You Say Potatoe....

I was sitting on our bed yesterday, reading at the back of my X-files boxes, getting really excited about all those amazing episodes that I had forgotten about. So I looked up at my boyfriend smiling like an idiot saying:

“Jose Cung’s from Outer Space!”

He looked at me in fear.

“You’re crazy,” he informed me. “You should see yourself right now. You’re scaring me.”

And he, a trekker. He should just talk. I read somewhere a long time ago that while the x-philes are somewhat sane and responsible people trekkers are just completely insane. But I guess this is what happens when a x-phile and trekker falls in love.

“Nerd,” he fills in, mocking my tapes in the process. “And we’re not watching gay people having sex while eating dinner today either.” Referring to my Queer as Folk obsession.

That’s what he’s seeing. Gay people having sex. Talk about missing the point. I guess that was why people were getting so upset. Couldn’t see the forest for all the trees huh?

So no Queer as Folk during dinner. Instead we got to see a Klingon coming on to a Betazoid, like this isn’t a strech of an alternative life style...

They Did What Now?

This is what my friend sent me. It strikes me once more how much amazing things that are out on the Internet these days. This could be my new favorite word.


cheek flapper

To expell gas from one's anus with such force that both sides of his/her buttox slap together to create a distinctly audible, and occasionally painful, vibration.

Example:
During the awkward silence on his date, John let forth such an intense cheek flapper that the silverware on the table rattled.

Has anyone ever really experienced this?

Completely Completely Fantastic

I got my VCR to start working again. Bliss! Yes, you heard me right, my VCR. Mind you, I have a lot of my favorites still on video tapes and I haven't been able to watch them in years.

So I started off with Queer as Folk (UK). Well obviously since that is without a doubt the best show ever produced (should not be mistaken with Queer as Folk US which is by definition the worst crap ever produced). I haven't seen it (back on the UK version for those who are trying to keep up with me) in about three years and I thought I would get dissapointed like you get when you realize you've outgrown something. But it is still at the top of my list.

Everything from the script to the acting and choice of characters. It is so amazing how something can convey a message so clearly without ever really stating the obvious. It is all so sublte, so perfectly put together. It's pure brilliance.

It is in fact so good I had to turn it off and watch some Once a Thief (also brilliant, but not at all in the same way) to even things out. So OaT to the rescue, a show that was so bad when it first aired that they had to cancel it after the first season. I love it though. It lacks everything that makes QaF such a great series and by some strange reason it is because of those absolutely awful plotlines, rotten acting and confusing messages that I simply can't get enough.

I think need to get a life :)

To Brag or Not to Brag

I had a professor when I was studying English and Communication six years ago who wasn't very good. He was young, around 37, which is very young as far as professors go and pretty unexperienced. But he did give me the best piece of advice I think anyone has ever given me.

He told us to always be humble. He said, you will learn a lot here and you will probably run in to friends and family who didn't have the opportunaty or didn't want to study for a higher education. Don't throw your -isms in their faces, don't talk about Darrida or Barthes and give references to what you yourself just recently learned. Don't ever fool yourself to think that you are better than them just because you now percieve the world in a different light. It is not necessarily a better light. So be humble.

It was a footnote to his class. He just said it in passing and as if he hadn't planned for it. Not like a rehearsed speech but more like something that he really needed to tell us, right that moment. And for someone who taught representations of litterature he was usually very stiff and textbook oriented but this once he changed completely which is probably why I remember it so well.

Since then I've learned that his advice can be applied to any given situation. I mean it's basically about not acting surperiour when you have it going for you and people who lack humility often have to pay for it later when tables are turned. Which of course is exaggerated in numerous American movies but it still applies to real life now and then.

Anyways I think it's a great advice whether it has to do with avoiding the reality of what goes around comes around or just for the sake of being a nice person.

Tunguska

I have a history of re-watching a lot of tv-shows and stocking useless quotes in my mind. And then sometimes they pop up in my head whenever there is need for associaton.

Like today when I've been working on my writing and I realize that everything is very dark and depressing. Which in itself isn't unusal at all, most of what I write is quite dark. It is kind of ironic since I usually write when I'm feeling quite good about myself and my life. Not to be mistaken for diaries I've held that are filled with tragic events. I started writing a seperate diary once and I called it my "Happy Diary" but I never wrote in it which is why will look back at my life thinking it sucked.

Anyways, I had a (praying mantis) epiphany while I was going through my stuff earlier today realizing how very dark it actually was. So the qoute in this context came from Tunguska (or probably Terma but few people know the difference and Tunguska sounds so much better).


The only thing you will find here is pain... and suffering.


Should of course be pronounced with a Russian accent for desirable effect.

The Power of Suggestion

"I have been on the bridge that spans two worlds..."

No but seriously, I've been caught in a creative whirlwind, or tornado really, for the last month or so and that kind of messes with my own take on reality. I've been mass producing page after page and there seems to be no end to this madness. But I love it. I absolutely love it.

My genetic gene pool consists of words. Whoever or whatever it is that decides these things probably thought it was a good idea to skip the numbers and science alltogether and focus on the words and creativity. Which was why I as a nosy five year old told my parents that it was about time I learned how to read and write. I understood that there was a whole world there to discover before I understood other stuff that would probably had been more useful to me.

Writing was my first love but it didn't really turn into a relationship until I was 13 and got an electric typewriter from my father. It was a noisy bugger, and for years I tried different ways of drowning the sound of they keyboard as I usually stayed up all night writing. I wasn't very good though, it was never really about that. Being good that is. I would like to think that I am getting better though.

When my boyfriend moved in with me and I needed to free some space in my closet I found that first story I wrote from around 1992 to about 1997 . I didn't even remember that I'd brought it with me when I moved to my apartment but there it was, under a pile of old clothes that I can't bring myself to throw out. I kept it in a black thick folder and most of it was typed on my typewriter. Hundereds of pages. Of crap really, but it's my crap and it's not the text in itself that moves me, it is what it represents. But I won't lie, it is crap incarnate.

The other stories I've worked on (actually only two more) are all in my computer and they are getting less and less crappy. I guess it is the power of development and probably also because I am not writing alone these days. There is this need of trying to do better when you know someone will read it, even if it is only one person and you know you can write just about anything and she'll think it's brilliant... But you still try to push yourself to do better and sometimes when you go through your stuff you'll find something that isn't half bad and you feel kind of proud.

But as passions go, this is mine and if I am absent in my blog it only means I'm being creative elsewhere. So if you'll excuse me I have a very depressed and border line suicidal homosexual who needs my attention.

More Pictures

Probably the prettiest girl in the world.

Catching the Strawberry Thief

Sometimes, when no one is looking and things are in the right level, life is just great!

We spent Midsummer this year with my sister, her boyfriend and the lovely little Miss Lova (above) just like last year. It’s in the middle of nowhere, or it feels as if it is in the middle of nowhere which it is not of course. A lot of nice houses, a lot of trees and mosquitos and at Midsummer an open medow with a temporary wooden dance floor and a DJ. This is where all the people, young as old, end up when they’ve run out of herring, strawberries and schnapps. It doesn’t get more Swedish than this.

Last year I got to see my boyfriend dance to the lowest form of music, a very popular genre with the older generation, especially around Midsummer. Since it is not really his scene it went fairly and considering the fact the dance floor is in fact moving up and down from everyone “dancing” around on top of it, it doesn’t really matter. You can stand still and look like you’re shaking it all like that! Though this year Marika, a friend of my sister’s, tried to teach him how to dance “kasedans”, which is the custom in these settings. He then wanted to show his new moves when the next appropriate song came, in this case In a Small Fisherman’s Harbour (I en liten fiskehamn), a smooth transendance from the previous song Lordis Hardrock Hallelulja. I doubt that we got the moves right judging from the professionals around us. Maybe next year we’ll show them.

Bored

My boyfriend sits with his headphones on, editing his documentary. He pretends that he doesn't hear what I say when I talk to him but I know he does. I just have to say something interesting enough and his curiousity exposes him. Mostly I humor him though and communicate through the msn which is even more annoying I'm sure.

"I'm bored" I write to him which he at this point feels is my own problem.

Every now and then he wants my oppinion of course. Not in the sense of a muse but rather a 'partner in crime'. Still, he mostly just sits there, poking around in the timeline, going over the sequences as if there was no tomorrow.

And I am bored. So incredibly bored.

Cracks Me Up

"The ants are my friends
they're blowing in the wind.
The ants are blowing in the wind...."


What I can't understand is how the person singing this could connect this line of thought with the previous lyrics of this song.

Graceful Me

I am one of those boring people who seldom gets drunk beyond the ability to control my own action or motorfunction. Usually that is.

Once when I was around 16 years old I drank a whole bottle of wine with a straw in the park and my friend had to drag me in to a taxi. This isn’t even my own memory but a story told by others which scared the living daylight out of me. So I spent the rest of my teenage partying days drinking myself pretty and holding my friend’s hair when they were throwing up in the bathroom in the back of a club. These were friend’s who drank tequila straight from the bottle and who apparently did not understand the sentiment of the word enough.

Sure, once in a while I would stumble and fall but as my boyfriend pointed out to me the other day, it had little to do with the alcohol and more to do with my ability to fall over and run my toes in to dead objects.

“You’re always cursing the furniture,” my boyfriend explained one morning very matter of factly. “It’s always ‘damn that chair’ or ‘stupid idiot table’. What you should be saying is ‘stupid idiot feet’” he snickered, recieving a well deserved pillow in his face.

It’s because of my mother you see. My mother always falls, trips or turn things over. I inherented that gene. The clumsy gene. On every vaction we ever took my mother would fall. She would tell me and my sister that we should be careful and then the next second she would slide down the slippery slope on her behind. In New York she got it out of her system right from the start as she flew out of the taxi, falling flat on her stomach right in front of the hotel, just inches from the doorman, a tall African American who was looking down at her. I was so embaressed.

Maybe that is why I stay so much in control when we’re out. Becuase for once I am the person standing up straight. The person who can look at others acting clumsy, falling over, and for once feel like a graceful being.

Dare to Dream

Today came the verdict. At least it felt like a vertict since the outcome wasn’t what I had hoped for. “They decided to go with another candidate....” If I got payed every time I heard that, I’d be rich. But at least they called this time. Usually they don’t, you have to call them up yourself, which you know is a bad sign right from the start.

I am dissapointed. Naturally. This was not just any job. It was not Customer Support, which I have been told from one agency is my only option because of my limited experience and which I can’t get either way since I have too much education. It was not a Marketing Assistent job which another agency called me in for a couple of weeks ago, but that I didn’t get because they wanted someone with education in economics. It wasn’t even a job as an Informant or Communicator which I have been told I can forget about right from the start even though I have the education for it. It was Head of Information at on of Sweden’s most successful companies. Like being Chief. Boss. In charge.

Madness!

“Don’t look at this as a defeat,” the recruiter said. “Try to focus on the fact that you got this far on almost no experience. They felt you had a lot of potential and ambition but they wanted someone with experience.”

He said it almost as if he disagreed with their decision. As if he thought that they’d missed the point. “I’m really sorry.” He added.

It didn’t feel like he was feeding me a line, it felt as if he really meant it. At our first meeting I found him completely intimidating in the way that he kept throwing difficult questions at me, as if he was testing my ability to cope. I walked out of that room never expecting to hear from him again.

Then he calls, out of nowhere, and he wants to see me again. We meet again and he is no longer intimidating. After that meeting he calls and tells me he wants to send me to the interview. For the job as Head of Information! He tells me that he is sending two other candidates with experience and then me. He tells me I am his favorite candidate, the most ambitious one in the bunch and also the one most likely to pull this off. These are almost his exact words. He sees something no one else have dared to discover. He sees potential. And he tells me that potential is more important than experience.

I can’t believe it is happening. I can’t believe that I am going on this interview and that someone believes in me as much as he does. And even though I know that this is too good to be true, I dare to dream. I know I don’t have the same chance as the rest but I am toying with the posibility of getting the job and I can’t stop myself from thinking: what if?

So of course I am dissapointed. And I panic over the fact that I now have to deal with the people of little faith. The unbelievers.

Dead Ficus

My ficus is officially dead. I can't tell if it is caused by too much or too little water because all the other plants are still alive. But the ficus is sagging like a tired old man sitting outside a dressing room, waiting for his wife to try on the tenth shirt which looks like all the other shirts in which she just posed for him.

"It's been a good couple of months," my boyfriend proclaims and rather congratulates me on the success of the plants that are still alive. He knows as well as I do that I am hopeless with plants, maybe even more so than he is. And I am proud of this minor achievement, a step in the right direction, but at the same time I can not let go of the failure, the stains in my success. That's just the kind of animal that I am.


Meanwhile I am three out of over two hundered. I am one of three for the position of a life time. The kind of job that no one gets, not in my position anyway. I am the candidate least qualified for the position, of this I'm sure. Not sure like in "I pity myself" but sure because the man sending me to the interview told me so. He said I had spirit and ambition but not sufficient experience. He said he believed I was the best candidate but that chances are that they don't. People stare themselves blind on experience, he said. And contacts, I added in silence.

He told me I am his favorite candidate. That out of over two hundered, cut to ten, then to five and three, I am his favorite. I don't care that he probably tells all three candidates this, I really needed to hear it. After all the dissapointments, the deceits and unfairness that comes from the position I am in, it felt like coming up for air when you are suffocating.

Even if I don't get the job I am very content. I am proud that I got this far. I never thought it possible after what I've learned these past couple of months. And I take solace in the fact that you can get far with honesty and hard work. It feels comforting.

But I am very much like my ficus. Usually I drown in the water, having too much experience. Otherwise I dry out, having too little experience. This interview felt very dry. I'm fairly sure I'm not getting this job, it all adds up to that. Never the less I have had a good experience and I've regained faith in something I thought I'd lost.

Misunderstanding

In Sweden most kids come to the realization some time during pre teen period that the rockband Kiss does not mean urine, which it translates in to in Swedish. I am embaressed to say that I was very late to discover this myself which is strange since I was always advanced in English in relation to my peers. Justified humiliation though since I was always very arrogant about it.

My best friend once told the story about her boyfriend's brother who misunderstood the song lyrics for the theme song in the cartoon version of Robin Hood. Instead of singing "Oo-de-lally, Oo-de-lally Golly, what a day", he sang "Woody Allen, Woody Allen Golly, what a day" (in Swedisn of course).

I just love such stories, because I know how stupid we feel when we realize the mistake. And usually we've always felt that our misunderstandings sounded weird and didn't make much sense even when we were unaware that we were wrong. I mean, why would any band want to be named Urine?

This is why I was delighted to find this site about the song lyrics we thought we heard and what they really meant. Some of these are hilarious.


http://kissthisguy.com/

Point, what Point?

I was sitting on the bus on my way downtown when I noticed a man looking straight at me. I met his eyes and he didn't look away like people ususally do when caught staring at someone. Intense glaring makes me uncomfortable however so I broke contact but noticed that the man kept staring at me.

Had I been 16, thinking that the world evolved around me, I would probably have thought that he couldn't help himself, seeing how pretty I was. Now, eleven years later, it's more leaning towards: "I must have smut somewhere on my face...." So I dove into my bag for my hand mirror and tried to see just how bad it was.

Turns out I didn't have smut on my face. It also turns out that the man is holding a white cane, indicating he was blind. I felt really bad for thinking he was creepy.


Then, two hours later, over a cup of Vanilla Nut Latte, my friend starts pondering whether or not blind people dream. According to a number of not so reliable websites I find out that they don't. At least not in images.

You're now probably thinking that if there is a point I should be getting to it shortly. Sorry to say that I have no point to make. Just making an observation.

Review

I feel the pressure of writing some kind of review of the documentary, Smiling in a War Zone, I watched this Friday, since I brought it up. So here goes.

I heard that it got some bad reviews on TV the day before but I haven't seen the review myself so I can't really object to any specific complaints. I can see how someone would be unimpressed by it, and I had a few bad reactions to the poor video qualities, embaressing "special effects" and the occasional unability to keep a clear perspective. It felt as if she wanted to say so many things with the documentary that some things became a bit redundant when she didn't take the time to explain her point thurully.

But.... to give it a two out of five? To me that just feels like the person didn't understand the point of the movie, which wasn't to do a high quality documentary but something completely different. The fact that this woman spent a year of her life, a fortune that she didn't even have and risked her own life to be able to fulfill one young woman's wish of flying is enough to give it at least three points. I mean, are we so spoiled with special effects and perfectly scripted and orchestrated documentaries that we fail to appreciate a genuin effort and inspirational message just because it doesn't come in a golden wrapper? I think it is sad.

To me this documentary represents a brave woman with a message that becomes a truth rather than a cliché through the journey that she makes. A message that you really can do anything you want if you just put your mind to it. And that's good media.

Smiling in a War Zone

About two or three years ago I went to a seminar held by a Danish woman, Simone, who was making a documentary of her "journey" to Kabul. Allegedly she had, through some news channel, heard about a young woman in Kabul who wanted nothing more than to once be able to fly a plane. Reading this, Simone got the crazy idea that she should fulfill that wish. And she did.

She bought a forty-year-old Piper Colt and made the trip, 50 hours in the air, 33 landings and one illegal flight in to Afghanistan to find the young woman Farial and make her wish come true.


The documentary, Smiling in a War Zone, premieres here in Malmö today and I am meeting up my boyfriend after work to see it. Expectations are high.

The Horror, The Horror...

I went on an interview for a position as an international informant this morning and I honestly can't say what scares me the most; to recieve information of yet another failure or to actually get the job.

The whole experience of the interview was, to say the least, horrifying. He treated me as if I had worked as an informant for years, asking me questions that probably any qualified informant could answer in a split of a second, and demanded quick answers. I started to wonder if he had read my application at all because it would clearly tell him that I have limited experience. Then he confessed that his approach was rather agressive and that he understood that I could not possibly know these things with respect to my background. And I started to wonder why I was even there. With all of the 300 applications he'd recieved... I did not even impress myself.

I feel a bit discouraged about this informant business. It's sad because I've had that goal in sight for as long as I can remember. But everytime I get within reach of it I end up either devastated or doubting my own abilities.

I've never created an entire internal network by myself. I've never composed an actual communication plan by myself. I'm not even sure if I know what it is. I've never been a part of any board of directors or responsible for the communication of one. I've never had to defend a company in a press release...

Given the cance, I could learn and I know that. But it doesn't really matter when you are expected to master it before you've learned it.

It will be a cold day in hell before I get this job. My only solace is that whether I get rejected or, God help us, get the job, it is all me. I'm loosing or gaining this job on my own. And damned proud of it either way.

I Have a Confession to Make

My name is Sofie, and I am a chocoholic.

Like that. The truth. The ugly truth about the habit that I apparently can not kick. Chocolate is my heroin. Simple as that.

I stopped eating chocolate for two weeks. Two whole weeks. It is hard for anyone to comprehend the nature of the situation. The nervous eye twitch, the biting of nails, the self delusions I suffered. Until time did its thing and I realized that I didn't need it anymore.

Then comes Easter.

Big Easter egg. Chocolate dreamboat. The best kinds of chocolate in a see trough delight. The kind of chocolate that melts in your mouth before you even get around to tear the wrappers. Not at all a cheep perfunctonary gift that nobody ever asks for. Just an oval shaped piece of heaven.

I was such a good girl. I didn't even touch it. Then the next day my boyfriend opens the egg and lets out a scent of chocolate my way. He looks at me and asks: "Do you want one?" Do you want one? Is he freaking kidding me?

I was lost and the addiction came back. But I didn't really understand how serious it was until today. When I went through the last remains of the egg and found three pieces of the disgusting chocolate still there. You know the hardened jell-o and marzipan pieces that no one really likes. And as one piece of my brain concluded that I hate marzipan the other part of the brain kept insisting on the importance of; covered in chocolate, covered in chocolate. It all ended with a see through egg, filled with brown paper wrappers and one girl who never knew what hit her.

Last Friday

My boyfriend knows a guy who works backstage at various concerts here in Malmö. He managed to get my boyfriend the drumsticks after the Morrissey concert last friday. Since my boyfriend is a drummer and a fan of Morrissey he thought that was a very nice perk to the whole concert.

The drumsticks are barely holding together and they smell kind of funny. But I appreciate sentiment.