Iva’s WTF site – Squirrelism.net

The worst thing about having both rich offline and online lives is actually being able to keep up with everything, not forget stuff (or even worse: PEOPLE!), be well-organised and not mess things up…says someone with about 500 emails waiting to be replied to. And then people who are just plain bored nudge you on MSN and wonder what on Earth have you been doing in case you have not responded to each single messages within, like, twenty seconds.

The week behind me was important, in many ways. I realised how nasty I was to some people in the past with no reason, and they cared about me. And they still do. I re-united with a bunch of online friends whom I have ditched or forgotten for no real reason and I’m still trying to figure out if I would forgive them if they were me and if I was the one doing it. And I realise that tolerance is a good thing. If one thinks something in the lines of “Iva is having some weird shit going on, she’ll be fine sometime, until then I shall be here” then yes, they’re tolerant. Having said that, I hope the remaining ones will forgive me, too…unfortunately, I also have not called one of my closest offline friends, I don’t even know if she got my lame birthday e-card 2 months ago.

And what else happened? I bumped into three highschool mates and a bunch of elementary school ones on the Facebook. I’ve added them all and so far all but one who’s not around at the moment have added me back. Then I figured out I’d search for my mates from the animated movies workshop and I found two of them. Both of them have been in USA ever since after the NATO bombing. And they were more than delighted that I remember them, which was the most heart-warming moment of the week, absolutely.

Other than that and having gone for a quick drink and a walk with one of my closest friends on Friday, I’m still spending the most of the time cleaning my room.

Last week we threw the old mirror out and it’s in the basement now, waiting for better days and more space. People say that it is not good for one’s luck to have a broken mirror around, anyway. I don’t know. Broken or not, mirrors have always been inspiring me to write. The novel I am almost ashamed to continue writing is based on a story which has a little, little bit in common with Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carol and two Paulo Coelho’s novels I like very much: On The Banks Of River Piedra I Sat And Wept and Veronika Decides To Die. And the mirror was triple. I was seeing three copies of myself and I simply couldn’t have been alone. I remember standing on the opposite side of the room with my friend Zoka when we were little, enjoying how there were six other little girls looking at us from the other side. And, during spring 1999, I was afraid of mirrors, because I had some dream where I looked into the mirror and saw a skeleton looking back at me and a rather haunted voice said that, when the same thing happens in reality, I will be killed in bombing. Strangely enough, just after the whole horror ended, Chemical Brothers’ video for Hey Boy, Hey Girl got into heavy rotation on both MTV and Viva. And there was David Bowie’s Look Back In Anger as well.

So, the new item in the room is a computer table. I never had a computer table before, so I am still amused by the sliding extension for the keyboard and mouse. That’s right, at the age of 24. And my poor mahagoni desk is not weeping under the weight of the monitor anymore. I could actually study at it. Writing? Nah, I prefer to write in bed for some reason.

Either way, I shall post photos of my re-organised room when I’m done with the desk and the corner where the TV is.

If you have not read Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows yet, do not read further because there’s a shizzyload of spoilers! After having read the book, I was just…shaking. I was reading slowly until I got to the part where Harry and Hermione went to Bathilda Bagshot, that was when I got REALLY anxious and I just had to read it all!

I expected at least one of the Weasleys to die and I also expected the remaining two guys from James’ gang to die; but I think it’s creepy that JK had to kill Tonks! She seemed enthusiastic about her when he first introduced her to us in the 5th book and then, poof, she’s suddenly a not-so-important character, ten thousand light years away from her punk/feminist attitude that I really liked and has a baby, then dies, as if she had never been important.

It is weird that the Malfoys remained unpunished in every way.

The Ron and Hermione kiss in the moment when everything was falling apart was horribly stupid. It reminded me of “Is There A Pilot In This Plane?” and the woman who kept on having sex with random passengers (and even a donkey at the end) as it was supposedly the last couple of hours of her life. Cliché. Stupid.

Neville Longbottom was simply amazing throughout the book, so was his grandmother. When he killed Nagini, he was so heroic. I love the outsiders that turn out to be cool guys in the end.

The deaths of Dobby and Hedwig upset me the most. Dobby was one of my favourite characters in the book, next to Luna, Hagrid and Sirius. Having said that, I am glad Luna and Hagrid escaped unhurt, but at the same time wondering why didn’t Luna with her family show up at the end of the book. Also, I never got the Ginny thing, I always thought Harry would eventually end up with Luna, as Ginny had always been so-and-so and Luna was always showing sincerity, loyalty and commitment…and she was a loner as much as Harry was at some points.

The most morbid part in the book was the weird use and burying the Mad-Eye’s eye. It reminded me of the creepiest jokes I’ve heard in this life and I can imagine nightmares anyone younger than 12 will have when reading the book. Also, it’s horrible that his body was not found and burried properly.

And of course, there had to be two nude Harry moments. OK, the first one was a multiple-nude Harry moment. I think JK has fallen in love with her own character long ago…and that the love is expressed by mixing strange sadism (losing the bones in the right arm in the 2nd, Dolores Umbridge’s way of punishing in the 4th book) and voyerism and fetishist moments, such as these random acts of nudity and the bath scene with Moaning Myrtle in the 4th book.

My absolutely favourite moment was when Molly Weasley killed Bellatrix Lestrange! HA! I knew she’d have to die a horrible death as she was probably the worst villain in the series, worse than Voldemort himself, but the way it happened was beyond hillarous. I had a very strong hate towards that character ever since I had read the 5th book, I had always been thinking that people who admired her and “studied” her were a bit odd as there was absolutely NOTHING appealing about her, she was as charming as The Butcher Of Barcelona.

The most of people were right about Snape turning out to be a positive character in the end and about Harry being the 7th Horcrux. And yes, the scene where it wasn’t clear whether Harry died or not was the best part of the book and also a proof that Dumbledore was not 100% right.

However, the thing I predicted and was surprised at myself was interesting: I knew that the dead basilisk would play an important role in the book, as it had always seemed weird to me that its corpse wasn’t burried or destroyed.

So, these would be my first thoughts about the book. One of these days, I’ll review the movie, too…