Therefore, what?

Letter of Intent for Boston University

2011-10-13T22:40:00.000-06:00

I intend to earn a MLA inGastronomy. Through that program I will hone skills that will enableme to help people realize the crucial part that food plays in theirlives and by so doing shift public perception and policy toward ahealthier understanding and lifestyle. I feel that my experience andeducation in food, writing, and philosophy give me a unique approachto food studies that is tailor-made for entering the Gastronomyprogram:

As a child, I was raised inan environment where food was a central part of life. My mother, alife-long certified master gardener and canner, always raised,prepared, and preserved most of the food eaten in my family. I raisedflocks of chickens, cordoned off sections of the family garden for mypersonal use, and prepared elaborate, over-the-top lunches for myselfnearly every day as a child. Like many young males, my initialinterest in food was purely a matter of volume consumption. Havinggrown up surrounded by high-quality food, I simply loved eating. Ican still recall sitting at my Italian great-grandmother's rice farm,eating seconds and thirds of recently-scavenged pheasant roadkillscraped off the nearby county road 39. That roadkill could be asmagnificently prepared is still a matter of some wonder.

As I matured, my interest infood followed suit. I began to appreciate quality food for what itwas, rather than simply a great way to stuff myself silly. I began tounderstand the beauty of fresh tomatoes at the eclectic local farmersmarket, the tenuous balance of local ecosystems, (for instance, how acouple extra wolves in the valley could be disastrous to FFA kidstrying to raise a herd of goats) and how my involvement in a MontanaAERO sustainability group could actually make a difference in curbingthe spread of our tenacious, all-present enemy, turkish knapweed. Sliding loose change into a large mason jar to pay for our weeklygallon of fresh milk from our neighbors' cow inculcated in me theidea that food could be wonderful, natural, and economically viable.

As I attended Brigham Young University,my understanding of food underwent yet another transformation. As Istudied philosophy, in particular the work of continental thinkerssuch as Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I developed apassion for what is often called “philosophy of the ordinary.”This philosophy asserts that by seeking to comprehend and examine oureveryday experiences with mundane things, we can more fullyunderstand their crucial role in structuring out lives. Through thesestudies, frequent semi-pretentious food nights and cheese tastingsamong close friends, and a semester abroad studying food and culturein Europe, my understanding of food added a layer of complexity. Ibegan to understand food as something philosophically and culturallymeaningful in addition to being so tasty and beautiful.

This interest has not since waned. As Icontinue to study the state of food in our country and the world, Iam convinced that it is one of the most pivotal issues of modernsociety. Reading the works of philosophers such as Albert Borgmannand Hans-Georg Gadamer as well as searching out books about food andsociety has helped me to realize that all of my experiences in food - my love of fresh and local; my deep appreciation for food and itsgrounding role in community, family, and tradition; and myfascination with food's oft-ignored place in philosophy – cometogether to form a character-defining interest in food to which Iplan to devote my professional, academic, and personal life. The MLAin Gastronomy from Boston University strikes me as the perfectprogram to propel me further in my studies and toward my professionalgoals.

In his awful majesty

2011-09-08T14:11:00.000-06:00

When we drive, it is a largely conscious-less activity. We cruise along, listening to the rhythmic stirrings of the car interacting with our favorite album, reacting to the drivers around us in a silent, cacophonous dance of steel. I found myself in this mobile cocoon of mechanism today until I was sharply torn out of my world by a figure of pure sublimity.

Transportation in the downtown area is a grand, hyper game of frogger. Busses and tour boats crawl along through the flow of maddened, desperate drivers. As the Hondas and Toyotas duel for multi-lane supremacy, bicycles flit about like gadflies, largely attending to their own business but occasionally stinging one of their much larger counterparts, setting off a ripple that ends with busses careening across lanes and cars scrambling to make turns. As I joyously played my part in the game today, I found myself in yet another featureless intersection, hedged in by towering financial institutions and cheap merchandise stands selling T-shirts glorying in the self-love and boorishness of Boston Bruins fans.

I bathed in the simultaneous green lights that had seemingly been gifted upon me from heaven, and slammed the accelerator, desperate to get my monthly fix of over-twenty-mph driving. As I did so, pedestrians scurried to and fro, deftly skipping between cars as pedestrians are wont to do. Gradually, I became aware of a bent figure picking his way across the intersection directly below one of the green beacons urging me onward. I noticed the dexterity and timing of this archaic figure and mused of his destination. A 80+ yoga class, perhaps? The weekly doctor's appointment? A smile flickered across my face, betraying my self-amusement.

Suddenly, the man straightened. Arising from his hunched posture, the man turned, scowling. I was immediately arrested in his gaze of pure scorn. From his eyes, I felt an endless hatred of automobiles and all drivers thereof. As he stood, exactly in the center of my lane, I realized that this was no simple breaker of the law. As Gandalf and the Balrog, he and I both understood exactly what was going to occur in this intersection at that moment. I dug deep to find the courage to match his gaze, faltered, and fell to the onslaught of insane pedestrian pride. On any other day I may have locked eyes with a simple pedestrian who would have cowed his head to my rightful domination of the streets and fell into line. Today I was the subject, he the master. I jerked my wheel, barely sliding into the adjacent lane and barely zipping around the monumental man proclaiming his ambulatory supremacy. I fearfully glanced in my mirror, in awe, and saw him recede into the distance.

My memories of Boston driving, undoubtedly, will mix together into a melange of parking tickets, inevitable body work, and raging Italians. My encounter with this man, however, will always remain vivid and unique. I will always remember the day I saw the man.

He; the defiant, the suicidally indifferent to laws of traffic and physics -

the King of the Jaywalkers.

Something very exciting!

2010-10-17T13:25:00.001-06:00

I recently discovered that Boston University offers a graduate program called the "Masters of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy." It's one of the coolest programs I've ever seen offered. Until this point, I had figured on going to a full-on culinary school, but I think this fits my career goals much better, especially since they allow their students to enrich their program with classes and certificates from the culinary arts program. Check it out:

http://www.bu.edu/met/programs/graduate/gastronomy/

I'd probably choose to concentrate in business, and take their classes relating to restaurant management and food writing while earning the degree. Looking through their class list, I don't know how I'd ever pare it down and just take a few. There's so many amazing things to learn and discover!

I'd been concerned about the hours, lifestyle, and physical grind of a classical culinary career, and I think this program offers more options, whether they be in a journalism field or in high-end restaurant management.

It also corresponds with another great opportunity I have. As you all know, I have recently started working at the Provo Marriott. The company that manages our restaurant, IHR, also manages a particularly nice hotel in Boston, the Charles. The Charles, aside from being a great hotel, houses some fantastic restaurants, including the Rialto, one of the finest hotel restaurants in the country. It will probably not be that difficult, after a year or so at the Provo Marriott, to transfer to the Charles and work in one of the restaurants there, and sooner or later end up in Rialto. Check out the websites for the hotel (http://www.charleshotel.com/index.cfm) and the Rialto (http://www.rialto-restaurant.com/home/). Through IHR, I will probably also be able to get some tuition reimbursement to ease the pain of paying for a graduate program as I attend part-time and work.

Anyhow, I just wanted to share this with y'all because I'm really, really excited about it right now. More research is in order, to find out if it is a legitimate program and career options that stem from it, but needless to say it's the most fantastic graduate degree program I've ever seen and something I seriously want to consider for my future.

My kids are totally doing this.

2010-10-17T13:20:00.001-06:00

I think this is a wonderful idea! I want to learn these skills myself and help my kinds understand them someday:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-eyes-chefs-kids.html

Mom's Dinner

2010-05-15T22:25:00.001-06:00

Mother's Day 2010

Allegro

Artichokes Braised with Garlic and Thyme

Roasted Garlic Crostini

Andante

Chiffonade of Romaine and Bibb Lettuces

Roast Lamb with Anchovy, Garlic, and Rosemary

Soufleed Gnocchi alla Parmigiana

Presto

Apricot-Almond Macaroon Cake

Maple and Blueberry Ice Cream

Philosophy of Mind: The Case for Panpsychism

2009-10-13T21:16:00.002-06:00

Recently, I have had the opportunity of learning about panpsychism or panexperientialism from process philosophy, and from some discussions with a friend that believes in it. I thought I would take some time reviewing my qualms with the position. Perhaps I can discover my own bigotry or biases along the way! I was once struck with panpsychism’s aesthetic sense and novelty, but when I tried to bring it down to life I found the concept broke down. I am resistant to panpsychism because after reading and thinking about the philosophical discussion regarding it (much of which I will paraphrase below; I ought to have given due credit to those who make these points and cite them carefully, but bare with me), I do not know what it really even means or explains. We can be poetic and attribute "inner experience" or "mentality" to objects (which kinds of objects by the way--what about properties, states of affairs, numbers, relations, space-time? Do these also have inner experiences? Or are panpsychists restricting their domain of discourse to the “physical” universe; or are they nominalists--these things have only semantic existence?), but we don't mean anything like human consciousness. Consciousness in human systems is brought about by neurobiological processes that quarks don't have. The purported analogical basis between human consciousness and other objects appears purely imaginative. So we must suppose there is this "inanimate mentality" in other objects--but what that is, no one makes clear. What would its inner experience be? And can it have experience--what does it mean to receive conscious experiences if one has no memory? And since people like to build freedom out of panpsychism, what does it mean to choose if you have no concept of an action to choose from, or obey when you have no conceptual understanding? The motivation behind panpsychism seems to be in offering some sort of continuity between ourselves and nature. Yet it seems wildly implausible to attribute anything much like our consciousness to all things; if the "mentality" attributed to them is different enough from ours for such attribution to look plausible, that difference will have to be so great that it will undermine the sense of continuity between us and the rest of nature.

So I don't think panpsychism comes any closer to bridging the "explanatory gap" or problem of emergence. Typically, people think physicalists have the problem; we can never explain how conscious experience emerges from physical processes. If we would just assume that human macro consciousness is nested in a greater micro consciousness, all will be well. There is a sort of argument for A V B (physicalism or panpsychism); ~A because of the emergence problem, therefore by DS, B. But what about other alternatives? There are a lot of metaphysical worldviews out there; should panpsychism be strictly favored because it is monistic which somehow solves interaction issues and because it supposedly solves the emergence issue? I don't think so, because I think many of its supposed strong points promise more than they can deliver. Take for instance, the explanatory gap.

If we assume that there is human consciousness and the wider quasi-consciousness that all (again what we mean by all is difficult here; let us say the constituents of the universe--quarks or strings, or "puffs"--whatever it is) at a minimum experiences, we have two different ways for phenomenon to be experiential. Can human consciousness be explained by this wider quasi-consciousness? How could trillions of thinking-particles constitute what feels like a single, unitary subject of experience (This is known as the combination problem)? There is the epistemological problem of not being able to know anything about the experientiality of the ultimates composing me. I surely can't introspect into my hair's or toe nail's conscious experience. And yet if I can't introspect or empirically observe their conscious behavior, how could I ever in principle get any evidence as to the nature of these properties? If I can't get to these properties, how can I ever know if my human consciousness emerges out of them? As some philosophers have pointed out, with water I can look at H2O molecules and their properties and from there deduce the liquidity of water. But if I can't know the experiential properties of the "puffs," I can never provide a philosophical explanation of human consciousness in terms of them. In my opinion, no hypothesis should be adopted that cannot possibly be tested (unless it can make a transcendental argument; but this is a weak kind of argument, since any sight of proof to another theory will be superior to the transcendental. Furthermore, I have wondered that with there possibly being a multiplicity of transcendental arguments that can explain the same facts without evidence--which one is to be preferred and why?). I personally find it puzzling when it is not possible to answer the question "Is the panpsychist position true?"

But for the sake of argument, let us say that the quasi-conscious properties of these "puffs" are known in their complete detail. Would that help explain the emergence problem? Unfortunately, no. If one imagines the thought-particles interacting in ways that mirror the human consciousness' components, it is still possible that the resulting complex being lacks consciousness. To suggest otherwise would be to commit the fallacy of composition. In which case no amount of knowledge of the quasi-conscious aspect of particles could ever explain phenomenal consciousness in the way that knowledge of the component particles of water and their interaction explain liquidity. If one replies that they act in some unknown complex way, cannot the physicalist (and any other metaphysical worldview for that matter) make the same argument?

Perhaps one wants to make a weak claim: since everything is of the same metaphysical type (constituents and the human consciousness), should not this indicate that panpsychism might render the latter (human consciousness) more explicable? No; we don't have any idea how the quasi-conscious properties possessed by one entity or set of entities might contribute to a reductive explanation of the human consciousness. So panpsychism has provided no explanation for phenomena that it has promised to deliver. Thus to the great step from non-living to living matter corresponds a great step from inner experiences to the human consciousness. Even on the panpsychist account, something totally new enters with world.

Physicalists have made attempts to dissolve the explanatory gap that should not be brushed off hand, as observed by the enormous articles and books on philosophy of mind. And Karl Popper has made some interesting points here too. To insist something must be mind-like and that it can be attributed even to quarks is misleading. There are processes of nature which are emergent in the sense that they don't lead gradually, but leap to a property not there before. "We know crystals and other solids have the property of solidity without solidity being present in the liquid before crystallization."

Are there any other reasons for panpsychism to be appealing? There seems to be a multiplicity of metaphysical explanations in theology to explain free will, divine agency, etc. that are not unique to panpsychism, so I cannot see that benefit. I am amused at the state of philosophy on the issue of mind: while some are trying to understand how it is even possible that other minds or my own mind exists, others are dead set that everything possessing a mind!

Forgive me for rushing through these arguments and not giving some due citations on many of the points that have convinced me against panpsychism.

Fascinating articles

2009-09-21T11:37:00.002-06:00

Here's a few really interesting articles in the ongoing same-gender attraction discussion. First is an article by Elder Bruce Hafen. Keep in mind, this is published in the official LDS newsroom. That gives it a certain air of official-ness (but don't blow it out of proportion, it's not like a new section of the D&C...always worth working through the tangled mess of LDS thought heirarchy). It's a strong position, but quite temperately and rationally written. Probably one of the most interesting, readable and non-polemic articles I've read on the topic:

http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/public-issues/elder-bruce-c-hafen-speaks-on-same-sex-attraction

Second, an article calling into question his scholarship and use of APA research:

http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/?p=2657

I think that the feminist mormon housewife blog makes some good points and calls Elder Hafen and his readers to return to the sources and consider what's being said in general. I don't think their criticism invalidates Elder Hafen's points but they certainly offer more food for thought.

This quote - "If you are faithful, on resurrection morning—and maybe even before then--you will rise with normal attractions for the opposite sex." - is the pinnacle of the Hafen article. It's a huge statement - socially, theologically, emotionally, politically, etc. It is, however, not the only landmark point he makes about LDS opinion (at least his stance, which seems to mirror that of many members) on same-gender attraction.

I think this article is important, as it leads LDS folks to really think through their opinions. The things I've heard from many members are usually vague ideas and parroted responses. Elder Hafen challenges us to actually think it through and be ethical about it. Read Elder Hafen's article, I'd love to hear what people think. I' m sure it'll be a bit divisive, bu I think the tone of the article lends to more reasonable discussion than the topic usually brings out.

Why I love Montana

2009-06-18T17:32:00.002-06:00

Highlights from a recent bill in the MT house of representatives:

HOUSE BILL NO. 246
"Montana Firearms Freedom Act"

Section 4. Prohibitions. A personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in Montana and that remains within the borders of Montana is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce.

Kinda fun

2009-02-23T00:32:00.002-07:00

Ok, on my friend Brad's blog I saw an interesting thing. He took the challenge to go to the 6th folder in his picture file and post the 6th picture in that folder on his blog. Just like Brad, I decided to just take a peek and check out the picture for kicks. Then, just like Brad, I decided to post it. It's kind of a fun picture that I haven't seen in a looong time:

That is a picture of some of the hair that was cut off of my head in the summer of '06 after letting my white-boy fro grow out for a long, long time. It is also a picture of a fairly impressive farmer tan and a slightly skinnier version of me. What more could you want?

Supah Hero!

2009-02-16T16:42:00.003-07:00

It's me, Hero-ized!

You can check out the website if you'd like super powers...

2009-02-09T19:53:00.003-07:00

Here's the menu for the multi-course meal I made (with some help from my sous-chef) for Mike and Kaela on Kaela's birthday:

Le Menu

Apéritif
Chile-Rubbed Shrimp with Avocado Corn Cocktail

Entrée
Crostini with Roasted Garlic, Goat Cheese and Apple Chutney

Plat Principal
Pan-Roasted Sirloin with Corn Relish
Roasted-Garlic Soufflé

Un Petit Dessert
Pomegranate Panna Cotta

Birthday Pizza

2009-01-20T23:22:00.004-07:00

Last night I made my Mom pizza on her brand-new pizza stone. It was marvelous!

Basically I made the dough and while it sat I chopped veggies (Red Onion, Zucchini, Portabello Mushrooms, Green Bell Peppers and Cherry Tomatoes). I put the veggies in a casserole and tossed them in olive oil, salt and pepper. Meanwhile, I mixed some softened butter with green onions, minced garlic, and basil leaves. I put the veggies in the oven for 10 minutes at 425, and then put the crust in with the veggies for another 10 minutes (the pizza stone had been in during the preheat process). I removed the crust, spread it with the herb butter, added some mozzarella cheese, piled it high with roasted veggies, sprinkled it generously with parmesan and baked it until browned and bubbly. And thus, Roasted Vegetable Bianca Pizza was born!

It really was tasty. The crust turned out marvelous, a sturdy medium-thickness crust that didn't bend under the significant weight of lovely vegetables but wasn't overly dense. Hurrah for pizza stones! The veggies were soft but still had some texture to them, providing satisfying resistance. The butter precluded any need for sauce and compensated for my relatively light use of cheese. I would have liked to put some asiago, romano or fontina cheese, but Wal-Mart doesn't have the greatest selection...

Anyhow, good pizza!

GREAT word

2008-12-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

Check this out:

Omphiloskepsis - The act of contemplating one's navel

Follow-up

2008-12-08T13:20:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine discovered this, and I wanted to pass it on as a follow-up to my previous blog. This is an ad printed in the New York Times concerning the backlash against the LDS church over Prop 8:

http://www.nomobveto.org/images/nytad_lg.png

Quite frankly, I'm very impressed. I'm glad that responsible citizens (who don't profess to be mormon or gay) are willing to speak out against the ridiculous response to LDS members (and others) who supported Prop 8.

Well done, sirs.

In the wake of Prop 8

2008-11-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

I wasn't a big participator in the Prop 8 argument. I'm not firmly decided in any particular way, it seems MUCH more complicated that most want it to be. Believe it or not, the argument over Prop 8 is not between lunatic, godless, twisted sex demons bent on fiery, burning apocalypse and the complete destruction of America's moral system versus wild-eyed Christian fanatics bent on conquest through Bible-violence, forcing their opinions on innocent bystanders like bloody crusaders of years past carving a swath through heathen "Mohamadens".

It's all much more human than that. These people on both sides are people, people.

However, what does get me in a bit of a fit (Besides retarded Mormons with no idea how to ethically consider people that have different beliefs and lifestyles) is the post-prop 8 backlash. Many of the homosexual-rights groups have gone well past the line. I'm not talking about civil rights or political platitudes. I'm talking about blatant disregard of life, liberty and property. Why do we even HAVE a constitution if these people can trample on the rights of those that disagree?

Check out this article, it echoes many of my sentiments in a fairly level-headed way:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTU5MjZmMDIyMDU3NjRiMjBlNjcxYTlmOGQ2ODA5NjA=

Why do we stand for it? Why are the protesters climbing over the wall of the LA temple not thrown in prison? Why are many of the vocal anti-religious groups not branded as the bigoted idiots that they present themselves as? Why isn't America pissed about this?

I am.

A Quick Glance of Spain

2008-11-09T09:29:00.002-07:00

On my way to school, whether I walk or ride the bus, I witness many occurrences that reveal Spain. Sometimes Spain is the wisp of smoke, the dog crap on the sidewalks that sticks to my sandals, two women chatting with loud voices and lively gestures, the smell of fresh-baked bread, or the long line of cured pig legs hanging at a butcher shop. At other times, Spain is one of many teenagers' mullets, a flock of birds, the whine of a beggar’s violin, or the rhythm of the feet of pedestrians.

For me, Spain is the king of specialty stores and quaint mom and pop shops. There is an “-ería” for anything g you could image (frutería, panadería, pastelería, papelería, dime-que-quieres-ería), and very few monster superstores. There are large street markets where gypsies, Africans, and Spaniards sell every item under the sun. This includes exotic fruits: membrillos, jínjoles, chirimoyas, caquis [persimins], y granadas [pomegranates]. While the prices are reasonable, the problem is that you usually have to buy at least a kilo. It can be hard to carry all the food you are interested home, let alone consume it all. The non-food items you need to be careful with as they are probably from Morocco or China, and the quality is often poor. There is definitely a black market here in Spain. The salesmen offer their products (Gucci look-alike purses, movies, music CDs) on blankets and sheets. They tie a rope carefully around the blanket so that if they see the police coming they can pull the cord and the blanket will close up. Then, they can make a ran for it or try to meld within the crowd.

Part of Spain is poor and miserable. I see it in the people waiting in line at the doors of the government employment agency. Some carry babies (possibly for emotional effect when speaking with an agent), others sport Mohawks, and others dress like businessmen. They age from 18 to 60. I see it in the lives of beggars. One shook his money-cup frantically up and down with his teeth up because he was armless. There are drunks; one walrus-man passed out on the sidewalk, his enormous stomach pouring out onto the pavement.

The majority of the urban cities are anthills with cramped streets. I don’t know how the busdrivers can wind there way through them without accidents [correction: they don’t]. Navigating through an unvisited neighborhood seems like wandering in a labyrinth. There are supposed to be streets signs on the sides of buildings, but most of the time they are not available. Many of the smaller streets are not available on the map. Gratefully, the cities are so beautiful during the day that even if you are lost you end up in a place where you can enjoy yourself.

Spain is crowned with the arts. Everywhere there are cultural sites, monuments to writers and intellectuals, and museums to historical figures. The works of painters are collected in galleries like the Prado or the Reina Sofia. On the Gran Via there is a series of theaters and music venues. Add to that the many elaborate fountains, medieval fairs, and botanical gardens. Spain even protects the stork nests by placing fences around them on the roofs. Aesthetics and sports mix in the bullfights. It is a cruel art, a correct art in portraying the ser-en-lucha of existence that would satisfy Schopenhauer, but unnecessary in a life that already proclaims this message to the four winds. There is also the darker side of art here. Spain was a prostitute when I left her in 1997, and she still plays her role. Pornography fills the newspapers, and covers the shelves of gas stations. The book stores at train stops and in the streets all sell sex books with risqué covers. Even the advertising used by local pharmacies shows naked women to promote their products.

I emphasize that Spain is really a cultural passion; a mix of sensations and mental phenomena. She is not just a piece of land. I taste Spain in a gross yema [sugared egg yolk], I see her in a paella’s yellow, and I hear her in the sound of castanets. These rituals and experiences show me more of her organic history and delights than boundary lines on a map.

Voting Angst: Part Second

2008-11-03T21:46:00.001-07:00

Honestly, it's hard for me to want to vote either way. When it comes to principles, I lean toward McCain and can't really consider Obama. When it comes to presentation of candidates, I lean toward Obama and can't imagine McCain. Obama seems significantly more rational and effective as a politician than McCain, but that doesn't mean he's the best choice. The liberal side strikes me as a pipe dream of a perfect world laced with some fairly disturbing and immoral ideas. I don't believe Obama seeks to kill babies and throw our country into communism, but there are definitely ideas that give me the heebie-jeebies. The Republican side reeks of ignorance, cronyism and decay. They can't get anything done and ignore facts that scream in their faces. Ostriches with their heads in the sand, both sides spending our money to save their personal political careers. At the expense of the rest of us. It's a brave new world or the same ol' corrupt one, eh?

There doesn't seem to be any middle ground for me. I checked out the third parties, they scare the heck out of me. They don't have ANY idea what they're doing in national/international policies. Basically, I feel like all I get is lies and propaganda and I don't know how I can make a good decision. As if there were a good decision.

So, I'll go to the booth tomorrow and vote. It doesn't make me happy; I'm not excited to do this particular civic duty. It feels like someone but a bag of poo on my porch last night and I have to clean it up now. When the chips are down, my sister's bit on the abortion issue (http://nessaandmichael.blogspot.com) seems the only thing that strikes a real chord in me. All of the rest seems like so much force-fed drivel that has nothing to do with the way the country will actually be run. It is certainly time for change, but there ain't no change in this election. So I'll vote for no change tomorrow. Not because I want to; because I have no choice.

Voting angst

2008-11-03T16:02:00.002-07:00

Anyone have any good ideas what one should do when voting feels like selecting which cancer to contract? I've heard "lesser of the two evils" but after doing a bit of research on the positions of the main (and third-party) candidates, I've decided it's the "lesser of the five depressings." What on earth am I to do when I feel compelled to vote but feel a bit of disgust when I consider my choices?

More random Peirce thoughts

2008-10-24T10:30:00.001-06:00

The symbols we use define our reality in many ways. They affect how we interpret the world and what we see around us. However, the symbols of our society are not concretely defined. They are always changing, depending on how they’re used and how wee the world. Peirce has said that we are always impacting and impacted by symbols. They are a fluid thing, guiding our communication and thought processes. For instance, the symbol of justice cannot be easily defined and, indeed, changes from case to case, moment to moment. And yet, we nearly all believe we have a concrete idea of justice upon which we base our conduct and the expectations of the conduct of others. Is would be useless to squabble over whether or not this fact is good or bad, it is merely a fact. However, we should realize the fact. We should understand that the symbols and terms we use are fluid. Many times we get stuck on a particular idea or way of looking at things when it is not, in fact, defined as such. How we have used a symbol, how we are now using it and its future use all play a part in what the symbol means.

Peirce’s pragmatism suggests that unless something makes an observable difference in the way we experience the world, an idea is pointless. I agree. However, this idea has some pretty strong consequences. If that is accepted, we can never assert to finally have “the truth.” We never know what facts lurk that simply have not made themselves known through a discernible difference. We will forever discover them, as our perceptions change and our ways of looking at the world become more complex. Will we ever understand everything? Maybe, but even if we did, how would we know that we did? Therefore: would it matter?

Drooling over Spanish Philosophers

2008-10-09T03:21:00.002-06:00

While I once thought there was a dearth of Spanish philosophers, I recognized that it was just my Philosophy book. There is some great stuff here. I've been drooling over my copy of Unamuno's Del Sentimiento Tragico de la Vida. It's surprising easy to read philosophy in Spanish. I have also been plowing through his La Agonia of Cristianismo (The Agony of Christianity). I have also been trying to inundate myself in some Jose Ortega y Gasset. These guys are surprisingly in my line of thinking: mixing some James, Kierkegaard, Husserl, and Christianity into an interesting, pragmatic Christian existentialism to some extent. I have been enjoying John Thomas Graham's A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega Y Gasset. And really want to get my hands on "Spain's Christian Existentialism," but of course it had to be someone's disertation... ugh. Anyway, I think I'm going to study some more Ortega y Gasset and Unamuno in grad school. As for some other Spanish philosophers, I'll want to go into George Santayana. And I have found John of the Cross' works surprisingly moving. The Spanish mystic is quite different than I would have expected; very different from other mystics.

Stupid Fonts

2008-09-26T00:08:00.000-06:00

Ok, the last post looks retarded with the font issues. Every time I copy text from Microsoft Word in gets all weird on me. Anyone know a way around that?

Peirce

2008-09-26T00:07:00.000-06:00

Ok, I've been reading Charles Sanders Peirce's Some Consequences of Four Incapacities and here are some thoughts I had.

(Look, I realize that there is no explanation of the content of the article, that I give no background information to acclimate you to the discussion. Get over it, I'm that lazy. You get what you get. If you want more info, ask me some questions and I'll either give unsatisfactory answers or none at all. Your lucky day!)

Peirce makes a claim that we have no ability to introspect. If we have no power of introspection, if we cannot know anything without reasoning from external facts, how do we approach religious knowledge that is described as inherently introspective? There are several options: 1. Peirce is wrong about introspection. 2. Religious knowledge is not knowledge after all. 3. Religious knowledge does not come through introspection.

Considering the first: Could Peirce be wrong? Sure, but it sure doesn’t seem like it. He persuasively explains that everything we know is from external facts, down to our very existence. If we do not have introspection about our own being, can we have introspective knowledge of other things?

Second: Perhaps, as many have suggested, religious knowledge is not knowledge after all, but merely delusion or false hope or what have you. This may be so. Perhaps religious knowledge is a hope for knowledge, a desire for something better. This certainly requires a different stance to be taken on how we approach religious knowledge, but does not necessarily make it obsolete or bad.

Third: A more interesting idea to think about. When we as mormons speak of learning things through the Holy Ghost, is it always introspection. Surely not in the cases of inspiration where the faculties of reason are increased, where those under the influence of the spirit are able to quickly put things together. But what of those cases where we just “know”? Where the knowledge comes from the “inside?” Does it really? Or do we approach it externally? Perhaps we’ve been taught that the spirit feels a certain way in certain situations… when we feel this feeling, we attribute it to the spirit, an external fact. Perhaps religious knowledge is never actually introspective the way we think it is…

Peirce makes an interesting point when he argues that emotions are known through external facts as well. Anger, for instance, seems to always be pointed at an object. Do we ever have un-directed anger? Peirce admits that some emotions, melancholy, for instance, are non-directional, but goes on to show that these emotions do not manifest themselves spontaneously but are shown through objects of thought. I feel melancholy ABOUT things in the world, ABOUT my life, ABOUT life. Is it ever just melancholy? Another good case seems to be the existential angst referred to by Sartre, Kierkegaard and others. I’m in no position to fully define this “angst”, neither do I intend to for this line of thought. It has been described as a general feeling of unease, a feeling in inadequacy or a general feeling of meaninglessness in life. Does this manifest itself through objects of thought as well? When and how do I feel the angst?

Peirce says that we discover our own existence through error. It is not until we do something “wrong” that we discover the being that erred. This is interesting in light of Heidegger’s ideas on things being broken. Heidegger argued that we use things as tools, not noticing their qualities or being until they “break.” When things no longer work as usual, when our routine is disturbed, we start to notice the objects themselves, no longer mindlessly using them. Is this how we discover our own being as well? Do we only really discover our being through our being broken? Perhaps this is why we tend to disappear to our consciousness when life is running smoothly and our the fact of our existence (bodily or otherwise) comes forcefully back to us when we run into issues? Is this where the afore-mentioned angst steps in? When our existence breaks? All of a sudden we become an “I”, as in “I’m sick,” “I hurt,” “I screwed up,” or even “I don’t know why I’m here (existence, not location)”

Mike

2008-09-19T00:29:00.001-06:00

I lost a friend today.

I was not friends with Mike Hess for long, I never had his cell phone number and I never even added him as a friend on facebook. We were "just" coworkers who joked around a few times a week. All the same, I treasured my friendship with him. Today, as I sat on the lawn, enjoying the glorious sunshine and reading Terry Pratchett, I realized something important.

Last night, Mike and I both lived and loved. We cared about people, we enjoyed life and we smiled. Two days ago, we laughed together and joked about burnt food, 50 cent raises and grocery. Last week, he beamed and told me about how he finally reached level 70. Three months ago, Mike said hi to me in his particularly "Mike-ish" way and made me particularly happy.

And now? Mike still lives and loves. He still cares, he enjoys and he certainly smiles. And so must I. I feel no remorse for Mike's passing. He lived well and died well. I do not mourn his loss. I feel pain that he is no longer here, I wish to share that with all those that knew him. To be true to Mike, we must be Mike for someone who never got the chance to meet him. We must smile, we must greet, we must sing and talk and laugh and joke like Mike. We have the chance to affect people the way he did us. May we never forget that.

Thank you Mike, for showing me how to treat people. Thanks for the happiness. I'm glad you hit level 70 before you left, I'm glad you found love and married before you left, I'm glad I met you before you left, and I hope there are others wherever you are that can meet you. Keep burnin' the butterscotch!

See you later!

Recent Paper

2008-09-11T22:53:00.003-06:00

I've been trying to get informed about politics lately so as to be able to make an informed decision in the upcoming election. I figure if I'm gonna vote I may as well know what on earth is going on and what my options are...

Simultaneously, my first major assignment in my writing class was to write a quick one-page paper that makes and argument. The papers are not masterpieces, just quickies to give the professor an idea of what he's dealing with in his students.

In light of a recent interview I saw between Bill O'Reilly and Barack Obama, I chose to write my argument about income redistribution. I'm not sure I agree with myself, but I haven't satisfactorally answered my own questions brought up in the paper, so I thought I'd post it for all to see (that is, the select few that occasionally check this recently scant blog.) What do you think? Am I off base in my concerns? Why?

Without further ado:

Income redistribution has recently arisen as a topic of debate. Proponents of the system suggest taxing the rich at a considerably higher rate than others in order to reallocate their wealth to the lower and middle classes. Income redistribution, although noble in its aims, is not just. This oft-nicknamed “Robin Hood” procedure seems like a great way to help the less fortunate, but, like its namesake, eventually boils down to stealing from the rich.

There are many wealthy people in the United States. On the other hand, there is a large contingent of Americans that fall under the poverty line. Many have suggested that the rich can afford to be taxed more heavily in order to assist the under privileged. To tax the rich at a greater rate than others, however, reeks of theft. Those voluntarily giving to the poor should be lauded for their altruism, but if a mob were to come and take money from them, even if the mob were to give its spoils to the poor and hungry, it would turn the “givers” into victims. Onlookers would be outraged to hear of such an event and would rightly clamor for justice.

Similarly, if the middle and lower class were to decide to forcibly take money from the upper class, although through democratically chosen and seemingly legal taxation, does not the same ethical problem arise? The rich cannot be forced to “donate” their money to others, no matter how needy the poor may seem. It is their choice to do what they please with their property.

Simply put, the rich cannot be over-taxed to benefit the lower and middle classes. We are beyond our rights to impel them to give aid if they are not willing to do so. Income redistribution, no matter how much it helps, cannot be ethically upheld.

Uncertainty and Politics

2008-08-11T21:13:00.003-06:00

I am going to discuss this in a very mediocre format, so bear with me. Americans dwell within a democratic society where our votes can largely shape the structure which in we live. Of course, we are not used to dealing with issues from day to day, and probably only use our democratic powers when we vote once every four years for our president. We probably rarely, if ever, communicate with our elected officials. However, when it comes to voting for our President and issues that spike our interest more than usual (for instance, the recent developments regarding same sex marriage), how do we decide where to vote when we are not happy with either sides of an issue, or are not certain where to vote? As for myself, I doubt pretty much everything I get the chance to think about. That will probably include this post when I am done writing it. So how do I (when I am pompous enough to believe, and probably wrongly so, that I think on certain issues more than the average Joe or Jane that votes) vote on issues that I am uncertain about? Should I let many others who do not make thoughtful decisions choose the outcome? Is not voting really accurate of my view if I care very much about the issue? I don't believe we can trust on what "we feel good about." There are many decisions that I think may have been the right decision but I felt or still feel insecurity about. Marriage was one of them, but I do not think that was the wrong decision. I think we often have competing claims made upon us, and choosing one is to the exclusion of the other, and so we are bound to feel some insecurity for excluding the other claim which had good to it. So what to do? Do we pick to stay the course? In other words, when we are not certain about a topic, ought we stick with the original position if the alternative is a radical departure? Of course with non-radical departures, we would be more willing to give and take. Hmm... thoughts are appreciated. I am sure this is a difficult issue regardless of when it takes place, and there is no perfect way to follow it out.

Attraction and Gay Marriage

2008-07-15T18:03:00.003-06:00

As a California resident, these topics are a little more pressing on my mind. In November Californians will have the opportunity to vote for Proposition 8, a proposed constitutional amendment (also known as the Limit on Marriage Amendment or California Marriage Protection Act) that would override the Court's decision to permit gay marriage in California.

California like most states has a very divided population: a very liberal urban population and a very conservative rural population. It will be very interesting to see what the turnout for this vote will be. My question is, as a Latter-day Saint, what can I do to better interface with Christians and non-Christians on this topic? I believe there are many sitting on the fence on this issue. It is hard to fight against a wave that claims freedom is its banner, and discrimination and intolerance and bigot are the labels attached to those that oppose it. There is an immense amount of social pressure to live sexually as you wish, regardless if through pornography, homosexuality, fornication, and adultery. Furthermore, I know I have had a tendency to let people live the way they want to, as long as it doesn't interfere with my life. I imagine many other people feel this way.

However, as I have grown older, I realize (imagine that!) that I do not live in a vacuum. The popular opinion has a huger sway than we recognize, and even moreso what our educational systems and authority figures teach. This beckons to Michel Foucault, who sought to understand how power relationships create conditions for the production of knowledge. The knowledge that is either opened or closed as a result of these relationships greatly influences our freedom. Indeed, it seems hard to choose to do that which we do not know of. While we may stumble upon experiences by mistake (perhaps I could whistle by blowing air through my mouth without intending to, and then study the experience enough to replicate the action for instance), overall what we can do we have experienced. Faith cometh by hearing. An adjustment in what we hear then changes what we will believe and do.

So what does that have to do with gay marriage? Simply, I wish to show how accepting gay marriage as an outlet for those who wish to become part of it will greatly change the educational structure of this nation. In essence, do I want my children to be taught there is a good chance they are homosexual and that they should participate in it? That gay marriage is a normal and acceptable institution to engage in? This occurred on some level while I was in High School. They took all the Junior High School students on a weekend getaway, and one evening they held a "fireside" on how it was alright to be gay and that many of us probably were. Students were taught that it can be hard, but we should have the strength to act on what we "know." Parents and students were not informed that this was going to occur. Hence, I don't believe it is far-fetched to think that if gay marriage is adopted, state-by-state and perhaps on a national level, that our educational systems will be greatly altered in how they approach the issues in the class rooms, the second generation of text books will promote gay marriage, and even children's books will be altered. You can look at Massachusetts as an example. I've seen recent copies of Goldilocks and the Three Bears get rid of Mama and Papa bear for non-gender terms like Big Bear and Bear.

I don't believe I want my children to be exposed to such cognitive dissonance as they are taught strongly by their educational and social figures that such a lifestyle is good, and their parental and religious figures teaching strongly it is bad. The popularity of opinion is bound to encourage more children to embrace that lifestyle. The teenage years are troubling and filled with emotional angst and existential crises; no reason to take advantage of it. This issue may go beyond the dissonance as well. Reverse discrimination may come in spades. In the recent interview with Elder Oaks, he mentioned "a church pastor threatened with prison for preaching from the pulpit that homosexual behavior is sinful." Now I'm not expecting that to occur in America, but it's a frightening possibility. Will we be able to preach against homosexuality as others preach for it? The most scary possibility (though highly unlikely) is that the marriage rights of the church could be revoked. Adoption agencies have been forced to shut down for not permitting gay couples adoptions. The question then becomes: Can the government refuse a religous organization the right to legally marry people if they refuse to perform marriages for gay couples? While of course the church would continue to perform marriage in the eyes of the Lord, could their right to perform marriage via the laws of the land be revoked? I am not mentioning this to promote some fanatical notion, but to consider the possibilities.

I think these ideas and thoughts need to be considered by those who are Christian, religious, and those not religious but champion or are considerate of heterosexual marriage. We need to encourage others to think, and recognize their vote on this matter counts. Yes, their choice will involve discrimination. But it always does; we form our world. To be a person is to have a stance on an issue, to be faced one way or the other: to have opinions, and to reject other views. A freedom in one area can limit freedoms in another.

We tend to argue against same-gender marriage on historical-traditional grounds (it's always been heterosexual marriage), religious grounds (God has revealed it this way), and definitional grounds (marriage means a lawfully sanctioned relationship between a man and woman). I've heard Kantian ethics also applied: that which is not got for all of us to adopt, none of us should adopt. As homosexuality would lead to the extinction of the race, it is not good. It would provide an evolutionary dead-end. Of course, not only would this logic be faulty in many occasions, but what of bisexuality then? While these arguments may be convincing to conservatives, they seem unconvincing to liberals. Perhaps we need to be greater versed in discourse with those promoting homosexual marriage, even on basic issues. A lot of these will probe questions of philosophy of sex. For instance,

1. What do we mean by saying attraction or gender orientation is genetic? As I would imagine attraction comes via the senses, how can genes determine what I enjoy visually? How can the senses judge between men and women? Obviously, the sexual organs can be, but not any place I live around has them publicly displayed. I know attraction can come via cultural norms, but cultural norms don't seem to be inherited in genes. There are so many differences between cultures and in time on what is attractive: how is that genetic?

I've been to the beach and been attracted to who I thought were women in the water in wetsuits, only to find out they were men. How can gay men (the same applies to lesbians) not say they were attracted to women they thought or look like men? From what I've read, this is more myth with homosexuals. The "ghost stat" that I've heard is that 80% of homosexuals are actually bisexual.

It seems we culturally create archetypal molds or ideas of what is attractive: by why are those gender specific? My questions here need to come to blind people too. Take out the visual element: how do they note gender differences and what is attractive to them? I imagine the sound of the voice, but I could be wrong. There is a large array of pitches of voices that spread across gender lines: how would such attraction be genetic?

Sexual attraction also goes beyond simply gender: it goes into age. Some people enjoy sexual encounters with little children, babies, grandma at the old folk’s home, their own brothers and sisters, dead people. It even moves beyond the human species: with dogs, horses, and so forth. Some are not attracted to anyone, but enjoy masturbation. Gender is not the only sexual orientation. Are such attractions also genetic? How can that possibly be?

2. Is attraction conditioned? And if so, to what extent? Since Locke and particularly Hume, and probably earlier than this, we have recognized the mental experience of association. This means when someone brings up basketball, and I think about the topic, other ideas brought up with it come to my mind: perhaps Michael Jordan or in Jason's case, how the Suns need to win the NBA championship. Pavlov noticed this with his dogs on a behavioral level, and developed the notion of classical conditioning. The bells rang when the food was brought out, and soon enough when the bells rang without the food being brough out, the dogs salivated anyway. Could it be that human attraction is conditioned: ie when we aroused and we see certain behaviors, images, and so forth, and then they become what we aroused by? Could human romantic encounters that we see on television or our society’s pornography largely define what we find to be attractive or that arouses us? Pornography could play an interesting part in sexual orientation: many homosexuals and those engaging in bestiality have been involved in that first. I am sure there are some who have not. Or could it be a mental fascination or curiosity? People tell us so and so is attractive, so and so is interested in us: do we form attraction around opportunities and indoctrination?

3. Is attraction divine? And if so, what does that mean? Are our consciousnesses directed by or connected to some wider field of consciousness that influences our sexual behavior? Or is attraction bestowed from the divine via a naturalistic-genetic path or via conditioning through scripture and revelation? Why does the divine care about sexuality?

4. What is sexuality? By this question I mean, what does it contain? Does sexuality mean expression with one’s sexual organs? Or does it involve procreation and reproduction as well? Can they be separated? Does sexuality necessarily involve a partner? For instance, am I sexual if all I involve myself in is masturbation? Or what if I enjoy a form of pornography, but do not physically engage in it (i.e. am I homosexual/bisexual if I enjoy homosexual pornography but do not and would not engage in it physically)?

5. How can I honor and tolerate all forms of sexual attraction and yet honor fidelity? How can I be “bisexual” and loyal to my partner?

6. Should sexual attractions be curbed or sponsored by society? If so, why?

I have many other questions and topics I would like to talk about on this issue, but feel I should stop as this post is already so long. I would like to hear from other thinking LDS students what they believe/have heard/have thought about on such issues. For me and my state, this topic is pressing, and I would appreciate discussion.

What is this world coming to?

2008-07-11T21:55:00.002-06:00

Tonight we (Mike, Kayla and Myself) dine:

French Dinner Crepes with Steamed Broccoli and Swiss Cheese
Moroccan Chickpeas and Roasted Vegetables over Cracked Barley
Couscous Tfaya with Chicken and Majhoul Dates
Moroccan Almond Baklava

The kicker? We can't get anyone to dine with us. Noone will eat our fare.

The Silence Must End

2008-06-25T14:25:00.002-06:00

Pathetic. All of our writings and musings have been on such a halt. I suppose that's what Summer Jobs do to you. School years are such easier times to think. Well, I got back from St. George yesterday. I hiked Angel's Landing on Monday, and it was pretty cool. My uncle had warned me against hiking it because some kid that went with his Boy Scout troop lost his grip on a chain, fell down the mountain and died. It's true, there is over a 1500 feet drop off, sheer cliffs on both sides. On the other hand, the chains were sturdy and the path was still decently wide, only narrowing down to 8-10 feet at a few points. I didn't feel that unsafe. It was fun, to stand out in the middle of a gorgeous, big canyon. In fact, when I got to the "summit," the scene reminded me of that scene at the end of the Land Before Time, when Little Foot and company see the huge fertile valley they've made it to. Well, okay, it was a lot more of a desert than a fertile valley from where I stood, but it still captured that sort of majesty. On an aside, 7 of us hiked it and I think all of us were unfit. Most of us took an Excedrin afterwards because we were getting headaches; my brother-in-law Dave and sister-in-law Megan had it so bad that they both barfed. I don't think i've ever barfed because of a headache before. yet I do have to say that once I got down the mountain I was very uncomfortable, questioning if it was worth it. Yet when I was at the summit, and even now, i think it definitely was. I guess there's a great example where bodily condition can change perspectives.

As for what I've been thinking about: I've been thinking more about embodiment, and my relationship with my wife. I want to enjoy each day with her, because I don't think I really understand or accept that one day they will end. How to make the most of it... Always tough.

You've got to be kidding me.

2008-04-30T00:03:00.000-06:00

Martin and I are about to turn in a 70-page paper. Holy...

Nickelcade!

2008-04-05T10:02:00.005-06:00

Who knew the Nickelcade would be so much fun? All this for $3.50 per person!

To infinity....and beyond!

Giddy-ap

Martin's big butt baaarely fit

Of, come on, this is a G-rated establishment!Something funny is going on around here...

Road? Rage

The race is on!
Other way, Marty...Good-lookin' folks!

For Champions

2008-04-01T22:20:00.003-06:00

My latest paper for my "Writing about Food" class:
(Can you believe they give college credit for such a class?)
(Thanks for letting me steal your recipe, V)

For Champions

Ah, breakfast. Widely portrayed as the most important meal of the day by concerned mothers, breakfast is indeed a big part of our lives. Anyone who’s never awoken to the wonderful smell of something warm in the oven or sizzling on the stove has truly been deprived of one of the great pleasures of life. The iconic image of Mother, hovering over the kitchen table with a large plate of pancakes ready to be inundated in syrup and messily devoured hangs around my dreams like a squatter intent on staking a claim. Let’s get real, though. We’re at college here. Mom’s not bringing a steaming plate and roommates probably aren’t going to pull through, either. So what’s a guy to do? I’ve got three papers due today, I slept in a few snooze-buttons too many and my car hasn’t really worked for longer than I can remember. Frankly, getting a healthy and filling breakfast is pretty far down the list of priorities. (Probably somewhere between shining the irregularly worn spots on my shoes and vacuuming the front room that feels more like walking on a sandbar than carpet.) Partially as a personal culinary enrichment activity, partially for a class assignment and partially for the sake of time-destitute and cooking-resistant men everywhere, I humbly submit these easy, fast and utterly screw-up proof recipes.

Sometimes lucky charms just don’t cut it. A cold bowl of pre-packaged grain (at least that’s what the box calls it) and sugar is not usually what the doctor – or anyone else, for that matter – ordered. On the flip side, the two types of oatmeal, stick-to-your-ribs and hello-hemorrhoid, don’t exactly get me excited. Here’s the remedy: a cereal that skirts the line and delivers the best of both worlds. After you justify not doing the majority of your homework but before you go to bed, take 1 cup of rolled oats and 1 cup of cream (or half and half if you’re watching your girlish figure), mix them in a bowl and stick ‘em in the fridge. When you drag yourself out of bed in the morning, grab the bowl, mix in whatever raisins, fresh fruit or nuts you can find and voila, breakfast for a king. With a calorie count to satisfy a linebacker and a prep time of less than five minutes, how could you go wrong?

If slicing an apple and sticking it in a bowl of creamy oats takes too long, consider this quick granola idea to make ahead of time: Turn the oven on to 300. Mix together 3 cups of rolled oats, 3 tablespoons of oat flour (grab it at the health-food store or just throw some oats in the blender for a while) and 1 cup of sliced almonds in a large bowl. In another container, whisk 1/3 cup canola oil, 1/2 cup honey, 1 teaspoon nutmeg and 1 teaspoon almond extract. I know this is getting tough. Stay with me. Put the contents of bowl 2 into bowl 1 and mix well. Pour the whole mess into a 9x13 pan and bake for an hour. Remember to mix it around after a half-hour if you plan to ever get it out of the pan. When it cools, put in into an airtight container and treat it like lucky charms. You know, pour milk over it and eat with a spoon.

There are mornings where I feel a bit like a hippie. All I really want to do is eat some fruit, drink soymilk and play an acoustic guitar all day. On days like that, a smoothie works perfectly. Smoothies are insanely easy to make. Do you have a blender? Congratulations, you’ve just accomplished the hardest part of the recipe! Now, here are the basics. You need an 8 oz. container of yogurt. Doesn’t really matter what kind, although I try to avoid chocolaty stuff. Now add 1/2 cup of soymilk, 3 ice cubes and a little of whatever juice is sitting in the fridge. That’s your base. Now, you can pretty much throw in whatever you want. A year-old can of peaches? Sure, toss it in. (Not the can, stupid…) Your girlfriend’s frozen strawberries? You bet. Those old browning bananas? The browner the better! (Remember, brown and black are different). Really, you can toss in whatever fruit you’ve got. That’s the beauty of a smoothie! 99% of the time it’ll taste great. The other 1% will work great as paint remover.

Finally, a slightly tougher dish for the really ambitious: muffins. The beauty of muffins is that once they’re made they’re tasty, easy and portable. Muffins are like smoothies and research papers: they start with a basic pattern and the rest is just a bunch of BSing. The oven gets set to 400. Mix 1/2 cup oat flour (see above), 1 1/2 cups of white flour, 3 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 3/4 cup white sugar in a big bowl. Crack an egg into a smaller bowl and beat it with a fork. Add 1 cup of milk and 1/4 cup applesauce to the egg. Finally, mix the eggish milk stuff into the bowl with the floury stuff (not too much or you’ll get hockey pucks instead of muffins). You want to keep your batter a bit lumpy. Bake for 25 minutes and they’re good to go. You may have noticed that those muffins are pretty boring. Never fear, this is where the BSing comes in. Let’s say you want blueberry muffins: toss some blueberries in before you bake them. Ditto for strawberries, bananas, nuts and whatever else you may want in them. If you want cinnamon and sugar on top, put some on top before you bake. It’s pretty much up to you at this point.

So there you go. Four painless ways to have a quick breakfast that mom would be proud of. No more starving at 10:15, no more raiding the vending machines for donuts to hold you over until lunch. These recipes won’t fail in a crunch. Go ahead, use your newfound cooking skills to impress the girls and bribe your roommates! You’ll never have to miss breakfast again!

A Miscellany of Colorful Pictures

2008-03-30T12:29:00.008-06:00

Welcome to the Hare Krishna temple for the Festival of Colors!

Jennifer gets a little touch-up

Arrrrr!

How cute...

The Battle Snake DancerCasualties of WarYou ok, Katie?Love is in the airThe GangThe Chest-bumpIndividual Shots

What remains

Boogers

Sort of like a deer, but not.

2008-02-12T22:29:00.001-07:00

When I cross a road at night and a car comes, I look directly at the car. Every time. Why?

I think it's an inherent understanding that when they see my face they will understand and deal with me as an 'other'. Something in the way they perceive me changes when they see my face. It's my little way of demanding that their treatment of that thing in the road shift from object to other. It's basically just the creation of a moral relationship. Interesting, eh?

A funny thin happened on the way to the JFSB today...

2008-02-11T13:32:00.001-07:00

Walking across campus, I witnessed a unique seen. A physically handicapped guy, in a wheel chair, having lunch with a slightly-less-handicapped lady. He didn't have fully developed arms and she was feeing him cucumber sticks or something of the sort. It's the sort of awkward scene that is interesting but one must hide his interest so as to not be socially "rude". At any rate, as I watched the process for a moment, I was overcome by a sort of curious jealousy. Here was a man and woman, seemingly detached from the suffocating social norms by perceived-as-debilitating handicaps, enjoying a wonderful afternoon lunch together. No pretension, no image to keep up for the sake of someone that doesn't even care. These two people were just having lunch. She seemed perfectly at ease feeding him his lunch and he at receiving it, unable to assist. Both stunning examples of attitudes devoid from the pride that seems to plague us. They've understood and enacted a good life that few of us achieve and often only temporarily. To paraphrase "Gone In Sixty Seconds":

"...they carry with them an inherent nobility, and a supreme glory. We should all be so fortunate. You say poor them? I say poor us."

Mika

2008-02-09T01:03:00.000-07:00

I attended the Mika concert in Salt Lake last night. It was a blast! After we waited in the cold for 1 1/2 hours, we finally got in to intermix with the teenagers. Mika's instruments and equipment was stuck in CO somewhere in the snow so we got 10 dollars back from our ticket and heard a ad-libbed concert with someone else's instruments. It was really, really good! The band took the whole thing pretty light-hearted and just had a lot of fun with the audience doing something they'd never done before. My favorite part was the 40-something black guy behind me with a beard dancing and singing along... well worth the 13 bucks! If you get a chance, go to a Mika concert. He puts on a GREAT show!

Egocentric doubt

2008-02-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

So some not totally thought out thoughts on egocentric doubt. This doubt, in overabundance, brings such a focus on the ego that it may weaken and dissolve the community. Although listening and accepting the opinions of others suggests a faith in one's judgments about their opinions, it does not bare the same egocentrism. This focus on the ego seems to try to destroy the views of others to replace them with your own. We ought to be willing to limit the egocentrism at times, and be willing to adopt the intellectual progeny of others (at least in an experimental sense), and work them in our lives. By subduing the ego, we may significantly aide ourselves in developing part of relationships, friendships, marriages. It is hard, this courage to accept an other's will, yet courage and faith it is, a choice to believe. This adventurous endeavor undoubtably brings either some sense of unity, friendship, love, or well... disappointment.

Animal Sacrifice

2008-02-05T17:33:00.001-07:00

So finally, I return to posting on this good ole blog. There will be many of them today I imagine. I wanted to note down some thoughts that I've pondered on animal sacrifice. I don't understand overall why it's there. It's traditionally explained as some sort of useful memory device that pointed people to Christ's coming and sacrifice. But I don't see how that's a valid point of view. They were without Christ, just as we are now. We have our types, explanations, tools and so forth to "remember him," so why couldn't they use similar ones themselves? We don't need to slay animals now to remember. Other rituals like dances would be just as fruitful without causing suffering. So this is strange stuff.

But then I thought that of course the food was eaten by the priests after the slaying of the animals. We have to slay animals or kill plants ourselves to eat. So if the animals were going to be slain anyway for the purpose of food (in a nontorturous way), then maybe the ritual has purpose. The public killing and burning could bring a communal awareness of what must be done so that we might live as humans. This seems more humane than eating in private boneless meats and forgetting what is done for us to live. So in essence, the animal sacrifice attaches further meaning to an act we already endure. That's useful. Yet, as I'm going through these Biblical sacrifices, it seems that many animals were burned/killed without being eaten at all. This seems extremely wasteful, and contains pointless suffering. So, oh well I tried to think of a meaning for them. Only some do. Last of all, how good is the animal sacrifice for a prefiguring of the atonement? The animals are not voluntarily giving up their lives as sacrifices (not that we could no if they were or not I suppose), so it doesn't equate too well. The blood being spilt could be shown without death, but I guess death is the point. Oh well; seems like another case of human ascendancy.

Why? Why not!

2008-01-31T22:44:00.000-07:00

Restaurant Review of Gloria's Little Italy

2008-01-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

The majority of Italian restaurants I’ve visited in America have been embellished affairs, with flowers, soft music and reprints of semi-famous paintings adorning the walls. The atmosphere in these restaurants usually consists of every non-table surface being covered with darkly tinted wine bottles and baskets of pasta, tomatoes and garlic. This, however, is not the experience of dining had by most diners in Italy itself. Most Italian trattoria are not nearly this ostentatious, focusing on quality food and value rather than pomp and scenery. Gloria’s Little Italy follows this philosophy, a breath of fresh air in a market drowning in fake Italian music and too many lobster dishes.

Gloria’s is an unassuming, metal-chair-and-plastic-tablecloth kind of establishment. The restaurant, tucked cozily to the side of the kitchen and market section of the store, is lined with shelves holding a wide variety of purchasable imported European goods. The dining room is abuzz with busy staff and regular customers, some holding hushed conversations, some bantering back and forth in both Italian and English.

Upon seating, I asked the waitress (who had neither a Sicilian accent nor a name ending in –a) to suggest a dish for a first-timer. She steered me toward the pesto pasta, a house specialty. While waiting for my entrée, I was treated to a small salad and a few slices of bread. The salad was quite good, with a variety of unusual but tasty lettuces lightly sprinkled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The tomatoes, sadly, were rather tasteless and spongy, not unusual considering our location and season. The bread, drizzled with olive oil was warm and inviting, with an unanticipated but satisfying saltiness.

The pesto dish lived up to its billing. Penne pasta, tossed in copious amounts of olive oil-laden pesto sauce, was delightfully smooth and simple. The individual flavors of basil, olive and pine nuts, like harmonies in beautiful music, had been respectfully blended to create a balanced accord bringing out the highlights of each ingredient. The result was eminently rewarding.

The menu at Gloria’s consists almost exclusively of pastas and calzones, ranging in price from $7 - $14. There were select few antipasti or appetizers, one of which, amusingly, is the most expensive item available. There is a range of desserts available: distinctive cakes, flaky pastries and luscious gelato make their appearances, each with unpredictable and varying options. The servings are generous (especially the slices of cake) and the service hurried but friendly. Reservations are suggested for groups and on weekends.

Dining at Gloria’s Little Italy is a great experience. If you’re looking for fancy china, all-you-can eat breadsticks or expensive seafood, you may be better served elsewhere. However, if you want an Italian experience reminiscent of your favorite corner Italian restaurant in Europe, look no further. Gloria’s has the atmosphere, the ingredients and the personality to transport you right back to the outskirts of Florence, Milan or Rome.

Gloria’s Little Italy

279 E. 300 S.

(801) 805-4913

Ethical fragment

2008-01-08T17:28:00.001-07:00

We mock the less fortunate to our own denouncement. When we see those around us that are ugly or awkward or dumb, we only indict ourselves by comparing ourselves to them. The less fortunate have the same desires for success, comfort, love, learning and acceptance as we do and often far less fortuity in achieving such. There is a struggle for these extremely important emotional needs that we simply do not face when things are easy for us. We often miss out on that struggle and the personal inglorious glory that comes with such a battle.

Do we put such persons on a pedestal, to learn from and idolize? Certainly not. Wishing or seeking for misfortune will only land is in bad situations without the natural processes that lead to the painful yet beautiful trial.

Do we pity them, for the mental anguish and their lack of whatever-it-be that causes their unhappy situation. We cannot. To pity is to make an even deeper mockery of the solemn life of the tried. We often reveal only our own glaring pride and ignorance by pitying the suffering.

How then, do we approach the weirdos, those people that make us squirm and take another path? How do we treat the over-friendly nerd in our class, the girl whose vocabulary is mostly the term "like"? How can we interact with the smelly, the socially awkward, the un-cool? Only with respect. We can give them the deepest respect for fighting through something we may never fight, facing disappointments that we cannot even fathom. It is a personal charge they (we?) face, the moment of self-realization when our weaknesses shine through and our precious self-deception disappears. Let us recognize these as fellow-beings and admire their courageous struggle, offering a hand of friendship and acceptance.

Yeah yeah yeah

2008-01-06T23:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, everyone, I'm back. I know it's been a while, but when Brad makes fun of me for not writing in my blog I know things have gone a bit far. Thanks, Bradders...

Things have been good. I've been surviving the post-europe letdown fairly well. Christmas break was good, it involved a fair amount of working which was probably a good thing, preventing me from going completely and totally insane. I am absolutely pumped for school to start, I have enough cool classes to make me run around like a giddy schoolgirl. Schoolboy, perhaps? Martin and I have an independent study class that will be great. Why, you ask? Here's a taste: Tomorrow we get together to eat, talk and prepare a syllabus to present to our teacher.

How often does one make one's own syllabus?

That class is on Kierkegaard. Other good classes involve Nietschze, German, French Theology (focusing on Jean-Luc Marion and some other dud who's name escapes me currently) and "writing about food". Writing about food should be cool. Class will often involve tastings and restaurant visits. Not bad...

Well, that's it for now. I'll write more next time I'm up too late and feel postish.

Whew!

2007-12-12T04:33:00.000-07:00

Well, there it is. After 4 surprisingly long days of studies, finals are finally over. The flu-like symptoms didn't help much. How'd they go?

German: Basically, I think I aced it. That means I probably didn't and will be rudely surprised
Fine Arts: Confidently filled out every question (just like the midterm), hopefully I won't be derailed by questionable grading methods (just like the midterm)
Religion: Had some trouble with the "random facts about the church in Denmark in 1871" section but it went well otherwise...
History: Easy, baby! If you spend enough time reciting the history of Austria in your head all you have to do is write it down. Hurrah for short term memory!

Quite a relief, now we can relax and try to enjoy our last few days in Vienna. It's nice here. Sadly, I was talking to a Viennese kid earlier and he was flabbergasted that I liked it here and reiterated over an over how much better America is than Vienna. Sad! He lives in one of the coolest cities in the world and doesn't even care. I hope I never take America for granted like that, lousy food or not.

I'm so excited to get back to dollars. You have no idea. Food at a restaurant for only 10-12 bucks? Amazing! So cheap! Movies for less than 15 dollars? Great! I'll watch two! Exchange rates are lousy when you're at the wrong end. It was all fun and games in Thailand buying dinner for $1.25 but now things are serious.

mmm....Vanilla Kipferl are tasty....

If anyone has any tasty European chocolate orders you'd better put them in now. As in now. I'm leaving soon. Who knows, maybe Santa will be nice to ya!

Did I tell you about Frankfurt? It was great!!! We spent almost all our time at the temple but did get to go into town once. They had a lego store!!! Whoohooo! I immediately reverted to a 9 year old.

The temple there has a guesthouse (like a hostel) and a cafeteria so we were pretty much self-contained there for the 2.5 days of the trip. Oh, and the two 9 hour bus rides? WAAAY too much fun. Sleeping on a bus leads to temporary insanity, it turns out:

While in Frankfurt, we went to an activity that involved gingerbread houses. While people made beautiful chateaus, replicated historical landmarks and so forth, I designed...

Gummy bear hell

27 individual methods of death and dismemberment!!!

Notice the lovely cubist design. Notice the suffering. Notice the European snobbishnish. You bet I've learned something about art!

Oh, and at the stake center in Frankfurt they had drinking fountains. Understand, that was the first fountain I'd seen in Europe since the old mosque in Granada. In August. AMAZING

Went to Cafe Sperl yesterday. Cafes here are SO cool. I am going to desperately miss them. Are there any good European style cafes in Provo? SLC? I need to find one to fritter my time away in and become a true turn-of-the-century existentialist. hmmm...I'll need to take up smoking and wear black clothes too...maybe I'll settle for hot chocolate and a hoodie. Martin, our destiny as useless philosophers calls!

Tasty treat of the week comes from a Frankfurt market:

Ok, gotta go. Wien calls!

P.S. On a slightly more menacing note, the gummies have started to revolt against my tyrannical rule...

...silly gummies...

This is WAR!!!!

More smatterings from Vienna

2007-12-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

Today was pretty crazy, we got up early and went to hear the Vienna Boys’ Choir sing for Mass at the Hofburg Capelle. We were only able to stand in the doorway, which was a bummer, but they were quite good. We were watching them on a TV screen and even though they are world-class singers they’re still just little boys. They fidget, pick at their shoes and almost fall asleep. Funny little fellas!

I went to church in my German ward (for the last time) and had a temple interview with the bishop afterwards that was in German! Fortunately, I’ve had enough of those that I know the questions pretty well. Anyhow, to make a long story short, we’re going to the Frankfurt temple this weekend. I’ll tell you how it went when I get back (it may take a while, finals are next week. Bleh!)

We went to Wagner’s Kirche Am Steinhof, a Jugenstil church here in Vienna. It’s a modern architecture church, very different and cool.

We couldn’t get in on Thursday but we saw there was a concert there on Sunday. So we went back today and saw the concert. It was awesome! Organ, choral and violin concert.

Earlier in the week we went to the central cemetery. Graves there include Amerling, Schubert, Schonberg, Brahms, Beethoven (!) and Strauss. How crazy! They also have a Jugendstil church called the Dr.-Karl-Lueger kirche with a beautiful interior. Check out the inside of this dome!

Went to the Albertina museum this week which featured a exhibit on Impressionism called “From Monet to Picasso”. Loved it! My favorites were the paintings in the “Pointillist” style. Here are a few examples:

Signac

Feininger

The Monet stuff was also beautiful. I especially like his gardens.

Speaking of museums, we also went to Belvedere palace a learned about 20^th century art. I’m not a fan of Gustav Klimt. Not at all. I liked some of the expressionist stuff I saw and I loved a piece by Max Oppenheimer called “The Philharmonic”:

Anyhow, I’ve finally found some painting styles that I really like…

A small group of us went to Baden, a small town near Vienna, on Saturday. Baden means “baths” and it is aptly named. There are loads of natural heated baths in the town. We went to one called Romerthelle and it was great! 4 different pools of different temperatures and most of them had fountains and jets, etc. The large cooler pool also had underwater music and a reflective roof that you could look at and watch yourself swim around if you were on your back. It was like a video game as I maneuvered myself around, staring at the ceiling, trying to bonk into my friends’ heads while they weren’t paying attention. Hahahahaha! I was quite successful.

Oh! Cafes! We went to some great cafes this week! First was Café central, a old school, famous café in Vienna. We had dinner there and some cake. It is very stately, expensive and nice. It’s the kind of place that you can just sit all day and read, talk and listen to the piano player. They have free newspapers from all over the world that you can read and they’ll never kick you out. Perfect for itinerant philosophers!

We also went to Café Hawelka, a very different experience. A dark, extremely smoky place with tiny tables and tons of people. They serve fresh jam filled buns after 10 PM which we sampled. We also had dark hot chocolate which made the whole experience seem all the more gritty and fantastic.

As you can see, it was a brilliant week. Another one coming as I pack it all in before the end!

Bumbling around Vienna

2007-11-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

Snippets from what I've done recently:

- I played basketball with Austrians. I didn't really know what to expect going into it, having heard mixed reports on the quality and style of basketball in Europe. First impression when I arrived: These boys are BIG. Seems like half the guys on the court were 6'4", 220 lbs. of muscle. Ridiculous. Anyhow, the game was extremely competitive. I loved it! They were about as good as some of the better non-team guys at BYU. The game is a little different. They shoot a lot more (and are WAAAAY better shooters) and they have a real post game, but there is far less slashing and driving and physical play. It was really fun to play, with better passing and fundamentals. I got killed at first but eventually figured out the pace of the game and did much better.

- Watched the BYU-Utah game last night. What can I say? So our receivers can't catch. Big deal! Collie catches 'em when they count! Game MVP: Utah players who can't stop fouling.

- I went to Schonbrunn palace, which is a huge, ornate baroque palace. We took the "grand" tour and saw most of the rooms. Just an absurd amount of money went into that place. It housed 1500 people during its heyday. 1500! Each room was decorated differently. There were porcelain rooms, walnot-wood paneled rooms, exquisite parquet flooring and the like. The usual European fare. I'm excited to get back to Utah and get to enjoy the great architecture and design of buildings like the Clyde Building and the MARB. Shoot me.

- Allyson and I went to the ballet "Coppelia". I hadn't been to a ballet in years and years and was curious to see if I'd like it. I did. Who would have thought that people dancing could be funny? It is a very lighthearted ballet (unlike many of the others with people dying right and left) and the music, although unfamiliar, was very nice.

- My host showed us how to make Apple Strudel last week, so we made some and devoured them. There was one whole strudel for me and I ate the whole dang thing in one sitting. Tasty...

- Yesterday we went to a very fancy international grocery store. They had things from all over the world! Black tomatoes, Nectricots, 20 pound toblerones, they had it all. The highlight? White Truffles. Only $7500.00 a pound!

Well, that's all you get for know. Sure, we did more, but that's all I remember.

Lainzer Tiergarten Pics

2007-11-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman....Sissy French Buffalo thing

Moufflon

Fallow Deer

I touched it! I touched it!

R&R

2007-11-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

Well, our crazy traveling slowed down a bit and now we're here in Vienna for about 3-4 weeks without leaving. Honestly, it's been fairly nice so far. We've been able to catch up on some of the museums and other things that we haven't seen yet here in this city. Honestly, there is waaay too much to do in Vienna. There are so many museums, concerts, operas, historic places and events that it's impossible to ever do them all. I have a calendar laid out with all the things I want to do before I leave and it's getting to the point where I have 1 or 2 things planned for just about every day! It doesn't help that the weather has turned cold and rainy/snowy lately, making all of us a lot less ambitious to go out and do things. Honestly, I'd just like you find a recliner and some hot chocolate and read some Philosophy.

Last week we went to a museum called Neue Berg. In it we walked through the musical instrument display and the armor and weapons exhibit. Amazing stuff! They had pianos from Beethoven and other famous composers, armor from the Turkish sieges of Vienna in the 1500s and more. There's a lot of history in this continent.

Yesterday we went to the "Lainzer Tiergarten". It is a large nature reserve on the outskirts of Vienna where they walled off a large area for woods and animals. We were able to see Fallow Deer, Mouflon and European Bison. Pretty nifty. The Fallow Deer were sort of like a small cross between a elk and a moose. There are also wild boar at the reserve but we didn't see any of those. I was horribly disappointed. I want wild boar, dangit!

I'm all signed up for my classes for winter and honestly, as much as I'm dreading leaving Europe, I'm pretty excited to get back to friends, family and school. Weird, eh? Somehow I desperately want to both stay here AND go back. Maybe I can figure out a way to do that in the next 3-4 weeks.

It's snowing today, the christmas lights are up, the chestnuts are openfirishly roasting away (smelling amazig, BTW) and the Christmas market opens tonight. Such excitement. You should see the girls in our program. They're about ready to wet themselves out of excitement. It's like they've never seen Christmas in Austria before. Silly.

I haven't played basketball in months. I realized the other day that this is probably the longest I've gone without basketball since I was 11 or 12. Pretty wild. I need to play soon. Not want, NEED. I've found a few Austrian guys who play and we have a tentative appointment to play next Saturday. Cross your fingers!

Anyhow, there's the boring old didn't-travel-all-over-the-world update. Ciao!

Decisions, decisions

2007-11-14T13:11:00.000-07:00

So I'm finally going to actually apply for grad schools. And if I get in, I think I'm going to go. I don't have the anxiety that I used to. I don't worry about it; I can always fall back on something else if things don't work out. The real question is what grad school to go to? English Lit/Comp Lit, Philosophy, Religious Studies, or even Mormon Studies? I think I'll apply to them all for the moment and see what opportunities I even have. Eric, we should apply to schools around each other. By the way, sign up for PHIL 501R for Kierkegaard independent reading. You'll have to type in 3.0 credit hours. This will be fun. I think I'll try to audit writing for religion too.

Dublin!!!

2007-11-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

Got back from Dublin last week. Talk about cool. I had no idea that I would end up in Dublin when I started this trip but lo and behold, there I was. Pretty crazy. It was a long and tiring but overall fantastic!

We met at the school on Wednesday at about 11:30 and headed for the train station. Our flight was actually out of Bratislava, and so we needed to catch a bus/shuttle to there. We found the bus without and mishap and jumped on it. The bus left at about 1 and we got to Bratislava around 3ish. Our flight was at 5:45 so we had plenty of time to sit around the airport and discover some of the beautiful intricacies of discount European airlines. For instance: If you aren’t a EU citizen you cannot do online checkin and are therefore required to pay a 6 euro fee. Also, if you want to check luggage? 12 euro. A seat that reclines? 9 euro. Ok, the last one is a lie. They don’t have seats that recline. Honestly, everything worked surprisingly well, considering all the busses and shuttles and planes we were involved with over the week. The plane ride was about 3 hours. No significant barfing to report. Our attendants were a couple of funny guys from Ireland that made fun of each other over the intercom and generally spent the flight making jokes with the passengers, etc. When we started to descent into Ireland, things got crazy. It looked like there were fires all over the city! Honestly, I had no idea what was going on. Was it terrorism? Had a citywide fire broken out that they were trying to contain? And then we saw the explosions. Lots of them. All around the plane. I knew Northern and Southern Ireland fought with each other a lot but heavens, now I was right in the middle of it! Actually, it wasn’t terrorism or natural disaster.

I’ve been here in Europe long enough that I forget about American holidays like Labor Day or Thanksgiving, replacing them with things like All Saints’ Day. Well, I didn’t know that Halloween was NOT only an American institution. Dublin celebrates Halloween! We were flying right in the midst of all of the Halloween celebrating! There were fireworks all around the plane and huge bonfires all over the city. Very cool looking. Who would’ve thought that I’d spend Halloween in Dublin? Never in a million years. Now we were all excited to get off the plane and see what was going on down there.

We landed, got over the oddness of all the signs written in English and trekked across the airport. (When you use discount airlines your gate is usually waaaaaay out there.) On the way we walked through a long hallway with pictures of faraway exotic places on the wall. Paris, London, Budapest, Prague…it was about halfway down the hallway that I started to realize that I’ve been to them all. Crazy! Eiffel tower? Check. Sagrada Familia? Check. Charles Bridge? Czech. I’m like a freaking world traveler all of a sudden! The only place in the entire display that I hadn’t been was Johannesburg, South Africa. Maybe I’ll put that next on the list!

We hopped a bus into downtown Dublin, dumped our stuff at our hostel and headed out into town to take part in the festivities. Dublin strikes me as a very youngish town. I don’t know if it was just the weekend we were there or if it really is a vacation spot for lots of youth, but it seemed like a great deal more than half the city was under the age of 30. Bars, parties, puking in the streets, it was all on display that night. Everyone was dressed up (we saw at least four guys in mini-skirts. Ouch). One of our number had a tour guide that pointed out one of the best places in the city to get fish and chips and we decided to get off on the right foot by going there.

Once inside the fish and chips place, we started to order. There were two varieties left at this point in the day: fresh or smoked. Allyson, unsuspecting of the renowned Irish wit, asked “What’s the difference between fresh and smoked?”. The guy behind the counter looked at her a bit funny and without missing a beat leaned over and in his hilarious irish accent said “Well dear, one’s fresh and….one’s smoked.” We all died laughing. Apparently Allyson’s question hadn’t been answered because she followed with “Well, yeah, but what makes the smoked one different?” Again, the guy behind the counter saw his opportunity and countered with a dry “It’s smoked.” Hahahahahaha…we still laugh about this incident.

Bus seriously, the Irish are pretty funny folks. Many times we were just doing something, minding our own business and some random person walking by would say something funny, usually at our expense. As we sat and ate our grease-laden fish and chips, some random dude shouted out “They’re full of cholesterol, ladies!”. So random! The next day, as I stared at my map in frustration, I said, in exasperation “Where the heck ARE we?!?” to myself. A man in a business suit walking by said, without even looking in my direction or slowing down, “You’re lost” and continued on his way. Hahahahaha! I loved it!

After the fish and chips we all felt pretty gross, honestly. We found a grocery store and went in to get something, anything, healthy to eat. I was looking for fruit and then I saw it. The holy grail. They have this lovely fruit smoothie stuff in England called “Innocent”. It comes it rather expensive (tiny) bottles but is fantastic. Nothing but fruit, smashed and put in a bottle. I had completely forgotten about it, but there it stood, in a liter container on the shelves of a Dublin grocery store. Like a gift from heaven. I bought one as quickly as possible and guzzled it. I thought it might have been a mistake to buy it right before bed because I couldn’t finish it but that turned out to be a moot point. No problemo. We went to bed for the night, in my case in a dormish type room with 11 other guys. Snoring? Smelly? Oh yeah…

Thursday was our “see Dublin” day. We wanted to get out of the city on Friday so we decided to try and hit all the sights on Thurs. We made a plan and headed out for a long day of walking and sightseeing. First stop was Phoenix Park. It’s a big park in the west part of the city. Not a whole lot to it, just a big park.

I mean, it was cool and all, but what can you say about a park? Trees, grass, squirrels, the usual. The oddest part was probably the incredibly green grass. Even in November the grass was VERY green. “Emerald Island”, I suppose.

After the park we went to a part of the National Museum and saw exhibits of Irish applied arts. There were some dishes, some metalwork, some furniture and some clothing. Didn’t have a lot of time there but it was cool to see things made in the different art styles and particularly the “Celtic” style. Betcha didn’t know there was a celtic style, did you? Yup! There was also an old Viking longboat on display there. We took some pictures, pretended to pillage a few places and moved on. Toughest part of these short trips to cities is that you can’t linger at cool places with Viking longboats.

We walked south from the museum to visit the Guinness brewery.

They don’t allow people into the actual brewery part any more, but you can get a tour of the storehouse. We went in but decided to forego the tour. If it were the actual brewery and one was able to see the actual process I would have done it, but that wasn’t the case. Even the free pint of Guinness offered didn’t sway me to take the tour. It was cool to go inside for a minute or two, however. Guinness is a pretty big deal in Ireland. There are signs everywhere for it and there’s quite a bit of national pride behind the beer. I didn’t dare share with the locals that I had been in Prague (supposedly the best beer in the world is in Prague) for fear they’d beat me up. Some of those drunken Irish rugby players are rough-lookin’ dudes! I was really tempted to get a Guinness rugby shirt but they were a tad on the pricey side so I passed. 45-75 dollars is a lot of money for a shirt, no matter how cool the beer advertised. Plus, I didn’t know how our director would react to me returning from Ireland with a Guinness shirt. Oh well, maybe I’ll get one next time I’m in Dublin…right…

Now, of course, it was time to get a little lost. What’s a European city without getting lost? I’ll admit, I purposely take random paths to desired destinations secretly hoping to get hopelessly lost and spend the day wandering around the back streets of these places. It didn’t work out exactly like that in Dublin, but we did get to see lots of cool little townhouses and found a lovely bakery selling Irish goodies. I got a loaf of bread called “Barm Brack” (Spotted Bread). It was a light bread with chunks of fruit in it. Unbeknownst to me, it is also a tradition to bake a ring into the bread and whoever finds it is going to be married in the next year. Well, being the only one eating the loaf, I inevitably chomped down on something hard and, well, I guess I’ve got less than a year. Look out ladies!

We finally emerged from the land of the lost and took refuge in Christ Church in the center of town. Ireland’s Christians are predominantly Catholic, but oddly, all of the big churches in Dublin are Protestant. I dunno why. Christ Church was cool.

They have a mummified cat and a mummified mouse that were found in the organ when work was done on it. I’ll tell you one thing, going to all these famous cathedrals and churches in Europe I’ve really wanted to play one of their organs. Sadly, they don’t let visitors (even good looking organ players from Montana) play them. Sad, eh?

After this we went to St. Stephen’s Green (great park) and walked up some famous road of which its name escapes me currently. Starts with a G, I think. Or a Q. Something like that. Lots of expensive-looking shops. The street led to Trinity college.

We checked out the college. I think it would be very weird to go to school at a tourist attraction. Maybe that’s just me. Trinity is home to a very cool exhibit called the Book of Kells, basically a really old Irish book made by Monks and such.

After Trinity College, we attended a evening choral service in St. Patrick’s cathedral. It also happened to be All Saints’ Day and they were having a special service for the holiday.

It reminded me of the service we attended in Westminster Abbey back when we in London. Beautiful cathedral, amazing singing, good service. A few of the girls in our group went up and took communion. I really enjoy going to services in these cathedrals much better than just walking through them like a tourist. It’s nice because they kick all the crazy tourists out for the services so the cathedral is peaceful and you get to see what it is really for instead of fighting your way through mobs to read pamphlets and eavesdrop on tour guides. We needed somewhere to eat after the cathedral so we stopped a place called “delish”, where we ate meat pies. They weren’t exactly authentic, as I realized that it was basically Irish fast food, but they were tasty and they got the job done. I think that was it for the night - back to my room with all the other gentlemen and off to sleep.

Friday was “leave Dublin” day. First, however, we wanted to do a little shopping. Everyone was looking to get something from Ireland. I wanted a rugby shirt and a Irish cookbook. As we travel Europe I’ve tried to pick up a cookbook from everywhere we’ve gone so I can cook the fun things we’ve eaten back in the states. We found a great bookstore where I was able to buy a cookbook and an English philosophy book (Hallelujah! They’re impossible to find for less than 40 euro in Austria). I never did find a rugby shirt for a reasonable price and so I came home empty-handed in that department.

After the shopping we hopped a train to take us to a little village north of Dublin called “Howth”. The train ride wasn’t long and it dumped us on the coast, looking at ocean, a harbor and a beautiful little village.

We hiked up the hill through the village to find a vantage point on top of the hill.

We never found it. Walked around for hours and never saw a bit of ocean from any hilltops. Just as we were in a suburb and about to give up, one of the ladies suggested that we turn right and continue and no more than 3 minutes later we arrived on huge cliffs overlooking the ocean on three sides. It was breathtaking!

We walked around on the cliffs until we found a place to climb down and went to the beach.

We spent some time dinking around, playing on the rocks and wading in the water. We hadn’t thought to bring swimsuits to swim in the Irish sea (silly us) and so I contented myself with a cozy spot in the rocks to read Bentham while the girls went ahead and went swimming.

We climbed back up the hill and watched the sunset over the ocean from the top. As it got dark we thought we should get going. I suggested an alternate route back to the train station, which everyone foolishly agreed upon and we got quite lost. Several miles later we found the train station two stops down from where we started and headed back to Dublin. Hahahahaha…

That night dinner was in a good old-fashioned Irish pub. Our waiter was flabbergasted when he asked what drinks we wanted and the whole table was a selection of fruit juices and sodas. We all tried to choose Irish foods (All except Sharolee. Lasagna. Really? Lasagna? In Ireland?) I was quite pleased to be able to order Bangers ‘n’ Mash. Anything called Bangers ‘n’ Mash has to be good in my book. It’s right up there with Toad-In-The-Hole! I was not disappointed in my expectations. A pile of mashed potatoes replete with sausages, smothered in gravy! Oh, good ol’ gravy. The English/Scottish/Irish do love their gravy. In fact, on all the tables there are ketchup packets, mustard packets and gravy packets. Just in case you happen to order the one item that isn’t already floating in gravy. After dinner that I night I was given the special treat of staying in a mixed dorm. Not only 12 people, but some were women! That was a first. Actually, it was rather anti-climactic. I got in when everyone was still out and left in the morning while everyone was still sleeping. Apparently I have a different sleeping schedule than others vacationing in Ireland. Imagine that!

Saturday we hit the streets early to get our fill of the markets and bakeries. Ate a few pastries for breakfast and visited the very small markets in Dublin. We were particularly excited to visit the “Book Market” we had seen listed. It was supposed to start at 10 but apparently that means that people start to set up around 10:30 and who knows when it actually begins. Anyway, we had a plane to catch and had to abandon our designs on the book market. We made it to the airport without any mishap and armed with our quickly-growing reservoir of knowledge on European travel made it home safely and much earlier than anticipated.

Honestly, after weeks of travel I was pretty exhausted. I don’t have any trips planned for a while, possibly a month, and I’m actually looking forward to a slightly less hectic schedule and being able to see some of the amazing things here in Vienna that I haven’t been able to see.

Czech please!

2007-11-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

Ah, Prague, the home of basically every European action movie ever. James Bond, Mission Impossible, Jason Bourne; they’ve all spent time in Prague. I was excited to go there, see the explosions, witness the hostage situations and participate in the gunfights. Ok, not really. But I was excited to see Prague without any idea what to expect or what is there.

We left for Prague on Wednesday morning at about 10:00. We were taking the train from Sudbahnhof and everyone seemed to make it on time. The train ride was about 5 hours long. I was able to sneak in a few awkward naps and listened to a few tunes between edifying conversations with my car-mates about headless chickens. (Turns out I’m the only one who’s had personal experience with headless chickens and their acrobatic ways…go figure.) Finally arrived in Prague at about 2:00 and were met at the station there by our tour guide, Vlad. Vlad was an older, skinny, balding Czech man with a deep gravelly voice that sounded like he had some sort of serious throat cancer going on. He was hilarious! Best tour guide ever. We had tours from him almost every day we were in Prague and everyone in our group loved him. First stop was our hotel where we could drop off our luggage before heading out into the city. Our hostel was called A+ Hostel, which of course immediately leads one to believe that it is improperly named. The hostel wasn’t too bad, actually. There was a decent breakfast every day and we were able to get plenty of exercise living on the “third” floor (keep in mind that in Europe the numbering of floors doesn’t start until the actual third floor.) When we were ready, Vlad took us out into the city to show us some of the major sights. Prague is probably one of the most architecturally interesting towns in the world. Because it is very old and wasn’t bombed out during the second world war, there are loads of beautiful old buildings. We visited churches in the Romanesque, Baroque and Gothic styles, art nuveau coffeehouses and cubist restaurants. It is the only place in the world where walking down a single street you could probably see buildings from every century since about 1000 AD. We saw the Powder Tower, the Charles Bridge, the Old Bridge Tower, the Prague Castle, St. Vitas’ Cathedral, St. George’s Basilica, Wenceslas Square and more. Such a cool city! Oh, and there are some pretty cool museums there too, from the national museum and the Dali/Mucha museum to the medieval torture devices museum. Everything you could possibly want and more!

Prague is known for its beer. The local favorite, Pilsner Urquell, is widely known as some of the best stuff in the world. So, one would assume that such a famous place would be rather soggy, eh? Oh yeah. The place was absolutely dripping in beer. Drinking is the national sport of the Czech republic. Every meal consists of beer and things to eat with beer. Our first night in a restaurant our waiter was completely and utterly smashed. He could walk straight, kept repeating himself and broke just about everything in the place. Water pitcher: dropped and shattered. Pepper shakers: dropped and smashed. Our plates after our meal: dropped and destroyed. They had a lady working full time following the waiters around cleaning up all the broken glass. Hahahahahaha…
The food in Prague is very…heavy. Not exactly diet eating. In fact, one of the restaurants had this listed on the menu:

Light calorie options -
- Fried chicken with bacon
- Roast beef and mushrooms in gravy
- Sausage and butter fried potatoes

Sure sounds low-calorie, yeah? Well, that sums it up. First night I had lamb, wonderfully tender and cooked in gravy. They are all into dumplings there: I had dumplings with just about every meal. Also on the plate was some sort of spinach mash. Good food, very filling.

On the Charles bridge, there is a statue with a sculpted mural underneath. It illustrates the story of a saint (honestly, I can’t remember what he did to merit the statue but I think it was pretty significant). Next to this is a small relief of a dog. For years, it has been traditional to come onto the bridge and to touch the saint for luck. Oddly, however, it is also a big deal to touch the dog. Why? Noone knows. In fact, it’s quite amusing to ask people why they’re touching the dog as they do so. It’s completely pointless.

Ok, yeah, I touched the dog.
Why? I don’t know.
It’s just what one does in Prague.

We finished off our first evening in Prague with hot chocolate. We finished every night in Prague with hot chocolate. Hey! It was cold! We needed warmth! They had lots of good cocoa there. Once again, I was impressed by the culinary offerings of another European city. No surprise.

Thursday our tour guide met us in the morning and took us through the Jewish quarter of Prague. The Jewish section is very cool. We saw ridiculously old synagogues and got to walk through them, learning about Jewish life and religion. There is an old legend in Prague about a rabbi that built an earthen golem to protect the Jews from the Christians and the golem has made his way into just about every tourist stand in Prague. They thrive on that sort of stuff. The best part of the Jewish section, at least in my mind, was the inner town cemetery. Right next to one of the synagogues is an old cemetery. Since it was in the middle of the cemetery, they rapidly ran out of room to bury people. What did they do? Added another layer of dirt and buried some more. They continued this practice, in some places 12-15 times. The best part is that each time the added a layer they pulled up the gravestones from the lower graves to the surface along with the new ones. The result? The most beautiful cemetery in the world.

Back to the subject at hand: beer. They have beer flavored soap and shampoo here in Prague. Crazy!

Oh, and you know how Chinese restaurants sometimes translate things awkwardly? Imagine Chinese people in the Czech republic translating into English! The result is this – “Strange taste chicken”.

We were able to see the outside of the church where Jan Hus, famous Bohemian reformer, preached some of his sermons. I think one of the best parts of this whole European experiences is to visit the places where so many of the things I learn about actually occurred. The church where he preached. Not where the church used to stand or some ruins, the actual, honest-to-goodness church. Amazing!

Thursday night we went on a serious hunt for tasty goodies. We traversed the city, looking high a low for good pastries, yummies and hot chocolate. Mmm…love those kind of journeys. We had strudels, Czech crepes, honey cake, hot pears with chocolate sauce, fruit yeast dumplings and much more. There were several of us partaking, lest you think I was able to eat all that myself. I wish such was true but I fear the days of my eating everything in sight and asking for seconds have passed away with my teenage years. Alas, I’ll have to suffice with stuffing myself silly with three plates instead of seven; a sad day indeed.

Friday morning – tour of castle hill overlooking Prague. Our tour guide took us up there and we walked around, took pictures and froze our noog’ums off. The castle itself was rather nondescript (we weren’t even allowed to go in for whatever reason…some government thing going on) but around the back of it was St. Vitas’ cathedral. Oh my goodness! I’ve seen a lot of cathedrals on this trip (St. Stephens and Notre Dame included) but this place was easily the most imposing sight I’ve ever seen. A huge, brooding gothic cathedral with intricate carvings in dark stone, large bony towers jutting into the air, gargoyles keeping watch and massive buttresses that sits on top of a hill, overlooking the town and speaking volumes of the history of the catholic church and its influence on the town. I was totally blown away.

Right next to St. Vitas’ is St. George’s basilica, another catholic church but one built in the Romanesque style, giving it an entirely different feeling and look. Much more simple, St George’s seemed to focus less on the grandeur of God and his kingdom and more on pious worship. Almost an austere building with straight walls, small windows and much simpler frescoes. It was great to see the contrast. Later we visited a baroque church, St. Nicholas’ and I was met again with great contrast. St. Nicholas’ is in the baroque style with all of its pomp and pageantry. Baroque churches are very, very beautiful. They were meant to give the worshipper some idea of heaven and are warm and inviting. Lovely carvings, huge marble pillars, statues of saints and angels and frescoes of mortals ascending into heaven really give one the feeling of intermixing with angles and the divine. I loved seeing the three churches in shot succession, it really increased my appreciation of architecture and design in church buildings and the messages they send to the people therein.

There is a road near the castle called the “golden lane”. It used to be the home of many apothecarists that got into a lot of trouble promising the king gold and not delivering. Now it is a lovely little lane with shops of all sorts of crafts and goodies. The best part was the short doors. Perfect for the altitudinally challenged!

Much to my delight, we were able to walk past the window through which one of the infamous “defenestrations of Prague” occurred. Apparently, at several times in history, it has been a particularly popular pastime for mobs in Prague to hurl government officials out of windows. Sometimes this resulted in death and sometime it didn’t (depending of whether or not the mob stationed folks with pikes outside the window…). Anyhow, we visited the famous window of the 1618 defenestration where two catholic lords were thrown out of a second story window, part of the buildup towards the thirty-year war. I have been a fan of the defenstrations for several years (Thanks to Mike for the introduction) and I was delighted to see one of the infamous defenestrated-through windows.

The fall colors in Europe continue to amaze.

Food update! Friday’s lunch was at a great little Czech place called “Bar bar”. (Many thanks to “cheap eats in Prague” for the tip). I had a Czech pancake filled with some sort of extremely salty cheese, very sour cabbage and bacon with mashed potatoes on the side. Very different, very good. Some probably wouldn’t like it but I’ve been encouraging my ability to eat pretty much everything edible. So far I haven’t found anything in Europe that I wouldn’t gladly eat again. And it’s not like I’ve been avoiding questionable foods, I usually try to get the most unusual and/or traditional thing on the menu. For instance, I’ve had liver at least three times prepared three different ways. Love it!

That afternoon we climbed the “mountain” overlooking Prague for a better view of the city (and because we all wanted to get out of the city a bit…we’re sort of country bumpkins that way). On the way up we saw a sculpture dedicated to the victims of communism. I liked it a lot; I’ll let you come to your own conclusions:

It got dark as we ascended the mountain and we walked past one of the creepiest buildings I’ve ever seen. It was a museum/store dedicated to magic/witchcraft/weird stuff and it was bizarre! They had decorated in a very fitting fashion with strange colors, things dripping and clinging to the ceiling and slightly creepy paintings of naked people. We hurried right along past that place. I felt no need to experience that part of the culture. Hahahahahaha…

The views from the mountain were gorgeous. Prague is known for it’s towers and lights and it didn’t disappoint. There was a large lookout tower on the top but it had closed 20 minutes before we arrived so we had to be satisfied with the pictures we could get from the ground. Ate dinner at a pub, surrounded by more beer. Woohoo!

Oh, that night we went to Wenceslas square, famous for its demonstrations against communism and the events of the velvet revolution that occurred there. On the way home we ran into a few friendly locals who seemed very intent on scamming us and taking all our money through various underhanded means. We skedaddled.

Oh, more beer stories: We stopped at a bar to get our hot chocolate one of the nights and while we were there I decided to use the potty. (In Europe free toilets are more of a privilege than a right and so it’s best to use them when you’ve got them. Same with drinking water. No drinking fountains ANYWHERE. I’ve seen a total of two in the last several months and one was broken) Anyhow, while I was in the bathroom I got in a lovely chat with several drunken Czech fellows. We talked about American geography (“Montana? Where the #%*@ is that? Oh, by Oregon?”), American culture (“This song [some random Bob Dylan song I’ve never heard before] is probably the most important song in America, yeah?”) and American clothing (“Great shirt, dude. Great shirt”). Friendliest urinal trip I’ve ever taken. We were great friends by the time we’d all done our business!

Saturday was our last day to partake of Prague food so we set that as the main agenda of the day. We had breakfast at the hotel, little snacks throughout the day at pastry shops and bakeries (including the absolute best bakery in the world. Yep, it’s in Prague.). Lunch was the climax. I had a quarter of a roast duck, several types of dumplings and some sort of beet sauerkraut-y thing in a restaurant where noone really spoke English. How great is that?

On Saturday the street musicians were out. We heard everything from a funky little 20s Czech jazz band playing English stuff to classical violin to a blind lady singing opera, “reading” her Braille script. Awesome stuff. I love the music in the streets in the cities we visit. Once in Vienna we ran into a lady that had dragged her piano into a main square and was playing Beethoven and Debussy. Lovely! This Europe place really does do some things right.

I really was quite sad to leave Prague. It felt like I’d barely had time to get a grip on the culture, the food, the drunkenness. And yet, leave I did. Made in back to Vienna happier and healthier (hahaha) than ever. I certainly plan to return to Prague sometime in the future, if only to return to that amazing little bakery. Why the heck not?

Budapestering

2007-10-16T08:05:00.000-06:00

Ok, I’m back from Hungary. Our group made the trek to Budapest on Wednesday. We met that morning at 7:00 (meaning 5 AM wakeup) and jumped on the bus. We arrived in Budapest at about noonish. First order of business was to feed ourselves. We found an ATM, withdrew 10,000 Florints (Sure is fun to deal in thousands) and stopped to get some authentic Hungarian cuisine. Pizza! Actually, it was decent pizza. Four tasty cheeses, olives and corn. Different but good. The nicest part was that we noticed immediately that things were actually reasonably priced. Hallalujah! We paid 349 Florints for a slice of pizza, which is 1.4 Euros or $1.90. The same slice in Vienna would have been 3 Euro, $4. After this we met up with a tour guide and started a tour through Budapest. The city is actually two cities, Buda and Pest that have sort of grown together with a river, the Danube, down the middle. There are some really pretty bridges across the river but it certainly doesn’t help the transportation infrastructure. We saw some interesting things on the tour. I bought a Hungarian cookbook with recipes for pork feet stew and roast wild boar and cool stuff like that. When the tour ended we were on our own for the rest of the day. Allyson and I headed up the hill near our hotel with the Hungarian fortress and palace on it. We hung out up there for most of the evening, watching the sunset, taking pictures and getting really cold. Turns out this fall thing involves getting cold again. Blast. Speaking of fall, there are loads and loads of trees in Budapest and they were all changing colors. Magnificent! I was caught totally off guard by the beauty of Budapest. One of the prettiest cities I’ve seen in Europe and that’s saying a lot from a great world traveler like myself! Anyway, we eventually got a little too cold and headed down the hill. On the way down we met a new little friend. Allyson pointed out a nasty little rat in the path but on closer inspection we found that it wasn’t a rat at all. A hedgehog! I love hedgehogs! You may not know, but it is my goal to own a hedgehog someday. Great pets. We took a few pictures of the hedgehog, walked across the beautiful chain bridge and looked for hot chocolate somewhere. Finally we stopped at an English pub (Yeah. In Hungary.) and had some. Honestly, it was more like whipped hot milk with a little chocolate added. Not what I was expecting but tasty in it’s own way.

The next day we met up with our tour guide for the rest of the tour. We went to the jewish quarter of Budapest, stopping in the second largest synagogue in the world. It was really cool. Interestingly, the synagogue was designed by a man that did cathedrals, so it’s almost exactly like a catholic cathedral. The guide pointed out lots of features (altars, organs, pulpits) that have zero use in a synagogue but are still there. Quite funny. Rebekah, Allyson and I headed out after the tour and stopped for soup. Good soup. These Hungarians know how to cook. Their food is much spicier and heartier than their more “European” counterparts to the west. We walked down the Hungarian equivalent to the Champs Elysees in Paris called Andrassy. A beautiful tree-lined avenue leading to the square of heroes with statues and museums. Let me tell you, there were people making out all over the place! People say Paris and Venice are bad, but Hungary beats them in a heartbeat. PDAs everywhere! It got kind of ridiculous sometimes.

There was a great little market that we found in the middle of town. I was content looking around at the stalls and some of the cool woodwork but then I found the ties. Oh, the ties. There was a tie stand with incredibly beautiful ugly polyester ties for a euro a piece. I, of course, immediately went crazy looking through the goods and selected the 10 best ties to purchase. Simply lovely. That basically made me the happiest person on earth.

Hungary has a fairly recently built parliament building that’s pretty famous for its interior, so we decided to try and get in for a tour on Friday. Unfortunately, it’s extremely popular with my arch-nemeses, the tour bus people. We didn’t get in. RRRRRR….dang those fanny-pack toting, white sneaker wearing, chubby tour bus people! They really come in two brands. The overbearing, clueless Americans that make us embarrassed to speak English and the perky, picture happy Japanese types. Honestly, I’m not sure if there’s anyone left in the country of Japan. It seems that they’re all on tour. Gah!

As we walked the city, we stopped at the train station designed by Eiffel (of tower fame) and found a marvelous bakery. There are a lot of bakeries in Europe, but it’s actually kind of rare to find one that bakes it’s own unique bread. Always a treasured find! Near the bakery was a kids’ playground with a zipline. Oh the joy and happiness! We jumped on, weighing the thing down until it was about half an inch off the ground and pretended we were 6 again. Finally we wound up on the island in the middle of the Danube between Buda and Pest. The island was covered with trees changing colors, massive fountains choreographed to opera and ruins of old buildings and, of course, people making out on every available surface. Photo ops everywhere!

That night we returned to the English Pub (hahahahahaha….in Hungary) and had some Hungarian cuisine. I was skeptical that an English Pub could have good food, but they proved me entirely wrong. We had catfish in Paprika sauce and a great dish with tenderloins, sausage and goose liver. Wasn’t even expensive! Miracles!

Saturday we climbed to the top of a hill just outside the city with a beautiful view. They have a “Lady of Liberty” statue on top of the hill that we climbed to and enjoyed the view of Budapest. Finally we met back up with our group and grabbed the bus back to Vienna. As you can see, Budapest exceeded my expectations in every way! Great city. Lovely people, gorgeous scenery, very modern and un-communist seeming. I would strongly suggest it to anyone spending time in Central Europe.

Pictures from Florence

2007-10-14T11:07:00.001-06:00

Truffles! Huzzah!

Coolest little park ever

More coolest little park ever

Revenge of the coolest park ever

Allyson and our fresh Italian pomegranates

Streets of Florence

UGLY CAR!!!

Allyson, impaled on a door

Oh, the bruschetta was lovely

Climbing on stuff, one of our favorite pastimes

Gelato

The Florence skyline

Venetian adventures

2007-10-05T07:36:00.000-06:00

So. Arrival in Venice. We walked off the train and it hit me as soon as I saw the boat taxies and bridges. This was it! The city itself! Unbelievable!
The bridges are great for sightseeing but not always the best for 32 students hauling luggage around. We clattered our way to the hotel. A few days before there had been a lot of flooding in Venice (nothing new there) that had flooded several of the rooms in our hotel. As such, one of them was unlivable and some of the students were going to need to be housed in different hotel. Well, seeing as there are only 4 guys in our group as opposed to 28 girls, it was decided that the guys would be expelled from the fun and sent to the other hotel. We grabbed our luggage and headed out into the dark with a map with random instructions to a place we’d never heard of. We arrived at the new hotel well enough and introduced ourselves to a guy that barely spoke English. The hotel was beautiful; a small, quaint place with lovely tea sets and upholstered chairs. The guy at the desk told us to wait for a few moments, no doubt to wait for out room to be ready. Eventually another younger guy walked into the hotel and made motions for us to follow him.

Wait…

Where are we going?

What about the lovely little hotel? The upholstery! The tea sets! The quaintness! All of it faded away, abandoning us to the dark, rainy streets of Venice. The trudge continued. Two canals, three bridges and countless cobblestones later our guide turned into a darkened alley. “This is it” I thought, “we’re going to take part in our very own dramatic mafia-movie mugging!” Ok, so nothing happened. We were fine. We did, however, end up going into a small door that led to several rooms and a coffee machine. This was our hotel! No sign, no lobby, no host. Just a couple rooms and that sad li’l coffee machine. We were supposed to meet people from our group at about this time so we hurried up and dropped our stuff, grabbed our three different keys to get out (yeah, to get out) of our hotel and took off. The rain had started at this point and, of course, I was both to forgetful and too lazy to have my umbrella handy. So I got wet. At least I wasn’t sick or anything, right? Hahahahaha…

I went back to the hotel where our director was staying to let him know where we eventually ended up (Didn’t do a lot of good. He asked where our hotel was…no idea. He asked what it was called…no name. Tough conversation). I met up with a few of the girls and we went back into the deluge, still umbrella-less, looking for something to eat. Venice is a pricey town. Even the Italians think so! We found lots of restaurants that we could’ve mortgaged our organs to eat at and passed right by. We eventually found a great little cafeteria that served pasta. I had forgotten that pasta in Italy, even at the cheapest cafeteria, is going to be AWESOME. And it was. Amazing stuff, really. I went back, met the guys and we went back to our “hotel”.

The next morning I met up with Allyson and her termporary roommate, Ellen and we went out into the city. None of us had any particular agenda to the day, we just wanted to love our time in Venice. All three of us were in various stages of being sick, which led to a slower pace but we managed. I will tell you this right now. Vienna is EASILY the single most confusing city on the face of the planet. Loads of tiny roads, canals cutting everything up. Road signs and addresses don’t match, there aren’t any maps that contain more than 30% of the roads anyway. The roads wind, the disappear suddenly only to reappear 50 meters away on a perpendicular. I’ve never actually been lost in a city when I have a map but in Venice I was. Hopelessly lost. Finally! It was GREAT! It was a smidge on the rainy side, which dampened things a bit but actually worked well for taking pictures.

We stopped for breakfast at a little bakery and had a few pastries. Not bad at all. After this the morning was taken up in being lost. We saw churches, parks, monuments, beautiful buildings, mask shops, glass makers and everything in between. Where are they, one might ask? I haven’t the foggiest. Somewhere in Venice. Go get lost and I promise you’ll find them eventually.

Eventually our stomachs caught up to us and we really started to get hungry. I pulled out my trusty “Cheap Eats in Italy” book that had led us to many a fine restaurant on the trip and picked a few. Never found the first. Or the second. Or the third. I swear it was like the roads they were on never existed or if they did they were shifting in and out of reality, never staying in one place or going any particular direction. Finally after the third failure we gave up completely, meandered off into the city, resigned to our starvation and walked into the first restaurant we found. I looked at the menu and it said “Leon Bianco”. I’ll be durned. That was the third restaurant! We found it as soon as we stopped looking! We decided that Venice was teaching us a thing or two about navigating it’s streets. You’ll only find what you seek when you stop seeking it and let the city treat you to whatever it sees fit.

Best experience in Venice was St. Mark’s square. Big famous square with churches, flooding and pigeons. Hundreds and thousands of pigeons. So cool! We bought some of the birth-control laden bird food (supplied by the city government) and immediately were completely buried in birds. They come from EVERYWHERE! These birds are ravenous! It was hilarious! I had birds on my head, birds on my arms, birds on my shoulders, birds birds birds! Allyson had a friend that nested in her purse. I also had a dogpile at my feet with several layers of battling pigeons fighting it out for the precious seed. So funny!

Later in the afternoon we were on the boardwalk along the southern coast of the islands of Venice. It was beautiful. The ocean, the trees, the view. All of it was great. The weather had gotten sunny by this point and was ideal. We found a gelato shop and got their specialty, which was a slice of hazelnut-chocolate gelato in a cup with cream. So good! (BTW, for any smart-alecks out there making cracks about my pastry and gelato eating habits, I’ll have everyone know that I’ve dropped two belt holes since I’ve been in Europe. TWO. Take that.)

At this point Ellen was feeling a bit under the weather so we returned her to the hotel. Allyson and I grabbed some drawing materials, found a sweet little dock area with some boats and sketched for a while. The night was nice and the lighting perfect so it was nice to try some drawing. I’m not exactly Picasso. Basically I can’t really draw. But hey, I’ll keep trying! Allyson gave me some pointers and I ended up with some passable sketches. We were hungry so we searched the cheap eats book for a proper restaurant for our last night in Venice, decided on a place that was supposed to have good fish. They say that fish is the thing to eat in Venice. We grabbed our table along the canal and ate grilled salmon while freezing our noog’ms off. It was quite good! That was about it for the evening…

Saturday: last day in Italy. How sad! We did some more wandering saw some more stuff, ate large amounts of gelato and generally had a heck of a day. Last meal was tasty sandwiches.

We picked up a few souvenirs, dropped by a great Post Office and met back up with the group. The train back through the Italian alps was properly beautiful. At one point our director, his wife and my roommate David got off the train during a 30-minute stop to eat. The 30-minute stop immediately ended and the train left. Hahahahaha…they got left in some tiny town in Italy. We were a bit worried but I thought it was more funny than anything. Later they held the train and all of the people they had left behind were shuttled up to return to the train. Alls well that ends well, I suppose. We all made it back in one piece, utterly exhausted and ready for a little R&R.

I LOVED Italy. So great! If you’ve been there, you understand. If you haven’t, you’d better get going! We never rode a Gondola, which I slightly regret, but I suppose that gives me an excuse to go back someday. Someday soon.

More belated pics

2007-10-04T08:35:00.001-06:00

Pictures from our crazy cool trip to Halstatt!!!

Allyson, lookin' good in the doorway...

...and me

Freaky skull-pile-in-a-small-cemetery pictures

Sweet miner outfits for the salt mines

Lickin' the saltywall

These people have SWEET clothes

Our tasty Venison treat in Halstatt.

The Gastatte Zauner

Cool little bridge

The chessmaster

Here's Halstatt!

Heaven on earth? You decide.

Mauthausen. Not so pretty.

Pics!

2007-10-02T00:07:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures from out trip to Schönbrunn Palace a few weeks ago. Better late than never, right?

Stephanie, Me, Emily and my roomie David

Pet the lovely tree!

Anne speaks Duck

The ducks don't really like me, however...

Beautiful gardens at the Palace

The group

Italia!

2007-09-30T09:28:00.000-06:00

Here is the first of two entries on my AMAZING trip to Italy (As usual, pictures are late but forthcoming):

We left Vienna on Monday evening at about 7ish. We were to take a night train to Florence, Italy. We basically took over an entire traincar full of sleeping berths except for one poor room with a few people stuck in the middle of 30 BYU students with way too much energy. I only saw these travel partners once or twice but they looked as if they wanted to hurl themselves off the train. Hahahahaha…we stayed up for a while on the train playing games and generally having a good time, spent 20 minutes or so trying to understand the randomly shaped train sheets (never figured that one out) and finally fell asleep while chugging across the Italian countryside. We were awakened at about 6:00 AM by one of the cranky train attendants and were told that we had about 30 minutes until the train arrived at it’s destination. Naturally, we all rolled back over and figured we’d sleep for 29 more minutes. Then the train stopped. We all groaned and carried on for a few minutes until someone had the bright idea to look out a window. We heard a shout from the other end of the car “Hey! This is Florence!” It slowly dawned on everyone simultaneously that we were IN Florence and that if we didn’t get off the train pronto there would be unfortunate consequences. Chaos ensued. Students running around, collecting baggage, tying shoes while hopping down the hall, fifteen girls trying to use the bathroom in less than 2 minutes. We must have been quite the sight. Fortunately, everyone in our group managed to get their luggage and get off the train safely. We walked through the dark streets of Florence until we found our hotel and found out there (at about 7:00) that we couldn’t check in until noon. Oh the horror. Everyone was either in pajamas or nasty day-old street clothes that had been slept in on the train. We rapidly gave up any idea of smelling better than garbage and just dropped our luggage and went out into the city.

First order of business was the Dome. The Dome is right smack in the middle of Florence, a cathedral with supposedly the biggest free dome in Europe. If you’ve never been to Florence, I’ll tell you that the Dome is beautiful. The inside of the church is nothing terribly spectacular after all the other cathedrals in Europe, but the exterior and the inside of the dome itself was great. We climbed the steps up into the dome, checking out the painting of Dante’s inferno (Basically people getting disemboweled in Hell. Gotta love uplifting church pieces!) and finally onto the top. This was a beautiful look over the city, with all of the rooftops, gardens and market in our view. We climbed back down the tower, nearly getting motion sick from the tight spiraling staircases, and hit up the market we saw nearby. European markets are way too much fun. Lots of people selling everything from fresh fruit to pirated goods to useless junk. Everything is worth haggling about, as they usually start selling to tourists at about twice what they’ll actually get from someone who’s not getting fleeced. I ended up with a few nice Italian ties for 2 euros apiece. Not bad.

After checking into the hotel about noonish and eating a lovely little eggplant sandwich from a street vendor, Allyson, Heather and I went back out into the city and walked. Walked walked walked. We aren’t even sure how many miles we put on that day. We found a recommended (by my great little “Cheap eats in Italy” book) Gelato shop and tried the local specialty. Woohoo! Gelato was a hit. The fruit flavors we tried we intense. Gelato, incidentally, ended up being the weakness of many a young lady in our group. I have heard tales of upwards of nine scoops a day for some in Italy. I liked it, but not quite THAT much. Frozen custard still holds my crown as best frozen dessert. Later in the evening we went to Michaelangelo Piazza, a square on a hill overlooking the city and took in the sunset. At this point hunger was rapidly setting in and we followed a road back into the hills looking for a particular restaurant. An hour and a half later we gave up. We dragged our poor starving bodies all the way back into town, nearly fainting and stopped at one of the finest Neapolitan pizza places in town. We made a reservation for a half-hour later and found a clean patch of cement to collapse on during the wait. The pizza was worth all the starvation (Probably partially because of our intense hunger) and we polished off the day with a bit more Gelato.

Florence is a beautiful town. It is set amidst tree-covered hills and still holds a very renaissance feeling. This is where the Medici family really kick-started the arts and intellectualism that fueled the Italian renaissance. The who’s who list in Florence includes Michaelangelo, Donatello, Dante, Machiavelli and just goes on and on.

Wednesday: More walking. We started with a return to the market and then tried as hard as could to get lost. It worked fairly well, and took several hours to return to where we could figure out where we were. After a while we returned to the hotel to drop stuff off and prepare for the evening. We found a park in the area, played around a while on the swings and ran around like five-year-olds. Great fun. I think all of the Italians in the area thought us a bit strange but I’m sure they just dismissed us as crazy tourists and let it go. Florence is packed with an unreal amount of tourists. I was blown away. Going anywhere near the Dome in midday is like reliving the life of a canned sardine. It’s like a giant moshpit. Bleh. I don’t like tourist crowds much.

Our entire group met at the Uffizi museum at 4:20 to get in as a group. We got in at 5ish and just sort of dispersed. Allyson and I, not knowing as much as we possibly should about art, kind of just meandered around looking at things and having very little idea why they were important. The art is impressive, mind you, but a painting of some guy who was a random doctor in the 1600s has never really done it for me. After a while we decided there were better things to do and took off. We were quite hungry and looked for some type of fruit stand or market. We found a place with a little old Italian guy selling some fresh fruit and expected that to work out well but NO! This was one mean old Italian dude. I was picking up the fruit trying to decide which pear to buy and he completely freaked out on me. Started shouting at me to not touch the fruit and slipping back and forth in between Italian and English. Whoa…since when can you not touch fresh fruit at a fruit stand? It’s not fine art, my friend. Take a chill pill. I’m not just going to buy a piece of fruit because someone tells me it’s ripe…I decided to not buy anything there and moved on. We did find a little grocery store and picked up a little something there, including a pear that was nice and ripe (I’d know, I checked them all).

After finding some food we went on a hunt for cake. Our goal was to find a super-rich chocolate cake and somewhere to sit as it had started to drizzle a bit. We had no specific destination in mind, as we prefer to see where random roads lead, as we headed out on the search for cake. First we stopped at a little bar/lounge. The proprietor was very kind and re-opened the restaurant portion of his place for us to have some cake. I had cheesecake, Allyson carrot cake. The cake was fantastic and actually fairly cheap. We weren’t satisfied in our craving for sweets and went out again. At this point it was really starting to get going with the rain. We discovered that Liesl had conveniently forgotten her poncho in my bag and we used it to shield ourselves as we ran around the city. Again, the Italians must have been amused by two Americans running around holding a poncho over their heads trying to stay somewhat dry. We found a little coffee shop and bought a cake-like thing (Actually it turned out to be a bowl of frozen cream puffs covered in dark chocolate and hazelnuts) but when we bought it they told us we had to wait at least an hour to eat it. Well, we couldn’t wait that long so as we continued our poncho-and-now-cake-holding journey, we stopped into another café and got some pastries to hold us over until we could devour our chocolately treat. I got a pear-chocolate pastry that was surprisingly yummy and Allyson had a pineapple filled treat. When we eventually arrived at the hotel we messily plowed into our creampuff loveliness and got chocolate all over ourselves. After we had made ourselves completely ill we grudgingly shared the chocolate with others (making darn good friends in the process) and tried to convince our stomachs to forgive us.

Thursday morning we felt a little guilty for not having visited most of Florence’s museums and tourist attractions so we decided to join a large group going to the Academia in the morning. This is where the famous “David” by Michaelangelo is housed. It’s actually a fairly small museum, though impressive, and we were back out on the streets in no time. We continued our pattern of getting lost, but this time to the south. We walked past the Medici palace and gardens and just kept trucking until we found ourselves in the hills outside the city. This place was gorgeous. Beautiful windy streets, small towns, parks, fountains, hills, everything you could want. We took loads of pictures. Eventually we were a good 3-4 inches off the city map and the time was running short so we tried to find out where we were and how to get back. We stopped at a restaurant with a little map, asked for directions at a lovely hotel and managed to bump into a bus stop. Just as we walked towards the bus stop we heard a HUGE crack of thunder. A bus pulled up immediately, almost magically, and we stepped on as the heavens opened and the rains came down. As we watched from the dryness of the bus, the streets were literally filled with water and hail. Incredible timing. We weren’t sure exactly where the bus was going, but by speaking my lousy Spanish to the Italians I ascertained that it would, eventually, end up somewhere in Florence. We got off the bus in an area that seemed fairly well-used by tourists and, incredibly, were fairly close to our hotel. We lucked out all over the place that day. That night we were to jump a train to Venice but before we left we wanted to eat some lunch/dinner. We stopped at a good-looking restaurant with tomatoes and mushrooms in the window (I’m a sucker for restaurants with fresh tomatoes and mushrooms in the window. Works every time.) Once we got inside and were looking at the menu, Allyson pointed out a dish to me with truffles. TRUFFLES! I’ve been looking all over for those! One of my goals in coming to Europe, Italy especially, was to eat truffles. I ordered it in anticipation. Truffles have always been described to me as an amazing eating experience and I was not let down at all. They are fantastic. They are unlike anything else, and therefore impossible to describe, but they taste good and the smell coming off the sauce they were in was seriously like crack cocaine. I spent more time smelling my food than I did eating it. Very cool.

We grabbed our luggage, met up with the group and hopped on the train for Venice. Venice! How cool!

I’ve failed to mention that I was getting sick at this point. I’d had a slightly sore throat in Florence and on the way to Venice it decided to get serious. My nose was running and I had congestion. I wasn’t about to let that happen, though, so I took some cold pills and told it to go away. That worked marginally well.

I didn’t get really excited about Venice until we started across the narrow bridge that leads to the islands that are Venice. At that point I was running around the train, looking out the window and basically acting like a 9-year-old with a new toy. Venice! I’ve wanted to go to Venice for a loooong, long time.

hahahahaha...

2007-09-24T00:12:00.000-06:00

Too cool. Check it out! Not related to Vienna at all. (Actually, it is. I offer a prize for anyone who ca tell me how.)

Best week EVER!

2007-09-23T09:42:00.000-06:00

Well heavens. I haven’t written for a while, but that’s mostly because I’ve been on a trip to Salzburg and the surrounding areas. We left Wednesday morning and just got back tonight. The trip was the most amazing experience I’ve had in my entire life. I know that’s saying a lot but I’ll explain and once you get the entire story you’ll understand.

Wednesday morning we hopped on a bus and headed out. First stop was Mauthausen. Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp in Austria during the second World War. I’m not sure what to say about it. If you’ve been to such a place you’d understand. I have no idea how people could treat others in that way. Somehow it seems that the people responsible for the atrocities committed there had completely lost sight of their (and their prisoners’) humanity. Very frightening and sickening. Literally. I got a bit physically ill just being there and had to sit for a while. Hideous. However, in a more poignant moment, Allyson and I went out into the meadow next to the camp and picked lovely little wildflowers and it provided a great contrast of beauty next to the ugliness we’d just experienced. In the camp we would walk into a room, see the walls and it would slowly dawn on us that people (hundreds if not thousands) had suffered and died looking at those walls. Very quickly sobering. Some in our group were able to stay fairly objective and treat the place like a museum but I was not. I skipped the movie at the end of the tour because I had basically seen all I ever wanted to see and already learned the important lessons that such a place is there to remind us of.

We left Mauthausen and continued on our bus down to the lake/mountain region of Austria. The town we were visiting and staying in that night is called Halstatt. It is an ancient town (now somewhat more modern) perched on the edge of a mountain, clinging to the rocks so as not to fall into the beautiful alpine lake. The single prettiest town I have ever seen in my entire life. Allyson and I managed to take over 1000 pictures on our trip so I ought to be able to find one or two good ones soon. Anyhow, we got to Halstatt and basically had the afternoon to wander around and do what we would. Allyson, Anne, Brian and I walked up a down the town for a while, taking pictures and repeating words like “Wow” and “Amazing” ad nauseum. Later that evening we ate dinner in a cool restaurant with ivy all over the exterior and growing into the interior through the windows, fish heads and game mounted on the wall and waiters in lederhosen. Allyson and I split a dish of roast venison that was spectacular. It was cooked perfectly and came with several sauces, well cooked vegetables, beet sauerkraut, baked apples stuffed with cranberries and potatoes. I really thought I’d died and gone to heaven. We wandered around for a while after dark, taking in the nighttime air and sights before heading into bed. Interesting to see the contrast of the most beautiful place experiences of my life and the ugliest place I’ve ever been to falling on the same day.

Thursday we got up early and visited the salt mines near Halstatt. These mines have been working since 5000 B.C. How about that? It was great to take the tour through them, which included fun slides and sneaking away from the tour guide to lick the salty wall (mmmm….). They had underground light shows in some of the chambers, pretty nifty. Back in town we visited a church full of skulls and saw the prettiest graveyard ever. Each grave had a carefully cultivated and unique flowerbed growing on it. Eventually we tearfully (Ok, there weren’t any tears but it was darn close) left Halstatt, visited a old church with amazing woodcarvings in some-town-with-a-German-name-that-I-can’t-remember and ended up in Salzburg at about 5ish in the afternoon. Salzburg is a wonderful town world-renowned for being the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and for being the locale of “Sound of Music”. (More people know of the latter than the former fact. Sad commentary on society.) Salzburg isn’t as pretty as Halstatt (a fate shared by most places on earth) but has a lot of history and some amazing sights, sounds and smells. The main square was full of little booths with craftsmen doing their trades. Blacksmiths, clock makers, pastry chefs (MMMM!!!! Warm fig pastries!!!!) and leatherworkers plied their art right in front of our very eyes. I loved that part of town. That night we went to dinner at a place that’s name had something to do with Monkeys and had some good food. Allyson and I split (something we do quite frequently, as it allows for more tasting) an herbal cream soup and a dish that was toasted bread with cured bacon and grated horseradish on it. Tasty tasty tasty. As you can see, seeing beautiful sights and eating good food was pretty much the name of the game. Another good (long) day; we went home, wrote in journals and staggered off to bed.

Friday: morning guided walking tour of Salzburg, saw all of the main attractions and figured out what we wanted to go back and see more in depth. We got to see cathedrals, houses of famous people, gardens and beer-soaked festivals. What could be better? After the tour we climbed up one of the local hills, Mönchsberg, looked out over the city and took more good pictures. The climb was a lot of fun. We came down off the mountain and went to Mirabel gardens (the do-re-mi song gardens). There was a nifty little playground that we played in for a bit, a labyrinth and lots of carefully manicured flowers. More exploring of the city in the afternoon. We visited the nearby fortress on top of a mountain and ate dinner there. Dinner was vegetable strudel and four types of Viennese sausages. Very local and authentic, exactly what we wanted. We ate at the castle wall on a cliff, overlooking a huge valley. Every once in a while I still have to remind myself that this is all real! We bussed our way to the hotel to get jackets and things for the evening and then went to dessert. Big story there. We went to St. Peters, established in 802 A.D. No typo there. The place is over 1200 years old. Charlemagne ate there. Possibly the oldest restaurant in the world. The restaurant was so incredible. The inside was something straight out of an expensive magazine. What did we order?

Salzburg Nockerl!

What the heck else? We’re in Salzburg, for pete’s sake! Salzburg Nockerl, for the uninitiated, is a baked meringue type dessert with cranberries baked in and raspberry sauce over the top. I’ve been hearing Mom talk about it for years. It was like a dream. Very rich, very tasty. Allyson and I were totally defeated by it and unable to eat the whole thing. I was, at that moment, quite possibly as happy as a person can even be. 1200-year-old restaurant, night air, perfect decorations and lighting, eating Salzburg Nockerl with an amazing girl. Straight out of a movie, I swear. Once in a lifetime kind of night.

Saturday: Woke up, did the breakfast thing and met a group of kids to take a picture on a big, cool tree that we had seen the day before in a park. We walked around the gardens a bit more and proceeded to Mozart’s house. The tour through Mozart’s house included seeing some of his instruments, original scores and listening to a lot of his pieces. Very cool for a rapidly blossoming classical music nut. After the tour we got another fresh fig pastry (MMMM!!!) as a sort of midday snack. After checking out the shopping area of Salzburg (finding several articles of clothing and other items that we wanted that would each cost over a thousand dollars. Each. Anyone want to buy me a handcrafted accordion?) and watching some guys in funny alpine outfits do some local dances, we went back to St. Peters. We got some appetizers and soups (won’t take the time to explain; simply know that they were the most artistic, unique and tasty foods I’ve ever eaten. If you want to know more ask me about it). We grudgingly walked back to our hotel, sensing our impending doom and hopped on the bus back to Vienna. I know, it’s stupid to be disappointed about going to Vienna, but after all this can you blame me? Honestly?

Stay tuned:

We’re off to Italy next week! Holy overwhelmingness!

Remember the Vienna woods?

2007-09-13T08:42:00.001-06:00

Here's the woods!

2007-09-13T08:15:00.001-06:00

A selection of pictures, in no discernible order:

Weiner Hütte!

Stephansdom tower

Inside Stephansdom

Pizza. They're REALLY into pizza here

Overlooking the Danube in Vienna

Outside...some pretty building

On a bench, looking happy

Like a bad penny...

2007-09-13T00:25:00.000-06:00

Gee. Two busy days. It’s been good. I’ll start with yesterday: Got up fairly early and got to the Institute where we did homework and played around on the internet until class started at 9:30. German class for an hour and then our European Fine Arts class. For Fine Arts our teacher took us to Karlskirche, a large cathedral here in Vienna. I’ve been to several cathedrals all over Europe but this was much different. Most cathedrals are gothic style but this was baroque. Baroque style is much warmer, using oranges and reds and natural light to give the impression that one is arrived in heaven on earth. The coolest part is that they are redoing the inside of the dome in Karls and have a scaffolding up all the way into the top. They have an elevator and allow people to go up into the dome. Very cool. To see the paintings on the ceiling up close and go into the dome to see the sight of the city was quite worthwhile. I’ve really enjoyed the fine arts class so far, even with my limited background in art.

Talked to my lovely sister for a bit...she's moving. (Boo! Booooo!!!)

After this we had our “experiencing Vienna” class at the outreach center. Kind of a boring class, but that’s ok. It gets a lot of the administrative stuff out of the way for our trips and such and sometimes we get money. Never a bad thing.

Several people in the group left the outreach center to go climb the tower of Stephansdom cathedral and I decided to go with. The tower is about 350 steps in a spiral staircase to the top. Bit of a grunt, really. I went with Emily, David, Andrew, Stephanie and Ellen. The view was actually not so spectacular after Karlskirche but the climb itself was fun and it was good to get out with some folks. I’ve really been trying to figure out who I’m going to hang out with for this whole trip and it hasn’t been easy thus far. We ran to a café after the climb down and the girls had ice cream while we watched a clown run amok in the town square and basically terrorize unsuspecting passers-by. He was quite good. Everyone either loved him or hated him and I suppose that’s the measure of a good clown.

Later that night we were all going to a very old church, built in the 1100s, called Ruprechtskirche for a concert of old instruments. Andrew and I headed over a bit later than everyone else and found that everyone had bailed. Turns out the concert that we thought was free was actually 11 euro ($15.50). Taylor showed up and we decided to abandon our reservations about cost and do it. They concert consisted of a Theorbe, a Cembalo, a Harpsichord and two Viola de Gambas. It was very, very interesting to hear the old music played on the original instruments. It was crazy to sit there and realize that I was sitting in a 1000-year-old church listening to 1700s music being played. Wow. The last piece was one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard. Very much worth the 11 euros. I’m going to try and find the piece on the internet somehow.

I was anticipating today. We went down into the Danube valley to ride bikes along the river. Cool, eh? We had to get up at 5:00 AM. Not cool, eh? We met at the institute at 7:00, boarded a bus and rolled out to Melk. We first visited the Babenburg palace-turned-monastery there. It was cool. These people sure knew how to put together a fancy building! Then we headed down to a hotel to pick up our bikes and get on the ride. I was basically by myself for a while in the monastery until Anne, Allyson and I started hanging out. It was raining when we got our bikes and I was a bit skeptical about riding 35-40 kilometers in the rain. We started to ride, however, and the rain cleared up rather quickly. The weather continued to improve all day leading to a glorious afternoon.

Did I mention that the Danube valley is unequivocally the most beautiful place on earth? Yeah. Better than Montana (*gasp* Blasphemy!), better than Southern Spain (Is that possible?!). Completely, absolutely and totally breathtaking. It is a huge fertile valley chock full of picturesque villages, terraced mountainside vineyards and lush fruit orchards. We had to stop every few KMs to buy fruit from one of the locals. Wine grapes, fresh plums, apples, we ate it all. Allyson, Anne and I took a very leisurely pace and just wandered around the little towns stopping to take pictures of everything. The entire valley is one big postcard, I swear. It was like walking around in a dream. I can’t adequately describe it. Toss in the beautiful flowers and landscape and the authentic and fresh bakeries and we basically spent the day in heaven. Take dinner as an example: Dense rye bread, cheese and herb spread and ham. Yum. Perfect weather, perfect scenery, perfect transportation, perfect food. PERFECT!

Weiner literally means Wien-er

2007-09-10T00:44:00.000-06:00

Friday, September 7, 2007

Another dreary, cold rainy day. Today we had “dinner” with our host Mom at 12:00 so we just decided to have a slow morning in the house. We woke up, lollygagged around, went shopping at a nearby grocery store…

Good story there. We went to the Hofer down the street quite a ways. We took the bus/streetcar to get there and spent some time getting our groceries. At Hofer, as well as most grocery stores in Europe, you either have to bring your own bag or buy one at the register. We didn’t have bags so we bought them. Nice big paper bags. Unfortunately, one of the things that I didn’t realize is that paper bags and rain don’t really do well together. When we got on the streetcar my bag started to go kaput. One of the handles ripped off. So, during the 15-minute walk home I had to carry my bag with both arms and as soon as I walked in the front door the bag exploded and stuff went everywhere. It was totally in tatters. Pretty funny, actually.

“Dinner” consisted of some sort of meatloaf thing cooked in a sauce with bacon. It was really quite good. Very rich and hearty, like most food here in Austria. We also had a soup, a potato dish and a salad. I was given serving after serving until I thought I would explode. That was actually kind of nice, as serving sizes are not usually all that large here in Europe and meat is expensive. As bad as it is, it was nice to stuff myself silly on meat.

After dinner we lazed a bit and then finally wandered into town. We went to the institute to use the internet and there joined up with a group going to the 7:00 showing of the Magic Flute by Mozart. We were doing the standing place thing again and had to stand in line for 3 hours. This time I was a bit more prepared and didn’t mind the waiting nearly as much. Plus we had a few more people in our group and it was more fun than waiting for Carmen.

The Opera itself was REALLY good. I absolutely loved it. It was funny, happier more touching and much faster paced than the other operas I’ve seen. Best one by a long shot. It didn’t feel long like the others did at all. Enjoyed every minute. There really seemed to be a lot of interesting things to think about hidden behind the fairly simple story. I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. It actually reminded me of the movie “stardust”; different plot but same lighthearted yet serious storyline. I’d love to see it again.

After the opera we walked around Vienna: the rain has stopped! I’m so happy! It’s so nice to not get wet every time I go outside! Hoorah!

Since Friday:
Saturday was quite fun. We went to the Naschmarkt, a sweet little flea market. I bought a little sidebag there for the days when I don't need my million pound backpack. After the market a few of the girls suggested a sweet restaurant out in the woods south of Vienna. We rode the train, the bus and hiked for a while before arriving at the wooded hill that we would climb to the top of to go to the restuarant. It was called the Weiner Hütte. Great place. Good food, cheaper than I've seen in all of europe. We all ate a great meal for about 6-7 euros each. Most places you're looking at 10-12. After the meal we hiked back down, stopping to take some fun pictures.
After the hike we went to the host's of three girls in our group and hung out there for the evening. It was really fun. We watched comedy shorts, talked, generally just chillin'. It was good to spend a little quality time with some friends. Anyhow, a good time indeed.
Sunday was Stake Conference was Sunday. Fortunately they had English translation which allowed me to actually get something out of it. That was nice. I will say, however, that the Stake President's address was by far the oddest stake conference talk I have EVER heard. Very strange. (Long story, if you're interested ask me...) AFter church my roomie, David, and I went to some cool looking church we saw from the train station. We still don't know what it's called but it was very nice. There was a basketball court next to the church in a park. I nearly wet myself. That's the first court I've seen in almost a month! Now I just need a basketball...
We had our religion class at the director's place later that night and then went home and crashed.

Operatic adventures!

2007-09-07T07:28:00.000-06:00

Thursday, Sep 6. 2007

Pretty slow day. It is still quite rainy and cold, which doesn’t really motivate one to be active and do a lot of sightseeing. German class was cancelled for the morning and so we didn’t have class until 2:00. In the morning I went to the institute and basically hung out there until class. I did some reading, finished some homework for history class and caught up on the latest college football happenings. After history class I finally was able to catch Mom online and we chatted for about 20-30 minutes. That was nice. We didn’t get the audio working but that’s ok. I was in a public room and I’m not sure they would have appreciated the conversation anyhow. (of course, in a similar situation I was able to listen to a girl talk mushy-talk with her fiancée for about 20 minutes…wanted to stab myself with my pencil to end the madness. Seriously, they spent 5 minutes arguing about who missed the others’ voice more. Bleh!)

Last night the big plan was for a group to get together and go to the Opera to see Carmen. We are, of course, cheapo students, and opt for the standing room tickets in the nether regions of the opera hall. Do grab these hot pieces of real estate you basically just have to get in line 2-3 hours early. So, we jumped in line at 4:30. I was assured that we could just get through the line quickly, grab some tickets, mark our spots and then head back out into town until the opera started at 7. Good thing, too, because I was getting pretty hungry. Well, it wasn’t until I read the opera ticket manual that I found out that the standing room (stehplatz) tickets wouldn’t even start selling until 5:45. Egad. So, over an hour later, the line started to move slowly and sometime around 6 we finally got our tickets. I was absolutely famished and excited to get out and find some food but…nope. Turns out once you get your tickets you have to show them to get your standing room spot and then there’s no turning back. “The point of no return”, to quote an operatic tale. So I just slowly starved to death in my spot for an hour until the show started. Beautiful building, by the way.

Anyhow, the performance started and it was indeed marvelous. We enjoyed the first two acts immensely. We found some of the other kids from our program across the hall from us and talked to them for a bit. Amusingly, they thought Carmen only had two acts and left after the second. Whoops. It has four. We stayed for the whole thing (3.5 hours of standing got a bit old after all that time in line…). Really quite enjoyable, especially towards the end when people start going insane and there are stabbings. There were several famous songs that I had no idea were in Carmen. Having just been to southern spain, which is the setting for the Opera, I especially enjoyed watching it with my background experience on Flamenco, bullfighting and Spanish culture. Good stuff. Oh, and did I mention that the performance only cost 2 euros ($2.70)? Pretty good bargain!

Drowned in a rat-like fashion!

2007-09-06T05:29:00.000-06:00

Random journal excerpts masquerading as a Blog entry:

Tuesday Sep. 4 - Finished the Bertrand Russell book last night, started the Merleau-Ponty book “Phenomenology of Perception” today. Much denser than Russell but so far fairly rewarding (still in the preface….hahahaha). This morning had German class, my skills are still coming back well. I am pleased about that. Went to an Italian place for lunch…there are absolutely LOADS of Italian places here. I had a pizza with bacon and corn on it. Not great cuisine but still pretty tasty. After that headed to the outreach center (LDS institute) and attended our “experiencing Vienna” class and the german conversation class. I’m not sure I’ll continue in the German convo class as I don’t really want to have a certain number of required hours of German to achieve a particular grade. Seems a bit oppressive. On the other hand, I do need the German practice and this would be a good way to make sure I do it, but hey, I am here partially to have a stress-free good time, right? Hmmmm…..

Dinner consisted of a fruit-yogurt drink and some bread with Liverwurst. Not bad fare for a few euros. We went to the Opera to get in line for the Barber of Seville but it wasn’t taking people for the standing room tonight. Private performance or some such nonsense. So we tried to find a plan “B”. I found one, and a darn good one if I may be so bold. We got lost a bit but finally found the concert house where we attended a performance of the Weiner Kammerphilharmonker. It was simply incredible. They performed a Mozart piece, a Mendelssohn piece and finished it off with Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7. Beethoven is amazing. He plays with emotions more than any other composer I’ve ever heard. I loved it. Got ahold of a schedule for the concert and some people that want to go fairly often so I’ll probably try to take advantage of that and continue to expand my knowledge of classical music.

Wednesday, Sep 5: Bratislava Day

We arrived in Bratislava at about 10:30 and I tried to feel out a decent group to visit the city with. I wound up with Andrew and some girls (with a 7 to 1 ration of girls to guys, we're always outnumbered). The group went to the Primate’s palace, which has nothing to do with monkeys or apes, and then split off for individual activities for 6 hours. Did I mention that it had been raining lightly all day? Well, once we split off, it started to get REAL nasty. Wind, rain, cold, the whole shebang. First stop was lunch, as we were all famished. We went to a Spanish (In Slovakia?) restaurant and I had rabbit. It was a total rip-off. The food wasn’t bad, but it cost waaaay more than advertised and wasn’t quite worth it. We visited a castle on the hill that was actually quite a letdown, as we really didn’t see anything of note except an 85-meter deep well.

We went into St. Martin’s church, where most of the big names in Hapsburg history were crowned and saw a few cool things in there. There was an area dug up with glass over it in which there were skeletons in the ground and a crypt with coffins and the like. Definitely worth the 25 crowns (roughly 1 dollar). We continued to slog through the rain, stopping in a lovely old orthodox church to dry off. The church was just starting a mass so we stayed and watched/listened for a while. It was very cool to see the mass in Slovakian and hear their sermon, service and prayers. One of the most enjoyable parts of the day.

Finally we wandered around, found a grocery store to use the last of our crowns (dinner was about 1/10^th the price of lunch. Ouch.) and finally found a street car to take us back to the train station. At this point we were freezing, wet and exhausted. I crashed on the train, sleeping all the way back. Then it was merely a matter of David and I taking our usual 45-minute journey home, walking through the rain a bit and finally getting back to our nice little German house. Long day but well worth the effort!

Bratislava was cool. Much rougher than Vienna...lots of graffiti and a bit more run down. It was interesting but I think the next few trips (Salzburg, Budapest, Italy) will be much longer and more eventful.

Today: Raining all day, very dreary. I am pretty much hanging out doing homework, reading philosophy books and using the internet at AAIE. I have history class at 2:00 and then perhaps the opera or something else amusing. I'll get some pictures up on here at some point...

Out of order

2007-09-03T08:15:00.000-06:00

I may, eventually, get around to continuing my sordid tale of the trip around Europe, but I thought everyone would appreciate a little update about Vienna. This from Friday:

We arrived in Vienna yesterday at 8:30ish. We arrived in the Westbahnhof train station, which was actually different than we had told our group director. We were supposed to arrive in the Sudbahnhof station, which explained why we waited for an hour for someone to pick us up to no avail. Turns out they wouldn’t have picked us up either way, as we were supposed to just make our way to the institute to meet everyone by about 12:00. Finally we got into the metro system (we’d become pros at the metros in Europe by this point and found our way to the AAIE. Took a minute to find, but it wasn’t difficult as it was right next to the StaatOpera in downtown Vienna. We arrived and slowly a few other students started to straggle in. Most of the group came from the US together and so they all showed up at the same time with Dr. Hansen. To be perfectly frank, I appreciated the entire group showing up. I had enjoyed my trip and time with Andrew, Ellen and Kimberlee but I was definitely ready to expand my social circle a bit. The nice part is that the 4 of us are still great friends but probably get along better now that we don’t have to be around each other 24/7.

Vienna is very nice. It’s a bit like Paris with the architecture and style but seems a little smaller and cleaner. Thus far I’ve been VERY impressed with the cleanliness and apparent safety of the city. Of course you can still do stupid stuff and get into a lot of trouble but frankly, if you’re smart, you’ll be ok.

After the entire group arrived I looked around and was a bit shocked. 4 guys, 27 girls. Talk about weird. It’s strange to think that guys are in that much of a minority. I’m no ladies man, but with that many females I think I may actually do all right in that department for the first time in my life. Hahahahahaha….. We have one guy in our group who is rapidly becoming the ladies’ favorite (Ty) but I imagine as soon as they all settle down and stop fighting over him like a bunch of starving animals on the Serengeti us other guys will start looking better and better. Other than Ty the big suave guy there is Andrew the hyperactive film freak and David the tall quiet dude. As I told the other guys, we each get 7 girls so no one get greedy. That should be plenty.

After we arrived we went on a little walk aroud the city to keep all of the plane folks awake until nighttime (to combat jetlag) and got some dessert. My first taste of Vienna was an apple strudel. Definitely impressive. I’m going to like this town. The girls, of course, are all freaking out about the gelato, but let’s face it: you don’t come to Vienna for ice cream. Baked treats, my friends. Baked treats.

We stopped by Stefansdom, the large cathedral in the middle of Wien and looked around for abit and proceeded on to Peter’s something-or-other, another church. We arrived at 3:00 which happened to be the exact time they were starting an organ concert, which sounded very good. Sadly the group left after one piece and I had no choice but to follow. Blasted. I am EXTREMELY excited about the music in this town. Everybody talks about the upcoming concerts, there are ticket vendors for operas and ballets on every corner; basically these people are freaks for classical and that’s awesome. Mozart is basically the city’s patron saint at this point. Between that and the food I feel like I’ve finally found a town slightly more suited to my interests. Now if only I could find a well-populated basketball court…

We grabbed little luggage and headed to our hotel, the pension baronesse. Nice place. All the amenities. All four of the guys stayed in the same room with our own bathroom and that worked out well. Andrew and I hopped into the shower immediately, as an unfortunate side effect of out three day night train and Switzerland experience was no showers for 72 hours. Lots of interesting odors. The shower water was actually brown and filmy as it drained. Not a pretty site. I also shaved for the first time in weeks. That took a while…

The AAIE took us out to dinner to a very nice Italian place with quite authentic food. I got a Bella Napoli pizza which basically was a crust with tomato sauce baked and then they throw on fresh cherry tomatoes, some kind of light spinach, spices, chunks of buffalo mozzarella and cured ham. The whole thing was beautiful and tasted even better. One of the best meals I’ve had to date. (That’s saying quite a bit, mind you) After dinner we returned to the hotel, played around on the internet and eventually crashed into our beds.

This morning we woke at about 8ish, dressed, and headed down for a continental breakfast provided by the hotel in the basement. The breakfast was significantly better than expected. There were several kinds of juices, breads, jams, cheeses, meats, fancy cereals, toast, hot chocolate, fruit….on and on. I ate a ton (for the first time ever in Europe. In fact, this was probably the first time I’d had two decently large meals in a row in my entire trip)

We left for the institute and sat around there for a few hours listening to orientation stuff. Pretty boring, really, but important information was mixed in and it was worthwhile to wade through all the easy garbage to get the crucial info for our stay here. One of the directors of the program took us on a practical tour of the area, showing us grocery stores and post offices and the like followed by a stop for lunch at the local market, Kunsmarkt. There we sampled some eastern cuisine (a sort of gyro style falafel sandwich). We returned to the institute like a herd of cattle and sat through more boring orientation information before going upstairs to meet our families. David Scoville and I are staying with a woman named Hedy Drapal in the 17^th bizirk. She is a widow of a philharmonic clarinet soloist who lives by herself. Very nice lady, probably in her 70s. We had a tour of the house, talked about the house rules and she left us to unpack. Had a good dinner of schnitzel and talked (half in broken English and half in bad german) for an hour or so. We gave her the gifts we’d brought and headed to the third floor which is sort of our domain. That’s where I am now, sitting here at 8:40 and wondering what on earth I’ll do with myself tonight. I’m not entirely used to going to bed before midnight.

------------------Back to reality---------------------

Ok, so here I am in the present. I am currently sitting in the lovely little building that is the LDS institute, enjoying their free internet, snacks provided by kind senior missionaries and air conditioning. It really is a great place to call home in the city since my "home" is 45 minutes away from the city center and really only where I sleep.

I went to church on Sunday. It was a cool little building in the suburb area. The people were super nice but the fact of the matter is I was completely and utterly lost for 3 hours. It's VERY hard to stay awake when you don't understand much of anything. Occasionally an American would speak "gringo" german and I caught a little bit but usually I just stared and wondered. Things can only go up in that department.

Classes started today. We had our first german class followed by a bit more orientation, me wandering around Vienna looking for a grocery store (Lunch: an apple-swiss sandwich. Interesting!) and then european history. Not sure what I'll do for the rest of the afternoon. Perhaps read my new Bertrand Russell book I picked up and wait for institute? More wandering around Vienna? The nicest part about this trip is the lack of work/responsibilities and the opportunity I have to do whatever I want and pursue my interests. So far very refreshing!

Next stop: France

2007-08-30T13:33:00.001-06:00

So, I knew we had to catch the chunnel for Paris at 7:09 AM. Not so difficult, unless you consider that we were supposed to be at the train station at least 30 minutes early and we had to take several metro lines to get there. Add all that together and you end up with a wakey time much, much earlier than I particularly wanted to consider. We hit the sack somewhat early, hoping to get a good night’s sleep. That didn’t happen. This whole trip I’ve been without an alarm clock. I simply cannot find the clock tat I packed. Either I didn’t pack it or I packed it too well, but in either case I don’t have it to use. I must have woken up 5 times that night, panicked that we had overslept our 5:15 goal. First time was at midnight. I woke up all in a fix and had to check my computer to see what time it was. It said 12:00 but I didn’t believe it, so I go wandering around the hotel, looking for a clock. I finally wound up at the front desk and asked the very confused clerk what time it is. I think he thought I was abusing some substance as there was a large, very readable clock directly behind his head. He looked at me funny, turned around and read the clock to me – 12:00. I was both relieved and frustrated at my early jumping the gun on waking up and staggered back to bed.

1:30 – repeat

2:15 – repeat

3:30 – repeat

4:00 – repeat

AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!! Not a good night.

Finally it was actually time to get up and we all got ready and made it to the chunnel with plenty of time, settled into our seats and started off for Paris.

On the chunnel we enjoyed our first taste of Paris, a lovely croissant from the train cafeteria that only cost the equivalent of roughly $7.50. Don’t you just love European tourist prices?

The French countryside was absolutely lovely. The morning we arrived everything was very green. We seemed to have left the rain behind in London at it was replaced by a light mist that settled picturesquely over the French farms and hills. Granted, I was sleeping for most of the train trip due to my less-than stellar night, but the parts I did catch sure were nice!

We arrived in Paris around noonish and immediately set to deciphering the instructions to our hotel. They were a tad cryptic and it took us a while to find it but after going to the absolute last metro stop on the line and carrying our bags for what seemed like 50 miles we chanced upon our hotel. It was simple but nice. We unpacked our bags and headed back out into the city.

Our first stop was probably the most daunting: the Louvre. We popped out of the metro right next to the big beast and were floored. It was similar to the feeling that we had seeing Big Ben for the first time. The Louvre is HUGE! These kings in Europe had absolutely no shame in building disgustingly ostentatious buildings. It did fulfill it’s goal (inspiring awe) I suppose.

The other issue with the Louvre is the sheer number of people inside. We were stuffed in there like sardines. There must have been 500 people in the mosh pit by the Mona Lisa. We saw some pretty famous stuff, but I’ve never known a whole lot about art so I probably didn’t appreciate it as I should have.

About 20 minutes into the museum I got hit by some nasty cramps and gas. I could barely breathe. That made the oppressive crowds and heat all the much more pleasant to deal with. At one point I found a bathroom but quickly discovered that there was someone taking their (and everyone else’s, apparently) sweet time. There were 4 men in line for the only stall and they all spoke different languages. The older Japanese guy who kept patting his midsection was squabbling it out with the young, well-dressed French (possibly gay) guy. I decided to skip that idea and looked for an easier way to find a toilet.

Anyway, I staggered my way around the museum ripping some nasty ones, probably damaging priceless artwork with the fumes. I think it may have killed one of the guards. We finally left the Louvre (which had become my idea of a personal hell) and went looking for some food. We found a neat little café down the road a bit and stopped. I immediately sought out their facilities while my compadres ordered. When I got back I found a lovely little set of sandwiches waiting. I had half of two different baguette sandwiches, one of them some kind of fancy ham and the other sausage pate. I was immediately feeling better about this Paris place. If they could produce food like this they must not be all bad, right?

After our dinner we wandered around the Champs Elysee, stopping to gawk at the Arc d’Triomph.

Much bigger than I expected. No wonder all the many countries that have invaded france have felt it necessary to stomp around outside the arc. Very majestic. Then we wandered around some Parisian back roads (wandering is rapidly becoming one of our favorite activities here in Europe) until we bumped into the Eiffel Tower. Again, much larger and cooler than I anticipated. Really seems like an engineering feat when you get right up next to it. We found a cool little park that was relatively people-free and hung out there for a few minutes until the lights came on the tower and hung around until 9:00 when the whole thing went up in sparkles. Looked pretty dang cool.

Did some more wandering until we bumped into a metro station, walked the distance back to our hotel, showered and hit the sack. Paris was shaping up to be a good time after all!

London part deux

2007-08-27T02:18:00.000-06:00

Slept well, woke up in good ol’ Chiswick (pronounced Chisick, no W)

We stopped at a market on the way to the metro for our breakfast. The little markets here are considerably better quality than the ones back home, you can actually get a decent meal that doesn’t leave you slightly queasy! I picked up some little pasties called “chelseas” and some juice. The chelseas were like little pastries shaped liked cinnamon rolls with currants instead of cinnamon. I like the pastries in Europe waaay better than America because they’re not all sweet. No nasty frosting, just a little glaze and some fruit, usually. Or a little butter. Mmmmm…..

Being Sunday morning, we decided to do what any good little Mormon kids would do and go to church. Only we decided to do it Europe style and attend the morning service at Westminster Abbey.

We went to a Matins service that involved a lot of singing from the choir, a sermon and some good ol’ fashioned creed recitations. The Abbey is beautiful, the sermon was quite good and it really was nice all around. The cathedrals were built to draw your eyes and thoughts to heaven
and they fulfill their role quite well. You end up looking up and pondering a lot.

Westminster Abbey is beautiful. I love the architecture here in Europe. I’ve realized that I prefer architecture to many of the other forms of art (painting, etc.) In fact, painting is probably my leats favorite. I enjoy sketches, sculptures and other things more than paintings. But back to the point, I prefer just wandering around London looking at the buildings and seeing the city to going to crowded museums and taking tours. Maybe that’s just me.

After the service we walked to Trafalgar Square, taking in the sights along the way. Big Ben, Parliament, countless churches and old government buildings went before our eyes. Interestingly, one almost becomes immune to magnificent spectacles. I caught myself several times dismissing absolutely beautiful buildings as “Oh, there’s another one”. You almost expect grandeur on every corner. And you’re rarely disappointed.

In Trafalgar we hopped on a red double-decker bus for a “hop-on hop-off” tour that would basically allow us to roam around London, grabbing a bus whenever we felt so moved. That worked out well, as we didn’t have to follow any certain schedule but could enjoy whatever we wanted for as long as we wanted. Again, more sights. St. Paul’s Cathedral, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Tower of London.

Our guide, a little English gal with a thick London accent and a very poor grasp on humor explained them all in a passing manner as if they were just buildings. She spent more time gossiping about English celebrities like Diana, David Beckham and Prince Henry or whoever than talking about the actual city (Maybe I need to read more tabloids?)

One of the girls in our group was desperately looking for a book by one of her favorite authors that is only published in England and that led us on a tour of London’s finest book establishments. Interestingly, there is one road through town that houses nearly all of the bookstores. You have the regulars like Borders and Barnes & Nobles in addition to countless cramped little used bookstores. I loved going through these little trashy stores and seeing what they had, although I was disappointed in their sections on Philosophy. Who woulda thought that obscure philosophy books aren’t a hot item for used bookstores to carry? Hahahahahaha…

We wandered into an area of town called Covent Garden, known for its gardens and dining options. We were looking for somewhere to get some “authentic” English cuisine. What better place than a pub? We found a suitably seedy looking establishment full of English chaps getting smashed and roaring at a football game going on. We were planning on getting fish and chips (the classic) but when the menu came I saw an item I couldn’t resist:

Toad-in-the-hole.

Wow. Can it get ANY more English than that? Let me tell you! When I got my food, it was a large scone thing with limp veggies, mashed potatoes and a curled beef sausage in it. Oh, and the whole thing was absolutely DROWNING in gravy. I was floored. Anyhow, a picture is attached.

It tasted EXACTLY like you’re imagining right now. Doused in gravy.

After dinner we jumped back on the Tube (which we had completely mastered by this point) and headed back to Chiswick. We decided to go out and search down an internet place so we could tell out parents and friends we were alive. We found one, a little joint operated by two middle-eastern gentlemen that was closing just as we arrived. We gave them out best poor-students-in-dire-need-of-an-internet-fix routine and they allowed us 10 minutes to do our stuff. We all fired off really short letters (much to the ire of our parents) and hurried out so they could close.

Oh, did I mention the weather? This whole time it had been raining. Not any kind of downpour, mind you, but seattle drizzly rain. It actually made sightseeing quite pleasant as it wasn’t too hot and kept the lines down. We never really had to wear a coat so we weren’t held back at all by the water. And, frankly, I think drizzly is a much more fitting backdrop for London than sunny and warm.

Back to the hotel, crawled into bed and prepared for a big day. Off to Paris in the morning!

Luuuun-done!

2007-08-25T03:05:00.000-06:00

After all the hugs and kisses and generally making a sentimental fool of myself, I was finally off to London. Only one obstacle remained in my way, looming before me like some specter of doom. Suspicious looking men prowled around me, brandishing their weapons and sizing me up. I prepared for the worst as I entered airport security, sure that they could do their worst but that I could pass through unscathed, clinging to my dream of boarding a plane bound for Europe. As I stepped towards the metal detector, I removed my backpack. The guy at the counter looked at me, slightly amused and said “Laptop?” I took my laptop out. “Camera?” I removed my camera. “Shoes?” Off came the shoes. “Pockets?” I emptied them on command. “Belt?” …….. OH COME ON! This was getting ridiculous. Honestly, I think the guy was just having a good time. That job probably gets just a smidge boring and sometimes he chooses poor, hapless college students to torments. Twisted.

I survived security fairly well. I’ve actually been surprised so far that it’s been quite easy to get in and out of airports and train stations. I think, six years later, the transit people have finally gotten the hang of tighter security.

Interesting side note: I saw Dan Albright in the airport, dressed up in his pilot stuff and heading off to copilot…we talked a bit.

I met up with one of the girls in our little group, Kimberlee Sirstins, in the SLC airport and we flew all the way to London together. We met the other girl, Ellen Lloyd, in Cincinnati during our layover. I spent nearly the entire flight stuffing Mom’s homemade cookies in my face. Let me tell you about disgusting airplane food. The “dinner” they served was most certainly the nastiest pile of poo I’ve ever tasted. I stuck each of the dishes in my mouth and nearly gagged each time. Stunning. I still shudder at the thought.

We arrived in London at about 8:45 on Saturday morning. We were to meet our final group member, Andrew Frick, there when his flight at 9:15. And wouldn’t you know, his flight was late! So, of course, we wait. The board says 10:05. Then 10:20. Finally, at 10:45, the plane arrives. We look anxiously for Andrew to emerge. And wait. And wait some more. He rolled out of the baggage area at about 12:30. Unbelievable! Turns out the planes were so backlogged from a storm in New York that it was taking everyone 2 hours to get their baggage. So, in essence, we spent a happy 3.5 hours sitting in the airport in London. What better way could you possibly spend your hard-earned time in England? Thrill of a lifetime! We were looking for a way to page him over the intercom of find where he was, but the information desk was inexplicably closed for a loooong brunch and noone seemed to know why. Everyone we asked anything to responded with “ask the information desk” and when I told them it was vacant, they’d say “well, someone should open that up!” assertively. Of course, nothing ever happened. Well done, information people!

I’m convinced airports hate me.

It’s a conspiracy.

The coolest things I’ve seen in Europe so far are the hand dryers in the men’s bathroom of Gatwick airport. Words don’t suffice to describe, but be assured that they are the pinnacle of human engineering. They actually dry your hands. Quickly.

Andrew managed to lose one of his bags immediately upon arrival in the metro station. We’re standing in line and we here his name called out over the intercom. I was certain we’d gotten busted for unknowingly smuggling some illicit materials into England, but it turned out that he’d just walked off without a bag. Whoops! We got through the line for metro tickets and placed our order and voila! Our credit cards don’t work. Why? Turns out, as we were later told by an attendant, that the machine “doesn’t like our type of cards”. We inquired into the “type” of our cards and were met by a blank stare. (Maybe it doesn’t like Yankee plastic?)

Finally, we arrived at our hotel at 3:00 PM. We checked into the cozy little establishment and lo and behold, cozy is certainly the apt describing word. The rooms are roughly 347 times smaller than the pictures on the website. Apparently the English have mastered adobe photoshop to a degree far beyond our own skill. The rooms were clean enough had functioning locks and came with and had fresh towels. What more could you want for 90 bucks a night? More, you say? Well, maybe you haven’t been to London. I’ll let you in on a little secret.

London is absurdly expensive.

Wow.

Basically take all prices in the US, replace the dollar sign with a pound sign and multiply what you thought the cost was time 2.09. That’ll about do it. Reasonably cheap dinner? 25 bucks. One-way metro pass? 8 dollah. Pitifully tiny water bottle? 3-4 buckaroos. I’ll be broke in a matter of a week.

(Speaking of small, everything here in Europe seems to come in 2 sizes: “small” and “rationed out for the London blitz”. No wonder there aren’t any fat people in London. Nothing to eat!)

When we came out of the tube we were right next to Big Ben and we had our “holy crud, we’re actually in London!” moment. There we were, in front of the actual big ben. Not a post card, not a movie, the real thing.

We had the opportunity to visit the British Library. Not a real big tourist attraction, but easily one of the best in my mind. They have originals of some farly famous documents like, oh, the magna carta. You know, obscure stuff. They also had originals from Shakespeare, Chaucer (eat your heart out, Marty), Jane Austen, Leonardo Da Vinci, Rachmaninoff, Mozart, Darwin and tons more famous people. Oh, and a great religious section highlighted by an original Gutenberg Bible and several copies of the Qu’ran from a loooong time ago.

Andrew is a real fim/theater freak, so he convinced our group to attend a musical in the theater section of London, Picadilly. We decided on Spamalot, an award-winning musical based on Monty Python. After wandering around, we saw a discount ticket booth and Andrew rushed over to buy some tickets. They had two left at 25 pounds and promised that we could go to the theater and that they would give us a few more (“the last ones available”) for this great price. Oh, but right before Andrew and Ellen bought, the tickets magically went up to 30 pounds apiece. I was a bit suspicious of our over-zealous and slightly creepy ticket-selling friends, to say the least. Anyhow, we found a really good Italian place and grabbed some dinner before heading up for the concert…

Dinner: Rigatoni in a Marscapone, Tarragon, Red Onion and Pecorinno sauce. The stuff of dreams.

…when we arrived at the concert, I found it distressing but oddly hilarious that we’d been had. There were plenty of tickets left for the show at the full price of 22.50. Andrew and Ellen were given a wonderful “discount” of an extra 15 bucks! Hahahahahaha….I don’t know why it strikes me as funny but it is. Probably because I didn’t get ripped for 15 big ones. Anyway, that’ll teach you to be rushed into a sale with seedy people that change their prices, eh? Hahahaha…

Anyhow, Spamalot exceeded my expectations and ended up being freakin’ hilarious. Very funny, incorporating all of the highlights of Monty Python. I think it was particularly good here in London because of the genuine accents and british humor. Oh, and the large teeth. That helps.

Thoughts on London so far: I absolutely LOVE it. The city is clean, the people are fairly nice, the british girls are far better looking than generally reported. The architecture is amazing, the candy bars fantastic and the slightly cool and very light drizzle a nice change from surface-of-the-sun Provo. Many more adventures await!

(I’m writing this a few days later, so it’s not exactly current events. Hopefully I’ll catch up sometime.)

Europe! Finally!

2007-08-25T03:04:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I finally got free wireless in one of our hostels, so the blogs should come fast and furiously.

Ok, maybe not fast and furiously but at least every once in a while?

Abraham again

2007-07-11T01:18:00.001-06:00

Abraham's situation with Isaac is one of the most interesting ethical issues in history. What on earth was going on there? I could go on and on, but you already know the story. Think about it.

While you're at it, try this on for size. What if Abraham had already decided to disobey God when the angel told him to stop? Perhaps "passing the test" was to see if Abraham put more stock in obedience to an unethical commandment than to do what is right? Levinas talks about this, I find the idea fascinating. There is much more to this than I am writing; if anyone is interested in more please respond to the post or ask me...

Who am I?

2007-07-11T00:50:00.001-06:00

I look at who I've become. What I am right now is not ever what I expected when I was 8, 12 or even 19. How did I end up the person I am? Was I led inexorably to become myself or was it through a series of choices that I made? Were there choices that I had no idea would affect my life that permanently altered my very take on life and my character? Or does who we truly are simply shine through as we live our lives? Not only am I different than I thought I'd be, I don't think I've ended up being what anyone expected. Maybe I am and I'm just blind to that fact.

So, I look at myself and think, could I have done it differently? Would I even want to? There is no 'right' way to do it and each path comes with it's bumps and potholes. Sure I could have avoided some of the problems I face right now, but what sacrifices would I have made to avoid them and which problems would have come instead? As much as there are certain parts of my life that I'm not entirely happy with right now (read: very frustrated at), I feel that all in all I am doing this just as well as I can and living as truly as I can to what I believe is right. That is somewhat placating, but it doesn't change the fact that I am blown away, amazed and even frustrated with the current state of Eric L. Dowdle.

Perception?

2007-07-10T01:49:00.000-06:00

Abraham = good

Abraham's Dad = bad

Huh? Didn't they do the exact same thing?

Messy moral muddle

2007-07-08T01:12:00.000-06:00

What do you think about doing the right things for the wrong reasons? Sometimes it is viewed as a very good thing (perhaps in the case of modern-day home teaching or 8 year olds that get baptized to make their friends and parents happy) and other times it is seen as slightly more negative (for instance: Cain). What creates the difference? Is it the degree of the wrong reason? The degree of the right thing? A comparison of the degrees? I've been told to "fake it 'til you make it" and that seems like a decent idea until you realize that perhaps that "faking it" leads to many of the problems in the world. Insincerity seems to be rampant and it destroys relationships, families, businesses, societies and lives. When you put it that way it doesn't seem like such a hot idea. So....what gives?

On the flipside, what about the wrong things for the right reasons? What does that even mean? Is there a "right reason" to do the wrong thing or does it then become the right thing to do?

Un-deep

2007-07-08T01:11:00.000-06:00

Some people are accused of being shallow in their pursuit of the opposite gender. Where does that idea come from? It's a stretch to say that some of us don't have certain strong biases when searching for a significant other, so why is "hot" or "rich" considered shallow when "kind" and "loving" are not? Is there something inherently better about those? Is it tied to the relationship itself? Perhaps the latter make for longer-surviving flings? However, that once again assumes that one is searching for something long-term, which may or may not be the aim. Another judgment call made on seemingly shaky ground. Can we simply say that everyone looks for particular things and none is better or are there actually better things to seek? Is there "shallow"?

Good, good movie

2007-07-03T03:00:00.000-06:00

It's hard to find a decent movie these days, you know? I'll post 'em on here as I find them. Tonight's addition? "Inside Man". Very, very good. Filmed well, cast well, a thinking movie. Check it out!

Temporality

2007-06-26T18:35:00.001-06:00

How do you think about your own temporality? Do you imagine yourself as a blip inexorably moving along a timeling? Or perhaps as a stationary observer watching the world temporally flow by like a river? (how very heraclitian of you!) Or perhaps time is more of a ecstasies-smear like Heidegger thinks? (i.e. every experience is not a discreet piece of a timeline but rather always influenced by the past, present and the future making it nearly impossible to distinguish any moment as simply past present or future...)

I definitely see aspects of the last two in my perception of time. I've really seemed to move away from idea #1. This is, however, how our society works so you can't totally abandon it and expect to live well and interact with others.

Meaningless Thoughts like the Purpose of Life

2007-06-25T13:26:00.000-06:00

Initially, I had posited the purpose of life was not in just serving other people as I had been taught by my church, and I assume Christianity in general. I understood then service to mean mowing my neighbor's lawn, as it tends to be used. I deemed that creation/expression in artistic and thoughtful means was just as needful and live and meaningful. I now change that to include 2 others: to commune and to experience. I think still that they who know the most (both inward and outward cognitions) are truly the most free. It is one's duty to seek to learn more--through others and life, rather than simply through the inner conversation present within the mind. We must build and maintain relationships, sharing life's joys, asking to know more, having the humility to invite and need others' contributions, and give and receive courage to push ourselves even farther. Relationships occur quantitatively no matter what. How many of them and of what quality they are is totally another matter. There is something in that d and c verse of seeking learning out of the best books. But I also say seek after activities, people, books, talks and so forth. Determine their value and then seek the best. I submit in soul building, whether it is God's purpose or not. It is mine. None of these processes: service, creation, community, experience will never end, any of them, until death wraps me in its shroud or the great beyond beckons me to do so longer. At least that is how my hopes knit. Growing and changing in alternating pluralistic environments... and it is wonderful. This is eternal life for me as of yet.

To defend "service" as a concept, I know that experiencing, expressing/creating, and communing can all be labelled service in the proper context. The same could be true with any of them: all could be put under experience, or all under expression, and all under communion. Regardless, the point is to further identify the areas of service, the directions in which one takes that builds meaning. Most would not group the rest of these with mowing your neighbor's lawn. Service is meant to be selfless, apparently. I urge more service which directly benefits both the self and others, though of course it may turn in selfless ways too. In other words, the activities need not be sacrifices. They can be fun. But if you wish to be a stickler, and suggest opportunity costs as sacrifices, everything is a sacrifice, which I then believe demeans and lessens the purpose of the word. Argue if you will. Alas...

Revisiting Paschel's Wager

2007-06-22T14:13:00.000-06:00

Yeah, so this pretty much has nothing to do with Paschel's Wager. There are many other options in the "next life" if it exists than hell or eternal life. But I wanted to consider the Either/Or position. I think the concept of eternal life, especially the Mormon idea of eternal life, is so intriguing, so fascinatingly wonderful, that to prove it and have absolute certainty of it is nigh impossible. It is such a grand idea that the evidence requisite to prove it would be much higher than proving the theory of relativity, evolution, or what have you. Something that promises that much requires so much more evidence to effectively convince on that they are not being scammed. However, at the same time, the promises are so great that it requires so much more evidence to toss it all out completely. If religious experiences give even the slightest glimmer of hope that this reality may be real, then of course we cling to it, hold to it--it's that worth while if it is true, it is everything. Then this is why we struggle with it, it is so precious, yet so hard to pin down. We teeter-totter in our trust of the promise, but to forsake it completely (or invest completely) is quite the ordeal for any conscious thinker. At least those are my views.

Why?

2007-06-12T02:25:00.001-06:00

Pretty sure that's why.

If wishes were fishes...

2007-06-07T03:29:00.000-06:00

I really wish I didn't have to sleep. Think of all the things I could get done in those 6-whatever hours! Man. Tonight I was thinking..."I have 5 hours to sleep before a big day tomorrow. Can I get in some Kierkegaard before bed?"

Hahahahahahaha....no way...I'll get sick so fast it'll blow your mind without sleep. Still, I waste a lot of time during the day and I don't think about that as a waste...weird, eh? How do I transfer my post-midnight energy for doing things to the middle of the day? Say 2 PM?

Wait...

2007-06-04T00:26:00.001-06:00

I'm Jane?

Jobicus Stupidus

2007-05-30T20:06:00.000-06:00

Urgh... Me Tarzan, you Jane. Me work, work, work... and ... uh... no use head much besides breaking cocunut! Haha! Me no get to thinky-thinky about skies, whales, and big powerful flying guys, as me work, work, work... Job make me dumb.

God and Religious Experience: Misrepresentation Allowed?

2007-05-29T22:27:00.001-06:00

Mormons like myself may have to consider a broader understanding of religious experience. Consider: if God revealed the doctrine of heaven and hell, even in its Book of Mormon form, and then revealed the degrees of glory concept, is it possible that God could misrepresent reality to teach certain principles? In this case, to teach people that we are responsible for our actions and they will influence our state in the next life. However, if this is the case... is it therefore possible that God has "misrepresented" or "reduced" reality to several different religions and faiths to teach incomplete principles? Could many mystics religious experience be from God/Gods? Just curious. Some could say no, and claim heaven and hell was just some theological idea prophets came up with to justify how God could be righteous and reward the good and punish the wicked. Others may say heaven and hell was always understood to be spirit prison and paradise (I beg to differ). Nevertheless, this pushes us to consider the broader spectrum of God's communications with man. Furthermore, it may be true that certain doctrines are yet "misrepresented" to teach principles. Thoughts?

The World of Objects (Macrocosm) and the World of Symbols (Microcosm)

2007-05-12T15:04:00.000-06:00

Eric, you might remember those silly drawings I made during philosophy of food where I would draw two worlds with a window pane in between them. The first world represented external reality, the window the senses, and the second world the internal reality. Initially I thought the senses could affect and shape both realities: and that there is a constant relationship between the two of them. For instance, the senses' communications to an entity about the nature of reality could encourage an entity to act a certain way, and use its sensory utilities (say touch) to influence reality by say, breaking the branch off a tree. Sorry if that was convoluted. I've adjusted some of these thoughts. First, I think I have neglected largely the will, which interprets the sensory data and with it builds the internal reality. This internal reality largely consists of symbols, a sort of terrain that is largely more flexible than the external reality. What I mean by symbols as that we group items from the World of Objects into categorical entities. For instance, if you ask someone to draw you a tree, most of the time they'll draw you a long, straight trunk with a green puff on top (resembling Ronald McDonald's hair). No tree honestly looks like that, but they've equated or reduced all trees into this symbol. They can't really think back into their mind of a tree to draw. You may experience this while driving on a road trip and you may have seen some grassy hills. Now, you can't probably remember this hill, but you've grouped it together with what you equate to be the typical "grassy hill." I think generally we take snapshots of the external reality and translate it in easier to digest symbols. But then there are those things that are more important to us, that we "pay attention to," and they are more unique both at the present or in our memory. These may be because of an imperative issue, say a cannonball whizzing towards my head and my need to truly concentrate, or a personal choice to use one's senses to not reduce the external object down to a symbol because one appreciates it or wishes to understand it enough. I think this may be why some memories are very fuzzy and others more vivid. Interestingly, I think some are less reduced than others--human faces, especially those of one's race that one is familiar with. Blacks and Asians look the same to me more than other Whites. You may notice this especially on how easily you can recall the faces of actors in movies you saw when you were six years old. Now this conglomerate of more concrete and symbolic engage our mind... but what influences the mind more? And with dreams, most dream theorists reduce dreams down to symbols, when if what is concrete exists in the mind and also if the concrete is more important, isn't this a huge mistake? Anyone, probably a confusing post but something to think about. I'll have to edit this and think about it more later.

Merrily we roll along...

2007-05-10T19:42:00.000-06:00

Why is it that people are so fixated on answers? I've talked to several people lately who will retreat into absurdity rather than admit that they simply don't know the answers to any of their questions. What is it about people that instills such a morbid fear of ignorance? Why can't we say "Gee, I haven't got the foggiest idea and yet I'll keep exploring in order to learn more". I don't know if it a social thing or more primordial to the human condition but people are absolute cowards in the face of the unknown. Someone was complaining about how if we accept certain propositions it leaves us without a base to stand on. What's the big deal with that? If we really are riding about on an uncertain universe shouldn't we learn to stand on our own?

Reduced Libertarianism and the Effects of the Other on Free Will

2007-05-08T14:31:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking a lot about the claims of libertarian free will that one can choose to do what one wants when they want to. Although this view of human freedom appeals to me, I don't think we're able to do as it claims. First, I believe our bodies automatically do things we are hardly aware of and choose to do on a constant basis--breathe, digest, and so forth. If I concentrate on the action, I can stop breathing and defacating, but overall I do not think I consciously make a decision to breathe each time. Besides this, there are many habits that we form that may originally have been established through free will, but afterwards lack decision. For instance, I lick my tongue and say "ahh" (sounds dirty, but it isn't), after taking a gulp of any drink, but I don't consciously make this decision. These sorts of habits seem to make it more difficult to apply one's free will. The same would occur with addictions. I'm not quite sure what the difference is between a habit and an addiction, but I will have to think about it. It seems that a habit is an unconscious action one is familiar with doing, while an addiction arises in the forefront of one's mind and one struggles with its occurrence, but one is also familiar with doing it. Hence, it seems we're only able to choose what we concentrate on. Next, life is full of distractions that demand our attention and our thoughts. This could refer to television broadcasts, media, conversations and relationship with others and so forth. It seems that many of the decisions and choices that we make are often given by our interactions with the Other. This could involve one person's ability to consider and think of the salvific mission of Jesus Christ, what ethics are and how we should treat others, what is appropriate for one to eat, and so forth. Now, we do have the opportunity to turn down the others. But they seem to construct what decisions we will make in our lives. If different others in our lives than those we experience, we might have very different characters and lives. Of course, without any world or others, we could not make any decisions at all. So it seems that the more we know and experience the more decisions we are able to make, and what are able to be more free in choosing them also. Moses says something like this in Moses 1, that after experiencing what he does with Jehovah, he thinks about things he never before had supposed. Perhaps God is greatly and growingly free because he experiences and knows much and more and more than others. Of course, the veil then is seen as hugely distorting our original agency, giving a bit of a clean slate as Locke (the empiricist) said. Anyway, those are my thoughts. And I think therefore that knowledge and free will have a larger connection than we give them connection and libertarianism claims are a little too great. I promote more of a reduced libertarianism.

Udderly wasted

2007-05-02T00:40:00.000-06:00

D&C 2:3 - Why will the world be utterly wasted at the coming of the Lord without the keys of Elijah? I've read the explanation in Doctrines of Salvation but I don't really remember it. Where is the causal relationship between the powers that Elijah brings and the non-wastage of the world?

D&C 3:1-2 - These verses suggest that God's infrustrationialism is because he doesn't walk in crooked paths. So...does he follow laws so perfectly that noone can stop him? This transfers the power of God over to the laws, doesn't it?

(Funny sidenote: "his paths are straight and his course is one eternal round")

Verse 4 seems to return the power to God. If a man incurs the vengeance of a just God, God is not just a judge in a preset law situation but the dispenser of the law itself. Ooch. Sure we can say he's both but that's like saying nothing at all.

Ok, in verses 5 and 6 it becomes apparent that God is talking to people with which he has entered into a specific contract/covenant, making the whole situation easier. When one is in a contractual situation the other party is given rights both as an originator and executor.

Verse 20: "be glorified through faith in his name, and that through their repentance they might be saved". VERY interesting. Most places in the scriptures it talks of exaltation (glorified) coming through repentance and sanctification and salvation (saved) through faith. This one gives them the other way! Weirdness.

Job rants

2007-05-01T11:15:00.000-06:00

So is anyone else sick of this crap you see in job posts and interviews?

1. Every post seems to have these "power" adjectives to define who they want for their position. They're always using words like "dynamic," "synergy," and "charismatic." What the heck does dynamic mean? Do they even know what they want? They've really got to stop quoting terms from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I think Covey's book has become the business Bible from Hell. They try to quote all these fancy terms and I don't think they know what they're talking about.

2. What's with all of the umbrella companies? Why is every office of theirs composed of about 50 people all around the age of 23? They always have this policy of whoever joins the company has to start from the ground up regardless of their background. And then they mask their company's work; they call it "marketing" or "advertising," when it's all door-to-door canvassing of office supplies like Quill. They respond to your e-mails a 1000 times faster than any other company because they want to milk you. Dang multi-level marketing crap.

3. Why is they always want you to have 1-2 years experience for an entry level job? Isn't the point of an entry level job to give you 1-2 years of experience? It's like trying to apply at a college as a Freshman, and for them to list as a requirement to be a Junior. No schooling required in one phrase, but have some schooling being said in the next.

4. What's with getting a job with a temp agency that pays you 13/hour? You work for that company and they say if you weren't with the agency they'd pay you 18. They say you should have looked on Craig's List, but when you look there, no one's offering it!

Wrath?

2007-05-01T00:24:00.000-06:00

Doctrine and Covenants 1:9 - "to the day when the wrath of God shall be poured out upon the wicked without measure"

This seems like awful strong language to me. Where does this idea of wrath and fury fit into mormon doctrine of our God? How is this constructive in the god-making process that God is engaged in? It seems like God is a bit pissy, frankly. Why is he so blasted angry? Why does he choose to use anabashed rage to vent his obviously powerful emotion? (kiss it, most unmoved mover!)

Perhaps it's merely a figure of speech to bring us to repentance. This raises huge issues. God is scaring us into being good? Wha..? Maybe it's just the millenarianism of the early saints peeking through in what Jospeh wrote. But we are to see this chapter as the word of the Lord, yes? Is there some type of prophetic quotational liberty at work?

The footnote takes us to Revelation 18:6 - "Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works;"

Why is the Lord doubling it? Does everything get magnified? Are we blessed more and cursed more in the next life for our current choices and actions? Although the idea of greater blessing seems tempting, how is it fair in a more universal sense? Is "she" being rewarded double because she rewarded the saints double or is it a general rule of thumb for the Lord's recompense?

In D&C 1:3 it seems to suggest that the sorrow the sinners feel is the open declaration of their sin, showing their corruption to the world and destroying any facade they've so carefully developed. Is this the "wrath of God"? Seems a ill-advised metaphor, they don't really connect in my mind.

Verses 13-16: What's with the "my way or the highway" attitude? Is the Lord so stuck on His plan that he can't allow others to choose alternatively? One cannot argue that the cursing is simply a natural consequence of the sin as the Lord seems to go to great lengths describing the fact that he is very active in dishing out the pain. A regular pain-train. The celestial punisher. These are not passive punishments that are unavoidable. The Lord is giving a smackdown. Why does he need to do that? It seems to imply weak character.

Verse 17: Total 180. All of a sudden it's a "calamity that shall come upon the earth", a very passive construction. It suggests that the Lord is simply trying to protect his children from the imminent and unavoidable destruction. However, he very emphatically declared that he's the one doing the punishing. Now he steps in a delivers? Weird setup for a growing process...

Pornography, Villiers, and Levinas

2007-04-25T08:03:00.000-06:00

So while reading Villiers de I'Isle-Adam's Tomorrow's Eve (a late 1870s work), I came upon the realization that electronic pornography through the Internet has created Hadaly already and broken down Levinas' concept of the Other. The story is about a Lord Ewald, who has fallen in love with an Alicia Clary, a woman who looks nearly identical to the Venus d'Milo. However, she is a heartless and cruel, empty woman, and so Ewald wants to commit suicide. He struggles with what he projects upon her (what he wants her to be according to the look of her outward appearance and what she really is). He visits Thomas Edison (the famous inventor), who he had donated lots of money to when Edison started his work. He explains his predicament to Edison and his intents to kill himself, but Edison urges him to quit his designs and join with him to solve his problem through the creation of the perfect woman, Hadaly. Villiers' Hadaly is the first idea of the "android," which would lady be spun off in films like Metropolis, or TV Shows with Data in Star Trek or in Battlestar Galactica. She is a woman made of completely artifical materials, but made to reflect humanity (another man made in a man's image).

When Ewald doubts his ability to fall in love with the android, Edison scoffs at his resistance (man seems to have this silly idea about being more virtuous by respecting the "real deal"). He says the following:

"You have declared... that the creature whom you love, and who for you is the sole REALITY, is by no means the one who is momentarily embodied in this transient human figure, but a creature of your desire. That is what does not exist in her, much more, you know it doesn't exist there. For you're not a dupe--neither of the woman nor of yourself. You deliberately close your eyes, those of your understanding, you deliberately stifle the voice of your conscience, in order to be able to find in this mistress of yours only the phantom of your desire. For you at least, her true personality is nothing but the Illusion planted in your entire being by the power of her beauty. This Illusion is the one thing that you struggle against all odds to REVIVE in the presence of your beloved, in spite of the frightful, deadly, withering nullity of the real Alicia.

What you love is this shadow alone; it's for the shadow that you want to die. That and that alone is what you recognize as unconditionally REAL. In short, it's this objectified projection of your own soul that you call on, you perceive, that you CREATE in your living woman, and which is nothing but your own soul reduplicated in her. Yes, this is your love; and, as you see, it is nothing but a continual and ever-fruitless attempt at redemption."

In these lines, we see the reduction of the other to the self. And Edison continues on to explaining how now Ewald can truly project his soul upon an Illusion (Hadaly) and get results: "You will see then how the Alicia of your desires will become tangible, concentrated, animated in this Shade... And then you will judge in your own intimate conscience whether this auxilary Creature-Phantom which leads you back to love of life doesn't really merit the name of HUMAN more than that living specter whose sorry so-called "reality" was able to inspire you with anything but the desire of death."

Later, Edison explains to Ewald the new and "better" relationship he will have with Hadaly: "Well, now, with the future Alicia, the real one, the Alicia of your soul, you will no longer have to endure these sterile and bitter frustrations. The word that comes will always be the expected word; and its beauty will depend entirely on your own suggestive powers! Her 'consciousness' will no longer be the negation of yours, but rather will become whatever spiritual affinity your own melancholy suggests to you. You will be able to evoke in her the radiant presence of your own, your individual passion, without having to worry, this time, that she gives the lie to your dream! Her words will never deceive your delicately nurtured knows how to make them. At the very least, you will never experience here that fear of being misunderstood which haunts you with the living woman; you will simply have to pay attention to the intervals between the words she speaks. In time, it may become superfluous for you to articulate anything! Her words will reply to your thoughts, to your silences."

Now, there's definitely something scary about this reduction of the Other, and the lack of interruption Hadaly can give Ewald. She is simply soul of his soul, mind of his mind. It's even more disturbing that she has rings on her fingers, which Ewald can twist and make her do and think things. One causes her to return to a black coffin and rest, which he can lock with a key.

So I began to think how sick it would be for people to have Hadalies, when I came to the horrific realization that many do in many ways through the Internet and pornography. People look into women's faces, hear their voices, but they actually never really see them, look into their eyes, or hear them speak. These images and videos, and 3-Dimensional virtual realities have no souls. They are only a reflection of the viewers: they see more of themselves in the faces of someone else. The computer buttons give commands, and the mouseclicks move the porn stars to other stances. These shades are shaped out of the image of the viewer's mind: they give them thoughts and feelings. But like with Hadaly, they can shut them up, turn them off, bury them back in the coffin, and cause them to re-emerge whenever they please. But it's hard to see how Ewald or the viewers could not begin to apply their relationships with the shades to real human beings. Levinas felt that the human face brought about ethical demands like not killing and so forth. However, what about online? What about digital media? Where the face no longer has a soul, but the viewer's. Does the 2-D screen, and it's lack of 3-Dimensionality allow us to demoralize ethics in humanity? Does the human face there say "rape me" instead of don't kill me? Does the distorted ethics of virtual reality bounce back on reality and cause us to produce shades of the others, and reduce them to the self? Just some thoughts. There may be many Hadalies. After all, 60% of the 600 million websites are pornographic.

It reminds me of a quote by a pornviewer in the book Pornified: "I don’t see how any male who likes porn can think actual sex is better, at least if it involves all the crap that comes with having a real live female in your life."

Egad!

2007-04-25T00:34:00.000-06:00

Ever have those moments where you realize that you're not terribly good at anything and significantly less interesting and amusing than you thought? When everything you are doing seems terribly silly and you're not even doing them well? It's somewhat like Heidegger's anxiety, and I got loads of it!

bleh.

Oddly enough...

2007-04-23T14:36:00.000-06:00

Funny thing happened today. I finally realized why certain people in the past have decided that enforced celibacy and/or becoming a eunuch could possibly be considered more than sheer lunacy. Formerly I scoffed at the idea, with no idea how anyone in their right mind could even think about it. Well, I think I get it now.

I was sitting in a student philosophy conference and I found myself distracted by a certain good-looking female in the class. I am really quite annoyed that I am unable to control my mind in that regard and that it distracts me from something I love and find important. Later, as I sit on my computer writing a very interesting and impending paper on the philosophy of food I wander off into thought about some girl. Why? Why is it so impossible to keep away from that topic. Right then I thought: "Gee, I wish I could just get rid of these thoughts altogether so I can focus on Philosophy". Go ahead, follow that line. Where does it lead? I suppose if you felt strongly enough you would find a way to repress the desire. Hence, castration, eunuchs, celibacy, etc...

So these people actually had a good reason. It still seems an incredibly drastic measure to me, but if you really, really wanted to focus maybe it would work?

Relations

2007-03-27T15:16:00.000-06:00

Levinas says that each of us encounter others in the world, "others" if you will. These other entities automatically make demands upon us because of their existence in our world. The first demand is "Don't kill me". Are we generally murderous beings that would follow that course of action if not dissauded? Of course not. Perhaps there's more than one way to kill someone. We have our individual sphere of existence that gets intruded upon by others. When this happens, we have the option of understanding those people by their qualities and nothing else. Our friend or acquaintence becomes simply "the girl with brown hair that talks alot" or "my roomate's annoying cousin from Kansas". When we do this, however, we essentially reduce them to non-humans. We are, in a way, killing them. We must see beyond these things and take people as actual people. This is the only way to create real and meaningful relationships. Why don't we? Because treating others as people automatically creates demands upon us. We're unable to retreat into our own little world and focus on ourselves. It's not easy and/or necessarily comfortable. And yet, I think if a lot of people (certainly not all people) really understood, they'd realize that it is in fact what they've been seeking, going about it in entirely the wrong way.

This is why relationships are so important, though. By having someone to make demands upon me we are forced to look beyond ourselves and recognize others as humans. I think this applies to marriage. Does marriage necessarily mean we'll be recognizing our spouse? Nope. We can just classify them away and 'kill' them as easily as not. In addition to this we can (with our spouse) essentially become a single ego and exclude others. We've all met those married people who have nothing else in their universe...not so good. This leads to the importance of children. When we introduce a third, it doesn't just introduce a third person that could conceivably become part of the conglomerate ego we've created, it seems to introduce the idea of other introducing even our partnership. There could be another child, another person at any time. We are opened to the fact that we have to deal with others as people and not simply have a Cartesian life focused on creating our universe and pleasures; we have to deal with the world that surrounds us, a world filled with other things, equipment, enjoyments and most especially, other people.

blah blah blah

2007-03-23T00:23:00.000-06:00

Oh my goodness. Today through Saturday the conference of the SMTP (Socity for Mormon Philosophy and Theology) is being held at BYU. I attended several of the lectures today and it was an astounding experience. Each of the speakers addressed rather important issues and did so in a very rational manner. The lectures were free of the half-baked ideas you often get in Mormon "philosophy". The best part was that after the lectures there was a Q&A session with the speakers where very intelligent people (both Mormon and not) were able to carry on brilliant conversations. It's like heaven. I'll attend lecures tomorrow from 9:30 to 5:30 and some on Saturday. Brilliant stuff, really.

On another note, I've been thinking alot about the Heideggerian idea of Authenticity. I'm not going to pretend that my idea is what he meant but it is what I've come to see it as in my life. People are generally inauthentic. In any situation they are likely to only do what "one" does in that situation. This is inauthentic. They are not taking a stand on their being as any decent dasein would. When we are inauthentic we take a generalized approach to a situation. For instance, if we are teaching, we teach our classroom in a general way. If we are to approach it authentically, we will take this particular teaching experience and focus on the needs of the students. In general life, it means doing things because you want to do them and not because it's what "one" does. Authenticity doesn't mean morality, it simply means that you are actually directing your own life. Everyone has the capacity for this type of living at least some of the time but it doesn't seem that many take advantage of the opportunity. I suppose it's scary as it requires facing up to responsibility for the quality of our life and the things we do wrong. However, how can you have a rich life without living authentically as much as possible? Seems so empty. I find that talking to someone when they are in inauthentic mode is dissatisfying. But, it's hard to find authentic people. Bit of a conundrum, really.

Guilt and Goodness

2007-03-16T00:10:00.000-06:00

Here's an interesting idea: Martin Heidegger seperated the idea of guilt/conscience from morality. He said that each of us live in inauthentic way in relation to the world. We just do whatever one does and don't live authentically. What happens is this leads us to not make real decisions about our lives. Life involves possibilities and we (hopefully) choose a certain way to live. In so doing, however, we choose NOT to do certain things. This can lead to a certain amount of guilt. Our decisions affect people negatively and when we don't make decisions authentically we feel bad doing so.

When people feel this anxiety and guilt about life they try to escape this. They try to escape this by using certain "moral" actions to assuage their feelings of guilt. "If I'm nicer to people I'll feel better". "If I pay my tithing I'll feel better". While these things may be true, Heidegger thinks that it doesn't address the real problem...if we never take a stand on who we are we'll never escape the tendency to hide from the anxiety. We cannot get away from guilt, it is a part of our being. But, if we face up to theat fact and live realizing that we have to make decisions we can at least live authentically and have a rich existence.

At any rate, it's interesting to think that perhaps what we think is escaping from guilt is actually perpetuating the problem and "solving" it in entirely the wrong way.

Chew on this!

2007-03-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

This is Richard Polt's explanation of Heidegger's thought on death:

What makes my life my own is ultimately the sheer fact that it is mine to live, mine to make something of, in the face of my possible non-existence. Every other possibility is something that I may be free not to do, and that someone else may be able to do just as well as I can. But my death is a possibility that necessarily faces me alone: no one can face it for me.

I think it's a very interesting thought.

Woohoo!

2007-02-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

Well, it took a little more frustration and work than I expected, but I've been accepted to the Fall '07 Vienna Study Abroad program. I was informed earlier this week that I had been accepted as an alternate, which I wasn't terribly happy about. So, I e-mailed the guy in charge and asked some questions about the alternate status. He wanted me to come in a talk and after I did and we cleared up a few things he admitted me to the program! Yay! I'm really excited to go. Hopefully I'll be able to not only enjoy Europe but work on my german and start writing a possible honors thesis while I'm there.

In other news, my intramural basketball team got destroyed last night, 55-29. Not a pretty game. The refs were pretty bad and it turned into a bit of a brawl. Heber was the only person on the team that could consistenly score and that just won't cut it! bleh.

Little mix-up

2007-02-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

Somehow my previous blog got lost somewhere in the vast underbelly of Google. They wouldn't let me access it through signing in. So, I created this one. Nice to be back, thanks!

Life's been good lately. I've been enjoying my classes, they're really quite interesting. My german is definitely improving and I'm excited about going to Vienna next fall. (I haven't been actually ACCEPTED to the program but that's just a minor technicality)

Went on a date last week (yeah, that's right, I went on a date). It was rather good. We went to Carrabba's and dominated one of their tables for 4+ hours. I don't think they much liked us but they were forced to be hospitable. We took advantage and talked there and other places for 6-7 hours. Time flies when you're having fun, eh?