BEER

Today we are going to talk about beer! Because everyone loves beer. And it's what we drink when we're not drinking tea here.

Scottish culture pretty much revolves around pubs. It's a very egalitarian situation - you alternate buying the drinks with whoever is keeping pace with you - and the Scots can drink. I feel like my 4 years of undergrad were training for UK drinking - I am now confident in my ability to drink from 4pm until 11 pm, having eaten lunch at 12:30, with dinner at 8pm (this is not uncommon) AND NOT SAY OR DO ANYTHING STUPID.

So! Beer!

Unsurprisingly, not many American beers make it over here. And if they are here, either a) they're usually pretty good American beers or b) you're in a nice pub. Sierra Nevada is pretty popular, and I've seen a couple places that had Sam Adams and Brooklyn Lager (I was excited). That said, you can get a bottle of Budweiser in most places (Light beer doesn't exist here, so Bud Light is out of the question.) You can also sometimes get Miller Genuine Draft, and then laugh about it because you know it's shit! Last week I had both Miller and Corona, because they were The Cheap Beer Special. We should probably start being embarrassed about anything that you can buy in a 30 rack. Blue Moon is starting to trickle over here, which is hilarious, however - I keep seeing it as a "specialty bottled beer".

The cheapest of the cheap beers here are infinitely better than American cheap beers. The big one here is Tennants, which is made in Glasgow. Tennants is sort of like Budweiser in that nobody actually likes it, but everyone will drink it. Stella and Peroni are both pretty popular, though I have no idea why- one is infinitely worse than the other (hint: Peroni > Stella.) Other cheap beers include Belhaven, Grolsh, Heineken, Kronenbourg, and Budweiser Budvar (which I assure you is different than Budweiser.) Guinness isn't always cheap, but it's easy to get. And, of course, every country needs their hipster beer. We don't have PBR here (but everyone who has been to the states LOVES pbr, it's hilarious); hipster beer here is Red Stripe. These are all pretty cheap, they're about £2 or £3 at a pub. You can get most of these - except for Red Stripe, you need to be able to identify your hipsters - on tap. Tennants and Belhaven are on tap at every single pub ever, and most places will have one or two others on tap too.

The UK also has cider, which is amazing. Well, we have it in the states, but not in the same way. Basically: you can buy a two-liter of alcohol that tastes like apples for about £2.50 at almost any store that sells alcohol, and it will fuck you up. It also comes on tap, in bottles and in cans. There's a couple major brands: Strongbow and Bulmer's are the two big ones, and then there are some smaller breweries around (Addleston's is good and I think the main local one). A good rule for cider is "the cloudier it is the more you will get fucked up". I really like cider but that's a slippery slope to go down sometimes!

There are some really good local brews too - Deuchar's IPA is made in Caledonia, and it's amazing. I don't usually like IPAs and this is fantastic. Alloa is made in some place called Clackmannanshire, they've got a great beer called Good Times ("Hiya, can I get two Good Times?" sounds ridiculous, but it's delicious) and they make porter called Midnight Sun which is very good too. Caley is heavy; I'm not a big fan but maybe you are. There's a whole group of ales called Heather Ales, which are fantastic, but again not if you're going to be drinking them for a long time.

I happen to really like Hefenweizens, which are German wheat beers - we're close to Germany, so those are easy to come by; naturally I am very pleased. I've had a couple of real German Hefenweizens, and they were lovely, but alas I cannot spell them (I can barely pronounce them).

incredible things are happening in the world

YOU GUYS GUESS WHAT CAME TODAY.

My visa! Yes! Apparently the consulate decided to take pity on me after all of this purgatory AND GRANTED ME MY VISA. I am very, very pleased, as this saves me several more weeks of anguish and stress. Conveniently, they UPSed it to me - I am glad that somebody involved still trusts UPS. But this is great news! I can get on with my life! Time to buy a plane ticket!

Also, I got my first paycheck from The Examiner today. This means I am a real writer... right? It only took 47 articles before I reached their payout level, but this is still exciting!

Two things today

1. this is my 100th post! I was actually planning on having yesterday's post be up for tomorrow, but I mixed up my dates. Oops. Happy 100 posts, blogotron fans!

2.

YOU GUYS I AM ON THE FRONT PAGE OF A WEBSITE click here to see it larger

From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to Porto-centric Lisboans, Greek Cypriots and and hobbisots who hang around in quotes a lot

So I write a column for The Examiner about linguistics. (you might have heard about it.) It's a lot of fun, there's a lot of freedom to write about whatever you want as long as it's relevant to your topic. However, next to nothing happens linguistically on a day to day basis, and rarely does anything especially "local" happens in my field - sometimes it's a bit of a stretch to come up with stuff to talk about! As a result, a lot of my columns are mostly extravagant concessions on my part.

Much like this blog, I have no idea who is reading my columns. I'm not really promoting this page at all, so it's often like shouting into the void. Writing for the Examiner is similar in that I'm still kind of shouting into the void, but I'm also putting all of my articles on StumbleUpon and sending a few people my articles. I'm trying a little harder. I have garnered some readership, and unlike this blog, I have some analytics available for The Examiner. I usually get about 60-90 page hits on days that I write. This baffles me, because I don't think I could think of 60-90 people who would want to hear what I have to say. Other than the people I've bullied into reading (thanks, if you're reading; I do really appreciate it, and I'm sorry if it's annoying) and a few people in my family who are sort of required to read my articles (ahem, Mom & Dad) I don't think I could come up with 60-90 people off the top of my head!

But for the first time since I started writing for The Examiner, something linguistically newsworthy happened and I wrote about it for yesterday's article. I then went to Boston for a day and a half to dog-sit with my friend KA. Upon coming back, I found out that I was on the front of the Society & Culture page and had been on the front page of the Boston Examiner yesterday, leading to my highest readership ever - just from one article! I am currently the third-most read Society & Culture Examiner behind the New York Charities Examiner. I am floored!

1,413 people were interested in what I had to say yesterday. That's pretty cool. If you've been reading all along - thanks so much.

Our aspirations are wrapped up in books

I read a lot, and consider myself to be very well-read. I don't know if it's especially apparent when you meet me - I don't think I have the self-awareness necessary to make that claim - but it's true. I majored in English not because I wanted to write, but because I wanted someone to tell me what to read! But for all the highfalutin Smart-People Books Read In College (And Beyond) - literature! - that I read, I am a sucker for most mass-consumed things. I get so tired of hearing all the hype for a book that I end up having to go read it, just to see for myself.

This is how I end up reading things like the first book in the Twilight series, multiple Dan Brown books and Eat Pray Love (yes, really). To my own credit, a majority of the time spent with these books involved throwing them against a wall, because Dan Brown seems utterly incapable of writing anything vaguely resembling a sentence. Stephanie Meyer and Elizabeth Gilbert can't do anything remotely literary. To put it simply, these books sucked and I want those hours of my life back. I am still legitimately angry that I spent time reading them several years ago.

Whenever I walked within 30 feet of a bookstore or tried to buy a book online, I found myself constantly barraged by how wonderful and great Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy supposedly was. And thus the internal monologue begins: "Shut up already, it can't be that good." This eventually becomes "....well, they keep getting more popular. What if they are really good? Maybe I should look into this" which becomes "OKAY FINE I'LL READ IT. But I'm buying a real book too."

Crime thrillers are definitely not my thing, as I'm sure you can imagine; I've found them to be just so formulaic and predictable. If need be, they can make a nice "light read". Or, you know, a really annoying one.

And so with all of that in mind, I started The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, expecting mediocrity. Instead I found out that I could not put it down. This book was so well-written, with an unexpected level of depth. There's a lot more than Uncomfortable Romance Between Characters and Intoxicating Plot Twists Involving Corrupt People! I mean, these factors are certainly there, but you won't care. You will read 300-400 pages in what feels like no time. You will be hooked. It's almost addictive. You finish the first one and immediately start the second one. And by the time you finish the second one you just have to read the third one. There's no stopping you. YOU MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, oh my GOD!!

And although the translation is sometimes questionable - Swedish doesn't go into English easily, and a lot of the smaller details can be lost on a non-Swedish reader - the point is very much still there. The feminism driving these books is surprisingly great and very unexpected, too. (Originally the first book was titled Men Who Hate Women, a much better title if you ask me, but I think the translator changed the title so the three books would be consistent).

Please don't misunderstand - they certainly have their flaws. Critically speaking, nothing is perfect. There are definitely philosophical contradictions between two of the main characters which occasionally severely distract from the plot, and there are occasional narrative gaps which muddle things up a bit. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is by far the best out of the three: it exists both within the context of the trilogy and by itself; The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest makes some of the bloated first three hundred pages of The Girl Who Played With Fire totally worth it. It's a necessary concession for later; once the actual plot of Fire gets going, you are hooked all over again.

what do you do with a BA in English?

Now that I am officially a college graduate, I am living at home (like any good post-collegiate person does in the 2000s) and am trying to get a job.

Though I might be a leading expert in my field, this is a slow-moving process. It turns out I have very few marketable skills beyond comparative literary studies, translating Beowulf from Old English to Modern English, and telling you the underlying structures of language. Unsurprisingly, our modern workforce does not really need to these abilities. (Do you need someone with these qualifications? I'M YOUR GIRL. give me a holler.)

Luckily, I live equidistant from two major cities, and I have been stalking jobs for both of them on craiglist.com in addition to driving around, submitting applications to places which would be entertaining to work at.

So far I'm not exceptionally worried. I have a tendency to have interesting summers entirely by accident; something will fall into place.

legs to make us longer

I took a thesis vacation yesterday evening.

Basically, I'm trying to drink less. Due to this one-month-ish time constraint (my thesis is due on May 10), I can't afford to go out drinking mostly because of the time commitment. I have things to do, and I can't be hungover while doing them - it's a miserable experience. And, I'd rather not do this very serious, important work while drunk. So I have generally been showing up at parties kind of late, trying not to stick around for an exceptionally long time, and am limiting myself to no more than three beers, and especially No Being Drunk. I have been to a lot of parties and bars soberly these days, just to take a bit of a break from thesising. Look at me, being responsible!

So my choices last night were to go to a Joint Birthday Party, as two of my friends are turning 21-and-12-months this upcoming week, to go to a bunch of bars with another friend, or to see Kaki King in Boston.

Friends: I love you, you know this. But I took the Kaki King option. Even though a group of my friends are seeing her in Portland on 4/20 (ahem...) it was in my best interest not to do that. I have work to do, and I can't afford to lose all that time. I'd feel much better if it was on a weekend... so I went down to Boston with my friend Nicole.

And you know what? it was totally worth it. I ended up in front row, three feet away from her. She's this tiny, hot, ferocious woman (totally unexpected, by the way) who can fucking rock. I've liked her for a long time; I went to this concert to see her reproduce her albums' beauty. I left this concert with an intellectual and musical boner for her. Holy shit. opening with this song - disregard the Jimmy Fallon bit, sorry about that -


This happened too. No big deal or anything...

She ended her set by turning Jessica - a soft, light song, into a 7+ minute rock out. AMAZING. and then closed her encore with a dance-party version of Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers. So, I'm in awe and stuff. And I only see awesome concerts.

Dear my lunch (or maybe dinner, i'm not sure)

i might love you. Cheap beer and chinese food - how could you be wrong??

Dear take-out gods and/or Town of Durham, NH:
Thank you for finally having good chinese food within walking distance. you have improved my quality of life by at least 15%. Take-out gods: I offer my bank account as a sacrifice.
puppies, daisies and kittens,
heather


Judgement Day with Shelly went well today. After two weeks of reading, writing and thinking about a stack of academic texts and a week of mathing (yes my thesis is about math - enjoy the irony here), i am not only I on the right path but I'm exploring some really interesting things and have full permission to go forward with what I'm doing. Shortly after this announcement, Adam and G captured me and took me to a coffeeshop in Dover; it was like being a real person again for a little bit. Being a real person - rather than a thesis robot - is really, really nice sometimes.

Free Things From Census 2010: A Collection

did you know people still use mousepads? i didn't.


and useful things!


KEEP WATCHING THIS SPACE
TO BE UPDATED ACCORDINGLY

And while I'm on the topic of books

I present what will probably be the highlight of my summer.

From the publisher's website --
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters coauthor Ben H. Winters is back with an all-new collaborator, legendary Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, and the result is Android Karenina: an enhanced edition of the classic love story set in a strange new world of robots, cyborgs, and interplanetary travel.

As in the original novel, our story follows two relationships: the tragic adulterous romance of Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, and the much more hopeful marriage of Nikolai Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya. These four, yearning for true love, live in a steampunk-inspired 19th century of mechanical butlers, extraterrestrial-worshiping cults, and airborne debutante balls. Their passions alone would be enough to consume them—but when a secret cabal of radical scientific revolutionaries launches an attack on Russian high society’s high-tech lifestyle, our heroes must fight back with all their courage, all their gadgets, and all the power of a sleek new cyborg model like nothing the world has ever seen.

I, FOR ONE, AM EXCITED
(especially as I just read the original over break)

Like most universities, UNH offers a second running of films from the last semester at supremely reduced rates.

It's a great system, and I don't go nearly as often as I would like to. But that's not the point.

I just returned from seeing the movie Precious (2009).

I had heard from many people that this movie was difficult to watch - a number of people had to leave halfway through it. I consider myself to be an extremely emotionally stable person, and I sat through all 110 minutes of it. The end killed me - I'm still a mess, half an hour later. I cried the whole way home. This movie should be required viewing for everyone over the age of 18. It's amazing, powerful, and beautifully presented.


The trailer doesn't even begin to do it justice. Just go see it.

People I love, Part 2

My friend Katherine has had a blog for a while - and occasionally I would appear on it as a guest. Mostly, these posts involved me trying to cook stuff (here is a good example).

I finally remembered to tell Katherine about this. Thanks for letting me write for you occasionally, and I look forward to more collaborations!