Formula A essay (yes, that is the title. I can't think of an exciting title, so I thought I'd go as unexciting as possible...) I'm fairly sure my brain has gained several new wrinkles since I started to think about this essay - to figure out what person in my life has been so significant I can go on an on about him/her in an essay, when did I experience a great turning point in my life last. What a dreadful assignment - I can't even settle for what ice cream flavour to get at the supermarket, and now I've had to go through my entire life to single something out. Well, I hope my mother, grandmother, best friend and eight grade art teacher forgives me for not writing about them. I won't mention such moments as my birth, my first theater performance - not even coming to America. I'm going to write about how the Oprah Winfrey Show made me realize I want to spend my life reading and writing books. How's that for an unusual topic? The first time I ever saw Oprah on tv, the subject was about single men in America seeking women. Of course I was immediately sucked in by this - I've always been drawn to talk shows, and even though they weren't really broadcasted in Sweden that until just a few years ago, we had a satellite dish that brought Sally Jessy Raphael and The Joan Rivers Show straight to our tv. Oh joy. The Oprah show was different though. First of all, the topics weren't "My boyfriend is really a girl". Secondly, the audience never chanted the hosts name obsessively before and after they went to commercial breaks. How odd, I thought, but decided to stick with it a few more episodes. Those few episodes soon gathered up to weeks, and soon I found myself watching the show on a regular basis, much to my friends dismay, as neither of them could get the channel that showed it, and therefore got sick of hearing what Oprah or a guest said yesterday that was so funny, and no, they didn't need to know what to do in case a twister was approaching. Twisters aren't that common in Sweden... The reasons I hold the Oprah Winfrey show responsible for me being in America in the first place, struggeling to get a degree in english are two; Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. Before the Oprah show, the only thing I knew about Toni Morrison was that she had won the Nobel prize in literature, and that she had amazing hair. The first vouched for her being an obscure author us normal human beings never read, and the second simply said the Nobel prize dinner is a very boring thing televised, where the only uplifting thing is how people look. Seeing her on the Oprah show made me run directly to our local library and borrow everything they had by her. I read it all in 3 days. Never have I felt so high spirited, so inspired and confident in myself. I took a week off to think things through, then I did the whole thing all over again, only this time with the works of Maya Angelou. Oh be still, my beating heart - could words really do this to people? Don't get me wrong now, I've always been an avid reader, but I've only seen myself as just that, a reader. These womens words made me want to write, think, feel, share. [insert paragraph I definately haven't written yet] It's been over a year now, and I'm here now, I'm in America, in college, giving it a go. Who knows if I ever do share my stories with an audience - I might end up working in a factory. I do know how I got here though. It was thanks to the Oprah Winfrey Show, and their book of the month is 'Paradise', by Toni Morrison.

I know =( AWFUL! What the hell was I thinking???? I suck. I can't even be original without sucking =-(=(

Friday, February 6 The current version of the essay is here. Do e-mail critisizm, as long as it's more than a simple "You suck", okay?=)

Okay. You know something that BOTHERS me with american's? They'll walk by you, and say "Hi, howyoudoin'?". Now what's that all about?? I like the "Hi" part, but "howyoudoin'"? I mean they're not expecting an answer, they keep walking so...blah. Ah well. it could be worse. They could be saying "Hi fuckoffworm-ass".

Today is my one-month-in-America day! Exciting, isn't it? Me and Jesica are going to the dollar theater tonight to see Kiss The Girls, although I might faint from excitement before then. Why am I so excited, I hear you ask...well. It's set and filmed mostly here in Durham, where I go to school! I'm just so...wowy over that...ME, in a city where they've filmed a serial killer movie with MORGAN FREEMAN in it...WOW! I mean, I ride by some of the warehouses mentioned at the movie site every day on my bus, not to mention the woods...heheheheh!! I'm thinking about making a Kiss The Girls site, and have pictures taken of me in different places that appeared in the movie, just to...be dorky. It would be so wonderfully lame...heheh. IT'S SO ME. Actually, you know what's me? Going to see a serial killer movie. I don't know, I just love scary freaky stuff. Heh, and this time I won't just have to be regularly freaked out..this time I'll be able to actualy PICTURE the creep outside my window for real. How wonderful. Did you know I own a copy of "The New Edition of the Serial Killer Encyclopedia"? It's quite 'entertaining'. Or maybe I need a life. Besides, now I'm actualy IN a country with REAL serial killers. I'll shut up from now on 8(

Kill Phil (Collins). (a friend's hilarious site to be...I can't wait!)

*laugh* We spent the afternoon talking smut at CN. I admitted to actualy having pictured me having sex with Jerry Springer. I'm not gonna lie about it! I have, hehe...I dunno, I don't think I'll ever stop picturing me having sex with random people. It just..HAPPENS...I see someone on the bus, and woosh, there's a mental picture..not always having sex, just...doing something 8) The bad thing is, that's when my paranoid side kick in, and I start thinking "ACK! Is he reading my mind? Is he a psychic? I didn't mean to phantasize about us having sex, really! It was a..mishap! Please tune away from my head..okay?". Well. Just remember, if you see an odd pale blubby girl, probably wearing blue or black lipstick looking at you funny...try not to look directly at her. She might think you can see her imagening you and her having sex and well...she'd get embarrassed.

I'm SUCH a mental slut! 8) *hide*

Monday, February 9 . . . when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. ~ A. A. Milne, "The House at Pooh Corner" Blatantly stolen from Willa's Journal. Sorry.

"Jennie! Read the Assignment Guide closely. I don't know if this paper will be as successful as others, but then, after reading it I think it has promise. You do a good job with the language and have a good sense of voice. Just cut back on the "cutesy - quotient" and say what you mean forcefully. You'll be surprised at how the humor will present itself! Good luck on revision. C. Hall"

It made me cry. *shrug* I'm not good at taking critizism from teacher's, I guess. No. It's his whole attitude, it makes ME get an attitude. I snapped at him, I snatched my paper right out of his hands, he uttered the words "Remeber, -I- am the instructor". I'm sorry. I made an ass of myself, because I was trying to keep the tears from falling where people could see it. I'm sorry. I didn't know my writing qualifies as "too cute". I wasn't aware that I was trying to "WRITE(tm)" as opposed to write. I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that I was throwing in too many anecdotes and humourous passages. Sorry. *sigh* I know I sound silly, but the whole experience was just so...pissy. I still get teary-eyed thinking about it. It's not everyday you bomb. I guess the reason it shook me up so much was because the 3 people in my writing group thought it was great and funny and blah...all sorts of positive things, but they kept mentioning how conversational it was, and how they liked that about the essay. Then the teacher had a look and filled my 3 pages with red ink =*( What really gets to me about him is that he doesn't seem to know how to melt together being an instructor with giving good advice. In one sentence he will say 'I AM your instructor and don't you forget that - I am just sitting in on your writing group to give pointers". He keeps saying I look at him in a tone of voice. ("Don't look at me in that tone of voice, Jennie" hahaha, he's soooo witty... until he says it a fourth time.)I wasn't aware that questioning and asking him to elaborate and clearify his comments qualifyed as talking back and being snippy =( Shit, cryin' again. How awqward.

I got an A on my social something something test. Oh my. It's kind of funny that the subjects I'm the worst at are the classes going the best for me right now.

Philip waved to me. Heh. I feel soo ridiculous now. I mean he does have a button that says "click me and I will wave to you.", but this got way too...personal for me. I want a webcam, but I don't want to interact ALLLLL the time. I'm sure I would dressup or do stupid makeup to please any poor soul who might be watching on occasion, but I wouldn't be able to handle constant interaction like that. I'm impressed, intimidated and..hmm..confuzzled. The reason I found it was because I decided to look at the webcam for livecam's list of sites. What a strange phenomena. There's DaniCam, snapping pictures of a babygirl in her crib. Not my cup of tea, and..who asked her? *shrug* Maybe I should just scrap this whole webcam idea. I mean...there are over 500 already. Who needs to see me? I don't plan on being naked live, nor am I very photogenic, and heh, when I'm at home I mostly play Tetris, watch tv or spod. And I'm poor. Okay. Consider idea scrapped. Maybe 8)

Hmm. Is it contradictary to question why people would bother watching me, when I already have a journal up, trying to grab strangers attention? I guess. On the other hand, this isn't about interaction. Unless you do something that affect me, I won't mention it (even though I have been known to post weird fan mail in here ;). I don't strive to write really really well and imagenative, nor do I mention a fraction of what I actualy do every day. I like writing here, because it makes me calmer, and I have a reason to go over events and thoughts that have occured during the day, or even weeks. I don't have a lot of readers (afaik) outside of a few friends, and some random strangers - that's okay. I like that. I know of diaries with thousands of hits every day...think about that for a sec. THOUSANDS. That means hundreds of people have that diary as a part of their daily life. EeEEeeE. I've made other people's diaries and webcam's a part of my daily routine too, few of them will ever know that. It's an odd, odd thing, this web of ours.

Swedish guys Webcam. School guys I think. Heh. I actualy got stuck watching *drumroll* because one can send a message and get answers back. See? I can't be consistent. On one hand I thought it was creepy to have Philip wave at me, on the other I indulge in conversation with the people I'm watching. Ughughugh. 8(

Tuesday, February 10 My brain is tired...or something. I can't get any energy to get excited about much anything. Go to school? Okay...do homework? No..please...just let me sit here and play Tetris like a zombie. I need an energy boost. Or maybe I just need more sleep. I used to never be able to sleep in cars/trains/on planes...now, the minute I take my seat on the bus to Durham, my eyelids close and my head fall back. It's rather useless too, because I'm not really sleeping, I'm too scared to miss my stop for that, so I spend an hour rolling my eyeballs around, worrying that I'll make some gross snore sound so people know I'm really sleeping. Heh. There's better things to worry about than making noises on the bus, I guess, but I can't think of many.

I don't feel comfortable in my own skin =( NO, actualy, it has nothing to do with me, it's the outside of the skin...this morning my hair made me insane, so I cut the bottom half shorter. It got worse =( Now I can't make it look okay REGARDLESS if I try and poof it up, or leave it flat. At least I only have myself to blame. Now I'm obsessed with dying my hair...I can't help it, but I want blue hair. Or maybe red hair. Or maybe purple...*sigh* I can't decide if I have the guts to make it blue, or the to-hell-with-it attitude to have it crayon red. But what if people point and laugh and shake their heads and I actualy DO care?? *sigh* wuss wuss wuss wuss wuss wuss wuss wuss wuss wuss wuss. It's not just the hair either. It's..ME. I spent 50 minutes waiting for the bus, while catching glimpses of myself in the storewindows by the bus stop. I just couldn't stop, and I kept looking around to make sure no one noticed, because then I'd seem like a selfobsessed dork. Although I am. Heh. My nails are weak and won't grow long before they crack at the sides. My hair is thin and limp, and now - uneven and too short in the wrong places. My skin is so pale it looks sickly. My hands are short and chubby. I CAN'T SING. I make predictable lists of my faults. I suck =)

Ride on, ride on friends of the black swan ride on, ride on do you know where she's gone Tori Amos, Black Swan.

I'll revise the essay tonight. Oh Joy. You know what? I don't give a damn today =) I'm tired of being depressed about it, I mean, it's like Jessica said, it's my firstborn. I'll just make a feast tonight and sacrifice it to..SATAN! hehe...although it might be too cute for him too. Him? Why does Satan always have to be a him? People always say things like "I know God is really a woman", but when was the last time someone said that about Satan? (I'd like to note that I don't believe in a God, nor a Devil. So there :P) Personaly, I think it'd be interesting if a movie depicted the devil in a female form, or dammit, even in the form of a chihuahua. Or maybe it's true. The devil is walking this world, and his name is Phil Collins...hehehehehhehhehe.

Did I mention the part friday night, when me, Jesica and Gene was just out trying to think of something to do, we get on this bus for students, and wham, 5 drunk guys step on and start laughing, pointing and joking about my blue lipstick? I guess I thought I'd be able to get away with it here, in a town with 20,000+ students, around midnight on a friday night, but no...Heh. they were so LAME though. They made SMURF jokes, for cryin' out loud! (Jesica now insists on calling me smurf 8) Ah well. Just wait til they see my blue featherboa.

Wednesday, February 11 I was going to bed early last night, at 10 already, ONLY to have the posters I sent here from sweden FINALY arrive...it only took over a MONTH :P But they got here...my Catwoman poster, my Tori Amos poster, the printout of a drawing a friend made called Father Earth, and two magazines from Sweden! I just had to read the magazines, so I didn't fall asleep until after 11 8(. I was sooo rosy cheeked and cheery when I got up at 6.20 to catch the 6.39 bus...sure..hehe. At least I got to school by 8, just in time to finish revising my essay (which still sucks, and will be around a D/C, but I've finaly stopped caring. It helped visualizing myself dancing around a fire, burning the essay pages in sacrifice to satan ;), and finished a test that was due a few days ago...But I DID IT. No more guilty feelings. I hate feeling guilty about schoolwork of all things... Speaking of which...I got a summary back from Soc. class...I had 25 out of 25 pts!! That means so far I've had an A in everything in tha class....SCARY.

Soar throat, head ache, hungry...just in the right mood to write my diary ;) My hair is still crappy too, BUT today I don't care. I don't even care that some guys in school commented on my shoes (a sacrastic "I like your shoes"). My hair is crappy. I will live. My shoes are rather dirty and allover ugly. I will live. I might even get new shoes WHEN I CAN AFFORD IT.

restore me, carry my guilt on your shoulders then let go use me abuse me accuse me amuse me I will go Something my head put together earlier today. I know it sucks :P

Thursday, February 12 I'M SICK. No I mean sick sick. I went to bed at 9.30 last night and woke up...9.30 this morning. I felt like shite allthrough sleeping too, woke up a few times with a HUGE enormous headache, coughing like a chainsaw. Not to mention the fever, and my skin being all sensitive, even my clothes felt like they were made of lead last night...

*laugh* I'm at such a low point it's getting ridiculous. I still barely know anybody here, school is getting boring, and I've been sick ever since I got here. Not to mention reading Ana's logs is making me...I dunno. She's making a record, doing interviews, photoshoots...Blah. This reminds me of something I've been doing for a few years now...I'll feel age and nothingness creep up on me, and I'll start comparing me and my life with others. Claire Danes IS JUST 18. How depressing. It's sad when you're a wannabe without any particular talent. Being a wannabe geek just..doesn't sound very cool, now does it?

I'm dreaming daily of dying my hair blue. I can't even imagine it. Maybe then I'd feel different. I could pretend Gothic Lesbian Whores was a real band, that I wasn't a 20-year old loser. *grin* Am I depressing anybody yet? I hope not, because this is actualy making me smile :) Just imagening me with blue hair, and Jessica making some noises with her guitars is just..silly. We would make such a great band, you know, the kind that has a small but loyal audience. Um...yes. We could take all 3 of them out to Taco Bell after every show ;) I like imagening myself as a small star, not a big one, just big enough to have Adam Sandler's home phone number...*sigh*

THE WEDDING SINGER opens tomorrow! Promise you'll be there..I sure will :))(even if my head'll be spinning and vomiting like Linda Blair's in The exorcist..)

Jessica, have a good, safe trip :) (She's going to Colorado till tuesday)

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