Monday, August 28, 2006

Writer's block

For the past few weeks I have been experiencing a writer's block. This annoys me.

For those of you who have spent their days waiting for me to update this only to be getting a rant about pancakes in the past I can imagine you don't really see the impact this could have on me, but rest assured I do a bit more writing than only this little blog o'mine.
Or better, at the moment, I do NOT do a bit more writing than this blog o'mine.

Usually I am putting things on paper, story ideas, blog ideas, column ideas. At this poitn in time nothing gets written. I have trouble finishing a simple e-mail asking for a few days of.
And that's not the worst part, actually. The worst is the fact that my language is deteriorating as we speak.
The simplest things escape me at the moment. The difference between "live" and "life" seems to be the flimsiest and nebulous of substances most of my days. "Then" and "than" are being switched basically willy-nilly in the faint hope of being right at least once in a while. Dutch words I know the meaning of escape all meaning when I try to explain them to others, and I can't even comprehend why I use specific words, whereas usually I pride myself on my ability to make language my personal bitch.

Bad times, my friends, bad times.
In the last few weeks I have seen a number of movies, some so very very bad they make Jaws 3D look like a very succesful cinematographic experience. But I find myself unable to tell you all about it. I am so very sorry.

For now, goodbye. As soon as the block lifts, I will let you know.

Grtz,
Kevin.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Spelling errors

And how I do tend to make them.

No matter how carefully I try to keep most big errors out of my lines here, or while messaging, they do tend to sneak in. These are usually not the real "error" type of errors as much as they are the "mentally typing faster then your fingers are able to handle" type of errors.

I am quite good at avoiding words like catastrophe, with an F, will mostly not type "their" when I mean "they are" and should be counted on to hardly ever use simply the wrong word to say what I mean. Words are important, don't mess about, I always say.
But I will gleefully swap letters, misplace spaces and use the next letter over. Things like "Ye sI wuold love to go to am obie" aren't at all rare, for me, allthough I do usually apologize for them.

While chatting or messaging, I usually state quite quickly that spelling is completely optional, as long as I can get the gist of what is being said and the other party can understand me as well. This means the departure of the need to go back and revise everything. Now, only when I genuinely misspell or make a true mistake I can go back and edit.
That's while chatting. This blog-thing, I try to keep as clean as possible, but I do notice that usually I post with a few missed errors. I apologize for this. I do tend to re-edit once in a while to get them out, but errors are like cockroaches, if there's one there's more and short of burning down the house, nothing is completely going to eradicate them.

This brings me to the more general subject of language. A true love of mine, to be honest. I love language. I love puns, and wonderfully built sentences. I like big words and I like most accents and I adore local idiom. I can get excited by learning new words in other languages than my own, and a multi-language pun has a good chance of making me need to change my pants.

A friend of mine told me about a joke she shared with her mother, who was standing looking out of her apartment-window. Both friend and mother are Dutch, both speak very good English, and the mom is living in Florida. So naturally in conversations the two languages intermingle freely.
So the mom is standing looking out the window at a lilac bush. Lilacs, in Dutch, are called "seringen" which the mom said, and my friend replied with "well, pick them up then!"
This can have me in spades, and a load of people are never ever going to get it. Thing is, seringen sounds like "ze ringen" where "ze" is Dutch for the English "They", effectively getting "they ring".
Capital stuff, and very, very stupid at the same time.
I am a fan of the mom anyways since I was allowed to spend a week in Florida with them and found her snooping through the bag of books I bought over there. She sort of apologized with a statement I can no more than full-heartedly agree with: "It was a bag of books out in the open, it seemed lonely, so I snooped." Obviously, I could've made exactly that point.

Language. As I said, I like playing around with words. Messing them up a bit, using them to twist meanings and likenesses. Language is a type of magic, really. Relatedly, I know I truly fucked up in dealing with another good friend of mine when the language turns chilly, and polite.
I am the sort of person that will press boundaries, and will toy with you and your emotions every once in a while, but when the language suddenly turns all nice and friendly, things are very, very wrong.
Suddenly, words are chosen with extreme care and precision, they are pronounced with a cold exactness that would put a glacier to shame. I know the worst rows I've had with friends would seem to an outsider like a prime example of polite conversations, and conversely the best evenings I spend with people would prompt that same outsider to call the police or at the very least hide the sharp objects.
Which is good, my friends agree on the importance of words, and like it's acceptable to have one or two plates in the sink when friends come over, the house needs to be spotless and shiny when enemies arrive. So as well wordwise, between friends a slip up can be made, but in a tight spot, be scrupulously correct.

Actually, fairly, the wrong word in the wrong place can get on my tits in a way that is nearly unexplainable. People who use "labyrinth" when they should be using "maze" should be shot at sight. There is a difference people, a big one.
I was sitting on the bus a while back, and two people were having a conversation, and one of them said "...and so I nearly got lost, it was like a labyrinth" and I was ready for a massacre. Cause you can't get lost in a labyrinth, it has no forks, only bends. The danger of the labyrinth isn't in being unable to get out, it's in the desorientation of distance, of turns and twists. You can always just follow the path out of a labyrinth no worries, but they are symbolic for changing you.
In contrast to a maze, where you can get lost because it has different paths and pathways. A more complete view of this subject will be given in an upcoming post, I think.

There are more examples to be given, obviously, and each and everyone annoying enough to prompt a bitchslap from Mother Theresa. Don't use self-conscious when you mean insecure, it's not the same thing. Don't use gay when you mean stupid, or dumb when you mean uninformed. Just don't.

Using the right words is a mark of respect. Like spelling, if it is done right, I know. But rest assured, gentle reader, that I can and will respect you in the choice of my words a good deal better than I ever will trying to spell correctly.
That is, those of you I do respect, all others are free to find as much snubbing as you want in the badly typed mess I usually leave here.

Greetings for now,
Kevin.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Somewheeeeere, over the weekend

Iiiii juuuust haaaaad
I have lost all the will to
Ever again leave my bed...

Right, not the best amount of syllables to try and stack into the tune of "Somewhere over the rainbow", but in fairness, it's true.
Plus, it was a good way to get all of you to be humming that blasted song today, and since I will be, I figured shared grief and all...

Anyway, waking up to the sound of raindrops on your windowpane can be one of the most uplifting experiences known to man. The steady trickling of water can be soothing and sweet, and very little is nicer than burrowing once more into a pile of pillows/good book/sweethearts chest and to drift of into nothingness for another hour or so.
Then again, noticing that you've overslept and need to get out of bed NOW and then being confronted with a veritable deluge of biblical proportions? Not so nice. I would even go so far as to say that I found it quite jarring and unpleasant, this morning. Jarring and unpleasant enough to convince myself not to go to work but to call in "too distraught to function"? No, not quite that jarring and unpleasant, although I hadn't reached the bus before I wished I had.
So it's monday, alltogether a crap way to spend 1/7th of a life, and the weekend is officialy over.

But a good weekend it was, actually. Seen a couple of movies, hung out with some friends, went on a failed quest for fries, and watched an episode of Buffy. All in all, I came out on top I guess, but needs must be met, and more detail must be gotten into. And I will.

Friday afternoon at work seemed a good way to get into a calm and easygoing fridaynight at home. I had bought a shiteload of books in the past few weeks and I was well planning on getting into those, when a goodly bored Bienie (http://bienietalk.web-log.nl/) appeared on my skype. Now, this as such is remarkable, mostly she is quite busy and we hardly ever chat online apart from cementing appointments and such things.
This time the end of the conversation prompted a sudden rush, as we had agreed to go see TFTF3: Tokyo Drift. Which started at seven and gave me not all that much time to get home, change, and get into town again.

But man... was it worth it.

I like "the Fast and the Furious" for a few very simple reasons. Them being; the cars & the boys. Now anyone who knows me will tell you I have about as much aptitude for cars as an native to Finland would have for the care and maintenance of tropical fish. And this person would be right. Right, that is, when talking about the kind of cars you see on Dutch highways. When taling about the classic American muscle cars that make nice deep woomping sounds while going really, really fast, I still no shite-all about them apart from knowing I want one. Want one. Wantonewantonewantone.
The fact Paul Walker was there in all his blonde studliness certainly helped, by the way.

I hated the second one, though. Strange, cause nothing really changed there. More of the same perhaps a disappointment.
But now, the third one. TFTF3: Tokyo Drift. Which has, apart form really quite spiffy cars a few other things to say for itself. It also boasts Lucas Black, a boy with eyebrows that for some strange reason get me all bothered and an accent that needs no reason to get me bothered at all. He does the "american in a strange land" role, and he does it quite well. Obviously, his character makes the types of choices that would make a normal man closely resemble roadkill on life's highway, but what does one expect from a movie like this.
The movie also has its' share of japanalia. The classic Japanese schoolgirl/boy gone wild, over the top manga-type people, a few ganguro-gals, which i have always found a fascinating idea, and so on and so forth. The movie has it's weak points, obviously, but actually it's quite allright. I liked the first one better, but it was a good sequel.

After a sturdy and nice meal at the local McDonalds (how they dare to call a teruyaki burger in any way asian is beyond me, really) we proceeded to see "Stay Alive", a teen slasher flick I have been wanting to see for some time now.
And I was pleased. Very pleased. I like teen slasher because they should at least provide some eyecandy, and some tension, and some scares, be they cheap or genuine. Regretfully, the succes of Scream has made sure that the genre has stopped taking itself all that seriously, and as a result, the movies have suffered. Scream was good, IKWYDLS sucked puppies.
Stay Alive watches like a departure from the very hip, self-depreciating humoristic approach to slasherflicking.
Not htta it hasn't it's share of tongue-in-cheekness or the requisite comic relief character, but it also has some very good scare scenes, and actually little or no cheap and easy scares whatsoever. When you think a character is going to die, he/she will most likely die. Simple as that. No cats jumping out from behind trashcans, no birds flying up inthe background. The noises in the night are wat is going to kill you, simple as that.
And I liked that. It nearly made me forget that the scriptwriters used one of my favourite historical characters and made her a computer-animated witch. But the animations were done well. The plot of the movie is a bit Ringu-like. It centers around a group of kids who get their hands on a computer game, and when people die in the game, they die in real life.
Now, obviously, you would want to stop playing before you die, and some of them try. Luckiliy for us, the game just continues without them, so we get a few death scenes.
Scenes that are, by the way, not out-of-the-way gory, but actually quite realistic. Final destination had it's guts, nailguns and blood but this movie doesn't and it's more effective for it.

Go see it, it's nice. I for one am waiting for the DVD now, not in the least for the fact that the main character is, really, very cute. Not cute in the way these movies usually have cute, just a normal guy-next-doory type of cuteness. And he was geeky, be still my heart.

After the movies I was texted by an old friend to see if I was still in town (yes) and if I was willing to join him for a drink (yes), so I went to a drag-queen oriented bar to meet up with him for a few cokes and a couple of hours belting to the gay classics. Good times.

Saturday I was going to meet up with Sabine and Edwin, a friend of Sabine's, to go see Superman Returns. Before meeting up with them I hopped into the store sellign a spencer I'd been eyeing for a while now, and which I have on good authority actually makes me look like the type of schoolboy you'd find in a good japanese mange. Pristine, innocent, sweet. And slutty, yes, and if anybody wants a poster boy for the worship of the Great Old Ones, I'm your man. :)

But Superman, oh god Superman. After Lucas Black, after Jon Foster, now Brandon Routh. My movies this weekend were filled with men that only made me think things along the lines of "do me, do me now, please". Never a bad thing.
Although the boy helped, the movie on it's own is actually quite entertaining, hell, even Parker Posey was cast right for once and I found myself not even tempted to kick her head in.
A movie that looks like people had a lot of fun making it, and I like seeing that sort of energy on screen. Obviously, as a Superman-flick, it has the story, plot and drive of a batch of cotton candy, but what does one expect. Superman as an action hero is not tormented, not drivem he needs not even be smart, as such. He is big, blue and strong, nuff said.
But they did their best, and apart from a few botched concepts here and there, it was quite entertaining.

Afterwards, we went to get a few burgers at our standar Irish Pub, and I went home to watch Trainspotting with my roommate. A good ending to the evening.

Sunday was spend mostly in bed, reading, behind my computer, gaming, and ended with hunger. And a craving for fries, or salmon eggs.
We have quite a good Japanese restaurant quite close to our house, and on the way to the snackbar I decided to take my roommate out to dinner there. I wanted Nigiri Ikura, which is a type of sushi with little orange salmon eggs, and she wanted the battered chicken.
When we arrived and were given our drinks, we found out that both our wishes could not be accomodated. They were out of Ikura, and the chicken was no longer on the menu.

Annoyed, we left after a starter, only to find ourselves too late to get a burger and fries from the snack-vendor. And then too late to get fries from the next closest one. After that, we travelled all through the town looking for a chipshop still open and finding jack shit.

Annoyed, we went home, popped some garlic bread in the oven, and watched an episode of Bffy the Vampire Slayer.
Shite thing, really, still a bit annoyed about it and not eating at the Japanese restaurant ever again. No-egg-bastard.

And thusly, my weekend. I'll try to do some regular posting again, need to get into the swing again and Sabine has promised to comment more after a nice compliment this weekend, so I need to give her an option to do so. The rest of you should perhaps do so as well, I need feedback people. Feedback!

Grtz,
Kevin.