Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Everything you want is not everything you need

I rediscovered Vertical Horizon's Everything You Want again after looking up some word concepts. I like the music video. Such combinations of visuals and text are always very appealing to me. They remind me of Serial Experiments Lain (although Lain's texts are of course much less straightforward).

Also came across a nice quote:
"Man muss noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
("You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.")

***

Something from my thesis got me thinking...
Fairies might come from the Persian peris (it's a minority theory, as most researcher believe the Grimms' theory). That made me read up a bit on Persia. I've always had troubles with grasping that Persia and Iran are the same countries. I connect Persia with a rich culture, traditions and exotic tales; something out of a book rather than reality, and fully positive. Iran, on the other hand, is to me related to war, rural and poor areas and nuclear weapons. It's interesting how two words can refer to the same thing, but create completely different concepts in one's head. I bet the advertisement industry works a lot with that, just in reversal. Take something negative, give it a new name and image and turn it into something positive.
(I don't see the point in renaming geography, though. Persia turned into Iran, Edo became Tokyo, Lentos was renamed first Lentia and then Linz, etc. I mean, alright, I can understand the reasoning behind the renaming of Edo, but for the most part, there are no reasons given for renaming geographic points, and it's just immensely confusing when you find out after years that two names that you always treated as being separate from each other are actually one and the same thing).

***

I used the ending of last year and beginning of the new one for another cooking feast (because when there are so many people in the house who will possibly eat what you cook without running away in panic, you need to seize the opportunity). Unlike the Paella cooking in February, though, it was not one big thing but many little ones - sauces, desserts, etc. After not having been able to try out some new recipes in the last weeks, I had lots of fun with this.

Grapefruit-shrimps-salad:



Attempting to make sushi for the first time. I need to try this more often. Haven't quite figured out how to roll it in a nice way. I still have two other types of sushi to try out anyway. Here, Nigiri-sushi and Maki-sushi:



Finally, Dim Sum and Onigiri:



At some point I managed to leave the kitchen and joined the group. We spent a fun game evening playing Uno and Kragmortha (cool game - not quite as good as real roleplaying, but it really got me into the mood again) and following some superstitions and rites. Then the new year began with snowfall, and everything was perfect. I really like this year so far.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome, 2008!

The one thing I memorized after watching that music-clip: First the copy says "every six seconds you think about sex" and a little bit later "every second counts"... that fits very well, doesn't it? ^^

The big, bad advertising industry, yes. These guys try to make us believe that "sugarfree" or "light" products are healthy. If you have a closer look, they contain Aspartame, which is of course not healthy... And those damn graphic-designers! They design packages that try to mask this instance!

By the way: I also did not know that Persia is the same as Iran... On the other hand it is of course not the same! There is a difference: time! So much can happen in only one year. How much can happen in decades or centuries! We all change - and so do cultures.

Onigiri - I remember as if it was yesterday! Buying onigiri in Japan was always a little bit risky because we were not able to read the list of ingedients. So it was always a big surprise what was in it ;-)

And UNO ;-) We played UNO too. UNO Spin. How many people may have done the same at the turn of the tide... year?

Happy new year!
CwB

Anonymous said...

@cwb: there are studies that say only men think so often about it...anyway...i have to find out when your 6th second is and than hit you men ;o)

@persia: i think in former times there was more than iran...
anyway...i shared my flat for more than 2 years with an girl from iran and had some study collegues from there...those guys were good friends of mine...only f*** media makes people accoiating iran with war and terror...

@food: it has nice colours on the pictures...maybe i should try cooking too one day...

happy new year from my side too...
Sue-San

Manuela said...

I also heard it's only men who think about sex every six seconds. So that's why the samurai insisted on not thinking at all during fighting ;)

@CwB: Yesss, those damn graphic designers. They all need to be locked away in some dark place where computers don't exist for the benefit of mankind ;)
Ages ago I actually read an interview with a game designer, in which she said that making "killer games" never bothered her until she met the people from her former school, who had all sorts of useful jobs that helped other people. Job ethics are a completely new and difficult topic per se. But mostly, I'm having a "Don't blame the messenger for the message" attitude towards that (although that proverb doesn't include the one who wrote the message in a, uh, king-dictates-message-to-the-scribe sort of way.

Buying food in countries whose language you don't understand can be ... interesting. When I was in Rome I thought I had ordered spaghetti with garlic, but got spaghetti with clams. And I really dislike clams :/
You suddenly tend to get very tolerant towards weird foods, because you have no other choice.

I didn't even know that there are new UNO versions. We always play the original, old fashioned one with adapted rules (Action UNO) and self-made sound effects. Makes it very communicative and sometimes painful when you play with people who have fingernails and rings (like ... me).

@Sue-San: The media image, yeah ... makes you wonder how you'd really experience a country if you weren't influenced at all by the news. Or not just countries, but anything at all. There's probably at lot of good stuff lost on us because we approach it already with lots of preconceptions.

Cooking is fun. I pretty much didn't cook at all until two years ago. Then I discovered how much I enjoy poisoning people, so now I do it as often as people let me ;)

Anonymous said...

@sue-san: Yes, we think so often about sex – and we tell you the truth. Do you too? ;-)
And: Why do not you try to make me think about it more often? Then there would be more chances for you to strike! I would not keep you off that for sure *G*

Greetins,
CwB

Anonymous said...

@manuela: The same applies to you. And you have outspeeded me… maybe I thought about something different ;-)

CwB

Manuela said...

Hehehe. Well, being Mistress of the Sixth Second in Blogging is a good start. Let's see which Kendo Linz girl manages it first in keiko ;)