I have had several people recommend this book to me, and I have been intrigued by what I’ve heard.  Plus, I enjoy the mystery genre very much, and I enjoy mysteries set in other countries, and there were tattoos!  (At least, I assumed there would be).  This book sounded tailor-made for me.  Because I was going to read it, I didn’t look to see what it was about.  I rather not read blurbs if I know for sure I am going to read a book.  If only I had read a bit about it beforehand.  Then again, I just read the Wiki entry, and it wouldn’t have been enough to put me off my feed.  A pet peeve of mine, but I will get to it later.

Now, I bought the some time ago.  And I meant to read it at the time; I really did.  However, I kept putting it off, and then, I never read it.  Then, the books and the movies became a sensation, and I felt compelled to pull out the book and read it.  Someone at BJ jokingly asked if I was one of Lisbeth Salander’s alter egos (titular character).  Briefly, Stieg Larsson wrote three books (his Millennium trilogy) before dying.  People have mourned that he hadn’t been able to write more.  Intrigued, I dug out the book and started reading.

The first thirty pages were deadly dull.  I struggled to get through them, and I almost put the book down several times.  However, I plowed through, and I was soon glad I did.  The story really picked up steam, and the introduction of Lisbeth Salander was…well, let me put it this way.  I have not identified with a character like this in some time–and, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

I’m going to get all spoilery below the fold, so again, if you want to read the book without knowing what happens, leave now.

Lisbeth Salander has many tattoos.  She is a misfit, a ward of the state, probably has Asperger’s, and she’s a loner.  She is omnisexual (or as I like to say, sexual), has a photographic memory, is a computer hacker extraordinaire, has difficulty trusting and loving others, and is in her own eyes, a damaged freak.  She has sex when she wants with whom she wants, and it doesn’t trouble her much.  However, love, on the other hand is a whole different story.

In the beginning, we meet her as she’s a researcher at an investigation firm.  She is antisocial and doesn’t form relationships, but she is really fucking good at her work.  She is an anorexic blond (that’s how others describe her) who is slovenly in her personal habits, but razor-sharp in her professional detail.

Now, obviously, I do not have Aspberger’s, and while I’m a loner, I do have friends.  I am not a hacker, either, but I’m pretty obsessive when it comes to my work–or anything, really.

Lisbeth had a bad childhood which she doesn’t discuss.  She doesn’t actually talk about much of anything–until she meets Mikael Blomkvist, the other main character of the book.  By the way, the book is a really good portrayal of the current economic situation in our country, just FYI.  Anyway, she meets him because she was hired to research him, and then he found out she hacked into his computer to research him, so he hired her to help him with his current case–a forty-year old murder mystery.

In the meantime, Blomkvist (who is the main protagonist in the book) is dealing with his own situation–which includes jail-time for libel.  The book is set in Sweden, by the way.  After the first thirty pages, the book just hums along, and I am engrossed.  The storytelling is solid; there is little to no scenery to break things up (good); the characters are compelling.  I am turning pages like crazy (it’s as long as a Potter book, but way better), when the first troubling thing happens.  Now, really, major spoilery here.  Final warning.

Lisbeth’s old guardian dies (she’s a ward of the state).  Her new one, Nils Bjurman, is creepy as hell.  At first, he’s just a major pain in the ass, telling her that he will control all her finances from now on (her old guardian let her do it), and I think, control-freak and a pompous asshole.

I should have remembered that every chapter starts with stats on women being sexually assaulted in Sweden.  That should have been my warning.  Alas, I failed to heed it.

Non sequitur:  I was talking to a friend why I don’t like movies in general.  If there is a disturbing or graphic scene in a movie, it will haunt me for months to years afterwards.  Even though I know it’s *just* a movie, my mind and body can’t differentiate between real and fiction.

My best friend took me to see Girl, Interrupted when I was really depressed and The Virgin Suicides right after a break-up.  Note to Kiki:  Not the best choices, girlfriend.  Anyway, in the former, there is a scene in which one of the girls (I believe it’s Angelina Jolie) completely breaks down another girl emotionally (Brittany Murphy, I want to say) in order to get something from her (the latter).  That was hard enough to watch, but the next scene is of Daisy (Murphy) hanging from the shower curtain rod.  Suicide.  I felt it viscerally, and I couldn’t shake it for months after.

Now, I don’t feel the same way with books.  I can read about pretty gruesome shit, and it doesn’t really bother me.  Except, I forgot the one exception–rape scenes.  Especially rape scenes of characters with whom I identify.  Lisbeth’s new guardian starts to ask her inappropriate questions about sex.  She tries to answer with minimal cooperation.  The next meeting, he tells her that she will have to be nice to him in order for him to be nice to her (she needs money).  He forces her to give him a blowjob.  I’m starting to freak out.

Lisbeth cannot take being a victim, so she plots her response.  Her idea is to enact the same scene and videotape him so she can get him in trouble.  Alas, he is not just a control freak, but a full-blown sadist.  He handcuffs her to the bed…and he rapes her.  But, he doesn’t just rape her–he rapes her anally with a dildo of sorts.  Then keeps her chained up and continues to abuse her.  Until he lets her go.  He thinks she won’t do anything to him (predators usually choose compliant victims).

My body immediately seized up on reading this scene, and I could barely make it through.  I kept reading because as I said, the book is really fucking good, but my body wouldn’t stop shaking.  An hour later, I still had tears in my eyes.

Now, let me say that Lisbeth got a spectacular and brutal revenge on the creep–and I was viciously cheering her on every step of the way.

I had to quit reading when I couldn’t stop shaking after an hour.

This happened to me when I saw Leaving Las Vegas as well (except that movie sucked balls).  I couldn’t help thinking that when Pulp Fiction came out, much was made of the rape/near rape of a man scene.  I even had a friend tell me it was worse for men because they weren’t used to it.  I blasted her at the time, but now I can see what she means.

I know that rape is common place in books and movies (and real life), and I know that I can’t expect not to read about them, but for some reason, this really got to me.  And, I felt ashamed because I wasn’t past my, well, past.  It felt as immediate as if it had happened yesterday.  Since my flashbacks, I have thought more about the guy in Thailand than I have in all the years since it happened.  I can feel the helplessness and the hopelessness he inflicted in me.  I remember what it was like to be a nonentity with someone forcibly fucking me.    I can feel the victim label I wore on my forehead as surely as if it were emblazoned there in neon lights.  In the book, Lisbeth’s boss keeps thinking how she’s the perfect victim–he might as well have been talking about me.

I finished the rest of the book tonight, and it’s really fucking good.  Seriously.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  However, the rest of the story concerns a father/son serial kidnapping/torturing/raping/murdering duo, and horrific incest.  The second book is all about these horrors, and yeah, they are indelible.

I am drawn to this book and to Lisbeth (especially when she calls herself a damaged freak), and I want to read the next book (an excerpt was at the end of this book), but I don’t know if I can.  I also want to see the movies, but I have heard the scenes are in the movie, and yeah, don’t think I can deal with that.

I feel ashamed.  Ashamed that I am not over my past.  Ashamed that reading a book can be so much of a trigger, and ashamed that I can’t distinguish reality from fiction.  I don’t know why this particular book, either, as I have read other books with graphic rape scenes that have not affected me this deeply.  I feel weak because I’m so shaken by this book.  I’m rattled, damn it, and I hate feeling this way–especially for no good reason.

It brings out the self-loathing and the doubts that I am more than what I was trained to be.  A whore.  A sex-toy.  A victim.  Even though Lisbeth takes revenge on the biggest monster in the book, she is still a victim, and she is still damaged beyond repair.  She is unable to forge lasting romantic bonds, and she is even puzzled as to what constitutes friendship.

I am not Lisbeth.  I know this.  And yet, I identify so damn much with her.   Sometimes, I feel as if I, too, am damaged beyond repair.  I feel as if my sexuality was so twisted when I was a kid, I can’t possible get it to be anything approaching normal or healthy.  I think I am further along than I’ve ever been down the healing road, but I despair of ever making it to whole.

P.S.  If you suggest a movie or book to me, please let me know if there are graphic rape scenes.  I can deal with it better if I know ahead of time.  Thx.

So, here’s the deal.  I took my first step to becoming an adult yesterday.  My fiction writing is very important to me.  I talked briefly about it at the party last Saturday, and I realized that I really miss it.  I have always looked at my ability to tell stories as a gift that was given to me.  I have characters living in my head most of the time, and they are the ones who narrate the stories–not me.  In fact, most of my best stories come to me intact, and I have to do very little tweaking on them once they are on paper.  Anyway, I went to Poets & Writers to look at the current crop of contests.   I found a few that I have decided to enter.  One is a Flash Fiction contest (under 1,000 words) due by the end of August.  I wrote a story in about an hour, and it was pretty good.  I looked through my archives (I have a shitload of old stories) and found two stories that fit the category and that were really fucking good.  Creepy as hell, one of them, but that’s only to be expected.

Then, I started reading other short stories of mine because the next contest is Glimmer Train’s (under 12,000 words), also due at the end of August.  Glimmer Train is an excellent and respected literary journal, and I will continue to submit to them even though there is no chance in hell they will publish me (I’m not literary enough for them).  Anyway, as I was reading my pieces, some that I have not looked at in years, I realized something:  I am a fucking good writer.  No, really, I mean it.  I used to say, “Well, I enjoy writing, and I think I have some talent for it, but, you know,” but really, y’all–I can flat-out write.

My strength is that I create such vivid characters.  In fact, when I re-read my pieces, I am most struck by the throwaway characters who only appear for a few scenes.  There are a few I would like to branch off into stories of their own.  Many times when I read novels, the people don’t seem real to me.  There have been threads over at TNC’s place about literature.  This one spawned this one.  I participated in both threads.   One thing that is simultaneously refreshing and frustrating about TNC’s place is that threads are pretty strictly topic-related.  There is some veering, to be sure, but not as much as, say, over at BJ.  This is refreshing because it keeps people on task and to the point.  It’s frustrating because there are often tangential threads that could belong on the original thread, but not really.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because these threads deal with what is considered the norm in literature.  White male.  Hell, it’s the norm for pretty much everything in our society.  Thus, we have fiction, and we have LGBT fiction or Asian American fiction.  Most people wanted all fiction lumped together.  I actually like the separate categories (or would if the implication wasn’t that the other is lesser) because I don’t particularly care to read white males.  Someone mentioned that with technology being what it is, soon we will have books in multiple categories, which I like.

People were talking about the Pulitzer Prize and how much weight does it really have with the average reader.  Many people pointed out that the little sticker on the book gives it cache.  One commenter even said that since she had so little time and usually went into a bookstore without really knowing what she wants, she’s apt to give a stickered book more consideration than a non-stickered one.

I didn’t get into it too much over there, but I am the exact opposite.  You know Oprah’s Book Club (also discussed over there)?  Well, in a used bookstore in SF, they have the anti-Oprah’s Book Club (books which will never be make it to Oprah’s Book Club).  I am the same way.  I am not drawn towards books with any kind of stickers on them.  In fact, I am less apt to pick up a book with an Oprah sticker on it or a Pulitzer sticker.  Anti-elite snobbery?  Hell, yeah.

Another mini-rant I went into over there is how certain trends must be followed.  In chick lit, it was the quirky twenty-something who was with Mr. Right Now and under-utilizing her talents.  She takes a journey to her soul throughout the book (with many amusing adventures along the way) and ends up finding the meaning of happiness–which usually included finding Mr. Right.   or Mr. Right Now turns out to be Mr. Right after all.  In addition, all the covers had women’s body parts on them.  A torso, a leg, an arm, an ass, but rarely a head.  It’s as if the women were interchangeable, and they really were.

I read a few of them, but I couldn’t connect at all to the characters.  It’s not just because it’s chick lit, either.  There are many authors who are considered serious (Wally Lamb and Dennis Lehane come to mind) whose novels also left me hollow.  I was in a Barnes & Noble the other day to pick up a birthday gift for my nephew.  I browsed through the fiction section just to see what was out there.  It all left me cold.

I feel the same way about many of the classics.  They are so far out of my realm and so not my world, they have little interest to me.  It’s probably why I also don’t care much for trad music or classic movies, either.

I have come to realize over the years that it’s the unusual that interests me.  My place is with the freaks and the oddballs, the misfits and the loners.  When I used to perform, I always had people thanking me for my work because they never knew that others felt that way, too.  My BA is in psychology, and I think I draw from my psych knowledge when I write.

My writing touches people.  It doesn’t matter that my characters are mainly Asian American females with fluid sexualities.  After reading an excerpt from an essay I wrote on what home meant to me, an African American man walked up to me and burst into tears.  He told me he was adopted by a white Christian couple, a Republican, and privately gay.  He thanked me profusely for my piece, and I ached for him.

As many of you know, I started this blog because I wish I had something like it to read when I was growing up.  When I write my fiction, I know it’s not going to appeal to the masses (though the movies might with all teh hawt sexing going on), and I made my peace with that a long time ago.  It’s the same with my tastes–they are odd, eclectic, and not very mainstream.

Non sequitur, tangentially:  I have found that there are people who take it personally if you don’t like a movie/book/song they love.  I have found this odd because I pretty much know that people in general are going to not like what I do.  Therefore, when someone says a movie I like is slow, dull, crappy, whatever, I don’t care.

The same is true with my fiction.  In my MA program, my cohorts didn’t quite get what I was trying to do.  Granted, some of the stuff I wrote was shit–that’s the nature of the beast.  However, I slowly realized that just because they didn’t like or get what I wrote, it didn’t mean that what I wrote was all shit.  It just meant different people have different tastes.  I had a small cohort group, so they weren’t really representative of the population in general.

My strengths as a writer:  My characters and my engaging plots.

My weaknesses:  Total lack of interest in scenery and descriptions.

But, I shouldn’t even label the weaknesses as such because it’s really a matter of style.

My writing:  Fuck, yeah!  I will never be considered mainstream or an author of literature, but so what?  I am a voice for the misfits and the freaks–and we shall be heard.

So.  ScriptFrenzy has officially started.  I have the screenplay written in my head and ready to go.  Except, I had a therapy session today.  When I laid out my things I need to do (in rough format), I included ScriptFrenzy.  My therapist asked me why I was doing it.  In other words, was I just using it as another reason not to do the things I NEED to do?  I wanted to protest, but I had to check myself.  I thought about what she had said, and I realized that she had hit on something.

Doing Scriptfrenzy is something I want to do because it’s creative and gets my juices flowing, yes.  However, I tend to get obsessive about these things (shut up!) to the detriment of other things around me.  It’s like dieting.  I have good reasons for wanting to lose weight (health, for one), but I know that a large part of it is to avoid doing what I need to do and to feed my ED self.  By the way, fifteen pounds down and three inches off my waist in two months.  My second month wasn’t as good as my first, but I’m cutting myself some slack here.

Anyway, the goal of Scriptfrenzy is to write 100 pages in 30 days.  Last year, with my script The Year of Seven Penises (which turned out to be two and a half penii instead), I wrote roughly 150 pages.   The year before, I wrote over 225 pages.  In other words, I take their suggestion as a starting ground and run with it.

My therapist asked if I could afford to take two hours a day for Scriptfrenzy.  She said at the end of the month, am I going to have my script and nothing else to show for the month?  You know what?  It was entirely possible that I would have a kick-ass script, but nothing else to show for the month of April.  And that would fucking suck.  So, we did some EFT, and I came up with an idea.  I have three things I want to do every day.  I want to spend an hour looking for a job, spend an hour cleaning up the house, and spend an hour exercising (or two).  Initially, I had submitting pieces to literary magazines, but if I’m going to do Scriptfrenzy, then I can give myself a little leeway on submitting.

So.  Here is my plan.  If I do the three things I need to do every day, then I can work on Scriptfrenzy at night (my most creative time, anyway).  And, it’s not a punitive thing, but a “I get to do it” thing.

One other thing to come out of my therapy session was that in my family, there is no right decision.   Many years ago, my best friend separated from her hubby.  She was agonizing about what to do when her mother said to her, “You’ll be fine if you stay with him, and you’ll be fine if you leave him.”  That was her family ethos in a nutshell–there was no wrong decision.  I replied at the time, and it’s true today, my mother would have said, “You will not be fine with him, and you will not be fine without him.”  That, my friends, is my family ethos in a nutshell.  There is no right decision–only wrong and wronger.  No wonder I can be paralyzed at times.  If subconsciously, I think any decision I make is going to be a wrong one, how can I force myself to make said decision?

This is where Taiji enters the picture.  I mentioned to my therapist that Taiji class is the one place where I feel it’s ok to make mistakes, in a large part because Julie is so nurturing.  I have a classmate who berates herself when she makes a mistake.  Julie smiles and says, “It’s ok.  You’ll have plenty of opportunities to do that posture again.”  I have been taking classes from her for nearly two years, and I just recently realized I was moving my foot on the wrong count for one posture.  Now that I recognized my mistake, I do it correctly almost every time.  I had been doing this posture wrong for nearly two years, but it wasn’t set in stone.  I could correct the mistake.  I might make it again, but I did it less frequently with more repetition.

That was the corollary to the family motto of there is no right decision:  There is no way to correct a bad decision.   I am slowly learning that not only is it ok to make mistakes, I can fix said mistakes.  More family ethos:  We are not like others; we do not make mistakes.  Well, yeah, we do.  We’re human.  That’s what humans do.

I also realized that by setting limits, I actually was giving myself more freedom.  WTF, you say?  Huh?  Let me explain.  There were no boundaries in my family as I grew up.  Part of that is Asian culture, and part of that is the weirdness that is my family.  So, I became enmeshed with my mother.  In college, I nearly drove myself crazy trying to help a…friend for lack of better word with his issues.  He would come knocking at my door at one in the morning, and I would talk to him for hours.  My boyfriend at the time pointed out that I wasn’t doing anyone any favors with my behavior.  He said, “Minna, if you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of others.”  Trite, I know, but true.

My mom called earlier in the week.  I did not want to talk to her, so I didn’t answer the phone.  After she left a message, I thought, “I’ll talk to her next time.”  Not, “I will have to talk to her next time”, but “I will talk to her next time.”  She called tonight, and I actually offered her a few tidbits of information without her having to pry them from me.  There is room in limits, though that may seem contradictory.

So.  Back to my schedule.  When I leave it open-ended, I get nothing done because I either feel too overwhelmed to decide what to do, or I think, “Well, I have ALL this time.  I can get to it in an hour.”  Then, I waste away the day like I always do, and I have nothing to do but berate myself at the end of the day.

The other thing I found out in my therapy session today is that I have a logical loving voice in my head that can calm the chatter.  Yes, it’s soft right now, and no, I don’t pay it nearly enough attention, but it’s there.  It’s the voice that says, “Eh, you don’t want to go down that road” when I start thinking about fasting and exercising three hours a day.  I really need to cultivate it more.

So.  I will be doing Scriptfrenzy, sort of.  I am going to try to not be obsessive about it and not use it as an avoidance tactic.  I’ll let you know how I do.

As I was driving back from the airport to my house, I felt some relief to be getting away from my family and the pernicious insidiousness of Taiwanese beliefs about women, family, etc.  One thing my therapist commented on before I went on my trip was that the culture clash of family first v. independence was something I would have to deal with now.  She said it much more eloquently, but it’s what she meant.

Now, I am not saying that putting family first is an inherently-dysfunctional thing, any more than I am touting the superiority of rugged individuality.  I think both have their pluses and their minuses.   What I am saying is that when you skew crazily to either side, then there’s a problem.  In my case, in my family, the boundaries between each person are nonexistent.  What I want isn’t a factor at all.  It’s not that my parents don’t care what I want or think–they simply don’t realize that I could possibly think or want something other than what they think I want.

I have written in the past that my father is a narcissist, so the fact that he can’t fathom a me outside of him doesn’t surprise me.  However, the realization that my mother is just as much a narcissist in some ways is really bothersome to me.  I have spent much of my life grappling with issues with my mother (I gave up my father as a lost cause many years ago), and this new revelation throws things in a different light.  In addition, her ability at revisionist history is comparable to that of a current GOP congressperson, which is really disturbing.

Because of her latter capability (she firmly believes that she and I were really close when I was a teenager), everything she says about my past is now suspect as well.  I feel as if the sands are shifting under my feet.  What really happened in my childhood?

There is one person who knows and who has a good memory:  My brother.  Yet, I hesitate asking him what he remembers from our childhood.  It’s another unspoken taboo as he didn’t have a very cheery childhood, either.  My father used to beat him (as per old customs) until my mom made him stop–or so my mother says.  Then (again, according to my mother), my dad washed his hands of all disciplining thereafter.

I have heard this story since I was a kid, and it makes me so angry now.  If it’s true, then that means that my mother stood up for my brother, but not for me.  In fact, she’s never stood up for me in relation with my father.  She takes his side and downplays any beefs I have with him.  As I have written about before, when I confronted the family about my father’s abuse so many years ago, the first thing my mom said was, “It can’t be true.  If it’s true, then I’ll have to leave him.”

Oh, in addition, she has a habit of forgetting that she says these kind of things.  And, a few years after I told her I was bi (to which she said, “If that’s acceptable, what next, bestiality?”), I mentioned something about a woman, and she said, “Oh, you still like women?”  She tries to bend reality to her liking and ignores all the parts she doesn’t like.

Anyway, this is a new year.  Funny, it feels a lot like the old one, but a new one, it is.  I made it back from Taiwan barely in one piece (though my mind is still fragmented, and my sleep schedule is more fucked than usual), and now it’s time to look to the future and what I hope to accomplish this year.

Which depresses the hell out of me.  So, first up, my fantasy list of all the things I want to accomplish this year.

1. Lose 100 pounds
2. Become self-supporting and self-sufficient
3. Buy my own house
4. Get back into theater
5. Become a published author
6. Get my online literary mag up and running
7. Get laid
8. Start playing the cello again
9. Finish the long form in taiji and start pushing hands
10. Start dating

Since I am CDO, I’m limiting myself to 10 for 2010.  Yes, I know the list is unreasonable.  That’s kind of the point.  I wanted to lay it down and see exactly how far I have to go.

The result:  Depressingly far.  When I look at the big picture, I am overwhelmed.  Objectively, finishing the long form in taiji this year is doable.   Taking up the cello again is doable.  God, I miss playing.  I don’t miss practicing or the pressure of performing, but I do miss playing the cello.  What a beautiful instrument.

The rest will take lots of psychological fortitude as well as sheer determination.  I am lazy by nature when facing things I don’t have to do and that are hard for me to do.  I tend to get overwhelmed by the big picture.  I know the answer is to break down each goal into smaller, reasonable steps, but that’s hard for me to do as well.

I am sad, cranky, depressed, and in self-hatred mode upon my return to the States.  My mom emailed me that I made a couple errors in her manuscript, which means I’m not done with it yet.  Plus, she still wants to make changes, which is up to the editor, but if he says yes, then that means more work for me.

The trip to Taiwan was intense.  During the last two weeks (and about a month before), I was so focused on surviving the trip, I pretty much put the rest of my life on hold.  Now that I’m back, all the shit I shoved to the background is pushing forward once again. On top of all that,  I am still struggling with the utter worthlessness I felt while being with my family.  It’s hard for me to think I matter after two weeks in which I did not.

The worst thing about being with my family is that I lose ground every time I spend an appreciable amount of time with them.  They have me doubting myself and everything I am.  It’s not intentional, but it’s the end result.  By the end of the trip, I was more suicidal than I have been in years.

Anyway, I am done with today’s entry.  At some point, I will write a more reasonable list of goals for this year.  Maybe.

P.S.  To justify the Alan Rickman category tag, which I haven’t used in a while, this is the year that I make my fantasy of Alan Rickman, chocolate, pizza, handcuffs, and a blindfold come true.

First, housecleaning details:  200,220 words for NaNoWriMo!  I had to revise my original goal due to brutal sickness, and I was unhappy about it for a bit.  Then, yesterday, as I was struggling to bang out the final 2,000 words, I realized that 200,000 words was pretty damn good for a month’s worth.   I gotta tell you, those last 2,000  nearly killed me.  I kept checking my count, and it would only be up a hundred or two hundred words.  I was averaging 2,500 words per hour for most of the month.  The last two thousand took me three hours to write.

Then, I went to verify my word count, and I couldn’t get my whole manuscript through.  WTF?  I tried half the manuscript and that went through.  Three-fourths of the manuscript went through as well, but nothing more.  I freaked out because I had put so much goddamn work into it, and I wanted every word counted.  I emailed NaNoWriMo asking what the hell should I do?  I finally checked the forums and discovered that their verifier was only programmed to handle 50,000 words.  Now, I didn’t have a problem verifying in the past two years, but I didn’t go over 150,000 either year.

So, once I was verified, I had to manually change my word count.  I can’t tell you how good it felt to see 200,220 in my word count.   It felt so good, I didn’t even care (much) that I hadn’t met my original goal.  I gave myself a well-deserved pat on the back for a job well done.  Now, I just have to make sure I don’t do what I’ve done the past two years–lose all interest in my NaNoWriMo writing. *

This year, I finished one long-ass murder mystery that is filled with trauma, drama, sex, lust, intrigue, and lots more.  I need to cut a good portion of it, but I am pretty pleased at how it turned out.  For the second novel, I took one of the characters from the first novel (but not the protagonist) and made her the main character.  I have about a third of it done, and I pretty much know where I’m going with it.  The third novel is a little strange in that it’s a blend of fiction/nonfiction.  I just started on that one, but I’m liking the energy in the early goings.

So, NaNoWriMo ’09 is in the books, and it was a smashing success.  Yay, me!

Next up, my health.  Went to the doctor, and she said it was viral.  She told me to give it a couple more days and see how I felt.  I felt a bit better yesterday, and now I am worse again.  However, that was not the biggest thing to happen at the doc’s appt.

First, I have to say that I really like my doctor.  She takes time to talk to me and assess where I am in all aspects of my life.  She is a believer in alternative medicine, acupuncture, meditation, and as little medication as possible.  She is a vegetarian who is very much into organic foods.

That said, there was an issue this time that bothered me.  It seems the insurance companies are really pushing the BMI chart as the be-all, end-all of health.  My doctor doesn’t believe in the BMI because it was formed as a research tool and not a way to gauge individual health, but she has to push it because that’s what gets her clinic better ratings by the insurance companies.  Now, here is where it gets all jumbled, so bear with me.  In brief, the BMI is a formula based on your height and your weight.  It comes out with a number, and that number tells you if you’re underweight, in a healthy range, overweight, obese, or morbidly obese.   What the BMI does not take into account is muscle-mass, frame of the person, and the fact that every individual is different.  It’s a blunt instrument, and it’s pretty much useless except as a very broad general guideline.

Now, I’m not going to get into the argument about whether or not fat is a major problem or not.  You can go to the Shapely Prose website if you want a radically different view on fat and the dangers of it (or the lack thereof).   I fall somewhere in between that being fat in and of itself is the be-all, end-all, and that it has no effect on our health at all.

Here’s the thing.  My doctor spent a good portion of our appointment talking to me about the dangers of being obese.  She believes it’s a huge problem in this country.  That’s fine, and I know it’s her job, but then she pulled out the BMI chart and showed me how very very very very fat I was, even though she didn’t believe in the chart.  I did not appreciate that part at all.

First of all, I know I’m fat.  Very fat.  I am at my heaviest, and I am not happy about it.  I also know what I *should* do in order to reduce my weight (eat less crap and more healthy food, and exercise) because I am the queen of dieting.  The problem I have with the BMI, however, and all the mindless pushing of it is that even when I was at my skinniest (I had a 24″ waist) and fainting from lack of nutrients, my weight put me on the upper side of healthy on the BMI chart.  138 lbs (by the doctor’s scale) at 5’5″ (not 5’6″ as I have thought my whole life) gives me a BMI of 23.  Anything from 18.5 to 25 is healthy.   So, at 5’5″, I can go down to 114 pounds and be considered ‘healthy’.   Granted, the lower numbers are supposedly for people with smaller frames, but the numbers are the same for women and men, so supposedly, women would be on the lower side.

Let me reiterate that.  When I weighted 138 pounds and had a 24″ waist and exercising two-and-a-half hours a day and eating 1,200 – 1,500 calories a day, I was considered, by the fucking BMI, to be healthy.   This is the epitome of anorectic thinking, my friends, and I should know.  I have been anorexic and bulimic throughout my life, and it always amazes me how many of the so-called sensible dieting tips veer into ED (Eating Disorder) thinking.

So, I left the office feeling fat, grumpy, and disgusted–with myself.  One of the problems with weight in this country is that we have equated being fat with being morally bad.  Someone who is fat is lazy, a glutton, weak, etc.  I have dealt with this from two cultures because it’s even worse in the Asian culture.  Just last week, my mom, a highly-intelligent woman, told me about a Taiwanese Star Search contestant who talked about changing her life–by stretching her whole body every morning.  She lost twenty pounds doing it, and my mom said I should try it once I get over being sick.

In other words, “Minna, you’re fucking fat.  Do something about it.”

I’m going to Taiwan at the end of the month, and one of the things I am not looking forward to (besides, well, most of the trip) is the fact that in Taiwanese culture (at least 16 years ago), it’s perfectly acceptable to say, “You’re fat.”   In fact, it was the first thing a cousin said to me when we first met (when I was nine).

In fact, the whole time my doctor was talking to me about weight, all I could think about was, “I’m fat I’m fat I’m fat.”  Not only that, I was thinking, “I’m disgusting and gross and, oh, yeah, I’m fat.”

So.  Kel and I are going to be weightloss twins.  We are going to do it in a healthy, sensible way.   She will not tolerate my bullshit.  I am telling as many people about it as possible because I know that it’s easiest for me to slip into ED thinking when I isolate myself.   I am going to lose weight slowly and sensibly, and I am going to do it for my health.   I know my friends will not support me in my delusions (which I usually appreciate).  This is all good, right?

Not exactly.  I so want to do it my way.  I want to severely restrict my calories and exercise hours every day.  I want to push, push, push until I can’t push any longer.  I’ll tell you a secret:  I want to be skinny.  There.  I said it.  I want to look like this, even though I prefer women who look like this.   I want to feel my bones jutting out from my skin.  I feel purer when I am thin.  I feel less weighted down.  I feel, less connected.  On the other hand, I feel more sensual, sexual, and real when I am heavier.

Here’s the thing.  I made the decision to lose weight, and I immediately threw out the chips I had.  That’s fine.  However, I started thinking about everything that went in my mouth, and not in a good way.  I used to count calories, so I have a calorie index in my head.  It’s not a good thing because I get caught up in it.  I start resenting any food that I put into my body because that means added calories.

I have two donuts left (well, had) that I bought on one of my Cub runs.  I decided I would eat one today and eat one tomorrow and then not buy any more.  Sensible, right?  Well, until I ate the donut and immediately had the urge to throw it up.  I had to talk myself out of shoving three fingers down my throat (because I have no gag reflex as a normal rule), and it was touch and go there for a minute.  I did not throw up, but I was so tempted to do so.  And, this is just the beginning of my quest to be thin healthy.

This is my dilemma.  Because of my obsessive nature, I swing to the extremes.  Either I rigidly control everything and become eating disordered, or I control nothing and become a glutton.   And, the problem is that it’s so easy for me to slip into the former without realizing it (because disordered eating/dieting is supported in our society for the most part).

I know my thinking is wrong.  I know that my thinking is messed up and disordered.  I know that my body is not meant to be skinny.  Even when I lose weight, I still have the boobs.  And yet, I find myself falling.  I feel like food is the enemy, and I don’t know how to not go there.  Hell, go there?  I fucking live there.   I don’t want to view food as the enemy, damn it, because I love it so!

I need to lose weight and be healthier.   I am just not sure I can do it in a sane way.

P.S.  I will be bringing this up with my therapist tomorrow.  Just FYI.

*I am posting Vienna Teng’s My Medea again because it really fits as my theme song, and because I like supporting a Taiwanese American sistah.

Much as I am not now.   Now, granted, I don’t go to actual bookstores that often because I prefer to order online, but when I do, I am dismayed at the drivel that is being published.  So much dreck and so little silver (fucking hate gold).  There is very little to interest me.  I don’t give a damn about any of the books people are reading right now.  I really don’t.  They all look the same to me, and they fucking bore me.  I do not read literature to be bored, people.

Is it too much to ask that authors write something original? I would rather an author take a huge risk and fail magnificently than write carefully-crafted books that are well-written, safe, tidy little journeys, and fucking boring!  We are not Victorian, England.  Fuck that shit.  No, seriously.  Fuck that shit.  On the flip side, don’t write something shocking just for the sake of being shocking.  I fucking hate that shit even more.  I am not easily shocked, and I resent people trying to push that button.  Just write an exuberant, dark, fantastical, engrossing, intriguing story, and I am there, damn it!  On with the show.

Ok, so that isn’t the title song.  It’s Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side as an exhortation to all the writers out there to let their freak flags fly.  Here is the actual title song/video of the day.

Since I am grumpy with mainstream literature right now (not that I’m ever really happy with it), I am turning my back on them.  I don’t think there is a mainstream book I’ve read that would even make my favorites list, anyway.  Oh wait, there is one.  It will be number one on the list.  The others will be random, as is my want.

Oh, and I have to explain a bit about my love for graphic novels.  I never read them as a kid because, as with television, movies, and music, they were not a part of my cultural upbringing.  I saw the Superman movie when I was a young girl, and it gave me nightmares for weeks.

Anyway, it was only within the last five or seven years that I have been reading graphic novels.  Natasha turned me onto the Sandman series by the brilliant Neil Gaiman, and I was hooked.   I became a comic book whore, except more discriminating.

And now, on with the list.

1. The Giver by Lois Lowry.  This is a Young Adult novel with some pretty adult themes.  Sober ones.  It won the Newberry Medal in 1994.  It is about a boy who discovers the memories of his society.  More than that, I will not say because it’s best to read this book without any preconceived ideas.
2. Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.  This is an engrossing novel about two cousins from India who have an unbreakable bond.  It follows them in California and in India as each deal with an arranged marriage and many familial secrets.  I like most of her novels, but this one is her strongest.  The sequel, The Vine of Desire, is good, but not as strong.
3. Sandman by Neil Gaiman (link is to the Volume 1).  This is, without question, the greatest graphic novel ever.  I will not countenance any argument–yes, I will.  I am curious to see which graphic novels other people find seminal.  I know this has been around forever, but as I said, I’m a latecomer to the world of graphic novels.  I have read the whole series plus all the spin-offs, and I am eternally grateful to Gaiman (who is a serious hottie, too) for creating the Endless and their fantastical realms.  I wrote a novel based on the Endless characters, and when I tweak the ending to my satisfaction, I’m going to see if Vertigo will let me try to get it publish (or publish it themselves).
4. Midnight Nation by J. Michael Straczynski.  A graphic novel that blew me away.  It’s about spirituality, but not in a ooey-gooey kind of way.  It’s dark, grim, and downright bleak.  My kind of story.
5. The Tattoo Murder Case by Akimitsu Takagi.  This is a Japanese murder story, and yeah, it has tattoos galore in it.  It’s grim; it’s noir; it’s stylish; it’s fiendish; it’s devilishly engaging.  If you like Asian culture, beautiful women, and intrigue, this is the book for you.
6. All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe.  Another Japanese mystery novel, but not so noir this time.  This one is more heartrending, bitter, and poignant.  It does have Asian culture, beautiful women, and intrigue as well, though.

I also like several mystery series.  Quickly, they are:  Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone series.  Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot series.  Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe series.  Anything by Laurie R. King.  Carol O’Connell’s Kathleen Mallory series.  Those are but a few of the series I enjoy.  The problem is, most series should end after seven or so books.  These are a few that have endured past that mark.

This is but the tip of the iceberg of the books I have enjoyed.  I have piles and piles of unread books just begging to be fondled.  I don’t do the Kindle because I like the tactile feel of paper in my hands.  I like the smell of ink on the page–no matter how illusory it may be.  I like bending the spine gently so that it doesn’t break.  I like dog-earing the corner of the page I am on or simply to place the book face down on the open page.  I like to read while I’m on the can. I like to read when I’m taking a bath.  Yes, I’m old-school, and yes, many trees are dying to feed my obsession, but I will not stop reading actual books for anything.

Books were my first true love.  They will most likely be my last as well.

Aw, crap.  I was gonna tell you why reading so many Asian female writers when I was in my early twenties was earth-shattering for me.  Well, simply put, I didn’t think I could be a published author before that, not really.  Much like not seeing any Asian people in movies or on TV subconsciously told me I couldn’t be an actor, the lack of yellow pigmentation in the writing world signaled that, no, Minna, you can’t do that, either.  Once I discovered that other Asian women had, I realized that I could do it myself as well.   And now, I will.

*Stereophonics.  I fucking hate clowns, but this song is teh awesome.  There is a song called Lady Writer by Dire Straits, which is more apropos, but it is not teh awesome.

I was reading eighth-grade books by the time I was in first grade.  I started reading the dictionary for fun.  I made it to the “I” section before I stopped.  I got teased a lot in school for being fat, Asian, and/or smart.  Books were my solace, my escape, and my friends.  I read pretty much nonstop after I got out of school until I went to bed.  I would take a book with me to whatever lame Taiwanese event my parents made me attend.  I would find a nice corner and read.  I read The Scarlet Letter when I was ten (didn’t like it) and half of War and Peace before giving up.

I am embarrassed to admit that I devoured the teenybopper romance crap that were precursors to Harlequin Romances.  Girl meets boy.  Girl likes boy.  Boy is with another girl (or just oblivious).  Girl chases boy throughout book.  In the end, girl gets boy.  Rinse, lather, repeat.  As a younger child, I read all the Nancy Drew books, the Hardy Boys, and Trixie Belden, too.  I read the choose your own ending books, and Encyclopedia Brown as well.  Yes, even back then, I liked mysteries.

In college, I started reading Asian women authors once I realized I could, and it was on after that.  I started reading anyone of color I could get my hands on–especially women.  I went to a Lutheran college (St. Olaf) in the early nineties, just as diversity was becoming a buzzword, so pickings were slim, to say the least.

On Facebook, there are many, “How many of these classics have you read?” memes.  They bug me because they are mostly lists of dead white men.  Yes, I know most of the classics are written by dead white men, but that doesn’t mean they are the only thing worth reading.  I stopped filling out those memes because I don’t need to be any more pissed than I am in general.   So, instead of getting mad, I’m going to list some of my favorite books.

Now, remember, this is not a list of the bestest books evah.  No, it’s a list of some of my favorite books.  Many are by Asian women.  Many are mysteries.  There are some graphic novels in the mix.  Almost anything by Neil Gaiman could have made the list.  With that, here we go.  Oh, and I buy most of my books from www.half.com.

1. The Coffin Tree by Wendy Law-Yone.   It’s a story about a  Burmese brother and sister who immigrate to the US after the Burmese coup.  Both brother and sister are mentally ill.  It’s one of the first Asian American books I’ve read, and it’s still one of the best.
2. The Forbidden Stitch:  An Asian American Women’s Anthology, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim.  The title says it all.  It’s a bit of this and a bit of that, and a great primer on the diversity in the Asian American world.
3. NP by Banana Yoshimoto.  I love all of Yoshimoto’s work, and this one is my favorite (followed closely by Amrita).  It’s a breezy yet disturbing portrait of forbidden love.  It’s a slim book and utterly engrossing.  Set in Japan, written in Japanese, and translated into English.

I’m really fucking tired, so I’m going to leave this short and finish it up later.

Hm.  I think I could say that these books were influential in helping me realize that I, too, could be an author.  More on that in the next post.

*Elvis Costello, bitchez.  You better recognize.

Little did I know that The Joy Luck Club would kick off the genre I like to refer to as the heavily-oprressed, intergenerational Asian women genre.  I would throw Maxine Hong Kingston’s Warrior Woman into the mix as well, but that didn’t reach nearly the lofty heights that The Joy Luck Club did.  In this genre, the characters were Fresh off the Boat (FOB) Asian.  They spoke with thick accents, lived in Chinatown or equivalent neighborhoods, stuck to their own, and worked long hours in a laundry or restaurant.  For many years after The Joy Luck Club hit its peak, any female Asian American author had to follow the standard boilerplate of working class FOB Asian women who got oppressed or beaten or abused by the men in their life.  I don’t blame the women who wrote these books; I blame America’s insistence in putting the ‘other’ in a palatable box.

My background is quite different.  My parents both came to the states (separately, they met in Tennessee) for educational purposes.  They both were in MA programs, met, fell in love, married, and moved to Minnesota so my dad could get his Ph.D. in economics.  My mom went to work fulltime as a court psychologist.  They both speak three languages fluently (Taiwanese, Chinese, English), and they were both involved in the general society.  It’s true that they had their group of Taiwanese friends, but they also interacted with general society on a regular basis through school, thorough work, and through daily living–we lived in a suburb of Minneapolis that was predominately white.  In other words, my world was far apart from Amy Tan’s world, and I resented the fact that she was considered the sole representation of the Asian American female experience.

It all came to a head when I lived in the Bay Area in 2000-2002.  I haunted the local used bookstores with a disturbing regularity, and I always checked out the Asian American fiction section.  I kept seeing stories of Asians immigrants grateful to America for all the opportunities they couldn’t find in their home countries as well as the now-ubiquitous tales of intergenerational suffering of Asian women.  I was getting more and more pissed off when I picked up a book about–what else–three generations of Asian women (grandmother, mother, and daughter) who suffer horribly throughout their lives.  I slammed the book down and exclaimed at the top of my lungs, “If I ever see another goddamn book about three generations of suffering Asian women, I’m going to fucking punch someone!”  My friend tried to hush me up, but I had had enough.  By that time, Asian American women were flavor of the month, not to mention exotic and trendy, and I was fucking sick of it.  I had been dumped countless times for not being subservient enough–by the way, for your information, most Asian American women I know are most definitely NOT shy, demure, and subservient.  Deal with it–and I was beginning to get gun-shy about dating white guys.  As I am fond of saying, I was born and raised in MN, so I am about as exotic as lutefisk.

I fucking hated it.  Up until that point, I read every Asian/Asian American female author I could get my hands on out of a misguided sense of loyalty.  After that, I was done.  If the story was about FOB, I wouldn’t read it.  If the bulk of the story focused on the abuse of women or a woman in general, I wouldn’t read it.  Broken English–nope, not for me.  I was sick of the shit, and I wanted something more from my Asian American literature, thank you very much.  Look, I wasn’t pissed off that these stories were being told.  No,  I was pissed off that they were the ONLY Asian American stories being told.  It’s part of the romanticization of Asians, indeliably reinforcing our otherness while underscoring the pathos. Think of the persisting image of Asian people–FOB, computer geeks, inscrutable, shy, demure (or, conversely, dragon lady scary), subservient, good at math, industrious, smart, violin virtuosos, etc.  Many people think of Asians (of the East persuasion) as the model minority, which sounds like it would be a good thing, but it’s still a fucking stereotype that doesn’t allow us to be real human beings.

One of the reasons I make the main characters of my stories Asian American besides being incredibly narcissistic is because I want to show the many different faces of East Asian America.  I think it’s about damn time.

P.S.  I have much to say concerning the roles available for Asian/Asian American women in television and film, but that will be another post for another day.

P.P.S.  I posted a shorter version of this entry over at Yellow Menace.  Go check it out.

First of all, I have added Yellow Menace to my blogroll to the left.  Please check it out when you have a moment because it’s a rollicking good site filled with all the fun facts about Asian pop culture your little hearts could ever desire.  You should also check it out because Musashi (with gentle prodding from Mazinga) has invited me to be a blogger on the site!   I had visited the site and perused it because both Musashi and Mazinga are really cool guys, and after Musashi made his invitation, I looked over the site much more thoroughly.

I liked it.  A lot.  In fact, I bought a book based on a recommendation from AnaKhouri, the third member of the Yellow Menace staff.  I told Musashi I would give it a go, and after I picked a name (Mazu, the sea goddess of Taiwan.  Her original name means Silent Girl, which I think is appropriate for me), he set up my account and wrote an introductory post welcoming me aboard.  Now, however, I am a bit intimidated.  I am Asian, but I don’t know much about pop culture.  Plus, I tend to be, um, outspoken.  I warned Musashi that I am not family-friendly, and he’s fine with that.  In addition, I tend to write many many words.  Most of the posts over there are much briefer than mine–except for the movie reviews.

In any event, I am excited to be embarking on this new adventure, so thank you, Musashi for extending the invite.  Thank you, Mazinga, for making Musashi read my blog!

Next up, I have a dear friend in Nantes, France who writes the fabulous food blog, Life’s A Feast, which is on my food blogroll to the left.  Jamie bestowed an award to me in the past, and she has done it again.  This time around, it’s the Joy of Reading Award.  Here are the rules:

1. Collect the book you have most handy
2. Turn to page 161
3. Find the fifth complete sentence
4. Cite the sentence on your blog
5. Pass on the award to five other bloggers

I love to read.  I taught myself to read at age four, and I spent hours every day when I was child lost in the fantasies of the written word.  I didn’t have many friends, so I found my solace in the adventures of Pippi Longstocking, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Harriet the Spy, Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and Ramona Quimby, to name a few.  I read books with male protagonists, too, but I remember more clearly the female-based books.

I started writing stories when I was seven.  I did mostly poetry until I was in college, but my love for the written word never left me.  I have stories running through my mind at all times.  One reason I like books better than movies is because I can imagine the scenes in my mind, just as they should be, rather than as some director decides they will be.

I was in a special reading class with one other student in first grade.  We read eighth-grade material with ease.  On my own, I read The Scarlet Letter in fifth grade (didn’t like it), and waded my way through half of War and Peace before I gave up on it.  I read all the Judy Blume books, including Forever and Wifey.  Anything I could get my hands on, I read.

During college, I realized that I didn’t have to read exclusively dead white men, so I broadened my horizons a bit.   Well, a whole lot.  I spent one year reading only Asian/Asian American women, which was eye-opening for me.  There was a lot of dreck in what I read, but there were some really good authors at well.  One of my favorite anthologies, The Forbidden Stitch:  An Asian American Women’s Anthology, edited by Shirly Geok-lin Lim was seminal in my belief that I could actually be a writer who had something worthwhile to read.  I read that anthology countless times, and several others like it.

I am again honored that Jamie has given me this award.  The book I have chosen is UNHOLY GHOST:  writers on depression, edited by Nell Casey.  Page 161 falls into the essay, Melancholy and the Muse, written by Ann Beattie.  Here is the fifth full sentence:  ”It is an occasion for melancholy, realizing that you might have gone a little too public, being diverted by what you construed as writerly obligations, listening to too much chatter, letting those seemingly important but ultimately very unimportant things infiltrate where once the muse had time and space to alight.”

Wow.  That’s a mouthful.  Anyway, I will have to think about to whom I will give the award, and I will let you know at a future time.

Finally.  The thing that is pissing me off.  It’s not important, but it’s still infuriating.  After weeks of saying he wouldn’t, Brett Favre has signed with the Vikings.  I’m not linking so you will either have to take my word for it or go look it up yourself.  He conveniently sat out spring training and signed in time for the season.  I fucking hate Brett Favre and his prima donna attitude.  ”Brett Favre loves the game!  He’s like a kid out there!”  If he loved the game so much, he would actually do things to improve his skills instead of just coast on his reputation.  He hasn’t been a top-tier quarterback in years, and it really fucking pisses me off that he’s still treated like royalty.

I am rooting for the Pack this year.  I am rooting for every Viking game to end with a Favre interception.  I am rooting for Favre never to make it to to the starting spot.  I cannot believe that that fucking asshole is going to be on MY team.  Well, they are not my team this year.  Thanks, Brett, for ruining the NFL season for me before it’s even begun.  Oh, and FUCK YOU.

I met Jamie on the Mudflats blog, and I got to know her better through the wonders of Facebook.  She is a kind, warm, funny woman who bakes a mean chocolate cake.  No, I’ve never tasted it, but I’ve seen pics of it, and I would eat the whole dang thing myself if I could.  I am going to meet her some day, and she is going to make a magnificent feast for us that will make her husband and sons  tremble.  She is upbeat, but also down to earth.  I quickly felt a bond to her that transcends the ether.  Go read her blog, damn it.  Read it now.

When I first started writing this blog, I didn’t really know where I was going with it.  I am a writer, and I have a ton of opinions, so what better venue than a blog?  I am mostly interested in politics, but I also have chewed quite a bit over this silly thing called life.  I am not an orderly person in life (though I am OCD in some ways), and I don’t like to be put in a box.  I decided that I wasn’ going to try to make my blog anything other than a forum in which I just spew whatever’s on my mind.  

To that end, I will talk about religion one day (or week), homophobia the next, and how much I lust over Alan Rickman on the following.  I try to blog once a day, and each entry is usually over a thousand words.  That’s about the only shape my blog takes.  I have been disheartened by the trolls who’ve commented on my blog (but since I have total control over the first comment from a person, I haven’t posted them), so an award from a woman I highly esteem is a nice balm for my soul.

Here are the rules to giving the award in turn:

1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.
2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

That’s it.  Pretty simple, right?  Well, I don’t read many blogs, so I will be researching a bit before giving out the award in turn.  Quite likely, I will not give out fifteen.  That’s ok.  

Thank you, Jamie, for the wonderful award.  It means so much, especially coming from you.