Sigh. Why is it so damn hot in Israel at the end of October?… I went from 8°C in Berlin to 29°C in Tel Aviv in the span of four hours.

Who said that it’s fun to go home??

 

(Well, I lie. It is fun if someone is waiting for you there and makes you forget what the word “weather” even means).

 

J  

 

Note to self: Hauptbahnhof and Ostbahnhof are not the same station.

Getting off at Hauptbahnhof will result in half an hour of confusion and running around after your own tail. It will also get dark and you won’t be able to see anything of the East Side Gallery.

 

Dear self: you’re preventing me from being a stereotypical tourist and making me out to be a stupid stereotypical tourist. Please stop.

 

SIGH.

 

Things one generally doesn’t want to hear while going abroad or being there:

 

1.       “Cosher breakfast! Cosher breakfast!” (A stuardess on a plane at 2:00 in the morning, after everybody fell asleep).

2.       “Hrrm. Hrrrrr. Hrrrrrrrrrr”. (A typically huge man, typically snoring in a seat next to you).

3.       “Achew! Achoo! Ha-choooo! Prrrrrrr” (90% of the passangers on the plain having a cold and sneezing/blowing their nose intermitently).

4.       “I’m sorry, I know you have a reservation, but we’re booked and have no free rooms till 3 in the afternoon” (A hotel receptionist thinking you’re a nuisance after you’ve arrived wet and cold and hoping for a warm bed). rHHHHH

5.       “The temperature in Berlin will be 4°C with heavy rain and strong winds for most of the week” (A local weather forecast).

6.       “We have a four-hour waiting line, are you sure you’d like to buy tickets?…” (A ticket seller at a local tourist sight, at 20:15 on a very wet evening).

 

And despite all that, I’m actually resting pretty well and managing to enjoy myself (tfu tfu tfu!). One mustn’t complain about being alive, being healthy, and being abroad :-). I do find some of my experiences though pretty damn funny… At least, in retrospect ;-).

 

 

Sometimes people scare me. I mean, really. There are days on which it seems that there is not a single person in this world who knows what a normal inter-personal relationship is. Or how to conduct oneself socially. 

Yes, me included.
But I expect better of other people. 

And with no connection, Nemi: 

I can't believe I actually went and watched this movie in a cinema. While being sober.
Just goes to prove that I've totally stopped watching movies because of what they are, but can watch pretty much anything when in company.
Sad, isn't it? :)

Maybe a girl will take it
Maybe a boy will steal it
Maybe a shake of the bough
will wake it and make it fall

My favorite plum. 

 

Moses Hadas’ translation of Aristophanes’ Wasps… Here’s an example:

 

CHORUS: Clear it is to the humble all

How stealthily does tyranny crawl!

You’d make legal safeguards nugatory,

You reactionary long-haired Tory.

Our city shields the proletariat;

But you choose to be an aristocrat.

 

I will not nitpick. I will ignore the smaller problems of this passage. But – I am so ecstatically glad that Aristophanes, who lived during the 5^th century BC, and who wrote Wasps in 422 BC, was apparently not only a genius playwright but also a genius seer. So genius, in fact, that he cast his inner eye 24 centuries ahead and said to himself, “hmm, Tories! Yes, I will definitely reference a British conservative party in my play, I’m sure both contemporary Athenians and future non-British readers will muchly appreciate this wittisism”. 

 

Why? Why would you, if you’re in the right mind, take an ancient Greek play and translate it so that it will become full of anachronistic mentions of things like “the middle ages”, “dollars”, bizarre slang that no one except perhaps Dickens would understand, and – wonderfully inspiring references to modern politics. Why??

 

I just realized that I shouldn’t complain about the translation of Harry Potter anymore. That one at least wasn’t a literary classic…

Both of my computers (yes, I have two) are driving me absolutely mad. Especially when I'm trying to work - and earn some money so I'll be able to fix the bloody things. Arrrgh. 

On the bright side -  sometimes I have dreams like this:



(c) Belittled Bee

:-) 

"Nothing crushed him like seeing her not really seeing him...".

- A Day and a Night and a Day, Glen Duncan

So, I’ve recently finished reading a book called Firmin – A Metropolitan Lowlife. (Well, actually, I’ve recently finished reading quite a lot of books, but I’m being too lazy to post anything serious about them. Um. Perhaps except to say that I wish more people (read: any people) would read the same stuff that I do – the stuff I like, anyway).

 

I’m not going to post a review of the book, because (as we already established) I’m horribly lazy, and - more importantly - because it was already done in a way that, as far as I’m concerned, leaves nothing more to be desired. So you go read it here and then come back.

 

What I felt like is posting the illustrations that accompanied Firmin, and which I liked way more than what Sam Savage has written. They were made by Fernando Krahn, a pretty cool Chilean illustrator. I guess seven years of reading graphic novels made me more partial to art than I’ve realized… :-)

( A rat that reads and plays the piano... )

This was made specifically for Ireland, but I think it pretty much applies to most of the countries (with the exception of Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, Norway and Sweden).

That’s all I have to say.

In a short, truncated way :)

This is what we human beings (and critics in particular, though I’m sure there are some people who will specifically exclude them from the human race) do when we read a really cool book. The kind of book that was smart and wonderful and unique and special and made us love every page of it.

 

We claim that it is exactly like a lot of other books we’ve read, only all of them together.

 

Don’t ask me why it makes sense.

 

Here’s an example (for a Terry Pratchett book that won Carnegie Medal):

 

“Like Monty Pyton crossed with J.R.R. Tolkien with a dash of Charles Dickens and a pinch of Steven Spielberg thrown in”.

 

And for another book:

 

“Like Celtic mythology fused with Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.

 

Yes, because if god forbid we’ll use our own words to describe something (for instance: great social commentary, wonderful wit, entrancing observations, uniquely imaginative, fun (gasp!) to read), no one will surely understand the merits of the book or be in any way interested in reading it.

 

Personally, if you’d have offered me to read a book because it was part Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy, part Victorian writer who made all his female characters cardboard thick, and part Tolkien (two dimensional characters of elves and hobbits, yay) - I would’ve shown you the finger.

 

And yet, I love Terry Pratchett.*

-------
*(Or any other writer who was compared to at least four other writers, directors, tv shows, etc, with as much sense as you usually get in genetically crossing a badger with a sewing machine and a capibara - be it Robin Hobb, Jeanette Winterson or Chitra Divakaruni). 
 

IF I WAS DEAD

 

If I was dead,

and my bones adrift

like dropped oars

in the deep, turning earth;

 

or drowned,

and my skull

a listening shell

on the dark ocean bed;

 

if I was dead,

and my heart

soft mulch

for a red, red rose;

 

or burned,

and my body

a fistful of grit, thrown

in the face of the wind;

 

if I was dead,

and my eyes,

blind at the roots of flowers,

wept into nothing,

 

I swear your love

would raise me

out of my grave,

in my flesh and blood,

 

like Lazarus;

hungry for this,

and this, and this,

your living kiss.

 

-- Carol Ann Duffy

So yesterday I ended up watching this. That was tragic. Even having Laura Harring of the “Mulholland Drive” fame kissing a woman again didn’t help any. I had a single, all consuming problem with “Drool” (and I hereby declare that I’m willing to buy expensive dinner to the first person who’ll explain to me this wonderful title in the context of the movie) – the problem being that I was completely, utterly and very painfully sober during its screening. Honestly, film festivals puzzle me. I think the only way to enjoy movies screened on this occasion is to be happily tipsy – either because of alcohol consumption, of love, or of both. From personal experience I know I can enjoy an incredible and mind boggling variety of crap as long as the person I’m in love with is holding my hand, and about 85% of the abovementioned after a bottle and a half of wine (two of the forces combined resulted in a personal record – I’ve managed to watch “Cynara” from start to finish… And until you’ve tried, you can’t appreciate the magnitude of this event).

 

( More whinning... )

[...] When I awoke, the moon hung near the western ridge of the hills. Realizing that it had been a dream, I lay there sunk in deep reflection and wished I had never woken up. I composed this poem,

I saw her in my dream,
And now my bed is all afloat with tears.
Tell her how much I yearn for her,
Oh moon, as now you glide towards the West!

-- Sarashina nikki

TEXT

 

I tend the mobile now

like an injured bird.

 

We text, text, text

our significant words.

 

I re-read your first,

your second, your third,

 

look for your small xx,

feeling absurd.

 

The codes we send

arrive with a briken chord.

 

I try to picture your hands,

their image is blurred.

 

Nothing my thumbs press

will ever be heard.

 
                   -- Carol Ann Duffy

 

Just music, no video clip...

Вечер без любви,
Утро без обиды.
Люди-инвалиды -
Люди-инвалиды.