"HELEN!!!!!!!!!!"

Say what you want about the teeth, the food, the constant drunkenness, and the unsettling obsession with ceremony, but the British have fantastic emergency exit signs. The United States of America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, where the streets are paved with gold, where anybody can become president someday, and where clouds rain puppies—but I don’t think our emergency exit signs reflect our mission. For those of you who are not American I should explain that, unlike the mirthful British signs, the American signs say quite simply “EXIT” in the same, uniform lettering, and they usually glow a sinister red or green. They’re almost German in their efficiency.

Now for my American readers I should probably explain what emergency exit signs look like here.
Basically it is a silhouette man making a mad dash for the exit.

I’d like to imagine this poor silhouette man running from the flames in a state of complete, pants-shitting terror. “You guys, we have to get the fuck out of here!” he seems to say. “It’s gone all backdraft!” he seems to add. Forgetting all the fire drills they practiced in the land of silhouettes that exist on various signs, he makes a sprinting beeline for the exit and bowls over small children in the process. At this point the animalistic instinct to preserve his own life takes over, and he finds himself practically frothing at the mouth like a rabid beast and plowing through a crowd of silhouette people who have gotten between him and the exit, like he's one of the less classy men on the Titanic.

While being the first to admit that I usually read into things far too much, I’d like to hope that designers, like me, had a full backstory for the poor man on the sign fleeing the flames. Maybe he isn’t the selfish, fearful man that I think he is. Maybe he’s married to the silhouette woman from public restroom signs (yeah, you’d think she’s married to the men’s restroom silhouette man, but that’s because you’re such a racist), and he’s actually fleeing quickly because he wants to make sure his wife, who’s in another area of the building, is okay.

Although the silhouette man does find her eventually, she’s tragically trapped in an upper floor of the building. “Take care of the children, darling!” she calls out from the window, with a stoical look on her blank, silhouette face as the flames climb higher. “HELEN, NOOOOOO!” her husband screams as the silhouette firefighters usher him away. They try to wrap him in a blanket, and he throws it off, raving like a madsilhouetteman, “WHY? WHY? NOOOOO! HELEN! WHY, SILHOUETTE GOD? WHY?”

Hmm. Yeah, I’m probably reading too much into those signs.

“Religious Services: Come for the farts, stay for the God.”

Warning: it’s another immature one.

After the unrivalled success of “High School Graduation Bingo, 2006 Edition” (I got to call out “Bingo!” after hearing, for example, the words “journey,” “spread your wings,” “look to your left,” and a joke about doing laundry very poorly at college), I’ve decided to create a new version of Bingo for farts during religious services.

Obviously you’ll be wantin’ some instructions on how to play Church Fart Bingo: The way it’d work is that any time a participant went church surfing or synagogue chasing they’d bring their Bingo card with them. On it would be different services you could go to: mass, evensong, shacharit, maariv, kol nidre, Rosh Hashanah morning (1st day), Quaker meeting, zen meditation, etc. And then you’d just play the waiting game. Because, if you go to church/synagogue as often as I do, you’ll end up hearing enough farts to get Bingo eventually. And then, no matter if the cantor is in the middle of wailing away in Hebrew about how different people are going to die this year or if the priest is in the middle of turning wine into the blood of Christ, you would be LEGALLY OBLIGATED to scream out at the top of your lungs, “BINGOOOOO!”

So the reason I bring this up is that tonight I ended up at Kol Nidre. Partly because I’m training to teach religion and need to keep up with how different people are praying, partly because I still sometimes feel as though if I don’t go to services on Yom Kippur I’m going to get smote/smited/whatever the word is, and partly because I was missing some old, dear friends. I thought going to Kol Nidre would be a nice way to recall fond memories of getting the inappropriate giggles with friends during Yamei Kippur past, when someone farted during the morning service, when the old professor acting as cantor had a peculiar voice that a friend spent the following years imitating at completely random intervals, or when the cantor went ridiculously slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-owly and caused the fast to drag on for even longer than necessary.

Hearing all that Hebrew and hearing the familiar tunes made me think of old friends in LA, Chicago and Jerusalem, and I’ll completely unashamedly admit that my eyes started tearing up. It’s rather embarrassing to do this during Kol Nidre, because I’m sure crying while you’re begging God for forgiveness in Hebrew can only look to your neighbors as though you did something well and truly fucked up this year that needs some serious atoning for. I imagine neighbors would be thinking, “Bitch, you clearly need to prostrate yourself.” Not really in the mood for a hearty helping of homesickness, I started to regret coming to the service, repeatedly asking myself, “What the hell were you thinking when you came?”


And then someone in my row ripped a substantial fart.


Stifling a quick giggle, I brushed it off as just a squeaky chair or a shoe noise. But then an unmistakable odor filled the air and confirmed my suspicions. And, dear readers, surely at this point in our relationship you can correctly predict my immensely mature reaction. Yes, the correct answer is indeed a solid 20 minutes of silent giggles, tears streaming down my face, a lobster-red face, and my entire body shaking like I was having some kind of a seizure.

Being trapped in a crowded Yom Kippur service with the severe people of England only made my struggle worse, as my brain kept trying to convince my sense of humor that we needed to behave ourselves. It’s supposed to be the most serious night of the year and I’m laughing about flatulence. Typical Sam, I’m afraid.

I calmed down for a minute, but then reflected on the number of religious services I’ve been to in which a member of the congregation audibly cheesed. After realizing that the number is actually appallingly high, and that the Jews have (according to empirical data that I have compiled) been the worst offenders, I completely lost it again and was back to silently shaking with giggles. With these kinds of stats I feel like I should pass Tums around at religious services, though maybe I’ll wait to see what patterns emerge on the graphs before deciding on a course of action.

But I promise I do have a point in sharing my story of someone farting during Kol Nidre. See, this is what I love about my life. At the very moment when I was feeling my lowest, like I made a huge mistake, like everything was now totally shit…at that very moment what I think is the single funniest thing in the world that could possibly happen ACTUALLY HAPPENED. If that’s not unquestionable proof that God exists and is a loving god, I don’t know what is.

Aw crap though, I’ve started using farts as proof of God’s existence. What would Anselm say?

Hanging out with a cat.

From 10/4/11 and 10/3/11
So I pretty much sat next to Lauren Cooper today. And, much like the adults in those sketches, I had not the faintest idea how to get young Lauren to shut the fuck up. But that truly deserves its own blog post, and I can only write about it after the homicidal urges have subsided. And when I say homicidal urges I actually mean the urge to drown my sorrows with cheesecake. Which I am doing right now.

Instead today I’d like to talk about a cat called Gemma that I became friends with on Monday. Being the socially awkward and inept person that I am, she might very well have been the ONLY friend I made on Monday. I’d like to think that the fact that I am fully aware of my awkwardness kind of puts me one step ahead of, say, PhD students, but this might be a purely theoretical distinction.

Anyway: Gemma. The chilliest cat in all of England. So basically I just sat with her outside for about half an hour. To be honest it wasn’t all that interesting. And quite frankly the only reason I sat with her in the first place was that I just thought she was ill. Mostly because I think all cats look ill. Probably because they’re not dogs.

So I was just chilling—okay, I have to interrupt myself here and say that the English people I’ve met have overwhelmingly used the word “chillaxing,” which is something I thought only dweeby 14-year-olds in the Midwest still said because they thought it was still the done thing in California. But apparently it’s still going strong here. Anyway. So I was just chilling with Gemma, waiting for someone who knew cats better than I did (basically anybody) to walk by, but no one came. So it was just me sitting with this cat who was making this weird moaning sound that I assumed at the time was a cat swan song but that I guess in retrospect is just extremely posh meowing that apparently American cats don’t do.

And my response was to just stroke her. Every now and then I’d stop stroking her because I was afraid she was dying and I really just didn’t want to turn today into a day in which I stroked a dead cat. But then I thought that would be really uncharitable of me, and the key word of the house today seemed to be “charity” (well, that and “cake”), so I continued stroking her and desperately prayed that she wouldn’t die. At least not while I was touching her.

I kept talking to her, calling “Gemma!” quite a bit, because I figured that when you do that to dying people they hang on a little longer. (“Gemma, you’re going to be fine. We’re going to see Venice, don’t you remember? Don’t you remember how you wanted to see Venice, Gemma? You just gotta hang on.”) While remaining slightly doubtful as to whether or not it works on cats, I thought it couldn’t hurt. Having briefly considered whether or not meowing at her would be more productive, I decided that there was definitely a boundary of weirdness that even I wasn’t prepared to cross. So I just continued my little chat with quite possibly the worst conversation partner ever.

Finally someone did walk by and I asked him whose cat it was. Turns out she belongs to the professor who gave me my own copy of the New Testament in Greek a couple weeks ago. The same professor who, whenever he says so much as “Hello, Sam” in the hallway, causes me to cower in reverence and fear of his NT skills. This is his cat. (Urge to make “Magnificat” pun rising…)
Well, fuck. If his cat dies in my presence that’ll probably piss him off and then he’ll probably ask for the New Testament back. …HANG IN THERE, GEMMA!

The guy who came across my little makeshift vet office (Dr. Sam: I cure your pets with love and slightly squeamish stroking) seemed really unconcerned about Gemma, so she must be doing okay. And I’ll admit I didn’t really want to press the issue because he’s part of the ordinand crew, and they scare me somewhat for two reasons: 1) sometimes, particularly during mass, they wear dresses, and 2) I know they can just tell what an asshole I truly am, as most people can, but then they’re going to tell God about it, and then, well, I’m just totally fucked.

Casually waiting for the ordinand to round the corner, I started to get up, and as I did so I reflected on the fact that I just spent a sizeable fraction of an hour talking to a cat. And it was still probably the most productive thing I did all day.

But as I stood up and reflected a most horrific realization dawned on me: ooooooh Jesus have I been sitting in a bad spot. I’d been sitting Indian style right in front of the open door that leads straight to the kitchen. The way I was sitting you couldn’t see from the kitchen that I was with a cat. SO basically it just looked like I was camping out in front of the kitchen.

Look, I don’t mind if the cook thinks I’m just a hungry fatass who is sitting in front of the kitchen at 1 in the afternoon because she wants to be first in line for dinner at 7—in fact, I’d prefer that. But unfortunately I’m pretty sure that even before this incident I’d already managed to accidentally convince the cook here that I have some kind of an unhealthy obsession with him. To be fair, my passionate and extremely loud declaration of love for him when he served me my first taste of Indian food probably sent mixed signals.

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

So I think I made one terrible mistake coming here. And by that I mean I have accidentally passed up my one obvious opportunity in life to reinvent myself. No one here knew me when I first arrived. See, I’ve just been portraying myself as Sam, the RE student-teacher who likes Doctor Who, aspires to be Laura Ingalls Wilder, and dances to the Footloose soundtrack alone in her room. Which is fine I guess, because it’s a more or less accurate description of me. But I can’t help feeling like I missed out on a fantastic opportunity to introduce myself to everyone as Pocahontas.

Talk during Doctor Who and I'll have you put on the sex offenders register

Yesterday I watched the season finale of Doctor Who. I ended up camping out on the common room couch for some time beforehand just in case anyone would dare try to watch something besides Doctor Who. Then again, since England only has 1 ½ channels I’m not sure what else they’d be watching. Test patterns maybe?

Anyway, before Doctor Who there’s this terrifying show called “Strictly Come Dancing,” which I think is what the American “Dancing with the Stars” is based on. It’s terrifying because I don’t know all the endearing backstories of the celebrities because, coming from America, I’m used to actual celebrities. So instead of viewing their dancing from a sympathetic perspective, all I see are a bunch of old, sad tarts clad in sequin disasters being rather violently flung about on the dance floor by some eternally cheery young thing who has the almost impossible job of hiding his disbelief at how shit his partner is at dancing. And, frankly, it makes me fear old age. I don’t mind making an ass of myself, but I prefer KNOWING when I’m making an ass of myself. And it seems that when you’re old you lose your awareness of how ridiculous you are, and instead do a dance routine on national television in which you look like an overweight corgi chasing after dropped table scraps.

But I’m not here to talk about Strictly Come Dancing. I’m here to talk about child molesters. And by that I mean people who talk during Doctor Who. So I’m sitting there, practically pissing myself with excitement from watching the resolution of the huge mystery of the entire season, whether or not the Doctor does actually die, when suddenly an entire battalion of visitors to the college decided it needed to have a tea party in the common room RIGHT THEN. “Team, we need to have tea RIGHT NOW, and we need to very loudly and passionately discuss and sort out all of the world’s problems. RIGHT NOW. The world’s depending on us. And to show the world just how seriously we take our responsibility, we’re going to clink our cups and saucers loudly enough that even folks in Siberia are aware that this historic discussion is occurring.” …Sometimes I truly think universities should be made illegal and their students sentenced to 20 years hard labor in kibbutz laundry rooms. Whatever, I tell myself, that’s fine. I turn up the volume a bit and try to keep up with all the crazy shit that’s coming out of Matt Smith’s mouth, which is sometimes challenging enough even if you’re in a silent room…and you’re Stephen Hawking.

But then (and this person is so nice in every way, I just want to make that clear) someone decided to ask me about my day. A slight grunt was my response. Part of me felt so rude to not respond properly by reciprocating the question (or even simply responding with anything besides what was essentially a mouth fart), but the part of me that won out thought that anyone who talks during Doctor Who is clearly some kind of a pervert. And, dear readers, I just don’t have time for perverts.

Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m an awful person who prefers TV to human beings—the reality is that I’m an awful person who prefers Time Lords to human beings. And to be fair to myself, I may not have the patience to exchange pleasantries during Doctor Who, but if someone came to me desperately needing a sympathetic ear during Doctor Who I wouldn’t be angry. Hell, if it were something serious and urgent like, “Sam, I’m contemplating suicide,” I might even turn down the volume. A bit.

Sam's brush with greatness

Two days ago I had the surreal experience of showing a famous academic where the bathroom was. My college was hosting some conference on churches or theology or some other thing that presumably means something to God but not much to anyone else, and so our house was invaded by a sea of obese and religious Europeans. So as I’m wading through a crowd of well-fed Europeans so I can get to tea and cake on time and I’m silently cursing all of them for delaying my cake eating, a woman stops me and asks, “Do you know where the toilets are?”

I rather lazily pointed in the direction of the bathroom, and as I did I caught sight of her name tag. Holy crap. “Jane Doe.” I’ve read her stuff. My tutor has mentioned her almost as many times as he’s mentioned trees, and if you know anything about my tutor you’ll know the man loves himself some trees. OH MY GOD. Jane Doe said “toilets” to me! I helped Jane Doe have a (I’ll assume) successful bowel movement!

I wish I hadn’t just lazily pointed. I should have escorted her. I should have shown her Lambeth Palace, which is what I’ve started calling the handicapped bathroom that is about twice the size of my bedroom and that has fine soaps that the regular bathroom doesn’t have, which I guess is supposed to make people feel a little better about being handicapped. Then again, I’m fine with just lazily pointing. After all, bitch got between me and cake.

Writing is against my birthright.

So I’m still having trouble comprehending this whole issue of pens in UK schools. From my limited experience (observations in six schools—still prolly more classroom experience than Michael Gove), I’ve concluded that British children must be allergic to pens. At the start of every class period inevitably a small riot breaks out as the kids loudly inform Miss that they don’t have a pen or demand that Sir lend them one from the supply that he finds himself forced to bring with him.

I find it genuinely fascinating that it doesn’t occur to these children to bring their own goddamn pens to each lesson, and I often like to speculate on the thought process behind that one. I imagine that these children think that they are going to simply do interpretive dance all day at school and are then on a daily basis deeply shocked and offended to find that going to school usually involves writing at least a couple things down in your notebook—“Wait, we’re going to have to write things down? IN SCHOOL???”

I really just don’t get it. In my school people rarely forgot pens. And if you did you would very quickly have a quiet word with your neighbor to ask, completely humiliated and one step away from performing public self-flagellation, whether you could borrow a pen. And if that neighbor was me, you would then have to sign a contract. Because I was that desperate to not have any friends.

The kids’ aversion to pens is almost as confusing to me as British teachers’ obsession with having the kids underline things with rulers as opposed to simply letting the children do the terrifyingly bold and dangerous task of freehanding lines underneath entire words (dare I even imagine such a world?!), which seems like such a frustratingly massive waste of time that it might even earn itself its own blog post.