Time for a rez or 2

It's that time again. If you can't figure out what a rez is then you're not cool enough to be reading this. Go away.

Only jestin'. It's New Year's Eve! Wow, that went quick. Actually, on second thought it took about a year.. pretty average I reckon.

I'll just get straight to the point then. In the next year I promise to..

• Be good
  
• Write better, act more, get good at photography etc etc.
• Popularize using the abbreviated form of words, both in general and the use of particular words that were not previously typically abbreviated that way.
• Upon reading the previous sentence, I profess to learn English grammar more proper, and improve my skill at formulating sentences.
• Start a trend in using the word "literally" in inappropriate (written)contexts, surrounded by quotation marks.. ie "literally" to be double decker super ironic, and make sure that I am known to be the orginator of this remarkable bit of wittiness.
• Don't drink too much.

Pretty modest. But not too modest.
Have a good celeb folks, don't drink too much and see you next year.. (guffaw)

Yes sir, you are a dick.

I've fallen out of the habit of commenting on stuff that's out there of late, but I came across this article that "literally" screamed out for mockery. It's been done by everyone by now, but I'm nothing if not a bandwagon jumper.. so here I go.

Dennis Prager is a conservative American dickheads who writes for Town Hall, a site for stuff written for and about conservative American dickheads, and this is his article.. excerpts shall commence..

It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood,
she need not have sex with her husband.

In non pretentious wanker speak, that means something like, it's a widely accepted idea in modern times that a woman has autonomy over her own body even when she's married. In general people who in any way resemble reasonable think this is a good thing, a very damn good thing in fact and a downright necessary thing, but as I said, this is a conservative dickhead, writing for a conservative dickhead site so needless to say he disagrees with "this axiom".

First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wife's refusal to
have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by
her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few
women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea
sounds almost funny). This is, therefore, usually a revelation to a woman. Many
women think men's natures are similar to theirs, and this is so different from a
woman's nature, that few women know this about men unless told about it.

I don't know how many types of bullshit this is, I count about 5. One is the obviously being bullshit type of bullshit. A man needs sex to feel like he's loved? How about being told, verbally.. how about a woman shows her husband she loves him by staying married to him.. or acting like she's rather fond of him, which can be done in not directly sexual ways.. yeah, I'm a dumb woman and can't read "man" but most men are slightly more complex than that. There are times of course, when someone doesn't give off those "I love you" cues as much, due to stress, being tired and other things, which are things that most likely mess with the sex drive too.. in these situations, the best idea, not a genius one, is to ask about it, talk about it, find out what the problem is etc etc.

Oh and women couldn't possibly understand things from a male point of view, being that we never get to hear about it. We could never get the idea (true or not) that men only care about sex, think about sex, have sex on their minds all the time. And women never feel like shit, unloved, unattractive and ignored if their partner doesn't want sex with them.. we don't think like that, we aren't told by society that our worth and our lovableness comes from our sexual desirability.. so thank you Dennis, for telling us silly ladies how it is. Not!

And I love how the theory is "A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him" as opposed to she wants to have sex with him. The husband doesn't fucking care if she finds him sexually desirable or not, just that she's willing to make the sacrifice and do her duty! Really fucking romantic.

The basic gist of the whole article is further detailing just why women should give it up all the time, women and men are different, they just are, he says so. Men are animals so should be panedered to unless it causes them great pain or whatever, women are just different and can't possibly understand. He acknowledges that sometimes the woman wants sex more, but that's different so he won't address it here, but don't be getting any ideas ladies that all this applies to you if you're wanting more sex. Then the disclaimer that this only applies to good men, and you should compromise a little bit on this issue, but not much. And there's this line.

Every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily
heroic self-control.

*stops laughing*

fuck me, I didn't think even your average conservative dickhead would go so far as to actually say that. Well give the man a medal would ya.. he hasn't fucked around on his wife.. and she's not even super hot and almost the same age as him.. we're not worthy we're not worthy!!

Ok, that's all for that. But wait, this is only part I, part II is coming and he will explain in detail why mood should play little or no role in a woman's determining whether she has sex with her husband. I thought he already did that? Anyway it's pretty easy, her husband wants it when he wants it, and sometimes the wife might not be in the mood. Next!

One last thing before we get this out of the way..

So that was christmas. We went out for dinner, had people over for dinner, rearranged the furniture, frazzled the cat, drank a fair bit and opened presents. It was green. Not green in the sci-fi-view through night vision goggles sense, or in the environmentally conscious sense, though due to the relative modesty of the occasion, it was probably inadvertently so. No, it was green in the "not white" sense. The sky was grey, the streets were grey, the buildings were pale yellow, white, or grey.. so it was green.

It was supposed to snow, the internet said so. Early on it was supposed to snow on xmas eve, and all through the first half of xmas day, but by xmas eve it wasn't snowing and the online forecasts were predicting it would snow at 5am xmas morning, and keep up until the afternoon. Very convenient it seemed, but I still kept open the possibility of waking up to a pure white christmas morning. But, at 5am there was no snow, and a few hours later when I got up there was still no snow, and it continued not snowing all through the day.

It snowed in Vancouver though. That's where the bf is from, and apparently it never snows there, so make of it what you will.

The real meaning of xmas.

It's been a while since I've heard someone bemoan to me that the "real meaning" of Christmas has been lost. I do come across it online though, and was recently invited to join the cause to "keep the Christ in Christmas" on a social networking site. I politely declined.

It reminded me of those people, back when I lived in a more Christian country than this one, who assumed I would agree with them that the focus on non Jesus elements was wrong for Christmas. I always found it annoying, though I never said anything.

I know that those people meant well, and were on the whole good people, not usually the type to push their religious ways on people, but nevertheless, they were wrong. They weren't wrong that Jesus is the meaning of Christmas for them and for people who think like them. What they were wrong about, is assuming that it's that way (or should be) for anyone else.

Yes, it's (in English anyway) named after Christ, and has a Christian history, that is after they took the festival from the Pagans and altered it to suit them, but now it's a Western cultural tradition, which is still Christian for some people, but not at all for others.

I grew up in a family which celebrated Christmas, though we were never religious. I grew up with the trees and presents and Santa Claus, the food, the family... and that's what it is about. That's all it is about. Since I've grown up, I still celebrate Christmas, though I've become an official atheist, because I like it. Some atheists see it as a Christian holiday and don't celebrate it which is all fine.. I can see a lot more reasons to not like Christmas than just the religious one, I'm a sucker though, I like all that festive jazz.. I'm quite suited to a bit of sparkly tree and Santa worship.. much more than I am to worshiping the baby Jesus.

Ironic of course, that in this adopted, not very Christian country of mine, it's the baby Jesus who gives children presents. Traditionally there isn't a Santa Claus, and his new presence is none too welcome by some of the local folk, which I got to overhear from many passer's by last year during my stint as Santa's photographer. I can understand it, he is to some, the symbol of creeping American culture, Coca Cola, the worst excesses of xmas materialism.. but.. I still like the jolly fella. And the trees and the sparkly shit and the (these days very modest) pressies.

And it's another excuse to booze it up. Perhaps that's what I like about it most of all :)

Merry Christmas all, have a happy one.

A modest christmas

Like many out there affected by the economic downturn it's going to be a modest christmas for me and mine this year. Hey.. I'm like other people.. I'm part of an international trend.. what do you think of that.. I'm almost normal!

Well, not really. It's always modest for me, and this year's necessity for simplicity has little to do with the rest of the world.. I mean, yeah, there's not much money.. but it's mostly because of.. yeah, it's cos of money. That and there's no turkey to be found and my people are pretty disorganized and haven't so far gotten our shit together.

So this year it's going to be chicken, some salad.. beer at our place with our tree with puppy purses and slithery snake.. not even any tinsel. But it's ok, because we'll be together.. *tears well up in eyes* and there will be booze. Actually that makes my tears well up more than the together bit :)

Anyway.. I'm sitting here at my "office" 7:55pm on the night before christmas eve, wishing I could go home but er.. doing something.. let's just say it's due to not being able to buy something.. and I'm doing something which I can't do at home because.. well because, and I should have started much earlier because I'm crap at sewing and stuff and I know it so I should have anticipated this.. that's all I'm saying.

Enjoy the longer days...

if you're in the Northern Hemisphere I mean. If you're in the Southern the days will get shorter now, of course, but it's mid summer there so you guys can afford a few minutes of daylight.

The solstice was yesterday, and I was busy celebrating Chanukah so didn't get to go completely pagan and celebrate the natural cycle.. actually we could have quite happily celebrated both but being a bit poor at the moment we were short on drinks and I don't know about you, but my idea of a solstice celebration requires some drunk getting. Ok so most do, but last night was somewhat low key.

It's ok, there's still christmas, and I will make up for it then.. hopefully. If nothing else then the sun might not go down until at least 4:04pm, so we get to enjoy that, though at this point it probably won't snow.

The night I almost turned Christian.

I went to the Prague Playhouse's "Holiday" party last night. It was a chance to see all the acting pals I've hardly seen all year due to being a lazy fat ass and doing next to nothing all year, except for the little I've done which isn't much. It was fun, drank beer, chatted, introduced Erik to some weird people. We had to leave to get our night tram on time, so unfortunately missed out on that promised "smoke" which took too long to get organized.. a slightly surprising fact considering later incidents.

We got home hungry and made some grilled cheese sandwiches with hermelín.. chatting all the while. It was well liked, and our conversation turned, as it often does, to cheese. The greatness of cheese, the gloriousness of cheese, the sheer yumminess of cheese.. all round cheese worship.. "blessed are the cheesemakers" I recited, which I arrived upon I know not how, apart from the fact that we were discussing cheese at the time. I,knew it from somewhere. it sounded like a bible verse to me, all that "blessed" shit.. and I started to think. "Did Jesus say that?" Fuck! Well if He did, He had the right idea... could.. could.. there be something in it?

It hit me like a.. something that's not physically hard but makes you think.. I might be able to.. believe. I could become.. a Christian!

Now luckily, the word christian can interpreted loosely, and there are so many different kinds of Christians, so many different sects so that I considered it even possible.. like others I could d to pick and choose what bits I'd follow, I would follow.. more the pro-cheese parts and less the wifely submission parts, and if I had to make up my own church I was more than ready to do it.

First I needed to be sure, so I rushed to google to verify what I thought might maybe be sorta true. I typed in "blessed are the cheesemakers" and got.. some Life of Brian links and other random stuff that didn't make any sense to me. I knew now, where I had heard it.

I was gutted. Ok, I was perhaps mildly disappointed, but mostly relieved. I mean, I know myself pretty well and I'm more suited to Python worship than baby Jesus worship, and I got over it pretty quick.

It's all very silly, the very mild beer buzz I was experiencing is hardly an excuse, and it really seems like more the domain of stoned people, which is what I was referring to up there when I said it was mildly surprising.... and it doesn't even end there.. don't even get me started on the Secondary Fraggles incident.

Oh and Happy Chanukah. It's due to start today at dusk, which around here is about 4pm.
We're gonna light the candle, spin the dreidel, eat latkes.. you know, the usual stuff.

The song says "white", not "damp, grey and drizzly"

For the past couple of days our local forecast has been mostly "rain and snow". As it often is with forecasts, it hasn't been exactly accurate. It's been half accurate, and you guess which half is the correct one. Yes, it's been quite right about the "rain" part.

I know that to most normal people, the forecast itself is cause for grumbling.. normal people don't like cold, and aren't particularly fond of snow, but I, despite living in places that get quite to very cold in winter, for over 10 years, I still retain the romantic, childish fascination with snow that I had growing up in a place that just doesn't get any. I look forward to the snow.

And it just rains. Actually it did snow a few weeks ago. It was quite early, so I thought that this year would be a big snow one, but since then there hasn't been any, though some was promised.

Of course, it's still only mid December, and Christmas isn't for another week so there's still hope. I'm just extra anxious about it this year, because after the early snowfall I kind of promised my boyfriend, who is as giddy about the snow as I.. even though he's from Canada.. though he's from the freaky part that just gets rain... and now he's waiting wistfully for another snowfall.. I don't want to fail him, you understand.

The rest of today's and overnight forecast is for rain/snow and then snow.. so perhaps we might get some finally, though actually it's neither snowing or raining currently and it might just be wrong.. but I still hope.. oh how I look forward to the freezing cold day when I get up at the crack of dawn to go to some obscure part of the city to take photographs at dawn in the pure whiteness that no one will ever look at..

please let it snow!

Note to self

I need to get some kind of notebook thingy so I can jot down ideas as soon as they pop into my head. Over the last week I've had inspiration all over the place, or so I vaguely seem to remember.. and mentally wrote out a bunch of what at the time seemed brilliant posts.. but I've completely forgotten what any of them were, well I remember the subject of one maybe, but don't remember the content of it.

Damn... I was planning on reviving this old blog of mine but it isn't going to happen right now. Not that way anyway.. I'll keep it up by writing about writing or not writing or about why I'm not writing in the mean time.

Maybe some of it will come back to me.

Sounds rude doesn't it?

I speak of the word ablaut, a recent Word o the day that caught my attention. Of course, when I say it sounds rude, I don't mean it sounds rude in the sense that it "sounds rude", I mean that it sounds rude to me (to whom almost everything sounds rude) particularly, and even more so when coupled with it's meaning, which is "vowel change".

you know, it sounds sorta like... oh nevermind..

The more detailed meaning is:

the systematic substitution of one root vowel sound for another in different inflectional forms or derivatives of a word, as in ring, rang, rung

so there you go. It's the kind of word I'd like to be clever enough to use in regular conversation, but I'm afraid I'm not.

Another word I really love, and I love in the sense that I fucking hate, is "literally". The word itself is inoffensive, but the problem is the way it's used, but strangely enough it never really hit me why it bothered me so much, I always thought it was just that it's so overused, but I realized now that it's because it's mostly used incorrectly, "I literally died", "I've seen it literally millions of times", "the sea literally sang to me" etc etc etc.. Imagine that! All this time I've been oblivious to a major kind of inappropriate word usage... of course, I must have always been subconsciously aware of it, I was just protecting myself from the true extent of the horror... if I hadn't blocked it out I'd have been forced to realize that the person in front of me hadn't died, etc because it was either impossible or extremely unlikely and GODDAMMIT IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE USED TO EMPHASISE YOUR POINT and gotten quite peeved.. grrrr.. it literally makes my blood boil.

Ok no, I don't mean that in the sense of it's actual meaning.. ie what really occurred. Actually it's not even true if you take into account I'm using the word "literally" in the common incorrect way, which would make the meaning really "really" angry. The meaning of that sentence can be understood if you know I'm using that word in the common incorrect usage and heavily exaggerating all of it.

Ok, let's say some of the time I hear it (the word "literally" use incorrectly) I don't even notice. Some of the time I hear it get mildly annoyed, out of some of those times I get slightly more than mildly annoyed. Some of the times I'm amused, and out of those times some of those times I'm inspired to write something about it, and out of those times, some of them.. at least one, I put it on my blog.

And that's it. Literally. If I was a kiwi I would say it more like "luterally" depending on how you read those vowels. Of course if you're from New Zealand and reading this, it sounds more like "literally".

I'm not sure if that was an ablaut or not.. was ablaut, if I just ablauted, I just did an ablaut. Whatever.

Xmas atmos

Got a christmas tree today. It's the first one I've had for years, haven't really been too bothered about it in past, but this year I feel quite happy and festive, got my honey, and our kitty so it seems like the right thing to do, christmas should be enjoyed with the family after all :) and we have a menora and dreidel as well, as we're half Jewish in our household, or is it a 3rd? Anyway I guess that means we're having Hannamus, or is a Chrissaka.. dunno. whatever, as long as we get to eat and drink and stuff, it's cool for whatever reason.

The great unveiling happened this morning.. just a cheap fake tree that we had to put together.. sorry, but it's just easier, and Cooley had a nice time acquainting herself with the new part of the house, she was a little apprehensive at first, but before long she was trying to eat it. Hopefully she gets over that soon.

It's a modest tree, don't have too much in the way of decorations yet, so far just some lights, a slithery snake and shiny balloon, but at least it's our individual shit and we'll get more of it as time goes by.

A cool photo I once took..

this is from the night of my birthday, it's relatively cool in relation to my other photos anyway.

I'm fillering again, I had a post in my head but someone else was on the computer while it was there and the moment passed. It's still there and the combination of having to work to bring it out and caring that it won't be quite like the original is stopping me from writing it right now so you're getting this. Damn this combination of caring so much and not being bothered enough that plagues me so!

I did have a few beers tonight.

A real post.

Actually I think it's more of a sorta real post. I'm mostly just writing to tell you that I have a proper post in my head ready to go when I'm in the right frame of mind, but not being in that frame of mind right now, you're getting this instead. Of course, it may never happen so the advice is "don't hold your breath".

Here I go again acting like anyone cares.

I wrote it all in my head last night the hour before falling asleep, you know, the way I used to always do. That is, you know if you're one of the old timers who's been following this blog since it's birth, which as last estimation I put the count at zero, so forget I said any of that.

So in short, this is pretty much about nothing. The usual post then.

Early sorta christmas before christmas photo post to keep the blog updated...

I feel like I've been here before.

It's my birthday. There's things I could say but every birthday I've had since I've started this blog I've written about me being in my almost to mid 30s, musing on being a relatively advanced age without having achieved any of those markers of being a grownup so.. that again. It's much the same again so it's a bit of an anti-climax to make a point of being the big three five this year and I might as well stick to the traditional it's my birthday.. yay.. drink.

And post my obligatory themed self portrait.

I was going for a "mature" classic old hollywood sorta feel, but ended up with me, doing a look.. it's got to do.

We got snow

A bit early.. maybe it means we'll get more this year. In somewhat related news, I also got new shoes, ideal for winter.

I just wish it described me somehow..

Word o the day today is Lucullan which is described as rich; magnificent and luxurious.. ie..

When literary groups meet in Paris, they also tend to eat and during the
November rite of book awards, luncheons may reach a Lucullan level.-- Jeanne
Molli, Paris Links Pleasures Of Table and the Mind, New York Times, November 18,
1958

Obviously only sellouts win those awards..

I prefer the description of Lucullen which I got when I scrolled over it on the Yahoo page.. profusely extravagant.. words that I would never think to put together, indeed words that I don't use individually all that often.. but I think it works as an expressive description. Better than lucullen really.. even assuming anyone knows what it means.

Burp

It's really great having this boyfriend guy around. Not only is he gorgeous, wonderful company, has a cute kitty and makes great lasagne, but he encourages me to do stuff. I mean, I never used to do stuff, and yesterday we had this holiday here.. I dunno something about ending communism or whatever.. but anyway people who have proper jobs got the day off (ie him) so we decided to use the opportunity to go and explore a bit more of this fine country we live in. We went to Plzen which is famous for not much except beer, but beer's good enough for us so off we went.

It was fun, we saw the brewery, got to go to "The Pub", not just as pub, but "The" pub, for which I felt honoured, we got to pour our own beer, or in my case foam, but I'm easily amused so I enjoyed the novelty. And other stuff but that's already been written about so I'll leave it.

Highlight of the day..

I was in a public bathroom earlier on, I'd just finished with the primary purpose of entering such a place, had washed my hands, ripped out some paper to dry them and wished to throw it in the appropriate recepticle, but it happened to be right underneath the bag of the girl using the sink next to me, who had been there applying makeup since before I walked in.

I stood there with the used paper in my hand for somewhere between 30 seconds and 10 minutes.. (hard to tell when you're standing there doing nothing) and she just stood there, doing her makeup, not moving herself or her bag a bit, either not knowing or caring that someone was standing there waiting only for her to move slightly.

Honestly.. people!

If that isn't enough they gave me the wrong address, they said 38 Narodni and it was 28 Narodni, so I'd walked around the block a bit before going in, and they were running late anwyway. The purpose of being there isn't important, just another casting for the film school, I did a pretty good job of playing a stalker-ish woman saying goodbye in the morning to some bloke she'd had a rendevouz with, but it doesn't matter, because none of these people ever need a 30 something ordinary looking woman who speaks English with an ambiguous accent and I won't get a role anyway.

I had drinks afterwards with some people who I hadn't seen for a while, and was solicited to read a script of a random person sitting near us to give my opinion. So I gave it, don't know if I helped.

That's about all.

What day is it today?

I'm going to pretend it's Thursday, whatever the day is (like anyone knows/remembers or cares about the reference).

Caption this.

So I was wrong.

I was in the post office again yesterday, lots of people in there so I had to wait again. I'm waiting.. waiting.. watching numbers etc and ticket number 113 comes up. So much for that. Guess it was just a coincidence.

And that concludes my triskaidekaphobia trilogy. I'll have to think of something else to write about. Might be a while.

Something you didn't know about me.

I know you don't know this because I haven't told anyone, on the blog or otherwise. Now, before you get all excited, it's not that interesting, I just haven't told anyone because it's too pointless to ever mention. It relates somewhat to my last post, about that number. I have a thing with the number 13. I'm not superstitious, I don't really believe the hoopla, but nevertheless I have a thing.

It's simple, I try to avoid the number. Mostly it's when I'm sitting at the computer, I try to skip from (substitute 2 for any hour) 2:11 or 2:12 to 2:14 or later. Sometimes I time it so that's the time I get up to make a coffee or I just try to avert my eyes from the time. But that's not all, ever since it occurred to me to notice that :47 is 13 minutes before the hour, I need to avoid minute 47 as well. I avoid the number 87 too, in situations it may come up, for similar reasons. I don't understand why, like I said I'm not triskaidekaphobic. I may have trained myself to be aesthetically displeased with the looks of those numbers, but I see things that aren't pretty all the time, and it hardly explains why I'd go out of my way to avoid them.

Yes, I am blushing. Just as much for actually bothering to write this down as if anyone cares to read it in the slightest, as I am about how stupid my "thing" is.

I would guess it's a mild kind of OCD, one that doesn't affect my ability to go about my normal business, and perhaps everyone has some, if not similar, equally pointless habits that they have no reason to ever tell anyone, so maybe you're all thinking.. "oh that's nothing, everyone does stuff like that!"

Then again maybe you're laughing your asses off at me.

The only other sorta OCD thing I do is fix up beermats whenever I go to a pub, I have to arrange them all facing the same way and the same way up. However I'm not embarrassed about this one, in fact, I rather suspect myself of making a big production of doing it in front of people so they can see how fabulously quirky I am. I could be mistaken though.

Other than that I think I'm normal.

The things you notice while you're waiting..

I was in the post office earlier to pick up something. I went in, got my number, made myself comfortable and observed the numbers that were coming up. I had 365 and after a couple of new ones showed up there was 360..

so.. it slowly goes up.. 361, 362 in between all the other lines which go through much more quickly.. of course, when 512 comes up. It was up to about 363.. so I sat, watching the numbers.. and the next one up is 514!

Then mine came up and I did my business.. but I wonder.. was it deliberate.. do they not have tickets with that number for a reason..

hmmm..

Well that was quick.

he "that" that I am referring to is a certain person getting their ass literally whipped in a certain recent Presidential election...

ok, literal is perhaps not the right word..

carrying on, I knew about it right away at about 5am.. I was awake, not up but not sleeping due to nursing a headache from staying up almost that late and drinking. I got a call from someone who was still up and drinking and watching the election saying he already had enough seats for a win.. so good on him. The "him" I'm referring to being Barack Obama, future President of the United
States.

And yeah, I know I was anything but quick on this, having stayed up late (but not that late) last night, and drinking, and nursing a hangover pretty much the whole day. I'm mostly better now, and just wanted to add to what I'm sure is a chorus of yay Obama out there.

Happy November

It's a big day for the US and by extension the world.. as that's the way it goes.. being that big "election" thing going on. Now, I am not going to at this late stage go on about it at length, seeing as I'm not American, I don't really do that.. and I'm not really good at that analysis politicky sort of thingamy stuff. I'm just going to say that hopefully that Obama wins because.. well, lots of reasons, he's pretty good, and the other mob, between them, have run a pretty horrid, insulting campaign, believe that women's "health" is something to be put in quotation marks, belong to churches that believe in witches, and think that redistribution of wealth.. even when talking of taxing very wealthy people a tiny bit more, is somehow a universally bad thing. Amongst other things I could add if I'd have been paying attention more.

In short they're a couple of wankers.. but on to something more important.

There are new blogs out there! And ones that have been around for ages but are new to me.

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary”
Quotation Marks

Apostrophe
Abuse

Literally, a Web Log

lowercase L

In case it's not bleedin' obvious, these blogs are all dedicated to punctuation related dorkism... so if that's what you're into..

I of course leave the best to last. For the dorkiest, the coolest, the most magnificent.. read Erikland, it's about stuff. Run by a charming gentleman who lives here in Prague, with me actually :) and he rocks.

Halloween...

was fun.

The last one is from the actual night, the others are some "art" with a theme.

Now that's my kind of word.

A recent word o' the day, which I felt compelled to rouse myself from my blogging slumber for..

circumlocution;
The use of many words to express an idea that might be
expressed by few; indirect or roundabout language.

In other words.. when one is trying to say something and it comes out in a way which.. and there are many ways you can do this depending on your background, personality, or other things which influence the way you tend to express yourself.. but I won't get into that now.. let's just put it this way.. a circumloculater (if in fact that is a word.. and I have my doubts, but let's just say for the purposes of this excercise that a circumloculater is "one who circumlocutates (not sure if that's a word either.. oh well) and anyway.. where were we.. oh yeah.. the "circumloculater".. a circumloculator will get something in their head which they wish to express to those they are in company with, and instead of telling them.. I mean, not instead of but.. I mean they tell them but they tell them in a way which includes a whole lot of extra information which may or may not be relevant.. a bunch of non-sequiturs, unfinished thou.. you get what I mean. In short, they go on. And on and on and on.. and then start talking in another direction. They may or may not use paragraph breaks :)

And that's it. I could probably get into it more but at present I haven't the time.

Rum, cabin boys and lots o' fish..preferably tuna..

"Ahoy! me maties.. I hope you're havin' a fine day today. "

If you're wonderin' why I'm speakin' oddly it's because I'm a pirate. No really I am.

Ok, I'm just celebratin' talk like a Pirate Day! A little thin' that people do if they're nerdy enough.. and, if you know me as well as I do.. then it's quite clear that I'm more than nerdy enough.

But that's not all....

Oh what an excitin' day it is.. not only be it an internationally observed holiday for all pirates and buckos of.. it's all a very special little rascal's birthday....

She's 2 today. And in the spirit of.. well.. just spirit.. she's a pirate today too.


Oh dear another filler post.. *sighs*

Bit o' nerdism for Monday.

Flounce. I love this word, it's so flexible and so expressive. It came to my attention when I used it the other day. My use of the word was one of it's modern, internet related version, when someone on a site I contribute to regularly considered it necessary to tell the folk of the forum that they thought it sucked and they were leaving.. actually there were a few people who did this, and I left a comment about all these people who have to do the "flounce".. like we give a shit why they're leaving.. I used it without really thinking.. subconsciously being aware that the word was sorta suitable..

so, I was talking about this incident and the word with my significant other one evening.. as you do.. and he decided to look up the word in the Urban Dictionary. We found..

2. Flounce When a member of an online community announces they are leaving, usually after a protracted disagreement with other members of the community.
"I'm gone. You all enjoy your little discussions."

So I was surprisingly accurate! It wasn't the only definition.. in fact there are 6 on the page, most of which I've never hard.. but I really liked this one..

1. flounce: A person who is annoying bouncy when annoyed or way too excited about lame stuff!
"Heather is one big flounce!"

Hehe.. lame stuff. I am afraid that.. according to this definition, in light of this very blog post.. I could accurately be referred to as "a flounce".

Dammit!

Totally forgot to write for more than a week! Shit. And I thought I'd made it really easy for myself. Oh well.. what was my Tuesday thing again.. fuck, who cares.

So.. not a whole lot going on, I went to Kutna Hora last weekend, I already mentioned that, but now I have some photos to show for it.. saw all the gruesome bones and all that. Since then I've done the usual... not much, I think I already said that.

Oh well.. here are some bones.

Monday Word o' the day - the vain and silly man edition..

I had a cool weekend. Picked up our guests on Friday, ate and drank, went to the park on Saturday, and ate and drank, and went on a day trip to Kutna Hora yesterday, rode on a train, saw the "bone church" as it's colloquially referred to, and walked around a charming and dare I say quaint little town, and ate and drank. Oh and I took lots of photos. Both days.

A problem with this word of the day thing is that it's never updated until it's business hours wherever Dictionary.com is.. which I'd guess is California, as it's always late in the day.. so I'll pick the one I like best from the weekend.. and I do quite like this word..

fop -\FOP\, noun:
A man who is overly concerned with or vain about his dress and appearance; a dandy.

I wear ties because I don't have to, because in an increasingly dressed-down,
homogenized world, they can set you apart. I wear ties because they nurture the
inner fop. Also the outer one.-- Abbott Combes, "Secrets and Ties", New York Times
Magazine, November 14, 1999

He's swaddled in a heavy black wool overcoat
and his shoes are silver-buckled with cap toes, the black leather well taken
care of. He's a bit of a lounge lizard, a hip-hop fop.-- Po Bronson, The
Nudist on the Late Shift

Fop comes from Middle English fop, foppe, "a fool." The adjective form is foppish.

/end w.o.t.d part..

another example of a fop in popular literature (according to myself) is Sir Walter Elliot of Persuasion.. in fact, I thought of him as soon as I read the word.

Speaking of word nerding, I played boggle for the first time ever last night, and got my butt walloped.. I sucked! Unfortunately, a rather fabulous word like "fop" would be disallowed because the words have to be at least 4 letters long, but "foppish" would be just perfect, as long as all the letters are there, and they fall in the right places. I did get points for the words "frock" and "gusto", of which I was quite proud.

Actually having a weekend..

It is coming up to what we in our culture generally refer to as the "weekend", a time which normal people usually use to do something different than the "week", when they're required to work, and a time that usually isn't that much different for me, well that's not true because since I've been living with Erik I spend the time with him as he has a regular job, but that's not the point.

The point is we're having visitor's, Erik cousin and her friend, and we're picking them up from the airport this evening, and will be doing touristy stuff over the weekend, and may even go just outside of Prague for a day trip one of the two days which make up the weekend.

Bit of random though not unrelated trivia, do you know that in Israel the weekend consists of only Saturday and Sunday is a regular work day? It's true, something to do with god. Well, they get sorta Friday off too, depending on the week. I'm sure other people could explain it better.

Here's Cooley.

Bad blogger! Bad! *slaps self*

I missed my dose of daily dorkism yesterday. After all that buildup, but.. I've said this at least 48 times and will probably cause to say it again.. no one cares or even noticed.

It's Thursday. Caption this.

Tuesday Stupid Questions nobody ever asks #1.1,finally, the kettle edition.

Just what colour is the pot anyway?

Yes, this is the one I've had on hold for weeks. Sad isn't it?

Word o the day/week.. the rabble rousing edition..

Today's word is:

foment \foh-MENT; FOH-ment\, transitive verb:1. To nurse to life or activity; to incite; to abet; to instigate; -- often in a bad sense.

noun:1. Fomentation; the act of fomenting.2. State of excitation.

Cynical politicians may even foment conflicts among groups to advance their
own power.-- Martha Minow, Not
Only for Myself

Here, over many cups of coffee and other brews, John Adams, James Otis,
and Paul Revere met to foment rebellion, prompting Daniel Webster to call it
"the headquarters of the Revolution."-- Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon
Grounds

Having burned to taste the foment of the sixties, I romanticized
Diego's experience of it.-- Katherine Russell Rich, The
Red Devil

Foment is from Latin fomentum, "fomentation," from fovere, "to warm, to foster, to encourage." /

Don't you feel smarter already :)

We're here again..

It's the wrap up o' the week.. or is it the rap up? Still an unsolved mystery that one.

Monday and Tuesday I was in a film. It was wonderful, terrible, exhilarating, painful, satisfying, exasperating.. and a host of other emotions... ok not so much the negative emotions, and really, it was as mostly pleasant experience with a few small anxieties, I'm satisfied I did well, but am still wary of looking a bit silly in places due to the nature of the film. I was playing a less than glamorous character, in fact a particularly slovenly one who hasn't left home for ages, so I wore no makeup for filming, and there were a lot of closeups, so being just the slightest bit vain, I'm not sure I want to see myself blown up to cinema size at the screening. I might just wait to get the dvd. Anyway the film was fun, and I finished earlier than expected both days so I was able to write about each day's filming when it was fresh in my mind, so no need to re-recap it further.

*wracks brain to think of anything else I did all week*

I did the usual, worked, fussed around on the internet, got involved in the Next Biggest Group on Flickr after the original Biggest Group went all haywire but nobody reading this probably really cares about that.

On Wednesday me and my beloved had a dinner guest, our first ever since he moved here, and it was quite successful. He made middle eastern type food, which is he quite familiar with after living in Israel for 4 years, and had beer and fernet. We ate, drank and chatted, and danced like dorks to 80s radio.. and a good time was had by all, and Cooley the cat, who is usually really shy with new people and runs and hides from them at first, wasn't the slightest bit scared of our visitor and seemed to like him right away.

That's about all of note, I hope that the weekend will be pleasant and that next week will be at least as, or even more interesting than this week. Happy weekend to you all.

Right, I'm gonna play properly now..

Anyone who's been paying attention will notice that I haven't been following my dorky system too closely this week, which was supposed to be the first week of doing it properly but you know what, I don't care! Hmpf!

I'm doing it today though. Caption this photo.

This is typical...

absolutely typical.

I keep up the blog for about 2 weeks and then I get lazy and can't be bothered. Well.. I just don't feel like writing today, but I'm writing anyway so I suppose it doesn't count.. it's more like I'm not doing my Wednesday thing, which to be honest is getting old and I don't feel like doing it today, so I won't.

I'm having a guest for dinner tonight, I like a grownup.

And that's a wrap..

Or is it rap? In any case I believe that's a stupid question which should suffice this Tuesday.. and I'm sure no one ever asks that.

I'm not sure if it's finished finished, but my part in it finished quite early today. I suppose I did all right. Again I had to express fright, anxiety and all that without speaking, I had to tiptoe very slowly and carefully down the stairs and look out the front door with a stupid smile on my face, not sure how that's gonna look, I was doing that while an extreme closeup was being taken, or was it just a bog standard one.. don't remember, either is close enough when one is being specifically directed to smile more.. and one can only turn the edges of one's mouth up at such a direction. Not exactly natural is all I'm saying.

And yes, "bog standard" is an industry term :)

So the knell tolled on my contribution to the film and I walked out into the aestival street, and visited my kitty friends, who were there to greet me, as if they'd been given a philter by.. er, someone who was inclined to do that sort of thing.

I believe I used those words extremely ill, but it's my way of making up for yesterday.

Between takes

Day one done for my latest film, more to do tomorrow. It was an interesting day, though I realized that this movie acting stuff is kinda hard, I mean, I've done plenty of these small films before, but maybe it's been a while.. or I was paying more attention today. Or I just had a role that had a little depth in it for once.

I am the only character in the film, really. No speaking, just looking. That's the hard part, especially if you want to be any good, which I kinda do. I was all (sorta half) prepared, with a background to my character, and had planned to delve into my inner emotions and do it the Meisner way, where you really feel what it is you're supposed to be portraying, but as soon as I got in when there were some slight changes that threw my interpretation out, I felt myself having to concentrate on being in exact position to film.. and well I haven't been to class for a long time and I'm a bit rusty on the technique which, to be honest the best you could have described my proficiency at the height of my study is "ordinary". Well.. that and I really only ever got to mid-beginner level, if one was to describe it.

In short.. I can't do it. I tried and it didn't happen. So I pretended. I screwed my face up in the way that I would expect someone who's scared or determined or shocked or anxious or any combination of those together would do. I was getting very specific instructions on what I was was supposed to feel, on top of needing to walk to where the x was.. and I don't think that I could have done it the Meisner way if I had been considerably better at it, for it is a no no to deliberately play and emotion, you're just supposed to let it come out as it does. Sort of. I even got instructions on how to screw up my mouth in one bit that was for a closeup.. so I'm unsure how one could reconcile acting via the aforementioned technique while pleasing the director, in this case. Maybe a genius could do it.

Anyway.. I think by the standards of amateur film I did ok. I guess I kinda sorta in a very superficial way "felt it" when I had to be scared or something.. if only moving my body in a way so I had the physical reactions you would, but I don't think that counts.

There's more to film tomorrow. Hopefully I'll do at least just as well as I did today.

Hyperventilates...

I'll be acting in a film tomorrow, a short one. There's no dialogue and it's all closeups and facial expressions and being scared and it's gonna look super cheese if I do poorly, and acting without lines is fucking hard.. very easy to go over the top and look like a hack which is probably what will happen.. my only hope is that I care enough to be truly, deeply worried about being shit so I will be able to use that feeling to be genuinely terrified. Then I'll look like I'm actually good at this stuff. Maybe.

Rainy Friday rambling on..

It's raining today. That's not such a surprise, but it's quite cold too, much colder than yesterday, and it's raining and overcast all day, as opposed to being sorta cloudy, quite sunny then storming for an hour and stopping and becoming sunny again, all while being very hot/quite warm. Oh well.

I notice blogger has changed the design of it's dashboard, it appears to be all the same stuff, but more streamlined and cool looking. Fair enough.

It's time for me to star in a movie again. Well.. time for me to star, I will actually be the star of this one, the only human in it actually.. except for a voice. I don't actually have any lined so I have to express and stuff. It's ok, it will be a challenge and if I'm any good everyone will be all impressed which is the main part. I will be shooting on Monday and Tuesday, so I have to analyse and get to know my character over the weekend.. so I can be deep and stuff. For real.

For some reason the blogger spellcheck thinks that ok is a spelling mistake. Odd.. I always find strange non-mistakes caught by it, I would be inclined not to trust it if I didn't know better.

Kitties!!!

I'll let you decide..

I mean.. I shouldn't be leaving myself open to this but..

Caption this photo..

*goes red*

This I know how to do.

Ok, it's Wednesday and I've been doing this forever so I won't bother with tedious explanations, I'll just get on with it:

Jer 10:10 "But the LORD is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King, At His wrath the earth will tremble, And the nations will not be able to endure His indignation"

a) This LORD guy rules. He totally rules and totally governs everything and has LOADS of power right, and if he just gets pissed off at everyone in the world right.. he'll just up and destroy everything.. s,true.. I mean.. the dude literally RULES man.. isn't it awesome? I mean.. until he goes and fucks everything up that will kinda suck but fuck.. he's like.. the man..

b) Be weary unless ye anger God, our true Lord for if you do he will SMITE you everlastingly, and DESTROY the earth and it won't matter for the good cos they'll go straight to heaven but if you are a sinner you will go to HELL! Yes.. all you Satan loving whores better be warned. STOP BEING GAY!

c) Jesus is the kindest, most lovely person/god that ever walked this earth, and you know that because the bible tell us so, he's even so kind as to warn us to be good, and do good unto others that he gives us such a good motivation to follow his example and not anger him, as we will lose our earth and home otherwise..

I stun myself with my cleverness sometimes.

Tuesday Stupid Questions Nodoby ever asks #1, the not really doing it edition.

Kettles

Fuck, I should write something, and something in particular, I keep thinking kettles but further than that my brain starts to swim, or do something that would make a more suitable metaphor, but I can't think of what it is because my brain keeps doing whatever it is that I can't think of.

Fuck.

Dammit, it's the first proper actual day where I do finally get into the meat of my new anal dorky gimmicky system thingy that I've been going on about forever and I'm not even reall doing it properly. Fuck!

Kettles.

I went on an adventure today, I went out to the country, visited a workshop/junkyard, rode in a tank, met a cat and took lots of photos (of course), didn't eat until 5pm and the diesel fules in my head are making my brain swim, or whatever it is that it's doing. Kettles.

I knew it was something about kettles, but I can't think of what. I'm supposed to ask a question but I don't know any, oh yes I do. What is it about the kettles? It's a stupid enough question I think. Problem is that it's not very clever. Damn! There's always a catch.

Starting the week afresh..

It's Monday, the sun is shining, the birds are singing. Actually it looks like it might rain.. whatever, the main point is that it's a new week, so it would be time to start my new system a-proper if it wasn't for the fact that last Monday I was busy introducing my scheme and didn't actually include an idea for Monday itself.

So.. gimmick of the day for Monday shall hereby be... WORDS. A word.. Word o' the day if you like. I shall pick a one of the daily words I get daily.. (yes, I get them daily strange that) and will dissect them.. or whatever.

But today, in my what I can call a tradition if I like, of not following the rules I create for myself just yet because it's the first time, I'll just talk about a words, different words, a few particular words and their appropriateness to their function.

I will start with the word phonetic which troubles me. The entry says..

pho·net·ic - [fuh-net-ik, foh-]

–adjective
1. Also, pho·net·i·cal. of or pertaining to speech sounds, their production, or their transcription in written symbols.
2. corresponding to pronunciation: phonetic transcription.
3. agreeing with pronunciation: phonetic spelling.
4&5. etc etc etc.

So, in general, the word is to do with vocal sounds and such, but what I am concerned is with my interpretation of the word, which is no fault at all of the ancient Greeks or whoever originally meant the word to mean what it originally meant, but as I said, it troubles me. When I hear the word "phonetic", I usually think of definition #3, the one about spelling.

Do you see where I'm going here? Now, the word as it sounds, should have no effect it's suitability for a word which describes CORRESPONDING TO PRONUNCIATION, so I guess I'm incorrect in saying that the word itself troubles me, and once again, no disrespect to the ancient Greeks (or whoever) for if indeed this was one of the original meanings of the word.. I'm pretty sure they weren't the ones who decided to SPELL IT THAT WAY!!!

If you didn't get the irony before, I'm sure you do by now. A word, which spelling a word how it sounds, is spelt ABOUT AS UNLIKE HOW IT SOUNDS AS YOU CAN SQUEEZE INTO ONE SMALL WORD!! So.. in short, they fucked up. They being the deciders o' spelling with all their p,s and h,s and letters that don't sound like f, amongst others. Unless it's a joke in which case hardy fucking har har.

Ok enough about that How about a really cool word that is just perfect for it's intended meaning. I came across this one about a week ago, it is...

sesquipedalian

and can you guess what it means? Bet you can't, ok.. here it is:

adjective
1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.

noun:1.
A long word.

Isn't it brilliant? And so suitable! I totally have to figure out a way to work into conversation.

I'm on holiday..

It is technically part of my inaugural week o gimmicks, but Gold told me I'm not allowed to work on this day and being a good christian I'm simply not allowed to. So no gimmick today, just rambling. I think that's a chilled enough way to spend the day.

I didn't contribute yesterday either, being a weekend, and me having gone to a wedding party for someone I'd never met before on Friday night. The people, despite me never having met them before, were more than friendly and very generous with alcohol etc.. which I readily consumed. And yesterday I was fucked up. All day. Too much to even focus on a computer screen. So I didn't.

I wake up today and get online and the whole world has changed.. medals have been won, Georgia has been invaded and something about John Edwards which really doesn't matter but people keep going on about it anyway.

I think I'll go back to resting now.

It's just too easy..

We come to the end of the week.. that is if we don't include the weekend which I haven't decided yet if I'll be including in my new system.. anyway, after the astounding success of yesterday's gimmick to try and make people comment (yes I am being sarcastic) today I will be going back to the usual I-write-and-people-sit-there type of post. Which I was going to do anyway...

so.. being that it's Friday, which already has a tradition out there in the mainstream blogosphere, the random 10, which I've used a few times.. and the cat blogging which I've been doing recently.. so I may or may not use one of these for future Fridays.

This Friday, I have a kitty.

That's Cooley under there, in case you wondered.

Pick o' the week

We come to Thursday in the inaugural week of my new experiment, and today, and hopefully many Thursdays to come, it's the pic or rather picture of the week... and of course the pic/picture will be the "pick" referred to in this title... get it? Of course you get it because it's not the least bit clever.

So what I will do is choose a photo, most likely from my flickr photostream and do the old "caption this" game. I know I'm being ambitious going with something interractive here, seeing as I haven't been getting a huge volume of commenters lately.. but what the hell.

In future I'm going to try to use a photo from the previous 7 days, but as this is the first I will go with any old shot. This, is any old shot.

Be clever. Or be stupid, just be.

Ah, lets settle down to some good old fashioned tradition...

It's Wednesday.. and you know what that means...

well, if you (singular) are reading, you probably do. If I happen to have picked up a stray reader who will probably peruse this post and then never visit again, you probably won't. In the case of situation #2 I won't bother explaining.. let's just say we're going with pies tonight, just like every Wednesday since time immemorial. Or some Wednesdays since some time last year..

1 John 1:1-3 "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled,
concerning the Word of life-- the life was manifested, and we have seen, and
bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and
was manifested to us-- that which we have seen and heard we declare to you"

a) Ok, it's set up like this.. this bible thing that we are dictating right now is right and good in everything and you need to believe all of it, even the bits that contradict the other bits.. and anyway, if you do that you'll get everlasting life. Nice, isn't it?

b) Listen up and listen good.. the LORD has spoken and HE is all powerful.. which means you've got to do what he says. And what he says is do what I say and don't be gay and if yer wimmins then don't be whores and submit to yer mens.. kay.. what you doin.. don't worry about what it says there just listen to what I say.

c) .. and the kitties, and the bunnies, and the birdies, and the flowers, and the trees, and the wine, and the harp, and the sea, and the songs and the dancing.. la la la la la...

Until tomorrow...

Some steak and chips for Tuesday, or maybe just a stupid question that nobody ever asks, #0

It's Tuesday, so it's time for...

Stupid Questions that nobody ever asks. This one is part 0 because if it was part one I'd have to come up with a stupid question, and I can't think of one.. oh I have plenty of stupid questions but I can't think of the right one.. you know.. a clever one..

er...

I'm thinking kettles, but anything more specific than that I will save for the numbered entries.

I'm sad I know.

Blogging about blogging about blogging stuff.

I'm thinking of being a regular blogger again, I've done this before, and have tried a few times recently to get back into it, but I seem to keep slipping out of it. I realize the world will survive without on average daily posts by me about all and sundry, but to me it's important. At least kinda.

So I need a plan, something to help me keep at this blogging thing and succeed in my plan to take over the wo.. I mean fulfill my need to express myself and all that... obviously I've already thought of how this will be done and that's why I'm writing about it, and the idea I've come up with is a dose of total dorkism. I think I might be able to pull it off.

To be more specific I'm gonna do themes, gimmicks, days o the week, serieses.. which I've already done in small part, but I'm going to go all out, and not stop myself from doing a Tuesday whatever because just below me is a Monday random thingy pointless filler post. I'm gonna have steak and chips on Tuesday and chips and egg on Thursday and I don't care how utterly sad people think I am. Especially since they're probably not going to bother commenting at all, so I won't even know.

The way I'm hoping it works is this, I will have a bunch of different ideas for different days which will help banish the lack of inspiration I have been suffering, as I will be inspired by the subject/gimmick/whateveryouwannacallit.. and will come up with something. It might be dumb, but it's something. I will easily be able to come up with something to post every single day, so my blog will constantly be updated, and perhaps even drum up a few visits here and there, again encouraging me to post because I think people are actually reading.. the very act of posting will help give me more ideas, and some of those pots will even give me ideas.. and as I've found, I'll be able to blog more about blogging as I'm blogging more and hopefully I'll have plenty of clever, well thought out posts, which may or may not have anything to do with the subject o the day.. and on those days, I will post about anything.. as I go on I will post more and more on random things, some silly, some personal, some deeply profound.. and my day of the week themes will be needed less and less.. more people will read and comment, and I'll have more motivation to write, and more to write about and on and on and on and my blog will grow..

Or maybe I won't. Who knows. But I'm sure I'm on the right track with the dorkism thing.. something tells me I'll be a natural...

I really should write something..

I know it really doesn't matter whether I do or not, so actually I won't....






ok I will.

So what have I been up to.. I've been in 2 films since last writing, one very small role in a smallish film, and one as pretty much the only character in a tiny tiny film. It was about 4 hours filming alltogether but at least I've done something this year, it took long enough for me to get around to it.

Apart from that just hanging around, I'm sure there's something worth mentioning but I can't think of anything for the moment, so maybe it's not that worth mentioning. Maybe I'll remember later.

So that's it. Don't know why I bothered writing really...

Oh dear..

I forgot I had a blog again. Oh well.. I'll write something soon. Here's a photo to fill in some space.

Just like the old days.

*Sheds wistful tear*

I came in to "work" this morning.. and I put "work" in quotation marks not because it's not really what I came to do but because my "office" where I work, though being a real office due to it being the place that I work, is also the home of a particular person who I know very well, apart from working with him.. which is why his place is my "office" and it's all relevant to the situation, in that it explains how it is that I came in to the "office" to find Hotel California playing continuously on the computer, and a man passed out on the floor.

Some people would react differently to this but I just stepped over him and got on the computer, not to do anything resembling work, but just to fiddle around online, as I often do, being that this is quite a familiar experience, one that happened a lot in the past, and felt quite like old times.

It's funny how, despite growing, learning new things, meeting new people and moving and all that, some things never change. Sure I'd rather hold on to the youth, beauty and being able to see properly, rather than get to experience coming in to find a body on the floor.. but you can't have everything..

Funny but stupid report of the day

A great writer recently noted that as bloggers we have a wealth of material out there at our fingertips to link to when we're on an off day/month/year and aren't in the frame of mind for real writing. Of course, I'm above this sort of thing and usually stick a photo up when I haven't written anything for a while, I only link such items when I feel they are worthy, it has to be really silly to tempt me. Fortunately that's not too difficult to find.

The American Family Association, as the name suggests is a right wing Christian organization that wants to make everyone Christian by law, kill all the gays and make all women pregnant. All right there's a little bit more to them than that, mostly to do with warmongering, but that's the gist of it.

They have a news feed, where you can read news through their special "family" filter.. (ok I just made that up) and read only things that are suitable for good christians to read, with certain words edited so that the proper word replaces it, I assume it's to get rid of any dirty words or such things, though I'm not sure how many profanities will be in news articles.. oh wait.. there is one gay, the word gay is naughty to christianists.. or not so much naughty as used the wrong way. Gay is supposed to mean happy, and not entirely disgusting and despicable and wrong in every way, and we know that the liberal media incorrectly uses it to mean what shall not be mentioned, so that when the word "gay" shows up in an article, it is replaced by the correct word "homosexual" which, we all know, means entirely disgusting and despicable and wrong in every way. And you get stuff like this...

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic
track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.
His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. […]
Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.”

Yeah.. I bet he was fatigued :)

Fucking weirdos.

Friday Cooley Blogging

Our little angel this morning.

Who's your daddy?

Time for one of my favourite pastimes, that age old one of plucking an obscure verse from a holy text and twisting it's meaning (or in some cases by a an amazing coincidence getting it spot on) and use it to justify genocide, oppression or unusual sex acts involving furry costumes.. though as far as I know nobody's ever used the bible for the last one, but I could be mistaken. Let's just get on with it. I got this one from this site, cos the one I was using before doesn't seem to do it anymore.

Isa 26:4-5 "Trust in the LORD forever, For in YAH, the LORD, is everlasting
strength, For He brings down those who dwell on high, The lofty city; He lays it
low, He lays it low to the ground, He brings it down to the dust"

a) You see, you should worship god because he's a just an honorable sort of chap, he'll give you all sorts of goodies, a long life, nice house and all that shit.. just as long as you worship him and believe everything he says without question and spend your life grovelling to him. Otherwise he'll strike you dead with lightning or something.. seems fair to me.

b) God rules everything. He is all powerful. He can kill you and destroy everything you know.. in fact, he might just do it for a whim. You never know. He can just snap his fingers and the world is a goner, if he just gets displeased or something.. and that's why you gotta trust him. I know.. it doesn't make sense. Just don't ask.

c) God will STRIKE ye down in a SECOND if he so wishes.. so ye must OBEY all that is written by HIM. Which means be a right wing money making gay and non white people hating christian, preferably from Texas or somewhere similar. Oh and we like the womens to keep quiet.. so keep yer womens quiet. If ye are a womens then SHUT UP!

Yeah I don't know what I'm talking about. Whatevs.

I know I know...

I shouldn't be so negative. It won't get me anywhere.. grumble grumble grumble...

Pointless

I wasn't going to say anything about these things, because every time I talk about stuff I potentially want to do it ends up not happening, but it's already ended up not happening so it doesn't matter now..

So far this year I've done pretty much nothing in the world of acting. I feel kind of useless because of that, but that was to be made up with all the things going on this summer. First there was a guy who I spoke to back in March or something, some Australian dude making a film, an independent no budget affair, but it sounded pretty good and there was talk of me being the central character. So of course he went and got someone else to do it.. I saw some stuff advertised about a series of short films which the makers wanted actors for, so I emailed them, telling them all about myself, with photos and everything.. and no answer. So I emailed again. No answer so obviously I'm of no use or not good enough or something. Then there's the usual summer films at the film school. I went to a casting the other night, sucked, but thought possibly I'd still get something because there weren't so many people there, and yesterday I got a phone call from a guy who asked me my schedule and that he might use me in his film, he asked my email address so he could email me the script. I got no email so today I sent him a message reminding him. I got a message back saying he'd gone with someone from the class. I sent one back explaining that I'm much better than this hussy he got to do the role, not in those words, but said, hey... I'm fucking good, give it to me.. and no answer.

Everyone I know who's vaguely into acting or making films is making their own films and everyone I know who's vaguely into acting is in them except for me. I'm too fucking stupid and scatterbrained to come up with any ideas of my own.. or rather to put them together in a format that can be made into anything so I'm not going to be doing anything of my own very soon.. so I rather fucking depend on people making something to fucking pick me for one of the millions of fucking roles in their piddly little no budget fucking films! But no.. I'm not even good enough for that!

I'm fucking sick of this. I want to fucking be in something already.

As I was saying..

I'm back. I was gone but not anymore.

Over the last week I've had a computer break down, a water heater explode and our building almost burning down.. so I've been a bit frazzled.

The first one explains why I've been (mostly) offline. It was just a bit that attached the fan to board whatsit thingy.. but due to neither me or co-owner knowing much about the hardware stuff and us getting different advice from everyone on what the problem was and how to fix it, it took about 5 days to get the part and get it running. I'm glad to say we go away with a minimum of cost, though we had to wait.

The water heater.. oh the water heater, much fun. Remember how I was pleasantly surprised that the first time it stopped working I called the guy and he said he'd come the next day? And he came the next day quite early? And he came and fixed it and it was working fine? Well it stopped working again, and we fiddled around with it and it burst dirty water all over our stuff, and it kept leaking.. we fucked around with it more and finally got it to stop dripping, but it still didn't work and we had a big mess in the kitchen. That was Friday, and of course these people don't work on weekends... back to this later.

On Saturday, after dinner we were alerted to some noise outside our front window, looked out and saw a fire engine, firemen and police and people waiting around looking. Slightly alarming but we figured it was probably for somewhere else on the street, until we saw them coming into our building. Still.. there didn't seem to be any evacuating going on so we remained.. not sure whether to get out coats and valuables and stuff Cooley in a cage or not.. but by the time we'd interally and to each other debated this, they left the building and left. And the building didn't burn down so I guess it wasn't such a big deal.

We also saw some kitties, but I don't think anyone really cares about that.

The fixit dude came again yesterday and fixed it. I had a nice warm shower and we enjoyed relative normality for the rest of yesterday. This morning it wasn't working again.. so he has to come again with new parts and whatnot but this saga still isn't over. Bummer.

And I went for a casting at the film school yesterday and made an idiot of myself. I still feel kind of embarrassed. Still.. there was hardly anyone there so it's possible I'll get a role just because there isn't anyone else.

I'm back online!

Oh.. by the way I was offline for a bit. More details later.

Friday the 13th Black Cat Blogging

Say hello to Schwarzie.

I feel gunky

Not terribly gunky, but in time I will feel more so. It is for what I can accurately call the usual reason. No hot water. Yeah, it seems to happen every year or *insert number of months just under a year* or at least once every place I live. I've been in the current place for oh.. at least 6 weeks so I suppose it's time I had a bit of an issue with the old water heater.

Oh I love that I keep getting to have these little adventures that strengthen my character. I really do. And of course.. a good grumble is about the best topic for a post I can come up with these days.. and everything's been so perfect late...

actually it hasn't but going on about money problems, personal problems, being stuck going nowhere, being ignored by the film/acting world and deleting a whole bunch of fantastic kitties off my memory card can only be done so many times. Or not at all.

Anyway I have to call some guy that the management group that work for the owners of my building gave me to get him to come over and sort it out, so I'll talk to him, explain the whole situation who I am and all that.. and he'll ask a bunch of questions I can't answer, then I'll probably have to call the owners, they won't answer or they won't know what I'm talking about so I'll have to call the real estate people who'll probably call them and maybe then they'll call me to tell me to call the fixit guy again, and when I finally get through he'll probably ask me a bunch of questions again, and then I'll explain it all again and he'll call the owners, then they'll call me back and tell me to call him. I'll call him again and he'll tell me he'll call me back about when he can come and fix it. He won't call back so I'll call again tomorrow and he'll say he'll figure out his schedule and call back, maybe he'll call back or maybe I'll have to call again but finally he'll make an appointment for a few days after that particular conversation, excluding the weekend of course and maybe I'll be able to have a shower about a week and a half from now.

Or something like that.

I'm not alone!

For a while I've been trudging along alone here.. hoping desperately that someone would care enough to read and maybe even comment. Once upon a time I was doing pretty well.. I had my little group of bloggers who gave each other love, and there were always nice numbers under my posts.. so it looked like I was actually kinda popular, and that I just could have written something a bit interesting.. then everyone deleted themselves or quit blogging regularly and it became sorta lonely here, I quit blogging so much so I didn't pick up any new readers and because no one seemed to be reading I didn't blog as much.. and because I wasn't blogging so much people weren't really reading.. and on and on and on..

well anyway.. better get to this quick before he deletes it again Ronald the Fruitbat, sometimes known as something else.. is back!

*goes to check*

yeah he's still there. Anyway.. welcome back D.. er Ronald.. hope to see lots of fine posts from you in the coming weeks.

Hopefully at least one or 2 :Z

Something a bit different

I had an adventure yesterday, if you call doing not much in a different place than where you usually don't do much. Well.. I did not much in Karlovy Vary, a town that's famous for it's hot springs.

We went with Steve and Jana who I know through Erik.. strangely. Oh it's a funny story, they met each other in Israel years ago.. then he (Steve) moved to Spain and now has a Czech girlfriend who he lived with there but she's here now and he came to visit her and.. well anyway we went with them.

We walked around town, I took thousands of identical and near identical photos, and we drank some of that healing spring water. We first sampled some from a small fountain surrounded by a lovely gazebo. The water came out at about 60° and I wouldn't say it tasted awful exactly, but it definitely tasted weird. Of course being totally organic and fresh and all that it must be good for you.. so it makes sense that it tastes.. though not necessarily putrid, it definitely tastes weird, and probably isn't served best at 50+° and in a plastic bottle.

Of course you're supposed to drink it in a weird squashed in sort of mug, something I learnt while I was there.

Other things I learnt about the town during our short visit:

A lot of older people
A lot of Russians
A lot of people wearing white.
The music played in some restaurant/pub gardens (some being those that play it at all, rather than those which don't) is usually some awful easy listening type "rock" from the mid 80s to mid 90s. This could be just a weird observation of mine.. or something particular about yesterday. Or something to do with the average age of person in the city.
The clothes in shop windows (and on people) were more monumentally dreadful than those I've noticed around here. It could have something to do with the greater age of typical person in the city. Or the greater Russian-ness of the typical person in the city. Or a bit of both.

And Becherovka comes from there, but we didn't have any. We did have lunch and beer however. And our waiter sang along with the music, the aforementioned awful easy listening type.

That's all.

I'm nothing if not traditional.

Those of you who are readers of old (I get the feeling it's entirely inappropriate for me to be addressing you in plural.. hmmm) will remember my old Wednesday Random Bible Verse series.

Anyway it's Wednesday and I have nothing else to write and I remembered it for once. So..

Matt 22:31-33 "But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read
what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living"

a) Matt said.. but, like.. you know when people die right.. and they're dead right.. well what if they weren't really dead but like.. um.. cos there's god they're like.. out there but in like.. another plane sorta.. you know, something really cosmic cos god said something about Abraham or um.. something and said that he's into life and like.. positive stuff.. (said in the voice of Neil from the Young Ones)

b) Look, it's very simple. God said.. 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" so.. that means, that although it would seem to the layperson that he is indeed dead, he can't be dead, because he's god, and he said that he is the god of the "living".. and the living aren't dead. So he must be alive in some way that we can't explain but it's ok because it's god and he can do anything. See?

c) God is God and he manages to be alive even though he's dead. We know this because he said so, and we know that what he says is always true because he brought himself back to life. And because of this whatever he says is true. Oh and this all means that homos are evil and chicks need to shut up and keep their legs closed. S'true.

That's it.

The plot thickens!

My oh my those cats could have their own soap opera, particularly the dashing Zorro, who we learnt in a previous episode is actually a girl.

Well, yesterday I went by and saw little baby Schwarzie again. He didn't want to come out this time but we watched him play and be motherly smothered by Zorro. I even got a cute little video of them bonding.

There was another woman there at the same time, who was relating to any random person in the vicinity that it was odd that there was a little one there, as all the cats there have been "done". Apparently she's an authority on this sort of gossip because she knows someone who works there or who would otherwise know the status of these cats..

So, either she's not mad, making it up, or somehow mistaken, or Sdhwarzie isn't really Zorro's! No biologically anyway.

Hmm.. well. It does seem that there is only one kitten there. And we didn't see it before last Saturday, and the mother was, just a few days before that dashing about like she didn't have a care in the world, certainly not like someone who was either pregnant or had just given birth.

But on the other hand.. Zorro does seem to have taken to little Schwarzie quite strongly, she follows him around constantly, is always watching him, cleans him and it even seems like she fed him once or twice.. or were we mistaken?

It certainly is a mystery.

Shock! Horror!

What an amazing weekend I had, full of amazement and revelations! Oh I can barely contain my excitement...

Well, remember Cooley, my newly adopted kitty who was featured in the last post? She has been in a bit of a mood lately.. let's just say she has needs. This means that despite being utterly adorable she can be a bit much sometimes.. and we've been thinking of hooking her up with a nice man. We had our eye on a guy who hangs out at the Vinohrady Waterworks, which is kind of like the Colosseum except that it's where we get our water from in this local area. Anyway cats live there, including one particular handsome chap called Zorro. We've been considering inviting him over to hang out with Cooley a bit, trying to come up with the right proposition, that sort of thing. Until this Saturday.

There were no cats around at first so we waited.. then we heard what sounded like a meow. A very faint, high sound, but definitely a cat. Then Zorro jumped out all of a sudden.. so we thought it was him.. a bit later we heard the noise again.. this time knowing it didn't come from him. That was the sound of a kitten.

Kittens!!! So we hung around until we caught site of a little black tail amongst the bushes. We watched and tried to coax it out as Zorro watched carefully.. hmmm..

The kittens managed to jump up onto the fence and played with us a bit, which was cute. Zorro watched on.. hmmmm... Ok, by this time it was pretty clear that Zorro was being what one could accurately describe as "motherly" here, but when we saw kittens drinking milk from his.. er her nipples.. well.

Anyway.. bit of a blow for Cooley. I mean, I don't think he'd be quite right for her now.. well... who knows, she might be if Cooley is into that sort of thing, but Zorro being a new mother has her paws kind of full right now and probably doesn't have time for too much fooling around, so we're just going to have to figure out who the man is amongst that group, and perhaps convince him to come over.

And the kittens are so adorable, I can forgive Zorro for not being the man I thought she was.

Here she is!

The little goblin herself.

Isn't she a treasure :)

Things you learn when your man who you met online leaves his job, uproots himself and moves to Prague to be with you..

Cats are like alarm clocks with no off button, just snooze. And they can't set the time yourself it's done automatically, and they don't just stay where you put them, they run across the headboard and meow in your face while you're trying to sleep. But they're very cute all the same. Oh I forgot to mention he brought his cat.

I intend to stick to this blogging thing..

So I present to you a photo.

This, according to highly intelligent and reliable sources, is a Eurasian Jay, taken a few weeks ago in some local gardens. If you want to know what I've been doing all this time I've been following birds around to get fine shots like this, well not really but I do quite like the birdies. Still got some magpies, sparrows and tits to shoot, which are proving quite difficult but I do so enjoy a challenge.

I might write something one of these days too.

Oh yeah.. the blog

Ok, let's get right to it.

The main shit that's been going on with me recently is the move, well, the move + everything surrounding the move and reason for moving. On May 1 I moved into a quite nice, sunny, pleasant flat not far from here. Erik, who formerly lived in Israel but was visiting Prague fairly often and was in regular correspondence with myself arrived in Prague with his adorable cat Cooley, and moved in as well.

So the last 2 weeks we've been fixing up our cute little flat, wandering around looking at stuff, adoring and being amused by Cooley, hanging out at home luxuriously lolling in bed in the mornings and that sort of thing :)

Apart from that I've been doing the usual work and taking a lot of photos. I haven't done anything remotely acting related and, as anyone out there still reading knows, I haven't been writing either. And that's about it.

Feel free to chime in with comments anytime :)

Update

Goodness, it's a long time since I posted anything.. and even longer since I've actually written anything! Bad blogger.. bad! Oh well, not a lot has been going. Actually that's not so true, I mean, it's true but it's never stopped me from blogging before.

Anyway, like I said, there's not much going on. I haven't been going to class, I missed a semester.. (I know that makes it sound all important and stuff, but it's just what they call the quarters that you pay for full in) and then I missed the beginning of the next one because I stopped getting communication from them. Oh well, when the next quarter starts, I'll join again. Maybe.

My acting career has slown down a bit as well. Yes, I know.. how can you slow down from nothing? The only thing I've done, apart from meet with people for films that didn't end up happening is appear, or rather hang around the set for a short film one of the guys in the aforementioned class made. I was an afterthought addition afer I met some of them at a beer garden a few weeks ago, and I played the caterer, who was supposed to be hanging out in the background and getting into the conversation occasionally. What I really did was hang around in the background and that's about all. Oh I did make coffee and tea for people and set up all the food stuff.. so I was a caterer actually, in a small way, I just didn't really play a role in a movie. I did take a lot of photos that day though.

Speaking of, that's one thing I've been doing a lot of. I'm still up on the photo thing, walking around everywhere, I discovered a colony of cats nearby, and even was in the country for a day which was all very exciting. I'm sorta kinda talking about thinking of doing more filming, especially since Flickr has video now, and I have a lot of ideas for short clips that I'll definitely do. Some time. I plan on making my own short films too some time or rather.

And I'm moving soon. This will be a good thing.

Another photo.

Because I can.

A thought

It has come to my attention that I'm not really bothering with this stuff anymore. Hmmmm.

Hello

I'm still around, just don't have anything to write. I figured it was time to pop in, just to say hi. Well.. still got nothing to write so I'll leave you with this photo sort of seasonal greeting-ish thingy.

Damn!

Would you believe it's fucking snowing! Amazing. And yes, it is the most exciting thing that's happening right now. Nothing going on at all, except for a cough that just won't go away. Thanks cold weather in March.. I was all ready for spring and then this!

Damn.

Just because you haven't heard me grumbling enough..

I'm sick.

Not too sick, but sick enough. The other night I started to feel a tickle in my throat, and yesterday when I woke up it was sore. It wasn't too sore, and didn't seem to get worse or have anything else accompanying it by the evening so I hoped it would just fade away, but during the night I couldn't sleep much because my throat was bothering me, and when I woke up it was worse and accompanied by a headcold, and I was starting to get a bit sniffly..

I blame the weather. It was really warm one day and I thought it might be spring already, so I've been going out with milder weather clothes on, when apart from that one day it hasn't been warmer. I just wished it too much. Oh well.

So today I had to go out to do stuff and it was raining, which didn't help much, but I'm drinking tea. I can't stand tea so the fact I'm drinking it means I must be sick.

I know this is all frightfully fascinating but there's absolutely nothing else to talk about. Well there is but I don't want to talk about it because as a result of telling it then there will really be nothing to talk about. So I won't talk about it.