*Drinks*

Ok, it's still late afternoon here although the sun went down a few hours ago so I'm not sure if it's technically evening proper but that's neither here nor there, it's time to party.

But first it's time to be responsible, which means making a list of stuff I intend to do and ways I will improve myself in the new year which I inevitably will not do, better known as resolutions. Here we go.

My Resolutions for 2010

Note: Every year I make resolutions about doing more acting stuff and getting a proper job etc etc etc which I continue to not do, and they are also things that I pretty much always have in my mind, so just take it as read that I want to do more and more proper acting stuff and get some sort of proper job or at least a proper source of income. Now we can start for real.

1. Take a self portrait every day. I've joined the 365 group on Flickr which will motivate me so I have confidence about this one. That is confidence enough. I'm almost certain it won't be possible for me to do a self portrait every single day so I'll do them on every single day I can. Let's just say I have confidence that I'll do lots. And maybe even some good ones.

2. Get up to date. I do work, sort of. I have stuff I need to do and I'm usually behind on it, completely my own fault most of the time.

3. Make those films that I have ideas for. Acting related but can be separate from the just acting stuff.

4. Get a coffee grinder. Yeah I'm running out of ideas. I've wanted a coffee grinder ever since we got the espresso maker thingy, and recently I bought a bag of coffee beans by mistake that we can't use.

That's all. Happy New Year!!

If I had anything smaller...

then I would be using it! FFS!

Money I mean. I swear every transaction I've made since the world started working again has had that exchange in it... and the people don't actually have the change, they have to go to a different drawer or somewhere to get it. Does no one around here have change? Did everyone use it all for christmas! And why the fuck do people think I'm using a large note to buy something small if I have something smaller? And come to think of it, why do keep using large notes again and again when I keep getting tons of change in return for every transaction I make? Where is it all going? Well right now I have change, lots of coins weighing me down. It's always either one or the other I suppose.

I think I know this one..

Today's Word o' the day is... surreptitious

Not as obscure as many, I've heard of it, I think I even know what it means, kind of, and may have actually used it once or twice. I would say it means something like.. um, secretive, sneaky? Sorta.

The dictionary says, done, made, or gotten by stealth; also, marked by stealth.

Kay.

That's all. Except I'll leave you with this quote:

The monitoring is not surreptitious; on the contrary, the defendant and his or her attorney are required to be given notice of the government's listening activities.

"-- John Ashcroft, "National Security; Prevention of Acts of Violence and Terrorism", Federal Register 66, no. 211, October 26, 2001"

Catch ya later.

True Bliss.

I've discovered today that Boxing Day is the most perfect of all the holidays that fall at this time of year. Both Christmas days are over, you've had dinner at your friend's, hosted dinner yourself, slept in after staying up really late because one of the movies your friend brought over is a 3 hour long arty western sort of number and today you have nothing to do but.. well nothing really. There are tons of leftovers and they have these channel things on the internet so you can watch sitcoms all day without getting up and selecting files.. it's like the old days when there was television! The sun was shining earlier on so I felt briefly that I should go outside but I got over that quick.

Happy December 26 everyone!

Veselé Vánoce!

That's Merry Christmas for those of you that don't understand Czech.



And a happy new year. And all of that.

And the holidays keep coming..

It is now officially sorta christmas! And it's actually christmas christmas in some parts of the world, not just sorta actual christmas cos the main celebration is on christmas eve which it is, but christmas day so Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it, and to everyone else happy Thursday.

*drinks*

And for the rest of us...

it's time for a holiday. This is for the ba humbugs.. those that cringe at Christmas, hate Hanukah and scoff at the solstice, or alternatively people who celebrate every bullshit holiday that comes along. This is me, the one that celebrates every bullshit holiday. The particular bullshit holiday is Festivus. In the spirit of Festivus I'll won't bother explaining it to you and if you don't know what it is fucking google it.

So, I have my virtual pole up and it's time to air my grievances to you, that is, the world. So world, here they are:

1. Once again this year, wars have gone on. Now wars are very bad things, they kill a lot of people, destroy cities, homes and livelihoods, separate families and live on in the nightmares of all who have experienced them. It's still going on, it's horrific, and I fucking hate it!

2. Poverty (see also hunger) is still around. There are millions of people in the world living below the poverty line which is kind of vague but usually defined way too low. These people are often homeless, lacking in proper medical care and hungry (see hunger again) and not even in position to think about the kind of opportunities the better off people of the world have. And this is while a very small percentage of the world's population hold most of the wealth. I don't like it at all.

3. My socks never match! Just how the fuck does it happen that every time I take my socks out of the washing machine I end up with an odd number of socks, and out of those I get about 3 pairs, at least one of them which is pushing it, and 7 odd socks left over that just won't match up no matter how much I try? What the fuck world?

4. I have no money. Ok I have some but I always seem to be short. Ok, I don't have a proper job and am not going hugely out of my way to get one, and the business that I sorta do I sorta do very half heartedly but still!

5. No acting roles. Ok I was in a few student films but not too many and nothing better. Once again.. ok, see #4 I haven't bothered so much but you'd think one of these years I'd get "discovered" just by existing and not really have to work for this, I mean, it's supposed to be sort of like magic right? That's how it happens in the movies!

6. What is up with computers this year? I could go on about this and in fact have, but one computer continues to refuse to work, ok one did, the one I replaced it with wouldn't take my hard drive and would only take one installed with some patched up version of Linux which was good for practically nothing, and then that hard drive was taken away and has so far been replaced with nothing, and the other is old and slow and keeps giving me that hourglass thingy.. it's fucking infuriating!

7. Really bad things are still around. I know I covered some of it with war and poverty, but there's still other terrible things around, in this day and age, like inequality, bigotry, continued degradation of the environment and all sorts of things I should be paying more attention to but am distracted by things like socks, but still I really really really don't like these things and I think they should stop.

And that's it. You can't say I didn't tell you world. Shall we wrestle now?

The cup is full.

Happy Solstice world! I hope those of you in the Southern Hemisphere are enjoying all that gorgeous summer daylight and making the most of it, dancing around bonfires, drinking home made wine and praying to your horned gods. Or however you like spending it. If you're using the opportunity to go for pleasant walks with the dog, then that's quite cool too.

And those of us in the north, however dreary it might be, however cold it still is even though it's warmed up about 8 degrees from yesterday and however much the snow has turned to slush and ice and possibly it's a bit rainy.. can be happy in the knowledge that tomorrow will be a slightly longer day, and the day after that will be slightly longer still, and the day after that, still longer and so on and so forth. Not only that, but over the years humans have created holidays that fall around this time of year to get their minds off the depressing mood that constant cold and dark and drizzle creates.. so pretty much everyone has something to celebrate at this time of year, even if you're in the light and sunny south, due to migration and stuff.

So it really is quite good to be today. Seriously, it is.

Posh iz us.

We went to dinner at a fancy schmanzy place last night. It went well, despite our history of cockups whenever we try to dine above our station. It was a christmas present, so perhaps that's why we were allowed just this once...

The place was on the Old Town Square, and we walked though in the evening, stopping and gazing, and snapping pics of the christmassy, wintry magic, the bigass tree that's all lit up, and crushing through the hoardes of people hanging about, surprisingly or unsurprisingly considering it was more than typically freezing.

We walked into the restaurant and were stopped a few times, asked for reservations etc, and I kept getting the feeling that we would be asked, extremely politely to leave, but we handed over our printed out email and waltzed in. Seriously, we literally waltzed. Ok not really but it turned out most people were dressed in jumpers and comfy trousers. I thought for a second that this is something new that posh people do, go to dinner dressed like they're hanging out in their living room and dressing in nice shirts and stuff is a sign of being riff raff, but no one seemed to care either way.

Nice dinner, complimentary champagne, 2 first courses and some nice things with eggplants and goats cheese. If anyone considered it undignified to photograph our dishes, I didn't notice. There was music too.

We enjoyed it, and got out unscathed. Of course when we hit the -12°C outside it felt pretty scathing but that was experienced by everyone posh or common, I reckon.

That's almost it for the zany zeroes..

I think I'll call it that. The Zany Zeroes (or zeros, not too sure on that one) that is, this decade that we are still in for a little more than a week. Not sure if anyone else has used it, perhaps not, in which case I just coined it. It's fitting that it's only getting it's nickname now, usually we don't talk about decades like that until they're over, or almost over. Or maybe it's just because the decade never had a good name, like the 90s, or 80s, or 70s.. or the 60s you know what I mean. The noughts or whatever never really stood a chance.

I don't think anybody would be bothering with this zeroes crap if we were on the verge of entering a proper decade like.. the 20s.. but, what the fuck are we getting? The tens? The teens? Sounds crap, by the time the 20s come round again people will breathe a collective sigh of relief.. mine being a rather gasping, breathless one, as I'll be old then. Old! In my f.. f... fff fourties I'll be :Z

Bloody hell. It seems like just yesterday everyone was going on about millennium this, millennium that, 2000 bla bla bla and now the first decade is over. Over! In 12 days I mean. 12 days and a few hours. Actually that depends on your time zone. And it's technically 1 year 12 days and however many hours but the numbers say 9 and 10 so we like it this way better.

By the way it's freezing cold here, and very wintry.

Hello out there...

I wouldn't mind some feedback.. you know.. *looks all needy and stuff*

And speaking of...

Christmas that is. It's beginning to look like it. That is, it snowed.. a bit at least and some snow stayed on the ground giving it that "it's winter" look. And it's pretty.

Anyway that's all I had to say.

And so this is christmas...

and if I hear that song once more I'm gonna, I'm gonna...

well, not do much except for grumble that I'm hearing it again. I mean fuck, we know it's fucking christmas Mr Lennon cos you KEEP FUCKING TELLING ANYONE IN THE WESTERN WORLD WHO HAS SPENT ANY TIME AT ALL IN THE VAGUE VICINITY OF A RADIO!!!!

And dude, it technically isn't christmas for 9 days, though it is Chanukah right now.

Seriously, I "literally" never listen to the radio and I've heard it 3 times today! Once in the supermarket, once because I was forced to listen to the little clock radio in the kitchen because the computer there is a dead empty shell and I can't play my chosen tracks and once... well maybe I heard it another time, it seems like I did... but fuck! Fuck, fuck.. fuck!

Ok it's not that bad, it could be worse. I spent one christmas in Ireland. Make of that what you will.

It was christmas eve babe, In the drunk tank...

Hmmm, that's odd.

The internet is behaving very oddly, very oddly indeed. For about the last hour now I haven't been able to get into anything.. anything I tell you!

Anything that is, except for this site, any google sites actually, and a few random others. The others however, (the others being not google or the others I managed to get through to) I simply cannot access. It includes Flickr and *mumbles a bit* Facebook and a few random others, and it's extremely odd. At first I thought it was Yahoo, as that site itself was inaccessible as well as Flickr which is a subsidiary (if that's the correct term) but... the random others aren't, I don't think.

It's very odd.

Hmph!

Just as I thought.. no snow, just overcast drizzly coldness. Boring! To be fair to the world's meteorologists.. (some of them) not all the weather sites said it would snow, in fact, they all said something a bit different and were kind of vague. One said snow all day certainly, one just said "fog" another said something else but the one with the hourly updates said there would be "flurries" all night, and "flurries" during most of the day, snowfall for an hour or 2 and "flurries" again.

Guess what? Not a single flurry. Dammit, if you're gonna promise flurries I expect flurries! Yeah I'm sure a lot of normal grownup people who didn't grow up in a warm climate are pleased with the lack of flurries but I'm not them!

I want my flurries!!!!

Apparently...

It's going to snow.

*gets all giddy and stuff*

I know a lot of regular grownups don't really like the snow.. something about it being wet and slushy and accompanied by really cold weather, but I'm neither normal or all that grownup, and from Australia where it just doesn't snow, ever. Not where I'm from anyway.. and though I haven't been there for quite a while now, childhood conditioning stays with you, I'm silly about the snow, still, even though I've lived through early spring where it's still freezing cold and there's a thick layer of ice on the ground. And it's early winter and at least 10 months since I last saw any. By April I might be sick of seeing it. Of course we might not get hardly any this season, and it probably won't snow tomorrow after all. Oh well. Happy Channukah all the same.

A bit o' fun with fotos

Caption this.

Still have the shell.

Not a fetching sea shell, brought back from my recent(ish) jaunts in the Mediterranean. It's a computer without a hard drive. It's been there for about a week... ho to go out and get one and put it in and get a system installed and have a real working computer.. not that this one isn't working.. just.. or that that is what would have actually happened, but the point is I was all gung ho.. and stuff.

Well.. I was until I looked up hard drives on the computer store's site and it was kind of hard so I gave up in despair. And I turned out to have less money that I thought I would but seriously.. why does everything in computerese have to be impossible for normal people to glean any meaning from? I have an old comp which will accept a hard drive with the little needly bits on the end, one the "older" type ones from before they changed them whenever that was but what the fuck do the computer people call it.. what type of "interface" or whatever is it? I don't bloody know. I ask someone who would know and they don't really understand what I'm asking but give me an answer all the same but it's one that is equally meaningless to me.

So it's still sitting there, useless.

Stupid Questions... (edit:SQNEA #9.1)

.. that no one ever asks, is the slightest bit interested in or even really understands the point of asking.

Why are there no bleeding ATM machines around here? I'm right in the centre of the city for fucks sake.. well in a central area, not the centre exactly (that would be Prague 1 and I'm in Prague 2) and there simply aren't any, well none that have the Vodafone symbol so I can put credits on my phone anyway.. not in the direction I went because I didn't feel like going in the other direction because going that way is annoying. Now I have to go out again in the morning to get fucking credits for the fucking phone before I can even make the phone calls which really should have been done today, well last week if I were to be totally responsible about it, but fortunately I'm never motivated to be all that responsible so I'm only a day behind.

Bugger. Yes, I'm calling that a sentence. Sue me.

The Silliness is On!

I now pronounce it officially Silly Season! Circumstances have made it impossible for me to pretend it's still regular season. It's ok to go be silly now.

Yesterday was Mikuláš, a xmassy predecessor to xmas which is celebrated here in the Czech Republic. We started the day regularly enough, going to visit the kitties, fed them food Cooley refuses to eat, saw old friends, and some new kitties and the official cat lady, who in broken English told them all their names (not the real names, the names other people all them) and a bit of history.

It got dark, and colder so we popped into a cafe we occasionally visit. Had relaxing liqueur coffees with light ambient jazz playing in the background. There was a slight disruption to this peace as a couple with a huge pram (with child inside) squeezed past me, forcing me to move my chair.. I know, the nerve.. but I got over it.

A little later a sooty devil came in, followed by two angels and St. Nicholas himself, took a table and sat down. We were completely unfazed by this, as it's exactly the day of the year one expects to see these characters. They were joined shortly after by another angel, but an angel that made us sit up and take notice, she had an elaborate headdress, big silver wings and a tiny violin. "She's a musical angel" I noted, with interest.

She began to play and I retracted "musical" from my that. It wasn't bad exactly, just.. as I said it was a tiny violin (or whatever instrument the one that's smaller than a violin is) and played only high notes, and a few songs she played I believed hadn't been practiced so much, that's all. The child however, had a stronger opinion on this free show. She started crying, that is screaming the way children do when they're displeased with something, so we had a bit of an opera going with the tiny high pitched violin on one side, and noisy (and high pitched) child on the other.

This was the moment when the season officially became silly. That is, sillier than my "regular" seasons, and believe you me, that is considerably silly.

We stayed a while longer, simultaneously amused and horrified at the spectacle, the only other thing of note that occurred during that time was another couple with a huge pram, this time squeezing past Erik came in. I was sure that this new child was going to join the opera before long, but he just slept, and slept.

Meanwhile, the parents of the other child were trying to soothe her, to get her to stop crying but to no avail, she calmed down for a short time while the angel stopped playing and decided what to play next, which should have been a tip off to anyone paying attention, but the music went on and so did the wailing.

When it became enough (after about 10 minutes) we left. To Namesti Miru we went, to continue the silliness. There were a lot of people, not too many characters but we indulged in a hot wine and took silly ghosty shots of our heads, a giant christmas tree and a few devils and St. Nicks. Overall it was pretty silly.

Something nerdy for Friday.

Today's word o the day is such a doozie I just had to share it with you. It's one of those rare examples when not just the word itself, but the description lives up to the aforementioned title of "doozie".

gallimaufry
\gal-uh-MAW-free\, noun;
1. A hodgepodge; jumble; confused medley.

Should I bother to go on, can that be improved on? When you already talk of a hodgepodge and throw in a medley and some confusion.. where is there to go?

Well.. one can elaborate on , I guess. Here are some quotes:

Today bilingual programs are conducted in a gallimaufry of around 80 tongues, ranging from Spanish to Lithuanian to Micronesian Yapese.

-- Ezra Bowen, "For Learning or Ethnic Pride?", Time, July 8, 1985

We have the same eyes dark and chestnut hair. But I am a lame gallimaufry and she remains perfect.

-- Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

That's quite a mouthful.

Origin:

Gallimaufry, originally meaning "a hash of various kinds of meats," comes from French galimafrée, from Old French, from galer, "to rejoice, to make merry" (source of English gala) + mafrer, "to eat much," from Medieval Dutch maffelen, "to open one's mouth wide."

kay.

Bits, and some bobs.

It's funny. You know, things. Things you thought, things you learn, things that never occurred to you.

Like, a lot of people in the Post Office don't really know what they're doing, and are goofily apologetic when they mess up which is often, or at least during the hour I had to observe them as I repeatedly messed up and had to fill and refill out forms repeatedly (yes I know already said "re" fill, it stands) put a small envelope into a larger envelope when I thought originally I'd have to take that package home and repack it which would take days and some running around because I'm out of the paper tape you need to sign over when you're insuring, even the stuff I used this morning which were the remnants of the stuff that somehow got soaked and wrinkled and lost it's sticky (strangely enough that's not the first time I've used this phrase on this blog) so I just put clear tape over it and hoped it would fly.. seems it did anyway so luckily I was able to send them out after all that, and being told I wouldn't be able to in the first PO I went to.. or at least that's the impression I got.

Oh, and speaking of the first PO I went to, it's funny how when you're waiting in a place where you have to take a ticket you think it's crap because you're waiting so long and there doesn't seem to be any system to it, but when you're somewhere you just line up you think that's crap and they should have the ticket system, but when you're in a Post Office where you sorta float around each window behind the person being served keeping an eye on the other windows and the people hovering behind them and wondering what the hell the person at the window has that is taking so long.. and if indeed they even do what you need at that window.. you wish they'd just fucking decide on a fucking system for fucks sake! For fucks sake! Worst. Post. Office. In. Prague.

So.. you see, things. And then there are things that are not the slightest bit perplexing, just... typical. You go to the stationery shop and want fine, but not too fine point black felt pens. They have tons of pens of course, weird erasable ones, they have felt pens, big fat ones that smell strongly. Really fine point felt pens and packages of fine, but not too fine pens, in 4 different colours. I mean.. I'd probably get a pack of 4 if they were all black, because I will end up using all of those, but no.. they have black, blue, red and some other colour I'll never use. And of course they have nothing of the sort sold individually. And they have no tape, except for a small one on the dispenser and paper tape, forget it.

And of course (still going with the previous one.. sorta) there are tons of people at the register... I stand behind what I think is a mother and daughter and the woman rings it up.. a bunch of pens all individually priced, and a few other items. She takes her grand old time she does. So the other register becomes free and some dude walks up to it, when the woman in front of me goes over and tells him politely but firmly that she's first.. and the young girl pays in what seems like the smallest coins possible. She takes her time gathering her stuff and getting out of the way.. and finally I buy my stuff. I know it's shit that happens every day, but still.

And another thing. If you have card machines at your Post Office, people should be able to pay with their cards. I'd meant to go to the cash machine, just in case, as I was spinning around but zoned it out, and thought.. well they have machines at the post office or so I thought because I never use my card to pay for things.. I'm kind of a luddite about that if that's the right term.. but today I thought I might finally become a grownup and use it. If I needed to. Well I needed to and you can't so I had to go to the nearest bank machine, which isn't all that near and come back.

I think I'll stop now.

Kay, that went well.

I am now the proud owner of a discarded shell of a computer. An old computer with no hard drive.. and there's a hard drive out there that has a bunch of my stuff on it that I cannot access until I get the next round of stuff done (read, get anything done).. there's also another bunch of data that is trapped on an inaccessible hard drive but that one's here, it's just inaccessible (refers reader to previous comment inferring that naught is getting done).

So now I have to get a hard drive, like buy a hard drive. Like I have the first clue how to do that. Well I do, I even have a place that's supposed to be good for those sorts of things. After that I need to get it installed with some system thingy and I will have help with that but I'm not sure a new version will work well on this old comp with not enough ram so I might have to continue struggling with the one I've been "using" (yes I say that in it's broadest possible sense) the one that's a hodge podge of different.. er.. systems and and old version of Linux that doesn't even have Midnight Commander. If you can believe that.

Anyway.. I'm strangely and quite stupidly optimistic as if there's the slightest chance that I'm a) going to actually get my ass out and get this thing soon, b) that fixing it to the comp is going to be without incident and c) well... that the whole thing is going to turn out to be as unfathomable to me as all the rest has been and d) that it just won't happen which is covered by the other points but I think it's worth mentioning in a point of it's own... as it won't happen. You'll see.

Still, I'm quite looking forward to going down to techland and looking at all the goodies and knowing exactly what I want and bringing it home and making it work and getting the system on and getting it online and downloading and installing all those programs and having a working computer, that'll be cool.

So it went pretty well.

Oh FFFS!

Bloody computer bloody crap bloody fuck it to fuck.

Ok not this one, although it's doing it's working annoyingly slow and freezing up often which I've almost become desensitized too except for when it pisses me off but I'm talking about the other one. The one that I got to replace the other one that died mysteriously with a hard drive (on loan) which was installed with Linux which I couldn't for the life of me make head or tail of and which the adaptor thingy I had wouldn't operate on so I wasn't online.

So, I finally got an adaptor thingy which works on Linux and waddaya know... you need to go through all sorts of fiddly building kernels and long lines of text and bla bla bla fuck it to fuck for fuck's sake.

So we invite a friend over, ok so he comes over so we can all go bowling because it's my birthday and we're gonna bowl and drink and whatever but he comes over and during the time he's there we casually accidentally mention that we got the adaptor thingy and can't figure out for the life of us how to make it work.

He gets on the comp... fiddles around. Decides he doesn't know how to configure it or whatever but stays on looking up what we got there, doesn't recognize the version and tries to bring up Midnight Commander.. and fry my knees like a flounder... there is no Midnight Commander on the system.

Well.. I was flabbergasted. Ok so I'd never heard of this jazz before.. but apparently it's on every single system there is, not just Linux or Windows or whatever it's on everything so it doesn't matter that this is a sort of custom made Linux-esque operating system because they simply all have Midnight Commander.. something like that anyway. Except for this one of course..

He fucked around a bit more, but the only thing he could discover is that it isn't a standard Linux version it's a sort of custom made Linux-esque operating system... and didn't know how to work this one. So he fiddled around more on it but the sun was going down, and the end of cheap hours at the bowling alley was becoming nearer and there was only one response to this.

Fuck it dude, let's go bowling.

So he fucked around on it a bit more.. we tried the line again, in fact a few times because there really aren't enough opportunities in real life to use that line and have it make sense in the current context, unless you're someone who goes bowling a lot which we aren't.. and finally we went bowling.

So now.. oh, here's the best bit, the dude who the hard drive is on loan from now really really needs it back and is coming to get it tomorrow, and here's the better bit, I have a bunch of stuff on there, photos and whatever, and being lazy, penniless and clueless about all things computer I haven't done anything about it and it's pretty much stuck there. I could transfer them over to this comp but get this... and this, wait this is the best bit, there isn't enough room on this comp for it all, or even a significant percentage of it so fuck knows what now.

I think I'll take up bowling as a regular thing. Or maybe drinking Oh wait...