Steal These Lights

Bicycles in Amsterdam are ostensibly required to have both front and back lights. Apparently the police will set up check points and stop people to make sure that the have functioning lights on their bike and will subsequently fine them if they don’t. Knowing this, I bought a pair of lights at the same time I bought my bike. I don’t know what sort of lights you’re picturing, but they’re almost certainly not what I ended up with. Imagine the cheapest-looking, most ineffectual lights you can imagine. Did you picture these? Well, that’s what I got.

I noticed a problem the very first night I took my bike out. The back light seemed to work fine, but the front light seemed incredibly finicky, always blinking out shortly after turning it on. I suspected the light’s problems began when I dropped it onto the pavement while attempting to hang it from my handlebars for the first time. I learned to live with this problem. The light seemed to blink out when I hit a bump in the road, so as my biking skills improve and I learned to avoid bumps, the light stayed on longer and longer.

I always knew I was playing with fire whenever I left the lights on the bike after locking it up. In a city where anything bike-related is fair game for thieves, I knew that easily removable lights were probably an attractive target. I like living on the edge though, so most of the time I didn’t even worry about it. This came back to bite me one evening as I returned to my bike locked in front of the ISHSS building, only to find that the front light was missing. “Damn,” I thought to myself, “Well at least it was only the shitty front light.” Slightly perturbed, I bike back to Funen and locked my bike in the indoor bike rack. Because that rack is accessible only by key, and because I’d like to think of the people of Funen as generally trustworthy, I’ve always been pretty lax about how I lock my bike in there. It’s a bit of an inconvenience to reach down and lock the front wheel and frame to the rack itself, so I just loop my chain through the back wheel and frame. Somebody could take the bike if they wanted, it would just be fucking impossible for them to ride after the theft.

Very much to my chagrin, when I went down to my bike later that night to ride to the Sugar Factory with Nick, I discovered that my back light had been stolen in the matter of hours since I had returned to Funen. Pretty pissed and slightly worried a police officer would spot me, I set out lightless. On the way to the club, we passed a large grouping of officers hanging around outside a police station, as well as a couple of police on bikes. Sure that I was about the get stopped, I began to work out my excuse for why I didn’t have any lights. These excuses consisted mostly of the truth. To my relief, I didn’t get stopped, and the night went on basically without a hitch (see post “We Make Plans for Big Times” for the hitches that did occur).

A few days later I visited the flea market on Waterlooplein with the intention of finding new lights. I quickly found a similar pair of LED lights for the enticing price of €3, less than half of what I had paid for my first pair. This should have been a warning to me, rather than a bargain.

I again dropped the front light as I attempted to put it on, but this time the result was much more serious, it would stay on for a matter of seconds then go out, regardless of whether I was hitting bumps or not. The back light seemed to be fine, though when I got back to Funen, I noticed that it had gone out, and I haven’t been able to get it to work since. Clearly, and I hate resorting to cliché here, I got what I paid for. Now I’m just hoping that some asshole will again steal my lights only to have karma come and bite them in the ass when the lights fail to function at all.

I’ve also begun to again come up with excuses for police if they pull me over for my lights being out at night. What I’ve come up with so far is “Oh officer, I didn’t notice. My lights are out? They must be broken.” Or I could just pretend not to understand English, Dutch, French or German. That could work too.

The Salient Bits

I’m going to try something new here.

I’ve developed a certain habit every time I do any sorting of cooking. It involves pulling a chair under the smoke detector in preparation.

At the P-Dub, I would often keep a broom handy so I could hit the “silence” button as soon as the smoke detector invariably went off. At least, I did that until I removed the batteries from all three detectors in close proximity to the kitchen. Here, no such luck. At least so far, I haven’t figured out how to remove the batteries, though to be truthful, I haven’t yet tried to figure out how to remove the batteries.

This isn’t a better-safe-than-sorry type of thing, the chair isn’t a just-in-case measure. When I cook, whether it’s a grilled cheese sandwich or a bratwurst or a chicken breast, the chair is absolutely essential in shutting off the alarm. I think I even set it off when heating up soup one time.

My pièce de résistance occurred last night as I tried to cook a hamburger in my frying pan. The frying pan has become my weapon of choice when cooking; with no oven or grill of any sort, everything must be heated on the stove, essentializing the frying pan. I bought ground beef from AH, brought it home, shaped it into a patty that was probably overly thick, and tossed it onto the pan. I sprinkled chili powder I had bought just for this occasion. Learning from past mistakes with bratwursts and chicken breasts, I didn’t add any oil to the pan; I left the fate of my dinner to the quality of my teflon-coated pan instead.

At first, things seemed to be going well. The beef seemed to be browning nicely and grease wasn’t yet jumping all around the pan. It wasn’t until I flipped the patty that I began to notice a problem: the surface of the patty was darkening far too fast in relation to the bright pink middle of the patty. I decided to keep on keeping on, flipping the patty every couple of minutes, trying to maximize interior heating and minimize exterior burning. As time when on, the delicious burger juice began to seep out and the grease began to dance on the skillet. The patty became blacker and blacker so I finally decided to cut into it to check the middle. The results? Still very pink. Now, I enjoy my burgers medium-rare just as much the next person but this was just too much. I continued my flipping routine.

The consequence of cutting into the burger is that even more burger juice seeped out, creating a verifiable lake of grease in the pan. Flashes of the grease fire I started while working the Grill at Ukrop’s. I was able to put that fire out with the fire extinguisher we had on hand, but I didn’t think I had one of my own anywhere in the apartment. All of a sudden it happened! Flame began to shoot out of the pan, licks of fire jumped up to the vents above the stove. Acting quickly, I pulled the skillet off the burner and turned off the gas. Quickly, I began to take a mental inventory of the pot lids in my cabinets, prioritizing them based on which would be most useful in smothering the flames. I tried thinking back to any fire safety training I had ever had: you shouldn’t use water to put out grease fires, right? Plus, that would definitely ruin my burger.

All of my mental calculations were moot however, as simply being removed from the heat had caused the flame to die down and extinguish itself. Well that was convenient. Leaving the patty in the pan, I tossed a few slices of cheese on top. I slathered the bun with ketchup and mustard, anything to dull the taste of a burger that most closely resembled a charcoal briquette. After assembling the whole thing and grabbing a beer to help calm my racing heart (which seems to be a common theme in my posts), I went over to my laptop to watch an episode of 30Rock while I ate.

The first bite was surprisingly promising. At the very least the edges of the burger had been adequately cooked. As I endeavored further into my meal, I was pleasantly surprised: although it was a little crunchy, it was cooked all the way through and the spicy mustard I had used covered any taste of burning. All things considered, I would have to consider the entire adventure a success.

Next time though, I think I’m going to try and create a thinner, flatter patty. Of course, I could just get a cheeseburger in a can.

Oscar Fever

I stood outside the Literary Café, not entirely sure what to expect. The pictures online had made it look pretty nice, and the associated description sounded appealing, so I was expecting good things. Plus, the very fact that it was called the Literary Café made me think that perhaps it was just what I was looking for. I walked up the front steps into a dingy, peeling hallway that lead into the cafe itself. As I entered the building, I recognized a familiar and comforting refrain broadcasting over the cafe’s sound system, the reassuring chorus of The Beta Band’s Dry the Rain. It immediately warmed me to the place, especially when various employees and patrons began singing and whistling along to the song. All the best seats, on a riser in the front of the store right in front of the windows, were taking, leaving me to take a seat at a small table near the bar.

The decor of the place was pleasant, concert posters plastered various sections of the wall. The clientele seemed nice, people seemed to greet each other by name as patrons entered. A couple pinball machines were tucked into a back corner. As I sat at my table writing, a band began to set up on the riser in the front of the cafe. As I sat, I became unsure of the ordering protocol. Most Dutch places seem to have waiters or waitresses who will come to your table and take your order, but that didn’t seem to be the case here. Eventually I went up to the bar and ordered an espresso. It tasted a little bit burned and bitter. Even though I was curious to listen to the still-assembling band, I decided to head out, so I could complete the various cafe explorations that I had planned for the day.

I made a quick stop by Bagels & Beans as much to get a decent cup of coffee as anything else before leaving again to try and find Brandmeester’s. I had a pretty good idea how to get there (I knew it was near Vondelpark) but wasn’t sure, and although I ended up deviating from my original plan on how to get there, I arrived at Brandmeester’s in pretty good time, all things considered. Unfortunately, I arrived at about 5:38 and the sign on the door indicated that they had closed eight minutes previous. Able to look in the window, I could tell that the cafe was very modern and sparse and cleanly designed. It was painted predominately white and all the furniture appeared to be very blocky and minimalist. I think it’s interesting how both the Literary Café and Brandmeester’s were both very obviously Dutch in design and philosophy, but individually couldn’t be more different. The former was very much in the tradition of Amsterdam’s famous brown cafes, so called because many years of tobacco stains had turned the walls brown. It was dim and dominated by a large bar, but had a familial clientele, many who probably visit every day after getting off work. The latter on the other hand, as far as I could tell by looking through the front window, epitomized the Dutch fascination with efficiency and simplicity. Perhaps it’s the collision of tradition and the recent emergence of modern design as we know it. Whatever the case may be, I found it be a fascinating juxtaposition.

After abandoning my plan of visiting Brandmeester’s, I decided to walk around the Museumplein area where I found myself. I thought the section of grass on an incline above an Albert Heijn was pretty interesting, and it immediately reminded me of the ridiculous centerfield hill at Minute Maid Park in Houston. I wandered around the area bit more, but eventually found myself biking home, having not found a suitable replacement for the Brandmeester’s failure.

An issue I had struggled with all day was what to do about the Oscars. Despite their frivolous nature and frequent celebration of mediocrity, I found myself hoping to watch the Academy Awards because, this year at least, I felt they would be pretty hard to mess up. With Jon Stewart hosting, and two of my favorite directors up for big awards with their excellent films, I couldn’t see how the night could be a miss. The only problem was finding a place to watch it. Sean and I had talked earlier in the day about that very dilemma; if it was even being broadcast on Dutch, we still didn’t know where to find a TV, and we were dubious that any bar would be staying open until 6am to broadcast the complete ceremony. By the late evening, I had given up hope, and was considering just following the ceremony through various sites who would be live blogging the awards. Part of me, horror upon horrors, felt like just going to bed. As blasphemous as that may seem, it made a certain amount of sense; the show wasn’t even going to start until 2am, after all, and it would probably last at least three and a half hours. Sean came through, though, in the end. Apparently one of the girls (Rachel) in Funen had a Slingbox, and was willing to let us watch on her laptop. Success! I took a brief pre-Oscars nap, woke up at 1:45am, and went down to enjoy the festivities.

When I got down there, I discovered that Sean and Rachel had both made lists with their picks to win in each category. Not wanting to miss out on the fun, I quickly wrote down my own picks, guessing blindly on any number of categories (best animated short subject, anybody?). I struggled between sentimental picks and pragmatism. While I love the Coen brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood was my favorite film of the year. Of course, No Country for Old Men had been getting most of the buzz, so ended up splitting my vote: NCOM for best picture, PTA for best director. My other picks were all pretty safe bets for the most part (Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem), mixed in with the occasional upset (Tilda Swinton for best supporting actress). Before the telecast began, Rachel asked what was at stake, and Sean put forth that he would put a gram on his picks. We all agreed to that, and waited for the show to begin.

By the end of the night, I had the most correct picks, which was nice, but slightly marred by the fact that I still had gotten for than fifty percent of my picks wrong. I guess eleven out of twenty-four isn’t terrible, but some of the results really infuriated me (best special effects for The Golden Compass… really?). Mostly I just enjoyed watching the Coens accept their various awards with their typical anti-Hollywood sentiments. I would have liked to see PTA win something, but the award for Daniel Day-Lewis and the cinematographer made up for his snub. Hopefully now the Coens will have free reign to make whatever they want, for good.

I finally made to to bed around 7am and got a solid five hours of sleep before waking up. My dreams were filled with the acceptances speeches of imaginary directors, followed by said imaginary directors doling out helpful and humble advice at post-show parties. Mmmm alliteration!

Saturday

Saturday for me began when I rolled out of bed and decided to finish the second half of All The President’s Men. After making some lunch and bumming around for a while, I made a quick stop by Albert Heijn for some groceries (I’m sure you can tell already this is going to be an action-packed post). I was informed there was going to be a party in Sarah’s room later on, so at the designated time, I made my way up to her room.

It was a lot of fun, the group of us just bullshitting around for six or seven hours. I had an in depth discussion on the mythology of Lost with Hallie, some sort of political/philosophical human nature discussion with Bri and Alex, and near the end of the night drunkenly agreed to form a writer’s group with Nick, Bri and Sarah. Apparently my first piece of work is due this coming Thursday, which is kind of terrifying, as I have no idea what genre or form I want to write in, let alone have an idea for a plot or subject. I’m leaning towards writing a few scenes to begin a screenplay simply because I want to do something as far removed from blogging as possible. As I’ve been sitting here writing, a spark of an idea has crossed my mind, but it’s so fleeting and evanescent that I doubt whether it has the chops to become anything at all. Also throughout the evening I think Nick and I made plans to visit Belgium simply to see a Star Wars exhibition at a museum in Brussels. Some loves never die. I also just have to add that it quite a blast from the past to visit TheForce.net for the first time since middle school, when I devoured every shred of information about the upcoming Episode I.

I ended the night with some very exciting news when I received an email from Will detailing the wonderful house he had found for us to live in next year. I very incoherently replied that he should go for it, so hopefully everything will work out.

I guess I should also mention that I came this close to biking about 20 miles to Haarlem to see Kele Okereke DJ at a club, but it just didn’t happen. Neither did the midnight screening of The Big Lebowski, for that matter. For shame.

We Make Plans for Big Times

Managing to pull myself out of bed at a decent hour, I began my day by watching the episode of Lost I had been downloading all night. To my horror, I realized that I had forgotten to cap my upload rate before going to bed and subsequently upon waking up, I discovered that I was uploading at something like 1.08 Mb/s. Shit shit shit. What’s worse is that my ratio of that torrent was over 80, which means I had uploaded something in the realm of 30 GB since going to bed. Quadruple shit. Even now a day later, after hearing stories of Dutch ISPs cutting kids off for using too much bandwidth, I’m worried that my internet could blink out at any moment. That doesn’t mean that I’ll stop downloading, though, oh no. If they get me, you can be sure I’ll go down in a blaze of glory.

After finishing what was, naturally, another very exciting episode of Lost, I headed on over to, again, naturally, Bagels & Beans. After chatting with the waiter who’d been there each of my two previous visits about the weather, I ordered an iced coffee. I discovered during my last visit that iced coffee in Amsterdam is not like iced coffee in the U.S. Instead of simply dropping ice cubes into otherwise normal brewed coffee, iced coffee in Amsterdam is rather a more like a coffee flavored shake, though with a much more runny consistency than something like a frappucino. It was, of course, delicious. After punching out Wednesday’s post, I decided to order again. Cool Waiter asked if the iced coffee was as good as last time, and I replied “of course.” I then ordered regular coffee and a goat cheese/bacon/pine nuts bagel. After finishing both of those items, Cool Waiter came by again, and we discussed how, really, the goat cheese has too strong of a flavor to be very good. It overpowers the taste of the bacon and the bagel, which is unfortunate, because it was otherwise very good.

I’ve noticed a number of IES students in B&B since I’ve started frequenting there. I had an awkward encounter with one girl on Wednesday, I knew she was in IES, and I expect she knew that I was too, but we had never talked or really acknowledged each other (even though I’m pretty sure she lives two doors down from me), so we just sat next to each, each doing our own thing. Friday, however, Eliza came by and we had a nice little chat about this and that. I think the cafe’s location in proximity to the school is what brings a lot of IESers by, as it’s a three or four minute bike ride from the ISHSS building to get there.

I do want to branch out a little, so earlier today I began doing research online into other cafes in the area. I’d tried this before without much luck, but I took a different approach this time. I Googled “Bagels & Beans Amsterdam” with the hope I’d find guides to the city that would list places similar to B&B. This strategy ended up working, so in the next few days I’m going to visit The Literary Café and Brandmeester’s, both which seem to be the type of place that I’m looking for. I don’t mean to abandon Bagels & Beans, but I just feel like I should see what else is out there.

After leaving B&B, I headed over to the PHK student apartments to meet with my Film Theory in Practice group. We’re doing a project on broken chronologies / non-linear narratives in film, so we’re watching a different movie each week to analyze. Last night we decided to watch Fight Club, even though I knew it really didn’t have much to offer in terms of non-linearity, something the other group members seemed to be surprised by after the movie ended. I think we each right an individual paper on the the topic, so I think that while they focus primarily on non-linear films as the relate to the mind and memory, I’m going to look at a variety of films that are non-linear in different ways, and discuss how the broken chronology serves the story and themes. I haven’t told them yet, though. Hmm.

I ordered an Indian Chicken Curry Pizza from Liberty Pizza after getting back. It sounded good in theory, but I didn’t really know what to expect. The chicken and curry sauce were both very good and it included pineapple which was unexpected but not disagreeable. Unfortunately, it also included mushrooms, which just really destroyed the pizza for me. It was edible, but I had to go through and pick off the mushrooms, which was just a hassle. I guess I could try being a less picky eater, but really, I’m just not crazy about the idea of eating fungus.

I decided I was going to go to a midnight screening of The Big Lebowski later that night. I checked around to see if other people were interested in going. Nick had plans to check out a couple of clubs, and since Lebowski was playing both Friday and Saturday, I decided to join him. First we went to a Gerrit Rietveld Academy (the art school at UvA) party at the Sugar Factory. Apparently a pretty decent band was supposed to be playing, but when we got there, we discovered that not only was the band disappointingly mediocre, they were also very poorly mixed, making it almost impossible to make out the singer’s lyrics, or anything he was saying, even between songs. We tried to stick it out as long as we could, but eventually decided we better check out Club 8, where they were hosting something called Club Bangkok that specialized in indie-electro-pop, just the type of music we were both looking for.

We got there around 1am, and the place was fairly sparsely populated. The music wasn’t terrible, but there just weren’t nearly enough people there for either of us to really feel comfortable dancing. We went downstairs briefly and spent our last €2,20 playing fifteen minutes of pool that cost €9,50 an hour. It was probably one of the sadder games of pool ever played, though, to my credit, I managed to keep the cue ball on the table this time… After our fifteen minutes ended, we went back upstairs to the dance floor. More people had trickled it, so it was a bit more crowded, but we still stuck to the back and discussed The Wire and such things. They did sample Daft Punk a few times, which was at least somewhat comforting.

When we headed to the coat check shortly thereafter, we found it to be abandoned. Soon though, a girl from the front desk came to help us, grabbing my ass as she passed behind the counter. I’m not sure what was meant by that, although she was very friendly while retrieving our coats for us. I’ll just chalk it up to her being drunk, a safe bet I think. We then biked back to Funen, where I started watching All The President’s Men before turning it off to sleep about halfway through. I love me some Dustin Hoffman (and some Robert Redford, for that matter…).

“The trick is not minding.”
-G. Gordon Liddy

Schnabelicious

I never made it to Bagels & Beans on Thursday like I had hoped. I think it’s going to become my new haunt; it’d be nice to be considered a regular at some place, so think I’m going to try and make it hear at least a few times a week, if not every weekday, which would be ideal. It would also be very expensive, as I’ve been spending about €10 a visit so far, usually getting a couple drinks and a bagel over the course of two or three hours. Everything I’ve had is worth whatever it costs, but I don’t know if I can justify spending €50 a week on bagels and coffee.

I would have made it to Bagels & Beans as planned had I woken up when I intended, at 12:30, rather than hitting the ’snooze’ button on my phone for an hour and a half and waking up at 2pm. I then of course had to go through my lengthy getting ready for the day procedure, which involved surfing the internet for a couple of hours and watching the previous night’s episode of Project Runway (my biggest gripe thus far with the Netherlands is, by far, the time difference between Western Europe and the U.S. I’m torn between staying up until 4:30 in the morning in order to download the latest episode of P-Run or Lost as soon as it’s posted, or waiting to download it the next day. Jesus I lead a rough life). P-Run, for those interested, was a waste of time, as it was this season’s reunion episode and consisted mostly of highlights from the last eleven episodes.

By the time I finished with that, it was almost 4pm, and since B&B closes at 5:30, I didn’t think it was worth it to head over (that’s why Wednesdays post was written today and not yesterday). So, self-consigned to my room, I decided to torrent a few movies. I ended up getting The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Lars and the Real Girl and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Aside from all three films having been christened with unusually verbose titles, all three are in contention for some sort of Oscar, so these are three high pedigree films, make no mistake about it. I began by watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (TDBB from here on out), directed by Julian Schnabel. I’d heard lots of great things about the film, but was a little predisposed to dislike the film because of Schnabel’s enormous ego. I remember reading a proclamation of his, where is said that “[he] is the closest thing to Picasso that’s going to come about this century” (rough quotation from my memory).

Asshole director aside, the film was fairly stunning. It depicts the struggle of a man afflicted with locked-in syndrome, meaning that he has full mental faculties, and can see and hear without a problem, but is unable to move any part of his body apart from his left eyelid. He learns to painstakingly communicate by blinking to indicate a letter as a aid continuously recites the alphabet. In this manner, creating sentences letter by letter, he dictates a book recounting his trials dealing with his new found captivity. The film is both beautiful and terrifying; I don’t think I’ve recoiled in horror at any film in recent memory to the degree that I did when the film depicted his right eyelid being sewn shut from his perspective (picture the camera placed where his eyeball would have been as the last rays of light that eye would ever see are extinguished). I don’t know where the film ranks among my favorite films of last year, but I did enjoy it despite the self-aggrandizing Schnabel.

Later in the evening, I hung out with Sarah, Alex, Christy, Hallie and Brianna for a short while. We had a few drinks and played a game going around the room and asking on-the-spot, awkward questions from a book called, I believe, The Book of Questions. Why anyone would buy that book, I’m unsure, but apparently it was a NYTimes bestseller, so I guess I’m out of touch with the American public. Afterwards, I went back to my room and watched Lars and the Real Girl. I had originally been very dubious about the film after seeing the trailer, but after reading a couple positive reviews, I decided to give it a chance. It’s a very sweet, small film unadorned with the irony and cynicism of much of Hollywood. At its essence, it’s about a town coming together to help when on of its residents is in need, and it’s just very uplifting without being saccharine. I think making a film revolving around the premise of a man forming a relation with a life-sized sex doll without resorting to gross-out humor or jokes at the main character’s expense is a feat in itself, and just goes to illustrate that that’s not at all what the film is about. I think the fact that it was written by a former writer of Six Feet Under speaks volumes about what to expect.

On a closing note, I set of my smoke detector twice in the span of about two hours, which I think is a new record. At least I didn’t set it off at three in the morning like I did last time…

A long discussion on the intricacies of citing sources

At 11:50am on Wednesday morning, I willed myself out of bed, already in a sour mood that early in the day. I wasn’t sour just for the sake of being sour, however; I had a damn good reason for being sour. The only reason I was pulling myself out of bed before noon, on a Wednesday, one of my (many) free days, is that all IES were required to attend a lecture on plagiarism at the University. I’ve been learning about the ills of plagiarism since my freshmen year of high school, maybe earlier. I know how to cite sources, and am well versed in the ins and outs of the MLA format (not true, but at the very least, I’m very well acquainted with Citation Machine). I quickly checked my email just to be sure that this meeting was indeed mandatory. It was, so I quickly brushed my teeth, tossed on some clothes and inhaled a banana all in the name of being punctual to a meeting I was sure would be an utter waste of my time.

As I biked to the meeting, I began to ask myself just how the mandatory nature of the meeting was going to be enforced. What sort of disciplinary actions could possibly be taken were I not to attend? What would they do, revoke my residence permit? Negative. It dawned on me, a fear that I had in the back of head all morning, was that there would have been absolutely no repercussions for failing to appear at the plagiarism meeting, but there I was, pedaling to school, my mood getting fouler by the moment.

When I arrived in the designated room, my fears were confirmed. Only a small selection of IES students had bothered to show up; clearly, most other people were far more perceptive than myself about the way things work than myself. A few more kids filed in as the presentation began, but overall, the kids who decided to show up were in the small minority.

First to speak was the dean of the ISHSS. I don’t really remember what he spoke about, something about academic integrity I think; I spent most of his speech playing Snake Xenia on my cellphone. There Spiteful Tim raised his ugly head: if they were going to waste my time I was damn sure going to waste theirs. Next, some woman of unknown position within the school came up to talk about the specifics of the Harvard English citation system, the format of citation used by the University. She showed us a couple of examples of how to use in-text citations with the Harvard system (it goes something like this: (Perrotta, 2000: 95-101), this happens to be a citation of Joe College by Tom Perrotta, one of the novels I picked up at the library last week, and the reading material I brought with me to Bagels & Beans (by the way, the punctuation within the citation is probably incorrect, but I know the format is (author year page) with some sort of varying combination of commas, colons or semi-colons separating them). She then asked us if any of us were familiar with any other types of citations. Somebody behind me raised their hand and mentioned “the Chicago style.” The woman up front said she wasn’t familiar with that style (to be fair, neither am I, though I have heard of it), and asked if there were any others. In an exaggerated motion, I raised my hand and responded “MLA motherfucker!” Slightly taken aback, she then asked if MLA was similar to Harvard style. At first, I wasn’t sure if she was asking me specifically, or anybody, but when it became obvious she intended me to answer, I replied “Well, it’s almost the same, except we don’t include the year.”

As soon as I said it, I realized I could hardly have said anything more pretentious if I had tried. We don’t include the year? What, I speak for the entire Modern Language Association (in my mind, that’s what MLA stands, though I really have no idea, and I still can’t connect to the internet at Bagels & Beans, so I can’t check Wikipedia to be sure… perhaps it stand for Magniloquent Linguists of America, but I doubt it). She responded with a benign comment of some sort and continued with the presentation. She railed on about the dangers of plagiarism, how it would ruin our academic careers and, indeed, our lives. Apparently a few ISHSS students get caught every year plagiarizing (UvA is very big on Blackboard, meaning that lots of papers get turned in digitally, and are therefore automatically checked for plagiarism against a database of past academic papers), and are kicked out of school, sent to jail, and occasionally shot by firing squad to send a message to all other potential plagiarists. This is what could happen to you! Apparently some people actually buy papers online from time to time, something that seemed unbelievably desperate to me back in high school, let alone now in college.

The meeting actually ended about fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, praise be to God, so I quickly left for Bagels & Beans, my new stomping ground to read and write entries for the past couple of days. I finished Saturday, a novel that I think is quite possibly a masterpiece. It takes place during one day in the life of Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon living in London. I’d call the novel Joyce-esque, though I’ve never read Ulysses, so I couldn’t say if the comparison is truly apt or not. That being said, Perowne’s anxieties about modern living certainly rang true, and his musings on genius and his unease about the insipidness of his own life. I’m reminded of a quote about “a man who is not only dull but the cause of dullness in others” (I’m forgetting who actually said the quote, though the name Samuel Johnson comes to mind (yep! the internet says it was Samuel Johnson), but I became familiar with it when it was quoted incorrectly in Magnolia by a character whose name escapes me (it just came back to me: Thomas Howell, I believe (nope! wrong again. since arriving home and checking IMDb, it turns out the character is in fact Thurston Howell), who is then corrected by Quiz Kid Donnie Smith. Picky picky!). I don’t think the quotation necessarily applies to Perowne, but I think it ties in to his unease in how he sees himself, especially in terms of his masculinity.

A blurb on the back of the novel called it the first great novel written in a post September 11th mindset, which I think is accurate, but also is the weakest part of the novel. The backdrop for much of the novel is a massive anti-war protest in London, which serves to call out many of the character’s opinions on the imminent invasion of Iraq. Perowne doesn’t know where he stands on the invasion; he sees the evil of Saddam Hussein and believes he should be removed from power, but he’s unsure of at what cost this will be achieved. The weakest part of the novel is a short argument between Perowne and his vehemently anti-war daughter. It’s a couple pages of back and forth encompassing the same pro and con arguments that we’ve been hearing about the war for the past five years, and it just seems tired and very much of its time, whereas the rest of the novel seems timeless, despite its specific historical setting. It had previously read Atonement, also by Ian McEwan, so I knew the prose would be stunning, but his way with words continues to fascinate me. I’m going to hunt for more of his novels next time I go to the library.

After leaving Bagels & Beans, I went back to Funen to hang out for the rest of night. I watched a little Arrested Development on the resurrected TV-Links which reminded me just how great that show is.

Her?