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...