England

Flag of England, or a plus sign? YOU DECIDE!

Man, you know what I’m getting tired of? Commercials for The General, and telling people when I’m going to England.

So for the last time, all of you: I leave Oregon on March 31st, and I leave America (from Detroit, unfortunately) on April 4th. I come back on June 20th. I will be using planes to get there. I will be traveling alone. Yes, I still hate flying with every fiber of my being. Yes, I do remember that time I freaked out because I thought we were crashing on the way back from the Rose Bowl. No, I don’t plan on doing it again.

But the fact remains: In a matter of days, I’ll be studying abroad in England. I’ve always wanted to go to England, because I have an inherent respect for the people who invented the one and only language I will ever speak, as well as the deep fried fish and the deep fried candy bar. I suppose that if there were any other country besides America that showed a stronger dedication to deep frying ordinary foods than England, I would study there, even if it meant learning a new language.

Academically speaking, my trip to England is going to be more or less a wash. I’ll be taking three general education classes that, while they appear to be highly interesting, will fulfill requirements I’ve already completed in the United States for a fraction of the cost. However, that’s the way I like it: I’m not going to England to take classes, I’m going to England to do literally everything. The last thing I want is my education getting in the way of that. This is the express reason that I pulled out of the internship I was going to do in London at the last second – making photocopies for some British TV station could take up time that I could be spending doing literally everything.

My trip overseas will not have an impact on the blog per se – if I can write 2000 words a week about the inane bullshit I do in Eugene, Oregon, then the only reason I would be unable to write that much during my globe trotting adventures in England is because I’ll be too busy doing literally everything to post an update.

One of the major changes you can expect while I’m away is that there’s going to be more multimedia content. Ordinarily, the pictures you see on this blog are barely-related images pulled from Google at the last minute before I post my blog and return to my regularly scheduled pornography. In England, though, I’ll be using both a digital camera and a Flip video camera to record everything of interest, and probably a lot of uninteresting things too.*

*On that note, I had been planning to do this update as a video blog, but when I looked at the footage I realized that video blogging really doesn’t have much on text blogging when it’s just a greasy dude who hasn’t showered sitting alone in his parents’ house in Oregon. It will, no doubt, be more visually compelling when I’m both clean and on the road.

The other major change is that I will most likely be blogging for an on-campus organization while I’m gone. I can’t say who just yet because I haven’t received official confirmation, but should I get the job, my blogs will be appearing both on their website and here more or less simultaneously. Their blog receives a bit more traffic than this one does, too, so there’s a good chance that in the future I won’t be able to name all of my readers in ten seconds anymore.

You may have noticed in my departure information that I’m leaving Oregon several days before I leave for England. The reason for this is that I’ll be spending a few days in Los Angeles to interview for summer internships at production companies, and potentially pitch Mike’s and my recently completed screenplay, should the opportunity arise. If I’m fortunate enough to land one of these internships, I’ll be spending my summer in LA, which means my blog will probably abandon its highly analytical dorkyness in favor of a more ‘coked out hot tub full of cheap strippers’ sort of vibe.

In one way or another, it’s all comin’ together for ‘ol Liz Lemon – for the next six months I’ll be either studying in the country I’ve always wanted to go to or interning at the heart of the industry I’ve always wanted to get into. It’s rare for all of my good fortunes to align like this – an apparent six months of Owen Wilson days – and so I’m somewhat nervous that on my way to the airport to start this grand adventure a giant Monty Python foot is going to come out of the sky and squish me.

Rest assured, though, that whatever happens over this next crazy half of a year, it’s going to be pretty thoroughly catalogued here. I’ve always been an on time update Nazi, but maybe give me a little leeway if I’m off by a day or so – for a long, continuous stretch, I’m going to have A Lot Going On, and I would be an idiot to turn down a chance to go steal silverware from Buckingham Palace because I’ve got to write an on-time blog that night. Some updates might be shorter, too, but they’re bound to be more interesting than 1000 words about cardboard boxes.

All I’m saying is, be ready to have your minds blown, even if it’s not in a necessarily timely fashion.

Truman Capps will probably listen to Rocketman on the plane.