Across the pond and back again

[mangosteen]

Meta: Written in the air, posted on the ground.

It's that time again.....

Live and direct from 38000 feet above sea-level, it's

trip summary time!!!

Approximately 21 months ago, when my sweetie and I got engaged, I informed her that somewhere around 6 weeks before the wedding, I fully expected I was going to be so thoroughly fed up with wedding planning/manuevering/backstabbing/hand-wringing/etc. that I was going to leave the country for a week.

So I did.

Destination: nowehere creative, just going to the UK to visit friends, relax, and enjoy the last few days of summer in London.

Weather: Gorgeous. 72 degF, dry, and breezy. Every day. Drier than it ever really gets in Boston, actually. There is no true "Boston Dry". More like "Canada Dry."

List: Things that happened during the trip:


• I visited a cathedral whose length was measured in tenths of miles. One-tenth, roughly. The Ely Cathedral has existed for roughly 1300 years. Besides all the standard quips about "ah yes, back when craft work was cheap", it was, put simply, absolutely stunning. The thing that got me the most was just seeing how it represented the continuity of a civilization.
  
  Now, imagine having the song "Dear God" by XTC running through your head, while looking at all this astounding architecture and what it represented, with a digital camera in your hand:
  
  

  
  "I don't believe in heaven or--" oooh. pretty. (click) (beep) "hell, no saints no sinners no--" wow. (click) (beep) "devil as well, no pearly gates, no--" (click) (beep beep beep) "damn. dead battery."
  

  
  
  
• I finally got to go to a tapas bar. "Why not go to 'Dali', which at least has the advantage of being in your home country?" you say? Well, I could walk to it frequent-running public transit, and there wasn't a constant line out the door. I like the concept. Spanish dim-sum. I'll have to do that again, possibly locally.
  
  
• I got to go to the "costumes and props from the Lord of the Rings" exhibit at The London Science Museum. Words fail. I had a lot of respect for Peter Jackson and the small army who made it all happen even before seeing how they did what they did [1]. Complete and total fanboy heaven. It's there until 11 January 2004. See it.
  
  
• I now know what East Somerville looks like, if you blow it up to London's scale. It's called Essex.
  
  
• I made a few new friends and acquaintances (cf. redcountess, reddragdiva, ruthi), as well as met even more people from the greater London goth crowd. I'm goth-compatible. Wacky.
  
  Note: redcountess, I was completely wrong on the whole "origin of the name 'Elizabeth'" thing. Mea cowboy, Mea cowboy, Mea Marlboro Cowboy.
  
  
• Having finally read a few comics by Jhonen Vasquez, I now have absolutely no bleeping idea how that man managed to get a cartoon on Nickelodeon. I'm glad he did, though.
  
  
• I now have light-up juggling balls. Hee.
  
  
• I picked up a bunch of CDs for downright reasonable prices (yes, even after converting from pounds to dollars. thppt.). I've been much more into music lately than I have been in the past, at least in terms of finding new genres and expanding the collection in non-obvious ways. I consider this to be a good thing. I credit FOPP with actually having a workable business model, that being "sell the Big New Hits at standard annoying retail prices, but sell the back-catalogue of many major artists at GBP 5 a CD." It's quite true that I'll take a flyer on a CD if I only have to hand over a 5 pound note. A month ago, Universal Music Group announced that, starting in October, it would be significantly dropping the prices of CDs it issued. I think they're on to something.
  
  Observation: The Brits love their music compilations, yes they do. "Greatest Club Hits #56" is the one that stood out in my memory, but also just the sheer amount of dual-CD annually-done compilations was quite interesting. Value for money, and all that.
  
  
• I bought more books than I really should have. Walking into a used bookstore with really cheap prices in a large university town is much like walking into the Horror Movie Woodshed(tm), armed only with a flashlight. There wasn't too much carnage, but it wasn't pretty.
  
  Observation: The "Very Short Introduction" series by Oxford Press is a wonderful and beautiful thing. Find some, read some, they're worth it. I'm currently reading through the ones on globalization, psychology, and linguistics.
  
  
• I completely failed in my mission to get a bunch of aniseed balls. The candy vendor in the market square in Cambridge appeared to be on vacation during the time I was there. Fortunately, there's always mail order.
  
  
• I got to do the "Stephenson Tour" of London. That is to say, _nicolai_ was kind enough to take me to the buildings in London that contain the exchange points for most of the UK's traffic. In the end, it's all boxes and blinky lights, but that doesn't stop it from being interesting if you fully understand the significance (and read a few cable labels).
  
  
• I saw The Matrix: Reloaded on an IMAX screen. While it was really fun, and made it easier to see some of the details of the sets, I don't think I really needed to see every expanded pore on Lawrence Fishburne's face. Just sayin'.
  
  

Realization: For a week where I thought I just slacked off and sat around, I guess I did some stuff. [3]
--------

[1] Actually, I had respect for Peter Jackson right after I saw "Meet The Feebles". He managed to simulate the eruption of every known human bodily fluid in that movie.[2] That has to count for something.

[2] Yes, even those.

[3] Oh yes, and I just finished up a LALR-1 grammar for a network-device config change language. There's something very obsessively fun about making sure that every token is well-defined.

Comments

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

According to the Wall Street Journal, Universal Music is also requiring stores that want that discount to:
a. give 33% of their space to Universal
b. price CDs only about a buck above wholesale

Universal also will no longer pay for joint advertising of their product with the record stores. Right now they pay about half of the ad and the store picks up the other half. The store will still be mandated to advertise the product; they'll just have to pony up all the money.

Independent record stores, led by Newbury Comics, are refusing to sign.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

So, it's not Universal Music actually getting it, they're just deciding to screw their distribution channels rather than the end-user.
Hmm.
Not just is it the same leopard, it's still got spots, and they're in much the same pattern.

[reddragdiva]

Oh, wow. Got a non-paid link on that one?

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Nope, sadly; the WSJ doesn't do those.

[redcountess]

So what *is* the origin of Elizabeth?