The Gin Game...and Beefeaters, Anyway

Went and saw Paragon Theatre's production of The Gin Game by D.L. Coburn tonight. I caught the #7 north to 24th and Downing, then just walked over a few blocks. Stopped in to the coffee/ice cream shop to get a cappuccino.

As I sat in the Crossroads Theatre before the show admiring the set (it was really cool), I was struck by a very, very strong wave of something. I'm not sure what it was, but it made me want to rush out to DIA and get on the first flight to Heathrow. I haven't heard the London Calling for a time, and I guess I just forgot what it felt like. I could feel the sunlight in Kensington Park and the light rain that fell on me in Maida Vale. There was an urge for Strongbow Cider and shawarmas. And for that smiling Romanian girl who worked the Italian Restaurant on Queensway.

As much as I want to go traipsing about the ruins of Persepolis or climbing through the underground cities of Central Anatolia, there's still that magnetic something calling to me (screaming to me) to come back to the Square Mile, to Portobello Road, to Marble Arch, to Blackfriars, to the Tower, and back to late nights with Adam, Melissa, Matt and all the others.

Quando hominem taedet Londinii, eum taedet vitae.

There's Whiskey in the Jar

I quite accidentally ended up at Whole Foods this morning; just woke up in the Bulk Foods aisle. Weird, right? Anywho, I roamed about the place and picked up some sodium-free Nu-Salt. Apparently, it uses potassium chloride instead of the NaCl version. Picked up a bottle of High Country ginger kombucha, and finally bought a bag of mate. I'd put the accent on the final letter, but I still don't know how to do it with the keyboard.

For this I am eternally sorry.

Since I had some free time, I traipsed through the bakery/deli section, which has never been done. They sell Field Roast stuff! There was lots of bread. As I walked to the registers, I caught a wave of nirvana from somewhere. My guess is that it came from the bakery, but there's really no certainty.

I checked out and hopped onto the patio to drink the kombucha in the bright, bright sun.

Almost two hours later, I bought new blue jeans. As they say in Wigan...

Northern Illinois University

On an unrelated note: The horrifying news today out of Northern Illinois University. A gunman walked into a lecture hall and shot 21 people, killing 5 of them, before turning the gun on himself. I first heard about it after reading a Facebook status update from a friend of mine who is a student at NIU. It read "Mike : GUNMAN AT NORTHERN, GET TO SAFETY."

I started following the news at that point.

I must say, when Seung-Hui Cho undertook whatever grisly mission it was that he had in his head at Virginia Tech, my reaction was quite different. I have friends at NIU. I've spent time there. I have family connections there.

Let those who passed requiescat in pace, and peace upon the familes and friends of the wounded and shell-shocked.

Well It's 50 Cups of Coffee and You Know It's On

I was reading a blog earlier today; something chronicling the Long War.

There was an Iraqi flag on the sidebar linking to somewhere else.

I read the words in the middle; it was the takbir (Allahu akbar).

After a second or two, my mind registered the fact that I had read the Arabic script.

Martin had told me that learning to read Arabic is like riding a bike.

I think he was right, because it felt just like the first time I took off without training wheels.

Granted, I've still got half of the alphabet and all of the diacriticals to learn, but this is a start.

Once I finish that, I'll be functionally illiterate in a handful of languages.

Great!

Old Smells p.2

The Campus Bank today smelled like the home of my Aunt and Uncle in the suburbs back in Illinois. I like that smell; it comes to me far more often than the other old ones. It's not that it's particularly comforting or anything, no more so than the others. I just like the thought of the location that the smell evokes, and the knowledge that someday I will return to that house to eat dinner with my Aunt and Uncle and two cousins. They will ask about what I've been up to, I will tell them, and then ask them the same. It will be a pleasing time for all involved, I feel.

Homesickness, or for some people, homes-sickness, is a terrible disease. It is best combated by fulfilling the desires that it evokes. Someday I'll stop a scientist from inventing a drug to cure homesickness. He'll be like, "This is for the good of humanity!"

And I'll grab the collar of his lab-coat (while his research minions look on in terror, or confusion) and say, "Mister, maybe you and I might have different ideas of what is 'good', but I'm damn sure that humanity would be better off holding on to those feelings."

Then I'll roundhouse kick all his test tubes. It's gonna be awesome. And expensive, because someone's going to have to replace all the lab equipment, and it is not cheap at all.

Maybe I'll just stay home that day. It's not like he's forcing me to take the pills, right?

Identity (Iteration 1)

What are we to make of intersecting identities? I relate this to a very old Values Council discussion (it happened to be our first in the virtual world, actually). The question was posited, "Why is religious identity such a big damn deal now?" I suppose this ignores questions like, "Has it always been?" or "OH IS IT? I HADN'T NOTICED!"

Anywho, we decided that perhaps the autumn of 1989 provided the fertile ground for its "resurgence," since when "the Wall fell," the world ceased to be discussable in terms of Soviet and Free World. Of course, people had been religious during the Cold War, and for thousands of years before that. Probably since forever.

Of course, identity is far more than just one's vision of ultimate reality. There is tribal allegiance, gender, nationality, some construction of ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, location, socioeconomic background, height, weight, preferred brand of cigarette, language, history (both personal and otherwise), cat-lover or dog-lover or dog-lover-cat-hater, pasta fanatic or gluten-allergic, handicapped or able-bodied or somewhere-in-between, vegan or not, and a whole slew of hyphenated, tongue-in-cheek bits of what constitutes a person.

So what does identity mean nowadays? Can we be sure? Why does it seem important to the level of life-and-death at some times and completely inconsequential at others? Why doesn't one act as a militant whatever until that point at which being a whatever comes under attack by someone who is explicitly or implicitly not whatever? What does identity mean for us? What does identity mean for me?

As a young undergraduate, I wrote a paper on linguistic diversity wherein I claimed that discourse communities could be both as broad and as narrow as we could possibly conceive, since one's linguistic identity was a combination of many factors, a handful of which are listed above. Perhaps I was looking too specifically at the subject. Perhaps identity as identity is a worthy topic of discussion. The meta-identifiable bits of what makes humans interesting are what I concern myself with.

That, and what how I'm going to get all my schoolwork done this term without suffering a nervous breakdown.

Statistically Significant

Woke this morning with the phone not answering my commands.

Went south. Forgot my Stats notebook. Laptop screen died. Pen ran out of ink. Class took a long time.

Lots of other mostly terrible stuff, but at least my head wasn't aching like yesterday

Came home. Lots of boxes in the mail. Ran to store to buy vegetables. Came home, finished the cabbage.

The boxes contained the leftover stuff that I had been unable to take with me back to the mountains after Christmas, so I now sit surrounded by spoils. My new saucepan is among them, and many books. And a boot dryer.

Balance in all things...