As I fell asleep last night the meteorologist on Al Jazeera English stated, “It is *still* raining in Tokyo.” A deliberate pause and emphasis on “still”. I was half asleep, but it is amazing how a simple statement like, “It is still raining in Tokyo” immediately jolts vivid memories into the active mind.
I was suddenly walking in a downpour in Tokyo, perhaps the only one on the busy street without an umbrella. It was September, hot and even more humid.
I don’t doubt that the situation in Greece is serious. But I also don’t doubt that I am one of many who feels a weariness about this topic that makes me feel completely indifferent to the details. Every single day is a “this is a do or die” or “we’re at the brink”… but every single day seems to be another step, another reprieve and another step toward going back to the table. I don’t doubt that all of this is a problem for Europe and financial markets and whatever else – I won’t even bother to analyze or find the proper terminology for it.
Weary indifference hearing the same “Greece may be kicked out of the eurozone” talk.
But what is difficult to accept, and where light is only partly shone, is on average Greek people suffering the effects of the uncertainty and the long-term austerity measures. This is the part that is most heartbreaking.
Norway does not understand angst well enough to make good films or television. At least this has always been my contention. If they have ever produced a decent film, it is usually because it hits on the one area many Norwegians seem to understand and some struggle with: mental illness (see Elling or Buddy).
I have, however, been surprised by The Saboteurs. I only got around to watching it now (it’s being shown on British tv now as The Saboteurs. It was shown originally in January on NRK under an original title, Kampen om Tungtvannet, or “The Heavy-Water War”).
Only funny part is that someone seriously asked me if Werner Heisenberg was a real guy. I explained that not only was he real, another tv show (Breaking Bad) had a character who adopted “Heisenberg” as his alias/alter ego because of Werner Heisenberg.
“Today’s the 4th of July, another June has gone by, and when they light up our town, I just think what a waste of gunpowder and sky…” -Aimee Mann, “4th of July”
Happy Independence Day, America. I posted an article on Facebook about how fewer Americans than ever claim that America is the “best country in the world”. Naturally this created a minor shitstorm. Any constructive criticism of the country and the claws come out, as if one critical word is going to unravel the country from its core. I don’t know what is so offensive about being critical. The country has plenty of great aspects, but it’s on the decline and needs a lot of help. To call it the “greatest” is certainly subjective but also shows a lack of knowledge about life anywhere else. Sure, there are a lot of places in the world that have it nowhere near as “good” as the US, but plenty of places that have it better (again, subjectively). It depends on what things you value. Blind patriotism is ugly and uninformed. Questioning and criticizing has nothing to do with lack of loyalty or patriotism.
But I’m no patriot. In response to every defensive citizen (of any country) whose first reactionary response is, “If you don’t like it, leave…”, I can say, “I did.”
Good intentions, good intentions. I do need to discard more things but have not done much for a few days. Ideally the intent would be to discard one thing each day. But I have never been much of a hoarder/collector/keeper, so I don’t have a whole lot of things that I don’t use. I may move some furniture around, which will be a good time to go through things that are hidden away.
One of the big long-term plans is to renovate the house and surrounding buildings, which is undoubtedly a much bigger and more involved project than I can even imagine, especially because I don’t have much of an imagination at all when it comes to visualizing and conceptualizing space.
I’ve had some kind of eye discomfort/pain – I thought it was a stye so tried to self-treat but there was never any visible stye and eventually the discomfort got much worse. It seems to have been a tear duct blockage and possibly some kind of irritant got into my eye when I was driving with the windows open for many hours the other day (a lot of dust, dirt, etc. flying about). I suppose this has all been exacerbated by the fact that I spent so much of last weekend actually using the tear ducts – I guess I did shed something after all.
Growing up my mother always made giant jugs of iced tea in summer. It seemed commonplace at the time, nothing remarkable. She’d break out these large plastic jugs in late spring, and we’d never run out until summer did.
Since leaving home, I tried to make iced tea maybe only once. It was difficult because I never had a refrigerator big enough to hold a very large pitcher (and it never seemed worthwhile to make iced tea at all unless I could make a whole lot of it at once).
Suddenly the last few months, I have wanted iced tea badly. Especially when I go to restaurants – and there is no option for pure, plain, unsweetened iced tea anywhere. In the US, of course, it’s pretty much everywhere. What a simple, good but ridiculously cheap thing to drink.
I finally did it – I made two pitchers and they turned out even better than I hoped. I had a glass with lemon, and I am again truly happy with the small things.
I know there is nothing I can do or say.
I am happy as and how I am. I do not need anything else. I definitely do not need the agony of an addict clinging to my life, stuffing it with lies and venom.
I am quite calm – the answer was obvious but I dragged my feet for a while. I am sure it is what he was counting on.
I obsess a bit too much about robots, artificial intelligence and robots taking over the world.
I’ve just indulged in a handful of episodes of the show Humans, and it’s creepily promising. Humans coexist with a population of humanoid “synthetics”, who are basically slaves. A small group of these synths has been created and given consciousness – and this is the story unfolding alongside the intricacies of daily life in which humans rely on, feel humiliated by, feel inadequate next to, feel creeped out by, love and humanize their synths.
Mr Robot is not a show about robots except in the broadest sense, but instead is about a loner-hacker-morphine addict named Elliott. It’s suspenseful and often funny (love it in the first episode when Elliott, also the narrator, recounts for the audience all the ways in which his best friend Angela’s douchebag boyfriend is offensive – including the fact that he listens to Maroon 5 and Josh Groban).
Both shows drum up questions on ethics that are becoming more pervasive all the time, which is part of why I am excited about both shows.
Meanwhile, technology has already taken over.
Watching new show Mr Robot and bought myself a belated birthday gift – a new Roomba. I don’t need it, but it will be handy to have the little robot drive around upstairs and keep it clean.
Now just to get the lawn maintenance equipment that I actually do quite desperately need.
And going to bed at last. Sleep almost never eludes me but it’s been rough the last week.
After more than two years of waiting, the fiber is live at the homestead.
It’s unbelievable how long this project took. The process of getting the cable in the ground, then connected from outside to inside the house, and then getting the media box installed has taken just over two years.
The media box is the final step – but strangely it was so inconsequential time and work wise that I don’t understand why it took a year between the outside-in installation and the media box part. Really. I guess it is because it is the entire municipality that’s a part of this project and some of them dragged their feet burying their cable (delaying it for an entire frozen winter).
Where I live, you can get only semi-decent internet connectivity but the amount of data is limited and expensive. Communities here have to take up the initiative independently and then can get funds from the EU, etc. once organized. I gather that the organizational part was a big process, collecting signatures and that whole rigmarole. But 2.5 years!?
I almost want to have a party to celebrate that this is finally done. All fi(be)red up!