The Agrinautica

   Deputy District Attorney Tim Wallace & I have embarked on a joint lobbying mission. Our goal is to convince the owner of the Fat Cat Cafe (Edna) one of these days to make corn chowder as the soup of the day.


Historicity
   Moving right along with the pre-Emosnail series, since I left off in the middle of a story:

   Tuesday October 26th, 1999: the day after the day I'd set about becoming the new best friend of the girl my best friend Alberto had a crush on -- After school Alberto convinces me to go with him into the band-room, which was known to be Oakley's habitat. The band-room immediately steals my soul and I am cursed to not go a single weekday without entering the bandroom for several weeks thereafter.
   In what may be a direct precursor to this livejournal, I end up writing a "weekly band-room rat report" on the weekly antics of the band-room rats. This report was compiled weekly through extensive interviews and research (really), and published in the weekly SWO Newsletter, which had a circulation of 700+. Though SWO stands for "Simpsons World Order" I got away with writing nonsimpsons-related articles for maybe a year before editor-in-chief Matt Mullen told me I needed to write about the Simpsons or get canned. Senior year I also wrote a weekly column on "the World According to Mr Drinkworth," who was a history teacher who would very routinely try to pass of retarded things as fact, such as "cold air rises, thats why there's snow on mountains." I also started writing a weekly Futurama report, since Futurama is awesome and kind of Simpsons-related. Anyway, eventually Mullen canned me, and the whole enterprize immediately went under. In preparing for this entry I searched for the archives but they're no longer on the internets. Mullen says he has them on a computer at home somewhere though so maybe someday they will be resurrected.
   I immediately launched my own weekly satire newsletter called the Chosen Echidna, which continued for a short time, and I reserve the right to resurrect at any moment.

   Anyway, enough of that tangent. So Alberto and I ventured into that dank cave known as the Band Room. There I ran into bassoonist Elena Jordanov again. The next day we hung out with them there at lunch. By Thursday evening Alberto called me:
Him: "Dude!" (which translates to "you're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you")
Me:  "Dude!" (trans: well tell me already)
Him: "Dude!" (trans: no really I have a great idea)
Me:  "Why are you calling me? we were talking on AIM"
Him: "Hey we should try to get Oakley & Elena to go trick-or-treating with us"
   And so we proceeded to work out some devious overly-complicated plot to ask Oakley and Elena to spend Halloween with us (which was the upcoming Saturday)
   The next day as we were standing on the band-room entrance ramp getting ready to put our devious plan into action, Oakley pulled out a "so, you guys should hang out with us on halloween."

   Continuing the Emosnail Prehistory series...

   I spent what would have been my sophomore year of high school in Sweden -- summer 1998 to summer 1999. I stayed with the family of Tony Bjuhr, the Swedish exchange student who had stayed with my family for the previous year. They lived in Kristinehamn, a small town of 25,000 on the northeastern corner of Sweden's largest lake (fig.1).
   Kristinehamn (literally, Port Kristine) was known for most of its history as "Bro" ("Bridge." The town was named Bridge. Wtf) until someone finally decided it needed a real name. It was used for loading iron on to boats on Lake Vanern. Now its main industry is production of turbines -- ship propellors and hydroelectric turbines.
   About an hour away from Kristinehamn is Karlstad ("Car-shta" to those in the know, Charleswood for those with a penchant for literal translation. It has 80,000 people, at least four McDonaldses, and an airport. When I arrived I came in on a Fokker 50 (yeah Fokker, the German WWII manufacturer) turboprop from Stockholm.
   Also of note is the small town of Bjorneborg ("Byee-orna-bor-E," or Bear Castle) about 8km to the where several of my friends lived. There we'd hang out in a small cafe, in which anyone can work for an hour or two for a free meal. The church in Kristinehamn had two tours, normally churchs have one tower and anything with two is a cathedral, apparently, but the second tower was actually the Bjorneborg tower, making it not a cathedral. Or so I was told.

   That year I attended Brogardsgymnasiet ("Bridgeyard (a yard in this sense is like a neighbourhood I think, a subsection of a city) High School" I was disappointed to learn it wasn't named after someone named Brogard, cause thats a tight name). My class's head teacher was named Erling (teachers go by first names there). He had also been my host-father's teacher! The school's headmaster looked exactly like Santa Claus, and in contrast to the Kilkenny College headmaster, was jolly and amiable. I think his name was even Niklas. I'm pretty sure that when not involved in his christmas duties, Santa Claus is the headmaster of Brogardsgymnasiet.
   Now thanks to the miracles of socialism, the school had an overly inflated budget (did you know not only is college free in Sweden, but students receive a stipend to attend... they get paid to go to school!). Unfortunately, when you take money out of the hands of the people and put it into huge bureucracies, it gets spent less efficiently. Thus, though Brogardsgymnasiet probably had a bigger budget than MVHS, it lacked the fancy things MVHS has like a video productions department and fancy auditorium and suchforth, but instead the walls were repainted every year and the floors cleaned EVERY DAY, among other things. Also there were couches in the hallways. MVHS in contrast looks a little like a prison. No walls are painted, no floors are cleaned...
   Best of all though, whereas at MVHS they start lowering your grade after the third time you're late, and incarcerate you if you miss a class, in Sweden its your own loss if you miss class or are particularly late, and presumably will be reflected on your tests if its really a problem. (In Ireland they incarcerate you if you don't turn in your homework)
   In Sweden all the girls are named Erika. The most common boys name is Daniel, but there are also a lot of Stefans. The funniest name that is common there I think was Pontis. Pontis is a fairly common name there. Pontis!

   Tony has four brothers. Andreas, the second oldest, was an exhange student in Costa Rica for the first half of my stay. Stefan was my age, we were in the same class. He managed to graduate two years later than me though. Ola was about 11 and already a ladiesman. Eric was five and taught me Swedish.
   Really. 70% of Swedes can speak english, so a lot of people resorted to speaking english to me when swedish didn't work. Eric couldn't speak english and never gave up trying to speak swedish to me, so I think he really is significantly responsible for teaching me Swedish. Once he pounded on my door saying he wanted to hang out with me, but I was busy. But I didn't know how to say "busy." So when he asked why I couldn't hang out with him instead I said (in Swedish) "I can't I'm... eating spiders!" to which he said "I want to eat spiders also!" ("jag vill ata spindlerna ocka!" I think the conversation is funnier in Swedish) so I had to say "but... the spiders are all gone" ("spindlerna are slut" ("sloot")).
   On that note, I was shocked the first day I walked into the school cafeteria to see the sign next to the plate dispenser flashing "slut" as people walked by. "Slut," pronounced "sloot," means gone or empty. Also on the subject, lunch was free in the cafeteria.
   Tony's father Sven-Goran was the head of the "Erection Department" at Kvaerner Turbine, the local hydroelectric turbine plant. His mother was a nurse.

   More Swedish adventures later. Now I'm gonna pack for the weekend in Santa Cruz.


Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Today: Getting Screwed By The Man II - and another beach bonfire and Taco Loco with Shasta
   Year Ago Today: Kristy is Coming to Visit!! - Kristy suprises me with a suprise visit. It was the strongest sauce. Also I rescue bees from the pool.
   Previously on the Prehistory Series: Freshman Year - 1997-98
   Next on the Prehistory Series: Sweden II - Angsty Situations - 1998-1999

   Today I went shopping for some nice semi-formal clothes with my mother. This was partly because my cousin Chelsea is marrying "the partner" in a month or two, but also because with all the things I do that require professional dress, all I have to work with are dress shirts, ties, worn out black dickies and polished docs (Which have a hole in the toe).
   So I went with mother to Stainmart and if she wasn't with me a surely would have shreiked and fled within five minutes because shopping for clothing is NOT my thing. I thought it was funny that Stainmart had two things in the men's clothing section: men's clothing (most of which was hideous), and golf supplies. WTF shouldn't that be in I don't know a sport supply store? Is golf a hobby or a sport? Anyway its not a clothing line, but they know who is shopping at Stainmart I guess.
   And apparently its impossible to find anything simple. I hate clothing that looks like its trying to be fancy. Elegance is in simplicity. Belts for example: I need a belt. I wanted a plain belt that is black leather with a brass buckle. Isn't that what a basic belt is? They had over 100 belts, and not one was plain leather with a brass buckle. They all had all kinds of stupid retardinated patterns and crap on them. People suck. Eventually I found a nice shirt and some nice pants, but the belt situation couldn't be resolved there.


To quote my mother: In other news: We will be hosting a French kid at our house starting tomorrow. He is allegedly 20 years old. He will be working as an intern at a local business. Once more a European will have his view of America skewed by living with us. Most of the others survived; wish this guy well. He moves into a house that is a disaster in terms of tidiness: there are computer cables everywhere, beehives in the living room, and the detritus of my classroom in the entryway. The only resident "child" has a 9 inch green mohawk. All of us go off to work each day, except, so far, Mr Mohawk, who goes out to coffee hangouts until midnight or later most evenings. I guess our Frenchman will be able to choose which lifestyle to emulate. -Toad & Frog report.


The Prehistoric Emosnail - Ireland
   But my plan for this entry wasn't to talk about the above. Much earlier in the year I had decided that I have a lot of stories from before this livejournal existed, that I'd like to get written down as well. So I resolved to start trying to tell those stories in chronological order. Let us start in Ireland in 1997:

   I went to Kilkenny College, City of Kilkenny, County of Kilkenny, Ireland. It was basically the American grades 7-12. Fortunately for me it was co-ed, a lot of schools in Ireland aren't and "you just have to make do" if you happen to go to such a school. There was also an "experimental" school in town that was actually ::gasp:: multidenominational, but this was a crazy experiment and many were very skeptical that a nondenomenational school could function.
   The Headmaster of Kilkenny College is (until this August apparently) Canon Jack Black, AKA the Black Canon. He billows around like Darth Vader in a cape (seriously a black cape!) and will not talk to anyone without an appointment (not even teachers I think). Kilkenny College, founded in 1538, boasts of many Lords of the Admiralty and other ostensibly famous people who attended it, but makes no official mention of their most famous graduate, Jonathon Swift, because he was a satirist and that we all know is not an honourable profession.
   Three times a week they had "assembly" in the gym, so we all herded into the gym, usually making cow noises to illustrate the similarities between our herding into the gym and the herding of cows (aomething you cannot but be familiar with in Ireland). The gym doors had a sign that said something along the lines of "no shoes other than gym shoes allowed in the gym," yet three times a week the entire school was herded in wearing their black non-gym shoes, I never really understood that. School uniforms (seen here) consisted of grey slacks, light blue dress shirt, tie, and a grey pullover for guys -- (substitute grey skirt for girls, subtract tie). So basically your usually wearing the pullover so everyone is grey and grey most of the time.
   Anyway, once I was tromping into the gym along with everyone else and my tie apparently wasn't tied right. Darth Headmaster Black, who was guarding the gym entrace like the ogre of darkness he is, pulled me aside and pointed at my tie. So I retied it and asked him if it was good. But god forbid he actually talk to a student -- he stared off over my head like I wasn't there, so I started walking into the gym again -- and he used Vader powers to strangle me yanked me back and pointed at my tie again. So I retied the tie and asked him again, but of course received the you-don't-exist response, so I slowly stepped away to see if he'd kill me with a lightsaber pull me back again but he didn't so it was kosher I guess.

   Another incident that highlights the difference between school in Ireland and in America was the time there was a brawl between the "Day People" and the "Boarders." In American HS, if people so much as look at eachother funny everyone comes running and the supervisors come speeding over in golfcarts to haul them both to the re-education camp office. During my time at Kilkenny College, a brawl once went on for the entire hour of lunch. Staff must have been aware of it but there was no attempt to stop it. About two dozen people would converge in a melee of fists and violence, pause to regroup and insult eachother, and rejoin in combat. For an hour. Then we all went back to class and got over it.

   So yeah. That was school in Ireland. I returned to the United States shortly after the 4th of July 1997.


Previously on Emosnail
   Posted Two Years Ago Today: Introducing Top of the World - and bonfires at Capo Beach... ah the Golden Age of good times with the Diedrichs Crew was just beginning
   Activities Two Years Ago Today: The 4th of July Party & Getting Screwed By the Man II - I'd say the summer of 2003 was the best summer of my life, and the party at Katie D'Agistino's place was one of the best events of it.
   One Year Ago Today: Photo Essay: San Diego - Went to San Diego with the parents for 4th of July, saw the San Diego sights. Took pictures. Check it out.