Dear friends,

I’ve been traveling for the last week and enjoying the alienation of travel; my favorite part of being not-home is the mundane anthropological delight that comes from seeing how other people live. How is their takeaway pizza slice different from the one I get, in my neighborhood (answer: theirs is garnished with arugula)? How do pedestrians negotiate crosswalks? What’s the local soft drink (and will I regret having one after five p.m. because it was created to use up extra caffeine)?

Although I saw quite a few churches, I didn’t eat any of them.

The cost of harmonizing plug types throughout the EU was estimated at 100 billion Euro (and would take 75 years), which is why I’m carrying three different plugs on this trip.

If you like surrealism, you’ll probably like massurrealism. And if you like text-based art, you’ll probably like Cecil Touchon.

Occasionally I’ll fall down a Wikipedia rabbit hole (okay, ‘occasionally’ is an understatement) and find a phrase that lives in my head, disconnected from its context, such as ‘every hexagonal number is also a triangular number’. (My theory is that the miasma of consumer advertising, FM radio, and simplistic sitcom catchphrases of the 1970s and 1980s created a mental dependency on facile slogans and this is how that need is now satisfied in the absence of those environmental conditions. Sometimes memes work for this, and sometimes they don’t. The Simpsons always works for this.)

The vocabulary of archaic board and card games is always fun (perhaps more fun than the games were). You can win at Ticktack five different ways, including Tootes and Rovers! Or how about the rules of Queen Nazarene? “The Queen of Diamonds is Queen Nazareen, and he that hath it, demands three apiece of every Player. The Knave of Clubs is called Knave Knocher, and he that hath it challengeth two apiece. If women play among men it is customary for Knave Knocher to kiss Queen Nazareen.” Or calling the nine of diamonds the curse of Scotland?

Stay well!

Your friend,

Erin