I have heard lately only bad news. From moderately annoying to down right nasty. And I have noticed something: that almost all bad news are related to a missing person. Someone is alone and missing the presence of a partner. Someone is in an estranged relationship and is missing the way the partner was some time ago. Someone is in a marriage only because of the children and what that person is missing is a spouse to rely on and share a marriage with. Someone is missing their child. Someone is missing their pet who was exactly like a child to them.
All this heartache relates to a soul missing from someone's life.
I wish I could fix this.
I wish I could make people's life easy.
I wish they could make their lives easy.
I wish people would finally understand that they have to assume responsibility for their choices.
I wish they would stop making silly choices instead of reasonable ones.
I wish there were an easy way to deal with death.
I wish we could find the way to make waiting easier and less wearisome.
I wish good things happened to good people.
I wish I heard one piece of meaningful good news.
The older I get, the more fond I am of hearing good news.
Help out a soon to be old lady.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Latest Lazlo's lament - end of a generation
Pre Scriptum: I wrote this post last week. I intended to edit it further. I no longer feel like. So here it is.
So, as I have said before, my friend laments the end of a generation that was before his. Apparently, Clint Eastwood's latest movie deals precisely with this topic. I did not have a chance to see it, it hasn't come here yet.
But this is too good a topic for me to pass on. Especially since the old generations dying in the corner of the world I come from have things in common and things that set them apart from the old generations that die out in the US.
The sense of right and wrong, the responsibility of doing the proper thing, the sense of community and family, the sense of shame (which I have to say that nowadays is almost completely lost), these are common on both sides of the pond.
Nevertheless, the old generations from Eastern Europe differ from the Western world, and this major difference comes from the long reign of communism in that part of the Earth. Here I must confess something: I am very sick and tired of talking and hearing about the "plague of communism", I lived 17 years in the post-"revolutionary" Romania and heard almost everything there was to be said about communism, not to mention having lived for 14 years the plague itself.
Still, despite this sickness and tiredness, I realize how people who have not lived it, share my feelings towards such discussion, but in fact have no clue about what communism was or felt like. Here I include people from capitalist countries and people born in the 90s.
I do not intend to get into the details of how it was to live in fear of making the wrong joke about you-know-who, you had to be rather stupid to make jokes like that in a inadvisable company, and traitors have been around and even took friendly forms since the beginning of time. I will only remind the following: seeing oranges and bananas once a year (the lucky ones, I mean); having the right to buy one half of loaf of bread per day, one kilo of sugar and one liter of oil per month; having loads of shops with nothing in them (literally, food stores with empty shelves); the cold that froze the crummy apartments in gray blocks of flats (which still stand); the abortion decree that was valid for some 20 years and led to almost an entire generation of unwanted children, starved for food and love; the entire network of lies that made up our lives at the time... These lies are the ones that affected us most. They took out the friggin' F out of LIFE and made it a plain LIE. These lies shaped so much the mentality of parents and children that they became a way of living. And now, people cannot tell the real from the fake, they keep waiting for the State to help them out, they still follow the same adagio of "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us".
This is why the older generation saw its principles twisted and ended up bringing up many younger generations in pretty much the same way. Now we witness "evil and fake" inherited and passed on, in improved ways, from father to son. The generation that held on to their beliefs and minded their business and tried to do right was beaten up and shackled to the ground. It was an obvious conclusion that having principles was not really useful.You could get by easier if you did not have them. So it is easy to understand the erosion of the family and community, of the moral rules of conduct, process that unfortunately takes less time than one might imagine.
And when there aree nincompoops breeding, we can't really expect too much, can we now?! But in this respect, I couldn't really tell the difference between former-communist nincompoops and capitalist nitwits. Because, at the end of the day, the problem is the same: generations of youngsters more able to socialize online than in person, who think that school is for morons and milk comes from the microwave, who want all rights and no obligation. More frightening is that they believe that their chance in life is winning American Idol or America's Next Topmodel or Bachelor or any other similarly contest. Not that I don't watch some of these shows, I do. But there are very few who have talent and deserve a chance at fame, and a whole lot of the contestants just make pathetic fools of themselves. And they are the ones who grow up thinking thin is beautiful, rich is happy and brand is life. Which, in my old fashion opinion, is wrong.
Thankfully, I have succeeded in life in making friends with like-minded people who give me back the hope that I am not completely right. And if this group of friends exist, then maybe we are not alone. Maybe it is just the media's fault, people are just people as they have always been, only that now we are being repeatedly told about the human nature. Maybe shallowness is more often met than we would like. Maybe, with this overpopulation, this is just nature's mechanism to regulate this issue, cretins are to be eliminated just like bad skin peeling away after an overexposure to the sun. Maybe this is just my wishful thinking.
Nevertheless, despite my pessimism (which I like to call realism, because whenever something good could happen, it rarely does, and when something bad could happen, then it will almost surely will - little theory that saves me heartbreak sometimes), I want to believe that each generation has something good in it, even though we might not always know what. And I firmly believe that life always compensates everything, even though we might not want or like. This is why I trust the superior authority on this. From what I read and watched in the movies, I think I would have liked the 20s and its folies. From what I have lived, now it's not that bad either after all. Just do the Monty Python thing.
So, as I have said before, my friend laments the end of a generation that was before his. Apparently, Clint Eastwood's latest movie deals precisely with this topic. I did not have a chance to see it, it hasn't come here yet.
But this is too good a topic for me to pass on. Especially since the old generations dying in the corner of the world I come from have things in common and things that set them apart from the old generations that die out in the US.
The sense of right and wrong, the responsibility of doing the proper thing, the sense of community and family, the sense of shame (which I have to say that nowadays is almost completely lost), these are common on both sides of the pond.
Nevertheless, the old generations from Eastern Europe differ from the Western world, and this major difference comes from the long reign of communism in that part of the Earth. Here I must confess something: I am very sick and tired of talking and hearing about the "plague of communism", I lived 17 years in the post-"revolutionary" Romania and heard almost everything there was to be said about communism, not to mention having lived for 14 years the plague itself.
Still, despite this sickness and tiredness, I realize how people who have not lived it, share my feelings towards such discussion, but in fact have no clue about what communism was or felt like. Here I include people from capitalist countries and people born in the 90s.
I do not intend to get into the details of how it was to live in fear of making the wrong joke about you-know-who, you had to be rather stupid to make jokes like that in a inadvisable company, and traitors have been around and even took friendly forms since the beginning of time. I will only remind the following: seeing oranges and bananas once a year (the lucky ones, I mean); having the right to buy one half of loaf of bread per day, one kilo of sugar and one liter of oil per month; having loads of shops with nothing in them (literally, food stores with empty shelves); the cold that froze the crummy apartments in gray blocks of flats (which still stand); the abortion decree that was valid for some 20 years and led to almost an entire generation of unwanted children, starved for food and love; the entire network of lies that made up our lives at the time... These lies are the ones that affected us most. They took out the friggin' F out of LIFE and made it a plain LIE. These lies shaped so much the mentality of parents and children that they became a way of living. And now, people cannot tell the real from the fake, they keep waiting for the State to help them out, they still follow the same adagio of "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us".
This is why the older generation saw its principles twisted and ended up bringing up many younger generations in pretty much the same way. Now we witness "evil and fake" inherited and passed on, in improved ways, from father to son. The generation that held on to their beliefs and minded their business and tried to do right was beaten up and shackled to the ground. It was an obvious conclusion that having principles was not really useful.You could get by easier if you did not have them. So it is easy to understand the erosion of the family and community, of the moral rules of conduct, process that unfortunately takes less time than one might imagine.
And when there aree nincompoops breeding, we can't really expect too much, can we now?! But in this respect, I couldn't really tell the difference between former-communist nincompoops and capitalist nitwits. Because, at the end of the day, the problem is the same: generations of youngsters more able to socialize online than in person, who think that school is for morons and milk comes from the microwave, who want all rights and no obligation. More frightening is that they believe that their chance in life is winning American Idol or America's Next Topmodel or Bachelor or any other similarly contest. Not that I don't watch some of these shows, I do. But there are very few who have talent and deserve a chance at fame, and a whole lot of the contestants just make pathetic fools of themselves. And they are the ones who grow up thinking thin is beautiful, rich is happy and brand is life. Which, in my old fashion opinion, is wrong.
Thankfully, I have succeeded in life in making friends with like-minded people who give me back the hope that I am not completely right. And if this group of friends exist, then maybe we are not alone. Maybe it is just the media's fault, people are just people as they have always been, only that now we are being repeatedly told about the human nature. Maybe shallowness is more often met than we would like. Maybe, with this overpopulation, this is just nature's mechanism to regulate this issue, cretins are to be eliminated just like bad skin peeling away after an overexposure to the sun. Maybe this is just my wishful thinking.
Nevertheless, despite my pessimism (which I like to call realism, because whenever something good could happen, it rarely does, and when something bad could happen, then it will almost surely will - little theory that saves me heartbreak sometimes), I want to believe that each generation has something good in it, even though we might not always know what. And I firmly believe that life always compensates everything, even though we might not want or like. This is why I trust the superior authority on this. From what I read and watched in the movies, I think I would have liked the 20s and its folies. From what I have lived, now it's not that bad either after all. Just do the Monty Python thing.
Tuesday, the 13th
I have just realized that today was Tuesday (3 dark hours in some cultures) AND 13th (another bad omen in urban cultures everywhere, I think).
Lucky me, I got to spend it mostly indoors. Where I did not fall on anything, did not slip, burn, cut or any other similar activity. So I can safely say by now that Tuesday 13th is a good day to live and not hide. ;-) Or perhaps it was because I was not aware of it until it ended. Luckily, in this respect my mom was right: the older you get, the less superstitious smart people tend to get.
Talking about getting older - I realized one thing, not without a certain amount of surprise, I might add. When I was younger, my friends and I used to find "amusing" a lot of traits in a person and to get to be our laughing stock was a matter of couple of oddities away. At the time, I had a nagging tingling in the back of my mind that I might not be completely right (as young people have the urge to feel all the time) and that maybe, just maybe, I am prone to the same mistakes that made those people be laughed at by the self-righteous lot that we were, and I would most certainly not like to be given the same treatment. Not to mention the physical traits, right?!, that are still a huge laughable source.
And now I come to the realization that surprised me. I think that to laugh at someone is not so funny anymore. I am excluding from the very beginning the physical traits stuff. I mean, come ooon! This can be hilarious when you are 10 (at most), but to laugh because someone's big nose or large feet, that is ridiculous (pun intended). To be very clear, I am not referring to the situations when some 50 year-old dons a canary yellow miniskirt and matches it with the pepto bismol pink on the pout. Not this kind of avoidable ridiculousness.
Which makes me think - am I indeed right in the middle of the current leading to the self-righteous prick I always displayed the inclination of becoming? Am I getting too old too soon? If I am right, then why do I not see eye to eye with so many others of my age on this? I think of myself as one odd (pinkish, if I may choose) egg in the basket, but to what extent I am right and to what extent I am plainly (painfully but truthfully) wrong? To avoid confusion, I am not doubting myself (I rank pretty high in the self-confidence department) but I am constantly aware that since things can be right or wrong, I always have 50% chances to be wrong. Which is pretty high, and gives room to reevaluation.
All right, so, here is another post about me, myself and I and about how I can have too many principles stuffed up my alley. Well, suits you right for reading how I tend to see life.
And now I will end this post to move on to another. Mr. Laz threw down his glove. And I intend to rise up to the challenge.
Lucky me, I got to spend it mostly indoors. Where I did not fall on anything, did not slip, burn, cut or any other similar activity. So I can safely say by now that Tuesday 13th is a good day to live and not hide. ;-) Or perhaps it was because I was not aware of it until it ended. Luckily, in this respect my mom was right: the older you get, the less superstitious smart people tend to get.
Talking about getting older - I realized one thing, not without a certain amount of surprise, I might add. When I was younger, my friends and I used to find "amusing" a lot of traits in a person and to get to be our laughing stock was a matter of couple of oddities away. At the time, I had a nagging tingling in the back of my mind that I might not be completely right (as young people have the urge to feel all the time) and that maybe, just maybe, I am prone to the same mistakes that made those people be laughed at by the self-righteous lot that we were, and I would most certainly not like to be given the same treatment. Not to mention the physical traits, right?!, that are still a huge laughable source.
And now I come to the realization that surprised me. I think that to laugh at someone is not so funny anymore. I am excluding from the very beginning the physical traits stuff. I mean, come ooon! This can be hilarious when you are 10 (at most), but to laugh because someone's big nose or large feet, that is ridiculous (pun intended). To be very clear, I am not referring to the situations when some 50 year-old dons a canary yellow miniskirt and matches it with the pepto bismol pink on the pout. Not this kind of avoidable ridiculousness.
Which makes me think - am I indeed right in the middle of the current leading to the self-righteous prick I always displayed the inclination of becoming? Am I getting too old too soon? If I am right, then why do I not see eye to eye with so many others of my age on this? I think of myself as one odd (pinkish, if I may choose) egg in the basket, but to what extent I am right and to what extent I am plainly (painfully but truthfully) wrong? To avoid confusion, I am not doubting myself (I rank pretty high in the self-confidence department) but I am constantly aware that since things can be right or wrong, I always have 50% chances to be wrong. Which is pretty high, and gives room to reevaluation.
All right, so, here is another post about me, myself and I and about how I can have too many principles stuffed up my alley. Well, suits you right for reading how I tend to see life.
And now I will end this post to move on to another. Mr. Laz threw down his glove. And I intend to rise up to the challenge.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Stihl Timbersports
I could not believe it. There is such a competition called STIHL TIMBERSPORTS
link here
It reminds me ofthis old movie . And what is puzzling for me is that they are genuinely having fun! Competing and wining tend to to that to people, isn't it?! :-))
Now, I wonder what is more thought-provoking: watching it on telly or going on site to cheer them up in person?
So, another year has gone by. For me personally it has been a good year. In general though, there are many who might say that it was not exactly so. I will not get into that, there are far better and competent people who can do it from more points of view I can think of right now. But I will try to sum up a few things I have learned this year. Well, not exactly learned THIS year, I knew them before, but this year was full of reminders in these following respects:
- No matter how much you might want something good to happen to a good person, that does not always turn out the way you want.
- When unhappy things happen to good people who have been waiting for something good for a while now, this can throw them off balance rather swiftly.
- Harm suffered cannot be undone by a good thing. But it can be alleviated.
- New love makes one's heart feel brand new and forget all the sorrow it has ever gone through and act as it has never been broken. New break-up, on the other hand, does not happen to that brand new sparkling heart from the beginning of a new love. No, break up accumulates in time and along with the previous break-ups, what the latest one does is to worsen the damage the heart was subjected to and make the owner plunge into new depths of sorrow.
- People often fall for the wrong kind of persons and surprisingly most of the times are unaware of this. (This is a truism but I find it surprising to see how often this happens to people from whom you expect better, really.)
- Life is absolutely spectacular when you share it with the one you love. I cannot get enough of it. This is again a truism and a most annoying one when you do not lead a boring happy life. I am not pompous to tell anyone "If you don't believe, go try it for yourself". I am truly wishing everyone the boredom of living a happy life. You'll instantly see that THIS was your life's true calling.
- Times flies by.
- Flu is being in limbo: you're not "ill" enough to call it a proper "illness" and despite its popularity people still consider you pathetic for not being able to "shake it off", still you feel like a beaten dog for an entire week and curse the modern medicine that failed to come up with a decent cure for such simple symptoms: sore throat, running nose, broken-bones feeling, mushy brains lurking behind one's eyes.
- Snow is not how it used to be like in my childhood. Children nowadays must be devastated that they cannot have one tiny little real hope for school to be called off because of snow.
The mushy brains behind my eyes are racked.
I must go run my nose in bed.
This page needs tinkering. Looks a bit... simple. I have to do something about it. Later.
link here
It reminds me of
Now, I wonder what is more thought-provoking: watching it on telly or going on site to cheer them up in person?
So, another year has gone by. For me personally it has been a good year. In general though, there are many who might say that it was not exactly so. I will not get into that, there are far better and competent people who can do it from more points of view I can think of right now. But I will try to sum up a few things I have learned this year. Well, not exactly learned THIS year, I knew them before, but this year was full of reminders in these following respects:
- No matter how much you might want something good to happen to a good person, that does not always turn out the way you want.
- When unhappy things happen to good people who have been waiting for something good for a while now, this can throw them off balance rather swiftly.
- Harm suffered cannot be undone by a good thing. But it can be alleviated.
- New love makes one's heart feel brand new and forget all the sorrow it has ever gone through and act as it has never been broken. New break-up, on the other hand, does not happen to that brand new sparkling heart from the beginning of a new love. No, break up accumulates in time and along with the previous break-ups, what the latest one does is to worsen the damage the heart was subjected to and make the owner plunge into new depths of sorrow.
- People often fall for the wrong kind of persons and surprisingly most of the times are unaware of this. (This is a truism but I find it surprising to see how often this happens to people from whom you expect better, really.)
- Life is absolutely spectacular when you share it with the one you love. I cannot get enough of it. This is again a truism and a most annoying one when you do not lead a boring happy life. I am not pompous to tell anyone "If you don't believe, go try it for yourself". I am truly wishing everyone the boredom of living a happy life. You'll instantly see that THIS was your life's true calling.
- Times flies by.
- Flu is being in limbo: you're not "ill" enough to call it a proper "illness" and despite its popularity people still consider you pathetic for not being able to "shake it off", still you feel like a beaten dog for an entire week and curse the modern medicine that failed to come up with a decent cure for such simple symptoms: sore throat, running nose, broken-bones feeling, mushy brains lurking behind one's eyes.
- Snow is not how it used to be like in my childhood. Children nowadays must be devastated that they cannot have one tiny little real hope for school to be called off because of snow.
The mushy brains behind my eyes are racked.
I must go run my nose in bed.
This page needs tinkering. Looks a bit... simple. I have to do something about it. Later.
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