The Other World

I saw this challenge to list five songs a long time ago so I can't blame anyone in particular for filling the blog with what, I am sure, everyone finds absolutely and thoroughly interesting. But the five songs currently above the surface of my twisted mind (not in a value order, just listing them as they come along):

1. 'B.Y.O.B.' by System of A Down - one of my all-time SOAD songs, though 'Chop Suye!' and 'Question' come close. I've been listening to 'Mesmerize' in general a lot lately. One of the funny incidents was when I couldn't sleep and I ended up knitting a small scarf for my cousin and listening to 'Mesmerize' (and singing along, of course). I suppose this falls under the same category as wearing a Children of Bodom shirt and singing Roxette. =)

2. 'Listen to Your Heart' by Roxette. It (or, one of its club versions, at least) is in the forthcoming BodyPump tracklist. Tried the first six tracks of the new programme and... my major muscles are aching. Cycling isn't much fun. Or sitting down. Or standing up. Or moving my legs or my arms too high... ah well, leaves the way it came.

3. 'Senzafine' and 'Without Fear' and 'Comalies' by Lacuna Coil. It great having a perfect permission to spend my time listening to Lacuna Coil songs, especially the ones sung in Italian now that I'm studying Italian!

4. 'Our Solemn Hour' by Within Temptation. The lyrics fit perfectly to my current not-too-world-loving mood.

5. The whole album of 'Consequences of Disobedience' by Velcra, especially the songs 'Solar Red', 'Can't Stop Fighting' and 'Test Animals'. COD has been on my personal Top 10 list of the best albums I've ever listened to since I first heard it and has stayed there ever since.

Thanks to millikan and Rokkihomo for giving me these nice, little and completely useless tests to kill time before my Italian lectures!

The Animal Quiz (http://bluepyramid.org/ia/aquiz.htm):

"You're a Komodo Dragon! [ed. note: I'm a dragon!!! YAY!!!] While many people like to talk about running off to be the vicious dictator of a small distant island, you feel you have more potential to follow through on this plan than anyone. Big, strong, muscular, and a teensy bit vindictive [a lot vindictive, actually...], you feel you could overpower anyone who tried to question your authority. When not taking over the world, island by island, you enjoy sunning yourself on the beach. You have an absurdly long [and poisonous] tongue."

The Book Quiz (http://bluepyramid.org/ia/bquiz.htm):

"You're Inherit the Wind' by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee! To you, the learning process is inherently about controversy. If people aren't having their minds stretched, how could they possibly be learning? This makes you a good but unpopular teacher, and the people around you are ready to make it a federal case. All you're asking them to do is evolve a little. But they would like you to be more creative. You would make an excellent lawyer, even though people think you love monkeys."

The Country Test (http://bluepyramid.org/ia/cquiz.htm):

"You're China! [a questionable honour...]
Big and powerful, you have a long history behind you with more good and bad than you care to remember, or are really capable of remembering. Lately, in older age, you've gotten sort of crochety and even mean-spirited. There is still a lot that's beautiful about you, but most of the focus people have when they think about you is how hard it is to work with you. There's hope that you might start opening up to people, but lots of people have bumper stickers about how much you should change."

And some extra of my own...

The Women World Leaders Quiz (http://bluepyramid.org/wwlquiz/):

You're Aung San Suu Kyi! What happens to a dream deferred? You've had to live the answer to that question for years, constantly hoping that your efforts will be rewarded and you will be granted what you've earned. Until that time, you remain faithful to your means and principles, and to the desire to tell people your incredible story. Inspired by those who use nonviolence to gain strength, you have made yourself an unassailable thorn in the side of those in power. You've been seeing a lot of your home lately."

Hmm.. I thought I'd be Benazir Bhutto...

We are currently having a course on popular culture texts. In the discussion forum we are debating on romance fiction and the following question was presented: "why should romance fiction be realistic?"

I was supposed to go on about saying how close to actual reality romance fiction is and why it is therefore important that it should have some responsibility on it's stories but I realised something very disturbing: I am partially behaving like a man when I assume that women in general need protection and that they (as in straight women) cannot tell stand up for themselves in real life.

I have to pay attention to this kind of thought pattern closely in the future!

I was cheating and looking for a listing of all locations of the minikit pieces of Lego Satr Wars I and came across with the following sentences for the episode "The Battle over Coruscant":

Everything is on the main path. Just shoot them or fly into them to get them. If you miss one, just kill yourself and try again.

The last sentence kind of represents the whole view humans tend to have on death in general, don't you think.

My mother has a boyfriend.

She and my siblings were visiting me last Wednesday and we ended up having dinner in a restaurant and then going shopping. In the middle of fitting white stilletto boots my mother blurped out something about a previously unknown person, P. The sentence did -if I recall correctly- insinuate some romantic relationsip but the problem was that there's a family acquintance who has the same name and who is engaged. So obviously I thought my mother was talking about him. I'm sure my expression pointed that out right away because the next moment my mother said it's not him but someone else. When my siblings returned to the shoeshop I right away asked them if they knew of this (yes) and how long (long before me) and who is this guy anyway. Apparently he is a 55-year-old LVI-guy who was divorced nine years ago and has two daughters. I don't know how old they are. I don't know how my mother met him and how ling this has been going on (I believe the timescale is in months). My sister hasn't seen him. My brother (who lives with our mother) said that Mother had one day asked him how he would feel if she dated someone and a couple of hours later he had walked in. It would also appear that -according to my siblings who are far more trustworthy about this- Mother is acting like a bloody teenager and like WE were her parents, not the other way around! She tries to sneek in to her bedroom giggling in the cell phone, and won't have anyone drive her in front of P's house when they meet.

I'm not sure what to think about this. Okay, I did acknowledge the possibility -an likelihood- of this a year ago already but I didn't have a very thorough philosophising then. Now I would like to have a long list of hard facts of this guy. Like my sister pointed out to Mother, when we do meet P, he is going to have to sit through a long cross examination if Mother doesn't tell us anything herself. Yesterday I came to a conclusion how to treat P if I do meet him. He will not be my step-father. Even if they did get married (hey, anything's possible; Buh was re-elected despite of everything!) he will be just someone who is a lot to do with my family but who is not related to me. He'll just be another stranger, male, and therefore gets exactly the same bitchy treatment from me. After all, it's my mother he courts, not me.

I've been wondering what the daughters are like, what they think about this. But I suppose if their parents divorced nine years ago, they've probably faced this "Dad has a girlfriend" situation before. What if one of the daughters is a sexy lesbian? Ooo... Baaaaaad, Splenetic, baaaaad!!! But it wouldn't be really incest since we're not related.

Can you compete with thy beloved Splenetic, aka. Vesper?

http://ww12.freearcade.com/Fillit.jav/Fillit.html?s=highscore

My current high score (which at the present time also ranks me the top player of the game worldwide) is 139,510 points, successfully ending the tenth -and last- level.

A week ago:

My bed broke. I was turning to my other side when all of a sudden I hear s breaking sound and two metallic clangs as the two supporting "sticks" underneath the bed's centre pole hit the floor. Then I went to the place I got the bed from. They said they would see if there would be spare parts for me to fix it. They called me later the same day they have a forty euro token waiting for me there.

Today:

I call the place to ask whether the spareparts have been discovered. I get a reply telling me the forty euro token I got is not an extra for my having to go down there but as a replacement as they have no spare parts to give me (this they didn't say). So, I had to clarify it with a question: "So I have a 40 euro token and a bed I cannot sleep in?" "Well... yes." "And how exactly do this two meet?" *silence* "What if we forget the token and you see if I can get another bed? Because I'm getting tired of sleeping on the floor and having a double bed which takes about half of my room floor as a mere decoration."

Pissed...!

A sequel to the previous entry - I got another reply from E. Here's approximately what I will send him back, altough I think I may have to ..hmm.. revise the general tone of the letter.

"Your intelligence to me is part of the build up to my attraction towards you, and no friendship exists without an attraction, so it is an addition to your body structure which I like, right!"

This isn't happening... fuck this... And since when has the appearance of a friend become a criterion to be friends with them?

"Yes, I see you understood the euphemism ("union of opposite sex") I used in my lines to you. I think the two places I have some fears with you are on this, (sex) and on your inability to trust yourself in finding a worthy friend in the opposite sex, and this makes us differ."

You really think it makes us differ? No shit! I would have never guessed in a million years. Wow... Have you not been listening to a single word I've said?! I am not incapable of trusting myself in finding a worthy friend of the opposite sex; I am capable of being reasonable enough NOT to trust people of the opposite sex as -and pay attention, here comes the important part- they are not worthy of trust!!! That includes you!

"Well, if you deem it fit, you may think twice about your stand on men. I still like you, both as my girl friend, and beyond that, if we make a good match."

No, I don't "deem it fit" and I don't know where the hell you've gotten the idea I might "deem it fit". And I will think twice my stand on men the second they start acting like civilised human beings, not some fucking hormone and ego-ridden legs for their even more hormone and ego-ridden penises!

I'm beginning to like you less by the second. I will not hang around anyone who thinks it is even remotely possible that I might become *his* girlfriend and have any physical contact with him! It is probably unnecessary to spell this out but I'm going to do so in order to avoid *any* misunderstandings: we don't make a good match! You want to change me into a fuckable housing and cooking machine/baby factory/boxing bag. And because of that I would like to kill you and your kind.

It is best we stop writing and seeking each other's company. If (and most likely when) we see each other at the university or somewhere around town, we'll just say hello. That's all from now on.

I wish you good luck with your thesis. I suppose I should say ''hopefully you'll find another 'friend' who thinks more the way you do than I possibly ever can'' but I don't do lying, especially since in this case it would mean losing another woman to your patriarchal and deceitful world.

Have a nice life!

A while ago I ended up having an argument within five minutes of meeting him (which I wrote about on the 13th of September). Anyway, I sent him an e-mail in which I had listed all the books that would probably explain him why I think the way I do, since that puzzled him so much. Today I reaad the reply.

First he said I have some qualities (intelliigence and logic) he likes. But what made me burst out laughing with my eyes open thinking if I do live in a backwards world was this: "More so, you have a kind of physic I most enjoy in women." Can you believe it?! What??!! I mean what the hell... since when have I had with my overweight "the physic" anyone enjoys??? This is just absurd! Right now I'm glad we are currently communicating through e-mail because for once someone else than my mother has said something that has made me speechless. I suppose what E said is supposed to be a compliment but... this is what follows: "But I am afraid you said you don't like men, and you wouldn't want to have anything doing with a man, especially one who enjoys the union of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, I enjoy great romance in a relationship." YACK!!! Extra emphasis on the syllable 'yack'! *shivers* Disgusting... Straight sex is... eww... That is so gross!

My father has not died after all. In fact, there are two of them looking exactly alike: the other represents what I thought was good in him and the other all that was bad (drunk, violence, betrayal etc.). The good dies; I see the back of his head which looks like a boiled egg that's been hit: otherwise round but cracked and oozing something (in this case, blood) in the round place.

I wake up. After three hours of playing Minesweeper and finishing a book (from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m.), I fall back asleep:

My father isn't dead. We are driving in a car towards something. My father is driving, and there are me, my mother, possibly my sister and/or my brother and my young cousin. The girl is sitting on my lap, pointing enthusiastically out of the window at different things outside. It makes me smile. We stop somewhere. I see my father buying a gun. I tell my mother we should do something, that he can't possibly be given a gun, him being an alcoholic with a short temper. My mother acknowledges my worry but tells me to be quiet; she seems to think (as in real life) that if you don't talk about it, it's not real. My father comes back and we continue driving like nothing's out of ordinary. We stop again. All of us apart from my father go inside what appears to be a cloth shop or something similar. I am standing near the doorway with my cousin, the rest are further back. Suddenly my father appears in the doorway carrying to handguns. He starts shooting at me. My cousin is no longer there, so I duck under a table near of which I was standing. My father ducks too, and keeps shooting at me. As I realise that it doesn't matter whether or not I get up, that I will die, everything seems to slow down: the bullets that are coming at me and my own movement. I look at my father in the eyes: he's grinning and his eyes seem to be filled with hatred towards me. And I wonder why he hates me of all his children so much. I can see my own body: my pale face and the the wounds, especally the one in my head, near my hairline, and my own open eyes.

I don't like these dreams at all. They make me uncomfortable.