Tag: beginnings

PM: 2009 resolution candidates.

I came back to Gothenburg in time to welcome the new year with a couple of friends. After dinner we headed to Heaven 23 (on the 23rd floor of a hotel) for drinks and fireworks. We’d been told that a strict dress code would be enforced, and as a result we all looked bloody fabulous in jackets and such. Anna and Hanna had given me a scarf with flower prints on which allowed me to play the part of a toyboy and/or gay chihuahua.

We pretty soon realise that the whole dress code thing doesn’t apply to the scores of hotel guests that have found their way to the top floor with their kids in search for lebensraum and alcohol. The enterprise we had set out on is now transforming in front of our eyes into an after ski, but with more expensive alcohol and family friendly music volume. Once the fireworks start the kids are swarming, longingly staring out over the city but probably missing their Playstation consoles.

We’ve been buying drinks for two hours or so and slowly realise that we’re not getting value for money. We wrap shit up and leave in search for other venues that might enjoy our custom, and where we might actually enjoy being customers. I’m still sick and communicate mostly through coughs and spit – I’m a whiny bastard when I’m sick – so it’s actually a relief when we give up on finding anything interesting at half two and take the tram home.

Mum just got back from Hawaii, where she and her boyfriend were seeing new places and having a grand time. Sounds like fun, that. My Christmas has been spent under the banner of plague and lethargy, and I’m looking forward to getting back to work at Chalmers and planning stupendous projects. Also, I need to make more money so that I can buy people all those Christmas presents I’ve been putting off for three weeks. I mean, my brother got two pairs of socks from me, which although they were designer socks, still are socks.

Contrary to the title, I don’t have a new years resolution yet. I’m working on it and it’ll be a good one. Promise.

Marriage, masturbation, mortality, Melvin

Marriage:

My friend Mirjana got married on Saturday. It was a short ceremony at city hall. And by short I mean really short. Less than one minute in fact. The halls were full of couples getting wed, and they were all processed on a conveyour belt (not really, but sort of):

mirjana wedding

In the image they have just turned their heads as the man doing the ceremony sped by like a small and quite fast japanese car. Do you? Do you? You’re done!
He even managed to include an aphorism about love that had us scratching our heads for a while: “To love is nothing, to be loved is something, to love and be loved is everything”. I think he liked the rhythm of “nothing-something-everything”. If it was “something-something-everything” we wouldn’t have had as much trouble parsing it as we had.

All the best to Mirjana and Dimitri on the endevour. Yay you! Etc.

Masturbation:

beautifulagono.com

I was innocently browsing the internets for images of cute puppies and things that would make my mom proud when I stumbled upon this art porn site. I’ve been suggesting to my friends that we should get in on this neoporn thing while the getting is good – there has to be other ways of turning people on rather than showing the same worn out cumshots – but since I’m not a very prolific porn-surfer I haven’t seen much of this new-wave porn but rather heard it thrown around a bit (mostly on high profile blogs like boingboing.net or violet blues’ tinynibbles.com).

It’s videos showing the faces of people helping themselves to a handful of loving. All the pretentious stuff aside, it’s very onturning. Oh, and if you click the image and subscribe I might actually get a free months’ subscription. help me help myself, so to speak.

Mortality:

I was on the phone with mom the other day and she told me that a kid I grew up and went to kindergarden with got stabbed to death on new years eve. His name was Samir and during a fight outside a party he and some other people got knifed. I haven’t found any accounts of it (there were a few stabbings in Stockholm on new years), so I don’t know what happened.

He was living in the apartment building across from my moms when I was in grade school, and we would have fallouts because we both were stubborn. The strongest memory I have of him was when we were in afterschool daycare and after a spat I accidentally threw a baking pin in his face (the handle came off while I was waving it around), forcing him to visit a hospital and get his forehead stiched up. I recall being quite frightened at the small trail of blood leading to the bathroom where one of the grown-ups cleaned up the wound.

I was too engrossed in the taunting and ostracizing I was experiencing at school to consider if I was being overly mean to him (he was two years my junior I think) but I might have been. Anyways. RIP Samir

Melvin:

mark melvin January party
Mark Melvin came by to visit us gothenburgians, and it was much appreciated. I missed his show cause of the marriage but he did get a small telegram (with picture!) in the national/local paper about the exhibition.

Yes, he usually covers his face whenever being photographed. I don’t know why. It might be because he doesn’t want any bad images to appear on any blogs or such. Too bad I have enough decency not to show the image I have of him doing the face he always does when frustrated. Damn shame.