So long, suckers!

This is my final post of 2006. I've got finals next week and then I'm going away, so there's tons of stuff to do. So... Merry Christmas and I'll see you all next year.

Oh, yeah... In the spirit of the season, I though't I'd give you this. I tried posting it as a video, but the tag is broken, so... Here's a link:

http://www.dagbladet.no/tv/index.html?type=fbig&clipid=1358

Did you notice how they have enough foresight to tell the idiot not to hold it with his hands?

An idle wag of the Solomonic tail

Yesterday I purchased a CD. But not just any CD. Oh no. It had the sound of New Year’s rockets on them. Around here people buy and fire their own rockets from their own backyards. Usually while drunk. Very, very drunk. Every year tons of stuff burn to the ground.

They always scare the living shit out of my dog. The rockets, that is. Personally I worry more about the neighbours, but what the hell. As soon as she hears the sound of fireworks, she shoots under the couch like a bullet, hitting the wall so hard that my depicted relatives rattle on their hooks.

It’s really quite amazing that she hasn’t given herself brain damage yet. Actually, come to think of it, she does spend a lot of time chasing and playing with bugs and little animals that clearly only exist inside her own head…


Now I’m working on gradually getting her used to the sound of New Year’s rockets. I guess we can hope that her eccentric behaviour won’t get any worse. Maybe.

From The Devil’s Dictionary:

Dog, n. A kind of additonal or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations, takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival – an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon the door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase an idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition.
An idle wag of the Somomonic tail… Now there’s a mental image.

The pooch finds religion

I have a headache. A the-boy-who-removes-the-sword-from-my-head-shall-be-king kinda headache.

That got me to thinking about that one time at the cabin when the pooch got sick.

I’d escaped to the mum’s cabin to study for my exams. The pooch came with me, of course, since her life naturally seems bleak and meaningless without me (just like yours would, I’m sure). That, and she can’t feed herself. This also meant that once we arrived at our destination, I felt obligated to fix her up some kibble and water.

To the tiny fridge in the tiny kitchen I went. There was no running water in the cabin, and I was to plain lazy to walk down to the river and fetch some, so I filled her bowl with some of the bottled water from the refrigerator. How many dogs do you know that get the chance to drink Evian, huh? Not many, I bet. Little did I know…

The pooch drank and ate and pretty much passed out in a corner. All was peaceful. For a while.

I was deeply engulfed in the oh so fascinating world of hydrology (ironically enough) when the pooch woke up and made it clear that she wanted to go outside, by a long series of jumping and screaming her head off.

As soon as the door opened, she bolted out to the nearest bush and began making it miserable by throwing up on it like a sailor on shore-leave (or whatever they call it).

I later learned that the Evian bottle contained holy water. The kinda stuff that’s blessed by a priest. Why anyone my mum’s would keep holy water in the cabin (or why they would have holy water at all, for that matter) I have no idea.

It is, however, obvious that religion does not agree with my dog…

Ham and maturity, please

People spend their whole lives trying to be mature. Then you become mature, and have your midlife crises, where you try desperately to recapture your lost youth.

I'm still in that phase where I'm trying to be a grown-up.

A little while ago, I bought a ham. It's in my freezer right this moment. Having a ham in your freezer is definitely very grown-up.
Of course, I also bought apples simply because they were shiny. That might not be.

Sometimes I tell friends that I’d like to be an adult. And then I jump up and down, or something, just to demonstrate how eager I am to reach this goal. Most of them seems to think that I’m not, though.

Dave Cockrum, the guy who created the X-Men, died recently at the age of 63. They found him with a Batman blanket, wearing his Superman pyjamas. That’s definitely not grown-up. I wonder if he had a girlfriend? He probably didn’t have a ham in his freezer, anyway.

Richard Simmons' exploding steamer

"I swear, they take over my head"

I don't understand writers who say that their storied just write themselves because the characters take over their heads. This doesn't sound healthy to me. It actually sounds a bit... nuts.

Sure, when I write I know my character pretty well. They have their little personalities and attitudes, I know pretty much what they would and wouldn't do. But I am still master of my head. Nobody but me is commanding my little grey cells.

If this balance of power ever shifted, I'd go into therapy. If they told me to, I'd take pills. Little ones, big ones, round ones, square, pink, blue or purple ones - it wouldn't matter, I'd take them anyway. They could stick needles in me, if they thought it necessary. Considering some of the people I've written about, I might even agree to shock therapy.

If the invasion got really bad, I'd fully expect a loved one to knock me unconcious and drag me to an institution, where they could solve the problem, using whatever means necessary.

Picture "Inside" by Andrew Mason

The Devil's Dictionary

I love the devil's dictionary. It's got some very funny stuff in it. Like this:

Day, A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper - the former devoted to sins of business, the latter concentrated on the other sort. These two kinds of social activity overlap.

Absentee, A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.

Abstainer, A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

I'm definitly not one of those. I obstain from very little, unless circumstances beyond my control force me to, and I don't give a damn about the large majority of people.

Belladonna, In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of he essential identity of the two tongues.

Cabbage, A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

Dawn, The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth bein that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The resaon we find only robust people doing this think is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

Debauchee, One who has so earnestly pursued pleasure that he has had the misfortune to overtake it.

I want to be a debauchee when I grow up, mummy

I'm a CIA agent!

Do you remember the Furby? They were the little, furry toy which shot to fame a few years ago. They spoke furbish and could pick up on worlds and sentences that they heard.

Apparently the CIA issued a memo to their employees, saying that they weren’t allowed to bring their Furbies with them to work, because they didn’t want the toys to go blabbing about things they overheard in the office.

This made me wonder…

The words “I’m a CIA agent” have been used by idiot teens everywhere to make them seem tough. They’re also a key ingredient in heaps of action movies. To many, this simple phrase is the verbal equivalent to adjusting your crotch.
Unless, of course, you do it like Michael Jackson.

These are the same people who need a special memo to keep them from bringing their stuffed animals with them to work.

I’m not so sure I’d want to give them a gun, really.



Pic by Guillermo Ruiz de Loizaga for www.flickr.com

I took a test, I did

I'm not a ma'am, dammit!

Phonesalesmen make me crazy. They make me want to strap them to my kitchen table and dissect them alive with knitting needles.

About a year ago, I had a fit of niceness and donated some money to an organization that works against infant death syndrome, and thus placed myself firmly on their List Of Suckers.

So now they call me almost every day. It usually happens when the phone is turned off or when I can’t hear it ring, but then I can see that they’ve called, and that’s just as irritating as if I’d actually had to talk to them.

I’ve registered my number against marketing, so now all I need to do, is to tell them to leave me the hell alone, or I’ll strangle them with the telephone cord. Easies said than done…

The last time I actually spoke to one of them, he was talking so much and so fast that I couldn’t get a damn word in edgewise. Then he committed the ultimate transgression. Without any warning, the word slithered out of the telephone and into my ear.

“Ma’am”
That’s right, the little shit ma’am-ed me. I’m not a ma’am, dammit. I’m barely a lady.
I hung up. I had to. People don’t respond well to murder threats. Not even the ones who aren’t really intelligent enough to understand the concept of murder.

But they’ll call back. They always do.

Pic by Jgh Photo for www.Flickr.com

Pill surprise

One unavoidable side-effect of the holiday season, is that an unusually large junk-mountain lands on my mailbox every day. Usually this stuff never makes it past the trashcan in my driveway, but yesterday I found something that made me giggle. I giggled, of course, because deep down I’m nothing but a big brat with my head up my ass.

Anyway, it was a commercial for roseroot pills. According to the fancy looking little pamphlet, this wondrous product would help me focus on (for instance) my studies before an exam AND increase sexual arousal.

Now call me crazy if you’d like, but those two things don’t seem like something that you could combine, you know? So is it like a 50/50 thing? Say that I ordered this stuff (which I didn’t, just for the record), and say that I’m sitting in front of my very large books, completely unable to study. And say that I take one of these little miracle pills. Would I become either be absolutely focused, like a little study robot, or completely unable to concentrate?

How do you know which pill does what? Are they labelled? Is it like a pill-surprise?

*giggle*

Dresses, Liberace and Aquaman

It's the season for me driving myself crazy trying to find a dress to wear for various Christmas parties, that won't make me look like a hooker or a powder puff. Both styles are big in Hellhole, judging by the content of the (four) stores. Tagging along for my futile dress-hunt, was a good friend that we all call Toto.

Toto is, in his own words, gayer than Liberace at a trucker convention.

After an eternity of trying on one outfit more hideous than the other, I finally gave up and decided to just use my dress from last year with new accessories. “Oh, you really should,” said Toto. “That dress is dead sexy.”

I froze.

Women dress up all purty for two reasons.
1) to attract attention from men, because… Well, just because.
2) To emphasize our good bits so that we can rub it in other women’s faces (no, not like that, you pervert).
However, if Toto – who is gayer than Aquaman dressed up in a very gay, pink spandex superhero outfit – thinks that my dress is sexy, there’s obviously something terribly, horribly wrong with it.

So maybe I’ll go shopping again later this week…

Pic by eyecandyforthebrokenhearted for www.Flickr.com

Great, big ears

The Pooch has got very large ears. You couldn't sneak up on her, even if you tried really hard. Which I have. Many, many times.

Thanks to those humongous radar dishes on the top of her head, she noticed the neighbour’s cats hiding under the porch the moment she stepped into the yard to do her business this morning. Three of them, in all. As soon as they saw her, they came to the unanimous decision that they should find another place to hang out, which might not have been a bad idea.

First she chased a little, black cat until it escaped over the fence. The second one went up the apple tree, but the third... Well, the third cat was different.

As soon as the pooch had determined that cat nr. 2 was not coming down, and that she herself was not one of those rare doggies who could climb a tree, she span around, ready to see how fast the third intruder could go. It wasn't going fast at all, actually. In fact, it was sort of sauntering across the lawn, heading for a small opening under the fence. It was moving much the same way that I do, when I'm trying to remember something important that I forgot to write down (of course I did).

The pooch would not let this deter her, however. Convinced that the cat would pick up the speed once it saw her coming, she rushed towards it, ears back, tongue out and legs rotating wildly. The cat looked at her, blinked and carefully placed it's bum on the wet grass.

Doggie was confused. This wasn't how these things were supposed to work. The cats were supposed to run really, really fast and then she was meant to chase them at almost the same speed. Everybody knew that. And still, this one just sat there and stared at her. Could it be that it hadn't learned the rules? It was just a kitten, after all.

"yelp," said the pooch.

"Hiss," answered the cat.

The dog stared at it for another couple of seconds, shifting her weight from one paw to another, before she stuck her tail between her legs and escaped from this fearsome enemy.

My dog is such a sissy.

Like a little lamb to the slaughter

As I mentioned, I had an exam on Friday, which I both survived and passed (I assume). Obviously (obvious for me, anyway) this called for some sort of reward. One of the edible kind and another one of the wearable kind, I figured.

Feeling deflated and exhausted, I tottered off to the mall.
Earlier that day, I’d been so stressed out, I hadn’t even noticed that all the Christmas decorations were out all over town. Now that it was getting dark, everything was oh so shiny. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at it, wide-eyed, thinking “Oh so shiny”. And then my stomach got bubbly and Jinglebells started playing in the back of my head. Covered in little, clear lightbulbs and with little trees decorated and placed all around, the mall was the shiniest one of them all.

Inside, it was as if Santa had exploded like some gigantic holiday piñata, spreading Christmas and cheer everywhere. I jumped on the escalator and up, up I went, straight into the glittery fun of “T’is the season, fa-la-la-la-la”, still bubbly inside and biting my bottom lip.

A little while later, I stood in front of a cash register and waited for one of the four clerks to take notice of me. I wasn’t in a hurry - I was staring down a Christmas tree.

What I didn’t realise at this point, was that there aren’t many shoppers in the stores that last hour before they close. The clerks are all terribly bored. They want to make those last sixty minutes pass by quickly, so that they can go home. And there was I, standing completely unattended, holding a sweater in my little hands.

Like a lamb to the slaughter…

All four saw me and pounced at the same time, faces full of big smiles and helpful expressions. The sweater flew out of my hands, as Nr. 1 rang it up. Nr. 2 dropped down underneath the counter, eagerly searching for a plastic bag. Nr. 3 tip-toed behind Nr. 1, ready to grab my receipt for me as soon as it chose to make an appearance, and all the while Nr. 4 made friendly comments about the weather. Four pairs of hands ensured that my sweater was folded up all pretty-like and placed in the bag, which in turn was handed to me.

When I finally got home, I didn’t have the energy to look at any of my rewards very closely. Go figure.

Pic 1 by Rameckers for www.sxc.hu

Pic 2 by Paul Keleher for www.Flickr.com

attack of the finals

Stumbling out of bed in the morning, with the realization that you're late for your final exam attacking you from all possible angles, is no fun. I didn't like it much either. My alarm hadn't gone off, and I was hideously, horribly late. At that very moment, my classmates were sitting bent over their papers, their little brains pounding away at the problems. And where was I? Running around my bathroom looking for my clothes, that's where I was.

In the end, I didn't have time to find anything to wear that matched or looked halfway sane. I would have missed the bus, and then I'd really be screwed. So I just grabbed the things closest to me - a oversized, grey sweater and snowman pajama bottoms. That's right: Snowman pajama bottoms. Through my window, I could see the bus moving steadily towards the bus stop, and I had to run for it. My hair was standing almost straight up, I was dressed like a freak, running down the street, shouting for the bus to "wait for me". In the hurry, I even forgot to put on shoes. It wasn't until I was sitting in one of the run-down seats that I realised that I was still wearing slippers...

I leaped off the bus like a deranged bullet and ran towards the college as fast as I could. Twice I fell flat on my face. Did you know that you could actually run and fall at the exact same time? You're head knows that it's heading for the concrete, but the legs don't have time to listen to that sort of pessimistic dribble, and they just keep on going. People were looking at me as if they were completely positive that I'd escaped from somewhere. In their heads, they were probably working out what they would say to the butterfly-net-men who would undoubtedly come looking for me.

Completely out of breath, soaking wet and absolutely filthy from stumbling around like I had, I finally arrived outside the auditoriom where the exam was being held. But the door was locked, and no amount of knocking or shouting could convince anyone to open it...

...And then I woke up.

The things that make me a terror bird

This post is inspired by the fact that I’m hungry and waiting for my lunch. I have a math exam tomorrow and cramming for it seems to empty my stomach faster than the most vigorous workout.

After my exam, I plan to celebrate my making myself lots of good things to eat and watching a DVD. That’s pretty much what I’m gonna have the energy for. As usual, I’ll probably be done eating before the credits roll by… And this isn’t because I eat so very little. No, it’s because I truly master the art of stuffing my face, that’s why.

An ex used to tell me that I ate like a bird. This is completely true if you take into consideration that a bird can scoff down about three times its own weight. I don’t really think that’s what he meant, though. The last time I can remember him saying this, was while we were having dinner at a friends apartment. We’d all chipped in for the food, and prepared it together, but the x-man had to work late, so he only saw the eating-part and not the shopping-part or the cooking-part.

I once worked as a kitchen assistant, and the chefs always had us try the food, to make sure that it was okay. After all, when you’re cooking something for someone else, you want to make sure that the meal is all that it can be. That it reaches its meal-potential, and all that. Unless, of course, you’re cooking for someone you really can’t stand. If so, you might be happy as long as the food places them firmly on the toilet for a while. Their own toilet, that is…

So while we were preparing the stuff, we tested it. Thoroughly. And once we had checked it once, we had to check it again, just like the song says. We figure out more or less how much food will be eaten at the table, and then we get twice as much in the store – because about half of it won’t ever make it out of the kitchen.

So that evening, x-man watched me picking my food, shook his head and said “You eat like a bird.”

Sure I do. Like the 10 ft tall, carnivorous Terror Birds that lived in South America about a million years ago.

I'll just leave you with this - the song that the monster in "Naked Space" sings:

I want to eat your face.

It could just be so yummy.

I'd like to have your face, in my tummy.

I want to eat your smile.

Your smile is so beguiling.

I could eat your smile, I'd be smiling.

I want to eat your knees!

Oh they would really please me.

So let me eat those knees, Don't you tease me!

bird picture by Procsilas for www.Flickr.com

Neverending Friday (part II)

As I mentioned, last Friday was a bit of a challenge for my good mood and sunny disposition. After I finally got my paper handed in, all I wanted to do, was go home. Unfortunately, unless I stopped by the grocery store first, I’d have to live off of raisins and old strawberry jam. And I’d probably have to fight the pooch for them, since she had just emptied her food storage the day before.

The store stood where it normally did, across the street from the station. I walked through the sliding doors. They closed behind me with a swish, and I looked longingly at the spot where my bus always stops. It wouldn’t be there for another twenty minutes. I wanted to go home.

I was very proud of myself when I managed to find all of the stuff I needed in a very short time, without my Inner Voice convincing me to “get the cookies” or “pick up that candybar”.

Heading for the checkout line, I figured I’d be out of there in no time. Until I saw the person standing in front of me, that is… A little, old lady with blue, curly hair who I hadn’t noticed earlier, since she practically disappeared behind her overstuffed cart. I wanted to get away, slither over to one of the other lines, but people started crowding me from behind. I was trapped.

The old bird started placing her items on the little conveyor belt. Slowly she bent into the cart, fumbled around for her groceries and picking them up as if someone had poured cement into her fake fur coat. Or maybe it wasn’t fake. If so, whichever animal had passed on for it, must have done so half a century ago.

Why are little, old ladies apparently allergic to plastic? No, not all kinds of plastic. Many of them seem very fond of plastic plants and plastic covers for furniture, but when it comes to the kind of plastic that you might use to… Oh, say pay for your groceries, that’s another story.

“That’ll be 416 kr.” said the cashier.

The little, old lady stared at him for a few seconds, while her little, old brain digested what he had just said. Then she dived into her purse. As she slowly placed the bills in the little, white tray in front of the cashier, she counted each one of them out loud. “Oooone, twooooooo, threeeeeeeee…”
When the turn came to the small change, she stopped again, her brain trying to recollect what it was that it had just digested.

“Did you say three?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. Sixteen,” the cashier said.

The women digested, returned to her purse and started putting the coins into the white tray, counting as she went along.
“Ooone, twooooo…. Did you say three?”

“No. Sixteen.”

Behind her, I was tip-toeing like a toddler needing to use the facilities. Through the window, I could see my bus pulling up. I wanted to go home, and I wanted to go home NOW.

By the time the old thing had relinquished her cash, and the cashier started to turn towards me, my items were already sitting on the little conveyor belt, ready to putter past the register, and I was holding my card in my raised hand, like a weapon.

Paying for my things and stuffing them into a plastic bag, probably took all of fifteen seconds, but it felt even longer than the eternity the old lady had used.

I made the bus with a minute to spare.

Old lady pic by KoAn for www.Flickr.com

I'm it again

Once again, I've been tagged. These are seven songs that I'm into right now:

1: "I'm an asshole"

By Dennis Leary. I like this song. Somewhere beneath my sweet, harmless exterior, there's an asshole just gagging to come out and make your life miserable.

2: "The greatest"

By Cat Power. I wanna be the greatest. Enough said.

3: "(I can't get no) satisfaction)"

By the Rolling Stones. The perfect song for dancing around the house like a maniac. Which I do. Often.

4: "Jumpin' Jack Flash"

More Rolling Stones. Because this song is almost as perfect for dancing around the house like a maniac as Satisfaction. Almost. Very close.

5: "You got me rocking"

By... *drumroll*.... ROLLING STONES. If you don't realise why this is a great song, you're to dumb for me to talk to anyway. So there.

6: "Are you gonna go my way?"

I've been obsessed with this song since I was thirteen years old. Never been fed up with it. Which is kinda sorta freaky, now that I think about it...

7: "Like always"

By Motorpsycho. At the moment this is my lie-on-the-floor-and-stare-at-the-ceiling-song. If you're going to lie on the floor, you need one of those. Everybody knows that.

Microphone pic by Brainloc for www.sxc.jpg

Rolling Stones pic by Cromo for www.Flickr.com

Neverending Friday

Last Friday was a very long day, of the seemingly neverending variety. Despite not having any classes that day, I went to the college. Being the lethargic creature that I am, this goes against everything I stand for. I did, however, have to hand in a paper.

I had the idea in my head that this would be a piece of cake. All I had to do, was find the professors office, knock-knock on the door, and hand it over, right? I should have known better. There’s no such thing as a piece of cake in Hellhole.

The finding-the-office-bit was easy enough. Knocking on the door went just as I had planned. But that was where Friday stopped following the script. There was no answer. I knocked again. Nothing. I waited. And then I waited some more. And a bit longer. Then I got fed up with waiting, and concluded that if the professor wouldn’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed would come to the professor. So I went searching the halls for a tall, gangly man in his fifties (the professor, duh). The only problem was that the guy kept moving around. When they insist on having things handed to them, the least they can do is bloody hold still, don’t you think? All lecturers should have some sort of tracking device injected into their necks, so that their students could find them. Then they could just hang a few of those electronic gizmos that show their locations as a small, red dot on the wall. Like the ones they used in Alien.

I looked at my wristwatch. The bus would leave in less than an hour, and after that I’d have to wait two hours for the next one. I needed a plan.

Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in the checkout line at the store, clutching the key ingredient to my master plan: a roll of tape. Ten minutes after that, I was in the process of thoroughly sticking my paper to the professor’s office door with great enthusiasm.

And what did I see coming towards me at that very moment? A tall, gangly man in his fifties, that’s what.

Bloody typical.

Tape pic by deziner02 for www.sxc.hu

You can’t go out wearing that!

Rain, rain, rain and more rain. And after that, it’ll probably start raining again. My house is right next to a great big parking lot. Nobody ever uses it, so the clever politicians decided that there’s no point in maintaining it anymore, and it’s since been reduced to a collection of very impressive cracks and holes.

Before it started raining, it snowed for a while. Then the rain turned the snow into ice and the parking lot into a skating range, basically. A skating range with large pools built into it. As I walked across it to get to the bus stop, I tried my very best not to slip’n slide directly into one of them. I haven’t bathed in a puddle since I was a kid, and I can’t quite remember what it was about getting my pants full of muddy water that was so hysterically funny.

The morning bus was bursting with teenagers on their way to school, as usual. I don’t get that trend where guys wear pants that only cover the bottom half of their ass. And I really don’t understand wearing half-ass pants with white underwear in the rain, especially if you’re planning on doing a lot of bending over. I’m not interested in looking at either one of these guys' bums for at least another ten years, and probably not even then.

That’s not to say that I don’t have some strange things sitting in my closet, also. I have this huge belt, for instance. It’s got a bunch of gold plates on it. Someone gave it to me as a present once, and I’ve never worn it, because every time I look at it, all I can think is “heavyweight champion of the world.”

Then there was that period in the mid nineties, when I had the animal print outfits and ridiculous plateau shoes. Not to mention men’s shirts and big hats.

I’m hoping that in another ten years, I’ll be able to look back on myself without blushing from shame.

Hat pic by brndnprkns for www.Flickr.com

Dead slugs and the thing that barfed itself to death

I spent an hour on the phone with a good friend of mine, Mariè, on Wednesday. We used to hang out all the time, back when I lived in the city (Ah! Civilization – I remember it, vaguely, in the back of my mind along with the red wagon I had when I was three), but there aren’t a lot of opportunities for us to get together these days. The girl, Parisian by birth, is one of those chefs who love to cook even after she goes off work, and used to have friends over for dinner all the time. Mostly, this was terrific, but for a while it became almost bloodcurdling.

I know what you’re thinking. “Listen to her! She’s got a real, live chef cooking for her, and this is how she shows her gratitude. What a spoiled *****” Well, you know what you’re words were. And yes, at first it was brilliant. Absolutely, completely and totally superb. But then it changed. She started cooking some seriously weird stuff.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; slugs weren’t meant to be eaten. Those of my friends who are French either by birth or in spirit, will object now, of course. Jazz once said that the idea of eating snails was less daunting if you called the dish “Escargot”, like they do in France. This didn’t help me when I was sitting by Marie’s round kitchen table with three friends, staring the content our round dinner plates.

“Don’t look so sceptical. They really don’t taste like anything at all. The seasoning provides all of the flavour,” she said to me, as she was cooking the revolting little things. We were all supposed to turn up at her flat just after she finished cooking (I’m guessing that she was going to feed her Escargots to us poor, unsuspecting victims, and then let us know what we’d just eaten once it had started working its way through our digestive systems), but she gave me the wrong time, so I came early enough to see what she was up to.
“Well, then you eat those and I’ll lick the frying pan,” I said.
Mariè laughed. I wasn’t joking.

Just as I had stuck my fork in one of the little nightmares, my cellphone rang.
“Hello. I’m calling on behalf of The Really Wonderful Newspaper. Would you like to hear about our subscription services?” chirped a woman’s voice in my ear.
“Okay, I’ll be right over,” I said. Then I put on my regretful face and told my friends that I had to go. To this day, I’ve never eaten a snail.

The week after that, Mariè served her last scary meal - a fish. It had been baked whole in the oven and now it lay on an elegant serving platter, surrounded by various accessories, with stuffing coming out of its open mouth. It looked a bit as if it had barfed itself to death.

After that, things returned to normal.

Eye pic by Fazen for www.Flickr.com

Snail pic by Giamil for www.sxc.hu

spinning heads

I’m so stressed out these days, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. I think the only thing that keeps my head from spinning around and around like something out of The Exorcist, is the fact that it can’t decide on which way to go first. I have a gazillion papers to write and final exams from hell looming on the horizon.

As usual this time of the year, I’m chronically behind on everything that I’m supposed to do, sleep deprived and trying very hard (very, very hard) to deny the approach of Christmas. My whole head is programmed completely wrong. When I’m studying, I want to go back to bed. When I go to bed, I can’t sleep because my brain keeps chewing formulas, equations and whatever insane theories Freud came up with.

In an attempt to somewhat lessen my workload, I decided to hit study hall for a few hours the other day. So I swung by the store and picked up one of their sorry excuses for a lunch (the kind that’ll fill you up like a peg in a hole right there and then, but makes you feel like you ate a brick a little later in the day). But the goal was not culinary delight, but to hold out at my little desk for as long as possible.

The first problem with my brilliant plan reared its ugly head almost right away. Seeing how I was as sleep deprived as ever, it took almost two hours for my brain to kick into action. After that, I got about half an hour of work done before it decided that it didn’t want to perform anymore, because it had already been in study hall for two hours, and enough was enough. Then I spent another half hour trying to force it to work, before my brain finally told me to bite it and shut down completely. All in all, I might as well just have stayed in bed.

Everyone keeps telling me that when I’m out of grad school, and working full-time, I’ll miss the days when I was a student. Personally, I’m not convinced. I’m quite looking forwards to the whole not-working-my-ass-off-24/7-thing. Not to mention the living-off-of-something-other-than-cheap-pasta-thing. And I especially look forwards to the checking-my-bankaccount-and-actually-finding-something-there-thing.

Until then I guess I’ll be having my heart attack in instalments.

I thought I saw a pussycat

Last night was fairly… interesting. I’d left my bedroom window open the night before, because I like oxygen when I sleep. But then I decided to go close it before I went to bed, because I’d rather not wake up to discover that my tits have turned into ice cubes.
So up the winding stairs I went, treading very carefully. You see, they’re kinda dark, and I almost kill myself on them yearly, on average. Since I’ve now reached mid-November without injury, I figure that my number is probably coming up.

In my room, I shifted the mosquito net (I also leave Christmas decorations out until August) a bit to the side, and pulled the window closed. Just as I was doing this, something black and far too big to be a mouse shot out from under the bed and out the door.

“I thought I saw a pussycat,” I thought.

Seconds later, a large screech, followed by a great deal of hysterical barking, could be heard from the living-room.

“I did. I did see a pussycat,” I thought.

As I entered the hallway, there was more screeching, barking and general madness. The neighbour’s cat sat on top of my piano, balancing on a gigantic stack of sheetmusic, while my dog, trying to get at the cat, clambered away at the keys, both of them screaming at each other like maniacs. It sounded a bit like the choir they had at my elementary school. Apparently, the animal had climbed up the tree outside my window and made it's way through the window.

It was obvious that the relatively large cat on top of a stack of papers, would eventually be defeated by gravity. It needed a way out. Preferably a way that didn’t go through the dog’s digestive system. So I opened the veranda door, and the cat blasted through it like a bullet, sending sheetmusic flying in all directions. Unfortunately, so did the dog.

I didn’t want the dog to eat our neighbour’s cat. I actually think there’s a law against letting your dog do stuff like that. Neither did I want it to stand outside, late at night, barking its head off. So I did the only thing I could have done – I sat down by the piano and played the “Maple Leaf Rag”.

You see, my dog has a very strange reaction to that particular piece of music. It’s kinda like Roger Rabbit and the old “shave and a haircut” trick. Whenever she hears it, she has got to stand by the piano and howl. This need far outweighs the need to devour passing felines.

Sure enough, the dog came bolting through the door and started to wail. By the time she remembered her cat-sized snack, the door was closed.

After all – you can put a cat in the oven, but that doesn’t make it a biscuit. Or something along those lines.

Little, green men

Sometime this weekend, I read in a newspaper article that this army-guy named Ford had retired, and was now worried about the fact that earth haven’t done anything to protect itself against attacks from the little, green spacemen that may or may not be fluttering above our heads in their flying saucers. According to Ford, there have been several reliable sightings of UFOs over the past few years.

Personally, if I ever saw a flying saucer, I wouldn’t tell a soul. Say that I’m out walking the pooch, and say that a UFO decides to swoosh above the treetops somewhere within my field of vision, that would just be my little secret. Hell, even if it landed right smack in front of me, sending out a short fellow with emerald green skin and eyeballs the size of a grown mans fists, and this little guy had a globe, or something, and wanted directions to The White House… Well, I STILL wouldn’t tell.

This attitude may, of course, change as the years go by. I plan to become one of those crazy, old ladies with long hair, insane dresses and humongous hats. All the children who see me will instantly think that I’m a wich, and the grown-ups will probably think I’m a nut, because I’ll look nothing like their dear old, blue-haired mums. When this time comes, I might mention it.

On the other hand, I don’t want to insult anyone by claiming that there’s no such thing as an unidentified flying object, simply because I haven’t seen one (and if I had, I certainly wouldn’t tell you lot). So if anyone of you would like to claim that you have a meaningful long-distance relationship with a spaceman, far be it from me to say that you don’t. If I had a UFO sitting in my garage, I would most definitely take it for a spin. Granted, I wouldn’t go very far, seeing how I don’t have any sense of direction whatsoever, and space seems like the kind of place where one might get lost. Still, would I have myself a little expedition? Sure I would. Would I go around kidnapping creatures that I met on my way, and impregnate them with my spawn? Not so much.

Well… Okay, maybe once. Or twice. But just for science, though.



Alien pic 1 by Roadsidepictures for www.Flickr.com
Alien pic 2 by Paulgi for www.Flickr.com
Space pic by Lakerea for www.Flickr.com

Four

I've been tagged By Irene. Here goes...

Four jobs I've had in my life:

The postoffice:

My firs job ever was in a postoffice for a week during workweek at junior high. Some might say that this wouldn't count as an actual job, but I completely disagree. I remember quite clearly having a cut on my thumb from those rubberbands that they use when they stack large piles of newspapers and such together. Anything that involves you getting injured on a schedule, is a job. So there.

Phonesales:

Really, truly the worst job ever. Most of which consisted of ringing people up at night, right in the middle of their favorite TV-show, try to sell them baking recipies, get yelled at and then moving on to the next one. You know what Barnum said about there being one born every minute? Well, that didn't apply to most of the people on my calling list, that's for sure.

Kitchen assistent:

The chefs would chase us around to get us to taste whatever they were cooking at the time. Also, I was in charge of preparing desserts. I... uhm.... swelled a little bit during this period.

Graveyard shift:

At a retirement home, to be exact. I did a whole lot of reading, which made me sleepy, which in turn ensured that I got a lot of exercise walking around and around a fountain in the yard.

Four TV-shows I love to watch

That 70s show:

Although I don't really buy the Fez-not-getting-laid-thing...

What not to wear:
I know it's pathetic. Stop laughing. I mean it. I'll kick your ass.

Lost:

I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. Did I mention that I love it? Even if they did kill off Boone.

Invasion:

It's what they're currently sending because Lost is taking a break. Gotta love those angry aliens. Even if they don't love you back.

Four of my favorite foods:

Pizza:

Pizzarolls, pizzapie, small pizza, big pizza, round pizza, square pizza. I had pizza for dinner yesterday. Today it's all gone, and I miss it *sigh*

Tortellini:

I could live off this quite happily for the rest of my life. Maybe with a small salad on the side for variety.

Mexican food:

This way I can indirectly name waaay more than just four foods. Am I clever, or what?

Indian chicken curry:

I even know how to make it from scratch, all by myself. And then I can eat it all by myself. Buahaha. Yay me!

Four movies I would watch over and over

The fifth element:

I mean, who doesn't love watching a girl, with suspenders that look like cheese, kick alien ass?

Piano:

It's just... pretty. And it's sappy and romantic and cute.

Pride and predjudice:

The british version, mind you. It's even worse than Piano, and it lasts for five hours. Five hours of cute goo. Yay!

Toy story:

Because deep, deep down in the darkest pits of my soul, I'm a big, drooling baby. But don't tell anyone 'cause it's a secret.

And now I'd like to tag the following people *evil laughter*

JAZZ

TOAST

TOO_LIVELY

And.... KRISTIINA

Tv-pic by Ruurmo for www.Flickr.com

Food-pic by Selva Morales for www.Flickr.com

Film-pic by Philly J for www.sxc.hu

Day of the "eeek"

Yesterday started out fantastically boring. It was plain and simply dull. I was sitting by my computer, having an IM conversation with a friend, rolling in my own tedium, when I suddenly heard a strange sound from the corner of the kitchen where the oven and the refrigerator lives. It was sort of like tapping on metal. Every time I heard it, I got up from my chair to investigate, but all became quiet as soon as I did.

Thinking that it was probably nothing, I returned to my chair and my conversation. Just as I had almost stopped thinking about the whole thing, I saw, in the corner of my eye, something small, brown and roundish dart out from behind the refrigerator and disappear behind the dog’s feed barrel. “Mouse!” shouted The Voice that lives inside my head.

In a split second, my attention was ripped away from my computer screen and towards the barrel. Somewhere along the line, I let out a gasp. The dog, which up until that moment had been snoring away in the livingroom, immediately flew out of the couch and came running. Somewhere in her puppyhood, she made the connection between gasps and something happening. As far as gasps go, this was a good one, and she was determined no to miss the cause of it.

Now I was sitting on my kitchen chair, stiff as a board, my eyes darting back and forth between the dog and the barrel. The pooch stood in the middle of the kitchen, ears pricked upwards, looking around, wide-eyed. Her whole body was tense and her tail wagged, not just from side to side, but around in circles.

The mouse chose this moment to make a run for it. Around the side of the barrel it went, towards the door which leads into the hallway. To a rodent on the run, it probably seemed like a good place to hide. The mouse and the pooch spotted eachother at the same time. Immediately, the doggie rushed forwards towards what she perceived to be a nice, crunchy snack. The mouse was rightfully terrified as it aimed for the door, moving much slower now than it initially had. I managed to slam the door shut between it and the dog before something really gross happened.

There have always been mice here in winter, living inside the walls, and I’ve gotten used to that, but I don’t want them on MY side of the walls. Now there was one in the hallway. That’s just great.

A quick search online told me what mice like to eat and how to place the traps to make sure that they are killed immediately when they walk into it. I also have a new respect for the intelligence of rats, but that’s a whole different story. After a few moments of procrastinating and feeling sorry for the mouse, which was kinda cute, after all, and hadn’t really done anything wrong (that I knew of), I loaded up four traps with bread and placed them around the hallway. Then I took the dog for a walk.

“There’s no point in checking the traps this soon,” I thought when we got back. But I did it anyway. And sure enough, there it was. Apparently it liked bread more than I thought. At first I just mentally confirm that something shaped like a mouse’s butt was sticking out of it, went “eeek”, turned right around and ran into the kitchen where I called my mother. I’m not really sure what good I thought that would do.

Then I got a broom, swept it up, went “eeek” again and dumped it into the trashcan outside, trap and all.

And that was my day.

I'm a little teapot

Over the last couple of days, I've been amusing myself with one of those automatic translators on the internet. This has yielded some interesting results.

Do you know the verse "I'm a little teapot"? If not, it goes something like this:

I'm a little teapot,

short and stout,

here is my handle

here is my spout.

When I get all steamed up,

I will shout.

Tip me over, and pour me out.

Unless, of course, you just translated it back from traditional chinese. Then it goes a little something like this:

They are a small teapot,

short and the beer of malt,

is my handle here,

is my spout here.

When I obtain all cooked to vapour in on,

grid era I,

it will turn over it over it will pour it outside.

Sure, 'cause that makes sense. Of course it does. Another vell known verse, is "Hush a bye baby". That goes like this:

Hush a bye baby, in the tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock;

when the bow breaks, the cradle will fall,

and down will come baby, cradle and all.

The exception is when you translate it back from Dutch, in which case it goes like this:

A silencing secondary baby, above tree,

when the wind blows the cradle to hope rock;

The When bow break, the cradle will fall,

with will get down the future baby, the cradle and possesses.

Isn't grammar fun? And you know that little rant underneath the headline on this blog? The one with the oysters. Well...

I will not eat the oysters. I wish my dead men of the food. Not become ill. Not ferrito. Breakdown. Creed that seventy for hundreds of happening in the life are revealing and are thankful for the laughter, less than when the latte ones exit from my nose.

I think we've all learned something important here today.

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