T8, ur gr8.

On Saturday, I went to the Tate Modern with some friends. I didn't go into any of the special exhibits because I didn't want to pay for them, and I've never really even liked modern art, but this was wonderful. I promise, Melissa, it will totally live up to all of your expectations.

We found some great little chairs for viewing the artworks and carried them around with us. I know it's what they're meant for, but you look like such an asshole when you unfold a small seat in front of a painting and just plop yourself down for a few minutes, effectively blocking the access of everyone around you. It does make for great photos, though.


For me, the best part of the Museum was Jill Magid's exhibit, Authority to Remove, in which the artist documents and interprets her experiences after being commissioned by the Dutch Secret Service to create art for them. After spending months researching them and becoming vetted herself, Magid shows them the document/novel that she has written, Becoming Tarden, and it is returned to her with many of her thoughts, memories and feelings censored out. The Organization (as Magid refers to them) then suggested that she put the book on display under glass in a one-time-only art exhibit, effectively turning it into a sculpture piece, after which she would return it to them along with all of her rights to the document. This is that art exhibit.

Magid ripped the spine out of the book before displaying it, an act that demonstrates her compliance with their wishes and their disregard for the dignity and autonomy of her artwork. Only the Prologue and the Epilogue are available to read now, but you can read them online via the link above.

I found the entire exhibit poignant and thought-provoking, especially the way that it explored censorship and the way that the act of censoring something often serves to imbue it with more power and meaning than it would have had otherwise. If she hadn't been censored, Magid's artwork would have been far less interesting, and her awareness of this fact gives her works even more depth. As the subtitle of the exhibit says, "The secret itself is much more beautiful than its revelation."

Here's another nice piece from the exhibit that refers to the ability of one agent to reveal the identity of another:

Outrageous Policies & Ridiculous Rules

Today marks the one-week anniversary of my arrival in London. I'm living in an intercollegiate residence hall, with students from various colleges in the University of London, not just LSE. We have breakfast and dinner available downstairs (but only from 8 am to 9 am and 6 pm to 7 pm). There are limits on the amount we can eat, and we don't have the luxury of eating both vegetables and salad -- we have to choose one. This morning I got into an argument with the cafeteria lady about whether or not I could have cereal.

We are encouraged to have guests over, at the low price of a pound and a half per night -- but they've got to be signed in before 11 pm. If you have a guest who isn't staying the night and you forget to sign them out before midnight, you get fined 10 pounds.

Every morning around 10 am, a jolly, non-English-speaking cleaning lady unlocks the door to my bedroom without knocking and empties my garbage can. We are forbidden from putting our garbage cans outside our doors, and the handbook informs us that "do not disturb signs will be ignored".

There appear to be no committees or forums for complaint or discussion. Remember 'taxation without representation'? Well, I don't think my hall does.

Today I went to the British Museum, which is free and holds all of the spoils of the centuries of British empire. I saw the Rosetta Stone, pieces of the Pantheon, and all sorts of mummies. English people don't seem to have any qualms about touching art and artifacts in museums -- I saw a child climbing a stone sarcophagus and a number of people leaning on statues as they posed for pictures or listened to a museum tour. It was horrifying.

In brighter news, I have a mailing address! Here it is:

Hughes-Parry Hall, Unit 1014
19-26 Cartwright Gardens
London, UK, WC1H 9EF

Pumpkin Pleasures

Readers, it's fall. There are only a few things I like about fall, and one of them is pumpkin. Pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, spiced pumpkin drinks, etc. In theory, I'm also a fan of "sweater weather," but in reality, I can't remember the last time I was cold enough to wear a sweater that I didn't opt for a t-shirt and jacket instead.

Last fall, I bought a Sprinkles cupcake mix on clearance from Williams-Sonoma in the flavor of pumpkin. This fall, I decided to make it.

Sprinkles claims to be the first cupcake bakery ever, and "the progenitor of the haute cupcake craze" (what?), so I wanted to try one of their mixes. The pumpkin cupcakes turned out delicious, but the real star of the show was the Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting that I made using Sprinkles' recipe.

Intermission.

Right now is my in-between time. I've returned from India, and I haven't yet left for London. I'm neither here nor there. In fact, I'm in Buffalo, my personal purgatory.

As I write this, I'm sitting in Wegman's, arguably the best grocery store ever, using their free wireless because I haven't any in my house. I got my hard drive replaced on Saturday, and I'm picking up the pieces: uploading photos, downloading applications, extracting music, and resetting settings.

I haven't much to do here, so I'm going to try to make a few batches of cupcakes and try some new recipes. For my first batch, I stuck to the classics and made some vanilla cupcakes garnished with evening glories from my front garden.

Untitled.

Angie's boyfriend, Pete, volunteers at Little Stars School. One of his main responsibilities is to solve English workbooks because, for the most part, the teachers don't speak English well enough to know the correct answers.

Today he found a gem of a sentence inside of Seasons - Class 5, and I just had to share.

Exercise C: Your teacher will read out some sentences. Spot the error in each of them.

2. We loved her soft pussy fur and wet licks, but what we loved most was her bark.

Pete just crossed out "bark" and wrote "meow" instead.

"And how was it, madam?"

In my latest adventure, I decided to treat Stephanie to a back massage before she left India as a way of saying thanks for all the help she's given me in settling in. I found a shop called "What Women Want", or "W3", and it seemed clean enough, with reasonable prices, so I made reservations for 2 back massages.

From this experience, I learned two things:
1) A good businessperson never makes a good masseuse.
2) In India, when they say "full body massage," they really mean "full body massage."
Let me explain.

The woman that I made reservations with spoke good English, and seemed professional and businesslike. I liked her right away, because you don't meet many people like that in Varanasi. She was also wearing jeans, which means she is modern and liberal. I think she was the owner of the shop.

When we arrived for our appointment, we were shown to a tiny room upstairs with 2 small beds, but only one masseuse. I was confused. I thought to myself, "I hope this one lady doesn't just walk back and forth between us." But then, suddenly, who should appear but the owner from downstairs? "Lay down please, madam," she said.

Because of her aforementioned professional, businesslike nature, she convinced us that we should have full body massages. It would only cost a little bit extra, and it was worth the value. Okay, whatever.

The lady then proceeded to rub my back with oil for a while, and roll a very squeaky massage instrument up and down my body. She asked if she could take my underwear off, but I graciously declined. I was trying very hard not to laugh the whole time, which probably just left me with a creepy smile pasted across my face.

I don't think that this woman was formally trained in the arts of massage, because she only used her thumbs once during the 45 minutes. Mostly she just moved her oily palms all over me. Imagine my surprise when she asked me to roll over, and then proceeded to palm my bare chest for a while. Just when I thought the massage couldn't get any more awkward, it did.

I never thought that a touch could be so impersonal, so perfunctory. At the end of the massage, she said to me, "How was it, madam? Did you like it?" I wasn't sure how to respond. "Oh, yes. Very nice," I mumbled.

As we walked out, Stephanie asked me if I felt like I had just paid someone to molest me.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

This morning, there was a solar eclipse around 6 am. Have you ever seen a solar eclipse? I doubt it. This was my first.

I took a boat out on the Ganges with some friends for the best viewing experience possible. Solar eclipses are considered very auspicious events, so there were lakhs (Indian word for 10,000) of people who came out from all over to see it and bathe and pray and whatever else they felt like doing. The shores were crowded with Indians and foreigners alike. Because Varanasi is such a holy city, tourists from other parts of India came here to watch the eclipse.

I took loads of pictures, but I can't upload them now because I'm using an internet cafe. Unfortunately, my computer is still broken, and now Pierre's is too.

All I can say about that eclipse is that I completely understand why everyone thought the world was ending when they saw them a long time ago. They look very eerie, and everything just goes dark suddenly in the middle of the day.

You're not supposed to look at the sun during a solar eclipse (something about the darkness tricking your eyes so that your pupils contract, leaving your corneas unprotected), but I just couldn't resist, and now I'm afraid I'll go blind someday. I kept sneaking peeks and then looking away very quickly. Pray for the the quality of my vision, alright?