Kitten for life
20-04-2008 @ 14:45 by Wi11owRecently my father and I took our youngest cat, Katja, to the vet for her castration. By that time she was still a slightly oversized kitten, so we were wondering if it would be ok. However, she was old enough and spring is here, so we took her there anyway. During the castration, which took quite long and was obviously quite distressing to Katja, the vet discovered only one ovary. The other ovary might still be in her body, but it’s much more likely that she was born with only one. The vet marked this as a good explanation of why she’s so small, for this would mean that she’s been missing out on a lot of growth hormones. The removal of the ovaries might mean that she’ll still grow a little bit, or so the vet said, but it’s been a while since the operation now and there’s still little change. So this means we’ve got an eternally cute kitten for a housecat! I made a small video of her to show off the cuteness ^_^
YouTube Inventiveness
07-04-2008 @ 00:18 by Wi11owSomeone on YouTube doesn’t like the Rolling Stones, so the person figured several video replies were needed…
When I clicked on the user, I found that not only do his videoreplies feature the word ‘FUCK’, but also the word ‘ASS’.
Perhaps I need to make a video reply in which I go mental and yell at him to LEAVE THE ROLLING STONES ALONE! Or perhaps I should just jump along to the next summer hit on the webcam. I <3 YouTube ^_^
Review: John Irving - Until I Find You
06-04-2008 @ 16:22 by Wi11owJohn Irving - Until I find you. Random House Inc., 820 pages.
ISBN: 1-4000-6383-3
***** (5/5)
How a childhood was lost
Jack Burns is a little kid who has a twisted childhood. His father, William Burns, is an organ player who has left Jack’s mother Alice Stronach, a well-known tattoo artist. Together Jack and Alice travel across Europe to find his father. Alice finds work as a tattoo artist in several countries, and eventually they end up in Amsterdam, near the red light district. However, soon they have to give up because William has travelled to Australia, and they cannot follow him because they do not have the money.
Jack ends up in a neighbourhood full of girls and women. He goes to St. Hilda’s, an all-girls school in Toronto, and all the girls there expect him to become the same kind of ladykiller that his father allegedly was. There, a story of sexual abuse begins and Jack grows up experiencing many sexually harassing incidents. However, Jack does not see these incidents as abuse since he does not know any better. After St. Hilda’s he attends an all-boys school in Maine, where Jack’s list of awkward relationships begins. One friend he keeps from St. Hilda’s is Emma Oastler, who is moody, sensitive and whose weight changes like the weather. They start living together in Los Angeles and Emma becomes a successful writer while Jack gets parts as an actor, and his most famous parts are the ones in which he plays a woman.
At thirty-nine, Emma dies and Jack gets the rights over the script Emma has made of her best-selling novel. After the movie has been made, Jack decides to take a step back. A lot of his past is still unclear, and lost as he is, he decides to finally go look for his father. Along the way he discovers the lies his mother has told him, and what really happened to his father.
The storyline of Until I Find You changes along with the changes that take place inside Jack’s head. When Jack is four and knows nothing, the story remains sketchy, as if a lot of it is missing. As he grows up and becomes more aware of the gruesome childhood he has been through, the style changes to a wandering story, while Jack tries to remember who he is. Sometimes all chronology is lost because Jack remembers something from his childhood, and when he starts looking for his father he relives his youngest years as he finds out the truth about his dad. Because of these flashbacks the reader becomes aware of the reason why Jack is so apathic and sexually out of control.
Like the apathy Jack feels, the style of Irving’s novel is very factual and almost plain. A deeply disturbing event, such as Jack being raped by Mrs. Machado, is described in almost the same way as one would describe a day at the park. Since this way of writing reflects Jack’s thinking, this is an effective style indeed; one really gets the impression that Jack is indeed not horrified by what he goes through. This style changes along with Jack’s realisation of the horrors of his past, and the events of his present. Therefore the style keeps fitting in with the progression in the storyline.
Even though the description of the novel seems very long, it’s as short as can be while still doing justice to the intricately woven plot. Irving has included every detail, every little morsel of information, to add credibility to the whole. Jack’s relationships with his mother, Emma Oastler, his first girlfriend Michele Maher and his molester Mrs. Machado are complicated to say the least, and Irvings passionate storytelling makes it all the easier to identify with Jack. He has no influence at all on what happens to him in his childhood. The travelling in search of his father, the molesters at his school and Mrs. Machado, all the events take away a little bit of his childhood and he can’t do anything but watch. In that sense Irving has expressed a general truth: your childhood is not just yours to lose, it is taken away from you bit by bit through the doing of others.
Even though I should warn the weak reader about the fact that the protagonist’s life is perverted and filled with abuse, Until I Find You contains a myriad of feelings and sentiments which any reader can relate to. It is an epic story about the loss of childhood and the search for normality in life, and it is definitely a must-read.
When you wake up and feel like deleting stuff, stay in bed
29-03-2008 @ 02:17 by Wi11owSo I felt like deleting lots of stuff, or something. Or I just didn’t think about it when I accidentally deleted wilgje.net from my domains list on GoDaddy (thank heavens that they fixed that fast for me, or I would have been unable to blog this!). Or when I deleted my whole phonebook along with my Windows Mobile OS when I wanted to try something new on my phone (now I need to ask people for their numbers). Seriously, I need to grow a brain or something. Or get up earlier. And have some coffee. Nah, it’ll only spill over my laptop…
Heads I win, tails you lose
21-02-2008 @ 14:16 by Wi11owI’m currently doing research into a topic for my thesis, and I found this article about fallacies in arguments. Even though I’m not going to discuss this subject, it’s a really interesting read. It is also a sad story about Sam who loses his job because Todd rejects all his arguments in a number of ways. I guess Todd didn’t like him much.
A small abstract, discussing one particular fallacy:
Either-or fallacy (”black-and-white fallacy” or “false dilemma”)
This occurs when an argument is built upon the assumption that only two outcomes are possible when there are several, or when of two possible outcomes, one would not contradict the other. This faulty adversarial construction places the listener “between a rock and a hard place.”
Sam: “Todd, I conducted an investigation on Triki not to “judge” her, but because I received a complaint from a client. What I found was certainly more than I expected. Triki has clearly violated not one, but several of the company’s rules. Triki herself admitted to abusing her position repeatedly and to providing false documents upon enrollment. All this is in my report; its goal was to review employee conduct—as per our usual procedures—and to propose a review of our employee recruitment and verification system. I don’t understand what is wrong about bringing up this matter here.”
Todd: “Sam, you seem more interested in being right than in being truthful.”
This statement implies that being right is inconsistent with being truthful; there is also innuendo (…).
This is all the stuff that’s made me lose about ten thousand arguments on irc ;)
Speech therapy
20-02-2008 @ 14:26 by Wi11owIt’s been a bit quiet here, but no worries: two book reviews are on their way. I just need to refine them somewhat. In the mean time life has been a bit chaotic for me. My former speech therapist, whom I’d been seeing since I was eleven, referred me to another therapist. She’s not just a general speech therapist, since she deals with stutterers only. The change in therapy, after only two sessions, is rather huge.
Some of the things I’ve learned so far:
- Even though I stutter myself, I seem to have issues with hearing other stuttering people talk. I can’t explain why this is and I think I’m a hypocrite for it, but it’s a fact. I found out when I arrived at my therapist early yesterday and heard her talk to one of the worst stutterers she treats. I just couldn’t bear to listen to it. The weirdest part of it is, she told me that the guy doesn’t really seem to mind… and I think my level of stuttering is horrible already…
- The former point has done two things for me: first of all, I realised that I don’t know any other stutterers than my dad, whose stuttering I don’t even hear anymore, at all. All of this has led me to believe that meeting other stutterers would be an excellent idea. So I’m going to do just that, in a couple of weeks.
- I avert my eyes when I stutter, which makes any communicative situation I’m in worse (except phonecalls, I can look wherever I want then). If I keep facing the people I talk to while I stutter, they’ll experience it as much less of an issue than when I cast my eyes down while I do it.
- Stuttering is all the things a stutterer does in order to avoid stuttering. Meaning, if a stutterer wasn’t so incredibly busy thinking “it’s going to go wrong” or “I can’t stutter now!”, much of the stress would be relieved. All the things stutterers come up with, like choosing different words or saying “uhm”, just make the situation more stressful.
- My voice does not sound like that of an eight year old, in contrast to what I always think when I hear my own voice. Although I must say this has been said to me before.
- There are other problems in my life that are way more serious and need attention, such as the current home situation I live in.
- It’s not a bad thing to have someone else finish your sentence every once in a while. In fact, normal speaking people do it to each other all the time, so it would in fact be more normal to finish that sentence. Of course, it’s still annoying when the sentence gets finished in a way that the speaker didn’t intend.
This therapist has much more to teach me, like how to stutter on purpose, which is bloody difficult (and that strikes me as really weird). I think she can help me quite a lot and I must say that I’m looking forward to the next session.
The Straight Story
19-01-2008 @ 19:54 by Wi11owToday I was reminded of a movie that I really need to see again because of a million reasons. The story is brilliant because of it’s simplicity and complications at the same time, the setting is beautiful and the music… wow. The Straight Story is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Also it’s incidentally one of the few David Lynch movies I actually understand more than enough to like it. Note, again, his crazy thing for filming the stripes in the middle of a road, something I noticed first in Lost Highway (which I saw at 16, perhaps I should watch it again to see if I get it now). I don’t know for sure, but perhaps he considers it to be some sort of trademark.
In this scene Alvin Straight drives his lawnmower out of town to visit his brother who lives in an adjacent state (never mind the Italian, I couldn’t find this scene in English). The two haven’t spoken to each other for many years and he wants to make amends. The music is by Angelo Badalamenti, who convinced me so much by this soundtrack alone that I’d watch any movie featuring him in the soundtrack. I have no words for how beautiful this song is.
Our Lady Peace - Angels/Losing/Sleep
17-01-2008 @ 18:06 by Wi11owNice music I’ve recently discovered, with a slight touch of emo.