Skirts are winter clothing items. Fact.

So I have to apologize for the lack of pictures contained herein. It's not a question of ability, mind you, there are photographs, contained in the convenient digital medium of a standard camera memory card. However, you must understand the camera itself is in my coat pocket, which is not in the same room as this laptop. There is a staircase. I knew you'd be sympathetic.

Having just indulged in a meal composed of fish and also chips, I feel I have become cognizant of exactly everything to do with the English lifestyle. To contrast it directly with the American equivalent, the lifestyle I mean, would be complete folly. Sure, there are similarities, usually in the visual style i.e., it may look like chocolate, and the texture may be very chocolatey indeed, but to say that American chocolate and English chocolate are the same is, as they might say, proper retarded. For your information, English chocolate is better. It's like the Americans had a vague notion of what chocolate should be like, even mixing the correct ingredients, but before they could create the product a massive earthquake sundered the very ground beneath them, and instead of making chocolate they ended up making complete shit. I'm not really sure how exactly the earthquake came to adjust the results, but seriously, the gulf is so vast it would surely take some climactic near-apocalypse to replicate the same monstrosity.

For the record, I used to think chocolate was OK. Not great, and not worth having in any regular fashion. I now eat chocolate after every meal. It's like sex in your mouth. I have absolutely no fathomable idea why English people stay thin. One comment I have made, which confused Christine greatly, was my befuddlement (fun fact: I had originally written "dumbfoundedness," but apparently the British English dictionary extension I've installed refuses to acknowledge its wordliness.) at the idea that English people are unafraid to eat. And by that, I mean eat crap. Are you aware of what a (full) English Breakfast is? It's fried eggs, fried bacon, fried sausages, fried beans, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms, and buttered toast. Fried. Sometimes, you may also get hash browns. It's a particularly violent way to dine the morning of a particularly violent hangover, which is every morning.

Anyway, while any self-conscious American female (heh) would never be caught dead eating anything fattier than raw broccoli in public, no such restriction exists here. There are always long lines leading away from take-away curry houses at all times of the night, and the German Christmas market swarms with people carrying bratwurst and other coronary atrocities.

Oh...Christmas.

I used to think a month of insipid Christmas music in every store was a difficult cross to bear. Recall Thanksgiving is not a recognized holiday in, well, any other part of the world. A damn shame, to be sure, but not just because others do not have holidays in which the entire idea is to indulge in ridiculous gluttony. No, because without Thanksgiving, Christmas starts November 1st. It simply cannot be described. We have been, for several weeks now, in full-on Christmas Advertisement Mode (tm). Lights, music, the whole bit. It's not even as if the good folks of Great Britain with whom I have spoken believe otherwise, or have become so steeped in tradition as to herald this holiday's explosion into existence the beginning of the eleventh month and the commercial horror it brings.

Worse, it's totally working. I am well aware that continuing exposure is going to get me really excited. But, thanks to my internal Christmas clock being completely fucked, my brain is simply not aware of how long I have to resist the siren's call. At this rate, I'll hit holybatshitit'salmostCHRISTMASOMGOMG right around December 7th.

So, if I start singing along before December 24th, you have my permission to slap me in the face. Or, you know, um...sing with me.

Love you all! More comin.

So I'm in Leeds

It's been far too long, I know. When we last left our hero, he was still in America. A place where, as I understand it, there are states.

The uni is a city campus, so the old and graceful architecture of the university is entirely indistinguishable from the old and graceful architecture of the city of Leeds. In fact, there is at least one libary here which has since been converted into a bar. Called, oddly enough, "The Library."

On one side of the city are a number of very large and ill-lit (in the perpetual night of northern England) parks. These parks are gorgeous if solely for the matter of their cleanliness, a fact which remains a mystery to me. It has nothing, I've decided, to do with the CCTV cameras which now number 1 for every 14 people living in the country, nor the 500 pound (that's more than 900 US Dollars for those keeping track at home) fine levied for the egregious infraction of littering.

I've compared the fashion-obsessed city of Leeds to sort of an English Montreal. Only, the city is quite old, and the persons therein tend to speak English, rather than French. Indeed, this confused me utterly (and still does occasionally), as I am now present in a foreign place, and I am able to understand the native inhabitants. It often surprises me, sometimes mid-conversation, that listening to the words being spoken will produce understanding. The idea that I would be able to conversate in the common tongue, while sound in theory, becomes further alien to me whenever I hear the jarring tone of my own accent being produced.

Communicative issues aside, the city is beautiful and I'm loving every moment of being here. Expect further updates from the front line in the very, very near future.

:)