Shakespeare and Nonsense

Today we were at the Globe Theater and Tate Modern. The Globe Theater is a rather acurate replica of the theater Shakespeare owned and operated in, and it is very impressive. When I say owned, I actually mean "stole", which is one of the coolest things one can do with a building of that size. Very interesting place with a very interesting guided tour. We learned about how the plays were set up and a lot about why the theater looks the way it does.
We also learned about interesting things that the people in the area did to amuse themselves when they weren't at the theater, and I feel I must tell you about some of these things.
The first one consisted of chaining a bear to a pole, setting some dogs on it, and then betting on how quickly the bear would kill the dogs.
Another was to tie a monkey to the back of a horse, and having dogs chase it in a circle, scaring the monkey and making it scream. This was considered hilarious, because apparently monkeys sound like women when they scream.
When the people of the day would get bored of messing with animals, they decided to pick on the poor people instead. So they made what was essentially a big piñata full of fruit, hung it up over some open bit of land, and then threw firecrackers at it until it broke. Poor people where then allowed to go and pick up the fruit. While the richer people threw firecrackers at them. Great fun.
People say that the internet has desensitized us. I don't think that's the case. We desensitized us.

After the Globe, we went to the Tate modern.
The Tate Modern is a gallery of modern art.
I really, really, Really hate modern art.
I could see the point of literaly no things in the entire building.
From what I can understand, modern art relies very heavily on the viewer to see what isn't there, to see beyond the obvious and see the artist's intent. This makes no sense to me either.
What I hate most about modern art isn't the art, it's the community. The fact that, whenever someone does not understand modern art, that person is uneducated or unsophisticated. The idea that they keep trying to justify their creations with artistic sentences.
"Blah blah blah after commiting random acts of violence to random objects the artist reveals a hidden meaning of the objects"
No. You ran over a trombone with a steamroller. Good for you. There is no "hidden meaning" in a trombone that only comes out when you run it over with a steamroller. It is a trombone. An instrument. It was designed to make a certain kind of noise, not to have hidden meanings in it to be steamrolled out.
And I don't care how fancy words you use, you simply cannot justify a video of a naked man in a monkey/mongoloid-mask spasming around and smearing red paint all over himself as art. It is not art, it is bad YouTube.
Modern art simply makes no sense to me, and whenever I actually try to "see beyond the obvious", rather than just be amazed at the stupidity of it all, it makes my head hurt.
Summary: The Tate Modern was the most depressing building I have ever been in. I could have appreciated it a bit more if I had been able to just talk about how amazingly stupid it all is, but whenever anyone said anything about a painting one got angry looks from people around, people who undoubtebly thought they were better than me because they could understand why an empty canvas with a knifewound in it, or some very large circles of runny red paint on a white wall, is art.
Well, if that's the meassure of intelectuality, I'll settle to be a retard, thank you very much.

Masks and Me

I was going to write a post about what we've been doing, but I decided against it.
Instead, I'm going to talk about an interesting thing I realized the other day:
I miss me.
It feels like it's been the longest time since I was me, properly.
I had a long talk with one of the girls in my class a week or so ago (I think she was a bit drunk at the time) and I realized that I can't be me when dealing with most people. I knew this in part already, but I hadn't realized how much of me I had to take away in order to not make people uncomfortable or annoyed. When I hang out with the guys in my class, I can pretty easily just take a simple layer of stereotypical manly behavior and use that as a personality, it's a relatively simple piece of acting and an easy roll to fall into, but it's not really me, in any proper sense of the word. I have been able to be a part of me when we've been playing games at an internet-cafe here, that part has been very nice, since that is actually a role I can feel is a part of proper me, but other than that, I miss being able to relax and just be. It doesn't work here, or with these people. The biggest issue is, I think, that I'm much more used to the Scout-way of making friends, which is usually very direct. This doesn't seem to suit most other people, so I come off as annoyingly direct and personal. Not an optimal first impression. The good thing here has been that a lot of people have been drunk a lot of the time, and that tends to move people slightly further towards my favored way of socializing, but it is still pretty far from "the real deal", and it also tends to be quite temporary, what with people sobering up and all.
I guess that, in essence, what I really miss most is the possibility to meet new people and make friends without having to limit myself and go through layers of rules and technicalities every step of the way in order to not drive people away. It is really quite taxing, in the long run.
There were other things to write, but I forgot them. I'm sure you're all surprised.
Cheerio.