Testing, testing. Hello?
Hello campers! It's been an age since I've written anything here, so take this as proof that I'm not actually dead. I've been teaching in Italy for the past year, and am going back there next week. Specifically, I'll be in Sardinia, which is awesome. Hopefully I'll start revising the miniscule amount of Italian I picked up last time (most of which was the bad words), and will be reasonably okay at it by this time next year.
Teaching is turning out to be a lot of fun, in that you get to meet lots of interesting people and subject them to this really quite strange language. I now know more about grammar than I would care to admit, and will speak about it more than anyone would care to hear. Plus, I get to see all different parts of the world and find ways to somehow get into difficulty in each one. I've been stranded up a mountain, relying on passing natives to supply me with spark plugs for my rented motorbike. I've wandered around Rome for half the night trying to find somewhere to drink, and then spent the other half and a lot of the morning trying to avoid too much confrontation while drinking an amount of alcohol that wasn't healthy or clever. I lost my passport in Poland, and somehow returned to the UK without it. What I'm saying is that on the whole I've enjoyed myself.
At the moment the plan is to go on doing it at least for two years, then pause and see where I'm at and what opportunities I have. If I love teaching so much that I've lost all my senses, I may even start teaching in state schools. Then again those kids would understand me when I insult them with complicated words. "You utterly malodorous heap of effluent". Maybe not.
Beneath the cut is a characteristically uninformed musing on international politics. Because I haven't changed.
One of my favourite dark satire jokes concerns 9/11. I think Frankie Boyle delivered it, so it is utterly tasteless. He was talking about what they should build at ground zero and suggesting that the perfect choice would be a mosque, reason being that it's guaranteed to be safe from terrorists.
That's a joke I felt guilty about finding funny when I first heard it. But it's also an interesting idea that might have something to recommend it. Think about it. It would be an olive branch to the muslim world, a statement that the US understands that their religion and Al Quaeda are not synonymous. It would also have to be infuriating to the terrorists who would love to polarise their conflict based on religion. It robs them of legitimacy, contradicting the idea that Western and muslim values are naturally opposed to each other. It makes the fundamentalists look silly, and there's nothing better for winning hearts and minds than making your opponent look like a clown.
Of course that wouldn't ever happen, and I'm not really suggesting that it should. Respecting those that were killed on that day is very important for the American people. Plus, it seems that the US actually doesn't see any difference between muslims and terrorists. See the huge media coverage of a muslim community centre proposed for a spot a few blocks from ground zero which, for reasons of their own, many have referred to as a mosque on the actual site. And now the muslim world is getting a very different impression of the US. It is a culture that reacts to theirs with fear and violence, just as the worst of them react with fear and violence to christian culture. We threaten to burn their holy book, as if we weren't doing enough to make the people with so much conviction that they blow themselves up angry.
In the Bush years you heard a lot of people saying that if you don't support the war in Iraq, or questioned anything that administration did, then the terrorists have already won. But by making the building of something that isn't even a mosque such an issue, you are increasing ill feeling about the US. I'm not repeating the old cliche as if it's suddenly real, because it isn't. But it is making the middle east that little bit more angry at the west. That's probably not a good thing.
Teaching is turning out to be a lot of fun, in that you get to meet lots of interesting people and subject them to this really quite strange language. I now know more about grammar than I would care to admit, and will speak about it more than anyone would care to hear. Plus, I get to see all different parts of the world and find ways to somehow get into difficulty in each one. I've been stranded up a mountain, relying on passing natives to supply me with spark plugs for my rented motorbike. I've wandered around Rome for half the night trying to find somewhere to drink, and then spent the other half and a lot of the morning trying to avoid too much confrontation while drinking an amount of alcohol that wasn't healthy or clever. I lost my passport in Poland, and somehow returned to the UK without it. What I'm saying is that on the whole I've enjoyed myself.
At the moment the plan is to go on doing it at least for two years, then pause and see where I'm at and what opportunities I have. If I love teaching so much that I've lost all my senses, I may even start teaching in state schools. Then again those kids would understand me when I insult them with complicated words. "You utterly malodorous heap of effluent". Maybe not.
Beneath the cut is a characteristically uninformed musing on international politics. Because I haven't changed.
One of my favourite dark satire jokes concerns 9/11. I think Frankie Boyle delivered it, so it is utterly tasteless. He was talking about what they should build at ground zero and suggesting that the perfect choice would be a mosque, reason being that it's guaranteed to be safe from terrorists.
That's a joke I felt guilty about finding funny when I first heard it. But it's also an interesting idea that might have something to recommend it. Think about it. It would be an olive branch to the muslim world, a statement that the US understands that their religion and Al Quaeda are not synonymous. It would also have to be infuriating to the terrorists who would love to polarise their conflict based on religion. It robs them of legitimacy, contradicting the idea that Western and muslim values are naturally opposed to each other. It makes the fundamentalists look silly, and there's nothing better for winning hearts and minds than making your opponent look like a clown.
Of course that wouldn't ever happen, and I'm not really suggesting that it should. Respecting those that were killed on that day is very important for the American people. Plus, it seems that the US actually doesn't see any difference between muslims and terrorists. See the huge media coverage of a muslim community centre proposed for a spot a few blocks from ground zero which, for reasons of their own, many have referred to as a mosque on the actual site. And now the muslim world is getting a very different impression of the US. It is a culture that reacts to theirs with fear and violence, just as the worst of them react with fear and violence to christian culture. We threaten to burn their holy book, as if we weren't doing enough to make the people with so much conviction that they blow themselves up angry.
In the Bush years you heard a lot of people saying that if you don't support the war in Iraq, or questioned anything that administration did, then the terrorists have already won. But by making the building of something that isn't even a mosque such an issue, you are increasing ill feeling about the US. I'm not repeating the old cliche as if it's suddenly real, because it isn't. But it is making the middle east that little bit more angry at the west. That's probably not a good thing.