Iva’s WTF site - Squirrelism.net

This is not an entry you’ll get to read on the most of other people’s blogs on the last day of October, so I’m reeeeally sorry that I don’ fit into the cliché.

14 days ago someone sort of…slapped me in the face, in a good way. We met earlier this year and I instantly liked them for many reasons: enormous intelligence, knowing at what point people’s discussions turn from interesting to tasteless and their slight resemblance to my childhood best friend, as if they were a version 2.0 of that person (who is, by the way, not really nice, as we spoke a couple of weeks ago, talked about seeing each other and she’s not even returning text messages now! So NOT nice and so not sincere…). That evening, when I came home from a small gathering we both went to, I sat down and cried. I wondered if I was really becoming so strange that even people who don’t know me that well can notice it. And, at the same time, I couldn’t believe that someone was so nice to me, as I almost always have the bad luck of running into egoists, agony aunts, fake moralists and…you know, all those idiots. And, somehow, after that day, I did a huge amount of work, I didn’t sleep for more than 10-12 hours per night (and that’s a big step forward for me) and I didn’t cry one single time. It’s a nice feeling. And I wish we could be friends. I must be silly with the “will you be my friend” attitude, but ummm…sometimes it works. It would really be nice. Either way, I’m thankful to them for giving me a stress-free second half of October 2006.

However, some others have done all they could, probably because they’re dumb. Basically, someone descrambled the URLs to the new and very popular video clips on Invisible Movement and found the exact path to the .wmv files on the server. And what happened next? A bunch of “lol im so dumb how r u lol” MySpace kids have started using those videos on their freakin’ profile pages, among falling skulls, bright green lines, so all of their 6556566 friends out of them they know 2 could see them. Isn’t that cute? I am looking for the best way to protect my files so this never happens again. I’m also considering switching that domain to Dreamhost or some similar provider which does offer a lot, but is reliable enough at the same time.
Seriously, how does one deal with idiots? Any ideas? Experience from people running big sites would surely help.

Last week, I was pretty quiet…why? The last week of October is the week of the famous anual book fair here. It’s the second largest book fair in Europe afer the one in Frankfurt, if I’m correct….

The answer: safer than the most of the European capitals, but not as safe as I thought.

The story starts on Tuesday; when a tram on my favourite line, which I ride on, like 10 times a week or so, de-railed in a street which was actually rebuilt earlier this year and where all the rails and motors were replaced. Of course, after thinking I could’ve been there and after realising that nobody was seriously hurt; I moved on.

However, today it continued. Three fires, two of them a couple of hundred metres from where I live, at the edges of the city centre.

Just when I thought it was over, I read that tomorrow we’re not allowed to go to the biggest park/fortress in the city, as destruction of an unexploded mine from World War II will take place.

This is odd.

.::uni stuff::.
I am pretty much comfortable with the fact that I didn’t pass the second year of my four year studies for…god, you don’t want to know which time. However, I’m not comfortable with the fact that, when I get to the last year someday, I might have someone from 2001 generation I’m a part of teaching me. Sofija is a better student than Mila and me, she is at the beginning of the last year now and she was rather surprised to see one of our class mates from the first year as professor’s assistant. And then, well, I have to wonder. When I was 18, looking at what to choose for my degree, I picked something I really liked. I could have picked English language and I would’ve probably obtained my diploma by now…but I always thought of English language as some sort of an universal, rather easy thing which wouldn’t be that interesting to get deeper into. I could have picked my native language, but what would be the use? I’d have to spend the rest of my life at a highschool or elementary school teaching a bunch of kids with hormones set on overdrive. This way, I hope to find something more creative to do for living.

.::g33k stuff::.
I think the most of the site problems are solved now, apart from the ongoing issues with every single Gravatar plugin I try to use. They all either display no gravatars at all, or they display the default one for every single person. Why do the Gravatars hate me? I seriously don’t get this anymore.

The commenter plugger and the threaded comments plugin hate each other, since the first one is plugging *me* after I reply to someone else’s comment. I can live with the ridiculous idea of plugging myself on my own website, but it’s still…stupid.

I am currently making myself some link buttons. I feel bad because I owe one to Sam and I just SUCK at making buttons. So, well, hope these on the domain page are at least satisfying.

And I am desperately looking for a plugin which would enable me to blog in Serbian as well, without too much fuss or without installing another WP.

.::stuff stuff::.
Either way, here’s my little reward for the day. My wonderful friend Marian from New York sent me a letter, a little something for which I can’t still figure out what it is, the both Dani California singles and one of the Tell Me Baby Singles…2 of those 3 were bought via gift certificate from my Amazon associate earnings; the third one was a gift. And, the best part of the gift is the November 2006 issue of Guitar Player Magazine, with John Frusciante on the cover. The article is amazing, he’s talking about recording of Stadium Arcadium…in fact, he dissected every single song to atoms, he revealed the secrets of what he was using in terms of equipment. My mother was, as usual, annoyed with the cover, she compared John to Genaro Gattuso, she accused him of wanting to gain more female fans by wearing an unbuttoned shirt and she was pretending not to hear me when I said that John today is what Hendrix and Page were back in the days. Blah…either way, if you want to see the whole article, head over to Invisible Movement; I should have it up there soon.

So…all hail Marian and fingers crossed to her because that wonderful woman is going to two Red Hot Chili Peppers’ shows this week and she deserves to have the best time ever. I am as excited as if I would be if I was going to those shows.

On the night between 12th and 13th October, I was talking to my German friend Kerstin and somehow we came up with the subject of trends…girlbands and boybands. She told me that a friend of hers has to promote a girl band called Soccx and I said that I have not seen them yet, despite the fact that my prehistoric analog satellite system is mostly showing German TV channels. Either way, both Kerstin and I pulled an all-nighter; then, when my mom woke up, I logged off and went to watch TV, as dad went fishing and when he’s here, nobody can watch TV since he’s always in front of it.

Guess what was the first thing I saw? You guessed it right, Soccx, and their music video for From Dusk To Dawn. They were robbing a bank, they were examined by police, seducing police officers and bla bla blaaaaaa. The song was OK, I basically like happy pop songs, but everything else was something I’ve seen 1000 times: licking lips, making those dumb pseudo-sexy faces, pulling wonderbra straps from under small tops, exposed stomach, low-cut skinny jeansand miniskirts. Then I changed the channel to see if Spongebob was on yet and when I switched back to Viva Plus, there was Diddy talking to the band. I was confused because I had no idea what he’d be doing with a German pop band…

…and it really took me until the end of the video to realise that the Soccx video ended and that this was another band, Danity Kane and that they were, obviously, from USA. I swear that I could not spot the difference on the first watch/listen! They were indentical to Soccx in terms of haircuts, clothing, just more RnB and less pop. Then I Googled a little and found the whole story on Making The Band, the series which I don’t think German MTV and MTV Adria have stopped showing after the obvious fact that nobody really like O-Town, hehe.

Either way, girl bands became a bit too cheap nowadays. With Spice Girls, it was OK at the beginning, they did have some “headlights” showing in the Wannabe video, some of those skirts and dresses were really too short to sit down in and Geri Halliwell’s stunts and Victoria Beckham’s (actually, she was Adams back then) private life were such annoying things to fill the newspapers with…however, they were amusing. You can say everyone loved them. Then some idiot launched All Saints and eeeh…yuck. They covered a song they probably didn’t even understand, one of them got pregnant almost immediatelly and had to hide her huge stomach in the Bootie Call video clip and, well, you get the idea, they didn’t last long. Not to forget that there were the early Atomic Kitten, B*Witched, Solid HarmoniE, Funky Diamonds…and, to my knowledge, the most of those bands were formed after auditions.

When the whole thing got boring, the auditions became public, turned into big votings and reality shows. Anyone remembers popstars? No Angels won in Germany in 2000, the USA band was Eden’s Crush. No Angels were, well, pretty good and actually talented. And all five members actually could sing, two of them, Lucy and especially Nadja have stunning voices. I don’t know much about those popstar bands from other countries, though, so I’ll have to skip that bit…

Anyway, at that very point the audience didn’t want anything cute and girly anymore. The most of the bands would get, how I’m saying, sluttified after the first video or two…a complete image change, the “we’re not little girls anymore, we’re women” story, relationships with other celebrities, eccentric and ambitious “body modifications”. A couple of photo sessions in wonderbras or with hands covering breasts or erotic dancing sequences with men in videos were now obligatory. However, I think All Saints did that first with their performance at the MTV European Music Awards 1998, so all the girl bands of past and present must be hailing them as pioneers in that.

So, today, you have girl bands which are sluttified since the very beginning, no more pretending they’re cute harmless teenage girls. If they’re too young, you simply have to wonder who’s behind them? Marketing machinery, ambitious parents or pedophyle managers and choreographers? And, what’s worse, teen magazines are landfull of those girls, their sex and beauty tips and they’re praised on front pages for being “as sexy as one should be”. What does that result with? So many girls adopt the girlband babe image even for their everyday styling, they change boyfriends like socks (or soccx, perhaps?) and think they will always have priority over others just because they’re supposedly beautiful. Not good. Really, really not good. Also, the age limit for this or that is going down constantly. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a video with a 10-year-old singing while a small bikini top with wire inside is holding her barely existing breasts up and the camera is filming her bellydancing moves. I always remember what Anastacia Newkirk said a couple of years ago, that she was nowhere near her usual clothing style and image when she was a teenager. I repeat: nowhere near that. One thing is to listen to that music, it’s enjoyable (at least until it turns to p0rn); but you don’t have to copy those girls, for god’s sake, their image is artificial, anyway.

There will be a sequel to this entry sometime soon, as I have some things to say about boybands as well, as they’re even more stuck in a cliché. Ooooh yes I do.

I am not supersticious. Friday the 13th, so freakin’ what? However, in elementary school, there was this girl, Nena, who was scared to death not only of Friday the 13th, but also every 13th of the month. Maybe it was because she was one of the worst students in the class, so she needed an excuse for failing? Either way, my friend Sofija has an exam today. It was supposed to be yesterday, but they postponed it. I know that we’re at the university and that everything is supposed to be serious and mature…but knowing our professors, they did it on purpose, to try to freak out as many people as possible. Not a nice joke, methinks.

I would like to thank everyone who commented on my previous entry. You were so nice, so supportive and it was wonderful to read such comments even from people who don’t know me, such as Despair commenters and those who stumbled upon my site. And, thinking about all that, I also figured out that the certain guy might’ve been frighten by the fact that I know much more than he knows. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time it happened. Here in Serbia web design, e-commerce and similar things sort of exploded in 2005 when the main telecommunications company let go of its monopoly and allowed minor ISPs to offer ADSL, wireless and cable connections to people. Can’t imagine what kind of a war this will be once those connections are actually affordable by each single regular mortal the way dial-up is. Designers will be jumping over each other to get a work opportunity…ohwell, guess I need to learn how to resist….in “the way the Eastpak bag stays on a skeleton” way.

Either way, thought I’d reveal a little obsession here. Virtual Villagers! That game is sooo addictive. Some people say that it reminds them of The Sims, but since I am not a gamer and I never played that one anyway, no matter how famous it is, I can’t really make a comparison there, sorry. All I know is that this game is, well, tricky and that cheating or experimenting isn’t a good idea…why?

…because it ends like this:

And, it should definitely be like this:

So, I’d advice everyone to try your luck with Virtual Villagers. 4 of my tribes starved to death, but the 5th tribe survived, I solved all the 16 puzzles and bought all the tech…and now I basically have to wait for someone to die of old age so there could be more babies, as the population is limited to 90 villagers.

P.S. Very special plugs for Claudia because she found me the commenter plugger script and for Nozomi, because I spy the certain most wonderful person on the planet on her layout. Oh yes, and also Rika, because this is, if I’m not wrong, her…fifth domen since we met? So…..Rika, Rika, Rika, Rika, Rika!!!:p