So long, farewell...

Last night marked the end of Dollhouse, the latest creation from the infamous Joss Whedon. I was thirteen years old when I first was exposed to his brilliance. Buffy was my gateway drug, not just to Joss, but to the fandom world in general. It was the first show I wrote fanfic for, the first I made fanart for, the first I vidded, even the first I attended a convention for. Considering my dedication to Buffy, it was only natural that I embraced the spin-off Angel. It took me longer to give Firefly a try, but when I did it became one of my alltime favorite shows. I knew then not to doubt this man's vision. Dr. Horrible came next and I have to admit the concept of a super villain/hero musical sounded a whole world of weird, however once again it was love at first sight.

So when I heard the announcement that Joss was going to make another show, this time with Eliza Dushku in the lead (whom I've also followed the career of since she dazzled me in Buffy), I was confident it was going to be brilliant.

Dollhouse has so far been the one project of Joss that didn't take off instantly with the fans. I loved it, but many fellow Whedon fans didn't share the sentiment. I think that comes down to several factors.

* First of all Fox got in the way. Clearly they didn't learn from the Firefly days to lean back and trust Joss' vision. The pilot was scrapped and Joss was forced to take the show in a different direction. I'm happy they decided to include the original pilot on the DVD box set, because it gave the fans the chance to compare it to the pilot that actually aired. Fox's desired pilot was all fast paced action and very little mythology and character focus, which is where Joss real powers lie. The original pilot, however, it had the mythology, the character focus, it felt much, much more like Joss than the Fox approved pilot did.

* Secondly the concept behind Dollhouse is probably one of the hardest things to realize. I mean, what is the one most important thing to any show out there? That they have characters that people can connect with, and here we have a show where most of the character ensemble aren't even themselves, not only that, they don't even have the same personality from one episode to the next. Finding an angle to show that and still have us connect with the individual characters, that's probably the hardest thing to accomplish. Of course it takes more than one episode to do it.

As time went by and new episodes aired (each topping their predecessor) many who'd viewed Dollhouse as a disappointment to start with (but had continued watching despite of it) began to come around. And I was beyond thrilled when I found out Fox actually had learned a lesson from the Firefly days and renewed the show for a second season.

It came as a shock, at least to me, when Fox so quickly announced Dollhouse's cancelation, and for several reasons. First of all I got immediately afraid they were going to give Dollhouse the Tru Calling treatment (where they had renewed the series only to stop shooting six episodes into the second season, giving it a very up-in-the-air ending), but I was quickly assured that they would let the season run its course. Secondly it came as a shock because the announcement came after the airing of "Belonging", which I still think is the most powerful episode in the entire show. It was hard to understand that *this* was the time Fox chose to cancel it.

Now, at the end of the journey I am both grateful and amazed at how Joss managed work in what had to be seasons worth of revelations into the remaining episodes. He gave us a proper ending with answers and conclusions, while still keeping a few mysteries to himself. I'm very sad this has to be the end, but at the same time I am just so darn grateful for what I got and I want to give my thanks to everyone who was involved in the process.

I now can't wait to see what Joss will come up with next. All I know is that whatever it is I will watch it, and I will love it.

Rules in life

The list of rules I intend to present in this entry is currently haunting our inboxes, but I felt the message was just too good not to share here. According to it Bill Gates gave a speech for high school kids where he talked about today's youth's misguided concept of reality and how these kids because of that are set up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss..

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time..

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds... Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Obviously Mr. Gates worded his speech to specifically apply to high school students, but I think many of the points he makes applies to a much wider demographic. Our expectations when entering the working world straight from school be it high school, college or university, they hardly if ever match up to the reality we meet. The wages aren't what we imagined. Our boss demands more of us, not to mention tolerates way less bullshit than the teacher ever did. We don't have unlimited chances to correct mistakes we make, one too many and we have to look around for another job.

The general life lessons applies to all of us. The world doesn't deal in fairness, and the sooner we realize that, the better equipped we are to handle it. Sometimes bad things happens to good people and fortune is bestowed upon the undeserving. But whining and self-pity will not accomplish anything. If you are unhappy with something in your life, it is on you to do something about it, to make the change happen. It might not always be enough, but it will sure as hell take you further than sitting on your ass and doing nothing.

A teacher of mine once described the way of life the following way:
"We do something we don't enjoy [work], so that we can be able to do the things we do enjoy."

With that he was not insinuating that we don't enjoy whatever it was we chose [or was chosen for us] to do for a living, but he was talking about how we in life make compromises. Nothing comes for free. What we desire is proportional to the effort necessary to achieve it.

However, we always have to remember rule number one for the times where despite our strongest effort, things don't go our way:

Life isn't fair!

The concept of beauty

In my tender preteen years a boy in my class made up a nickname for me that would forever haunt me. It wasn't particularily clever, nor did it catch on with the rest of the class. However it made a play on the fact that I had a double-chin. I have since then been very self-concious about that and my appearance in general. So much that when I graduated the norwegian equivalent to high school I made the choice to drop my dream at the time, which was becoming an actress. I simply knew that I didn't have the looks to make it and I saw little point in putting in all that time and effort and then achieve nothing.

A year ago, almost to the day, a middle-aged woman took the stage in Glasgow, auditioning for a national talent show. A woman who, if she didn't think it herself, had probably been told again and again by others that she would never make it. Not because she didn't have what it takes in terms of talent, but because her talent wasn't wrapped in the package the world expects it to be. On that day she wowed three judges and the crowd behind them did a standing ovation. When it aired a couple of months later she became an overnight world-wide sensation. The world's eyes were opened.

It is not my intention to compare my story to that of Susan Boyle [1][2][3][4][5]. I am fairly sure I made the right choice not to pursue my acting dream. Over six years have passed since I made the decision, and I am still searching to find my true purpose in life. I don't believe acting was that purpose.

But what links me to Susan is the subject of beauty. After clicking the youtube link my friend sent me last April, and watching Susan's Glasgow audition, which moved me tremendously, I immediately showed it to a friend, who made a comment about her beauty, or lack of as it was. But is Susan actually ugly? I ask because when I look at this woman, that is honestly not what I see. I see something in her that just shines through, in her eyes, in her smile. And that makes her beautiful to me. I know it's a cliché to say that beauty comes from within, but I think there is a reason why it is a cliché. Because there's a lot of truth in that saying.

When I reached the norwegian equivalent to jr. high there was a boy in my class who was physically good looking, however his rotten personality made him look utterly revolting to me, so much that I couldn't believe there had been a point where I had considered him attractive. Whenever I look at him, even when I see pictures of him, all I see is this hideous grin on his face, his teeth gritted together while his mouth remains as open as the face muscles allow. No matter what that is what I see when I see his face.

It is the complete opposite with Susan. Like me, she has the double-chin, the grey in her hair and we both have the not-so-desired physique. But when I look at her, I see beauty. Not the conventional kind, but the kind that truly matters. It shines through her.

And when I look into the mirror, and I take off the "glasses" that only focuses on individual faults and lacks, and I look at the whole person who is staring back at me, I can even call myself beautiful. Sure there are plenty of photos of me that I wish never saw daylight, but even conventional beauties have their off days. A bad angle, some unfortunate lighting, clothes that doesn't compliment them. If we were to keep the critical "glasses" on all the time, then we would quickly realize that no one, not even the world proclaimed beauties out there will truly measure up.

Our perseption of beauty is truly distorted.

Sometimes I am just curious...

Have you ever glanced at a stranger as you pass them on the street, as they sit in front of you on the bus, stand in front of you at the check-out line... and wondered who they are, what they are thinking, what their life is like?

If you are anything like me, then these thoughts have occurred to you on many a random occasion. You won't do anything about it, but for a fleeting moment you wish you could read minds. You wonder if this is a social butterfly or a lonely soul. What do they do for a living? Does it make them happy? Have they found love yet or are they still looking? Are they looking at all? What are they most passionate about? Do they care what other people think about them? Do they sometimes wonder about complete strangers like you are now?

Today I read the absolute best written article I've read in my life. Unfortunately it is only available in norwegian, so those of you who doesn't understand it will just have to make do with my musings around it instead.

A man collapses after dismounting his bike. Witnesses run over to help, an ambulance is called, but it is too late. The only thing the man carries on him that helps identify him is the key to his apartment. According to the national register he has no living relatives. He is buried on the city's bill and no one comes to his funeral.

A journalist decides to find out who this man was, what his life was like. The people in his building didn't know him, even claimed there was no one living in that house by that name. The people he went to school with couldn't remember him.

It's a story about a mentally retarded man, who as a child was put in a special class, hidden away at a special school. He never had a job, no significant other and all that comes with, thirty odd years ago he was turned away from his own half-sister's house. He got no real help from the city and was merely stowed away in his apartment.

There is, however, a bright side to this story. Another lonely soul who lived three floors above him for several years became his friend and confidante. He accepted this man as who he was, did what he could to take care of him. Together they went on long drives in his friend's car and had even done so the day before his death. His friend had not been in his funeral, simply because he didn't know about it until afterwards, but he was present when they buried the urn.

It is not a happy ending, but it is nice to know that this person who everyone else seemed to have forgotten even existed, that he had a friend after all. Someone who knew him, who could tell his story.

From what I can tell, it seems this friendship probably started out with a random exchange of words, maybe as the two met by the mailboxes, or the doorway, or something equally random, ordinary place. And I think that's how many, many friendships out there starts out. One person says hello to a stranger they are curious about, and the stranger answers. So think about that the next time you catch yourself wondering about the strangers around you. Maybe these really are friends that you just don't know yet...