Hello. Welcome to my website. It started while I was in Europe for a semester, and I've kept it up since then. I'm now at the University of Chicago Law School, living in Hyde Park, and the story continues. If you want to say hi or visit me, email cfloyd at uchicago dot edu.
"Life is nothing if not the sum of your anecdotes." -Scotty The Body, on storytelling "But it ain't that bad, man. Just figure out the system before the system figures out you." -T. Matthew Smith, on the 1L year "The beer just doesn't taste as good when you're not drinking it with your buddies." -Anon., on being away from good friends "Somebody has to pay the rent around here. Why the hell not us?" -Cotton, on studying for exams
3/21/2003
A joke:
A guy walks into a store and asks the clerk, "Do you speak English?" The clerk says, "Yes. What do you need?" So the guy says, "Marlboro."
Get it?
Oh, you don't get it. Neither did I at first. The joke is that English isn't needed to know what "Marlboro" means. It's the cool cigarrette to smoke.
There are little bits of English all across the world, to the point that they stop being English and start being international. Little words from English don't just apply to cigarettes. English phrases have invaded all walks of life here. A used Handy is, in German, a "secondhand Handy." Live Music? "Livemusik." Anything hip has an English phrase somewhere in the advertisement. "Be there or be square." German would work just fine, but English is cool. So they say.
Another joke:
What is American Culture?
An oxymoron.
If you're a European that's pretty funny, kind of like a French joke in the US. It's funny, until you realize that you had to take the Marlboro and the Big Mac out of your mouth to laugh, put your Coca-Cola down to slap your knee through your Levi's jeans, and turn down the MTV to talk. It was funny, but now you begin to resent this entity across the sea that seems so smug and cool. Remember the worst thing about the coolest kids in school? They weren't trying. They didn't even know how cool they seemed. And when they finally realized you resented them, they didn't understand why. That's anti-Americanism. We didn't even realize it existed. Doesn't everybody else have their own music, their own cola, their own smokes? They wish they did.
3/21/2003 04:54:00 AM
