Joy is...

...this:

It's heaven, I tell you. :D :D

There are ways and means in which you can extract maximum happiness from a little egg-shaped, chocolate- and surprise-filled ...thing.

Here are the steps:

1. Enjoy splitting egg-container. :D

2. Enjoy taking out spoon thing.

3. Enjoy eating the little ferrero rochers and the chocolate. Eat quickly, this gives you a nice little sugar rush. :D

4. Read the instructions.

5.* Enjoy assembling teeny-tiny toy.

6.* Enjoy watching teeny-tiny toy working.

*Note: for maximum enjoyment, ensure no wet blanket types are around while executing these steps, to say, 'Exactly how old are you, again?' and other demotivating things.

Joy.

Katze

How to Read a Book

Let's see.

I used to think I had no clue, and yet, as I trawl the internet for the 'right' way, I realise no one else does, either. In fact, most people have even less of a clue than I do.

At least, after years and years of reading, I've figured out how to pick books I might want to read, and then actually get down to reading them. I don't need a blog somewhere on the shores of the vast ocean that is the web telling me to find a nice, quiet place. I can read pretty much anywhere, but certain times and weathers inspire me more than others. Like late at night, with nothing else to do, or during the rains, when the weather is special and amazing and cool. I know what kind of books I can read(well-written ones) and which ones I shouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.(It's taken me precious reading time and money to identify those, anyway)

But the real question is, how does one get the most out of a really good book? I rarely ever think about what I'm reading while I'm reading it, and I'm sure this isn't correct. One should, in theory, immerse oneself, and yet be able to talk about it later.

Right?

I tried to read Tolstoy, experimentally, while thinking about and appreciating word usage, characterization and the like. And found myself here, in the present, instead of turn-of-the-century Russia, going to war against Napoleon Bonaparte. More importantly, Andrushka, my longtime fictional crush, stopped being a real person and became just another character fleshed out on paper. I felt like crying.

*sniff*

I give up. Now, unless someone makes me read a book in that way again, I never will. It shatters the soul, really. And ruins all the books that made my life worth living.

Then, I tried to read The Lord of the Flies while thinking about what was happening every chapter or so. I was safe from disconnection, since I thought about everyone, Piggy and Ralph and Jack, as real people, stuck on an island somewhere. But here, while I loathed Piggy initially, I started becoming as scared of the other boys as he was, eventually. And what happened in the end created an emotion in me, a deep root of self-hatred for a race that could become like this in practically no time at all, with no self-control and no ultimate feeling of responsibility when they are away from the eyes of civilization. And that terrified me, too.

So I stick, for the time being, to reading books like I always have, dissolving into nothingness for a while, and coming back with only the vague impression that I have witnessed, not been a part of, something great.

It's safer that way.

Katze

Fic # 3:Secret

For Archu, with no dialogue.(Oh, however will I make the characters and setting believable to my readers??)

Title: Secret
Word count: 506
Genre: No clue :P

****

This big secret. I take it with me wherever I go, and it weighs on my mind.

Life's suddenly become too exciting. All the frustrated wishes that things would change, become better, wilder, have vanished, and all I want right now is for things to go back to normal. To be a nobody, with nothing and no one's attention.

But I should start at the beginning. I have a friend; don't ask me who it is, don't think it's about you, or you, or you in the back there. So this friend of mine, she begins to go slightly crazy. Nothing anyone will notice, of course, but ever so slightly. Things which are unimportant happen, and she's freaked out by them. I, being a half-decent friend, as I like to believe I am, am concerned, then worried. I try to speak to her, and she asks me to leave it alone.

I don't listen. I don't want to.

So then I do what everyone else does, which is poke my nose into her business. I sneakily read her texts, watch her ever so carefully as she walks to and from her apartment, and just generally do things that eventually warrant a restraining order.

I find?

...Nothing, of course. Everything is completely normal. And then(I'm assuming) she finds out about me, because she freaks out even more one evening, as we're sitting in her kitchen and talking about life. So I ask her point-blank, what it is she is so terrified of.

And she won't tell me, but I ask again and again, and it's too late, and we're too high on lack of sleep, and she tells me things. Things I don't want to hear, things I've never wanted to listen to. But now that I have, can I simply go back to the way things were?

The short answer is no.

I want to help, though. I'm unsure about a lot of things, but I know for certain that I want to help her. This burden that she's carried, it seems to have eased simply by the telling, and I wonder if it would ease even more if I try to actively help.

So I try. I follow her around more, and she becomes tired of telling me to go away, go home and leave her to her task. I am always with her, on her side, sometimes the only one. I tell her she is important(not only to the world but to me), and as the weeks pass I realize this has become the truth. She has become irreplaceable and precious and important.

And when she falls, my important, precious, irreplaceable person, I go slightly crazy. Ever so slightly, nothing anyone will notice.

This is the burden I carry, the secret I have shared with no one but her. Her life's work is now mine and I will(must) do anything to achieve its completion. I wish none of this had happened, I wish I hadn't been so curious and so thoughtless, enough to throw my life away.

What choice did I have, though?

It was love.

****

I'm still not sure what that was.

Katze

...Into Something Beautiful

You know, you know I love you so

Okay. You didn't come here to re-read nonsense lyrics that play in my head all the time. You came to read something and be entertained. Let me help you with that. ;)

Five places that don't exist but should:

1. Willy Wonka's chocolate factory: Complete with glass elevator, chocolate river(and waterfall), boiled-sweet boat and assorted sugar plants and trees and things. Just imagine the awesomeness.

2. Jurassic Park(duh): The safe version with electrified fences and everything, please. I want to go and gawk like a silly tourist. It'd be so cool.

3. The magical city of Camorr, from 'The Lies of Locke Lamora': Canals, like Venice, but so much better, because it has pretty glass bridges, which shine with an eerie and beautiful light at dusk. Locke himself still living there would be an added bonus. :D(sigh. must I have crushes on fictional characters?)

4. Discworld: Enough said.

5. Venice from 'The Thief Lord'  Oh, wait, that one does exist. Silly me.

5. The Minecraft world: Because I said so. And because pixelated cake is super-delicious. And blocky pigs can be set on fire.(Does that count towards me being an evil person?)

Love, love, love always

Katze

Problims[sic] go 'way

Today's post is about the kinds of people in the world.

There are Rats, and there are Pigs.

Like so:

Yeah, there's just the two.

:D

... :(

Katze

P.S. If anyone loves Pearls before Swine half as much as I do, let me know who your favourite character is. I <3 Pig.(obviously)

We live in a Beautiful World

...yeah, we do
yeah, we do

The Coldplay video 'Don't Panic'. Also the inspiration for the title of this blog post.

I've been panicking recently. Thinking about my life, and my future, and where I'd like both to go.

There is the commonly accepted view, that I'll get a degree, do research further on, and settle as a professor. That is the science-related profession that is least loathsome, or most enjoyable, to me. I'm not quite sure which. At the moment, I do enjoy the subjects I'm taught, except when I'm to actually study them. Perhaps that is just my natural tendency to laziness and under-utilization of my brain.

There is another, that wants me to take a year off, concentrate on my writing, and try to get published. This has a lot more uncertainty in it than anything else: whether I'll achieve fulfillment in doing something I've always wanted to do; whether I'll be good enough to live on my writing alone, a rare enough return on the dream that I, like a lot of people before me have possessed.

Not writing for weeks and weeks together, not expanding my mind through wide reading, is putting me back three and a half weeks for every month of progress I make in my writing. It's simple, really. Writing is a profession like any other. No one simply sits down to be a writer. It needs practice, and learning, and reading and then some more practice, and so on. If I have to be a writer I need to work on it 24x7 for three or four years or 20 minutes a day for 20 years.

Being a good scientist will require me to give up my voracious reading and focus on my studies, and external science-related stuff, work in a lab, perhaps, with lesser free time to write as I please. Or else I'll mess up like I have so far, with my CPI, not getting a good project: no one wants a half-hearted student. I will not learn what I need to, to be successful in the future. Everything I've worked on until now will be a waste if I don't avail myself of the opportunities I've been given by putting my soul into science.

There are no shortcuts in life.

Katze.

P.S. Still panicking. This didn't help at all.

Deadhouse Gates

...Because some book titles are just too cool to believe.

Life is cruel, they say. That's why George R.R. Martin, while writing Game of Thrones, maimed an 8-year-old within the first few chapters.

Of course I hated it when that happened, because I like life to be sunny and happy and joyful and all that jazz. Not that it is, ever. But it's nice to pretend--and even believe--that it is. And that is the kind of feeling I get from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. There's a lot of sadness and bitterness in it, and a lot of death. But at the end, I kind of feel like the people in the story changed lives, their own or those of others, in some way. Mostly for the better. And, possibly, that's all one could ever want in life.

Basically I liked Coltaine. I really liked him. He had a useful way of dealing with people--ignore their whining and then enforce martial law to make sure they toe the line. Yup, something special, all right. Highlight for spoilers: And he's dead, nothing can change that, really. But his sacrifice wasn't in vain, and that's what matters in the end. 

End spoiler. Something I learnt from TV tropes and idioms, a rather useful if slightly flame-y site.

Go on: Linky, linky

Hum. Anyway, Coltaine. Here's the most romanticised version of him I've seen so far:

.

.

And here is a book cover with him on it:

Yeah. Sliight difference. As a matter of fact, that cover is more art than cover, almost. It depicts the feeling so well, you feel like crying when you see it. (*sniff* No, that is not a tear there in my eye.) Beautiful, wonderful special edition. Now, why can't more people gift me stuff like this?? People in my life, take heed.

Signing off, and wondering why life, while alright in the theoretical, is such a pain to actually live.

Katze.

P.S. Is a bit mortified, because just realised have been pronouncing it wrong myself, and have recently corrected someone else's(correct) pronunciation. Sorry. >.<