Snippets from the US of A

“America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.”

– A. Toynbee – Read the rest »

-Any of the boys home? Girls and computers, same sex sexism

In this shithole I live in at the moment (I think I have mentioned that before), there are three boys on the first floor, and two women on the second. I live in the bloody basement – the troll under their feet. The Internet connection is atrocious – I think I have mentioned that too – and it turns out that all is honky dory down, but not happening up. One of the women have never had it working properly, and as I call the manufacturer of the miserable pile of technology, she butts in.

-Can you press some buttons on my pc? This guy did once, and then it worked.
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Insomnia – nightly expedition and sneaking around on the net

I live in a shithole. I try to ignore that I live in a shithole.  My sleep pattern gone haywire, my eating habits likewise. Time does funny things, and seems to coil and loop. That is why I drove out last night, at three thirty in the morning to capture the early morning light.
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Living in misery – all for the love of a cat

What I will not do for my kitty..
Due to a million things, I now live – temporarily – in a smelly basement in the most boring town in Norway. I assure you, there’s stiff competition. A filthy kitchen upstairs, where cat is not welcome. The first thing I had to do was to scrub the stove. I am not hysterically antiseptic or dainty, but there seemed to be things living there. So, for the smelly basement – the smell sends me back to ireland; a mouldy, damp cat-pee infested mess of old sofas and wrecked furniture. Naked lightbulbs. Concrete floor. Mouldy carpet. Nice…
All because of a general aversion to cats, lack of information and communication.
I could kill to get out of here. I am pissed off. Too pissed off to take a photo of the dungheap.
I have been here less than three nights, and I grow more miserable by the minute.
And to top it off, the wireless connection is atrocious.

I alternately hate and love my cat – I live here for lack of options because I refuse to get rid of her. Clearly love won.

Bollocks.

The colour blue – the devil, the virgin and the red dyers' bribes

Today, blue is probably the most popular colour around.
We assosiate good things with it, it represents all sorts of positive things: air, sea, freshness, calm, and a few not so; feeling blue, blue monday. At least in this day and age, blue get a good deal of attention. But it was not always so-
Blue is not an old colour- it is not a paleolithic colour- our ancestors in the caves didn’t have blue. The prehistoric palette was – as mentioned elsewhere – ochre, white, black and iron oxide. Yellow-brown, chalk, ash and rust.
This was the case a few millenia later too- when we settled down and started farming – and dyeing. Until the Middle Ages, these where in fact the main colours around- and social and religious structures and symbolism buildt around them (note that the catholic church still revolves around red, white and black, with green added as a tag-on for «all the other days»).

In europe, the oldest fabrics are all dyed in shades of red. In fact, they say, in Roman times, the latin word for ‘coloured’ and ‘red’ were synonyms. Greeks and romans rarely dyed in blue, but the celts and germanic tribes did – using woad (that yellow plant you see all around temperate europe). Hence, blue was seen as primitive and barbaric.

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Lawnmowerensis

Summer at last.
Weekend at last.
Two more exams.

Beautiful weather, gorgeous peace.

Sitting in the garden reading, taking notes, it begins.
The neighbour fires up the lawnmower. This is, in fact more contagious than ebola in a chicken coop. So the neighbour on the other side thinks «oh, mow the lawn, maybe!» and he fires up his machinery. So then the landlord… and the guy across the road, and the next one up…

So when neighbour number 1 is finished with the mower – thank god!… out comes the bloody trimmer. A high-pitched whine, a teeth-grinding squealing. I brace myself, and see that I could go bonkers, and remember a high quality splatter-film I saw once. It included some deranged caracter, a blade lawnmower and about 30 000 liters of fake blood. I get pictures in my head. I see why people go apeshit on planes or turn up at work with sub machine guns. Simply one bleeding lawnmower too many. Read the rest »

The worst books ever written

Few books deserves a place on the bookshelf of shame, and I’m a little ambivalent about this – should I dignify the biggest drivel I have ever read, or is the best plan to let them die in silence? For artists and authors the worst thing is indiffrence. Hate is at least an emotion too.
But on the other hand: the world should be warned. I have no place for nazi techniques, but burning them will at least keep you warm for a bit. The only good I can see for those books. They should never have been written, never published and never read. These books are drivel, rubbish and the world would be a better place without them. So, as a service, here I present two books you can stay clear of, and consider yourself lucky and a better person for not having read them.

So- without further ado:
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The great student riots of 2008

In the spring of 2008 campuses all over the country exploded in political protest. Riots spread like wildfire, and creative students built barricades of tables, vending machines and arming themselves with molotovcoctails and general kitchenwear found on campus.

The first buildings they occupied, was the server and computer labs, and from there coordinated their actions. In Østfold, they painted the glass walls and brick buildings with slogans of politcal dissent, and set up watches with web cameras and sensors on the roof of the university college.

The leaders of the riots said to the press, via video interviews, that they will not give in, that the demands must be met, and that the educational system..

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Get out the petrol, bottles, rags and sugar, darling

Bookshops with no books. Torching is too good for them. Never mind air rage, and people going bonkers with automatics at work. Never mind that telly is a dumbing down, and that Idiocracy is one of my favourite films, for all the wrong reasons. It makes me laugh an evil I-have-always-known-people-are-idiots-laugh. Or cry.

Bookshops without books. Somebody should get shot. Somebodies head should roll.

In a corner, behind the massive display of diddle figures, pink pencils, rubber balls, key rings, balloons, wrapping paper, glittering teddy bears, and multi-coloured markers… there’s a small shelf, with a few books. It’s about the size of mine; after I removed 10 boxes and moved here. Read the rest »