Iva’s WTF site – Squirrelism.net

My parents crossed The Inner German Border back in the late 70s, through a cornfield, in a Renault 4 with no lights on. If Yugoslavia wasn’t a neutral country, I guess there wouldn’t be me and they wouldn’t be alive now.

Dad didn’t want to pay for a plane ticket to go to visit mom’s aunt in western Berlin because of his “phobia for planes” and he opted for an EXTREMELY ORIGINAL AND EFFICIENT method to pay less. Later on, they needed a permission to somehow get OUT of western Berlin and, from what I understand, while dad is proud of it and mom avoids the answer; everyone thought they were a weird pair of people doing some weird stuff.

In my previous post, I was ranting about the catastrophe known to the world as OLYMPIC AUGUST or, if you prefer it that way, August of the leap year. Now, there’s something good in OLYMPIC AUGUST. If I put aside the fact that I’m broke, moody and definitely too self-conscious these days; the good thing about this month are, of course…Olympic Medals!

We got three of them. One silver and two bronzes. And they’re our first medals ever, as the only time we went to the Olympic Games as a separate country before was back in 1912 and, well, we have not won anything in 1912.

Milorad Čavić lost by 1/100 in men’s butterfly 100 metres from the oh-so-famous Michael Phelps. There have been many things said about that race. All I can say is that some people will always be big and some will always be small. Either way, the guy is the European record holder and he was better in his heat (where he was “accidentaly” placed one lane next to Phelps…to have his motivation broken, perhaps?) and in the semifinals.

Novak Đoković won the bronze medal in men’s tennis. He narrowly lost to Rafael Nadal in the semifinals to beat James Blake in the third place match. It was sad to see him lose to Nadal, but then, he won the medal and he was as happy as a little child. He was running around, he tossed half of his gear into the audience and he was genuinely happy.

Waterpolo team unexpectedly lost to USA (clearly outsiders in waterpolo) in the semifinals to, ironically, beat Montenegro for the lowest step of the podium. And they were pretty lucky, too; as the day after semifinals, one of the best strikers and the goalkeeper beat each other up. The goalkeeper had his arm broken, the striker had his leg broken and had to be sent home to be operated. Also, back in June, another top-player was almost killed in a motorbike accident. So, in such circumstances, getting a medal is more than incredible. And shall I add that the replacement goalkeeper turned out to be perfect? Either that or Montenegro players had the worst off-day ever.

However, I’m extremely sad for Jelena Janković who couldn’t make it to women’s tennis semifinals and the volleyball team who, guess what, lost to USA. I guess the other unexpected option would be losing to China, as both China and USA are suddenly good in sports the majority of their cititens have never heard about. Oh yes, and Ana Ivanović didn’t even get to compete because of problems with her thumb.

The worst case would, however, be our female marathon runner, Olivera Jevtić. She’s 31 years old, but still a promising, great athlete, yet she had to pull out in the middle of the marathon due to enormous stomach pain and dizziness. And she was crying. I so hope she’ll soon have a good chance to win something, as this was really not her fault.

Shall I add that I’m not sorry for the female volleyball and male football team at all? They both played like major losers. I didn’t expect that from the ladies, so it was like a slap in the face and…as for the guys; for the past eight years I’ve believed that we should simply give up on football in general.

Roll on the next Olympics: with horrible weather, etc. If I’m not dead broke by 2012, perhaps I could make it there…thought I doubt so, as I’ve never gone that far in my whole life.

If anyone would ask me what is my least favourite month in year, I would probably say June. June and I never liked each other and I have explained that a couple of times. However, if I was able to pick out my least favourite during the period starting with one leap year and ending with the other, that would be an OLYMPIC AUGUST. Yup, like the one that is (OMG, yay!) going to be over in nine days. And those nine days sound like an agony to me.

Olympic games were held in July in 1996 and in September 2000, so that is how the world escaped the horrible disaster that is an OLYMPIC AUGUST. However, that one came back in 2004…with a vengeance. In my books, for certain reasons, I call it the invisible A-bomb month. So many things happened and all of them changed my views of life.

However, I see a difference between myself during the last OLYMPIC AUGUST and this one. I was trying to be like the others. Now I am experiencing this phenomenon of, gasp, others trying to be like me.

And I’m advising them kindly not to try that. Everything in my life is like a huge storm with winds colliding from all the possible angles. Many of the things from this entry occured because of someone whose name is partly windy and I also happen to know a couple of people named after hurricanes. Ironically, the über-petite among them shares the name with the most diastrous ones.

Let’s end this with a fragment of the previous OLYMPIC AUGUST, hoping the one in 2012 will be sane:

Then we put Milena in one of those office chairs and we were “driving” her all around the 5th floor. I told her that she’s the first female to win a F1 race and she was so proud of that. Mom finally arrived and Milena basically glued herself to her. Yup, my mom is for some odd reason that little girl’s idol. LOL. I downloaded my stuff, but I couldn’t burn it on a CD, since Danijela who has the burner is on a holiday.

This makes me angry. Unrelated to the country it happened in, the concept makes me want to vomit.

My whole life just consists of
Plain leaning against the wall.
Lost in a pile of those who glisten,
Whose shadows burn with vivacious colours,
I’ve always been ashamed of who I am.
Cold as ice, covered in absolut darkness,
The ninth rock, like an useless ravine.

Do you want to see how it feels to be me?
Suddenly on the wrong side of the fence,
Suddenly with no right to vote,
The second-class citizen in the dark,
Everyone’s feeling their worst when they stay alone…
but nobody ever asks me a thing.
Tell me…who am I?

While I manage to make one lap,
Everyone will make a couple of laps,
Then all my tries turn to be a complete nonsense,
Someone always does it better, someone does more of it.
Nobody sees me With my hand on the doorknob,
I am just begging them to let me in,
On their sour faces I see only despise.

Do you want to see how it feels to be me?
Suddenly on the wrong side of the fence,
Suddenly with no right to vote,
The second-class citizen in the dark,
Everyone’s feeling their worst when they stay alone…
but nobody ever asks me a thing.
Tell me…who am I?

If you could, only once,
Drag yourselves over here,
You’d realise how ugly everything is from the distance,
How sad the whole universe could be.