Feel free to post comments. Just don’t turn this into “my religion is better than yours” because we all know my religion is the best.

• The best part about living with a bunch of people is when you walk into the kitchen/common area and start making food, only to realize that the two people who were already in there are discussing deeply personal relationship issues. And you just have to stand there while your steak cooks, listening to drama and feeling vaguely voyeuristic. I’m awkward enough already, I don’t need shit like this.
• Do you ever get little cuts inside your mouth? Like at the very bottom of the inside of your lip, right up against the base of your gums? And you can’t do anything but wait for it to heal? I hate that.
• One would think that it’d be really easy to find gifts for people in a foreign country, that my Christmas shopping would almost do itself. Unfortunately, unless you have a lot of friends who are really into tacky tourist crap, it’s actually just as difficult as doing it at home, with the added joy of disgustingly high shipping costs and exchange rates. I have a number of friends who are getting gift cards again this year; they’re the ones who are getting anything at all.
• I knew, in sort of a vague sense, that Harrod’s in London was expensive. I thought “well, it’s Christmas, if I can find something really good on sale for someone it might be worth it.” I went in and found a scarf that would be perfect for a friend of mine. It was £399. I had to double check to make sure I hadn’t mentally moved the decimal. For those of you in the US, yes, that’s a SCARF–a nice piece of fabric, for God’s sake–that would have cost me $800, a little over half the expected cost of my two weeks in Italy.
• It turns out that even though I tend to feel kind of lame eating alone in a restaurant that doesn’t have a menu over the counter, it’s actually kind of beneficial. I went to the Hard Rock Cafe tonight because I was in the mood for a huge-ass burger. The group of four people behind me had a wait of over two hours before they’d be seated. I told the host that I was there by myself; he said to go in and find a place at the bar. Bitchin’.
• As I was eating my deliciously huge-ass burger, two young ladies came in to try and find seats at the bar. There were two free seats, one on either side of me. I insisted on moving behind the pillar so they could sit together and order without a great deal of effort. They bought me a beer when they got their drinks. The lesson, guys: Be nice, you might get free beer.
• Everywhere in London is currently sold out of AA batteries, apparently.
• I saw a kid with blue hair sitting on the bus on the way home. On the back of his jacket was a patch that said “XS PUNK.” I’m still wondering if that means “Excess Punk,” “Extra-Small Punk,” or something else entirely.
• I hate to be the guy who comes out of his room on a Friday night to ask people to quiet down, but seriously dude, it’s 4 in the morning and you’re singing Anglican hymns. What the hell?

That’s about it for now, I think. I’m off to watch the Futurama movie.

• You pretty much cannot get anything done on Sundays in England. The Tube and rail systems have limited departures, the buses cut their running times in half, and the normally 24 hour supermarket closes at 4:00 PM for no apparent reason. This was especially irritating when the first night we were here was a Sunday, and it was much more difficult than it should have been to obtain beer.
• I really hate people who get impatient on elevators (“lifts,” I guess I should be calling them). I live in a 14-story tower, with 12-13 people on each floor. I cannot count the number of times that someone from the 13th or 14th floor has constantly sighed or rolled their eyes on the way down when the elevator stops at a few floors. Sorry to make you wait ten seconds to get where you’re going, asshole, but I don’t really feel like walking nine flights of stairs every time I go to class. If you don’t like stopping for other people, you can take the fucking stairs. Prick.
• You know how a lot of gas station and other skeezy bathrooms in the United States have crappy generic condoms available from vending machines? Well, those are all over the place in England, only they have actual name-brand condoms in them. This surprised me. More surprising, however, was the fact that one of the bathrooms on campus here has a sex toy vending machine. No, I am not joking. For anywhere from £3-5, you can get fuzzy handcuffs, a vibrator, “blue pills” that are apparently generic Viagra, a vibrating cock ring, and inexplicably, an inflatable sheep, which I can only hope is meant as a joke. It’s kind of odd. On the plus side though, I know where to go if I am in dire need of fuzzy handcuffs some evening.
• British Mexican food SUCKS. Seriously, don’t even bother. A friend and I went to a Mexican restaurant to see what it was like; I’m from Utah and she’s from California, so we were missing good Mexican food pretty quick. The menu was not particularly promising–it referred to a quesadilla as a “Mexican pancake stuffed with cheese and meat,” so we knew we weren’t going to get the authenticity we’re used to. I ordered a burrito. What I got was a tortilla folded into a square with ground beef and black beans inside and nothing on top. There was decent guacamole and pico de gallo on the side, as well as “Mexican rice” that was apparently normal rice, only with corn and peas in it. We asked for hot sauce; they brought us an approximation of salsa that made the whole thing about as spicy as your average frozen burrito. The food itself wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t Mexican. On the plus side drinks were half-price that evening. Also, I had the foresight to bring a large bottle of Cholula with me so I can at least make my own Mexican food.
• This brings me to another point regarding Mexican food: immigration. Say what you will about job loss, wage depression, taxes, social burdens, etc. Some of those are valid arguments and some aren’t. However, regardless of any other issues with immigration, I think anti-immigration groups in the US are missing a huge point: If we don’t have any more people coming up from Mexico, our Mexican food will start to suck. The reason British Mexican food sucks is because there are no Mexicans for 5000 miles, except maybe a few who come here on vacation and can’t even find a goddamn Taco Bell. The reason the British have such excellent curry, however, is because they have a large number of Indian and Middle Eastern immigrants. All other arguments aside, I believe in opening our border for the sole purpose of having awesome food widely available.
• Time Crisis 2 is really not that hard to beat. I usually stop playing after dying once, so I’ve never beaten it before (except maybe when I was like 12 or something). Today I forgot what room my class was in and decided to play Time Crisis instead. I had to put in a grand total of three coins, beat the game, and felt all epic until the timer told me I had spent just under 20 minutes beating the entire thing. That’s honestly pretty lame.
• I’m quitting smoking, or seriously cutting back at least. Not because I want to; I could honestly give a shit about all the health stuff. No, the reason I’m quitting is because a pack of cigarettes here is almost £6, which at the current exchange rate equals out to about $12. Much as I enjoy smoking, I really can’t justify paying $12 for a pack of cigarettes, especially if I’m going through two or three packs a week like I usually do. I may buy myself a pack as a Christmas present or something, who knows. It’s especially disgruntling because my flat allows smoking in the rooms, so this is more than likely the one time I’ll be able to smoke a cigarette while watching TV on my computer, and I have to quit (or at least limit myself to a pack a month or something, but that might be difficult). Fucking exchange rate.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. I’ll try to write something here more than once a month.

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What I enjoy about Colbert is his sense of humor which some people just don’t seem to get. That, of course, just makes it more interesting. When there were rumors that Colbert would be running for president after a New York Times article he wrote he appeared on The Daily Show and said he would respond to the allegations on “a more prestigious show.” Of course, a few minutes later he announced his presidential campaign on his own show. He announced he would run for president for both the Democrats and Republicans only in South Carolina.

There is a Facebook group for Colbert named “1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert” to make fun of similarly named groups for Obama and Clinton. Yesterday and within about ten days of the start of the group, it achieved its goal and has become the fastest growing group on Facebook (even more than “Students Against the Facebook News Feed”).

It will be interesting to see what Colbert is doing in a few more years.

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