The Miss South Carolina Phenomenon.

I know this is a little old hat, but I experienced the Miss South Carolina Phenomenon in a university classroom today.  First, the stuffy background: So last week for my ethnology/anthropology course (Swedish Society and Everyday Life) we had been assigned various articles to read and analyze in preparation for discussion in this week’s seminar.  We broke off into groups based on which article we had read to discuss the text and prepare a summary and some talking points for a larger class discussion at the end.  A great majority of the class (myself included) had read a text titled “Medieval Selves and Current Communities: Playing with Identity at an Intersection of Rootedness and Mobility” by Lotten Gustafsson.  The text covered the implications of folk heritage, medieval reenactment, cultural festivals, and role-playing on modern culture and our ideas of identity.  We’d been getting into (what I thought was) a really interesting discussion about why people reenact history and why they do it to the point of creating an entire medieval persona to play at festivals and the like.  There were some really interesting points about making personal connections to a place and to a history, something about reenactment that made the past more real, history as accessible, the boundaries of time, events as shared experience and what makes a place, the ability to create yourself in an entirely different light free from the bounds reality (a real world nobody playing the role of a king or other veritable importance, a wealthy banker safely and temporarily trying on the shoes and rags of a beggar).  We even hit on some philosophy of play and entertainment and why people need to escape the simple grind of living.  As a class, I’d say we drew some really cool concepts out of the text.  And then it happened.  The Miss South Carolina Phenomenon unfolding before my very ears: “I think that because of such things like war today people shouldn’t be playing role-playing games such as the medieval festivals or video games.  I think with such problems today in the world this isn’t a good idea.  Like games aren’t real.  But those might be different issues.”  The class went silent.  I wish I’d been taking notes, for I have not done justice to the inanity we experienced.  Only a reenactment.  After a pause we continued on as if nothing had happened.  Like we were all on a plane and it was about to crash so everybody just started having sex and then the plane righted itself back to safety and everyone got off like nothing ever happened.  Yeah, that happened to our brains.  Except without the good part.  Only the atrocity.  This is the reality people hope to escape through role-play.

For those of you who are somehow unfamiliar with the original phenomenon, or for whatever reason do not remember its occurrence, allow me to refresh your memories:

Listening to: The Lover, MMW

P.S. Oh, hello Proper Formatting.  Where have you been?

Table Tennis.

Apparently some of the buildings in Flogsta have table tennis tables.  After a bout of wandering post- Swedish proficiency test, I again found myself reeled in to a night of social contact.  As a hermit, I’m always amazed at how this happens.  One minute I’m making dinner (and getting an undue amount of awe at my ability to throw frozen foods into a skillet and cohere them into a single hot food — although thank you for the amazement, Josh), the next minute I’m wandering over to a neighboring building and in the company of my friends.  I’ve barely used my phone here save for the occasional flustered correspondence with Áine, and yet I’ve still managed to find myself out and about in the light of day amongst my peers (this is, of course, a figure of speech, because as we all know, I’m not exactly awake during the few hours of light we have here in Sweden… whoops).  Now what was I talking about?  Oh yes, table tennis.  So one minute dinner, the next minute table tennis.  The ten of us paired off into opposing teams, my team taking the ultimate victory of 4/5 games.  With two players on the opposing team regressing evolution, running about the room, and making yipping animal noises, the victory was a hollow one.  I just don’t think their heads were in the game.  Come to think of it, I don’t know where their heads were, but it seemed on par with childhood.  The night ended with fancy yogurt and tea.  As I’m bad with names, I forget who was to thank for that.  It’s going to be bad when I develop alzheimers.  This memory of mine… it’s like a steel sieve.  Gotta remember to drink my blueberry juice.  I read somewhere that it’s good for something.  Memory I think.  Or the heart.  Ah, whatever it was I’m sure I’m doing wrong by it by watching things like this (not safe for work):

Speaking of science, have you read this article?  Apparently science can teleport energy now.  Only a few more years until we get transporter pads and I’ll never have to ride another plane agaiiiiin!  …  I think I’m appropriately excited.

Listening to: Did You See The Words, Animal Collective

In Dreams.

I’d like to share a dream from a few days ago.  I may or may not have inadvertently made a deal with the devil in my sleep.  I’ll let you be the judge of that…

A lady friend and I had been discussing making comic books.  She’d been doing superhero artwork for a long time and she asked me to do the writing.  It seemed like a pretty good idea and we immediately entered into a classic 80’s style writing montage.  We sat gesticulating wildly over a storyboard, scrawled out ideas, tossed crumpled papers into an overflowing bin, and then sat with dumbly satisfied smiles over a finished comic book.  The story went something like this: a heroine and her various super-powered sidekicks hung around drinking at bars, helping their friends move, and playing pranks on local children.  I guess we never got along to writing in any proper villians.  Still very proud of the product, we decided to pitch the comic at a super hip little indie comic joint.  The clerks loved it and took us up to their office, where they told us flat out that the comic was too big for their little store — we needed to take this to the big time.  Being the helpful sorts they were, the clerks phoned up some big time company exec.  Apparently the indie clerks had notable taste, because the exec came straightaway into the tiny office to take a look at our comic.  She also loved it, asking us to please step into her office to sign.  We said sure, and so she opened up a large demonic portal in the middle of the room, told us not to worry, and kind of nudged the pair of us through the portal.  On the other side, we all took on the forms of slightly gruesome but-still-very-obviously-made-out-of-Play-Doh dinosaurs.  We bumbled along to the exec’s office and had a brief meeting about the future of the comic.  The exec said something about not being worried about the supposed “sexist plot and imagery,” which was confusing to both my friend and me, as we’d thought the comic to be extremely progressive.  Of course, we were assured not to worry, and that the comic would be going “big places,” so we signed.  And then I woke up.

Listening to: NPR

Propaganda

Ever noticed how the forces of good always work as a team and the forces of evil are always loners?  I think this is extroverted propaganda.

P.S. New post over at KGB.

Listening to: Black River Killer, Blitzen Trapper

New Edgy Layout!

After recent accusations that I’m boring, I’ve decided to give the blog a new and edgy layout: sandbox 1.1.  Totally raw!  I’d also like to point out a few goals of mine.  Firstly: get a legitimate domain for my blog (and maybe some real formatting).  Secondly: I may have talked recently about the dream journal I’ve been keeping.  I’ll be trying to post one of these once or twice a week, depending on the quality of my dreams.  Mostly I find them kind of disturbing and often wake up feeling uncomfortable.  Like David Lynch uncomfortable.  Anyway, one last thing: I’ve changed the blog heading to classify this as a “blog absurda” instead of the former “blog poetica.”  I haven’t posted too many poems, although I’ve been writing regularly-ish (although I see my friend Kyle’s actually been keeping up on the KGB Poetry Press (I’ll post some comments soon I swear, maybe even a poem grumble grumble).).  Anyway, the point of the change being that in addition to posting mundane stuff about my adventures abroad, I’m also going to start a nice internet reel!  Because really, I love the internet.  And interwebs just begs to be P2P’d.  In spirit of the attempted movie night tonight (we were going to watch Star Trek), here’s the first taste of this internet absurdity:

Listening to: The above video on repeat.  I really shouldn’t post this late at night.  Brain no worky correctly with lack of sleepy.  Okay, time to make some content for goal #2.

On Tallinn, Estonia.

As some of you may be aware from my last post announcing it, I went with a group of 30-something other exchange students on a cruise to Tallinn, Estonia, this weekend.  In other words: booze cruise to a country boasting precious little in the way of sightseeing except for a dozen or so churches and a shorefront of liquor stores.  First I’ll throw a few sparse details your way, then give you some photos and you can fill in the blanks.

Since my memory of the actual cruise is a little fuzzy, we’ll start with a description of Tallinn.  The main attraction is supposedly their town square.  So when we arrived, we disembarked based on level of hangover.  I made it into the early-risers group with three of my Irish friends (Áine, Anna, Eolann) and a Peruvian girl (Silvana — didn’t know her name the entire weekend until we bought our return train tickets together.  whoops!).  Anyway, so this group of mine hit the town square straightaway.  And by straightaway I mean after stopping in a maritime museum (called the Fat Margaret) and in a very somber church where Anna sat down at the piano to have a play, ringing Boogie Woogie into the rafters, then scaring a bunch of Estonian schoolchildren.  Great job!

So, right, then off to the town square to find a spot of food with which to fend off our collective hangover.  This was, of course, a mistake.  The minute we set foot on town square ground we got harassed from every which way by shop owners imploring us to “You buy!  You buy!”  In a desperate attempt to ward off the harassers, Eolann told one of the men after shouts of “You like pizza?  You buy my pizza.  Eat.  You buy!” that, “No thank you, we don’t like pizza.”  Mere moments later we passed what was apparently his shop to check the prices (cheap is why we were in Estonia in the first place) only to have the man come over and yell, “Why you say you not like pizza?  You come to the same fucking place anyway!”  Turns out the prices were horrible and we did not, it would seem, end up at the same fucking place anyway.  Instead we ambled over to the fine fine establishment known only as the Texas Honky Tonk Cantina.  The food was rotten, but the prices were low enough.  It should be noted here that the Irish also found the token Irish pub.  It advertised a proper dinner roast, but the door was locked, taunting us with music emanating from within.  Later, when we got lost and found the Irish embassy, we found more locked doors.  Useless.

I think some other things happened, but I can already feel my narrative structure falling to pieces.  Plus I’m hungry.  So here’s some pictures:

At some point during the boat ride I got to cast a message in a bottle into the sea.  Hopefully someone posts that video up onto YouTube so everyone can see how awesome I am at throwing bottles.  Into the sea.  Anyway, it read, “Dear friends, we are 31 Erasmus students from Sweden going to Estonia.  If you find this come to Uppsala to party with us! <3 Love, A bunch of Spanish, Greek, Irish, and a few others.”  I’m a few other!  Woo!

Oh, and the best part of the entire trip was actually on the train ride back.  We got sat in front of the toilet.  And it made space noises anytime someone used it.  Nothing like being five years old again.

Listening to: Circuitry of the Wolf, Mew

Vacation!

I’m off to Estonia this weekend.  Get away from this stressful Uppsala lifestyle, you know?  Anyway, a yarn will be spun upon my return.  That’s it.  No content for you today.  Because I’ve been busy doing school things the last few days.  Exciiiting.

Really, California?

It would seem that Merriam-Webster’s 10th Edition Dictionary joins the list of banned books.  Words are SCARY, in’t they?  Read about it here.  Good luck with that United States, glad to be a world away.  Speaking of the European front, who’s been up to date on the Irish blaspheme laws?  Here’s a nice blog about it.  And that’s my chunk of Western World News for the day.

On the personal front, not too much interesting happening.  I am, however, standing an anthropological observation project at the Cafe Carolina in the university’s library for my ethnology course.  For those of you wondering, the difference between anthropology and ethnology is whether or not you are studying culture from the outside or inside, respectively.  As it is a more student centric part of Uppsala, perhaps it is still in part ethnology, as there is definitely a difference between student/youth culture and national culture.  There also seem to be a great deal of academics from abroad wandering through the Cafe Carolina, so perhaps this, too, ties me to it in a more ethnological sense.  Furthermore, as the observations come from my own personal experience, not drawn upon texts and works of others (yet, although published text will eventually factor in to the final project), I could even say this is part autoethnography.  Here I am writing about the start of this project, bringing the focus directly to me.  This is my project and my observations, giving it a very first person, less ‘culturally broad’ approach.  Of course, then I’ll have to get political.  Hmm… here’s a game: see how much people enjoy talking politics while getting fika.  And whether they speak in Swedish or another language.  All kinds of fun questions I can ask myself during this project.  Another fun part: the interviews.  I have a legitimate reason to hang out in a coffee shop and sit down with random strangers to ask them questions.  How exciting.  That’s all for today.

Listening to: An Eluardian Instance, Of Montreal

Sweden fail.

With such a large English speaking population, you would think this could be avoided:

In other news, I seem to have Facebook again again.  Turns out Swedes don’t use phones.  Just Facebook.

Listening to: Empty Spaces, Pink Floyd

I’m a terrible American.

I’ve been accused of being a terrible American.  Apparently, I don’t watch enough television.  I found this out when talking to a pair of Irish and a pair of Swedes at last night’s pub quiz at Kalmar.  It also seems that I don’t know enough about football and too much (which is actually very little) about soccer.  I was also shamed into admitting that I have not taken part in a toga party.  Nor, really, any frat parties.  Well, I’m not too ashamed about the frat part, but I’d always kind of assumed that toga parties were synonymous with college.  On that front, I do feel quite deprived.  Let it be known right now, friends back home, that when I return I fully expect a toga party to be thrown in my honor.  And by the by, I think that bit of egotism puts me back in the American running, yeah?

Fun fact: I was at the university library’s cafe the other day (the Cafe Carolina), and was quite stunned to discover lätt öl on the menu.  For those of you unfamiliar, lätt öl means “light beer,” and is the kind of beer one might find at a grocery store (meaning, it has 3.5 or less % alcohol content, rather than the heavier stuff that one can only find at the Systembolaget [the government's liquor store monopoly]).  If I might reiterate, although it’s light beer, it’s still beer.  At the library.

Listening to: Tes Lacets Sont Des Fées, Dionysos