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Post by bartman2001 on Dec 27, 2020 22:39:03 GMT -5
I was gone for fourteen days I mighta been gone for more....
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I......
Jan 4, 2021 16:02:02 GMT -5
Post by anaix3l on Jan 4, 2021 16:02:02 GMT -5
I can't believe how disturbing the news of Alexi Laiho's death could be. CoB were done and I had drifted away from their music in recent years. But... it's a mix of so many things. There's the fact that he was only 41, far too young... You think that people still plan to do things at that age. And as a musician, he could have still produced great stuff, even if not with CoB - as Joe Bonamassa said, his death is very sad news for the guitar community. And there's also the fact that CoB remain one of the first bands I ever got into. I discovered them in 2005 because of that Alice Cooper cover. The newness of their style, so unlike anything else I had heard before... I didn't even know what to think about it at first, but I just felt drawn to it, felt the need to check out more. And it was such a way to let out my frustration during those years when I felt so much was wrong and if only I could be better... Ironically, Alexi was also very critical about his own work. On the Chaos Ridden Years DVD, they recall a show from 1997 which went completely wrong and his bandmates say he was so upset he got completely drunk and ran screaming through the streets, hitting walls... he thought that one bad show would be the end of their career and wanted to kill himself.
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Post by anaix3l on Jan 7, 2021 4:54:45 GMT -5
I have lots of photos of chocolates taken on bus stop/ park/ similar benches. The thing is, when I was traveling for concerts, that time when I was waiting for a bus to take me to the next city or waiting somewhere in a park for the hour I can check into the hotel was pretty much the only time I had for chocolate. Anywhere else where I could get a bit more comfortable, feel safer to take my laptop out and get some work done (like in a coffee shop or on a bus/ train or at the hotel), I would do that instead.
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Post by anaix3l on Jan 10, 2021 17:14:50 GMT -5
I survived the first full week of 2021.
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I......
Jan 11, 2021 12:12:51 GMT -5
Post by bartman2001 on Jan 11, 2021 12:12:51 GMT -5
I almost wish there was some Aerodrama going on to liven up the board. I look to this board to keep me from being bored and a focal point of making it thru the day. Sadly it's doing a borderline incompetent job on said matters albeit Nobody's Fault! Un-clever pun intended.
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Post by AeroCooper on Jan 11, 2021 13:30:43 GMT -5
I almost wish there was some Aerodrama going on to liven up the board. I look to this board to keep me from being bored and a focal point of making it thru the day. Sadly it's doing a borderline incompetent job on said matters albeit Nobody's Fault! Un-clever pun intended. Cry Me a River?
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I......
Jan 14, 2021 6:09:02 GMT -5
Post by anaix3l on Jan 14, 2021 6:09:02 GMT -5
I went to the cemetery yesterday. Got her roses. Both because she loved them and because they just get preserved better than anything else. I had in mind something more... vibrant? Something to make a strong contrast with the snow because real winter finally came for the past week. But I only found yellowish-orange-pink-red gradient ones. Still, they were the big flowers kind and pretty. It's much easier to pick flowers in the summer, you know... I'll try to find dark red ones on Monday when it's going to be a two years since she died.
I also had candles to light there. I normally carry matches with me, but I had cleaned my backpack so I only had a lighter with me. Which I swear I tested and worked before I left. It's just that there, at the grave, it refused to work. I didn't know what to do initially. Middle of the day, snowing, windy, cold... not the kind of weather people come to the cemetery in. I still looked around and I saw someone sweeping the snow off a grave pretty far away. Why do people sweep the snow of the stones instead of drawing on it with their fingers or at least leaving a paw print? So I went to ask for matches. And that's how I lighted the candles. The circuit of matches, I guess... I got approached by two ladies and asked for matches as I was leaving the cemetery a few months back. I gave them the box I had. Now it was me asking for matches and getting a box.
I guess what we get exposed to does end up shaping the way we think. Because the first thought I had when seeing the box of matches the lady from yesterday gave me was that it clearly indicates where it was bought from and she probably lives in that area. It's a local supermarket's own brand and they only have one more location left in the city. Now I don't intend to do anything with this info. I just can't help but think that ten years ago, the thought that a box of matches can share sensitive info would have never crossed my mind. But in the meanwhile, through work, I got to know a lot of people working in information security and got to learn about a lot of brilliantly evil ways in which people's info can be extracted and used for one's own profit. So I now I can't help but notice all these little clues that could be exploited even if I have no intent to do so. And I always wonder if I should warn people... will they think I'm just fucking crazy/ creepy?
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Jan 14, 2021 7:07:30 GMT -5
Post by AeroCooper on Jan 14, 2021 7:07:30 GMT -5
^ I felt like I was reading the first page of a novel.
EDIT: That was meant to be a compliment, not a criticism. You should be a writer.
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Post by redvers76 on Jan 14, 2021 13:20:11 GMT -5
Today is 1 year since mum died. I’m worried about my sister as she still seems to be really upset about it. Unfortunately due to lockdown I’m not able to go visit her, although I’m sure if I FaceTime dad later she’ll be on the shelf in the background... he plans to have her ashes buried in his coffin when it’s his turn...
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Post by AeroCooper on Jan 14, 2021 15:34:07 GMT -5
he plans to have her ashes buried in his coffin when it’s his turn... I like this idea, very sweet.
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Post by anaix3l on Jan 21, 2021 8:28:18 GMT -5
I finally got my shit together and made use of my chocolate voucher. At some point in early to mid December, I had a couple of public conversations on twitter about chocolate I was planning on getting. I may have mentioned before I really love Zotter chocolate. I first discovered them in 2011 and I loved them instantly. They have a huge range of unique and innovative products. Their handscooped bars range is probably the best-known one. Those bars are like thin cakes in chocolate in the sense that they're made in layers - you may have a layer of marzipan, then a layer of boozy orange jelly, then a layer of chocolate mousse and then everything gets covered in chocolate. They have well over a hundred varieties and, of course, not everything is for everyone, it really depends on whether what's in those layers is for you or not. I'm picky, so a lot of things aren't for me. But with such a huge range, there are obviously always things I'm excited to try. And it's not like they don't have other ranges with cool stuff as well - I absolutely love the Labookos (their plain chocolate, often single origin range) and the there are the Mitzi Blues, the lollies, the drinking chocolate range and more... Anyway, December was stressful so I kept postponing and postponing making that order. Though I really wanted to do it because now I don't know of any place that would still bring them here and I cannot go to Austria anymore and I haven't had any since last January. But work first, chocolate later. Then right after Xmas, I got a DM from someone who told me he was prompted to try Zotter chocolate by seeing those conversations in his timeline and now wanted to thank me for the great recommendation with a voucher. That was one hell of a surprise! I normally don't like surprise gifts because... they're usually a miss, but this was one of those extremely rare ones that I loved! And yeah, even if I was bouncing like a happy kitten over the thought of it... I still kept postponing making that order! Until today, when I finally did it! ^ I felt like I was reading the first page of a novel. EDIT: That was meant to be a compliment, not a criticism. You should be a writer.
Yeah, right... Writing was what I sucked at the most in school. Other than music, running, endurance and often team sports. And sadly, those last things were what mattered the most for PE grades, which is why my parents bribed a doctor to get me a PE exemption after 5th grade. I was ridiculously bendy and I could jump and climb like a monkey, but that was far from being enough and it costed me 1st prize in 5th grade. Came in a bitter second for the first time in my life. As for writing... it was my mom who wrote all my compositions throughout elementary school. It all started with my parents checking my homework, my mom hating it and deciding to do better. Which she did. My teacher absofuckinlutely loved her compositions. Even though I recall a particular one I will forever find so cringy. And my teacher had to read it out loud - I just wanted to die! I did write one composition myself. I got it back with "I don't like it! You can write beautiful compositions!" Back to mom it was! And then I almost failed literature in the last semester high school. My friends got into huge trouble just so I wouldn't. We had been skipping that class together (as well as the religion class and other stuff like philosophy that none of us cared for), so the four of us were the only ones missing a last grade, so not only did Corina tell me what to say, but they also all willingly crashed their own examinations just so they'd make me look better by comparison that day. I'll also never know how I ever passed the two mandatory baccalaureate Romanian literature tests. I know our French teacher knew I was nervous about those and was trying to find out who would be evaluating them, but I'll never know for sure. I didn't ask her to do anything. It was just that me and my friend Bianca had opted to take French as the foreign language test, so she spent a lot of time with us doing extra work in preparation for the exam and ended up finding out. Then went to the Polytechnic so I'd never ever have to deal with humanities again. I think me not being able to express myself better than a boot also has a lot to do with how I do things. I know I'll never be able to win an argument or sweet talk anyone into anything. So I just keep my mouth shut and quietly do on my own whatever I want to. People may shriek about it later, but what's done is done.
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Post by bartman2001 on Jan 21, 2021 11:18:21 GMT -5
If I ever had to take a religion class I sure as hell would have skipped it too. I'm one of six children. My older four siblings had to go to Catholic School, suckers, I don't know if its because my mother thought I had a learning disability or because it just got to expensive to send me and my younger sister but I thankfully was spared that fate. No religion classes, no uniforms, no having to wear a tie on Mondays and go to mass whilst the unpleasant aftertaste of being in church the preceding day still remained.
Neil Peart did more to spark my interest in reading than any of my teachers and their shitty cariculum ever did. I'm certain that's why I regard most of them, especially grades 1 - 8, as shitty excuses for "educators". It's also why I didn't really start reading, for enjoyment and otherwise, until college and why it's more sporadic than I'd like to this day.
Lastly I'm not sure how my mother, and intelligent woman, ever got suckered into all that Catholic nonsense. (I know they grab you, all religions for that matter, at an early age and don't and won't let go). I'm proud to say she graduated to secular humanism in the last 25 years or so of her life which is exactly where I've stood once I shook off that aforementioned unpleasant aftertaste of church so many years ago.
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Post by redvers76 on Jan 21, 2021 12:06:51 GMT -5
I think it’s funny how Ana writes a long and eloquent post in a second language to tell us how she is no good at writing!
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Post by anaix3l on Jan 21, 2021 12:43:34 GMT -5
I'm afraid it's been mandatory in Romania for almost 30 years. During the communist period, teaching religion wasn't a thing because another competing brainwashing machine wasn't something desirable. But that made some even more religious as a sort of a silent revolt. Then the Romanian orthodox church came back strongly and it has sadly been able to influence politics in its advantage (aka pass laws that allow us to get more money because people listen to us and will vote however we tell them). When I started school in 1990, religion classes weren't mandatory, but that only lasted for a couple of years. We had to take them starting in third grade.
The classes were also mostly shit in content, btw. In third grade, our religion teacher was just another teacher who taught that class as well. She made us learn some prayers by heart and that was pretty much it. Fuck knows what was the content in fourth grade, that year our teacher was a priest who seemed pretty disgusted with having to be in a room full of kids. Fifth to eighth grade, our religion teacher was another priest who took the brainwashing part more seriously, but what I remember most about him were that his main interests were karate and cars. Unsurprising, the Romanian internet is full of sarcastic memes about the priests' love for high end Mercedes and Volvo cars. And he was a short dude who probably got beaten the crap out of and then decided to learn how to return the favour.
After that... our religion teachers were just girls who were doing various shit for the church like restoring religious paintings and also got sent to handle these classes. They were all shy and boring and largely ignored by all of us. To the point one of them was super-excited that one of my colleagues, who was not religious, but was interested in history, contradicted her all the time. He kept telling her that what she's saying is crap, but hey, he was actually paying attention, instead of working on Maths, Physics or Chemistry stuff... or the (in)famous Biology tests (our Biology teacher had these incredibly difficult multiple choice tests, where any number of choices could be correct and all of them were so debatable that realistically, no teenager could have ever aced... our scores were usually like artistic skating ones, maxing out at 6).
As for uniforms... I had to wear one throughout most of my school years. The first to fourth grade one was a national thing, though now I believe it's a school level thing. Then from 9th grade, I went to an elite high school. And pretty much all elite schools have uniforms. And I don't know about others, but my school enforced them, yes. There was a teacher at the entrance and no uniform, no entry (also only skirts, no trousers allowed for girls unless temperatures dropped below -10°C because you have to toughen the fuck up... thanks, I guess, at least now I can wait a few hours outside at winter concerts just to catch a spot in front). Go home to change and, in addition to that, get marked for skipping the class.
We did this thing when we had PE as the first class. Some of us with uniforms would change into them in the sports hall after that first class, go to our classroom, change back into sports equipment, throw them out the window for our classmates who'd go back to the sports hall to change and would then be allowed to enter too. We didn't count on some secretary looking out one of the windows below and seeing it was raining uniforms. Well, we sure got yelled at for that and those who had come without a uniform got sent back home and got marked for skipping the class. Which, as everything else in life, was a bigger or a lesser deal depending on where you were in the teachers' mental hierarchy.
I was never going to get into trouble for it. I was lucky enough to start my time there by winning some regional school olympiad prizes and then going to nationals. And also at our first class with our main teacher, who happened to be our Physics teacher, I was the first to solve his difficult problems. So I got the bright kid label right off the bat and a lot of shit got tolerated. No joke, I called the principal a stupid cow to her face because she had lost one of my papers. And while I know that didn't sit well with her, the next time we talked was when I told her I'm too tired for her class because I'm preparing for an olympiad and she was all, sure, go home, sweetheart, I know you have more important things on your mind.
So I guess the money they got based off students' results were worth it. Or, who knows, maybe she had just forgotten all about it. Just like she had forgotten what she had done with my paper. She did happen to be the kind of person who'd lose her head if not attached. I mean... she once went to the market with her car, did her shopping, forgot she had arrived by car, got home, noticed her car was missing and called the police to report it stolen. Her husband found her car at the market, brought it home, but before he could get up to tell her, she saw the car out the window and she called the police again to thank them for being so fast.
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Post by anaix3l on Jan 26, 2021 10:50:01 GMT -5
I got my chocolate box earlier today!
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