Loose Cans

Stirling, to be precise. Not like I have the faintest idea where that is. I have a 1:20 train to Belfast, a 5:10 ferry to Stranraer and then I'm counting on a teammate to know how to get to Stirling. I think you have to take a train through Glasgow. It's a tournament, naturellement, but I'm not playing for TCD. I'm playing for Wet Beavers. The reason for this name is that the sometime captain's name is Claire McKeever, otherwise known as Beaver. So it was a pretty obvious choice.

Don't have much time to write; I have to go home and pack. Briefly, though, a rundown of my classes. I am interested in two of them: my one-term electives, Faulkner and Postmodern Fiction (Sadie has dubbed it PoMoFo). This last is taught by a Dartmouth professor named Brenda Silver, and I've already gotten the chance to talk to her. We get along very well. Faulkner is taught by Matterson, the department head, and he's quite good, too. I plowed through 85 pages of The Sound and the Fury last night.

But then there are the four others: Romance, Renaissance Poetry (two more boring courses, I couldn't imagine), The Fable (doesn't get interesting until the Spring) and Victorianism. At least we read some Dickens in that, as well as The Importance of Being Wilde. Unfortunately, the first book is Jane Eyre. Kill me. Kill me now.

But it's Renaissance Poetry that's really going to slay me. It's not just poetry, either. It's "Renaissance Poetry and the Making of 16th Century Identity." Effectively, I am going to slog through bloated, bloviating primers on how to be a courtier. It's long-defunct English social mores. Why I, a confirmedly postmodernist young American, might find this even remotely relevant, I don't know. It's not poetry, it's irrelevant history. Worse yet, it's taught by this Cro-Magnon-looking creaure from the depths named Eileen ni Chullinnean (or something close to that) who, while apparently a very distinguished poet, is unfortunately the most boring teacher I have ever come across.

Romance is bearable only because it's taught by the department's resident loon, Gerald Morgan, who is a world-class scholar and former academic god of rock, but who is so doggedly attached to the notion that it's all been downhill since Chaucer that it's rather hard to take him seriously. He's quite a spectacle. Imagine Pasquale DeVito at 62 with the most perfect English accent ever. Now subtract the religion and add in massive wells of literary knowledge, multiply by reverence for the Medieval and divide by a solid helping of spite at the English department. Multiply again by increasing senescence and a sense of ultimate futility and you've got Morgan. At least he isn't boring.

In other news, we had a huge turnout at Ultimate, more than the gym could hold. We got something like 231 signatures, compared with 90 last year. Now I have to run home and pack, though. Here's hoping they have cheap single malts in Stirling. Oh, Christ, I have to deal with the pound again. I need a job that pays in Euros. I think I'm getting close, though. Let you know more when I do. I don't want to jinx it.

Today is the first day of school. Apparently. This is what they are telling me, but I don't believe a word of it. I am not at all prepared for academics; at present my attentions are entirely directed towards the more thorough pimping-out of this already tres pimp apartment. This is what is important now; until the pimping process is more or less complete, work, actual work, is not at all on the agenda. We still have lamps to buy, posters to pin up (we are thinking Dolph Lundgren as He-Man in Masters of the Universe, as well as Ed Wood movies. Did you know Dolph Lundgren has an IQ of 160, has a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering, and is a world-class black belt? He's like the Aryan ubermensch), other articles to buy, basically a lot of buying--on the cheap--is occurring now. Learning in the pedagogical sense is not. Come back to me in November sometime.

So far, though, things are excellent. So what if it's only been a few days and I'm already planning all my vacations (with the Sunday Irish Times came a little insert with the "20 Hot Spots," and I decided, on the spot, that wherever we go next, it has to be out of that book. I'm thinking Tallinn, Estonia, or possibly Stockholm. Blue eyes, blond hair, clean streets, antiseptic people. Looking ominously semitic in the middle of it all. My idea of fun.

The apartment is lovely, though the disparity in bedroom size between my room and Sadie's is so great that I've elected to pick up some extra rent, €25-50 per month. I'll start looking for a job tomorrow, when I have no classes. None. I have tuesday and wednesday off completely. It's ridiculous. But living together is perfectly fine, good talk, good food, good music. Auspicious.

Otherwise, everybody is well. Have seen a lot of Duncan, Stephen and Caitriona, and all are very well, except for Stephen's hair, which has gotten long, stringy and unkempt, and which is prompting all of us to threaten him with scalping. Living next to the biggest movie theatre in Dublin (my bedroom literally abuts it) is a big perk, too; last night I went to see Man on Fire in my pajamas and herring-bone jacket, and the night before that, Collateral. Neither movie was terrific, but I so enjoy seeing movies alone and in pajamas that it made me very happy. Maybe today, if I get bored, I will see an early showing of Layer Cake for €4.50. Ahh, productivity. I've played a lot of Ultimate, too, shaking off the rust. This weekend I'm going to Stirling, Scotland, to play in a tourney there. The team is called Wet Beavers. How can we go wrong?

I'm back. Each year I manage it. There's no renewal or rebirth, just a swift and mostly painless reintegration. Everything moving well together in the blender. I'm sure the start of classes will throw a few rocks into the blender, but the blender is a high-grade, retro Waring, very tough, and it's gonna bust those muthafuckas wide open. Word.