Saturday 31 December 2011

End of a year of Good Beginnings...

Things that 'started of' this year:
- my photography career
- summat my (professional) writing career
- some other personal serious shit
- my marriage

Today is the last day that I get to work on Nasty Little Light and tomorrow I begin the comissioned book's main text body. It took me a little while to gather all the material, and mementum by finishing 'Heart (working title), so ... here we go. The year of excellent foundation.

On a non-related subject... :)) One of the articles on the Wiki front today is a story of the only regent empress of Vietnam, a lady who was very much not liked in history, as supposedly she only lasted a year before another dynasty took over altogether... For this reason, she was not worshipped as an ancestor and had no place in the temple, only a small shrine near-by. I have to admit, though supposedly mentally unstable, her predecessor obviously did have some wit about him, because if he had not named her but instead someone he actually liked, it would have been HIM that would be remembered as the failing kind and HE would be shunned from the temple. This way he pulled a very vicious, very selfish prank on a girl who probably had no idea what was happening, as at the time of all this turmoil, she was only six years old.

Friday 30 December 2011

Girl with the dragon tattoo times two




Last night the Gen and  I went to the movies, to see the American remake of the Larsson story, starring R. Mara, D. Craig, directed by Fincher. We like Fincher. I’m a great fan of the original movie starring Nyqvist and Rapace and directed by Oplev as well and of all three books by the (supposedly) late Stieg Larsson. Perhaps not so much the second and third installments, but the first movie, Män som hatar kvinnor  (Men who hate women) I really liked. I knew it would be difficult to watch this soonish remake, because it is almost the exact copy of the original and yet trying desperately to be entirely different.

Standalone, it’s an excellent film. I think. The actors, director and cinematographer are actually doing a really good job. Craig is okay, although he feels a bit too tired and quite oddly thin for my taste, wearing tight jeans and falling all over. His face when she pulls down her undies and the walkie-talkie alarm code: Fuck fuck fuck is hilarious. Understandably he’s been aiming to remove himself from any Bond affiliation, but compared to Nyqvist he’s sort of like rice-paper to cardboard. Rooney Mara on the other hand, is amazing. She’s this dark punk ninja pixie that you can’t wait to see and hear next. If I had never seen any other version of her I would instantly love her. She’s a little rough diamond. I long to watch her again and I hope she inspires some cool deep heroines in the future.
         Other actors did a good job as well. I especially loved the part where they all speak with the something of a Norse accent, except maybe Skarsgard, who is actually Swedish – he speaks perfect American. It was good to see Robin Wright Penn and Joely Richardson again, wearing very little make-up, old women that they are and still so very beautiful. And the casting of the rapist social worker was good. He displayed a great measure of paternal fondness and sadistic fucked-upness at the same time. In the original movie Bjurman (Bear man) is instantly repulsive.
         The rape scene was powerful. Possibly one of the worst in history of cinema. I tried to warn my friend that this story contains a tremendously savage rape and she asked me if it will be graphic and I admitted that in an American version, I just don’t know. For a moment it actually seemed like it will be skipped altogether, but Fincher decided to go with it and delivered it all. It certainly splits you down the middle and makes you very, very happy this is only a movie.
        
… And so on and so forth. If you haven’t seen the original and like the genre, I coldly recommend it (I would say warmly, but it takes place in winter Sweden, so… You wish.). If you had read the books and seen the Swedish version, then perhaps wait a few decades. Even the Bond-like opening credits will confuse you. Seriosuly, what WAS that?

Now for the bad parts.
         There is too much of everything in this one film. Too many gruesome murders. Like, three times as much. Everyone seemed to be raping everyone in that family, too. It would have been good enough to leave it at “You will be investigating thieves, misers, bullies. The most detestable collection of people that you will ever meet -  My family.” Everyone knows how that feels and yet often it’s just family rivalry and things aren’t really as bad. It leaves the speculations and the mysteries opened. No need to over-sell it. Lots of stuff from the other two parts of the trilogy are crammed in here and also several parts that aren’t in the story at all.
         Regardless of how excellent Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth is, Rapace’s is a whole lot better. More realistic, a lot tougher, a lot more unique and troubled looking even without the elaborate make-up and hair-cut. They are both supposed to look like troubled little girls, but Rooney’s looks about twelve and cute whereas Rapace’s looks old and hard. Perhaps these indeed are the European and the American editions. Very well to the point in fact.
         In the Swedish version, it is she that helps him and then he is the one who falls for her. In the American it’s him who finds her and she is the one who then follows him around with big loving puppy eyes, hoping to be loved. Kind of defeats the point of Lisbeth, doesn’t it?
         However good the casting in the American version was, the original was better. Then again the sort of appeal that original cast has isn’t really clear enough for the American standards. People need to be cuter, thinner and more hysterical and their hair always needs to be perfect, unless of course there’s something deeply wrong with them, in which case the hair is slightly tussled. There also needs to be more guns and winning fights and possibly airplane travel in American versions. And exactly how Lisbeth cleared the Cayman accounts needs to be told frame by frame, otherwise people wouldn’t really get it. Like… What the Hell are bonds, right?  
         I preferred the role of the missing girl in the original film. How she was Mika’s babysitter and how she actually moved to Australia and had a good life there. The solitary playing fake identity lady played by Richardson didn’t really make much sense.
         What the fuck was that with the cat?!

          

Wednesday 28 December 2011

PS. To all my friends and people whose phone number I know...

Should you happen to ever recieve a slightly flirtatious or downright lesbian advance text message from me, chances are it was meant for the hubby and I am simply too madly in love to be able to choose the correct numbers from my phone. It happens. Don't be alarmed. He gets about five of those per day and he isn't worried yet :))p

Wishlist 2o12

Photography:
  A new computer or a better screen at least:




- Rotolight
- Maybe a studio. But not so vital anymore :D Love daylight.

...short list, I know :))












Paper:
- Books published, as per usual :D 



+
- a tiny car



- ridiculously cool vibrator. If I'm gonna have one, it may as well be a work of art ;)

- mayhap another pet?

- and a small, not particularly painful trip with a hubby. 

Tuesday 27 December 2011

On sex toys, wet dreams and X-mas dinners with Predators


I love it when the General gives me the sad eyes and says: I have no more clean T-shirts. As if that was such an irreparable condition, all that can fix it s a hug and a good cry. Yes, honey, I got it by now. Your theory of how shirts travel to and from the washer by themselves has tragically failed. I’ll make an exception and pose as a housekeeper just this once. Just no more big sad eyes.
         On the other hand, he has made a face like he just saw The Blessed Virgin Mary this morning, when I asked about our plans for today and he said: Playing Warcraft and having sex and I said: Oh, gods, no, please, no more sex. I can’t do this any longer.
Spending more time on Lelo site than I was on Wikipedia lately has paid off. Also the toys we got for Christmas from our friends and the Generals’ words: I will root your sex drive out of you if I have to go buy new batteries during. And after a few days I am willing to feign defeat. I’m an old lady and I don’t have time to sleep four hours after those orgasms twice a day. I should probably invoke the quickie rule again, only this time in reverse: one vs. four ratio, please.
The family dinners have passed; I feel a year older. Recession has shown on the gifts, though I am proud of the doggie calendars I made for my folks. The parental injustice didn’t sadden me as much as I thought it would, though I did rename one of my family members into an Antichrist in my phone, and the food was, as always, absurdly excellent. Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to watch my Predator quintology beforehand, so I just watched the really gruesome bits ASAP afterwards. It’s much needed to level my redefinition of good and evil. You know: my family is not the worst. There are bigger monsters out there.
I did dreamt an excellent stoream this morning. Maybe now as a story it lacks certain, if not all, sense, but within it it was quite pleasant. The theory that saliva production halts to zero during dormant hours is entirely false: a strong parasimpatico, particularly during such dreams, produces a lot more than normal. I literally soak my pillow.
Like an English TV mini-series, because I woke up during, there are two parts… J
         It starts with me in a London or somesuch ministry or city hall, where I am trying to get my passport done to leave the country, but cannot remember my young son’s birth date. (His name and picture need to be included, but the date fazes me. This is due to the fact I can never remember my last name in proper order.) I try to call the General, but the connection is too bad and I cannot hear him well enough and I don’t want to get it wrong. To deal with this, I go to the other part of the building, across a small park to a more administrative area of the establishment where a friend of mine works and he might be able to help me more than the nervous teller ladies. The security lad in a small bunker room between the door and the hallway also knows me, so he lets me in while he phones my friend to come and get me. We chat and he mentions that the postman van parked in front is strange, as this is parcel region 18 but the van is marked 16.  While he’s on the phone, I notice that the ‘mail man’ is approaching rapidly, holding nothing but a small wooden pepper-shaker-like object. My little red flags go up and I start to urge the security lad to leave the phone, open the door and allow us to flee into the hallway. Just as he does this and I run in, yelling at people to take cower, not even looking back, I hear the first explosion and just as I manage to hide behind one of the classroom-like door niches, the second, inner door blows and the metal panel flies clear across the hall. Glass is flying everywhere. More of it than usual, even, and a lot brighter. As I proceed to run, my legs badly cut and my calves kind of full of shards sticking out, I realize that the man attacking is actually using some sort of sonic scream to literally shatter people like glass. This shakes me so, that when he finds me, I can’t even look, I just hide and hope he ignores me. But he doesn’t, he begins to shatter me, too, and to my great relief and surprise, as my body is turning to tiny bits of very bright glass, it feels very painless and calm. I almost thank the man, who is now a source of sharp brightness, but then I blow into a million bits that continue to cut through people.
         This is when I woke up, so the next ‘episode’ began with a camera POV and it was on the roof of the ministry, where a politician lady was talking to her head security consultant and the roof they were walking was also where sometimes they tortured and experimented on suspects. But this time there was a young soldier there, painfully tied up in wires and pulleys and sort of elastic material with cutlery pulled away from him and then aimed for his eyes and the like. Supposedly this soldier once ventured into another world and was there tortured like this, so now they tortured, semi-willingly him again to try and establish what they were dealing with. There was a debate about how they used forks, but never making a sound, so when they dropped their fork onto a platter, it made a difficult, almost sonic sound and they realized something. Dunno what. Something pivotal.
         Cut scene to a young woman in front of a mirror, putting make-up to cover the eyes under her bags and the song is playing something about how she spent the whole night up with her boss. She’s not very pretty and quite pale and bit of lower middle class, though small and lovely in a tired, desperate way. She is wearing a nighty and a thin over-robe, and goes to clean up the bed of her baby son, who managed to wet it again, because she forgot to put on a diaper. Her son is absurdly large for a baby, which somehow agrees to a theory her boss is a very large and obese man. The baby patiently lies on her bed with white sheets and blue covers, but is amused because the ceiling is also starting to drip while she complains how he is a constant source of water.
         Meanwhile, three men dressed in desert storm Special Forces outfits which they probably bought on-line, one of whom is the same sonic mail-man who assaulted the ministry; break into the very same building. They go through the receptionist’s book of tenants (well, one does, the other two have fun disposing of the poor guy), until they find one they like. They make a call and that young woman with the baby answers. They seem to ask her some random questions though she cannot help but to flirt a little with the strangers on the phone. However, talking to them, she finally sees her ceiling is almost completely wet and quite swollen and dripping on her son. She takes the son quickly to the other room, where situation soon becomes the same. Though not very bright, she gives into her instincts and starts to run out of the apartment, shutting the front door just as the bedroom ceiling gives in under the burden of the upper apartment being completely flooded.
         Running out, she pulls the neighbor old lady, which can be her mum or her grandma and they start to run down the stairs, arguing. They may for some reason be the only tenants who run, because even though there seems to be water everywhere, others don’t notice it. And the windows and doors of this building appear to be very tight. Once outside, it’s clear this is a rather poor but tall apartment sky-scraper, surrounded by a few more and a neat, shy park with threes and some green patches in between parking lots. Even as the three are fleeing, they can see splashes of water coming from an opened window row, making them realize the building is swaying. Not only that, it’s so heavy with the extra weight of water in every apartment on every floor that it’s literally sinking. There are some hands trying to call for help, but it’s too late. The only happy trio is the strange terrorists, now on that opened row balcony, enjoying their achievement. They notice us – mum, daughter and baby – running away as other people are approaching to see what’s going on. They even shoot something at a bunch of young school-skippers that tease the daughter’s wardrobe. But they also shoot at us, which is what wakes me up for the second time… So alas, I am not sure how this story ends :P

Thursday 22 December 2011

Winter officialy here :)



Barky

Interesting way of self-soothing - plug your snout into your pooper and dream happy dreams :))



Almost there... ;)




It took me a decade to stop masturbating over some of the characters in LotR and I wonder if anyone in The Hobbit will hit me so straight as some of them did. I'm thinking this guy? :))


Though I am very curious about what they will make of Legolas's evil dad and of course of my beloved Beorn.

I knew it was premature to close down my show in the shire :P




Monday 19 December 2011

I am starting to drink beer more than usual. By that I mean I ordered my first beer today. I never even particularly liked it until along came drinkers (and I could say she's a real bad influence, because all we ever do is drink and talk about sex, but then I remember it's me who orders the drinks and always talks about sex and she just listens like friends do, hopefully not thinking about running away screaming :P) and ordered my first grapefruit Radler. Granted, it was during a sex fair and we were very thirsty, but it was still an excellent drink. I wonder how my family will react seeing me drink alcohol on X-mas. 

On a related subject - I have been going way too often to religious events lately as well. It's starting to brew something in me, some odd need to belong to a ritual or faith. As puzzling as it may be how any intelligent person would ever believe any of the nonsense most religions sell, I can imagine why one would overlook the retarded rules (I'm thinking mostly Muslims here and an occasional Buddhist) in order to feel blessed by the wisdom and the revelations of gods and sages. I am happy believing in nature and circle of life and that most things have personality if not soul, which clashes heavily with having to endure General's need for slaughter, but I do miss the ritual. For this reason I may make Gennonsuke, the male lead and love-interest in The Nasty Little Light a shinigami AND Jewish. He's half Swedish as it is. Might as well learn a thing or two from his layer cake personality...


Ow shit. Kim Jong-il died. One of the last truly whacko dictators. And he was reported to pass on from a heart attack while traveling by a train. Was that the same train that he liked staffed with former beauty queens and teen models I wonder?

Friday 16 December 2011

On socks and boobs

It took me about 45 seconds to get addicted to these....

 

(The grippy knobbies, I mean, not the toe things.) Feeling them ALL the time, walking, flexing my soles - and when you take them off and put on regular socks, you feel like your foot is in a bucket of water. Am seriously considering getting more shoes and socks. I suppose one pair of trekking shoes and one pair of flip flops is a disgrace for a woman. Though if my life depended on it, I am certain I could dig out some army issued ladies heels, boots and of course two old pairs of training bullers.

I have skipped right over this guy, Pejić.


Lovely he may be, but he is also dumb as fuck and I am so over halfwit models. That drawer is stuck as it is with Gackt. (Aware that that man exists brings whole new light to my own species.) Regardless of my turn on for manga (where even the worst of male villains may look like little girls sometimes). I'm thinking Kuja.

I am nigh finished with the latest book, but it's too large to be printed for easy money. Granted, I am a fan of a hard cover, but hitherto I just can't afford it. Luckily I couldn't afford it even if it was half the price, so I merrily sail on, already flirting with the sequel. I stole these planets from Wiki to doodle around with a cover, but I didn't do it because I didn't have a better one, I did it because at the same time the book speaks about distant planets and my great boobs :P


Tuesday 13 December 2011

Nafis

Couple of pickies of Nafis Umerkulova, a little piano wrangler I met when I shot the classical concerts taking place these holiday season. A minute Uzbek taming a grand Steinbeck certainly is a sight to behold and you know me - I tend to sit, alone, in the front line and pretend there's just music and me and the face of the people playing. Half of what I understand of sounds is what I interpret from teh expression of the musicians :) She studies in Glasgow with Katarina Majcen and she was super nice to me, when I joined the friends/family of the stars for drinks afterwards and would of course just sit and observe quietly.








Sunday 11 December 2011

On funerals, sex fairs and slaughter


It's been a week since I've tried reaching out into the world for lessons and approval, and my hands have been healing nicely. The nasty wounds on my palms (a little less stigmata and a little more psoriasis, though I could fool you) have been healing very neatly and I no longer cringe from shaking people's hands.

                In the past three days, I have gone to the extremes of human condition. Each and every one was traumatic and rejuvenating to the point of primal urge to yell.
                First was a fuck-lot-depressing funeral. I have gone to more funerals this year than all the rest of my life combined and each one was worse than the other. This time the corrupt shit-hearted faith-whore of a priest delivered such a disturbed sermon, I literally started crying. Luckily it was a funeral, but I was so upset I shook and trembled and would have had it much worse if my parents didn’t agree: this was ridiculous. We are communists (or at least one communist, one atheist and me respectfully in the middle) but we do respect other faiths if they are genuine and intimately between people and their needs to not feel small and alone, but this was simply awful. I was about to lose it when the guy said children conceived in test tubes have no chance of ever meeting the grace of that dude hanging from two sticks, so basically, because we need a little help of science to conceive, the General’s kids by me won’t stand a right to be baptized? (Though by now I think the General comprehends I would rather raise my offspring as Jewish than ever have them speak to the likes of these preachers.) If that didn’t seal my hatred of the lot, his comments on how we should be as devout as zealot Islamists in our faith – and of course no matter how much he charged for this, because they charge a lot for these masses, he still sent out the large basket and stared at people how much money they will give, more – that certainly did. I thought my dad will be upset when I put my hands in my pockets and showed my back to the creep in a dress when he approached me, but, in a moment of excellent family camaraderie, my dad did the same. We would have done much worse if this was not a funeral of our family member.

The second event, a day later, was a sex fair. We get one of these each years and as it turned out, people from all over, far across the borders, come, to check out the products and XXX starlets… I know I am a newbie and would have never gone alone if it were not for a very good friend of mine, who is the only other person I know to have the same taste in porn and speaks about sex the same cheerful, liberal way. She has also done this before, so she was not as shy as me and would explain a lot of stuff. I have to say, as far as some of the more costly products go, the temptation is indeed overwhelming. I especially liked this: http://en.lelo.com/index.php?collectionName=insignia-luxe&groupName=TIANI
…. Whereas the peoples on stage… That was a smack certain libido killer. Some people were so ugly, so sadly cheap-silicone, it made us blush. Some were just sad, old and … sad. There were very few that were not terrible and perhaps two of the visitors there would make me horny if I happened to be ovulating. The rest were just mostly sweaty single men who came to rub against ‘naughty nurses ‘in fishnets and whatever some of the others were supposed to be… Butt implants commercias or something. Then again I haven't seen these many tele-lenses and puffed up semi-professional cameras since the Nikon fair last week.

The finish day of this bizarre trio was the slaughter of the pigs in the General’s home farm. It’s still a double murder, terrible and nightmare-inducing, very cruel, very painful and to people like me, messed up. However, I tend to face the things that freak me out through a lens, so I got some good pictures. And I am a big fan of gross anatomy and like the study of internal organs, as long as there isn’t any blood involved. Plus there is something to be said about the General ripping out a pig’s spine as if he just met a Predator and fucked it up and said: “Wrong ooman, asshole.”


Saturday 3 December 2011

Imago


I woke up feeling so incredibly small today. So incredibly unborn. I felt like I should just curl up and die and stop wasting the air of this insensitive little world. Luckily I’ve felt like this before and I know what it is. In the insect world it’s called imago. Shedding a shell. 
One of the options was sending buck shots through my photography bag, but I don’t really want to kill Mark, not yet. He was kissed and neatly packed into his bag and will sleep, the gentle prince, until the spring comes. Sure, I will shoot plenty of dogs and winter family sports and places we’ll visit, but no more expecting money for my work. I have no idea how I will get the money to live, but I got it before and besides – lately most of my photography work was just simply stolen or published without my name signed and for all I tried, for all I invested, time and resources, it kept coming back to nothing. Normally I’d just abandon my ambition, because it’s been so long since I’ve been doing this – but I love my light, my colors, this beauty captured and stolen from time, too much. So March it is.
People who will want to find me will find me. People who will want to hire me will hire me. But no more evenings away from my husband, begging people for deals and clinging onto false promises like a naïve, approval starved child. I’ve given so much and achieved so little the way I’ve approached it until now.
It’s time to go to sleep and shed this shell – something that always feels awful, painful and rotten on this end and always feels like getting wings on the other. It’s time for pain and helplessness now. In spring it’ll be another story.

Friday 2 December 2011


I have to say I love the way my brain works. Not that it's doing me any favors, but I am still in awe of its predictability. :D
            My day hasn’t been the best. Finding out yet more of my published photos have not been signed and yet more people posing as professionals have degraded my efforts, not to mention a photo shoot I’ve been really looking forward to has been cancelled and Barki seems to be a little bit sick. I’ve tried writing a single page of a book I am obliged to write and instead ended up writing fourteen pages of a book I am only writing to blow off steam that builds while I’m focusing on the research of the first. It’s not exactly Mozart – finished in the first go – but it makes for an excellent skeleton structure for the narrative I will eventually, probably, embellish. Huge chunks of the last part of my space adventure are coming together, even if in a strange and unfamiliar tone. There is a scene in which I kill my first real person, but I only wrote about three lines on the subject. The writing should probably rest for a bit, a month or so, so that I can re-read it and decide if this cold, detached, shallow and dry tone fits perfectly to the mental state of the heroine at the time of the final showdown or can I do a lot better… Either which way, it was an unexpected positive closure of a bad day.

Thursday 1 December 2011

Oddly enough, I have not listened to Tori Amos for over fifteen years. She reminds me of a period of my life when my dreams were plagued by Gaiman's Sandman (and when I say plagued I mean there were oozes of fucked up nightmares and black holes of confidence and creativity, only a numbing fear of death that extended well into my waking hours.) I hung out with a girl back then, which I still consider a filthy snake, the biblical type of someone who betrays one’s trust and friendship without the slightest emotional aftermath. Tori Amos was the backsound of bad dreams, rape issues and feeling very very left behind to die alone.
         It’s always curious to hear such a strong song again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PAxJ_kJtkM) during a photo shoot and feel nothing but inspiration and power. How the lowly have changed :D Indeed.
         Before the doggie walk today, because I have started working more intently on the travel book, I also started writing stuff in the counter-balance mode. It’s the way I write – one part is difficult, focused and serious and the other is playful, silly, funky and comes naturally, in great bursts of color. In an hour I wrote a two-page short story for my next collection of stories, about my lovers. I wrote a piece of it to the General and he pulled my head back and aimed a fist at my bent neck, saying it will be over very quickly. He is not happy with my fictional view on open marriage. It’s probably the reaction of someone who only ever read non-fiction books. There should be a long conversation about the merits of fiction and fantasy before I read him something from my list again.
         There’s a line in that story, though, that I find worth translating :)
         “That I love books is a gross understatement. I worship books. I steal them, I forge them, I take them even from museums and monasteries. I am obsessed with preserving the tales often left between only two mouse-nibbled covers at all. To me they are like diamonds: each is precious, but there are rare samples which are more precious still. I like to wait and see who will be the one to take them home and then befriend those people.”

The Rosa Accessories catalogue shots...

Publishing some of the catalogue work... Work like this really makes you itch and hop on toetips, as you're so anxious to show it to everyone :D

The brainstorm behind the beauty of the baggies are Mateja Bobek and Nina Škoberne


The models are the magnificent Claire Pecniq, Tamara Kolenc and Levin Oparenović
Make up was done by the lovely Nea Likar
Hair by Nevenka Bobek
Stylings were from S.Oliver
The concepts, drafts and direction was by the fantastic pair Dare Vasiljevič and Tanja Špan of ARHIMETRICS