leaving for the US tomorrow...

...NERVOUS AS FUCK.

FUUUCK.

Another step in my ten-year masochism plan.

I just finished watching Twilight.

The acting is probably the most atrocious excuse for the seventh art I have ever seen in my life. And I've seen a load of horrible flicks in my days. Nothing beats lighting a joint with friends and watching pathetic excuses for cinema to laugh your ass off. But not even pot could save this - even if I had any at the moment. Which I don't. Anyway. I think the director - whatever that retarded bitch is called - actually told the guy playing Edward (by the way, wasn't he supposed to be the guy all the teenage girls are falling for? Him? I might be out of the loop here - you know, being straight and all - but really? Oh. Wow.) to act every scene he was in as if "EDWARD HAS MAKE POOPY IN PANTS OK?". 'Cause honest to God, that's how it looked. And as much as I enjoyed Kirsten Stewart's performance in Adventureland (which I recommend watching), she just looked like she had a severe case of total, utter, all-devouring mental retardation.

A pretty hefty chunk of my soul and brain rotted away slowly as the movie progressed, and I was close to slitting my wrists when that fucking vampire dude started glittering. Furthermore, I think I may have suffered severe damage from clawing at my eyes because of the horrible editing and camera work. There's blood everywhere.
By the time the baseball scene ended, I was convinced that everything beautiful in this world had been forsaken - after all, how could a species that loves fine and subtle art make this bullshit - and I took to the streets with a large heavy wooden stick, determined to destroy anything on my path. As I screamed "ALL FUCKING HOPE IS LOST! THE MOTHERFUCKER GLITTERS IN THE SUNLIGHT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER, IN ANY POSSIBLE SCENARIO THINKABLE BY RATIONAL MEN, THINK THIS IS AN OKAY THING? HOW CAN THIS BE LEGAL? HOW?", I flung my heavy stick about relentlessly, hitting anything I could. Skulls of the elderly were bashed in. Newborn kittens were stomped under raging heels. Toddlers were punted by kicks of fury into fiery pits of eternal damnation. I had no mercy. I had no compassion. All I had was hate-fueled rage and an all-consuming desire to annihilate. As I stood panting above a mountain of corpses I had gathered, I wiped away the blood and tissue that had splattered all over my anger-ridden face, cracked the last living skull with a swift stomp and roared to the heavens. "THIS IS WHAT YOU DESERVE FOR BRINGING SUCH AN ABOMINATION INTO THIS UNIVERSE, HUMANITY. THIS IS WHAT YOU GET. YOU BROUGHT THIS UPON YOURSELF. I AM SIMPLY THE MESSENGER OF DOOM."

Finally, I went home to make a peanut butter sandwich and take a well-earned shower. As you may or may not have noticed, I did not like this movie.


But nonetheless, Kirsten Stewart is a fine piece of tail. M-mm. Damn.

idunno, man.

no idea.

so bored. UGH.

after august 20th i'm burning anyone who mentions medieval history with PSYCHIC LASER POWERS.

What are we but creatures that simply love and hate?

LOVE

• The first hit of a cigarette.
• Cats.
• Playing drums.
• The color of the sky just before sunrise.
• Finding the cooler spots of my sheets with my feet.
• Coffee.
• My mother.
  
• More coffee.
• Playing live music.
• Walking through town without any real purpose.
• Laying in the grass on a beautiful summer day, listening to the laughter of playing children.
• Pooping when I have to go REALLY badly.
• Discovering new music that leaves me breathless.
• Pulling the plastic protective layers off little screens on newly bought electronical appliances.
• Bubble wrap.
• Spending an hour finetuning my drum kit, then feeling slightly embarrassed because it sounds exactly the fucking same, then telling my bandmate he's an idiot for not hearing the difference.
• Smoking a cigarette out of the window and looking at the people walking by below.
• Being on a crowded bus, tram or train, being absolutely certain that other people can hear the music from my headphones, and looking for people who approve.
• Killing mosquitoes mid-air.

HATE

• The rest of the cigarette.
• Stupid people. In every sense of the word.
  
• Spiders. FUCKING spiders.
• Pretending to not care about being off key/having lyrics wrong when singing along to music, but secretly dying from shame.
• The fact that about a quarter of a pack of tobacco is fucking useless on account of being all dried up and shit in the end anyway.
• Taking a shit, finding out there's no toilet paper left, and having to walk around the house looking for paper bare-assed, legs spread awkwardly, hoping there's no one to see you.
• When someone does see you in said situation.
• MOTHERFUCKING SPIDERS.
• People who talk through movies at a theatre.
  
• Having been unable to find my Thrice shirt for about 2 years now. I still haven't given up on it.
• Being vulnerable.
• Mosquitoes that always seem to want to fly RIGHT into your FUCKING ear when you're trying to sleep.
• Wanting to listen to about 10 different bands at the same time and being unable to decide what to go for.
• Fake humility
  
• Idiots who insist on bringing an attitude into a hardcore show.
• Staircases that have an odd number of stairs.
• Standing in the shower and discovering there's no shampoo left. Deciding to get a new bottle...
• ...but forgetting about it and having the exact same situation the next day.
• Single-word replies.
• The use of "u" instead of "you".

Midsummer's resolutions.

• Quit smoking.
• Lose those last few pounds.
• Save my money for my trip.
• Pass my exams.
• Stop worrying.
• Go to sleep before 3am. At least once.
• Quit smoking again, since I will relapse the first time.

Wish me luck.

May I have your attention please?

1. I have my flight ticket to San Diego.
2. I'm off to buy James Berlin's recording gear in a few minutes.
3. I'm going to witness my first AND last Have Heart show tonight.

THIS SUMMER IS SO FUCKING AWESOME.

Thank you.

The best webcomic ever? Why, yes. Yes, it is.

http://www.questionablecontent.net/

1445 pages long now, I love this comic so much. Jeph Jacques is so talented, and the evolution of his art is really nice to witness if you start reading from the beginning. Oh, and guess what, the band the characters start? Jeph apparently was tired of just being a comic artist, so he was like "HEY LETS RECORD SOME SONGS FOR THIS IMAGINARY BAND". And then they turn out to be really fucking great. Check it out here: http://www.last.fm/music/Deathm%C3%B8le (link works even though it looks like it was invaded by Germany in 1939), there's free downloads and everything.

Fuck you, Jeph, for being such a talented prick.

Hail to the King, baby.

Last night, I had the pleasure of witnessing something beautiful. I went to see B.B. King perform live in Gent. It's crazy how someone can make thousands of people feel absolutely together despite their differences. I suppose that's true for a lot of artists, but last night the feeling was so thick you could taste it. Perhaps I'm just a wimp, but the minute B.B. took the stage and started playing his beloved guitar Lucille I teared up a bit. I did not stop being incredibly moved for the next 2 and a half hours, and all in all it was a night to remember. I specifically loved how the 83 year old king of blues sneered at modern day rap artists who show a great lack of respect for the fairer gender, and proceeded to play You Are My Sunshine in honor of every woman around the world. He said: "I have never seen a woman that wasn't beautiful." While I'm not going to agree with that wholeheartedly, he's pretty much right. What would us guys do without women? Other than fap like crazy and drink beer? Exactly. Please stay as lovely as you are now, women around the world. No amount of PMS can blemish the way you make us men feel. <3

It was pretty cool being out with my mother for a night. I'm lucky I've had such a nice person taking care of me for 21 years, and I hope she'll be around for a long, LONG time. I can't imagine what my life would be like without her, even though she can annoy me at times (like when she can't help but scream YOU LOOK SO CUTE IN THAT SHIRT in the middle of a crowded train. Gosh, mom.).

The biggest annoyance of the night, however, was the fact that there was about a third of the tent closed off during B.B.'s gig. It was reserved for 'VIP's, which meant that the less important people were stacked pretty tightly, even though there were numerous seats available in the VIP section. Am I the only one who sees the horrible irony in this ridiculous elitism at a blues concert? Fuck. While it didn't ruin the concert for me (it'd take quite a bit more than that), it did annoy me greatly. Especially since the security was really strict about not standing in the hallways (the entire tent had seats. yeah. seats. at a concert. sigh.), so I was forced to take a seat at the back. But as I said, it was a night to remember, now matter how shitty the organization was.

Speaking of awesome music, I've been listening to Millionaire all day. Paradisiac is such a fucking epic record. I'm proud that a small Belgian band has outperformed pretty much most of the current music industry and just put out a record that is original, well-written, clever and catchy. No matter how many times I listen to it, it still manages to send chills down my spine. That's not just music. That's art. I know this record has been out for quite a while, but in my view it's timeless. Definitely something I'll want my children to hear.

But enough yapping. :3

Until next time

Yours sincerely,

Yannick

It's nice to know you work alone.

So I got a job. This is great news, 'cause it's paying my ticket to California and general awesomeness.
The job itself, however, is probably what hell is like. Fuck. I can't stress enough how motivated I am right now to study like fuck and get a degree, because I can't imagine doing shit like this for the rest of my life. What I did for seven hours today can be described as "take box. put box on conveyor belt. get new box. put box on conveyor belt". This got switched around at a certain point to "put books in box. put other books in other box. repeat. wish you were dead. put books in box". I guess I can't help but respect people who actually do this for a living. I'd hang myself after a year. Working the late shift (2 pm to 9:30 pm) is kinda weird for my day structure, since I stay up 'til 3 am and lay in bed until 11:30 when they call me up to go work again. The thing is I get day-to-day contracts, so I never know if I'll get to work the next day. Which kind of sucks. But I guess I'm grateful for what I get, as it's slim pickings nowadays.

So anyway, it pays about 71 euros per day, which is what I need. After 23 days of work (crazy Belgian law, don't ask) I'll have made 1633 euros, which means I be ballin'. This'll come in handy for California.

And that's basically it. I'm not really looking forward to spending the rest of my summer studying, but as I said, I've never been so motivated to just go there and kick everyone's ass at boring stuff about teaching.

Also. IT'S SO FUCKING HOT RIGHT NOW. FUCK.

Sunshine Cleaning - a movie review

So last night I decided to watch Sunshine Cleaning. A friend told me it was made by the same person who made Little Miss Sunshine, which turned out to be proven false by a quick trip to IMDb.com. You fail, Bregt.

Anyway, even though it has nothing to do with 2006's oscarwinning revelation of the year, except for a word in the title, Sunshine Cleaning manages to create a similar vibe. Ordinary people are put in an intriguing situation, and the viewer immediately feels connected to the broad plethora of personalities displayed in the movie. The context of the story is original and fresh, but quite simple: Rose and Norah, two sisters having difficulties keeping their lives together decide to form a small company that cleans up after dead people. It might sound morbid, but it's mostly a powerful example of getting your shit together and doing something worthwhile with your life. Make no mistake, however, this is not a morality flick, and the cleaning company context mostly feels like a playground for the characters to live their lives on. The film is extremely character-driven, and the characters are fleshed out enough to keep you interested from the first to the last minute.

That being said, I'll just go straight ahead and tell you that this is most likely the best film I've seen so far this year. It doesn't happen often that a movie can make me smile, cry and laugh out loud in the space of 5 minutes, but this one did it - multiple times. Without wanting to ruin everything, one particular scene (you'll know what I mean) had me tearing up like an emotionally unstable pregnant woman watching Bambi. Luckily though, the film steers far away from any kind of cliché or cheap emotion. The reasonably predictable ending (which I'm willing to forgive - just this once) aside, this film managed to surprise me on several occasions, and some exceptionally poignant parts might leave you gasping for a second.
Another thing that helps is that the two lead actresses both seem to be playing at the top of their game (both of them being utterly gorgeous doesn't hurt either), which means that while you may not agree with their actions, you'll find it quite easy to relate to the characters.

All in all this brutally honest film about life, loss and friendship (oh dear, that sounded WAY too sappy) is definitely worth a watch.

Nine out of ten.

Frostbite

(The following is a short story I wrote a few months ago. It may have some typo's left. Also, forgive me for the lame pun title. I'm a horrible writer who thinks stacking adjectives is awesome, but then again.. I'm a horrible musician and that never stopped me.)

As far as he remembered, the sun had never shined so brightly, nor had the snow ever blinded him so fiercely, reflecting the golden rays cast down upon the ground. It was truly a sight for sore eyes, an idyllic snapshot of natural beauty. The only thing that bothered him was the undead clawing at his limbs.

Over the past few weeks, he had grown used to their presence, but this did not mean he liked it. He suddenly seized his train of thought and decided he could not figure out if it had been weeks, or months since the plague had begun. All he knew was that there had been no snow at the start. The landscape had been all but white, but a dark, gloomy red with the blood of living and undead alike. How it started, he did not want to know. He just knew that it had seemed manageable the first days after the initial outbreak. Back then, he used to have friends. He used to have hope. He used to have… them. Those things had been taken away from him by gnawing teeth and scratching fingers. And it hadn’t been this damn cold.

He looked at his jacket and noticed stains of blood. Some of the older bits were his, certainly, but there was new, fresh blood. Not looking forward to smelling like a sewer – if one thing can be said about zombie blood, it’s that the stuff is not quite fresh – he glanced at the ground. Dead corpses littered the ground around him. Apparently he had slain them without even realizing it. The speed at which one could become used to the idea of killing still shook him, but it slowly became all too familiar a feeling. However, the corners of his mouth curved upwards. Dead corpses? The irony of making a clear distinction between corpses that laid still and lifeless on the ground and the ones that were up and about and lusting for flesh only struck him now. He decided he wasn’t too fond of corpses in general either way, and continued towards his makeshift fortress.

Calling his hideout a fortress was a slight overstatement. It had been a small maintenance building before the end of humanity. The fact that it was in a park, with a healthy supply of firewood nearby, certainly made it more convenient, but luxury was nowhere to be found. In better days, he had been a man of science, working in laboratories and spending his off time with his family. All that got left behind when… he dared not think about it. Now his life resembled that of a bum; a bum going about decapitating the living dead, sure, but still a bum.
After putting down the backpack he had filled with supplies for the coming winter days, he lit a fire. He wasn’t planning on dying of cold after seemingly being the only man to survive the apocalypse. Night was falling swiftly, so he made sure his early warning system worked. While it was dangerous outside, the zombies weren’t exactly bright and never saw the strings, cans and chimes he had strategically put around his hideout. He wasn’t exactly certain they could see at all, he pondered. He just knew they bit. And they bit hard. The obvious discomforts of being bitten by another human aside, a bite from a zombie was nearly as deadly as a bullet to the head. He had seen people die from bites after just a few short hours, only to rise up again and continue spreading the infection. He had been bitten himself, in the finger, by her, but knowing what he knew, and deciding he would not wander the earth as a mindless corpse, he had cut off his own left hand. This had seemed to work: while his conditions weren’t ideal, at least he hadn’t gotten a craving for human flesh just yet. And while he missed his left hand, he was glad he still lived.
After ensuring his undead surprise prevention system was in working order, he went back to his fire. Slowly warming up thanks to a healthy mix of burning wood and looted whiskey, he slowly dozed off.

“Honey?”

He opened his eyes and stared straight into hers, and couldn’t help but feel completely happy. Her fingers ran through his hair, and she softly kissed him on his forehead.
“You have to drive David to hockey practice. It’s your turn this week, remember?” she said, smiling. He looked towards the doorway and saw his eleven year old son looking at him expectantly. David sure loved hockey. He got up and headed downstairs. The smell of coffee welcomed him. It had been another late Friday night at the laboratory, working on his newest assignment, but coming home to all this certainly made it worthwhile. After his morning – or early noon, he reluctantly admitted – shower and cup of coffee, he took David to the car and off they went, to the hockey field. While standing still at a traffic light, he looked to his left, towards his son, and saw… rotting flesh. Dead eyes. Twitching hands. The shock almost phased out the background noise. Cans and chimes.

Cans and chimes. Still in shock from witnessing the horrid vision in his dream, he instinctively grabbed for his machete, letting out a low grunt of despair. Cans and chimes only meant one thing to him: death was near. For a split second, he wished the same thing he always wished when he grabbed his machete: he wished he still had ammunition for that gun he had stashed away. A machete worked just as well, but that didn’t mean getting personal with the undead was his preferred choice of dealing with them. He peeked outside. Thank God it’s only one, he thought, as the blurriness of sleep faded away. He sneaked outside, only to trip over a can he had carelessly left to linger. While he hissed and attempted to get up – an endeavor quite mundane to a man in possession of both hands, but all the more challenging for one laying on a patch of ice with only one hand occupied by a rusty machete – he slipped on the ice and fell flat on his back. Meanwhile, the ghoul shuffled slowly towards him, clearly aware of the presence of a warm body to feed on. In a less deadly situation, the crooked step and moaning of the zombie might have been considered humorous. Only comedians typically don’t want to eat your flesh.
Struggling to get up, he noticed the ghoul was mere feet away from his body. He hacked at the fiend’s legs, cutting deep at the ankle. The zombie, unaware of any pain, seemingly ignored the weapon, but fell down nonetheless. It fell down straight on top of him. The struggle was brief and bloody, and ended the same way it always did: a decapitated undead corpse. His moment of victory was short, however, as he noticed a stinging pain in his shoulder.

He had been bitten. This time, he realized, he wouldn’t get off the hook as easily as he did with his hand. In a way, he felt serene and calm, as if things had come full circle at last. He remembered something. While the gun in his backpack didn’t carry any ammunition he wanted to shoot at random undead, it did carry the one bullet he had been saving for emergencies. While the bullet might have saved his life from the wandering ghoul moments earlier, he knew that it would now serve an equally important purpose. It would save him from himself.
He grabbed the gun, paid no heed to the biting cold and wandered off. There was another reason he had made his hideout here. The firewood had served him well, but a short walk away from his improvised hearth they rested in a shallow grave: his wife, Candace, and his son, David. The last day he had seen them, both had been infected. They had maniacally clawed and bitten him, and he hadn’t had a choice but to defend himself.

This was his burden. He had killed them once, by accidentally mixing up the samples in the laboratory, unwittingly setting loose the infection upon the planet. After infection, he had been forced to kill them once again. This had cost him not only his hand, but also his spirit. From that point on he had become a mindless machine, purely killing for survival. Ironically, this made him not that different from the hordes he battled. He found peace in the decision he made as he arrived at the grave. He noticed shuffling feet surrounding him as he put the barrel in his mouth, and was happy.

He would not be one of them.

Ohai

Hello. My name is Yannick. Welcome to my blog. Feel free to stick around and hear all about what happens to yours truly, although I can not guarantee it'll be extremely interesting.

I guess I've always found blogging to be digital masturbation. In essence, I figured, someone writing about their own life can only be interesting to themselves, and other people that are crazy enough to actually like the self-absorbed dribblings of a twenty-first century internet philosopher. Over time, however, and by being exposed to other people's blogs and various internet literary scraps I have come to realise that the blogosphere is not just wankery, it captures the spirit of these modern days perfectly. More suiting than novels or articles, interneture (get it? get it? clever, right? I even googled it, and I'm the first person to come up with it!) is the written embodiment of our society. People twittering about buying new bbq sets, scene kids making lists of their favourite Simple Plan albums, people describing their entire lives in blogs, andsoforth. As I said, from a literary perspective, these things are void of anything meaningful. The dynamic relationship of exhibitionism and voyeurism that is so obvious in our lives, however, makes it so that in my eyes, we know each other better than ever before. I personally don't mind this trend, and embrace the changing of times. Plus, fuck, reading people's diaries is fun, so if they want us to, why not?

Anyway, before I get too academical, let me introduce myself. This is my first blog post, after all, so you might as well get to know the basics before I tell you all about the way my fridge smells, or what my cat puked up this week. I'm Belgian, currently 21 years old, and my biggest motivation in life is music. Whether it's listening, playing or writing, music is something that I am in direct contact with, oh, let's say 80% of my waking life. I love cats, especially my own, a fat 14 year old feline stuck in a perpetual state of sleep, only interrupted to either eat, ask me for food, or meow for half an hour to get me to open some door, only to be meowing from the other side two minutes later. As you have certainly noticed, I have a certain fondness for large words and long, confusing sentences, which will become more and more obvious as I write more for this page. This parallels my love for writing, and I guess I can put some short stories I've written on here, if anyone would care at all. I guess you don't even need to care. It's my blog. :3
But yeah, what keeps me going is music. I play in a two-man band called James Berlin, with my best friend Bregt, with whom I have what you could call a bromance. Think Turk and JD from Scrubs, and you're getting there. We've been playing music together for 7 years, and will continue to do so until one of us marries Yoko Ono. You can check out our music and other fabulous things on our myspace page www.myspace.com/jamesberlin, or on our official website (but lets be honest here, who even uses those anymore?) www.jamesberlin.com. We're recording a split EP with Lasvas Radio (a band I felt like plugging in here, because they are great guys and talented musicians) this summer, so if you like what you hear, drop us some love on our myspace or facebook page. Or, you know, write our band name on your breasts, take a picture and send it to us. That works too.
What else? It has been said that I have an elaborate movie encyclopedia in my head, as I seem to have an almost autistic ability to effortlessly memorize every useless fact about movies and series. Prepare for both music and movie reviews on this blog. Another thing that I was told is that I make the best sandwiches in the world. I guess a talent is a talent. Einstein had his theory of relativity, I have... sandwiches.
There's more, but this is getting lengthy, and there's a limit to how much self-absorbed writing I can do without feeling like a cunt, so I suppose you'll get to know the rest of me through my writings.

Until next time (which is actually in about 20 minutes because I'm already writing my first legit blog post),

Yours sincerely
Yannick