New ring :D

Coffee ring! No way I could have resisted this.. I am starting to accummulate quite a lot of these adorable thingies lately. Now all I gotta do is start wearing them :D But I always worry I will hurt them, so I just keep them special/safe.

I had an odd moment of creativity yesterday (two coffees and two fake chocolate bars in). The predicament I’ve been struggling with lately was the tone of my narrative. I got 160 pages in my latest ‘librarians with teeth’ chronicle and hated the tone. Problem was, the book I’m on now is very serious and straight forward. This has elevated my expectationsof my literature. I wannbe damn better at what I do than an average book-worm. I even tried writing ahigh novel and the story just poured out of me like from a broken dam. But the problem is... I love the pagans and their crazy shit. People like it, it's funny and it makes the world slightly more interesting on a bleak March day. So until I can sever the two, I am not supposed to write just one. Too much words for just one story.

Taking in my pro-horror medicine: watching The Walking Dead. Yes, it's an excellent study of 'what if' characters. Everybody knows it's never the dead you need fearing most. Yes, Andrea is the most annoying fucking character ever. Even the way she stands when she's mouthing her dumb statements irrates me. Shame about Shane. Truly good looking individual. Pity they don't make them like this in my moral standards. And yes. Midseason of the seconds season, Sofia coming out of the barn, that's an incredibly potent piece of narrative.

 

Horror is like salt ...

If you put salt in your food, that's all it ever is - salty. If you don't, you get to sample all the natural flavour of individual food units. It's the same with movies or shows. If you only notice the horror, you miss out on all the other excellent elements of something. Music, costumes, scenery, characters, details, text...

General's line of the day

Me: Hon, I think my singing is getting quite good. Listen. [sing a little bit of I will fall] Don't you?
Gen: Indeed. Although I don't think that now, while you're dieting, you should be straining your chords.


*Just to clarify a) I will fall is an extremely slow, quiet and gentle song. And b) He can't say plainly 'Fuck, no! Stop, stop!!' to me. He is very polite. And he loves me.

Best part of Easter - pimpin' the eggies, o yeah

Only took me two months to realise the hunger I'm constantly feeling is actually thirst. Honestly, I'm like a CIPA patient. I could start peeing bricks and still wouldn't feel a direct need for hydration.

Reading, writing at the doctor's office

Arrr, waiting in the doctor's office. Lame. Okay, actually I am waiting in the café close by, sampling my fifth white coffee with flavor (tiramisu). I don't want the visit to be any more tedious as it already is... But I'm reading a political magazine and am thinking...

All these activists, all these exposés, all the "truths" by random broken people... How dangerous are half-truths, I wonder? Not that they are not truths, they're just remarkably one-sided.

There's an article about a lady that does art to stress the issues of endangered rivers. Rivers, such as those mega Chinese dam waterscapes that got retouched by the need to bring electricity to remote villages and ever-growing cities.... Okay, sure, rivers are important. Ducks swim on them and whatnot. But like everything regarding this planet, they've been here a while and they will be loooong after we're gone. And I am sure there's a species or four of some algae that got the worst end of the deal in the process, but exactly how important is it for the people to get a chance at a better life? Does this lady live there? Does she know an alternative source of energy that would solve this issue? Or, better yet, does she believe the people there needn't running water and power, because they're perfectly happy living in the middle ages? Or do the people matter none in this particular equation? 

Truly, nothing pisses me off more reading articles like these, some righteous bitches who would prefer to save some fucking patch of nature, ignoring millions of humans. If it was up to me, I would stuff them in a rocket and launch them off to Pandora to tree-hug there. No matter what someone tries to do, there’s an environmentalist that cries their heart out about it. I can’t WAIT to see what they come up with when it starts to turn out the planet is actually COOLING.

There's another article about the latest El Papa Grande and how he supposedly didn't help some of his homies when people were being killed left right and center in Argentina in the seventies... Do you know how EASY it is to blame someone for something? Especially something they DIDN'T do? Paramilitary police murdering and you are called a criminal for being scared? Okay, not that I am defending any actions of any pope, but just imagine. Someone writes a long and horribly tragic article about you - how at some point, some random day, YOU didn't give change to some beggar and as a result, she didn't catch the bus, got raped and killed, her children orphaned, turned criminals, killing nurses and whatnot ... And so on and so forth. You can't say he didn't hide some people when the death squad came knocking. You don't know what went down. Perhaps the said people were really pushy and loud, when it was not the time to poke the hornet's nest. Perhaps he knew he would have caused a lot more trouble for the other innocent people in the convent. You just don't know. So it's very difficult, and dangerous, to assume. But of course that's all anyone ever does, being a journalist. 

Drej and I talked about the latest idiotic news cast from North Korea. Okay, even I have to admit, they are pretty fucking hilarious. Now they've declared war on the South. The odd thing about it, though, you only ever get to see the crazies. Nobody ever talks about the South Koreans constantly provoking them, like a slick bully consta poking them, AFTER they got royally buttfucked by the Japanese and the Southies during the world war or sometime after. The Kims are like the Osbournes - you only ever get to see the really weird ones. That little idiot that inherited the throne and doesn't really seem to know what is happening around him actually has three really cool siblings. Cool, calm, educated people with families and decent jobs that don't look quite so worrisome. But you'll never see them. They're not televised-worthy and can not be mocked as easily mocked. 

Few days ago I was sitting on a train opposite a woman, who took out a foreign-language paperback and began to, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, vehemently mark it with an orange pen-marker. Part of me was really curious regarding her pattern, because she did this very quickly and I couldn't for the life of me determine what her method was. Was she a teacher, skilled and fast, preparing a lesson? Was she a student, methodic and innovative, dissecting a classic (though I think it was a random pulp) piece? Or was she simply a crazy person, entertaining herself on an otherwise uneventful train ride? I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want the beast demystified.

My country has elected a new government. The leader of it is a lady that supposedly plagiarized her college thesis and, better yet, entirely falsified her grades to get into college, or something. Dunno. This is what the media is saying - media sponsored by her opposition, so I have no idea. There are profound university professors who are glad these things are being brought to light, but at the same time warn that cases may occur where prosecutors will be entirely unfit to analyze, yet alone grade thesis' and doctorate studies. The committees are employing a computer program which will determine whether a work is a plagiat or not - but professors stress that at times almost ALL of a thesis is quotes and already known statements, simply challenged. Also, there is a grave difference between a work of fiction and a work of bullshit. Sometimes you have an entirely unique thesis that's plain and simple trash. 

            Question. Why not be a politician? I mean here, now. Hm. Let’s see. Firstly, because this is the one profession in the entire catalogue, that actually consists of naught but lukewarm air. You do nothing. You create nothing. Even if you make an effort, you achieve nothing. This is the exact opposite of being a doctor, a judge or an artist. You do nothing. You talk. You lie. You scheme. You argue ALL THE TIME with fanatics, craving power. You drown all the time. You can't wipe your nose without insulting someone. You do nothing but try to keep sane. And to what end? Nothing. You get paid a lot of money to sit in a parliament and occasionally vote on one pass or another. I can't think of a single member of our parliament that in the past twenty-five years changed the world for the better. I KNOW the path to Utopia is very long and very winding, but still. I wouldn’t  want that career upon my worst enemy. Okay, maybe my worst enemy. But what would one try and achieve once in power? Nothing that needs fixing can actually be fixed by an optimist. And even if one did make a positive, benevolent change for the little people... It would all just get fucked over in four years' time. 

Oki, enough random ranting; my turn to go in :) My yearly ultrasound check-up. Half of the pleasure is being at the hands of Dr. Malinar. He is so chatty, so friendly. I just love him. Old school Yugoslavian physician. One of the really good ones. He will talk about every ounce of my anatomy, showing me the gray mess on the monitor, as if I had any idea what he is talking about. Complimenting my aorta, my kidneys, my breasts, my pancreas, and telling me off over my slightly fatty liver, and commenting on my tiny bladder. I think he takes twice the time to handle a patient than he probably should. Dunno. Or just me. I love it how he triple checks every funky shadow on every layer of my earthly frame. From ears to eggs. Ahh, my infamous ovaries. They are like at war with one another. Two old ladies bantering :D

I'm gonna go back to the cafe and have another coffee until I need to pee. Don't like being home alone. Today's been an odd, long day. Check-up ended well. Coffee's been great. I read through and through the magazine. Wrote four pages of inner monologue. Found some unexpected money and spent it on color pens and a bought a new notebook, because I wanna try writing something and it requires a new mental scenery:)))) 

And it's Wednesday. All new dungeons tonight on Wow. Good times. 

They grow up so fast #2

Not sure how Nicholas Hoult went from that adorable vulcan geekling in About a Boy (another movie I prefered to the book), but I did check him up after last few night's nightmares and he certainly grew into every gay man's jerk candy. No wonder he plays such a lovely zombie. That young man is exactly half my weight and twice my height. Poor Jennifer Lawrence looks obese beside him. And she's the one thing in Hollywood nobody should say anything bad about, ever. 

Divinity bell

Am starting to worry about Garrosh. I know that what is happening is supposed to happen and must happen and will happen, but there is just something borderline indecent about killing princes. And he isn't borderline indecent type. There's no honor in killing kids or so he used to roam. Even if they are very annoying. Even if they're allies. 

You're gotta taunty when lusty after pulli. There's just no butts about it.

Awww, John Noble on The Good Wife. The day is starting to look not bleak. Not bleak at all.

LoL, I'be been so tired last night from working on the garden, I've been having nightmares all night. Not bad nightmares, like waking up crying and feeling terrible, but picturesque, ghoulish nightmares, like being in the movie Warm Bodies. And there was a part in which everyone was dying from some virus and our house collapsed and I spent the duration of the dream trying to get the chargers for my gadgets from underneath debris. I'm starting to see this as my number one apocalyptic concern: to WANT to document everything, just not being  - technically - able to. Cause, even if i dug my old cameras from underneath the piles of contemporary machinery, who the fuck still develops the old 35mm films???

       And I should probably start carrying a small, light notepad around with me, in case my iPad runs out of battery just as I am about to conjure a haiku of the century.

       .... Yeah. THOSE kind of nightmares.

       I remember I kept waking up with my arms and legs and back in muscle ache and I remember General was kissing and petting me a lot, like just very gently caressing my hair, looking at me, or massaging my arms and shoulder, but I have to ask him if I was complaining about ache or just tossed around a lot? I think it was 9pm when I passed out. It was 7:30 when I got up again. And I can't wait to get uphill and do it all over again :D

I like my mum and dad's reasoning lately. Well, I always liked their reason, but up until recently they were always too stressed to shine it through. Anyhoo. These predicaments I'm having with the editors. I just LOOOVE how they calm me down - my parents. They say two sentences and I see everything clearly.
         Example. Why did the editors change their mind about the book being unique. Most likely because it started out as a perky idea, but commercialists warned this is not the time to experiment, so now they simple need to make this a very POPULAR book. Not necessarily brilliant, just very popular. Which kind of makes sense.
          Another. They said I cling to my work far too obsessively. Even when it's not entirely justified or even needed... Also true. I do. Drej says what they're doing to my text is fine. The editor says the team behind her is smart and means well. I should trust them. But I AM extremely territorial. That derives from being a loner. But that also makes sense.
          Also, they've worked my nuts off in the past two afternoons. My glutes are rock hard. My biceps is like oak. And the garden looks wonderful :D

On the Tiny Karlins and original Prometheus script...

The Twilight fucking zone of my latest book continues. I am fully aware that this is the unavoidable part of the publishing a piece process, but I am still overwhelmed by how incredibly disarmed I feel. We've been through this last week, when the editor changed my text entirely and I felt pretty fucking stupid for allowing that, not knowing better. Then for a few days it was okay, we found a common ground to work in and continued fine. And then, WHAM!, again, yet another editor... No wait, here's the kicker. this one isn't even supposed to be the editor. This one is supposed to be the grammar proof reader. But no. Now THAT one on top of the first one is going through my text, throwing out stuff that I put in there for a reason. The reason being, they ASKED me to write a perky, unique book. They asked me to write it LENGHTILY. And now? Now they are throwing out any sign of it being written by a travel-happy human and cutting it half short. 

But that isn't even happening executively. No, that happens in a process of the text being sent back and forth to me up to five or seven times.  I literally started pulling my hair out last night. Nobody has answered me WHY this is happening, WHY they asked me to write a cute travel book only to fuck it up completely just before it's printed. I could have written ANY  kind of book, I could have written it so boring it would seem as if generated by a GPS lady.

I cracked this morning, so, so sad. And torn. I didn't wanna fuck up this opportunity to prove myself to the ONLY publishing company that still exists - even if just barely - in the country. But I really don't like the direction they are taking. And it makes me wonder - is it me? Was my book actually so poorly written? was it actually... TOO PERKY? Too aloof? Too fucking unique? Was it too so much so even AFTER the first - and then after the SECOND editing? Because after the second time we edit every chapter, then come the "real editors" and just rape it up into unrecognizable string of boring data. The ONE thing they asked me to create. A not boring string of data. 

I can live without having any say in the title. I loved Tiny Karlins, because in my language it sounds perfect for this exact book. But okay. I loved the cover I made specifically for this book. But no, of course not. It has to be like the other are. Says the commercialist posing as my fourth editor. I can even live with parting with some of the funny stories I put in to make the otherwise bland events more depthy.

But I can't live with having my text completely and utterly altered in to the exact thing they hired me NOT to write. That just fucking rips me in two.

And to top all that, I've been reading the original Prometheus script, when it was still called Aliens: the engineers. Those who hated Prometheus kept saying that this script was so much better and it explained all the weird stuff happening that made people hate the movie. Well... I just can't see it. I've already figured out all of the issues of the movie by using common sense and reading a lot of theories. In fact I actually far PREFER the movie version, because most of the script reads like some fucking boring rip-off of an early Crichton novel of the AVP verse. Uuuu, the genius archeology professor and his very beautiful but very girly student. Uuuu, the evil yet incredibly intelligent android that wants to kill everyone to get his boss the technology. Uuuu, the ruddy crew that looses it when faced with mortal danger.

How much more done to death do you need to get?? We GOT all that in the past fourteen or so Alien/Predator movies, thanks. I really didn't need to have it spelled out for me again. I LOVED the way Prometheus was done. Oh, and the ship isn't called Prometheus, isn't important cause the titan  dude gave men fire (science). Wayland isn't looking for science. Prometheus is the equivalent of phoenix in this case, because the titan dude not only made people smart, he made people PERIOD. Wayland is looking for life. Not scientific profit.

So ... So I'm thinking the book I've written is like that script. It's okay. It's not bad. But to make it into a best-seller of the season (okay, only because it will be the ONLY seller of the season), does it need to go though the grinding mills of smarter people than me? And yet ... I don't really see any Ridley Scotts in that publishing house. I just see a bunch of very tired and very polite people following orders of the commercialists, pushing original texts under the train to get bland bullshit and get paid. 

So what am I to do? Admit they know better and just collect my paycheck, hoping they were right and I will be praised, learning a valuable lesson? Or stand by my original text and never open the book once it's published, for it may as well bare any given name at all, having nothing to do with my work?

I pray we weather this through. This piece was meant to prove me as a professional. All it did is made me hate the profession .

On a related note...

I have by now sampled three flavour of the Cuba coffee and can safely say that while I am very fond the of the 'violets' afterglow of said coffees, 'chetsnut' is useless and 'marzipan' is very potent. I'm working my way up the list :) And perhaps the moment will come when I can ask the waitress to hang out sometime, because she seems very ... well, me.

On a related note yet again ...

I need to get better paper for this frigging fish. It's driving me nuts. I hate not being able to jump straight into a talent. 'Two bunnies humping' was annoying enough. This is just plain old frustrating.

An annoying koi origami I want to learn how to make...

Today I saw the cutest camera ever. I suppose I overlooked it, firstly because on paper it doesn't look like much and second because I am prone to overlooking things I don't pine over in some way or another. This is a darling version of my tool of trade a lot more expensive than a toy, but not good enough for what I aim for, so it's a bitch to consider it for what it is - just so incredibly, ridiculously adorable.

Fujifilm FinePix X100

The design is simply instant karma. This is the sort of camera that your dreams think all cameras are like. When you look through, that's the "stolen moments" machine if ever there was one. Okay, granted, it's missing two things that my fundamental childhood photo education distinctly recalls and that's the sound of the shutter mirror retracting (that I sometimes just LISTEN in Mark, not even taking picture, just LISTENING to taking pictures...) and the little thumb switch that pulled the film forward. My first tiny machine was a Minolta, but it was almost identical to this one. 

         Course, this little shit costs like it's made of hazelnuts and the 35 mm lens, although user-friendly, does require a certain amount of pre-knowledge ... and a lot of love for reportage shots. There's something very intimate with a frame like this. Something very Lucy Berliner. 

         Seriously. The game changers we find when having coffee with friends..

Workspace

:)
Featuring the "Cool trees" route.
:)

Most normal day ever

This has probably been the most normal day I've had in a while. First a chatty, chilly March walk with Drej and play with the dogs. Checking my mail, downloading Smash and watching some of it. (I'm team Derek, so I wanna see him back in the center of the mess that is Bombshell, FYI.) Most of the trouble with the editor has been put aside and I took the sketches to a potential contractor. I washed and hung the clothes, neatly, because there's just something so very cool about hanging matching socks that smell fresh, while the General napped and then we went uphill to have lunch with my parents. Actually the plan was to go up to photograph sausages and dumplings, but also I wanted their opinion on my professional predicament. I'm glad they went though all this beforehand. At times I am not sure what my rights are and I don't know I am allowed to insist on certain matters.When the editor completely re-arranged my first chapter into an unrecognisable, very politically correct and absolutely boring rip-off (basically she just kept the ideas and data and wrote the entries anew in a way she saw fit.) I didn't know she was not allowed to do that. In fact the editor is not allowed to change anything about the text without the consent of the author and certainly not completely. I was also sad because she cut vast portions of my text - after I was asked to write them to make the book more story-like. This before anyone mentioned the texts are too long. 

              Long story short, I think now this mess is resolved (I hope. Other than this, I love the way the book is becoming.) and I think mum&dad are proud of me for doing what I'm doing. I think they're okay with me being a pauper writer as opposed to being a mediocre-situated clerk. Also, dad said I make good landscape photos. Which is all I ever need to hear to smile about that.

               Breaking the diet because of the sausages and dumpling (damn but some things are really yummy when you're hungry), we had a small lunch and we talked simple, friendly stuff. Dogs were funny, until the elder bitches got tired of Lyra and went to nap under the dining table. Then Gen and I returned home and went to bed. At around six he had to leave for a hunters meeting and I got to renaming and resizing the photos for the summer chapters. Two hours later he came back home and we went out to have a drink. We ventured into the Cuba cafe and General had hot chocolate and I had violets-flavoured white coffee. The chocolate was mesmerising, but my coffee was way too sweet. I forgot to ask for just a drop of syrup. Since our diet, I've gotten so unaccustomed to salt and sugar, it tastes too hard every time someone uses them. 

               Treating himself (I would have done it for his birthday in a few weeks), General bought a new video game and uploaded it while I tried the latest new dungeon in the Pandaria expansion. Got over the first boss and got two new gear points, but the raid was not very good, so I left. Now I'll join him in the horizontal, where he's reading a military magazine and I'll play DrawSomething or read a comic. (Saga? Thor, God of Thunder? Wolverine, Best There Is?)

               Can't think of a day spent more calmly. It was such a refreshment after the last two weeks of havoc. Drej gave me fitness exercises to start working on, but I forgot to do those. Curse my distracted brain.

The Station Agent

I saw an odd movie that I really liked. If I ever got into making movies, this would probably be what my first feature would be like. It's incredibly minimalistic, slow, very few actors, very little dialogue, but it's almost absurd how excellent the actors who ARE in it perform - and how very well the few lines that are in it, deliver.
     Towards the end you almost feel like even  the three catharsic/turn points - the librarian girl being pregnant, the painter lady trying to kill herself and the main character's school speech - are unnecessary. I was worried the Cuban guy's dad might die or something. Which would be needless in it's entirety.

The story is about a dwarf/little person, who is very removed from social buzz because people treat him as if he was ... something. He says of himself that he's actually really boring. He probably would have room to develop if he was of normal size, but little by little the mockery and the stares numbed him and he is entirely dissociative. So much so that he tends to mistake the interest of strangers for ridicule. Oddly enough, he is actually very attractive. All three female protagonists, two of which (Played by a very lovely Patricia Clarkson and a really cute, still very raw Michelle Williams) are drawn to him, although more in a friendly, chavalieuristic mannerism than an actual kinky sex variety. The third is a train-interested little girl that ultimately draws him out of his shell. The two male protagonists, one of which passes on at the beginning of the film (thus starting the story) and the other who talks for all other five combined, also find profound connection to Fin.
            The photography and the use of the set is amazing. Even the glacier pace is perfect.
            And there's trains. Which I can watch in any movie. Even Trainspotting, that has almost nothing to do with them..

Spleeny

... Sometimes this is exactly how I feel ....

Low and high

Low light of the day. The editor sent back the 'edited' first chapter and it was so changed it was entirely unrecognisable. None of my spark was in it anymore. She's okay, she means well and was trying to please a very broad spectrum of the readers, but my job was to write yet another guide, in a completely new and cool tone. Now it's just yet another guide. That kind of felt like I just gathered the info and somebody else used it in sentences that have nothing to do with mine. Like they didn't trust me with my approach. Dunno. They probably made the book a lot more sell-able, but... Anyone's name can be put on it now. It has very little left to do with me. Today, when a nasty case of vertigo has me and I can barely focus. Lowlite indeed.

Highlight, on the other hand, makes me feel alright again. We bathed the cat (again) in anti-flee shampoo (again) and she was super fluffy and clean and flee-free and white and majestic (again.) A flawless household pussy cat. 

Next she went and waited for the dog to pee and rolled in it.

That much about that.

Best quote ever.
(By Dolly Parton, a lady who shares my cup size.)

"The reason my feet are so small is because things don't grow in the shade."

and, just this once my exception to the rule on no-quotes-please-ever..
some more by the fine lady:

I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.
It's a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I'd be a drag queen.
You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap!

If I were asked to create one sentence that involves God, music, and food as they all relate to my life it would have to be: Thank God I have been able to sing for a supper.

Have you ever been asked to pose nude?
Yes, I have agreed to pose for Penthouse on my hundredth birthday. Everybody is going to be sorry.

Some pickies from the roadtrip the other day

I am trying and trying to understand landscape/architecture photography, but all I can do is look for shapes and composition, not the narrative. Perhaps I am trying too hard. There is this argument I keep offering, despite the fact my pictures are too monographic, that a good photo should give a promise of "(wonders) just around the corner".

 The beds in Ajdovščina hostel. Of course if there were zombies or aliens running around, catching them in a room like this would be very difficult.  But other than that, the rooms were perfect. And the bar served nice coffee.