Insane procrastination

I'm supposed to go to England for two weeks in... a few hours. And I haven't finished packing, and I need a shower badly, and there's a ton of other things I need to do. And yet I just seem to sit here and goof off.
Once I've finished this I'm going for the shower, so no yelling now, but it still worries me a bit.
And I want to start splurging and be excited about the larps I'm going to at the roleplaying convention, but there could be spoilers there for people who might theoretically read this, and I'm not quite ready to divulge all of the secrets yet.
I am going to play Rex the Dinosaur from Toy Story though, which is really cool. I always liked Rex. I'm also a Commissar Cadet, a Supergenius (not sure if I'm Hero or Villain yet), a nun (who I think might be evil), one thing I don't know, and one thing I can't tell. And I'm GM'ing one game, in which I'll be NPC'ing among other things a lobotimised mage. Sounds like fun? You bet it does.
There's a couple of characters that worry me, and that I have no idea if I can handle on my best days, much less when there's travelling stress and probably not enough sleep. But it's not the end of the world, really. I'd just suck.
And for some reason I really am very careful about these peoples opinions of me, and my actions during the games. Because that's really the only image of me that they have, those few days during the year, and that's what they walk away with. I did a couple of stupid things last year, and they still stick with me. Because there's no way I can set anything right when I'm in a different country.
There's also a second con, which I have little to no info on. But hey, it's a con. It'll be great!

I'll try to be online and such, really I will. But time might well be an issue, since there is the last-minute-panic of larp work everywhere.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! *pass out*

Not walking on sunshine as much as shuffling under rainclouds

Things are going pretty good, actually.
A bit stressy with things going on, but it's functioning.
I have, though, realised that I dislike activity that isn't routine. I enjoy going abroad and doing larps and weekend stuff, but to do something big and important every [utterly random number of days] is sort of confusing. Maybe it gets easier if there is a job at the same time.

Speaking of a job, I had a shrink appointment a few days back, and the shrink lady was quite nice. She also seemed utterly shocked that I hadn't gotten any kind of help from the state, with actual rehabilitation (or habilitation in the first place). That it hadn't even been brought up or mentioned by the people giving me money, since you'd think that they'd want me to stop eating their moneys.
But nooooo...
So she signed me up to talk to a couple of weird worky-habilitation people. Which could be good. Not being overly enthusiastic about it yet.

I also have an incredibly comfortable inflatable matress now, complete with a pump that (I shit you not) sounds exactly like the movement scanner from Aliens. Bee-bep. Bee-bep. Bee-bep. Freaky squeaking, I tell you.
I also burnt through four larp-plots yesterday, which may not tell you much, but involves writing about 15-20 pages of text, fitting twenty-ish characters and exactly what they're currently doing themselves and along with all the others into my head at once, and making sure not only that the plot is readable and understandable for all involved, but will work nicely during a 4-hour period, and not fall through.
So tricky, immense amounts of fun, and actually more hard work than I thought I could do. Granted, they were four easy and short plots, but still. I'm vaguely impressed with myself.

I have also realised that I need to take more time to read. As it is now, I'm really only doing it in bed right before I go to sleep, and on trains and such. And that just ain't good enough. I haven't sat down and enjoyed a book in ages. Must improve upon this.

Every day's another step that takes you even closer to the sky

Or I guess it's supposed to be.
I'm currently sitting at home, waiting for shit to happen to me. No wait, I'm not. I'm calling my contact person and having him set me up a meeting to get some kind of job. Hah!
Also, I need to pay the fee for that stagefighting weekend. That does seem like awesome fun. Need to get an inflatable mattress, too. For sleeping on floor!

And larp work has started!
Landston larp is barely underway, and me and Johanne are planning a mafia larp, which is hopefully going to be as fun to play as it'll be to make!
Writing on that has begun as well, or at least planning. Logistics seem to be working out fine, plots are numerous and I doubt we'll have much trouble finding 28-ish players for a one-day larp. Swedish and norwegian invited all.
Will be fun!
And now I return to the swampy marshlands of larp plots. Banzaii!

No matter how close two people are, an infininte distance separates them.

I dreamt about a nice place. A tropical, tiny island, the kind of size that humorous castaway sketches are set at. But it had a little corner-type shop on it, that magically replenished itself. And the laid-back locals ran it just because they wanted to. And somehow, I had a chance to stay and run the shop. And it was a beautiful place, and I wanted to stay.
And it makes me kinda happy to know that maybe somewhere in the world there's a place kinda like that.

So, today I have a time at a physical therapist! Which is great. I might get some help with my knee, finally, and they can take a look at my wrist, too. And I can give you a clue: One of these injuries are not related to naughty activities.
And after that, I should get to a gym. Like, regularly. It'd be really good, actually, to have that down as a routine. I've wanted to be stronger for a long time, and it'd be cool with some real muscles in my arms and shoulders. Then, getting a stronger back (less pain) and stronger legs (less pain) and being able to run for more than twenty seconds at a time will be a bonus.
Or maybe the cool stuff is the bonus...

I've also cleaned my place awesomely, dusted all the shelves and rearranged and tossed old crap and cleared out my second desk (the one that doesn't have computer all over it) so that I can work there. It's clear here, and I got space to move, and it feels good. Not having to step over things or dust things off when I take them from the shelf.
Now I just need something else to do.
Trip to Norway! Wohooo!

Dark Knight. Raaawrgh

I really like Dark Knight. And Superman is a dick.
So there.

Vrrom vroooom!

I spent a couple of hours today with my mum, and we both had a great wonderful mother-daughter bonding experience, and learned new things!
Me, I learned how to drive really well!
My mum, she learned how to say "Step on the clutch step on the clutch step on the clutch!!" REALLY fast!

It was awesome. Also, I really should be saving money. More money.
And I have a beer belly! The one I used to have was kind of cute, this one is a bit closer to "50-year old male with a beer balanced on his stomach". It's not near that yet, but it is certainly starting to look it.
Am I going to have to give up chocolate milk...? Am I going to have to.. *gasp* Exercise?!

Money spent buying soap bubbles never existed in the first place

So, I'm back home now, finally. Not that I especially wanted to go home, but it's always nice after a long time away. A little over two weeks in norway (and Prague) has been wonderful, but life does need to be at least acknowledged now and then.

I had thoughts on the train back about cynisism being calculated detachment, designed to enable the person to stand taking the world in without going insane. In that way, it's sort of like religion, or "seeing the best in things", or focusing on a single cause and dedicating your life to making it better. It's just another way to handle this world, which is quite honetsly a thoroughly unpleasant place. It has its moments, certainly, but the sheer weight of horror happening at all places, at all times, is quite devastating. Therefore, we deal. Cynicism is merely the detachment version of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "Lalalalalala!", and possibly even the least blinkered of all the methods of dealing out there. At least it admits to the bad shit happening, unlike a lot of the other ways.
Not that it's an awesome thing. It's just not a terrible thing.
Me, I'm even having problems remembering that everybody around me is an actual, multi-faceted person with thoughts and memories and motives, so heavy, ingrained cynicism is my only choice.
Stop me if any of this doesn't make sense. No, wait. Stop me if any of it DOES make sense, and I can celebrate!

Anyway, now that I'm home I can start working on stuff. Like my actual life. As usual, I'm not sure how, but I'll be working on it anyway. Calling the contacty "helpy" person and get a place to work halftime, or something like that.
We'll just have to see.

Another year over, a new one just begun

So... that was my trials for this year. Wendelsberg over and done with
Got kicked out of both of them, although one went better than the other. Even though at the latest one I didn't go on after the first round, there were perhaps 200 applicants, only 40 of which went on to the next round. So there was a slim chance, but still. It does make you wonder all kinds of things, since there's no comments or feedback whatsoever. Although, with 200 people, I can understand that there's such a policy in place.

Anyway, now I'm going to Prague, which will be awesome fun. And when I get home from that, I'm going to act on the realisation that acting school isn't the only place to start, probably isn't even the best place. I'll have a year of amateur acting, taking classes and workshops, maybe (and that's a big maybe) even try for some kind of dance class.
This is the sort of thing that feels like crap right now, but it will pass. It has to pass, because I have better things to do than sit around and fucking mope about not being in the top 5% of people who wanted to get into one of the best theatre schools in the country. It just doesn't work that way.
I have been told a few times in the recent weeks that even if one does go through this, it's not any more easy after that; you don't get free offers, and people lined up to hire you. It's constant hard damn work. So I might as well get used to it now.

And there we went.

Right. Trials done, and judging by the title and the general starting tone of the post, you can probably guess how it went.
I didn't get in. I got to do two out of three trials, which was kinda good though. And I did impress the judges, even though there were other things in the way.
The thing is, what I fell on wasn't ability, nor passion, nor energy.
It was emotion. Not too little of it, but too much.
Coming out of a heavy depression, I'm not entirely in control over my own feelings and when and where I release them. Especially grief or sadness. There's not a problem with acting out, it's a problem with reigning in.
I learned this during a talk with the teacher guy who'd make the call. He was actually nice enough to take a few minutes with me in a room and explain exactly why I'd gotten removed, and it made all the difference in the world. I'm still sad about not getting in, but I am not bitter. I understand exactly why he made his choice, and if I was in his shoes, I probably would have made the same call. He also gave me the possibility of working on the things that need working on.
Being more in control over what I let show, what I do with the emotions I have. When and where to bring them out. To be measured and precise.
To boil it all down:
I can do chainsaw, but I have yet to learn scalpel.

And of course, in two weeks it's the other trial, for the Gothenburg one.

Here we go.

This is the night before the day after.
I could do this.
I CAN do this.
One of them is actually quite funny, when delivered with a bit of timing, and if I can only remember the cues and the movements, it'll go well.
And the other one... If I can do it tomorrow like I did just now, I will impress people. Sounds conceited, and feels conceited too, but I think I will. I do think it's good.
Tomorrow we'll see if I'm good enough to do 2 / 3 tests. I think I will be. Then the third one will be left, on tuesday.

Wish me luck. But if this goes like I think it will (might, could, should), I won't need it.

Gaaaaaah

Holy hell. Learning this first text (the humorous one, not the weepy one) has taken me about a week, and I still don't have all the detail down. It's not like learning the entirety of the Lion King in a couple of days, noo.. It's more like writing down the incomprehensible ramblings of a madwoman, and then expecting people to make art out of it. Or, well, completely random ramblings I can do. This has just enough structure to be difficult, but not quite enough to make sense all the time in my head.
I am WAY too late in starting with the second piece, but there's still two days, so I can do it if I actually work on it. Instead of sitting at my computer watching things on youtube for hours and hours and hours. 3-minute clips don't seem like much, but when you've watched 20 of them...
I'm feeling the strangest mix of panic and serenity. I can do it, if I only keep panicking. If I do keep working. God, I'm glad they do these things on different days, with a week or two between the two trials. Gives me time to think, to prepare. I don't even have to finally decide on a song until I get home from the first trial day in Skara, since the one when I actually have to sing isn't until tuesday. That's also when I get to do some proper improv, which I am SO looking forwards to. And I am hoping like hell that they'll let me stay on until I can do that, at least. After all this larping and RP'ing, it should sure as hell be my strong point.
Good thing is, I'm not scared any more. I'm way beyond scared, I'm... I'm in a place of tense focus, where I know I'm going to be doing something nearly impossible, and very dangerous, but my brain's prepared for it now. I want to get this over with, but I HAVE to make it perfect. I want to have the prepared scenes over with so I can go on and show my skillz at improvisation, but I can't in ANY way afford to rush them. All the little things just become mind-bogglingly important, and it's almost paralyzing.
I feel, unfortunately, less like a coiled snake and more like a deer in the headlights...

Twilight - Legends of the Slapping Beaver

Right... I just did one of those things, that beforehand seemed like a fairly decent idea (hey, you know), and then afterwards I find myself sitting there, wondering what went wrong in my life.
I have watched Twilight.
Bear with me, this will be a long post.
Now, I knew it was going to suck, I had picked that much up from living in the world where there are occasionally sane people. With taste. Sparkling vampires, baseball and teenage angst, it just couldn't be very good. What I wasn't prepared for, though, was how absolutely, mind-bogglingly bad it was. It was a suckfest, and not in a good way, let me tell you. (Seriously, how am I NOT supposed to make "sucking"-puns with this movie?)

Twilight is a deep, compelling tale about a small-town sheriff whose wife has left him, and whose daughter is suffering from several crippling mental illnesses. He tries hard to get along with everybody, and keep things quiet and peaceful in the place he loves, but no matter what he does, life seems to be out to fuck with him in the greatest ways imaginable. He loves his daughter, but has a hard time showing it, and it seems like everything he tries falls on deaf ears. It's kinda like 'The Wrestler', but with shotguns. Or, well. It should be.
For some bizarre reason, however, we don't see much of the dad. We instead follow his daughter. Belle.

Belle lives in Arizona and is very pale. We never get to know why she is so pale, even though she lives in fucking Arizona. It's probably supposed to make her look haunting and mysterious, but along with the dark rings under her eyes, she's more of a "crackwhore with AIDS"-type pale.
I'm at a complete loss as to how they thought she'd inspire empathy in the audience, because she's a huffy, ungrateful little emo bitch. She moves to this shithole town up in Nowhere, Northwest, to live with her dad, because her mom's going out with a baseball player now and wants to live the good life. But hey, no hard feelings.
She meets her dad, who fights to make her feel at home, along with the rest of the town, who is nothing but friendly, welcoming and open-hearted. Even at school, she is greeted by nice people and within days have friends, who she promptly starts to ignore, avoid and be generally lonely around. (There's of course the mandatory "arrive in the truck my dad just gave me and be horribly embarrassed because it's not as pretty as all the other cars"-scene, but it's forgotten in the very next shot, and all pretenses towards making her actually believably lonely are thrown out the window.)
Then of course, she meets The Boy. He's mysterious, and hangs out with his creepily incestuous family, but he's still the dream boy of the school, since he's Oh, so pretty. Apparently the girls in this town have a thing for constipations, or maybe the constantly recurring "I have a brain tumour"-face. It starts out with him acting like a freak around her, of course, and she's rightfully pissed at him. This all goes away, though. For some reason. Because when they next meet she's gone from "I'm going to bawl him out" to "Oh, he's so mysterious and lonely must know more".
This, then, goes on and on and on and on for two hours.
The guy keeps acting like he has multiple personalities, one of which has mind-numbing headaches that hit him instead of emotions, and the other is a raging bastard. The girl seems to be very quickly developing a dangerous obsession, and by the end of the movie has turned into a full-blown, shrieking "YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME!!!", emotionally crippled retard.
There is no other explanation than severe brain damage. That would also explain the acting. It is quite possibly the worst acting I have ever seen in a leading pair, where tossing ones head and making a little offended noise has to stand in for actual emotion. The only one that actually does a fairly good job is the dad, whose awkward social retardation actually fits the character, unlike all the others, where it just looks out of place.

Oh, and I mentioned the "creepily incestuous" thing? Well, this family of vampires are pretending to be "adopted" by the head vampire, the "dad" of the family. There's five kids. Four of them are dating each other. Yes. This lifts very few eyebrows in the little american town, in fact it lifts no eyebrows at all. Which makes me wonder about their marriage practices.

The dialogue is another thing.
"- I'm designed to kill.
- I don't care.
- I've killed people before.
- It doesn't matter.
- ...I want to kill you. I've never wanted a human's blood so much in my life before.
- I trust you."

.... wait, what?
And bear in mind, this is just after the girl has realised that yes, this guy's a vampire. Him or his family are most probably the ones responsible for the two murders that have occurred here lately. Let's run off into the woods with this guy, alone, and declare our love. This guy that has really done nothing but acting like an asshole one moment and a retard the next. I mean, telling a girl that you don't want anything to do with her because you don't think you're good for her, fine. But running after her repeatedly the next day to tell her that you don't think you should be friends (because hey, you know, she might change her mind), is just creepy.
I also think he might be setting the girl up for "dangerous situations" so he can jump in and save her. Seriously, it just happens way too often to be coincidental.

The whole thing reads like bad fanfiction, I kid you not. It reads like the author has put herself in the guise of a high school girl who is lonely and emo, but still popular!!! I cannot stress this enough. She's just naturally popular and everybody loves her for who she is and she can get any boy she wants really, and I'll show them all when I'm rich and famous grumble grumble...
And the guy... Oh god, it's actually the first time I've seen a female author having trouble portraying guys realistically. It's not hard. You just put him there and make him say things that aren't horrendously stupid all the time, and you got a guy. This one though, just can't seem to pull it off. There's just emo angst, and quite possibly the worst "endless love" scenario in existence.

And also, when you've been a vampire for about a hundred years, don't you think you should have come up with a better excuse for the fact that your eyes change colour now and then, than "It's... er.. it's the... flourescent... *runs off*" (Actual quote from the movie)
If you're trying to pass as human, it might be a good idea to answer Yes to the question "Are you wearing contacts?"
And when you "accidentally" tell people that you can read minds, don't act so shocked. Looking at his empty, empty face, I'd be very surprised if these little slip-ups didn't happen all the time.

There's also the Thunderstorm Baseball. Yes. This is apparently a vampire tradition. Whenever there's a thunderstorm, they play baseball. Because they hit the ball so hard it breaks Mach 1, and make a loud bang. So they can only play during thunderstorms. Because gunshot-like noises in the middle of the forest outside a small american town must always inspire suspicion of supernatural causes in the local law-enforcement. What, "We have a gun range" wasn't a good enough excuse for you people?

The whole setting is also completely off-the-wall bad. Apparently making a vampire happens every time you bite. Unless you kill them outright, because of a venom in their fangs. This always happens, if you have enough restraint to hold back and not drain the person completely. Unless they suck hard enough.
Literally.
I'm not making that up, the entire end of the movie is based around that.
GAH! How am I supposed to not making stupid jokes out of this?!
They can also be out in daylight on cloudy days. (That's how they can all go to high-school, see? Because it's a cloudy town.) But watch out so you're not hit by direct sunbeams!! What happens then, you ask? Do they burst into flame? No. They show their true vampire-form. Oooh, demonic visages, like in Buffy? Do you see their current point of decomposition, like in Pirates of the Caribbean? No.
They sparkle. Like diamonds.
Apparently this is a bad thing. People will know they're different.
But hey, if you didn't want humans to know you're different, maybe you shouldn't act like fucking retards all the time, and blurt out things about your secret powers to every crack-whore that comes along? Hm? HM? Just a suggestion.

There was one good thing about this movie, though. One quite amusing little thing. At one point the heroine (Or shall I say HEROIN? Geddit? Eh? EH?! ...It's because she sucks.) is searching on google for local indian legends, because of... oh god, I can't even be bothered to tell you. It's stupid. Anyway, one of the hits, the one that she clicks on, has a couple of example booktitles below it, one of which is... yes, you knew it was going to come.
"Legends of the Slapping Beaver."
I tell you, if they had gone out in a blaze of glorious self-distance, and named the entire movie THAT... It would have been good. That thing alone.
But hey, maybe there will be a porno version soon...



...at least pornos have comparatively believable plots, good acting and decent scripts.

Hoy!

Doing work.
Work hard is work good.
I can do this.
Right?
I'm getting there, I do think I am. It's going slow, and it's really damn difficult, but I think I might be able to do this. As long as I don't think "Oh, I can do this" and in any way slow down. Because then I'll be fucked.
One good thing though is that I've been given number 5 for the first theatre trial. Five's a good number. Good, solid number.
Today I am a bit too tired to do any more though, and that is a fact. I could try to cram some more information into my head, but it'd most likely be futile. Tomorrow, I'm going to do more. Tomorrow, I'll go on.
Tomorrow, I'll have yet another realisation that I'm in way over my head, can't do this, and might as well give up. And then I'll have another one wherein this is the only thing I could possibly do with my life, and sort of HAVE to succeed, or be a miserable failiure. And then I get a bit confused and has to sit down.
Monday, I'm going to do everything. For now... slog on. Eat food. Try to sleep in a decent time. Oh yes, fuck. I have to start turning my day around properly now, or I'll be a zombie on saturday. (Yes, it's in a week. I tremble.) Zombies are fun, but they rarely get accepted into exclusive, expensive acting schools. I say rarely. I mean never.
That's just one of the points where the equality movement is lagging behind.

Fucks sake

Today has been WEIRD.
I think it started up with sleeping for 11-12 hours for the first time in months. I had weird dreams all the time, too. Maye I needed to rest for some reason, or maybe it was the fact that the dream promised me sex and never followed up on it. So I stayed with it for a long time.
Don't gimme that look! You'd have done it too.

And then I do wake up, just in time to miss my boyfriend on the web, which I suppose isn't too bad. I mean, he WILL come back again, so it won't kill me.
What I do find, though, is a letter telling me that they've given me permission to drive, but can't issue the learner's permit until I give them a signed paper about it from a psychologist, a proper doctor one. Which... I did? I went there twice, went and took TWO fucking blood samples because they forgot something in the first one, and all in all payed 900SKR for. So what the fuck was that? Didn't that ever reach them, or wasn't it good enough? Because if it isn't what they wanted, I'm having my damn money back.

Also, I went to hand in the english essay, (which the teacher wants in physical form, the weird person) and it turned out the damn place closed at 4 on fridays. So I was late. Because of the oversleeping thing. At least the paper is good. I'd say it's DAMN good, considering that the purpose of it wasn't necessarily to provide an all-encompassing summation of a period in history (Then it'd be History class) but rather do it in a comprehensive and literate way, to make people understand my language and be impressed by my advanced words. Which they should be. They're very advanced. My mum says so. (And she should know, bitches, she's been an english teacher for years and has now retreated to being School Dictator - also known as principal - With Moonlaser.)

So now I'm sitting at home with my head all "too much sleep"-muddled, and wondering if I'll get anything done today, at all.

Bawling like a bitch

So, I'm sitting around being lazy and watching my favourite Swedish stand-up comedian, Jonas Gardell. I'm supposed to be starting out on the scenes for the theatre thing, but I am feeling good about time, yesterday I finished up the English essay and things are going well. And yes, I know that's the attitude that makes you do fuckall until there's two days left and you end up curled in a corner, rocking back and forth and whimpering because the overwhelming panic won't let you do anything else. But I -am- getting things done.
Because I'm watching one of his older shows, and then suddenly he stops making the audience piss themselves laughing, like he does, and he just calms down. And starts speaking. He reads a piece from a play he wrote a while back, called "Ömheten", or "the Tenderness". And it's beautiful. Heart-wrenchingly, stupefyingly beautiful, terrifying and saddening beyond any words.
It's about one man sitting by the bedside as his lover dies, and it had me crying. I watched it again, and again, and still I was crying.
So I've made up my mind, I'm doing it for the trials.
Because it is a scene that requires tears. The pain is so palpable, it needs to be there. And I feel it as I read or listen to the scene, that pain just returns to me again and again, it stupefies me and leaves me incapable of feeling nothing.
Because I can do it. I can do it well, and I think - I HOPE I can do it well enough to make them feel it too. Which is what it is all about.
And the text is simple, won't take more than a couple of minutes, so there's no problem learning it, that'll take all of half a day, if I sit down with it. The problem is only that perhaps I'll grow numb to it. Maybe it won't effect me like it did the first time. I do have to try to bring it out, to return to that place. I do have to think about people I love.
But I guess that's the challenge, eh? That's what they're supposed to tell whether or not I can do.
I'll return to it in a couple of days, see if I can still feel it then.
For now, I'll keep working on trying to memorise half a page of fevered ranting...

Woot...?

Right!
I'm finally finished with the second, nerve-wracking entrance form for the second, awesome theater school I'm going to try to get into.
Both of them are sent off, and in both cases I get to go in and have strange trials with practiced scenes and improvisations. And then they tell me if I'm worthy or not.
In one case, I might get in, there's a possibility for it and I'm not too worried about breaking in twain if I don't get in. The other place though, is like my dream come true. Or half-true so far, until the point where I actually get into the place.
They do demand more of you there, though. Physically. And I worry that my asthma and my absolutely appaling physique will stand in the way there. Also, I do kind of move like a fridge. With a door that sticks.
I do have almost 4 weeks to get into slightly better shape, though, and I might just take that chance. If I can make myself do it, that is. Starting up and committing to something like that is one of the most difficult things I can possibly do. But hell, if it means the difference between getting in and not getting in? I feel my legs twitching already with energy.
No wait, that's the necrosis...

I am also working on the paper for my English class, the very last bar before I can get the grades I need to be able to get into any of these schools. If my mum counted the points correctly, that is, and I sort of trust her to. She should know these things.
Paper (on the penal colonies in Australia) is indeed coming along, although at this point verbosity is my main problem. I've filled up almost half of the allotted pages, and the prisoners haven't even gotten onto the damn boat yet. But, you know, there's introductions and overarching information to consider, that I started up with. And if nothing else, I can shrink the text down, so there. Ah, the wonders of modern word processing.

Landston, unfortunately, is on an extended hiatus. I just don't have the energy to spend on pushing myself to do that, with all the pushing in other directions that I'm doing. It's not a matter of time, I still spend hours every day reading crap on the internet and watching youtube clips of people being yelled at, but time isn't the issue. Effort is.
Anyway, now that I've got the forms sent off (and on Monday I'll -finally- finish up that damn blood sample thing. Yes, they want blood samples before they'll get me a drivers permit. I'm special, they say.) I will have more time to actually start working on the scenes for the trial days. They will, admittedly, be the most difficult thing. I should start by at least learning the text, after that it should be a breeze.
At least I'm out in good time this year.
Or, better time.
I'm not in panic!

Hmmm...

I think maybe my little Joker figurine doesn't like me. I don't know if he hates my taste in music or if I smack my mouth when I eat or if he just finds me plain ol' ugly, but he keeps trying to commit suicide by throwing himself off his perch on the base speaker.
Luckily there's a pile of paper beneath it, so he hasn't managed it yet. I'll just have to keep sharp objects and open flames away from him...

Allright...

Seems that the previous post was... both right and wrong.
There is a suggestion up about this, which is in essence designed to let mobile phone operators turn off their users when they've been racking up too high a bill downloading stuff off the internet, especially abroad.
The problem is, this bill is so fuzzily written that it could easily be made to apply to those mobile phone operators that also give the customers internet connections.
So there's been misunderstandings, people have become scared, and understandably so. With the latest fad of fucking with peoples rights on the internet, it didn't actually seem that incredible that they'd try something like this. Which is a scary thing in itself.

WHAT?!

What in the jesus fucking hell shit kind of piece of fucking cum-eating crap?!

http://blackouteurope.eu/

What the FUCK?!


...Although after some thought (and a friend pointing it out), there's nothing here that says that this thing is actually real. Might very well be completely fake.

Matters of Sundry Importance

Soo.. Back from England, and off again to Norway.
England was awesome, in all kinds of ways. I wrote a larp and ate chocolate spunge cake and played an alien. Loads of fun.

Now, I'm in Norway. At The Gathering, which is a huge congregation of nerds in an even huger upside-down boat.
There has been wrestling show and two nights of sleep so far, one of which was cold and not very sleepyful, and one which was awesome and snuggly. And it has gone fairly far when I consider six hours of relatively uninterrupted sleep something awesome and luxurious.

Soon though, on tuesday in fact, I'm going to go home and not go away from my apartment in a long time. Weeks and weeks. And it will be glorious.
Maybe I'll even get some damn work done. *cough* Which I definitely should do.

An army of stuff

Right, tomorrow evening I'm going to England. And I won't be home for over a week. And then when I come home I'll be off again within a couple of days, to a LAN in Norway. And then I'll be sorta busy all up until April 14th. And that weekend I'm going to Stockholm with my mum too, so then there's that. All in all, I won't be home properly for about a month from now.
And then there's the theatre stuff that has to be dealt with the week after that. And I'm quite nervous about that. Because if I don't get in this year either, I'm going to have to do something else. Study or work, either of the two, I'll have to do -something-. Not because of outer pressure, but simply because it's been too long not to.
And right now, I'm trying my best to work, but it's going slow. I'm not getting much done. Maybe I should move to something else for now and return to Malova later on, because the land of trees and shiny armour isn't getting much more finished. Maybe the minor countries, or the magic. Gah, I dread the magic. I know all of it in my head, but it's very difficult to formulate it, get it down on paper.
And I'm scared. Scared of the big world that I'm slowly being forced out unto. Scared of life. Scared of having things to do. And I don't want to be, but ever even thinking about my life makes my chest tighten. Yeah, life sucks, yadi yada. I guess I'll get over it, but I just don't know how.

Post-Watchmen musings

So, I have just returned from seeing Watchmen.
It was... a mixed experience. It was a wild ride of Zack Snyders cinematic orgasming (his), and fangirl squeeing (mine).
The whole thing looked absolutely awesome, the casting was brilliant beyond my hopes and dreams (except for Ozymandias) and it followed the comic book slavishly, sometimes frame by frame.
And that was the problem.
I loved the movie. It was everything you could have hoped for as a Watchmen fan, it was beautiful, violent, brutal, unforgiving. It was the comic book, and this is the best thing I could possibly say about it.
Because at the same time, it left me with a strange, bad taste in my mouth. The pacing was wrong. The exposition was shoddy and the scenes sometimes even felt unnecessary. There were numerous Tjeckovian guns lying around unused and cold, that were to fans of the comic book (like me) awesome references to a greater whole, a hidden work of genius behind what was shown, and to those that hadn't read and enjoyed the comic (like my bored-out-of-his-skull boyfriend) was most probably bland and uninteresting, making the whole experience into a sub-par superhero movie.
And this is a crying shame, but it has its explanations.
A comic book is an awesome thing, as is a movie, but they both have very different languages, different ways of showing you what you need to know. And this translation of the comic Watchmen just didn't work. Alan Moore's dark, sometimes frightening rendition of our world and our heroes, shown to us so up close that we can see every single filthy flaw, was reduced to something made out of cheap (but awesome) special effects and bullet-time fights that were way over the top.
The whole thing was shown as in the movie 300, a larger-than-life saga of brilliant superbeings, slow-motion and loud music both almost constantly present. In 300, it worked. In Watchmen, which is supposed to be a gritty, realistic alternate history, it didn't.
I am afraid to say that Watchmen - the movie is exactly what any fan could want of the movie. It is brilliant, beautiful, perfect. Except it's still Watchmen - the comic book. Which isn't what was needed.
I will probably be wanting to see Watchmen again, since I am a fan of the comic book, and reading it in one sitting is about the same as watching the 3-hour movie of it (plus I get to see the wiggly penis again), but I am afraid that as a movie, it doesn't stand up on its own.
It is a fanfest, and it hurts me to say so, but nothing more.

If you love the comic book, go see the movie. It's perfect. If you've never read Watchmen, don't let this be your first brush with a story that is as brilliant as it is horrible.

The thee R's of Call of Cthulhu

I think you all already know what those are, so I don't have to tell you. And if you don't, just run.

I did indeed play Call of Cthulhu last night. Supposed to be three of us, but there ended up just being me and Robert playing, with Johan as a game master. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a deadly, horrid and absolutely awesome thing.
I laughed until I cried and when walking home afterwards I was creeped out by all the moving shadows in the night.
Robert summed up my character's experience after the game in a very amusing way. I played Lewis Heller, a cryptozoologist and professional debunker of ghosts and goblins. He'd travel to a place that claimed to be haunted or filled with something supernatural, and investigate and then he'd scoff derisively at the whole thing. Scoff, scoff, scoff.
That is, until he became part of Delta Green, a super secret american organisation tasked with National Security, and with a cell leader / boss who never gave out any more information then absolutely necessary, because that's not how it's done. Neither do you report back any information whatsoever back to him, he doesn't want to know, and not telling us what we might face beforehand is a good thing because it might spare our poor fragile little mind. My character was quite upset with this.
Anyway, the summing up went as follows; "Nah, nah, I've done this hundreds of times. Someone claims that their place is haunted to get publicity or people. They pay off witnesses, they make up stories, a few special effects made by computers and surveillance, and then it goes by itself. I've seen it a thousand times before." *five days later* "AAAAAH! OH GOD, WE'RE GOING TO DIE!!! SARAH!! KILL IT! KILL THE FILM!! *shoots wildly at lovecraftian monster coming out of movie screen, shrieking with terror*"
Which was pretty much it. Poor Lewis went from 75 sanity (pretty good) to 30 sanity in a single session (a drop normally reserved for 2-3 sessions).
The way to go in CoC is low intelligence and high wisdom. That makes you willstrong and durable, but you don't understand what happens around you. "Ooh, that was a VERY strange cat!" *professor next to him gibbering madly*
So that was all absolutely awesome. And afterwards he went up to his boss and shook him, wild-eyed, by the shoulder. "I... I understand now. I know why you don't talk about it. Why you don't give out information. It's... it's better not to know.. I GET it now..." And his boss looked at him with understanding sympathy for a moment, and then said "You need a vacation." And then there was that. And a company shrink, who apparently CAN listen to you. I wonder what his SAN is...

In other news, all those things I've been planning to do are catching up with me. Which is a bit scary, but kinda cool. It's getting to the point where I'm starting to worry about the theatre school entrance exams again. Which is in.. may, I think. Preparation is necessary.
Maybe I should start choosing and learning my second piece.

I have HD-ADD. I can barely pay attention, but when I do it's unbelievably clear.

I'm really starting to ponder about that whole thing.
I know I have things wrong with my head, even if I feel like I can function at least partially like a normal person, and most of the time there seems to be no difference between me and the huddled masses.
And then, now and again, I run into something I just don't get, or get completely wrong. And I start to wonder. What am I assuming that isn't true? What do I believe about the people close to me, or people in general, that is completely off the rocker?
What have I gotten wrong, what do I suck at that I don't realise? What is there for me to understand and learn?
And I do want to know these things as soon as possible, so I can go on with life. And I'm a bit worried that finding these things out is what life -is-.
And I'm worried I'll be making life more difficult for the people around me until I do find out, which I don't want.
And I sit here wondering how I could ever make up for all the love and patience and help I've gotten from those who love me. And that, my friends, is more daunting a task than anything else is for me.

Goodnight, demonslayer

There's a monster that lives 'neath your bed,
oh for crying out loud, it's a futon on the floor,
he must be flat as a board

There's a creature that lurks behind the door
though I've checked 15 times, when I leave
then he arrives, every night.

Tell the monster that lives 'neath your bed
to go somewhere else instead, or you'll kick him in the head
Tell the creature that lurks behind the door
if he knows what's good he won't come here no more
'cause you'll kick in his butt at the count of four.

Goodnight, demonslayer, goodnight.
Now it's time to close your tired eyes
There's devils to slay and dragons to ride
when they see you coming, hell, they'd better hide
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight
Goodnight, my little slayer, goodnight

Tell the monster that eats children that you taste bad
and you're sure you'd be the worst he's ever had
If he eats you, don't you fret, just cut him open with an axe
Don't regret it, he deserved it; he's a cad

Tell the harpies that land on your bedpost
that counted to five; you'll roast them alive
Tell the devil that it's time to pay him his due
he should go back to hell, he should shake in his shoes,
cause the mightiest, scariest creature is you.

Goodnight, demonslayer, goodnight.
Now it's time to close your tired eyes
There's devils to slay and dragons to ride
when they see you coming, hell, they'd better hide
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight
Goodnight, my little slayer, goodnight

I won't tell you there's nothing beneath your bed
I won't sell you that it's all in your head
this world of ours is not as it seems
the monsters are real but they're not in your dreams
Learn what you can from the beasts you defeat,
you'll need it for some of the people you'll meet.

Goodnight, demonslayer, goodnight.
Now it's time to close your tired eyes
There's devils to slay and dragons to ride
when they see you coming, hell, they'd better hide
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight
Goodnight, my little slayer, goodnight.
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight
Goodnight


I just love me this song. Pretty much tells it how it is, dunnit?