As I can now (with some difficulty) count the number of days left until I leave for Japan and an actual Job on two hands, I spend my days doing just that, counting. Not like I did back in school, bless it's sweet heart, no. Since this is likely/hopefully the last month-long winter break I'll have before retiring, I'm counting media-consumption-achievements. How many books of how many chapters of how many pages can I read before going? How many CDs can I listen to and rate on the completely arbitrary scale of one to five stars? How many movies can I watch and how many times can I make friends have exactly the same pizza while we're watching them? How many games can I complete? How many tv-shows can I watch? How many annoying emails can I write? These are big and important questions to somebody who doesn't really happen to have a lot going on at the moment. One might also include "how many blog posts can I write in about a month", but the obvious answer to that is just one, so I won't include that.
However! It is not only I who am busy achieving stuff, far from it. Mother Nature too, has been at it. First with a storm that caused blackouts accross the known universe which for some lasted over a week, until the next storm came along. And apparently, the Swedish people (surely I'm not generalizing!) lost all sense of irony and/or sarcasm along with the power as a certain radio show host got inundated with irate emails after he'd made a joke about the size of this particular industrialized-nation problem. And yes, I did swallow a thesaurus prior to writing this paragraph. You should try it, it's not bad with a pinch of garlic and... soy?
Oh yeah, before I went off on that tangent, the above was supposed to segue nicely into the fact that the first snow has fallen, one week before I leave. About damn time, too. Curse you Global-Warming-or-natural-climate-variation!
---
New and very-much-only-tengnetially-relevant subject!
I usually try to avoid mentioning current events in order to keep this thing as timeless as possible for all mankind to enjoy for ever and ever, but as I am currently spending way too much time doing very little productive work furthering the cause of humanity, indulge me this once.
You see, one of my "achievements" is that I've been watching Prison Break. It's quite aptly named, I don't think I'll have to explain the concept to anyone who's actually read the first sentence of this paragraph. The reason I mention it is that I have rarely come across a show which causes such contradictory feelings in the viewer (that would be me, for those of you playing the home game). This may be because other than Prison Break, I only watch the Muppets and the occasional episode of the Smurfs (you see, in their language, "to Smurf" can mean anything!), but that's neither here nor there. Getting back on track: the basic moral morsel provided by the - and I'm guessing here - severely overdramatized story is intended (surely!) to make pretty much any viewer in the entire world anti-death penalty, regardless of their previous stance on the issue. If you'd, say, grown up in Sweden and thus were almost (note the almost!) that way by default but hadn't really thought about it a whole lot, it does make you think. At least a little. Because at the same time, the antagonist is... Well, I caught myself talking to the TV, and that's never a good sign. I shall not transcribe what I "said to her", but suffice to say it was in Japanese, and very much contradictory to my stance on the death penalty. I would have loved to believe that a couple of million years of evolution would have been enough to widen the gap to our instinctive reptilian brain, but apparently, it'll take another couple of generations. At least in my case.
Seriously though. If you have 14 hours left over in the space of 22 weeks, watch it. You won't get more quality time with your reptilian brain this side of the summer's "blockbuster" movies. Unless you've got the entire Smurfs collector's edition DVD boxed set with the OST CD thrown in. Don't ask, just... don't.
If you have any other suggestions, feel free to let me know.
---
Finally, for those of you who made it this far, I can (almost) assure you that this thing will see more frequent updates from here on in. I'm not saying they'll be worth your time, but I am saying they'll be here. See, paradoxically enough, having lots of free time should mean I would be able to use more of it to write about random things, but apparently I need a bit of stress to get my ass in gear, as it were. Good thing that's what's just on the horizon, beginning February 1st.
Oh, and for those of you who enjoy things which are fun, you would do well to head here. There's dinosaurs over there! Thank you Mr. Da Pete for happifying my life with that one.
