Turukhtan

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Derelict villas in Potsdam

(More photos!)

Today I was in Potsdam with my recent acquaintance Josef, who lives there. The town looks really bizarre - everything in the old city centre is so cute and small and clean. But as we walked down Puschkinallee, I spotted these lovely dilapidating old villas. Finally something I could photograph!

According to Josef, "potsdam" is a naughty word in Yiddish (which he doesn't speak, but he says he knows a lot of swearwords, as his older relatives always used to swear at each other in Yiddish ...). However, he didn't say what "potsdam" means, and I haven't been able to verify that claim. Oh well.

Posted at 12:56 am by turukhtan
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Friday, July 13, 2007

Irresistible.

I've been fangirling the Red Hot Chili Peppers ever since I started reading Scar Tissue (though I can't actually even remember how I got the idea to start reading it). And then I came across this image:

Anthony is fuzzing it up with two wolfdogs at the West Michigan SPCA, an animal sanctuary that, among other activities, provides a lifelong home for wolfdogs, which are today illegal to keep as pets. RHCP have made substantial donations to the SPCA over the years. (Photo via Troublekids in Funk Heaven)

Another dose of Anthony + darling fuzz can be seen at the end of the video for Soul to Squeeze.

¤ ¤ ¤

Speaking of fangirling, it would appear that I'm going through some sort of teenager period right now, going to concerts and inflicting tinnitus upon my ears, immersing myself in rock music, fangirling Anthony Kiedis, etc.
When I was an actual teenager, I was a rather serious and 'adult' person, only interested in politics, arts and literature. I stayed like that throughout most of university, until somewhere around this past year, when a lot of people who really mattered to me have kept dying or leaving me. Maybe I'm in the process of being reborn and growing up again, or something ...

----------------------------------------------

*Edit the day after:*

Now I remember the course of events that led me to Scar Tissue.
One day, I watched various bass guitar tutorials on YouTube, and among them were tutorials with Flea from RHCP, who is one of the greatest bass players ever. It struck me how he radiated such goodness and sweetness throughout the interviews. Sometimes he'd mention stuff about the other band members, and that led me to watch a few interviews with them, too, and they all seemed like such nice and sweet people despite having gone through a lot of harsh things in their lives. Somewhere someone mentioned Anthony's book, and I got hold of it and started reading it.
Somehow they remind me a bit of Gipi, who has also gone through a lot of heavy drug-related shit in his life, but creates amazing art and is a really nice and sweet guy. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are the Gipi of rock music ... >:(:))

Posted at 11:58 pm by turukhtan
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Yay, FC FiVE!

The concert yesterday was a lot of fun. The whole room was - literally! - vibrating with the sound, the bands were playing like it was the last show on earth, and the audience was stagediving all over the place and running/dancing into other people on purpose. I haven't been to that many concerts, and certainly none where the audience let loose like this. It was a good way to get a bit of nice and healthy physical contact for someone like me who spends all her days working alone at her computer. ^_^

Oh, and my hearing is slowly but steadily getting back to normal again. Maybe I should have used earplugs.

Here is a photo by Flickr user "MY BEST PRIDE" from a recent concert with FC FiVE in Italy, that catches a bit of the spirit ...

Unfortunately, they didn't have any merch with the boar design, and they didn't even have their CD with them (for which they apologised).

Posted at 12:47 pm by turukhtan
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Thursday, July 12, 2007

Like, WTF.

Last night, someone from Rocky Point (or adjacent), New York State, USA, accessed this blog through the search string "tinet+elmgren+mihai".

It felt a bit weird to be exposed to that association again, after such a long time (almost a lifetime, it feels like). Especially when I have no idea who did it and why.

(Was it my own brainwaves?? Yesterday, I finished reading Anthony Kiedis' autobiography Scar Tissue, and so much in his descriptions of his romantic relationships reminded me of the one I once had with Mihai.)

Posted at 1:43 pm by turukhtan
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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Yay, concert tomorrow!?

Tomorrow I'll see if I can get into the concert of these two hardcore bands (+ a third one) at Cassiopeia. FC FiVE is from Ibaraki, Japan, and for some reason, they have a wild boar on the cover of their latest record.

They are on tour together with a band called Ritual, and in the tour poster, the boar motif has been combined with Ritual's wolf motif, creating interesting associations - it's as if the boar is a spirit or something, and it's "huffing and puffing", and the wolf is frightened and angry at it. I saw it somewhere completely by chance yesterday, and I instantly knew that I had to go to the concert.

FC FiVE play a slightly 'melodic' kind of hardcore that I like. And, of course, they are cute. Though they should sing more in Japanese ... :3

I hope they'll have merchandise with this motif!

Posted at 10:39 pm by turukhtan
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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Comic book dream

I've had dreams that unfolded like prose on paper, word after word, and I've had dreams that were in comic book form, where I saw panel after panel with speech bubbles, captions and drawings.

Last night, or, more accurately, today before noon (I stayed up all night working), I had one of the latter. As I was waking up from it, I could still remember every last detail, and wondered if I should perhaps write down this awesome synopsis that I'd just had a revelation of. But for some reason I kept making up excuses like , "oh, it's too complicated, it would take hours to write down", "I could never make it justice with my humble skills", "it only seems that great to me now, but when I'm fully awake, it will seem ridiculous", and even, "even if I could make it great, no one would want to read it anyway". By the time I was fully awake I realised I didn't remember anymore how it ended, and other details just kept fading away very fast.

The only things I still remember about it now are that it was about a mother, her child, and a man who might have been their distant relative. They lived in a big house in a park-like neighbourhood, which might not have been their house originally. There was a war. Enemy troops were first bombing the area, and then they marched in. These people hung white flags from the windows.

There was a very particular story that unfolded against this backdrop, but, frustratingly enough, I can't remember anything about it now.

Posted at 8:58 pm by turukhtan
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Friday, July 06, 2007

Big Brother is watching me!

I'm doing a little experiment. Click the picture to read the explanation ...

Big brother is watching you, and he can see you're not working!

Posted at 7:12 pm by turukhtan
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Mum and Ainur were visiting

Ainur acting cool in the Tacheles staircase

From these seven hectic and very fun days, there are a couple of more pictures.

Posted at 7:03 pm by turukhtan
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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Spectacle spectacles

The lens surface of my Carl Bildt partnerlook glasses has crackled up to the point that it disturbs my vision. It's probably because of my bad habit of wiping them with a normal dish cloth (clean), and not a microfibre cloth. It happened to my old glasses, too, but only after about 6 years and many rough rides. To my cheap Carl Bildt glasses it happened already after 1,5 years.

I remembered that I still had the other pair of glasses that I got in the "two for one" deal with my old glasses. Back then I thought they didn't suit me at all, and I never wore them. But now, they suddenly look pretty good on me ...

Posted at 8:11 pm by turukhtan
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Friday, June 15, 2007

The Year of Death

Today it has been one year since my little princess Mitsu died. Since then, within this one year, also my little baby Sergei and my grandma Liisa have died.

Mitsu died of cancer, but at an old age, and I think she had led a full life, and that it was a good time for her to die. Sergei, on the other hand, died before he got all that old. He got ill with kidney stones, and as there was no way he could ever be operated, we had to put him down. But I couldn't be there when he died. I couldn't get there fast enough.

Since Sergei's death I've been kind of numb. When mum told me the day before yesterday that grandma had died, my reaction was pretty much "oh, okay". I wasn't sad at all and I didn't miss her. She had a very quick and peaceful death through a heart attack, after having been in bed for about ten years since she got cerebral haemorrhage that left half of her body paralysed.

I was much more sad ten years ago. Because after that, her personality changed completely, and as I didn't have much contact with her anyway, I felt like I didn't know her anymore. She always made my mother cry because she kept saying cruel things that mum took too seriously.
I don't miss that "version" of her at all. I had never felt like there was anything I could give her, or get from her, anyway, even if we had kept up some sort of contact.

Today I saw some old photos of grandma that Ainur posted on Flickr. They made me remember how she used to be. For instance, once when we were little, I ate too much sweets and puked on her bed. I couldn't stop crying because I was so sorry and embarrassed, but she wasn't angry at all.

And that, finally, made me cry again. So, I guess I'm still human, after all ...

Posted at 9:36 am by turukhtan
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