THE CHIPS ARE A LIE

                                           

In general, I'd consider myself a fairly healthy person. Lots of veggies, plenty of fruit, I take the stairs, etc. However, despite any nutrition facts you care to throw at me, despite the probability that these will probably wind up giving me four kinds of cancer by the time I'm thirty and even IF the powder on them was made from the blood of kittens: I will still LOVE these chips. I can eat them like most people drink water. If there was a swimming pool full of them somewhere, I would use the rest of my college loan money to buy it, set up my laptop, and sit there happily eating every single one of them while finishing my dissertation.

However! Tragically. The brand they have here instead of Lays is "Walkers," and the standard Walkers 'crisp' flavors are Prawn Cocktail, Salt & Vinegar, and Cheese & Onion. 

So, knowing this, you can imagine my excitement when (on my way back from a dissertation meeting) I spotted these in the shop down the street:

(I looked something like this)

(Just in case you were having trouble visualizing)

So of course I buy them, get home, pop the bag open aaaaand, first disappointment:

Really? Britain, I have consumed family-sized bags worth of Lays BBQ chips in a single sitting! 

This is probably the equivalent of what would normally crumble to the floor as I'm shoving the contents of a human-sized bag in my mouth.

 America SO does not approve. However, all things considered, this is still more BBQ chips than no BBQ chips, right? So time to quit taking photos for posterity's sake, sit back, pull up the essay, finally put the first piece of crispy heaven into my mouth, and------

Oh. Sweet. Mercy. 

WHAT did I just eat??? Good gawd, that tasted like... OH *gag* that is not NOT what I wanted, the vicious betrayal, the crippling disappointment! BBQ Rib, Walkers??? Rib of WHAT? Did you buy the bbq sauce from Pound-land?? *water*

Final tragic result: The chips... are a lie.

*sigh* Guess it's time for a healthy snack and to get back to the essays... don't get me wrong, I do love blackberries, and these are darn good ones, but it's still definitely not the same as having the lining of your tongue seared off by the blistering glory of Lays BBQ. Here's to you, America!

Notes:

~The cake is also a lie, for anyone who hasn't heard this magical song yet.

~I'm trying to focus on three 15-page essays right now, so I've been pretty much locked up in my dorm all day and night. Hopefully I'll get at least one and a half done before I start traveling again! Haha, and HOPEFULLY hopefully that will mean the next few blogs will involve more exciting photos ;)

Supermoon

The past month and a half has been a rough combination of raging stress coupled with that unnerving silent lull of not technically having a lot of work to get done.

Sadly, of the fourteen PhD schools I applied to, I've gotten nine "we regret to inform you" letters back; at about the 8th "no", it was safe to accept the writing on the wall. I definitely wasn't surprised: I know people infinitely more qualified than me who were dealt the same blow last year, and what with the economy still hungover as hell from the past few years of partying like a college freshmen who won the lottery, many more over-qualified candidates are returning to hide in school too. It's not being a surprise, though, didn't help make it any better... letters trickling back, the agonizing waiting, that wretched pin prick of hope refusing to dissipate completely. Ugh. It feels gross, people. 

Fortunately though, about early March, (with the support of good friends) I finally decided to pull my shit together, stand back up, and go find ways to level up until I could truly take on the PhD-- after all, every real Pokemaster knows you have to spend a few days pacing in the grass before you can take on the Elite Four.

I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing to beef up my resume for the next year or two, but I'm researching now, and I do know it will wind up being in the States this time, at least for a while. Yup. For all of its often obnoxious gusto and media-fueled idiot escapades, I still find myself missing the land of apple pie and freedom and (most importantly) the family and friends I have there!

This isn't to say though, that there isn't something about being in Europe that makes your heart swell. Last Saturday, about midnight/1am, a friend enlightened me to the existence of Supermoon, so I bundled up, shut my laptop, and walked out into the night. Tragically, Supermoon was obscured that night by clouds. However! Nothing can whip the fog out of your mind quite like the chilly shock of standing alone at midnight in front of an early 12th century cathedral, wondering what it must have looked like at night before they had floodlights to keep the back towers bright. I see this cathedral every day, but something about stopping to sit with it at night-- it puts fire and ice in your human veins; it makes a person dream again.

It was a cold night last Saturday, but even then you could feel summer coming. And you know what oncoming summer feels like this year? It feels like epic European adventures and kick-arse essays! I'm so grateful to the people who helped me out with PhD stuff this round-- next time, I can assure them, when I face the Doctorate applications again, I'm going in with all available heart pieces and armed with a resume that onlookers could swear pulses with its own sacred light: I hope those schools (and life in general) will be prepared for what follows.

And now: back to essays.

Three defining snippets of my soul:

1. "You can laugh when your dreams fall apart at the seams..." -one of the slickest womanizers to grace the Earth

2. The sonnet that has hung, hand-written, near my bed since I discovered it four years ago. 

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,	5
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,	10
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

                                                                                                   -Keats

3. The song which defines the pulse of my internal childhood.