AKA The Trump Aftermath AKA... What Else Is New?

I pondered starting to use lowercase letters in my titles, but decided against it when I started wondering if I pondered this because I am currently sick of the routines I willingly delve into each day, yet wish to somehow escape. I want to take a break, but I know that if I do I might not do all I'd like to, and then look back at the break in six years as one long and useless mistake.

So I keep on going, plowing through the weeks! Writing prose or poems, or whatever rows I sow to demons keep away from home as omens flow in, I sleep and zone in, and weep discreet. Cause there are secrets in my life but not all secrets that I keep. Yet it's infinite: I heard a song and got right into it! It inspired me, fired me up like cinder kits. It changed my life so much that now I'm sitting in with kicks, though usually in Sweden we wear socks and keep our indoors mint. But here's a hint: I'm not really wearing kicks - I left them downstairs. I'm wearing socks and a robe, while I walk around here. My life isn't all that I claim that it is - not always, yet it's true that I'm aiming for bliss. I call faith.

It's my all blue. Truth, where are you? What's your number I can't call you! Fall passed quick, then winter in a whisk seemed to fall through. I don't know if it's the dark times or if I'm a small dude just, getting by, contemplating which window shows the most tall view. But I'll: get through it with my music, collaborations are brewing, I have a lot of old projects - and new ones I am doing. I thought I'd write a weekly blog but then my mind got moving and soon I'm fuming tunes not really knowing what I'm doing. So should I add a beat to this? Polish it up, till it gleams and glists? Put the album at the top, of my Christmas list? I think the gist of this is: no need to run. Doing things is the only real secret to things getting done. So I'll finish this, and leave it up on my blog... it's infinite.

Yeah, guess what track just inspired that one! Though it's so old: hearing it now, with the promises that one remastered single seems to lift, is like a gleam of light in one large and spreading darkness. It's like a promise of a time past, that may finally come to fruition. A long lost hope that withered, yet starts to grow. A secret that's been dwelling in the shadows all this time - that changed the world, yet is still largely unheard of. It has a certain element of myth and mystery to it - it was the thing that could've started everything, yet passed by without notice, yet inspired change in so many other ways. And it's stood the test of time, to come back today when it is as most relevant.

Life is not all dark though! I had a couple of sessions of massage and muscle stretching/testing this week, thanks to a good buddy who's currently undergoing a grueling short-year education on said craft. The first session had me feeling great, so rejuvenated it was like all tensions had just dispirited entirely. My posture was perfect. I walked around feeling light and agile, and brimming with confidence... and that feeling lasted about half a day. Must have done some great though. The next session just left me feeling immensely tired, and today I still don't feel light or posturized. Guess the effects of a second massage so soon after the first may not be as drastic as the first after a few years without... but they were probably both equally useful. I need to get more of this stuff...

Otherwise? I've reached 365 days straight of 750 word writing! I went bowling this Wednesday (oh, right, was planning to incorporate that into the title after the lack of it last week, and post a bit of a backstory there - it's been a long time in the planning). I've watched a few movies, and played some Castlevnia (Dawn of Sorrow), and I'm currently up at 38,000 words on the NaNoWriMo challenge... more than halfway, and just nine more days to go! Hopefully I'll manage to reach my quota next weekend. Till then it's work as usual. And words as usual. Oh, and here's a missing screencap from last weeks post. Superimportant stuff. Not really.

On the blog I've posted 6 reviews, some music, and here's last week. Until then, I'll try to break down my routine a bit and so some things new... without sacrificing all. Ciao for now.

I don't usually type about politics on this blog, but now that Trump been elected... what's going to happen to the world?! Will it bring about war, chaos, and a collapse of society as we know it... or order and prosperity for all, and a large Mexican wall? So far not much seems to be happening, but it sure is an interesting era to live in! Time will tell if he was all talk and no Trump, or if we stand at the brink of some real changes - for better or... much worse.

I've been following the elections from pretty far on the side, and it wasn't until a few weeks before the election that the idea of Trump winning even seemed plausible to me. I've read so many jokes, and seen so many parodies since he first announced his decision to run, that the whole thing seemed like a joke to me. I guess the joke's on me, huh? Glad the official polls weren't much better at predicting the outcome.

My views on the candidates have been just as shifty as the polls this past week - not so much due to our shifty media coverage, as due to what people I've been speaking to have said, and though I started a firm Hilary supporter... I'm not so sure now. I had a very naive impression of her as a person, maybe because she's a woman and mother, and a much more negative one of Trump - since he's the one everybody's been talking about. Neither party seems like the ideal candidate, but I get the impression Trump talks a lot of shit - but may not be such a shitty leader. His stance on (the lack of) climate change is worrying, but his vocal spontaneity and non-bureaucratic approach is a breath of fresh air in a policial room that's been stagnating more and more over the years.

A while ago the election debate felt far away and unimportant, but now it feels like the result may have far-reaching implications all over the world, and maybe it's a bit late to get educated, but they couldn't have gotten my vote either way. Now that one of the candidates really is present in presidency (un unprecedented leader no less!), it feels all the more relevant to know what they'll go for. And oh, Fore! Maybe for... coath war?

Maybe his leadership will have much broader implications than that - maybe he will affect what leaders are chosen in other countries, and what form of candidates people choose to support. If he does lead the country wisely, then we'll know how wrong we are to keep electing the same old paper-pushers, year in year out, all in the game more for fame and profit than for the necessity of the situation; a dire state in the world that calls for good leadership. Now I'm not sure Trump will be that leader, but I hope some good does come out of this all, and that soon the riots quieten. More on that in some other post, and on the candidates - when maybe I'm better educated.

Even without the elections, I've had an interesting week this week.

On Friday a Pit Bull Terrier (or similar) tried to steal my lunch. I almost slipped down two sets of stone steps. I was going to go bowling, but that didn't happen... and then I came home and wrote three thousand words about it elsewhere, sparing little energy for the blog.

It feels like I'm spending a lot more energy on 750 Words this month, but maybe that's not so strange considering It's NaNoWriMo! The goal's no longer just a mere 750 words each day, but an average of at least 1,666 if I'm not to reach the 50,000 word quota by the end of it. Some days it's easy to write, some days not so, and work days I usually have little time regardless. So far I've just about fulfilled a fourth of my quota, and on the blog far less. Not that word count is at all as relevant here. Nor writing daily. Maybe I should make myself a weekly quota here as well, so I have a goal to strive for? I hear there are plugins that provide similar motivations for writing regularly, as the badges on 750w...

But I am here now, on the blog, at the end of a long Sunday full of Inktober doodling and Father's Day celebration, and as far as Inktober doodles go I am finally done! And almost caught up with my Project 2016 too. You can browse the doodles specifically here.

Those Father's Day celebrations are done too, btw. I wrote a short poem, gave a jar of Amberfish from Riga (it looks beautiful, but the ingredients are still a mystery), some Olive marmalade, and some less interesting consumables. My sister baked a Raw Food cake (that was great), and we had ourselves a little party.

I've sampled some Saint-James, Remy Martin, Grand Marnier, Mandarine Napoleon (a new favorite) and Contreau liquor this week too - embedded in bite-sized chocolate wrapping, and am documenting the names here since I doubt I'll remember them otherwise. Also tried bleaching away grease stains on a shirt with potato flour, and they turned red. Pro tip: if you've used a mixture of butter and coconut oil, potato flower does not work!! Next up: Bicarbonate to remove coconut oil and butter grease stains turned red. I'll keep you posted.

The weather's been snowy, and on Wednesday in particular it was chaos. I spent an hour shoveling snow before I could leave for work, and though the train ride in went better than expected, the trains on the way home were both packed and late. A colleague had to sleep at a friends place since all inner-city buses were shut down, and I heard horror stories on the train home about people waiting 3 hours on a train station, and 2 hours on a highway. People interviewed later on were stuck in jams virtually the entire day, stuck in traffic for as much as eight hours. Imagine eight hours on a public bus with no bathroom...

We were shoveling snow all day both at home and at work, and at the time I left SL's traffic status looked like /img/4/SL-Kaos.png">this. Note that 139 störningar (disturbances) refers only to buses. This only in Stockholm.

I was fortunate to get home no more than 45 minutes after schedule, but then again the snow had stopped falling at the time I left, and things were finally getting under control. And yet 'disturbances due to recent snowstorm' kept playing on the train station signs for the rest of the week. It was not a storm, and not even half a meter snow. Winter came earlier than expected, but as expected: in the South of Sweden people just can't handle a little bit of winter.

It's been an appreciated change of scenery with the winter white this week though, and yesterday the weather was beautifully bright, a fresh coat of snow sparkling over the old, and open water shimmering beyond trees still sheathed with green leaves - just like spring. Today it melts, and the roads are a salty slush, but hopefully the leftover snow will last a few days more at least! Even if they are doing their best to get rid of it.

Btw, if you missed Google's Halloween game it was pretty fun. Check it out here. And if you missed the recent GOG Fall Sale, that ended today, /img/4/GOG-Fall-Sale-2016-Snaps.png">t/img/4/GOG-Fall-Sale-2016-Snaps-0.png">h/img/4/GOG-Fall-Sale-2016-Snaps-1.png">i/img/4/GOG-Fall-Sale-2016-Snaps-2.png">s is /img/4/GOG-Fall-Sale-2016-Snaps-3.png">w/img/4/GOG-Fall-Sale-2016-Snaps-4.png">h/img/4/GOG-Fall-Sale-2016-Snaps-5.png">at you missed. On the topic of games: I haven't even started yet, but here's a few compelling reasons to keep playing DOOM. Really need to try that game soon...

On the blog I've posted 6 movie reviews, this this this and this. Here's last week. Ciao for now!

What a busy week this was! Monday to Wednesday weren't that out of the ordinary, nor extraordinary, though we did get our first small sprinkle of snow on that last of those aforementioned days. The day after that: everything descended into chaos.

It probably wasn't so much the snow as the cold that caused some electrical problems somewhere along the (train) line, and traffic stood still for hours. Meanwhile: the roads were covered with a thin layer of ice, and cars slid around and blocked both high and lowways. I stayed home from work a while, hoping the train traffic stockade would blow over, but when I finally decided to venture into the city some new malfunction occurred just half a station along the way.

We were shooed off the train at Kungsängen and onto a replacement bus, only the bus went to Hjulsta instead of Kalhäll as it was supposed to. People rioted, and shouted, and demanded the driver open the doors - but he just kept on going and told the crowd he wasn't allowed to stop. We reached our destination, and I took a brisk walk to the nearest train station in Spånga. Pretty much everyone else opted for the nearby subway, which did not go in a straight line anywhere near where I was going, but after a brisk ten minutes of quick walk I managed to climb aboard a train that rolled in just as I arrived, on a station packed with people that had been waiting for hours. Lucky.

In the end, it didn't take more than an hour extra.

This same week a certain section of the train tracks have been closed down for maintenance/expansion, so replacement buses were running shuttle traffic between stations. Perfect timing for my nephew to drop by for a surprise visit, and no less want to venture into the city on two extra occasions, to visit Livrustkammaren (the armory museum at the Royal Castle), and Medelhavsmuseet (a museum of the Mediterranean, with plenty of pre-Christ statues and remnants from civilizations of old).

That was Friday, and I picked him up at Stockholm Central that same day the trains stood still. We made it home just about 40 minutes behind schedule that day, and a bit earlier the next, and with no delays at all on Sunday. Though we still had to take the scheduled replacement buses: an extra hour and a half each trip.

On Saturday we visited Skokloster Castle by car, took a tour and tea, and drove by Säby Holm on the way back to pick some apples. The very next day apple season froze over entirely! Snow. Snow. And more snow.

Here's a quick tour of the castle grounds:

Read on...

How often does a week end on Halloween? Well, wait, Halloween is tomorrow... looks like I'm living a day ahead of the time with this one! And this morning I was living an hour after my time, with winter time switching things up during the calm of night. Doesn't seem like it'll affect my wake-up and go-to-sleep times much though - they've been getting pushed further and further forward with each darker day, and now they're back to normal all of a sudden.

This week? I've been searching for a pastry, waiting for a package that never arrived, bought a printer that did arrive (since a new one's almost cheaper than ink cartridges for the old one - and new ink cartridges are included with the new), been outside a couple days this weekend sipping some rare sunshine before winter drops in on us, and today we're celebrating my sister's 38th birthday! It's actually tomorrow, but today's Sunday so: better. It's also not Halloween.

There´s really not much to write about otherwise: life's busy. I've been attempting to catch up on Inktober artistries before October blows over (about halfway through at the time of writing, and getting better and better at Wacom), I was hoping to record some more but that didn't happen this week, and work takes a big chunk of time as always.

On the site I've done a slight overhaul of the movie reviews: after giving old duplicate reviews a tag of their own, excluding them from the movie review index, and planning to automatically link to them via the new reviews using a custom field - I now have all reviews for the same movie included in the same post instead, in chronological order from old to new, and ratings are displayed as per the original review score if they have changed. I'm thinking it'd make more sense to switch this around and show both newest review and score for newest review on the index though... maybe soon. Will see how this change settles in first.

The duplicate review thing all started out with one or two accidental duplicates - new reviews for movies it turns out I'd reviewed already, and then moved to a few intentional ones with new impressions on movies I'd reviewed far back, but from now on it won't be a problem whenever I do feel like reviewing a movie I have a review for already. I'll just add one more to the old post.

The new question is: should I count these duplicate reviews as reviews in my weekly posts, or just count the new ones, since those are the ones that show on the main page for anyone browsing and keeping count (if I should count all I've actually posted 8 reviews this week)? Maybe I should say something like "I've posted 6 reviews, and 2 dupes"... or maybe I'm overthinking this a bit, and what I say doesn't matter one bit or mega!

I'm planning on porting a few old reviews from the old list to the blog too. I mean, I am planning on porting all of them eventually, but I'm thinking I'll revise a few of those each week that I have no other reviews to post, as to stick to this totally redundant routine I've made myself of posting precisely six reviews per week, unless I go fanatic and manage the double (I really don't get how I had time for that earlier this year).

This review merge was a tough call, because it meant I'd have to delete a few posts (which means decreased post count - an idea that doesn't appeal to me even slightly), but better quality than quantity right? It also came with the unexpected issue of comments not being movable between posts, and one of those duplicate posts having comments, but fortunately I found a plugin that could do just that. I also merged old and new post views, and attached the missing images to their respective new post. I've been doing a lot of other maintenance stuff this week. Stuff you probably won't notice.

Alas, the most part of the work I put into this site passes by the masses without their seeing even if they might enhance their sight with glasses! But that is... just how it is.

Back to this review thing: for now this seems like the easiest way. Only the first review shows up when you skim the archives too, and you'll have to 'Read More' to see the second. Review posts with more than one review have a (2) beside their title on the index - or any other number within parenthesis matching the amount of reviews I've left for that particular movie.

So that concludes that, and pretty much everything else that's been going on this week. I'm still trying new ice creams btw. Just a few more left on each of the brands I'm attempting to complete (GB and Triumf).

On the blog I've posted 6 movie reviews, 2 anime reviews, this this and this, and here's last week. See you soon, and may you have a...

GRAND HALLOWEEN

...tomorrow!

What should I write about this week? I feel low on words. Low on much except foodstuff, of which I just recently consumed half a batter of pancakes. I dished out a nine dish meal for the family yesterday too (a present I'd promised last Christmas), which turned out pretty nice! Though maybe a few dishes too many. In an alternative life I could've been a cook, and all but an unbooked rookie. Also went bowling this Monday for the first time in a long time. It felt like Friday. The rest of the week felt like overtime.

It's been a dose of way too gray and depressing days overall - but for a very brief glimmer of sun on Thursday. Lots of work and stuff. I managed to jog a little. I've been tasting ice cream brands I haven't tried earlier, most recently a batch of Holly & Dan's Raw Chocolate Peanut Crunch. 100% Vegan ice cream with coconut milk, raw chocolate, coffee beans and other goodies. It tasted exactly like chocolate mousse, though the cold and different consistency made it a bewildering similarity.

It's probably not the best time of the year to be trying new ice cream, but I didn't try that much during the warmer part of it so it feels like I have some catching up to do. One down, a... hundred to go?

Otherwise? Not much. Better type something longer when I feel like typing for longer, but for now the words don't belong here, I'd rather sing a song or be gone down the long stairs to the kitchen, and even without the sun get something sizzling!

Halloween's closing in too, though our neighbors already put up lights for Christmas. A bit early, but it does brighten up a dull morning. I've been working a bit on my sites, and music, and Castlevania. All things considered it's been a pretty good week.

On the blog I've posted 6 movie reviews, music, stuff, and here's last week. Hopefully, next week'll be a sunnier stretch! See you then.

Honey, Where Are You? Ah, you're in Riga! Alrighty then. Better get up early. Take the car to the bus. Catch the bus. Get to the airport. Board a plane. Read a magazine. Land. Stand in a ten minute queue to the way too small but otherwise pretty luxury bathrooms at Riga International. Get into the city. Buy six packs of pollen, some wax, some honey bread, some honey, some Black Balsam and green tea, get back late night and ride the commuter train tired, lights white and bright, memories from a brief visit that almost seem like a dream flickering through my mind. Have I really been abroad at all?

It didn't take much longer to get to Latvia than it usually takes me to get to work, and just a little longer on the way back, in a small SAS 2x2 seats/row plane.

In Latvia the sights were bright and wonderful - blue skies and sun away from this week's unbreakable barrier of cotton-gray cloud here in Sweden. We toured the Old City, the parks, a bridge covered in padlocks, ate raw food at a new school cafe, visited the market, and supermarkets, and barely managed a quick dinner at the airport - mozzarella sticks, fries and beer-brewed onion rings before our departure. Not as cheap as city-food, but good!

They had some Black Current ice cream bars too. Interesting fish. Huge watermelons. The people were humble and serious, and seemed to have lived a harsh life without much English education. I hadn't learned much Latvian either. Communication was... interesting.

I bought a dice made out of amber as my one souvenir and potential lucky charm for the future. The city was nice - with old, pompous, but somewhat rundown buildings. Masterful architectural remnants from the Russian occupation looming in the distance, along with modern skyscrapers in shimmering metal and glass. Quite a contrast.

I didn't really expect it to be so much fun to travel, but I hope and look forward to going back to Riga again. Maybe for more than a day next time. Maybe with a bit better lingual skills in the Latvian language too. As it was, the only thing I could remember was Bez Glutena (without gluten). I should've memorized Baldies at least. Thank you. Had to look up that word after each awkward conversation, and the next time... Placebo? Please? Labile? What was that word?! I ran through my phrases-to-remember the day after the trip (the trip was Tuesday btw), and plan to go through them again in a week. Repetition on day 1, 2 and 7 days (or was it 14?) is supposed to be a surefire way to commit something to mind. Pondering getting an audio guide too.

Needless to say though, though I've said it already: it was a good trip! We took a minibus to and from the airport - which is just half an hour outside the city, and didn't stray too far from the city center - admired the view over the river, and then headed back. The weather's been hella gray and depressing all of this week in Sweden, so it was really the right time for a trip! Here's a few photos:

Read on...