Lessons Learned Looking at Facebook Photos; Also Letters to Cool People

I have learned several lessons while looking through photos of myself on Facebook just now. This is an activity I partake in pretty much every time I friend new people, since I know it’s one of the first things they’ll be perusing on my profile. I certainly don’t read their agonizingly long lists of preferred books, movies and ice cream flavors…but 837 tagged photos of them taking body shots, showing off their orange tans, vomiting and/or grabbing their friends’ bosoms? Bring it on! Never mind that the photos tagged of me are mostly of me doing one of the following: a) sitting sedately in a bar with a pint glass in front of me b) smiling with a small gaggle of friends, usually in front of a monument of some sort, and with a minimum of bosom grabbing c) doing something dorky and Harry Potter related or d) humping a wall. I don’t know how that last one sneaks in there, but it always does. There are many photos of me humping walls. And doors. Basically anything flat and vertical.

In addition to this very important lesson (Lesson 1: I am Not Cool. Surprise!) I have learned a few others that, because I am so uncool (see Lesson 1), I feel compelled to share with you

Lesson 2: I look better with long hair. While I desperately want short hair and keep trying to convince myself it will look cute, the evidence is quite to the contrary. The shorter my hair is the more ridiculous it looks. Bobbing it will probably be a poor choice, especially in the summer. Especially in a country that has callously discontinued the one styling product that works for my hair. (I suspect this is because I am the only curly haired consumer in the entire United Kingdom. Damn you, genetics!)

Lesson 3: I have the correct items in my everyday wardrobe (read: items I wear out of the house on a regular basis) to make the following costumes:

• Spy
• Male History Professor
• Female Hippie History Professor
• Hippie
• 1920s Safari Person
• Lady Zookeeper
• Equestrian
• Random 1920s person (male)

The moral of the story is that this is a startling number of costume-y pieces for one, ostensibly normal wardrobe. Also, if I lived in the 1920s I probably would have been considered some sort of sexually deviant drag king. (Especially if I went around humping walls.) If loving tweed is wrong then I don’t want to be right!

Edited for clarity: I realize that there’s the possibility that orange, body-shot taking people from my past may find this blog via my Facebook profile and I want to make sure that, in this eventuality, they understand that I mean no offense. You see, we Uncool folks have our own form of social climbing to do, and the prize basically goes to the person who can be the most facetious and self-deprecating. I am not even in the running for this as I am too mediocre for even the heights of Uncoolness, so rest easy knowing I will never be lambasting your orangeness or my wall-humping in the pages of the New Yorker. Also, I do my fair share of drinking and vomiting, I just don’t capture these activities on film. Instead I say things like “Oh, get one of me in the Eskimo costume running from the taxidermied polar bear!” or “Oh look, people dressed up as Quidditch players! Let’s take a photo with them!” You see fair reader (fair=orange), I have my priorities straight.

I’m going to stop now because I think you get the point. No offense but unto myself, etc etc. I still laugh at your tans though.

Eew, the WordPress dashboard has an ugly new look.

Here is a glimpse into my exciting and glamorous life in Europe: I visit cool places, become even more extremely poor than I am now, and then return ‘home’ to my dorm room in Leicester. I never update about my travels because life aside from those travels is so mundanely boring. No one wants to hear about your Continental frolics unless you also have something exciting coming up in your schedule, as in “Last night Zelda and I dined at the Ritz, and tomorrow we will head off for a week in St Kitts.” Notice how my example contained zero references to the Continent, although I guess the Ritz is probably everywhere by now.

Let’s give it a try, shall we?

Last week I went inside a 5,000 year old tomb, and today I am sitting at my desk, listening to the hail outside, and updating my blog. Next I will either go read a book or watch the BBC. Yawn.

So that’s why I haven’t filled anyone in on my travels, which were to Prague and Ireland by the way. I loved Prague but frankly didn’t care for Dublin, though I don’t have anything especially pithy and disparaging to say about it. It was just ugly and expensive.

And the future? Until mid-June I will be completely unscheduled, lazing about and then banging out a dissertation at what is likely to be the 11th hour. I am going to take up Exercise, Drink, and Writing Things That Aren’t Blogs (But Are Unlikely to be My Dissertation Either). I’m mostly kidding about the drink. Then I’m home in NY for a week and a half before moving to London for my summer placement.

Past the end of August my life is basically a Mystery. I will be moving to wherever the jobs are, kind of like those tramps from the Great Depression. Yay recession! Hopefully I will be able to afford to travel on the inside of trains. And hopefully the work that awaits me will not be agricultural.