The dream about being shot (I blame the Criminal Minds)

Tonight I dreamed I got shot in the chest. We were on a trip in Italy or some such nice historical place and we were in this nice domed chapel, like one of the old temple-like tombs with fades walls and funny echoes. A large hillbilly-looking man was pushing and pulling his daughter around and I could see he had a small, cheap revolved in his hand to threathen her. he would never really shoot her, he was just being and arse. I knew that if I intervene, I will get shot. It's exactly what happened. We tussled and then he said 'I wasn't going to kill anyone, but if you insist...' and h shot me straight into my sternum. I was smaller in the dream and my boobs weren't so amazing and I was wearing a light summer blouse, mainly white. After I fell down and cupped my hand over the wound to make sure the blood isn't spilled, I kept the gun and put it in my pocket. Like you have to try to keep the snake or spider that bit you to help the hospital rescuers, I kept the gun. It was a small calliber, maybe a '22 and I knew that's bad. Those bullets ricochet. But it didn't hurt at all.

            My life split into two paralels at that point. One of my stories was me being transported on a gourney and into the ambulance and to surgery and I don't think in that story I was going to make it. In the other line however, I kept walking around, palm pressed fastly to my wound, full of hot blood like I grabbed a handful of warm pudding and would hold it to my chest - any wrong movement and it would spill and I would make a mess on the white blouse. Riding a bus, I went home to my parents, which were happy to see me back from my trip. We would unpack and talk and they would (they just woke up and were in their robes) go about their hastened morning rituals and all the while I felt like bragging, as if 'Look what happened to me!', needing to reap stunned and panicked reactions from them. But I didn't do it. I think by then I knew also that this was just my chance to say goodbye in my own way and get some affairs in order, before the two lifelines combine again and then ceise.

Happy Rhodes.

As it turns out, one of my favorite songs isn't sung by two people at all, it's sung instead by a seriously curious lady called Happy Rhodes. She basically feels like haunting nice people with ghosts of Annie Lennox and Tori Amos, but for reasons all but melancholly, I am truly drawn to her performances. Not just because her split personality singing delivers two for the price for one, but because I can't get enough of what she can do with her voice. Not what she can DO as if weird opera people screaming and twisting and doing all kinds of vocal acrobatics that make no art at all, just showing off.. She sings SO lovely. You can believe upon the first notes you hear come from her she really likes to do it.

            I cannot comprehend music, almost to no extend, probably because I can't even hear it properly and cannot sing to save a mayfly, but when I am not using it as a motivation for an active day dream, a scene I need pictured to great detail in order to be able to paint it - that's exactly what I do: I relate it to my kind of art. Some of it rationally and some of it simply with the cavern of my chest where the compassion lives. I can paint and draw and sketch and design and illustrate, even sculpt or plan, and when i'm not doing it for work or training, I am doing it because I love it. That's how I think singers like this lady exists with her talent: she trains and she performs but mainly I think she loves and plays and lives with it. Nothing pompous, nothing in kitch mini skirts with fake boobs and hysterical stadium audiences... Just... The beautiful songs. The not-exactly-right music. The very much right music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zzcMmfGBjY

Intermezzo

Stuff's been up, but I am working on the book so hardcore, I can't bring myself to spend an hour updating this little thing all fine and neat as it's supposed to be done. So it's ust some load thrown in, because I cannot keep it all in and everyone else I could bug to talk to me about it is offline :p

Oscarcs came and went. It was an awfully boring run, with all the magnificent dresses and hair-cuts and jewelry and speeches so politically correct i can remember maybe two at the most. (Both lead actors, actually.) I'm unhappy my honey Avatar didn't come through, but perhaps Academy decided Cameron has enough Oscars and being the most grossing film to date, is praise on it's own. Am happy Hurt Locker won at the same time, and that the first female director got the award as well. White men really are ridiculously posessive, aren't they?

 

Just because I've seen so much during the award ceremony and Mags told me so much about it, even though it's not the sort of stuff I'm supposed to see (haha, shows about serial killers are okay, but genuine human suffering is a no no if you're supposed to be a children's author. Already my  third story is too gory for adults, but 11-year olds love it. :), I've downloaded Precious and am looking for the book Push even further. That is SUCH a ridiculously scary film... The performances are like being stabbed. I still cannot comprehend some people exist in such states of mental viciousness. I mean, powerty I can understand. I've seen villages poor beyond all reason in Nepal, but still for all their shortcomings, folk there seemed kind of cool. They smiled a lot, were curious, weren't extending their palms to beg, the children were playful and households were open and inviting. I can understand that being sorrounded by the cheapest possible version of a consumer's world is reality-distorting and imposes a certain lack of ... everything on people, but to be so impossibly  stupid and mean? The social workers never have it easy and yet in a place like that? I am wondering if anyone can truly stay as positive as the author or her fictional alternative Blue Rain. So smart and so tired and yet so willing to push... (The actress they chose is amazingly beautiful and it still took me an imdb to find out where I've seen her before. No make-up makes another person. And there is no WAY that's really Mariah Carrey LOL) No wonder the performer Mo'Nique got the award - she feels like an unmovable force of nature, a human equivalent of the Haiti tragedy. She is like a black hole of humanity. Funny how the story leads the reader/watcher to the point when you know Precious will soon die, but between her mother and her son she will live long enough to sever the darkness of the human condition and perhaps make the gene line less doomed. 

I am halfway through. I'm not responsible for tears, if this was paper.Hello.

PS

Besides being starved for shows to watch while drawing (I've switched from CSI to Criminal Minds and learned a new concept: victimology. Hello, nightmares..), not only was the House episode about a life in the day of Cuddy amazing, so was the latest Grey's Anatomy (Time warp) - and I was just about to give up on that show... Little mandy! LOOOL! "Lose the smile!" scene was awesome :D Okay, so the entire show is one big sappy hospital  sex, drama, but it's worth watching just for Dr. Bailey. What a stag beetle! :D

Holy hershys, it's been like an EON since my last entry and it's not from the lack of events, let me tell you :P

I haven't been able to upload since Piček's mum's doughnut making lesson, have I? Either way - see, this is the way they are SUPPOSED to be done. 

Now no more for a while. Except maybe her home made noodles...

As you can see, I've gotten the hang of the timer stamp. *aplause...* 

Time really runs so fast. There may have been a spell in the middle, when I was kind of bored and off the main road, thinking about posting some photos of Ziyi Zhang, because even though she is more less perfect in design, photographers get creative while taking her pics, without really stepping out of the box. Last I've seen that was with Gillian Anderson, but she's not so lovely, so perhaps is doesn't count. Easiest shots are always taken with people who look like dolls. Faces with minute flaws already make the job easier. And nothing is as boring as a photo of a pretty lady.

       But I'll do that another day.

Piček's sister's family has moved and for as much as nice their new house is, I have been secretly imagining the left-behind flat as my would-be kitchen for the cake studio. All I'd need would be someone who is licenced and a lot of cake models. :D

The drawing, on the other hands, sometimes goes incredibly well and I produce pickies I am really proud of, or I get stuck and I pick a fight with my baby. Bad fool. But I am a high maintenance bitch. Never said I wasn't. I just make sure it's worth it.

(It's purposefully bad quality, as I am obliged by contract to discourage copyrights violations... The book is rapidly heading for the finish-line...) 

We've gone to the movies to see the Wolfman. It's rather disappointing, but not entirely dumb. The cast was actually remarkable, except Benicio Del Toro, who seems like he's on crack and has just been woken up and dragged onto the set one minute ago for every scene. As much as I adore Hugo Weaving, he is obviously stuck onto his Agent Smith way of acting - and sorry but his Tick continues to inspire me today. The script was painfully bad, and everything seems to have been cut short - the narrative, the plot,  the human condition substory, the which-ever love affair.. It's like they took two minutes out of every scene done. The design of the story is not bad at all - Eerie Victorian era, science stuck between old superstitions and modern treatments, the arrogant beliefs that all human faults can be treated with torture.. I liked that approach a lot. The anemic little creature that plays the opportunistic fiance (first failing to get to the family wealth by marrying one brother, then the next) is for once individualistic and intelligent, if bored. She has a shop that no-one keeps? She must have it just for the heck of it then. But like I said, everything is just... something. Aha, there's a werewolf who is not only hungry, he's also rabid (no wild animal attacks with that much fuss Everybody knows the most dangerous predators go for the rim of the herd and do it soundlessly.) He takes out entire villages and gypsy camps and suddenly gypsies are a bunch of screaming girls. Then there's the old father figure, who is a father and a villain and a victim all in one go and Hopkins manages to pull it off magnificently, as expected. Then there's the whole transformation stuff and eating of the stupid doctor London elite and a bunch of "incredible Hulk in Matrix" fights. Between the two, I'd choose Hot Rod to be a better movie and that one just m kes your jaw fall off from staring. 

Alright, but the biggest news so far, is that I've finally created a guild. I've been fidgettng about it for days, until Piček was so fed up with me, he refused to be involved in the process of elimination of the titles :P (My idea of compromise, when I want the guild to be called something like The Literary Society, and he wants it to be warrior-like and cool, like Karantania, is to eventually come up with "KarantanialnLibrary Club". NOT what he was hoping for. LoLz.) But you know, I want the game to stop making nerds being ashamed of being nerds :) Probably not 2% of Slavs know that this was a proto-slavic 9th century realm, a pretty cool and feisty one in fact - but those who bother to google it, are in :) No idea yet what we'll do with it,  I just wanted the tabard and the bank - the slots are fucking absurdly costly! - but as long as I stop seeing it as something to worry about, it should be fun. We may even get together enough folk to raid decently. If we feel like it :)

Fot the least bit of interesting news, just in a sense of a log entry, a cultural office has approached me to do a project for them, but the way they've been going at it, letting me know they practically have no idea what they want done, they just wanna make sure it's super cheap, made me wanna hit "leave party". Seriously. Like a daft PUG. Lame players, epic starved. No, thank you.

~

 

The Kurents with their victim. One of the more magical, and brutal, heirlooms of our culture - the monstrously dressed fathers and sons with violently noisy cow bells, hopping through the streets to spook the winter off the roofs and fields. They snatch young ladies and take their scarfs or handkerchiefs to later brag which one has gathered more. Personally, I love the lore and love the noise and color, but cannot stand being caught by them. Hence the photos taken from the second story window :p

LoL, it's RAINING! And not just some shy snow, hitting the ground all wet because of global warming - it's raining like a propper warm-time rain. I've forgotten how much I like the sound of it, not to mention how well it does it's job as janitor - streets are super salty, cars and shoes and trouser legs are getting eaten away by it and as I've always wondered how a highway would taste if I licked it, good riddance. Winter's been positively lovely (haven't had the chance to go enjoy it outdoors much, but that's not because trekking, skiing or shovel sledding wouldn't be available to me, it's just cause I'm butt lazy.), but it has been going on long enough. There's severeal wintery posts I haven't had the chance to upload yet - butt lazy part again - but it's a cool saturday morning, windows open wide, streets void of school geese flocks and I have Piček at home for another two long days. Rain just makes it perfect :)

Yesterday's cooking lessons: doughnuts, shtraubi and pads

 The doughnuts, the crunchy shtraubi and the lunch meat variety, pads. 
Firstly, donuts.

Featuring:

Mats. :)
Hehe. Okay, so I've never made donuts before. (I prefer the 'dough nut' version of the word, btw. It's so cool.) Mum made them once and they didn't work out - they were burnt on the outside and runny on the inside. Still good, though, so we are them anyway and then we were really sick. 

         I had three different recipies, trying to make sure stuff made sense. Like, there's almost no sugar and  wanted to double check that. Or one said no salt and that makes no sense either. It would have been a waste of a lot of mats if I messed up :) Mum helped by being nervous, fussy and over-all pesimistic, which is usualy a good sign and stuff then works out perfectly in the end. 

 

  

Then they are bounced around into a neat cushion, left to rise, then spread rolled around 2cm thick and cut out with shapes, and left to rise again, covered someplace warm. Both times they kind of double in size, but if they don't, it didn't seem to matter much, as they popped into shape as soon as they hit boiling oil. 

Yeah. I know. They are all over the place in shapes and sizes, because I never did them before, had no idea how I should shape them before and wasn't sure if they'll get puffy and if they didn't, how well will they actually be done in the center. Oddly enough, every single one was delicious. Tastes in the household vary, so some prefer them more done, others less and some just use them as an excuse to get to jam.

 

 ~

The second version of the shtraubi was more to my memory of them - they were without yeast, a lot more done, crunchy, sweeter and somehow tasting of winter. They usually go with mashes apples, but we ran out. Again, this was done mostly from an idea what they ught to be like, but they were a total success. Mags adored them and Piček annihilated them and dogs literally drooled all over kitchen when mum was teasing them with crumps. If you've ever seen a Rottweiler drool, you'll know how serious that gets :p

  

Tricky bit is knowing just how hot the oil ought to be. If it's too hot, they burn within seconds, but only on the outside. If it's not hot enough, it foams like a fountain that someone dropped a detergent in.

Ultimately, though, this is what they're like,

This is what is left

And this is why. Dad complained about them until he finished them off. :P

And for lunch, because you have to have some normal food before such  dessert, we made bready pads.

You need: some herbs, such as parsley, onions, some spices, old bread in bits, dipped in milk and minced meat. 

 That green thingie in the middle is blitva. Not an ingreadiant, but a sidedish. Anyboo, you mix the lot, make pads and fry it. Ultra yum. 

 

ICC10... hello.

Am heading to town to join my dad for grocery shopping. We both like to do that, doesn't matter what we buy. Plus it will be extra interesting, as all the roads and parking lots are snowed in and it is almost impossible to maneuvre around the city. Took me two hours to climb uphill yesterday, in 4o cm of snow. Was so tired when I returned Piček and I went to bed at 8, however 2o minutes into enjoying his body warmth, sis phoned to ask if I wanna join her guild to do an ICC run with a ten-man group. It's hard to stress to a civilian what an honor that is. Hehe. Well, the kind you do not pass unless you're suddenly blinded or, say, knitting or something. I haven't had the opportunity to go to Icecrown Citadel - up to this point the hardest dungeons in Warcraft, only recently cracked by the uber guild (an Alliance faction, alas, as we are fiercely Horde), and you cannot suceed besting one ridiculously difficult boss after another. I've tried, but in the end it's just not worth it, giving yourself all in only to die because of some 'tard's incompetence or CBAism. This was the first time I was in a group of true 'professionals' and we went though it like a hot knife though a rubber duck. Did all four first bosses without a wipe, then Professor and his two sons (you'd have to see them to believe them), the Bblood Council of three princes (IMPOSSIBLY difficult and fuck those orbs all over again now that I'm able to type properly) and finally the queen - the last of the second set. Then we retired for the morning and did some smaller things. I have total muscle ache from tension. My neck hurts so much and my teeth look like I'm a hypo by now, ground flat... SO much adrenaline. SO much concentration my screen cracks under my stare. At one point there are six or seven things to mind - usually there are three or four - and it is the first time where I was unable to perform a task on my own. Needed help. That's never happened before. (It was the princes. My job - I'm a hunter, so obvioustly - is to prevent orbs of energy, which hover like soap bubbles, from reachng the floor and killing everyone. If I see another soap bubble anywhere I will run away screaming.) Meanwhile there are three other kinds of orbs, good, very good and very bad, that I have to avoid in order to allow other 9 players to manipulate them, and that's just the background noise. The real fight is going from one prince to the next, as they wolleyball power and mortality amidst eachother and players have to either taunt, hurt or heal. There is so much chaos - and I haven't done this fight before, so to me it was just ridiculously messy - you think you'll pee yourself by the time it's - sucesfully - over. (Fifth or sixts try). Failures are coitus interruptus'. If I didn't have my sister's for-warnings and Mag's calm voice, i don't tzhink i'd be able to pull it off. That's a couple of hours of feeling like you're on bad heroin (I imagine.) The queen was lovely, though. She bites someone and for a minute they have no attention and amazing power, but then they need to bite two other unafflicted players - so if after 5 minutes the fight is not over, there's a certain wipe. Not always easy finding them in the mess. Meanwhile you can get plague and need to run out of the cluster of players, or you get a string of life connecting you to another player and neet to instantly meet with them.  All the while making sure you do not attract her attention and all the while making absolute impossibly high damage, so she doesn't last 5 minutes. Such SUCH power of mind. I wish I had Demontania's calm demeanor. Staying that concentraded for such periods of time is like holding up an absurd weight, all your body screaming to let go, why bother, there are easier ways to make an impression, and somehow yet you continue to will it steady. And this is my brain we are talking about. NOT my most prominent muscle :P

Of curse I am compulsively getting up at 4:4o no matter when I go to bed and am now underslept, under-focused and hysterically giddy. Can't recal the last time that kind of energy was surging though me in the real world. No wonder this game addicts.Virtual emotions are better than the real ones,  nearly more profound, because you allow yourself to feel them. In the AFK most feelings are totally in your way or completely impolite. Genuine rage, envy, racism, abuse of power, bragging, that's all prohibited in every day life, and true fear, dissapointment, anticipation and art of war are usually a bad idea to promote. In a game this well created, you can go all out, knowing perfectly well you can log off and be okay in an hour. Be really really totally scared, like, almost on the verge of tears, knowing absolutely nothing will actually harm you, so go ahead and go mental. Even reputation, if lost, is just an LCD illusion :)