This is my heart-shaped clock. I bought it a long time ago, and discovered it recently still unused and in its package. It makes a loud ticking sound which I love, but I don’t love ‘time’ itself. Since the clock is heart-shaped, you get the irony. Nevertheless, it goes really well with some quotes on love and time, and my mood today.
I cannot promise very much.
I give you the images I know.
Lie still with me and watch.
We laugh and we touch.
I promise you love. Time will not take that away.
Other than spending my free time plotting to casually meet Craig Ferguson and enchant him so that we would get married the very next month, I read his book (Between the Bridge and the River), google his pictures, and watch him on YouTube.
No, really, I am not that desperate. I don’t spend ALL of my free time thinking about Ferguson, but I do find him very intelligent, funny, and prime eyecandy. Now some will argue that he is 45 and I am 23, but love knows no boundaries…and the man has a tattoo for crying out loud! (It reads: Dulcius ex aspirus, or “sweeter after difficulty.” = Yum!)
The reason for this post is that yesterday I officially joined Glaswegian - The Craig Ferguson Fanlisting, to which I had applied months ago. I am happy I am now an official, certified fan minus the crazy antics that fans normally do. For all we know, I am probably the most sane of all Ferguson’s fans and what I just said in the previous passages confirms this.
Ferguson’s book, Between the Bridge and the River, was to me an exciting existential read that paralleled my own attitudes towards life. It was when I read his book that I was certain Ferguson’s witty intellect on his show was in fact no show, and I enjoyed connecting to his ideas because they were similar to mine.
I like him because he’s quirky and spontaneous and simply funny, and now I will go and celebrate my official ‘fan’ status and that I am the ONLY official Ferguson fan in Jordan. I leave you with this interview he did with Gerard Butler from 300 (aka The 6-Pack Movie):
Last night at around 9 PM, I got an SMS from my best friend Mai who’s now in Kuwait with her husband. She told me in all-capital letters: I AM PREGNANT!
We have been together since 7th grade. We’re the same age. We know each other better than sisters.
During college years, we used to hang out every single day, gossiping about the guys she went out with and the guys I went out with. I’d often advise her to dump hers and she would advise me to dump mine. We were kewl like that.
She was always the friendly one, I was the bitchy one.
She always laughed at my dirty jokes, and we always had grilled turkey sandwiches and pepsi every day.
She always covered my tracks, and saved my butt.
We got our ears pierced together. She got two new holes that day, I got six. A year later, she went again with me but did not get pierced again.
We did things I can’t list here because they will damage both our reputations. But they were loads of fun and I would do them again with her any day.
We wrote our names in the fresh concrete of a pavement on campus. They’re still there today.
We went shopping for belly dance costumes down town once. The shop owner hit on us in an icky way.
I couldn’t even blog before and after she got married. I was so lonely.
I had the best times of my life with her, and I love her very much.
Who doesn’t remember Lady Oscar? Jordanian kids of my generation and up to ten years older grew up with this fascinating anime originally called The Rose of Versailles and dubbed in Arabic. In my opinion, Lady Oscar was the ultimate BEST anime ever shown on Jordanian/Arabic TV stations.
I am very nostalgic today. I found myself watching old cartoons on YouTube and repressing my tears. When I found that almost ALL the episodes of Lady Oscar were on there, and in Arabic, I almost cried. To me, Lady Oscar was more than an anime character. Looking at my life, my tastes, my personality now, I understand exactly how she affected me. This was a powerful, intelligent, and no-crap lady who was raised as a man and competed with, and always outshone, her male counterparts. On top of all that, her wardrobe was absolutely gorgeous.
The Rose of Versailles focuses on Oscar François de Jarjayes, a girl raised as a man to become her father’s successor as leader of the Palace Guards. A brilliant combatant with a strong sense of justice, Oscar is proud of the life she leads, but becomes torn between class loyalty and her desire to help the impoverished as revolution brews among the oppressed lower class. Also important to the story are her conflicting desires to live life as both a militiant and a regular woman as well as her relationships with Marie Antoinette, Count Axel von Fersen, and servant and best friend André Grandier.
Lady Oscar was this fabulously strong-willed woman who set, I believe, an excellent example for the thousands of Arab girls who watched her. Now that I think of it, I find it amazing how the anime was ever played on Arab TVs since Lady Oscar’s sexuality was a bit ambiguous. Perhaps the people who censor shows did not get that part, but hey, all the better for us.
There are some shoujo-ai elements embodied in the relationship between Oscar and her protégée Rosalie Lamorlière, the secret daughter of the scheming Madame de Polignac, whose admiration for Oscar may be interpreted as either idol worship or romantic love coming from her possible bisexuality. Many of the court ladies also greatly adore Oscar, openly admiring her at parties and become very jealous when she brings female companions to them.
I remember hating Rosalie too and feeling a very strong attraction to Lady Oscar. I also remember loving André Grandier and hoping they would end up together, him and Oscar, which never happened. There was this imposing sexual and intellectual tension throughout the show, and thinking back, again I wonder how it was broadcasted on Arab TVs in the 20th century. If that was intentional, it was very progressive. If not, well, it didn’t screw me up so the people who censor shows need not feel guilty about letting it slip.
I used to love everything Oscar wore; those military jackets and tight riding pants, the white fitted French-cuff shirts, the fine ruffled collars, the knee-high boots– everything. I still love the look today, and looking at my tastes in fashion, I see Oscar and the period she lived in in most everything I fancy. She was a fine fencer and rider, too. I’ve always wanted to learn fencing and to have a horse, but I learned how to shoot instead. That was more doable.
I used to admire and respect Oscar for being so strong, for being able to always hold her own in front of the men she led, and for being a good person. She was controversial and great. I still remember how heartbroken I was when she died, and although I watched the show tons of times, I cried every time. Oscar was a phenomenon, not just a cartoon show. The anime had a message about gender equality, history, love and loyalty.
I really wish more shows of the type would air on Arab TVs, as Oscar taught me a lot and became a role model of sorts to me. I am still very much in love with the character and the show as a whole, and right now I am looking for a way to purchase the complete episodes on DVD.
This was my humble tribute to Lady Oscar, the rose of Versailles and my role model.
I have recently become obsessed with classical music to an unprecedented degree. I am very deeply in love with a Carl Orff composition called O Fortuna, which is the title of one of 24 Latin poem collection called Carmina Burana, dating back to the 13th century.
I have always had a profound, at times sinful, attraction to dark moods. By nature, I have a morbid mind and a tendency to appreciate the obscure, the gloomy, and the depressing. Within this context, I am a blink away from worshiping O Fortuna.
O Fortuna (Chorus)
O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis,
semper crescis
aut decrescis;
vita detestabilis
nunc obdurat
et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,
egestatem,
potestatem
dissolvit ut glaciem.
Sors immanis
et inanis,
rota tu volubilis,
status malus,
vana salus
semper dissolubilis,
obumbrata
et velata
michi quoque niteris;
nunc per ludum
dorsum nudum
fero tui sceleris.
Sors salutis
et virtutis
michi nunc contraria,
est affectus
et defectus
semper in angaria.
Hac in hora
sine mora
corde pulsum tangite;
quod per sortem
sternit fortem,
mecum omnes plangite!
English Translation
O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
and waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.
Fate - monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.
Fate is against me
in health
and virtue,
driven on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate
strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!
Do you lull your melancholy with hopes of future quick, poor visits every now and then? Do you anxiously wait for them to be cloned, replaced by exact types to keep you company when it rains and you’re hungry? Do you propose unnecessary plans just so you can bask in the memories only they share with you? Do you sit alone and get acquainted with yourself, and miss them all the same? Do you secretly wish they would not go away to a distant land, to the arms of a lover, and wish they remain yours forever?
What do you do, what can you do that is not in vain? Tell me.
