death is serious business.

and as such, it kinda annoys me to see people messing around with it. take michael jackson's passing, for example. now i know a lot of people - and i mean a lot - who mentioned him and his "great contribute to music and to art" in their blogs, who wrote on their i.m. nicknames stuff like "r.i.p. michael jackson" or "you will be missed, m.j." and i think, oh, come on, give me a fucking break. some of them don't even have the most remote idea of what "r.i.p." means, for christ's sake. and most of them (think i could risk say all of them, but let's be optimistic) couldn't care lass about his songs either, for them michael jackson was some singer from the past who became famous as the black guy who tried so hard to become white. people just talk because every god damned soul in the planet is talking about it. and hey, i'm no michael jackson fan or something (don't even like his songs, even though i admit they some of them are quite good), but it kinda annoys me anyway. in the end, what happened was as simple as this: a decadent guy died. period. will happen to all of us. the difference is, no one is gonna talk about us, or make spontaneous gatherings in madison square garden.

but talking about death, i've been willing to write this lately: one thing that annoys me even more in the subject of death is the eulogy. no one ever makes a sincere eulogy. everyone always hides in the safety of the common place: "farewell, you will be missed, you were such a great person", yada yada yada. most of times it is bullshit all along, and if god was paying just a little bit of attention to that display of hypocrisy being played at his own church, he would smite them all to kingdom come (thankfully he has better things to do). i mean, seriously: if i think that x. is a rotten son of a bitch, why on earth do i have to praise him when he dies? don't count on me for that: x. will get something like "farewell, x., i can't say i will miss you because i won't, see you in hell one of these days." and please do the same for me when i'm the one kicking the bucket. don't go all sentimental saying "farewell, john, you were a great person", because i'm not great, nor do i want to be. i'd rather go with "bye bye, have fun, you selfish bastard. you were not hitler or something but hey, no one's perfect and you were definitely far from being perfect". say whatever you like, but please be honest - and crude, and rough, if that's what it takes. in the end, that's the greatest tribute you can give to someone who has died.

and now i look around and everything reminds me of you. sorting out the mess of my bedroom will be one of the hardest things i've ever done.

a guess:

a couple, a portuguese guy and a norwegian girl, goes to the beach in southern portugal. which one of them gets sunburned?

... i knew my life had a quite sarcastic sense of humour, but it could well spare my shoulders' skin.

honesty and lies.

i cannot translate this, unfortunately - i'm not sure whether i lack the inspiration, the vocabulary, or (most likely) both. but it is, by far, the most brilliant thing i've read in the blog-world in quite a long time.

i've said that before (but i'm too lazy to find the links). many people seem to think that an absolute sincerity, or honesty, is a virtue. it is not; it is actually a curse. and the author is right: a couple made of two absolutely honest people is not heaven, but hell. human relationships value the truth, but they survive out of lies; and without those lies, they simply come crashing down. this applies for working relationships, family relationships, friendly relatioships, and, obviously, to love relationships (they are absolutely necessary in the last two). i don't even need to give examples to illustrate this, but anyway. some things, like silly thoughts that cross our mind in a second, or minor doubts, are irrelevant for us - and telling them to the other is like calling upon a storm that both could avoid so easily. some thoughts, altough true and necessary for the relationship, cannot be told the way they come to our mind - let's face it, our inner mind, as brilliant as it might be, it's not famous for its subtlety, and it often lacks touch. when we forget this, we often ruin something that must be said by the way we said it. form overlapping the content. the medium cannot always be the message itself - or, leaving macluhan and getting back into context, the way we say things shall not overcome the meaning we want to convey, or the meaning will be lost in the static and a misunderstanding will surface and...

... and we all know how these things end.

we cannot expect absolute honesty from others because, in the end, we are never absolutely honest, not even with ourselves. there is nothing wrong with that, it doesn't mean that we are bad persons and are going to burn in hell when we die.. nor does it mean that we are unworthy of trust. it merely means that we're humans, and as such, we struggle for survival - even for social survival. try speaking the truth all the time, and see how long you will last in your social circles.

had to post this:

YOUNG MAN
No, forget it, it's too risky. I'm through doin' that shit.

YOUNG WOMAN
You always say that, the same thing every time: never again, I'm through, too dangerous.

YOUNG MAN
I know that's what I always say. I'm always right too, but --

YOUNG WOMAN
-- but you forget about it in a day or two --

YOUNG MAN
-- yeah, well, the days of me forgittin' are over, and the days of me rememberin' have just begun.

YOUNG WOMAN
When you go on like this, you know what you sound like?

YOUNG MAN
I sound like a sensible fucking man, is what I sound like.

YOUNG WOMAN
You sound like a duck.
Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack...

YOUNG MAN
Well take heart, 'cause you're never gonna hafta hear it again. Because since I'm never gonna do it again, you're never gonna hafta hear me quack about how I'm never gonna do it again.

YOUNG WOMAN
After tonight.

YOUNG MAN
Correct. I got all tonight to quack.

WAITRESS
Can I get anybody anymore coffee?

YOUNG WOMAN
Oh yes, thank you.

YOUNG MAN
I'm doin' fine.

YOUNG MAN
I mean the way it is now, you're takin' the same fuckin' risk as when you rob a bank. You take more of a risk. Banks are easier! Federal banks aren't supposed to stop you anyway, during a robbery. They're insured, why should they care? You don't even need a gun in a federal bank. I heard about this guy, walked into a federal bank with a portable phone, handed the phone to the teller, the guy on the other end of the phone said: "We got this guy's little girl, and if you don't give him all your money, we're gonna kill 'er."

YOUNG WOMAN
Did it work?

YOUNG MAN
Fuckin' A it worked, that's what I'm talkin' about! Knucklehead walks in a bank with a telephone, not a pistol, not a shotgun, but a fuckin' phone, cleans the place out, and they don't lift a fuckin' finger.

YOUNG WOMAN
Did they hurt the little girl?

YOUNG MAN
I don't know. There probably never was a little girl -- the point of the story isn't the little girl. The point of the story is they robbed the bank with a telephone.

YOUNG WOMAN
You wanna rob banks?

YOUNG MAN
I'm not sayin' I wanna rob banks, I'm just illustrating that if we did, it would be easier than what we been doin'.

YOUNG WOMAN
So you don't want to be a bank robber?

YOUNG MAN
Naw, all those guys are goin' down the same road, either dead or servin' twenty.

YOUNG WOMAN
And no more liquor stores?

YOUNG MAN
What have we been talking about? Yeah, no-more-liquor-stores. Besides, it ain't the giggle it usta be. Too many foreigners own liquor stores. Vietnamese, Koreans, they can't fuckin' speak English. You tell 'em: "Empty out the register," and they don't know what it fuckin' means. They make it too personal. We keep on, one of those gook motherfuckers' gonna make us kill 'em.

YOUNG WOMAN
I'm not gonna kill anybody.

YOUNG MAN
I don't wanna kill anybody either. But they'll probably put us in a situation where it's us of them. And if it's not the gooks, it these old Jews who've owned the store for fifteen fuckin' generations. Ya got Grandpa Irving sittin' behind the counter with a fuckin' Magnum. Try walkin' into one of those stores with nothin' but a telephone, see how far it gets you. Fuck it, forget it, we're out of it.

YOUNG WOMAN
Well, what else is there, day jobs?

YOUNG MAN
Not this life.

YOUNG WOMAN
Well what then?

YOUNG MAN
Garçon! Coffee!

YOUNG MAN
This place.

WAITRESS
"Garçon" means boy.

YOUNG WOMAN
Here? It's a coffee shop.

YOUNG MAN
What's wrong with that? People never rob restaurants, why not? Bars, liquor stores, gas stations, you get your head blown off stickin' up one of them. Restaurants, on the other hand, you catch with their pants down. They're not expecting to get robbed, or not as expecting.

YOUNG WOMAN
I bet in places like this you could cut down on the hero factor.

YOUNG MAN
Correct. Just like banks, these places are insured. The managers don't give a fuck, they're just tryin' to get ya out the door before you start pluggin' diners. Waitresses, forget it, they ain't takin' a bullet for the register. Busboys, some wetback gettin' paid a dollar fifty a hour gonna really give a fuck you're stealin' from the owner. Customers are sittin' there with food in their mouths, they don't know what's goin' on. One minute they're havin' a Denver omelette, next minute somebody's stickin' a gun in their face.

YOUNG MAN
See, I got the idea last liquor store we stuck up. 'Member all those customers kept comin' in?

YOUNG WOMAN
Yeah.

YOUNG MAN
They you got the idea to take everybody's wallet.

YOUNG WOMAN
Uh-huh.

YOUNG MAN
That was a good idea.

YOUNG WOMAN
Thank you.

YOUNG MAN
We made more from the wallets then we did the register.

YOUNG WOMAN
Yes we did.

YOUNG MAN
A lot of people go to restaurants.

YOUNG WOMAN
A lot of wallets.

YOUNG MAN
Pretty smart, huh?

YOUNG WOMAN
Pretty smart.
I'm ready, let's go, right here, right now.

YOUNG MAN
Remember, same as before, you're crowd control, I handle the employees.

YOUNG WOMAN
Got it.

YOUNG WOMAN
I love you, Pumpkin.

YOUNG MAN
I love you, Honey Bunny.

PUMPKIN (yelling to all)
Everybody be cool this is a robbery!

HONEY BUNNY
Any of you fuckin' pricks move and I'll execute every one of you motherfuckers! Got that?

(pulp fiction, by quentin tarantino)

this is one of those posts that might well fuck me up one day,

but screw it: can someone please tell that lady who works here at the office that i am not the least interested on the bullshit she's spitting out every five minutes?

A great, great movie:

barry lyndon, 1975, directed by stanley kubrick. talk about stories well told. a masterpiece. but hey, we're talking about kubrick. the man couldn't do less than a masterpiece anyway.

restarting life in technicolor (II)

one week later. life restarted in technicolor at the airport that evening. like a movie sequence.

hold on: i said one week? time lost its meaning, if you ask me. it feels like a lifetime. it truly feels like a lifetime. it might seem strange, but somehow for me it makes perfect sense. challenging all odds. everything feels natural, flowing like a river through the course it shaped for itself through mud and rock ages ago. a dream in technicolor. something like an old movie: charming and with a great plot. nowadays no one knows how to write decent movies, have you noticed it? our own is good though, even though it is not entirely written yet: we're writing it as we go. i don't know where our writing will lead us. but i can tell you i really want to find out with you.

restarting life in technicolor

resuming emission in six hours.

a song out of darkness (IV and V*)

*because last week i forgot something. anyway. choices for today are rather obvious - and good, very good:

the gloaming (a draft).

they say things change in the dark. the dark, feared since the dawn of men, as the sun falls below the line of the horizon and the starlit void beyond is unfolded in the sky. elemental balance, said the god who created the night, darkness to be the counterpart of the light that heralds life in its brilliance and warmth.

it is said that the creation of the night - and everything it implied - brought the war between the gods, the twilight of the world. truth be told, darkness is not the perfect counterpart of light, for light includes a part of darkness already, by casting shadows. darkness, however, is different than shadows - these are only cast under the light, as if the goddess wanted us to remember that we always have a darker side that sometimes is revealed. but darkness thrives for itself, feeds on itself, endures by itself. in darkness, there is no light and as such, in darkness, no shadow can exist.

darkness brought death to the world. and eventually it brought the war that nearly made it collapse. we sided with the forces of light and fought hard against the demons, against the horrors unleashed by the dark god. we rejoiced with our victories and suffered with our defeats. we conquered land with our own blood, and spilled demonic blood with the tip of our spears. we lost land and lifes to their massive onslaughts. but we pressed on. we always pressed on. until the moment when everything seemed lost, and the dark god made it all stop by confronting the light goddess. by killing each other, they brought us peace. a tenuous piece, in a world forever changed. forever ravaged.

with time, many wounds were healed. but not all. half of the known world was gone, either wasted by the gods' deadly sway or sank below the oceans in the last attempt to make things right. and in the half that remained... some wounds went on bleeding. most of the surviving nations ignored them - either because they were so far away, or because they were too busy fighting among themselves. as ever.

so we took into our hands the task of cleansing the remaining darkness. and there we went, to the distant south. we made our home among the ashes and the trees that remained. we crawled on stagnant water. and we vanished from the rest of the world, hiding in the shadow, ultimately becoming shadows ourselves. shadows of what we once were. shadows to fight the darkness, and the horrors that crawled in the land of eternal gloaming.

(...)

- eren shadowfall

old people.

i like old people.

i always did. maybe because the place where i've grown up, a village deep in the countryside, a wide area of scattered population that cannot hold the young any more. the old remain. either for emotional attachement to the land where they lived their entire life, or for lacking the will to go somewhere else, even when their children - now adults - ask them. there's something special about old people. especially in the countryside. the way they talk, so simple and sweet, so pure. the way how the smallest things can cheer them up. the importance they give to traditions and gestures that we consider old-fashioned. their practical spirit. and above all, their imense knowledge, made of things that were never learned in school. and how they enjoy talking about it.

all this came to me as i was talking to an old man who works here at the office. some random chat about the weather made us talk about our homeland. and i saw his gray eyes shining as he talked about the land where he grew up, where he still holds a small piece of land that grows some vegetables. i couldn't help notice the smile on his lips, longing for that part of his life that is now so far away, and yet it is still there for him, welcoming him whenever he returns. it made me think about your smile, your long lost smile that opened whenever something amused you. it made me think about your weary eyes, always somewhat sad, remembering a long life. i wonder about the things you've seen, the things you've lived. about the things you've never told me because only too late i realised that i was the one who should break your walls of silence. and now i miss you.

there are wounds that even time cannot mend.

yes, i'm away,

but i can't resist leaving you this:

"Where exactly do you take your socks off? My advice is to take them off right after your shoes, and before your trousers. That’s the sock gap. Miss it, and suddenly you’re a naked man in socks. No self-respecting woman will ever let a naked man in socks do the squelchy with her." in "Coupling"

taken from the blog the sock gap 2. will link it soon, when i'm definitely back and this blog has a facelift. so to speak.