Surprise - I'm angry!

yep. sure.

it's one of those days when things just fuck up. at least seem to fuck up. But after a while when its getting darker, after a glass of wine it all seems better. Why wince over higher rents, expensive dentist bills, disappointing love affairs when a family of bears will be killed just because they are talking a walk somewhere in the woods, but a bit to close to another species.
That fucking species that invented nuclear power,weapons - that spreads disease, pollution, hatred and evil. That is by 80% full of evil and himself.

that's all for today

(and by the way a friend of mine once said, something really smart - a disappointing affair is like a classic cold, it hits you bad, you suffer but you'll always get over it in a couple of days. With swollen runny eyes, yes.)

(and for the record: my teeth are fucking perfect!)

SURVIVAL KIT

SURVIVAL KIT FILM PROGRAMM
September 4, Dirty Deal Cafe
19:30 – 24:00 Films by Isabell Spengler in RIGA WHITE NIGHT program
Screenings: 19:30 A, 20:15 B, 21:00 A, 21:45 B, 22:30 A, 23:15 B/ Entrance free
September 5, Cinema Riga
19:30 Isabell Spengler’s Talk "Surviving Hollywood" & selected films
September 6
16:30 Tanja Ostojić’s Talk “Crossing Borders: Development of Diverse Artistic Strategies”
In EU House
19:30 Cinema Riga
Open Studio of New Belgrade Chronicle: Gazela Settlement
Tanja Ostojić, 2006, 6’
Naine - a woman
Eléonore de Montesquiou, D/ EST 2009, 15’10
Our Pride and Glory
Meggie Schneider, D 2009, 13’
Critical Review on Icelandic Power Structures
Nina Lassila, 2009, 15’
September 7, Cinema Riga Picture from “Our Pride and Glory”, M. Schneider
19:30 Rien ne vaut que la vie, mais la vie même ne vaut rien
Brigitta Kuster & Moise Merlin Mabouna, D 2003, 24’
Sans Papiers
Tanja Ostojić / David Rych, 2004, 14’
Shedding Details
Laura Horelli / Gerhard Friedl, 2009, 25’
September 8, Cinema Riga
19:30 Passing Drama
Angela Melitopoulos, D 1999, 66’
September 9, Cinema Riga
19:30 I Will Arrange Everything. It Will Be The Best Film Ever.
Gitte Villesen, D 2010, 45’
September 10, Cinema Riga
19:30 New York Memories
Rosa von Praunheim, D 2010, 89’
September 11, Cinema Riga
19:30 I Will Arrange Everything. It Will Be The Best Film Ever. (Repeated)
Gitte Villesen, D 2010, 45’
Installation s in EU House (September 6-10, from 10:00 – 18:00)
Kreenholm (part 1-3)
Eléonore de Montesquiou, D/EE 2009
Metal
Eléonore de Montesquiou, D/EE 2009, 6’30

true love will find you in the end...Daniel Johnston...

what a beautiful song, and I enjoy it without weed (for the fucking record, I'm not on weed I'm watching Weeds on tv).

...wonder why I bother getting into debates with silly people.
about different topics. Probably because the topics are important.
But why are there so many stupid jealous evil bastards on these forums?

What's bugging them?

How can we change them?

Jag menar. Jösses flickor! Vad är det för fel på vissa?

Var kommer all dendär negativa energin ifrån. varför vill man inte se lösningar. varför bara tjata och skuld belägga. Varför alltid insistera på att finna en syndabock? Varför inte rotera och lufta till lite?

Nu ska jag inte påstå att jag är fröken idel sunshine.

nej, jag är cynsisk djävel till kärring ibland.

Men, inte när det gäller viktiga ting.

What does the heart say? Why not follow?

and about licking...

Now when your dog tries to lick your face, you should have a better idea of what he's trying to communicate. He may simply be hungry and asking for a snack. Obviously, you won't regurgitate some food at that signal, but you might respond affectionately and perhaps give him a treat, such as a dog biscuit. He may be communicating submission and pacification-the adult version of goodwill in puppies. Basically, he is saying, "Look, I'm just like a puppy who is dependent on big adults like you. I need your acceptance and help." Alternatively, he may be showing respect and deference to you as a more dominant dog in his pack..."

Excerpted from How to Speak Dog
© Stanley Coren All rights reserved
Reprinted by permission
Dr. Stanley Coren is a professor of Psychology.
He has written 6 books on dogs and is the host
of the television show Good Dog!

Wagging tails - dog tails - why dogs wag their tails

Wagging tails - dog tails - why dogs wag their tails
(Excerpt from How to Speak Dog)
Dr. Stanley Coren

"....In some ways, tail-wagging serves the same functions as our human smile, polite greeting, or nod of recognition. Smiles are social signals, and human beings seem to reserve most of their smiles for social situations, where somebody is around to see them. Sometimes, vicarious social situations, as when watching television or occasionally when thinking about somebody special, can trigger a smile. For dogs, the tail wag seems to have the same properties. A dog will wag its tail for a person or another dog. It may wag its tail for a cat, horse, mouse, or perhaps even a butterfly. But when the dog is by itself, it will not wag its tail to any lifeless thing. If you put a bowl of food down, the dog will wag its tail to express its gratitude to you. In contrast, when the dog walks into a room and finds its bowl full, it will approach and eat the food just as happily, but with no tail-wagging other than perhaps a slight excitement tremor. This is one indication that tail-wagging is meant as communication or language. In the same way that we don't talk to walls, dogs don't wag their tails to things that are not apparently alive and socially responsive.

A dog's tail speaks volumes about his mental state, his social position, and his intentions. How the tail came to be a communication device is an interesting story.

The dog's tail was originally designed to assist the dog in its balance. When a dog is running and has to turn quickly, it throws the front part of its body in the direction it wants to go. Its back then bends, but its forward velocity is such that the hindquarters will tend to continue in the original direction. Left unchecked, this movement might result in the dog's rear swinging widely, which could greatly slow its rate of movement or even cause the dog to topple over as it tries to make a high-speed turn. The dog's tail helps to prevent this. Throwing the tail in the same direction that the body is turning serves as a sort of counterweight, which reduces the tendency to spin off course. Dogs will also use their tails when walking along narrow surfaces. By deliberately swinging the tail to one side or the other in the direction opposite to any tilt in the body, the dog helps maintain its balance, much the same way a circus tightrope walker uses a balance bar. Quite obviously, then, the tail has important uses associated with specific movements. However, the tail is not particularly important on flat surfaces, when a dog is simply standing around or walking at normal speeds. At these times, it becomes available for other uses. Evolution again seized an opportunity and now adapted the tail for communication purposes.

It is something of a surprise to many people to learn that puppies don't wag their tails when they are very young. The youngest puppy I ever saw systematically wagging its tail was eighteen days old, and both the breeder and I agreed that this was quite unusual. Although there are some differences among the various breeds, the scientific data suggests that, on average, by thirty days of age, about half of all puppies are tail wagging, and the behavior is usually fully established by around forty nine days of age.

Why does it take so long for the puppy to start wagging its tail? The answer comes from the fact that puppies begin wagging their tails when it is necessary for purposes of social communication. Until they are about three weeks of age, puppies mostly eat and sleep. They are not interacting significantly with their littermates other than curling up together to keep warm as they sleep or crowding together to nurse. They are physically capable of wagging their tails at this time, but they don't.

By the age of six or seven weeks (when we start to see tail-wagging behaviors on a regular basis), the puppies are socially interacting with one another. Most of the social interactions in puppies consist of what psychologists call "play behaviors." It is through playing that puppies learn about their own abilities, how they can interact with their environment, and most important, how to get along with other individuals. A puppy learns that if it bites a littermate, it is apt to be bitten back, and perhaps the game it was playing might be terminated by its now angry playmate. It is at this point that the puppy also starts to learn dog language. It is not clear to what degree these emerging social communications are prewired, but learning is clearly needed to refine the use and interpretation of these signals. The pups learn to connect their own signals and the signals provided by their mother and their siblings with the behaviors that come next. They also begin to learn that they can use signals to indicate their intentions and to circumvent any conflicts. This is where and when the tail-wagging behavior begins.

One place where conflicts are likely to occur is during feeding. When a puppy wants to suckle its mother, it must come very close to its littermates as it crowds in to find her teats. Remember that this puppy is now coming close to the very same individuals that might have been nipping, jostling, or chasing him a few minutes earlier. To indicate that this is a peaceful situation, and to calm any fearful or aggressive response by the other puppies when they too are pushing toward the mother's teat, the puppy begins to wag its tail. Tail-wagging in the puppy then serves as a truce flag to its littermates. Later on, puppies will begin to wag their tails when they are begging food from the adult animals in their pack or family. The puppies come close, to lick the face of the adult, and they signal their peaceful intentions by tail-wagging. It thus becomes clear that the reason that very young puppies don't wag their tails is that they don't yet need to send appeasement signals to other dogs. When communication between dogs is needed, they rapidly learn the appropriate tail signals.

Tail language actually has three different channels of information: position, shape, and movement. Movement is a very important aspect of the signal, since dog's eyes are much more sensitive to movement than they are to details or colors. This makes a waving or wagging tail very visible to other dogs.

Evolution has used a few additional tricks to make the tails even more visible. Wild canines, like wolves, often have great bushy tails, which are easily seen at a distance. In addition, many tails are specially colored to facilitate recognition of tail signals. Often, the underside of the tail is lighter, to make the high-tailed signals quite visibly different from signals involving the tucking of tails into a lower position. Many canines will also have distinctive markings to make the tail tip more visible. Usually, there is a lightening toward the tail tip, or perhaps simply a white mark which defines the tip of the tail. In other canines, the tail tip is noticeably darker. Either of these two color contrasts helps to make the end of the tail more visible, and this make movement and position cues easier to recognize...."

fortsättning om skelning mm

tänker fortfarande på detdär med min skelning.
att folk nog missuppfattar mig ofta. när jag tex tittar på deras hund(ar) så tror dom att jag ser på dem. hm. men det är lättare med hundar. det har alltid känts som att hundar fattar vem jag är. Ibland undrar jag om dom ser mig som en i gänget - som en hund. we chew the same bones.

har gått in på dethär ämnet förr. skrev en text som hette "why I like dogs", nehe, jag kom ihåg fel där. här är den

When are sad people happy? Or what makes sad people happy?



I always feel good when I see a dog. Dogs are good. Generally their minds are not fucked up like ours. That's why they make me feel good. They just wag their tails, sniff around and bark occasionally. I might be wrong but the feeling I get by seeing a dog is good and calm so what else can I think? People make me nervous. I can't trust them. You never know what's going on in their minds.



Usually I don't get good vibes when watching "happy families". I don't believe their happiness is true or then the sight of them just bores me, or even worse, sometimes it scares the shit out of me. This is obviously an age problem. What else could it be? Everything is explained with something, the fear of getting old, fear or dying, fear of vanishing.



I'm not extremely sad but I can be very melancholic from time to time. I also feel that I'm afraid of a lot of things. I never feel empty or tired. I feel restless and angry. Full of thoughts, ideas bursting inside me. I feel that this world steals my freedom, it steals my precious time. I feel I'm taking part in a long game of monopoly and that I can't get out or quit. And if I would quit I wouldn't know where to go, except heaven if there is one. This "not knowing situation" makes me sad. I understand the situation very well but I don't know the solution nor do I have an explanation. It's like understanding eternity. It's impossible, but you still try and when you get tired you get sad, some people call this melancholia. Some philosophers even divided people into four categories according to their personalities. One of them was the melancholic one. Saturn influenced these people strongly.



You could say they are nostalgic dreamers but I believe it's more complex than that.



I don't have any explanations yet, nor am I a professor in psychology, astronomy or philosophy. I'm simply a curious artist. I'm not looking for a remedy or trying to get cured, because the feelings I have make my life exiting and even worth living.


ok. nu handlade den texten inte så värst mycket om hundar. Plus att jag nog har förändrats lite på vissa punkter. Som det med lyckliga familjer, numera avundas jag dom mer eller mindre. det beror på. Om dom är sånadär Latte familjer - då blir jag mer avskräckt. Men om dom har en tatuering eller en hund eller bara ser så där lämpligt coolt trashiga ut. om dom dricker en öl. om dom inte tramsar för mycket.

ok. satan också. om dom ser ut som att en av dom kunde vara jag.

där kom det. nu har jag sagt det. ja, ja. jag vill ju också. vadå? uppleva lycka med ett gäng folk man kallar familj.

det var ju lite nära här ett tag men kortslottet rasade. tack och lov får jag väl säga nu i efterhand. ridå liksom. ridå for the fucking madman. han som var allt det där fantastiska man trodde men som sedermera och rätt kvickt faktiskt började droppa ned sina aggressiva bomber på mig. som tur skrek jag senn NEJ.

efter det tänkte jag länge att hund får det bli.

just some thoughts on everyday stuff

when reading about Fransesca Woodmans "Some Disordered Interior Geometries" I do get the feeling that I understand her. I also get the feeling that I'm a liar. A coward. Not doing the work I'd want to. More sort of doing the work I'm expected to.
I have got to take time, relax and think things over. What was important again?

Also reading a book I must have started reading years ago, but at that point found it dull or something. It's Immortality by Milan Kundera.
This time I got into it quickly. But during the first chapter I got angry with the writer. What a fucking chauvinist. Asshole. Writing these dreadful comments about the older woman by the pool. I felt tired and a bit disappointed. Betrayed.
But after some days I decided to go on reading. Trying to neglect the chauvinism. And well, I've got to say that this book contains some interesting thoughts. For example this thought about the beauty of cities. wait. I've got to take the book out and find the exact words: (Avenarius) there isn't a single angle of view from which cars wont be visible from the back, from the front, on both sides. Their omnipresent noise corrodes every moment of contemplation like an acid. Cars have made the former beauty of cities invisible.

well. that was a quite simple thing I fell for. There is more. Like the section where Goethe and Hemingway meet after death and discuss their positions. And their image. It's nice. It's a wonderful tempting idea. And yes, I do enjoy the book now.

I should read so much more instead of watching i.e Weeds. It just makes me want to start smoking weed.

Another thing that buggs me, or bugged me for some hours was that a friend that I consider a friend told me that my eyes or my glance is horrible. It's a traumatic thing. Yes, I do squint. And yes, I have even been to see a doctor about it. Because somebody in my past thought it was difficult to speak to me. I guess he sought perfection...well,the doctor said "Nina, you wont go blind. No need to worry. This operation can be done - but in 95% of the cases the squinting comes back."

So I'm a fucking squinter. And soon making a squinters united T-shirt.

So bugger of those who have a problem with it.




B245-DES185
Review Of Immortality, by Milan Kundera
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 10/7/05

Immortality is probably the last novel by Kundera that shows him at his best. This book, translated by Peter Kussi, released in 1990, is the last of a trilogy that includes the great The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting, and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. While Immortality is not a great book, and not in the class of those other two books, it is certainly a good book that continues Kundera’s metafictional ride through the 20th Century.
The nuts and bolts plot is about two French sisters, Agnes and Laura, and the man they are involved with- Paul. Except that none of them are real- they are the fictive inventions of the metafictional Milan Kundera who, after an old lady motions to a swimming instructor at a Paris spa, somehow becomes infatuated with the name Agnes, and decides to write a novel called Immortality. He says, ‘At the time, that gesture aroused in me immense, inexplicable nostalgia, and this nostalgia gave birth to the woman I call Agnes.’ Of course, there are detours- whole sections of the book that are philosophic musings between literary figures like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ernest Hemingway. Also along for the ride is Professor Avenarius, a possibly real character who has been metafictionalized, who consults with Kundera on the progress of his novel, and whom Kundera rewards with a copy of his earlier novel Life Is Elsewhere. If this seems convolutes it is, and a bit unnecessary, although the more straight-forward passages in which literary and real world heroes come and go are better, and the philosophizing is first rate.
In many ways Kundera has taken what started with Vonnegut- the metafictive realm- and moved it to its next level. However, this book is not on a par with his two earlier masterworks, and the utter narrative convolutions are the book’s undoing, what separates it from them. Where they are fresh and playful this novel, at times, seems on the verge of collapsing upon its own cutesiness. Also, the lives of the four ‘real fictive’ characters never grabs ahold of the reader like those in the earlier books. Yet, overall, this is balanced by the great ideas put into life, death, art, and immortality.
But, this is not a book for the would be Kunderaphile to start with. Its convolutions may put them off from reading other of his works, and this book also marked the last gasp of greatness, as Kundera, since then, seems to merely be aping his former greatness, as his polypersonaic skills have faltered and he’s become much more generic and predictable in both forms and ideas. Where once Kundera’s interruptions of story were whimsical and refreshing, even by this novel, they seem more affective than effective, and his characters less individuals than personifications of themes. Agnes is not really Agnes, but a symbol of the human yearn for deathlessness, which then is rehashed by Goethe and his lover Bettina von Arnim- a woman who would nowadays be classified as a groupie of the rich and famous. Here is the symbolized Agnes:
She walked around the pool toward the exit. She passed the lifeguard, and after she had gone some three or four steps beyond him, she turned her head, smiled, and waved to him. At that instant I felt a pang in my heart! That smile and that gesture belonged to a twenty-year-old girl! Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly colored ball to her lover. That smile and that gesture had charm and elegance, while the face and the body no longer had any charm. It was the charm of a gesture drowning in the charmlessness of the body. But the woman, though she must of course have realized that she was no longer beautiful, forgot that for the moment. There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless. In any case, the instant she turned, smiled, and waved to the young lifeguard (who couldn’t control himself and burst out laughing), she was unaware of her age. The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me. I was strangely moved. And then the word Agnes entered my mind. Agnes. I had never known a woman by that name.

Professor Avenarius, to use another example, is not a professor- even if he really exists- so much as Kundera’s own rebellious streak, for this man’s great joy is puncturing automobile tires, which are seen as enablers to the destruction of the real by the phony- i.e.- modern civilization.
Of course, these merely symbolic characters are not symbols in their realm, and when the Professor puncture’s Agnes’s husband’s, Paul’s, tires he is delayed in getting to a hospital after Agnes has been in a car accident, after swerving to avoid a would-be suicide. She dies minutes before Paul’s arrival. She joins the already dead, like Goethe and Hemingway, who moan on about the curse of their immortality, for, as Hemingway bitches, ‘Instead of reading my books, they're writing books about me.’ Yet, it’s these more overt declamations, that are so rare in The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, which infest Immortality with too much didactic preening. Part 6, the Rubens chapter, which stands alone and apart from the rest of the book, does not work, and is an example of where Kundera starts going wrong. It is a tangent without necessity- in short, it’s excess for the sake of filling out a novel that, at 345 pages, is too long, and was in need of trimming, not padding. Too much of the book never fully coalesces. In his two great novels they do, even though that coalescence is not necessary.
And while I reiterate the fact that this is Kundera’s best book, after his two masterworks, there is only so much breaking of the fourth wall that is needed to convey the metafictive nature of tales, in general, and this one specifically. Sometimes walls are not only necessary, but enough.

greg. gregorius

greg. gregorius

min älskade vän. min vän i över 16 år.
min vän som minns hur svårt jag har haft det. min vän som alltid slickat mig på kinden.
Min älskade Gregorius von Leavenworth. Grand Old Man.

Jag visste att du är gammal. Jag har vetat det länge. Men du har alltid varit en del av mej. Min familj. Nu är du borta. Din fysiska fina lurviga kropp är borta.

Du har alltid vartit den finaste fina hund som finns. Efter min Brutus.


Så om jag får lov. Det känns rätt nu, kan jag. Kan jag kanske få en vän.
En liten Bertha Gorgeus? Efter dig o Brutus. Mina fina herrar. Dom bästa djävla terriers som finns. Dom bästa finaste vänner en Nina kan ha.

jag sa att jag inte skulle gråta.

Men jag gör det.

Jag har gråtit hela dagen. Jag vet att jag kommer att sakna dig så. dendär gården kommer inte att vara samma nu när du är borta. Jag minns ditt skall. Din bossighet.
Nu är du borta.


dom säger att du bara är en hund.

men för mig är du mer än det.

ja, jag vet att du hade ett bra liv. det var nog så. Jag vet det.

life

I say: life is like tetris...at the end the colorful pieces start coming way to fast and there's a huge chaos of disorganized piles of stuff...and then you just give up...saying fuck it...or?