In Omnia Paratus » In the present

Jenny Aspelund — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:38:23 +0000

I apologize for my absence from the blog during the summer but to be honest I just couldn’t find the inspiration to write something cheerful or even remotely poetic, I felt completely drained. I wanted this blog to be a happy place, well… sort of anyway maybe hopeful is a more suitable word. I’m not living in Stars Hollow it just wouldn’t be real without tragedy and despair. That is just what life is like and we all have to push through this awfulness for God knows what reason. Hopefully release is awaitening at the end. But there is magic in the world, it is just very hard to find sometimes. It’s necessary for me to constantly search for it, to be able to find the strength to keep on going.

In summer vacation it seems like people are more agitated and hostile against fellow vacationers than ever before, there’s absolutely no patience what so ever, especially when there’s a bit of a shorting of parking lots. It has come to that I’m almost surprised when I see a friendly face.

But this blog post about talking to strangers made me laugh out loud, I just have to link back to it. This is the sort of glimmering gem that keeps me going the rest of the day with a smile on my face. My armour against the harsh world gets a little bit thicker and I can withstand for a little while longer. There are more of us wishing for the Stars Hollow bliss to be real. Thank you Margaret.

Beautiful Mini by Boontje

Jenny Aspelund — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:30:41 +0000

For months I’ve been working on a borrowed HP lap top since my old LG broke down. I really liked everything about my LG and tried to find a similar but new model. Turned out it was impossible. Why is it so incredible hard to find a computer that isn’t just plain ugly? And why does the manufacturer’s even consider making new computers with only 1280×800 resolution? That’s way too small. I just don’t get it. But I wasn’t ready to make the PC-Mac transition just yet so I had to settle for a kind of weird green colored Dell. In Japan there’s a different market for personally looking beautiful electronic devises, like this HP Mini designed by Tord Boontje shown down below. That’s what I’m talking about!

Studio Tord Boontje model

Nestbeschmutzer

Jenny Aspelund — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:53:23 +0000

Nestbeschmutzer is a German word. We don’t really have any similar to it in Swedish and I don’t believe there is one in English either. I found it when I was reading about Thomas Bernhard on Wikipedia. I’ve been talking about this for years but I never found the right word for it until now. This exactly describes the phenomenon that can be exemplified with the editor of a magazine who sees a decline of readers and decides to “give the people what they want” or “be more youth oriented”. First of all, young people never like to read the same thing their parents read so that’s stupid to begin with. Second of all why is it that what people want for some strange reason always turn out to be nakedness, articles about sex and gruesome murders preferably in the same article, celebrity gossip, and global warming?

What happens to the nestbeschmutzer in time? Of course they can no longer live in the mess they’ve created. In time this is never what people really want. Only the media that unrelentlessly focus on well-written articles with real content will survive and the other ones will be beheaded in the guillotine they themselves brought back from the ancient times we believed was long gone never to return again. It’s really quite simple.

The ultimate fortune cookie

Jenny Aspelund — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:14:27 +0000

Today I got the ultimate fortune cookie with my thai – In dreams and in life, nothing is impossible. I really needed this encouragement because it wasn’t as great as I imagined it to be when I finished my first manuscript. I’m anxious. I don’t want anyone to evaluate my writings, to discuss with each other if it’s good or not. It feels awful just to think about it.

Elizabeth Gilbert gave a great speech about writer’s block and the bad rep writer’s have about being sort of mentally unstable on TedTalks. I think the reason for this is simply the totally weird job they have of placing their heart on a piece of paper to share it with thousands of people and then hearing one person saying it’s crap. Because there’s always that one person, no matter how good the novel is. Just the mere thought of the harsh evaluation give me the writer’s block. I could always say though that I, like Elizabeth Gilbert showed up for my part of the job and if it’s lacking I completely blame the creative genius for being too fast for me that day.

I’m out of the skin flap!

Jenny Aspelund — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:28:09 +0000

I’m out of the skin flap! Such a relief. The right hand is still a bit bundled up though. The first thing I did yesterday was to take down all the Christmas decorations. We celebrated the surviving finger by eating bread fingers and pie.

/stg

Happy New Year 2010!

Jenny Aspelund — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:56:04 +0000

2009 ended somewhat gloomy on my part. Killer bacteria started attacking my finger after a simple cut by a kitchen knife so I ended up in the hospital for two weeks with… penicillin drip. It turned out that a large piece of the skin tissue was dead so the surgeons performed a so called skin flap. I’m now attached to this for a while and can only use my left hand. But soon I will be able to use my right hand again and then I will be twice as effective since my left hand now functions almost as good as the right. Looking forward to an exciting 2010!
/stg