confusion

I went to see Beaner this weekend before he heads off, back to North American and places where color has no u in it. We just kinda chilled out for the day. We went on a quest to find the island where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis took many a walk, and though we don’t know if we ever found it, we did find an absolutely amazing garden, filled with gigantic trees, and quiet glades. Then after a nice home made dinner we went out to explore the tavern history of Oxford. Our first stop was a place called the “Turf Tavern” build in the 15th century. This place has character—it oozes with it. The ceiling is lower than six feet and the tavern has a total of about 6 tables in three rooms each smaller than my dorm. But it also has two court yards, complete with ivy covered walls older than the US and pit fires to keep you warm when the beer just does not cut it. Then after deciding it was just too cold to sit outside we wandered into “the oldest tavern in Oxford”—the Bear, founded 1242! We decided that it was not in the original building, but the building it was in was significantly old enough to suffer from the same problems as the Turf, low ceilings and a sever lack of seating.

Anyway all this old buildings combined with walks through statue filled gardens and forest paths managed to bring out the DM in both J███████ and myself and we had decide to dive full force into map making and world building…

Note: the forum was removed back in the dark ages… That is all.

If anyone out there reads this and has ever been to the forum on Confusion, then you may like to know that I just posted a new forum about human cloning, and if no one replies to it in the next month I will assume that no one reads the forum and may remove it.

-beggs

After a few late trains (it’s a long story!) and many, many, many Hoegaarden Weissbier (the best beer in the world!) I have become an international criminal, for defiling a national monument!

At about 3am local time saterday morning in Brussels, C██████ and myself undertook and completed the covert mission we were assigned by Elliot from DC101. Here is how it went down:

2:00am—Scout the scene. A few cars passing and one or two pedestrians in the street. Off the a pub to aquire courage (for C██████). Notice that a nearby tavern keeper has left broom outside next to trash can.

2:48am—Leave pub and return to future scene of crime. Only see one car pass, but decide to take walk around the block to calm C██████’s nerves, and plan out attack.

3:00am—Return to the target, procede to scale concret fence post at corner of fountain/fence/building.

3:02am—On top of back wall of fountain, Manneken Pis still 4 feet away, he is still pissing oblivious to the whole operation (this is good!). Now how the hell to get the shirt( in back pocket!) onto the little squirt (pun intended!) Idea: the broom spoted earlier outside nearby tavern! C██████ runs off the retrieve said broom.

3:04am—Caroyln returns with broom, place tee-shirt on broom handle (broom handle through neck). Using broom to reach across the last 4 feet, (while holding on for dear life!) snag the little bugger!

3:05am—C██████ takes picture of Manneken Pis waring DC101 – “Elliot in the Morning” tee-shirt!

3:06am—Return to street level in rather ungracefull manner, celebrate with a kiss and return to hotel.

11:14am—Return to scene of crime; Manneken Pis is not dressed in a Trogen Soldure costume, apparently the Brussels athorities don’t like Elliot!

It was actually fairly easy to do, the only problem was we had C██████s camera which does not have a zoom on it, so the pictures are not close ups. And when we went back in the morning with the big camera they had already removed the evidence!

I will post the pictures asap!

As for the rest of the trip… It could only have been beter if it could have been longer. I had a wonderful time sitting in pubs till all hours of the morning talking about everything with C██████ over many classes of Hoegaarden beer (and it comes in a half litre glass!).

We also went to Ghent to see a friend of C██████’s; Jurgen, who is a composer. We had a good time talking with him and seeing Ghent, I wish I could have seen more of it, but since it was raining we went to see a movie. The coolest thing is that J?rgen is playing piano and telling jokes in a Caberet that is touring Belgium, so if you happen to be planning to go to Belgium soon check out “Een mens sniidt aan twee kanten” (go here to find out more, click on the mask then the name of the show for more info!)

Other than that we ate a lot of falafal pitas and walked around a lot! It was a glorious weekend.

p.s. The missed trains where all on C██████s side, but because here train was late she missed the last connection to Brussels so she had to go to another city and then take a cab to Brussels on DeutscheBahn’s money. The only problem was she had no way of getting ahold of me and I was waiting for her to show up at 11pm at Gare du Nord. The cab dropped her at Gare Central at about 12am. But to make a long story short we finally met up and made it to the hotel. But I just got a message from her that her train back to Jena was late and she missed a connection, so is spending the night in some random German town and will go on to Jena in the morning. Jesus, and I expected that the Germans would be all about on-time trains!

Because C██████ and myself may well be arrested this weekend. Why? Well here is the story:

Early last summer, (boy that seams like a long time ago!) C██████ and I were listening to the radio one morning when the DJ, Elliot from DC101, said he would pay $1000 to anyone who could get a picture of the Manneken Pis statue in Brussels wareing an “Elliot in the Morning” tee shirt. So come the end of summer, after much headache, and busy phones, C██████ got ahold of Elliot and told him that She was going to be in Europe for the year, and if he would send her a tee shirt she would try to get him his picture, he said he would still pay $500 for the pic and he would send the shit to her. One FedEx box latter C██████ packed an “Elliot in the Morning” tee shirt into her luggage and hopped a plane to Europe.

Now its been a couple of months since that happend, but this weekend C██████ and myself are going to Brussels to run amok and try to put the DC101 Shirt on the Manneken Pis. However having done some homework, I have learned that the statue is fenced in. So we may have to get completly trashed in order to try this (no problem, its Belgum, they have lots of beer!) Anyway there is a possablity they we could get arrested, in which case that $500 may come in handy, and the ability to say “bail” in flemish may be a required skill…

Wish us luck!

Ok, I cut short my beauty sleep this morning to go stand in the cold drizzle all day and listen to people speek out against the war in Afghanistan. I figured that I missed the civil rights movement, and the anti Vietnam war protests, so I should get my protest march experiance while I can.

It was interesting, the crowd gathered at Hyde park by the marble arch at noon, and listend to a bunch of speekers for a while. The interesting thing about these speekers was that half of them where from one or another branch of the Socialist/Marxist party, and they spend as much time bitching about the British government in general as they did bitching about the war. There where some interesting speekers in the park though, a profesor from Cambridge, leader of the Association of Muslim Businesses in the United Kingdoms, who spooke about the racist backlash. The only problem was that he focused more on the Palistine question than the war in Afghanistan. Speeking of the Palistine question there was A LOT of talk and shouting about that today. About a third of the signs people where holding up were anti-Isrial or at least pro-Palistine signs. There was also a lot of talk about the US not signing the World Court treaty, and a lot of intersting reasons for this where given, my favorite is the one about not signing it because Henry Kissenger would be the first one tried for his crimes against humanity in the Vietnam war. Another good one is the one about Arial Sharon being one of the first to be charged should the Court be approved (it has been ratified by some 40 countries but needs better than 60 to go into effect.)

After leaving Hyde Park, the protesters marched down Park Lane to Trafalger square where the line up of speekers got much better; two members of Parlement, an exmember of the Labor party, Yvonne Ridley the jurnalist who was taken prisoner by the Taliban, and the leaders of some Muslim organizations (sorry I can’t say the names, much less write them down form memory)

A lot more speeches followed, many of them very infalmatory, with little fact just a lot of “I’ll tell you why…” Some of my favorite where the ones to do with the reasons for the war, like “America wants cheep oil,” or “the economy is bad, start a war.” There where a lot off good points made about American and British society, and the problems the governments have caused in the world. But after a while the speeches broke down into America bashing with everyone saying the same thing, (of which “America needs to fix the problem in Palistine…” was interesting, and “Why are the rights of wemon in Kabul so important when the wemon of Saudi Arabi are just as repressed? I’ll tell you why, Oil!”)

The crowd was quite intersting, a lot of Muslims of all ages, quite a few ex-hippies, many college students (read new-hippies) and more middle aged people than I expected. The march from Hyde Park to Trafalger Square was filled with interesting slogans being chanted; “Hey Bush, we know you! Daddy was a killer too!” along with a lot of recycled hippy slogans.

Call me strange, or just a sucker for different cultures, but I thought the coolest thing all day was when the guy got up to sing the Prayer to Allah, or call to the faithful at sunset to signal the end of the fast and the time to pray, for all the Muslims who where fasting on account of it being Ramadan. The other really cool thing was one of the speekers talked about the talk in the newspapers about how Islam was an alien culture and religion to most people in the UK, but he said if any of them did their homework, they would know that the name Trafalger comes from an Arabic name, Tarf el garb which means “cape of the West.”

Anyway, it was an interesting day, and I took some pictures, they did not burn anything which disapointed me but oh well. I can tell my kids years from now that I was one of the 100,000 people in Trafalgar square protesting the bombing of Afghanistan.