Things you probably don’t know about me. Part 15 of 16.

A small list of things I’m afraid of.

1. Water
2. Clowns, mimes and all their unholy offspring
3. Horses
4. Height
5. Death
6. Getting sharp pieces of glass while drinking from a bottle
7. Seeing my own blood
8. Most dogs I don’t know
9. Being abandoned
10. Wasps
11. The scarf getting caught in a door
12. Going deaf
13. Getting holes in the socks
14. The house burning down
15. Breaking my hands.

Things you probably don’t know about me. Part 13 of 16.

Can something be worse than bad? Well, if it’s about things not happening to you but rather artish things then yeah. Music, movies, photos, et all, they can all be worse than bad. They can be mediocre. If it’s bad, at least it makes you feel something. You can’t shrug it off, you notice details that might throw you off course and think differently. Mediocre does nothing. It just dulls the mind.

Hence, I’d rather watch a bad movie than a bland one. The middle road is useless.

Things you probably don’t know about me. Part 12 of 16.

My movie interest was sparked by my parents. We had one of those Betamax — wonderful cassettes, I miss them — real early and I could handle the video player when I was three. Most of it was cartoons but when we got a VHS we got more movies. The thing is this, my parents always had the opinion that I could watch what I wanted as long as I didn’t whine. If I thought I could handle it, fine, otherwise leave the room.

I learned to read to the folder with movies available to rent at the local gas station, I saw Star Wars the first time when I was five. Between the re-watches I saw almost anything I could get my hands on.

I still love movies, but it’s been surpassed with passions for books and music. I’ve had bookselves in front of windows due to lack of a good free wall and music… Well, you know about music. If it’s good, it sets the soul on fire and tears down walls of perception. Together with books, it’s a constant revision and revolution, improvising a wall with holes and gaps and spikes and towers and aqueducts, corroding graphitti and blown off pofrtions letting almsot anything good enough through.

Because I love reading and listening to new things. The new affects me, it makes me see and feel things differently, it’s exciting. Sure, I listen and reread things which after some time gives new angles due to not being the same person anymore. But really, always go back to music you loved for ages? That’s like being suffucated by a security blanket. Perhaps I’m just restless. But art isn’t supposed to be safe, and I love music too much to not make an effort to find the good.

Oh, and I’m really elitistic about literature…

(This all made sense in my head, but it might look a bit like I’m just rampling.)

Things you probably don’t know about me. Part 11 of 16.

Soon done with these and that feels both good and bad.

I don’t believe in God. At all. I even got thrown out from Sunday school. But it’s not that simple, while I do agree with some of the things Richard Dawkins et all says, I feel a bit disgusted doing it. Most often they come across just as fanatically insane as the people they oppose, if not more. Sometimes a whole damn lot more. Which makes it hard to even say “I think they have a point” because the way they say it makes me throw up a bit in my mouth

The truth is at times I see this non-religiousness as a limitation. I can’t believe, I can’t have faith like that which means that my world is more boring and lacks some imagination. At least, that’s how I see it sometimes. This makes me interested, I even considered reading theology at the University. I want to know how it it works, what the theories are and how it binds people together like it does, it fascinates me to no end. There are even times when I really want to believe.

And when the atheist fanatics argue that people who have spiritual beliefs are stupid and such, I just want to beat them up because I get really angry. Fuck, some of the smartest people I know are believers. I have huge issues with this binary mentality about these things, it’s not that simple. You’re not a moron or a bad person because the beliefs are different.

Things you probably don’t know about me. Part 10 of 16.

I know, I know. Another body part post. Not the thing that makes you scream “yay” and slobber like a gossip hungry vulture. Except! This one contains violence! Blood! Pain! Murder! Okay, not murder.

I’m a bit ashamed about this, because it is rather stupid and I should know better. But the thing is, I hit my knee into things on an almost daily basis. I’ve managed to avoid it today though, so far anyway. All types of furniture that are heavy, sturdy and consists of wood or metal throws themselves into my path. I think they have a bet on which one will be the one to break something.

I doubt my knee looks like this anymore. Truth to be told, it’s not just the knee. The hands and elbows have started to act evil too. Perhaps I should try to burn the Necronomicon before they get possessed too much.

Things you probably don’t know about me. Part 9 of 16.

I learned to read pretty early. The problem was that I didn’t really care about reading more than subtitles or the back of a VHS cassette so progress was slow. Really painfully slow.

In school we had this short novellas. I think you was supposed to read them all, and then move on to the more advanced. Or it could have been a fixed number, like five or eight or ten. Anyways, that isn’t important. The thing is this: I was among the last to be able to read the advanced ones. I was slow, didn’t really care for the questionaires in the end of each book we were supposed to answer to prove that we had read it, and I wasn’t good at writing either. It was some sort of rebellion, I resented the other kids for being better.

A few years later, when I was about ten, I think I read better than most though. It might have something to do with the fact that I got my allergies around that time. And now, I doubt many of them even remembers how to open a book unless it comes with an instructional cd.

Things you probably don’t know about me. Part 8 of 16.

This is somewhat connected to point four, but only in the sense that it’s about the same bodypart. Yeah, the nose. Have you seen the shows M*A*S*H or Firefly? Sorry. Of course you have, you’re not stupid. I share a tick with the characters Hawkeye and Jayne: I smell things. The scene in the episode The Message where Jayne gets mail and he looks at the box from all sides and sniffs the edges? I’m like that.

Be it food, drinks, people (easiest when giving them a hug, otherwise it might seem a bit… creepy), records, clothes, books — oh dear lord, books! The smell of a used bookshop, I can walk around in a bliss for hours. Pulling out books to inhale the dusty and old scent of pulp and feel the text on the pages with my fingers.

This is not always a good thing. The cans with spice is not too good to inhale. The peppers. I don’t think I need to describe that, do I? You know what I’m talking about. I smell the tea leafs as well as the tea. I inhale deeply when I have the long scarf around my neck.

Things you probably don’t know about me. Part 6 of 16.

There are people who are amazing on making mixtapes/cds/whatever (mix LPs, that’s what I want to see). They take time and the end result is you sitting there, mouth agape, the music ringing in the ears and your brain splattered across the wall because the selection and order is so mind-blowingly good. Me? I’m decent. I got another card up my sleeve.

The booklets are my kind of thing. Thick and lots of text and images, some tied together with string, others made like a giant jigsaw puzzle. While I take time to choose songs and order — because you have to, it’s the law — it’s nothing when measured in time I take with making the booklet. Especially when dealing with mix cds, without a proper booklet, what’s the big deal? It is too easy. This way, it’s adds a difficulty level when choosing songs, there has to be something I can write about. I have to think and be articulate about what otherwise might had been intuitive

And besides, I love booklets with bought cds as well. Really love them. So I always get saddened when it’s just a small paper with song titles and copyrights. Fuck that. Give me texts! Give me stories! Give me photos! So there’s no way I could do that to anyone, no matter how much longer it might take to get finished because I’m too lazy.

Things you probably don’t know about me. Part 4 of 16.

A sign that I’m getting a bit drunkish is that my nose gets numb and cold and tingles. This could had been a great way of notifing me of “whoa there, take it a bit easy with the beer’n’whisky” if it wasn’t for the fact the it never really happens at the same level.

There have been times when the numbness occured after half a beer and there have been other when it happend after… let’s call it an heroic amount and leave it at that. Not a great signal.