Saan's doing a little happy dance behind her pc at the moment due to no homework except for the Potato Project for the first three days of the week, the upcoming fall festival and a whole Wednesday of No School! So there's time for: -friends (verrry important) -poi (enthusiasm will probably have dampened some after an hour of still not getting the alternate butterfly right) -sleeping late with no three am wakeup call from the hair dryer (*locks herself up in room*) -writing stuff that's not for the blog (So far that one sucks and it won't get any better due to monthly transfer limit approaching and a Favor Owed) -considering going back to her embroidery for a few minutes (She's stuck. Poor her.) -the Potato Project (MS Word Table wrestling, advanced level) -Figuring out what to do about the T-shirt (XXXL. It makes for comfy jammies, though)
Maths was boring today, Saan had a scrap of paper lying about, this is what came out. There is a Special Edition Paint Shop Pro Version, which I won't be posting due to absolute horridness and hippie patterns. This didn't take long to scan because Saan's brother scanned it in for her and his pc does not eat scans for breakfast.
Cookies are strange things. They're bad for you, but everyone eats them. There's dozens of kinds of 'em, and they're all different. And some of them (or those in Saan's house) have super powers (Special thanks to Philou for this idea), such as: teleportation, invisibility, mind-control and auto-multiplication when eaten or liked. Allow Saan to elaborate on this theory.
Teleportation: They were in the cookie-cupboard a minute ago. Now they're on Saan's brother's desk/in her father's car/mother's schoolbag/sister's mouth and no one knows how they got there. Disappearance at point A, reappearance at point B. Can occur with entire boxes, snack packs or single cookies.
Invisibility: Last night, there were two full boxes left. Now, both boxes are gone, and there's just this wee little package left, hidden in a faraway corner. No one knows where they're now. Disappearance at point A, no reappearance whatsoever. Or Saan's got a problem with invisible mutant rats that eat cardboard, plastic wrappers and large amounts of chemical conservants, colorants and flavors without leaving crumbs and show no interest in things like bags of flour or sugar. Sometimes the box does reappear, in the wastebasket, neatly folded, with the top and bottom torn open. If it's mutant rats, they're neat freaks.
Mind-control: When looking for a snack, Saan tells herself she'll eat one Oreo and leave the rest for after her schoolwork. Three snack-packs later, she's still munching away while a tiny voice in the back of her mind keeps suggesting she take 'one more'.
Auto-Multiplication: When Eaten: This happens mostly with adults. They eat one 50 gr cookie a day, and still manage to gain more weight than the actual cookies together by the end of the month. Keeping in mind that according to the laws of chemistry you cannot gain or lose mass during a reaction, auto-multiplication is the only explanation. When Liked: This happens to kids. They find a new kind of cookie, usually one that was eaten at a friend's house, eat it and go 'Hey, this isn't that bad' within earshot of an adult. Three days later, there's five family packs of the new treat sitting with the groceries, and both mother and father insist they did not buy them when their significant other asks.
That being said, Saan's gonna eat one more Prince Mini Star (black and white variety) and go wash her hair.
PMS brings on strange cravings for some women, most of them not so good for the accompanying cramps. Saan could just sum it up with one word for her: Easter. You see, Easter, just like the premenstrual syndrome, is purely: -Chocolate, sugar-shelled eggs with creamy fillings and greasy, sandwich-like, sugary breads, blessed or not. -Döner kebab. Not quite sure how that'll fit in there, but it probably does, somehow. -The urge to huddle under the covers and not come out of bed for the day. -The weather either too hot, too cold or too wet. -The phone ringing more than it seems to do when it's not your turn to pick up. -Getting your clothes stained with deodorant somehow. -The absolute, resounding 'no' to all kinds of physical excercise. -The demand for flannel sheets with mice on it. Big enough for a bed with room for two. -Five-minute-lasting good intentions. -Not finding your mom until you've solved it yourself. -The urge to stay home and NOT see your family. And last but not least: -An excuse for your behavior.
(Tuesday=cleanup day. Saan's collecting her mess from all over the house tonight, so the post's short.)
The blog's passed the five hundred visitor mark today and no one got horribly mutilated during Chemistry. Saan's making use of the occasion to thank everyone checking back here regularly and clean up her pc's hard disk. It's getting a wee bit full. Part of her folders are getting placed onto The Stick (tm) and most of her photos are going to the home network server, which has all the room Saan needs in its 300 GB of space. And her brother's messing with the electricity again, so the post's short in case we have troubles again. See ya.
Tomorrow saan has her first practical chermistry lesson of the year. In preparation, she got to look up the R- and S-factors of all used substances got looked up. This is meant to be a safety precaution, but Saan suspects it's meant to scare students into not trying anything funny. The first substance alone had the need for gloves, lab coat and safety goggles. The down part to the last is that Saan can't use them safely; she can't see further than two feet without her own glasses. If you put on safety goggles, they slide off and generally don't protect much. Ergo, no goggles for anyone wearing glasses already. The second substance goes so far as to have the safety suggestion that a facial protection mask can also be a smart idea. Both substances require medical advice if contact with the eyes is established. One also tells you to go to the doc if you have an accident with it or start feeling unwell. Eek, much. Risk factors: irritation to the eyes, skin and breathing system. Causes burns. Danger for a serious eye injury.
So, if there's no post tomorrow, an accident happened or Saan's lab partner poisoned her.
Saan was going to write something today, but she hasn't any inspiration. Brain storming gets results like 'World Peace', 'Love', 'Rain Worms', 'Sweet Little Rabbits with Flies On Their Noses' (And only Dutch-speaking BeNeLux inhabitants who regularly listen to the radio will get that one). So there's no post today. Not about fluffy rabbits, or newspaper misprints, or commong motives for murder. Not even about the wicked vanilla pudding her mom made two nights back, or how she managed a freaky move that looks a bit like One On Each Side today, with her poi, though it was lots of fun to look at. She could talk about her new socks, which are blue, fluffy, soft and excellent for sliding across hardwood floors (she did the test on her bedroom floor and catapulted herself into the bed), but that about sums it up. Or, perhaps, she could count all the pieces of her sister's puzzle on the table, but the box says it are five hundred. It'd be a waste of good typing. Maybe she could beat the Christmas rush and translate the star-song to English, but she can't sing, and it'd end up sounding freaky. She wants to ask if someone knows the recipe for the awesome dessert she just had, but she doesn't know the name, and the waiter wouldn't tell. Or if anyone reading this has any culinary talents. Any suggestions are welcome; it contained lots of chocolate, and biscuit. She could talk about how the fish that kept rising from the dead has finally died and has been flushed through the toilet and how the local humane society will be called in if the drain's clogged with rotting guppy corpses. And then there's the Invisible Bruise on her hip that no one sees, but she does feel every time she gets up, or the headache that mysteriously disappeared after she turned on some music. Oh, and apparently there are total strangers reading this that like what she's writing, which is probably why she kept on typing after the first sentence. Those that hate it can take a very long walk on a short pier and drown. See if Saan gives a damn. Then there's the possibility of a monologue on what's on tv tonight, but without cable, you only have two real options. Saan has had all the French she can handle for one day. She's also wondering on how she's gonna start on her poetic interpretation of Catullus' Carmen something of the Lesbia Lotsofpoems. Reading it over and over makes Saan convinced that a dog later will be less of a pest than a husband. She could put a picture here, but she'd have to spend half an hour fiddling with the scanner and image. She could get started on her St. Nicholas/Christmas/New Years/Birthday-wish list. So far, there's a set of leather finger-straps with ball-chains on it. And some fluffy poi heads to hang onto it, in pink, orange, rainbow or purple. The only problem is that it's too early.
So, sadly enough, there's no post today. Maybe Saan will have more inspiration tomorrow.
At last (on request of the class Y-chromosone), Saan and the rainbow poi. Photographer: sis. Instructor: same sis. Hence the funky eyes and the funky expression. Sadly enough, no real move being done. Saan needs more practice.
Saan's sister's fish are dying, one by one. It started once they added more fish to the three surviving. It usually does. You should, apparently, place the critters in some sort of quarantine before adding them to the others, or you get neurotic orange blobs burying themselves under volcanic-rock-like chunks and getting stuck until they starve to death, diseased fish that foam over, fish that manage to destroy the plants in the aquarium and then roll over and die. Fish that contaminate the water until you've got an empty aquarium.
You should also start off with a few fish, then, slowly, one by one, add more. Eleven-year olds do not have that kind of patience. No, no, they want lots of fish, and quickly, too. They name them, based on their gender and species. We had three guppies called 'Blub', one called 'Blob' and a striped little thing called 'Bloib'. Apparently, the next time Saan's sis gets fish, the plan is to get them from a specialist and inform beforehand.
Saan still thinks that one or two simple goldfish would have worked just as well, but she's alone in that.
Regional elections are coming up over here, and Saan hates it. It means that suddenly everyone working near the city hall in the past four years suddenly has this obsessive need to spread their pictures and slogans no one understands, without permit to do so. TV makes it into something even more hysterical: there apparently is a problem with someone not white trying for mayor, even if he's second on the list and no one but the interviewer and the man's own, discriminated side of the population seems to have any problem at all with, every slight misstep or displeasure of the past four years gets digged up, polished and presented nationwide, every politician is corrupt but apparently, whatever they did to get corrupted improved their city.
Yes, Belgium discriminates; if you are not white or do not look very much like a Japanese tourist, you tend to get discrimated. That a muslim woman may not wear her headscarf while working with, say, machinery, something where that innocent piece of cloth is a very real safety hazard, that's sort of understandable. Why a teacher can't wear it, while a teacher can wear a cross or even jewish symbols of faith seems to be ridiculous. People with darker skin color rarely get shown in the media unless they are A) artists of some kind, celebrities B) criminals, C) presenting children's programs and talking on level with someone who is suffering from severe brain damage, D) eye candy, decoration, something easy to get into bed with, E) representatives of a part of the population with roughly the same cultural back ground during a political conflict, F) people who are no official inhabitants of Belgium, born and raised in Belgium or tourists, G) servants, waiters, janitors, people who do other people's dirty work, H) actors playing to be any of the above. Having an accent even gets you looked at funnily. Wearing uncommon clothing, having a daring hair style is the same as killing (some of) your opportunities in life. Saan has never been asked to show her passport to the nice policemen patrolling in the morning. Some kids from, say, African parentage sometimes get asked a dozen times a day. Belgium is told to have a problem between the south and northern part of it. No one except for politicians (who get bothered by having to print the tax forms in two languages, make every official web site in double) have. If you speak French, German or Dutch, people don't care. Just be Belgian. The fact that there's more trouble with Belgian kids beating foreign-looking kids up than the other way around is no problem.
All politcians are corrupt, no matter where you go. It's always picking either pest or cholera. They also are a different kind of corrupt than most non-politicians who are corrupt. The more they do for society, the more corrupt they are. You lessen the morning traffic jam, you manage to make half the schoolkids eat fruit and ban candy from the schools, you install more watering fountains, everything gets improved, and you'll get re-elected... But you'll be Satan incarnate when the papers get hold of you before the actual election.
So, that's in short, the insanity of Belgian regional elections. Saan is so very happy she's not eighteen yet right now.
September's passed its halfway mark. Saan's gotten past the initial September-Back-To-School-Madness. Her study work is starting to even out, she's getting used to it and starting to come back into the half-coma that is school during the day. The positive part about having all main functions tuned in to studying is that Saan no longer panicking like a maniac when she has more than two subjects to study for. The negative part about it is that it's Sunday, Saan's inspiration is nearing the zero-mark once more and Saan spent her day studying and playing mind-numbing computer games. The kind that makes pong seem like something active and fun. Her MP3-players batteries are dead. The alternate butterfly doesn't work on her left side and she wants to go Nordic walking. Check back tomorrow and you'll probably get something more lively.
Saan can do needlepoint. Honestly. She's got the ring, the needle and the access to lots and lots of patterns. Real handwork shops are few and far inbetween. Most people these days remember their last sewing or embroidery or knitting from school and then don't pass it on. Saan's mom teaches it to thirteen-year olds during their lunch breaks. Around this time of year, that means Saan's mom's busy staring at what her students need and make thirty packets of thread, needle and a patch of fabric with a pattern to go with it. Most of it's bunnies with lady bugs and simple patterns. By the end of the year, she'll loose two-thirds of her class. If she has two boys in her class, she's lucky.
She taught Saan how to do needlepoint at the age of five. Saan didn't actually get interested until she was about thirteen. Then it was on and off. Now, she sleeps with a ring, pattern, and needle in her nighstand. The only down side is that it's not very portable. And Saan's position changes as soon as she gets into it. Half of the time, it ends with people asking why she's lying on her back on her bed with her feet stretched up against the wall and her toes starting to feel oddly numb.
So tonight, the post's gonna stay at this due to Saan getting stuck cutting strips of cardboard, splitting threads and finding needles that tend to travel all over the house somehow.
Saan's post's gonna be real short today 'cause she went to another fair, this time without fireworks or prior planning. She won a pink hippo (yaaay, pink hippo!) and spend the entire night playing puppeteer with it. Her brother's back, so the camera's back, too. More fishes for the fish-bulb tomorrow. To answer the question in last night's comment: Saan's not going anywhere. Deal with it, you territorial dimwit. Also: twenty-fifth birthday (sort of, twenty-five days old) of the blog! *pops kiddy-champagne*
Try this sometime: -SMILE. The creepy, 'I am deliriously happy and you won't understand' smile, bright with threatening enthusiasm. Act as though you mean it. -Should people ask, you're brimming with happiness. Sun is shining, birds are singing, life is insanely good and right and beautiful. Be creative with your reasons. 'It's raining! The plants are getting some water!', 'It's freezing cold! Global heating can't be all that bad!', 'We've got more homework than time! A good reason to stay up late!', or, if it's a particulary dull and everyday day, fall back on things that didn't happen: the house didn't collapse, no earthquakes took place, no weapons of mass destruction to be found. -Be enthusiastic, even if you get the lousiest things to do. As a matter of fact, volunteer for them. Try skipping your way toward them. Keep on smiling. -Be polite. Greet everyone on your way. Shake hands with teachers and classmates. Apologise profusely for the slightest mistakes. Hold open doors, walk on the right side of the stairs and be the last one to leave the lift. -Be positive. You've got a truckload of homework--but it's Friday tomorrow! You're dead tired--but you can go back to sleep in only seven hours of school! The entire world hates you and everything is against you and it isn't fair--but it can always get worse, so cheer up! -Make wide, energetic gestures while doing all of this. Watch people duck. -Motivate people who seem down. Move them into a happier position yourself if need be. -Dance. Shake that booty. Wave your arms around. Make sure you've got no audible music around, or that people can't hear it. It looks freaky. -Hug people. Alternate between sneaking up on people and pouncing with a cry of utter delight. It shocks the bejeesus out of most folks. -Be social. Act interested. Ask embarrasing, intimate or personal questions, but make sure it won't hurt people's feelings.
If it works, you'll find suspiciously little people blocking your way to the places that are often blocked, people walking around you in a wide berth. You'll notice how your peers and elders and even younger people react seemingly unlogically to your giving off positive vibes. Your attempts at making life seem a little less depressive will confuse people and you will not be thanked. You'll probably be asked to quit it and act normal. You'll be given suspicious looks. If you feel like having a day to yourself and not having anyone bother you, try these abovementioned actions. It should work. Really.
Saan was going to post a picture of her with the rainbow poi, but:
1) her brother nicked the good camera 2) the not-good camera didnt have any batteries in it 3) The camera needed 4, and only 2 were fully loaded 4) she has to study for her first test of the year which is tomorrow: Early Poetry in the Roman Empire. Fingers crossed!
How does she know people are reading this? The counter keeps mysteriously gaining numbers even though no one comments on the posts.
Teenagers feel like they know everything. It's genetical or something. Each and every kid above twelve and still not in that phase of life where they realise they know nothing, believes they are omniscient and own the world. Strangely enough, all teenagers disagree on how that world looks like and what are the veritable facts about it. Really quite amusing if you think about it.
When adults get involved, however, adolescent boys and girls seem to form an uninted front: us against the big bad world that doesn't understand us at all. The fact that grownups tend to either come half a decade late with teenage slang, new hypes and what music should be in right now don't exactly inspire confidence when you're trying to convince all these angry teens that they're wrong and the people paying taxes are right. Yes, parents, your children either are, have been or will be laughing behind your back, flushing from acute embarrasment or looking at you in utter disgust. Ninety percent of the time, your actions will have been completely unintentional.
It's apparenlty always been this way, and probably always will. Today's teenagers will grow up and lose sight of new words, hypes and music somewhere inbetween kids, a job, paying off mortages and credit cards and trying to keep some money left to take previously mentioned kids on a holiday during the summer. Said kids prove their thanks by mocking their parents. A popular teenage phrase that has reached the adult front goes pretty much like this: 'Life Sucks, and Then You Die'. Some countries have the phrase that children speak the truest, speak the utter truth, completely ignoring the fact that children learn how to lie almost right after they learn how to form a cohorent sentence and learn that not everyone knows everything. Though, with this one, the kids got it right, or so it would seem.
Parents do notice that their puberty-stricken children disagree with their peers. Differences in interest, hobbies, style and behavior baffle the heebie-jeebies out of everyone old enough to have fathered (or birthed) a thirtheen year old. For example, someone is in love with true, pure contact juggling, someone else takes on something that's closely akin to it, like poi or diabolo or devilsticks or even just staff or double staff. When children express their desire to light up their toys after dousing them in kerosene, the difference between circus tricks becomes more apparent than before. Rugby and soccer, tennis and golf, ice skating and nordic blading, all could do for examples. The concept is roughly the same, but small differences make them either more or less dangerous and thus appealing to both children and parents. Parents of children who are asking for fire-diabolos for Christmas wonder why they didn't get the nice girl next door, who merely wants a set of balls made out of acrylic, or perhaps pvc with LEDs in it.
Children love to astound their parents with their complexity. Psychologists call this 'developing an own personality'. Saan would refer to it as 'that bit of closet sadism that we all cherish and nurture deep inside us'. Basically, a teenager believes that the world runs like they think it does because they know the square root of twenty-five and that their parents, who know how to handle income tax, are ignorant barbarians. They believe this because they are starting to develop a need for an own life (which is legally possible, but hard and would severely limit their chances further in life) and their parents 'won't let them'. The fact that most of these kids don't have a driver's license that is applicable to a motorised vehincle on four or more wheels (A.K.A an automobile) seems a minor detail. The fact that these kids have been living their enitre life on the money that their parents have earned and saved and invested also seems to be unimportant.
But, parents who are reading this, if it's any consolation: as soon as your kid hits eighteen and it's that time of the year where Mr. Government demands payment for its own crimes, you'll have your own chance to be horribly and incohorently complex and confusing towards your children, and receive some graditude for it.
There's an electric grill standing there, I better go do some homework.
Saan is tired. Partly because today was a school day and Saan doesn't like school days because they require more energy than they're worth, partly because Saan's done a lot of homework she shouldn't have done and partly because Saan spent half an hour playing with her rainbow colored poi (there was a picture of Saan finally getting the butterfly2 on Doddles' cell phone but she erased it before Saan could ask her to mail to Saan) trying to get the butterfly1 (-><-) to work after the butterfly2 (<-->) worked). She didn't start sooner because her dad was cleaning up the grill and she needed help dragging the table to the side. One of the downsides of outside eating is that you have to clean up before you can do anything else. Then she remembered she'd screw up on her translation for Latin if she let it lie until tomorrow night. By the time Saan had finished that, the temperatures had dropped and Saan's mom had nicked Saan's thumb hole jacket. When Saan found out about it, it was too dark to go spin her poi. ('Dear St. Nicholas. This year, I'd like the nifty rainbow LED sock poi I saw on HOP, please. Yes, I've been a good girl. No, I do not need sleep.') So now Saan is tired and feeling very abused after having a chunk of ingrown toenail yanked out and being hit by her poi. Strangely enough, poi seems to be a kind of self-abuse that relieves stress and brings you into a very zen-like state. Really. You spend thirty to ninety minutes fighting a set of balls that try to yank your arms from the socket once they go to fast and getting hit in about every part of your body. Mainly those that hurt most. Saan nearly broke her glasses and nearly hit her kneecap wrongly today. But you come out of it feeling refreshed and relaxed. Bruised and sweaty, but relaxed. If you spend another ten minutes staring at the 3 fish in the thirty litre tank, you're practically brain dead. Go on, try it!
This is the Chibi Trick or Treating Fribbin-Dude that Saan drew a few months back. Around last Halloween. Anyone noticed Saan's posts get less and less inspired as the week progresses?
Anyway, Saan'll probably make a new Halloween Chibi around Halloween. Maybe there'll be another doodle like this in here next week. Maybe Saan'll come up with another lame excuse. Maybe it'll rain popsicles tomorrow. Just keep an eye out for it.
At last (on request of the class Y-chromosone), Saan and the rainbow poi. Photographer: sis. Instructor: same sis. Hence the funky eyes and the funky expression. Sadly enough, no real move being done. Saan needs more practice.
This is the Chibi Trick or Treating Fribbin-Dude that Saan drew a few months back. Around last Halloween. Anyone noticed Saan's posts get less and less inspired as the week progresses?
