It Is Time.

Spring Break in England is awesome. Of course, it's no Cancun, but it's a month long. I get yelled at by my Limey friends for calling it Spring Break, and not Easter Holiday, but we all know that Easter does not take up an entire month. Besides, American habits die hard. The fact that it's a month long give me lots of time to do things like work on papers, catch up on Chinese vocabulary, and see Lauren. There is one more endeavor that I think it is time to pursue.

Not so long ago I was watching Marshall Bowen talk about the history of the Mary Washington Geography Department. It goes without saying that Marshall can talk about anything and make it interesting. He is one of those people that should be on television but isn't. Well, he's on YouTube. Which got me thinking about the one thing the discipline of geography really needs. Good public relations. Any geographer reading this surely knows the deficit of geographical awareness in America. I don't trust statistics, but when I'm told that large portions of the American population cannot find Iraq on a world map, I'm inclined to believe it.

The University of Mary Washington Geography Department has more than done its part in alleviating this blight of geographical neglect. But plenty of others in the field of geography can't be bothered to share and explain the benefits of geographical understanding to others. (There's a few professors here at Nottingham that certainly fall into this category.) To be fair, geography as a discipline has an identity crisis that rivals that of John Nash. I think a lot of geographers become casualties of this. (Personally I think that geographers are better off embracing the expansive anarchy of geography than wasting their wit on trying to give the discipline that which it lacks most: discipline.)

So, I'm going to begin my own public relations campaign for geography. I'm going to do it via YouTube. I do this hoping that I might make geography a little more interesting. Hopefully a few people will watch and make at least a small step towards geographic edification. Either way, I plan to have some fun doing it. My first video should be out in the next few weeks.

There's also one other thing I wish to talk about.

The North-South Divide in England.

It's generally accepted anywhere I go in England that Scottish people are barking mad. And the Irish... well, the're Irish. 'Nuff said. But the most obvious divide is the one between the North and the South.

In America there's the "Mason-Dixon Line." It supposedly divides America's rude, intellectual and industrial north from the sweet tea-drinking, NASCAR-loving, tobacco-growing, bigoted south. Anyone that has spent more than 5 minutes in either of these "demarcated" regions knows that these stereotypes are hogswash. Having lived my entire life south of the Mason-Dixon I don't put sugar in my tea, I think NASCAR is damn boring, I've never once grown tobacco, and my only bigotry is towards West Virginian and Maryland drivers regardless of creed or color. I will say that the south has risen again, but I say that from an economical standpoint, not as part of a lunatic separatist minority.

To be honest, it's easier to take the piss out of individual states. There ain't too much I can make fun of my Connecticut brethren for. (Way to have covered bridges. Those are soooo two centuries ago.) It's far easier to antagonize those from New Jersey. I mean, the show Jersey Shore speaks for itself. On the other foot, (or tar-coated heel as the case may be...) how do you make fun of North Carolinians? Way to have several esteemed universities and a growing banking industry? I hear your pine is more sappy than up north? Mississippi on the other hand... well. About the only things you can't poke fun at in that state are the blues, the catfish and the Jim Henson museum.

And so our own regional divide is not so concrete as some people would have you think. With England it's a little more intense and evident. The North is full of hard-headed, not-too-bright, out-of-work steel workers who can't speak proper English and have a propensity towards violence. Or so I'm told. The south is full of rich, snobbish, pony-riding fops and dandies that can't survive hardship and would be nowhere if not for hardworking northerners. They cannot speak proper English as well. I don't spend much time in the south, although I've met my fair share of southern Brits. My northern friends assure me that whatever I see is superficial. They're all apparently fops and fopettes under the surface.

The only real constant in the North-South English stereotypes that seems to apply is the fact that few in this country can actually speak English. I think the purporters of that stereotype on both sides hit that nail wham-bam-thankyouma'am smack dab on the head.

And while the divide certainly isn't serious enough to lead to a civil war, there seems to be far more antagonism between northerners and southerners in this country. It's almost as much of a point of division as social class is, but I'm not gonna poke that turd today. Let's just all agree to hope that NASCAR doesn't catch on over here...

That's the end of it.

It's raining here in England like a cow pissin' on a flat rock.

So if you're here, wear your galoshes. If not, have a pleasant tomorrow.

- Jonathan "Real Geography Has No Boundaries" Trenary

Mustachioed Alphabet

Lord Voldemort's Holy Week.

Long time no see, guys n' gals. I'm not going to go on about how busy I am. I think I go on about that one enough. To be honest, it's probably for the best that I only post every so often. All the time now we are inundated with information and needless prattle from just about every possible source. Talk show hosts, news pundits, disaffected college students, celebrities and stay-at-home parents feel the need to tell you every possible thing they can. Even if you don't want to know it. So think of my infrequent postings as an effort to avoid overwhelming you with the inanities of my life.

I've got a few things to talk about, and since I have some time this weekend, I'll probably split my subjects of interest into a textual segment and a video.

The first thing of interest is the end of the Rugby season. We stand defeated. We have yet to win a game. This isn't one of those endearing situations like those found in quality 1990's era kid-oriented sports movies like Little Giants or The Big Green. There is no comeback for us. (Fortunately there's no Rick Moranis or Steve Guttenberg. as coach either.) The most we can hope for is to not finish last in our six team league. How can we justify losing so much? Well, it's not that we're bad. It's just that we're old. Most of the guys on the teams that are trouncing us are lads half a decade our junior. They don't have the benefit of 4+ years of drinking beer and sitting on the coach watching Spongebob Squarepants, wearing nothing but skivvies. (Justin, I apologize for putting you through that.) So these boys are a bit fitter than us. They also have yet to gape into the ugly maw that is the final, frantic year of an undergrad degree. (At that point beer intake has to double in order to cope with the pressures of graduating.) This means that they have yet to be psychologically scarred by the onset of what I like to call "The Real World." Hmmm.... Perhaps I should take out the capital letters. Surely every college grad doesn't end up on a crappy MTV reality show. Or maybe they do, and I just wasn't invited.

Anyway, so they haven't faced what I like to call, "the real world." The looming reality of having to pay bills, get a job and act like a responsible adult. A hell to which the only remedy, albeit a brief one, is to go away to grad school. This will provide relief akin to that which is achieved from scratching bug bites. A brief second of reprise and then a condition even worse than the initial one. (i.e. $30,000 in debt.) Brrr. Gives me shivers.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. The kids. So we play a different set of kids every week, limp off to have a beer and crack wise afterwards, and do the same thing a week later. We're the old man team. My buddy Luke likes to joke that we're a drinking team with a rugby problem. But he exaggerates. Really.

Also, I need to give you a Voldemort update.

This is Lord Voldemort. I've talked about him in the past.

The guy behind Lord Voldemort is my buddy Dave, who also happens to be on the "Old Man Rugby Team" with me. I want to talk about Lord Voldemort here, though. For those of you that don't know, Lord Voldemort is not his real name. I just call him that because he is the most cynical man I know. Track back to previous posts if you have more questions. Or trek onwards to avail yourselves of his most recent exploits.

I recently had the privilege of working in a group with Lord Voldemort for my most favoritest class: Research Methods. He is probably the most interesting group member I have ever worked with. Let me start by giving him some praise. He is a hard-working individual with a sharp and critical mind. He's more than willing to do his fair share of the work. He also gets good results. That being said, he is the most cantankerous person I have ever met. If there was a Lord Voldemort action figure with a pull-string, it would say two things.

"It's shit"

&

"I'm going for a fag."

(Note: Most of you probably know this, but I should point out that the Brits call cigarettes "fags.")

He says other things too. Most of the other things he says are rants. He will rant about anything. Traffic. Not being able to smoke in pubs. Students. Assignments. The color of the wall paper. Waste dumping licenses. How ugly your baby is. The British government. Oh lord, the British government. Some of his best rants are conspiracy theories. The formula for a typical Lord Voldemort rant goes something like this:

JT mentions something to Dave.

Voldemort overhears and says:

"Oh yeah, [Thing JT mentioned to Dave]. It's shit."

A rant goes on for anywhere between 3 and 15 minutes.

It dies down and Lord Voldemort eventually says, "I'm going for a fag."

Lord Voldemort exits, presumably to smoke a cigarette.

My favorite exploit of Lord Voldemort's happened on the eve of our project being due. He informed us that he would be giving us his part of the work early on the grounds that it was holy week. Holy week? He didn't seem like a very religious person, but who can tell. Then I tried to think of religious holidays in the middle of March. Easter was a big fat no. I know when that is and it's definitely not in the middle of March. Passover doesn't start till the 30th. Ramadan is in August. Then I thought maybe he's part of some smaller religion like Jainism or Zoroastrianism. But even those holidays have yet to occur. (The next Jain holiday is Mahavir Jayanti, which occurs on March 29th. The next Zoroastrian holiday is Norouz, or the Persian new year, which takes place on March 21st.

Dave finally let me in on his religion: Gambling

Specifically, horse racing. The 16th to the 19th of March is the Cheltenham horse racing festival. Apparently Lord Voldemort wouldn't be able to do any work because he would be sitting in a pub for four days watching horse races and smoking cigarettes. The cigarette smoking would have to be done outside of the pub. (I know he would be smoking outside because that's one of his favorite things to rant against.) What a holy week!

Anyway, everything else will be in a soon-to-follow video.

Chip Chip Cheerio.

Don't give in to the darkside.

-Jonathan "Wish I could post blogs as frequently as the FOX network cancels good shows" Trenary

PS: An entertaining follow-up to to my last posting HERE