Category: Friends

Vote Mateusz!

Tobias Hermansson is an evil man that enjoys clubbing seals, tearing wings off of flies, and doesn’t relent in his insistance that I look like Pedro. He used the power of Photoshop to make his case more convincing:

Speaking of voting, I’d urge all of you eligible to vote in the upcoming Swedish EU parliament election to support the Pirate Party. For real, if you don’t vote for them, you probably hate democracy. And puppies. What the fuck do you have against puppies you puppy–hating democracy–hater‽

Seriously though: “If voting changed anything they’d make it illegal” is more or less correct, but you could vote PP for shits and giggles if for no other reason. If you actually believe representative democracy is a good idea (oh, aren’t you adorable!) you ought to vote Pirate Party because every other party, left to right, doesn’t understand how the laws we’re passing on a national as well as international level are undermining every citizens right to privacy, and by extension all the provision that are in place that try to ensure a transparent democratic process and private communication and debate.

Who watchers the watchers, and so on. Go vote, you lazy bum. Piss off a few retarded politicians.

End of show, summery.

The course that I’ve been teaching at Chalmers is over. The fifth year students are finishing their masters projects and there’s some running around and mild panic regarding the final exabition, but for all intents and purposes the course itself is over.

It’s tempting to attempt a summery of things that were experienced and lessons learned, but I refrain from doing one giant monster post on the subject and instead maybe shower you with the golden sparks of detail.

For example: Architect Carl-Johan can be seen below, pointing in the general direction of something visionary and awesome. He joined me and Ana two weeks ago in doing the final critique of the projects. He’s brother of the artist formely known as Andreas-in-Gothenburg, with whom he shares laughter and a mischievous wink.

Jonas and the stars.

Jonas, the most charming man who ever rode a fixie, visited with us the past couple of days. We spend a couple of days sightseeing Gothenburg and a couple of nights sightseeing bars. As it turns out I don’t really know this city as well as I ought to considering the six years I’ve done here. It’s odd what you find out when you’re a tourist in your own city. For example: It is very difficult to find a totally dark place where you can observe the stars, even if you go out of the city.

As a kid I remember staring up at the night sky, feeling both awe at the vastness of the universe and an aching sense of unfairness that I might not get to go out into space and travel between stars. The books I’d read and the movies I’d seen had made the sensation of space exploration so vivid in my mind that I could almost sense the hum of engines under my feet and taste the stale, reconditioned air.

The sense of loss was not about privilege lost; It wasn’t parents or class or education that was holding me back, but rather our limited technological development, and as such this acts as a great equaliser: We have but to look up to recognise the inconsequence of our own wishes – or least some of them – and there’s something liberating about it. It might remind us of the limits of human experience, but just as death is malleable, these limits are material and not absolute.

The emotion I experience looking at the stars is sadness at not getting to go, but also a brazen defiance, a reassurance: If only I could live long enough, it would have been me.

Guarding Enrico Pallazzo with my bare fists.

Given that I’m both handsome and easily amused, I was handed guard duty at the housewarming party for Hey, it’s Enrico Pallazzo on Saturday. As if by total coincidence that day marked the end of my one month sobriety; It goes without saying that beer improves the quality of life when you’re standing in freezing weather, trying to be friendly to people. What also helps is having a faux earpiece in one ear, and making an occasional pretense at receiving info from inside the party. Not many dared to call me on it, and those who did thought it was fun.

It was interesting to note the ten metre walk of dignity that people felt compelled to put on as soon as I was spotted. The avoidance of eye contact, the miniscule nod of the head so as to indicate friendliness, or alternatively the 1000 yard stare past me so that sheer determination would see them through. Gods know we’ve all been there, and I’m happy to say that a minimal amount of power was abused by me.

Carding 19-year olds was a bit odd, but even they seemed cheerful. I guess it’s because they’ve just barely reached legal age and still revel in being able to show a legit ID and not their older brothers bus pass. Because the housewarming was semi-private, the cost of getting in varied depending on who knew whom and what mood that person was in; The cover charge jumped from “voluntary” to 100 then down to 20, 50 and settled on 40-ish. The age-limit yo-yoed as did the rules of “this drunk or less to get in.” In the end only one guy was turned away; His indignant snarl diminished by his more convincing inability to speak in full sentences.

Hey, it’s Enrico Pallazzo is an ensemble of folks who got bored working for advertising agencies and started up something that nestles between advertisement and art. Adart? Regardless of their ambition, the space they are renting is beyond awesome. It’s beawesome.

Anna and Jan have commandeered a tiled room – imagine a large shower at a mental asylum, refurbished with a wooden floor – and there’s a big pillared hall which can be used for workshops, exhibitions or (like the other day) for parties. A grand space is an excellent catalyst for action; It’s going to be fun to see what comes off it.

“Earth Hour” was celebrated by turning off all the lights for half an hour, issuing glowsticks and lighting candles. Any doubt as to the symbolism of the event was dispelled by the unabated techno. Imagine that you’re Earth and one of the kids kicking you in the face has decided not to wear steel tipped shoes out of consideration for your well-being, but is still aiming for the teeth. Even so, there was an accoustic guitar, which I guess counts as a token of caring and a concession to uplugged entertainment.

Re-writing. Development. Skiing + ambitions.

Congratulations to Tobias who finished the cross country competition Vasaloppet in under nine hours. That’s 90 kilometers (56 miles) on skis. And it was done on a dare, so congratulations on being manly about it.

I’m updating the old blog posts to fit in with the 640 pixel style I’m sporting now, and find myself being embarrassed about some of the stuff I wrote. Even more full of myself than I am now, pretentious and whiny. Can’t believe people wanted to hang out with me – I would have been annoyed with me. And I never capitalise any letters! What’s up with that? Some of the old links are dead, but I’m not going to update those for fear of disturbing the fossil record.

It occured to me that I should improve upon myself more actively. Or if not improve per se, then at least try something else on for a while. Not drinking for a month? Draw for half an hour each day? Publish an hour-by-hour record of my day every evening, so as to find out where all those hours disappear?

Like: 13:00-14:00 – Checked email five times, read about mosquitos then malaria then Egypt then pyramids then about DIY stone masonry. If I linked to anything interesting I find, would you like it or does it sound shit? For me it would be sort of a self-exploration type of thing; I don’t use the time of day properly and would like to get more out of it. I go for runs and prepare the school work that me and Ana are doing at Chalmers, but that’s about it. I’m not really being an active agent of my own destiny and could use the extra push of being accountable.

Fuck it, I’m going to try the non-drinking thing. As of Saturday 28th February I’m not drinking booze for a month. I managed to go to a bar and drink nothing but the non-alcoholic beer for an evening. It’s odd how you look at others when when you’re sober and they are not. It goes a long way to explain why straight edge people and Christians can be such obnoxious twats – seeing people getting sloshed and blurry can get tiresome, I imagine.

To whomever. According to Olle

I don’t know what Olle has against people who don’t speak Swedish, but he contributed to the whomever project with a short biography in Swedish. The image is in the mail. Thank you Sir:

Bilden är tagen 1996 och publicerades i nöjesbilagan till Turku sanomat. Mannen på bilden uppgav sig heta Hasse Wigeèr och vara från Umeå. Bilden presenterades som en mingelbild vid en konsert med artisten Jimmie Tenor.

Några veckor senare ringer någon till redaktionen på Turku Sannomat och uppger att mannen på bilden inte är Hasse Wigeer utan istället föreställer den fd. rallyföraren Terje Vissää. Terje var känd för sin orädda och aggressiva stil på banan och prisades av president Kekkonen för sina insatser inom rallysporten. Terje var även känd för sitt hårda leverne och sitter i rullstol sedan en han onykter kraschat med sin motorcykel 1989. Terje var tidigare ett känt ansikte i Turkus nöjeliv, men har sedan kraschen inte synts offentligt fram till att denna bild publicerades. Vi önskar Terje välkommen tillbaka.

To whomever. According to Tobias

A while back I got a respons to the “To Whomever” thing. Instead of writing a letter to the person in the picture, Tobias wrote a short biography. Much appreciated. If you would like to participate, please check out the original post and send a letter to the person you imagine is in the photo. Include a postal address and I’ll send a copy signed in character – A perfect decoration for any fridge. The image below is on its way to Tobias.

Vold Streckzy is in a direct descending way related to Nedeljko Cabrinovic, the biggest klutz in history. Vold himself does not know this. But to a person having this knowledge when looking upon Vold it makes perfect sense.

Vold always has a look of fear in his eyes. He’ve had this ever since he was a small boy living in the outskirts of Sarajevo where he one day due to a series of highly unlikely events fell of his tricycle. After tumbling down a rocky slope with thorny bushes for a good 5 minutes he ended up in a sheep den. As he had a considerable amount of vertical velocity he got stuck waist-high in sheep droppings. Given the sheep being startled and that Vold had the shame of his ancestor hanging upon him, the sheep attacked. Then after dodging hooves for what seemed like the better part of his childhood his mother came and dragged him out.

After the incident they moved to Turkey but the ill-omen resting upon Vold never seized tormenting him. He has been on the move ever since. Hence the constant fear in his eyes.

Oh heavens, part deux. And the Twitter.

Much of my online activity as of late has migrated towards Twitter and Blip. In case you don’t know them they are micro-blogging services. The micro implies both the length of the messages you can publish, and also the length of my attention span – which seems to have shrunk to measures traditionally used for 100m dash.

Like right now, while writing this, I blipped two songs and emailed Petter about it and updated my Twitter feed (even though it auto-updates every five minutes).

At the same time as the immediacy of connection is being realised, there’s an almost constant feeling of “wait, where were I?” Some of us have become so fully immersed in our computers and their proffered connections that we’ve become very active nodes. We’re spending so much time computing and parsing data that to an online observer we might as well be highly specialised and slightly retarded computers. Or maybe it’s just me; Having so much info passing through eyes and ears and out my fingertips, and retaining nothing but the constant buzzing noise, the trunk noise of a phone held to the ear.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/untitled-linked-comp-01_1.flv https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/picture-1.png 640 360]

The upside of all this – Olle tells me that optimistic posts are better than “the self-loathing and whiny stuff” I occasionally write – is that I’m getting stuff done. Granted, it’s not like I’m actually using all my waking hours being creative or something, but there is a feeling of “getting shit done” in the air which is uplifting.

There’s that thing with my brother and that thing with Petter, and some stuff Ana and I have been talking about as well as the whole Skup Palet that Anna, Jan + a bunch of us are learing at. With that, I know it’s easy to talk about stuff that you might do or are interested in doing or perhaps would consider doing if the conditions are favourable and you are sober enough, but there’s something in the air. Like, pollution, only good pollution.

Thanks to global warming the winter has been mild here and we’ve been spared the sleet and piss that a Gothenburg winter is commonly associated with. Knock on wood. It all adds up.

I can’t believe I’m actually looking forwards to spring. Let’s recap the past year: I quit smoking after 7 years, started running, got a drivers license and had an interesting job both in spring and fall. And I got a moustache.

And now I’m looking forwards to spring, lying on my bed looking up at the clouds passing by. It’s just like that science guy from Independence Day when he played another science guy in The Fly and he slowly turns into a fly and peels his eyes off. Only I’ve peeled my eyes off and discover I’m now a twinkly hippie person. Before you know it I’ll be tie-dying shit and doing astral journeys in public.

Pants! Again!

I broke a needle, and lesson learned Re: Using gaffers tape for support, but I managed to stitch a pair of pants together. By “together” i mean I’m no longer exposing any nasty bits, although obviously my craftsmanship isn’t perfected yet. Some people didn’t notice the careful work and dedication I put into it. Well, some people can go suck an egg, that’s what I say. And I used a coloured thread on purpose. It was an artistic decision.

Because being psychosomatic is an interesting hobby, I spent the other day doing a mix-n-match between my blood-test results and possible deficiencies/symptoms. I do this vegan blood test once a year or so to see what stuff I might be lacking (I don’t feel like becoming a B12-goth) and this time it turns out that I have way too high iron levels. Four hours later, I’m quite certain i might have become a B12-goth.

I have a meeting with lady in white come Monday, and she’ll prolly tell me to stop being a whiny turd, hopefully using more comforting language. But it’s always tempting to assign blame – and if I could pass off my tiredness and passivity as of late to something as banal as vitamin deficiency, I could just as easily be placeboed into “fitness” or something resembling it. Below, Anna and Jonas, two of the most fit people I know.