14 Swatches!

Jinx is over! ^_^ I would like to add the picture of my new Swatch, but as we say in Hungary the picture addic application "beadta az unalmast" (dished out the boring). Namely, it got fucked up. More jinx? Impossible, I have my 14th Swatch and so it is impossible that I've be jinxed. Oh! There you go! That's my new Swatch! I told you I wasn't Jinxed anymore! This is just working slowly. Anyway, my 14th is sleek, stylish and just perfect for June, that critical month where only black and perfect black is acceptable. My third skin. Leather to it. I can't tell you how proud I am. It's a perfect jinx-breaking Swatch. Naturally, the Swatch the Club members only watch would have been better for Jinx breaking, but then I guess I can have that watch for another magic number. Anyway, I've reached 14 Swatches.

When I bought my first Swatch, a black Swatch, the guy who sold it to me told me of one of the biggest collectors he knew, here in the country, who owned 20 Swatches. That number has become magical in my head. It doesn't seem that much, specially for a collector. 500 would be more like it, but since that was the first number I heard of relating to collecting these amazing, iconic watches, it has stuck to me as the floor number I shall reach in order to become a certified collector. Is that to be part of my life? A Swatch collector. Well, Swatch is not necesarily a way of life, but it's certainly a style marker. How could a watch become a "way of life"? A job can, a passion -- oh, I'm getting tangled, and it's not due to the Smirnoff Ice I'm drinking. What becomes a way of life? Style is not a way of life, but a way of life has an implied style. Is there more than one way of life or there's only true way of life and millions and billions of fake ways of life laid down for those not strong enough to be faithful to themselves. How many people get derailed?

Swatch is style and is part of a way of life if you can give it a meaning within the frame of your life. Otherwise it's just a watch, just like an MNG dress can become just a dress for someone who gives no meaning to it, or a Benetton polo just a polo. It's not the brand, and that's something a lot of people don't get, it's the meaning of it.

Meaning, meaning, meaning. That's what makes the difference.

Yesterday I had a few things to do, and none of them had to do with my job. I'm happy I'm breaking above it and stopped squeezing myself for results for a company that would never get anywhere as long as it sports those same stupid assholes it does in the decision making positions. So I went on with my "job free" plans and gave myself... to myself. Ran some errands, ended my jinx, talked for hours with this salesgirl from Swatch about the most fabulous watches ever. Imagine my surprise, my Snow Maiden watch has not arrived here, yet I have it. Oh, I'm the only one here with my amazing snowflake Swatch! I then went for a movie. I saw Vantage Point. I promised a friend a little review, which I have been planning to put up since yesterday, so here it comes.

Vantage Point

Directed by Pete Travis

The cast includes actors like Forest Whitaker, Dennis Quaid and William Hurt. The movie is basically about a terrorist attack against the President of the United States, played by William Hurt. In a very interesting way, the movie is built up from different points of view that, at first stick to different people: Media, the body guards, the president, an American Tourist, but then the movie kind of chips away and starts a new point of view into which many others flow in order to finish telling a suficiently cohesive story in a given amount of time. It did started great, and the delivering proposal was quite interesting, but as it went over and over, the threads of the plot frayed and broke into some action mass. When the ideas and the purpose fail, throw in a violent car chase to pump it up and save the day. Death and angsty solutions to tie up "minor loose ends" wrapped up the finishing of the story, and it was sad because there was so much more that could have been acomplished. Important stuff was left hanging, and in a way I understand why, since it could have been a very, very delicate situation to handle out in the open.

There was something, though, that caught my attention. First, there was the cut speech of the journalist, who out in the open said that America was not the hero in the terrorist situation. It was a brushing upon a topic that runs around the world, from mouth ot mouth like an underground whisper, but which everybody hears. As there was this anti-terrorist meeting prepared, there was outside a manifestation, and the journalist said "there are many stories here to be told", or something on the line, and her boss told her that it was not her place to go about them. Uncomfortable truths that the media covered up. A glimpse to the news and what we all know: they don't broadcast the facts, "the truth", they cover it up. There's no coverage about what's really going on. That make-believe news company made what we all know real broadcasting news enterprises do: they filter the facts so we get only that porting that can be fitted into a suitable, manageable truth.

For those who understand Spanish, there's something else that caught me hard in the movie. At the begining it's very hard to make it out, but the protesting crowd screams "Estados Unidos es el problema, no la solución." (The US is the problem, not the solution.) To put something like that in a movie... it takes balls.

The movie itself is poor, though it has a few hotties worthy of a look, yet I recommend people to go watch it and take something from it to yourselves. There are plenty of interesting messages hidden in there.

The point of view shifting gets tiresome, so you kinda understand why it didn't go up to eight, but the idea was cool.