Dug Up from the Archives

I had an acute episode of feeling weird yesterday. I know, that’s not a very specific description of the condition. I don’t know what my bloody problem was, apart from lacking a will to do anything, including breathing.

I fixed it though when it occurred to me to pleasure my OCD (aka CDO) and dig around in my computer archives with the apparent purpose to organise them. It was really an emotional displacement because everything about me, including my archives, are well organised already. Except it’s not perfect, so here you go.

What I dug up was shocking. That is, boring to anyone but me, who was genuinely surprised and sometimes severely shocked at my own paraphernalia. I couldn’t even remember that I ever created some of the content I found, but unless my cat has a covert hobby, it must’ve been me.

Among other long-forgotten and hence basically non-existent stuff, I found: unexpectedly good poems in Czech (in a folder labelled creative writing, so I must’ve authored them); love letters (what the actual fuck?); something written in German (I do recall I studied German but no longer speak the language); and photos, a lot of photos.

The ones in the gallery were originally posted on Flickr, before I deleted my account after not using it for years. (You get the sequence of events here, right?) They were taken with my beloved red compact camera, which I no longer own and wonder whom I gave it to. Because I want it back.

I’m Typing This with My Tongue

You clicked this only to find out how to type with your tongue, right? As it goes in life, you’ll be disappointed. Tongue typing is only for experts and cripples. If you’re not one (or both/either/neither), I suggest you try typing with your toes first. But I’m no expert. I’m a cripple.

It started with the commendable resolution to do one housekeeping item each day. To kick off (and simultaneously terminate) my project, I began cleaning the bathroom tiles from glue.

You know these self-adhesive bathroom hooks? Those little shits that aren’t really adhesive at all? So when they peel off from your tiles under the weight of air again, I recommend you don’t scrape the bits of adhesive stuck on the tiles with your finger. I learned the hard way.

I cleaned the tiles pristine, that I got to owe to myself, except soon after the act, I discovered a huge blister on the top of my scraping finger. The blister I wouldn’t mind, but it turned out to be highly annoying when typing and mouse-clicking. Also, this irregular growth of a blister irks my OCD insanely.

Serving suggestion

Cut to the next day. I added a crippled arm to my crippled finger. That escalated quickly, right? This time, however, I didn’t do it to myself but had it done to myself. That’s called delegating. I got a new tattoo on my upper arm, which resulted in a loss of function for a few hours.

You know, they plaster a fresh tattoo with some plastic film to protect it. My tattoo guy doesn’t fuck around, so he fixed the film with some duct tape. It was inopportune that he taped my arm to the position of the robot dance. You got the image. Well, I guess it could’ve been worse, I could’ve ended up sieg-heiling for all I know.

My arm is fine now, thanks for asking, except the healing process is in the itchy stage, so I’m jerking around and looking like I’m having an epileptic seizure. My blister isn’t better at all, and how long the actual fuck does it even take for a blister to go away? Sorry for the fucks, by the way. But I maintain that expletives are an essential part of the language.

I put these fancy plasters on the blister. I hate the thing popping out of my finger, and the plaster flattens it, so. Have you ever tried putting a plaster on the top of your finger though? Or rather, have you ever tried keeping a plaster on the top of your finger? Don’t try. It’s impossible. You need a special plaster for that.

It’s made of silicone (or something) and, unlike bathroom hooks, it’s super adhesive. It’s so adhesive that when you want to remove it, you have to cut it off. Which is, as you would expect, where my (so far) last injury comes in. I was cutting the plaster with my sharpest scissors and, naturally, I cut myself in the same finger. So I had something proper to put plaster on. And that’s how come I’m typing with my tongue now.

I’m a Hoarder

What’s the biggest fear in your life? That you become like your parents, right? Well, I’m unhappy to announce that it happened. I became my mother. Not literally as in literally, but literally as in figuratively.

My mother is an old unpleasant lady—truth to be told—and she’s a hoarder. She’s been like this ever since I can remember. On her defence, the huge ugly multilevel cubical structure where we lived—and which we called somewhat inaccurately a family home—was a hoarder’s wet dream and ultimate temptation.

We had two garages—for one car—several cellars and multiple fucking pantries. Or cold rooms? What do you call the cool closet which is a room without windows primarily not intended for the storage of dead bodies but for the storage of food, though the usage is up to the user’s discretion? The cold room would be accurate.

So we had these cold rooms like we lived in a primitive agrarian society, grew our own food and had to store whole smoked pigs if we wanted to eat in winter. Actually, we did store cut-up pigs, in all seasons, in one of our multiple freezers.

The pantries were stashed with expired long-keeping food—but not long-keeping enough—pickled veggies, conserved fruits and jams. No one ate that shit, so it got periodically thrown out and replaced by freshly home-made batches.

Also, my mother grew up in the post-WWII austerity years. So let’s say that her food hoarding is an understandable deviation. Tell me this, though. Why do I hoard food? For fuck’s sake? Huh?

Irrelevant picture—I hoard these too

I realised I had a problem when I brought in groceries the other day and realised there were too much groceries in the cabinet—I downscaled and own no pantry, thanks god—for it to fit more groceries. Okay, what is happening here? Why hoard food?? Am I insane???

Well, I am insane, officially certified insane, but I never knew it was so bad. What am I stocking up for like it’s a cold war? Though it is cold and there’s always war somewhere, so by a certain logic—if flawed—this is indeed a cold war era.

Am I stashing food in case I die, or what? The last time I checked, dead people didn’t eat. Except when they were undead, in which case they would eat live people. An eventuality I’m pitifully unprepared for.

But seriously. It’s not like I live in the middle of nowhere—well, I do, but there is a Tesco even. It’s not like I don’t have a car—well, I don’t, but the Tesco is within a walking distance, you know, when you set out with sunrise and are lucky, you’re back by midnight. Kidding. Also, it’s not like I have kids to feed.

I assume that my food hoarding is a pathological personality trait which reflects my obsessive urge to be in control, be prepared for any scenario and always expect that an unspecified disaster and gloom and doom—and no food—are impending. What do you make out of it?