Good Day

Today was a milestone day. I made it through the entire day without speaking English. I even reacted to sayings I did not expect. Its like a game we used to play in baseball, pepper, where you are 5 yards or so from a guy with a bat. You throw the ball and he hits in back lightly. You never know if it will be on a line, a pop-up, a grounder, to your right or your left...you just have to react to whatever you are dealt. That was me today. It was so much fun! I actually think that watching more TV in Swedish has made a very big difference.

A Day in the Life

Today, so far, provides a good cross-section of my daily life in Sweden. I wake up around 7 am and practice Swedish in my room until my roommate leaves around 8:30. Its easier for one person at a time to get ready, and I am not really a people person in the morning (as opposed to all those other times when I am a people person!)...Then I do some straightening up around the apartment; dishes, vacuum, bathroom, counters, etc...This is basically because I think indoor cats are disgusting conceptually and they require ritual cleansing. Then I eat a breakfast/lunch and usually try to catch a train around 11. I also shower, brush my teeth and all that. Then I head either to the canal town, library town, or the city. If I go to canal town or library town then I stay at the same place for 7-8 hours working on my dissertation and then go home (assuming there is no world cup match I want to see). If I am in the city then I will usually rotate between the city library, the university library, kulturhuset (like a cafe, library, theatre) and a cafe...just to keep it interesting. I come home around 7 or 8 and go for a run. Midway through my run I get a stomachache that ruins my whole day (this has happened every run for the last week). Then I come home and eat dinner if my stomach settles, shower, and try to get to bed around 9:30 if there is no World Cup game to watch. In bed I watch dvds on my laptop on the off-chance that the A/C cable for my laptop is working and it will hold a charge. Otherwise I go to bed and do the same thing the next day...all seven days in the week! I am trying to think if I ever steer off this course...I go to the grocery store once a week...yesterday I had a stomachache so I stayed here and worked...ok, I am late...off to the city.

En Fästing!!!

Some may know that I have an insane fear of biting arachnids. Spiders are bad because they are most prominent, most calculating, and most malicious...but despite their prominence there are other biting arachnids that are much more horrifying, parastic silent killers! I am talking now specifically about ticks although all parasitic insects put the fear of god in me.

It turns out that the Stockholm area is crawling with these things in the summer time. In my area in particular, a bit outside of the city, there is no place that I cannot reach without walking through a trail in the woods except maybe the dumpster.

I run in the woods every night. You can run as many sensational newscasts about sharks, killer weather formations, people putting anthrax on the train...none of that worries me in the slightest...one newscast about ticks and I am in hysterics. The worst thing is that I understood only 30% of the segment, but I saw a guy drag some cloth through the grass and come up with like 15 ticks. So I exam myself every couple hours just to be sure (I also just watched an episode of House that my mom sent where a girl was dying from a tick...I can think of few more pathetic ways to go then being infecting by a non-sentient bloodsucking bug).

Some may say I am paranoid, eccentric or just plain crazy. Well, "just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you" as the wise Kurt Cobain once said! Yesterday I was sitting on "soffan" watching some fotboll when one of the feline demons walked past and I swore I saw something awry. "Falcon, komma hit!" I took a closer look...my worst fears were confirmed...a tick! If i tick can get to these cunning kitties then I am a sitting duck. I am nowhere near as smart as they are.

Uh oh...Lyckochansen is changing channels, be right back...What is "Lyckochansen" you are probably asking? It means "the lucky chance" and its the favorite word/number money-winning game of every Swede and non-Swede who is at home at 11 am on a weekday! They have three hosts...one of them is the prettiest girl I have ever seen so I have become a loyal watcher...when she hosts at least. Its not all fun and games friends, I am actually getting more experience listening to Swedish by watching this show than from anything else. Its near perfect because its a word game, its repetitive, and I can see and hear a lot of the words.

Yesterday Linda (thats her name, we are destined for each other!) told a joke and I laughed without even realizing what had just happened. I had not even realized for the previous hour of playing along that I was actually understanding what was happening! This was a break-through. I used to watch with the sound off while I listened to the radio...not anymore. Me and Linda's relationship is getting so strong that I am even willing to listen to what she says! This is a first for me :)

I got to go now...time for my lunch coffee...time to go brave the ticks!!

Lovefool

The general consensus is that I am "too skinny." Well, this is nonsense for several reasons. First of all, I am sculpted like a Greek god...like Zeus even! Secondly, I eat three squares a day. For breakfast I have orange juice and coffee. For lunch I have two cups of coffee, and between dinner and lunch I have another cup of coffee as a snack. For dinner I have water and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to go with my water. Not to mention that I am sure I swallow some of my toothpaste when I brush my teeth, and I do that at least 2-3 times a day! Kidding...I am fine.

Top ten videos on MTV in Sweden today is the top ten Cardigan videos. I am digging on the Cardigans this morning because I love the Sweden. The Cardigans are from the Sweden and demonstratively so.

I have not gotten to watch much of the World Cup since I got back to Sweden...thats a shame. The quarters are lining up nicely for some big matches. Sweden is gone, Holland is gone...I am casting my support toward Germany now although I am sticking to my initial prediction...the Argentine Thespian Society.

I had a funny occurrence yesterday in the canal town. I went there to read, but I had a letter to send so I had to find the post office. I had seen it before but could not remember where...the town is like 4 city blocks so I figured it had to be close to the station. I decided to pop into the tourist office to ask. The fact that this town has a tourist office is funny in itself! I asked the girl working there, "Is there a post office around here?" She said, "ja," and then I swear like ten seconds went by where I just looked at her and waited for her to tell me where and she looked at me waiting for me to ask where. I was not going to budge! I had obviously not come to the tourist office of this one-horse town south of Stockholm inquiring as to whether or not a post office existed there! (Whoa, "Lovefool" was only number 5...what videos are left!! I have seen all the ones I know...this is so exciting!). Finally I broke down and asked where it was. She told me, and acted as if she honestly did not know that I was trying to find my way to the post office when I asked originally if there was one near there!

Oh yeah, I took the skateboard on its inaugural run here in the Swedish Himalayas where I live. I specifically avoided the biggest hills, but at one point when I was coming up on 30 mph I had two thoughts. 1) I cannot stop now because when I take my back foot off my squirrelly trucks get a serious wobble going...I may have to tighten them. 2) I have not yet been to a Swedish hospital...that seemed like a bit of a pity.

It was one of those instances where going as hard as you could was the only option, and you have to do it well. This happens in surfing a lot...if you hesitate then you can end up in a bit of trouble. It worked out alright, but I had to make a pretty gradual left turn near the bottom of the hill and it was like making a hard bottom-turn on a big steep day at Blacks. I was completely squared-off with the front of the board (my shoulders were perpendicular to the board), and I felt like I was fully laid out toward my backside. I really think my left hand was about a foot away from the grass. I was really worried that my tail would slide and I would spin out but it actually worked and was quite fun.

It is odd for me to be in a place for almost two months without landing in the hospital though. In college I fell off my skateboard skating on the roughly 30 ft. wall of a storm drain. I have pictures from me and two of my best friends in the hospital. I had on hot pink sunglasses and my friend David had a picture of himself in front of some neon coloured painting with turtles and frogs in the children´s ward. In San Diego I separated my shoulder trying to stall in a barrel. I did not get to go to the hospital this time because I was uninsured and in America we have a first amendment right to rip off vulnerable people. So I was turned away from about 3 places before I settled on the PB Emergency Care Clinic where my fairly expensive wetsuit was finally cut off of me. Because it had been roughly 4-5 hours since my shoulder separated I had nerve damage and could not feel most of my arm for a couple weeks afterwards...I love American healthcare as much as American education of you could not guess. My hospital trip in Denmark is well chronicled. In London I never had to go myself but for a friend. I spent some 8 hours in a crummy emergency room, partitioned by a shower curtain, staring at some hideous painting while she slept. So I am due in Sweden, and I will be sure to keep detailed notes, eat all the free ice cream I can, and walk around in my underwear making unrealistic demands on the staff the entire time..."Can someone please move my chair in front of the window so I can read by it!!!...and I will take another strawberry milkshake" (reference to Denmark hospital)...

Speaking of Denmark though...I think I may go there in a couple weeks. I want to see an exhibit at the State Art Museum. I also want to see a couple friends...as good a time as I am having here sitting in silence, reading, and talking to myself in Swedish...it will be nice to go to a country where I knew people...not necessarily "where everybody knows your name," but as close as it gets!

Number one Cardigans video! Got to go...

Igår Var Bäst Dagen!

Yesterday was the best day I have had in months. I started by heading to the only open coffee shop I could find to fill up the tank for a day of reading the most inscrutible book I have ever seen (hence the previous post on the ad). I got a big cup of strong coffee that had me shaking like a leaf midway through. It was raining so I thought I would sit there for a while despite their incredibly uncomfortable chairs.

While there three things of note happened. First, I ordered in Swedish but then did not listen to what the girl said in response. This is my biggest problem with Swedish, not listening and having a somewhat tough time picking out words when I do. This has led to my revelation that I must not listen much in English either, but I have become so accustomed with the mechanistic way we have conversation that it does not matter...language is 74% anticipation. She asked "Med mjölk?" which I know...it just means "with milk?" I had to switch back to English and then the jig was up. Later on when you have to ask something again you feel stupid switching back to Swedish...you have been exposed, "please just give me one more chance...I promise this time I´ll listen to you!" The second was that the obnoxiously difficult book I am reading became engaging, beautiful, and readable all at once! This happens with Heidegger if you are willing to put the time in and make it through the tough parts at the beginning. The final thing was that I met an older couple from Southern California doing a 3-week tour of Scandinavia. They had some of my initial feelings about it (minus the dark and the blistering cold in January)...so I had a few nuggets of wisdom to pass their way as I have become a lover of all the finer sides of Scandinavian life. Very lovely people and a real treat of a conversation in my mother tongue.

I decided to move on because the uncomfortable seats were threatening my vestigal coccyx, and because the rain had stopped outside. In the summer in Scandinavia it seems to rain a little most everyday, but it also seems to dry up instantly. So I figured I would make my way down to the sea to sit and read a bit. Its a treat for the senses! The warmth of the sun pouring over my ghostly pale body (my self-given nickname is "the Geist" now...its at once self-deprecating and narcissistic!), the sound and smell of the fresh sea as it rolls past below me. It was a wonderful time. Fresh, cool saltwater air mixing with the warm and never-ending sun of a Swedish summer...all accompanied by one of the best essays I have ever read. Hypothetical London counter-example:

I swatted the gnats away as the sweltering heat and humidity beat down, before me rolled the filthy chocolate milk Thames River, hauling an entire debased city´s worth of cocaine from the night before. The air was filled with the pungent odor of sewage and automobile exhaust. As my body set to auto-immune self-destruction in the confusing chaos of toxins it was currently being force-fed, I opened my book. Just then I felt a swift kick in the back and I turned to see what had happened. A fat English man in a suit missing most of his teeth looked at me squarely and told me to, "F### off!." I heeded his barely coherent warning and got back to my business when I felt another jab to my back...I turned again thinking it was some thug looking to sell me drugs, a prostitute or in the process of stealing my money...it was the collection man, "That´ll be pound-fifty to sit here." I said to myself, "forget it, I am moving back north."

I am falling in love with this place more and more everyday. I know, I know...I will hate it in the winter. But you all may be surprised. I have come to like, in theory at least, the cold dark winters. I have always hated the feaux cheeriness that accompanied the weather in San Diego...I was one of the few people who loved "May Gray" and "June Gloom" because it cooled my living conditions, kept the crowds in the ocean manageable, and kept the human filth from East County out of PB. All I need is a few friends and the winter is manageable. I love my apartment. I could see me under a blanket watching DVDs on the laptop, or movies with my friends or roommate (who is also awesome) or just reading a book. We´ll see, but for now I am not sure I ever want to leave! Scandinavia is everything I have ever looked for in a society (I speak of "Scandinavia" as though its one place...it will be eventually when I force unification and the new language I am creating out of speaking all three Nordic languages badly!). They value education, the arts, a quality standard of living for all, peace and safety, efficiency (not in the stupid market sense, but in the sense of being orderly to avoid the frustrations of chaos). I want to be here to watch it rot from the inside as the London-US model of top heavy capitalism and bottom-heavy stupidity and soul-loss creeps in from the southwest ;)

Today I am going south to the canal town (I am going to start using names like that for the smaller places I go...since Södertälje means nothing to you). Hopefully the coffee shop is open, but if not I will sit on the canal until its time to come home and watch Sweden-Germany. A battle for the title of Nordic superiority! The Teutons vs. the Vikings...I am going for the Vikings in this one cause they are the home team...but I still love ya Tyskland! After all, it seems by default that the nation of poets and philosophers has cleared out some living space on my bookshelf...all of it, as the Germans tend to do...and won my heart. So really I am split today...just hoping Sweden shows up and that its a good match. So why might the coffee shop be closed? Cue the next topic...

---This week´s weekly excuse to only work four days in Sweden ("holiday") is called Midsommarsdag---

It means just what it looks like it means...a festival to celebrate the middle of the summer. In true Swedish fashion they clear some space out on the calendar by also making the three or four days around the holiday "holidays." Why work! Scandinavia wears its pagan roots more on its sleeve than other countries, and this is, I believe, a pagan festival. Christianity usually melded with paganism and then covered it over...how many Christian events happen to occur on solstices? I do not know much about Midsommarsdag except that its beautiful out today, the sun is not setting ever at this point (technically it does, but at the darkest point in the night you could go out and toss a dark blue baseball without problems). It also seems to be occasioned by flowers all over the place...I am a lover of the flower as I have said in the past (see the Denmark blog). Girls put flowers in their hair, which is very cool...I do not really know what guys do, but I am an American guy in Sweden, I have no real excuse for knowing what guys do.

In a way I feel bad for Scandinavia guys...eventhough they are all a foot taller than me...they really contribute nothing to their society! Just kidding, I am friends with Scandinavian guys who may be reading this...we all know that, genetically, you are at least half-responsible for bringing Scandinavian girls into the world and thats doing more than enough...

Off to the canal town! Ha en jättebra Midsommarsdag!

A Disorienting Moment (Warning: I am working with the Swedish by memory in the following...I will correct errors and replace them if necessary)

"Frys Ögonblicket!"

The above quote translates to "Freeze the Moment" in English. This was on a poster at a major chain coffee shop that I went to today in Stockholm. This slogan, as a marketing campaign at a Swedish chain coffee shop, is one of the most extraordinarily odd things I have ever seen. Allow me to explain.

It is obviously a play on the Latin phrase "Carpe Diem!" This would be most accurately translated in Swedish as "Grip Dagen!," which means "Seize the Day." In the slogan from the coffee shop they are playing on the phrase "Seize the Moment," or "Grip Ögonblicket" in Swedish. The advertisement is pushing a line of frozen coffee/tea beverages for the summer months. The phrase "Frys Ögonblicket!" translates to "Freeze the Moment!" in English. It seems clever and appropriate in many ways, but I hope everyone is starting to see how strange this is.

In order for the pun, "Frys Ögonblicket," to have the sense that it ought to have it must be translated into English. When it is rendered "Freeze the Moment" it becomes clear that it is playing on the phrase "Seize the Moment." In Swedish it lacks this sense altogether. The two Swedish phrases, "Frys Ögonblicket" and "Grip Ögonblicket," are not the phrases that are intended in the advertisement. Rather this is a Swedish ad directed at a Swedish demographic, which relies on being rendered instantaneously and transparently into its English equivalent. It would mean nothing to the average English speaker with no Swedish training, and it would not be a very effective marketing campaign if it required a translatory effort by its Swedish target.

I cannot convey how bizarre it seems to me, as a native English speaker, to have your language so pervaded by the alien that a marketing campaign, which is obviously researched and directed for effectiveness, assumes such insideness of a foreign language as to have a pun that requires almost a threefold translation without effort. What does this say about the Swedish experience of their own language? Well, it suggests to me that the average Swede does not speak a Swedish that relates to English as a vertical or layered relationship (requiring conscious translation in each instance). Rather it would seem that for Swedes English and Swedish co-exist in the same linguistic structure!

I have mentioned before that language is often understood today, structurally, as a relational web. Words are not "word-things" that are linked to one another, and then the material world, by linguistic fibers. The entire structure itself is a nondiscrete web in which the name or word serves to take hold for a moment of a more playful and loose linguistic entity which is "carried over" into knowledge through a solidifying metaphor...the "concept" ("metaphor" derives from a Greek word for "carrying over"). The common understanding that a word gets its "sense" or meaning by naming some substantial thing in the material world is not the case. Words mean because of the way they relate to other words. Words are not so static as to make a one-to-one relationship to phenomena (which themselves may in turn only seem so static by the illusory stasis of the word) ...they only seem to be static by virtue of their forgotten poesy...we forget we are working with a metaphor that only takes hold of, for the moment, (Carpe Diem!) a fluid relational web.

Let us take for an an example the word "carpe" itself, which does not literally translate to "seize," but in any case the idea of seizing or laying hold is satisfactory. Think of another word that shares a root with carpe...carpals, which is the name for the bones in our hands. Very often we use metaphors on grasping or laying physical hold of things in order to suggest the meaning of understanding or willing (comprehension, apprehension both share a root with "prehensile," which describes the way our thumbs move so as to make "taking hold" more effective). So the notion of seizing a moment, or a day, which is clearly not literally a grabbing the moment with your hand is a forgotten metaphor on laying physical hold of something with the hand. So much more forgotten because it is taken over anew from an old and foreign language.

The best quote I can think of to describe the web-nature of the linguistic is from Nietzsche in his essay "On Truth and Lying in an Non-Moral Sense." The example itself lays hold of a lovely metaphor that retains its vigour, its vitality, rather unlike "the illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour..." Of the loose and relational character of language, Nietzsche says the following:

"One can certainly admire humanity as a mighty architectural genius who succeeds in erecting the infinitely complicated cathedral of concepts on moving foundations, or even, one might say, on flowing water; admittedly, in order to rest on such foundations, it has to be like a thing constructed from cobwebs, so delicate that it can be carried off on the waves and yet so firm as not to be blown apart by the wind."
Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense."

So again, what does it mean for the linguistic experience of a Swede to have a structure so invaded by the "alien?" And I will not even go into the hotly contested space of what a unique linguistic experience can say about the being of he who dwells within it! Gadamer says that a language is operating properly when it disappears or is transparent behind its use. One only endeavours "into" the nature of the language as an abstraction when something has broken down, or as someone who has managed to step "outside" in a way. Of course, one does not ever delve into a language in order to consider it scientifically, because such an undertaking always is, was, and will be within the language. For the same reasons one never steps out. But, anyone who has ever taken up learning a foreign language will realize how the transparency of his/her own language is rendered conspicuous at times. In this case, however, the advertisement has to rely on the ability of the average Swedish speaker to have already so sufficiently fused with English as to relate alongside, or within it, rather than above or under! This would appear to be a fundamentally alienated language, or an entirely new language altogether.

Something That Bothers Me

When people order coffees that look like ice cream.

Worthless

After years of exposure to university exams I think I may have developed an immunity to them. I am test-proof. It speaks a great deal to how stupid it is to give graduate students exams. After eight years of university education at a fairly high level it may well be the case that I have learned absolutely nothing except how to do well on exams...so why keep making me do them? Especially since I have been studying philosophy...I can take an essay exam on anything and if the person grading the exam is not a philistine or a lawyer then I can make an issue of it metaphysically and write a fine essay about it.

I have a good, but spotty memory. So if you ask me about what Iris Marion-Young thinks if the link between individualism and autonomy in liberalism then I will remember the essay and a few quotes. I will put those quotes in there and a few sentences about them...then I will take a bow, turn around, and whistle for the cavalry. At this point everyone from Heraclitus to the Supreme Court of the United States will fire a round into the essay if need be.

What is that you ask, should group rights be protected over individual rights or the other way around? Well, I do not know much about all that practical mumbo-jumbo, but I can tell you a little bit about significance, consciousness, the self and possibility. Does she suffer from "false consciousness," and is this why she submits to oppressive treatment? Enough about her, let me tell you what I think about consciousness and why it is so hard to say whether or not someone's consciousness is "true" or "false."

First of all, it is not quite clear what model of truth you are working in (and it does not matter cause I am equipped to complicate everyone one of them), but I am prepared to suggest that consciousness itself is false or un-natural. Because we are a fallen creature, we are conscious...to become conscious, aware, is to fall from grace. This is why Adam and Eve covered themselves when they partook of "knowing ." To clothe one's self, to be clothed in a self, to be a self, the first falseness and now we are dealing with a new level of verity that deals in "significance."

As Aristotle says, we percieve particular things sensually, we know the generalities we derive inductively after retaining sense perceptions and recognizing likeness. The first order ability of the conscious-knower is an artistic rendition of the known, then we interpret this and we know. Furthermore, this happens in society, in liguistic communities, and outside of society man is "either beast or god, but no man." So we false animals, can we have a "true consciousness?"

When someone suggests that someone is falsely conscious they are speaking more about the motivation of actions than consciousness. To adopt a common term, they are suggesting that, rather than acting according to their own will, they are taking over the directive of a more dominating will (best illustration of "false consciousness" is Sartrean "bad faith"...real false consciousness is the Marxian idea of consciousness being superstructural epiphenomena that does not accurately reflect awareness of the real structural existence). What does it mean to have a will in this sense? Again, we are working in consciousness, that realm of signification the fallen beast has given to the world he dwells within, to have a will it would seem is to press into possibility a choice made available by the various significances that make up your world. You can never have your own meaning (Wittgenstein--"private language"), hence you cannot have your own transcendental will that presses its own spontaneous meaning into possibility...such is, quite literally, incoherent.

What does it mean for her to be falsely conscious? It means she is conscious...she is human...and she is in existential need of redemption like all of us.

More English Incompetence

In the middle of our exams, and for two days now, the network here at the LSE has not functioned properly. No word from the university of when we will be able to access classnotes, our notes, old exams, email...not that it matter cause I have an exam in 2 hours for which I have not been able to get any of the information I need. Maybe they will send me an invoice to remind me of what I have paid so much money to this university for.

A Portrait of the Artist

A rather unfortunate marriage has occasioned the popular conception of the artist. What remains is a bizarre hangover from Romanticism merged with idiotic armchair Freudianism. This was almost inevitable. The Romantic idea of "genius" springs from Kant's use in the 3rd Critique as one through whom nature speaks. This melded all too well with Nietzschean/Schopenhauerian ideas of a primordial Will that is somehow tapped into directly through the new prophet, the artist (they did not make this leap explicitly...their prioritizing of the artist, juxtaposing him with the saint, and metaphysics of the will were adjoined to the Kantian idea of Genius...now the Primal speaks through the artist). Now it is one small step to explicitly claiming that this primal is the "Unconscious" Freud and others around his time spoke of. The fallout of all this is a metaphysical/aesthetic idea of artistic genius joined to a psychological conception of the unconscious. All that is left is to "torture" the genius and Romanticize the psychological. First the Romantic is psychologized and then the psychological is Romanticized. We are left with a notion of a man privy to the churning darkness that is the unconscious and fatally flawed existentially and psychologically as a result. What the artist has really suffered here is the stupid mythologizing of the small but popular mind.

English Incompetence

Almost lost in the whining of the English football players about the heat in Germany, and the press whining about Sven's subsitution of Michael Owen is the fact that the British police seem to have, again, shot someone based on bad intel about terrorism.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5075352.stm

Last year they killed a Brazilian man, lied about it for weeks, and are still sorting this out. The UK government is even more incompetent than ours. They do absolutely nothing to stop the rampant drugs, crime and prostitution that crawls all over the disgusting streets of this city. Yet, if you just call the Met and suggest someone with a beard and a long last name who lives in east London has acted suspiciously its the shootout at the OK Corral. They paste it all over the news about how the police have conducted a raid and shot a suspected terrorist, yet you hardly hear a week and a half later that the boneheads have found nothing after tearing the house to pieces and have been required to release the "terrorists."

Maybe England should just give up on policing and focus on the only thing they do well, make money off of making as many transactions as possible...making money out of money! The national health care system is a wreck, the justice system is a wreck, the police are idiots, the streets are overrun with crime, and the government alternates between corruption, incompetence and impotence. God save the queen! What a fallen nation. The world's biggest bank really. And as word is released today that America has seen its biggest increase in violent crime in almost two decades, does anyone still doubt why this ceaseless critic of peoples and societies wants to stay in the best society he has yet to find?

A Lesson

The word "arche" means "command" roughly...so our word "anarchy" (an-arche) means without a command basically.

People are Strange

I do not have a key to my old apartment, and 3 out of the 4 days I have been here I have ended up outside in the parking lot for 3-5 hours. I am so ready to go back to Sweden. I have a test today and I am tired. I have a massive stomachache too, and I am not prepared.

I have noticed something odd, but kind of good. Swedish people do not seem to speak English as well as Danes. This is good cause it makes learning the language a little easier. They all seem to speak English, especially younger people in the cities...but they are not comfortable speaking English. I met someone from Sweden yesterday while I was trying to pass the time waiting to get into my apartment and even here in London she was not comfortable speaking English (to be fair not that many people speak English in London).

One funny thing people do when they realize that you speak a little bit of their language is they get this semi-devious, semi-entertained smile and tell you to "Start saying things in Swedish." Do people not understand that language does not really work that way...start saying what? Its a bit like someone finding out that you like to run from time to time and then they suspend you in mid-air, smile, and say "let's see you do some running." Language has a complex and multidirectional substrate...take a lot of that away and then demand that someone start crawling around linguistically and you will find a problem.

There is a guy in here who I think lives here (I am in the library). I see him here every single time I come here no matter when it is. He is in my department and I don't like him at all. Usually I start out not liking people in my department and see if it turns out that they are not bad...students are generally not very fun...especially when they are becoming "academics." The stereotype of superabundant self-love is fairly accurate. This guy is even worse though. He is about 50 so his standard intellectual self-importance is amplified by thinking that being old is also a philosophical quality. My question is how do you work so long in philosophy and still not get a bit of it. Philosophy is really funny...it is a lot like the old Socratic saw of needing to first admit that you know nothing (and usually ending in aporia!)...but it doesn't happen methodologically.

"Ok, time to read Being and Time....wait...'I do not know anything'...alright now I am ready."

Its more a state you fall reluctantly into I think...then you know you are done. People work in these two levels alongside each other. The people who have not yet allowed themselves to be carried off by what we do, and those who have...It is really terrible to have to sit in a class with the former. This guy falls into that category...not a wit of curiousity and not even an eye turned toward authenticity...just joyless plagiarism. I got so sick of hearing him talk at some point that I wanted to drop the class.

They suck you into their debased level of doing philosophy though too. I never talk in class anymore...I am really tired of going to them and I find your best use of time is to just sit in the corner and read while the circus goes on in the near-distance. This guy was almost enough to get you to talk though, but it would be on that level. I remember thinking at one point while he was spouting off on what was wrong with what we had read the night before (they always have some dogma too that provides their spin on everything....you can usually sub out "I think..." for "Hegel thinks," or "Adam Smith thinks," etc...) So he was carrying on one day and all I could think was that this would not even be interesting if it were right...the guy had clearly not even read the book, and if the book he was offering his daft critique of even existed then both it and the criticism would be a waste of my time...so it was a "waste of time" and a "meta-waste of time" in one package...he is also ugly.

Blaaaah!

A bag of candy sounded like a good idea two hours ago. Afterall, its good late night studying grub to grind on. Yeah, it sounded like a good idea. Now I feel like I am going to throw up (maybe its this stupid garbage I am studying though). I just had to go to the 4th floor of the library...I don't use elevators out of principle...the library has one stair case, its spiral with wedge-shaped stairs. This is easily the most idiotically designed building I have ever been in. It looks like a hospital room, everywhere is either too cold or too hot, there is not a single comfortable seat in the whole building. There are no independent study seats (this is important because I hate sleeping at a table with three people I do not know...but since there are no couches or comfortable seats on this entire campus sleeping on tables is compulsory). The staircase is like a gradual knee-injury...but the point is that my nausea from downing a bag of pure sugar has been brought to a climax by climbing up and down that dizzying staircase. Now I am tired, sick and at a wall for today so I want to go home...but I don't have one!! I have a couch in the dump I used to live in. My ex-roommates have a party or mini-party every single night, try sleeping in the very middle of that. People wonder why I would just come up with excuses to stay at other people's apartments while I lived here...