en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 60 http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal The Last.fm journal for LeaTelamon. Last.fm journals are a place to talk about all things music. http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2010/10/06/3ypmq2_red_sparowes Wed, 6 Oct 2010 23:41:19 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2010/10/06/3ypmq2_red_sparowes Wed 6 Oct – Red Sparowes
I’ve spent most of the time both during and after the concert to understand the experience that is Red Sparowes. While some explanations come close, none of them can entirely capture the essence. Once I was inside Pustervik, I knew it was going to be special and out of the ordinary. However, I couldn’t anticipate how special. Red Sparowes isn’t mere entertainment, it’s an experience. I have come to the conclusion that the closest analogy that describes Red Sparowes is sex. Listening to Red Sparowes records is like watching porn. You get a sense of how it would be like, you can fantasize about how amazing it would be, yet it cannot beat an actual orgasm during actual sex. Red Sparowes is like auditory sex, and during the height of the concert, you experience an auditory orgasm. What makes me think that the sex analogy is at least somewhat fitting is the lack of verbal communication between performer and receiver. Even though there was a microphone on stage, it was never used. Some people yelled after a song was finished, but never once did they call out for a specific song or even call out the name of the band, so the communication between the band and the public was completely non-verbal. Furthermore, there was often minimal to no eye-contact between the band and the public. I managed to catch eye-contact once with Bryant, and that was it. The band often performed with their eyes closed, as if they were one with the music they were performing, just enjoying and savoring the moment. Like sex. There was never a need for them to fake enjoyment; their body language was crystal clear.

In order to enhance the feeling further and to probably give the public something to look at, which is common at instrumental shows, they added a video playing in the background. It was showing different images of… well, the world. Somehow, this along with the music gave me a nostalgic feeling of the 60s and made me think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where we get to follow the human evolution and at the end see a fetus in space. Somehow Red Sparowes managed to induce this existential feeling in me. The music pierced me, flowed through me. I could be a fetus in a giant cosmos made out of sound waves. It was an incredibly powerful experience, and during the end of the concert I was all teary, not quite understanding why. It was just so simply beautiful, not only because the music is so atmospheric, but because the experience the music creates is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever felt in my life.

And I know I wasn’t alone feeling that way. On my way out I caught a conversation that went something along the lines that “the music was so loud I couldn’t hear my own thoughts, I could only listen”. And during the concert, there was a guy a bit to my left who was so immersed in the music he seemed to be almost in a trance. He kept slowly moving and shaking with his eyes closed, not even looking at the stage. Just listening. I’m inclined to agree that the feeling of being in trance might not be too far off. It was almost like a religious experience (I wouldn’t know as a non-religious person). If so, then I will certainly worship Red Sparowes, and I will pray that I will see them at least one more time in my life. Everything felt so surreal both during the show and afterwards. It still feels completely surreal, even though I am now at home, sitting in my bed, writing this in a futile attempt to understand what I just experienced today. It really can only be summed up in two words: Red Sparowes. If you haven’t seen them yet and are hesitating to do so, don’t. I can assure you that it is not something you will regret. Red Sparowes can not merely be listened to; it must be experienced in order to truly understand what Red Sparowes is.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2010/05/14/3mxen1_what_i_love_about_anthropology Fri, 14 May 2010 18:01:26 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2010/05/14/3mxen1_what_i_love_about_anthropology Just like most children, I had no clue what I really wanted to be when I would grow up, even though I wanted to be so much. I remember that my father often teased me for not wanting to be an archeologist (historical anthropology), which was one of his childhood dreams. As I grew older, we would later joke about me performing some excavation in some far-away land while he was watching me, eating his favorite cake.
During compulsory school I got a liking for language and linguistics, which naturally also came with a general interest of the culture where that language was spoken. I also remembered that I wanted to teach, preferably about some language that I knew well. Other subjects that interested me greatly were religion and psychology. Why do some believe? This was hard to fathom as I am myself an unbeliever. The cognitive aspects of the human being also fascinated me. Why do we act like we do? When I graduated secondary school, these thoughts were lingering in my head. Becoming a psychologist? No, that wouldn’t work. Not only was it very hard to become accepted to study the program, it takes over six years to finish it. While I felt that I wanted to help people with their mental problems, I realized that becoming a psychologist was not something which I burned for to the extent I thought I did. An option would be to teach language. But yet I couldn’t imagine myself having the patience teaching 15-year-olds about English or any other modern language that are taught in Swedish schools. While I like the idea of being able to share my knowledge with the world, teaching impatient students in a classroom was not my idea of how I wanted to teach. I also thought greatly what I wanted to do about religion. Teach it? Again, same issues as with teaching language were raised. I could potentially research it, but I didn’t feel that I wanted to spend my whole life reading religious works to understand their greater meanings.
So when I got accepted to the university, I studied English. It felt straight-forward and logical. In a globalized world where communication becomes increasingly important, I knew this was the way to go to become employed. I was thinking whether I would become some kind of translator. I like reading books, but at a closer thought, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read books that way. However, the English course disappointed me for many reasons I will not entail here. So I decided I needed to go back to the basics: Swedish. The Swedish course took up something which I had not experienced before in any of my earlier studies: The importance of human communication in a social context. It looked into how language was used in building up a personal identity and how we humans convey thoughts about ourselves with the use of language (semiotics) and how we actually communicate. At that course I also met a person who told me about social anthropology. I had never heard that scientific discipline before. She told me I seem to be a social anthropologist, and jokingly said that “psychologists got mental issues, so they study the psyche, sociologists got issues with the society, so they study social organization, but the social anthropologist got both mental issues and issues with the society, so they study both the psyche and social organization”. Well, that sounded a lot like me. So I decided I would give the basic course in social anthropology a try. The worst thing that could happen would be that I didn’t like it, so I was back at square one. But it turned out I did like it. A lot. So much I decided I study the second course. And the course thereafter. And the course after that one. Until there were no courses left for me to study at my level. And this is what I find so fascinating about anthropology, because there’s really not anything that is about humans and human behavior that one cannot study. I have now written my bachelor’s thesis which is to be delivered in two weeks, and when looking back, I realize how I was actually all along an anthropologist. Because what do anthropologists do? They teach humans about being human! And it includes everything from language, culture, behavior patterns and religious beliefs. And so much more. All that I actually wanted to work with.
So even though I didn’t study historical anthropology like my father wanted, although that’s also interesting (but I find it more interesting to study people here and now), it turns out I became very close in reliving his dream as an anthropologist.
I just saw this amazing clip on Youtube not too long time ago about how humans keep finding new ways to network and create a social community for themselves and it reminded me why I like what I do so much. I may not like all humans and I may not like everything we do to ourselves, our planet and others, but in studying it I can achieve a greater understanding, and maybe sometimes, even be able to forgive. And in being able to forgive there’s also a possibility to change. To change myself and to change others. That to me makes anthropology meaningful and the most important discipline of all scientific disciplines. Anthropology is about being human, and being human is the most human a human can be.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2010/04/18/3kppbh_damn_you,_fredrik_klingwall Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:59:55 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2010/04/18/3kppbh_damn_you,_fredrik_klingwall So I found out about this extremely obscure and unknown ambient/neoclassical musician, whose music I totally love. However, trying to find his music except on his Youtube channel seems to be one of the most painful things I've ever been through musical wise. It seems that not even Amazon got all of his CDs but I have to buy from independent sources. That feels like a no-no. I would preferrebly like to buy them from a Swedish site, but where?

At least he uploaded his records on CDbaby. What a dubious name.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2010/01/24/3d4g87_feminist_rantings_about_video_game_heroines Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:49:30 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2010/01/24/3d4g87_feminist_rantings_about_video_game_heroines I picked up Metroid Prime 3 yesterday. Surprisingly good, I have no idea why I didn't do it earlier. 2 hours later and I am as hooked as you can get. Some people may be surprised to hear that this is the first Metroid game I have ever played seriously. I did play the original for NES on emulator many years ago, but it didn't really hook me much back then, and after finishing the first level, I think I quit.

Since I never played the first game tp the very end, I did not know that Samus Aran was a woman. This of course becomes obvious in the Metroid Prime 3 introduction, where we see her shortly without her suit, and when in scanning mode, we may see her eyes reflected against the glass, which shows that she uses mascara. Other than that, Samus has surprisingly few female traits, and the whole deal with the original game was that people thought that she was a guy.

Curious as I am about everything, I had to read her up on the Wikipedia site to see what kind of reception she received for this. Interestingly, many men praised her for being one of the first video game heroines and who didn't become sex icons, like what happened with Lara Croft, and this has helped to keep her integrety as a woman. Then a small part quoted by Heidi Dangelmaier just made me wonder if I was going to laugh or cry:

That's not a woman, that's a drag queen. [...] Does she have the right contours? Sensibilities? Sense? Probably she's quite brutal. I don't think this is a role model for women or something we would aspire to be. [...] You're going to find some girls who like these games, but generally they know they're being left out.


And this is where my rantings will come in. But you see Heidi, you cannot have an overly feminine female as a lead character in a game that primarily revolves around being a first person shooter with heavy adventure elements and expect the girls to love it. We've already seen that in Tomb Raider, but I think the mod "Nude Raider" probably passed Hedi completely by. Tomb Raider attracted men because there was a sexy female in the lead, but why have her sexy when you can make her more sexy? The problem with Lara Croft is that she isn't a woman, she's a grown-up child. Lara Croft is portrayed as one of those dark mysterious women who may kick a man's ass just because she felt like it, but I would argue that that is hardly a good role model for most gaming women. She's like Nemi, the metal goth protrayed in the comic series with the same name, who similarily refuses to grow up. You will find that Nemi has many similar traits with Lara. That doesn't make neither Lara nor Nemi less likable as female roles, but they certainly don't portray the kind of woman people should aspire to be like, because at the end of the day, they are very superifical characters who only care about themselves. We may enjoy them in a fictive reality as cat women, but they certainly don't inspire me, and look what happened to the real Catwoman in Batman. She became self-consumed.

So what people like Heidi don't understand is that FPS games, or games in general that involve an extreme level of violence usually don't attract girls to play. When games for girls are developed, they usually contain cuddly and cute fluff, and may have a huge emphasis on relationships. Just look at The Sims, the video game franchise played by most girls in the world. A game ilke The Sims allowed young women to live out their dreams in a fictive reality. What guy would she meet? How would he be like? Would be he good looking? and so and so forth. A game for girls cannot be a hardcore game, it must be user-friendly and easy to learn and play. Look at World of Warcraft. Even though it has hardcore elements (hardcore raiding, hardcore arena teams), that's not where you will find most of the girls, because yes, it's hardcore. The girls of WoW will most likely be casual gamers, collecting cute pets, doing the random dungeon and questing. I am in a guild which is unique in such a sense that it has such a high female to male ratio. Not too surprisingly, the guild itself is not hardcore in PvE, we do not for example use a DKP system, but we do emphasis PvE progress and currently we are forth on our server in Icecrown Citadel 25-man.

So Heidi, even though your aspiration to draw more women into the gaming world may be a genuine and appreciated one, the way you perceive the gaming world is completely wrong, because the idea of the woman you portray it, the feminine one without masculine traits, will simply never be able to break through in hardcore gaming, because along with being overly feminine, so is for example disliking violence, but be interested in relationships and stuff that is generally cute. When it comes to hardcore gaming, one must be rough, tough, and be able to show the men that you are just as good as they are even though you happened to be born with two X chromosomes instead. Samus Aran perfectly pictures this. She is silent, gets her job done and never complains. She doesn't think that being female would give her special treatment, and you know what? I find it utterly relieving to see a woman who is still a woman, but can show that women can get the job done just as good as the men. Masculine traits? That doesn't make one a drag queen. She wears makeup for fuck's sake. Samus doesn't deny her sexuality! This is is the kind of women we must see more when it comes to hardcore gaming. Not the whimsy one that turns into a sex icon. You cannot be a female hardcore gamer without having some kind of masculine traits. That's just how it is right now. Men play violent games because that's what men are expected to do. Women play cute and cuddly games because that's what they are expected to do. But people like me, who are either born as tomboys or bigendered, we want to take as much part of the hardcore gaming like the men, because if you really are into gaming, you will miss out a hell lot of good games otherwise, and I would see that more as a disaster than whether the main character happened to be female or not. In reality, it doesn't matter what gender the main character happened to be. If you cannot identify yourself beyond gender-portrayals, then maybe it might be time to receive some psychological conseling. I mean, one of my favorite franchises is The Legend of Zelda. What do you play as? Usually a naïve young boy who grows up through his adventures, whom, I should add, most likely is trying to save the damsel in distress! Are The Legend of Zelda games mostly aimed for boys? Well yes, but it doesn't stop me, as a grown-up woman, or anyone else for the matter to not identify myself with Link in his endeavors. If you must have a female lead in a hardcore game, then you will have to look wide and far, because inbetween the random RPG, they are very few (and most Western styled RPGs usually allow you to fully customize your character from scratch, including gender so they barely count). For example, looking at the FPS genre, the only other game which has a clear female lead except Tomb Raider is Perfect Dark. What does that tell us? That few women are to be found in hardcore gaming. Samus Aran wasn't even originally conceived to be a female, it changed later during the game's development, and back then, even fewer women played video games as opposed to now.

So as long as the idea of how a woman should be like to truly be a woman will persist in society, you will almost never see a women pick up hardcore games, because being feminine and at the same time shooting stuff up into pieces just doesn't seem to fit together at all. And most importantly of all, what exactly determines that you are a woman by being feminine? Isn't it how you feel what you are which decides that, not whether you care about such superficial things as having groomed your hair the best way, made sure that your nailpolish has not worn off and that your clothes make sure you look as fit as you used to when you were 20? There are female gamers out there who play hardcore games, but those females are never going to be as how Heidi portrayed them. That doesn't make them less of a woman, quite on the contrary.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/09/28/31m7pf_audiosurf_-_ride_your_music! Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:38:44 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/09/28/31m7pf_audiosurf_-_ride_your_music! So I found out this little neat game called Audiosurf, which is basically in the veins of previous bestsellers like Guitar Hero and Stepmania. Nothing new and revolutionary there. However, what makes Audiosurf interesting and better than its predecessors is how it functions: instead of playing preprogrammed songs (which often aren't even the originals but performed by cover bands due to legal reasons), you can play any song you want as long it exists in a proper recognizable music format and is located on your computer's harddrive. What I always found iffy with games like Stepmania and Guitar Hero was exactly that: that the songs were preprogrammed and that the timing was also usually rather off at times, and that the amount of songs were limited to those who were supported by the game. Of course, some skilled people uploaded their own hacked versions, but still, those were only available if you owned the ported/ripped version for PCs.

So, as a person who likes a lot of lesser known underground music, I was really disappointed with games like Guitar Hero for the reason that I wasn't able to play my favorite songs, and there was simply no way for me to get ahold of them even if they did exist to Guitar Hero. This isn't a problem with Audiosurf. Since the game first of all doesn't rely on you hitting things along the proper rhythm, there is no confusion when a "note" is completely off, secondly, since it ports the music from existing files and encodes it into a map, it will always be along the proper rhythm. The goal is simply not to follow it in the same way.

Thirdly, the game is dirtcheap, and costs ~10 dollars/8 euro, so even a poor student like me felt I could afford it! The only annoying part about the game is that you can only download it legally from the internet, and through a program called Steam, meaning you must first download Steam before you can download Audiosurf. Steam is for free, but for people like me who really just want to minimize the amount of additional applications needed to make my computer run, it's an annoying aside that could've been avoided in a better way. Also, you can only buy the game via credit card transfers. This isn't a problem for me since I got a credit card for internet transfers only, but for others it may be more tricky if they either don't own a card at all or just don't trust to buy things over the internet.

Of course, for those who are of the latter opinion, doing like I have, and have seperate accounts, really makes it a lot safer for you, since the only amount of money on your card should always be the amount of you wish to transfer. You can't really be more safe than that, and most banks got further protection from transfering money from your account to other unknown accounts, such as authenticators that always create randomized numbers meaning that only the person who owns the authenticator can actually accept such transfers either way.

But yes, I can strongly recommend Audiosurf. Now I can finally listen to the music I like and play it at the same time. Furthermore, Audiosurf also supports Last.fm scrobbling, meaning that while you are playing a song, you can also scrobble it at the same time!]]> http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/07/11/2v1ewy_internet_types Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:11:16 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/07/11/2v1ewy_internet_types I think there are three types of people on the internet: the nice people, the people who are always ignorant and the not so nice people.

Of course, any person at any given time can be any other of these types, depending the circumstances. Now, what lead me to write this is because I need a way to chill off quite the silly forum drama that occured at my WoW's realm server forums. What happene was that I was being personally attacked by a number of people for writing of what I at least personally considered to be constructive criticism formulated in a way of how I myself would've liked to see it formulated, for an RP story.

All in all, the criticism the people attacked me for had little to no depth behind it. Often it was rather the disagreement in the execution rather than my opinions. People felt my execution was not justified, and thus, felt it was justified to attack me for it, while I never raised my tone and apologized many times if my original post seemed offensive to the OP.

Generally, I of course like to consider myself of the nice people group. Most of the time, I try to act nice, especially if there is no reason for me to attack the person in question, such as this case.

However, I attack the not so nice people with the same coin, because I believe in treat others in how you wish to be treated. So I always treat people I usually don't know with respect and I expect to get it back. If I don't, they don't earn it and thus, I can treat them how I want. Some people may disagree with me for this, but I cannot turn the other cheek if someone say, personally attacks me and thus disrespects me. I have the right to clear my name, and I will.

Then, there are just the completely ignorant people. People who keep spewing up stupid things just for the sake of it over and over, without regarding that people got it now, and they are becoming fed up. Often the ignorant people reconcile with the not so nice people. Often the way they choose to spew out things is by flaming another person.

Really. Same thing happens on Youtube as soon as I open my mouth and try to write something constructive. Someone doesn't agree with me and they write something not so very counterproductive in return, as well as down-rating my comments.

I mean, it does seem like 90% of the internet users act like 7-year-old bickering kids most of the time. It's sad, and it's even more sad when I see a thread like the one I mentioned in the beginning getting derailed becase one or two people could not bother in writing a constructive post in what faults I did with my critical post.

At least show some respect to the OP, if you now do respect the original work, and don't derail the thread into a flame war! I am not going to bother in replying. It will just feed the forum trolls more, out of respect of the OP.

It pisses me off to see such pathetic behavior over and over. I wish people could act as mature as they often claim to be.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/06/20/2t94oh_listening_habits Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:54:45 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/06/20/2t94oh_listening_habits Every once in a while, somebody asks you what you listen to. It may mean something to the other person in question, and surely we all like some genre more than others, genres worth mentioning to the right people. But what do you do when know it's useless to mention it because you know they will not know, or not understand? Some people like me, got very extensive musical tastes. So extensive, even such a site like last.fm cannot reflect it properly, partially due to poor tagging from the last.fm users. I also listen to a lot of bands and artists that are unknown to the other human population as a whole. The question, "What do you listen to?/What music do you like?", can then be, quite frustrating. What do I answer with? I've been sticking with "A lot of genres" for some time, but I feel it is not expressive enough. The answer "Lots of music" may be a hint, but it doesn't reflect my extensive taste.

Been getting into lots and lots of ambient lately. I like how it makes you feel uncomfortable. I now understand, enjoying ambient makes sense to me. I already like chill-out, a subgenre of trance that extensively focuses on melodies that are calm, and the ambient genre lies quite closely to chill-out, as chill-out was partially developed out from ambient.

I really wish there was an easy answer to this question, that is almost like a quasi-question to me. It has no real answer that I know of, as of yet, without having me to ramble up all the genres I DO listen to. Still, doing so might having me forgetting one, and just forgetting one seems terrible. I don't know why it's important for me to show exactly HOW extensive my taste is (especially when last.fm reflects it so poorly...), but music makes my life feel a bit more complete. I feel that with music, I can be a bit more me, and you don't really want people to just get a part of you, right?]]> http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/06/09/2s9qa7_shadow_is_not_an_arch_enemy_copy! Tue, 9 Jun 2009 12:09:37 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/06/09/2s9qa7_shadow_is_not_an_arch_enemy_copy! So. There I said it. Been a bit tired to see such comments lately. Why do people think that? Most likely because Shadow has a female vocalist just like Arch Enemy. Yes, Arch Enemy was the first one who had a female vocalist with growls, but just because another band comes in doesn't make it a copy, regardless if they happen to play the same type of music.

It was bound to happen that there would be another female vocalist coming in regardless, and it will in any genre. We are already seeing female black metal bands, but no one argues that they are copying anyone or anything. So why should Shadow? Yes, it is obvious they draw inspiration from the Gothenburg scene, and I am glad there are bands who are still willing to play classical melodic death metal but still sound genuine! Not like Blood Stain Child that just sound like good ol' In Flames, but more like fanboys playing music similar like their biggest idol.

I hear influences from eveywhere when I hear Shadow, just like I hear influences of Iron Maiden when I listen to old In Flames in particular. Those gallop riffs, the more power chords driven parts of the music... That's very Iron Maiden, and while other bands may draw inspiration from other bands too with similar techniques, I think it should be accepted and well established once and for all that melodic death metal is that inbetween genre. It is not death metal (there are parts that are though), and it is not heavy/power metal either, that the riffing sometimes may want to hint you in believing, would it not be for those growls. Then again, the growls are inbetween too. They are not as high-pitched as in black metal, but not as deep as those in death metal.

With that said, I like Tokiko. She's doing what few women would dream of doing, and I think she's doing it gracefully well. She can improve, but then again, Angela's voice isn't always so angel-like either. Heard the cover of Maiden's Aces High? I think the backup vocals she receives as wel as a very deep mixing hides the worse parts of her vocals. Then adding that I would personally classify Shadow's music as a tad closer to Iron Maiden-esque melodic death metal, might very well do the difference, just like it does a difference for Altti in Eternal Tears of Sorrow. He's a guy whose vocals I never really liked, but I found it passable for the music.

There are ways to make bad vocals sound good, and while I think Shadow sounded like they were trying very hard on their first album, I think they were trying hard to not sound just like the already existing famous bands within their genre, while still delivering great music.

With their second album, I hear nothing of such an insecurity and I think they are great as a stand-alone band, and should not just be reduced to a mere "copycat", because that seems to certainly not be their goal. Believing so is to me a lack of respect of their proven talent and the notorious will in recreating a genre that to some people has been considered lost since mid-90s.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/03/01/2iwhrx_my_dream_diary:_i Sun, 1 Mar 2009 09:09:37 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/03/01/2iwhrx_my_dream_diary:_i I decided to record my dreams again, as a part of my lucid dreaming project where I will attempt to reach a state of lucid dreaming, by writing down my dreams here in my last.fm journal.

My dream tonight was weird, the first thing I remember was that I was sitting in a classroom, and there was a book we were supposed to study and it was something about economics. I dreamt some of my old classmates from high school were there, along with a childhood friend and her friend with whom I lost contact with. Upon trying to remembering further, I also remember I was in a bus before the classroom and I said something very rude randomly, which is unlike me. It was a sort of school trip I think. I also have a very vague memory of a house, but more I can't remember.

Anyway, after a while, I was assigned with two other people from my class to hold an argumentative debate for and against this study book's stances as they were presented. The debate itself was an utter lackluster, which was strange in comparison to my previous aggressive classroom behavior, answering most questions correctly etc. It was in fact for that very reason I was chosen for this debate. Ultimately one of my old classmates outsmarted me, as he had done so many times in the past, being one of the know-it-all kids back when we were in the same school.

Then class was over and the scene shifted into a public toilet. There were some cleaners who were there cleaning the toilets, along with a middle-aged wheelchair bound woman who was severely overweight. It turned out the woman had been writing secret love letters to another overweight man, and they were planning to have sex in one of the public toilet huts. It also turned out that the man was just using her, he wasn't really in love with her, and I remember that the man had a very find and delicate cursive handwriting which I liked very much.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/01/08/2drq1b_a_dream_about_behemoth Thu, 8 Jan 2009 13:20:07 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/LeaTelamon/journal/2009/01/08/2drq1b_a_dream_about_behemoth Probably one of the weirdest dreams I've had in quite some time. I reckon the reason why was that I read a lot and checked out some vids by Behemoth before I went to bed, anyway, I dreamt that for a reason I cannot remember I was hired as a stage guitarist by Nergal along with some other chick, and we had to drive off to the concert hall which was located in some strange hospital-alike hotel. For some reason I had no chance to practice the songs so Nergal basically just wrote a note to me and the other chick who was supposed to play lead while I played rhythm about how to play, which was really just a lot of extreme tremolo picking and a few power chords along the line. In a subconscious level I was aware I could no way perform these songs with just a few chords: obviously their music is more complex than that but this was seemingly ok for Nergal. In addition we only got like one hour to practice together before the show started and it opened with the first band 20.00 and Behemoth was supposed to be on stage 11. Except for the song Inner Sanctum it turned out we were supposed to play a lot of weird classical pieces Nergal had somehow put together along with a symphony orchestra, in my dream he was not only a guitarist but a multiartist, for some reason he was also a famous painter... Eventually I think the stress being forced to perform songs I don't know and with no time to prepare or even jam with the band I was supposed to help out woke me up, and lucky that!

The most funny thing I guess was the fact that Nergal hired me after being a bassist in The Rasmus lol... I guess even my mind somehow knew how crappy they were so it was a huge improvement that Nergal hired me for no apparent reason since it can barely be because of my awesome skillz lulz.]]>