And on the 4th day of Christmas...

Actually, it's not quite that time of December.  I'm jump-starting it all because it goes along with the theme of "my life is stressful and it happens to coincide with the season of cheer because it's ironic and irony is humorous as shit."  And on the fourth day, someone bullshit overlord of the universe created finals week because he/she wants us to be sad. 

So, unlike my genetic counterpart, I am not equipped with beautiful photos illustrating my adventures throughout Pittsburgh, even though I have actually done some things and they were exciting.  And for this, I blame the fact that my favorite camera, the beautiful Canon Ae-1, is broken.  It's been missing a crucial piece that keeps the body light-tight ever since I moved to Pennsylvania.  I believe it went missing somewhere over Arizona or Arkansas, one of the A's.  And, as a general rule, I don't take my DSLR out very much due to my extreme paranoia that it will be 1) lost 2) stolen 3) lost and then stolen 4) lost and then mauled by a bear and then stolen 5) stolen and then returned and then mutilated by a blood-thirsty pterodactyl whose only purpose in life is to ruin a camera that I spent half a year saving up for and then stolen by someone who has a thing for cameras torn apart by extinct, flying reptilians.  It could happen.

So, I usually take my circa-1976 film camera with me on my adventures throughout life because goddamn can that camera take a beating.  It's like 99% metal, 1% metal-ier metal.  It used to be my third arm.  I would take it to school, to the grocery store, to the doctor, everywhere.  I don't have very much proof of these outings because I am dumb and never had the camera on the right setting so most of those pictures are either completely over-exposed or under-exposed.  But those moments happened and they lived on that fragile, opaque negative and they made me look like a photographer. 

Now I am a photographer who doesn't take pictures except when required to do so. 

Anyways, let us move on to something joyful and exciting.

Thanksgiving happened.  Like Ashley, I wasn't able to fly home for the occasion so I spent the week at my friend Allie's parents' house in Greensburg, PA (the only thing I've really taken any pictures of).  Greensburg, like our hometown, is full of a whole lot of nothing to do.  But we made the most of it.  We drove around and walked aimlessly through their mall and learned how to say "mistletoe" in German and we tried to do donuts in her Suzuki SUV in the hookah bar parking lot and we sang whatever came on the radio in the Panera parking lot, waiting for her younger sister to get off work.  All in all, it was nice. 

And last night, we adventured about the Cathedral of Learning and pranked some people working on a project that required a buzz saw and then hid in the bathroom and tried to get on the roof but eventually gave up and left.

So things have happened, I just don't have proof of the exciting bits.
I think that's what I've been trying to say.
In any case, here are some pictures I took on my phone of my time in Greensburg.

 

The drive to Greensburg.

The truly amazing view from their living room window.

 Allie taking a picture of her cat.

Me waking up in Allie's bed because Allie is a lovely individual who gladly slept on the couch.

Midnight soup of champions.

Allie's evil cat, Luca.

Allie.

Amazing view from living room part II.

Allie and her cat part II.

Stairs.  Coffee cup.  Unidentified black object.  Maybe boots.

Amazing view part III, but from a different perspective.

And a couple pictures I actually did take on the elusive DSLR.

Until next time,
Stephanie

"Thanks?" — A Thanksgiving Carol

Hello all. Now that we’ve awoken from our tryptophan comas it’s time to once again enter the dark, mysterious world of corruption, sex, and explosions that I like to call my life. Except this blog is about Thanksgiving so there will be none of that at all.

Let’s go back a few days to the preparation. As my job was the mashed potatoes and yams I thought, “That is going to be no problem whatsoever.” Now, what I didn’t take into consideration was that in Glasgow, it takes at least twenty minutes to walk anywhere and potatoes/yams for 10 people = 5 million pounds. Maybe billion. But I digress.

As I was shopping for ingredients with my recipes in hand, I looked from the American measurements on my paper (cups, ounces, what have you) to the UK ones on the containers (grams, kilograms, what the fuck do these mean). As I stood there for the next twenty minutes trying to crawl back into the dark/angsty corner of my mind that stores high school memories, I attempted to recall just what exactly the conversion was from grams to ounces.

I never figured it out so I just bought ten of everything. On an unrelated note, if anyways needs 9 ¾ bottles of lemon juice I might know where you can get some. Oh and by the way, the best thing about grocery shopping the day before Thanksgiving in Scotland is that it’s not the day before Thanksgiving in Scotland. If that makes sense.

Finally the day arrived and my friend Gina and I were off to Alex’s, a friend who so graciously let us cook at his house. With our turkey wrapped in a garbage bag and my potato and yam mountain shoved into a suitcase, we successfully made the trip and started cooking that bitch. Oh and we named him (the turkey) Keith because it is the ugliest name in the English language and it made us feel better about ripping out his insides and carving into his body. 

All in all the cooking process went well. I was left in charge of Keith when Gina had to leave to go to class and he didn’t explode. The mashed potatoes turned out great except for the moment that the cream boiled over the pot in a fiery inferno of whiteness. I had to make a store run about halfway through and got in line behind a woman who had cut out every coupon in the world ever made. And I learned that yams turn into bullets when you cut them in half … just try cutting one and see what happens. Yam bullets. That’s what’s going to happen.

Overall, my friends (American and nae American <-- that means not) made this first Thanksgiving without family awesome. Keith was successfully destroyed as were our waistlines, and after the meal we revisited the meaning of Thanksgiving and listed what we were thankful for. I told the non-Americans that Thanksgiving was a celebration of the day we came together as brethren, as pilgrims and Indians together as one. And then afterwards we slaughtered them and took all their land.

I will now end the storytelling portion of this blog with a list … a list of what I am thankful for. Get ready, cuz it’s a SHIT TON:

1. Family (except Stephanie)
2. Friends (except for the ones that ask for money. Except no one asks me for money because I live in a consistently impoverished state)
3. My new home in Glasgow (except for the fact that the sun comes up at 9 and is gone by 3. The North man, the North)
4. Ice cream
5. More ice cream
6. Coffee
7. Coffee ice cream
8. Our new blog friends Bryan and Brandon. It’s blogs like yours that make my day go from a 6 to a 6 ½
9. My books/my writings
10. Ron Fucking Swanson

NOW LET THE PHOTOS BEGIN:

Meet Keith  

Meet one half of the 10 billion potatoes I had to carry 500 miles 

AWWWW YEAHHH 

MEET GINA

MEET KATIE

Now watch carefully ...

Because this my friends 

Is how children are conceived 

Fuzzy picture of me part 1

Fuzz part 2

Thank you for your service Keith 

Helen and the Gines

Alex and Gina showing everyone how her belt cannot be broken

Alex and Gina after her belt broke

My people

Oliver stabbing Keith in the back. Sorry buddy but if the Lord our God didn't want this 

to happen to you he shouldn't have named you Keith 

On that note … goodbye Thanksgiving. Hello Kwanza. Oh and Stephanie and I will be reunited in two weeks. Get ready for more mystery and explosions THAN YOU HAVE EVER SEEN.

Love,

Ash-uh-lee

Welcome Reddit readers, you are the 1 cent.

Do you....do you see what I did there.  It's a TOPICAL joke.  (Those advertisements you see on the side of the page?  That's coffee money right there.) And we really did earn one cent from you lovely people. Oh wait, the only comment we received on Reddit was "I find the blog content narcissistic, boring and uninsightful" and then this lovely creature linked us to The Oatmeal, claiming "this is funny".  And guys, the similarities between this blog and The Oatmeal are astounding.  We don't own our own domain, Mathew Inman does.  We don't draw what we want to say, Mathew Inman does.  We update each other on the happenings in our lives and hope it entertains our readers too, Mathew Inman does not.  Well pour me out and call me buttermilk, Mr. Inman should sue us for all we're worth (which is, let's face it, not much).

I don't have an "in contrast to all of this" statement ready for you.  It's still cooking in the metaphorical oven.  I am currently sitting in bed, sipping on some leftover coffee, and dreaming of breakfast potatoes.  I don't know what it is about those potatoes but they are the simple carb of the gods.  In fact, I recall roommate #2 (otherwise known as Kayla) and I tried to pull an all-nighter a while back and we were at one point, amidst our sleepy stupor, just shouting out words.  Pretty sure "POTATO, 7:30" was emitted right before we both passed out.  (Breakfast starts at 7:30 here because they hate us and want us to be sad.)

Would you guys hate me terribly if I filled the rest of this post with pictures?  Pictures with captions? It is nearly 2 am and my face has to be awake in a few hours for class.  The brain.  It is not present.  I guess you can call this post UNINSIGHTFUL and BORING. 

Just kidding I'm not bitter.

 I started this mirror conversation.  RIP the best mirror interaction ever.

 sumtimez i take picz of fog

 You don't know shit about my cat.

 This was sitting outside my building.  Still is.  Doesn't look quite so good now.

 This is taped to a bathroom door in the Art & Design Center.

 Pennsylvania has pretty great leaves.

 Aforementioned leaves.  Also foot.

 The kitchen on my floor.  It has a really great skylight.

 A show I went to.  I've literally never seen more hipsters in my entire life.

 Myself in the aforementioned show's basement bathroom.  We're just...we're not going to talk about the amount of health code violations that were in this bathroom.

Roommate #2 took this of me.  Yeah so.

 

Proof that I am indeed a photography major and not a iPhone-toting-Instagram-using idiot oh wait.

 

More proof.  Feet.  Bench.  Wet.  Wet bench. 

Stephanie said I look like a hipsta

Also, this is not technically cheating because it is not a thing comprised of words (RIGHT STEPH??). This was the picture I sent Stephanie to show her my new shoes and she said I looked hipster. That whore bitch. Also, my bed is unmade. Get over it.

Wallace, Fawkes and Wao

It’s me again home dogs. And this time, it’s for … wait for it … CLASS. Yes you heard right, this blog post is for homework. Never thought I’d see the day. We are experimenting with writing through different media. So what I’m going to do is post some shit on here and then post some shit on the flicker and BOOM. Master’s course complete.

Jayy kayyy I still have like a year and a half left.

So let me fill you in on the happenings. Glasgow’s great but it’s fucking cold. Like, it’s 0 degrees. And I know that’s in Celsius so my American compadres won’t understand what I’m talking about but I think that the number “0” universally translates to, “fuck, that’s really cold.” Oh and also, the sun goes down at like 4 pm — and that’s only going to get worse from what I hear. Except when I started complaining about that to my new Icelandic friend Bobo, he told me to suck my shit up. I guess Iceland get’s it worse.

Oh and my writing is going really great. There were a few weeks there when I felt like I should take the little piece of Ashley that wanted to be a writer and walk it out the far reaches of a desolate field, duct tape it to a stick of dynamite, and then manically laugh from afar as I watched it incinerate, its ashes going their separate ways into the night sky. But now I’m ok. I read The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and wrote a short story based on its style. It was well-received by my experimentation professor who said he thought it could be the start of something fascinating. So I’m PUMPED.

Also I’ve been doing some travelling around with Katie and Gina. We went to Stirling which is just a short 45 minute train ride north (don’t quote me on “north” … it could have been east for all I know. But I’m pretty sure it’s north). And it was pretty great even though BBC said that the sun would be shining down upon the small Scottish town yet when we arrived it was … GASP … raining. BUT THAT DID NOT DETER US. We went to Stirling Castle and took a tour. We got to see the room in the castle where Mary Queen of Scots was crowned at nine months old. Gina sung Phantom of the Opera songs in the empty chapel because she has the voice of an angel of Jesus. And we got to see the William Wallace monument and I may or may not have screamed exactly what you would expect any Mel Gibson loving person would scream at the William Wallace monument \m/ So all in all a pretty great day.

OH and also it was Guy Fawkes Day a couple days ago. For my American friends, it was V for Vendetta Day — and it was great. A group of friends and I went to the Glasgow Green which was basically just a giant mud lawn. And there were fireworks and carnivals rides and 9283743 people and the absence of any form of warmth and fireworks. It was amazing. Just like the fourth of July except cold as balls.

Now for the weekly round of pictures:

Stirling Castle ooOOoooO 

The backside of Katie

The sexual side of Gina

The slightly doll-faced side of me

Castle stairs 

Castle & Toilets ... a deadly combination

Stirling Cemetery 

I don't know what that was, all I know my future front lawn is going to look exactly like it

Gina's seat of power

Guy Fawkes Day. 

My friend Alex and Helen's ghost. 

I am resisting all urges to quote Katy Perry 

That's all for me bitches. See you next time.

-Asher lee