Goodbyes

And so the time has come for me to leave Baltimore for good. It has been a good time all in all, definitely “an interesting place to live… for a while”. Probably my first view of ‘regular America’ (unless Florida counts, NYC and Alaska clearly don’t), and I suppose this blog will tell a better story about it than any last minute parting words.

I used to live in Latin America, now I’m in Gays.

The past week or two has been predictably intense. Lots and lots of experiments to get done of course, I also made a concerted effort to go out with a bang. Numerous goodbye dinners were arranged, gay clubs were visited (a blog-worthy story in itself), $1 oysters were consumed, tequila bottles were emptied and furniture-rearrangement/Britney singalong/blackouts ensued. I even managed to squeeze in a (business) trip to San Francisco right before leaving, resulting in three consecutive red-eyes and a 9-hour time difference to get back to Denmark. So the beat drops, and I’m tired now; but tomorrow it’ll kickstart and I’ll be back to TCB.

さようなら friends and strangers, much appreciate all the good times and I hope I puffed you up more than I fucked you up.

Jennifer told me to take some pics of her and other people in the lab. Not one to just give people what they want, here is instead one of her eating pie…

And one from the lab. Hammertime!

Greg

In the nick of time, Greg gets his own blog post. The reason I haven’t written about him isn’t his lack of impact (our endless discussions about principles alone should disprove that theory), but rather my inability to snag nice photos of him. I mean, this is pretty much what I had to work with:

So what changed now? Well, to use his own words: “My essence can only be captured when my head is pressed against a womans chest”

Music I’ve recently discovered and enjoy listening to

Sometimes I feel like sharing but don’t feel like writing a bunch. This is one of those times. Hope you enjoy it.
Ronald Jenkees

Alt-J

Grimes

Goldfrapp

Ghostland Observatory

Lana del Rey

Nero

Sneaker Pimps

Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Halloweekend, part 2

Delays delays, where were we now? Oh right, Halloween, supposedly the one day a year when girls can wear pretty much nothing in public and not catch any flak for it. Plus, for once we actually had the entire collection of roommates gathered for the night out (first time since I moved in, to be honest). Sara and I stumbled upon a treasure trove of Renn Faire outfits that a previous inhabitant had left in the basement, so it was exceedingly simple to turn her into a gypsy. With the previous owner being of the female persuasion pickings were a bit slimmer for me, but I did find a couple of cloaks to replace the bedsheet-cape I’d planned on making. Greg went with the ever reliable $5 toga, while Trevor turned some old clothes into a Ponyboy outfit. George, lover of all things glowy, went all out with a purchased Tron outfit that he pimped out with superbright 12V LED strips.

Pony boy, the gypsy, Toga dude, Tron and… what are you supposed to be?

So what exactly was I doing? Essentially what I’d planned to do in New Orleans two years earlier, though at that time it fell through. Though costumes of specific characters can certainly be cool, I rather enjoy the challenge of throwing something less obvious together from a bunch of random items. The idea had been to do some kind of hoodoo-ish skull facepaint and then some skirts and tingle-tangle for a shamanistic look of sorts. Back then I couldn’t get what I needed at Walmart and ended up as a kickass ‘The Grand Prize’ instead; but thanks to the cache in the basement and some necklaces I’d gotten in Hong Kong, this time Walmart only needed to sell me a 97 cent tube of facepaint.

It thus appeared that I was all set for the shaman, but at the cusp I was overtaken by an ensconced urge to instead replicate the tiger pattern of Gully Foyle in one of my favorite books. In retrospect there was no way to avoid this, but it was one of those things that you never notice until it’s already happening. In any case Sara did an absolutely bang up job of replicating the picture on the cover of the book, and I was pleased indeed.

Oh right, Gully Foyle of course.

Unfortunately (though expectedly) it would appear that this excellent book is on few curricula in American schools, as not a single person recognized the reference even when I told them. Of course I fed inquirers some malarkey or other (I am the ‘who’ in the cry ‘who’s there?’), in protest of the urge to dress up as something recognizable. So Mr. Tron stole the limelight, but I was feeling pretty darn good in my orange hair and dashing cape. And thus I frolicked around, talking and joking with anyone who happened to be near me, asking any- and everyone whether they were supposed to be that guy that Johnny Depp played in that pirate movie, and overall had a splendid night. And if there’s a lesson to this post, it is that good times happen when everyone is in a good mood, pretenses are crushed by fantastic outfits and the quipping flows freely. Halloween makes this a lot more likely, and I love it for that.