the stench of scorched flesh...

drifts through the air..

for tonight is the Burning Of The Witches.

Today, they don't burn actual witches ie actual real people at least not officially ad not legally. Hopefully not at all, it's just an effigy. It's an old end of winter/coming of summer ritual that dates back to Pagan times when people burnt bonfires to scare away evil spirits and say goodbye and hearty fuck you for a least a couple of months to winter.

Then the Christians came along and had to twist it to their liking, so they thought, hmmm, what's evil.. I know? Witches, they're women and they're into Satan and they're currently our representation of (insert hated Empire)/(queen/queen consort/King's mistress)/Catholics/Protestants etc... and we burn them. So they went with that.

People still do it and it's a bit of a lark and excuse to stay out all night with bonfires,very popular with the young people. I personally am not impressed. I've always been kind of on the witches side. To be honest, I never believed any of those people really cursed anyone, and really, even if they did, I bet they had a good reason, and of course most of the victims were women, pagans, poor and destitute, weird and outsiders, sure some of them were actually kind of assholes, but burning? really, and hanging as well, for the crime of being old and unpopular and maybe a bit of a crook but not that bad of one. Not good medieval/post medieval reformation era/later if you're in America people!

So I'm here, in my room, not partaking.

And another thing! You have a festival that marks the end of winter/beginning of spring on the last day of April! I mean shit how long to we have to wait for the start of spring? You've got the equinox, then you got Easter then you have May.. I mean, you're just tempting fate. Let's just have an equinox festival and be done with it, everything after that can be called something else, say it's for the berries or something but you keep up with this shit you'll have frozen ground til June. Don't want that.

Writing home

Again, I've got nothing to write home about, but nevertheless..

I've written quite a lot this month, relative to how much I have in the last months, years, this whole decade? Still not a lot, but more than usual. Way back in my early days of blogging I used to write much more. It was mostly drivel, actually exactly the sort of stuff I write not, just more, and oftener. I did write a few pieces which I was proud of, and whenever I look back on years ago I remember it as a golden age where I had ideas all the time and a variety of subjects I would share with the world. I would lament the lack of any inspiration, wondering how I ever managed to be so prolific, and not half bad at that.

Back in the day, I used to get ideas late at night, I'd latch onto something and in my head I'd write a whole post, complete with witty lines and clever jokes. The next day, I'd put off writing it down because it seemed like so much pressure, and finally I'd get it done, sure that I'd forgotten all the best details and it never seemed as good as I thought it was the night before, but still, a pretty decent piece of writing.

Then I stopped writing so much, and this didn't happen again for like, years. I thought the magic was gone. I was no longer a (sort of, in the broadest sense, if you're extremely generous on what constitutes one) writer.

Well the other night, inf act around easter just before my good Friday post it happened again. The result is here, or at least partly here, I came up with that in my head, as well as another bit that I half intended to write later, but never got around to. Whether it's all that good is up to the reader, and if it's not worth writing down well that could be due to the missing bit and the fact that all the best details weren't in it because I forget them by the time I wrote them down but the point is it happened! After, possibly 10 years, at least once I had this idea at night, words, sentences, phrases all there. It's not gone, not completely. And if it happened once it might again.

I just need to write more. Writing puts me in the mood for more writing and coming up with things to write about gives me more ideas of things to write about, and if I do it a lot, it gets the brain in that mode. In order to be able to write, I need to write. So here I write, and I will continue to write, and write more, and then some more.

If I could only figure out exactly what to write about.

Busy Holiday

'twas the festival of fertility and rebirth, or if you like, dead guy on a stick day (was that it) or as I like to call it and will continue hammering on about until I tire of it or forget it, which likely will be soon, Zombie Appreciation Day. Or it still is, I'm not sue of the status of Easter Tuesday, if that even is a thing, here or anywhere else. Anyway, Holiday. And oh how busy I've been! Sort of. Though I didn't actually go to work or do any work or do anything related to the organizing of future work that will bring much needed money that has more or less run out (both any work I seemed to be doing and the money) and it would be in my defense to state that it was a holiday and there's not so many opportunities for job seeking around at a time like this except it doesn't make much more than the slightest difference considering the sort of work I do if I ever get around to doing it, where I am and the resources I use to get that information, so only little excuses only there. What I have been doing is cleaning my room, oh wait I procrastinated but I actually did it the next day, I spoke like a ghost and I ate garlic, and lemon. Apart from that not much apart from the usual flupping around on the internet and watching tv.

Yes they are all shameless links to my videos. Don't watch them though, they're dumb.

The day o' the rising

otherwise known as Zombie Acceptance Day

Happy Easter

It's Good

On this.. well not on this day, what do you call it when you celebrate a day that represents something that was supposed to happen at a certain time adjacent to another holiday that's based on the phases of the moon or the tides or something? Well that, on this that, Jesus our alleged Lord and Saviour, supposedly died a slow and agonizing death on the cross.

Now if you've read enough of the posts on this blog that have any coherent thought to them (admittedly that does narrow things down a bit) then you'll know that I'm rather skeptical that this event ever happened, and indeed that there ever really was a Jesus, if that's even his real name, but nevertheless, that is supposedly why we celebrate this holiday of Easter.

It's really a brilliant bit of PR by the Catholic church to name the whatever you call it versary of that day Good Friday. I think it goes something like being crucified allowed Jesus to die so he could rise and go to Heaven and and thus be able to provide salvation (finally) for sinners, which is all people, who were pretty much born guilty. Something along the lines of Jesus died on the cross which paid for everyone's sins, eg existing as we're born sinners and all that so ta Jesus, was swell of you. I mean you still have to jump through some hoops to get it, and which hoops differ according to who you ask, but this, as far as I know (which admittedly isn't a whole lot) is why the whatever it is of the day of Jesus' rather grim death, is called "Good".

Have a good day.

A Modest Thought

Earlier today, as I posed before an art class, in all my fabulous glory, looking past the young artists swishing their paint across their canvas through the window at the spring blossoms and spires of the magnificent St Vitus Cathedral at the Castle, here in Prague , Czech republic, or Czechia if you prefer, I thought to myself, along with the thought "ooh it's a wee bit nippy in here" that I may well be literally the most Bohemian person in existence.

I don't imagine there's any money in that, unfortunately.

Plugging along

I'm still going with my for want of a better word project, which is, to upload a video every day. I've passed the 50 mark and I had a beer for a celebration of that. I'm tentatively pleased with my sorta success, I mean, I've done one every day, haven't managed to upload every single one the same day but I mostly have, some of the videos are kind of interesting but mostly they're quite forgettable, and the quality is what you'd expect from a crappy digital camera with no extra equipment, or particular skill on the part of the video maker so it's a mixed bag of... stuff.

I was kind of hoping by this point that the videos would be, if not good at least not too embarrassing and occasionally quite good at least in presentation of a good idea or even better, my unmatchable wit and charm but even my vanity (the part of me that is uncensored by the modesty I present to the world) can't claim that. They're just a bunch of videos done quickly, for myself for my own purposes and they're not particularly bad for what they are.

My limitations, some which I've already mentioned, lack of experience, training, equipment, sometimes even time on the card when I'm filming out and about all contribute to the lack of anything to write home about so far. Other things may include my lack of ability to do anything great, which I must realistically admit as a possibility, but one reason I know doesn't help is my damned laziness. I mean, I'm motivated enough to go through with this idea and to stick to it, but not quite enough to do anything properly, most of my recent vids, and well, the majority of the last 51 (52 if you count today's as yet unedited) have been the best idea I could come up with that would take the least effort. In a way it's a microcosm for the story of my life, but in this case it's keeping me from greatness, or slightly better than I am ness.

I have many ideas, some which I think are quite good, some which won't (and haven't) look as good on video as in my head but I have them, ideas for series, more important stuff, but my laziness and this weird anxiety(there it is again) that keeps me from pushing slightly out of my weird wobbly comfort zone stop me from filming them. Maybe I'm afraid exactly of that, the ideas coming out looking flat and dull, maybe I don't want to use what is actually a good idea until I'm ready to do justice to it. Maybe it's all these things. It's all these things. That's too many things. No wonder I can't get anything done. Not true I'm getting it done I'm just not getting it done well. Oh well 52 videos (assuming I upload one today) is nothing to sneeze at. Why would you sneeze at a video anyway? That would be ludicrous.

I like the rain.

I like the rain, but I don't like it when it's raining. I like the spring but it rains too much, besides all that sunshine and light and beauty makes me feel like I should go out there and experience life, and for the most part I'd like to stay here, cozy and alone with just my computer for company. And sometimes a guitar, and it'd be nice to have a cat around to occasionally cuddly up to me but that's it. Some human companionship after so many hours but that's it. If I didn't have anywhere to go ever that's all I'd do, be here, reading, writing, watching stuff, taking some photos and shooting videos although for the last 2 I give myself the pressure to actually go somewhere that isn't here in order to create them, but if I wasn't really into those, and didn't ever have to then I'd never go anywhere until it got to the point where I can't stand being here doing nothing seeing no one anymore while simultaneously being so entropied both physically and emotionally that my anxiety of the outside world makes me unable to experience it. At least, I think so, I haven't gotten quite that far yet before there was a need to go somewhere, maybe it would.

Why am I telling you this? Well, why not, I've got a blog, might as well throw something up there.

It's just too much work!

It's April the 1st. This is a day of foolishness, frivolity, fakeness and falsity. It's the day when you just can't trust anything anyone says. When we all try to one up each other on how clever and elaborate our pranks can get.

Well bugger it. Can't do it. In years past I've had the need, due to my mildly OCD need to dorkily follow time sensitive themes, I always felt I had to do at least something, on this most silly of days, to partake in the revelry. I've done some elaborate ones, mostly not but I always and by always I mean sometimes, acknowedge it. This year it's too much. Can't think of anything, can't be bothered, it's not just the blog, there's flickr, and Facebook and now I'm doing this video project and it's all too much. I mean I did this photo..



of me being silly, and a video that kind of goes with it, and mentioned something on Facebook that no one paid attention to but that's it! This day means nothing to me.