Things I’ll do once I die

When I become a ghost, which is definitely on my list of things to do (towards the bottom, right between dieing and watching Elvis eat a peanutbutter sandwich), I’m not going to be like one of those idiot spirits on TV-shows like “The ghost whisperer”.

Say that I want to find a man named Elmer. I wouldn’t go around leaving dumbass messages such as “search for the man with the tiny nostrils” or “find the bloke with the missing pinkie.” No. I would get myself a permanent magic marker (I figure that when you’re a ghost, you can just walk, or float or whatever it is that ghosts do, into a store and nick one) and write the fellow’s full name and address on the wall of whoever was lucky enough to be haunted by me. Not only that, I would also include telephone numbers, because unlike all the moronic phantoms on TV, I would have the intelligence to look him up in the phone book. Honestly, if you can make lightbulbs explode and things move by themselves, you can open up a damn phonebook. If possible, I would also draw a tidy little map of how to get to Elmer’s house.

Another thing you won’t see me doing when I become a ghost, is floating around hallways and such at night, looking depressed. I’m going to enjoy myself, I am. If I get hungry – although I’m not sure what a spectres metabolism might be like – I’ll just swoosh on down to the nearest supermarket and pick out whatever I want. I also figure that ghosts can eat whatever they want to, without gaining any weight at all. If I feel like reading something, I’ll go to the bookstore and get it. All in all, the possibilities are endless. These activities would probably have to take place at night, though. After all, I wouldn’t want anyone to get too freaked out and decide to exorcise me. That would be very unpractical. Besides, the idea of someone showing a cross into my face and shouting stuff like “I expel thee,” gives me the creeps (the first time I saw that movie, I was sure he said "propell" rather than "expel". Made for an interesting scene).

I’d also like to find myself a nice mansion or a castle to haunt. Something with lots of room for me to hover, drift and glide to my hearts content. Perhaps something by the seaside.

I won’t be the most law-abiding poltergeist around, but I’m sure that if I continue to be a good girl in life, my conscience won’t be too bothered with it. Besides, it’s not as if they can arrest me, now is it?

Ghostpic by Merlinprincess for www.Flickr.com

Castlepic by SteuveFE for www.Flickr.com

Grocery shopping and the seagull-head

I believe in the unconscious, but I have to say that I prefer the conscious. They pay more attention, if you know what I mean. The cashier at the grocery store on Saturday, for example? She was unconscious.

A friend and I decided to put together a taco pizza, so off we went to the grocery store, happily picturing our soon to be meal in our heads. When you have friends over to cook, eating while you’re cooking is part of the fun, so we picked up a bunch of snacks, as well. Pretty soon, our shiny wagon was filled to the point of almost bursting with all sorts of figure-ruining things.

We balanced the overstuffed wagon between the isles and towards the checkout line, still eager to sink our teeth into its content. Operating the cash machine, a bit like a seagull picking on a dead fish, was a teenaged girl with black mascara smeared underneath her eyes which in turn were almost hidden under dishwater blonde hair.

Every pin-code she fed into the registry was acknowledged by a short *beep*, as it should be, with a few exceptions. The first was my see-through bag of rolls.

“How many?” asked racoon-girl and held it up in the air.
“I forget,” I said. “Count them, dumbass,” my inner voice added.
It turned out to be five, and I can understand that she needed to ask. Five is, after all, a difficult number.

A couple more beeps later, she picks up yet another bag. Paper, this time.
“What’s in here?” she asked. The word "Figs" were written on it in capital letters just above a picture of… Guess what! Figs. Also, it was partly transparent, so that you could clearly see the content, which matched the picture perfectly. At this point, I felt like saying something rude. However, my friend cut in, answering the girls question. My inner voice did have some things to say, of course, but I won’t repeat them here.

Then came the small can of corn which I found sitting by itself on a shelf with all the other canned goods. The registry refused to beep at it. Simply refused. As the girl fixed her gaze at me once more, I could feel my patience packing up its stuff and making a run for it. I wondered how she’d react if I were to reach across the counter and slap her.

“Was this part of a pack of three?” she asked. I answered (surprised at how patient and polite I sounded) that I really didn’t know. It had been sitting on the shelf by itself. The seagull reached under the counter to ring a buzzer. Then we waited (and waited, and waited) until the store manager turned up. Mascara-face asked her about the can of corn, and she went off to check. When she returned, she smiled and explained to me that “this particular can came from a pack of three such cans which cost so-and-so, blablabla, so that a single can would cost me this much”. As if I gave a damn. I smiled politely, and said thank you. My inner voice used much more colourful phrasings.

After what seemed like a small eternity, our groceries were finally paid for and we were given one – one – bag to pack them into. You know that trick that they do in circuses where they see how many clowns they can stuff into a mini? It was a bit like that. And there was no way that we could fit all of our clowns into that tiny, little bag. We tried asking seagull-head for another bag, but she overheard us. So we were forced to get creative, stuffing groceries into our handbags and pockets.

I hate doing my grocery shopping in Hellhole…


Pic by Wallula Junction for www.Flickr.com

Reinventing celebrity

Hollywood is a weird place. It’s even weirder than Hellhole, although not by much. They say that there aren’t true stars anymore. Not like in the old days, with Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant. Those who are famous today, have been predicted to disappear from our memories in not very long, only to be replaced by someone prettier and skinnier, who will, in turn, be replaced by someone even more so, and so on and so forth.

But who is to say that our heroes of today will be gone tomorrow? I’ve been thinking about this lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably not true. After all, the average Hollywood megastar has had so much work done, the largest organ in their bodies is… well… plastic.

And what happens to plastic once it’s no longer useful for its current purpose? It’s recycled, that’s what happens. They melt it down and turn it into buttons or soda bottles or fleece jackets or those block-things that you build basements with.

A few years from now, you might be able to keep your shirt closed, and thereby your dignity intact, thanks to whatever part of Michael Jackson’s nose that didn’t rot off. Or how about taking a sip of Cola from what used to be bits and pieces of Pamela Anderson. Especially the bits.
And just imagine taking that arrogant, looking-down-his-nose-at-you neighbour to have a look at your newly decorated den in the basement. All you have to do is lean up against the fireplace (there has got to be a fireplace, obviously), make a small handgesture and utter the words: “all Cher.” That’ll teach him.

Actually, with Cher you could probably have a fancy den, all the fizzy drinks you could handle and enough fleece jackets to last you a lifetime – with buttons.

Marilyn Monroe pic by Coda for www.Flickr.com

Broken Barbie pic by Wiseacre photo for www.Flickr.com

Return of the Über-Stink

"The following entry contains moments of scatological information, which might not be suitable to all readers. Reader discretion is adviced."*
Do you remember when I told you about the smell? The one in the bathroom that doesn’t seem to be coming from anywhere? For a while, I thought I knew where it lived, but I was wrong. Finding it is becoming vital. Up till now, it’s simply been irritating for periods of time. But On Tuesday it tried to murder me.

I came home early that day, far to exhausted from lack of sleep to go through any more classes. Luck, more than hand-eye coordination, helped me stick the key into the keyhole and turn it. As the door slowly opened, and the dog came bounding through (eager to pee on the bushes and sniff along the fence), I could sense that there was something wrong. A quick whiff of the hallway air confirmed my suspicions. It was back. And it was angry.

I stood motionless in the hallway, staring through the kitchen at the bathroom door, which now seemed to bulge out between the oven and the cupboard. Although I wanted to go in there almost as badly as I wanted to shove hot pokers up my nose, a perverse side of me needed to. As soon as I did, it attacked. It was like walking into a wall of indescribable stink. The kind of stink that forces you to make little whimpering sounds every time you inhale it.

Later that day, my mum wondered out loud if it could be a sewage leak in a pipe under the floor, and from that very moment, the smell took on a distinct poopy character, which I hope is all in my head. The plumbing-company didn’t have anyone to send over that day, but I’m supposed to call them back once The Mother Of All Stinks decides to attack again. Then they’ll send someone over to “sniff out the problem”, and act for which they will have earned a medal of honour. With the luck I’ve been having lately, it probably will be a sewage leak, and they’ll have to rip up the floorboards. That way, I’ll have a hole in the floor with sewage in it. A Bulgarian toilet, basically.

I once went to Bulgaria. It's a nice place. Their fried chicken is excellent. Their toilets I can do without.

* Warning included after a suggestion by Jazz

I'm off to see the wizard

Right now, as I’m writing this, there’s a power shortage, which makes owning a laptop very practical. I was minding my own business, when a storm came out of nowhere and blew all of my electricity and the phoneline away. By now, they’re probably in Oz, skipping up and down the yellow brick road.

Outside, it’s raining sideways and the trees, usually upright, are making brave efforts to lie along the ground.

Luckily, my stepmother is in the business of burying people. Once they’re dead, anyway. What's that? Can't see the connection? Well, you see, for this purpose, they use a whole bunch of white candles. Now, the thing is, that an average candle burns for… oh… let’s say somewhere between 10-24 hours. And you can’t very well use the same candle twice, now, can you? No, you can’t. Whoever is reclining in the coffin probably won’t mind, but their friends and relatives may not approve. Also, you can’t draw out a funeral to last for hours on end because at some point, the guest of honour will start to go stale. Therefore, they dropped off tons of candle stubs here a while back. When you light them all, it’s quite cosy. As long as you don’t think to hard about what they were really meant for, anyway.

I am also making my best efforts not to burn the house down in the process. I’m pretty sure that burning a house down is much easier than it sounds. Most things, especially accidents, are. Last week, for example, when I was going to step off the bus, I somehow misjudged the width of the bottom step (or perhaps it was the size of my foot) and landed on the concrete sidewalk with a loud thud. Easy. The driver and an old woman, who happened to be passing by, didn’t seem to realize just how completely straightforward and uncomplicated such an occurrence is. They were both very surprised. The little, old lady was even ready to accept the guilt for my unscheduled flight, thinking that she had startled me as she came wobbling down the sidewalk with her squeaky walker.

A side effect of such a power shortage, I’ve discovered, is sleepiness. Something about the candlelight makes me want to curl up in the foetal position and drift off into dreamland. Or maybe I’ll go to Oz and see what my electricity is getting up to.

Pic by Bialy-Fox for www.flickr.com

The snow and I

Saturday was the first day of snow this year. I was standing in the kitchen early in the morning, when I glanced out of the window, and say huge, white snowflakes zigzagging down from the sky.

For a few seconds, I just stood there and stared at it, in disbelief. However late in the year the snow decides to turn up, I always react with amazement. And then the bubbles start. From the bottom of my tummy, at first, then they travel upwards, until they reach my brain where they promptly ring the snowbell. “Snow!” my brain shouts. “Snow, snow, snowsnowsnowsnowsnow!!!”

Once all that is done, I have to run out into the yard, so that I can catch flakes with my tongue. I even caught a few with my eyeballs, actually. Having a snowflake melt on your eyeball, is a very strange sensation, by the way. I also took the dog for a long walk. Before I went, I considered bringing an umbrella, but decided against it. You see, although the ultimate outcome of walking in the snow might be the same as walking in the rain (wet), the process is completely different. Therefore, I decided that I didn’t need the umbrella.

On the first snowday, I always get lots of stuff done. I don’t know why. I think time works differently when everything is covered with snow. And everything goes completely quiet. Snowquiet is like lots of quiets stacked on top of each other.

I wrote lots and spent the rest of the day in a comfy chair with my aforementioned strawberry milk and a book. Every now and then, I’d glance out the window, the bubbles would rise upwards again, ringing the snowbell, and my brain would go “snowsnowsnowsnowsnow!!!”

If it keeps on snowing, this state of mind usually last for about a week. After that first seven day period, it starts to look as if I might have to move the stuff around. I then stop referring to the snow as “the snow” and start referring to it as “the crap”. Also, the ultimate outcome of being out in the snow (wet) becomes much more important than the process.

My general feeling of grumpiness will continue to grow until it’s almost Christmas, at which point it will be replaced with more bubbles and an almost frightening enthusiasm for anything Christmasish. This also lasts for about a week. Afterwards, we’re back to general grumpiness until the snow (now referred to as “the crap”) starts to melt.

And there you have it – the next six months of my life, pretty much mapped out.

Pic by Iguana Jo for www.flickr.com

The strawberry demon

It all started on Thursday, really. At the store. I was hungry, and you shouldn’t shop for groceries when you’re hungry, I’m completely aware of that, but it fitted into my schedule so perfectly. The store is right across the street from the station, where my buss stops. Otherwise, I’d have to go to the marked in Hellhole, which is all the way on the other side of the river. Granted, it’s not far, and it’s not as if I’d have to swim across, or anything, but still… It would have been Out Of My Way. That’s right: with capital letters.

So there I was, drifting up and down between the isles, with my stomach making all sorts of suggestions about what I should put in my little, blue basket. Most of which, I ignored.

All of a sudden, something caught my eye. It wasn’t prominently placed in any way, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that it was bright pink and placed right in between several large bags of white stuff, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

It was strawberry milk powder.

Pensive, I picked it up. After having looked at it for a while, studied both sides of the packet and weighed it in my hand, I put it in my shopping basket along with the eggs, bread and a carton of milk.

Half and hour later I was home, feeling completely exhausted. It had already started to get dark outside. Wanting to relax, I stuck a DVD into the machine and made myself a tall glass of strawberry milk. It was pink, and although I’m not a huge fan of pink, it looked nice. And it tasted nice. And then I drank more. And more. And by Friday night, the milk was gone… But there was still more powder left. Lots of it. Potential strawberry goodness just waiting to be completed.

On Saturday, it started to snow. “I don’t want to go to the store today,” I though. After all, the only thing that I was out of, was milk. But at the same time, there was a little, nagging voice inside my head. That voice wanted more of the strawberry stuff. Eventually, I gave in. By then, the snowflakes from earlier that morning, had grown and were now more balls then they were flakes.

I put on boots, my coat, a scarf and my new gloves and headed towards the bridge, while my mind was playing with pictures of pink liquid in tall glasses. Every time I walked underneath a tree or a lamppost, they would drop cold, wet lumps of snow on my head, but I just kept right on walking. Why? Because I had a goal, dammit.

Over the weekend I gobbled up enough milk to dry up a full-grown cow.

Today I think I’m over the worst of it. A slight feeling of nausea has begun to tickle the back of my throat when I look at that brightly coloured pink packet in my cupboard. I will beat this demon. Yes, I will.



Strawberry pic by Social Advances for Flickr.com
Snowflake pic by Captpiper for Flickr.com

The evil in its eyes...

Ever seen that Hitchock (or however you spell that) movie "the birds"? It had lots of different types of birds, but I can't remember seeing any swans there. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it is that the swans are the ones you need to look out for.

I first started to suspect this when I was walking the dog one cold winter night. There's this lovely path along the river that we use sometimes. During the whole walk, I kept hearing little sounds behind me, but everytime I turned around they were gone, and there was nothing there. But after a while, I saw something moving out in the water. Right there, in the middle of the river, with it's eyes fixed directly on me, was a huge, white swan. It looked evil.

After that, it kept happening every time we walked along the river path. The swan would turn up and follow us, all the while it was staring at us, but it never once came out of the water.

Then, it was just before christmas (during that mild period we always have a few days before christmas eve, when everyone worries that we're not going to get any snow this year), we met a man. He was out walking all alone. He smiled and nodded at us. Said something along the lines of "what a pjutty woggie" (to the dog, not me) as he walked by. Then there was a mighty splash and an even mightier scream. I turned around to see the woggie-man run for his life with the swan coming after him, hissing like a snake. Never before have I seen a swan move like that.

I still walk on the river path every now and then. It's pretty. But the swan is always there. And I always bring my dog.

Picture by Chris Sainsbury

Meet Mr. Philosophy!

As I may or may not have mentioned, I enrolled in a class in idéa history this semester, just for the hell of it (which, after three years of studying for a degree in science, is kinda like visiting the Twilight Zone).

Our professor this semester, is a philosopher and a bit of an oddball. A very clever oddball, but an oddball nevertheless. He's... *insert drumroll here*... Mr. Philosophy.

Mr. Philosophy has managed the feat that it undoubtedly is to combine the look of a somewhat posh, upper westside (why are the fancy places always up and westwards?) professor with that of an old, english sheepdog. His head and shoulders always enter the room before the rest of him does, because he bends forwards a bit when he walks, as if he's contemplating charging through a wall like a mad rhino, or something. At least that's what he'd look like if he didn't always have the smily-little-boy-on-christmas-eve-expression in his face.

When he's made his way into an auditorium, however, the posture changes. Now, the pelvis is tilted forwards, while the torso sort of slumps backwards. The smily-christmas-face is constant, though, and, as he gets excited about what he's lecturing, his arms start to move around in circles, and he begins to jump in place, as if he had little springs in his knees. Then he actually looks a bit like a skiing-instructor I saw on TV once upon a time.

And that pretty much sums up what I got out of my class today.

Head-implosion

I'm bored. I'm very, very, terribly, horribly, excruciatingly bored. In fact, I’m so bored, that I feel as if my brain is imploding inside my skull. It’s the kind of boredom that I usually reserve for my late classes, but here it is. On my day off, damn it.
I thought I might entertain myself by looking out of the windows (it seems to work really well for the dog), but it’s so foggy out, you can’t see a thing.

Something scary happened this morning, though… I got up (and okay, since it was my day off, it wasn’t really quite morning anymore), only to discover that there was only one, single warm degree outside. And a Celsius degree, at that.

C.O.L.D

I actually went into the woodshed to find wood. Why? So that I could stack it in the fireplace. Why? So that I could set it on fire. Why? Because it was that cold. Of course, as soon as I got back inside and had made a nice pile out of it, the sun came up. I also discovered that there's a small hole in the door of the woodshed. Apparently the neighbours cats are convinced that it leads into some sort of kitty toilet. Or maybe they reached that decision by default, I dunno. The happy toilet-days of summer are over now, though.

(Pic by Richard Winchell for www.Flickr.com)

Bah, humbug!

I woke up today with a major, throbbing ouch(!!!) in my left arm. I figure that it stems from either sitting by the computer for hours on end, trying to finish the first draft of my termpaper on time, or it's the longest, most drawn-out heartattack in medical history...
There's nothing like a little surge of pain to make you really, truly grumpy in the morning. But being the industrious student *cough* that I am, I puttered off to my classes, after all.

An hour into my final class, the grumpyness returned with full force. I came to the decision that I had to get out of there or projectile vomit straight across the auditorium. The last option probably would have had some sort of negative consequenses, so I opted for running away. Or at the very least, walking very quickly.

And after spending all day being babbled at, I'm going to go take a painkiller, watch TV and feel sorry for myself.

Mature adult? Me? Neeeeh

I've come to the conclusion that, in many ways, I'm still the exact same person that I was when I was about five years old. Granted, there are some external changes, such as the fact that I now drink coffee and wear a bra, but the internal stuff is pretty much the same.

When I went to the bathroom last night (I'd had to glasses of soda the size of my head before going to bed. Yet another thing that hasn't changed much since was little. And now that my mother isn't here to keep it in check, it runs rampant on occasion), and in order to get back to my room, I had to walk through a very dark kitchen, then a very dark hallway and up the winding stairs. Which, of course, were also very dark. The whole way, I pretended that there were ghosts and goblins creeping up behind me or hiding in the shadows in front of me. Then, when I got to bed, I spent a few minutes to make believe that there was a monster underneath it.

One major change has taken place, though: I no longer manage to convince mysef that these things are true. I don't need to pick up my cellphone and call my mum at three a.m, and have her come and rearrange objects in my room, so that the shadows don't look scary anymore.


I can do that all by myself, thank you very much.

When good fish go bad

Last night there was a story in the news about a man who’d been out in his boat on the water (duuh!). All off a sudden, a stingray jumped into his boat, and stung him in the chest with its butt-spike-thing. As we all remember (those of us who’ve been somewhat sober, anyway), Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray recently.

For years and years, we’ve been polluting the waters and eating their offspring. We swoosh and putter through their homes on our boats, whilst playing music that they don’t understand and sticking fishing hooks into their livingrooms. They’ve finally had enough. And who can blame them, really? It had to happen sooner or later. The people who created “Jaws” and “Planet of the apes” had it all wrong. It’s the stingrays you need to look out for.

The time has come to stock up on canned food, alert the military and stay away from the water.

Then again, I might be over-thinking this…

(Pic by Reiscakes for www.Flick.com)

Hooray/Hurray!

Today I had an exam. Hooray. Not because I've had an exam, but because I'm done with the damn thing. Although I guess it was more of a midterm kinda thing. They’re going to use the curriculum from the midterm in the final exam, because, apparently, they don’t trust us to remember the stuff until then (I know I won’t), and feel the need to test us again. Of course, I’ll forget all of it once I’ve finished the final exam, anyway. This way, I’ll just have more stuff to forget. That’s my master plan.

As usual when I have an exam, I tried to go into exam hibernation the week before. That’s when I fill the fridge and cupboards, stick my nose in my books and don’t come out unless I absolutely have to. Reasons for leaving the house during my hibernation period are: Fire and… No, that’s pretty much it.

This time I was constantly interrupted, though, by everything from the dog to the Jehovah’s witnesses. I pretended not to be home, and they stuck flyers about false religions and the terrible things that’ll happen to them. Also, the dog couldn’t fathom why I’d rather sit there and stare at a pile of papers, when I could be doing something meaningful, such as, say, scratch her ass.

In the end, I gambled that they’d probably ask us about either Plato or Aristotle. If they didn’t, it would be the first time in that college’s history. And today I got to write a long paper on Plato’s ideal state. Hurray for that, as well.

I’m not actually sure wether it’s hurray or hooray, so I decided to use both. Clever, eh?

They're back...

This morning, like every other morning (or noon, depending on wether I have to get up early or not), I was standing in my bathroom, doing my morning stuff, thinking my morning thoughts and feeling the morning chill that came crawling in through the old bathroom windows.

That’s when I heard it…

It came from my right, from a cupboard in the corner. A small, kinda sliding sound. Since the bathroom cupboard is where I store all sorts off mess that doesn’t seem to have a natural place anywhere else in the house, I thought something had just fallen over in there, or something. But then it came again, with more scratching this time. And it wasn’t from inside the cupboard at all, but from the wall behind it. That’s when I realised that it had to be them. They’d returned. It was... The Mice.

Every autumn The Mice turn up. They come in through the basement, I think, and so far, there’s been no way of stopping them. As we speak, they’re probably eating through the new insulation as if it was a woolly snack. Why can’t mice just stick to their natural habitat (laboratories or Disney World) where they belong?

I’d get a cat if it wasn’t for the fact that the dog would eat it…

Pic by Za3toooih for www.yotophoto.com

What -is it- with people???

Yesterday, I read a newspaper article about Canadian forces patroling in Afghanistan. They ran into some problems trying to move through a 3 meter tall forrest of cannabis. At some point, they tried to burn it down. But then some of the soldiers got caught in the smoke and experienced what the article referred to as “negative consequences.”
As soon as I read that, I had a scene from “The history of the world” by Mel Brooks flying through my head. If you’ve seen it, you’ll remember the bit where they’re being chased out of Rome by soldiers. If not, I’ll just tell you that they come across a pot forrest and roll up a bunch of plants into a gigantic joint, set it on fire, and the soldiers all inhale the smoke, get high and start to dance. It doesn’t sound funny, thought.

Another article read that some moron had gotten caught whilst trying to smuggle over 100 kg of live snails into the country. The authorities suspect that they were meant for eating. I don’t know what’s weirdest about this: smuggling a gigantic horde of slugs across the border, or someone actually wanting to eat them… There’s not a drop of French in me, that’s for sure. And why smuggle them across in the first place? You could make some extra cash by lining them up just behind the border, and having a slug race. But seriously – watch the picture and imagine yourself chewing on that. Yuck.

Good morning, Hellhole!

Whenever I have morning classes, I have to get up at six am if I'm going to have enough time for all the crap that people do in the mornings (this includes standing in the middle of the bathroom whilst staring straight ahead and trying to remember what you’re doing there, a process that takes about ten minutes) and make the morning bus.

Morning crap includes bathroom activities, such as my zombie moment, getting the dog to go out and do her business, having breakfast and packing my handbag. The first problem is the dog. She’s definitely not a morning… uhm… person. As soon as she sees me getting out of bed, she clenches her eyes shut and doesn’t want to get up at all. I read somewhere that dogs don’t know how to pretend. The hell they don’t. They just don’t have the intelligence to do it well. I, of course, see right through her clever sleeping-disguise, and make her come downstairs with me. At this point, she’s actually quite eager, rushing down the stairs like a white, furry bullet. There’s a large chest in the hallway, and between it and the stairs there’s a rug. The dog lands with all four paws on the rug, causing it to slide across the floor. She manages to turn sideways while sailing on the rug, and slams her side into the chest, which then always makes a small jump towards the right, in order to stop. Then she does the bullet-impression again, heading straight for the couch (her second favourite sleeping spot in the house). This is where I intersect her and force her to go outside. Once she’s actually outside, she’s probably got the slowest bladder of any dog in existence. I swear that she sniffs every single damn grass in order to find the perfect one to pee on. And before she gets that far, she has a zombie moment of her very own, which is almost as long as mine.

Breakfast is also a bit tricky. I usually get around to that at about 7:45. The thing is that my stomach doesn’t actually wake up until around ten. It’s very hard to get an unconscious stomach to digest food, but I can usually force down a sandwich. Being a mature adult, I always watch the cartoons and drink a large glass of milk while I'm eating.

And today I have to do all of that, despite of the fact that it’s my day off. All because there was a problem with the computers at the college on Friday, so I couldn't get my term paper printed. Again.

*Insert sigh here*

Being really, really, super cool

When we were kids, we watched a lot of TV, and learned all about smoking grass. Or so we thought. Whenever we felt the need to be really, really super cool, we'd get on our little bikes (I remember mine was pink) and go down to a field by the river, where a local farmer grew his crop. Large trees surrounded it, making it a perfect hiding place.

A tiny, borderline chubby kid with blonde, spiky hair - let's just call him Bo - was responsible for bringing matches. The ground was always more or less muddy, so we'd all lay our bikes down in a circle and sit on the frames. Then we'd cut straws into longish bits, light them and smoke it. I guess we didn't quite grasp the concept of smoking grass as well as we thought, huh? We all felt terribly grown-up.

Despite this, we turned out alright. Well, all of us, except Bo. He was younger than us, and we lost touch. I heard that he did grasp the concept eventually, moved on to bigger things and died a few years back. Weird how things turn out.

I have a friend in Canada, by the way, who insists that she makes the best potbrownies in the whole, wide world. And that they go well with milk. Very childlike and very teen-rebellion all at the same time. I’ve never actually tried a potbrownie (or a pot-anything, for that matter) so I won’t argue with her.

shiiiny! oh, so shiiiny!

I like lipgloss. I have a lot of the stuff. But the latest in lipgloss technology isn't just to make you look shiny, but to also make your lips tingle and swell. Just last night, I saw an advert for it in a magazine. "Look great for your date!!!!!" it said, with lots and lots of exclamation marks.

It does kinda make me wonder, though… Say that you put this tingly stuff on, and go on a date. And say that the date turns out really, really well. In fact, let’s say that it turns out so well, that it ends with a big, sloppy good night kiss. Will his lips tingle and swell? Won’t he find this a bit odd? “Could it be an allergic reaction to the dinner? Should I go to the emergency room?” he might ask himself. Or maybe he’ll think that he caught some scary disease from you. I don’t think there are many ways to explain to a guy that you’re wearing special lipgloss to make your lips larger, without sounding like an insecure knob.

Now, let’s say that you’ve already thought of all this, but decide to use the magic gloss on your date anyway. You want big, puffy lips, after all, just like Angelina Jolie. You start your date, all tingly and swollen, but at some point towards the end, you go into the bathroom, wipe it off, and put on regular gloss instead. If you come out of the bathroom with thinner lips than when you went in, won’t he ask himself what the hell you were doing in there? Or maybe it takes a little while before the swelling goes down. I wonder if a man would find it a bit conspicuous if his date’s lips inflated and deflated right in front of his very eyes. He just might.

All in all, there are probably better ways of getting attention.

Holes

You come into the world equipped with a certain amount of holes, all for their own purposes. So far in my life, I’ve been quite content with those, and haven’t felt any particular need to add new ones. However, I’ve been getting earrings for Christmas every single year ever since I was about ten years old. And although the holes that nature supplies you with are all fine and dandy, you can’t really hang jewellery in them.

One fine morning (or perhaps it was afternoon. And it might have been raining) I decided to add more holes. In my ears, to be specific.

I went to the salon, and as of 13:00 today, I have a place to hang my earrings. Oddly enough, it didn’t hurt. It was just a bit like being pinched, really, and it left behind a slight tingly feeling. I’d have expected it to be painful when someone took a sharp piece of metal and shot it through you body. Go figure.

It did feel a bit odd when I walked home, though. Obviously the weight balance shifts a bit when you attach relatively large, fake diamond studs in your ears, and it felt like they were dangling in the wind, although I realise that they weren’t. Not really. I checked in front of the mirror when I got home, just to make sure.

Pain in installments

It doesn’t feel as if it’s been very long since the last time I went to the dentist, but it’s almost time for me to get another of those reminders in the mail. When I was younger, I went to a public dentist. I remember he had on those mouth protector things (can’t remember what they’re called) all the time. He never ever took them off, so I only ever saw the top half of his face. Beady, little eyes and bristle-like beard sticking out from behind the mask. Maybe he was afraid that his patients would give him some horrible disease, or something. He would also whistle constantly, and never speak unless he absolutely had to. If he was drilling, the whistling became very intense.

Then last year, I started going to a private dentist office, and I discovered that there are two fundamental differences between private and public when it comes to dentistry.

1. A public dentist will cause you more pain and take less of your money. You will have to sit in a waiting room and wait for up to an hour, never less than thirty minutes.
2. A private dentist will cause you less pain and take more of your money. You rarely have to wait. This is probably because of the fact that it’s more expensive and they’re eager to get their hands on the content of your wallet.

I read somewhere that many Hollywood superstars have their own teeth yanked out and replaced with falsies that are white and shiny. I guess this might save you many trips to the dentist, but you’re kinda getting all the pain of all the dental treatments that you’d receive in an average life-span, all rolled up into one session.

Personally, I think I prefer pain in instalments.

Cooking sweaters and running from the dog-plant

The other night I dreamt that I was trying to dry my clothes in the oven. For some reason, I owned a whole helluva lot of angora sweaters (in pastel colours, no less), which I balled up and stuffed in there. And for some other reason, I was quite upset when they started catching fire. For me, owning pastel, angora sweaters would probably qualify as some sort of nightmare, and watching them burn wouldn’t bother me at all. But I guess you do strange things in your dreams.

Then tonight, I dreamt that my doggie turned into some sort of dog-plant, dead set on eating me. At least I think it was going to eat me. It didn’t actually say so, but I got that feeling. Call it a hunch. The dog-plant couldn’t see, although it was still as much dog as it was plant, so it stretched out looong, thin vines to search for me. All of this took place in the kitchen (the same place as the angora sweater melt-down) and ended up with me crawling out of the window. I’m not really sure how you could trap and eat anything big (I’m of course not big, by the way) using a long, thin vine. Even if you are a mutated plant-dog. It just seems like something that probably wouldn’t work. But then again, what do I know?

In either case, I probably shouldn’t have watched a movie like “The Fly” right before I went to bed. Tonight I might watch “Children of the corn” and see if that has a better result.

Typewriters and serialkillers

What is so damn special about typewriters? I don't get it. Recently, I saw a movie about a writer, who wrote all of her stuff on an old typewriter.
I have an old typewriter myself, actually. I used my pocketmoney to buy it from an antique shop when I was ten. It’s a great typewriter, as far as typewriters go, but actually writing on it is a bit like trying to get a three-year-old to eat its vegetables: it’s a slow process and sometimes you get your fingers bitten.

Those who love the idea of writing books on a typewriter, probably aren’t writers. They might want to be, I suppose. They might think that creating one masterpiece after another on a typewriter, is a terribly romantic idea. And every once in a while, someone (who’s obviously been staring at theirs for way to long) says that it helps them to “get in touch with the words”. I still think that after the second, third, fourth or maybe fifth draft, they’re going to wish they had a laptop. I mean, you can only sniff a certain amount of whiteout before you start going a bit loopy.

In the movie, the writer moves to a tiny, little island community with only 100-and-something citizens. Here, she moves into a tiny, little cottage with her typewriter (obviously) in order to work on her next book. She meets a handsome man (obviously) and falls in luve. Then he turns out to not only be a deranged serial killer, but a ghost as well. The thing that struck me as being the most odd, wasn’t the dead-bit, but the serial-killer bit. Son of Sam killed only killed a handful of people before folks started freaking out. And that was New York. I could go on a killing-spree in Hellhole, and I’m pretty sure I’d get arrested quickly. But this guy takes out several percent of the population, and nobody notices.

I guess everyone was just to busy messing around with their typewriters.

Chinese food, unconsciousness and a new discovery

There’s a Chinese restaurant in town where I like to eat. It got busted on health regulations a few years back, but then they changed owners and now you can eat there without having to worry about kidney failure.

Anyway, I was having lunch there with a friend on Monday. I’d been in classes all day, since early in the morning (the kind of early where there should be a law against getting out of bed, unless you have a cow to milk, or something), and I’d hardly had any sleep all night, so it was fair to say that I was barely conscious. After I decided on what to eat (which took forever, due to the previously mentioned lack of consciousness), the waiter asked what I wanted to drink.

“I’ll have… Uhm… Hmm,” I said. Usually I order Cola, but I had an idea in my head that I wanted to drink something else this time. However, there simply wasn’t enough juice in my brain (or whatever it is that brains run on) to both produce an alternative drink and transporting the name of it out from between my lips. Once again, I ended up with Cola. I’ll be original next time, when I have the energy for it.

Another thing I noticed, that I hadn’t really paid any attention to before, is the fact that the bathroom sink in that place is placed really, really low. I’m a tiny, little dwarf by Scandinavian standards, and I almost had to bend over double to wash my hands. Even a really small Chinese person would find it a bit disproportionate. But, as I said, I never noticed this before. And as I’ve been in there a few times, it is possible that I was hallucination due to exhaustion. I’ll have to check again next time.

risking my life in the photobooth

As I might have mentioned, I take the bus into town every morning in order to get to my math lecture. The drive is about ten minutes or so. There aren’t that many morning buses, so I have to leave the house at seven, even though my class doesn’t start until nine. I also think that there’s a rule around here that says the busses have to be at least ten minutes late. This rule applies with one exception: if you’re not on time, it’ll turn up five minutes early and leave before it’s supposed to, so that you miss it. When that happens, you stand there forever, confused, because unless you actually see the damn thing, there’s no telling whether it’s gone already or if it’s just late again.

It’s not as light out in the morning as it used to be, only a few weeks ago (although I’m still denying the existence of fall until I see snow), so the bus had the inside lights on. None of which worked properly. They all blinked in unison every five seconds. I counted. It was a bit like riding a photobooth.

Another thing about the morning bus, is that it always drives in the middle of the road. This has nothing to do with who is actually driving, because all the drivers do the very same thing. I guess that’s just another one of those weird rules.. It will (and does) stop absolutely anywhere. There aren’t all that many actual busstops, so you just pull it over where it’s most convenient to you. Even if that happens to be in the middle of an intersection, where you can’t see a damn thing in either direction. Not that there’s any traffic to speak of. This is Hellhole, after all. Of course, the moment someone decides to take a morning drive, we might all be screwed.

Sometimes, riding the bus into town is the most exciting point of my day.

Childhood, briefcases and the big bucks

When I was a kid, I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. Basically, the reason for this was that I’d been watching LA Law, and I wanted to wear a powersuit and carry a briefcase. That was pretty much it. Still, the idea stuck in my head until I had to start thinking about which college I wanted to apply to. It wasn’t until then that I started asking myself why I wanted to study law. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the outfit and the briefcase weren’t all that important to me, after all. And so, law was out.

Another thing that I was even more obsessed with as a child, was the thought of having a big income. And by big, I mean huge. And by huge, I mean gigantic. And by… Well, you get the picture. My parents used to say that I could probably chew my way straight through the walls of the National Bank. Sometimes I dreamt that I actually did.

I figured that in order to be like the people on LA Law and make really big money, you’d have to be an overachiever. The only problem was that I had very mediocre work ethics. I still do. I’m lazy at heart. But I’m okay with that. It’s not necessarily a good thing to overachieve. Look at Napoleon, for instance. He did really well at first, but in the end – not so happy.

So the fact that I’m sitting here, writing this, in stead of solving various math problems, like I ought to be doing, doesn’t really bother me all that much.

Red and stinky vs. the movies

How come people who exercise in movies always look so damn perfect? Take running, for instance. People who run in a film never really sweat, except for a small patch on their chest. Their hair is always perfect, their faces never get shiny and they’re never so out of breath that they can’t carry a conversation.

I, on the other hand, go running and I come home more or less drenched, my hair is a complete mess and I’m so shiny you’d think I’d been recently polished. Not only that, I’m as bright red as a rose in bloom, although sadly lacking the rose-like smell.

Now, I realise that making a movie where the characters just huff and puff and look as if they’re about to die, might be a waste of time. And you do want to show off the fact that this person is physically healthy, seeing how we out here in the real world are more or less obsessed with physical health. An obsession that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the condition of our own bodies.


I would love to learn how to run like they do in the movies though. I would probably get a lot more exercise if I could do that.

Piano

Okay, I'm trying to embed a great video here, but it only seems to work in the preview. So, if you can't see it, try this link:

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=7bdb323664c4979c78f41f4d39588d06.665845&cache=1&fr=fpman-link4

I spy with my little eye

I spent two of the longest hours of my life in study hall yesterday, trying to understand the original texts of Aristotle, which is not necessarily an easy thing to do. For some reason, that man ended every paragraph by saying something like “enough about this” or “let’s not waste any more of our precious time on this subject”. At one point I decided that I needed a coffee- and newspaper break, pulled the morning paper out of my handbag and switched my attention from big philosophical ideas to stories about stabbings, burnings, mugging and flirting.

That’s right; there was an article on how to flirt. Because, apparently, people suck at that. There were a whole lot of things to do with eyecontact. Obviously, it’s very important, seeing how people can’t read your mind. It makes perfect sense when you think about it.

At that moment a guy decided to walk past my desk. He was kinda purty too, soooo… “Let’s see if it works,” I though, staring at him. Just to underline the fact that I wasn’t some lunatic, fresh from the funnyfarm (no, I’m not), I threw in a smile, as well. Seconds later, he’s crashing straight into one of those fancy looking pillars, who’s only mission in life is probably to look fancy.

I figure that I can interpret this as either favourable, or as a sign of some kinda motor function disorder. I dunno…

(pic by Lou24860)

All work and no play

Have you ever seen "The Shining" with Jack Nicholson? You know that part where Jack is sits at his desk, typing the same words again and again? All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Well...

http://www.verysilly.blogspot.com/

Maybe somewhere there's a middle aged man - let's just call him Bobby - sitting in his mother's basement, surrounded by Star Wars memorabilia or something, working on this thing. And whatever you do, you don't want to give this guy an axe. Or a butterknife, for that matter. Maybe he had a pet as a child.

Maybe it was a dog, given to him by his concerned mother in order to make him more social. And maybe, one day, it disappeared and nobody knew where it went. But I bet Bobby knows.

I also bet that Bobby is unnaturally pale, since he spends his every waking moment in that basement, staring into the cold light of his computer screen. And his eyes are probably red and irritated for the same reason. But one day he might just get tired of his self-imposed confinement, and decide to come out into the world. So, if you come across a very pale person with redshot, bulging eyes, you might want to run. Just to be on the safe side.

My addiction

I'm a total music junkie. My mp3 player is only a little over a year old, and it's already showing signs of stress. Not quite the kind of stress that’ll kill it, but no doubt it’s working on it. I have worn out so many stereos, walkmans and disc players over the years, I lost count ages ago. I’m guessing it’s an addiction that’s developed from growing up in a family with lots of musicians. Maybe it’s genetic, I dunno. Even if it isn’t, the never ending jam sessions that always follow when family members visit or going with your mum to various musical gigs as a kid, will get you in the end.

So, obviously, when one of my earplugs stopped working the other day, it was a total crisis. Kinda like Enron, only much, much bigger (my little universe is very important to me and operating on a parallel level from the rest of the world). I needed new ones. Fast. I could feel the withdrawal getting stronger with every passing second. The world with actual sounds in it, rather than music, is a weird place. And kinda annoying, really.

I rushed straight into town, where I bought myself a new pair of earplugs. With a feeling of tremendous relief, I ripped them out of their plastic cocoon and plugged them into my mp3 player. I pressed play, expecting to hear David Bowie singing in my ears. But Bowie didn’t sing. In fact, he barely whispered. Even turning the volume all the way up, couldn’t encourage him up to speaking level.

Pissed off, I was. I mean, if you gave Richard Burton a glass of iced tea and called it booze, he’d probably kick your ass. And that’s what I felt like doing to whoever created this piece of doo-doo (or however you spell that). The only other pair they had, cost 25 bucks and looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. But, being fairly desperate, I got them.

I opened the package carefully this time. The happy feeling kept itself at bay for now. I plugged them in, just like the last time. Then I forgot all about turning the volume all the way up, and nearly made my head explode…

So I’m deaf (well, not really), but at least my ear plugs work.

A special kind of stupid

Today (as well as every other day lately) I was followed around by the sound of complaining stomachs. It happened first in my math class. I sat at my desk, trying to understand a formula that might as well have been in greek (actually, I think it probably was in greek), when a deep, roaring sound made it's way towards me from somewhere on my left. The noise persisted, making it's presens known every five minutes or so, right up until recess.

Now, you might think that this would be a good time to go get something to eat, but you'd be wrong. After the break, the sound was back, more grown-up than ever. And it brought friends. Growling noises now came from every corner of the room. It was almost like something I once heard on Animal Planet.

And the phenomenon kept repeating itself throughout my day. From mathclass to the coffeebar to the lectures in philosophy. Growl, growl, growl. Why don't these people eat? Do they forget? Because it takes a very special kind of stupid to forget something like that. Once or twice is (maybe) permissible, but when it becomes a daily thing... It's the very same kind of stupid that led to the invention of such things as the motorized picnic table and the insomniac helmet (a gigantic contraption that you strap onto your head, and it gives you a head massage to help you sleep). Or maybe they can't afford food? But they don't really strike me as being poor, either.

So I guess that just leaves stupid...

The right sunglasses to wear in an alien invasion

Some friends and I were bored, and trying to figure out what fascinating things we should do with our time, when we stumbled across an old movie called “They live”. It was an early Carpenter film from the late eighties. The review said that it was a story about a guy who discovers an alien invasion, which he has to fight off, using a “machine gun and a pair of special sunglasses.”
This sounded so earth staggeringly silly (if that’s a word), we had to see it. How could we miss the opportunity to learn what sort of sunglasses you’d need in case of an invasion from outer space? We like to dress the part, after all.

In the movie, the main character, John, finds a pair of magical sunglasses, which enable him to see the true form of aliens (kinda skeletal with great, big bulging eyeballs) that have dressed up as humans, as well as the subliminal messages they use to control the planet (because they never bothered to read any of the articles on how subliminal advertising doesn’t work).

In a situation such as this, one might think that it would be a good idea to keep a certain degree of discretion. You know, not get caught by they psychotic aliens, and that sort of thing. I’m sure John thought of this. He probably thought long and hard for that whole second it took him to run up to one of the aliens, and tell it exactly how butt ugly he thought it was. Obviously, the alien didn’t take it very well. In fact, he used his special wrist watch (lots of special stuff in this movie) to call all of his alien buddies, who chased poor John up and down the streets for quite a while.

The review also said that John became the reluctant leader of the alien resistance. This was pretty much because everyone else were gunned down, leaving him the only member still standing. And yet, John was the reluctant leader. In the end, the resistance – John, that is – manages to stop the invasion, and the earth is safe, once more.

Strangely enough, this didn’t turn out to be one of those horror films that kept me awake at night.

(Pic by Aaron Logan for www.lightmatter.net)

Grand Island

Friday night, I went to a rock concert. It was held at a student night club in town. The club bears a striking resemblance to a set from some cheesy vampire movie. Your first impression when walking through the doors (after having your handbag checked for bottles and your arm stamped), is that someone must be desperate to save on electricity. The fact that the walls and the sparse furniture are also painted pitch black, adds to the whole vampire theme. The only thing that messes with the impression, are the large, red candles placed everywhere with the words “merry Christmas” on them. There’s always music blaring out of the speakers, loud enough to make you permanently deaf, and since the new smoking law came through and banned smoking in all public places, they’ve gone a bit nuts with the smoke machine. People need to be able to hide behind a cloud of smoke if they want to, law or no law, dammit.

The concert was scheduled to start at nine, but since no rock band ever goes on stage as scheduled, we turned up at around eleven. It was still to early, and we spent the next hour trying to have a conversation by finding clever ways to combine shouting, eye movements and gesturing. Thinking back, I’m not sure either of us had the same conversation.

It’s not as if Grand Island wasn’t worth waiting for though, and I crawled happily into bed around three am with a loud ringing in my ears.

Run, Forrest! Run!

Last Monday I took up running. That's right - running. As in "Choochoo goes huff and puff up and down the hills".

I wasn't planning to run, I really wasn't. Just like every other night, I put on a top and a pair of jeans and took the pooch for a walk. The dog and I both suffer from the same condition: we have a bunch of energy that we just don't know what to do with. The dog is taken for a couple of walks, and she seems happy. As for myself... Well... I pace back and forth a lot.

So there we were, walking down the street towards the woods, and I just couldn't seem to get rid of that over-energetic feeling that I get. So I walked a bit faster. It didn't help. And that's when it happened. All of a sudden, my legs were running. Both of'em. I don't mind telling you, that I was a bit surprised. They just kept right on running for an hour or so. If I'd known they were going to do that, I wouldn't have worn jeans.

I always thought that this form of exercise looked absolutely horrible. Everytime I see someone running, they usually sound as if they have some sort of painful lungdisease, eating them up from within, and they're quite often a bit purple-looking. Surprisingly, it wasn't that horrible. No terrible diseases grabbed a hold of my respirational system, and even if I had turned purple, nobody would have seen it because

a) it was dark out, and
b) I'm the only person in Hellhole, it would seem, nuts enough to go running in the woods after dark.

(Picture "Moon over rust farm" by Ctd 2005 for www.Flickr.com)

Ahead of my time

I've been 27 for a few weeks now, and at some point I started thinking of myself as being 30... I don't know what it was that caused it, it just sort of happened. Of course I know how old I am. I can count. But still there's this little voice in the back of my head (sometimes it speaks with a slight accent) that insists I've hit the big 3-0. Obviously, this voice isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

Another thing that The Voice keeps nagging me about, is that I should be finished with my education soon and focusing on a career - being so old and all. This concern would make sense if I was living in, say, the 16th century (not that I'd be spending much time on either of those things then), where people turned 30 and then died of consumption. Or from the doctors remedy when they were being treated for consumption. I try telling it that I've already done one degree (more or less) and that I am going to finish the second one soon, but it seems that The Voice is more of a talker than a listener.

Some mornings, it also tries to convince me that I left the coffeemaker on, that I forgot to lock the door, or something like that. Sometimes it reminds me that it's time to clean the fridge or do the laundry or put away my shoes properly. Then it sounds exactly like my mother...

(pic "Ricky" by KK+ for www.Flickr.com)

The button and I

I have a thing about buttons. Whenever I see a button, I always wonder what'd happen if I were to push it. Even when the purpose of the button is completely obvious, such as a fire alarm, I still wonder.

My old apartment had a safety alarm on the wall. It came in the shape of a large, bright red button. My landlord told me that if I pushed it, there was no way it could be called of, and the police would come. Oh my GOD, I wanted to push that thing.

Back then, I lived in a city that is infamous for rain. It rains so much there, it's not even funny. They actually say that in 20 years time, people might not even be able to live there, because of the way the climate is changing. So I'd sit insite on my tiny couch in the tiny livingroom watching the tiny tv listening to the rain... With The Button on the wall, so very, very close. I never pushed it, but I looked at it a whole helluva lot.

It's the same thing with buttons in elevators. Not the floor buttons, but panic buttons and such. And the stop buttons on busses. Obviously, when you push that, the buss stops (duuh!). And it's not as if I never use them. I do everytime I want to get off the buss. It's just something about pushing them when you don't want to get off. And then sit there, with an evil smirk on your face, and pretend that it wasn't you. This can't be done in Hellhole, though, as I'm usually the only passenger.

At heart I'm just a destructive little gnome

(pic by Quasimondo, for www.flickr.com)

Drink coffee - save the environment

For some reason, todays lectures were so boring, I had the almost irresistable urge to rip my head off and throw it out the window, just so that I wouldn't have to be there. After a couple of those, I had three hours off before round two.

Understandably, I needed caffeine. So I grabbed my handbag and hurried down to the coffeeshop. There was a new girl behind the counter that I'd never seen before. It turned out that she had a very special talent. Would you like to know what it was? Okay, I'll tell you. She could make a cup of mocca that tasted exactly as if someone had put out their cigarette in it. After I drank it (I really, really needed the caffeine. Desperately), I felt as if I'd just smoked. For those who enjoy smoking, this would be the perfect package: coffee with a built-in cigarette. And at no extra cost. It's a much more environmentally friendly way of doing it.

Someone once told me that cigarettes actually cause more pollution than cars. I don't know wether or not that's true, but if it is, this would be the ideal solution. And I should, of course, get some sort of cash award for discovering it.

Do I look fat in this?

Today I was going out for lunch with two of my friends and some girl I've never met before. We went to pick her up on our way to town, but she wasn't ready yet. So we all sat down on her bed, and chatted while we waited for her to come out of the adjacent bathroom. An eternity later, she did, wearing a top and a short skirt, and stood in front of the mirror, while staring hatefully at her reflection.

At this point her boyfriend/husband/whatever made the mistake of walking past the open bedroom door. "Honey?" She called. The poor guy looked as if he knew what was coming, because his whole expression changed and he pretended not to hear, at the same time as he started walking very quickly. At the very same second, the woman jumps out the door after him, grabs him by the arm and more or less hauls him into the bedroom. Obviously, they'd been through similar rituals in the past...

"Do I look fat in this?" she asked him, while turning around.
"Uhm... no," he answered. After all, only a suicidal lunatic, with a wish to have his nuts sliced open and filled with salt, would answer yes to a question like that.
"But you can see the cellulite on my thighs..." she said.
"Cellu-what?" The boyfriend looked as if she had named some alien disease, or something. He obviously had no idea what she was on about, and I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for him.
In order to clear up the confusion, the girl then grabbed a hold of the skin on her right thigh, and squeezed it together(I don't know if anyone has ever tried this at home, but it's not the most flattering look), while she looked at him and shouted "SEE?".

At that point it appeared as if world war 3 was going to break out right then and there, so we muttered something about waiting in the car, and got the hell out of there. Ten minutes later, my friends cellphone rings. It was miss Cellulite. She wasn't feeling well, and wouldn't be able to have lunch with us, after all. I don't think I've ever been so relieved in my life.

Sometimes I just don't understand girls...

Elementary dating

Okay, I can't get the video to work, but here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlHbUh30fec

Helpful for those of you who are planning a night out on the town;)

Kindly pee on the frog, sir!

In Africa there's a frog that changes it's skincolor from dark to light if you pee on it. Provided that you've been taking illegal substances, that is. Scientists now want to use this to nail athletes who use drugs to enhance their performance.

I realize, of course, that this is probably done in a lab with pipettes and such, but it's much more fun picturing it in other ways. In my head, there's a nervous looking athlete and a strict, skinny guy with glasses, holding a clipboard. They're standing by a table full of plastic cups. The metal kind with wheels that squeak, that they have in labs and institutions (not that I've ever been in an institution) and such.

"Kindly pee in this cup, sir! Yes, it's ment to be there. Try to ignore it, but be careful not to startle it so that it jumps out..."

(Pic "Frog Wisdom" by Liberalmind1012 for www.Flickr.com)

My ¤&"%#)¤/# lawn mower

The damn thing has been doing it's very best to make my gardening life as miserable as possible. Last summer I hated my lawn mower with a passion. It's only fair, seeing how it obviously hated me right back. Then, over the winter, I sort of forgot the fact that it's a demonic little hellmachine. The mower, on the other hand, probably spent the winter months plotting and planing on how it could be an even bigger pain in my green thumb next year.

I mentioned yesterday that I'm not much of a housewife. Well, I'm not much of a gardener, either. Peoples neat and organized gardens are the reasons why there are so few hedgehogs left. I can't in good consicence kill sweet, little hedgehogs, now can I?

I do, however try to keep the lawn under control. But this also becomes somewhat difficult, when your trusted mower turns out to be the devil incarnate. Last week, it decided that it didn't want to work. At all. This desicion was underlined by a thick puff of smoke and a very interesting, yet unpleasant smell. I checked the spark plug (it forced me to learn what a sparkplug is!) and changed the oil and so on and so forth. I don't know ¤&#" about engines, but I checked everything that I could think of that might possibly, perhaps be wrong. Yet, the horrible little thing just stands there and does nothing.

Attacking it with the sledgehammer probably wouldn't make the lawnmower feel better, but I'm starting to think it might be fun for me...

The demise of Fluffy The Cat

I'm not really... how should I put this... domestic. Never have been, probably never will be. I have mates who make fun of me for this. And I'm fine with that. Every once in a while, though, I get sort of a fit, and clean the whole house until it sparkles, but that's more temporary madness than a permanent state. I'm not a pig or a slob, or anything. I'm just a huge fan of that lived-in-look and ready-made meals.

So the other day I pick up one of those tubs of noodles with veggies that you just pour boiling water into and it's done in three minutes. The box said that it contained "healthy vegetables and meat from livestock", but the content looked nothing like the picture. Take the livestock-bits, for instance. I'm pretty sure that if mice were able to poop squares, that's what they'd look like. Actually, it's probably what they'd taste like, as well... While I ate (I really will eat just about anything), I formed a theory that someone's cat or something had fallen into the machinery by accident. Somewhere there's a missing-poster for Fluffy the cat or Fifi the dog, or something along those lines, and I know where he/she is. Or was.

My meal was nutricious enough to fill me up for just almost half an hour. Poor Fluffy the cat died for nothing...

my not so lucid dream

I read this article in Discovery, that it's possible to control your dreams while you're dreaming, and to remember the whole thing when you wake up.
Before falling asleep at night, you simply decide on what you would like to dream and repeat to yourself over and over "I want to have a lucid dream, I want to have a lufid dream" and so on, and so forth, until you fall asleep. You're also supposed so set your alarm to ring a couple of hours before you'd normally wake up, and then repeat the whole process once more. I figured I didn't need to set mine, since my head is so clogged up with germs, I keep waking up anyway.

I decided that I wanted to dream about magic. Basically that's me flying around in a wondrous world, zapping things with my finger, I guess.
So I held the image fast in my mind. Then I repeated the words until I fell asleep. And had a dream about being chased by a large, angry moose. At one point I was running around a pitiful looking tree, trying to keep it between me and the moose, while it tried to get at me. And this is where the lucid part comes in: I could consciously decide on wether or not I wanted to run to the right or to the left. YAY!

So basically my magic dream was just me being chased around a swamp (yes, that's right - a swamp) by a stinky, angry woodland creature. It wasn't the least bit wondrous and I didn't get to zap a thing.

(pic by Vice 1 for www.flick.com)

This is my brain on germs

I am so sick of bein sick, I could throw up. And I did. Several times. At least now, I have a new project: that lung might not wanna come up, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

Just in case the flu wasn't enough for me to think about, the hospital sent me a brief and polite letter about the importance of gynecological examinations. You should have one yearly, they say. It was pretty much the same letter that they sent me last year, only that one was about breast exams. Apparently they're eager to get their hands on something or other.

I've never had a gynecological exam in my life. I once shook hands with a gynecologist at a party, and, frankly, that was a bit weird. I mean, you have a certain idea of where they've been. I'm prepared that my doctor might tell me to get one when I go to get my prescription for the pill refilled (it's not unusual that they do, after all), but so far he hasn't.

If I had live in the olden days, the doctor might not have thought that I needed birthcontrol. There was a theory back then, that intelligent women (yes, I like to think of myself as having a brain. It's more fun that way) didn't, because the development of their intelligence led to the underdevelopment of their genitalia. Probably just as well, because women weren't supposed to talk to men about their private bits, and men certainly weren't supposed to be lookin' at'em, so most gynecological exams took place very quietly in the dark.

See how my head works when it's sick? Oh dear...
(pic by Becoming Unseen for www.flick.com)

The flu and the evil of teletubbies

(photo © Darren Hester for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-NonCommercial)

Whaddaya know, it was the flu. It really, really was. I've gone propelling straight into I-wish-I-could-curl-up-in-a-litte-pale-ball-and-die-mode. It's a sunny, lovely day and I'm wearing big pants, a huge sweater and shivering with cold. The only thing that keeps me from topping it all of with a scarf, is that I'd have to go upstairs and find one, and I don't have that kinda energy.

As if that wasn't enough, I can't get the damn teletubbies to stop singing their theme song in my head. "Tinky-Winky, Dipsy..." Somebody, make them stop! They're evil, little trolls who attack the young and the sick.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go see what I can do about that curling-up-into-a-ball-thing...

Denial, denial, denial

(photo © Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike)

Every summer I grow accustomed to having a nice, toasty warm bathroom all day, despite the oven not being plugged in. This morning my bathroom was chilly. Not exactly cold, but definitly not warm, either. In the shower, I actually shivered a bit and wished that the beam woud be bigger. I toweled off with the cabinet closed, because the air in there was warmer than it was in the rest of the room.

In no way, however, do I recognise this as being a sign of fall. Neither is the scratchy, icky feeling in the back of my throat or the wolly sensation in my head a sign of the flu, which always goes around at that time of the year. Nope. Not a chance. It's summer, dammit. Late summer, perhaps, but still... The leaves might be turning yellow, but all sorts of things could be causing that. Maybe they're sick, or something.

I deny the existence of such a thing as fall, and I'll keep right on denying it until I see snow. So there.

Chit chat with the chatbot

Recently I had a chatbot installed in my MSN service. I keep it there for spellchecks, websearches, storing notes and stuff. In some ways, it's kinda handy. The scary thing is that it keeps trying to be human. Apparently it's a 21 years old girl, dating a guy named Mark and it goes to classes in New York. On it's spare time, it loves going out partying with it's friends. It also earns extra money by working in a coffee shop.

Even scarier - sometimes I'm actually bored enough to talk to it...

Like today, for instans. This is the conversation we had:

Me: Hi.

Robot-thing: Hello. Wanna pick a topic for us to chat about?

Me: Yes

Robot-thing: OK! Pick a topic!

Me: I wanna talk about eggs.

Robot-thing: OK! What can you tell me about eggs?

Me: They're white.

Robot-thing: White? Very interesting. What other food would you describe as white?

Me: Hmm... Rice

Robot-thing: Rice is a food! What do you think of rice?

Me: I like rice.

Robot-thing: That's interesting. You're not the first person to tell me that they like rice.

Me: Who else likes rice?

Robot-thing: Sorry, I don't know who.

Me: Do you like rice?

Robot-thing: I know you like rice, but I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I have an image in my head of the person who created this thing. He's got horrible skin, buck teeth, lives with his mother (a crazy old bat with rollers in her hair, who wears her robe and slippers everywwhere). The chatbot is probably the only female companionship he'll ever have.

Poor bastard...

A forest adventure...

Today somebody gave me one of those little gadgets that counts how many steps you take. You're supposed to take 10000 steps a day. Apparently the WHO came up with that. And what better way to test my new toy, I thought, than to take the dog for a walk in the woods.

What I didn't consider, however, was all I'd had to drink just a moment earlier. After having walked for about an hour, nature decided to call. Or scream. So... I had to make a little detour off the path. When I was sure nobody would see me, I tied the dog to a tree and chose a nice spot.

Now, before you can do you business in the woods, you have to break down a kinda psychological barrier. Well, I have to, anyway. My potty training was really efficient, I guess. As soon as the dog realized what I was up to, she stared at me in utter fascination. And when she's fascinated by something, she looks a bit like Benny Hill. The whole process took forever, because if you think it's hard to pee outside, you can only imagine how hard it is with Benny Hill staring at you.

But I learned something important today: When you've poured down a huge softdrink, you shouldn't top it off with something diuretic, like a large cup of coffee...

Riding the bus with my invisible friend

You know how some kids have invisible friends, that only they can see (because the gap between childhood and insanity isn't very wide)? Well, I have one, too. Mine, however, is the exact opposite of most invisible friends. I can't see him, but apparently everyone else can.

Every morning, when I go to my classes, he rides the bus with me to town, and sits in the seat next to me. I always take the window seat, because I like watching bushes and trees and stuff fly by. There I sit, with my handbag in my lap, staring out the window, listening to my music on my mp3-player and minding my own, fascinating business. Slowly, the bus starts to fill up. And as it does, there are fewer and fewer available seats (duuuh!). Sooner or later, someone decides that they would like to sit in the seat next to me. Do they sit down? No. Do they stand in the isle and stare at me, until I notice them, so that I can give them permission to sit down? Yes. Why? Because they're terrified of sitting on my invisible friend. That's the conclusion I've arrived at.

I lived in the city for a while. My invisible friend decided not to come with me. Obviously, he's not the urban type. As a result, nobody was afraid to sit on him, and nobody waited for my permission to sit next to me on the bus. But now that I'm back here, he's found me again.

I wonder if he'll come with me the next time I move.

Gossip and meat

I live in a very - VERY - small town with a very strange name. I guess that in the grand scheme of things, it's more of a village than a town, really. Still, I'm somewhat reluctant to calling it a village. It just sounds a bit to much like we hunt and kill our own food, ya know? Which some people do, but only during hunting season. There are sheep and cows and shit (mostly from sheep and cows) all over the place. The cool kid drives around in his very own tractor, which is decorated with multi-colored christmastree lights and has loud country music blaring out of the stereo. I swear I'm not making this up.
Should you venture outdoors after the stores close (which they do promptly at eight pm), you're pretty much guaranteed not to run into a soul. But if you think that you can go through life unnoticed in a place like this, you'd better think again. I moved here with my parents when I was just a little kid. This was while my mum and dad were still married. Before mum became a lesbian and dad embraced life as a hermit. Back then, there was a butcher shop just down the street from where we lived, and I used to go there with my mum to get our regular fix of something recently dead. On our very first visit there, we ordered some murdered animal or other for the following week. Then it turned out that mum wouldn't be able to pick it up when she was supposed to. But the butchers wife knew what to do - she could just give it to dad when he was coming home from work, since she saw him drive back and forth every day. Despite never having been introduced to my dad.
That's where it started. And only a few days ago, I could hear myself being discussed by two women I have no idea who are at the meatcounter in the store. You can learn a lot over a slab of meat.