This is way back from the birthday party of me and Mihai. Our birthdays are just nine days apart, so we wanted to have a little party together. Unfortunately, everyone else was also having a party on that day, so we only had one guest (Ainur, to the left). But I insisted that we still light all the 51 candles (24 for me, 27 for Mihai) ...

Today I went out for sushi with Ainur and her boyfriend. We went to a local sushi bar, Ikizukuri. I wanted kappamaki (not because I'm a vegetarian, but because I think it's the best sushi in the universe). Since it wasn't on the menu, I asked the guy at the counter if they could make one for me.

The guy gave me a bewildered look and asked me in English what I'd like to order. I assumed that he was some foreign surfer boy, and ordered my kappamaki in English. He didn't have a clue what kappamaki was, but I was able to describe it to him. Then, the guy yelled the order to the cook in accentless Skåne dialect.

"Oh, so you DO speak Swedish!" - "How AMAZING!", me and my sister shouted in genuine wonder. The peroxide and instant-tan guy looked like he didn't want to look embarrassed, and mumbled something. He then repeated the order in Swedish (in a way that he, with his intelligence level, could understand): "One maki with just cucumbers, right?" Yes. That is the kind of sushi that's called KAPPAMAKI in JAPAN and also GOOD Japanese restaurants and sushi bars elsewhere (like Tabemono in Lund).

Then, he asked 55 crowns for it. Although I had previously, at two other occasions, paid 30 and 40 crowns for the same at the same place (but from other counter boys) I didn't start to haggle, because I just wished I could be relieved from the pain of looking at this moron ...

I wonder if they require new employees to maybe know even a tiny little bit about sushi before they get the job. Come on, there is a high unemployment rate in this country. You should have plenty of people to choose from. Some of them might even have an interest in sushi!!!

Then again, ALL the people at Ikizukuri are already notorious for pronouncing their dish jô in a Swedish way: yoo, rhyming with 'do' when pronounced with, say, an Italian accent.

# # # # #

Hmm. Maybe I should try to involve myself in some *real* problems for once in my life ...? And start making sushi at home, instead. Cheaper, better, and more fun. With less instant-tan morons.

As mentioned below, I've made illustrations for two articles in Utrikesperspektiv dealing with different aspects of the concept 'white trash'. While researching them I also came across websites like texastrailertrash.com, missouritrailertrash.com, "Great Mobile Homes of Mississippi" and "Great Mobile Homes of Indiana".

Their concept is to show photographs of how poor people live, while giving sarcastic comments about the 'tasteful landscaping', etc. A quote from texastrailertrash.com:

"However, there are those amongst us that want the rest of the world to look down upon us. They eat too many Big Macs, live in beat down trailers, have several cars in the yard accompanied by a washer/dryer/refrigerator, you get the picture. We lovingly refer to these people as 'Texas trailer trash'. They used to embarrass me, but I have now chosen to use them in a productive manner, by utilizing them to satisfy my endless need for amusement. There is a seemingly endless supply of material for the 'Bad' section, and that's where you'll find pictures of these people's dwellings."

This is one of the ways in which the urge to isolate yourself from another group manifests itself. You project negative attributes on a group of people, contrasting them to the positive attributes you project on your own group. That way, you don't run the risk of scary thoughts like "that could be my family living in that trailer ..."

For an antidote, try "Working Class Whites" and Jacob Holdt's "American Pictures".

I had one of those frustrating "wanting badly to do something/get somewhere but never getting there because stupid things get in the way and hamper you" dreams.

In 99% of the cases, these dreams are about riding horses. I've had nightmares about frustratedly trying to ride a horse ever since I started taking riding lessons as a kid. In the dreams, something always gets in the way - either it's incredibly difficult to get my clothes on so I can finally go out to the horse, or some stupid people do something so I have to wait, or the horse turns into my pig Sergei (in one dream I still tried to ride him, and I somehow steered him by pulling his tail in different directions ...).

Well, last night was an exception, because this time I dreamed about my former home and place of study Moscow State University.

I was one in a group of foreign students who were going to take a one-week course at MGU. Also in the group was a stupid girl from my elementary school, who I still remember as being really icky to touch - she was so small and soft that I kept being afraid that she would break if I touched her too hard (those were the times of stupid classroom games involving the command "everyone hug!" - otherwise I wouldn't know much about this girl's texture, because I thought it was scary to touch other people).

So, anyway, at first we had to go to the international office to get our paperwork done. When everyone was ready, we could go to the dorm rooms that had been appointed to us. I was going to be in the same corpus and floor as last time, and it really excited me to soon be able to see if everything still was the same. I wanted to run there as quickly as possible! But then, this girl from my elementary school somehow glued herself to me, and I had to keep company with her. She had never even been in Russia before, so I felt obliged to at least show her the way to her dorm.

Now, in real life, the building where the international office is located is just on the other side of the street from the main building, where the dorms are. But in this dream, it appeared to be a little further away. We trudged along, and this girl was walking incredibly slow. There was a lot of people on the streets, and that made our progress towards MGU even slower. The girl was carrying a lot of luggage, and suddenly a group of boys stole a bag from her. I rushed to take it back, but when I returned, they were at it again, and had just knocked her over and had taken her shoes. I ran after them again, but was only able to take back one of her shoes, while the other shoe I was able to grab was someone else’s shoe.

I gave the two shoes to the girl, but the other shoe didn’t fit her very well, so she was walking even more slowly. I tried to stay as close to her as possible to protect her from the hooligans, while I at the same time wished I could just leave her behind and run towards the spires of MGU that were beckoning me above the other buildings ahead …

But I woke up before I got even close.

On Sat, 7 May 2005 21:30:06 -0700
XXX (xxx@xxx.com) wrote:
> I ran across your site looking for Okean Elzy discografia and you
>said
> he speak the 'R' like a Frenchman. When he does say 'R' he say like
>a
> Ukrainian, not French. The french sounding R is actually the
>Ukrianian
> 'H' sound, creating by softly grating the tongue on the back of the
> throat, not 'KH' but close.

¤ ¤ ¤

On 5/8/05, Tinet Elmgren (kommiekomiks @ rambler.ru) wrote:

Hey, I never realised that. I don't know much about the Ukrainian
language, I guess! Thanks for pointing this out. I will make a
correction in a moment ...

Cheers,

Tinet

¤ ¤ ¤

On Sun, 8 May 2005 15:43:45 -0700
XXX (xxx@xxx.com) wrote:

Just FYI, as you americans say.

¤ ¤ ¤

Отправитель: "Tinet Elmgren" (kommiekomiks @ rambler.ru)
Тема: Re: music to my ears
Дата: Mon, 09 May 2005 16:37:45 +0400
Кому: KJ Wolf (xxx@xxx.com)

Oops, I was almost insulted. I am NOT American!!! :oD

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

The things people think of me when they visit my websites. Once someone thought I was a 35-year old Russian woman in exile, now I'm an American ...

You Are Best Described By...

Pig In Soup By Michael Sowa

While researching for an illustration to an article about how a large part of the US army comes from the poorest parts of society, I've lost myself in "urban exploration" websites (some featuring the kind of trailer parks that I want to depict in my illustration). Also, I've rediscovered "Something More #1" by Tracey Moffatt, which is pretty much the kind of picture I want to draw.

The weekend was quite exhausting. First, there was the "last of April", when all the students in Lund have to go sit in the park and drink themselves unconscious. Mihai wanted to go see what it was like, and some of his classmates were going to be there, as well. The massive congestion with human beings made the park buzz with a loud, monotonous sound, which was kind of scary. People were sitting around and drinking, or standing in the bushes pissing (there were just five toilet booths, and you had to pay to use them). Particularly the pond in the middle of the park was a favoured toilet, and lots of people were pissing directly into the pond. The invention of the water closet apparently has created the (rather false) association string "water = toilet!" in the minds of ignorant modern men.


I tried to make Mihai take pictures of the stupid young men (so I could put their pictures on the internet, of course), but he was more interested in the poor ducks ...

Later that afternoon we went to a grill party at the house of some of Mihai's classmates. A really funny party, with lots of good food and playing around ...

This weekend was actually orthodox easter, so we had been colouring eggs (with onion peels, chili powder and red beets). The eggs should, according to a certain tradition, be red. The story behind it is that when Jesus was on the cross, some of his friends brought him food. One woman had eggs with her, and the blood from Jesus's wounds flowed on the eggs and made them red.


Our eggs really look like they were coloured with blood ... but I actually don't know what the pigs have to do with the story!

Mihai wanted to find an orthodox church and go to mass. His colleague Irina from Ukraine also wanted to come, and convinced him to go next morning, instead of in the night. In the phonebook, we thought we had found a church in Malmö. But when we got to the address, we realised that the apartment building probably didn't house any church, but just the congregation. So, no church, no blessing of the bread ...

To make the best of it, we went to have breakfast at the nice coffee shop of a friendly Lebanese guy. Then, we rode the ferris wheel in Folkets park (the biggest in northern Europe!), and listened a bit to the sermon in an evangelical church (organ music was perhaps a bit exotic for my orthodox friends). Back in Lund, we slept a few hours, and woke up in time to see the 1st of May parade go past under our window. While all the religious activity of the few last days had left me pretty much cold, I could now observe strange emotional reactions in myself! Watching the parade with all the nice red flags with all the nice slogans moved me deeply, so that I almost started to cry ... o_O Maybe I really am a little commie deep inside. Luckily, Mihai was too busy taking pictures to notice what was going on with me.

(All pictures were taken by Mihai.)

I have internet again, and it actually seems to work permanently (or so I hope).

I've been hanging around a bit on the discussion forum of Serieframjandet, the Swedish "comics supporters". In one thread people were comparing their drawing techniques with a funny thing called artPad. The thread soon evolved into a discussion about whether men think with their penis or not, and it was pretty old anyway, so I'll post a link to one of my experiments here, instead:

http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?ifpda519rvzw


(That's Eva.)

My blogging is kind of sporadic lately, which is due to the fact that I have no internet connected to my own computer, and I don't get to Mihai's computer all that often, because he's working all the time on it. Today he miraculously left it at home, though, so I can serve you the following:

	Takeshi Kaneshiro is 3/4 Taiwanese and 1/4 Japanese. Fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and English (all of which his character tries to speak with Brigitte Lin's character in Chungking Express on the left), he has appeared in both Chinese and Japanese films. I saw Chungking Express for the first time many years ago, and while watching House of Flying Daggers, the one of the two male main characters who wasn't wearing a wig (but probably hair extensions) looked awfully familiar ... and really cute. ^_^
	Jet Li is a Kung Fu genious who has played in many martial arts movies and also produced some (his own flicks, such as Fist of Legend, from which the third frame comes, are usually said to be crappy, but I'll leave that up to you - martial arts movies are much like porn films: you don't really watch them because you're thirsting for an intriguing plot). Jet Li's strength as an actor isn't really acting in itself, but martial arts. There is about one character that he can play, with slight variations from film to film. But it's a *nice* character - quiet, serious and good-hearted - so that's okay ... The first time I saw Jet Li was in Hero. But it was only when I watched Kiss of the Dragon that I developed a serious fandom for him, and became aware of his true ability as a martial artist. That film, with all its clichés and silliness, would be a waste of time if it didn't have Jet Li in it. But with him, it's silly in an *endearing* way! ^_^
	Tadanobu Asano is the actor behind the ronin Hattori Genosuke in Zatoichi, who works as a bodyguard to provide for his ill wife. He kicks serious ass, and he's the only one in the film who is able to at all injure Zatoichi. He has played in some other non-conventional period pieces, such as Gojoe, about the supposed demon killing off members of the Heike clan on the Gojo bridge in Kyoto, and Gohatto, a film exploring homoerotic tensions in the Shinsengumi. In the West, Asano is probably most (in)famous for his role as the super-masochist Kakihara in Ichi the Killer - devoted fangirls are widely able to ignore director Takashi Miike's misogyny, because Asano is just so *hot* ... When Asano was forced by his dad to go to his first audition as a kid, he watched the other children at the audition, and noticed how they were all overacting in a slightly silly and and not really credible way. At that point, he made the decision that he would never be like them. And so, Asano's brilliance as an actor builds on his unique ability to *under*act.