Welcome to the I.R.

Via Gawker, this is a funny article that was linked that was actually via Yale's paper that describes International Relations in terms of The OC which makes I.R. - a normally confusing topic for most people a little easier to understand (that is, if you watch The OC).

Link here: "Global Conflict, here we coooooooooome"

Also, 8 years ago Dylan wrote a message in a bottle and threw it into the Potomac and actually received a response from Scotland! How amazing? So much of it was by luck and chance and it makes you feel like a little kid again. Anyway, read it by clicking "D-Love" under my links section and go to his blog or scroll down a bit where I have copy and pasted this particular entry:

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

Everything you are about to read is completely true.

When I was ten years old, my head full of romantic ideas, I wrote a note and put my name and address on it. I put it in an empty two liter bottle of Coke, walked across the street, and pitched it into the Potomac River. Time passed, and I eventually forgot all about it.

Fast forward eight years. My mom calls me from the kitchen to look at a postcard that's addressed to me. It's postmarked from Scotland, and it said something to the following effect:

Dylan:
We found your message in the Coke bottle. Pretty interesting, considering it came all the way from America. Write back if you can.
-Fiona

My head is reeling. I don't know what to think. There's no way this is real. We can hardly make out the return address. I didn't get excited, but I definitely wasn't calm. It's an interesting feeling. The postcard was put on the shelf in between my mom's cookbooks and was blotted out from memory for a bit.

When I remember it over a year later, I ask my mom is she knows anyone from Scotland. Surprisingly, she says she just met a Scottish woman at the gym who recently moved to the area. She takes the postcard to the woman, who is able to tell my mom that, "Yes, this was definitely mailed from overseas." She keeps the postcard, taking it home to her dad. Armed with a detailed map of the land, the two of them manage to find the city named in the return address. They say it's north, way north, probably a tiny little village of 100 or 150 people. The return address names a place called "The Old Smithy," and they figure this to be a local bar or inn.

To make it even more interesting, this woman's father is returning to Scotland soon for some reason or another. He says that he'll be somewhat close to the area the postcard came from! He'll go for a drive and do a little bit of detective work. Maybe find the city. Maybe find The Old Smithy. Maybe find Fiona.

When I think about the tremendous number of tiny things that had to happen at exactly the right moment to get a Coke bottle down the river and across the Atlantic Ocean and into someone else's hands, it's staggering. I looked at a map of the Potomac. Just to getting it into the Chesapeake Bay is an oddesey all its own. But this bottle did that and then some. I like the idea that strange things can happen for no reason. I like the idea that the ocean isn't as big as it seems when you've got eight years to cross it. I like the idea that two total strangers can become connected by little more that a scrap of paper and a strategically-shaped piece of plastic.