I know I should be working on my journal here, rather than posting humour shwag, but this also was too funny to resist sharing- If you know anything about dipshit hackers, it's that much funnier. ;)

dslartoo: l33t h4xx0r th34tr3!!!!!

Ananova - Police hunt poo protesters

Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: "This has been
going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles
of excrement that have been claimed during that time."

When I get the remainder of my shit together I'll catch up my pre-poland entries here, stay tuned.

If I haven't mentioned before, when I lapse in writing this thing, it gets worse with each passing day. With more events to recap, the less I want to sit down and play catch-up on what's been happening. Somewhere between being busy, lazy, and mobile came the inevitable, immutable, result: Procrastination. That wicked time-thieving imp has remained Perched atop my shoulder daily. Whispering conspiritorialy in my ear "You can write in your journal tomarrow"

Persuasive lil' bugger, too..

There are a fair few things new in my world. Most of them unexpected and random. The road has been working it's signature magic; landing me once more hip-deep in unforseen circumstance, among intersting people, and in odd surroundings. The last time I posted here I was headed for Prauge, via Berlin, for new years eve.

Well, a few things worked out a little.. differently.

I never made it to Prague. I made it to.. Poland.
I have been living in Krakow for the past 23 days. Rent-free in a hostel.
I am working as a System Admin and Web Developer for the Hostel's owner.
It's deliciously weird here - and I'm delirously happy.
It's fucking cold as hell.

Hidden between the lines of the above facts, lie a great many explanations, anicdotes, and tales of drunken debauched adventure. Chock full of perlious hilarity, strange happenings, new friends, and good times. There are too many stories to simply summarize, and most of them really deserve a proper telling.

So rather than pay mere lip service to these chronicles of high-weirdness, I'm going to go back and write about them. In seperate entries, as I should have done initially. I'll have plenty of time to reflect and write as I sit huddled indoors, a refugee from the biting Polish cold - compiling Postfix in the dark.

So, I'll start with Berlin and start stiching up the the gap to the present. If you are keen to follow-along. you may do well to remember that I will be posting multiple entries simultaneously. So checking backward from the most recent is probably a good idea if you don't want to miss anything. To keep it all sane- I'll make a catagory called 'Berlin-To-Krakow' and post all the timeshifted entries there, as I'll still want to post new stuff here.

There's a catagory for photos now, expect to see it filling up with backlogged pics as well.

Warm Regards and Cool Runnings for all,

Well, folks.

It seems my pre-disposition to prolonged absences between posts has become habitual, if not expected. It's been over 10 days since my last stop-in here. I was in London from the 7th, expecting to stay only seven days and stretching out my stint to over 2 weeks.

London this time was a bit more eventfull, I spent a lot of time hanging with Hilary and her friends. She was in town to record on an album with a mate of hers, who as it turns out is a reasonably well known UK pop-star. It was a bit surreal spending time with a celebrity in bars, clubs, etc while jaunting around town. I felt like such a groupie. :)

The house with the Orange door has been an absolute zoo. The owner Axel was off to South Africa with his girlfriend and kids for an eight week holliday. This means of course that each on of his borders had guests staying in the house. In addition to the regular residents, Hilary, myself, and a South African girl have been staying there as well. It's been a bustling planet of activity non-stop. With people partying, drinking, cooking, and running around like cranked-out ants under glass.

I spent a fair amount of my London evenings haunting a hostel-bar called the Generator in Russell Square, trying to meet travelers and searching for New Year's ideas. I managed to hit it off really well with the staff there, and I've been offered a job if I manage to get my Visa in order. It's a pretty cool place, though I am ever mindfull of the hostel-trap and don't want to get stuck partying in Europe again. I remind myself constantly that I'm here to travel and learn. I must resist this Dark Side whenever possible, as it's much "Quicker, and more sedcutive"

I finally decided that Prague for new year's eve sounded pretty good. So In a fit of self-presevation ( I was dangerously close to staying at the Generator to party ) I grabbed the cheapest ticket I could find off of the island, which landed me in Amsterdam. I've been here two days and I'm leaving for Berlin in a few hours. Afterwards, off to Prague. It will cold there - no doubt. I have some strange cold-war associations with eastern Europe which always cause me to picture destinations like Prague covered in snow. So in that vein it only seems appropriate. Also, Prague will be cheap. I'm a big fan of cheap. (Hell, I AM pretty cheap)

That's it for now, I think i'll post some pictures here in a bit. They've been piling up.

Have a Happy Christmas all, I love and miss you all like crazy.

So, what have I been up to you ask ?, What is the meaning of this outrageous hiatus from writing?. I've gone weeks without a single god-damed peep. There had better be a good excuse buddy- a seriously good one.

Was I abducted by gypsies?, forced into white slavery and made to perform elicit sex-acts in some undground Lyonnais freakshow?. Thrown into a dank Spanish prision?, Taken hostage by lebanese seperatists?

Didn't they have a computer?

Knowing that you have far better things to do than sit there restlessly wearing the varnish off your seat-edges. I'll end the suspense, so feel free to exhale. What have I been doing for the last 3 weeks?

Not Much. Well, not really.

Sleeping, reading, thinking and studying French. Cooking the occasional meal with Xavier, going out to pubs. Walking about, snapping pictures and contemplating the next step. Exciting eh? Everything you'd hoped for?.

There have been some noteworthy, intersting, moments in there. Kernels of adventure in my relaxation. So I've trimmed the fat, and passed-on the savings to you. Here are a few memorable bits of the last several weeks.

Watching Xavier get piss-drunk and dancing to atrocious 80's era french pop music.

Getting pitched Dianetics by a french Scientologist on the street. (in french no less)

There ya go. Just a few things I did. I'm back in London now for a bit. Xavier needed some space to study for his final exams, and I'm here visiing Hillary and Ben. We are going on a huge pub-crawl tonight with about 20 people. It should be brilliant. I'm still at loose-ends about what to do for New Year's however. I can't make up my mind where to go.

So the polls are open kids- Any ideas?

This is my first post in quite a while, for some reason or other I've been uninspired to jot down my thoughts lately. Every time I sit down at the computer to conduct my daily ritual of checking mail and reading news, I think about writing something but I avoid it. I invent some internal reason to be 'not in the mood', or convince myself I really have nothing interesting to say.

I've been doing a lot of mental house cleaning lately, spending a profane amout of time alone and lost in my own thoughts. It's been a very nessasary, positive and cathartic process; deconstructing my life and my motives for living it and the brutal honesty I've been affording myself has lead me to a few uncomfortable conclusions . Perhaps I've been dodging my weblog to avoid spilling my identity crisis all over the page, maybe I wanted to sort all my baggage into neater piles first?. I feel like some sort of freudian puzzle-box. I keep re-arranging my world view to accept new conclusions, and it's been good, very good - just taxing.

Selling all your possessions and fleeing to a foreign place full of unfamiliar people with whom you can't communicate throws your life into stark relief. If might just be the ultimate form of therapy - It might just be a metaphor for something?.

The upshot is, I feel great!. With the cobwebs out of my synaptic rafters ( and the bigger messes marked for later-retrieval) I'm enjoying life a great deal more. Dwelling and introspection are winter-inspiried passtimes, with my seasonal glum out of the way, I'm prepared for the optimism of spring. I wish it would get here too, It's colder than Chris Cringle's Jockstrap over here.

*I have some fun travel news as well, but I think I'll seperate it into a new entry. I mean that's what you came here to read anyhow, right?. Take your medicine, we'll get back to the fun stuff soon enough :)*

Just thought i'd wish everyone who happened to see it a happy Thanksgiving. May your turkey stuffings give you only minor bellyaches (leave room for pie!), and your chemically-induced comas pass without incident :).

Myself I didn't do a whole-lot for Thanksgiving, I was invited out to dinner with the UOregon exchange center that X is affiliated with, the 27 euro price tag for the outing caused me to give it a miss, however. I'm trying to keep my spending slim until further notice. I just stayed in with a bottle of wine, watched movies on my laptop and read my book. Not exciting I know, but after a week of running about Lyon it was preicesly what I needed.

Tonight is Friday once more, I think i'll finish up here and go out to a pub somewhere and see if i can meet some new folks. Xavier is out on a date for the evening I think. I'm seriously thinking about heading for Italy when I return from London. Some internet friends have invited me to join them in Rome in the next few weeks.

Anyhow enjoy your turkeys, family disfunction, cranberry sauce dementia and the like.

Well, I made it in one piece to Lyon, and Xavier's floor. The flight was relativley painless, only about an hour and half airborne. I had a bit of fiaso getting to X's place on the Metro. It seems the french aren't so hot with trasit maps and signs. They are even worse at indication wither a paticular stop is above (or below) ground. This caused me a bit of grief as I wandered around the transit mall pulling my hair out by the roots.

Xavier's proclamation that his apartment was 'kind of small' proved to be wildly understated. It was not unlike a blind date with a 'Great Personality'; dissapointing and awkward. X's place is naugh more than a prision cell with a kitchenette and 24-hour access. In fact, there being no place to sleep but the strip of linoleum floor near his bed, my first mission was straight to the mall to grab an air mattress.

(This is not meant to incinuate that i'm not extroidinarily gratefull for a place to stay, in fact the accomodation is more than adaqute, just very small.)

My Second day I just walked around the city as much as possible, saw a few cathedrals, had lunch in the ruins of the roman theatres and watched the sun go down. (God I love history!) It's so frustrating that I don't know any French, I feel like such a schlep whenever I attempt to interact with someone here. I'm beginning to to feel that I might stay here and learn the language so I don't have to feel this awkward ever again. That however is a can of worms to be opened at a later date- at present I don't know what my long-term goals are.

Fun Now. Responsibility Later.

Speaking of fun, I'm headed back to London in a few weeks to hang with Hillary and Co. That should be a good time. I think she has the free-time and inclination to go out and play, where Ben was usually to tired and harrowed from work.

**Hmm I have no idea why the picture post is showing up twice, sorry about that**

So, I'm off to Lyon on Weds. afternoon, to hang with Mister Xavier. The man has more college degrees than he has digits on his left hand, Most of them related to French. Evidently his apartment is a bit tiny; and by tiny I mean micro-fucking small- It should make for intersting accomodation for two people. The likleyhood of us killing each other seems greatly increased.

My last few days in London have been quite uneventfull. Mostly hanging with Ben and going on long walks around the city. I went to a few bars and went clubbing one night, nothing that intersteing really. One thing about european cities that I love is that when you meet new people you never know where they're from right-off. It's equally likely they will be from Albania as England. It's possible this is just a big-city phenomena, where folks from everywhere gravitate to one place. After all, I've never been to New York maybe it's the same way there.

Regardless, I rarely meet foreigners in the states, and when you do it's such a novelty, you single out the moment. Here it just feels natural that people should be from wherever. It makes you feel more like a citizen of the world, rather than simply one place. It's a very comforting feeling, and it gives me a strange sense of belonging. - If that makes any sense.

London is an interesting place.-not sure yet if I want to live here, it's staggeringly huge and very, very, busy. I'll be back here in about a month, I'll see Lyon has altered my perceptions any at that point.