Trollhättan and back. With pictures!

It’s like this: A friend of mine organised this rather big festival indoors that started at three in the afternoon and kept on going until 01:00. (now, actually)

They had lotsa bands playing, some stalls, a mini ramp for skateboards. And a big warehouse they didn’t really manage to fill, (it would’ve taken a thousand people to get a crowd going, and there were 2-300 perhaps?) and it was really, really cold. Really cold. Very very cold. This being a aforementioned “big big warehouse.”

Lot of very nicely geared up teenagers, and of course I feel out of place. My friend is running around climbing stuff and doing all those things that need to get done when you pull something of this magnitude together, which leaves me fending for myself with whatever pitiful social skills that I have: Usually they consist of me lending my lighter to people who are standing outside of the locale, smoking with fingers so frostbitten that the glow from cigarettes is the only thing that’s keeping them from falling apart (á la terminator 2). It’s very cold.

I did rediscover that some of the people from the (brilliant) band bob hund had reformed as Sci-fi skane. And that was good. Apart from that, I was supposed to take some pictures. Since I wasn’t paid, I left it to my mood to dictate what I’d shoot, so it was few pictures, mostly taken from a distance, showing concrete walls, cigarette butts and the occasional first-aid person.

Another video online

I’ve added another video to the guiltyguiltyguilty.org page: Mark Melvin.

Since last week I haven’t really touched the page, just sort of leaning back and occasionally watching the traffic stats (not all that high yet), but I’ll prolly get around changing some of the texts – as it stands it’s focusing a bit too much on music- & film-piracy, instead of the more general question of “intellectual property – is it a useful concept?” sorta thing.

But for now – feed my ego and go and watch the new video.

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2009 Update: The above mentioned site is now defunct. Go to monocultured.com for a mirror of the project.

Pratchett progress

I always do this.

I really have taken the Oscar Wilde saying to heart, that too much of something good is wonderful (or words to that sentiment, I can’t be bothered to look it up) and currently that means that I spend all my waking hours with headphones on, listening to Terry Pratchett audiobooks. When I was but a wee lad I used to buy the Discworld novels and read them in the same spirit that I’d read the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, but ever since I started downloading audio versions of the books, I’ve come to realise that Pratchett can have a lot to offer when it comes to plot and character development – or to put it differently, it’s all rather good. (albeit silly at times)

Since I like compiling lists I made one showing the Discworld novels in their chronological order, ticking off the ones I’ve read:

[x]The Colour of Magic
[x]The Light Fantastic
[x]Equal Rites
[x]Mort
[x]Sourcery
[x]Wyrd Sisters
[ ]Pyramids
[x]Guards! Guards!
[ ]Eric
[x]Moving Pictures
[x]Reaper Man
[x]Witches Abroad
[ ]Small Gods
[x]Lords and Ladies
[x]Men at Arms
[ ]Soul Music
[x]Interesting Times
[x]Maskerade
[x]Feet of Clay
[x]Hogfather
[x]Jingo
[x]The Last Continent
[ ]Carpe Jugulum
[x]The Fifth Elephant
[x]The Truth
[x]Thief of Time
[x]The Last Hero
[ ]The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
[x]Night Watch
[ ]The Wee Free Men
[x]Monstrous Regiment
[x]A Hat Full of Sky
[x]Going Postal
[x]Thud!

Some of the uncheked ones I’m quite sure I’ve read already, but that was a long time ago, in a galaxy far away so to speak, so I’m gonna give em a listen and see if that doesn’t jolt my memory. Currently, I’m nearing the end of Moving pictures; Not the best in the lot, there’s too much real-world-influence jokes (popcorn is called banged grains and so on) for my liking, but still. It’s part of whatever disorder I have to go through them all. I just can’t bear the thought of not gobbing it all up in one go; A behaviour that can be readily observed whenever I’m making food and subsequently eating all of it regardless if it’s three helpings or six.

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Update: I’ve finished two more: Moving pictures and Light fantastic. I’m listening to Carpe jugulum right now, althought I know I’ve read it already – it was a while ago, so the book is sort of new with just occasional anticipation on my part.

T-shirt

I’ve always had a thing for doing t-shirts. It’s something about wearing my heart on my sleeve (of which I btw have a design), and being obtrusely juvenile. So imagine my joy when I found out about Threadless.com. Lotsa fun tshirt designs, and rather on the cheap side. (unless you order three or more, in which case you end up paying tax when it arrived within the EU)

So I submitted my first design the other week:

And to my surprise it wasn’t even allowed into the competition. What the hell I thought, they’ve had blood and gore and suicide t-shirt, and they didn’t allow this one in? I know they don’t like text-based designs, but I thought I was being rather clever.

Oh, well, I’m not one to give up to easily, so despite not being able to draw if so my life depended on it, I traced and photoshopped this one up:

Again, more clever than well executed, but whatever. If it’s get entered into the running I’ll be sure to post it up here as a minor achievement… In the meantime, y’all better get accounts there so that if it does get accepted you’ll be ready to vote for it and shower me with praise and such like.

In the previous episode…

Or, let me list the ways in which I am displeased about my life.

* The MFA course i’m doing right now is cancelled. I will be able to finish the MFA, but I don’t know who’s gonna be responsible for it, or if we’re gonna get shuffled around and lose our studios or what the budget is going to be. The course I’m doing has always seemed to be the retarded stepchild of the art academy, but it still pisses me off no end that I found out about the cancellation of my program through the fucking web page of the fucking university instead of maybe, oh I don’t know, an email gently informing us about it? At all?. Or why not when I applied to the course. A short sentence like “oh, btw, we might cancel your education on a whim“.

* Anna is looking to sell her place, which means that I will have to start looking for something new. And it’s the second last thing that i like to be thinking of.

* The last thing that i want to be thinking about is money. It’s not original, it’s not a fun conversational topic, but for hells sake I need to straighten my “economy” out in some way. Preferably not a way that includes robberies or lottery tickets.

On a lighter side, there’s been a lot of hubbub about people doing remixes of subway maps. The transit authority in London has ordered shutdown of this page because the maps that the site is hosting are breaking trademark rules or somesuch. Which of course is a crock of shit, so I’ve put up a mirror of the site here.

Enjoy it while it lasts; Don’t know the university stance on these kinds of things, but even with the relative laxness of copyright law enforcement here in Sweden, I wouldn’t bet much on any spine existing within the university administration – it’s just not the point of administrators…