So… 2008 is history, and we have in our hands a brand new year to ruin.
Isn’t it exciting to get one’s dirty fingers on something that feels and smells entirely new… in order to destroy it?  Or maybe I’m just sick.

So… 2008 in perspective.  It wasn’t a horrible year… but maybe I’m biased because I’ve known incredibly horrible years, or maybe I’m just biased because 2009 is predicted to be terrible here. 
In 2008 I did a bunch of things that I had been postponing for some time, so I guess my “To-do-in-life” list became shorter, which is good… as time runs out fast.
I’ve met a bunch of lovely people in 2008, and I am grateful for it.   My sister and other relatives are healthy, as are my kitties… so I guess I shouldn’t protest much.

In entertainment, 2008 wasn’t a year that saw a lot of me.  I didn’t go to see many movies, nor did I pay much attention to music releases or book releases.
One book I was hoping to get my grabby hands on is Snuff, by Chuck Palahniuk.  Just because it is proof that smut can be literature too.  However, I cannot give a review because I still haven’t gotten it.
Most of the books I read this year were released in previous years.  One of them is Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami; which was a great-great-great read.  However, I think the one I enjoyed the most was Feodor Dostoevsky’s “The house of the dead”. 
In music, I enjoyed listening to Bauhaus’ “Go away white” (which, coincidentally, I’m listening to right now too).  If you expect classic Bauhaus, go and pick up their old stuff.  I thought I’d hate this album, but much to my surprised I was OK with it and actually enjoyed listening to it!  It’s not among my favorite Bauhaus albums, though.  But it’s a good listen.  Go buy it, it’s worth it.
The Cure’s 4:13 dream was…. OK.  But you all know my bitter feelings regarding The Cure, so perhaps I am biased.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Dig, Lazarus! Dig!!!” was probably the album I enjoyed the most among 2008’s releases.  If you are of the dark persuation, I recommend getting a hold of that album.  You can never go wrong with Nick, he is an incredibily talented musician and dark poet.
Enya’s “And winter came” is a nice, introspective, winter-themed album, that I found really enjoyable over the holidays. 
Other 2008 albums that I liked were KMFDM’s Brimborium (re-mixes), REM’s Accelerate, Portishead’s Third, and to some degree Smashing Pumpkins’ American Gothic.

In Japanese music… erhm… nothing drove me crazy, to be honest.  But that is perhaps because I haven’t been paying much attention to the JRock scene this year.  I am still to listen to BUCK-TICK’s Memento Mori (Oh, dude… how I absolutely LOVE that name…).  I liked their Galaxy single.
Full’s Tafuca Madara’s album was nice, btw.  It reminds me of Suilen, which also had a nice release this (past) year.

In dorama… I think the only 2008 dorama I got hooked on was absolute boyfriend.  I watched other doramas, but I think the one that put me on the edge of my seat was A.B.   Recommendations anyone?

In movies… I haven’t gone to the movies a lot.  I only watched the Batman movie and Wall-E.  I liked both.  I can’t say any of them drove me nuts, but they were enjoyable movies.

As for games, anime, manga… I am not interested in any of those, so I cannot say.  There was some vampire-themed manga that was incredibly cheesy, but I read it nonetheless.  I guess the fact that I don’t remember its name is sufficient proof that I am not a lot into this kind of thing.

In art… I am not up to date with art releases this year. X_x  However, I did enjoy the works of several local artists, and attended a few gallery nights events this year.

Ai Iijima has died.
Her body was found by the police last Wednesday in her Shibuya condo.  Apparently, she had been dead for a week.
The circumstances of her death are rather unclear.
More about Ai Iijima’s demise can be found here.  I am… rather shocked.
I own her book “Platonic sex” although I admit I have never finished reading it (lack of time… and I get distracted easily…), and I remember getting into sort of an argument with an old friend about her  (she hated Ai, I defended her… old story, anyway) some two or three years ago.

May she find the peaceful rest she didn’t have in life.

It looks like 2008 won’t go before having taken a handful along.

Edit:  More about Ai Iijima’s life and unfortunate demise at TokyoMango.  I think their blog entry gives a very good idea of why Ai was such an important icon, so I’d like to politely encourage those who don’t know much about her to read it.

A few hours ago, I randomly picked a book from my bookcase, and I was glad to see it is a book I haven’t touched in decades. It’s Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. I remember having read it in high school. The book left a deep impression in me when I was 16 years old.
I used to read a lot on those days. When I wasn’t in the streets, I was reading. Both things were my only escape from reality.
15 years later, I guess I am drawing a full circle, and going back to some of my old habits. Perhaps, just like Charlie Gordon, or like Segismundo in Calderon de la Barca’s “Life is a dream”; my short time of illumination is reaching/has reached its end. And what have I made of it? Perhaps, nothing. Perhaps the light was too blinding, like Plato suggests.

I missed two books in the bi-weekly “Mathematical Challenges” collection. ~_~ This annoys me to no end; as I will have to go buy them straight from the distributor. The distro is a small, independent one, and they do not have an online order option. I managed to get Jacob Perelman’s Recreational Mathematics, though. There’s something about Russian Mathematicians that makes them compelling to the last dot.
I remember studying math in college with Russian books (mathematic is true universal language). Sometimes I think chess, go, mahjongg… they are also universal languages, but those are games… maybe they don’t count.

I remember playing chess against my grand-uncle when I was a kid. I always lost. I also remember playing checkers with my grandpa. I usually lost too. I wish they were still alive.

Merry Christmas~!

I hope everyone has a wonderful time around the holidays. And Christmas tree stars!
Lately, I’m having a bit of a hard time with schedules and family issues, and that has kept me away from the internet for some time.
I got a surprise health office audit, which is like surprise butt-secks minus the fun (not that I’m trying to imply that surprise butt-secks is fun for me).  Fortunately, everything went well… but all the unnecessary stress, plus the fact that I’m working over 14 hours a day every day, have ended up giving me a very bad flu… which is EXTREMELY annoying.

Earlier today I was going to transplant my lovely pine tree (thuja smaragd, if you want to look up some pics) into a new container.  It’s a live tree, I would never accept a butchered-massacred-mangled-assassinated tree, and it seems to have adapted very well to the corner of the balcony where I’ve put it, so I figured it’s time to take it out of its original (and ugly) container and put it into some pretty one.  But alas! The new container broke! >________<  I figure I will go get a new one tomorrow when I can get a hold of a car to carry it.  … my balcony is a mess.  The stupid container broke at the most unsuitable time.

The little ulcer in my right lower eyelid has popped up again, and it hurts like a… well, like an ulcer; and my lower left wisdom tooth has decided it wants to come out of the closet gum.  All of this, combined with the flu, is making me VERY annoyed.   Yesterday my blood pressure dropped while I was working, and I was lucky enough to find some soft candy to swallow rapidly and cause the sugar in my blood to rise, otherwise… I would have plummeted to the floor in the span of 10 or 15 minutes.  X_x   I think my blood pressure lowered because I was having a mild fever from the flu… but there was no way I could cancel appointments, so I had to endure.  I suspect this because my head felt like I was inside a bubble, it throbbed, I couldn’t hear very well and all my body was sore.   A bit too much for just a flu… .
Right now my body and I are on non-speaking terms. >[
I don’t speak to TRAITORS.

Nevertheless, I did the true Pisces thing and decided to ignore it all, and pretend I am SUPER-DUPER-HEALTHY, (probably because there was nobody I could whine at) and I went buying groceries, taking my alarm clock to fix (oh, yeah, and my alarm clock broke too, earlier this week), and doing some random stuff like picking up clothes from the dry-cleaner’s, taking shoes to fix, buying accountancy-related stationary… and buying flu medicine. X_x
I was distracted by one of those pretty “activity centers” for cats… and bought one. >>
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What?  It’s my kitties’ Christmas present…  It’s like a wii for cats… Mommy can’t always afford these things, so when I can, I don’t give it second thoughts.  Pics will arrive soon. 
I also took a reproduction of an old world map to be framed.  >>

Uhm…. maybe I’ll be entertaining some guests after the holidays, yes, that’s why. 
You probably wondered if the flu was making me drop my procrastination ways?  No, it wasn’t the flu. >>

Taking advantage of the very welcome free time around the holidays, I’ve been reading a lot about cougars, which are some lovely kitties about the size of an adult human.
I oppose the idea of re-opening the cougar hunting season after over 10 years of restriction; and a bunch of like-minded fellows here are planning to protest it very vocally. (Yes, this is the tree-hugger speaking, in case you hadn’t noticed.)

In sad news, (because it’s not me if I’m not bringing up something morbid), Betty Page has died recently, as has Forrest J. Ackerman. 2008 has taken away many icons already.

But in brighter news,  Depeche Mode has completed recording a new studio album. And The Mission are to release a 3-disc DVD set (2008 live performance in London).  Hahahahaha…. (my wallet is shivering)

I have fixed the problem with my computer, which caused the mouse to freeze.  Re-starting the xserver didn’t fix this problem, so I figured there was some rogue process causing it… but I just couldn’t determine what process it was.
In the end, I can’t tell you for certain that I found the culprit, but disabling the power-saving options seems to have fixed it. 
I initially thought it was a graphics card driver problem, and that got me through the pita of re-patching the kernel.  But… the good side of fixing a few incongruencies with the kernel nvidia patch and the rest of the graphic applications, was that now I can run compiz-fusion without a glitch! Hurrah!

Compiz-fusion has some pretty effects for the desktop.  Look it up on youtube if you wish. 
I also installed the awn docker, and spent some time prettifying my workspace.
This is probably the only thing that kept me sane after a nightmarish week.

I’m having a bit of a hard time at work, and that’s why I haven’t been online much.
This is just a quick note to let you know that:

1) Second part of the interview with Morrie is here.  Read it, it’s interesting. ^_^

2) Have you been star-gazing lately?  If you have, you probably noticed this.  I’ve been watching it for the last 3 days or so, when I come back from work at night. ^_^

I’ve never read “The Egyptian“, although I’ve kept this book since I was a teenager.
I’ve always been afraid to touch it, fearing that my dirty fingers would ruin one of the few mementos that granduncle Jos (my favorite granduncle) left behind for me before waving goodbye in his hospital deathbed.
Jos was a very important person in my life… well over ten years after his death, I still speak about him as if he was alive.  I realize I need to learn to let go… but I am severely lacking in that field.
He gave me this book, a year or two before his death.
He used to be so fond of reading… he was a truly exceptional person.

This book was one of his own collection.  His personal collection of beloved books kept inside an old and dusty art-deco buffet, together with the few belongings he still possessed after over 75 years of endless fight against life’s whims and knee-jerks.
He gave me this book, and a precious blue velvet-bound book on archaeology.
I read the latter, but I refrained from touching the seemingly fragile former.

Today, the weather is tough, and as I lay myself down I hear the call of this “unending gift”* that granduncle Jos gave me.
One that will keep me company throughout my entire life.  In reading it slowly, the voice that sang me asleep as a child lulls the words that time has been unable to erase, and yellowing has been unable to cover.
The voice and the words that only my heart can hear, are a gift of inmense proportions, in this infinite sea of absence.

*
“The unending gift”, by Jorge Luis Borges: (horrendous translation by yours truly)

A painter promised us a picture.
Now, In New England, I know he has died.  I felt, like I have before, the sadness and surprise of understanding that we are like a dream.  I thought of the man and the painting, both lost.

(Only the gods can make promises, because they are immortal.)

I thought of the pre-assigned place that the canvas will not sit at.  Later I thought: if it was there, in time it would have become just another object, a thing, one of the vanities or habits at my home; now it is unlimited, unending, capable of taking any form, any color, never tied to anything.  It exists in a way.  It will live and grow like music, and it will be with me until the end.  Thank you, Jorge Larco.

(Men can make promises too, because there is something immortal in a promise.) 

Oh, well. Go to bed, children.
Or I’ll send the mummy after y’all.

There is a very interesting interview with Morrie (Yes, THE Morrie) at his MySpace here.  The interview is in English as well as in Japanese.  You might want to check it out if you are of the dark music persuasion.  (You don’t need to be a MySpace member in order to check it out, btw.  Just click.)

I always find his words to be thought-provoking.
I also find it funny how he states he is a single 108 years old female, but don’t mind me.  I chuckle at random randomness.

In less fascinating news… ghost ships! And consciousness after decapitation!
I’ll probably write further and more in detail about these topics at a later time.
Ghost ships have interested me since I was a little kid and my grand-uncle told me the story of the Mary Celeste (probably the most emblematic ghost ship story). 

I live in a town full of cemeteries and ghost stories… and I am a lot bit on the side of morbidly inclined… and water is my element… I guess just do the math.

The article about consciousness after decapitation reminds me of a story I was told as a kid, regarding the French Revolution, and regarding the fact that since it was considered that the head remained conscious for a few seconds after decapitation, the executioner would lift the recently chopped head and show it the remaining body, in order to add more shock and horror as the last image the dead would carry to the grave.
I find it horrendous, yet not surprising considering how horrendous humanity can be.
Growing up I decided it was only a fabrication… but reading this article has made me think that maybe it wasn’t a fabrication and maybe people did try to inflict this kind of torture after death into the decapitated.

Browsing my feeds I noticed an interview with The Sisters of Mercy’s guitarist Ben Christo.
Quoting from the article:

The Sisters Of Mercy are currently on tour in the USA and will do a big European tour, starting beginning 2009. We had the chance to have an interview with lead-guitarist Ben Christo about the past, present and future of one of the most important bands in the alternative scene ever…

I know a handful of you are fellow Sisters fans, so I thought I’d share. ^_^

I guess I’ve nothing to say aside from that, haha.

I am having a bit of a hectic time right now because in a matter of 5 hours I’m heading for a lecture of epic proportions at the main lecture hall of one of the largest national hospitals here, so on one hand I’m shivering in fear, on the other hand I’m super-excited in anticipation, as I am one of the lecturers.

I’ve spoken with my mentor about 30 minutes ago, and we said goodbye promising each other that we would ROCK the lecture hall! And we totally will.
However, as you can imagine, I’m a bit antsy about it.

Meanwhile, I leave you with This piece of Obama entertainment now that the US presidential election is over, and just in case anyone is having election-adrenaline-withdrawal symptoms. XDD
(Note: if you have ever played super mario world, you want to check this out. *wink, wink*)

I thought it was cute… but those piggies are really annoying…