I first heard of Aimee Mann through some weblog (Kottke, maybe?) and listened to snippets of her Magnolia sound track at Amazon. She’s had quite an interesting career.
Hmm. I’ve slashed my food expenses from some 900 marks a month to under 60 euros (about 350 marks). My shelf in the fridge is always bare with only a milk carton (for coffee, only), margarine and—once in a while — some cheese. I don’t know if I feel any richer for “all that money” I’m saving.
Betcha didn’t know I suffer from photic sneezing. I didn’t know what it was called until I heard of it via Biz Stone.
The Real Blogger's Manifesto. Funny, insightful, and true.
We are going to terminate our contract for our Kongontie cellar-cum-office-slash-illegal-apartment. Notice is three months, and no, neither of has arranged future living quarters. We do so love living on the edge. And yes, we will probably be homeless come summer.
As to all the talk about the majority of weblogs being crap: it may be so, but find the opposite a problem also; there's just too many good weblogs out there. I can't seem to stop finding them.
Gene Simmons of KISS interview on NPR (a whopping 25 MB file, so be careful). Excellent. Via Textism.
Walking home from work today I was filled with a long-lost sense of... elation, I guess I could call it. I’m not sure what brought it on, but it sure felt good. The first day at work without Taneli was kind of nice, too. I was busy all morning so the time went pretty fast and it didn’t feel so tiringly useless.
Yesterday night before Markku left we had a conversation in which I was able to sum up my bouts with depression and on-going search for “myself” fairly briefly. I take this as a definite good sign that I’m coming to terms with this whole, uh, period of my life.
Right now I’d like to concentrate on being studious, as in really getting stuff done, generous, as in truly giving of myself and “my posessions” without feeling used, and generally sensitive to both my feelings and the feelings of others around me.
I’d also like to learn Python, whip Avaruus Edit into shape (so that I can, for exampe, use it for this blourgnal), and start writing so much that I lose my appreciation of single words and sentence contructs. Treating writing as something that happens by slashing open a creative vein is not exactly condusive to a) learning how to write, or b) writing for a living.
Yesterday, not much
Last night Elexa and I went to see the Finn-Brit Players showing of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, of which Misu was the costume designer slash make-up and hair stylist.
An intense performance running almost three hours in length, one woman in the audience exclaimed that she got tired from just watching the actors work. I could relate.
The play was fitted with references to current affairs and the actors broke from their roles several times making references to the play-wright and acknowledging the audience, which was interesting, but not really as effective as similarly layered intertextuality in movies.
I'm alone, sweet alone. Words never come easy. Sentences run loose and runny, lacking the same zest as the red wine I bought. A little too cold, a heavy touch too clammy.
Baba Lybek. Uh, yeah. And the story on Gifu. Hand-drawn, cut 'n paste. Killer hot. And my hands dry and without surface circulation. Indecision. Cold floors. Balled up toes.
A Friday night.
Short stories, bittersweet. Of childhoods forgotten. Or relationships ended. I have nothing to talk about. Where is my voice?
Not satisfied with the words. Oh no, not at all. Do I rearrange them, massage them, gently stroke their every dip and curve? No. No, again. The words are less ones and more zeros. Zeros as in null, empty, void of meaning. At least meaning in context. Context of expression of emotion.
No. No. No. Good word, that. Very good. Short, powerful. Like something else I know and love (I like to think). No. Also descriptive. I feel a little “no” today. I feel a little “no” many days. At least since I lost myself.
Friday night. Still. Stupid CD player. Repeating itself without me noticing. Tired. Looping thoughts. Stuck in a scratch. Misu's writing yet another book. Crazy bitch. I love her.
Bad boy?
By the time I got home, the pizza was cold. Stupid pizza. Man hits woman. “I can buy my own cider!” A domestic fight. Woman walks away. Man follows at a distance, turns around. Woman gets on tram. Answers cell phone. “No, you hit me.” Cell phone rings. ... “Okay, I'm coming.”
This is enough. I'm going out. Where's Janne?
Misu can make depressing cartoons, too. They’re all simple (the elegant kind of simple) and cute.
Ooh, useful! Japanese sex slang. [Via CamWorld]
Someone forgot to remind me to buy condoms today. Luckily I remembered.
When I listen to Radio Helsinki and I hear a Stupido shop ad, I drop the volume to zero. I hate those ads.
As I sit here right now, in front of my computer, in my room at our illegal cellar-cum-apartment, one of my small two identical windows (two thirds of all of the windows in the household, in fact) is wide open. I can hear rainwater dripping from the roof and splattering on the ground.
It's dark outside. Dark and cold and wet. It's utterly gloomy, lacking even the romantic undercurrents of rainy days or cold spring nights. The weather makes me want to... Well, it doesn't make me want anything. Rather, it makes me unwant... anything.
My ashtray is filled up in under an hour when I have friends over.
Judging by state of my room that some 15 percent of all cigarette ashes end up outside of the ashtray.
My twenty-first birthday is in eighteen days. I have ninety-nine days of civilian service left.
I am smoking a cigarette right now. No, I lied. I just put it out. I dropped a huge nugget of ash on my desk.
Felt better later in the evening. Elexa and Anna came over and we all ended up staying up too late. Poor Misu had to go to work today and wake up way before the rest of us. Ah, such is the lot of my sweet coffee shop girl.
Misu came over about an hour ago. That's what set it off. Today's Friday and I was supposed to go out and have fun with Misu, Janne, Elexa and Anna, who's visiting from Tampere. Only now I feel so restless, bitchy and depressed. And I have no idea why I feel this way all of the sudden.
I think my foul mood is because I'm frustrated with myself. I've spent all week trying to create and don't have a thing to show for it. Nothing. Nothing but plans and false starts and mind-numbing surfing and nights with too little sleep.
I just made Misu dinner (an omelette) and did half of the dishes. Two "tasks" and both of them set me off ruminating and spouting angrily. Someone had eaten most of the cream cheese and sprouts. “Who's the fucking asshole who ate my food. 'Ilya, can I borrow some food?' they ask. What the hell am I going to say to that? No? 'Come on, Ilya, I don't have any food and the stores are closed...' they whine. So why the fuck didn't you go to the store when it was open?”
And the dishes, well, it's of course obvious what I was muttering about while washing them. “I'm the only one who ever does anything around the house. Taneli invites all his friends over and they use all the dishes and guess who's left to clean up...”
While the borrowed food thing is true, my bitterness about the dishes iss most definitely not true. I probably have guests over more often than Taneli. And Taneli does do the dishes just as often as I do. So my complaining is totally bunk. It's just how I felt then.
Why am I such a control freak? How come I feel like I need to have things my way? And how come I totally freak out when people don't do things the way I want them to?
I don't want to be a control freak. I know it's so dumb. I can see how pointless it is. And seing it all so clearly only makes me feel worse.
I get so annoyed by Markku or Janne borrowing my food. I try to justify it by citing how much everything costs. Or how annoying it is to discover too late that I don't have the food in the refridgerator that I thought I did. I do realise that I don't make my point very well when I try to explain how I feel. It sounds so stupid. And that I over-react so strongly makes me really mad. At myself. And then I redirect that anger on others even further totally clouding my point. Add to that that my "point" is so fucking insignificant at the first point!
It's an infuriating and tormeting cycle.
And I feel like crap.
