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Freaky Sunday

Recently I am receiving signals from the mother-ship and seriously considering to suspend watching horror movies for a while. Today I was about to kill the printer in a very painful way.

I was just preparing a sandwich and my second cup of milk with coffee in the kitchen, when suddenly our printer started warming up. Our printer is a big, solid piece of machinery, that besides the printing, is contributing to the home ambient with noises, that could make a harvester from the times of the Warsaw pact to fall in love with it. It is a real cannonade of rattles, creaks and clatters. So naturally I ran to see what the hack was going on and why the stupid printer decided to become a zombie. And staying in front of it, with highly arched right eyebrow, waiting for the result of its efforts, I managed to think of:
1. Was there a movie in which a devil possessed printer had been printing messages to people that they were going to die in a week or so?
2. How is a human supposed to destroy a zombie printer?
3. If the stupid machine spits that kind of crap now, I am going to turn it into confetti with something heavy;
4. What kind of equipment with that purpose I have available at home? and
5. I think my husband’s Aikido swords will do the job.

Armed with that life saving conclusion, I took the coming sheet. I wasn’t scared at all, just expected personalized greeting from the beyond. Well, it appears, my husband in Lisbon decided to get a train ticket from Zurich to Geneva, and of course he needed to safely print it at home. Oh, wonders of technology! Next time, try a love letter, honey.

I really enjoy living with myself, adventures happen every day. The question is who would expect a personal message FROM the printer? Maybe I should check what does the local supermarket put in the coffee.

Update:
On the next day, I got another mystical message, this way FROM the printer. Her is the message itself:
Hello.

This is your printer.

I recently read your blog entry about me, and have to say that I took offence with the way you describe my necessary stretching activity prior to serving your every needs for printing, scanning and faxing. It hurts my feelings that you suspect me capable of evil deeds, and if I had a heart, it would now be broken. *sniff*

I think a husband, who’s adapting quickly to the game and is feeding my sick imagination is the best gift I can get from the universe.

Love

One of my favourite love stories, ever.

Thanks to Antonia

Corpses and stuff

Being home alone is always revealing my cheerful personality: today’s selection included Sweeney Todd, Nightmare before Christmas, My dying bride,
and A little piece of heaven for good night. I wonder where did I get that morbid fascination from. Anyway, sweet dreams and don’t even think to misbehave.

New affiliations

Beautiful!

from here

Presents management – mission almost possible

I am completely lost when it comes to choosing presents to people I love most of all. Even being quite creative, when it comes to a special presents occasion for my husband, I can easily reach amok. I don’t like to give gadgets to any of my close friends, as for me this is a gift, lacking imagination. Of course there are exceptions (my father in law was childishly happy to get a Tom-Tom for his birthday) but for Georg, everything should be special. Very special.

So I prefer to organize some trips and outdoor activities for us, but recently the time for those is getting less and less. Unfortunately, this is leaving me with even smaller field to operate on and the need to start thinking about special occasions much in advance.
Here is what I DON’T consider a good enough present for my husband:

1. Gadgets (total lack of fantasy, just a way to get away without much effort. Besides, he is much more technical person than me, to take care of his toys alone). Exceptions: Exclusive and expensive toys, which will benefit the whole family (sports car, Canon 5D set, small yacht, etc.)
2. Clothes (Too ordinary to be a special occasion gift. Still allow exceptions if it is a luxury brand, possibly?)
3. Cosmetics
4. Jewellery (He doesn’t wear watch, and except for the wedding ring, he is not much into other decoration).

Will fill the list if I think of more restrains.

Here are some places, I draw some inspiration and ideas from at last for some things I can handmade. Please share your experience of choosing presents for your partners and friends. I am slowly starting to freak out, and Gergyovden is approaching.

the Decocentric Blog
Poppytalk
Etsy
DaWanda
SusyJack Contemporary paper goods

Зеркало души мизантропа a.k.a. mirror of misanthrope’s soul


“I am not fat, I’m fluffy”

Manul is a small wild cat from Central Asia. It is about the size of a house cat, but unlike it, Manul is impossible to domesticate not only because of its fantastic and friendly character, but also for these wonderful creature appears to be extremely vulnerable to infections.

Manuls’ allergy towards people and life in civilisation is instantly signing the whole F. manul species to my personal category of exceptionaly wise animals. And being called “a mirror of the misanthrope’s soul” can only contribute to the overall score.

I find it especially entertaining, that such adorably fluffy creature can look at you like Dirty Harry, but I know where I am going to go next weekend – the one on the rocks is living in Zurich Zoo.

In Bruges and not only


“The Pillowman”, SFUMATO, Sofia, Bulgaria

In Bruges I liked very very much. I was funny, entertaining and most importantly very natural looking, The action went so smoothly, I really believed this kind of story could happen everywhere, even in fockin’ Bruges.
But to state the obvious merits of the movie is not the intent in this entry. This is about Martin McDonagh, the writer and director of that piece, and also the playwriter ot “The Pillowman“.

I saw the stageplay in Sofia in 2005, performed by the visiting Drama Theatre of Varna, in the “SFUMATO” experimental theatre lab. Whether it was because of the adaptation and directing of the excessively talented Yavor Gardev, combined with the stage set by Nikola Toromanov, this play grabbed me into the story, shaken me, and than spit me out without notice.

The story is the interrogation of a writer in a totalitarian state, because the gruesome content of his short stories are copied to a number of child-murders that are happening in his town. It is not a story of good and bad, there is no good and bad cop, no good and bad brother. It is somehow real, naked, reminding me again that being a monster leads nowhere but to create more monsters.

The environment was very important too – the act is in police room “aquarium”, and the public is situated around it, to watch through the observation windows. Somehow sterile, white shirts and polished shoes, exactly as sterile as the souls of many people are.

“…The father, as we have established, treats the little girl badly, and one day the girl gets some apples and carves some little men out of these apples, all little fingers, little eyes, little toes, and she gives them to her father but she says to him they’re not to be eaten, they’re to be kept as a memento of when his only little daughter was young, and naturally the pig of a father swallows a bunch of these applemen whole, just to spite her, and they have razor blades in them, and he dies in agony…”

For me, this play was just brilliant. I saw afterwards lots of critiques, which I am obviously not going to comment, as I lack formal theatre and acting background. Still, I am confident enough to say, the Bulgarian team did an amazing job on the performance here. It stunned me, nailed me on the seat and I still can feel the emotions from after the end of the play. That is the important thing.

Some videos are available here, although this should be seen on stage. I am still trying to find the play performing in Switzerland or Germany. If you have any information, please let me know.

Misantropes from allover the world – unite!

Pearls Before Swine” is my morning Holy Scripture. Recently, this spring of wisdom touched a very dear topic for me – misanthropy. And now I am really provoked…

Let’s get things straight first – Misanthropy is a general dislike, distrust, or hatred of the human species or a disposition to dislike and/or distrust other people’s silent consensus about reality.
Misanthropy is commonly misinterpreted and distorted as a widespread and individualized hatred of humans. Because of this, the term often associates a great number of false negative tie-ins with the term. An extreme misanthrope may indeed hate the human species generally, but it does not necessarily entail psychopathy. Misanthropes can hold normal and intimate relationships with people, but they will often be very few and far between. They will typically be very selective with whom they choose to associate. This is also where their aversion is most prevalent, because their perspective shows an overriding contempt towards common human faults and weaknesses in others and, in some cases, themselves.
It is because of that aversion that most misanthropes will often be categorized as loners, living in seclusion. They generally will not find solace or effective functioning in society as a result of their perspective. However, effectively functioning in society has little or no value to the misanthrope, and the prospect of fitting into their culture seems to them like idiocy.

Let me tell you a story. In my early child hood, beginning of ’80 in still communistic Bulgaria, I had a friend. Those were the times back there, propaganda was still quite strong – even small kids were subject to it – we had to memorise rhymes with values, things like you should help weaker and smaller than you, you should respect and support elderly people, be a good friend, never lie and other things like this. Of course those values were only for the good citizens of the communistic countries, the kids from the western ones were born rotten and evil.
My friend lived on the third floor, with her grandparents. She was several years older than me, very warm, always smiling, she was literally a big clumsy bear. Valeri. She was retarded.
Val was my best friend – we were together all the time, just two of us, sitting on the bench in the big garden of the neighbourhood, usually looking at the pictures of books we had, playing with colourful cubes, or just collecting leaves from the plants around. She wasn’t able to actually play the games with the other girls around, but they didn’t want to play with her too.
There was another girl from the neighbourhood, I was playing from time to time with, usually when Val had to go to the hospital. Sue was nice girl after all, but she would have never play with me and Val together.
One day, I was in the garden, when Sue came to me, asking me to go the the next garden with the playground, to show me something. We were walking towards the place, when I saw them. The others. 8-10 little girls, my age, armed with sticks and brunches. Ready to educate, ready to punish. I didn’t get beaten bad, because Sue got scared and ran to my grandmother for help. I got some scratches and I’ve learnt a priceless lesson – people are lying bastards and gathered into a society, they are even worse. And if you try to live according to the values, this freak-show is pretending to be aiming at, you are going to be punished. Next year Val left with her parent and I never saw her again.

Today, I am a misanthrope, a very convinced and proud of being one. I do not trust people, I generally tend to think people are idiots, until they prove they aren’t. Society scares me – emotional waves of many people at one place, herd instincts, empty words of the lying bastards, trying to manipulate the masses, fake values, senseless jabbering, small talks – all of this disgusts me. I am carefully picking my causes, my friends, my surrounding. I can perfectly mingle with the crowd though, and if I am in a good mood, you will be surprised how charming and funny I can be. I have real friends, few, but dear. I have a wonderful husband. Being a misanthrope is not making me dysfunctional, nor aggressive psycho. I am just slightly a bit antisocial and alerted because society, my friends, is way too overrated.

There are many people like me. People, who would kindly ask for the reasoning behind society or individual attempts to make them do this or that. People who would question processes and procedures. They would deliberately neglect the recent hype of social networking or annoying communication only because continuous stating of the perfectly obvious doesn’t fill them with confidence. They won’t play empathy with you, won’t pretend to like you. They will mock – you, the world, god, themselves. They will tell you the truth if consider you intelligent enough the face it, or will just ignore you, because of having more interesting things to deal with. You can run around and act like being the sparrow with the broken wing, this would not either impress us, neither move our helping instincts.
Society’s main content is lazy nincompoops, greedy bastards without any ethics, empty-headed marionettes and low-price prostitutes of mind and soul. The others are too few to prevail, or just ordinary misanthropes.

If you have different opinion, fill my day with joy and enlighten me. Just come closer, to be in the range of my Grand Poobah Idiot Sceptre.
Comments are not allowed to this article, because sometimes the best gift is the gift of never seeing you again.

The world of Goo


The World of Goo is one of the funniest games I have ever played, after the ultimate Neverhood and the not that ultimate, but still quite funny Eye of the Kraken. Reminding a bit of the Incredible machine, believe me, this game pays every single cent of the 20$ cost. The game is available for GNU/Linux systems also, which immediately adds a big fat bonus point for the developers.

Twilight

I delayed this article, wanting to read all the books before talking about the bitter taste I got. I admit – I finished the third book from pure stubbornness and the fourth one is completely out of my motivation and interest to read.
Twilight” is the bastard you will get by mixing Jane Austin and Daniel Steel. With supernatural creatures and very bad messages. Don’t get me wrong – I like Austin’s novels very much – they are intelligent, sensitive, passionate, thrilling. Practically, everything Twilight is not, but wants to be.

All characters are so annoyingly flat – they are to similar, very superficial, very 2D into a 3D world.
I expected them to evolve, to change, to develop somehow, no matter in which direction. Unfortunately, from the very beginning to the very end of this apotheosis of the wretched imitation of literature, the characters did not move an inch.

Eduard is a tyran, a manipulative bastard – he does not even know what personal space means – he controls her every single move – from sneaking in her bedroom, listening to her deliriums, asking his fortune-telling sister to permanently track on Bella’s future, only because he was not able to read her mind, taking practically every decision instead of her, manipulating her choice, emotionally blackmailing her – all of this of course pleasantly packed with the pink ribbon of the sake of her safety and because he loves her so so much. Of course.
He wants to marry her, or at last be officially engaged in order to have sex – you might think it is noble, but no, it isn’t. It is sick and wrong. Bella is just 18 years old, she definitely should do much more things before getting married. For example, getting to know the opposite sex better, could help a lot in building a healthy, informed, based on mutual pleasure choice of a partner. Anyway.

Bella is mediocre, boring and stupid. Ah, yeah, she is also an elephant in a glassware store. The ultimate quality she possess is that she smells extremely appetizing to Eduard. And that’s all. Oh, I forgot – he couldn’t read her mind, which was also kind of exciting for him. Well, dear boy, I hate to kill your enthusiasm, but may be the reason for that is because her mind is empty?!? Trivial, I know, but quite true. Bella wants only one thing – to be with Eduard. She doesn’t have any dreams, ambitions, desires to achieve something. She doesn’t even have interests. All she does is to whimper, worry, scream for help and mutter. Or worship the divine beauty of Eduard’s.

Their relation is based entirely on repeating to one another that they love each other very much and cannot live without each other. And that’s all. No intellectual, or real emotional connection. Just “I don’t want to live without you” and “I love you” until you are sick and eventually dead of it. Four books they didn’t find anything else to talk about.

Maybe the most annoying thing in the whole book are the vampires itself. A mockery of the sacred orthodox of the vampires, those ones even shine on the sunlight. Whether this is due to the author’s ignorance, or her desire to construct something from what she have heard and picked from here and there, the concept of angel looking, human protecting vampires, who even despite of being practically dead and with poison running instead of blood, manage to have erection and fertilize a human being – wow, it can’t be more brilliant than that, can it?

Dear Ms. Meyer, Stephenie, I hope you did manage to make a lot of money from the bullshit you put in written – I hope you at last made enough, to live happily ever after and focus on other activities instead of writing – training pigs to find truffles would be a very proper one. Unfortunate as it is, your writings are crippled, absurd and inadequate. Your inability to develop characters is disturbing. Your lack of imagination, lack of playing with images, even lack of finding different symbols and analogies is disturbing.
Being such a bitch is just one of the services I offer, but here I am not alone: “Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.” – says the great Stephen King. Who am I to argue him?

I strongly advise not to waste time and watch the movie, it is not even amusingly stupid. Take your partner to a nice restaurant instead, you will get more credits. But if you still feel you miss something – here is a review.