It wasn’t me, honestly!

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, there was quite a bit of noise outside. One of the neighbors was driving around the house on a motorized lawnmower, mowing the sparse grass and the even more sparse wildflowers. And possibly rhubarb, seeing how I found a couple huge rhubarb leaves hanging low in the nearby tree today. The big crystal stone that stood on the old tree stump outside was knocked down, and even the bench by the outdoors table was dragged a bit away, though I am not sure whether that was done with the lawnmower or by hand.

It was pretty surreal. I had no idea whether to thank them or scold them. And then it became even more surreal, as I heard the sound of small children playing noisily outside.  It was as if two timestreams were about to merge: Inside the house, the one where I lived here, and outside, a slightly different cosmos without me.  It was, to be honest, a little creepy.  As a FaceBook friend quite reasonably commented: Sounds like you are a ghost, do you remember dying lately?

Not more than usual.  And the place is quite nicely mowed, I give them that. Whose rhubarb it was, I may never know. I have a feeling that I saw such a plant here at some point in time, but I won’t swear it.  Perhaps the kids brought it with them from somewhere else.  I may have seen it passing the neighbors.

More generally, there probably is some kind of right of passage, as it were, on this property. Even though I have not lived that far from other houses since I left home at the age of 15, there are people passing right beside the house on a weekly basis if not more.  Some walk by the study and living room window, others by the kitchen window.  It is not as insane as it sounds, because the house is near the riverbank, and this is the easiest place to get to it. The river is large enough that small personal boats can go up it from the sea, and there is a landing not too far from the house. Still, I am surprised by how popular it is. Well, if that means free lawnmowing, I am not really complaining. Just really, really surprised.

I have no idea what these are called in English, or even whether they exist in England.  They grow wild here though.

Little more than a week ago, I was using the wood stove as well as the heat pump to keep the house comfortably warm. There was no longer a risk of the water pipes freezing, although the temperature might briefly have dipped below the freezing point outside during the night.  But it was uncomfortably chilly.  For the next days, however, I made do by simply shutting the door to the home office, where a row of inexpensive computers is churning away day and night.  Once the door was closed, the temperature gradually climbed to a comfortable level and eventually beyond.

The last couple days it has been too warm to comfortably keep my shirt on, unless I open the window and let the insects in.  The week between these two events is what we Norwegians refer to as spring.  Your spring may vary. It gets more extreme further north, although it may be an exaggeration when one humorist from Northern Norway could not remember the spring that year: “I was in the outhouse right then.”

Bee that as it May, the insects are out in force, but they are still badly understaffed.  Entire fields have become yellow seas of dandelion, or “popotan” as I like to call them.  (This is a childish mis-saying of their Japanese name, “tanpopo”. In Norwegian they are called “løvetann”, which means “lion-tooth”, which of course also is what dan-de-lion meant long ago.) Somehow the popotan always manage to set seed, with or without insect help, or so it seems.

The flowering trees along the road are also far too numerous for the few bees and bumblebees at this time of the year.  I am sure there will be more winged workers soon though, so please don’t give up!

I was surprised by just how plentiful these trees are here.  Back home we had a big one growing near where the river was making its way down the hill from below the mountain down to the bottom of the valley.  I remember going there each spring.  But of course it did not hold my attention long.  I had planet densities to memorize, and the Latin names of tropical insects I would never see. But young men and women would meet near these trees (not ours, as far as I know, but others like it). This makes sense, for I noticed today how the flowers smell like young women look: Sweet and yet fresh.  But when I was young, I did not consider that.  I was more interested in the mating habits of tropical insects. The male of the mantis, in particular, is known to lose its head completely when courting a hungry female.  There is probably a lesson in this.

The world is filled with beauty and books, and so I may be reading about the age of the Sun, and you may be living in it. May you love your life as much as I, or even more if you can.  The sun shines on saints and scoundrels alike, after all.

So say the Summer Interns at OKCupid, a free matchmaking site which is also known for its innumerable quizzes. More exactly they write to tell me: “We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid’s most attractive users. The scales recently tipped in your favor, and we thought you’d like to know.“  Now, the Summer Interns did not just stick their heads together and look at the pictures.  Rather they are known for their imaginative software tools that analyze things that are hard to analyze: “How can we say this with confidence? We’ve tracked click-thrus on your photo and analyzed other people’s reactions to you in QuickMatch and Quiver.”  (Those being two of the more rapid-firing matchmaking tools, and thus – I surmise – more likely to be influenced by superficial visual attraction rather than the subject’s religious pr political affiliations.)

This would all have been slightly more favorably received if I had recently added the picture, but it has been around for a while. Thus, the most rational explanation for me making into the the “above average” looks is that the average has fallen.  In other words, there has been a recent influx of people even uglier than me, which is a rather disturbing thought, and certainly not cause for celebration.  Cerebration, perhaps.

What happened?  Did they get kicked out from Eharmony or whatever the non-free alternatives are called? Did they just give up?  Did the economic downturn disproportionately hit the less good-looking men?  (Actually, almost certainly yes.  Humans being the idiots they are, good-looking people are paid more and promoted more readily, so it is no stretch to imagine that they are not the first to be fired either.) Or some compromise of the above, such as with money being tight for everyone, the less glamorous slunk over to the budget alternative.

In either case, the world continues to be unfair to the less facially gifted: “You will now see more attractive people in your match results. You’ll also be shown to more attractive people in their match results.”

This is not quite as non-sequitur as it looks, because pretty people tend to pair off, all other things being equal.  Of course, all other things are not equal, especially for men.  A smart or rich man can make up for a crooked nose, while women have a harder time avoiding the superficial judgment.  (Though I suppose a smart woman is generally better at playing dumb than a less smart one, and so evolution stumbles erratically forward. Or something.)

But the most striking part of the whole thing is how utterly useless it is.  You see, the reason I am there in the first place is that I took a “What superhero origin are you?” quiz back when City of Heroes was in development. (By the way, I believe I came out with “magic origin”, though it is about 7 years so my memory may not be exact.)  Never finding out how to delete my account, I have kind of hung around.  But given the backstory, it seems highly unlikely that I am ever going to date anything less than a Superwoman.  And those, you may remember, are in rather short supply in my world.

Instead I play City of Heroes, and even my mobile phone is called Hero.  Not that I am superstitious or ambitious or anything.

“Rise of the Godslayer” should be out just around now.  It is the first expansion pack to the online multiplayer game “Age of Conan“. I took an early interest in this game as it was developed here in Norway, by the Norwegian company Funcom. Technically AoC is head and shoulder above the competition, as can be expected when developed in this affluent and hi-tech little nation. But I am not going to buy a game with a name like “Godslayer”.

Nor am I planning to buy HTC Desire, arguably the best smartphone on the market today and the successor to my own HTC Hero.  A telephone is an expression of your personality, and there has been more than enough desire in my life without naming my phone after it.  Can you imagine the Buddha or Christ wearing a phone called Desire??  What is going on in people’s heads using names like that.  For that matter HTC Droid Eris.  I don’t want to pull out my phone only to have people around me go “Hail Eris!“.

Of course, there may be people who don’t read the Chaos Node for the same reason. But that is completely different… Right?  Right?

The bus stops here.  Ordinary spring flowers in an ordinary meadow on an ordinary day.

Well, ordinary for me at least!  I suppose there are actually very few humans who have the same “ordinary” as I have, but that may be so with all and at least all who have their own personality and see the world through their own eyes. We all have our own “ordinary”.  Here is a little of mine.

***

I added a link to my Daggerfall fan site, at the request of one of my more talkative readers.  To tell the truth, I am a bit embarrassed by how obsessed I was with the game.  I mean, it is a game, not a spouse.  It should not be the first thing you think of in the morning and the last thing you think of before falling asleep, not to mention the recurring dreams.

I remember saying that I wished I could live forever, in which case I would want to play Daggerfall for another 1000 years.  It would still not be enough to explore every part of this huge game, which is approximately the size of Great Britain if I remember correctly.  This is all true, but there are many other things that would be more appropriate to think of in that context.

***

I spent about 10 minutes on the exercise bike and then took a 40 minutes fast walk.  An hour or so later I got a craving for chocolate, but realized that I had forgotten to buy before the weekend.  So I went to the shop and bought a chocolate and a bottle of Pepsi.  If I keep this up, I may end up just skin and bones:  It is an hour’s brisk walk to get to the shop and back.   True, between the chocolate and the large bottle of Pepsi there is 1100 kcal (calories), which is about twice what I spent on getting them.  But it is not like this is an alternative to fasting.  It displaces other food, as I already eat about as much as I can.  Except for fat, which I get sick if I eat more than very small quantities of.

Actually when I came home, the chocolate hunger was gone. This is good, because then I could eat my favorite dinner instead.  This dinner contains a little fat, so I cannot eat it the same afternoon as a piece of chocolate. It is pretty simple:  I slightly overcook three different types of full-grain pasta, adding some raisins at the end of the cooking. When it is almost finished cooking, I fry some store-bought potato salad (or other tasty food) and remove the fat that melts out.  There is still enough fat left clinging to the potato bits and stuff so when I add the cooked pasta it does not stick to the bottom. Also, fat is tasty, I just have to make sure to not get more than a few drops of it over the course of a day.  Anyway, I stir fry, adding herbs until it is golden brown and delicious. Then I melt low-fat cheese over it and it is ready to eat!  Also, the kitchen smells yummy for hours afterwards.

***

Today was the first day of the year when it was warmer outside than inside. Then again it was uncomfortably chilly in the living room.  In the study it has been quite warm for a few days now without having to use the heat pump: I simply close the door for a while and let the computers heat the room. It is not like the water pipes will freeze in the rest of the house at this time!

It is not many nights since there was frost, though. The spring has been unusually cold, as was the winter.  And that is painfully evident on the utility bills.  I got another one a few days ago.  I had hoped this month would be the first that I could actually start paying off the loan I took for the moving, the double rents and of course the double utility bills.  I guess that was a bit optimistic, but I don’t worry.  I remembered from last time I moved that there were many unexpected expenses; so besides saving up some money, I also arranged for affordable and easy-to-get-to credit beforehand.  Looking for affordable credit when you are broke is usually harder, but if you don’t need credit, you can get it at a reasonable price.  The world is weird like that.

And I think it is safe to say that the utility bills will be much, much smaller the next half year!  This is Norway after all, and even before the ash clouds there was not much need for air conditioning.

***

Well, I hope you enjoyed a glimpse of my ordinary life.  Of course, I also have an extraordinary life of the mind, but then again, I hope we all have that! It is our birth-gift as humans, after all, to be a “planeswalker” of the mind. ^_^