I have ordered a really nice sexy red corset from the internet. I had hoped that it would arrive on Friday morning since I ordered it last Tuesday and I eagerly looked forward to trying it on and seeing where I would need to make adjustments...I expected too much of course! Our wonderful postal service gave me just two small letters and both of them were business and not a sniff of perfume to be inhaled anywhere.
Next Friday morning we have Guggenheim house again and this time she is the photographer and I'm going to be one of the models for Hitomi - I knew she had taste. I begged and begged for a chance in that beautiful bridal gown (ok I asked about seven or eight times and made big puppy-dog eyes at her) and finally my love, arguably the most talented photographer in the world, said 'yes!' I danced in merriment!
We have to start early and be finished with any equipment's, props and other articles all removed by 1:30pm because that is the time the 3:00pm bookings need to come in and begin to organize their afternoon event.
When we get costumes in, either from net shopping or by delivery from some of the local suppliers, I love to try them on, who wouldn't? There is an almost indescribable pleasant feeling when you wear new clothes. The items I talk about now belong to the studio but it doesn't really matter - these are still assets I can think of as mine if just for a moment and just to pose for Hitomi.
I am posting this Monday morning. The Angels have just gone to school and I'm sat at my desk writing this...
Actually I'd just written "Nia will be wearing this" and I looked for the link to connect it to and paused, I took a sip of my tea and almost spilled it!
My phone was set to loud and every time I get an email it alerts me with a loud audible beep!
"BEEP", it yelled at me just as my cup rested on my lips. It picked the most inopportune time to blazon the announcement. What I need is something a little gentler like the old AOL bowser used to have when a voice simply declared, "You have mail!" Although I think we could make it more palatable with a sexy British accented girl. Anything more natural sounding would be infinitely better than that most dreadful 'beep!'
The beep must be one of the scariest of all artificial sounds that I can imagine. My phones beep and my computers do, the microwave does and even trucks reversing into small roads outside beep at me. It's not a natural sound like a drum or thunder or the sea crashing against the shore. It's not even like the sound of human voices. It's a cheap electronically produced square-wave thrown at an equally cheap (and mass produced) piezoelectric speaker.
It didn't take the dropping of the silver platter like the crash of cymbals behind me to make me jump a half meter into the air, it just took a mail alert beep on my blackberry! My iphone still has the Irene Adler ring-tone as my mail alert.
The girl who played with fire.
I finally finished my book, the girl who played with fire by Stieg Larsson and I found the novel gripping. The detail, the intensity and the startling revelations as they are slowly uncovered about the amazing Lisbeth Salander is gripping from start to finish. In the first book, tattoo, it merely drops hints and indeed demonstrates that she is a computer genius, a fantastic researcher but the product of a very disturbed childhood that has left her socially inept.In this second book, the girl who played with fire, she is accused of murdering three people: the lawyer assigned to be her guardian by the government and two journalists who were working on a story and book for Mikael Blomkvist's magazine, Millennium, about the importing of Eastern European girls for prostitution purposes. At first, it seems obvious to almost everyone that she is guilty. The newspaper stories about her life make her sound like a psychopath and there is the circumstantial evidence of her fingerprints on the murder weapon found at one of the crime scenes. She does not seem to have any friends other than Blomkvist and she keeps him at a distance. Then it gets really complicated as the past and the truth is slowly uncovered and we meet a brutal blond giant named Niederman, who is impervious to pain, a biker gang and a seemingly ghost-like and untouchable criminal named Zala, who has more than one secret from his past catching up with him. Lisbeth does not have many friends at all but the ones she does have like Armanskij, her ex-employer, Palmgren, her previous guardian until he suffered a debilitating stroke, Blomqvist, Miriam Wu, her girlfriend and the pro boxer, Paolo Roberto, are all very loyal, unusual, and resourceful.
Satisfied with an excellent and enthralling book, I decided to watch the movie (on the internet - Swedish Language with English sub-titles). I found out one thing straight away, the movie shows some important scenes as it rushes to get the 569 book pages of the novel and cram it into just over two hours of movie time. Some dialog in the movie was exact and quoted lines from the book but so much of it is left out. I guess if you don't read the book you can consider the movie a very brief synopsis and 'a skimming over' of the beautifully rich intrigue within the pages. It makes me want to go back and actually read the girl with the dragon tattoo to become engrossed in all the detail that the movies (both Hollywood and Swedish versions) have probably omitted.
There are scene changes that I find a little of a let-down especially for some missing sub plots but the scene involving Lisbeth coming out of her ex guardians summer cabin and meeting Lundin and Sonny Nieminen, two motorcycle gang-members in the employ of the blond giant is fairly accurate:
From the book:
Lundin did not believe his eyes when he saw Lisbeth Salander in the driveway in front of Bjurman’s summer cabin. It was a bonus that would blow the giant’s fucking mind. He was sure it was her, although she looked different. Was that a wig? She was just standing there, waiting for them. They rode up and parked six feet away on each side of her. When they switched off their motors it was utterly silent in the woods. Lundin didn’t quite know what to say. At last he managed to speak. “Well, how about that? We’ve been looking for you for a while, Salander. Sonny, meet Fröken Salander.” He smiled. Salander regarded Lundin with expressionless eyes. She noticed that he still had a bright red, newly healed welt on his cheek and jaw where she had cut him with her keys. She raised her eyes and looked at the treetops behind him. Then she lowered them again. Her eyes were disconcertingly coal black. “I’ve had a fucking miserable week and I’m in a fucking bad mood,” she said. “You know what the worst thing is? Every time I turn around there’s some fucking pile of shit with a beer belly in my way acting tough. Now I’d like to leave. So move your ass.” Lundin’s mouth was hanging open. He thought he had heard wrong. Then he started laughing involuntarily. The situation was ridiculous. There stood a skinny girl who could fit into his breast pocket getting cheeky with two fully grown men with leather vests that showed they belonged to Svavelsjö MC, which meant they were the most dangerous of bikers and would soon be members of Hell’s Angels. They could tear her apart and stuff her in their saddlebags.
Even if the girl was as nutty as a fruitcake—which she obviously was, according to the newspapers and what he had just seen of her here—their emblem still ought to command respect. And she didn’t show the smallest sign of that. This sort of behaviour could not be tolerated, no matter how ridiculous the situation. He glanced at Nieminen. “I think the dyke needs some cock, Sonny,” he said, climbing off the Harley and setting his kickstand. He took two slow steps towards Salander and looked down at her. She did not shift an inch. Lundin shook his head and sighed. Then he lashed out a backhand with the same considerable power with which he had struck Blomkvist on Lundagatan. He met nothing but thin air. At the instant his hand should have hit her face, she took one step back and stood there just out of his reach. Nieminen was leaning on the handlebars of his Harley and watching his fellow club member with amusement. Lundin was red in the face and took another couple of swings at her. She backed up again. Lundin swung faster.
Salander stopped abruptly and emptied half the contents of a Mace canister in his face. His eyes burned like fire. The toe of her boot shot up with full force and was transformed into kinetic energy in his crotch with a pressure of about 1,700 pounds per square inch. Lundin dropped gasping to his knees and stayed there at a more comfortable height for Salander. She kicked him in the face, deliberately, as if she were taking a penalty in soccer. There was an ugly crunching sound before Lundin toppled over like a sack of potatoes. It took a few seconds for Nieminen to realize that something unbelievable had happened before his eyes. He tried to set the kickstand of his Harley, missed, and had to look down. Then he decided to play it safe and started groping for the pistol he had in his vest’s inside pocket. As he was pulling down the zipper he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. When he looked up he saw Salander coming at him like a cannonball. She jumped with both feet and kicked him full force in the hip, which didn’t injure him but was hard enough to knock over both him and his motorcycle. He narrowly missed having his leg pinned under the bike and stumbled a few paces backwards before he regained his balance. When he had her in view again he saw her arm move, and a stone as big as his fist flew through the air. He ducked and it missed his head by about an inch. He finally got out his pistol and tried to flick off the safety, but when he looked up again Salander was upon him. He saw evil in her eyes and felt for the first time a shocked terror.
“Goodnight,” Salander said. She shoved the Taser into his crotch and fired off 50,000 volts, holding the electrodes against him for at least twenty seconds. Nieminen was transformed into a vegetable. Salander heard a noise behind her and spun around to see Lundin laboriously getting to his knees. She looked at him with raised eyebrows. He was fumbling blindly through the burning fog of the Mace. “I’m going to kill you!” he roared. He was groping around, trying to locate Salander. She watched him circumspectly. Then he said: “Fucking whore.” Salander bent down and picked up Nieminen’s pistol, noticing that it was a Polish P-83 Wanad. She opened the magazine and checked that it was loaded with the correct 9 mm Makarov. She cocked it. She stepped over Nieminen and went across to Lundin, took aim with both hands, and shot him in the foot. He shrieked in shock and collapsed again. She wondered if she should bother asking about the identity of the hulk she had seen him with at Blomberg’s Café. According to Sandström, the man had murdered someone in a warehouse with Lundin’s help. Hmm. She should have waited to fire the pistol until she had asked her questions.
Lundin did not seem to be in any condition now to carry on a lucid conversation, and there was the possibility that someone had heard the shot. So she ought to leave the area right away. She could always find Lundin at some later date and ask him the question under less stressful circumstances. She secured the weapon’s safety, zipped it into her jacket pocket, and picked up her backpack. She had gone about ten yards down the road when she stopped and turned around. She walked back slowly and studied Lundin’s motorcycle. “Harley-Davidson,” she said. “Sweet.”At this point in the story, Lisbeth had not met the blond giant although she had seen him once. She had met Lundin once before when he had tried to kidnap her outside her old apartment. They’d fought briefly and she had scratched his face with her keys before dropping them and running off. Blomqvist had seen the fight from the distance and had sprinted across to help but he was too late and by the time he caught up with Lundin, the biker flattened him with one frustrated back-handed slap!
You can tell that I do so love these stories so far, huh?
If you have an e-book reader on your computer, such as 'Calibre' or 'mobi-pocket reader' and you have installed a bit torrent program then you could easily find and get the book straight to your computer for evaluation purposes - please do support the Larsson estate by purchasing copies of either the e-book or the printed versions. Once you download the compressed files, you simply need to extract them using a utility such as 'win-zip', 'win-rar' or the free 'J-zip' program.
From the movie:
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