the animals {photopost}

This is Oggy, the family dog. She eats cat poop and likes to roll around in the litter.

She's enjoying the ignorance of Loki getting armed.

"I was going to lie quietly and be cute. But then you started taking pictures and I had to sabotage that."

You can imagine who's the more aggressive one.

five scenes you miss when you only listen to tv shows

I usually only listen and half-watch TV shows. It's a stupid habit, and I'm always assured in exactly how much when I spot a scene that I never noticed before, and which significantly contributes to the whole thing, or even is just funny. The fact that I can just listen to them means these shows are great, but I tend to forget that great shows usually also have great visuals. These are some of the few I could hunt down.

There are probably some spoilers here. Also, Gaby Hoffmann made this post NSFW.

1. Gilmore Girls

Right before Lorelai is supposed to marry Max, this happens for about two seconds. I've seen Gilmore Girls an unhealthy amount of times, but the Max storyline has never made sense to me. It still doesn't, but this is a really good visual.

2. Modern Family: Claire

Anything Julie Bowen does with her face is worth watching. In fact, I'd say that Modern Family is one of those shows that you can just have running in the background and not be bored, and at the same time you're losing on some awesome physical comedy. It can do both those things, because it's a great show.

3. Modern Family: Mitch and the Princess Castle

 3. The Big Bang Theory

Leonard proposes during sex, and then proceeds to don Penny's pink bathrobe, because of course he does.

4. Girls

And obviously, Gaby Hoffmann and her bush must make an appearance. I get how this thing gets made fun of and why people have given it a Twitter account etc., but at the same time I still remember the feeling of dread at that scene, this powerful visual of vulnerability, insanity and pain. Scenes like those make Girls still very much worth watching, no matter what you might think about the characters or the storylines.

Obviously enough, I do not own these images.

on attention {photopost}

{Photos taken by me, use only with permission.}

five things I'm doing

{Yet another try for a regular feature. I'm an optimist.}

This is what I've been doing recently:

1. Taking pictures of black cats. They have multiplied since I last visited their hangout. When they all come together in evening hours, it looks like giant ants are crawling all around the gardens.

2. Allowing myself to think that spring has come to stay. This involves wearing weather-inappropriate clothing and taking copious pictures of flowers.

3. Remembering that listening to this song on repeat and crying is something I did at a certain point in my life. Acknowledging with gratitude to all involved that since then my life has become significantly less pathetic.

4. Listening to Tom Waits and thinking about the time I fell in love for the worst time. Acknowledging with gratitude to all involved that since then my life has become significantly less pathetic.

5. Taking creepy pictures of myself in preparation for reading Hollow City. Not actually reading Hollow City, because I only have time for reading at night and I'm not making that mistake again.

my laptop sucks. and other stories.

This is an entry for the Getting to Know You link-up by Suzy from Eeeep I'm a Blogger. 

Unfortunately I haven't managed to get the video up, because after 90 minutes of uploading it, YouTube only played audio with a black screen. I'm angry about this, because I spent all of the time off I had today making the video. Also, I finally managed to get it under 15 minutes, which was very lucky for everyone involved. It seems as though my webcam is incompatible with both YouTube and the Windows Movie Maker, since the video got really mangled on YouTube and the Movie Maker refuses to load it at all.

So. This sucks.

I definitely want to make a vlog some day, so I'll try to work out my technical difficulties and I'll make one then. For now, I'll answer the questions in writing, because I still want to participate!

1. What makes you laugh?
This is The Bugle Podcast. Go listen to it. If there are any Buglers among you, know that I probably want to be your friend.

2. What made you become a blogger?
I wanted an outlet for my writing and pictures, and to be a part of the blogger community.

3. Do you have any regular features on your blog? If not, why not and if so, why do you do them?
I don't have any actual regular features. I never manage to keep them regular. Or continue at all.


4. What is one piece of advice that has stuck with you?
The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you.


5. What inspires you when writing blog posts?
I have a very short attention span, so anything that I sit down to write about must be a thing that's had quite an impact on me (remember that answer when I write the post about my dog eating cat poop all of a sudden). Other than that, it can be anything. That's why I have so many photo posts.

6. Aside from being fantastic at blogging, do you have any other hidden talents/party tricks?
Haha, I don't think I'm fantastic at blogging. I don't know about hidden talents, either. I've tried loads of things because I'm addicted to learning new stuff, but few of them stick.


7. What are your top tips for first time vloggers/bloggers?
Start. And then carry on. (Bloggers, that is. Vlogging remains a mystery to me)


8. If you’d had to get a tattoo at eleven years of age, what would it have been?
Something from the Lord of the Rings. I was a huge geek for all that.


9. What is the story behind your blog name/username?
There's not actually a story. I realize I'm not being very interesting here. If I managed to get the video up, you'd at least have my funny accent.


10. How do you think you’d react if your blog ever appeared on Get Off My Internets?
I imagine I'd be quite glad for the traffic.


11. Tell us about a teacher who has had a big influence on your life (doesn’t have to be an actual school teacher).
There are people who go through life being decent, kind and fair to others no matter how hard it gets. I've had the privilege to meet several of those people. Seeing that it is possible to live like that has been a valuable lesson.

12. If you could give a message to anybody who isn’t here right now, what would it be?
I wouldn't. I'm bad enough at communicating with people who are here.

That's it. I'm sorry about the video. Here, have a kitty picture.

I know, right?

read! The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

I read The Broom of the System, and I wanted to write about it immediately, but it couldn't be done. I wouldn't even know where to begin. I don't know that still.

Reading this book is like spending time with an exceptionally interesting, engaging person. The story is not just written and given to you. It happens in your head as you read. You're a part of it and it's a part of you. Like in a love affair. And it's difficult and exhausting and painful at times (particularly towards the end). I knew the feeling from before, but it took me some time to connect it to a book. It felt the same to read The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, the former of which is famously difficult, yet the reading of it feels like coming to a place you belong to after a long time away.

David Foster Wallace wrote the book when he was in his twenties. It is possible that he had complex intentions with it, that he had the code to the story or the outline or whatever you want to call it. It is also possible that he didn't. However it came to be, this book is a testament to the fact that a novel can never be described by means of recounting the story. It demonstrates, same as Faulkner's and (as much I'm not happy to admit that, because I don't like him) Milan Kundera's novels, the idea that the relationship between a book and its reader is an interdependent one. The book only assumes existence when it is read. It can be read many times, each time in a different way as the reader gains knowledge and experience which then modify the act of reading.

One of the parts I enjoyed the most throughout the book are the transcripts of therapy sessions the characters have with an extensively obnoxious psychiatrist. They were also the ones where I grasped the allusions (or I thought I did). I read somewhere that the book is supposed to be a "dialogue between Wittgenstein and Derrida" and I'm very little familiar with either.

LENORE: What context? There’s no context. A context implies something that hangs together. All that’s happening now is that a thoroughly screwed-up life that’s barely hung together is now even less well hung together.

[Dr.] JAY: So the woman is worried that her life is not “well hung.”

LENORE: Go suck a rock.
I know I didn't say anything about the story if the book or its characters, but the problem is, if I did, it would be pointless. I've read annotations for the book elsewhere and they tell you virtually nothing. There is a character named Lenore, who is central to the plot by virtue of featuring in all of the story lines. There is a huge corporation doing shady things, and a wacky talking parrot. The story is taking place in the future of it being written, which, the book having been written in the eighties, is the year 1990, one year before I was born. I like that. It makes me think of books I read as a child, which painted the year 2000 as a distant point in the future, magical and pumped with promise and innovation and possibilities. Oh, also there's a black desert in the book, and a town shaped like the head of Jayne Mansfield. That should intrigue everyone, right?

"the shift has to be coming"

Seconds after I wrote the last post, I read that Ned Vizzini died. He was the author of one of the most profound, true novels about mental illness I have ever read, a book called "It's Kind of a Funny Story." The novel deals with a teenage boy suffering from depression, who has himself committed after having suicidal thoughts. It was based on the author's experiences. This book gave me and countless other people hope and encouragement while recounting with incredible precision what it's like to have this particular disorder, making itself invaluable for friends and family of anyone affected. It made me feel less alone when I read it and I'm sure it has had a similar effect on very many people.

“The Shift is coming. The Shift has to be coming. Because if you keep living like this you'll die,” says the hero of It's Kind of a Funny Story at one point in the book. It came for him and thanks to him the readers can believe it will come for them. I don't know why Ned Vizzini died. Maybe the Shift did not come for him, maybe something else happened. And no matter what it was, we all lose for it having happened. I just wanted to say it. It makes me so sad.

on traditions

I wasn't going to write a Christmas post. Then, however, I was thinking of Czech (more specifically my family's) Christmas traditions and as I came to see them from a distance, they suddenly seemed very much worth writing about. I guess the noteworthiness stems from the global reach of Santa and his foreignness here, which brings all the cozy and normal things into a bizarre, interesting light. It's kind of like Hermione taking Muggle Studies despite being Muggle-born: "but it will be interesting to study them from a wizards'point of view!" 

As in many countries, Christmas trees are common here. My family doesn't have a tree, but we've been growing a tropical plant that resembles one for years, out in the hall. Every year it gets a new layer (floor?) of branches, which we celebrate by putting all the decorations on it until it disappears. As we'd always had a plastic tree instead of a live one, live trees don't evoke Christmas in me and therefore I don't fully grasp the point of them, although I understand wanting to have one if you're used to it. 

Other Christmas traditions include baking a giant load of Christmas sweets. I was once told that it's not done in Britain (and possibly even elsewhere). What do you use to gain holiday weight, then? The baking of sweets is a bizarre kind of honour deal - people tend to "casually" mention how many kinds they've got and the more the better. It's hugely stressful for those who subscribe to it, because these sweets are a hell to make. I only made the start of one kind this year and it took me four hours. It is generally considered to be a stupid competition, but it's still done, so it might be hard-wired into some people's brains.

Fried carp is eaten in the Czech Republic on the evening of Christmas Day, so part of the deal is to pick up the fish and prepare it. Some people buy live carp and slaughter them at home. Ours is already butchered and gutted, because this bloodthirsty custom didn't really catch on in our family. We don't do anything on Christmas Eve, except stress and bicker (the stress from gift-shopping and holiday preparations will have spread wide by that time). The main event is the evening of the next day when a big dinner is eaten (and unless the meal is bought prepared or the family has a cook, there is always one or more people totally knackered by that point). Every family has a different take on the dinner proceedings and even the dinner courses, depending on what part of the country you are, your ancestors' customs, religious beliefs (or lack thereof) and other things. After dinner the family moves to another room (where the tree is) and the presents are unwrapped. 

To little children the purported bringer of the presents is Ježíšek, or, in English, Baby Jesus. And you can't imagine how weird typing this is for me, because despite it being habitually translated this way, the "baby" part is not evident in the Czech term. Until I read it in English, I had never in my life  assumed that the force behind the present bringing is a baby, because come on, that's clearly ridiculous. As he is never seen or depicted anywhere, I used to imagine him as an approximately ten years old flying boy with a big bag full of stuff, who can de-materialize. Because how else he'd fly through the window (which he does during the dinner because he's very efficient). The provenience of the presents was never specified. It's not like Baby Jesus has any toy factories. He just procures the presents. Also, his arrival is heralded by the ringing of a bell. Even in pre-mobile times parents had ways to make the bell ring when nobody's in the room with the tree. 

Children write letters to Ježíšek, so that the parents know what to get them. I think that only really tiny children genuinely believe in him. When the secret is broken, which happens, at the latest, in the first grade, at some families the belief, no longer genuine, is kept in the form of an unspoken covenant, clearing the children of the obligation to procure presents for their parents. In other families everyone gives gifts from then on and the belief is only maintained for the sake of the youngest child. Personally I think the latter way is better, as it trains you for gift-giving with limited resources and puts your own demand for gifts into perspective. 

Anyway. After the presents are unwrapped, there's usually a new made-for-TV fairy tale story on the public-service channel. As they've been pretty horrible for a long time now, many people prefer the old ones, which can usually be found on other channels. Other favourites include feel-good films, either black and white and usually pre-communist, or colour and have-to-be-taken-with-a-grain-of-salt, as they were probably made during the Communist era, which spanned from 1948 to 1989. Most of the films popular now are those that avoided any propaganda and are simply funny or tell a good story. I only like two of these and a couple of the fairy-tale ones, and I hate TV broadcast in general, so I prefer not to tune in to the annual new-story attempt. 

As the prevailing religion in the country is Catholic, at about ten o'clock lots of people can be found at the "midnight" mass. I've been to a fair few and I'm not even any kind of religious. It was a family obligation and a strain on both sides. I respect religion all the way to the point where it sticks its collective nose where it doesn't belong, and as most religions don't seem to observe this principle, we're generally better off apart. 

After the big day, the rest of the holidays is spent eating sweets and leftovers at home or visiting friends and eating their sweets and leftovers at their homes. For students, the holidays are a time of denial and, further, procrastination, as January is the main time for exams, some of which are conveniently crammed several into one day. Forget Christmas, that's the most wonderful time of the year.

And that's all I guess. Whatever way you celebrate this season, may it be a happy way. 

going vegetarian: the stupid way

Recently I've decided to stop eating meat. You know, gradually phase it out of my diet while adopting new eating habits, like a sane, reasonable person. The problem (that was totally foreseeable, predictable even) is that I'm not, by most standards, a reasonable person.* I had been considering going vegetarian/pescaterian (that's what you call fish-eaters, right?) for years prior, so quitting meat really wasn't that difficult. Aside from not really liking the taste, I detest the idea of mass-breeding animals whose sole purpose is to be slaughtered afterwards. Which is also the kind of animals whose meat gets on your plate if you live in the city and are at the same income level as me. So what happened was, I got the gradually phasing out part right, and everything else sort of didn't follow at all.

First of all, if you're going to exclude something as major as meat from your diet, it really helps if your diet is not of the "have I eaten today" kind. It also helps if you're mentally stable. I can't currently boast either of those things. Since getting out of bed in the morning is an effort** and so is the tiniest single fucking thing, I live in kind of a half-state, a limbo of semi-consciousness. As I am a lucky person and have my living conditions covered, what I primarily seek in my existence is solace, got in any way possible. That's not exactly an excellent starting point for starting a new lifestyle.

However, if you're stupid enough to do that, there needs to be a certain amount of force applied. Make a list, set an alarm, whatever works. I have years of eating badly/barely eating/starving myself under my belt, so detecting a fuck-up in the dietary department comes quickly to me. Thing is, if you don't control your nutrients intake, your body will turn on you in various inventive ways. There are loads of specific guides on the Internet on how to adjust your eating habits, like this one and I guess it would be smart to consult at least those. Even without a consultation, though, eating well requires planning. Which is what I have not been doing and now various regions of my body are screaming FUCK YOU at me in their scary voices.

Personal shortcomings aside, there are other people's attitudes to your newly minted lifestyle choice, that you will have to consider. I'm not forcing my choices on anyone, nor am I trying to convert other people, yet still it's difficult for some people (read: my mom) that I have stopped eating meat (barring fish, which are expensive and not really an everyday eating option, thus not a supporting argument). Today I made an interesting discovery when I decided to budge to an exquisite final act of emotional blackmail in the form of leftovers of a traditional dish. It was strips of pork and I distinctly remember it being one of my more favoured meals. I haven't been craving meat almost at all, but I didn't think it extended to actively disliking it when I put it in my mouth. Logical, right? Why would it? Except that it totally does. I couldn't eat it.

This brings up several conclusions for me. First of all, blackmail or not (this sounds very first-world-problems, but did you really expect anything else?), I've simply stopped eating meat, period. It makes it easier that I can't eat it now, because there's not that little what if notion. However, even if I'm happy with the decision on a mental level, clearly I need to step up my game in the cooking and actually eating department.

I'm going to eat some chickpeas now. Vegetarian/pescaterian personal advice is more than welcome.

*Don't get me wrong, I try. It's just that from every experience I emerge dumber than I could ever have expected. 
**Stop making the "if-you-had-to" face. If I have to, I get up and function zombie-style. If it only were that simple.

christmas fair

You know, because nothing says "Christmas" better than a huge Ferris wheel and a really crappy band playing the cheesiest songs ever written.

{All photos were taken by me. In the unlikely case that you want to put them somewhere, please ask for permission.}