Fuck. Sometimes bad news hit you so off guard and so hard, you never have time to open the umbrella :///

Just another manic Sunday

(Okay, Saturday, but Friday's been a national holiday, so weekend started off early.)

I've been realising some stuff today. Firstly, the answer to any moral dilemma ever is 'no'. Should I tell something I've learnt....? No. Is it better to act on a.....? No. Would it make me a better person if I....? No. Keep your nose to yourself. Unless it affects you directly, stay out of it. 

... And watching the David 8 promos, I still don't know what is unethical. Okay, no, I do. Just not regarding my own life.  Whenever I do, I can always only name other people's examples. The closest I've gotten to myself is gossip, but I don't really gossip. Not like a pro.

I am not a fan of tiny things. I am not very fond of finesse. For example, if someone offers me a tiny pastry to sample or a tiny cup to drink something tasty from... Don't do that. I don't like one lovely kiss or one gentle stroke of my hair or one quickie. Nor would I appreciate one raspberry or one hearing of a really good song. I like an endless supply of these at my disposal. It doesn't matter how I ration it, that's my business. Chocolate, milk, art, books, kissing... I've arranged my life to be a cornucopia of this, so don't challenge it.

I have thoroughly stopped stealing things. This one is probably blamed on the General, because he's also responsible for me now always being on time. For someone who used to think that being on time is a waste of time, this is a thorough leap. I still occasionally take things that don't belong to me, but these things could never be considered an act of crime. I take, like, more food that it's actually offered or a flower from someone else's meadow... 

Now that I have finally washed and stored all my socks in neat pairs, it's too hot for anything but my flip-flops. 

I've finally realised what the story in my book, the one about Canada is about: it's about Kay trying to see where blatant arrogance will take her, as she's already tried everything being nice and meek and it only ever got her half way... 

Today was my mum's birthday. We all visited her, something that makes me so tired after it's done that I near pass out - probably especially because it takes so long and we grab food so quickly when it's done it kind of clogs our system. Then I get cranky and emotional and the General orders me to to go to bed and sleep it off, like a baby, and when I wake up, it's the middle of the night. 

And two more things: my dad is very smart. Funny, when lately I get to talk to him and we feel a little bit like strangers that have been in the same boat for thirty five years, I notice we have our wits exactly alike. I can't really fool him and he will see the second layer of things intuitively, honestly and clearly, like I often do. This is kind of really really neat. He's like me, with more beard. 

... and the General is an amazing designer. We took on a project today and when we got home, he sketched the first draft on a back on an envelope and it's brilliant. he's like a fucking comic book artist to which I'm just the inker. Crimeney. The things he failed to mention before I fell madly in love with him :D

Yaaay, Zurnizip is slowly getting to the library shelves!! I know this is nothing really to retire over, but it certainly is a wonderful step on the loooong, hopefully very long journey :D Somehow now it feels there is no turning back. My legacy is shelved. It will be a long while now before I am rendered completely anonymous again :))

Hmmmmm... Question. How to create really really long exposures? How? I mean cheaply, not with some super special addition to gear. What is a ND filter? Or is that more easily done with a trick? Placing multiple ones atop one another? Or what?

A cute list on this blog: http://tamara-linse.blogspot.com/2012/04/100-things-about-photography-by-nithin.html

 This dude left the exposure opened for YEARS.

Spring'n'things

There is no secret service that could match an old lady. I am telling you. There is nothing one can ever do escape the watchful eye of your grandmother, when she’s on a prowl. :D

But oddly enough, with everything happening, my life is remarkably good right now. I could name a dozen things that are terrible or tragic, but in truth, I feel uncharacteristically optimistic and calm. Let’s blame the spring, shall we? I doubt there’s any point in taking pickies, since everyone knows springs are pretty, but there is no doubt that spring is better than (late) winter, like summer is better than fall. Falls, like evenings, represent an end and I do not like ends. Like I could never compare spring and summer, because I am a creature of light and heat, but I love this chilly freshness in the morning, which slowly crawls out of its shell, develops and hits you full blast with a 100°F by the time for a luncheon – better be wearing short sleeves and t-shirt when that occurs and my lovey lovey flipflops.

Sometimes, when your life gets sticky, there come nights when you really can’t sleep. I didn’t think that’s supposed to be literal, but there actually has been a month not far back, when I would lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking – how did we fuck up so badly? How are we ever going to get out of this?...  There would be fighting, tears, no sex, no productivity… Then a friend told me – a financial crisis is not the end of the world. It may feel like it, but if you have everything else, just not the money, that doesn’t make you a lost person. It makes you a moron to act as if it was. The trick is not to start selling off stuff you’ve accumulated so far. That’s indeed what losers do - the trick is finding a lucrative way to get out of it, pronto. I don’t know if we’ve found a way to become quite rich, but we are certainly no longer in the ‘staying awake at night, listening to the dog fart’ period. It just took a little clawing out of a proverbial pit.

Or it could just be the spring.

Necessity is the mother of invention. NEVER overlook that, never forget. Laying down arms in the heat of battle is the most loserish thing you can ever do. ANYONE could do that. There’s no fighting spirit in that at all. Laying down arms AFTER you’ve fought, cheated, stole, tricked, fucked all the officers AND their horses and lost all your castles, then consider defeatist strategies. But until then, don’t hide underneath a corpse and wait for a miracle. You’d be missing all the fun.

On a related subject, Barky nearly had a fit yesterday, when we went to the doctor’s office for a yearly anti-rabies shot. I wonder if kids will act the same, only louder? It’s not like anything bad ever happened to her there, but ghosts of a million dead pets must linger over the building  and she’s never ever stepping into it voluntarily. This was the first time anyone gave her a cookie and she wouldn’t even sniff it. Tiny freak, clad in normality :))

Also, I have a zit on my chin. A ZiT. I’m 35 and I have a zit. I understand having a mustache – you get it if you kiss someone with a mustache very many times – but a zit? And yesterday my sis bought some of the most fattening and jummyest food in existence, which naturally killed my dieting resolve, but it was oh so worth it. The good thing about being very fat and losing 10 pounds is nobody really notices and all clothes still fit, so you never have to bring it up in a conversatin. Ten more to go. Then fingers crossed the damn therapy will work, because I am not too thrilled about needles either. I’ve pricked my finger on a thorn few days ago and still won’t shut up about it :P

Writing about Nuada brought me to a strange place. There’s a moment of serenity around the characters, between when he already knows he is too late to seek absolution – when all the flowers in the old professor’s room die -  and the time he commits suicide by courtesan. I started working on a scene yesterday, when he finds an old doctor’s bag (my great-granddad’s) amidst Kay’s things and asks if she’s ever learned to use these things she’s been blessed with inheriting. They spend a day in some old world, slightly ‘Mists of Pandaria’ seasoned, where she learns how to use every tool in the bag. It’s perhaps the moment when she decides to start actively changing things for the better by doing painful and gory things. My dog has never been as frightened as she was yesterday, which sucked big time, but what we did will ensure she doesn’t get ill and die a very painful death. Funny profession, really… A traveling healer. Traumatic, yet touched by God.

And now I’m back to a diet of apples and tea. Another gruesome, determined act. And showering. Oh, how I hate showering. Almost as much as I hate socks :P

People who love books (as much as me)

Fuck yeah---

Bloody Mary. Watching way too much of the Tudors :P

Indulgences

I was thinking, talking it over with Drej on our profound-dialogue-of-worldly-authors doggy walk, about indulgences. I was thinking almost everyone has some. The kind that offer a personal expansion – the kind that cost all of our free money. Regardless of how little or how much you have, now or ever, there’s something you waste it on. Something that could have been a lot better spent, I suppose, otherwise. But you treat yourself.

The most common ones I can think of are smokes, drinks, clothes, pets, travels, suchlike… It got me thinking to how acutely abstinent some of us are. I’ve never smoked, I’ve never drank, what little coffees we meet for with mates usually cost very little. I wear mostly clothes that people give me. I don’t think that save underwear and socks I’ve ever really bought myself anything and my only shoes are so worn, they are held together by inertia rather than material. It would just never occur to me to spend money on shoes. The ones I actually bought and can’t wait to put on again, so I won’t have to wear other things, are my dear flippy floppies. They kind of signal summer to a great depth.

Regarding other things… my computer is very old, I eat very little and a lot f it is given by General’s parents, who have a farm, I download my movies, we don’t really heat or cool our home. Nowadays, and it’s not just because we can’t afford anything, but also because it feels good to be able to thoroughly economize, we have costs down to such bare minimum, we exist like hermits in a cave.

Up until we hit my indulgence. I waste, or spend, or trust or however it’s better to put it, all my earnings, such as they are, into paper. (The photographic gear fits under that as well. Everything should be on paper in the end.) I draw and I write and I publish books into economy that could hardly be worse. The distribution manager explained how a few years ago the libraries would buy at least a few, if not a few dozens of books, especially novels, and I’ve experienced that, because when it came to my picture books, libraries still have up to twenty or thirty each. Following the progress of Drej’s book now, libraries – IF they take anything – take one. Out of two hundred libraries registered in this country, only two took more than one – they took three.

I picked a great fucking time to have an indulgence. But as it goes for the lot of them – they keep us sane.

Prometheus promos and hot men's dentals

I am not sure what Prometheus is going to be about, as far as I can tell it will delve deep into the world of Aliens and other serious shit, but I am already loving the really spooky promos they are putting out periodically. As Weyland Yutani's android Bishop was almost as creepy as the first movie's Ash, and Gods know I wrote *novels* about what I would do to him if I could keep him, now there's a new toaster in town. This latest promo introduces David. Although Michael Fassbender is quite young and has magnificent green eyes, I can't take my eyes off his mouth... There's just something so incredibly unnatural about it - like it belonged to another species. How can anyone have so many teeth?? It's hard getting over Gotye, who looks like someone ran out of room for incisors and then added them in afterwards. That being said (and if need be, I'll say it again: in my next life I want to come back as Michael Fassbender's underwear), I can't think of anything less appealing than an android type-David... (LOVE the Julian Sands hair-do. Has there ever been a worse hair-do on a grown man?!) That's like a friggin' nuclear wasteland waiting to happen. It's like a serial killer with an IQ of a child, dressed in a poodle. If I had a rich dad who bough some for his company, I would have made sure we were never on the same floor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMlBVtR12Hs

 It looks very shiny, though, doesn't it? Very clean?

 Two people from thsi industry i am always looking forward to seeing again: Scott and Rapace.. The movie also has Idris Elba. Doesn't get much cooler than that.

Certainly a lot less clammy than Giger's vaginal designs would have it... Which is a shame, as those sceneries contributed to the cult status. It made you really not want to be there. Here it just makes me wish I'd brought a bigger mug of coffee.

This would have been Joffrey after I would have been done with him...

... and no, the likeness to my ex husband is purely coincidental. It did not even occur to me I was doing his portrait until somebody pointed it our. Subconsciousness is indeed a sticky bitch :D

I am writing (a short story, as this lately seems to be my grand forte) about a Joffrey-esque boy, a prince, in living Hell much earned. The story depicts his father, a feeble-minded, weak man in a position of a king, who grows increasingly absent from leadership as his teenage son - who cannot do wrong in his father's eyes - begins to rule as a youthful regent. He has a sister, but she is less terrible. The boy on the other hand is a nightmare. And not a sexy nightmare, like Sephiroth is a nightmare you WANT to be having, but a true nightmare. Manically vicious, fascisticly cruel, genocidal, psychopathic little freak drunk with power - with an unlimited supply there-of by the time he is fifteen... He hurts thousands of people, ruins the lives of tens of thousands of subjects and several on top, personally, or through his reign. After his father is killed it seams nothing much worse can happen to the people of an otherwise hard-working and fairly minding-their-own-business kingdom.
          But a king is not a God and at some point he kills the wrong woman - the wife of his guards' captain and the captain loses it. They overthrow the family, slaying all, including the sister, although they were just going to toy with her, but things got out of hand. The boy, however... the boy would live. He would be stripped completely naked, nobody to clothe him, and he would be chained into two iron balls for gloves - too large to enable him to run, swim, even lift them properly, dress himself or bathe himself. These two ball gloves would also tell everyone who he is: he is the boy king that ripped the bleeding heart out of a nation since he was five years old.
           And as a form of punishment, the cruelest of the cruel and the most righteous of them all, he would belong to each and every man, woman and child for one day at a time. For one day at a time, every countryman would be able to do anything and treat the boy king anyhow they pleased. Two guards at all times would follow himg, making sure he does not try to kill himself or anyone tries to kill him too thoroughly or too quickly.
           The story would follow him through several days after about half a year since his table turned. By then he would already be long pass his wits intact and his body almost irreparably crippled. But not yet dead. Not by a long shot. The final entry on the final day written down would be that of a woman whose child was dead because of him, who would spend the whole day making sure he gets better, gets proper bathing, food and dressing of his wounds - the tenderest treatment he has ever had in his entire life - just so that he would live a lot, a lot longer, and suffer a lot longer still.

"In the dream, his father was a king and his sister a princess. She sang such innocent songs. In the dream his father was king and everyone else was beneath them. No matter what a desire or command, everyone was subject, body or soul. That seems so difficult to believe now. Like an echo that came back distorted to mock him.  In the dream he himself was king for an hour. this would have indeed been a sweet dream, if the boy was asleep. Alas, he was not."

Mum and dad made a tribute lunch to the bookie launch - dad by making my favourite foods (stefani roast, red cabbage...) and mum by wrapping the book with a flower on a posh spot behind the table :)) That was super sweet of them, we even opened a bottle of bubbly, even though nobody really drinks it. I've made a couple of sales and couple of deals, enough to feel slightly less empty-handed for a change.

... And I remembered that once, a long time ago, I illustrated the original 'Stone Age Home Read' really, really, neatly, but the mentor that was supposed to read it, never returned it. Which kind of pissed me off...

Then I painted a design of Paper Kay from the moment she realizes she's abandoned the ranks of hunter-gatherers of stories and joined Chimes as someone who makes sure certain stories don't last too long. A story shepherd, if you will... And her life begins to make sense again.

Birthday food and being Cankar

On exactly this day, couple decades ago, a very large baby was born by a very cool lady. He had teeny tiny fingernails on his bubbly baby hands which he clutched in fists, thumb in, much like he does today; he had gorgeous, full, pouty little mouth, which he still has today and pretty much the same hair-style. He was a quiet, curious, hungry baby. There was a little bit of a healthy, manly fascination with breasts. That hasn't changed to date either.
      To celebrate that very thankful day, I broke my diet and we went to the Serbian restaurant, like we often do to celebrate rare precious stuff. For the love of all that's hot and creamy, that food is to die for. My tummy wasn't too grateful, not like my tongue was, but I am hoping I will recover by the time we run out of toilet paper. Good things about Serbian food is you don't get hungry again for about a week.

The Cankar thing - Cankar is the national top shit when it comes to literature (and by that of course it means he wrote stuff to slash your wrists by) - today when when Drej and I were walking out mutts, in the rain, chatting merrily away ... We met another lady and she said something about how Drej and I are both published writers, nay? How profound our conversations during walks must be! ... Ehem. Well, yes. As a matter of fact, they can be. We discuss high literature aplenty. We compare ideas and polish our techniques. We critique each-other and others with great taste ... Until somebody walks by a puppy. Then we make retarded baby noises and talk about puppies for the remainder of the route.

Zurnizip FINALLY home

After such a fucking painstaking grind and sooo many growing pains, my first self-published (and edited, so it's not quite quite quite a tribute to perfectionism just yet :D) bookie is finally here... Surreal, I know. But I am already anxious about having more than one on my special achievements shelf !! :D

http://zurnizip.blogspot.com/

It's bad enough to discover that an actor you found to be gruesomely unattractive as a man yet oh so erotic in a heavy make-up role of a fiction villain, started his career in a boy band from the eighties... It's much much worse to start humming their greatest hit and your husband mutters: "Ah. Bros."

O.o

 God has a vicious sense of humour...

... And I was SO close to writing a really good copulation-strangulation scene, thinking of him... Gone now. All gone.

Criminal minds for breakfast

A good Criminal Minds episode today (The Company), for breakfast. I am not particularly fond of the character of Derek Morgan, no man who must spend so much time grooming his perfect eyebrows doesn't do it for me, but he delivers good stuff when the spotlight is turned on him. In this case he gets first torn to bits, then his ego bitch-slaps him and then he finally comes out the tall dark hero that women around him need them to be. Mind, though, the characters of JJ and Prentiss weren't half bad either, doing that interrogation on the character of Ford. I thought I was gonna choke on my cereals out when she says to the evil slave-happy unsub: "Sssh. The adults are talking. When it's your turn to speak, I'll give you permission. Okay?"

Half of the episode delves into the issue of Stockholm syndrome, a fascinating, very slippery issue in cases of kidnapping and abuse (that I employ in my literature to a degree, as most of my heroine's relationships often start or develop through violence and sexual abuse). The second half is less intense and more understandable - mini spoiler alert - but also not inconceivable. I especially liked the whole mail order bride hints. Though, honestly, if you're a mail order bride, what are you expecting?

The bit I find particularly curious about the whole thing, the syndrome, is that it is evolutionarily explained: the female doesn't need to give consent to the male to impregnate her ... This is where all the turn-on for a man to be domineering and playfully violent comes from. In the end we are just incubators. Our species seriously needs a mental make-over.

Writing as much as I have been writing and reading as much as I have been reading lately, I got to the point where I feel torn regarding my genre.  (I was pleasantly surprised by Shanghai baby, because someone told me it's quite bad, but I found it to be remarkably honest and feministic, at least by comparison to anything written by Chelsea Handler, which was awful supposedly-same genre- literature). I have gotten to the point where I can write well enough to think that the things I am writing ABOUT are stupid… I mean, I wrote a good, really good scene in which the heroine strangles her lover to death, down to the forensic details, complete with inner turmoil monologue. She does it in a righteous – which is the worst kind of a – way, because he asked her to, as opposed to advocating life as she’s always done, and in result she falls into a deep depression – this kill being a trigger for all of her more or less painful past two years catching up with her otherwise perky disposition… I wrote a paragraph starting with “how did my world get so dark?..” really well, I though, when it hit me – dude, I’m writing about elves and starships… isn’t it time I tried writing a real novel? I even got a good idea that Drej helped me kick into shape over coffee, and ghost writing my dad’s memoirs should be an amazing project I have set for winter, but…  I know I can do better. I want to do better. While still true to my genre. I want to stay on my elves and kings and space stations, but I want to be better at describing them. You can’t write in the tone of a high literature and expect people to read it for fun. Starships are not meant to be taken seriously. They are meant to entertain people on long transatlantic flights. They are meant to be metaphors, so I am going to learn how to let them thrive under the burden of being metaphors.

Which is good, because while the General is working night shifts, the only thing I am really industrious at, is making him super delicious surprise lunch packages. My Little Karlins chapters are all over the place, sleeping is a bitch (hate hate hate sleeping alone) and having him home for the mornings leads nowhere. And also, of course, I am waiting for the moment when I finally get to hold my latest book, printed and ready for sale. I am so paranoid about it, I am having nightmares about the transport van which will deliver them one of these day, getting in an accident and burning down. Freaking out, I know. But that’s me. A Chinese firecracker. General says the only time I am really Zen is when I fart and then pause to listen if he’s heard me. That’s the one moment of absolute tranquility he can honestly relate to me.