Here's how I ended up a story artist for Tim Burton

First off, please, meet my family: a transplant surgeon in the foreground (guess who ;-)...

Gosh, why do people confide in me so much?? I guess that this transplant surgeon was no exception...

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Secondly, when I was a student, I conducted some academic research on German literature. That included intensive research on German romantic writers: various death freaks like Novalis, for example, who used to write night after night to his... dead fiancée (Hymn to the Night); some beauty freaks, also, ready to die for beauty (whereas I'd rather live up to it), like Thomas Mann ("Death in Venice"), exploring the desire to deny the reality of death in "The Magic Mountain", and being quite thorough about those desires... Etc. Etc.

Third, in my family on my mother's side, we tend to see ghosts... I mean... not the ghost of people we know or have known, or the ghost of a person somebody we know used to know... No, that'd be too easy... Those ghosts we get to see are total strangers, and the best way to get rid of those "visions" is to enquire about the aforesaid ghosts... 'cause you see, if I can see them, well, that means that they must've got some kind of a mission for me... Both the transplant surgeon in my family and I are death freaks... but of a different kind... If you ask that surgeon in my family: "What are you doing for a living?", I'm afraid the honest answer's gonna sound like: "I need some vital organs as sure as vampires need blood...", whereas, as far as I'm concerned, I happen to see ghosts of people who got robbed of their vital organs (or blood, for that matter) and my wild guess is that they are not too happy about it... Yeah, yeah, I know... Just another family rant... At least, my little indiscretions allow you to get both sides of the story. I told that surgeon: "Don't worry! My lips are sealed. Mom's the word." But remember? I told you that on my mother's side, we tend to see ghosts, so...

It's not always easy to determine degrees of family relationship (who was your great-grandmother in the third degree? Can you answer that one in two shakes of a lamb's tail?), let alone sort a ghost's life (and death) out! And no, my name is not Victor, or Victoria... but I've started wondering if I could possibly have met with some distant cousin of our dear "Corpse Bride"... Dear Lord! Things are not easy! Try being in my shoes for a couple of secs.You've got the family of the living and the family of the dead... they don't get along... and you're meddling... Who's talking about bending over backwards now? See? Things are pretty much like in that "Anger Management" TV show, plus: add some kind of meddling psychic (medium) in the picture (that'd be me), and you'll easily understand that before you get to this...

... you have to go aaall the way through this first... and second... and third... etc.

Of course I've read quite a lot of stuff regarding this "brain death" scientific polemic... White papers and stuff... Are "brain dead" organ donors really dead? How can you get living organs from dead people?, etc.

'cause one of the ghosts I see, well, I suspect he must have been a dead organ donor at some point in his life... death... life... ooops, sorry, this is confusing...

Anyway, let's wrap things up, shan't we? How I ended up a story artist for Tim Burton? How difficult is that? Well, lemme tell you one thing for sure: it's a no-brainer!

Pic. 1: http://nouvellesvagues.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/1181
Pic. 2: http://copycatty.deviantart.com/art/The-Corpse-Bride-336296207
Pic. 3: http://www.halloweenmoviesontv.com/halloween-movies-a-to-z/tim-burtons-corpse-bride-2005