Thursday, January 28, 2010

This blog has no title, just words and a tune

I find myself reminding you, readers dear, that you know me. This is why you read the blog. (I hope. I don’t have blog statistics up, though, so welcome, as well, to our random reader from Kansas City! I hope you enjoy your stay. You, in case you forgot, don’t know me.)

Those of you who do might recall that I am a klutz. Absolutely clumsy butterfinger (and not the candy kind) walking catastrophe. I try to avoid it, I really do. Sometimes I even can – in the wintry and unsalted icy Moscow streets I’ve only fallen twice! Hurray!

Here’s the story. The other night I’m finishing the presentation on American suburbia and I have my headphones in because the Colonial Invaders™ have gone to bed and I am a nice person. And/or subdued jungleman. I’m not sure which. I drop my pen, and due to an unfortunate choice on my own part to try to rescue said pen, my computer crashes onto the floor.

Miraculously, it does not break (despite being an ancient Dell). Unfortunately, my headphone jack breaks off into the speaker! What’s more – in the process of trying to “fix” things, I end up jamming the female part of the speaker jack all the way into the computer’s core.

Cue a frantic copying of every important document I might have updated onto my external hard drive, convinced as I am that the sound card is connected to the mother board and the mother board’s connected to the COMPUTER IS GOING TO DIE NOW AHHHH (board).

Scene change: The next morning. I warily boot up the computer and find that it is working nicely. Hurray! I put the last touches on the presentation and enter bureaucracy hell™ (a different story entirely).

Scene change: That night. I return home and realize that the external speakers don’t work. This is nothing new. I wonder if I can rescue the jack from the interior of the beast like God looking upon…um…is it Josiah in the whale? – and oh! What a man can’t do with good Fortune smiling upon him and a pen cap. The jack is rescued!

But still no sound.

I then take the male end of the microphone half of my Skype set and jiggle it around in said jack. Suddenly – sound! I am invincible!

But now I can’t move my computer or I have to go through the whole process again.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

A sneak preview of my presentation tomorrow


Bell tower of the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery reflected in a bank's tinted glass windows.

It's ironic because one of the basic tenets of Russian Orthodoxy is total asceticism.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

It's still a foreign language.

Like David Tennant, I am trying to learn an Estuary accent!

In preparation for my trip to England to visit my friends Kipling, Pigeon, and Union Jack, I’ve been reading a hysterical blog I discovered via Wif’s non-Wer&Wif blog.

By “reading” I mean when I have internet access I save 2 or 3 months from 2004 or 2005 into a word document and read them when I get sick of reading about Russian architects in the dorm.

I’m excited about the differences in British and American English. From JohnnyB (who writes that blog I mentioned not two sentences ago, remember?) I’ve learned that in British English you can:

Use companies and teams as weird collective nouns:
“Are you sure Nike don’t make bowls shoes?”

“In an exciting match, Chelsea have toppled Manchester United."
You can use new and exciting words, usually starting with “k”!
knackered (tired)

Kerb (curb)
You can play new games!
cricket ( 1) very slow-paced baseball; 2) Quidditch without brooms)

Bowls (I think it’s like curling (kurling?), except without coffee pots, and on the grass?)

Snooker (sadly, I don’t think anyone gets Snickers&trade, nor do they get kissed, during play.)
I’m terribly excited, really. I hope that when I’ve mastered British English there will be at least half as many flower petals falling from the sky as there were at the end of the version of Pygmalion that Earl Grey and I saw.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Ahead of them, Red Flag a-waving...

Let’s get this clear right off the bat, in case there was any doubt: I am a crazy person.

When I’m walking on the streets by myself and there’s no one around, I practice my phonetic pronunciation of Russian poetry. Every so often someone rounds a corner and startles me, although I probably startle them more. “Crazy person muttering under his breath,” they must, invariably, think.

Last semester my favorite line was from Blok’s Dvenadtsat’ [The Twelve]: “Вся власть учредительному собранию!” [Vsia vlast’ uchreditel’nomu sobraniu - All power to the founded Soviet! (A slogan for War Communism).]

The hard part is the –ch- “the bad brothers,” as one of my nephews called them, followed by the –r-, which is palatalized and trilled (or, to put it in English: is said with smiling lips and rolled like in Spanish).

But I’m tired of Blok. I want something new. I just haven’t decided what a good poem could be. I really liked Dvenadtsat’ because there’s a refrain that goes TRAAAA-TAAA-TAA (1/8 drums, 7/8 Tommy gun fire).

I am in quite the quagmire.

Speaking of which, does anyone remember that Mac game?!

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Saturday, January 23, 2010

So a Baby Seal Walks Into a Club...

I’ve been debating whether to tell this story or not for over a month. Even though Briullov/Storm has already posted his response to the conversation we had, I decided to write.

A Penguin I’m friends with sent me an email. She had been playing nurse and housemaid to her boyfriend while he was sick with swine flu, and then came home one day to find that she was not allowed in the house.

And not for the relatively “fun” reason that he had zombie fever and it was quarantined by the CDC, or for the more “fun” reason that she might really be a penguin and maybe he accidentally stepped on the egg when she was away hunting and he didn’t want her to see. No.

Her boyfriend, Mr. Seal, had a girl (herein: Ms. Sea-Urchin) at home and he didn’t want the girlfriend to spoil his game.

Wait.

What?

Yes.

This still makes no sense to me. If Mr. Seal knew Penguin was coming over, why would he invite a random different girl (and think that telling Penguin to wait outside in the midnight air for a half hour would suffice his purposes)?

I want to be chivalrous and say that Ms. Sea-Urchin didn’t know of Penguin’s existence before she got invited over. I think that’s being very generous. Likely she did.

But still. The fantasy-construct of “ooh-I’m-doing-something-bad-you-have-a-girlfriend” is one thing. Sitting in the guy’s apartment and hearing him tell Penguin off, still anticipating to pose as the Humpback Whale as she’s gone seems really totally creepy and awkward. How did the exchanges you overheard (you, I’m speaking to you, Ms. Sea-Urchin) make you feel?

I realize I’m operating here on the assumption that humans are capable of rational thought, which is typically untrue.

The same night I got Penguin’s email, I was sitting one of my favorite cafés. The couple next to me spoke in very loud voices about the affair they were planning (he was married; she had a child [not his, but no wedding ring]).

What’s the Charlie Brown quote? Something like: “I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand.”

Friday, January 22, 2010

A Whole New World (It would be...)

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I lived just a block down the road, on Gagarin Square.

I would trip balls every morning, first of all, because the apartment buildings there are some of my Stalinist Neoclassical buildings. I could slightly reimagine my Man-Who-Makes-the-Totentanz-Go-‘Round project. It would be:
Life on Gagarin Square!
and it would be a magical and hysterical essay-novel that would describe my time in Moscow, fill the heart with joy and wisdom, draw parallels between the wintry climate of the city and the ghastly (both figuratively horrible, and, literally, ghoulish – but I’ll save that story) freezer in the basement of my old work, and wittily argue specifics of architecture built in the post-war Soviet period.

In other words, I’m nearing the time when I have to pay rent. I haven’t come to a conclusion, yet, if I want to stay in the dorm. Because my trip to England lands at the end of February/early March, I’ll have to secure housing for both months at the same time, ahora. Decisions. Decisions.

Whelp. I’m back to the expat housing-for-rent forums.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Die, Fad, Die!

I get mad at American health trends!

Alright, so I was going to be all stealth-mode and incommunicado, and use the limited amount of Interwebs I have today only working on the presentations coming up, but I got distracted.

Primarily because I haven't found a good way to cull search results for "suburban hell" so it's not all links to tons and tons of crazy people.

Anyway. Clicked over to a woman's blog I sometimes read (it's not in the list to the right.) and she has a post about how she doesn't want to go back to her gym's yoga because they made her hurt. I laughed because I have a similar post.

But then I made the mistake of clicking on the comments link, and saw one that goes: "Sorry the yoga didn't work out. Maybe tai chi would be lighter!"

Now, I get mad enough that American suburban housewives of DOOM™ have coopted yoga as an exercise form and totally removed all sense of spirituality and meditation from it, but really? "Maybe tai chi would be lighter," as in it will be a nice stepping stone into yoga? They're different exercises for completely different religious practices!

Welcome to Global Capitalism 101. Today we will take your sacred practices and use them to address our own neuroses of health and beauty. Tomorrow we'll be talking about the new hip diet that increases your spirituality: The Russian Orthodox Lenten Fasting! (Great for gluten-free diets!)

Click here for a different perspective. Thanks to Penguin for sending that in.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Hello silence, my old friend

Pardon the temporary radio silence as I flip my shiz.

I am giving multiple presentations in the next couple of weeks, and also decided that I wanted to give in-depth progress reports to The Professor and to Prof F. So...see you in a little while.

(Don't worry, this will likely only last a couple of days, and then I'll have a backlog of some five or ten thousand posts that I can begin scheduling for your consumption.)

In the meantime, I have scheduled posts to go up on the existential crisis blog, so feel free to check those out.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Mommy, I Want Some Candy!

A new generation is born!

I used to be creeped out by the silence of children I saw in Russia, by the obedient attention I saw them give to their parents while out in public. Oh, no more.

A pair of young couples met for coffee. Their two daughters began celebrating the Satanic holiday that indubitably was occurring, slapping each other, pushing, screaming. One sat, "under control," kicking, pearls swinging around her neck, tongue hanging, and screaming, screaming screaming screaming, absolutely hollering for her ice cream. WHERE IS IT!? The other crept up close to my table and stared at me until I looked her way, and then she ran away.

Another two, with parents who were absolute strangers (to the children themselves? to one another?) were playing chase. One stranger yelled for her boy to come back, not moving more than just her neck to look in his general direction.

The first of the Satan-worshipers began to sprint around as well. She ran to an empty chair at a blonde woman's table, but couldn't get in, the table too close. The woman, hesitantly, began to draw the table back.

"Liza!" the father yelled. And Liza returned to her ice cream.

The woman didn't shake her head, and didn't purse her lips, and gave no outward sign of any reaction. But in her stillness I think I read one word: "Безобразие."

ROD

Безобразие (bezobrazie) - "Scandalous!", "Outrageous!", literally: "without-form-ity"

Saturday, January 16, 2010

How am I supposed to wear this?

I don’t understand fashion.

Almost, if not absolutely, all of the people who read this have seen me in person, so that sentence has almost no redemptive value. You know it already! I leave it only because I needed a sentence to embold. And not in the courageous way.

I’ve heard it said that “one cannot be fashionable unless one likes the feeling of being squeezed, pressed upon, buttoned up.” I think that’s actually a misplaced quote from the Marquis de Sade.

I have a couple of questions, anyway, that the Marquis’s quote doesn’t explain. Today’s “Frozen-Icarus-Doesn’t-Understand-Fashion” (possibly a new feature?) post is dedicated to beaters.

1. What is the point of a beater? If the general point of undershirts is to protect dress shirts from sweat stains, and armpits sweat a lot, and the point of a beater is to not encloth the armpit…there seems to be a major problem here.

2. Now, this isn’t beaters’ problem only, as I’ve (unfortunately) bought t-shirt undershirts with this problem as well – what is the deal with the ridiculous length with which some undershirts are built? These shirts hang down, down, down. Hem of the boxers low. But it’s not like I’ve bought the wrong size – they are the correct fit throughout the shirt section. Did I miss the memo that we’re going back to tunics?

3. Along with that – I have a set of Polo beaters (they were on sale at TJ Maxx, you can’t call me white trash. Although -- I was chuckling to myself when I realized that between the mullet, the goatee, and the beater poking through the unbuttoned top of my dress shirt I look like Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites. Except not pretty. Only a decade left until Y2K!)

Anyway. The emblem on these Polo beaters are on the bottom hem towards the left – and they suffer from what I discussed in #2. So the logo is always tucked in (because I wear them as undershirts) but would likewise remain tucked in even if I decided to dress like white trash for the day.

Because otherwise I’d be wearing a tunic.

So this doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand what capitalist trick they’re playing at. I already know that it’s a Polo shirt, I bought it…isn’t the general idea right now that I’m supposed to be a walking advertisement for the clothing brand I bought?

Friday, January 15, 2010

A pox on both my houses!

I still have a cold.

No exclamation point for that bold sentence.

I was going to leave it be with just the one post about having a cold, but I’m pissed that I still feel gross! Not ok.

I also don’t understand why people have to be cranky when we feel bad. I think, seeing as I already feel tired, and there is snot coming magically from nowhere to pour down my throat and out my nose, at the very least I should be in a superb mood! Right!?

But I get cranky. As does everyone else. Because we don’t like having the coldses.

I need to have some angry words with someone upstairs. (By whom I mean less the Colonial Invaders™, more He-Who-Makes-the-Totentanz-Go-Round.)

GAH! So much pressure in my sinuses!

I've been medicating the best way I know how in Moscow: prianiki (which are easiest to think of as baked, instead of fried, glazed and jelly-filled donut holes) and ginger ale. Neither is anything but a placebo buut...it's my life. Don't judge.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

There's not enough inanity in this blog

I ate a Vidalia onion!

(There were some in the salad I got from the market.)

(It turns out, readers dear, that vegetables are healthy for the human body! I, personally, enjoy eating them. Particularly when there is such a satisfying ring about the name: Vidalia. Vidalia.)

Ah, Vidalia onions.

I could sing it from the rooftops!

But that song hasn’t been written yet, so I won’t.

My favorite part about Vidalia onions – besides their near-limitless uses in healthy salads, salsas, and spreads (and rooftop-sung arias) – is that everyone always has the same story about them. The exact same response to their appearance in any conversation – which makes me wonder if they’re not in an evil collusion with Flouride to take over the world. This is the response.
Oh, Vidalia onions? They’re so sweet, my grandfather would just eat them plain.
It’s always the same! It’s not just the hypothetical “you” who could eat them, or “one,” or even a personalized “I have eaten one” – it’s always grandpa!

Multiple times, many times, thousands – nay, dozens – nay, at least five times have I heard that.

Hmph.

I will likely feel in a bad way later tonight because I ate the whole packet of Vidalia onion & friends salad. I have been scared about leaving foodstuffs overnight without my fridge ever since that weird burp incident.

Still vomit free since ’93, however.

Ha ha. That’s a lie…but a different story, entirely.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Death! Pestilence!

Shawn [of Psych and “He’s so ugly!” fame]: There he is!
Gus [blinking, shaking his head]: What time is it?
Shawn: Dayyyyyyyytime.
Gus [realizing he’s in the passenger seat of his own car]: What happened?
Shawn: I might have dropped 6 allergy pills in your Frosty while you were peeing.
I have a cold!

This is unfortunate, as I really did want to get back into the libraries when they opened up at the end of vacation period. Instead I’ve been sleeping twelve or thirteen hours a night, rubbing my nose and upper lip so raw that I have almost doubled the radius of my open mouth, and single-handedly created as much snot as there is sludge on Moscow streets (a lot, that means).

Excuse me, my five minutes are up. I need to go find another Kleenex.

Edited to add:

December 31: Frozen Icarus thinks, "I haven't done any kind of facial-hair challenge since 2008's Decem-beard. I want a mustache." The mustache growing begins (it is currently in the form of a disconnected goatee until the mustache is long enough to stand on its own.)
January 13: Briullov sends me this link.

Yes! I am exactly a fortnight ahead of the curve! I've not felt this great since I heard Owl City's "Fireflies" (via Pandora) a good two months before WFNX played it. Hurrah!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

It smells funny when I make Number 1

I drink tea.

No, wait. I drink tea! Exclamation point!?!??! I forgot.

Some friends of mine gave me chocolates to go with them. The chocolates are good, but I feel like I need to convince myself to go for an extra five minutes on the treadmill for every piece I eat. I hate feeling guilty. So let’s ignore the fact that I’m stuffing my face with them right now (thanks, Belief. Thanks, Tequila-Flavored-Drink).

In other news, this Princess Noori (sp? – I have only ever seen it in Russian. In Cyrillic letters it’s spelled Нури. Anyway, this tea) is t3h CRACK. I am seriously addicted to any flavor. Anything. Lemon. Raspberry. Plain™ black tea. Something called “Begamot” (which is the word for hippopotamous!?!??!). Delicious. I must learn how to spell this in English so I can buy it in the ‘Rica.

Oh my.

What if it is the crack?

What if the Colonial Invaders’™ radio hasn’t been going off, but it’s all been part of a massive tea-hallucination!?!??!

I need to go lie down a bit.

Edited to add: It is “bergamot,” not “begamot” – bergamot, which, apparently, is some kind of pear. Alas. I wish I had hippo tea.

Monday, January 11, 2010

This is what pain feels like(?)

I dry-heaved in the locker room!

This is all the more exciting because I didn’t actually puke.

And even more exciting because I don’t know what caused it! Mwahaha. The list is near-endless:

- Maybe there’s something funky in the water!
- There were gross grinds in the coffee I had in the café. Maybe they were deadly!
- I had a slice of cheese with bread this morning. Maybe there was a creature on one or both!
- I bought a tuna sandwich for lunch. Maybe the fish was bad!
- I had just finished in the workout room in the gym. Maybe I had over-exerted myself!

The world will never know.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Monster in a Mirror Says "A-Doodle-Ee-Doo"

I have become a passive-aggressive note-leaver!

I don’t know where the Colonial Invaders™ are today, but they were gone from the room at 9:15.

Their alarm went off.

I hope they return before I go to sleep.

I left a note under their door, saying: “Hello! Could you please check if you haven’t set an alarm on your stereo system to go off at 9:15 every night? It went off while you were out today, as it has every night you were out of the city last week. -Icarus” (Except in Russian. And without the italics. And with my real name.)

I think it’s still in the realm of polite behavior to have left it, right? I’m not a complete passive-aggressive d-bag, yet…right? The note doesn’t say “TURN OFF YOUR F*&%ING STEREO!” (I just recently learned how to put the f-bomb into its adjective form, so I could well write said note.) But I don’t want to upset my Lords and Masters. I just don’t want to have to listen to a mix of Eurotrash hits of 2009 and American pop songs from 2001-2003.

If Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana’s “Maria” comes on the radio one more time, though, I’m switching the polite note for the swearing one. It should be written into the Geneva Conventions that playing that song constitutes psychological torture.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Interrupting this broadcast

Why I've started listening to learn-French-daily-podcasts in the morning!

I've waxed poetical (several times over) about the podcast I listen(ed) to as I drink coffee in the morning, The Sandbox, previously of WFNX fame.

Which I just found out when I went to download their podcast and found a...lack...of podcast. A quick google news search (thank you, google!) told me that a massive programming change rendered the show asunder, to use Biblical imagery.

I don't think that the weirdest news is that the show is canceled, but that I didn't know it was canceled until now - like everyone knew it before I did. It's not like it'd be on the front page of bbc.co.uk. And for some reason that being-late-to-the-party-itude makes me feel dirty.

Still creeped out by the idea of twins, too.
In the middle of the road there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
there was a stone
in the middle of the road there was a stone.

Never should I forget this event
in the life of my fatigued retinas.
Never should I forget that in the middle of the road
there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
in the middle of the road there was a stone.
     -Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Friday, January 8, 2010

I don't care how moldy they are, I love them!

I have bought rare books!

If I ever make the misguided attempt to argue that I am not a nerd, you have my permission to rub my face in this post.

I was downtown on Tverskaya Street, looking for something to do for a half hour before meeting Briullov for coffee. Of course I walked into the nearest bookstore. What other option would I have?(!)

I originally wasn’t going to buy anything.

I swear.

Scout’s honor. (Probably not the best choice. I was a Boy Scout for less than two years.)

But then I walked downstairs into the rare book section, and found three texts that a) are on my to-read list and b) are constantly cited by other authors. I did my typical carry-carry-carry around the store trick, hoping to figure out which one I wanted to buy when it came time to leave, but I couldn’t decide.

“I can’t decide, I can’t decide, I can’t decide,” I said to each in turn. Hopefully not out loud.
I can’t decide whether you should live or die!
Oh, you’d probably go to Heaven
Please don’t hang your head and cry!
Don’t wonder why my heart feels dead inside
It’s cold and hard and petrified!
Lock the doors and close the blinds
We’re going for a ride!
In the end, I couldn’t come to any conclusion as to which to throw away. I bought them all!

I will never regret this.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Not in MY Valley of Death, You Don't

The Colonialist Invaders™ are back!

Their first order of business was to turn off the radio.

And then they shut the window.

Or maybe it was the other way around. I was asleep when this occurred. I awoke only at the resounding echoes of silence. It was glorious.

They then – my lords -
They will come
Come across the waters
Mighty saviors with their bows of steel
Then they kill us!
– they gave me a New Year’s/apology present of a zebra-striped tea cup when I got home from grocery shopping. This is very nice of them.

But I fear it’s all part of their plan of dormitory conquest. First they set up the dialectic wherein their absence is my discomfort, their presence my happiness. And then I welcome their existence. And then they slowly take away my joysesees, and then I have nothing left! And this space – I myself – we are theirs! Exclamation point!

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Awrharwaaaaaah.

“What an incredible new smell you’ve discovered!”

Oh, Han Solo. So mad at Chewbacca. It wasn’t even Chewbacca’s fault that they escaped into a trash compactor.

But I do understand Han’s point. For I have discovered a new smell.

Every morning, the entrance to the ‘tro smells like wet dog. (exclamation point?)

At least that’s the identification my scent-memory throws my way. I’m scared that it’s not actually the homeless dogs, even though they do come in to warm up after rolling around in the snow all the cold night long. They can only stay for a short time before the crack squad of crazy grandmas (with their useless whistle-blowing at the xuligany [hooligans] leaping past the turnstiles) totter over to the door and beg them to shoo. The grandmas addresses the homeless dogs on tovarishch [comrade]. Fantastic.

I think the smell is actually the people. I’m just not sure if it’s the fur coats, or the actual, physical, human beings surrounding me.

That’s probably impolite to say, isn’t it.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

I learn things

There are two different phrases for participating in an interview, depending on if you're the one asking questions or answering them. I can never remember which is which. So I ask.

Turns out:
брать интервью - brat' interv'iu - to take (that is, to ask the questions)
давать интервью - davat' interv'iu - to give (that is, to answer)

This sets up one of the best RODs-to-date:

ROD

Она дает. (from the same verb, "to give") - Ona daiot. - She puts out.

Monday, January 4, 2010

We decided kilt and B.Flow feather jacket

I went on a day trip to Portsmouth!

Wer, Wif, and I walked down the street.

Wif: Did I tell you that my Scottish friends are coming to the wedding?!

Icarus: I just saw it on your blog. Fantastic! [Intonation on the 'fantastic' is important. It must have self-reflexive irony and a rough North English accent in order to hearken to Christopher Eccleston's Doctor.]

Wif: And they'll be in town from Wednesday to Wednesday, so you'll have a chance to meet them.

Wer: And -- and. and. They'll be wearing kilts to the weddings, precious, yes. [This should be deadpan, not in an obvious Gollum voice.]

Wif: So I think when we do our pub crawl after the rehearsal dinner, you, monkey, and Wer, and Good-ol-Abe should wear kilts with the Scots.

Icarus: Hm. Only a quarter of me will be ok with that. Can I wear a quarter-kilt?

[Wer&Wif share looks of horror.]

Wer: Um. They're pretty short to begin with.

Wif: Are you planning on wearing underwear with that?

Icarus: No! I meant a loincloth, not a mini-skirt...

[More looks of horror.]

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Extended baseball metaphors are fun

Erm. So. Blog. Yes. I forgot for a moment that I need to write entries in here before they go live, they don't just do that on their own.

Why don't they just do that on their own? That's going to be the next step in the development of Satan's chat box, I think - the direct neural-Interwebs upload link. I think: "I want this sentence to be on the Interwebs," and POOF!

I'd rather the sound was "BAM!" but it's not like there's an explosion, it's just an electronic transfer. Onomatopoeia must be true to the original sound.

My brain is fuzzy today because I haven't been sleeping well lately. New Year's Eve is strike one. Strike two is that my suitemates, who left on the 30th and are gone until tomorrow, have a pretty sick stereo system. Which they use as an alarm clock. Which they forgot to turn off. It's like -- well, it is clockwork - it turns off at 18:00, there are a lovely three hours of silence, and then from 21:14:15 (on my clock, which can be anywhere on their clock from 21:00 to 21:30, depending on if they are Aristotle or Bob the Builder) it begins again.

The worst is between 5:30 and 7 - which is when the DJ plays the "IF YOU'RE DRIVING DON'T FALL ASLEEP AGHAGHAHGAHGHAGHAH!" techno mix.

I've been listening to my Master and Margarita audiotape to drown out the music. :D

But seriously, if the Moroccan colonial invaders want to woo me back to their cause there will have to be lots of tea and kartoshka.

Strike three is a cold snap. I can tell how cold it is outside by the heat leeching from my room: 62-66 inside, I don't want to leave. The snot and hair inside my nose will free immediately leaving the house. 67-71, not too bad. I can go outside and play in the snow, or walk around all night, and not freeze to death. 72-74, and I don't have to even consider putting on a scarf or gloves.

It was 65 last night, and the forecast says it probably won't get warmer until Thursday. Theez eez vhy I am doing the writing now. I'm going into hibernation as soon as the suitemates have shut off the alarm, and not coming out of it until Friday. Mwahahahaha

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Prepare the blood sacrifices

Happy 2010, one and all. Let’s start the countdown: 2 years, 350-and-some-odd days, and just a few short hours. The end times cometh!

Hopefully they will not be as illogical and self-contradictory as the Doctor Who version of the End of Time. (I should be nicer. I’ve only seen part one. Maybe it’ll make more sense later.

Who am I kidding. That series has no need for internal consistency.)

Anyway. It is my duty and pleasure to pass on to you --
1. My apologies for the extended hiatus. Hopefully I will resume my pen’s prolific pontifications soon.
2. At Galinda’s (Dramatis Personae it if you don’t remember who that is) request I am going to start a new feature to every blog post.
Such is my plan: I will only use the bold HTML tag in one sentence per post. That sentence will typically have an exclamation point (I love exclamation points), and will summarize the rest of the post. Therefore vis-à-vis quid pro quo l’etat c’est moi – thusly, even if the post doesn’t seem interesting you can still know what’s going on in my life!

But that one sentence is not always going to be at the beginning of the page.

hahahaHA!haha