| |
2002-12-30
In Extremo
In completely unrelated news, I'm currently listening to "Herr Mannelig" by In Extremo and finding to my complete and utter amazement that I actually like it. Of course, it is one of the more mediaeval and less metal peaces of these guys, if my sample wasn't terribly skewed, but even so...
And in case it wasn't bleeding obvious, this is NOT the kind of music I normally subject my ears to.
2002-12-29
Visiting Dad
When I phoned my Dad in order to synchronize our holiday schedules sufficiently to arrange a mini family meeting, he announced that it would be just that, a family meeting - just him, his wife and me and my wife, no christmas, no gifts; saying that gifts where for kids and that everyone involved had outgrown the custom. But that's my dad for you: surround him with kids, and you get a happy old man in a cloud of happy children almost unseparably welded to him; surround him with adults instead, and he closes up, getting all cold, and hiding behind his intelligence.
Consequently, the highlight of the evening was the presence of the eldest of the three grand children he has acquired as part of his last marriage - a quiet, intelligent teenager who followed our discourse and chimed in with insightful questions when she didn't understand something our we were jumping around topics too quickly for her to follow. It's always nice to see one of the three, and it is heart-warming to see how they bloom in the calm household of dad and his wife which is so much less chaotic than their home or the presence of their rather dominant mum.
The food was delicious and abundant as always - dad's talent in the kitchen is one of the few characteristics of his I do not even share in part. And as always, I learned of a few more things we do have in common.
But the most valuable information I got that evening was his confirmation of my and others' scepticism of the cholesterol scare and what is usually considered a healthy diet: the overabundance of carbohydrates and decided lack of both meat and a healthy amount of fat. And he told me of the diet he has reliably used for more than a dozen years to get back to his target weight of 85 kg when he exceeds it by several pounds: tone down carbohydrates to about 50 grams per day, mostly in fruits and vegetables with almost no bread or potatoes, fill up with meat and fat according to taste. He says it's a slow progress with about 1 kg per week , but it works reliably and suffices for his purposes (which is more than can be said about those unhealthy "lose 20 pounds in as many days" tortures that grace the titles of those many bad womens' magazines).
Now if only I could convince my father-in-law of this and get him to again enjoy food instead of just obsessing about it... He has been on the cholesterol scare for a few months and is wearing everyone's nerves down with his incessant criticism of everything that he finds on both the dining table and that bloody stupid list his doctor gave him of things that he should eat either not at all or only in minimal amounts, lest his cholesterol levels rise. As if any less than astronomical deviance of the cholesterol level from the norm, or the mere existence of HDL cholesterol in his blood, had any medical significance...
2002-12-28
Emotional Shipwreck
When that cold claw of fear gripped me and squeazed my heart until it pounded in my chest as if it would burst out of it, making me want to run and flee in complete and utter panic, I knew it with every fibre of my being. Of course, I had intellectually analyzed it a few days ago and dismissed it as a fancy of my mind; and of course my subconscious had been trying to tell me about it for the last couple of weeks, and I had suppressed it, once again making the mistake of not listening to that most reliable part of my mind. But now, as I lay there, my chest pounding, I could no longer deny what should not, could not, MUST NOT happen: I was in love.
Great, you say. What's the BFD?
When that panic gripped me, a deep dark abyss opening before my eyes, I held my loving wife in my arms, trying to help her fight her own personal demons. And for once I was guiltily grateful for the sorry psychic state she was in as it meant that she, who knew me better than anyone else and still loved me, wouldn't notice, and I would be spared from lying in her face, trying to evade the truth while answering her insistent questions.
For how could I tell her that in this fateful moment I had questioned our marriage, the ten years we had been living together, and my life as it is now, and all this because of a person I had never met face to face, who lived half a planet away, and who was in love with someone else entirely? Simple - I could not. It would hurt her immeasurably, and she would not understand, and I can't blame her because neither do I.
So what's to do? To suffer in (relative) silence and wait for my stupid heart to stop that idiocy, that's what. All the alternatives I can think of are even worse: I still love my wife, although not as much as she deserves, and I could not bear to hurt her like that - the guilt would poison my life and would make even happiness unbearable. Besides, how realistic would pursuing this be? Apart from all the things mentioned above, all of them ingredients for a nice desaster all by themselves, I know I'm not the kind of guy she needs in her life, either.
So I figure, better one person stranded on the island of despair than three.
2002-12-26
Mercedes Lackey: The Lark and the Wren
I've read that book on and off over the last two weeks, and now that I've finished it, I have truly mixed feelings about it.
I liked it a lot, the path of the protagonist Rune (the Lark in the title) following her passion of music, running away from being a neglected tavern wench in the back of nowhere to become a happy Bard is plastered with a lot of passion, compassion, beautiful descriptions of the magic of music, and some fine humor.
But then, there were some things that marred the experience considerably. For one thing, the second part of the book (Rune as a Bard) has almost nothing to do with the first and feels kind of tacked on. Heck, that part of the book mainly consists of several episodes which do not seem to have much to do with each other, strung one after the other, making a good impression as a collection of short stories about the Heroine, but failing miserably as a novel.
Then there's the plot. If you're looking out for a nice, intricate, twisty plot, this book is not for you. The number of times our heroes are saved by a deus ex machina from any real hardship and danger, getting just what they need at that time or sliding into the next adventure, is mind boggling and easily rates as the second most offensive thing about the book. The most offensive?
The end. Do not even get me started about the end! MAJOR SPOILER FOLLOWS!
Here we have a conflict of epic proportions: the corrupt, power hungry Church in alliance with the equally corrupt Bards' Guild oppressing the Free Bards, the gypsies, all the non-human races as well as everybody else they can get away with on one side; the gypsies and Free Bards, led by the greatest living bard (Wren) and what is probably the strongest living Bard Mage (Lark) on the other. And all we get is the two settling down in the end and a sort of "happily ever after"? Excuse me? Why bother building up the two characters, only to throw them away at the end? If this isn't anticlimactic, I do not know what is.
Yes, this is only the first book in the series, but from the scant information about the plot of the following titles it seems like Lark and Wren only get supporting roles in them, if any, shifting the focus to other members of the bards and gypsies. I find this so disappointing that I have for the foreseeable future canceled my plans of buying the whole series, although the world of the "Bardic Voices" has a lot of potential.
Over all, I'd say this one's good as a free read, but only buy it if you can live with the drawbacks.
In lieu of a FAQ
Q. What can we expect to read here?
A. You and your expectations... You can expect to read here whatever I deem to write here, oviously. Now as to the question of what I'm going to write here: stuff about myself, rants about people, software, hardware I couldn't avoid having to deal with, praise of the few people and things I wouldn't ever dream of avoiding, critiques of the books I've read (I'm working through the pile of books available in the Baen free library), but mostly stuff about myself, really, which brings us to:
Q. You call yourself Gudy, you name your blog Gudy; are you conceited or what?
A. Or what. OK, so you may need to be a little conceited to actually start a blog, but the name has nothing to do with it. For more or less obvious reasons I wanted this to be twoshoes.blogspot.com, but that one's already taken. Don't click on that link above, it's seriously not worth it. If you've read this far, you have already read more here than there actually is to read over there. Yes, I'm pissed, why do you ask?
Q. Who is this Gudy guy anyway?
A. Ahh, that would be telling now, wouldn't it? Suffice it to say that I was born in 1974 and live near Berlin, Germany. Nowadays I work as a software developer for a small local branch of a foreign firm. I love music (especially Bach, Händel, Vivaldi, Brahms, Pachelbel and Beethoven), like computer games (roleplaying and action games with a story) and love reading (mostly fantasy and science fiction) and travelling abroad.
Q. The layout sucks, the colors suck, your blog sucks, you suck.
A. None of the standard layouts that come with blogspot are candidates for the webby awards, so I've taken one that wasn't too offensive and cut it down to be simpler and even less offensive, in my eyes at least. Maybe, when I'm bored to tears with it, or just plain feel like futzing with the template, I'll change it, but in the meantime, deal with it.
A. I like blue. Deal with it.
A. Then go read something else, or deal with it.
A. Please go somewhere else, or be prepared to be edited unless you can tell me, in articulate english, some reasons why you think I suck. I've been on the net since before eternal september started, and I know how to deal with trolls.
|
