Strange

Look at that, it's back! Whaddayaknow.

Warped Signifigance

Puners be coming left and right.

And for some reason the function that allows for people to comment on the blog has vanished without a trace. I can't seem to figure out why. This does not fit in to my own megalomaniacal cosmology.

Stuck in the quagmire.

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.

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.