H introduced me to the verbal ticklings of Dylan Moran and I fell in love. His sense of humor is totally on the point. Perfect.

He did a stand up thingy in Australia, it’s called What It Is. Youtube has all the bits of it, I’ll just post the first part for you to love. It’s a good substitute for exercise: you can laugh your abs into rocks.

I found a cartoon by this name by someone called zu on Toonpool. Jesus H. Cuticles, I laughed myself bonkers!

It’s almost here. I’ve got yummies in the oven, PB on the way with extra champagne and a headache sneaking at the back of my head. It’s all looking good.

I think Al and I are going to have a quiet evening together, with PB passing through, and then we’ll go and greet the new year in city centre. It’s only 5 minutes ride on the bus and we’re there so why not.

But you never really know how quiet an evening you’re going to spend until you wake up the next morning. Last time I thought I was going to have a nice quiet evening I woke up getting flashbacks of me and H staggering home at 4am, eating snow along the way. Not to worry – the thick snow had just fallen, so no yellow nowhere.

So what will the new year bring for me?

I will have my first meaningless and stricken with hopelessness twenty-something birthday.

With any luck I will graduate from university and get my BA degree.

Summer has to be spent working, but with the recession and everything I have no idea whatsoever how that’s going to work out.

And in autumn I will have to decide whether or not to go to school again. I would love to go and study something that I will actually be able to benefit from, something practical that will allow me to work with my hands. But, yet again, the recession has teeth and they might bite hard.

So who knows. But it will be a pretty interesting year, that 2010.

Exactly what I needed – another totally pointless pastime to get me to station Braindead.

It took me a long time to accept Facebook. I didn’t see much of a point in being there (actually, I still don’t). I watched my sis play Farmville and felt bad for her, seeing her ploughing and planting stuff on a virtual farm like it mattered somehow to do it.

I said to myself: “Maria, you are so smart to stay away from nasty habits such as playing Farmville, because with your nonexistent willpower you would surely be stuck at your computer at all possible times, planting pumpkins and whatnots, earning points and money that have no real value anywhere but in your little head that doesn’t grasp the big picture. Good girl, yay.”

And then I decided to give Facebook a chance. And since I found absolutely nothing to do there, I thought: “what the heck, I’ll just pop into Farmville for a sec and see what all the fuss is about.”

Surely you can see where this is headed.

Yes, I’m a Farmville junky. I cannot resist planting little raspberries and strawberries and cotton and daffodils and wheat and buying cows and sheep and chickens and putting them in the den and getting presents and putting them under the Christmas tree and harvesting apple trees and lemon trees and peach trees and getting money for it all and buying more stuff and sheltering animals and hatching mystery eggs and Jesusiambonkers.

It is always funny when an American tries to read some text in Latin. It’s especially funny when it happens on screen. Usually it’s priests and such, trying to act all serious while reading “in nomine patris et filiis et spiritus sancti”, but you know, the pronunciation is messed up. I’m not accusing anyone of being stupid or anything. But it’s fun.

There is a lot of American Latin on Buffy. It’s hilarious. They read the passages, make serious faces, but they are so far off the side of Latin that is Latin that it diminishes the awe that I should be feeling. You know the drill: the end of the world is nigh, bad things are happening, people are dying… but then Angel starts reading something in Latin and you can’t help but smile.

I’m observant like that.

Procession of Alexander the Great Large Plaque

I am always amused by engrish. It’s like language without rules.

Think of the possibilities!

Today in psychology class a girl sat near me wearing a yellowish hoodie with skulls, angels and asparagus (?) on it. And on her right sleeve, just big enough for me to read it three people away, was the text:

Ahem.

I got flashbacks of all the clothes I have seen that have major WTF writings on them. I know I myself have had tees with what looks like a poem on them, but is actually the result of some Chinese kid’s play of lets-flip-the-dictionary-and-pick-random-words.

I wish I would still have the shirt I had when I was 10 that had some good 20 long lines on it. I remember I tried to read it and afterwards felt like I was the stupidest person alive because I could not understand anything. I dreamt of the day I would be able to decipher that wretched code, get to the bottom of that – no doubt – meaningful and deep message, and get on with my life. That day never came, of course.

And just to continue on the subject of randomness, here’s a picture of a chair I like:

Summer of 2005. Oh, that was one good summer. We were in camp (sort of) and in love with David Bowie’s Space Oddity. On the first picture: me and PB on a field outside our camp residence, gathering flowers to win the clean-up-your-rooms contest. We won. Our magnificent interior design piece ’Busted Old Bathroom Sink With A Dirty Broken Bucket Containing Some Wild Flowers’ that is shown on the second picture (which also shows my cleavage)  stole the spotlight. Shots by Helmut.

Summer of ‘09 went down the drain, I guess. Well, I’d better make up for it in 2010.

Holy shit, it’s 2010 in a few months already! Wasn’t the turn of the century just a few years ago? Man, I hate the fact that I can say things like ‘oh, that happened 10 years ago’ or even ‘man, that was 20 years ago’. I’m getting old.

I’m getting old! I mean I am 21. This year I had my last meaningful birthday. Now I can legally drink vodka and gamble. Yay. The next big birthday is my 30th, which is in 9 years and in the meantime I have to accomplish something. Well, next year I’ll get my BA. Then it’s straight to some other school where I can learn something that is actually useful. So that’s 4 years planned ahead right there. Then maybe I want a Master’s Degree. That’s 2 more years. So that makes 6 years. Which gives me 3 years to get a “grown-up life”. And then I’m 30. And then I’ll get 16 kids and 7 divorces.

Now that sounds sad. I gotta make some changes as I go along, otherwise I’ll greet my 30th birthday as a vegetable. I like cucumbers, though.

Ooh that smell.

Can’t you smell that smell?

It’s a baby hedgehog. At first I thought someone had made this as a toy. Because… well, it doesn’t seem real that something could be as cute as this little baby. Right?

From here.

JOIK is an Estonian producer of eco-friendly candles and spa products. Their products smell so good you cannot believe it. All of the products are handmade in Estonia and, apart from the candles, they are all made from 100% natural ingredients.

I have their grapefruit-tangerine body lotion with carrot oil and every time I use it I fight the temptation of eating the whole thing. It just smells so good! And it leaves your skin so smooth and soft. I love their products. The body scrub with coffee and brown sugar looks like something you can spread on bread and munch away. I want it.