inparis
no time to do any updates, but I just read that the shit will soon hit the fan in Zimb, now that the opposition's pulled out. Thought: FUCK. Someone needs to get rid of Mugabe.
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no time to do any updates, but I just read that the shit will soon hit the fan in Zimb, now that the opposition's pulled out. Thought: FUCK. Someone needs to get rid of Mugabe.
Well, seeing Anna again and meeting Jorrit is nice. Though I feel like I'm invading someone's home a bit, since they're not on vacation and I'm visiting during the workweek.
This is a funny country. Everyone's packed like sardines into this tiny country, so I guess it's to be expected, this mix of new and old.
Out of 25 channels I'm getting in front of me right now there's one that's a 24/7 porn channel. And unlike Canadian television they seem to be able to broadcast cumshots and anal penetration.
But I wouldn't know if they can do anal in Canada... don't watch much late night porn. Nights are for watching stuff like Dexter on the on-demand channels. National Geographic seems to be playing stuff on Russian nuclear subs... but since the volume's all the way down so people can sleep, I can't hear it. It appears to be in German (with dutch subtitles)... German subtitles would be more useful to me, and CNN's got Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on. I hate Situation Room and Wolf Blitzer, so I'm not bothering.
At least pornography doesn't need audio to convey most of what its getting at.
Apeldoorn's interesting. Not much excitement but that's good right now as I try to recover from this cold. Sitting in parks, writing postcards, stuff like that. Very busy shopping street though, and of course, since the Dutch won tonight in the Euro... that totally made the streets a huge party as well, but since I wasn't downstairs watching the game (I was up here, watching the game) and I already saw them win a bigger match against France while in Amsterdam... I'd rather not go out and get more sick.
Of course, not being such a big tourist town, I stand out like a sore thumb. Not knowing any Nederlands makes it worse. I alleviate that by ordering my favourite lunch... fries with mayo. Sitting outside with fries with mayo makes me one of them. My appearance as a strange foreigner from far-away lands (or worse, an American... such is the woe of Canadian tourists) can be alleviated by a slight tinge of a British accent (as though I was an expatriat) and eating local fastfoods.
I should go. Other business calls.
Well... I appear to have come down with a mild cold, though it has done nothing to deter me from having plenty of fun. Amsterdam was... well, full of things that I'd rather not talk about. I got to meet a friend that I've been working with online for ages... got to chill out a lot with Shannon and party real hard, and we spent one last night there of quite enjoyable eroticism in the Red Light District.
Now I'm in Apeldoorn... until recently I hadn't heard of this town, and that's only because my friend Anna moved here. So I'm visiting her and her boy Jorrit, checking out their absolutely gorgeous apartment for a few days... trying to figure out where I should be headed next. I'm thinking Brussels... but then again...
I'd like to get out to Prague this year but it really looks like it might be a tall order. I need to return to England at some point to spend some more time with the family and such, so that may kill those plans... and this cold has reminded me that I'm not, as I often think I am, an invincible superman.
Wish I were though. Would make life so much easier. =)
I should go. I left a pair of opera glasses I bought in Amsterdam, I need to send off an e-mail to the hostel.
Today, I have a roommate.
I haven't met this person yet... the only clue to their existence has been clothing on the bunk below mine that I found when I got back in and a set of clean sheets in a plastic bag, standard procedure here at the hostel. Perhaps I shall meet them tonight.
It's been good. I travel usually by the seat of my pants, and London has such a presence in literature (and after all, I was here just last year for a weekend) that I have no trouble finding anything... though I usually just wander the streets looking for interesting stuff to do. I stumbled into a singing class at Southwark Cathedral today, tons of schoolchildren singing in a church. That was interesting. Walked all over town... ended up at Elephant & Castle for a bit... and found that there was far too out of the way to be interesting... and miserable looking apartment blocks aren't really my cup of tea.
I spent a lot of time avoiding tourist attractions today. I started off the day bright and early at Tower Hill, decided not to pay the £16.50 for admission (despite a 62 gun salute supposedly taking place at some point to commemorate his royalness the Duke of Edinburgh)... same goes for the HMS Belfast. Wandered around the South side of the Thames, ending up eventually at Southwark Cathedral (and ending up at Elephant & Castle afterwards), as I've already mentioned.
Pause. I'm wearing a bright white shirt today with blue splotches of what is probably best described as 'decorative scribbling'. It somehow works... and I'm not wearing black.
Back to today... wandering alone is wonderful. When I got sick of dreary Elephant & Castle and its shopping centre (barring an interesting gallery inside said shopping centre) I took the tube to Covent Garden, and spent the rest of the day there, just chilling out and watching street performers and such.
Oh yeah. All of the Lush employees across London must think I'm an absolute freak. Every time I pass by one I walk in the door, inhale deeply, linger a bit, and walk out without buying anything.
Well, what the hell am I going to do with stuff from Lush when I'm living at hostels?
Only complaints: I hate people. I spent most of my time watching street performers today, trying to get some reprieve for my feet... and also watched people walk away when musicians announced their last song, even though they'd been standing there enjoying the music for some time, just to avoid paying any tip. Fucking ridiculous.
When I'm not busy getting some drinks in me or wandering the town, I've been reading Lunar Park. My reading list this summer has been extremely macabre... but this is probably the first time in a long time a book's freaked me out. I expected a little bit of insanity from Ellis and plenty of sexy violence, but it's lacking a lot of both and making up with fucking with my head. There's only been one corpse so far (well, two, now that I think about it) and I'm more than halfway through it. American Psycho, with its multitudes of corpses, did not affect me so much (though I would be lying if I said that it did not disturb me at times... but that was possibly because my response to it was vaguely sympathetic).
I try not to think about the things I'm missing out on for this trip, but they do come up. Things like the BSG finale and Formula One's epic crash I can always watch later when this is done... but people's birthdays (people near and dear to me) I cannot.
One cannot have everything.
Tommorrow, York to see the cousin... and then soon, Amsterdam... where I shall be meeting up with a lot more people than I originally thought I would.
The smell of food is wafting in... I'm going to see about snagging a Guinness and something to eat.
I have had, on occasion, the unfortunate distinction of having flatly stated that, "I love the Queen," with no further elaboration.
How can I offer one, really? Almost anything I could say would either take far too long, or simply appear to be simply patriotic (a condition which is certainly not a shameful one to bear). Even that fact in itself, the patriotism inherent in the love for the monarchy, is indicative of the character of the monarchy.
But it is not an illogical admiration.
Many assert that the tradition of the royal family is an outdated one. On that I will agree, to some level. Let's make that bit clear... on some level. I can boil the explanation down to this: the world in which we live (in the West) is under very little danger from erupting into anarchic conditions.
I do not love the royals out of any sense of tradition or duty-bound honour, nor any sense that they embody the characteristics which we should all aspire to, at least, those do not form the core of my admiration. It is rather, a love of respect and a recognition of necessity.
The monarchy in its current form is impotent and at the will of the people. We give them their palaces, their places of honour, and we ask little in return. This is why so many think that it is an institution to be abolished. But it is exactly because of this fact that I respect them. In times of peace, as it is now, they seem to be suckling off the teat of people, and in times of conflict they are far from any authority.
But they do, however, still hold the fancies of the people and embody the spirit of a nation. Not only their subjects, but of the world. Who in the world did not perk up and pay attention to Princess Diana's death? In times of need, they perform a very simple task, but one essential to the welfare of the nation.
They are the symbol by which all decisions are seen by simple eyes. The dissolution of the empire fell symbolically to the hands of a monarchic symbol who acquiesced peaceably (according to the will of the people and Parliament), and as such the commonwealth came into being without tremendous bloodshed. The Statute of Westminister would not have been lent the same credibility in the eyes of the populace without the tour of George IV. In times of conflict (even now) the monarchy has remained a symbol of hope when things go horribly wrong and Churchill's making drunken attacks on members of Parliament. The royal family remained in England throughout the war rather than take off the Canada, and today's headlines concerning Prince Harry's military deployment still garner the attention the royal family traditionally receives.
We certainly give a lot, and receive very little, from the royal family... but what we give, while collectively a large sum monetarily, is hardly significant individually. What the royal family gives, a dedication to their nation as symbols, is individually significant, and collectively shapes the consciousness of a nation. While it may not seem significant now (though it is), in times of crisis it makes all the difference.
I'm okay with that.
Most of the discussion about time travel and the problems thereof center around aspects of physics, or the interrelated question of paradoxical impossibilities. Discussion around historical concerns (when discussing a model in which time travel changes the future in a direct manner, rather than some dimensional tangent, or however it may go) when discussing time travel usually center around doing more harm than good when mucking about in the past.
What if we were to disregard such concerns in the debate over traveling into the past? Just... for a moment, chuck them out the window, and consider the question of morality (perhaps a human construct, but one we can bandy about nonetheless). Say, we could say as an absolute certainty that if we traveled into the past and removed the leaders of the axis powers in the Second World War, and guided the socio-economic factors that led up to that war into a prosperous future so that such a war with is accompanying atrocities never existed. Or any other change... and we could be absolutely certain that the net effect would be a benefit towards humanity, rather than a detriment.
Would you?
I suppose the question is... if we could change the past for the better, no strings attached... is history so sacred that you would not tamper with it to produce the desired result? I'm not even sure what my own answer would be. Just a question I posed to myself earlier today.
It's a question of absolute benefit over the sanctity of historical posterity. While I lean towards absolute benefit... I have a moral objection towards changing history, even if we could be absolutely certain of a net beneficial effect. It's illogical, but it's there.