Thinking out Loud

If you really had to choose, what would be worse, to be liked but not respected or to be respected but not liked?

Most people claim that they want to be both liked and respected of course. I wonder what the turning point from being liked and respected to being neither could be for those who take that path. What motivates the choices some make that turns them into bastards? Money? Fame? A false sense of respect? A false sense of justification for the actions that they take? I guess it all wages against our conscience and our self respect.

I have been offered the possibility of becoming a bastard on two occasions. I didn't take any one of them. The first one was not a hard choice at all to turn down. I was offered to become the “front figure” of a Japanese French Maid Resturant when I was in Tokyo. At first I thought it was a joke, I mean for one I’m not exactly model material and the very idea of seeing myself dressed in a French Maid costume at all, never the less on large billboards all over Tokyo felt a bit bizarre and very repulsive.

“You blond, big blue eyes. You make millions of dollars here.” He explained to me.

“Well, that sounds very nice but I’m afraid my self respect is not for sale,” I explained having a hard time sticking with the politeness one must adapt to in Japan.


The other situation was very different and very complex which was why it was a much harder choice to make. What I learned from that experience and what made me understand that I made the right choice is that when you realize that you feel a need to justify your actions in terms of how it will affect other people, there is something that is very wrong. And that is your cue.


Hell no, I’m not that desperate... yet. :)

To Boldly Go....

Creativity builds more creativity. I guess that's just the way it is.

I got great feedback on my graphic assigment and it might generate some more work on that department for me. It's not really a big deal but it's just something that makes me feel really really good about myself. And I am easily flattered these days, if someone tells me that I have talent I chose to trust their judgement. Even if it turns out to be total crap, this would be the kind of lie I would like to believe.

I then found a lot of inspirational videos on the net. And some music videos with clips from old XF episodes. Sort of like fan fiction but in movie format. Felt kind of nostalgic about that, like discovering Spell for the first time, even though I am not (and I can't stress this enough) a shipper. This philer is a slasher down to the bone.

Anyway, I ended up in my Word document writing away on my "story in the making" (sorry, that expression just cracks me up). I managed to write 6 pages so far and for once there seems to be something recembling a plotline. I'm so proud. Until tomorrow when I read it all in the light of day and have to ask myself what the hell I was thinking :)

Crappy Day(s)

Monday started off bad. Thuesday's been even worse. I know for a fact that Wensday will top the cake.

I'm not really in a bad mood, I'm just... depressed. It takes a lot more than for most people I know, but eventually I do cave when the pressure gets to me.


Then my boyfriend calls me from his business trip. He's been away for two days and he tells me that he finally got to do something he's been talking about, dreaming about, ever since we first started dating. He had the opportunaty to go out and sail, and he won the whole sailing competition. He's so happy I just feel like hugging him for making me smile. Then he remembers the hell that I've been through and stops talking about his wonderful day. I didn't want him to but then he goes ahead and tells me that he loves me and that he misses me. And suddenly everything else seems unimportant.

Next station: Benville

Sometimes you just have to laugh about it. Even if it is not even remotely funny and it comes out more like the cry of a madman who's been sitting there waiting hours on end with no assurance that help would arrive.

Let the smile be your umbrella and that crap.

Yes crap.

I might be going mad. I don't know how you can tell. I asked my boyfriend, he said: "not more than usual." What does that mean?

Maybe crying would be healthier but then you're not so much mad as you are weak. I'd rather be mad than weak. People who are insane make great authors. Or mabye great authors go insane, I don't remember which.

I'd better stay in Benville instead. There everyone is a bit mad. Except for the lawyer who is just boring and who feels like one of those Ken dolls you had as a child that couldn't bend his arms. He tried to hug Barbie and he risked poking her eye out. But other than that you will feel right at home so just go right ahead and.... step right in.

Who Ever Said the Japanese were Different?

Like does He have a Car?

I happened to catch the last couple of minutes of Footloose on TV a few hours ago and now I just zapped past Saturday Night Live on another channel. In movies such as these people start to dance in sync just like that. In the spur of the moment and by some unexplained force they all know the moves. And no one ever trips and fall, no one ever finds him/herself standing there looking like a complete idiot dancing on their own. As one would do had one attempted to do this out on a club (or God help us all: the street).

It's like musicals, where people start singing for no particular reason at all. That never happens in real life. I've never been standing in line in a grocery store or anywhere else for that matter to suddenly hear someone burst out singing, feeling the uncontrollable urge to sing along. It never happened. People who go around singing in public without any particualr reason are called lunatics and we lock them up in special places.

Negotiating with the Dead

I still don’t understans what it is that persuades a person with common sense to leave behind a sense of security and devote his or her whole life describing people who does not exist. If it is make believe – which a lot of people who writes about writing often claims – how can one explain the overriding urge to do it, and that alone, and consider it as rationell as riding your bike over the Alps?

I walked absent mindely though the different stands at a market yesterday, waiting for my sister and mother to finish their shopping frenzy when I noticed a book in the bookstand. It caught my attention instantly and as I went in for a closer look I was surprised to see that it was written by my favorite author. A Canadian woman who makes the rest of us look really bad as we try to make sense of plotlines and purpose in our own writing. Turns out that I’ve stumbeled across her book about just that; writing. There, in a mist of bad novels and pretentious authors I find the best, offering her view on authors and writers.

The quote above is a part of the introduction in Margret Atwood’s book, Negotiating with the Dead. A Writer on Writing. It’s a quote from Mavis Gallant’s Selected Stories and she dives in to the passions and difficulties of writing. I’ve only read 70 pages so far but she strikes down to the very core of what I know and all that I want to know about but didn’t know I needed. She simply continues to amaze me.

I’ve read a lot of work from feminist author’s, most of them very old like the Brontë sister’s, Jane Austin and Kate Chopin but also more contemporary author’s such as Toni Morrisson and Bharati Mukehrejee but Margret Atwood is without a doubt the best one. I have no good way of describing it, she just writes it like it is. Her work is subjective of course becasue she writes about women in different situations but you can still detect her as the objective force holding the pen (or the keyboard in this case). She is never obvious but she gets her point across without ever explaining it to you. She is simply amazing, a true inspiration and I am very happy that I stumbeled across her take on reality.