On this picture you can ironically see FBI agents demonstrating my depiction of "1930's American Gangster"-style...

He's just nailed the look. So you can understand my disapointment and somewhat dispair when he came around wearing a full purple Adidas sportswear gear during our preliminary examinations. I mean, that's just bad luck walking through the door...

I'm writing about this boy, not because I've got a picture of him you can look at (never even talked to him... would be strange to ask for a picture then, wouldn't it?!). I'm writing about this boy, because he can stir the thoughts of people. You've got lovers and haters. I think it's very fascinating when the way you dress can provoke such a variety of emotions.

I'm obviously a lover, but there are a lot of people between the scale of love-hate (and make that opinion very clear when he walks by). A few weeks ago I'd made a similar scale regarding music. Realizing, when making this scale of music, that the ultimate form to love (Stalkers) is equal to the ultimate form of hate (Love to hate). Hereby being the overall feeling of being better because you truely love/hate something. As my teacher said: "There's nothing as bonding as true hate", or love for that matter. By the way, the teacher said this regarding the Spanish Inquisition... so you know it's a form that has been practiced for many years. 

The Mostly Incomplete Scale of Love-Hate... If you can think of something that's missing, don't hesitate to comment.

Everyone has an opinion about something that's underpinned by emotion. It's almost art when you can turn those feelings into a good opinion. Good obviously being a subjective concept. Is something good when we both agree upon it? Or when it's my (or in your case your) opinion? Because it's mine and on the scale of 1-10 of opinions that I care about, mine is (or ought to be) the most important one.

I once had a friend who told me that she liked the music of Justin Bieber. When telling me this rather normal opinion, she explicity asked me to tell no one about it. Because her other friends thought he was stupid and they wouldn't hang out with her anymore if she was (openly) a Justin Bieber fan. Me, not being a Justin Bieber fan, was quite shocked about this. First thing that ran through my mind was naturally: Well if they won't hang out with you because you're a fan of something they don't like, they aren't really being good friends, are they? The second thing I thought about was how something can include or exclude you at the same time. In her case: Include - Justin Bieber fanbase/Exclude - Friends. You're sort of forced to make compensations. Again in her case being silence about her being a Justin Bieber fan.

When I was younger I was a total full on Tokio Hotel fan. To express my fan-feelings, my dad covered the side thingy before the wheels to protect your clothes from splatter of my bike (technical term) with the Tokio Hotel logo (oh yes, we had a logo). On the other side he wrote Tokio Hotel. I felt über cool and fan like, but when I came back to school they didn't liked it as much as I did. I've always been bullied about my appearance (High school uniform: black skinny jeans, Tokio Hotel tshirt, big boots, red lipstick and hair before my eyes), but now this bike was apparantly the last drop of my "rebellious" behaviour. My bike became an extansion of me and had to withstand some sort of distruction ritual. My bike had to deal with a lot. But when they began spitting on it, I was downright furious. I mean, it's such a deeming and very gross thing to do. Being excluded by this group of people, I tried to interact with them in the only way I thought was possible: I wrote to a popular teenmagazine that everybody read and complained about the spitting. I wrote a sort of plea about how we all ought to live with eachother and like whatever we want. My dad had put some hard work into creating the ultimate bike for me. I won't spit on your bike if you're fan of something I don't like, it's a disturbing thing to do!  And then, after all my words of love and frustration I wrote: P.s. could you print a picture of Tokio Hotel beside this... very smooth. And then, after it got published (it got published, yay) the spitting stopped. May this be due to the medium of a teenmagazine or the growth of some braincells, no one will know.

So now my bike was included and I was still excluded... but that was fine, I guess.

Love,

Dominique