Painting the Roses Red

I'm not actually painting anything, but as I sat staring at the blank blog page, it's what came to me. I love the old (animated) version of Alice in Wonderland so much that I never watched the new one. Johnny Depp is good, but there are some movies that (in my opinion) don't need to be remade, and he's been in two of them (the other being Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Each was called something else (I think), but they were the same ideas. Could anyone be a better Wonka than Gene Wilder? I don't think so. That movie is absolutely magical, as much so now as when I saw it in the theater when I was about twelve. For the longest time, I thought that someday I would see an elevator that would pop out of the top of a building and float gently over the city; now that seems more scary than cool, but when I was a teenager, it seemed amazing.

Maybe I'm thinking of the title song because it reminds me of the Queen of Hearts, who was at least a bit of a bitch. Today I stood up for myself in what could have been perceived as bitchy fashion. I was actually very nice, but I negotiated well and in the end I think all involved were satisfied. It's a shame that women who stand up for themselves are often seen as being bitchy. Females are trained from the time we are little girls to be "good" and "quiet" and "ladylike", all attributes that don't encourage good negotiating, or even assertiveness, skills. I try to help young women stand up for themselves, to give them a different message, but as I told a friend earlier today, each of us has someone with whom that's more difficult than with others. I'm not sure that makes sense (my head is finally mostly clear after my bout of flu, but not fully) but I'm already bored with the topic, at least for the moment. And it seems familiar to type, so I've probably written about it ad nauseum on previous occasions. So I will stop for now and bid you a fine evening -- or morning, or midday, or whatever time of day it is where you are.