Party Pics

Hey guys,

I've put up some new pictures on my flickr page. There are pics from last weekend's party in Northumberland and from Tom and my birthdays.

L x

Now look here,



I'll be back in Edinburgh on 30 August. That is a Thursday. I will wish to go to the pub to celebrate/mourn my return. You should all come along.



Also, I may need to commandeer someone's couch for a few days.



What's going on there, anyway? Canadia has been mixing it up lately. The weather's been lovely, and we saw an excellent outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. On the other hand, whenever we go up north, nature tries to kill me. First I got bitten by a spider, which I didn't see, but judging by the way my leg swelled up it must have been an enormous hairy one with huge venom-dripping fangs. Then I got slashed on the foot while swimming by a petrified underwater tree-stump. Admittedly I'm making these events sound a bit more dramatic than they really were. But anyway.



That'll do.

get it right up ye.

nb: Boss's hair, far left. Ha ha.

I'll fucking do it then.

Hi all; just a quick kick in the blogging bottom, this.

Those of you not in Ed' have missed the following recently:

i) One Jeffrey Ketland getting explosively muddy whilst wearing an off-white suit and playing rounders in the Meadows.

ii) Rare glimpses of the lesser-spotted Dave Ward, when a certain Nicky "the Dave Robber" Ford has let him out of her sight. (Dennett is here on Wednesday, here's hoping that Dave won't renege on his promise to pull his beard).

iii) Mog flying into a violent rage over the correct description of the taste of celery.

iv) A spectacularly peculiar and drunken evening at chez Chris 'n' Tom on Friday night / early Saturday morning, featuring the lamest game of 'ring of fire' the world has ever seen.

What's your news, Americans?

human folly

Greetings all. Against my better judgment, I feel compelled to relate to you a memorable event that occurred to me today.

You know when you do something unbelievably stupid and also unbelievably painful in public, and then the embarrassment just about overcomes the pain, so, to preserve your dignity, you pretend it didn't happen until you can find a private spot to sit down and cry?

I was in the bookshop at Columbia this afternoon. It has a revolving door onto the street. I entered the revolving door without incident. My error was to attempt to exit the door before it had revolved around far enough. The result was a crunching face-first collision with the commendably transparent window that I had mistaken for thin air. In the initial shock I was able to stumble out the door and continue around the corner as though nothing had happened ("don't let anyone see what you just did", my brain told me). As soon as I was a safe distance away I realised what tremendous pain I was in and had to crouch down for a few minutes recovering and dabbing blood from my nose. I then went into the library cafe and sat on a comfy chair for an hour and a half, trying to work; instead I occupied myself, first, with wondering if I was about to pass out from the ache in my face and brain, and, if so, whether I should find a doctor, and, second, fretting that I had broken my nose. I don't think I had, though it's a bit swollen at the top.

Anyway, I am back to full health and consoling myself with the thought that I couldn't possibly do anything so comically inept again for the rest of my life.

Unrestricting

Okay, so I *think* that I changed the settings so that anyone can post now. NO EXCUSES.

Also, most people seem to be able to post, or have in the past, so really I think it's laziness. POST!

xo
Lisa

Last week in NYC...

Hey all,

Well, I don't think I've given a proper update for a while, and my guilt has finally worn me down.. so here goes:

Well, it’s my last week in New York, since I head up to Toronto next week, to job hunt like mad! I had a couple leads on super waitressing jobs but they seem to have fallen through, so wish me luck! Let's hope I don't end up at the deli serving hot dogs... shudder...

New York has been a lot more fun this spring, living up in Harlem and not being stuck on my own with a bunch of scary Americans! Conor’s friend Cianan was here last week, and so we were out pretty much every night… in the East Village for an open-mike night (some good, some bad, some horrifying…), at our local jazz club, we even managed to see a play that won the Perrier at the festival last August, which was great. It’s my birthday next Tuesday, so my parents are coming into town for the weekend, both to help drive stuff to storage/Toronto and so we’ll celebrate my birthday here too. I’m going to have a going-away dinner on Monday, involving beer and sushi, and then on Tuesday, my birthday, we’ll be going to see “The Moon for the Misbegotten” which has ok reviews but mostly we’re going because Kevin Spacey is performing in it, which is very cool. There are also plans to get up to the top of the Empire State Building to see the sun set….

Conor, as you may know, is staying in nyc until June 15th, and has secured a sub-let in a loft in the part of Brooklyn known as Williamsburg, where all the hipsters live with their angular haircuts and crazy facial hair… so we may see the return of the conference moustache… but in any case I’m sure Conor will have interesting stories!

Anyway, that’s about it for now –I’m pretty bogged down with papers and getting ready to head back to Toronto. Though I recently discovered that it looks like I’ll be able to live in the place we have right now next fall, which is such a relief because at least I’m familiar with it and at least I have a place for the fall! Then hopefully I’ll be moving back to Edinburgh for the spring and the summer and waiting to hear about universities. Oh and guess what! The New School has decided they might credit all my Edinburgh courses to me which would mean that I save a year and a half of course work, which is excellent. It also means that I save a lot of cash as well… so although I don’t know if I’ll stay here for several reasons, this is one reason in favour of staying…

Okay, well I should get back to those papers…

WRITE! I haven’t heard from most of you lately and I don’t want to lose touch!

Lisa
xo

Wedding pics

For those of you who are interested, here are some pics from the wedding:

Conor's baby nephew in his wedding attire...

Des, right before the wedding....

Baggini Correspondence

"Cheers. Someone from Rapid Vienna Circle mentioned you lot as opposition!

jb

T Roberts wrote:


Dear Dr Baggini,
re: your Philos-L post on philosophers' football teams - we at Edinburgh have a postgrad five-a-side team called 'Sartre of Midlothian' (cf. SPL side 'Heart of Midlothian', of course), would that be of any interest? I imagine you've been inundated with awfully-punning team-names.

regards,

Tom Roberts. "

Sex crimes and the Vatican

have a look at this

The great staff-student football face-off

For those of you who have not already seen it, I thought I would post this match report from the staff-student football match on Friday. Supposedly writen by an "impartial" observer, but I have my suspicions...

MATCH REPORT: STAFF vs GRAD STUDENT FOOTBALL 4th MAY 2007 Experience Triumphs Over Youthful Good-Looks and Natural Talent. Staff 4 - Postgrads 1. The sporting event of the season ended on Friday in an emphatic victory for the Staff of Edinburgh University’s department of philosophy over their Postgrad counterparts, in an error-strewn match in front of a capacity crowd at Edinburgh’s Meadows Stadium.

The students started well, with footballing-whirlwind Diego linking effectively with top strikers Ana and Lise, but the tide was soon to turn. Diego, perhaps unnerved by pitchside rumours of a nefarious Staff plan to rid him of his trousers, found scoring opportunities elusive, and it was left to Staff captain Chrisman to settle his team’s nerves with the first goal of the match. The euphoria was shared by onlookers and city bookmakers alike.

Staff momentum was maintained as the Postgrads, vocally marshalled by midfield-general Tom, failed to penetrate solid defensive work by the intimidating Nudds-Mason axis. A series of acrobatic saves by keeper Ketland kept the Postgrads at bay before Staff secret-weapon Davis was unleashed to score their second goal on the stroke of half-time.

A second-half fightback appeared on the cards as Postgrad pressure yielded a well-executed and strategic own-goal attributed amid confusion to both Ketland and Kallestrup. With Staff’s corner-kicks being taken from a point increasingly close to the Postgrad goal-mouth, however, and with sporting giant Brown guilty of repeated standing-still-with-malevolent-intent offences out of sight of the referee, there was no way back for a violent spirited Postgrad team. A lack of discipline, with Staff veteran Scaltsas the victim of several particularly harsh challenges, led to the loss of third goal of the evening.

The last laugh was had by Staff’s Jesper Kallestrup, whose fine solo effort rubbed salt into Postgrad wounds following concerted pressure, with Mog’s rabbit-in-the-headlights approach to goalkeeping proving no match for the Danish Dynamo.

“That should be worth at least a Pass on my degree” commented one satisfied Postgrad playmaker.

Hi folks. I actually composed a new update for the blog about a week ago, but then was deprived of email access and was unable to post it. I'm not complaining though, as the main reason for that deprivation was that we were sitting by the side of a lake in beautiful sunshine, a long way from any internet connection, celebrating my brother's marriage by the ingestion of alcohol in various forms. It was wonderful.

I'm back to New York this afternoon; Lisa went ahead of me yesterday (total travel time from Lough Derg to W157 St: 16 hours).

Anyway, here's some of the rubbish that I wrote last week:

How goes? I'm sure there can't be as little happening in Edinburgh as the low level of activity on the blog would suggest. I want to see some posts, goddammit. (I except from this remark those of you who have recently sent emails.)

It was *just* turning nice when we left NY last weekend. Apparently it's usual to have about a week of nice weather before it turns unbearably humid.

More things that have happened in NY:

- I was in our local corner shop recently picking up some painkillers. As I carried out my transaction, a woman jumped in behind me, ignoring the queue, paid for whatever she was getting, and left. The man who had been behind me in the queue approached the counter in turn. Paying for his chocolate bar, he calmly said to the owner: "If you ever let anyone cut in front of me again, I'll come back in here with my 357 and stick it up your nose." At that point I left.

- There is a very greasy fried chicken joint just beside our local subway stop. At night, its powerful stench attracts citizens from miles around. It's mouth-watering. Me and Lisa were coming home from a night's drinking recently and found ourselves in need of fried chicken. Inside the place there was a queue of mostly Dominican people. Just ahead of us there were two guys, our age, one black and one Dominican. The black guy was lamenting his ineligibility for the 'Spanish discount' - the extra chicken you get in such places if you order in Spanish. "I have to improve my Spanish!" he complained. "But I do speak *some* Spanish! Yo hablo Espanol! Yo quiero Taco Bell!" Then he looked around for some objects to name. "Pollo! ... Comida!" Now looking in our direction: "Rojo! ... Rojo flaco!" At which point Lisa burst out laughing. The Dominican guy said: "Very good. And I'll tell you what's funnier, is that she understands you." The black guy now looked a bit embarrassed. I stood there grinning, not sure what was happening. The Dominican guy prompted Lisa: "What does it mean?" "Skinny redhead," she said. "Aha!" I said, spoiling for a fight. Well, everyone seemed to find it very funny, so I decided not to beat anyone up. In fact, we made friends with the two guys. Maybe we'll meet them in there again.

- The world's biggest rainstorm. Holy hell.

Dave I hope you are looking after the snooker for me. I have been able to watch a bit of it here at home. The Matrix-style rotating-table graphic that they do is definitely the best thing that has ever been on tv.

Ciao for now.

pics from harlem

when harry met sally

fuhgedabadit

This is now officially the Lisa&Conor in NY blog, for a while anyway.

Thanks for the posts, those of you who have put stuff up. Sorry it's taken so long for us to do so.

So how is everyone? I keep imagining that there are all sorts of shenanigans going on in Edinburgh that I'm missing out on. Well? I hear you've had your summer already; hope you enjoyed it. I was jealous to hear that people had been out on the meadows kicking a football and each other. It's been wintry here ever since the second day after I arrived, so there hasn't been much in the way of outdoor activity. It even snowed a couple of times over the weekend. Not very heavily, and it didn't stick, but still. It's April. Come on.

What have we been up to? Hmm.

We've been to a couple of really good pubs - or 'bars', if you will. We were in one on Monday, with Lisa's ex-flatmate, which is on the premises of an old hairdresser's. It's called 'The
Beauty Bar'. The gimmick is that they didn't actually renovate or redecorate the place. They stuck some beer taps in; otherwise it's just a dimly lit, abandoned hairdresser's. You
can sit along the wall under those ridiculous big hairdryers that look like helmets. There was also a cool place called McSorley's. It's an Irish bar, as you might have guessed, but
retains the nice elements of being an Irish bar - i.e. sawdust on a bare wooden floor, surly barmen, decor and fittings that might have been arranged by a blind person - and little of the cheesy stuff. They serve only two types of beer - dark and light. They're brewed by the pub. For some reason a pint comes divided between two half-pint glasses.

Of course, pints here are smaller than at home. Annoying.

Also, the decent bars are concentrated in a few small areas, well downtown from us - the two I mentioned are down on the lower east side. There's not such a thing as a local pub here. The closest we have is a Dominican-run diner that happens to be open late and serve beer.

We had our friends Clare and Simon, and their (now our) friend Sherlyn over for dinner on Sunday. (I went to college with Clare, back in my undergrad days. She's now working here, doing fMRI studies; Simon does similar stuff.) It being Easter Sunday, we thought we would serve part of a dead lamb - part of its leg, to be precise. So we stuck that in the oven and roasted it. It was great. Much wine was also consumed. Clare and Simon are well into their wine, so had
brought some really nice stuff. Clare also had made a chocolate and Guinness cake. It was a beautiful thing. An enjoyable night was had.

Things I have seen

- Morris dancers in Central Park. Why? They weren't English, either, they were locals, so it can't be dismissed as some homesick expats engaging in their bizarre national sport.

- A car chase. Seriously. One block from our flat. It wasn't a very exciting car chase, to be fair. There were two unmarked police cars trying to get another car to stop by flashing their
lights (they had one of those flashy-police-lights placed in the front window). He wasn't stopping, so one of the police cars accelerated in front of him and then braked, forcing him
to stop. At this point, anticipating an exchange of gunfire, I fled in the direction of the flat. I can only assume that the cops just shot the bloke.

- Mad people on the subway. Lots of them.

Things that haven't happened

- Being mugged. Actually, everyone is so friendly it's ridiculous. The area we're in is very working class and mostly Dominican and black, but I feel less nervous walking around than I have sometimes felt in Edinburgh or in Dublin when there were drunk/dodgy people around.
The other day I was in our local 'laundromat'. Apart from being conspicuous by the shade of my skin, which was considerably fairer than that of anyone else within ten miles, I also
clearly had no idea how to use the machines, or how laundromats work anyway. Everyone was falling over themselves to help me. A nice lady, whose expression suggested that she had me pegged for a harmless retard, pretty much did the whole thing for me.

Having said all that, I was taking a walk on my own one evening last week, and decided to head east, towards the Bronx. It was kind of nice for a while, but then I got onto this run-down
side-street - and here 'run-down' means seriously run-down - vacant lots, dingy buildings, bars on windows. There weren't very many people around, but those who were there didn't seem like they had much to do. I turned around and walked back.

- Doing touristy stuff. We do intend to. But it's also kind of nice to just live in a place, rather than feel like you're visiting it.

We'll be back in Ireland as of Saturday week, for my (remaining unmarried) brother's wedding. His friends are not renowned for their restraint, so it should be interesting. We'll be back
here on 30 April, I believe.

That's about all I can remember for now. Keep us updated about how you're all doing.
We'll lash some photos up v soon.

Oh and by the way, have I mentioned that our apartment building is a former residence of Duke Ellington? Cop that.

Welcome to America, McHugh!

Will Conor's arrival be celebrated like this?

Drink, drugs, philosophy and knitting

Hi all,

Hope things are going well for "the McHughs" in New York. Things seem to be going well here, we came second in the quiz despite being a pretty depleted team. More impressively, we won the jackpot, which was a whole £13! It's always nice to win something but £3.25 each is quite hard to get excited about.

The Stirling weekend away was good fun, but pretty uneventful. We were in a beautiful place and Chris K., Tom C. and I had a nice walk on Saturday. Otherwise there was much drinking, eating (including some of Chris' special brownies), a little philosophy and lots of good banter. The staff were pretty restrained on Friday but let rip more on Saturday night. Unsurprisingly, Kent was still going strong at 5am... I am now officially the most boring person I know having spent more time knitting than drinking, going to bed early on Friday night and not indulging in Chris' cakes at any point over the weekend. I did go for a quick skinny dip on Sunday though, so I guess I'm not completely done for...

Anyway, there are photos of the weekend available on my flickr page (in which everyone is fully clothed, I'm afraid).

Ciao,
Lottie x

Blair: funniest PM ever!

folks, watch Blair's comic relief sketch

Ciao fools!

I've noticed that in recent times there has been a bit of a lack of activity on this here blog. Is this because nothing of interest has been happening? With Mr McHugh's impending departure to Noo Yawk I thought someone should try and revive it... I am expecting regular updates from you, McHugh (and it'd be nice to hear from Lisa too). In return I shall make sure that there are regular updates from this side of the pond.

At the moment there's not really that much to say. Things are continuing as normal over here. I'm gradually regaining an interest in philosophy but am still dedicating far more time to knitting than anything else; professors Roberts and Ward are finally getting a chance to destroy Noe in person on Monday; renegade scientist MacMorris appears to be working himself into an early grave and has recently recruited a suspected facist to his cause; the Italians have been celebrating the recent improvement in their rugby team's fortunes and everyone is preparing to celebrate the aforementioned departure of McHugh (I jest, of course, he shall be greatly missed during his operations abroad).

Anyway, it has been pointed out to me that I've been rather lax myself in updating both my flickr page and my photo wall. I can reassure you all that this is now in the process of being remedied. I've added several new sets on flickr and the physical prints should be winging their way to me in the next couple of days. You can all find pictures from the mexican party and our trip up Ben Lomond (amongst others) in the usual place.

our gracious queen

yours, really

jesus camp

guys, here's Jesus Camp, the Oscar nominated documentary about Evangelical Christians in America. Watch it!

A wee, sleekit, cowerin', tim'rous beastie...

Happy new year everyone!

Warmest felicitations, especially, to Zoe - for her most excellent party - and to Dave - for suggesting the Bongo Club, where much fun was had by all...