As Liz once very correctly pointed out, my primary communication tools are those of debate and conflict, so this is what I thrive on when it comes to interacting with others. Of course, knowing me, this interaction must be strictly on-line and this obviously doesn’t also apply to the people that I am or would want to be particularly close to, but it does apply to pretty much anyone else and, unless I’m feeling very drained for other reasons, the more people disagree with opinions and concepts that I firmly support and the more I fight, the more I get a sort of “bloodlust” that motivates me and keeps me going even longer. However, now I find myself quite fed up with it and wanting to take a break for a while.
Admittedly, that “bloodlust” I mentioned appeared less and less often since Andra left and there have been plenty of moments when I was too drained to argue, but I already mentioned this as the exception and it has nothing to do with the debates or arguments themselves. This time, however, the problem actually seems to be related to the arguments, though perhaps somewhat indirectly. I imagine that I could keep arguing without problems against people that I’d normally see as opponents, but recently things seem to be going very badly between me and people or organizations that I’d really, really want to support… To the point that I’m starting to run out of things to support. And that’s what’s truly draining.
This series actually started a little over a month ago, when I ended up being banned from Remus Cernea‘s Facebook page after an argument during which I apparently complained about him not sticking to his original promises and expressed a few of my more radical views one too many times. But at least that wasn’t unexpected and I wasn’t exactly supporting him anymore, particularly since he and his party, the Greens’ Movement, had formalized their alliance with the Social Liberal Union. We obviously still agree on many goals but, while we also still disagree on some others, the main problem has to do with the preferred methods of reaching said goals, those chosen by them seeming about as unacceptable and even unthinkable to me as those I suggest obviously are to them, and to him in particular.
Still, that ban only blocks me from posting on his page and others are still open to discussions, so there are still ways to express my views regarding their actions, be they positive or negative. Unfortunately, a few days ago I also ended up being banned from the Facebook page of the Global Population Speak Out movement. I saved the whole thing, including the e-mail exchange that followed, but I can summarize the reason as apparently reminding them one time too many that voluntary measures are completely insufficient and very drastic ones need to be taken immediately if we’re to still be able to get the population back within sustainable limits within any reasonable time frame without needing to increase mortality in any way in order to do so. Of course, such a reaction is what I get almost every single time when it comes to this issue, but it’s saddening to see it from those who administer such a project.
Then again, I know all too well that I’m pretty much on my own when it comes to that, but I certainly thought that it was different when it came to the causes supported by the Romanian Pirate Party. However, yesterday I found myself arguing with one of its founders on the page meant for the protests organized here against ACTA in particular and the slew of laws, treaties and regulations aimed at restricting and controlling the Internet in general. The discussion, which started from an opinion he expressed in a blog post that the administrator of that page linked to but otherwise had nothing to do with the issues that the Pirate Party should be focusing on, moved from the page to private messages and eventually ended with the conclusion that my support is no longer desired if I don’t fully agree and associate myself with their organization as a whole and all the opinions they express. Which also means that I won’t be trying to participate in any further protests, because such a course of action may now carry risks that I’m not willing to take.
Speaking of those protests, there was supposed to be one yesterday as well. It should have been turned into a simple flash mob, because it was the day before elections and trying anything more than that might have resulted in problems, but I didn’t see anyone else there when I arrived, some three minutes before the announced time. A few minutes later, I noticed one more person who was probably there for the same reason and might have been the one posting that there are no protesters, seeing as he pulled out his laptop around the time that message was posted, plus a few others that I was unsure about, but any chance of a flash mob had been lost because people failed to gather at the set time and nothing else seemed to be happening, so I left after about 20 minutes of wandering around.
Still, at least I tried, and I have participated in all previous protests organized in the same spot for this reason, so it felt awfully unfair when I was accused of being infiltrated among their ranks to ruin their efforts. I once again ended up being accused of being “Basescu‘s man”, which was a rather frequent accusation when opposing anything stated by Remus Cernea or others from the Greens’ Movement as well, but this time my explanation that I don’t stand or work for anyone but myself seemed to have been accepted… Only for that accusation to be replaced with one of having my own hidden agenda then, because I’m too determined to disagree and express negative opinions to be a regular naysayer and apparently only people who have such agendas and serve obscure interests may do that.
Actually, there have been a few more accusations and “slaps” after that as well, in the private messages, and yes, I threw some of them right back at him as well, but those were less relevant. Then again, none of it was relevant, seeing as it all started from him saying that he won’t vote because he loathes the current electoral laws and none of the parties or candidates that meet their admittedly dreadful requirements may be worth voting, which prompted me to ask him why is he trying to form a party and, more importantly, what right will he have to ask people to vote for his party when it’ll be registered, which will imply meeting these same requirements, when he now claims that nobody who runs for office may be worth voting simply due to the electoral process, regardless of who the candidates are or what they plan to do. But he ignored my questions, only snapping at my annoyed remark about the failed protest. That meant that he was still reading, which prompted me to ask again, but that only resulted in that slew of accusations, plus an annoyed remark posted by that page’s administrator.
But I’ll just say that apparently making sense is unacceptable when talking to people who see themselves as leaders and leave it at that for now. These debates and arguments gave me a few more ideas that could be turned into some posts, but you know you shouldn’t hold your breath for that, so we’ll see what will happen over the following weeks.
In just a few hours, starting at 10:09 PM GMT, we’ll be able to witness one of the rarest cyclical and predictable astronomical events, namely a transit of Venus. Yes, they come in pairs that are eight years apart, so there was another one in 2004, but these pairs are separated by 105 and a half years and these groups of two pairs are themselves separated by 121 and a half years. As such, the last transit before the 2004 one was back in 1882 and the next one will be in 2117, so you should make the most of this chance because you most probably won’t get another.
If you want to observe the event directly, a map depicting how much of the transit you’ll be able to see depending on your location is available at the bottom of the NASA article I linked to above, but make sure you won’t look at the Sun without properly protecting your eyes, since that can quickly cause serious and likely permanent eye damage. Otherwise, and perhaps preferably, there will be plenty of opportunities to observe the transit safely by looking for one of the on-line or TV broadcasts, such as the ones offered by NASA or Planet Hunters, which will likely provide far better images than you’ll be able to obtain on your own, especially since that way you’ll be able to view any part of the transit you wish, without being limited by the sunrise and sunset times for your location.
Since we’re talking about astronomy, I must take this opportunity to show you one more thing before letting you prepare for the transit, in case you’re interested: The second video in Neil deGrasse Tyson‘s “We Stopped Dreaming” series. It’s an outstanding speech that, despite focusing on the USA and NASA, applies to the entire world, presenting one of the most important reasons why we should keep looking up… And restart dreaming.
Somewhat strangely, I haven’t been following the Roland Garros this year, only glancing over the first round results for singles a couple of days ago. However, last night I went through all the results so far for both singles and doubles and noticed one match that stood out due to its length: Paul-Henri Mathieu defeated John Isner 6-7 (2-7) 6-4 6-4 3-6 18-16 in the fourth longest match in Grand Slam history, lasting five hours and 41 minutes.
Seeing as he entered the history books in 2010, after winning the longest match in the history of tennis, against Nicolas Mahut, at Wimbledon, it sure seems like Isner is becoming the marathon man of tennis, at least when his opponents are French, even if this time he lost. Granted that this match has nothing whatsoever on that one, but it’s obvious that something quite like that will probably never happen again, so we have to leave that one aside and compare what happened now to the other very long matches, in which case it ends up looking quite impressive. For one, it set a new record for most games played in a match at Roland Garros ever since the tie-break has been introduced, so it can claim to be the most tightly contested match of this traditionally very tactical tournament.
But now that the tournament caught my attention this year as well, I’m going to watch what I can. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that a second such match will take place during this year’s competition and in fact, as 2010’s record also proves, they generally take place during the first couple of rounds anyway, but the Roland Garros is the tournament that I generally follow the most anyway. So let’s see what Andreas Seppi will manage against Novak Djokovic now, after surprisingly winning the first two sets.
Edit: He lost. 4-6 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 7-5 6-3 for Djokovic.
It’s been a while since the last time I had nothing written in a week before the weekend, so I should just throw something out here today and then see what I’ll manage to write about tomorrow. If it comes down to it, I did manage to write two non-personal posts last week, so I could get away with two personal ones now. I’d certainly rather not waste last week’s effort so quickly, but the option is there if needed, especially since I heard that there’s a chance that I may be alone tomorrow, in which case I doubt I’ll feel like struggling for several hours to come up with something non-personal to post.
But enough with the introduction. What I should be saying here is that I finally started reading those books. More specifically, I picked up The Born Queen on Monday, saw that it had about 600 pages, thought I’d take it relatively easy and go through about 100 pages per day… And ended up finishing it on Wednesday, though at one point I thought I might even finish it on Tuesday. It was a little hard to get going after not reading any proper books for so long, had to take a break after about 20 pages, then another after about 20 more, but then something clicked into place and I saw just how starved for reading I was.
There’s also a tiny two-paragraph review that I quickly wrote for it as soon as I was done, and if anyone’s interested I wrote similar ones for The Briar King, The Charnel Prince and The Blood Knight as well. As I said there, The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone is one of the very best series I ever read and I highly recommend it to anyone who has any interest in high fantasy, in spite of the various criticisms that all but the first book received.
Still on the topic of books, the book fair is taking place here this week, and I went there yesterday. Didn’t get anything from there, and in fact there was hardly anything that caught my eye in any way, finding myself somewhat more interested in what was being sold in the little traditional foods fair that was taking place outside, on one side of the main alley, but at least I went, unlike last year. However, not getting anything from there doesn’t mean that I didn’t get any new books thanks to it, because that little bookstore that hasn’t been participating in several years is still offering a 20% discount on all titles during the fair and I passed through there on my way back after noticing that something I was curious about was cheaper there even at full price than it was on the Romanian branch of Books Express.
I do have to say that I really don’t like that little bookstore, since it’s so small and cramped and there are usually two people working there in one way or another. In fact, I had never managed to buy anything from there myself so far, only entering a couple of times and quickly becoming too panicked to even be able to look around well, but yesterday that changed and I could even talk to the cashier briefly, seeing as one of the books I was looking for after seeing on their site wasn’t on the shelves and he had to look through the stacks of books they hadn’t yet sorted properly for a copy. Maybe that was in part because I didn’t see two people working there anymore, certainly was also thanks to the fact that there were two other guys there before me and they kept him occupied for a while, so I could browse without feeling watched, but what matters is that I got the two Witcher books that have been translated in English so far, which were the ones I actually went there for, and also The Eternity Artifact, because I happened to notice it there, I do rather like the author‘s work and, at a mere 23 RON after discount, it was surprisingly cheap… And that “surprisingly” became “shockingly” after I checked its price on Books Express afterwards and saw that they’re currently selling it for a staggering 66.75 RON! And no, that’s not for the hardcover edition…
So, to conclude, I haven’t bought any books in a year and a half and now I bought seven in a month. Just read one of them so far, and that only happened this week, but I’ll be going through the rest now as well, since I got myself started. The Eternity Artifact should be next, for a change of scenery and because it shouldn’t be directly related to anything else, and then I’ll see. I still plan to leave A Dance with Dragons last, however.
Otherwise, a worker mowed the weeds behind the fence that’s behind the building here yesterday, which may be a first, as so far there were some people ripping out whatever they could get their hands on around this time of year. Thankfully, and unlike in previous years, this time the bushes and trees seem to have been left alone, the only taller vegetation that was sadly removed being the plants that had coated the fence. This still leaves me looking at a metal fence with barbed wire on top and piles of dead vegetation scattered everywhere behind it instead of a healthy sea of green, but with the taller things left alone for once, it is much less bad than I was expecting. I only hope that they actually plan to leave them be for once and aren’t just taking a break for the weekend and coming back next week to finish the job…
This should be it for now. There would be one more thing to say about how yesterday went, but I’ll leave it out. It was expected to some extent, seeing as I do that whenever I need to interact with others outside, but I feel crappy enough whenever that happens and yesterday it was worse than ever before, so… Yes, this should be more than enough for now.
This is the end of certainly one of the very best series that I ever read. The story is interesting, the pacing is extremely intense, with next to no filler and very, very little that doesn’t actually drive the story forward, and any complaints that may in all fairness be made regarding character development and the huge amount of extremely lucky events that happen to the characters easily get forgotten.
As for the very end… It’s a whirlwind of action, a chain nightmare, a series of fever dreams which has been building up all along and suddenly explodes in your face, leaving you gaping and grasping at it, trying, perhaps in vain, to come to terms with all that’s going on. When it’s all over, all too soon, you’ll probably still be at least somewhat confused and perhaps, as Mery put it, “feel a better kind of sad”.
Rating: 5/5
