Sunny way home

 

"EGAL" (Whatever) - A point of view that would do us good from time to time. And me close to my home:

Two years later...

To the best of my memory a person from work had a book from me for over 2 years... and didn't even start reading it. Because I wanted to read the book again for certain reasons, I asked her to give it back to me. Which she did today. My desk had enough free space for the things to be put there, but instead that person decided to put them in the cupboard behind my back and in the lower bottom part of it. I wanted one book back from her. I had forgotten over the time that she had two books and a DVD as well.

I pretended that I hadn't seen them, although I saw them almost immediately when I came into the room. Since that person's work day ended earlier than mine, she told me before she left that she had put the things in the cupboard behind me. I turned around and only said something like, "Ah, ok. Thanks."

I don't have to understand everything from other people and as of now I don't need to have anything to do with this person. Apart from the fact that we still share the same office.

Only partly visible in the photo, these are the things I got back (all well worth watching/reading in my opinion):

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

The Wave by Morton Rhue

The DVD of the movie Little Children

Carrot head

Today I found this carrot among others in the store. I cut the holes for the eyes and mouth. But the nose was as is.

My beloved toilet paper

 Actually I already took that picture in March to show an online friend what kind of toilet paper I have. I like it so much because it's so literal:

I just like how it fits to use a toilet paper that is called "Happy End" to finish your business on the toilet. Little did I know that shortly after taking this picture it would take months until I would have that specific one back. So just in case: I won't tell anyone where I got it from.

Rorschach was here...

  ... this morning on the tram I saw this blot:

Not only was it literally "mirrored" because of the window like a pattern of a Rorschach test. It also reminded me of a mix between two of them:

Card1 (Source: https://www.rorschach.org/):

for the top part, something like off-standing ears and dots and card 4 (Source: https://www.rorschach.org/):

for the bottom part, what looks like feet or boots.

Write me, what do you see in the blot from the tram.

The irony...

Found this sign at the bus stop today. I thought of getting it when I came back from work, but it wasn't there anymore then. I thought it was very ironic that whatever happened before the sign was left there, all that was left was this sign and it says:

I guess it was somewhat effective advertisement, because of course everything has hashtags these days and people may look up that one as well. https://lnob.net/en/

In the tram on the way to work today

 

Out at a restaurant with a very special guest at the table next to us

 

vu

I had a proverbial screw loose (and lost it)

 

On the way to the Christmas party...

The jaw of a co-worker dropped and she was literally speechless when I showed her this picture I took on my way to the Christmas party:

Two signs

Saw this today in the city, no idea who made the signs or who put them there:

"Geil, endlich 4 neue College-Blöcke" - Wicked, finally 4 new spiral-bound notepads

"Kein BAUM ist EGAL" - No TREE is INDIFFERENT

Comparing pays

Christmas is long over now, but the next Christmas will surely come. For this Christmas I checked my sister's amazon wish list and found a liqueur that I knew a certain store close to my place sells, too. Amazon had it for about 16 Euros (about 18 US Dollars). I went to the store close to me and found the last 2 bottles of the liqueur my sister wanted... for only 11 Euros (about 12.42 US Dollars). It was only a bit strange for me to pay for it, because I don't drink alcohol and now was standing with a liqueur bottle at the cashout.

The moral of the story: Even if online shopping is comfortable, it may pay to compare.

Taking and giving

Last month I wanted to go shopping and found an envelop wet from the rain on the pavement. I picked it up and found that it wasn't an open one, but a closed letter. I walked the path a bit further, because there would be a mailbox. Until now anyway. When I reached that corner, I looked around. Where was the mailbox? Had I not paid attention? I hadn't used it that often so far, but it should have been here somewhere. Then I saw it: the shadow and the holes from the attachment where the mailbox had been the past years. It had been taken away! I used the entrance to the tram station and went to the inner city to throw the envelop in the mailbox there.

By the way I had to go to the inner city, because the post office at the townhall closed last year, as well as the one at the central station. I found out the one at the townhall doesn't exist anymore when I went there to send a letter and found the building closed. I was surprised about the closing of the office at the central station at the same time, which I found out, when I wanted to get some money from the cash machine there and didn't find it. Only after walking the many hallways in the building and was standing in front of the door where the counters had been, did I see a note about the closing of the office. Really great. Hadn't it been possible to pin a note on all the entrances of the building, instead of letting me walk through all the long hallways to almost the counter room first? If I understood it correctly, the thought was to have all the possibilities of service in one single office. A research on the internet revealed that I wasn't the only person angry about the closing of the office at the central station. The parking options for car owners were seemingly better at the central station than at the inner city.

Around the same time I wanted to dispose of my recycling paper and walked to the container nearby. (The same container where I had found the religious figure.) But when I arrived after about 5 minutes of walking with the full cardboard box, I found no container. Just like with the mailbox, I looked around in surprise. The containers had been here for sure. Two paper banks and one for white, green and brown glass. But there was not one container! Angry I walked the way back and further to the other containers, which are inconveniently placed so you have to stand right on the street to dispose of your trash. At least those were still there, but the paper banks were pretty full and I had trouble getting my recycling paper I there to dispose it. On my way back I toyed with the idea of writing my landlady to give us back our paper bin. It doesn't cost extra money anyway. Our “housekeeper” had argued that it had been taken away for “fire safety reasons”, because nobody would take care to empty it, but it got stuffed overflowing. I discarded that thought to write to my landlady soon however. Surely she'd disagree or take her time to get our bin back, like she had been with other things in the past.

Today I walked a slightly different way back home from shopping than usual. I wondered what kind of containers there were just at the corner of our street. Were those new containers in fact? Indeed! We have new paper banks just very near by at the corner at our street! I walked home to get rid of the shopping and picked up my cardboard box which was overflowing with paper and dedicated the new paper banks.

I'm curious though that suddenly 2 paper bands are able to stand at the corner of the street. I had written to the city a while ago, because on the map online that street corner had been marked for paper banks, but didn't have any and I asked if it was possible to add some there. They negated that arguing that the vehicles to collect the paper were too big to drive there. Suddenly it seems possible after all. Suits me.

A letter from my aunt

Here's the (translated) beginning of a letter from my aunt from Hamburg, Germany, which I had in my mailbox today:

"Dear Sarah, 14 days ago I received your lovely Christmas greetings." (Liebe Sarah, vor 14 Tagen erhielt ich Deine lieben Weihnachtsgrüße.")

Granted, I had been late at the post office, only 2 days before Christmas(?) to send away my Christmas greetings. Still it's a very long time now for a simple post card in an envelope within Germany, isn't it?

The sad face

Caution: This entry contains Watchmen spoilers!

In January 2018 a long time and good internet friend of mine (you know who you are) and I came to talk about masks in an online game and consequently also masks more generally. I told her that I have a Scream mask that glows in the dark. (I still owe that friend a picture of that glowing mask. Back then I didn't get a good picture of that, because I keep the mask in the wardrobe in the dark.) I showed her also masks, of which I was thinking of maybe getting version 1 or version 2.They come closest to the moving Rorschach masks given the options available now. The friend wrote to me then that she had just rewatched Rorschach's death. "he looks like one of his masks inkblots on the snow".

I wrote to her under the title "Rorschach mask ink blots" the following text:

Rorschach's mask is not only moving, those blots are linked to his emotions.

This is one of the cards the psychiatrist shows him when he's caught:

This is the vision or memory he gets from seeing it: his mother (a prostitute) kissing the client. The boy sees them, worries about his mother and speaks to her, which makes the client walk away without paying the mother and she slaps her son:

We never see the full body image of them, like we do on the card, but it should be close enough to get the connection.

Rorschach's obviously false answer to what he sees: “Some nice flowers.“

This is the last image that shows on his mask shortly before his death and before he takes it off:

This is what's left of him, after Doctor Manhattan killed him:

If anything, this is his “sad“ face. It just has to be. Of course it's a sad moment in his childhood, but the image it makes on his face makes sense after we see that memory, at least it makes sense to me. He sees them close and kissing and later gets slapped. That is sad for a boy. And later he knows that Doctor Manhattan will kill him. He has to. They both know it. Another sad moment in Rorschach's life. The remains then form the only shape that makes sense.

There are other ink blots both in the book and movie that are related to certain emotions. But the sad face is the most obvious one of them all and gets repeated several times, as you can see. It's fairly obvious once you pay attention. Most people don't notice.

Check ebay for “Rorschach t-shirt” there are some with that very image for sale, too.

At that time I referred to the movie mostly. In the book there are other situations as well, in which more similar shadows are cast from different people and the Knot Tops spray their tag on walls, which is a very similar figure and on watchmen.fandom.com and whitneyblogs.weebly.com is called "The Hiroshima Lovers" following a comment the psychiatrist makes who evaluates Rorschach.

In memory of Walter Joseph Kovacs (March, 21 1940 - November, 2 1985)

Miss Marple and the helicopter

Yesterday a police helicopter was flying in the city. It wasn't actually flying a lot. It was more hovering in one position for a long time. Still at work I looked on the internet to find information, but didn't find any on the spot, not even on the pages of the police. In the evening I searched again with a bit different words than previously and eventually found information. Whether it was because of the different words or because of time passing, I am not sure. The helicopter wasn't searching for a person of any kind, like a co-worker and I had suspected, but had done overview shots.

The next day I told the co-worker that I had searched for information again in the evening and found some, too. She then called me "Miss Marple".

Magical blow

Did you ever wonder what's so magical about blowing? As a child we blow out candles on our birthday cake and make a wish. As a child, after we hurt ourselves, mommy blew on the body part that hurt to make the pain go away (or at least lessen it).

Maybe, just maybe, adults would be a bit happier again, if they pursed their lips more often and let all the air out and make a wish. But it's got to be something you really want. Not just something willy-nilly, because I just told you to and you don't really want to. Go on. Make a wish. Inhale. Purse your lips. Exhale.

Let me know in the comments if your wish came true. Also let me know if you've got ideas about what's so magical about blowing.

The wrong door

The other day I entered the tram through the right entrance next to the driver. The tram was pretty packed. At the very front and the very back it's also very cramped for my taste. Next to me was a young man. The next three stops the exit was on the left side. On the third stop a couple of people passed us to exit. When he noticed that he was where he wanted to go out, too, he approached the driver, “Could you...?”, pointing at the closed right door. The driver couldn't contain a grin. The young man noticed his mistake himself without the driver needing to say something and exited still on time.

Nail clipping. The right hand first or the left hand first?

Since I just clipped my fingernails again, I came to think about a scene from "Nymphomaniac 1", not for the first time.

An old man meets a young woman and lets her live with him. He introduces himself as "Seligman", which seems to be an odd name. He explains that it means "the happy one". She calls herself Joe and asks if he is happy.

Seligman: Well, I suppose I am. - In my own way. Even if I'm the kind of person who cut the nails
of the right hand first.
Joe: What does that mean?
Seligman: Well, I divide humanity into two groups: the people who cut the nails on the left hand first,
and the people who cut the nails of the right hand first. My theory is that the people who cut the nails
of the left hand first, they're more light-hearted. They ... they have a tendency to enjoy life more, because they go straight for the easiest task, and save the difficulties for later. - So what do you do?
Joe: Always the left hand first. I don't think there's a choice. Go for the pleasure first, always. And then when you've done the left hand, only the right hand remains. That's... that's the easiest one left.
Seligman: I never thought of it like that. - Well, you're never too old. Never too old to learn.

Which hand do you clip first? Let me know in the comments.

Religious signs

On March, 30th I went to throw my waste paper in the containers a couple of streets from here. Next to them was a big bag. I was curious and peeked inside. Inside were several dishes and a statue. I hesitated for a short moment and then I took the statue and took it home with me. It's about 21.5 cm (about 8.5 in) and weighs a tidy 1.3 kg (about 2.9 lb). No idea who would dispose of something like that. I would suppose that a religious relative died and the other relatives didn't have any use for such a figure and didn't know how to get rid of it in another way or didn't want to sell it. Strange though that this figure was dumped so shortly before Easter. What a timing!

Yesterday I went outside for a short time, walked our street and saw something round, golden and shiny on the sidewalk. I bent down to pick it up, believing it was one of the coins we have for shopping trolleys, although it obviously has a small hook, which those coins usually don't have. When I turned this thing around in my hand, I was baffled. It wasn't a coin, but a religious pendant. Fairly solid, too. I can't bend it. It's not a cheap toy. I put it on my keychain and wondered, why I found such religious things twice in such a short period of time. Me of all people.

I think, I'll hold on to both for a while, until I decided on what to do with them. Sell online?