International Banking

I opened a TCF after college, seduced by the 7 - 7, 7 days a week availability and free checking. It was nice having a bank branch in every Jewel, which, for a while, was on almost every corner of Bolingbrook. I've stuck with them through a lot of their trouble (they had a run of identity thefts due to lack of account security, and their customer service is historically atrocious). Their free checking and convenience was more important to me than nice people on the phone.

Now, though, the ugly head of the TCF monster has turned it's gaze on me.

The first to go was the free checking. One would think that, having had an account that was built on free checking, I would be grandfathered in as they changed from free checking to heavily fined for going below a certain dollar amount checking. That was not the case. Unceremoniously, I was told that I could either have my account type changed, or I could bank with someone else. I am smarter with my finances now, so it didn't bother me that I could no longer empty my account to zero and leave it that way for several months without a charge.

Now, though, they have added a straw, breaking my proverbial camel's back: overseas ATM fees.

Anyone who has done any banking internationally knows that a certain percentage of the money transferred or withdrawn will be pulled from your account. TCF charges 3%. My account was riddled with $.26 fees as I withdrew money at the end of the year, having drained my British account. I expected that, and wasn't too upset.

What was a little more disconcerting was a sudden $90 fee for using the overseas ATMs. In America, we are used to ATM fees, sometimes getting as costly as $2.50 when in a congested, or heavily used area. In Britain, ATM fee are like albino sheep: everyone has seen one and know they exist, but most of your life is spent without ever seeing one. I can think of one ATM that charges, and it's just outside the Inn on the Pier. In fact, when I use my American ATM card at the UK ATM, it is quick to remind me that they won't charge me a fee, but my American account would. And they did: not only did they charge a 3% fee, they also charged me a flat fee of $5. 5$: every ATM transaction, every time.

Here, though, is where I decided I needed to pull my account. I called TCF looking for an explanation (they explained to me what I explained above for the first time, despite asking before I left if there was going to be much of an issue; I would put an extra $5 per withdraw as a pretty big issue), and the woman acted very concerned. Her advice: just take out as much as I feel comfortable carrying every time, and to avoid just running back and forth between the ATM. Ah...good. Thanks for explaining to me, slowly and in great detail, what would be common-sensical to anyone with half a brain.

In short: I need a new bank account. There are rumors that some banks have agreements with UK banks, allowing me to pull from, say HSBC ATMs without accruing withdraw fees. Or maybe I just put everything in my British bank account and use that for the few months I am here. Any suggestions from people more familiar with both banking systems would be greatly appreciated.

The Art of Flying

I have criss-crossed the Atlantic now eight times now since going to Aberystwyth. I don't want to suggest that I am by any means an expert in flying, but I have learned a lot since I piled into Ohare Airport a year and a half ago.

Here's the first thing that I learned: I don't need as much as I thought I would while on the plane. My first time across the Atlantic, I packed three novels and four comic trade paperbacks. I think, by the end of it, I read one comic and half of a novel. The thing is: an eight hour flight sounds like a daunting task, particularly when you put in a plane change, as I tend to have. Honestly, though, that time is not empty time.

For example, when I saw that I would have a two hour layover in Frankfurt, I imagined needing to fill two hours. Truthfully, it took me about an hour to get from one terminal to another, which included two trips through security. By the end of it, I think I had about twenty minutes to fill at the terminal, and I spent most of that making sure I had made it to the correct terminal.

On the plane, of course, there is a lot of time. On average, my flights take about seven and a half hours from Heathrow to Chicago (a little more if I fly from Zurich or Frankfurt, but not too terribly much; less if I can snag a direct flight from Birmingham, but again, not by much). Most flights, though, punctuate your journey with food and snack services. I find that just shy of two hours of my journey is filled with eating and drinking. Then, the first twenty minutes and the last twenty minutes are spent taking off and landing, during which time I sit completely upright with no electronic items in use. Likewise, all my overhead gear needs to be stored, so I a really stuck to a book. I don't know about you all, but I have trouble focusing on much when the plane is banking and turning, engines full bore. Once in the air, the flight crew starts with the snacks. Then, at least on international flights, the movies start.

A brief aside about movies: I see a lot of movies. At home, I am lucky enough to have access to a pass which lets my Mom see as many movies as she wants for free, and take two other people with her. My Mom and I tend to see about four or five movies a week, and then I'll rent from the Redbox or watch on Netflix another two or three movies. All in all, there is not a lot that I haven't seen. In the old days, airplanes used to get movies that were recent, but not particularly new. For instance, when I fly to London for New Years Eve in 2006, I had seen all the movies I was interested in and the ones I was left with were movies I never wanted to see. This past few trips, though, the movies have been pretty recent. For example, on one trip, I saw Never Let Me Go, a Kiera Knightly movie (sorry Lizzie) that was actually pretty good. The thing was, it had not been released yet in the UK. This past trip I saw No Strings Attached,Rango, and Unknown, three movies I missed at the theatre, but which had not been released on DVD yet. In my eight trips across the ocean, there has not been a single trip where there wasn't at least two movies that I wanted to see.

Now, I will say this: some flights are better about their movies than others. For example, United and Delta just run the movies, so you have to be on the channel when it starts to see the whole thing. American will start the movie, and then start it again about ten minutes later, so you have a few opportunities to catch it. Swiss Air is probably the greatest of them all, offering each passenger complete control. Each seat comes with an on-demand remote that allows you to choose the movies; pause, rewind or start whenever you choose; and offers a range of languages and subtitling. The Gold Standard for in-flight movies has to be Swiss Air.

Between the movies, the food, take off and landing, I was really left with little idle time. And honestly, the crew tries to push you to fall asleep as soon as dinner has been served. The plane is usually dark, and the crew asks that all the blinds be closed. Because most people are watching movies, not many of the overhead lights are switched on. The darkness and the white noise of the engine usually gets me to drift off for a bit.

With each successive trip, I have found that I can pack less and less in my carryon. This past trip, I packed my laptop (obviously), two novels and a comic book. Had I been able to get to the airport without a five hour train journey (no movies or food there) and without a night at the hotel alone, I may not have even packed that much.

Despite getting better at the carryon luggage, my checked bag continues to be an issue. It helps that I can store some things overseas, but I still feel that I need to bring most of my life with me when I come home for the summer. In all honestly, I probably don't.

Last summer, I checked two bags, both of which exceeded the weight limit. One bag was so heavy, I needed to unpack some of it and add it to my carryon. I brought half my comic collection and a ton of criticism books, expecting that I would spend the summer writing my dissertation. This summer, I realized the folly in that thinking, and only packed the novels I'd finished reading through the year (and wanted to leave here in America with the rest of my collection), one criticism book that is germane to the one chapter I want to get written, and the book I need for my presentation at Comic Con.

One thing that I still struggle with, though, is clothing. Here, I have found a genius solution that creates as many problems as it causes: vacuum bags. These packing bags allow me to pull all the air out of the bag, which collapses things like clothing and bedding (which I leave in Aberystwyth) to a much smaller size. In this way, I can bag two bags worth of stuff into one suitcase. Seems great, right?

Unfortunately, packing all that stuff into a smaller size reduces the size of the clothing, and increases it's weight. Fitting two t-shirts into the space of one makes that same space two t-shirts heavy. In this way, my suitcase becomes nearly twice as heavy as it should be. I have yet to pack my suitcase in such a way that it does not exceed the weight limit.

My problem is the length of time that I am going for. On short trips, like this one I am currently on in New York, I pack exactly what I need with little extra clothing. However, for four months, time in which I might not know what I will need to do, it's hard to know what to pack. I have a wedding to attend, a presentation to give, two vacations to take, etc. etc. If I hang out with just my friends, then I won't need too much more than a few button up shirts and a boat load of t-shirts. But if I end up going out like I did last year, I need a lot more fancy clothing. With all this time, it's hard to know what I am going to need.

The problem here is that over-weight bag charges are more expensive that extra bag charges. A smarter man would figure out how to get the same amount of stuff into more, lighter bags. Because I am by myself, though, I tend to need free hands. As I see it, fewer bags are more important than lighter bags. What I need to realize, to get the bags down to the minimum number, and have these bags meet weight limits, is that I don't need as much stuff as I think.

There is this scene from Up in the Air where George Clooney's Alex is showing Natalie Keener's Anna that she doesn't need all the baggage that she brings. He throws away the pillow that she's packed, the enormous winter coat she has and so on. He eventually pares her down to what can fit in a carryon.

The more I travel, the more I realize that Alex might have it right. I think I value my possessions to greatly. I pack almost every t-shirt I own (around 40 or so) and a dozen or so other shirts (button ups, polos, et. al.). I pack a lot of socks, which really, I don't need. I was trying to think about why I have such anxiety over getting rid of my things and I settled on one conclusion: ownership.

I don't have a house. I don't even have an apartment. My stuff is in two different storage units across two continents. My things, my books and clothes and what not, that is the only stuff of mine that I have. Having things is a sign of having a place in the world, and since I don't have a place in the world, I feel like I need to bring my stuff with me everywhere. Literally load up all my baggage and drag it across the country with me to show the world that I do exist. What I need to do is realize there is more to being a person than just having things. Once I can feel secure with myself, separate from my things, then I can get down to one bag, one carryon, and all of it meeting the maximum bag weight.

Cause for Celebration

I woke up this morning to an email from my Mom saying that Osama Bin Laden had been caught and killed. Immediately, I opened Yahoo to see what the news would be. I watched President Obama's address, and found it to be poignant and moving. I thought he did a good job, touching on how this was a long sought after act of justice, but that America needs to remain vigilant as Bin Laden's death is going to create some backlash. Hopefully, though, as al-Qaida loses popularity among Muslims, this branch of organized terrorism will start to die down. The flip side, that by killing Bin Laden America has galvanized the extremist, is another equally likely possibility. Again, though, as Obama hinted in his address, Bin Laden's death feels like closure - closure the Nation badly wanted and has been denied over the last ten years.

But, that's not on what this entry is really going to focus. My Mom also raised a question: "I wonder what the British make of this." The small survey of British people that I know (and one Polish woman) all seemed rather indifferent. The biggest tell would be the front page of Yahoo.co.uk.

Because it makes finding my Fantasy teams easier, I have Yahoo set to the Extra Freedom edition (aka Yahoo.com). When I went seeking more information, partly convinced my Mom had been duped by some sort of Internet hoax, I was greeted with this:

Generally, Yahoo has a series of stories, ranging from hard news to entertainment journalism (yesterday, for instance, I learned that Indian scientist had reintroduced giant tortoises to an island off their coast to help the plant life survive, particularly the ebony tree). This morning, though, the story was fixed: "Osama Bin Laden is Dead." This was later softened throughout the day as fervor wore down, and messages were reconsidered. All the headlines lead to more information on Bin Laden, his death, and America's reaction: "Death Comes for the Master Terrorist: Bin Laden's twisted path" and "How the U.S. Finally Got Him." The message was clear: America has done something major here. Something worth celebrating. The main image is of celebrating Americans, mostly young people waving flags and clamoring outside the White House.

How, then, did the British Yahoo decide to handle the news? This is the screen capture from Yahoo.co.uk this morning:

This story was run like any other major headline. This looks like what Yahoo any other day would look like. There are four stories to scroll through, some hard news (such as the story of Bin Laden's death) and others are lighter stories (like movies actors have decided to disown certain movies [I'm looking at you Harrison Ford and the last Indiana Jones movie] and the soccer goals from yesterday's matches). Interestingly, in the top ten trending topics, there is no mention of Bin Laden, al-Qaida or President Obama's address. Instead, British Yahoo searchers were more concerned with William and Kate, and David and Victoria Beckham. Even the story of Bin Laden's death focuses on the facts of the situation: a major player in a terrorist organization was killed by the US military. There are no pictures of celebrating Americans. There are no American flags emblazoned across the screen. By 10:00 PM BST, the story of Bin Laden's death was relegated to the third page of stories, and spun as a cause of concern among British Homeland Security personnel. It was sandwiched between a story about foods to boost your brain power and how bees held up a soccer match by nesting in a goal.

I also find it interesting how no other countries involved in the military actions in Afghanistan want any part of this. Even the Pakistanis, who have a lot to lose in foreign relations with the Afghani, are only remotely mentioned. All stories, from America and abroad, clearly pin this action to America.

It could be that the British just don't understand the catharsis that immediately washed over Americans when the news broke. Or, it could be that the British are looking to distance themselves from the celebrations, going as far as to bury news about it. From the British standpoint, I can understand if that is the impetus: if there is going to be a backlash, I wouldn't want to be associated with the target. By sticking to the situation itself, not showing how the situation has been interpreted, the British news seems less antagonistic to angry Bin Laden followers.

But, like most Americans, I wanted blood. I've never condoned going to war in my life, but as soon as a face was attached to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, I wanted vengeance in a way that makes me uncomfortable. Honestly, had I been in Chicago, I might have joined in the revelry.

3000 miles away, though, distanced both by time and location from the main celebration, I'm afforded a different vantage point on the picture that graced Yahoo for most of the day. Remember after the September 11th attacks, when news was scarce, the 24 hour news outlets showed pictures of certain countries rejoicing? Pictures of people celebrating the loss of American lives - I remember how viscerally angry that made me. I understand that Bin Laden was anything but innocent, and he got what he deserved in the end; while those who lost their lives in the attacks were innocent, having done nothing wrong other than go to work that day. Clearly those celebrating the attack on 9/11 were celebrating something atrocious while America was celebrating justice. Obviously, the two situations are different, but I am not sure people outside of America see this as a reason for celebration. And I know that people who are sympathetic to Bin Laden's cause are going to see pictures of these celebrations as cause for recourse (much in the way that Americans saw the celebrations and flag burnings after 9/11 as reason to bomb a country to rubble).

Again, though, I was pretty happy when I heard the news; I'll admit it. As I noted earlier, I watched the President's address, and then went to collect something for breakfast. I ran into my housemate Bernie in the kitchen, and he hadn't even heard the news at this point in the day (which was later than most people eat breakfast, I'll say...and leave it at that). He didn't immediately express his happiness hearing the news, and this was confusing. I expected him to congratulate me for what my country has done, shaking the hand of a citizen of a great nation that just did a great thing. Instead he said, "Wasn't he old when the terrorist attacks happened? So he must be really old now. Your government just killed a really old, possibly dying man. Is that a good thing?"

The subtext to this argument raises questions about the value of killing Bin Laden. By some accounts, he was not a well man, physically. Some believe it's likely that he wouldn't have lasted much longer as it is. I guess only time will tell if killing Bin Laden was worth it. If there are major offensive strikes against America by a rejuvenated terrorist cell that has atrophied in recent years, then maybe it was a mistake to kill him. If this puts the killing blow to terrorist thinking that America is soft or an easy target, then it was certainly worth it. If this is the act that brings a divided America together, healing wounds that have been festering for the last ten years, then I am elated that it went down as it did.

As for how to handle the news, in the end, I am torn. I am really happy to see the face of the 9/11 terrorist attacks put down like the rabid animal he was. But I also understand the need for some tact here. In an effort to not further poke the anemic bear of terrorism, it might be best if America kept the celebrations quiet and dignified, to try our best not to sound overly confident or arrogant.

Remember when France lost to Italy in the 2006 World Cup Final? If you are in America, maybe only vaguely. In that game, French soccer legend Zinedine Zidane had scored the first goal, and the Italians answered. With ten minutes left in the game, the Italians were playing well, and feeling cocky. One of the strikers said something to Zidane as they trotted up field. After briefly walking away, Zidane turned and headbutted the Italian striker in the chest. It was violent, and it tarnished his run at the World Cup that year. In the end, though, Zidane was unapologetic to Marco Materazzi. He was willing to sacrifice the game, his reputation and France's chance at returning to glory all because of something the Italian had said to him. There's a lesson to be learned by everyone here, and Zidane sums it up pretty well in the linked article above:

Asked what had caused to react so violently, he said Materazzi had directed some "very hard words" at him.

"You hear them once and you try to move away. But then you hear them twice, and then a third time," said Zidane.

"I am a man and some words are harder to hear than actions. I would rather have taken a blow to the face than hear that."

Sometimes the actions aren't the catalyst; sometimes it what's said afterwards that inspires violence. America needs to choose her words carefully from this point forward.

Finicky Eating

It would be safe to say that I was, as a child, a very, VERY finicky eater. To demonstrate this, I will relate two aspects of my diet as a child that probably frustrated my Mother to no end:

1) I could not eat things that were touching. That is, I did not like when separate items on the plate were touching. So, when my Mom would make, say, pork chops and mashed potatoes (a staple dish in the Lannon household growing up), my pork chop would need to be distinctly separate from the mashed potatoes.

Of course, this would get difficult when something like Jello was introduced into the mix. Jello has a tendency to melt, sending it's sugary goodness into whatever food was nearby. As a child, I would often times eat the center of the mashed potatoes out, leaving the part that might have touched the Jello (easily spotted by how the mashed potato had changed color).

2) I would not eat what I could not easily identify. This kept my life devoid of gravy and sauces for most of my childhood. See: I have an issue with consistency, and still have trouble eating some things with strange consistencies (read: tomatoes). When things are obscured, an accidental carrot or pea might be eaten, and that would spell disaster. Particularly if I wasn't expecting that consistency.

This made eating stews particularly difficult. I would fish through the pot looking for chunks of food that I could easily identify, straining out the thickened broth. I would then pile my chunks of meat and potato on my plate, happy to have something recognizable for dinner.

It wasn't until around high school that I was able to fully appreciate the culinary excellence of gravy and sauce. From there, I was able to add pasta to my repertoire. Eventually, as gravy and sauces tended to leak across the plate, I got used to the idea of separate food items touching. In college, I made the bold steps forward and enjoyed my first soup. I have since expanded even further to eat mixed rice dishes, stews and a new favorite of mine: curry.

Knowing what I said above, eating a curry is nothing short of a miracle. The standard British curry takes a meat (generally not beef due to it's Indian roots and the prevalence of Hinduism therein), and covers it in a thick, spicy sauce that makes the entire mass indistinguishable. Serve with rice and naan bread, and you have yourself a curry meal.

Initially, I was worried about the spiciness of curry. Indian food has the reputation of being quite hot, and my stomach, after years of finicky eating, can't really take much heat. This has prevented me from eating at such culinary delights as Chipotle or Taco Bell. Maybe "saved" is a better word here, rather than "prevented". But, as I noted in an earlier entry about food, while in Wales I am going to eat what everyone else is eating.

The first time I had curry, I tried the vanilla of curries: Chicken Tikka Masala. Chicken tikka is pretty popular in these parts, and it can even be bought as a luncheon meat. It was not horrible, but nothing particularly special about it. It tasted like any other heavily spiced chicken and rice dish that one might have at a run-of-the-mill pan-Asian restaurant. All in all, I was not really impressed with Indian food. It didn't do anything for me that Thai food couldn't do, and didn't really taste as good.

It was some time before I had Indian food again. This time, with Indian food connoisseurs Jamie and Rachel, I went, in my limited experience, is the greatest Indian food restaurant on the planet earth, Shilam. After perusing their massive menu, I settled on the Murgh Korma Royale. As the menu claimed, I was treated to chicken breast cooked in a surprisingly delicious mix of almonds, cashews and coconut milk. It was creamy, smooth and made the chicken unbelievably delicious. The whole mess was a tan color, and no one item was clearly recognizable from the others. In the end, I just ate until I saw the plate, and didn't regret it one bit.

The next time we went to Shilam, to celebrate Rachel's sister's visit, I had Gosth Rogan Josh: a lamb dish that was considerably more spicy. This blended cashew nuts, spring onions, green pepper and yellow onion in a chunky tomato sauce. The menu said "mild" but it must only be mild for people who are used to eating the "Merciless Peppers of Quetzalzaltenango." It was certainly hotter than most food that I eat on a daily basis, but I persisted, and by the end, a bit of a sweaty mess, I was really happy to have finished off the dish.

As people passed out samples of their dishes, some of my tablemates talked about how they were finicky eaters. When I got home, sated and full of curry goodness, I thought about how far I have come in my life. Granted, I never was hypnotized to get over my fussy eating, but now I can go into almost any restaurant with any type of food and find something that I'll like.

But I still won't eat tomatoes.

Homophones

Homophones are words that are pronounced the same, but have different meanings. According to Wikipedia, the unquestionable source of the world's unbiased and totally accurate information, homophones include heterographs (word that have different spellings, and different meanings, like, to/too/to or by/buy/bye...which turns that N*Sync song into a lesson on linguistics) and homonyms (words that have the same spelling but different meanings, tire [as to grow weary] and tire [as the rubber circle your cars and bikes travel on]). These words have been wreaking havoc on student essays the world over since man put pen to paper.

Generally, though, homophones don't cause too many problems in spoken communication because the words sound the same, and because we generally don't see a word spelled out when someone is speaking, there is no meaning confused between heterographs. The context can carry most meanings nicely. So, when someone says, "I went to buy/by/bye apples," there is no confusion, regardless of which word is used because the meaning is carried by the sound, not the written text.

I get into more arguments over the pronunciations of words (which doesn't have a fun term to associate with it; heteronyms are close, having the same spelling and different pronounciation, but different meanings, according to Wikipedia, are also required, like number [a digit in math] and number [the comparative of numb, to loose feeling]). For example, the British are still miffed about "aluminum", which they pronounce and spell "aluminium". The same is true of "tomato": "tow-MAY-toe" in America, "toh-MAH-toe" in Britain. Recently, I was in a heated debated over the pronunciation of "caramelized". Like most red-blooded, freedom loving Americans, I said "CAR-mahl-ized." My British friends, particularly Lizzie, was ruffled by this, claiming, "care-a-MUH-lized" was the correct way to say that.

In most of these arguments, I take the stance that 300,000,000 people can't be wrong. Granted, this is a slightly flawed argument, in that across America there probably wouldn't be any agreement about how to say any words. Just consider this beautifully detailed map that shows the spread of the populace that refers to generic carbonated beverages as "soda", "pop" or the infinitely wrong "coke". Interestingly, I am a statistical oddity here, as the small majority of Chicagoans use the term "pop" and I tend to use the more elitist and intellectual "soda". Regardless, if we polled America about which pronunciation was right, the British way or any American dialect, I am sure jingoism would get all 300,000,000 Americans to vote against the British - especially the British.

At any rate, my time over here has shown that Americans and the British share words that are homophonous (homophonic is just ripe for confusion). For example, Paul, the male teacher at my swing dance class wears yellow suspenders to hold up his purple pin-stripe pants, which makes him instantly the most stylish in our class, every class. I asked Lizzie, "Where do you think one can get yellow suspenders?" and she was momentarily confused. See: here, suspenders are what Americans call garter belts - the device made to hold up women's stockings. What Americans call suspenders are called "braces" over here. There is equal confusion over "vest". In America, that is part of a suit, or a button up top to cover your shirt. Here, a vest is a sleeveless t-shirt, or what Americans so sensitively call a "wife beater" or "Dego tee".

Generally, in these instances, the context of the statement can bridge the language gap. In the case of Paul's rad suspenders/braces, it was clear what I was talking about since there was only one yellow bit of clothing in the room worth mentioning, and no women's garters were visible.

This was not the case this past Tuesday.

When I come to Wales, I tend to lose weight. This due in equal parts to a lack of a car and a lack of peanut butter M&Ms. Because of this, my jeans, which tend to be a bit saggy, hang off to the point where they get in the way. This leads me to tug at the legs of my jeans so I am not standing on them. I was doing just this when we changed partners. The woman approaching me laughed about it, as it seemed like I was readying myself for some difficult labor (to be fair, the Texas Tommy turn is not the easiest, so the visual metaphor was apt).
Yeah, I know, I said, my pants are too big.

Seemed an innocuous enough statement, but there immediately was something amiss between the two of us.
I'm sorry, she said.

My pants...they're too big, I said. I thought maybe she didn't hear it; it can be loud in the Morlan Center.

Well... she paused, clearly uncomfortable, I guess you could get a belt to hold them up.

Blessedly, we had to change partners before too much longer, and she was on her way. I was left to ponder what made such a commonplace conversation so difficult and uncomfortable. It hit me about three partners later.

Pants = underwear in the UK.

Essentially, I had told a stranger that I was wearing large underwear, underwear that was too large in fact, for me to dance comfortably. Awesome. I had about four more partner switches before she came back, so I grew more an more mortified as the exchanges brought us closer and closer.

As she came back towards me, she said, Everything okay with the pants?

Oh yeah, I said, I lose weight when I am over here so my pants...I mean trousers...don't fit right. I let a beat pass. I guess, you guys call them trousers over here.

She smiled as our miscommunication dawned on her. Yeah. Pants are really more a private matter.

The Top of a Slippery Slope

When you deal in comic books, as I do, you tend to walk in the fringes of literary critics. I find my closest friends, and the ones I share resources with most often deal with poet-painters, hypertext fiction, painting-poems, visual poetry, video game narratives and so on. Nothing straight forwards and run-of-the-mill like 18th Century Poetry, or Defoe.

Because of this, I have taken a keen interest in the Kindle (and Kindle-like products: the Nook, the Sony E-Reader, etc.). Reading books on the computer has not been new since the onset of the Internet and Project Gutenberg or Literature On-Line which publish many free editions of works that have long past copyrighting. Library databases like EBSCO and Jstor have long had full-text articles for downloading. What the Kindle has done is take the idea of digital text and, like the iPod, made it portable.

There is a history there, as well. Since the advent of the iPod (and iPod like devices: Zune, et. al.), audio books have allowed people to take an entire library, reduce it down to a couple dozen MP3s and take it with you everywhere. And someone will read it to you. Before that, books came on tapes and CDs. Again, Kindle is not the first to try and make an entire library of books more convenient.

What Kindle has done, though, is retain the reading environment as much as it can. Reading is an act, like walking or singing, that is unique unto itself. Listening to a book is completely different, as the reader interprets the text for you through vocal inflections, pauses and so on. The narrative is given to you in one possible interpretation, and the others are inaccessible. When reading, though, the narrative created by individual readers can differs vastly depending on what catches the reader's eye. Of course, this boarders dangerously on relativism, suggesting that meaning is created by each individual reader, and thus the narrative cannot be said to mean anything universally. To skirt this argument, I like to think about a range of meanings; that is, each text will allow a narrow range of possible readings and misreadings, but not all readings are possible.

At any rate, there is a lot of dense narrative and reader-response theory circling these issues, and if you want, you and I can hash those out some other time. The point that I want to retain here is that the Kindle gives the reader a sense of reading. It is lacking the materiality of the book: the place in the narrative is not indicated by the ratio of pages to the left and right of the one you are reading, there is no tangible movement through a three-dimensional space, and the graphic capabilities are limited to what the Kindle can reproduce. These discrepancies aside, the reader's eyes scan a page, and process the linguistic signs.

I like the idea of a Kindle of some things. For example, I have to print and read a TON of articles. Having access to a Library's database helps, because I can grab free, digital copies of the text, but there is no good way to annotate these, and no convenient way to read them unless I want to print it out. Of course, there is no telling how good the article is going to be until I've read it, and, as any academic researcher knows, there might be a lot of chaff to get through before you get to the tasty tasty seed center. Kindle allows the reader to download the PDF files, and the recent Kindle's allow for the reader to annotate the text, as well. In this way, I can save a lot of paper, and have a store of random journal article right at my finger tips.

As a collector, though, I like having books. I like having walls and walls of books that I have read or am waiting to read. If you aren't a collector, it's hard to explain, but I am happiest among my books, CDs and DVDs (maybe, one day, Blu-rays...if I ever get a big boy job). I don't have any ideological problem with the Kindle (hell, I have an iPod), but I like having the object.

That said, I found this to be problematic: Amazon's most recent Kindle pricing scheme. As it stands, the super-souped up Kindle, with 3G and WiFi capabilities to wirelessly download books on the go, runs for $189 (for a scant $190 more, you can get a 9" rather than a 6" screen). The model with just WiFi runs for $139. But, for $114, you can buy a Kindle with "special offers."

Hmmm..., I thought to myself, I like special offers. I investigated what the "special" offer was, and it turns out for a savings of $25, you can have a Kindle Advertising Machine instead of an e-reader. Let me clarify: it still provides electronic versions of books, but your Kindle will be periodically flooded with "special offers". It also runs a screen saver that is sponsored by a company which will use the function to advertise some more. Essentially, what you have done is paid Amazon and the sponsoring companies for the luxury of seeing their advertisements.

Now, I am not against advertisements. In fact, I sort of like ads on things I enjoy for free, like Facebook, other internet pages, network TV stations, the radio and so on. These advertisements keeps Pandora free, allows me to watch the Simpsons three times a night on Fox, and provides the radio station with the funds to keep playing music instead of talking at me. What I am not happy about is dealing with advertisements in things I have to pay a lot of money for. I get annoyed that I have to watch car and cell-phone commercials and still pay $10 to see a movie, or I have to pay hundreds to fly home and still have to watch a commercial for the god damn airline I am on. I get it Swiss Air...the only way you could be more awesome is letting us ride polar bears to our destination.

More than any of them, though, the Kindle really bothers me because of what it opens the gates for. Sure, certain CDs, DVDs and books will come with leaflets for other CDs, DVDs and books I might like to buy by that publisher. If enough people buy into this Kindle with Special Offers, though, these books, CD and DVD publishers will see how viable selling ad space on their commodity would be. Is the consuming public still going to pay $14 for a new paperback that comes with an ad on the back? Or one that places ads strategically throughout the book? Are you going to put a CD into your CD player and hear an ad for the newest Nokia before track one? And then again between track 4 and 5, and three more ads at the end? The same could work with digital downloads: before each song starts you have to listen to an ad.

I know the logical fallacy to this argument: the slippery slope logic suggest corollary actions that have not yet happens and are based on assumptions. Sure. But seeing that Amazon is doing this, I feel it begs the question of where it ends. In the nearby future, is mankind going to have to get used to advertising? Are we just going to take for granted that things cost full price AND come with annoyances?

Discrimination

As a white man between the ages of 18 and 55, I have not often felt the pain of discrimination. Some people would count all the anti-discriminating laws as discrimination against someone in my position, but I find these people are usually just upset because being a white male doesn't carry the same guarantees it used to. Granted, knowing that X number of interview spots must be held aside for certain races or genders might seem to stack the deck against me, but that just simply means I need to be better. Hopefully, with time, there won't be a need for that, but a world where someone can be excluded from even the hope of a job because of gender, skin color or other non-work related trait doesn't seem to be a fair trade off.

Where was I? Right, as I said: not often discriminated against. In fact, to borrow a phrase from the British, if I am being completely honest, I have gotten more than I deserved. I should never have graduate from high school, more or less have been admitted to as good a school as Monmouth. But that's a story for another time.

Today, as I walked home with Jamie and Rachel, having left the Ship and Castle, we decided to pop in for some chips (French fries, for the Americans). Outside the place, two younger college men stood smoking.

"Hey, mate!" one yelled as we got close, "You're wearing your hat like a Yank."

This was true, but because I am so unaccustomed to hearing that term used, I thought he might have mistaken my Cubs hat for a Yankees hat. You could line up any number of the British soccer teams gear in front of me, and I couldn't tell you which was for the Trottenham Hotspurs or the Wolverhampton Wolves. I could understand someone confusing a baseball hat.

"You're hat, mate," he continued, "you're wearing it backwards, like a fuckin' Yank."

It was at this point, that I realized he meant I was wearing my hat in a way prototypically American.

"I am American," I said.

He stopped, clearly not expecting this answer.

"But, your in Britain. You should wear your hat like that man."

At this point I lost interest in this conversation and continued into the chip shop where he continued to shout belligerently about the "proper" way to wear a hat. Or, rather, in his words, "a cap." The chip shop owner went out to remind him that, in fact, he had been told before not to shout at customers.

I guess I should have been happy. I mean from a distance, I looked like I was British, which says something about my efforts to assimilate. Hell, I spelled color with a "u" the other day, "colour". However, to this point in my life, I was unaware of there being a "way" to wear your hat that could be associated with your nationality. For a while in the early 1990s, it could associate you with certain street gangs, but forward and backwards were always acceptable styles. It seemed pretty straight forward to me: some people wore hats forward, some people wear them backwards. I used to play a lot of basketball, and wore hats to keep the sweat out of my eyes. Over time, I eventually just took to like wearing hats backward.

It's also true that you don't see the number of hats, baseball-style hats at least, worn here in Britain as you do in America. Not having baseball might account for why. And cricket hats or rugby helmets lack the fashion appeal of a baseball hat (it should be noted that most cricket players wear baseball-like hats now). The oversized, knit winter caps seem to be popular, regardless of the weather, but I find my head gets hot enough when it's warm out that I don't need to assist how much my scalp sweats.

In short, I could understand his consternation, but I don't understand:

a) his approach: Firstly, I was not his "mate" so it seemed odd to start a confrontational conversation that way; and secondly, he seemed intent just to let me know that I was, in fact, wearing my hat in a specific way that could bespeak a false nationality. I'm not sure what the purpose was to alert me to this fact. Maybe if I were on fire, blissfully walking down the street, he might have seen a good reason to get my attention and tell me what should be obvious, but to inform someone of the way they are wearing their hat seems, well, pointless.

b) why this was a problem: Okay. This is a bit of a misstatement. I could understand being a bit miffed by a native countryman exclaiming to the world that he prefers a different country's hat wearing technique. Once he found I was American, though, it would seem that he should let the issue drop. It's not like the British have certain laws that America doesn't, and I was flaunting these laws. I wasn't wandering around the city brandishing a legally obtained firearm; I wasn't loudly proclaiming how awesome having an elected President feels: I was wearing a hat.

In the end, I didn't take off or change the way I was wearing my hat. It wasn't a problem, and as an American, I'm not likely to change what isn't a problem (it could also be argued that, as American, I might not even change that which is clearly understood as a problem).

To close, I leave you with a story by Ron White, regarding hats and arrest records.