when a motorway loves a city very, very much..

city water supply goes all wonky every single time i'm sick stop why stop

-i might have done the best portrait i'll ever do

(which still isn't very good).

on a tablet. too bad it's a real actual person.

-it has been done! constellations as a euphemism for acne.

-been waiting for the other shoe to drop for weeks, and it keeps not happening. it is, in fact, so not happening that just as i was going "somebodyplstakeovermylifeandgetmethroughthisplsnao", they actually went and did that. it was very ridiculous.

are you sure we should be doing this

because weren't we doing this before when it didn't happen can i see that again how much exactly we're talking about a scale of one to ten how much does it hurt from bastogne to neige i can't give you any there's always some risk involved right for yourself you're a sensible believes in stats let me see that again there must've been a mistake if when they take that away what will you have left

that poem still doesn't mean what you think it means

it's gonna beeeeeee

a julelys! a juleLYS!

right, okay.

been trying to sync a song to a video of a certain beetle a pois trying (&failing miserably) to eat coloured sprinkles for the last 30mins despite my stupid brain who thinks it fits perfectly each time. (now that's an ugly sentence.)

festive we are festive

lines 1 and 9

now i know why "ninove" sounded familiar.

"romans built X..."

(lost my train of thought here)

"...in a feat of organization."

i know what tonymartinthecyclist will look like twenty years later.

dh talks differently in real life. v. disturbing to hear.

tomorrow starts

something i like to call operacion SIL-OLO (no affiliation)

where the first O is redundant

an early newyears resolution of sorts.

OLE.

bilan for the year is up, and the Eels fan at sporzaHQ is still in charge. after the "[no]ordinary man/beautiful freak" juxtaposition of yesteryear, here's this years's playlist for posterity:

Dreamer - Isbells (JAF, OHN)
For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield (AC, P-N)*
Oh So Lovely - Eels (OF, MSR)
The Morning - Eels (RvV start) > this part was nice.
The Boy In The Bubble - Paul Simon (FC, P-R)
The Runaway - UNKLE (AV, LBL)*
Streetgirls - Tocadisco (Giro start) > this wasn't i thought.
Drunken Sailor (BW, Giro prologue)*
Il Canto degli Italiani (IB, Giro)
Runaway - The National (MC, Tour)
Easy Street - Randy Newman (FC, WCTT)*

* means i lold.

also see:
"thero coma thero thero thero thero thero thero thero thero thero thero cinco"

[this had a title once.]

"right, right, now listen to me" is one.

"running commentary/just don't run out of things to say" is another.

can't say i know what it's like, but there's "as we exist in companiable silence".

and then there's "let's be around each other as we worry and we bitch and we whine and we try to be (until we are considered as) one of those other people who are, maybe not exactly perfect, but". that's just plain offensive.

and there's land, and there's water and there's grass.

lakehopping

she reread what??

the curmudgeon <3.

metawell,

look at the datestamp & weep.

though you die, la resistance meta lives on. and becomes a micro!meta!meme:

why?

1. i'm precious about how i say things.

2. i'm worried bad things'll happen if nothing at all makes it out of my head.

3. the romantic notion where nothing disappears off the internets.

4. writing -> reduced inhibitions -> no quality contol whatsoever + niche interests -> "maybe i should spare people."

other ideas:

5. how much content? (this here is very much navelgazing only, for example.)

6. three phrases my brain considers to be markers of good writing: "oh well" , "but hey" & "a shame, that"

this also a leftover:

[on a somewhat unrelated note, i'm positive if fschleck dyed his hair red he could fool the earth into... the (unfunny) jokes practically write themselves (make it stop).]

'tis the season!

my first chairlift experience:

terrifying (the good kind) with the right music on.

now have photos with a mile high antenna

(barely) above the tree line.

there were naked branches too.

but they were all purplebrown.

tomorrow i'm going to lay on the couch and look at civilized snow all day. start crying if they make me leave. especially now that my pet moth died.

read me pretend to have made peace with the fact that

i'm never going to finish my post about (whatelse).

teaching conjunctions to esl students:

is there a way to do it right? discuss.

singletrack

fuzz

tap

solution

wilful

artsy

sitback

acknowledgement

brought to you by whatever

(clipping)

for a change

i said "noooooooo, today's koppenbergcross."

i thought "if nys's going to win anything anytime soon this is it."

so it happened.

then i ate nice things.

see?

just give me another two weeks.

last night i dreamt making my way through vending machines and bodybags in paris metro to get my (messenger) bag upstairs. there were roadworks on the opposite corner of the odeon stop. a man with deformed hands. more bodies folded in a white car all taped up. serif font. fortunately i know where most of this comes from.

for about seven glorious minutes today i watched the tour pres.er live. as in, first there was clapping and then somebody in a suit was posing all alone with the route. yes, a suit.

i know i haven't commented on operacion we want the sweet meats yet, but

231 days since het volk.

(stuff goes here.)

somebody else said something like this.

"they know they're gonna get caught and yet they keep doing it."

they were talking about cycling.

about floyd.

riiiiiiiight.

mind the gap.

i don't know who's kidgloving who

(swoo)

sprinter

(sh)

if i was a three day old chocolate bar stuck to the back of a carseat i'd want some closure i thought

m

saw a dozen dead bees

a blue butterfly

capillary clouds

finally no work talk

knew it was possible

your fearless leader after all.

so, immersion*

let's take notes as we go, shall we?

(pre-)intermediate:

1. grammar excercise.

2. free grammar/rigid sentence composition: sentences to exemplify a rule.

v

(GIANT ABÎME** OF DOOM.)

v

3. let's talk about current issues!

"je, er... *interpretivedancemove* ...*falsefriend*..."

v

3. let's talk about current issues!

"*grammatically correct sentence a native speaker wouldn't make, only features simple tenses*"

v

foreseeing another abîme here before internalizing fancy tenses/moods.

to do: repeat step 2. lots of mindless conjugation.

instruction time devoted to the above: 0 minutes per week.

weaknesses that shouldn't be there, considering: conjugating verbs correctly verbally. conjugating verbs correctly in writing. homophone confusion esp. with verbs. forming natural-sounding questions. grammatical gender. having forgotten entire tenses/moods existed.

other stuff to whine about: instructor not v. sympathethic; a tendency to stay on task instead of going off into grammar&vocab-related tangents. difficulty finding stuff to say: the case for every glossy language textbook ever, aggravated by the fact that the characters are a. not funny. b. cartoon (=loooow production values). lack of time&determination to do mindless conjugation. a sinking feeling. personality not really suited to this kind of thing. a perpetual state of very-mild-but-there annoyance directed to fellow learners with offending accents (who otherwise have good language skills). questioning whether you've been oh-so-r-ironically but steadily bleeding self-confidence and similar public speaking skills for the last couple of years without realizing. the reasonable certainty that the method on its own won't solve the verb problem in a million years. lack of available mindless conjugation materials***.

affirmations: there's still time.

*oh, the memories.

**hugo injoke.

***always wanted to own a heavily used copy of EnglishGrammarInUse.

just saying.

today was the 10th anniversary of KidA.

how i celebrated it, 50 easy steps:

1. walked in a store.

2. quickly to the section titled pop-rock.

3. looked for the letter r.

4. saw two okcomputers, two paper-sleeved bestofs and one something else i forgot.

5. walked out.

6. tried to buy myself other things.

7. failed somewhat.

8. walked into another store.

9. drew two circles because i am not familiar with the layout of that particular store whose concept is sometthing like airport-style multimedia seller: books for everyone about deep & interesting stuff! not.

10. saw a snowcovered mountain range on the very left- next-to-bottom shelf.

11. picked it up.

12. strode towards the register.

13. which was deserted.

14. looked around for the tall ponytailed guy with the logoed lightblue shirt.

15. caught his eye.

16. waited for him to get behind the counter.

17. held the cd out.

18. got asked by the guy whether i was buying a birthday present.

19. wondered whether he thought that because people don’t buy cds anymore or because i didn’t take a secnd look at it or because i smiled somewhere along the way.

20. answered in negative.

21. informed the guy of the anniversary.

22. paid etcetera.

23. suffered an interminable five hours.

24. came home.

25. had dinner.

26. got the case out of the plastic bag.

27. turned it around.

28. looked at the back cover.

29. got rid of the clear plastic thing.

30. noted the case had a crack in the bottom right corner.

31. opened the thing.

32. got out my cd player under a pile of stuff shoved in a drawer.

33. connected my headphones.

34. noticed it wasn’t turning on.

35. went back to the drawer to look for the charger.

36. unplugged my bedside light.

37. plugged in the charger and connected to the cd player.

38. got thecd out.

39. put it in.

40. pulled the joysticklike thing uplike to play.

41. got the booklet out.

42. got the cdputtingplace out.

43. looked at the reminder of the hidden booklet that is no more.

44. undid 42.

45. looked at the booklet.

46. closed the booklet.

47. put it aside.

48. listened to it watching the ceiling until it went back to the start.

49. even waited the silence out.

50. pulled the joysticklike thing downlike to stop.

i still don't know what it feels like to hear KidA for the first time in its entirety.

our best laid plan. our best laid plan?

listened to ligeti's requiem tuesday. it's really something, isn't it? something makes sense to you, doesn't mean it happened. must you really trill that- your uvula must hate you. so not a humanities person here, ouch. focus on the pretty now. forget the words. let the great world spin. *if i have enough brain cells, money, beauty, edumacation then does it become my responsibility to have a rewarding life? weekend getaways and reunions and long beaded necklaces- throw in a couple hagiographies as well, it's not serious. shout down the microphone now and then. i want to tell them all about it while they don't pretend to listen. it will all go up in paperplanes. through the grilles. delusions of grandeur. resist the temptation. say it the said way. trying my best not to laugh at you. can you handle the real thing? wait. we're not there yet. close the door.

on sera les sauterelles des étoiles.

or, we might just be missing something important.

alert the presses

i got a french headspace!

stuttery, but there. searching for the path of least (grammar)resistance.

6 years later: still the best feeling in the world.

let the record show

"what do you mean it's gone?"

lying on a nicely manicured lawn

bright dots and floaters -theraindrops, helpfully supply my earphones- should get that checked out sometime? it's supposed to be normal but am neurotic about that stuff because of my ridiculously elongated eyeballs and they were really weird besides- floaters on acid?

(real, honest-to-god raindrops followed a day later.)

(hate to break it to you, but.. your ferrari, sir, is male. i mean, look at those quadriceps substitutes! would i fling myself at the thing wearing revealing clothing? maybe. if it was yellow. why not? okay.)

i began to see the point of living in a purely residential neighborhood. suburbia even.

lucky.

went looking for two lines:

1. let's waste time, chasing cars etc.

2. slow down my beating heart, slowly love etc.

both songs were there. both lines weren't.

still a bit queasy from all the feelgood politics.

knew all refrains and nothing else; worked perfectly.

'm worried.

reichstag zu worms.

(comment devenir meilleur.)

xylene and toluene free.

-tomorrow i'll get to hear about the intricacies of phase transitions by someone who looks, walks & talks like kate walsh. a.k.a. the jaguar lady.

-today i learned yellow permanent markers are not yellow unless you write on white plastic or similar. on paper they're... butterscotchish? i'd never buy them if i knew but it's actually a pretty nice color and i'm in a good mood so i'm inclined to let it go.

-when i was seven a friend of mine with ridiculous eyelashes *and* freckles asked me why teachers had a seperate cafeteria line. i was instructive & bit wistful in an "i hate to break this to you" way(i suppose i was already me then?). i still wonder whether she went "um. okay." or just rolled her eyes at me.

-(recap after use.)

if you never say your name out loud to anyone

when is owning a marble etc. bust kitsch?

is there such a thing as too much UST in a procedural?

[|||]

to be laughed at later

updated travel wishlist! there was one, there was actually a travel journal but i'm afraid to open it because the last person who read it wasn't me and whatever.

-rome, by itself. winter.

-dublin.

-weekend trip to athens. winter.

-strasbourg/luxembourg/nancy/metz

- oslo/stockholm/copenhagen. possibly the last two together.

- san francisco?

-nz. good airline.

-krakow and whatever else there is in poland.

-lombardy, somewhere not milan.

-brussels/brugge/anvers, possibly oudenaarde.

-london. i *liked* it. lotsa stuff i want to see too.

-naples. spent all of 6 hours there. remember a square, red flowers, a dome, a view, some blue, loving it, and the guide who said "the unification of italy" way too much.

-bike racing is a good way to promote your region. except when turkey does it because no one has convinced me they care about the bike racing part yet.

and paris! in winter. this is pretty much all that's left:

-arts&metiers and one of the science museums, wonder which one's the less kiddy one.

-egouts, catacombs.

-arenes de lutece. i know there's nothing there, so let's put "rambling around the v." instead.

-mineralogie.

-ile-st-l's left-bank-side quai.

-'tit palais.

-carnavalet chronologically. i'm hopelessly confused by the layout but pretty sure it's possible.

-plans&reliefs. had a nervous breakdown trying to find it, next time i'll actually try listening to the person i asked. think the armee folks are just jealous because p&r (which i'm pretty sure is just a room) is free and more interesting, which i suspect only makes sense in my head.

-towers of the notre dame.

-champs elysees at very early in the morning, 5-6am.

-a hotel a bit further inland.

-louvre at night. stuff i'm aware i haven't seen: egyptian ertruscan etc. artefacts (which doesn't really bother me) & roman and some italian/french sculpture.

-st.denis. had time & safety concerns this time but have to see it someday.

-churches i haven't seen: st.l-en-l'ile, st.e-du-mont and the quirky one around the bernardins. also the two near the river around st.michel and whatever else i come across.

-churches i really want to see again: st.merri, st.eustache, ste-chapelle, st.jean @ monmartre.

ETA: musee moreau.

TMI.

so i don't deal well with a barrage of questions the real answer to which is "neither" or "i don't care" but then who does, right? after stumbling out meaningless answers for the last couple of days am starting to train myself to htfu and just pick one but not really succeeding so far. over soon anyway. but:

there isn't a trashcan in the toilet. fun. not.

this old but might as well:

is it wrong to look at pictures of people having fun and only see their brastraps? you see one and then another and then you just keep looking for them- it's a carcrash thing.

i want a keylogger.

how can the internets eat multiple submitted comments after showing it on the screen as such? that's twenty full minutes of genius that's lost!

as for services owned by oogleg, i might as well put content in a blackhole. but i suppose that's not really their fault (ahem).

the one thing i'm afraid of more than i am of keyloggers is contracting tetanus.

no, not really. the tetanus part is true however. i'm really unreasonably afraid of that.

note to self: visit krakow.

when the cobbled roads at the city centre are closed and shiny with rain & questionable infrastructure, and the sun is all orange and low on the sky (if possible).

and there's a bike race with a backlit bunchsprint that drives commentators crazy & an irish winner with his own personal rainbow.

yeah, that'd be nice.

they play "stand up for the champions" after podium ceremonies in swimming euros @ budapest. longer than i heard on any six day, and then they hand them something that looks suspiciously like a stuffed skodayeti.

"pool party time!" says the bemused commentator.

ma patrie, c'est la langue anglaise.

-okay, so i should've printed cards that said "i'm not judging you because you can't speak english. i also happen to understand french. spare us your embarrassed arm-waving and speak to me." only more concisely. and in french. seriously, i can read intramuseum blurbs! you'd think i can construct grammatical sentences.

-deserves its own bulletpoint:

language acquisition window*, people! love it, hug it.

-bertador signed! i got a phone call! honorable mentions to the orange internet access thingies as well as the good old printed press. here at living is easy hq we're tranquilo & will have more to say come september 1. also, that press conference is a thing of beauty- check out the difference in støds bw/ bjarne and lars seier! and the giddiness of it all; he's in kastrup! he couldn't find a taxi!

-[the pretty goes here.]

*not exactly the right term here. i know.

starts with m, rhymes with funny.

(since when paris in fricking august is a good idea?)

more importantly, since i'm going with someone completely hopeless at it, it had to be somewhere i can navigate- not many cities share that distinction. certainly not this one here. (i find the fact that there are motorways running through it very disconcerting. not the only one, surely?)

(i'm missing san seb! can't someone text me if bertador signs with bjarne while i'm gone? no?)

at least i have my travelporn by alaindebotton all ready to ward off the budget airline depression. (broke my secondhand = icky rule for that one & promptly forgot about it. every summer i swear up & down i'll get my unread queue to zero at which point the tour starts, gah.)

(oh, and katla no esplodey pls.)

my love letter to cancer.

dear people, you can't prevent cancer by eating organic, exercising, smiling, listening to music or taking dietary supplements. you can't recover from it by wishing, hoping, holding hands, making a circle, praying, thinking positively, coming up with puns or chatting with others that have it. you'd do better to stop wasting your energy.

there's no noble "fight against cancer". you develop it (and there's a good chance you will, what with being multicellular & having a ridiculous life expectancy), you better be lucky enough to have the right genetic makeup, spot it early, happen to have the money and brains to seek out the best treatment possible, or you'll die. and you won't go down swinging either.

got money left over? donate it to people who do science, willya? and stop appropriating my sport. kthnxbai, A.

somewhat more lighthearted notes from the Tour:

-JC teh ebil podium h8er was that guy? oh dear.

anyway, thanks JC!

-one of those days, i'm going to write an "andy comes of age" thing. until then, the guys over at rtl.lu said it best: merci andy.

-still can't get over how bertie *glompsquish*d andy on the podium. i giggled.

-is there a particular reason why the grand duke of luxembourg is wearing the same suit he wore last year at the champs?

donne, vedete

watched the bbc p&p miniseries. it was, well, p&p.

cons: long. not enough pretty to distract. old people. the kiss at the end, ew.

pros: faithful. added material is pure crack. gratuitous darcy sequences involving water. the fact that elizabeth sings voi che sapete with silly english lyrics.

memorable quote: "wut?"

somebody stop me.

i'm contributing cat pictures to the internets?!

this was going to be a tuesday.

he's pulling a joubert here; namely the

"prometheus with TEH INVISIBLE FIRE OF DOOM"

move from the "ah-ah-uh" programme

can't be arsed to react now. sleep first.

miscellanea.

-"There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use."

Freeman Dyson

-third scandinavian movie in two days. on tv? we must be in heaven, man! sir.

anyway, one of them was this office movie of lars von trier, and i'm thinking, wow, he's tried hard with the framing but it's all so pretty so you forgive him - turns out it was shot with fixed camera & some code randomly panning, zooming etc and yeah. i like.

-appearently there are turkish people who don't blush upon hearing "inertia creeps".

(okay, it was dark. but they looked quite comfortable.)

omg.

how did the turkishES commentator learn to pronounce "Thor Hushovd"?

a little more flap on the r and ü instead of u and bit more dipthongy with the o and it'll be perfect!

may be the closest anyone ever got.

he then said "chapeau" & all my sympathy deserted me once again, but i suppose he can't really say "hats off to the man" or even "i dips me lid" - not really hat country.

still needs to come clean about the landmarks press booklet though.

(last week i went office chair shopping to IKEA; had to decide between "Karsten" and "Torbjörn". Torbjörn was less comfortable but i got him anyway because i liked the name better. 'cause who you sit on matters.)

ETA:

(i day later)

so i'm watching and i wondered, hey, what's the guy up to?

he started by butchering Jens' name and was about to launch into a sad & slowly narrated story about dead cyclists so i switched back to Int.

i switched to tr again when attacks were going and

the guy was responding to an email! about the dead cyclists! oops, sorry! it was a single cyclist!

so i switched back again.

ten minutes later, i check again, and it's showing the GC teams in position riding tempo and

the guy was talking about what Footon makes!

and and and he said

that the Footon jersey was one of the most popular!

omfg.

followup.

he likes me.

newsflash.

i always knew i was a dog person.

i didn't know that was because i am the cat.

so there's this cat in the house. will stay for a week. has a name so stupid only a human can think of it. (we spare a moment here to mourn the total cost [time, energy spent, nerve connections] of being able to recite a certain musical from start to finish. among others. ahem. least the others i regret less.)

he does all the things i do or feel like doing. (when? well. much more often than i'd like.) looks around suspiciously. a place to hide. meows. gets the wide-pupiled off-blue stare. (pretty sure mine is more of a thousand yarder, his more point blank.) finds somewhere relatively sheltered, gets in. still nervous. looks around, gets out. walks the length of the house. meows again. doesn't know this place. on alert all the time. nothing to do, even as a cat. somebody closes a door. looks up, what was that? can't beat the conditioning. danger, danger. silence. okay then. meows. starts all over again. just killing time. wish i had a way of telling him yes. yes, it will end eventually. or you'll get used to it. will be fine either way.

and here i am sitting & worrying about what he thinks of me.

wait, he doesn't worry about that. i don't think.

and what he's doing all cats do.

(and he's sitting at the threshold of the room watching me type & [i'm sure] thinking of his Name. the name with a why have you forsaken me.)

it's all a matter of numbers

i need a life. i need a life. i need a life. i need a life. i need a life. this one right here if that's possible this one the arrow the point to here not there where's denmark count the islands on our own way roar of time whirl of accident adesso ivan right now you hear no it wasn't that bad not bad at all go on keep talking make a difference referrer spam alphabet soup v.i.p. dinner dead end replicator how much to go now now now how much now

snip!

"look" he said, "i generated this content just for you."

"aww."

"sööğınsın, yooğınsın and ğommade'el walk into a bar."

"woof!"

call cousin vinnie

secret bonus level, here i come!

(last night i fell asleep listening to a chorus of overenthusiastic birds, a wooden wind chime -not the annoying kind- , cars i like to think are all going to the airport, and three guys singing "prayer is better than sleep.")

clocks don't melt, silly.

three days ago, i threw a noneaten cornetto out the window- don't tell anyone.

(i did eat the tip of the cone. can't let those go to waste.)

and because i had better things to do, i took pictures.

(disclaimer: shitty camera, amateur photog, from a height of about five meters. the ice cream was harmed in the making of.)

note the icyness in the first photo, by the tenth it's completely melted; not much change in appearance after that. am particularly fascinated by the durability of the chocolate "dimple".

timestampage (l-r, 14 June, local): 15:45, 15:55, 16:05, 16:10, 16:17, 16:31, 16:43, 16:51, 17:01, 17:08, 17:20, 17:30, 17:52, 18:29, 19:50 (15th) 12:26, 16:05, 18:23 (16th) 13:26, 16:09.

weather on the 14th, 16:00 local: clear skies, temperature 28.2°C, humidity 67%, wind 6 km/h NE

(via meteor.gov.tr)

lotsa stray cats & dogs around, but the wreck is still there as of this writing. it is also unphotographable at night because the flash just reflects off of the leaves above it, grr. more updates to follow.

i think of this *now* ?

how often do you see a JanUllrich(sorta)lookalike (outside of northerneurope)?

okay, so i often see resemblances where most people don't. but still.

had an interesting encounter with a pale green butterfly today who banged itself repeatedly against the French window and appeared very uncoordinated- probably dead by now. we gazed at each other's eyes as it rested, its antennae worryingly still. then it resumed trying to fly through the window. i was v. flattered, obviously.

tuesday.

why my life is so hard, v.31142176 in a series

under NO circumstances should a birthday candle be lit twice. never. you do this, i go all CAPSLOCK on you. so don't. love, A.

water closet!

my teams, in order of supportage (or underdoggage, same difference):

denmark

serbia

uruguay/argentina

holland/italy/france

the rest

brazil

germany

spain (i know, i know.)

the vuvuthingy does need to go.

i libe wuwu, wuwu, wuwuzange. imbiyali me zembe, hahule huhu, u yambe knote'e.

wonder if he's still alive. wrong part of africa too.

how cool is it that those particular sentences from an endangered language is now stored in the "useless things i remember despite my best intentions" folder of thousands of people all over the world?

someone i know lives in Port Elizabeth.

i never got to the africa chapter of Guns, Germs and Steel. one of the few books i really did read (450 pages of) too early. it seemed huge at the time at 560 pages. remember some very specific examples though, so maybe not that early.

what do kaka, dunga and boka have in common?

denmark has three poulsens in the team. scandinavian patronymic surnames, how i love you.

and this is what you get when someone who hasn't watched world football since the penultimate water closet writes about it: anything but football. estr commentators on cycling&wintersports, i am one of you today. let's be a world, form a circle, immerse our souls in love.

can you imagine when this race is won

as, jv

happy barricadeday!

a holiday observed by my first, tiny, very-closed-canon fandom. kinda miss it, should take another look sometime after these two weeks. also, link. (first orwell, now hugo? leave the human race alone, boys.)

boopoe.

-(bkz. charlotte au chocolat)

(bkz. çorbaya dönmek)

-today i came home and there was no giro. it was sad.

(celebrations yesterday consisted of eating rice cakes & watching "adesso ivaaaan! motoooo!"

my heart still breaks at every crunch.)

-earthquake soon, the pseudoscientists say.

(bkz. famous last words)

and nothing.

sometimes i dream
where all the other people dance
sometimes i dream
charlotte sometimes
sometimes i'm dreaming
the sounds all stay the same
sometimes i'm dreaming
so many different names

charlotte sometimes crying for herself

charlotte sometimes dreams a wall around herself
but it's always with love
with so much love it looks like
everything else
of charlotte sometimes
so far away
glass sealed and pretty
charlotte sometimes

she loved me sometimes, i loved her too

(she loved me, sometimes i loved her too)

how could one not have loved her great still eyes

from the bottom of my pencilcase

change of plans! i have a new door! it has no windows! i fell in love with a mountain! unfortunately for us, a mountain is a mammal.

i survived what might be the last soul crushing discussion on 1984. what i learned from the experience was mostly that it was indeed possible everyone else in the room is very, very stupid.

i, for one, welcome our new overlords.

these from a book i should not be reading

"sizin için üzülen kitaplar" - "feel sorry for you" p.9

"bu belgelerden dolayı suçsuz olduğu" - innocent of having written stuff p.9

"... listesinin internette dolaşan sürümü" - ne sürümü yaa? p.10

"parmak ısırtan, kendini iyi hissettiren gelişmemişliğe karşı" p.10

"yazılan ... bir edebi gelenek vardır" p.10

"eğitimde süregelen ... gıda zehirlenmesidir" p.11

"aksiliklere karşı bir mücadeledir" - "against all odds" p.13

"hava kabarcığı" - "bubble", as in bubble boy p.14

"yaşamın semptomları" - just bad writing? p.14

"endişelerimizin en temel saçmalığı" - p.17

"altın yıldızlar" - and nonamericans go bzuh. p.17

"belirli koşullar altındaki" - "in any given circumstance" p.25

"bir gün kasmanız gerekecek" - i LOLd. p.31

"pembe not kağıdınız" - "pink slip" as in firing someone p.34

"Rhodes bilginleri"- "Rhodes scholars" p.35

a little competence is all i ask, really.

oh, what a lonely thing, in a blood red drain

-me: *asks a RL question to the 8-ball*

8-ball: outlook not so good.

me: good riddance?

8-ball: as i see it, yes.

-if the situation at Cali negatively affects the sponsor thing,

i will cry.

speaking of which, why does stuff like that only happen when i have other things to do? why?

the day my brain esploded.

oh look, it's the prairial lady!

also, trains. mmm, traaaaaaains.

meta!

it's STRIKETHROUGH late /STRIKETHROUGH early, and it occurred to me that this place didn't have enough angst. so there:

-i nearly threw my waterglass at the monitor just now because I NEED A STRIKETHROUGH THINGY IN MY TEXTBAR THINGY DAMMIT. that sounds dirty. YES I KNOW THE TAG. I DON'T CARE. also, that's not true. i'll never throw a glass anywhere. cause then it will shatter and all the pieces will bounce off places and it will hurt.

(i wrote something about contamination by onions and dreaming of perfect salad greens here at which point i realized this isn't working at all. i still write letters in my head to people that actually exist, usually when i'm feeling cornered. then i try to write it down and i start thinking. thinking, so not conductive to producing written angst. i want to write angst! help.)

i wrote this, for example (3May):

"[blah blah thesis blah] ...so the next time i'm just going to open my eyes really wide and say something about [censor this part] depending on which you it is with as much wonder as i can manage, and suddenly i'm not the one who's thinking they're missing something. before i know it the time will be up and i'll have somewhere to be. this is a draft, draft i say. close the window. i crack myself up."

and this (26Aug)

"...i won’t be angry anymore. just, you know, ashamed that i thought of these things (let alone type them out, horrors)."

there! angst about angst!

word of the day: guldstøv.

coming up next:

- ten days of perfect tunes.

- hell.

- holy week #3.

- couple of days somewhere hopefully above 50° N.

- teh Tour.

- two (?) weeks of hell ft people i don't know.

- september. nuff said.

to do:

- regret not starting the tr:cycle thingy.

- look at train schedules & dream.

- feel bad about my french.

- buy self birthday presents.

- find music in danish.

- buy an estonianblue marker.

- write thethingihavetowrite without getting too involved.

tuesday. (d.attnbrgh edition)

oh, and

i heard a "the thing is about this is that.." on maythefourth.

closed letter.

dear DH,

please get rid of your Union Jack tinted glasses before the TTT.

(i hear pink is all the rage these days. might want to try one of those.)

love,

alfred.

"never say anything. be instrumental."

"Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople?"

georestricted?!

was the giro team presentation. brought it upon myself, i did.

georestricted.

az önce adı d ile başlayan bir kanalımızda yayınlanan
bisikletli aksa enerji reklamındaki gözlüklü çocuk.

tuesday.

CrappyCam, natural light, complementary colors? huh.

oh look, a colorbar! (the same fabrics, w/ flash this time) :

my brains, you say? they're made of peberkager.

just finished "The Blank Slate" by Pinker.

-was strange to see my (sprawly*) rant to my mother about free will staring back at me (my version included more hand waving, obviously, but still).

-you may agree with him, you may not, but the guy can write. (is this popular science, then? [one day i'm going to show the syntax parts of The Language Instinct to someone who has less background than i had and watch. on a related note, they should really do something about that YA book cover.])

-the last chapter, well. the last passage didn't impress me as much as it impressed Pinker, especially without the rest of the story. so, meh. it had started out suitably manifestoish too.

-go read (says AtS to herself).

*am amused to discover this is actually a word.

(so not last) tuesday.

slain i tell you

(belated) moment of silence

in awe of Eyjafjallajökull.

...

in other news, someone stood behind me and peered at my screen the other day. not only didn't i notice at first, i also didn't react when i finally noticed. this, i believe, is called progress.

tuesday (people in glass houses edition)

tuesday (WPP edition)

43 days after Het Volk (two more to go)

(The shuttle I take every day has the word "Sprinter" at the back of every seat; am looking forward to the marginal gains.)

the woods are lovely.

Getting emotionally invested in sports* is a bit of a crapshoot, but every once in a while THIS happens, and it's so CAPSLOCK that (he can't even either) and

I have 1563586 things to do before it's tomorrow(been self-sabotaging again) and I need to sleep and to brace myself for the next eight weeks

which is so long that (even longer than that neverending 45 kilometers)

gah.

*Oh shut up. People have been doing it for millenia.

four words.

"there you go again."

tuesday.

this from Delphi.

"the omelette is not right!"

(why your life is not a chickflick.)

similarly:

"omelette?" *runs screaming*

(why my life is not a chickflick.)

i got powerz.

be v. afraid.

(imagine what could happen if i work on my timing. i could've gotten some sleep!)

it's over a (see just / over this) wall

when holy weeks meet.

lkpsrgdflgödpfgdfg...zzz.

back when i can keep my eyes open more than five secs at a time.

stuff i learned today:

there's no institution that has a website that teaches a north germanic language in my country.

there's a chance i'm brilliant.

we're not quite sure.

words i don't want to hear for a long time:

culture

society

affect

misconception

term

plasmid

smart

works hard

comfortable

wantlist:

to write a novel mocking every dystopic novel ever written.

which won't happen. because that would entail reading them.

to say stuff i shouldn't say.

riis to find a sponsor willing to invest a silly amount of money.

tuesday.

(spot the birds! there's four.)

couldn't tell what i felt

(first mosquito bite of the season detected.)

and never be found

- Still boycotting sprint events on the track by, er, refusing to watch them. Effective, eh?

- Random people who ride are asking to follow me* on Twitter. Sorry, random people, I wrote exactly zero tweets ("wrote tweets"? augh.), which may change, but considering my previous 54643546435 resolutions about saying stuff to other people all failed miserably, it probably won't.

- *Which, of course, wouldn't happen if I hadn't screened my tweets (&lack thereof). D'oh.

- Seem to have acquired a mug that says "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. (Borges)"

- Would agree, except I don't want to sound like ilikebeatlesgiller. Oh, and I insist it be empty. The library, that is.

- Have a sneaking suspicion Borges was trying to say something other than "I like libraries."

tuesday.

when the world is puddle-wonderful

perimetercheck:

birdnest - check.

plum tree - check.

laurel tree - check.

peach tree - needs a bit more time.

hyacinths - nope.

longsleeved tshirts

(three of them in my usual cabbagelike fashion, but still).

tea consumption - going strong.

still comfortable with hair down.

la primavera - was yesterday.

(la primavera - technically today.)

there's no such thing as tekçenekli* daisies.

and science still works.

*monocot

sesame.

Today I watched XC sprints at a pizza place at the mall.
Thank you, whoever is responsible for the channel selection.

I have three (3) books waiting to be read that has a plane on their cover.

In other news, has anyone seen the switch i'm looking for?
It has "yes" on one end.

theme day.

öbür ışıkları getir hadi süleyman
bulvarın ortasında dur bağırma
senin için bir yağmur hazırladım
hadi ışıkları getir yağdıracağım

al bu nisan akşamını benimkini ver
sual sorup durma sevmiyorum
öbür ışıkları getir hadi getir
karanlıkta korkuyorum karnım ağrıyor
o kadını da getirsene portakal yiyen
porselen dişli kadını hani pantolon giymiş
dur dolmabahçe saatini dinleyeceğim
onikiyi çalsın öyle getir hadi getir

deniz fenerinden mi çalarsın işte çal
kibrit mi tutarsın bilmem işte tut
öbür ışıkları getir hadi süleyman
sana yağmur hazırladım yağdıracağım

sen kimsin süleyman bir de bu var

(Attila İlhan)

list(les)s.

acabanedirnedir:

a) it's pretty.
b) it doesn't work well in black and white.
c) and yet i could draw it by using only three colors (and not mixing any of them). if i could draw, that is.
d) (c) is surprising, considering what type of an object it is.
e) when you look at it from the corner of your eye, you see this distinctive blob of color, and because (a), after a while you can't not notice when there's one around.
f) (e)'s not particularly desirable.
g) some parts of it are rather like optical fibres.
d) it doesn't luminesce. or does it?


stuff i learned today:

1. good markers forgive a lot.
2. i may need to sell by soul to buy as many colors as i want.
3. appearently there is bioluminescent stuff in Avatar.
4. holmenkollen > cycling.

wishlist:

" more markers.
' a deadline disappearing.
^ a trip to norway. anywhere, really.
+ a justbecause summer allnighter.
% cobbles.
& whacking Tour of Turkey organizers on the head. (or, learning the prologue doesn't conflict with the Roubaix broadcast.)
/ to see the finishlinepainter amca at ToT again this year. (we have a prologue! nice, but does this mean we won't be able to yell at the bellguy anymore?)
( yanodaya şeysinden.

Under the control the games, during the games...

...we had the some possibilities, some big chances, some big okazyons, like Simon Ammann, Lamy-Chappuis' sprint at the 10km, a tomato that flew, Sweden beating Canada to the women's curling gold.. and that's pretty much it. Which brings us to the fact that

big games are easy than the other games, unfortunately; rainy games were rainy, slushy snow was slushy, green trees were green, and easy courses were easy. Except maybe the luge track. Oops.

You have to give it to the Norwegians, though. They did disappoint, but at least they got the timing right, with Ole’s (who missed seven on the mass start?!) clean standing shoot at the relay and Petter Nordhug’s bizarro (for a cycling fan, that is. think a Schleck towing Valverde up hills to the finish.) 50km Classic MS gold strategically placed toward the end of the games. (I wish I was born a bit earlier and watched, say, Ole at Salt Lake City. [And Daehlie! I’m not at all sad, however, to have missed the Festina/Lance/OP years, though Floyd might have been fun? {Perish the thought.}])

Odd-Bjørn Hjelmeset’s priceless comment about porn aside, the quote of the olympics has to be the beautifully executed « Putain de jeux olympiques de merde! » by a certain M. Joubert, who messed up spectacularly to the surprise of no one including himself, channeling the olympic spirit so many before him has felt but failed to put into words. The official word was that’s the figure skating, and something happened, until a couple of hours after the SP, when he was pronounced a « p’tit con » by his federation in the press. The next day, he admitted to his « p’tit con » ness, infuriated translators everywhere (one headline said “Joubert admits to being kinda stupid”) and promised to do whatever the federation guy tells him. Next year, when all of that fails, while sad for Brian, I’ll at least have the satisfaction of having predicted it. (I missed most of his career as well, though I remember watching the « Time » programme, probably my earliest memory of men’s figure skating.)

Technical problems kept me away from intl. commentary, but I have to admit, despite my prejudice against them, that the Turkish ES guys did surprisingly well. That said, dear sirs, the races you’re commentating on are infinitely interesting and beautiful to us who actually care about that particular sport (who, you’d think, make up a sizeable portion of your target market). So please, please do talk about the race? This especially goes for XC skiing /cycling etc; and I understand commentating on a Vuelta sprint stage or the 50 km event can be a challenge, but your English-language counterparts seem to have found a solution, so it’s definitely doable. Please, please do resist the urge to recount the history of the sport complete with a detailed description of all the polemica you’ve ever heard about and forget about the race that’s actually going on. ‘Cause, y’know, chances are we already know everything you want to tell us, and the new viewers will enjoy getting to know a new sport by osmosis rather than an infodump. (I know I did.) There’s no reason to doubt the sport, we don't think it's that boring; we love it, honest. We love you, for bringing it to us. We feel bad when we have to mute the commentary. (I would also humbly advise against shouting every ski jumper’s name as they land their jump. And I’m sure you’ll agree that “yukarıdan geldi” isn’t a terribly interesting observation, considering.)

etc etc etc
Some of the grammatical mistakes you see is art.

nothing but blue skies from now on. no ghosts no skeletons. someone said

he was a good man they said he was a gentleman they said even when life spat in his face he put everything back in its right place.