Iggy & the Stooges, Sonic Youth, Bardo Pond, Six Organs of Admittance, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Charalambides, My Cat Is An Alien, The Skaters, Melvins, Magik Markers, Deerhoof, Wooden Wand, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Wolf Eyes, The Dead C., Monotract, Prurient, Awesome Color, MC5, Dinosaur Jr., Gang of Four, Nurse With Wound, Aaron Dilloway, Major Stars, Mouthus, Double Leopards, Lambsbread, No-Neck Blues Band, Hive Mind, Leslie Keffer, Dead Machines, Nels Cline, Flipper, MV/EE + the Bummer Road, Hair Police, 16 Bitch Pile Up, Bark Haze, Islaja, Comets on Fire, and Sun City Girls.

I also hate the Nintendo Wii.

Edit: I no longer hate the Nintendo Wii. Gimme your friend code if you have a Wii!

I can't even believe I did this, let alone enjoyed it. On the "Essay Comment Sheet," Professor Plant wrote in one section: "The piece is very well structured, but I'm not sure I believe your view that some of the idiosyncrasies result from masonic misunderstanding; the partial arcading, for example, is too deliberate. Also there is a strong body of opinion that the master, or the man in charge of the works was a clergyman, Elias of Dereham." I got an A!

This also makes me think of the conditions under which the paper was written. A girl named Erica (who had a brother named Eric) was in my class and stayed up until 5am with me online the night before it was due, cheering me on to get the paper done, and vice-versa. She was also writing on Salisbury Cathedral, though she believed it to be not a maverick, but a paradigm. We were talking online because the week before, our class had taken a trip to Ely Cathedral, which required a long train ride, and I ended up sitting across from Erica. We got along well and I got her phone number shortly after making a joke about my mother being raised by gazelles while growing up in Kenya.

So we finally finished our papers around the same time, and Erica mentioned that we had to celebrate after class by going to a pub. When the time came, we were both hungry and walked to a sushi restaurant but decided against going in since I saw my terrifying History of Political Theory professor dining near the window. We bought ramen noodles from the campus shop and went to her flat to eat them. While they cooked we shared a bottle of red wine and talked about Professor Plant's jagged teeth, getting tipsy in a matter of minutes. Erica began speaking in an amazing Cockney accent (she was from California) and flailing her arms around in a dance on her side of the table. I started laughing and clapping rhythmically and leaned forward quickly, breaking the chair in the process. Erica and I tried to piece it back together for a few minutes until we realized that people in the opposite flat were watching us through their windows and pointing. Erica said she needed a shower and I got a phone call from another friend about dinner plans, so we said goodbye and she stood in the doorway as I walked down the staircase, telling me to come back again sometime.

I met up with my other friend for dinner, and when she saw me, she gave me a hug that swung her purse into my testicles with overwhelming force.

I never saw Erica again, other than when I ran into her on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral. I was exiting, she was entering. We both smiled, waved at each other, and kept walking.