tragic as Faustus tries to come to grips with his power, the extent of that power, and how much of a role he has in his own salvation/damnation. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Recommended.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Robinson-Crusoe-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199553971/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374674152&sr=1-3&keywords=robinson+crusoe">I wanted to throw in the Styx: Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe</a></i></b></span></div>
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<a href="http://bookcrazes.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cover1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://bookcrazes.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cover1.jpg" width="230" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I bought this one on audiobook so I could listen to it while doing other things. I was still bored enough by the end to consider strangling myself with my earphones. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For those who don’t know, the novel tells the story of a man - no prizes for guessing his name - who goes and gets himself</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> stranded on a desert island for a decade or three. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I know </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Robinson Crusoe</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> is considered a classic, up there with all the other behemoths of literature, but I just can’t get past how much of the book is made up of useless lists and details. They run all the way through. To me,<a href="http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/crusoe/summary.html"> the Sparknotes summary</a> is actually a far more compelling read.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And it only gets worse as the super-specific story goes on. Even after Crusoe actually manages to get himself back to mainland alive and kicking, only now with a handy sidekick/slave, Defoe keeps the monolithic paragraphs rolling for another forty pages give the ending of Lord of the Rings a run for its money in the it-should-have-ended-ages-ago competition. At the ending of the book, then, Defoe treats the reader to a thorough view of Crusoe’s bank details.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’m not a fan.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In other news, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Foe-J-M-Coetzee/dp/0241950112">J.M Coetzee’s ‘Foe’</a>, a retelling of the Crusoe story with Coetzee’s own preoccupations mixed in, is well worth reading.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Slaughterhouse-Childrens-Crusade-Duty-dance-Death/dp/0099800209/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374674618&sr=1-1&keywords=slaughterhouse+five">I prefer to most people: Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut</a></i></b></span></div>
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<a href="http://relishreads.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/slaughterhouse-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://relishreads.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/slaughterhouse-5.jpg" width="130" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many seem to think most novels can be swept into two categories. On one side we have LITERATURE, where you’ll find clever books being meaningful</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> but rarely any fun. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On the other hand we have literature, lower case, where you’ll have a fun ride but won’t really remember anything about it after finishing it. The idea goes that you should read LITERATURE, but you want to read literature. LITERATURE is like being at a formal dinner; literature is like being at a barbeque.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This whole way of thinking suffers from one key disadvantage - It’s wrong, and Vonnegut’s <i>Slaughterhouse Five</i>, on its own, is enough to blow it apart. Within a story about a WWII prisoner of war who gets abducted by aliens (what) and time-travels apathetically through his own life, the novel bats around questions of meaning, free will and heroism better than anything else I've read. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As a novel, it’d show up to LITERATURE's formal dinner wearing shorts and a t-shirt that said ‘pull my finger’. It's fantastic.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Renaissance-Italy-Jacob-Burckhardt/dp/0486475972"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>An alternative to capital punishment would be: </i></b></span><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy - Jacob Burckhardt</i></b></a></div>
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<a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v670/RareBookCellar/33/59534.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v670/RareBookCellar/33/59534.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For the third time, I’ve got to admit I’ve referenced what I’m about to talk about already <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-ii-big-ol.html">in another pos</a>t. Maybe I’m running out of material, maybe I’m running out of bad jokes (I know a few who’d say the well dried up on the good ones a while back, hey-hey). Still, if you’d try and read this book, you’d know Burckhardt is worth a second round.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy </i>is a 19th century German work that talks about 14-16th century Italy, and, like the other two texts I’ve sent packing back to the publishers, this one - within the rather niche field that exists in - is seen as a groundbreaking piece of work. Scanning the blurb last summer, I was actually looking forward to getting stuck. That excitement lasted to maybe half-way down page four. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s just really, really boring. It’s not that the words are difficult or the content is hard to swallow. It’s just dull. To give an example, selected at random:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>In the great Federigo (1444-1482), whether he were a genuine Montefeltro or not, Urbino possessed a brilliant representative of the princely order. As a Condottiere he shared the political morality of soldiers of fortune, a morality of which the fault does not rest with them alone; as ruler of his little territory he adopted the plan of spending at home the money he had earned abroad, and taxing his people as lightly as possible. Of him and his two successors, Guidobaldo and Francesco Maria, we read: ’They erected buildings, furthered the cultivation of the land, lived at home, and gave employment to a large number of people: their subjects loved them.’</i></span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />
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See? I kept catching myself rereading the same paragraph two or three times just because my brain kept flicking off.. As far as I know, I was the only one in the class who struggled to the end, but I can’t see myself picking it up again unless I’m short of kindling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">I could describe it a bit more, but instead I’m just going to give<a href="http://www.paduan.dk/Kunsthistorie%202008/Tekster/The%20Civilization%20of%20the%20Renaissance%20in%20Italy%20-%20Burckhardt.pdf"> a link to a PDF version of the book</a> (hooray, it’s in the public domain) so you can see for yourself. Bet you </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">can't</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> make it past page four. Go on, I dare you.</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/07/driven-to-madness.html"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i></i></span><br /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/07/driven-to-madness.html">Click here if you would rather read an elaborate account of a man relieving his bladder in my presence. Nope, no joke.</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/06/observing-christians.html">Or how about some tongue-in-cheek observations of Christians, as a Chris</a>tian?</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><u>If you're wondering, since my last post I’ve been reading/playing/watching:</u></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>The Shining by Stephen King </i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson</i></span></div>
ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-81888246846735231822013-07-16T05:08:00.001-07:002013-07-16T08:08:36.975-07:00Driven to Madness<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: right;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span id="goog_1178722460"></span><span id="goog_1178722461"></span>(Or: some other half-baked pun for a story that still makes me gag a little)<br>
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(Or: some other half-baked pun for a story that will make you gag a little, all the rest of your days)<br>
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(Or: Seeing Red)</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8ILlFM7IimU5oQpeyuHJdCi8ChXHnI1uPlJi-hZYOfT5bVFPSST3gWxy2KkcI6hQEAirYiR2FY1_z2s-9epFpnXqvVFRYHfLmojyQKG4RT4UKZ8hFphXJ_EwvCneHeXUpZ2mWg0mvZI/s1600/SAM_0472.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8ILlFM7IimU5oQpeyuHJdCi8ChXHnI1uPlJi-hZYOfT5bVFPSST3gWxy2KkcI6hQEAirYiR2FY1_z2s-9epFpnXqvVFRYHfLmojyQKG4RT4UKZ8hFphXJ_EwvCneHeXUpZ2mWg0mvZI/s320/SAM_0472.JPG" width="320"></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The four of us piled out the sticky, dirty air of whatever Bangkok street it was and into the taxi, with our wet fringes were clinging to our foreheads and the balls of our feet less than half a mile from crying ‘go on without us, lads!’ and crumbling to dust. Our little group looked to our driver - or, as we were near to calling him, Champion - with a mix of thankfulness and quiet awe. The man was lean, somewhere in the fifties, with a few wisps of beard straggled out from his chin under a thin nose and lips. A half-finished bottle of coke was sloshing beside snack wrappers and dustballs in the car door pockets. Our driver didn’t seem nearly as keen to study us - his left hand drummed the wheel in an annoyed <i>getonwidit </i>kind of way, head flicking from road to us and back to the road again.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“We’re looking to go to the grand palace?” Justin, eldest of our little band of travelers and leader by virtue of being able to navigate his way towards anything other than failure or a Big Mac, ventured. The wispy man with the annoyed <i>gedonwidit </i>gesture looked back, his face making it clear he didn’t understand a word of English (how dare he).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Grand Palace?” Justin tried again. He brought out our map, then jutted a finger towards the Palace, which probably would’ve been helpful if the map looked less like a mix between a theme park guide and the Game of Thrones title sequence. It also, helpfully, didn’t speak Thai.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At first, our Champion still seemed nonplussed on where these ignorant tourists he’d picked up wanted to go. A few seconds passed, then, just as we thought he might give up and bustle us out his car, he thumbed the button on his cab meter, shrugged his shoulders slightly and set off to join the rest of the traffic.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This shrug, in retrospect, should have been thought of as a ‘massive clue’.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><br>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">At the time, we were too exhausted to really notice anything beyond a vague </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Ohlookthingsaremovingthatsnice feeling,</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> watching the neon yellows and pinks of the signs and cars clashing against the grey buildings rather like a clown cartwheeling around a politician as he's in the middle of discussing tax reform. Slender trees sprinkled themselves along the kerb between shops and street-vendors. Stalls, with offers ranging from mostly-innocent to entirely obscene - including special ‘toys’ wrapped in cellophane - clustered in with each other, giving some streets an artificial, if seedy, canopy. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">‘Massive clue’ number two: the seedy stalls and shops were becoming more the standard than the exception. By the end of the ride, it seemed the guys who owned them were setting up shrines to viagra.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvynYs5LFad0MtJaFSYR5qBxRkswDc1J66SzKp7e7OGJ-ou6W-7H459VieVArWE-oJsfH55ZWyDXy0Dc_5eLKhDBJcITFEEp2dQ_RWFupprv4nqAGVYbCLMWcjaLFufrBgRtHtmSqGgYU/s1600/SAM_0550.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvynYs5LFad0MtJaFSYR5qBxRkswDc1J66SzKp7e7OGJ-ou6W-7H459VieVArWE-oJsfH55ZWyDXy0Dc_5eLKhDBJcITFEEp2dQ_RWFupprv4nqAGVYbCLMWcjaLFufrBgRtHtmSqGgYU/s320/SAM_0550.JPG" width="320"></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To our shame, it was only Justin who was beginning to wonder if things were perhaps not going as we had hoped. Under his breath - “I’m not sure he’s taking us to the Palace.” Out loud, in an awkwardly high voice, as what little hope he’d put on reserve from the earlier conversation was spilled out - “Grand Palace, yes?...yes?”</span><br>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our Champion didn’t seem too happy with our questioning him - all at once his foot punched down on the accelerator; he lifted his left hand off the wheel and slapped the flat of his wrist against the dashboard, pointing angrily to the road (which was now feeding itself under his cab rather quickly) as he started shouting, quickly and loudly ‘<i>Grahnpalass</i>! Yes! <i>Grahnpalass</i>!” His wrist did a little flick towards Justin as though brushing off a fly. “<i>Granplass</i> Shhh.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">‘Massive Clue’ that our Champion might not actually be such a Champion number three: picked up on. Well, at least a little. Despite his fiery response, despite the almost definite fact that we were heading nowhere near the <i>Granplass</i>, none of us made any move to leave the cab. The man was our driver, after all. We were paying him. He wouldn’t, we felt sure, take us to any old place just to get a few extra Baht. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“I think he’s taking us to the red light district,” Justin muttered out in his quiet low voice, presumably in case there was a danger the driver might suddenly have absorbed a Merriam-Webster’s.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Clue four, received.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s a running joke that a lot of men who come to Bangkok would have responded to “I think he’s taking us to the red light district” with “Oh, good! Which one?”. Not us: we resolved to leave the taxi as soon as the traffic was clear and our Champion/Anti-Hero had put his car back behind the sound barrier. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Fate decreed, however, that before we got out there was to be one final, awful trial by taxi. We stopped under the traffic lights in the middle of perhaps four or five lanes of cars. Ex-Champion/Anti-Hero was finishing the last of his coke and we were discussing how best to continue our journey:<br>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Right,” one of us in the back said, “he’s probably been taking us in the wrong direction, but-”<br>
“Wrong direction? He knew exactly where he was taking us.”<br>
“Guys...”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“-But it shouldn’t be too hard to get back on track.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Guys...”<br>
“True. We can probably walk some of the way or get another cab.”<br>
“Guys...”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“That or just take the subway-”<br>
“Guys, he’s about to pee.”</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiaG4QrW47ZBQkzENPvR89gr0kazrOTNvGoBXNQGofC8M209aJaFrCbJ3KKzklyCJ7LCupmRCHfFQjo6LhUCajFZX76qt7lUkhTATENdZ33UQHXARD6-aKTw2y6qdmU1W2ZLgmsX4WMjw/s1600/SAM_0595.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiaG4QrW47ZBQkzENPvR89gr0kazrOTNvGoBXNQGofC8M209aJaFrCbJ3KKzklyCJ7LCupmRCHfFQjo6LhUCajFZX76qt7lUkhTATENdZ33UQHXARD6-aKTw2y6qdmU1W2ZLgmsX4WMjw/s320/SAM_0595.JPG" width="320"></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Justin was speaking in the mutter again, barely audible. His entire face was staring, unblinking straight ahead like someone had stuck it there with an invisible vice.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then, we heard a zipping, then a grunt. An unmistakable shloshing noise came, the sound of a recently emptied coke bottle being filled back up.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Oh, mercy,” said Justin. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We could only just hear him over the sound of that <i>shloshing</i> and our own miserable internal wailing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Still nowhere to stop, we four had a choice - (a) leave the car and hope the traffic lights didn’t change, or (b) shout at the man until he stopped. We opted for (c) be very British, look out the window and pretend it isn’t happening. He had been going for a good while, surely</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>slosh</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It would have to to stop soon. We would, we thought, be</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>sloshh</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">laughing about this in ten, fifteen minutes.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After four or five seconds of the Ex-Champion/Anti-Hero/Worst Enemy emptying the Niagara into the plastic the red light flicked to green. For a wonderful second the man was forced to stop and take off the handbrake. Once he’d got the handbrake off, though, he was back to business </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br>
(“Guys, I can’t look”<br>
“Keep it together Justin”</span><br>
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“Easy for you to say you can’t see it”)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And back en route to what probably wasn’t going to be the <i>Granpalahss.</i></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig1G2p5bH7AMxTyH0MsIAPzTB-4inF_06FQk_lE87_rJUsOTl8TgK5jix_eQpv1xkf-neLVxfwqzZJt8mNoARErJm2ZNyxwfqb4Ck10IFxjq-U7337HNUYMgorC2EC7YTAoCKjBgZoNbE/s1600/SAM_0491.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig1G2p5bH7AMxTyH0MsIAPzTB-4inF_06FQk_lE87_rJUsOTl8TgK5jix_eQpv1xkf-neLVxfwqzZJt8mNoARErJm2ZNyxwfqb4Ck10IFxjq-U7337HNUYMgorC2EC7YTAoCKjBgZoNbE/s320/SAM_0491.JPG" width="320"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Right to left: Justin, Michael, a sex-crazed monk we met (story for another post), Jonathan.</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Say, look at that building!” One of us in the back cried, pointing through the passenger window at a random slab of a structure, away from Ex-Champion/Anti-Hero/Worst-Enemy's side of the car. Those in the back agreed in high, appreciative sobs, then Justin took up the appreciation from the front, slapping his head to the left with a “Yes, look at that! Wow!” Meanwhile, the t</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">raffic was beginning to slow again. Our driver, without stopping - car or bladder - slanted his face to the left to see what we were all looking at. Failing to find what was animating us so (try looking down, buddy), he flicked his gaze from the scenery </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Slosh</i> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">to Justin and </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Slosh</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Stayed there. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Though it came several bales after it should have, we finally reached our last straw. “We’re getting out now”, Justin said.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi00bDCzbS3hF9GLYK7kO2sNsOOOcePoJKaQe_0LhGQQ7QoYSlrWn4VYp2TcGj2N_8AyNqiFA-qPG4r5gKHx2e7fdH63piZO4qYcv2vhF13JXpk-Tk6HuwNEYVGKWeR2aDAj9xngGPLTzk/s1600/SAM_0551.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi00bDCzbS3hF9GLYK7kO2sNsOOOcePoJKaQe_0LhGQQ7QoYSlrWn4VYp2TcGj2N_8AyNqiFA-qPG4r5gKHx2e7fdH63piZO4qYcv2vhF13JXpk-Tk6HuwNEYVGKWeR2aDAj9xngGPLTzk/s320/SAM_0551.JPG" width="320"></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We waved for the driver to stop, pointed at the kerb, tried to hold it together for a little longer. Worst Enemy/Very Bad Man looked surprised. He lifted the bottle <i>out</i> and placed it beside the wrappers in the door pocket, lid still off and flies still unzipped. He shifted his vehicle to a closer lane. Worst- Enemy/Very Bad Man, after getting over his initial surprise that his passengers wanted out, turned a little angry. He started barking at us - we for once found ourselves very grateful for the language barrier - and screwed his face up into a scowl.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I took out a few dozen Baht, hating myself for feeling guilty. He took the money. For a brief second, our hands touched. We opened the doors and left the taxi.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Though we’d met horror at one kind of red lights, we’d still managed to get out before the other kind really made its presence felt in any other way apart from the frequency of the questionable stalls. Still, we opted to subway our way out this side of town before taking a shower, arranging some therapy then calling our family to tell them we loved them very, very much. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And just think. Somewhere, on the other side of the world, some innocent, tired tourists could well be piling out the sticky, dirty air of whatever Bangkok street it they’re on and into the taxi...</span><br>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Oh mercy.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>For a similarly written escapade concerning paying large sums of money to dance stupidly at clubs, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-misadventures-as-reluctant-clubber.html">you might want to visit this link</a>,<br>
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Or here for <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.com/2013/06/observing-christians.html">my recent observations of Christians, as a Christian</a>,</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Or, if this one was all too much for you, <a href="http://wallpapertube.com/photography/calming-sunset-wallpaper-2">click here to see a nice sunset</a>.</i></span></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-90411329625223317352013-06-29T20:43:00.001-07:002013-06-29T20:43:24.146-07:00Observing Christians<div><b>Warning - Partially Flippant</b></div><div><br></div>Christians are, generally unintentionally, funny - a fact often found true not in obvious cases of stupidity or in wince-some biblical puns, but rather in simple observation of the redeemed masses. The simple, everyday quirks of the average Christian are more colourful and undeniably funny than a preacher doing a one-man reenactment of Jesus Christ Superstar. On rollerskates.<div><div><br><div>With this in mind, I present to you some of the more bizarre tendencies of, as well as a few tips for, the average Christian (most points are things the writer has caught himself doing, and all can be read faster than your child usually says Grace).</div><div><div><br></div><div>(1) If the original Greek or Hebrew is made reference to in a sermon, it means (a) the point of the passage is made more clear by explaining a specific word (b) the preacher is pandering for time.</div><div><br></div><div>(2) Inter-faith dialogue always seems like a good idea until it turns out that the other person knows more than you.</div><div><br></div><div>(3) Children's talks are rarely only beneficial for children.</div><div><br></div><div>(4) Psalms should only be sung by those who have a tune in mind before they begin to sing.</div><div><br></div><div>(5) Many Christians harbour the suspicion their life would be a lot easier if Jesus had actually said 'love your enemies, apart from that one guy. Man, he's such a jerk.'</div><div><br></div><div>(6) It's often possible to identify the worship song coming next from the prayer beforehand ('And help us remember, Lord, that our God is an awesome God. That's you. You're an awesome God. Amen.)</div><div><br></div><div>(7) Friendships between denominations usually operate around the unspoken premise <i>You're family in Christ so I'm willing to overlook the fact that you're very, very wrong.</i></div><div><i><br></i></div><div>(8) It is widely known a Spurgeon quote a day keeps those heretics at bay.</div><div><br></div><div>(9) Not everything should be attributed to spiritual warfare. There are probably no angels and demons playing tug-of-war with your lost scarf.</div><div><br></div><div>(10) 'Is Justin Bieber really a Christian?' Should not be one's most pressing theological question.</div><div><br></div><div>(11) 'Bible-based fun' often amounts to 'Hour-long lecture'.</div><div><br></div><div>(12) Ten years later, many Christians are still struggling to let go of Bruce Almighty as a source of conversation in youth groups.</div><div><br></div><div>(13) Tea and biscuits are the staple diet of every church member.</div><div><br></div><div>(14) Everyone secretly enjoys the tense standoffs that arise when two people begin to pray simultaneously.</div><div><br></div><div>(15) Occasionally, Baptists dance.</div><div><br></div><div>(16) Many pious deem 'How can I pray for you?' as a substitute for 'What's the gossip?'</div><div><br></div><div>(17) Struggling to bring in the youth to your event? Bring snacks.</div><div><br></div><div>(18) The affirming hum Christians make in response the prayers of others is actually a well-honed, delicate art, said by some to be passed down by the apostle Paul himself.</div><div><br></div><div>(19) M<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">ake sure you know your audience well enough b</span>efore shouting a triumphant 'can I get an amen?' </div><div><br></div><div>(20) When a typo appears in the hymn lyrics, all those singing undergo a fierce inner debate whether they should sing the error or the actual word. </div><div><br></div><div>(21) Bible-based cartoons and films are always entertaining for nearly always the wrong reasons.</div><div><br></div><div>(22) The sentence 'Oh, you're a Christian are you?' doesn't necessarily imply 'please, let me help you evangelise to this oncoming Land Rover'.</div><div><br></div><div>(23) If someone opens a conversation by addressing you as Brother/Sister expect an intensive loving rebuke to be inbound.</div><div><br></div><div>(24) One mistruth is continually told in churches across the world: 'no-one's watching you worship anyway.'</div><div><br></div><div>(25) In a sermon, the use of the phrase 'one last point' is usually code for 'I hope you brought a packed lunch to this gig'.</div><div><br></div><div>(26) When the preacher says </div><div><br></div><div>'if you feel like the Spirit is speaking to you personally through tonight's message, raise your hand',</div><div><br></div><div>you will often find yourself fighting the urge to scratch your right ear.<br><div><br></div><div>(27) It's disrespectful to watch the congregation member getting frustrated that their final drop of communion has, once again, evaded their tongue and has decided to remain camped out in the glass.</div><div><br></div><div>(28) It's disrespectful to watch them, but they're always there.</div></div></div><div><br></div><div>(29) "It is known that name-dropping and quoting Church Fathers will boost your sanctification levels to somewhere around Augustine's" - Tertullian </div></div><div><br></div><div>(30) When an awful worship lead says "And we'll get to spend an eternity in heaven like this!" it's within the bounds of orthodoxy to wonder if he hasn't got heaven mixed up with that other place.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-80886125921915264272013-06-12T14:40:00.001-07:002013-06-12T14:40:22.887-07:00Time to Summer Down <br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">The funny thing about Summer is that it seems to be the Best Thing Ever</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 5px; letter-spacing: 0px;">(TM)</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> a week before it kicks off. When students are (ideally) </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">funnelling</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> their waking hours into past papers, staring at lecture notes or wondering wistfully if Armageddon has been pencilled in for anytime soon, scores of hours of free time seem like the best thing since people stopped saying YOLO. And, to start, it is, even if you don’t do much. There's a lot to commend days that revolve around C-List Youtube videos and the eternal question </span></span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">how late does it have to be before breakfast is really lunch?</i><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Such stretches of nothingness, however, can begin to grate - even if you’ve got a fairly busy social schedule these kinds of days can stack up on each other quickly and do weird things to your mind. Personally, so much time spent in purposeless isolation can cause my tolerance levels to drop faster than the fan base of <i>Heroes</i>. During summer, pet hates balloon into mortal sins; little quirks of everyday living become unforgivable slights. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Think I’m kidding? Here are three quick examples of holiday-specific aggravations.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>(1) Fun-sized snack bars</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">‘Good things come in small packages’ is what we’re told, usually at Christmas by someone who thinks you’ll be made made whole by another pocket sized Filofax. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes the cliche is true - when I’m sent a document to proofread and end up after two hours drowsily blinking through eyelashes that feel sealed with wax, small is definitely better. When Samwise Gamgee is getting hitched to a nice lady-hobbit after all drama in the film ended half an hour ago, less is more. When someone asks how you’re doing, they don’t want to hear anything longer than ‘Pretty good. You?’.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Not always, though, is the smaller superior. Imagine: I’m rummaging in the cupboards for a snack. My fingers clasp around the thin wrapper of something that feels deliciously fattening. I pull my hand out of the cupboard and (to my unimaginable horror) see that the chocolate bar is small enough to make my thumb feel like a Titan amongst mortals. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Such an event would be upsetting yet forgivable had the designers of the packet not had the evil within their hearts to tauntingly label the food ‘Fun-sized’. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Fun-sized! Is anyone actually persuaded by this move? Is there anyone with the capacity to read who looks at the fictitious adjective and exclaims “Oh, score! I thought I was having a plain old Mars Bar but I guess today’s my lucky day!” Hardly. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Though I understand slapping “The Over-Compensating Snack” on the wrapper instead might not sell as well, I reserve the right to be mildly irritated.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some Cola out in plain view. Rookie mistake.</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>(2) </b></span><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Refrigerator Hide and Seek</b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Say for the sake of argument that after some smashed windows and flipped tables, you’ve regained your cool. You’ve gone to the shops, bought some honest consumables and, now home, are in need of some fridge space to store the things that need cooling. Not so fast! You’ve forgotten that the fridge is the preferred hunting ground of that ignoble species: The Family. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What’s that, you say? You’ve written your name on your purchases? Words can be easily overlooked in the face of hunger. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What’s that? Parents wouldn’t take take your things without checking? Ah, you forget the “We’ve been feeding you your whole life anyway” response, the ultimate shut-down and worst possible afterward to all apologies. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No, young novice. Best hide your purchase behind something less appetising - say that cabbage that decides being green is too mainstream - and avoid the tastebuds of Sauron sweeping over and devouring your property. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Refrigerator</span></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Hide and Seek: saving over 50,000 cakes per annum. Thank me later.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What’s that? There’s a sandwich already stashed behind that cabbage? Dibs</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">.</span></div>
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<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;">(3) Gratuitous Nicety</b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now, it’s pleasant when you’re trying to turn onto a busy road and some other driver decides to decelerate a bit to let you in. This is actually called by some ‘being nice’. When the same road holds only one person and (s)he still drops twenty miles an hour to let you in first, this is ‘being unnecessary and a bit strange’.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.acceptingevangelicals.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Christmas-Present-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="249" src="http://www.acceptingevangelicals.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Christmas-Present-2.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If I’m walking through someplace with my rucksack open and someone taps my shoulder and points this fact out to me, I appreciate the concern and thank the stranger. If I drop a pen and that same person from miles away charges forward to pick it up for me, I wonder if they are trying to be kind or if the makers of Cluedo could have been a bit more comprehensive in their identification of weaponry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">When an </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">aquaintance</span></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> gets you a present and the tag reads </span></span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">‘Happy Birthday, Melvin!’</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">, it shows they care. If your name's Melvin, anyway. When a friend gets you a present and the tag says </span></span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">‘Happy Monday! (present one of seven)'</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">, you might have to set set your social media to </span></span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">appear offline</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> for a few years.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>At this point, belief in the essential goodness of humanity being slowly drained with every sentence, you hold your head in your hands and wonder how somebody could get annoyed at such triviality. “Maybe”, you say, “He can get along on a day to day basis without being such a grump?”<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/life-as-rubbish-catering-assistant-part.html">Maybe</a>.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/50-rules-for-pain-free-bus-riding.html">Then again,</a></i></span></div>
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<i><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/things-high-school-taught-me-part-one.html"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></a></i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/things-high-school-taught-me-part-one.html">Probably not.</a></i></span></div>
ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-71677148908629399592013-06-04T02:45:00.003-07:002013-06-04T02:45:54.756-07:00Things High School Taught Me, Part one: A Waist of Time<br />
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<i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Back in March, I uploaded a quick list of things I’d learnt in my Primary school years that hadn’t managed to make it to the official syllabus. </span></i><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The post was fairly well received. Not in the usual X-Factor ‘I’m know I’m good at singing because my friends and family tell me I am’ sort of way, either. </i></div>
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<i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In the weeks following the post’s online life, I’ve been asked by some to write a sequel about my years in secondary education. To start, I wasn’t all that keen to do so - partly because I found high school rather an unpleasant period, and mostly because my alter-ego at that time would have to have been named Bland-Man or something along those lines. I had at that time of life, for example, a favourite vegetable; I had an unhealthy obsession with my Runescape persona (purely platonic, you understand); phrases like ‘outside world’ would all too easily strike fear into my innermost being.</i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>As time has frittered away in the past month or two, however, I’ve found myself caught up in snippets of memories and quirks of my time at secondary school that hopefully merit a strongish post. Sit down, then, relax, never say the word ‘chillax’ in my presence, and enjoy part one of Things High School Taught Me.</i></span></div>
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<b>Lesson one</b>: <b>Johnny B. Goode has been ruined by overzealous PE Teachers</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.liberdance.ru/uploads/posts/2011-12/1323547056_logo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.liberdance.ru/uploads/posts/2011-12/1323547056_logo1.jpg" width="247" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Each year, between the annual downpour of sleet and the hallowed Christmas break, there existed a stint of several weeks where ‘Physical Education’, a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at sport, was swapped out for ‘social dancing’: a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at dancing with members of the opposite sex.<br />
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Every week, the classes would be marched into the games hall and the genders would establish themselves at either side of the room. Only the most beautiful and confident of souls would ever strut across the no-mans-land for a chat, while those at the other side of the social spectrum would watch these human peacocks and very much miss our virtual crossbows. Most, somewhere in between the extremes, stuck to their side waiting (perhaps a little nervously) for the teacher to bellow ‘Choose your partners!’ like some kind of failed gameshow host and, only then, venture across as a team.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If I had to choose one part of my whole social dancing career I really did enjoy, it was this ‘choosing of the partners’, which involved the entire group of puberty-suffering youngsters trying to toe the line between scoring the person they wanted to lock hands with while still pretending not to care about anything much, ever. Such a ritual usually includes deliberately positioning yourself within a ten-foot radius of your target; absent-mindedly/deliberately catching their eyes, then asking if they would like to double up - normally with as few words as possible:<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Hi. Partners?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“You?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As time went on, actually, these lines of questions became an increasingly honed art - by our fifth year all it took was an eyebrow twitch and you had three weeks’s worth of dancing and a prom date all lined up. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIf494C0QyuLpGfFFDl4_mUeM8i1DX2oXXAtN5ODOId1rw0s3Zu5JFrBgiJRT8bPD2ShGaZ4B4cUP_4nemjKZseeGVwqr2IcOf5KdIMxqRjHV3l5o41cnF6pROfC8jRSJp2dPg6cTq6wc/s1600/Teen-dance-in-bank-lot-8-21-64-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIf494C0QyuLpGfFFDl4_mUeM8i1DX2oXXAtN5ODOId1rw0s3Zu5JFrBgiJRT8bPD2ShGaZ4B4cUP_4nemjKZseeGVwqr2IcOf5KdIMxqRjHV3l5o41cnF6pROfC8jRSJp2dPg6cTq6wc/s400/Teen-dance-in-bank-lot-8-21-64-5.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After maybe a minute or so, ninety percent of the student body would be coupled and lined around the perimeter; the final ten percent were assigned a partner (though by their faces they may as well have been asked to read out a stack of ‘yo’ momma’ jokes to a firing squad), and one way or another I’d be facing a girl in my year and fighting the urge to apologise in advance. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now came the dancing itself: a terrifying prospect filled with all kinds of woe. For one, where was I supposed to look? Should I have watched my shoes? Should I have kept my neck snapped away or stared straight into her eyes as like I was about to whisper “and what became of your lamb, Clarice”? Usually, I ended up flicking between them all in three or four seconds like the star of a low-budget sequel to the Exorcist.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another obstacle for the 13-year-old myself was the business of placing my hand round the girl’s waist - a move that at the time seemed next door to impregnation. I had no desire to become one of those underage fathers you read about on the news and so I always panicked, placing a closed fist on my dancing partner's side instead. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Worst of all, these kinds of problems usually went by unanswered and piled up on each other. Doing my best to look like I was enjoying myself, attached to my peer by a single pair of joined hands and a few knuckles, I’d spend most periods of social dancing snapping my neck to the side, down to my shoes and then straight into my partner’s soul; all the while pondering why people were so anxious for Johnny B. Goode to go away in the first place. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To this day, my favourite part of a ceilidh is when the nibbles come out.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Lesson two: Every pupil has their own ongoing skirmish with the office</b><br />
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You may recall that my primary school post featured a faction of pre-pubescent midgets joining forces to meet a shared goal, namely, the acquisition of the hallowed Hill. A high schooler’s War with the Office is generally of a different sort - each student is forced to carry his/her fight and shoulder his/her burdens by him/herself.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have to admit that my personal conflict with the school office was kicked off by (A) my desire for a temporarily free lunch and (B) my tending to thrust all my problems on a future version of myself. At least twice a week for a large part of my second year I’d treat the room beside the school entrance as half office, half bank and ask the increasingly irritated woman at the window for a lunch slip intended for who’d forgotten their lunch money, and not for those who’d blown theirs on Jaffacakes the day before. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I would always uncategorically swear to pay my debts the next day, though was fascinated by how ‘next day’ and ‘next wednesday’ could be so easily conflated. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">After several months of taking advantage of the school in such a way, I realised my system wasn’t the most selfless of actions. Repentant, I turned over a new leaf, paid my dues and began to buy my lunch like any other. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">I thought, insodoing, I’d stopped any conflict with the office before it had started. I was rather surprised, then, when one morning I showed up with a single note to pay two seperate (and not lunch-caused) fees. </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">Apparently</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">, this was a heinous sin and very much not to be done. I</span></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">nstead of asking me to come back the next day with two seperate payments, the lady’s face in front of me puckered into a giggle before she turned to a colleague still at her desk. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“This <i>boy” - </i>I would have preferred student, pupil, gentleman, but I let it pass - “wants to pay for two things with one note!” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“We don’t do that”, she said.<br />
“We don’t do that.” The woman at the window said, turning back to me, shaking her head and still snickering.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Maybe it was a running joke on that side of the glass, but if there was it was lost to me. Embarrassed, bewildered, and having not yet fully understood the concept of ‘turn the other cheek’, I fled back to class and prepared myself for the next round of war.</span></div>
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To be continued, etc, etc.</div>
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<i>If you want to see the original primary school post, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/what-primary-school-taught-me-to-l-and.html">go here.</a></i></div>
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<i>If you want to read about my long-winded day out in London, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-author-arguments-and-overpriced.html">go here</a>.</i></div>
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<i>If you are interested in acquiring a black belt in the ways of the dish towel, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/life-as-rubbish-catering-assistant-part.html">go here.</a></i></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-35479310189864458122013-05-30T15:38:00.000-07:002013-05-31T03:24:22.434-07:00The Author, the Arguments and the Overpriced Sandwich: My day at the Unbelievable? 2013 Conference<div style="text-align: center;">
Surprised by Clive?</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">One of the few things perhaps more comic than watching a group of people politely, strategically edging past each other in one queue is watching a group of Christians politely, strategically edging past each other in another.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This fact, while amusing, was easily the most useless bit of information gleaned at this year’s <i>Unbelievable? The Conference</i>, held last weekend in London. The conference - <a href="http://www.premierradio.org.uk/shows/saturday/unbelievable.aspx">based on the radio programme of the same name</a> - was a one-day event dealing with various strands of</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">apologetics </i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">(</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">a clever sounding term defined as a rational defense of Christianity. Some apologists, of course, are more rational than others, but that’s probably a different point).</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD33yMqieXzXbwmoUrblhymYv2mSE-ohujCJPRWzsq7rIdcEMgl-1PncEXZf9EkH7Ukd7JJkJRMaUNZ9hOilnQmcJKQTDlAnoWXamM4v91yqUIQ_jU97iKay3oxpdW9EBxENuMAr6gqTk/s320/cs-lewis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD33yMqieXzXbwmoUrblhymYv2mSE-ohujCJPRWzsq7rIdcEMgl-1PncEXZf9EkH7Ukd7JJkJRMaUNZ9hOilnQmcJKQTDlAnoWXamM4v91yqUIQ_jU97iKay3oxpdW9EBxENuMAr6gqTk/s320/cs-lewis.jpg" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">While keeping the annual focus on apologetics, this year’s conference was also bit different from the previous two - it had been given a rather sizeable C.S Lewis-edged theme. Actually, three of the nine seminars on offer in some way linked to the late, great and very</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> clever writer. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Incidentally, did you know C.S stands for Clive Staples? I’d probably have abbreviated that too. As it stands with the middle name Munster I'm more likely to sympathise.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Although I’d missed the past two years of conferencing due to my own various failings, 2013, I decided, would be different, and so on the Friday my friend Claire and I shouldered our rucksacks; found them rather heavy; dropped them; rubbed our shoulders a bit; picked them back up and hopped on on to a nine-hour bus ride to London.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">n some ways, traveling so far to hear arguments for theism a little pointless - the bus journey made the existence of hell, at least, pretty darn clear. Repent and believe, for Megabus desires to sift you as wheat.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Somehow, we survived. Claire and I wandered into the The Brewery, the locale of the event (very posh - bowler hats and all) the next day, still smuggling in some of the residue from our Tesco breakfast. We took our seats at the front of the auditorium and began to sweep the room with our eyes, looking for some of the speakers with largely the same subtlety as Lazenby’s Bond. We watched the conference room began to pack out.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgWEg0V0ysTXXJhR8bDQxidShJOhdXeRi50QWgeZtWRAeT_uergzdP8-IAkv_7UGUeh0PVo2S8fdGahLVezM598jmt9Jy6zNg9E3sCX09kINZ9faj4Axxk0omCjLY6Q1dtaWyUW9mQ8YRp/s1600/cs_lewis02_web.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgWEg0V0ysTXXJhR8bDQxidShJOhdXeRi50QWgeZtWRAeT_uergzdP8-IAkv_7UGUeh0PVo2S8fdGahLVezM598jmt9Jy6zNg9E3sCX09kINZ9faj4Axxk0omCjLY6Q1dtaWyUW9mQ8YRp/s200/cs_lewis02_web.jpeg" width="129" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">A little after ten, Justin Brierley, the presenter of the whole thing, took to the stage and thanked us all for coming. The powerpoint above his head wincingly proclaimed that it was ‘</span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">unbelievably</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> good to see us’. </span></div>
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<a href="http://www.premierradio.org.uk/shows/saturday/unbelievable.aspx"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">(Justin hosts the aforementioned </span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Unbelievable?</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> radio programme - a weekly show on iTunes that generally takes the form of a ninety-minute dialogue on some aspect of the God debate. There. </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">Recommended</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">.</span></span></a>)<span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After giving us his words of welcome, our beaming anchor invited the keynote speaker Alister McGrath to switch places with him and give his opening address: <i>“Joy, Meaning, and Purpose: What our culture needs to hear from Christians”. </i></span></div>
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Alister has debated Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett (to differing degrees of success, in my un-learned opinion); he’s written books both theological and apologetical, most recently, the biography the weekend's best friend: <i>C.S Lewis: A Life. </i></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Here, he was on form. after telling the crowd it was ‘unbelievably’ good to see us - this time the wincing was mostly mine - he then began to work through his material cogently and thoroughly. </span><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </b><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I did have one criticism, it has to be said: I found myself continually distracted by the fact Alister seemed to be addressing a patch of air several feet above our collective heads.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Such a minor foible of his address was, however, exactly that. After Alister was finished and then applauded, he switched places with Justin again who started to tell the crowd where the seminars we could choose from were located in the building. His choosing of words were at his peril: the final syllable of ‘limited spacing’ had barely escaped his face before the assembled Christians began to rise from their chairs and, very civilly, started to storm to the room of their preferred speaker. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It was only to be expected, in a way. One of the perks of being interested in a fairly niche area is that it’s easy to meet your heroes and only slightly more difficult to make a fool of yourself in front of them.<br />
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“How rude!”, I noted to Claire, as we half-stormed up a ramp to the far left of the hall, therefore strategically avoiding the throng advancing up the stairs. “He hadn’t even finished speaking!” I vented, morally indignant, as we squeezed into an already crammed lift that cut a few paces off our journey and boosted us ahead of most of the crowd.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I may, as in previous blogs, be exaggerating a little. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Despite all my valiant hypocrisy, we were still some of the very last few to throng into the Queen Charlotte room and land in a couple of chairs facing Peter S. Williams and his booted-up slides.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The title of Peter’s seminar,<i> "If C.S Lewis met Dawkins"</i>, was really an offshoot from the second Lewis-orientated publication of the day, "<i>C.S Lewis vs the New Atheists"</i>, an evaluation of the recent critiques of Christianity based from the writings of Clive (or, if you were his friend, Jack. I don't know why) himself. While admittedly I haven’t even gotten as far as opening a copy of William's book, his talk stood on its own, giving a rebuttal of Dawkins’ self-contradictory - from Peter's perspective - positions on ethics, free will and so forth. Regardless of what you think of Peter’s conclusions, it’d be hard to deny he has done his homework and then a little more recommended reading over supper. His quotes cited within the hour, for example, ranged from Dawkins’ most impressively-sized texts to a recent interview done with Playboy magazine. </span><br />
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Stories and Studies</h3>
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<a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/ligonier-public-media/learn/series_images/HAN01_HandoutApologetics_620x332.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/ligonier-public-media/learn/series_images/HAN01_HandoutApologetics_620x332.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After some question and answer, seminar one closed and a coffee break began. After some tea and biscuits (I like to stick it to the schedule) the coffee break closed and seminar two began. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This time, there wasn’t nearly as much of a rush for us. We’d decided to stay in the comfortably large main hall and listen to Alister McGrath take on round two with his talk <i>CS Lewis, The Storyteller</i>. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I appreciated this one in an entirely different way I had Peter’s: as an English/Journalism/Creative Writing/Procrastination/Hot-drinks-consuming student, apologetics has always seemed cursorily at best linked to my studies. Alister’s point that Lewis would employ narrative and argument to drive his points home to different audiences was a good one, and one that had never really crossed my mind. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"Using our imaginations", Alister said, if Claire's notes tell me true, "is not inventing faith, but faith has the ability to captivate imaginations"</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Maybe not all that obvious when you peruse the fiction section of your nearby Christian bookstore but in theory still a valid point. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> I’m not claiming McGrath's talk 'changed my life', 'blew my mind', ' 'turned my world upside down' or so forth, but in what he'd discussed lay some points I’d never really picked up on before - a feeling kind of like when someone gently points out the solution to a puzzle that seems horribly easy only ten seconds after it's been solved.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">While my writing, not to mention this blog, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/marlowe-and-me.html">dips</a> and <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/unmusical-chairs-how-to-face-fear-and.html">ascends</a> in quality from a week-to-week basis depending on amount of time spent and caffeine in my system, it was nice to see something that linked to what I study and know I can do. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Words, after all, is things I'm more good at than some stuff.</span><br />
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Seating and Sandwiches</h3>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After seminar two came lunch, which I won’t dwell on longer than to say that if an establishment charging so much for a sandwich that I can buy another ticket on the Bus of Doom after two and a half purchases, you should probably rethink a thing or two. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There was another quick welcome back from Justin in the main auditorium before the third and final set of seminars were set to start. As we walked back in, I had a stroke of what seemed, maybe not genius but at least genius' estranged cousin. I turned to Claire.<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“Let's sit at the very back. When people start to rush we can stand and stroll to the door and still beat the crowd.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And so we sat squinting at the stage which had gone from being this close:</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Welcoming and announcements being again made, for the second time Justin got as far as something along the lines of ‘final set of seminars’ before the mass of justified saints began to stand and civilly bound for the door. Before I even realised what was happening, actually, there were a good a hundred people past us and out to our prime choices of seats. Darn it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Still, we did manage to get to where we wanted to go. Since we attended all the seminars on Lewis thus far, we thought it would’ve been amiss not to complete our strange trilogy and listen to Amy Orr-Ewing broach her topic - <i>C.S Lewis and suffering</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Really, however, save from a couple quotations, Amy mainly stuck to the problem of suffering and left Clive out the picture. Both understandable and wise, perhaps, seeing as she hasn’t recently written several hundred pages on the man. Besides, the problem of suffering is such a huge discussion without him being mentioned and is seen by many as the strongest argument against theism. Instead, Amy walked through various responses of other world-views to the problem of suffering before giving a response from a Christian perspective. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Personally, I found it the most difficult of the seminars to follow and could've done with a few slides, but this talk was, by far, the most well received by the audience. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The murder in Woolwich earlier this week had already been brought up one or two points during the day already and both times the effect on the audience was obvious - smiles falling from faces, downcast eyes, collective sighs a hundred people. What was to some people primarily ‘news’ was, to them, hurt. Here was a talk that while to me perhaps raised less points than the other two, yet the points raised were the ones most needed to be heard for many. To those same people this seminar undoubtedly the most important part of the day.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">For a final time, we were back in the main auditorium for a panel discussion, in which I would’ve perhaps liked to see more interaction between the speakers. From what I remember, questions from the audience were responded to in standalone answers, and made the thing feel as though if you had put each speaker in an isolated booth you would’ve been given the same answers which to me defeats the purpose of a roundtable conversation in the first place. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">That aside, the questions asked were varied, challenging and of a surprisingly high quality - to the annoyance of the woman to my right I kept </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">murmuring</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> 'ah, course' and 'good point' as the microphone was swept around the hall like the weapon of a serial approver.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then the final question was asked, answered and the whole thing was over. We were for a final time thanked (no Punbelievables were made), then the crowd started to gradually stream out the exits. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Claire and I wandered out of The Brewery and back to the hotel, chatting between ourselves about how we'd thought the day had gone. We’d both, like the majority of the crowd, had seemed to have gotten a lot out of the conference as a whole with a few personal quibbles that we'd have liked to bring up had we had more time. </span><br />
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<a href="http://jabbate209.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/debate.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="139" src="http://jabbate209.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/debate.gif" width="200" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The fact that these quibbles were all so slight did raise for me a larger critique of the day. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I am, as a rule, terribly biased and horribly aware of it, and it would have been nice if alongside speakers who I knew shared the majority of my views, there had been a track of seminars devoted to two speakers debating an issue, even if such an topic was an inter-Christian debate. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">While perhaps less straightforward to organise, it would have been more in the spirit of the Unbelievable show which bases itself upon the idea that truth can be seen in</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> views being respectfully batted back and forth in dialogue. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Also, it might have been be a good idea attach seat-belts to the chairs only to be unclipped once the presenter has finished with everything he wants to say. At least by idiots like me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span> For more of my bus-angst, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/50-rules-for-pain-free-bus-riding.html">go here.</a><br />
To read about my journey as a coffee-wielding insulting maniac, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/life-as-rubbish-catering-assistant-part.html">go here.</a><br />
Or, if you're still not out the studying woods, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/confessions-of-overworked-gunslinger.html">here are some entirely unhelpful personal tips.</a></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-71597031111126572002013-05-17T14:00:00.000-07:002013-05-17T14:10:45.884-07:00Life as a Rubbish Catering Assistant (part the second)<br />
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<u><span style="font-size: large;">Can I get you some verbal abuse with your cappuccino?</span></u></h3>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We left the first half of my adventures with my metaphorically building a crockery-fort that could shelter me from the difficulties of my new job - the biggest problem, frankly, being my lack of general competence. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The reason for the fort, you’ll remember, was the OCD that seemed only to hit me during the washing and drying of dishes. Luckily, after a few nightmare sessions of such cleaning it was gently pointed out to me that my teaspoons didn’t have to possess the sparkle of Barry Scott’s molars;they had to be clean. At first I was unconvinced, remaining terrifyingly certain I was the heroic barrier between Mononucleosis and your grandmother.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Bang!" And, just like that, Barry was gone forever.</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As the weeks flitted by, though, I began to absorb the advice and put it into practice. Dishes arrived; dishes were washed; dishes were dried; dishes were stacked. I become one with the matrix of saucers and soup bowls and was able to operate a fairly tidy work area without crying like a little child. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My washing/drying wasn’t fast to the point of uncleanliness, yet at the same time the Lattes no longer had the aftertaste of the industrial equivalent to Fairy liquid: in this area, my slow journey towards adequacy was close enough to complete.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We will, therefore, leave the dish-side of the job and wander back out to the counter to observe my progress there.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Which is lucky for you, reader(s)- although I was past the stage where every sale would set my heart beating until it wanted to tear out my ribcage and give the customer a strong piece of its mind, I still found talking to the average customer a bit of a hassle, mostly because I'm endowed with the talent of saying the wrong thing at exactly the best time. It should be stressed I mostly come across as awkwardly charming (or maybe one of those two), but things still often fall out my mouth that should really be thrown back in and locked away.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One sleepy weekday afternoon, for example, I was quietly wiping down some trays in a fairly vacant cafe when I was nearly swept away by a barrage of middle-aged faces that had suddenly stormed the place with the intensity of a military insurgency. One of the happier faces at the helm of the group smiled at me as I hastily began serving.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Sorry”, she said, “there’s a lot of us, I know. We’ve all just come down from a prophecy conference down at central.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Really?”, the words spilled out, “I never saw <i>that</i> coming.”<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The helms-woman tilted her head. “Sorry, son?”<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“I said can I get you some tea with your muffin?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here we have an accidental slip of almost-wit - generally when I say something stupid I’m the last to be know it. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To demonstrate, i’ll give you a second example. One lunchtime, a fairly heavy gentleman and a woman strolled in together and took their place in line. When the queue had shuffled forward I took the pair as a couple and asked them what I could fetch them.<br />
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“Just a quiche, please.” The hefty man replied.<br />
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“Sure." I responded, "But we’ve only got the one left. Is that okay?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The sparkle in the man’s eyes died, quietly. <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“I only wanted one.” he said, this time in a far less jolly tone.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As it transpired, man and wife were ordering separately. Very modern, perhaps, but still was the root cause of my frantic apologising. Incidentally, it was difficult to say sorry while trying to not make reference to the rather weighty reason why this customer may have taken particular offense at my mistake. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I probably failed in finding that balance.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">However, insulting the Glaswegian populace (regardless of gender and age), couldn’t last forever - f</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">irstly because</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I eventually reached levels of social acceptability. The days of dish forts and wanting to duck behind the counter gave way to the age of being able to exchange a few sentences without facial spasms.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Second: I left the job almost two weeks ago. Yes, that’s right: I hung up my dishcloth and wandered out of the cafe and into the sunset where my bus had probably just taken off. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At the end of that final shift, then, what had I taken away? The ability to multitask, for one; the ability to weave away from numerous near-accidents and spills; the satisfaction that I had entered an establishment and walked away with a new skill set; and, not least, a best wishes card and a cake my quiche-inclined friend might be more than a little envious of. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">More important is what I didn’t take away: black eyes from accidental insults; a bill for all the equipment I annihilated over the months; the ability to serve coffee to a stranger without my left eyebrow twitching like Jack the Ripper’s great-grandson.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now there’s an idea for a cheap paperback. </span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/life-as-rubbish-catering-assistant-part.html">If you missed part one, why on earth did you read this far?</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/50-rules-for-pain-free-bus-riding.html">Here if you enjoyed the quasi-joke about the myriad difficulties surrounding Glaswegian public transport</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/confessions-of-overworked-gunslinger.html">And because I’m still in exam period, I'm probably wearing something in here</a></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By the way, if I don’t come across as awkwardly charming, keep that knowledge to yourself and let me live that lie.</span></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-80671890465047060422013-05-05T14:08:00.000-07:002013-05-09T13:35:28.487-07:00Life as a Rubbish Catering Assistant, Part the First<br />
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The adventures of an undeserving employee</h3>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Picture the scene: a little less than a year ago, I shuffled to my job interview at a cafe in the centre of Glasgow dressed largely like a Mafia henchman on Atkins. My suit (and by ‘my suit’ I mean ‘my brother’s suit’ (and by ‘my brother’s suit’ I mean ‘my temporarily commandeered formalwear’)) was far, far oversized and hung off my sweaty arms like a wizard’s robe. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was more than a little nervous - and being at the best of times endowed with the sociability of an Asperger’s-afflicted brick, feeling like the Coat-hanger Incarnate wasn’t boosting morale much. Nevertheless, I continued my bold shuffle to the till and squeakily announced my presence.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about the interview itself. Ushered over to a table at the corner of the cafe, the interview lasted maybe six or seven minutes; the longest question asked of me was probably a tie between <i>“can you work saturdays?” </i>and <i>“do you have any questions for us?”</i>; and, best of all, both the friendly interviewers pretended to ignore the gathering puddle of perspiration that began to create a moat between us and the rest of the room.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I may be exaggerating.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A few hours later, I was given a call inviting me to take the job as a part-time catering assistant asking whether I could come in the next day for a ‘little induction’. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And so it came to pass the anti-social brick was hired. You can’t help but wonder who else was interviewed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Fast forward twenty hours, and I was on the other side of the counter and staring in wide-eyed horror as my first customer approached, whistling and grinning mildly to himself. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“<i>What if he wants a coffee?”</i> I wondered, my eyes momentarily stopping flicking for an escape route and instead zoned in at the coffee machine (which may well have spent its spare time moonlighting NASA’s spare remote control). All the while, the man was meandering closer. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My brain kicked itself into a frenzied overdrive: </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“<i>That machine looks way too complicated to be a coffee maker- Maybe I could wield one of those filter handles instead - battle my way out - go into hiding - find a nice cave somwhere-”</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Having worked myself to this panic, It took me a few seconds to realise the whistling, grinning man was now standing opposite and looking right at me. A few seconds silence. Some more. His grey-black hair were ruffled into a baseball cap and his knuckles were blithely rapping a drumbeat on the countertop. Some more silence. Why? It had suddenly struck me I had no idea what I was supposed to say to him. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>“How can I help?”</i> I mentally tested alternatives, <i>“What can I get you?</i>”. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The man had stopped whistling, letting his fingers drum the tune off into silence, and it was here my mind decided and leapt into action. My lips parsed, and</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>“What do <i>you</i> want?”</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Gloriously burst forth. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It wasn’t, on reflection, the politest of enquiries. My eyes bulged at the blunder and I tried to smooth the rudeness out with a smile, but found my facial muscles had packed up and headed south for the next several decades.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The cap-wearing whistler, however, luckily turned out to be a regular - if ‘regular’ encompasses people who exist in a state of tea-drinking hibernation - and didn’t really notice my complete lack of social protocol. He grinned again absent-mindedly. “Tea please”, he said. Tea was served, the next customer hopefully felt a little less interrogated.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Serving drinks to customers, though, was only half of my new job’s requirements. Compared to my dishwashing, in fact, each muscle spasm seemed a BAFTA-nominating smile. Thus, after half an hour so of customer-intimidating I was steered back through the kitchen, acquainted with the essentials of a dishtowel, pointed to the little hole in the wall where dishes came through and was given a go at drying. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The problem herewasn’t that the dishes weren’t being cleaned properly - it was the opposite. Engulfed with the possibility that I was the Guardian of Hygiene, the sole gateway between a customer and potential sickness, I entered a state of OCD where I made absolutely sure each cup and saucer and teaspoon had been blitzed enough that it was the cleanest utensil this side of central station. This is all laudable but meant the inflow of dirtied dishes weren’t making the outflow look bad as much as holding the outflow’s lunch money above its head and giving it a serious wedgie.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I may have, once, spent a few minutes wondering if I could build a happy place out of porcelain and plastic trays.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Thus ends part the first of my adventures - it is exam time after all. Tune in next week for part the second<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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which includes such highlights as prophecy conferences, dancing with milk, and accidentally insulting the obese.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/my-misadventures-as-reluctant-clubber.html">In the meantime you might enjoy that time I went clubbing,</a></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/50-rules-for-pain-free-bus-riding.html">Or that time I ranted about busses,</a></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Or you might enjoy another blog! -<a href="http://eilidhstewart.blogspot.co.uk/"> http://eilidhstewart.blogspot.co.uk</a></span></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-8942202867563583002013-04-26T01:54:00.000-07:002013-04-26T02:05:28.468-07:00(Un)Musical Chairs: How to Face The Fear and Win<br />
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;">A Personal Essay concerning my being a rather large 'fraidy cat</span></u></b></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My career as a master mute musician reached its height during my membership of the school concert band. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Let me explain.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizVKqbXbe75QkbpAE_Y0Z8YWrlj-ySGREV37sO16RqaRJNbEv9AUrvRsSsOCgog_d0ZyIEHziBtJBLPPGtxg8i3i8wUaoThumwwXOYcMCACRElcOz2YqjpsT6Zjbk99IpVUwtnu3V90q4/s1600/mouse+and+flute.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizVKqbXbe75QkbpAE_Y0Z8YWrlj-ySGREV37sO16RqaRJNbEv9AUrvRsSsOCgog_d0ZyIEHziBtJBLPPGtxg8i3i8wUaoThumwwXOYcMCACRElcOz2YqjpsT6Zjbk99IpVUwtnu3V90q4/s320/mouse+and+flute.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Every Friday afternoon, for the last eighteen months of high school, I’d trudge away from the school exit and into the auditorium at the far end of the building and go through the same motions. Dump bag; assemble my flute; glumly mingle with animated peers. After a few minutes, this chipper mass would assemble, and then sit on, sets of cold blue straight-backed chairs. A chill would always be hanging in the auditorium, making goosebumps prickle up and chafe against trousers, shirts. None of the other band members were perturbed by the clinical surroundings - they always pulsed out enthusiasm, voices wavering excitedly to match fluttering hands. In fact, conversation would continue right up until our teacher would stride to the podium and lift her baton. The band would raise their instruments, poised, and our conductor’s stick would drop and the bluesy notes would run like liquid silver from clarinets, saxophones, almost all the flutes.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Almost all. I would be miming along, my fingers stubbing the instrument to the tune but my mouth never daring to breathe life into the instrument. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The reason for my silence was simple: I was consumed by a near-demonic emotion I call The Fear - terror that spawns inactivity. Convinced I wasn’t as good as the other band members, my fear of playing badly made me stop attempting to play at all, both during rehearsals and outside. It was self-perpetuating. I practiced less, so became less confident; I became less confident, so practiced less.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Fear, however, doesn’t solely operate within the musical sphere, but can rather curl its fingers round hosts of activities. Avoiding going out for a run because that the (marginally) slimmer neighbor might see your flailing; allowing your pen’s ink to congeal for fear someone might snigger at your screenplay; keeping a competition flier firmly locked in a cupboard somewhere. All of these are instances of a prevailing sense of inadequacy that produces lifelessness. All these, then, are examples of The Fear.</span></div>
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<a href="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2175/2110349082_2fc8f90b6b_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2175/2110349082_2fc8f90b6b_z.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This isn’t a feeling that people should blithely shrug their shoulders at, either. The Fear wastes legions of hours, both those belonging to the victim and those of others involved tangentially. It can distort self-esteem and create huge levels of cognitive dissonance, especially guilt. In my case, I’d waste two bloated hours pretending to be a flautist, then be driven home by a willing parent (“<i>anything to support our musical child!”) </i>while I sat beside glumly wondering how I got into this mess at all. For me, all the boxes were ticked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We should, then, aspire to face The Fear wherever we spot it, should do our utmost win out. The framing out of this contention, however, is based on a presumption that all might share -namely, the idea that it’s all too common to be constricted by this emotion. Surely no-one can get themselves into such ridiculous situations that The Fear requires? Who would willingly sit down alongside a concert band and play dumb for so long?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But that’s the thing - The Fear can snare a victim in two distinct, equally effective ways. The first is what psychologists semi-poetically refer to as a ‘flashbulb memory’, widely regarded as a memory so vivid it sears itself into the mind and is able to affect a person from a single episode. I, for example, haven’t driven on the motorway since what was supposed to be a leisurely journey home from a conference at St. Andrews. I set off on the drive early, well before the sun was anywhere near setting. When it began to slide down the sky like a running egg (as it did an hour or so into the trip) I found myself hurtling down the M80, suddenly locked in a deathly staring contest with the sun. Blinded for a quarter of an hour, I was terrified, convinced of my imminent dispatch from the earth. Mercifully, I did somehow arrive home intact, but that memory, like a flashbulb, punches itself to the forefront of my mind every time I get into the driver’s seat. From now on, my longest driving sessions are usually no longer than a weekly sojourn to Tesco’s for some salsa (<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/my-misadventures-as-reluctant-clubber.html">discussed in an earlier post</a> - points for continuity).</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhgxo3ukLiBCYesQWUkTYFVJ6XCbasnYsaWahbBt4ZR4gXOauCcM7C0swsZDUl2U0orG0t6ZCKWaRG3ez8Kz7SXz8sKpBH0WNzw8phZJQUrGgd-R9z615G3v3lVZyYjfwXHqoc1W56Vtw/s1600/283825_10150251481418105_5300821_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhgxo3ukLiBCYesQWUkTYFVJ6XCbasnYsaWahbBt4ZR4gXOauCcM7C0swsZDUl2U0orG0t6ZCKWaRG3ez8Kz7SXz8sKpBH0WNzw8phZJQUrGgd-R9z615G3v3lVZyYjfwXHqoc1W56Vtw/s640/283825_10150251481418105_5300821_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In case you're wondering, I'm the one who looks like he's wandered in having just come from a fun day of murdering</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The second way The Fear operates, however, is not through a definitive event but rather through gradual increments. Very rarely does The Fear blind - it often chooses to be subtle, delicate, more like the moon sneaking to its place than the sun lowering itself down.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Take my flute playing. After that first week or so of practice, aged nine or so, I was pleased to find I’d managed to get a kind of warbled sound out of the thing, and from there began to tackle increasingly complex tunes. To me, every note, pure or faulty, was helping me improve, so I’d play twenty minutes a day, constantly, consistently. It never felt like practice. Moving into the start of high school, everything was still only on the up. I started doing graded exams, and their reports gave me outside evidence of my progress. I played at weddings, joined the school band. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Then, one summer, I went on holiday. Somewhere in France - a trip with family -swimming, climbing, meandering, a bustling fortnight brimming with activity, so though I brought the flute and did play a little, it often lay dormant on some table. The week after, I was camping with a mass of gruff adolescents aspiring to be like their cooler older siblings who viewed any music besides <i>Nickelback</i> as an utter waste of time. Although I played there, too, it was in even more sporadic, stubbed periods of time, only when well away from the judgment of those sharing my tent. Then, after this, I helped at several children’s holiday clubs at home, finding myself too exhausted to even think about playing. And so on, and so on. By the end of this leviathan summer, my flute stayed packed up in its box on a windowsill, forgotten by everything but the odd burst of sunlight. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At start of the new term I eventually picked the instrument back up, but when I blew into it, the notes seemed to come out flabby, despondent. My fingers felt like slugs, my eyes glazed over the notes that seemed to dance by themselves on the sheet in front. I was confused, disappointed - after ten minutes of stress, I clumsily stuck the parts in the case and thrust it back on the sill, promising myself I’d try again later.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pocketmonsters.net/images/attacks/constrict.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://www.pocketmonsters.net/images/attacks/constrict.gif" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Like Pokemon, the Fear can constrict.<br />
As in Pokemon, it's very frustrating.</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course, I didn’t try again for a long stretch of time, then a longer stretch after that. By gradually playing less and less, first without realising and then consciously shirking practice, The Fear was able to petrify me into silence. Eventually, I found myself going to the band I once enjoyed now out of obligation, too paralysed at my own inadequacy to play.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, assume you’ve seen yourself in my example and self-diagnosed yourself with this malady: what can you do? How can you face The Fear and emerge victorious? There are two viable alternatives available:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Option one: keep playing and push through. The pursuit of a goal almost always brings difficulties, and often the best way to overcome them is to simply strive on. This may sound obvious to some, but others may need to hear that their self-doubt can be overcome:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get Busy - </i><b><i>Dale Carnegie</i></b><i>.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>An illustration, perhaps, to make this option less abstract. Several streets in my area, despite stopping at dead ends, are all connected by a river that runs behind the back gardens of the houses; a stream overgrown with trees and brambles and patches of soft marsh. Children, as a rule, are drawn to short cuts, and when I was younger I would cut by this grassy, slippery route to get to a friend’s house, dirtied, but a few minutes faster. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Originally, the friend’s parents would thrust me back to my own house to change my disheveled, muddy clothes, but interestingly the more I travelled via shortcut the easier the journey became to navigate cleanly. As the tall grass was beaten down under foot, as the branches snapped back and the best stepping stones assaulted with marker pens, I managed to subdue the obstacles that seemed so dominant through regular treading and re-treading. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://castleage.wdfiles.com/local--files/monster:gold-dragon/dragon_monster_gold.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://castleage.wdfiles.com/local--files/monster:gold-dragon/dragon_monster_gold.jpg" width="319" /></a></td></tr>
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Face your Fear</div>
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(but wear a helmet and/or cup if your Fear has talons)</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Similarly, putting on the shoes and running each day; applying each criticism of your script or novel (or essay); every mangled note will brush back the brambles a little more. In time, The Fear will have been exorcised through repetition.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In contrast to this, Option Two: walk away, might be seen as negative and defeatist, but it’s important to emphasise this strategy is not synonymous with giving up. Giving up, in this context, would be to sit in the chair continuing to mime. Walking away is about getting off the chair and finding a new skill to invest time in. Personally, it wasn’t until I gave up the flute that I was able to spend more time writing seriously, channeling those wasted hours into something that has since blossomed. Option two is not defeatist, then: it was through the pain of walking away that this essay is here to be read, critiqued. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which option is chosen. What’s paramount is that the Fear’s pervasive consequences - wasted time, deflated self-esteem and guilt - are fended off. The worst thing that can be done is to sit dejectedly on that cold blue seat, too petrified to move away, too scared to play. Instead, let’s battle The Fear and make it too afraid to try attacking ever again.</span></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/50-rules-for-pain-free-bus-riding.html"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/50-rules-for-pain-free-bus-riding.html">If you're reading this on a bus - I'm so sorry. This might brighten your day, though.</a></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/confessions-of-overworked-gunslinger.html">If you're reading this to procrastinate studying, you might want to keep doing that with this</a>.</div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-ii-big-ol.html">If...If... I can't think of another one. Here are my puntastic thoughts on Assassin's Creed II.</a></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-31011198193973965712013-04-19T11:14:00.003-07:002013-04-19T11:15:36.610-07:0050 Rules for Pain-free Bus Riding<br />
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<i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I spend a large portion of my borderline-adult life being shuttled from university to home to work to university to home to work. In fact, I’ve harnessed all my mathematical prowess and worked out a four year degree will net me a full month’s worth sitting blithely.</i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Just kidding, I used a calculator. </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>In order to make what’s left of that time more pleasant for everyone, I’ve taken the liberty of chartering up the following ideas that’ll hopefully make our future journeys together more bearable. </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Here are my 50 rules for pain-free bus riding.</i></span></div>
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<a href="http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc210/oceanvue/bus5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc210/oceanvue/bus5.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(1) There shall be no playing of music without headphones, no matter how banging you perceive your ‘tunes’ to be. The rest of us don’t want to hear how Taylor is Never-Ever-Ever getting back with her ex.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">(2)If rule (1) is ignored, you must - on pain of vehicular lynching - refrain from singing along. If there’s one thing we want to hear less than Miss Swift’s repetition, it’s you warbling that same story.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(3) If we can hear the sound of your headphones over ours, your music is too loud.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(4) When somebody says: </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sorry, I kind of need to be doing some studying now.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">They most likely mean: </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t want to talk to you.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(5) What should you do if you see somebody you know and have to think about whether you should sit next to them? Don’t sit next to them.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(6) On a crowded bus, putting your bag on the vacant seat beside you is acceptable but probably means you’re a bit of a tool.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(7) On a crowded bus, deliberately sitting on the aisle side is unacceptable and will probably net you a lot of angry stares.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(8) If your bus passes another, it’s vital you abstain from making any awkward eye-contact with riders of that other vehicle.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(9) Energy drinks are not and never will be acceptable for any journey.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(10) If you take the train to work, bus-takers will view you as having ‘made it’.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(11) If you’re wearing a school uniform, it’s probably best you don’t speak.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(12) If you have to run for the bus, unzip your jacket. You may look like an idiot but at least this way you’ll feel like superman.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(13) When waiting for your bus, don’t listen to music. Bus stops are oases of stupidity.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(14) If you decide to nip into Poundland while you wait, your bus will definitely come and you will definitely miss it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(15) Your bus can come at any time apart from when your app says it will.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(16) Fast food can be only consumed at off-peak hours, on a less than half-full bus. Energy drinks, incidentally, still aren’t allowed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(17) When that middle aged woman queue-jumps you as people start to board, let her pass. Odds are she isn’t in a very happy place and you’re probably winning overall.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(18) If the head of the gingerbread man you were eating falls into the hood of the man in front, don’t go after it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(19) If you go up to the top floor of a double-decker and there’s only one other person up there, you must sit somewhere on the empty side.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(20) See that bus in the distance that might be yours? It isn’t.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(21) The bus will always leave twenty seconds before you arrive.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(22) Bus prices will always rise in correlation with the pricing of a Freddo.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(23) Answering an unexpected phone call is permissible; calling your buddy for a chat is not.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(24) If you leave rubbish on the seat - surprisingly - it won’t evaporate. Take it with you.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(25) Ringing the STOP bell more than twice will earn you instant damnation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(26) If the vehicle doesn’t have WiFi it will be considered Amish.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(27) If you’re wondering</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Did somebody see that?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Somebody saw that.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(28) The Metro is a free paper, so there’s no excuse for reading mine over my shoulder.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(29) If you have to read the Sun on the bus, have the decency to flick past page three. Sophie, 23, from Manchester agrees.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(30) If Rule (29) is violated, don’t justify yourself by saying you were reading the articles or opinions.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(31) If you’re reading a large book, don’t keep checking if people can see you reading it - nobody cares about your intellectual prowess.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(32) Drawing a penis on a steamed window does not make you a street artist.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(33) Writing your name on a steamy window followed by ‘FTW’ does not make you a misunderstood poet.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(34) Revenue checkers are generally only a little more intrusive than that time the Dementors halted the Hogwarts express.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br />(35) If you utilise the word ‘like’ or ‘pure’ more than once every seven words, best you don’t speak either.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(36) If you’re sitting on your own, you have no reason for looking behind you and making the rest of us feel self-conscious.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(37) Ideally, don’t get yourself into the situation where you drop pieces of gingerbread into men’s hoods.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(38) If you forgot to bring entertainment for your journey, why not pass the time by winking at passersby? Fellow bus-dwellers are not allowed to be winked at, see rule (8)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(39) There are no comfortable places to put your feet, so save yourself some time and don’t bother searching.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(40) If you’re happy to belch in public, leave.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(41) If you’re happy to belch in public with a stranger sitting beside you, leave via the top-floor back window. On the dual carriageway. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(42) It’s a bus journey, not a low-budget episode of Takeshi’s castle. Don’t try and get up on an S-bend.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(43) If rule (42) is violated, at least make sure your bag is double-strapped. You don’t want to dispatch someone because of your swinging storage.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(44) If both rules (42) and (43) are violated and someone gets a rucksack to the face, pretend you didn’t see it happening. They’ll likely be too embarrassed to say anything anyway.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(45) Feel free to take the stairs two at a time, although if you trip, people laugh.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(46) There is no noise more irritating than an empty plastic bottle rolling up and down a moving bus.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(47) If you don’t have enough change for the bus, just smokescreen the amount of money you’re putting in by making sure there’s a lot of coppers going down the chute.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(48) The highest honour is reserved for those who pay their fare with a jar of pennies.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(49) If the bus suddenly breaks down, no amount of collective sighing will get that engine running again.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(50) Remember everyone else has a name too and you’ll be fine.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, if you'll excuse me I have some Bioshock that needs played.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you want to console yourself in my absence with <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/my-misadventures-as-reluctant-clubber.html">this</a>, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/confessions-of-overworked-gunslinger.html">this</a> or <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-ii-big-ol.html">even this</a>, the hidden hit counter goes up and I smile.</span></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-59817241468363902652013-04-14T09:18:00.000-07:002013-05-09T01:35:17.859-07:00My Misadventures as a Reluctant Clubber <h3>
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<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Wherein the unstoppably awkward force meeds the unnecessarily loud establishment: </b><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The highlight reel of my night clubbing</b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Disclaimer: in the following I intend to poke fun at both an actual club and people who - for once - aren’t myself. I’ve taken the liberty of replacing friend’s names with Charles Dickens’ beloved characters to spare their feelings. Hope you understand.</i></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.biography.com/imported/images/Biography/Images/Profiles/D/Charles-Dickens-9274087-2-402.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.biography.com/imported/images/Biography/Images/Profiles/D/Charles-Dickens-9274087-2-402.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am, to understate, dramatically antisocial. My idea of a ‘good time’ usually involves watching old reruns of Scrubs while dual-wielding cups of tea. As a rule, the best reason I’ve found for leaving the house is to embark on a quick quest for Doritos.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Maybe if I’m feeling dangerous some salsa as well.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Despite this, I somehow found myself queueing with six or seven friends outside a well-known Glasgow club one saturday night; trapped at the front of the line, unable to make any kind of a getaway. </span></div>
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Here are the highlights of my night on the town.</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I stood at the front of the queue, nervously thumbing my glasses back to the top of my face, then turned to my buddy Barnaby Rudge and grinned awkwardly. Barnaby, unfortunately, was already preoccupied.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Oh-man-look-there”, he muttered, unconsciously toying with the cuffs of his shirt and staring at a nearby group of women whose smiles were rigidly screaming <i>I’ll die before I admit I am cold.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I thumbed my glasses again, left him to his mental debauchery. A</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">fter a few seconds we were led out the line and to the doorway of the club, preparing to offer our IDs to a bouncer large enough to use one of our arms as a Q-tip. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">More than that, he looked like he’d take a fair amount of pleasure in removing the limb of a fellow human being: his eyebrows caterpillared like angry stitches across his face just below a huge bowling-ball slab of a forehead, his mouth puckered as if he was being drip-fed a lemon. T</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">he raging giant was dressed in all black - probably, I assumed, so he could attend my funeral (“I didn’t mean to swat him to death with his driver’s license, honest!”) without too much effort.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I watched John Jasper, my friend in front, approach this Moby Dick of bouncers. He grunted, surveyed Jasper’s passport, then, seemingly satisfied, began to paw down his victim’s frame for any concealed weaponry.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Endowed with kitten-like rage, Jasper couldn’t help but let an awkward giggle escape when his inner seem was patted down for a switchblade or two. Misinterpreting the laugh, Moby Dick leapt up and Jasper found himself face-to-shoulderblade with the Hulk’s bigger brother.<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Sorry, is something funny?” Moby growled, intimating that he very much hoped there was. My bold friend squeaked the opposite, however, and was after a few seconds of terrifying eye contact, permitted to pass through intact. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At my turn, I thought it best not to ask Moby to pull my finger. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://managinglibraryvolunteers.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/bouncer-white.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://managinglibraryvolunteers.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/bouncer-white.gif" width="168" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A whale of a time</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Eventually, all of our group entered the jaws of the club. Unscathed and reunited, we descended down some dark dark stairs, along some dark dark halls, past a dark dark cloakroom. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">After letting a marker-pen-wielding employee stamp the backs of our hands - or, in my confused case, a palm - we found ourselves in the fabled ‘Dance Floor’: a place seemingly designed to maximise impracticality. Just filled enough that it could be navigated, but not without some apologetic shoves; the music was too loud to talk, too quiet to sit silent. The constant pulse of the bass made me think of a monolithic heart beating a few inches under our feet. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dignity recovered, Jasper let out a grin pointed to an empty corner saved for us, and I was suddenly sitting under a poster-sized image (on reflection, probably a poster) of a thoroughly topless blonde. I was unreservedly uncomfortable. Scrooge asked what I wanted to drink, and I thought it best not to enquire if breakfast tea was a viable option.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For the next hour after this, I did my best to look as though I was enjoying myself. I was clearly failing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“C’mon!” Scrooge accosted me. “Get up and dance! Have some fun! Aren’t Christians always saying they can have fun too?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I began explaining that while Christians could enjoy a dance or two and certainly could be fun loving, it was, mercifully in my case, no mandate; that I danced like an Albatross on LSD and that I was too busy enjoying my second vodka and coke - which was a blustering lie, it was my third coke and coke - to even consider moving.</span></div>
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<a href="http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/sustainableclub2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/sustainableclub2.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Evidently, Scrooge couldn’t hear me. I was yanked to my feet, thrust into the crowd and forced to spend some time flicking between waiting for the earth to swallow me up and moving with what I hoped was the beat of the floor-heart. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It was here I spied companions Oliver Twist and Mr. Bumble confidently arm-pump their way towards another group of women, who, in turn, arm pumped away. Before they were swept up in the crowd, I saw my gallant friends artfully ignore the hint and continue their mission.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After a stretch of standing/minimalist dancing, I shoved my way back to the corner. Under the legs of our new poster-friend I saw the friends who were still sitting down laughing and pointing back to the floor. I wheeled, and was greeted with the reality of Barnaby and some girl locked at the jaw, seemingly doing their darndest to swap faces. I turned back to the corner, sat down. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Expecting to be met with a shouted quip or two, I saw one of my buddies looking pale, then paler, then about the same shade as Marley’s ghost. After a few concerned ‘you alright, man?’ queries, this particular friend’s evening’s alcohol consumption was spewed all over the table.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.chrismahoney.co.nz/Graphics/Colonel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.chrismahoney.co.nz/Graphics/Colonel.jpg" width="249" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Shortly after we were very nicely asked by a bouncer to get the *insert expletive here* out and so we </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">emerged into the slightly smoggy air of the early morning </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">looking for a taxi. No transport was immediately available, and we decided to huddle in a nearby KFC and joke about the evening’s escapades. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Meanwhile, Barnaby sat reminiscing about one specific incident.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“She was perfect, man!” he cried, plucking an empty bargain bucket from a nearby table and sticking it on his head. “Oh!” His eyes sparking up, “I never got her number! We need to go back! I think she was the one, man...”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The evening then ended as it had begun - with my deciding to choose my battles wisely. It was, I thought, not the best idea to debate the nature of love with a man who was currently demanding people call him the Colonel. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The taxi arrived, we were driven home.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Needless to say, I was back to the tea and sitcoms the following night. And every night to eternity</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">, until hot beverages are served along with the Budweisers.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/confessions-of-overworked-gunslinger.html"><br /></a></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/confessions-of-overworked-gunslinger.html">When I'm not a raging party-goer, this is how I study.</a></span></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/what-primary-school-taught-me-to-l-and.html">I've always been awkward. Here's me lacking self-awareness as a plucky primary scho</a><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-ii-big-ol.html">ol child.</a></div>
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-ii-big-ol.html">I also review video games so people won't spot my inner wild child. Here's an example.</a></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-534634800012035952013-04-06T13:02:00.002-07:002013-04-07T01:39:35.769-07:00Confessions of an Overworked Gunslinger - Some Personal Study Coping Methods<h2>
It's Plath-tastic!</h2>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And suddenly we’re back at that time of year - much like waking up an hour before your alarm is set to scream itself into existence, we’re all beginning to see that next set of exams loom up in the distance.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Depending on your place of study and procrastination prowess, you may have already started studying, or else are set begin, about to slip into that red haze of past papers and lecture notes and criticism and pain that builds and builds until the alarms are telling us it’s Day of Reckoning O’Clock.</span></div>
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<a href="http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/wp-content/uploads/Time.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/wp-content/uploads/Time.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>(Side theory - invigilators are actually monsters that literally feed on the fear of students; exams are essentially their gathering energy for hibernating through the lazy summer ahead. Go on, prove me wrong.)</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In light of the exam stress, I think it’s time we were honest about the coping methods we use to keep our sanity levels in check - those little splices of mayhem we put into our day that allow to catch a few seconds of breath in between, or even during, study.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So here are mine.</span></div>
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<u><br /><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Coping Mechanism A - Becoming founding father of the ‘Study Outfit’</b></span></u></h4>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">First of all, you have to understand I’ve never aspired to fashion greatness. For me, clothes are successful if they don’t draw any attention to themselves. In fact, I count it as a victory if I look as good as a rejected George model.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When I’ve got to embark on several hours of intellectual purgatory though, I find it helps if I’m wearing something either admirable or else patently ridiculous. I’m kept motivated by the fact that even if literary theory is sometimes a bit banal, it’s made more amusing in light of the farce I’m sporting. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many of my ‘Study Outfits’ are inspired from other places - some examples:<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;"><i>The Gunslinger</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIp4w3yX8nO3LNZ8Lp0aGkm4iZMb6qN5dluXeOVRzGn7hhpr2zBL58VRIEaxlqkXxObLK9N4pH2ANZGOsuqTNPEUvg6_xyc9ebjgiW1XQHbUNP-Ox5u_PU2yQl-K6vKW0pOWqs2VFNOto/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIp4w3yX8nO3LNZ8Lp0aGkm4iZMb6qN5dluXeOVRzGn7hhpr2zBL58VRIEaxlqkXxObLK9N4pH2ANZGOsuqTNPEUvg6_xyc9ebjgiW1XQHbUNP-Ox5u_PU2yQl-K6vKW0pOWqs2VFNOto/s200/photo.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Inspired by Stephen King Dark Tower fame, this one starts off relatively simple - T-shirt, jeans with a dressing gown thrown on over. What makes this ensemble more Deschain than Dent, however, is the inclusion of myriad toy guns (in my case, obtained in a toyshop fire sale) fitted into the loops of the gown. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Ideal for those arduous evening sessions, <i>The Gunslinger</i> will make you feel cool, comfortable and, most importantly, able to shoot your way through several hours of work in a single sitting.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Just don’t look into any mirrors. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">The Bond</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgmnsHRv7GQGZVXiVMmrn-USFCoBJvQeLBKpaPA7sADNdxMzSgolRE8IpPibXLgJipinkQkHfqMGmCtydpf5Li9dH5m5NSvUa0k0muFk6j-gRJiuFjxjIjtj-lBfz4gvjkeU31zS0WiDg/s1600/photo-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgmnsHRv7GQGZVXiVMmrn-USFCoBJvQeLBKpaPA7sADNdxMzSgolRE8IpPibXLgJipinkQkHfqMGmCtydpf5Li9dH5m5NSvUa0k0muFk6j-gRJiuFjxjIjtj-lBfz4gvjkeU31zS0WiDg/s200/photo-1.JPG" width="150" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Feeling exhausted after a long day’s work? As appealing as a horse in a coughing fit? <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you're at the end of your wits but not the end of your work, why not spend the rest of your evening suited up? In as long as it takes to clip on that fake bow-tie, you’ll stop scaring the living daylights out of everyone who knocks on your door, and instead feel as important as if you were aiding her majesty’s secret service itself. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For maximal effect, flick that browser over to youtube and work to your favourite Bond soundtrack. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What are you waiting for? Boost that self-esteem and start being the spy who loved <b>me</b>. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">The Night’s Watch (aka The Crow)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjha4XRRiFyMtDVfbGpzA2yRGw3ieSoGB3U8Fczq_lkpnR-7tYDpqDc5ybwOQV983_Dy367kU5EEtDOfGmvcN48dKGyxibox4YkaRXC6dRYVHcjp1uLwSnygnwjxL2M3nzc1JrgliZNHvg/s1600/photo-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjha4XRRiFyMtDVfbGpzA2yRGw3ieSoGB3U8Fczq_lkpnR-7tYDpqDc5ybwOQV983_Dy367kU5EEtDOfGmvcN48dKGyxibox4YkaRXC6dRYVHcjp1uLwSnygnwjxL2M3nzc1JrgliZNHvg/s200/photo-2.JPG" width="150" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We all know winter is coming. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why not prepare for it with this all-black attire based on that series of books/episodes you know and love?</span></div>
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<a href="webkit-fake-url://EEF201C4-F855-409A-838E-E01C6607E79F/image.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Ideal for those bleak frosty nights of semester one, this cosy set of clothing will let you slay those essay questions like your pen is valyrian steel.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Cloak recommended, direwolf optional.</span></div>
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<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><u>Coping Mechanism B: Descending into Rampant Materialism</u></b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is Leonard. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-YMH5uEiwDnQr4ZtrQ34hQ_rqMLcc5JOd9kS_NxZvQd19QNkuyIEO4bDLA0-tgUcS-NMVJfeVhj2C8alBWI8IkNVBEk5KxjB7c3uegmJBOm0IjsjLrFzCwExmFmvgciLXL_g3r4nBjfE/s1600/photo-3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-YMH5uEiwDnQr4ZtrQ34hQ_rqMLcc5JOd9kS_NxZvQd19QNkuyIEO4bDLA0-tgUcS-NMVJfeVhj2C8alBWI8IkNVBEk5KxjB7c3uegmJBOm0IjsjLrFzCwExmFmvgciLXL_g3r4nBjfE/s320/photo-3.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Are you still there?</td></tr>
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Leonard is a cuddly toy version of those hilarious sentry turrets from the superb Portal series, and <span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">is but a single example of my shameful inability to stop buying purposeless things during exam time. Walking to the university library, desperate for procrastination, I succumb to almost anything mildly well-advertised like a moth to a consumerist flame. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mercifully for my wallet, ninety-nine percent of these occasions I spend a minute looking and then resume my travels to the place where laughter goes to die. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But then there’s that other percent...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It would be sightly okay if I were buying things that had some semblance of usefulness, but it almost never is. It’s more often an amusing mug than a textbook, more often DVDs than socks. By the time exams are over, my wallet is as thin as my tolerance, and I have to spend the next few months building the pennies back up (knowing exactly where I'll be likely funnelling those same coins a few months further down the line).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, if you see me in town eyeing that remote-controlled helicopter, drag me at turret-point back to the library, please. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><u>Coping Mechanism C: When I Procrastinate, I Procrastinate Properly</u></b></span></h4>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s not just my hard-won cash I senselessly waste, either. When I study I’m generally able to sit down and plough through several hours of work undistracted. This usually entails, however, that when I fall off the study-wagon, I fall hard and bounce off a rock or two besides. I don’t just spend a few minutes scrolling aimlessly down the twitter feed - I let several hours slide as I’m driven to find out exactly what Astronauts do when they're not up in space. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">More recently I was inexplicably gripped to discover, in detail, the history of the Haiku. After an hour of researching Basho - one of my favourite names ever, by the way - I was inspired to write some Haiku of my own. At this idea, the procrastination sea-slug whispered into my ear: “You know, to write the Haiku you need to get in touch with nature. You can't just sit at a desk, you need to be by rivers and trees and leaves...” </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"You're right!" I cried, enthused, and soon I found myself in a forest, watching the sun setting and trying to fumble my inner zen into a few horrifically-placed syllables.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And with that, the day reserved for studiousness was gone. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It would have been a day well, if oddly, spent had I the free time to spend. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">A fortnight before the invigilators were set to feed on my fear, not so much. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><u>Mechanism D: Becoming Possessed by the Ghosts of Exams Past</u></b></span></h4>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This one is less of a coping Mechanism and more of an inevitability, really.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">When not hiking through some backwater forest aspiring to be the reincarnation of a long-gone japanese poet, I study English literature, and have done</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> to varying extents for some years now. Indeed, this set of exams marks my seventh time being forced to argue why a certain text means something that the author probably never even realised was an option. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I love my course. I love reading the text, thinking through the text, reading other’s thoughts on the text. I love spending more time on an author’s works than they probably did themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What I don’t like so much, if you'll excuse the particularly bad pun, is sitting and memorising thousands of Wordsworth of quotes. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A large part of studying a book is learning the book, and so often my ‘studying’ counts as trying to lodge another sentence that might possibly be needed (but probably won't be) into my head. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The weird part is a lot of the quotations I’ve learned don't fade away. As I embark on the same study/study-more/more-study/study-like-the-wind process each semester, I find that the most vivid quotes from authors I’ve previously been examined on come roaring back as if these new sentences are just riding the crest of an older wave.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve found myself walking through the streets of Glasgow murmuring Plath’s best hits (“If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!”) to passers by. Macbeth’s more violent speeches come to mind while whittling through the cupboard for those stray digestives. Eddie is still pining awkwardly over his niece; Browning is still pasting his disturbed speakers along the walls of my head.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What I’ve learned to do, though, is accept the authors in my head; try to let them mingle and say their lines. I know a few weeks later they'll sink back into the subconscious for another season. Worst case scenario, I become a little unhinged in the meantime, but, hey, that’s how the best study outfits are born.</span><br />
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<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-ii-big-ol.html">Click here to see my thoughts on Assassin's Creed II,</a><br />
<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/what-primary-school-taught-me-to-l-and.html">Or else go here to see where my education began,</a><br />
<a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/what-doesnt-kill-you.html">Or if you just want Plath to stop looking at you this'll do.</a></div>
ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-59675464149899819642013-03-31T11:32:00.001-07:002013-03-31T15:56:25.839-07:00Revisiting Assassin’s Creed II - A Big Ol’ Slice of Heaven<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
A cut above the rest?</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In his seminal masterpiece “The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy”, 19th Century historian Jacob Burckhardt says of that time period:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“An objective treatment and consideration of the state and of all the things of this world became possible.The subjective side...asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual and recognised himself as such.”</i></span></div>
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<a href="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B002D5LTOQ.01.PT02.LXXXXXXX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B002D5LTOQ.01.PT02.LXXXXXXX.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The reader can see much of this Renaissance Representation reflected in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II - here we have characters critiquing the state, putting forward their own plans, propositions. At the same time, the game exhibits the flamboyant showmanship of the Renaissance through festivals, carnivale, extravagant clothing, architecture and art. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is, however, one key difference between Burkhardt’s work and Ubisoft’s game - Assassin’s Creed II is actually quite a bit of fun, whereas <i>Civilisation</i> makes me want to stick a hidden blade in my brain via nostril. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That said, the game deserves more than just to be labeled ‘a bit of fun’. Actually, bluntly put, ACII makes the original 'Creed look like a blueprint for this sequel. In fact, I’m going to lay my terribly orthodox opinions down on the table and proclaim Assassin’s Creed II as the best the franchise has offered to date. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At a first glance, this may seem a bold claim. Although it’s true that ACII might briefly look much like the same action-conspiracy-laden-sandbox-parkour-stabfest-adventure as before, now just a bit dressed up to fit the 15thC, the lightest of scrapings reveals just how much the developers have responded to criticism of the original game. Actually, it’s pretty much impossible to discuss the game without frequently referring to the first game’s inadequacies - every element of the original has been somehow tweaked, improved, re-thought or else redacted for the sequel. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This list of improvements, while not actually endless, certainly comes out longer than the dialogue in your average Michael Bay flick. ACI’s singular, bland enemy type has been flattened under the variety of enemies endowed with a superfluity of weapons - daggers, hammers, axes, spears. Fists are now a viable option in combat. The unwavering sun that one shone on Damascus and Jerusalem has been switched for a timed day/night cycle. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Ezio, the game’s new protagonist, is both nimble and acrobatic (and makes his predecessor Altair look positively arthritic). This, among other things, entails he doesn’t have to be on a level plane with his target to exact swift murdery goodness. Nope: The player can now dispatch his target from rooftops, ledges, even while napping in a stray bale of hay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Further, </span></span><a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-i-thought-id.html"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">in my </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">surveyal</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> of Altair’s adventures</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> I made the point - somewhat vehemently - that there the player is expected to work with the tools given or else taste pixellated backhand. Here, you’re given far more slack on how you want to interact with the world. Ezio is free and encouraged to customise and upgrade his weapons, outfits and so forth. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">This is a game that wants you to enjoy yourself right up to the end of the 20 hours or so of story, while AC1 was the equivalent of a blind date that keeps yawning and checking her watch, wondering when you’re going to pluck up the nerve to excuse yourself and leave.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Alright, I hear you: less social life, more escapism.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Where there’s an alteration, there’s an addition - too many to fully list, though one of the standout inclusions that can't be overlooked are the ‘Assassin’s Tomb’ missions: six entirely optional, linear levels that vary from sewer to palace, and require the player to exercise as much mental agility as dexterity. I say optional, you’d be a fool to overlook them.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Never Cross the Streams (unless developing games)</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">These alterations and add-ons are all well and good, and make for a much more enjoyable romp. Assassin’s Creed II’s highpoint (pun!), though, isn’t in these micro-improvements; rather it's in the way all these individual elements (let’s for convenience’s sake categorise them into setting, narrative and gameplay) are woven together, not tacked alongside each other.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">‘Nay!’ cries the objector. ‘Surely gameplay always has a place in the narrative of a games, and that story always has to be set within a place? What makes this game so special?’ True, uncommonly literate respondent - almost all games will connect story, place and gameplay together to some extent. Some, however do it better than others, and some are as accomplished at it as I am at football.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(My career at that particular sport slid from defender to goalkeeper to goalpost, in case you’re wondering).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Particular examples of games that flail at this element merging are Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (I can’t believe those pesky COMBO letters have escaped again!); </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Call of Duty (“Why is the player suddenly in this location?” “Why not? It looks pretty”), and, of course, the original Assassin’s Creed, where missions were unashamedly added on after the narrative was already finished. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Conversely, in Assassin’s Creed II, narrative, setting and gameplay are coiled into a single whole to such a degree that it would be impossible to parse them apart. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Bear with me - it's necessary to explain this bit properly. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Take narrative and setting alone, first of all. Interesting historical characters, from the dubious Pazzi to the downright nasty Borgia, as well as the surprisingly comic Da Vinci himself, have central parts to play within the plot. Staples of the Renaissance - religion, conspiracy, self-expression - also happen to be themes that bleed into the Assassin’s series as a whole. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">We see all these things, additionally, through the lens of our new protagonist, Ezio Auditore, in many ways an archetype of the Renaissance himself. As opposed to Altair’s bland stoicism, we meet Ezio as a loud, sharp, self-absorbed youngster, certainly not Master Assassin (PhD). The series’ new-found sense of </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">humour</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> is complimented equally by the sharp writing and characterisation as much as the world Ezio himself lives in.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It would, then, be jarring to uproot the plot and plant it in a different place or time period - they're too bound together, which is just as well, because Renaissance Italy sprawls in both of the game’s halves: Florence, Tuscany and Forli, then in the larger labyrinthine Venice (or Venezia, if you want to sound pretentious and make people dislike you more). Real architectural landmarks are realised, when viewed up close with startling detail. I’m not going to say ‘living breathing world’, but It’s a close run thing. Costumes are extravagant, cities bustle with noise and music. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">These elements of setting and plot then built into the gameplay, not alongside. Missions, to different extents, always have some kind of </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">relevance</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> to the narrative, very rarely existing as obvious time-padding. The ‘Hey Altair, please find my flags and I’ll tell you something about your target’ structure of AC1 is no more; rather, cutscenes and dialogue always frame the basis for what the player does. The gameplay changes noted above, additionally, are justified narratively by the fact that the ever bland Desmond is hooked up to the Animus 2.0. It's another unnecessary yet welcome touch that adds another piece of evidence to the overallpoint.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The developers also use gameplay to emphasise certain points of narrative. To make another bad pun, the merging cuts both ways. Ezio’s first intended assassination, for example. is both emotion-fuelled and sloppy, and forces him to flee his home town and take refuge in his uncle's mansion. The game recognises the player's rustiness and uses it, making the player feels as though his/her actions are in tune with the narrative, not distinct. Desmond’s shorter sequences similarly grow clumsy combat to honed carnage as comes to absorb the skills of his ancestors as the player's skill progresses alongside. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Needles in a Haystack</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://0.tqn.com/d/compactiongames/1/0/M/j/1/assassins_creed_2_scr009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://0.tqn.com/d/compactiongames/1/0/M/j/1/assassins_creed_2_scr009.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>It’s this coalescing that was the downfall of the original Assassin’s Creed, but what makes this sequel shine even when the graphics begin to look less than sparkling -</i> which is just as well, because that’s happening as the next generation begins to roll in. The animations that only a few years ago were at worst adequate have become comical.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Don’t believe me? Fast forward to the ‘grueling’ scene of 5:50-6:00 of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwnuwvytK4M">this walkthrough</a> (disclaimer, which isn’t owned by me) and see for yourself. Can you not taste the horror of the scene? Me neither</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s not just in the close-up detail that the game fumbles a bit, either. The grand buildings, as noted, look sublime when being climbed but from a distance look more like cardboard cut-outs than imposing structures. The skyline overall also looks muddied and hazy compared with more recent gaming cityscapes. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The narrative also suffers from a few blights, the main foible being that story often juts forward years at a time, leaving the player perplexed and often disgruntled. Characters are often disposed of in odd ways, too - Ezio effectively damns his sister to several decades of managing his finances. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s important to realise, however, that most of these flaws arise only because ACII bites off considerably more than ACI ever attempted to chew. These shortcomings, in other words, exist because the game tries to do much more with itself and sets the standard far higher. The vast majority of the time, it succeeds.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Overall, ACII is still a fantastic, incredible, adjectival-topping jaunt into one of the best games that the current generation has to offer. Even when the game becomes as old as Burkhardt’s language, it’ll never be as archaic. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But why bother waiting that long at all? Get climbing, get running, get stabbing. Go.</span></div>
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<i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span>If you want to see my opinion of Assassin's Creed the first, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-i-thought-id.html">go here.</a></i><br />
<i>To read about my adventures an an uneducated juvenile, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/what-primary-school-taught-me-to-l-and.html">go here.</a></i><br />
<i>If you want to read Jacob Burckhardt, go get some sun.</i></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-36771301739370392722013-03-23T14:54:00.003-07:002013-03-31T15:43:20.959-07:00What Primary School Taught Me: To L and back again<div style="font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>“Good Morniiing Mister Bloggs..”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Whether you called it Primary school, Elementary, Kindergarden or us-kids-sitting-cross-legged-inside-a-shack-somewhere: all of us share a lot of the same memories of our earliest stages of education, mainly because these memories are drawn from largely the same pool.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Most of us, for example, had some variety of flavoured milk at break (I’m team strawberry, personally), we all knew to Never-Ever-Ever tell even your closest allies if there was something tooth-decaying in your lunchbox. Hordes of children kicked the bins and ran from even greater hordes of bees; scores of us attempted to grow little portable patches of cress and often staked bizarre levels of pride in our plant’s vertical progress. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At the same time, it’s important to recognise each of us have our own pocket of experiences that our opening years of education have given us specifically. So, without any more textual dribbling, allow me to share three lessons Primary school have imparted to me and probably not you:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Lesson One: Hiding under your table is a valid alternative to doing homework</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Back at the very start of my Primary school career, I hadn’t done my homework. You read right: try your best to abstain from clapping me in irons. For whatever reason, I hadn’t glued the macaroni to the sugar paper or whatever it was I was supposed to apply my mind to that previous evening. Additionally, I distinctly remember being worried because I hadn’t done well rehearsing the alphabet - or something like that - earlier that day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If I had told the teacher (a nice lady who we’ll call Mrs X, well rehearsed in the follies of four-year-olds) I would have at worst been given a sentence-long rebuke. Maybe a charge to do it for the next day. As she went round the tables inspecting whatever it was everyone else had done, though, a sterling plan emerged in my muddled head: instead of telling the truth, I could hide. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But where? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The answer struck me like a gym-shoe to the face. I eyed Mrs X across the room, bent over and inspecting the handiwork of someone else; I eyed the peers in my group, too transfixed by their own mini-marvels to see anything in their peripheral vision, then decided to act. I edged out my little red chair from the desk slightly, kicked my schoolbag to the side and slithered off my seat and under the table. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I told you it was sterling. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Miraculously, nobody spotted this daring feat among the feet, or else perceived it to be too commonplace to be worth mentioning.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Plan executed, I clasped the legs of my seat with my little hands, pulled the chair in and waited for Mrs X to nod appreciatively at my group’s pastapieces and move on, at which point I’d slither out, put this blip behind me and resume my travels through the education system.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A couple of minutes passed, and I was getting bored. I counted the shoes around me, fiddled with the straps on the schoolbags, tried to remember if lunch was soon. To a Primary one, lunch is always too far off (although, to a second-year university student, lunch is still always too far off).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I counted my fingers, recited rhymes, played with the velcro on my shiny school shoes. Not long now, I thought, not long now until she- </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“David?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Slowly, I arched my little neck round, and saw Mrs. X was crouched, looking at me, wondering what on earth I was doing amid all the schoolbags. Her mouth formed a small circle of surprise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">O. That was the letter I kept forgetting...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These guys saved my education. Except Quarrelsome Queen. Nobody likes Quarrelsome Queen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Lesson Two: You are never ‘Too Young’ to partake in strategic conquests</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some geography is necessary: the entire outside area of my school was essentially a large ‘L’ shape nestled around the building itself. The upper side of the ‘L’ was the area for older students (between Primary 3-7), a big slab of grey tarmac where kids could trade cards, bounce balls and so forth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The other line was for the younger ones- a smaller area made of similar stuff where the Primary 1’s and 2’s could gain temporary respite from the trials of learning to pronounce their own names properly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, just beyond that horizontal side of the L was a stretch of grass which sloped up lazily at one end to become a fair-sized knoll.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This patch of elevated turf came to be known by the older students simply as ‘The Hill’. We were a platonic bunch, really. To the bored older ones, ‘The Hill’ - particularly during summer - looked more appealing than back-to-back episodes of Bernard’s Watch. The light breeze would waft the shards of grass about, lazily inviting us to come destroy it with our footballs. Lost lunch money beckoned the adventurers, while other sun-gleaned areas called for the more silver-tongued striplings to make the case why the white colour <i>is</i> a necessity for crayon packs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In the greatest outrage in the history of Scottish education, for most of our lunchtimes The Hill was decidedly, uncompromisingly, out of bounds. Whether that’s because certain days were allocated for certain year-groups, or it was only certain days of the week all were allowed on at the same time, I don’t really remember. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This didn’t bother most, who were comfortable enough flailing about or throwing rubber balls hard at walls (and then acting surprised when it came charging back at their faces).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To an elect few, however, The Hill still beckoned, and this same select few strove to meet it. To reach our desire on one of these ‘out of bounds’ days, an elder student would have to navigate through the younger playground - the wrong side of the L all the while avoiding the patrolling sentries that were the Teaching Assistants - in reality, adults trying to make sure no-one had decided they were human agents of the god of war, but to us, nefarious masterminds who wanted children to enjoy themselves as much as Alcatraz inmates.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To successfully travel to to The Hill, then, we had to get strategical. This we did one summer, where a band of us developed several strategies to bypass the staff, get to our grassy destination and play our fill of Ninjas versus Commandos.These ingenious plans included: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Pawn - works better for larger parties. Send a pair of unlucky martyrs to get deliberately caught while a larger party sweeps across the other side of the playground. Success chance: moderate.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Disguise - works better for individuals or younger groups. Crouch and stroll nonchalantly across, pretending, without ever drawing attention to yourself, that you’re a younger child. Last minute dash necessary or Assistants will see you on the grass. Success chance: unlikely.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Shuffle - this one is a stroke of genius - walk along the wall of the school building, facing the building and keeping your back to everyone behind you. You’ll blend right in and look totally subtle. Success chance: if you try this, you’re an idiot.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes our stratagems would work, other times we’d get easily caught and marched back to the grey slab. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By the end of term, we spent so much time on our military-style excursions I wouldn’t have blamed the staff if they wondered whether cane wasn’t actually a pretty swell idea after all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Still, it was a fun few weeks that educated me greatly in the merits of teamwork and pragmatism, though I probably owe a few apologies to several faculty members, and more than one box of chocolates. Sorry, guys.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Moving swiftly on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Between the two semi-narratives above lingers a memory, far shorter yet too vivid not to be recalled. The situation was thus. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In class one morning, the assembled mass of marginally-literate children were writing some form of story or poem or doctoral dissertation or something. As we all know, kids imagine they are the best at everything they do. Indeed, if a child clearly, unavoidably loses at something, that something immediately becomes relegated to the ‘not worth doing anyway’ pile. Anyway, We were all getting quite invested into our writing, and the classroom was so quiet you could hear every flick of a pencil, every moistened lip, every rustle of anyone potentially taking refuge under a nearby desk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arthur: everyone's closest childhood friend</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you remember, I earlier discussed that a lot of our memories are collective, not individual, as they come from the same source. The ‘I’ll say I like yours if you say you like mine’ tactic is probably in this fold.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For those few unaware, ‘I’ll say I like yours if you say you like mine’ idea is simple: Child A will provide Child B with approval for their creative work if B reciprocates the gesture. ‘I’ll like yours if you like mine’ may miss the point of compliments, but no more than teenagers calling themselves ugly on their Facebook photos. Like my friend Peter, some people never grow up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On my quest for validation, I decided to implement the ‘‘I’ll say I like yours if you say you like mine’ tactic on the girl sitting next to me, grievously disregarding the silence that pervaded the room. Before a few syllables had left my high-pitched tongue, Mrs. Y issued me with what I can only describe as the Stare of Rage. Her eyebrows swooped like a bird hovering, hunting. The mouth tightened, the pupils widened, her whole body tautened tight as a Trebuchet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My juvenile tongue instantly glotted in my throat, and my voice climbed up to a somehow higher octave before fading away to nothing. I feared for my life, my sanity, my...t</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">hen, quick as that, Mrs. Y walked on. Justice had been served with a simple look. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Evidently, she had other fish to visually fry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Cliche images aside, it was terrifying. I never crossed the teacher for the rest of the year, and a good fifteen years on can still can see that Stare of Rage (TM). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now that the fear has passed, though, I want to find her and ask her to teach me her ways. I could stop wars, elect presidents, get someone else to pass the salt - all from a simple stare.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, school-bound friends, next time you’re about to do something stupid - make sure there’s no teacher nearby. There isn’t a table in the world that can save you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Do you have any unique primary-school memories?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>To read how my education fares now, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/marlowe-and-me.html">go here</a>.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>To see how I procrastinate my education, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/revisiting-assassins-creed-i-thought-id.html">go here</a>.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>If you just like hyperlinks, <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/what-doesnt-kill-you.html">go here</a>.</i></span></div>
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ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279513651398995679.post-86012514474678872013-03-16T16:11:00.003-07:002013-03-26T06:51:06.523-07:00Revisiting Assassin’s creed: I thought I’d have a stab<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />
Platform - Xbox360<br />
Cost New- £10</span><br />
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<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I steer Altair up to the entrance of Damascus’ poorest district. Here, there’s no shelter - the sun stares down on dirty walls of baked brick. Along the edges, sellers are pandering goods in splintered, ramshackle stalls.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">None of this bothers me: I’m busy eyeing the sole entrance into the city itself. The gate is open but four guards are standing sentry, huddled into the narrow high space that separates my hero from my goal.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My fingers slacken on the controller as my mind flicks through the options. Dispatching them the old-fashioned bloody way is the first alternative, and I find it rather attractive. I’d be saving this bunch of human-shaped pixels from the perpetual damnation of standing here for all of virtual eternity. Yes - the only humane thing to do, really, is to imminently carve up four sizable slices of man-turkey. </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ll take my Nobel Peace Prize to go, please.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then, my honed perception (and by honed perception, I mean a huge icon) informs me there’s a group of scholars beginning to meander up to to the gates, totally unwatched. My perception (icon) points out that my white robes would blend in quite nicely with the surly academics and I could pass through violence-free. </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There we go, then. Plan.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As I start to move, though, the camera swivels up a little and I see a stall slightly closer to the gate than the rest, probably close enough to leap over the guard’s heads without their noticing. Out of the three alternatives, this strikes me - and by extension, Altair - as the most best option. Virtual gymnastics that defy the developer’s expectations. Delicious. </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I make Altair change tack and let him mount the rickety roof of the stall. A run and a jump later and he’s soaring across the dust, then over the heads of the guards still staring blandly in front, and then landing on the other side. Home free. There’s no way they saw that, I know; the city sprawls ahead. </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of a sudden, my HUD flares red, and the apparently all-seeing guards turn quickly, uniformly, like some bizarre form of Crusade Macarena. They brandish their swords and unapologetically charge. The same guards, in case I’m not stressing this enough, who didn’t see my novel method of entrance. Not even a little bit.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Welcome to Assassin’s Creed: a game that really doesn’t care about your stupid whiny feelings.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_RDxmf0Qn_edxGtZnTmN0z-HcsbzVyGAZUJtq4C7XTmDXMxprXirNdn82nTvKn_j-H9fhK8zZlzq_f6r2axxLdti8LR3AhOph5-IXHVRWcKFrG33sDJi2tFupI9CrlhBo1puLQ6PKd7y/s1600/news_photo_15187_1316529073.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_RDxmf0Qn_edxGtZnTmN0z-HcsbzVyGAZUJtq4C7XTmDXMxprXirNdn82nTvKn_j-H9fhK8zZlzq_f6r2axxLdti8LR3AhOph5-IXHVRWcKFrG33sDJi2tFupI9CrlhBo1puLQ6PKd7y/s320/news_photo_15187_1316529073.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The Hangover Part 1191</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The first thing people seem to have forgotten about the original Assassin’s Creed is that, when it was released back in 2007, no-one really had a clue what was going on plot-wise. Sure, there were a few with the time and notepads able to piece together fragmentary excerpts of dialogue into a somewhat cohesive whole, but for the most part the game starts off confusing and spirals out from there, deliberately murky. </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here are the things that you’re allowed to have a firm grasp on - you play as Altair, Master Assassin (PhD), living in the middle of the third crusade, commissioned with the task of bumping off nine ‘templars’ from either side of the fighting. It’s worth noting most targets are genuinely interesting historical figures (see <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Assassin%27s_Creed_characters#The_Templar_Order">here</a> </i>for a list). You find yourself being more sympathetic towards some, pitying others, and wanting to plough others down with a medieval tractor. Still, it’s difficult to understand what their end goal is, and just when you think you’ve got things sorted out, the final fifteen minutes narrative-slaps you so hard you’re left utterly disorientated and more dazed than ever.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This confusion consumes almost every aspect of the plot, too - while in later installments the player is allowed to take refuge from the meta-narrative within the more intimate story of the protagonist, Altair has graduated first-class from the College of the One Dimensional Personality.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This assessment is perhaps too generous for the game’s other protagonist, Desmond Myles, a present-day Assassin captured and forced to relive his memories via the ‘Animus’, essentially a Matrix machine into the past. The Desmond parts of gameplay are less marginal than anyone would like, serving to break up the action in the same way the Pacific separates Hawaii from the mainland. Desmond (here and the sequels) acts clearly a device that allow the writers to flick between time periods, and isn’t really worth dwelling on further than these few remarks. His sections are decidedly, deliberately grey and uninspiring.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://hothfactory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Desmond-Miles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="307" src="http://hothfactory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Desmond-Miles.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Desmond: A strange mix of bland and </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">eminently</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> punchable</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Back to Altair, then.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There’s no getting away from the disorientation the game steamrollers the player with - in fact, it’s actually integrated into some of the game elements too. Huge expanses of land are accessible but are pretty much void, and the game’s collectable ‘flags’ have no discernible purpose, without so much as a pat on the back as a reward. Unless you do it yourself, but we have to save our energy for those trips to the fridge.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here’s the crux of my argument, though: this constant, consistent disorientation isn’t necessarily a bad thing. </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why?</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Because it helps build one of the most palpable atmospheres in gaming. The boring wastelands of dialogue are frustrating because there’s something deeper going on if you could just tease it out. The huge, expansive cities of Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre are (though bettered by the sequels) huge, distinctive sprawling masses yet, in the same way as the plot, you never feel as though you ‘control’ them in the way you do in later installments. There’s a detachment here - gloomy filters are woven so there often isn’t any kind of sunny escapism. Little sprinklings of music exist where others may have placed a bombastic score. There are no huge set-pieces that make things feel especially ‘gamey’. Altair is slower in his climbing and free-running, giving exploration a less intense, more careful pacing.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The narrative works precisely because it feeds into the brilliant mysterious atmosphere that the game is, as a whole, drenched with. It makes the player always feel like the smaller part of a bigger whole, that there’s a conspiracy two steps ahead of your puny mind. The game doesn’t care if you keep up with it because things aren’t ultimately about you, and you’re made to know it.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This realisation, though, belies the paradox at the heart of Assassin’s Creed - this mysterious atmosphere is entirely undercut by the most repetitive gaming structure since Tetris.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Each ‘level’, if you can call it that, amalgamates (what a fantastic word) to the same thing:<br />
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(1) Converse with Assassin master.</span></div><ol><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Travel to city</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Converse with Assassin Headquarter’s master</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Climb some highpoints to find minigame-style missions</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Complete minigame-style missions</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Converse with Assassin Headquarter’s master</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Travel to target</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Watch Target converse</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Stab target</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Converse with Target</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Run back to Assassin Headquarter’s master</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Converse with Assassin Headquarter’s master</span></li><li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Converse with Assassin master</span></li></ol><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. The whole thing begins to feel more like a business transaction than a game, and that’s only after the second or third cycle. There are nine assassinations to do, totaling easily two dozen hours of gameplay (though as you can see gameplay/watching ratio is as annoyingly off balance as playing see-saw with the fat kid) it can easily become a chore.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvdOza7QLKf7XL0DCR_v0aMnhJ_cNwdl70cdwva3eF34d70ITLPK4tAInd4_nFMrFu9ICzZf9SlPxDIrdnUhzhSyjvSM6Y_DwnSaCpbx038z3Avz7795cy6ZglHAUX6FNqlFVP8Z_Se5AZ/s1600/thumbs_up_bciy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvdOza7QLKf7XL0DCR_v0aMnhJ_cNwdl70cdwva3eF34d70ITLPK4tAInd4_nFMrFu9ICzZf9SlPxDIrdnUhzhSyjvSM6Y_DwnSaCpbx038z3Avz7795cy6ZglHAUX6FNqlFVP8Z_Se5AZ/s320/thumbs_up_bciy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Nice level. Let's use it again. And again. And again.</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s so frustrating because each element of gameplay taken individually is at least adequate, and more often than not excellent. The combat, similar though vastly inferior to 2009’s Arkham Asylum, is entertaining, the free-running through cities is sublime, the various high-points scattered around the cities is fantastic. Shoehorning these things into annoying mini-games makes the entire experience feel as though a week before shipping Ubisoft suddenly realised they had to put an actual game in with the experience itself. The overall effect, as said, is a paradox and is utterly, hopelessly detrimental.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Even by 2013‘s standards, the game still looks decent, although character faces have weird mackerel eyes and bizarre melted wax faces, and sometimes the framerate can dip to slower speeds than your grandparent’s holiday slideshow.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, overall, do I recommend you play Assassin’s Creed? Yes - as a piece of art and a lesson in game development, not as a game. It all depends on your patience supply. think people who say ‘Stick with ACII’ are being a little harsh - certainly the prequel has a lot to recommend it. </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Give the game a try, though don’t throw the series out if it’s not your thing. </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And for goodness' sake don't climb onto that stall. You'll get yourself some serious splinters.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><i>For another game-related blog, go <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/what-doesnt-kill-you.html">here</a>.</i></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><i>If you hate videogames, and prefer Renaissance drama, go <a href="http://scotbydefault.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/marlowe-and-me.html">here</a>.</i></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><br />
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</div>ScotByDefaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16676654423523473867noreply@blogger.com0