Tuesday 30 April 2013

Top of theLake

Started watching the New Zealand version of The Killing or some such. Mostly because it comes with such mixed reviews - some really hate it, some really love it. there's Elisabeth Moss in it, always a plus, and David Wenham which we haven't seen in a decent role since he played a disdained steward's daughter in Lord of The Rings. 

So far, about 10 minutes in, I am having a ride of the week, watching some rough redneck farmers clash with hippy women halfway camp and listening to the tragic tale of one woman's ill-fated affair with a chimpanzee. The expression on their faces is priceless. It's one of those I'm a redneck roughneck and i thought I've seen it all...

Not sure if she's carring a gun, but if she is, this is an amazing shot. (Pun intended) :)))

Start to end this things has a super creepy "almost hoping this isn't reality" air to it

Holly Hunter, Campion's muse, once again steals every scene.

Monday 29 April 2013

Welcome to my brain

These are the characters and relations from Zurnizip that I want to bring with me into the Goose.



Each of these characters/relationships is up to 20 years in the making. If you asked me about them, I could describe every single one down to their last insignificant detail (without making stuff up as I go along). What the issue here is, though, is that I want to a) refine the relationships until they are almost all connected (example, there still is no clear connection between Paper and Murphy's wife and son that get killed - the reason why Kay decides to aid the professors who rescue Murphy. Or who and why is the old man who holds the book of Ill Intentions ...?) and b) introduce them without sounding aloof. Ye, I've known them for twenty years. Where have you been?

There are still a couple of them missing. I have to re-arrange the characters that were based on other characters. dDaniel will be a problem, because this one was blatantly adopted out of convenience and similarity. I have to entirely undo and re-do the character of Murphy's temporary heir. Alongside, I also have to re-arrange Murphy's family. Murphy's Greek. He has pre-existing mum and dad and brothers and sisters. (By pre-existing i mean picturesque and without legal copyrights issues.) The idea that he is three is also Greek, though I'm bending that one a little bit to create a better spiral.

I only hold two thirds of the Goose book. I have no idea what the third third will be or what about. What I do know is that I want it adult, cynical and - very importantly - humorous. There are about 160 pages of the first chapter that is useless, because it's too fucking depressing. The first chapter will have to be extremely dense and slightly neurotic even, whereas the second one will have to be extremely calm, linear and fulfilling. I must resist the temptation to intersect it with non-canon chapters. No matter how fun they would be. Either blend it or dump it. My transition from short stories patched together and a high novel won't be quite so neat, so what little exceptions I employ, must have solid standing. And, above all, purposefully bothered with.

Few more pressing predicaments to sleep on and then we're off. To begin, write and finish my first English novel... again.

Friday 26 April 2013

... Can't believe I'm on page 80 of a book I know nothing about.
Anyhoo. Some stupid spring bug got to me and by the time I realized I do in fact not have hay fever, I developed a fully fledged virus farm in my face. Hundred and forty handkerchiefs and about a dozen various drugs (for boiling stomach acid, allergies, pain, sleep deprivation, the usual horrors...) later, I was sick and tired <sic> of feeling so low and started going out to shake it. Jogging with Drej, something we do more and more during doggie walks, was out of the question. Fact I don't ever really sweat much (It's actually important to learn how to do this when you're crossing a desert in June.) was completely overthrown. But instead of trying, I drove to St.George's, General's home town, to shoot for an assignment. (Which will or will not satiate the assignment givers, no way of knowing that nor, in fact, caring at all.) It was actually a good idea to do that.
          The morning was very nice, clear and fresh - the proverbially perfect spring morning. I even stopped halfway there to shoot an iron melting ... plant thingie. Yup, there's me, climbing over scrap metal, wiping my nose, making no sense, trying to get the perfect shot... Hello, hello. Bye now. But the next stop on my route was an old locomotive on the train stop. While shooting over and under there, an elderly gentleman approached me and asked what's up. I told him I just stopped to shoot it cause it seems interesting. We started talking and he took me to a small (old whistle stop office) museum he assembled and it was brilliant! it was SO cute. I felt so good about seeing The Station Agent... I truly like station offices as they were at the start... When there was nothing much else about the town breaching modern times - just suddenly someone pulled a track through it, added telegraph and post office service and eventually running water and electricity and paved roads followed... 
           Further, I began exploring the town through the lens. I am still not entirely at home with *not portrait* photies, so looking for good shots of a town can be divided into two categories. One - you have an amazingly picturesque town, very easily portrayed. Two - you have a very bland town with almost nothing really picturesque to photograph. Any retard can be an excellent landscape or architecture photie when at liberty to pursue their own great motifs. But a town like St. George's? A lovely town indeed, just not so much ... photogenic.
          I parked at the only sweets cafe and set to. For two and a half hours I walked around, changing lenses, greeting people, circling buildings, leaning, squatting, bending, climbing, focusing on details and wide-angle landscapes postcard-style takes... Such a cool, cool task. An excellent practice in something that does not come easy. As my good friend, colleague and mentor, My Brain, would tell me, the trick to a good set shot is math and a trick to an excellent set shot is an unhinged, unpredictable detail that elevates the, well, set scene to an action memoir. Brain knows what it's talking about. Or so it claims.
         I've noticed almost all angels on graveyards look like the pale Sandman 2.0, something I should probably use in the *next* book ... 
         Afterwards, I drove up to my ancestors and ate and napped like a small kitten, to get my strength back. General took me out to the movies in the evening. That made me feel tons better. Next day we went for a walk (well, he rode his bike and I strolled through the woods, listening to the Oblivion OST). Lots of good sex. I found an old flute uphill at my parents' house and am thinking of self-teaching to play it ... poor birds in my street. Uf, that reminds me, still have a penguin to draw and I've been pumping myself full of gracious mood by reading alone in cafe gardens... Which reminds me. I haven't one that today, yet :)) See ya, chubsies.

Couple pickies from the other day's field work. I'll write about it when it rains again :)





















This is very pretty: (from today's Elementary episode on selfish sobriety.) I should try to find this in translation. Translators into my language sometimes do majestic job.


The woods are lovely,
Dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep. 

(Frost guy.)
General's line of the week:

     "Are you okay? What are you doing?"
     "I'm okay, I'm just concentrating."
     "You're what?"
     "Concentrating."
     "Why would you do that?! Does this mean I'll now only have two pints of my my, but it will be in concentrate?!"

Monday 22 April 2013

Olympus has fallen ... hard

Such a storm hit town that we were basically cut off from most of in-door entertainment (while still keeping our clothes on), so we headed off to the movies. Before that I got my library card, finally, and got a book to read over coffee while waiting for the General to return home. (I got Gaiman. Although am not fond of him, as he is pretty much a fucking A-hole in person, his characters are just clichĂŠ enough to keep the story interesting.) 
           It was Gen's pick, so we went to see a manly shoot flick. It was so oddly much worse than I expected, it's kinda sad, really. SUCH big budget, SUCH amazing actors (and also Gerard Butler) and such a pressing premise, and it was still beyond low. No, seriously. This film had some of my favourite actors of all times. Melissa Leo and Angella Bassett, two od the most beautiful elderly ladies I can think of. And Ashley Judd. Radha Mitchell and Cole Hauser, whom I've based a life-long characters in my fiction (Cole and Radha, obviously), Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman, and Keong Sim and Rick Yune, two of the most handsome Korean actors, like, ever. And the only thing worth seeing the movie about is the line ".. the People's Republic of Who Gives a Fuck." :)))
         Good thing we were alone in the theatre and we could loudly mock the scenes and grope one another and throw popcorn. I was angry because nobody wore vests and General kept saying it wouldn't make any difference with the calibre they were using. I was mocking the Americans idiotic fear of nuclear weapons while they are the ONLY ones on the planet who continue to make/plant/fuck them up. Even if other nations have a nuke or two, Americans have HUNDREDS and the best part is, you can manipulate them with computers. Perish the thought somebody, at the news of compromised executive ordering would simply, dunno, disconnect the nukes from the modem and make sure they are not fired prematurely? Also, why is there such an acute not-negotiation-with-terrorists policy in the administration and yet they argue every single time, usually for the lives of a very scarce few? Like, one child versus an entire nation? Honestly? Those are supposed to be reasonable, stern leaders? ... And so on and so forth.
       
Amazing cast under a rubble of lame script: Melissa Leo, Rick Yune, Keong Sim, Aaron Eckhart, Cole Hauser and some other dude..

Some really good B&W portraits of the Got leads

Rob, stern and narrowminded, failing to see his demise will come from behind

Dany, which is just perfect, like fire and a gemstone come to life

Jon, lost and confused, entirely uncertain where his loyalties lie (at this point)

Cersei, pretending to be a tough bitch, but is in fact just posing

Caitlin, wonderfully undone - a ghost then and a ghost now


Tyrion the Imp, torn between being a cool, smart and lonely guy and a popular villain

Poor Jaime, hiding behind his red right hand... while he still has it

Ah, GoT :) (S03E04)

My favorite dragons & tits show. I finally understand what those chained lines (moving forth) in front of Astapor's model are :D
Genius design.



Sunday 21 April 2013

Back!
Halleluyah.
I cannot feel my vagina.
Off to ride a bike to Gen's home village. If this is my last post, just remember. I gave it an honest try. This coming from a person that when in need of turning a curve, I get off the bike and re-adjust the direction.

And I'm talking about a push bike. Not a power bike.

Saturday 20 April 2013

Collective memory of a village

Am reading a good publication about these four cool bitches that walked into a small French village in the late 6o's to study what time and passage mean to such a remote, almost entirely self-sufficient urban unit. The foreword is nice, they write how the lot of them were young, fresh out of university of Paris, rigid in their textbook scheme, ignorant and slightly naive and how they approached the subjects each found familiar or interesting. One of them was a geographer and people took her most seriously, because they worried she was secretly IRS. The rest... At the time - they caught the 'good old days' just by the tail, and when you told the village hotshots some researchers are coming to conduct a sweep on their folklore, they expected Einstein, not four hippie chicks. The afterword is by some Ăźbermenschen anthropologist that I didn't understand a single word of. I can tell the translator did a good job making the book actually Slovenian, whereas the Slovenian anthropologist dean or whatever he was, made sure it sounds so foreign, it feels like he's making himself a golden armour of glorification of his own wit and might. I just didn't read that part. (With study books I normally always read the foreword and afterword first. I am just as interested in the concept and method as I am with the results of the study itself..)
       The book opens some subjects that i am very fascinated by. The collective memory of a village, for example, being one. Like, for example, if someone wronged the village 300 years ago, to this day the grudge will linger in the psyche of every single individual. Or if something was considered sacred a long time ago, it will still be sacred now. That's worrisome in violent regions, especially for archaeologists. Some habits die hard. Some locals get tempted.
        I've so far realised, reading, that people weren't kind and friendly to one another once, because they wanted to be or felt like it, but because they NEEDED to be. People were poor and individuals were not fit to handle absolutely everything. This is a tricky subject matter for me, because I am a loner by design and shy away from situations in which i would have to expect assistance. People like me were shunned for a reason. General's family, on the other hand, they have very friendly (except the proverbial few) neighbourly relations and very often lend each others hands and work tools and whatnot. Still. Ever.
         Communal festivities, also, were far less, it seems, a matter of want but of necessity. It was what people had for entertainment and how they coupled. The other day working on Tiny Karlins I came across an architectural element in a region here, in Slovenia, (though probably not exclusively indigenous), which was this tiny hut for storing grain or tools or in some cases serfs, but it was also often given to newlyweds to offer some privacy and a sense of ... dunno. Having now the right to your own patch of the world or something?
          With the electricity, running water, later radio and TV that of course changed and people were neither as ignorant and entertainment starved as before, nor do I think, deep within them, they still cared to linger in the old ways. Certain customs may have, with the channels on TV, seem shameful and vulgar to they younger generations. The woman who washed the dead, something she probably would have done until it was her turn to meet the angels, had to retire. In the Tiny Karlins research I came across an old house where a woman who would carry water to other houses lived. Can you imagine that? An old woman whose job was to bring fresh water to households. That sounds even more cool than selling buttons door-to-door.
          These are such strange, strange old things. There are times when I actually feel for a thousand years nothing much shifted and then suddenly, 70 years ago, after the Big war 2.0, the world just exploded in change and European communities shed a layer of ... mud?
           But then I ease away into my trust of merchants and entrepreneurs and see that since ever, and for ever, things will slowly and surely shift within a shell and the shell will stay the same. Perhaps things just get a new dress. The local devirginizer is replaced by a night club, aloof village doctor is replaced by the aloof village doctor,  preachers are never weeded out as far as I know and good old days, well... I wonder. Never do we think that the time we live in now is the golden age. Woody Allen's movie "A Midnight in Paris" teaches us that. Only 20 or so years later does it start to become the golden age. I absolutely disdain the times I exist in now, despite having more than I have ever wanted. Will these times be the golden age when I'm fifty, the good old days? Even though we'll all have flying cars and alien pets and will be able to play Warcraft within it?
          

Thursday 18 April 2013

Ikea cookbook

... This is just beyond brilliant. And like all magnificent things, it just gave me a dozen ideas :D






Watching Jack Reacher. Was EVERY guy who ever remotely joined the army for any period of time a sniper? I must have met 50 ex-soldiers and they were all snipers, even though a) our army doesn't have a sniper unit and b) pretty much all of the battalions they listed were logistics (socks and shovels.) But okay. I'm not the one to call their bluff.

What does interest me, however, is how does some random investigator from out of town, given some random redneck trailer address, just drive up to it in one go? I live in a town the size of a pizza and it took me half an hour to find my brother's street the other day (new house, first time there - in my defence.) I was using the iPad GPS AND google maps.

It's an okay movie. Mostly Tom Cruise walking around with an aura of "I am so smart and hot and cool and awesome it's not even funny anymore. Ladies, form an orderly line, please." and Rosamund Pike following him with huge googly eyes and wonderful cleavage. Werner Herzog makes an appearance. And Jai Courtney serves a good lesson: if a young, hot hunky guy talks to you and asks you out for a drink for no reason, he's most likely a serial killer.

Bonus: there was the mandatory old gunnie scene. The old gunnie scenes are the best. Duvall plays the gunpowder wiseman this time. I love how he puts empty shells in his ears to use as mufflers. (They actually do that on the range.) And Cruise did well as a sniper, the exhaling and the recharging slowly and carefully without losing the posture once it's been settled. His straight leg should have been less off centre and is he or isn't he a leftie? Well, nevermind. It's true best snipers keep both their eyes open, (aim just beneath the target) and exhale after the shot, but for that amount of humidity, he probably would have needed a spotter to start (or they just checked the conditions beforehand.) Nice scene. Like riding a bike. That was a beautiful gun, too. A beautiful classic Remington 700. Number 4 on my wish list ;)

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Been thinking...

Do I want the Garrosh T-shirt. Yes.

Would I mind if General bought himself the premium set expansion, because it contains the books :D ? No. It contains books!

Am I addicted to buying nail polish? Oddly so. (And where the hell did that come from?!)

Should we invest into a cleaning robot? No. It would only get raped by the cat and I am not very comfortable around robots. They sneak up on you and stare at you funny.

Would I enjoy being an editor? Probably not. a) It would just be fixing up other authors' mess and leaving no energy for my own work and b) Too many books, force-fed down one's interest, isn't all that fun.

Is it likely that the small pox is engineered and fed to kids in kindergartens every two or so years, to ensure they all get it and thus get over it? Very likely.

Should I split the character of Murphy into three souls and later on refuse to connect them back, causing him to be an unstable invalid? But which one? I'm considering Phobetor. The nasty one. The necessary one.The one whose eyelashes turn to rust when he looks upon beauty.

Do I include the concept of the DU (Distopia/Utopia) line in Gorgie cityscapes? Lets. And the scene of their wedding?

Would researcher of origin of words be an interesting job? No. But it would be a very interesting hobby. 

I wonder, if aliens arrived, anyone would think of Kim Jung Un feeling like a fucking idiot for shaking his big bad bombs around, playing the town bully for about a week.

Oblivion (movie)

The weekend was lovely - General's birthday was an endless beady stream of nice meals and intimate cosy moments with the three of us (Rockstar along.) like going to have pizza or to the shooting range or to buy G's bike or to the park to test the 'fetch far' or to sample the new ice-cream or to the movies... 
          We watched Oblivion, which I was very glad we did. Not so much the boys, prolly, because they would say there was a thorough lack of aliens and fighting. But that film was sooooo beautiful. Even the fighting - even the story - seemed unnecessary (though, obviously, necessary). The story, twisty and foreboding as it was, could have been told in half a sentence, but there was a number of clever little hidden troves within it, that I could appreciate. For example 'tet', being the Vietnamese new year, was also a nasty offencive business in Viet Nam by Viet Kong - a code for an effective blitz attack. It is also an Egyptian mark for 'good' and 'wheel'. 
           But I sat at the edge of my seat for the visuals of the duration.
      I cannot get enough of the movies this clear. (Also, I am starting to really, really like Iceland/Greenland scapes (aerial shots).) There is SO much glass. I pay attention to things such as clarity of surfaces and the element of cold, clinical environment the main protagonist is forced to appreciate, but cannot call home or connect to his soul. Even the porcelain beauty of his partner, down to her metallic ring of a belt, is a demonstration of his ambition: gravitation towards a lake cottage full of things that weren't made by machines and are not cleaned by machines. It was funny, in a way, that the only remaining adam was surrounded by three females: The god (Sally, played by a very headmistress-authority-on-a-cellular-level Melissa Leo). The reality (too-perfect-to-be-true character portrayed by Andrea Riseborough). And the flawed, fragmented fantasy in the direction of the salvation. (Played by the earthly majesty of beauty, Olgy Kuryenko.) Tom Cruise, in his fresh young fifties, looks 35. If nothing else positive could be said of the man, he certainly is the testament of greatness to beauticians and youth-surgeons.
           And also there was Morgan Freeman. (And even a little bit of Nicolaj Coster-waldau, all limbs, no less.) And I loved the moment in which Vika tells Julia she's the only survivor of the crash and Julia says 'What do you mean??..' The scene in which Julia starts to laught at the couple that rescued her is also very sad. Seen from her perspective, she handled her situation extremely well. 

I would have loved to read this comic.



Note how he's using an old empty bomb shell as a pot :D





Saturday 13 April 2013

I've read an interesting article about the nuclear threat of the NK.. And how people couldn't care less. Once upon a time nothing seemed worse than the horror of an atomic warfare, people would panic, clean shelters, supply gear, teach the little ones in school how to put on masks and inject anti-radiation medicine... Now honestly nobody could care less. We have so many actual every day problems, some warmongering lunatic and America with their retarded rule-imposing bullying couldn't concern us less. Hungary is right next to us, battling dictatorship, and we couldn't care less. The winter has been so long and stuff going on in the world so absurd, a nuclear war is just another one on the long list of unpleasantness to add to the overall. 

Friday 12 April 2013

Another unexpectedly beautiful day. Could the spring actually finally be here? I was gonna skip work today and go shopping just a little, but my family was in town and they interrupted me. Had coffee with them and they snared me to come with them uphill. Sis bought a load of plants that needed planting, including a coffee plant. Hello :D I was gonna propose to write his biography to dad and sort of seeded the concept which will, hopefully, nag him enough to make him wanna try... When he asked why, I simply said, he's by far the most interesting person I've met. After a pause we both laughed and agreed my standarts have significantly lowered. Oaf :)))  But it was mum's garden-making that captivated it eventually and I ran the end of my term, airing the soil of her patch and adding cow poo to it profusely, to make it super. My mum is ridiculously meticulous when it comes to turning the soil over, picking out every last stone and weed, making these tiny flower beds, with paths and careful rotation planning. I just love to do the menial parts. not so much the meticulous bits. The wind started blowing summat awful, but it was warm and very April-y. (I still caught a cold. I've been meaning to catch one, a small one, so I elevate my immune system in the long run.) Heavy clouds, hot sun, heavy clouds, hot sun... Lastly i stomped deep holes for her bean pikes, till I could lift the iron no longer. If I had been striking the same spot, I would eventually struck oil. Finally, worn out for the morning, I rolled downhill back to own, lamenting over the fact I came up so quickly I forgot to take the mutt.
          On the way down through the woods, I called the General about fifteen times, teasing and luring him into coming to meet me and coming to check out new pushbikes at the sports stone - but alas, those only arrive tomorrow. So we went to check out a new wheelbarrow for dad's BD. For reasons mysterious, General allowed me to drag him to test the new snack place, "Cooking Fly" - which I've been wanting to since I first noticed it.
           Awwww, that was sooo cool! They serve somewhat more healthy food than I would normally appreciate, but my body wants and needs stuff that's wet and crunchy, so I just gorged on it - even the orange food bits. We had wholewheat pancakes, he with chicken, curry and some other exotic stuff, me with pumpkins, peppers, mozzarella and some herb sauce. And kuskus veggie salad. We got home made, very nice unsweetened tea for free. We could have had soups and deserts of the similar 'healthy variety, but in truth, we were too full to push it. A vine fly came by and Gen said: oh, look, the boss! :))) It did leave us awfully in need of something sweet, though, I noticed. General went home and ate some čokolino, I added Nupos to my make-up cart. (Suddenly, in my desperate need of spring, I am starting to use make-up again.) 
          At the library, adorable good news when I had my card re-made (I keep losing that one) and I asked about my yearly fee, the librarian said I won't be charged a fee this year. Because?? Because I helped salvage the books from flood last autumn. Seriously?? I didn't do that for the free card, I did it to save Snufkin! That was so cool. 
          We met with Drej to talk my tomorrow over-seeing her fair. Nice coffee closure of the afternoon. (There was also some editor ping-pong meanwhile, but nothing enough to spoil my good mood.) I'm waiting for the Gen to return home with the youngling, we're thinking about going to the movies. Unless I get called on a business date. Fine by me either way. I've done some work and played some Warcraft and unexpectedly gotten through a difficult dungeon at last. Am not complaining at all.

PS
General's sex line of the day. 
I said I'm missing some tenderness, attention to detail and slow pace one usually gets in lesbian lovemaking and he summed it up: so basically you're saying I should go down on you tonight or you'll become a dyke? Seriously. Men.

Thursday 11 April 2013

Blade Runner posters

Haven't seen many of these before and I find them extraordinary. Trying to decide if the unicorn is meant to be Deckard or Batty ... or both? I just don't get that movie's depth. Maybe why I worship it so wishingly:))






The drop of rain blood down the nose is fantastic...