Ransen's Blog

I've told earlier of my hallucinogenic paraphenelia (earplugs and eye coverings for a midday nap) and normally I enjoy the strangeness of the visions which come. But yesterday I saw four steps of logic which proved the existence of God. (Not Anselmi's... ...much better than his). As my dreaming brain considered the proof, my heart started beating faster, I got scared and annoyed. I struggled to wake up, which I finally did with a start. Of course I could not remember a single step of the proof. But I remember each step cutting into my brain/mind like a metal claw...

The cat (I'd like to say our cat but he won't let me) went into the garden and saw a squirrel on the grass a few meters away. Immediately the cat went into "I'm a hunting tiger" stance (despite his weight problem). The squirrel looked at the cat and the cat looked at the squirrel. Here they are in other circumstances: A few years ago the cat could get to the top of trees 12 meters high, and sway in about in the wind fearlessly. I was so surprised I took a photo (from the third floor): Then he discovered a nice restaurant on the first floor of our building, a lady who feeds him till he bursts. So the cat looked at the squirrel and the squirrel looked at the cat, then the squirrel zipped along the grass and up a tree followed by the small podgy tiger. Up the tree the squirrel went. The cat tried it too, but got only a couple of meters before giving up and falling to the ground, breathing heavily and sweating a l

The flower is dying... ...but the seeds are getting ready to fly away... PS: I thought I'd post something happy after all my whining . PPS: I thought only dandelions had seeds airplanes like this.

A bit dischuffed at the non performance of my Mastercard in trying to pay a legitimate bill of a legitimate company I protested to the bank. They had changed me from Visa to Mastercard. "It's better" they said. Like the gullible fool I am, I signed. I wanted to pay the bill. I wanted the service the company was offering. It was a Saturday, so no hope in getting a real reply till Monday, but I thought I'd see what the automated system  would do. I had to type in my question to a fake person called "Paolo", who turned out to be as stupid as Microsoft's "Clippy" (but much more easily offended). When Paolo did not understand my question (and his response was clearly from a non human, i.e. an automatic program) I asked him, in Italian, how stupid he was. He replied that I needed to reply to him more politely: A ?$%&ing machine is telling me how to behave when I talk to it! I lost my

Step 1) Go and live in the country for at least 3 months. 2 years is better. Step 2) Find light funny books to read in the language you are trying to learn. When I went to live in Japan a young woman (a young woman no longer, alas) there recommended (in English) that I read (in Japanese) Patariro! She was right. It got me straight away. It's a manga, supposedly for children, but I noticed many adults reading Patariro! comics on the trains. The fact that it is "for children" made it easier for foreigners. The text was written in adult Japanese, with the pronounciation above it or to the side of the complex kanji characters. So children (and as a side effect foreigners studying Japanese) would understand it too: When I came to Italy I thought I'd do the same thing. I needed to find a comic that the natives like. Unfortunately I found "Diabolik!" And it is. The plots are plodding and samey, the drawings are stolid and static

Like most people I like the smell of mint, and when I saw the lovely purple flowers of mint I thought I'd, yes, look at them under my USB microscope. And they are beautiful, but I did not realise that seeing the pollen at the end of the stamen... ...would expand my informed imagination a day later. Because the next time I saw the mint flowers on the balcony even though I could not see the pollen (my eyesight is not great) the image from the microscope jumped into my mind. I suppose that many enthusiasts and experts in all fields have this experience, but I'd never felt it so much as I did with the mint flowers and their pollen grains.

I know we're going to die and everything but we may as well enjoy life and be creative and try to make beautiful things (devices, artworks, relationships etc.) while we're alive. Which is why the Greek myths have always annoyed me. Take Arachne the Spinner for example. The goddess Athene got annoyed that Arachne the human could make better tapestries than the goddess could. So Athene turned Arachne into a spider. Here they both are, the more talented one hanging by a thread from a tree: So, the message of these wonderful Greek myths is "Aim for mediocrity! Don't try for anything! The gods will get you!" What balls. What boredom.  I prefer Marvel and DC stories.