After reading Nana by Zola, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (by Laclos), and a few works by Stendhal, I have come to the conclusion that French are sex addicts.

There are few types of sexual perversion, as far as I can see. There’s the clichéd “Italian”, who just loves women (Casanova, anyone?), then there’s the British kind where apparently it is acceptable to fornicate in the back street of Covent Garden against a wall (which scared the bejesus out of me when I discovered the said fornication at ONE in the morning on the way back from the library), and then there’s the French kind, who puts up some romantic excuse to err, “nique". Baiser, fouer, mettre comes to mind. As much as I love my French friend (who I have not heard from in months… why does he go AWOL whenever he finds a new “love of his life” which lasts about three weeks, giving me the impression that his life is actually three weeks and he goes through reincarnation every time he breaks up?), his behavior does nothing to plead against the case.

In fact, after reading Rouge et Noir, my mother and I have started to call Julien Sorel “The Ladder Dude”, since that’s basically all he does in his spare time apparently: put up a ladder against a girl’s window, climb up, and fornicate.

Unfortunately before I embarked on Stendhal’s works, I was engaged with Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, where the only romance comes from exchanging glances with Claudia Chauchat. Very understated and mild indeed. Then I was promptly thrown into the world of Ladder Dude climbing up the walls to err, get into a girl’s bed, and Fabrice Del Dongo sleeping with basically everyone in the village to avoid his aunt who’s coming onto him. At this point my head exploded.

I have been to Paris, known French people to a certain degree, and I’ve come to the conclusion that whoever thinks Paris/France is the city of flowers where perfume permeates the air, chansons stream through the cafes and every man you see is Alain Delon and Jean Malais is seriously deluded. I mean, come on. Chopin had written home when he had first arrived at Paris, and he had said fearfully that “[This] is a terrible place… there are advertisement posters for STD treatments all over the town”. The guy who looks like Julien Sorel is a British American, J’s black book is onto book two and when it rains the streets turn yellow from all the dog shit.

I love French culture. I really do. Their food’s scrumptious and I love their couture. But that’s not all to a ethnicity, is there? 

Apparently there’s a new fad or something that involves coming up with the most retarded, long answering machine possible. Here is the one from JB:

Hi, this is JB. Unfortunately I was recently blasted with antimatter ray beams and if I were to touch the phone the energy released from the contact would make the Bikini Island debacle look like an incident. So leave a message when my body matter is no longer anti.

Here’s the one by IM:

Hi, you’ve reached IM’s phone. Unfortunately I can’t find my phone, I think it eloped with my sock and my USB cable. So leave a message and I’ll try to bring them back. Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with them.

?!?!?!

Why can’t people just stick with “Hello, you’ve reached, --- ----. Please leave your message after the tone, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. *BEEP*”?

Still writing the new novel. I can’t believe I’ve already started with absolutely no plotline in my head. This is unlike of me, but at least I have characters in place; now I need them to move. Unfortunately I now do have a vague idea of what’s going to happen (it involves J being a little thoughtless…) but as to the path to get there, I actually have no idea. I’m just hoping this thing writes itself. I’m probably never going to publish it, but now that it’s online I have to write it, meaning I can’t just write the scenes that keeps pickling in my head then forget about it.

Writing all day is a difficult task. I kept getting stuck on a phrase, or maybe a character would say something out of place, or nothing would happen and my characters are stuck, frozen in motion, waiting for my next command. I got cramps above my shoulder blades and my brain was like a bunch of cotton after wrangling my head trying to keep the flowing, with nothing coming out. I might be hitting a writer’s block; unfortunately no amount of therapy will fix this. I just need to wait it out. But I do have a schedule and I do want to have the story somewhat finished by the end of this year! Argh.

It’s so much easier when you’re writing from 3rd person point of view, or already have established characters. Adding Arien and moving Reno around was very easy compared to this. Although the characters are based off of real, living people, the setting’s completely different (I don’t live with them, for instance) and therefore it’s harder to imagine what they’d be like if I lived with them. Apart from it being chaos and me the victim, I can’t really tell.

The website’s coming along okay; the target frame problem is solved, but the image for the background of the new C’Est La Vie became quite gory. And not really romantic. I’m starting to think I’m better off gun-blazing actions rather than realistic fiction, contemporary fantasy, or romance. Well, romance is a given; the one I wrote flopped so much that I never even finished it. But the original fiction I’m writing at the moment (contemporary fantasy) is much more difficult to write, since I keep imagining characters running around with guns in hands. Realistic fiction… well, I did start writing a Victorian tragedy but unfortunately I never got around to doing research for the Victorian times.

This fiction’s the hardest I’ve written so far; it’s always in first person but the speaker changes by every chapter, and making each character sound different is difficult. The main character and speaker two are easy to create, but toss in speaker three, four, five and I think I’m screwed. Maybe I should keep check of the real-life-counterparts’ speaking patterns… except it won’t work, because one of them is FRENCH and can’t speak decent English. I can’t make Jean speak Frenglish, because it just won’t work.

I also need to add female characters. I do have a few in mind that I can use, but I’m not sure how to tie them in… and I better come up with it soon.

Anyway, I should put up a writing schedule so people’ll know when to expect the next release…

So after four years of stewing over a tantalizing bit of plotline which involves my rambunctious friends, vampires, decadent lifestyle and pure silliness, I have finally embarked upon the journey to write a novel (again). This won’t be some Victorian tragedy like The Letters, mainly because while I can write about it, I can’t go all the way to Gieves to ask how much their suit cost back in the 19th century. So here it is.

The title is yet undecided, as I have tentatively tagged a word that vaguely sounds sci-fi, but I’m guessing this will be changing quite soon. Loada fashion-involving and J-induced innuendos in this one.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. Pseudo-realistic fiction isn’t really my thing, but considering that I’m just writing this for fun, what harm can it do?

There is an article released from Yale that states people with active frontal cortex are more likely to develop mental problems due to the fact that they are more prone to judging themselves critically. Which led me to the conclusion that while lobotomy had the completely wrong methodology, it had the right idea. Somewhat.

Then I came across the new healthcare reform bill, and I’m not entirely sure if this is Jesus or lobotomy.

First, the outline of the bill. The House and the Senate have yet to reconcile their differences, but the outline is the same. Here is a very very brief overview:

• You are now required to purchase a healthcare plan. The government does not care if you don’t make money at all or you are Bill Gates.
• If private health insurance is not affordable, the government has a version of its own. Obama says it’s significantly cheaper, but I don’t know if he knows what cheap means. I mean, come on, he’s not exactly from working class. Neither is his wife.
• The Congress projects the cost of this bill to be in the vicinity of $870 billion. When the said Congress brought Medicare into existence back in 1985, it was projected to be around $12 billion in 1990, inflation-adjusted. The actual cost was off by one digit. Greater.
• The IRS will be the health enforcer. Being so good at getting taxes from basically everybody (which I don’t mind), I’m pretty sure they’re going to enforce this bill with an iron fist. Which means fines until you get a qualifying health insurance, and possibly jail time (what?!).
• Necessary health-screenings may now not be covered. This would increase cancer screenings. (So what? They just die?)
• Rehospitalizations of sick and elderly are now out. They drain too much. Old people now are just left to hospice care. I guess you deserve death for being old in this country.
• Pregnant college students will get welfare benefits. While retarded people in twenties get money for not using protection, I guess old people get to pay for it and die off.

I’m sorry, but this just sounds like somebody had a huge plate of crazy for lunch. MOST PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT INSURED ARE SO BECAUSE THEY CAN’T PAY FOR IT. Making it a national requirement to have health insurance then not providing it for free when you can’t afford it is just stupid. It doesn’t help that most people who sit in that building in Washington DC don’t have to worry about affording health insurances.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a democrat. I’m all for national health insurance… but this legislation is so incomplete this is like lobotomy. Good idea, but awful execution. But then again, communism was a great idea, and it never worked.

These kinds of major changes require careful planning from all angles; otherwise it’ll start fraying in half a century (like NHS). This sounds like whoever wrote the legislation just bunged it up together in a week. Not gonna work, babe. Implementing this bill might have been great if it was in 1997, but it’s 2010 and the economy’s in a slump ever since Lehman Brothers crashed through the ground.

So will this bill be Jesus or lobotomy? I’m not sure yet, but I’m leaning toward lobotomy. And like most great ideas that went terribly terribly wrong, communism and lobotomy are now defunct.

The show is about models living in New York. Sixteen, young, and fresh, and quite frankly, ready to be devoured by the industry. What the show succeeds to show is that yes, you need to be a size 00 to be a model, along with the height of six foot. And yes, drugs are rampant. And yes, you sometimes need to sleep with booker, photographer, basically anyone who will offer you a job.

What this show fails to show is that tricking the designer terminates your career (it does NOT matter if you are sixty or two years old), most of the models are living on salads that modelizers buy for them and heroin, they live in apartments with five to a room, rejection is almost the staple of life and this industry is easy to be bored, eats models then spits out the husks then moves onto the next victim without a thought.

And that is what irks me.

J is a survivor. He has survived in the Versace jungle for almost… a decade? Half a decade? Something like that. And for that he should be awarded something like “Long-living model award”. And I have seen the corruption that just permeates the industry; drugs to lose weight, drugs to make money, people with no sexual morals whatsoever, oral sex in middle of the bathrooms and people walking in on accident. All reservations go out the window, and most models spend what they earn usually on the walk back to their rooms. Photographers often believe it is their right to sleep with anyone he wishes to just because he’s giving them a job.

Modeling is not a beautiful life. It is a tough market and people get bored. It is hellish, with rejections after rejections, waiting for hours, getting up early, going to bed late, trying to eat right…

So after all, I can’t really blame J’s antics. The level of stress he goes through must be quite unbelievable; constantly being judged for how you look is rather agonizing.

I really wish someone would shed a light on what they are really like. But then again, it might end up being rated NC-17. So maybe not.

Set heures, le soir…

«Je suis finis! Je suis vraiment!»

«Pour quoi?»

«Vous avez Amy, la fille que je dormais avec?»

«Peut-être. Alors?»

«Son amant entra dans chambre. Alors que nous étions fiancés.»

«A ha! Alors tu es Vicomte Valmont. Eh bien, tant pis.»

«Tu es une femme cruelle. Tu ne garde que je suis dans la pétrin?»

«Err, non.»

Alors, il ressemble habitudes Jeremy ont finalement rattrapé avec lui. Tant pis…

Nous vivons vraiment dans le univers de Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Évidemment, je suis de Laclos, et J est Vicomte Valmont. Je ne sais pas qui est Danceny, et nous n’avons pas Cécile. Mais ce monde est dangereux. Si vous êtes le joueur.

And this pisses me off.

Everybody in my family speak two languages. My mother speaks about five in varying levels. I use Latin, English, Japanese, and (although still learning) French. Which makes my use of language rather diverse.

I think it’s natural for Microsoft to develop bilingual programs, especially Word processors and blogging tools. Word’s fine, as it is adaptable to whatever language setting you are currently using, but Windows Live Writer is another problem. This stinking program only allows ONE language to be used per program version. Meaning, quite frankly, that I am screwed.

I’m not even asking for a translator here. All I want is a spellchecker, since I switch keyboards quite often and this can get problematical. A grammar checker would be nice, but I’m not exactly demanding it.

Is it so hard to add another language to Windows Live Writer? Methinks not. Just allowing the users to download the dictionary files, saving them in the writer dictionary folder, and then maybe adding a macro or a button to switch languages seems to be sufficient. I wasn’t aware of the fact that while programming is quite beyond me at this moment, these said tasks can be excruciatingly difficult. Or that is what I am led to believe, since MICROSOFT HAS FACED THS PROBLEM SINCE BEGINNING OF LAST YEAR AND STILL HAS DONE NOTHING.

I ask you, just how much people in this world are bilingual? Well, let’s see… my German friend Fabian (well, acquaintance might be a closer term) is a trilingual. J is a bilingual (despite his total disregard for grammar). I am a bilingual (at least). My father is a bilingual. My other is a pentalingual (if you count being able to carry out daily duties in that language as a lingual proficiency). Half my friends are bilinguals. Half of Germans either have command of English, French, or both, and their own native language.

So tell me, oh Microsoft, why are you delaying this particular function? Does chief of the software developer team for Windows Live Writer have a grudge against bilinguals or something? I’m running out of patience here.

In the meanwhile, Microsoft developers are keenly adding useless crap – like twitter notification – while many multilinguals have to sit on their rear ends, patiently waiting for the updated version to come out (which might be in a decade, for all we know), or go through the tedious job of writing the 2nd language post in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, run the spellcheck through, the paste it into the Writer, all the while wondering if the unseen format codes in the said files will accidentally transfer to the Writer. Very inconvenient indeed.

I considered moving to Wordpress, but that just takes too much work. Not to mention that while I am considering hosting my own website (I do have a lot of half-written novels that I’d like to finish but can’t, since I keep writing sporadic scenes without finishing them), I have not started moving toward my goal. To be honest, I don’t even know if people’ll visit, and what exactly is the point of a website that remains unvisited? It’s like a book that is never read by anyone. Completely and utterly pointless.

So the problem remains. And I am at a loss…

My friends, it seems, seem to have rather odd interests. IM is VERY interested in Mobile Suit Gundam series, which appalled me. And now that the new movie came out, I stumbled upon another of their “interests”…

Sherlock Holmes.

Now, I myself am an avid Holmes fan. While the tricks detailed in his adventures are rather simple sometimes (The Solitary Cyclist case was rather easy enough to predict the outcome), I do love his mannerisms and well, his “flash of brilliance” as opposed to the very common John Watson. But never had I been a Sherlock maniac, as IM and JB are.

So when I inquired them whether I should go see the newly-released film, their immediate response was a solid, definite, “NO.”

“Why?”

“Because no American can do Sherlock Holmes. It is a sacrilege to everything Sherlock stands for. Only an Englishman raised in England during the Victorian era who attended Oxbridge can exude that kind of particular mannerisms. It is rather obvious that Sherlock would be clean-shaven, meticulous in his habits.”

This young man who said it, might I add, is an Englishman who, while not raised in the Victorian Era, had attended Oxbridge and is clean-shaven. I’m not certain what to think of this.

“Has to be an Englishman, hasn’t he?”

“Of course. A Scotsman has a rather different outlook of life. No, only an Englishman, I’d say; Jeremy Brett was Sherlock himself. Rupert Everett isn’t so bad either, but none shall stand up to Brett’s rendition of that detective.”

I should hope so. After all, Jeremy Brett spent his life doing Holmes.

“What about the game? You know, Sherlock Holmes VS Jack the Ripper?”

“That game is a farce. If Sherlock was kind enough to be charitable to the street urchins, I am going to eat my hat.”

“But, IM, you don’t wear a hat.”

“Regardless, I will eat my hat. That is no Sherlock. Sherlock is a cold-hearted, calculating, meticulous, observant bastard.”

“… why do those phrases sound peculiarly familiar?”

“Because, Gabrielle, they were used to describe you at some point. And me, now to think of it.”

“How pleasant, JB. I’m honoured.”

I do agree wholeheartedly, however, that no rendition of Holmes, no matter how much money had gone into it, shall beat Brett’s rendition of that detective who dwells in 221b Baker Street. Now to come and think of it, I do remember popping in at that particular post office which is around the corner of 221b Baker Street in the Granada Television edition.

Much is said about Sherlock, and so much more isn’t said; but as far as I know, those two shall always admire Holmes’ ingeniosity (which the word, by the way, apparently dos not exist according to my spelchecker). I’m just hoping I’m not Watson. Being above-average is one thing, but being the utter definition of “common” is quite another. I’m not asking to be the spark of brilliance here, but being the foil to the spark of brilliance is rather humiliating by itself.

We then went onto typing Sherlock. To me, Sherlock is an INTJ. He is meticulous, has his own little rules, introverted to the extreme (in fact, he only had one friend during the varsity years), uses his intuition rather often, and almost seems heartless. Watson might be… well, I don’t know if he’s an extrovert or an introvert, but he certainly senses rather than relying on intuition. He might be a J, but again, I can’t tell.

So there we are. Hollywood has messed up Sherlock (how dare they to think that they can match Doyle’s writing?) quite badly. Sherlock Holmes cannot become action, because he rarely does move until the very last minute. He’s a chair-detective, not an action detective, leaving all the physical exertion to Watson if at all possible.

But seriously, Hollywood, haven’t you anything better to do?!