C.R.A.Z.Y
On Christmas Day, 1960 Zac is born, as the fourth son in a family that eventually has five sons. Just when he’s been born, he dies, but the doctors manage to bring him back. Then one of the older brothers drops him to the floor. During the following twenty years, Zac almost dies twice more.
From an early age, Zac turns out to be different from his brothers. For instance, he has a white lock of hair. His religious mother soon has the impression that he can heal the sick. What he can do, without a doubt, is making his youngest brother stop crying and go to sleep quietly.
Zac has trouble getting along with at least one of his older brothers, but other than that, everyone loves him. He loves his parents, but soon he realizes he has character traits which make his father regard him with doubts and concern. Is Zac not a ‘real’ man? Even before Zac is grown up, he has to struggle with his personality. He doesn’t want his father to stop loving him.
Before long, Zac finds out that he isn’t like others. He’s attracted to other boys, for instance his cousin’s sexy boyfriend. The two of them smoke marijuana together in a rather intimate way.
In the end, Zac can’t hide his true preferences anymore, and there’s an explosive confrontation with his father, who tells Zac to get lost. Zac leaves the country (Canada) and goes to Israel to complete the pilgrimage his mother has always dreamed of making.
At the same time, the family is hit by a disaster, right when Zac has almost managed to make friends with his older brother.
In this movie, you get to see twenty years of youth subculture. There’s a lot of music and the fashion of the 1970’s. Something I really appreciated was that the movie was in French.
I really liked this movie, even though it was quite sad. Despite that, there’s a bit of hope at the end. If you’re interested in modern history and music, you might like this movie.
Weird slash
For some reason I got it into my head to wonder what’s the strangest slash (not grossest), but most unusual slash you’ve read. In my case, I think it’s a piece of original fiction by Selma Lagerlof (famous Swedish Nobel prize winning author). She would most likely have been astonished to hear her story described as slash, and she’d probably need an explanation of the term, but I get definite slash vibes from this one. A bit of BDSM too…
Her story is about two rivers who compete as they rush towards the sea, but eventually one submits to the other and they become one. LOL. Sounds a bit slashy, right?
I’m sure this isn’t the weirdest slash story that’s out there, but it’s what springs to mind right now (late, late at night, or very early in the morning, whichever way you’d like to see it).
So disappointed…
I can’t help being disappointed. Today I saw for myself for the first time what my LiveJournal looks to people who are not logged in – ie the majority of my friends. Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I deliberatey chose a ‘basic’ account, so I could have a nice looking journal, without many of the features the paid accounts get. And now they’ve found a way to cheat us twice over. We get the basic features but we still have to endure the ads.
I just hate ads on a site. Usually anyway. I know of a few sites where first of all the ads are so unobtrusive they don’t offend me and I don’t even notice them unless I go look for them, secondly, the ads are usually to the point. I’ll find merchandise and services that I’m interested in. But in general, ads are an eyesore. And now LJ has joined the ranks of those moneygrabbers. Sorry, but that’s how I feel. If LJ hadn’t been such a nice community I’d leave, but from now on, I don’t think I’ll blog there anymore, I’ll just post a link to my real blog/homepage. Anyone interested in my posts will have to click a link and leave the site.
Dogs
Today, when I was out walking my sister’s dog, I ran into a girl walking her two dogs. One of them especially, was really sweet. A little dachshund. Lhasa apsos are my favorite, and I also like the other Tibetan breeds, but I am very fond of dachshunds too.
Unlike most dog owners we meet nowadays, this girl actually let the dogs meet and sniff each other, but strangely enough her male dog, a longhaired chihuahua, didn’t like my sister’s dog, and the girl assumed she was a male too. I guess she isn’t familiar with keeshonden. This one is actually quite small even for a female.
So I guess, from my point of view and my sister’s dog’s this was quite a good day.
Is it ok to be afraid of dogs?
That’s a question an upset person asks in a column in one of our major Swedish daily newspapers.
I can answer that question. Sure you can, but you don’t even need to be scared or allergic to harass innocent dog owners. That right is so fundamental that it doesn’t even need to be questioned.
We (a dog-owning family since the 1970’s) really don’t recognize the situation in the question. Maybe it’s a typical big city problem?
In our family we never try to get non-dog loving people to pay attention to our babies. Far too many times we’ve run into animal haters and other intolerant people and we always prefer to stay as far away as possible from those.
This is how it really is in our towns: Seagulls and canada geese are to be shot. Store owners want to follow dog owners home and pee in their mailboxes. (By the way, our female dog would only be able to pee on this store owner’s potted plants if we lifted her up and held her above them, in which case she’d never pee at all.) People awake after seven thirty in the evening should be evicted from their homes. (I’m not talking about neighbors partying all night. Far from it. It’s more than enough if you sneak downstairs to get a glass of water, once in a while.)
A typical situation:
The dog sits down and does her business. (This is a pleasant, friendly pet dog, not a pit bull type). You stand around patiently waiting, your little black plastic bag in your hand. Suddenly a concerned citizen pops up out of the blue yelling that we have to pick up after our dog. What do they think the bag is for? Or are they blind? Which leads you to wonder how they were able to tell that the dog sat down at all.
One ‘helpful’ elderly woman took the opportunity to point out some of the dog’s ‘business’ just in passing, so that we wouldn’t forget even one of them, when standing hunched over, holding on to the bag.
My question is this: Is it ok for us to exist? If not, I sincerely hope we’ll find a better place to live, somewhere far away from animal haters and intolerant neighbors.
Cool new book
I just read a fascinating article about a 93-year-old woman in the UK who just debuted as a novelist. Yeah, you read that right. She’s 93. She says she’s been writing ‘forever’ or ‘for a hundred years’ or close enough. I guess it will be that long until I get published…
The book she wrote seems really interesting too. It’s a feminist thriller. That wouldn’t have been my first guess, when I learned that the author is 93…
I can’t wait to read her book.
I guess older people are becoming trendy these days. Young people want to be old. (I read that in the paper the other day). Personally I can’t see why though. I’m always going to stay young. And I’m also going to be a famous, celebrated best selling author. Yeah, right.
Anyway, it isn’t all that long ago that we in Sweden were stunned to realize that we had a 93-year-old rapper. Greta the Rapper, who raps about Jolly Bob from Aberdeen. All in her Gothenburg dialect, naturally. She has a very exciting past. A bit of a freedom fighter. Again, a little like Lorna Page, the author.
If 20 is the new 50, as I read in the paper, maybe 90 is the new 30.
RIP, L!
The other day, I found out that a friend of mine from school had died. We hadn’t met for years, but I was really upset. It’s so hard to imagine that he’s gone, that I’ll never hear his voice again. Even if we hadn’t met for ages, he was still as real to me as the last time we met. Now I’ll just have to get used to the idea that we’ll never see each other again.
I miss you, L!
