Back home & stuff.

I AM BACK HOME! 

Yeah, it's been a while - even though the four people who read this already know that. I'm back in the best city when it comes to life quality (according to polls), and dayum, I am FUCKING HAPPY. 

After dwelling in an empty flat which was gracefully handed over to me for, well, dwelling in it, which also lacked gas and electricity (joy of joys, but hey, after the ordeal of the UK I am not complaining), and then moving into the storage room of a good friend's band colleague, I finally found a flat. One that is overlooking a train station. Which is awesome. 

To elaborate: I grew up next to a train station, and trains have a soothing effect on my psyche. I love the sound, I love the smell, I love the sight of railroads and trains. It calms me. So that is fucking brilliant. 

It's HUGE. Now I can afford it (after all, yours truly is now an official stipendiate of a superawesome science thing and gets shitloads of money for just sitting at home and working on its PhD), and the cats and myself are thoroughly enjoying the change. 

It's still empty as fuck though. It'll take until the end of February until I know whether I get a cheap bed and sofa of good quality. At the moment, I'm sleeping on all the blankets I could get, plus the mad lycan's sleeping bag, plus a new awesome friend's air mattress.... which has been clawed by my girlcat, so the bed is way flatter now than it should be, but hell. I'm away from the UK. That's what counts. 

I was taken out to IKEA yesterday by aforementioned mad lycan (big hugs to you, when you read this), and we did a roundabout trip through the fucking store after cleaning out the filth of my best female friend's mother's flat. More on that in a later posting, because it was an experience that deserves to be immortalised on the internet. 

Anyways. IKEA. We got 10 big Billy shelves, blankets, pillows (I need to sit *somewhere*), some other basic shit, a plush kitty, and then realised we would have to carry the crap up to my 4th floor flat. Luckily we could abuse the elevator, which is generally not for transporting shit that isn't people. It still took us a fucking ridiculous amount of time to get everything up, with me almost collapsing towards the end. There's definitely a need for red there... but alas. 

I also bought a chair. It's a wonderchair. It keeps my spine straight, my hips in the correct position, has about 7000 different functions, and was ridiculously expensive. But considering the fact that I basically live at my workspace, I thought that spending a ridiculous amount of money on such a wonderchair was a good idea (I still think that, and will continue to do so - my bones, sinews and flesh melt into how a human body is supposed to sit when I am in this chair, and boy, it feels good. Most of my physical issues come from having spent way too much time cramped on shitty chairs in front of shitty tables, so now I'm going all out to make sure that I will not have to suffer through that again for the next 15 years at least). Yay for the chair! 

Me and the cats are quite comfortable. At this very moment, I am cooking up 6 liters of soup with beef, lamb hearts, veggies and six thick, fat bones full of marrow, which will make my body happy once again. In the same vein (heh) I was informed that I'll be able to get red again. Things are looking up already - and no, this is not anything that the wiccans did (/me looks at Dr Mabuse). 

Home. 

Where can I start? 

Our food is so much more suited to my body than the one in the UK. Granted, both meat and fish are way more expensive here, but the quality is so much fucking better. We have actual bread - real bread! Not sandwich bread with shitloads of sugar, but REAL bread. I was binging on bread for two weeks after my arrival. 

Our beer is so much more better. In the UK, you drink 5 pints of whatever, and you wake up with a hangover that destroys your brain and remains of your physis. Here, you can down 12, and still wake up refreshed the day after. I guess it's because we have a Reinheitsgebot and no fucking sulphites in our alcohol. We take our alcohol way more serious. And fuck me, it's much cheaper. For one UK beer I get three beers here, which are actually wonderful beers. Aaaaaaah. 

Our public transport. I used to whine about it when I was still living here before the UK, but after the experience of having to pay 400 quid a month for public transport I will never ever again complain about ours. For that money (less, actually) I get a full year pass.

And I've got friends here. Kudos to the few of you who read this, you know who you are. 

So now I am chillaxxing here in my wonderchair, watching an accident happen on the street below, with purring cats, wonderful beer, cheap cigarettes that I can get anytime I want, listening to Mörk Gryning's first album from '95 (one of my favourites) and reading Eternal Champion comics (Corum, at the moment). 

I am fucking happy. 

Granted, it turned out that my formerly best male friend is a disgusting bastard whom I never want to see again as he was using the same ridiculous techniques of "control" on me than my UK-ex and the horrifying exes before that one, but hey. I got to know so many new and awesome people that the loss of that one creep really doesn't hurt. Life goes on, as the saying goes. 

Happy, happy, happy. 

And I was just given links to needleful things by my best internet-friend. Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh. 

Life is good.

UK "psychological assessment" & mental health system

Preliminary note: Blogspot seems to refuse my edits in regards to colour and font and just does whatever the fuck it wants, so nothing really looks as uniform and as pretty as I want it to look. I hope to be able to fix that when I have the possibility to do so again, but until then, this is a mess. I apologise on behalf of blogspot.  
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In late July I had a psychological assessment by a "psychiatric nurse" from the Living Well Network. On the 23rd of November that assessment was finally done and sent to yours truly, and yours truly can't even begin to express how ridiculously WRONG that thing is. 

Basically, it states that I am a normal person without problems, because  

a) my kitchen is clean, 

b) my clothes are clean, 

c) I appear to like my cats, and 

d) I have a degree.  

Nobody who has a Master's degree and wears clean clothes and keeps their flat somewhat clean can have any sort of mental health problems - that's what that "psychological assessment" tells me. 

I am not sure how that nurse who conducted the interview with me got her job, or is able to keep it. Literally everything I said about my psychological background was disregarded:

• "Phrenosyne says that she experienced an "unhappy childhood", but she clearly exaggerates, because her kitchen is clean."
• "Phrenosyne tells me that she often feels sad, but she has a degree so it is unlikely that this is actually true."
• "Phrenosyne complains that she felt bullied at work, but as a woman employee at such a prestigious institution as the XXXXX XXXXX this is an exaggeration."{FOOTNOTE}
  
• "Phrenosyne says she was diagnosed with depression as a child, but she has a degree, so that cannot be true."
• "Phrenosyne says that she has social anxiety, but she can go to the shops to buy cat food, so she is clearly exaggerating."
• "Phrenosyne tells me that she suffered a stroke in her early twenties, but I consider this to be a lie because she clearly has no problems with English now."
• "Phrenosyne says that she finds social interaction difficult, but her clothes are clean and she keeps her kitchen clean, so this cannot be true."

etc. etc. pp. ad nauseam

I find it highly telling that the only parts in this "report"/"assessment" that are written with a true insight are the parts about my clean kitchen, my clean clothes, and my clean flat. Says a lot about the quality of education that "psychiatric nurse" got. I did tell that woman that I cleaned up specifically for her visit, and that I often don't do anything when depression hits me - you know, standard depressive symptoms: You lie in bed, stare into nothingness, don't move, don't shower, don't clean anything, because you cannot even find the motivation to move a limb as all seems pointless and dark and why not kill yourself? But me cleaning my flat for someone from what I generically call "the government" is clearly a sign that I am not depressed at all. 

Hell, I showed that woman my arms (who are quite cut up), and in this "assessment" of hers she states that "[she] is at a very low risk of self harm, because she only self harms superficially when she has been binge drinking". EXCUSE ME?! My self harm is nothing I am proud of, far from it, but I am quite capable of doing that when sober. And "superficially"... dear fucking gods. How much deeper do I have to cut for it to be recognised as non-superficial?? 

Apparently, my suicide attempt in June, for which I was dragged to the hospital by a horde of policemen (think SWAT team) after they barged into my flat, threw me onto the ground, handcuffed me, put their knees into my back and repeatedly slammed my head onto the floor whilst yelling at me to BE CALM!!!! (all of which resulted in a ridiculous amount of bruises and a slight concussion, but nobody cared about that either) didn't count as a suicide attempt either, but was logged as "superficial self harm". I know what superficial self harm is, and trust me, I haven't been doing that. IF I resort to self harm for lack of any other coping mechanisms available then it's proper self harm. And a suicide attempt in which you stab your veins with scalpels in order to release a maximum amount of blood from your system before carving down into your veins and hitting them is not "superficial self harm". Dear gods. This country's mental health system is well and truly fucked beyond good an evil. 

In addition to all that crap, the "assessment" referred a phone call that has apparently been made on the 8th of November (I cannot remember one, and neither can my phone log, but hey, who fucking cares) in which I apparently stated that I "suffer from several eating disorders". 

WUT??? 

Thank you for informing me, you incompetent fucks! I wasn't aware of that, I am happy to see that you not only disregard anything I said about how I feel and what my problems are, but that you also make up fictional phone calls in which I inform you of nonexistent disorders! I DON'T HAVE ANY EATING DISORDER! 

References to my psychiatrist's diagnoses WHICH I SHOWED THAT WOMAN were disregarded as blatant lies of mine as well (probably because people in the UK cannot trust foreign doctors from foreign non-UK countries - after all, they're foreign and could say ANYTHING). So apparently I made up all of my diagnoses that I got back home and showed that "psychiatric nurse". 

Seriously. Is this what the UK mental health system is like? You send a borderline retarded "psychiatric nurse" to visit someone who just tried to kill themselves, they have a look around, note approvingly that the flat and kitchen is clean, that the patient in question doesn't stink, make a note that they have a degree, and then they're off for almost four months to then write an "assessment" stating that the person in question is fucking fine?! FINE?! DO I HAVE TO CARVE WORDS IN MY FACE AGAIN SO THAT I AM NOT CONSIDERED FINE??? Apparently carving and burning up your arms doesn't count on the magical and wonderful secret grading system of the NHS. What would you need to do? I told her that I had been in the grip of fucking suicidal ideation for months, and that it didn't get better! What do they want someone like me to do to recognise and accept that I would need SOME help?? I am not asking them to put me through years of fucking therapy or anything, or section me away (because cats), but WHAT DO THEY WANT?! I just wanted to see a fucking psychiatrist to get some medication to tide me over until I manage to sort my circumstances out - but FUCK NO, WE CAN'T HAVE THAT. I am just lying to them about all of my past and all of my psychiatric history, faking the 900+ scars on my arms because I find that funny and an engaging way to spend my fucking time?? 

These people make me sick. Reading this "assessment"/"report" I had to start to cry, because I felt so betrayed. Apparently I'm doing something wrong when talking to mental health people in the UK. Being honest and open with them, telling them how it is, how it was and what kinds of treatment I received in the past, telling them why I am in a bad shape right now seems to be a really, really bad idea. What do they expect me to do? Should I take a razor to my face when they talk to me? I can do that. But this is just.... so very, very wrong.
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Edit: Addendum
After the aforementioned suicide attempt, when I was in A&E with friend Dr Mabuse, the two social worker ladies (very nice, no complaint there) who asked me about me and why I was there continuously remarked that they were impressed that I had such a high level of reflection on what I was thinking and feeling and the reasons for that, and that it's rare to have a patient who is so articulate about all that after such an incident. Apparently that makes these people think that you weren't serious. For some reason, being able to explain rationally in detail why you came to the conclusion that it would be best to simply remove yourself from existence, and how you tried to do that and why you failed (human weakness always being the most uncomfortable point in that list), makes the people interviewing you think that you didn't really want to die or even hurt yourself.
How dumb and insensitive is that? Do I have to be raging with tears and the fuel of madness in order for someone to believe that yes, /i would like to end myself? Shouldn't being able to explain my reasons be more reason to trust my judgment on that?
Fucking ridiculous. "You can think, hence you WANT TO LIVE!" - No you stupid fuck, I just failed to die, there's a distinct difference.
/Addendum
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This woman was talking to me for an hour. I cleaned everything up because I was under the apparently mistaken assumption that you fucking clean your flat when someone visits you, especially someone from an official institution. I tried to keep my calm, even though I broke down crying several times throughout the interview. What? What did I do wrong? 

Should I have tried to cut my arm off? Should I have smeared the walls with blood beforehand? I dont want to be sectioned - but trying to appear like a somewhat sane adult who simply needs help because they've been failed by all of the systems apparently in place for people like me in the UK apparently was a huge mistake.

You can't win in a game like that that is rigged against you from the beginning. Being left to float in an existential limbo for almost four months after such a visit, hearing nothing, getting no help whatsoever, and then getting this thing sent to you in which you have to read that you're fine and at no risk of self harm - it is not just insulting, it is deeply hurtful. In the time since that woman had talked to me (or rather, since I had talked at her), I have cut myself 11 times. Admittedly, five of those were not really as deep as I could go, but the rest were me enthusiastically carving up bits of myself to try and cope with the overwhelming feelings of isolation, externally caused depression (situational context of mode of existence) plus a correspondingly thorough dose of self hatred and existential despair. 

This isn't helping people who need help. At all. I am lucky enough to possess a relatively high level of self reflection (say the professionals), because that comes with my IQ and 15+ years of examining myself and trying to get better on my own because there is nobody there to help you. I dread to think what someone with a less developed system of internal coping mechanisms would have done - or someone in a worse situation than me. It's no wonder that there are regularly news about people cut off from benefits committing suicide here in the UK whilst they're waiting for help from both the social security and mental health system, particularly when you're "fit for work". (<-- LINKS)
{I'm not happy that I fall in this category - as with many people who are in similar circumstances, if not most, I feel ashamed for my problems (the devious devil of the ominously designated 'mental health problems'), because mental health issues are generally seen as something completely different from physical health problems. Physical health problems happen to you, but the mental health problems aren't considered to be something that also just happens to you, but something that you intrinsically "have", something that you *are*}

There is no mental health system here for people who are really at risk and really need it. I've talked to enough people who also suffer from mental health issues of various kinds, who have all been left alone by this "system". We cannot contribute financially to the UK because we're "crazy" and "wrong" and "lying". 

I have talked to six different doctors, and they all refused to refer me to a psychiatrist (why? Apparently I dont need one, simple as that). I have been refused treatment at emergency clinics (you need a referral from a GP first, even if you show up there with blood dripping from the cuts on your arms, in tears and hardly able to communicate because you're so fucked up in the head BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN LEFT ALONE BY EVERYBODY - and if you don't have a referral from your GP? Well, there's probably a reason why s/he won't give you one! Go back home!). 

Good going, UK "mental health system". This will surely solve all of the problems and high suicide rates. Verily.

It makes me sick.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/17/austerity-and-a-malign-benefits-regime-are-profoundly-damaging-mental-health

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FOOTNOTE: "woman employee"? If I had a penis, would I have been referred to as a "man employee"?! It makes me sound as if I was cleaning the floors rather than curate a giant collection. "woman employee". Hah. No sexism there at all.

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SHIT I READ 000 - ravenous panic reading list, or: how to avoid PhD topics professionally!

Writing the last entry I realised that I read a shitload of books last month in order to not do anything useful and not get into a panic. And because it is quite an impressive list I am totally listing it here. For if I can't offer my immense knowledge and awesomeness in regards to PhD topics, I can at least offer "shit I read".

Hence I present:

SHIT I READ:

Caitlín R. Kiernan - Murder of Angels

Caitlín R. Kiernan - Silk

Caitlín R. Kiernan - The Ape's Wife and Other Stories

Umberto Eco - The Prague Cemetery

Nancy A. Collins - Dead Man's Hand

Paul Guran (ed.) - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2011

Dennis Detwiller - Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy. A Cthulhu Mythos Novel of WWII

Lord Dunsany - Fifty-One Tales

Umberto Eco - Baudolino

Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett (eds.) - Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

Richard Matheson - I Am Legend

Stephen Jones (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21

Stephen Jones (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror  22

Stephen Jones (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror  23

Caitlín R. Kiernan - Alabaster

Caitlín R. Kiernan - The Red Tree

Nancy A. Collins - Right Hand Magic

Octavia E. Butler - Fledgling

Poppy Z. Brite - Lost Souls

Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

John Skipp and Craig Spector - Animals

John Skipp and Craig Spector - Dead Lines

John Skipp and Craig Spector - The Scream

John Skipp and Craig Spector - The Light at the End

...which makes 24 books for October. Not too shabby. I am honestly surprised that I read that many, even though I wanted to read more. I feel slightly bad for not having even looked at a single academic book or article, but fuck it, trying to remain sane has a higher priority than accumulating knowledge right now. Plus, this has been the first time I've been reading fiction in years. As I am a creature of extremes, I do tend to binge. This was definitely a binge-reading month. And it worked - as my goal was to not think of my PhD shit, I succeeded brilliantly.

I need to read more. MORE. I was thinking about reading Tad Williams' Otherland books again (because I love Dread), but that won't work because I only have them as pdfs, and the e-book reader I got from Kumpelino only shows pdfs with font size 8. Which is headache-inducing. I can't read any more by Caitlín R. Kiernan because her repetitive wording makes me go insane (KUDZU VINES! FUCKING KUDZU VINES!), I don't want to read more Poppy Z. Brite, because KUDZU VINES and man-on-man sex, and blah. Headache. And I'm sick of the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror books, as I already know most of the stories included. Damn my ravenous reading habits.

Now, what to read next...? I was thinking about binging on Umberto Eco, possibly re-reading Foucault's Pendulum, because I thoroughly enjoy feeling clever. But again, only available as a pdf, because I DO NOT HAVE MY LIBRARY IN THIS THRICE DAMNED COUNTRY. Suggestions are welcome*. Fuck all of this shit. I would go through my Moorcock collection again if I had my Moorcock collection with me. But I do have The Warhound and the World's Pain in the 1992 Millennium edition, so maybe I'll read that. I do have Eco's From the Tree to the Labyrinth in actual book form as well, which I haven't read yet (as opposed to the aforementioned Moorcock), but that involves thinking and taking notes and more thinking, and I don't want to think right now. I want easy shit to read that doesn't involve any fucking brain activity whatsoever.  And nothing that involves sitting in front of the laptop, I'm getting eye-aches and headaches from that (probably psychosomatic, but that doesn't stop the pain). I did find an amazing book edited by Ian Hodder (He Of the Power and Might of Catalhöyük) that I really would love to read, but it's a) a pdf, b) nonfiction, and both a) and b) will make my head hurt like fuck.

Blegh.

*feels like shit*

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*FN 1: I am looking at you, 1410c!

it's November already, and I can't sleep

November. 

I am almost hysterically nervous about the entire "will I get the PhD stipend I applied for?!" thing. As I do not allow myself to actually get into the hysterical nervousness that is what I actually feel about this (OH MY FUCKING GODS THIS IS A THING THAT WILL DETERMINE MY LIFE FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUUUUUUUCK), I've been reading for the last... four weeks? It's completely ridiculous. I haven't been reading fiction since I finished my Master's degree - after that I didn't have any time for it, and... now I am just scared as fuck and can't do anything but get ridiculously drunk (impossible due to monetary issues) or read, read, read, read, read to numb and kill off my brain and mind and the associated issues. (I shall post a list of books that I read later.)

I still haven't gotten a notification about the PhD stipend. 

And I noticed that it's already November. I mean, I was perfectly aware of the fact that it's November, because November is WHEN THE PhD STIPEND WILL BE DECIDED UPON. I am shivering with nerves. And I do not mean this in any way hypothetical or theoretical. I am sitting here and shaking like a Parkinson's patient, grinding my teeth (this has been going on for three months, and my teeth are correspondingly shitty - thanks, life) and making the occasional mewling noise. I got enough money to a) buy the meds for Oona's asthma, b) buy alcohol. I would like to be dead-drunk every single second of the day. The whole waiting for the stipend email makes me really, really, really, REALLY FUCKING NERVOUS. I would prefer to carve my eyes out rather than wait and not know. To die. To just off myself, easy way out rather than this. This waiting. What if I don't get the stipend? Shit. I am going crazy with all of this. 

BUT: Storytelling helps. 

Hence:

There was a young woman from Austria living in London who had applied for a PhD stipend that would fix her life for the next three years. When the time came to learn whether she had gotten the stipend or not, she became so nervous that she couldn't sleep properly anymore and felt incredibly nervous. She was shaking all the time, which was bad for her health, but it lent power to the things she had created and commanded to give her that stipend (because she was a little bit crazy, and being a little bit crazy told all the solar and jupiterian critters she had built to get her that stipend). So she was sitting around in her living room, staring at the wall, drinking when she had money to afford alcohol to drink, and generally was a nervous wreck. The stipend in question was a decisive point in her life. For months she had worked to get it, and had succeeded in overcoming lust of result - but these last days before the decision whether she'd get it or not her mind simply refused to be calm. Barely getting four hours of sleep a day she tried to read fiction in order to relax - which worked. But those days during which the reading of fiction worked were the last days of October. Now November had started, and she realised that she was unable to remain calm. She was hungry and nervous. She tried reading fiction, but she didn't have the mental fortitude to do so. She tried reading articles and nonfiction books, but she didn't have the mental fortitude to do so either. So she spent the days staring at the walls, staring at her arms, staring at the floor and staring at the tree in front of her flat. 

Usually, when she wasn't as nervous, she slept about 15 hours a day in order to not focus on her nerves going haywire. But now she couldn't do that anymore, and, down to four hours a day, she became haggard and frazzled. 

Then, finally, on the day that the stipends were going to be sent out, she checked her email inbox. She barely managed to log into her email, being mostly busy with staring at the tree in front of her living room. Leaves fell down in spiralling motions, and she tried to focus onto them - seeing the spirals as they drew themselves into the air, seeing the colours of the leaves that had disassociated themselves from the tree. Seeing. Watching. Breathing. Hoping. Being dead inside, expecting her life to die away under her shaking hands. 

So she checked her inbox. No email from the stipend people. Nothing. More and more nervous, she started to take prescription drugs in order to calm down, to not shake, to not feel her nerves vibrate with anxiety. Sleepless, she continued to sit in front of the computer, compulsively checking her emails. And then - an email. From the stipend people. She breathed in deeply before opening it, and then looked...

....everything was alright, and her life was safe for the next years. She smiled and fell asleep. Everything was beautiful. Life was good. 

...because storytelling helps with reality. Burn it into reality. BURN. I NEED THIS FUCKING STIPEND. I want to sleep again - at the moment I'm down to four hours a day. Which doesn't help at all. Luckily I got red on Monday, which helped with health issues and all that, but I DO NOT KNOW IF I GET THE STIPEND AND I CANNOT RELAX. Fuck this situation. I need drugs to relax and calm down, and I don't have any weed to smoke, which is really not a good thing, since that is the best and surest way to relax. Unless I want to take all the benzodiazepines. And benzodiazepines aren't as healthy. Ah fuck. Shaking. I'm staring out at the tree in front of my window, at the leaves that cover the ground. I watch the leaves fall down from the tree, and I want to scream. Gah. So instead it's Alligatoah, K.I.Z., Trailerpark and Eisregen (again). 

I don't dare to be scared, but nervous is definitely a term I can use. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I want to carve my arm open and burn it so that I can have all the endorphins, but I am aware of the fact that that isn't how shit works. Still. Nervous. Shaking. 

[...] 

Trying to make things better by playing my solar playlist (calling upon my critter-thingie...) - mainly stuff by Satoshi Yagisawa. Which actually helps a bit with the calming down. Maybe I should sacrifice something* - because I'm nothing if not superstitious. I've got two lamb hearts in the fridge, maybe one of those...? DEAR FUCK, I AM MAD WITH PANIC.

I should probably watch some Tokyo Ghoul.

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FN 1: I did sacrifice a lamb's heart, burning it in this very flat. It took about 30', it caused a lot of smoke (luckily I had already disabled the smoke detector a year ago, because crazy occultists do not need a smoke detector that goes off when you make pasta), and I now understand why beer was an integral part of early Neolithic and (pre-)Sumerian cult. You can't fucking eat something like that without beer. All hail the beer. Now I have to air out the flat. This was not a well thought out procedure.

gymnastics in the early morning rain

It's 4:44 now, and I spent almost 1.5hrs outside in the playground not far away from my flat. It's been raining for several hours, but rain never ever managed to keep me from being happy outside. On the contrary - the more it rains, the more happy I get, the more time I spend outside.

Usually, there's people out there. People. Kids and children are playing there during the days, and I have never ever even gotten closer to this mysterious playground-of-children than just carefully crossing the street, glancing at it. Until now - well, not "now" specifically. Earlier.

Dark, night, nobody around. And if there had been anyone around - wouldn't have cared. What followed were almost two hours of me happily playing around with the available stuff, mostly focusing on the arm-and-leg-things. I have no idea what these things are called, and I am drunk enough to not know what they are called in German either and not care. But I had lots of fun, if "doing things with your legs and arms" can be considered 'fun'. Climbing up and down the ladder with only my legs, same thing with only arms (way more difficult!), trying a combination thereof, falling down onto the ground, singing whilst doing the leg-stuff, hanging onto the metal things with one leg wrapped around the top bit and waving around the rest of my limbs rhythmically to a song mocking the place I grew up and learned these things at. 

There's only two people around who know me and have been to the place where I grew up in  - Max (TimTimmäääh!), Martin, this is for you, because you are the only people I know who can actually understand -- remember M-Hofen-ov-Doom: 

Almost two hours in the rain. With me singing along to this, because I AM NOT IN THE PLACE OF HORROR! Incredibly enjoyable. Hooking myself into children's playground thingies with my legs and realising that I am actually able to keep myself up with just that. Making me into a proper adult figure hanging onto this playground thing by her legs and wobbling around a bit. I could be more scary if I wanted to, but this was not a night to do that. 
So I spent the rainy time outside, with the phone music blaring Alligatoah and K.I.Z. into the darkness. Five people moved past the area in these two hours, and none of them appeared to actively notice that there was a) awesome music, b) me doing awesome things and c) being almost naked at times around the torso due to hanging down, legs wrapped around the metal bars and my (slightly soggy) Dissection shirt tendentially hanging down into my face. 

It's been fucking years since I did something like that. I am going to do it again tomorrow - night, calm, happy, plus autumn time. I am still excited from this little exercise! Maybe I could take the cats outside as well, I suspect that would be a lot of fun. Well. "fun". My idea of fun sometimes doesn't really correspond to that of 'normal' people. Or so they say. Heh. *hides the evil chuckle of doom*

I did ponder whether I should try and break the window of fucking GFdtR, but I have decided that that would be a ...not-good idea. For I am sane. *nods*

 Let's see how I'm going to deal with this over the next remaining month. I am definitely going to go out at night and enjoy myself and the felines at this playground though, because it's fucking awesome, makes me oddly happy, and I enjoy spending time there without kids, adults or related humans around. Yay for the beautiful solitude of an adult in a playground at night doing the hanging-down-equivalent of sit-ups, hopefully accompanied by two crazy cats. And I haven't been doing anything there for the entire time I've been living here now. So now that I know that I'm leaving I need to use this shit. Otherwise I'll be pissed off at myself.

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Edit:
Besides for repeating myself over and over and over again - Asqui just threw up a shitload of food, and I'm a bit worried. I did feed the felines an additional third time today, to celebrate, but obviously this was a bad idea. I do have to say that he is very artistic with where he deposits the vomit though - it's a path winding from one part of the flat to the opposite side, including a small circle in the middle. Just because he's a cat.

the joys of planning my escape

Welp. After yet another breakdown I had the pleasure to entertain a good friend on Monday (officially "best friend in the UK"), whom I opened up to about my plans to run with the speed of light from this prison island. Emboldened by both my horrible mood and the fact that that means that there will be an end to this uncomfortable situation (uncomfortable for everybody involved, really), he began helping me making plans to get me out of here as soon as possible. 

Once again, it's the feline companions that will be the biggest problem I'm going to face. Travel via airplane is ridiculously expensive (D. looked at various offers, and the cheapest quote he got was £933...), so the two possibilities "cats via road" or "take cats and everything myself and go by ferry and train" remain. 

Whilst I enjoy going by train, it would probably lead to quite a few problems. I am at the moment nothing but a bundle of nerves in a steadily deteriorating shell, and a lengthy ferry-and-train journey poses several problems:

• how on earth am I going to carry around a huge kennel (7.5kg) with two nervous cats (together ~ 9kg)?

• how on earth am I going to carry the little bit of stuff that I can take with me around in addition to that? 
• how am I going to store the freakishly huge kennel in the trains? That thing doesn't fit into a train. Going by Austrian train standards, it's impossible to even carry it through the trains. 
• considering these issues of merely dragging my stuff around - how am I going to get from one train to the next without having a nervous breakdown? 
• train waiting times - I am carrying around two nervous cats. Cats need to occasionally piss. I can't let them do that anywhere on a journey via ferry-and-train.
• the cats themselves - they're going to be paralysed with fear, particularly the nuffse. She's naturally more wary than the möffz, and hates being surrounded by more than 2-3 people, one of them should ideally be me. And when she's nervous, her asthma gets worse. Which would probably lead to me becoming hysterical. 
• potential problems/delays with the papers - again, nerves. 

So yeah, in my mind I'm pretty much sold on the "cats by road via a pet transport thingie"-idea. They get fed in there, have enough water, no hordes of strangers around them, there are stops for letting them use the litterbox, and the people doing this are professionals. They deal with the authorities and take care of the animal, which would leave me to be less nervous on my own. I've already gotten one quote (£180/cat, can use my own kennel - which is good, because I paid a shitload of money for it when we moved here, and I frankly don't want to sell it if possible). I trust this idea. 

Let's see how much the other two companies I wrote to charge for the same service. 

So now I just need to know if there's someone in Vienna where I can crash with my cats in order to be able to book the transport. Ok, wrong - first I need money, then I can do the rest. Including getting them vaccinated, microchips checked and passports updated. And then later, at most 10 days before the actual relocation, have them checked by the money grubbing thieves from the vet again, because they suck you dry of all funds you may or may not possess, knowing fully well that you're helpless without them. Grrrrrrr. 

So yeah. It's a bit more stressful than I expected, which is mostly due to my already frazzled nerves thanks to the past year(s). It's times like this when I want to kick myself in the head for not having decided to do my PhD in Germany, rather than to endure my previous employer and then this kafkaesque nightmare/comedy of bureaucratic failure and existential limbo.

the semiotics of rap?

Ever since a friend showed me the beauty and joy of K.I.Z., Alligatoah and Trailerpark, my brain has been vibrating with the insane urge to take a closer look at the semiotics of German aggro-rap and analyse it. 

I am not really a big fan of räp in general. But this stuff is awesome. Not just because it's angry and has delightful lyrics, but because the lyrics read like Umberto Eco on cocaine. 

I wanted to write something about the semiotics of Trailerpark's "Fledermausland" (cf. last blog entry), but I am faced with the same problem that I have with the following:

• explaining Umberto Eco 
• explaining complex diri compounds in cuneiform 

Which is ridiculous. I shouldn't have problems with explaining the inherent magnificent beauty of semiotically finely crafted pieces of art - but I do. My brain is whirring and whizzing around and collects and accumulates all of the possible connections that I can find, but I lack the words to express that. Which I guess is one of the huge problems I am facing with my PhD - trying to express what my brain does. 

fuck my brain. 

I wonder if the guys who write these lyrics are aware of the fact that they are doing something astonishing with language on a highly complex semiotic level. Particularly Alligatoah's lyrics are a fucking feast of semiotic beauty. I would like to have sex with the guy's brain in order to see what actually goes on in there. 

To make this clear: I do not think that the topics of the various songs in themselves are particularly brilliant. As someone who holds modern consumerist society in extremely low regard, they appear logical to me. But oh dear fucking gods - it is a fucking joy to listen to this stuff, on an intellectual level. The cross-connections that are being made with single words within a sentence are beautiful. 

I'm quite the fan of Goethe, and I really have to say that Alligatoah in particular is a joy to read that strongly reminds me of the Dichterfürst, only with the beautiful complexity of Eco's best novels. The cross-references within fucking single words make me swoon with demented joy. 

...but now I need to hit something.