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...