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Monday, February 25, 2019
Once in a while the audience reaction to an event in the film is memorable.
So it was when I went to see Rooney Mara in the  “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Lisbeth Salander, an older-teenaged ward of court, is raped by her Court-appointed guardian, the man who dispenses her money.
She knows that some sex act will be required of her anytime she wants money.

She rings him up in his apartment.
He is delighted, knowing now that she has accepted her fate.
He opens the door and lets her in, closing the door behind him.
The audience is tense, waiting some manner of mayhem.
As she turns to face him, he smiles.
Suddenly her hand rushes to his neck and tasers him, he collapsing to the floor.

A universal roar of approval from the audience was the great participatory moment.
He was her prisoner.

In the movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the moment of Lisbeth Salander’s revenge for her rape was a memorable film-goers’ event.

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Tagging Today
Monday, February 25, 2019

My 319th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.

Time is 12.01am.
On Monday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 34* with a feels-like temperature of 21.*
A cloudy day with sunny breaks.



Dinner is Roast Chicken Soup.

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Tick Tock
319 posts to date.
Today we’re at the 6.38% mark of my commitment,
the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.

The 5,000-posts commitment will take 13.69 years, taking me to a new phase of my life.
We will see thirteen “Winter-Spring Shoulder Season Calendar, Feb 14 to April 7,” before that happens.
But it will.

The winter-spring shoulder calendar features a panoply of weather conditions, from stormy winter to lovely spring, the latter somewhat rare.

But not the cold, rare.
In fact, we’re in it again.
For a couple of days.
Then back into the 30s and 40s.

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Question of the Day
What is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

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Elephant jokes to tell at a bar:
What time is it when a elephant sits on a fence?

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Love your notes.
Contact me at existentialautotrip@hotmail.com

Jim Pasto added this piece of camaraderie to the weight post:

I also can’t drop those pounds too, or keep them off for long when I do. I just love to eat.

Your friend,

Jim

Web Meister Responds: Amen to that, my friend.

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Answer to the Question of the Day
What is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (original title: Men Who Hate Women) is a psychological thriller novel by Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson (1954–2004), which was published posthumously in 2005 to become an international bestseller.
It is the first book of the Millennium series.

In December 2002, Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of the Swedish political magazine Millennium, loses a libel case involving allegations about billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. Blomkvist is sentenced to three months (deferred) in prison, and ordered to pay hefty damages and costs.

Soon afterwards, he is invited to meet Henrik Vanger, the retired CEO of the Vanger Corporation, unaware that Vanger has checked into his personal and professional history; the investigation of Blomkvist's circumstances has been carried out by Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant but deeply troubled researcher and computer hacker.

Vanger promises to provide Blomkvist with evidence against Wennerström in return for discovering what happened to Vanger's grandniece, Harriet, who disappeared in 1966 during a family gathering at the Vanger estate on Hedeby Island, when the island was temporarily cut off from the mainland by a traffic accident on the bridge.

Blomkvist moves to the island and begins to research the Vanger family history and Harriet's disappearance.
As he does so, he meets most of the remaining Vanger clan, including Harriet's brother Martin, current CEO of the company; Isabella, Martin and Harriet's mother; and Cecilia, a headmistress who was Harriet's younger aunt and friend.

Meanwhile, Salander's legal guardian Holger Palmgrem suffers a stroke, and is replaced by Nils Bjurman, who uses his position to extort sexual favors from her and eventually rapes her.
After using a hidden camera to record her assault, Salander takes her revenge, torturing Bjurman and threatening to ruin him unless he gives her full control of her life and finances.
She then uses a tattoo machine to brand him as a rapist.

On Hedeby Island, Blomkvist pursues new evidence in Harriet's disappearance, including photographs showing Harriet's discomfort at the sight of a young man.
He also discovers a set of names and numbers believed to be old telephone numbers in Harriet's journal; however, his daughter Pernilla, passing through on the way to Bible camp, identifies them as passages from the Book of Leviticus, which describe rules about violent punishment of women.
Blomkvist correlates one of them with the grotesque murder of a Vanger Corporation secretary in 1949, and realizes that he may be on the trail of a serial killer.
Vanger's lawyer suggests Salander as a research assistant.

Blomkvist realizes that Salander hacked into his computer for the initial report, and confronts her to ask her to help with the investigation, to which she agrees.
The two eventually become casual lovers.
However, they realize they are being threatened when a local cat is left dismembered on their porch, and Blomkvist is shot at from a distance during an afternoon jog.

Meanwhile, they uncover the remaining four murders corresponding to what was described in Harriet's journal, as well as several more that fit the profile.
Moreover, most of the murders occurred in locations where the Vanger Corporation did business.
They are initially suspicious that the murderer was Gottfried Vanger, Martin and Harriet's deceased father, but they find out that he died prior to the last victim's death.

While Salander continues to hunt through Vanger Corporation archives, Blomkvist manages to identify the man in the photograph: her brother Martin.
However, before he can do anything, Martin takes Blomkvist prisoner, revealing that Gottfried "initiated" him into the ritual rape and murder of women before his own death, and implies that Gottfried sexually abused both him and Harriet.
Martin admits to murdering dozens of women but denies killing his sister.

He attempts to murder Blomkvist, but Salander—who had discovered the connections independently—arrives and attacks Martin.
Martin flees by car, pursued by Salander, and commits suicide by purposely colliding with an oncoming truck.

Believing that Cecilia's sister Anita, who now lives in London, is the only relative who might know something about Harriet's fate, Blomkvist and Salander meet her and learn that Harriet is still alive and living under Anita's name in Australia.

When Blomkvist flies there to meet her, Harriet tells him the truth about her disappearance: her father and brother had repeatedly raped her, until she killed her father in self-defense.
Martin was sent away to preparatory school, but he returned the day of her disappearance.
Harriet realized she needed to escape, so she found a place to hide during the traffic accident, and Anita smuggled her to the mainland the next morning.
Blomkvist persuades Harriet to return to Sweden, where she reunites with Henrik.
Blomkvist then accompanies Salander to her mother's funeral.

Back in Sweden, Blomkvist learns that the evidence against Wennerström that Vanger promised him is useless.
However, Salander hacks Wennerström's computer and discovered that his crimes go far beyond what Blomkvist documented.

Using her evidence, Blomkvist prints an exposé and book which ruin Wennerström and catapult Millennium to national prominence.
Salander, using her hacking skills, succeeds in stealing some 2.6 billion kr (about $260 million USD) from Wennerström's secret bank account.

Blomkvist and Salander spend Christmas together in his holiday retreat. Shortly after, she goes to Blomkvist's home, intending to declare her love for him, but leaves when she sees him with his long-time lover and business partner Erika Berger.

As a postscript, Salander continues to monitor Wennerström and after six months, anonymously informs a lawyer in Miami of his whereabouts.
Four days later the body of Wennerström is found in Marbella, Spain, shot three times in the head.

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Good Morning on this Monday, the 25th day of February.
We talked about memorable film audience reactions, specifically in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
And about the weather and Roast Chicken Soup. MMmmM!
Jim Pasto weighed in, so to speak and we heard another elephant joke. They just keep coming.
Finally we talked about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
And now? Now gotta go.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Love

Dom

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