I do enjoy the idea of a world end as propagated by the American movies: that without electricity and Internet, they're going back to the stone age... (Because, you know, that's when electricity's been invented and America discovered), which follows when you take electronics away from the teenager. They don't know where their friends live without their phones and FB, they don't know how to contact them or their teachers without Internet, they don't know how to find them, they don't even know where to start looking. Stand on the street and hope someone familiar walks by?

Ye, maybe leaving a man who looks like the General, underslept and in a truly bad mood, in the paediatric ward of the hospital thorough the night with a book about a middle aged paedophile isn't the best strategy... I only had Lolita, Pavček poems and Whitman poems in the bag when shit went down with the retarded fucking teenager, and G wasn't in the mood for poetry....

Eh, obviously

Drej, the other day, pointed out a ‘society’ of young doctorate-armed individuals, a pack of a dozen or so fiery young minds, who have single-handedly decided to collapse the pedestal which Žižek has set for himself, crowning himself the greatness of political philosophy and so on. Dunno, Žižek is a stuttering, twitching, spitting, hissing force of nature who at least made political philosophy sexy again and pretty much everyone knows who he is, if not so much what exactly he is talking about. Sometimes, reading his stuff, I deeply agree and admire his articulation, sometimes I wonder which one of us is crazy and am embarrassed for him, and overall I think Slovenians deserve more people who are not shy to get their message across by fraternising with Rock stars and marrying plenty of young hot women from underdeveloped countries. In truth, I think he’s entertaining. For someone who is a philosopher by profession, he’s damn entertaining; because I went to those classes while we waited for other classes to start and if quite good, educational, entertaining they were not.

So this young lady is said – by a nicely set up website – to approach her senior mentor in desire to establish a some kind of a specific psychoanalytical or ‘therapeutical society. I have no idea what that specific branch envelops, because the website is set so that you are supposed to known wholesomely who these obscure-branch people are, and because psychoanalysis is not something I particularly care to associate myself with. I am thoroughly respectful towards psychiatrists, who deal with the truly broken people, whereas psychotherapists … hm. I’ve met some, socially. I would not recommend them, professionally. Though I have met some socially catastrophic people who turned out to me mind-blowingly good as lawyers, so… I won’t judge in general terms. Just what I’ve seen.

In the little story she begins the site with, she goes to the mentor to propose this society and he tells her she is very brave, because he would never dare to stand against the mighty, the mightiest of which is Žižek.

I wrote the letter to them, saying that for two reasons their website is infantile and poorly set: the way this woman lists all of Žižek’s crimes (The Plagiarist , The Censor, The …. I dunno. Boogeyman or something,) it sounds less like an adult, professional critic (Žižek’s most ardent opponent is Chomsky and there at least you have a grown-ups’ debate), and more like a turned down college-classroom mistress. But mainly because none of her accusations have a single citation. Not a single one. Not a screen cap anywhere, not a quote, not even a single article excerpt where ANY of her denunciations would be met with evidence. Sure, they have a posh site with hot B&W portraits, they’re all young and well off, and lots of text about whom they are, young doctorate minds … aaand nothing else. Nothing about this terrible war of intellect targeted against the super famous philosopher, more famous than any of them are, combined, and their strategy to get fame is to call him a super villain and themselves the heroes of their own website. No articles of their own, no translations of their articles from foreign publications which they claim to hold to their names, no propositions of either common ground or separating on ‘church of Žižek’ and actually establishing their own branch of modern psychoanalysis. Nothing. Just a list of how bad a person Žižek is, as written by a schoolchild.  I wrote them they will not be taken seriously, least of all by him, if they make claims so incredibly half-way, so dire and yet so entirely headline-y. I was all for them, rooting for them wholeheartedly, because I enjoy listening to criticism of very loud, pompous famous people, so I can decide on my own, using my own brain, who was right, who was reactionary who was click-baity or were they neither, or both, in the wrong.

That’s the best bit about philosophy. Intelligent debate. The ONLY bit that matters in the end. I wrote two pages about this. I used all of my School of Kekistan knowledge to try and offer constructive criticism on how not to make unsubstantiated claims against their senior colleagues.  

You can imagine what their response was.

Yeah.

To get professional help.

… Something tells me I will DIE naïve.

Opening of the Summer season

Yestereve was such a cute day… Instagram has some of the pickies, but lemme just sum it up, before I pass out for today (we worked uphill and my inflamed Achilles tendon is murderizing me…) Plus a mosquito stung me in the middle of the back and that’s agony all on its own…

                At around 5:48 I texted Drej I’m too sleepy to get up for our 6 o’clock walk agreed, but then I remembered G has an engagement of the religious variety at around seven, so I nagged him by sending him “pretty please? Big goo goo eyes?” texts in ever more ridiculous emoji forms until he yielded.

                   o.o    …  0.0  ... O.O  …  ().()   ..  { }.{ }     …

I am categorically prohibited from coming within 300 yards of any Roman-Catholic institution (this is an odd way to say it), but you know me. I’m super nosy. He dropped me off at my fav café and I was just done ordering coffee, cake and spreading out neatly a sketchbook, a notebook, Lolita and Pavček’s poetry, when the phone rings: G calls to say he’s done and is coming to collect me. For real real?? That was the fastest confession ever: that man’s deep dark psyche is like, the most aired, neatly arranged and full of old magazines and properly folded socks place ever… If there is a grave sin within him is that he can be awfully stoic sometimes, especially in a ‘dangerous dirty secrets’ department…

                Two hours of trying to trick him to tell me what they talked about later, we got home and he went to sleep, and I offed to find Drej, who was having an art market Saturday. The tricky bit is that the entirety of the town was closed for pedestrian traffic due to the start of a bike race. I photographed a 50 or so police motorbike snake and later, with a very calm Starbark tied to the railing, cheered for the cyclists to have a great day as they sped by. It was quite fun, really, with media helicopters circling and fast cars with spare bikes on top rushing behind, and them, after the “End of Race” signal car, a couple of amateur cyclists trying to catch up and the crowd pretending they’ve just reached the finish line, applauding in a silly way. Behind the lane the music school performed karaoke drum show with very small kids drumming like Ringo fucking Starr.  

                Later G and I drove to a shopping mall to get some gift material and G met the Tedi store for the first time. I’ve never seen him stay in a single store for as long. Tedi is a truly cheap Chinese merchandise outlet, but their shit is adorable: I buy tons of buttons there, ribbons, scrapbook material and lots of practical gifts like cute lemon-like icecube moulds or holiday decoration. After getting G a new pair of Crocks flippyfloppies nextdoor, we picked up MyMaja and went to McDonald’s for a snack. The plan was to walk, but my ankle was already hurting.

                It was the opening of the “Summer in Celje” season, with a Museum Night headlighting: tons of open-air concerts and museums free of change and open until midnight. MyMaja and I traded our movie night for a museum night and bee-lined to the first stop, the old Regional.

                Halfway there the main square featured a vast array of posh chairs in front of a large stage where an orchestra, a choir and interchanging hot young people half-seriously performed loud, fun songs I’ve never heard before. We had no idea what was going on, but was so appealing we sat down and clapped every time they finished. The bleached young guy said we needn’t do so, because this is just a rehearsal, but if we really want to it’s okay. They made cute little jokes all the time, so we thought maybe it was something of a comedy. In truth it was a concert version of the Veronika musical, usually performed up on the castle, which I cannot afford. But the lead broke his foot and the weather was unpredictable, so they just played eleven songs without the show. Holy cow! That shit was awesome! The songs were so cool – simplistic, but very agreeable – and when a few minutes later the show began for realz, something like a thousand people showed up, stopped to listen, with occasional dog barking or baby crying, because some of the songs were pompous or dramatic or sad. They interpreted the story of Frederic and Veronica: a famous love-story about the end of the Princes of Cilli lore, in which a philandering young hair to the throne falls for one of the regular local honeys and ends up (probably) murdering his wife to marry the common girl. Modern commentaries of old customs usually irate me, I find them stupid (stuff like arranged marriages being preposterous or family politics being unusual..) Here the death of the Croatian noble lady is presented differently and I liked it. Clearly nobody will ever know what really happened, who was the villain of the story, who was the gold-digger, who was the asshole. Later, out of musical, in different history accounts, the legend of Cilli Princes is cut to a stop by a curse – an old man whose pretty daughter was kidnapped and raped to death by the last prince and his party, calls for the end of the dynasty and for crows and owls to inhabit the mighty castle instead. Which is what happened. No more Cilli.

                After it was finished – and it was indeed a catchy show, I am still singing passages from it, those I remember – we checked if any other place are ‘on‘, then hurried to the Old Regional, said to only be opened till 21:30 due to lot reconstruction (?). We saw a modern expo, a primitive colourful quilt expo and some more stuff on Alma and Thea – two old women who lived bohemic pauper life up on near-by Svetina hill. Alma is very famous in this town, because she was the first woman to knowingly circle the planet back in the day, but she’s also known for being so small, thin and unattractive the cannibals of exotic eastern islands wouldn’t eat her. I don’t like her because she was desperate for approval of the ‘old boys’ Vienna club, writing in German and being almost pathetic in her prose. Her companion Thea later illustrated her books and pretended to be a paintress, though her art-schooling was make-believe. But they were the closest Celje had of truly worldly, independent women back then, so in a sense they were super cool. Just … incredibly fucking sad; ignored, outcast and abandoned.

                The next stop was the newly renovated, massive Regional Museum, but we were already fairly tired by then, so we just sort of skimmed it. That place is not designed to host thirty people per room: the oxygen starts to run out and the air gets too stuffy. I met tons of familiar people, some of whom I am exceptionally fond of, and also saw they added new stuff to the Prehistoric wing. Including an oddly… well, no, not oddly but blatantly pornographic animation of Kelt customs… very interesting choice. Hm.

                Finally, in need of ice-cream, we sought for the café still opened and settled for a chat, a cake and some Coke Zero (I am slowly building up my tolerance for it). It was really late, so slowly we parted ways and I crawled to bed and dreamt the songs I’m still singing…               

Monster Squad (1987)

Watching Monster Squad. It's so campy and anti PC it's making my teeth decay. Like Goonies with monsters in it. And an exceptionally calm beagle. Adorable. Hey, it was either that or It Comes At Night and I've capped my fill of depressing-as-fuck psycho horrors for this week.

What happens when you watch too many courtroom shows :D

Dudes, I had an unusually awesome Thursday. Even just the nap was good, as I knew I had commitments at noon I flattened out at ten: G slept holding my butt, the road construction under my window didn’t sound like four Transformers fucking, the dog didn’t continuously try to drown itself in the water bowl (it’s hot outside.)…

So, my dad asked me to come to the court, to keep him company (and morals up with my random stories and debates about anthropology or mass graves from the second world war, our usual topics..), it was the first proper hearing. Two years after the fact he was still suing the guy who broke his face over a parking spot, and the guy was suing him. But, because - even earlier, with the mediator - the other guy expressed an interest in dropping the whole thing, and because I could see for all of dad’s journalistic courtroom experience he was too old to still find all of this funny, it wasn’t as fun as it could be. We have a cool lawyer, he’s a decent guy, and if you ask me we had a decent case. My sis watches enough CSI to take good forensic photos and we had good photos of dad being properly fucked up. He’s an old guy, had his strokes, had his heart-attacks. Beating him up was not a nice thing to do. But I’ve met him, he can be an asshole, so from time to time someone does.

Going in, both lawyers and their posh purple court gowns, the black-gowned young female judge and her clerk, and the grim grey-cloaked DA. On one side of a wooden bench sits dad on the other of same bench the other guy; they didn’t even look at one another. Outside the window a grotesque barbed wire mess enveloping the prison building, fox maximum effect. (Always helps if you can see prison from the courtroom: they haven’t renovated that thing since the Nazis used it.) The judge asked who I was, who sat alone in the back and it was noted I was a daughter. I was the only cheerful person around. Oh, did you know that you can now wear short sleeves and open-toe shoes in the house? I didn’t know that. You didn’t used to be allowed in, so dad and I were awfully over-dressed.

                As soon as it all began the judge: I ask one more time if the two of you are willing to reconcile, at which point costs of the court are still covered by the state and the two of you only owe your lawyers respectively …

                Nobody did or said anything, except me, who was nodding profusely. The judge said: I see your daughter is happy about that prospect.

                Everyone looks at me and I continue to nod happily, like a retard. In fact I was ready to say: Stop acting like two hissy toddlers – five grownups are wasting their time listening to you bicker over nothing! You are two minutes away from the judge to find you both guilty and have you pay for all the costs equally! (At which point the judge would probably say: do you mind if I now do the judging? It is, after all, my room…)

                But I didn’t say anything. I just nodded happily. Truly, nothing is worse than two old men fucking around, claiming broken nose and broken pride, costing waaaaay to much taxpayers’ money, not to mention their own. We have a lot of things, but money isn’t one of them.

                I wasn’t sure if the lawyer will get terribly angry at me, but he did ask for a minute of consultation and the three of us stepped outside. Dad said he’ll beat the shit out of me and I told him to stick to the victim narrative before someone hears him. I added that expert witnesses cost a boatload and both of them have equally stupid arguments. It’s time to call it enough. The lawyer was civil enough to keep both options open. Dad asked to call mum (my hands were shaking so badly – I was raised to deeply revere authority and courthouses are almost sacred to me) and ask what she thinks. She said the other guy should at least pay for the broken nose and tooth. I snapped the phone shut and said: mum agrees you should quit!

                Dad said the guy should publicly apologize. I said dad, quit fucking around and poking. The lawyer said he’ll ask for the reconciliation and add it would be polite to shake hands. Like I said, civil guy.

                And so, ye. The two old farts dropped the case, shook hands. Dad couldn’t help himself and began: you were luckily I got up again, after two strokes, bla bla--… And the judge said: you can continue this in the hallway, practically throwing them out. Dad said he can now stop walking around with a gun and I yelled at all the people who stopped and turned: Joke!! That was a joke!!! He’s joking!!!

                The other man said to me: I am sorry I hit your father, but he said to me ‘I’ve been parking here since before your mother shat you out’, and I just lost it..

                I sometimes wonder how my father is still alive.

                We offed to have a coffee and dad was angry with me, saying how will he now ever show his face in the home street again, where everyone will know he gave up a fight. I said nobody gives a shit and what if he got so stressed he had another heart-attack, hm? Is that old fart worth it?

                We had coffee for about an hour, being joined by another retired old journalist colleague, lamenting some friends who have died and celebrating some who are still alive. Dad and I went on one or two other errands and then I left to go home. The kid has since returned, having successfully finished the third year of school, one to go, and we talked about the option of becoming a military or maritime officer. Then G and I offed to buy a magnificent gift (ye, ye, you know me, it’s obviously a book) and we met MyMaja outside the ice-cream parlour. I totally had the mango and lemon again and a touch of peach, which was sublime. Not having been bought a book of my own this month, as I often am for doing something right, G instead renewed my dormant Warcraft subscription, so I can again do some random quests when I take breaks from writing… (Compared to IRL, my made-up stories are rather anaemic.) And courtroom drama! :D I could so totally be a lawyer, don’t you think, if I had an IQ and the focus to remember to tie both my shoes :D

First page of the march ledger, after they notice Tovelyn's gone missing

The Zurnizip stone seal

.. as carried by the rangers of Anne of a Thousand Days march :)
Comes in gold, green or blue, signifying lawmen, healers and scholars :D I get the original grey one, because me.