back in the city of nouveau york

so anyone not in new york must by definition suck because new york is the centre of the universe. and that aint a lie. cnn is mad annoying, can they try to report more than 5 stories the whole day? jeez.

oh so i went to budapest this week, very groovy. matt, emily and i hit up the shizzy after james's 21st on friday which translated into the sweet 48 hours of no sleep, arriving in hungary totally shattered but that didnt stop us from enjoying some quality goulash. it was coooold there, around same as new york but london is considerably warmer so yeah. plus we were doing a lot of walking around and siteseeing so after a day in that weather (around 5 below centigrade) we were very welcoming to BATHE hungarian style which was exciting to say the least. mad old fat floppy men jumping around in a big room together and just about every permutation of weirdness you can think of was live in practice. parliament was cool as well, half of it is rented out because when it was built they had an upper and lower house whereas now they just have a lower house so the upper house (which is identical to the lower house) can be had for 20,000 euros per day, just about the same price as bush's signature on the bill of your choice. met up with these 2 guys from warwick, another university in england, and they were cool, had a good night out with them and so on. mad soviet style shit going down in budapest but the nightlife is fairly western (although then again being western myself maybe i was self-selecting such venues) and the people were generally nice with a few exceptions (the staff in the baths were awful!) so all in all a nice trip.

london came on 14th, ny on 15th, all i needed was tokyo on 16th but alas i missed the proverbial boat, because its already the 17th and im still in new york (and because what boat could get you from new york to tokyo in one day?? get a grip man). ah ran into goluskin and matt katz on 9th and broadway last night with sam, wow i must've not seen him since stuy because he's changed quite a bit (physically i mean, voice changed, taller, facial hair) so that was cool. also saw joanna roth last night which was also pretty cool, hit up the 86st diner frozen in the 20th century.

im reading the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (amalia!) and its pretty good but i only read it on airplanes or so far at least thats been the case but i read like 30 pages of it and then dont want to keep going cuz then it'll be over and that would kinda suck. :( i dont think i'd like to have a child with behavioural problems. the strand bookstore is your friend.

come home soon peoples!!

have you ever

looked in your pocket and pulled out a receipt from "THIRD DEGREE" for "LONDON IRISH-- £5.00"? ya so i did and i have absolutely no idea where this came from which leads me to the conclusion that on the 23rd of october i must've had a pretty good time.

excellent

so now i'm caught up with everyones blog, including bruce's which as of november 14th 1:07 GMT tells me that he has lots of stories to tell us... on september 5th. penis.

so sunday morning is the perfect blogtime. no matter how much work there is to do, on a sunday morning you have an unlimited amount of time to do whatever you want until it gets dark at around 5 at which point you realise that you're fucked and someone lied to you when they told you unlimited time exists. i liked lina's economic blog on healthiness and so on (lina see coment i left). right so im cold let me try to sort that out.

peculiar thing: sky news here in the UK is owned by news corp aka rupert murdoch aka satan right. but. whereas in the US his faux news channel exists for the exclusive function of eliciting ejaculation from george bush and the republican party, here sky news interviewed tony blair a couple days ago totally giving him shit about how the mission in iraq was inappropriate and elections will be unfair citing the US's lack of recognition of arafat (and the UK following suite) as an example where elections will only be recognized by the US/UK if the elected is someone amiable to the [evil imperial capitalist] regimes in line with those in the United States. So that's a fairly different story than faux news and although the evil capitalist thing wasn't fulled articulated i certainly received it that way. (...)

so yay people have exciting lives. in no particular order the going-ons of my life include starting tutoring at this state [public] school in south london (but north of me) where all the students are uniform-wearing girls. so thats kinda weird but ya. 1/3rd are white british, which leaves a healthy majority as ethnic minorities or foreigners (or both). I'm teaching GCSE-level math to the "capable lot" so basically its math for 15 and 16 year olds and that includes like cubic functions and all that good stuff i feel like i never learned and if i did have long forgotten so time for me to buy a GCSE Maths book at the expense of BP (who sponsors the tutoring scheme at LSE).

got broadband. sweet. but wireless router has yet to be set up cuz the modem is funky so im still forced into the lounge to use it which is kind of annoying but what can you do.

ah ha! this should have been higher in the list. last night i "met the parents". oh wait before that i should mention i've been going out with a very nice girl who's a 3rd year international relations and history student from sao paulo and yesterday was her 21st birthday SO. this created a dilemma for the following reasons: 1. wtf do i get her? we've been together for only a few weeks so clearly no heart of the ocean but at the same time its her 21st and so its quite significant (because although by 21 in europe you can do all of the cool stuff its important because traditionally you inherit your money when you turn 21 even though obviously thats not the case anymore so i think its kind of silly but anyway). so in the end i got her this silver bracelet with a red stone in the middle and its quite nice, made in afghanistan before the american invasion (or so the dude who looked afghani at the market which i got it told me). and yes reason #2: her parents. she talks to them everyday and they call her at odd hours in the morning aka 7am. which is OK but you see where this is going... they're hardcore protective. so in light of this i shaved for the second time in a 4 day period which hasn't happened since 2002. right right so ya end of story is the evening ended without any hitches. her dad told me he was going to new york tomorrow so i told him to hook himself up with john's pizza on bleecker street but who knows if he'll heed my suggestion.

friday night was "nordic by nature" aka pack as many people as possible into tantra (a pretty smart club off regent street) which would be OK except no because the notion of personal space definitely got the shiest. other than that it was good, free drinks for the first hour was in effect so that was cool (this place is one of those £8.50 for a cocktail and the most expensive thing on the menu is a bottle mathasalem champagne for a bargain £15,500. Yes, that is enough money to buy a small boat. or a large car. or half of my undergraduate education. or jennifer lopez for 18 minutes.

essay due wednesday on whether effective diplomacy requires force to back it up. getting pumped for that one. I have 8 books and 3 articles for it and am getting ready to read a fat 5% if that of all the stuff i have.

ok so this show X factor is REALLY annoying and emily insists on watching it.

ah ha!!! very exciting!!! I can make waverly melts and they are sexy. george foreman grill + mince beef + onion + cheese + sliced bread + toaster + ketchup = cheap good meal that brings back memories of high school and the good old days.

and another show that goes on the REALLY annoying list is eastenders which is this english soap opera thats been going on for 20 years (sam u should know about it) and it is properly some of the worst acting and rubbish ive ever seen. Argh i hate soap operas.

ok so what else. some quality movies i want to see but havent gotten around to them yet. oh bruce i have another idea for chandler blackstone: a restaurant. ethiopian style where everyone eats out of the same big bowl. nice. lots of xmas stuff in stores and xmas lights on oxford/regent st. what happened to thanksgiving? rubbish. going to the casa in france in a couple weeks for daddy's birthday but this year i have to go solo :-( i dont like flying alone its so lonely. oh got my free ipod, its cool i guess but i felt guilty over the opportunity costs of opening it versus selling it and using the proceeds for charity.

not feeling religion these days. every religion is dangerous i think. if the basis for religion is essentially irrational beliefs in something that unites a group of people there is always this looming threat of conflict with other religious groups a la all of history right? so can't we all just get along and get over the religion thing? or am i being too much of a modernist?

new cell phone btw but same number so YOU CAN STILL CALL ME at "011 44 770 8811 531" or at home "011 44 208 678 8459" . and also skype it up: skype name is "paulbrandenburg"

i'd really like to talk to you guys so please make some effort and i promise i'll reciprocate. love you.

peach bottom

is the name of a town in lancaster county pennsylvania (amish country!) very exciting yea? wow its early, 7.26. whats that about? oh wait no its 12.27 in the afternoon, phew. had a "dinner party" last night a la middle-aged people (totally toms idea) which was kinda fun in a once-every-2-years kind of way. so as many of you will know last night was guy fawkes night where upon everyone in england lights bonfires and burns effigies in celebration of the mr. guy fawkes being hung, slain, and courted (sounds like fun right?) he tried to blow up parliament (on nov 5) but failed and now gets remembered forever. relevance to me: fireworks last night on clapham common which were quite impressive and lasted over half an hour. moving right along, essay due yesterday havent started yet should probably get around to that one. and... oh yes the american "elections". i think we can sum those up with my vision for a new north america: (i cant figure out how to insert the pic here oh well)

o chi wala

so Luci was about to get +10 for being cool and blogging it up until she ruined it and expressed discontent with knowing the going-ons (word?) of my life. so now she's down to a measly +2. in other news bruce is now -15 and amalia is a close 2nd with -8. and yes we are keeping track of these Paul Points. At the moment I am in the lead with no change in sight at +383,135 and Samantha is in dead last with -3,215 next to Mr. Bush with -3,213. That's right Sam. You're that bad. SOOOO very exciting news everyone:
Absentee Ballot received, sent, and sorted.
I made a photocopy of it first so I can remember forever that I voted against the mainstream corporatism-dominated two-party US system (I've since had to stop referring to it as 'American' due to the onslaught by fellow South and Central American compatriots. UK passport got shot down, something about me not being a British citizen came into play, not guinness. Last night I saw a totally cracked out play at the National Theatre, 'Buried Child' and it was like 50% funny and 50% totally wtf.
so while i concur completely that coffee is quite the nonsense i'm surprised this is a new development in la vie de luci. being master of the universe i knew since 2 weeks conception that coffee was evil addictive growth-stunting stuff. and the whole dependency thing with the headaches is bad as well. its like alcoholism minus the alcohol. speaking of which i wrote my first beaver article on agent orange in the vietnam war!! very cool. writing articles is easy i dont know what susie keeps going on about taking up all her time and so on.
broadband is in the works ladies and gentlemen. soon skype will be a reality for me once more and we will take back this country. take it back for the working class! ok a little carried away.
saw the debates. stayed up til 4. i dont like either of them. bush needs to go back to 5th grade and kerry needs to change his name to Ralph Nader and get serious about having good policies. and chill with being so bourgie. Nader has like one suit. mad pimp. the dutch legal type that is.

OK so i think i've done the blog thing for right now. tonight will feature me and 3 books getting kinda freaky. might bust out the highlighter and a little disco. see what goes down. may take some pictures for the net. check back for the good stuff.

i miss and love you all!

Sitting at the bar with my laptop looking like a nerd

OK so today is October 2 and I am being ghetto and writing this at home and then going to the wireless-enabled pub—‘the belle vue’ to post it on the net since I don’t have broadband yet and dial-up isn’t 1p/min like I thought its 4.5p/min (!!) So this week involved me working on this race project for the secretariat project in terms of undergrad admissions—good stuff. Took up all my daytime from half 9 in the morning to 5 everyday. Oh wait before that I had a good flight and stuff, slept most of the time. Looked up new york in virgin guide and found lots of cool places I’ve never been before (Republic is in the guide of around 40 places!!) so ya made me feel like a non-new yorker bad scene. Class starts Monday at 9am (ugh) so that’s going to be some macroeconomic funness. Sam & Susie: we can revise for midterms or something together!! I hope my teachers are good and stuff. Dvorak’s new world symphony just came on. Quality. So ya toms out at harrods with his parents buying furniture for their flat in Chelsea (how bourgeois is that?). Tom’s quite the strange creature I’ve noticed. His dad makes money hand over fist yet he works from 9 to 7 in the conference office Monday thru Friday for the past 3 weeks. So ya its good he doesn’t just mooch from his dad (aka the American tradition) but off too far the other way. Everyones come back for this week and he’d work til 7 and miss out on valuable pre-term chilltime. Ah well, better be too much of a worker bee than a lazy piece of rubbish like virtually all of america’s wealthy teenagers. This morning and afternoon (ok I woke up at noon so afternoon) was really nice, walked round clapham common with tom for some lunch and it was really nice and sunny and lots of shops, cafes, everything. Now its cloudy and that’s not the way to go about it is it mother nature? Build me up buttercup just ended—I thought I was listening to dvorak? Winamp’s pulling a fast one on me.

So last night was the first crush and as always it seemed even more packed than the last time. Its safest to not change locales more than once every 30 mins or else you get so angry u just end up pushing everyone out of your way which doesn’t fly with the hundreds of peoples everywhere. Oh and the student union bars were refurbished this summer (at a cost of £850,000!) so no longer do they look dodgy they’re like proper wine-bar-esque with leather sofas and nice wood tables and glass walls looking out onto Houghton street and all that. Kinda weird considering they’re planning to destroy the whole building in a few years anyway cuz its old and rubbish… sounds like the british way of wasting money but oh well while I’m here I get to enjoy a swanky place (even though I definitely forsee it getting wrecked after a couple crushes).

So Nicolas in the tradition of being a pimp pulled two girls last night one was actually from new jersey (aka Geneva) the other was from the far east I think I didn’t get a chance to screen her for extra-shadiness like I did the first one lol. Markus got to work on the finnish constituency which was crazy cuz I never really heard finnish spoken like that and now I know why. And me I got to kick it with the trashed british boys singing dancing on the nice wooden tables and stuff of that sort. Hey 2 good cinemas around the clapham picture house and the ritzy (sp?) so im looking forward to checking them out. They’re both independent and play new movies as well as old classics and the clapham picture house even has the kids club on Saturdays at 11.15am and today they played Aladdin!! How awesome is that? I think I wanna go next Saturday. Ugh 3 of my Listerine tongue-thingies are all busted up cuz of the humidity. I hate it when that happens.

I miss you guys a lot but I think once I get broadband set up this year should be better than last in terms of keeping touch a la skype as long as some individuals (ahem bruce) get their shit together. I’m a little unresolved on the emotional love front but I guess that’s how it goes. Oh wait here comes the sun thru the clouds. Nice.

longtime no blog

it's been a week since my last confession. whoa so my power surge just flipped off and everything went dead for like 2 secs. anyway, so yesterday was cool. had some bonding time with the sis and mum. took a tour of princeton which was kinda cool. another oxbridge wannabe (:-)) but they didn't use as much acid to make it look old like yale does so it wasn't quite up to snuff. so i also got some driving of the 1989 volvo in which was a blast from the past as always. ok so just got off the phone with emily and tom at our new house in london (!!). Meanwhile I started this post 88 minutes ago i'm not very good at focusing am I? So ya anyway after we went to an off-campus bday party for one of margot's classmates we went to one of the eating clubs which was quite the experience. At first I thought it was quite different from other stuff I've been to but then I kinda realized it wasn't much different than most frat parties probably and not that different than crush on friday nights except for the fireplace and fancy-looking lobby. monthly tube pass=not cheap. thats icky. i do get a 30% discount tho cuz ima student which is nice. free ipod will hopefully get here before i bounce on thursday but if not i'll have mommy ship it to me. !attention rubbishers! the following need to download skype: Lina, Luci, Bruce. So ya do that on the right quick. Note this is not a request or anything silly like that this is a direct order. whoa speaking of which bush pulling ahead in the polls bigtime? sounds like fun. ok so i am really dragging my feet here its almost 5 and i started this at 2.46. so i think i'm going to go and then come back tomorrow with something exciting to say. bob marley shot the sheriff. bob what'd the sheriff ever do to you?

Happy days, Summer 2004

wonderful

i was about to type out some lyrics from the everclear song with the abovementioned name but i realized that would be a bit pas bon. so i was thinking as i sometimes do whats the deal with this happiness thing. while there are about a million ways to dissect this heres how i worked it out in my head:
1. current situation
2. future prospects

so if i have sex with keira knightley everynight that falls under category #1 and if for some deranged reason i'm under the impression i will be in the forseeable future that goes into #2. having a good time in college? 1. got into a good college and excited to go? 2. for the most part anything that can go into one group can go in another. so boom all we have to do to install me as world leader is to deceive everyone that they have tremendous future prospects a la matrix without the matrix if you follow me.

remember that question, if u could choose money, power, or fame (with the implication u cant use one to acquire the other) which one would u choose? so the answer is power. hands down. and hands up! simon didnt say! step to the side.

and now wyclef just said yo what up its wyclef. whoa he made a song called 911??? and i have it? trippy. downloaded hero, apparently its a good movie so i have high hopes. amalia wins the wack award for having non-service on her cell / avoiding me (!! bitch).

ok so back to the happiness theme. for most people, more of our happiness lies in category 2 because well we dont really know what the deal is. we have all these expectations and aspirations like falling in love, getting a job, buying a house, consistently having amazing sex (this is more a male thing perhaps), and so on. but then you think OK well lets turn to our category 1 happinesses. those, for most people on the planet, are category 2 happinesses. Without lecturing, most people don't have proper nutrition, water supply, shelter, and so on. We are New Yorkers (well... sorry Bruce) and that in itself is a life-goal for millions I'm sure. The interesting thing is that none of this really matters because even though we have all of these #1's we're not necessarily happier than those who have them as #2's. And people who have our #2's as their #1's are usually not happy (who wants to be old?) So maybe this theory is a little flawed. We need to assign values. but thats near impossible cuz this is abstract stuff we're talking about. but they manage to do it in microeconomics.. utils? whats that rubbish about. well i dont know but if they do it i can do it too. your total happiness (in hapils) = sum of #2 happinesses + #1 happinesses (this latter # will be negative, for example, if you are most people in the world and don't have the adequate living conditions abovementioned). ok so thats a start. next we can put a maximum on the hapils on each kind of happiness sooo sex for example might have a maximum of 1000 whereas material possessions / acquisition might have 300. here is where it gets dicey. Sex, for example, provides more hapils as a category 1 than as a 2 cuz shit, anyone no matter how legitimately i might think i'm sleeping with keira knightley next week its not quite as nice as actually doing it or having done so. Material possessions, on the other hand, often provide more hapils as a 2 because once you have (that house or jaguar for example) you got what u wanted, and thats the end of it. not that excited about it anymore are you? didn't think so. and then there's the simple fact that for some the material hapil max may be more than sex (lets call them for convenience sake conservatives). so in order to carry out my plan of world domination via making everyone happy i need to efficiently allocate happiness. i think i'm on the right track. by the way you can still call me p-master funk when im hegemon. hakuna matata.

dreamt that rocky was trying to kill me last night in my apartment building. i managed to get away by jumping from the staircase down into the elevator and taking the elevator back up to the 16th floor.

today

i feel all this pressure to be happy. i'm a self-loathing westerner. being in the top 2 or 3% of the world's population i am what you could say a rich mofo. and thus i shouldn't be entitled to happiness. OK so I wrote that at 10:55 and now it's 1:19. how did that happen. i got robbed bigtime. so coming home on the subway= quality experience. these people who i later learned after checking the cia factbook were from or whos heritage was dominica which is its own country in the carribean with a population of 69,278. i only know this because they were draped in the flag which i matched on the factbook site. so ya there was this one dude talking about how the reason why you say someone "falls in love" is because they are falling down-- it is the end of their period of the strength, they fall down and exhibit weakness. so ya, man's gotta point. also-- krugman article extremely excellent: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03krugman.html?ex=1095404378&ei=1&en=2419ad9814b6f181 courtesy of susanna poppick the first.

So let's see what else. Central park was where it was at today with good fun in the sun with luke, james, kris, and amalia (english peoples - amalia). chatted it up with this dude who got back from miami last night after managing to get on a flight (much like amalia from brasil) while kris, amalia, and james were playing football and luke and i were rubbishing alongside (i had only birkenstocks so you can see, i had an excuse). in other news we managed to get 2 shoes and 2 frisbees (both mine) stuck in a tree (originally one frisbee then it got ugly when trying to throw stuff at it to get it down...)

In other news lina is crazy. but we knew that and love her for it :-) wait she doesn't know about this yet i dont think i gotta tell her.

fuck its almost 2, work 2mro. ima write something cool again tomorrow. i had lots of thoughts today i wanted to put down but forgot them.

peoples

so tonight was cool, chilled with polazzo over some quality chicken sandwich at dojo's. after a whole evening of defending the US system at the end he was like ya the american system has so many problems its sad i was like thank you bastard at long last. but so ya that was cool. i wanna visit stuy b4 i go and be a high schooler again. its weird tho im going to know basically no one so i can be all cool in polazzo's class and like i graduated TWO years ago, a REAL alum. luke arrived last nite from san fran and hes his usual rubbish self which is fun. work wasnt bad, chatted it up with this cat from the wall st journal in cali about how we're going to make this event a big fuckin deal in 2005 and so forth. speaking of event i hate the rnc and all the traffic it is causing. ya ya it was the protestors shutup i dont want to hear it. if we had a proper government we wouldnt have protestors ok? quit bitching and go home. so ya word on the street bruce got lost in a wormhole and cannot speak english anymore so thats why hes not emailing calling writing breathing etc. ok well hopefully hes breathing cuz thats necessary to live and so on. so once again i find myself ready to be lame and go to sleep at the ripe hour of 12:30. shit! i have 2 lectures all year at 9am. 9am!!!!!! ill have to wake up at 8AM. 8AM!!!!! fucking fuck. thats inhumane. i think im going to protest. ok so now its time for me fall asleep like i did on the trian today. sleeping's a funny thing.

March in August

Yes indeed folks today was a quality anti establishment day. seeing as i know all of you are diehard members of the rubbish party i've posted these pics so you can try to understand the proletariat suffering from your cushy university palaces of grandeur. memorable chants included "fuck bush fuck kerry revolution is necessary!" and [as passing the fox newsvan] "fox news sucks!" (they packed into the van on the right quick once they got the word from HQ there wasnt a story anymore). the protestwarriors aka the KKK are featured in a pic thats quite funny until its disturbing. i'm kind of disappointed in CNN's homepage story "tens of thousands of demonstrators..." fuck that dude its one thing for fox to say that but CNN is supposed to be legit. BBC has quite a good article for you to check out very in touch with the NY scene and some good pictures from AP. in other news susie is annoying and has wasted no time in finding a new "coffee" buddy. i guess i should've been expecting this?

union square at 3p when we finished up the march

I love new york

Flatiron building from Empire State

ESB yay!

MSG policy one cop per 5 feet

Mooshu!!! We done after 7 hours

billionaires for bush

As we passed this group of cops their skeptical looks turned to smiles when we started chanting "give the cops a raise!"

Sis, Ajamu, Saba on 34th

The higher level cops hiding under the MSG shade.

And the RNC constituency was in full force...

Save America Defeat Bush. Classic

Marching

Who died? Oh right, thanks Mr. Bush.

10:13AM Good morning! Would you like a sign? (x1000)

Moms Bday

so today was mommy's birthday, exciting stuff. went to museum of city of new york and the garden on 104th-- mad cool. u best all have gone there if not we're going asap. i wanna go in winter tho cuz ive never seen it in snow and i imagine it must be beautiful then. so ya gonna do the whole protest thing tomorrow, hopefully wont get bombed or arrested, that'd be bad. listening to usher burn i feel like im a teenage girl (and a criminal, im not actually listening to him burn, i'd save him if i was :0) so ya i think its time for all of us to make the www.notinourname.net and www.votenader.org visits right about now. DO IT!

Day One

Heyo so I decided we're doing the blog thing guys. Yeah. Serious blog action gonna go down in this piece fo shizzle son. Right. So dude, Susie has a blog on blogster but its totally anonymous she says aka she changed all the names of the people she was hating on and refused to tell me its address. sketchy if i ever heard. everyone should read the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay its mad ill pimpin' minus the pimpin' cause pimps are bad evil people who dont respect women. i think i know a few pimps in that case. dude how did pimp become to mean a good thing? a desirable attribute among men-- "dude i'm pimpin'". oh yea? "hey officer! this guys a pimp take him away! he mistreats women!" ok. so i wasn't going anywhere with that in case you were wondering so i think im gonna sign off now.