the Lifestream chronicles

Make the best of it

2012-02-06T17:19:00.001+01:00

Just saw an ad for a webcomic (or something along those lines) that said: "Trapped in the body of an adult film star, your own body stolen by the devil himself - WHAT DO YOU DO" and I'm like.... have fun? GL with that body mr. Devil, I'm just going to enjoy myself over here (double entendre intended)!

What Society Taught Me Of Women 01

2012-02-05T04:07:00.000+01:00

Om din man inte klagar precis såhär är du ingen riktig kvinna:

From: here

Inget ont om Rocky, jag älskar serien.

Swedish Democrats

2012-01-30T22:31:00.003+01:00

*reads pamphlet*

Ice: You know, if I didn't know there's complete racist idiots in that party, the Swedish Democrats sound pretty reasonable.

N: How can you say that!

Ice: Come on, listen to this: "We want an open Swedish identity where the opportunity to be a part of this country isn't dependent on how you look or where you come from. What matters is a person's values and actions. We are also always clear with that it's the politics and not the immigrants themselves that is responsible for the failures of integration."

N: You know what those people really think.

Ice: You don't even have any arguments to answer me with. And this: "Multi-culture is the ideology that a nation should be built upon widely separated values working side by side, which in practice leads to separation and segregation. We want to stand up for the Western ideas of democracy, equality, animal protection and children's rights."

N: Western ideas? In practice? Besides, how can they both be equal and not allow some people to keep their culture?

Ice: If you're like that, you might as well ask "why be equal and not allow the people who want to to have crocodiles in their basements", maybe it belongs to someone's religious faith to have crocodiles? Besides, I'm not saying the Swedish Democrats are good people, I'm saying they have a point.

N: A point that is WRONG. Imagine what would have happened to those people who had been turned away, if our politics were harsher.

Ice: Imagine what could have happened to the people who got in, if they were treated better and not just tossed across the border with the "Everyone should come" policy? One of those human rights groups had a commercial a while ago that went, "there's a difference between being alive and living".

N: That's ridiculous, they were probably referring to people imprisoned in inhumane environments or starving in a desert, not to people with houses and clothes and their families around them.

Ice: Anna, what do you think?

Anna: I leave this discussion to professionals in immigration and economics.

N: Of course, since you can't get anything out of it.

Ice: In the best of worlds, the Swedish Democrats would have made the other parties look over their immigration politics, but since we have a habit of yelling NAZI every time anyone breathes anything that could possibly be considered anywhere near negative about people not Swedish, there can't even be a serious discussion. How is that for discrimination, anyway. Equality should mean we're allowed to talk bad about everyone.

N: Hear that? You're an idol of equality to everyone, Anna.

A Quiet Birthday Celebration

2012-01-26T20:39:00.003+01:00

Today, or rather, between yesterday and today since Korea's half a world away, Jaejoong had his birthday. I feel really happy because A) I remembered it and B) I celebrated it all on my own incentive and in a good and balanced way. That is, I fancied up a little and bought sushi and chilled. Outsiders might not be able to spot the difference between me celebrating and me not doing it, but I feel the difference quite noticeably. I didn't listen to his music to no end, I didn't watch sixteen episodes of the drama - I celebrated his birthday in the only way that truly counts; in my heart.

All of it made me think about mold and cornflakes, about the patterns in the universe and in our back yards, about the way cities grow and the way we breed animals; about how everything is one single beautiful whole, and in all that, Jaejoong is the one single thing that when I think about him I don't think about everything else. I don't think "but there is a statistical possibility that piracy actually severely damages culture in aspects that I might be ignoring because supporting free information furthers my own short-term agendas". I don't think "this book is such crap compared to what I know I'm capable of; if I'd just had the resolve I might have published my first book already, but even so, I know what I write will never be best-selling because considering mass psychology I write things too different from the general fare". I don't think, "which part of a person is DNA and which is not, and if all are, then why do parts of me contradict and what do people actually want?", I don't even think "all of this is hyped up fangirl mass-hysteria typical of my gender that enforces all kinds of woman-degrading ideas that circulate, and I am playing into the expert hands of marketing professionals that have molded some kind of public persona over whoever he is beneath".

There is always a "but", a "maybe", another view to consider, another detail to examine. Every time I look at a thread a spider web explodes in my head.

But not with him. I don't think. Every single thing - every single thing - I have found out about him, and seen of him, and heard of him, since the day I first saw his picture, has been perfect. No compromises, no thoughts, no justifications. No shrugs of "I guess I can live with that". I don't care if I never find out about the parts that some people seem to think "matters", or if I never exchange a single word with anyone in his general direction. It makes no difference who he is or how I discovered him or what he does for a living, all that matter is that the spider web goes silent. I look at him, and all I see is him. And until that stops being, god forbid that it does, I have one way to keep myself from going insane.

I am so happy you were born, Jaejoong, and I wish you everything in the world. For once, for one person, I can truly and with no hesitation say that. And I wish words could express how much I mean it.

Sunday Morning

2012-01-22T10:59:00.001+01:00

It suddenly occurred to me that I haven't had any paralyzing or mindfucking strikes of anxiety regarding life, money or the universe in general this weekend. I've been... happy. Satisfied with my position and progress. Oh well. It's still only Sunday morning, there's still time.

OTHER NEWS: Commotion at the Cork Tree

2012-01-05T04:00:00.003+01:00

We have earlier reported on the commotion at the Cork Tree regarding the modernizations of the cattle pens, where one of the current residents, a bull going by Ferdinand, has been conducting something of a non-violence protest - in fact, he hasn't done anything at all, including moving. We finally got past the blockade to speak to him directly.

"I understand if people want to get on with their lives," said Ferdinand, on the subject of the other cattle having left already. "It's nice to have company, but I'd rather sit here under my tree and smell the flowers alone, than listen to them talk loud and proud to each other about "not wanting to be helped"."

When we asked him what he thought of the complaints made against him, he said: "Before they wanted to make a tourist spot of this precise tree, people sighed and shook their heads and thought I was peculiar but cute, but now that they do, they sigh and shake their heads and say I am difficult and have social phobias and discuss motivational therapy or tow trucks to move me to an institution where they have painted flowers on the walls and sprayed perfume in the air. They say I cannot pay my rent by sitting under a tree smelling flowers, and cork trees are in high demand recently. But I don't think I bother anyone, really. It's not like I'm one of the new bred bulls that talk about depressing things and threaten with going to the slaughter house as soon as someone wants to leave. People actually listen to them. They just make me tired."

We asked how long he planned to continue his protest and what his actual goal was, but he did not seem to be aware of there being a protest going on anywhere, and said he didn't have any goals with his life and that seemed to be what upset people.

Footnote: A week after this interview was conducted, the flowers at the cork tree were dug up to make room for benches and a brand new water supplying system. Expressing a wish for keeping at least one flower, Ferdinand was taken away for obstruction of progress. We have not yet been able to reach him about a comment on this, but a spokesperson for Progress expressed assurances that he was "in a better place".

2011-12-27T22:31:00.000+01:00

I think it was on Christmas Eve, late at night, after all the excitement was over, that I went outside for a little bit alone for some air. You can see stars in the city, at least my part of the city, but I had forgotten what it's like, when the night is perfectly crystal clear and there are no lights to interfere. Not just stars, but like you'd taken a handful of glitter and spread across the skies; all those small stars that you never see in the city because the sky is lit up too much. It gets so dark here on the countryside, so completely dark it engulfs you in an otherworldly feeling. It took my by surprise.

For a moment I felt completely alone in the world, and the incomprehensible vastness of space made the reality of my own mortality well up from the beast beneath. The intelligent mind likes to push it away, but the beast knows. I got tears in my eyes, maybe because the insignificance of my life and death in comparison to the stars was a bit too much for me, but mostly because everything was so beautiful. Mortality, death, distance - and the sky. It frightened me, but made me wish for more.

Beauty is cold. It is not a warm red Santa, or the glimmer in a child's eyes, or the warmth of a hug. It has nothing to do with love or generosity. Beauty is a cold mistress, a crystal constellation; beauty is smooth, hard ice and deep impenetrable darkness and distant, uncaring light. Those who confess to the god of beauty will live like skulking wolves in the borderlands of the glowing crystal ice, forever struggling against their fear of light to get a glimpse of their most beloved mistress.

My beast stared up at the stars, and for a moment it shared with me the absolute obedience and loyalty that only beasts can know. It let me feel the fear that only beasts can fear, at the border between light and darkness, and it showed me how the light burned against its skin and how it still longed and longed for it. Perhaps it was my totem sign, marking my belonging to the church of glass and razorblades. But then again, we all knew that already.

Lövet och Stjärnorna

2011-12-19T23:54:00.001+01:00

Jag är ett löv på stora havets vågor
och driver fram och åter som det vill.
Man säger mig att jag kan växa åror
om jag är modig och stark och lite till.

Man säger att där finns ett träd jag kom från,
och någonstans jag kanske blir ett träd.
Och likt ett legendariskt barn på halmstrån,
Tre Vise Männen kan visa mig min väg.

Man säger, du som kan se stjärnor
du borde ro dit stjärnskådarna bor.
Att driva runt är som med svin och pärlor;
varför va löv när man kan vara stor?

Men jag är blott ett löv på havets vida vågor,
jag ser stjärnor när de själva ror förbi.
Jag varit båt om jag var ment för åror
- men jag är Löv, och löv ska jag förbli.

Pony Aliens

2011-12-14T13:55:00.000+01:00

This:

Now that I have your attention, that is indeed a My Little Pony gone Alien.

There's an awesome artist doing pony versions of popular culture

figures, ranging from Batman to Marilyn Monroe, go check out

Sippo on DeviantArt!

Not a common cover

2011-12-13T23:53:00.001+01:00

Wish I could have done this one better, because it's awesome (and also cheating - genderflipping Witchblade is like shooting paralyzed ducks with a homing rocket launcher) but it's got way too much detail and stuff so I just preserved some general moody darkness.

I can't actually remember ever seeing a graphic novel with this kind of cover. Yaoi can possibly have scantily clad guys in compromising positions on the cover, but not quite like this actually, even if that's how they end up in the pages. And for a woman to get this kind of position? No boob, hip or neck exposure and with a serious, dark expression... also notice her lips being closed, while the dude (you might not see this because it's so small) has his scandalously slightly open.

Looking closely also made me notice other things. Like that her blade-tentacle-censor thingy is drawn as if it's hands grabbing her boobs. And I have no idea what the snake has to do with anything. The dude (whose name is Darkness) actually doesn't have *that* crazy shoulders to be a comic book dude. Lately I've realized that to make men look even impossibly more buff, they draw their heads smaller relative to their bodies which, when you start thinking about it, makes them look more silly than cool actually - just like I think Witchblade and all her boob-job friends look silly. I'm not saying all artists draw either gender that way however, there are plenty doing a fine job of applying cool comic style without drinking too deep from the more-is-better-fountain and falling off the tower of exaggeration in their drunken stupor.

Amnesia

2011-12-11T02:15:00.000+01:00

It's been around for a while, but I haven't talked about it so I will now. I'm gonna recommend Amnesia: The Dark Descent. And if you're not going to play it, or am too much of a wuss like me to play it, I'm going to recommend watching Day9 play it. It's not only very amusing, it's like a crash course in fantastic game design, and fear.

I found it very interesting, on top of getting to "play the game" through him, to see my own reactions together with his and see where they overlapped and stuff. It's obviously very different playing the game and watching someone else do it, but watching it is as much as my nerves can take (I am a huge scardycat in games) and I knew from the earlier games from the company that they are absolutely awesome at what they do - which is to slowly, gently, carefully wrap you in dread and leave you standing in front of a door going "no, fuck this, no, no no I'm not gonna open it, no".

It also struck me that you have to accept the conditions of fear to actually feel fear. It becomes very obvious in a game or movie, because you can go "this is just a game, those are just pixels, I'm not going to care" and kill the whole game, pretty much. It's harder in a game because you're going through the motions, which fools your brain into thinking that it's actually happening more than just watching a movie. And it can still freak you out once or twice, but only because nobody's completely immune to surprise. However, most of the game builds of dread, and dread only works if you play along with the conditions. I am scared as fuck in games because I can be scared as fuck in games, it's okay. In real life a little fear is a good way to protect yourself, but being scared out of your mind is mostly detrimental to the effort, so I try to cast off the conditions as best I can. Neither of those two are chosen; it's just how my brain has decided it should be, so I can't play scary games and I dismiss most real life fear within seconds - the more abstract the harder to dismiss. I'm trying to figure out exactly what the conditions are; it's clearly something about wanting a certain outcome, like survival, and being only partially or only under the illusion of control of the situation, yet not leaving it completely to chance, and that there must be a chance of success however small.

Anyway enough rambling. If you're going to ignore both recommendations, go look up a "best moments of day9 playing Amnesia" on youtube or something because it's really too good to miss.

Why gays make perfect parents (but lesbians don't)!

2011-12-02T07:20:00.000+01:00

Boys apparently need fathers to show them what it really means to be a man. I'm quite sure I had a mother, in exact terms I have two; although one is absent that clearly does not remove a father's label so it shouldn't hers. But can someone please explain to me what it really means to be a woman? I think I have a better idea of what it means to be a man, in fact, which I find an itsy bitsy bit amusing. Maybe our fathers are supposed to educate us on that matter too? Since they're all-knowing on the subject of manliness, they should reversely know what is womanliness, since it's all about polarization and stuff. No pressure, boys. It's not manly to get nervous, or have insecurities, or fail. Even women know to teach their sons that.

Special Flowers - A Superhero Gender Switch

2011-11-14T22:19:00.000+01:00

I happened upon some "girl" versions of male superheroes, and was stuck by how extremely over the top sexual they were. To put Batman or Wolverine in that type of porn-poses would certainly raise a few eyebrows, but apparently females do not suffer the same respect. So I looked around and found that, yes, fanart is indeed extremely exaggerated most of the time, but the actual comics are more sensible (it seems even most comic book artists figure you can't fight Magneto in stilettos). This being of course sensible comics, I can't mention Witchblade or Fathom in this context and keep a straight face. (Just google it if you don't know.)

Well, so I decided to make my own gender-switch fanart, but with two conditions:
1) keep the original costume as true as possible.
2) keep the original pose as true as possible.

So here's my little transexual darlings, with the originals down below (since blogger still refuses to put images next to each other... -.-) The coloring is very lazy because, well, I'm lazy.

I'm not happy about Wonder Man, and I apologize to the world for Batwoman but that's his pose I can't by rules change it. On the other hand I'm in love with Spider Man (I loved that suit already on Boobs McBoobpants, so on a pretty boy... mmm), and Superwoman is clearly over-awesoming the original. And who knew that when you turned Invisible Woman male she turned into her brother? A clever eye will see that the only difference between Spider-Man and his female counterpart is boobs, but it's because of his pose ok! There's no curves to work with and no muscles to shrink. And it's "superwoman" not supergirl and "batwoman" not batgirl -.- I'd like to see "Batboy" and "Iron Boy" try to be taken seriously. Invisible Woman is, in many ways, the first lady of Marvel (or superhero comics) in her whole-body suits and "woman" not "girl" name. Which they of course quickly remedied in the movies.

I have failed my conditions on one single point, I'm sure you saw; I kept the Hulk shirtless and even ventured for nipples, but I couldn't put the male Supergirl in a skirt. The point was actually not to make fun of it or whine about sexism, but to see that many of them still make sense (like the gender-switched Superman and Mr. Fantastic) and that women not dressed in skimpy outfits and posing like porn stars are also cool and awesome - as well as the reverse! Special flowers like Elektro also deserve some space - look at that Hand assassin, isn't he some sexy shit? The male Storm turned into a manga character... but this is one of my least favorite Storm costumes.

Don't hold your breaths, but there will probably be more, I have some epic pictures of said Witchblade I'd love to switcharoo and even more agressively manly Batman (I know, how is it possible?!?).

PS. If you're dissatisfied with the average boob size in this post, I would let you know that I suck at drawing girls, and suck even more at drawing boobs, so you should be glad you have boobs to look at at all. I'm rather sure I got progressively better the more of them I drew though, mostly because for every n:th girl, I had to redraw them inifinity - n times.

A Different Kind of Travel Diary

2011-11-12T15:48:00.000+01:00

Berlin.

Now nothing but a token in my head, like a notch on a bedpost. I didn't want to take general pictures, at first, because I wanted it all inside, I wanted it to be all mine. No one and nothing can steal memories. They can take them away or destroy them, but never steal them. Then I took pictures, on my "sightseeing day", because the girl I was with did it. Conformity, mimicking to make a bond, more than trying to preserve visual memories. When I came, I knew there were only two photos I wanted and was going to get at any cost. The big arc, and the pieces of the wall at Potsdamer, and I wanted those for one reason only: proof. I was there. I had been there, at those locations, which were exactly where JYJ had been two days earlier. But when I took those two, I thought, in this modern age of internet, photoshop and reality-like graphic technologies, what kind of proof is a photo? No. I still cherish those two photos, but in reality there is only one proof: memories. All mine.

I've been emotionally haywire, it's starting to settle now. Haywire in my own quiet way. And though the dust has settled, the pigments sunk to the bottom of the glass and the water is clearer, I can conjure it back. Just take my little finger and gently draw it over the water surface and see the colors swirl. All I need to think is "I walked away, I left of free will." Being on my own in a foreign environment, I realized, happiness doesn't come in many forms it comes it one. One. And it has not been here for a while. I walked away, I left of free will, I willingly walked back into my cauldron of despair.

Loving someone you don't know is like an addiction to the pain. A pain that makes you feel more alive than ever, and then, when it settles, makes you want to claw your eyes out, just to a moment later be chasing the high again. I must never let go of my vow to never drink alone. I must never smoke a cigarette, and I must be careful with medicine. Because it's so easy. It's so easy to want the addiction, and once you want it, you're not longer steering the boat, you're just riding the waves, the ups and the downs. It's wonderful, it's liberating, it's an illusion of freedom so strong you can no longer see any other freedom.

Berlin.

Without JYJ Berlin is just a city like any other city, filled with people like any other people, and buildings like any other buildings. Sticks and stones, flesh and bones. But it's not about JYJ, you know that, just like it's not really about alcohol or pills or cigarettes. It's about that through my own madness, for one day only, I gave Berlin wings and turned it into something beautiful. And like all true art, it lasted only for an all too short time.

That Which Wants

2011-10-28T23:44:00.000+02:00

I want such peculiar little things.
I want to lift my feet when it vacuums,
and do its laundry,
and not mind when it walks in on me dancing stupidly in my headphones.
I wouldn't mind walking with it,
but I don't want to bike with it,
or drive with it,
unless I can ride in the back.
I don't want to share my cat cuddle time
- that's between the cat and me -
but I would love to watch the cat sleeping
on it sleeping.

I want to walk beneath orange streetlights
like a model on a catwalk to the beat in my ears
in the cold night air,
wishing I could reflect the light like cat eyes -
then I would leer at myself in the darkness,
smirk and giggle darkly
that I am that
which lifts its feet when you vacuum,
which does your laundry
and watches you sleep with a cat on your chest.

Movie Review: X-Men First Class

2011-10-25T17:04:00.001+02:00

Saw X-Men First Class and, boy, do I like it better than those other three X-Men movies... actually, let's forget all about those and pretend they never existed. For all intents and purposes this will vastly improve your quality of life, I promise. It still has its flaws and stuff, but this movie actually manages to feel more like the comics, which is good. It wouldn't be impressive, only to expect, if it weren't for those three non-existing movies that you've forgotten that had directors that knew nothing about the comics. Possibly the first one is watchable, if it existed. So in the shadow of things that do not exist, this movie is impressive. On its own, it's merely a good action movie, that I enjoyed watching. Also because the actors don't suck and actually fit their respective characters, as opposed to... okay I'll stop talking about things you're trying to forget.

I was hesitant at first. Through the first 20-30 minutes I was basically holding my breath, watching the movie do a delicate balance act without safety net where I expected it to fall off and land on its face, and saw its feet trembling. What kept it standing was Kevin Bacon and the Angel of Hope. Then it stabilizes, pretty much as soon as Charles and Eric meet. The two of them balance out like the long stick rope walkers have. Suddenly you have cool X-Men with cool powers that they actually use in sensible and intuitive ways (such as Eric using his body and magnetic powers to press Charles against the floor of the plane when it goes down), as well as character depth (the big one of course being the clash of experience, upbringing, nature and idealism between Charles and Eric - something both actors manage to convey with feeling). And even humor, that doesn't feel milked out of a cow's ass. Woo. Since everything is new and raw to the characters as well it's a lot easier to take in and understand than Magneto and Professor X shouting "you never understood anything" at each other forty years into the future.

*SPOILER WARNING*
A part of my approval might lay with the choices of mutants to appear. Banshee, Havok, Angel (the wasp girl not the bird guy), Emma Frost... they're all cool people, who opposed to people like Phoenix and Wolverine carry a little less iconic baggage which makes them easier to portray and let people focus on who they are rather than who they think they should be. The one thing I dislike about the casting is that they do the good old "only the black guy dies" thing, which feels very old by now, and especially since the black guy in question is a fairly obscure character - taken in only to have a black guy? Being also a noble character with interesting powers, I believe Darwin deserved a better cinematic fate. Rather do what you want and forget about token people. As an Asian, I can just as well go "where's my token Asian person?". Eventually people like that would control your movie. Considering this is set in the '60s, it'd be neither offensive nor unrealistic to have an all-caucasian cast.
*SPOILER OVER :D*

Summary:
This movie could also be called:
Kevin Bacon and the Mildly Annoying Good Guys - but stealing the show is very in character for Sebastian Shaw; it's pretty much been his character weakness all along :D
How Magneto Got His Silly Helmet - and just to be sure he sillifies the reasonably unsilly helmet as soon as he gets it.
But what I really want to call this movie is:
Better.

168 Hours

2011-10-22T15:39:00.000+02:00

A week has 168 hours, and despite wasting most of them, I always feel they're not enough. And then I waste some more worrying about wasting so many. So I decided to waste one on something slightly more productive; make a list of how my ideal 168hour week would look, if I didn't have to worry about making enough money and all that.

The first thing that happened as I wrote down what I wanted, was that just a normal week, a real week, on my part, is short 20-something hours even at the best of circumstances. That's mostly because I play too much games and get stuck zoning out or cuddling my cat.

So on with the (roughly calculated) imaginary ideal week then:
Necessities:
Sleep 7-8h/d = 49-56h
Food&Related 2h/d = 14h
Hygiene 1.5h/d = 10.5h (includes an averaged out amount for things like laundry)
Total: 73.5-80.5h (and since I like dreaming, I'm going to count on the higher of those.)
Fun:
Writing&Related 3h/d 5d/w = 15h
Social 2h/d = 14h
Games&Roleplaying 3h/d = 21h
Other Entertainment 1h/d = 7h (tv, movies, music...)
Excersise = 2h
Travel&Transportation = 7h (too much?)
Misc 0.5h/d = 3.5h (dressing, zoning out, pet care...this is counted generously low)
Information 1h/d = 7h (mail, phone, news, magazines...)
Total: 73.5h

This makes 154 hours.

Which leaves 14 hours. If I had a little more confidence in my own discipline, I'd set 5h a day instead of 3 on writing, but I'm not sure I could keep that up. And if I could sleep less I would. One hour less per night makes 7 whole shiny hours to do other things with, but only if you're not so tired that you're zombieing through those hours. Travel is so high because I counted on things like visiting friends and family now and then. The leftover 14 hours (or 21 if I slept less) would be distributed on things like writing binges, significant other(s), special occasions like birthdays, appointments, more Misc and so on.

This is, above all, a week that is extremely unlikely to ever happen.

The reality-based week I sketched up ended up only barely making sense if I work/study half-time, which is something I've already realized. I'd have to make drastic changes to myself and my life to manage full-time without going insane and failing at everything like I am right now. Also in reality I've cut away the writing, and of course don't exercise, both of which probably does me more harm than help.

I think I'm going to make a time-sheet and see what I do with all my hours for like a month. If I can keep that up (and keep myself honest) maybe it will tell me some (probably very harsh) truths about reality.

Holding on to nothing.

2011-10-17T16:11:00.000+02:00

What's worth ending a friendship over?

My instinctive answer to that is: you can't. If someone was ever really your friend, the two of you will always be. Something might happen that make you not speak to each other for five years, or he or she might turn into someone you don't really like anymore, but if your friendship was at any point true, friendship will always remain there in the bottom. Ten years later when you need something, that friendship will be like a flat +5 bonus no matter what happened in between - even if your friend murdered your parents or somesuch.

But is that true? Or are friends, like any other kind of relationship or alliance, something that comes and goes like the tide as you and the people around you grow and change? Like, today a blue shirt, tomorrow a red? And you never really know anyone, so can you ever really have a true friendship?

And so if friendships can end, then what is worth ending them for? Love? Principle? Self-preservation? Faith? Or is it that you can end friendships - but there is nothing worth that price?

Maybe the question I ought to answer rather is this one: What makes a friendship worth keeping?

How to hijack a me.

2011-10-13T15:58:00.000+02:00

Just saw a cute variant on the "bringing a knife to a gunfight" saying; "bringing a cop to a superhero fight" :D

I had like twenty things to say when I opened my browser, but after my daily Twitter, Gmail and GReader round I've been overrun with new stalker pictures of Jaejoong, the news that my CD is now on the way, and some very sweet comic pages. Wiped everything else. What did I do before that? How did I get here? Who am I?

2011-10-06T21:57:00.000+02:00

Cute!
My personal favorite is the baseball guy. Look at that S-line! And nothing beats shorts and knee-high socks!

Movie Review: Ninja Assassin

2011-10-04T11:43:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the movie review of Ninja Assassin, also known as "A 90 Minute Study of Rain's Abs".

Let me make something clear first; this is not a deep story movie, and those who expected it to be are in for a well-deserved disappointment. However with decent acting and beautiful filming, it flies safely over the dark abyss of porn-quality. Some official or other starts digging into the truth behind a rumor of a secret ninja organization. So we leave the story, because it's standard, and neither contributes greatly or ruins anything.

We have established that it's an action movie. It's also, obviously, a martial arts ninja movie. Let me make another thing clear: this is not a realistic movie. Those who expect that past the first five minutes are also in for a well-deserved disappointment. Ninjas move in darkness like in that horror movie called, oh right, Darkness, and obey the ninja trope of "the more ninjas in one place, the worse they get".

However, taking the movie at face value, I enjoyed the action a lot! Almost all of it is blade-based, very little fists or firearms, and they've done the most of it, with dark moody settings where the glimmering blades and the exaggeratedly red blood are the only focal points. Think Sin City and replace American noir with ninja manga dismemberment á la Blade of the Immortal. I think the stylistic yet semi-realistic violence balances between beauty and grotesqueness in a fascinating way, and I love the blade-on-a-chain weapon and the visual effects it produces.

The Rain (aka Jung Ji-Hoon) whose abs we study is a Korean actor/singer and the reason I saw this movie in the first place. While I openly admit bias, I think he really is a good actor, a better actor than singer, and he's gotten a few awards and remarks from high places. Obviously his acting is hardly put to the test here, but I think what keeps the story together and on level is the performance from him and the big boss, Shô Kosugi.

In summary: I greatly enjoyed watching this movie, and I think all the bad reviews are a little unfair. It's not trying to get the Nobel prize in philosophy, neither is it trying to accurately depict ninjas. I like it a great lot better than many other brainless action movies that have gotten a much more favorable reception. While watching it in complete darkness certainly helped, the way they played with shadows was exciting, and the style of the action as well as the acting quality were very positive surprises considering what I'd heard about it. Together with the added bonus of "A 90 Minute Study of Rain's Abs" (and trust me, heterosexual men, they are a bonus for you as well), it is hovering in the top50-borderlands of Totally Enjoyable Friday Night Movie.

PS. Also don't whine at that all the ninjas speak English. It falls under the "take at face value", together with "how the hell did they get armored vehicles from Europe into the Japanese mountains".

Hope

2011-10-01T20:46:00.000+02:00

I will most likely not live as long as any of you, given the state of my body and my lifestyle. (Although I hope the nornir will cut me some slack for not smoking.) I'm telling you because should something ever happen, I want you to know that I don't think I'm missing out on sixty years of health and happiness. That is unlikely.

I'm telling you because a couple of days ago I got a life scare, like accidentally walking into the road in front of a car kind of scare but not exactly that. I asked myself, if I am actually going to die very soon, like a moment or a month from now, can we handle that information? Amazingly my mind answered; "Yes, that is okay. We have written down that story we wanted to write, even if it's not quite polished yet it's out there. So if we must go, we go in peace." (Although to be completely honest, it also said "it would be nice if we got to meet Jaejoong first and tell him eye to eye that he's awesome, maybe he would agree to it if we were dying?) Anyway, I don't mean I think I'm done, like one single story is all I ever wanted, but across these last couple of years I've actually been afraid of dying, only because what if I died before that story I was working on was done? Actually all the way to, what if I get a meteor in my head before I finish the next chapter? Now it's done, so it's fine. It's fine until I get started on another one that I feel as strongly about.

So, universe and everything. If I must go, please pick a time in between stories. And if you're feeling generous, relatively painless would also be nice, and preferably before every muscle in my body breaks from the strain of compensating for my leg being a bitch. I think that's all.

(I realize it makes me sound crazy to refer to us as we when I talk to myself, but look, I (that's one), and myself (that's two), and one plus one makes two. Two is a we. We are not crazy.)

Top50 Movies as of 2011

2011-09-26T12:37:00.001+02:00

Finally my top 50 movies, although it's actually a top 48 because I kept two spots open in wait of watching Inception and Black Swan but haven't gotten around to it, and I have a feeling I've forgotten something. I also made a top9 because they set themselves so dramatically apart from the others, at least in my heart, that they clearly rank above the others. The other 39 are divided in rough genres to make it a little more manageable to read, but aside from the top9 being above the others (and roughly ranked against each other, I realize), there's no internal ranking. I guess I'll write some silly comments like you guys did ;)

I also want to point out that I didn't read your lists until now, because I didn't want to get last-minute infections from you that would ruin it :P the point was to share new things not echo each others, so that's how it is anyway.

TOP 9
The Big Blue - I cannot empathize enough the emotions this movie gave me. Fucking dangerous.
Leon - The love-at-first-sight meeting with Luc Besson and Jean Reno.
Oldboy - The whole movie is a bloody wonder, but that moment near the end hit me so damned hard.
Wall-E - Nicking in together with the Lion King, an instant classic that hits all the right notes.
The Lion King - In a sense my first meeting with concepts like honor, but most of all because I love Simba and Scar equally, which taught me so much.
District 9 - The best political movies are those that never feel like one.
Batman: The Dark Knight - We were all dancing around after leaving the cinema, so you know why.
Adam's Apples - Absurd, human and beautiful, a hidden Danish treasure ^^
Boondock Saints - If the stylish main characters don't win you over, the violence will :D

ANIMATED
How to train your Dragon - I also want a black beautiful cat-dragon! Gimme!
Ratatouille - Not sure why tbh but I love it.
FF7 Advent Children - Yes, actually, not just as a fan, but the visuals, the music, the composition, is great.

DRAMA / ROMANCE
Love Actually - In all honesty, basically the only romance movie you'll ever need.
Le Fabuleaux destin de Amelie du Montmartre - Had to write the whole title, because it feels just like the movie, ridiculous and perfect.
About Adam - Would love some opinions on this. It amused me greatly though.
Hard Candy - Surprised me at the time, and also of course star performance from Ellen Page.
The Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare! Amazing performance by Al Pacino as the Jew.

The King and the Clown / The King's Man - Korean historic drama, difficult but intriguing.
Postman to Heaven / Heaven's Postman - Fantastic visuals and charming story lifted this from just fan love of the actor to love of the movie itself.
Whale Rider - A slow but fierce story of a Maori girl fighting to fulfill her destiny despite her gender and the times around her.
Definitely Maybe - Charmed me despite going in with low expectations.
Ballad of Jack and Rose - I would never see it again, but it slowly, light as a breath, crept under your skin while watching.

Efter Bryllupet / After the Wedding - Touching and twisting.
Les amants du Point Neuf - One of those great movies you see only once because it hurts too much to watch.
Forrest Gump - Overwhelmingly cute and one of those happy success stories that doesn't make you barf.
The Fall - Because the act of telling a story can also be a story, and change the one who tells it.
Crash - Worth every award it's gotten.

HORROR
Cloverfield - Came into it not knowing anything, which was good. Got the proper surprise effect ;)

ACTION / THRILLER / SOMETHING
Kingdom of Heaven - Something about that whole honor and a man's gotta do crap that always works for me. Also Jeremy Irons and a cool king in a mask.
Once upon a time in Mexico - Like Boondock, it's an elegant mix of violence, style and humor.
Memento - Something of a token spot; yes it's good, yes it's innovative, we all heard it the first time.
V for Vendetta - Managing to keep decently close to the comic, while not feeling terribly much like one.

Inglorious Bastards - Not because of Brad Pitt, whom I hate in this movie, but because the script is fuckin' awesome.
Iron Man - Somewhat the same motivation as V for Vendetta; and R.D.Junior is ofc Stark. IRL. Really.
Pitch Black - Fantastic stylish sci-fi horror/action with a treasured absence of silly space-ships.
No Country for Old Men - This movie has balls.

300 - Love the visuals, even if I think they're already a little dated so you can "see the bluescreen".
The Good The Bad The Weird - Korean action movie with a lot of cool action and even a little plot.
Lock, Stock and 2 smoking barrels - Better than Snatch, IMO, in that it has more shooting ;)
History of Violence - Aside from the Hollywood touches that dirties it at times, it's a cute murderous story.

COMEDY
Easy A - The clever teen movie. Ooooh, was that a flying pig?
The Hangover - Hangs on just at my level of stupid humor.
Zombieland - Is so amusing it's criminal. Was that the second Emma Stone comedy? Look at that.
I'm A Cyborg but it's OK - Oldboy-director goes "I'ma do some random insane romance-comedy now", and it's just as great!

SOMETHING ELSE
Ink - Like picked out of the head of me or someone I know, a whole fantastic world to share for an hour and a half.
Cube - Also never to see again, it really messed with my head.
Pan's Labyrinth - Scary in so many ways.
Hero - See it, if for nothing else than just for the colors.

HONORARY MENTIONS
Snatch - Got kicked off this list by Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels.
11.14 - Sort of the forgotten Crash, it's perhaps not quite as good, but definitely worth watching.
Stardust - I do prefer it to Princess Bride, because that one totally falls off the wagon halfway through.
Batman Begins - Kicked, ofc, by The Dark Knight.
Pirets of the Carribbean:At world's end - If any of them were to make it, it would be this.
Funny Girl - I don't really do old movies, so this is the exception.
Happy Feet - We all know what it's like to have a rythm in our bodies that we can't let out, don't we?
Memoirs of a Geisha - My mind and I had a conversation. It went; "put it on", "nah", "why not?", "dunno".
Lucky Number Sl3vin - The further I get on this commenting, the more I start doubting what should on the list and not. Damnit.
Se7en - This is not on for the same reason as I felt obligated to put Memento on; it's good, everyone knows it, old news, boring.
The Tourist - Was a pleasant surprise all things considered, I think. Pleasant and surprising enough to get mentioned.
Avatar - Well, the graphics are fantastic. The story is a word-by-word ripoff from Pocahontas or every other Romeo and Juliet. Bah.
Silent Hill - The only other horror movie that's been to my liking. Pyramid-head! Run! Waaaah!

Okay before I run away, I want to make some little overview notes. It's obvious from the list, I think, that I favor strange and violent movies, preferably visually impressive, and that I've watched a lot of Korean and Danish movies these last few years. Also I have flashes of terrible taste. Definitely Maybe? Well, I stand by my list. There's not a single Swedish movie, interestingly. I was considering the Millenium-series, but in comparison with the books they just pale out into a mushy gray mass that I can't even review fairly, despite Noomi Rapace rockin' her boots off.

The movies that are on all three lists are these (correct me if I'm wrong):
The Lion King
Wall-E
The Dark Knight
which I would say is fair enough. If anyone else would like to contribute a list of their own, fret not, there is still time! ^^

Now then. AAAAAHHHHH!

The end of a story

2011-09-22T15:16:00.000+02:00

So my computer died and stuff so that top movie list will come around later. Right now what I want to tell you is that I finished that awesome thing I was writing. Finishing a story is always equal parts excitement and great pain, because yay it's finished, but boo it's finished :P Same as when a good movie or game finishes but bigger.

Anyway I'm not posting it here for all the world to see because it needs proofreading and opinions and revisions and all that cool stuff, and also because it's more important to me than the other stuff up on this site. So I know you're all a busy lot with your own lives to keep together, but if anyone would feel like taking the important task to polish it, I'd be very happy. It's 80 pages, in English, and I have both just mechanical proofreading of spelling and grammar in mind as well as opinions on the content and the way I present it. Harsh opinions if need be, because I really, really want this one to be good and I will take any kinds of abusive reviews if it can help me get there.

It also needs a title. So if you want to read it just to help me put a title on it, then that would also be an option.

Crazy yelling Asian girls.

2011-09-19T23:04:00.000+02:00

Mucking about on the computer on bed, with the window open so Loki can come and go as he wants. The way the window opens, you can't see my bed from outside, and I can't see out. So I hear the sound of Loki jumping into the windowsill, and the silhouette of his head looking inside. Odd, Loki usually jumps straight in.
"Oh hai," I say, sticking my head forward prepared to cuddle.
The cat turns and looks right at me, very calmly, and the light reflects in its eyes that way it does in cat eyes so they shine. And I realize, it's not Loki - in fact it's a cat identical to my grandmother's cat that died a few months back. With those demon eyes staring at me from about two decimeters away my brain goes "GHOST! INTRUDER! DANGER!", and I get a rush similar to if a stranger would stick their head into my room with a pocket knife.
"OUT!" I yell like a crazy woman at the poor cat, that looks at me with normal eyes now since it's turned away from the light. I fly out of bed, but neither the yelling nor the action fazes it. If it had eyebrows, one would slowly go up and the other down.
By now I've realized it's not a ghost, and it's not there to bite my face off because I took pictures of it a day before it died. Just a new cat I haven't seen around, that's oddly unafraid of crazy yelling Asian girls in nightgowns. So I stand in the middle of the room, and the cat sits on my windowsill, and we probably feel equally stupid.
It shouldn't sit there anyway, inside is Loki's territory that I should protect. So I shoo it a little. It looks gravely offended and turns around and leaves.

Watch it. Just shut up and do it.

2011-09-07T23:47:00.002+02:00

King of Games

2011-09-07T09:27:00.000+02:00

The movie list will be around soon. I just had to make a small observation of life with Loki:

Cat + strong mint-smelling cooling paste = D: -> XP -> T.T
I put some on my foot (since I kicked a table, how intelligent and graceful) and now he's walking in big circles around me. Also all the rain makes him really cuddly. Surprisingly, he's not too keen on going outside in the wet, and seems to think that sleeping on top of me at all times increases the chances of the rain stopping.

I'm playing Yu-Gi-Oh again! One of the older NDS versions. I have a feeling I will play it in periods forever :P It's so much fun! Card games are logic and crazy all in one neat organized package of total control over the lack of control xD. Probabilities, you see. Those gnarly bastards. What I like about it, is that there's cards for virtually anything, even ridiculously stupid things, so that you can build giant complex insane strategies that have a probability of one in a million to actually ever come into play, but it doesn't matter because you had so much fun coming up with it! And also you can just throw together a deck based on some basic principle, like, healing yourself, or tossing out the cards in your opponent's hand, and it usually works if you just want to play right now. Pokemon is fun but too simple to do those crazy fun things, and Magic: The Gathering never really hit the spot. My spot, I mean. Tapping things is for tap dancers anyway. Posh and poncy people*.

*opinions expressed in this post is in no way representative of the real life opinions towards tap dancers, by anyone, and particularly not me.

Setting the Stage

2011-09-04T21:08:00.000+02:00

I've been working on a top50 movies imo list. It's impossible. It's like some kind of quantum-time-space-mechanics behind liking things, because I look at movie A and movie B and rate movie A higher, then look at movie C and think it's better than A but worse than B.

To make it at all possible I decided that it's only a top50 in the sense that those on the list are better than those not on the list. I'm not saying these are the movies with the best story ever, or the best screenplay, or the best music score, but rather those that stuck with me, no matter if it was because it was thought-provoking or immensely entertaining, or whatever.

So in essence, one could say I'm making a list of the 50 movies I am most likely to recommend to any given person on any given day.

Now, feel free to make your own lists! Top 10 or top 100, or whatever. Like always I'm making this list because I'd really like to have your lists :D Setting the example and hoping for everyone to follow! :P I need a little while longer though, I have like 15 movies competing for the last 5 spots on my list, and it's bloody difficult! It should come around sometime next week.

2011-08-28T16:35:00.002+02:00

Oh and I gotta recommend Minor Acts of Heroism, an awesome, charming, and very pretty little webcomic. The one and only backside is that the updates are far apart.

Words as my Wolverine

2011-08-28T13:37:00.001+02:00

I'm somewhere on page 64 in a story that I know will be my best yet. It's been under construction for more or less two years, on and off, and I've gone to great pains making sure every word is right, rewriting large chunks, digging deep into my own emotions and letting it take its time. There's a part I've rewritten a whole of five times, and it's still not just that right as it needs to be. Because it's important I get it right; it's built around emotions so deep and basic to me, that writing the story has been a way to cope with something bigger than I ever thought I could handle. And it's starring a character that's been in my head for an even longer time, and that I greatly love.

I'm at approximately 3/4, at the build up to the moment when they jump off the trampoline and really make the dive to the big finale, and I'm letting the conversation between two characters flow freely because if the story is right, they will naturally come to all the points I need them to. And then one of them says a line, that completely throws me off. Just like the veil that is supposed to come off the main character's eyes around now, I realize I've walked on air. It takes all momentum out of me, I've been writing nonstop for four hours and now my fingers just freeze.

I try to create some kind of comeback, a sensible answer. But what's happened, is that I've come forward in my attempts at processing the things that lay as ground for this story. The writing process has taken me to a new step in my own emotional state. Unfortunately, that means my head now decides that this story is crap. I've come around and gotten a grip on it and started to understand it, so suddenly I can't understand why I needed to write this story. I've passed the point of no return; knowledge.

It's an homage, in a way, to someone I loved, though. And a form of celebration of love itself, although that might seem twisted. So I will finish it. And I will hope that it isn't crap, that it is a story that need to be read as much as it needed to be written. I will hope I can still do it justice. While before I was a demon writing of inner demons, I'm now, well, not so much. And there is much of the demon in this story.

They say it's the journey, not the goal.

2011-08-21T01:15:00.001+02:00

The learning process is a painful one. It's a long stretch of pure repetition, where you make mistakes, correct them, adjust and memorize. You slowly crawl your way from abysmal to passable. When you hit that passable, you've struggled so much that you think, now, now it'll work. Then you have a row of opportunities ahead, most of which will turn out not in your favor, not exactly because of you, but because the right moment simply won't arrive. If you're lucky you won't have to wait too long for that right moment, but no matter how long, you will be frustrated, eager to accomplish something. The deceptive initial success will fill you with confidence and hope. And this is the moment, when you're ready for your time in the limelight and your share of the rewards, that life will tear the carpet from under your feet. You'll make A Mistake. The other "mistakes" you made were just little forgettable sidesteps on a wide road, this is where you set your foot down and realize you've been walking on a rope and you just missed it. Most likely you won't just fall yourself, but everyone else around you. It's when you've stood up from that fall, seen to your comrades, patched up the bruises and hopefully nobody was seriously hurt or maybe they were, that you've actually really learned something. And it will only be worth it if you get up and do it all again, because this is the point where you realize, where you fully understand, that all that work has taught you the letter A. Now for the rest of the letters of the alphabet.

What you also realize, most likely, is that all you will ever get out of all this is the slight chance that at some point, just when the time is right and the moon is red and pigs fly, you might get to recite the alphabet just once, if you manage to walk that mile on the rope, and it probably won't be perfect or pretty or at all as you dreamed of all those days in initial training. It's here you'll know if you really like what you're doing; if you really want to learn, because if you do, it will be worth it even so.

A or B

2011-08-19T20:20:00.001+02:00

One or the other is true:

A) I am utterly incapable of motivating myself to do anything I don't want to do, and I cannot anticipate or control what I want to do.

B) I subconsciously sabotage everything I do whether I want it or not, for some sublime psychological reason yet undiscovered.

I'm not sure how to find out, since I never know if I actually want something. Hm.

A Farewell to S

2011-08-14T20:23:00.000+02:00

I just found out another good, brave man has left the battle. It's frightening that people can just suddenly disappear like that, somehow I hold in calculation that the people closest to me might die at any moment from age or disease or accident, but I forget that everyone around us are also mortal. In any case, yesterday was his time. I really liked him, the little I saw of him - in fact I had one of those little-girl-crushes on him and used to spy on him whenever he visited dad - and it feels unfair that those I've liked the most are the ones fading away first. My heart to his family.

Return to the Lifestream, strong one. Our essences might meet again there.

Note to self:

2011-08-13T20:49:00.000+02:00

Just came home from the IKAA Gathering, overall two things will stay in my memory of this day, aside from the obvious "pretty house", "oh gosh so many koreans" and stuff.

a Swedish Korean adoptee who have lived in Korea five years, yet never really thought about any of the stuff talked about today - racism, identity, nationality... It made me wonder many things about her and myself, but most of all it felt like hope: here is someone just like me who is at peace.

and an Italian Korean adoptee who said "Maybe this is our prize - our gift in return for the traumas and things we've gone through: a unique perspective that nobody else can have." It made me realize that I don't feel as if this whole Korean thing, or this whole adopted thing, was forced on me and I don't wish it undone. It's more like I'm trying to understand this unique perspective I was given, because it's my duty and privilege as the receiver of such a gift.

the choice of What If

2011-08-12T10:43:00.001+02:00

Tomorrow I am off to meet other Korean adoptees, mostly Swedes but also from other parts of the world, and to listen to a bunch of them talking about, well... us. I asked myself "why", just before, and I'm not sure. I think, because I want to determine just how big a part of me this really is.

But as to "how big parts of us things are" it's a little arbitrary, wouldn't you say? Would I be this hopeless unmotivated game geek with author dreams if there had been nothing wrong with my leg? Or would I be a world famous dancer and model with posters in half the male population's bedrooms? Could anyone say that the two are the same person? And would my leg problem be the "defining" in my life, if we knew for a fact that the other path would have happen had it not been? Since there's so many other "defining" moments. Had I not gone to school away from home at 16 I might not have failed and lost confidence, but I might also have withered into a voiceless mouse in a corner without the support and inspiration of the people I met there. Or, everything might have gone exactly the same. So who can say which choices actually made a difference in our lives, and which don't. Maybe the big choices don't really matter, and some random small ones end up dictating our lives.

Well, the choice to go to this seminar will probably not lead to any life-defining changes. Unless I meet the most violently handsome Korean guy with whom I elope and raise sixteen babies, or a giant robot decide to invade Stockholm just tomorrow and beam me up into space. While those two would certainly be fun, it's the tiny little realistic "what-if"s that really scare/excite me. Like, what if I meet someone who is actually a younger sibling of mine, adopted away as I was, and we would possibly never know.

You know, thinking about that, any younger adopted Korean could be a sibling. Okay, so if that violently handsome Korean guy is not older than me, then I'll say goodbye and thanks for the fish. Do not want to go near that possibility, especially with a prospect of sixteen babies.

Pew Pew

2011-08-05T20:22:00.002+02:00

I drew something at last! The name is not a thanks for inspiration ;) it's a total coincidence!

Candy Cane Sheep!

2011-07-26T23:08:00.000+02:00

Saw half a dozen newly sheared sheep on the way back to town. They were rubbing their sides against a red-painted barn, maybe it itches when the new fur grows, and the color rubbed off on them. They looked like candy canes!

Didn't really want to stop to take a picture, wanted to get Loki home as fast as possible, he's cooperative but rather stressed about riding the car. Or maybe it's just the fact that he's locked in a small box for four and a half hours after twelve hours without food and eight without water.

Sounds and letters

2011-07-22T16:38:00.000+02:00

I wanted to ask something. I found a band logo today for a korean band that pronounced their name as "beast" but the logo was "B2ST". I spent a ridiculous amount of time staring at it trying to make sense of it, turning it this way and that, distorting "two", but my puzzlement only grew. Until my dear friend pointed out that the 2 could be in the band's native language. I'd already thought about that but dismissed it because two in korean is "set" and in their chinese loan numbers "ii".
When she said it though, I realized that "ii" and "ea" in beast probably is the same sound. I say probably, because in my head, it's not. If you recorded me saying the two sounds, I realize that I'm very unlikely to hear any difference myself, but would you ask me when I'm saying it, I'd swear that I'm saying two different things. In my head, when I say or hear "beast" there is clearly both an "e" and an "a" in there. I feel them... it's not quite seeing and not quite hearing.
This probably helps me with spelling, because I would also claim that I can "hear" how a word is spelled (probably it's just obscure grammatical rules that I've somehow absorbed subconsciously, and I'll claim the same even if I spelled it wrong the first time and then learned the right). But it does confuse me when it comes to word-plays like the band name.

So the question is, do you too?

Learning a new language

2011-07-20T08:24:00.000+02:00

i -- 1. (particle after subject or object word) 2. this 3. (particle after verb or adjective to make adverb) 4. tooth, teeth 5. two, 2 (hanja) 6. lice 7. person (particle after younger/same age person's name) 8. with 9. ear 10. different

do -- 1. (particle after noun to add meaning of 'as well', 'too') 2. district, province 3. principle, doctrine 4. drawing, picture 5. degree (angle or temperature) 6. (particle after word to add meaning of 'but, however') 7. group of people 8. island

si -- 1. hour, time, o'clock 2. (particle in verb to add politeness) 3. (particle in verb to make polite request) 4. city, town 5. (particle in noun to add meaning of 'in-law') 6. poem 7. to see (hanja)

:<

Melodies

2011-07-19T08:59:00.001+02:00

Saw a black cat trotting along the road yesterday, carrying a... uh, [sork] so big that the tail was dragging on the ground, it was at least twice the size of the cat's head. Show off.

Listening to Korean radio through shoutcast.com. Partly because normal radio is boring, partly because I like music where I don't understand the words because then I don't get ticked off at stupid lyrics, and partly because listening to it passively teaches me the sounds and melodies of the language. It's also cool to have a normal music radio channel that plays *only* songs in the native language. How many Swedish-exclusive music channels are there? (Not that I'd listen to them.) I've listened to French radio before, but a lot of the music is the same as ours and in English. While it's cool to have like a "universal" language between European countries, I guess that native languages get sidelined. I'm usually not so opposed to that, but it's a tragedy when it comes to music, really. Every language is like it's own instrument. Ever listen to duets by people from Sweden/Norway/Denmark? Chorusing together but in their own language, it sounds awesome.

So if every language is it's own instrument, what instrument would that be? Like, Norwegian would be the ukulele to the Swedish guitar, Italian would be drums and Russian, I think, like one of those stringed square things that lie down and you can play chords on... not the Asian ones, darn it what are they called...

<p>&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;If </p>

Cuddling with cat > [insert activity here]

2011-07-18T11:40:00.008+02:00

Anyone can understand programming, just look at this:

public class Cat extends Pet {

public void getAttention(mistress) {

if(attention==false){
try{
sitOnKeyboard();
if(attention==true)
break;
pokeObject(breakable);
if(attention==true)
break;
chewOnCables();
if(attention==true)
break;
} catch (OverProvocationException op) {
runAwayHide();
}
}

}

public void main(String[] args) {
Cat.getAttention(me);
if(attention==true) {
purr();
}
}

}

beta test

2011-07-14T11:31:00.001+02:00

EDIT: Graphical UI now implemented, it was many easier than I thought. And the "bunny" type will work now, and this time I mean it :P The window looks kinda funny... because well, it was easy enough to make it work, but to make it look like I wanted... whole other story./EDIT

I've been playing around with java and have managed to generate something that might work, so now I'd like to see if it really is something to bounce about like a bunny over.

You'll find it here.

I'd love it if some people would like to try the program so I can get some beta test results :) For windows it should be just double-clicking the Evolution.jar file. For Linux, either double click it, but if that just opens a folder you open terminal and go to the file's locaton and write "java -jar Evolution.jar". For mac I have no idea :p

Oh and you need JRE but you should already or I'll be a fat surprisedcat. Otherwise just get it, you'll need it for other things.

Hello my name is...

2011-07-10T16:42:00.003+02:00

I've been sitting here writing for like 40 min. I write something, and then censor it, and write something else, and censor it. It's a bunch of whining, really. Maybe it's just therapeutic to write it down. It's funny how little of what I think that I actually tell people. I mean, it's probably the same for everyone. I guess. How would I know? :p Maybe I should say, it's lucky how little of what I think that I actually tell people.

I censor everything that comes out. Everything, to varying degrees but still. I figure that also is the same for everyone, but I don't know that either. Some people really seem to say what they think, but I guess if you think fairly ok things then that's ok. Huh. That right there is another of my quirks. When I say things about people I envy or admire (it's the same thing though right?) it always comes out sounding like an insult, so I usually censor that. It's not an insult. Let me try again. If you think good things, then it's ok. Nuh, still kinda sounds like an insult. Like a pat on the head :<

The essence of my whiny mood lies in a few things: being stuck here with my family for too long (I need my independence dammit!), not having my computer (this made me realize how dependent I've gotten on it for social stuff), and my leg and back being crappily crappy and it bringing around some realizations. Like that if I have kids, I won't be able to run around and play with them, or catch them if they wander into the middle of the road. But I think what really brought this bout of depression down was that some people went to an amusement park, and I thought, well crap I would have wanted to come, and that funny guy Voice of Reason said, "No, you don't, because you can't walk for shit and after an hour you'd be sitting on a park bench with a hurting back and hurting ankle and a fake smile as they walked away from you to do something fun, or much worse were stuck sitting there with you". And then it turned into a merry little garden party when old buddy Who Do You Think You Are popped out to cheer me up saying, "Oh what, are you crying now? Don't be such a wimp, there's so many people so much worse off than you."

Oh good. This time I could write it with a bit of humor instead of deep black emo-ness. Therapy session over.

Conscience

2011-07-05T18:54:00.001+02:00

Buying The Witcher 2 from www.gog.com gives pretty much the full amount paid directly to the creators of the game, as far as I've understood. It's 49.99€ for the digital download, where some shit like maps and making-of videos come included. Bear with me, this isn't a commercial, nor a review. It's gotten pretty decent reviews, packs quite a long playtime in a well thought-out world, and comes from the company that made the first The Witcher. They were a fairly unknown Polish group, who produced one of the best RPG's of its time. GoG also recognizes that because of laws and taxes and all that funky stuff, the European digital download costs 16$ more than the US, so they give you games from their store to the same value. The Witcher team also makes a point of trusting their players, choosing to believe that if their product is good it will stand for itself: The Witcher 2, like the first, comes without any DRM. No, this is not a request for them to have my babies.

So what is it? It's a question: If I hypothetically said that I know a site that is 100% reliable and legal but possibly much less ethical (in how they acquire what they sell, but I don't know, I don't know if anyone knows), that sells The Witcher 2 for a little more than 16€, but where it's very doubtful if the developers get very much, if anything at all... how is that different from torrenting it for free? Because it feels different. If this was any other game I would probably buy it cheap, but why? Have they successfully guilt-tripped me into buying their game from being too nice? I'm extremely curious how the game sales are. Is the DRM-free way the way to go to win the war against pirating, not because you defeat the hackers, but because you win the players hearts and loyalty? Or is it the eyes full of hope of a catholic sheep on its way into the wolf's den?

Does a product that is good ever stand on its own?

A regular day's concerns

2011-07-02T13:18:00.000+02:00

"If you stick to the roads, you´ll meet less mosquitos, just like in World of Warcraft."

I was playing The World Ends With You today, where there´s a bonus boss that´s insanely difficult because of one single thing; he stomps the ground all the time which interrupts casting healing and shields, which I´ve been relying on a lot. I was staring at my Nintendo DS wondering how on Earth I would be able to kill it, and thought, "but hey, Chingling, my pokémon, is immune to ground moves".

>.>

In other news, Loki now knows two tricks: high 5, and uh, licking my hand, well it´s a trick because he does it on cue. I´m sorry, three tricks, the third being leaving live mice all around the apartment. Yesterday I found one right inside the door and anther severely bleeding beneath my suitcase. I´m a little worried that he´s put a dead one behind the stove because something smells -.- His free-roaming privileges have been revoked.

air

2011-06-25T16:42:00.002+02:00

I can totally see why people like strangulation sex. Air is pretty fucking great to have.

It's Cut Your Own Hair Day!

2011-06-16T18:59:00.000+02:00

It doesn't take guts, just the determination to get past the first steps.

There's the "Stop staring at the mirror and pick up the scissors" phase. Now that I've done it a couple of time I spend a very short moment there, compared to the agonizing first time.

Then comes the "Maybe I should've planned this before I started" phase. Unless you're an organized, sensible person, and not like me who, in the case of haircutting, is all enthusiasm and no thought.

Closely after this comes the "Oh but this works, this is kinda fun and easy" phase. This is the point you want to get to. If you chicken out before this, then you didn't give it a proper chance. This is also where your grand plans completely take over your head and you start cutting like Edward Scissorhands, and your sensible self clasps its hands and pray to preferred divinity that the result will be something you want.

The funny thing is that after this point, you kinda stop looking at yourself and what you're doing until you're done. When you think you're done, you reach the "Hey this is alright... oh my god what have I done I'm ugly forever"-phase. Depending on how dramatic your haircut is, this phase's graveness varies, and don't worry it's just a reaction to the change. I cut seldom but a lot, so I tend to have a big inner psychotic break over what I think is the disaster of a lifetime, before I pull myself together into the "I can fix this" phase.

In this phase you poke things, cut maybe a hair here or there, and take the time you spend on silly pointless minor adjustments to get used to your new look. It works as a transition into the best phase of all, the "Oh hey, I'm fucking hawt... dude I'm so awesome"-phase. For some reason, between the panic phase and this phase, although you haven't really changed anything, suddenly it's your vision come to life that's staring at you from the mirror. Now enjoy this phase. For a little, precious while you're the catwalk queen, the rock star, the southern prince or oriental princess.

Then you realize that it's just hair, and you look just like usual, with shorter hair. Congratulations. You're done.

If anyone's a bit more serious, here's a couple of tips that work for me:

Think of it like a sculpture. The shapes and lines you want. And remember there's some limitations like where your hair likes to part of itself, respect those. Hair has a tendency to fall in the same places, so if you want a v shape, just cut a v shape.
If you want something done in the back that requires any form of precision, don't do it. Ask a brave friend or pay up.
Don't cut your hair while it's wet. I don't know if cutting it wet might be better for the hair or something, but I leave the whole "let's guess what happens when it dries" up to professionals. I actually like to fix the hair up before I cut it, because then I see exactly how it'll be.
Remember that it's easier to cut a little at a time, than try to paste it back on! :) Let it take some time.
Don't be a nitpick. Hair consists of a myriad of straws, it's not a piece of wood you can carve. It'll move, it'll grow. You can definitively make it look good, and shape it as you want, but chill. If you wanted perfectionism you should've gone to hairdresser school. Or opened that fat wallet.
Give it a week. For some reason, it takes a few days for the hair to settle (or maybe it's your head that needs to settle) and you'll fine some straws here and there that you missed, and even if you were initially disappointed you might look at it a different way.

Alright buds, cya out there! How did my hair turn out? Well... it's shorter than it's ever been ;) and I'm SO HOT! AND SO AWESOME! Okay so maybe I haven't finished the last phase yet...

Bouncing

2011-06-16T03:55:00.001+02:00

I wake up to the sound of Loki bouncing about the carpet. I recognize that pattern of sound very well. It's the sound of a cat bouncing around captured prey, most likely still alive. So I know the truth long before I actually see it. There is a live mouse on my carpet. For the time being it's corralled in one spot by a happy, bouncing cat.

My first plan is to stick it in the bathroom, cat, mouse and all and just go back to sleep. Ignorance is bliss. But the more awake I get, the more I realize it's not a terrific plan. So after chasing cat and mouse around the apartment for a good while I gather the courage to capture it (mice can bite and give diseases, alright!). With a plastic bag between my hand and a tiny little warm, breathing mouse, I realize that I, I indeed, I have a live mouse in my hand, how incredibly cool I am to pick it up. (No I don't know why, it's four in the morning damn it.) So I proudly toss it out, and Loki runs after, picks it up, and jumps back in the window.

-.-'

Another circle chase, I close the window, and he jumps right into the glass. Well sorry, cat. We have a communication issue. I'd rather not have a mouse gnawing on my computer cables. And mom would probably not want mouse blood on the carpet. If you ate it in the bathroom I could clean it up easy, but I can't tell you that, can I.

I did learn something about myself. When the damned thing ran right over my feet, I was too terrified by the absolutely disgusting idea of stepping on it to actually freak out and jump away.

At least my first instinct wasn't to take a picture. That's the sign of blog-/facebook brain damage.

Who do you think you are?

2011-06-13T19:15:00.000+02:00

I realized something while I wrote that comment on the post below.

"Who do you think you are?" that voice in my head said. "Do you really think you can come to a better answer, that you can come closer to god, than a hundred generations of millions of Christians or Muslims or whatever. Scholars and priests, kings and peasants. Who do you think you are to believe yourself above them?"

I don't know. I've never thought about it that way, and now that I did, it feels a little embarrassing. Who do I think I am? Isn't it true, aren't I trying to be better than every thinking human before me and around me? It makes my humble Swedish upbringing cringe where it's stored in the basic structures of my brain, but the truth, while difficult to admit, is simple. Yes. I do think I can. My world revolves around me. I am my own god, and my world will live and die with me. I do believe to the fullest of my heart that I have as much ability and right to claim I know my god, to claim my own path to faith, as any man or woman who as ever walked on Earth and any that will ever live.

And in the same way, I also believe it is the right and duty of every human to claim their own path to faith, to belief and religion. Which is why, I realize, organized religion infuriates me. And in the same way, the mindlessness with which people treat other's belief infuriates me to the same degree. Of course I don't want to sing psalms in church, that would be lying. Lying at another's place of worship. If there was a corresponding way to desecrate my own faith, I would want to kill the one who did. Someone said "religion lies in the hearts of men", if I don't remember incorrectly. And that is exactly it. Tradition and ceremony might serve other purposes, but faith, actual faith, has it's own shelf. And it is holy, too holy for organizations and institutions.

prayer

2011-06-04T15:47:00.001+02:00

At the end of a long drive, the clouds were rather peculiar. Straight ahead, far far away it looked like some odd thing in the air. My mind couldn't decide what it was - a demon, an alien spaceship - but my first thought was "finally!". To my inner eye I saw war and magic, death and heroism. Then I realized it was an odd cloud, radically different than the surrounding ones but a cloud nonetheless. And I wondered, finally what? Finally war? Finally death? But it seems my naive heart would rather suffer those things to get something more.

Also, another baptism for me, and when I was sitting there I was for a moment tempted into the lull of organized religion. Then almost like a voice saying to me: it's your immortal soul you gamble with, you think you'd be shown mercy for chosing what everyone else believe because you're afraid to be wrong?

Ladies in capes

2011-06-01T21:32:00.001+02:00

Going through my stash and found a couple of pictures I saved for being epic and awesome, and that should be shared. However by now I don't remember where they originally came from, so... don't sue me please, kthxbai.

First: one of you have probably given me this to begin with. It's an excellent start.

Then a couple of awesome avatars from forums... again, sorry, I can't credit because I don't know! Tell me if you know, and I will. Just don't kill my cat.

(By the way, Blogger doesn't handle pictures very well. EDIT: previewing this tells me that Blogger absolutely fucking sucks at handling pictures. I tried to get them all in one row and this is the best I could do, after a lot of clicking and dragging and bashing the keyboard in frustration.)

This, however, is the best avatar I've ever seen.

And finally, the image that changed my view of those annoying bathroom signs that assume all women wear skirts:

Ta mates!

Bloody Bird

2011-05-30T17:43:00.000+02:00

The silliest things can trigger a big philosophical discussion inside confused heads like mine. I found a newborn baby bird on my balcony today, it must have fallen out of a nest somewhere and was lying there just breathing. Ugly as fuck, but the whole "it's a baby" instinct was triggered nonetheless and my first thought was to protect it from the cat and dog, and find it something to eat. Well, then I realized I can't bloody well raise a baby bird. Neither do I want to. So I was caught in no-man's-land between instincts, the other instinct being "get this crap off my property". Also, birds abandon their babies if they fall out of the nest, as far as I know. Then my roomie reminded me of something important, when I texted her the issue. It's a bird. A bloody 4AM tweeter. Beneath that innocent ugly exterior beats the evil little heart of a flappy crapper. I have at several occasions expressed that their only good trait is eating insects. There is only one type of bird I don't actively dislike, and that's because my shallowness happens to override my bird-dislike - I find it pretty:

The philosophical discussion was: compassion. Is it a trait of a superior race to express compassion towards even a race we generally dislike? Are we compassionate towards other races because we can afford to be? If humanity as a race had to fight for survival, then would we show a great deal less compassion for species that could be a threat to us? Compassion is somehow something we take very much for granted. Is it a part of being human? Or a part of being Universally Good? Can we really expect that if we'd encounter extraterrestial beings, that they'd have the same traits as we do? That they'd give a damned? Well... it's when I hit aliens that I decided to leave the discussion.

The turnout was that I, after much battling with myself, reached the conclusion that I can't express disapproval of birds and then not kill a baby bird for the single reason that it's a baby. That'd make me a hypocrite. Was it an adult bird I wouldn't think twice. Also I believe my cat is my partner and not my captive and slave and want him to live according to his feline instincts as far as possible - we should both compromise to coexist. So. I opened the door for the cat, with a sense of satisfaction with my conclusions.

Loki promptly picked up the bird and ran in and put it under my chair. No! That's one compromise I will not make! Out!

Philosophical corner 942

2011-05-25T19:01:00.000+02:00

So here's what I figure happens when you die: see, that moment when you're born, I imagine inside the baby's head is going on something of a panic attack screaming "put me back in right this instant you crazy bastards!", and then we get used to being outside. Well, dying must be like being put back in. Coming home. I believe (I have no scientific proof, any logic reasoning, and need neither) that when people die their "life energy", what some would call "soul" although energy is more appropriate I think, returns to the world. So it must be like a sigh of relief, I imagine. Being dissolved from this limiting form and return to the bigger One Whole (the Mothership!). I imagine it would be like a dolphin swimming with its family in free waters rich of fish, gliding through the universe, or like being a stream in the ocean free of thought or feeling.

So, essentially, to me, death will be good. I'm telling you because this belief might influence what I'll say next: I'm really fucking curious of what death is. I really look forward to dying because I'll find out. Whatever it is, I won't be disappointed, I just really really really want to know. So immortality, not for me, unless I somehow find out without dying that death really sucks, like if there's a psychotic version of hell or something.

And on to the next Philosophical Mumbo Jumbo: I asked myself, if I found out that my life would end tomorrow, what would I do? If I had a week or a month, I'd spend all my money and go see a concert, I'd go find my biological parents, I'd save kittens, I'd tell everyone how exactly I felt about them. But one day? The first ting I thought was: I'd do exactly what I do every day. I'd just keep doing what I'm doing, and then I'd die. And that would be fine. So although I bitch and whine (especially to myself), apparently I'm rather satisfied with my life.

Then I asked myself another question: what would I do if I found out that tomorrow my life will begin? Hm? What would you do?

Progress, at last!

2011-05-22T15:57:00.000+02:00

I finished a subject! At the third try! T.T I'm so happy I could cry. Scream and cry and roll around on the ground. One down, three to go! School this term has not been at the top of my accomplishments...

In other news, what does one wear to a baptism? I constantly find myself out of "fancy clothes" that properly fit into the conservative world of old traditional ceremonies. Probably because I think regular or random clothes are so much more fun and awesome and pretty than fancy clothes. Fancy clothes, to reach any level of awesomeness, require a ton of accessories and fancying up hair and stuff. And who cba buying and fixing all that for an awkward ceremony that you go to a handful of times in your life and that you don't believe in? Bleh. Fancy clothes make me feel like a Christian ajumma (Korean middle-aged-to-old woman) who emigrated to the conservative part of the US and never hangs out with anything other than other ajummas in small wooden churches to complain about their modern children. And they feel like I'm wrapped in saran wrap (= gladpack), figuratively speaking. I'd need a very particular kind of fancy clothes, that work with both my own style and my unwillingness to wear fancy clothes, and with the demands of my peers and circumstances (read: family and their friends). Fat chance of ever finding that.

I need a suit. A simple, mildly feminine, light but not peach suit, maybe white. Pants, not skirt. Yeah. Where to find those? Gah, they probably cost a ton...

Kittyproof!

2011-05-18T23:35:00.001+02:00

Most of my friends don't have pets, but those who have might recognize the situation of returning to your computer to find your darling cat have posted "+666" on facebook, or watching a VLC movie when cat pushes a few keyboard commands and speeds the sound up by 200%. Easy enough fixes, but also annoying, and windows has no built-in keyboard lock. So, I found a tiny program to do it for me, it's called Kid-Key-Lock. Workes very well with Launchy, and it's free. With a alt+space, k and enter my keyboard and mouse are locked, and with a password sequence of keys that you can choose - in this case the perpetrator's name (that's the cat) - it is unlocked. You can choose to let it display the password while locked if you're just trying to block small children and pets, or if you have extremely bad short term memory.

There is also a shareware version called Pro-Key-Lock where you can customize exactly which keys and combinations of both keyboard and mouse to lock. Probably useful for someone.

Carved into my heart

2011-05-13T23:59:00.001+02:00

I have two fangirl modes: 1) DBSK / JYJ / really it's Jaejoong but the other guys are ok. 2) Deadpool. Lately it's been Deadpool mode. Thus this.

I want a Deadpool tattoo! I've been thinking about it for years, but I can't design tattoos, I suck at that. Symbols and patterns, I'm terrible at it. And I really want tattoos that are made to be on a body, not just take a picture and slap it on my arm. It has to look good where it is. Love those types of tattoos where it looks like you've branded something in, or folded back skin to show bone, or stuff like that.

The round Deadpool symbol is my best bet.

As if it's freshly cut into my skin perhaps? This one kinda needs to be in color, even if I'm against color tattoos in general. Or maybe like a stamp with "approved Deadpool fangirl" around it or something xD Maybe I wouldn't mind a real picture in this case...

but pictures, just plain pictures, should be on flat surfaces like the back, and I wanna save that for something extraordinarily special, if I'd find the perfect tattoo one day. I kinda want this under the collar bone, either left or right.

Aside from that, tattoos I want someday are the Iceye symbol:

kinda like this, or just the stylized one, maybe inside of my wrist,

and something to symbolize the other things carved into my heart, like the White, maybe just his name on my ankle or something... Jaejoong has a while to go before I'm that certain of myself. Another year and a half, if my feelings haven't changed, I think he's tattoo worthy.

And finally, what gave this blog its name, the Lifestream, as a symbol of a philosophical idea that shaped so much of me. Maybe curling up my side or my left arm. If I ever get round to that, it's rather extensive.

On that note, since growing up with superheroes have certainly shaped my way of thinking, I should have the Marvel brand on my left shoulder or high on my back, like a tag.

Hmm.

Nitpicks will notice I'm leaving out family and friends here. If it ever will happen, it won't happen 'til you're dead, peops.

Static Electricity Cat meets Harley the Circling Dog

2011-05-11T15:51:00.000+02:00

And so there was dog. Cat and dog seems to get along rather well. Cat is immensely, painfully, undeniably curious. If there wasn't for that pesky instinct that says that living creatures six times your own size should be held at sensible distance, cat would be prodding dog's stomach by now, sitting on top of it. But there is that instinct, and so there's a lot of bipolar hissing-followed-by-sneaking-closer going on. Dog is fascinating, but also clearly a latent psychopath, acting nice but possibly waiting to chomp cat's head off. Dog, meanwhile, is mostly confused. Dog tries to stay out of cat's way because obviously the hissing, clawed thing has mental issues, but doesn't have all that much space to maneuver. Bone is a lot better, dog thinks. Bones are simple. Chew.

Comic Opinions: Deadpool #13-22

2011-05-09T15:21:00.000+02:00

Deadpool: X marks the spot and Deadpool: Monkey Business collects Deadpool #13-22, and are the first steps of my "let's be a serious comic geek and not a leech and start buying good shit" campaign. For safety I will not divulge how I got to read #1-12. It's a personal campaign, of course, worry not, I'm not going to go righteous bitch on you.

I loved the earlier Deadpool series by Priest and Simone, especially the one that connected with the Agent X series, and I was at first unconvinced by the new writer mr. Daniel Way and the "inner voices" (Deadpool has two more or less consistent "extra selves" that he has conversations with). Although I found Deadpool's role in Secret Invasion (a big, global "Event" in Marvel Universe) to be brilliant and in a way properly introducing him into the big boy game by throwing him in with Norman Osborn, anyone can shoot a pony once, and the inner voices deal was still bothering me.

I've always felt that the difficulty in writing Deadpool has been to balance his good-vs-evil. Insanity implies randomness, and randomness doesn't know good or evil; it hardly knows consequence. How to get a coherent character with interesting storylines with that in mind? It's a deadly balance act.

I'd say that Way has now proven his pony-shooting abilities to me with these two collections. X Marks The Spot has Deadpool out to become a pirate, and through a series of events has him helping rather than hurting the islands he set out to rob. What follows next is what impressed me most; a sort of looking-glass peek into a darker part of Deadpool that no one else seems to have paid any attention; namely, immortality itself could serve to drive a man insane, so what will a man do with it who is already insane? This philosophical bout with himself brings him to the fever-dazed conclusion that he'd rather be a hero, and he makes an attempt at becoming an X-Man. The story from there is a lot more complex than one first realizes, and the balance act can be summed up with one of the lines from the book: "He may be insane, but I'm starting to think he may not be crazy".

Monkey Business picks the story right up as Deadpool continues on to New York to try and soak up some hero-moves from Spider-Man, and suddenly finds himself on the best seat of the house as Spider-Man has to protect him from a mercenary-hunting monkey hitman. Again, Deadpool proves himself as much a hallucinating lunatic as a man with a plan, turning Spider-Man's life upside down in the process. The writing impressed me still, in this case because it is skillfully focused on Deadpool. What Spider-Man thinks about the whole thing can most often only be read from what he says and does, so as a reader I get the feeling of watching the frustrated hero rub his forehead through a camera stuck on Deadpool's suit, that bounces a little as Deadpool chuckles to himself.

The art is good in the two "main" stories here, the X-Men and Spider-Man stories. As for the pirate story as well as a short extra as Deadpool leaves New York, they have more looney cartooney or caricature style drawings. I can appreciate different styles of drawing, I think, but especially in the case of Deadpool I'm for a more "realistic" style because although he himself is like an mad bugs bunny, he is real in the Marvel Universe, he is in fact brutally real as many who have tasted his bullets have had to realize. A conversation with him should perhaps never be taken literally, but he as a force, an immortal man with amazing weapon skills, should always be taken very, very seriously, and that is the tragedy and the comedy. A cartooney style marginalizes the violence he does upon others, but that is a part of what makes the character complex and fascinating. Reading Deadpool should always bring along a tint of disgust, a wince where you go "what the HELL man" as he cracks a joke and a skull at the same time; just seeing him as a funny guy does not embrace all that the character is.

I always feel like I walk away from reading Deadpool having learned something subtle and difficult to pinpoint, which is also part of the charm. As when Deadpool spared Killbrew's life in the earlier series, I now await Way's followup with hesitant enthusiasm. Deadpool's chase for heroism allows a bit of creative ballet on the delicate balance of good and evil, now I can only cross my fingers and hope Way doesn't overstep and break a toe.

Spider-Man goes, as usual, for the anvil-to-the-head kind of life lessons: "It's always easy being what you are... what's hard is being what you want to be."

I'm Batman!

2011-05-02T23:52:00.000+02:00

Suggestions for caption for this picture?

(I stole it from a video here.)

2011-04-24T16:01:00.000+02:00

It is SO ODD to read old posts, most of all old poems and the ramblings I have around them. Poems are tricky things. They're obviously obvious to myself, which means that it's impossible to imagine what they look like to someone who isn't inside my head, and somehow right now I relate that to what they talked about in the Portal 2 commentary; that puzzles have to be dumbed down for people to understand. If nobody understands my poems, then what would be their point? On the other hand, how much can I "dumb them down" without losing their meaning? Should I do that at all, seeing as poems should be "pure" or "raw" in contrast to prose or story form, or that's been my impression anyway. They are attempts at communicating, after all.

In any case, because of cat, when I get my random inspirations of wanting to sing (happens a lot) I've improvised melodies to a poem I made a long time ago that I love a lot and that works well to improvise simple tunes to. My roomie has expressed... I'm not sure what, puzzlement? at what this text is, so now that I've found my original (because I'd forgotten a verse) I'm going to post it here.

!

Have you ever seen a thing
as beautiful, as amazing,
as feline missus over there
and how she carries her bling-bling?

Every hair in proper place,
no sign of make-up on her face,
nor or knife or needle are
on her body any trace.

See how gracious her behind;
such a step is hard to find,
and this one mister over here,
she has already blown his mind.
Mister takes his only chance
and asks her politely to dance,
and there they go in correct waltz
though surely he would wish to prance!
Such a lady, is she not?
It takes him all night long to spot
a way in through her defense
as solid as the Camelot!
Though first saying firmly no,
treating him almost as foe,
no more a lady is she now
than to tell him "let us go!".
But do not think her easy prey;
more a hunter I would say.
And it will be up to her call
if there'll be kittens here in May!

!

Did I land on an invisible gnome?

2011-04-23T19:07:00.001+02:00

My roomie keeps whining at me if I leave water on the floor in the bathroom after I shower. I always figured, meh, it'll dry away. Well, turns out, the world decided to demonstrate the wrongness of my ways, as I slipped in the hallway because I'd stepped in water. No big deal. But here's the thing. I slipped on absolutely flat floor, but I have a bruise right in the middle of my palm, about the size of my little finger's fingerprint. How does that happen?

Cheester!

2011-04-23T00:09:00.001+02:00

Alone at last....!

Nah but because I'm spoiling my cat silly I'm staying here over Easter instead of going to my parents (and also because of some silly notion that I'd use this time to do some school-work... yeah! right!) and it's odd being on my own. It's something special about being absolutely certain that nobody's going to walk through that door without my explicit knowledge and consent (if all goes as it should). Not good or bad, just special. I think it makes the world sharper, more distinct. Having people around dulls the edges, for good or bad. Eases the pain, makes you a bit drowsy. Cats just eases the pain without dulling anything. Go cats. It sounds like I hate people but that's not true. I need people. And while I love to hate to need people, I need people to love to hate, otherwise I'm not sure I'd be neither loving nor hating and that would be incredibly dull. I think. Also it's more the need that I love to hate, rather than the people. I think. Hmm. Let's leave this subject before I confuse myself too much.

(Edit: People you know and/or like, that is. Random people just provoke random feelings, as their randomness suggests.)

Easter! Bunnies, chickens and eggs! All the fluffy and/or edible things make this one of my favorite holidays. Actually both bunnies and chickens are edible... Anyway, I thought about picking some sticks and buying some colorful feathers and stick the feathers on the sticks (haHA!), and then the second part of the thought involved sewing them into my clothes so that I get one of those back-fans like Edea in FF8:

except it would be made of sticks with colorful feathers, but I think I should settle on the first part. Also I think I'd get to keep it for about two seconds before I'd have a very happy cat tearing it to shreds.

Poison

2011-04-14T14:21:00.000+02:00

So a bit of googling and calculating brings me this result; if my cat of 3kg did any of these:

ate 220g milk chocolate (as a reference, one bar is usually around 200g)
drank 12 cans of normal coke (or 8 half-liter bottles, or 2 big 2-liter bottles)
drank one 50ml cup of Starbucks coffee (pure, not some latte shit)
ate 28g of dark, unsweetened baking chocolate

he would most likely die. I strongly, very strongly, doubt he could fit 4l of coke, or 220g choclate, in his tiny stomach, or that he'd venture to drink strong, black coffee, but the baking chocolate could be a possible scenario I guess. Also he would get kinda sick before it got lethal. This is in one quick dose, but that doesn't mean it's fully safe eating smaller amounts. If it's done often it can also be dangerous since cats take up things again automatically from their own urine and so the poison could stay for a long time in their bodies and build up.

(As a side note, poisonous doses are almost always based on weight, and that's the case in this case. So dogs would have to eat a whole lot more to get sick. An adult, average German shepherd weighs about 11-13 times as much as my cat; that's 11-13 bars of chocolate. I don't know if they do the whole taking up nutrients from their own urine thing, because if they don't the poison also leaves their bodies faster.)

I also found out that the reason cats hate, and I mean *hate*, the smell of citrus fruits is because eating them makes them vomit. They'd have to eat a damned lot of citrus fruit for it to get dangerous, and most likely they'd have thrown up long before that. Unfortunately for them they can't smell the poison (it's not just the caffeine) in coffee, tea or chocolate, that's actually more dangerous, and they don't always vomit it up if they eat enough to get seriously sick either.

So keep the baking chocolate away from the cat, or the cat away from the chocolate. Considering the nature of cats, I strongly suspect the first is easier.

Unguarded

2011-04-11T17:25:00.000+02:00

When did this happen?
When did this tousled little ball of fur
become a single fire burning
at the top of the world?

When did the world shift and make you mine?
I wish I could recall ever letting my guard down.
But the truth is you've spread like a drop of red paint
slowly stretching through the plumbing of my veins,
and the passages of my mind.

When did it happen?
When did this sleeping god awaken
to shred the shell I once met
and plant the new seed?

When did the sprout burst, and its leaves?
I wish I could recall ever seeing it grow.
But the truth is it's here, rooting you in my home,
slowly growing into the webs of my bones,
reaching into a memory, into my heart...

awakening the fear that I
have spent a hundred lifetimes forgetting
and still failed.

A Modest Request

2011-04-10T15:21:00.001+02:00

Oh hai. A bit of shamelessness coming up. My brother is in a hockey team, and they need to pay for stuff like renting the ice to practice on, or equipment and travel. There are a few ways anyone can get them money without paying a dime themselves, only sacrificing a few seconds or minutes whenever they feel like it. You won't need to get out of your chair, or open your mouth. I don't like to be pushy and demand things from people, and I'm also trying to maintain a sense of anonymity in this blog, but at the same time this is an excellent place to ask people. So I'm putting it out here and if you think it sounds reasonable you can get back to me either in the comments or on other media and then I'll tell you all about it elsewhere. It literally only takes you between a couple of seconds and ten minutes a week, and it might give you stuff like discounts depending on what you do, and it's absolutely legal and will not ruin your credibility, neither your street rep. It's possible it only works for people in Sweden, or Scandinavia, at least the stores and stuff involved are mostly local so the discounts may only be useful for people here, but I'm pretty sure you can help anyway if you're extraordinarily selfless. Alright, now I'm done, and will never mention this again ^.~ Peace out.

Little Old Me, As Usual

2011-03-30T22:45:00.000+02:00

Routines are good. Cool, even. Sometimes I think, I want to be the odd lady down the street that always eats a cheeseburger on Saturdays and waters her plants on Thursday. You know, the regular, the unchanging point in other people's lives. That thing people on first dates always point to in romantic movies and bond over, and then at the end they'll see it again and smile and kiss. It also seems to be a way to be effective. If you always do laundry on Mondays, then laundry will always be done. And it minimizes effort. You'll just do it, because you always do it, and no brain activity is required, no motivation.

Then of course, if you make yourself a creature of habit, you'll be in deep shit if something disturbs those habits. But I have this deep-rooted belief that whatever happens everything will be okay, or it won't but you'll just have to live with it; a type of "fuck-all" attitude that would probably help. I'd get thrown off by breaking habits but would always somehow self-right like one of those toys with round, weighted bottoms.

The issue is that habits are so hard to create. And the world itself seems to work against you. Just when you've decided on a great schedule, someone or something decides to break it. Maybe that's the thing; to make habits, you have to have the stoicism to stick to your habits, even when it's almost impossible. Well damn, I guess my clever plan isn't so clever. It appears you need motivation, to get rid of the need for motivation. Who would've guessed.

Classic Fantasy Puzzle Adventure RPG

2011-03-26T02:29:00.000+01:00

So far my new shiny Nintendo DS Lite has done what all good game systems with good games should do: keep me from doing what I should be doing. Nintendo have almost equal respect in my eyes as Disney, in both cases strongly affected by their modern developments (*cough* Wii), and my inability to look past the classy piano black exterior of the competing power machine from the land of the Rising Sun. Despite this the DS sports a fancy number of decent games and if I am to say from the games I've tried so far, the royal family of these are well worth the money. If it's worth failing my courses, we'll find out in just a week or so.

As for the title that gave a title to this post, Might & Magic - Clash of Heroes, it kept me occupied today until my batteries ran out. Among the many games I've just tested for fifteen minutes or so, those I most vigorously wasted away time on were Professor Layton, Final Fantasy 3, Shin Megami Tensei and Picross DS, all of which positively surprised me in different ways. Most surprised probably with Shin Megami Tensei's story that seems awesome for now at least, and most positively with FF3 which has nice updated graphics but kept the style and feeling of the original very well. I've tried The World Ends With You before on a friend's and know that I'll probably want that too. And KH 356/2 has pretty decent reviews actually so I might try it, same friend has that too. And... yeah. I suddenly need a week or three. Dear ___ what I want for my birthday is some time outside of time so I can play all these games...

Whoa

2011-03-22T17:18:00.000+01:00

Because I keep missing people posting on their blogs because my current way of keeping track of them is very 2000 and ineffective, I just found out that I could get a singing person in my living room. Most of you already know this, because you're probably keeping track of blogs in some sensible way. Whoa. I dunno how big a deal this is to other people, some people seem to look at the whole "artist" deal, or more like "famous person" deal very differently from me, but to me it's sort of... nuts. Nuts. I mean, I know that, if you know a famous person it's just a dude/tte, and yada yada. If I think about, like, would I work for one of the people I greatly like or admire like that, then yea that would be awesome. Even like, personal assistant. Would I want to be friends with one of them? Yea sure, depending on how it happened, awesome. But that, to just invite one randomly into your living room to play... O.O imagining doing that with one of the bands I really like makes me feel like I'd want to die. I'd open the door and shake all their hands and then fall down dead :p I swear! And I'd want to! I don't want to talk to authors I like, and I don't want to meet people who draw awesome drawings... it's like through art you can get a special connection to people and I feel like it'd break or morph into something else if you met them for real. But I'd still work for them... I dunno. But I already knew my attitude to fame is a little odd. Can't quite make sense of it.

Lately I've had this odd thing that when I listen to music and am outside, I imagine the surroundings as a music video for the song, so I'd imagine dancers in hip-hop gear dancing on top of the cars of the parking lot, or the singer on giant holo screens on top of the tall apartment buildings in Flogsta with neon lights playing over the trees. It makes it even more hard to not dance as I walk. And it's not intentional, it happened all of itself a few days ago when I walked home late with JYJ in my ears. Usually my imagination is a lot more... theoretical. I can have huge problems visualizing things that I "know" very well, but this came so easily. Now I can't get rid of it. But it's too cool to get rid of anyway.

A new superhero is born!

2011-03-21T12:16:00.001+01:00

Hm.
Static electricity cat fears: Bikes (moving), Joggers, Plastic Trash Cans (this may be the effect of traumatizing treatment by housekeepers)
Static electricity cat is not afraid of: Other Cats, Collars, Yelling, Static Electricity
Static electricity cat likes: Cat Carrying Bag, Food, Sticking Nose In Streaming Water, Lollipop Sticks, Biting Human Hands (play), Sleeping On Humans, Talking Back (probably witty comments but since I don't speak cat...)
Defining traits: Static electricity cat has the vaguely disturbing but welcome habit of NOT clawing people in that cat-characteristic way when feeling good. So scratching behind ears is safe. Aside from getting play-bitten.
Place of Power: The Chair. However continually stolen by the housekeeper, it is really because Static electricity cat is so nice and lets her borrow it, generously wanting to share its awesomeness and mystic powers.
Tactics: Static electricity cat will sneak up on you, slap you in the face and give you a static electricity jolt for good measure. This tactic is mainly employed on other cats. It is not aggressively used upon humans, but rather in a defensive way giving you a jolt when you touch him. Static electricity cat appears resistant to his own powers.
Weakness: Static electricity cat need to recharge his static electricity by running back and crawling all over the sofa in between.
Nemesis: Coca Cola

Dragon Age 2

2011-03-16T20:55:00.003+01:00

38 hours over three days later, I was done with my first playthrough of Dragon Age 2 and could begin on the two other necessary to explore how much freedom of choice you actually have and how much is set in stone with the illusion of choice. My impression is that it's a very well thought-out game with an engaging story and very fun game mechanics. If a little... overzealous at times.

There are a few questions. With the perceived size of the city, where the hell do they get the one hundred raiders and bandits and hunters and thieves that your group murders every night? Admittedly only a dozen nights every three years, but still. Considering the Blight, the common conflicts, and supposedly the victims of these raiders and bandits and hunters and thieves, one wonders just how large a population would be necessary to sustain them, and to breed new ones quickly enough to sate the next three years. And the same can be said of mages, somehow. There are very many mages. So many I'm wondering why they don't prance off and claim a little country of their own instead. Oh yeah, maybe because if they're all as crazy as the ones you get joining you, they'd be gnawing each others toes off within a year. No but seriously, in a normal encounter the game would throw around twenty people at you, ten of which are only there as cannon fodder, but usually there's even more. Fun maybe, but... where the hell do they all come from? And why do they keep running at you after fifteen of their sturdier friends have already tried and died?

But overall the story is good, and have successfully made its point; humans are complicated, dirty, easily breakable things that are right in many things and wrong in others, unfortunately about different things so they insist on fighting over everything.

I do miss the dialogue of the first DA, because this is Mass Effect style and a little too short-hand; I feel more like I'm playing 1-X-2 than having a conversation. Also the elves look like tiny non-blue Avatars. Do they have bones in those skinny little bodies, or just twigs? There are talents that are so obviously, incredibly much better than others that you wonder why you'd ever use a different build. The Exiled Prince DLC gives you another friend that isn't mind-numbingly crazy, contributes to a more complex choice of combat tactics, and that I'd rather have had in the base game. If you set your mind to it, every melee boss can be soloed by ranged characters running about, because melee can't hit and move at the same time and have three-second hit-animations, which feels a little silly when a dwarf with a crossbow run around a pole for fifteen minutes killing a dragon bolt-by-bolt. Or when a mage has an "honorable" duel with a badass warrior by pewing him with his staff, then running away, then pewing him again, (because sensible spells have too long cast animation) in front of an awed public. And again the Spirit Healer rocks the boots off of everything else, but that doesn't make a huge difference since it's kinda satisfyingly easy on normal, and equally fun playing all classes.

There have been laughs, but no tears, which sufficiently illustrates my level of involvement. Specifically two peak quotes that I was going to share but realized they're much better if you hear them in context, so: do Avaline's personal quests, and bring Isabela and Fenris at the same time in your party for a while. I know, Isabela is kinda useless gameplay-wise. But you shall not be dissappointed.

Wow this post is beautifully structured! Look at it! Wicked sick! I'm awesome. (Viewer satisfaction not guaranteed; depending on your screen resolution.)

BAAI

2011-03-12T12:52:00.000+01:00

Pull out your binoculars and settle down with a bowl of chips because I'm about to backlink to myself: here. In that post, that's like a month old (gimme a "whoaaaa") I looked for a couple of things in videogames; dark, broody guys in leather, sensible women, coolness... well it seems Dragon Age 2 read my mind (more like the developers I guess, kinda freaky if the game read my mind). I've gotten pretty much exactly what I whined for, which is kinda lulz. And also explains if I disappear from the world for a couple of days. So bai.

McNinja meets Deadpool

2011-03-09T23:36:00.000+01:00

The man who made Dr. McNinja is now writing Deadpool for Marvel. Need I say more? No. No I don't.

I think it might be time for me to buy another comic book. This one, for example. I so wish I had more money so I could do it more often! I'd want a whole library, a wall of comics! I'd want to go places and argue about whether the art of issue#233 was better than #232, I'd want to sit in my sea of Exiles and New Avengers and Gambit and Deadpool and discuss the development of Spider-Man or the validity of animations versus the comic book originals. I'd want to befriend the dude who whined at me when we first met for saying "comic book" and not "graphic novel", and beat the guy who prefers DC over Marvel in, well, I'm tempted to say Yu-Gi-Oh. If I'd been born in the US and, more importantly, had gotten the proper encouragement, you could've made an utter comic book geek out of me, Marvel.

Actually, the artist from kukuburi that I also read is/has also worked on Deadpool. Perhaps the webcomics I have found are of like-minded people? That wouldn't be beyond logic.

Here's the article, and here's Dr.McNinja.

Chill-pill

2011-03-08T21:15:00.001+01:00

Famous bloggers blog at least once a day, they say. And do stuff like "outfit of the week" or "quote of the day". That's 365 posts a year. Many. I'm not going anywhere specific with this, it just sort of hit me.

So now I have a cat. Responsibilities. I'm in a mutual agreement: I provide for cat and cat provides company for me. Is it the female BIOS in me that goes "oh noes what if I do something wroooong", or is that just the general reaction to responsibilities when they involve other living things? Or inanimate objects, in some cases. Yes that's true, I freak out about inanimate objects too. As a matter of fact, I'm terrified of breaking anything at all, to the point where I'm even reluctant to do things I know are bad in a game-world even if I know that the solution is always just a 5-second quick load.

Anyway my point was that I waited and waited for the cat, and then when he was inside my apartment my brain imploded in "omigodomigod" over how much I should feed him, what I should feed him, if I should brush him, what to do about his teeth (because I read cats often get problems with their teeth), when I should let him outside... and that, that is the question. What if I let him outside and he doesn't come back? Or another cat beats him up bad, there's a lot of cats here. Or I dunno, if a giant fucking eagle flies in from outer space and eats him for a snack and good measure? Logically, it all seems as probable as the last suggestion there, or at least as equally valid arguments to not let him outside. This is most likely how parents feel, I imagine. Poor things.

To be honest I think of myself as quite qualified to take care of a cat, but the worrymonster isn't really interested in qualifications. It's very easy to get a job from him though, i hear.

So with regular intervals I give myself a mental slap in the face and a harsh "Get a hold of yourself!", but then again, nothing new with that. I'm usually the one telling people to take a chill-pill, and that includes myself.

Cocoon

2011-03-04T21:59:00.000+01:00

The German woman who was kidnapped and kept in a guy's basement for 8 and a half years was just on Skavlan, you can see it on SVTPlay tomorrow probably. Strange somehow. Seeing her there, talking about it, its unimaginable what she went through and yet - she looks just like a normal woman.

We all do. Or, I should say, we look simply like people. It's so easy in movies or comics where people wear their scars or their powers on the outside, but that's not how it works in the real world. Or is there such a thing? If you looked properly into her eyes, would you see the pain she went through, would you see that thing they speak of in literature, where a person has gone through a great deal or seem older than they are? I think, to be honest, that that is only imagination, finding patters because we expect them, like seeing Jesus in a patch of dirt.

I think the patterns it makes is not in our faces or in our eyes or burned into our skin; it's softly ground into our person, into our behavior and characteristics, like a complex, three-dimentional puzzle by our gestures and our voices and every muscle that moves. They study brains to see if they can read the memories there, if like the rings of a tree one can read the history of a human in the mosaics of neurons, and perhaps. Perhaps that twitch is crafted to cover up a different twitch spawned long ago because of a mishap, and perhaps the story is written in our brains. But rather than that,

it is a wonder, isn't it? To be surrounded by all these people, to be enveloped in all this history, the pain and the laughs and the fortunes. The way the old woman by the bus stop hunches her shoulders, the corner of the mouth of the cashier, the hitch at the end of specific words when the tourist asks you for directions. It is all a part of their history, like hieroglyphs of their lives, that although we can't read them clearly, they all together form the weave that is the fate of our world - the past, the present, the future.

It is overwhelming. I saw this woman speak of her story, and all of this sort of washed over me, and I realized, it's not strange that I'm sometimes reluctant to go outside, to be among people even if I don't have to interact. They are interacting with me, all of them, with every movement and every glimmer of their eyes. I'm in a constant flow of information, like a million radio waves in foreign languages passing through me on every frequency, from every direction. And filtering it out is such a painful process, in many different ways. For who wouldn't want to try to understand the history of everything?

Press Publish Post

2011-03-04T13:45:00.003+01:00

The voice control feature in Windows 7 is an unending source of amusement. For one it's really fun to be able to put my headset on the kitchen counter and yell "press b!" when i'm doing dishes and Winamp switches to the next track of music, but that's basically the most useful use I've found for it. It's decently good at recognizing voice commands, although some features like the "switch to" is a bit blunt; for example I can say "start Winamp" to start it and "start Steam" to start that, and I can switch to Winamp, but saying "switch to Steam" doesn't do anything. UNLESS you have Dragon Age running, because in that case, whatever you try to switch to that isn't Winamp (yes my voice recognition loves Winamp) it switches to Dragon Age. Even if I'm saying "switch to catfuck", I get Dragon Age. Which is somewhat impressive. Otherwise if I say something it doesn't understand it simply ignores me.

Now all I need to do is program a synthesized voice that can read out the messages that the voice recognition gives. Like if I say "press b" it gives a message that says "pressing b", or if I say something it doesn't understand it answers "I don't understand", so simply adding a voice that reads those out loud I'd have a computer that I can have conversations with, in a way. Although I have no idea how to do that. Or what use I'd have of it. But it would be cool!

PS. I tried to read this in but it was many annoying with all the "'s and caps and all so that was abandoned. I did publish it solely by voice though! Saying "view post" presses "view blog" but whatever :P

Kitteh LOL

2011-03-01T11:05:00.000+01:00

So... I'm gonna be that annoying person who never communicates with any human being without telling a cute cat story. See my cat tends to sit on the most out-of-the-way flat space on the desk, which happens to be my drawing pad, which is a Bamboo Pen & Touch, and that last part means you can also use it like a laptop's touchpad. And little Loke's paws are exactly the right size to register as a finger. Then there's some buttons that are very easy to press, and a few "finger gestures" that mean special commands. So I'd be playing, say, Dragon Age, and just got into a fight where I'm surrounded by sixteen darkspawn and a mage channeling a fireball, when the cat goes LOL and alt-tabbs me out of the game. Which does not pause, when alt-tabbed. Hilarity ensues, particularly if I've forgotten to quick-save.

Kitty is also being a kitten and chasing my mouse pointer around, or attacking the lead character when I'm running around in DA or WoW. It's lucky he's not using claws, because I think my screen would disagree to that. In total though he's a very well-behaved cat. Yes, I will blog about something other than cat eventually. I'm working on a thing, actually, so when that's finished I'll be all deep and artistic and emo. Ahh the certainty of when an artist says "when I finish this I'll... " :D

Fun and Convenience

2011-02-25T15:05:00.000+01:00

Cat has happened. This is now a real home. He appears to pee where he should, not bite cables, and is friendly and curious and not much afraid. This mutually beneficial partnership should work out well. I'd like to warn everyone that I don't much like to be called "owner" or "mom". A cat is a friend, not a slave or a baby. I'd agree to "mistress" possibly, because I could somewhat imagine a cat going "My mistress has this weird habit...", more in the sense of a "woman you have on the side for fun and convenience", especially a cat named Loke (Loki for the English-speaking), and I guess I have to be called something.

less than three

2011-02-23T17:19:00.001+01:00

Catcatcatcatfridaycatstuffmoneyfurcarroadblockcatsandfoodcatcatfridaynowcat 0.0 *draws for breath* blanketcatpillowwarmsnowcatcatcatclawcarpettowercatmeowcatcat O.O *draws for breath* plant! Friday naooooow! Puh. *collapses*

Hello!

2011-02-20T16:03:00.000+01:00

So there's a slowly creeping number of followers O.O At first I ignored it because I figured it was my RL friends, but it's not. Then I figured that it must be spammers. But I guess it could be real people actually following this blog, which feels kinda odd, since mostly I'm just rambling on about nothing much at all. At this rate, maybe I'll be famous when I'm 100... I'd also be famous as the "randomly rambling girl", oh yeah baby. I guess I'd rather be known for my stories, or perhaps my fabulous success at League of Legends or Killing Floor (I know I shouldn't, but I can't help but want to yell "You just got beat by a GIRL!" every time I win), but I'm not complaining.
Actually when I started this blog, there was a lurking thought at the back of my head that if I kept myself online, maybe one day it would trick the right person into reading my stories and suddenly BAM I'd be lunching with Johnny Depp about his upcoming part in the movie based on my bestselling book. (Yeah, I'd rather have had Heath Ledger, but even in fantasy-land I don't bring back the dead.)
This is even more silly now considering I'm barely writing a word at the moment. Books don't write themselves.
Anyway, if there are any real people among my followers (oooh I feel like Jesus), then it'd be nice to get a "hi" out of you at least (I bet Jesus did!) ^^

Ahhhh *sigh* this feels so silly...

Where my money goes

2011-02-17T14:38:00.000+01:00

The big titles of this (half of the?) year:

The Witcher 2
Dragon Age 2
Killzone 3

Sequels all of them...
Then some other stuff...

The Last Guardian - except who knows if it actually exists or if wild gnomes stole and ate it.
Ratchet & Clank A Crack in Time - that I've wanted forever but for some reason never buy.
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep - that I want but don't really want to play :p it seems annoying but the story is fun.
Valkyra Chronicles - the new one on PSP that I'm holding off until I've finished the PS3 one... and you know how good I am at finishing games...
And of course... the next Final Fantasy... yes it's basically only for nostalgic, loyal reasons... and character design...

Big lack of mmm guys in all the games I play lately. Not just visually; character wise. I'm trying to think of a cool guy and it's really really sad that the only I can come up with is Ezreal or Kassadin, although landing Ez would probably also land me in jail since he looks about... fourteen. Kassa is just cool. This includes The Witcher, League of Legends, (Killing Floor, lol), Starcraft... I really need a new Squall. People underestimated FF8, methinks, and the sublime depths of his mind woooo. Also fur-lined leather. Yes, gimme a well-dressed man, damnit! How hard can it be! To those who thought Isaac looked like a toaster in Dead Space: No, he looked cool, but now he certainly looks like a toaster in DS2. Also they've done a character of him in Dragon Age 2 that you get if you buy DS2, and he looks so damned awesomely fun(ny) that I consider buying DS2 just for that :D No I don't know why I thought of Isaac... oh yes, because thinking about well-dressed men always makes me think of speedway drivers, and the suit has sort of the shape of a speedway driver suit except for the helmet and the spine thingy.

Hey! I just realized Darksiders don't have any pretty boys I can chase, which means it's even more praiseworthy because my love for it isn't based on some female hormone running rampage. Not a lot of female hormones overall in that game, it made *me* feel like the manliest most badass dude on the planet - awesome! ^^ Also the horse rocks. Hold on wait... are there women in that game? I can't recall a single one. No boobs? Can an awesome game exist without boobs? Ahh no right the freaky scary fanatic angel woman. She has boobs. But she utterly freaks me out so... now I'm trying to think of what kind of guy would actually get the hots for her and... disturbing thought. I don't think she's a booth-babe, besides when you meet her you're usually too busy keeping her sword out of your spine to think about boobs. That's how women should be! ;D Hmmm... not a single cheap flirting line or women-degrading quest or anything. That might just add to the awesomeness and general manliness of the game actually.

Geralt, you're nice and all (not really) but I really have no idea what women see in you. Also the women you score are either whores or bitches, so I guess you get the fish you bait for. Tip: if you look for game portraits of actual cool, hawt women, don't play the Witcher lol. My cat is more complex than the women in that game, and I don't have a cat. If this is how women are, no wonder I'm game-straight. (I'm making an exception for Lightning, but then again everyone knows she's a female Cloud.)

Woohoo this post got longer and longer and longer and longer... It also is really only relevant to myself heh. I would add pictures just to make it longer but I can't be bothered. Google it! Or don't! Google eats your brain!

Seeing is believing

2011-02-16T00:20:00.000+01:00

Yes I should be in bed but I happened upon an awesome little video. Do watch it full screen!

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

I have no idea how it was done but it's really cool. I think something like "tilt-shift photography" was mentioned, if that means something to anyone. I don't care, it's just awesome. Maybe this is how god sees us, hmm? ^.~

I was thinking I might have a little video-theme now (or later) if I can find all the stuff I've seen randomly all over the place that I wanted to show you guys.

AHA!

2011-02-11T19:44:00.000+01:00

I made a text document that included:

things I need to do (right now)
things I need to do (for school)
things I need to do (at some point)
things I want to do (right now)
things I want to do (at some point)
things I want to do (but never will)

It quickly got unmanageable and also a bit embarrassing. Aside from that, separating "things I want to do at some point" from "things I want to do but never will" is a painfully surgical task, and even if I can tell that something goes on the latter list the want doesn't go away one bit. In fact, if I look at my life, it's the "things I need to do at some point" that never gets done, and I drag myself screaming and flailing to do the "things I need to do right now", while I slowly and with great care crawl ever closer to the "things I want to do but never will", sort of stubbornly refusing to give up hope. Chasing the unattainable is ever so much more alluring than achieving the attainable, although I'd never admit that I'm chasing anything if you'd ask me face to face. As long as it's on my "things I want to do but never will"-list, and I slowly, awkwardly creep up on it, it can never turn around and yell "AHA!", because then I can just as quickly, like a cat, sit down and study the ground and say "I wasn't really going for it, I was just casually walking about and happened upon its general direction".

Happening upon things' general directions is probably how most things in my life happen. And also how I want it to be, strange as it may seem. I want to ride the waves of life, not steer the boat. Unfortunately I'm also a little afraid of water. And a bit nervy about my ability to float.

I guess I should write porn, that might amuse me while I wait.

2011-02-02T22:59:00.000+01:00

I feel like I haven't written anything remotely interesting/sensible/inspired on this blog for a very long time. Just a bunch of crap really - oooh my grand heritage to the world. And I haven't really written anything interesting/sensible/inspired anywhere else either, even if I have ideas to expand on and a bunch of finetuning that I could do.

I said to myself that it was okay if I would "throw away" three years of my life to get an education so I could get a job and do something later. So for three years now, i have the respite to accomplish nothing (except school, and one and a half left). And I know three years of my life isn't much. I sleep away a whole lot more than that. But, although I'm slow and not very spontaneous most of the time, I'm one of those people who want what I want right now. So it makes me sad and not very interesting and a bit shut down.

Oh well. I guess I can be sad and uninteresting for three years. Here's to hoping I won't die before they're over, and that I'll do myself proud and at least write/publish something once they are. Life is so distracting, I guess I'll have to get one of those little cabins in the forest with nothing but a bed, a stove, my laptop and my plant.

Fuck husband and kids, I have a plant. ;D

2011-01-30T02:09:00.000+01:00

Example of how quickly the brain forgets:

"Bored... oh let's do a puzzle, it's been a while since I did that. I have one here. That's fun."
Ten minutes later: "BAAAAAAAH!"

Oil, ink or crayons

2011-01-28T15:34:00.001+01:00

Language nerdery:
This sentence: 가격이 너무 비싸요 is transcribed roughly "gagyuk-i nomu bisayo". 가격 (gagyuk) is "price", 이 is a particle that in this instance means "this", 너무(nomu) means "too(much)" and 비싸-(bisa-) is "expensive". 요(yo) is just a suffix to finish a sentence in the semi-polite sense.
Now what is this? A fully correct sentence without the use of a verb? Clearly the meaning is "this price is too expensive", but there is no "is" in there. Those who know their Korean would immediately answer that the base form of bisa- is 비싸다(bisada) which makes it a "verb": to be expensive.
Where am I going with this? Not sure, but it amazes me somehow because if you think about it, if you see the world as if adjectives were verbs and the words "to be" or "is" are void of meaning and useless, it's like looking through a filter; it changes things around in my head. So I don't think that a language can limit your thoughts, exactly, but it can probably adjust the course of your thoughts a bit, since they're the narrow channels we push our thoughts through before they become solid and shareable.
Why am I putting verb inside rabbit ears? Because I'm not sure I agree with that bisada is a verb. That would require pushing Korean through the narrow channels that is western linguistics, which means even more information could be lost along the way. Is it the same thing to say "green cat" as "cat being green"? The same thing saying "difficult girl" as "girl being difficult"? Is it necessary to have the opportunity for both in a language? And how many other different ways to say it are there? How many ways to think it?

To really go off the deep end here; is any single word we ever say or write or think exactly the same as another in the sense that it expresses exactly the same thought or feeling?
But that wasn't what I came to discuss. Rather, if you look at this this way, "is" seems like such a useless word really. "Is" is hardly a word at all. It needs all kinds of support to become something, just like a pronoun. Thinking about it, the Korean(and many more Eastern languages if I remember correctly) way makes much more sense.

Not again

2011-01-24T16:27:00.000+01:00

I want a "backspace" button. A real life Ctrl-z, so I can go back in time and tell myself how much I'm going to regret doing what I just did in a few seconds, or hours, or days. Because the brain has a wondrous ability to smooth things over, to fill in the blanks, so that a few seconds, or hours, or days later you think "oh but it's ok, it wasn't that bad". And however much I say to myself "yes it was, you're just making that up", it's like being your own mother and your own teenage daughter at the same time. "That guy will break your heart." "Oh mom, you just don't get it."

Dream Quest Royale, extra cheese

2011-01-23T13:48:00.000+01:00

Finally a dream without that strange feeling.
At a party, there was this girl I'd known for a long time, we were friends really. She usually hung out with a vampire that I only knew a little bit. We'd flirted a bit casually before, but tonight we actually kissed. It wasn't an outspoken promise, but it was a big step towards love. But I was suspicious of the vampire, and went back after the party was over. As I'd thought, he was much more than friends with her. At first I felt betrayed, but then she told me, not with her voice but with her eyes, that her consent in their relationship was twofold; she was afraid of him, and she didn't dare tell him that she was afraid of him.
You can't fight a vampire for me, her eyes said, reflecting the little worried voice inside of me.
I left, but as I did I thought; You better believe I can.

So is this my grand dream quest? Starting a battle for love with a vampire, that would mainly be carried out in the mental and social areas, because the vampire was rather civilized. It bears striking resemblance to the quests of old; save the maiden from the evil monster. It's also insane.

There was also this intense moment, that I can't remember how it connected to the rest, where there was this guy, and I put my hand behind his neck and brought his head to mine so our foreheads rested together, and I said; "It's gonna be ok." And the feeling of connection was just overwhelming, it was like merging into another being, mind body and soul.
Was it me? My male side? Because that scene was the only point in the entire dream that I was female.

selective memory

2011-01-22T00:13:00.000+01:00

This is gravely embarrassing but I'm going to post 3 (horrible) images. They're all attempts at drawing a person, a real living one that I've seen quite frequently the last couple of years (although never in real life).
The first is entirely from memory. Been at least 24 hours since I saw a picture or video or whatever of him. It's also without "warming up" my drawing hand which might explain a shard of its suckiness.
The second image is an attempt at redraming that image while looking at reference pictures (Google). This was done rather quick and dirty, if I'd put my mind to it I could have adjusted it much more, and I'm not really satisfied, but it's there to provide a middle step.
The third is an "overlay", meaning I copypasted a photo beneath the drawing and redrew the lines that needed to change. It's not a "copy" exactly because it's still black-and-white linework, and since I started the drawing without a specific photo in mind I had to find a photo that had approximately the same angle and posture so a tiny bit of adjustment was required.

So why am I doing this? (Broadcasting my drawing failiures to the world, I mean :P) Because it's a fascinating. When I look at a familiar face I don't actually *look* at it. Neither do I really *see* it when I think of that person. When I was done with the first drawing I was rather sure it was at least decent. By the time the second drawing was done I was aware of that it lacked greatly but didn't quite know how to fix it. And then with the overlay, I can kinda see that it's him, but it looks terrible. (Although that's also because of my low drawing skills and the simplicity of the image.) The way he looks in my mind is probably somewhere between the second and third. How he really looks... I think I'm unable to see anymore. Maybe if someone knocked me on the head so I lost all memory of him. I remember clearly that I saw pictures of him long ago and paid him no attention, but over time he's grown to be the most handsome man on the planet. Clearly that doesn't have all that much to do with how the actually looks, because now when I studied him more as a visual composition - he didn't look at all like I know he does.
Is it me "filling in the blanks" with what I want to be there? I know I get the same feeling when I look at a friend or family member and really only look without seeing their face. I can think, Wow, she's really pretty or Was that how he looked?. Thinking of a person really only calls up some rough markers in my head. Hair, general body shape, general face shape, and for some people eyes. Then everyone have behavioral markers that aren't strictly looks but are effectively inseparable from their visual impact; their movement patterns, signature nervous habits, eye movements.

So beauty truly must lie in the eye of the beholder. Can a face be objectively, unemotionally beautiful? It can be structurally perfected I suppose. Symmetry and golden ratio and all that. But does that really make something we love? Beauty comes from the inside, to pull up another cliché - maybe it does in the sense that what you do creates behavioral markers that fill in the blank spaces with exactly what your watchers want to see?

If he really looked like how I see him in my head, would he even look human? Would I, if I saw him outside my head in the real world, even like what I saw? Actually, I think no. When I look closer at photos I always think it doesn't quite look like him. I think what makes him so beautiful, is all that he is that I know of, overlayed with the linework of my mind. We're all little artists like that :)

If you wanna know what he looks like on photo, just Google Jaejoong. Bother linking and shit.

The itch you can't scratch

2011-01-20T21:49:00.000+01:00

I usually say I have no nightmares, and I stand by that. Lately my dreams have been about different things, and many times I've still ran around adventure style - saving fairies, teaching kids about gardening, kissing brave, rash heroes and... burying my father. None of it has offended anyone. Or gotten them mad, or sad. Not even me. In fact, these have been the least emotional dreams of my life. I've chased off soldiers who were going to kill my friends using a bright green pump action water gun, I've infiltrated a family of cannibals by pretending to be a babysitter, and I watched a witch hoist a cat in a box up a telephone line as bait to catch the handsome prince. My friends sort of nodded in approval, the family watched me with mild amusement, and the witch just giggled at me.

But there is something. "Like the essence of evil soaked into the walls, the ground, the people, just like the sweat of many different people soaked into a changing room after dozens and dozens of years." Everything is just a little too perfect. A little too silent. Like I'm hearing through water, like I'm not really there at all, like I'm living on top of a live volcano. And it's knowing that the volcano simile is just silly, because there is something out there that's so much worse than anything I could ever possibly come up with.

That's the thing. No nightmares. Just an insane, maddening, bewildering slight discomfort. It's worse than any nightmare I've ever had or ever imagined.

An invasion of my last sacred haven, and yet another reason to not want to sleep... but I don't want to stop dreaming. Maybe that's the worst thing that could happen. To never dream again.

Ayyy Girl

2011-01-15T03:40:00.000+01:00

Been listening to that album I mentioned by JYJ over and over the past days, it grows on me. The songs that at first sound cool turn out a bit boring, and the songs that you forget in the beginning between every listen suddenly won't get off my brain - I find myself humming them every time I zone out for a second.

Music is an easy way to tap into my brain, by association. I rather like my music with a bit of visuals to it; a music video always appeals, especially since the kind of cheesy coolness generally displayed is just my taste. Music can also be a key for emotions or memories, mental or physical.

Like right now, the music video for one of the songs on the album has a typical cheesy cool dance, but there's this segment where the music is awesome but the dance is really... funny. Adorable, actually, like a stupid, happy dog. And every time that part plays, I get the sweetest of impulses to do the dance, and get invariably giggly happy.

In the same way, shouting along in my mind with the guitar-drum-chaos of a rock song can make me feel really dark and cool, or flicking my tongue over the "Dont'cha wish your girlfriend was hawt like me!" makes me the sexiest little thing in all the world.

But the giggly happy ones are the best. Closely followed by the smooth-and-suave ones.

That's how I listen to music.

And parody songs are the spawn of the devil! Bleh, I hate those... >.>

bah

2011-01-05T22:07:00.000+01:00

Internet slow. Blogging from phone also slow.
Damn ubuntu. Lost several days work. Then spent entire day reinstall bc internet slow. Then another day bc you dont install in ubuntu, you get a list of libraries that you by hard work and mercy of the internet find and install by command lines after reading up on forums how to survive w/o the ones not found. Then possibly you get a .tar, god forbid they give you a .bin, and once you figure what to do with it and all the command line arguments necessary, it still wont work bc you didnt clean out everything and start over that one time you mistyped something.
Why on earth would we give you a program where the whole thing is included and that you can just run?
Did I mention its a text editor Im trying to install?

2011-01-04T18:32:00.002+01:00

I never blog this much when my life is actually interesting because then I'm busy.

The Actress

2011-01-03T14:53:00.000+01:00

I wanna paint a picture of life and health
in pale pink and black and red;
if I stare in a mirror long enough
I'll see the picture there instead.
I wanna dance on the rooftops and float on clouds
and weigh like a feather of grace;
and if the scales show heavy numbers then
there's someone else there in my place.
I wanna be the ghost that everyone sees,
an invisible object of love;
if unattainable is the most wanted of all
then I'll be the star above.
I wanna craft my eggshell so perfectly
that even I can't see the lie;
and how empty it is inside won't be known
until it shatters - until I die.

Word Lesson 2

2010-12-30T21:10:00.000+01:00

The singular form of algae is "alga",
And a "plaintain" is a big plant similar to a banana plant, that gives plantain fruit that looks like giant green bananas, and that is food rather than dessert like the sweet normal bananas.

Just in case any of you would want to refer to a single alga. Algae have feelings too!

Splash!

2010-12-30T19:28:00.000+01:00

I keep wanting to draw comics, just short ones, but still. Some stories make better print, and some make better drawings, and some I'd suppose make better film. Since my writing has come to a standstill and I can't seem to conjure up the strength to push it forward, now my brain is yelling at me about comics and animation. Something that, if I don't have time to write, I certainly don't have time for :P

I feel like a magicarp splashing around on land :< so much potential, so little time (before I suffocate and die from not being in the water :P)

Recently read a discussion about pokémon, where they talked about the "fainting" concept. Most people, it appeared, like I, never paid any attention to the word "faint" and saw it more like they died and were resurrected. I for one always thought of it as "aw crap I killed it" when you knock out a wild one and thus can't capture it. (It kinda makes no sense that because you knocked it out, you now can't keep it... O.o Do they get teleported away into crystal stasis whenever they lose consciousness? Ooooh nobody will get that reference xD the geekiness!) I imagine they called it fainting because it's a kids' game, but if all the kids imagine them dying anyway... Think people are a bit too careful with these things; it's electronic imaginary monsters, ffs.

She's a killer whale, gunpowder, ginger ale

2010-12-28T16:52:00.000+01:00

I'm playing puzzle games to spend time, which incidentally also teaches me new words of the English language, since I've made a point of looking up those I find. At least for a few minutes, because I've already forgotten most of the words I learned yesterday. Well, I'll know them if I read them. The one I remember is "roe" which is a collection of fish eggs or sperm. For whatever reason I should know that word >.>

Today I learned what a "porpoise" is. Either you can see it here, or you can let me explain; it's a kind of small whale that looks like dolphins except they're shorter, stouter and don't have the long nose. They kinda looks like the bastard dwarf children of a dolphin and a killer whale. I think they're much cuter than dolphins. Killer whales/orcas can also be called "blackfish", apparantly, which... I dunno, it sounds a bit... plain. I like "orca". I heard a story when I was a kid where they were sort of "holy animals", and "orca" sounds like something like that. A mythical creature.

Porpoises live in small "herds" of less than ten, and you call these herds "pods". So you'd go; "There's a pod of porpoises at the harbor" which is such an awesome sentence that I think porpoises are my new favoritest animal.

If you're wondering about the header for last post, it's because I was talking to Nallenon, and I said I don't want to write too long blogposts and he said why (sometimes I think the Nallenon-"why" is less out of actual questioning and more a conditioned response to any declarative statement) and I said it's because I have no grasp of how slow/fast people read and I don't want to occupy their entire day. I can tell when I read like an article over someone's shoulder that I tend to finish faster than most, but how fast people normally read... nooo clue. So, uh, I hope I'm not writing too long. Tell me if I do.

How Long Does It Take You To Read This?

2010-12-27T21:50:00.000+01:00

You know what Hollywood has ruined for me? Aside from sensible beauty standards, gender roles, social life... actually intelligence, good stories, evil endings, sensibility and temperance... I'm off track, I'll try again.

You know what Hollywood has ruined for me? Nudity in movies. Whenever I see a movie that has good enough camera work and sound to not be some kid's wet dream from a garage, and there's someone naked in there, I jump as if someone threw a bucket of water in my face. "She's naked! She can't be naked, what is this, someone call... the cops, call a lawyer, call Bush! Now!"

If you're wondering what movie has nakedness, it's Macbeth from 2006. In Australia, naked women aren't a horror and sin against God. They're also redheads and have cool tattoos. Going a bit off track here again...

I happened upon it because I was looking up Sam Worthington because I watched Clash of the Titans (Sorry to interrupt, but why the hell is it named that? It makes less sense than Japanese anime naming O.o) because I was looking up Mads Mikkelsen (I just have to interject that, don't see this movie because of him, cuz his part sucks... actually the whole movie kinda sucks... the only reason to watch it really is for the actors, and in that case they all have better works...) because I watched King Arthur because I was looking up Joel Edgerton because I saw someone in something on tv who almost looked like him but it wasn't.

Joel Edgerton makes a hawt Gawain. Sorry, but somebody had to say it. Mads Mikkelsen makes a hawt Tristram as well. Then put them both on horses. And Keira Knightly in camo paint and leather straps stepping out of the forest mist. Mmmmm. Off track! Off track again!

Incidentally, I thought about how little that movie, King Arthur, makes any sense with the other legends like Tristram and Isolde or the Holy Grail. Not that any of that makes any sense to begin with. But it's fun to try and imagine those stories with these characters.

A static pattern of infinite variation

2010-12-25T15:39:00.000+01:00

Christmas day and lazily watching television. Something sciency. I was paying half attention while carefully dissecting a chocolate Santa. They were talking about chaos. The idea that began with/spawned the saying about the butterfly and the tornado. I was thinking, boring, idiots, how couldn't you see? I've known, somewhere deep inside, always. The tiny details that tip the scales, creates tidal waves, that somehow fit into a greater pattern that yet still cannot predict the wave. I got interested at first because it amazed me that generations of great mathematicians seemed to have been baffled at the realization. The idea that chaos in the general sense is something that doesn't truly exist; it's simply another form of order.

But as they went on...

Not even nature can keep track of all the details. Micromanaging has never been the way to win a war. It's about initiating very simple patterns, that will lay the land for the winning strike, although you can never be sure when or how it will happen. Like a tree that repeats itself, smaller and smaller into branches, like our blood vessels, like river streams. Suddenly I saw the connection from math - to fractals - to nature - to the patterns of humanity and the world - back to the math that we spawned because of it. Feedback; an infinite, clever loop based on a very simple concept. A single pulse of the bat sonar, and another shard of clarity taken away from it.

Perhaps there is no need to know the details, perhaps no need to understand the small things, only to know the simple premises and how they build on each other? A difficult thing for me to accept, because it turns my beliefs about science upside down. Is it possible for humanity to understand the world we live in? An hour ago I would have said no, never, absolutely not. But maybe understanding it does not mean to know exactly where lightning will strike; rather to know the premises under which lightning will surely strike - sometime, somewhere.

It strikes me that it might be what my knowledge of people builds upon. As I get to know a person, a simple equation takes shape that will explain all behavior - but not predict it. I have always known that I'll never be able to predict. Too many small variables for a human brain to compute, probably also for a supercomputer. Bigger patterns of behavior are much easier to predict, but the actions of a single individual may also change the course of that behavior so drastically that predictions will always be just predictions; guesses.

Perhaps I even believe in evolution now, although that's a bit trickier. It means progress requires small mutations in all systems, which again removes the capacity to ever understand anything, because the tiniest change in the premise of the pattern can drastically change the outcome. Butterfly and all that.

Which brings me back to the idea that a system in motion, one that contains living, growing, evolving things can never be accurately understood or described, especially not by those inside of it.

Fractals have taken us closer to a math of nature than I previously understood. But can humanity ever understand everything? No, never, absolutely not.

But clearly there are underlaying, static patters that create a world of infinite variation. Can those be found and understood? Maybe. Maybe.

Today's theme: hopeful.

2010-12-03T17:10:00.000+01:00

Today I am back in sync with my planning and my master plans.
d=(^_^)=b
And I have a new hat. Since *someone* stole mine. Rocks.

Under Attack

2010-12-01T16:00:00.000+01:00

Big fucking tractor clearing away the snow at 3AM this morning, and as if the noise and the vibrations in the floor weren't enough, it also has a bright orange light going round round.

Sleepy and confused, I woke up by a very, very loud bang and my room filled with orange light. My head, known to make leaps at times, immediately yelled at the top of it's lungs "EMP!". If I had any tendencies towards talking in my sleep I would have actually shouted it out; it was so loud that I thought someone else had actually yelled it from somewhere outside.

I froze in place like a scared rabbit and waited for my blurry vision to clear. I was fighting with myself about whether to hide under the bed or go check if my roomie was alive and well. A few seconds later though, probably when my low blood pressure managed to get a few drops up to my brain, two creeping realizations slowly fought their way into my consciousness; 1) my vision was blurry because I wasn't wearing glasses, and 2) everywhere I'd ever seen EMP's mentioned, the light had been blue, not orange. Fishy.

I needed to go to the bathroom so I got up and opened the door, but my roomie was in the bathroom. Good, because then she was safe, so I closed the door and went back to bed. That's when the tractor continued it's work and I realized that A) tractor; so probably not black-camoed soldiers coming to crash through my window and B) well... why the hell would anyone do any of the things I had imagined to me, this city or this country.

Then the tractor went on working and kept me awake for almost an hour :< if it'd been an EMP at least hopefully he'd stopped.