pointless stream

Date: Friday 7th of August, 12.33
Location: Leiden, at work, inside my head

what was it I said again? "it is been renovating" ... which should have been "it is being renovated", gosh I'm so stupid, what was I thinking, and I also think he wasn't that interested in the building anyway, maybe I should have talked about something else, what was it he said again? oh no, I'm doing it again; replaying conversations in my head and correcting the grammatical mistakes I made. I shouldn't do that, it is ridiculous to worry about what I said and how I said things in conversations with other people. it's just that I feel that I'm not allowed to make such mistakes since I've been studying the language for like five years now, I must look like a total idiot, especially since I told everyone that I have a BA in English when we had to introduce ourselves to the group, so they probably expect me to speak the language fluently, which makes me self-conscious when I talk. maybe when I go to Nottingham I should tell people that I did do a BA in English, but then add that I know it's not perfect and I'm there to improve my language skills. but that's just stupid, I shouldn't have to apologise for anything, my english is probably better than most other exchange students there and why should I care about what other people might think of me? I need to stop worrying about things like this, it is probably not very healthy, so from now on, I am not allowed to replay conversations in my head. I must think about something else. I must clear my head and think about nothing, just focus on what's going on right now and nothing else. I'll just listen to the music on my mp3-player. I'm mister brightside... this song reminds me of catena parties, I think I'm wearing that little dress with the fringe to the party tonight. maybe I should get some new tights, or check out my closet this afternoon to see if I have one good pair left. maybe I should wear red lipstick, isn't that what they wore in the thirties? I don't think I have red lipstick though, so I would have to go out and buy some. although that might be a little unnecessary now I think about it, I never even wear lipstick and my boyfriend doesn't like it. maybe I'll go shopping this afternoon and then decide. I'm worrying about unimportant stuff again, let's just not think for a while. I'm vacuuming the stairs. I'm vacuuming the stairs. I'm vacuuming the stairs. wow, this gets boring pretty quickly. I wouldn't want to live in a house like this. my house would have a large bedroom with a giant closet with many shelves to hold my shoes. and it wouldn't have doors, but a curtain along the entire wall so I could hide all of my clothes behind it without having to stack them neatly. and I'd get a dressing table, and a small cabinet with drawers for gloves and necklaces and stuff which could hold the tv. I don't really need a tv in the bedroom, but since I'm getting a huge closet and a dressing table I guess my boyfriend should get something too. his gamecube must go into another room though. he'll probably want a gameroom so that's two rooms and then there's the living room which makes three, unless the kitchen is in another room big enough to hold a kitchen table, I kind of like that idea, so that makes four rooms which seems a bit unnecessary since there's only the two of us, and now I realise I haven't thought about where to put our books, so they should go into the living room, but then if I wanted to have a desk to work on that should go into the living room as well. seems a bit greedy to want a house with four rooms while I was thinking of downsizing the amount of useless crap I own. I would like a bigger house but with less crap though and probably more books and shoes. desire...is the cause of all suffering? it's probably not very healthy to think about stuff I want either. I shouldn't worry about the things I've done, I shouldn't worry about the future, but then there's nothing left to think about but the present. I bet if I could manage to think about the present only I'd spend a lot less time worrying, unless of course I'm doing exciting stuff at the present time that needs worrying about. I suppose if I stopped worrying unless it was absolutely necessary I'd feel more relaxed in general. which is good. although it would mean that I have to monitor my thoughts and make sure that I don't worry but think about other stuff. other stuff that isn't just superficial thoughts about stuff I want like lipstick and a giant closet. argh now I'm worrying about how not to worry. this is hopeless, it is impossible to think about stuff without worrying or without wishing things were different, unless you think about what's happening right now, at this moment in the present. the unbelievably boring present that kind of makes you wish you were somewhere else if only you were allowed to. trying to control your thoughts is ridiculous. endless, pointless.

Not easy to learn this language is

Although I dare not say I have quite 'mastered' the language yet, after years of study I find myself quite capable to at least understand most of it. Sometimes I even venture to speak a word, or a sentence, hoping it won't sound too much like nonsense or betray my lack of knowledge to the ears of a native speaker. Fluency in this language is not an absolute necessity for me, but understanding it is certainly not unimportant if I still want to be able to communicate with my boyfriend (for lack of a better word, or a ring! (ouch, nice one, if I may say so myself)).
But for his sake, of course I am prepared to improve my language skills. I even took a course in the past two weeks, which consisted of watching all six star wars movies in chronological order. It was more intensive than I imagined, and I fell asleep twice, but luckily my instructor offered to pause the dvd and resume watching the next day whenever things became too much for me to stay awake. On the whole, it was a real learning experience. Not only am I now able to grasp star wars related jokes, I learned that the quotation "Luke, I am your father" is not actually in the movie, Leia's bikini is not really golden and her hair is not in buns while wearing the bikini, and that Darth Vader's suit is actually a life-saving device, not a fashion statement as I always thought. I also learned that there is some systematicity to Yoda's annoyingly mangled syntax (it is the predicate complementing the verb which he moves to the front of the sentence, if you like I could draw you some tree diagrams), and that the dark side ain't so bad, although my instructor was not very happy about these last two observations. Nevertheless, I completed this course, I am still waiting for some sort of certificate though and I am beginning to suspect that my efforts are much underappreciated.
Meanwhile, my lessons in the dialect my boyfriend seems to be fluent in continue as he tries to use it in conversation with me on an almost daily basis. I think I know my way around words like co-op, first-person shooter and turn-based rpg's, and I know the difference now between things like graphics and game-design and I am even able to refer to games by name. However, the need to create or possess three identical Halo games (a guy in a suit who shoots at stuff) and the usefulness of an arcade-joystick thing for street fighter 2 (or 1, 5 or 7 I don't know) remain a mystery to me. I am trying to keep up though, and I must confess I did get a little excited when my boyfriend told me about some new mmo rpg where you can be a hero and create a costumized character with superpowers. But I think the best thing about all of this is that I can share this language with him now. Fortunately, whenever I have absolutely no clue what he is talking about, I am quite happy to just stare and nod, since he is considerably easy on the eyes to say the least.
This summer I plan to continue the study and brush up on comics, especially Elfquest since the last time I read it was about six years ago, and maybe Requiem, if there is time, because I am a slow reader. I suppose you can learn how to read comics quicker, it is probably something you can acquire, like hand-eye co-ordination (although I think myself more a mouth-eye co-ordination person since I never have any trouble eating everything I see).
Then, finally there is the language's orthographic system called l33t or something like it, but at the moment I don't see any reason why I should go into all that, since my boyfriend never uses it and I have no need to talk over the internet with nerds I don't even know.
As a linguist, I would say that this language certainly isn't the most difficult in the world, but may be quite difficult to learn if you are not a native speaker yourself; it is not in the nature of nerds to interact with other people as they generally live secluded lives behind their pc, xbox, stack of comics, or Darth Vader mask. And when you do encounter one of them, it is not likely that you will understand him, even less that he is prepared to explain and teach the language to an outsider. What makes things even more complicated is that sometimes you cannot tell whether someone is a nerd, until he meets another nerd and they start rambling to each other like two furbies placed within ten centimeter's distance. Therefore I know I am very fortunate to have a good mentor and I'd say that I am well on my way to understand, and one day perhaps fluently speak Nerd.

Dirty Power Metal Slut Babydoll

Why why WHY are there no decent metal band shirts for women? I know metal in general has always been strongly male-dominated (and I wouldn't want it any other way, it's not very feminist of me, but girls in metal bands? meh.) - and that everything including the band merchandise is therefore designed to cater to men. But do they really expect us women, who by the way, deserve some credit just for being brave enough to enter this world of dirty grunting men and thereby abandoning the lady-like behaviour which is expected from us, to also give up our god-given right to dress nice, and instead wrap ourselves in three times oversized men's shirts concealing every female curve that differentiates us from these same dirty grunting men?!
Well...apparently they do.
But we are not supposed to complain, because there have been some attempts to appease us when they came up with the so-called girlies, (or if you prefer ungrammaticality, 'girly's') made from stretchy material which often enough supposedly 'fit all'. Unfortunately these girlies are also usually only available for girly bands that girly girls love because the lead singer is so hot and girly.
What's worse, they also go by the name of 'baby doll' sometimes, which I think by itself sounds demeaning (I'm not a baby OR a doll, you idiots), but when googled leads you to a page called 'Dragonforce Ladies' Apparel: Dirty Power Metal Slut Babydoll'. Wow, Dragonforce really understands women and metal.

But I've heard...that there are decent girly shirts around, that they do exist, and I know it must be true because I own a few of these mythical creatures (don't tell anyone though). Sometimes girly shirts with logos of bands that even men would want to be seen wearing appear in obscure online webshops. Of course, there'll be no good picture of the shirt itself, but it'll be the outline of a girly shirt with the logo pasted on by some guy who simply edited the picture in Paint just to deal with the inconvenience of marginal female shoppers. And that's a bad move. Because I'll tell you something about women; we shop. And if there would be pretty pictures, and other things besides shirts (and I'm not talking about the slutty Slipknot tanktop which somehow always turns up everywhere), I'm telling you, we would go for it.
If something does not change soon, I am going to cut up one of your perfect square-shaped Devildriver manshirts and I will sew it into a dress - that's right, a DRESS. That's the thing with men and male-governed worlds; if you want something done, you'd better do it yourself.

Seven years

Some say life is a succession of seven-year periods, each of them defining a different stage in your life. I guess that could be true to some extent. I spent the first seven years of my life in Rotterdam, after which my family and I moved to a small and quiet town, a major change for all of us. During the next seven years I went from elementary to grammar school, changed from a girl who had a single best friend into someone who actually belonged to a clique. Nothing particularly great happened when I became fourteen and entered the next 'stage', although over the next few years I gradually became your typical teenage poet lamenting the agony of everyday life and the uselessness of it all. And then I fell in love, life became brighter (although the colour of my clothes did not), I graduated and went to college, moved out of my parent's house, learned many things, met new people... It just seems silly to consider these events which took place during seven years to belong to a single stage in life. Maybe this theory does not work out so well for me after all. But say it does, that would mean I have just started the fourth seven-year stage of my life. Nothing special happened to mark the transition from the previous period into this one though. People are probably supposed to become grown-ups during these seven years; finish their studies, get a job, get a car, maybe get married, maybe have kids (eek!). Hmmm... For now, I think I'll just try to do the first and worry about the rest later. Maybe in the next seven years.