Not too long after I had decided to get married and had had a few daydreams about how my great grandfather would be proud of me getting married he died. Probably my reaction was a natural one but I still felt a bit ashamed. I mean who is angry with someone for dieing before an event they would be invited to. If anyone had the right to be angry, it’s the deciest. Then again, my great granddad didn’t know he would be invited. Oh, and also it’s very extremely unlikely that he cares anymore. It’s quite more likely, that he’s not any more.

I liked the funeral kind of, as much as one can like a “goodbye forever” party where everyone feels sad that they’ll never ever meet the person again. But I liked it in that it was private, just the closest family. Of his over 30 great grandchildren just the oldest two were present. And after the short ceremony we all went to a dining place and just chatted about the things that family members chat about with each other as well as remembered both my great grandfather and his wife, who had died five years earlier. It was sweet.

There were two scary thoughts I had. It was sad burying a great grandfather I hardly knew from a few visits. How much more sad it must be to bury someone much closer to me, like most of the other people there. The rest of my grandparents, my parents and their siblings. If all is well, I still get to go to most of their funerals. And how kind of scary and sad must it feel for my grandparents to be the elders of the family. Yes, they have their children and grandchildren, but no parent of either of them lives any more.

It was almost by accident that just before my opaps passing away I had lost belief in life after death and the good things that the dead can do for us. But this unbelief made the whole thing even scarier for me. Before I got convinced of the unlikeliness of an afterlife I would have thought the only scary thing is to be the most experienced one, the one that everyone would look up to. Because I thought death would be something to look forward to, finally to know what exactly happens next. Not so any more.

What happened was that my Love begun borrowing Richard Dawkins’s books one by one, reading them with enthusiasm, watching all videos available with Dawkins talking and submitting me to those same books, same videos. The God that Dawkins wanted to free people of was the revengeful angry God of the Old testament. As a side effect, he convinced me my lovely fantasies were also illogical and highly improbable. I complained to my Love about this and told him how my beliefs were completely different and nice and I wanted them. He asked me questions and pointed out discrepencies and unlikelinesses to me. This made me totally sceptic.

The feeling was not unlike what it would feel like if I was waiting for a bus, a very comfortable and fun bus that would take me to a really cool place. Then the two of them come along and tell me that according to the bus shedule my bus has gone long ago. For now I am left without a ride, but my mom always says it’s no good chasing after buses and boys, because the next will come along soon. I think I want the nice afterlife so bad, that I’ll figure a way to circumvent logic, to keep believing in afterlife.

I want to write about a recent favourite author of mine. Hes name is Neil Gaiman.

A few years ago I took a bunch of audio-books from an acquaintance. He talked a lot about self development and he was quite a leader and read books on those things (self development and leadership). Among his books was one called The American Gods. I figured it’d be a book about the large corporations in America and power struggle between them. The beginning of the book, though a bit surprising, didn’t contradict this assumption too much. Later on I was astonished and surprised all the time, because the book was not at all what I thought it would be. I loved it.

I wasn’t sure why I loved it so much, was it because how it surprised me (for the best) or because it was genuinely so well written. It had details that I love so much – in the beginning of the book something happens that doesn’t quite make sense at the time, but does near the end when so much more has been resolved. It has culture in it and lots of fantasy.

I blabbered the authors name all over my relatives and got Stardust for my birthday. I also got a glittery stone tied up in string at the same time, though it was a souvenir from some trip that my father had been on and not intentionally related. But it was such a great combination of presents for a dreaming girl like me. I loved the book too. Even though I now didn’t expect anything boring of it.

I’ve also read Anansi Boys now and I want to get my hands on the Sandman comics. I’m also looking forward to the Graveyard Book. But it’s not near all he’s done.

I admire him even more for interacting with readers so much. I read his blog and he answers such a great amount of letters, I think. Even though I don’t agree with everything he does, I think it’s great that he doesn’t do just books. And I am happy that he isn’t conservative about how people get to his work. I have gotten a few of his works for free, but I have also purchased some because of it. And he understands and encourages it.

If I ever become a writer, I want to be just like him, except female, and obviously I want to be original and everything. What I meant was that he’s great with so many words. English is not my native language, but I think I’d learn a few words from his books even if it was. And he does great research for his books.

Now I’ll be one of the over 2500 websites that link to his page every day and I’m proud of it.

Life is all about balance. Eat enough tasty things to make yourself happy, but little enough not to make yourself fat. Save enough money to become more wealthy and ensured, but don’t become obsessed with it and let yourself buy an occasional treat. Work hard enough, but don’t become overworked. Have belief, but also be reasonable. And so on. Today I want to talk about freedom of speech and abusing it.

The trigger for me to talk about this was a few articles in a local newspaper site about abusive advertisements. I didn’t find those advertisements abusive. One was an advertisement for a cell phone that stated three things why a phone is better than a secretary. It was a bit lame instead of being actually funny, but it wasn’t abusive. Not even to female secretaries (as it was claimed it was, because of a picture of a woman in a suit and with a pensive expression). I think if we go around saying that’s abusive, we’ll end up not being able to say a lot of things. From this I concluded that I’m all for freedom of speech.

I’m not the firs to talk about this. Violent Acres talks about overly applied political correctness and illustrates it with a story that very deeply touched me. And yes, I’m a great fan of hers and would love to get noticed by her, but I’ll link to her posts often because they stick with me (not to get noticed). I remember what I’ve read at VA’s and more often like and agree with it than not.

In my country and my life political correctness is not such an issue yet, because we’re still a pretty monotone community. Probably in time we’ll get there, though.

I could use the above mentioned story to illustrate the point that people can feel offended by anything if they want to. And if they’re confident enough and don’t want to achieve anything by being offended and needing an apology they can shrug and laugh at almost anything.

I have a suspicion that for any given text there is a person somewhere who is offended by said text. I was offended by Terry Pratchett when he did a word play on the game “Poohsticks”, which is a game I love since “Winnie-the-Pooh” by Alan Alexander Milne is my childhood favourite book. But it was a good joke and I would not let anyone forbid it, because it offends me.

It’s like with most things in life. We can be very careful and strive for not being offensive to anyone and end up not being able to talk much, or we can be open and talkative and not be offended by so much stuff. I vote for the second option.