The box on the corner of Maple Leaves Rd. and Drive

I am having the worst cold I've had in years. I blame the toddlers which were visiting (yeesh, five Vs! Poooor grammar that) and brought along something. My nose looks like a fucking radish. I drool and snot like a  glacier - if I was a Sleeping Beauty, there'd be stalagmites!! But as a result Piček, who needs to get up in an hour to start work again, and yours truly cranky tucked ourselves in early and I had another one of the good storeams (story dreams.) My brain is bored with being so close to mucus, so I'm getting movies.

I call this one

The box on the corner of Maple Leaves Rd. and Drive

(It stars John Cusack first and then Ralph Fiennes later as the lead psycho and towards the end the entire cast of Criminal minds, which makes this less of a feature and one of their episodes.. Normally I don't go see movies if Cusack is in them, but this one would at least be one of his less characteristic and better performances.)

The box in question is a large mailbox. This is in a city like Baltimore, but in an open, vast area in the corner of a random park that doesn't even look particularly appealing. Just an area that hasn't been housed-in yet and has some bushed and benches. In the distance down a broad road is an indistinct but recognizable political building and behind the POV is the main post office that the mailbox belongs to. Which is odd, because of course the post office has several slots of its own.

          This is where the story starts, tho, with this view. We the audience can tell this is where the lead character, a slightly fatter, older and bleaker John Cusack in reading glasses, is watching a very nervous young man battle his own demons, confronted with that mail box, across and slightly down the street, clutching an increasingly damper from sweat and creasy envelope. The perspired young man, which does have an air of a brainiac about him, although he could have been anybody, eventually manages to push the envelope in the mail box and then hurry away as if he's done something shameful. He is followed and killed by Cusack, but we don't get to see that and it's not really important. What's important is that Cusack's character plays a friendly confused and awkward neighborly weirdo gentleman on the postman and asks for the key to the box as he's thrown in his mail before he managed to, dunno, post a stamp on it or proper address or something... Either way, we see him getting the creasy envelope, which is about as big as if holding a video cassette, and going home with it, happily. 

         It contains a science project. Not a school science project, though the poor nervous guy was in fact a student, but a genuine groundbreaking thesis - the kind a real author was too nervous and too insecure about to mention anywhere but online, but also the kind that almost changes the world, like Napster or something.

         We begin to realize what the deal is with Cusack's character: he is a bit strange and unpleasant, but everyone knows he is a benevolent genius, because everybody knows that behind the greasy sweater and odd way of looking over and sideways from his reading glasses, is a man who publishes very prominent science articles. Only we, who have seen the entire event, however, gather that all he actually does is he stays on an on-line look-out for solitary nerds and slowly manipulates them into gaining courage to mail a copy of their ideas to science papers. He tells them in a flick of a wrist way 'oh, you're from Baltimore? Oh, but this is perfect! You know where you should go? There is a place actually that is just swell for this step, my good friend, I have just the mailbox in mind!' - he knows of a mail box that has always brought him luck and thus preying on them from an ideal spot, even if he only ever just watches. Whichever way, he has been doing this for years. Being a famous physicist is to him almost as rewarding as the whole process of stealing the actual legwork.

          It's not all he does, though. He also knows the neighborhood and we see him next watching a couple (he usually does this standing on the corner of the neat marble mail office entrance, holding his own mail as if he's just gone to retreat it from his PO box.) of young drug dealers. This is a pair of punk kids with dyed black hair and piercings, which came to the big city to make money dealing good homemade stuff, but which yet have the decency to mail some cash home every once in a while. This time the envelope is thicker, though, as they grew bored with sharing their bounty with the lame folks back in the suburbs and are mailing the money the last time. We don't know whether he kills them or not, but he does repeat the 'faulty mail, may I have the key to the box key please, my good man' routine with the mailman and gets his bills money.

           The police is getting closer to him. He has killed so many people that he's drawn attention and although profilers cannot tell that it's him yet, they can definitely tell it's the mail box. The character J.J., after she has had the baby, joins the rest of the team on the field, but she tilts her head the wrong way, awkwardly, not used to the field, when entering the post office, so that Cusack's character can tell she's up to something and hurries home, now aware of the fact FBI is closing in.

           Which is a problem, because: another fox has entered a henhouse. Another man has been paying attention and has written a whole book about what he has seen or would shortly see the Cusack's character do: all the ideas he hasn't manipulated into being mailed yet, etc - with just enough of the pieces of the puzzle missing, that once the book would be out and his name on the top of the lists again, the sneaky author of the book would step forward with evidence and disclose the 'Mr. weird but friendly neighourhood published genius' as a fraud and posibly even something worse. 

           John Cusac has now been replaced by Ralph Fiennes, the ajar personal hygiene and the oversized old pale brown cardigans remaining the same. (Not sure why my brain did that, but at least Fiennes I can appreciate.) He, the lead, kills the new sleasy blackmailing author, whose sin and undoing is arrogance, and pushes his pleading routine for the box key one last time - with the FBI being so close that we almost think he's done it once too many. But no, he retrieves the fully fledged manuscript in a very thick envelope and takes it home in a hurry, then flips through it seeing "his" masterpiece, with the bits of plans and diagrams missing. Because he's killed the lonely guy who designed this whole concept - and the man was no less lonely and twisted than he is, because while gathering the thesises (O.o??), so as to not be interrupted when the scheme starts, he also disposed of the real nerdies - he goes to the last victim's home and finds all the missing pieces, putting them in place, thus perfecting the book to the point of it being a brilliant 'swan song'. He knows he is going to die by the FBI, so he mails the now fixed book with a smile, knowing perfectly well he will be remembered as a truly remarkable member of the scientific community. 

The end. 

The box that has seen it all :p

Discovery HD Showcase

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAufFmv2jk

Love the add, love the music... There's also an insert in the shorter version, of Bear hanging from the chopper with some kind of Vietnam fields beneath him twirling and his smile is beyond 'lust for life'.

This road

You know the roads that make you wanna grab a bag and an apple and old walking shoes and just take off until the weather turns? The sort that promises the good kind of blisters and timeless scenes of country life and memories of landscape that is like heaven, only green? Road where there throd horses and tractors and vaggons and cart and rogue seeds of wheat, corn and sunflowers attempted to grow, but were walked over? The type of a road that has nothing to prove and is older than the infamous Roman highways?The kind that leads nowhere and takes you everywhere where your senses always needed to be?

                This is the kind of a road. 

The toddlers are visiting, finally. Toni is snoring gently on the sofa and the triplets are trying not to make a ruckus, making themselves amults out of carton. I gave them the book about the making of Henson's Dark Crystal, so they are in dire need of magical amulets. Myself, personally, yearn to take my imaginary dawgie and my camera and just leave this world for a few hours and go down the road until they notice I'm gone. It's just one of those days :D

Had a ridiculous tummy ache the other day. Worst I've had since as long as I can remember.. And it didn't seem to make any sense either, as it wasn't pms cramps or bad food. Even more absurd was that the pain came in pulses and with the exact same intensity one of my worst off tooth ached alongside. I took four pills, different kinds, to try and get at it from four different directions, but not much helped. Of course Piček tried helping me all along, telling me to drink some gruesome mineral water, but I didn't cooperate until the end of means and then the tension passed when I burbed a few times and similar explosions, and after 2o minutes I was fine. I love Piček. I love serving him the opportunities to say 'I told you so'. :P

Pudding

Two things I love about pudding: lumps and crust. General likes everything about it as long as there's lots :D

Such a pleasant day went by... After an eon - since we used to do it with dad when I was a kid and then later sometimes with dDaniel, when we had a few bucks in our pockets - I've ridden shotgun when cruising the countryside...  We were after the wildlife to see if deer have singled out before the hunting season starts and if we could find some rabbits. (Rabbits are rare in these parts). But mostly we just drove around and observed the rims of forests and fields steaming and unknown grounds, small roads and timeless villages... It is one of my favorite things, driving slowly through quaint dawn-time places... I feel like I'm advocating for entire humanity, watching this land's basic goings on...

I'm guessing a well-fed bit below 3-year old? His coat looks funny because it's shedding time. It's a decent specimen, but not listed for hunting. It's not his time yet :) And yes, I do need a better sports camera :D

We found this farm on top of one of the hills... A huge, incredibly beautiful complex of four large, traditional buildings (not so much land around), which makes me believe this must have belonged to someone noble once. Most farms around here are just one-family establishmens... This one was majestic.

Later on we couldn't find a parking spot on our own courtyard, so I decided to go see my parentals and it was so cool. Mum persuaded me to bake something and I made another one of her favored coffee cakes (though I did manage to place a cooling mould onto a molten cooker and burn the whole dough thingie.. Oups.) and first in the line of many rehearsals for my wedding cake... Which is cooling through the night and will be continued tomorrow. What I really need is some decent marzipan to make the orchids..

Lumberjacking

Two days of lumberjacking. I feel like one of those people in adventure "tours", you know, where they need to save the day and it's okay, because they've had one whole session with an ancient master they met in the next dungeon cell.. I've been lumberjacking for two days. I'm practically a gladiator. 

The bitchy bit is, this is how they are supposed to split...

 

This is how they DO split:

But ultimately they just get manhandled. There's no way the General will lose a fight against a tree trunk.

Or of course his mother comes by and when she's not wrecking havoc with a chainsaw, she's whacking things with an axe of her own. Poor things don't stand the chance.No surprises she's the type to murder an ox with her bare hands. And she's humble about to, too...

The computorized proofs came back. Finally. After 9 weeks. Of course they did - I was just  about to throw in a towel and give up on seeing the book published this year and had started another. Know what it's like switching between one project and another? It's like training figure skating for a very long while very intensely and putting everything that you are into one Olympics, and when it's done, you're high-strung, worn out and triumphant. And you move on and start training, say, judo or something. And you start getting the grip on it and just when you get very good at it, very focused, sacquiring a whole new motorics, omeone comes and asks you if you could jump in and compete in one more figure skating gig...

I don't really watch the news - the closest I get is watching the SNL comments on the news comments, but apparently some vulcano has blown up and Bjork is popular again for it. Airlines are going on and on about having financial loses, as if they were the worst off ever. Hey - my monthly taxes have gone up 5o euro - that's 3o% and nobody mentioned a thing. That's quite a blow for starting small firm owners. And nobody cares.

Off to chop wood again. I need my primal lumberjack workout. I love this weather, the sun getting up SO early and air being so clean and fresh and then the tricky sunshine, slowly and gradually blocked by the clowds and the afternoon storms... So passionate. Also, Zemotion has some new pickies out. That always does the Goblin Jumper Cables on me. 

Someone on some show on some channel said primates may have began to walk upright also to snow the male assets to the mating females. Makes SO much sense. The entire species evolving so that men can flail their prunes in front of hotties. I've been wondering about men last night. Commandos. (We still love Bear :D And his team. You've got to admire professionals who are willing to follow someone with a mind of a 4 years old and no sense of self-preservation at all.) Why is it that male ego can undego any kind of abnormal traning/torture, as long as promised to be able to do the worst things in return? They only train killers so profusely. Not rescuers or even law enforcers. Just men who'll get to blow shit up and shoot others. Usually civilians. Intresting, isn't it? The most elite physical  professionals and all they can do is quality harm.  

Can't get enough of Nurse Jackie. I've noticed quite a feminist undertones of the latest week's shows: the lady presidents taking a deep breath and a massive leap in 24, Ugll Betty becoming just Betty in the show's finale and Jackie... well.. The first episode of the second season kind of starts with someone firing a gun in the catholic hospital, sending a bullet pass Jackie into the statue of Virgin Mary and she yells: "She's a mother!!" LoL.

Interesting, concerning Piček, is how he is quite religiously.... religious.. but he despises popes. Odd, that. He has a profound loyalty for God and respect for his parents' beliefs, but popes he deems men who pretend to be gods and by 'men' he meas the worst of mankind - greed and pathological need to be thought better than others being just the tip of the berg. Kings, though, we are both okay with. They are such unfortunate clowns, so punished for their place among commoners already, you really cannot add salt to their wounds.  People always think being a king is so magnificent as you get to have a lot of sex and parade around in very pretty outfits, but come on. That's the famous paintors' propaganda. Kings like this exist only in museums... and England. Real royalty was more like that depicted in movies like Queen Margot and Elisabeth. They were like cancer cores of political fevers.

"Kurbus Debelus"

How to translate that very significant term? Kurbus Debelus is something I could never have a doggie without. It superseds breeding, rank, pedigree and so forth. The dog can be the tristate champion amidst its peers and I would still not want it if it was not Kurbus Debelus. I am THAT strict about it. 

here are some pointers:

See what I mean?

The most relative translation of the term would be something like a 'fat fucking whore!' but it is by no means anything remotely ugly. Nothing to do with prostitution at all. The story behind it is very old and has Edko in it. It is just something that describes the puppy as I demand it to be: FAT. With large paws. Dumb loyal eyes that strip you of your dignity and make you start making the dumbest puppy noises and above all BIG FLUPPY EARS THAT YOU MUST SQUEEZE UNTIL YOU CRACK YOUR FRONT TEETH.  God should not be allowed to make puppies without it.

We are in a full fledged pursuit of a puppy. General has his people up, sis has her own and of course since I relate to muts and he relates to perfectionism, we now need to find a litter, money for it and school to create the flawless Kurbis Debelus hunter named something after a warcraft character. Nefarion or something. The very thought of having someone to go to the park with me every day is so exhilirating, I've been giggling all these hours.

Except now. I am SO tired. In the real world we've been splitting trees for firewood and that is a bitch all in its own turn. General has three injuries, but you should see the tree! I'm sorry I haven't taken any pickies, was to busy telemarketing for my future Kurbus Debelus. He is really good at it. He splits the trunks into daisies flailing the maul and whacking the iron thingies into the wood, making it tear and crack in this profound, rich, ancient sound of bicentennial things breaking. Unfortunately the day was so lovely, sun so shiney and air so early-spring cool we all danced around in short sleeves and his head got so fried over time it now looks like a baboon's butt. And the iron thingies flake and shoot splinters around like bullets. Few missed but few hit and he is a bit punctured. My village blacksmith :D

Off to watch Bear Gryll's Behind the Scenes. We love Bear. We know he's an overly-dramatic drinking game magnet, as he gets a) narrative b), gruesomely unappetizing and c) naked in every show, but I suppose I prefer this littl clown to gom around pretty places making super ninja moves on nature as oppose to some other REAL survivalist in some bleak and lonely circumstance, albeit way more realistic. I prefer TV to be a little bit more .... premeditated. It kind of traumatized me when that idiot Steve Irwin got sheeshkebabed and I kind of don't want to see that happen again to any media persona. Bear is just the right amount of cuteness and acrobatics for one to want to watch a lot and never ever want to kiss. 

I've started working on the "Tree" book. It cheers me up as then I don't feel so much jerked off by printers and sponsors and so forth - people who stand between me and my publications.. I have no idea how it will turn out and like all new relationships, it makes me feel infantly alive :D

        Am watching Nurse Jackie during. By Gods what a cynical and cool portrait of New York... Makes me never ever want to be a nurse. Have no idea why my sis hates Peter Facinelli so, he's such a tard :D Mrs. Falco is brilliant, tho. It feels like this is the sort of a role every thesbian yearns to get once in a run. Pretty much up there with the super dude that palys the lead of Breaking bad...
        General's having his shooting testings done today (weather's a bicth) - loads of hunters gather and need to pass the score or are not granted the hunting licence for this year. I went to the rehearsal with him and his friend and had an excellent time playing a spotter. Got to fire one shot, with a falty bullet. Oh, yeah. I am still the badass of the old west :p Boys got nothing on me 8)
         Setting the guns to work just right for someone is almost as professional as then secretly, when everyone is done for the day and goes to study the targets, screwing them back out of aim. What can I tell you. I am way pro life. It's my dirty little secret.
         He's still not budging about letting me have a puppy. I don't think he understands: even if we did live on an estate, I'd still play with the thing indoors and treat it as way more than a functional subject. The fact that I truly love how it's just teh two of us has nothing to do with it either. There is no telling I wouldn't love it even more if it was the three of us. Puppy would get my piggy (hot watter thingie.) and a corner we cleared..

WorK in pRogreSs....

Been creating a new detective, an uncanny character for my 'children's poetry' pieces, for kiddy magazines...

Also tried to use daylight to digitalize them. Doesn't work either. Am getting increasingly frustrated with trying to get things from paper to pixels...

 It's about a cloud thief she out-witts, the research where spring hides and why it comes to look for us and then what happened with the dragon that fled the zoo... There's also one about a cave boy, first poet...

 

We went pass a bookstore (no such thing) and found a very cool gun encyclopedia with nice educational photos and cool short stories - a perfect gift for the General indeed. There's some stuff in there he knows that not even I have ever heard before... But the important bit is we bought two fresh mountain-climbing booklets and I am alreday jumpy with anticipation. I miss mountaneering. I miss all summer sports!! AND I WANT MY DOG DAMNIT!

one Edko

The measuring unit for retarded stares: one Edko....

After two days of fighting and weeping, Piček's face has finally eased up. I can always tell when he's troubled and if I spend the entire day tryingt to cheer him up to no veil, well, then, fuck it. I have a right to feel bad, too.

The sex we had was pretty scary, tho. That was the worst orgasm I've ever had and by worst I mean so intense I thought I was going to have a fit. I really dislike those kind of orgasms, I like my small, controlled, clitoral ones, not the vast, general, tripple-stimulation, black-out-like ones... I know I had one like that before years back when a guy gave me good oral sex, but I didn't like it. Yesterday I was on top and it felt so good to sway in friction and then suddenly there was no feeling at all and then, a few seconds afterwards, it hit me like a truck from behind: everything in me spasemed; I gasped, yelped, shreeked and tears burst from my eyes - and this lasted MINUTES. Seriously, I can't even think of what it must have looked like to flail around and roll like an aligator in mid-kill.. Somewhere in the middle, in the panic, where I had to grab onto my sanity with all fours, I genuinely needed to struggle not to either pass out or vomit from hyperventilation or have a heart attack. Supposedly people think the more intense the orgasm, the better the sex, but no. Uh-uh. I like sex for sex, not just as a work-up for a climax. Small orgams keeps lots of the... "physical emotion" in. This one just stressed me freakless. 

            Course the General thinks it was pretty funny. He tried to make me come this morning as well, but no, thank you. I'm fine with just really good sex. I don't have to feel like someone's split my head open and ripped my brain out and then smacked it against the tiles for good measure.But it's good to know he feels good about himself again.

>o<

Sometimes I thank my dreams for being very enterraining :D Like they knew I can't be bothered to go to the movies and they play weird interactive scenarios in my head instead. Needles to say, I can't get enough fo them :D

Some people, though. Yesterday, as parents are visiting Barania - a region of Croacia - and we're all dogsitting, we went to the park, along the river, to a hanging brigde a few miles of a neat hike. Except for the part where we are all so fat any lazy we anearly died, it was lovely. But there was a small incident regarding a disturbed woman, which picked on us (it is very popular lately to make a fuss about large dogs) because Tara, our Rottweiler, barked at her mut, how our dog doesn'tbelong in society and so on and so forth. I was ready to retaliate, but Dromedar tried reasoning with her, which only led for the woman to wait for us half a mile on, and continue accusing us of seing us very often and how our dogs are dangerous. It mattered little that our dogs are young and playful and how she's never met us in her life, as this was the first time we ever walked there. But no matter. She followed a little while further, yelling  how she knows people and will report us. We decided to ignore her as not to make things worse and moved at our own pace, the dogs enjoying the scenery and being curious about ducks. Of course 2o or so minutes later, we are whistled at by two intervention-unit police officers, which inform us they've been called no less than three times about how some lady was attacked by the rabid Rottweiler. The General tried calling me, but my phone was on silent, to make sis's boyfriend gain some distance, in case some daft old cop on a bad day would bug him about his prolonged stay in this country, but the two cops were young and, although unpleasant looking, they began to take our statement. As it turns out, no, our dogs were never off a leash, no, they are not rabid and not dangerous and no, we do not walk around every day intimidating innocent doggie-walkers like we were some attention-hungry junkies. Tara being Tara laid down and allowed herself to be petted on her tummy and as the cop tickled her snout to see what she'll do, she even raised her leg as to say 'yeah, right there, a little further down, oh, that's the spot.' Obvioustly they saw we did nothing wrong and dogs, albeit not trained yet, were delightful. They took our names, but when they got to sis's boyfriend, his name sounded foreign and they didn't even bother. Ultimately, one of the cops produced a cell-phone with a picture of HIS Rottweiler and we all parted buddies. I am sorry I didn't take the womans name. She stood a few hundret meters away, observing. I hope they mentioned that the next time she alarms the police with false accusations, there will be fines to pay. But really: some people.

It made me have a dog very much. My very own beast, something very nasty called Nefarion or something and I'm thinking a Jack Russel terrier. The General doesn't want to hear about it, of course, but ven though it makes me very sad, I can never tell if he says stuff like 'no and that's the end of it' because he's being a macho arsehole telling m what to do in my won flat like I'm some fucking infant he's schooling or because he's already made arranements and wants to surprice me with a puppy in a bow...

I have musclefieber :s I hate that, but what can you do. I'm getting old. My own father believes I'm 36 already. Arse :P

Went to the dermathologist finally today, expecting, dunno what, something dramatic (I prepared the whole history in two page detail, too. Hey, I take my House very seriously! :P), but the cocky 'hottest babe on the ward' doctor took one look and asked one question and diagnosed me with Psoriasis Inversa, which is the most boring of them all. I didn't even get any lotions for it, since I managed to deminish my symptoms completely by now. Some lepper I am.. :s At least Piček has the one where your fingernails get all pricky bubbly, like tiny filigree and it makes his beautiful fingernails look even more impressive. Mine is completely boring. And I have such a thing for constant illnesses. Ah, well. Maybe if I invest more into being a nervous wreck, my skin will fall off and I'll have to go out only at night and wear lots of powder like a Kabuki ghoul. :P

Vermeer's inspiration for the story below:

The girl with a milk pitcher (he had a thing for girls in his household..) but those are some seriously insane blues!

»The Slave Pens« (Extract from the space pirates adventures)

I bought a farm! It's almost like an island, as there are two rivers marking the area, though it’ll be a while before it gets the fame of Mesopotamia, but no, seriously, I bought a farm.

            I’m a big believer in chance, so when it all pointed to it being a good idea, I wasn’t going to wait until I’m proven otherwise. Besides, I wanted an excuse to hang around Fidi’s new workplace since she got her own cottage and gained the benefit of a resident witch in some behind-God’s-behind landscape. For a witch that’s sort of a mark of adulthood. Kind of like having you first book published for a ‘Pagan. Although the nasty little shit continues to look thirteen, nobody can argue she’s probably older than an average planet by now. (Side effect of being an avid time traveler. Things add up.) – and as I’ve gotten the opportunity to learn more about her new home world, I’ve been wanting for an excuse to linger there more lengthily. Not many places left which would include trees in their terraforming ambitions, yet alone worlds where forests would be older than settlers as well. Not to mention those sex temples are a bomb! Anyway, I sold Gennonsuke’s silt – to him, in fact – and for the money I got, I bought him a farm. I enjoy giving his tax attorney a headache. The drug money from drugs, stolen, then sold back to the drug dealer and used to buy him a fresh breeding ground. That was before he could get angry at me for finally admitting it was me who stole his precious star feldspar. The man is so lovely when he’s gullible and he’s audaciously gullible – Sepp noticed right away the fish in the tank where I’ve hidden the silt look like banshees.

            Anyhoo. Zoom back forty-five solar systems to the left, the moon, Fidi’d moon, is called Dharowansa. As far as stellar charters concur, it is the only moon know to date to have its own – moon. Dharowansa actually means Moon’s Moon, although I’ve forgotten in whose language in particular. It isn’t supposed to be possible, but that’s universe for you: constant supply of anomalies. The pivotal planet, Marnassa, is a gas giant and it isn’t habitable, but it is beneficial for the Moon’s surface as far as temperature and debris goes and the moon² is a little more than a glorified rock that hasn’t decided on its allegiances yet. The Good Jupiter’s gravity will probably, eventually, mess with its route and adopt it, but for now, as it matters, it belongs to Dharowansa. Because, although quite bright, this inhabitable moon’s atmosphere is always cloudy, the breathable air is constant and while nobody can see the little moon, everyone knows it’s there.

            Another excellent thing is that it’s quite close to Aurora. Horses continues to be my favorite planet, but by now everyone’s accepted Aurora as our Yeah-4ooo home, which is that much more easy to do because we are space pirates and every time some insane politician’s regime goes and fucks everything up, we can just skip out of Dodge and return when crazy solar winds blow over. Cole is still stationed there, though. Last I heard he passed on a promotion and switched from Human Trafficking Dept. back to legitimate bounty hunting, pursuing slaves. The thing with slavery being reinstated last year was a particularly interesting turning point and it doesn’t matter HOW better off the system’s economy is for it. The General’s considered assassinating key members of parliament who enforced it, but he’s since just murdered one. Best I can say, what with the sadist missing, is that some of us are doing more for those people now that they are forced to allow us, than anyone’s ever done for them when they were free. Gennonsuke alone has more than 18oo of them on his grounds, working in the paper mill, and some of them are daily fed and neatly clad for the first time in their existence. Cole continues to bring more in and General is bulling ministers into enforcing the strictest rules against inhumane abuse of the chattels by the so-called remaining free folk. You can’t not try to make the world a better place by turning one blind eye to the fact some people are just waiting for the green lights to start treating everyone else like punching bags.

            So this is what my farm will become. My Slave Pens. An extension of Gennonsuke’s factory vicinity. (“If you can’t beat the system from without, go within and around until you’ve hanged someone with it.”) Although no decree exactly prohibits the evacuation of slaves from Aurora, Gennonsuke has behave like a model entrepreneur and sign strict contracts that ensure the legislators he will not in fact try to simply smuggle them out and set them free like one would condemned lab rats. Not that it wasn’t our first intention. Ironically, however, as humane and moral that would be, it would not help them. It’s one of the rare things Cole had to agree with General on. These people were perfectly free since they settled on Aurora, but they continuously failed to rise up to its standards. Somewhat because they were lazy but mostly because they were bullied, they dripped, from one generation to the next, fourth one coming up very soon, lost and pointless. I am not trying to make excused for the ridiculous slavery law, but I worked as a mail-maid in those districts and they were a nightmare. You couldn’t even get them to accept vaccines and some of the plagues had resurfaced that hadn’t even been catalogued for the last 8oo years. I had to see from the creepy politicians’ perspective and agree with Cole, that as scary as this new law might be, it just may offer them an excellent new start. Then we went and bought every single one we could get our hands on and stuffed them all into Gennonsuke’s latest factory.

            The farm, my farm, is over 4o hectares, almost a 1oo acres of plowable land, with two rivers which periodically flood and wash away everything and four already standing buildings that we tore down and rebuild entirely. Fidi’s cottage is 34 kilometers westward through a forest, as a spaceship flies, which is how I found the place in the first place. We went leisure-flying around, looking about, hunting a bit (with cameras), checking the turf and just nosing as witches should, when a cool picnic spot presented itself and when we asked whose the abandoned real-estate was, we were informed it was for sale.

            Because Gennonsuke’s factory has reached its full current capacity some time ago and he wasn’t able to keep up with the expansion works – meaning the government would sit on his shoulder every chance they could, so he wasn’t taking chances pushing tin – I told him to lend me 4oo of his own while he airs the halls a bit. He gave me 2oo (he was still pissed at me. Stealing that feldspar two years ago put him out f his drug dealing business in his home world and profusely out of favor with the local cartels he supplied. If you ask me, it was just as well. He needed to stretch his legs a little. Universe is such a pretty place to stay in one mess for too long.) Mostly it was folk that was ailing or less useful in the mill in some way. (One of the plagues that commonly afflicted the slums of Aurora City was a parasite that ate the lungs and many people had a lot of problems breathing. He sent me those because doctors agreed Dharowansa’s air was fresher and would do them good. First spa time for any of them, also.)  

            Despite the fact that it will be a while before this place reaches the ranks of paradise, you have to start somewhere. I’m already past the basics, past the features of a Roman plantation. Not quite middle USA in the early thirties yet, though. We’re still building fast on.

  Easiest to accommodate are men. But I didn’t get only men and I wouldn’t have them if someone offered – I am not the sort to take the easy way around. First two thirds were male, only half were single and because all newly proclaimed slaves were given a vaccination of a sedative, supposedly to last a lifetime (considering the value of government I’d say that meant some 1o, 15 years), they were less inclined to just strike out again and burn the whole place down. These people were primitive and ugly before, now they’re just humiliated and trapped. There were ghetto gangs that spend their days making one another’s lives miserable: shooting, pillaging, burning each-other’s things and beating their women; their children never stood a chance. Now, chemically docile, they were harnessed into lower middle class minus the right to speak and although still resentful, they didn’t vandalize every spoon and shoe they got, which qualified for an improvement. Government applauded itself.

            Slave to my need to play an architect – pun tasteless, I realize - the first thing we built was the three main slave pens. We resided in tents until we managed. The one civil engineer we required to double-check my statics calculations was happy to help, since General kidnapped him and threatened to carve out his kidneys if he tries to charge us. The biggest building – that is to say, the longest, barracks-shaped – was for the multitude of single men. It was stationed on the far west of the kidney-shaped estate. In the middle of the bricked-in area was a communal room with a small bar and on each side of it were bathrooms, but mainly, split two ways, were the bunk-bed aisles that accommodated a 1oo sleepers each. I was still pining for more people, so we made it more spacious than really necessary.

            The second pen was similar in shape, long, but smaller and with more mirrors – that was the building for the single women. Not all of the beds there were bunks and some had partitions between them. A lot of women I got were elderly ladies, which coughed a lot. The third one, wider, was for families. There were 2o apartments, tiny but comfy, for couples with pre-adolescent children. For infants, there was a day care unit in a building we split four ways – into kindergarten, supervisor’s office, personnel supplies storage and infirmary. Another building was for preparation and serving of food. At the gate, there was a sort of a check-point mini-armory and cots for on-call militia watch, and stables (Dharowansa’s rural regions were still heavy on horse traffic.) All this was sort of bunched up between the main gate and the main house, which would probably be mine, but I only arranged that to be for the ground floor – a nice airy apartment with a neat kitchen and three guest rooms, where we could stay if we came to visit over a summer break. Upper floor and attic were small rooms for maids and cooks – elder single women who truly didn’t enjoy sleeping in communal dorms on bunk-beds or showering in the hammam. These also took care of the clothes and the windows and employed kids to do the dishes and toilets and helped me maintain a garden. I suck at gardening, but I always wanted to have one, so we planted a load of flowers behind the main house and I’m hoping somebody will think of watering them from time to time. There’s a cool pond with trout and a small cemetery at the far end of the first complex area. One river cuts it in half and cuts off a small hill from the second area, where there’s a little cottage for (originally the overseer) Gennonsuke. He agrees it’s far nicer than the big house and besides – he can hardly chance running into the General, so that’s where he’s decided to call home when on Dharowansa. Only other structure there – and the only in the third area also, are the sheds and shelters in case of bad weather, or where some of the workers may sleep if they choose, and tool storage.

            Of course I haven’t said anything about what we grow, yet.

            Well. Considering this is me, and considering I only really stretch my mind in one direction, purchasing this farm wouldn’t even cross my mind if I didn’t know only one natural pigment production site exists in all mapped universe until now. Somewhere, nobody really cares where and I’ve only heard of it once, there’s a small insignificant farm with some sentimental owner with a hand-painted paper fetish. They grow bushes that produce mulberries which, upon proper treatment, make a really good and lasting pigment. I only know this, because as a curiosity, General and I went to buy some and I was mesmerized by their merchandise. By the looks on their faces, we were one of very few. Our next move was to procure the seeds for each of the bushes, as they were genetically altered (it began as an old man’s experiment and then became a regional wonder and quite a posh to indulge in, if one was a quilt letterer, but since, of course, nobody ever used ink to write anymore, their business never took off.) and could only be stolen. There were 12 different trees and just for good measure, we cleared out their research studio and took all the hybrids as well. I’m not sure if they’ve ever found out who robbed them, but that doesn’t worry me. Even if there was some son or some dying man’s vendetta, militia was trained by The General and they have shoot-on-sight orders for anyone who comes asking about my patents. We also have pigs.

            In love with pigment since the first time I pushed my fingers into the sleek powder in a market in Africa and got a bright bluish rash, I never got the chance to really collect it. It’s been a while since the era of Johannes Vermeer, so after Earth was lost, so went all its earthly treasures. Even though natural things that produced color, even saffron to a degree, still existed here and there, nobody bothered to color things with things that made your hands dirty. Aurora was an excellent place to resurrect certain crafts and as we already had a vast paper mill up and going, natural pigment was only.. natural. Carmine and Lapis lazuli were relics. Now we had freaky berry things.

            Four different reds – depending on the ripeness of the picked fruit; two blues, two greens, one orange, yellow, brown and two blacks (which became two different grays) were complimented by (experimental, fickle) another violet, green, ochre and pink. I was badly lacking fluorescent pink and turquoise, which can be very interesting colors in the dusty gritty backside of places like once-was-India and Mali. There will have to be room for my own research lab sometime in the future and I’ve notified the General to be on the look-out for some chromatic chemists, should he happen to be bored.

            And so, this is how I now have a little pigment mulberries farm. Work starts early, with a big brass bell toll and the slaves pour out of the pens like ants from a ruckused anthill, use bathrooms, gravitate towards the refectory and then hit the fields. They are either planting the seeds, tending to the soil, applying fertilizers, removing parasites or simply building. Berries are very neatly divided by the color of their results and they require different teams. Most of the trick is soil treatment, as it was observed early on by dendrologists, that different types of soil make for different colors of the blossoms on same plants. When harvest time comes, by the time we’re done with all the tricky little details, it will be time to sow again. Not sure what we’ll use to rotate the patches, but probably lawn and goats on it and then we’ll produce a shitload of butter. Hm. I can’t see why not. I think I’ll go find some cows.

            So then around early afternoon (time runs differently here, but let’s say around 3) there’s lunch and an hour’s rest and then more work until 7, when there’s big dinner. Afterwards lights out is at 1o, but people have to be in beds by midnight. There’s no alcohol anywhere and they can’t really run, the slaves, even though unlike some plantations, I don’t make them wear collars or build busty electrical fences. They all have GPSs in their spines,  and the inspections need to count them all every few weeks or so. They are always set in groups of ten and if someone is missing, that group’s register number doesn’t light up to green. It’s the same for a group that’s made of groups – if there’s not a hundred people in it, group’s faulty. If a group doesn’t pass inspection and if it’s suspected one has run away, they are taken from the incompetent owner and put to a far more heavy duty environment. It doesn’t make any difference, of course. People are natural born rule-breakers and some of the best characters in history were runaway slaves. I’m just hoping they keep it together long enough for Aurora economy to change and for whatever Spartacus emerges, times will be ready. I’ll hold their coats while they force laws to change back to humane again, but until then, a have a farm called Slave Pens and am making ink to be able to write it all down, neatly.

The other day, in the bathroom, obviously, I had one of those profound thoughts that people quote you for for the rest of your life. The kind you could write an entire book around, just so that it would get extracted and exploited again - the kind that makes you seem like you've just comprehended the meaning of universe. Not that I wrote it down or had less interesting things to do, before it fled me again. Now the grand quote is gone for good and all that remains in knowing there once was one, but fuck me sideways if I know what it was. And I move on.

Noblegarden was magnificent. Not just the Warcraft one, either. It was SO cute, the way the whole family came (plus or minus some ungrateful fucking inbred kids with table manners of elephant shit). Mum and dad worked overtime again, to prepare the most delicious food and I painted a truckload of eggies and the dogs helped :P There was a basket of chocolate goodies that I distributed all over the estate and the woods and then sketched a multiple of treasure maps and everyone, kid or adult, no matter how aloof initially, then ran around, looking for the Easter booty. Neighbours must have thought we were on shrooms, the way (estate is amphitheater shaped, so you can easily see where everyone is) we were running up and down, left and right and all around, poking vineyard poles and nutbushes. 

In between those two events, an interesting incident occured. For all my snarly take on the infants, it turns out I do have a maternal instinct after all. Who knew! I was listening to my music, going through town yesterday, and with the corner of my eye saw a small kid, maybe a year and a half old, fall off a small two-stair platform on the side of the promenade. There was no premeditation to it - the next thing i knew I was on my knees, stretched out to the end of my balance and my hand was opened just softly enough to catch the toddler's face before it hit the pavement. I even remember buffering the impact, so his nose took least and my knuckles the most damage. The way that whole maneuver was executed, shocked me. A ninja couldn't have done it better. And I don't even like kids. 

Goes to show you never can tell :P

Re-watching Tigerland (the most watched movie before I joined the army), I've fallen passionately for Bozz all over again, but then I saw one of the Criminal Minds and it reminded me of a stalker I used to have. I never found out who it was, probably someone from the family or someone pulling a tasteless prank, but a stalker none the less. They'd send me obscene letters, describing in detail how cute I am on baby pictures, how lovely I looked when accompanying gran to the graveyard, how bullets work on the body and so on and so forth. Not that bluffing didn't ruin the whole spooky intent (Me cute on baby pictures?! Are you fucking blind?) or that I wasn't flattered, but you can't really out-freak the really freaky. If anything, I scared the perv away. Ah, well.It was the thought that mattered.

Other than that... Not much. Am bored, so am gonna go sexually molest Piček, who finally has a whole day off and is sleeping like a small kitten amidst 5 pillows and three douvets. No way I can resist kissing him 57 times.! Am learning about pigment meanwhile, too, some very basic stuff. Very interesting. The whole synthetic/natural conflict is uncanny. Painting easter eggs has left my hands very telltale :D