any way
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keywords:any way description:any way Friday, August 18, 2006 Can I hurryInvariably, the mind is on the move, and it rarely stops doing so. A few skies are that wise they can shut the eye from their sights and freeze time - at least, for one quick second; but they do not come when we ask for them. And not in dreams, certainly. At night we often walk in stroboscopic worlds challenging the fabric of our souls with spasti-c-h-emic convulsions of imagination, when we should be at rest, turned off and not on. Maybe later then, smothered from morning-light in the warm odourharbour of a lover's armpit you can refine that first smell that will quiet it all, for another second or two. But ultimately there is no rest, no pause-button, and it keeps moving, until after a while all one does is pass through the same turnstiles with different turns and different styles, but with the same lies. Envy those dead with pity, but with envy then pity these that live. -- I'm starting to understand why children are so important, and how cold the world would become without them.
..Catch my drift or let it fly, for this one is about stronger winds.
Everyone knows the story of the Hurricane, the man the authorities came to blame - (In case you don't.)
His name was Rubin Carter and he was tried for triple murder. He appealed - which is always a clever thing to do when you have been verdicted for murder, by the way.
During that period, Bob Dylan had come and visited the man in jail, and became convinced of Rubin's innocence. He'd decided to make a bitter, passionate song about his fate, "Hurricane". After about a year, there came a re-trial, where Rubin was found guilty again, on February the 9th, 1976. It's only in 1985, that the Hurricane was finally released from prison.
The peculiar thing is that Bob Dylan has never playing Hurricane live since January 25th, 1976. Not when Rubin was released in 1985 either. Why did he stop playing the song, which had become substantially popular at the time, one week before the re-trial of Rubin Carter?
Below you can find a video where it's played live (for that very last time, I think).
It was the first and most played track on 'Desire', during which what is probably later considered to be the most succesful period of his career, so many people were out there supporting Rubin and waiting for this particular song.
One good reason might be because he simply didn't like playing the whole thing, or maybe didn't want to do so without his "Desire" violin player, Scarlet Rivera. Or simply because he did not want to be stereotyped into the shape of just some political activist.
I still think it strange and wonder if it is at all possible that Bob Dylan changed his mind about the whole thing and about Rubin's innocence, o rjust thought it wiser not to take any blind sides. It is odd that Rubin's presumed accomplice to the crime isn't mentioned in the song either, - a man who soon after being released was found guilty of drug and weapon possession - which doesn't say a thing of course, - and odder even that Dylan did not publically re-acquaint with Rubin after his release. Although I suppose it isn't Dylan's thing to do things publically - or anything involving the word "-ally".
Either way, it seems like there is more to the story than what meets the eye, and when I hear the song I often wonder how honest the man behind the words really is.
Somewhere out there, two people are kissing their last kiss, under the cold rain of giant lip-stick tube shaped things. It would be a beautiful image, were it not for the stupidity of the everywholething.
Wars used to be great beautiful things, a force of nature, a deafening roar that brought proud tears to both the eyes of those who fell to the earth as to those who thanked the sky for tomorrow's victory. But now, it's just... nasty, dishonest, and because of that it seems so much more cruel.
Or maybe I'm just thinking like that because I'm not on any winning side.
Anyway, my tortoise.
I have a tortoise. Most people have turtles (those are the kinds that swim around and eventually drink their own pee), but I have a Marginated tortoise. It came with the house and it's pretty old, we think it's got to be around for about 60 years, - you can make a good estimate from the patterns on their shells. They can be to about a 100/150 years old, like most tortoises, so it's really the perfect pet for young people who don't want to witness the death of their own pet.
But that's about all it's perfect for.
My tortoise (which doesn't have a name since, for some reason, our family has been consistently incapable of consent on giving our pets particular names), well, for all its experience it's probably the stupidest thing I've ever seen, aside of television anyway.
It eats three different kinds of things: lettuce (every day), tomatoes (bi-daily), and bananas (when they have gone rotten). That's is the only thing it does: it walks, stops to eat, and then starts walking again. Note that it doesn't sit still like normal domestic animals do once they realize they have been confined in a closed space, no. It just walks and walks like everything is a new adventure all the time as if in some eternal senile bliss.
How it manages to dissect and eat a tomato with only those clumsy paws and a thumb-sized neck is truly beyond me, and I haven't ever seen it in progress.
Why? you may wonder, if you were the wary wondering one kind.
Well, you have to understand, my tortoise is possibly the horniest creature in the entire world of male fauna. It hasn't got laid in (probably) 60 years - aside from one occasion which I will elaborate on later, - and from the moment I step out into the garden it has only one thing in mind. Because, for some reason it seems to think my shoes, - and it doesn't matter what shoes they are, - that my shoes, are two too-willing, possibly bisexual, hot, naked female tortoises. I don't know how tortoises can be naked and I'm not even sure over how exactly they can be female, but if you look up the word 'cloaca' you'll know why I don't want to find out either.
Anyway, the following ritual impedes the tranquility of each of my precious mornings:
Once I set my first foot into its territory, it starts to race towards me, like mad.
Trust me, tortoises can run like mad. Don't believe the stories.
I, in my turn, have to race towards the specific spot in our garden where it remembers there is sometimes food. So we both race, each in his own way. Usually it gets to me before I get there, depending on our initial positions. In that case, I have to run away before it starts biting the soles of my shoes (apparently their foreplay consists out of violent biting - which is not at all that different of some humans, I have to say), and I have to leave it behind in pure distress and, in an eternal senile loop of disappointment.
It's a very sad sight, even after all these years. Luckily, the damn thing hibernates under the ground six months out of twelve (how on earth it manages to surface every year is another one of those mysteries).
One time, we invited my aunt's female tortoise(tte?) to our place, for a week. She was about 40 years younger than ours. Imagine that.
That very night, my tortoise got devirginized, and we all awwed as the poor old chap winked his cute little eyes in happiness during his first tiny premature orgasm - it is a sad affair that God made most animals unable to masturbate.
The next night, the neighbours started to complain about the noise. And as the days grew on, the sex became more and more frequent, harder, and, unless racing in circles is also part of their foreplay, a lot less wanted from the side of the poor tortoisette. Thank God she was already a mother of three and infertile because I couldn't imagine having another one of these horny bastards to care for.
Football.
A game traditionally played with twenty-two people, a ball, a field with two goals, and some lines to avoid nasty arguments between the players.
You don't even need the lines or the field and the goals can be very makeshift, and you can play it with half or even less the amount of people - I'd pity the person who has twenty-one friends to hang out with, anyway.
This simplicity is one thing that makes football such an intimate and true game that is shared by all sorts of very different people.
Now, most Americans insist that their "football" is the only real football. No, incredibly, they do! Even if this is very similar to saying that indigo wastes herring for dinner, which would at least be a less concealed form of nonsense. Let us find a better name for their game, shall we?
Firstly, the amount of times the foot actually touches the ball in American Football does not hardly warrant the use of this body part as a prefix. The foot is only used three or four times in the average game, so we will definitely have to fix that bit. - You'd wonder how they came up with it in the first place.
Let's consider "American Running Ball" for now, since the main object of the game is to simply run with the ball all the way to the other side, - where you have to perform some sort of ridiculous victory dance that has been carefully choreographed by your wife and family during the past week.
Then, the ball.
Any definition of this word mentions the requirement that the object be spherical. This is not the case in American Football, obviously. It's not even an egg or an ellipsoid: in fact it's a Vesica piscis. Which is translated as "bladder of a fish". Indeed, the bladders of various organisms have the exact shape of the "ball" in American Football.
So, forcibly, we have now established "American Running Bladder."
Consider all the things you need to actually be able to play American Running Bladder. A field painted meticulously with geometrically perfect yard-lines, two large metallic structures for the goals, and not in the least, twenty-some highly technologic titanium exo-skeletons to protect the players in, with spandex shorts and matching helmets that usually have small lightning rods to stress the emptiness of their contents.
It's a ridiculous game to organize, and is thus only played in highly commercial clubs or universities and not at all accessible for people who are too small or thin to carry half their weight in metal while they are trodding around in this charade.
So, we end up with "American Steroid Spandex Running Ultra Bladder", conveniently abbreviating itself to "ASSRUB".
There, I'm sure both parties will agree this name-change will do with the confusion, and provide a more reliable account on the way both games are played.
I was thinking of feeding some birds today, somewhere in a park, alongside a lake.
But you need dry bread to feed birds. I think... I don't know if they can eat fresh bread, which might in some way be dangerous to their wee lil' bird-stomachs, or if people only give them dry leftovers because they don't think birds are worth any more than that.
As you can tell I'm not very experienced at the whole thing...
I'm not sure either whether you can ask a baker for dry bread that is meant to feed birds with - upon which he might promptly leave to some back-room of his store and return with a bag of crumbs and, well, give it to you for free. I don't feel inclined to try that out right now. It's possible some law enforces all bakers to provide this service to the people and to the birds, yet nobody makes use of it.
So, I am simply forced to use fresh bread and I hope I don't kill any birds today out of pure ignorance. Although, ignorance no longer exists with the modern protocols of the internet..
Google "can you feed birds with fresh bread?" - and it sends you to...
New Zealand.. which is a pretty far place to part for, yet far too pretty to forfeit that parting. (eheh, right)
But some way further - further down the page then - you learn that fresh bread freezes when it is too cold and then birds can't eat it so it is better to give bread that no longer has any water in it. - you remember this and it will probably resurface in some kind of conversation later in the week.
Of course, now you know that it is safe to feed them fresh bread in this weather, you wonder whether perhaps you can treat them to something special, like bread with raisins in it, or bits of sugar, for maybe this will make you immensely popular among the geese and ducks and they will treat you as some sort of king, and, they will steal jewelry off of people and lay it all at your feet in flocks of anticipation for more sweets, and the cops won't be able to do a thing about it since our laws aren't complex enough to deal with armies of poultry stealing things and how or how much this would make you an accomplice, and even if they don't allow you to keep the goods, you will become rich merely by taking tv-interviews; until of course someone discovers your secret lure and copies it and the birds decide to take a new king after which they peck out your eye-balls, since any coup d'tt needs some form of violence even when it is wildly unnecessary.
The chances this all happens are, however, quite remote, and they are in any case much smaller than anything boring that might happen instead - a probability even less large than the chances you are wasting valuable time by eating this blog-space for breakfast instead of some bread for your own. I need some kind of diversion to be able to end this paragraph, though.. Bird-bread, now there's a thought..
"Fortune favours the bold," Cheetara said. She said it in that deep wise voice that had already long conquered my soul. I remember I gasped, felt my heart skip several beats, and I am sure now that in that central second I became slightly less of a boy and more of a man.
Cheetara..
Cheetara was the reason I came home after school, people, the secret day-dream I made while we were running our last laps around the playground; she was my heroin in more ways than one.
To quote the author of forestated website:
She is also unarguably one of the coolest female hero characters on a cartoon, in that she's not a ditz or all girly. (Case in point Princess Allura of Voltron!) Not only can she run circles around evildoers, but she also has awesome psychic powers too!
Exactly!
Obviously this was written by either a girl or a very innocent boy, since it fails to mention certain physical qualities that make Cheetara quite a bit more attractive than the general Thunderpuss, but still, it gets the general gist. Cheetara was ber-fast and ber-intelligent. She didn't at all fit in that silly cast of freaks that needed 46 episodes to foil the practices of a dead mummie.
She was way too clever to be on the good side of things, and I suspect the only reason she was helping them out is out of sheer pity.
Eight years later (which is about two years ago), I downloaded all of the Thundercats episodes, and it is hard to hide the fact that I did this at least partly for my yellow-haired love of yore.
Of course, it was a bad idea.
I discovered that Thundercats was made by several different drawing teams that had but one common quality: their incompetence. Most of the times Cheetara was depicted as some kind of broad-shouldered she-male and they always failed to get her two eyes to point in the same direction.
It became apparent that I had lost a lot of the imagination I had as a boy, and Cheetara's beauty had mostly been a figment of my own creative mind - as is the case with most true love.
Still, she delivered that line again, "Fortune favours the bold," and even if I know now that it is not originally hers and that she stole it from someone else, I don't care.
If they ever invent a machine that brings cartoon characters to life, I would probably use it to have a drink with Homer; but Cheetara would sure make a close second.
Saturday, May 13, 2006 Morning bell
All I seem to use this blog for these days is to write either a headache or the time away.
Which is a bit sad, especially when I enviously note the energy other people can put into their words. (I would name them here but that would do them no good, I fear..)
Anyway, I will try and change today and write my heart out even when it has nothing at all real to say. At least I can still rhyme or alliterate to spice it up, right? Right..
Here goes then, another theft of time - as much or more of yours than as of mine.
It has come to my attention that Ghent is one freak'o'ville on Saturday.
My many international readers - truth: there used to be one Korean who visited me twice and for whom I can only hope he is from the South and his name has a better ring to it than Li or Wang, - well they wouldn't know what I'm talking about and shouldn't be reading this anyway, but really, once the students have poured out of this town and left for their mother-ships, the true owners of our city remain behind; a slow-moving residue of wacko residents. Every saturday they begin a two-day task of cleaning up the broken glass and vomit, and of re-establishing their regional dialect somewhat - in time for when the pirates of the coast come to claim it back..
Okay I had a pinsharp hangover and cynism drained me of life, but follow me any way and may you see what I did see..
So, yes, it starts with a hangover, the dirty kind that keeps slamming your brains against your forehead. There is no water to cure it, and experience - oh, so very much experience, - tells you that drinking from the tap will be a quick ticket to the colorful land of Puke.
There is but one way: out, so you set off in the sun to walk the line, through rings of fire.. - besides, you need to buy a present for Mother's Day, and you know this will involve walking around shelves with odoured candles, the mere thought of it shutting off your stomach from your mouth.
Freak #1 is innocent, but without any doubt one of the national heroes among freaks.
He is the homeless guy who carries dozens of bags on his back, two jackets over his shoulders, and one story behind his eyes, a story that noone knows.
I once saw him in a nightmare and feel less comfortable around him ever since. But we greet, as we always do: I look at him and he looks away, ashamed to be known, yet I hope secretly relieved as well. I set on and thinly contemplate the thought that maybe he is Jesus and is only waiting for people to follow him.
But I have little time to think, as Freak #2 stands just a couple of steps further. He is a huge American ex-bballplayer who has a new sandwichbar, that seems to be a complete disaster. There is never anybody in his place so he spends the entire day looking grimly outside his stars-and striped window, visibly cursing Europeans and Belgians in particular for their refined palates.
Truth be told, his sandwiches are horrible and I cannot help but enjoy the fact that american non-food has no fans in my city.
The Veldstraat. My counter goes wild here and by the time I've reached the end of the street it has three digits. If Hitler is still alive and undercover somewhere, he'd be entirely invisible here.
But the pen is too dry for them really and I'm starting to bore even myself.
Drunk from riding the wild cackling carrousel, I sit down to eat something on the Korenmarkt, - after swinging a large detour to avoid those annoyingly friendly Oxfam people who try so very hard to drain your conscience into their pockets.
The pigeons here, of course, are freaks. A couple of them have weird horns on their heads. I sigh and bite my sandwich, thinking what I could buy for my mother, whilst I overhear a couple's conversation about mattress covers.
Later, I end up between the odoured candles and somehow manage to remain conscious. But not enough to choose one for my mother. Tired of my headache, and of stalking these endless streams of walking talking people, I buy her a picture frame, and go home.
The strange new Polish girl who works in the Spar and always does the exact opposite of what you ask her gives me my bottle of water. I drink it on a bench and think about what a friend has said - everything seems to be a Neil Young quote nowadays, doesn't it? - no that's not what he said, it's just that this friend is tired of Ghent and needs to make amends, and I can't help but understand - why is it all my friends are so lonely, indeed.
And so ends this experiment, my guided brainfart.
My eyes flash through it and I am ashamed of my lack of entertainment; next time I will try something different, cause this isn't really what I meant to send -..
Oh, pay mind never to trust the Chinese - Package does not equal content!
Dear blog
- A good friend (at least she is, if it concerns me) told me I should not blog like writing to a diary, but this is a unique circumstance that calls for different measures. -
I am currently occupying the rather solemn, slightly sous-sol hallway of a youth hostel, and there are 3 minutes left on my internet counter that need to be written off.
Mainly, because I'm sold out entirely of boredom, as there is nothing to do here, and I don't even get any paper - perhaps they mistook my rather distraught expression for mental instability, and were afraid I would paper-cut myself out of this world.
You may have noticed this post revolves somewhat around the prefix "sol", which has several meanings that are all intertwined - revolving like planetary concepts around my silhouette; me, waiting in solitude for the Sol to come up, waiting for my soles to find a solution to this problem of solar absence (- I simply don't trust Brussels in its darkness)..
The counter is dripping its final digits away so I will stop this rambling. Consider this a solute to boredom, if you want.
I started to write an opera today.. - the scene still needs a last verse, in case you actually got there (sorry if you did).
It's a very old-fashioned one too, but I really dig that kind of thing right now (though I'm sure I'm one of very few).
I even tried to make colour tests of the first scene (see below for an example), and was inches away of designing some costumes - I've always wanted to design costumes.
Madness!!
It took me a whole day to realize how mad it is to tick precious time away with yet another impossible-to-finish side-project.
I am supposed to be writing a 140-page thesis on neural networks, and again my manic procrastination silently pushed me beyond the bounds of sanity, into the familiar world of eccentricity.
But, it may have been a better waste of time than anything involving cigarettes or beer. And hey, with some misplaced amount of pride, I kind of like the opera idea, and may one day even finish it - ..my most admirable trait has to be the ability to utterly belie myself.
Well, I had absolutely nothing else to say today (and I need at least one post a week to keep the doctor away).
There is a standard set of feelings that escapes any worthwhile morning-after.. at least I'd like to think so. Today's was definitely a worthwhile entry in a long series of morning-afters, so I will sum those feelings up, chronologically.
We'll skip the ones you have when you've just woken up, since that's probably the only moment in a person's day he is not thinking about anything at all.
So, you're drinking some coffee in a quiet kitchen, and staring out in front of you.
First, there is a gasp of relief; relief that you are still alive to see today and haven't lost any significant body-parts, or life-threatening amounts of fluids. This gasp is usually very short (milliseconds, really), and cannot in any way be used to actually learn anything, or prevent anything from happening to yourself in the future.
Then, the memories come pouring in. Things, - inevitably ugly things, rare and few things of beauty, and a lot of things that are just things, - come back slowly, distorted at first but gradually fixing themselves into defined positions on the timeframe of your severed mind: Eyes become faces who have talked with and listened to and shouted at you or eyed you strangely and just walked away; the carrousel world of yester becomes somewhat coherent as pictures from various slant angles slide into place, and one may carefully start to appreciate a talk with friends about everything that happened.
Usually this is accompanied by a very religious, sacred feeling: the reason you are still alive is because clearly there is someone up there who wants you to be so. Of course this is rubbish, and common sense will soon take over.
But for a while there is no need for any Descartian paradox: the proof of God lies in the persistence of your own existence. How long he or she will still feel that way about you, that's a different matter of course..
Then, there is usually a long stretch of embarrassment about everything I did but that's just because I am a whimp in those things.
Later, some pictures may follow, the only bodies of evidence that have survived that vertigo night.. For people who can't stand themselves on pictures this can be quite shocking.. but they are inevitable, and you are never quite alone on them.
Traditionally, we make plans for a better life; an entertained and entertaining life, yet without the peril. No more of this and certainly no more of that, we say to ourselves.. but these plans do not survive the Moon's light (let alone the age she brings in one's eyes).
It is ever she that guides us and will send us where she cares to. We, slaves of the night that do but her bidding: to search and to destroy and then, to search again.
Always carry a little note-book and something to write with you, when you go out.
The slight discomfort of having another thing in the pockets of your pants - I for one already feel like inspector Gadget, packing that fixed wallettobacco'rizlaphonechange set each time I leave, - well it's made up largely by the cognitive safety-net these instruments can provide.
For instance, this week I forgot the notebook in my hurry. And of course, late in the night I'd hit a great idea for a detective story, somewhere between the bottom of a beer-glass and two blue eyes.. And now it's gone. Forever gone!
Of course it might have been a lame idea and it probably was - since, you know, detective story ideas are usually very lame, - but who knows for certain?
One practical problem with writing down thoughts is that, too much alcohol tends to make one's hand rather lazy. Not rarely do I read my little red notebook the day after, only to see dozens of lines resembling the ECG-diagram of a very nearly dead person, and for the life of me I can't decipher them. What the heck was I trying to say? This might be even more frustrating than forgetting things altogether.
Anyway, since Urban Guideline #373 is about avoiding the everyday pigeon's dropping, I'll leave that one for another time.
A rather lousy day and I feel like writing it away...maybe this can paint some red and green over a morning's blue.
You know, it's a pity we have to use the Gregorian calendar - which is based on the position of the Sun, - rather than a lunar calendar like the Hebrews used.
Aside from no longer having to remember overly complicated rules to know when we may finally start eating those delicious white chocolate Easter bunnies - or teddy-bears nowadays, and even small men with hats, (what's up with them anyway?) - this would have other cool advantages.
For one, and foremost, there would be a lot more celebrations!
Think about it, we would celebrate the start of every month at night, (conveniently, when we're still unwrapping our new pay-checks) shaking our glasses at that full eye in the sky. And at the end of the month, we replace its absence with a grand set of fireworks.
It would be somewhat easier to remember when your wife is best handled with extra care, too.
Heck, if I had more than this handful of readers, I would start a petition to bring back the lunar calendar.
Anyway, this doesn't take away from the fact that full moons are quite, dangerous things.
The word "lunacy" doesn't get its etymology from nowhere; I for one am one of those that needs to watch my steps when the night is somewhat lighter than it usually is.
And every full moon is followed by another normal day.. Moon and sun: the joker and the judge.
But all things pass and all things go, and I can't quite put my finger on where that line is from or why it ended up here.
What a mess.. Arrest this writer, lest he confess another guess, and is left secretless..
Yeah, I've been taking my time.
Alright, what's there to write about then, tonight?
Sometimes I feel I should say at least something on that one thing, you know, that, hush mush stuff...the Least Objective View on Everything, or the Loss Of Valuable Energy, whichever is your current sentiment..
Luckily, the need to write about it usually flies away quickly. - one might say, as soon as it's taken a rather uncomfortable landing on the branch behind my cranium that carries certain burdens.
So, I will write about something entirely different!
Deep-sea squid, for instance.
More specifically, the Colossal Squid.
In an age where, - if you look hard enough, - footsteps can be seen on the surface of the Moon, we still know little to nothing about creatures that live in Earth's deepest waters.
Which really is a happy thought that I have treasured ever since I was a child.
La possibilit d'avoir l'Autre dans les yeux, de voir un monde diffrent; de ne plus devoir s'endormir pour se mettre en rve.
Silly French wordplays aside, really, sometimes nothing makes me happier than the thought of these tentacle monsters, existing.
Right now, some thousands of lengths beneath your feet, huge predators are fighting each other to the death, in a cold silent darkness. I can't wait to see this world on film one day, and I sure hope I live long enough to see it.
Cursed with a very dry pen - or rather, wooden keys, - I find little more to say - relying on the hope that maybe you will catch my drifts.
"Set me adrift..and I'll long for the Sea..."
Heck, a short Joycian-inspired text on the girls in the Belgradostraat, who probably too have their Monday-(or is it Saturday?)-mornings. It may be a bit mad, especially if you don't know Joyce!
I have a good friend living there, in the Belgradostraat, and often see them reading Marquèz or other interesting books when I pass, so maybe they know him - though they could only pose that to draw geeks inside (if there's want for clarity: that hasn't worked for me yet).
One grows with one's own worth.
Onely, to see the samedifferent one become a shrivel in seconds: two miniature minute threefold seeing-believe-lying self-reflections late, in the fourhours last'n five/days/a-weak exterience of rivering the Styx, frown bottom t'its opium mouth.
No-one knows the snow on my groin. The groaning womb down below. Don't go (down below).
Throw then thy bones rung my (room) my (sanctu-wary) my (berry-tree) my (mocking-bird's nest) my (thorn bush) my (dry dream-brush),
throw thy coins and be gone - One cannot miss tharrow that never aims to be--
come now the next one,
come bow, and be gone
and come again a friend
come a friend a fiend
and come against, be me.
Really, a lot of bad things happened in 1982, but not even the Falklands, Lebanon wars and E.T. combined could match the negative impact of this ten-by-ten carrier of concentrated frustration.
In a decennium where music probably reached its lowest point since say, the first ever bagpiper started practicing in his bedroom, some scientists decided it would a groovy idea to put everything on small silver discs.
Of course, it was a groovy idea and the CD is a pretty good execution of it. It usually sounds nearly as good as an LP, and often sounds even better.
The problem is that they're like great Mojito cocktails that have been spiked with cyanide; they don't last very long.
Unless you treat your CD's as small nuclear weapons and hardly touch them and never leave them out in the open, or never even look at them for too long, they will become extremely fragile and at one point or another, they will start skipping.
And God knows when they do, they have a knack for skipping at exactly the moments you really don't want them to. How they know this is a mystery in its own and may have something to do with brain-waves, but fact is that they know.
Anyway, when it happens, your only salvation becomes the fast-forward button on your stereo; which too, like in my case, will start wearing off, until finally you are left with but one alternative. The Kick. - Or Punch, depending on the height of your stereo-kit. (or your own physical agility)
Any experienced stereo-kicker knows the best places and the exact pressure needed to kick life back into his music. After some practice one can even kick casually while talking to another person, or doing the dishes, never even disrupting the mood of the moment.
But, one day the disc will simply stop working - usually informing you about this with a strange whirring noise, - after which the only solution left is a potentially illegal one.
All these rants aside, CD's are simply good intentions but failed inventions, and it pains me to see that there is no prospect for any improvements in the near future. Thursday, March 30, 2006 Cream sugar
One of the simplest and most important laws in Physics is the conservation of energy.
It can be phrased as, "What goes in, must either stay in, or come out."
It's quite a good law really, and seems to work well in most situations.
But I sometimes think I am one of the living cases that prove this law is not law but mere theory.
Maybe if I'd lend my body to science, it could win someone a Nobel prize.
Every day thousands of calories and fats enter me, drifting happily on wild rivers of sugar or beer, - and yet, what happens to them once inside, once the gates close behind them and they are at the mercy of my digestive system?
Unless I carry a small black hole somewhere - which would again be a prize-winning discovery, - they certainly don't stay there, nor do they seem to come out in the same inane amounts.
So, the internet tells me, I am simply a fast energy burner.
They have silly names for me, such as a "hard gainer".
Well, there is a reason why they coined us with this rather ironic term.
Fact is, we, the hard gainers, are a completely neglected group of individuals in society.
Supermarkets don't have a ray with food specific for hard gainers. On the contrary, it becomes hard to gain access to any food that has a normal percentage of fat and calories, let aside a higher one.
Often this problem simply results in buying more food, which makes it hard to gain any financial benefits out of one's eating habits. Some of us can't stop eating, at any time of the day, or even the night.
It gets even worse. Hard gainers have the tendency to forget about other people's eating habits, so they tend to cook things that bathe in fat or oils and aren't well received by friends or family. Yes, you heard it coming: hard gainers have a hard time gaining any enthusiastic eating partners, which may even affect their romantic lives.
Alright, that last one was a complete stretch of bullshit - though someone once told me that is what most blogging is all about, anyway.
Well, I did not mean any disrespect for the "easy gainers", who have problems of their own.
Still, there is something fundamentally wrong with the world of commercial food. Obsessed with meaningless percentages, we strive for a food-line that may prove to be lethal to some members of society who have simply lost their popular vote in it.
Sometimes I do get scared where it's heading. Maybe only decennia from now, skinny people like me will drop dead on the street, deprived of their daily needs.
Trampled away by a crowd of gargantic masses, a final shaky hand will ask the air for cream and sugar, like a desert-dweller begging the sun for a last drop of water.
Up there in ivory towers, some invisible men and women have decided that tonight, the hour 2 a.m. will not exist - not in this country anyway.
The absurdity of the matter aside, I'm kind of relieved about it. I don't like 2 a.m.
Somehow it always feels like one of the worst parts of my day.
It's that hour when you're either awake in bed or asleep in a noisy world...when everyone's either going away when you want to stay, or staying when you want to leave.
It's simply the hour when things often break, and end, between people or inside people; the moment from which on everyone can only linger forth, chained to a destiny that has already been pinned down into the all-knowful moon hours before.
I'm probably just exaggerating, using big words to hide an empty heart.
When I was a kid I used to play with the idea that God went to bed, at about 2 a.m. After he'd blown out the candles, and cleaned up his desk a bit - which would be very large and stacked with mountains of reports, and thus for all purposes might even take the Big Man two hours to arrange.
I thought, sitting in my bed underneath tight covers, that anything was possible now in the night, as the world was no longer in control of his laws. I counted the minutes and grew gradually more afraid of murderous axe-men that could be killing my parents, or of spiders searching all sorts of inventive ways to enter my body - and usually anything I'd seen when I'd snuck downstairs to the TV at night.
And when He woke up again he would fix it all, so that the Italian bus that had been eaten by three-legged whales the night before, made it into the news as just having driven off a cliff and exploded.
Yeah, I was a fucked up little nave kid, like most, and grew to be a fucked up little boy, to most.
But tonight breathes differently, now that 2 a.m. will never be. It's 1 am. 53, and I am me.
I did an experiment today. Go here if you want to see it.
It's part of an idea me and a friend are working out. But, I thought it was surprising how ridiculously hard - or rather, frustrating, - it is to solve.
Hopefully that will improve with more suitable drawings and a scenario..
The zooming doesn't quite work yet, I'm having some problems figuring that out. A lot of brain cells disappeared last night, and I think some of them were the geeky ones.
Well, if you do solve it, I pity you because, 't was a total waste of time.
I also made another broccoli picture, which you can see here. It's a bad picture really, but think of it as a final tribute to my broccoli flower. I've had it for about 4 months, it's become hard as rock, and it's simply amazing how it manages to retain its colours. Although I saturated it a bit in that picture..
One advice that's sometimes given to people who suffer from lack of energy or a depression, is to buy a plant, because it forces you to take care of something. It's a living reminder that your actions can cause, well, life, and it also provides an extra source of structure in your day.
I don't know why I'm telling this, I don't even have any plants. I've always wanted some..I kind of hope someone will give one to me one day, because I can't ever choose one.
My mind is entirely empty, yet feels as heavy as a universe, and perhaps this is one of the things worth most writing about. But it's also one of the things one mostly writes worst about.
And I feel too eroded anyway to give in to that evergreen paradox; tackling a writer's block by talking about it..
So I will simply pause myself, and hope to press some better buttons at dawn.
It came in the middle of the day, just when the sun was on my face and I was feeling spring for the first time since, well, last spring.
A smile had started to bend my lips, bringing old muscles back to life, muscles that had lain dormant for months. I leaned back and closed my eyes, building a dream of thin-clothed nymphs dancing around in a summer's breeze, weaving myself into a calm peace..
..and then, I opened them again, and saw it.
It was black, hairy, and looking at me with its thousand eyes, each one more meaningful than the others. Six paws were patting the surface of my window sill impatiently.
I'm sure that if I could understand the fly-language, it would have said something like, "hello there. remember me?" in a high-pitched mocking voice, maybe adding some "zzezheheh" laughter for effect.
I have wondered what other insects think about flies. I can't imagine anyone likes them, and I really hope that in the insect world too, there are political powers that are trying to get rid of them.
Either way, the battle is back on, and this Spring I won't be any safer from these home-invaders.
My arch-enemy looks at me one last time, and then flies out, undoubtedly by now informing its friends on the layout of my place, and the whereabouts of its riches.
I decide not to care for now, and join my imagined nymphs once again in their sensual dance.
Only this time, with the window closed.
On a different note, I caught a lost broccoli sleeping on my towel today... I thought it made nice colors - it's a little mis-aligned but I didn't want to move it and disturb its sleep.
One of my many disorders is that I like people to listen to the music I'm listening to.
I'm sure this can be very annoying for them. And not just for people that have the burden of knowing me personally; even complete strangers are but preys to my unexpected musical libido.
Sometimes, when I'm on a train, an iPod
When Neil is lifting our burdens, Frank's layering hundreds of beautiful melodies on top of each other, or Jimi starts playing another cosmically inspired solo, I just want them to experience the same moments. And when I am reaching another musical climax, I have this feeling I am not alone in it, that people are suddenly breathing harder, shifting uneasily in their seats, touched by the same waves, waves that were tiny when they entered me and have now radiated out to them through my entire body, as if born again from flesh.
But then, some guy, or woman (or, in the case of Oostende's train station, some guy who's dressed up like a woman) asks to see my ticket... I remove the earphones, and invariably I notice it's impossible to hear anything of that wonderful soundscape from the outside.. all that comes from those two plugs is a treblish noise that sounds like it could be cheap techno music.
Disappointed, I put them back in and spend the rest of the trip alone, no longer joined by equal souls.
The sad thing is that, when I'm sure people can hear me, when the train is quiet and there are no babies crying - this, especially the latter, does not happen often, - I get embarrassed and turn the volume down.
Rare but beautiful are those times when I spot someone's foot tapping along with my music, unknowingly putting a smile into my heart.
It really sounds like it could be a place. Hangover.
A small town somewhere in, the Scottish Highlands..a maze of dark alleys, roamed by solemn zombified men, who mumble only vague hellos to each other.
Everyone is constantly in a bad mood, and huge neon signs flickering "you will never drink again" and "from now on you will change your life" are broken and whithered with age.
Instead of a sun the pale sky carries a hard moon, in the shape of a giant aspirine. And nowhere is there any water for it to bathe in, for an endless draught has taken a hold of the stale air.
And so now you know why my writing today, well, sucks.
I wish I had one of these.
March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006
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