Resolution #26

Be less naive

And that's all for now folks! I wish you a good year 2009.. Long live friendship, love and mort aux cons!

Resolution #25

Learn how to make a proper smoky eye (for ignorant people and / or men, this is a make up technic that makes you look like Avril Lavigne)

Resolutions

Resolution #20: Write or call my grandmother more often
Resolution #21: Learn how to grow herbs on my balcony
Resolution #22: Get comfortable with people of another opinion (i.e. right wing)
Resolution #23: Watch different films, not only the ones talking about one eyed women in South India or the conflict in the Middle East
Resolution #24: Learn photography

Resolution # 18 and 19

Resolution #18: Learning relaxation
Resolution #19: Kick my own ass to have this bicycle group started

Resolutions

# 14: Visiting the friends I haven't seen in ages, in Sweden, Spain, Czech Republic etc
# 15: Learning how to sew properly
# 16: Get a pair of stilettos
# 17: Tell people to fuck off when I mean it

Resolutions # 12 and 13

Resolution #12: Get into sports. Boxing is the preferred option
Resolution #13: Have my oven repaired

Resolution #11

Give my mom her birthday presents on time, put reminders for other people's birthdays

Special note

Resolutions #9 and 10

Resolution #9: Clean my apartment more often
Resolution #10: Stop eating jellies by kilo. One or two at a time should suffice

Resolution #8

Stop drinking like an Irish person, i.e. binge drinking once or twice a week

Resolution #7

Make a decision about this redundancy plan we have just received

Resolution #6

Sort out my life (yeah, it's vague). Job, family, friends etc.

Resolution #5

Stop swearing at each end of sentence

Resolutions # 3 and 4

Didn't have time yesterday.
Resolution #3: Go on a (long) trip
Resolution #4: Find a Swedish speaker and get conversation classes

Resolution #3

Start practising yoga

Resolution #2

Stop smoking in bed

New year's resolutions

It might be a bit early, but I think this period of questioning and sadness and winter might actually be a good moment. So until December 31st, I will write one resolution for 2009.

Resolution #1: write this daily bloody resolution every day

And no, there is no link between the picture and the text. I just thought the picture was deadly

Pfffffff

J'ai les boules. Ces dernieres semaines ont ete difficiles. Je ne vais pas enumerer les raisons pour lesquelles j'ai les boules parce que je n'ai pas envie d'en parler, mais c'est pas la grande forme. Et puis je suis fatiguee.
Si quelqu'un est assez gentil pour me prendre sous son aile et me donner des forces je suis preneuse. Serieux, je vais de deception en deception, de peur en peur, les personnes que j'aime ont des emmerdes et je ne sais pas ou aller ni a qui demander, je suis seule. Comme dirait notre grand philosophe Michel Berger "Mais au bout du coooompte / On se rend coooompte / qu'on est toujours tout seul au mooooonde".

Bref, vivement ce weekend que je m'aere la tete avec de la bonne bouffe, du bon vin, des ballades et du repos. Je reprendrai du poil de la bete une fois que je me serai reposee. C'est peut-etre l'hiver apres tout. Ou la crise financiere. Heureusement que je me suis abonnee a Fluide Glacial!

Hommage a ma grand-mere / Tribute to my grandmother

Painful history

I didn't sleep well last night. I am a bit sick and cannot stop coughing. But there was something on my mind too. I saw a beautiful film: Hunger



This film is crude, terribly blunt in the way it shows the process of hunger strike (this is mostly about Bobby Sands, who died after 66 days of hunger strike in a confrontation with the British Government at the beginning of the eighties). This hunger strike was preceded by the Blanket Protest and the Dirty Protest, where IRA and INLA prisoners refused to wear uniforms and stopped washing because they were treated like ordinary convicts and not political prisoners. You can find more here. The prisoners were covering their prison walls with excrement and piss, and then decided to go on hunger strike. 9 men died during this protest, the first one being Bobby Sands, who is a symbol of the Northern Ireland so-called "Troubles" and whose face is painted on a lot of Belfast walls.

I liked this film a lot: it is a hard film, a non compromising one, but I think what I liked the most was the non militant side of it. Victims are everywhere in this film, communities suffer, fathers die, children are brought up in violence, the two sides are broken by silence and ressentment, there is no winner. This is a relief, as the themes around the Northern Ireland conflict are generally debatted with passion and anger (not in the Republic though, which will be another subject of this blog). It is so intelligent from the director to show (in a beautiful photography and with wonderful actors) the human cost and not to take sides (even when McQueen uses Thatcher's speeches and declarations, he doesn't add anything to it. Those are extraordinary to my mind, she showed such a contempt for human life and for the Irish fighters in particular).


In other words, if you want to see a very nice and very honest piece of work, I recommend this film.

One interesting article about the reaction after this film was shown in Belfast. There is hope, let's hang to it.