Sometimes I write about subjects. Usually I just write about stuff.
The new year will be here soon, I've already reflected, now it's time to look forward.
Is nearly over. There are 8 hours and 36 minutes left of this year in my time zone, as of posting. It's actually already next year in some parts of the world.. hi family.. how's 2012? Here, it's still the old year.. and time to reminisce...
*picture goes all blurry while harp plays*
Well.. really, it's been much like most other fucking years, didn't achieve nearly what I wanted to, or what would be a regular level of achievement for a normal person, or even the modest tasks which I more realistically set for myself, but it wasn't so bad.
Did some travelling.. big trip to Canada and a stop by Berlin, and London, and later to Paris.. started a new job, something completely new as a tour guide, and made a much more concerted effort to get registered with casting agencies. It yielded exactly nothing but.. well, that's actually kind of crap.
Was in a few video project thingies, and an actual movie.. at least I equaled my average for a year.. and actually began making my own stuff. Started quite late in the year, and didn't do nearly as much as what I wanted to, and it's all pretty.. well.. bad, but considering I'd done it not at all any previous year this is a huge achievement. I think, even with the travelling, and actually having some formal employment, this is my most prized achievement of the year.
And when I look back on what I said a year ago ..
For the next year.. I dunno, more of the same, more movies, acting in and making, better movies.. both again. Get a job, an actual job that pays money and.. well, just be super awesome in general.I haven't done so bad, I mean yeah, I pretty much did all those things, an of course, the last one I achieved quite beautifully :)
is the time for a fresh new start, putting your head down and getting your shit together.. doing new things and doing those things that you're supposed to do but never getting around to..
then it's ok to just.. bum around and not get much done in the old year.. right?
*does it anyway*
Night I tell you!
In a few days it will be 2012, the last year the earth will exist, or exist in it's current form, or that humans will be around, or that our civilization will be as we know it or.. something. That's if you believe the Mayans, and that what they wrote has been interpreted correctly, and that our calendar year somehow corresponds with what was written in whatever texts we get this from.. and that they knew what they were talking about..
So.. 2 days left that we know we're going to be here.. (if you believe all the stuff in the previous paragraph) because once we hit Jan 1, 2012 we just don't know how long there will be.. maybe a few minutes after midnight, maybe 6 months.. (unless you're going with the December 21 prediction or whatever other date prediction assuming there is a theory that it could be any other date which I'm not sure there is, but that would spoil half the fun wouldn't it now) so you might as well part it on up on NYE.. get as drunk as you want, spend all your money, go somewhere you haven't gone before..
of course.. you might spend every cent you have until your next paycheck, say on the 5th of Jan, have people over to eat all your food and mess your place up, and drink so much that you're sick for at least a day and a half, and then drearily go to work and just be hungry and miserable and bored because you don't have money for food or food left and everyone is pissed off with you because of something you said when you were drunk and have a miserable shitty few days of it and then the world ends.. just before you get paid again and everyone forgets about the bullshit of New Year's Eve and right after you finally get around to cleaning the place up properly, moving the furniture and scrubbing the floors and everything.
It's a possibility.
All about Cooley. Santa was very good to her this year.. we're thinking that she's just permanently on the "cute" list.
Christmas has been and gone.. well.. I mean, the main bit of it, it's still boxing day and er.. 2nd/3rd day of Christmas? I dunno.. but yesterday is gone. We did our presents, got some nice things.. though one of my presents was suspiciously like something a kitty would want..
anyway, made rocks, that is, made bread that turned out like rocks but it didn't matter because we had so much other food that there was more than enough for our guests.. oh, did I mention, we had guests. Just a few, our usual xmas people, and we all ate, listened to cheesy music and watched some silly movies.
I think it was quite a success. And we have leftovers, that's the best bit.
Well.. currently Santa's flying over South East Asia, according to my sources.. so I'm gonna assume list is done and checked twice, so at this point, there's not much I can do.. if I'm on the naughty list, I'm staying there.
Fortunately I've been good this year. As usual.
So.. this is Christmas, as the overplayed and otherwise annoying enough song goes.. what have we done? Oh the usual, nothing too interesting. Gonna spend the next few days preparing for guests, eating ,drinking and hanging out with guests, hopefully in a merry fashion.. oh and presents. Yeah, there's already some under the tree.. (actually under where the tree goes, we been putting it in the spare room for most of the time so Cooley doesn't chew on it) but yeah..
Not much else to say. It's Christmas, hope everyone has an awesome one.
Don't drink too much :)
I know, it's something I usually never do, but today is a very particular day on which it is appropriate to "air one's grievances".
Festivus, a little known holiday where you get to er.. air your grievances. Semi famous for being featured in a very popular 90s sitcom. Anyway whatever who cares.. here they are. (my grievances that is).
Acting "career". Grievance being, well, my need to put the word "career" in those quotes.. don't have one, still going nowhere, did like one film this year, and no theatre or really anything else, as usuall the infrequent auditions I go for come to nothing, well one recent one but I went for a quite a few over the last month and one of the others I really liked the sound of and thought I'd have a good chance at.. and the stuff I've done is poor and small in number. I keep meaning to do a lot more but for one reason or another, usually quite poor reasons, I don't. *grumbles*
Lack of money. Don't have much money. This is because of my job, which pretty much sucks, well it's an ordinary job that I like as much as any I would do, but there are only so many hours I can do it, and at the moment the season is slow and I'm making next to nothing.
My job. Well, it sucks. I mean, it's not bad but it's like any job, which sucks. One reason being I don't make much but there are other reasons.
My latest upload on youtube doesn't have a thumbnail. I mean a proper one.. you know, a bit from one of the clips of the video. This vexes me.
Other stuff.. lots of it. I could be here all day.
Oh yeah.. the world, people are poor, there's violence, illness equality, other bad things. Work it out world!
It is the shortest day o the year today, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, at least according to whichever site I clicked on when I googled winter solstice.. it's either today or yesterday.. whichever, there are really only a few minutes difference in the amount of light we see.
Today, or at least according to a certain script I often quote, and very near to the same aforementioned sites I spoke of, had exactly twice as much dark, as there was light. Not sure exactly what that means, as the sun takes it's time to both rise and set, but that's what they say if you're on the 50th parallel, as I am.
Yeah it's 3 days before Christmas, 2 if you count xmas eve which we do here and of course I had things to do.. stuff I should have done already but I'm doing pretty well if I'm not still desperately pushing through the crowds in the last hours of whatever's open being open on xmas eve, which is pretty much a holiday here so not so much and pretty early.. er, where was I, yeah, so getting stuff done on the 22nd, very responsible by my standards.
*sighs* That time of year.
Yeah, I can write backwards :). Actually not really, I just google translated that.. it is Hebrew and it does mean (according to google, haven't actually checked with Erik, who does know) Happy Hannukah. Or Happy Channukah.. depending on your preference. It is the first night today and we're beginning our holiday hosting season this evening, with an elegant eve of latkes and stuff, spinning the dreidel with friends. Yes, got a dreidel this year, couldn't find it last year..
It's a strange time of year and a strange year for this strange time, one of our country's most beloved men, Vaclav Havel, dissident playwright during the communist years, major player in the Velvet revolution and President of Czechlosovakia and then the Czech Republic, died just 2 days ago, so it will be a relatively subdued season this year, for the Czech Republic...
nevertheless, life goes on, people still celebrate, lights are up, music is playing.. and all around Prague there are pools on the street, with carp swimming around in them, awaiting their fate...
One must pay for. *groans* I've had a pretty good run recently of getting off mildly after a night of drinking, about the last month or so. I wake up, sometimes have a small headache and often not even that and get on with my day.
Well, my blessed time seems to be over.. just in time for the holiday season too. It's rubbish. I'm not sure if there was something particular to last night, didn't really drink so much, although the bit between finishing my last drink and waking up in the middle of the night still half dressed is completely lost to me. Weird.
Anyway.. it's all heating up around here, parties to plan, feasts to get organized, bars to attend.
Not tonight though.
I suppose.
Yeah, did another one of our episodes.. this one about trains. I don't really like it but I put it up and I'm linking it here anyway. These episode thingies are not going exactly how I envisioned.. this envisioning which began long ago and has finally been done a few times after many false starts.. but I've liked most of them, kind of. this one.. er.. I dunno.. I know sometimes you have a bad day and anyone can have times when they don't have much to say that's interesting.. though of course when the subject is trains how could that be ;)... but I've realized, and particularly after doing, and viewing this ep that.. I'm just not that good at this. The idea was to be interesting, funny, silly.. and i take it so fucking seriously? I mean... Erik's cool, he always says something witty but I'm always trying to get us back on the boring track. Don't know why I do it.. I suppose I can train myself out of it, anything can be learnt, or unlearnt. Oh well.
I've been going over all my accents, regional, international.. ones I don't have which is pretty much all of them because I don't have one, not really.. the way I speak is a mix of many things and to speak with any one accent, I would always have to fake it..
Is today. Should't be such a letdown, as I don't have a traditional job, and in fact, don't work much at all. Shameful, I know. I am being bothered though. I just want to get some of my stuff done, look up some stuff and.. well let's face it a lot of today will be spent me doing stuff that is mostly in the "wasting time" category, and very little of researching, practicing, editing, cleaning up etc.. and even stuff that's useful for work (that is the paying kind) but still, if I'm not going to get anything out of this time, then I might as well spend it a way that I enjoy, as opposed to not getting any of that stuff done, and not being able to do whatever due to someone being here who will hang around for way longer than is necessary, which is already way longer than I'd like.
It's the stupid little things that bother me... computer stuff, can't put a certain program on the comp due to, I dunno, not understand how easy ti really is.. other computer stuff. People coming here and hanging around all day, who I've numerous times tried to explain that I really do need time to do stuff, on my own and every time he takes his sweet ass time hanging around and I seem annoyed he gets pissy and asks why and I either leave it or have to explain the whole thing which I've already gone through, yet again..
I had an average day to put it in the mildest possible way. Started when I woke up, turned on a light, which went out after half a second, taking everything else with it. Including the computer which you can imagine was particularly vexing. So, due misunderstandings, assumptions and just plain stupidi er.. naivety, I was sitting here without any electricity, for some hours.
The days really get short so quickly, I've noticed. I mean, it's obvious why when the end of daylight savings comes, you get an instant hour's difference, that's understandable.. but from then on it just gets shorter and shorter by the second. I'm not sure that makes much sense, but I've noticed in the mornings.. you get the extra hour then, but within a few weeks it still dark by 7am or so.. and on a day that's dark by 4pm.
I'd probably rest on them.
So, a lovely sunny Saturday. It's nice to get those, particularly this time of year when one does not expect nice kinds of weather. Pleasant it was, though, not having a lounging about day, I had things to do!
I had to do the old fiddly change transit thing that one must do at times, so I go to Narodni Trida, and wait for the 17. It's a weekend so the trams are coming slightly less frequently than weekdays, but still not so bad. one showed up after not long. Well, I didn't notice it at first, because some woman came up and asked me how to get to Prague Castle, even though I was checking through my little notebook at the time in the vain hope I'd written some information that was important there.. so another lady took over from me, explaining in detail how to get there. In the whole kerfuffle I didn't notice the 17 waiting there at first, it was backed up, like a tram is when there's another tram waiting ahead of it, but there was no other tram in front. I went up to get on it, and it moved forward.. oh, thinks I, it's moving up to the front, where it's supposed to be. But no, it didn't.. just kept going.
So I had to wait for the next one. And no, the important info was not in my little notebook.
I get to my destination, and I walk and walk, I hadn't been to this place before but I had a pretty good idea of how to get there, until an unfamiliar road, one that I was sure I hadn't seen on the map, came up ahead of me. Then, lo and behold, I see someone I know coming across the road. Hadn't seen him for a while, so we did a stop and chat, and I asked where this place was.. I remembered the street, sorta. He scratched his head, sure that he was familiar with it.. and then realized, it was written on the street sign right above his head. Oh how we laughed and laughed.
So.. said ciao and went on, down that street, the street I was supposed to be on. But my destination was not along it! Walked back up that street, and found it ended where I had begun. I consulted my crudely drawn map and realized that all the streets were wrong, or the google map was wrong because they didn't match up. That my own map was an inaccurate representation of the official map, is not a possibility of course.
I walked up and down a bit. Then made a phone call, found out, I had the address wrong. No idea how that happened, but I walked on to this other street. Fortunately it had a name which kinda gave away where it was so it wasn't so hard to find, though the place I needed to go was a bit difficult to spot, part of a big complex of warehouses and stuff.. so I walked past the entrance a few times until I found it, then I wandered around in there for a few more minutes.. and then I thought the door was locked and waited outside like a chump.
Pretty typical of me trying to get somewhere. On the way home, I waited at the tram stop for the 17 again, checked the time it came, but it didn't come. Had to wait for the next one, and then it didn't go back the samw way but took me of course. Damn 17!
Life really should be simpler than this. That's what, (or something similar to that, "life should be much easier", "I thought you said it would make life easier", "things really should be easier", I remembered the exact words earlier, but I failed to note them right away) a I heard as I was walking a busy Prague street on the way to work earlier on.. they were said to a woman, carrying a large box, which looked like it had been filled with some kind of fruit or vegetable, but was now almost empty, with difficulty through the too narrow streets, full of people already experiencing christmastime.. by a distinguished sounding Englishman wearing a sorta Dr Who type coat.
Well it seemed intriguing at the time. I also saw some ghostbusters tonight... that is, I passed a car with the ghostbusters symbol on it. I didn't know they had those anymore :)
So work was, well, waiting around for no one to show up for a tour, but that meant I got to listen to the festive music in the Old Town Square, a colorful group of singers playing funky but whimsical songs about Jesus. Well.. you know.
Oh, and that reminds me, I came up with a cool new name for christmas, it is.. um.. shit, I think I forgot exactly how it goes already, one of those lying in bed half asleep inventions.
I remember. Magic Baby Saves the World holiday. It might sound silly, or even offensive to some.. but really, not that different from what those silver voiced youth were singing in our city tonight. Sorta.
