Today I like: walking out of a bookshop, thinking I’ve just spent sixty euros on books, and then realising that I won’t miss them; drinking a glass of quality whiskey and simply enjoying it without having to worry about not spending too much; carefully assessing the demands an upcoming challenge will make on me and realising I’m up to the task.

Today I don’t like: forgetting which way to twist a tap to turn it off; realising I’m still way behind on my required reading; realising I’m making jocular remarks about people over thirty because I’m afraid of growing old and incontinent and disabled and it’s scaring the shit out of me.

It’s confession time. I’m going to be honest with you guys, and share three shortcomings with you. I’ll try to illustrate each shortcoming with a specific example by relating it to the newly-introduced ads on FreeMinded.

1. I don’t have a credit card. Not yet, at least. I intend to get one in the near future (i.e. the next half year), but as of yet, I do not possess the means of buying stuff over the internet, even when potentially interesting bargains are suggested to me by Google. The joys of Amazon & rare and impossible-to-find books, dvds and cds have hitherto been denied to me. Consequently, most online ads are pretty useless, from my point of view: I lack even the basic means of accepting their offers.Â
2. I have a severe dislike for the ubiquity of unsolicited advertisements. I do see the advantages of online advertisements. I do realise that they are what keeps much of the internet free, and I want the internet to stay that way, but honestly: all those flash(y) ads make my computer slow, and most of them proffer goods that I’d never contemplate buying, or stuff I don’t need or that I don’t want to need. Just like tv ads for cars or brands of shampoo or tampons or dish-washer tabs that I do not need. Right now, there’s ads on top of the FreeMinded home page that say Pregnancy 5 Weeks — All The Pregnancy Info You Need, and Baby’s Ultrasound Images. No doubt these are due to the Parenting forum, but they hold very little meaning to me. The only ads I want to click on are either the ones that do interest me, or the ones on websites that are someone’s bread and butter — and not just anyone’s site: I only want to help the artists I admire in this way.
3. When I’m bored, I try out silly ideas. Whenever stuff’s going on that does not directly affect me (such as ads for things I’d never contemplate buying), I get bored, and I start playing games with whatever’s boring me at that moment. For instance, given a series of ads that I have no interest whatsoever in, I start wondering how they can still serve to provide me with some amusement. Naturally, that means that I’m going to use the ads in a way they aren’t supposed to be used; but who cares? I’m bored.

So there. I’m about to play a little game with these ads, purely for my own self-amusement. Since google ads are based on correspondences with randomly-selected loose words on a given page, I’ll be pasting the titles to today’s portion of spam messages below. Just to see what crazy products Google will throw up.

Since my last bike collapsed underneath me (and a cardboard box full of books) about a year and a half ago, I’ve pretty much walked everywhere as long as I could get there within a reasonable timeframe. I’ve never been pro-active enough to get myself a new bike, and obtaining my driver’s license is not something I have time for right now, so I’ve pretty much been dependent on public transport for anything that’s more than, say, a fourty minutes’ walk away. Living three minutes away from a minor railway station has been a great help of course; and there’s at least two bus stops with on average one bus every ten minutes only two streets away. On top of that, when the unfortunate collapsing incident occurred, I had just found a temporary job ten minutes away from where I live (on foot!); I then worked in Brussels for nearly a year at a place easily reachable by train and subway; and six months ago I found a delightful job at a place that’s a mere half-hour walk away from my flat. In other words, things could not have worked out better for me, transport-wise.

BethanyM and I decided to make this video and upload it to youtube, for everyone’s viewing (dis)pleasure. It’s a home-made movie based on some of our From Our Local Correspondents (FOLC) entry from April. We already got a couple of stories all ready for this month (which we’ll post in the next few days), and we’re planning to turn at least some of them into Youtube videos as well. Some of that material has already been filmed.

Today I like: two old ladies in apron and skirt hugging and kissing each other goodbye; a nosy street cat that prowls the backyard terrace of a local restaurant and that, once fed a little beef and boiled zucchini, overcomes its inhibitions and climbs on a chair to try and eat out of my plate; a man with smudges of pink lipstick on his knee; a French-Bulgarian couple who converse in wonky English and lurvy kisses; and finding a black skirt in the street (it smells of stale cigarette smoke and wet pavement).

I need a new computer.

It’s not just that mine is old. It was second- and probably even third-hand when I got it in early 2004, but so were all of the computers I’ve owned, and I don’t really consider that a major flaw: all my computers have performed more than adequately for at least several years.

Nor is it just because the screen is slowly giving up on me. It’s gradually losing the ability to correctly project colours and images. I’ve been adjusting the colour settings about as far as they will go, but the problem is slowly getting worse. All but the brightest pictures and videos I watch (youtube or otherwise) are just too damn dark to discern what’s going on.

I haven’t mentioned it here, but I take evening classes in Swedish.
The reason I’m bringing this up is that I took my written exam for this
year earlier this week, and I had to write a short story for one of the
main assignments. Before I share that with you (in translation, of
course), let me warn you that my skills in Swedish are nowhere near
decent, and any story I write in that language is going to contain
numerous grammatical mistakes and clumsy paraphrases.

This is the story of how I invented the processes of editing and rewriting. Note that I didn’t say discovered, which would entail that I merely found out about something that already existed. I did mean invent: coming up with an original and previously unknown idea. Yup, it was me who first implemented the concept of a draft version, all by myself. Of course, you have all profited from this wonderful commodity, and I bet you’re simply dying to know all about the events and the thought processes that led to this marvellous development. Well, you’re in luck. For here, for the first time in history, shall be unveiled the story of how I, dimwitted little me, came up with the idea of a draft.

Asking Google odd questions just to see what it comes up with is undoubtedly a widespread phenomenon, like vanity searches for your own name. Trying this on Google Image Search has many interesting but weird variants
(warning: those two last links are all about searching out offensive
 pics).

It started snowing again just when I was boarding the stopping train home earlier today. Granted, the snow was sleety, and just about the only things it managed to cover in white were roofs, parked cars, unmoving plants and harvested fields; and the time of year is out of the ordinary, to say the least; but it was snow nonetheless. It made me relax my shoulder muscles, which had knotted up because of the heavy bag I was carrying. I had the entire carriage to myself, which was a blessing after the noisy band of singing children I’d had to put up with earlier.