Random observations

I have cold. That nasty cold that blocked my nose for the night and I couldn't really sleep. Weren't it for my mom who called at 1008 to ask how I am, I'd be probably dozing off until now.

I made it to the 1030 doc appointment, though. I can act fast when it's needed and if it's not for too long.

Doc said that her qualification ends at 20mg of citalopram and that if I need more, I need to see a psychiatrist. I shrugged, thinking something unhappy, while she started naming local shrinks. Since I'm having depressions and related fun since I was around 16, and since this is a small town, good part of them were on the blacklist, such as Dr. Whatever, who didn't have any better idea than telling my mother, without my approval or knowledge, although I was legally sane and of age. Or Dr. So-and-so who is just a generalized jerk. Dr. Whatshisname who gave me antipsychotics for sick stomach, I wonder whether this dearie goes fishing with dynamite.
The problem is that I'm smart. I might be a blonde with painted nails but that doesn't mean I'm a brainless Barbie, puh-leeze. To illustrate what happens: it was a psychologist but the story is too cute. She showed me the Rorschach test images and asked me to tell her what do they remind me of. Vertebra, another vertebra, lumbar vertebra, alien vertebra, vertebra with some soft tissues attached... erm, are you okay, doc? Doc muttered something about morbid thoughts and how bad it is. If she had asked Why vertebrae?, I'd answer Yanno, I'm learning to draw. Anatomical drawings. After anatomy atlas, volume I, bones.
And nope, I have no clue what's so morbid about vertebrae. Also, I have no clue why the psychoworkers don't even suspect that the clients might be thinking creatures.
I spread the word, I still hold hope that there are thinking shrinks somewhere out there in the world.

To add insult to injury, herpes started to grow on my lip.

A bit of shameless bragging: I made a good geometric sketch for a sweater knit entirely on bias. Now I need to try whether it works in real.

Life sucks, why?

Fashion tip of the day

If you use long pins to hold your hair, it is extremely recommendable to pull further clothing items over your head very carefully. The resulting mess of hair, sweater and hair accessories is rather difficult to disentangle, especially if your arms are already in the sweater.

And I did use knitting needles, yes, why. I couldn't find anything handier without rummaging in the drawer. But I'm led to wonder where I could find pretty hairpins - maybe I could use the KnitPro Symfonie double point needles in coloured laminated wood?

Just... just...

I acted totally studip today and also totally studip sociophobic chickenshit way. Not that the latter surprised me but in the circumstances, it almost made me cry.

I decided to do something productive and decided that taking the trash to the bins would be the thing. So I packed up that box of used nappies K. left here, bag of kitchen trash, another bag of plastic and a handful of milk cartons and while trying to get through the door without dropping any of these, I grabbed the keys, slammed the door at attempt three, went out and noticed that although I have keys, it's not the set with blue keyring with a red diode light, two big keys and a small one for the mailbox but just two big keys that however did vaguely look like the right ones. I turned around and went to try but vaguely looking right doesn't mean looking right.

I went to throw away the trash hoping for a miracle or something.

I live on the ground floor. After having the place burglarized and after my flatmate lost the cat through the window (story omitted but it makes my blood boil years after), I just don't keep the windows open when I'm not around, which may mean not in the room, depending on the momentary paranoia level. No, I don't have a yard where I could keep the spare keys in a birdhouse. No, I don't have a car parked around the corner with spare keys taped to the inside of the bumper. Since I went with the trash, I didn't take such useful things as my celly or some money. J. has the keys and should be somewhere around but I have no clue where, he was due to arrive yesterday evening but I haven't heard from him.

I sat on the stairs and pondered about the possibilities. The obvious one, ring the doorbel to any random neighbour and explain the situation via the intercom, asking them to let me in and to let me use their phone to call a locksmith was just impossible. Like, making-me-sick-to-think-of-it impossible. I decided to wait for something to happen because nothing can be worse than talking through the intercom to someone whom I barely know and who has hardly any idea who I am.

A while later a lady I rememered vaguely having seen before was arriving, she said Hello, are you waiting for someone? and then I said Yeah, well, I locked myself out... etc.

I called a locksmith, got the door opened, paid him what was to be my food budget for two weeks and decided that trash is not that bad house company after all.

Also, I am stupid.

Edited to add this cool graph that explains just about anything:
. I needed a bitter grin with my late morning coffee.

Movie archaeology

While living on Ravelry, which means living among Americans mostly, I became a part of the beehive mentality of the bunch I socialize with. I started referencing to Star Trek which I might not have seen at all, for example. I felt it as a major flaw in my education, not the Star Trek per se but the general popcultural (with a shift to nerdy) framework of which I was aware but without deeper knowledge. In other words, my friends talked about things I didn't udnerstand and sometimes I felt bad about that.

The other day, Sadako probably got slightly annoyed with my method of obtaining movies and music, which consisted of asking her to do it for me and taught me the basics, namely where to find stuff and where to find subtitles if they don't come with stuff. Since she lives on various cinéphile forums, I use her as a reference in case I need to find out what the movie where Antonio Banderas plays a lover to some Persian prince or that one about the Danish guys who have Mifune's ghost in the basement.
To which there's a story. When I was around ten, the revolution came, no more censorship, lots of enthusiasm and some chaos. At around the same time, my parents got a new TV set that was stationed in their bedroom. Since I didn't want to watch news or whatever they were watching then, I hid in the bedroom and watched movies. Apparently, the program department poured in whatever hadn't been allowed because there was nudity, blood, anything possibly politically offensive, stuff from the ebil Capitalist countries... and I watched whatever I found interesting. That movie about some American anti-Commie headquarters, and how things got out of control, Americans nuked Moscow by mistake and to make things even, they also nuked their very own New York. Another hint, it was black and white. It conveyed the atmosphere very well and quel surprise, those whom our propaganda depicted as the worst scum evah were actual people with actual fears. I might be 11 or 12 so I wouldn't think of it as educational. Or Fellini's Dolce Vita, which I didn't really get until much later but it was pretty. Scores of classical westerns, they had been teh ebil American things so we wouldn't get much of them. For whatever reason, I remember McKenna's Gold. Someone in the programming department must have had a weak spot for Japanese movies, too, some were lovable - colourful, quirky and with buckets of blood to add to the colours. And obviously action movies of very various quality, I think I've seen dozens. Trash of all genres. Existential it-is-not-really-porn-it-is-art stuff. Something that could well be Russ Meyer but I'd have to check.

Around two years later, things settled and the programming department either got fired or burned down but all this stopped. I needed to wait five or six years until I became aware of cultural mags where I could read about that stuff. But, it was pre-internet era (2) so that was all I could do, along with a bit of hope that one day, it will be screened at the university cinema ran by the half-crazy people from Film Studies department.

Another dose of eclectic came when I started studying. I lived at the dorms, my roommates were irritating, to put it mildly, and the National Film Archive cinema was two blocks away. If I got a sandwich and a ticket, it was cheaper than an actual dinner and I could spend two hours in the theatre covered in burgundy plush and gilded stucco watching some more Hungarian psychological dramas or whatever it might have been. At that time, I started to take notes. Not really extensive but digging in my old diaries might at least help identifying that Mexican movie whose plot I didn't get at all but visually, it was a two hour orgasm.

Somewhere on the way, I developed a deep love for (a) sarcastic movies of any sort (b) visually strong stuff (c) films where every killed person has at least 15 litres of blood. (3)

Huh. Now when I've learned to download stuff, I can search for something from which I remember one scene that struck me. (4)

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(1) I'm old
(2) I've already mentioned that I'm old, haven't I.
(3) Think me cruel but after a day spent by creating another piece of academic obfuscation, nothing is as relaxing as a sarcastic and aesthetically pleasing bloodshed.
(4) I'd love to be bored someday. I keep failing.

Radio silence

I'm writing my doctoral thesis, it goes slowly and it generally sucks. I'll be back later, stay tuned.

I sense a problem

Sadako finally taught me how to download movies from teh internetz. I could think of a handful from the top of my head and then there're catalogs from film festivals where I'll be able to find out whatever I missed, would want to see again... I'm doomed.

In other news, another sign of apocalypse has been spotted. Coffee makes me nauseous. I drink impossible amounts of tea, then, and I hope it goes away somehow.

I stand corrected

I'm no expert in mycology, until recently I had known only around 8 species by name. Those nicely coloured boletes were not two specimens of Boletus satanas but one Boletus calopus, inedible because awfully bitter (but oh so pretty. I know where they grow, I'll get a picture when the rains stop) a well slug-gnawed Boletus erythropus.
Which I found out by showing them to a botanist friend. I was also told that B. erythropus is hardly ever infected with insect larvae but that it's popular among slugs and forest mice. Also, it turns nicely blue when bruised or cut. Mental note: I should read something about the chemistry in mushrooms. I wonder whether the blue colour could be fixed somehow.

It's raining and I'm not going anywhere out until it's sunny. No more mushrooms for a few days, promise.