flyover state
I’ve put up photos from last summer’s trip to Denmark and my Saturday trip to UCSC. I got lazy and didn’t finish titling the West Denmark photos; may be I’ll finish those up sometime later.
Look, he even looks like he has a tiny ray-gun! and a… tail.
List of Famous Crap I Visited: London Eye, Westminster Abbey, Parliament (the outside, at least), British Museum, National Theatre, Tower of London (incl. White Tower, Crown Jewels), London Tower, London City Hall, Waterloo Station, Covent Garden.
Of the three cities we visited, London felt the most like an American city, as if Boston had around 2,000 years more history behind it. It helped, I suppose, that everyone spoke English.
(It’s not hard to sound semi-British, by the way: soften your pronunciation, de-emphasize the center of the phrase slightly, raise your intonation at the end of the phrase, and feather the very end. This works on the hypothesis that Americans hammer their words like nails into a wall, while Brits gently place their words next to the crumpets and cucumber sandwiches on their enunciative tea platters.)
Right before we arrived at Heathrow Airport, the pilot announced that England had lost to Portugal in the World Cup. I was hoping that London would be fabulously aflame—angry-mob-style—when we landed, but alas it was not to be.
We stayed in a big youth hostel in Southwark, which is sort of not quite a semi-suburb of London. The hostel was okay, definitely the most mediocre of our European accommodations but, to be fair, pretty decent for a giant hostel. The night we arrived we were greeted by endearing frat-types who me asked me 1) whether I was Chinese and 2) whether I knew kung-fu. (Later on, in Westminster, a girl would drive by me shouting “Jackie Chan!”, which I’ll take as a complement.)
During the summer, Europe as a whole has a fairly fuckered-up day-night cycle: the sun rose at about 4 AM and set at around 10 PM. Thus, it took me about four days to work off my stupendous jet lag, meaning that the very first day I fell asleep around 3 AM and woke up around 4 AM. After a while, I noticed Alex was up and we set out to explore the area. We strolled among the houses and past the condos along the River Thames, alternating between statements of Southwark’s quaintness and its occasional stinkiness. Southwark is, indeed, quite quaint—it has kind of a hobbit-scale to it, even though it’s dense by American suburban standards.
Compared to Rome and Paris, London felt a tad politely uptight. Indeed, it appears to be slowly descending into a sort of police state. Lovely closed-circuit security cameras were almost everywhere, accompanied by reassuring statements such as “please note, you are being monitored—this is for your own protection.” The escalators to the Underground have little signs every two meters which remind you to “Please Stay to the Right.” Yes, there’s a vaguely defeated “V for Vendetta” sense about the place. I mean, the Londoners themselves seem nice enough, but I can’t see myself kicking back and having a two hour lunch like we did in the other cities.
On the positive side, the place is certainly on the up-and-up, with big construction cranes everywhere and large sums of sterling flowing all over. If I had been there before then I’d say it’s now more ridiculously expensive than ever. The prices are basically the same as in America, except they’re in pounds. (For reference, £1 = $2! I tried not to buy anything.) In any case, the city is full of new shiny things, like the 33 St. Mary Axe (AKA the “gherkin”), the new City Hall (looks like a sliced-up egg given a little knock to the side), and the big wonkin’ British Airways London Eye (a huge, huge Ferris Wheel that takes center place among the millennium South Bank developments).
Also, the Opera, Symphony, and Theatre are all top-notch… presumably. (I went to one play and no operas or symphonies, so I can’t really comment on the latter.) As far as infusion of culture goes, I’d say London dukes it out with New York for title of Most Cultured City in the English-Speaking World: there are loads of plays, performances, concerts, and film fests going on all over the place, not to mention the museums full of stuff the UK has jacked from other countries. We went to see The Life of Galileo (featuring my hero, George Clooney Galileo) at the National Theatre, and it was beautifully, tear-jerkingly awesome.
Our last day was the Fourth of July, so I did my best to be an obnoxious American by singing our national anthem at Underground stops, in malls, and wherever else I could embarrass my peers. (Yes, sadly, my travel mates weren’t as excited, probably because they hate Freedom, Liberty, and Texas our beautiful Free Liberty-Saturated United States.) I have to say that it felt slightly weird to be visiting our formal colonial oppressors on the day of our glorious declaration of independence.
Oh yeah, and I’d rate English food somewhere between “Baker’s Square” and “TGI Friday’s.” They had hard-boiled eggs wrapped in sausage meat and then deep fried, which sounds like a good idea… but really isn’t. On the other hand, they had pretty tasty meat pies (”pasties” in the Midwest?), and I had fun putting brown sauce on everything.
Here’s Alex inside our London Eye bubble, doing his best “Malcolm in the Middle” impression.
Who’s on Israel’s side
The Independent has a brilliant info-graphic that shows exactly who’s siding with Israel on the Israel-Lebanon conflict:
As I understand it: Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant resistance movement and political party, attacked several of Israel’s northern cities with rockets in an attempt to get Israel to release three Lebanese political prisoners. Israel retaliated against Lebanon as a whole and Hezbollah facilities specifically, with bombing raids, ground raids, naval blockades, and the capture of Maroun al-Ras. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Government is desperately calling for a ceasefire while disavowing Hezbollah’s actions. (Hezbollah has 18% of the seats in Lebanon’s Parliament; 27.3% including others in its bloc.)
Basically, the U.S. seems to be blindly pro-Israel and willing to hold all of Lebanon responsible, even though only a small portion of Lebanon is at fault. On July 16, Rice said the only way to fix things was “to deal with the extremists, isolate the extremists, and put in place moderate democratic states.” The thing is, Lebanon is already ruled by a pro-U.S. coalition. The longer Israel—with U.S. backing—hammers away at Lebanon, the more the Lebanese will feel betrayed by America over a militant faction of which they have no control, and the more Hezbollah will seem correct in their actions, thus pushing the whole of Lebanon into a war that doesn’t need to happen.
A comprehensive ceasefire is needed for both states; or, conversely, what favorable outcome could possibly come from continued attacks? As Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora argues, “Bombardment, killing, injuries, and destruction of all the infrastructure—this is not an environment in which you can talk.” Even if the Lebanese Government somehow capitulates to Israel, that doesn’t mean that Hezbollah would be stopped—that group is as much apart from the government as it is a part of it. What seems likely is the escalation of the conflict, as other Arab/Middle Eastern states come to aid of Lebanon and the U.S./reluctant Western-EU countries comes to the aid of Israel.
Also, why is the U.K. still our bitch? Join the EU already!
(thanks to kottke.org)