Hey, Everyone!
Sorry I haven’t written in so long. I’ve been attempting to write in chronological order, and I'm about 2-3 weeks behind and you'd never get to hear about what's going on with me RIGHT NOW! Not to mention I’m up to Rome and that’s the trip with the haziest details (Hey! It WAS my birthday gift!).
Well, currently in the sweltering computing room ... okay, it’s sort of warm as I think the AC is just making noise to give the impression of actually blowing cool air. Very few places have AC in Europe and those that do don’t make it nearly as cold as most places in the US. My first night in Rome, it was cooler outside than it was indoors!
This is my first weekend staying in Brighton since I got here back in June. Sad to say, I’ve been a bit of a hermit though. It was PRIDE weekend in Brighton - the gay capital of England! That’s sort of surprising cause I would have thought Soho in London would be it, but according to the original Queer As Folk, Manchester (Canal Street) was the gay capital of England back in ‘99. But now sunny ol’ beach town Brighton is the gay place to be. My friend and I went to Pride in London and it would have been very cool to check it out and compare, but alas I’m “working” on my essays.
Yes. I have essays. One due each of the next two following Tuesdays. I’m taking an extremely fascinating class called either Freud and Fantasy or Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture. It applies psychoanalysis to popular texts such as novels (Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde) and movies (Dracula, Vertigo, Peeping Tom, Fight Club, Alien). It’s odd; each class, we enter as sceptics and basically our tutor converts us. I think I’m not as “stubborn” as my other classmates though. I’ve taken a lot of theoretical classes and basically, you don’t have to believe in them just accept that certain people think that way. Freud is often very far-fetched and he comes up with the most ludicrous conclusions and it’s all sex. Everything is sex. Another part of it is to find the unconscious of a text (sex). We had to find the unconscious in excerpts from Dracula and basically we were finding the porn in this revered novel written by a man who was anti-pornography. And it’s definitely there. Dracula is a pretty good book though (and not the porn, I didn’t get that far) and I plan to finish it...someday.
I’m currently supposed to be writing an (un-graded) essay on Vertigo, but I keep thinking ahead for my paper on Fight Club. I even read the work associated with that film so I can get working on it. I look forward to it. This class has been cool because it’s associated with my new favorite pastime: renting DVDs from the library. I was excited to find out that my laptop does play Region 2 DVDs so I was able to rent Queer As Folk UK, Vertigo, It Happened One Night (never seen a Capra film and it’s so funny. And that Clark Gable is a total fox), Quadrophenia (The Who rock-opera filmed in Brighton...with Sting), Eraserhead (...?...) and I tried to watch Fellini’s Satyricon, but couldn’t. It’s like Caligula with subtitles and no graphic sexual content. I currently have The Falcon and the Snowman and Clockers. I just picked them up ‘cause why not? If I don’t watch them, it was still free.
I think I will head to the student store downstairs and see if Fight Club is available for rent. I’ve honestly analyzed a lot from memory since I’ve seen it so many times, but I’d like to review the order of scenes and I’d like to do it before Thursday (when we watch Fight Club for class). I want to get a good chunk of this done before I go to Berlin. Push come shove, I’ll go online and find the script.
So off to the student store I go. I am going to make myself an abridged English breakfast for dinner. Basically, it won’t be a full, as I don’t have any bacon or tomatoes. But I will do the sausage, eggs, beans, toast and I’ll probably sauté these baby new potatoes I have in place of the hash browns.
I dread it because wasps inevitably drop in to see “What’s cookin’” and the alternative is to shut the windows and suffocate and die. Okay. Must leave now. Chinese girl is on phone with someone. My goodness, if ever there was a language that is nails on a chalkboard. Actually, it’s not the language so much as the girls that speak it sound so whiny. That’s one of the reasons why I hated my hostel in Dublin. Chinese girls cleaned the room and it was like 2 straight hours of it. I don’t want to sound prejudice or anything, but people who’ve heard it know what I mean.
Smooches all.