Another Week, Another Milne Post

I decided to post last week's quotes before this week's class. "Why?" You might ask. One: Don't question, just be grateful you're getting post, dang it. Two: Because...because it's letting me procrastinate. :( I ran today in an effort to procrastinate, it seems like putting up a few pictures and quotations in an effort to procrastinate was probably the easier thing to do. So now I'm doing it. My legs are too sore for another run. These quotes come to you from the week that the wonderful Sameera was visiting. This is important because of all the winning that occurred in class due to her presence.

Winning? Hellz yeah, BI-WINNING. For those of you who have never seen a television in your lives, Charlie Sheen has gone completely mad. Whether this is a for realzies madness or attention madness, I won't pretend to know. However, his utter insanity has birthed some gems. Warlock gems. One of these is his concept of winning. Duh. And it has proven to be an absolute inspiration in the Archaeology Class Game. Archaeology Class Game? (Shhhhh, I'm asking myself a lot of questions...don't worry about it) The Archeology Class Game is a variation of the Direction Switching Game introduced to me by David I. on the Jack the Ripper tour. You win the Direction Switching Game by being closest to the tour guide when you all switch directions after you are done looking at whatever you happen to be learning about at the time. Winning the Archeology Class Game involves being the closest person to Gustav Milne at all times, in order to better hear what he's saying (he has a propensity to speak rather softly even when he's trying to be loudish and we are touring around a bustling city) and because that's how you win THE GAME (Dear David, I haven't done that recently enough, consider YOUR GAME LOST). Now, it isn't terribly difficult to win the Archeology Class Game. Milne walks briskly and the other students in the class tend to walk rather slowly. So you really just have to capable of a moderately quick pace and the occasional bit of people weaving.

This is relevant because Sameera and I won the Archeology Class Game pretty much the entire day last Tuesday. Sameera took to the game like a flipping pro and we were ABSOLUTE CHAMPS. So that was pretty cool.

Ok.

Onto the pictures and quotes. We walked around Southwark today, which is south of the river. We were quite close to the river for the entire lecture. It was a pretty gray day (ugh, that's a painful little rhyme) but there were lots of boats on the river! Including a bunch of military-type things that were cruising pretty fast.

We went to the Tower Bridge Station via the...I don't remember which tube line. Via the tube. And immediately exited next to dun dun dun....The London Dungeon! Scary! Umm, my impression of the place was that if you were lactose intolerant but craving some cheese, here would be the best place to get your fill. Get it? It was cheesy. Super super cheesy. Like the way I described it was...

There were lots of questionable characters advertising the place. They kept trying to hand us flyers. Oh, and when I say "questionable" I mean "definitely the undead." It's ok though, we weren't too scared because Milne was quite reassuring...

"There are a few zombies. Don't worry, they're relatively harmless."

(For the record, he said to save your money instead of visiting the Dungeons. So...save your money. Be smart.)

We next walked away from there and near the river and just around. Uhhhh. I don't have a picture for this part. My bad. However, we were all of the sudden asked the question:

"Who's head would you have been able to see in 1535 dripping gently on a spike?"

Ummmmmmm, dripping gently? WHAT? The answer:

"Thomas Moore...you would have been able to wave to it dripping gently."

Again, dripping gently? Ok...

We next passed the London Bridge. A lot of you may be under the impression that this is the London Bridge.

This picture does not belong to me. I did not take it. It belongs to...Wikipedia? That's where I found it.

This is a lie. A total lie. YOU ARE WRONG (I'm so sorry, I'm feeling a touch obnoxious at the moment). That is actually a picture of the Tower Bridge. The Tower Bridge is the sexy bridge. It's the one that shows up in something like 90+% of pictures when you google image "London Bridge" because it is what you think of when you think of "London" and "Bridge."

The London Bridge actually looks like this.

Once again, thank you wikipedia

Disappointed? Don't be, the Tower Bridge still exists. And the London Bridge is fully functional. Interesting a version of the London Bridge was created in place of the medieval bridge in the 1870s. What, that's not interesting? Ok, guess where that bridge currently resides. Guess.

You've guessed?

Arizona. Yeah. Britain shipped the London Bridge over to Arizona where it is currently located. Why? Let's ask Milne:

"I don't know why, it wasn't my fault."

Oh. Ok. Nevermind. Yeah, I guess it's one of those "ummmm...really guys?" moments that history frequently throws our way. Apparently there is a bit of an urban legend in London that we silly Americans thought that we were getting the Tower Bridge in the deal because we made the mistake that I mentioned in the above section.

Our next stop was yet another Church thing. I don't remember much about this history of this, to be perfectly honest. Note to self: I should have made this post a little under a week ago. Sorry.

I do know that the section of wall here that is exposed within the church has sections that come from some different times. The red placard on the left reads "Early English Arch: Late 12th Century" and the one on the right says "Norman Priory apse: Early 12th Century."

I have not pictures of the proper inside of the church. How come?

"Because they charge so much money to visit the church, we're just going to run through it."

What, you might say, that quote is not terribly funny. Imagine it being said, by your badass archeology professor in a SUPER SKETCHY manner. Then tell me it's not funny. Next tip of the day:

"If anyone asks you for money, speak French...we don't speak English."

We hurried through the interior and got a slightly scandalized look from the church people inside who made a quip about not expecting a group but then we were gone. Like ninjas. Like a large pack of archeology ninjas.

The side of the church that we exited was so pretty. I love all the cherry trees in England. Gorgeous. We walked around a bit more. We passed this ship reconstruction. It's what a ship kind of what a ship would have looked like in Tudor England. If you squint. Or at night, as Milne said. The port was a REALLY big deal at the time. Apparently customs officials made quite a tidy sum on everything. This ship is available for parties so if you feel like hosting a Fairly Close Approximation of a Tudor Era Ship Party anytime soon you know where to go! Did I say "if?" I totally meant "when."

Let's see...this next picture is Winchester Palace belonging to the Bishop of Winchester. Or rather, what remains of it. Not only was the Bishop rolling in dough, he also apparently owned some brothels. And his prostitutes were called his "geese." Rawr. Err...honk?

Next we decided to track down The Globe Theatre, home to the original performances William Shakespeare's plays.

"You all know who William Shakespeare was, I suppose. He was a chap...who wrote plays."

You know, just some chap. You've probably heard of him.

Oh! That looks promising...a sign saying the Globe (that my AWESOME picture skillz reduced to "GLOB"...not really the same...). So where is the actual theatre?

Uhhhh, yeah, it's a parking lot now. Poor Shakespeare. But they've made a lovely reconstruction a little ways off from the original site. There was another theatre close to the original Globe which also did not survive into the modern day. It was called, I believe, The Rose. And when a company wanted to make a building over the site of the theatre, they had to completely redesign the building to preserve what little remained of the foundations. We didn't get to see them. Because they are being preserved in what we was told a pool to protect them. I don't think it's open to the public. I'm not sure that this is a loss to the public. Why did this happen?

"Because people like Dustin Hoffman, if you believe, gently sat in front of bulldozers and said *Raises hand* NO."

Again with the gently. In all seriousness though, this raises an interesting question about the importance of preservation. I mean, I tend to believe that we should preserve the CRAP out of what remains to us, but are there some things that maybe aren't worth making a huge fuss about?

At this point in the lecture a car tried to run us all over. We were standing in the middle of a little side street/alley thing that looked more like a drive way than anything else and a car started backing up towards us. To it's credit there was not a single pedestrian casualty despite our rather slow response. It took our dear group a while to move. Milne's response:

"Go away! Can't you see I'm talking!"

Just to make sure I'm not giving you the wrong impression, that statement was to us. Not to the driver in the car. No fights ensued. It was not confrontational. I've seen shouting matches between drivers and pedestrians here. This was not that. At all.

Our last stop was the reconstructed Globe Theatre. It was disappointingly non-globe like. But that doesn't mean I'm not crazy excited to see a play there at the end of the year! Woo!!!

Ok. I need to go back to reading the decision issued in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education and looking at the definition of science used in court cases involving evolution.

Ta darlings!

Much love and cheers!