Could someone please explain to me what possible point there could be to pantyliners…

Ok, any guys out there might not want to read the rest of this – it’s on a “too much information” kind of level. I just need to rant.
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I’ve just realised that the “talking to me” bit of this blog’s headline is somewhat inaccurate, as they don’t actually talk, do they? They effing sing, that’s what. Not content to have driven me to the point of distraction yesterday, J-Lo and LL handed the baton to Åge Aleksandersen who’s been singing “Ungen spring i mot mæ, kjem så lett som i dans” and so on in my head since some time last evening. Aaargh.

And then I get to work and some inconsiderate sod is whistling “Do-re-mi”, which is a particularly gruesome Norwegian Eurovision entry, by Jan Teigen, famous (or notorious) for being the first person ever to receive 0 points all together in the international final (though not for that song). Come to think of it, all his entries (he’s been sent to the final more times than I care to remember) are particularly gruesome. I do not want him in my head singing any of them.

In case you hadn’t noticed: There’s now a snazzy set of links to the archived Little Voices posts by category down the bottom of the menu on the right. Not sure all the categories make sense, but there you are. There’s a similar list in the Currently Reading section, categorised by author. In case it comes in handy.

One of the things I am really good at is bullshitting. I mean I’m really good at giving the impression that I’m talking sense and fact when I’m seriously just making it up as I go along and really have very little idea of what I am talking about. Maybe this is a better candidate for my “pet sin” than anything else, I am, at least, a little dubious as to the wisdom of telling the world about this, as a lot of people might start wondering whether to take me seriously in future, and my employer might start wondering whether I really deserve the salary I’m getting (regarding the latter: just consider how useful this ability to spout utter nonsense that sounds like sense is in a customer-facing situation. It means I can give the impression of having all the answers just off the cuff and buy myself time to actually go off and check before comitting myself to anything one way or the other. Believe me, I’ve been doing this for all of my life, I know what I am talking about).

Let me give you an example of how this works: I tend to know a little about most things. I also know a lot about choice subjects (whisky and Jane Austen are two that spring to mind), but not necessarily the most useful ones. So I babble. At school I had a tendency to have a good grasp on history as “story”. I.e. I knew why things happened, what the consequences were of this that and the other and generally in which order they happened, too. However, I did not have any grasp whatsoever on dates and names. My brain just doesn’t pick them up easily and I couldn’t be bothered to work much at memorising them. So I got very, very good at writing essays without mentioning a single name or date, with sentences constructed in such a way that this omission seemed entirely natural and that obvioulsy I knew these facts and could have put them on paper if I wanted, but that I considered them to be too blindingly obvious to bother writing them down. With the result that I consistently got decent grades, not top marks, as for that I would have actually needed to include some names and dates, but not as bad as I probably deserved. And when, for once, I had sat down before a test and really learnt the relevant dates and names (the test was on the unified Germany – all I remember now is “late 19th C.” and Bismarck – actually, I didn’t remember Bismarck, I had to go look the name up just now – given time I probably would have remembered – I do most days – but I couldn’t be bothered to wait) and put as many of them as I possibly could into the essay and was rewarded by an excellent grade and the unforgettable comment from my teacher “This is what I have been waiting for, Robin. I mean, I know you always know all these facts, but normally you don’t manage to put them down on paper.” Yeah, right.

Anyway, Saturday night I found myself spouting bullshit again. I was at this party and somehow or other one of the guys found out that I worked with computers and wanted to have a long, involved discussion with me about OSs and such. Well, you know, always happy to oblige and all that. Just as I was admonishing myself (though silently, of course): “Where did all that come from? You know you have no idea what you are talking about, really, don’t you? Then why do you keep talking nonsense?” he started complimenting me on being really smart. Ok, so it was late and all, but still. The funny thing, of course, is that as compliments go it wasn’t very successful as, despite me mumbling some form of “Thanks”, a more accurate description of my thoughts at the time would be something like “You really fell for that bullshit? You poor sucker.” (Uhm, if you’re reading this, I apologise. If it’s any comfort, you’re not alone, I don’t think very highly of other people’s intelligence as a rule. I’m an arrogant bitch, really, you see. My outward sweetness – what little there is of it – is all a front.) It was quite an interesting discussion for a late night party conversation topic, though. (Geek, me? Whatever gave you that idea?) In fact it was a pretty good party, and a pretty late one, too, I got to bed at some point between 4 and 5 in the morning, but that’s beside the point.

Voice in mye head: Åge Aleksandersen – Eldorado

I just looked a film up in Halliwell’s (To Have and Have Not, which is on TCM at the moment, I decided against watching it, though), and suddenly remembered a couple of other things I had meant to check (when did The Philadelphia Story get made? (1940) and when did they do the musical remake, High Society? (1956) The Halliwell reviewer hates the latter, but I like it – mainly for “Well, did you eva’?”, but whatever) and while I was flicking through I came across one review that made me laugh out loud (not very unusual as far as Halliwell’s goes, one of the reasons I like it is the reviews are quite often more amusing than the films). The film is called Viking Women (I have no idea why I started reading about it, I mean, you can tell immediately that the film’s not worth seeing, really, can’t you?), and the synopsis is “A group of Viking women set sail in search of their men, who went on an expedition three years before.” Doesn’t sound very promising, does it? Or realistic, for that matter, but I suspect that wasn’t the plan in any case. Anyway, this is what the reviewer has to say:

This claims to be ‘The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent’. Viking women, it turns out, are all leggy, slim blondes who wear skin-tight leather and plenty of eye-liner, and look incapable of even fixing their own make-up.

Gotta love ’em, really.

My bed is only 80 cm wide. Normally this is not a problem, in fact, as I sleep flat on my back and have a small apartment a bigger bed would just be a waste of space. However, at the moment I’m getting increasingly of the opinion that another 10 or 20 centimetres would not be a bad thing. See, it’s suddenly summer. And it is way too warm to sleep underneath a duvet. On the other hand, I can’t just put the duvet away in a cupboard or something, because at some point during the night, it normally gets cool enough that I want to cover parts of me. My shoulders, normally. So the duvet has to be there, squashed up against the wal like a fat sausage. And, frankly, it’s in the way.

Maybe I could get one of those duvets for babies? Nine nights out of ten it really is just my shoulders I want to cover, and a baby-duvet would do the trick. Then I could at least put the other one on a chair or something and only get it if the temperature suddenly drops.

Or would that just be weird? (On the other hand, do I care?)

Voices on the stereo: Bon Jovi – Stick to Your Guns

I think I’m giving up on the Monday Mission from now on, it’s too wordy, and my answers just seem too short in comparison to make it worth the bother. In any case, I’ve found this other site called “The Daily Double” – first through anja – which offers something for every day of the week. We’ll see how it goes.

1. What is your favorite body part on others?
Uhm. Eyes? Hands, maybe? Nape of the neck? What sort of question is this, anyway? Depends on the other person, really, I mean, it sort of changes from person to person, doesn’t it? One person has a nice ass and someone else has gorgeous hair and so on. The eyes are what I look at first (on anyone), the nape of the neck normally the bit I am most tempted to touch (on guys, that is). Does that answer the question?

2. If you can have plastic surgery, where would you get it?
I wouldn’t. Thanks. I’m not squeamish – not afraid of surgery or needles or anything – I just think it’s pointless.

But I guess it is, there’s a Monday Mission, anyway.

1. In my work Outlook inbox, I have 343 unread email messages. Most of them are newsletters I’ve subscribed to but not had time to read. It is a bit intimidating at this point, and I am tempted to delete them all and start fresh. But I am that way in many things, relationships, art projects, and more. Have you even just totally trashed something you were working on because it wasn’t going the way you wanted? What happened? Did you start over again? Was it
better?

In one of my mail folders I have 2492 unread messages, and that’s just one mailing list. I regularly trash a large amount of them, and only dip in to read the occasional one. I don’t want to unsubscribe, though.

I don’t think I’ve ever completely trashed something I was working on, though. Actually, that’s not entirely true, I have scrapped large chunks of code that weren’t working and started coding from a fresh angle, and that tends to be a good idea.

2. My friend was contacted out of the blue by someone from High School at his work e-mail. He wondered how someone found him and I told him to try putting his own name in Google.com to see what happens. Have you ever contacted an old friend out of the blue over the internet? How did it go? Have any old friends or lovers ever contacted you? Did it flatter you or freak you out?

I’ve tried to locate people I’ve lost touch with due to too many moves and not enough Christmas-card sending, but haven’t been all that successful (it helps if people have unusual names, the people in question didn’t). I was contacted pretty much out of the blue by an old pen-pal who’d found me on ICQ, and I was pleased to hear from him again, he used to write some good letters. The contact sort of petered out again, though. With e-mail there’s less of the obligation of “I had a letter from you, now it’s my turn to write” and therefore it’s a lot easier to just never get around to sending a message, somehow.

3. I am the forgetful type. I need lists. I need notes. Oddly, I’ve found if I write something down to remember it, the mere act of writing makes me remember it and I seldom ever refer back to the paper again. What is the most important thing that you have ever forgotten? Did it have any negative results? How did it all turn out?

What is the most important thing I have ever forgotten? Hm. I can’t really think of anything “important”. I once forgot to go to a concert I had a ticket for, which annoyed me greatly, both because I wanted to see the concert and because the ticket was obviously a waste of money seeing as I didn’t use it, but it didn’t have any consequences beyond that.

4. In America, we are currently suffering through an overdose of “reality” programs on television. Survivor, Fear Factor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother, The Bachelor and so on. Which of the “reality” television programs do you think you would have a chance at winning? Why? Would you ever actually consider signing up for one? Have you?

(Not only in America…) I might do alright in one of the survivor type things, I’m stubborn enough. I’d guess I probably don’t have the physical strength for some of the tasks, though, not that I really know what it is they get up to, I avoid reality shows like the plague. The only “reality” shows I watch are things like Idol/Fame Academy, and I would certainly have no chance at winning those.

And I’d never sign up.

5. Do you allow commenting on your blog? Why? Have you ever considered removing/adding that function? What was one of the worst situations you’ve found yourself in due to blog comments?

I like comments. I haven’t attracted any nasty ones yet, only some very weird ones. I don’t think I’d ever remove the function, I’d probably just laugh at any flamers anyway, so they’d be quite likely to give up trying to bug me.

6. Have you found any cool shareware/freeware applications/scripts/tools recently? Yeah? Tell me more!

Editpad is my new favourite text editor. That’s kinda cool. Other than that, Movable Type, of course, but that’s hardly a surprise, is it? (I LOVE MT!)

7. I’ve mentioned it here before, but one of my favorite terms I’ve heard a Minster use was when he refereed to a “pet sin.” Which is when you live your life right for the most part, but you have this one secret thing, this one bad thing that you do that is wrong for you to do, that you won’t give up, even though you know you should (and sometime criticize others for doing). Now I am not asking to know what it is, but do you have a “pet sin?” When did it start? Are you trying to give it up, or are you just reconciled to the fact that you will always have it? Would anyone think less of you if they knew about it?

Procrastination is hardly a sin, is it? I can’t think of anything else that I do that I really shouldn’t, certainly not anything I do in secret.

Mission accomplished. I’ve been out rollerblading. And how. It was fun, and, I suspect, good for me (judging from the way my muscles are registering their protest at being woken up and made to work). Linda knew this route that she’s gone round a couple of times before, so we thought we might as well do that one (the drawback to setting off at random is that there is no telling what the state of the roads is going to be like, and decent paving is pretty essential). I’ve amused myself with scanning maps to show you the route, so you can all go “Wow!” or “Pft, that’s nothing!” depending on your inclination. We set off from Linda’s, marked 1, and made our way along the pink line. When we got to the point marked 2, we agreed that it would be pretty much a waste of time for me to go the rest of the way back down to Linda’s, so we split up. At that point I was on a roll (literally) so I thought I’d just go on a little further, a few more blocks or so, before I changed to sandals and got the bus home. Well, I obviously ended up blading all the way home, where I arrived with my face a nice lobstery shade – and cursed the stairs all the way up.

Now for the monday mission, and then that second coat of paint for the table, and I will feel very smug indeed.

Voice on the tv: Frank Sinatra – New York, New York (he has momentarily drowned out J-Lo and LL who’ve been singing “Oh, my pride is all that I have – Pride is what you had, baby, not what you have” or whatever it is they sing (that’s what I hear) in my head all day and have been driving me mad)