Sopranos (Spoiler Alert)

For those of you who are proceeding through past Sopranos episodes at a one a month rate, I am not sure where you are so I may reveal some secrets. I have been going from season five back to season one the last few weeks. I just started season three last night...watched the first four episodes (not a tough feat when you go to bed at 7 every night cause you have no friends on the continent you live on...if you did not get your invitation to the pity party it may still be coming, postal service in Sweden is tricky what with the reindeers, wolves and things). Season three is one of my personal favs.

When I watch the show fast like this I notice a few things I am not quite as aware of in regular speed. As a viewer, your emotional involvement with the characters changes like a rollercoaster...maybe this is just after the 4th or 5th viewing cause I do not remember such ambiguity the first time through. I find myself thinking a character is despicable who, just the night before, was one of my favorites. Then you have moments where you have to remind yourself that these are all basically terrible human beings. You enter a world of such moral decenteredness that you lose awareness of this. Sometimes the show will insert little reminders of the ethical absurdity you are moving in now. One of the best lines is in season four after Christopher comes out of rehab and Adrianna is talking to an FBI agent. The agent asks about their relationship and Adrianna replies, "Christopher is afraid he cannot be a good father now after killing my dog." The FBI agent looks like someone slapped her in the face. You get the irony I am sure, given who Christopher is (oddly, he remains, throughout the show, one of the more sympathetic characters).

Sounds like the stupid cats just got into something again. I look forward to getting out of here every morning because then their destructiveness is out of my hands. I used to be ambivalent toward cats, I think after these cats I will never be friendly to another one again.

Today I will try for the third time to mail this stupid package to Norway. If it does not work this time I am going to buy a big pigeon and strap this to it. Or, maybe I can put the package on one of these cats and through them outside to make their way to Norway. With all the water between here and their I cannot see them making it there though...that has its positives and negatives I suppose. After that I have to work on more school stuff all day. School is making it impossible for me to get accustomed to here or to practice Swedish. When you have to sit in silence all day with books you do not care about at all, a social life is not easy to develop. I am about to give up on it all at this point. I am getting really sick of living in Europe. Mostly I am sick of not being able to surf, I am sick of school, and I am sick of moving around all the time. I like it here a lot, but I have no confidence that I will make any progress on the language. For me to learn a language I would have to completely change who I am...I do not make small talk with people, actually I prefer not having to talk to them at all if I do not have to.